Discourses on freedom 2: looking for the heat.

In the first half of the "Discourses on freedom 1" I have dwelt upon issues regarding the aging
phenomena that democracies are experiencing. Well, you should read that!
When we speak of freedoms, we have a veil of romanticism abstracting real considerations. People are interested into clauses stating that country X has freedom of press and freedom of that encrusted in its constitution. We open the books and laws and search for every phrase that has "right" or "freedom" and then we rejoice and praise whoever wrote that.
Needless to say that is crap! So cut the crap!!!!
In reality, provisions for freedoms have no value whatsoever. They are completely worthless for two main reasons: One that is inherent in them and one relates to their enactment.
Let us first consider the flaw inherent in most clauses granting freedoms and that good stuff: The sheer phrasing of these clauses usually includes provisions to be regulated by further laws. That is to say, they all real as follow:
You can do whatever you want, as long as you don't violate the laws. 
The deceit is such a phrase is despicable. The logical and linguistic organisation of these phrases is flawed. It would be much more sensible to say:
You are not allowed to do whatever you want: do not do the following... 
That leads me to call for a new way to consider the level of freedom a people enjoy: To consider the limitations and the freedoms they are deprived of!
I was part of a conference discussing the drafting of the Tunisian constitution. There was many politicians and writers and people society deems honorable. In other words few cool people and mostly lame old dudes. Most people wanted to avert any mention in the constitution of any limits to freedom of expression. So cliché! There is going to be limits. That is indubitable! All what we should discuss in fact, is how to choose and phrase these limits rather than ignore them.
Just like coldness is the absence of heat, freedom is fundamentally the absence of restrictions.
 So let us not be foolish and let us start working on making our "restrictions" and limitation fewer, efficient and clearer. That is true progressiveness and activism. Freedom seekers and activists have to admit to the realities of the world they are trying to change. There is no need for an idea that is "good in theory" and bad in practice. Instead we should acknowledge that certain limitations have to exist for our societies to function. Then we shall attempt to expose them to the public in order to strip all unnecessary restrictions from any legitimacy!
Lebounce

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.