Freedom, Ad Nauseam

I've had enough of hearing about freedom. Freedom is a dead concept.

Specific freedoms, however, are a completely different story. Many specific freedoms are very much alive and relevant. Freedom of speech, freedom of the press, freedom to bear arms, freedom to not have soldiers show up at your house and demand to stay with you (which sounds like the plot of a gay porn film but was actually such a problem in the late 1700s that they devoted the third amendment to it), etc. -- all these are very important freedoms, and I am very happy to live in a country that ensures them.

But "freedom," when not referring to a specific freedom, is a word that has been overused to the point of irrelevance. Anyone, in this country at least, would say they're in favor of freedom in general. It's like saying that you like things that are good. It's essentially meaningless.

The problem is that, for many people, freedom in general is seen as sufficient reason by itself for keeping or making something legal. It's not. For something to be a protected freedom, you have to prove that it is in the best interests of society. Many freedoms carry the risk of harming others. Many, such as freedom of speech, actually carry great benefits to society. It becomes a true freedom only if society decides that the benefits outweigh the risks. "Because I want to" is not a sufficient reason for grown-ups to do things, particularly when those things affect others (which almost everything does).

An example is in order. You might think you should have the freedom to own your own nuclear weapon. Because, well, you want to. And freedom. But compare your freedom to indulge in your little fantasy of being Kim Jong-Un to the potential cost to society of allowing a private person who idolizes Kim Jong-Un to own a nuclear weapon. In that calculus, your freedom can go to hell. Our lives are more important.

This is all laws really are: They lay out what should be a freedom and what shouldn't. We have decided, as a society, that we should have the freedom to assemble groups of people as we see fit. We have also decided, as a society, that we should not have the freedom to beat our spouses. We choose the freedoms that best serve society, and curtail the freedoms that don't. These decisions are made through experience, study, and debate, all of which culminate in the creation of laws.

This might sound obvious, but I don't think people accept that everything needs to evaluated in terms of whether it is a worthwhile freedom, and not just whether it can be portrayed as a freedom at all. It seems like every time someone isn't allowed to something they want to do, they decide it's a unconstitutional infringement on their freedom. So banning assault weapons isn't an argument about safety -- it becomes about freedom. Regulations on business kill freedom. I'm sure that NAMBLA believes that bans on man-boy love infringe on freedom.

Conservatives say that they're all about "individual freedom." But not the freedom of women to choose whether or not they have an abortion. And not the freedom to have health care without worrying whether you can pay for it. So really, they're in favor of specific freedoms, and not others -- not definitely not freedom in general.

I'm picking on conservatives, because they abuse the word "freedom" the most, and because I like picking on conservatives. But anyone of any political persuasion who says they "believe in freedom" really means they believe in certain freedoms that they think society should protect, and not in others.

Everyone seems to have a different vision of what they mean by "freedom" though. So that means that the word has so many different meanings that it becomes useless for the purposes of discussion. I say we ban discussions of "freedom" in itself and talk only about the relative merits of individual freedoms.