The protagonist in a popular television series called Zero Day made a distinction between liberty and freedom. Because this writer had never really given those two words much thought at that level I went to the Oxford Dictionary to see if such subtly had anything to do with today’s careening, reckless, self dealing government.  The answer was yes, the difference between freedom and liberty makes a big difference.

Freedom without a modifier or qualifications is amoral and can support any action or consequence. For example we are free in this country, but not to murder our neighbor who is flying the wrong flag for the the wrong football team. We are not free to do that. We are free to drive our cars and trucks, but not down the wrong side of the road or up the exit ramp of the freeway because we are too drunk to read the signs. Of course we are not free to do that. We are not free to shout fire in a crowded theater and so on. In fact, freedom without a modifier is the most meaningless political device ever to be misused in a political campaign and freedom is shown in a particularly bad light when it is coupled with an historic tendency to lie or mislead. The people who created this nation couldn’t have anticipated today’s travesty surrounding the word freedom, but they were not naive. They frequently used, for good reason, the more nuanced word ‘liberty’.

The word liberty is defined in the Oxford dictionary with the critical modifiers to freedom and is: “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views”. Liberty is a ‘house of a word’ that provides a structure within which to practice our freedoms. Liberty, not freedom, protects the plurality of religion in this country and allows us to freely practice our beliefs in morality as well as ethics. Liberty is freedom’s refuge and the foundation of democratic justice. The American public might just be victims of a “bait and switch” strategy. We have been offered freedoms we can’t and shouldn’t have in exchange for the destruction of liberty which we must have for a free democracy. Morality and Ethics are disdained by the current administration. It would be such a shame that a democracy birthed by an apocryphal President who ‘couldn’t tell a lie’ would be buried by a too real President who couldn’t tell the truth. Good in this case is gathering to reconstitute the rule of liberty in a world to be bound and united by the commonality of diverse moral and ethical communities.