Opinion: Thinking about freedom

By PARKER POTTER

Published: 05-06-2023 6:00 AM

Parker Potter is a former archaeologist and historian, and a retired lawyer. He is currently a semi-professional dog walker who lives and works in Contoocook.

For a year or so, on my morning walk, I used to see a pickup truck drive by with a slogan on its tailgate: “Carry Your Freedom. I Do.” I know the man who drives the truck, a fine fellow, and when I once asked him about the slogan he confirmed what I had suspected. “Carry Your Freedom” is a pro-gun message. Turning to another current political debate, people on the pro-choice side of the abortion issue often couch their arguments in terms of reproductive freedom. Anti-taxers talk about freedom from big government.

These are only three examples of people expressing political positions in terms of freedom. Freedom is, indeed, a deeply cherished American value, and it sometimes seems as if people think that if they can attach the word “freedom” to a position they advocate or a belief they hold, the debate is over and they win. For my part, however, I feel a need to explore a bit more deeply the idea of freedom in America.

To be sure, our country’s reverence for freedom has deep historical roots. In our national anthem, we sing “O say does that star spangled banner yet wave, o’er the land of the free . . .”

Here in New Hampshire, our license plates bear a motto that is older than the Star Spangled Banner: “Live Free or Die.” But what, exactly, was the freedom for which our founders fought?

How much freedom was achieved for the mothers, sisters, wives, and daughters of our founding fathers? Let us not forget that women were not given the right to vote until 1920, nearly a century and a half after the American Revolution, and during the lifetimes of all four of my grandparents. And the freedom for which our founders fought did not include freedom for enslaved Africans, who had to wait more than eighty years for Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

So, when we speak of the freedom that was won by those who fought the American Revolution, we should bear in mind that what was actually achieved was the freedom of privileged white men in North America to govern themselves, and everyone else here, without interference from the privileged white men in the English Parliament. From that perspective, it is not hard to see how some people might see the glorification of the American Revolution and our founding fathers as a divisive concept. But that is a question for another My Turn.

As for this My Turn, fast forward to today. There is no question that Americans enjoy more freedom, and more kinds of freedom, than many people in many other countries in the world. But it is also important to understand the entirely legitimate and necessary limits on most of the freedoms we enjoy.

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Take, for example, automobile ownership. Owning a car gives a person the freedom of the open road, the freedom to travel at will. That, however, is only half the story. Just think of all the responsibilities and requirements that ride along with that freedom: car payments, licensing and registration, the obligation to obey the rules of the road and, in most jurisdictions, the obligation to obtain insurance. Thus, while owning a car gives us all kinds of freedom, it also enmeshes us in all manner of vigorously enforced legal relationships.

Moreover, while there are those among us who don’t always fulfill all of the obligations imposed by car ownership, few would argue against the importance and the legitimacy of those constraints on the freedoms afforded by automobile ownership.

Here’s why. Freedom does not exist in a vacuum. My freedom to travel must co-exist with your freedom from having to pay for damage to your car if I happen to sideswipe you when you are exercising your freedom to travel. That is why most jurisdictions require automobile drivers to be insured.

So, let me say it again: freedom does not exist in a vacuum. The freedoms that each of us enjoy bump into each other in a myriad of ways. My freedom to travel bumps into your freedom from paying for my bad driving. One person’s right to keep and bear arms bumps into another person’s right to be free from the fear of being an innocent victim of gun violence. A pharmaceutical company’s freedom to manufacture and market its products bumps into a patient’s freedom to take medication without undue risk of harmful consequences. And the list goes on.

Because a world with unconstrained freedom for all would be chaotic and dangerous, even in a freedom-loving country like ours, freedom is, and must be, contingent and constrained. Therefore, attaching the word “freedom” to a political position is not an argument-winning, conversation-ending golden ticket. Rather, when we include the idea of freedom in a political conversation we need to consider, carefully, those points where one person’s freedom bumps into another person’s freedom, and we need to be open to compromises that get most of us most of what we need.

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