Sunday, December 19, 2010

What Is Freedom? by Winston Churchill

What is freedom?

There are one or two quite simple, practical tests by which it can be known in the modern world in peace conditions -- namely:

Is there the right to free expression of opinion and of opposition and criticism of the Government of the day?

Have the people the right to turn out a Government of which they disapprove, and are constitutional means provided by which they can make their will apparent?

Are their courts of justice free from violence by the Executive and from threats of mob violence, and free from all association with particular political parties?

Will these courts administer open and well-established laws which are associated in the human mind with the broad principles of decency and justice?

Will there be fair play for poor as well as for rich, for private persons as well as Government officials?

Will the rights of the individual, subject to his duties to the State, be maintained and asserted and exalted?

Is the ordinary peasant or workman, who is earning a living by daily toil and striving to bring up a family free from the fear that some grim police organization under the control of a single party, like the Gestapo, started by the Nazi and Fascist parties, will tap him on the shoulder and pack him off without fair or open trial to bondage or ill-treatment?

These simple practical tests are some of the title-deeds on which a new Italy could be founded.

-- Winston Churchill 1944.

These same questions can be asked of any modern democracy.

Of particular concern today is political influence over judicial proceedings, the justice of laws and a legal system that can be adapted to charge and convict just about anyone given a sufficient search of the legal codes, extra-judicial punishment, and mob behavior whether by individuals, politicians or corporations.

No comments:

Post a Comment