Our Most Important Freedom

There are lots of candidates for our most important freedom:

President Roosevelt in 1941 offered the Four Freedoms::
Freedom of speech and expression
Freedom of every person to worship in his [or her] own way
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear

Glenn Reynolds makes a good case for the right to keep and bear arms being the most important freedom not just here but worldwide.
"not one of the principal genocides of the twentieth century, and there have been dozens, has been inflicted on a population that was armed."

But the freedom I personally am most thankful for is the secret ballot. In my opinion, without that one, all the others can gradually be taken away. Democracy itself loses any useful meaning when votes of the people (the "demos") can be coerced, as they always can be when those with power can personally identify those who don't vote "correctly."

This, by the way, is the problem with doing public opinion surveys in unfree countries - most interviewees will offer to a stranger only the officially-sanctioned opinion on every issue. If, for example, you lived in the Palestinian Territories, and a stranger came to your door asking whether you favor peace with Israel, would you dare to say so?

Surprisingly, Congress is today considering taking away the right of the secret ballot in union elections (H.R. 800.) If that somehow passes in both the House and Senate, I sincerely hope President Bush will find and use his veto pen. It's ironic that a party named for democracy, and usually very concerned about human rights, would want to take away the one I consider most important of all.