Who is it that defends Freedom?

Who is it that defends Freedom?

Some Fourth of July Thoughts

Written by Dan McDonald

 

                Freedom, like love, is something we all love and something we agree upon until asked its definition.  Freedom, like love, is something universally valued but with a meaning unique to every person.  Long ago the thought was coined about liberty that the cost of liberty is eternal vigilance.  Our celebrations of the Fourth of July are not merely celebrations of an independence won more than two hundred years ago.  On the fourth of July, we celebrate the eternal vigilance necessary to maintain freedom and liberty.  Who should we then celebrate on this Independence Day?

                I think the answer is quite complex.  But perhaps a music analogy might help to frame my feelings and thoughts about freedom and liberty and who it is who helps defend and maintain freedom and liberty.  Bach has been considered the master of the fugue.  The fugue employs a music form known as contrapuntal.  In contrapuntal music, the music is created by blending two or more lines of music in which each line maintains and develops its distinct character but each of these lines of music is arranged to create an overall harmony that is blended to create the full sound of the composer’s intended piece.  The Merriam-Webster online dictionary describes counterpoint in music with this definition, “the use of two or more independent melodies into a single harmonic texture in which each retains its linear character.”

                In essence the political goals of the founding fathers both in declaring independence and in forming the Constitution was to create a nation wherein each and every individual, within our national union, would be able to live out their lives within their own distinct character and personality.  That is quite an undertaking, perhaps beyond what any earthly nation can promise or fulfill.  Perhaps that is why when one group of people begin to take the nation in one direction another group of people feel that everything is about to be destroyed.  What is liberty for one group of people is tyranny for another group of people.  If we try to limit our ideas of freedom to merely individual liberty then we are not committed to the same way of liberty as our founding fathers.  Our founding fathers dreamed not only of individual freedom but also of a more perfect union and a government to defend freedom.  My libertarian friends like to claim the founding fathers as their own, but our founding fathers were statesmen, politicians, and creators of government aimed at creating a national purpose that did not make meaningless or destroy the contributions of each individual seeking to retain the linear character or each person within the national union.  So perhaps the founding fathers took on something of a dream bigger than themselves.  Perhaps they never even realized how big of a dream or undertaking to which they were committing themselves and the nation they founded.  Thus perhaps those have it right who see the Fourth of July not only as a celebration of a victory won more than two hundred years ago, but as a time to pause in what can only be an eternal struggle for freedom and liberty as we ask, “and now where will we go and take this freedom of ours?”

                But the question I wanted to address in these words I write this day is the question “Who defends freedom?

                That is something you will also likely be able to answer with your own thoughts.  But here is my answer.  It is first and foremost the person who lives his own life freely and yearns for his neighbor to be able to live his own freely.  That is not easy for most people.  We want to create zones for our neighborhood not only for health and safety reasons but to coerce others to live just like us.  We tend to want neighborhoods that reflect our own individual values.  But one must ask is this sort of desire a denial of freedom or the foundation for a neighborhood of people who choose to associate together in a common purpose for a common conceived good?  Is freedom and liberty only an individual pursuit or is it a chosen common good?  Do you see how complex this creation of a nation built on liberty and freedom is?  To some degree this is why the founding fathers were lovers of states’ rights.  Virginians did not necessarily want the same sort of state as did the founding fathers in Massachusetts.  During the time of the Articles of Confederation, the new territories were to be settled in townships.  Each township would charter its own school and church, and so the pursuit of liberty would be a communally based township capable with a large degree of freedom for creating a society of one’s own choosing on the local level.  Freedom was about building better societies and communities and never merely about being able to pursue one’s own individual lifestyle.

                A lot of our modern celebrations of freedom focus on the soldier who has been willing to fight for our liberties, even knowing it may cost him his own life.  Certainly this is someone who can be called a defender of our freedoms.  But we should, I think, also be celebrating the men and women who called our government and government leaders to give an account.  Perhaps men like Thoreau and Snowden are as essential to the maintenance of freedom and liberty as the soldiers who offered their lives in national military service.

                As we have tried, in America, to create a nation built on liberty and freedom, it would seem that those citizens who obey the laws of the land, and live quietly and respectfully towards their neighbors would be candidates for those who best maintain liberty.  Liberty will be forever lost the moment a nation of people truly determine it is every man for himself.  Laws that serve to establish the boundaries for peaceful relationships among neighbors are essential to the creation of a society where individuals can possess liberty alongside social harmony.  So surely those who are law-abiding citizens promote and help maintain liberty.

                But we must not forget that our liberties and the liberties of many within our society have been won by those unwilling to surrender to unjust laws that oppressed men and women rather than freed them.  The founding fathers gave a list of reasons for their own paths of civil disobedience and rebellion.  We would not be talking about an American system of freedom without their determination to live in disobedience and rebellion to what they believed was tyranny.  Furthermore, for most of our early national history, freedom for a majority was celebrated at the expense of freedom for many others in the minority.  We didn’t imagine it worked that way in our theories of political science.  But the Native American and African-American, and sometimes in some places other minorities were not given the same degree of liberty or independence given to the majority.  One of the best observations of how breaking the law helped to foster liberty and freedom was made in regard to Rosa Parks’ refusal to go to the back of the bus.  A commentator summed up her action by saying on that day Rosa Parks refused to cooperate with the oppressor in her own oppression.

                Freedom is not an easy way of life.  Most of us find life more easily lived with convenient principles and expectations directing us.  But sometimes, when such principles are oppressive and such expectations are hurtful to our own dignity and that of others, our choosing to obey such principles and expectations is merely cooperation with the tyrant in our own oppression.  You and I will have many choices to make if we wish to maintain freedom.  These choices will not always be easy and they will often not be clear.  Usually they are not clear until hindsight.  Such is the case with Rosa Parks’ decision not to go to the back of the bus.  Many, both white and black, would have opposed her stand.  But she helped ignite the reformation of a culture by that one act.

                Quite often such decisions are not easily recognizable.  I remember a conversation regarding the movie, “The Hunger Games.”  Someone commented their thought that the movie was stupid, because they knew of no one who would participate in such games.  Movies and art often turn human life into absurd pictures of human life to make a point.  If instead of looking at “The Hunger Games” as a literal game, one looks at it as a portrait of reality in the absurd maybe we will think differently of the value of this movie.  Is it enough for a man or a woman when a national government calls its people to war to simply submit one’s self to the call to war?  That was the real life power of government given an absurd portrait in “The Hunger Games.”  There is in fact, in every national war a need for individuals to ask if this present war is a necessity for the defense of liberty or simply a use of power to coerce others for the sake of a regime that has lifted itself and its co-conspirators above the normal and ordinary rights of free men?  If one thinks of war as a sort of “Hunger Games” then the absurd plot of “The Hunger Games” is to be seen as something millions of men and women over the face of the earth have simply submitted themselves to for no better reason than that their government determined to choose to go to war.  The lead character in “The Hunger Games” chose to go to war but refused her government's reason for the war imposed upon a portion of the citizenry.  She chose first to fight for her sister, because her sister would have been more helpless than she.  Then she fought for a new friend, in many ways similar to her own sister.  She fought with her own values because an unjust warfare had been imposed upon her.  Finally when run out of choices she made the state determine if it would show itself the true murderer or allow the final two persons left in this imposed war to both live.  She felt every step of the way a prisoner of her circumstances, and simply tried to make the best of a bad situation.  When she made her stand, she likely felt as if nothing had changed.  Most everything remained for the moment all the same.  But, in reality, everything had now begun to change.  That is the story of “the Hunger Games.”  Oppression rules with all the power until confronted by an act of freedom.  Freedom first acting subversively by conforming to the legal code but contrary to the imposed purpose.  Finally freedom boldly challenges the power of oppression and at first nothing seems to change, but often at that very point everything is set in motion so that nothing can ever again remain the same.  That is the story that was told in "The Hunger Games".  It is the story of a person living among a people trained not to be free, finding their way first subversively and then boldly to be free. 

                Freedom is not very simple in the life of humanity.   Neither will it be simple to defend and maintain.  In the end, we will not likely always agree on how it is best defended and maintained.  That is because freedom is contrapuntal.  It is a glorious fugue where each individual in the song of liberty has his own character and nature and personality.  The fugue of freedom progresses by maintaining and retaining the distinct characteristics of each individual’s person within the building of a society.  The harmony requires the respect for other individuals' freedom as well as the following of one's own inclinations towards freedom.  That is the goal of freedom, a goal that is spiritual and like all spiritual values is progressing towards a day of fulfillment even though never quite fulfilled before the great day awaiting us.  Those are my thoughts about freedom for now.  I think I will go eat some hot dogs.  Let us celebrate freedom.  Let us dedicate ourselves to freedom.  Let us dedicate ourselves to the respect of other’s freedoms.  Let us realize freedom is precious and must be vigilantly defended and maintained in many diverse ways.  To everyone, I wish a very happy Fourth of July.