Fueled by Jeremy Scahill’s recent revelations about Blackwater and its founder Erik Prince in The Nation, I’ve got a new essay at Religion Dispatches exploring the concept of freedom in relationship to the business of free-market warfare.

Erik Prince discovered a passion for freedom long before founding Blackwater.

Freedom is a mighty thing. Its exercise unleashes, its defense galvanizes. In the imagination, it conjures a dream that meets reality only in glimpses: an open field, a decisive choice, or a long-held desire finally in reach. Freedom, such ecstasy reveals, is the principle (or anti-principle) that organizes the whole universe. It is simple. But grasping it for oneself, without slipping into a new sort of bondage, is hard.

Continue reading at Religion Dispatches.