Classical American Freedom
I am not at heart or in my blood a member of this generation, this century. I don't fit in and I don't belong—it's obvious to me.
But really the choices they offered me weren't good.
Most people are a part of the times they live in—as if manufactured for consumption in their age. Do not be frightened by the words; it means they belong.
But for me I choose this age to live in. I choose it over all others: I do not belong to it but would have belonged less to any other historical age.
This is by far the only really free age—where the people have freedom. From the 1960's to the year 2010 or so—that is it. In fact here in 1976 we've already passed the peak of freedom. But any other age—and what freedom is there for people? Look at Egypt 4000 BC. Look at the early Chinese civilizations. Look even at Western Europe two centuries ago. It is only in the last two centuries that Western Europe has had even a liberal amount of freedom.
I hardly had a choice. Who wants to die a heretic during the early Renaissance? Or be part of the executions in China whenever a new dynasty comes in? Even the old Greeks and Romans did not create worlds of freedom, and tribal Africa was not much.
So that they showed me what there was—and this was it.
And even this period of classical American liberty is short lived: maybe it will manage to last 60 years. Already we have passed the high mark and the decline has started, and little by little our freedom is gone. Even the high mark itself wasn't all that much: but it is what man has to offer.
For people who live in the age as if made for it, the passing of their freedom is no great thing: they were made for the age and not for the freedom. They will follow the age, whatever it does.
But for me, and the others like me, who choose this age over all ages, freedom is our lifeblood or might as well be.
We do not belong to the age; we are vultures sucking after freedom wherever it be.
And so 30, maybe 40 more years of classical American freedom; then three hundred years of despair, and the snapping closed the final hunt of steel traps upon the ankles of freedom.
And after the 300 years?
I don't know. They showed me nothing after: it was not part of what I could choose.
