On A Good Day

• Why is the United States the most materially successful nation on Earth?  Freedom! 
• Why do people flock to our shores as immigrants?  They are yearning to be free! 
• Why do Americans lead the world in product innovation? Freedom to think! 
• Why has American culture conquered the world? Freedom to be different! 
• Why do we foster so much creativity?  Freedom to be ourselves and experiment! 
• Why can anyone in America stand in the public square and criticize their government?  Political freedom! 
• And what is the foundation upon which we’ve built our society?  Freedom!  

Freedom is the only legitimate foundation to build a society.  It implies that the individual members came together of their own accord, voluntarily and without coercion, to form a collective body.  In the United States force has been de-legitimized as a means of structuring a community.  It was the tool that the powerful used to subjugate and exploit people for millennia.  And those are the only two options: people can act of their own volition or they can be forced to act through coercion.  Which would you choose? 

Freedom is the most liberal value because it tells the powerful that they have no power over anyone without that person’s consent.  In The Social Contract Rousseau theorized a state where the people came together out of choice and voluntarily surrendered some of their liberty to achieve a measure of security and the benefits of a well-organized community.  Being voluntary, the citizens would be more likely to obey the rules and social mores because they chose them.  Everyone would have an equal share in the government and tyranny could not exist.  With everyone equal members in the state, tolerance and mutual respect would more likely exist.  Because no one is set above another in the ranks of citizenship, law, and human rights, we can face each other as true peers.  Our democratic republic, based on the Rule of Law, makes every vote equal no matter how wealthy or talented others may be; on Election Day, we each count as one American and only freedom can assure that. 

People, as social creatures, tend to drive conformity, and in hierarchical societies where power resides at the top, this tendency is exacerbated.  The tyrant wants obedient servants, not independent minded iconoclasts.  That is why creativity and innovation were at an ebb during the Middle Ages when feudalism was the primary structure for organizing society.  The more political freedom we have the more mental and emotional freedom we can attain.  Being at liberty to be ourselves, we are also free from fear.  Diversity is not only allowed, it is celebrated!  Literature, music, theater, television, sculpture, painting, and all the arts flourish.  Tolerance for people of different backgrounds, skin color, nationality, religion, gender recognition, and sexual orientation grows.  It has taken over 200 years of American-style freedom to achieve our present levels of acceptance and we still have further to go, but without that foundation of liberty, we never could have gotten this far. 

The dawn of the United States shone on a nation with divisive politics and cultures, Yankee Puritans and Southern Cavaliers, Federalists and Democrats, slavery, disenfranchised women, and many other sins.  But conceived in liberty a government of the people and not of the nobility rose to shine a new light on that dark world.  It became every person’s right to stand in the public square and advocate for an even better world.  Our first great cultural change eliminated slavery and lifted an entire class of people into the association of equal citizens.  Further activism recognized the right of women to vote.  Protestors lead movements to bring more substantive equality through Feminism, Civil Rights, and Lesbian, Bi-sexual, Gay, and Transsexual (LBGT) marches.  All of these successes started as protest movements where a small group of people first changed the culture of the nation and then drove the state to recognize that progress. 

We don’t live in Eden, we live in a world where freedom comes with responsibility.  To be truly free each person must be able to stand on their own and contribute to society.  Government requires that we surrender some liberty to form an ordered society but we should be careful not to cede too much.  Only through freedom can we be equal and only through equality can we have mutual respect and tolerance for all.  Freedom grants us the right to change our world.  It encourages us to dream and to act to envision a better future and move toward it.  By necessity we give up our rights to violence and its coercive, corrosive effects to liberate ourselves from the force of others.  We should take great cares to avoid putting new chains on ourselves.