Presumptive nominee John McCain is back to his old ways -- speaking to La Raza and promising comprehensive immigration reform. Can conservatives trust McCain? Should we start a movement to dump him from the ticket? Let us know what you think.

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5/16/2008

Barack Hussein Obama has come unglued because of something President Bush said. In a speech to Israel's Knesset, Bush said... 

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Monday, May 19

Richard Collins - 9:30AM
Founder of the premier Hillary Clinton educational website StopHerNow.com Collins has declared StopHerNow.com’s mission accomplished and how now launched Stop-Him-Now.com to do the same to Sen. Obama.

FIND INFORMATION on how to carry The Lynn Woolley Show in your market.

LOGICAL ITEMS for Logical people. If it is not found here, it's not logical.

The Death of Talk Radio?
A politically-powerful liberal-left movement seeks to silence conservative media personalities. This book analyzes the threat from the perspective of veteran talk show host Lynn Woolley and media analyst and critic Cliff Kincaid.

Clear Moral Objectives
*Special Price*
Finally, here's a book that examines the nation's twelve big challenges in clear, logical terms -- no spin and no parsing of words.

The Last Great Days of Radio
*Special Price*
A mixture of humor, wit, and nostalgia, this memoir follows one radio career from a small station in a small market all the way to the largest radio newsroom in Texas -- and back again.

Wes Riddle's Horse Sense
October 8, 2007

Life in America is all about being free, at least that is a pervasive opinion.  People do generally come to this country looking for some kind of freedom, whether economic, political or religious.  And ask any school kid what it means to be an American, he or she will tell you it has to do with freedom.  Peel back the onion a little, however, and the talk gets confused.  Educated Americans and the civic minded might elaborate about freedom of something, like freedom of speech and freedom of the press.  If they recur to the first Ten Amendments to the Constitution or Bill of Rights, they could lay out other freedoms too that are quintessentially “American.”  A nearly unanimous opinion held by kids and adults alike is that freedom American-style (whatever that is) is pretty much a universal value shared by everyone—if people in other countries don’t have it yet, they at least surely want to.  

What Americans term “freedom” is really a compound idea, the admixture of at least three components or sub-categories: national freedom, political freedom and individual freedom.  National freedom is freedom from foreign control, the ability of a people to rule and have self-determination.  Political freedom is freedom to vote, hold office and pass laws—consent of the governed if you will.  Individual freedom at its most basic level is freedom to live as you choose, as long as you do no harm to anyone else.  All these types of freedom differ in their particulars according to which nation and which epoch in history.  In the United States, we tend to assume these three ideals of freedom always go hand in hand, but history proves the three component ideals of freedom in no wise have to be mutually inclusive.

For instance, you can have national freedom without political or individual freedom: Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea are examples.  National freedom has often served ends at odds with political or individual freedom, such as it did in Nazi Germany.  It is quite possible to have political and national freedom and no individual freedom too.  Ancient Sparta had national and political freedom, but without any modern recognizable individual freedoms.  Ironically, the Roman Empire brought considerable peace and prosperity to the world at the expense of all three forms of freedom, especially for non-Romans.  Many people preferred the security and economy of the Empire to freedom per se, because freedom in those days could be nasty, brutish and short-lived. 

From the Declaration of Independence to the First World War and its aftermath, our own country provides ample examples of the separateness of the three component ideals.  After 1776, the United States had national freedom.  Adult white males also had political and individual freedom.  White women had a considerable degree of individual freedom but limited political liberty until 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.  Until after the War Between the States, African-Americans possessed neither political nor individual freedom, and in 1857 the Supreme Court said so formally.  The soldiers of the Confederacy fought valiantly for national, political and individual freedom while defending their right to deny individual and political liberty to a considerable proportion of the population. 

Had we learned to appreciate the anatomy of freedom and the lessons of history, Americans may have avoided some crucial mistakes in foreign policy concerning the Middle East.  History demonstrates that one of the most basic human feelings is the desire for national freedom or self-determination.  You may hate your government, but if someone invades you, you may very well fight in defense of your country.  Napoleon learned this in Spain.  We should have been very skeptical of the claim that we would be welcomed as liberators in Iraq for very long.  A second lesson of history we should have pondered is whether freedom is actually a universal value. 

In fact, great civilizations have risen and fallen without any clear conception of freedom at all.  Egypt—the civilization that built the pyramids, created astronomy and medicine, did not even have a word for freedom.  Everything was under the power of the Pharaoh, who was god on earth.  Ancient Mesopotamia had a word for freedom, but the word had the connotation of something an all-powerful king gives you, like exemption from taxes, which he can capriciously take away.  It can be argued that the Middle East from the time of the pyramids until today has had no real concept of freedom, at least none akin to our own. 

While terms in the Declaration of Independence are stated as universals that apply to all peoples, we should not imagine the likes of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson would have made the same mistakes.  They could have told us about freedom, about its sub-categories and sub-subcategories in detail.  They could have waxed eloquent about history right up to their own day.  They had no illusions about the fragile and complex nature of freedom or the uniqueness of the American experiment.  History formed their framework of knowledge.  Americans today may appreciate their Constitution without knowing too much about what’s in it or about the concepts that lay behind it.  Nevertheless, one wonders how much longer freedom itself can last, with the fuzzy thinking of this arrogant age. 

_____________________
Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors
from West Point and Oxford.  Widely published in the academic and opinion
press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican
Primary.  Email: wes@wesriddle.com.