What a Free Man Is
How one defines this will help to shape one’s ideology. Her in the States, we primarily define freedom as lacking impedance from the law. When we think of people who aren’t free, our minds go immediately to prisoners. It is most often the metaphor we seek when describing other things. For example, one might say that he is a prisoner to the sexual norms of a society. Needless to say our country has a very liberal view of freedom, something that isn’t entirely shocking given our founding.
In many other places and times the opposite of a free man is seen as the servant. The free man in this scheme is one that can offer and withdraw his labor at will. He and his family are secure in his abode. He has the ability to receive religious instruction. Last but not least, he has the ability to leisure. Under such a framework, most people in this country are not free. In particular, the poor in our country are rarely free. And while it is well and good to preach about how the poor will always be with us, the scheme of capitalism and democracy (and many other schemes while we are at) were not created so that the wealthy could be free. Simply saying it is sufficient to address the ludicrousness of the notion. People did not fight the American Revolution so that the rich could be free. People didn’t come to America in hopes that the rich would finally be free.
Before modern advancements, the poorer classes were mostly slaves. This even persisted well into the modern era. I am not one to romanticize those times or the people who lived in them. What greeted the end of those systems, be it in Russia, England, or America were the words of “We are taking away your work, your home, and your food. You are free now to acquire those things on your own.” And some certainly were able to move themselves to cities and find gainful employment. Many attempted to find a way to continue doing work for their former masters or lords. Most went from place to place, desperate to find sustenance. This is papered over as adventure in many books. The Laura Ingalls Wilder books come immediately to mind as ones where the average reader doesn’t recognize them as being the story of a family tramping and trying to avoid starvation, although admittedly it wasn’t a case of an emancipated slave. Much of culture tries to put a happy face on poverty, because if people can only be happy if they are free, we are going to make sure a happy face is on poverty lest we have to actually confront any evil in our society.
All the happy faces can’t hide the truth though. Our poor aren’t really free. My mind often moves back to this article in Der Spiegel.
“From today’s perspective, I believe that we were driven out of paradise when the Wall came down,” one person writes, and a 38-year-old man “thanks God” that he was able to experience living in the GDR, noting that it wasn’t until after German reunification that he witnessed people who feared for their existence, beggars and homeless people.Today’s Germany is described as a “slave state” and a “dictatorship of capital,” and some letter writers reject Germany for being, in their opinion, too capitalist or dictatorial, and certainly not democratic.
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It appears that you romanticize the communist era in Eastern Europe as some romanticize the West in this country. I personally know of residents from the former East Germany who are thankful that the wall fell. Through that regime, they experienced illness, hunger, and sexual abuse at the whim of the communist government.
Growing up poor in this country, my dad worked hard to provide for himself and his family. He survived the Great Depression and wanted better for us. I had the opportunity to seek an education and make a better life. Now, I have the freedom to make life better for others. I would not trade this for the type of government that ruled Eastern Germany and am thankful for the freedom whe experience in this country.
The poor in this country do have opportunities. The despair comes from people telling them that they don’t.
Another interesting article in the same regard:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2010/jan/22/cuba-communism-human-rights
Those who risk their lives to go somewhere else seem to go in one direction; East Germans and others behind the Iron Curtain fled to the West as opposed to the other way around. I’ll start giving credence to the premise of this article when the “unfree” of the US and other Western countries, start risking their lives to go elsewhere.
This article doesn’t mention religious freedom, which is kind of surprising.
He has the ability to receive religious instruction.
That was it though. I debated it, but decided I didn’t want to tackle the abuses in and around the Reformation.
There are no free men other than saints. And a true saint is free in a prison cell or under forced labor. There is much truth–perhaps unintended–in the song line “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” The issue is whether that loss was forced and regretted, or whether that loss was voluntary and gratefully, even joyfully assumed.
Oh…and only the free “go to heaven.”
“Those who risk their lives to go somewhere else seem to go in one direction; East Germans and others behind the Iron Curtain fled to the West as opposed to the other way around. I’ll start giving credence to the premise of this article when the “unfree” of the US and other Western countries, start risking their lives to go elsewhere.”
“The USA: It’s Better Than Dying In A Gulag!”
I’ll start printing bumper stickers.
In the classic philosophic sense, the “free man” is the one who is liberated from the control of his passions or his sensual pleasures.
This is an orthodox Christian, as well as a Stoic moral principle, but what the 19th century “liberals” who call themselves “conservatives” in America don’t understand is that, to create that “freedom” for everyone, the social project to eliminate grinding poverty MUST persist, in some form.
There must also exist, on the other hand, an educational project to lessen the allure and status of material wealth, since “conspicuous consumption” is as addictive and corruptive as the oftimes criminal distractions of the wretchedly poor (violent sports, drugs, alcohol, etc.).
These are “projects” that are best undertaken by educational and religious institutions, rather than governments, I grant you, but have you ever noticed how little attention is given, inside the United States, by so-called “conservative Catholics,” to the need to offset the influence of consumerist advertising–which actively seeks to promote these “addictions” among the most vulnerable–the young, the most ignorant consumers (e.g. Walmart shoppers) and the panicked elderly, who are so fearful of death?
It may well be that the abuses in our economic system are really symptomatic of a far greater cultural and spiritual malaise (which, in my opinion, is the end-result of centuries of perverted, heretical theology), but it seems to me that that is no less a reason to pay attention to them, and to seek ways of addressing them that may be more practically effective than some stop-gap governmental regulation.
The more philosophic “conservatives” are absolutely right: governmental fiats are not an effective way of remedying endemic moral and social corruption, but what has always galled me about American conservatives is their complaisance, after they’ve dismissed legislation and regulation as effective solutions for social blight, regarding actually DOING SOMETHING to help those who, according to the best Christian incarnational theology (i.e. the Catholic, not the dour, hopeless Calvinism that permeates American culture) ACTUALLY REPRESENT CHRIST IN THIS WORLD!
Tonight my wealthy business-man brother, who, in the past has generally been a corporate pirate, turned his mercedes-benz around on a storm and hail-ridden North Carolina road, on his way home from work, to pick up a bearded, “hippy-type” who was struggling in the rain to carry some groceries to his trailer-park. When my sister-in-law asked him why he did that, he said “It might have been Jesus, for all I know.” We didn’t laugh. He’s improving with age–becoming not so “conservative” (in the American sense).
MZ – I didn’t read that comment as a reference to religious freedom. Even rereading it, I wouldn’t have caught that.
Digby – I don’t know about your brother, but it sounds there’s a lot of dualism and prejudging in your last comment.
Pinky,
It is a pretty big bag of worms when you think about it. Many of the groups that fled to America were forcibly suppressed in England. We have the history of burning of heretics, but before we beat ourselves up too much, the prots did the same to Catholics. This would seem to be solved with Vatican II, and there clearly is a section of the particularly American Church who believe that religious freedom is whatever one wants to believe. This isn’t quite where the Vatican is at though. For example, it is quite clear that the Vatican believes Pentecostals and similar groups should be officially suppressed in South America. There is a pretty clear division between what the Vatican considers to be cult and religion. Needless to say, this is a can of worms that requires more nuance for me to treat it fairly and accurately.
“Pre-judging,” no doubt, Pinky; I do have my “prejudices,” but at least I admit ‘em: I like neither irresponsible rentiers, not the self-made plutocrats who’ve forgotten where they’ve come from.
The original dualist heretics weren’t Calvinists. They didn’t see wealth as a sign of God’s favor. They denounced material existence. You want to be very careful when you start judging the quality of a person’s soul by the number of his possessions.
You want to be very careful when you start judging the quality of a person’s soul by the number of his possessions.
You are SO mistaken about me, my opinions and my history–it’s almost ludicrous!
For your information, I come from an enormously priveleged–I would say, almost overpriveleged–background, but I was also brought up to DESPISE people who didn’t understand the responsibilities that come with wealth and social status. It’s the ATTITUDES of those who’ve been corrupted by what they own that I judge–not the possessions or the possessors.
“You want to be very careful when you start judging the quality of a person’s soul by the number of his possessions.”
Tell that to St. Francis.
Ultimately: if you can’t take it with you, then it ain’t worth dying for.
Ultimately: if you can’t take it with you, then it ain’t worth dying for.
Well said, Rodak. Makes you wonder about the justice of many of this nation’s wars, doesn’t it?
Rodak, a look at the early history of the Franciscans shows the risk in being too hard or too soft on that question. Besides, not everyone is called to be a Franciscan.
I think that most people, myself not excluded, have no idea what they’re called to be, because they’re much too preoccupied to listen.
Hey, bro, Rodak, even though I think you’re a Prot, I love you, man!
You don’t need to “think” I’m a Protestant; I proudly avow it. And I love you, too. I love this whole crazy crew!
I love you, too
I’m not sure how much longer I can keep this combox open with these vicious attacks going on. j/k