This is a cause and effect essay explaining how education, free speech, and contraception contribute to a free society.

Vehicles of Freedom

We have the privilege of living in a free and open society, a society kept afloat on an open sea of oppression by providing and allowing education, freedom of speech, and contraception. Through readily available education we establish a citizenry with the opportunity to communicate clearly and understand each other in ways unavailable to a less educated people. Freedom of speech is a necessary vehicle for navigating the treacherous waters of a free democracy. One can not extol the benefits of contraception in the modern world too much, for it has done more for the economy and civil rights in the last forty-three years then most would suspect. All of these things are vital driving forces on our ship of freedom.

Untold suffering has been caused by limited resources and disease. These are not new issues for humanity, nor for any living creature. These are the issues that we have faced since time immemorial.

United States

The "free speech zone" at the 2004 Democratic Nati...

Borlaug speaking at the Ministerial Methodist Conf...

And since time immemorial, we have overcome adversity through our innate human talent for learning. If there is one thing that consistently dominates the "golden" periods of our history, it is education and the technologies provided to people through education. The modern world is simply a reflection of the old world; the names may have changed, but our goals remain the same: we want to eat when hungry, sleep when tired, have medicine when we are sick, and provide these things to our families. Education allows us to do these things better, education from and for people like Dr. Norman Borlaug.

It is impossible to underestimate the value of Dr. Borlaug's research at the Rockefeller and Ford research foundations, where he formulated a wheat hybrid that has fed literally over a billion people (http://reason.com/0004/fe.rb.billions.shtml). Dr. Borlaug's research has saved more people than that...