Even Greener Pastures

You know that I usually avoid political discussions. It's maybe because I don't feel competent enough to talk about the politics of my country, and especially about the other countries I don't live in.
But today is a different day. I've just finished to watch a debate on TV. The debate was held at the European Center of Solidarity in Gdańsk (the institution which commemorates the Polish 'Solidarity' and its part in the fall of communism here) and the occasion on which it was organised today is 30th anniversary of first partially-free elections in Poland in 1989 (partially-free because 65% of places in the parliament were guaranteed to the communist party and only 35% were to be chosen freely during the elections). The debate was interesting not only from the historical point of view but also because of some linguistic problems. One of the participants was a professor of history from the Oxford University (I don't remember his name), and a few comments were about the meaning people understand under the phrases like 'freedom as a human right'.
In Polish we have the word 'wolność' which may be translated as 'freedom' or 'liberty'. People have "prawo" to be free and the word 'prawo' means 'right' but also 'law'. People have rights to fight for their freedom, but what should they do when they get it - fight to defend THEIR rights or elaborate the compromise which gives maximal possible liberty to biggest possible group of people with the respect to freedom of the others. The English historian defined 'liberty' like something every person has rights to, and freedom as something connected to the state of group of people or the whole society. Another participant - Polish professor of Law - pointed to this unfortunate meaning of 'prawo'. She said that freedom should be a human right, but people see it as something given them (or not) by the law. Some politicians think that getting the highest rate in the FREE elections give them the RIGHT to change the LAW according to their views ignoring completely the others (and their LIBERTY).
What is interesting not all the parts of the political scene equally enthusiastically celebrate this anniversary. There are groups which say that some groups made a treaty with the communist and thus deceived the ideals of the 'Solidarity' movement, and that there is nothing to celebrate today.
I don't want to discuss about who is right and who is wrong here, because I try to keep myself as far from the politics as I can. My questions are:

1) What is the meaning of these words (right, law, freedom, liberty) to you?
2) How about the equivalents of these words in other languages - is the meaning language-dependent?
3) How the possible differences of these words in different languages can influence the history of nations?

It is all about power. I mean in a broad sense of that word like money, muscles (military force), institutional position in a society etc. Freedom or Liberty (aren't they interchangeable words?) is ability to do anything you want as long as you have power to do it without any repercussions.  Rights is very abstract meaningless term on its own. If you have a power, you have rights. If you don't have a power, you have no any rights. If you meet  a guy with  a gun and you don't have one, you are basically screwed, no matter what is written on some papers or  stones or whatever. And what is the law? As long as you have power to enforce it, it will work. On the other hand, if you have a power, you can break the law without consequences.

We might need Steven to explain the difference between "freedom" and "liberty", and also between "right/s" and "law".
However, as I understand it, even though they're frequently used as synonyms, freedom is the general thing. As in: I'm free to travel the world, for example. In theory, I could go anywhere I pleased and where my passport is accepted; at any rate, nobody could stop me from leaving my country. In practice, though, I'm constrained by family obligations and also by lack of money. Therefore, I'm actually not at liberty to travel.

German doesn't make the distiction, there is just the one word: Freiheit.

We do have one word for "right/s", Recht/e, and another one for "law", Gesetz. And the way I see it, laws are often there to curtail your rights. While we do have freedom of speech, Recht auf freie Meinungsäußerung, for example, there are laws against insulting people. However, the two do cross over at times, because we talk about Rechtssprechung (court rulings).

As to n° 3... You know, Marcin, for somebody who's just claimed his English wasn't up to complicated discussions, you don't half ask difficult questions, do you? 
Anyway, there is no state where everyone is completely free, is there? Nor would you wish to live in a state where everybody was free to kill off or rob other people at will, for example, would you? And governments are always pretty good at telling their people how it's to everybody's good that their rights have been curtailed, aren't they? You'd therefore always want to take a really close look at the laws to be able to judge to whose benefit everybody's rights had really been reduced.
Personally, I think it's pretty dangerous, for example, if there is a serious infringement of individual people's rights/freedom, introduced solely to guarantee the continued existence of a state (read: one particular government). Take for example the laws against leaving the GDR - people got shot simply for wanting to live in a different country. Still, I'm sure schoolchildren in Eastern Germany were taught they were growing up in a free country, that they actually had much more freedom than the slaves of capitalism across the border.

 Japanese words originally are related to Chinese and the word of freedom didn't exist until 1862. It was imported and translated into Japanese. It has a positive meaning. Before the positive word, freedom, people in the old time seemed to use another word to mean "being selfish" as freedom.
Freedom, liberty, right, these words are just 100- 150 years old in Japan. All Japanese know the meaning of them, but they didn't feel they were things to cherish and keep an important philosophy and idea. Because we didn't fight to acquire them, unlike France. We ourselves didn't change the country to the democratic. Those ideas were given and taught by the westerners.
Of course, we discuss and fight for that, for example, to establish women's right or freedom. Then we always have to quote Europe and US way to prove how the women's right is admitted by the laws. Japanese can't do anything without good examples from westerners. We are behind as a civilized country from the advanced world, but interestingly Japan is known to the world as one of the safest countries. The freedom country, the US is known as a dangerous society where citizens have rights to hold the guns to protect themselves. It is a sad contradictory.

 I have something interesting story regarding the words, right, and law. This is just my own original idea so please take it with a grain of salt.
The word, right, has three meaning. It means to be correct. The other meaning is to be qualified. And the last one is the opposite of left.
One day, when I saw the famous painting、” Last Judgment" by Michelangelo in the book, it took my breath away.
"Oh..! That's why! Right and Left"
 I understood the painting said, "God let the people who did the right things go to the right place. God left the people who did the wrong things to the left place."
If you look at the painting, Last Judgment, you will get the meaning of my saying.
If you live to do the right things, you will give the right to be free and you are protected by God. But God is always busy to help people all over the world so that human invented "laws" to protect them.
I'm not religious but I thought of this story seriously.