Defining Freedom and Liberty Under a Perceived Neo-Fascist Government

"Those who do not know their rights and freedoms, do not understand their rights and freedoms,
or are unwilling to fight for their rights and freedoms, do not deserve the right to have their freedom."

While the title of this essay may be alarming in its proclamation that the US government could be conceived as a neo-fascist system, under the categorization of the various forms of government and how they came into being, the principles of neo-fascism are the closest to the present government's policies in restricting certain aspects of freedom and liberty. Judge Learned Hand stated that, "Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there, it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it."

The general concepts of freedom and liberty in America have been eroded by the selfish desires of the few who seemingly wish to instill certain values on the entire populace. It should be enough that people within a society have the common goals of pursuing a peaceful society, one which is self sufficient enough that it should not have to instill its will upon other societies who may not share the same values, a society which understands certain fundamental rights which cannot be given, but instead must be willed from generation to generation in an unbroken and unmolested manner. The Founding Fathers and Framers, with the eventual will of the people, tore America from the grasp of a tyrant who was bent on bleeding the resources of a colony and crushing its spirit under a yoke of servitude arisen from centuries of violently enforced fealty, oppressive taxes which if not paid resulted in imprisonment, loss of goods and death. At the same time, the Fathers understood that each human being within the newly created society, with the exception of those who were enslaved, had certain rights to be free, free from oppression, free from fear to speak out, and freedom from the general fear of living as one saw fit.

So what went wrong in America since the signing of the Declaration of Independence, since the creation of the United States Constitution, and since the forging of the Bill of Rights? What has happened to the freedom that was once enjoyed by the majority? Why did America lose its perception of liberty? Perhaps these general concepts have been swept under the rug of greed, selfishness, and the myopic derision that seeps into a society through the implementation of a fascist-like, self-interested government which has stolen freedom and liberty from the masses in the name of personal economic gain for the few and under the false premise that their freedoms must be restricted in order to protect the masses. Perhaps more likely and less conspiratorial, is that many people in America have taken for granted the very concept of freedom and liberty and through complacency in education, a societal belief that to gain wealth on the backs of others with no regard to the consequences is their right, or perhaps the majority of people in America have forgotten how to define freedom and liberty, and as such have no way to gauge when they have lost those things that were so dear to the founding fathers and subsequently dear to the populace of America.

Freedom, in its own right, is not the ability to do whatever one wants at the expense of others. At the same time it is not the belief in the right neither to travel where one wants, work where one wants, live where one wants nor to be with whomever one wishes. These concepts are the same in other countries that harbor fascist governments, communist countries and socialist countries. Many of these concepts are accepted practices in countries that harbor terrorism, dictatorships, and benevolent and malevolent monarchies alike. Liberty, in its own right, is not freedom and yet the concepts go hand in glove, because without one the other is impossible to sustain regardless of what type of government or nation in which one lives. Liberty is fundamentally intrinsic to the construct of any free society that desires to ensure that its peoples can acknowledge the freedoms with which they have been willed through the blood of others, the blood that was spilled with the knowledge that others shall benefit.

The politicians of today's America proclaim that the seeds of liberty and freedom must be sown on all the populaces of the world regardless of their respective government's desire, regardless of that nation's respective people's desire, and regardless of the way in which the world will view America's action. Selfishly, American politicians proclaim that every nation, which internally desires to have a notion of being free, should be assisted with the blood of America's people, people who have been told that dying on foreign soil somehow constitutes ensuring freedom on American soil. The mantra, 'we must fight them over there so that we do not have to fight them here', rings as a hollow testament to nationalism and ethnocentric bias which in essence declares America to have some God- given right to exist as a nation at the expense of all other nations. No individual alive today has ever experienced an invasion from a foreign power, setting aside the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, (located on the Hawaiian Islands which had been annexed by the US) as a debilitating attack after which the United States found itself embroiled in a world war on three major fronts, a war in which America would develop and use the most devastating weapon that the world had ever seen, annihilating close to 200,000 souls in two blinks of an eye, and setting aside the two attacks on the World Trade Center as a lashing out of a non-state actor whose frustration concerning America's foreign policies had reached a point that could not be reconciled by diplomatic means. (Also to be included in this lack of invasion would be the little known failed attempt by the Japanese to invade Attu in the Aleutian Islands in June of 1942.) Nearly every individual alive today, in contrast, either knows someone personally, or by association is aware of someone who has fought on a foreign battlefield, fought in the name of protecting the country from potential foreign invasion, fought in the name of defeating an ideal, which in theory works, but in practice, with the understanding that human nature will not permit such a system, communism and fascism alike, has no other future but to implode upon itself, an ideal which created such a palpable fear that politicians within the United States were willing to put people on trial for their very belief in those ideals.

While protecting its people from others ideology, the politicians, who the people believe have been placed into power for the purpose of furthering the ideals of freedom and liberty within its own borders, have created a certain failure in that: those who run the country, by the supposed virtue of its populace, have generated a false sense of how freedom and liberty should be defined. Ideology, in that it is nothing more than a concept of how a particular belief in an accepted practice is disseminated to the populace of a nation, should never be the basis for conflict for the American people, at least not as it pertains to populaces in other countries. To believe that American beliefs and values are somehow subject to the whims of other nations is to acquiesce to an ego that transcends actual accepted moral values and the concepts of freedom and liberty, and that acquiescence creates a danger to the very fabric of American society.

When establishing the Constitution of the United States, Alexander Hamilton proclaimed that, "Among the most formidable of the obstacles which the new Constitution will have to encounter may readily be distinguished the obvious interest of a certain class of men in every State to resist all changes which may hazard a diminution of the power, emolument, and consequences of the offices they hold under the State establishments; and the perverted ambition of another class of men will either hope to aggrandize themselves by the confusions of their country, or will flatter themselves with fairer prospects of elevation from the subdivision of the empire into several confederacies than from its union under one government."[1]In essence Hamilton makes the case that it is in fact the classes of citizens who are in power, who ultimately, for reasons of their own self-interested desires, which can only be attributed to the gaining of wealth and power, (for there is no other justifiable reason to attempt to destroy a nation from within), make the choice to resort to political behavior in which the end result can only be the decimation of a way of life, won on the backs of others, for the profit of a few.

Most nations begin as an idea, or a philosophy, but in time, all nations, all attempts at autonomy, will lose that philosophy, that ideal... to the desire for power and economic gain.[2] If one were to continue to believe that America was conceived under the ideals of religious freedom, the country has denigrated into a bastion of economic principle, namely capitalism. Capitalism originally was about the accumulation of wealth by individuals; now however, governments have cast their nets in the water of capitalism in order to strengthen the base of power.[3] Words like "religious freedom", "freedom of speech and press" and "right to bear arms" fall away as the nation relinquishes its original ideals and takes on the trappings of economic and military power.

The general concepts of freedom often get broken down into discussions of freedom of speech, press and religion, with the constitution of the United States being the arbitrator of these discussions, but because no one person can rightly define what freedom is for the masses, each individual should have the ability to define freedom for one's self with out the interference of others. The society in which American citizens live will not permit an individual to exercise the right's which one assigns to one's self, rather requiring the citizen to accept the definition which a few have passed down through the generations. The Supreme Court makes the ultimate determination of what constitutes specific aspects of freedom and liberty, but can not and should never, be the court of opinion on what constitutes freedom in general.

One can consider the question of slavery when discussing the definition of freedom. Slaves, whether one thinks of them as being the African slaves brought to America, or in present terms, the slave-like conditions of child labor, or even sex enslavement, eventually only know enslavement and their concept of freedom is dulled, and the only understanding that they have is that freedom simply means to be released from bondage. If one were to declare in colonial America, or even during the War Between the States, that slavery was an abomination to the moral code of the nation, some might be able to make the argument that it is in fact slavery that permits the masses the enjoyment of inexpensive goods, and to remove slavery as an institution would directly impact nearly all lives in the country. But more importantly, the nation as a whole, even those who were in favor of the abolition of the institution, believed that there was some kind of fundamental difference which would not permit, those who were forced into labor, to be integrated into the society as a whole. Even the one man who eventually removed the yoke from the necks of the slaves did not believe that they could be integrated into society. While no friend to the institution of slavery, Lincoln had no desire to free the slaves under any conditions, except for two initially. A: Give them their own land and separate them from the white population and, B: Send them back to Africa.[4]"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in anyway the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."[5]

So how would a person who has been enslaved define what freedom means to one's self? While there are few who are alive today who could definitively answer that question, there is a certain amount of speculation which can be permitted that can at least attempt to understand how the enslaved person might define the concept of freedom. Instinctively freedom tends to be defined as the ability to do as one pleases within the constructs of the society in which one lives, however, when societal restrictions proclaim that some are freer than others then one must determine how a society defines freedom. Today society defines freedom as the ability to act, in concert with societal restrictions, without the fear of reprisals from either those who live in close proximity, or the government. Yet a slave would define freedom as nothing more than the ability to make decisions and choices for one's self without fear of reprisals from those who proclaim ownership. The concept of freedom is elusive to those who can not experience, for whatever reason, what the masses believe to be their God endowed freedom. There must be an understanding of the fundamental difference between "freedom" and "personal freedoms". Freedom should be defined as the collective rights, which best suit the values and morals of a nation, that are bestowed upon a populace. Personal freedom can be defined only by each individual with consideration paid to what ones own tolerance may be for the removal of collective freedoms of the populace.

To take freedom for granted, a matter of such importance that entire nations will go to war to either protect their way of life or will fight to the death to avoid losing their way of life, is to allow those who would enslave a people to begin to tear at the very fabric of a society, rendering it impotent to defend itself and eventually that society will be in its death throes. Some will say that in this day and age to speak so dramatically about nothing more than a concept is to give too much weight to those few who would attempt to destroy this society. Those individuals should be given a dire warning that it is not a foreign power that is more likely to wish to take away the rights of a nation, but rather those who are in control at the present time.

The founders were often concerned with how power was distributed or how power was to be wielded by those in control. There was, in that time, as there is at present, a concerned class of citizenry who worried that the government, if engaged in both the economic affairs and the political affairs of the several states that a tyrannical form of government would arise. Hamilton, while not succumbing to the perceived threat, stated, "[F]or argument's sake, that mere wantonness and lust of domination would be sufficient to beget that disposition (in the federal councils to usurp powers with which they are connected) *; still it may be safely affirmed that in the sense of the constituent body of the national representatives, or, in other words, the people of the several States, would control the indulgence of so extravagant an appetite."[6]This declaration was a noble sentiment believed in during a kinder, gentler time, but evidence would show that the "wantonness and lust of domination" prior to the French Revolution was ultimately the cause of the dissolution of the Monarchy. Granted, that revolution was started by the people of France and not an elected representative of the people, there is a certain lesson that should be learned from those events. The simple lesson is that if a government becomes so corrupted that it fails its citizenship, then the people have the right to rise up and expel that government by whatever means necessary to regain those rights to which they believe they are entitled.

No empire that has ever been created has ever survived, just as no system of government that has been created has ever remained intact. While there is speculation as to why this holds true, the truth of this argument is borne out in the annals of history. From the Roman Empire to the Egyptian empire, from the Mongols to the Japanese, as well as the British, Spanish, Germanic and French Empires, all of these exceedingly aggressive world powers ended up losing their status in the world, mostly for over-exceeding their resources, but also because the people of those nations rose up from paralyzing poverty and oppression to reclaim what they believed to be their liberties and freedom. There can therefore be no wonder that the system of the United States government will implode as well.

A statement made at the Constitutional Convention of 1787 declared, "Government is instituted for those who live under it. It ought therefore to be so constituted as not to be dangerous to their liberties. The more permanency it has the worse if it be a bad government. Frequent elections are necessary to preserve the good behavior of rulers."[7] The purpose of the convention was to ensure that those in government could not become tyrants, but ultimately no one took human nature into consideration. Human nature dictates that greed will ultimately overcome any system of government, greed in the form of the desire for more power, or for more material possessions, greed that will ultimately cause those in power to create laws that eventually diminish the rights of the governed so that those in power can maintain the status quo.

Perhaps freedom can be better defined as the right to be free from those who would desire to separate the masses from their perceived definition of what freedom means. This is not to attempt to foment a revolution on a government but rather to instill, in those who would declare themselves to be without desire to neither be involved nor have knowledge of the way that one's government operates, to become involved with the political process.

Revolution in the United States is generally considered to be against the law. "Whatever theoretical merit there may be to the argument that there is a 'right' to rebellion against dictatorial governments is without force where the existing structure of government provides for peaceful and orderly change... No one could conceive that it is not within the power of Congress to prohibit acts intended to overthrow the Government by force and violence."[8] The question would have to be asked, "what if the government in question institutes policies which do not permit change or the government has become an entity which can not be altered by 'peaceful and orderly change'?

It is not one's neighbor who will be responsible for the removal of rights; it will be, in fact, certain uncontrolled factions within government which have been allowed to remain unfettered. Often the concept of how a government proceeds with removing the rights of its citizens without the consent of the governed eludes many people. This is because many do not equate freedoms with rights, tending to separate the two concepts, believing that rights can be taken away by imprisonment. While some aspect of this thinking has a grain of truth, it must be understood that even a person who is imprisoned still has many of the rights that those who enjoy personal freedom take for granted. Once those rights are taken away, freedom is automatically stripped away because the concept of freedom is contained within those rights.

The individuals who take certain rights of personal freedom for granted should consider the case of Korematsu v. US 1944, in which the Supreme Court determined that in the interest of national security the internment of US citizens of Japanese and German descent could be imprisoned indefinitely without a trial. The Supreme Court in this instance set aside three of the most important rights that Americans take for granted. The first of the rights abused, the Fourth Amendment states, "The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the person or things to be seized." The second is covered under the Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights which states in its entirety, "No person shall be held to answer for a capitol, or other wise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land and navel forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger, shall not any person be subject to the same offense twice to be put in jeopardy life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived or life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor shall private property be take for private use without just compensation". The third is laid out in the Fourteenth Amendment which declares (less section 2 which is at present not necessary for this discussion), "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It has to be understood by all American citizens, that to suspend these three fundamental rights is to in essence remove all other rights that the US Constitution grants.

Were these rights suspended for the whole of the nation, all power would belong to the authorities and create a police state where one could be subjected to all manner of laws which could include curfews, stop and search for no cause; laws which subject people to arrest for speaking out against the government, and laws that determine what the press can print and what it can not.

It would be dangerous for anyone to proclaim that the Bill of Rights, contained in the Constitution, is somehow protection against the creation of a police state in this country. It would be folly to contend that because one doesn't commit crimes that one is somehow immune to the aftermath of a suspension of the Bill of Rights. Often these beliefs are born of a failure to understand how these rights actually protect each individual while at the same time protect the nation as a whole.

While a discussion on the subjects of Habeas Corpus and the Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918 could fill volumes, it becomes necessary to briefly discuss how these acts came into being and what the effect on freedom could be if these Acts were ever implemented and sustained again in the US. Firstly, a discussion of Habeas Corpus is in order so that the impact of the Sedition Acts can be fully understood. In general Habeas Corpus is the right of the individual to be informed of what charges, if any, have been brought against him. When there is a suspension of Habeas Corpus the individual no longer has the right to that information and an oppressive government, if it desired, could imprison any individual indefinitely without cause. This would mean, as we have seen with some of the jailing which has occurred with "terrorism" suspects, that one's very association with an individual of questionable character could be construed as providing certain comforts to the defined enemy and that individual would experience not just the loss of rights, but of freedom in general.

The Sedition Acts of 1798 and 1918 were enacted in order to forbid individuals and groups from speaking out, as well as acting out against the United States Government. During times of what may be purported to be a time of national crisis, the government often reserves the right to, in essence, keep the people from questioning the motives and actions of those who are in power. As has been seen in the last few years, it is not even necessary to invoke a specific Act in order to remove these Freedom's which are guaranteed in the United States Constitution.

A couple of years after the beginning of the Iraq War, Vice President Dick Cheney was in a Shopping Mall in Eagle County, Colorado and was approached by Steve Howard and his seven year old boy. Howard declared that he found (Cheney's) policies on Iraq to be reprehensible.[9] He was arrested ten minutes later by the Secret Service initially for assault on the Vice President. The agent later requested that a charge of harassment be filed, but the Eagle County District Attorney' office refused and dismissed the charges. While the charge was not carried out, the man still lost his personal freedom for a period of time simply because of something that he said to one of the nation's leaders. This action by the government constitutes the very fabric of what the Sedition Acts were about, speak out against the government in a time of crisis and one could potentially lose one's freedom. But if a single individual can lose their personal freedom because a government entity does not like something that one has said, does this constitute a loss of Freedom by the entire populace? There is evidence that suggests that the answer to this question suggests the affirmative.

When a government is permitted, either by law, by design, or by the will of the populace, to remove personal freedoms from the few, it then has the ability and the precedent to remove Freedom from the masses. As the PATRIOT ACT was passed into law as a tool for protecting the freedoms of the United States, several unnoticed laws became a permanent part of the laws of the land. Every single one of these laws punched holes in the Fourth Amendment, but very few people cared initially. The only person to object to the attack on the Constitution was Senator Russ Feingold who made this statement on the floor of the Senate on October 11, 2001:

There is no doubt that if we lived in a police state, it would be easier to catch terrorists. If we lived in a country where the police were allowed to search your home at any time for any reason; if we lived in a country where the government is entitled to open your mail, eavesdrop on your phone conversations, or intercept our e-mail communications; if we lived in a country where people could be held in jail indefinitely based on what they write or think, or based on mere suspicion that they are up to no good, the government would probably, discover and arrest more terrorists or would be terrorists, just as it would find more lawbreakers generally.

But that wouldn't be a country in which we would want to live, and it wouldn't be a country for which we could in good conscience, ask our young people to fight and die. In short that country wouldn't be America.

I think it is important to remember that the Constitution was written in 1789 by men who had recently won the Revolutionary War...They wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to protect individual liberties in times of war as well as in times of peace.

There have been periods in our nation's history when civil liberties have taken a back seat to what appeared at the time to be legitimate exigencies of war. Our national consciousness still bears the stain and the scars of those events.

We must not allow this piece of our past to become prologue. Preserving our freedom is the reason we are now engaged in this new war on terrorism. We will lose that war without a shot being fired if we sacrifice the liberties of the American people in the belief that by doing so we will stop the terrorists.

While this treatise does not attempt to provide answers to the questions of what constitutes freedom and liberty, it does strive to cause the reader to question their own preconceived and learned notions of what freedom and liberty means on a personal level. As America enters the seventh year of the so called War on Terror and the fifth year of the Iraq War, those who do not question the loss of liberties, while supposedly fighting for freedom, may very likely find themselves held in the confining chains of fascism wondering why and how the imprisonment came about. Let there be no mistake, when a government causes the people that it serves to question its veracity, its intent, and its motivation to remove the certain assigned freedoms and liberties from its populace, that form of government can no longer sustain itself as a protector of its people. That same government can not, and should never consider itself a beacon of freedom unto the world, for the very freedom that it offers is tainted with a corruption of the very meanings of the words which it depends on to hold the rest of the world in thrall.

One must determine one's own definitions of freedom and liberty, but once that definition is set in stone it must be fought for with every ounce of energy that a person can muster, for to be lenient in the struggle to retain those freedoms is to throw away everything that the Founders and Framers fought and worked for to ensure that a tyrannical government would not come to power.

[1] "Hamilton Federalist #1" The Federalist Papers Hamilton Madison Jay 1961

[2] King, Desmond The Liberty of Strangers: Making the American Nation (Oxford University Press, 2004)

Kortunov S. V. The Fate of Russia:Several Observations On "New" Russian Identity

http://www.stanford.edu/group/Russia20/volumepdf/Kortunov.pdf

[3] Boswell, John G. PhD The Role of National Development in Determining the Policy and Structure of Education:A Study of Education as an Essential Factor in the Development of the Nation State

http://www.gwu.edu/~edpol/manuscript/contents.htm May 2000

[4] "My first impulse would be to free all the slaves, and send them to Liberia, to their own native land." After acknowledging that this plan's "sudden execution is impossible," he asked whether freed blacks should be made "politically and socially our equals?" "My own feelings will not admit of this," he said, "and [even] if mine would, we well know that those of the great mass of white people will not ... We can not, then, make them equals." Roy P. Basler, editor, et al, The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1953-1955 [eight volumes and index]), Vol. II, pp. 255-256. (Cited hereinafter as R. Basler, Collected Works.).; David A. Hollinger and Charles Capper, eds., The American Intellectual Tradition (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1989), vol. I, pp. 378-379.

[5]The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln edited by Roy P. Basler, Volume III, "Fourth Debate with Stephen A. Douglas at Charleston, Illinois" (September 18, 1858), pp. 145-146.

* Parenthetical statement has been inserted by the author... derived from a previous paragraph in Federalist #17

[6] Hamilton "Federalist #17"

[7] "Notes on the Debates in the Federal Convention of 1787 Reported by James Madison"

[8] Dennis v. United States 341 U.S.494 (1951)

[9] Brennan, Charlie Rocky Mountain News "Arrest Over Cheney Barb Triggers Lawsuit" Tuesday, October 3, 2006