alternative history

One of the main tenets of our current presidential administration is the proliferation of freedom, or what the regime considers freedom. This is what America is doing in Iraq, apparently, spreading canned freedom, as well as doing what presidential hopeful Mike Huckabee calls "fixing what we broke." The think tank, Freedom House, reports on the state of the world's freedom on a per-country basis every year. According to Freedom House,

"Freedom is possible only in democratic political systems in which the governments are accountable to their own people; the rule of law prevails; and freedoms of expression, association, belief and respect for the rights of minorities and women are guaranteed."

There is a wonderfully colorful chart of the organization's findings, called "Freedom in the World" on Wikipedia, in addition to color-coded maps like the one below.


The green color means that the country is "free," the tan "partly free," and the blue "not free." There is also a chart that enumerates each country in the world and assigns it a value based on the amount of political rights and civil liberties its citizens enjoy. The lower the number (from 1 to 6), the better off the country is. Unsurprisingly, the United States earns a 1 in both categories, and is labeled "free." In fact, the majority of countries in the Americas are free. Cuba is the only country labeled "not free," though Venezuela is close to it, with 4s in both categories. It's a nice idea, to be able to distinguish the apparent freedom of a country's citizens, especially when those doing the distinguishing do so from the lofty perch of Mount Superpower. I've always found it a bit ironic that for as great a country we are, we are unable to see freedom as something other than a democracy.

John Adams said in 1814, "Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There never was a democracy yet that did not commit suicide." We're pressing our luck, aren't we, two centuries later? Historically speaking, our country's experiment with democracy has been successful. We emerged from relative obscurity to be first to develop nuclear weapons (be first to use them, too), first to put a man on the moon. But if we look back at the formation of our country and why it was that way, we've moved very far away from our original goals. With instruments like Social Security and the Great Society, we've moved into a position of reliance on the government such that we've developed selective amnesia. We can't remember what it was like before the government helped to support its citizens, warned its citizens about the dangers of ingesting mood-altering substances, regulated the civil unions of its citizens. We've become so dependent, we don't believe we could ever be independent again.

Sometimes I wonder how our country would have turned out if the South had won that nasty War of Northern Aggression. It's a polarizing question because many are liable to jump on the soapbox of slavery. Slavery is a horrible institution. It was horrible then and it's horrible now. But it was not the reason our Civil War was fought. It was fought out of fear. The South was defending State's rights and its very way of life. The North was advocating Change and Progress and National rights. Ultimately, Lincoln succeeded in reuniting the Union, a feat he is much commended for. I'm not a big fan of Lincoln to begin with. Yes, he was a great speech-writer. Yes, he was calm in the face of adversity and all that. But he suspended habeas corpus. And he quashed State's rights. The South contended that States should be able to decide how to live, and since the States were founded before the United States was, their rights should prevail. The North contended the opposite. Obviously, we know what happened.

But if the South had won, what might the world be like? Would there still be a Confederacy, or would the South have eventually joined up with the North again? Would Amendments 13, 14, and 15 be passed eventually? Realistically, there's no way to know. But wouldn't it be nice for people to think about it, without getting caught up in the peripheral issues?

Can our form of government, our system of justice, survive if one can be denied a freedom because he might abuse it? – Harlon Carter