Most of my Polish friends believe that we live in a free country and that the government is a warranter of our freedom. But when we continue to discuss that issue, it becomes clear that they are talking about the meaning of freedom our government taught us in school.
They recall everything they’ve heard about the People’s Republic of Poland and they compare our present situation to the obvious lack of freedom people experienced in real socialism. They agree that there are countries where citizens have more individual rights than we have in Poland but still they think that freedom can be measured on a binary scale and they give totalitarianism a ‘0’ rating and representative democracy a ‘1’ rating.
Image from Wikipedia - the office and residence of the Poland's president.
When I compare their definition of freedom, full of complications and exclusions, to my understanding of freedom as an ability to do everything that doesn’t violate freedom of other individuals, I come to one conclusion – that government isn’t warranter of our freedom but it teaches us to be warranters of its freedom. And ‘well-educated’ society becomes such warranter. Even if some of us are too stupid or too smart to learn its rules, the government keeps us all under its wings thanks to the magnificent tool of democracy.
And everyone has to agree that democracy is fair. It is the majority rule so it’s justified by... well, only by itself really... Each government would tell you that most people believe in democracy – so democracy is declared by the power of itself. Just like authoritarianism was declared by the power of authoritarian rulers. Optimists would call it a progress but I think it’s pure evolution...
Image from Wikipedia
Even if government was an efficient warranter of the remains of freedom it has left us, it would still be an enemy of our freedom as it forces us to sacrifice some of our natural rights. You don’t have to search any further for examples – we aren’t even free to choose the warranter of our freedom and we aren’t able to resign this warrant when we decide that the price is too high to pay for such protection. Most prisoners wouldn’t call their guards ‘warranters of their freedom’ but if bars are invisible and people haven’t heard of place beyond them, most of them get confused. They can’t believe they are in jail. If they have no choice they force themselves to think that they would choose their situation anyway. If the government declares itself to be the only legal warranter of our freedom, most of people claim it’s the cheapest one.
Still, I believe that government doesn’t have to be an enemy of our freedom. It could be warranter of it without stealing our natural rights. Such situation is only possible if government’s duties would become services provided on the free market. If people were able to create their own governments (or self-governments) or submit to existing ones by signing a free agreement, each government would have to serve people instead of parasitize them. If we were free to choose or resign our government, it would become our inferior, not superior.
Only then we and our present rulers would ascertain how many people prefer to be governed by others rather than self-governed. But before this situation occurs many optimists will have to realize their lack of freedom. If you see the bars imprisoning you and your countrymen, you have to make them visible for as many of them as you can. Democracy is declared even if you don’t like it.
For a Polish version of this article, click here.
I wrote this article in 2009 and it won the contest organized by Language of Liberty Institute for the best essay on theme: Government: warranter or enemy of freedom? The article was later published in IDEE (No. 10) - the newsletter of Polish-American Foundation for Economic Research & Education.
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