Mass Freedom

Ability to Do Anything

How to Protect Our Constitutional Freedoms

There are several ways in which we can protect our constitutional freedoms. Those ways, in which we can protect our constitutional freedoms, will be the focus of today’s article. We always have to remember that our constitutional freedoms didn’t come by chance. People fought for them. Some people had to pay the ultimate price, for us to enjoy these freedoms. Our part, as the people who are living now, is to protect those freedoms: so that the generations that will come after us will be able to enjoy them the same way we do. At a practical level, we can protect our constitutional freedoms by:

  1. Not taking the constitutional freedoms for granted: it is easy to fall into the trap of taking our constitutional freedoms for granted. Once we get to that point of taking our constitutional freedoms for granted, the next stage will be where we lose the motivation to protect them. And once we lose the motivation to protect them, they will start slipping away from us. By the time we realize what is happening, we may have lost all our freedoms.
  2. Being vigilant: we need to watch over our constitutional freedoms like sentinels – lest the freedoms be taken away from us. We need to watch the trends carefully. And once we note a trend where a certain constitutional freedom is increasingly being infringed upon, we need to raise our voices in protest. I will liken the level of vigilance that is necessary here to a debit card holder’s vigilance. If, for instance, you are a KPFprepaid debit card holder, you are inclined to be always vigilant about the card’s balance. That is why you find yourself visiting the card’s website (at KPFprepaid.com) from time to time, to check the balance. That is how vigilant we need to be about our constitutional freedoms – lest they be taken away from us by despots and tyrants.
  3. Being careful in the political choices we make: we need to ensure that we only elect leaders and political parties that are committed to the protection of our constitutional freedoms. This means that we need to interrogate all people who seek political office carefully. We need to interrogate them, so as to be able to understand their stand on matters to do with the protection of constitutional freedoms. If we have any doubts about a particular candidate’s commitment to the protection of constitutional freedoms, we will always be better off denying that candidate our votes.

Will We Ever Have Unfettered Freedom to Live in Any Part of the World?

Almost everyday, we wake up to disturbing news of ‘illegal’ immigrants caught trying to move from one part of the world to another. Many of these are folks who are ready to risk limb and life, to move to parts of the world where they are likely to access better opportunities. They encounter huge challenges in the process. And through them, we come to realize that we don’t enjoy unfettered freedom to live in any part of the world. In fact, our freedoms in that regard are severely restricted. To move from the part of the world you are in to another part, you need to have certain papers. At the very least, to move from one nation to another, you need to have a passport. You may, on top of that, be required to have visas, to move from certain nations to others.

That is not how it is supposed to be. A few centuries ago, people were, for all purposes and intends, free to live in any part of the world. That is how the various major migrations took place. But at some point, borders and immigration desks were established, and it became hard to move from one nation to another. The question that arises is as to whether we will ever go back to the natural state. That is, the state where people had unfettered freedom to live in any part of the world they desired. And that turns out to be a difficult question to answer. The trends are hard to read. We see, for instance, nations coalescing into regional blocs, such as the EU, which makes it easier for folks to live wherever they want. But with other nations opting out of such blocs (as Britain did with Brexit), you realize that we are not making straightforward progress. We are moving several steps forward, and several steps backwards.

There is hope. As people get more and more enlightened, they are giving up things like racial prejudices, and becoming more accommodating. And as population growth slows down, nations are having to open up their borders to expatriate workers. Perhaps a day is coming, when we will have genuine unfettered freedom to live in any part of the world we choose.