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    freedom

    Police Confront Pro-Palestinian Protesters At CCNY

    Trump’s Threats to Jail or Deport Campus Protesters Reveal His View of Free Speech

    In the longstanding Western tradition that Trump epitomizes—free speech is the possession of some, meant to be used against others.

    Jim Naureckas
    Mar 05, 2025

    In The Dawn of Everything, David Graeber and David Wengrow note that the Western notion of freedom derives from the Roman legal tradition, in which freedom was conceived as “the power of the male household head in ancient Rome, who could do whatever he liked with his chattels and possessions, including his children and slaves.”

    Because of this, “freedom was always defined—at least potentially—as something exercised to the cost of others.”

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    free speech
    Kids getting Junior Ranger badges.

    Attacking Public Service Dismantles the Infrastructure of Democracy

    When billionaires like Musk ally with political forces to dismantle public institutions, they're not just eliminating jobs—they're attempting to redefine freedom as nothing more than market choice.

    Emese Ilyés
    Feb 18, 2025

    Last Friday, an estimated 14,000 federal workers were fired from their positions across multiple agencies. Among them was Brian Gibbs, a National Park Service ranger whose heartbreaking account of losing his "dream job" puts a human face on a crisis that threatens the very fabric of American life. "I am the smiling face that greets you at the front door," Gibbs wrote. "I am your family vacation planner... I am the Band-Aid for a skinned knee."

    This generous offering of his words reveals an essential truth: Public service is not about bureaucracy—it's about the careful, often invisible, undervalued work of maintaining our society's fundamental freedoms.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    federal workers
    elon musk

    Elon Musk and the Dictatorship of Feudal Freedom

    Since the Modern Era, power has depended on virtual money. The more money, the more power.

    Jorge Majfud
    Apr 14, 2024

    Since the end of the last century, I have occasionally repeated five or six straightforward exercises in classrooms in different countries with students of different cultures, ages, and social classes―with the same result.

    One (inspired in Africa) refers to the classification of geometric figures, where we always see the differences and never what they have in common. In another, in the United States, I draw a cube on the blackboard and, when asked what they see, they unanimously say that it is a cube. It is not a cube, but three rhombuses together. To the question of what colors the sky and the sun are, the answers have also been unanimous, for years. But the repetitive response is a question: “Professor, are you also going to tell us that the sky is not blue and the sun is not yellow?” After all, that’s how they are on flags, in children’s drawings, and in any other representation that is not modern art―that which made Hitler’s blood boil. Something that hasn’t changed much today. The sky is not always blue and the sun is never yellow. Not only is it white, but the dominant colors are blue and violet.

    Keep ReadingShow Less
    Opinion
    democracy

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