How much is our liberty worth?

Well, today we have a price: $85,000

Nice to finally know, isn’t it?  Eighty-five grand.  That’s the price being asked on Ebay by the terrorist who walked away yesterday with a podium bearing the seal of the Speaker of the House.  He wants 85 thousand dollars for this symbol of our nation’s self-governance and freedom, this symbol of our national pride in our elected government from what we call, “the people’s house.”  This is where we are about 24 hours after a mob responded to incitement from the President of the United States and launched a mass attack on our Capitol.  

It would be impossible to add up the cost of our liberty over the last 240-plus years, of course. Hundreds of thousands have given their lives in defense of liberty. The most recent estimate of Union soldiers who died in defense of liberty during Civil War is about 430,000, according to a study published in 2012 by J. David Hacker, a demographic historian from Binghamton University in New York.  He estimates that somewhere between 650,000 and 850,000 died overall.  That number includes those who fought for the Confederacy, who could hardly be described as defending our liberty. About 116,516 American soldiers gave their lives in World War I, and most historians have agreed on a figure of 405,000 for Americans killed in World War II fighting to defend our freedoms from the scourge of Nazi fascism.

How do you put a value on a human life?  You can’t, so we’ll never have a dollar figure representing the sacrifice paid by so many soldiers, sailors, airmen, and Marines in defense of our liberty over the last two centuries.

Symbols like the Speaker’s podium stolen yesterday from the Capitol by a smiling, Trump hat wearing lunatic, are only physical things, after all – in this case appearing to be made of mahogany and brass.  I’m sure Nancy Pelosi can find a replacement podium to stand behind the next time she needs one.  But symbols are important in a country like ours.  The Stars and Stripes is just a flag, a piece of cloth, but it symbolizes the country for which hundreds of thousands have given their lives. 

We take too much for granted.  Way too much.  Until yesterday, we took for granted the Capitol building which some call the cradle of our democracy.  We’re used to seeing the Capitol on our television screens, shots of microphone-wielding reporters chasing senators and representatives down basement hallways seeking answers to questions about matters before the Congress.  Some of us have visited the Capitol building, gone through the metal detectors and security checkpoints and wandered its halls and galleries to gaze upon not only our seat of government, but history itself.  Far too few of us are aware that enslaved people who were denied the right of citizenship built the Capitol, from cornerstone to the very top of the dome, a building to which they would have no access as individuals and no representation as voters because they were denied the right to vote.  The thugs and rednecks who stormed the Capitol yesterday were probably not aware of this history, and if they were, had contempt for it.  They showed their contempt for the labor of the slaves who built the Capitol, and their contempt for the government for which it stands, when they broke windows and looted offices and destroyed art displayed on its walls and rampaged through its hallways waving the Confederate flag. 

But because of their worship of Donald Trump and the sedition they carried out in his name, we have a price for one symbol of our freedom:  $85,000 for the wooden podium of the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Finally, we know what one piece of our liberty is worth. Now it’s up to us to defend the rest of it.