WHO CARES ABOUT FREEDOM?

This piece appeared in the newspapers in early October, 2025.

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We Americans have always stressed the importance of Freedom. We’ve defined our nation as “the land of the free,” in the final words of our national anthem, written more than two centuries ago. And the United States has for several generations claimed the mantle of “the leader of the free world.” Patrick Henry earned a place in our patriotic pantheon by declaring, “Give me liberty or give me death.”

Growing up surrounded by such expressions of value in post-WWII America, I assumed that freedom was essential to the goodness of a society, and to a human life rightly lived. And I assumed that nearly all my fellow Americans shared that belief.

Now I’ve come to wonder just how much difference it makes to the majority of people. It seems that a whole lot of people are willing to become more like what the American “land of the free” always defined itself against.

We’ve watched other countries go from freedom into its opposite (call it dictatorship, authoritarianism, fascism, tyranny) within the past generation. And the people did not object. A recent article by the brilliant Paul Krugman described how both the Putin regime in Russia and the Orban regime in Hungary were popular during the early years as these dictators consolidated the power that they used in ways that make the people less free.

We can see what freedom means by identifying just what changes when a nation comes under the control of some power that can do whatever it wants and is not answerable to the people. Such regimes tend to control the flow of information, punish those who say what the power doesn’t want said, and use coercion and violence to suppress opposition.

As with the early popularity of Putin in Russia and Erdogan in Turkey, Hitler was also popular in the mid-30s as the Nazi regime imposed its totalitarian control over Germany.

What made them popular, Krugman explains, is that in all those cases the population was enjoying improving economic times. Freedom was gone, but prosperity was growing. And that combination was apparently good enough for a great deal of the populace.

(Krugman notes that Trump’s situation is different: his support is slipping as the economy weakens, leaving him in a race to seize full control before unpopularity might drive him from power.)

If the material conditions of life matter to people much more than freedom, just what does that say about the importance of freedom to the good human life? How many people actually do or say anything differently depending on whether or not they live in a free society?

Do they have anything important to them to feel free to say — things that, under a dictatorship, might be dangerous for them to speak aloud? Do they take advantage of the fact that they can read whatever they want, and see comedians on TV make jokes the Leader doesn’t like? Do they feel that they are able to live the lives they want under the authoritarian regime?

Over the past decade, I’ve seen a big part of the American electorate vote for Donald Trump, who was clearly determined to make them less free. And they sacrificed their freedoms over “the price of eggs” and grossly mistaken judgments about the incumbent’s economic performance — which had just been called “the envy of the world.”

How important can freedom be to all those people if they’d put it at risk because they were upset about all that post-pandemic inflation?

It seems that life, for a lot of people, is predominantly a matter of creaturely comfort and pleasures, so prosperity under a dictator satisfies their needs pretty well.

The importance of freedom varies between different kinds of people living different kinds of lives. For Jefferson and John Adams, it was paramount — and it remains so for many Americans today.

Many Americans care deeply about whether government thugs are sent to abuse the vulnerable, or whether a dictator tries to bend the nation’s universities to his will.

Opposing the fascist takeover are many Americans who would suffer under a dictatorship — whether for exercising what were once First Amendment rights, or from the pain of living in a world disfigured by tyrannical injustice, in a society where — instead of power serving the people — the people are compelled to serve the power of a human monster.

This points to a fundamental divide: some people are content with enough hay in their warm barns, while others need the meanings that only freedom can bring to life.

Something I’d say to fellow countrymen who don’t need freedom to be happy so long as their material circumstances — like those of Germans in the mid-30s — are satisfactory:

You may not need freedom, but history shows that when power goes from the top down (tyranny) rather than the bottom up (democracy), the people get exploited.

When power takes away freedom, the people end up paying a high price — diminished lives, exploitative power relationships. Ultimately, the people who subordinated themselves to someone who lusts for domination will not have their wants and needs taken much into consideration as the society evolves into an ugly future.

Freedom is just another word for the foundation of protection for the good society. It’s not a good idea to choose the Evil of tyranny.