Examples Of The Three Freedoms

The Three Freedoms As Ayn Rand eloquently stated, “Intellectual freedom cannot exist without political freedom; political freedom cannot exist without economic freedom; a free mind and a free market are corollaries. If a citizen is to lose one of these freedoms, they will eventually lose all of them. Intellectual freedom allows a person to seek out or receive ideas and knowledge from all points of view without being hindered. As history has proven, the suppression of new ideas or ways of thinking results in both anger and violence. If the state is to declare a certain form of thought illegal, the freedom of speech does not exist. Speech may be declared illegal to prevent the exposure of government corruption or inequality. Any government that employs these tactics ultimately fails.
Political freedom, being closely associated with civil liberties and individual rights, allows citizens to be involved with their political system and to have their views respected in said system. In a totalitarian society, the government controls nearly every aspect of one’s life, and no one is allowed to protest these laws or to have them changed. This form of government arises once the government has prohibited its citizens from holding or expressing ideas declared taboo. If a citizen is to speak out against their government, they are immediately silenced, and this action is often carried out with force. Necessary for the prosperity of a society, economic freedom proves an incredibly valuable aspect of a free society.
Having the freedom to trade goods or services and to run a business without significant government interference proves itself necessary to a strong economy and a free people. When the government or a specific group of people attain the power to control the transactions carried out by citizens in their society, corruption and economic collapse ensue. The incentive to work decreases, and nationalized corporations create monopolies on their respective goods and services. The ability to start one’s own business diminishes, and the ingenuity so often found in a market economy driven by competition disappears altogether. With no alternative vendors for various products, citizens lose the ability to choose where they do business, and it with no alternatives, they cannot boycott corporations committing acts some may consider to be immoral. All the rights and privileges held by citizens of free market economies do not exist in these totalitarian societies. The freedoms so passionately adored by citizens of free societies are taken away by a state that despises
liberty. When one looks at the three major freedoms together, their interdependence becomes abundantly clear. If a nation loses one of these freedoms, the other two are lost as well. This is why it is imperative that a society protects all three major freedoms. Otherwise, the freedoms free citizens hold so dearly are lost, and once they are lost, it becomes nearly impossible to recover them. -477