Freedom: Ownership vs. Stewardship

Any government that would take away the people's right to buy inefficient cars and light bulbs is a horrible, tyrannical institution. This is what we are hearing from those who oppose programs that would phase out SUV's and incandescent light bulbs.

Because somebody way back when must have died to give us those freedoms, right?

So what kind of freedom are we talking about? The freedom to make bad choices? Actually, yes, I believe that we do have and should have that freedom. This is why it's called a "democracy" (even though we actually live in a "republic"). But it is one thing to have the freedom to make mistakes; it is quite another to demand that we, as a nation, refuse to learn anything from the consequences of our mistakes.

So let's look at an analogy: Imagine a young man who goes to a bar, drinks too much, gets in a fight, and hits another man in the face. However, instead of merely bloodying his nose, that punch actually kills the man. Our young friend would now be held legally responsible for the murder of another human being - even though he never meant to kill anyone. He had the freedom to go to a bar and drink as much as he wanted, but when he abused that freedom and wound up killing someone, even though society gave him the freedom to drink at a bar, we still hold him responsible for how he uses that freedom, and he will spend some of the best years of his life behind bars. This is because we understand that when someone use their freedom in a way that harms others, the responsible and adult thing for society to do is to take away that freedom.

Similarly, if we look at the deadly effects of air pollution it is easy to see that we are all collectively drunk with dirty energy, and as a result, tens of thousands of people die of pollution-caused illnesses every year. It is a tragedy that we have gotten to a place where the very air we breathe is killing us, but it is unconscionable that we continue to do it, now that we know the causes and have available solutions. That some people call this kind of collective murder a "freedom" is an incredibly twisted understanding of freedom.

Of course, the modern idea of freedom has its roots in centuries of history, leading all the way back to the idea of personal property. For most people, owning personal property means that you not only have the right to use and profit from your land and possessions, but also to abuse and destroy them, if that is what you want to do. This is freedom without responsibility, ownership without stewardship, power with no regard for consequences.

What is so ironic is that such irresponsible behavior and rhetoric comes from members of the "Party of personal responsibility." Republicans have used this refrain to justify cutting and blocking aid for poor and minority citizens, the idea being that the onus of helping the poor falls on the poor themselves, that they should take responsibility for their lot in life, pull themselves up by the boot-straps, and "make it" in this great country of ours. But as we can see from the way those same Republicans eschew responsibility for the effects of old, inefficient, unnecessarily dirty technology, this mantra of "personal responsibility" is actually just a ploy to avoid taking any personal responsibility at all. Yes, the poor often shoot themselves in the foot when it comes to making the kinds of choices that will lift their economic prospects, but they also face daunting institutional disadvantages to coming out of poverty, institutions that disproportionately benefit those who are already well-off. Why don't conservatives take responsibility for the consequences their policies have on the poor? For the same reason they don't take responsibility for the consequences of the pollution they create - because they are not the Party of personal responsibility, they are the Party of responsibility-free wealth and ownership.

This is what we see over and over again from our friends on the Right. They want the "freedom" to get rich, buy what they want, pollute as much as they want, consume as much as they want, and never once have to deal with "job-killing regulations" or to think about the consequences their avarice might have on others. It would be easy to demonize these people and to look down our noses at them, but to my way of thinking, they actually hurt themselves as much as anyone else, for two reasons:

1) Someday, all of this irresponsible behavior will come back to bite them where the sun doesn't shine.
2) These people are the biggest slaves of them all - slaves to their own fears and desires. How can anyone be truly happy when their hearts are full of such rot? How disconnected from all that is good do you have to be before the freedom to pollute seems more important than a child's ability to breathe clean air?

This is why the freedom to abuse power and ownership isn't freedom at all, it is slavery to our worst instincts. True freedom comes from being connected to your own goodness and a desire to see others thrive, so when you come into possession of something, you act as its steward for the benefit of all, not its slave-master for your own selfish pursuits. And when we all act as stewards for the many blessings we've been given, we can spread those blessings to others - and others will spread their blessings to us, creating a kind of synergy that is impossible to create in a greed-centered world.

That is to say, in a world of universal stewardship, we all win; and in a world of personal ownership, we all eventually lose.