Celebrating the first bill of rights while forgetting the second

Well, it's that time of year again. Between Canada Day on the first day of the month and America's 4th of July holiday, everyone is busy celebrating freedom in North America. When we're not setting off fireworks we like to spend time congratulating ourselves for supposedly enjoying more freedom than anyone else, especially here in the states. But we've been taught to only look at one side of the coin when it comes to freedom. Negative liberty, the liberty provided by an absence of obstacles to action such as freedom from restrictions on speech or worship, gets almost all the press. Positive liberty, the freedom that comes with the ability to act, gets almost none.

The US Bill of Rights and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada have both done an excellent job of articulating the limits of government power when it comes to placing legal restrictions on our right to speak out on an issue, assemble, worship, or to vote for the candidate of our choice - however limited the choice of candidates may sometimes be. The trend, at least until recently, was an expansion of individual liberty and greater checks on government intrusion or obstacles.

While freedom requires the government be prohibited from putting us in jail for publicly criticizing the president or prime minister, it also rests on our ability to effectively do so. If the poor and middle class are shut out of the electoral process because elections have become so expensive they can't effectively participate as candidates, or even donors, what difference does it make if the Constitution guarantees them the right to run for office provided they have reached a certain age? If we have the freedom to pursue any employment we choose, what good is that freedom if the list of jobs providing a living wage continues to shrink? Does it matter that we have the legal right to attend university provided our grades are good enough if the cost of tuition is so high most of the population can't even consider attending without facing years of staggering debt? The government of the UK acknowledged recently in a memo never intended to go public that up to 40,000 British families would be rendered homeless by proposed austerity measures. What good is it to them to have the legal right to purchase or rent a home? That choice has been or soon will be denied to them.

By focusing on individual negative liberty and forgetting positive liberty, we haven't merely put the cart before the horse; we've purchased the cart and failed to invest in a horse to pull it with. The legal right to do something is meaningless without the ability to do it. If our letters to the editor, votes, and even our volunteer hours or campaigns are drowned out by the rich because the supreme court has equated money with speech, the freedom to speak is trumped by wealth's ability to be heard, even if we don't want to listen.

Toward the end of World War II, FDR articulated a second bill of rights. These included the right to earn a living and to provide food, clothing, and shelter for ourselves and our families, the right to healthcare, and the right to an education. These together, FDR said, "spelled security", and were essential to the long-term maintenance of the other freedoms we hold dear. In a society where negative liberties are enshrined as sacred but the ability to effectively act on those liberties is increasingly denied, cynicism and despair are the inevitable result. Who among us would deny both are increasingly visible in the body politic today?

The current recession and the election of Barack Obama filled many of us with hope something like the second bill of rights was around the corner, but with the word 'austerity' filling the air, Gandhi's reminder that "to a hungry man, God comes in the form of a loaf of bread" seems more apt than the promise of change that seemed everywhere just over two years ago. The ability of more and more of our fellow citizens to provide for themselves, let alone take advantage of the rights guaranteed in our most important documents, is slipping away, and that means today there is significantly less freedom than there was just a few years ago.