Freedom

So, this week in class we had a lot of discussions about freedom. We read a piece by Fredric Douglas about the Freedom of African Americans from slavery and how The fourth of July emphasizes the hypocrisy towards African Americans. We read a piece by Sarah Vowell called the partly cloudy patriot which hits on things like having the freedom of opinion, to be able to question and be suspicious of the government. This quality is something she says is the heart of American Patriotism. Finally we read a speech by David Foster Wallace called This is Water, where he talks about one freeing themselves from hard wired setting we all have in our minds to place ourselves as the center of the universe and see out own problems as important. All these articles show different types of freedoms that are important to different people during different time periods. So what form of freedom is important to people right. I think one type of freedom that is really emphasized in school and in politics I think is the freedom to have different opinions and to be able to discuss them freely. In a time where there are many different beliefs and ideals all clustered and together, it is important to be able to discuss all the ideas freely and in a peaceful manner. Even us students, when we go out into the world, we're gonna meet many people who have different ideals as us, so it is very important to be able to talk about them freely and peacefully.