Freedom Isnıt Free
Inaugural address of Crispin Sartwell, successful Nihilist candidate for President of the United States.
My fellow ³Americans.² I am humbled by the fact that youıve entrusted me with absolute power. I will re-make the world, but first I want to re-make the language.
I would like to talk to you today about a single word: ³freedom.² That one word crystallizes everything that I believe and that our blessed nation stands for. Freedom is the gift of the Almighty to every man, woman, and child in the world: a gift, in other words, of the powerful to the powerless.
To the people of the world, I promise you this: universal freedom will be the gift given to you by us, the most efficient killing machine the world has ever known.
I pledge to the oppressed, yearning to breathe free, that we will visit upon your cities a rain of fire, a reign of freedom.
We will bring freedom everywhere as we have brought freedom to Iraq. We deposed a vile dictator, and now we administer the country from his palaces. To bring Iraqis freedom, we stacked them up in naked piles in Saddamıs prisons and photographed them. As our body count approaches Saddamıs, Iraqis may ask: whatıs the difference? One word: freedom.
Itıs funny how when you say a word over and over you begin to lose your grip on what it means. Itıs like this one time when I was in college? I smoked some awesome weed and then I looked at my hand, and I was like: ³what the heck is that thing?²
But I digress. We are going to encourage the blessings of democracy all over the world, on the models of our allies Saudi Arabia, Russia, China, Uzbekistan, Egypt, and Department of Justice. And I warn governments that were not democratically elected, like those of Venezuela and France: free your minorities, disband your oppressive surveillance and intelligence agencies, empty your prisons, stop your torture, or we will expunge you from the face of the earth.
Here at home, meanwhile, freedom means one thing: the maximal possible expansion of government. Freedom isnıt free, but it can be financed painlessly through massive deficit spending.
Right here, right now, I announce that we will create as many gigantic new bureaucracies as possible, to bring the blessings of freedom to every corner of our great land. We will eliminate due process and search warrants. We will censor indecency from the airwaves once and for all. Then, and only then, can we call ourselves a free people.
You canıt make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and as we contemplate together the real meaning of ³freedom, ³let me quote not Thoreau or Jefferson, but Humpty Dumpty, as portrayed in Through the Looking Glass. Humpty was a great patriot who knew the real fragility of life in an age of terror, and he said this. `When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less. . . . The question is who is to be master -- that's all.'
We intend to apply this beautiful ideal consistently to every issue. To us, freedom means not being able to marry someone if we donıt want you to. Freedom means not being able to end your own life, even if you are terminally ill and in frightful pain. Freedom means standardizing education in every respect under the administration of a federal bureaucracy. Freedom is the opposite of choice: itıs a question of who is to be master thatıs all.
That is a beautiful, idealistic vision, which should surprise no one, since itıs my vision. Today, I feel downright omnipotent, which is freedom indeed. It is a humbling sensation.
May God bless you, and may God bless ³America.²
Crispin Sartwell teaches political philosophy at Dickinson College in Carlisle, PA and blogs at eyeofthestorm.blogs.com.
