2/6/19: Freedom House, which has been rating nations around the world on a number of factors, from ease of access to voting, to freedom of the press, to corruption within the government, recently released its annual report. A total of 88 nations, including the United States are rated as “free.” That designation covers 2.9 billion people, 39 percent of the global population.
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Only four in ten people
today live in free countries.
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Almost as many people today, 2.7 billion, live in nations rated “not free.” Scored on a 100 point scale (with Australia, for example, scoring 98 to rate as “free”) some of the big names on the “not free” list include China (14), Cuba (14), Iran (18) North Korea (3), Russia (20), Saudi Arabia (7) and Venezuela (26).
The bottom five include Syria (-1), Tibet (1), South Sudan (2), and Eritrea, tied with North Korea (3).
By comparison, Canada (99), Belgium (95), Chile (94), Czech Republic (93), Denmark (97), Estonia (94), Finland (100), France (90), Germany (94), Greece (85), Iceland (96), India (77), Japan (96), Kiribati (93), Mongolia (85), Netherlands (99), Norway (100), South Korea (84), Sweden (100), Taiwan (93), Tunisia (70), the United Kingdom (94) and Uruguay (98) are rated “free.”
This list holds special interest for this blogger. He began using it in his American history classes when he first started teaching in the 70s. If memory serves, China in those days, scored 0. Chile and the Czech Republic (then part of Czechoslovakia) were “not free.” Chile suffered under a brutal military dictatorship. Czechoslovakia was under the Soviet thumb. Germany was carved in two. West Germany scored high. East Germany, under communist control, scored, if I remember correctly, in single digits.
I do remember that students found stories about the ways people escaped from East Berlin and East Germany of great interest. In the early days of the Berlin Wall, for example, one man pole-vaulted to freedom. Later, a family floated out of East Germany in a homemade hot-air balloon. The famous picture of the East German guard leaping across barbed wire in a dash for freedom always made a critical point.
People
around the world crave freedom.
The guard escapes.
I never had a problem highlighting the flaws in the U.S. system of government. But the fact we scored 100 in those days, was an indication that clean government and a commitment to protecting individual rights mattered.
So, in the sampling for 2018, I include Finland, Norway, Sweden, and Venezuela for a reason. All are socialist nations. Those first three are the freest countries in the world. The last is a failing state, beset by hyper-inflation, and ruled by a despot. I think we should avoid the simplistic arguments about socialism and the fearmongering on Fox News and in the right-wing media sphere.
Trump administration abdicates democratic leadership.
More than that, I was saddened to see that Freedom House rated the United States at 86 for a second year in a row, somewhere around fiftieth place.
In a section titled “Democracy in Crisis,” we learn that 2018 marked the thirteenth year in a row during which freedom round the globe has been in retreat. One contributing factor is the decision of the Trump administration to abdicate democratic leadership, and in several cases to lead in reverse.
Freedom House explains:
The gravity of the threat to
global freedom requires the United States to shore up and expand its alliances
with fellow democracies and deepen its own commitment to the values they share.
Only a united front among the world’s democratic nations—and a defense of democracy as a universal right
rather than the historical inheritance of a few Western societies—can roll back
the world’s current authoritarian and antiliberal trends. By contrast, a
withdrawal of the United States from global engagement on behalf of democracy,
and a shift to transactional or mercenary relations with allies and rivals
alike [emphasis added], will only accelerate the decline of democratic
norms.
*
LATELY, DON JR. has been busy trying to prove that when it comes to tweeting, he’s just as big an ass as his father, but without the excuse of early-onset Alzheimer’s. It really got his undies in a wad when he noticed Democratic congresswomen dressed in white for the State of the Union address last night, and realized they weren’t sporting American flag pins!
Boy, oh boy, how unpatriotic.
Sadly, brother Eric soon posted a family picture from the same evening, and no one pictured, not Tiffany, not Ivanka, not Eric, not Don Jr. and not Donner or Blitzen, was sporting…a flag pin.
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No flag pins in sight. |
At any rate, while we’re on the topic, can we remember again what Washington Irving said two centuries ago? His comment tells us something about true patriotism and the Trump clan today.
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“Teach us to distrust and despise those clamorous patriots whose courage dwells but in the tongue.”
Washington Irving
(1819)
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There’s still hope for Barron because
he’s young.
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