Billie Silvey
An eclectic website about Women, Christianity,
History, Culture and the Arts--
and anything else that comes to mind.
History, Culture and the Arts--
and anything else that comes to mind.
December 2013
Oh, Freedom!
We all want freedom. We chafe under restraint. We don’t want
people telling us what to do. Even children feel this way. “You can’t
tell me what to do,” we hear them cry. "You're not my mother."
Yet we’re quick to determine that other people or nations aren’t
ready for the freedom we insist on for ourselves.
Freedom seems like such a positive state that we forget that,
essentially, it's negative, implying the absence of something. In this
case, restraint. When we think of it as a positive, we fail to plan for
something to take the place of that restraint.
Freedom was the watchword of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.
These uprisings have been compared often with the Eastern
European revolutions of 1989 or sub-Saharan Africa in the early
1990s. Reams have been written to analyze why they have not
achieved the same results.
Perhaps they failed to prepare adequately for the lifting of the
restraint. How many homes, nations and individual lives have
exploded when restraints were removed?
The first international instance I recall was Yugoslavia after Tito.
Everybody was eager to get rid of him, but when he was gone, what
was there to take his place? With the pressure off, things fall apart.
And everything did. Without that one uniting force, tribal divisions
asserted themselves, and Yugoslavia was no more.
It happened in Iraq when we got rid of Saddam Hussein without a
clear plan for rebuilding a nation that lacked a political structure.
We're still dealing with the effects of that one. It's easy to oppose a
dictator, but a lot harder to come together and craft a nation that can
continue after he's gone.
Other articles in this website are With Liberty and Justice,
Emancipation and Equality.
I hope you enjoy it and will write me your thoughts about freedom at
b.silvey@sbcglobal.net.
people telling us what to do. Even children feel this way. “You can’t
tell me what to do,” we hear them cry. "You're not my mother."
Yet we’re quick to determine that other people or nations aren’t
ready for the freedom we insist on for ourselves.
Freedom seems like such a positive state that we forget that,
essentially, it's negative, implying the absence of something. In this
case, restraint. When we think of it as a positive, we fail to plan for
something to take the place of that restraint.
Freedom was the watchword of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011.
These uprisings have been compared often with the Eastern
European revolutions of 1989 or sub-Saharan Africa in the early
1990s. Reams have been written to analyze why they have not
achieved the same results.
Perhaps they failed to prepare adequately for the lifting of the
restraint. How many homes, nations and individual lives have
exploded when restraints were removed?
The first international instance I recall was Yugoslavia after Tito.
Everybody was eager to get rid of him, but when he was gone, what
was there to take his place? With the pressure off, things fall apart.
And everything did. Without that one uniting force, tribal divisions
asserted themselves, and Yugoslavia was no more.
It happened in Iraq when we got rid of Saddam Hussein without a
clear plan for rebuilding a nation that lacked a political structure.
We're still dealing with the effects of that one. It's easy to oppose a
dictator, but a lot harder to come together and craft a nation that can
continue after he's gone.
Other articles in this website are With Liberty and Justice,
Emancipation and Equality.
I hope you enjoy it and will write me your thoughts about freedom at
b.silvey@sbcglobal.net.
