This column in the Big Horn County News is continued on the seventh paragraph below
There's been a lot of discussion in the news lately about our rights to privacy as U.S. citizens—what with spy drones and NSA data-bases keeping tabs on us all. I'm probably not the only one concerned about the role domestic surveillance should play in keeping our country secure. How much freedom is reasonable to sacrifice for safety? It's not an easy call. Our desire to limit our own freedoms and those of others seems to vary with how threatened we feel at any point in time.
This time of year brings to mind two important milestones in our nation's quest for liberty. June 26 marks the anniversary of the US Army's 7th Cavalry Defeat in 1876 at the Little Big Horn near Crow Agency. Of course July 4th celebrates the day in 1776 when the United States Declaration of Independence was sent to King George of Britain. Both of these events remind us of how hard won our existing freedoms are. They also remind us of how a few with liberty and power can withhold similar freedoms from others, leading to deadly conflict.
Throughout time and history nations have often viewed others' access to liberty as a threat to their own. When we see those others gaining the liberties we cherish, we can so easily see ourselves losing. Why is it so much clearer to us when our own freedoms are being threatened as compared to when we're ignoring the rights of others? Perhaps it takes the perspective of history to understand the underlying motives of fear and greed that influence our decisions.
It's easy to see how we might lose our peripheral vision in times of crisis. One of our mother hens had similar trouble keeping track of her little ones in the rainy weather this spring. She lost one early in the spring when it got separated and left behind during a foraging expedition in the field. It was too fragile to survive for long in the tall wet grass. Several days later we almost had another fatality. Our hen was out with her brood when a storm struck. The wind rose suddenly, followed by cracking thunder and the first drops of a major rain falling. With the small ones unable to get back to better shelter, their mother spread her wings and hunkered down to protect them. We saw the storm on radar, and decided to bring her and her little ones into the shelter. But we didn't count them until we set them in the safe shelter. One was missing. So I carried the mother hen back out into the lightning, wind and rain, and set her down where we found her earlier. She ran immediately a few yards and opened her wings. She found the lost chick we couldn't hear or see, and fortunately none were lost.
Our own struggles with freedom and security don't always have a happy ending. Like our mother hen, it's easy for us to lose sight of all the pieces when we're in crisis or fear mode. Our natural instinct is to protect our own, sometimes at the cost of the very principles we're striving to defend. Yet, many people see protecting those whose liberties are being limited or lost as a sacred task. Our common sense of morality recoils from the thought that our liberty depends on depriving others of theirs.
This summer, let's not celebrate our nation's unprecedented capacity with interrogation technology, surveillance, drones and guided missiles to successfully select and exterminate human liberty and life. Unlike what too many of our politicians, media and preachers claim, the Bible itself says this power does not grow our own liberty. Let's rather celebrate the compassion and strength we have found in our national history to side with those whose liberties have been limited. When the next media onslaught comes, let's count past ten and take time to listen and look for those lost.
The column continues with resource links: www.greenwoodback40.blogspot.com
Both King George and the legislators behind General Custer's last campaign on the Little Horn were oblivious to the loss of liberty and even life stemming from their fears and selfishness. King George and the East India Tea Company were about to lose their liberty to extract tax money and profit from the colonists. He sent occupation troops to end the colonial rebellion. This was business as usual in the British Empire of 1776, despite the King's claim to be an advocate of human life and liberty. They could have learned from the roots of our revolution and our struggle to build a constitution, but almost two hundred years later Britain was flagrantly and secretly violating this claim.
The new book, "Imperial Reckoning: The Untold Story of Britain's Gulag in Kenya," by Caroline Elkins, truth powerful empires want to hide, because it unveils a brutal and ugly side to their proclaimed quest for liberty. See Amazon's reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Imperial-Reckoning-Untold-Story-Britains/dp/0805080015
It's the sad history from the 1950's still being repeated today at Guantanamo and elsewhere. When we willingly sacrifice life and liberty of others outside or even inside our borders, are we really better than Custer or King George? Yet today nations deny and fail to see what we can better see in Big Horn County: that protecting those whose liberties are being limited or lost is a sacred task, a bigger task more worth dying for than the simple task of limiting (or ending) life and liberty for some.
Our common sense of morality recoils from the thought that our liberty depends on depriving others of theirs. We here can join vicariously with those who struggled for life and liberty, leaving the security of the US army posts in Colorado and Nebraska in the 1870's and venturing out to the good grass between the Rosebud and the Big Horn rivers to pursue life, liberty and happiness for their families. We can also join vicariously with those who signed that liberty-declaring document in 1776, knowing it was only a milestone in a struggle that continues beyond July 4, 2013, still calling us to a similar respect for the life and liberty of any human being.
Hardin, MT 59034
graberdb@gmail.com
