The Freedoms We Lost

A brilliant and original examination of American freedom as it existed before the Revolution, from the Smithsonian’s curator of social history. The American Revolution is widely understood—by schoolchildren and citizens alike—as having ushered in “freedom” as we know it, a freedom that places voting at the center of American democracy. In a sharp break from this view, historian Barbara Clark Smith charts the largely unknown territory of the unique freedoms enjoyed by colonial American subjects of the British king—that is, American freedom before the Revolution. The Freedoms We Lost recovers a world of common people regularly serving on juries, joining crowds that enforced (or opposed) the king’s edicts, and supplying community enforcement of laws in an era when there were no professional police. The Freedoms We Lost challenges the unquestioned assumption that the American patriots simply introduced freedom where the king had once reigned. Rather, Smith shows that they relied on colonial-era traditions of political participation to drive the Revolution forward—and eventually, betrayed these same traditions as leading patriots gravitated toward “monied men” and elites who would limit the role of common men in the new democracy. By the end of the 1780s, she shows, Americans discovered that forms of participation once proper to subjects of Britain were inappropriate—even impermissible—to citizens of the United States. In a narrative that counters nearly every textbook account of America’s founding era, The Freedoms We Lost challenges us to think about what it means to be free.

Individual liberty will be the defining issue of the twenty-first century, while fear of terrorism, crime and social chaos has put our ideas of liberty into retreat in recent years. It is clear that there is not just a crisis of liberty, but a crisis in the way people talk about liberty. How do we, as individuals, negotiate the maximum amount of freedom in such a complex world? How can we resist the growth of intrusive authoritarianism without exposing ourselves to crime, terrorism and other risks? Even those who instinctively support social freedoms are losing confidence when confronted with such hard truths. History provides a guide to answering these questions. We have a rich legacy to draw upon to help define our approach to current problems. Yet it is a history which we are in danger of forgetting or misreading. In What Price Liberty? Ben Wilson travels through four centuries of British, American and European history, elaborating not just how civil liberties were constructed in the past, but how they were continually re-thought -and re-fought - in response to modernity. The last chapters put into context the controversies of the last decade or so-the threat of terrorism and the rise of the database nation. If liberty is to survive now it must, like it did in the past, adapt to new circumstances. But to do this we need to agree about the value we place on liberty.

Why is it that so many people around the world appear willing to give up freedoms in return for either security or prosperity? For the past 60 years it had been assumed that capitalism was intertwined with liberal democracy, that the two not just thrived together but needed each other to survive. But what happens when both are undermined? Governments around the world -- whether they fall into the authoritarian or the democratic camp -- have drawn up a new pact with their peoples. These are its terms: repression is selective, confined to those who openly challenge the status quo, who publicly go out of their way to 'cause trouble'. The number of people who fall into that category is actually very few. The rest of the population can enjoy freedom to travel, to live more or less as they wish, and to make and spend their money. This is the difference between public freedoms and privatefreedoms. We choose different freedoms we are prepared to cede. We all do it. Freedom for Sale will set a new agenda. Mixing narrative from different countries around the world, it breaks new ground in revealing the extent to which the old assumptions and securities have died. It will crucially ask why so many intelligent and ambitious citizens around the world, particularly among the young, seemed prepared to sacrifice freedom of the press and freedom of speech in their quest for wealth. A new world order may well be upon us, and in this gripping and devastating book John Kampfner reveals how it may just be too late to stop it.

A timely manifesto on freedom from Hong Kong’s leading pro-democracy activist Nathan Law, a Nobel Prize nominee Activist Nathan Law experienced firsthand the speed with which our freedom can be taken away. When sovereignty over Hong Kong was handed to China in 1997, Hong Kong was guaranteed freedom of the press, expression, and assembly. However, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has been chipping away at these rights and, since 2014, restricting free and fair elections. Law writes, “When governments control access to information and are able to define the narrative and dictate what we know, we lose more than our freedoms. We lose the ability to see the world for what it is. We lose our humanity.” In 2016, Law became the youngest-ever elected legislator in Hong Kong on a pro-democracy platform and was subsequently imprisoned for his role as a leader of the Umbrella Movement. He now lives in exile. An urgent rallying cry, Freedom warns of the dangers of authoritarianism and inspires us to protect democracy and freedom—or face losing them forever.

Lost Freedom addresses the widespread feeling that there has been a fundamental change in the social life of children in recent decades: the loss of childhood freedom, and in particular, the loss of freedom to roam beyond the safety of home. Mathew Thomson explores this phenomenon, concentrating on the period from the Second World War until the 1970s, and considering the roles of psychological theory, traffic, safety consciousness, anxiety about sexual danger, and television in the erosion of freedom. Thomson argues that the Second World War has an important place in this story, with war-borne anxieties encouraging an emphasis on the central importance of a landscape of home. War also encouraged the development of specially designed spaces for the cultivation of the child, including the adventure playground, and the virtual landscape of children's television. However, before the 1970s, British children still had much more physical freedom than they do today. Lost Freedom explores why this situation has changed. The volume pays particular attention to the 1970s as a period of transition, and one which saw radical visions of child liberation, but with anxieties about child protection also escalating in response. This is strikingly demonstrated in the story of how the paedophile emerged as a figure of major public concern. Thomson argues that this crisis of concern over child freedom is indicative of some of the broader problems of the social settlements that had been forged out of the Second World War.

More than any other people on earth, we Americans are free to say and write what we think. The press can air the secrets of government, the corporate boardroom, or the bedroom with little fear of punishment or penalty. This extraordinary freedom results not from America’s culture of tolerance, but from fourteen words in the constitution: the free expression clauses of the First Amendment.InFreedom for the Thought That We Hate, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winner Anthony Lewis describes how our free-speech rights were created in five distinct areas—political speech, artistic expression, libel, commercial speech, and unusual forms of expression such as T-shirts and campaign spending. It is a story of hard choices, heroic judges, and the fascinating and eccentric defendants who forced the legal system to come face to face with one of America’s great founding ideas.

The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Tyler Stovall explores the intertwined histories of racism and freedom in France and the United States, the two leading nations that have claimed liberty as the heart of their national identities. He explores how French and American thinkers defined freedom in racial terms and conceived of liberty as an aspect and privilege of whiteness. He discusses how the Statue of Liberty—a gift from France to the United States and perhaps the most famous symbol of freedom on Earth—promised both freedom and whiteness to European immigrants. Taking readers from the Age of Revolution to today, Stovall challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, demonstrating how white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty. Throughout the history of modern Western liberal democracy, freedom has long been white freedom. A major work of scholarship that is certain to draw a wide readership and transform contemporary debates, White Freedom provides vital new perspectives on the inherent racism behind our most cherished beliefs about freedom, liberty, and human rights.

"Freedom is living your life the way you want to live it. This book shows how you can have that freedom now - without having to change the world or the people around you."--Jacket