Freedom Confounded

I recently wrote a series of five short-read books on the subject of freedom in the United States - its history, its nature, its requirements, its challenges, and its opponents. In my social media space, I posted about parts of it - and a post drew a response that sent me back to my keyboard.

The response came from Trenton Bennett, an old friend and colleague whose intelligence, insights, and values I've come to trust over the years. In a single post, he made an argument that extended my own, adding elements that I'd neglected. The more I thought about the points he was making, the more I realized they were essential to the discussion I was trying to initiate with the books.

Trenton's points amounted to this: yes, freedom is a complex thing; yes, it's on the ropes in America and throughout the Western World; and yes, the attack on freedom is a determined, strategic assault by players who have been at it a good long while.

But, he pointed out, there is a very specific infrastructure now surrounding this struggle, one that freedom's opponents - let's just come right out with it and say those who profit from inequality - have labored long to construct around both the debate and the machinery of government required to change anything. That machinery is secured by a number of long-standing memes and assumptions cultivated in the minds of the electorate over decades.

Inspired, I realized I had one more short book to write.