Having experienced many lifestyles and sides of existence, I have seen
different people's ideas of freedom and how they work for them but not
for others. While someone may regard it as freedom to raise a family
and have a home - while someone else might regard as freedom living
a troubadour lifestyle - and while someone else still might regard
as freedom the ability to practice their religion, I find that these
are definitions relative to the person's character and propensities -
each of which works for some people and not for others. Instead I have
been seeking an absolute definition of freedom, one that completely
summarizes the concept.

My definition: Freedom is absense of fear.

The people who live in fear are anything but free. It is by knowing
this that the people hostile to freedom - the most recent example
being Osama Bin Laden - use intimidation, having calculated rightly
that people whose security is threatened by terrorism, to put people
into a mindset in which they would willingly surrender their rights
and their liberties for security, while completely destroying
everything for which America claims to stand. And it is by knowing this
that the enemies of freedom within America - from academic "feminists"
to hysteria-mongerers in the media to the pop psychology jerks with
their creation of a class of people who are to be designated as always
dangerous - have convinced the majority of Americans to give up their
constitutional rights and liberties and hide in a boxed-in existence
where they are entrapped and bled dry.

I will go further to say the following: That every time people are made
to fear, everything that America stands for is threatened. Hysterias,
from McCarthyism to ill-named "political correctness" - a phenomenon
I refer to as left-wing neo-Puritanism - to prosecution of so-called
personality disorders - have in all cases resulted in people giving
up liberty; indeed in giving up and destroying everything that America
claims to stand for. And far more than any number of Communists, or
rapists, or "sociopaths," it is these hysterias and their mongerers
that are the true danger to America as it has been intended and
defined.

Fear is the ultimate enemy of freedom. When people are afraid, they
surrender their liberties and attack those of others, seeing threat
everywhere, seeing red everywhere, and being by that misperception kept
from appreciating, experiencing or having a life worth living. They
become suspicious, cruel, destructive; suspecting anything that they
can't control; and indeed seeking to either control everything around
them, or else to destroy it. In climates like these, freedom simply
cannot exist. And indeed neither can anything that the best in
humanity, including America's founders, have struggled over centuries
to accomplish.

It was one of the aforementioned founders that said, "People who would
sacrifice liberty for security are not worthy of either." And indeed
that sacrifice, not any perceived or erected threats, that are the true
enemy of this country. If America preserves its independence but
destroys its freedom, the victory would mean nothing. It is only
correct to protect America if in so doing we protect what America
stands for. And that means, absolutely no compromise to our freedom.

When we see someone - anyone - spreading fear and suspicion and
paranoia, we know we have the true enemy of America. That means as much
for academic brainwashers making all girls believe that every other man
is a predator or a rapist, as it is for authoritarian ninnies
screeching about "perverts" and "sociopaths," as it is
for Ann Coulter
claiming that liberals are rooting against America, as it is for Trent
Lott when he said that, in wake of 9-11 attacks, the civil liberties
need to be seen "differently." These, not the people they paint as
enemies, are the true enemy of America. And they, not the people they
paint as dangerous, are the true danger to America and everything for
which it claims to stand.

Ilya Shambat.



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