What They Die for, We Burn

Three years ago we celebrated the 100th birthday of the Statue of Liberty and re-lit her torch of freedom with a bash in New York that none of us will ever forget.

Tall ships from all over the world passed in review and dipped their colors to her while millions of people jammed the south end of Manhattan and millions more watched on TV. There were concerts and speeches and entertainment extravaganzas for three days, winding up with a fireworks display that bathed Lady Liberty in light and still sends shivers up my spine whenever I think of it.

We’d worked for almost four years to restore the statue and plan that celebration. I never thought anybody could ever pay any higher respect to her and all she stands for than we did on that Fourth of July weekend in 1986.

That is, until last month when I saw all those brave kids in China parading their own version of Lady Liberty around Tian An Men Square.

I saw that on TV and I realized how puny in comparison our tribute really was.

We were using the Lady to say “thank you” for all the freedom we enjoy in America, and we said it with a party.

They were using that same symbol to say “please, please let us have the same kind of freedom.” And they said it with their blood.

Every Fourth of July we unfold the flag and break out the firecrackers, but sometimes I’m afraid it may be little more than a ritual. Only when we see how much other people around the world want what we have in America, and the price they’re willing to pay for it, can we really appreciate what we have.

It’s the same old story: Freedom is too easy to take for granted; it means the most to those who don’t have it, and people are often willing to sacrifice more to get it than they are to be sure they keep it.

It’s hard to visualize an ideal. That’s why we use symbols. When people are willing to die under a symbol, they’re really dying for an ideal, but they are sanctifying that symbol.

Barely two weeks after the “Goddess of Democracy” was shattered by tanks in Tian An Men Square, our Supreme Court said that Americans have a right to burn their own flag to protest policies of our government they disagree with.

The irony is almost too heavy to comprehend. On one side of the world people are willing to die under one of the great symbols of America, and in our own country people have the constitutional right to desecrate another great American symbol in the name of free speech.

I wonder if any American willing to burn the flag to “make a statement” would ever show the same courage shown by those students in Beijing-- the courage to die for the principles and ideals they say they’re defending. I seriously doubt it.

It doesn’t take much guts to desecrate a sacred symbol when the act carries no personal consequences at all.

It takes magnificent courage, on the other hand, to honor a symbol if the consequences may be a volley of machine gun bullets.

So on this coming Fourth of July, as we all reflect on what this country is and what it stands for, I suggest that we don’t just think of the Lady With the Torch who has been standing in New York Harbor for 103 years, but also remember the makeshift copy of her that stood so proudly and so hopefully in Tian An Men Square for only a few short days.

It should remind us how fragile our freedoms are, how easily they can be smashed and how dangerous it is to take them for granted.