I attended Timothy Snyder’s Conversation on Freedom and Democracy at the State Theater in September. One thing that I was pleasantly surprised by Timothy Snyder’s presentation was that even though it was a conversation about the ‘Dilemmas of Democracy’, he made it clear from the beginning that he personally believes that democracy is not doomed, and it is, in fact, our only chance at defending our future. I personally resonated with this statement because although the state of politics is not looking very bright right now, focusing on only the negatives without considering the solutions to those problems will not help. I appreciated how Timothy Snyder’s presentation was not all about how our future is doomed and he actually provided solutions to the problems we are facing today.

 

One part of Snyder’s conversation that I found particularly interesting was the discussion on ideas of “negative freedom” and “positive freedom” and the distinction between the two. He explained that the idea of negative freedom is that freedom is a matter of the government staying out of one’s business and not putting up barriers to one’s liberties. Positive freedom, however, is the idea that everyone should have freedom and the government exists to facilitate this. He explains that negative freedom is often a defense for people who already have the power to use against a government trying to disperse some of that power to others with less influence. Negative freedom, he believes, doesn’t serve inequality and aims to keep those with power and influence in control while leaving minority groups in the dust. I thought this was a really interesting way of looking at things and really resonated with his ideas on this topic. 

 

Another idea that Snyder brought up was the act of prison gerrymandering. This is when districts are gerrymandered to include large prisons, which adds to the population of the area, even though these prisoners can’t vote. By having large prisons in a district, it gives more representation and power to the area, a large part of the population is disenfranchised and doesn’t have a say in government. It’s also a reason why many politicians vote for more prisons in their area. Snyder connected this idea to the ⅗ rule from America’s history and how African American slaves were allowed to be partly counted as part of the population to give the south more representation, yet the slaves were not allowed to vote or participate in government in any way. I didn’t know much about this topic beforehand but I thought this whole part of the conversation was really interesting. 

 

Overall, I learned a lot from Timothy Snyder’s Conversation and I’m glad I went. It gave me a whole new perspective on the future of democracy and the ways we can possibly fix things. I really enjoyed the connections Snyder made to current issues in politics, such as the Ukraine War. It really proved to me that this discussion is more relevant now than ever and it inspired me to follow politics more closely after this presentation.