What is Freedom? Can We Keep It?

As we approach another election season, the temperature begins to warm with each passing day. Tempers flare and the temptation to resort to personal attacks grows stronger. The USA enjoys a high level of freedom of speech, and is just one of many freedoms in America.

Americans are legally allowed to share their opinions on religion, politics, government, and even sports. Can we keep this freedom? In this I'll defer to Frederic Bastiat who explained it much better than I could. The Law was written by Bastiat in France in 1850. I encourage all to read it with the intent to understand it.

Freedom is not inherently immortal. Once established, it can be destroyed. How?

An excerpt from The Law:

"As long as it is admitted that the law may be diverted from its true purpose — that it may violate property instead of protecting it — then everyone will want to participate in making the law, either to protect himself against plunder or to use it for plunder."


In today's terms, "special-interest groups" hire "lobbyists" to consistently and persistently "lobby" members of Congress in order to "persuade" them to vote in a certain way that, of course, favors their clients.


Unfortunately, this has become the norm. Every member of Congress receives visits from lobbyists. Whether they "buy-in" or not varies, I'm sure, but the fact remains that the law "may be diverted from its true purpose."


Special interests are not new and neither is lobbying. We do owe it to ourselves, however, to ask "How much longer can the freedom-preserving laws of our Republic withstand the destructive waves caused by the persistent onslaught of competing special interests?" Sadly, the circus of Congress has become a spawning ground for lobbyists who are employed to counter-lobby against other special-interest groups. 


More eloquently and succinctly, Bastiat writes:

"See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. Then abolish this law without delay, for it is not only an evil itself, but also it is a fertile source for further evils because it invites reprisals. If such a law — which may be an isolated case — is not abolished immediately, it will spread, multiply, and develop into a system."

The United States Congress operates in this system today. It needn't be so. I invite you to read the remainder of Bastiat's essay. It's worth the effort.

-Matthew Nielsen

IVLG