[Congressional Record Volume 149, Number 66 (Tuesday, May 6, 2003)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E877-E878]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          FREEDOM'S OBLIGATION

                                 ______
                                 

                             HON. JIM RYUN

                               of kansas

                    in the house of representatives

                          Tuesday, May 6, 2003

  Mr. RYUN of Kansas. Mr. Speaker, I would like to bring to the 
attention of my colleagues an essay written by fellow Kansan, Christina 
Lachut. Ms. Lachut, from Fort Riley, Kansas, is this year's Kansas 
winner of the Veterans of Foreign Wars Voice of Democracy Scholarship 
Contest. I am very proud of Ms. Lachut and her accomplishment.

                          Freedom's Obligation

                         (By Christina Lachut)

       Freedom. The very thought of it conjures visions of blue 
     skies, soaring eagles, and star spangled banners fluttering 
     in the breeze. However, every Veterans' Day, Memorial Day, 
     Independence Day, and now Patriot Day, we are reminded of the 
     many lives sacrificed at ``Freedom's altar.'' Freedom's altar 
     lies not in a single land, but across many, from the fields 
     of Gettysburg to Flanders field, from Pearl Harbor to the 
     Mekong Delta, from the sands of Iraq to the hills of the 
     Balkans, and from the streets of New York City to the rocks 
     of Afghanistan. In every land where an American in Freedom's 
     name falls, a lighthouse of hope is raised. Yes, one can 
     easily see that our liberties as Americans are not without a 
     price. This American freedom is not as much a right as it is 
     an obligation; an obligation to be a torch of freedom and 
     justice to every dark shore our nation beholds.
       Even in its birth, our country inspired other peoples in 
     far away lands to begin their pursuit of the ideals our 
     Founding Fathers themselves sought. As our nation matured, it 
     fought its own battles into adulthood and came to more fully 
     realize the breadth of the concept of the Freedom it 
     embraced: the state of being fully without bonds and lawfully 
     equal to all people regardless of color, heritage, gender, 
     ability, or belief. As an individual, each has a 
     responsibility to help preserve another's freedom, and not to 
     aid in impeding it. As well as to

[[Page E878]]

     the individual, this concept of responsibility must be 
     applied to the nation as a whole.
       Prior to the Second World War, the United States tried to 
     remain isolated from the conflicts that engulfed Europe. The 
     United States only joined these wars after it was impossible 
     to do otherwise. Little by little, though, our country has 
     learned to heed the warning presented by Martin Luther King 
     Jr. that, ``A threat to freedom anywhere is a threat to 
     freedom everywhere.'' Freedom and oppression simply cannot 
     coexist.
       Why, though, are Americans now so willing to fight for such 
     an abstract idea as freedom? Perhaps it is because we have 
     beheld the horrors of the Holocaust, the terror of the Khmer 
     Rouge, and the stranglehold of the Taliban. This loyalty to 
     freedom, though, lies more likely in the essence of the 
     American spirit, that every-gnawing hunger for fairness, 
     justice, and the righteousness of the Golden Rule. A long 
     line of Americans fighting on foreign soil have justified the 
     war to themselves by reasoning that they have liberty because 
     someone they never knew paid the price for it, and it is only 
     fair that they, in their state of freedom, be willing to do 
     the same for another.
       It is our duty, as partakers of freedom in this part of the 
     world, to be defenders of freedom throughout the world. 
     Abraham Lincoln stated this obligation best when he surmised; 
     ``In giving freedom to the slave we assure freedom to the 
     free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve.'' 
     By the freedom that has made our own nation great, we must 
     humble ourselves, and share the wealth with which we have 
     been so mightily blessed.

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