freedom
The Constitution of the United States is in most respects a rather prosaic document fashioned to accommodate the contending interests of the elites of that era. However, it contained the germ of an idea, which through accidents of history eventually produced one of the most remarkable advances ever to occur in the human condition.
I refer, of course, to the First Amendment. At its inception, it only applied to the federal government. The states were allowed, and some did, violate any or all of its prohibitions. That is, there were state established churches and state laws criminalizing speech, such as blasphemy for example. However, post Civil War, a series of additional amendments were made to accommodate the abolition of slavery. Eventually, the Supreme Court ruled that those amendments “implied” that the First Amendment now applied to the states.
So the First Amendment was transformed from being simply a device for adjudicating issues of supremacy between two competing civil authorities to prohibiting any civil authority from attempting to restrict the right of any individual to free speech. In other words, that prohibition (intended or not) became the recognition of a fundamental human right. Now, a fundamental human right adheres to a person simply because she/he is human, and is beyond the competence of any authority to abridge. It cannot be granted or taken away. It must simply be recognized. This was the first such recognition (of which I am aware) by any political authority. However, even if not the first, because of where and when it occurred, it was certainly the most momentous.
It is apparent that the only entity that has “rights” is the individual human being. Any institution within society has “rights” only in so far as such rights are a manifestation of the rights of the individuals composing its membership. For example, the Catholic Church has no rights as such. However, any individual has a right to become an adherent of the ideology expressed by that institution and thereby provide the institution access to those rights.
Therefore, “freedom” means “personal freedom” or it has no meaning at all. So in this instance, we have a circumstance in which some accidents of history produced the recognition of a human right – free speech.
We now have a claim that free speech is a human right and, therefore, an important element in the concept of liberty (human freedom). But it evolved out of accidents of history, which is a very frail foundation for the support for such a significant event. How can this idea be secured on a firmer basis? Also, the question arises as to how we determine what other, if any, human rights exist? And how do we adjudicate conflicting claims for supremacy between rules necessary for a social existence and personal freedom?
The American conventional wisdom provides two rationalizations.
First, the American Declaration of Independence assumes the value of liberty to be self-evident. But this is far from the case. While each individual has a strong sense of the value of his/her own personal freedom, many have reservations about the value of extending that kind of freedom to those whom they regard as less adequately endowed. Further, the vast majority of social arrangements both current and historic have radically denied the value of universal personal freedom. If the value of liberty is self-evident why has it been so seldom implemented?
Second, we have the rationale that freedom is god-given from our Judeo-Christian heritage. For anyone with even a superficial acquaintance with that “heritage”, such a claim is outrageous. The most consistent enemies of the concept of personal freedom are the so-called “revealed religions”. The dynamic driving these ideologies is obedience to their un-vetted ideological assumptions (i.e. dogmas), with little sympathy or tolerance for those who might think differently. There is, of course, the stipulation in the Gospel of John that “You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”. It’s not clear exactly what that is intended to mean (free from what?). But it is clear that even that stipulation is a wrong-headed formulation of the issue. It is not the truth that makes us free but rather freedom that gives us access to the truth. The ultimate goal is not freedom but the truth, and it is now clear that because of the constraints of our evolutionary nature, freedom is essential for attainment of that goal. In any event, the modern idea of personal freedom is a product of the Enlightenment mentality, which effectively “de-clawed” religious authority. The concept of personal freedom did not arise from “our religious heritage”, but rather resulted from the long slow struggle to overcome it.
The firm foundation required is provided the implication of Darwinian dynamics.
Enhancing the probability of long-term survival for the human species lays in deepening our understanding of Darwinian dynamics and using rational thought to make the best accommodation possible. If the human imperative in evolution is to get to the truth, then it follows that personal freedom is absolutely essential for the successful pursuit of that goal. The critical component is the availability of a multitude of insights and that only occurs with the recognition of personal freedom as a natural right. Therefore, the right to personal freedom conferred on us by the dynamics of evolution should be inviolable since a denial of that right decreases the probability of the long-term survival of our species. We can, therefore, conclude that it is beyond the competence of any authority to abridge, circumvent or deny the universal human right to personal freedom.
With regard to the second issue of adjudicating conflicting claims for supremacy between rules necessary for a social existence and personal freedom, that is accomplished by an appeal to the items enumerated under the section on Human Decency. Any attempt by society to impose conditions that would violate any of those principles is a “crime” against the human spirit.
Of course, recognition of the right to free speech is simply another way to express the principle of the inviolability of insights. The fact that it happened, for whatever reasons, was surely a momentous occurrence in the human condition since it was an example of a “culture” adopting one of the principles of human decency as a provision in its conventional wisdom.
In summary, we know we have, and why, an evolutionary right to our insights and to be free from the imposition of the insights of others. But equally we know others have the right to their insights and why their rights have value for us. This recognition provides the rational foundation for that intuitive human yearning for personal freedom.
Human rights exist regardless of society’s attitude on that issue. Our freedom depends only on our knowledge that these rights inherently belong to us. Therefore, our ability to be free is fundamentally a product of the life of the mind. Our freedom is not rooted in what we are permitted to do or not do, but in how we think. Freedom can be taken away only by the successful destruction of the independent life of the mind through such things as the use torture and the administration of certain psychotropic drugs. While possible and done in individual cases, this is so unfeasible for the masses of human beings as to be a practical impossibility. On a practical basis, it is only by allowing ourselves to be deceived that our freedom can only be lost. In consequence, freedom cannot be granted to us, or defended for us, by others. Others may defend our lives and property, but whether nor not we are free is solely our prerogative.
- Home
- Introduction
- Part 1
- Truth
- Insights
- The Human Condition
- Education
- Human Decency
- Enlightenment
- Part 2
- Culture Demystified
- The Elite
- Mediocrities
- Self-regard
- Self and Society
- Part 3
- Morals, Ethics, and Virtue
- The Concept of Evil is a Bad Idea
- Religion
- Patriotism
- Freedom
- Market Capitalism
- Wealth Distribution