It was sometime two years ago in an interview with a European podcast when the host asked me what one word I would suggest to sum up an agenda to reform policies in Europe. I gave the obvious answer: freedom. That is the alternative to the despotism now on the march throughout the world.
He and his co-hosts immediately pushed back. They said that the word freedom has been thoroughly discredited in Europe. It means being unvaccinated and not complying with disease-mitigation measures. Freedom sounds like the spreading of infection and death, so using it to sum up an agenda will certainly fail.
Did I have any other suggestions? I did not.
My own sense of things is that if we cannot save the word “freedom,” we are completely sunk. Freedom is the basis of all progress, all human dignity, all human achievement. To favor freedom is not to say that individuals and society are perfect, only that permitting people to live their lives in peace is going to yield vastly better results than any plan pushed by the ruling class whether national or transnational, government or corporate, nonprofit or for profit. A world without freedom is a world myriad in endless economic and cultural stagnation.
To be fair, this problem not only affected Europe. It was true in the United States itself. There was a moment back in those days when Fauci and then Biden and then everyone in their ranks trashed the very idea of freedom. On social media, the partisans began spelling the word “freedumb.” That truly broke my heart, since freedom is the core of the American idea. Without it, we too are sunk.
If your goal is to promote some version of servitude under the wise guidance of an elite, freedom is indeed anathema. Anyone who attacks the concept is playing with fire. They are plotting the destruction of the good life for regular people while scheming to pillage resources and power from the rest of the society. It can happen under any excuse—national security, disease, climate change, stamping out sedition, or whatever—but the goal is always the same.
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