Freedom and War

The American Revolution, The War of 1812, The Civil War, The Spanish-American War, World War I, World War II, The Korean War, Desert Storm, Operation Enduring Freedom, and Operation Iraqi Freedom. These wars all have one thing in common, they are wars that the United States either started or became involved with, in the name of “freedom”. The United States military casualties of just those wars listed amount to over 1.2million. A ridiculously high cost for a concept with such a subjective definition. In the summer of 2007 a met a boy named Philip Kwii, we were taking a class in Philosophy and in that class we were required to write down what freedom meant to us. Once we finished writing down our individual definitions of freedom, we were instructed to switch papers and do a peer review. I had written something abstract about the state of nature and absolute freedom. My friend Philip had written about chewing gum. Philip was from Singapore, and in Singapore chewing gum is banned. What I discovered that day was the radically different definitions of freedom people have and often times what we truly believe to be freedom, that light at the end of the tunnel, is something we feel we have been unjustly denied.

This leads to one popular definition of freedom. Freedom as the non-restriction of options (Parent, 1974). The definition of freedom as the non-restriction of options is more of an outline built to encompass the many varying personal definitions of freedom that exist around the world. For example, in my friend Philip's case, he would achieve freedom if the leadership of Singapore lifted the ban on chewing gum, no longer restricting his option to chew gum.. In the case of the southern states, freedom was the option to secede from the United States and form the Confederate States of America and establish their own, separate set of rules.

Conflicts arise when one persons definition of freedom impedes another persons definition of freedom. For example, Philip wants to be able to chew gum, but Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wants the streets of Singapore to be free of sticky discarded chewing gum. Conflict will ensue, and the weaker power (Philip) is forced to yield to the stronger power (in this case Prime Minister Yew). The same concept applies to nations, or even rebellious groups as was the case in the American Revolution when the United States (then 13 British Colonies) felt that their freedoms were being compromised by what the British thought were their freedoms. Conflict escalated to war, Britain was repelled, and 13 rebellious colonies became the United States of America.

To understand freedom we must first try to understand perspective. Hopefully, during that undertaking we will begin to understand the reasons behind other people's aggression. Through that understanding maybe, someday, we can avoid conflict all together. Remember, not even Hitler viewed himself as the bad guy.


Citations

Lee, R. "The History Guy: Casualties From America's Wars"
http://www.historyguy.com/american_war_casualties.html

Parent, W. A. (1974). Freedom as the Non-Restriction of Options . Mind, New Series, 83(331), Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/2252746