Price of Freedom

An author makes an innocent tweets and a politician challenges her to come to the street to be “given the treatment” by his blind followers. She takes up the challenge and continues to write against these new age loud mouth politicians. She exercises her freedom.

A civil servant takes the fight to the big time politicians and their kin to expose their corrupt dealings and ways of amassing huge wealth. Under all kinds of threats he continues to push the system and ask beaurocrats to “do their duty well” to stop scams from happening. He exercises his freedom.

There are many stories of many whistle blowers, social workers and other ordinary citizens who have raised their voice against wrong. Some have been successful and some not. Some got us to follow them and raise the decibel of their shout while others were just left fighting all alone. No matter what was the eventual result of their fight, these are the people who exercise their freedom and fight for their freedom. In my terminology, they are the current age freedom fighters. They fight to keep their and our freedom intact.

Margaret Hefferman, http://www.mheffernan.com/, a keynote speaker and author talks about it. She says, “Freedom Exists, because we use it!” It’s like an iron utensil which will rust if not used.

If we choose to keep quite, those given the power by us will not sit calmly, they will grab our right to speech. If we don’t vote, those who could have got a thumbs down from us, will abolish elections and take away our right to choose. If we choose to let them, they will take away our right to live and right to die with or without dignity.

So let’s pay the price for freedom. Exercise it, use it. In our small ways, we can change our world.

16^th Aug 2013