The Cult of Liberty

The cult of equality is bad.

This cult is on full display in our schools, and it is bad enough.Teachers cannot tell their students what to do, because their thoughts and opinions are granted as much credence as the role of the teacher. Leveling that field will level the future that our students want, but will not be able to receive precisely because they are graduating with the false notion that everything is supposed to work out for them as they see fit.

Telling people that the goal of government and the proper role of mankind is to "beat down the mountains and bring up the valleys" for social and economic inequality ends up creating a world filled with widespread poverty, with an elite few commanding greater access to the resources.

However, the cult of liberty can also be damaging, one which tells people that "doing what you want" and making your own way in the world, irrespective of the values and wisdom of the ages.

Freedom ain't free, and freedom remains dumb to the degree that men and women do not know who they are.

Just as a painting without borders will fade into the wall on which it rests, so to human beings without a defining goal for their freedom will give in to the massive conformity of the crowd, of the popular opinion of men, or in the group which commandeers more power.

Man needs a voice, his own spirit, one which comes from Someone else.

When he had found this voice, when he knows who he is, and what he has, and what he is called to do, then his freedom has meaning, has purpose, had direction.

Otherwise, the ability to choose becomes an inability to choose, a world and a way fraught with doubt and worry, forever incapable of deciding which way to go, what to do, where to go.

"I" make decisions, but who am I? Where do these decisions come from, and where are the going?

The cult of liberty, which some would call "rugged individualism", has created the en masse conformity in which men and women still look to belong to something, seeking a system that will help them make sense of a chaotic world which does not regard them as the center of the  universe.

The cult of liberty is just as dangerous as the cult of equality, in large part because it creates the cult of equality, where men and women have become too afraid to stand on their own, because they have nothing to stand on but themselves.