Freedomite — English Dictionary

Noun

1. A member of a Christian zealot sect that split off from the Doukhobors, and which was involved in protests against certain policies of the Canadian government during the early to mid 20th century; the Doukhobors were a non-Orthodox religious group which emigrated from Russia to Canada at the end of the 19th century to escape persecution.

   Usage

   • Canada
   • also
   • attributive
   • Historical

   Examples

   More examples (1)

   They [the Freedomites] have no deep-down objection to education, but a child who learns his lessons in English instead of Russian, and who rubs shoulders with some other race of youngsters, is liable to get some of the "Freedomite" edges rubbed smooth. The children are said to be communal, and that he is—allegedly—a wise Freedomite who knows his own father.

   I think the house will find it interesting to know that 124 Freedomites served as volunteers during World War II.

   More examples (2)

   The writer pointed out that of the approximately 12,500 Doukhobors in British Columbia, only about 2,500 belonged to the Freedomite group and of these only 46 families, involving 66 children, were currently refusing to send their children to school.

   In certain quarters, the sentiment in relation to the Doukhobors was that the problems caused by the Freedomites were the result of zealotry and should not be confused with the aspirations and anxieties of the Doukhobor population at large, which was living in relative peace with itself and its neighbours. Freedomite resentment over and resistance to public education was no reason to undo the work of getting the rest of the Doukhobor community to buy into it.

2. A member of the Dominica Freedom Party.

   Usage

   • also
   • attributive

   Examples

   More examples (3)

   Although unable to make inroads into the Labor government until this election, the Freedomites stalled land reform, thwarting the socialist ideology of the party in power.

   Among the adherents of the new radicalism, the Freedom Party of 1970 was viewed as more a vehicle for criticism of the Labor regime (which the town-based Freedomites saw as an assault by the formerly powerless rural poor upon their citadel of privilege) than a catalyst for systemic change.

   He told DNO on Monday differences within the party led to his resignation but remains a Freedomite and is firmly committed to the development of Dominica, especially after Hurricane Maria.

3. One who advocates for freedom in various contexts.

   Usage

   • also
   • attributive
   • Dated

   Examples

   More examples (9)

   To what terrible straits the Freedomites, men who persist in their efforts to exercise the right to pervert Homœopathy into Eclecticism, are driven, becomes apparent by this last public effort of the Editor of a Quarterly Journal (professedly a Homœopathic periodical) to make it appear that [Samuel] Hahnemann himself favoured that freedom of medical opinion and action which, as history shows, emboldened its advocates, till finally they denounced our Law of Cure, called it a good rule at times, to be embodied merely as one of the many expedients resorted to by the Eclectic School.

   Woman must have the perfect arbitration of her own individuality. The right to vote is good so far as it goes, but it alone cannot free her if man continues his ownership and control of her person. In this opinion Irene perfectly agrees with the Social Freedomites, so called, and, with us she has entered into the most thorough investigation of woman's social condition in all departments of life and every avenue of society.

   In behalf of our dear old friend and fellow citizen, we, a few of the North Freedomites with a few of your immediate neighbors, met here this evening to celebrate your 80th birthday.

   The strike is being prosecuted so successfully that the M. and M. are driven to their wits' end. Even the non-unionists are rebelling at the benevolent despotism of the "Industrial Freedomites."

   The eyes of the public are being opened toward those grafters who are preying on the gullibility of the sick and bed-ridden humanity. [...] [T]hey have banded together, and under the guise of injured innocence they bob up again as exponents of "medical freedom." [...] The medical freedomite officers are the proselytes of the medical fake nostrums who, like the vultures, live on the carcasses of incurable diseases.

   A notorious "industrial freedomite" will begin publication of a daily in Santa Barbara. The officers of No. 349, after interviewing the promoter and hearing his defiant declaration that he would run an "open shop," presented the facts to the Santa Barbara Union at the regular meeting on April 13, 1913, when the union decided unanimously that union men will not be permitted to work on the paper.

   One spring the National League for Medical Freedom advertised its opposition [...] to the expenditures of public money for the compulsory examination of school children. [...] As I have understood these Freedomites the freedom of the family to employ whom they pleased was just what they wanted. [...] If government modifies the policy to give the Freedomites the freedom asked for, they are "agin" that.

   The extent to which relativism has conquered the thinking processes of the academic freedomites would, on reflection, I believe, astound even the most emphatic of their number.

   Since the early 1990s, the Austrian Freedom Party, the FPÖ, has used the issue of culture as a political lever, claiming that the Left enjoyed hegemonic status in the arts in Austria. [...] Attacks on Hermann Nitsch, Elfriede Jelinek and Claus Peymann are characteristic of Freedomite tactics, but the force of rhetoric cannot disguise the absence of a genuine positive cultural policy once in power.