Freedom Is…
Look around at the world today. You drink tea imported from India, you wear shirts made in China, you can have a place to call your own, you can choose your mate, choose your president, choose your church; you have a sense of freedom. It wasn’t just handed out. The benefits of some most definitely come at the cost of others. Economic freedom was a huge desire when the English found America and seen how wonderful the Indians had it. Religious freedom was a battle fought out due to very religious leaders. Together these things fall hand in hand with political freedom.
The story of Christopher Columbus is by far the biggest reason we are as we are today. He found American land, and the Indian people in America. He seen all was good, better actually than things were at home. In England they had the poorest of the poor and the richest of the rich. There were many diseases that had come from their unsanitary way of life. Small pox was one of the biggest epidemics at the time, and when Christopher Columbus came to America, he brought it with him. The battle with small pox alone killed many native people. Columbus thought the Indians looked poor but healthy, which made them “beautiful”. The Indians were good people and never objected to sharing what they had within reason. Hungry for more, mayhem was brought upon the Indian people and most of them did not survive. As said by Adam Smith “ By uniting…the most distant parts of the world, by enabling them to relieve one another’s wants, to increase another’s enjoyments, and to encourage another’s industry, their general tendency would seem to be beneficial. To the natives however…all the commercial benefits which can have resulted from those events have been sunk and lost in the dreadful misfortunes which they have occasioned” (Smith 2-3). The English now has more land, more resources; economically they felt a sense of greatness, a sense of economic freedom.
At the beginning of the century Spain was a leading power in Europe. They were led by a Catholic King and Queen, and they were all hungry for power. To them the Indians had the devil living inside them (Morton 5) so they enslaved them. Under paid and under kept the Indian people were as stated by Casas were “…totally deprived of their freedom and were put in the harshest, fiercest, most horrible servitude and captivity…” (Collard 8-9).Anyone who seemed to differ in beliefs different from their own were condemned, tortured even. To our understanding now of God, these acts were