Johanna Maska & Jay Nordlinger on freedom
The University of AZ Freedom Center launches Re:freedom—featuring contributions from Journalists-in-Residence Johanna Maska and Jay Nordlinger. Diverse voices are invited to join the conversation.
Johanna Maska
In March 2013 I left my 1 year old at home in good care, with my husband. We both worked busy jobs but we balanced the newest love i our lives. I flew to Jordan where I was working to facilitate a visit for the President of the United States.
We had just landed in Petra, an ancient former kingdom carved in rose-red sandstone cliffs, in helicopters. It’s an unbelievable site, a true wonder of the world. On the ground, I met a Jordanian diplomat, a young woman, though probably not much younger than me. As we stood there, surrounded by the history of great civilization, we got to talking and I mentioned my new son and how much I now looked forward to getting home from these trips.
She made a comment that stuck with me, something like, “Your husband lets you travel?”
He never tried to stop me. I had worked for Barack Obama since the earliest days of his campaign and was now traveling the globe with him, a job that had a timeline, in a role I loved. The idea of asking my husband’s permission never would have crossed my mind (or his, to be honest). That’s not how we worked.
But conversations like that have shaped the meaning of freedom to me. I’m keenly aware that freedom is far more than what the government allows. For many women and men alike, it’s what culture, family, and religion permit, it’s what we permit for ourselves, and I don’t take my freedom for granted.
I’m a Midwestern girl. I was born in Wichita, Kansas. My parents married young, for reasons I’d learn later: They had gotten pregnant in Catholic high school, and in their community, an out-of-wedlock birth carried enormous stigma. They placed their child up for adoption. My mother would later confess that all she wanted after that adoption was to replace him. She missed her son terribly. She and my dad married, had me and two more, and eventually settled in Galesburg, Illinois, a manufacturing town that lost manufacturing, and the place that shaped me.
Seeking freedom themselves, my parents always raised me, their only girl, to be resilient.
My conservative father wanted me to be a wrestler. He got a cheerleader instead. And a Democrat, much to his chagrin. But the freedom I was raised with encouraged me to explore who I was, become myself fully, and gave me wings to feel like I’ve lived every minute of life fully.
The world as it should be, to me, permits that freedom for everyone. To form their own views, to find the freedom to express themselves, and to find purpose and pursuit. To make choices and live with them. That’s a tall ask. The diplomat in Petra had her own understanding of what freedom means and who grants it.
The balance of freedom has never been perfect. Right now, though, in America it feels like we can all be so righteous in what equals freedom, and for whom. Perhaps that’s why it’s a good time to have the discussion Re:freedom.
Jay Nordlinger
“Freedom” is one of our most cherished words and concepts—right up there with “love,” “peace,” and “justice.” Leaving aside love for a moment, freedom has often been linked to peace and justice.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “We seek peace, knowing that peace is the climate of freedom.” The British prime minister Margaret Thatcher liked a slogan: “Peace—with freedom and justice.”
The highest form of freedom is spiritual. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32).
You ever heard a song from the 1960s, by Billy Taylor? Listen to Leontyne Price sing it, here. “I wish that I knew how it feels to be free. I wish I could break all these chains binding me.”
Are those chains spiritual or material? Everyone has his own chains to deal with, of whatever variety.
In the realm of politics, we speak of “negative freedom” and “positive freedom.” The negative is: “Leave me alone! Don’t tread on me! Get out of my way. Let me do my thing (as long as I’m not hurting anybody else in the process).”
And “positive freedom”? The government steps in to help you on your journey. Sometimes this help is genuine—public education, for example—sometimes not so much.
When I was growing up in the 1970s and ’80s, you often heard something like this: “Sure, we in the West have political rights: the right to self-expression, the right to vote, etc. But in the Soviet bloc, they have social rights: the right to food, shelter, and medicine.”
The fact was, people in the Soviet bloc were not only unfree, they were also poor as hell. It turns out that political freedom brings material prosperity in the bargain.
Speaking of Eastern Europe, the great freedom struggle today is in Ukraine—as Ukrainians try to resist subjugation by a colossal invader. They are fighting for their very right to exist as a nation.
In December 1981, the Polish dictatorship imposed martial law, under pressure from Moscow. In the White House, President Ronald Reagan gave a speech, in which he said:
When 19th-century Polish patriots rose against foreign oppressors, their rallying cry was, “For our freedom and yours.” Well, that motto still rings true in our time. There is a spirit of solidarity abroad in the world tonight that no physical force can crush. It crosses national boundaries and enters into the hearts of men and women everywhere.
In any era, there are people who want politics and government to fill our lives with meaning. Some of us have a different desire: to live in an atmosphere of ordered liberty, so that we might pursue our dreams, join others in voluntary associations, and fulfill our potential.
Beware people whose religion, so to speak, is politics. They can be dangerous.
President Gerald R. Ford liked to say, “Remember: A government big enough to give you everything you want is a government big enough to take from you everything you have.” A successor, Reagan, said, “Freedom is always just one generation away from extinction.” You have to work to preserve it. The encroachers never rest.
A song of ours ends, “. . . the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Are we?
In this little article, I’ve thrown a bunch of bromides and clichés at you. The thing is—they’re all true.
More about Re:freedom
Re:freedom is the official Substack of the University of Arizona’s Center for the Philosophy of Freedom, dedicated to bringing academic ideas into public conversation. Through essays, commentary, and dialogue, it seeks to reconnect scholarship with civic life and to reclaim disagreement as a vital public good. Featuring contributions from scholars, journalists, students, and invited voices, Re:freedom is an open forum for rigorous, thoughtful engagement.
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