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Political freedom is the absence of interference with the sovereignty of an individual by the use of coercion or aggression. Freedom is commonly known as a state of being free from government oppression.
The opposite of a free society is a totalitarian Totalitarianism is a political system where the state, usually under the control of a single political organization, faction, or class domination, recognizes no limits to its authority and strives to regulate every aspect of public and private life wherever feasible. Totalitarianism is generally characterised by the coincidence of authoritarianism state, which highly restricts political freedom in order to regulate almost every aspect of behavior. In this sense ‘freedom’ refers solely to the relation of humans to other humans, and the only infringement on it is coercion by humans[1].
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Types
The concept of political freedom is very closely allied with the concepts of civil liberties Civil liberties are rights and freedoms that protect an individual from the state. Civil liberties set limits on government so that its members cannot abuse their power and interfere unduly with the lives of private citizens and individual rights, which in most democratic Democracy is a political government either carried out directly by the people or by means of elected representatives of the people (Representative democracy). The term is derived from the Greek: δημοκρατία - (dēmokratía) "the power to the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) "people" and κράτος ( societies is characterized by various freedoms which are afforded the legal protection from the state A sovereign state, commonly simply referred to as a state, is a political association with effective internal and external sovereignty over a geographic area and population which is not dependent on, or subject to any other power or state. While in abstract terms a sovereign state can exist without being recognised by other sovereign states,. Some of these freedoms may include (in alphabetical order):
- Freedom of assembly Freedom of assembly, sometimes used interchangeably with the freedom of association, is the individual right to come together and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. The right to freedom of association is recognized as a human right, a political freedom and a civil liberty
- Freedom of association Freedom of association is the individual right to come together with other individuals and collectively express, promote, pursue and defend common interests. The right to freedom of association has been included in a number of national constitutions and human rights instruments, including the US constitution and the European Convention on Human
- Freedom of movement Freedom of movement, mobility rights or the right to travel is a human rights concept which is respected in the constitutions of numerous states. It asserts that a citizen of a state, in which that citizen is present, generally has the right to leave that state, travel wherever the citizen is welcome, and, with proper documentation, return to that
- Freedom of religion Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any religion. Freedom of religion is considered by many
- Freedom of speech Freedom of speech is the freedom to speak without censorship and/or limitation. The synonymous term freedom of expression is sometimes used to indicate not only freedom of verbal speech but any act of seeking, receiving and imparting information or ideas, regardless of the medium used. In practice, the right to freedom of speech is not absolute in
- Freedom of the press Freedom of the press, is the freedom of communication and expression through vehicles including various electronic media and published materials. While such freedom mostly implies the absence of interference from an overreaching state, its preservation may be sought through constitutional or other legal protections
- Freedom of thought Freedom of thought is the freedom of an individual to hold or consider a fact, viewpoint, or thought, independent of others' viewpoints. It is different from and not to be confused with the concept of freedom of expression
- Freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures The Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution is the part of the Bill of Rights which guards against unreasonable searches and seizures. It was ratified as a response to the abuse of the writ of assistance, which is a type of general search warrant, in the American Revolution. The amendment specifically also requires search and arrest, which is related to freedom of privacy
- Freedom to bear arms The right to keep and bear arms, often referred as the right to bear arms or the right to have arms, is the assertion that people have a personal right to weapons for individual use, or a collective right to bear arms in a militia, or both. In this context, "arms" refers to a variety of weapons and armor and to "bear arms"
- Suffrage Suffrage is the civil right to vote, or the exercise of that right. It is also called political franchise or simply the franchise. Suffrage may apply to elections, but also extends to initiatives and referendums. Suffrage is used to describe not only the legal right to vote, but also to the practical question of the opportunity to vote, which is
- Scientific freedom Scientific freedom is the idea of freedom applied to natural science, in particular the practices of scientific research and discourse, mainly by publication. The ideal is promoted by many organizations of scientists, and is the subject of article 15 ¶ 3 of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights
- Academic freedom Academic freedom is the belief that the freedom of inquiry by students and faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy, and that scholars should have freedom to teach or communicate ideas or facts without being targeted for repression, job loss, or imprisonment
Views
Various groups along the political spectrum A political spectrum is a way of modeling different political positions by placing them upon one or more geometric axes symbolizing independent political dimensions naturally differ on what they believe constitutes "true" political freedom.
Left wing In politics, left-wing, leftist and the Left generally implies support for social change with a view towards creating a more egalitarian society. The terms Left and Right were coined during the French Revolution, referring to the seating arrangement in parliament; those who sat on the left generally supported the radical changes of the revolution, political philosophy generally couples the notion of freedom with that of positive liberty Positive liberty refers to having the power and resources to act to fulfill one's own potential, as opposed to negative liberty, which refers to freedom from restraint. Inherent to positive liberty is the idea that liberty is the ability of citizens to participate in their government, or in voluntary co-operation in the case of anarchists. As, or the enabling of an individual to realize his or her own potential. Freedom, in this sense, may include freedom from poverty, starvation, treatable disease, and oppression, as well as freedom from force and coercion, from whomever they may issue.
However Friedrich Hayek Friedrich August von Hayek CH , was an Austrian-born economist and philosopher known for his defense of classical liberalism and free-market capitalism against socialist and collectivist thought. He is considered by some to be one of the most important economists and political philosophers of the twentieth century. Hayek's account of how changing, a well-known classical liberal Classical liberalism is a political ideology that developed in the 19th century in England, Western Europe, and the Americas. It followed earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to personal freedom and popular government, but differed from earlier forms of liberalism in its commitment to free markets and classical economics. Notable, criticized this as a misconception of freedom:
the use of ‘liberty’ to describe the physical ‘ability to do what I want’, the power to satisfy our wishes, or the extent of the choice of alternatives open to us...has been deliberately fostered as part of the socialist argument... Once this identification of freedom with power is admitted, there is no limit to the sophisms by which the attractions of the word ‘liberty’ can be used to support measures which destroy individual liberty, no end to the tricks by which people can be exhorted in the name of liberty to give up their liberty. It has been with the help of this equivocation that the notion of collective power over circumstances has been substituted for that of individual liberty and that in totalitarian states liberty has been suppressed in the name of liberty.[2]
Hayek also famously noted[3] that "liberty" and "freedom" have probably been the most abused words in recent history.
Milton Friedman Milton Friedman was an American economist, statistician, and public intellectual, and a recipient of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. He is best known among scholars for his theoretical and empirical research, especially consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy. He, another classical liberal, strongly incorporated the absence from coercion into his description of political freedom.
The essence of political freedom is the absence of coercion of one man by his fellow men. The fundamental danger to political freedom is the concentration of power. The existence of a large measure of power in the hands of a relatively few individuals enables them to use it to coerce their fellow men. Preservation of freedom requires either the elimination of power where that is possible or its dispersal where it cannot be eliminated.[4]
Many social anarchists Social anarchism, socialist anarchism, anarcho-socialism, anarchist socialism or communitarian anarchism, is an umbrella term used to differentiate two broad categories of anarchism, this one being the collectivist, with the other being individualist anarchism. Where individualist forms of anarchism emphasize personal autonomy and the rational see negative and positive liberty as complementary concepts of freedom. They describe the negative liberty-centric view endorsed by capitalists Capitalism is an economic and social system in which capital, the non-labor factors of production , is privately controlled;[citation needed] labor, goods and capital are traded in markets; and profits distributed to owners or invested in technologies and industries as "selfish freedom". According to Anarchism FAQ
The right-libertarian does not address or even acknowledge that the (absolute) right of private property may lead to extensive control by property owners over those who use, but do not own, property (such as workers and tenants). Thus a free-market capitalist system leads to a very selective and class-based protection of "rights" and "freedoms." For example, under capitalism, the "freedom" of employers inevitably conflicts with the "freedom" of employees. When stockholders or their managers exercise their "freedom of enterprise" to decide how their company will operate, they violate their employee's right to decide how their labouring capacities will be utilised. In other words, under capitalism, the "property rights" of employers will conflict with and restrict the "human right" of employees to manage themselves. Capitalism allows the right of self-management only to the few, not to all. Or, alternatively, capitalism does not recognise certain human rights as universal which anarchism does.
Some people treat freedom as if it were almost synonymous with democracy Democracy is a political government either carried out directly by the people or by means of elected representatives of the people (Representative democracy). The term is derived from the Greek: δημοκρατία - (dēmokratía) "the power to the people", which was coined from δῆμος (dêmos) "people" and κράτος (, while other people see conflicts or even opposition between the two concepts. For example, some people argue that Iraq Iraq , officially the Republic of Iraq (Arabic: جمهورية العراق (help·info) Jumhūrīyat Al-Irāq, Kurdish: كؤماری عهراق, Komara Îraqê, Assyrian: ܥܝܪܐܩ) is a country in Western Asia spanning most of the northwestern end of the Zagros mountain range, the eastern part of the Syrian Desert and the northern part of was free under Paul Bremer Lewis Paul Bremer III , also nicknamed Jerry Bremer, is an American diplomat. He is most notable for being the U.S. Administrator of Iraq charged with overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq. In his role as head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, he reported primarily to the U.S. Secretary of Defense and exercised authority over Iraq's civil on the grounds that it was a rational, humanist, non-subjugating government, long before elections were held[citation needed]. Others have argued that Iraq was free under Saddam Hussein Saddam Hussein Abd al-Majid al-Tikriti was the President of Iraq from 16 July 1979 until 9 April 2003. A leading member of the revolutionary Ba'ath Party, which espoused secular pan-Arabism, economic modernization, and Arab socialism, Saddam played a key role in the 1968 coup that brought the party to long-term power because Iraq was not a colony[citation needed], while a third one's claim is that neither dictatorial nor colonial rule in Iraq are examples of political freedom.
Environmentalists An environmentalist supports any goal of the environmental movement, an information-based perspective on appropriate use of technology to prevent adverse effects on the environment. An environmentalist is engaged in or believes in the philosophy of environmentalism often argue that political freedoms should include some constraint on use of ecosystems The term ecosystems refers to the combined physical and biological components of an environment. An ecosystem is generally an area within the natural environment in which physical factors of the environment, such as rocks and soil, function together along with interdependent (biotic) organisms, such as plants and animals, within the same habitat. They maintain there is no such thing, for instance, as "freedom to pollute" or "freedom to deforest" given that such activities create negative externalities In economics, an externality or spillover of an economic transaction is an impact on a party that is not directly involved in the transaction. In such a case, prices do not reflect the full costs or benefits in production or consumption of a product or service. An advantageous impact is called an external benefit or positive externality, while a. The popularity of SUVs A sport utility vehicle is a generic marketing term for a vehicle similar to a station wagon, but built on a light-truck chassis. Usually equipped with four-wheel drive for on- or off-road ability, and with some pretension or ability to be used as an off-road vehicle, some SUVs include the towing capacity of a pickup truck with the passenger-, golf Golf is a precision club-and-ball sport, in which competing players , using many types of clubs, attempt to hit balls into each hole on a golf course while employing the fewest number of strokes. Golf is one of the few ball games that does not require a standardized playing area. Instead, the game is played on golf "courses", each of, and urban sprawl has been used as evidence that some ideas of freedom and ecological conservation can clash. This leads at times to serious confrontations and clashes of values reflected in advertising campaigns, e.g. that of PETA regarding fur.
There have been numerous philosophical debates over the nature of freedom, the claimed differences between various types of freedom, and the extent to which freedom is desirable. Determinists argue that all human actions are pre-determined and thus freedom is an illusion. Isaiah Berlin saw a distinction between negative liberty and positive liberty.
In jurisprudence, freedom is the right to determine one's own actions autonomously; generally it is granted in those fields in which the subject has no obligations to fulfill or laws to obey, according to the interpretation that the hypothetical natural unlimited freedom is limited by the law for some matters.
References
- ^ Friedrich August von Hayek, ‘Freedom and Coercion’ in David Miller (ed), Liberty (1991) pp. 80, 81.
- ^ Friedrich August von Hayek, ‘Freedom and Coercion’ in David Miller (ed), Liberty (1991) pp. 80, 85-86
- ^ Friedrich August von Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (1944) p. 14
- ^ Milton Friedman, The New Liberal's Creed: Individual Freedom, Preserving Dissent Are Ultimate Goals (1961)
External links
| Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: freedom |
- Poverty, Political Freedom, and the Roots of Terrorism from Alberto Abadie – Harvard University and NBER, October 2004 (pdf)
- Brief review of trends in political change: freedom and conflict Global trends
- The Discovery of Freedom, a manuscript by Sanjeev Sabhlok
Categories: Civil rights and liberties | Political philosophy | Social philosophy
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