Remembering Freedom: The Book for the Modern Discussion

This article first appeared on my Substack, https://rememberingtomorrow.substack.com. Today, I invite you to get to know me a little better, hear a little about my background, and learn what all the hoopla is about this book I’ve mentioned several times. Please enjoy, and let me know what you think!

My first job was pulling watermelons for my neighbor in the hot SC summer sun, walking and working beside people whose grandfathers had been enslaved by the grandfather of our now employer. I remember that I got paid $5.00 an hour for anything less than a half-day work, $25.00 for a half day, and $50.00 for a full day. I can also remember the excitement my brothers and I felt when the federal minimum wage jumped from $5.00 an hour to $7.00 an hour - we all thought we were getting a raise. But as so many under-the-table jobs go, our pay did not rise to match the federal update: we continued with the same pay scale as we currently had. That was alright, though: we chalked it up to not having a “real” job yet, and that things would be much more “official” when we had “real” jobs. It was, simply put, a sentiment that would refrain time and time again - one that reflects a longstanding yet recently challenged societal position as we enter more deeply into the inherited ramifications of the Enlightenment. 

During my senior year of high school, I swapped out pulling watermelons during the summer for a job that would continue even during the colder months: the local hardware store. Our town was small (microscopic, compared to some!), and you can only sweep the floor, inventory the stock, and rearrange the display so many times. At a certain point, human creativity will combine with boredom to create some pretty ingenious things. And so, my days at the store saw me eating up the mass amounts of dead time between customers with anything from taking the leather from our recent cow and braid it into a bullwhip, to hand-writing poems and theological apologies, to even fashioning our own checker board from nuts and bolts. It was alright, I justified, because this was such a small town it didn’t constitute a real job. Real jobs wouldn’t see me with so much down time in between customers with no more legitimate work to do until one were to show up. 

Off I went to college right after graduation. Magdalen College of the Liberal Arts had at the time one of the premier humanities programs out of all its peers. It also boasted the power to award the Apostolic Catechetical Diploma. Small though the school was, its excellent program of studies, coupled with its rigorous observation and celebration of the Sacred Liturgies, all set on the backdrop of its multi-million dollar campus nestled in the beautiful Blue Hills mountains of Warner New Hampshire enabled this school, in my opinion, to rival the academic prowess of many larger schools. How surprised I was, then, to find that when I got there many of my fellow students were prone to make complaints based on the premise that we were not a “real” school. What a “real” school was - besides being somewhat bigger with more money - was never really defined in these complaints. All I would get when I would ask was simply that we wouldn’t have to endure x, y, or z policy, whichever one that was the current object of opposition. Nevertheless, I thought to myself, I understand that this was a small (again, microscopic to some!) school, and that there were unique problems and quirks to having a school small.

I married very shortly after leaving life on a college campus. Finding myself newly married in a new state with no connections, no friends, no marketable skills (YOU try finding employment when your resume boasts nothing more than watermelon picking and an undergraduate degree in philosophy/liberal arts!) and an immediate need for income, I found myself working with a dual hat of producer/Human Resources for a small packaging company in Cleveland, OH. This company effectively packaged hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of product for various multi-million dollar companies worldwide - and had done so at the time for decades. This being said, the employee number at this company was well under 30 at any given time - and sometimes even in the mere single digits. You might not be surprised, given the trajectory of this conversation, to hear that I was surrounded by incessant comments about the company’s legitimacy: never a day went by when some quirk of company life wasn’t lamented and complained about in terms of “we wouldn’t have to do x, y, or z if we were a real company!” And even here, at what you might consider my first “real” job, I discounted and “understood” these complaints: we were such a small company, we were allowed to have a more “human” approach to employment than some of the supposed colder, authoritative, and “official” approaches of larger companies. 

I wish I could say that the cries for the “real life” to stand up stopped with this place of employment. You may or may not be surprised to hear that this would not be the case. How surprised I was, at any rate, when not long after this I found myself at Basic Combat Training and were surrounded by “if we were in the real Army,” or “once we get to a real unit,” such and such a problem would not be the case anymore. I began to wonder: what is this real Army that people keep supposing exists with more surety than the life that is literally surrounding us! I would continue that wondering when I was surrounded by those same complaints of un-reality on my first deployment, my 2 year stint as an armored car driver at the oldest operable branch of the largest security company in the entire world, my second deployment, and, ultimately, by those who would criticize my position as an adoptive (and therefore not real) parent. 

Eventually, through all of these experiences, I began to realize: human nature struggles to recognize reality, especially here in the 21st century. The same defects that caused the Jews to reject Christ (how could this be the Messiah), those same ones that have allowed Protestantism to become prolific (how could God exist and operate here, and not in the abstract “out there?!”) have finally found philosophical traction and consequence as found in societal structure. The Enlightenment, the Social Contractors, Baconian/Machiavellian approaches to reality, and Kantian metaphysics have paved the way for an anthropology and epistemology that would isolate Man from his fellow, set keep him in the confines of his own subjectivity, and create a worldview so absurd as to be invincible in its ability to shut down conversations: when everything can be boiled down to my point of view, no knowledge of the “real” world - let alone discussion about what that means - is possible. The necessary result? Freedom means the ability to do what you wish and desire - so long as you don’t step on anyone else’s toes. And, as a corollary, any prohibition on your desires makes you less free. It is indeed a lonely worldview to find yourself in.

For centuries, this philosophical traction has been sped along and abetted by the rise of isolating technology and social movements aimed at preserving the insurmountable autonomy and isolation of the subjective human experience; now, at long last, the freeze is beginning to thaw. Look everywhere around you: conversation is beginning to take place again. From the “prove me wrong” of Steven Crowder to the college campaigns of the late Charlie Kirk to the return of the street preachers, we see the public once again becoming enamored of real discussion. Debate is back; human nature is ready to be human once again, joining together for discourse, discussion, and constructive critiques of the philosophical inheritance we have been handed - and what reality is actually made of so that we can act within and upon it as good stewards.

Now, no one can live and be completely free from the philosophies that make up his surroundings - even those who are faithful Catholics. Too often, the worldviews and fundamental beliefs of the modern human are too far removed from our own to have meaningful discussions, and who is to say who is right?

 How are we to communicate and have these discussions when everything is boiled down to mere point of view? Or how are we to discuss human flourishing when happiness is considered the fulfillment of fleeting pleasure? And how are we to respond when our cries to outlaw evil are met with protestations that we are inhibiting personal freedom? For those of you who were at the Veranova Gala a couple weeks ago, you will have heard Father in his keynote talk about words; when the devil can co-opt words, when the enemy has a monopoly on how we use words, he has the upper hand. The ultimate question for the American today is: how is it that I am free, how do I defend eradicating evil as still upholding individual freedom, and - perhaps most damnably - how is it that I can know I am right in these matters? 

If you find yourself met with these challenges in the crazy modern dialogue, you are not alone. And this book is just for you.  

Remembering Freedom reclaims a coherent anthropology of Freedom, Happiness, and Knowledge. This reclamation is at once rooted in Thomistic philosophy without devolving into mere historicism - a simple turning backwards in time and thought. This book articulates an essential premise of productive discussions: that there is an objective truth, and that Truth is Personal in nature. We do not simply encounter truth as subjective individuals with senses, opinions, and personal backgrounds: rather, encounter with truth is a response to a Person Who beckons us come, recognize Him in the created nature we perceive around us. 

Remembering Freedom is unique on the public stage in that it is rooted in classical philosophical premises, while at the same time not falling prey to historicism as the only way of reclaiming coherency. It offers a synthesis of complex intellectual traditions in a way that is timely, coherent, and pastorally relevant, giving clarity through integrating traditional ideas to a coherent worldview - something sorely lacking in modern discourse. This book is designed to be at once engaging and practical: though some technical distinctions like those between anamnesis, synderesis, and conscience are present in the book, each one is accompanied by practical story aimed at illustrating what this more “abstract” thing looks like here in the real world - and offers a synthesis as to why this distinction matters, and how we are to apply it.

Knowledge is not an abstract or merely scientific in its composition, my friends, nor is freedom a license to do what I wish so long as I do not harm anyone else. These positions are hard to hold and defend here in the year 2026; but without the ability to articulate these premises, we are left with that false humility that causes us to end each apology of our Faith with the dreaded “I don’t know, though,” just in case we’re wrong - or, worse yet, “you do you.” If you are looking to enter into discussions, if you find yourself wondering how on earth we got to the point we are at now, or if you find yourself trying to reconcile the American identity of freedom with something more conservative than libertarianism, this book is for you.

If you enjoyed this, be sure to stay up to date by Subscribing to my Substack!  And get your copy of Remembering Freedom today! https://www.amazon.com/Remembering-Freedom-Connor-Curley/dp/1633574830