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11. Three Cheers For The Red,
White and Blue
"What have you done for liberty?"
said William
Jennings Bryan a century ago.
''If nothing, what can
freedom mean to you?"
It
seems that no generation of
Americans has talked as much about freedom as the
present one, and yet some have shown greater
readiness to abandon it.
How far we have come from a time when patriots
like Nathan Hale who, before going to his death on ·a
British gallows in our War for Independence, spoke the
undying words:
''/only regret that I have but one life
to lose for my country.
"
We may not all remember the dates we learned in
our history courses, and we will most certainly forget
much of the details of our national development.
However, each and every American should try to live up
to the ideals that have become our American heritage:
self-reliance; personal courage; love for country; faith
in God; responsible freedom; limited constitutional
government; fiscal integrity; and free, private
enterprise.
As Woodrow Wilson penned it,
'The things that the
flag stands for were created by the experiences of a
great people. Everything that it stands for was written
by their lives. The flag is the embodiment, not of
sentiment, but ofhistory.
"
Why do we knock ourselves, when we are the envy
of the world? We have so much to be thankful for:
A country of unbounded beauty; almost unlimited
natural resources; a standard of living beyond the
dream of kings; a judicial system that is the envy
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