Export Freedom?by
Vin Suprynowicz
In his big speech last week, President Bush spoke a lot about America's mission to spread freedom. From the Left we have heard mostly complaints that Mr. Bush is hypocritical. When do we plan to liberate the Red Chinese from tyranny, they ask? Will we now side with the Chechen freedom-fighters against their Russian oppressors? (Actually, short of sending in troops, we should do exactly that. Though it's unlikely the braying naysayers actually would.) This isn't much of a debate, because it's only a debate about how to throw our muscle around. By now Bill Clinton would probably have had us in another "peacekeeping" war in Darfur, and this same chorus would be cheering him on. Actually, America was supposed to be the beacon of freedom of the world by example. If Mr. Bush or anyone else in Washington wants to advance the cause of freedom, they could start by ending the domestic "wars" on Americans' medical liberty (the war on drugs) and self-defense. Then they could follow Mr. Jefferson's advice not to "steal the bread from the mouth of labor" – simultaneously restoring our financial liberty and privacy – by repealing the income tax. The extent to which we have been trained to celebrate our bondage is demonstrated by the shrieks of terror (or instinct to ridicule) which even these modest suggestions now evoke among the self-anointed "freest people in the world." A friend went away to the war, recently – started out sleeping in a tent in fatigues and ended up being fitted for appropriate attire for a fancy dress ball in Muscat, capital of the Sultanate of Oman. There's more to the story, of course. An Omani girl was scheduled to have her hand amputated after several local surgeries had failed to deal with a virulent growth on that extremity. My friend being the kind of person chaplains ought to be and sometimes actually are, a successful medical intervention back here in the states was arranged. The hand was saved, and the Omanis wanted to say thank you in appropriate style. The Rev. Captain came home with a number of tokens of appreciation – none, let us hasten to add, of any appreciable re-sale value – one of which is an impressive book, full of impressive photos of the progress made in Oman under the rule of our great friend the Sultan Qaboos bin Said. Now, ask any American which people are more free – everyday citizens of the United States, or the residents of some hereditary Mideastern satrapy like Oman. Which people find themselves less troubled by a haughty "us-vs.-them" attitude on the part of their rulers? I would bet the almost universal American answer would be, "America, of course. America is the freest country in the world." I have not been to Oman. Probably there are things we could find to dislike there. But near the front of the chaplain's book is printed a large color photograph of men sitting on the floor waiting to take their cases before the local magistrate ... who sits on the floor with them. The magistrate has to be identified in the caption as "third from right." His clothing does not immediately give evidence of any exalted rank. He is not surrounded by clerks, transcriptionists, or law books. He does not sit symbolically elevated behind a bench. As he listens to the cases, all he holds in his hand is a fan to deal with the heat. Clad in white robes and headgear typical of the Bedouin, the men who sit on the floor next to him, their backs to the wall, waiting their turn to present their cases, do hold something in their hands, however. Name me one courthouse in America where an unarmed judge sits within arm's reach of his constituents, unafraid, as they sit waiting to speak with him on volatile matters, holding propped in their laps their well-maintained and presumably fully loaded Model 4 Enfield rifles. The first necessity of freedom is that we trust each other. Each night, on our drive home, we trust tens of thousands of our neighbors not to risk death (still the penalty for courthouse murders, coincidentally) by yanking their steering wheels and colliding with us, head-on. Every day for years, our neighbors resist this temptation. Our trust turns out to be well-placed. So who is it who taught us to immediately shriek in terror at the prospect of our neighbors being allowed to exercise the other freedoms guaranteed a free people? It is the trick of the tyrant to start by getting us to not trust each other, teaching us to assume we can be saved from chaos and mayhem only by a strong central government granted a monopoly on armed force. This was not the prescription of our Founding Fathers, who urged us to avoid entangling foreign alliances, to spread freedom not by the sword but rather by example, shining for the world the light of freedom, showing them how peaceful and prosperous could be a land of men governed with their own consent ... the kind of people who do not need to be buffaloed and overawed by the might of government, but rather could be trusted to sit down with their public officers while bearing arms. If Mr. Bush wants to set an example in the fight for freedom, when does he plan to disband all this nonsense at the airports, going back to allowing a free people to carry arms and defend themselves – given that all this metal-detector nonsense did not do a thing to prevent the events of Sept. 11, 2001, in the first place?
Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow. Copyright © 2005 Vin Suprynowicz |
