What IS freedom?

Now that the Fourth of July has come and gone, the commentary about patriotism and freedom are starting to fade away. Just as in every other year that I can remember, no article, editorial, or letter to an editor that I’ve read has ever been able to explain exactly what American freedom is or just what it means.

I’ve observed many times through the years that most people either have no idea themselves, or are unable to put their ideas about the matter into comprehendible words.

Some years ago, my little brother and I were discussing politics over the phone. He wasn’t sure what freedom truly meant, either. He thought that ‘freedom’ was a synonym for ‘democracy’.

It’s an interesting position, and it would seem logical. The only problem with that is that the United States has little if any actual democracy going on within its borders!

True democracy is an interesting concept, a utopian ideal that defies the reality of human nature, not to mention reality itself. The closest example I can think of would be the referendums that states like California often hold where voters cast a ballot for or against a proposed law, or even in general presidential elections where the voter is asked whether they feel there is a need for a Constitutional convention to be held for any reason. I couldn’t even tell you when the last time one of those was convened! The end of prohibition, or the Equal Rights Amendment pushed for in the late 70’s, perhaps. I don't see how twelve people voluntarily living together in a commune somewhere couldn't have democracy. All they'd have to do would be to sit down and take a vote on anything that would affect the group and then collectively do whatver the majority decided. It wouldn't work if there were too many more people than that, however.

In a perfect world, democracy would be the only way for government to exist. The fact is, though, that not only is every citizen in a democracy treated perfectly equally under the laws, it is necessary that each person’s personal contribution to the democracy is also equal.

Herein lies the problem. For this to work, everyone would have to think and reason at more or less the same level, which never has and likely never will happen. For one thing, some of us are innately more intelligent than others. I doubt anyone has ever made it any farther than the first or second grade in school before this became painfully obvious. It would go without saying that older people are almost always going to be wiser than younger people just because of their many extra years of life experience and all the additional opportunities to learn about what works and what doesn’t this experience affords them. Besides, the law does not treat all people equally in any democracy, anyway. Anyone under the age of 18 will readily acknowledge this, though this really is for their own good most of the time. Commit a felony and I guarantee you will have definite legal disabilities! The same is true should one ever be judged to be mentally incompetent by a court. The larger consideration is that every citizen would choose to act only in good faith for the best interest of society and that everyone would be as diligent as possible in making the time and effort to examine and contemplate all the issues at hand before voting on action for each and every one of them. Can you ever see this happening? Not as long as people have proclilvities to be selfish and greedy, it won't! And, of course, some people just don't care.

Democracy sounds nice, anyway. It might have even been a genuinely good idea in ancient times when life was a whole lot simpler and there just wasn’t that much that had to be legislated. Let’s face it: the way society is supposed to work is that each person who is of age and no longer the responsibility of their parents literally governs themselves, and the government of the community, be it the town, city, county, state, or nation, sets and enforces the rules concerning how citizens act toward and deal with each other!

In a healthy society where strong families are the norm rather than the exception, people tend to get along pretty well. A lot of it is shame and embarrassment – if you drop the ball somewhere, you’ll likely never live it down. That keeps most normal people in the straight and narrow like nothing else. Strong religious values tend to be quite useful for this, too. Any group larger than a relative handful of people is always going to have those characters who have no conscious, who feel no shame. They may not have any family, in fact or even figuratively. Without any empathy or a propensity to feel insult or offense, a person has little to stop them from acting in whichever way fits their mood at the time. For such people, evil as a way of life has a lot of advantages…almost anything one wants can be had through theft, fraud, duress, or extortion! Who do we turn to when someone else is trying to take our possessions, our livelihoods, our the health, welfare, or even the lives of ourselves or the members of our families? The government that establishes and maintains law enforcement agencies, courts of law, and prisons, of course!

As time passes, the criminal element finds more and more opportunities to exploit, necessitating more and more laws to prohibit new methods of victimizing citizens. Add in all the other services that government administers, and laws become not only numerous, but sometimes very complicated, not to mention expensive! There’s a reason that attorneys go to school for roughly the same amount of time that medical doctors and rocket scientists do. With that in mind, is it honestly reasonable to expect every average citizen to always be fully informed so they can make responsible decisions at the ballot box?

I know some very avid do it yourselfers, of which I’m one, but even I buy most of the things I use. If I wanted to, I certainly could make my own light bulbs. But why? General Electric and Sylvania make excellent light bulbs that I can buy for much less time and money than it would take for me to make them myself. And so it is with a great many things in life. Most of us do something quite good, and it’s either what we do for a living, or at least as a hobby. But we leave most of the rest of our needs up to the experts to fulfill.

I believe it was Maslow who identified the three basic human needs as food, clothing, and shelter. Once upon a time, those were all D-Y-I propositions. Sure I like to cook and I have a garden most years, but I don’t raise and slaughter my own meat and I haven’t baked anything in years. I can and do sew quite well, and the old Singer is sitting on a table just a few feet in front of me as I’m writing, but I buy all my clothes ready-made. It’s quicker, easier, and costs less that way. I sew when I need to make repairs, alter garments, sew patches on uniforms, or if I need some specialty item I simply can’t get any other way. It’s very hard to find someone who’ll do those things around my town, so I do it myself. But most clothing simply isn’t worth the time and effort. Shelter? I’m a skillful carpenter, the top of my class when I was in trade school, in fact. But I didn’t build the house I live in. Professionals built it. And they must’ve done a pretty good job, since that was nearly sixty years ago and the house is still standing today.

They had plenty of experience building houses; they built all the other ones in the neighborhood at the time, too. The neighborhood is even named after the contractor, for that matter. Most laws do turn out better when the experts make them. You don’t get so many ‘Gee, I didn’t think about that…’ situations when professional lawmakers pass legislation. When something doesn’t work, you get a bunch of ‘See, we told you so!’ from the minority of the lawmakers most of the rest chose not to agree with when the merits of the law were debated.

It’s never been a requirement, but does it come as any surprise that many, if not most, lawmakers were originally lawyers by trade? They are at least dealing with what they know! They’re aware of how government works, what can and can’t be done, and how to word laws in specific language that clearly states just what the law means. Most of the time, anyway. The courts get to sort it out at a later date otherwise!

Although it’s widely considered democracy, the representative government used in America is still a republic, where other people decide on laws on our behalf. The job of the citizen is to help decide which expert to choose for the job, then hope that the candidate selected does the job they agreed to do when we elected them. They’re infamous for not keeping that promise, aren’t they?

Politics is not about keeping promises. It’s not supposed to be. Nor is it supposed to be about making constituents happy, though that’s often what it becomes. The job of an elected official is to be the one who becomes an expert on all the fine points of pending legislation introduced and then voting for or against it in accordance to the best interests of those he was elected to represent.

Sometimes what people want is not what’s in their best interest, as any parent who’s ever tried to get a small child to eat vegetables can attest. Some of the bills brought before legislatures in the fifty states or in Washington are kind of like ice cream. They seem very appealing, and everybody feels it’s what they want, but in the long run, they’re not healthy!

As I explained to my little brother in that phone conversation years ago, democracy is not freedom. It is merely a tool to help ensure our freedom.

So what is freedom?

Freedom is your right to be who you are. You can’t do whatever you want, necessarily, but if you’re just minding your own business and not bothering anyone else while you're at it, you’re enjoying freedom when you’re left alone to keep on doing just that. You were born with a voice, so you can use it to express yourself, as long as you’re not using to bother anyone else, and no one will be in the right if they attempt to silence you.

If you were born into a family that adheres to a given religion, you can follow your spiritual convictions without having to worry about being taxed, arrested, or imprisoned solely because were born into or later chose your faith. Your church cannot be declared illegal, and another church that may be of different principals of yours cannot be granted any form of official endorsement, approval, or preferential treatment over yours.

If you are of no religion at all, the government of a free person will never attempt to force or coerce you into belonging to any church, either. You can tell everyone you meet that you’re a Satanist, and you can worship Satan in any number of ways, and the government will not have a problem with that, provided you do not harm anyone or violate any other person’s rights in the process.

You can’t just be thrown in jail. The government has to have, and prove it had, good solid reasons for taking you into custody and they have to tell you what those reasons are; you can’t just be made to ‘disappear’ like often happens in other countries. By the same standard, you cannot be made to just hand over all you own, either. Sure, you can be required to pay some taxes here and there, you can be kicked out of your home, and anything acquired through unlawful activity is never safe. But there are rules that have to be followed and none of this is instant or arbitrary.

The circumstances in which you are required to give up your property are spelled out and none of it is entirely set in stone. It may not do you much good, but you do always have a chance to argue your case in these instances. Sometimes you can even prevail should the law happen to be in your favor. It does occasionally work out that way!

If you’re a free citizen, your citizenship cannot be involuntarily revoked – you cannot be stripped of your citizenship and sent away from your home nation if you’re a free citizen. The government of a free nation is required to give you nothing. If you're in need, you may be eligible for financial and other assistance from your government, but there is no guarantee that any person is automatically eligible for any such program; it is not an enumerated right. You’re on your own to make your own way. But what you had to start with and what you make for yourself is always yours when your freedom is maintained and upheld.

For a long time, the common person viewed government as an enemy. In many cases, it most certainly was. More recently, most of us have began to see government as a servant, and we’ve become quite demanding of it. It’s very easy to forget that the beauty of the United States government is not what it can give to or do for us. It’s really about what it isn’t allowed to take from or do to us!

Enjoying my freedom,

Tim Gordon