One of my friends has recently taken a deeper interest in politics, and e-mailed me to ask what I think “will bring this nation greater liberty.” She probably got much more than she expected, but here’s what I sent back to her:

The most direct answer is legislation, of course. The American people, as well as all branches of the government, need to realize that the First Amendment applies to all people, regardless of religion, sex, gender, nationality or sexual orientation. We’ve made some progress with race, fortunately, although racism still exists. Part of the problem is that one political party controls both houses of Congress, the White House, and soon the Supreme Court. Any government that is so one-sided makes freedom difficult. This is especially dangerous to liberty because the Republican party is very religiously-based and gets a great deal of their support from far right conservative groups, which is actively threatening the separation of church and state. Conservative Christianity disagrees with the Constitution on several points, and the Republican government is working on taking away rights and freedoms that every human being should have, such as privacy, warrant requirements for search and seizure, habeus corpus, the right to a speedy trial, reproductive freedom, and the freedom to love other consenting adults.

A less obvious answer on gaining more freedom is moving away from a two-party system. When there are only two realistic choices to vote for, it limits the options of the American people. The two parties have become polarized, with the Republicans being strictly conservative and even stepping backward from the social progress we’ve made, and the Democrats trying to maintain a constituency by not being too progressive but still more so than the Republicans. The Green and Libertarian parties and independents don’t even count in any election, and that isn’t how it should be. The English Parliament runs its elections with lots of different parties, then divides up the seats in Parliament according to the percentages of the popular vote in each party’s favor. I normally don’t like the idea of voting for a party rather than an individual, but with more parties, it’s almost like voting for an individual because there are more and slighter degrees of difference among the parties, which better reflect individual preferences. It’s one effective way to give people more liberty in their elections, and we should either use it or find another.

More should also be done to combat poverty. People with low incomes have very restricted options in life, and some find that breaking the law is the only way to survive. Instead of handing out tax breaks to rich companies that give campaign contributions to the political parties (and that are owned by politicians), the government should offer more need-based education grants and subsidize housing in better areas of town so that people have better chances of finding decent jobs and going to decent schools. Another effective tool against poverty would be decent sex education. Abstinence is a very good idea, but teaching kids that it’s the only option has been shown to be completely ineffective. People have sex no matter what you tell them, and without accurate knowledge of birth control, pregnancy happens. Unplanned pregnancy is the leading cause of people falling into poverty, and it’s a huge cause of them staying there. It’s actually been widely theorized that the Global Gag Rule, which prevents aid workers in undeveloped countries from giving out birth control or information about it, was designed to keep poor nations overpopulated and poor so they can’t compete with the U.S. People need to have the freedom to reproduce only when they choose, if they’re going to truly be free. This goes for Bush’s attempts to restrict/outlaw abortion, as well. No government should have the power to restrict people’s access to information that they could use to make their own decisions, especially in other countries, and especially in this one.

What the government does need to restrict is how much business owners and supervisors can abuse their employees with forced overtime, bad benefits, and less pay than is deserved and can be afforded. Workers’ rights are invaluable, but employees are often too scared of their employers to stand up for them, and these rights often go unenforced by the government. There is too much power in the hands of the few people who own the businesses. Getting away from over-concentration of power was the sole purpose of the founding fathers setting up the government with three branches instead of making their own monarchy. I favor capitalism completely, but there should be greater restrictions on corporations and greater protections for their workers.