Last week I went down to the Pause to watch a 3rd party presidential debate on CNN. I was enjoying the various third party candidates debate on the issues, and fielding questions from audience members. Abruptly, the program was interrupted and switched to a CNN special report. Yugoslavia had finally fallen to the opposition. A chaotic scene showed Yugoslavian citizens in the streets. As I watched the program cut back and forth between Yugoslavia and a reporter in Moscow and President Clinton who was speaking about the issue in Princeton, N.J. I was mesmerized.

But beyond that, I was thankful. On a daily basis I forget that we live in a country which allows freedom of speech, and religion, and press. The simple fact that I am allowed to write basically whatever I want on this page would be incomprehensible to some.

It seems, especially at this age, it is unbelievably easy to take for granted the basic freedoms and rights that we were born into. We never worked to earn any of our freedoms. They were a birth right. Many have laid down their lives so that their families and future families may live as we do.

This is not to say that our freedoms have not cost us anything or that we have solved all of our problems. Our society is faced with severe environmental problems, high rates of crime and violence, and addictions to everything from gambling to alcohol and drugs to food.

In looking for solutions to these problems, however, it seems easy to forget how fortunate we are. And that without our fundamental freedoms and rights we would have much larger problems on our hands. While looking for solutions to crime, and domestic violence and the environment it seems some people our age are willing to take for granted the freedoms which we have not even had to earn. Perhaps that is the problem, however. The sheer fact that we don't have a concept of what it would be like to live without these freedoms allows us to be willing to throw them out the door to try to reach some utopian society, which seems borderline communistic at times, to solve the problems which we do have.