WendyMcElroy.com

Those of us who love freedom as though it were a living, breathing being must remember that human liberty was not born in the United States, it is not an American citizen and it will not die in decrepitude with what appears to be the slow-motion collapse of the American Empire. The libertarian icon Murray Rothbard once told me, if he had to guess, he would wager that freedom was probably born in the depths of a German forest somewhere. I thought then, as now, that Murray was expressing his predilection for German theorists like Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. Others have pointed to British Classical Liberalism and its British predecessors (e.g. the Dissenters) as the 'root' of liberty; I suspect they more accurately meant the 'root' of modern libertarian theory.

My purpose here is not to argue the geography of where liberty arose. Although I find it fascinating to trace back the origins of specific ideas within specific cultures -- e.g. when did the concept of 'marginal utility' (whatever it was called) emerge within Western civilization? But I do not believe that liberty in its multitudinous and sometimes divergent expressions has a birthplace...other than within each being at the moment of his or her birth. In short, I believe the 'urge to freedom' to be innate within human beings. I do not say it is predominant or will predominate because a 'will to dominate' also seems to be an innate human trait in the same manner as the opposition of compassion and cruelty both coexist within man. Ultimately, I believe it is a choice every person makes and, in making the choice, he or she is deeply impacted by circumstance. Although I cannot prove it except anecdotally, I believe the circumstances of peace, justice, civil society and the absence of government promote the best within man, which includes 'the urge to freedom.'

What is that urge? It probably differs from person to person as much as the spark of creativity within them differs. But you see it manifested every day...in parents who want their children to grow up with dignity and the chance to rise on merit, in hardworking people who feel in their gut it is wrong to take away what their sweat has earned, in bystanders who are shocked at the police beating a defenseless person. On and on....

But, again, my purpose here is merely to say that freedom itself does not rest upon anything that happens in the United States. It is a human trait, not an American one.

This may seem to be an obvious point to non-Americans. But I was born near the U.S. border, on what Americans consider to be "the bad side of tracks" (aka Canada). I have spent many years in the States and most of my family resides there. In short, I am intimately acquainted with the American psyche, and one of the most sacred pieces of secular dogma that is embedded deep in the American soul is that the United States is "the freest country in the world," "the global guardian of freedom," "freedom's first and last bastion." Well...perhaps at one point it was the freest nation but not lately. And it never was the cradle. It was a glorious promise that has turned into a blackguard's lie.

And, yet, what is happening in America is nothing new; the rise and fall of Empire has happened through history. The American instance will not bring down freedom any more than the fall of the Roman or British Empires killed human liberty. Indeed, a case could be made that when a government embarks on Empire, as America did in the Spanish American War (1898), then its ultimate fall is a necessary requisite to restoring liberty.

I could argue the foregoing but I don't have the heart to do so because what is happening to the United States is sad to the point of heartbreaking. BUT is not tragic to human freedom in the sense of being a fatal blow. Far from it. Just as they cry out at the death of a monarch "The King is dead. Long live the King!" I look at the death of American Empire and say "Liberty is dead. Long live Liberty!"