Is freedom just another word
for nothing left to lose?

Perhaps it is.. The pursuit of freedom is the reason we led by the West are here today. It sure is a free world today, so much that everybody assumes that there is very little scope for improvement in Government systems especially Western ones. Actually the two items in the opposing pans of the scale are best identified by the following line.

"To this day, our church seeks to combine the two great strands of typically English thought; respect for authority and love of freedom."

This line is from Thomas More Commemoration Sermons The 1995 Thomas More Sermon This sermon was delivered at Chelsea Old Church on Sunday 9 July 1995 by Prebendary Leighton Thomson (Vicar C.O.C. 1950-1992)

• The average life expectancy in the United States was forty-seven.
  
• Only 14 percent of the homes in the United States had a bathtub.
  
• Only 8 percent of the homes had a telephone. A three minute call from Denver to New York City cost eleven dollars.
  
• There were only 8,000 cars in the US and only 144 miles of paved roads. The maximum speed limit in most cities was ten mph.
  
• Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa, and Tennessee were each more heavily populated than California. With a mere 1.4 million residents, California was only the twenty-first most populous state in the Union.
  
• The tallest structure in the world was the Eiffel Tower.
  
• The average wage in the U.S. was twenty-two cents an hour. The average U.S. worker made between $200 and $400 per year.
  
• A competent accountant could expect to earn $2000 per year, a dentist $2500 per year, a veterinarian between $1500 and $4000 per year, and a mechanical engineer about $5000 per year.
  
• More than 95 percent of all births in the United States took place at home.
  
• Ninety percent of all U.S. physicians had no college education. Instead, they attended medical schools, many of which were condemned in the press and by the government as "substandard."
  
• Sugar cost four cents a pound. Eggs were fourteen cents a dozen. Coffee cost fifteen cents a pound.
  
• Most women only washed their hair once a month and used borax or egg yolks for shampoo.
  
• Canada passed a law prohibiting poor people from entering the country for any reason, either as travellers or immigrants.
  
• The five leading causes of death in the U.S. were:
  1.Pneumonia and influenza, 2.Tuberculosis, 3.Diarrhea, 4.Heart disease, 5.Stroke
  
• The American flag had 45 stars. Arizona, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Hawaii and Alaska hadn't been admitted to the Union yet.
  
• Drive-by-shootings-in which teenage boys galloped down the street on horses and started randomly shooting at houses, carriages, or anything else that caught their fancy-were an ongoing problem in Denver and other cities in the West.
  
• The population of Las Vegas, Nevada was thirty. The remote desert community was inhabited by only a handful of ranchers and their families.
  
• Plutonium, insulin, and antibiotics hadn't been discovered yet. Scotch tape, crossword puzzles, canned beer, and iced tea hadn't been invented.
  
• There was no Mother's Day or Father's Day.
  
• One in ten U.S. adults couldn't read or write. Only 6 percent of all Americans had graduated from high school.
  
• Marijuana, heroin, and morphine were all available over the counter at corner drugstores. According to one pharmacist, "Heroin clears the complexion, gives buoyancy to the mind, regulates the stomach and the bowels, and is, in fact, a perfect guardian of health.
  
• Coca-Cola contained cocaine instead of caffeine.
  
• Punch card data processing had recently been developed, and early predecessors of the modern computer were used for the first time by the government to help compile the 1900 census.
  
• Eighteen percent of households in the United States had at least one full-time servant or domestic.
  
• There were about 230 reported murders in the U.S. annually.
  
  

The Title to the picture above says "Liberty enlightening the world" which really is what the flame represents. The poem at its base really misses the point and assumes the statue is showing the way to a place of refuge, to the oppressed of the world. Note : You can get the words of the poem on the Web but dont waste your time.

And don't miss the books in the hand - the weight of ancient wisdom. Notice too all eyes on the camera man. Today they would not look if he had a gun. Photography was just a few decades old then. The kind of camera which took this picture was still in use in India in the early 60's. The shutter speed was determined by the cameraman's hand.

Don't mistake this text for an eulogy of the US. It is just my tribute to a great human endeavour of the not too distant past . Black, white or brown does not matter.

I dont know how you view the impact of the creation of US on the rest of the world. Why is it called the "Brave New World"? Over two centuries after the creation of the US, the rest of the world is New only in Parts. It still carries with it an enormous legacy of Monarchical Times. We could never really shake off the garb (because Government itself was defined as something mainly for the benefit of those in Government). Anything which has something to do with old fashioned nobility, or what the British call Upper Classes is still regarded as something related to the supernatural, and not to unfair allocation of funds.

None of the things now in widespread use would have been in widespread use if it had not been for the essential motivation which emanated from the US. That benefits of new technology should go beyond palace walls was a revolutionary idea, whose strength cannot be understood today.

It is possible that you may not have considered the US itself as an invention with an uncertain future. That it was possible to establish a working Government without a Pantheon of Trivia like Kings and Queens and their ancillaries, was not a proven idea. In that case look at this ...

Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation , conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war , testing whether that or any nation so conceived can long endure. .....

Most of Europe still retains its Kings and Queens. And even around the turn of the last century the world had not rubbished Royalty - it still has not. So it is not surprising that the US would pick up a few pages from the Royalty handbook . What do you make of this ?....

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived, without apportionment among the several States, and without regard to any census or enumeration.