The Fourth of July

I'm sitting on the dock of the bay. (Literally!) It's the Fourth of July. The twilight is deepening, spreading over the bay as the fireworks start down in Harwich.

I've been thinking about freedom, and what this holiday means in our post 9/11 world.

Thinking about the President's mantra that “They hate us for our freedom.” I don't think it's freedom they hate, but rather the results of freedom. One thing Don Rumsfeld was right about – freedom is untidy.

Free people loot pension funds, and they wear risque clothing. They drink and smoke, and their kids shoot up schools. Some of them have gender reassignment surgery. They also lay down their lives to save people they've never met from fires, and give food to strangers who have none.

A lot of them gave their lives to defend this experiment we call America.

Notice I said "to defend" this experiment. There was time when wars were undertaken to defend freedom, either ours or someone else's, not to instill it where it never existed. It's a shame we've allowed our leaders to try to roll this idea out to the rest of the world in such an incompetent way.

One thing I am sure of – freedom gives me the right to be who I am, even if it annoys the $%@# out of you.

My third grade teacher used to say - my right to swing my arm ends where your nose begins. Before the right of freedom comes the responsibility of tolerance. This is why our experiment won't work in the middle east just yet. This is also why our homegrown fundamentalists who insist that we should all do as they believe are dead wrong.

Tolerance has to come first, the the untidiness of freedom can begin.