Never before has freedom been preached more than in our day; never, perhaps, has it been practiced less. I mean an authentic freedom; that is, the freedom to live one's life in pursuit of the good, according to one’s best judgment. For the Christian, it is obvious that the ultimate good being pursued is God and His will, but even from a more earthly-minded viewpoint that can be accepted by nonbelievers, that is to say, of a natural human happiness, we are, in the name of "freedom", more and more constrained to accept a limited range of "choices" with which to pursue it these days, which correspond to no real choice at all. That we are supposedly living in a representative democracy does not alter this fact. An American can "choose" his representatives, for example. However, in practice this means little more than which of two candidates backed by a plutocratic establishment will get to vote on how to control an ever increasing number of details of his daily life. Indeed, such is the attitude of the times that the most extreme proponent of the divine right of kings in former ages never dreamed of giving such despotic power to an absolute monarch as that which is taken for granted as natural in a modern "democracy" to grant unto the government. Yet the citizens nevertheless celebrate their "freedom". And the reason why such can be calmly accepted is because we have lost the vision of what freedom actually means.
But then what does freedom actually mean? Perhaps the first thing that should be established is what it does not entail. It does not consist of anarchy. Indeed, the more a nation is in anarchy of whatever sort, the less freedom it ultimately has, for order is the first essential for human living, and it will reassert itself in one way or another. If it does not do so within the confines of an ordered liberty, it will ultimately do so through an ordered tyranny. Anarchy cannot survive, for it is merely destructive, not creative. It is a slow death, not life. That is why with an anarchy of morals in our present time, for instance, has come a corresponding increase in the power of the government, to re-establish the order which individuals have forfeited to determine for themselves. Indeed, it is no coincidence, it would seem, that it is those in high positions of government who have most encouraged such an anarchy of morals disguised as "freedom" which we see today. The more such counterfeit "freedom" granted to the populace, and hence the less self-order (with corresponding self-restraint), then the more power ultimately given to the government to re-establish the order necessary for human living. Except it will be an order beneficial, not to the people as before, but to the elites. As Chesterton said, "If you will not have rules, you will have rulers."
But if freedom is ordered instead of anarchic, then does that mean it eliminates an authentic freedom of choice for individuals? No, it does not. Indeed, a society becomes more ordered, not less so, the more it grants freedom of choice to its citizens in most matters. For order by its very nature is based upon knowledge. And knowledge, in its turn, is in so many cases dependent precisely on those factors which only an individual is in the best position to determine, and hence to apply such knowledge. In such cases, it is the individual that must choose, not merely as proper to his own dignity as a human being, but also so that the best possible order may be achieved. That there are boundaries within which the individual must make such concrete applications is true, and which is why the government has the rightful authority to exist at all. (Thus, for instance, no person has the right to take the life of an innocent human being; hence, the legitimacy of laws against murder. All the more so is it wrong when it comes to the murder of the most innocent of all, such as in that parody of the “freedom to choose” which sometimes seems to be the only “choice” we are allowed these days). But, speaking generally, how principles apply in specific cases are dependent on a variety of factors that often can be only known by the individual, not the government. That is why freedom recognizes the necessity of choice belonging to individuals. But notice that if it is an authentic freedom of choice, then it must be an informed one. Otherwise, it is not an ordered freedom any more, but a (temporary) chaotic anarchy that such ignorance entails, with the death to freedom that inevitably results. The order must then be imposed from an outside source.
And that is why we no longer live in a free society. It is not simply that we have lost external forms of freedom, due to governmental interference. Indeed, as far as that is concerned, while there are enough encroachments on such freedoms making it harder and harder to maintain that we live in "the land of the free" anymore, it may be fully granted that there are yet many aspects of our lives in which we still do have considerable freedom, externally speaking. Our modern rulers are shrewd enough to allow us many external freedoms still, so that we may live under the delusion that we are still free essentially. No, our poverty is even greater. For we are starving for internal freedoms. We are not sufficiently granted the truth needed to make informed choices, or, in other words, to live authentically free. Modernity has enslaved us by denying us truth. Indeed, a relativistic society which denies objective truth deprives us not merely of the actual practice of freedom (which deprivation has been a curse throughout all of human history), but even to hope for the potential for real freedom.
After all, if authentic freedom (as distinct from the anarchy which leads to tyranny) can only be exercised by making choices based on truth, then it follows the only way we can increase our freedom is by embracing the truth. "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." Deny the truth, and thereby increase anarchy in the mind, then a society becomes further enslaved. Deny even the possibility of truth, and you destroy the hope of redemption as well. That is why we need to re-establish the liberating rule of truth, and proclaim our emancipation from the slavery of relativism, if we wish to have any hope of freedom and justice in this world. It was, after all, a relativistic politician asking "What is truth?" who as a consequence of his philosophy gave into the demands to crucify an innocent person in the greatest crime of human history.
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