June 25, 2026

Yesterday, while walking around the neighborhood, I saw a banner that read "1776 - 2026: 250 years of Freedom". I immediately thought of this quote from a recent biography of Mark Twain. I love that Twain recognized that we can't date the birth of liberty and freedom until after all slaves were freed.

Taking his idea a little further, I think 1920 and the granting of the right to vote to women would be another date that we need to consider as a potential real birth of liberty.

But that is still too early. 1964 and the passage of civil rights legislation puts a new limit on the earliest date for this birth of liberty.

Then we have 1990 and the signing of the ADA. If we are not directly effected by this, we might not realize the importance of this milestone. This legislation granted freedom of movement, job opportunities, and so much more to millions of our fellow citizens. There is no way we can claim freedom existed for these people before the implementation of this act.

1990 is still too early to mark the start of freedom. In 2015, the Supreme Court opened the door for same sex marriage. For the first time ever millions more Americans obtained the freedom to marriage the person that they loved.

The point of all of this is to remind us that it has been 250 years of progress towards freedom and that we still have not achieved the goal. We should be very proud of the strides we have made and we damn well better push back against the hate that exists in the hearts of those who would shrink the circle of freedom to fewer individuals in our country.