Be Willing To Live For Freedom

My dad wouldn’t talk with me about World War II except to say it was brutal and bloody and that he lost many friends. So when he swapped war stories in the basement with his drinking buddies, I would sit in the dark at the top of the stairs and listen.

I learned how his hands and feet had been frostbitten during the Battle of the Bulge, and that one of his Bronze Star citations was for taking out a Nazi machine gun nest. He thought the Germans were decent people whose big mistake was not standing up to the Brownshirt thugs who broke Jewish store windows on Kristalnacht. As I remembered this, I watched mountains of broken glass being swept up in Oklahoma City as the death count rose.

Reports of the carnage there, the selfless efforts of the rescue crews, and the horror of even some militia members, mingle eerily with stories commemorating the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II in Europe, and the 20th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

I found history lessons connecting these events in an old brass-bound wooden chest inherited after we buried my dad at Arlington Cemetery 20 years ago. Inside were brittle photos of a young lieutenant, a dried flower sent to my mom from “somewhere in Belgium,” crumbling newspaper clippings on the fighting near Bastogne, and a leather case filled with war medals.

Like many white Christians in the late 1950s, Dad stereotyped blacks and Jews. His actions spoke differently, though, and were the durable lesson. When neighbors told him that our town was not ready for his Little League team - with a black player, a Jewish player, and a Jewish assistant coach - Dad said he had picked the best and closed the door. He muttered that Jews and blacks had died along with everyone else fighting the Nazis; then he pointedly invited the entire team and their families to our yard for a very public picnic.

My dad was grand marshal of our town’s Memorial Day parade. When a tiny peace group in the early 1970s asked to participate, it created a furor. Dad was a lifelong Republican, pro-war and anti-Communist, but his idea of America came right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He told the town officials that if the peace marchers followed the rules, they were entitled to march. And they did. Mom told me he came home from the debate shaking his head, asking how people could forget those who gave their lives to defend such rights.

My brother fought in Vietnam; I fought for civil rights and against the war. Reunited as a family one Thanksgiving, we toasted my brother’s safe return from Vietnam with crystal wine glasses my dad brought home from Germany.

Years later, battling cancer, my dad was determined to don his uniform one last time on Memorial Day. As I helped him dress I asked him about the war. His only reply was to hand me one of his medals. Inscribed on the back were the words “Freedom from Fear and Want. Freedom of Speech and Religion.”

My dad fought fascism to defend these freedoms, not just for himself, but for people of different religions and races, people he was prejudiced against, even people he disagreed with. Today the four freedoms that millions fought to defend are under attack - in part because we forget why people fought World War II, deny what led to the Holocaust, and refuse to heal the wounds of the Vietnam War era.

Freedom of speech must be defended because democracy depends on a thoughtful debate to build informed consent. This is impossible when the public conversation - from the armed militias to talk-show hosts to mainstream politicians - is typified by shouting, falsehoods and scapegoating. The Nazi death camps proved that hateful speech linked to conspiracy myths can lead to violence and death.

Freedom from fear is being manipulated by intelligence agencies who demand laws that would undermine freedom of speech. Just like during the civil rights and anti-war movements, they pursue the false notion that widespread infiltration is a more practical response to dissent than addressing grievances. And government officials refuse to admit that negligent bureaucratic brutality at Waco - as at Kent State - could cause any citizen to be distrustful or cynical about government.

Freedom of religion is twisted by those seeking to make their private religions into laws governing the public, and by liberal critics who patronize sincere religious belief as ignorance.

Freedom from want has been forgotten in a mean-spirited drive to punish the hungry, the poor, the homeless, the disenfranchised.

For many in our country, the four freedoms remain only a dream, but at least in 1945 it was a dream worth fighting for. How many of us today are willing to stop shouting and just talk with each other about how best our nation can defend the four freedoms?

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