Freedom and Fairness focus on Memorial Day Speech

In his annual address during the Memorial Day Services at the Stockton Cemetery on Monday, May 30th, veteran and VFW Post 8873 Quartermaster John Berkley spoke as follows:

“Welcome. On Memorial Day, veterans gather to remember and honor those who have served to protect and defend our liberties. Since the time of our Revolutionary War many generations of Americans have fought and died protecting our rights from those who would deny them to us. As free citizens we feel we have the right to make decisions about how our lives are lived. Unfortunately, there are those around the world who think they know what is best for us and therefore have the right to make those choices for us. We must be ever watchful for those with the mentality that they are caretakers for us and must be in control of everyone’s lives. Whenever I see a politician I try to make a determination about whether they are on the side of liberty or tyranny. I have no doubt that many of our politicians, if they ever had the chance, would initiate a coupe to overthrow our government, As free citizens, we must be ever watchful for those wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Today I want to discuss the words ‘free’ and ‘fair’ in regards to politics. Free or freedom is fairly easy to describe. If a person is free to do something, he is acting without outside restrains on his actions. His free will determines what actions he might want to take. On the other hand, if fairness is to determine our actions, the assumption is that someone or something will determine what is fair and compel us to follow in that direction. There is an element of coercion assumed in doing what is fair. Milton Freidman put it clearly when he stated, ‘If speech must be fair, then it cannot cannot also be free; someone must decide what is fair.’ When the press in previous years was subject to a ‘fairness doctrine’ someone, somewhere had to make the determination of what was fair and impose that upon the press. As free citizens we must always be aware that fairness does not equal freedom and is often its opposite.

We should be aware that America’s founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, both contained the word free. The word fair is not used in either document. Our founders fully understood the implications of these two words.

Applying these two words to political systems it should be fairly obvious that free is the term most applicable to our democratic republic. Fair is the term most applicable to socialists and communist counters, whichever term you prefer. Communist countries prefer to not let individuals decide matters for themselves, but to follow what is demanded of them. What is happening in Ukraine is what Russia has determined to be fairness, a repeat of Communism’s many takeovers throughout the world in the past century. Communism/ Socialism determines what is fair in income, speech, law, work and all other areas of life. In America, there is no one imposing their will upon us and should not be. Remember, fairness is the guiding principal of totalitarian governments; freedom is the guiding principal of those seeking liberty.”