On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good.

We enable freedom not by rejecting government, but by affirming freedom as the guide to good government.

In singing the anthem, we treat its values as permanent, or as if they were enacted by song. But praise is not practice.

We are neither gods nor objects. We are humans who can become sovereign. Freedom is neither the lack nor the acceptance of constraints, but rather the use of them.

A government that does not claim to be sovereign, but that aims for the sovereignty of its children, legitimizes itself by its work for freedom. And it does so with respect not to a myth of the past or to people who are dead but with respect to each coming generation and to people who are coming to life.

Declaring and accommodating are the basic capacities of a sovereign person.

The oligarchical turn made mobility very difficult and warped the conversation about freedom. The more concentrated the wealth became, the more constrained was the discussion—until, in effect, the word freedom in American English came to mean little more than the privilege of a few wealthy Americans not to pay taxes, the power of a few oligarchs to shape the discourse, and the unequal application of criminal law.

Sadopopulism bargains, in other words, not by granting resources but by offering relative degrees of pain and permission to enjoy the suffering of others.

Sadopopulism normalizes oligarchy. If I am comfortable with stagnation because others are drowning, my attitude to the highfliers will be one of supplication.

When we speak of “free markets” instead of “free people,” we are in trouble.

Nothing is entirely new. Everything has some instructive connection to past events. Nor is anything really eternal or inevitable. If we have the references, we remember that past catastrophes have been survived, overcome, and even exploited. Then the present seems less shocking, and the future more open. The possibilities are more numerous than they seem, and some of them are good. Indeed, some of them are wonderful. The future could be far better than we can presently imagine.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler explained the public relations strategy that others have since followed: tell a lie so enormous that your followers cannot imagine that you would deceive them on such a scale.

The internet runs ever faster circles around ever scarcer knowledge.

Most fundamental to libertarianism is its opposition to solidarity. It counsels us to act selfishly at all times, consoling us with the thought that this behavior will lead to the good of everyone. Competition can be a very good thing, as a practice within rules girded by norms.

The notion that freedom is state inaction makes sense only for the tiny minority who can protect their families without a representative government.

Democracy is a verb disguised as a noun. Its supporters must believe in it and improve it.

Doing nothing to halt voter suppression means complicity in white supremacy.

A large representative democracy works only when people are in fact represented. Democracy is rule by the people, so nonhuman entities (algorithms, corporations, and foundations) should neither vote nor pay for political campaigns. No American should count for more than any other American. Campaigns should be transparently and publicly financed. Candidates should be publicly funded; voter registration should be automatic; voting stations should be plentiful; ballots should be paper; gerrymandering should be outlawed. These formulations might sound radical; in other democracies, they are commonsensical ground rules.

oligarchs in one country have more in common with oligarchs in another country than with their own people.

Freedom of speech is not the surging emotion of a given moment. Emotions and moments are easily managed by oligarchs and machines. Freedom of speech is grander than that and rests on the foundations of humility and risk.