The false freedom paradox

In his January 1961 inaugural address, U.S. President John F. Kennedy admonished the entire world: “Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans . . .,” he declared with soaring, inflated rhetoric, somehow implying that Americans inherently shouldered a burden. In this case, the “torch” Kennedy broached was a symbolic metaphor for the innate American “responsibility” of defending and upholding freedom around the world.

In subsequent sections of his famous speech, Kennedy was more unmistakably explicit: “Let every nation know,” he grandly proclaimed, “whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.” To frame the matter in less grandiloquent and more mundane terms, Kennedy basically promised to do anything and everything to promote freedom all over the world.

Millions of patriotic Americans applauded Kennedy for making this unrestrained statement–a statement that would later lead to ignominious defeat in the Republic of South Vietnam.

It was a naive Wilsonian vision–one fraught with danger and filled with glaring but unquestioned contradictions. Kennedy essentially set out to “make the world safe for democracy” and freedom. He would do whatever was required to uphold “freedom”–including forcing others to support freedom.

Consider Kennedy’s sweeping statement once again. Consider its dire and alarming implications. He said that “. . . we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”

In a sense, this sweeping proclamation sounds a great deal like fascism. Who is “we”?
Quite obviously, the American people. But who is making serious decisions for them? Why, Kennedy, of course.

Kennedy speaks almost as if he were the King of Camelot and the American people were his loyal subjects. He would decide for them. He would allocate their precious private resources toward the protection of foreign liberty.

Although Americans should support freedom, they nevertheless should object to the rather altruistic practice of crusading around the world and squandering US taxpayer dollars–or worse, blood–to promote and defend the liberty of others, which is clearly not a mandate of the US Constitution.

Americans cannot uphold freedom by denying the freedom of one man in order to uphold the freedom of another. There is no such thing as a freedom paradox.

No American President can draft a soldier, command him to meet his death in Vietnam, and then call this a noble act specifically designed to promote freedom. Military conscription–involuntary recruiting–is slavery.

During the Cold War, America drafted soldiers, threw them to their deaths in Korea and Vietnam, and then celebrated them as great fallen heroes–“heroes” who died defending “our” freedom abroad. Some freedom.

Remember that next Memorial Day. America probably has not defended its freedom since the War of 1812.