If you live in Madison County, chances are that you have seen the monument residing there on the northeast corner of US-90 and Range Street. You have seen the four angels, arms stretched out, eyes ever pointing toward the heavens. In June of 1944, a week after thousands of men gave their lives on the beaches of Normandy, that monument arrived in Madison and was dedicated to another man who gave his life for what he believed in. The monument represented four fundamental freedoms from President Franklin Roosevelt's 1941 State of the Union Address, almost an entire year before the worst attack on American lives until September 11, 2001. Those four freedoms, represented in that marble sculpture by four angels, are the Freedom of Expression, the Freedom of Worship, the Freedom from Want, and most importantly, the Freedom from Fear. I cannot help but consider what those words meant to him, and more importantly, to the America to which they were addressed. That America had fought through starvation and destitution for ten years during the Great Depression, they picked themselves up by their bootstraps and worked their way out of it. They had watched a German and Japanese war machine ride seemingly unchecked across Europe and Asia with threats to America ever growing. They had already fought and bled in one of Europe's wars, and had no desire to return. They had survived through one of the worst plagues in modern history with Influenza, and yet, here their president was speaking to the American people on not giving in to fear. Why is that?
To Americans, reasons to be fearful have been around since before our inception. Since the day pilgrims set foot in Plymouth, Massachusetts and the Jamestown plantation was established in Virginia, Americans had reason to fear, whether disease, starvation, attacks, or the like. But never did it find its way into their hearts. As a country, we are founded upon the ideals of, while we can see the dangers in front of us, we damn the torpedoes and sail full steam ahead into the unknown. It is this spirit that birthed this great nation, that grew it westward until we could not go any further and then we grew upward. We grew so high until we could touch the very clouds and then we decided to push beyond them! It is for that reason that the stars and stripes grace the moon's surface with its colors. It is for that reason that tens of thousands of men would leave their homes and ultimately give their lives to fight and destroy tyranny half a world away. It is for that reason that Americans will start a business venture, fail, and continually try again until they succeed without a loss of spirit. It is why those Four Freedoms that stand resolute in downtown Madison do not represent anything new to Americans, but embody our very nature since this nation's beginning.
Lately, though, we seem to be going in the opposite direction. That age old tradition of Americans never bowing to fear has taken a backseat to the alleged necessity of safety in the face of a new plague. Our Freedom from Fear has become a bygone fever dream subject to the dictatorial actions and agendas of those who sow seeds of dread as a means of gaining control over the people. No longer is it that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself, but to instead fear the virus. As if such fear would add a single day to our lives! Perhaps it stems from the lack of faith in life after death, or perhaps it stems from leaders' motives truly being evil, but our lives, our prosperity, our very future have suffered in the name of safety. Around the nation, we see the effects of allowing fear to rule us. Our workers are not allowed to work, thus poverty is on the rise while production falls rapidly. Our churches are not allowed to fellowship, thus our moral compass veers further from true north. Our schools are not allowed to open, our children are not allowed to socialize, and we all must succumb to the humiliation of being forced to wear a mask, in the name of the "new normal".
I truly believe that our lack of faith has rendered us to this point. Matthew's Gospel speaks of Jesus imploring the people to not fear, because it will never add another day to our lives. God himself spoke through the Prophet Isaiah, that when we pass through rivers, they will not overwhelm us, and when we walk through fire, they will not consume us. We act as if this life is all that there is, and that to preserve it we must put it on a shelf and lock our doors and shut ourselves off from the world. But if you believe like me, that God has placed me here on this Earth with the time I am given for a reason, then I want to live! Paul writes to Timothy that God has not given us a spirit of timidity, a spirit of fear, but a spirit of power! This same spirit has embodied Americanism for nearly two and a half centuries, and I pray every day that it will for two and a half more.
History has shown us, time and time again, that if a nation allows itself to succumb to fear, it shall not remain. For we have seen with the Freedom from Fear lost, how those other three angels have begun to crumble as well. Resiliency in the face of fear is what ensures our rights as a people. It ensures that we will not be swayed by anything, by any fearmongering television talking head or by any power oriented official claiming to champion our safety. I refuse to be swayed by fear, and I ask that you, as a community, as a nation, would do the same. Go back to the roots of your forefathers, go back to the frontier spirit that conquered the West, Space, Influenza, Nazism, Communism, and Radical Islam and find yourself there. Because without that same spirit, we are doomed to fail as a nation.
- Jacob Moore