What is freedom?

[Pepsi]

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Seems to me freedom is not something that can be defined easily.. it's all a matter of degree of freedom.    We like to say we are free, but there are a whole lot of things we are not free to do.     We have some semblance of political freedom, we are free to call George Bush an idiot and a dunce.    What's freedom to you?

[Michael]

Just another word for "nothing left to lose"? 

There are too many complex restrictions in this world.  The right to slam a president without prosecution is not quite the same thing as personal freedoms. 

There are many perspectives of what is considered freedom.  Freedoms within the law, or without the law...which kinda becomes more like "liberty" or the taking of "liberties" rather than naturally HAVING freedom. 

This world is too restrictive to have enough real freedom for ME. 

[lucy]

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either."
- Following the Equator, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar - Mark Twain

[lucy]

My ancestors came to America looking for something, perhaps freedom to be sure. They first settled, some of them, in Pennsylvania, then a generation later headed to North Carolina. They built a church with some friends and established farms. They established a school. And they fought in the revolutionary war.

Others came because they were dirt poor and established households and remained poor for a long time but at least they survived.

There was freedom for them in the sense that they were left alone to survive the best they could, given the circumstances. Maybe part of freedom is being able just to be left alone and try to do what one can to survive the circumstances without a lot of other people telling them what they have to do to comply with this and that or what...

Certainly most of them never had much money or fame or anything, but they raised their kids and none of us turned out that badly.,,,We are now doctors and lawyers and poets and teachers and preachers  and soldiers and some of us are even well-heeled bankers and very well-heeled lawyers....but, one thing we did not do as a family by and large. We did not become industrialists or arms salesmen or drug dealers or politicians.

[Michael]

I don't think that any group of people on the planet had more freedom than the Apache.  I am sure that there was a definite influence by their free nature on others who came to the continent.   In SOME ways at least, but certainly not in others. 

I think that people tend to confine themselves too much with competitive struggles.  The rush to succeed materialistically leaves little time for the freedom to smell the roses.

[lucy]

In order for one to be truly free, one has to aknowledge the same for others...If your freedom is based on the taking of freedom of others, then how truly free are you?

[Michael]

In order for one to be truly free, one has to aknowledge the same for others...If your freedom is based on the taking of freedom of others, then how truly free are you?

Not free at all. 

Revelation 13:10   He that leadeth into captivity shall go into captivity:.....

[Hollybaere]

I guess none of you have ever read The Patriot Acts I & II

And I'm betting that you never heard of H.R. 1955 either.

Read about it and then tell me how "free" we American's really are.

http://www.indypendent.org/2007/12/02/kucinich-on-hr-1955/