Apathy Threatens Individual Freedom
by Maureen Thorson

"Pal, I've seen the future. Know what it is? A 47-year-old virgin sitting in his pajamas, sipping a banana-broccoli shake, singing 'I 'm the Oscar Meyer Weiner.'"

-- Friendly, in "Demolition Man"

TWO WEEKS ago Wednesday, I was listening to Jacob Hornberger, president of the The Future of Freedom Foundation giving a lecture in Minor Hall. The lecture was entitled "Libertarianism: The Hope for America." Libertarians, a rather misunderstood faction of social and political thought, believe government should exist solely to protect its citizens' natural rights to life, liberty and property. From a libertarian standpoint, government should not build roads, or run schools or inoculate schoolchildren. It also should not interfere with people's lives in the form of taxes and silly, bigoted regulations against behavior that harms neither themselves nor their neighbors. Libertarians wish to protect our right to be irresponsible -- to drink, smoke or play Scrabble nude on our back porches, so long as we don't violate the rights of others.

In place of a faith in "big" government, libertarians have a deep faith in capitalism. They argue that if government was reduced to providing mere protection of individual natural rights, business would take up the gap -- inoculating children, building roads, etc. There would be no need for regulatory agencies. It could not possibly benefit companies to produce shoddy merchandise or contaminated food -- no one would buy it.

I do not agree with all the ideas advanced by libertarians. A libertarian society would not be for the weak of heart, mind or will. Without dedicated, responsible and informed citizens, a society built solely on those principles easily could move into Social Darwinism. Despite that, libertarians do raise a very interesting question on the nature of freedom in American society. Namely, do we have it?

Most of us would agree we do. No one is forcing us to drink fruit smoothies against our will, as in Friendly's Orwellian nightmare. But our choices are being circumscribed daily by countless creeping little laws and statutes: the right to choose where we smoke or drink, what we can say to our co-workers, how we use our bodies, how we school our children and even whether we have the right to buy beer through out-of-state mail-order companies.

The enemy of individual freedom is apathy and in education. For a government to fully protect individual irresponsibility, it must start off with people educated enough to understand the need to behave responsibly on important issues. The people must work for the social good while protecting individual rights. We are not such a people. It is easier to pay the IRS bill and forget about where your money is going. More Americans declared bankruptcy last year than graduated college. Our economic irresponsibility has outweighed our education and common sense.

The United States government, despite the panorama of gnarled hands and wrinkly brows presented on C-SPAN, soon will be in our hands. If we want freedom (as we enter an information age that will demand it), and if we want an end to apathy and its gorgon kid sisters -- bigotry and oppression -- we are the ones who must act. We must become educated and responsible, self-reliant and charitable --socially conscious by choice as individuals, not socially conscious through taxation by the state. Libertarianism, in this way, is a long-haul philosophy, but well worth it.

After the lecture, one listener asked Mr. Hornberger why he thought the American people had allowed so many of their freedoms to slowly be sapped away. He replied, "Under it all is the natural human urge for security. Imagine living without any kind of security." The social contract itself implies the surrender of some individual rights in exchange for social security. Americans need to ask themselves, "Aren't we all feeling just a little too secure?"