There is irony in the picture of motorcades festooned with posters calling for freedom as they impede the freedom of others to use public spaces for their intended purpose. The meaning of freedom has occupied philosophers for millennia, and to this date there is no agreement on a single meaning of the word.
One school of thought holds that if we have the power to do other than we have done, then we are free. Another holds that freedom is having the choice to act on one’s underlying nature rather than in conformity with the outer world. Either way, protestors who impede traffic to call for freedom are in effect demonstrating that they already have what they are demanding.
Saint Augustine (354-430) distinguished between liberum arbitrium, the free choice which implies the power to do evil – to pass on a double solid line – and libertas, which is the good use of that choice. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) reasoned that freedom means doing what one ought to do. More recent philosophers did not deviate far from Saint Augustine’s views. Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) defined freedom as the right of the ignorant man to be governed by the wise. John Dewey (1859-1952) held to a similar view. He presented freedom as the ability to make intelligent choices, and to act upon them, while acting from the base of one’s own individuality.
Black’s Law Dictionary defines freedom as “[t]he power of acting, in the character of a moral personality, according to the dictates of the will, without other check, hindrance, or prohibition than such as may be imposed by just and necessary laws and the duties of social life.” Democracy allows that the state may cause injustices. To that end democracy embraces freedom for citizens to engage in a wide range of political actions. However, freedom unconstrained by “duties of social life” and/or in contempt of “just and necessary laws” runs the risk of drifting away from Saint Augustine’s libertas.
Freedom in the libertas sense means that a person may chose “a” in a situation containing options “a” and “b,” and if again facing that same situation that person, may instead chose “b.” Responsibility is unalterably linked to freedom. One cannot chose “a” (or “b”) without being responsible and accountable for the consequences arising from that choice. With that in mind, Carlyle’s and Dewey’s definitions of freedom are not patronizing, they are prudent.
The choice under the freedom umbrella in the matter of Covid-19 is not between “a” accepting or “b” refusing vaccination because the consequences of “b” may cause harm to others. Freedom’s choices in this pandemic are between “a” Pfizer-BioNTech, “b” Moderna Spikevax, “c” AstraZeneca Vaxzevria, and other approved vaccines.
The media’s focus during the pandemic was on the daily number of people who were infected, who were hospitalized, and who succumbed to the virus. Occasionally we learned about the anxiety suffered by the thousands of people whose urgently needed and already scheduled surgeries had to be either delayed or cancelled outright, to give priority to persons infected by the virus. Freedom is not a factor in the decision to give precedence to a person infected by Covid-19 over a person scheduled for cancer surgery; most certainly not on the part of the cancer patient.
As it concerns Covid-19 vaccination protocols and mandates, the enemy is not the government, it is ignorance.