Meaning Of Freedom Essay Research Paper I

Meaning Of Freedom Essay, Research Paper

I want to talk with you about freedom. Freedom! That seems simple enough, but it is a word with profoundly different meanings for different people. Some of the people whom I most despise and whom I consider the greatest threat to freedom have, in fact, represented themselves as champions of freedom. I’m talking about liberals. The name “liberal” comes from the Roman word meaning “free.” How ironic! — although I am sure that most liberals don’t see the irony. Their concept of freedom is radically different from mine.

For me freedom is a fairly simple thing: it is closely tied to my idea of independence. I am free when no man can claim the right to force me to do his will rather than mine. This definition is a definition relative to society, to government, and to the law. I said, “when no man can claim the right . . . .” Thus, I don’t consider myself unfree when a robber points a gun at me and tells me to give him my wallet. He’s telling me what to do, but he doesn’t claim any right to do so. I consider myself unfree if I am not able to entertain the possibility of drawing my own pistol and contesting his request for my wallet because the government previously has disarmed me with a gun-control law.

I also consider myself unfree when I cannot say whatever I want to say on any subject whatsoever, because the government has forbidden me to speak.

Freedom or lack of freedom is a function of my relationship to society and to the government. It is not a function of how much money I have, how popular I am, or how happy I am with my life. A lot of people talk about things like “freedom from hunger,” “freedom from fear,” or “freedom from want,” but they’re not using the word “freedom” the way I use it. Hunger and fear are serious things and unpleasant things, but they don’t have anything to do with freedom as I’ve defined it here.

We all make conscious decisions to impose certain limits on our own freedom. When we marry, for example, we consciously give up some of our freedom. When we choose to be a member of any community or any society, we enter into a social contract: in return for receiving the benefits of being a member of the society, we agree to obey the society’s rules. But these things are a matter of choice for us. They are voluntarily accepted limitations. The man with a strong sense of self-worth and independence, the man who loves freedom, will be cautious about accepting such limitations, and he will want to keep them to a minimum. He will be eternally vigilant to prevent other men from changing the terms of his social contract in such a way as to diminish his freedom.

Weaker, more dependent men, on the other hand, may gladly accept more limitations in return for the promise of more social benefits or more security. And that’s all right, so long as we don’t let their weakness encroach on our freedom.

Liberals have an entirely different concept of freedom. For the liberal the idea of freedom is mixed up with the ideas of happiness and comfort. That’s why one always hears liberals talking about things like “freedom from want.” To liberals, a hungry man is not a free man. And of course, in a certain sense of the word that is true. A hungry man is encouraged by the pain in his belly to do something to get food. His options are more limited — at least temporarily — than those of a man who is not hungry. But that’s not the sense in which we use the word “free.” Whether a man is hungry or not, whether he is poor or not, he is free as long as he not prevented by the government from seeking food for himself or seeking to alleviate his poverty.

That’s where we and the liberals differ. To us a poor man is unfree only if the government prevents him by law from bettering his condition. To us a man can be poor and hungry and still be free. To the liberals a poor man lacks freedom even if he is poor solely because of his own laziness or stupidity. What counts to the liberals is that he is poor, regardless of the reason, and therefore cannot have everything he wants. So the liberals campaign to free him from his wants, not to free him from laws which prevent him from taking care of his own wants. The liberals in their campaign for “freedom from want” very often seek solutions in the form of more laws: laws which take away our freedom in order to satisfy the wants of those who have an entirely different concept of freedom.

A big thing with the liberals these days is “freedom from oppression.” By “oppression” the liberals mean anything which makes them feel bad or keeps them from having what they want. To the liberals poverty is a form of oppression. So is feeling bad because they are ugly, stupid, awkward, ill-bred, or unpopular. The liberals consider a person is “oppressed” when he is reminded of his inferiority by something another person writes or says. Feminists, in particular, are fond of complaining about this sort of “oppression.” They believe that they are free from oppression only when they are feeling good about themselves, and this “freedom to feel good,” as they see it, is threatened by people who say “insensitive” things.

The liberals believe that they are fighting for freedom from oppression when they campaign for laws designed to protect the feelings of people who could be offended by the comments or actions of other people. These laws are often called “