The Trouble with Freedom

[Guest fountainhall]

With the election season nearing its climax in the USA, the airwaves will inevitably become saturated with constant talk of freedom and democracy. Like political parties in many countries, the GOP and the Democrats will continuously hammer home the message that in the land of the free, one not only naturally goes hand and hand with the other, you can not have one without the other.

 

But is that really the case? In a “Point of View” essay entitled “The Trouble with Freedom” on the BBC website, the political philosopher and author, John Gray, suggests that it is not necessarily so.

 

We believe that freedom and democracy are inseparable, so that when a dictator is toppled the result is not only a more accountable type of government but also greater liberty throughout society.

 

This belief forms the justification of the repeated attempts by Western governments to export their own political model to countries such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. In this simple and seemingly compelling story, freedom and democracy are a package that can be delivered anywhere in the world.

 

An older generation of thinkers recognised that freedom and democracy don't always go hand in hand. The 19th Century liberal John Stuart Mill was a life-long campaigner for greater democracy, but he also worried that personal liberty would shrink once governments could claim to express the will of the majority.

 

Born in 1872 and dying in 1970 at the age of 98, Mill's godson Bertrand Russell agreed and shocked many people when he observed that while Britain after World War II was a more democratic society than the one he'd grown up in, it was also in some ways less free. For Russell, as for Mill, liberty was one thing, democracy another. It's a deeply unfashionable view, but I think essentially correct.

 

Where this older generation differed from many today is that they thought of freedom as a lack of restriction on how we can act. Being free meant simply the absence of obstacles to living as we choose. While it's a view that's been criticised because it seems to see individuals as being separate from society, it seems to me to capture better than any other what freedom means and why it's important for every human being.

 

We need freedom because our goals and values are highly diverse and often quite different from those of the people around us. Having a voice in collective decisions - the basis of democracy - is a fine thing, but it won't protect your freedom if the majority is hostile to the way you choose to live.

 

Many will tell you that this danger can be dealt with by bills of rights that put some freedoms beyond the range of political interference. But politics has a habit of finding ways around the law, and when the state is weak declarations of rights tend to be unenforceable.

 

Once you think of freedom as living as you choose, you'll see that it's not just tyrants that stand in its way. The world is full of failed and enfeebled states in which the main threats to freedom come from organised crime, ethnic conflict and militant sectarian groups.

 

Part of the article centres on what has been happening in the Middle East over the last decade. The west tries to export its own form of democracy. It now claims Iraq is democratic, but “the state is too weak and fractured and politics too dominated by sectarianism to prevent assaults on freedom.” The danger obviously is exemplified by Russia where the despotism of the Tsars was replaced by a far more repressive system of government. He goes on –

 

In the reassuring story we like to repeat to ourselves, the emergence of these new threats is just a phase - in time these countries will achieve the type of freedom-loving democracy that we believe we enjoy. But we can say this only because we've forgotten our own history and neglect the dangers we currently face.

 

The democratic nation-states that exist in Europe today came into being in a process - extending from the French revolution through the collapse of the Habsburg empire after WWI to the break-up of former Yugoslavia - that included repressing the freedom of minorities, and the process hasn't ended with democracy and freedom co-existing in harmony as we like to think . . .

 

We've come to believe a story in which freedom is the natural human condition, which only tyrants prevent everyone from enjoying. The reality is that when a tyrant is toppled we can't know what will come next.

 

It’s a compelling argument.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk...gazine-19372177

[Rogie]

Good topic for discussion.

 

I liked what the writer had to say about freedom:

 

"Where this older generation differed from many today is that they thought of freedom as a lack of restriction on how we can act. Being free meant simply the absence of obstacles to living as we choose. While it's a view that's been criticised because it seems to see individuals as being separate from society, it seems to me to capture better than any other what freedom means and why it's important for every human being."

 

As a keen naturist (nudist) I enjoy going naked - but I stay within the law . . . whatever that is! In Britain for many years now we have a man called Stephen Gough in the news. If anyone mentions the Naked Rambler, it's immediately obvious who is being referred to. He is a bit weird, certainly, and pretty extreme, but it's ultimately the freedom to walk naked he is fighting for. He has been arrested in Scotland on numerous occasions and imprisoned. Here is a link to a press release from BN (British Naturism).

 

The writer, Andrew Welch, speaking of prejudice has this to say:

 

British Naturism advocates a less confrontational approach than Mr Gough has pursued but that does not alter the logic and principles underlying this case. Mr Gough, just like every human, has the right to be treated fairly, according to facts and evidence, not according to prejudice. It does not matter how popular a prejudice may appear to be, or how strongly that prejudice may be held, unless there is evidence of harm, it is nothing but prejudice.

 

 

http://www.bn.org.uk/articles.php/_/news/pressreleases/life-imprisonment-for-dressing-naturally-r158