Sen. Bob Dole's final column: 'Too many of us have sacrificed too much'

This is Sen. Dole’s final op-ed. He began drafting it, with pen and paper, in October and finished it on Nov. 23. He died on Sunday.

Dwight Eisenhower said America is best described by the word "freedom." It’s an all-purpose sort of word, one that we salute like the flag on the Fourth of July, even if no two of us define it in exactly the same way. This gives rise to a perpetual tug of war between those on the left who look to an activist government to broker economic security and a level playing field without which democratic capitalism can degenerate into mere survival of the fittest, and those on the right who pursue freedom from – especially from heavy-handed dictation, stifling taxes or overregulation that can smother individual initiative and discourage social mobility.