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‘Freedom’ is an anti-government slogan
Across Cuba, people are protesting in the streets, in an effort to escape the yoke of socialist oppression that has suffocated the Cuban people for 60 years. American Republicans view Cuba’s socialist government as inhumane and dangerous. So did Democrats, until recently (see, for example, JFK). But more recently, American socialists, news media, and other Democrats have taken a more nuanced view of the Cuban government, repeatedly pointing out its universal health care, or admirable literacy programs. For some reason that escapes American Democrats, the people that actually live in Cuba tend to take a less nuanced view, and they want to destroy their government.
The protests got so big and so widespread so quickly that even the Cuban government’s cheerleaders in the American media were forced to mention the story. Powerline has a typically outstanding summary of the situation. Their post included the following passage from a New York Times story, which caught my eye:
Shouting “Freedom” and other anti-government slogans, hundreds of Cubans took to the streets in cities around the country on Sunday to protest food and medicine shortages, in a remarkable eruption of discontent not seen in nearly 30 years.
So the reliably left-wing newspaper The New York Times writes that “Freedom” is an anti-government slogan. How very, very true.
And how very, very odd for The New York Times.
I just can’t believe that an editor let this through. This is an example of living in such a homogeneous echo chamber that you completely lose the ability to consider any concept from any perspective other than your own. If the editors had considered that Republicans across the country would be yelling, “Right! ‘Freedom’ is an anti-government slogan! Exactly!”, they would have cut it from the first draft and fired the writer.
President Obama and Raul Castro sharing the secret socialist club secret handshake.
But it never occurred to them. Amazing.
This is a part of modern leftism that I honestly don’t understand.
Ok, so leftists like big government. They want governmental control over everything from your health care to your lightbulbs. And then what do they do? They defund police. They complain that their Constitutional freedoms are being infringed upon. “Keep your laws off my body!” And so on and so forth.
I don’t understand. I don’t understand otherwise intelligent people complaining about the very government control that they’ve spent their lives voting for. What, exactly, do they want?
But on a certain level, I think leftists understand that, when you get right down to it, what they are really promoting is increasing government control – socialism – tyranny – whatever you want to call it. They know that’s what they mean. So The New York Times, who has never seen a government program they didn’t like, casually acknowledges that “Freedom” is an anti-government slogan.
And what does The New York Times want? More government! Which they openly acknowledge is the opposite of freedom.
Understand that I am not an anarchist. We need government, of course. But with the benefits of government, we must understand that as we make government bigger, we make citizens smaller. As government gains power, citizens naturally lose power. It’s a balance. It’s a trade-off. There is no other way.
So The New York Times obviously understands that point. If they realize that “Freedom” is anti-government slogan, then every time The New York Times promotes increasing the power of government, they know that they are simultaneously promoting decreasing the freedom of individuals. There is no other way.
And they’re ok with that.
America was founded on the concept of limiting the power of government. So transitioning from a small, limited government to a form of socialist tyranny is directly opposed to America’s most fundamental ideals.
Our media continues to promote one expansion of government power after another. Even though they know that is in direct opposition to individual freedoms.
After all, according to The New York Times, “Freedom” is an anti-government slogan.
And therefore, the American media is an anti-American organization.
It’s nice to have The New York Times acknowledge this fundamental truth from time to time.
Even if it’s accidental.
Published in General
Not for nothing, does our esteemed member @paulrahe call the NYT “Pravda on the Hudson”.
According to Leftists, people become free if the government gives you stuff. The theory goes that without government , your freedom is suppressed by family, community and sexual mores. Humans aren’t naturally free. For much of our young life, we are dependent on our mothers’ to survive for example. We exist more as cooperating groups that compete with other groups than as individuals.
Doc, I think that this is an oversimplified view of things.
When the government prohibits defecating on the sidewalk, I don’t think that I get smaller. Yes, someone’s “freedom” is curtailed — the guy who wants to take a dump on the sidewalk. My life gets better, and my shoes cleaner.
The freedoms of individuals are often in conflict. The other guy’s freedom to squat on the sidewalk is at odds with my freedom to walk without dodging the products of his action. Is mine a “positive” freedom, which we have to disapprove? It is a “freedom from,” I guess — freedom from feces-covered sidewalks.
This example may not be a “positive” freedom, as the term is defined, because it doesn’t require that I be given anything. Well, except a sidewalk free of poop, but the other guy doesn’t have to give me the sidewalk. He just has to find somewhere else to answer the call of nature.
So in many cases, I don’t find the freedom/liberty argument to be very persuasive. More freedom is not always a good thing, and may infringe on the freedom of others.
We’re hemmed in by a huge amount of laws and regulations in our lives, most of which are quite sensible and beneficial. Next time you drive anywhere, try to notice how tightly restricted you are in your driving. You have to stay in a particular lane. You have to signal. You have to go a certain speed. You can’t go through a red light, or a stop sign. You have to leave a proper space between your car and the one in front of you. And many other things besides.
The result, though, is freedom — the freedom to drive around at a quite astonishing speed, something that would have made Jefferson green with envy. Yet we can’t have this overall freedom without a great deal of regulation about the details.
Modern leftists have dropped the mask. This is not a “gaffe” any more. They simply don’t care about anyone else’s opinion about their goals.
I like this quote from one of the newspapers Powerline linked to;
“To date, some 6 million doses of the Abdala vaccine have been administered (three are needed to complete the treatment). But now, their vaccination efforts are hampered by a shortage of syringes.”
Didn’t Michael Moore make a “documentary” about the benefits of Cuba’s socialized medical system? Funny how these sort of shortages and bad luck seem to be par for the course for socialized medical systems.
I looked up the definitions of “free” and “liberty” recently and all but one of all the definitions defined freedom as a lack of some form of restraint. It’s as if freedom doesn’t exist apart from some associated social, spiritual or physical law (or order). I would argue that freedom doesn’t exist without laws, and restraint prospers us and increases our control. (The one definition that didn’t define freedom as an absence of some form of restraint, but freedom to do something, referred to natural liberty and subordinately civil liberty, liberty of conscience and of the press.)
The absence of freedom within restraint is libertinism and chaos.
https://twitter.com/sos__cuba/status/1414399459354685454
It’s night and they’re shooting protesters. Cuba’s President
https://nypost.com/2021/07/12/stunning-video-shows-cuban-authorities-firing-on-protestors/
From NY Post
So will Bernie, AOC and the rest of the gang be flying to Havana to heed the call?
What in the wide, wide world of sports is going on in this photo?? Was Obama about to pat Castro on the head?
Maybe he was getting ready to bow.
This isn’t that hard! They want FREEDOM from consequences. They want to be free to do what feels good, whatever and whenever they want – and they want the government to protect them from the consequences. That means free health care and UBI, but means no enforcement of laws. It means free day care, government supplied abortion and birth control, and free education from infancy to adulthood. It means no failing grades, no starvation, no living on the streets. It means work only if I want to and not because I need to.
That is it. That’s all the leftists want. To be perpetual children, constantly protected and provided for by parent government.
That’s the exact thing I said to my wife.
They don’t think they’re the ones whose freedoms will be curtailed.
See Robert Heinlein’s example of “bad luck.”
More than our own liberty, humanity values power over other men. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective. If your tribe can dominate another tribe. Than you are buffered against outsiders.
More government is not the opposite of freedom when you are the government.
Not sure how firmly that mask was ever attached. Leftists in this country fell in love with Stalin in the 1930s, chosing to believe that millions were not being starved.
Very little changed after WWII. Our elites were only “cool” if they vacationed somewhere behind the Iron Curtain. Then, in the l960s and 70s, going down to labor in Castro’s sugar fields was an honor to die for (and to brag about after returning safely to this country).
After the Iron Curtain fell, Leftists were temporarily flummoxed. However, they could always fall back on Castro and when Chavez took over (and bankrupted) Venezuela, they found another dictatorship they could root for.
The line from Walter Duranty to present day NYT leadership may stretch nearly 90 years but that line is as straight as an arrow.
Good call, Dr. Bastiat.
(If you can do equally well with medical diagnosis, you’re a keeper.)
Don’t worry, the same people who praised the Castro regime for decades will be claiming Cuba wasn’t “real socialism”
The socialist life cycle will repeat itself
Well, maybe it is a bit oversimplified. But not by much, I don’t think.
And I think this is why John Adams said that this form of limited government is for the governance of a moral and religious people, and is poorly suited to the governance of any other. I think part of his point was, “Ok, look. If you folks need laws to tell you not to crap on the sidewalk, then so much for limited government, you know what I mean? We can have fewer laws only if your own system of ethics governs most of your behavior. That which is Caesars, and all that, ya dig?”
As we increasingly ignore our ethical and religious guidance, we will require more government guidance. And government gets more powerful. And people lose freedom. It’s a trade-off. There is no other way.
Only an ethical people who control their own behavior can get by with a small government. Once we start crapping on the sidewalk, then we need bigger government, and we need less individual liberty.
So I really don’t think I oversimplified it by much…
I just think its refreshing to see protests over grievances that aren’t 150 years old.
Jerry, I think we have a lot of laws that are more about conventions that liberty restriction. There’s a real harm done to a homeowner whose sidewalk is used as a men’s room. Lots of money has been spent by the homeowner to make sure that waste isn’t in the house. It’s undestood that feces is unpleasant, we don’t want to be around it. So deucing a sidewalk does cause a harm.
As far as driving conventions go, they enable freedom. You would not be free to drive to a restaurant if other drivers were allowed to drive on the left side of the road. It’s a set of rules that enable freedom, and they are not ideological.
I’ve been on the internets since the mid-late 1980s, and I don’t recall a time when American socialists, news media, etc. have not taken that more “nuanced” view about Cuba, loudly and clearly. In fact, I’m pretty sure their “nuances” go back a lot further than that.
I was watching our black-and-white television in 1959 when American TV reporters were slobbering over Fidel Castro as he paraded into Havana, though I was more skeptical of all of it, probably having been influenced by the kind of magazines and talk that was around our house. My memories of that event are pretty vague, though, as I wasn’t yet 11 years old. I’m pretty sure I had no idea of all that would come of it. (Also, I’m pretty sure I’m not getting this mixed up with Fidel’s visit to the UN in New York City, but it’s possible that I am. The main thing that has stuck with me all these years is the excited, girlish tone of the U.S. groupies/reporters covering the event.)
Edit: I can guarantee that I didn’t know the term “groupies” in those days, but I’ve associated that term with American “journalists” for as long as I’ve known about it.
Freedom is consequences. Choose wisely lest by death you lose the opportunity to try again.
“I pledge allegiance to the Che / Of the Communist Party of Cuba / And to the misery for which it stands / One island / Indivisible / With tyranny and oppression for all”
It’s not just money, it’s sanitary. Uncontrolled defecation spreads disease and parasites.
Doc, there’s a lot of truth in the Adams condition for limited government in that it is directly related to the morals of the citizenry.
One of the economically cripling features of most of the planet is corruption. Bribery and extortion are a normal part of life outside of the US, EU, Canada and a few spots in the far east. Success is punished, not by the imposition of taxes that might improve the standard of living or save the indigent, but by direct payment to a government poobah. His wealth depends on the authority granted by the government and his demands are enforced by the government. All manner of government – required approvals are at the discretion of an individual with his hand out. Government becomes much bigger to the common person when the rules are fluid and the authority is corrupt. It barely matters what the official form of government is.
The resulting assault on private property is withering. Great inventions and innovations tend to keep coming from the same countries for a reason.
A generation or two ago a story of blatent corruption like the Clinton Global Initiative or the Biden crime family would outrage the country on both sides of the aisle. Sadly, that requires some basic morality.
The problem is not the rules, laws, and regulations in and of themselves. The problem is consent of the governed.
If you want to live in a home owners’ association (HOA) community with its myriad rules and restrictions, it’s your choice to do so. But you can’t impose that level of restriction on an entire town, city, state, or country.
What we are in perpetual argument on at the national level is how much law to impose on the entire nation.
What’s been happening since the 1950s is that the urban areas, because they have powerful legislative blocks, have been able to impose their laws geared to managing densely populated areas on the entire country. It’s not fair, and it’s not wanted.
New York City has the same square miles as Cape Cod–a little over 300. New York City houses 10 million people compared to the 300,000 on Cape Cod at the height of our summer tourist season. The laws the people agree to live with in New York City are not necessary and are not wanted on Cape Cod.
That’s the freedom-versus-anarchy friction.
This doesn’t make much sense to me, on detailed analysis.
If you have a moral and religious people, then you don’t need much government regulation, because such people are going to behave pretty well. You won’t need much government. The people will have “freedom,” but won’t be exercising it much, because they will generally behave well.
If you don’t have a moral or religious people — or if you have a people with a different morality and religion than what Adams was contemplating — then you are going to need a lot of government regulation, because many people will behave badly. You end up having to enforce rules that people should follow, and would follow, for the most part, if they were moral and religious.
We no longer have a moral and religious people, so we require increasing levels of government regulation. Doc, you seem to indicate the the problem is the loss of freedom. I don’t think that this is the problem, because it is the consequence. The problem is the loss of morality and religion.
If you strongly advocate freedom, at the present time, then it seems to me that you are advocating the immoral behavior that creates the problem. Suggesting that an absence of freedom is the problem is, in my view, quite wrong. The problem is the absence of a moral and religious people. The solution, I think, is to turn things around in terms of morality and religion.
I do not know how to do this. We no longer have a consensus on about morality and religion.
I think we mostly agree. Although I take a slightly different view of this point as well.
There are those who think that freedom is defined as freedom to do whatever you want. Such as crap on the sidewalk.
That’s not how I see freedom. And you neither, it seems.
So I think we largely agree here…