The Fragile Flame of Freedom

posted at 1:08 pm on June 4, 2009 by Doctor Zero

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere. – From Barack Obama’s Cairo speech, June 04, 2009

President Obama’s speech had some good moments, but the tone of the above paragraph reflects some dangerous delusions about the nature of freedom, and America’s role in promoting freedom around the world. He spent far too much time equivocating and apologizing, in an address to people who should be sitting at our feet as students, not addressed as fellow professors in the faculty lounge. The proper tone doesn’t have to be rude, but it does have to be confident. If Obama was this timid about his beliefs when he was a teacher, then he was a rotten teacher. No one learns a lesson presented as an interesting suggestion.

The President labors under a delusion common to latter-day American politicians: that freedom is an irresistible, unbreakable tide flowing forward through human history. His predecessor suffered from this illusion as well, as George W. Bush once declared, “Freedom is the direction of history, because freedom is the permanent hope of humanity.”

No, it isn’t.

Freedom is all the more precious and valuable because it is a fragile flame. We like to tell ourselves that everyone around the world is yearning for American levels of political, economic, and cultural freedom, and only brutal dictators with thugs and secret police prevent them from realizing this dream. We often meditate on Ben Franlin’s famous assertion that “those who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety,” in the belief that no one who considers Franklin’s wisdom could possibly conclude that trading liberty for safety is a good idea.

I can show you a lot of recent public opinion polls that would demonstrate most Americans don’t reject the idea of making that trade out of hand, never mind the rest of the world. People long ago lost their reverence for the ideal of freedom, and became increasingly willing to trade liberties they regard as abstract notions, for concrete benefits. If you ask modern-day Americans whether they would trade the freedom to choose between different styles of automobile for a miserable, Soviet-style government-designed car with hardware that limits how far it can be driven each week, provided “free” by leveling confiscatory taxes against the evil rich and their foreign car purchases, don’t be surprised if you get a frightening number of takers. The guiding purpose of the Obama Administration is the belief that dusty old liberties can be pawned for material benefits.

The sad truth is that most people around the world wear chains, and they are not entirely forged from bullets and barbed wire. The history of successful revolts against tyranny is not brimming with success stories. If the people of Cuba “yearn for government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people,” they have spent the last fifty years doing this yearning in stony silence, except for the brave souls who speak out and end up in Castro’s dungeons. They’ve sat quietly by as the reins of their kleptocratic dictatorship are handed off to Casto’s brother, who displays no signs of being a democratic reformer. Of course the Cubans are afraid of the heavily armed thugs Castro calls “soldiers,” but they were afraid of the Batista thugs, too. If they all rose up and spoke with one voice, the regime could not silence or kill them all. The same is true of the Middle East, where the precarious freedom of Iraq and Afghanistan was won through the matchless skill and courage of American fighting men and women, after decades of brutal tyranny. Neither Saddam Hussein, nor the Taliban, were going anywhere until the United States military sent them howling down to hell, and the job will not be finished with the Taliban unless America finishes it.

Most of the people on Earth live under the dominion of small, savage ruling cliques, who are vastly outnumbered by their oppressed subjects. It will remain so until America fully remembers, and accepts, its position as the champion of freedom… not just religious freedom, which Obama returned to half a dozen times in his speech in Cairo, and seemed to be the only brand of liberty he was interested in talking about. Religious freedom does not long survive in the absence of other liberties. Show me a dictatorship, and I’ll show you an underground church movement that lives in fear of raids by the secret police. Freedom is a comprehensive ideal, whose power is easily diluted by fear, greed, or the desire to satisfy smoldering hatreds. Once a people begin listing the freedoms they’re willing to trade away for security or ideological purity, the list inevitably begins growing longer. After you’ve been shamed or frightened into trading away your property or speech rights, it won’t be long before the total state decides it doesn’t have much respect for your right to worship, either – especially when your religious beliefs keep coming into conflict with the government’s objectives.

We do the Muslim world no favors by qualifying our support for liberty and equality. When Obama says that “America does not presume to know what is best for everyone,” he pretends to a false humility that clouds the severity of radical Islam’s deficiencies. We do know some things that are best for everyone. Here’s one: stop murdering people because you think your religion demands it. Here’s another: no leader is legitimate, except one chosen by all of his people, and bound by laws that require him to respect their rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We’ve known these things for two hundred and thirty years. We aren’t performing any service for the rest of humanity by pretending they’re just interesting theories we’re still experimenting with, or that we’re interested in hearing a totalitarian culture’s alternatives to them.

If you’re planning on attending a Fourth of July Tea Party, you might contemplate the circumstances of the original Boston Tea Party, in which the principles of freedom led our forefathers to embark on a path that led to a desperate struggle against the most powerful nation in the world… because of a tax that quite a few Americans did not find unbearable. That is how you defend freedom: entirely and unapologetically, because tyranny is intolerable long before it becomes unbearable. Ronald Reagan, a far better and wiser president than Barack Obama, knew that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” Freedom is fragile, so its champions must be strong. Americans are not a helpless endangered species, apologizing for any inconvenience we might cause the world’s dictators before we die off. We are lions, and the free people of the world are our pride. The one thing President Obama unquestionably has in common with the leaders of the “Muslim world” is that his long-term goals depend on preventing the American people from remembering that.

Blowback