Freedom From Wisdom

I am often amused and sometimes enlightened by the writings of Arnaud de Borchgrave, a 30-year Newsweek veteran and now editor at large of UPI and The Washington Times. I tend to share his skepticism, though not his pessimism, about using our taxes and military for secular missionary work in Iraq and elsewhere. His January 24 column, however, traveled a bridge too far:

“Democracy and freedom,” he wrote, “mean different things to different peoples around the world. For countless millions in Europe, the Middle East, South Asia and China, it means the freedom not to emulate America's anything-goes freedom -- where surveys show the rich getting richer and the poor standing still, and almost daily mega swindles on Wall Street. For almost half of humanity, which survives $2 a day per person or less, it means freedom from want, hunger and disease.”

Even aside from this gratuitous leftist bias (oddly attributed to “surveys”) against affluence and Wall Street, Borchgrave’s notion that the concept of freedom is culturally subjective is both offensive and absurd.

Residents of our maximum-security prisons have “freedom from want” and hunger. And their medical care is free too.