Liberty

From Sacrificing FOR Freedom to Choosing the Sacrifice OF Freedom

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On June 6, 1944, thousands of young Americans went ashore or parachuted into enemy fire.

And in 2023, a survey found that 29% of young Americans (18-29) said they would favor the government installing surveillance cameras in every household to reduce domestic violence, abuse, and other illegal activity.

Here is the survey detail.   Note that the desire to exist in an Orwellian world is far stronger among those 18-40 than among those older.   Interestingly, people who identify themselves as ‘liberal’ or ‘moderate’ are more likely to desire perpetual surveillance than those who call themselves ‘conservative’, ‘very conservative, or ”very liberal.’

Independence and Rights

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Originally posted at the Scholar’s Stage, 15 September 2013.

 “The Freedman”
John Quincy Adam Ward. 1863. Displayed in the Metropolitan Museum of Art.


The phrase “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” is a truism long accepted. I do not question the general truth this phrase attempts to convey, but I sometimes find it obscures more than it reveals. Men on opposing lines of battle may both fight in the name of freedom yet be fighting for very different things. “Freedom” comes in all shapes and sizes; when a Pashtun elder uses a word like freedom he may not be thinking anything close to the thoughts expressed at the average American Independence Day parade.

The freedom fighters of the American revolution fought in the name of liberty. The liberty they battled for came in two distinct flavors, each reflecting an esteemed political tradition inherited from their brothers across the sea. The first is the classical liberal tradition; the second the classical republican. In many ways the political history of the republic they founded was an attempt to reconcile these two traditions. [1]

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Adams and Jefferson Are Gone

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“ADAMS and JEFFERSON, I have said, are no more. As human beings, indeed, they are no more. They are no more, as in 1776, bold and fearless advocates of independence; no more, as at subsequent periods, the head of the government; nor more, as we have recently seen them, aged and venerable objects of admiration and regard. They are no more. They are dead. But how little is there of the great and good which can die! To their country they yet live, and live for ever. They live in all that perpetuates the remembrance of men on earth; in the recorded proofs of their own great actions, in the offspring of their intellect, in the deep-engraved lines of public gratitude, and in the respect and homage of mankind. They live in their example; and they live, emphatically, and will live, in the influence which their lives and efforts, their principles and opinions, now exercise, and will continue to exercise, on the affairs of men, not only in their own country but throughout the civilized world. 

A superior and commanding human intellect, a truly great man, when Heaven vouchsafes so rare a gift, is not a temporary flame, burning brightly for a while, and then giving place to returning darkness. It is rather a spark of fervent heat, as well as radiant light, with power to enkindle the common mass of human kind; so that when it glimmers in its own decay, and finally goes out in death, no night follows, but it leaves the world all light, all on fire from the potent contact of its own spirit. Bacon died; but the human understanding, roused by the touch of his miraculous wand to a perception of the true philosophy and the just mode of inquiring after truth, has kept on its course successfully and gloriously. Newton died; yet the courses of the spheres are still known, and they yet move on by the laws which he discovered, and in the orbits which he saw, and described for them, in the infinity of space.

No two men now live, fellow-citizen, perhaps it may be doubted whether any two men have ever lived in one age, who, more than those we now commemorate, have impressed on mankind their own opinions more deeply into the opinions of others, or given a more lasting direction to the current of human thought. Their work doth not perish with them. The tree which they assisted to plant will flourish, although they water it and protect it no longer; for it has struck its roots deep, it has sent them to the very centre; no storm, not of force to burst the orb, can overturn it; its branches spread wide; they stretch their protecting arms braoder and broader, and its top is destined to reach the heavens.

We are not deceived. There is no delusion here. No age will come in which the American Revolution will appear less than it is, one of the greatest events in human history. No age will come in which it shall cease to be seen and felt, on either continent, that a mighty step, a great advance, not only in American affairs, but in human affairs, was made on the 4th of July, 1776. And no age will come, we trust, so ignorant or so unjust as not to see and acknowledge the efficient agency of those we now honor in producing that momentous event.”
–Daniel Webster, “Adams and Jefferson,” delivered on 2nd of August, 1826 at Faneuil Hall, in Boston, Massachusetts, the event being a commemoration of the lives of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, who had died earlier that year within five hours of each other. Their last day in mortality was July 4th.  

Statue of John Adams in front of the Quincy city hall.
Image source. 
            Statue of Thomas Jefferson in the national Jefferson Memorial.
Image source.  



Cross Posted at The Scholar’s Stage.