The Love of Liberty Versus the Hatred of Oppression, Part 1: Oppression Haters

This is part 1 of a 5-part article.

Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

In the pursuit of happiness, the question one must answer is, “Do I love freedom, or do I hate oppression?”

On the surface, these questions appear to be a redundancy, yet what naturally flows from the answers to each are worlds apart in their long-term consequences.

Truth and freedom are synonymous with happiness. As man aligns his thoughts, speech, and actions with eternal, immutable truth, he discovers personal freedom and is therefore happy; one cannot be free and unhappy simultaneously.

Mere political freedom, therefore, is simply one level of freedom on an infinite scale, and is not the ultimate goal of the pursuit of happiness — the former is merely a framework to facilitate the latter.

Many of us make the mistake of pursuing political freedom before internalizing personal integrity.

This is a result of being led by the hatred of oppression, rather than the love of liberty.

Oppression Haters

Haters of oppression are shortsighted and limited by the fact that they are only able to see “what is seen,” which is the external oppression at hand.

They blindly stab in the darkness at their oppressors without any thought to what they will replace the tyrants with if they do indeed defeat them.

They are the first to strike at the leaves and the last to contemplate the roots.

Those who merely despise despotism are like rebellious teenagers throwing off the perceived shackles of parental coercion and embracing the counterfeit, arbitrary freedom of drugs and alcohol, free sex, and no curfews.

They are the “freedom fighters” who inevitably replace one tyrant with many and find themselves more persecuted and less free after their struggle than before. Or even worse, if they defeat their oppressors, they immediately begin to practice the same dictatorial methods that the vanquished had used on them previously.

They are the “Revolutionaries” who would be more accurately classified as “Reactionaries.” Their imbalanced emotional indulgence simply seeks nothing more than immunity from coercion; their concept of freedom is to be subject to no law.

Those who abhor tyranny often find that they must liberate themselves from the effects and consequences of their previous “liberation.”

They are engaged in a negative process of extrication, instead of a positive, sincere search for balanced, permanent peace and liberty.

Their prevailing thought is how their oppression affects them personally, and what they can do to change it for their own good instead of working also toward the liberation of others, including their own children and grandchildren.

They are as the immature child screaming for his rights without understanding the responsibilities attached to those rights. And because their focus is on their rights, if they ever do achieve a semblance of freedom they take it for granted, often losing it in the next generation.

They don’t appreciate it and cherish it as something precious and fleeting if not safeguarded; they just expect it and whine if they don’t get it.

Mere revulsion to force is a selfish, myopic renunciation of external constraints and ultimately, and almost inevitably, leads also to the abandonment of internal discipline.

It is the childish, lesser law of “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”; it leads to the justification of becoming the exact thing that one is supposedly fighting against.

It seeks no ultimate, higher end than the immediate goal of casting off the shackles of oppression, and consequently leads to a dangerous and irresponsible usage of pragmatic methods.

In his book Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals, Saul D. Alinsky, a political activist aptly labeled “this country’s leading hell-raiser” in the 1960′s and ‘70′s, writes:

“Life and how you live it is the story of means and ends. The end is what you want, and the means is how you get it. Whenever we think about social change, the question of means and ends arises. The man of action views the issue of means and ends in pragmatic and strategic terms. He has no other problem; he thinks only of his actual resources and the possibilities of various choices of action. He asks of ends only whether they are achievable and worth the cost; of means, only whether they will work.

“To say that corrupt means corrupt the ends is to believe in the immaculate conception of ends and principles. The real arena is corrupt and bloody. Life is a corrupting process from the time a child learns to play his mother off against his father in the politics of when to go to bed; he who fears corruption fears life.”

Does it not follow then that corruption is the ultimate end, and life is the means to that end, Mr. Alinsky?

Read Part 2 Here
Read Part 3 Here
Read Part 4 Here
Read Part 5 Here

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Stephen Palmer is a book writer for mission-driven leaders, a small business lead generation website design architect and persuasive website copywriter, a co-founder of The Center for Social Leadership, and the author of Uncommon Sense: A Common Citizen’s Guide to Rebuilding America.

He co-authored the New York Times bestseller Killing Sacred Cows: Overcoming the Financial Myths that are Destroying Your Prosperity, as well as Hub Mentality: Shifting from Business Transactions to Community Interaction.

He is a liberal-arts graduate of George Wythe University and a graduate and faculty member of the “non-traditional business school” Wizard Academy.

Stephen resides in Round Rock, Texas with his gorgeous wife Karina, awesome son Alex, and princess daughters Libby, Avery, and Laela.

Subscribe to Stephen’s blog and contact him at stephen [at] leadershipwriter [dot] com.