Abstract
Liberty and Freedom are and always were Basic Human Needs

A critical element in the evolution of modern social structures was the late 18th century formation of the U.S. Constitution. The American act can take responsibility in large part for the wave of revolutions that spread all over the globe six decades later in 1848. Looking back historically on the last millennium, Christianity had plenty of opportunities to struggle for Freedom and Liberty. Already in the early 8th century Islamic population flooded the Iberian Peninsula and South and Eastern Europe was under constant attacks and occupations all the way into the 20th century. The 19th century social changes were largely responsible for the explosive growth of productivity, technological and industrial revolutions bringing constant changes to Western Societies and the whole of the planet.

Full text
Liberty and Freedom are and always were Basic Human Needs
All indications are that the drive for Liberty and Freedom is built into humans at the DNA level and it is universal. The late 18th century U.S. Constitution has generally been considered a successful attempt to increase Freedom and greatly impressed the World. Six decades later, in 1848 January a revolution started in Sicily and spread to most of the European nations. It was republican forces against monarchies attempting to establish their independence. The same year revolts started to reshape the maps of South America, New Granada, Brazil and Bolivia. Uruguay had seen internal conflicts in the next year and Mexico was unable to participate only because the country was still struggling with the results of the Mexican-American War of 1845-48. Most of the European revolts failed against the monarchies but they slowly advanced toward their goals in the following decades.
The terms Liberty and Freedom carry endless, different – often contradictory – ideas in the West today. Historically, these sets of ideas were more focused on the self-realization of nations and groups, mostly defined by religious, cultural, ethnical and racial characteristics. Ideological confrontations were coined to be used by empires of the 20th century mostly, taking the West down on a self-destructive path toward dissolution.
The writings of Appiah (2016), Birken (1992) and Royal (1998) argue for the validity and even the nonexistence of Western Civilization. Clearly, the writers reflect on different evaluations of Western Culture offering the different views of different people with very different backgrounds. After reading their opinions the rather valid question comes to the surface: If Western Culture does not exist by definition, is there any culture in existence on this planet today?
Pope Urban II’s words “Deus vult!” or “God wills it!” at the Council of Clermont in 1095 was the proper answer for centuries of Muslim intrusions into Christian lands (Urban II 1095). The words resonated very differently in Europe and the Arab Peninsula. Urban II opened the gates for two centuries of Crusades and a new European attitude against the common enemy. The very foundation of European Christianity was endangered and by the standards of the age the opponent had to be engaged.
The roots of the West clearly go back to the Classic Greek period an age that survived and was carried on into Rome and Europe and spread around globally starting in the 16th century. Freedom and Liberty needs space and proper circumstances to exist. Their definition depends on the time and geographical location of the application with some universal elements almost always present. This space for Europe was secured by the last battles fought by King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile for Granada in early 1492. They broke almost eight centuries of Islamic occupation (Roberts 2017). In the very same year Columbus’ ships opened up the Americas for Europe’s besieged population.
What were the forces driving Leonidas’ 300 men against the Persians, the Spaniards eight century long struggle to retake their land from the Moors, the endless centuries of fighting of the Greeks and Hungarians against the Ottoman Empire, the relocation of the Kievan Rus after the 13th century Mongol invasions to the cold inhospitable northern environments of Russia? What drove the desperate uprisings of Hungarian and Polish people against the Red Army in 1956 (Lendvai 2008), (Persak 2018)? The goal was always the same: To secure space and freedom for self-realization based on religious, cultural, national, ethnic, linguistic and racial identity.