Freedom’s Choice
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| Roger Williams and the Narragansetts |
It was a choice.
And the fact that they had a choice is what brought them here in first place.
Having choice is what made them…us.
The
Puritans who settled in Massachusetts came here because they wanted to have the
choice of how they worshiped. But after the Puritans settled in Massachusetts
they began to create rules limiting the choices of their followers. At that
point Roger Williams, the founder of Rhode Island, took his followers to a
place where their choices were still up to them. They uprooted their lives to
preserve their right to personal choice.
Roll
the clock forward. Frontiersmen are pushing the boundaries of America West. As
they were overcoming the new challenges they encountered in the new world they
were making, they had no time for minding their neighbors’ business. Their
focus was on advancing their nascent society. Matters which were not common to the
public welfare were handled in the family forum.
As
our founding fathers were hammering together the structure of the America we
know today, they included protection against “unreasonable search and seizure.”
This was another example of giving people a choice. The choice they were guaranteeing
was that citizens would be free to do what they wanted inside of their own
homes as long as it neither negatively impacted their neighbors, nor restricted
in any way their neighbor’s choices. The background social concept that
developed was that Americans could choose to do whatever they personally
decided, as long as it did not diminish another’s welfare. This social aspect
of our society has persevered to this day, and is a premier reason that freedom
seekers from around the globe are still willing to risk all to reach our
America and become one of us.
So
what has changed? One thing is that politics is now a career, a permanent
career. To keep on getting re-elected politicians need dependable constituents.
One way to create that committed and dependable support is to cater to people's
beliefs. Beliefs, after all, are not topics that someone running for office has
to continually debate or carefully trend watch. Unfortunately this “chunking”
of the electorate by our officials into values populations has set group vying
with group in a social tug-of –war that is not in the best interests of any of
us.
There
was a time when we Americans had more common threads woven into our society. Not
too long ago, when every soul in America watched the same three networks, there
were many things that all Americans could discuss around the water cooler the
next day.
The
present society in which we are immersed is much more fragmented. The extent to
which we are now able to instantly access information and people throughout the
globe camouflages the fact that we actually identify less with major portions
of our fellow citizens. Part of this new separation is a media phenomenon.
Whatever a person’s skin tone, religious dispositions, or social preferences,
there is a cable station or radio channel focused directly at that person’s
profile. We as a society are now being shattered by the accelerating and sometimes
questionable use of the tremendous reservoir of "big data" which our
personal communication devices silently gather and store. This trove of
personal information makes us vulnerable to being marketed and informed as a
nation of discrete individuals. The communal consequence is that we are left
with very limited connections through the society around us to bind us as a
coherent people.
In
the present political arena, disparate social and religious differences are
used as political wedges. In the early days of the country, many of these
differences would have been privately addressed inside each citizen's
"Castle," and would not be part of the wider public discussion. The
arena of public debate was reserved for issues that impacted everyone in the
society in the emblematic American way of persistently moving forward getting
things done.
This
shifting boundary between what is public concern and what is private territory
is a major problem of our day. This issue stands between the current schismatic
society we fret about and the cooperative and productive community we
collectively desire. Let's look at some examples of how the beliefs of small
groups of Americans are being injected into our political scene to shore up the
power base of our now permanent politicians to the detriment of us all.
Take
the issue of same-sex marriage for example. Segments of the population are
holding politicians hostage because of something in which that particular group
believes. The members of the population who are against the concept of same-sex
marriage are trying to remove the choice of same-sex marriage from other people’s
lives. It seems these people have forgotten that there was another time when
some citizens, because of their beliefs, would not allow a black person to
marry a white person… to the shame of us all.
We’ve come a long way along the freedom road as a nation, but we are not
all marching at the same pace.
A
second example of small parts of the population pushing the buttons of our
career politicians is the issue of giving people the choice to end their lives
with dignity and without suffering if diagnosed with a fatal disease. Throughout
most of human history, humans simply did not have the resources or the
technology to sustain the heartbeat of an aged and infirm member of their
group. The current set of statistics which inform us that a preponderance of peoples’
lifetime medical costs will be incurred in the final days of their lives is
evidence of the same reality. Death and dying are natural aspects of life that
should be dealt with, not fought against. Again, a segment of the population is
seeking to prevent all the other people from having that personal and final choice
in their lives.
Another
issue of choice, and perhaps garnering the highest energy level in today's
social discourse, is the topic of abortion. In the fractured discussions in
which partial information is directed toward groups with strong belief
frameworks about the topic, significant background knowledge is never
mentioned. There are parts of our country in which a fertilized egg in a woman's
reproductive system is believed to have all the rights of full citizenship. The
medical fact that up to eighty percent (Clin Reprod
Fertil 1 (3): 177–84. PMID 6196101.) of all fertilized eggs never successfully implant, and
therefore never become a functioning human being, does not seem to be part of
the discussion.
Furthermore,
of the fertilized eggs that do successfully begin a pregnancy in a woman's
womb, roughly one third (of those pregnancies are aborted by nature… more
commonly referred to as miscarriages (N Engl J Med 1988; 319:189–94.). These
natural abortions occur because pregnancies are incredibly complicated
cavalcades of precise biochemical and developmental stages which often and
understandably suffer unrecoverable errors. One flawed reproductive attempt is
terminated by Mother Nature to save the biological resources for the next try. With
this clinical information available, but apparently being ignored, faith based
constituencies put tremendous pressure on everyone else in America to abandon a
choice that might have profound consequences for their lives.
As
a last example, and perhaps the most perspicacious of them all, is the issue of
stem cell research. As the rest of the world forges ahead in this area of
medical promise, America is being left behind. Some of our best and brightest
scientists are going elsewhere to continue their research. The exploration of
the medical benefits which will cascade from this technology is just beginning.
Yet in America alone almost a half a million frozen embryos, which could serve
to move medical science forward, will be silently discarded as medical waste.
This wasteful tragedy will happen because relatively small groups of the
population are forcing too many of our permanent politicians to cater to their
belief-based position condemning stem cell research. The effect of which is to
deny everyone else in the country the choice of pursuing the medical, economic,
and life quality benefits that this breakthrough will bring in the future.
Listening
to statements employed by groups seeking to limit the choices mentioned here,
one gets the impression that the people seeking to limit the choices of others would
somehow be forced to do something they did not want to do if everyone were free
to choose. As though allowing other people to marry someone of the same sex
would somehow be a mandate for the children of a fundamentalist Christian
family to be required to marry someone of the same sex. That allowing women in
America to choose to end a pregnancy because of reasons they deemed paramount
to their lives somehow would force women with strong faith based opinions to
the contrary to also have an abortion. That allowing terminally ill people to
end their life calmly surrounded by their family at a time of their choosing
would force people with beliefs forbidding such actions to do the same.
Choice
is the antithesis of force. The freedom that allows a citizen to choose to do
something is the same freedom that allows another citizen to choose not to do
it.
So
what choices must we make to regain this fundamental American value, our
freedom of personal choice?
The
concept of separation of church and state was instituted exactly for this
reason. The founding fathers were generally religious, but saw that
accommodating different beliefs into the arena of civil society introduces
conflicts that literally cannot be resolved. To believe something is to hold it
to be true without proof or question. To the people holding the belief, it is
taken as a fact, a reality. The believers invite that concept into their lives
and make important personal decisions based on that believed reality. But to
other people that fact both does not exist and certainly should not be a factor
in any public policy making. Beliefs, by their nature, are beyond reason and
are not open to compromise. Beliefs and the influence they are given on a
person's life belong solely in the domain of one's Castle and not in the public
square.
In
the search for coherence in the social fabric the word tolerance is often used.
The appropriateness of “tolerance” depends on which definition Americans choose
from the two offered by the dictionary. One leads to resentment and acrimony,
and one opens the way to the individual and communal vision of America that
inspires us all.
One
definition encountered in the dictionary for the word tolerance is “the act or
capacity of enduring.” This definition implies that someone is being forced to suffer
something that is malevolent or improper. That is not what I am talking about
here.
The
higher definition on the dictionary page is “a fair, objective, and permissive
attitude towards opinions and practices that differ from one's own." This
is the definition that has worked, and can still work, for America.
Allowing
choice in the lives of Americans does not force anyone to do anything. On the
contrary, it frees us. It frees us to come together on all aspects of our
overlapping lives that drive us as a people towards the common betterment of
our condition. It frees us to rule in our castles as we see fit. It frees us to
follow our beliefs, our passions, and our dreams however we choose in our
pursuit of life, liberty, and happiness.
The
choice is ours. Protect it.