Freedom is a slippery business. I call myself a contrarian skeptic because that’s the catchphrase for what I consider freedom: Question everything, especially conventional wisdom; and develop a tendency to lean away from conventional behavior. What this requires, of course, is sufficient generosity of spirit to allow others the same freedom. And the real problem arises when your vision of freedom conflicts with mine in ways that leave one or both of us less free. Compromise requires responsibility on both sides.
From time immemorial, this conflict has nearly always arisen between the elites and the common people. Aristocracy is an older name for these elites. Kings, queens, dukes, barons; that whole uppity ilk always assumed that they knew better than the scruffy folk out in the world growing their food, sewing their clothes, and trying not to get hung for getting on some ilkiphile’s nerves. It was that way for a very long time.
Then America happened.
Our nation grew out of an unprecedented establishment of balance between freedom and responsibility. We still have elites, who are still striving for a world government with all freedom and power in their hands and little or none in ours. You know the kind: slobbery screamers who want to take away your gas stove while roaring around the world in private jets belching out tons of carbon dioxide. Sometimes the rules lean toward the elites. There is machinery in place to allow ordinary people to pull those rules back into balance.
Astonishingly enough, two hundred fifty years later, this still works.
That’s what I celebrate on Independence Day: A balance between those who want to gather all power to themselves and those who want to spread it around. I don’t see that working in the rest of the world, though there are some bright spots in South America and other places. For reasons that would take a book to explain, freedom leads to prosperity, while authoritarianism leads to poverty and collapse and bloodshed.
Happy birthday, America! Two hundred fifty years ago, you nailed it—and those nails are still holding our nation together.
