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Current Events » in reply to re: What price freedom/

Freedom vs Lives is not a valid equation
azstrummer — (archived)

Let's see. I see the current administration's policies as a threat to American freedom as it's defined in the Constitution. By putting things into this black and white world of equating the attainment of freedom with the taking of lives it almost seems to me people are advocating violent rebellion to deal with the political differences I have with Bush and company. That would be pretty abhorrent to most civilized Americans as well as to me.

No society seems to operate with complete freedom. Generally, due to human greed and excess, absolute freedom leads to societal chaos and exploitation. I would imagine that the Iraqi citizens had individual notions about how free or restricted they were depending on their political affiliation and their lot in life. That's not saying they had a free society by the classical definition but I'd guess many in the country took the good with the bad and decided that no taking of lives was necessary to have satisfactory lives.

Let's look at our own Revolutionary War and the thousands of lives that were lost in the pursuit of freedom. Afterwards we certainly lost the domination of the British but individually many people's lives did not change drastically. Townships were often run by cruel political or religious leaders that severely limited individual expression. Slavery went on and even flourished. The native Americans certainly didn't see gains from our sacrifice. Perhaps the perceived freedoms we have today didn't come from the bloodletting of that war but from a natural human societal evolution. Canada was under the same colonial rule we were then but didn't revolt and yet their society today is in many ways more free from the government interfering in personal lives than ours is.

All I'm saying is that this conversation of trying to pin a figure on how many lives can be lost in the pursuit of freedom is a moot point because history seems to show no direct correlation. The cause and effect formula simply has too many variable to it to ever quantify such a connection.

Art

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