Over the weekend I finally saw "300" and found it viscerally powerful and quite moving for its depiction of the sacrifice of the Spartans at Thermopylae. There is a good argument to be made that without their sacrifice, Greece would have been conquered by the Persians, ending the nascent experiment in democracy and freedom, stillborn, perhaps for all time. A powerful argument can be made that democracy and freedom are not inevitable outcomes of human striving and in fact, are very likely to be completely in opposition to the most basic aspects of human nature. That our experiment in freedom has lasted for over 200 years is a testament to the remarkable foresight of the men who founded this nation.
I often think about freedom and what it means, perhaps more so at this time of year: Passover, the Jewish celebration of Freedom, begins next Monday at sunset.
It is natural for a working Psychoanalyst to think about Freedom, since so much of our work involves the attempt to elucidate the inner, unconscious chains, which bind our patients' minds. How one conceives of freedom makes a dramatic difference in how one experiences and views the world. That Freedom means different things to different people is a tautology.
Dictionary.com offers fully 17 different definitions of the word "Freedom". Wikipedia suggest there are 13 different types of political freedoms and lists numerous uses to which the word is put at the service of political ideas, ranging from libertarian to anarchist to communist; in many cases the word freedom appears to have completely contradictory meanings depending on one's political stance. However, it seems to me that when we discuss freedom we must start with two intimately related aspects of freedom: Freedom of Thought and its derivative, Freedom of Speech. Without these two aspects of Freedom, no man can be considered a free man.
Freedom of Speech and Thought were meaningless when our distant ancestors lived close to the edge, when survival transcended concerns about speech or thought. The world was the way it was, and did not allow for much in the way of free thought. In tribal settings, everyone was and is constrained by the needs of the tribe. Rights are far out-weighed by responsibilities. Freedom of Speech and Thought are quite literally non-sequitors; they are not meaningful concepts.
Modern Freedoms are only possible because man has become adept at creating structures which support large numbers of people in relative luxury.
[Considering that through most of man's history and pre-history, simply living to adulthood was considered a bit of a triumph, between the ravages of intra-species conflict, disease, failures of food supply, the vicissitudes of nature, and various disasters, it is hard to see any Americans, even the poorest, as living in privation compared to most people throughout the past 100,000 years. Modern concepts of freedom are only 3-4 thousand years old at best, a fraction of the time since Homo sapiens emerged in modern form.]
The movement from "free people" to "free individuals" is of even more recent vintage, and the movement from "free individuals" to beginning the process of working out the internal constraints that prevent us from thinking freely is only ~100 years old. There are many complaints one can make about Psychoanalysis, questions of whether or not it is a true science versus a hermeneutic exercise, whether it is worth the time, money, and emotional investment for the uncertainty of outcome that is all we can promise; there are criticisms to be made that too many Psychoanalysts, perhaps in identification with the early pioneers' antipathy toward competing belief systems (notably religion), fail to respect or credit the value of religious freedom and belief as part of Freedom. Yet, at the same time the idea that a mind can attempt to understand its own workings is an audacious, perhaps even arrogant, conceptual leap of faith.
It is no coincidence that Freud is considered "evil" and Psychoanalysis anathema, in totalitarian states. Psychoanalysis aims to question everything we believe about ourselves, our basic assumptions about how our minds work, and find ways to unshackle the constraints imposed by unconscious beliefs and conflicts. It is never completely successful since no one can ever live conflict-free (in the sense of internal conflicts between desires, prohibitions, demands of reality, etc) and it can never remove the source of irrationality that we all must accommodate to, since such irrationality emerges from the basic deep structure of our minds. Yet even with all the internal and external limitations on our freedom of action and speech and thought, our struggle since the days of the ancient Spartan defenders at Thermopylae has been to enlarge our degrees of freedom, to allow us to reach this moment when more people have more freedom than ever in mankind's journey.
Many people are frightened of too much Freedom, since it includes the Freedom to fail and the Freedom to be criticized. The more Freedom a person has, the more uncertainty and insecurity he faces. Those who crave security over Freedom are willing to cede some of their Freedoms to others to assure themselves of security. We are fortunate beyond the gratitude that words can express for those who have chosen to serve to protect our Freedoms, yet too many in the West dishonor their sacrifices by failing to value the very Freedom they fight and die to preserve. There is a powerful strain of pacifism and anti-Americanism, often conflated with anti-Zionism/anti-Semitism, that values the illusion of security over the uncertainty and danger of Freedom. The loss of will of so much of the West, either due to the internalized and rigid structure of un-Freedom known as Multi-Culturism, which attacks the very foundations of Western Civilization, and its intolerant spawn, Political Correctness, has led confused and frightened people to accede to those who threaten their freedoms. Often agents of intolerance are in league with weak minded, banal, inane, and venal elites, who conspire to test our will and attempt to erode our ability to defend our Western, Judeo-Christian Freedoms. We are currently witnessing an assault from within and without.
Our allies in the UK stood passive while their military man, in uniform, were seized in an act of war, by the Iranian military, in an iteration of the 1979 act of war, the seizure of American diplomats in Tehran. The Iranians proudly announce their intention to violate the Geneva Convention and there is resounding silence from the usual sources, always so ready to extend Geneva Convention rights to illegal combatants and denounce any failures of their conception of due process in America or Israel.
Closer to home, there is a campaign underway to intimidate Americans and limit our Free Speech in ways that Europe has already adopted, to their shame. Caroline Glick discussed recent disheartening events at Cambridge in describing The Road to serfdom, How a civilization collapses:
In Israel, as in the rest of the free world, we are witnessing the death by a thousand cuts of free thought.
Last month, two students at Cambridge University's Clare College became victims of this state of affairs. The students dedicated an edition of their satire magazine to the one year anniversary of the global Muslim riots which followed the publication of caricatures of Mohammed in the Danish Jyllands Posten newspaper. As the students recalled, those riots led to the deaths of more than a hundred people.
Although the British media refused to republish the caricatures, British Muslims held terrifying protests throughout the country where they called from the destruction of Britain, the US, Denmark and Israel and for the murder of all who refuse to accept the global domination of Islam.
In their magazine, the students published some of the caricatures and mocked the Muslims for their hypocrisy in accusing British society of racial prejudice while calling for its violent destruction.
The Muslim reaction was apparently swift. Fearing for their lives, the students were forced into hiding. But the Muslims were not alone in their anger. Clare College set up a special disciplinary court to consider action against the students. And the Cambridgeshire police opened a criminal investigation against them in late February.
The persecution of these students provides a case study of the two-pronged offensive being carried out today against Western culture. First there are the jihadists, who call for our destruction. Then there are the leftist intellectuals and public figures who defend radical Islamists and work to silence those who criticize them by criminalizing speech and condemning free thinkers as racists.
The direct consequence of this two-pronged offensive is the repression of free thought.
The religion-which-must-not-be-criticized is the subject of a bill introduced in Congress by the inestimable John Conyers, which seeks to declare some Free Speech less free than others. Kurt at AJacksonian does his usual exemplary job describing the issues involved and offers some history and some explanation for the like of Conyers who do not seem to understand what the Bill of Rights means and why we have it:
Keeping faith so that faith may be kept
Consider the bill that Rep. John Conyers wants to pass: Resolution Regarding Religious Intolerance. And what is the basis for this bill? Well, Rep. Conyers tries to do some nice window dressing and say that it applies to all religions, but he has decided that Congress should show especial attitude towards ONE religion.
...
... this is starting to sound like a separate Islamic Bill of Rights leading to a total withdrawal of Islam from the Common Governance of the United States. When any piece of legislation singles out any single religion in a broader 'religious protection bill' you are bluntly stating that you are no longer respecting all religions equally before the Law of the Land. Now you *could* remove the Islamic and Quran references and bluntly state your support for ALL Citizens to have respect of their beliefs. Otherwise you stand in opposition to Amendment I, and now put the force of the Federal Government due to especial mention FOR one single religion by citation and mention above ALL OTHERS.
Why not just pass a resolution to re-affirm the Rights of Citizens without regard to their religious outlook to practice their religion in peace so long as it harms none, Mr. Conyers?
Oh, we already have that.
In the Constitution.
Just in case you forgot, Rep. Conyers.
The document you have sworn to uphold and defend.
Kurt also points out that those who came to America and gave us the Bill of Rights came from a historical record of religious discord that caused the deaths of untold millions in Europe before finally arriving at the Westphalian system of states which enabled people to begin to worship as they pleased. Freedom of Religion, to worship freely the religion of one's choice and to leave that religion at one's desire, is inseparable from Freedom of Thought and Freedom of Speech. The Conyers bill is a step back toward a time when evil men could control the debate through violence and intimidation. Once you surrender to the violent your Right to Free Speech, your Right to Free Thought is on a slippery slope.
A society that values Freedom only when it is easy and convenient is a society that will soon find itself losing its Rights at an accelerating pace. The West is now in Iraq and Afghanistan, in Palestine, and at home, fighting for Freedom against the Barbarians who offer only submission in exchange for the illusion of peace and security.
Those who prefer submission have shown themselves only too willing to assist in the assault.
Recent Comments