Universal Freedom

Barack Obama likes to think that everything in the world must be universal. Universal health care, universal school systems, universal economics. As long as the universe is his universe.

Now, he wants us to believe that freedom is “universal” too. Oh no, he’s not saying that we should spread universal freedom throughout the world as the previous president believed; he’s saying that freedom is a “universal principle.”

Pardon me for a moment whilst I endeavor to wrap my brain around this one.

If freedom is a universal principle, Mr. President, then please explain to me why the women in Muslim countries must walk about with their faces and heads covered, cowering in shame and fear that something they do will be interpreted as evil. Explain to me how men can get away with gang-raping a woman, and then the woman is charged with adultery. This is freedom?

If freedom is a universal principle, Mr. President, then why is it that in present day Canada, preachers who speak their opinions about homosexuality are branded “intolerant” and tossed behind bars for “hate crimes.” If it is a universal principle, how is it that in China Christians must be registered with the state and teach only state-approved doctrines or risk their health and freedom (such as it is) to teach and preach what they truly believe? How is it that in China the internet is censored to omit almost all mentions of the Tienanmen Square Massacre? How is it that in Africa, rival warlords continue to fight each other for the right to put their fellow Africans in subjugation to themselves.

Are these things freedom?

Mr. President, do you not realize that the skimming of the surface I just mentioned to you is not an aberration, but the norm throughout history?

And since freedom is such a universal principle, there would not be a problem with the United States, (until January of this year) the chief purveyor of freedom in the modern world, spreading that message, now would there? However, the President seems to be under the impression that we should not . . .

impose these values on another country with a different history and a different culture.

Wait? Which is it? Is freedom universal to all countries with all histories and cultures? Or is it an American idea that we’re “forcing” on all those poor wretched souls in third world countries like some of the President’s close family members live in?

Barack Obama has absolutely no right to pompously go on radio stations in other countries and proclaim in the same breath that America has no right to impose her values (of freedom) on others, and then claim that freedom is a universal principle. If freedom is a universal principle, than we aren’t imposing anything. We’re giving them a gift of what they want.

Freedom is not a universal principle. Freedom as America was introduced to it is a principle based almost solely in the Bible, which, rather ironically, happens to be where the principles of about ninety-eight percent of the Founding Fathers were based as well. Until Barack Obama and the rest of the United States understands that, freedom in a country . . . well, that’s going to become an extinct principle.

Then we can have universal speech and religion as well. Won’t that be nice?

©2009 Harrison Beckmann, theinconvenientpatriot.wordpress.com. All Rights Reserved.

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