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Near a large Christian bookshop in Pennsylvania is an inexpensive restaurant. Its popular. The food is good and you can eat all you wish. While waiting in line I noticed a painting near the register. A family is happily gathered around the dinner table at Grandma's house. Granddad stands at the head of the table while she's at his side serving the turkey. Ah yes, you know the painting well. Norman Rockwell did it as part of a set. They were inspired by F.D.R.'s Jan. 6, 1941 speech: "at no previous time has American security been as seriously threatened from without as it is today." Terrorist objectives on US soil came to light when the Spanish authorities released documents captured during the investigation of the Madrid Railway bombings. It could as easily have been Grand Central Station. In the Speilberg movie, Empire of the Sun, you might recall the print of a Rockwell painting that the boy has in his suitcase. Its two boys being tucked into bed by dutiful parents. Household calm is breathed into every hue of the evening image. That scene of repose was set by the artist against the presidents dire observations: "the peace of 1919 was far less unjust than the kind of pacification being carried on under the new order of tyranny that seeks to spread over every continent today. The American people have unalterably set their faces against that tyranny." Do we so stand against the new tyranny?
Researching this article I came upon the 3rd in the Rockwell set: an ordinary young man stands to expressing his views. The artist gives no clue as to what motivated the speaker. What we know in retrospect is that Norman wanted the paintings to appear on the cover of the Post newspaper so as to promote the sale of war bonds. He had been motivated by F.D.R. saying: "every realist knows that the democratic way of life is being directly assailed in every part of the world --assailed either by arms or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda." The fall of the twin towers has brought to our nation the brutal awareness that Muslim fanatics with their jaundiced Wahabi world view, are willing to use terrorism to oppose democracy. Religion does have a part to play in how the extremists of this Saudi Arabian sect want a world conformed to one narrow brand of Islam. In the 4th painting Rockwell depicts a composite scene of faces and hands in a profile of prayer. America doesn't stand for imposition of sectarian religion, but let all the world - yes even the N.E.A. - know that we want freedom to worship in the way that democracy allows. That means if Christianity is the most dominant religion of the country - let there be prayers to Jesus Christ even in the schoolhouse, the White House and the jailhouse. Courtroom and Congress may justifiably be the place where the expression of the faith most widely held by "We the People" can be practiced. All this with due respect to other faiths. F.D.R. said: "we may take pride in the fact that we are soft-hearted; but we cannot afford to be soft-headed." Rockwell bolstered the president's closing concepts with his paintings because F.D.R. focused the nation on 4 freedoms: "The first is freedom of speech and expression.(young speaker) The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way.(many praying) The third is freedom from want.(dinner table) The fourth is freedom from fear.(bedtime) The recurrent phrase he used at the end of each freedom was: "everywhere in the world." Our soldiers are in the Middle East today with balled fist to confront a hydra of slavery that has to date denied those basic freedoms. Do you want those freedoms to be everywhere in the world - even in Iraq? What price should this nation be willing to pay in support of freedom's ideals? The 1941 speech ended: "To that high concept there can be no end save victory." Or as Ronald Reagan quipped about his Cold War policy: "Its simple - we win they lose." This month I shall visit the Korean War memorial again and read there: "Freedom is not free."
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