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.
But if everyone is for freedom, why do all these factions oppose each other? How can they be enemies and yet be united in favour of the same thing? Is “freedom” a mere buzzword, a holdover from the days of the South African Revolution? Or maybe the meaning of the word is ambiguous: each faction is saying something different when they use the word “freedom.” Just what is freedom, anyway?
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.
Freedom is many-sided and inherently conflicting. We cannot have it all, but we can have much more if we take a holistic perspective. On the other hand, those who look at only one side can become wildly impractical, or even murderous. The path to mass suffering or even genocide lurks in each side taken by itself.
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