Sunday, January 04, 2026
Sunday Reflection: On War and Freedom
It seems that whenever one country invades another, it projects the invasion as a "liberation" that will bring freedom to the other nation. I understand the instinct, but the track record is pretty poor. Afghanistan, which we "ran" for years, is not exactly a hotbed of individual freedoms right now under the Taliban. Iraq is better-- but as the score above from Freedom House reflects, not so great.
The Constitution's way of maintaining individual liberties (beyond direct guarantees in the Bill of Rights) is to prevent any one governmental institution or person from becoming too powerful-- because that is often when rights are restricted (as we see in places like Venezuela where strongmen rule).
So, if we care about preserving freedoms by preventing any one person from becoming too powerful, we can do that right here... and need to.
What freedoms are we talking about? Americans usually go right to freedom of speech and religion. The sad thing about advanced democracies right now is not that they lack freedom of religion-- they have that, generally-- but that such a freedom is irrelevant. Faith simply is not important in most people's lives, at least in terms of leading them to do things that need to be protected. Sure, we hear a lot about some Christians whose faith seems to be centered on discrimination against LGBTQ people, but that's not the kind of risk I'm talking about, because right now it is no risk at all (and I'm still not sure how it is Christian, but that's a different story). It's rare that faith under freedom is dangerous to a governing regime in a thriving democracy.
What Maduro did that really is objectionable was limit political dissent-- jailing and killing people who opposed the government. And, again, maybe what we need to do is make sure that doesn't happen here...
