“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Elective Affinities

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Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms

 A rights-based perspective and approach to economic, social and cultural (ESC)

A 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights will establish that all Americans are entitled to:

1. The right to a useful job that pays a living wage, and to a voice in the workplace through a union and collective bargaining.

2. The right to comprehensive quality health care.

3. The right to a complete cost-free public education and access to broadband internet.

4. The right to decent, safe, affordable housing.

5. The right to a clean environment and a secure planet.

6. The right to a meaningful endowment of resources at birth and a secure retirement.

7. The right to sound banking and financial services.

8. The right to recreation and participation in public life.

9. The right to have freedom

 

1. Fundamental Freedoms

These are essential freedoms recognized universally, often enshrined in human rights documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR) and constitutions:

  • Freedom of Speech: The right to express opinions without censorship or restraint.
  • Freedom of Thought and Conscience: The right to hold beliefs and opinions, including philosophical or ideological views.
  • Freedom of Religion: The right to practice, change, or abandon a religion or belief.
  • Freedom of Assembly: The right to gather peacefully for protests, rallies, or meetings.
  • Freedom of Association: The right to join or form groups, organizations, or unions.
  • Freedom of the Press: The right for media to operate without censorship or undue restriction.
  • Freedom of Movement: The right to travel within, leave, and return to one’s country.

2. Personal and Bodily Freedoms

Freedoms that protect individuals from interference in their personal lives:

  • Freedom from Torture and Cruel Treatment: Protection from physical or psychological harm.
  • Freedom from Slavery and Forced Labor: The right to live free from bondage.
  • Freedom from Discrimination: The right to equality regardless of race, gender, religion, or other characteristics.
  • Freedom of Privacy: The right to personal and digital privacy, including freedom from surveillance.
  • Freedom to Make Personal Decisions: Autonomy over personal life choices, including marriage, family, and health care.

3. Political Freedoms

Freedoms that ensure participation in political life and governance:

  • Freedom to Vote: The right to participate in free and fair elections.
  • Freedom to Run for Office: The right to seek public office or positions of authority.
  • Freedom to Protest: The right to challenge government actions or policies peacefully.
  • Freedom of Political Opinion: The right to hold and express political beliefs without fear of persecution.

4. Economic and Social Freedoms

Freedoms that ensure fairness and access to resources:

  • Freedom to Work: The right to choose an occupation and work under fair conditions.
  • Freedom to Own Property: The right to acquire, use, and transfer property.
  • Freedom from Poverty: The right to access basic needs like food, water, and shelter.
  • Freedom to Trade and Conduct Business: The right to engage in lawful economic activities.

5. Digital and Technological Freedoms

Freedoms that safeguard individuals in the digital age:

  • Freedom of Internet Access: The right to access the internet without restrictions.
  • Freedom from Censorship Online: The right to express opinions and share information freely online.
  • Freedom of Data Ownership: The right to control personal data and information.
  • Freedom to Use Technology: Access to tools and devices that enable participation in modern society.

6. Cultural and Creative Freedoms

Freedoms that promote diversity and expression:

  • Freedom of Cultural Expression: The right to preserve and celebrate one’s cultural heritage.
  • Freedom of Artistic Expression: The right to create and share art without restriction.
  • Freedom of Language: The right to speak and use one’s native language.

7. Environmental Freedoms

Freedoms linked to environmental well-being and sustainability:

  • Freedom to Live in a Clean Environment: The right to a healthy and sustainable ecosystem.
  • Freedom to Access Natural Resources: Fair access to water, air, and other resources.

8. Scientific and Intellectual Freedoms

Freedoms tied to knowledge and innovation:

  • Freedom of Education: The right to access education and learning opportunities.
  • Freedom of Research: The right to pursue scientific inquiry without interference.
  • Freedom of Innovation: The right to invent, create, and share knowledge freely.

9. Freedom of Choice

A general principle ensuring individuals can make decisions about their lives:

  • Freedom to Choose Partners: The right to marry or form relationships freely.
  • Freedom to Relocate: The right to move to a new area or country.
  • Freedom to Practice a Lifestyle: The right to adopt personal habits, diets, or practices.

10. Group-Specific Freedoms

Freedoms tailored for specific populations:

  • Freedom of Youth: Rights ensuring children can access education and grow in safety.
  • Freedom for Women: The right to equality, safety, and autonomy in personal and professional lives.
  • Freedom for Indigenous Peoples: The right to self-determination, land, and cultural preservation.
  • Freedom for the Elderly: The right to live with dignity, access healthcare, and participate in society.

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Distributive justice

 

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On Liberty.

Mankind can hardly be too often reminded, that there was once a man named Socrates, between whom and the legal authorities and public opinion of his time there took place a memorable collision. … while we know him as the head and
prototype of all subsequent teachers of virtue, the source equally of the lofty inspiration of Plato and the judicious utilitarianism of Aristotle, … This acknowledged master of all the eminent thinkers who have since lived—whose fame, still growing after more than two thousand years, all but outweighs the whole remainder of the names which make his native city illustrious—was put to death by his countrymen, after a judicial conviction, for impiety and immorality.

Impiety, in denying the gods recognised by the State; indeed his accuser asserted (see the Apologia) that he believed in no gods at all. Immorality, in being, by his doctrines and instructions, a “corruptor of youth.” Of these charges the tribunal, there is every ground for believing, honestly found him guilty, and condemned the man who probably of all then born had deserved best of mankind to be put to death as a criminal (p. 25).

 

Though we do not now inflict so much evil on those who think differently from us as it was formerly our custom to do, it may be that we do ourselves as much evil as ever by our treatment of them. Socrates was put to death, but the Socratic philosophy rose like the sun in heaven, and spread its illumination over the whole intellectual firmament. Christians were cast to the lions, but the Christian church grew up a stately and spreading tree, overtopping the older and less vigorous growths, and stifling them by its shade. Our merely social intolerance kills no one, roots out no opinions, but induces men to dis-
guise them, or to abstain from any active effort for their diffusion (p.31).

When there are persons to be found who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissentients have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence (p.46).

We have now recognised the necessity to the mental well-being of mankind (on which all their other well-being depends) of freedom of  opinion, and freedom of the expression of opinion, on four distinct grounds; which we will now briefly recapitulate.

First, if any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny this is to assume our own infallibility.

Secondly, though the silenced opinion be an error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any subject is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

Thirdly, even if the received opinion be not only true, but the whole truth; unless it is suffered to be, and actually is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will, by most of those who receive it, be held in the manner of a prejudice, with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds. And not only this, but,

fourthly, the meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

Mill, John Stuart. 1867. On Liberty. Longmans, Green & Company.

هنگامی که افرادی وجود دارند که نظری متفاوت با وحدت نظر جهانی در مورد موضوعی دارند 
  حتی اگر جهان بر حق باشد ، همیشه محتمل است که فرد مخالف، چیزی را که ارزش شنیدن دارد مطرح کند
آن حقیقت با سکوت ایشان ممکن است از دست برود (ص 46)
جان استوارت میل ، در باره آزادی 1867

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