Can We Actually Bestow Freedom on Another People?

This post ran first in July of 2005!

Is it possible to give someone freedom?






Think about it. This is profound.

Is freedom something you can bestow upon another human being? Or, must freedom be taken, and secured, by those who would be free?

There is hardly a race of people on the planet who have not, at one time or another, been slaves. Most have seized any opportunity to end their enslavement by taking their freedom, often through revolt and the shedding of blood. Their freedom was bought, and paid for, in the currency most often bartered for liberty… blood.

The shedding of blood gave them an investment in their freedom and a reason to cherish it precisely because of it’s cost. These people understand freedom and the cost. They know, all too well, that freedom is not free. If one desires freedom, one must pay for it.

It seems, to me, that when you bestow freedom upon a people, you simply substitute one slave master for another. That is, the person upon whom, you bestow that freedom, is forever tied to you. That is enslavement. Voluntary Servitude, maybe, but there is most certainly a tie that binds between the “bestowed” and the “bestower”. And sooner or later the “bestowed” begins to resent the “eternal hold” his emancipator has over him. And a slow burning rage begins deep inside his inner most being. That rage is handed down from generation to generation. We see evidence of that rage here, in America, everyday.

Much is being said today about the Continent of Africa. A hopeless morass of enslavement, if ever there has been one, stares the entire world in the face. There is little we can do for Africa. I have said it before and I will say it again… Africa must heal itself.

The question arises… if the western world steps in and cleans the mess up and “bestows” the Africans with their freedom, will they be able to maintain it. Will they value it enough to strive to protect and defend that freedom, or will that place less value in the “gift” of freedom than they would it that freedom was “earned”. I tend to think they will value it less as a “gift”.

There are all sorts of enslavement, but the simple truth is… the resentment of the emancipated for the emancipator is ever present. I have come to believe we do enslaved peoples no favor when we free them. For proof of this we have only to look at France, or even here, within America, and I fear, we will have the same resentment in Iraq, and the other middle eastern countries, when our military is finished setting them, free.

This is a hard truth to digest. But, I believe that when we get past all the politically correct facades we have constructed to shield ourselves from this truth we will come face to face with the hard cold fact: The bestowal of Freedom can’t be done. It is impossible to accomplish. Freedom must be taken, seized at whatever cost, to have any value. A human being cannot accept freedom as a gift without accepting the inevitable bonds that will always, and forever, tie the emancipated to the emancipator.

Eventually we will have to accept this truth and deal with it.

“Longstreet”