The Price of Freedom - an article by C. Hanther

[Nut4Dawgs]

Hanther is, to me, an interesting guy. I thought this would be interesting/thought provoking to everyone posting/lurking here. Then again, maybe not.


The Price Of Freedom

Christopher Lindbergh Hanther, Jr.

There is a story in the Christian Bible, Genesis Chapter 25, of two brothers of the names Esau and Jacob. Esau was the elder of the brothers by a few moments as the two were born twins. Now Esau was a cunning hunter and outdoors sort while Jacob was more the domestic variety. On the day in question, Esau came in from the fields and he was hungry. Jacob had in his possession some pottage, it says here. We make the assumption this means a sort of stew.

Whatever, it was something to eat and Esau asked to be fed as he was faint with hunger. Jacob, ever on the lookout for opportunity, insisted on a deal. In trade for the stew, or pottage, Jacob wanted Esau to hand over his birthright, that is to say all he stood to gain by being the older of the brothers. Esau reasoned the birthright would serve him no good if he starved to death, so he readily agreed to the trade. An impartial observer would suspect that, in addition to having had no food, Esau was also a few bricks short of a full load.

He may have had an overpowering hunger, but if he had enough active life remaining to negotiate with his scheming brother for a bowl of stew, he was likely to survive another couple hours before passing on to that great Sportsman Paradise in the sky, probably long enough to tell Jacob to cram it and to go out and snare a rabbit and roast it over an open fire and in so doing provide his own dinner.

But, so reads the Bible, that is not the way it happened. Esau traded his birthright for dinner and lived to regret his rash decision. Apparently Esau had the remainder of his life to contemplate his folly as his younger brother, Jacob, took the trade as a done deal and arranged for the old man to pass everything to him. Any number of readers who come to that bible story shake their heads in contempt at Esau for selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. Those same readers, remembering Esau with contempt, are setting aside their own birthright of freedom and not even getting dinner in return.

It is the overused bromide of our day that freedom is not free. We hear it dripping from the mouths of ego blasted political hacks exhorting us to remember the brave Americans who have made the ultimate sacrifice in the service of their country to protect our freedom. More often than most are willing to admit, the wars in which those honorable young servicemen and women died were initiated by brain rotted politicians eager to create a legacy to feed their own vanity.

It is absolutely true that freedom is not free. Freedom must be paid for, but not in the manner politicians love to proclaim as they blithely send young men and women off to die in wars that should never have been initiated. Freedom, to be free, comes with a corresponding responsibility, the responsibility of your own actions and the responsibility to accept the consequences of your own mistakes. Freedom means the unrestricted license to decide on an honest course of action and to reap the full reward of that action in the event that course of action proves profitable.

The same freedom also means accepting the responsibility to pay the consequences in the event your course of action results in failure to earn the reward you expected. There is very little recognition in our day of the kind of freedom associated with corresponding responsibility. We hear mostly today of freedom to avoid responsibility.

That is the kind of freedom exemplified by the irresponsible gambler who walks into a gambling din and plops his money down on the card table. In the event he wins the hand of cards, he expects to pocket his winnings. In the event he does not win, and we need remember fancy gambling houses are not constructed with the money of winners and state lottery operations do not perpetuate themselves on the money of winners, he still expects to walk away with the money he brought in.

The freedom we hear of is the freedom to do whatever we like without fear of consequences. We hear about the freedom to select a house that lies in a flood plain and the freedom to expect someone else to rebuild the house when a flood washes the house away. We hear of the freedom to pig out on all the junk food we can force into our mouths while we expect someone else to pay our hospital bills when we have a heart attack. We expect the security of a high paying job without the responsibility of actually having to do any meaningful work.

We expect to have as many babies as we like while someone else has the responsibility of caring for them.

No one wishes to remember when a people demand their government provide them with an existence free from responsibility, there is no freedom. It is the government official who decides how you shall live your life. It is the bureaucrat who decides where you are allowed to live and how much you shall be paid and what you can buy and who your customers are and what you can eat and who are your friends and what you can say. When a man chooses to give up the freedom that demands responsibility for his choices in exchange for the promised freedom from responsibility, he becomes the slave of the bureaucrat holding the leash.

It is well to remember a people do not have freedom taken from them by force of arms. People give away their freedom gladly and with praise and appreciation for their masters. Tyrants do not come from outside. Tyrants are grown at home and the powers of government are pressed gladly into their hands. Tyrants come promising security from terrible dangers and injustice both real and imagined. Tyrants come with the promise of full employment, with the promise no one will be left behind.

Tyrants come proclaiming freedom as their goal and eternal vigilance against any and all who would threaten the accepted community standards. The people accept the tyrant as the savior of the nation and they are granted in turn the good life of a dog on a leash sitting the foot of an all powerful master.