This sentence appeared in a newspaper: "In our nation, freedom of religion and conscience are not only guaranteed in the constitution, they're exercised daily." Most citizens living in an open, free, democratic society would agree. But the sentence is a direct quote from the Karl Marx City Free Press, dated November 15, 1986. And this "free" press was anything but free at that time. It was Communist controlled. Today "Karl Marx City" once again bears its old name, Chemnitz, and the city has a democratic government. But the quote offers a useful example of the way words and content can be twisted, and rights and freedoms that are eloquently described in theory can be brutally suppressed in practice.
This kind of discrepancy between words and reality has occupied my thinking from earliest childhood. Having grown up in Berlin, which for many years was a divided city in a divided country, I experienced first-hand what freedom—or the lack of it—can mean.
One thing is clear. A freedom guaranteed in a government's constitution does not necessarily lead to individual freedom. But a freedom that is denied by the state does not necessarily limit individual freedom, either. The individual's thoughts determine his freedom, whether the individual is in a free society or not.
