Some further thoughts about The Barrister's fine post Freedom? No Thanks, and a word about Erich Fromm:
Freedom is about the relationship of the individual to the State. I think of freedom as being a zero-sum game: either freedom, and the heavy responsibilities that go with it, belong to the individual or the power belongs to the State (but that may be a bit too black-and-white).
Even in democracies, the State is not "the people" and is not "the nation." Institutions have a power-seeking dynamic of their own. Our Founders knew that - and rightly feared that.
Does "security from the vicissitudes of life," when provided by the State, result in a diminution of individual freedom? Our Libertarian-minded Barrister often speaks dramatically about "selling our birthright of liberty for a bowl of lentils."
Ed Driscoll quotes a piece by Orin Judd. A snippet:
...the importance of the responses to the Depression by both Hoover and Roosevelt lay in their decision to elevate a negative idea of Freedom, freedom from want, from hunger, from "the vicissitudes of life" above, and against, the traditional American ideal of republican Liberty. This shift from a government aimed at protecting Freedom to one designed to provide Security is the single most important thing that happened in 20th Century America.
This is why we sometimes refer to FDR, except for his role as a wartime leader, as the worst President of the US. In his noblesse oblige socialist fashion, he shifted the psychology of the nation to one in which people were encouraged to look to a government as parent (while grossly mis-managing the economy, and while viewing the Depression as a "market failure" rather than partly the consequence of mis-management).
I understand very well the human desire for security: emotional, material, physical, spiritual, etc. These are things most of us strive for. However, the psychological shift from "Uncle Sam" to "Mom and Dad" government has been momentous and has, I believe, weakened the American spirit by appealing to the dependent child inside all of us and the notion that somebody else can do it for us. Naturally, many politicians jump on this opportunity to win votes by the transfer of money from neighbor to neighbor.
We are ambivalent about freedom and autonomy, and our ambivalence is exploited by politicians. Even those who do not chose lives of wealth-seeking unashamedly covet the wealth of others through government programs and benefits - from corporate farmers to single moms to those on Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare and SCHIP to those on government pensions, etc. etc.
That is why we find ourselves in a place where people can complain, with a straight face, that "Bush doesn't care about the health of our children" - as if the care and feeding of our kids were the job of the federal government, instead of ours. The thought contains an infantile assumption and an infantile wish. The trend leads to a royal, if not god-like, view of the State, as if reality no longer counted, and as if the State had the power to immanentize the eschaton. As Robert Parker would say, "Pretty to think so."
The conservative JFK tried to reverse this trend. "Ask not..." was an appeal to the best in the country, an effort to right the ship, to redefine the country as something that depended on us, the people, rather than something we looked to for care and parenting. He was trying to say that "the country" is not "the government." He was saying that the duties of citizens of a free republic and large, and serious. But then we had Johnson.
Neoneo reminds me of her piece from Passover, 2006, In Celebration of Freedom. She quotes the immortal Dostoevsky in The Grand Inquisitor chapter of Brothers:
Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?
Addendum: Our blog pal Shrinkwrapped happily picked up on the theme with a thoughtful piece which focuses on the psychology of freedom - On Autonomy and Regression.
Late Addendum from Dr. Bliss: Lest this post, with which I entirely agree, sound too heartless, we are entirely in favor of a safety net for the unlucky, the feckless, the mentally ill, and for those who, for whatever good reason, cannot make it in the modern world. We are not in favor of policies which put every able-bodied soul on the dole, and reduce them to political and literal serfdom. We resist anything which causes or tempts the able-bodied towards dependency in some way: that is not the American spirit nor does it do justice to the human spirit. Plus, if we do that, who will be motivated to take the risks and to create the wealth to pay those bills? That has been tried, and it failed, because of human nature. Governments cannot create wealth: they can only help create conditions under which people can create it. On the whole, humans will rise to challenge, but will take what they can get, if their pride and conscience permit.
