Freedom?

A few weeks ago, I took a road trip with three friends to Southern Ohio. While on the trip, I saw a pick-up truck with a bumper sticker with this slogan:









Obviously, this person didn't vote for Obama. But it got me thinking about how Conservatives see Freedom.

It seems to me like I frequently hear from self-identified conservatives about how social welfare programs and nationalized health care are "Socialist" and are somehow taking away their freedom. I've always thought that "Socialist" was just a dirty word that the Right threw at the Left, an insult left over from McCarthyism. To some extent, I still think that's the case. But as always, it's more complex.

Somehow, money has become equated with freedom. A conservative friend of mine said that taxes infringe on his freedom, because he doesn't get to decide how that money is spent. I sugested that he does have a voice in how it's spent, since he's electing the lawmakers who spend the money ultimately anyway. Another conservative friend suggests that there should be no income taxes, only usage fees for things that we actually use. So instead of paying taxes that are used to build and maintain roads and bridges, everything would have tolls that would be paid. Personally, I don't see how any of this makes anyone more "free."

I feel it's become necessary to define Socialism, just in case someone is not familiar with the writings of Karl Marx. Socialism is an economy where the means of production are controlled by the workers. In our American democracy, it could be argued that the workers are the "people" and the people are the government. So if the government controls the means of production, that would be Socialism.

Socialism is not, however, making health care and education accessible to every American. It's not even giving money to failing banks and auto manufacturers to help keep our post-industrial economy afloat. If President Obama gave GM a boat-load of money and then fired the Board of Directors and appointed a whole new board, then I'd be concerned. But to my understanding, that's not what he's doing.

As I sink deeper and deeper into student loan debt with every passing quarter of community college, I ask what is so wrong with the idea of free education. Or what would be so terrible about everyone being able to go to the doctor when they're ill, without worrying about how they're going to pay for it. How does it make you less "Free" for a poor child to have the same access to health care and education as a child whose parents have more access to these resources? What about the freedom of someone who is born into less advantageous circumstances?

In America, the middle class has seems to have the illusion that everyone has equal freedom. I don't think this is the case. The poor are not as free as the middle class, who are not as free as the wealthy. Sure, a poor kid can bust their ass and get a scholarship to an Ivy League school, but do you think that it's as easy for that poor kid as it is for the child born into privledge? Of course it's not. So that poor kid has less freedom.

It sounds like I'm changing my own mind. Maybe money does equal freedom. But that guy in Portsmouth, Ohio with the bumper sticker doesn't have as much freedom as he thinks.