Ironically, although the last 15 months have been lived in masked isolation, more has been revealed to our faces than was evident before. The gullibility of the dependent masses, the tyrannical tendencies of the ruling elites, and those muted dissident voices have all been brought to the forefront. Covid-mania, race-riots, and election shenanigans have all brought opportunities for clarity for those who are paying attention.
The last year or so has been the NFL Draft Day. The tumult we’ve been experiencing at the beginning of this decade has been a turbulence and shaking to get the pieces to fall into place. The lines are being drawn and the sides chosen for whatever it is that’s coming up. We’re seeing who the teams are going to be made up of. People have been reevaluating their loyalties, switching churches, and leaving blue states for red ones. First round picks are set. Some are joining the sides later than others, and that’s why the draft has seven rounds. Some might not even know what team they’re on until the first game of the season. At that point the line will be drawn, and you’ll end up on the side where you were standing when the whistle blew.
With all the hustle and bustle as of late, it seems that the line is not drawn cleanly down the aisle between political parties or voting blocs (although those can be telling signs), but between Mob Rule Elitist Tyrants on one side and Advocates for Individual Liberty on the other. Those individual liberty advocates are made up of a hodgepodge of voting segments, putting homosexual classical liberals like Dave Rubin, political and economic libertarians like Rand Paul, conservative rationalists like Ben Shapiro, and Burkean conservatives like Jonah Goldberg on the same team. Looking like a hodgepodge is supposed to look like, the allegiances are confusing and a bit inconsistent – well, more than a bit inconsistent. And perhaps that’s okay for the time being. Churchill and Roosevelt did work alongside Stalin. They all despised Hitler, for one reason or another.
However, if Churchill started to advocate for the regime tactics Stalin used, that would be a problem. So, although they shared an enemy in the current battle, they did not share the same end which that enemy was threatening. It’s important to know the end game, and so I think it’s worth spending a few minutes contemplating why we’re on the side we’re on.
What unites these “Liberty Advocates” is just that: they value individual liberty and believe it’s worth fighting for. So far, so good. We’re all getting along on the playground. But different families can enjoy a playground together while going home to complete different households.
The rise of cancel culture, media censorship, BLM propaganda, mask-tyranny, vax-tyranny, and squeaky-wheel-gets-the-grease over lording has awakened a realization in many that perhaps individual liberty is something we should care about. The question that I think is worth pondering regarding all of this is in line with that ancient agenda lying at the depths of philosophical inquiry – why? Why is individual liberty a value we should cherish and protect?
Falling in line with outcries for individual freedom and personal choice is a certain kind of zealous Christian who cares about individual liberty because, well, because it’s good. Or is it because it’s god? Mandatory masking is an outrage because it limits our individual choices. Required vaccination is absurd because it overthrows our personal liberty. The list goes on. What is elevated above all else as the pinnacle and root of a free and prosperous society is for everybody to get to choose what they want.
That sounds familiar. I can’t put a finger on it. It almost sounds like that utopian dream in the Book of Judges.
“In those days there was no king in Israel. Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.” – Judges 21:25
In my careful study of that complex and nuanced text, it seems this informal foundation of personal choice didn’t work out too well for the Nation of Israel.
Now, before I get lambasted with accusations of my Russian dictatorial ancestry seeping through (as it does at times when I tell my kids to take off their shoes in our house), let me set the record straight. I believe the way the Constitution of these United States protects an individual’s inalienable right to life, liberty, and property is proper and in good order. Those are God-given rights, making a man a condemned sinner if he were to attempt to trespass upon these rights of another, whether he be prince or pauper, judge or robber. Individual liberty is good – as a right. But as an end-all goal, unrestricted personal choice, even though it’s a consumer’s dream, is society’s nightmare.
Too many of those masquerading in the corners of liberty, whether they call themselves conservatives, libertarians, or classical liberals, set Personal Choice behind the steering wheel and God as a hitchhiker, whom the whim and winsomeness of our choices may or may not allow to ride along. And too many Christians sit shotgun, gleefully encouraging the driver. Freedom as the foundation for civilization is sinking sand. And yet, we continue hauling in the bags. “You may not take away our guns because freedom! You may not limit gatherings because freedom! You may not censor speech because freedom!” In the name of Freedom, we war, and we fight. In response, what freedom-lovers hear is a blatant and unapologetic, “No”, perhaps even with a few vulgarities intermixed.
David French, writing for the conservative National Review, argues for freedom in letting mentally unstable trannies read to your kids in the public library. Andrew Klavan, speaking for the conservative Daily Wire, advocates for freedom for homosexuals if they want to get married as such. Tomi Lahren, formally a commentator for the conservative media The Blaze, speaks up for freedom for women to let them kill their babies if they so choose. Who’s to say? Freedom, at all costs. If you set your foundation as freedom and choice, what will you build? “Everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”
Freedom and choice are delicious fruit. But they can only grow on the tree of submission to a transcendent moral order. The root of the tree is not liberty. That’s the fruit. Liberty is found only in submission to the God who spoke the law of liberty. If you want to keep eating of the tree, don’t uproot it and plant it upside down. All you’ll get is rotten fruit and a tumbled tree.
As we embark on trying to convert third downs, score touchdowns, and defend against the other team’s plays in these culture games of ours, we need to remember where the end zone is, and why we’re even in this game. Tyranny is ultimately wrong not because it hinders our personal freedom, but because it attempts to dethrone the Lord of Liberty. Mob rule is ultimately wrong not because it threatens the freedom of the individual, but because it’s rebellion against our Maker. Christians can get carried away in all the freedom rhetoric. Its good rhetoric. But freedom is not the reason. It’s the result.
Sonja
Well stated, well thought and logical!