“The Use And Abuse Of Freedom”: The Elements Of Words That Explain The Mess We’re In
Last week David Brooks had an interesting column about a couple of studies that surveyed key words in a body of writings. (No, we’re not talking about tax examiners looking for Tea Party among applications.) He describes the “two elements” that he found:
“The first element in this story is rising individualism. A study by Jean M. Twenge, W. Keith Campbell and Brittany Gentile found that between 1960 and 2008 individualistic words and phrases increasingly overshadowed communal words and phrases. That is to say, over those 48 years, words and phrases like “personalized,” “self,” “standout,” “unique,” “I come first” and “I can do it myself” were used more frequently. Communal words and phrases like “community,” “collective,” “tribe,” “share,” “united,” “band together” and “common good” receded.
“The second element of the story is demoralization. A study by Pelin Kesebir and Selin Kesebir found that general moral terms like “virtue,” “decency” and “conscience” were used less frequently over the course of the 20th century. Words associated with moral excellence, like “honesty,” “patience” and “compassion” were used much less frequently. The Kesebirs identified 50 words associated with moral virtue and found that 74 percent were used less frequently as the century progressed. Certain types of virtues were especially hard hit. Usage of courage words like “bravery” and “fortitude” fell by 66 percent. Usage of gratitude words like “thankfulness” and “appreciation” dropped by 49 percent. ”
The question I have–and would have tried to answer, had not my attempts to find these studies through google led me to data bases that thwarted my efforts to access the pieces–is this: how did the word `freedom’ do?
One of the biggest changes in my adult life is what has happened to freedom, not just as a word, but as a value. It is, it seems to me, the only value Americans put much stock in. Equality, in which immigrants and labor unions invested so much energy and support and devotion during the first part of the 20th century, now seems a hostage of identity group politics. Freedom is it–it’s what we appeal to for everything, from gay marriage to Wall Street shortcuts to environmental pollution to smoking pot to war (Free Kuwait! Iraqi freedom!) These are the years of freedom triumphant, and boy, if anything explains the mess we’re in, it’s freedom. Try arguing for something in terms of Community, or Sacrifice. Go to Congress and make a case for Majority Rule, and you’ll get an earful from Ted Cruz and Rand Paul about the freedom of the minority to thwart the majority.
More than anyone, Ronald Reagan put us on this path. I can’t imagine a figure who would be able to get us to rebalance our values.
By: Jamie Malanowski, Washington Monthly Political Animal, May 26, 2013
“Hell Isle”: A Commonwealth Of The United States Where “Funny Talkers” Need Not Apply
Check out what the loopy Ayn Randroids are up to now. In long-suffering Detroit, a libertarian real estate developer wants to buy a civic crown jewel, Belle Isle, the 982-acre park designed by Frederick Law Olmstead—think the Motor City’s Central Park—and turn it into an independent nation, selling citizenships at $300,000 per. Not, mind you, out of any mercenary motives, says would-be founder Rodney Lockwood—but just “to provide an economic and social laboratory for a society which effectively addresses some of the most important problems of American, and the western world.” (Sic.)
Address how? Well, let’s say I’ve never seen a document that better reveals the extent to which, for libertarians, “liberty” means the opposite of liberty—at least since Rick Santorum held up the company town in which his grandpa was entombed as a beacon of freedom.
An aspiring Ayn Rand himself, Lockwood has set out his vision in a “novel,” poetically titled Belle Isle: Detroit’s Game Changer. Although he’s actually done the master one better, by imagining he can get his utopia built. Last week he presented the plan, alongside a retired Chrysler executive, a charter school entrepreneur (who apparently enjoys a cameo in the novel running one of the island’s two K-12 schools) and a senior economist at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, to what The Detroit News called “a select group of movers and shakers at the tony Detroit Athletic Club,” who included the president and CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Never let it be said Rod Lockwood (perfect pornstar name? You be the judge) hasn’t thought this thing through. The plan is foolproof: “Belle Isle is sold by the City of Detroit to a group of investors for $1 billion. The island is then developed into a city-state of 35,000 people, with its own laws, customs and currency, under United States supervision as a Commonwealth.” Relations with neighboring, impoverished Detroit will be naught but copacetic, and not exploitative at all: “Plants will be built across the Detroit River…. with the engineering and management functions on Belle Isle. Companies from all over the world will locate on Belle Isle, bringing in massive amounts of capital and GDP.” (Because, you know, tax-dodging international financiers of the sort a scheme like this attracts are just desperate to open and operate factories.) Government will be limited to ten percent or less of GDP, “by constitutional dictate. The social safety net is operated charities, which are highly encouraged and supported by the government.”
Although, on Belle Isle, “the word ‘Government’ is discouraged and replaced with the word ‘Service’ in the name of buildings.” Note the verb-tense slippage between present and future throughout. Lockwood is a realist.
He says what he imagines is a “Midwest Tiger”—helpfully explaining that his self-bestowed nickname is “a play on the label given Singapore as the ‘Asian Tiger.’ Singapore, in recent decades, has transformed itself into the most dynamic economy in the world, through low regulation, low taxes and business-friendly practices.”
Singapore. You know: that libertarian paradise where chewing gum is banned; thousands of people each year are sentenced to whippings with rattan canes for such offenses as overstaying visas and spray-painting buildings; the punishment for littering can be $1,000, a term of forced labor and being required to wear a sign reading “I am a litter lout”; and where pornography, criticizing religion, connecting to an unsecured Wi-Fi hotspot and (yes!) over-exuberant hugging are all banned. Freedom!
What are the Commonwealth’s other inspirations, you ask? “The country of Liechtenstein, which, although a monarchy, has a very effective government.”
And indeed, just like little Liechtenstein, Belle Islanders will enjoy protection from America’s security umbrella: “As a Commonwealth of the United States…Belle Isle pays its share of the U.S. defense budget, based on its population. It amounts to about $2,000 per person per year.” In fact Belle Islanders can expect nothing but fiscal gratitude from citizens of the United States. Yes, “a citizen who lives on Belle Isle who operates an investment fund with world-wide customers will pay no income taxes” to the United States. “Won’t the US lose a lot of tax revenue?” Oh, ye of little libertarian faith. “It will probably gain revenue…. Entrepreneurs from around the world will locate on Belle Isle and headquarter there, but often have their plant operations in the US because the island is so small. Businesses producing products in the U.S. will still be taxed at US corporate rates…. the influx of capital and jobs will be staggering…. Detroiters will see this vision as the answer to their prayers, and how could the federal government deny Detroit a chance to turn itself around, accelerate its re-birth, all at no cost to the taxpayer? How could they deny this long standing population of over 700,000 their first real shot at the American dream.” (Sic.)
Want in? Three requirements. First, of course, you need to come up with $300,000. “Will the citizenship fee pay for the purchase of any land for homes or businesses on Belle Isle?” “No—that will be an additional cost.” But look what that $300,000 buys you: “One of the core values” of the new nation, Lockwood writes, “is respect for all its citizens, no matter their station in life.”
Second: approval by the “citizenship board.” (Freedom!) Third step: “a command of English.” Because nothing says “respect for all its citizens” like “funny-talkers need not apply.”
And yes, it’s true, Lockwood proposes the “Rand” as the name of Belle Isle’s currency. But I’m sure he means Rand as in “Ayn Rand,” not, you know, Rand as in “South Africa,” the former home of a social system that functioned by surrounding minority enclaves of affluent whites with a reserve army of impoverished and disenfranchised blacks. Not like that at all.
What could go wrong? What’s the downside? After all, writes Lockwood in the section of his FAQ asking, ‘What is Bell Isle used for currently?”, “It is uninhabited and functions as a public park.” Just like that dead zone between 59th and 110th Streets in Manhattan.
You can sign up for updates on the project here. Although, take note, in order do so you have to give the organizers your phone number. Because, you know… freedom.
By: Rick Perlstein, The Nation, January 28, 2013
“A Renewed Alligance”: Echoes Of FDR, President Obama’s Inspiring Address Links Freedom With Security And Dignity
So much for the “Grand Bargain” – or at least for the not-so-grand gutting of Social Security and Medicare that the “very serious” thought-leaders of Washington political and media circles have always found so appealing. Whatever President Obama may have contemplated up until now, his second inaugural address, delivered yesterday on the steps of the Capitol, bluntly repudiated Republican arguments against the social safety net – and forcefully identified those popular programs with the most sacred American values.
“We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity,” said Obama – not only because it is the responsibility we have to each other as human beings, but because security and dignity, for every man, woman, and child, are the existential foundations of freedom.
“For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn,” he said. “We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss or a sudden illness or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative. They strengthen us.”
In a modern nation, suggested the president, those commitments are indeed fundamental to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. This is essentially the same message articulated by Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his 1941 “Four Freedoms” State of the Union address, which included employment, social security, and health care as defining aspects of a truly democratic society.
Every liberal and progressive (and presumably every conservative and wingnut, too) recognized that moment as renewing Barack Obama’s allegiance to principles that have sustained the Democratic Party since FDR. Far from undermining freedom, enterprise, and productivity, as right-wing propaganda insists, the president argued that those guarantees – still cherished by the overwhelming majority of Americans — have strengthened the nation.
Obama acknowledged the financial problem that rising health care poses for Medicare; eventually, he said, the federal budget must be stabilized, with “hard choices” ahead. Yet that objective will not be achieved, he pledged, by undoing the ligaments of security and liberty that American leaders have stitched together over the past century, nor by pitting younger people against their parents and grandparents (as the opponents of Social Security and Medicare habitually attempt to do). He pointedly rejected “the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future.”
Precisely what the president means when he talks about hard choices should be revealed next month, when he will no doubt feel politically obliged to discuss how to reduce the deficit in his State of the Union address. Troubling signals have emanated from the White House that he might accept sharp and unnecessary cuts in Medicare and Social Security to achieve the “grand bargain” – which Washington’s conventional wisdom often defines as the only legacy worth pursuing for him.
Indeed, Obama has sometimes appeared to be listening when such very serious types, the over-privileged and under-informed, complain about burdensome “entitlements.” Those worthies might well have assumed that he would ultimately implement their mindless, heartless, and destructive proposals.
But in yesterday’s inspirational new beginning, this country’s 44th president set forth a very different expectation, promising hope and not disappointment to the people who re-elected him. The responsibility of his most devoted supporters will be to hold him true to it.
By: Joe Conason, The National Memo, January 21, 2013
“Wide Latitude To Jackassery”: Imagine If The Government Started Policing Rush Limbaugh’s Facts
Today, Philip Bump at Grist passed along this interesting story about a shock jock in Australia who, after spewing some false nonsense about climate change on the air, “has been ordered to undergo ‘factual accuracy’ training, and to use fact-checkers.” Obviously, the government has no such powers here in America, but it’s a good reminder that America’s particular version of free speech wasn’t handed down from above, or even by the Founders. The words in the First Amendment (“Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press”) are very general; the contours and details of that freedom have been given shape over the decades by a succession of Supreme Court cases. James Madison didn’t have an opinion about whether it was OK for Rush Limbaugh to go on the air and call Sandra Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute,” so we had to figure out later how to handle that, and we chose, for some good reasons, to let it slide (legally speaking).
In other countries where people are just as committed to freedom as we are, they’ve come to slightly different conclusions about where the limits of those freedoms are. It’s not that they don’t value free expression, it’s just that competing values like truth and civility sometimes get weighed more heavily. We believe there are limits to freedom of speech no less than the Australians do; we just put those limits farther out. There are plenty of speech acts you can be sued or even prosecuted for, from intentionally libeling someone to inciting violence to revealing state secrets to conspiring to commit a crime.
I wouldn’t be comfortable with our government making decisions like the one the Australian government did, but we shouldn’t forget that our expansive interpretation of free speech comes with a cost. Because we don’t want the government policing the truth, we have to put up with a lot of lies; because we don’t think you have a right not to be offended, we have to put up with lots of offensive speech. There are countries where the consensus belief is that personal dignity is a value that outweighs freedom of speech, so you can be punished for offending someone. This is at the heart of why many people in the Muslim world can’t quite understand why our society would tolerate something like that anti-Muslim film, and why we can’t quite understand why they got so worked up over it, since it was just some jackass making a stupid video. Here in America, we offer wide latitude to jackassery.
There are lots of Americans who only value free speech so long as their own feelings aren’t being hurt and they don’t have to hear any speech they don’t like. But democracy is often painful and unpleasant. For instance, 18 days from now, half the country is going to be very, very disappointed with the results of the election. I have a feeling that when it happens, particularly if Barack Obama wins, we’re going to see how thin the commitment to democracy is on the part of some people.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, October 19, 2012
Mitt Romney’s “Freedom To Dream”: That Is, If You Just Forget About Reality
At this point, it appears that Mitt Romney delivers a “major” speech on the economy about once a month, apparently working under the assumption that, eventually, someone will take one of these speeches seriously. The last such effort, delivered to an empty football stadium in Detroit, didn’t go well, so the former governor gave it yet another try yesterday at the University of Chicago.
The event was largely overlooked — apparently, once-a-month economic speeches read from teleprompters on a weekday afternoon have started to bore political reporters — but the remarks were actually worth paying attention to. Jamelle Bouie described the speech as “a remarkable work of staggering dishonesty,” which struck me as more than fair.
I believe speechwriters tend to call remarks like Romney’s yesterday as “big picture speeches.” The former governor presented no specifics and offered no details about any aspect of his economic vision, but he used the word “freedom” 29 times, and the word “free” an additional 10 times — all while standing in front of six American flags — all of which apparently was supposed to distract the audience from the fact that Romney’s vision lacked all meaningful substance.
But there was something to be learned from the speech anyway. For one thing, Romney presented an economic vision that’s very conservative.
“[O]ne feature of our culture that propels the American economy stands out: freedom. The American economy is fueled by freedom. Free people and their free enterprises are what drive our economic vitality. […]
“Today, however, our status and our standing are in peril because the source of our economic strength is threatened. Over the last several decades, and particularly over the last three years, Washington has increasingly encroached upon our freedom…. If we don’t change course now, this assault on freedom could damage our economy and the well-being of American families for decades to come.
“We see this attack on our freedom in every corner of the economy.”
Just get the government out of the way and wait for “freedom” to solve all of our problems. Once we get pesky safeguards and regulations out of the way, we’ll be free to breathe dirty air and drink dirty water; we’ll be free of the burdens of affordable medical care; we’ll be free to watch Wall Street excesses rob the country blind; we’ll be free to slip into poverty into an inadequate safety net full of holes; we’ll be free of the homework assigned to college students; and we’ll be free to remain dependent on oil indefinitely.
It’s the kind of freedom that Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) will find inspiring, and working families will find crushing.
What’s more, yesterday offered a reminder as to just how dishonest Romney is prepared to be to advance his ambitions. To listen to this speech, you’d think that President Obama raised taxes instead of having cut them repeatedly. You’d think the stock market has been crushed by “restricted freedom,” instead of having soared under Obama’s watch. You’d think oil production has been sharply reduced, instead of having gone up each of the past three years.
And you’d think Obama vastly increased government spending and hired legions of new bureaucrats, none of which happened in reality.
“The reality is that, under President Obama’s administration, these pioneers would have found it much more difficult, if not impossible, to innovate, invent, and create.
“Under Dodd-Frank, they would have struggled to get loans from their community banks.
“A regulator would have shut down the Wright Brothers for their “dust pollution.”
“And the government would have banned Thomas Edison’s light bulb. Oh yeah, Obama’s regulators actually did just that.”
When Mitt Romney says “the reality is,” you can probably assume you’re not going to hear anything about reality. In this case, Romney is completely wrong about Wall Street reform; the Wright Brothers line doesn’t make sense; and the light bulb line refers to a Bush-era, bipartisan energy measure that doesn’t ban light bulbs at all.
“A remarkable work of staggering dishonesty,” indeed.
By: Steve Benen, The Maddow Blog, March 20, 2012
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