Freedom

The founding of this country, and the irresistible dream that attracted so many is not the allure of limitless, indolent riches … it was the freedom from servitude, from the injustice of all forms of slavery.

Part of the American dream must always be that it honors the essential dignity of every individual. It was the abolition of class-based society that forms the beating heart of what was to be built here. But there is a twist … this freedom must be a birthright, not simply a reward for those who fight hard enough.

What we did not know was that this was ultimately at risk by the very systems we put in place. By giving the open hand of freedom to the individual to create, to build, to dream, we opened the door to all human ambition, including the darker expressions of it. It could be no other way than to free the entirely of the human soul, both darkness and light together. Along with our brighter dreams have come visions of excess, of dominance, of subjugation masked as enterprise.

We must now be willing to accept this truth and deal with it head on. There can be no more room for allowing those who live in the volitional ignorance of the effects of their dominance. The American dream was never supposed to be a battle to the death in the arena where a few win their glorious freedom and others languish in shame and defeat.

At the heart, the question is this: does freedom come to the individual fighting his way out of the mire, chopping down his fellow man to rise higher; or does it come to the community, all together, being freed by our common understanding of the power of those individuals.

I believe the Republican party (to put none to fine a point on it) has been seduced by a darker vision. It has been led astray by the voices of those “self made men” who, having fought and struggled and cut down others to reach the top, now demand society be remade in their image.

The freedom we love and cherish as Americans cannot exist unless it is freedom for all. This is not in name only, but must be in practice. It is not a stagnant set of principles on an aging piece of paper in a glass case. It is a living expression of the value and importance of the individual expression of the human spirit.

We must recognize that in this moment there are many who are living under an oppression not of politics, but of run-away market forces. There are farmers who will choose death in record numbers, choose to abandon their humanity in the final and most extreme way because economics has taken dignity and hope from them.

Ultimately we must recognize that our freedom, our beliefs about the incredible wonder of what a human being is, must drive our economics. It can never be the other way around. Capitalism must always be an expression of common, universal freedom, not the source of that freedom. Economics can never give rise to freedom — it can only enhance the expression of freedom once it has been established.

As we move deeper into this new, contentious realm of American politics, we must be willing to recognize when the essentials of the debate have been hijacked and turned to pointless questions that serve only a few. The alignment of old understandings of free markets and free men versus the evils of socialism must be reexamined.

It is time to begin to ask ourselves if the pendulum has swung too far one way. Have we reached the point where the open markets we so love and vociferously defend are making some of us less free. This must be a serious question for us all, as there is no truth greater than this; if only some of us are free today, than none will be tomorrow.