A simple definition
Why are you fighting?
What motivates you to protest the Congresscriminals’ latest assault on us or to write a letter against the same to your local newspaper? What prompts you to study history and political philosophy? Why do you strive not only to understand America’s current mess but to cure it? Why do you debate the Deep State with your neighbors, emphasizing its evil?
Perhaps you hope to restore the Constitution’s limitations on the feds. Or you long to Make America Great Again. Maybe you’re a committed Republican who reflexively opposes everything Democratic. Or you dream of preserving the culture — and even the race — that built this country from Progressives’ ceaseless attacks.
However worthy some of these goals may be, a far more fundamental value should inspire all our political efforts: liberty.
We don’t hear much about liberty anymore. The communist half of America, with its rabid faith in the State and its conviction that politicians and bureaucrats should rule us, actively despises freedom. They crave laws, licenses, regulations and statutes to bind every aspect of our lives.
But liberty is often an afterthought even among conservatives and those who comprehend government’s menace. Prizing practicality rather than principle, they despise Obummercare because an inefficient bureaucracy will foist the horrors of the VA’s hospitals on us rather than because nationalized insurance enslaves patients. They condemn public schools because the Constitution doesn’t authorize the Feds to propagandize kids — but if it did, their hostility would fade though education’s enmity toward freedom hadn’t. They cheer Trump’s plans for a wall on the Mexican border without concern that monitoring travel is not only unconstitutional but dictatorial.
This preoccupation with lesser goals than political freedom divides us and diminishes our effectiveness. Some who fear the Feds fear immigrants just as much; these xenophobes demand a closed border along with a return to the Constitution. They frown on those who also insist that government abide by the Constitution but consider an overgrown military a greater threat than migrants trying to better themselves. Rather than making common cause, they battle one another almost as much as they do the socialists and fascists killing our freedom.
Some of the animosity arises from fuzzy definitions of “liberty;” patriots frequently expand the term to encompass their favorite issue. Those who idolize cops and the military swear that “freedom” requires strong support for these enforcers of the State’s agenda. Christians often believe that liberty upholds Biblical morality: a “free” country will outlaw such sins as prostitution, gambling, drunkenness and “recreational” drugs. Others may insist that a free people will cherish family so much they’ll foster legislation promoting marriage and children.
But even
the dictionary’s definition of “liberty” disproves these ideas: “1. freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. 2. freedom from external or foreign rule; independence. 3. freedom from control, interference, obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc.,according to choice.”
In other words, liberty in general precludes the use of force against a peaceful person (though not against aggressors. Those who initiate force should meet resistance. But do free men expect politicians and bureaucrats to protect them, or do they guard themselves? Liberty’s lovers never empower government in any area, including that of defense.) People are free when they can decide and act for themselves without compulsion from an exterior authority. On a social level, a free adult need not obtain permission from a spouse, relative, friend or anyone else. And on a political level, no politician or bureaucrat may restrict us with laws and regulations, fining or imprisoning us when we don’t behave as he orders.
Reducing political liberty to its simplest terms, then, means that no ruler may bring physical force against us. (In contrast,
moral compulsion, exercised on a social level, has its place. In the absence of laws banning sodomy, for example, disapproving neighbors would instead shun such deviants, refusing to buy from or sell to, hire or otherwise associate with them. Would perversion persist nonetheless? Of course. Liberty is not utopian: wickedness and vice will still corrupt our world. But a government that empowers a few evil men to lord it over the rest of us, at our expense, would no longer compel us to associate with degenerates.)
No wonder that a “strong” military and police are incompatible with freedom. These bullies impose the State’s will on their victims, whether it’s the speed we drive our cars, the
milk we drink, the
weeds we cultivate or the
professions we pursue. And the military ratchets up that tyranny, not only on foreigners but increasingly on us. So long as conservatives equate “patriotism” with armed might, liberty will continue to die.
In fact, no matter how worthy the goal, those who indulge in force to achieve it will always bring about slavery. Should regulations force students in public schools to study the Constitution? The authors themselves would be horrified at such a suggestion. Far better to abolish these indoctrination centers than try to “improve” them. Ditto for laws enshrining English as America’s official tongue: since language strongly influences even our thoughts, freedom’s friends would never entrust oversight of such a personal, essential tool to politicians. We can say the same of measures purporting to protect American culture.
Liberty is an indivisible whole. When we allow government to violate a few rights here and there, we endanger them all. Rulers strong enough to protect what we deem important are strong enough to destroy it, too. Loving liberty requires that we not only heed this elemental tenet but cooperate with it. No matter how necessary or good something may be, enforcing it at the point of the government’s guns always boomerangs, crushing what we sought to promote while empowering politicians.
If we are ever to live free, we must unite around the simplest definition of freedom and fight for it alone rather than for other issues: “no governmental compulsion against any peaceful person for any reason at any time.”
— Becky Akers
Becky Akers is a free-lance writer and historian who publishes so voluminously that whole forests of gigabytes have died. You’ve heard of some of the publications that carry her work (Personal Liberty Digest, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post, Barron’s, New York Post); others can only wish you’d heard of them. She’s also written two novels of the American Revolution, Halestorm and Abducting Arnold. They advocate sedition and liberty, among other joys, so the wise reader will buy them now, before they’re banned.
Liberty: A Simple Definition
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Originally Posted by Davy Crockett
