Originally posted by poet1b
reply to post by Jezus
The advancement of democratically elected governments around the world has lead to greater and greater freedoms of the masses. First of all, a free
man must be able to feed, clothe, and provide shelter for himself and his family. In the developed nations, these are extremely easy things to do.
Secondly, what is most important to a free man is his ability to develop his own ideals, express his ideals, and congregate to expand those ideals.
These abilities did not exist but for a very fraction of men before 1776, but since then, those abilities have spread around the globe.
Obviously you have no clue what is means to be free or to be a slave.
Had to comment on this. To answer your first point of people being able to feed and clothes themselves proving that we are free, this is absurd for
many reasons. Food and shelter may have to do with quality of life, but they have ZERO coorelation to freedom.
First, many people in the pre modern democratic era had many troubles feeding and clothing themselves at points, yet they were not slaves, and in fact
had near total freedom. A person native to the land that has no government can starve to death without being a slave, can they not?
Also, most slaves in the conventional use of the term had food and shelter. Now I know your answer will be, "yeah but they didn't provide it for
themselves, they were reliant on their masters". So ask yourself this, is this any different for people in the developed world today? The vast
majority of the people in the developed world totally rely on the government and huge corporations for all of their food needs.
Before this great development that you are praising, most people worked in agricultural in these developed countries, and were self-sufficient for
their food and clothing. So it would seem to me that if your point about being able to feed and clothe yourself gives you more freedom, then clearly
less developed countries have more freedom. In fact, many people feel the reliance of government in the developing world actually is another form of
slavery, just it is now wage based. (see Michelle Foucault's writings on biopower)
Again, you may think that the quality of life in these countries would be so much worse to justify the giving up of freedom, but that still goes
against your point of more developed being more free.
As to your second point about people being able to express their ideals more, this too is questionable. While it would seem that a person who can
vote would live in a society that was more open to individual ideals, this seems to not necessarily be the case.
As pointed out above, people that lived without governments obviously had more ability to express their own ideals than even the best modern
democracies. Based on the values you have mentioned, I'm sure you would find this the ideal situation.
There are other problems. Like do people actually have a voice, in even democracies? The majority of people in the US for example vehemently opposed
the governments wanton wasting of their tax dollars with the bailout, yet it went through anyways. It seems the only ideals that one is free to
express are ones that don't directly interfere with the governments agenda.
Also in this vein, how much of a choice do people really have when voting. In the US, we may choose between two parties that are legally lobbied to,
with the highest bidder almost always getting the party to pass laws favorable to them. It seems that again the people only have a voice in matters
that the people with money and power don't care about.
A worse problem is how becoming developed was forced on countries. Many economists and intellectuals of developing countries have claimed that the
developed worlds insistence on helping their countries develop have made them dependent on the developed world for their livelihood, and hence have
forcibly stripped their ideals. (its late but if you message me I can post cites for this).
At the end of the day, it seems as if you are saying that life is more comfortable today because the world is developed, and you are willing to
sacrifice your freedom for that comfort. I'm not saying this makes you a bad person, I'm just saying that if you are truly concerned with freedom,
your stance makes little sense. This leads me to one conclusion:
Obviously you have no clue what is means to be free or to be a slave.