Joseph L. Kagle, Jr. Essays

Home of the Free if Brave

I do weird things at times to make life interesting. At least that is what my wife says. Well, if you can’t make daily life interesting, what is the point of living? A friend of mine in Spokane embellishes reality. His children think that he lies a lot but I see his tall tale adventures going to the super market as a way to make the routine into some magical experience. The idea for this article started when I was standing in line, waiting to cash a check at my locally-owned bank. The tellers know me so when I come to the window they call me by name. This morning I was in a devilish mood and asked, “Is this the right window for free money? I see people giving you pieces of paper and you give them money. I brought a whole tablet of paper.” “No,” said my friendly teller, as if this was a question she gets all the time, “I am sorry but nothing is free here. In fact, I can’t think of anything that is free. You missed our free money day, I guess.”

On leaving the bank, I thought about her words, “Nothing is free,” and she is right, “Not even freedom is free.” We have a responsibility as Americans to pay our dues for freedom. Our first duty in this country is education for everyone. That costs. I serve on a Campus Decision Making Council for one of  the Texas elementary schools and I know that this one school’s budget is over $1.3 million each year. Multiple that one example by all the schools in Texas, then the nation and you have a staggering number. But also I know that if we are to educate citizens to make decisions on what kind of government they want, quality education is critical. In our Democracy, quality is cheap at any price. Thomas Jefferson believed that the initial duty of America was to educate the brightest and the best (regardless of their parents’ social position) to lead the nation. He created the campus at the University of Virginia to mirror his ideas: at one end of the main quadrangle was knowledge (the library), on each side was the students’ housing (the vessels for the knowledge), the middle was filled with grass for new thoughts and the end opposite the library was open so that knowledge could escape to the world at large.

As I said, one elementary school campus in my hometown spends over $1.3 million on children from kindergarten to fifth grade. Where does this money come from? It comes from taxes to the state and federal government by citizens and businesses. I heard Bernard Rapoport, a philanthropist with a conscience,  say in 1987 in a speech in the park, “Taxes are the price that we pay for democracy.” It is also the price we pay for education. It is interesting that the father-in- law of Bill Gates is opposing getting rid of the estate tax. He knows that all levels of government need funds to do some jobs that cannot be done by individuals. When our forefathers created this democracy, they understood that government had to have money to serve the people.

OK, we have now paid for “free” education and educated the brightest and best to serve as leaders in America. We the people must then vote for who we want as leaders and vote against others we do not want. It was Thomas Paine that felt that one vote for each citizen was a way to intelligently choose our leaders who would spend our tax dollars and vote them out if they did not serve us well. And the privilege of voting is not free, you have to make an effort to learn who is running, what amendments are proposed, and then you must go to the polls and make an educated vote. To stay free, we must hear what all Americans want.

There is a campaign now against SUV’s that says that bigger, heavier and gas-gosling cars are not the answer to our problems with air quality and dependence on outside oil markets. The privilege of our environment is not free. Air is not free. America pays a price to keep it clean and pure. A lean and hungry America is prepared to stay free. Look around next time you visit your bank, the majority of our citizens are overweight in many ways from the car they drive to the multiple holes in the belt around their waist. What started out as a joke at my local bank has made me think about all the things that I, as an American, take for granted as my freedom. In wartime, we know that we must sacrifice some things to stay free. Why can’t we make the same sacrifices every peace-filled day in the name of freedom? What makes America different from all the nations of the world is that one word, FREEDOM, and it is not without a price.