On a new portable DVD player, the kids watched a Pokemon movie in the KOA cabin. I sat outside enjoying the air and the setting sun. In a desultory way I listened to the dialogue of the movie that played superficially with social issues. My interest piqued when one character asked if it is better to be free or to be safe? Then one of the kids came out and asked me if it is better to be free or safe. I was taken aback and not immediately ready with an answer.
I cannot recall my reply, but I know it was incomplete. Let me try, therefore, in this piece to explore the idea. Keep in mind that we are addressing this question from the point of view of a young American kid, not as university philosophers. Nevertheless, on the highest moral level, I have no hesitation in choosing freedom over safety. I suspect, but have not the skill to prove, that only in a freedom lies safety. In other words, it is not really a choice between freedom and safety. Rather if you are free, you will be safe, or at least you have a better chance at working successfully to secure your safety in a free society.
As I write the sentences above, I realize I sound like an advocate of free access to guns: the basic idea that freedom to carry weapons ensures that no tyrant will ever take over. Then I realize the enormity of the arguments on both sides of this equation. And I wonder about the different levels of freedom versus safety I have observed and enjoyed in the different societies I have live in.
I recall the early years in South Africa. As kids, we were certainly safe and did things and went places that I would never allow my kids and grandkids to do today. But as we became aware, we realized we were not free. Of course we were “more free” than so many others, but it was all smoke and mirrors. And we realized we were not safe: how else to explain the growing military and induction of all young white men into the army to “defend the homeland?” We left before everybody got freedom, but now we hear nothing from the old country but of the conditions that demand every more action to remain safe. One despairs of aggregating the sum total of freedom versus safety in such a situation.
I cogitate on the freedom and safety we enjoy as we travel the miles across this country. I do not carry a gun. I do avoid the rough parts of towns. I stop only at those places along the way clearly set up for tourists and travelers. I feel most comfortable (safe and free) in a KOA surrounded by families, retired couples, and construction workers in RVs and log cabins. Maybe this is perfect freedom and safety. Then I receive an e-mail from my son on a destroyer somewhere in the Gulf, and I know a lot more is involved in both than we perceive on a day to day basis.
I am headed for Vancouver, where I am told I am safe and where I feel safe wondering the streets late at night on the way back to the ferry and bus from a movie, party, or bar. But I never feel as free there as I do here. Somehow the heavy hand of social correctness, restricted access to free radio, overly expensive books and liquor, loss of services pursuant to the ever-occurring strikes, and the pervasive anger at other countries and their actions, makes me feel less free. I suspect that on a day-to-day level I am as free, if not more so in Canada than in the United States. My US friend joke that I could (but I do not) easily and safely obtain and use drugs in Canada that would land me in jail in the US. And I am not subjected to the restrictions imposed by the extreme religious right—although I confess that nothing they do or say truly affects me in either country—although it obviously affects others.
So I replied to my grandson that he should always place freedom first; and he should always seek to preserve freedom in a way that the benefits of safety must surely flow from freedom unrestricted by narrow and selfish interests.
