The Five Freedoms

The last time I bought a book of stamps at the post office, I was surprised by the new design. The forever flag stamp featured one of four words on each stamp: freedom, liberty, justice, and equality.

It struck me as a nontraditional statement of values by the U.S. government. One can't help but read the four words and the "forever" designation of the stamps' value as a unified phrase. Read this way, the stamps say "Liberty forever," "Freedom forever," "Justice forever," and "Equality forever." I'm okay with the first two, because there is little confusion or disagreement about freedom and liberty. Justice, to me, means that all people are treated equally by the government without regard to station, race, religion. Equality is the same, we are all created equal, and as Americans we can succeed beyond our beginnings.

The left sees justice and equality as something that the government imposes on the people. Justice is no longer blind, it sees the inequalities and works to make them more fair. This leads to tribalism and divisiveness as competing groups fight for "justice" and "equality" for their preferred group. Finally, people's freedoms are compromised in the interest of "fairness," "equality," and "justice."

The Declaration states: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

Dennis Prager has his U.S. trinity that can be found on any coin: Liberty, e pluribus unum (from the many one), and In God We Trust.

For me, it's the five freedoms, under which all other rights exist.

1. The first freedom is life. A just nation protects citizens life through just laws, law enforcement, and national defense. In totalitarian societies, the life of individual citizens is always secondary to the good of the nation, which is why communists and other totalitarians kill so many of their own citizens.

2. The second freedom is freedom of conscience. We have the freedom to believe and argue for what we believe to be true. This is a freedom that I think we could lose. I am a firm believer in traditional marriage, but I could foresee a time in America when a person who thinks marriage between a man and a woman is an idea that is punishable. Totalitarian countries hate freedom of conscience, and they jail, silence, and kill those who disagree with the state's decisions.

3. The third freedom is the freedom of movement. In a free country, people move about without checking in with governmental officials. They drive cars, sail boats, and fly on airplanes when and where they see fit. Totalitarian states always limit people's movements because they hate not controlling where people live and work.

4. The fourth freedom is the freedom to own property. When you own your own land or you own your own house, then there is a piece of the earth where you are ruler of your domain. Totalitarian societies hate the ownership of property. Everything is owned by the state, and the citizen is a serf of the state.

5. The fifth freedom is the freedom of choices. This is not the so called "freedom of choice," which actually takes away someone's freedom of life, but the freedom to choose to buy this item instead of that item. To educate yourself in this way rather than that way. I see this freedom as the material twin of the freedom of conscience. That is freedom in the mental sphere, where this is freedom in the material sphere. This freedom is waning even in America today. Whether it's lightbulbs, fireplaces, toilets, or education, the statists chip away at our freedom to make choices.

Macabre Mountain

Mountain-climbing is a dangerous activity. Climbing the highest mountain in the world moves dangerous to almost suicidal. Everyone knows that people occasionally die when attempting to climb Mount Everest (the events that inspired Into Thin Air are now more than 15 years ago), but I wonder how many people realize that many of the bodies of the dead climbers remain exactly where they died. Glenn Reynolds linked to an article detailing some of the people whose bodies remain frozen in place years after they died. The extreme conditions make it almost impossible to retrieve them, and besides, some of them are frozen, like statues, and it would be difficult to move them.

The body of "Green Boots" (an Indian climber who died in 1996) lies near a cave that all climbers pass on their way to the peak. Green Boots now serves as a waypoint marker that climbers use to gauge how near they are to the summit. Green Boots became separated from his party in 1996 and sought this mountain overhang (really a small, open mouthed cave) to use as protection from the elements. He sat there shivering in the cold until he died. The wind has since blown his body over.

Bodies of those who died at Advanced Base Camp are also left lying where they succumbed to the cold.

Even if I was a mountaineer, think I would be unnerved to climb a mountain where so many of the dead lay strewn about the mountain like statues to our pride.

Losing Brings Clarity

There isn't much to like about a terrible football season. When the Vikings went 3–13 in 2011, the only good thing was that things became very clear--it became easier to see where the weaknesses were and to begin to have some ideas about how to improve the club. Whether or not the moves to improve the team actually help is another matter. Since the election, I've read some commentary from conservatives that has been overly hand-wringing, but I've also read some very insightful pieces. I think that most conservatives see the state of America more clearly today than they did a month ago. This article from Paul Rahe has a lot to think about: About the Catholic Church hierarchy:

In embracing the administrative entitlements state, as they have, Catholic churchmen and their Protestant counterparts have lent aid and comfort to those who believe that we can establish heaven right here on earth and they have led their flocks to mistake the Machiavellian maneuver of forcefully taking from one citizen to support another for a fulfillment of the Christian duty of charity. Moreoever, their desire to sustain the political alliance devoted to expanding the welfare state caused them to knowingly downplay the enormity of murdering 50 million unborn children, and now their erstwhile allies are rewarding them for their moral obtuseness over many years by making them complicit with mass murder. In sum, they made a pact with the devil, and payment is now due. The proper setting for the practice of Christian charity is a free-market society. The rise of the welfare state and the decline of Christianity go hand in hand. To see this, one need only go to church in Europe.

And about the welfare culture:

Single mothers and their offspring are bound for the most part to become wards of the state. For a man and a woman who are married to rear offspring is a chore. It may be fulfilling, but it is demanding and hard. It requires sacrifice and discipline. For a single person to do so and to do it well requires a species of heroism. For a single person to do so at all requires help -- and that is where we are. For we now take it for granted that we are to pay for the mistakes that the single mother (and her sexual partner) made. We now, in fact, presume that she is entitled to our help -- and we now have a political party in power built on that premise. We are to pay for her groceries through WIC (Women, Infants, Children), for her medical care through Medicaid, for the contraceptives that she does not have the discipline to use properly and for the morning-after pill should she slip up and need an abortion. Her right to be promiscuous trumps our right to the fruits of our own labor.

In National Review, the excellent Jay Nordlinger has completed a series of three articles that resonate deeply with me:

There is a defeatist strain among conservatives. Some say, “You know, we’ve done our best. We’ve tried our best in politics. Let’s just give up, and tend to private life, such as it is. Let’s look after our families, our places of worship, our friends. The culture is lost to us. The Left owns it. They have vanquished us. Politics follows culture. So, we’ll just cling to our guns and religion, exactly as Obama said we do.” These conservatives are resigned — if only for the moment — to being a Remnant. Or to living in a kind of dhimmitude, whereby we are tolerated by the majority culture, but know our place.

Seeing the cultural situation in America clearly is both refreshing and depressing. Is there a way forward for limited government and traditional values? Only time will tell.

My Election Experiences

Because we live in Minnesota, which was considered a safe state for President Obama, we received very little in the way of campaign literature regarding the presidential race. Romney and various Republican organizations sent us some fund-raising letters, but otherwise the only mailings that arrived in our mailbox were for state-wide races. That changed the week before the election. The media reported that Minnesota was possibly in play. My reaction to this was surprise because Minnesota is such a blue state, but I took it as a positive sign about Romney's chances--if Minnesota was in play, then the overall election was looking good. About five days before the election, the following postcard from Obama's campaign showed up in my mailbox addressed to my wife.

And here is the back of the card.

When I looked at the card, at first I was incredulous at the message contained in it. Is this really what the Obama campaign thought would move the election in his favor? Did he really think this was persuasive? To me, it seemed a desperate move, and again, I thought that it was a good sign of a Romney victory. A couple of days later, we received another postcard with similar content. These two postcards were the entirety of presidential election literature that arrived in our mailbox. On election day, I went to my poll in Fridley at 8:00. Based on 2008, I thought I would have a 20-30 minute wait to vote. When I arrived, I was surprised that there were a handful of people in the voting booths, but no line to get my ballot. I thought at the time that it was a bad sign. Later at work, I got a call from one of my teammates saying he would be in late because of waiting to vote. He sent me a photo of the line, which wound around the block. His precinct is a very liberal part of Minneapolis. Again, I thought, this isn't good. As we know, my fears were realized, and Obama was reelected. __________________________ Now that a couple of weeks have passed, I have had a chance to think about the election, and here are my thoughts. The two pieces of campaign literature we received from the Obama campaign were both focused on health care, specifically the idea that Romney should keep his "hands off of my birth control." Really? Did Romney or any Republican ever want to take away a woman's birth control? No. The message behind this mailing is the idea that the government should provide birth control for free, including sterilization and abortifacients. It is the Democrats that desire to insert the government between the woman and her birth control choices. This bald-faced lie was surprising. The other surprising thing to me was that this was the only appeal made to our family. There was nothing about jobs, wages, or the economy. At least we have proof that the thesis behind What's the Matter with Kansas by Thomas Frank has been positively debunked. The Democrats didn't even pretend that their platform would improve the lives of working class and poor people. There is no doubt that the American people have passed a threshold into a new America. We live in a time when more than a half of all Americans no longer believe in the ideas of the founding--in limited government. Most Americans think that a lot of government is a good thing, as long as the Democrats are in charge to administer it. I go back and forth between pessimism and hope for the future of this country. I am very aware that America has been through worse times in the past (Civil War, Depression, World War II), but I think the character of the American people has changed, and that it might be more difficult to overcome the disaster that is on the horizon.

The Advantages of Larger Families

I come from a family of five kids. I enjoyed my childhood, and I thought a big part of that was having several siblings. The opportunities for interactions with different siblings made each of my relationships better than it would have been if I only had one sibling. A single child has no sibling interactions. Two children have only one sibling combination: A and B. I call this a "versus" relationship. Three children have four sibling combinations: A-B, A-C, B-C, and A-B-C. Four children have eleven sibling combinations: A-B, A-C, A-D, B-C, B-D, C-D, A-B-C, A-B-D, A-C-D, B-C-D, A-B-C-D. As each child is added, the combinations for sibling interactions increases exponentially. I think this is healthy for children and healthy for families.

No Surprise

I hadn't seen this article in the Star Tribune, until my brother mentioned it to me. A high school and college classmate of mine teaches at a St. Paul public school, and it seems that he spoke up at a recent board of education meeting regarding the administration's mushy suspension policy for black students.

Aaron is one of the good guys I know--a man of principle and guts. He was looked up to by all of our high school class, and he was also a man of principle at the University of St. Thomas. I am not surprised by his comments, because he has always been one to go against the tide, but the interesting thing to me was the way the curtain was pulled back so we could catch a glimpse of the humbugs who run the public schools.

From the school board to the NAACP to the behavior specialists and assistant superintendents, the message to Aaron is the same: "Shut up and don't rock the gravy train. Federal and state grants that come in to "solve" these problems pay a lot of salaries."

Giving Up

I begin to worry that I am becoming so cynical about the prospects of a free United States, that I have begun to not care about the future of this once great and wonderful country.

Reading the article linked by Steyn makes me sadder than I can describe.