A Nation of Gluttons

Independence Day is just around the corner. I can already hear the fireworks that my wife and son enjoy, but which our dog, Dixie, could altogether do without. I can already hear the booming echoes of exploding rockets. I can already see the night sky filled with red trails of sizzling heat. I can already see my finger getting burned with a sparkler.
 

Most of Americans will celebrate Independence Day in some form or fashion. But what is it that we celebrate? Honestly, how many of us will gather with others and explicitly acknowledge the importance of the Declaration of Independence? Perhaps a philosopher could argue that our parties and streamers and coca cola serve as praise to the founding document of our nation. But this argument would be hard won; after all, even China has fireworks and Coke.

 Freedom is not, as someone once wrote, the right to do as you please; freedom is the liberty to do as you ought. And this, my friends, is what is missing in the USA.

Freedom has slipped into uncontrolled desire. Indeed, when a free society no longer values the twin sisters of wisdom and restraint, freedom is lost in a sea of licentiousness and gluttony.

I will not pretend to know the good and bad of all moral choices, as the categories of good and bad are now philosophically and culturally relative, which is, to some degree, necessary. The proper use of freedom is, in our postmodern culture, debated; there is no longer a fixed moral custom for our citizenry. Whether this is an asset or liability to freedom is an entirely different argument— and one that I am not inclined to entertain at this time.

However, what I will venture a judgment upon is gluttony, which is a misuse of liberty. It’s not too strong to say that we have become a nation of gluttons. From super-size french fries, super-size SUV’s, and super-size religion (insert “prosperity gospel”), we have learned to understand freedom as the liberty to do as we want, not necessarily to do what we ought.

We may continue to be the most ostensibly religious nation in the West, but I now wonder what our religious convictions amount to. Somewhere along the way we have been converted into believing that freedom is equivalent to unmitigated self-indulgence, rather than doing what we ought to do, a practice that often calls for restraint.