We talk about it a lot, we justify a lot of things in its name, we claim other countries hate us for how much of it we have, we name the tallest buildings after it, we say we have more of it than any other country in the world and we let it ring, mah friend. We let that freedom ring!

Hundreds of thousands of young men and women have given their lives in defense of it. It may be the single most important idea that defines who we are as a country and as a civilization.

We call ourselves “The land of the free.” But what does that mean, to be free?

Well, that’s a difficult question to answer because one person’s heaven is another person’s hell.

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I was recently introduced to a show on the “Discovery Channel” called Alaskan Bush People.

The “reality show” is about a family that insists on living in deep in the bush of Alaska, far from any kind of civilization, making due with what they have with no help from the outside whatsoever...

Growing and killing everything they eat, always on the edge of starvation with only their wits to keep them alive...

But they do so because they feel it’s the ultimate freedom. Nobody telling them what to do or how to live their lives, no intrusion from the government or society at large. Total. Freedom.

And of course in an interview the dad of the group claimed, This is what America is all about. This is the REAL America.

(Cut between clips from the show and Eagles flying with Lee Greenwood underneath it.)

But… Is it?

I mean, the constitution and the declaration of independence weren’t signed on an Appalachian mountaintop… They were signed in Philadelphia - the biggest city in the country at the time!

Is it freedom when the slightest misstep can leave you stranded in the frozen wilderness with a broken ankle, completely helpless, until you’re eaten by a bear?

Is it freedom when a common infection lays you out for weeks or kills you because you don’t have access to a hospital?

Having no backup if things go wrong might be freedom, but it’s a perilous freedom. Ask anyone who doesn’t have insurance.

I wouldn’t want to live like that.

For someone else, simply not having internet could be considered a lack of freedom.

So how do you define something that has a different meaning to everybody? In a country with 300 million everybody’s?

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