Freedom is not free. That is a nice sounding cliche that we will do well to ponder what it really means, and all that it entails.

Freedom costs!

The price of freedom is high. Many have willingly put aside their own personal ambitions, goals, desires, and needs to pay the ultimate price in the cause of freedom. They did it unselfishly and we reap the benefits of their sacrifice. Many take for granted the freedom that we enjoy as a nation, without ever stopping for one minute to consider what it costs to maintain this freedom.

People forget that until just a few centuries ago, the freedoms that we enjoy today was a strange concept in the world. People lived their lives under the thumb, and the whims of monarchs and tyrants. Whatever these rulers said was the law. That was the norm, and ordinary people did not have much room to object.

The American experiment in governance, influenced by the British Magna Carta, and the concept that all men are created equal, and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights was a foreign concept to the world.
Though the nation did not always live up to it’s ideals, America was always working on being a better nation to get to where we are today.

Much of the world eventually bought in to the idea, and freedombecame a goal of many around the world, but as noted earlier; freedom costs.

Whether it was on the battle fields of America’s civil war, in the trenches across Europe during WWI, facing off against Hitler’s formidable war machine in WWII, pushing back against the communist North Korean forces, battling the evil of terrorism, and the many other conflicts in between; freedom is not free.

There are always evil forces lying in wait, hoping to disrupt the lives we live, and the freedoms that we have come to cherish and enjoy as a nation, and in many other parts of the world. These evil forces will never rest in their effort against the the cause of freedom. They will never hesitate to use whatever means they have at their disposal in furtherance of their cause.

Many have stood in the way of these evil forces, and given their their lives to preserve the cause of freedom, and today we remember them.

Freedom is not free!

In memory of those who paid the ultimate price.