In the next few paragraphs, I am going to discuss what freedom means to me. I will explain what ways I feel freedom is vital to the art of being human. In addition, whether freedom is an inherent right of humankind and how our societal institutions limit our personal freedom and how all this make total freedom impossibility, even in a free society.
The idea of freedom is a strong desire for any human being and one that is worth fighting, and even dying for. What is life if it cannot be experienced free? The problems with freedom always arise when we deal with the very real and easily corruptible side of humankind. Unfortunately, it is very easy for man to be corrupted by greed and power to which freedom quickly shrinks and bows in comparison. You see, as strong as the desire to be free is it is not even comparable when you look at the desire to be rich and powerful.
Our institutions were designed to keep some of those checks and balances in place, so that when any one member or members began to jeopardize a society’s freedom by utilizing too much power or greed or took away another individuals freedom we could remove that entity from their position and in theory assure our members were out of harms way. One way this system is flawed is that jurors are not paid very much money for their services. Employers wrongly are given a choice to pay them (should be mandatory) or not, so some people receive only $5.00 a day from our government for their services. This, I feel, harms our system as jury members may be more willing to stay and state their opinions longer if they did not feel forced by loss or no income of their own to come to swift and often hasty verdicts. Not only that, our institutions are also ran by corruptible men who see that filling their prisons makes their pockets thicker and it has come to the point now that any member who becomes a prisoner gets tangled in the politics of institutions for the rest of their lives even after they are released back into society.
However, after the 2006 passing of the military commissions act, almost all of our bill of rights was eliminated with the removal of Habeas Corpus. George W. Bush rushed this bill through so fast some members did not even read it before they signed it. It eliminates our right to ask why we are being imprisoned and hold us indefinitely without even showing us the evidence against us. Without that right, our first right, freedom of speech becomes mute, our second right to bear arms will be hard to do if we are imprisoned indefinitely, our fourth search and seizure becomes a mute point, trials? Forget it there goes the fifth, speedy trials, no! There goes 6th and 7th, 8th bails? Right Ninth? Other rights retained by the people, well as Keith Olbermann says about the 9th and 10th if you can name them while were water boarding you maybe we will consider it. In addition, powers not delegated by the US Government, he reminds us that is where they ended up anyway.
Sound like a free America to you?
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