Of the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

Each verse of our national anthem ends with the stirring phrase, “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” For nearly two centuries—this fall will mark the 195th anniversary of the writing of the “Star Spangled Banner,” by Francis Scott Key—these words have stirred Americans on the battlefield, on the frontier, in their homes, at their work, at their places of worship, even in the halls of government, stirred them to great and bold and noble action for the freedom and independence of our people and as an example to the rest of the world.

In recent times, in more or less accelerating fashion from the New Deal of the 1930s to an even quicker pace since the first of the year, too many of our governmental leaders have been trying their best to turn our nation into the land of the safe and the home of the careful. From the little child wearing a monstrous bicycle helmet as she rides her tricycle, through the proliferation of warning labels on virtually everything we buy or use, to the politically correct speech codes at work and on campus, to the honey sweet invitations for people to surrender to government control their health care and financial choices, Americans are in danger of losing the core of what makes us Americans: our freedom and our courage.

Freedom is the ability to choose, to make our own lives, to make of ourselves who we are and who we will present to God at the last day. Courage is the drive to draw upon the best within us and make the best and right choices, in spite of the odds, in spite of ridicule, to overcome danger. Courage is the father of all of our virtues, without which no virtue is possible.

When I was a child—not too many decades ago—my playmates and I often defended our decisions with the phrase, “It’s a free country.” I do not hear children say that anymore. Is it because it is not a free country, or that the freedom is not apparent, or that our children are not taught about freedom being at the core of what made the United States the beacon of hope for the world?

This November we will mark another anniversary, seven score and six years ago, when Abraham Lincoln called upon a nation of the free and the brave to a greater and continued exertion, so that “this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.” Is that call any less relevant and important and stirring to Americans today?