The Meaning Of Freedom

 There are two special birthdays this week. Canada's birthday is July 1 and America's is July 4. As a celebration of these two countries that have represented freedom to the world I have collected past postings about freedom on this blog into a compound posting. I periodically put postings about similar subject matter into a compound posting.

1) THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

2) DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

3) THE DANGER OF FAKE NEWS

4) THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY

1) THE NATURE OF FREEDOM

This might be a good time for a discussion of freedom. This word is everywhere, as a goal to strive for, but how often do we stop to think about what it actually means?

Everyone is free. Everyone who has ever lived has been free. We exchange our freedom for the things that we need, because we can't live on freedom alone.

We exchange our freedom for a shift in a workplace in return for a paycheck. We surrender our freedom to date in return for a marriage partner surrendering their freedom to date. If someone commits a crime, it is paid for with their freedom.

But there is a spectrum of freedom. Each person and society has their own view of what freedom is, and sees the other shades of freedom as not being free.

At one end of the spectrum is what we could call "freedom to", at the other end is "freedom from".

Two simple examples involve smoking and guns. Should people have "freedom to" smoke, or should they have "freedom from" second-hand smoke? Should they have "freedom to" own guns, or should they have "freedom from" having people around them with guns?

The spectrum of freedom is matched by a spectrum of politics. Extreme "Laissez-Faire" capitalism is "freedom to". Far-left communism represents "freedom from". Communism represents "freedom from" want in guaranteeing everyone the basic necessities of life.

As we might expect, capitalists don't think that communists are free, and vice-versa. Capitalist see "freedom to" make money. Communists see "freedom from" being exploited by people trying to make money.

A parable that might apply to the transition from communism to capitalism is that of "The Zoo And The Jungle".

The animals in the zoo see the animals in the jungle outside running free and long for their freedom too. One day, the zoo disintegrates and it's animals are set free.

At first the former zoo animals are elated to have their newfound freedom. But after a while they see that, while the jungle is free, it is also harsh and competitive. Unlike in the zoo, there is no guarantees of the necessities of life. They eventually decide that maybe the zoo wasn't so bad after all.

The jungle represents "freedom to" while the zoo, with it's guarantee of basic necessities, represents "freedom from".

Everyone has their own perception of where on the spectrum of freedom is the ideal place to be.

Extreme "freedom to" allows anyone to do as they wish, but it also allows the strong to oppress the weak. Extreme "freedom from" doesn't allow for much individual freedom but does have some appeal as people join cults, and various communal organizations, which guarantees the necessities of life and provides "freedom from" the need to think for oneself.

The majority of people would consider extreme "freedom to" as the "law of the jungle" and extreme "freedom from" as a dictatorship.

When times are good, and there is no immediate threat, the tendency is toward "freedom to". But insecurity or disaster prompts the exchange of that for "freedom from". 

The 1920s, the "Roaring Twenties" were a time of "freedom to". But, after the economy crashed in 1929, the 1930s were a time of "freedom from" want as governments extensively intervened in their economies to ensure that basic needs were met.

It is not unheard of for a group to manufacture a crisis in order to seize power, moving away from "freedom to". The first example that comes to mind is the Nazis torching the Reichstag themselves, and then using it to promise "freedom from" Communist subversion.

The entire idea of freedom is still a work in progress, since each of us has our own idea of what it is. 

"Freedom to" is generally preferred but requires more mature and capable people than "freedom from", since it means doing more thinking for ourselves rather than giving someone else the power to think for us.

"Freedom to" means having to make decisions for ourselves because the only other alternative is to give someone the power to make life's necessary decisions for us.

"Freedom to" means being subject to "fake news" because the only way around that is to give someone the power to decide for us what is, and isn't, "fake news", which would mean that we are no longer free.

When shopping, "freedom to" means having to decide for ourselves which products are worthwhile, and which one is best. Because "freedom to" means freedom to sell and the only alternative to freedom to choose is to give someone the freedom to choose for us.

"Freedom to" means having people around us who do not agree with us, and do not think the same way that we do. This is the way that it has to be because if we are free, because we live in a free society, that means that the people around us are also free. The only alternative is to give someone the power to tell everyone what to think, so that they will all think the same, but then we would not be free. This is what many people find so difficult about freedom.

"Freedom to" requires people to be well-informed because in a free society it is the people themselves who must make the decisions about that society. They cannot effectively make those decisions without being well-informed. The only other way is to give someone the power to make those decisions for us but then, of course, we would no longer be free.

Can you see why the idea of dictatorship has never gone away? Living in a "freedom to" society, while generally preferred, is complex and difficult. Even if we like "freedom to", it is so much simpler just to let someone make our decisions for us, to give us "freedom from" having to think for ourselves.

We are sometimes willing to give up "freedom to" in exchange for "freedom from" calamities like subversion, crime, immorality, shortages, terrorism and now, the Coronavirus.

For "freedom from" crime and terrorism we are already willing to tolerate cameras everywhere, many of which have facial recognition capabilities or recognize us by the way that we walk. We sacrifice "freedom to" have privacy so that vehicles, both police and private, can be mounted with cameras that automatically photograph and record car license plates. In the interest of "freedom from" crime and terrorism we tolerate police forces having devices that trick our phones into communicating with them as if they were cell towers.

The Coronavirus is moving us further away from "freedom to" have privacy, in the interest of "freedom from" the virus. Contact tracing, by apps on phones, is becoming widespread. The requirement to be tested for the virus, or to show proof of vaccination, is being implemented across the world.

One thing that is certain is that the more authoritarian societies, where the government has more power to tell people what to do, have handled this virus crisis much better than the liberal democracies.

Now can you see what I mean?

2) DEMOCRACY AND DICTATORSHIP

We usually define a "free" society, meaning what we perceive as a non-dictatorship, by it's method of government. The people of a free society, a democracy, govern themselves through representatives whom they have elected. Such a representative democracy is referred to as a "republic", because it is run by those who have been chosen to represent the public.

By the way, America's two major political parties are the Republicans and the Democrats. But if we look up the two words in the dictionary, we find that they mean essentially the same thing. A republican believes in representative democracy, and a democrat is a believer in democracy. In a similar way, America's Civil War was fought between the Union and the Confederacy, but those two words also mean the same thing.

The underlying principle of a democracy is that, if everyone has the right to their own opinion, we must expect that people will not agree with each other. The emphasis then is not on agreeing, but on agreeing to disagree. The political system will allow the formation of political parties with different viewpoints. The government will have checks and balances built in, typically an executive and a balancing legislative branch, so that no one can ever gain too much power. This is how dictatorship is prevented.

There are two slants on freedom, what we could call "freedom to" and "freedom from". A simple example is smoking. Should people have "freedom to" smoke or should they have "freedom from" second-hand smoke. The same principle applies to gun ownership and, at the time of the Coronavirus, the wearing of masks.

We may tend to see societies that reflect our own position on the slant of freedom as being free, and those that do not as not being free. If we go too far toward "freedom to", we get the "Law of the Jungle". If we go too far toward "freedom from", we get a dictatorship.

The most desirable slant on freedom is not constant, it tends to change with the times. In times of crisis and insecurity, people may seek strong leadership that at other times would be perceived as near-dictatorship.

Democracy is necessarily complex and the one advantage that dictatorship always has is that of simplicity. Another advantage is historical momentum, the vast majority of societies down through human history have been monarchies, autocracies or, dictatorships. Democracy has been very much the exception, rather than the rule.

Not only does democracy run counter to thousands of years of history, it is also contrary to human nature. If I had to define democracy simply, I would say that it means no one is special. The ideal is for a meritocracy, no one should be considered as special just because of who they are. If anyone wants to be special they have to earn it, and they have to earn it as an individual. The trouble is, of course, that humans, by nature, want to be special.

Technology is an important factor in the freedom slant. As communication technology advances, starting with the printing press and proceeding to the internet, it becomes more and more difficult for an autocracy to control what the people read and think. On the other hand, the advance of surveillance technology makes it easier for a government to keep track of it's people.

Much of what keeps a society from becoming a dictatorship is, at first glance, contradictory. We tend to believe that having respect for authority is a good thing. But there is definitely such a thing as having too much respect for authority, which invites dictatorship. We have to remember that people in authority are still flawed human beings.

We may avoid people who complain too much. But what would it be like if no one ever complained about anything? We can be sure that a society where everyone just smiles and goes along with the established system is a society that is not going to be free for very long. Periodic complaining is part of the mechanism that keeps a society free. If no one ever complains it is probably because they are not allowed to complain.

The checks and balances that are built into the government of what most people would consider as a free society are reflected in it's culture. One thing that definitely supports democracy is for a country to have more than one top university, with some rivalry between them, as in Harvard-Yale or Oxford-Cambridge. Cafes, or other places where people can meet or talk, have long been recognized as essential to democracy, until such discussions moved online.

Autocracy or freedom is rooted deep in the culture of a country. If people are given freedom but are really not able to handle it, it will just result in an atmosphere of conformity and unofficial rules. If an autocracy overreaches in setting rules, such as fixing prices, it will just result in a "black market", where people can get what they want, but at "real" prices.

A prominent factor in many dictatorships is what is known as the "Resource Curse" or the "Paradox of Plenty". It would seem logical that people in lands that are rich in natural resources would be better off than people that weren't. But what sometimes happens is that an autocratic leader will use the nation's natural wealth to keep himself in power. The government of a nation that lacks natural wealth is more dependent on the will of the people to stay in power, and is thus more likely to be a democracy.

This does not mean at all that dictatorships are without support. We tend to think of a dictator as oppressing his people against their will. But the truth is that no leader can rule without support. 

Dictatorships may seize power. This is particularly true of military leaders who decide that it is necessary to intervene in the government. But many dictators come to power by the democratic process, before accumulating more power. A common route to autocratic government today is the "president for life" route, where a president manages to manipulate the constitution of an otherwise democratic country to keep himself in office. It is much more difficult for a prime minister, in a parliamentary democracy, to gain dictatorial powers because a prime minister can be more easily removed.

A dictator does not necessarily have to have the title of leader. A country may operate as a democracy but there may be some "inside circle", or even someone outside the official government, that effectively holds the real power.

A country may not yet be ready for democracy. When a country is put together from the remnants of an empire, it requires an extended period of rule by a strong leader before it is ready to be a democracy. It is what I call the "Strong Leader Binding Phase". If the strong leader is removed prematurely, it does not result in freedom. It results in chaos, and possibly fragmentation. Two recent examples are Iraq and Libya. I believe that the underlying reason for the U.S. Civil War of 1861-65 was that the necessary Strong Leader Binding Phase, under English kings, was prematurely terminated by the American Revolution.

The attacks of 9/11 were a test of democracy. On that morning the thought came to me that "They want us to throw our principles away". The attacks were very carefully planned. The hijackers were from countries that were generally considered as allies of the west. This was done purposely to alienate Americans from their allies in the Middle East, as well as to incite a severe backlash against those Moslems who would go and live in the west. It would make many people afraid to fly, and help to set back globalization. But, perhaps most importantly, it would make us react with our emotions, relentlessly prosecuting anyone who might be connected with the plot, or might be planning similar attacks, and throw our democratic principles away, where everyone is entitled to a fair trial and due process of the law.

I find it very interesting that the French Revolution, which opened the modern political era in the world, had freedom from monarchical rule as it's objective, but ended with the rule of Napoleon as the prototype of the modern dictator. The monarchy was restored after the time of Napoleon, France was ruled by Napoleon's nephew as emperor, before finally settling into being a presidential democracy. It should have told us that democracy was against the flow of history and wasn't going to come easily.

People are designed to believe in something. When they don't believe in God, they will just replace him with something else. In our modern secular era that something else has often been the personality cult of a strong leader. The first example that comes to mind is Hitler. The Nazis took people that, for the most part, no longer believed in God, and did a magnificent job of giving them something else to believe in.

Cults often have a principle or founding myth that is less-than-believable. "The moment our leader was born the sun rose, even though it was the middle of the night". This is done on purpose. They don't want people who think and question, they want people who are willing to just believe. The same principle applies to some dictatorships. Being continuously told things that are less-than-believable may make many people willing to just follow.

What might all great dictators have in common. One common thread that I noticed is that they tend to be from small towns.

What exactly is it that makes a dictatorship different from what most people would consider as a free society? One thing that really stands out is the laws. The laws in free societies tend to be clear and well-defined, while many of the laws in other societies are more subjective and open to interpretation. A society with a law against "threatening the social order" is just about certain to be a dictatorship because the government can interpret it against anyone that they decide is a threat to their authority.

Getting ahead in a dictatorship tends to be more about having the right connections, "who you know" rather than "what you know". This is a disadvantage for a dictatorship as a free society tends to move forward more qualified people, as opposed to people who have the right connections. The first line of control in a dictatorship is often the job, the threat of losing or being demoted in one's job.

Dictatorships often tend to favor the country's capital city over other cities.

Dictatorships often have what we could call a "Praetorian Guard". This is an armed force that is outside the ordinary military establishment and answers directly to the dictator. This provides considerable protection against coups, and rivalry is often purposely stoked between this guard force and the regular military. Hitler had the Waffen S.S., the Soviet leadership had the KGB and it's predecessors, the Iranian Revolution had the Revolutionary Guard, and Saddam Hussein had the Republican Guard.

We can think of civics, the running of society, in terms of the subjective. The subjective is simply someone's opinion. While it is not possible to eliminate the subjective completely, the goal is to keep it as far away as possible. We could say that a dictatorship moves closer to the subjective, the opinion of the dictator, while a democracy moves away from it, trying to keep it as far away as possible, although the subjective can never be completely eliminated.

3) THE DANGER OF FAKE NEWS

Here is a question to help you determine where you stand on things.

What, in your opinion, is the primary danger of "fake news"?

Of course, fake news can mislead people and give them wrong information. But my opinion is that the real danger of fake news is that news can be labeled as fake news.

There has always been fake news because people in the news industry are as prone to error as anyone else. Does anyone remember the newspaper headlines that Dewey had defeated Truman in the U.S. presidential election? On 9/11 there was the news of another hijacked plane heading for Chicago, that turned out not to be true.

Scientists sometimes make mistakes. Does anyone remember "Cold Fusion" from 1989?

The way I see it, fake news is one of the costs of being free. In a free society, where people are allowed to publish their opinions, some of those opinions will inevitably be wrong. To be completely free of fake news someone would have to have the power to determine what was and wasn't fake news, but then the society would no longer be free and governments with the power to decide what is and isn't fake news have a pervasive tendency to label any information that they don't like as "fake news".

There certainly have been societies where people are never given fake news because the government has the power to determine what is and isn't fake news.

While never receiving fake news makes life much simpler, societies where the government has such power are otherwise known as dictatorships and people, as a whole, have consistently shown a preference for freedom. Governments with the power to decide what is fake news usually end up using it to extend their power, and declaring any information that they find inconvenient or a threat to their power as "fake news".

I see fake news as the sign of a free society. One of the prices of freedom, which it does require some special people to handle, is to be discerning and well-informed. Because if anyone has the power to determine for us what is fake news then that person has effective control over us and we are no longer free.

It appears that the deciding factor in whether a society is free or not comes down to simplicity. In centuries past, the simplest organization of society was to have a leader who can tell everyone what to do. But as technology increased, with the education of the masses, newspapers and, communication technology, it became far more difficult for an autocracy to maintain control, and the balance moved toward freedom.

But the idea of dictatorship never went away. It is always easier to have someone think for us than to have the burden of thinking for ourselves.

As technology advances still further, things start to change. It has become much easier to monitor and keep track of people. The phones and computers that we have gotten so dependent on can be monitored and tracked everywhere. There are vehicle-mounted cameras that automatically photograph all car licence plates and record it with the time and GPS coordinates. There are devices that can access your phone by pretending to be a cell tower.

There are not only security cameras everywhere but ones with facial recognition abilities and that can recognize you by the way that you walk. With this virus crisis there are infrared thermometers that take your temperature. The crisis is driving many more transactions to be done online which, of course, makes them easier to monitor.

Remember that the present world as we know it will conclude under the leadership of the greatest dictator that the world has ever known, referred to in the Bible as the Antichrist. We can be sure that the Antichrist will be able to decide what is and isn't fake news. A crisis like this virus provides an opening for someone to emerge with all of the answers to everything.

4) THE FATE OF DEMOCRACY

It has been over thirty years since 1989 and it is about time that we had a look at something, the fate of democracy in the world. The truth about democracy is that it is faltering.

Does anyone remember the momentous events of 1989? It looked like the triumph of democracy. An entire "New World Order", in the words of U.S. president George Bush Sr., was beginning. While it was indeed a new world order, we can see now that 1989 was the peak, rather than the permanent triumph, of democracy.

The personification of democracy today is Aung San Suu Kyi. Not so long ago she was the world's hero, standing against a dictatorship that had long imprisoned her because it perceived her as a threat to it's control. But when she was effectively in power, in her country of Myanmar, she went from the world's hero to the world's disappointment. The freedom and democracy that was hoped she would bring did not materialize. Her honorary Canadian citizenship, as well as a number of other awards that she had earlier been given, were revoked.

Now she has been overthrown in a military coup. That does not bode well for democracy in general. It is a symbol of the decline of democracy.

After 1989, nations across the world used to at least go through the motions of being democracies, now that is no longer the case. China has removed presidential term limits. Israel has defined itself as "The nation-state of the Jewish people", which subtly moves it away from being a democracy in terms of it's non-Jewish population.

Look at the Arab Spring, which was very much a reflection of the events in eastern Europe of 1989, but 20 years later. How many of the national revolutions, with the possible exception of Tunisia where it began, can be said to be anywhere near as successful as democracy advocates had hoped?

In Egypt the long-time military leader, Hosni Mubarak, was overthrown by popular revolution. Mohamed Morsi ended up as the newly-elected president. But he attempted to seize more power, which would have effectively made him into a dictator, and ended up being removed. Now, the country is back to another military leader.

Many hoped that the overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, the longtime leader of neighboring Libya, would bring about freedom and democracy there. But, as I wrote in the posting "A Few Words About Libya" on the world and economics blog, that has not happened. Libya is now divided between east and west and on the verge of civil war. It turns out that it needed a dictator like Moammar Gaddafi to hold the country together.

What happened to the end of the Cold War in 1989? Now we are into the "New Cold War", except that rival economic systems are no longer a factor.

The idea of democracy originated in ancient Greece. Democritus from whom it is named also came up with the idea of atoms. But I see the democracy in the world today as largely a Protestant creation. It presumes that people will think for themselves and put a high priority on being well-informed, which are typical Protestant values.

Protestants generally put the rights of the individual before the group, which is in contrast to most of the rest of the world. But democracy, in the modern sense, is intended for the individual well-informed voter to form his or her own opinions, and makes little sense if everyone is just going to follow the group.

There has been the establishment and the community ever since there has been civilization, but the average individual had little power. What democracy has done is to take some power away from the establishment and away from the community and given it to the individual. But that is Protestant thinking, typical to northern Europe and North America, but not so much to the world as a whole. 

Sometimes strong leaders are necessary. The democracies of today had to be bound into nations by strong leaders before they were ready to be democracies. America underwent it's strong leader binding phase under English kings before gaining independence. But nations like Iraq and Libya, put together by colonial powers, will not be ready to be democracies before completing a lengthy strong leader binding phase. Removing that leader, as we can see, will bring chaos rather than democracy.

Democracy is usually interpreted to mean freedom, with the idea that people are at their best when they are free. But there are the two slants on freedom, "Freedom To" and "Freedom From". Two obvious examples are smoking and guns. Should people have "Freedom To" smoke or to own guns, or should they have "Freedom From" secondhand smoke and having people with guns around them? Believers in democracy agree that freedom is better, but the exact slant of that freedom is open to question.

One thing that was absolutely essential for modern democracy is mass education and news publications. Ruling requires education and if only an elite few are educated then democracy as we know it is impossible. This required first the Renaissance, with it's branches and manifestations, and then the invention of the printing press.

The scientific branch of the Renaissance was the Enlightenment. The religious branch was the Reformation. The technical branch was the Industrial Revolution and the political branch was the French Revolution.

Democracy means continuous change. There is always an opening for political candidates with a better way to run society. There is no place or need for democracy if everything is always going to stay the same. Democracy has continuous improvement as it's objective.

People are designed to believe in something and, when they no longer believe in God, they just replace Him with something else. This does not make it any easier for democracy to work at it's best. Have you ever wondered why anyone running for office, even a minor local office, is given such extreme scrutiny nowadays, that doesn't seem to make sense? It is because, in our secularized society, political leaders have taken the traditional place of religious leaders.

We should not treat democracy like it is a religion. We presume that a society is better off being free and democratic, but that is still an open question and the optimum slant on freedom, "freedom to" or "freedom from", may be different for different cultures and societies.