In light of this rather excellent review of V for Vendetta, I have decided to forgo writing a review of my own. (If you haven’t seen the movie and/or read the graphic novel, I think you’re safe, in terms of spoilers, reading down through the paragraph which ends “it seemed like a wasted bit of screen time”.) My one real bone to pick with that review begins and ends with his declaration that the film should be thought of more as “inspired by” than as an adaptation. I think the film is very much an adapatation and a very good one at that. My view on what constitutes a good adaptation though stems from a class I took on that very subject and is more long winded than I want to be at the moment (if you’ve ever been with me to a film adapted from another work, you’ve likely heard at least some of my opinion, and as that constitutes most of the people reading these words, I see no problem relegating that subject to another day).
Instead, I’ve decided to put forth thoughts provoked and reinforced by not only that film, but also the recent story about the Afghan man nearly put to death for converting to Christianity. Thoughts which also tie in to my outrage over the current U.S. administrations unconstitutional actions. Enough preamble, let’s get to it.
The government does not grant us any rights. Therefore it cannot, of it’s own volition, take them away. The rights we have, as described in (not given by) the Constitution are ours because those who wrote it believed that all of us posses those rights inherently. People living in a fascist state still have the right to assemble peacably. The government of that country may prevent the people from enacting that right, but it cannot take away the right itself. Our freedoms do not exist as some writing on a piece of paper or even as some free floating concept out in the world which can be roped and restrained. No, our freedom originates and lives in each of us.
The government, on the other hand, has no inherent rights. We, as a people choose what rights and powers it has. When the founding fathers cenceived our present government, they set before it two tasks, to protect our lives and to protect our liberty. To that end, they conceded to it all the power they imagined it would need. As they knew the imagination, while boundless in potential, is limited in practice, they left open the possibility that the government might need more power to fulfill its two goals. That stroke has made villians of us all.
Let’s look closer. Why should our lives be protected? So that we may live them, of course. And yet, why should we care about living our lives if we are restricted from living them as we would choose? Hence the need to ensure that our liberty and, more to the point, our ability to put into practice that liberty is also protected. Some, myself included, consider that second need to be the more vital. As Patrick Henry said, “Give me liberty or give me death.” If forced to choose between a long life lived without the chance to act freely or a short life in which I am free to do as I choose, I cannot imagine not choosing the latter circumstance.
It all comes down to that choice. Life or liberty? We cannot have both unrestricted. Yet, while our liberty is not inherently limited in any way, our lives are inherently constrained. We are mortal. We can takes steps to put off the day of our death, but we can not prevent it. By design, our lives are more limited than what we can do while we are living them. So why do we choose, continually, life over liberty?
(As I need to eat lunch and take care of several errands, I’ll continue this piece in a second part in the next day or two.)