FREEDOM!
Can anyone who has watched the movie “Braveheart” forget that scream by William Wallace at the end of the movie when he is being eviscerated by the king’s men? Having recently watched the movie again, it started me thinking a lot about the word "freedom" and what it means to we Americans. As a country we have a unique relationship with and devotion to freedom - we REALLY love it! Freedom in its many forms is enshrined in our Constitution which is both a cause and an effect of that love. In fact, we have gone to war many times to protect it and spent vast fortunes and countless American lives to help others have or keep those same freedoms (although with varying degrees of success in either.) Over the centuries that our country has been in existence we have grown from thirteen colonies with 3 million people (almost exclusively white Europeans - and their slaves, of course) living on farms, to a country of fifty states with a very diverse, mostly urban population of over 33