On beauty........

 

This is why beauty, even today, especially today, cannot serve any party; it cannot serve, in the long or short run, anything but men's suffering or their liberty.  The only really committed artist is he who, without refusing to take part in the combat, at least refuses to join the regular armies and remains free-lance.  The lesson he then finds in beauty, if he draws it fairly, is a lesson not of selfishness but rather of hard brotherhood.  Looked upon thus, beauty has never enslaved anyone.  And for thousands of years, every day, at every seond, it has instead assuaged the servitude of millions of men and, occasionally, liberated some of them once and for all.

-Albert Camus, from his 1957 lecture "Create Dangerously"

A pretty fair speech..................

 

"For nearly two centuries before the revolution, this land was settled and forged by men and women who bore in their souls the blood and noble spirit of the British. Here on a wild and untamed continent, they set loose the ancient English love of liberty and Great Britain’s distinctive sense of glory, destiny, and pride. And that’s what it is: glory, destiny, and pride. The American patriots who pledged their lives to independence in 1776 were the heirs to this majestic inheritance. Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true. In recent years, we’ve often heard it said that America is merely an idea. But the cause of freedom did not simply appear as an intellectual invention of 1776. The American founding was the culmination of hundreds of years of thought, struggle, sweat, blood, and sacrifice on both sides of the Atlantic."

-as cut-and-pasted from here

In support of publick virtue.............

 

A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the Whole Force of the Common Enemy.  While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader.  How necessary then is it for those who are determind to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on publick Principles in Support of publick virtue.

-Samuel Adams, from this 2/12/1779 letter

On social bonds.................

 

     Freedom and liberty always refer to interhuman relations.  A man is free as far as he can live and get on without being at the mercy of arbitrary decisions on the part of other people. In the frame of society everybody depends upon his fellow citizens. Social man cannot become independent without forsaking all the advantages of social cooperation.  The self-sufficient individual is independent, but he is not free.  He is at the mercy of everybody who is stronger than himself.  The stronger fellow has the power to kill him with impunity.  It is therefore nonsense to rant about an alleged "natural" and "inborn" freedom which people are supposed to have enjoyed in the ages preceding the emergence of social bonds.  Man was not created free; what freedom he may possess has been given to him by society.  Only societal conditions can present a man with an orbit within the limits of which he can attain liberty.

     Liberty and freedom are the conditions of man within a contractual society.

-Ludwig Von Mises, Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

I'll tell you what's fair.....................

Animal House................................Deltas on Trial

 

     courtesy of

the "great becoming"..................

 

After wrestling with Crawford's distinction between autonomy and true individuality, Rob Firchau adds to the mix with this quote from Frank Loyd Wright:

Liberty may be granted but freedom cannot be conferred.  Freedom is from within.

-full quote here

Longing for leadership.......................

.................................capable of uniting.

As these events unfold, America’s global leadership role is being challenged outside by other nations and inside by our polarized electorate. We need to find ways to put aside our differences and work in partnership with other Western nations in the name of democracy. During this time of great crises, uniting to protect our essential freedoms, including free enterprise, is paramount. We should remember that America, “conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal,” still remains a shining beacon of hope to citizens around the world. JPMorgan Chase, a company that historically has worked across borders and boundaries, will do its part to ensure that the global economy is safe and secure.

-Jamie Dimon, from here

An important aspect..............................

 

...........................................of liberty.

On limitations...............

 I do not mean by this that there has been, or can be, any progress in an attempt of the people to exist without a strong and vigorous government. That is the only foundation and the only support of all civilization. But progress has been made by the people relieving themselves of the unwarranted and unnecessary impositions of government. There exists, and must always exist, the righteous authority of the state. That is the sole source of the liberty of the individual, but it does not mean an inquisitive and officious intermeddling by attempted government action in all the affairs of the people. There is no justification for public interference with purely private concerns.

-Calvin Coolidge, from this 1922 speech

via

About equality.....................

 Now, I know of only two methods of establishing equality in the political world; rights must be given to every citizen, or none at all to anyone. . . .

     There is, in fact, a manly and lawful passion for equality that incites men to wish all to be powerful and honored.  This passion tends to elevate the humble to the rank of the great; but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom.

-Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book 1, Chapter 3

the key question......................

      Orwell and Churchill recognized that the key question of their century ultimately was not who controlled the means of production, as Marx thought, or how the human psyche functioned, as Freud taught, but rather how to preserve the liberty of the individual during an age when the state was becoming powerfully intrusive into private life.

-Thomas E. Ricks, Churchill & Orwell: The Fight for Freedom

preparation for freedom.........................

     Let us begin by asking the question of principle, namely, what should a lover of liberty wish to see done in the schools?  I think the ideal but somewhat Utopian answer would be that the pupils should be qualified as far as possible to form a reasonable judgment on controversial questions in regard to which they are likely to have to act.  This would require, on one hand, a training in judicial habits of thought; and, on the other hand, access to impartial supplies of knowledge.  In that way the pupil would be prepared for genuine freedom of choice on becoming adult.  We cannot give freedom to the child. but we can give him a preparation for freedom; and this is what education ought to do. 

     This, however, is not the theory of education which has prevailed in most parts of the world.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay on John Stuart Mill

one should not on that account acquiesce.....

      A readiness to adapt oneself to the facts of the real world is often portrayed as a virtue, and in part it is.  It is a bad thing to close one's eyes to facts or to fail to admit them because they are unwelcome.  But it is also a bad thing to assume that whatever is in the ascendant must be right, that regard for fact demands subservience to evil.  Even worse than conscious subservience to evil is the self-deception which denies that it is evil.  When I find individual liberty being everywhere lessened by regimentation, I will not on that account pretend that regimentation is a good thing.  It may be necessary for a time, but one should not on that account acquiesce to it as part of any society that one can admire.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay, Hopes: Realized and Disappointed

Unleashed........................

      The Great Enrichment after 1800 came from human creativity unleashed by liberty and dignity for ordinary people, through trade-tested betterment resting on a new equality in the eyes of others, and spread by the overturning of monopoly in competition.

-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,  Bourgeois Equality:  How Ideas, Not Capital Or Institutions Enriched The World

Making some rather large assumptions....

If, for example, good meant intelligent, and virtue meant wisdom; if men could be taught to see clearly their real interests, to see afar, the distant results of their deeds, to criticize and coordinate their desires out of a self-cancelling chaos into a purposive and creative harmony—this, perhaps, would provide for the educated and sophisticated man the morality which in the unlettered relies on reiterated precepts and external controls.  Perhaps all sin is error, partial vision, foolishness?  The intelligent man may have the same violent and unsocial impulses as the ignorant man, but surely he will control them better, and slip less often into imitation of the beast.  And in an intelligently administered society—one that returned to the individual, in widened powers, more than it took from him in restricted liberty—the advantage of every man would lie in social and loyal conduct, and only clear sight would be needed to ensure peace and order and good will.

-Will Durant,  The Story of Philosophy

Not sure it has happened yet....................

     Not too many people can point to a specific day when they sat down with a book and got up cured of the stupidities of youth.  I can.  I was 19.  The book was Four Essays on Liberty.  The author was Isaiah Berlin.  He died last week at 88.

-Charles Krauthammer, from his 1997 essay Thank You, Isaiah Berlin, as found in this latest collection of Krauthammer's writings.

On the responsibility of liberty...........

A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common Enemy.  While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued;  but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader.

-Samuel Adams, from a 1779 letter to James Warren

On liberty...........................

“I believe that liberty is the only genuinely valuable thing that men have invented, at least in the field of government, in a thousand years. I believe that it is better to be free than to be not free, even when the former is dangerous and the latter safe. I believe that the finest qualities of man can flourish only in free air – that progress made under the shadow of the policeman’s club is false progress, and of no permanent value.

I believe that any man who takes the liberty of another into his keeping is bound to become a tyrant, and that any man who yields up his liberty, in however slight the measure, is bound to become a slave…

In any dispute between a citizen and the government, it is my instinct to side with the citizen… I am against all efforts to make men virtuous by law.”

-H. L. Mencken

in liberty alone...................

"From infancy I was taught to love humanity and liberty.  Inquiry and experience have since confirmed by reverence for the lessons then given me, by convincing me more fully of their truth and excellence.  Benevolence towards mankind excites wishes for their welfare, and such wished endear the means of fulfilling them.  Those can be found in liberty alone, and therefore her sacred cause ought  to be espoused by every man, on every occasion, to the utmost of his power."

-John Dickinson, from Letters from a Farmer, Letter 1.  Circa 1767

A readiness..........................

     A readiness to adapt oneself to the facts of the real world is often praised as a virtue, and in part it is.  It is a bad thing to close one's eyes to facts or fail to admit them because they are not welcome.  But it is also a bad thing to assume that whatever is in the ascendant must be right, that regard for fact demands subservience to evil.  Even worse than conscious subservience to evil is the self-deception which denies that it is evil.  When I find individual liberty being everywhere lessened by regimentation, I will not on that account pretend that regimentation is a good thing.  It may be necessary for a time, but one should not on that account acquiesce in it as part of any society that one can admire.

-Bertrand Russell, from his essay "Hopes: Realized and Disappointed", as contained in this fine little tome.