CF,
That is an interesting question!
We think that freedom means different things to different generations. My generation was raised by a generation that saw the great inequities of economic depression and war close up. They, both as volunteers and conscript soldiers, had to fight for what they thought that they believed in. They saw the world in more black and white terms instead of the shades of grey that came along for my generation. When you see concentration camps and people who look like walking ghosts, it gives you a counterpoint to what not having freedom and the ability to have some self determination results in.
And, the greatest generation, as they have been called, saw death in all of its many forms. They did not have the modern medicine that this current generation has developed through the efforts of the greatest generation and my generation for them. And, there just wasn’t the material wealth running around in mine and my greatest generations parents time that there is today.
The greatest generation knew that with rights, came responsibilities and, so often, they took their responsibilities seriously. They wanted to believe in progress and in a progressive state that took them far away from their beginnings amid depression and war. This new generation has none of that backdrop to refer too for a contrast. All that so many of them have seen is a great materialism that they have benefited from. And, they have come upon their definition of freedom from the basis of that materialism. And, they see no reason to have any bounds put upon their freedom. Many of them have adopted the idea that their government is intrusive if it intrudes any at all and that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights that were given to them by a generation that fought for some rights and for some responsibilities, the later of which they have either forgotten, or never knew existed at all. And, their leaders who have never known a day of want in their lives, have come to believe, as libertarians, that liberty is the crowning achievement of their existence. As we heard a person of very modest means say the other day in the soup kitchen where we hang out: No rules!
If you live in a world where there are no rules, you live in a world that is the very definition of anarchy. It is a very unsettled state that cannot long exist but, in so many ways, it exists in this nation of America today as it has never existed before. So many people in America today believe in their God given rights, or wherever else they might come from such as the bill of rights, but they have never know the responsibilities that come as a result of those rights. And, they have certainly never known the high cost that it took in blood and treasure to secure those rights for them. This new generation has purchased an army of volunteers to fight their wars for them which has broken the old and enduring tradition of the citizen soldier who reluctantly leaves their families side when the letter comes to go fight for the national good and often its survival. The leaders of this new generation would not think of volunteering for something like what their forbearers often involuntarily did as an obligation to secure their freedoms. They would prefer it be handed off to those who may have spent a childhood playing computer war games who now have the opportunity to really kill those that they are so easily taught to hate. And, so, now the leaders of this new generation are isolated from the horrors of war that the greatest generation now hold as horrible fading memories as they pass away from the scene.
The leaders of this new generation believe that if they can limit the ability of their government to affect their lives that they will have advanced their freedoms. In many ways they are like the leaders of the mobs who ruled the French Revolution for a time before Napoleon arrived on the scene and restored order. This new generation and their leaders like a state of anarchy as they oppose a restrictive government who is, in reality, only fighting a rear guard action on behalf on those who did fight the great battles that gave this government its legitimacy. It is a legitimacy that is being destroyed each and every day that another older American who fought the great war dies and is replaced by another child who sees the wonder of themselves as they look into the mirror at themselves and their perceived greatness. It is a great shallowness and a democracy that is based on rights and responsibilities can not long stand in the face of it.
And, to answer your question: today there is very little difference in so many American eyes between freedom and anarchy. They just don’t know it yet!
The generation who is coming to power in this nation today is isolated from the past as it has never been isolated before. And, the leaders of this generation are taking great advantage of that isolation to advance their very selfish and questionable agendas. They use the constitution as a club to advance things such as limited government and the right to own guns as they raise a generation that knows less about the document than any generation has ever known before. They are destroying a primary education system that has always been the great strength of this nation and replacing it with a confusing multiplicity of outlets that are, at their base, further isolating so many Americans from one another. And, they are teaching things such as creationism and anti science that the greatest generation and the one who followed after it never would have espoused.
This nation, in our opinion, is already in a state of semi controlled anarchy and is moving rapidly toward a state of uncontrolled anarchy that will be replaced by something that so many who are passing from the scene each and every day do not want to contemplate. If those like those who surrounded
George W. Bush get their way, America will become Amerika, and will be a problem for the entire world to deal with somewhere just down the road. Out of anarchy usually comes nothing good and that is exactly, in our opinion, just where this nation is heading!
IOVHO,
Regards,
Joe
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