Following are eight recent encounters with thoughtful, eloquent Substack readers and writers on various aspects of the idea of freedom.
[1] The Ninth Service
On Sunday, I published “For July 4th, Eight Uniforms & Eight Marches”—stories of the anthems of America’s eight uniformed services (Army, Marines, Navy, Air Force, Space Force, Coast Guard, NOAA Corps, and Public Health Service Commissioned Corps). Several readers said I should include a ninth service—the Merchant Marine/U.S. Maritime Service. While they’re not technically a uniformed service, readers gave compelling arguments, and I added this additional anthem. One reader quoted from this article, which stated:
During [World War II], U.S. merchant mariners sailed dangerous seas prowled by enemy vessels to maintain the vital supply lines fueling the worldwide effort to liberate the world from tyranny. Known as the Nation’s “fourth arm of defense,” more than 215,000 merchant mariners delivered nearly 270 billion long tons of cargo to our armed forces, on average 17 million pounds of cargo every hour, while suffering a higher per-capita casualty rate than any of the military branches. Nearly 2,000 U.S. merchant ships were sunk during the war; more than 9,500 members of this all-volunteer force paid the ultimate sacrifice.
He also noted that:
“US merchant mariners suffered a higher casualty rate per capita in WWII than any of the armed services.” In addition, he wrote: “the US Merchant Marine Academy (a federal service academy) lost 142 cadets in WWII and is the only federal academy to have sent its cadets or midshipmen into the conflict.”
As I wrote in my addendum, “For this humble civilian, that’s good enough for me.”
[2] The Courage of Warren Harding
On June 13, I wrote about how the much-maligned President Warren G. Harding delivered the single most courageous civil rights speech of any president in U.S. history. In 1921, Harding courageously went to Birmingham, Alabama, and delivered a full-throated call for equality and voting rights for African Americans. One reader wrote in the comments:
“Some background on Harding’s speech: 1921 Birmingham was a Klan stronghold. The city was over 30% black, and Irish, Italian and Puerto Rican immigrants were flooding the city in order to work in the factories. Federal agents had already warned Mobile Bishop Allen about threats against the dynamic young priest assigned to St Paul’s downtown (now the cathedral for the new Diocese of Birmingham), Father James Coyle. On August 11, 1921 he married Ruth Stephenson to Pedro Gussman. Ruth’s father Edwin was already livid that Ruth had converted in April, and shot and killed Father Coyle. He turned himself in to the sheriff immediately. The Klan quickly raised money to hire Klan attorney Hugo Black, among others. The trial convened October 17, and the mostly-Klan jury found Stephenson not guilty on October 20. It was widely recognized that this was a terrible miscarriage of justice, and was in this atmosphere that Harding made his courageous speech.”
[3] A Glimmer of Freedom in Academe
The acerbic blogger/ tweeter IowaHawk (aka, David Burge) describes college as “an oasis of totalitarianism in a desert freedom.” In recent years, campuses have grown hostile to free speech and other traditional American concepts of freedom. That sad fact makes it all the better when there’s an example to the contrary. Juliette Sellgren, a University of Virginia student wrote at
on two of Frederick Douglass’s speeches, given over half a century before Warren Harding’s speech (described above). Sellgren wrote:In his most famous 1851 speech “What, to the Slave, is the Fourth of July?”, Douglass called out American slavery as a grotesquely unconstitutional—and unjust—institution at odds with fundamental American values. He praised America’s commitments but denounced its hypocrisy, offering a respectful and respectable balance of patriotism and pushback, one that all Americans should strive for.
In a lesser-known—but no less important— speech reprinted below, “What the Black Man Wants,” delivered at the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1865 just before the end of the Civil War—and one year before the passage of the 13th Amendment abolishing slavery—Douglass outlined the next step in the Black struggle for equality: universal suffrage.
In a Substack note, I commented on Sellgren’s essay and noted my own connections to her university:
Thanks to a UVa student from this UVa graduate and former UVa adjunct professor for posting Frederick Douglass’s speech and for your own commentary on that speech.
[4] Freedom Is an Acquired Taste
Journalist Matt Taibbi wrote, “This July 4th, Remember: Freedom is Good.” In a Substack Note, I commented:
Matt Taibbi wonders how Americans came to fear and dislike freedom. In my view, souring on freedom was a long, gradual process. Childhood went from the relatively unsupervised environment of my youth (1950s/1960s) to the Soviet panopticon/Skinner box experience of today. My youthful existence had its risks (wandering alone in streets and woods), and it had its confrontations (bullies and other unpleasant sorts). But this required one to develop life skills, to deal with problem situations, to make friends out of enemies, and to simply think of ways to fill one’s time. One of the gifts of this time was silence--time alone to ponder things. Then, pincer-like, two things happened. The physical layout of communities made my free-range childhood impossible, and as a substitute, schools and other institutions filled kids’ time and shielded them from risk, unpleasantry, and beneficent solitude. When you’ve grown up with zero freedom, it’s hard to imagine the virtues of free thought. I discussed this in detail recently in “Whence Fall Snowflakes.”
[5] Freedom and Reality
That article, Whence Fall Snowflakes, brought a great comment from a reader:
I homeschooled my daughter, now 38, for many of the reasons you talk about here. … We were Unschoolers. When my daughter was in her teens, she had a lot of difficulty relating to her peers. At first I worried, but then I realized she had trouble understanding her peers relationship with the world around them. She always gravitated toward older people, and surprisingly to me, young children. As a teen, she once said to me “older people live in reality, and little kids have their own reality. People my age believe what they’re told.” I never questioned my decision to homeschool after she said that. This was so nice to read and brought tears to my eyes.
These days, I’m not confident that “older people live in reality,” but I’m confident that this reader’s daughter does.
[6] Shot at without Result
Friedrich Nietzsche said, “Out of life's school of war — what doesn't kill me, makes me stronger.” Winston Churchill said, similarly, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.” American children today are systematically and emphatically deprived of challenges, risks, and responsibilities. Thus, law schools today must offer psychiatric counseling to their helpless, intolerant students who are too delicate to withstand Supreme Court decisions that don’t please them.
At
, emergency physician Edwin Leap writes that “Summer Wants to Kill You.” He describes how heat stroke, venomous snakes, spiders, wasps, drowning, power mowers conspire to kill those of us in the South. He focuses primarily on his work as an emergency physician, tending to these offenses—particularly among visitors unaccustomed to the South’s harsh persona. But he offers a deeper lesson:“I have a theory about why Southerners make up such a large proportion of our Armed Forces. It’s because of summer. As Southern children we learn that nature, for all it’s wonders, has it in for us. And we spend our time fighting and enduring temperatures, creatures, Kudzu, Poison Ivy and every other nefarious thing thrown our way. We learn caution, appropriate distrust and how to fight dirty. These are lessons that our visitors would do well to understand. Because like it or not, Summer wants you dead.”
In a Substack Note, I replied to Edwin’s essay:
“Southern summer also has an admirable work ethic. It rarely takes breaks and doesn’t mind working the night shift. I will never forget in 1950s/1960s Eastern Virginia, lying in my sweat-drenched bed, window open in futile hope of a breeze, with a near-deafening chorus of crickets laughing a capella at my misery. Most oddly, I have a bit of nostalgia for that memory. When I read Faulkner, the August heat he describes is visceral.”
[7] Class Dismissed
In “Class 2 Problems and Health Technology: Why issues with technology are not always the responsibility of the creator,” Bryan Vartabedian at
describes two kinds of technological problems:Class 1 problems are the problems that come from technology not being fully developed, or perfect. An example is the autonomous car which is in evolution and far from perfect. Class 2 problems, on the other hand, arise after technologies are fully formed. An example is the smartphone which is mature and everywhere. The problems with such a developed and ubiquitous technology include constant connectedness, distraction and privacy.
Class 1 problems arise early in product development are solved through reiteration, entrepreneurship, hustle and profit-mode. The market fixes Class 1 problems. Class 2 problems are fixed through regulation, cultural norms and social forces after a finished tool is released into the wild.
In a Substack Note, I described a reflexive compulsion to surrender freedom in the realm of technology:
(1) In [“The Talented Doctor Ripley”], I wrote about the dangers of [artificial intelligence] injecting incorrect information into medical journals & practice patterns AND about the menace of injecting regulators into Class 1 problems--as in Sam Altman's plea to regulate ChatGPT.
(2) My [Jambalaya: LizTruss vs TrussLiz etc.] features 2 videos showing a Class 2 problem before social forces fixed the problem. The retrospectively hilarious videos show senior citizens, terrified by rotary telephones.
[8] Oh My Darling
My article on military anthems was intentionally reverential, but sometimes, those who defend our freedom have terrific senses of humor. Some Navy guy told me decades ago that he was at a bar frequented by service personnel, drinking with shipmates. Nearby were some Marines. The Navy guys started ribbing the Marines to the point of being really irritating (on purpose). The Marines began getting really steamed but kept their seats, though tension was in the air. As things seemed to be coming to a head, one of the Navy guys stood up and hushed everyone. He said aloud some soothing words about having had some fun at the expense of the Marines, apologized for their barbs, and said how much respect they really had for the Marines and the work they do. He then raised his beer and proposed a toast—to which the Marines responded in kind. Then he said, as a show of respect, that the sailors would like to sing “The Marines’ Hymn.” Both groups stood up, beers in hand. Then the Navy guys began singing:
From the halls of Montezuma To the shores of Tripoli We will fight our nation's battles On the land and on the sea.
Only they sang it to the tune of “Oh My Darling Clementine” in Huckleberry Hound accents—at which point an all-out barroom brawl ensued. All these decades later, I’m still amazed by how well the 4/4 lyrics of “The Marines’ Hymn” fit the 3/4 meter of “Clementine.”
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