Donald Sensing wants to know if we're still free. He gives some interesting points to consider, and from a legal perspective I can understand why he'd suggest that we aren't.
What's fascinating to me, however, is that even though our government is tightening its grip on our liberty, people respect and obey the law less every year. Ideally we'd have a system with minimal laws and the population would completely agree with and adhere to those laws -- what we've got now is nearly the opposite, but is it functionally worse? An obfuscated legal system with many vague and loosely-enforced laws is certainly less just and fair on an individual basis, but will the aggregate effect on society be any different than an ideal system?
Probably so, because people will be frightened of being singled out for random enforcement. Still, until we're noticed and prosecuted for some trivial infraction, are we less free? I don't think so. If anything, we're more free than Americans 200 years ago, not because of the law but because of technology. We can go places and do things that would have been impossible (or prohibitively expensive) for our ancestors, and in a real way that balances against the strangle-hold of the government.
In fact, one could argue that the government has adapted to these new freedoms/abilities by imposing additional restrictions, thereby reducing our liberty to pre-existing levels. Is it possible that the government adapts to technological and societal advances to maintain some sort of "optimal" level of liberty? ("Optimal" from whatever perspective you want to discuss: the government's, the people's, both, economics, whatever.) As technology provides us with new freedoms, government may organically act to keep them in check... to protect us from ourselves? Is this balance an emergent function of government? Is it necessary or inescapable? It's obvious to me why a democracy may act in this manner; is there another form of government that might not (benevolent dictatorship)?
If this spurs anyone else's thoughts on the matter, please let me know.
I think you're making a basic error here. Technology does not make us more free, it makes us more *capable*. The question of what we are free to do is orthogonal to what we are capable of doing.
If you don't maintain this distinction, you are left unable to refute leftist criticisms like "A hungry man is not free."
Putting the point somewhat differently: If I lose my job, there are a lot of things I won't be able to do any more. But I won't be any less free.
KH: I see where you're going, but I don't think you're right. Without the internet I'm not "free" share mp3s with thousands of anonymous "friends", so there's no need to pass a law making it illegal -- any more than we currently need a law prohibiting people from using Heat Vision to burn each other to a crisp. No one has Heat Vision, so there's no need for a law.
And yes, a hungry person is in a practical sense less free than a person with plenty to eat. A short person may consider himself less free than a tall person, or vice versa since a tall person may have fewer acceptable car choices. And so forth. In all these cases we need to specifically define which freedoms should be respected by society, and which shouldn't. Not every freedom should be protected by law.
Power IS one component of freedom, lest freedom be entirely theoretical. I wouldn't argue that it is the most important component, but it can't be ignored, either.
The Internet has substantially boosted the power of freedom of the press. For instance, Michael, whom I will assume is not particularly wealthy, has the ability to try to persuade liberals such as myself to adopt his way of thinking. He would have had that "freedom" before the Internet, but without wealth it would have been largely unrealized.
Even aside from "power", there is more freedom of the press. The Pentagon Papers decision, as well as New York Times v. Sullivan have helped to ensure a robust press. The change from the old "fairness doctrine" that earlier muzzled talk radio is gone.
As for the judicial review aspect of freedom, I share some concerns there. Court decisions that allow private property to be taken for effectively private use (Wal-mart, housing developments) on the basis that they enhance the community or increase the tax base seem totally outside the intentions of the Constitution.
When we are speaking of freedom overall, however, there is no doubt that women, minorities and gays, for instance, have more freedoms than ever in society.
Freedom may be argued from different sides. Some would argue that the freedom not to accomodate minorities in motels, restaurants, theaters, etc. is an important one. The great majority, however, seem to agree that the greater freedom is for minorities to participate in society.
I think Miranda warnings are an important freedom, even as others might argue that they are extra-Constitutional.
JT: Your first sentence captured my thought exactly.
All genuine rights can ultimately be reduced to variations of protecting the individual's freedom to act in various contexts. Freedom of speech protects the individual's right to take actions like speaking, writing, and publishing, for example.
The reason we have laws that call out specific rights is because the general right to freedom of action is too abstract to provide useful guidance. So we codify specific aspects of free action we consider particularly important and protect them explicitly, while leaving others to more general mechanisms (such as the sadly eviscerated 9th amendment).
Improvements in technology enable new actions, both in scope and in kind. Some of the new possible actions are ones that violate rights, and these require new laws. Other new actions are not rights-violating, but may become sufficiently important to warrant explicit protection. (We don't have any explicit protection today for the right to emigrate to outer space, for example, but someday such a thing might become necessary.) But these changes in capability do not directly impact political freedom.
The measure of political freedom is simple: to the extent that individuals who are not violating the rights of others are themselves subject to coercion, they are not free.
One other thought with respect to JT's comment that the internet has boosted the power of freedom of the press. I don't see it that way. Freedom of the press still covers the same broad types of actions it did before: speaking, writing, publishing. What the internet has done is reduce the cost of publishing. This makes some of the *actions* covered by freedom of the press more effective, and allows a greater number of people to perform those actions. But it isn't an increase in the "power of freedom of the press". Freedom hasn't become more powerful -- publishing tools have.
We are all "free", as, either you are or you aren't. But I would like to point out that you are not discussing freedom at all. What you are discussing is liberty.
KH: It sounds like a distinction without a difference.
Freedom is the ability, liberty is the legal right. There's a world of difference.
Without liberty, you have to worry about offending the powerful. If you don't offend them, you might keep your freedom...but speak up and annoy somebody, and you can lose your freedom quickly, without recourse. You have to keep your head down.
With liberty, you have the right to say what you want, and there's not a thing anyone can do about it, no matter who they are.
When we have so many laws that everybody is breaking one of them, and so much surveillance that the powerful can easily find out which ones we're breaking, we have no liberty.
There was a social psychology experiment a while back, in which the experimenters set up a mock prison, assigning some students to be prisoners and others guards. Over the next few days, even though everyone knew it was fake, the prisoners were cowed and the guards became abusive, to the point where the experiment had to be halted for the prisoners' safety. If you want to know what the aggregate effect will be of this society we're building, you need look no further than that. We've built a society in which guards watch the prisoners and do as they will with them, and we wonder why, bit by bit, they seem to be getting more vicious.
Excellent point Dennis. I recently did something that put a lot of my own personal thoughts on this subject into perspective. I re-read the Declaration of Independence, and applied that to our current system of government. Try it, I think you will be surprised by what you come up with. It's subjective, but hell this whole idea is very subjective.
You were right, Michael. Contrary to S3 and Dennnis, the words freedom and liberty are synonymous. The only reason we even have both words in English, rather than just one or the other, is because we speak a Germanic language (cf. German, Freiheit) that got bombarded with French vocabulary (liberté) during the Norman Invasion. Any effort to tease out a semantic distinction between them is a fool's errand.
X: Aw man, you beat me to my comment. I just looked up the words to be sure myself, but yes, they're the same.
I disagree, liberty and freedom are not the same, and the distinction is important when discussing political philosophy. Whereas my hypothetical neighbor and I, both being American citizens, residents of Rhode Island, and non-felons, have the same degree of liberty, the fact that he has a net worth of $50 million and I do not provides him with freedom that I lack.
LJR: Well, I guess you can make up your own definitions for the words, but if you want people to understand what you're talking about you should probably follow the dictionary :)
Well, I could dig out my philosophy textbooks that go into the difference between liberty and freedom in far more detail than I did if you like. While the two words may be synonyms in common usage, there's a difference when they are used in the discussion of political philosophy.