Having the political right to some thing or another is not the same thing as being free. The right to "free speech" does not equate with the capacity to speak freely. Having the right to an abortion does not equate with being able to live freely. This principle can be applied again and again across the full spectrum of political rights. Rights are not freedoms, but opportunities for freedom that carry with them the responsibility for excercise of that power.
That is, to be granted a right is to become responsible for the just excercise of a freedom.
The fundamental justification for authoritarianism has long been that people are not to be trusted with the freedom of self-creation. In this justification can be seen the religious origins and nature of the State. Traditional moralities stand as surrogates for undeveloped personal conscience.
In response to this traditional justification, in combination with critiques of tyrannical abuses of power, has come the assertion that people can only learn to become responsible for their freedom by given excercise of it. By increasing their need, the theory goes, individuals and societies rise to the occaision.
Ideally.
In actual fact, it seems to me, this is far from guaranteed, and perhaps even far from likely. The genuine excercise of freedom might be an exceptional accomplishment, a sort of least available necessary resource, like water in a desert.
It is interesting to note the relationship between oppressive government and personal confusion as to the nature of freedom. An oppressive government cultivates in its citizenry the mistaken association of political rights and personal freedom. People cannot be legislated into freedom, but must liberate themselves within themselves. Thus is social oppression a sort of double bind, a mutually reinforcing chinese fingertrap, in which the liberational truth is fractured into polarized ideologies - with each side guarding and worshipping its bit as if it were in itself whole.
In response to this, many people are drawn to the principle of Centrism, though the reality that this term points to is something other than assuming it as an ideological position or even a political practice. There is a time for splitting apart and a time for bringing together, and the critical factor lies in knowing what the time is and how best to accomodate it.
It is a problem of magical proportions, in regard to which it is worth remembering the example of the alchemists, who understood that the intended union of opposites that they sought could only be accomplished by the Grace of God. A sentiment shared by our Founding Fathers, even if they termed that Grace 'Providence.'
Of course we're all too savvy to buy into such a notion, having debunked it with the crude ease of adolescent thinking - yet also justly, in response to the great history of abuse that it has enabled, or at least made apparently noble.
This is a meta-issue diary; an exploration. All of these issues are tied together: the cultural war of Left and Right, the weak centrism of the mainstream Democrats, the mass system of misinformation and disinformation, the flamewars. We are as the proverbial blind men groping the proverbial elephant. And a key indicator of this, I'm suggesting, is the confusion of political right with personal freedom. A right does not make you free, whatever it is.
Which is not to say that political rights are not necessary; only that they are not sufficient. And we should avoid worshipping them as if they were. Such a fixation on rights, without sufficient interest in the responsibility attendant them, plays - I'm suggesting - into the system of authoritarian social control.
One tangible example of this is the way in which fixation on rights fractures the polity into irreconcilable groups that are then subject to control by some much smaller group in power. Chomsky has been talking about a 'Democracy Gap' for years; by this referring to the difference between the values of the culture at large and its government. How many people, for example, don't want affordable health care? Why can't people come together around a fundamental Common Good?
As I've said, this is an open ended exploration - an attempt to understand the dynamics that seem to make true Kurt Vonnegut's statement that "the more things change, the more they stay the same."
I leave it for anyone to make of it what they will.