Freedom Restart

From time to time we all need a, “restart.” All the old clutter accumulated from day-to-day living needs to be cleaned out and cleared away.

Whatever is of value be preserved, but the restart allows even the previous material to be attacked from a fresh perspective. To some extent that’s what the Free Individual is doing today.

Morally, Freedom Is Not Optional

In today’s Independent Individualist article, “Free Society, The Unrealizable Ideal,” I make the following statement:

“I think working for freedom that will only be realized by some future generation is tantamount to altruistic self-sacrifice, a despicable act of immorality.”

I realized after writing that, the accusation of immorality is a very strong one. I thought of the words near the end of Atlas Shrugged, where John Galt was explaining the nature of the strike to Dagny Taggart:

“We started with no time limit in view. We did not know whether we’d live to see the liberation of the world or whether we’d have to leave our battle and our secret to the next generations. We knew only that this was the only way we cared to live.”

Was my accusation of immorality, perhaps a suggestion the “strike” in Atlas Shrugged was a fictional example of just such immorality?

The point of my article is that very few of those who claim to be in the, “battle for freedom,” are seeking freedom at all. Most, if not all, are fighting a battle to create a free society, as the means of being free, and none are actually engaged in the pursuit of their own individual freedom. As I wrote:

“If you are waiting for such a society to exist before being free, you will never be free, nor do you deserve to be free. If you are not a statist, you do not expect society to provide you anything, not your food, not your housing, not your education, not your health care or anything else. Why do you expect society to provide you your freedom?

“If you want freedom, like anything else of value in your life, you must provide it yourself, or at least seek to provide it. Like everything else in life, there are no guarantees. You may pursue it and fail in our pursuit, but if you do not pursue it, you will never be free.”

Though the words of John Galt suggest the success of there “revolution” might not have been realized in their own lifetime, it was not there own individual freedom they were willing to leave to future generations; they were already living as free individuals because, it “was the only way [they] cared to live.”

What they had to leave to future generation was the possibility their strike would eventually lead to, “the liberation of the world.” It was not by liberating the world, or even their own society, that they found freedom for themselves, it was by freeing themselves, living their own lives as free individuals, because they did not care to live in any other way, that was their means of liberating the societies of the world.

Those who are working for the liberation of society, who have not sought their own liberation first, remind me of the Biblical admonition, “first cast the beam out of your own eye, then you will see clearly to remove the tiny mote from your brother’s eye.” If you truly want to “fight for freedom,” first make yourself free, then you will be in a position to demonstrate to world what freedom is. So long as you remain a slave to your own oppressive society, it is hypocrisy and hubris to presume to bring freedom to others, especially a whole society.