During a conversation of how to discuss what White Privilege means, I reminded myself that the term may put the individual you are trying to discuss this with on the defensive. Especially, if they are white. Their first reaction to bringing up the conversation was usually, “Well I had to work hard for what I have. Nobody gave what I have achieved to me.” This defense is undoubtedly true in almost all cases. Their are very few, if any, persons that have not overcome some difficulty whether it has been emotionally, physical, financial or societal.
So in understanding the differences and create a conversation, one must think of life as a running track. Everyone begins with the same distance to run. Everyone has to wait for the gun to start. Yet, in some lanes there are hurdles and in some lanes there are, maybe not zero, but fewer. It is this concept that one can bring into the conversation the effort to remove hurdles burdening the lane runner that are placed there by the color of one’s skin or the visual proportions of their eyelids. These are always differences from the society majority no matter what nation but we can limit this conversation to those in the United States.
The privilege of running in the lane with less hurdles set up provides for a quicker finish for that runner. What is the finish? Well, anything like a good job, a good school district for your children, a happy retirement, better advancement career and even nicer neighborhoods for your children to play. All things found in the pursuit of happiness, that truly American ideal.
The effort of a just society should be to reduce those impediments that are not based on the opportunity itself. Lessen the obstacles placed there by ethnological protectionism within a diverse society. But moreover, there should be an unmitigated realization within a free people that such ethnological protectionism exists.
The reason I began this Blog was to publish new thoughts in a continuation from my previous Blog: In Search of a Quiet Room.
The picture above, I took during a visit to Dachau Prison in Germany. It is not in the context of that location that this discussion is centered. Yet, it is a visible sign that provokes the thought; which side? Is it from the side to stay in or the side to stay out? You may well know the answer but understand the psychological effect of such a barrier on the concepts of freedom? The barrier or fence has set limits. A concept of freedom either begins or ends at the fence. There is something inside or outside that must be protected. This barrier is both the physical and conceptual limit or border of an unmentioned freedom.
This concept of border forever removes the perception of boundless or limitless. It is this conservative thought that provided the end of the ideal of Rome. Dame Winifred Mary Beard provides the notion in her BBC saga Meet the Romans with Mary Beard. It was the building of Hadrian’s Wall that ended the concept, at least to Romans, of a boundless, ever-expanding Roman Empire. Rome was no longer the ever expanding empire that would rule all the known world. There were now those inside the physical limit on the empire that were Roman and those outside the limit that were barbarians.
Once defined as within limits, Rome placed itself on the defensive to protect and hold those borders against all those that sought to attack the State of Rome. It was this concept of a defined State that further eroded the empire’s hold. The conservative thought of Rome’s success was ultimately defined by it’s diverse religious deities and the State relationship within the favor of the abundant gods. Once Christianity mono-theistic thought arrived with followers who could not provide sacrifices to the Roman gods and would rather die than perform such ceremonies, this upset the balance in the concept of the State and how it believed in it’s success. This upset led to persecution and the Roman State’s attempt to outlaw an undoubtible cause of any State problems including military failures along its borders maintaining the status quo. The Christian practice had upset the traditional concept of the relationship of the State with the gods.
The concept of the Roman State began to erode. Continual attacks along its borders and the costs of needed defenses to prevent pillaging, political migration and immigration ultimately cost Rome it’s existence as a State. It was no longer the concept of a limitless State that could rule the entire world.
The Roman conservation of the State allowed the surrendering the concepts of limitless empire. Conservative Romans held rigid the concept of the State’s success through a favorable relationship with the gods. Both of these conservative concepts produced the fertilizer for the destruction of the State itself.
So now, how does the destruction of the Roman State bring us on the first paragraph’s definition of the limits of freedom? Especially, in the freedoms as defined by the conception of state found in the United States? If you look at a definition of conservative you find; holding to traditional attitudes and values and cautious about change or innovation, typically in relation to politics or religion.
In the United States, conservatives profess they hold freedom dearest and are it’s sole defenders. Conservatives profess a religious existence of the State in the requirement of standing for the National Anthem at a sport events. They profess this in a required saying of The Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America by school children.
The American concept since the United States’ creation has been a building of a concept of limitless freedoms. The founders viewed certain unalienable rights having no limit. Franklin D. Roosevelt insisted that people in all nations of the world shared Americans’ entitlement to four freedoms: the freedom of speech and expression, the freedom to worship God in his own way, freedom from want and freedom from fear. It was this boundless freedom concept that has ruled American political actions as a State since World War II. Eisenhower said to the troops on their way to Normandy,
You are about to embark upon the Great Crusade, toward which we have
striven these many months. The eyes of the world are upon you. The
hopes and prayers of liberty-loving people everywhere march with you.
The concept of freedom from the United States after World War II was that everyone in the world wanted and deserved freedom. John Kennedy wrote:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
In these ideas we see the concept of a limitless Liberty moving outward towards the people of the world without borders. All men are created equal in their desire to be free. The US concept of freedom was not limited to it’s view of itself as a state but a view that was without borders. Man’s desire for Liberty means to rule the known world.
The dangers to this liberty is now present in American society. Just like the Romans the conservative movement has abandoned the limitless concept of freedom and defining borders or limits to where liberty is and is not. Those inside free and those outside are not. The Republican conservative party has itself declared a religious worship of the state in a national anthem, with a symbol worship in the pledge of allegiance. They have set rigid the definition of liberty that is falling to the disobedience to the state gods in calls for social justice by Blacks and Women’s rights. It is this conservative call for attacks and persecutions of those within the Black Lives Movement and Woman’s Rights that endangers the concept of absolute and limitless freedom. These movement don’t hold the conservative religious concepts of the State. They don’t hold onto a single meaning in liberty. It is, as with the concept of Rome and its alliance with their gods, here that the conservative has endangered freedom in the world despite the perception of themselves as liberty’s defender.
ABSOLUTA LIBERTAS 