For what avail the plough or the sail, or land or life, if freedom fail.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist
THE greatest fear facing mankind is for some superior sovereign to define, decide and deliver freedom either through public policy manifest in written laws and constitutions, or by sheer force of political will that can assume dystopian proportions. Freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed. Demanding freedom attracted an assassin’s bullets for Martin Luther King, Jr.
John F. Kennedy could not avoid assassination either while believing that the great revolution in the history of man, past, present and future, is the revolution of those determined to be free. Radical and aggressive concepts of freedom and liberty flowing from the pens of philosophers, pacifists, poets and playwrights do not seem to attract danger. Such danger can only be invoked by the evil elite refusing discussion of the pith and substance of genuine freedom.
Article 11 of Malaysia’s Federal Constitution (FC) offers interesting insights with vague and imprecise words and phrases strung together describing freedom of religion. Legal positivism demands a written law for praying and worshipping the Supreme Being. Its formidable opposition – natural law – does not attract traction in written constitutions and laws because its definition of freedoms attracts controversy and organised chaos.
Article 11 FC seen through the thinking of William Faulkner is liberating, pun not intended: “we must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practise it.” Mankind is weakened when compelled to claim a freedom, and virtually insulted when that freedom is subject to a written law.
Natural law defines freedom and liberty from a totally different perspective. The emboldened Henry David Thoreau postulated that disobedience is the true foundation of liberty, and that the obedient must be slaves to an unjust law which is no law at all. Therefore, there is no punishment for disobeying an unjust law. Man-made unnatural laws springing from natural law is the accepted currency.
St. Augustine set it in stone when he said that man is most free when controlled by God alone according to Scripture. Therefore, freedom must come from a Supreme Being for it to be unassailable by legal positivism. Making a law to define liberty creates a licence to do something the government approves. On the other hand, if the government disapproves of your concept of liberty, then your licence is revoked – meaning you broke a law that invites a sanction.
Franklin Roosevelt understood the true meaning of freedom which he fought tooth and nail for through New Deal legislation which met with fierce opposition by the US Supreme Court’s legal positivists. Roosevelt declared that in the truest sense freedom cannot be bestowed, but it has to be achieved. And that’s only possible when natural law stands beside legal positivism when freedom and liberty are adjudicated in a court of man-made law with one strong thumb on the scales.
It’s not normal to be mundanely afraid, and ever worried about the bogeyman (thought-police). We are like lobotomized sheeple forced to accept zombie fashion. Fear has gripped mankind so bad that thinking of happiness and contentment seem hazardous encouraging the savant Khalil Gibran to declare that “life without liberty is like a body without spirit”.
Malaysia’s bicameral legislature is labelled Dewan Rakyat and Dewan Negara. Note that it is not the (elected) Dewan MP or (appointed) Dewan Senators. That reveals an interesting picture. Do voters have the constitutional right to instruct their elected representatives? The FC is silent on this pivotal issue. It then becomes patriotically necessary to examine whether our elected representatives should defer to the will of the people being that they are the electors.
From a constitutional vantage point the Dewan Rakyat (Peoples’ Chambers) must represent the cauldron where peoples’ wishes and expectations define, refine and guarantee genuine unassailable inherent freedoms. Anything short of this becomes a witches’ brew – “double, double, toil and trouble: fire burn, and cauldron bubble”.
Harry Potter legislation must magically dissipate and vanish for freedom to become a fact of life. It must be rejuvenated and reinvented each time a law threatens to make it a fiction or a fantasy. Reform-minded legislators ought to constantly remind themselves that any semblance to the pre-French Revolution lettres de cachet have no place in our FC.
The upcoming generations will have their hands full not just raised for praying, but to end the preying by benevolent despots.
The views expressed here are those of the columnist and do not necessarily represent the views of New Sarawak Tribune.
