Freedom, Fascism, and My First Car

When I was in high school my dad helped me buy my first car – a black 1996 Silverado which I still drive today. This truck gave me a lot of new freedom. It was expected that I would use that freedom to accomplish certain things like growing my small lawn mowing business, commuting to school, volunteering, getting to church functions, etc. With the exception of occasional shenanigans, I used my newfound freedom pretty well.

Our American freedom is similar. We are free so that we can better ourselves, improve society, serve, create, build, learn, educate, and mentor. Freedom is not an end in itself. It is a vehicle by which we may pursue important ends necessary for a good society.

The problem is that there are people who do not make use of their freedom, or they use their freedom to pursue the wrong things. This would be like if I had never left the house and let my truck rust out in the driveway, or if I had taken it to demolition derby.

Freedom is useless if we do not take advantage of it, and we ruin it for ourselves if we use freedom destructively. When people abuse or waste their freedom, society suffers. Culture wilts away. Ingenuity falters. Virtues and nobility fade into obscurity.

When this happens, people will long for better times, and history has shown there is always a charismatic leader ready to promise to fix everything. These sorts of leaders understand that people will never respond to a message of betterment for themselves and society. That would be hard and too much of a blow to their pride.

Instead, these charismatic leaders promise two things: there was a great time in this people’s past, and there is a group of “others” that ruined the greatness of the past.

What follows is a wrongful persecution of the scapegoats for the country’s problems, the shrill sound of politicians trying to rouse various groups and factions against one another, and a total absence of what is true, beautiful, and spiritual.

This is the image of fascism. It saps away the human spirit and feeds into the ugliest impulses of every individual. It rewards laziness, negligence, and hatred. We can only defeat it by an appreciation for what is beautiful in conjunction with a pursuit for what is true. Truth without beauty is cold and sterile while beauty without truth is fleeting and vapid.

America is not currently a place where people use their freedom well. That needs to change.