Freedom (from America):  The New Global Paradigm?

by Dr. Robert D. Crane

  “Freedom from America”?  Is this the new paradigm of thought now spreading throughout the world, as first suggested by Robert Fisk last week in his magnum opus entitled “The Age of Terror”?

  When will we as a people answer this new shift in world opinion? When will we recover traditionalist American thought best represented by Edmund Burke, the guru of American self-determination in the decades leading up to the American Revolution, by linking freedom with justice?  Order, justice, and freedom formed the interdependent triad of goals that motivated America’s founders.  Trying to sell, much less pursue, one without the others is like sitting on a one-legged stool. 

  Public policy is shaped by agendas, and agendas are informed by paradigms of thought.  When will America’s leaders have the courage to speak the “J” word, recognizing that order, democracy, and freedom depend upon it?  When, for example, will America start leading the world as an embodiment of the paradigmatic concept of justice by admitting that order and freedom in a world of concentrated ownership of productive wealth will remain a mere mirage until economic democracy and political democracy can reinforce each other? 

  When will we recognize that justice as a framework for human rights and responsibilities has objective meaning rooted in all the world religions, whereas peace, democracy, and freedom without this context have come to represent the exact opposite.  When will we prove by our actions that America does not represent the triumph of secular triumphalism and threaten every human value?

  Perhaps some day we will both practice justice at home and try to export it through our role as a model, which was the original foreign policy of America’s founders.  Until then, Under Secretary Karen Hughs’ public relations task of putting the best light on America’s pursuit of peace through freedom and democracy without facing up to the underlying challenge of both representing and pursuing justice won’t buy a cup of coffee.