What Freedom Means to Me
Since last July 4, I have taken part in two things that have come to define the American Experience: buying a house and losing my job.
I have always had a keen sense of place. As I was telling Bill Barrow at the Cleveland Memory Project on Thursday, there has never been any doubt in my mind that I am a Clevelander. In fact, the earliest memory I have of being a Clevelander is watching my mom and dad, with a chuckle, hang up their new Cleveland's a Plum bumper sticker in a place of prominence on our dining room wall in West Park. I didn't exactly understand what was so funny, just that Cleveland was obviously a weird place and I was from there.
However, I've had a harder time placing myself as an American. I know it's supposed to be something about freedom. But what does that mean, exactly?
Thanks to the work I did at the WRHS over the past year, I know what freedom meant to the late U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum; to Samuel Austin, founder of the Austin Company; and to the entrepreneur and philanthropist George Gund. From the vantage point of my backyard, I can hear that for one of my neighbors, freedom means opening all of your windows and playing your stereo with the bass cranked. I can smell that for another, freedom means the exuberant consumption of grilled, spicy meat.
To me, though, freedom just doesn't seem like the key value we should be embracing right now. When I think about my role as a U.S. citizen, the word that comes to mind most often is not freedom, not liberty, not independence, but responsibility. For the most part, we've gotten the hang of the other three things, and we don't really evolve as a nation by simply invoking them ad infinitum.
I always tell people there are two things that make me feel patriotic: standing in front of Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and paying my taxes.
My wish for America this 4th of July, then -- when we're struggling to ensure that there's health care for all, when funding to public libraries in Ohio is in mortal jeopardy -- is that more of my fellow citizens come to understand just how crucial that last bit is. Washington and the founding fathers paid for independence of our country with their lives; we've got to be responsible and pay with our wallets.
Because like it or not, taxes pay for the things that allow people to dream.
I have always had a keen sense of place. As I was telling Bill Barrow at the Cleveland Memory Project on Thursday, there has never been any doubt in my mind that I am a Clevelander. In fact, the earliest memory I have of being a Clevelander is watching my mom and dad, with a chuckle, hang up their new Cleveland's a Plum bumper sticker in a place of prominence on our dining room wall in West Park. I didn't exactly understand what was so funny, just that Cleveland was obviously a weird place and I was from there.
However, I've had a harder time placing myself as an American. I know it's supposed to be something about freedom. But what does that mean, exactly?
Thanks to the work I did at the WRHS over the past year, I know what freedom meant to the late U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum; to Samuel Austin, founder of the Austin Company; and to the entrepreneur and philanthropist George Gund. From the vantage point of my backyard, I can hear that for one of my neighbors, freedom means opening all of your windows and playing your stereo with the bass cranked. I can smell that for another, freedom means the exuberant consumption of grilled, spicy meat.
To me, though, freedom just doesn't seem like the key value we should be embracing right now. When I think about my role as a U.S. citizen, the word that comes to mind most often is not freedom, not liberty, not independence, but responsibility. For the most part, we've gotten the hang of the other three things, and we don't really evolve as a nation by simply invoking them ad infinitum.
I always tell people there are two things that make me feel patriotic: standing in front of Washington Crossing the Delaware at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and paying my taxes.
My wish for America this 4th of July, then -- when we're struggling to ensure that there's health care for all, when funding to public libraries in Ohio is in mortal jeopardy -- is that more of my fellow citizens come to understand just how crucial that last bit is. Washington and the founding fathers paid for independence of our country with their lives; we've got to be responsible and pay with our wallets.
Because like it or not, taxes pay for the things that allow people to dream.
posted by Christine Borne at 12:46 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home