Dear Editor,

Although freedom and Emancipation have a close relationship, they are not necessarily the same thing.

Emancipation apparently is the ability to positively affect or change your current circumstances, while freedom means having those circumstances or green light to do whatever you want.

For instance, the man who murders and ends up behind bars had the same freedom as that man who was working to support his family or helping someone in need. For that reason, freedom is neither a good or bad thing, except in what it is used for.

A baby may be free to eat a little more substantive food than milk, but not necessarily liberated from its mother’s breasts. Just as a man could be physically free to work, yet not emancipated from a dependency syndrome.

Similarity, a man may be free to develop his economy, but is burdened by a self-imposed slavery to several lending agencies. A person could become a slave to envy, hate, and jealousy, not because he’s denied the opportunities of his fellow man, but because a culture of entitlement dictates that if he’s deprived, some forces in nature determined it to be so.

Emancipation is a self-earned freedom, yet not all freedom equals emancipation. If a man is without direction he could become a slave to the very freedom he’s blessed with. The value of freedom, therefore, is that it allows the free man to prove what he’s actually made of. The value of emancipation is that it proves what the free man is made of.

Homer Sylvester

New York, USA

h2sylvester@gmail.com