What is "freedom" and "democracy" ?

By 史蒂夫 奥多

Those of you who do not live in the USA do not get the constant barrage of messages from government, civic groups and the media that tell you how lucky you are to live in a free democracy where you can "say what you want" and you have "total freedom" to live your life as you want. How real is this freedom? Let's look at my weekend and see.
I changed my resume to make it harder to trace my name and connect it to these blogs. I've changed the blogs to make them harder to connect to my name, when looking for a job. Anyone can Google my name. Since I live in a small town, I had to change that to Wichita, the near by mega-city, so they can't tell it's me. I've removed any obvious symbols of Maoism from many of my sites to prevent people from pinning me to that address in Maize.
All of this is so I can peruse a job, which in the USA is a privilege, not a right. "Society does not owe you a living" I was told my whole life. Yet they stick financial responsibilities on you and feel free to turn you down for jobs if they Google your name and find things they don't like. There is no sense of fair play. It's all their play and they make the rules to suit them. They can drug test you, they can turn you down for a job based on what you write or believe. I still have to make changes in my resume and maybe more of my blogsites.
Then I will read newspaper editorial letters telling me how lucky I am to live in a country that allows us to vote for our leaders (two parties and in some states only one) and the freedom to express my viewpoints. Yes the freedom to express my viewpoints if I'm not looking for a job. I may have already lost a few jobs because of blogs I have written not only here by on other sites.
There comes a point where the terms "freedom" and "democracy" don't seem to have any meaning at all. They are for those who generally agree with the status quo or those who do not fall outside of the boundaries of expectable speech. So what does it mean to live in a "free country" or a "democracy"? I honestly really don't know. If such country exists I've never seen it and it doesn't exist here. I honestly have no experience with these concepts. I am outside of America's "norm" and live in an alien world where "democracy" and "freedom" have no meaning at all. I've even been told not to use foreign lettering because it might cause potential employees to be suspicious of what I have to say, as if I'm leaving terrorists messages. I look at it this way; the ignorance of potential employers creates suspicion than I am hiding something.

សតេវុទតុ