Are we wasting our freedoms?

In my usual reading of news I came across an article about NYT being blocked by Chinese authorities because they wrote an article about Wen's wealth.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/story/2012/10/26/tec-nyt-china.html

Basically, NYT claimed that Wen's family and relatives amassed a fortune of about 2.7 billion due to favourable government attention and abnormal state-funding of business ventures. This was blocked by Chinese authorities because they believed it was a political article meant to blacken China's leadership's reputation.

And then the reader comments followed. But the most striking one is "If China Daily wrote an article about Romney's wealth would it be blocked? It shows China as politically immature."

Yeah, that's true but then, do people do anything with that information in North America? We've all seen Romney's massive wealth. We've seen him paying less income taxes than the poorest people of America. And what has that done? Shifted opinion on him by a percent?

I feel like we have all these freedoms, civil liberties, free press and we waste it completely. People can protest but no policy ever changes. People can complain publicly but no politician ever has to listen to them. And the only people to ever get real traction in politics are crazies like teabaggers.

What can we do to make more use of our freedoms?

The poorest in America pay 0% income tax, so this is inaccurate. (Just a minot nit to pick.)

Best Of: There are other taxes that it is harder to get out of paying then just income taxes.

I would not say that they are wasted in any regard. Your rights are there for you to use or not use. There is no gurantee that certain rights like freedom of speech, press, religion, etc. when expressed will achieve your desired goal. That is not necessarily the point of the rights. They are there to at least let you attempt to enact change.

Whether or not a leader or group of leaders listens to the people is more a reflection on the quality of our leaders.

edited 27th Oct '12 4:57:47 PM by TuefelHundenIV

The problem is that people vote for one person who has an opinion on a lot of different subjects, not all of them the same as the voter's.

And some subjects are deal-breakers for some people, which means they'll vote against someone who shares 90% of their opinions because he has an "unacceptable" opinion on one important issue.

Eventually some candidates reach a situation where none of the candidates are acceptable, so they either abstain or vote for the lesser evil to make sure that one guy isn't elected.

A lot of people have criticized Romney over his taxes, and a lot of people changed their minds from voting for him because of it. There's still going to be a lot of people voting for him because they don't think he didn't anything illegal or wrong. Or, like Grizzly, are voting largely over one issue that is unrelated to taxes, and thus have their opinion unaffected by such.

So... uh, I see bad decision making here but not necessarily wasting our freedoms, seeing as people are still expressing themselves here. Freedom to do those things also means freedom to disagree with what you personally think is a good decision.

So yeah, people are taking that information in and doing something with it. People are writing about Romney's wealth, and the wealth of others, and how what they're doing affects everyone at large. But people are going to disagree over what that all means, which we also have the freedom to do, and are using.

My primary concern is keeping and protecting the freedoms we already have, and not letting them be infringed upon.

Lookin at you, SOPA.

I think the biggest problem America today has is Apathy. We have the most sophisticated and easy to access information network in the world. The entire planet is at our fingertips, and nobody goes out and gets the facts, or does their research, or really seems to give a shit about anything beyond their favorite TV Show.

There is obviously a margin of exceptions to this, but I find myself feeling more and more disdain for my own people as time moves on. There isn't a nation out there I like better, but America fucking blows.

edited 27th Oct '12 1:56:16 PM by Barkey

On SOPA (and PIPA), we protested them and the policy changed.

I feel it's just a matter of time, because the American people don't focus for long, and the MPAA and their friends will just keep pushing it.

There is never a freedom at the first place. Existing as we are is a privillege bestowed by Earth's oxygen, water supply, the food chain and houses. The law protects us, we work for the country which supports the law, fair game. There's only fairness in what we do and what's done to us. From time to time, things which are not fair to us happens.

Rights are hardly a measure of how much freedom you have. They simply mean how much you can express yourself. They are also by no means a measure on how much limitations a country's citizen undergoes. Freedom, at least as a form of ideal, can't bring food to the table and power to politics. Only being fair by restructing government to combat systematic flaws, and benefit the populace in doing so, can bring food to the table.

How much freedom you have to express yourself is actually a sign of the quality of rights and freedoms you have, though. Countries where you can't freely criticize the government tend to be pretty crap, for one, and authoritarian. For all the problems the US has, we don't get in legal trouble with the feds for saying something like Bush or Obama were/are terrible presidents.

Freedom of speech; A small thing that can tell you a lot about the country you're in.

edited 27th Oct '12 5:18:02 PM by AceofSpades

I'm with Barkey on this. The last decade has shown some pretty glaring examples of how our freedoms are under attack, and he's right; the American populace has the memory of a goldfish when it comes to this stuff.

Take the two-party system for example; we all bitch about it during election season but do nothing to remedy it any other time.

In fairness if we did, we would probably be bitching about our new one/third party system.

@OP - Yes, and only frequent revolution against those who did it can help keep people take back what they need in order to survive in a world that should never be this fucking difficul for anyone who has less money!

Savage Heathen is back?

edit: probably not, but it sure struck me like something he'd say.

edited 28th Oct '12 1:55:38 PM by lordGacek

Well you know there are some possibilities here.

People in America don't care about how much income tax people pay, while people in China do.

Or, rather, we have the opposite problem than China — because everyone is allowed to say whatever they want, people either don't know what to believe or choose to believe one of conflicting sources. Bits of news like this become Unusually Uninteresting Sights, schrodinger's truths because according to news sources, it's both truth and lie at the same time.

Well the thing is, I look at China's lack of freedoms and it sucks but they do a lot with the little information they have. With Americans, they have lots of information at hand and barely bother to learn any of it, or make much use of it. For instance, some people may take issue with Romney's low tax rate and then vote against him over it, but the more important question to ask is, how many EXTRA people are now voting against him? The difference is so minuscule that it probably didn't matter. On the other hand, if in China, an official has his wrongdoings exposed, he's sacked the next day.

My point is that China's lack of freedoms and the plethora of freedoms in the West (despite the recent assault on them, still superior to China), seems to make nearly no difference. Almost all of China's problems stem from a bulky government and a poor economy; that is, none of it from lack of freedom (for instance, look at Sinagpore, a through and through dictatorship with no freedom of anything and a press controlled by the government... but people there are fairly happy and doing well relatively speaking).

I just feel that if we're going to take such a high stance about having liberties, we should use them to make ourselves stronger against countries that have less freedoms. Most of our advantages come from having a significant resource base and technological head start.

edited 31st Oct '12 7:43:17 PM by breadloaf

That is where I have to step in and say 'f*** no'

(USA) masquerading as an upholder of freedom and world peace? What has freedom of speech done to the whole modern culture? What have physical actions done to the world at large?

Being 'liberal' and having liberties doesn't mean you have to be 'strong' and bully the rest of the weaker world. We aren't 'free' to do anything, and certainly not when it comes to world ties and arms control.

China's economy is doing great.

Look I realize you have noble goal, but due to the War on Drug and the War on Terror, I'd rather the rest of the world take care of itself.

China's Economy is slowing down.

Not for long.

I meant absolute wise of course, China's economic trend is highly positive. Most of the discussion of China collapsing is based on the assumption that the Chinese are incapable of building an internal economy, which is a ridiculous assumption to make. At the very worse, they grow slower than they currently grow, that's about it.

But what do you mean, "the rest of the world take care of itself"? Addressing problems with freedom in our countries has nothing to do with other countries. It might be selfish to state but whether or not China has good freedoms or not doesn't matter to me, I care about North America keeping and making use of its freedoms to better itself. All I ever see people use our freedoms is to just go ahead and bash foreign countries.

I misinterpreted, we should use them to make ourselves stronger against countries that have less freedoms. as we should take on dictators and whatnot.

Oh i see, no I meant "stronger" as in a "lead by example" sort of stronger. That we don't focus on any failings of other countries as our own accomplishments but rather achieve great things as actual accomplishments we can point toward.

While we disagree on the specifics of what people should care about, Breadloaf, the fact remains that we as a country don't give enough of a damn. I say it's down either to a poor national grounding in things like civics and history, or to television and the Internet providing a bountiful distraction. Likely both.

Bonfire Note
Iiwahh titump: the protest of a writer whose hand has been forced.

I am not an American, but I am still fairly guilty on this regards. I am working to fix it, though.