Opinion: We can wave our flags and fight for our causes but let’s also step up to the moment and have real dialogue about what freedom truly means, writes kofi_hope
Freedom has been in the public conversation a lot these days. Especially issues of freedom of speech and in the convoy movement. It’s no accident those occupations and blockades grounded their protest in appeals to freedom. Early into the pandemic, anti-vaccination activists found that theories about nano-chips and side effects hidden by evil governments, were not mainstream ideas.
Canada, despite what the detractors say, remains a place with an extremely high level of political and civil freedom. But a disturbingly large amount of Canada thinks otherwise. A recentshowed 8.3 per cent of respondents believed threats to our freedoms are the nation’s biggest issue, the second-largest issue in the poll.
But a free society is about everyone having a real ability to make their own life choices. Freedoms that only exist on paper, that you can’t use, are dead in the water. It’s like a having a car but no gas. And for many, economic and social circumstances restrict them from living truly free lives. A few years later in 1966 the United Nations drafted a covenant on economic, social and cultural rights, outlining the other rights needed to have a free society, like the right to health care, labour rights and a basic standard of living.
But the political left has let populists and libertarians define our debates on freedom recently. And in truth within the Western tradition there has always been more consensus around a limited definition of freedom, focused on individual civil liberties. But as Graeber and Wengrow write, these freedoms could only exist because Indigenous people built a society based on mutual aid and economic sharing. People had freedom to chose how they would live their lives because food, land and shelter were shared by default. No one could be forced to work from fear of starving and leaders had to rely on competence to get people to follow them.
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