You are currently browsing the tag archive for the ‘Freedom’ tag.
The UK government under Prime Minister Keir Starmer has introduced the so-called BritCard proposal: a mandatory digital identity (ID) scheme set to roll out by 2029. According to Reuters and other major outlets, the idea is that workers will need this digital ID for right-to-work checks, and over time it may be extended to access public services like tax records, childcare, welfare, etc. (reuters.com) Critics argue it creates centralized databases, raises risks of surveillance, invites overreach, and may pave the way for a social credit framework. (theguardian.com)
A social credit system, like the one China is implementing, is where citizens are monitored, graded or blacklisted for various behaviors (both major and minor), and then rewarded or punished accordingly. In China, examples include: blocking millions of people from buying airplane or train tickets due to “discredited behaviour” (which might include unpaid fines or minor public misbehavior); preventing access to education or luxury purchases; placing people or companies on public blacklists affecting their livelihoods; and using facial recognition and wide surveillance to monitor compliance. (theguardian.com) Such a system curtails freedoms: freedom of movement, career opportunities, public participation, and even speech if one criticizes the state or fails to conform to expected norms.
The UK’s BritCard digital ID proposals, alongside other legislative trends, are troubling signs of creeping authoritarianism—where government tools offer the capacity for control as much as for convenience. Canada shows similar risks: its proposed Combatting Hate Act includes expanding definitions of hate speech, creating new offences for obstruction, intimidation, and streamlining hate-speech and propaganda prosecutions. (canada.ca) While aiming to protect vulnerable communities, such expanded powers risk chilling free speech, targeting dissent, and giving the state too much discretion over what is or isn’t allowable expression. As free societies, the West must resist anything resembling social credit systems dressed up as digital ID or online-hate regulation.
The Panopticon come to life.
What Social Credit Means for Freedom
Here’s what is at stake if systems like China’s are ever adopted in the West:
- Freedom of Movement: Bans on travel by air, train, or road for those with low “scores.”
- Freedom of Speech: Criticism of the government or “unharmonious” views can lower your score.
- Economic Opportunity: Blacklisting can prevent people from starting businesses, holding jobs, or receiving loans.
- Privacy & Autonomy: Facial recognition, mass surveillance, and data collection track daily life in detail.
- Access to Education & Services: Children of “blacklisted” parents have been denied access to private schools.
- Social Participation: Public shaming lists and score rankings reduce citizens to state-monitored reputations.
- Rule of Law: Arbitrary and opaque standards allow punishment without due process.
References
- Reuters – Britain to introduce mandatory digital ID cards
- FT – Digital ID: what is the UK planning, and why now?
- The Guardian – Digital ID plan for UK risks creating an ‘enormous hacking target’
- The Guardian – China bans 23m ‘discredited’ citizens from buying travel tickets
- CNBC – China to stop people traveling who have bad ‘social credit’
- Sohu – Examples of Chinese blacklists and restrictions
- Government of Canada – Combatting Hate Act – proposed legislation
A great place to start, I think. :)
1.Economic Freedom for Every Canadian
Imagine a Canada where your hard-earned money stays in your pocket, not drained by endless taxes. We propose bold tax cuts and the permanent end to the carbon tax, lifting financial burdens and sparking economic growth. A Canadian version of DOGE could take this further, injecting innovation into our economy while empowering individuals and businesses to thrive. This is about more than savings—it’s about giving you the freedom to prosper.
2. A Nation Rooted in Culture and Fairness
Canada’s strength lies in its people, but mass migration without limits risks stretching our resources thin and diluting our identity. We stand for controlled immigration that honors our values, paired with a renewed focus on promoting strong families and celebrating Canadian culture. Add to that a commitment to women’s sex-based rights, and we’re building a society that’s fair, united, and proud—free from the clutter of woke nonsense that’s crept into government.
3. Security and Sovereignty Above All
A strong Canada demands safety and independence. We’ll get hard on crime, ensuring justice and security for every citizen, while bolstering our military to protect the north and secure our borders. By stripping out divisive gender ideologies from governance, we refocus on what matters: a nation that’s tough, fair, and fiercely sovereign. This is a Canada worth fighting for—one that puts its people first.
The decision against Amy Hamm, detailed in the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms document from March 13, 2025, casts a shadow over the rights of women to speak freely. As a nurse, Hamm faced professional misconduct charges for sharing gender-critical views, a ruling that suggests her words were too heavy a burden for her profession to bear. This outcome feels like a quiet wound to women who rely on open expression to navigate a world that often overlooks their perspectives. It raises a somber question: if a woman’s honest thoughts can cost her livelihood, what space remains for her to speak without fear?
Women’s rights depend so much on the ability to voice what matters—whether it’s about their bodies, their work, or the policies that shape their lives. The Hamm case hints at a troubling pattern: when women step outside accepted lines, even thoughtfully, they risk being muted by those meant to protect fairness. It’s disheartening to think that a nurse, someone who cares for others daily, could be penalized not for her actions but for her words. This doesn’t just touch Hamm—it brushes against every woman who hesitates to speak up, wondering if her voice might carry too high a price.
Please, let’s hold onto the simple truth that free speech is a lifeline for women. I ask for a gentler approach, one that doesn’t rush to punish but listens instead. Hamm’s story shouldn’t end with her silence; it should remind us to safeguard the right of women to express themselves, even when it’s hard to hear. We need a world where women like her can share their views—raw, real, and human—without losing what they’ve worked so hard to build. That’s not too much to hope for, is it?
Free speech isn’t a tricky concept. It just needs to be applied universally and especially to the opinions and words of people you disagree with. Take some time and read the whole essay, it is worth your time.
“Another meme popular with the enemy is “calling bigotry an opinion is like calling arsenic a flavor”. Again, in plain English, “any opinion that I personally define as bigotry should not be tolerated”. To the jihadist or the Christian fundamentalist, any criticism or mockery of their own religion constitutes bigotry. And so it goes. The crux of the thing is who gets to define “bigotry” or whatever category of opinions is deemed intolerable and thus not protected free speech.
The people who make these kinds of assertions always assume that it is they, or people like them, who would have the power to define what is intolerant and thus intolerable. Don’t forget that in the near future it could be president DeSantis and a passel of legislators like Marjorie Taylor Greene who will be empowered to make that decision. The principle of free expression of opinion as an inviolable and seamless, yes, moral standard would stand robustly against them, because it would stand equally against any such attack regardless of which views are being suppressed. Once you decide certain opinions are worthy of suppression on whatever grounds, you have no principle to stand on when your opponents turn on you and try to suppress yours.”
“Yes, it makes for a more violent society. It makes gun crime, including the mass shootings, vastly more prevalent that it is in the UK and other European countries. But that is a choice that Americans have made. They may tweak their laws a little at the edges in response to the latest atrocity. They may require a medical certificate here, or a licence there, or curbs on the open sale of the most murderous automatic weapons. But they will not legislate, still less amend their Constitution, to deny people the right to bear arms.
To blame the US gun lobby for this, in the shape of the National Rifle Association, is to see things the wrong way around. The NRA is a force and has money because gun-ownership enjoys public support, and no amount of mass shootings or appeals from shocked Europeans is going to change this. Americans have accepted a trade-off, between permissive gun laws and the high incidence of death by shooting. It is a trade-off that regards El Paso and Dayton, and Columbine, Stoneham Douglas and the rest, as a high, but largely tolerable, price for what is seen as the ultimate in personal freedom. This view will persist well after Donald Trump has left the White House, and probably for a long time after that.”
The price is bit to high for me. I’m quite okay with not have the degree of freedom that American’s possess in exchange for the reasonable expectation that I will not be gunned down as I teach class, or while I’m watching or movie, or really doing anything in public.
This quote is from the Harper’s Magazine archive. We Do Abortions Here: A Nurse’s Story, is a powerful piece that goes 
beyond the well worn positions that are still being dragged about today. I recommend a full reading, go to Harper’s Archive to read it.
“Women have abortions because they are too old, and too young, too poor, and too rich, too stupid and too smart. I see women who berate themselves with violent emotions for their first and only abortion, and others who return three times, five times, hauling two or three children, who cannot remember to take a pill or where they put the diaphragm. We talk glibly about choice. But the choice for what? I see all the broken promises in lives lived like a series of impromptu obstacles. There are the sweet, light promises of live and intimacy, the glittering promise of education and progress, the warm promise of safe families, long years of innocence and community. And there is the promise of freedom: freedom from failure, from faithlessness. Freedom from biology. The early feminist defense of abortion asked many questions, but the one I remember is this: Is biology destiny? And the answer is yes, sometimes it is. Women who have the fewest choices of all exercise their right to abortion the most.”
A small slice of what the emancipation of women looks like can be found here. There is a distinct lack of ’empowerment’ and empty consumerist gestures in the second wave – just women liberating the space for women to make the tough calls in their lives as they see fit. It is not happy-fun-times, not empowerful, but rather it is the cold embrace of the bitter-sweet choices in life that, till recently, only half of the population was deemed worthy enough to experience.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
Your opinions…