Thank You for Being Late: An Optimist's Guide to Thriving in the Age of Accelerations

by Thomas L. Friedman

But when it comes to politics, the freedom people cherish most, he argues, is “freedom to”—the freedom to live the way they want because their freedom is anchored in consensual elections, a constitution, the rule of law, and a parliament. There are growing swaths of the world today where people have secured their freedom from, but failed yet to build the freedom to. And that explains a lot of the spreading and stubborn disorder. Seidman calls the gap in those countries, such as Libya or Syria or Yemen, or Egypt after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, that have secured their freedom from but not their freedom to, “the inequality of freedom.” And it may be the most relevant inequality in the world today. “‘Freedom from’ happens quickly, violently, and dramatically,” notes Seidman. “‘Freedom to’ takes time. After the Jews got their freedom from Pharaoh in Egypt, they had to wander in the desert for forty years before they developed the laws and moral codes that gave them their freedom to.”