Musings on the meanings of Freedom and Security

by David Safier

Two major buzzwords the Right Wing uses regularly are "Freedoms!" and "Security!"

"They're taking away our Freedoms!"

"We need Security from terrorists and illegal aliens!"

Freedom and Security as defined by the Right are actually the two ends of a seesaw, a fact the Right refuses to acknowledge. When Freedom as they define it goes up, Security goes down. When the type of Security they talk about is increased, Freedom goes down. The way the Right gets around this problem is by making the implicit assumption that the only people who deserve "Freedoms!" and "Security!" are people like them, who gain their "Freedoms!" and "Security!" by taking them away from the "Others."

(A local emeritus professor and friend, John Schwartz, wrote a brilliant analysis of the broader meanings of the word Freedom as defined by Adam Smith, John Locke and some of the original framers of our country's system of government. You can read his ideas in a lengthy book review in the recent Washington Monthly. The ideas in the review are a condensation of his far longer and more detailed analysis that has been discussed nationally in high level progressive/liberal circles. My readings of his original paper and the recent book review are what got me thinking along the lines of this post, though I take the ideas in a somewhat different direction. If you want some genuinely intellectual political theorizing which is much deeper and far better thought out than mine, read Schwartz's piece.)

Here is the crux of that seesaw relationship between the Right's definitions of "Freedom" and "Security."

If people and businesses have a maximized right to their "Freedoms," meaning they can do whatever they want, whenever they want, that creates all kinds of threats to our personal Security. When you decrease  governmental laws and regulations on people and businesses, you increase the threat of dangerous personal behavior and shoddy business practices which those laws and regulations are created to protect us from.

More Security, on the other hand — protection from those people who might want to harm us — comes at the cost of our Freedom as defined by the Right, since those Freedoms must be restricted to increase our Security. If people's phones and emails can be tapped at the whim of the government in the interest of greater Security, for instance, and people can be arrested on suspicion of wrongdoing and without just cause, that's a huge threat to our Freedom.

That elusive, ideal balance of the two — a moment when the seesaw is perfectly weighted and balanced on both sides — creates a situation where people are granted enough freedom that they don't feel overly hemmed in by governmental restraints while at the same time they feel a reasonable sense of personal security. The Right, however, doesn't acknowledge the need for a balance. They maintain you can maximize both.

The Right manages to reconcile the contradictions in its call for absolute "Freedoms!"and "Security!" by defining the terms in very limited ways. "Freedoms!" means, those people the Right agrees with get to do whatever they want, while the Others — the political, ethnic and religious Others — can have their rights stomped on if they say or do anything the Right disagrees with. "Security!" means protecting the "right thinking people" from threats by the Others — the same Others who don't deserve the "Freedoms!" the Right lays claim to. In other words, the Right is granted maximum "Freedoms!" and "Security!" by depriving the Others of their freedom and security.

In the Right's definitions, "Security!" doesn't include government programs like welfare, unemployment insurance and health care. It restricts the definition of the term "Security" to protection from the "Bad Guys," who in the Right's world are primarily terrorists, immigrants and members of various other ethnic groups who might do them harm.

By limiting Security to protection from the "Bad Guys," the Right ignores the hugely important concept of economic security. If someone has no job and no access to food, shelter or health care, for that person, protection from the unlikely threat of personal danger from the "Bad Guys" gives little comfort. And when someone without access to the necessities of life has a family to look after, the genuine sense of insecurity increases exponentially.

There's a reason FDR labeled his program Social "Security." There's a reason why Reagan, when he began dismantling FDR's legacy, said he wouldn't cut a hole in the "Safety" Net. Essential components of a person and a family's Security and Safety are food security (Have you noticed that "hunger" has recently been re-labeled "food insecurity"?), shelter security and health security. Take a family's food from its table, drive it away from the roof over its head and eliminate the guarantee that family members can see a doctor when they're sick, and you have robbed them of a sense of security far more basic than concern over some distant threat that some "Other" might attack them physically.

In this broader view of the idea of Security, Security and Freedom actually work together rather than sitting at opposite ends of a seesaw. If the government's social programs — its safety net — means a person will not fear homelessness, starvation and the inability to get medical care, that person is free to make choices. For instance, someone may feel the freedom to leave a dead end job and risk starting a business or going into a new field, both of which may benefit that person's happiness and income. The freedom to explore and innovate can have enormous benefits for the country as well as for the individual. Or if someone loses a job, economic security provided by the government can free that person from paralyzing fear and allow him/her to search for new job opportunities without accepting the first bad job that comes along, and conduct that search with the kind of positive spirit that is attractive to employers.

Democrats have ceded the words Freedom and Security to the Right. There must be some way of reclaiming an expanded version of those words which echo Democratic principles, substituting hope and opportunity for the Right's use of the words to promote fear and division. How we do that, I don't know, but it should be  part of our strategy for regaining the support of those who are near the bottom of the economic ladder who benefit most from our underlying personal and economic philosophy.