Freedom!!!

Freedom!!!

In 1941 Franklin, Delano Roosevelt believed that the United States should end its isolationist policies that came about as a result of World War I. Europe was in turmoil. Germany had taken over the continent of Europe along with Italy while Japan ravaged the Far East. The only countries left to fight the Axis powers were England and the Commonwealth. In the United States, the Neutrality Act prevented the United States from assisting them against Nazi Germany and the Axis powers. FDR felt that the United States needed to engage, so he started in 1939 to put in place the ability for the United States to assist England with armaments and aid. By 1941, he thought it was time for the United States to get directly involved, but he was waiting for his moment. It was in his State of the Union address that year, months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, that he finally gave voice to his view about the role the United States must play as a global citizen. His speech has become known as the four freedoms speech. Those freedoms were the freedom of speech, the freedom to worship, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear. FDR believed that those were universal freedoms, inalienable human rights, and that it was not just Americans who deserved such freedoms, but all of the people in the world, since what was America but an amalgam of those same diverse peoples.

Yesterday, an Op/Ed piece appeared in the New York Times, written by Jamelle Bouie, one of the Times’ Opinion columnists, who, like my favorite columnist, Heather Cox Richardson, writes about present day political issue with a historical context. I am increasingly finding that the only way to properly understand the political mess we find ourselves in these days is with the help of history. It also lends some basis for optimism that these times are not so unprecedented that we will not be able to find a path to salvation through the valley of death that seems to hang over us at all moments. The event that spurred this particular column was the North Carolina legislature’s passage of a 12-week abortion ban over the veto of the state’s Governor and tipped by a particular legislator who unexpectedly jumped ship from the Democratic to Republican slate after having been a strong proponent of a woman’s right to choose (she had also availed herself of an abortion in her younger days). That story alone made one feel like we were living in a state government version of The Manchurian Candidate, and that the Republican Party has quietly and surreptitiously gone about circumventing the democratic process by focusing their agenda through the state’s rights path that has heretofore gotten too little attention from Democrats.

At this same time, there is a story circulating about a married woman and mother in Texas who was refused an abortion by her running-scared physicians despite being told that she was carrying a fetus with a rare and incurable condition that would have her baby unable to live for more than a few hours. The story describes how she was forced to take the pregnancy to term and watch for 99 minutes as her newborn infant son tried, without success, to take his first breath and then died, as expected, an agonizing death with his parents and grandparents left to witness the tragedy and to explain the horror to the infant’s young sibling. The fine point on the story shows the 3-inch cremation urn of the infant standing on a memorial altar.

Bouie’s piece goes on from abortion bans to state-level actions to lift restrictions on child labor laws in order to replace the need for low-wage labor that otherwise would come to the U.S. through immigration. And then it reminds us of the state-led actions to suppress the dissemination of ideas that Republicans don’t want the educational system to discuss like “theories that systemic racism, sexism, oppression and privilege are inherent in the institutions of the United States and were created to maintain social, political and economic inequities.” All of that, despite the distinct possibility that those theories are pretty much true (oh, say, like this very legislation). And lastly, he discusses the overwhelmingly harmful and distinctly American trend towards state legislatures allowing and endorsing “stand your ground” legislation which allow open carry laws, enabling residents to have concealed weapons in public without a permit. These are being promoted by Republicans as “constitutional” rights which are afforded by the Second Amendment, despite that amendment’s language being “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” The Republican interpretation of that is so broad and unregulated that one wonders why we can’t each have our own nuclear weapon to detonate if a pizza delivery gets sent to our house in error.

In my ethics course, we spend time debating the concept of individual liberty versus the common good, a tradeoffs that has existed as long as man has walked the earth and yet one that particularly epitomizes the American experiment in democracy. No one holds individual freedoms more dear than Americans (except maybe Australians, who have an equally independent nature). These are the foundational freedoms that FDR spoke to in 1941. We advocate for free speech and the freedom to worship. We prize the freedom to pursue prosperity and eliminate want. And we believe in a world where we are free to live peacefully without fear. And, as FDR so clearly stated, these same rights should carry over to all people on earth and American’s should support that notion beyond our borders. That is why we intervened in WWII at long last and made the world a safer and more prosperous place for all, giving rise to the most amazing 80 years of advancement and prosperity the world has ever known. And that is why we are now sending F-16 jets to Ukraine to help them against the oppression of the Russians. But now, Republicans, particularly through the efforts of state legislatures, are seeking to fix all that.

In Florida, Disney is not allowed to speak its mind about legislation that offends its stakeholders. Across Republican strongholds, Christian pseudo-morality initiatives are advocating the Orban-like views that we should suffer no replacement tactics and stand for the righteousness of those who follow Jesus Christ. House Republicans are threatening self-destruction via debt abrogation unless we do not strip away safety net programs that keep whole swaths of the country from starvation. And state legislatures are stripping away the tatters of what little gun regulation exists in favor of giving its gun-toting members the right to protect themselves with assault rifles despite the record levels of gun violence across the country. That is the Republican view of individual liberty and the common good be damned.

Bouie eloquently outlines the Republican manifesto of freedoms in contrast to the basic rights outlined by FDR 82 years ago. He deduces that the four freedoms that Republicans seem to care most about are:

1. The freedom to control – to control women’s reproductive rights and their very health and bodies, as well as the right of anyone to reaffirm their own defined gender identity. That is God’s will according to their version of the testaments.

2. The freedom to exploit – For Adam Smith’s free markets and the capital they wield to uncompromisingly exploit the other main tenet of production, labor, and bring it down to subsistence level or below at their whim. After all, the donkey doesn’t need so much food to live.

3. The freedom to censor – to insure that no one can speak truth to power and that power is absolute in that perversion of the Golden Rule in that he who has the gold, rules.

4. The freedom to menace – to return us to the days of the Wild West where guns are used at any and all times to dominate of be dominated.

Republicans hold these truths to be self-evident and that all white men of means are created equal and determined by the will of God to rule the United States and the world. As William Wallace cries to the heavens at the end of Braveheart, “Freedom!!!”