The following is the contribution of a young student of mine. It leaves me hope when our youth have such wisdom so early. Kenneth Tack has given me permission to share his piece with my readers. He has captured the essence of freedom through our history from them to himself and you. Will you fight for liberty as did your forbearer’s or are you waiting for someone else to save it, or worse, are you happy to watch it go for promised security? The choice is not to be made by you sometime in the future but is before you now. Today. The Republic is almost gone. Let me be blunt. Are you an active member of the Tea Party Patriots? No other organization is more founding father’s based and so motivated. As Kenneth so ably states, “Now it is your turn.” What will your posterity say of you if you drop the ball on them leaving them to never have what you now have? As George Washington inferred in his famous Farewell Address; you do not have to recreate the parameters of the Constitution. They already did this. Your charge is simply to preserve it. Dr. Harold Pease
Freedom’s Cost
By Kenneth C. Tack
I want to be remembered. I want to know that my life, my ultimate sacrifice, was not given without making a difference in this world. These are the wishes of a dying man.
I lie here in this green field in silence while a war rages around me. My thoughts turn to my three year-old daughter and my wife at home. My wife will be making dinner around this time. I always loved coming home from my work in the fields to the savory smell of a salty slice of beef cooking on the wooden stove, and seeing the melting butter dribble down the side of the mountain of mashed potatoes that she had set on the table. Then my blond-haired little girl would always rush her sturdy little legs over to give me a warm greeting. All these things remind me of why I fight for this Union.
My thoughts snap back to reality in Yorktown. General Washington has finally managed to pin down the British General, Lord Cornwallis, after many years of defeat. This was to be our final great push for freedom. I silently laugh to myself when I think about all the chaos that was caused by 56 people signing one piece of paper. Off in the distance I see the white sails of the French Armada, and I know we will win this war. We shall win this beautiful land known as America.
I lay my head back on the soft grass. The air is chilly due to the ocean breeze, but that discomfort is small in comparison to seeing my bloody neighbors lying unnaturally still in the green grass beside me. The stale smell of drying blood is overpowering, and it’s already hard to breathe. I glance at the gaping wound in my chest, caused by a well placed British round. I know I will not survive to enjoy the freedom that was not free. I will never again embrace my sweet little girl, nor feel the warm embrace of my loving wife. No, I will be embraced by the arms of my Creator tonight.
As I lie here on my deathbed, all I can think about is the cause for which my friends and I died. I don’t want my cohorts’ sacrifice, nor mine, to go unremembered, or have it be bathed in apathy. After all, who are we if we are forgotten? Freedom is a gift, but it can be lost if its consumers forget that it was bought with a high price. It is something that must be carried in our hearts, because freedom cannot spread on its own. It is because of these things I wish to be remembered, not for my personal fame or glory. I wish to be remembered so that the freedom I paid for with my life will endure for all eternity.
My final thoughts travel back to my home, for they are the reason I am even here. My eyelids now feel like a thousand pounds, and my breathing is becoming scarcer by the moment. Now for the final time I look up into the sky with a single tear sneaking steadily down my cheek, for my one regret is that I will not be there for my family when this war is over. They too shall know freedom’s cost, and they will value freedom more because of that.
With these final thoughts in my head I take a deep breath and close my heavy eyes. I have fulfilled my duty to ensure liberty.
Now it’s your turn.
. . . .
It is no secret that freedom is being lost in today’s world. Everywhere we go we see regulations put on our lives for seemingly no reason at all. Freedom in its very core is the ability to do whatever you want, as long as it doesn’t interfere with another’s ability to do the same thing. That is what the revolutionaries fought for with their lives, and that is made clear in their war cry, the Declaration of Independence: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” But even after all of their sacrifices, the young America knew that one day, even America might start to lose their freedom; this is their cry to this America today:
“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
–Declaration of Independence