There is a charming (and probably true) story in my family that might hold the key to untangling the political morass we find ourselves in today. My Great Great Grandfather first came to America by boat from Bohemia (now the Czech Republic, or Czechia) in the 1870's. After clearing quarantine on Ellis Island, the first thing he did on the streets of New York was get arrested for taking some fruit from a fruit stand. His defense was that he thought this was a free country, which means he thought everything was free. He soon learned that American freedom was not that kind of freedom.
The meaning of freedom, and how we should see it and use it, is at the heart of where this nation has taken a wrong turn. Many modern Americans seem to have adopted my Great Great Grandfather's mistaken notion (definition) of freedom, and completely lost sight of what the Founders (and the Bible) mean by that word. Because of that, we have forgotten the profound importance, and inestimable blessings of true liberty.
This mis definition of freedom is the central principle of the modern left, even though many “conservatives” also like it. My eyes were opened about this in a recent election, when it was obvious that abortion, especially keeping abortion legal, was the big driver of voter turnout.
While pro abortion groups like to describe it with the “pro choice” phrase, our purpose is better served by returning to the name first given to this issue; “free love.” Legal abortion greatly enables “free love”, which is irresponsible and consequence free sexual activity.
So the left wants free love, along with free stuff, free services (medical care and education, food, clothing, housing and transportation). That is what the left means by the word “freedom”. You've undoubtedly seen the memes, “How can the richest country in the world not have...universal healthcare, or allow hunger, or restrict abortion?” And of course, they assert Jesus must be a socialist because he said we should give food to the hungry and clothes to the naked.
The fact that “Progressives” have been moving the language in that direction for decades is revealed by looking at FDR and his four freedoms (freedom of speech, to worship, from want, and from fear) from the 1930's. Freedom FROM want, fear, or anything else was never part of the Founders idea of what a free government should provide.
The system of governing that has grown out of this mis definition is, technically speaking, not freedom, nor is it libertarianism or socialism. What this system should be called, if we are going to be honest, is libertine socialism. When see in that light it is easy to understand why it is so hard to talk people out of it. Libertine Socialism is extremely attractive because it allows people to live any way they want, free from personal responsibility or accountability, and yet no matter how badly they have screwed up their life, family or community by making bad personal choices, the federal government is to always be there to take care of them and clean up the mess.,
This “system” will work fine, until it doesn't. Until, that is, it falls apart due to its own internal contradictions, which are both economic and moral. Even when it starts collapsing, it will remain so attractive that the masses will continue to clamor for it like an addict seeking drugs. So its collapse won't mean it is ending, rather, as will be explained, the economic and moral collapse of libertine socialism will just bring about the next stage of the wicked plan.
History demonstrates that systems like this have a corrosive effect on the moral and ethical thinking of the masses. Shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the newly free government of Russia invited American Christian groups to come in and evangelize the people. It seems the moral thinking of the masses had declined so far under 70 years of communism that achieving social cohesion without an authoritarian government was proving to be impossible.
The Founders considered that kind of licentious freedom, and rejected it. To better understand how the Founders saw freedom, it is best to start where they started, which is with the Bible. In the book of John, 8:32 it says, “You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” Again, in verse 36, John writes, “If the Son shall therefore make you free, you shall be free indeed.” Freedom of this sort is mentioned in a number of other places in the Bible.
The question immediately arises; how did this biblical, this obviously personal and spiritual form of freedom, come to mesh with the political freedom the Founders were hoping to establish? The answer lies in the definition.
Rejecting license as their ideal, the Founders embraced a form of freedom that has long eluded a clear definition. The closest to a workable definition that embraces both the inner spiritual life, and the external civic reality goes like this. Freedom is being unrestrained and unencumbered from becoming the person you were created to be. Thus under this form of freedom, a person is not held back by external oppression, nor are they prevented, by vice, addiction, or sin, from becoming the full person they were created to be.
Under the American form of freedom, people were free to pursue their own paths to prosperity, and were free to keep the fruit of their labors. Because of that, the economy produced much wealth. Certainly that was not true for those excluded from citizenship, but that highlights the fact that all who were included in our system of freedom did enjoy its economic blessings.
The moral aspect of freedom immediately came to the fore, and that aspect reveals the greatest blessing of American freedom. The issues of medical care, education, housing, jobs, infrastructure, environmental care and many others all have to be dealt with by any society which hopes to sustain over time.
The way that played out in America went as follows. The individual was free to seek their own good; life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and all that. But while the individual has those freedoms, physical reality requires that each person live in some place, some locality. It is within those localities that the American system of liberty placed the powers and responsibilities of dealing with those social issues with which any healthy society has to wrestle.
There is an old, nearly forgotten concept that freedom has to be balanced with responsibility. That old proverb really comes alive in the context of local communities having the freedom and responsibility for meeting social challenges. Within those free communities, which free individuals are free to choose between, all those social decisions, those inevitable trade offs, are made. The decisions about what kind of lifestyles to endorse must be balanced with the need to provide medical care to deal with any negative results from those lifestyles, and all of that must be balanced with the power of deciding what kind of moral thinking to instill in the young through public education. The need for a strong economy must be balanced with the need to regulate corporate abuse, and the environmental and health outcomes from those commercial enterprises which the community does allow.
Those and any number of other issues are to be decided by local (and state) governments under the system of American freedom. The powers of self government enshrined in local communities must be exercised responsibly or that community will not last. In the context of Local Community Moral Self Government, freedom and responsibility are organically tied together.
It is when those powers and responsibilities are bundled together at the local level that the blessings of liberty start to manifest. When almost all the powers and responsibilities of self government are bundled together and decided by the same mind, the mind of the local community as expressed through local government, then that quest to balance liberty and responsibility starts to affect the individual in a positive way.
When they (he or she) are in a community which must protect itself and answer the challenges reality throws at every community (disease, disaster, economic challenges, family breakdown, etc) and the community is small enough that the individual can have a real effect on decisions, then that positive dynamic kicks in. The mind of a governor, the thinking of one who has both the power to make governing decisions and also bears responsibility for how those decisions affect the community, comes to life in the minds of individual citizens. Then most people come to realize the importance of the local citizenry possessing strong moral values, and for most of us, that results in a personal determination to live a more moral life.
Thus, American style freedom first enables the individual living in it to cast off the external shackles that prevent them from working for their own benefit and happiness. Additionally, by investing almost all the powers of self government in local communities, our system organically encourages an ever rising moral consciousness in the hearts and minds of the people. So, in both the political and spiritual sense of the word, American style freedom enables the individual to grow ever closer to becoming the person they were created to be. All restraints and encumbrances to that growth are slowly lifted, if the individual so chooses. In that system the economy will naturally be strong, and the people will require little governmental control.
With the other definition of freedom, the one the Founders considered to be license, the opposite dynamic takes hold. People feel no connection with the decisions made by government or any personal agency in the making of those decisions. They feel only appetites for stuff and pleasure.
They might go so far as to riot to get that free stuff with which to satiate those appetites, but they won't feel any inner drive to be responsible about it. So instead of slowly inducing more enlightened thinking among the people, the licentious form of freedom tends to result in those same masses becoming less moral, less able to rise above their own internal constraints, less able to become the people they were created to be. In short, they become less free.
Nonetheless, libertine socialism is still very attractive and almost impossible to talk people out of. The internal contradictions driving its collapse are easy to see when we examine the philosophy behind it. Simply put, it comes down to the questions of authority and responsibility. In libertine socialism, the individual has authority over their own life, but the state has the responsibility to ensure the well being of the individual.
This split between responsibility and authority will, in times of economic stress, come to give increasing power to the party who is responsible. The people will become increasingly divided, dependent and powerless. After the system collapses, when the government becomes bankrupt, it will then have the rationale to start rationing what stuff and services folks are to receive, and how they are to live. It will also have the power to carry out those decisions.
Everyone might still have access to food, but that food might be nothing but stale bread, and one must stand in line for hours to receive it. An even more ominous scenario is likely to develop around healthcare, which can and will be rationed. In fact, it already is rationed in countries with so called free healthcare. Look at the waiting lines for procedures in the UK and Canada. In the US our system of rationing is based on who wants to pay. While that might seem cold and mercenary, when one desperately wants a procedure, for themselves or a loved one, in our present quasi free system they have a better chance of getting it in a timely manner than in a big government system.
Of much more concern is that if our health care is directly connected to the federal government, health care will be the biggest drain on that federal budget. When and if the federal government becomes bankrupt (any day now) the thinking will go far beyond merely rationing healthcare. The rationale will then be in place for the big central government to start dictating diet, lifestyles and any other aspect of our existence. Which means it will become a truly totalitarian government.
The thinking will be that healthcare is costing so much that we simply must reduce that expense. The way to do that is to ensure that everyone is living as healthy a life as possible. So even if you are a healthy twenty year old, we will still insist that you not smoke, or eat fatty foods, or consume anything deemed unhealthy, and that you engage in proscribed exercise programs. Even though you might not need health services today, you eventually will. Therefore since the state has to eventually foot the bill, the state has a legitimate power to tell you how to live today. What's more, anyone who objects will be labeled a threat and dealt with as such. The ongoing existential national emergency caused by bankruptcy will not tolerate any dissent.
That is the way societies have always gone once the people buy into that false definition of freedom. That is, when the masses start thinking that being empowered to live in a licentious and irresponsible way, and to be provided with all the free stuff the mob might demand is the proper function of government. It sounds good, but it actually leads us away from being the prosperous and morally enlightened people that true freedom impels us to, and demands of us. My Great Great Grandfather learned that lesson after one rebuke. If we stumble into this mistake as a nation, and it seems like we are doing that, it might take a very long time for us to figure our way out of it.
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