LM#52--Hello Freedom Man

0:01 Those are the drums of liberty. And freedom is a word these days being hijacked with many changes to its meaning. Let's talk about that on this Liberty Minute. Welcome to the Theory to Action podcast, where we examine the timeless treasures of wisdom from the great books in less time, to help you take action immediately and ultimately to create and lead a flourishing life. Now here's your host, David Kaiser.

0:42 Hello, I am David and welcome back to another Liberty Minute. You know, for the last decade or so, I've been watching the word freedom being changed in its definition and from its original meaning. It's being changed to willfulness or license. Whatever you can think up to do, you can do is what people call freedom these days Now. Freedom for most of my lifetime was closely associated with liberty, but if you watched the Democratic National Convention last week, you saw and heard the chants of freedom, freedom, freedom, but it was in a context of reproductive rights, meaning the killing of babies.

1:34 Of course, most people don't associate the word freedom to be able to do anything you want and, more importantly, being able to take another human right. That's not freedom. If you haven't listened to our last podcast, be sure to check that out. We think it's one of our better ones and we think we've clearly diagnosed what is going on and how freedom and reproductive justice is being hijacked by a radical, radical Democratic Party these days. You know them chanting freedom. Each of those days of their convention they chanted freedom, freedom, freedom, and it meant something totally different freedom, freedom, freedom.

2:22 And it meant something totally different, and it reminded me instantly of the phrase over the entrance to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Arbeit macht frei, which translates to work sets you free in English. You know that slogan was prominently displayed above the entrance at Auschwitz, the main camp of the Auschwitz I rather the main camp at the Auschwitz complex, and it became one of the most infamous symbols of the Holocaust. And the phrase was originally derived from the novel by the German writer Lorenz Dieffenbach and was used in various Nazi concentration camps, including Dachau and Sachsenhausen Sachsenhausen Sorry for my German pronunciation.

3:20 Now. This slogan was intended to deceive prisoners into believing that hard work could lead to their freedom, but in reality it was a cruel, cruel irony, as the camps were sites of forced labor, suffering and unfortunately and a horrifically mass extermination. The use of the phrase exemplified the Nazis' perverse manipulation of language and psychological cruelty towards the prisoners. You could say the same thing has happened to many millions of Democrats who believe honestly that reproductive justice and reproductive freedom will make them free Free to do with their own bodies anything they want, free even to kill a baby inside their body.

4:13 Unfortunately, that is the crazy world and the crazy times we are confronted with in our current era. But let's not be deceived. Let us have clarity. Let us stand for freedom in its true meaning, in its authentic meaning, in its real meaning, and so we can understand freedom in its proper meaning and context. Let us turn to our book. We shared last time meaning and context. Let us turn to our book. We shared last time the Eleven Principles of a Reagan Conservative by Paul Kengor. Now let me start with a story from the book. This comes to us from Ronald Reagan's farewell address, given on January 11th 1989.

4:58 We're going to pick it up in the middle of the address. You know, down the hall and up the stairs from this office is the part of the White House where the president and his family live. There are a few favorite windows I have up there that I like to stand and look out on early in the morning the view over the grounds here to the Washington Monument and then the mall and the Jefferson Memorial. But on mornings, when the humidity is low, you can see past the Jefferson to the river, the Potomac and the Virginia Shore. Some said that that's the view Lincoln had when he saw the smoke rising from the Battle of Bull Run.

5:41 I see more prosaic things the grass on the banks, the morning traffic as people make their way to work and now and then a sailboat on the river. I've been thinking a bit about that window. I've been reflecting on what the past eight years have meant and mean, and the image that comes to mind, like a refrain, is a nautical one a small story about a big ship and a refugee and a sailor. It was back in the early 80s, at the height of the boat, people and the sailor was hard at work on the carrier Midway, which was patrolling the South China Sea.

6:22 The sailor, like most American servicemen, was young, smart and fiercely observant. The crew spied on the horizon, a leaky little boat, and crammed inside were refugees from Indochina hoping to get to America. The Midway sent a small launch to bring them to the ship and to safety. As the refugees made their way through the choppy seas, one spied the sailor on the deck and stood up and called out to him. He yelled hello American sailor, hello freedom man. A small moment with a big meaning, a moment the sailor, who wrote it in a letter, couldn't get out of his mind, and when he saw it when I saw it, neither could I, because that's what it was to be an American in the 1980s we stood again for freedom.

7:23 I know we always have. But in the past few years the world again, and in a way we ourselves, rediscovered it. Hello American sailor, hello freedom man. Americans did rediscover freedom With the help of our last, great, greatest president. This country has had Ronald Reagan, and we rediscovered it with the help of Reagan, perhaps because no one else lived this freedom for the great majority of his life. Then did Reagan, from his entry into politics in 1964 with his speech for Goldwater where everyone said after that wipeout of election that conservatives, including Reagan, well, his career is just washed up before it even got started and to his final sunset in his life after politics, at the Reagan ranch, just North of Santa Barbara, california, reagan kept rediscovering that freedom.

8:32 He kept reminding us Americans to rediscover that freedom. He kept pointing the way, and that's a freedom which most Americans closely associate with Liberty, a freedom to do the right thing without coercion, the liberty to pursue virtue and not vice. Let's go back to the book for some more goodness about freedom. Hello American sailor, hello freedom man. This boat person in the hands of Ronald Reagan was not only a boat person but a spokesperson. Who's a spokesperson like Reagan, testifying to a great America to America, as a beacon to America, as a bastion of freedom.

9:19 He was an image and a symbol of something that ran deeper than the South China Sea. Reagan completed the thought of the boat person and on the sailor that is the American freedom man. A small moment with a big meaning. A moment, the sailor that is the American freedom man, a small moment with a big meaning. A moment. The sailor who wrote it in a letter couldn't get out of his mind, and when he saw it, neither could I, because that's what it meant, that's what it was to be an American. In the 1980s, we stood again for freedom. Ken Gore says that was quite a revealing statement. According to Ronald Reagan, to be an American in the 1980s his era, his time, his presidency, his time for choosing was to stand for one thing in particular freedom.

10:09 And for Reagan to be a conservative was to stand for freedom. Freedom had many manifestations in Reagan's mind. It related, as we'll see later, to taxes and regulations. The more the government takes in taxes, the less freedom the individual has with money earned. If the government increases your taxes by 50%, you lose that much more money Money that might have been used to reduce a mortgage, pay off student loans purchase a new car, buy groceries, do home repairs, fix a broken dishwasher, hire a plumber or electrician, replace a lawnmower, do landscaping or give to charity.

10:55 When government takes that money, you lose the freedom to use that money. As for regulations, excessive regulations hinder or even halt the ability to open or operate a business, which, incidentally, provides jobs for others. The freedom to school your children as you please is another important freedom we enjoy in America. Freedom is indispensable to education, not only from K-12, but also in higher education, as Reagan acutely understood. Of course, there are the First Amendment freedoms religion, speech, press, assembly.

11:39 There is the freedom even to leave, to travel, to emigrate. Now Reagan asked us in that farewell address in 1989 to rediscover our history, our land of hope, our land of opportunity. It's 2024. How are we doing in that endeavor? Are we reading the good books to enrich our civic virtue? Are we studying our founding documents? So any type of radical politician will not be able to change that history and revise it to their own meaning, which seems to be happening today.

12:22 How are we doing on those two fronts? Let's go back to the book. Reagan knew that freedom was the engine of American individualism and prosperity. He trusted individual Americans. He said the key was to trust the people and what they could do with their own freedom Quote. Only when people are free to worship, create and build, only when they can decide their destiny and benefit from their own risks, only then do societies become dynamic and prosperous. As an example, reagan pointed to oil, stating that oil was worthless until entrepreneurs with ideas and the freedom and faith to take risks manage to locate it, extract it and put it into work for humanity.

13:19 Indeed, added Reagan, americans could find more oil and we can develop abundant supplies of new forms of energy if we encourage risk-taking by thousands and thousands of entrepreneurs a lesson applicable today, as America's current White House leadership refuses to extract the vast reservoirs of oil under its own feet. The solution was to rely on American individuals rather than relying on quote a government to hoard and control. The whole idea was to trust the people. Government needed to get out of the way.

14:01 And you know what's amazing about this particular part in the group of the book is reagan references oil, and he certainly could know at the time about the fracking revolution After all, it was in the 1980s. He sang this, but he said oil was worthless until the entrepreneurs with ideas and freedom and faith to take those risks. Thousands of entrepreneurs. And just think if Reagan were around today, he would see the fruit of his predictions.

14:41 There was thousands of entrepreneurs who would indeed find more oil and they would invent other forms of energy. They would in fact invent a new method of extracting that oil with fracking to help propel the world for another 25 to 50 years. It's amazing when you give people freedom to do good and you get government out of the way, what happens? We, as Americans, prosper. Let's go back to the book. Reagan argued that ingenuity, imagination and creativity are the forces unleashed by human freedom.

15:24 It was these forces, he said, that built america. If given a chance, these forces could reshape the face of this planet. It's's only when people are free, said the president, whether free to dream and discuss untried ideas or free in the marketplace, that innovation and opportunity can become the order of the day as free men and women. There is nothing we Americans can't achieve. There is nothing we Americans can't achieve. And here we see a common theme across and at the apex of Reagan's principles His unwavering belief in the capabilities of the American people.

16:05 These were capabilities fueled in large part by the force of freedom Significantly. This freedom principle was just not an American principle. For Reagan, it was a universal principle. Freedom was not the exclusive domain of Americans. Freedom, reagan said rather, that freedom was one of the deepest and noblest aspirations of the human spirit. All humans aspire for freedom, and when governments permit people to express their aspiration for freedom, especially in the economic sphere, freedom works. Reagan told the United Nations flatly the free market works.

16:50 Conservatives thus needed to be freedom fighters. According to Reagan, conservatives should not be simply anti-big government or anti-communist or against high taxes and burdensome regulations, but in the positive keepers of the flame of liberty. By Reagan's recounting, a conservative conserved freedom. And so, in today's Liberty Minute, the forces of darkness and evil want to hijack the word freedom for vice and bad things. Let's remind ourselves of what freedom actually stands for and has stood for in the past.

17:36 Let's not let anyone redefine it towards their malice and bad intentions. Let's always stand up and fight for freedom from its own redefinition and let us always stand proud and tell the truth, even when it's inconvenient or in the face of violent opposition. Because when we do, when we stand for truth, then we shall learn, as the American sailor did on those choppy seas in the South China Sea in the early 1980s, what it was all worth. Hello American sailor, hello freedom man, welcome aboard.

18:19 You are free. Let's keep fighting the good fight. Let's keep fighting for freedom. Thank you for joining us. We hope you enjoyed this Theory to Action podcast. Be sure to check out our show page at teammojoacademycom, where we have everything we discussed in this podcast, as well as other great resources. Until next time, keep getting your mojo on.