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You’ll notice that it’s pretty quiet around the PW website today; we’re all out of the office, relaxing and enjoying our lives. We’ll be back Monday, ready to have fun.
In the meantime, I offer my half of this week’s Scripps Howard column with Ben Boychuk. The debate this week: How free is America on this July 4 weekend?
When the Founding Fathers declared America’s independence more than 230 years ago, they couldn’t have imagined some of the events this country has witnessed in the last year or so: A black man elected president. A woman nominated for vice president, and another nearly claim her party’s nomination for the top spot. In a few states, gay men and women have even been allowed to marry each other.
More Americans than ever can be confident of their ability to participate fully in the political process or create the family of their choosing — and if those aren’t signs that freedom is on the rise, well, what is? But the job is not complete. Gay Americans are still largely second-class citizens, prohibited in most places from marrying their partners. They’re still not allowed to serve openly in the military.
Meanwhile, America’s new president — while he has committed the welcome act of ending torture — has put himself on the side of warrantless wiretapping and the indefinite detention of terror suspects who can’t be convicted in a court of law. Lovers of liberty are rightly troubled by these developments.
What we have learned — again — is that freedom belongs to no particular political party. That it demands constant vigilance. And that it still stirs the American soul.
The battles that consume so much of our political life very often balance someone’s notion of freedom against somebody else’s desire to fix a problem. That’s not a bad thing. As long as we are battling for freedom — against its limitations and for its expansion — then we still have a large measure of it. That is something for which Americans can still be grateful.
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