MISSOURI WATCH: WHAT'S YOUR WORD FOR FREEDOM

As you might expect, the Germans have a word for it, just as they have a word for virtually every human condition. The former Goths of central Europe have invented a word puzzling to most of us: schlimmbesserung. If you want to pronounce it, you're on your own.

Here in Missouri, we have an old expression that seems to me expresses it more clearly: From the frying pan into the fire.

Regardless of your preference, both refer to the disappointing act of seeking and achieving progress, only to discover that once the moment is realized, things appear to be worse than before. In other words, an improvement that makes things appear worse than before. Even when they're really not.

As mankind advances, and that word is used advisedly and as an act of faith, we seem to be encountering schlimmbesserung with greater and greater frequency. Ideas, inventions, programs, plans, projects, politics---you name it, all begin with the premise that they will enhance our lives and free us from the drudgeries of everyday living, not to mention mundane thinking.

Over a couple of generations, we have created such progress as faster automobiles, more comfortable housing, electronic tools for every facet of human life, stereophonic sound movies, automatic door openers, elevators, computers, alarm systems, chocolate diets, air conditioning, chairs that vibrate, hair implants, radar ovens, instant pregnancy tests, rapid transit, diet colas, and the list goes on and on. We have more progress than we can accommodate, assimilate and afford.

Life should be grand.

But, obviously, it isn't always, which is why our German friends came up with their word, and why our ancestors experienced progress that was disappointing long ago when there were frying pans instead of dehydrated dietary supplements.

It's human to expect more from the word progress than can be realized. Maybe we Americans should invent our own word to indicate disillusionment with our expectations.

Recently a friend expressed disappointment that America had become a land in which citizens expressed themselves in a sometimes violent way, indicating he thought society had become more violent as civilization became older, if not always wiser. He only shook his head when I reminded him that the American Revolution began with acts of destruction by the earliest Americans, the Colonists-, against the British Crown, which in that day was the government and stood for law and order.

"But that was different," the friend protested. "We were fighting for what we believed in, and we were seeking freedom and justice and liberty." He did not look at me kindly when I reminded him that every movement since the beginning of time has used the same rationale. Hitler's Brown Shirts, the old Communists in Russia and China, the Viet Cong, the Bosnian Serbs and today's Japanese cults all use the same words. The big difference is they really don't practice them.

At least some of these groups borrowed the rallying call of the American and French revolutions as they, too, sought life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. If we are selective in our approval of liberty, then it means we are less than fully committed to its concept, allotting it only to those who have our approval.

Which brings us back to schlimmbesserung. Liberty and freedom are vital, essential components of progress, and it is even safe to say that the human spirit cannot move forward without these ingredients. But when we achieve them, there is a price to be paid. We just don't always calculate its cost.

And that price is learning tolerance. Not indifference, not disgust, not retaliation. Tolerance for all things that are free and just and deserving. Tolerance for ideas that are different than our own, religions that seem strange and not religious at all, political views that are diametrically opposite from ours, lifestyles that don't measure up to how we run our own lives.

If there is a more difficult job than learning tolerance, I'm not aware of it. The freedoms that we cherish must be granted to everyone, or there is no progress, or even any guarantee of freedom for the rest. The minute we begin to limit freedom is the exact second our own is at risk.

Liberty is the genie in the bottle. Once released, it can't be returned, and without it, there is no progress nor even so much as a manufacturer's warranty for a better tomorrow. It's amazing how many languages don't have a word for Freedom.

~Jack Stapleton is the editor of the Missouri News and Editorial Service.