If you’ve never had freedom taken from you, it’s easier to take it for granted. If you have, freedom becomes more precious and vital to survival and advancement. This is of much more than a matter of personal freedoms within Unfree countries. The despots ruling them also pose major threats to other countries.
For the 4th year in a row, according to Freedom House’s invaluable annual analyses since 1972, freedom has declined in the world. One can only hope that the Obamites are paying attention, as there is more evidence of they not giving much of a damn.
In 2009, declines for freedom were registered in 40 countries, representing 20 percent of the world’s polities…. The year also featured a drop in the number of electoral democracies from 119 to 116, the lowest figure since 1995.
Still:
By absolute historical standards, the overall state of freedom in the world has improved over the last two decades. Many more countries were in the Free category and were designated as electoral democracies in 2009 than in 1989, and the majority of countries that made major progress 20 years ago have retained those improvements….
But over the last four years, the dominant pattern has been one of growing restrictions on the fundamental freedoms of expression and association in authoritarian settings, and a failure to continue democratic progress in previously improving countries due to unchecked corruption and weaknesses in the rule of law.
Freedom House doesn’t measure promises or commentators’ perceived portents. Freedom House sticks to what actually exists. For example, 88% of the people in the MidEast and North Africa region were in Unfree countries. Check out this map: http://www.freedomhouse.org/uploads/fiw10/FIW_2010_Map_MENA.pdf Note the only speck of freedom is in tiny Israel. Wonder why the rulers of Islamic countries and their Unfree allies concentrate on eliminating Israel’s threat, by comparison alone, to their satrapies lack of freedoms or economic advancement.
There’s much more detail in the Freedom House reports.
