Woodrow Wilson had won re-election with a simple slogan: "He kept us out of war." But now war was coming. German Kaiser Wilhelm II had plunged Europe into chaos with his aggressive war policy; now the United States would lend a hand against the Kaiser. "Neutrality is no longer feasible or desirable where the peace of the world is involved and the freedom of its people," Wilson told Congress. The Kaiser would indeed fall. But would Wilson's pledge to fight for freedom prevent the rise of another German despot exponentially more dangerous than the first?
When our fathers with mighty endeavor
The madness of war engulfed Able Company, one of the first companies to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day, 1944. "All order has vanished from Able Company before it has fired a shot," wrote S.L.A. Marshall. "Already the sea runs red By the end of one half hour, approximately two thirds of the company is forever gone." Would the carnage endured by the heroes of Able Company be rewarded with ultimate victory?
Proclaimed as they marched to the fray
The men and women streamed down U.S. Highway 80 from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Harassed, cursed, assaulted, these freedom marchers would remind Americans that freedom is race-blind. "We must come to see that the end we seek is a society at peace with itself, a society that can live with its conscience," Martin Luther King Jr. stated on the steps of the state capitol building in Montgomery, Alabama. "That will not be the day of the white man, not of the black man. That will be the day of man as man." It was March 25, 1965.
That by their might and by their right
"[F]reedom is the non-negotiable right of every man, woman, and child," President George W. Bush recently stated. "[T]he path to lasting peace in our world is liberty." So too thought the signers of the Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Liberty is the fundamental human right. But how best can we ensure its continued ascent? We can begin by stamping the flag of liberty -- the American flag -- on our hearts and the hearts of our children.
It waves forever.