Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose. Kris Kristofferson, 1969 song Me and Bobby McGee with Fred Foster
That the individual shall have full protection in person and in property is a principle as old as the common law; but it has been found necessary from time to time to define anew the exact nature and extent of such protection. Political, social, and economic changes entail the recognition of new rights, and the common law, in its eternal youth, grows to meet the demands of society.
The press is overstepping in every direction the obvious bounds of propriety and of decency. Gossip is no longer the resource of the idle and of the vicious, but has become a trade, which is pursued with industry as well as effrontery. To satisfy a prurient taste the details of sexual relations are spread broadcast in the columns of the daily papers ... The intensity and complexity of life, attendant upon advancing civilization, have rendered necessary some retreat from the world, and man, under the refining influence of culture, has become more sensitive to publicity, so that solitude and privacy have become more essential to the individual; but modern enterprise and invention have, through invasions upon his privacy, subjected him to mental pain and distress, far greater than could be inflicted by mere bodily injury. Louis D Brandeis & Warren, The Right to Privacy
Fear of serious injury alone cannot justify oppression of free speech and assembly. Men feared witches and burnt women. It is the function of speech to free men from the bondage of irrational fears. Louis D Brandeis
Not bound to swear allegiance to any master,
Wherever the wind takes me I travel as a visitor. Horace, Epistles
Who then is free? The one who wisely is lord of themselves, who neither poverty, death or captivity terrify, who is strong to resist his appetites and shun horrors, and is complete in themselves smooth and round like a globe. Horace
It’s freedom, baby, yeah! Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery 1997 starring Mike Myers & Elizabeth Hurley & Michael York & Robert Wagner & Seth Green et al, director Jay Roach
Freedom is always and exclusively freedom for the one who thinks differently. Rosa Luxemburg, German revolutionary
You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man’s freedom. You can only be free if I am free. Cesar Chavez
Great disparities of wealth in society, however, restrict freedoms every bit as much as restrictions on voting. Everyone is ‘free’ to send their children to private school, to have tea at The Ritz, to gamble on the stock exchange. These ‘freedoms’ are defended far more vigorously than the freedom to vote, yet they are in fact restrictions on freedom. For every one person who can have tea at The Ritz, there are a hundred who cannot do so because they have not got the money. If 10 per cent can send their children to private school and secure for them a straight route back into the privileged class from which they came, 90 per cent cannot do so – are banned from doing so – because they cannot afford it.
Thus the ‘freedom’ handed out by capitalist society is more often than not the opposite of freedom. Yet the idea of freedom still prevails, because the prevailing ideas of any society are the ideas of the class which runs it.
So the people who fight against these ideas – whether in strikes, demonstrations, popular protests or just in argument – are always, or almost always, swimming against the stream. They are the minority. But this minority, unlike the passive majority, can involve other people far outside their immediate orbit. And once involved in struggle against the old society, people’s ideas can change decisively. Paul Foot, The Case for Socialism ch6
However distinguished by rank or property, in the rights of freedom we are all equal. Junius, cited Public Advertiser 19th March 1770
There’s no place to go. We’re going to have to turn and we’re going to have to confront Big Brother and we’re going to have to struggle if we’re going to maintain our individual liberties and freedom. Jim Marrs
I’m singing a song of freedom. Bing Cosby & Irvin Berlin
Years ago I recognized my kinship with all living things, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on the Earth. I said then and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it; while there is a criminal element, I am of it; while there is a soul in prison, I am not free. Eugene V Debs
The great epic of the human condition is the struggle for freedom. It’s a struggle for freedom, the struggle for historical memory, the struggle not to forget. John Pilger, lecture Freedom Next Time
Freedom is being lost in Britain. The land of Magna Carta is now the land of secret gagging orders, secret trials and imprisonment. The government will soon know about every phone call, every email, every text message. Police can wilfully shoot to death an innocent man, lie and expect to get away with it. Whole communities now fear the state. The foreign secretary routinely covers up allegations of torture; the justice secretary routinely prevents the release of critical cabinet minutes taken when Iraq was illegally invaded. The litany is cursory; there is much more ...
Freedoms are being lost in Britain because of the rapid growth of the ‘national security state’. This form of militarism was imported from the United States by New Labour. Totalitarian in essence, it relies upon fearmongering to entrench the executive with venal legal mechanisms that progressively diminish democracy and justice. ‘Security’ is all, as is propaganda promoting rapacious colonial wars, even as honest mistakes. Take away this propaganda, and the wars are exposed for what they are, and fear evaporates. Take away the obeisance of many in Britain’s liberal elite to American power and you demote a profound colonial and crusader mentality that covers for epic criminals like Blair. Prosecute these criminals and change the system that breeds them and you have freedom. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘War Comes Homes to Britain’; viz also website
On 13 January, George W Bush presented ‘presidential freedom medals’, said to be America’s highest recognition of devotion to freedom and peace. Among the recipients were Tony Blair, the epic liar who, with Bush, bears responsibility for the physical, social and cultural destruction of an entire nation; John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia and minor American vassal who led the most openly racist government in his country’s modern era; and Alvaro Uribe, the president of Colombia, whose government, according the latest study of that murderous state, is ‘responsible for than 90% of all cases of torture’.
As satire was made redundant when Henry Kissinger and Rupert Murdoch were honoured for their contributions to the betterment of humanity, Bush’s ceremony was, at least, telling of a system of which he and his freshly-minted successor are products. Although more spectacular in its choreographed histrionics, Barack Obama’s inauguration carried the same Orwellian message of inverted truth: of ruthlessness of criminal power, if not unending war. John Pilger, article New Statesman, ‘Come On Down For Your Freedom Medals’; viz also website
On Christmas Eve, I dropped in on Brian Haw, whose hunched, pacing figure was just visible through the freezing fog. For four and a half years, Brian has camped in Parliament Square with a graphic display of photographs that show the terror and suffering imposed on Iraqi children by British policies. The effectiveness of his action was demonstrated last April when the Blair government banned any expression of opposition within a kilometre of parliament. The high court subsequently ruled that, because his presence preceded the ban, Brian was an exception.
Day after day, night after night, season upon season, he remains a beacon, illuminating the great crime of Iraq and the cowardice of the House of Commons. As we talked, two women brought him a Christmas meal and mulled wine. They thanked him, shook his hand and hurried on. He had never seen them before. ‘That’s typical of the public,’ he said. A man in a pinstriped suit and tie emerged from the fog, carrying a small wreath. ‘I intend to place this at the Cenotaph and read out the names of the dead in Iraq,’ he said to Brian, who cautioned him: ‘You’ll spend the night in the cells, mate.’ We watched him stride off and lay his wreath. His head bowed, he appeared to be whispering. Thirty years ago, I watched dissidents do something similar outside the walls of the Kremlin.
As the night had covered him, he was lucky. On 7 December, Maya Evans, a vegan chef aged 25, was convicted of breaching the new Serious Organised Crime and Police Act by reading aloud at the Cenotaph the names of 97 British soldiers killed in Iraq. So serious was her crime that it required 14 policemen in two vans to arrest her. She was fined and given a criminal record for the rest of her life.
Freedom is dying.
Eighty-year-old John Catt served with the RAF in the Second World War. Last September, he was stopped by police in Brighton for wearing an ‘offensive’ T-shirt which suggested that Bush and Blair be tried for war crimes. He was arrested under the Terrorism Act and handcuffed, with his arms held behind his back. The official record of the arrest says the ‘purpose’ of searching him was ‘terrorism’ and the ‘grounds for intervention’ were ‘carrying plackard and T-shirt with anti-Blair info’ (sic).
He is awaiting trial.