On Freedom

Snyder writes from Ukraine’s Kherson region during the war, describing burned gas stations, mined fields, and struggling sunflowers. Remarking on the deep history of the region, he argues that Russia’s theft of museum artifacts and its targeting of agriculture and ports echo older imperial practices in which hunger itself becomes a weapon of war. Watermelons, once the region’s signature crop, emerge as emblems of solidarity after liberation. Snyder emphasizes that freedom cannot be entrusted to impersonal forces or oligarchs; it depends on values and collective effort, echoing the ancient Greek statesman Pericles’s call to rely on “our own hearts and hands” (245).

Snyder then introduces the “geometry” of the fifth dimension—the realm of values distinct from the four dimensions of space-time. Its rules are difference (a distinction between what is and ought to be), plurality (many virtues), intransitivity (virtues cannot be neatly ranked), tension (virtues often conflict), and combinability (people can creatively mix and invent virtues). Because no single truth or perfect plan exists, human judgment and imperfection make absolute freedom possible. Freedom occurs in the “space between” what is and what ought to be, where people continually choose among values. Snyder stresses that rules need both creation and critique; value conflicts cannot be escaped, only navigated. The five forms of freedom—sovereignty, unpredictability, mobility, factuality, and solidarity—serve as tools for that navigation, justifying government and guiding individuals.

He stresses that each form of freedom requires action. Sovereignty requires policy and generational work that help children grow into capable adults, supported by schools, libraries, and parental leave. Unpredictability demands rethinking social media through government regulation and personal practices. Mobility depends on infrastructure and institutions, from universities to roads, that allow people to move and develop. Factuality requires local reporting, independent journalism, and policies that fund them, along with individual choices to support news sources. Solidarity is realized through joining civic groups, assisting others with voting or medical debt, aiding those affected by war, and practicing daily climate responsibility.

Turning to the United States, Snyder argues that political divisions are worsened by collapsed local news, oligarchic concentration, and social media. He critiques right-wing definitions of negative freedom that devolve into chaos and leader worship, and left-wing emphases on equality that sometimes sideline liberty. Freedom, he asserts, is the “value of values” (251) while acknowledging equality as essential to its practice. He proposes a synthesis of traditions: liberal (placing freedom at the center), conservative (anchoring freedom in virtues), and socialist (building structures that support values). The republican and democratic traditions alike, he suggests, converge on self-government.

Democracy itself both sustains and depends on the forms of freedom. Snyder calls for positive freedom in voting, grounded in universal access, automatic registration, paper ballots, an end to gerrymandering, and public financing of campaigns. He criticizes the Supreme Court’s 2010 ruling Citizens United v. FEC, which equates money with speech, arguing that this equation advances oligarchy at the expense of dissenters and marginalized groups. Drawing on history from ancient Athens, Sparta, Rome, and modern Poland, he warns that democracy decays without vigilance against oligarchy and insists that teaching difficult history is vital for sustaining a durable, self-correcting republic.

He then turns to labor and markets. Freedom requires markets designed around humans rather than machines. Snyder advocates reversing incentives that privilege automation over training people, enforcing antitrust laws to curb monopolies, and shifting corporate time horizons beyond quarterly returns. He identifies unions as essential institutions of solidarity that strengthen civil society, protect factuality, and historically foster interracial coalitions. By contrast, profit from confinement—private prisons, detention centers, or contracted coercion—undermines liberty and must be rejected.

Mass incarceration, he argues, reveals the contradiction between American ideals and practices. Prison rates have risen even as crime has declined, disproportionately targeting Black Americans. Snyder calls for fewer prisons, shorter sentences, and an end to the drug war, along with investment in rehabilitative and especially “prehabilitative” opportunities that give children and young adults pathways to freedom. Responsibility, he warns, becomes tyrannical when individuals are blamed while structures deny them the possibility of freedom.

Snyder insists that extreme inequality is incompatible with a free republic. He calls for more effectively enforcing existing tax laws, closing loopholes, taxing both consumption and income progressively, and considering wealth taxes. Such measures, he argues, would ease inequality without affecting the lives of the very rich, and they align with traditions from James Madison and Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Paine, John Stuart Mill, Mark Twain, Friedrich Hayek, and Martin Luther King Jr.—all of whom linked liberty to economic fairness. The barrier is not cost but political will: The wealthy evade taxes while the broader society is left with immobility and diminished freedom.

Snyder also addresses digital life. Social media predict and manipulate users, eroding unpredictability. He offers practical habits to reclaim bodily agency—exercise before screens, remove devices from bedrooms, read physical books, write letters, and engage in face-to-face conversation. He proposes a new right, habeas mentem, or “you shall have the body of your mind.” This entails a public mandate (screen-light schools with strong teachers, public universities free of debt burdens), a private mandate (professional ethics for engineers and programmers), and a charter of fair transparency (giving users control over data, limiting data retention, ensuring correction of falsehoods, and requiring algorithmic accountability). Machines, he insists, must serve human purposes, not the reverse.

Freedom of speech depends on institutions that create and protect facts. Snyder argues for affirmative policies to sustain investigative and local journalism: subsidized reporting, national infrastructures for documentation, public service correspondent programs, and taxes on targeted advertising to fund news outlets. He draws historical parallels, noting that conventions like copyright did not arise naturally but were created to protect liberty. Today, he warns, news deserts—regions lacking access to trustworthy local journalism—invite lies and conspiracy theories; a revival of local factuality is essential for democracy.

Snyder closes with personal reflections on freedom as inheritance and practice, built through generations of labor, care, and community. Later conversations and experiences remind him of racial inequalities that continue to constrain freedom for many Americans. He argues that inclusion requires accommodating others’ stories and experiences, particularly those of Black Americans disproportionately affected by incarceration and violence. Freedom begins with virtues, but it also requires empathy, recognition, and responsibility for one another’s conditions.

Snyder ends with images of his own children, connecting their unpredictability and resilience to the broader hope for freedom’s future. Freedom, he concludes, is not automatic or inevitable but a chance—our last and best one—that must be seized together through shared values, good government, and mutual recognition.