By
H. Kent Craig
Ever
since I first came to consciousness at age five, my personal political
philosophy has been: “the maximum amount of freedom possible for the maximum
number of people possible, perfect freedom for everyone simultaneously being
impossible”.
The problem with political parties is that, because of the
duality of human nature, a political party tends to pander to one or more
similar, baser aspects of human nature. Using polemic discourse to play upon
the fears more than the dreams of those they are seeking allegiance from,
political organizations create climates that, from one pole or another, seek to
limit one or more areas of personal freedom, not enhance them.
By seeking to reduce
or eliminate one major area of freedom, such as the freedom to earn and keep as
much of the fruits of one’s labor as possible, the freedom the do with what one
will of one’s body save doing so harms no others, the freedom to speak
unpopular thoughts, the freedom to do actions in public that might offend some
neigh offend many but harm no one, the freedom to associate with those of one’s
personal choosing, e.g.’s what is now loosely but inaccurately known as “basic
human rights”, political parties seek to preserve one slice of the freedom pie
at the expense of sacrificing the rest of it. This is pandering to society’s
basest impulses and in the end helps reinforce the cynicism which pervades so
much of the political populi.
Any society that does not allow the most basic of freedoms,
that of freedom of thought and expression thereof, is doomed to die a slow,
agonizing death. Society can ban physical expressions of freedom, such as the
freedom to partake of what recreational substances that might be in vogue or
the freedom to embrace or avoid any certain medical procedure, but any
restrictions on freedom of thought cut to the quick of what it means to be
human, that of having a soul possessing conscious free will agency.
In any society, perfect freedom for all is truly impossible,
since the root selfishness which is one part of the core of our human natures
means that the fear which drives some humans more than others will invariably
intrude if not displace the freedoms of others. Libertarians can argue all they
want that no laws are the best laws, that a society with no laws is the best
society of all, but a society with no laws in not a society at all, it’s a new
Robinson Crusoe living alone on some mythical island where his actions whatever
they might be affect no one save himself.
When society exists, when humans interact with other humans
within a confined space whether that space literal as in a city or figurative
as in lines of expressed communication and interactions geographical distance
being irrelevant to the interchange of thought, a consensus of rules of
interaction must be created so that all parties can learn, know and play fair
within the agreed-upon rules. These rules are called laws, and this consensus
is called society.
Striving to create a climate in a society where the maximum
amount of freedom possible is created for the maximum number of people possible
begets the Pandora’s box of root questions which lead to the hopeful
common-sense chaos of temporary rules for temporary moments of time, allowing
change of rules as the given society evolves. Do I have a right to keep all my
income from my labor, or must I share part of it with the government? Do I have
a right to take recreational drugs, if those drugs are organic foods or
hard-core heroin, if I otherwise am a productive citizen and do not commit
violent crimes in order to take those drugs? Do I have a right to absolute
personal privacy, even if my choosing to give up some of my right to privacy
becomes a choice of convenience, if not for me then for the government or the
society at-large? If any of my public actions offend someone, does that
automatically become a crime even if those actions offend only one person out
of a million? Does the tyranny of the majority rule society, or does the
tyranny of the minority rule?
As a large-“C” Christian, I try to live every single moment
of every single day as an act of prayer. I try to live every single moment of
every single day by “The Golden Rule”, treating others as I wish to be treated.
Does that mean I must take my hard-earned money and feed every single person
who is hungry whom I know or suspect to be hungry, since if I was hungry I
definitely would want a fellow kind Christian to feed me, or do I maintain that
freedom of choice, that basic Law Of God right to make my own free will agency
choice not to be totally self-sacrificial for others at the expense of my own
family? If I have that right to do so in the society I live in, does society
have the right to abrogate that right in the interest of maintaining societal
order?
The Pandora’s box of possibilities always exists, because the
possibility of real revolution, the possibility that the society becoming so
against its own interests in particular and human nature in general that the
proverbial kicking in of the rotten door of a society gone wanting for continual
change always exists. The Pandora’s box of unlimited questions about what it
means to be free, means to have freedom, what the concept of freedom actually
means will always be the engine that drives change in society, whether society
wants that continual process of change or not.
Only by trying to live by our own personal version of The
Golden Rule and allowing ourselves the maximum amount of freedom we can
personally handle and allowing the maximum amount of freedom possible for our
fellow citizens in this society can we begin to even maintain a semblance of
both order and freedom, freedom not being possible without at least a modicum
of order, and order not being possible without the freedom from its citizens to
allow its creation in the first place.