A Gift from God?
  by Groff Schroeder

Religious politicians often claim freedom is a gift from god – frequently following this claim with impassioned calls for murderous wars in order to create, defend or restore freedom. If freedom is a grant from god, how can it be taken from its recipients? Is god’s gift of freedom a gift of such little consequence that god simply ignores those who routinely employ assassination, bribery, corruption, false imprisonment, propaganda, torture, totalitarianism and war to wrest freedom from those who received it from the divine?

We are taught that gods are omniscient (all-seeing), omnipotent (all-powerful), magical beings with infinite kindness and love for all human beings. If a god is allseeing, (s)he must know that many people have lost their freedom to vicious tyrants and that those who revoke the allegedly divine gift of freedom often claim special dispensation from the very god who presumably granted the freedom their actions destroy. How can a kind and loving god turn a blind eye as obviously corrupt people who claim to act in the god’s behalf revoke such a precious gift? God’s failure to ensure that the recipient retains the gift of freedom brings the notions of omniscience and omnipotence into question. Why would a god bestow the gift of freedom while allowing its summary revocation by mere humans?

Numerous men and women fought and died in World War II, liberating many nations in Europe and Asia and granting freedom to the peoples of the nations they liberated. Does this make them gods? If President Bush brings freedom to Iraq, will he become a god because he granted freedom to a people who did not have it before?

Freedom means the right to act, speak, think, write and worship as you please, which can only exist when due process, habeas corpus, and other legal protections exist in a social and legal framework governed by the Rule of Law. Freedom is not a gift, but a product of reason and societal evolution that requires defense from intellectual, foreign and domestic enemies.

The intellectual enemies of freedom include propaganda and covert action. Propaganda destroys freedom by creating the impression that freedom exists when it actually does not. Propaganda can also attack freedom by convincing people to tolerate and even defend horrific atrocities, creeping repression and outright totalitarianism. Covert military action, or other political actions hidden from the people through state secrecy, can quietly destroy freedom in virtually any nation – even our own.
Before a foreign enemy can take our freedom, it must overrun our nation and gain direct physical control over the People of the United States. America’s massive military superiority and the numerous arms retained by American Citizens obstruct foreign threats to our freedom.

In contrast, domestic enemies of freedom can and do easily revoke our freedoms. Thanks to rampant institutionalized corruption in government and pervasive diversionary propaganda, money can buy anything in the US Government, including extensions of copyrights in violation of the US Constitution, sweeping exemptions from environmental laws, stunning electoral mischief and the passage of laws establishing religion.

Freedom is not a gift from god and those who provide freedom are not gods. Freedom is an increasingly rare condition of the human spirit that each of us must individually recognize, obtain, cherish and preserve through knowledge of the Constitution and personal work in its defense.

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