Emad Barsoum writes: Progression to Past
In only five days, the whole country fell into the hands of the guardians of darkness, a country with hope for a brighter future, where girls and women had a right to education, work, and equality. Everyone could listen to music, watch movies, and read. This is what makes a society able to live in stability, humanity, and equality, if we consider that these conditions are the basic needs for a nation to exist, then the elements are different for the progress and stability of a democratic, modern, and civilized nation.
The true north presented to the world a great example of how a nation from the new world has placed itself on the top of the world’s democracies, economies, and practices of human rights. The fuel for a nation to achieve such success is a mix of understanding its present and a clear vision for the future. However, these attributes need a strong catalyst for progress to take place; a government with the capability to cognize and anticipate its road map, true equality and justice, and candid freedom. The latter is a title for a broad spectrum of conditions and practices, which is primarily freedom of speech.
Freedom of speech should never be taken as a privilege but rather an absolute right, it is the freedom of speech that caused the drastic change in Europe in medieval times to move from the darkness of feudalism, the sovereignty of the church, and the inquisition into the exemplary democracies and humanity as we witness it now. The freedom of speech when it started took several forms, it was in literature, art, music, and ideas of great philosophers, all poured in that pot of progressiveness.
As we are getting closer to the federal elections to choose the government that we will put all our aspirations into, the history of how the modern world moved from darkness to such a great progression must have crossed many minds and became a pressing matter, and the question would be how could we choose the new government! While the two major parties are not presenting any sort of clear vision for the future of our nation, they have failed to attract most of their citizens to a clear road, however instead they derailed the future by focusing on matters that controvert the progressiveness and modernity, and what they hit first was the simplest right of humanity, the freedom of speech.
They turned a blind eye to many attempts to slain democracy and exterminate the freedom of speech, by allowing bills and laws to act against the original rights of humans, and by discriminating against certain ideologies in favor of others.
The incumbent government has created a crack in the society by its favoritism and its attempts to mute the voices of people, using the same methods that were applied under the totalitarian regimes, where there is an army of dark guards within our democratic society waiting to prosecute any loyal citizen who would speak about the future of the country by questioning or criticizing the thoughts and doings of others.
On the other side, the opposition had also stood still and did not present any program or platform that would give hope for a better future, one that would resolve all the downfalls of the current government.
The opposition is in total accord with the government in rushing us back to the past, where darkness one day could cover the skies of a progressive modern nation, the true north.
