>>>what does freedom mean to you[?]<<<
Lucas 'Scot' Powe, former law clerk to now-deceased Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, once wrote that Douglas "stood for the individual as no other justice ever has," that "the intensity of his fear of government, with its ability to oppress individuals in body and spirit, was genuine and unmatched."
--The Nation, April 14, 2003, p. 25
Good question, Vitas. Now it's easy for me to answer since you've now well-defined your question. So, since you asked, here you go: First, a general definition; second, a description from me on my feeling of it; and, third, some excerpts of others and some examples of freedom:
DEFINITION OF FREEDOM:
1. [n] the condition of being free; the power to act or speak or think without externally imposed restraints
2. [n] immunity from an obligation or duty
hyperdictionary.com
MY OWN CONCEPT:
I think freedom begins early in life, that education and values from parents serve as primary for understanding choices relative to right from wrong; and that, with maturity, comes the process of experimentation and discovery leading to a solidfication of self-assigned viewpoints and values; thus, inherently, a quality of respect both for self and others. For me, this is an attribute of freedom and sort of a beginning point to experience same.
Moreover, we are families of individuals living in a society and this means that it's important that we each, as individuals, get along--that we not perceive our own freedom as more important than the freedom of other. Thus, freedom also has a shared quality to it.
The ideal of sharing, taught while young, helps us to live together as people. But what is the worth of this without also the ideal of self-determination gained from maturity? These two ideals, sharing and self-determination, must fit in order for a society of individuals to live in concert, in freedom with and for each other.
If one overweighs the other then society will become imbalanced and the quality of freedom diminished. The freedom of self must also inherently exist with the freedom of others for freedom to truly become a known experience.
Having rid itself both of the power of monarchy and the confines of slavery, America long has prided itself as the place for freedom of the individual who lives in a free society.
But have things changed, have we gotten or are we getting to a point where the best way to enslave people actually is making people only think that they are free, when they're not? I fear this happening.
Why?
Well, there's plenty of freedom here in America--or anywhere, really--for anyone who has lots of money. For these folks freedom is hardly an issue as choices, for them, are plentiful. The issue for these folks is not a question of freedom, or want for it; rather, for them, it becomes an issue--or condition--where there's a need for control in order to keep that which has been gotten. Unfortunately, this is at the expense of the freedom of others.
This explains America's past and present economic relationships with so many forgein dictators, dictators who made deals that enhanced not only their own wealth, but the wealth of those who invested with them or urged them into policies of exploitation (search: world exploitation of oil, gas, timber, rubber, copper, tin, silver, gold, diamonds, etc.--the imbalanced distribution of these resources).
But contemporary concepts of freedom in America are largely rooted and contingent on America having a strong middle class, the availability of its economic clout and the consequent choices resultant from it. This is how and why lots of Americans feel the experience of freedom and share in its process.
That one can be born poor and become middle class or one can be born middle class and become rich, or any upward combination therein, is a wonderful ideal and inspires worthy goals for many. That this happens is a quality to freedom, especially it is a quality to self-determination.
But the economics of control holds varying limits and today America's middle class is declining, and from this fewer choices. Less freedom. We're seeing yearly patterns of job decline, we're seeing jobholders being asked to produce more in less time--hence, more stress, less freedom. Many are working longer hours to make ends meet. Where once one breadwinner, today there's almost always two. And nearly every family or individual is saddled with debt.
So something's happening to freedom for the middle class?
And of entreprenurial freedom? Hey, we're today seeing small business bankrupticies at record levels. And I think even you would agree, Vitas, this ain't good! Interestingly, bankruptcies are a condition consistent with Republican administrations. And I think even you would agree, Vitas, this ain't good!
Now, poor folk? What freedoms have they ever had? For them a walk in the park on a nice day is a walk in the park on a nice day, whether they're walking in America or anywhere else on earth--that's pretty much it! Here in America even, Asian, Black and Hispanic families are doubled and tripled up within their housing. Some would call this economic opportunity. I'd call it something else.
Yes, poverty is a kept condition. From a world view, it's a condition heaping with terrible racial demographics for too long, to a point where religious overtones have become heavy. So how does any of this comport with my earlier definition of freedom, the very two ideals of sharing and self-determination? Of values learned? Freedom?
That a military is needed to keep dictators or monarchies in line, that a police force is needed to keep poor city and townfolk in line--here or there--is really not at all surprising. Is it? Absent the strongarm measures come economic pressures, similar to what the Bush Administration employed in order to create it's so-called Coalition of the Willing.
Think. Control and fear with economics are handy tools of repression. The greater this then also greater becomes the feeling of less freedom, if not the loss itself. In today's America, in today's world we're seeing this. Don't think we aren't. It worries me; it should worry you. You see, sharing and self-determination ideals, necessary ingredients for freedom, have become too blurred in too many ways.
EXCERPTS AND PASSAGES OF FREEDOM (foods for thought):
>>>What freedoms have Americans lost? Civil libertarians worry most that the new legislation:
* Permits the Attorney General to incarcerate or detain non-citizens based on mere suspicion, and to deny re-admission to the U.S. of non-citizens (including lawful permanent residents) for engaging in speech protected by the First Amendment.
* Minimizes judicial supervision of telephone and Internet surveillance by law enforcement authorities in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism.
* Expands the ability of the government to conduct secret searches, again in anti-terrorism investigations AND in routine criminal investigations unrelated to terrorism. This means that law enforcement authorities can enter and search an individual’s home without presenting a warrant or in any way informing the subject of the search.
* Gives the Attorney General and the Secretary of State the power to designate domestic groups as terrorist organizations and to block any non-citizen who belongs to them from entering the country.
* Makes the payment of membership dues to political organizations a deportable offense.
* Grants the FBI broad access to sensitive medical, financial, mental health, and educational records about individuals without having to show evidence of a crime and without a court order.
* Will lead to large-scale investigations of American citizens for "intelligence" purposes and use of intelligence authorities to by-pass probable cause requirements in criminal cases.
* Puts the CIA and other intelligence agencies back in the business of spying on Americans by giving the Director of Central Intelligence the authority to identify priority targets for intelligence surveillance in the United States.
* Allows searches of highly personal financial records without notice and without judicial review based on a very low standard that does not require probable cause of a crime or even relevancy to an ongoing terrorism investigation.
* Allows student records to be searched based on a very low standard of relevancy to an investigation.
* Creates a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" that could target people who engage in acts of political protest and subject them to wiretapping and enhanced penalties.
mindfully.org
Here's a couple of other interesting sites for consideration:
www.prisonplanet.com
infowars.com
EXAMPLES OF PEOPLE POWER--STANDING UP FOR FREEDOM:
>>>People power was very succesful in Bangkok, Belgrade, Djakarta and Manila and recently in Abidjan, by throwing dictators out of power. Unfortunately it failed in Beijing (Tiananmen Square) and Rangoon because of the superiority and cruelty of the military forces. People power also succesfully eliminated communist regimes in Berlin, Bucarest. Budapest, Prague, Tirana and Warsaw. However people power attempts in earlier days in Budapest (1956) and Prague (spring 1986) were suppressed by the Sovjet military forces and in Warsaw (1981) by the Polish military forces under General Jaruselski.<<<
users.dircon.co.uk
CONCLUSION:
Vitas, freedom is not like the air we breathe, the water we drink and it's not like the ground upon which we walk--for freedom is not a given thing. Freedom is something each individual must learn, must cherish and hold dear; it's something each individual must struggle to keep, for once it has been attained it, above all, must not become lost.
When I was young, Vitas, I read Kahlil Gibran's book, The Prophet. Here is a writer who excerpts nicely some passages from his book:
>>>In The Prophet, written in 1923 by Kahlil Gibran, freedom is “a yoke and a handcuff…(and) the desire of seeking freedom becomes a harness,” entrapping those living in it with “links that glitter in the sun and dazzle (the) eyes.” Have Americans become so besotted with their own freedom that they cease to see it as sustenance, a source of nourishment providing strength for action, and instead lie listlessly along its contours and seek only sleep among such lush plenty?
“You shall be free indeed,” Gibran writes, “when your days are not without a care nor your nights without a want and a grief, but rather when these things girdle your life and yet you rise above them naked and unbound.” Often we, surrounded by excess, know little of what it is to live nakedly and essentially, and thus know even less of our potential to produce and provide for others.<<<
dogstreetjournal.com
And I'll close with several passages from Martin Luther King:
>>>"let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred"<<<
Let us hope that the condition described below in King's famous speech, aimed directly into the hearts and minds of Americans far and wide, also becomes aimed at citizens of the world far and wide.
>>>This will be the day when all of God's children will be able to sing with a new meaning, "My country, 'tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim's pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring." And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania! Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado! Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California! But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia! Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee! Let freedom ring from every hill and every molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.
When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"<<<
mecca.org
PS: For your reading edification, perhaps your newfound activism, Vitas, here's a list of organizations that exist in the cause and defense of, and in the hopes for, freedom for all:
indefenseoffreedom.org |
