Compartmentalized Freedom

No more running down the wrong road
Dancing to a different drum
Can't you see what's going on
Deep inside your heart?
--Michael McDonald

While walking the neighborhood recently, I saw a sign posted in the rectory yard at my church which read "Support Religious Freedom," likely in reference to pro-life or Obamacare issues. Why just religious freedom? I wondered. Why not all freedom?

It is interesting that people tend to compartmentalize freedom. Freedom of religion, speech, assembly, association. Economic freedom. Freedom to protect person and property against invasion.

By thinking about freedom along various dimensions, it makes freedom more tangible as we can relate the construct more directly to activities and issues close to us in our daily lives.

The danger of such conceptual compartmentalization, however, is that it may make some people willing to sacrifice one dimension of freedom for another, or more willing to compromise the freedom from others in order to obtain more of the freedom that they desire. Currently, for example, Catholic church policymakers promote religious freedom while expressing willingness to restrict economic freedom.

I have yet to encounter a well-reasoned argument for why a particular dimension of freedom is more valid or more important than others. Why religious liberty but not economic liberty, for instance?

It is more straightforward to argue that, by their nature, the dimensions of freedom are inseparable. Limiting any dimension of freedom not only makes people less free, but ultimately restricts those dimensions of freedom that they preferentially value.