A freedom greater than freedom Essay

This is not an easy motion to debate on. Thus, this piece of writing will mention, discuss and bring forward the irrationality of choosing either freedom over equality or visa versa, without having a harmonious counterbalance between the two factors, implemented by a regulatory body. It will also include examples of countries which "total freedom" or "total equality" is in practice, where the search for total freedom led to total anarchy, or the pursuit for total equality curtailed the freedom in all areas of life. This short writing will be concluded with a personal view.

America is the universal symbol of freedom. But is it really free? Does the history of the United States stay true to the ideas of our forefathers? Or has the definition been altered to fit American policies? Has freedom defined America? Or has America defined freedom? I believe America was at first defined by freedom, then after time, America defined freedom, altering the definition to fit the niche it fits in, but still keeping key components so it still seems to be staying true to the ideas of America’s founding fathers.

Throughout history freedom has had many different meanings and definitions; based on race, gender, and ethnicity. According to the dictionary freedom means the state of being free or at liberty rather than in confinement or under physical restraint (“freedom” def. 1). Freedom may seem like something given to everyone however it was something workers had to fight for. Not everyone believed that workers’ rights needed to be changed, which led to a long battle between workers, employers and the government. To the working class people freedom meant making higher wages, having regulated hours, workable conditions and the right to free speech.

We all have thought of what it would be like to be royalty, or the head of a nation. We simply tell ourselves that power will never change who we are, that it will not pervert us. Nonetheless, History has showed us that power is cancerous, it blinds us, victimizes us, and it corrupts us. In Frederick Douglass’ “Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, An American Slave” he states that immoral power eventually taints the most tender heart and turns it into stone. There is no way we can truly avoid irresponsible power and its effects, but we can learn to distinguish it.

Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale, the popular, gifted, young clergyman and in which no expected, was Hester Prynne’s secretive lover. The citizens of Boston saw him as the perfect man, who could do no wrong. Little had they known, his sin was just as bad as Hester’s. Just like Black’s quote stated, Reverend Dimmesdale, acted on his light side, and used his sins to preach his best of sermons. Hawthorne stated on page 131, ‘To the high mountain-peaks of faith and sanctity he would have climbed…”. As many can observe, the young clergyman was a tremendous minister. He preached wonderful sermons and truly showed himself to be a man of God. Dimmesdale was a talented young man with a dark side that few people knew of. “…Mr. Dimmesdale was thinking of his grave, he questioned with himself whether the grass would ever grow on it, because an accursed thing must be there” (Hawthorne 131). This shows while he was preaching tremendous sermons, his health started to deteriorate, due to his inner guilt he was holding within himself. Perhaps if his lingering sin had not expended him, he would have been able live a happier, healthier life. However, unfortunately for him, the secret he was keeping was eating at him from the inside out and his darkness was prevailing. Dimmesdale’s sin of keeping the

Because of Dimmesdale’s connection with the Puritan Church and his unconfessed sin, his mental health deteriorates to the point of delusion. In order to lessen the guilt caused by his sin, Dimmesdale often practices nightlong fasts and vigils. Those fasts and vigils fail to lessen his guilt because they constitute a private confession. Because of the lack of public confession Dimmesdale starts to believe that he lives a lie; Dimmesdale symbolizes a moral compass for the Puritan community but is an unpunished adulterer. Dimmesdale and the Puritans believe that “to the untrue man, the whole universe is false” (Hawthorne 133). Hawthorne means that untrue men, such as Dimmesdale, create a fake reality in which those untrue men live in. Since Dimmesdale is an untrue man, his perception of what is real and what is false starts to slip, and he begins having visions of his bastard daughter pointing her finger at “the clergyman’s own breast” and because Dimmesdale creates a false reality, his visions and hallucinations combine with actual reality (Hawthorne 132). The guilt from Dimmesdale’s false life grows to the point that his “[delusions] were, in one sense, the truest and most substantial things which the poor minister now dealt with” (Hawthorne 133). When there is “no peril of discovery”, an attempt to publically

Since the creation of the United States, the meaning of freedom has changed to meet changing attitudes. Throughout our nation’s history, there have been significant periods of racial, economic and civil rights inequalities. There are different meanings for freedoms that have been established throughout the historical period of the United States. During this modern era, the US had certain periods of time that lived up to the ideals of freedom such as the Gilded Age. In opposition, the US has also had periods of time where our ideals of freedom failed to meet the requirements of our nation, a prime example being the late 1940s when the US entered the Cold War and led to the anti-communism period of McCarthyism which ultimately restricted

The power or right to act, speak or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. A word created by man to escape the bonds of tyranny to express the idea of what it means to persist one's own ambitions. Freedom. Freedom is not the absence of confinement but the will to achieve freedom when imprisoned. After carefully concluding the reading done over this semester one is able to clearly understand the confinement these early Americans felt and their decision to achieve a form of freedom. Freedom has always existed but it is the history of this nation that will define what actions freedom takes.

At the origin of the novel, Arthur Dimmesdale is young, healthy and enthused; he has no trouble with what he has done, he simply doesn’t think about it. Dimmesdale, the shining young minister of Boston, is described as a man whose “eloquence and

Freedom is the singular concept that the United States has embraced as a nation since July 4, 1776. The United States would not have the freedom that its citizens have today without the sacrifice of the thousands of lives that have died, and the sacrifice of the millions that fight every single day to keep our country safe and independent. A military force, backed by over 1.4 million people, is defending a nation, in which over 310 million people reside.

The American Ideological Consensus is that “…the American people have shared much of the same ideals, the same basic principles, and the same patterns of belief” (McClenaghan 104). When America filled itself with ideologically homogenous people, their beliefs started to define our nation and became American identities. If asked what they think of America, peoples of other nations would say that the roads are made of glass, opportunity is in the air, and civil rights are plentiful. These accounts maybe accentuated; however, the underlying message is that the American people have more freedoms then the peoples of other nations do. The most widely known American identity is freedom, and even though that American identity has been tried and

Awakening or to awake means “to wake up; to be or make alert or watchful” (Webster 23). This is what Edna Pontellier experienced in The Awakening.

Many ideas are important within the American culture, but to the American sense of patriotism, freedom is most fundamental. The idea of freedom is central to the American politics – which is at times referred to as liberty. Since the birth of the nation, freedom has been the vocabulary of the American language and its importance cannot be underestimated. The Declaration of Independence, for instance, ranks liberty as an inalienable right. On the other hand, the Constitution reckons that it purposes to protect civilians’ liberty. The importance of freedom has even stretched further than the political arena and has prompted the birth of civil rights movements and other activist protests. The Cold War and the Civil War were all for the cause of freedom. The importance that Americans attach to freedom can also be demonstrated from the erection of statues, banishment of slavery, use of liberty poles and a right to vote for adults. For many years, women and the African Americans have for a long time fought against denial and infringement of their freedom . However, given the importance that Americans affiliate to freedom in the conceptualization of their country, it has been the subject of modifications over the course of years especially before the Revolutionary War.

What is the price for FREEDOM? It's obvious that the price for freedom is not free but that it is rather large. After obtaining freedom, we look back and wonder was it worth it? Was freedom overpriced? In other words, did we sacrifice and pay too much to be free?

of us fail to cherish and value our granted freedom. Many of us do not