Good commentary on these concepts in the Post today.
Our culture, which treasures freedom above any other value, is conflicted about what freedom means. Is it the raw assertion of my own will, in which any limitation of that will, whether imposed from without or embraced from within, makes me something less than what I should be? Or is freedom my capacity to choose to what great mission I will devote my energies, my talents, even my life? Does maximizing my freedom mean preserving only the capacity to choose, to keep my options open? Or is freedom noble precisely because it enables us to commit to a particular choice, one mission among a hundred options?
In this concept of autonomy, freedom and choice, what is being chosen matters as much as the fact that we have a choice. You might as well sit in a real prison if you are going to spiritually land yourself there anyway through bad choices.
While I’m at it, there was some good commentary on the same concepts published by my workplace, the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada, last week.
by 
By defining freedom as entwined with choice one necessarily concludes that either freedom is to have no restraint on our choices or freedom is the choosing of some alternatives. In either case one is saying freedom is choosing. Or one could say choosing is freedom. Is one actually saying anything when one sees freedom like this. Rather tautological. Much like saying; ‘A’ is ‘B’ and ‘B’ is ‘A’. Perhaps these words are not synonymous. Perhaps freedom is distinct from choice.
In the story of the Ugly Duckling the ‘ugly duck’ becomes free in discovering its’ true nature. The ‘duck’ might have said in this discovery; ‘I am free. Free of what I thought I was, of misinformation, of constraints. Free, to be me’. The ugly duck is neither ugly or a duck. It is a swan and in discovering it is a swan it becomes free. Choice has nothing to do with freedom. However, if one brought choice into the story I suppose one could say the ‘duck’ could still choose to believe about himself whatever he wanted or make whatever choices he felt like making but, that would never make him free.
In our day the popular idea is to equate freedom with the ability to do what we like. Although we can never be without constraint we strongly adhere to this constraint-less definition. Milton focused on this issue and wrote of the difference of freedom and license in saying (essentially) ‘the good love freedom and the rest love license’. The world of thought we generally live in is different from this consciousness. However, the understanding Milton had seems much more intelligible and workable. ‘I am free when I am who I truly am’ -inviting, versus, “I am free when I do what I want’ – impossible.