Securing the Blessings of Liberty

It customary on Independence Day to honor the service and sacrifice of our military veterans, who, we are solemnly reminded, have "secured the blessings of liberty" for the rest of us and our posterity since the first continental army. While it is true that members of our military have historically paid the highest price in the cause of liberty, it would be unjust and untrue to give them all the credit--or all the responsibility. 

After all, threats to our liberty do not only (perhaps not even primarily) come from external forces. So on this Independence Day, I want to suggest that, in addition to honoring our veterans' many sacrifices to make and keep our nation free, we also remember the service and very real sacrifices of many others who also dedicate their lives to securing for all of us the blessings of liberty, including:

• Civil Rights leaders who have fought and sometimes died to ensure that women and people of color could enjoy the blessings of full citizenship, and who still fight and sometimes risk their lives to secure the blessings of liberty to Americans who remain to any degree unjustly disenfranchised
• First responders who put their lives on the line to keep us safe enough to enjoy our liberty
• Overworked lower court judges and public defenders who work thanklessly day in and day out to try to keep our justice system functioning, and those who attend seriously to their duties as jurors
• Civil servants--including politicians (not all, but many), regulators, etc., all the way down to the lowly poll workers on voting days making sure that we can participate in the democratic process--who dedicate their time and talents to promoting the common welfare rather than simply their own selfish interests
• Teachers of history, philosophy, ethics, civics, the arts, and sciences who remind us what liberty has meant and can mean, and what it has and may cost us to get, keep, and extend
• Those who stand up to government authority and say "no" when the government is in the wrong, even when they are in the minority
• Those who stand up FOR government authority against the mob when the government is in the right
• Countless and nameless women, LGBTQIA people, and people of color who for most of our country's history were effectively or explicitly denied opportunities to serve in the military, in office, as civil servants, or in most professions; and who yet retained faith, though long deferred, in the promise of liberty and served however they could within the limited spheres they were allowed. 

Though we rightly honor members of our armed services, we must not forget that not all patriots wear a uniform. Even George Washington, perhaps our nation's greatest military hero, understood that slavish veneration of a nation's military would ultimately doom it. Those who serve honorably in the military deserve our care and respect, but they are the arms, not the heart and soul of a free nation. Though most of us will never serve in the armed forces, all of us have a right and a duty to "secure the blessings of liberty" to ourselves and our posterity.