Freedom, Equality & Justice, Essay Example

Freedom, equality and justice are deceptively idealistic. They are all familiar concepts that can be interrelated and interchangeable from a broad governmental perspective. Ironically, the philosophy behind the three concepts can also be, at the same time, extremely opposing. The United States government, like any other developed democratic nation, claims to be the global example of what these three terms represent. Many US citizens and citizens of democracies across the globe would argue that considering the current state of our global economy and political mayhem; freedom, equality and justice are constantly diminishing at all levels of society. An example of this can be seen in recent New Hampshire news editorial published in The Union Leader. titled “A cop protected: Road Dawgs case an injustice.” The story is about a group of corrupt police officers who form a gang. The officers take advantage of their power and when the time comes for them to be punished for their crimes, they are set free. This is the same argument introduced in The Origin of Civil Society, where it reads, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains. Many a man believes himself to be the master of others who is, no less than they, a slave. How did this change take place? I do not know. What can make it legitimate? To this question I hope to be able to furnish an answer.”(The Social Contract). This line from Rousseau’s first chapter of his book The Social Contract, comes where he is trying to share his views of government both good and bad. To Rousseau we are all born independent, through nature with unlimited opportunities, but also with unlimited risks. This is why Rousseau argues that people from societies in all governments surrender freedoms willingly in exchange for securities provided by their fellow citizens or at least nature.

Freedom by definition is the “ability to act freely: a state in which somebody is able to act and live as he or she chooses, without being subject to any undue restraints or restrictions” (Websters Dictionary, 2010).In the previously mentioned editorial, an example of injustice is carried out as the author notes, “On Aug. 24, a chilling injustice was committed in New Hampshire. A judge let a Hill police sergeant get away with intimidating a private citizen and taking his personal property(“A cop protected: Road Dawgs case an injustice”, 1).”   The private citizen mentioned in the story is a shop owner. He has a specific leather jacket in his store that is known for being the uniform of a biker gang of police officers known as the Raw Dawgs.  When to off duty police officers and members of the gang enter his store they decide to steal the jacket and threaten to arrest him for stealing it. They also threaten to assault him. The storeowner charges one of the officers, the one who end s up taking the jacket, with theft by unauthorized taking. When both parties are in the courtroom, the author goes onto note, “asked by the prosecutor why they did not call the Concord police if they were simply trying to retrieve stolen property, as they claimed, Hill said, “We were just trying to solve it without involving the legal part of the system (“A cop protected: Road Dawgs case an injustice”, 1).” Here it’s clear that the police officer was exercising his own form of justice despite being a man of the law, and by doing so he was actually be unjust.”

Freedom can be seen more as a philosophy which serves to incorporate all the underlying branches of freedom that exist in contemporary societies, i.e. freedom of speech, economic freedom in the capitalist markets, political liberties, civil freedoms, etc. The issue with freedom lies in its vagueness; civil freedoms for example wouldn’t exist without restrictions and laws. Saying one nation is freer than another may be true but in reality the philosophy of freedom exists to say that true freedom is never attainable. Something is never free enough to do whatever because all freedoms have limitations; freedom may be limited by nature, by law, by physics, or merely choice. Freedom a term coined by democratic politics everywhere is less and less each day. Freedom has become an illusion that citizens contract to or are subject to by the very nature of the philosophy.

The concept of equality is far less complex than that of freedom. The nature of the word equality merely means two or more people, institutions, nations, etc. are recognized as one or the same (Webster Dictionary, 2010). The issue with equality lies in the recognition, and the denotation of the concept. Is equality ever truly attainable, or better said the perception of equality? Who or what decides on these equalities? In terms of legalities and rights we’re all equal but we all know this is not the case; sociological statistics and history show that perceptions of equality are constantly altering. In the example of the editorial on injustice, the store owner was treated as though his civil rights didn’t matter by the very people empowered to protect and defend his rights. Slavery for example, something most believe has been eliminated from contemporary society still exists, as well as human trafficking. In Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech ‘I Have a Dream’ the third paragraph from the book says, “One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.” (Dialogues of Learning 100). It’s still statistically argued today that African Americans are more likely to be from lower income families, their also more likely to end up in jail and hold a greater proportion of people in jail than other races. Racial equality is the easiest one, analyzing gender equality or sexual orientation equality shows even greater disparities. Without equality, and more importantly the recognition of fair equality there can be no freedoms or justice.

Justice a concept of morality bases itself on ethics, laws, rational, religion, equity, etc. Contemporary theories argue that justice would be the most important of the three concepts because according to American philosopher John Rawls, “Justice is the first virtue of social institutions, as truth is of systems of thought.” (Enotes) Justice serves to society what the concept of truth serves to knowledge; they two come hand in hand. I understand this reasoning completely and I believe this assignment calls for the recognition of this understanding of justice; justice is bigger than the other terms because it’s a deep cultural understanding of what forms of justices exist and how they are practiced. In contemporary society the bodies in charge of implementing justice and controlling the judicial systems tend to be the governments. With that said one can understand why democracies are predominantly the more desired form of governance. The way I see it government decides upon justice, justice accounts for all the morals in a society; if that society holds ‘free’ and ‘equal’ forms of morals, laws, beliefs, cultural expectations etc. then that’s great otherwise that society will be unfavored and thus unjust.

Unfortunately no society today, be it a democratic or authoritarian government, can say they have full freedom, full equality and be free of injustice. With that said the labeling of governments to be democratic is an illusion in itself. An example can be seen in the editorial when the judge lays down the verdict that the officer who stole the store owner’s jacket would be acquitted, due to the fact he turned the jacket in as evidence. The judge claimed this implied the officer did not have the intention of keeping the jacket in his possetion so he could not legally be convicted of stealing it. The circumstance seems more like corrupt justice than what one would expect from a democratic judicial system.

In sum, No democratic society can adhere to the justice it writes out on the constitutions, so what comprises a true democracy? Presumably the governments should enforce the will of the people, but often times they don’t, instead the will of the elite becomes top of the agenda. With that said the society is often structured in a form that forces its citizens to live in a specific way and do specific things. If a government doesn’t let you hold a say in what structures will be formed then one is just a slave like Rousseau argues. In a democracy everyone has the right to have a say in their government but one has to consider the purity of said democracy. Everyone must have an influence even against the tyranny of the majority. Unfortunately the influence from one citizen to the next is drastically unequal. We can only be as free as our governments (masters) structure us to be and if we are not participating in the structuring, which most are not, how can we ever have freedom, equality and justice. All of these concepts are limited to the extent of their anonyms. We put in place rules that restrict freedoms, we come up with inequalities that prevent equableness, and all in all this accounts for the injustices of contemporary governments which are governing on the premise of hypocrisy.

Works Cited

“A Cop Protected: Road Dawgs Case an Injustice.”Union Leader. N.p., Sept. 2012. Web. 24 Oct. 2012. <http://www.unionleader.com/article/20120902/OPINION01/709029928>.

“Lynn University. “The Core Curriculum: Dialogues of Learning â” , Boca Raton, Florida. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2012. <http://www.lynn.edu/academics/core-curriculum/the-core-curriculum-the-dialogues-of-learning>.

“THE SOCIAL CONTRACT.” Rousseau: Social Contract. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2012. <http://www.constitution.org/jjr/socon.htm>.

Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster, n.d. Web. 04 Oct. 2012. <http://www.merriam-webster.com/>.