The recent US Supreme Court ruling vis a vis furniture chain Hobby Lobby (which successfully argued that the contraception requirement in the Affordable Care Act- or "Obamacare" as it derisively termed in popular parlance mainly by its critics- violated its rights to religious freedom) got me thinking about freedom

(not just in the US but across the Western world) in the run up to the Fourth of July Independence Day celebrations in America.

"Freedom for the pike can mean death- or considerable discomfort- for the minnow!" runs an apocryphal statement of Aneurin (Nye) Bevan.

I should declare my bias on this issue- I have long not only been pretty cynical about the whole Fourth Of July hoopla( big deal- a bunch of white first-born Protestant males declared that man(presumably white ones- many of them such as my namesake George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry were admitted slaveowners)was born and entitled to be "free" but suspicious about the whole concept of corporate "personhood".

It is true that if we examine the whole sweep of American history, the trend has been towards expanding the blessings of liberty not just for the freed slaves and their descendants(albeit after the long dark night of "Jim Crow" segregation which lasted nearly half a century), Native Americans, Hispanics and Orientals but more recently for women(irrespective of their ethnicity or race) and indeed for LGBT people(pace same sex marriage), but the whole "three fifths of a human being" business for the slaves left a bad taste in the mouth(at least in mine!)

So what freedoms are YOU as an American most grateful for come the Fourth of July?