Our wonderful gift of liberty

Statue of Liberty, 1901, Library of Congress

Two hundred and thirty six years ago, a new nation appeared on the face of the Earth, unlike any other. At its heart, with this core tenet, the Declaration of Independence was radical:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal…

Equality was extremely rare on the planet.  The English had their Kings, the Catholics, their popes, the Egyptians, their Pharaohs.  But here was a new country dedicated to the principle that we are all created equal.  The individual freedom flowing from that simple principle has made us the greatest nation in the world.

All men are created equal – no one can tell you what religion to practice, or not practice, or which words you may utter, or print, or with whom you may associate.

All men are created equal – your property is yours, no one may confiscate or use it without your permission or fair compensation.

All men are created equal – the government has no divine right and serves only with the consent of the governed, the people, who have the right “to alter or abolish it.”

It is important to note that we imperfect humans have not perfectly implemented this equality, but have striven to achieve it, driven by bedrock principle, over many years.  Witness the Civil War, the 13^th amendment (slavery abolished), the 19^th amendment (women’s right to vote), the Civil Rights Act, Title IX… the list goes on as we continue to perfect this belief in equality. But to be clear, the individual liberty recognized by our social covenant does not guarantee equal outcomes, rather it affords equal opportunity. 

The results have been very encouraging.  President Barack Obama, billionaire businesswoman Oprah Winfrey, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall (died 1993) are just the tip of the iceberg.  How about Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard, or Stanley O’Neal, former CEO and chairman of Merrill Lynch. The incidence of successful, powerful, minorities and women continues to escalate, all to our mutual benefit as their ingenuity and drive contributes mightily to our collective success and well being.

Our founding fathers have given us a wonderful gift and our military has sacrificed mightily to help us keep it.  But whether we keep or squander it is up to us.  We can easily vote it away while chasing a mirage of equal outcomes.  Because with individual liberty comes choice and responsibility - the freedom to make choices and then being responsible for the outcome.  If you want equality of outcomes, then we must, perforce, yield up our liberty, forgo our choices.

Here is a better way.  Studies of census data have correlated individual behaviors to poverty over the past 60 years, and some simple relationships have emerged.  Ron Haskins of the Center on Children and Families at the Brookings Institute, recently testifying before Congress, made the following observation:

“… young people can virtually assure that they and their families will avoid poverty if they follow three elementary rules for success – complete at least a high school education, work full time, and wait until age 21 and get married before having a baby.”

Haskins went on to say that young people following those rules would almost certainly join the middle class and those who did not, would not.

Three simple rules.  Individual responsibility.  The outcome is your own doing, for better or for worse.  This is the cost, and the opportunity, of freedom.

Remembering Okinawa

Marines from the 1st Marine Regiment on Wana Ridge, Okinawa.

Each year in June, we remember the brave troops who first directly challenged the Nazi juggernaut on continental Europe. Operation Overlord, the assault on Nazi-occupied western Europe, began with the D-Day landings in Normandy on June 6, 1944.  The veterans of that action, if still alive, are 86 years or older.  This action, which over 60 days claimed the lives of over 20,000 American troops (and an additional 16,000 allied troops) has been memorialized by no less than John Wayne in “The Longest Day”, 1962, and Tom Hanks in “Saving Private Ryan”, 1998.  The enormous courage of these brave men broke the back of the Nazi war machine and directly led to victory in Europe in May of 1945.

While we should not, we must not, fail to recognize this enormous sacrifice, the month of June is somewhat unjustly overshadowed by D-Day.  Not as well known, one year later, on June 21, 1945, the Battle of Okinawa ended.

The war in the Pacific was viewed at the time as secondary to the war in Europe.  But the Japanese were fierce adversaries and had proven their battle mettle at Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, and China.  The threat of Japanese hegemony in the Pacific basin was very real. They were aggressively securing oil and mineral resources to fuel their formidable war machine. Not wishing to cede California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska (and Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) to Emperor Hirohito, we fought back. Hard.

There followed a series of swirling naval battles, such as the Battle of the Coral Sea and the Battle of Midway, intermixed with grueling island campaigns like the battles for Guadalcanal and Iwo Jima.  The Marine Corps, in particular, was the sharp end of the spear and suffered grievous losses.  But slowly the inexorable march to the Japanese homeland continued.

In April of 1945, Operation Iceberg was mounted. Okinawa, 340 miles from mainland Japan, was considered home Japanese territory.  This was the first Allied assault directly on Japanese native soil.  It was fiercely resisted.

Over 1,300 Navy ships and 183,000 troops (five Army and three Marine Corps divisions) were committed to Okinawa. Unlike the beaches of Normandy, the supply lines to Okinawa stretched across the Pacific, delivering over 750,000 tons of materiel.  The casualties were enormous: 72,000 Americans wounded, 12,500 dead, and 107,000 Japanese troops and over 100,000 civilians killed, more than the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined (estimated at over 150,000 killed).

As horrible as the atomic toll was, it paled in comparison to the projected loss of life if Operation Downfall, the invasion of mainland Japan, were undertaken.  Various estimates centered around a half million Americans killed and perhaps several million Japanese military and civilians. These estimates were largely based on the desperate battle for Okinawa, and informed President Harry Truman’s decision to use atomic weapons in a bid to cut short the war.

In the end, terrible as was the carnage at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, it is clear that many Japanese and American lives were saved by avoiding the ultimate land battle for Japan.  Okinawa, a key factor in this calculus, deserves to be remembered. The ghosts of our troops, our fathers and grandfathers’ brothers, demand it.