We live in a society that, generally, gives us a level of personal and political freedoms that many people in the world do not have. We often take these freedoms for granted as they become part of the background noise of our everyday life. However, Freedom is not the natural condition of mankind. Most of human history is characterised by tyranny and slavery. We may well believe that freedom is the product of a set of "inalienable rights" arising from god or nature, but these were still rights that had to be fought for. Our ancestors made enormous sacrifices to ensure that human dignity did in fact entail our rights. The tradition of freedom is not infinite and not eternal. It has finite limits and there are limits to its tolerance. Stretched beyond those limits, free societies are fragile and easily break. Functioning Democracies can easily become dictatorships and it can take generations for that process to be reversed. One of our greatest fears, expressed by authors such as George Orwell is that we may encounter dictatorships whose grip over the hearts and minds is so absolute, that there is no prospect of a reversal.
Liberty is not guaranteed but is an inheritance from one generation to another and it is up to each generation to renew its faith in personal liberty and to secure the institutions for the duration of brief its stewardship in government. Liberty is about more than individual wants. It is a common resources from which all of us can benefit. But when societies are driven only by self-interest, our common resources are degraded because people take advantage of them without putting something back to ensure that those resources continue for another generation.
What can we do to protect those free institutions and ensure they endure for the next generation?
I think a lot of it depends on how we define "freedom" and "liberty." Regarding the "natural condition of mankind," one thing that comes to mind is how disorganized the world has truly been up until recently. The tyranny only lasted until the borders of the next kingdom or some unclaimed wilderness area where people could go to escape slavery or tyranny.
An able-bodied person with a few primitive tools and practical survival skills (hunting, gathering, etc.) could still eke out a free existence far away from tyranny or slavery. The average peasant would be better equipped and better skilled to do that than those of us living today, where we've grown so heavily dependent on technology that most of us couldn't last more than a day or two out in the wild, even if the wild still existed. Through most of human history, we were only as "free" as nature would allow. A village/tribal existence also afforded some freedom, at least inasmuch as everyone was related to each other and part of the same extended family.
Even in the early days of the American colonies, a lot of the colonists were settlers and farmers along the frontier, who were able to coexist with the Native Americans, trade with them, have small homesteads with enough to able to survive under relatively free conditions. A lot of the early local "governments" were disorganized and far away from the centers of tyranny, so they were mostly left alone. It wasn't until the Seven Years War (aka "French and Indian War") that there started to be more and more government, taxes, and outside interference in areas where people had lived peacefully and freely for generations. It was partly due to that "sudden switch" in governmental style that triggered the colonists to rebel and fight to reclaim the "freedom" that they thought they always had.
But nowadays, it's completely different, mostly due to technology, a rapid rise in population, and government-driven scrambles to claim and take as much land as possible. Now, there is no "unclaimed" or open land available for people to move to, except maybe Alaska or northern Canada, but a lot of today's generations just don't have the skills to survive under those conditions. (I've heard that it's not uncommon for Alaskan rangers and other authorities to find people trying to do that, but failing miserably and in need of rescue - even people who fancy themselves as "survivalists" who are experienced hunters and have better survival skills than most. Even they have found great difficulties.)
So at this point, there is literally no place on Earth where one can go to find true "freedom" from government. Even Antarctica is pretty much all sewn up and under international treaty. Besides, most people like living in a technologically advanced, luxurious society, so they would rather have that with a modicum of "freedom" than have true freedom out in the wilderness.
I don't think it's really true "freedom" that people want, but it's more a sense of decency, morality, and compassion from governments and rulers (in addition to material sustenance, which is more important anyway). If we have to live in a cage either way, then let it be a gilded cage where one can still have a relatively decent life, at least to the point of having their basic needs provided for (as long as they carry their own weight and do a share of the workload).
"Slavery" is as much an illusion as "freedom," when you really think about it. Even back when slavery was legal and more common, most slaves could simply run away and escape - but where would they go? Where could they go, and how could they survive? That's what kept people locked in place - not so much fear of slave-catchers going out en masse to capture one or two errant slaves.
That's why "freedom" is pretty much an illusion, since the common response in America is "love it or leave it." If you don't like living in our "free" society, then there's the door. You can always leave, but leave to where? That's the same choice that a slave would face, so there's really no difference, when you come right down to it.
