Why Freedom?

For posterity, let it be known that there was such a thing in Canada in the year of our Lord 2022, called the “Freedom Convoy.”

Let it also be known that the Freedom Convoy was composed not of soldiers bearing arms and raising up the battle standards of Rome or the modern American empire, but of people and trucks who peacefully brought a present day tyranny to its knees.

Not a drop of blood was shed, not a single arm raised in violence by the people of the Freedom Convoy. And yet their collective roar was heard from coast to Canadian coast, across the oceans and over distant lands. The tyrants heard too - and trembled.

Freedom is worth fighting for - peacefully, with peaceful civil disobedience and with peaceful demonstrations of the mighty power of what Mahatma Gandhi called “soul force.” This is what the Freedom Convoy achieved.

The history of peaceful freedom movements is replete with attempts by totalitarian rulers and their compliant propaganda arm (the press and media) to recast freedom fighters as troublemakers, insurgents, even terrorists.

There were furious, desperate attempts to cast Gandhi and Lech Walesa, Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr, in the mold of terrorists. In their respective countries, these freedom fighters sacrificed much for the peerless cause of freedom and also spent long periods in prison. They emerged victorious, their beacon lights of freedom shining ever brighter with the sobering judgment of history and the passing years. The respective tyrannies on the other hand, have long bitten the inevitable dust of defeat - and nobody remembers the tyrants any more, except in the light of their crimes and their demise.

In a remarkable repeat of history, the Freedom Convoy was also demonized by a desperate and flailing tyrant and his propaganda press. One of the Convoy’s leaders is still in prison as I write this. A Gandhian struggle for freedom was born. It can have only one end - the defeat of tyranny and the triumph of freedom.

Why is freedom worth fighting for? And why do rich and poor, able and disabled flock to its shores and rise as one to its calling? Why is it worth living for, going to prison for, even dying for?

In the same way that a caged bird knows what it is to be free, every human being knows what freedom is. In this sense it is a yearning of the soul and like other yearnings of the soul, even love, it cannot be defined, only experienced.

It is possible of course, for a bird to view the confines of its cage and timely, predictable meals with a certain wistful and plastic affection. And for its captor to warn it repeatedly of the uncertain terrors that await any flight to freedom toward a beckoning, blue sky. But even in such a case, the quest for freedom cannot be quenched entirely and with its darting eyes and occasional, furtive, flap of wings, the bird conveys to us something of its inherent desire to be free.

The human soul can similarly be imprisoned within “comfortable” walls of tyranny, its basic bodily needs met and every one of its days following night after predictable night in terrifying regularity. It may eventually get used to this state of monotonous calm and the caged human soul, like its avian counterpart, may even embrace the hand that feeds it.

But no tyranny has ever succeeded in suppressing entirely the human soul’s yearning for freedom. Every soul that does not submit to being caged, is a nail in the coffin of the tyranny.

And when even the captive soul peers from its prison windows and sees the glorious experiences of freedom without its walls, its own restless longing for freedom is rekindled - and it too wants to break free and join the jubilant throng of free people outside. Many more nails are then nailed into the closing coffin of tyranny.

And thus it is, that no tyranny lasts forever. And every tyranny has a defined lifespan.

The benefits and glories of fighting for freedom are the same as those that accrue to human beings who fight for love, since the two are inextricably linked. Medieval stories of knights going to extraordinary lengths to free the damsels they love, also tell of damsels cruelly imprisoned by tyrants, often tyrants belonging to their own families. Some of these damsels even live a certain luxurious existence, within embroidered castle walls - but still long to be free, to be rescued from a fate worse than death, and join their galloping knight in the wild flight to freedom.

In the human soul likewise, love and freedom march together. Only by loving one’s neighbour as oneself is one able to truly fight for freedom. The self preserving instinct that knows that freedom is good for oneself, also knows that what is dearest to you is not really yours unless it is shared. Unless, that is, freedom’s noble fight is also equally, for one’s family, one’s community, one’s country, the world.

The cry for freedom being so inherent to self preservation should by itself qualify it as worth fighting for. But the altruistic desire that is present in human beings of wanting freedom for other people too, is proof enough, if such proof is needed, that freedom is one of the primitive urges of man.

It is primitive, because it is God given - no petty tyrant can suppress it forever, for the sum total of reality will always make the primal cry for freedom triumph, will always make the tyrant’s totalitarian oppression be at a fatal disadvantage to the relentless march of truth.

Truth leads to freedom, since what is inherently true must also be inherently free. Freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, academic freedom and freedom of the press (which is a function of freedom of speech) is therefore a result of this magnificent and productive coupling of truth with freedom.

How must the tyrant tremble and how the powers of darkness wail if they realize the full extent, the breadth, the height, the depth, of the defiant fight for freedom they are destined to lose!

The nature of tyranny of course, is its inseparable association with hubris, pride and arrogance. The tyrant will convince himself that the sword of oppression he wields has Camelot charms that make him invincible. When this cardboard weapon bends and folds and the tyranny itself collapses like the proverbial pack of cards, the tyrant will often keep believing the bubble of make-believe he and his sycophantic side-kicks have constructed.

The Soviet Union never believed it would be defeated. Nor did Hitler. Both now join the pale ranks of row after row of defeated tyrants - and are now the subject for historians on the rise and - inevitable - fall of tyrannies.

Jesus also was considered a terrorist and trouble maker in His time. The authorities believed His crucifixion would signal the end of His movement. Instead they were soon confronted with His resurrection. The Resurrection should remind us of both the temporal and cosmic triumph of freedom. “If the Son shall make you free,” Jesus said, “you shall be free indeed.”