Extending from the previous is another useful rule of thumb:  You have freedom to, not freedom from.

Franklin D. Roosevelt, in one of the single greatest acts of destruction against the concept of freedom by a United States president, famously listed his “Four Freedoms” which he believed should be guaranteed to all people: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.  With this simple formulation, he managed to equate freedom with its opposite, to make liberty and tyranny indistinguishable, and thus liberty indefensible, for generations to come.

Freedom of Speech is the freedom to speak, to express ideas.  It is built into a person, and a person can exercise it with no help from anyone else, without taking anything from anyone else or imposing any control on anyone else.  Likewise with freedom of worship.

Freedom from Want, though?  How does a person guarantee that he does not want, no matter that person’s circumstances in life?  Only by ensuring that he can take from someone else whenever he fails to provide for himself or circumstances fail to provide for him.  He, or some other body of people, must exert authority over others and say, “If this person wants, you will give, or I will kill you.”  Freedom from fear, likewise.  How does a person guarantee that he is not afraid, regardless of his circumstances in life?  Only by making sure he can stop other people from doing anything that frightens him.  He, or some other body of people, must exert authority over everyone who might do anything that frightens him and say, “You will stop that, or I will kill you.”

Freedom to do a thing is contained entirely within the free person.  It represents his ability to strive from the inside out, and it is real freedom.  Freedom from something means to live free of the influence of other people, free of the influence of their choices.  It means, by definition, control over others.  Thus, Roosevelt’s formulation is that all people should be free in two respects and should have absolute authority over everyone else in two other respects.  Two completely opposite things which cancel each other out.  It’s a nonsense statement, but it does serve to destroy utterly the notion of freedom for purposes of meaningful conversation, laying the groundwork for the destruction of freedom absolutely. (Destroy the language, and you destroy the concept.  Once you destroy the concept, you will have destroyed its reality.)

Notice here the chief challenge of freedom and its derivative rights: since the Enlightenment, freedom has been principally defined as self-determination, the opportunity of a person to determine his own fate, free from the influence of others. But this definition makes freedom impossible. It is easy to begin by making a person free from the tyranny of an obvious tyrant, but as long as a person lives in a world with other people, he can never be entirely free of those other people. He can never live a life of perfectly free choices uninfluenced by the choices of others. Thus, the traditional (even “conservative”) definition of freedom is self-destructive. As soon as a majority are convinced that freedom means absolute self-determination, tyranny of the masses becomes inevitable, because in the name of self-determination the people of that majority will seek to free themselves of the influences of their neighbors which frighten them most: carbon emissions, gun ownership, failure to be vaccinated. You would say, My failure to be vaccinated endangers you at the grocery store, limiting your ability to choose to go the grocery store whenever you please. Thus, for you to have perfect self-determination, you must have freedom from my choice not to be vaccinated, and from the fear you feel as a result of that.

Self-determination, then, as the ideal of freedom, is anathema to freedom. It is impossible. It can only lead to a contest of your desire to be free from versus my desire to be free to. Such a contest, like any contest of politics, can only, ultimately, be decided through violence.

If absolute self-determination is not, and cannot possibly be, the definition of freedom, then what is the definition of freedom? Perhaps I will save this one for another time….