Individual Freedom
Essays

There have always been philosophical battles between progressive thinkers and conservative thinkers when it comes to the education of America's children. Those wars were waged in the 18th, 19th, and 20th Centuries, and…

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was born on June 28th 1712, in Geneva, a French-speaking city-state within Switzerland. He received little formal education and, in 1728, left Geneva to live an unsettled existence, travelling…

Politically-motived objections to President Roosevelt's "New Deal" would long outlive FDR himself. In 2003, when Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman was looking for a term to describe the ideologically-driven…

"I believe democracy requires a 'sacred contract' between journalists and those who put their trust in us to tell them what we can about how the world really works" (Moyers, 2004). This essay examines the pro-corporate…

High crime rates are a societal problem that has changed the manner in which society functions. Recognizing the adverse effects that crime has on communities the state of California has implemented a three strikes law…

Is direct democracy desirable and/or possible today? The question is addressed first theoretically, with reference to Montesquieu's Spirit of the Laws, which actually categorizes direct democracy as one of the corruptions into which a democratic system can descend, by an insistence on too much egalitarianism. Direct democracy is considered as an ideal, which is desirable insofar as it offers a critique of contemporary politics, but whose possibility is limited by whether or not it can be feasibly implemented. Two contemporary case studies are brought in to examine the question further: the experiment with internet-organized direct democracy in Estonia, and the experiment with social-media-inspired direct democracy in the Occupy Wall Street movement. Paper then offers an answer to a second essay question about conceptions of freedom in contemporary liberal democracy.

Concluding in Political moderation, in "A Theory of Justice," and in later works, John Rawls explains a comprehensive, as well as influential theory, which is on the subject of, presenting a theory of justice in…

The Joy Luck Club (1993) was based on Amy Tan's 1989 novel and deals with issues of culture, assimilation and generation conflicts between a group of four Chinese mothers and their Americanized daughters. All four women in the club had emigrated from China to the U.S. after World War II, and met after church to play Chinese mahjong every week. In reality, they had little joy or luck, and no expectations, only the hope that their children would have better lives than theirs. An-mei Hsu and her daughter Rose were often in conflict over her American husband Ted Jordan, who was wealthy, and the fact that she regarded Rose as too weak and passive.

Democracy gives society value-freedom in voting for leaders based on legitimacy and charisma. Totalitarian rule permits no individual freedom and is an absolute and oppressive single party characterized by strong central rule. The two forms of government are completely the opposite in how a state is formed and in definition.

In recent years the presence of a global economy has become more apparent. Financial institutions throughout the world are now connected through a vast computerized network. As a result of this global economy issues…