On Freedom

by Timothy Snyder

The truth about the “land of the free” is more sobering still. Most of the countries with higher rankings than ours in civil and political liberties would surpass us by still greater margins in the measures that their citizens would consider elements of freedom, such as access to health care. If such measures were included, we would fall even further down on the scale. The countries where people tend to think of freedom as freedom to are doing better by our own measures, which tend to focus on freedom from. That should give pause for thought. Political systems that are oriented toward freedom to are doing better than we are on freedom from. This suggests that there is no contradiction between the two. Indeed, it suggests that freedom to comes first. That is not what we are used to thinking or want to think. It helps to look at others if we want to understand ourselves.