CJ, Kath, Cool. Let's get this international party platform going. We gotta find that guy that wrote "I'm ok. You're ok. We're ok" book. Great motto.
Anyway - in the 1950's, America proclaimed itself to be a free country while millions of blacks were being summarily exempted from the same restaurants, hotels, schools, neighborhoods and even the same drinking fountains as whites. Things have never been perfectly free anywhere and certainly not here in the US but they are much better now by the standards of equality and freedom than they were then. As long as there are laws, we are never free. Laws prevent people from doing things that some of us want to do. It's not like there are just 10 laws. There are millions of laws. All of them infringing on somone's freedom. [I am required by law to wear a seat=belt when I drive!].
I remember a little over a decade ago or so a Geraldo Rivera show on Satan worship in public schools. A local school decided to ban black concert t-shirts from heavy metal bands as a result. Often we hear of similar things. They are always going on. Sometimes we feel that things have gone awry but really they are the same, even better I am arguing. These things happen quite regularly. The system normally handles things ok. Never great. Just ok.
Civil liberties always clash with laws that protect ourselves form both our fellow citizens and external factors. One person wants to smoke in public [a civil liberty], another wants to be protected from second hand smoke. One person wants to speak out. Another doesn't want to be offended.
During times of national stress, there is usually a decrease in civil liberties as the law ebbs and flows and increases it's protective role and decreasing those civil liberties. In the US we had The Red Scare, Japanese internment camps and MacCarthyism. In my opinion, we have had far less change in our civil liberties as a result of the current period of national stress here compared to those situations.
Freedom. Something we aspire to. Something we can never quite attain. The only way to feel completely free is when there are no laws that prevent us from doing the things we wish. True freedom is anarchy. I imagine that in such a society someone would complain that their freedom to create laws was being abridged.
Last edited by Colin at Mar 7 2003, 07:33 AM
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