This is several years old now but I got thinking about it the other day. This is what generated my current interest in comic books, which at times I think can be a vastly under-rated medium of literature and other times... not so good. It's a big hit or miss industry. Anyway, here's is my quick synopsis. Imagine a world where people have super powers, sometimes not very nice people. Super villians obviously. Sometimes it's well meaning people who doesn't have good self control or judgement. This describes many of the protagonists in Marvel comics. Specifically the New Warriors in this story. They start up a reality show about catching super villians. One of these villians, Nitro, ends up blowing up and entire neighbourhood while defending himself. Hundreds dead as a result. (Interesting commentary on reality tv there) The government and people want more control over the actions of super powered individuals and soon it becomes law for everyone with any super human ability to register with the government and go through a training program. This splits the Marvel heroes into two opposing political groups and is where this story gets into some deeper messages.
A very basic philosophical concept of freedom is the major theme throughout this storyline. That is "freedom to" vs "freedom from". In the story we have the pro-registration side supporting "freedom from" the harm that unqualified and/or dangerous super powered beings cause whether intentional or collateral damage. The opposition is supportive of the "freedom to" privacy basically. Both sides can be seen as the protagonist here but some writers clearly show a bias towards the opposition unfortunetly.
This brings up many current political issues of freedom. Freedom isn't the ability to do whatever you want. To take an extreme, if I want the freedom to kill someone then I must give up my own freedom from being killed. (Since as a society attempting to build equal rights what one person is allowed must be applied to the others within that society. But thats getting onto a tangent) Freedoms are sometimes mutually exclusive. Thus, freedom to and freedom from are sometimes polar opposites and both cannot be satisfied. Now we can all agree that freedom from being murdered is a freedom we want. So we have made freedom to murder against the law. We don't want to be robbed so we as a society have made laws against stealing. But freedoms are not always so easy to agree upon. Think about the different political issues today. Legalizing marijuana (freedom to smoke weed vs. freedom from the effects of it) for example. It seems to me that after periods of prosperity, the "freedoms to" are pushed more than the "freedoms from". As we feel safe (due to our freedoms from) we want allowance to do a wider range of behaviours without legal interferance. The 60's was a good example, following the safety of the conservative 50's. After hard times, it is the freedoms from that recieve a greater push. See also the conservative 50's after World War 2. Discussion over which type of freedom is more important can obviously get very heated and depends greatly on perspective. I think of George Orwells book 1984. In that world, a great war has occured and the following society is almost completely based on "freedom from" so much that people don't have the "freedom to" be themselves or to really do anything. It's an extreme. The opposite view would be complete anarchy if we had all the "freedom to" that there could be.
Moderation in all things. Finding a balance between freedoms will be an ongoing battle. That brings me back to Marvel Civil War. Go read it. There's good character moments, great art and a thought provoking between the lines story about personal freedoms that can be related to everyone.
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