Having turned out the lights around 11:00pm on July 4th, I double-folded my pillow over my head to blunt the searing whistles and sonorous booms of illegal fireworks in the park next to our house, which continued for another half hour as my neighbors chose this way to exercise their freedom to celebrate the holiday. Living in drought-ravaged southern California, where errant embers flame into community-destroying conflagrations in a split second and local municipalities have even replaced fireworks displays with drone shows to mitigate wildfire risk, I’m constantly aware of the potential consequences of such activities. I had to tell myself to breathe and put aside the image of a spark carried by the wind to our roof so I could eventually fall asleep.
The next morning, I was thinking about how the very American notion of individual freedom has metastasized into a terminal illness that’s killing us all. In a recent podcast with the historian Heather Cox Richardson, Pete Buttigieg described contrasting views of freedom as “the freedom to live the life of our choosing…those kinds of thicker forms of freedom, versus just the way it’s been talked about most of my life, where freedom is just about avoiding a rule or a regulation…” That distinction is sticking in my mind as I consider the millions of Americans who have collected firearms unabated (120.5 firearms per 100 people in 2025) juxtaposed with the number of Americans dying from firearms (more than 130 every day in 2022). Or the loud chorus of anti-vax voices who fought mask and vaccine mandates compared to the number of Americans who’ve died of Covid (more than 1.2 million). In these scenarios, why is one’s right to oppose regulation of any kind more important than another individual’s right to live?
It's true, inalienable and individual rights are at the core of the nation’s principles. But the push of the last few decades toward elevating those rights above the rights of the collective has been inestimably detrimental to our culture. I would argue that the original concept of freedom on which this country was founded has been bastardized to excuse any behavior that—f*ck it—I just feel like enacting. Never mind the cost to others, even those near and dear to me. “Don’t Tread on Me,” the Gadsden flag motto that dates back to the American revolution that came to symbolize resistance to oppressive government, was eventually co-opted by members of the alt-right as recently as the 2010s to justify their belief system and advance white nationalism as the nation’s power structure. How many people’s rights will be trampled (and lives lost) for those who insist on the primacy of their own?
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As an Independence Day epilogue, fires broke out in both San Clemente and Laguna Beach as a result of illegal fireworks, endangering both life and property. We should be so grateful for our dedicated local firefighters and first responders, who stopped the fires’ advance, especially as our northern neighbors in the Palisades and Alta Dena recover/relocate from the decimation of their communities. But how different would the world be if—instead of “Don’t Tread on Me”—we could live by Jesus’s teaching of the Golden Rule: “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31)? A little empathy goes a long way.
-C Gitter, Ladera Ranch
