Going to Washington DC was one of the most amazing experiences in my life. It's one thing to read about and see pictures of it all but being there is an entirely different experience.
Perhaps what struck me most was just how fragile freedom really is. The documents that have made history? Locked up in vaults and protected by armed guards with security all around in every form concevable. But more than that, when you think of the wrangling and the contention this country has been through just to be born and how precipitous the course of events has been you realize just how fragile and yet how powerful freedom really is.
Would we still have freedom without the actual documents? Or, if they disappeared, could someone say that they never existed and it was all a myth and it's time to change things.
I got the impression that as long as those documents actually exist, the pen truly is mightier than the sword, and there is still a hold on liberty in our country.
In reading over the constittuion on the flight home I realized just how much really was unspecified in the daily affairs of American life. What scares me is just how much power the government has that isn't spelled out in that document, and yet how much power still rests in her citizens hands to protect their freedoms such as the right to bear arms, which as Jefferson noted, is so beautiful because we don't need the right to bear arms until someone tries to take it away.
I can look back on history and see the decisions where freedom was curtailed in order to preserve it. John Adams' signing of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798 which made criticism of the government by word of mouth or in writing a crime and made the requirements of citizenship to be residence in the U.S. for 14 years whereas previously it had been around four. This was because there were various threats of uprisings against the government and in order to preserve the freedoms that government provides, John Adams had to curtail the freedoms as well as prevent people who wanted to use citizenship to milk the government of its resources and alter its democratic processes from gaining that opportunity.
I hadn't realized until I saw "The Star Spangled Banner" and read the story about it what the significance of the story was. America was taking a BEATING at the hands of the British who had even burned the White House! They were moving north and about to put a strangle hold on Baltimore, but Fort McHenry stood between their blockade / invasion and American defeat in the war of 1812. In the morning, after suffering so many losses, to see the flag still there, that the U.S. had actually held out against the British was truly a victory at a time when America needed one and stood on the brink of being utterly defeated.
I'm still taking it all in. I have so much to reflect on but found so much material and inspiration for my blog while I was there that I'm still only beginning to make sense of it all. If you haven't ever read the constitution and its ammendments all the way through, read it! Every American should! That document is being trampled on right now. As the government is now offering to provide everything for us while taking it away from others in a redistribution of wealth - freedom is dying while many simply want security.
"If you want total security, go to prison. There you're fed, clothed, given medical care and so on. The only thing lacking... is freedom."
Dwight D. Eisenhower
