Freedom Isn’t Free

You hear it all the time, but explaining what about freedom is costly stumps many of us. Some think it mostly a matter of money: it costs money (tax money) for defense and police protection, NSA oversight, and all the personnel government requires to fix my roads and pay my doctor and assure fair treatment at all levels of authority.

Some think it mostly a matter of the struggle to achieve what has been unattainable: a fair shake in the job market, the ability to (actually) have a say in who governs, getting a good education and so on. Here the cost is money, for sure, but we perceive the personal cost of sacrifice, mistreatment, or denied choices as greater than just money.

The bedrock cost, though, lies beyond the ability of philanthropists and legislators to make an easier path of life. The bottom line is the enormous cost to an individual to embrace the self-limiting personal choices that reflect what I ought to do, rather than the external ability, affordability, access, or availability to do what I want to do.

Legal allowance and personal ought do not always coincide. The best a nation of laws can do is grant evenly enforced legality when it can. While evenly enforced legality is a monumental task and something any great society struggles to achieve, the crux of social success still depends on the internal choices each person makes about what they ought to do.

In fact, the fallibility of something as important as the legal level field is like the difference between a school assignment doggedly pursued to a grade versus the utter thrill and challenge of embracing boundless truth. The first can and does lead to the second often enough to be a worthwhile means to the end, but it cannot guarantee attaining the other, and, with disappointingly regular frequency, it actually impedes achieving the second.

Reality does not deal in legalities but in morality. If every individual chose to function in sync with morality, utopia would be waiting around the corner.  But the complexities of morality and the pitfalls of motives make legal rightness almost an oxymoron.

Who is to say which individual is doing the most to undermine “society as we know it:”

the lawyer who cheats on the bar exam; the fondling priest; the tax cheater; the guy who thinks sex is his birthright; the girl who think sex is her birthright; the pastor who cheats on his wife; the CEO who cheats on her husband; the teacher who has not redesigned his/her course content for years; the union organizer who wants to blackball non-union coworkers; management who wants to blackball union sympathizers; the parent who won’t discipline a child; the parent who disciplines in anger and selfish motive; the corrupt politician looking out for him or herself at the public expense; the politician looking out for his/her constituency at the expense of the country; the politician looking out for his/her country at the expense of the world; the environmentalist who values spiders more than humans; the industrialist who sees every empty field as a development site; the backseat of car experimenters; leering grandpas; students ignoring school work, missing deadlines, and avoiding engaged participation in learning; domestic terrorists shooting randomly in schools shopping centers and city streets; international terrorists bombing first world symbols of success and “good” living; teens lying about what they did last night; grade school students lying about why their homework was not done; corporate lawyers lying about offshore accounts; mothers lying about how much they spent shopping last week; the senator lying about why he/she really voted for a specific bill; the family routinely spending more than they make; the government routinely spending more than it takes in; the doctor who prescribes drugs based on product information gathered from jaunts paid for by drug companies; drug companies, construction companies, service unions, and wealthy individuals expecting preferential treatment for a price; scalpers selling coveted concert and sporting tickets at vastly inflated prices; everyone expecting something for nothing from others and the government; the neighbor who plays loud music; the drunk whose “inappropriate choices” have cost him/her a family; the profligate celebrity; the average family that experiences divorce; playground bullies; the family who never eats together; the literate masses who have never read a book since graduation…?

In millions of ways millions of we the people have stripped the country of its strength because we excuse for ourselves and justify for those we know. While we stew about how other people are ruining the country, the real problem grows from each of us sidestepping uncomfortable and hard-to-swallow ought-tos in our own lives. Whether courts have made our particular “ought” legal or not, whether society has made our special “ought” popular or demeaned, whether our friends enable us or confront us, we are each responsible to engage in making lifelong informed choices about how to order our lives to function and behave in a way that will strengthen the character backbone of our nation.

A formidable task. Exactly the reason freedom was never free. Because denying and limiting myself is too costly in a world that owes me happiness.