What Freedom Means

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose.”

Kris Kristofferson gets it. Janice Joplin got it. Freedom is not shirking responsibility, be it for family, community, country, or humanity. Freedom, in other words, is not freedom from bringing up your child or from paying taxes.

What did the founders have to say about it?

John Locke noted that there cannot be freedom where there is no law. A society, therefore, must act together to form a government of laws. Thomas Jefferson spoke of the need to divide the work of government among the many, distributing to every one exactly the functions he is competent to perform. John Adams spoke admiringly of pre-constitutional America that the education of all ranks of people was made the care and expense of the public.

At Oxford, studying under a Rhodes Scholarship, Kris Kristofferson was influenced by the poet William Blake, who proclaimed that if one has a God-given creative talent then one should use it, or else reap sorrow and despair.

So is freedom for losers? Or is it my right to do as I please?

Neither, of course. Freedom is an idea that is worthy of a lifetime of study and contemplation. There is no simplicity or certainty about it. The same is true of religion, and several founders wrote of the need for a free people to base their conduct on a moral or religious framework. So there is a discipline implied here. There is work to be done. I cannot simply declare myself to be Catholic or Born Again or Converted to Islam and be done with it. I cannot abdicate my lifelong responsibility to be the best I can be.

A good place to begin that work is to meditate on the Blake quote. Each of us is blessed with God-given gifts. Let us each, in this New Year, think about our own: what they are and how they can be “paid forward” – given back to our family, our community, our country. How they can be given back to humanity.

“Nothin' don't mean nothin' if it ain't free.”

Happy New Year!