“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose …”
I can’t help wondering what the men who founded our country would think of their handiwork nearly two and a half centuries later.
What were the freedoms that mattered the most to these men of the late 18th century and how do they compare to what matters to us today?
If you want to put it on the most basic level, freedom is about a person having the right to decide how to live their own life as long as they obey the law. That would mean living where they want to live, working where they want to work, worshipping (or not worshipping) as they want and expressing themself as they please.
It also meant freedom from arbitrary treatment by the government, including the right not to be subject to arbitrary search and seizure. Then there are the rights that go back centuries further, rights like habeas corpus and the right to be safe and secure inside their own homes.
And of course the right to keep and bear arms.
So what have we done with those rights?
Let’s start with the most controversial one, the right to keep and bear arms.
Let’s accept the right wing’s premise that the founders intended that everyone should have the right to own guns. Let’s leave the issue of assault weapons and related issues out of it.
Why do so many people — men mostly — want to carry guns in public? Not just handguns either, but assault weapons.
What possible reasonable goal could someone have for walking around outside a state capitol building with an assault weapon?
Why do so many people go to the store with a handgun in a holster?
I could speculate, but let’s just say this certainly isn’t what the founders intended. Even people who use the Old West to justify it ignore the fact that in places like Dodge City, cowboys who wanted to come into town were required to surrender their weapons until they were leaving town.
Let’s move on.
Let’s look at freedom of expression next.
We do put some minor restrictions here. We don’t allow either the creation or the consumption of child pornography, but there isn’t a whole lot else we ban. With the increasing use of special effects, we can create the illusion of showing the most horrific things. The problem is that while it may not really be happening, the person watching the finished product may be affected the same way as if it were.
Once was the time when the culture — movies, music, television and radio — was designed to be uplifting and make people feel better about themselves, their community and their country. Instead, we have a culture now that is designed to make people believe that everybody cheats, no one can be trusted and everything you see is creepy.
And on top of that, mass media complicates things with its mixed message, telling us that despite our decomposing culture, we live in the greatest nation on earth.
We could, you know.
We really could discard this horrible culture and, as the Beatles once sang, get back to where we once belonged.
We might have to give up a little of what we call freedom, but we wouldn’t be surrendering anything worth losing.