Ok i hear the word "freedom" being flung around a LOT.. so please somebody tell me what "freedom" is.

Is "freedom" being american?? or is it being that which you freely choose to be?

DO the palestinians have the freedom to vote for who they wish?

Do the Iraqis have the freedom to govern their own country? More importantly do they have the freedom to govern their own oil reserves?

Do the Afghanis have the freedom to choose their own governmental structure?

I dunno man .. forget about all that. Can anybody give me a definition of "freedom" that does not entail becoming an american client state?

I use the word freedom quite often, and I think it is largely misunderstood. A freedom is anything you can do. Drinking coffee is a freedom. Jumping is a freedom. Murder is a freedom. Speaking is a freedom. Not every freedom should be allowed. If a freedom is harmful to someone else, like murder, then we have to weigh the harms against the benefits and see whether that freedom should be allowed. But if we're going to deny a freedom, we should have a very good reason for it.

Now, freedoms should not be confused with political power. If I have the power to create law, that is not a freedom. For example, let's say that I create a law banning profanity. I have not exercised a freedom. I have taken no action of my own. Instead, I am using my political power to deny freedom to everyone else. Do you see the difference? Political power gives you the ability to control others, to deny their freedoms.

Now, you ask if Palestinians have the freedom to vote. But voting in itself is not a freedom. Voting is a political power. I mean, the physical act of walking into the voting building is a freedom. The physical act of drawing on the vote card is a freedom. But it is a political power that transforms a person's vote card into law. And that political power might be used to deny freedom, or it might be used to protect freedom. But it is not freedom in itself.

The same thing is true of your question about Iraqis having the "freedom" to govern their own country and to govern their own oil reserves. These are not freedoms, they are political powers granted to certain people. Your question about Afghanistan also deals with political power.

And this is a very, very important distinction to make, because freedom is so often confused with political power. For example, some people say that we brought "freedom" to Iraq. But that's not what we brought. We brought Democracy to Iraq. We removed the political power from a dictator, and we gave that political power to the majority. This is not freedom. The popular vote might very well decide to ban freedom, in which case, we'd have tyranny. Or, if the popular vote decides to protect freedom, then it would not be tyranny. Freedom and Democracy are two very different things.

Freedom is to live without repression from an institution or other individual. It is to be fully autonomous. Its the manifestation of the creativity of the individual, and the dynamic human spirit. Its not just the absense of some form of political control, but the independence from a culture that is provided for them by commercial interests. That is to say, the fullness of the human imagination; critique and reinvention. Its to rupture the system of the commodified consumer society, the "can you do this for me?" society, so that our repressed desires of a more human nature may be unbound by the chains of the systems of control.

They say you are free as an American citizen. I do not agree entirely, but that's not to say that I don't fully disagree. Its true that there is a distinct difference between a republic and despotism, but in the end they're both administered populations. In this country, our success is measured by our GDP. By the size of your car or house. It is therefore evident that our own creativity is being repressed. Creativity, the work of the individual imagination, is a collection of human possibilities not conductive to economic efficiency. I'm not really saying that all capitalism is a form of control. I'm just saying that its unbridled use in a free market fundementalist society, where everything is marketed to us and society is driven by profit margins, you have a system of control that is anything but "free".