Meddling vs Nurturing

These days those who speak most vociferously about liberty seem not to know what that word means. When one looks at the actions of such people, the following fact emerges: these people seem to think that liberty means the right to interfere with the liberty of others. In other words they have decided that they (unlike pettier criminals) should not have their actions ethically regulated by a governing body, that they are somehow above what is just for the greater good. I would like to suggest an alternative view of liberty: liberty is the freedom to grow as a human being without doing harm to others, or exacting a cost upon the well-being of others. Thousands (and later millions) of people fled Europe to Canada and the United States over the last few centuries because they were fleeing disenfranchisement and/or persecution. Here, by varying and increasing degrees, immigrants of different ethnic groups and their descendants could worship or not worship as they chose, access public education, enjoy public parks, start businesses, enter higher education, pursue professional careers. And yet these freedoms were always overshadowed by the presence of racial slavery, and later Jim Crow Laws, and new permutations of educational, entrepreneurial and job discrimination. This cancer, never obliterated by even legal reforms and social education, has grown to poison the well of liberty for people of all "races". We are recycling the shackles that our forebears escaped when they fled other parts of the world to come here: economic disenfranchisement, religious prejudice, severe social stratification, unfettered elite power, reduced rights of the small farmer and entrepreneur, financially onerous licensing, oligarchic public codes, political-corporate cronyism, dismissal of social justice as a legal issue in jurisprudence, destruction of our public spaces of recreation and restfulness, hyper-militarism, the de facto indifference of legislators to the interests of he poor and the middle class. In the meantime, the places that were once sources of such oppression are now what America had once been progressing toward: the governments and citizens of Europe and parts of Asia promote and protect a humane existence for all: the freedom to be spiritual in your own way, the freedom to be able to take care of your infants and children without interference from onerous and unreasonable work responsibilities or constraints, the freedom from fearing the loss of shelter, medical care, adequate nourishment or employment, the freedom to speak truth to power, the freedom to be artistic according to one's own lights, the freedom of academia to discuss the issues of the world without threat of dismissal from the influence of special interest groups, the freedom to financially afford higher education and specialized training, the freedom to enjoy quality public education in which critical thinking and imagination are espoused, the freedom to access all pertinent information on serious global, ecological and human issues, the freedom to enjoy affordable pervasive public transportation, the freedom from discrimination in employment because of age, gender, religion. The "liberty" of a society not to care for its members is the destruction of real freedom. It leads to the complete derangement of society, cultural meltdown and the end of civilization (read your history books, folks!). What is especially sad is that this derangement in the human species is spilling over into the psychological equilibrium of the animal world: marginal wilderness lands are being seized and desperate elephants denied their food sources are now rampaging through encroaching human settlements, the denizens of housing developments that have erased forest and meadows have been attacked by swarms of birds. What is worse is that human greed for real estate is driving animals of the same species (for example, lions and chimpanzees) to begin attacking and killing each other because of severely reduced environments for food resources. The old saying "freedom isn't free" is right, but the price of freedom is not always purchased with violence in foreign wars or hounding people with increased armies of law enforcement officers and private security. Our more precious liberties are won and protected by a fully-empowered government that represents the collective will of those who cannot otherwise protect themselves and freely exercise the responsible liberties that make for a humanly decent life. The wealthy can always buy their freedom and the liberty of their will, but democracy was created to extend the freedoms the wealthy can take for granted to those of humble means. When there is true liberty for all, only the petty sociopaths enact crimes. The normal person who can find good work and see proper reward for his or her good work will always choose the honest path rather than the brief self-destructive rewards of materialistic criminality. However, when there is only freedom and access to the necessities and amenities of life for the few, the sociopathic will governs the country, and democracy withers away. So then wither also the ecosystems that are always under the mercy of such an economy of power and privilege.