Restrictions of Freedom

There is a plethora of dramatic quotes in pop culture that espouse the necessity and importance of freedom or liberty, as well as political and personal philosophies built entirely around those ideas.

Here, Captain America delivers a dramatic speech to inform the good guys that their agency had been infiltrated by an organization focused on world domination.

The price of freedom is high. It always has been. But it’s a price I’m willing to pay.

— Captain America: The Winter Soldier (2014)

A quote from a letter asserting the Scotland’s independence (from almost a millennium ago) reads:

For we fight not for glory, nor riches, nor honours, but for Freedom alone; which no good man gives up without his life.

— Declaration of Arbroath (1320)

But what is freedom, really? Well, it’s the state of being free. Free to do what? Free to act, free to say, free to think — free to choose. It’s the ability to make choices, unhindered and unrestricted (e.g. by the physical world).

Freedom obviously has an incredibly good reputation as a virtue/quality, enough to make people “dogmatic” on freedom — meaning they treat it as an ultimate good and will optimize for freedom above all else.

In fact, freedom is neither good or bad, but “thinking makes it so”. Well, it’s more like there are positive elements that often come along (are correlated/associated) with freedom, which is why we revere…