Google’s nGram Viewer charts the frequency of word usage from among millions of books printed since 1800. By dividing the number of times that a particular word or phrase appears in a given year by the total number of words in the entire corpus of work produced that year, Google calculates the frequency of single word grams, or two-word bi-grams, and so on. In this admittedly limited fashion, Google’s tool permits researchers to explore micro-trends. We conducted some research of our own with the nGram Viewer, tracking the usage over time of the closely worded bi-grams: ‘freedom from’ and ‘freedom to.’1 The results appear below.
The modest prepositional shift is significant. Laudable ‘freedoms to’ include things like the freedom to assemble, to worship as we please, to speak freely, to due process, and to trial by jury. These freedoms are deeply valued in liberal societies. But equally important ‘freedoms from’ also hold high social value. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights enshrines “freedom from fear and want” as the most highly sought after among “the common people,” but freedom from tyranny, from unreasonable search and seizure, and from cruel and unusual punishment also rate pretty highly for most of us.
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