This means, quite simply, that the number of free states has declined as well. While not as "unfree" today as, say, twenty years ago, the state of play for freedom (and those who relish in the confusion, messiness, and uncertainty which comes with being free) remains parlous in the extreme.
It is a quick--and very sobering--process to take a dekko at the report's regional maps. They tell a lot in one fast view.
Consider the map of the Middle East and North Africa. There is only one country--Israel--which meets the criteria for freedom. In comparison there are fourteen states with a total population of nearly 325 million which are categorized as "not free." Three states with a population of thirty eight million are "partly free." It is of more than passing interest that the only non-Muslim country in the regions--Israel--is also the only "free" one.
The map of Central Asia, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union shows a similar picture when one looks at the coexistence of Islam and populations which are "not free." The solidly Muslim Central Asian republics are solidly "not free." In Eastern Europe it is of interest that Serbia is "free," while the Muslim plurality state of Bosnia is "not free."
A quick look at the world map indicates that very few Muslim majority countries are in the "free" classification. Indonesia makes the cut, but it is fair to argue with that conclusion given recent waves of anti-"Infidel" violence in the island state. Mali makes the list of "free" states which is a credit to it given that most of Africa is in one of the two lesser categories as well as it is ninety percent Muslim.
Both Turkey and Pakistan are considered by Freedom House to be "partly free." How well merited this designation is and how long it might be applicable are both open to debate. The increasingly Islamist leaning Turkish government of the AKP as well as the rapid growth of Islamism among recent arrivals in Ankara and Istanbul from the hinterlands seem to show a negative trajectory for Turkey's overall freedom. Pakistan is torn between pure Islamist jihadists, supporters of Islamism, those who hope to use and control Islamist jihadism for reasons of state, and a diminishing number of more or less nominal Muslims who see a place for religion but hope to keep religion in its place. This dynamic does not bode well for either the continued freedoms in or the stability of Pakistan.
To look at the "free" side of the world map is to see the tracery of both the Enlightenment and the Christian worldview which gave rise to that often maligned intellectual, social, and political movement of the Seventeenth and succeeding centuries. Western Europe, North America, most of South America as well as such offshoot states as Australia, India, South Africa are on the "A" list. Japan and South Korea appear among the blessed as well. (As does, rather surprisingly, that distant, desert country of Mongolia, a place untouched by the referenced phenomena.)
South America is primarily "free." Some of "partly free" are members of the Bolavarian Revolutionary group. Others such are experiencing internal political unrest including that driven by narcotraffickers. The only "not free" state in the hemisphere is the old standby, Cuba. The number of "free" countries is quite encouraging compared to a couple of decades back, but it is disturbing that the Bolivarian movement has used the mechanism of elections to come to freedom limiting conclusions.
Freedom brings some necessary consequences. Among these are uncertainties, inequities, imperfect justice, and and very imperfect outcomes. Freedom equals political messiness, slow solutions to complex problems, frustration, and other less than fun-filled concomitants of the human condition such as disorder and insecurity.
People crave security and certainty in life. Most also want fair even if imperfect outcomes, equity of reward and sacrifice, and other forms of ameliorating the many vicissitudes to which life is automatically heir.
Freedom limiting regimes, be they secular or religious in their ideological roots, promise to overcome insecurity, defeat disorder, insure equity and justice, and generally banish the icky-poo aspects of life. Therein lies the fatally seductive appeal of limiting liberty in the interest of greater goods. It matters not in the least that history has demonstrated repeatedly that the promises as well as the greater goods of the freedom annullers is on a par with the visions induced by LSD. People will continue to fall for the scam, to sell their freedom for the hallucination of security and predictability.
Only the graveyard possesses perfect tranquility, complete peace, absolute certainty, and utter predictability. People need desperately to get a firm grip on that reality. They also need to get a grip on a companion truth: Life, real, real authentic life, is as an unending exercise in risk, a constant career of sticking one's face in a fan until finally the graveyard can no longer be escaped.
We are all going to end up there. Thus there is no reason to hasten the process which is what has happened in all those many countries where freedom has been buried by a pile of false promises.
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