The American Revolution was not just against the king and his imposition of taxes without representation, it was also a new spirit of freedom being birthed in a land that was essentially separate already…a land that thought of itself as independent colonies who were granted the power to assemble under such things as charters to regulate their own form of government and create their own rules…sort of independent loyal subjects. As more people moved further away into new lands, a rugged individualism emerged as groups and towns formed, farther away from the idea of being a subject to a royal authority. The freedom experienced was not formulated in words, but lived in their hearts as the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as it was eventually put into words. And it was the people who cried out for it when the Continental Congress debated separation and it was the people who made their voices heard so that the delegates who returned to Philadelphia would express that in their decisions. A vision was created that encompassed that right and it was put down and developed not only in separation and the creation of a new country but eventually into the Bill of Rights and the Constitution with a Rule of Law to sustain it. It was a new time and a new vision that caused an upheaval here and into a wider world. An idea that created a new form for how the human family could live and operate together.

Now a new time is again here and a new vision is needed. Just as before when a king tried to impose his will upon a ‘free’ people, a mass of people are raising their voices to say no…we are not going there. They are also not content to stay where they were…in a society that favored the rich at the expense of the poor. They want something better than that…a new vision of who we can be and where we can go. In Revolution we found unity as a country…enough to go forward and develop…now we need to find unity as a people, who realize that we need a new path forward that allows each of us to develop and sustain ourselves together…a path that does not favor one over the other, but rather has room for all. It’s a call for a new kind of freedom rooted in brotherly love with the trust, integrity, honor, and compassion within each to sustain it.
S. Griffin