"They have been at a great feast of languages, and stolen the scraps."

Shakespeare,Love's Labour Lost

 

Britain has just been hit by another wave of bombings.  In the wake of such incidents, a number of things immediately follow.  Two of the most basic are fear and a desire to make certain attacks don't happen again.  The people demand restrictive measures designed with safety in mind.  Immediately thereafter, another predictable thing happens.  Liberal activists, university professors, and various lobbies take up a chant that I am certain will sound quite familiar to your ears.  It goes something like this:

Person A:  We need to do something to secure our borders and protect our people.  Perhaps we should start checking people who come into the country, or watching immigration.

Person B: You {insert derogatory expletive of choice here} are so hypocritical! You say you believe in "freedom" and then at the first breath of danger you take it all back.  What's more, you go around forcing your disgusting morality on everyone!  That's the exact opposite of freedom.

What is also very important to note, is that this anti-freedom argument applies to just about any liberal cause under the sun, not just (mostly) unintentionally aiding and abetting terrorists. The same attack crops up whenever someone brings up a view on homosexuality, abortion, welfare, etc. that a liberal doesn't particularly care to hear. 

I myself have heard this more times than I care to count. The point of the exercise, from the liberal perspective, is to a: make Person A feel guilty over having brought up principles that contradict Person B's, and b: to "demonstrate" that Person A has somehow morally disqualified his or herself from being able to speak on that subject again.  Of course, the obvious implication is that no one should bother to listen to anything else Person A might say. 

Well, I for one have finally had it, and I think its time to clear the philosophical air a bit.  What's actually happening in the above situation is yet another semantic game, one that conservatives and Christians have let liberals get away with for far too long.

The real issue at hand is what freedom really is. 

In modern America, we have two definitions for the same word one of them older and more philosophically consistent than the other.    The more respectable and practical definition of freedom is that it is the right to choose between every right--or at least morally neutral--thing.  According to this definition, there is right, there is wrong, and human beings can and do understand morality to the point that they can intelligently choose right over wrong.  If a thing is wrong (such as making child pornography or committing rape or murder), therefore, we never have a "right" to choose it (though we may have the power to do so). In fact, governments and laws are set up to prevent people from choosing wrong things, and to punish those that have.  Everything else, from the morally neutral to the morally good, is fair game for people to exercise their freedom upon.  This covers toothpaste to education to where they live to where they work to where they worship and anything that falls in between.

The newer, less consistent definition of freedom comes to us from the now popularized post modern movement.  The very essence of PM is relativism, an outflow of naturalism there is no settled norm for anything, especially morals.  Everything is reduced to mere preference and personal opinion.  So, if there is no right or wrong, then freedom means the right choose between all things, regardless of any alleged moral consequences.  Usually there is a "so long as it doesn't hurt anyone" rider attached to it, but anyone who can think past the end of his or her nose will see that there isn't a single reason why it shouldn't hurt anyone, as long as he or she can get away with it.

What we have in the hypothetical conversation above is a bit of semantically sleight of hand. The original speaker, Person A, has made a statement that presumes the first, more reliable definition of freedom.  To Person A, there is nothing inherently contradictory about saying that a group of people do not have the freedom to do a thing, so long as that thing is demonstrably wrong (such as allowing murdering terrorist into a country).  The question for Person A is this:  "Does the action in question stand the test of morality?"  If so, then people are free to pursue it, if not, then it is no more hypocritical to suggest that someone be prevented from "choosing" it than to say that pedophilia should be illegal.  You may not like the conclusion that Person A reaches, but he or she isn't being hypocritical in the least.

The hypocrisy is actually imposed from without, by Person B. Person B uses exactly the same language as Person A, but surreptitiously (though not always consciously) changes the meaning of the word "freedom" radically, from the old to the new.  If allowed to get away with this substitution, they will have "proved" Person A to be both a moron and a hypocrite.

How should one respond in a situation like this? Don't let the switch take place.  The real question at hand is which definition of "freedom" is right, and why.

It should be obvious that the modern secularist definition must fall apart at the merest breath of either critical analysis or practical application. There are some acts, such as those mentioned above, that every sane person believes is wrong and that those who want commit such acts should be prevented from doing so, if at all possible.  Successfully precluding an act means it is no longer a choice.  Even the fact that they believe that "no one should be hurt" by an action implies that they believe at least one thing is "right."  And if that is "right," then violating it must be "wrong."  Also, many relativists are quite happy to live with their philosophy, but only until it comes home to roost.  A "terrorist" is an "insurgent" until it is their husband, wife, child, brother or sister is the one killed in a "political statement."

Note that this does not, in itself prove anything beyond the fact that the liberal approach to "freedom," well intentioned though it may be, does not reflect reality.  Everyone should be "free," but some ideologies and causes (such as the ones they champion) are more "free" than others.

No one should take this op-ed to mean that I think governments should be given a blank check to "protect" its citizens by trampling over all of their rights.  But we should also be careful to make sure that the "rights" in question have not recently been created using a completely asinine definition of "freedom" that is as meaningless as it is self-refuting.  Given the literal life and death issues we face, sensible people, both in Britain and the United States, must train themselves to take the conversation up a notch or two, to get through guilt trip of smoke and mirrors, and at the real questions behind it all.  It is there that we hold all the aces.

 

Dr. Melton is an Assistant Professor of History at Liberty University.

 

 

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