Your Thoughts Exactly

Any time I have the opportunity to title a post with lyrics from the singer who was voted "Ugliest man on campus" at her college, I just have to run with it. For those not in the know (read: not as cool as me), one of Janis Joplin's more famous songs includes a line "Freedom's just another word..."

Now I have no idea what that song is about, but it was the first thing I thought of when I thought of the word 'freedom'. Does that make me a bad American? Maybe. I probably should have thought about the American Revolution, or eagles soaring, or our flag waving in the wind. America is synonymous with with the word in so many people's minds, so much so that almost everything we do overseas is to promote 'freedom'.

Perhaps America is SO synonymous with freedom in people's minds that they actually mean, 'we're trying to bring America to the Iraqi people' and 'we're attempting to spread American and democracy' and what we actually mean by 'Operation Iraqi Freedom' is actually 'Operation Let's turn Iraq into the 51st state of America'.

Ok, scratch that last one. But really, doesn't it really fit with the whole 'freedom' motif that's been rampaging our nation for the past 4 years? Freedom fries? Freedom toast? Really, aren't these people just losing their minds and latching onto what they think is the most American thing they can think of? I qualified my last statement two paragraphs ago with 'overseas', because really, a lot of what the American government has been doing over the past 4-5 years is to curb our own freedom in the name of stopping terrorism. I'm not going to rehash the Patriot Act or talk about the new unchecked wiretapping program. That those things have happened are not that surprising, and in fact, many people support those programs as important steps in securing our country.

But what I want to know is this: what is America really about? Is America synonymous with 'No Terrorism', or 'Freedom'? Is it ok to get rid of some of our freedom to stop terrorism? Is it ok to get rid of some freedom to win the war on drugs? What about the war on poverty? For so many people, America is supposed to be the land of the free. But if you look at the past decisions that American society has made, it clearly isn't what we stand for. A more accurate synonym for America would be 'wealth'. When you think about it, isn't that what really drove people to immigrate to the US? It was the promise of streets paved with cheese. I mean gold. Often, they were also seeking freedom and avoiding persecution- but why America over other free nations? It's clearly wealth. And wealth is power, by any standard. So is it really a revelation to anyone that America has always tried to be as powerful as possible? Is it a revelation that America doesn't mind curtailing our freedoms in order to stay powerful and wealthy? Of course not.

But I'm not trying to raise an alarm here. By any modern measure, America is a very free country, and I'm not complaining about it. What I'm wondering is- shouldn't we as a collective, try to have some priority other than keeping ourselves in power? As individuals, we try mostly to be satisfied and to be ethical and moral within society. But we are also driven by greed and selfishness in most cases. Why should our society work any different? I don't know. I'd like to refer you to the last post made by our blogging friend at Universal Traveler. To quote:

When you get down to it, though, it's really a negative term. You can't have
freedom without something "bad" to be free from...otherwise the word would
have no meaning.

In many circles, the idea is that your freedom ends when you infringe upon someone else's. What the definition of 'infringe' is depends on who you're talking to, however. But it strikes me as implying that every person needs a bubble, that every person IS a bubble. Doesn't every action involve have consequences for our society and on other people? Obviously, lines need to be drawn, and sometimes it is unreasonable to think that we could live in a society where everyone was truly free to do what they wanted, because as the post also implies, complete freedom requires complete solitude- where you can't infringe on other people.

And because we have to live with other humans, we compromise. Most of the time, these are reasonable constraints on our freedom. I'd like to think that we aren't merely trying to maximize every individual's freedom, or every individual's wealth. I'd like to think that our society is making real progress- that it stands for truth, that it stands for knowledge, or that it stands for progress itself.

Does it even matter? As human individuals, shouldn't we only care that our basic demands for freedom are met? Does it matter that other people's rights are taken away, or that America doesn't really prioritize freedom at all? Should we care that America takes no interest in countries and people that don't affect us?

I don't know. Perhaps the compromise we have in America is as good as it can get, given the fractured nature of its own citizens' priorities. And maybe we are making progress. Science still discovers new things every day, and human rights groups have noted some improvements over the last year. But that's my question to you: What should we be prioritizing?