Marathe and Steeply: choosing nothing to love (pp. 320–321)
How for the person to freely choose? How to choose any but a child’s greedy choices if there is no loving-filled father to guide, inform, teach the person how to choose? How is there freedom to choose if one does not learn how to choose?
Context
The freedom-from / freedom-to distinction that underwrites the whole theme. Marathe grants America its "freedom-from" — no one dictates to the precious individual self — and then drives the knife: freedom from constraint is worthless without the freedom-to, the learned capacity to choose well, and that capacity has to be taught. His candy-father parable makes it concrete: a rich father who lets his child eat only sweets in the name of "Freedom!" produces a weak, sick child, and is no good father. A culture that removed every temple and every teacher of choosing, then handed its citizens unlimited freedom-from, has raised children who can only make "a child's greedy choices" — which is exactly the choice the Entertainment counts on. Choosing your master is a skill, and a society that never taught it has pre-selected the master for everyone.