On Freedom of Conscience

I want to take a moment and liberate myself of something that has been on my conscience of late. I believe in our inalienable rights and freedoms. I also believe in circumstances that can come about when certain rights and freedoms can be limited, usually temporarily. For instance, I am aware of what is going on in the world, I have access to the same sources as the next person. However, I choose to refrain from making public statements that are political in nature and have to do with political matters that for me are not domestic.

In other words, I believe in my fundamental and inalienable freedom of speech, as well as my freedom to have what political beliefs and opinions I might choose to have. The problem, as I see it, is that as we are living in a more and more globalized world, I do not feel that I have the freedom to say whatever I choose. I believe that with rights come responsibilities.

I believe in my freedom of conscience, which goes both ways. With responsibilities can come limitations. I am free to have a conscience, which means that I am not free to do whatever I please. I am limited to doing, saying, even thinking, things that accord and concord with my Conscience. And for the time being, I find that there is too much social unrest in the world, that contributing my thoughts to the matter will not provide any solutions.

Therefore, I resolve myself to only making political statements about domestic matters. I am a Canadian citizen and feel justified in making statements about political matters at home, even though I rarely indulge in sharing my political opinions publicly. Again, I am all too aware of what is going on in the world. I just do not feel that sharing my opinions on matters of foreign powers and their constituencies, their governments and citizenries, is going to be helpful in any way, shape or form.

Lastly, I do believe that my brothers and sisters domestically do have a right, so to speak, to know what my positions are on political matters, economic matters, as well as social and other important matters. If you are my neighbor, I find that part of being neighborly is sharing what my thoughts and feelings are with you. I want to live in peace and I have found that being genuine and speaking my mind with those in my immediate surroundings tends to be fruit-bearing, not only for myself, but for the community at large. It tends to lead to more social cohesion, which I think is a great good, especially in such hard and trying times as these.

Again, my freedom of conscience, my freedoms of speech, of holding opinions and having beliefs, are not only my inalienable rights, but they are my responsibilities. They are not merely my responsibilities in that they are my prerogatives. I believe that my freedom of conscience limits me to think, say, and do only that which abides by my own conscience. Once and only once I have limited myself to that which I can live with comfortably, in my own conscience, do I feel most free. And at the moment I do not feel that the social, political, and economic context in the more and more globalized world permits me to speak freely about situations in foreign places, at once sharing my opinions publicly AND being limited to that which I can live with comfortably in my own conscience, which is always private.

And so I limit myself to only speaking publicly of matters that are domestic and usually local, in the community in which I live. Any other statements that I might make, if they have to do with foreign places, should always be taken with a grain of salt, since the only place I truly know is the place where I live. I fear that social networking technologies can back-fire. They can be great innovations, they can be truly great things, but they can also spread chaos and disorder, confusion and discord, and that I fear I must fundamentally stand against. For what makes up the content and substance of my conscience are fundamental principles which I stand by. I believe in rights and freedoms, but not at the expense of social unrest, disorder, anarchy, and the like. I fear that taking a position on some foreign power, some foreign government, nation, and its people, when they are experience trying and tough times, is tantamount to interference with matters that are patently not domestic.

I might have a power to do something, to change something, globally, with my Voice, but I cannot have a voice until I thoroughly understand a situation, and I trust that those whom I and my compatriots have elected to our highest offices, I have full confidence that they have taken the time to understand such situations occurring on foreign terrain. And so in times like these, trying and tough, I put my faith and confidence in those I have elected to speak on my behalf in foreign matters. It is the most important and powerful thing I can do, put my faith in those I and my neighbors have elected as our representatives. I shall let them speak for me in matters I do not thoroughly understand, and for which they are in the very best position to deal with. This means that I might disagree wholeheartedly with the position my elected representatives take on foreign matters, and so to abide by my conscience, silence and faith are my virtues, and not the other way around, noise and bad faith or anarchy and discord.
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