Meaning of Freedom?

Today was essentially a day of doing tourist things; mainly going to places I did not manage to go last time round. Started off at the Arlington Cemetery, interesting if only to realise the extent of the conflicts that the US has been involved in and the number of lives lost. Arlington Cemetery also has a brilliant view of Washington DC; and the autumn colours are beautiful and look even better from the sky.


I also visited two memorials - the Iwo Jima memorial that commemorates the very costly US victory in WW2 and the Roosevelt Island - which is really a nature reserve of sorts. The Iwo Jima memorial reminded me a lot about our DoD and DOW games and puts capture the flag into a whole new perspective. A note on scale - the pedestal is about 3m high.


Smithsonian's American Indian museum is the newest, and since I did not spend a lot of time in it last year I decided to go back. It is one of the most interesting museums; not only because of some really funky displays and the general content of the museum but also the presentation of the content. Unlike many other museums that have tried to showcase culture, the museum has tried to showcase both sides of the story with very little bias in the presentation. For example, most exhibits dealing with cultural clashes have two commentaries - one from each side of the clash and often with contrasting views of the same subject.

And this brings me to the title of the post - a lot of the content in the American Indian museum chronicles their fight to maintain their culture; to fight for the freedom to choose their destiny. It is no different to countries deposing colonial rule or "foreign" occupation. While walking between the Iwo Jima memorial and Roosevelt Island, I stumbled upon "Freedom Park" - a park which claims to chronicle the struggle for freedom. It has a large emphasis on press freedom with a memorial to journalist killed on duty from all corners of the globe (from WW2 IIRC). There are also pieces of the Berlin wall, a bronze statue of South Africa's ballot box from 1994, a casting of Martin Luther King jnr's jail cell door (well one of them), cobble stones from polish war camps in WW2, a broken statue of Lenin, a replica of the "Goddess of Democracy" from Tiananmen Square, a display of banners from the Suffrage movement and a replica of the Freedom statue that sits on top of the US capitol. My criticism of the park is that while there is a celebration of freedom; it is based too much on the fights for the right to vote. Other fights for freedom like the fight against colonialism or the American Indian tribes' fight for recognition and control of their own future are swept aside. And of course the other essential freedoms are