The Positive Pursuit Of Freedom
In my last Daily Freedom, “Stop Wasting Your Time,” I concluded with these words: “It is unlikely that anyone who let’s themselves become involved in any of today’s so-called freedom movements will ever achieve freedom, because all such movements can only waste one’s time, one’s energy, one’s life and one’s resources.”
While the statement is certainly true, it is not meant as an argument against such movements, which, in fact, would be doing the same thing all such movements do. Though it is true, none of these movements, campaigns, or programs will ever produce an hour’s more freedom for any individual in the world, except for the misdirection of energy and resources such movements might cost an individual involved with them, none of them are any danger to the independent individualist’s pursuit of freedom.
A Negative Pursuit
All freedom movements are negative pursuits. Most such movements do have, as their positive objective, the freedom of every individual, and they recognize the only possible limit to anyone’s personal freedom is the coercive interference of other individuals, usually in the form of some agency, a bureaucracy or government.
Practically, however, the methods of all such movements are negative. The approach is not to establish individual freedom, but to eliminate whatever limits or threatens individual freedom. This approach is necessarily a collective one, because the limits to individual freedom are elements of societies, that is, other individuals, because outside of societies there are no threats to an individual’s freedom.
Some of these movements are openly negative and plainly state their objective is anti-state or anti-government (e.g. all anarchist movements). Most present their objective as though it were a positive, a “free society;” but, a society is free unless their are elements of oppression in it, establishing a free society necessarily means eliminating the elements of oppression in that society.
It Won’t Work
No freedom loving individual can object to the elimination of oppression, but no movement has ever accomplished that. Outside of eliminating some particular elements of oppression, like slavery in some countries at some times, the power of governments and levels of oppression always increase, and the only exception is when a society totally collapses.
One’s freedom is like one’s health. The means to good health is not to eliminate from the world every possible thing that might make one ill, but to positively live in ways that enhance one’s own health and well-being. One does not seek to be healthy by making the society one lives in “healthy,” and a reasonable individual will not seek freedom by making the society one lives in a free one. If we must eliminate all disease from the world before we can live healthy lives, none of us will ever be well. If we must eliminate all sources of oppression in the world before we can have liberty, none of us will ever be free.
Educate The World
A quick look at the methods so-called freedom organizations advocate demonstrates that there are only two methods: the self-contradictory method of political activism and education.
For example, one such organization declares it is, “dedicated to building a free and peaceful world, respect for individual rights and liberties, and an open and competitive economic system based on voluntary exchange and free trade,” and their method is education, as, “a non-partisan educational foundation which is dedicated to building a worldwide grassroots movement for liberty. We realize that the principles of liberty must be understood and cherished by large numbers of ordinary people before any significant or lasting political change can occur.”
Another one claims they are, “… advocates of non-political, non-violent strategies to achieve a free society.” Which they will accomplish “through education ….”
Another is, “… dedicated to building public awareness of, and support for, market anarchism.”
One organization, “Works to bring about a free society by empowering those who love liberty to become highly successful at taking the ideas of individual freedom and responsibility, free markets, and peace to the world.”
There is even a course that promises, “You’ll gain a deep sense of freedom, as you discover things never seen before. That benefit will come at once. Its larger benefit will come when most of society - scores of millions - has graduated, by some time in the 2020s. Then, the whole country will be free.”
This one has a mission. “The mission … is to advance freedom by providing an uncompromising moral and economic case for individual liberty, free markets, private property, and limited government.” (It does not say to whom the case is being made, or how it will result in individual freedom.)
Here’s another mission. “Our mission is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.”
Just three comments:
Do none of these organizations believe anyone ever heard of freedom and liberty until they came along to educate the world?
Most of these organization have been around a long time. When is there education method going to work?
Do any of these organizations ever ask themselves just why the world needs to be educated by them? Perhaps the world is not really interested in being educated by them. Perhaps they should mind their own business.
In fact, that is what every individual who truly wants to be free must do, tend to the business of making themselves free, and allowing the rest of the world to tend to its own business.