What is Freedom?
“Fucking Commies!”
This celebratory 4th of July phrase was posted as a comment on our town’s Facebook group page. I think it was in response to a post reminding residents of the extreme fire danger posed by high winds, dry grass and searing heat.
Another local resident offered a similarly ballistic diatribe over fireworks restrictions. Therein he also grunted cathartically about the terrible restrictions that accompanied the COVID pandemic. Both issues clearly represented an affront to the guarantees of freedom explicit in our founding documents (and sports bars everywhere).
Trump, whom I refuse to dignify with “President,” drifted off script during a holiday speech at Mount Rushmore. As the New York Times reported, “Mr. Trump read from an apocalyptic script as the stony faces of Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln looked on. He said the word ‘communism’ so many times, you might’ve thought the Cold War was still on.”
His opponents are “godless” and “evil.” Fucking Commies!
Across the street, our invariably pleasant neighbors have a huge “FREEDOM” banner in a yard ringed with American flags. Up and down most American streets, flags and fireworks fly, damn the risks and God Bless America.
At a moment when our democratic republic seems most fragile, if not already irreparably shattered, I scanned my mind and heart to find reason to feel celebratory or proud. As to “celebratory,”my family members and I enjoy freedom’s fruits. Our privileges and opportunities are manifest. As to “proud,” not so much. I’ve always found “Proud to be an American” an odd claim. Most of us did precious little to “be an American.” Lucky, perhaps.
My grandparents emigrated from Sweden and Holland and, although they were hardly escaping tyranny, they found their small slice of the American dream and built solid foundations for my parents who, in turn, made my life possible.
I genuinely feel gratitude for this good fortune and recognize that the American experiment, as promised in the Declaration of Independence and codified in the United States Constitution, allowed this multi-generational flourishing.
Although somewhat tangential to this post, one cannot celebrate or acknowledge such good fortune without noting the nation’s original sin - slavery - which has its roots planted in the same soil. White folks’ freedoms grew expansively from generation to generation while Black women and men have realized only halting and incomplete freedom.
My 4th of July ambivalence led to a spontaneous experiment. I searched the entire Declaration of Independence for the word “responsible” or “responsibility.” The search yielded “no result.” Curiosity piqued, I pasted the entire United States Constitution into a document and repeated the search. No result once more. I don’t feel a rush of originality, but I’ve never encountered that analysis. I think it matters.
Our nation came to be through fighting oppression and escaping tyranny. The declaration of freedom meant something that it does not mean now. We have luxuriated in freedom for most of our existence, although we must be mindful of the caveat above.
Now “freedom” has been twisted and perverted from collective meaning. In the examples cited - “fucking commies” from the fireworks oppressed neighbors and “godless” and “evil” from Trump - freedom has come to mean “I can do what I want, dammit.”
Our founding documents would have been more elegant and prescient had they paired our freedoms with our responsibilities. That would have provided a moral tether to hold our freedoms at bay. To ensure that one person’s freedom is not another person’s burden. This notion is honored in 1st Amendment jurisprudence - you know, the fist and face analogy. But that’s about it.
In matters of gun violence, fireworks stubbornness and other obvious examples, freedom must be balanced with community responsibility. On a broader and vastly more important level, the capitalist’s freedom to profit must be circumscribed by the health, welfare and economic security of the community. Freedom without responsibility is anti-democratic and selfish.
You and I can surely cite innumerable examples of the dangers of freedom without responsibility. If I were inclined to decorate my home for the 4th - which I am not - I would fly a banner and flag with the word “Responsibility” in bold red, white and blue. Perhaps we can start a trend for next year and beyond.
Several times a year I find a reason to post my favorite poem from the late Grace Paley, with whom I had a nodding acquaintance while living in Vermont.
It is the responsibility of society to let the poet be a poet
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the poets to stand on street corners giving out poems and beautifully written leaflets also leaflets they can hardly bear to look at because of the screaming rhetoric
It is the responsibility of the poet to be lazy, to hang out and prophesy
It is the responsibility of the poet not to pay war taxes
It is the responsibility of the poet to go in and out of ivory towers and two-room apartments on Avenue C and buckwheat fields and Army camps
It is the responsibility of the male poet to be a woman
It is the responsibility of the female poet to be a woman
It is the poet’s responsibility to speak truth to power, as the Quakers say
It is the poet’s responsibility to learn the truth from the powerless
It is the responsibility of the poet to say many times: There is no freedom without justice and this means economic justice and love justice
It is the responsibility of the poet to sing this in all the original and traditional tunes of singing and telling poems
It is the responsibility of the poet to listen to gossip and pass it on in the way storytellers decant the story of life
There is no freedom without fear and bravery. There is no freedom unless earth and air and water continue and children also continue
It is the responsibility of the poet to be a woman, to keep an eye on this world and cry out like Cassandra, but be listened to this time.
Listen to her.