No matter what system governs a society, basic civil and political
freedoms have to be protected. These include freedom of speech,
freedom of association, a free press, and the right to protest.
No government should be above the law or beyond criticism, and freedom
from arbitrary government interference is essential.
Every justice system should protect individual rights and uphold due
process and the rule of law.
Freedom also includes the right to freely choose one’s own
culture. The idea that everyone in an English-speaking country should
speak English is the antithesis to freedom. In a multi-cultural
society, all cultures should be equal. Language is an integral part
of any culture, so telling people that they must speak English is
the equivalent of saying that one culture- the English culture-
is preferable and supreme to the others. If we insist people speak
English, then there is no multi-cultural society at all, but really
one dominant English culture that merely tolerates
acceptable aspects of other cultures, so long as any differences
do not extend to language.
That is not freedom, but a form of dictatorship.
Freedom should extend to free migration. People in richer
countries may be worried about the influx of the poor from all over
the world, but if they tackled world poverty, then that concern would
not arise. Equally, if state terrorism came to an end, there would
be no risk of non-state terrorists freely entering hostile states.
This world belongs to all of us, so subject to constraints of space, we should be able to move around
it freely, without being intercepted by states and forced to comply
with numerous bureaucratic regulations. |