The New American Language

Freedom. It’s one of the most beloved words in America. I’ve recently heard this word used in the context of “freedom from poverty”, used as an argument for wealth redistribution tactics of the left. I’ve also heard “freedom from disease” as an argument for the health care reform bill. We need to fight for these freedoms, they claim. And I wonder, what is this new freedom they’ve invented?

I know of a man who is free from sickness (he is well cared for), free from starvation (3 meals a day), free from violence (he’s protected by security). But this man is not free at all. He’s in prison.

“Freedom from” is not freedom. In fact, the methods proposed to provide this freedom from undesirable circumstance are the very antithesis of freedom. Freedom is the non-existence of an exerted force directed at the manipulation of people to do something. It is the absence of coercion, a constraint of choice or action. By compelling people to be free from poverty you must take away some freedom.

Rights are given to us by God. But now health care is apparently a “right”. How so? They’re right in a sense, we have a right to have health care, just as we have the right to have property. But these are not rights given to us by God, nor government. We have the right to obtain these things if we choose to and work for them. But my house, my car, my golf clubs, are properties I obtained through my work. I have no right to them if my obtaining of them requires me to strip another of their right to liberty or property.

And what about justice? It once meant that anyone who infringed on your rights of life, liberty, or property had to make fair compensation for the crime. Now it means that we all should have the same amount of stuff. So we must steal what was justly earned by some to give to others to achieve justice?

Equality once meant that everyone got treated the same by the law. Now it means that the law must treat people unequally based on their race or gender or income in order to balance society and make everyone the same.

Once these words were the powerful roots of the American society, held sacred in the hearts of Americans. Now they are empty shells of words, just as able to mean its opposite as it is its definition. Statists (I almost said liberals, but that word was also usurped, once meaning one whose philosophy is founded in liberty) have taken advantage of the emotional ties attached to these words and usurped them to bring that wave of emotional passion to their own plight, even though they stand as literal opposition to the very meanings of those words.

We’ve lost our language.