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Opinion

People, not military, gave us freedom 

Ernesto Aguilar
Guest Columnist

"If not for the military, we wouldn't have our freedoms."

The remark wafted through the brisk air as I crossed campus. It was no doubt a response to the counter-recruitment protest last week outside the University Center, and it's a sentiment I've heard before. All manner of well-meaning individuals seem to believe Americans are somehow safer and more free as a result of military activities.

The military's ownership of freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution is debatable at best -- the Department of Defense laying claim to the Revolutionary War is akin to the Soviet defeat of the Nazis being traced to prehistoric humans. In reality, the origins of our basic rights are indisputable. Such freedoms are the direct result not of military engagements, but of struggles waged by people like you and me.

While concepts of democracy can certainly be traced back to Enlightenment philosophers, even someone with the crudest knowledge of American history acknowledges the visioning of rights following the Revolutionary War was hardly perfect. Many Americans did not enjoy the freedoms we now take for granted. Indeed, many were not even considered Americans, but rather chattel.

While you may read of many skirmishes among the gentry over the centuries, it's the often-untold stories that prove fascinating. American history is a tapestry in which little people, not military might, weave our unbreakable threads.

Women won the right to vote via the 19th Amendment. It passed after years of efforts by women like Margaret Brent, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony and others. They endured hardship, ridicule and discrimination for their cause, which is now so lightly regarded that we consider women's rights a given.

The eight-hour workday was won by labor unions. History is dotted with incidents where American workers, protesting inhumane conditions and 14-hour shifts, were suppressed by the military.

Blacks gained basic rights through people facing down police, the Ku Klux Klan and public officials committed to preventing voting rights and equal treatment under the law. Abolitionists and slaves themselves fought and died to end slavery. Students like the ones at UH risked their lives in 1961 to register blacks in the Deep South to vote. And individuals from Fannie Lou Hamer to Huey Newton to the everyday people who spoke up can rightly be credited for sparking change.

Mexican-Americans lived as second-class citizens for generations. People like Ramsey Muniz, Corky Gonzales and scores of others active in the Mexican-American civil rights movement won victories making education access, civil rights and equality important principles we now honor.

And sadly, today and for at least three generations, the military is used as the blunt end of Rooseveltian big-stick diplomacy, ending up on the losing side of many fights and souring the rest of the globe against American interests.

When my father returned from duty in Vietnam, he and his platoon hoped their sons and daughters might fight for a nobler cause than they, themselves children sacrificed in a war that made no sense. The promises of freedom they were reportedly defending were lost amid unspeakable atrocities committed in a conflict none of them understood. As young people of lesser means, they had few choices, as I expect some of the soldiers overseas may now equally be denied.

I suspect only a few soldiers would ever claim they're responsible for our freedoms. It merely sounds like some politician's hollow line, lacking both a grasp of our history and compassion for those caught in war.

Aguilar, a UH alumnus, 
can be reached via dccampus@mail.uh.edu