Honoring the Spirit of the Fourth

If one is not careful, like many things in life, July Fourth can become a caricature - just another of many rituals we engage in without thinking. Parade, Hot Dogs, fireworks. But there is more at stake here.

It is a time to pause and consider how hard "freedom" and independence was to win and maintain.

In his inauguration speech of 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke of the "four freedoms":
* Freedom of speech
* Freedom of every person to worship God in his own way
* Freedom from want
* Freedom from fear (A world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor - anywhere in the world).

What does freedom mean to you these days ?
What do these "freedoms" say to you today ?
Do we practice what we preach ?
Is there an American version of freedom - is it a universal value ?
Who decides ?
What shape is our democracy in today ?
Is the system working for you ?

For me, as I wrestle with these questions and others, a good place to start is to actually read a source itself of these freedoms, the Declaration of Indepedence (an old NPR reading of it - a favorite of mine):

http://www.npr.org/programs/morning/features/2002/jul/declaration/020704.declaration.html