by Selwyn Duke
We here in America take great pride in saying that we are the "freest nation on earth."
We, especially when we perceive our country to be threatened by an external force, will pound our chests and give ourselves pep talks wherein we laud the unshackled state of being that we fancy ourselves to enjoy. Now, don't get me wrong, a proper measure of patriotism can be a positive quality, but there is one danger: sometimes, when you're thoroughly convinced of your greatness you fail to scrutinize yourself closely enough to realize it's escaping your grasp. It's like the undefeated boxer who is so convinced he's nonpareil that he slacks off and doesn't realize he's not the man he used to be until he wakes up on a trainer's table with a lump on his head. So, how free are we? Are we as free as we were 100 years ago, or freer? Before the United States existed, how could people have determined what nation was the freest on the planet? The real question is: how does one measure freedom? Is it all a matter of perception, just a judgement that can only be made on a subjective basis, or is there a way of quantifying such things?
There sure is a way freedom can be measured, and it's really quite simple: a nation's degree of freedom will be inversely proportional to the number of laws it has enacted. In other words, the more laws you have the less free you are. This is because a law by definition is the removal of a freedom; it states that there's something you cannot do or something you must do. And, needless to say, if there's something you cannot do, you're not free to do it - if there's something you must do, you aren't free to do otherwise. Armed with this knowledge, any individual can determine how free his country is relative to others and how free it is as compared to former times.
Understanding how freedom is measured is of the utmost importance, because only then can you understand how it is lost - and what you must do to preserve it. Every time a people decides to enact another law it has legislated away another freedom - this is why lawmaking is a serious matter. It's also why civilization tends to gravitate toward tyranny: the little child inside of everyone wants immediate gratification. This causes people to demand that social problems be remedied expeditiously, and the only way to effect what seems like instant change is through the law. What happens then is that the society will create more laws every year but hardly ever rescind any, and this means that every year its people will be less free - I call this creeping totalitarianism. This is no doubt why the great philosopher G.K. Chesterton said that it is a myth that civilizations transition from tyranny to democracy - they transition from democracy to tyranny. It makes perfect sense, because as time wears on freedom gets incrementally squelched under the ever more burdensome yoke of proliferating laws. So, how free are we? Well, in the "freest nation on earth" there are now over 250,000 laws....and counting.
