Exactly What Does Defending our Freedoms Mean?

The American political right exploits the word “freedom” by using it as if its meaning were univocal and unambiguous. We hear and see sentences like, “We have a right to defend our freedoms.” “We must preserve our freedoms,” etc. However, the word, “freedom” has not only meant different things in different historical periods, it means different things to people today whose political circumstances resemble circumstances in earlier times and places.

For instance, to the slave who seeks his freedom, freedom means not being owned as property by someone else. To a nation seeking its freedom from the domination of another nation, freedom means something else again, for perhaps none of the residents of the subjugated nation are slaves. Likewise, since the Glorious Revolution in England (1688), which culminated in imposing a Bill of Rights on the King, the word “freedom” has taken on still another meaning—the freedoms granted in Bills of Rights. For instance, the American Bill of Rights grants Americans the freedom to exercise one’s religion and protects a person’s freedom of speech. In this sense, the freedom and rights are related terms.

American politicians, from the right and left, love ambiguity; it relieves them of responsibility for their failures. Thus, in America, politicians talk about civil rights and human rights without defining either. Even worse, America criticizes other nations for their poor human rights records; yet it appears that what that criticism amounts to is merely the prohibition of a political opposition. It certainly doesn’t mean things like equality under the law, the lack of discrimination, and the free and fair exercise of suffrage; otherwise our list makers would have to include the United States of America on its own lists of human rights abusers.

Americans politicians also like to convey the impression that only Americans are blessed with a Bill of Rights. But parts of the American Bill of Rights were plagiarized from the English Bill of Rights imposed on the King by the Glorious Revolution. The French Revolution resulted in a Bill of Rights as did the Russian Revolution. And even the United Nations has produced a Universal Declaration of Rights to which the United States is a signatory but consistently violates many provisions of.

The United States does not have a clean record on rights and the granting of freedoms. Compare the American Bill of Rights to the Universal Declaration of Rights and notice how many of the latter are missing from the former. As far as developed nations go, the United States is a slacker when it comes to rights and freedom. Americans are by no means the freest people in the world. In fact, while freedom has been advanced in many nations, the United States has hardly advanced any since 1789. Americans in the 21^st Century are living in an 18^th Century political climate.

So we truly need to ask our political leaders to specifically define their terms. I suspect that if they ever do, they will all be voted out of office.