The Audacity of Hope: Blog 4

In this section, Obama cites in the Declaration of Independence that ...."they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among those are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness." We all come into this world with these rights and no one can ever take them away from us. But we often tend to take our freedoms and our rights for granted. Obama tells of taking his wife, Michelle, to Kenya. She quickly learned that life there is hard. They can do little to help themselves, because the opportunities aren't there for them. In America, we believe that if we work hard we can succeed. In many parts of the world that isn't possible. But we can't succeed at another person's expense. A company can't dump toxins and waste into a river just because it is convenient. And should we be able to take a person's property away to build a mall or a new highway or expand 35W? There has to be a balance between an individual's rights and what the government can do and control. Freedom also has to be limited when it is a threat to some one's safety. People wouldn't feel comfortable with the government telling them what they can eat even though what we eat can cause obesity and create huge medical costs for insurance companies. We have a right to practice whatever religion we want but we can't make human or animal sacrifices. We live in a complex world and we need to find balance between our rights and how they will affect others. People will disagree on many issues, but in the end we need to respect and support each other's decisions.