Kamala’s theme song and Donald’s theme songs are both about freedom - but not the same freedom.
Her song, Freedom, is from Beyonce’s album Lemonade. His is Lee Greenwood’s God Bless USA.
Wait, not the same freedom? There’s more than one meaning for freedom? Yes, and this confuses us, and is part of what’s tearing us apart.
What’s amiss with freedom in America?
I spent a rainy winter in a cabin in the Pacific Northwest trying to decode this. It was 2003. I embarked on this with nothing but chutzpah, an irrelevant college degree in Spanish and theater, and books by Amartya Sen, Murray Bookchin, Hegel, Kierkegaard and Wittgenstein. I felt a great urgency. I sensed that our idea of freedom was killing our world. But how?
Did someone send this to you? Want more?
America’s founding Koan
I wanted to bust one current American notion of “freedom as entitlement.”: This is a free county, I can do, say, have whatever I want (subtext: and you can’t stop me). It’s America’s get out of jail free card. I’d spent over a decade challenging consumerism as a path to freedom, "(I can buy whatever I want and if I don’t have the money, I have a credit card).
This notion, IMHO, is the core “design flaw” in our sense of freedom in America, and it’s killing us.
No, I said, consumerism makes you a corporate pawn, with your desires stoked by ads, and credit cards your enabler. And what do you get… another day older and deeper in debt. Freedom, I said, comes from knowing how much is enough. It comes from self-knowledge and choosing to invest your life energy only in what you truly value.
You are free not by what you can get, but by what you can leave alone if it doesn’t serve you.
Liberty and Justice for All
Freedom as entitlement is the liberty part of liberty and justice for all. But there’s this other freedom: justice. Freedom isn’t just doing what I want, it’s bestowed by the social contract, by laws that limit the rights of some to take away the freedom of others while still enabling the spirit of discovery and entrepreneurship. Freedom within limits. What are the minimal constraints that unleash the maximal creativity?
That’s the Gordian Knot I was trying to slice through. This is the Koan.
Then I had an Aha! Stick with me. It’s a bit dense.
Isaiah Berlin distinguished two freedoms that are the hallmark of America’s gorgeous freedom. Freedom From, and Freedom To.
I am free from domination from Kings and Religious leaders, to move away from what I don’t want. No King or Lord or Pope runs my life. I am free from oppression.
I am also free to pursue my own goals, to move towards what I want.
Creativity and drive come from these freedoms. These built America as surely as bricks and mortar.
But…
The two hidden freedoms: freedom for and freedom with
Freedom for asks what are the values that inform your exerercise of freedom. It’s not just getting away from what you don’t want or getting to what you do want.
As a conscious human, you can ask what motivates you and you can select goals that reflect your values, your moral core. Sociopaths presumably don’t have a moral sense, but the rest of us do. We have a conscience. We have people and ideals we value - and in some cases will die for. We have an internal sense of right and wrong.
Freedom with is even more mind-boggling to those who only ride on self-interest. Freedom with acknowledges that I exercise my freedom in the context of other free beings. You might include just humans. That’s plenty. More and more, we realize that nature has rights, at least animals and birds have rights to exist and thrive. What about ecosystems? This is the essence of moral freedom. We are all free, yes, but we are not free to arbitrarily limit the freedom of others. We are not entitled individuals or specific groups. We are citizens.
The correlate: I am free to be, do and have whatever I want, but I am never free from the consequences of my actions. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. I live in a relational world, and my actions affect everyone and everything, even if I can’t imagine who or what that is. Call it ethics, morals, Karma, God, nature, higher power, Wakan Tanka.
I call the first freedoms, from and to, the “freedoms that separate.” I call the second freedoms, with and for, the “freedoms that connect.”
There are 4 freedoms, not just one:
Two that separate, that give us room to grow.
And the two that connect, that put individual freedoms in a social context, that acknowledge we are part of a larger whole.
I’m am escape artist
I could recognize this because I have a long wide streak of freedom as entitlement. I bug out when I’m scared of someone or something or even myself (depression). It’s a lifelong strategy, right out of living with a family that I didn’t trust.
I could even escape while appearing to be right in front of you. Just ask my grandma - if she were alive. She’d look at me when I prattled on, shake her head and say “You little faker!”
I know down to my marrow, not just my bones, how ferocious I am as an escape artist. I first articulated this to myself about 40 years ago. I didn’t understand it and couldn’t find the source, but it was in my body, a vigilance underneath all my commitments.
I’ve said this line to every therapist who has tried to help me.
“I’m feral. I’m that wild animal that, if her leg were stuck in a trap, would gnaw my leg off.”
It takes an escape artist to know an escape artist, and recognize the big gap in the fence that the freedoms that separate offer.
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Kamala freedom
Beyonce’s chorus is this:
Freedom! Freedom! I can't move
Freedom, cut me loose!
Singin', freedom! Freedom! Where are you?
Cause I need freedom too!
I break chains all by myself
Won't let my freedom rot in hell
Hey! I'mma keep running
Cause a winner don't quit on themselves
This is the song of a black woman hearkening back to the long - and current - Black experience in America. There was no justice in slavery. There was no “for all” in the promise of liberty. Whites slave owners might be free to do, have, be and take whatever they wanted, but not slaves. This echoes down through centuries and is still the fight. “I need freedom too!”
Without the two freedoms that connect, not everyone is free.
Donald’s freedom
Here’s the chorus of Lee greenwood 1984 classic, God Bless the USA.
That I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me
And I'd gladly stand up
Next to you and defend her still today
'Cause there ain't no doubt I love this land
God bless the USA
Beautiful, but which Americans get to know they are free? Men? The original settlers or everyone? Even “this land”? And even the last line, the one we say again and again, separates. God bless the USA, but what about the billions of people in the nearly 200 other nations - does God not bless freedom on them? “for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust.” (Matthew 5:45)
One final observation
Kamala’s freedom is the long and unfinished struggle of the people to fulfill of the promise of America through Democracy.
Donald’s freedom is the freedom of an autocrat, of a Mafia Don - stick with me and I’ll make you free. Just this week (the second week in August 2024) he made off the cuff promises to his followers:
To lower energy bills by 50% to 70%
To cut federal regulations, taxes and inflation, saving each American $5000 to $7000 a year.
In other words, I promise you will be free if you stick with me, without any rigor about the consequences to American’s debt - or the environment or the future - from these promises. I’ll promise you everything you want. Oh, but not everyone. Only his voters.
In the old days with NYC party bosses it was called “walking around money,” bucks slipped to poor voters to get them to vote for you. Buying votes. And Donald is an old New Yorker in that traditions.
Kamala’s promise is to a more perfect union, where everyone matters, the willingness to wrestle with the Koan of liberty and justice for all.
Donald’s promise is for handouts to his followers - with the liars, cheats, socialists, fascist, commie Democrats left with nothing.
Help me say this better
I need your help. I know this is heady. I am trying to the describe the bones of our ideaIs. The armature on which our lives are built.
I haven’t - yet - shared the book I wrote about the ideas developed in that cabin. But it’s still in me, at almost 80, to pull this rabbit back out of the hat.
I hope to get this all down to a comprehensive, pithy, “what everyone knows” obvious few paragraphs, and then Instagram memes. It will take some work, but I am so satisfied to have taken this stab at showing the underbelly of Trump’s promises of freedom for his followers, the freedoms that separate.
Will you tell me what is clear and what is fuzzy? How you would say this?
Especially, can you tell me how the freedoms that connect and those that separate show up in your life?
Thank you. We’re all in this together, which is the freedoms that connect.
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