Liberty
No one agrees
I was in the parking lot of the grocery store waiting for my wife to finish shopping and saw a middle-aged man loading his SUV. He wore a t-shirt with "Got Liberty?" printed in large letters. I was reminded of FDR's reelection campaign speech in Wilmington, Delaware, 1936 where he quoted Abraham Lincoln's Sanitary Fair speech in Baltimore 1864 on the varying political uses of the word, "liberty"
Here is the relevant part of Lincoln's speech:
"The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name———liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names———liberty and tyranny.
The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep’s throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as a liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act as the destroyer of liberty, especially as the sheep was a black one. Plainly the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of the word liberty; and precisely the same difference prevails to-day among us human creatures, even in the North, and all professing to love liberty. Hence we behold the processes by which thousands are daily passing from under the yoke of bondage, hailed by some as the advance of liberty, and bewailed by others as the destruction of all liberty. Recently, as it seems, the people of Maryland have been doing something to define liberty; and thanks to them that, in what they have done, the wolf’s dictionary, has been repudiated."
Apparently FDR was so in agreement with Lincoln's sentiment and comparison, that he used it twice more in closing campaign speeches in 1940 and 1944. This is significant methinks in understanding FDR and understanding the core difference between the philosophies of the economically violent and economically nonviolent of our society. Perhaps this is a way to portray the divide: when a CEO makes 400 times the salary of the average company worker; that is economic violence, that is being a wolf, a predator. It is not that the ordinary people are somehow "sheep"-like; it is that they abstain from abusing others... They do not take the wolf's career path with all of its "liberty". Not out of necessity as a cynic might claim, but out of ethical choice. Hobbes, borrowing from Plautus, famously said,
“Homo homini lupus” Man is wolf to man.
I disagree vehemently. If that were the case we would never survived as a species nor built up a civilization. We are social creatures and cooperation and harmony come naturally to us. Yes, there are opportunists and predators among us, but they are in a minority and ever shall be.
Occasionally we have the ill fortune to get a regime that takes a Hobbesian view of our country and the world. But that type of government is an aberration and by its nature cannot long endure.
Just a half hour ago I watched a very crowded, rush hour roadway stop and wait patiently for two large families of geese with teenaged goslings to cross multiple lanes. They did not cross quickly: several of the goslings were keen on the pavement. No one honked their horn (or blew it :). It was several shared minutes of what felt like humanity, which is to say, kindness. Thank you for yours, Michael.
This is perfect, Michael. Thank you for a concise analysis of our noisy, wolf-dominated moment. I'm reminded of my writing on the ubiquity of parasites in the animal world, and how human parasites are uniquely unaware of their dependence on a healthy ecology.