As I am still writing part 3 of my series on The War for our Minds, allow me to present this look into Freedom.
A while ago, I wrote a thread on vaccines (actually, on how to debate civilly, but with vaccines as the segue to start tackling that topic). Interesting how you have to parse your words very carefully on certain topics.
One reaction was important enough to bring me to write this article: ‘freedom’.
One of the characteristics of American thinking, is this tendency to see things very dualistic: black or white, right or wrong, my side vs your side, with very little in between. It allows for quick judgement and action, but at the cost of nuance. In my native Belgium, compromise is a national sport. So we do have tons of nuance, but nothing ever gets done.
A side effect of this tendency, is that what we call ‘the right’, is in effect a huge amalgam of different schools of thought. One such school of thought I never fully agreed with, was libertarianism, in whichever form it presents itself.
Before you slam the door on this article, hear me out.
In the US, freedom is a true foundational value. No doubt. It is one of the strengths of the US. In Europe, when we hear ‘The US is the greatest country on the face of the Earth!’, we laugh. What do those arrogant Americans know about true culture or actual long history, we’d counter, rather arrogantly ourselves. Now I lived here in the US for about 15 years, and have become a citizen, and I still chuckle a little, but I now understand the truth behind those words.
It doesn’t mean the US is perfect, nor that the US is ‘better’ than other countries. It simply means, and correct me if I am wrong, that the US offers the truest freedom to her citizens. Where the criteria for who is and isn’t a citizen are very generous and rather hard to pin down. And importantly, those freedoms Americans enjoy and espouse, are seen as innate, not as ‘American’! Which means that every human, in any country, should be allowed the same freedoms.
This is, in a way, revolutionary. Not new, but revolutionary. (There is a very interesting link, tracing the foundations of that idea to medieval times in my native Flanders, but that would be something for a different article). This is why I do agree with this statement: ‘The US is the greatest country on the face of the Earth!’
But what is Freedom?
Too many think of freedom as the absence of obligations, being free from oppression, tyranny, from others telling them what to do or what not to do. “Nobody gets to tell me what to do/think/say, I am FREE!’ We’ve all heard it, we might have even thought it or said it at some point ourselves.
It is rooted in a very strong individualism. The core actor is seen as the individual, and this is made absolute.
There are many ways to approach this topic, and many ways to dissect, define and view it, I am well aware. I am not about to give an exhaustive and in-depth review on ‘freedom’.
But here is the angle I want to present, for your consideration:
Imagine being placed in a grass plain, flat, and stretching out as far as the eye can see. You could walk in any given direction for days, weeks, years, and not reach the end of it. Here, it is said, you are free to go where you want! Is that really freedom? I argue it isn’t, as it does not matter what you do, or even if you stay where you are.
Now imagine that the people who placed you there, also placed a fence, and said: do not cross this fence. Many would think that this is the beginning of a loss of freedom, but I would argue that it is the beginning of freedom!
For now your hitherto aimless and undefined wandering about becomes focused. Will you stay well clear of the fence? Will you remain close to it, as sailors of old did to the coast as a point of reference? Or will you flirt with the prohibition, sitting on the fence? Dangling your feet on the other side, while remaining in? Or step over? Really cross it and go far into the forbidden territory?
NOW you have options, and NOW you are free!
This might be a perplexing, and even shocking thought to some. But think of it: the opposite of love is not hatred, either, but indifference. Similarly, the opposite of freedom is not ‘having rules/limitations’, but having no rules at all. Or, think of it, the opposite of freedom is not ‘the Ten Commandments’, but ‘Do what thou wilt’.
An interesting though experiment, isn’t it? The main flaw is that we are not insular beings, disconnected from others. It isn’t just you on that plain, but several billion other people, as well, in various degrees of familiarity and closeness. The main guiding principle has been ‘your rights end where those of others begin’, which can be cast as ‘my freedoms end, where those of others begin’. A deeper, wiser take would be the golden rule: ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you".
So, freedom cannot be taken in an absolute form, or, more precise, an absolute individualism cannot be used as the foundation to apply freedom to. For starters, because absolute individualism is not tenable, and second, because such ‘freedom’ rejects any limitation at the preference of each individual, regardless of the freedoms and rights of others.
Now, when I state that such individual freedom cannot be absolute, and that thus a certain level of rules and limitations can and should be imposed by the communities we are part of, does not mean that you have to take my point to the extreme, and accuse me of espousing or promoting authoritarianism. On the contrary!
Even Truth Social, for example, weeds out bots, and otherwise conservative writers have no problems banning and blocking trolls and others who bring in dangerous and unlawful talk (spam, porn, calls to violence come to mind), to protect their forum and those who are on it. Are they against freedom, by denying those individuals their ‘right to speak’, or are they protecting our collective freedom? If you merely look at the individual, some here get angry “don’t tell us what we can and cannot do or speak about!”
Yet, if you look at the forum as a whole, such actions enable it to continue and to flourish, it encourages meaning debate and conversation, for those who want and engage in actual open conversation that is respectful and/or properly supported.
Is that a contradiction? Only if you limit your view on too small an area (the rights and welfare of individuals), or on too wide an area (the rights and welfare of the community). It isn’t either/or, but BOTH. We are individuals, AND we are members of a community. Our freedom, then, by necessity, has to be a reconciliation between both tensions and sets of rights.
Lastly, as a thought exercise, to prove my earlier points: If I am correct that true freedom is not wholly measured by the individual, nor by the whole of society, and if I am correct when I claimed that the opposite of freedom is not ‘having rules/limitations’, but having no rules at all, it should be possible to be free in prison.
Did I just lose my mind?
No, not really. We all have read the stories of prisoners, who defied their tormentors, simply by remaining free, despite the external limitations placed upon them. They realized, that since the opposite of freedom is not ‘having rules/limitations’, the actions of their captors, while restricting their temporal freedoms, did not alter they actual freedom. And their captors knew it, and it enraged them to no end, drove them mad, for they could not reach their captives, who proved them powerless, despite the obvious circumstance.
A truly impressive example, is that of the Jewish musician, Schächter, a brilliant Czech conductor, who was held in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Deprived of so much freedom, he banded together with a group of fellow prisoners, and he taught them how the sing the Requiem, by Verdi. The Germans had allowed it, since it was not deemed ‘subversive’, and Verdi was Italian, not Jewish. Schächter brought in the score for the Requiem, and its beauty and complexity kept the prisoners' minds focused on hope.
(A beautiful tribute to Schächter and his chorus was made, in the form of this documentary.)
They performed for their Nazi captors, even, and some of the survivors later said: “It was not entertainment, it was a fight for life.”
The text was sung in Latin, and the prisoners hoped the Germans wouldn’t understand the parts aimed against them:
A written book will be brought forth,
which contains everything
for which the world will be judged.
Therefore when the Judge takes His seat,
whatever is hidden will be revealed:
nothing shall remain unavenged.
There they sang, those Jews, deprived of so many freedoms, in mortal danger, shackled, shaven, hungry, worked to the bone, but still FREE.
As one of them, survivor Marianka May, later said in the film: “We proved beyond the shadow of any doubt that, yes, they have our bodies, yes, we have no more names – we have numbers. But they don't have our souls, our minds, being. Also, it will not be taken away when we are shot."
Or another survivor: “I don’t think the soul has to be nourished by anything but by heavenly music. The soul doesn’t need anything else.”
Such a freedom brings hope. Such a freedom is the ultimate defiance and rebellion. As Albert Camus famously wrote: “The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
Such a freedom cannot but ultimately prevail.
But many, in this day and age, have no longer learned to think deeper than the surface, and how to deal with more abstract or complicated topics. As someone said: they can’t think critically.
If you ask me, besides a failed education system and the culture we live in, in general, an individualism run rampant is at the root of this, where each styles themselves a teacher and researcher, even without any proper foundation to be such. The incredible ease of access to information is part of the growing attitude, as well. But, that is a different topic.
Here is the danger of not properly understanding the true nature of freedom: Such people will focus on the hopelessness, on the deprivation of this or that freedom, and as their oppressor shackles their body, they themselves shackle their own minds and hearts. As such, they will remain unfree, and will never be able to even see, let alone seize, the opportunities to regain the external freedoms they had been deprived of.
Since freedom, in the right to liberty, is endowed by our creator, who is man that claims to have taken it from me? I find that vision and understand far more powerful, especially in light of the danger our liberty might be in. It gives a hope, and a fire, that WILL be victorious, for it can never be quenched.
Nothing enrages and is feared more by evil, than a truly free man or woman. For they stand in the light and promise and hope of God.
Let’s all be such free men and women.
_________________________________________________
Addendum:
I have learned to love this country, and freedom is indeed it's greatest export product.
You have heard it before, how foreigners or immigrants say how 'if the US falls, where do we go?'
Imperfect as she is, the US is a symbol of freedom not just for Americans, but for the world.
Which is why Hong Kong waved the Stars and Stripes when they protested, which meant: WE WANT TO BE FREE!
So I am very grateful that I was given the privilege to become a citizen, and to attach my fate to that of yours.
To pledge my own live, fortune and sacred honor to each of you.
And the acceptance I have since felt, assures me that this ideal is not mere words, but still truly a reality.
(For most, and actually, for enough to make it so, still.)
Ut vivat, crescat, floreat!
I have recently started following you and enjoy your writing. It is interesting to read your musings on freedom, given your "new eyes" as a transplanted European. I'm an not a Constitutional scholar but I am an attorney writer who is fascinated with this subject. I have a slightly different perspective, and involved the distinctionn between "freedom" and "liberty". I think your defination of freedom, realized in the presence of rules (fence) is really an analogy for liberty, not freedom. The American way of expressing this, "Your freedom to swing your fist ends at my nose." That is a bargain for liberty. But freedom of thought and expression are also American values, and this is meant to be true freedom, not liberty. There are no inherent restrictions on that freedom to think and believe what you will. Both freedom and liberty are under attack, but one attacks the feedom of thought, and the other atttacks civil order. When we see others tearing down or through the fence without consequences, everyone's liberty is threatened.