"I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom." -- Bob Dylan

 We're just back from three days over in Reims, the capital of the Champagne region. It's less than an hour east on a train and in the middle of rolling hills near a national park. While much of the train ride is in a trackline that obscures the terrain, there is enough visible to know it's a strong area for cattle and other livestock, plus rapeseed (we know it as canola) and other stuff. All in all, a gentle few days in an ideal location near good restaurants and an easy stroll to the train station, plus a 13th-century cathedral (Jeanne d'Arc stepped here) and, of course, all the champagne producers.

In this year-long adventure, we have now been schooled in the production of both champagne (here) and rum (Martinique), enough to make us snobs should we choose. However, such snobbishness usually comes with a (literal) price tag we're unwilling to pay. If anything, it has helped us make some wiser decisions when looking at labels so we can squeeze the maximum out of our fixed incomes.

Reims is located between the champagne-related vineyards to the south and the so-called Zone Rouge to the north. The Zone Rouge is an off-limits area of World War One trench warfare left worthless by unexploded ordnance, poison gas remnants, human and animal remains and other detritus from The War To End All Wars. Entire towns and rural areas are considered 100% useless for human, animal or agricultural use. While the area has been slowly shrinking due to cleanup efforts over much of the past century, estimates are it will take up to 700 years to make the region usable again. Only slightly farther north is the Belgian border and the Ardennes, location of invasion in both world wars.

The towns and areas within an hour's drive read like a 20th-century military history lesson -- Soissons, Verdun, Chateau-Thierry, the Marne River, the Somme, etc. Not far to the west lies Normandy and its similar list of later battlefields.

Like our stops in Vienna and later in England, all these places are stark reminders of the difference between freedom and independence. While the US waves the flag and goes endlessly on about Independence Day and personal liberty, the "mah freedoms" crowd largely has no idea of what freedom really is or what it costs anymore.

The US hasn't seen its territory occupied by a foreign invasion force since 1814. It has not been bombed, seen its citizens subject to roundup and aggression by alien oppressors or had its daily life affected and infested by imposed rules handed down by another capital in a different country. While oceans certainly don't anymore offer the isolation of the past, our physical separation from Europe and Asia has shaped and continues to shape how we view ourselves and others. From first grade on, we have been fed book after book of comfortable Paul Revere-style homilies about our glorious Founding Fathers and, several times a year like this weekend's Memorial Day, we drag out Old Glory and take a minute of silence to remember those who paid the ultimate price in defense of liberty and the good ol' USA.

On foreign soil.

This isn't to say that sacrifice isn't worth honoring, because it certainly is. But that sacrifice wasn't made down the street, in this same town or (often) literally in the same house where the family still lives. Over here, the neighborhood was bombed flat, neighbors were lined up against that wall and shot for resisting or forced at gunpoint onto a train bound for Buchenwald.

There are reminders here every day in every city, town and village about what happens when fascism takes over. In Austria, the reminder is mainly about how so much was destroyed because too many chose flag-waving and blaming the innocent over compassion and education. In England and here in France, the bombs and artillery and firing squads and home invasions and occupations were the result of too many remaining silent while a minority took control of a complacent political system without effective opposition.

In short, the main difference is the US created its own warrior class when it ended the draft in the early 1970s. Not that we weren't deservedly sick of that jungle war (that I narrowly avoided) in Southeast Asia. But the result has been sending the same volunteers on repeated deployments while rewarding the battered returnees with free meals and claps on the shoulder from those whose day-to-day remained unaffected. We watched war on TV while here in Europe they watched it out the window or heard it overhead. The front line wasn't Out There. It was Right Here. That made everyone a veteran. It's not forgotten.

Nearly 80 years after the end of that last world war, Germany, Austria, France and so many others who suffered during the conflict are doing that "freedom" thing so much better than the US because the US hasn't learned that freedom is not simply individual rights. It is a collective safety valued more than how far one can push the limits of personal behavior. It is recognizing the responsibility of freedom in all its forms from personal safety to a comprehensive education to the value of being secure in one's self. For everyone.

Liberty. Equality, Fraternity.