By Edwin Cooney
Let's begin by considering the most fundamental dimension of liberty — freedom, the first and most fundamental gift of liberty! Absolute freedom means unencumbered mobility of body, mind, and spirit, all individual wants, actions and opportunities. Absolute freedom is as individual as your capacity to draw a breath or to go stand on your head! Absolute freedom is heedless of almost any response or even gravitational law. The fact of the matter is that freedom is ultimately dependent on one's environment. (Not even mischievous little Johnny at the back of the classroom will quarrel with that!)
Once we release freedom from the abstract it becomes both highly problematical and even contagious. (I'll even argue, just for the hell of it, that the desire for freedom according to Christian doctrine was humankind's first sin!)
Try this idea on for size: when Adam took his first bite into little Eve's apple, that’s when Patrick Henry's idea of liberty was born! The very idea of liberty was so strong that even after being tossed out of the Garden of Eden, humankind began rating both liberty and freedom as God's sweetest nectar without even comprehending that Adam's declaration of his right to liberty was the cause of his ejection from that beautiful garden. Steadily, therefore, humankind began the struggle for its individual and collective freedoms. (Note: Is it not ironic that we Christians who so vigorously demand individual freedom pray to go to a Heaven where the will of our Supreme Being shall prevail? Ah, the Garden of Eden all over again!)
Of course, originally warrior kings were the freest of all beings, but as time moved on, they were supported and opposed by powerful barons thus sanctifying the legitimacy of the richest men and women as deserving the most privileges. As the centuries passed, the more human beings felt freer, and the more desirable and, eventually, natural freedom felt.
Twenty-first century America is where freedom, the jewel of all human liberty, is supposed to reign. Even when it doesn't reign, almost everyone will insist that it ought to rule over suppression. Ah, but there exists within the the very desire for freedom a serious flaw if not a fatal contradiction. When one takes the time to think about it, the flaw is simple. Freedom is the legitimate goal of individuals and groups of people possessing inevitably conflicting ideals and circumstances. Even worse, too many people believe that they're entitled to liberty because they're rich or Christians or Jews or Moslems or perhaps because they've been injured in war or because they're suffering through a pandemic. The demands for freedom, liberty's most sacred and powerful jewel, are both ongoing and fiercely contentious. We too often act as though only our individual demand for freedom is both immediate and just. That demand for both liberty or freedom is too often selfish and even vengeful within the secret crevasses of jealous ambition.
Nevertheless, even with all of this cravenness, the true blessings of liberty remain as our ultimate gift if we would only stop struggling over it and allow freedom to engulf us.
The last 87 years of American history have seen the launching and temporary domination of two conflicting ideologies. They are liberalism exemplified by Franklin Roosevelt and conservatism as exemplified by Ronald Reagan. FDR's liberalism was the ultimate antidote to orthodox industrial and protestant-oriented conservative mores in vogue since right after the Civil War. When the rules of industrial-oriented doctrine proved incapable of adequately caring for the needs of the people, Roosevelt's New Deal became dominant utilizing government regulation with the support of labor unions and social service agencies at all levels of government. As vital as the gifts of FDR's liberalism were, they couldn't meet many of the demands of a changing constituency. Thus, by 1980, mid-twentieth century liberalism was exhausted by its own energy. Hence, enter President Ronald Wilson Reagan's brand of conservatism energized by enterprise and morality. Handsome, eloquent and elegant, President Reagan ushered in, as FDR had before him, a ideologically-oriented set of thinkers and doers whose mores and demands have finally exhausted the public just as the demands of liberalism did by the 1970s.
Thus the question prevails: whose liberty, whose freedom is at stake as we prepare to go to the polls? If everybody is entitled to liberty and thus freedom, liberty's most precious gift, what types of political, social and moral practices must we apply to ensure everybody a place in the sun?
Like liberalism's governmental regimentation of too many people forty years ago, conservatism's 2020 harsh judgement of others, I believe, has finally run its course.
The story of George Floyd is about far more than the circumstances of either his life or death, but his manner of death — murder — is something everyone understands. As hard as some conservatives try to minimize the significance of Mr. Floyd's murder, the more they protest its significance by condemning even the public's worst reaction to it, the deeper they become identified as abetting his murder. Even if time reveals Mr. Floyd to have been imperfect, his worst sins are far from worthy of a death sentence.
You may legitimately loathe a looter, especially if you are a peaceable protestor. Fortunately, free men and women, otherwise known as American voters, must, and I believe will, sustain you in November.
Remember, however, freedom is a blessing, not a license. It contains ongoing responsibilities and accountabilities by those who prize it most!
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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