There are those who pass themselves off as intelligent human beings by creating seemingly clever bits of wordplay that we all take as fact because they sound so good. I really hate that crap. There are numerous instances of this in religion, most of them so heavily dependent upon metaphors that when said metaphors are stripped away, not only is there no truth to the sayings, but there is no substance, either. Take this one from modern Christianity: "When God closes a door, he opens a window." What does that even mean? Does God want me to jump out the window, or does he just want me to have some fresh air? Or am I outside, and I'm supposed to be breaking into the place? And if the doors and windows are all on the same building, am I not going to end up in the exact same place, regardless of which one I pass through? Strip away the metaphors and the saying essentially suggests that all opportunities come directly from God, and that when he takes one away, he always provides a less ideal one in its place. Is that in the Bible? I don't remember ever reading that. The problem with these little, pet sayings is that even though they are not found in the scriptures and have no foundation in the canon of Christian tradition, they are still held to be the word of God, and that's a little scary, especially when the clever saying is a little less benign, like that whole 'Adam and Steve' thing, or various slogans that insensitively bash the beliefs held by the billions of other people in the world.
But perhaps nowhere has the power of superficially clever rhetoric been more effective in the war on intelligence than in the pseudopatriotism of the post-9/11 era, and none of these statements makes my blood boil more than "Freedom isn't Free." When did freedom become a commodity with a price tag? Are we really accepting that we have to pay a price for our freedom? Isn't that, well, not freedom? The Declaration of Independence says, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." Liberty, for those who don't know, is a synonym for Freedom, and a synonym is a word that means the same thing as another word. So according to our nation's founding document, freedom is an unalienable right that all people are born with, making it, by definition, free. Unfortunately, 'Freedom is an Unalienable Right and is therefore Free by Definition' doesn't make a very catchy bumper sticker. Well, maybe it'll catch on.
