AS PRESIDENT Bush takes the stage tomorrow night for the State of the Union speech, many will look for him to flesh out the soaring oratory from his forceful inaugural address two weeks ago. While the president may give further details like how long and how many American troops will stay in Iraq and clarify his intentions on North Korea and Iran, don't expect him to give an elaborate explanation of "freedom" -- a term he used 27 times in his 24-minute inaugural. In the wake of Iraq's historic free elections, it is useful to take a step back and evaluate the state of freedom in the world today.
For Franklin Roosevelt, there were "four essential human freedoms": freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want and freedom from fear. Libertarians might add freedom from government intrusion. But no matter what freedom one talks about, the common denominator in all of these freedoms is the autonomy of the individual. As long as any other person, group or government lays claim over any individual's sovereignty over himself -- which includes his labors and talents and, more fundamentally, his self-identity -- that individual is not truly free. Thus, another essential human freedom, especially in pluralistic societies, is the freedom from identity politics, a close cousin of FDR's "freedom from fear."
Identity politics is the practice of playing on a person's emotions and appealing to his base instincts for group association based on traits like race, ethnicity or religion. Such tactics deny the dignity of the individual and insult his intelligence and rationality and, in the long run, undermine social stability. Unfortunately, such tactics are also all too often successful. As societies disintegrate from group tensions, they can no longer attain the other freedoms. In recent history, we have seen all hell break loose because of identity politics and internal group conflict in places like the Balkans, Sudan, Rwanda and Somalia, to name some of the more prominent examples.
Against all odds, Iraq is now on the cusp of being the newest member of the community of free nations. But having the right to vote freely, although essential, is not the only freedom that matters. To be truly free, Iraqis must abandon their deeply held tribalism in a region that is the world's mecca for identity politics.
Defying threatened and actual violence, Iraqis voted in surprising numbers on Sunday in an election that will reverberate across the Middle East. Ignoring frequent admonitions to boycott the elections because of the Shiite-dominated government expected to result, even Sunnis turned out in force. Despite such successes, Iraqis still voted not as individuals, but as Shiites, Sunnis, and Kurds.
To overcome the bitter infighting that has felled other nations with similarly entrenched ethnic divisions and attain true freedom, Iraqis must be able to forgive past atrocities. The fact that Saddam Hussein was a Sunni who repressed the Shiites and slaughtered Kurds does not justify reprisals now. A healing process like South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission could be a first step for Iraqis to attain that eventual freedom from group identity politics and tensions.
Here at home, Americans are relatively free. Although not completely pure of identity politics, compared with many other pluralistic societies we do not vote primarily on the basis of race, ethnicity or religion. That is to say, unlike Iraqis, Americans do not vote for the black, white, Hispanic, Catholic or Protestant parties. This is not to say, however, that race, ethnicity or religion do not correlate, often too strongly, with how Americans vote.
Thus, the challenge for us, as a beacon of freedom to the world, is to participate in the political process to advance our individual interests instead of acting for the interests of the group. While individual interests will often lead to voting in common ways, we must not vote a certain way merely because we are members of some predetermined group. That's not freedom; that's just blind acquiescence.
President Bush stated in his inaugural that "freedom is the permanent hope of mankind, the hunger in dark places, the longing of the soul." Just as freedom has driven people the world over to fight for it at the risk of persecution and death, the politics of division and demagoguery have similarly strong universal appeal. As we embark on a mission to spread freedom to the darkest corners of the world, we must remember that the freedom of the individual and the tyranny of group identity are always in tension. Until the former triumphs, people are not truly free.
Eric Wang's column usually appears Wednesdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ewang@cavalierdaily.com.
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