The following are not matters of political opinion, but of the way reality itself seems to work—as observed over many thousands of years of human history. We can wish and pretend and even try to get around the reality—and it seems someone is always trying, or wishing at least—but we’ll never have the following freedoms, because this world simply doesn’t work that way, no matter one’s preferred political party.
The ten freedoms America will never have are these:
1. Freedom from tyrants that we are unwilling to restrict by force.
There have always been, and will always be, humans eager to exercise unjust control over others. The sort will never go away, and will be always on the lookout for opportunity. They must be opposed by strictly-enforced law (including by force, if need be), else, they will use government for their own purposes. If we are unwilling to stand up to them, they will walk all over us, just as we see happening to this very day. Wishing alone will not make them go away.
2. Freedom from scoundrels that we are unwilling to restrict by force.
Like the tyrant wants power that is not rightfully his, the scoundrel wants money that is not rightfully his. It has always been thus, and will always be. If the laws against such cheating are not robust and well-enforced (including by force, if need be), such people will always be a major menace to society, even in the halls of government, where they can often leverage their cheating the most. If we are unwilling to stand up to them, they will walk all over us, just as we see happening to this very day. Wishing alone will not make them go away.
3. Freedom from lies and errors we are unwilling to restrict by force.
Whether it’s the media, a merchant, or a school telling a lie or making a habitual error in fact, we will never be free from the troubles these lies and errors cause if we are not willing to have robust and well-enforced laws against such things. It’s rare that those who trade in lie and error will turn themselves in and cut it out of their own volition. If we are unwilling to stand up to them, they will walk all over us, just as we see happening to this very day. Wishing alone will not make them go away.
4. Freedom from the consequences of cheating the money.
If a nation will not insist on having sound money, even to the point of enforcing it by force if need be, you can bet that there will be tyrants and scoundrels working the system to their own benefit, and to the detriment of the common man. Inflation, deficit spending, and fractional reserve banking are common cheats that Americans barely understand, and are far from being ready to counter. If the people won’t insist on this being fixed, who’s going to fix it? The tyrants and scoundrels who are benefiting from it?
5. Freedom from disagreement.
Disagreement between humans is a constant feature of life on Planet Earth. Throughout history, many have wished for a way around this, including the persecution and/or manipulation of those who would speak their mind. And even though freedom of speech has been an American ideal from the very beginning, there have always been Americans trying to cheat it, not only by demanding that some be silenced, but also by forcing some to say things they do not want to say. Both of these acts are tyrannical and contrary to traditional American doctrine. If we can’t handle disagreement, we’re not well-suited for life in this republic.
6. Freedom from disagreement about the role and scope of government.
More specifically, there will always be disagreement about what should be the rightful role and scope of the government. How big should it be? What powers should it have? What rights should the citizens have? If we are averse to such disagreement and debate, we are not well-suited to life in a constitutional republic such as the United State of America. Like gravity, and like the waves of the oceans, such disagreement will always be going on whether we like it or not.
7. Freedom from work.
There has never been a day when sustaining the human race did not require labor. It has always been this way, and will always be. Even if food and shelter and other needs are to be given away, somebody still has to do the work to make it all happen—even if that labor is paid for by fake money that shouldn’t rightfully exist in the first place. We can pretend that the non-working life is possible—and normal, even—but the truth is that the work must be getting done by somebody. And chances are pretty good that those providing the work are getting cheated in one way or another—especially if they’re being paid with inflated, fake money.
8. Freedom from pain and suffering.
There has never been a generation of humans that did not have pain and suffering, yet even so, it seems the constant dream of mankind to find a way to escape all of it—as if someone owes it to us to shelter us from the cause-and-effect nature of this world. This bent toward escaping the inevitable creates opportunity for so many tyrants, scoundrels, lies, and errors to take hold in a society. They tell us what we want to hear, so we buy in. Until we are willing to suffer, we can never be free of these manipulations.
9. Freedom from the consequences of the aggregate morals of the society.
The less virtuous the people are as a whole, the more negative the effect on the society. This is inescapable, and it plays out in numerous ways, from how safe we feel walking down the street to whether there will be adequate public support in running tyrants and scoundrels out of office. Stories of societal corruption are as old as mankind and range from the Weimar Republic to Sodom and Gomorrah. This has always been an issue, and is very much an issue in America today, as there are now more ways to manipulate the public’s beliefs than ever before. And whose business is it to improve the morals of the society?
10. Freedom from the consequences of our own personal behavior.
It’s so easy to wish and to carry on as if our own personal behaviors had no effect on the nation, and that the problem lies with what everyone else is doing. But the fact is that many millions of us are doing this, even as we ourselves habitually vote for candidates that we know to be oath-breakers, and as we go on approving of (and even benefiting from) various ways in which the Government violates the Constitution. But we will never be free from the fact that the combined morals of the society as a whole (see #9 above) are the result of what people just like you and me are choosing to do.
CONCLUSION
As yet another national birthday approaches, it saddens me to see that America is still too big for her britches—still pushing at the seems of reality, as if we could cheat it and get away with it.
And it’s more obvious to me than ever that this mindless rage against reality isn’t just coming from the not-so-well-educated and not-so-wise public, but that it’s being artificially driven by big-money players who are probably using fake money to finance the campaign. Various irrational and irresponsible agendas are being promoted far beyond the marginal support they would naturally get from small pockets of philosophical outliers, into nationwide and even worldwide movements like this world may have never seen before.
Advances in the understanding of psychology (and how to manipulate it), as well as in the communications technology, have worked together to put the uber-rich in a better position than ever to take advantage of the world. And it’s fairly obvious that they don’t care about the quality of life of the average Joe, unless they can find a way to profit from it.
Meanwhile, the average Joe is not likely to take the initiative to rise above average and to push back against these ugly trends. He may wish this weren’t all happening, but what’s he going to do about it, other than to complain?
Well, what I observe again and again is that Joe gets so easily suckered into doing little more than blaming other groups for what’s wrong with the country, even though he actually does have the power to improve his own political behavior. The very thing he could do, he doesn’t do, because he’s been manipulated into believing that his own bad behaviors are inconsequential, while the bad behaviors that really count are the ones that those other people are doing. He doesn’t see that he (along with everybody else) is being manipulated in this way. He’s just not thinking on a deep-enough level to figure it out.
As I wrote in my essay, American Fire, the American system that was designed in the late 1700s was a pretty good one in several ways. And as I argued in my novel, The Extraordinary Visit of Benjamin True, the American people are not very good at caring what kind of people we are. They will always hope that the bulk of what ails us is somebody else’s fault. And they will always tend to minimize their own culpability in our national woes. This is what the natural human does, unless he or she has been inspired by some unusually-high philosophy.
And yes, yes, I hear you: we will never but perfect. But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t get better and better at it with some effort. The problem is that getting even a little bit better at it takes a level of effort that would be surprisingly high to the average Joe. And sadly, it’s simply easier to hope that some improvement will come along somehow, without Joe having to fix himself.
And that notion seems to be the Great American Gospel of the day. It runs through politics and religion alike, this idea that there’s some way around the common man having to do better than he does. And so far—234 years into our present Constitution—things are getting worse and worse in most ways, most would tell us in a candid moment.
We don’t need a new program to fix this. We don’t need a new federal department. We don’t need a law. What we need is for Joe American to fix himself—to do the very things he can do, rather than simply to complain about what somebody else needs to stop doing or start doing. This is the nastiest habit we are in, and we will never be free from its choke hold until a large number of our citizens have decided to free themselves from it, one by one.
There’s just no way around this one, folks. It is the inevitable and irresistible reality of society that it is made up of individuals who have sovereign control over their own will. America will never be free of the fact that as goes the will of the people, so goes the nation.
There are over 334 million Americans keeping this country from being the best it can be, but there’s nothing stopping you, Joe American, from being the best American you can be. That is 100% up to you, and you alone. Stop supporting oath-breakers and start refusing to benefit from unconstitutional activities. Go study the Constitution and learn what it means.
