Insidious Mantras
Originally published on My Sweet Delirium
Freedom is not free. Sounds like a kickass phrase. Americans see it everywhere — stamped on bumper stickers, printed on coffee mugs, embroidered on couch pillows, and tattooed on arms and legs. It’s a salute to our troops and a solemn reminder that we will have to sacrifice lives to maintain our liberty. But where did this expression come from and what does it mean?
The phrase is attributed to an Air Force colonel, Walter Hitchcock, and was engraved on the Korean War Memorial, originally to “express gratitude” to soldiers and their families for the sacrifices made in the name of freedom.
However, I find freedom is not free used in a different context. I hear it used in a way that says we will never have freedom unless we continually go to war. We must kill so that we, and other countries that ‘need’ us, can have freedom.
But how often are soldiers fighting for freedom and not some other agenda?
I also feel this sentence is poorly formulated to express gratitude. It’s written in present tense. It’s short and powerful. It’s definitive and leaves no room for dispute. As a writer of web copy, freedom is not free reads more like a marketing slogan. What will happen if we keep repeating this mantra as an affirmation that justifies war and death–that freedom can only come at the price of killing others?
I know most people have never thought of the phrase in this way, but words are powerful, and I think it’s important to pay close attention to what we drill into our heads.
War propaganda has been around as long as wars themselves and those in power use slogans to invoke a sense of duty and bravery in soldiers so they will pick up their arms and do whatever dirty work needs to be done. These phrases appeal to a military family’s a sense of pride and patriotism, signaling them that it is their time to step up and become part of something bigger. In other words, they are used to convince citizens to obey orders without questioning.
Collateral damage has become another tough-guy euphemism used to describe government sanctioned murder. It says innocents will die. It’s part of war. Accept it.
But killing never feels justified, because we know it’s never right.
That’s why veterans never get over the fact that they may have bombed villages where women and children were hiding. They never recover from shooting men their own age who, under normal circumstances, might have been their friends. My grandfather, who spent two years as a prisoner of war in Germany during WWII, is under palliative care and will be taking most of the horrors he witnessed and committed to his grave.
But aren’t we free once the war is won? No, we are caged by death. The sons and daughters who are killed at war leave holes of empty resentment that never heal. Those soldiers who survive must endure injuries, mental illness, and disillusionment. Even if they recover from their emotional and physical wounds, they may eventually suffer from grotesque diseases caused by exposure to chemical agents like Agent Orange and Sarin gas.
I understand why sayings like freedom is not free help people cope with war. It gives military personnel a sense that they fought for the greater good of all Americans. It gives grieving families the reassurance that their fallen hero did not die in vain. There is no doubt every serviceman and woman is brave and selfless, and they deserve the fullest of honor, but when are we going to wake up?
We are born free and we die free.
Freedom is not something you earn, or something your only attain by forcing others to submit to your idea of it.
Freedom is not found in oil fields or weapons of mass destruction.
Freedom is a divine right.
Freedom, above all, means thinking for ourselves. We must always question what ideas we are being spoon-fed. We must always beware of insidious propaganda. What is it that we are saying to ourselves?
Freedom was always free. Only warmongers have put a deadly price tag on it.
