What does freedom mean? In the tumultuous America we live in today it can be hard to understand the meaning of freedom. One definition states that freedom is the right to enjoy all the privileges or special rights of citizenship, membership, etc., in a community or the like. Is this what our founding fathers had in mind when they led us to freedom over British rule? I believe it is what they had in mind. With this being the case are Americans getting the right to enjoy this freedom?

The answer is sadly no.

People are being verbally accosted and even beaten just for voting for a candidate someone doesn’t agree with. Families and friends aren’t speaking due to the results of an election. An election in a free society where people can vote and in doing so are free to select the person they want. Innocent people are being killed for not being part of a religion, in a country that was founded to be separate from the church. Others are being targeted for expressing their freedom by choosing to be in that religion. Modern Americans have forgotten or never truly understood the beauty of the American ideal of freedom. We need to look back as to what was the reasoning of founding our country meant to those involved.

I have chose to look at the writer of the Declaration of Independence and third President of The United States Thomas Jefferson, to discover what he thought about our freedoms. The last letter Thomas Jefferson wrote before his death was to Roger Chew Weightman, the mayor of Washington, on June 24, 1826 regarding an invitation to Jefferson to attend the 50th anniversary of American Independence.

“all eyes are opened, or opening to the rights of man. the general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth that the mass of mankind has not been born, with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride them legitimately by the grace of god. these are grounds of hope for others. for ourselves let the annual return of this day, for ever refresh our recollections of these rights and an undiminished devotion to them.”

Another American I looked too was our sixteenth President Abraham Lincoln. He led our nation through its greatest challenge during the Civil War. The country was completely divided and had come to bloodshed. President Lincoln was on the right side of history in leading our country in overcoming our darkest era with slavery. He knew he had to do this because it was the right thing to do. In essence it was the American thing to do so that all people could truly be free as the founding fathers intended. In his speech to the 164th Ohio Regiment, August 22, 1864 he said the following.

“We have, as all will agree, a free Government, where every man has a right to be equal with every other man. In this great struggle, this form of Government and every form of human right is endangered if our enemies succeed.”

Again in a letter to Henry Pierce on April 6, 1859 President Lincoln wrote;

This is a world of compensations; and he who would be no slave, must consent to have no slave. Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and, under a just God, can not long retain it.

The freedom that Americans get to enjoy can’t be defined by another individual as to what it means to oneself. The point of our freedom as Americans is that we are free in all things we do. That should be celebrated by every American in their daily pursuit of happiness, love and opportunities. Once we start creating barriers that impede other Americans pursuit of their freedoms, is when the ideal of freedom has failed. As President Lincoln said our enemies succeed if we lose this struggle for our freedom for every person in this great country.

We may not like what the person next to us is saying, however, we should celebrate the fact that we all have the freedom to express oneself in America. With Freedom being so well defined, how about we start celebrating that freedom and allow others to do the same.