The Choice Is between Freedom and Coercion

There are some things we think are self-evident, such as that we our endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights, such as life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (which includes owning property).

But a whole lot of what was obvious, or self-evident, up until recently may not be so obvious today.

Here at the Spherical Model, we make the assumption that the good things we’re going for are freedom, prosperity, and civilization—rather than the alternatives of tyranny, poverty, and savagery. The choice seems obvious.

And yet there are many people who literally do not value freedom. It may be that they’ve had it redefined out of existence, like so many other truths. But I thought we might do a bit of awareness raising on freedom today.

Here’s how I define terms, using my 1980 Webster’s Dictionary combined with my words: 

Freedom: absence of hindrance, restraint, confinement, repression. In the political sense, it is ownership of one’s own life and the production of wealth and property that results from one’s use of life and effort. A government should protect the freedoms of life, liberty, and property; it does not grant these things, but protects them from infringement. A government that takes life, liberty, or property unjustly—when the person has not unlawfully infringed on those rights of another person—that is a tyrannical government, which is the opposite of freedom.

Political freedom means living in a society in which our God-given rights are protected rather than infringed. These would include freedoms of belief and expression, such as freedom of religion and freedom of the press, as well as freedoms of property and security, such as freedom from illegal searches and seizures and the right to bear arms.

Liberty: synonym of freedom. It is ownership of one’s own life, to pursue as one chooses, and to enjoy the fruits of one’s efforts. No person or government or other entity owns a person or controls how the person pursues happiness.

And yet, in today’s world, we have a rising generation that favors a change from our system of freedom to a tyranny they might call socialism, without knowing what that means either.

There’s another term that is useful here: Agency. Sometimes we combine it with the word free, as in free agency. You’ve probably encountered it when sports professionals leave a team and become free agents, open to a contract with another team. That might be the limit of how you've used it. But it implies the ability to choose. So you can see that agency is related to liberty.

There are various words we use as opposites to the ability to choose: coercion, oppression, tyranny.

When you look at a political ideology, you can simplify the search for the good and true by looking at its closeness to freedom, liberty, ability to choose—or by how dangerously close it is to coercion, oppression, tyranny.

·         Do you get to believe what you choose to believe?

·         Do you get to choose your profession and way of life?

·         Do you get to speak your opinions freely?

·         Do you get to associate with people you choose to associate with?

·         Do you get to enjoy the fruits of your own labors?

It wouldn’t be very convincing to offer you a truthful opposite, such as: “Wouldn’t you rather believe what we the powerful tell you to believe?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better for you if we the powerful decided what work you were allowed to do and for what pay?” Or “Wouldn’t it be better if you were allowed to speak only the words we the powerful told you to?” Or, “Wouldn’t it be better for all of us if you gave us all your earnings and we the powerful dole them out to those we favor?”

No, it has to be done more subtly than that:

·       Let’s stop others from believing things that we believe are just wrong—shut down churches, political groups, nonprofits, businesses, schools, or any individual or organization that does or says things we don’t like.

·       Let’s stop others from making a living in ways we don’t like—like using fossil fuels, or maybe just because the business owners believe things we don’t like.

·       Let’s cancel or coerce others to make them stop hurting us by saying things we don't believe—because their words are violence.

·       Let’s take the money from the rich and give it to the poor, like us, who are more deserving.

You get the idea. To someone with some enlightenment, the “progressive” or “woke” or “socially just” way is pretty dark. It takes away individual choice. It oppresses individuals. It rules over people tyrannically. If that’s OK with you as long as they’re on your side, not only is that evil of you, but it’s also just a matter of time until the powers-that-be come after you for some perceived infraction.

It’s a continuation of a very old war—a war that predates earth history. It’s a war between good and evil, between light and dark. I told this story here.   

Let me tell another old story that maybe we can apply. Versions of it show up in fantasy literature all the time. It’s from the Book of Revelation, the last book in the Bible, chapter 13 mostly. But I’ll be retelling it in a slightly more narrative form.

"La Bete de la Mer" tapestry in France, depicting
John the Revelator observing the dragon and the sea beast
image from Wikipedia

There is an evil force, in the form of a dragon, who is a scourge to all the earth. He is an enemy to light, goodness. He doesn’t build; he destroys. Chaos and coercion are his right- and left-hand weapons. He controls two monsters, hideous in form and function, who do his bidding. One monster comes up from the depths of the waters over all the earth. She is filthiness and all the worldly evils, and she rides and controls the powers of rulers and organizations over all the earth. She seduces them with power, and brings them together in secret oaths, so that they simultaneously threaten and support one another in their schemes to amass greater and greater power, buying and selling the souls of men.

The other monster comes up from the earth. Its form appears much less dangerous than the dragon, but it speaks with the tongue of the dragon. It voices the dragon’s words, which are lies. Some call it the false prophet. Another interpretation might be propaganda. It can be found flowing out of ivory and other towers, in and through the airways—redefining in the dragon’s lying lexicon what is “good” and persuading people to worship the dragon, along with his beasts.

The dragon and his forces will eventually lose in their efforts to harm and destroy all the people of the earth. Bur for now the dragon marshals his forces, stirring them up to larger and louder attacks, knowing his time is short.

What does it mean? Revelation, told in a sort of symbolic dream form, can be confusing. But suppose it does say that there will come a time when the organizations of the earth make secret agreements with one another in an effort to amass power? Is that happening? I don’t think it’s a conspiracy theory; it's not theory. You might try checking these out for a sample: here, here, here, here, and here.

And about that propaganda monster—that seems like a good explanation of how:

Rioters tear down statue of
Father Junipero Serra in CA
screenshot from here

·       Religion becomes “bad,” but lasciviousness and licentiousness become “good.”

·       Treating all lives as equally valuable becomes “racist,” but favoring a particular race above all others is “social justice.”

·       An elderly friend who suggests florists who could help service a same-sex “wedding” when her religion prevents her becomes “intolerant,” but taking away that woman’s business and savings for so doing is done in the name of “tolerance.”

·       Speaking reasoned opinions with data to back them up becomes “hate speech,” but shouting down a speaker for even holding different opinions is supporting “free speech.”

·       Honoring a free nation and its flag is “hateful,” but disrespecting the flag and tearing down monuments is understandable, considering the circumstances.

You get the idea. Look at the news. Almost every story will provide an example.

The lies appeal to a certain uncivilized human characteristic: selfishness. If they’re working on you, or on someone you know, selfishness is an underlying factor, often disguised as “this makes me feel virtuous,” so you won’t look carefully enough to notice the lies.

Whether or not these are the times described in Revelation, the description seems fitting for today. We may not know how each episode will turn out, but we do know how the story ends.

In the meantime, let’s see how much loving truth-telling we can do to rescue those who might want the light of freedom, prosperity, and civilization if only they could see it.