Freedom

Freedom. Our holiest word as Americans. Unfortunately, like other holy words, this one has been debased. Biblically, freedom is double-edged. Freedom from whatever hinders or constrains us from doing what we should and freedom for doing that which we should. By the time we reach America that notion of freedom was in the process of thinning out. The freedom for-aspect was fading as modernity pushed us to an ever-greater individualism and an early communitarianism faded. In our time, freedom seems to mean freedom from whatever hinders or constrains us from doing what we want and freedom for has morphed into freedom to do what we want. The transition from should to want marks the reduction to the one-dimensional view that reigns supreme and inviolable today: freedom from whatever hinders or constrains us from doing what we want.

This is clear in the gun-debate. Those who oppose any restrictions on gun ownership are on the side of the angels – our attenuated version of freedom. It’s an uphill battle for those favoring some form of control.

I suggest this attenuated notion of freedom is at the heart of our contention over guns. Freedom from should lead into freedom for – a common good that we are committed to as a people. Lacking that freedom for, as we presently do, freedom can only mean for each of us the possibility of doing what I want. And if I want to arm myself for whatever reason, I should be free to do so. But what if we had a robust purpose of seeking to be a people where all are included and have a right to be free of concern that our neighbors are armed thus making us vulnerable to all manner of witting or unwitting injury or death from them. Or our children getting maimed or killed by drive-by shootings. Or gang violence. Or vigilante justice-seekers. What if we committed as a people to live unarmed, trusting authorized law-keepers to deal with those who choose not to live within that purpose.

And there’s the catch: how to engender a freedom for today. I don’t know that it’s possible. But without one, our dogged commitment to freedom from alone will never allow us to make progress. Without a freedom for any move toward individual restrictions can always be defeated by waving the flag of freedom from as we see it today in the gun debates.

But if freedom from is but a (necessary) prelude to engaging our larger communal purpose, or freedom for, we can propose reasonable restrictions on what someone can do or possess to enhance that larger communal good with sacrificing freedom because freedom, freedom for is just what such limitations are meant to enhance.

It comes down to differing notions of freedom, then. Whether we realize it or not. Freedom from and for is a holy word. Freedom from is its unholy bastardized cousin. One will enrich us as individuals and a community. The other is killing us slowly. Leading us to the point where we have to say with Janis Joplin, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.”