metonymy4u

For the last 300 years or so, the west has been obsessed with the investigation and preservation of the principle we call “freedom.” There is literally nothing we would not do to preserve this idea as we understand it: bomb any nation, condemn any person, fabricate any data, entertain any delusion. What I think we have lost sight of, though, is the fact that when we enslave ourselves to a convention, even one as laudable as the idea of freedom, we lose contact with the nature of the way things are, here and now.