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This is an ambitious book with a title that beckons us and promises much, particularly given the current political climate in the United States. In response to the terrorism of September 11, 2001, the United States has become involved in two wars against oppressive regimes, one directly related in Afghanistan and the other unrelated in Iraq, and President Bush has articulated an aggressive policy of bringing freedom and democracy to the Middle East. At the same time, freedom, in terms of civil liberties, has been sorely tried by the Bush administration, from apparently illegal federal wiretapping of citizens to imprisonment of suspected terrorists or suspicious immigrants who are denied access to lawyers or judicial process, to the torture of detainees. Yet, Bush was re-elected when much of this was known. A recent survey of one thousand Americans found that only one in four could name more than one of the five fundamental First Amendment freedoms: speech, religion, press, assembly, and petition to redress of grievances (McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum, 2006). The question posed by these circumstances is whether this country, when threatened from without, can maintain its tradition of freedom. Thus, a book with this title seems particularly appropriate at this time.
However, Alford is not writing about political freedom per se. In fact, he does not define what he means by “freedom”. Instead, he attempts to find out what his American informants mean when they use the word “freedom”, and hopes that by doing so he will go to the heart of how Americans think about freedom. To do so, he obtained a “non-random” sample, which one must turn to the research appendix in the book to understand. Most, he says, came from the state university where he was employed, 35 between the ages of 18 and 30, and 17 between the ages of 31 and 74.