Freedom Isn't Free

Freedom is earned, not given.

The tools and methods that have been - and are being - used to suppress freedom in America have long been on the books. They were enacted in times when government officials were trusted to use them for the benefit and protection of the people who approved of them – but as human nature is unchanging, those tools and methods were just waiting for people of low values, malleable principles, and nefarious goals to arrive and use them against the people.

Paraphrasing James Madison from Federalist #51, “Men are no angels.”

We all know this.

We also know that F.A. Hayek was right when he described how the “worst get on top” in a collectivist state.

If we ever needed a living representation of how correct John Philpot Curran was when he said, "The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance, which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt", we now have it.

Sara Hoyt at Instapundit flagged a New York Post article (via Australia) called: “The surprising origin of the ‘quiet quitting’ trend sweeping multiple countries” that I found relevant.

The article continues:

“Workers all over the world are jumping on a new “quiet quitting” trend to fight back against their demanding jobs. But the origin of the movement will probably come as a surprise to many.

Quiet quitting is essentially a rejection of the idea that work has to take over your life and that you, as an employee, should be going above and beyond in your role.

Instead, people are now reverting to only performing the duties outlined in their job description and politely declining to take on any more responsibilities outside of that or work longer hours than necessary.”

Could “quiet quitting” be the root of our loss of liberty here in the good old US of A? The article is about workplace “quitting”, but the same could be said of our engagement in our own governance.

Could it be that regular Americans are so disassociated from the process of governance that it allows questionable people to do bad things to good people?

It certainly seems that Americans (and a flood of illegal immigrants) have come to believe that freedom and liberty are simply a given and because things have always been a certain way, it always will remain that way.

Can a man truly experience - or even appreciate - liberty if it is “given” to him without consequence or must he earn it?

What I mean by that is this: can a man truly know liberty if he seeks to take from others via any method other than earning it, whether legally or illegally, by theft, deception, or the creation of non-natural “rights” (i.e., a “right” to government provided healthcare, unemployment compensation) or is liberty only found in independence and achieving productivity enough to positively contribute to society?

How can he understand the value of it if he does not earn it?

The short answer is he can’t - and liberty can’t be “given”.

Liberty is an active proposition, not a passive anticipation.

It has been my observation that in life, gifts given and opportunities unearned are not treated with the same degree of reverence as those achieved by hard work, personal sacrifice and sweat. Perhaps the greatest examples of this are the lottery winners who fritter away millions because they simply cannot appreciate the opportunity that they have and government waste where agencies spend taxpayer dollars like there is no tomorrow.

There are apparently now many people in America who think liberty is something that can be given, can be bestowed as if it were a title handed down by a medieval king. The mistake made is confusing safety for liberty.

A decade ago, an acquaintance said:

“I think people, and I do include me, want a big brotherly government to take care of mundane matters, such as our health care, our retirement, overseeing the quality of goods and services, so we can concentrate our collective minds on American Idol and the exploding Kardashian population.”

His latter comments about American Idol and the Kardashians were sarcasm, the former were not. He was seriously wishing for Big Brother to take care of “mundane matters” so we can be “free” to do other things – but that is not liberty, it is safety. Safety is not a proper role of government as enumerated in the Constitution…again, it says that government’s role is to “promote the General Welfare”, not to provide a general welfare state.

If you believe as Democrats do, that to have liberty for all, money, property, or opportunity must be taken from those judged not to “miss it because they will still be wealthy”, you are participating in the reduction of liberty for every man, woman, and child in the United States. You may rationalize to yourself that taking more taxes from anyone simply because they have more than you do is about increasing your liberty and freedom, but when you accept that “gift” back from government, you have just placed yourself under the coercive power of the state.

You have done two things: 1) you just became more dependent on government, and 2) you did so at the expense of someone else.

The famous quote attributed to Ben Franklin speaks to this condition:

“They, who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Since government has no assets or powers other than what is granted to it by the people, receiving “gifts” from government in exchange for this “safety” necessarily comes at a cost. That cost can be expressed in a net reduction of liberty for all Americans because with every law passed, with every regulation promulgated, a little liberty dies.

You cannot create more liberty for yourself by taking it from someone else.

Nor can we sit back and allow it to happen.

Freedom isn’t free. It takes work.