Defense Of Freedom Research Articles

Editor’s Note: In Defense of Freedoms: Decentralized Networks as a Shield Against AI-Powered State Surveillance in Smart Cities

Associate Editor Ahmed Alrawi discusses the advancement of AI-powered state surveillance in smart cities and how they have sparked concerns. Decentralized systems may present a solution. Dispersed dat and systems make it more difficult for government security agencies and urban administrators to conduct widespread surveillance but also empower individuals with greater control over their personal data.

Unpacking nontarget majority consumers’ responses to modest fashion: how market controversy perpetuates marketplace exclusion

ABSTRACT Combining trends in style and form with religious considerations, modest fashion has grown worldwide despite a series of intense controversies in Western countries from the mid-2010s. Building on the sociology of scandal, we identify three rhetorical strategies that structure nontarget majority consumers’ responses to modest fashion, i.e. the place of religion in modern society, the defence of freedom, and the search for a harmonious society. Interestingly, the strategies of both the detractors and promoters of modest fashion appear to be built upon common values and norms, though at a collective vs. an individual level, respectively. This discursive dynamic allows the former to moralise their attack while neutralising the defence of the latter, thereby setting the public agenda, and leading to Muslims’ marketplace exclusion.

Privacy, Propaganda, and Digital ID: Why Our Delicate Values Must Be Deliberately Defended

In this paper I explore privacy as a concept that becomes relevant and sometimes necessary under specific circumstances, but unnecessary in others. Privacy, I suggest, can be thought of as the right to be left alone and is integral to related concepts such as freedom, liberty, and independence. In light of the ongoing expansion of data-mining technologies, business models, and emerging modes of governance, I suggest that privacy is simultaneously more necessary and more at risk than ever. Privacy, in other words, is fragile and must be appreciated, understood, and defended. At the same time, privacy is increasingly an obstacle for businesses, governments, and financial interests, all of whom are eager to extract our data, manage our expectations, and shape and control our desires. To achieve their objectives, I describe how these organizations have long used propaganda and persuasive techniques to shape and manage the opinions, values, and expectations of the public. These days, I argue, the meaning of privacy is being made to evolve in order to bolster these organizations’ interconnected efforts to expand their power and control and to pave the way for the imposition of digital IDs. I also reflect on the way propaganda is being used today, the ways it has been described in the past, and the ways it will evolve in the future—either in defense of freedom, liberty, and independence, or in service of organizations intent on expanding their power and control over managed populations.

Does Libertarian Self-Ownership Protect Freedom?

Many libertarians assume that there is a close relation between an individual’s self-ownership and her freedom. That relation needs questioning. In this article it is argued that, even in a pre-property state, self-ownership is insufficient to protect freedom. Therefore, libertarians who believe in self-ownership should either offer a defense of freedom that is independent from their defense of self-ownership, make it explicit that they hold freedom as second to self-ownership (and defend that position), or reconsider the moral basis of their political views.

Editor's Note

Editor's Note Daniel Simon a dark angel flies with a shofar playing his trumpet in flight – Boris Khersonsky Click for larger view View full resolution HOW IS IT possible to think about art during a time of war? Years before the Russian military began the full-scale destruction of the Ukrainian cities of Mariupol, Kharkiv, Kyiv, and many others in February 2022, writers and artists had been raising their voices in defense of freedom and peace. And while Vladimir Putin's ethnonationalist, irredentist campaign to annex Ukraine continues to kill thousands of people, wreak untold destruction, and send millions of refugees into exile, the current "Muses" issue of WLT makes the case for a Republic of Arts and Letters that transcends geopolitical conflicts and promotes a shared sense of humanity through cultural ties. Many of the cultural linkages present in this issue go as far back as Odessa in the late nineteenth century, where the Russian painters Leonid Pasternak (1862–1945) and Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1914) both attended the Grekov Odessa art school. Pasternak's painting of his famous son, Boris beside the Baltic at Mereküla (1910), appears alongside a letter that Boris wrote to a young University of Oklahoma student soon after Pasternak had been awarded the 1958 Nobel Prize in Literature, which, under pressure from Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and the Union of Soviet Writers, he declined to accept (page 20). Romanian artist and writer Constantin Severin's poem dedicated to Kandinsky appears alongside the latter's Composition #218 (Two Ovals) (1919). In a note introducing his poem, Severin writes: "Kandinsky inspired me as a symbol of interferences and fusion between music and art, soul and spirit, human and angel, dark history and bright culture" (page 42). A dark gulf looms between history and culture in the present moment, however. A further cultural connection presents itself in the interview with Russian Jewish émigré writer Yelena Lembersky (page 22). Her grandfather, Felix Lembersky (1913–1970), created a series of paintings between 1944 and '52 depicting the murder of more than 33,000 Ukrainian Jews at Babyn Yar in September 1941, "the largest single mass killing by the German army during its campaign against the Soviet Union" (Wolfram Wette). These paintings are the earliest representations of the massacre and among the earliest artistic images of the Holocaust. "Under the Stalinist regime," Lembersky's daughter Galina writes, "my father was offered fame, wealth, position, and endless opportunities to paint [and] exhibit his work," but instead "he refused the grand offer and chose instead poverty, persecution, and deprivation" (lembersky.org). For her part, Galina stood guard on the roof of the Academy of Arts during the Nazi siege of Leningrad (1941–44), armed with a bucket of sand. Back in Kyiv, over the course of the war, more than 100,000 victims of Nazi mass murder died at Babyn Yar during the occupation. On March 1, 2022, when Russian airstrikes killed at least five people at the site of the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy condemned the attack on Twitter, writing: "What is the point of saying 'never again' for eighty years, if the world stays silent when a bomb drops on the same site of Babyn Yar?" In their just-released verse collection The Country Where Everyone's Name Is Fear, by Odessan writers Lyudmyla and Boris Khersonsky (Lost Horse Press), war pervades the poems like an "angel of destruction" hovering over a landscape where a "black sun of melancholy shines like a shrapnel hole." As editors Katie Farris and Ilya Kaminsky note in their introduction, both poets have switched from Russian to Ukrainian in their recent work, in solidarity with other Ukrainian writers and artists. "Against the backdrop of silent muses heavy gunfire thunders louder," Boris writes in one poem, "and then there's a shank in your ribcage or gunshots at pointblank." In another poem, he imagines an era of "postwar executions" in which "the only justice is the bullet and the rope." Will writers and artists look away while such justice is rendered? Art must bear witness in a time of war as well as its aftermath. And even when they fall...

Should we open borders? Yes, but not in the name of global justice

ABSTRACT Some proponents of global justice question that opening borders is an effective strategy to alleviate global poverty and reduce inequalities between countries. This article goes a step further and asks whether an open borders policy is compatible with the objectives of global distributive justice. The latter, it will be argued, entails the ordering of needs, the assignment of priorities and the preference or subordination of some interests over others. In other words, global justice requires the establishment of conditions and restrictions on mobility. On the contrary, open borders claim an unrestricted and unconditional (not unqualified) freedom of movement, limited only by public health considerations, serious threats to national security or democratic institutions, but not by an aspiration for maximizing global redistributive utility. The main point is that not only would freedom of movement be instrumentalized, losing its presumptive moral force, but ultimately open borders as a remedy of global justice are an oxymoron. The article concludes with an alternative defence of freedom of international movement.

The Ideological Slant of COVID-19-Related Conspiracies. A New Niche for the Far-Right?

ABSTRACT What makes believers in COVID-19-related conspiratorial stories different from the usual conspiracy theorists? To date, evidence on conspiratorial beliefs about COVID-19 is scant and it focuses on only a few countries. Moreover, it overlooks political and ideological factors, which might well help in the endeavour of halting misperceptions about the pandemic and understanding their political consequences. This research note examines the role of these explanatory factors (placement on the left-right scale, authoritarianism, freedom, and support for the incumbent party) in relation to conspiracy theories in general and COVID-19-related conspiratorial beliefs in particular. To do so, it uses a new case study: Spain. Relying on a large online survey (N = 3760), we find that right-wing individuals are more prone to embrace COVID-19-specific than general conspiracies. We also find that people that value security over freedom are more prone to falling for pandemic misbeliefs. Those holding more general conspiratorial beliefs stand out for their defence of freedom above anything else, as well as for their rebellion against authority, including the ruling party. This suggests that the pandemic has roused a new sort of conspiratorial believer: a conservative niche that might become attractive to emerging far-right parties.

Promoting culture and spirituality in an audiovisual society: Pope Saint John Paul II’s teachings on cinema

During his pontificate (1978‒2005), John Paul II always approached cinema in a positive way, different from the reluctance that, generally speaking and with nuances, the Catholic Church initially manifested towards it. Aware of the powerful influence the film medium has as agent of socialization and culturalization, John Paul II poses the ethical challenge of using film’s great potential to promote man and society. Analysing extensively Pope Wojtyła’s statements on cinema, this article identifies and systematically presents their main ethical ideas. John Paul II expresses a positive vision of the cinematographic medium. His teaching combines respect and admiration with critical analysis, trust with warnings, the defense of freedom with the call to social responsibility for film industry professionals as well as for viewers. The results of this first systematic research on John Paul II’s magisterium may open the way to future studies on the relationship between cinema and society, also on the links between the transcendentals of being (beauty, truth, goodness) and the artistic, socio-cultural and industrial approaches to cinema.

RESSIGNIFICANDO O HEROÍSMO ÉPICO CLÁSSICO: SOLANO TRINDADE EM "CANTO DOS PALMARES"

This work starts from the analysis of Solano Trindade’s "Canto dos Palmares". We seek to highlight, through the theorization of Anazildo Vasconcelos da Silva (2017), how the poet intertwines a hybrid repertoire of Afro-Brazilian references without losing the dialogue with classical epic poetry. We see that the construction of the heroism of Zumbidos Palmares forges a new epic subject, structured by the real, mythical dimension, and diluted in national identity. The collective struggle of black population is associated with “quilombismo", formulated by Abdias Nascimento (2019), and Brazilian, epic of nineteenth century, whose base maintains a close relationship with bandeirismo in the Parnasiana epic. Thus, the rereading of the national formation rests on the dedication of love to life and in defense of freedom.

The Concept of Freedom in liberalism’s Thought, for Instance: Friedrich .A. Von Hayek's Vision

Liberalism thus views the concept of freedom as a fundamental element of its intellectual foundation and without access to and defense of freedom, there is no meaning for the existence and survival of liberals. Due to the wide range of views of liberalism and the differences of opinion of liberal thinkers and different trends, attitudes and views on different freedoms, for example some of the thinkers believe in the interference of the state power in personal freedoms with the goal of creating social justice and economic justice and so on..., such as the thinkers of the Social liberal trend in the thought of liberalism, But some other thinkers believe in the protection of individual freedoms from interfering of the power of the state, and reject any form of interference in freedom, such as thinkers of the Libertarians trend in the thought of liberalism, including (Friedrich A. von Hayek).
 These two views of liberalism are expressed in terms of freedom, as: positive freedom (when the state intervenes in freedoms), and negative freedom (that freedom is protected from the interference of state power). (Hayek) rejects positive freedom and believes that any interference in the freedom, economy, and property of individuals, commodities, and markets, leads to the deterioration of the security and stability of individuals on one hand, and the creation of an oppressive, tyrannical and dictatorial power or regime on the other hand. This condition becomes the cause and means of the departure of individuals and the coexistence of the living system to slavery.

Postclassicisms

Postclassicisms

¿Presidente o príncipe? Una crítica maquiaveliana a Roque Sáenz Peña y la reforma electoral de 1912

The article analyzes the book The President, by Julio Costa (governor of the province of Buenos Aires in the 1890s), published simultaneously with the electoral reform of 1912. It is argued that the relevance of this text lies in three axes. First, it shows key topics of the public debate of that moment: representative government, political parties, secret and mandatory voting. Second, it ponders universal suffrage in the name of preserving traditions and the defense of freedom. Thus, it offers indications of possible crossings between conservatism, liberalism and democracy in Argentina of 1910s. Finally, the book displays a severe criticism of Roque Sáenz Peña inspired by The Prince, the famous text by Nicolò Machiavelli. From this point of view, it integrates a broader sequence, so far little explored: a political reflection grounded in the Florentine author about the vicissitudes of Argentine public life of the first decades of the twentieth century.

Free Market Revolution: Partial or Complete?

Abstract This review of Free Market Revolution: How Ayn Rand’s Ideas Can End Big Government, by Yaron Brook and Don Watkins, lauds its virtues, while criticizing its tendencies toward a partial and one-sided understanding of the nature of the revolution it extols. In bracketing out a deeper analysis of the role of business in the creation of modern corporatist political economy and the debilitating effects of war and the national security state on markets at home and abroad, the authors ultimately fail to provide the more robust defense of freedom that Rand’s project implies.

A importância de se chamar Ferreira de Castro… a repressão no Estado Novo e a oposição dos “intelectuais”

O “Estado Novo”, vulgarmente chamado “fascismo à portuguesa”, sistema corporativo com ideologia única e com “partido único”, teve a sua polícia política que foi tratando os diversos casos em função da ideologia de cada um, do estrato social a que pertencia ou da sua importância pessoal. Os “intelectuais”, na sua grande maioria, exerceram desde sempre uma acção de oposição em defesa da liberdade, tendo sido, porém, objecto de repressão diferente, por exemplo, conforme eram simplesmente liberais ou comunistas, de acordo com as críticas que faziam ao regime ou a sua importância literária. Ferreira de Castro era um escritor consagrado nacional e internacionalmente. Assim, olhando o seu processo, verifica-se que, apesar de ter participado em quase todas as acções pacíficas contra o Estado Novo (que iam sendo descritas e vigiadas pela polícia), não foi vítima de uma repressão demasiado violenta, como a prisão, a tortura ou a perda de direitos políticos.

Academic freedom of students

Academic freedom is often regarded as an absolute value of higher education institutions. Traditionally, its value is related to such topics as tenure, and the need for academic work to be free from undue political influence and other pressures that can challenge time-consuming research processes. However, when an analysis of student freedom begins with arguments about free research and free speech, undergirded as they generally are by liberal political philosophy, other considerations, related to broader views of freedom, can slip through the cracks. In this essay, I want to take a step back from typical discussions of academic freedom, to take a broader perspective, before considering how freedom relates to student experience. The first part of this essay explores diverse elaborations and defences of freedom: How it is upheld in the liberal philosophy of Kant, the critical pedagogy of Freire, existentialism, and the capabilities approach to development. Exploring the often contrasting insights and implications of these views, I then connect relevant theoretical understandings derived from them to an exploration of the experience of freedom and (lack thereof) of students (in a university context). This essay thus considers how student freedom, and student academic freedom, are more precarious concepts than typically assumed.

An Athenian temple in the Antipodes: Ancient Greek cultural values and Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance

When the Great War ended, Australians needed to manage the grief and destruction it caused as they rebuilt their communities. Commemorating the dead preoccupied Australians for decades following the war, and ancient Greek and Roman (classical) cultures were drawn upon to present a serene, nebulous and timeless version of events, in an enduring commemorative aesthetic and rhetorical language that comforted those who survived. As well as being a mausoleum to those who served, the Shrine of Remembrance is also a shrine and a temple venerating these service people, who would be revered by future generations. It is often acknowledged that the architectural design of Melbourne’s Shrine owes a debt to ancient Greece. However, its function and form draws on much more than classical aesthetics. It connects Melbourne to ancient Athens, its democratic values, strong defence of freedom, and belief that sacrifice in service to the state should drive surviving citizens to build beautiful and prosperous futures, mitigating the cost of war. This article contends that the Shrine of Remembrance embodies ancient Athenian notions of glory, freedom and democracy to provide the people of Victoria with an everlasting monument to those who sacrificed themselves for the state’s eternal prosperity.

Assured Newcomers on a Squally Sea? The Czech Pirate Party before and after the 2017 Elections

The elections to the Chamber of Deputies in October 2017 were a turning point for the Czech Pirate Party (called “Piráti”). It was the first time since establishing the party in 2009 that the Pirates entered the lower house of the Czech Parliament. They took the third place with 10.79 % votes and won 22 seats out of 200. Their main programme points came out of typical “pirate policies” like control of power and the powerful ones, simplification of the running of the state through technology, protection of citizens from bullying and defence of freedom as well as basic Pirate principles including liberalism and direct democracy. Their programme was called “New Ideas for the New Age”. From a different view, this party presented itself as a watchdog of democracy and as an alternative mostly for liberal voters. This qualitative case study will provide a complex overview of the Pirate phenomenon in the Czech Republic from their establishment to their current role of an opposition party. This article aims to show and describe how the position of the Czech Pirates has varied over time. For this purpose, open data from the Czech Statistical Office (CZSO) and the findings from the Chapel Hill Expert Survey (CHES) dataset will be used. It is possible to say that the Pirates are playing the role of newcomers in the Chamber of Deputies after the 2017 elections, but they are not newcomers in the Czech party system.

Praising the fallen heroes: Storytelling in US war presidential rhetoric, from Johnson to Obama

This paper analyses the use of storytelling by United States presidents in their war speeches, from the Vietnam War to the War on Terror. The study proposes a dual concept of storytelling in political communication: first, the global story that lies behind the presidential rhetoric aimed at justifying war; and second, the use of a specific technique consisting of inserting particular, personal stories into the speeches in order to communicate specific messages to the audience. The methodology used consists of an in-depth, interpretive, qualitative content analysis of a sample of presidential speeches. The findings confirm, firstly, that US presidents’ war storytelling aims to reinforce the political myth of America’s duty to preserve freedom, an argument that helps make the burden of the war understandable and bearable for the people, thereby reaffirming American collective identity. It is a reductionist narrative, as all wars are presented as having the same causes and goals. Secondly, the presidential use of personal stories is confirmed to have increased exponentially from the Vietnam War era. In most cases, these stories consist of a personification of some basic values attributed to the whole nation, by means of which these values are reinforced: heroism, patriotism, sense of duty, and, above all – again – the defence of freedom. The results also show that, in this aspect of their war rhetoric, the differences between George W. Bush and Barack Obama are at least blurred, despite their ideological and political differences.

The first reception of James Steuart in Italy: Giovanni Tamassia and his liberal economic reading of the Principles of Political Economy

ABSTRACTThis article has two aims. The first is to explore the early reception of James Steuart in Italy, focusing on Giovanni Tamassia’s writings. In his Dello spirito di riforma, written between 1799 and 1800, Tamassia was the first Italian author to assume Steuart as a point of reference in economic analysis. Largely re-proposing Steuart’s considerations on the issues of redistribution of land, of luxury, and of comparison between ancient and modern times, he contributed decisively to the first circulation in Italy of the Principles of Political Economy. The second aim is to shed light on the singular reading given by Tamassia of Steuart’s thought. In his works Lezione di economia politica and Delle scienze e della libertà relativamente al commercio, the Italian author proposed an economic liberal reading of the Principles. Deliberately downplaying the importance attributed by Steuart to protectionist policies, he attempted to demonstrate the compatibility between the economic theories of Steuart and those of Smith in the matter of economic freedom. Rather than being based on the grounds of a rigorous economic analysis, Tamassia’s reading reflected a deliberate attempt to make Steuart’s thought compatible with an economic and political culture centred on the defence of freedom.

Kant on Scholarship and the Public Use of Reason

In “An Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment?,” Kant defines the public use of reason as “that use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers.” Commentators rarely note Kant’s reference to “scholarship” in this passage and, when they do, they often disagree about its meaning and significance. This paper addresses those disagreements by exploring discussions of scholarship in Kant’s logic lectures as well as in later works like The Conflict of the Faculties. These sources suggest that Kant defends a rigorous conception of scholarship, which may not be consistent with liberal and egalitarian interpretations of the public use of reason. The paper concludes that Kant’s account of the public use of reason provides only a limited defense of freedoms of speech and of the press, which is neither as liberal nor as egalitarian as other commentators have suggested.