Good Reigns

That Little Voice 

I want to believe good reigns in this world.

I want to feel peace is possible.

I want to think tolerance is practiced.

I want to know love is present in relationships.

I want to affirm freedom will remain a way of life for future generations to protect.

I want to assert indifference to every human being will not win.

But sometimes I don’t feel, believe, think, or know any of those things.

And I’m fearful many people throughout the world aren’t experiencing many of those things either.

Peace is not the first thing on your mind when your home is being bombed.

Tolerance is in short supply when you are being bullied, laughed at, ridiculed for being different.

Love isn’t apparent if you are being beaten by a spouse. Kindness is hard to imagine when you are ignored. Indifference breeds ignorance. Freedom is fragile when not protected. And I find determination to renew my commitment to freedom in the words of past leaders.

“Freedom is a fragile thing and is never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” Ronald Reagan, 1967 “Let’s not forget that freedom is more powerful than fear. That we have always met challenges, whether war or depression, natural disasters or terrorist attacks, by coming together around our common ideals as one nation and one people.” Barack Obama, 2015 “Freedom is fragile and must be protected. To sacrifice it, even as a temporary measure is to betray it.” Germaine Greer, 2019 “Freedom is very far from being the natural state of mankind. On the contrary, it is an extraordinarily unusual situation. If you look back through history, in any place on the globe, you will find that the natural state of mankind in most periods in history has been tyranny and misery.” Milton Friedman, 1975 The people of this country, alone, have formally and deliberately chosen a government for themselves, and with open and uninfluenced consent bound themselves into a social compact”... “Nothing that we propose can pass into a law without your consent. Be yourselves, O Americans, the authors of those laws on which your happiness depends.” Samuel Adams, 1776 “Indifference is not a beginning; it is an end. And, therefore, indifference is always the friend of the enemy, for it benefits the aggressor — never his victim, whose pain is magnified when he or she feels forgotten. The political prisoner in his cell, the hungry children, the homeless refugees — not to respond to their plight, not to relieve their solitude by offering them a spark of hope is to exile them from human memory. And in denying their humanity, we betray our own.” Elie Wiesel, 1999 “In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart.” Anne Frank, diary entry, 1944.