Freedom
The power to act, think, or speak without external restrictions. This term comes with strong positive connotations in America, among other countries, where de-mocracy is celebrated. Freedom gives us such proud word compounds as freedom fighterand freedom riders, but after World War II was increasingly used not just for democracy but especially to mean capitalism and free trade. The term has always offered a staple for political speeches. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, just before the American entry into World War II, told an English audience that “We, too, born to freedom . . . would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.”
Freedom can be more than political rhetoric for the Fourth of July or the sub-ject of wartime morality tales, however. As a morally charged word of loose and varying definition, it has been used by countries that are repressive as well as by democracies to conceal intentions, suppress critical thinking, and obscure realities.
In an attempt to caricature the Soviet Union, for example, President Ronald Final Solution
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he was no linguist, he was told that in the Russian language there isn’t even a word for “freedom.” Roosevelt was not wrong about the Nazi threat to freedom, but eco-nomic and political elites who may accord little respect to others’ freedoms (or even those who generally do) may exploit the term to advance their policies and ensure their “freedom” to invest.
On the day of the coordinated assault on the World Trade Center and Penta-gon, President Bush told Americans that “Freedom itself was attacked this morn-ing, and I assure you freedom will be defended.” (The variants attack on democracy, or on civilization, humanity, and God, were also heard; see CIVILIZATION; GOD REFER
-ENCES.) The president further explained the assaults in the symbolic terms of America as being “the brightest beacon for freedom . . . in the world.” The refer-ences were expected, especially since the president was about to embark on a “war on terrorism,” and Americans, even in a time of crisis, are reluctant to enter a war without assurance that it is about protecting such high ideals as freedom (when President Clinton bombed Sudan, he also spoke of America as standing for “free-dom”). For strategic and economic reasons as well as military, the government understands the necessity to persuade the public that democracy—the whole
“American Way of Life”—is at stake. Freedom talk not only signifies the moral power of the speakers, but suggests the barbaric, criminal status of those said to lack this ideal.
Terrorism, which, in addition to killing innocent people, negates freedom to debate, is not a democratic practice. But the statement that the 9-11 attack was made on American freedom was especially vague and hardly accurate, nor could it have been expected to be accurate since the government did not yet have clear evidence of who was responsible. As Lewis Lapham has written (2001, 40), free-dom is an abstract, not a proper noun: “freefree-dom is as safe as love or justice from the effects of . . . collapsing steel.” Of course, the attack shocked Americans and temporarily impeded travel, but fundamental freedoms were not in serious jeop-ardy. Unless freedom is construed as the market freedom represented by the World Trade Center, this was not even a symbolic targeting of freedom; for that, an at-tack on the Statue of Liberty would have been more appropriate (though such an attack might be done to mock, desecrate, and make a symbolic statement rather than out of envy). In addition, of the many freedom-loving countries in the world, it was the United States that was attacked. Although the Islamist terrorists, who do not subscribe to Enlightenment ideals, no doubt saw U.S. religious liberties and espoused gender equality as representative of a “doomed West,” they seemed more preoccupied with an America that was the focus of the economic and military power, represented by the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, that they see as misdirected and hoped to disrupt or bring down. This targeting of the United States is not new in international terrorism: twentieth-century “imperialistic” America was held long in the gun sites of the revolutionary left.
Terrorism, of course, can coerce people to change their lives in the interest of security. After September 11, the felt need both for security and to win the “war”
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against terrorism led, ironically, to an uneasy sufferance of the freedom said to be under attack. The name of the military campaign against terrorism—Operation Enduring Freedom—unintentionally suggested the burden of preserving freedom in a threatening world, while President Bush’s later rhetorical “Freedom and fear are at war” suggested the tension. With attention focused on the wrong done by terrorists to freedom, Attorney General John Ashcroft exercised increasing gov-ernmental coercion over individuals reminiscent of the civil rights abuses of the twentieth-century’s “red scares” (many of his measures were later successfully chal-lenged by courts). Meanwhile, the public agency with the real power to decide on issues of reconstruction of the Lower Manhattan site attacked on September 11 began to exercise that power without adequate democratic oversight (Sorkin and Zukin 2002, ix), and the U.S. government continued support for repressive regimes.
Whether terrorists attacked “freedom” may be debatable, but, as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy said in talking with students about American values,
“democracy may be stolen.”
The mainstream American attachment to freedom rhetoric can also be an irri-tant to people who take exception to American views. “All the Americans ever talk about is their freedom . . . and they can’t see that they are actually taking that away from people who have lived in that land for generations and generations,”
said a Jordanian of Palestinian origin. By “people” she meant Palestinians, and by
“that land,” Palestine (Barr 2001). Even some Americans—especially those whose freedom was already severely curtailed because of poverty or lack of educational opportunities—questioned the relevancy of a war whose outcomes were often in opposition to the freedoms said to be guarded. (Although this discussion focuses on the American use of the term, a strong case can be made that many Arabs who allege the West’s hypocritical attitude toward freedom, according to Kanan Makiya,
“no longer believe in the very things [freedom, democracy, justice, etc.] that they so vociferously denounce the West for not believing in” [Cronin 2002, 543].)
Americans, of course, resent the charge that they are self-serving or hypocriti-cal with their ideals. They see their freedom as a hard-won birthright, even a gift from God (see GOD REFERENCES). Indeed, at least for certain classes of Americans, the enjoyment of freedom is substantial relative to that available in many other countries. However, seeing terrorist attacks and retaliations only in terms of Ameri-can values Ameri-can severely limit dialogue and understanding. As David Harvey argues, to raise questions about, for example, the use or misuse of global U.S. financial and military power “was construed as being contrary to freedom and the American way”
(Sorkin and Zukin 2002, 58). Comfortable feelings about America’s democratic
“superiority” allure the faithful into an uncritical attitude toward power and policy, only increasing the likelihood of further attacks.
George Orwell (1982, 253), British author of works on totalitarianism, warned us that words such as freedom and democracy are “often used in a consciously dis-honest way . . . with intent to deceive.” See also CIVILIZATION;LIBERATION;NATIONAL SECURITY;PROTECTION;WAR.
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