In “Losing the Words of the Cold War” (2011), Daniel T. Rodgers writes:
As the force seeped out of the older, mid-twentieth-century ways of imagining society, talk of freedom did not diminish.. But its meanings changed. Individualized and privatized, released of it larger burdens, freedom was cut loose from the burdens and responsibilities that had once so closely accompanied it. (40)
Are you persuaded by Rodgers’ argument? Does his characterization of freedom resonate with your experiences and aspirations?
The change in the meaning of freedom that Rogers talks about refers to the ideas of freedom in the years leading up to the 1970s vs Regan’s ideas of freedom in the 1980s. As Rogers writes: “The freedom which hung so urgently in the balance in the 1950s and 1960s America was ballasted by and contained within its complements: responsibility, destiny, justice, morality, and society.” These are the “burdens and responsibilities” that Rogers refers to in the passage. These ideas of freedom are contrasted with Regan’s more poetic portrayal of freedom in which freedom is a dreamy state of limitless opportunity. “To dream, to reach, to sing, to break loose, to fly as high and as far as the imagination would carry you, to be all you might be: under the skin of the familiar words, the notion of freedom was enchanted.” Although there certainly is a great difference between the two different freedoms, Rogers’ characterization of Regan’s ideas of freedom does not seem very accurate in America today. People aren’t limited solely by their imaginations and there are very definite limiting factors to the freedom of achieving one’s aspirations. There are certainly very large differences in the quality of opportunities available to people born into different socioeconomic statuses and the idea that anybody has the freedom to be whatever they want is far from true.