Frontiersman, May 2023

Letter to the Editor
Dear Sam:

I’ve recently come up with a new definition of freedom, which I would like to share. Here goes:

“Freedom is the happiness inspired by the belief that one is able to experience what one wants, without fear of interference or punishment by other human beings.”

Obviously, this is a subjective, emotional definition. I think it has value, because more abstract, theoretical definitions of freedom never mention why a person might want freedom.

Your thoughts about this would be much appreciated.

—Sir Donald the Elusive

The differences between the meanings of different words can be just as important as the meanings themselves. In his explanation of contracts, in his 1889 law dictionary, John Bouvier wrote, “No two synonyms convey precisely the same idea. Most of them have minute distinctions.... If two are entirely equivalent, it will soon be determined by accident which shall remain in use and which shall become obsolete. To one who has no knowledge of a language, it is impossible to define any abstract idea. But to one who understands a language, an abstraction is defined by a synonym properly qualified. By pointing out distinctions and mutual relations between synonyms, the object of definition is answered.” [Volume 1, page 393]
When I gave Mere Keep its name, I intended for it to be a place for the discovery, exploration, and protection of the differences between the meanings of words, and of the ideas that those words represent. I had in mind the differences between such ideas as freedom and slavery, rights and privileges, sin and crime, currency and money, legislation and law, religion and God, diversity and complexity, brainwashing and education, and chaos and anarchy. A failure to understand the differences between the meanings of the words indicates a failure to understand the differences between the ideas. When words that represent two different ideas become synonyms, then one of the ideas disappears. In 1984 (the book, not the year), Orwell wrote, “How could you have a slogan like ‘freedom is slavery’ when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking— not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.”
During the 1980s, I believed that the legitimate function of a dictionary wasn’t to define proper usage, but to record current usage. Partly because of that belief, I compiled a list of the definitions of specific words, arranged in chronological order according to the publication dates of the dictionaries from which I took them. The more that I noticed the widespread misuse of the language, the more I began to wonder if I was taking the wrong position about the legitimate function of dictionaries. Eventually, I began to write Milam’s Dictionary of Distinctions, Differences, and Other Odds and Ends. I still tinker with it from time to time. Both documents are available in The Sovereign’s Library. One thing that I accomplished was to understand and formulate the necessary qualities of a good definition. A good definition must be general, concise, and unambiguous.
I noticed that your definition defines freedom not in terms of the condition itself, but in terms of somebody’s response to the condition. That’s an interesting approach, but it’s tricky. Something that causes happiness for Vladimir Putin will be different from something that causes happiness for me, but they’re both freedom, according to the definition. I suppose that it’s good that the definition is nonjudgmental but it might help scoundrels to claim bad behavior as legitimate freedom just because it makes them happy. Of course, they already do that anyway, so maybe that doesn’t matter. Another thing to consider is that being free might make you happy but being happy doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re free. I was happier after my first marriage than I was before, but I was less free. Here’s something else to ponder. Thinking about your definition, I looked up some definitions of freedom in my old dictionaries. Some definitions were better than others, but I was reminded of a statement by Edgar Pangborn. In 1972, in Angel’s Egg, he wrote, “One who can define kindness only as the absence of cruelty has surely not begun to understand the nature of either.” Human behavior, as I see it, suggests that maybe we don’t understand freedom well enough to be able to define it. You’ve set for yourself a difficult task to do so, a task that recalls to my mind the legacy of Mere Keep. It’s an interesting definition. Thank you for sending it to me.

—editor

Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III
•Any society or community that’s too large for its members to gather in one place, all at the same time, and vote by a show of hands, is too large to be a democracy.
•If you say something over and over again, enough times, then eventually people will begin to hear it. They might not understand it or believe it but, at least, they’ll hear it.