Freedom?

Freedom is a popular subject these days. It is hard to read the news without hearing about freedoms and rights. Laws violate our freedoms. Free speech is challenged constantly. We go to war in other lands to bring freedom to the people. What is often ignored, however, is the responsibility that comes with freedom. For every right there is a responsibility. We need to think very hard about what responsibilities we are prepared to accept before we start making demands for rights and freedoms.

As children, I'm sure, each of us dreamed of the freedom of adulthood. We saw open vistas of watching what we wanted on TV and in movies. We fantasized about choosing out own bedtimes. We dreamed about the power having all that money adults have would bring us. How many of us, I wonder, thought about how much responsibility those freedoms are. Sure we can go to bed any time we want, but we have to get up for work the next day most of the time. We've got money, but we've also got bills. As children we don't have a lot of freedom, but we also don't have a lot of understanding of responsibility. Without that, can we really handle freedom?

Of course the types of freedoms most of dreamed about as children are not what is normally discussed. We talk about grand human rights. In many countries, people can be arrested for saying the wrong thing, or even for holding a forbidden belief. Not us, right? Well, maybe we don't face arrest, but there are times when we can be subject to lawsuit if we say the wrong thing. Our definition of what the wrong thing is just happens to be far more narrow. Sure, we can believe anything we want, but we can't always act on those beliefs, and sometimes we can't even communicate them to the masses. No argument we have more freedom than many people enjoy, but it is still limited. Is this restriction on out freedom a bad thing? Not in my opinion. We have laws against slander to protect people from those who would abuse their freedom of speech. We have laws against hate crimes for the same reason. Not unreasonable restrictions in my opinion.

If the freedoms a child dreams of are minor compared to the human rights we have, so to are the responsibility that comes with those respective freedoms. It is time we started taking those responsibilities seriously. For example, I often hear that censorship is an appropriate use of the right to free speech, or some other similar right. What these people forget is that their rights end where other people begin. Sure it is a parent's right to deny their children access to material they deem offensive. It is not their right, however, to deny everyone access to those materials. Now the question becomes how do we carry that? Should all materials, no matter what the subject matter, be available to everyone? It is our responsibility as a society to decide this. What do we consider so abhorrent that is should be banned to everyone? And in deciding this, how will we go about enforcing this restriction on our freedoms? As free speaking, free thinking individuals, it is our collective responsibility to constantly think about these things, and sometimes to act on them as well.

There is one major responsibility that is most often forgotten in debates about freedom. Freedoms must apply equally. If I have the freedom to speak my mind freely about rights and freedoms, so does every one else around me. As such, for example, even if I am against giving people unrestricted freedom by abolishing all laws that restrict it, I must defend a supporter of that positions right to communicate his or her arguments. I believe in free speech, and my opponents have that right as much as I do. I cannot, in good conscience, say that I have the right to censor their words any more than I am prepared to censor my own. This is by far the most important responsibility that comes with any freedom.

Freedom cannot exist with out responsibility. For many years we have forgotten the duties that come along with our rights. It is about time we started thinking very seriously about what we are prepared to do to deserve the freedoms we have.