What Is Freedom?

     While I was in the Dells on vacation last October, one day we visited the grounds of the former Badger Ammunition Plant near Sauk City. I’m going to tell you all about the place another time; I thought it was fascinating. Not sure why, but I did. Thinking about it today, I’m reminded of the quote about history repeating itself.

Inside the Badger Army Ammunition Museum, I found the following poem, hanging on one of the walls. I tried searching for it on the internet, but came up empty. I hate reprinting articles without giving proper credit, but all I can say is that at the end was a blurb that it was used by permission of the Louisville Journal-Courier, as shown in the second picture. Hope that gets me out of plagiarism charges. In any case, I love this poem and am willing to risk arrest, because, well – that’s what freedom is. Don't take it for granted; we all need to keep fighting for our freedom.  

What is Freedom?

From the archivea of broken peace we are bringing out old words and dusting them off for use again, as shining lanterns to lead us through the darkness of another war.

Words like freedom, justice and truth – all of them hard to define, none of them used more frequently than freedom.

You cannot say what freedom is, perhaps, in a single sentence. It is not necessary to define it. It is enough to point to it.

Freedom is a man lifting a gate latch at dusk and sitting for a while on the porch, smoking his pipe, before he goes to bed.

It is the violence of an argument outside an election poll, it the righteous anger of the pulpits.

It is the warm laughter of a girl on a park bench.

It is the rush of a train over the continent and the unafraid faces of people looking out the windows.

It is all the howdys in the world, and all the hellos.

It is Westbrook Pegler telling Roosevelt how to raise his children; it is Roosevelt letting them raise themselves.

It is Lindbergh’s appeasing voice raised above a thousand hisses.

It is Dorothy Thompson asking for war; it is Gen. Hugh S. Johnson asking her to keep quiet.

It is you trying to remember the words to The Star-Spangled Banner.

It is the sea breaking on wide sands somewhere and the shoulders of a mountain supporting the sky.

It is the air you fill your lungs with and the dirt that is your garden.

It is a man cussing all cops.

It is the absence of apprehension at the sound of approaching footsteps outside your closed door.

It is your hot resentment of intrigue, the tilt of your chin and the tightening of your lips sometimes.

It is all the things you do and want to keep on doing.

It is all the things you feel and cannot help feeling.

Freedom – it is you.

 The website for the Ammunition Plant is: http://www.badgerordnancehistory.org/

 Here is background information on the names mentioned.

Westbrook Pegler was a columnist in the 1930s and 1940s, who opposed the New Deal and criticized the Supreme Court, the tax system, and labor unions. Pegler initially supported President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, but soon became one of Roosevelt’s sharpest critics, feeling the president was abusing his power. The journalist also had a strong dislike for Eleanor Roosevelt. In general, everything I read about Westbrook Pegler made me consider him to be the writer’s version of a loud-mouthed jerk.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his wife Eleanor had five sons and a daughter, although one son died in infancy. He was not very involved in raising his children, as he was so occupied with his work. He also believed that childrearing was a wife's task, but that was a common view in the early nineteen-hundreds. No matter what Pegler’s opinion was of the Roosevelt children, they turned out just fine.

Lindbergh refers to Charles Lindbergh, of course. Prior to the bombing of Pearl Harbor, he had been opposed to the United States getting involved in World War II. One of his journal entries at the time stated: "it seems improbable that we could win a war in Europe.” He also seemed to have a dislike, or maybe more a distrust, of President Roosevelt. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, however, and our declaration of war, he joined the fight in the Pacific.

Dorothy Thompson was an American journalist and radio broadcaster. She had been working as a journalist in Europe, when in the late 1920s, the New York Post appointed her head of its Berlin bureau in Germany. There she witnessed firsthand the rise of the Nazi party and in 1931, she interviewed Adolf Hitler, writing the book, “I Saw Hitler”. She wrote about the dangers of him winning power in Germany. The Nazis considered both the book and her articles offensive and, in August 1934, Thompson was kicked out of Germany.

General Hugh S. Johnson was a U.S. Army officer, businessman, speech writer, government official and newspaper columnist. He is best known as a member of the Brain Trust of Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1932–34, writing numerous speeches for FDR and helping plan the New Deal. FDR fired him, however in 1934, for having Fascist inclinations. As World War II began raging, Johnson endorsed isolationism—staying out of the conflict. In a story he had written previously in 1911, he had Japan invading and conquering California.