RISKING IT ALL FOR FREEDOM AND LIBERTY

In New Hampshire, we hear a lot about “Liberty” and “Freedom”. There are some people who are so enamored with themselves here in New Hampshire that they believe they know so much more about liberty than others, that they name their organizations such things as, “The Liberty Caucus” or the “Free State Project”. Where exactly in New Hampshire this project is happening, it's hard to know.
  
Thus far their strategy has included refusing to show their drivers license to a policeman when stopped, and not removing their hat in court when asked to by a judge.  I guess we are all supposed to be impressed with all this daring and risk taking.  These bumpkins even compare themselves to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., all the while packing heat and calling themselves “non-violent”.

Lately though, frustrated with these antics that have gotten them nowhere, their new strategy is to place themselves on the ballot as Democrats in Democratically leaning districts, which gets them elected under the radar because they manage to keep quiet about their extreme libertarian and right wing leanings.  They count on the fact that most people, if you can get them to show up at the polls for local and state elections, rarely get to know the candidates thoroughly.  Libertarians and right wing extremists can’t make it on their ideas so they have to resort to clandestine means, taking the easy way out instead of taking real risks in the marketplace of ideas.

This week, the passing of Nelson Mandela and reflections on his life and work, should make Americans grateful for the freedom we have.  It should also give us a life lesson on taking a risk for the cause of liberty.  The problem with Americans is that we are mostly spoiled, we don’t even know how good we have it.  If one listens to the libertarians and right wing extremists, one would think that we live in an entirely different country, where the government is out to get us and take away our freedom, our property, our guns, our Christmas, our…first born child.  Being an American fearful all the time of right wing bugaboos is a truly exhausting experience.
  
Nelson Mandela did actually put his life on the line for his own freedom and for the liberation of his countrymen. He said at his trial to his oppressors in their courtroom, as he was being taken away as a political prisoner,  “…this is a cause for which I am prepared to die…“.  (Where have we heard that before?  Give me liberty or give me death.)  In his country, the government was truly out to get him, and eventually it did get him, as Mandela sacrificed for what we Americans take for granted every day.  Mandela had to wait until he was a very old man to cast his vote in a democratic election, a right we Americans often prioritize below other daily activities as our dismal turnout percentages reveal every year on election day.

Nelson Mandela did not stop taking risks after he was freed.  As president of a new South Africa that was on the precipice of a bloody civil war, he donned the jersey of the national rugby team, which was long a symbol of white oppression of blacks, to unite the nation behind the team‘s bid for the national championship, thereby risking his political standing among the masses of black South Africans.

Mandela insisted on reconciliation instead of retribution in a post-Apartheid South Africa, extracting public admission and public forgiveness for all in South Africa, black and white, who committed injustices under Apartheid. Mandela set an example for the world on how to settle political conflict and injustice peacefully with hope for the future.

Mandela understood what all great leaders understand that the freedom and liberty of individuals is interdependent.  No single individual is truly free if other segments of the population of that country remain without liberty and suffer injustice.  He lived in a South Africa in which the white minority ruled and the black majority were denied their rights.  He did not want a new South African nation in which the black majority were now free to rule while denying the freedom of the white minority.

Today’s South Africa is not a perfect society by any means, as Mandela was well aware.  Many black people still feel the bitter, lingering affects of years of injustice brought by Apartheid, and many white people still live in fear behind barriers and gated communities.  Poverty remains a big problem in that country, but Mandela has left a legacy of hope for its future.

As we go to the polls to choose our elected officials, who so very often benefit from their positions of power by writing a book or gaining a cushy position in a lobby firm or with some private company or government contractor that their legislation might have helped, we have to ask ourselves, what risk, political or personal, is this person for whom I’m voting taking or willing to take for the cause of freedom?  Do they truly understand what it means to risk it all for liberty and freedom?