Freedom is a force more powerful than man or society. Liberty’s power transcends borders and cultures. It is the ability to live and seek truth in an uninhibited fashion, the capacity to dig deep into one’s soul and live in a manner that is assertive, healthy and creative. When fear or social pressure causes individuals to live otherwise, true freedom is lost. Rousseau said: “To renounce liberty is to renounce being a man, to surrender the rights of humanity and even its duties.”

The same applies to national governments. When a nation formulates policies premised upon fear or ignorance, the ultimate freedom of that nation is jeopardized. Freedom is a state of mind, a condition of the soul. Liberty is the higher condition, which enables individuals and societies to struggle and survive. Besides enabling a purposeful existence, freedom is an internal realization that opens the minds and hearts of individuals and nations to the world in which they exist.

When a nation formulates policies based upon a fearless analysis of all conceivable dynamics of a situation, it has achieved true freedom. American democracy allows its citizens the most viable opportunity to realise internal freedom. But the US government has not optimized its potential for the promotion and achievement of true freedom worldwide. In its relationships with foreign people and governments, the US decision-making apparatus must overcome the misconception that political freedom is necessarily the most effective way to promote world peace and stability.

In safeguarding or developing a free society, we should avoid the arrogance of certainty and the paralysis of ignorance. We should promote freedom, which acknowledges and accommodates the reality of contradictory beliefs within the free. The facilitation of access to knowledge and the freedom to develop forums to debate thoughts and findings resulting from such free access, are crucial, then, to a free society. Not simply because the result is a better-informed community of individuals, but also because authoritarianism can only arise where knowledge is concentrated in the hands of a few.

This is true whether the authoritarianism arises as an organised political force or in simply dealing with others in a democratic society. Freedom of the press and of speech cannot be absolute. Indeed, freedom of speech means that an individual can articulate his thoughts within the accepted and established norms of society.

The United Nations has asserted the rights of the individual, but in reality the concept of the individual and his rights, by its very nature, cannot be translated in the spirit of the assertion. In a democratic set-up, the individual’s right is affected by bureaucratic hierarchy. The individual gets only what the State offers, thus restricting the choices. To live without freedom is to live in fetters and one’s personality should not be made subservient to a system. The betterment of social living depends on the right exercise of freedom; good living means the legal and ethical use of freedom. Absolute freedom is chimera.

Perhaps ultimately, the most real and inalienable freedom is the one we have in our own heads, where the Ideal lurks. That creative freedom we call imagination. No matter how repressive a political system might be, such dreams and visions will persist. Certainly, it is the closest we can come to being gods.