The myth of freedom

As promised last time, I'm going to turn to the other half of Ben Franklin's equation: liberty, or freedom, as we most commonly call it. No, I'm not going to go into a discussion of the details of differentiation between the two. We all have a general understanding of the word, and we all profess with certainty that we are, in fact, free, but just short of an outright, apparent dictatorship, we couldn't be more wrong.

Another wise man, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, once remarked that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free." I would maintain that this statement applies to some degree to just about all of us, but it hits the proverbial nail on the head as far as Americans are concerned. Going back even further, no one less than Aristotle noted, that whoever prefers security to freedom is rightfully a slave. That pretty much describe post-9/11 America.

You can't voluntarily gut your own Bill of Rights, limiting or suspending your rights to freedom of expression, speech, and assembly, eliminating of the right of habeus corpus, allowing yourself to be arrested on mere suspicion of terrorism only to be potentially turned over to the military and suspension of all legal rights, gutting the 4th and 14th Amendments to the Constitution, allowing your elected representatives to gerrymander you out of the value of your vote, standing by while certain segments of the population are denied even their right to vote, and introducing so much money into politics that only those who have have a say and think you are living in a free country. You can't see one video (since you don't often see it on the news) of the dispersal of an Occupy demonstration or almost any demonstration for that matter and think that you live in a free country. And, especially if you are a person of color, you cannot begin to imagine how tenuous your own existence is should the State decide to clamp down on you, as was the case in the wake of the Ferguson demonstrations, for example.

None of that, my dear friends and readers, speaks of freedom. None of it. Each and every one of these is evidence of how severely your rights, and hence your freedoms, have been restricted. The worst of it all, of course, is that Americans, at any rate, demanded that it be done to them. They voluntarily gave these rights and freedoms up, in the name of -- quite ironically -- national security. Mr. Franklin was right all the way around.

One important point to keep in mind, however, is that none of these rights is ever coming back. Oh, we were all told that these were temporary steps necessary to get the situation under control, but I'm going to let you in on a little secret: power never relents; once you give up anything, especially your rights and your freedom, you never, ever get it back. Mr. Franklin said you don't deserve them anyway, and I happen to think he is right.

Enter Mr. Goethe. Yes, those who took all that away from you have not tired since telling you, impressing upon you, suggesting to you, convincing you that nothing has really changed. But it has. Those who took all that away from you lied to get it, just like they lied to start the wars that would increase your fear which would demand more action and more restriction and more control. Enter good old Aristotle: keep me safe and I'll do your bidding.

Americans, for the most part, have never really been all that free, but they are less free now than they have ever been. Depending on where you live, you know which sports teams to root for, which church to attend (and you'd better attend one of them), which religion to believe in, which party to vote for, and whom to associate with. Peer pressure has never been writ larger than in America, and, I have to admit, America is really good at it. But whether you're pressured by your peers or by the police or by the legal system, it doesn't really matter. In the end, you adjust, adapt, and submit. You like to think you're free. You love to tell yourself you are, but in reality, you're just grist for the mill.

When in the course of human events ...

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal ..." Thus begins the second paragraph of one of the holiest documents of the United States of America. In the 11 score and 17 years hence, some things have changed significantly. Some for the better, some not so much.

We now know that "men" in that statement actually means "humans", even though our forebears were really only thinking about males -- and those with property at that -- when Jefferson wrote those words and when the rest of "the guys" approved them. Yes, I know, Texas, the Republican party and Islamist extremists haven't caught on yet, but give them time. What's a couple of centuries amongst friends.

In case you hadn't noticed, that was the upside. The downside is that it really wasn't true then; that is, that they were held to be true, and they aren't true now. What is more, the following clause to the one above -- "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" -- aren't believed in anymore either. Oh, it's not because we stopped believing in a Creator. No, not at all. In fact, it appears that those most willing to ascribe our existence to that Creator are the first ones to ensure that none of this high-fallutin' gibberish is put into practice.

No, what was rotten at the founding of America is what is rotten to this day: property, not inalienable rights, is what counts, and if you've got it, you've got rights; if you don't, well, it just sucks to be you.

Yes, the preamble to the Declaration of Independence tries to justify the rebellion on the grounds that at some point in time, it just becomes too damn obvious that the few-and-far-away are benefitting unjustly at the expense of the many-right-here. The Declaration is interesting, I believe, for this more than any other reason. The lofty language it employs and the general ideas it incorporates were not new then and they aren't new now. The notions that the words point to -- i.e., equality, liberty, life, and the fact that these are in fact inherent, yes, inalienable rights -- are not new either, but there was an indication, a glimmer of hope that a broader base of humanity had come to recognize this. That was the hope, as I said, but it certainly wasn't and it still isn't a reality at all.

Anyone thinking anything even remotely akin to what the Founding Fathers might have been thinking, can be, and most often is, simply branded a traitor and a terrorist. Isn't it ironic somehow that less than two-and-a-half centuries after someone tried to put the ball in motion, that in that same place there is today the largest, most active, concerted, organized and, whenever thought to be necessary, violent opposition to those ideas?