The Mystery of Freedom: Lessons from Iraq

By Professor M. Gene Aldridge, New Mexico Independence Research Institute, Inc.
Published 10:18 AM MDT Monday, April 21, 2003

  LAS CRUCES, NM - - Reflecting upon the recent freedom that Iraqi people now enjoy is a lesson for all of us around the world as it relates to liberty. Watching the looting and the wanton pillage of society’s material wealth was not a pleasant sight for any of us, most of all, the Iraqi people. It is uncomfortable because it reminds us of our human frailty. We often fail to choose between personal responsibility and wanton animalistic tendencies for survival and revenge. In the discomfort, maybe we can find some meaning. Here is what I mean.

In freedom and liberty is buried the indestructible notion of responsibility. Of course, the opposite is also true, namely, that people can misuse freedom. Freedom, absent responsibility can be and is misunderstood and misused. Nonetheless, this does not call for us to abuse the idea in favor of continued error that goes by the name of normal behavior. Anyone who seeks freedom, independent of responsibility, is simply missing the point of the ideas imbedded within the concepts about liberty and freedom. The human experience also allows us to make these errors in freedom and keep trying to make our lives better. Consequently, a society in freedom is in constant revolution with itself. That is why the debated ideas are so important to a free society.
John Locke reminded us that freedom and liberty are derived from natural law. That is, these are natural rights. Liberty is the freedom from despotic and arbitrary government, or any other rule of law that is not grounded in self-government. Using John Locke’s own words, " The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth…The liberty of man in society is to be under no other legislative power but that established by consent…." John Locke and Thomas Jefferson left America with the enduring value of natural law (liberty) that does sustain the culture and glues people together. The shared core value of liberty hovers always around individual and natural rights of man as outlined in the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence for U.S. citizens.
Core values around liberty do not come easy for other nations like Iraq whose culture has been driven by despotic fear and intimidation. The first step is always to garner the social psychology of independence. To trust oneself in the midst of all the chaos of freedom and liberty is often a Herculean task. If we are going to build the Iraq nation around liberty and natural rights, then the Iraqi culture must begin to understand what this means both philosophically and pragmatically in the streets. While religion is important, it is not the only glue that holds cultures together. Men and women of modern politics cannot always trust the congresses either, wherever they reside, because they deviate from the path too often. The calling must be to liberty and liberty is found imbedded in the hearts of men, not in congresses. When people know in their hearts what they mean by liberty, then they are able to stand tall against the leviathan of big government or tyrannical power provided that they have the legal means or protection to do so. Lacking those means is why we fought in WWII and in Iraq.
Sometimes honest humans are so revolted and confused by the elements of life that come at them that the first instinct is to revolt against the absurdities. Freedom (liberty) allows all of us to relieve ourselves of the guilt, suffering and evil that has heretofore existed in Iraq, for example. Through freedom we can affirm what it is we want to be…to rise above the din of the day and create a new life for ourselves. To constantly challenge the assumptions by which we live. That is the beauty in what we are witnessing in Iraq. The answers now lie within the person, not from some new dictator. This new narrative will not be easy for the Iraqi people, anymore than it was easy for the first Americans in revolution.
The Iraqi’s must not fall victim to their own religious convictions either and confuse those convictions with the secular needs of the new free society under which they operate. For example, Iraqi’s new society must take care to keep the secular law and the religions law separate. They must allow for all persons in the society to enjoy new fruits of their freedom in the rule of law for society, not for the Muslims alone. Education, too, must ensure that both secular and religious teachings are taught as people may want them taught, but not forced upon them by Muslim clerics seeking to ensure that only one point of view is allowed, lest they fall prey to the Saddam syndrome again. This was true for the first American Puritans who came to our shores. If they had been left to their own devices all Americans would have been managed by the Puritan faith. Left unfettered, they could have been as despotic as the European system from which they came seeking religious freedom. The new system must be fair to all or it will once again not sustain itself. Iraq cannot use religion as the only envelop of hope or the key narrative.
It is no mistake social psychologically that our American and British troops, facing death on the battlefield are formed, decisive, resolute and reconciled to the pragmatics of war, even death. In choosing to fight, they recognize that they could die as a biological organism, but not in vain because freedom and liberty ring clear in their minds and hearts. Freedom or the need for freedom is not annihilated by the death of our troops, rather, it is affirmed for the next generation. Men and women choose to fight because they believe in their values or they are forced to fight for a ruthless regime that has no concern for liberty and freedom. Rather, this robber of people’s lives (Hussein) handed them an empty vase of blossoming lies and deceit. Liberty’s bell rings differently.
Freedom and liberty (natural rights) are the essential elements in the new chemistry of foreign policy and economic development for nations. They are the catalytic agents in the structure of nature. The late Daniel Patrick Moynihan reminded us of the problems we face in foreign policy when he said, foreign policy elites are “decent people, utterly unprepared for their work.” The U.S. must find the talent and the professionals among us for use in the U.S. State Department. These new professionals must be able to turn the U.S. State Department into a place that can manage the new era in which we find ourselves. The future of our nation and the future of international relations is at stake. The new era begins and we need new talent at the U.S. State Department who understand how to make this happen in places like Iraq. If not, the future of both liberty and the human species on this planet may be more short-lived than we might first have imagined. The modern political science departments in many universities are full of elite and pompous left wing tyrants who know little or nothing of the new world in which we all live or the operational challenges that exist around the ideas of liberty as it relates to other cultures in other nations. Unless we change the paradigm in those universities, there will be little hope for humankind or international relations.
“A life lived in freedom is responsibility or else it is a pathetic farce”, someone once said. This is the mystery of freedom. Freedom can only live where it is let in.

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