I may not do just anything I want with my life. The rest of you will not let me. I may not engage in deadly duels (even with a willing adversary). I am prohibited from taking certain drugs, from marrying my sister, from marrying more than one person, from selling my kidney for transplant to the highest bidder. And, of course, you will not let me sell myself into slavery.

From presidents to non-Americans, many people used to regard the United States as the leader of the free world. That was an easy line to maintain when the world was divided between the “free” nations and the tyranny of Soviet Communism. It was so easy, that when POTUSes went to the American public to justify defense spending or intelligence gathering, they employed the language of freedom.

Who could be against that?

What POTUSes forgot to remind people was that this freedom was to an end — an international order with a measure of peace and equity. Indeed, the United States was the leader of a coalition of nations during the Cold War that established an international liberal order — United Nations, NATO, World Bank, Common Market, for starters. In other words, POTUSes were really interested in order more than freedom.

But who goes around saying, “we’re the leader of the ordered world”? Who wants order more than freedom?

That is part of the national and international dynamic that led Americans, I believe, to overestimate freedom and not pay enough attention to order. Any infringement on personal freedoms (unless those of an alleged conservative speaker on a mainstream college or university campus) is a form of oppression to the self who must be unencumbered. This is partly the logic that fuels the Pro-Choice movement. A woman should have complete freedom over her body (even though when she tries to light up a cigarette in a bar or restaurant she experiences the limits of her body’s liberty). It also plays into arguments for physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia.

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