Five questions about Freedom

1. What does it actually mean to be free?

Is freedom simply the right to make our own choices without interference, or does it also include having the opportunities and resources necessary to exercise those choices?

I think freedom, from even a philosophical and psychological standpoint, starts with us realizing that we have the ability to make our own choices and decisions with or without interference from external forces. In America, we should be able to live in a country where we can make decisions freely for ourselves without worrying about somebody else coming and taking away that freedom from us.

But there’s also that piece of it where you have to ask the question: how much freedom should a single person have before it starts to interfere with or cause harm unto their fellow citizens? In those cases, that’s where laws and regulations come into play, which also leads to the question: how much should the government play in regulating those behaviors that one person might practice that could harm another person?

The second part to that question, though, as far as whether freedom includes the opportunities and resources to exercise our behaviors, I believe that we should all live our lives with the thought of contributing to the common good of our fellow Americans so that we can all cooperate and be successful together. I don’t think freedom is about living your life isolated from others and not caring what happens to our neighbors and community.

There are going to be some people who have that philosophy, but I think freedom is an exciting opportunity that allows us to work together and exercise free enterprise that leads to the invention of new services and products, or we can exchange value with one another. And sometimes we may not have the resources we need, but having the opportunity to be resourceful is important.

2. Where does one person’s freedom end and another person’s freedom begin?

When two people’s freedoms conflict, how should we determine whose rights take priority? Who gets to decide what constitutes harm to another person?

I think that’s a very interesting question because most of us would agree that individually we should have the freedom to live our own lives, but that there should be boundaries for the sake of other people that we respect.

The complexity of that is when you have to wrestle with the tension of what happens if the actions of our freedoms interfere with or cause harm to another person’s livelihood. I think we’re seeing that in our country today, where people’s rights on all sides of the political parties are being challenged due to the idea that they are causing harm to other people’s rights.

Two common examples are people who believe in the right to bear arms and want the freedom to carry a firearm in public places with no intent of using it to harm others. In that situation, you have others who don’t feel comfortable with that and feel like it increases the chances of crime taking place through shootings in public places. So there’s pushback on the right for people to carry weapons in public places because of that fear.

On the other end of that spectrum, you have people who believe that ministers should marry a gay couple regardless of their religious beliefs, or that we should allow LGBTQ people into restrooms of the opposite sex. In that situation, LGBTQ people feel like they have the right to choose whatever restroom they want, while another group of people feel like this is harming their children and infringing on their families’ safety.

I think it’s not a black-and-white answer because there’s a little bit of nuance somewhere in the middle of that. I think this is where our core value of Truth comes into play, because we must be willing to ask the difficult questions. Is there a higher chance of crime and shootings happening in public places where open carry is allowed? Is there a higher chance of young children being sexually assaulted from transgender people going into the public restroom of their choosing? Are there any other facts that we must be aware of that could be causing harm in either of these situations?

What both parties tend to do is defend one side and attack the other person’s viewpoint. But it is a question that we have to wrestle with: where does one person’s freedom end and another person’s freedom begin? I think it’s important that we continue to wrestle with that question and consider the different facts, the truth, and the data as we have those conversations.

3. What responsibility does government have in protecting freedom?

Should government’s primary responsibility be to protect individuals from interference, or should it also actively create conditions that allow people to experience greater freedom?

I think the government plays a very important role in protecting and standing up for its citizens’ freedoms. The challenge in a free enterprise society like ours is that it opens the door for people to test the boundaries of what they can do toward other people.

We’ve seen that in our history, where lawbreakers ran wild and threatened the good and well-being of the local community. The part that government plays is definitely creating laws and enforcing those laws for the well-being of its citizens.

But I think the most important part is working with its citizens on local and state levels, hearing from them on how to create the best legislation, one that gives citizens the power while the government takes on the least amount of power possible. I think it’s important for the government to regulate and to create the necessary systems in which our society can work, and when those regulations aren’t followed, there need to be certain consequences.

There have been times in our history where the government has had to step in and regulate different behaviors from individuals because they were causing harm to others. For example, in the late 1800s and early 1900s, employment had very minimal regulation as far as how many hours employees were required to work and even the age of the employees. This led to many adults overworking themselves seven days a week, often in unhealthy environments and factories that were causing health issues. It also led to many children having to work the same amount of hours, and it caused riots from employees toward their corporations. In these situations, the government stepped in and passed legislation that regulated work hours, conditions, and age restrictions.

I think we as Republicans, Democrats, independents, and other parties would look at those incidents and agree that the regulations were necessary, although back then I think the parties would have had a stronger disagreement with each other.

Then you have situations like what we experienced with COVID-19 in 2020, where the American people were asked to practice social isolation, wear masks, and ultimately take a vaccine because they were told it would help avoid the spread of the virus. In the beginning, the majority of Americans from different parties cooperated with that endeavor. But over time, that cooperation was challenged by different data and facts on how helpful the vaccines would actually be, how helpful social distancing and wearing masks actually were, and whether social isolation was causing a traumatic mental health crisis from people not being able to interact with each other. Since then, there’s been evidence that some of that is true, and at the time, one group of people felt like their voices weren’t being heard when new facts and data were being introduced. Doctors on the other side of the argument weren’t allowed to share their opinions and were getting canceled and their accounts removed from social media. Because of that, I think many Americans lost trust in the other side of the political aisle. And of course, the other side felt like that group of Americans didn’t care about the health and well-being of the community and were content with spreading the virus even if it meant more deaths.

So I think in those particular situations, it’s important for conversations with all different views to be able to happen, and happen quickly and extensively, in front of the public. We should be able to have all professionals and experts be part of those kinds of conversations and invite the community to come in, listen, and form opinions about them in a respectful way, so that government can introduce the best legislation without one administration coming in and making one group of people feel forced to do something that might violate their freedoms.

4. Should freedom ever be sacrificed for the common good?

Are there circumstances where limiting individual freedoms is justified to protect public safety, justice, or the well-being of others? If so, who determines when those limitations are appropriate?

I think those are important questions to ask, and it kind of goes back to our previous dialogue about how much power the government has. I would say in some cases yes and in other cases no, and we should take each situation with discernment and dialogue from government leadership as well as the local citizens.

There have been times when certain neighborhoods of houses were considered unsafe because of the geographical integrity of the land they were built on, and those houses had to be demolished, which required the homeowners to be forced to sell their houses and relocate. In those cases, you have to ask: is this a situation where the government has the right to force these homeowners to move because the geographical location could cause harm not only to them but potentially to the surrounding neighborhoods? I would say that situation is on a more extreme scale of the nuance we’re talking about here.

But then there are other situations where one person may want to control another person’s freedoms, behaviors, or lifestyles and make the legal case that the other person’s actions are causing some kind of harm, whether physical, mental, or emotional, and that the other person should give up their right so that they can feel safe or so that the common good can be impacted.

I think we confuse freedom with being recklessly rogue. There are people who may want to behave and act however they want at the cost of the well-being of another person, but that’s not what freedom is. Freedom is about living our lives in pursuit of happiness and success for ourselves, collaborating with each other to exchange value that makes an impact on the overall community, while not creating harm to others.

Within that realm, there also needs to be a responsibility for each of us to recognize that there are some things we allow others to control in us when we should be detached from those other people’s actions. Freedom is about not caring what other people say or feel about us and taking ownership of how we respond to the thoughts and ideas of other people. It means that we have the freedom to speak our own minds when those particular ideas are being talked about, and that we have the right to disagree and share why we disagree with them.

5. Can we genuinely value freedom if we only defend the freedoms of people we agree with?

How willing are we to defend the rights of people whose beliefs, lifestyles, or decisions directly contradict our own personal values?

I don’t think we can genuinely value freedom wholeheartedly if we are only willing to defend the freedoms of people within our political parties or religious or ideological groups. In order for freedom to work with everyone, we have to be willing to stand for the rights of everybody. I think that’s challenging for many Americans because it is more intuitive to stand alongside those who see everything the way we do when it comes to our policies and legislation. If something comes into law that we disagree with, I think it’s important that we stand for the rights of those who are adhering to the law.

But if we disagree with any of those laws, we also have the right to challenge them and invoke the cooperation of the community to adjust and amend those laws. I think that’s the beauty of our country: we have a place where we can dialogue and debate important issues, we can disagree with one another, and certain laws will come into legislation. We can either choose to attempt to adjust and amend those laws and communicate with others in the community why we think those laws should be adjusted, or abolish those laws altogether if we do not feel like they are working. But I think it’s important that we do stand for those people’s rights while those laws are active. I think that’s our responsibility and duty as fellow Americans.

I think it’s also important to note that as we stand up for different laws and debate new laws or amendments to old laws, we should always start from a disposition of respect for everybody. We should start with the truth of the facts and data that we’re testing out surrounding those laws, and we should avoid demonizing those who disagree with us as much as possible. We should avoid attacking each other’s characters and motives when we don’t know what their character and motive is, and focus on the facts, the data, and the truth before us.

All of this should be done within the context of respect and upholding the opportunity for everyone to experience freedom to the highest extent possible.