Freedom and why we're so scared of it

I've been reflecting tonight and this weekend.

Freedom is clearly a better path for people to live better lives, ones where they do more genuine good, ones where they are happy, ones that are more consistent with our best and stronger liberal democratic values. After several years of thinking about this, doing this work, and living a life that takes freedom more seriously, it's so clear to me, today, that freedom and the learning that come with it are the means for thinking about and generating solutions and creating what needs to be created in the world that are the basis for lives and a world that better cares for us and those we love.

People are just scared of it, is the problem. They're scared it means a free-for-all where all their worst nightmares get realized, certain in their belief that it is the controls and repression of their freedom and the freedom of others that keeps all the boogeymen at bay.

It's a foolish notion that has animated much of human history, tragically, and animates far too much of the world, liberal and illiberal, today.

And no matter how ugly, indecent, mean-spirited, barbaric, and tragic the illiberal forces in the world are, people stubbornly and foolishly hold onto their fear that it is all the freedom in the world that makes all those ugly things possible.

It's insanity is what it is. And its tragic consequences have including tens, hundreds of millions of people dead, enslaved, imprisoned, censored, and otherwise frightened in the 20th century and for the length of humanity.

All because people so often and tragically choose fear to animate their lives rather than the possibility and opportunities that freedom provides. All because people are more afraid of the mistakes that freedom inevitably involves, whether we choose liberal or illiberal pathes, than wise and appreciative to the advantages that freedom brings.

And much, if not most, of that because of the pain that comes with failure or trouble or punishment or consequences that freedom can often bring as people learn to use it more wisely.

It's the craziest goddamn thing I've ever seen in my life. And my day job, special education - the kind of special education that is concerned with kids and people who are struggling in school and in life, distinguished from (though with some overlap with) the kind of special education that wants to help kids and people with clear, biologically-derived cognitive and physical disabilities - is the living embodiment of that craziness and the fear that it is borne of.

It is the most serious source of dysfunctional and insane behavior that the whole world is subject to. And no matter how many times we are asked to choose between a world more like Saddam Hussein's Iraq or Afghanistan under the Taliban; Communist China, Cuba, or North Korea; Palestine, Iran, Syria or Libya; Sudan, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Somalia or the Congo; Nazi Germany, Soviet Russia, Fascist Italy or any number of totalitarian or dictatorial regimes; or a world more like our own liberal democratic lives, people persistently and irrationally still far too often choose the more repressive direction.

Because they are afraid. And because they are too often led by their fears rather than by their hopes and the possibilities that freedom brings.

I don't know why people hold onto such nonsense. I am becoming more confident that they begin to let it go, over time.

And in the meantime, I am learning to embrace the freedom and the learning that make for a much stronger, happier, more grounded life for me, and potentially for others, for those who learn to embrace it.

I have work to do.

Here's to a world of less fear. And less reasons to be afraid. And the freedom that affords us that world.

Love,
Ben

More reasons to be wary of Rudy

Rudy a Lefty? Yeah, Right.

Though I have to say, that Rudy's support for school choice is one of the more genuinely liberal - meaning valuing liberty - positions that he maintains. And his support for abortion and gay rights are pretty important to me, actually, no matter how much David Greenberg's fine piece tries to minimize those positions. Rudy, as much as anything, represents a changing electorate and a liberalization of attitudes among the American people as much as attitudes by Rudy.

But this is a very good reminder, nonetheless, of the illiberal baggage that Hizzoner brings to the 2008 Presidential race and, potentially, to the White House and Washington.

How refreshing...

...to see something real get said in a university classroom.



Props to the digital ethnography from Michael Wesch and his students at Kansas State University.

"Hillary Goes for the Kill"

You heard it first from The Huffington Post:

Hillary Goes for the Kill

It's amazing.

It's as if politics is a professional wrestling match. Or an action movie. Or a day at the carnival.

Notice any substance in this coverage or in much at all in any of the discussions or debates leading up to the election? Not really. Not serious substance.

One of the many reasons I don't like Hillary Clinton. Because she's too caught up in the grudge match philosophy of American politics. She thinks too little. And she thinks playing politics like it's professional boxing is an adequate substitute. As long as you're winning, that is. It's the biggest reason I don't trust either of the Clintons, these days, with as many good things as I've had to say about Bill Clinton in the past.

Because they seem to relish the grudge match. And take way too seriously both the fighting, itself, as if one ideology or party really is going to come out on top and be recognized as the winner by serious historians, and take way too seriously their role as the truer messiahs of their parties and their causes.

I don't trust people who think that highly of themselves. And I trust them less when they have a gaggle of party faithful certain of their ability to save the world from the evil that is their opponents.

There's plenty not to like about American politics, right now. Like imperialism at the turn of the 20th century, hyper-aggressive, hyper-competitive and dominance-centered democratic politics in the early 21st century is Lord Acton's concerns about power over a hundred years ago played out all over again for an audience that is all-too-easily convinced that they are in on the gag.

Does this really look like thoughtful engagement to anyone?

I learned something different about politics in college, I suppose, in all those political science and history and philosophy and scholarly discussions. I learned it was about humble conversations around the most serious issues that we face today, with people genuinely committed to seeking out the deepest and most honest answers to the problems we experience together. I had heard it was about people putting aside their more self-centered pursuits to wrestle with problems that face all of us, some of us more than others, sadly, and seeking out the most genuine and decent and honorable and enlightened solutions for those issues.

I suppose that was naive. I suppose that the best that politics has to offer is the language and practice of predation. I suppose the best that politics has to offer is going for the kill.

I suppose Hillary Clinton has one or two things to teach Barack and me and all the rest of us about politics.

Politics is about power. And if you doubt that, just ask Stalin. Or Hitler. They'll let you in on the dirty little secret that the sweet, naive, wholesome people of Kansas just could never fathom.

Hillary Clinton is going to teach Barack Obama what people have been trying to get through my thick and quaint but foolish little soul my whole life. Cynicism is not a sin. Cynicism is just a more honest accounting of reality. And if you doubt that, just watch while Hillary Clinton pushes Barack Obama's face into the sand. And then tell me that politics is not about power, you whiny little baby.

The truth is that Barack Obama and Joe Biden and John McCain and Rudy Giuliani and all the rest of us have something to learn about power from Ms. Clinton. And she's going to teach it to us.

And if you doubt that, just wait till she steamrolls you. And then you'll know something about smart power.

And thank God we all have Hillary to teach us that lesson. Because what would we do with without that kind of wisdom in office?

We might just find ourselves expecting something better.

Love,
Ben