Whole Foods CEO John Mackey on liberty
Liberty: Winning The Battle for Freedom
(a talk by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, from the June 2006 issue of “Liberty”)
Excerpt:
How many people in the audience believe drugs should be legalized? What about pornography? How many of you believe that prostitution should be legal? I believe all three should be legalized — within certain parameters which protect children. Who among you believes that private ownership of guns should be made illegal? I certainly don’t. Gun ownership is protected by the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution. It is an important right.
I believe, however, that all four of these issues are far less critical for improving our society than creating educational choice, privatizing Social Security, deregulating health care, and enacting meaningful tort reform. The legalization of drugs, pornography, prostitution, and guns, as issues, are all too closely associated with the freedom movement. Aligning ourselves with these issues has hurt our brand tremendously, by associating the freedom movement with cultural decadence. Parents don’t want their children’s lives ruined by drug experimentation, or their innocence prematurely lost to pornography and prostitution, or their lives ended with a bullet.
These four freedom issues need to be de-emphasized by the freedom movement if we hope to create a mass movement and continue to evolve our society in positive directions. How many of you believe that lessening the power of government over our lives is the most important goal of the freedom movement? I believe that the freedom movement’s biggest mistake today is focusing primarily on freedom “from” government coercion as its primary goal. Obviously this is a very important goal, but I strongly believe it must be accompanied by an equally important goal: the freedom “to” take responsibility for our own lives; the freedom “to” take responsibility for our own communities and our planet.
Freedom from government coercion is clearly a very, very important goal. But unless you live in a country like China, North Korea, Cuba, or Iran that lacks many personal liberties that we Westerners take largely for granted, freedom is not usually an important goal. American citizens mostly take their liberties for granted. Unlike the people in this audience, most Americans forget that vigilance is the eternal price we have to pay for protecting liberties.
Once we are free, or relatively free, to live our lives in the manner we choose, we must answer the question, “How then shall we actually live our lives?” Will we live our lives as hedonists, indulging ourselves with various amusements, diversions, and pleasures? Or will we choose the more difficult path of personal development and acceptance of social responsibility?
The freedom movement needs to reposition itself and re-brand itself. Personal freedom may be the first goal we work towards — but we can’t stop there; it isn’t enough. There is so much more to life. Using our freedom to take on greater social responsibility, as well as striving to reach our fullest potential as humans, needs to be a goal we support just as much as freedom from government coercion.
