Freedom, a word which we hear on everyday basis, a word which is being used in many different part of our everyday life. There are many different kind of freedoms (i.e. freedom of speech, freedom from slavery, political freedom, freedom from borders, spiritual freedom, freedom of information, self-freedom and financial freedom.) Each individual or certain group of individuals look at the concept of freedom in a totally different way. Hadenius suggests that “Each Individual or certain group of individual look at the concept of freedom in a totally different way”. For some of us, a freedom could be freedom based on going anywhere we want to go at any time or the freedom to do anything we would like at any given time. This essay will try to explore the idea behind freedom and how it affects our daily life. I will also look at the freedom in a very literate way and try to describe what it is and how it has developed over the past few years by the help of examples from different part of the world (Hadenius 27). In order to explore the concept freedom, let me describe the literate meaning of the word freedom, let me describe the literate meaning of the word freedom. Pam Seabright has tried to define in one of two ways: “The power to control action without limitation,” and “[t]he absence of restraint regarding choice or action” (12).
Seabright declares that “democracy is the true kind of freedom”. There are various countries in the world now who have democracy such as, Denmark, Dominican Republic
,El Salvador, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Iceland, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy and many others. I will use an example from United States of America. The current democratic system in US embraces its several commitments in a way which encourages a contented and comfortable society. In other words, due to freedom (democracy), once a government is elected it made sure that normal citizens can carry on with their everyday life knowing that government is working in the background to make sure everything works smoothly (13).I am going to try and look at some examples which shows us what freedom means to different people at different time. Schubert emphasizes “freedom of speech and freedom of press” by mentioning a very famous case, there was a very famous case which involved John Peter Zenger who was a publisher for New York Weekly Journal, back in 1735. Zenger was among the first journalist who was sued after he published some serious political stories about the officials at the time. This was the time when there was no such thing as Freedom of speech of freedom of press. This case eventually lead the establishment to the right of the press to criticize public and political officials. Thereafter, in 1791, the First Amendment was recognised. This Amendment is the foundation of the freedom of speech and specially freedom of press in United States (4).
There are more than 200 independent nations in our planet, and government in most of those nations have identified the responsibility of freedom and what does it mean to people especially in today’s highly modern world. It means that, general public is free to express their selves with all-purpose towards valuing the singular freedom of others. A simple example would be none other than United State of America, it is known as one of very few countries which tend to provide freedom at many different levels each American citizen. This is mainly due to a very stable democratic system developed by the government. In simple words, Americans have establish an improved understanding of self-worth, an improved intellect of communication and a will to follow an expressive life. Puddington looks at this topic in detail, he goes on by saying that US is one of very few countires in the world, where regardless what religion you follow and what belief you have you can pratcice it in public and no one will stop you or ask you about it. A simple way to look at the religion freedom is the fact that, in US you will find Church, Mosques, temple and synagogue for various different kind of religions so people can actually go their holy places and pray (12).
On the other hand, there are still various nations in the world who not just have so called independent countries but also they tend to preach about the different sort of freedoms. But when you look at countries like Algeria, Zimbabwe and many other rural countries in Africa and Asia, the situation is totally opposite. We are in twenty first century, it is so far the most advance time we have seen in many way. However, a large part of our planet is still not just rural and living under worst possible conditions but they don’t have any freedom to do anything. It is from freedom to speech to freedom of religion. The question we should ask ourselves is that if freedom is actually a very good concept that only very few of us are enjoying it at the best and rest of world is still going through life in a different way (Beetham 12). I also want to shed some light on the freedom of religion, after democracy and a country being an independent nation. This is one of the most type or degree of freedom, because there are currently thousands of different types of religion being practiced in the World. In countries like USA or UK, according to a recent survey, there are more than 100 religion being practiced just in New York and London. If these countries and their governments have not given full fledge freedom to their citizen, I don’t see that freedom of religion would have been possible (Carr 139).
There are many different examples at front of us from many different countries, but I would like to point out a very unorthodox example from a small country Romania. Traer points out that population is primarily Romanian and Eastern Orthodox. Here the minority community of Hungarian origin is under hostile to preserve its traditional and spiritual life. In this case minorities have protested and tried their best to get same rights as everyone else. It has been more than two decades since this is being happening in Romania and they still have not given full rights or freedom of religion to Hungarians (2).
However, on this exact argument I would also like to point out one other thing that, yes freedom and more specifically freedom of religion is very important. Everyone should be allowed to practice their belief freely. But, most of the terror and other crime activities are also being done one the name of religion. Now this is something we as human being and our governments will have to work on. There are always individuals among us who take advantage of freedom. It is not just our government but also our responsibility not to misuse the freedom given to us (Sullivan 487).
To conclude, I would like to start by saying that, yes any kind of freedom is a good thing to have in our society and we have developed many different degrees of freedom in past few decades. This intense development in technology and mass media to be everywhere at any given time has made sure that there is freedom of speech in most developed and even developing countries. As mention above in the essay most countries in the world are not just following the democracy examples set by nations like US, but they are making them more and more common everywhere. However, there is one thing which we should be very careful about it is the fact that yes we do have freedom, freedom of religion and speech. We should not misuse this power. In an essence freedom is nothing but a power and when some of us start looking at this remarkable concept as something like a power play. This is where problem comes and this is when we start to think that do we actually need this freedom in that part of the world. A simple example comes to mind which was of a Danish journalist creating awful cartoons of a Holy Prophet. We need to make sure that having this much freedom doesn’t lead to an incident like that again.
Work cited
Beetham, David. Liberal Democracy and the Limits Democratization. 1993: Stanford University Press, 1993.
Carr, Marilyn, Martha Alter Chen, and Jane Tate. "Globalization and Home-Based Workers." Feminist Economics (2000): 123-42.
Freidman, M. "Free to Choose." Freidman, M. Free to Choose. London: Secker & Warburg, 1980. 128.
Hadenius, Axel. "Democracy and Development." Cambridge: Cambridge University Press., 1992. 27.
Pam, Nurse. Explaining Freedom To Republicans. 20 April 2012. <http://www.addictinginfo.org/2012/04/20/explaining-freedom-to-republicans/>.
Puddington, Arch. Freedom in the World 3013: Democratic Breakthroughs in the Balance. New York, 2013.
Schubert, Jessica. What is Freedom of the Press? - Definition, History & Examples. 21 February 2012. Website: http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/what-is-freedom-of-the-press-definition-history-examples.html#lesson. 5 May 2014.
Seabright, Paul. The Road Upward: Development as Freedom. New York: New York Review of Books, 2001.
Sullivan, D. "Advancing the Freedom of Religion or Belief Through the UN Declaration on the Elimination of Religious Intolerance and Discrimination ." The American Journal of International Law (1988): 487.
Traer, Robert. Religious Freedom: A Community Right. 3 March 1991. Website: http://religionhumanrights.com/Law/ICCPR/community.rt.htm. 24 May 2014.
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