Last month, before the BLM protests arose, protests popped
up demanding for loosening of pandemic restrictions; people wanted to go to
work, go to the park, go shopping, get haircuts, have sit down dining. Being
told to stay home is an infringement of rights, they claim. It’s an
authoritarian power grab. So they clustered together and carried their guns
into public buildings and yelled in the faces of cops and nurses. For freedom.
And as some places opened up, the same people continued to
complain. Being told to wear a mask in a shop is trampling on their rights.
Churches reducing congregation size to 50% is a capitulation of the church to
the authoritarian state. Although a vaccine is at least a year away, there are
already exclamations to refuse vaccination. Their very freedom is under an
attack under the guise of a virus.
They freely share their grievances. They freely gather to
protest (breaking quarantine orders but facing no consequence). They freely
form groups and petitions and gatherings to discuss the restrictions on their
freedom of open shops and not wearing masks and not being vaccinated against a
pandemic. They do care about lives, they say. But one’s freedom is more
important.
Then a man died after a cop knelt on his neck for almost
nine minutes. And the world saw. And the world knew it was just another case of
in a long line of injustice. And different protests broke out. Masses of people
marching in the street—no guns, wearing masks. They were protesting injustice (and having curfews in place and protests broken up). They
demanded that police not kill people. That being killed without trial for petty
violations infringes on their rights. Can a black person walk down the street
in peace? Can she sleep in her bed in peace? Being fearful of violent cops
restricts their freedom. They live in fear of authoritarian overreach. They want
justice and equal freedom.
Comparing the two protests feels like night and day. But
they were only a week or so apart, and both claimed to be about the foundation
of American values. So it’s made me ask: What is freedom?
Broadly, freedom is the power to act, speak, or think as one
wants without restraint. Freedom is the state of not being subject to another.
When we say America was founded on freedom, we mean freedom from a king,
freedom from England’s laws, freedom of religion, speech, press, assembly, and
petition. To be free is to do whatever one wants without repercussion.
Taken to the extreme, it’s easy to see the danger in broad
freedom. Doing whatever we want without restraint leads to hedonism. Even “do
no harm” is seen as authoritarian and restricting when fulfilling desires is
the idea of freedom.
It also
leads to the most powerful consolidating that freedom. Those will the power or
force to do what they want to others can and will, while the rest must restrict
their movements out of fear and self-preservation.
The
idea of “do what I want” is not freedom. It is not true freedom to be a slave
to our desires and impulses. We can make ourselves slaves to drugs, sex, food, power,
or money. True freedom is the ability to become our best selves, to have our
will and potential unstrained and our desires properly ordered.
St. John Paul II said, “Every generation of
Americans needs to know that freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in
having the right to do what we ought.”
Freedom is not an ends; it is a means to do good.
The catechism says, “There is no true freedom except in the service of what is
good and just. The choice to disobey and do evil is an abuse of freedom and
leads to ‘the slavery of sin’ (CCC 1733).”
Are our actions impulses, are they harming
others, are they encouraging sin? Are we free if give ourselves over to
selfishness, violence, and anger? Freedom lies in our choices, and our ability
to make that choice in our society.
Today is Juneteenth. For white people, it’s
something we either never learned about or just vaguely heard of. It doesn’t
celebrate the freeing the of the slaves; they had been declared free months
before. It celebrates enslaved people learning of their freedom and thus, truly
becoming free. They couldn’t be free until they knew it and could act accordingly.
They suffered attempts at restricting that freedom and having their rights
infringed. It’s a continuing battle.
This year, as we celebrate July 4th, maybe
we should celebrate true freedom. Not separation from the British or our right
to brandish weapons and not wear masks, but our ability to protest, to speak
out for what is right, and to continue to choose to do what we ought.
