July 4th a day to reflect on freedom.

Byline: Bob Welch The Register-Guard

When the cheering beckoned them back on the Cuthbert Amphitheater stage, Crosby, Stills & Nash offered an encore few of us expected. It was July, four years ago.

David Crosby stepped to the microphone, plucked a few notes of prelude on his guitar, then began singing: "My country 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty ... ."

In seconds, the semi-raucous crowd quieted into hushed respect. No rendition of "America" has moved me so deeply.

Why? Perhaps because the song was so out of context, the trio being a rock band that had just served up a musical smorgasbord of save-the-whale, question-authority, teach-your-children fare that you'd expect at a CS&N concert.

Perhaps because the trio - Steven Stills and Graham Nash joined Crosby in harmony on "Land where my fathers died" - sang it with a reverence that put a lump in your throat.

And perhaps because it took place outside on a warm Willamette Valley summer night, the kind of evening that makes you appreciate this country all the more.

Listening to that song made me think more deeply about its words:

My country, 'tis of thee.

"My country." How easily we can take such inherited ownership for granted. I find it interesting how immigrants score higher on their citizenship exams than a lot us who were born into this "my-ness" might.

I don't see the "my" as a possessive "my," but a protective "my."

We who call it such have a responsibility to defend it. To make it more than it was when we found it. To sometimes even disagree with it, realizing that the Declaration of Independence itself doesn't encourage us to bow to a country, as much as to the ideals upon which that country was founded.

The declaration refers to "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness," then says: "Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and institute new Government

laying a foundation on such

principles ... ."

Radical stuff, this - far more radical than, say, Crosby's song, "Almost Cut My Hair."

Sweet land of liberty, / Of thee I sing.

Liberty means "freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control." You can argue that liberty is eroding in this country; maybe even win that argument. But Boris, my old next door neighbor who'd spent 40 years under communist rule in the former Soviet Union, would laugh in your face.

Land where my fathers died, / Land of the pilgrims' pride ... .

As Americans, we don't operate in a time vacuum. We are who we are because of the ideals, efforts and sacrifices of those who came before us. At Plymouth, Mass. The Statehouse in Philadelphia. Valley Forge. Verdun. Normandy. Kent State. That contrail-streaked sky over Texas after the Columbia fell to the Earth. Any place where Americans have given their lives in the pursuit of making this place better: those people should never be forgotten.

From every mountainside / Let freedom ring!

You don't hear freedom ringing much around here these days. Phones ring. Alarms ring. But imagine freedom ringing.

One year after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1777, the bells rang all day in Philadelphia.

The nation was still at war. But people were hopeful.

At a grand dinner at City Tavern in Philadelphia, a newspaper editor proposed a toast: "May the Fourth of July, that glorious and memorable day, be celebrated through America by the sons of freedom from age to age, till time shall be no more."

On the eve of Independence Day, that's good reminder for those of us fortunate enough to live in the Sweet Land of Liberty.

Last chance to nominate Eugene potholes for our worst-roads list. E-mail them to me at bwelch@guard net.com. Include a title, location and 40-word description.