A Few Words on Freedom

With the 66th anniversary of the bombing of Pearl Harbor coming on Friday I decided to post this. It was originally posted on my former blog on 3/29/07.

Let us start this post out with me laying some things bare about myself. I have issues. State it anyway you wish, but I have issues and if my other posts have not clued you into that fact yet, then I feel quite confident that this one will. This post will probably also offend you. Apologies will be issued for neither of those facts. Moreover, this post will most likely touch on another topic other than just freedom, namely equality. For, it seems self-evident to me that these two concepts are inextricably related and to attempt to reverse the tethering that is present would not only be unwise, but also irresponsible.

So, then what is freedom? I'm sure that we could all give nice succinct answers to this question that may have something to do with the lack of any oppressing forces, etc. However, I would like to take the long way before we arrive out our destination of freedom, if indeed we do end up at freedom. The first thing that I must say about freedom is that we do not value it. We purport that we value it above all else, but our actions scream another story. For instance, just 2 days ago Serena Williams (world-famous tennis player, black, sister of Venus Williams) was at a match and there was a man in the stands that was heckling her. By all accounts of the story all he did was heckle. He was very much annoying and disrespectful, but all he did was heckle. Nothing he did or said put Serena Williams or any of the other fans in any danger whatsoever. Yet, Serena stopped play and spoke with the Chair Umpire and forced them to remove the man and disallow him from ever returning. Since when is heckling disallowed in sports?

Now, you may be asking what he said and that is a fine question to ask. Most of it was the usual heckling though he did say: "…hit the ball into the net like any Negro would." It was this word that set Serena off. As she was sitting on her bench waiting for the officials to remove the man she was quite hysterical saying that the man could be a stalker and other things like that, but I was absolutely floored when I heard the following words come out of her mouth: "I'm an African-American and I won't stand for that!" WHAT?! Who does she think she is? Is she even really an African-American? Are any of her ancestors from Africa? (New note: Williams was born in Saginaw, Michigan) If they are, then fine, but what does her being an African-American have to do with anything? The man said a word that offended you and you expect the law to make him stop. Doesn't the First Amendment of our Constitution guarantee freedom of speech? Well, apparently it doesn't. It guarantees free speech when it doesn't offend someone, or better yet, when it doesn't offend a certain group. If I am on that court and someone of another race is heckling me and calls me something meant to be derogatory, such as maybe insinuating that my ancestors were slave owners or calling me a "cracker" or saying that I was a Nazi, and I asked for that person to be removed because "I'm a German-American and I won't stand for that," I would be laughed at (I am German-American by the way, my biological father was full-blood German. However, another issue I have is that I am an idiot if I demand that people call me German-American instead of Caucasian or white. I do not expect that everyone will know my heritage when they see me and neither should blacks expect others to know their's when other see them.

When will this country realize that not every single black person is of African descent? In fact, quite a large number of them are from Haiti and other countries south of us, yet they still insist on being called African-American so as to preserve something about their ancestry when really they have thrown it away by not taking the time to learn their real ancestry). We only value freedom when it is beneficial to us and the same is true with equality. Women and blacks (Please let it be understood that the generalizations do not mean that I truly think all women and all black people are the same and think and act the same way, for I do not. However, the generality is necessary for the ease of the flow of the language used herein) have desired equality for some time and I have absolutely no problem with them having it, but if they have it, then it needs to be real. Women say that they want equality, but they don't want to be drafted. Blacks say that they want equality, yet they expect for certain words to be outlawed when used against them, but not when they use those same words amongst themselves. Also, they expect laws to protect them from being offended, but do not want others to have similar laws. I understand that the word 'nigger' evokes many emotions and is often used in a derogatory sense, but what about all of the other racial slurs directed against Asians and Mexicans? No one is up in arms about those being used. People simply realize the idiocy of the persons using those words and they move on with their lives. So I have to ask: "What do we value most?" I believe that at this point in our history we value not offending black people.

Now, you may vehemently disagree and that is perfectly acceptable. I do not think that has always been our value (I know I am stating the obvious). Our country was founded by those who said that they desired religious freedom, but that was a sack of shit. They didn't truly value religious freedom any more than we truly value freedom of speech today. For, if they did, then they would have been okay with those persons who desired to practice religions other than theirs, but I think that our history tells us quite well, that that was not the case. The Japanese Internment camps that followed the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941 show me once again that our country does not value freedom. We value plenty of things – power, safety, comfort, not offending certain people, security – but to say that we value freedom seems to be to be a bold faced lie! The same is true with equality. Our Declaration of Independence says that "all men were created equal." And in that statement asserted quite the opposite, for they were intentional in making it only read "men" as opposed to "men and women" and they did not even follow through with what they had written. For, they enslaved blacks for almost another hundred years after that.

Though the bulk of this blog may seem to be directed at one group, please hear my heart when I say that it is not. It is directed at everyone in this country, be they black, white, Hispanic, Asian, male, female, young, old, in between. It doesn't matter to me. What does matter is that we do not value freedom, yet lie to ourselves and the rest of the world about it constantly. The mere presence of government shows that we made the decision a long time ago to give up certain freedoms for safety and security. I am not saying that all of this is wrong, what is wrong is when we scream and yell, often like children, for freedom and equality when freedom and equality are not what we really want. We want power. We want safety. We want security. We want people to agree with us. We want to not be offended. We want many things, but I cannot say with any confidence that true freedom and true equality are among the desires of our hearts.