Hey all, I again must beg your forgiveness for falling down on the blog. I resolve to do better.
I must confess, I have been preoccupied with images of war on the T.V. and listening to commentary from all different positions on the subject.
I have been very disturbed by those in our press who seem to be cheering for the failure of this enterprise and report with seeming glee every casualty and obstacle to our success. How these individuals do not see that this conflict is on the same level of so many others in our history that have been fought to preserve and extend liberty I will never understand. I believe our President spoke a profound truth when he said, "Liberty is not America's gift to the world, it is God's gift to mankind".
It just so happens that I am in the midst of preparing for a spring concert with the Ocean County Chorus. We are singing a program of patriotic music. One of the pieces we are doing is Randall Thompson's Testament of Freedom. It is a setting of texts by Thomas Jefferson. One of those texts is from The Declaration of Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms (July 6, 1775). As I am working on this music, I am struck by how relevent the words penned by Jefferson over 200 years ago are for our current circumstances:
Our cause is just. Our union is perfect. Our internal resources are great, and, if necessary, foreign assistance is undoubtably attainable. -- We gratefully acknowledge, as signal instances of the Divine favour towards us, that his Providence would not permit us to be called into this severe controversy, until we were grown up to our present strength, had been previously exercised in warlike operation, and possessed of the means of defending ourselves. With hearts fortified with these animating reflections, we most solemnly, before God and the world, *declare*, that exerting the utmost energy of those powers, which our beneficent Creator hath graciously bestowed upon us, the arms we have been compelled by our enemies to assume, we will, in defiance of every hazard, with unabating firmness and perseverence, employ for the preservation of our liberties; being with one mind resolved to die freemen rather than to live slaves.
We fight not for glory or for conquest. We exhibit to mankind the remarkable spectacle of a people attacked by unprovoked enemies, without any imputation or even suspicion of offence. They boast of their privileges and civilization, and yet proffer no milder conditions than servitude or death.
In our own native land, in defense of the freedom that is our birthright, and which we ever enjoyed till the late violation of it -- for the protection of our property, acquired solely by the honest industry of our fore-fathers and ourselves, against violence actually offered, we have taken up arms. We shall lay them down when hostilities shall cease on the part of the agressors, and all danger of their being renewed shall be removed, and not before.
