Certain personal freedoms are guaranteed to every citizen in any enlightened nation. These are the freedoms of speech, worship, the press, the freedom of movement, the freedom to vote and to assemble peaceably. The common freedoms of a democratic society.
The rights outlined above are automatically granted at birth to every man and woman in a free land. They need not be earned, no price is paid for them, they are the legacy of those who, in generations past, have built and preserved the nation.
TRUE LIBERTY: Americans reckon that the common freedoms by themselves, do not make an individual fully liberated. The additional perks give meaning to the freedoms. The freedom to be what one wishes to be, to live where one wishes to live, to support the causes one believes in, and to explore the full and exciting range of one’s potential. Not many people experience that kind of freedom. It cannot be produced by a legislative act or a decree.
TRUE LIBERTY requires not just the political right to pursue happiness, but the MATERIAL MEANS to do so. A man may be free to eat, but unless he has food., that freedom is meaningless. He may have the right to have whatever he wishes, but only the money to buy the house he chooses will make him truly free to do so. A man is politically free to travel at will from say Accra to New York, but that freedom is meaningful only if he has the money and the time to take the trip.
People in democratic states are free by law but bound by the realities of no time, no money, and no prospect of things ever changing very much. British political thinker Ramsey Macdonald said, “democracy grumbles meaninglessly on empty stomachs”.