Two Kinds of Freedom (for Sonoma Gazette 10/21)

 

Lately, I have come across memes on social media that say things like “If the government has to work so hard to coerce people to do something, it obviously is not in the people’s interest to comply”. When the government is freely offering something which science and common sense (and even self-preservation) deem to be valuable, it seems preposterous that it would be considered coercive and opposed to our freedom. I’m led to ask, “what do these people mean by freedom, anyway”?

The context of this question is obvious. I am talking about the various mandates to vaccinate and wear a mask. The opposition to these mandates is rooted in a variety of gripes; complaints that everyone experiences. Wearing a mask is a drag. No one takes pleasure in getting shots. No one enjoys the onerous reminders to wash one’s hands and stay 6 feet apart. It all rather sucks for all of us, doesn’t it?

So why is it that for some people these inconveniences become an affront to one’s sacred right to be free? I propose that in America there are two different takes on what freedom means.

On one hand, we find folks who embrace a fantasy of individual sovereignty. Anything that happens within their property lines is entirely up to them. If they make personal choices which are unhealthy (smoking, for example) it has no effect on anyone else and so, should not be regulated. Many say “I have made my own money. Taxation is theft!”. Wear a mask? It’s no different than wearing handcuffs!

On the other side, there is the very realistic acknowledgment that we live close to one another, have many of the same interests (especially in terms of our survival!) and that when one of us falls, there is more than just a moral obligation to pick her or him up, there is a practical one. Someone has to pay the bills for the smoker’s hospital stay. We know that many smokers can not shoulder that burden on their own. It’s a social burden.

Freedom, in the later view, has grown past the adolescent petulance that belts out, “You can’t tell me what to do!”. It embodies a mature understanding that in order to live in a civilized society, we must often blur the boundaries between us. There is an acceptance of the fact that we have to sometimes relax our individual desires and that institutions must be created to manage and solidify the moral and practical obligation we have to each other’s education, health and security. These institutions are imperfect, but in a democracy, they are sufficiently plastic enough to not be lording over us as a threat to our essential liberty.

Freedom is precious to everyone. It has a sacred quality, especially in light of the racial, sexual and social struggles in our history, and in light of our country’s origin (breaking free of a monarchy).  Things get weird when a complainer gets so pinched about mask wearing or vaccination that they equate these measures with a deviously intentional, anti-American assault on their (capital F) Freedom!

When someone starts freaking out about how mask wearing and vaccine mandates are an erosion of their liberties, the door is opened to all kinds of other preposterous exaggerations. It’s as if the emergency they’ve sounded is so extreme that it necessitates some kind of bracketing of scrutiny and deduction. Martial law is declared against science and journalism -the bastions of objectivity in our society. Of course, without objectivity, one is allowed to forward any explanation whatsoever that supports this fantasy war on our “freedoms”. We meet people who feel that becoming a soldier in this war has made them a better American!

A better American to me is someone who has the emotional maturity to recognize that we all need to make sacrifices in order to take care of one another.