free desire freedom

Freedom Craves Freedom

Prepared for Dr. Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

Honors 240 Section 1

Winter 2009

Joy Marie Prior

A pile of human carcasses supported the pole that held the tattered red, white, and blue flag. As the pale morning sun crept across the pools of blood, a prisoner of war, Francis Scott Key, saw the United States flag through the settling cannon smoke and penned “The Star Spangled Banner.” I cannot remember the teacher who told me that story, but I can still see the soldier’s glazed eyes staring out of the mound of contorted limbs, just as I imagined them from my desk years ago. A part of me wanted to step back in time to that battlefield, where I could walk up to each solider, push back their matted hair, look into their eyes, and ask, “Are you free?” During this internal debate I came to the conclusion that free men and women desire freedom for others. The establishment of freedom in the United States of America demonstrates the divine calling free men and women have to expand liberty.
“The desire for liberty” did not start in the American Colonies in 1776; freedom is an “age-old” belief (P. 85). Pages of my history book are littered with martyrs for freedom from all generations and cultures. What defined the American revolution was the “belief in the ability in the people for self-government” (P. 67). The idea that the governed have the right to determine government’s laws created a harbor for freedom. Before America declared its independence, there had never been a government that had given so much freedom to its citizens. Putting their livelihoods at stake, the founding fathers honored the belief that “America had been chosen by Providence for this grand experiment in testing the human capacity for self-government” (P. 186).
God inspired the American Constitution and Declaration of Independence to progress freedom to all nations, and not for the nation’s selfish gain. “[He] declared that the United States Constitution was divinely inspired for the specific purpose of eliminating bondage and the violation of the rights and protection which belong to ‘all flesh’” (P. 115). God ordained the Constitution as a step in the progression of freedom. His purpose of elevating the colonies to a nation was not to raise the country above others, but instead He intended America to be “the cradle of the Church” (P. 134). A matured baby can not live in a cradle forever, and God never expected to confine the knowledge and truth found in the Gospel within the boundaries of the United States. The blessings that rushed forward after the establishment of the American government were intended for “our world” (P. 188).
Understanding that God inspired the founding of the United States for the “specific purpose” of bringing freedom to all nations is vital to understanding that free men and women desire freedom for others (P. 115) . The Constitution is a “glorious standard” (P. 4) of rights and God intended that “those rights must be protected…and he designed that all men should protect one another” (P. 48). If America does not keep God’s purposes it will no longer be kept “free from bondage, and from captivity” (Ether 2:12). Those who stop freedom’s progression contradict freedom’s purpose of establishing “full civil equality for all of God‘s children. Anything less than this defeats our high ideal of the brotherhood of man” (P. 130). By not following God’s intentions our nation will be lead into bondage-- the opposite state of freedom.
The gem of freedom’s intent is to “warm every object beneath its rays” with liberty (P. 7). Before the foundation of the world, the United States Constitution and Declaration of Independence were designed to be an example of how to spread freedom to the common people of the nation (P. 102). God intended for the freedoms nurtured in America to spread across the whole earth, and not striving to expand freedom is going against God’s will.
I don’t know the names of the soldiers smeared in blood holding up the American flag, but I believe that they were free. As I imagine them in my mind--fathers, brothers, and husbands--I realize they did not sacrifice their lives for their own freedom, but for those that they loved. The solders buried in the mud on that battlefield understood freedom is only created when it is shared, and because of their example I know those men with the glazed eyes and blood-chapped lips were free.