There was a boss who was well within his rights to send any of his subordinates on errands. He was rich and they worked for his estate and served in his house. Out of some dislocated pleasures spawned in the mind of the devil himself he decided to send an employee whom he knew was allergic to animal fur to bring one of his cats to the vet. The employee’s allergies kicked in and the consequences were severe with quick onset of body swellings, itches and breathing difficulty. While the boss was free to send that employee, was he free to do him wrong?
There is a laissez faire attitude that parades the globe day, one in which freedom has been hijacked in a thousand different directions and monstrous atrocities have been perpetrated in its name. Freedom like all things has its boundaries that define its validity and the boundaries of freedom must be inextricably tied to the notion succinctly espoused by Abraham Lincoln that "Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves."
The answer to those who advocate that freedom has no boundaries and suffers no limitation, a land where anybody and everybody can do as they will or like independent of those who share the planet with them, perhaps lies in the pronouncement made by Canada’s 13 thirteenth Prime Minister John G. Diefenbaker (1895-1979): "Freedom is the right to be wrong, not the right to do wrong." Maybe the only exception when Freedom is the right to do wrong is when the same person embraces the right to suffer the consequences, whatever they may be.
If we are free, we must be free to dare to grow, and when we grow we will be wrong many many times along the way which is okay as long it helps us grow, but to knowing do wrong, that is certainly what we are not free to do. What are you doing to free yourself from the right to do wrong? Are there any circumstances where it is ever right to knowingly do what is wrong, robbing another of their freedom to grow into that best person they can be?
© October 2014 afesehngwaHilary
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