The Free Lance-Star (July 3, 1944)
Editorial: Fourth of July
One of the steadfast things in this sadly disrupted world is America’s adherence to freedom. That spirit activated the first people who braved the unknown to carve homes out of the wilderness on the Atlantic Coast. On these shores, love of liberty waxed stronger until it resulted in political independence as well as religious and economic freedom.
Through the many generations since that day, Americans have guarded their independence well. It is for the safeguarding of independence and its extension in a world overrun with totalitarian activities for man’s subjugation that Americans are fighting.
At every recurrence of the Fourth of July, the thought arises that when this country declared its independence it not only did something to the science of government among nations, but it wrought so effectively as to affect the individual to an extent that was world-stirring.
The idea inculcated in national independence was quite simple – that a people could be self-governing by keeping the executive, legislative and judicial arms of government in balance.
Freedom for the individual, which accompanied the establishment of independence in government, was decidedly intricate in its working. It obligated the individual to differentiate between license and liberty. It taught him that he had not right to resort of violence in deciding issues. But it did assure the individual that what he won by his brain, his energy – or through shrewdness – he had a right to turn into property in the possession of which he would be protected.
This was a subtle process when applied to the individual mind. It led to invention of the cotton gin, the steamboat, the telegraph, the reaper, the telephone, the electric light, the automobile, the airplane and to development of the major food, fuel and fiber sources of supply on earth.
Today, the United States is the most powerful nation on the globe. Independence did that. It is the richest nation in history. Liberty did that.