What is Freedom?

What is FREEDOM?

Freedom. Everyone seems to be for it: liberals and conservatives, libertarians and progressives, hippies and buttoned-down capitalists. You cannot do politics without being for freedom – at least in the United States.

You can pull out a dictionary for a stilted definition. I will define it simply: freedom is being able to do what you want to do. This definition encompasses the word root “free” in its myriad forms. Free speech and freebeer both speak of freedom. If you want to mouth off or get drunk, then free speech and free beer are the freedoms for you. In general, political freedom and financial freedom both enable us do more of what we want to do; they both give us more options in life.

Freedom is multi-faceted and inherently conflicting. We cannot have it all, but we can have much more if we take a holistc perspective. On the other hand, those who look at only one facet can become wildly impractical, or even murderous. The path to mass suffering or even genocide lurks in each facet taken by itself. This includes that supposedly self-consistent ideal of liberty, the libertarian definition of freedom.

Yuki

Holistic politics