The Cornerstones of a Free Society

With everything going on lately, the whole grand performance that's gripped the world for the last week or so, the events of the last year in general, the strange push in news, social media, and increasingly society itself towards control over other people's thoughts opinions and beliefs.

People are busy hating eachother and fighting over which other human being should rule them.

This takes me to my point. What i believe the cornerstones of a free society are and should be regardless of who's in charge or how they got there.

The first of these are the idea that every human in that society is just that a human in society. Including those in charge. For, anyone who would claim to be in charge of a free society their primary goal is to uphold the rest of the cornerstones of free society.

Which are as follows:

Freedoms, Rights and Responsibilities

The leader of a free society does not sit at the top. The leader of a free society is the base, the foundation that holds the cornerstones that support the pillar of free society. I'm going to start with freedom and rights, with the caveat, that the primary responsibility addresses any of the inconsistancies noticed.

The natural freedoms every human is born with

Freedom of thought, speech and expression

As free humans, no other human has the right to silence another's thoughts or voice

Freedom of Association

As free human beings, no other human has the right to decide who other humans are allowed to associate with.

Freedom of Movement

As free human beings, no other human has the right to arbitrarily and without cause stop another's ability to move within that society

Every free human has natural rights all humans are born with.

The right to pursue a productive life

Every free human has the right to pursue to the best of their ability a life they find productive, meaningful, or just their life, so long as it doesn't impinge on the rights and freedoms of others.

The right to defend your rights and freedoms

Every free human has the right to defend themselves against others who would try to deprive them of their rights and freedoms

The right to the fruits of your labours

Every free human who has spent their time, producing, creating, working has the right to the fruits of those labours. If it's something directly created, it belongs to that person, if employed by another to do work, you have the right to be compensated for said work. No free human should kept as a slave and forced to give their time to another.

The right to property

Tying into the last point, every free human has the right to their property. No other human has the right to deprive you of this. This includes, your.time and your life.

This brings us to responsibility, the one that ties everything together.

As a free society, as free humans, each of us has the responsibility of ensuring that by exercising our rights and freedoms, we are not impinging on the rights and freedoms of others and when others are depriving free humans of their freedoms and rights, we as a free society have the responsibility of righting that wrong and restoring the rights and freedoms to those who had them taken from them.

Only by ensuring as a society, that the above rights and freedoms are granted for all in that society can a society truly be free.

Free humans also have responsibility over their own lives. Successes, failures, whether through their own fault or others, the outcome of a person's life, their thoughts, their feelings, their words, their actions, their inactions, most importantly, the consequences of those things are each person's own responsibility to deal with.

Any government that would presume to rule over a free society needs to be the base that preserves and strengthens the cornerstones of free society. Not one that would sit at the top and erode that foundation.

Society increasingly seems to be pushing a set of new rights not based on freedom.

The right to not be offended, the right to silence opinions one disagrees with, the right to be 'safe', the right to the unearned fruits of another's labour, the right to opportunity, the right to blame others for their hardships or failings.

These 'rights' are not the rights of a free society. These rights violate the core responsibility of a free society, by exercising such rights, you impinge on the natural rights and freedoms every free human is born with.

A society based on such rights cannot be free.

What are ATS' thoughts? What do you feel a free society should be?

Those are basic human rights.

You now want the U.S to sign up and agree to these standards?

You already recognise human rights, you don’t need telling.

a reply to: dug88

Most excellent 👍🙂

Keep going with this!! What's the end goal or big picture 🤔👍

If freedom is a cornerstone, one "cornerstone to the cornerstone" is privacy.

You can't have complete freedom unless you have a right to privacy. Which is one of the major reasons why the social networking giants and other tech players are a threat to freedom.

a reply to: dug88

Excellently written, I bestow upon you the Standing Murray Ovation




While, as a doofus above said dismissively, these are all basic human rights, they're all not always held to with any particular fervor globally, nor enshrined as sacrosanct as they should be for such critical rights. Most are certainly applicable to many countries, and many are simply cherry-picked as lip-service elsewhere.

We're treading dangerously close to Lip Service territory, and it's very worrisome -- no truly free society that believes the freedom spiel they peddle would diminish them to serve a high few. Except the US is, we've been on that path for enough years where people are starting to believe reduced & removed freedoms equals more freedoms somehow.

a reply to: dug88

I wholeheartedly agree with your analysis of what the ideal of the rights of man would mean when put into practice.

Well done! I've been trying to read all of your threads since your short story about travel in year 2024.
www.abovetopsecret.com...

I hope you keep writing! Even a voice in the wilderness gets heard by most eventually