Freedom.

I am one of those people who really enjoy reading a little in bed before I turn out the lights and go to sleep. It's been that way as long as I can remember. Even before I learned to read, I remember being awake after my dad tucked me in and listening to the night sounds or playing quietly in my bed for a time, and only then could I roll over and fall asleep.

So, the other night, I was laying in bed, reading Laura Ingalls Wilder's Little Town on the Prairie, book five of the series I think, when I read something that got me really excited. In fact, it kind of kept me awake for a while. In the book, Laura is around 14 or 15, and she and her Pa and Mary are in town witnessing the 4th of July celebrations and singing "My Country 'Tis of Thee," when it strikes her what the meaning of freedom in this country is. It is the most concise and plain definition of freedom that I have come across and makes a clear distinction between freedom to pursue the good (the original meaning of freedom) and freedom from constraint to do whatever one wants (the muddled version that has become so virulent.) I can't believe I never noticed it sooner. Here she is:

The crowd was scattering away then, but Laura stood stock still. Suddenly she had a completely new thought. The Declaration and the song came together in her mind, and she thought: God is America's king.

She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa; he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself to be good.

Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means you have to be good. "Our father's God, author of liberty --" The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free.

I couldn't have said it beter.