Freedom comes at a cost – and the cost can wear and fray the edges of souls, can cost precious lives in the saving of it – but regardless how battered and tattered, regardless how sometimes the fight to keep freedom and it’s flag flying – it is worth the fight, the standing firm in the face of compromise, to live free, to maintain this shining city on a hill giving hope to a world of oppression.
I thought this 4th of July, Independence Day, the quotes of our founding fathers, the men who laid the cornerstone of our country’s foundation, many giving up all for this liberty – that we read some of their words regarding liberty and our flag – and then these words go down deep like a tonic, strengthening to sustain our responsibilities to keep our country strong, pure and true.
“If anyone, then, asks me the meaning of our flag, I say to him – it means just what Concord and Lexington meant; what Bunker Hill meant; which was, in short, the rising up of a valiant young people against an old tyranny to establish the most momentous doctrine that the world had ever known – the right of men to their own selves and to their liberties” ~Henry Ward Beecher
“Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.” ~ Thomas Jefferson
“Our flag means all that our fathers meant in the Revolutionary War. It means all that the Declaration of Independence meant. It means justice. It means liberty. It means happiness…. Every color means liberty. Every thread means liberty. Every star and stripe means liberty.” ~Henry Ward Beecher
“Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty, socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
This flag, which we honor and under which we serve, is the emblem of our unity, our power, our thought and purpose as a nation. It has no other character than that which we give it from generation to generation. The choices are ours. It floats in majestic silence above the hosts that execute those choices, whether in peace or in war. And yet, though silent, it speaks to us — speaks to us of the past, or the men and women who went before us, and of the records they wrote upon it” President Woodrow Wilson, 1917
“I weep for the liberty of my country when I see at this early day of its successful experiment that corruption has been imputed to many members of the House of Representatives, and the rights of the people have been bartered for promises of office” ~ Andrew Jackson
“We take the stars from heaven, the red from our mother country, separating it by white stripes, thus showing that we have separated from her, and the white stripes shall go down to posterity, representing our liberty.” ~George Washington, attributed
“Free people, remember this maxim: we may acquire liberty, but it is never recovered if it is once lost” ~ Jean-Jacques Rosseau
“When men yield up the privilege of thinking, the last shadow of liberty quits the horizon” ~ Thomas Payne
“Sure I wave the American flag. Do you know a better flag to wave? Sure I love my country with all her faults. I’m not ashamed of that, never have been, never will be” ~ John Wayne
“Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith” ~ Alexis de Tocqueville
“It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible.” ~ President George Washington
“We have room for but one flag, the American flag, and this excludes the red flag which symbolizes all wars against liberty and civilization just as much as it excludes any foreign flag of a nation to which we are hostile. We have room for but one language here and that is the English language, for we intend to see that the crucible turns our people out as Americans, of American nationality, and not as dwellers in a pollyglot [sic] boarding house; and we have room for but one, soul [sic] loyalty, and that loyalty is to the American people” (Letter from Theodore Roosevelt to Richard Hurd, January 3, 1919)
Story Telling Around the Table
Blue Cotton Memory 