On this Independence Day, a passage from one of my favorite books, The Last Battle (the last book of the Chronicles of Narnia by C.S. Lewis) has been on my mind. It takes place in the last days of Narnia, and a wicked Ape has begun pretending to speak for Aslan and has plans to put the Narnians into slavery.
“There! You see!” said the Ape. “It’s all arranged. And all for your own good. We’ll be able, with the money you earn, to make Narnia a country worth living in. There’ll be oranges and bananas pouring in–and roads and big cities and schools and offices and whips and muzzles and saddles and cages and kennels and prisons–oh, everything.”
“But we don’t want all those things,” said an old Bear. “We want to be free. And we want to hear Aslan speak for himself.”
“Now don’t you start arguing,” said the Ape, “for it’s a thing I won’t stand. I’m a Man: you’re only a fat, stupid old Bear. What do you know about freedom? You think freedom means doing what you like. Well, you’re wrong. That isn’t true freedom. True freedom means doing what I tell you.”
Luckily, this is just a fairy tale. Our leaders would never define freedom that way, would they?