Mark America

Freedom From Life

What sort of freedom do you seek?  Most Americans have been taught to think about freedom as something deeply personal, and something perfectly natural.  People everywhere desire to have freedom, but it is in examining what sort of freedom they’re seeking that you can learn the nature of their desires.  It’s easy to make a mistake and suppose that we’re all after the same things, and that some basic vision of liberty is common to all people.  A simple examination of history disclaims the thesis, and you needn’t look far to realize that not everybody who pretends to seek it is after the sort of freedom our founders envisioned.  Not every person who claims liberty as their guide has the same ultimate vision in mind.

Those of us who’ve studied the founders realize that the essence of the freedom they advocated was the sort that comported well with natural law.   Freedom, in their view, was a natural entitlement that left one able to choose one’s own course.  There was no entitlement to the means of exercising that freedom, but only the freedom to attain those means on one’s own, by one’s own efforts, in voluntary exchange with others exercising the same freedoms.  As an example, a person has a right to freedom of expression, but not a right to the material instruments of that expression, such as a bullhorn, a forum in which to speak, a printing press, or any other physical implementation of that freedom.  As a right, these things would of necessity be provided you by others, whose freedoms would first be negated as you took from them what was theirs, in violation of their freedoms.  This is the sort of freedom at which Barack Obama has sneered in his laments over our Constitution as a charter of negative liberties.

Now enter the collectivists and other various statists. Their view of freedom is entirely different, as is their view of nature. One could say it is an entirely unnatural view – one predicated on notions not based in reality – that drives these people. A good representation of them may be found in their Second Bill of Rights, and it includes every preposterous notion necessary to demonstrate their disconnection from reality.

The central theme of these is the freedom from some lack of material necessity.  Freedom from hunger.  Freedom from unemployment. Freedom from homelessness.  Freedom from the fears of old age.  Freedom from a lack of medical care.

As we examine these things, they must be considered a terribly thoughtless lot of ‘freedoms.’  They seek to relieve people of concerns for the material means of their lives. Reason knows that in one’s whole existence, one can never be free of such concerns, and yet for some purpose, FDR and his minions pursued this ideal.  They’re pursuing it still today.  The President and his comrades in Washington  are pursuing the idea that you should be freed from the burdens of maintaining your existence, promising it will be at the expense of everyone else.

What they seek is impossible.

What they seek, in truth, boiled down to its fundamental base, is a freedom from the burdens of living.  Notice that what they demand you be provided are all the material things that give purpose to all human life, and indeed, all life: The material necessities with which to live, survive, and thrive.  In what endeavor would you spend your life, if there was no cause to rouse you from bed?  If there was no further need to attain anything, to what purpose would your days belong?

Any rational adult ought to know that these are things one must attain on one’s own, by one’s own efforts.  Yet in the leftist mind, it is considered that these things ought to be provided every person, without fail, from somewhere.  Never is the identity of that place discussed.  Never is it made plain the method by which this is to be attained.   It is left unstated.   It is left unsaid.  It’s not that they don’t know it.  They do.  They know that all these things to be provided from somewhere, somehow, really always boil down to somebody, and that somebody is you.

There, finally, is the truth:  What they work very hard not to let you see is that they intend for everybody to become that somebody. If you have two nickels to clink together in your pocket, they will take one, at least, to free you from the noise of their clinking. If you have two slices of bread with which to make a sandwich, if only you could obtain some meat, they will relieve you of at least one, so you no longer need the meat.  What leftists, and indeed all collectivists demand is that you give up the notion of your own means to existence and first consider the existence of every other, even to your detriment, and even unto death.

Why would they pursue this?  What would lead them to think this could work?  Simply put, they don’t believe it.  They want it, but they don’t believe it.  What all their wishing provides to them is cover against learning what it is their real motive.  They don’t wish to see with their own eyes the nature of the beast they worship.  The simple truth is that they hope to extend their own miserable lives by each day’s worth they can graft from all they’ll coerce you to pay, allegedly for the good of some other.

In order to relieve you of the means of existence, while convincing you that they will relieve you of your fears over them, what must they do, in fact?

Put another way, how can they ultimately relieve you of your fears of old age, homelessness, joblessness, hunger, and a lack of healthcare? How can they do that?  There is only one means to that escape from reality, and it lies in the dark abyss at the bottom of their well of horrors:

Death.

Only in death can you escape these necessities.  Only in death can you avoid the fear of lacking for them.  Only in death is it possible to exist without the means of existence.  All of them shrink from this truth, every one, but all of them know it’s at the root of their beliefs. This is why everything they plan and plot and wish to perform demands, as a prerequisite, the unfettered legal authority to coerce you.

How else could you be marched off a cliff?  Would you not revolt if it were not for the gun to your head?

They know it.  This is why they work to get you to accept their guns, but wish to deny you yours.  This is why they strip from you, at every turn, the means of resistance.  Once you’re bound and shackled and disarmed, and gagged for good measure, what choice will you have but to do their bidding as they frog-march you into oblivion?

Please consider this each time you see or hear one of these collectivists demanding your head or your wallet on a plate, and know that this is their desire.  Realize that they are willing and happy to separate you from your means to your own existence, and then ponder what that must imply about their ultimate designs for you.  Understand that they want death for themselves too, but as perpetual cowards, they aren’t willing to go alone, or first.  After all, that’s why they have you.

When somebody tells you they’re after freedom too, before you accept their sincerity as the unchallenged proof of their motives,  you might first ask them what sort of freedom it is that they seek.  It may well be nothing like the liberty you have in mind.