Bush Doublespeak

The Bush Misadministration keeps talking about having delivered "freedom" to Iraq. Note our pal Rummy yesterday and today in his "speechifying." I think I remember a few other members of the staff of misadministration speaking about "freedom" and Iraq from time to time.

Freedom is such a shibboleth! The Bushies love to say the word even though it has so many different meanings. I would contend that there are several different meanings of the word.

In my lighter moments (yeah, they do so happen), I like to think of freedom (in the context of class) from the standpoint of the Old English framework. The British talked of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of property.” The pursuit of “property” implied that all bona fide members of the citizenry should have the right to pursue private property, without restriction, in a “free” market.

When the United States was being established as an independent nation, the framers of our declaration of independence from England were members of a landed-aristocracy. As such, they were apparently less than willing to grant unrestricted freedom to the masses with regard to this right. And so, the word “happiness” was intentionally substituted for the word “property.” In that context, the new citizens of the United States were defined as having the right to be happy, but are not necessarily the right to freely pursue property. So, the U.S.A. is founded on ridiculous assumptions of freedom.

There are at least two basic political meanings: positive freedom (freedom for government) and negative freedom (freedom from government). There are costs associated with both. It takes effort to register low-income voters so that they realize their freedom for government and to use government to effect freedom from want and freedom from fear (rather than government promoting fear as a basis for a pre-emptive war).

It also takes effort to protect civil liberties and to prevent government encroachment on free enterprise (if that's your thing). So however you slice it, freedom is not simple and blowing shit up is never a good way to define it.

There is a third kind of political freedom, and that is national independence. This freedom we violated when we presumed that we could "bring freedom to Iraq," and the costs have been horrendous for ourselves and even more for the Iraqis. Because "freedom is not free," we should count the real costs and avoid costly misadventures to "defend freedom."