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Health & Fitness

Freedoms

The Freedoms that Make Us Great. It is easy to ignore the fact that we have more to offer the world than ever.

February, 3, 1894, is the birth date of Norman Rockwell, artist.

An old article from the Readers Digest pops into my mind when I think of Rockwell.  I though it was worth re-reading and sharing.

It is as follows:

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Americans aren’t strangers to tough times: Consider 1941: The world was clawing its way out of the Great Depression only to come face to face with a troika of dictators hell bent on world domination.  Evil and uncertainty bred fear and pessimism.

But we pulled together, motivated by the ideals we hold most dear.  In his state of the Union address that year, President Franklin Roosevelt famously summed up the stakes in the looming conflict:
“freedom of speech and expression... freedom of every person to worship God in his own way…freedom from want…and freedom from fear”.

"The Four Freedoms” speech so inspired painter Norman Rockwell that he created four iconic painting on the theme, later reproduced (along with four essays) in a Saturday Evening Post series called “The Four Freedoms for Which We Fight”.  The paintings, made into posters raised $132 million for the war effort.

Today we face the Great Recession, instead of the Great Depression, religious terrorism and the anti-Islamic backlash - instead of Nazism and a polarized political atmosphere that threatens to give free speech a bad name. 

But while our problems are serious, they are hardly insurmountable, especially if we summon the unity of purpose that has always been our strength.

On this theme of Duty, Honor and Freedom...a few other thoughs of others.

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"Duty is what one expects from others, it is not what one does oneself".  Oscar Wilde, Poet & Dramatist

Apostles of freedom are ever idolized when dead, but crucified when alive".  - James Connolly  Irish Patriot

The ballot is stronger than the bullet".  Abraham Lincoln

I think 13th Century Poet Rumi put it best on religious tolorence:

God is like an Ocean, and religions are like rivers

that all flow into the same Ocean.  Our orgins are

the same, and our destinations are the same,

it is our paths that sometimes differ.

And, an all time favorite of mine,  Freedom to Speak but...

"When you don't know what you're talking about, it's hard to know when you're finished".

Mmmmmh, my long-winded bogs are weighing on my mind now, as I remember the above quote!

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