Definition of Freedom: An Evolving Concept in America - Research Paper

Introduction

The definition of Freedom varies depending on the setting and the speaker. Freedom refers to the state of being able to do something without being restricted. Freedom is an essential element of liberty. Freedom is a feeling, a value, and a concept. Freedom is a crucial requirement for human beings, and the majority of people believe and agree that Freedom is worth fighting for it. This paper will examine how the definition of Freedom has changed in America through different terms. The firstly pre-term era which consists of World War I, the great depression, World War II and the early cold war .Secondly the post-mid-term age which entails the Sixties, Nixon Era, globalization and Reagan revolution.

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In 1942 a master communicator Franklin D. Roosevelt addressed the concept of Freedom while addressing a state union to millions of American who had assembled around parlors that when he introduced the four freedoms that speech, worship, want and fear (Roosevelt). During this period, the United States of America was reeling from depression and fearful of war. He provided an affirmation that was powerful of shared values and called to action to defend them. Freedom was disappearing in Nazi-occupied Europe, Roosevelt made a reminder to Americans that the foundation for everything was grounded on their commitment to Freedom. Roosevelt joined the chorus of thinkers through questioning how free an individual is under the tenants of negative liberty.

Freedom can be defined as placing a person where he or she could reap the fruit of their labor and take care of themselves. Such Freedom can be accessed through having land, turn it and till it by an individual's employment. The years after the civil war, former slaves and their fellow whites, North and south requests for a redefinition of the meaning of American Freedom. The conservative era launched by Reagan promoted a far limited definition of Freedom. For this era, Freedom was centered in the markets which were free from interference by the government .the entrepreneur was at the center point but not the citizen. With the glaring exceptions of globe involvement and bloated military, conservatives made an argument that Freedom included privatization, deregulation limiting the reach of the government and capacity.

The end of the civil war that was declared by an Illinois congressman in 1865, the united states for the first time was wholly free and a new nation. The central question ion the nation's agenda revolved around asking what Freedom is according to a question posed by Congressman James A. Garfield, and he questions whether being free at this era was the absence of slavery or the bare privilege of not being chained.

In the American Revolution era, for instance, Freedom was primarily was a set of rights enjoyed in public activity that is the right of a community to be governed by regulations which its representatives have consented and of the individual to take part in religious worship without being interfered with the government. In the nineteen century, freedom got a definition of being identified with an individual's opportunity to develop to the fullest his or her inborn talents.

For the twentieth era, the definition of Freedom took another perspective of being defined as an ability to be able to select or choose in both private and public life. For the colonial era, the definition of Freedom was centering on financial make-up, treasured in the glorification of giving independence to a small scale producer, shopkeeper or skilled craftsman who was independent in his or her livelihood.

During the reconstruction period, freedom was a terrain of war. It was open to different and usually contradicting interpretations. The African Americans had an understanding of Freedom, which was grounded on their experiences as slaves and the observations that they had of a free society around them (Foner750). To them, Freedom meant escaping from several injustices of slavery, punishment by a whip, family separations, and sexual harassment of black women by their employers.

The development of technology in the United States enabled it to be in opposition to produce a lot of goods, investments and people flowed from all parts of the world to the U.S. It became the leading industrial power. In 1914, it produced more than one-third of the worlds manufactures goods. The citizens also were not left behind in spearheading American cultures, like popular music and movies. This also changed the way they had perceived their Freedom.

Woodrow Wilson foreign policy called liberal internationalism was based on showing that the progression economy and progress in politics were intertwined. Hence Freedom worldwide would flow inevitably from an increase in American investment and trade abroad. This would inspire since efforts to bring Freedom to the rest of the people.

During the 1920s, American multinational corporations expanded their sway across the world. Europe was recovering from the Great War, American investment worldwide exceeding other countries. The American dollar was used in place of the British pound in international trade. With this advancement, the definition of Freedom was changed because with their dollar having a more excellent monetary value, they had the freedom to determine the price of products in the market. The United States of America took part in fighting the civil war to bring to a new birth of Freedom, World War II for the four freedoms, the Cold War to defend the Free World.

In the 1930s and 1940s, it was a period of trial of the American citizen's strength and spirit and the commitment that had towards having a free economic system and democracy. The great depression affected the lives of people in America (Watkins). Following the great depression, President Herbert Hoover, his definition of Freedom, became unpopular because of his reluctance to stimulate the economy through government spending to ease the adverse effects of the depression. During this great depression, period freedom meant creating an equal opportunity for all people through policies such as unemployment benefits.

The love that Americans have for Freedom has been demonstrated through caps, statues, liberty poles, and running away from slavery to mention few. Its limits have defined freedom. The master's Freedom relied on the reality of slavery, overhyped self-sufficiency of men to take women's position. Additionally, there have been battles in the boundaries, which included the efforts of the racial minorities, women, and workers to get their Freedom according to their understanding.

The meaning of Freedom had been transformed and deepened by the demands of the excluded groups for inclusion. During the 1920s, this expansive notion of economic Freedom was eclipsed but a resurgence of laissez-faire ideology. In 1934 Roosevelt second fireside chat gave his mindset about the definition of liberty, which is greater security for an average man. Onwards, he linked Freedom with economic security identifying entrenched economic inequality as its primary enemy. Despite cold war rhetoric eased significantly in the 1970s, it was revived by Ronald Reagan who united into a coherent whole the elements of cold war freedom which entailed free enterprise, limited government, and anticommunism.

In the 1960s, the definition of Freedom in the united date changed considerably. There was a reserved inn only for the white students, for black students knowing went to the inn and they were not served a protest begun, and they were joined with their white allies until when they were served in that inn. Due to this protest, it resulted in the formation of Greensboro sit-in, through the establishment of the Greensboro sit-in it showed that the blacks had Freedom to be served as the rest of the white students without discrimination.

The southern residents demanded the integration not only in the lunch counters but of the restaurants, bowling alleys, libraries, parks, and other facilities. This demand arose because, by 1960, only a handful of black learners had been given admission to all-white schools. A challenge was posed to the United States to rethink what Freedom meant, including whether Freedom applied to all American's or only a portion of the population.

With their freedom rides, freedom marches, freedom schools and the cries for Freedom, black American's and their counterparts made Freedom once again the assembling shriek of the evicted. At the end of that decade, the New Left, Second Wave of feminism and activism movements challenged the 1950s understanding of Freedom connected to the cold war abroad and consumer choice. These groups forced a reconsideration of the nation's foreign policy and extension of claims to Freedom into intimate majority areas of life to the extent that American society confronted the idea that individual cohorts such as members of racial minorities, students, women, and homosexuals felt excepted from the enjoyment of American Freedom.

The central function of the United States government is conducting relations with almost 200 nations worldwide. The foreign policy has the duty of determining how America conducts relations with other countries. It seeks to assure America's security and defense. It explores the authority to offer protection and project to America's national interest around the globe (Engel). With this foreign policy, the definition of Freedom in the U.S. changes because it has the duty of conducting relations with other countries; hence, it means that there is no room for discrimination. The American's and the foreigners need to be treated equally without being discriminated being subjected to the same freedoms and rights.

There has been a change in the American foreign policy reflecting on the move in its national interest. After World War II emerged as a tremendous economic power in the earth, the United States changed its foreign policy, and it became the leader of the United Nations. With the role of being the leader, the term freedom had to change from secluding non-citizens to including them in their activities and giving them equal treatments.

As historian Eric Foner has expressed it, Freedom has remained to be a field of contest in the United States of America. In different time zones, Freedom has gained different meanings and definitions. For the founders of U.S. freedom meant Freedom from political autocracy, this was the same stand from the monarchists who had a special privilege from the crown. Freedom in America today requires making diversity a strength instead of fanning worries of foreigners and immigrants (Rose 150). Freedom means defending the equity of females and individual rights and liberties that been achieved through many struggles instead of capitulating to a counterattack against themselves. Additionally, Freedom meant making the elections free and leaders free from the corruption of big-money politics.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Freedom is a state of being free or at liberty instead of being under physical restriction or confinement.it is a hard imagination of the United States of America without the notion of freedom. Freedom has been at the center of America's mist useful events, either the American revolution or slavery abolition. Freedom in America tends to take different perspectives. For instance, in the time of war freedom included releasing an enslaved community, during the World War I freedom meant making the globe a safe place for democracy to take the lead while during World War II freedom was a matter of preserving the American way of life.

Works Cited

Engel, Jeffrey A., Ed. The four freedoms: Franklin D. Roosevelt and the evolution of an American idea. Oxford University Press, 2016.

Foner, Eric (1865). Give Me Liberty! An American History: Seagull Fourth Edition. Vol. 1. WW Norton &...