What is freedom?

That’s a question people around the world have spent many a July trying to answer — and an ideal for which they’ve laid down their lives and laid down the lives of others. Americans, of course, have Independence Day and all that it stands for to celebrate and look back on, but we’re certainly not unique. Canada Day, observed on July 1st, celebrates the beginning of Canadian self-rule as a country, instead of as a British colony; Somalia, Suriname, Rwanda, and Burundi also celebrate their independence on July 1st.

In France, Bastille Day is celebrated every July 14th to commemorate the storming of the Bastille and the commensurate end of feudal rule. In Russia, the Romanovs were executed on the night of July 16th by communists that, among other things, sought to free their country from the horrors of the first World War. July 24th is celebrated in Utah as Pioneer Day, which commemorates the arrival of the first Mormon pioneers into Salt Lake Valley; that day is also celebrated as Simón Bolívar Day in parts of South America to celebrate the military and political leader that liberated several South American countries from Spanish rule. July 27th, meanwhile, is celebrated in North Korea to commemorate the signing of the Korean Armistice Agreement. 

Some of the answers found in past Julys have proven more endurable than others. 

Unless you’re a tankie, it’s hard to argue that the perpetuation of the North Korean regime has advanced freedom for anyone. Similarly, though, it’s impossible to know whether the Tsars would have governed with more restraint (had they survived the October Revolution) than Lenin or Stalin did. And the Soviet Union was almost certainly not an improvement. On the other hand, though Latin America has had its troubles since independence (as even Simón Bolívar lamented toward the end of his life), Spanish colonial rule was intolerably brutal by the comparatively lax standards of the day. Similarly, Bastille Day may have unleashed the French Revolution, the Reign of Terror, and the Napoleonic War, but it also overthrew the French monarchy and cleared the way for the French Republic.

Even the best answers are seldom applied as consistently as they should be. Canada, for all of its stereotypical politeness, didn’t treat Asian immigrants any better than we did at the turn of the 20th century, and even today remains dangerously impolite to First Nations women. As for the United States, our history of slavery, forced relocations of various populations (indigenous and otherwise), realpolitik-driven support for various bloodthirsty dictatorships, invasions of various countries, and — lest anyone forget — intentionally cruel immigration enforcement policies demonstrate that while our marketing literature might claim that all men are created equal, some are more equal than others.

The difference between the best answers and the worst, more often than not, lies in the difference between freedom and power. Freedom is the ability to do something. Power, on the other hand, is the ability to do something to someone else, or to compel others to do something. Unfortunately, to those in positions of power, wielding power feels like freedom to them — and losing the ability to wield power feels like a loss of their freedom. 

How could wielding power feel like freedom, you ask? Well, how would you feel if you lost the power — pardon me, the freedom — to discipline or reward your child as you see fit? That freedom parents instinctively defend is the freedom to hold power over their children, to compel them to behave and to discipline them if they refuse. There may well be very good reasons to wield that power (there always are, aren’t there?), but it’s a “freedom” that wouldn’t exist unless there was a child to wield power over or against and the law granted you the right to do so. To you, being able to discipline your children is freedom. You’re the one choosing whether to do it or not, and under what circumstances, and to what ends. To your children, however, that’s not freedom; that’s your power being wielded against their freedom. 

Acknowledging this set of facts isn’t a value judgment on either power or freedom. If a child is about to run into traffic, it’s morally imperative to wield power over that child’s freedom to stroll onto the highway before a car wields power against that child’s freedom to live. It’s just important to understand and clearly identify the difference so when someone claims their freedom is being infringed, we can establish whether it is, in fact, their freedom or their power that is at stake and judge accordingly.

It should be no surprise, then, that for all of Nevada’s so-called “libertarian leanings,” what it means to be free in our state is rarely as free as we like to think. Who has freedom in Nevada and who does not frequently depends on who has power and who does not. 

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The stage was set early with the Paiute War in 1860, which seized western Nevada from the Northern Paiute, followed by the passage of the Treaty of Ruby Valley in 1863, which granted freedom of travel for emigrants passing through Shoshone lands in eastern Nevada — and the power to place the Shoshone in reservations the instant the “President of the United States shall deem it expedient for them to abandon the roaming life.” In return, the Shoshone were given $5,000.

Naturally, it didn’t take long for that treaty power to get exercised. And the $5,000, as I understand it, didn’t go far.

The reservation system set the stage for several further curtailments of the freedoms of Nevada’s indigenous population. The Stewart Indian School, soon to be Nevada’s newest museum, was originally built to house and educate Native American children — children that were compulsorily enrolled into the school and, for the first four decades of the school’s existence, punished if they used their native language. 

Meanwhile, Derby Dam, constructed as part of the Newlands Reclamation Act at the turn of the last century, diverted enough water upstream from the Pyramid Lake Indian Reservation to nearly cripple Pyramid Lake and drain Winnemucca Lake within three decades. Additionally, the dam disrupted the spawning habits of the Lahontan cutthroat trout, ensuring its assumed extinction from Nevada’s waterways by the beginning of World War II. If wildlife commissioners of the time hadn’t restocked every stream in Nevada with Lahontan cutthroat trout, it most certainly would be extinct today.

Those with the ability to permanently drain a large lake, nearly exterminate a large species of fish, and ignore downstream water rights that are as senior as they get had power — and the freedom to act upon it. The Paiutes, on the other hand, were powerless, and thus weren’t even free to teach their own children their native language. By comparison, the founders of Metropolis learned the hard way that farmers in Lovelock were considerably more powerful than Paiutes when they dammed one of the Humboldt River’s tributaries, only to run afoul of the more senior water rights of Lovelock’s farmers on the opposite end of the river. It didn’t take long for the courts to order the dam to drain; not long after that, Metropolis blew away in a puff of dust, drought, jackrabbits, and Mormon crickets.

On the other side of the state from Metropolis, in a bustling new boomtown called Goldfield, another vision of freedom tried to take root. The Industrial Workers of the World sought to organize all industries, including Goldfield’s miners, under “One Big Union.” According to the ideology of syndicalism (honest-to-goodness communism, basically, but with fewer rules and, believe it or not, less restraint), by treating a wrong against one industry as a wrong against all workers, they could seize the means of production through a series of strikes and slowdowns and thus overthrow capitalism. As they saw it, achieving this would free laborers from the power of the capitalists that set their wages and pocketed the profits generated from their labor. 

It almost worked.

By 1907, the “One Big Union” successfully unionized the miners, card dealers, bartenders, and — don’t tell our editors! — the newsboys. Flush with power, the union dictated wages and working hours for the mines. When a local newspaper refused to join the IWW, the IWW successfully pressured the owner to sell it. When local carpenters refused to unionize under the IWW, the IWW successfully pressured the mines into refusing to hire non-IWW carpenters. When a local restaurateur refused to only serve IWW labor, the IWW boycotted and picketed the restaurant. Later, a pair of IWW members shot and killed the restaurateur. 

When the Panic of 1907 (a market collapse that started on Wall Street) finally struck Goldfield, that all changed. 

Much as dot-com startups suddenly had trouble meeting payroll when venture capitalists stopped throwing money into them, many of Goldfield’s mines suddenly had trouble meeting payroll when stock speculators stopped throwing money into them and they were forced to fund their operations exclusively off of the ore they were pulling out of the ground. Unfortunately for Goldfield and the IWW both, by the end of 1907, Goldfield’s gold production was already declining.

When the mines tried to cut costs by cutting wages and the “One Big Union” responded predictably with a mass strike, the mines didn’t give in — they couldn’t afford to. Instead, they called the military. Though the president of the time, Teddy Roosevelt, made it clear that the military would not take sides, it didn’t have to — all it had to do was ensure that non-union labor could peacefully travel to Goldfield and get to work, which is exactly what it did. Meanwhile, the Western Federation of Miners, the IWW affiliate that Goldfield miners organized under, disaffiliated from the IWW because of its radical policies and open desire to seize the WFM’s financial assets.

To free workers from capitalism, the IWW asserted the power to control who workers associated with, who they worked for, and what wages they earned, enforced through boycotts, strikes, and other labor actions. To be clear, many capitalists of the era asserted similar powers, but the IWW’s vision didn’t free workers of being controlled by others with power - it merely shifted the power from capitalists to union organizers.

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Not every vision of “freedom” in Nevada, however, has been a vision of power. The most enduring visions of freedom have been those that actually granted visitors and Nevadans alike the right to do what they wanted to, without force or fraud against others. 

One started early in Nevada’s history. While Goldfield experimented with union-led syndicalist communism and Native American children were being punished at the Stewart Indian School for speaking their native languages, Reno had already established itself as “the nation’s new divorce headquarters.” Prior to that, Nevada was also the only state where boxing was legal, which made the state a magnet for high profile prize fights. And even before the Great Depression forced Nevada’s hand toward full legalization, gambling was largely tolerated in the state, if not outright encouraged. 

After the Great Depression, capitalism and the almighty dollar pushed Nevada forward when other forces would not. Though there’s a fair amount of debate about whether Nevada really was the “Mississippi of the West,” there’s absolutely no debate over whether black people or other minorities were treated fairly — they weren’t. Segregation was widespread and miscegenation (marrying someone of a different “race”) was legally forbidden. Unlike Mississippi, however, Nevada’s Jim Crow laws didn’t require segregated businesses, though there were municipal measures that applied some restrictions. 

It was only a matter of time before someone applied the now age old Nevadan tradition of asking for forgiveness instead of permission. 

The Moulin Rouge Hotel asked for neither, though. It demanded respect — and got it. 

Being the only desegregated casino and hotel in the Las Vegas Valley, it had what appeared to be a lucrative monopoly on both black entertainers and their frequently-not-black friends. Unfortunately, despite all of the positive press, the glamorous and well-attended parties, and the all-hours atmosphere of the place, it filed for bankruptcy only months later. Even so, its competitors couldn’t help but notice what the Moulin Rouge did to their bottom lines while it was open, and so they followed suit. Almost immediately, other casinos allowed their black entertainers to visit their properties after hours. A few years later, disciplined by the dollar to abandon parochial prejudices, casino owners and Nevada lawmakers worked together to legally end segregation in Nevada once and for all. 

The almighty dollar has also motivated Nevada to be a bit ahead of the curve in other areas, if somewhat imperfectly and a bit slowly. Though Nevada was not the first state to approve marijuana consumption for either medical or recreational use, it certainly wasn’t the last. Additionally, Nevada has a history of quietly decriminalizing drug consumption in general, if only for special occasions like Burning Man and the Electric Daisy Carnival, because the costs of strict enforcement exceed the economic benefits gained from a more live-and-let-live attitude. Even so, Nevada could be even better, as Portugal’s demonstrated over the past two decades. Letting individuals freely decide what’s best for their bodies reduces power applied against them — power that frequently targets poor and minority communities. 

Sadly, even the almighty dollar hasn’t yet compelled Nevada to legalize marriage equality. On the contrary, by an embarrassingly large margin, nearly 70 percent of Nevadans used their political power to deny non-heterosexual couples the right to marry. As one of the just over 30 percent that voted the other way, its overwhelming passage still remains a mystery to me, especially now that it’s crystal clear to anyone paying attention that when one couple gets married, it has absolutely no impact on anyone else’s marriage whatsoever. 

Another area where the almighty dollar could stand to give Nevada a firmer push is sex work. Though Nevada is the only state in the country where sex work is legalized, it is legalized in a way that grants power to the likes of Dennis Hof, not freedom to the working men and women that perform sex work each day. Additionally, Nevada’s public decency laws remain frustratingly vague and erratically enforced, as beachgoers in Lake Tahoe recently learned. As an alternative model to pursue, consider the Australian state of New South Wales, which decriminalized sex work in 1995. The result is a model that sex workers — not brothel owners — consistently advocate for and which enables sex workers to provide novel health services to those in need.

There are many other issues that would benefit from being analyzed on the basis of freedom over power. Does occupational licensing grant freedom to workers or power to well-connected bureaucrats and industry insiders? Does allowing someone to die with dignity grant them freedom, or does it empower insurance companies to pressure them to terminate their life prematurely — and if it might do the latter, is there a way to preserve the former while preventing that outcome? 

Nevada has never been perfect at protecting the freedom of its visitors and residents, and it won’t become perfect anytime soon. Even so, Nevada has done right and continues to do right when it protects freedom, especially at the expense of power. 

David Colborne has been active in the Libertarian Party for two decades. During that time, he has blogged intermittently on his personal blog, as well as the Libertarian Party of Nevada blog, and ran for office twice as a Libertarian candidate. He serves on the Executive Committee for both his state and county Libertarian Party chapters. He is the father of two sons and an IT professional. You can follow him on Twitter @DavidColborne or email him at [email protected].