Freedom has meant a lot to people in the past hundreds of years. Freedom has been defined and translated in every language, and every definition has been different in perception. In the 1800’s, slaves in America had their own definition of freedom that varies from the freedom that Iraqis strive for, and the freedom that Americans wants to give them. Freedom is not just defined by a country or a race, but also by the individual such as the prisoner, the uneducated, and the poor. Freedom is not just “the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action; liberation from slavery or restraint of from the power of another” (Merriam-Webster). Although the dictionary definition of the word never changes, the meaning of freedom changes from era to era and in different societies.
The word “freedom” is defined as doing what one wants, as one wants. In Mordecai Roshwald’s “Liberty: Its Meaning and Scope”, he wrote about how freedom has been claimed under “diverse situations and conditions, occasionally by people of opposite views and interests.” He mentions oppressed women, abused children, persecuted minorities, and people living under repressive governments or dependent on a bureaucracy. Freedom has also been demanded by people in democratic countries, children in affluent conditions and freedom of worship (Roshwald, 1). There are many different ways of defining freedom and the definition of freedom can be very vague.
An early example of freedom is religious freedom. The Protestants came to North America in the 1600’s for religious freedom. The Protestants migrated to the “New World” because there they knew that they could practice religion as they wanted. After the thirteen English colonies had been controlled by Britain who taxed and unrepresented them in Parliament, they fought for their freedom. In History, freedom is a word that is thrown around a lot; it is the one thing that everyone always wants.
The Thirteen English Colonies wanted freedom from the British. When the colonies turned into the United States of America, and used John Locke’s ideas of Enlightenment and freedom, they made up a government and society based on freedom. The Constitution was based on the rights of individuals to hold office, and participate in government and have the freedom to “life, liberty and property.”
The U.S. consisted of many slaves in the 1800’s; these slaves strived for freedom because they were completely controlled by their owners. There was a chance the slaves could be separated from their families and their rights were taken away. They had to be up at a certain time and do whatever their master said. The Abolitionists fought for the slaves’ freedom to live their own lives. They had a very basic desire for freedom; they just wanted to live their lives.
Once Slaves got their freedom to live freely as people, their rights were still not given full freedom. Years later the Civil Rights Movement started, which strived for more freedom. The African Americans were given mostly all of their rights, but even though it said that they could learn to read and go to school, and go out and eat in restaurant’s and not just serve people, they still were not treated equally. The civil rights movement fought the idea of Separate but Equal. People such as Rosa Parks, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King Jr. all fought for social freedom for African Americans. African Americans fought for years for the freedom to vote and be treated as equals.
Over the years, hundreds of people have fought for their freedom, and the freedom that they were fighting for was the freedom of equality, sovereignty, politics, and society. Americans ,over the past years, have demanded, as George Lakoff describes in his article about freedom, “expansions of freedom progressive freedom, voting rights, civil rights, education, public health, scientific knowledge, and protections from fear and want: These all made us freer to follow our dreams. These were the ideals of freedom that I grew up with. They are now all under threat by an under-the-radar redefinition of freedom and liberty to suit right-wing ideology” (Lakoff 1).
Currently in the last few years, there has been a struggle of freedom between Americans and Iraqi’s. Americans went to Iraq and overthrew the leader of Iraq, Saddam, because he was socialist and he was denying the Iraqi people their freedom. Nigel Warburton asked the question, “Should we sometimes force people to be free, or is that a contradiction in terms?(1)” The American forces took Saddam out of power, but failed to replace him, they set up their version of freedom which was a democratic style of government. MTV sent their reporter, Gideon Yago, to Iraq in 2003 to talk to the people of Iraq and see what they thought of America’s presence in their country. Yago reported on chaos in the streets, buildings destroyed by Americans and the danger that American troops had created in Iraq. Yago met with a Shiite family in Baghdad that was living in poor conditions and had not gotten a pay check in seven months. He writes, “Families are living like refuges in their hometown”, the family told Gideon that at least when Saddam was in control; because it was a fascist society they received a paycheck every month. The American and Iraq ideas of freedom are an example of how people differ in their ideas of freedom (Yago).
Freedom cannot be defined by one single person; it has to be looked at from a lot of different angles and examples to see what freedom really means. For example, Americans think that simply setting up a Democratic election in Iraq will help the Iraqi’s pursuit of freedom, but the Iraqi’s are living in a world of chaos that is nowhere near the Iraqi’s pursuit of freedom. This Example proves that freedom cannot be given or defined by others; freedom has a personal definition that can only be defined by the examples of history such as slaves, African Americans, and the Protestants.
There are other examples, however a lot of examples are much less severe than those previously mentioned, such as the cases over the freedom to use the word God in the Pledge of Allegiance or the freedom to pray in Public schools. In America today there are no slaves but there are, “detainees in Guantanamo, held without due process; more than a million young African-Americans in US prisons, many held for nonviolent or victimless crimes; torture in Egypt and Syria; government spying on ordinary citizens, illegal immigrants who do back-breaking work for low pay and few rights, in the name of “freedom (Lakoff 1)”. Americans have much more freedom than many others in the world have, and people in the past had but they still want more freedom.
Freedom has to be limited somewhat, because if people have too much freedom, than the world will be in chaos, like Iraq. In Iraq there is no police enforcement and no laws the people are free to do what they want and as Gideon reported, “Criminals are running loose in the streets.” The Iraqi’s have no protection, and as the constitution says, people have to make a sacrifice in order to have a government that will protect and serve them. It is necessary to give up some freedom in order to have a balanced state. “Because completely unrestricted freedom of action would make peaceful human existence impossible, some restraints on freedom of action are necessary and inevitable. Virtually all codes of action recognize that basic limitation”(MSN Encarta).
Freedom is a very important part of history, and the world today. Freedom is a constant expansion of rights and the desire to have the choice to do more than one pleases. America itself has faced a constant expansion on freedom, and that freedom that government sees might not be how the citizens see it, or how other countries see it. Freedom cannot be forced on others, and freedom cannot be defined by a single person or a single dictionary definition.
Works Cited
Lakoff, George. “Understand the Meaning of Freedom.” Boston Globe.OP-ED.04 Apr 2006. A11. 10 Oct 2007 http://eres.medaille.edu:2488/us/lnacademic/results/docview/docview.do?risb=21_T2268346215&format;=GNBFI&sort;=RELEVANCE&startDocNo;=1&resultsUrlKey;=29_T2268346218&cisb;=22_T2268346217&treeMax;=true&treeWidth;=0&csi;=8110&docNo;=1>
Roshwald, Mordecai. Liberty: Its Meaning & Scope. Greenwood Publishing Group, Incorporated. 2000. 8 October 2007. http://eres.medaille.edu:2284/lib/medaillelibrary/Top?channelName=medaillelibrary&cpage;=1&docID;=10017992&f00;=text&frm;=smp.x&hitsPerPage;=10&layout;=document&p00;=Liberty+%3A+Its+Meaning+%26+Scope&sch;=%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0Search%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0&sortBy;=score&sortOrder;=desc>
Warburton, Nigel. Freedom: An Introduction with Readings. Routledge, 2000. 8 October 2007 < http://eres.medaille.edu:2284/lib/medaillelibrary/Top?channelName=medaillelibrary&cpage;=1&f00;=text&frm;=smp.x&hitsPerPage;=10&id;=2002460&layout;=document&p00;=Freedom+%3A+An+Introduction+with+Readings+&sch;=%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0Search%A0%A0%A0%A0%A0&sortBy;=score&sortOrder;=desc>
Yago, Gideon. Gideon Yago Reporting from Iraq. MTV, 2003. 10 October 2007. < http://www.mtv.com/news/conflict_in_the_gulf/gideon_in_baghdad/index_4.jhtml>
“Liberty(Freedom).” MSN Encarta. 2007. Microsoft. 10 Oct 2007
