Liberty Cuts

"If liberty is glorious, that is because it allows human beings to use their intellectual and moral powers for glorious ends. It is not because it provides lasting tranquility and solid satisfaction."

― Glenn Tinder, "Liberty: Rethinking an Imperiled Ideal"

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Dear Kate,

One of the many gifts of democracy is, of course, liberty.

Gifted, but not given, as in being predictable in how the givenness would play itself out.  Like giving a razor to a barber and giving it to a baby too.  It cuts both—and many other, ways.

Look at ourselves in the past two years.  Some say we shouldn't abuse our freedom by resisting the vaccine and mandates; others say the burden of liberty is to not bow down to the autocratic policies of technocrats.  And that's only a most superficial way to put it.  The symphony of liberty plays itself out more like a cacophony.

I am going to tell you a story, with the picture above and words below, but before that, the main feature of this piece, a tour de force from one of my greatest teachers Glenn Tinder, pondering on the imperiled ideal of liberty:

"If liberty is glorious, that is because it allows human beings to use their intellectual and moral powers for glorious ends. It is not because it provides lasting tranquility and solid satisfaction. 

Where people are fixed in social stations involving definite duties, where the social order tells each one how life from beginning to end must be carried on, and where certain reigning dogmas are apt to be publicly uncontested, human evil is more or less curbed and obscured.

Where there is liberty, however, appetite and ambition are released, doubt is encouraged, and evil becomes manifest in diverse and unforeseeable ways. In free societies, children and parents, siblings and friends, professional colleagues and business associates all become potential sources of highly unpleasant surprises. 

And it is not only others who make the loss of creedal fixity and prescriptive place painful. Being responsible for the whole course of your life, and all the beliefs and allegiances that define your soul, can be a burden and a trial, and the final outcome may be not satisfaction but poignant regret."

I needed to catch my breath and weep a little after first reading that.  He was writing my life story.

The picture above is my son in Princeton, right now as we speak, working with the Mennonite Disaster Service (MDS) to restore homes damaged and destroyed by last year's flood.  I was planning to go too but wasn't able to take days off from work.  It's a one-week commitment.

He signed up to volunteer without letting me know.  He took the liberty of answering to the faithful guidance of our pastor, instead of answering to something else for his university reading break.  I didn't imagine he would make the decision on his own.  I was imagining badly.

The yellow jacket he's wearing is mine, my favorite winter work jacket I got for $24.95 back then, before I became the father of a son, when people would still crowd the mall for Boxing Day blowouts.  Only that the particular mall I got it from wasn't crowded.  (The shop would soon go out of business.)

I am acutely aware of the materiality of my Self, especially clothing that I put on, the value I wish to add to it.  I would touch the seams and relish the cuts.

This jacket was cut well.

Yours, Alex