Accidental Blogger

The air has started to shimmer with the heat. Red, white and blue flags hang waiting for the next touch of breeze outside the homes. A faint odor of fireworks of the smaller kind lingers around some yards, grilled charcoal in others.

So what is the Fourth of July about, if not cookouts, fireworks, picnics, family and friends? According to thousands of local newspapers, it's about 'Freedom'. But what does 'Freedom' mean?

From the dictionary, we get the standard definition:

"Date: before 12th century

1 : the quality or state of being free: as a : the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action b : liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another : independence c : the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous <freedom from care> d : ease, facility <spoke the language with freedom> e : the quality of being frank, open, or outspoken <answered with freedom> f : improper familiarity g : boldness of conception or execution h : unrestricted use <gave him the freedom of their home>
2 a : a political right b : franchise, privilege"

From our local (right-leaning) TV station news:

"I was in the Vietnam era; so, I know all about freedom," said one man who was attending the Regatta. "It means a lot to me."

"It's very heart-wrenching to see a lot of our fallen comrades, as well as people sacrificing their lives for us to enjoy the Fourth," said another person in attendance at the Regatta.

As we celebrate America's birthday – our most patriotic celebration – we should not forget that just in the past few weeks alone, three Pittsburgh-area servicemen gave their lives, fighting to preserve freedom."

( I thought the reverence for the military would have been a better focal point over Memorial Day.Wasn't the Fourth of July the date of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, when 13 colonies decided that they had enough of being 'subjects' and wanted now to become 'citizens'?)

The Herald-Sun of Durham, NC, asked a wide range of people for their definitions and got an equally wide range of answers, all of them filtered through the personal lenses of the people who were queried. (See the article for the details.)

For others, as in the Houston Chronicle forum on religion, it's the ability to go hammer and tongs at whether freedom of religion means freedom to practice religion, or freedom to be free of religion.

Of course, there is the ubiquitous bumper-sticker "Freedom isn't (ain't) free". The cost of course being paid by the soldiers who are sent to fight wars just or unjust, absolved from culpability by people whose orders they fight on, peppered with generous doses of the nobility of the 'Freedom' fought for and "Pro Patri mori".

As one well-schooled in the Indian educational system, I happen to like this definition the best, without particular regard to the invocation.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow
domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the
dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought
and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

— Rabindranath Tagore