The Pecan Park Eagle

Happy Fourth of July, Everyone!

This year, my thoughts turn to a subject that I’ve used for years in my work with adolescents – and that’s what I like to call “The Freedom Coin.” It’s a very simple idea, but it was at the heart of our Declaration of Independence and Bill of Rights just as much as it is the big lesson about “growing up.” It’s so important, in fact, that we may as well put it as it is: No one grows up until they are prepared to accept responsibility for the consequences of their own freely chosen actions or inactions.

And there it is in one gulp – a living definition of The Freedom Coin:

“Freedom” is simply one face of an inseparably two-sided coin. The other side also has a name – and that name is “Responsibility.”

In life, both as individuals and as a nation, we get as much freedom as we are willing to take responsibility for using.

When we fail to grasp this simple, but not-always-easy-or-convenient-to-live-by concept of The Freedom Coin, we are like the teenager who wants to use the car, but who also wants mom or dad to pay for any tickets or jail bonds that may result from a night on the town.

“I demand my rights!” It’s a statement in our beautiful USA that we hear often these days. In fact, we even hear it from people who are here in this country illegally – and we hear it because it’s always true. All of us – every living human being on this good earth – has a right to decent treatment from others as a fellow human being. It’s just that the cry for rights simply begs off the question that is always raised by The Freedom Coin: Are you willing to take responsibility for your own behavior in regard to this right you seek? Or do you simply want the keys to the car while someone else pays for the gas?

It’s too bad the Founding Fathers did not also write a corresponding Bill of Responsibilities to go with their fine effort on the Bill of Rights. It would’ve been tougher, but definitely possible. Otherwise, the Bill of Rights would not have been important as a statement of basic freedoms that we value in America. As freedoms, each statement in the Bill of Rights, even if their costs are totally unstated or merely implied,  also carries with it certain inseparable responsibilities as the other sides of each rights coin on the list.

Imagine our USA as a nation where all the adults lived by a full grasp of The Freedom Coin. It will never happen, except in a perfect world, because the real world is totally over-run with greedy folks, rampant sociopathy, and others who are simply dedicated to remaining emotional children for the rest of their lives. It’s still fun to play with the idea of a nation where our leaders, at least, grasped and lived by a working model  of the inseparable relationship between freedom and responsibility in their personal actions.

Imagine a nation where …

… politicians placed the good of the people ahead of personal gain;

… captains of industry pursued healthy profits, but drew the line on decisions that put corporate gain ahead of the welfare of their employees and the communities they purportedly served;

… moral leaders possessed an ability to say “no” sometimes to the temptation of using certain human misery causes as simply their stepping-stone paths to personal attention and power on the national level;

… children were always more than another redundant  bi-product of sexual promiscuity;

… moms and dads really tried to work out their issues rather than divorcing each other  and going off  to repeat similarly unworkable hellhole fates with “new” partners; and, finally,

… baseball hired a commissioner who finally said: “From now on to the crack of doom, there will be no designated hitters; and all future World Series games will be played in the daytime so the kids can watch them too.”

Ah, yes! – The good old Freedom Coin! It never goes away, whether we pick it up or not. I’d like to pick up The Coin, on the content level, anyway, by adding it to a new supercharged and enhanced version of the Pledge of Allegiance. The new Pledge would read like the following as my way of wishing all of you a Most Happy and Safe Fourth of July Celebration 2010:

I pledge Allegiance to the Flag,

Of the United States of America,

And to the Republic,

For which it Stands,

One Nation,

Under God,

Indivisible,

With Liberty and Justice,

Freedom and Responsibility,

For All.

Tags: 4th of July, America, culture, Freedom Coin

This entry was posted on July 4, 2010 at 10:30 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.