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we have forgotten what we are all about. In
this age of never ending searches for our real self, we
continue to look inward more and more. That would seem
to greatly reduce the odds that we will notice someone
else in need. I don't mean poverty stricken need, I mean
moral and emotional need. We all feel that we have more
than enough on our own plates, leaving little but crumbs
for others to nibble at. We have grown afraid to become
that stable diet that provides strength for those in
need. It doesn't help to throw a dollar in the hat.
We're talking long term relationships, an extended
family. Once upon a time, our grandparents grew up in a
nuturing land. They, and their families before them,
stood for a common will. Perhaps it was the sheer effort
to survive in times when so many did not. Maybe it was
the recognition that they answered only to God, and
seriously believed that they would be held accountable
for how they spent each minute of their lives. Waste
not, want not. Something made millions of young men deem
it an honor to fight in war after war, and do it with a
pride that could not be vanquished. They truely believed
that it was a privilege to not only live in this country,
but to die for it if necessary. I had really forgotten
how it used to be, lost in the hectic pace of my own
every day living, until a dear friend loaned me a book to
read. She said that she had read it over, and over and
over. I knew that it was about the Battle of Gettysburg,
and that it was required reading, for military officers,
I believe. What I found was more than a story of war.
In an effort to explain how the South did not feel that
slavery was the issue they were fighting for, what I
discovered was that both sides were fighting for the same
thing...freedom to make their own choices. Freedom is
not a word that many of us can really respect. I suspect
it is one of those things that you
really,
really can't feel, until it does
not exist. In the absence of freedom, you can't speak
your mind without fear of incarceration, or worse. The
freedom to stand up be counted, for
any cause,
without the fear of losing everything. If what we have
is less than perfect, it will not, and can not, get
better without our own effort to make it so. Just
because we have freedoms is no reason to take advantage
of them. They are a privledge, not a right, and the
price can be very high. Let's not lose the faith.
" He walked slowly toward the dark grove.
He had a complicated brain and there were things going on
back there from time to time that he only dimly
understood, so he relied on his instincts, but he was
learning all the time. The faith itself was simple: he
believed in the dignity of man. His ancestors were
Huguenots, refugees of a chained and bloody Europe. He
had learned their stories in the cradle. He had grown up
believing in America and the individual and it was a
stronger faith than his faith in God. This was the land
where no man had to bow. In this place at last a man
could stand up free of the past, free of tradition and
blood ties and the curse of royalty and become what he
wished to become. This was the first place on earth where
the man mattered more than the state. True freedom had
begun here and it would spread eventually over all the
earth. But it had begun
here.
"
"The Killer Angels" by Michael Shaara (1974):
Colonel Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain of the Union Army,
20th Regiment of Infantry, Maine Volunteers at the Battle
of Gettysburg.
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 Let me hear from
you.
Find any bad links or
have ones you would like to share?
Everett
A.Goodwin III
chunt@oocities.com
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