In the culture of the United States we hold freedom to be a virtue and a God given natural right of the human species.  After all, it was the search for freedom that drove the first settlers to flee the religious persecutions of Europe and come to the colonies of the new world.  It was freedom for which our forefathers fought and died.  Famous quotes such as: “Give me liberty or give me death!” fill our history books and give us a sense of national pride rooted in living in “the land of the free”.  With sensibilities in the United States structured to hold freedom in such high esteem, the presentation of freedom being the highest possible good may appear reasonable and perhaps even patriotic. 

            The philosophy that seems the most concerning in regard to this matter is the one that claims that any choice made is a good one as long as it is a choice made freely.  It may be worded in a fashion such as: “People are never really happy within the restrictions that society forces upon them.  Constructed values of good and bad create a convenient moral structure for the society that suffocates the individual.  People are too concerned with the ‘goodness’ of their actions.  The truly happy person, the free person is the one who realizes that any action that is chosen freely is the right action for them at that time.  For this route is the only route to authentic freedom, the route of tearing down the mental restraints of all the rules that society forces upon us.” 

 While freedom is indeed both a blessing and a right that is proper to man, the claim that freedom is the highest possible good does not stand up to scrutiny.  If I freely choose to murder, steal, extort, rape, etc. by this exulted view of freedom I have not done anything morally objectional.  Yet one doubts that the proponents of this philosophy would be willing to defend this point if they were the victimized party in such freely done actions.  The main problem with this exalted view is that it does not give an accurate account of human nature.