Discourses on Freedom 1: Aging democracies

http://lifeexaminations.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/total-freedom.jpg

Freedom and human rights are ubiquitous themes in many contemporary societies. Humans have been very keen on writing and somehow enacting charters concerning human rights and basic "freedoms". Every regime that is considered a liberal democracy is based on a constitution guaranteeing these "inalienable" rights.
For many decades,possibly centuries, European revolutions have raged on to gain and establish the current model of state and of individual freedoms and human rights. The fundamental logic has been that there was situations of oppression deemed negative. Thus struggles had to be mounted in order to progress (the "progressive" kind of progress that is). If we take perfection to be unattainable though: Under these premises, there is no room for any feelings of contentment. That is to say there must be a continual struggle towards reaching ever increasing rights and freedoms. But that is clearly not the case. One can easily see that there is a stagnation in the advancement of liberties.
A considerable number of homo-sapiens of this age consider our era to be the peak of personal freedoms and rights. We are fond of the Idea that we are the humans with most rights and freedoms in the history of the specie.

However, there might even be a substantial danger in the reliance on such Ideas: that of regression. The recourse to laws to limit religious manifestation especially for Muslim women is a vivid sign. The minarets ban in Switzerland is also another case of institutional breaches and abandonment of rights that existed before. Weather one agrees with these policies or not is irrelevant: the fact that there is rights that exited and that are taken away is of monumental significance.
In the midst of this political democratic "stagnation", new found democracies are attempting to build their own democratic institutions and constitutions. Namely in Egypt and in Tunisia. The consensus in the two nations is the adaption of classical democratic popular based political regimes. There might be attempts at some fixes here and there, but these remain adaptational rather than radical or new. Along with the democratic liberal model, the revolutionary nations are also going to acquire the flaws of the "aging" system... Because of this course, on the short and medium run, the Arab revolutions will not yield any immediate political advancements for humanity.
As a way of conclusion, considering this stagnation and aging phenomenons in our political systems is vital. For they need a constant state of alert and attention to preserve the benefits they have brought about already. As for the advancement and attainment of further benefits there is not yet a clear emerging vanguard new model. We can try to start envisioning that model but the priority is mostly for pumping new blood into our current, aging liberal democracies.