Freedom without any sense of responsibility

Tomorrow, we celebrate Independence Day, our 122nd since June 12, 1898. But it is sad, and even appalling, that many of us still do not understand the true meaning of independence, and its differences from freedom, liberty and rights. Many of us believe that they all give us the unrestrained opportunity to create chaos, malign people and destroy the peace and harmony in human society.

There is a constant danger besetting the reckless and the irresponsible among us, especially those who are waving red banners, throwing molotovs and burning flags and effigies tomorrow, to think that freedom is absolute. There are those who are opposing the Anti-Terror Bill without even reading it, much less understanding its letter and spirit, and those who are caged in prejudiced minds and are intricately chained to the prison bars of their self-imposed congenital resistance to discipline and the need for order and harmony in our communities and nation. People thoughtlessly demand unstifled freedom of expression to the extent of libel and licentiousness. They recklessly open their mouths and mindlessly post in the social media anything and everything not remembering that others, too, have the freedom to live in peace and honor.

They demand freedom of assembly to the extent of sedition, treason and insurrection. And they deny the right of the State to protect itself from internal subversion and external threat to our national security. Yes, many of us ignore the wise words of Lee Kuan Hew telling our leaders that what the Filipinos need is not more freedom but more discipline. Peter Marshall left these nuggets: Freedom is not the right to do as we please. It is the opportunity to do what is right. To which we add that freedom is not a personal license but a common responsibility to respect each other, and to uphold not the individual desires but the common good for the greater benefit of the greater number.

There are some Filipinos who believe that freedom means the right to disturb peace and order just to express one's self, not thinking enough to realize that the others also have the right to serenity and quiet in the community. Johann Wolfang Goethe said that no one is more enslaved than he who falsely believes that freedom is absolute and limitless. In the first letter of Saint Peter, Chapter 2, verse 16, he writes: Live as free people of God but do not use your freedom as a cover-up for evil. In Corinthians, Chapter 3, verse 17, Saint Paul writes: Where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And in the context of Christian teachings, freedom is never meant the right to inflict damage to others and to the great majority of peace-loving people.

Nelson Mandela, himself, a leading icon of freedom, taught us: To be free is not merely to remove the chains that bound us, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. No Filipino has the right to impose his own definition of freedom, liberty and human rights on the rest of the nation. Some of those who are aligned with the left are saying that those identified with the right are wrong. They allege that it is a violation of human rights for a policeman to shoot a drug addict who raped an innocent child, terrorized villages and murdered peace-loving people. These human rights advocates, however, mysteriously refuse to speak when soldiers who are delivering foods to frontliners are massacred by rebels and terrorists.

One of our greatest heroes, the sublime paralytic, Apolinario Mabini once, said that freedom is the duty to do what is right and not a license to do what is evil. Dr Martin Luther King Jr taught us, too: Let us not seek to satisfy our own thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. The Dalai Lama also reminds us: Genuine peace and freedom emanates from our own decision to free ourselves from our tendency to impose ourselves on others.

My own take on this is pure and simple: No Filipino, no human being has the right to define for me my own concept of how to be free.