One of the more un-American things regularly heard from Americans is: "Don't you try to tell me what to do! This is a free country. I can do anything I want!"

I used to hear that often from my playmates when I was a boy. Mostly, we confronted each other with it when one would try to order others around. We said it about parents and teachers behind their backs. (In those days it had better behind backs or they would get back to our behinds.)

I should like to think I never said that because even then I knew something had to be wrong with the idea. My little brother said it all the time when all the time I told him what to do.

Childish as such an attitude surely is, this has now become the political philosophy and social theory of many old enough they could be adult. It seems that everyone considers himself one kind of a victim or another, and it is always the fault of someone else. No sense of personal responsibility. So, of course, many haven’t even heard about social responsibility.

They suppose they are independent and exercise freedom without having any idea of the meaning of freedom.

In our language, verbs for freedom are always transitive and require a subject or an object. One is not grammatically correct with &uot;I am free.&uot; He must qualify by from what and also to what.

In experience, freedom is always relative and requires orientation. One cannot be logical and claim &uot;I am free.&uot; He must stipulate from what and also to what he is free.

Freedom is not an absolute value and an end in itself; it has value only relative to a worthy end toward which it is an appropriate means.

Freedom does not loose us with a license to do anything we want; it binds us under mandate to do all we ought.

Freedom is not the right to do anything we can, but the obligation to do all we must.

Freedom is the ability to be what you ought to be and the opportunity to function according to that nature.

Freedom is commitment to an object in which you wish to be free and separation from everything that compromises that commitment.

Just as we do not float around in space but are subject to the law of gravity, we do not drift through life but are subject to one moral law or another. If we do not consciously choose wholesome morality, corrupt morals will choose us. Then we become enslaved to evil.

But if we choose truth and experience truth, truth will set us free. Not truth in the abstract, but in the person of God’s Son. He who laid down this doctrine immediately added: &uot;So if the Son makes you free, you will be free indeed.&uot;

The pseudo-freedom that beguiles our society is relief from something demanding, but also surrender to something destructive.

Genuine freedom is escape from something oppressive, but also commitment to something fulfilling.

Freedom is not the right to do the opportune, but the opportunity to do the right.

Dr. Wallace Alcorn's column appears in the Herald on Mondays