Tag: freedom

The Cost of Free Choice

As we sat down at a table at a Mexican restaurant, my friends gave some advice.

Don’t worry. You won’t even have to look at the menu. They only serve nachos, enchiladas, and fajitas. Simple enough.

Simple enough. But also, kind of complicated.

The nachos, you see, were smothered with cheese – an ingredient I could not digest. The enchiladas were smothered in sauce, making a mess inevitable. (Oh, they also had cheese, for good measure.) And the fajitas required extra effort to assemble.

Where were the steak tacos I was craving? Or, to that end, the tamales or flautas?

Not at this restaurant. And so, my options were crude.

Order the fajita platter I didn’t want. Or go hungry – and explain to my friends why.

In essence, there was only one choice. So, when the waiter turned to me, I blurted out Beef fajitas, please, without a hint of hesitation.

My friends were right. I didn’t even have to look at the menu.

There are many reasons why this restaurant kept its menu so tidy.

Convenience. Simplicity. Tradition.

But also cost.

Mexican food, you see, often draws upon common ingredients. Corn tortillas. Flour tortillas. Salsa. Grilled steak. Grilled chicken. Peppers. Onions. Spiced rice. Refried beans. Cheese.

It’s the way that these items are assembled that comprises a menu. It’s what makes tacos different from enchiladas or burritos or chimichangas.

This interoperability makes ingredient costs a minor concern. Everything except the meat is generally affordable – no small detail in an industry with tight margins.

But preparation costs? That’s a different matter entirely.

It takes more work to, say, season grill a carne asada to perfection than it does to roll some shredded chicken in tortillas and smother the whole plate in sauce. It takes more work to assemble grilled skirt steak into tacos than it does to bring it to the table wholesale as fajitas.

This restaurant we were visiting was known for running a streamlined kitchen. Minimizing preparation costs were the ethos of its menu.

It’s a menu the restaurant has long mastered, to critical acclaim. But for someone like me, it took the words free choice off the table.

Literally.

Being saddled with one undesirable option at a restaurant might seem like a first world problem. And indeed, it is.

But this frustrating moment represents the tip of an iceberg. An iceberg sabotaging the fundamentals of our society.

We claim to live a land with liberty and justice for all. And for the most part, we do. We are free to vote, work, and entertain ourselves as we see fit.

But the options we have when exercising that free choice? Those have a cost.

Consider governance. As a representative democracy, we elect leaders to run our country’s affairs on our behalf. Those elections are open to nearly every American adult, free of charge. And myriad efforts to restrict these rights have been quashed over time.

But the choices on our ballots? Those are not nearly as open as our right to choose from them.

Not just anyone can make a serious run for office. To be viable, you need sterling credentials, a semblance of name recognition, and money. A lot of money.

You don’t rise from nothing to become President in America. You just don’t.

The earliest occupants of the office – our Founding Fathers – were wealthy plantation owners. Despite humble origins, Abraham Lincoln gained acclaim as a lawyer before pursuing the White House.

Even modern-day outsider candidates — Barack Obama and Ronald Reagan — had a leg up over everyday Americans. Obama earned a law degree from Harvard University, while Reagan earned acclaim as an actor. Each amassed a small fortune before even turning to politics, let alone pursuing the highest office in the land.

Make no mistake. Politics is awash in money. Money provided by special interest groups, by mega-donors, and by the politicians themselves. There’s a reason why the size of a candidate’s war chest matters as much as their poll numbers.

This creates a contradiction.

When we step into that voting booth, we exercise free choice. Free choice among options who paid to play.

The people whose names are on that ballot don’t seem much like us or relate to our lived experience. If we were to draft a list of who would best represent us, they likely wouldn’t make our Top 10.

And yet, here we are, left to choose between them. To decide whether Option 11 or Option 14 should be our Number 1.

We might want tacos, but we’re offered enchiladas or fajitas.

Free choice carries quite the cost. Make no mistake about that.

That’s just the way it is. Some things will never change. That’s just the way it is. Yeah, but don’t you believe them.

Bruce Hornsby and the Range rose to the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart on the strength of those lyrics nearly four decades ago. Hornsby and his band found acclaim. And yes, they earned quite a bit of money in the process.

The central premise of those lyrics remains a work in progress. We are still working at breaking barriers, eliminating preconceptions, and defining what’s possible.

I believe in that work, and the mission underpinning it. But I also believe it’s critical for all of us to be clear-eyed about something fundamental.

We may have been bestowed the right of free choice. But the power contained within that right is minimal.

Sure, we can help determine who sits in the Oval Office. Sure, we can help determine which automaker sells the most vehicles.

But there are other forces — capitalist forces — that put those options on the table for us in the first place. And it’s within those forces where the true power lies.

It’s my sincere hope that someday, that process will be more accessible. That we’ll be able to determine what makes the menu, not just what we want to order from it.

But that’s a long way off.

In the meanwhile, maximizing the power of our free choice means getting comfortable with three words:

Follow the money.

I am. Are you?

On Personal Liberty

It’s easy to speed on the streets of Midland.

The roads are wide and relatively free of traffic. The sky overhead is a cloudless blue that seems to stretch on forever. And the West Texas terrain is dry as a desert and flat as a tabletop.

In such a setting, the speed limit signs seem to be a suggestion. There’s no reason not to zip it across town.

And in my early days living there, that’s exactly what I did.

However, I soon discovered the cost of such expedience. All too often, a traffic light would turn to yellow as I was barreling toward an intersection. I would have to speed through the light before it turned red when this happened; I didn’t have enough space to slam on the brakes in time.

I generally made it through just fine. But one time, the light turned red just as I hit the intersection.

Now, I had learned years earlier that there is usually a buffer zone after a traffic light turns red. There are a few seconds built into the cycle in which the traffic lights in all directions are red. That way, any remaining vehicles can clear the intersection.

So, I wasn’t worried about getting broadsided or t-boned by another vehicle.

But what I was worried about was something I saw right above the light standard. That something was a traffic camera.

I knew that these cameras could single out offenders. They could identify vehicles that entered an intersection a second too late. And they could help the police send traffic tickets to those drivers — even if no officers were on the scene.

I had heard horror stories of this happening in other cities. So, I would always be cautious when I saw traffic cameras while driving in Miami, New York, Boston, Washington or a host of other cities.

Now, here on the plains of West Texas, my nemesis had returned.

Great, I thought. Just what I need.

Over the next few weeks, I patiently waited for my traffic ticket to come in the mail. And I kept a watchful eye out for more traffic cameras. Given my low salary, I couldn’t afford a second ticket.

But the first traffic ticket never came. For it turns out those cameras weren’t to nab red light runners. They were there as a public safety protocol.

Officers might pull the footage if there was a bad accident near the intersection, or if they were trying to locate a stolen car that might have passed through. But they weren’t using it for a traffic ticket scheme.

I should have expected this news. Texas has always been a haven for personal liberties. A place where homeowners are allowed to defend their properties with shotguns, and motorcyclists can ride without helmets.

Liberty lies with the individual. And so does much of the burden of responsibility.

While the rule of law exists in Texas, the extent of its reach is restricted. So, Big Brother would likely not be out to get me for hitting an intersection a hair too late.

I later found out — the hard way — that some cities did maintain red light cameras, when I got a ticket thanks to one in Fort Worth. But in recent years, the Texas Legislature has actually worked to dismantle such systems. That type of surveillance doesn’t jibe with the Texas ethos of personal liberties.

Personal liberties are not limited to Texas. Indeed, they’re a cornerstone of American society, and prevalent in the western European ethos as well.

As westerners, we are accustomed to a certain brand of freedom. To having room to roam, free of prejudice.

I, as much as anyone, know the benefit of personal liberty. It hasn’t just allowed me to skirt a traffic ticket or two. It also allowed me to move to Texas as a young adult so that I could chase my dreams.

If I had grown up in Asia, the Middle East or Africa, there would have been plenty of stigma behind such a move. There is a longstanding expectation of familial collectivism in those societies — an obligation to support one’s relatives over time and remain in close proximity to them. Relocating thousands of miles away to start anew would certainly raise eyebrows.

But not in America. In America, personal liberty reigns supreme. Or at least it did until recently.

The global pandemic has forced our society to retrench. To keep a lethal virus from spreading unchecked, we’ve had to put some short-term burdens in place. State and local governments have closed businesses, banned large gatherings and required people to wear protective masks — all, ostensibly, in the name of public health.

It hasn’t always gone smoothly. The mask issue, in particular, has become a flashpoint. Some have refused to comply with the order, citing personal liberties. Some business owners have done the same in the face of forced closures. And many people have thrown parties that willfully violated bans on large gatherings.

All of this has led to a new definition of personal liberty. In a pandemic era, the phrase refers to selfish petulance. To grown men and women throwing temper tantrums when they’re asked to sacrifice for the common good. To the worst in us, not the best in us.

To be sure, these recent actions show more of what’s wrong with America than what’s right with it. They’re not a good look.

But they represent a narrow view of personal liberty. And we need to see the entire picture.

 

Let’s go back to that moment when I was sure a traffic ticket was headed my way.

I took it a bit slower on the roads of Midland. And I would slam on my brakes every time I saw a yellow light ahead of me.

I was driving in fear. Out of a sense of financial survival, yes. But also out of skepticism toward Big Brother.

And yet, such changes didn’t make me a safer driver. My hard braking ahead of an intersection increased the chances I’d be rear-ended by another vehicle. And all that time I was taking it slow, I was preoccupied with the thought of another traffic camera somewhere, or a potential yellow light a half mile down the road.

Looking back, it’s a minor miracle that I didn’t get into a wreck during that time.

This incident underscores why personal liberty is so important to me. And to our society as a whole.

For without that benefit of the doubt, that implicit trust, problems are inevitable.

Sure, people are more compliant with the rules when there is constant oversight. But the sense of paranoia that accompanies it can prove to be a powerful distraction.

This distraction sets in like a fog. And so, people are less effective at the task at hand. They’re less creative, less adventurous and less capable of handling the myriad dangers of everyday life.

So no, Big Brother is not the solution. We need some semblance of personal liberty in our lives.

Now, such empowerment does come with responsibility. In times of crisis, we should be using our personal liberty for something more sensible making a scene in a grocery store. We should focus that energy on the common good instead.

Yet, even with that caveat, personal liberty is a crucial component of who we are. It doesn’t belong on the chopping block, even when the going gets tough.

So, let’s not throw out the baby with the bathwater.

Our health and safety are paramount, both in the moment and for the long haul. But we don’t need to abandon the principle of personal liberty to protect them. We just need better judgment.

Let’s resolve to find it.

The Wreckage Of Radical Thinking

These are trying times.

Our way of life is under attack by those we cannot understand, and who refuse to understand us. Undocumented people within our borders cause uncomfortable situations, while a booming international drug business is causing problems on multiple fronts. The color of our skin can be a de facto death sentence in certain encounters with law enforcement. Our rights to self-defense, privacy, speech and religion are threatened by — of all things —our own actions.

These are turbulent times indeed, compounded by our collective difficulty grasping one key concept.

Complex problems can’t be solved by simple solutions.

A concise rational statement. But we seem to have lost all rationality these days, as many are  convinced that by simply removing a set of people from our midst, we’ll make everything better.

It doesn’t work that way. Why? Because no matter how you classify us — black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Muslim, Jewish, Christian, cops, businesspeople, journalists — we have rights in this country. We have rights to live and defend ourselves. We have rights to spiritual beliefs and to free expression. We have rights to moments of privacy. We have rights to public safety. And, provided we don’t unduly impinge upon the safety of others, we have a right to freedom.

Change is good. Progress is good. But when radical responses to injustice catch fire, an entire subset of our society is denied these inalienable rights — and everything that we should stand for goes up in flames.

It ain’t progress when we ostracize all law enforcement officers for the abhorrent actions of several bad ones. It ain’t progress when we propose disarming our entire society completely, even in the wake of senseless tragedies. It ain’t progress when we threaten to kick out all the Mexicans, or all the Muslims.

For when we do all this, we succumb to closed-mindedness. We regress into an ugly past where some human beings within our borders were considered three-fifths of a person based on the color of their skin. We open the doors for those with the lethal combination of ultimate power and evil intentions to order a mass exterminations of a subset of our population. We threaten to shun our societal values — the unique mixture of cultural diversity and universal rights that has allowed our culture to transform the world.

So, when it comes to pushing our culture forward in the wake of tragic setbacks, we should not let our emotions goad us into radical decisions. Instead, we should show restraint and take a more moderate, central path toward improvement.

By staying true to who we are, we can ensure that who we will be is so much better.