Religious freedom, or not...............

 

............More stuff I never learned as a history major:

     In 1768, with dissenting religion continuing to grow, the Anglican establishment—both a political and religious entity—resorted to arrests.  Baptists faced the brunt of arrests.  By the time of the American Revolution, more than half the Baptist ministers in Virginia had been jailed for preaching without a license or disturbing the peace. (Some ministers responded that they had a license from "King Jesus" and recognized no other authority over their calling.) . . .

     Facing the most formidable military of the eighteenth century, and with dissenters accounting for 20 to 33 percent or more of Virginia's white population, patriot leaders realized quickly that they needed dissenters' support in the war effort. (Government documents noted, for example, the need for support from those marksmen in the heavily Presbyterian Shenandoah Valley with the extraordinarily accurate long rifles who eventually mad up the core of Daniel Morgan's riflemen at the Battle of Saratoga.)  This recognition led to a remarkable negotiation—support for the war effort being offered by dissenters in return for religious freedom.

     Dissenters' earlier pleas for some limited relief were replaced by demands for equal treatment: an end to the church tax; an end to Anglican control of marriage, orphans, and poor relief; exemption from military service for dissenting ministers.  Religious freedom was tied to the sought-after support for the war.

-John A. Ragosta, from his essay, What Does the American Revolution Mean to Me? in The American Revolution at 250: Twenty-Four Historians Reflect on the Founding

He seems a bit testy....................

 

............about how things are going in California:

As the descent accelerates, the promises of more free shit accelerate. Eventually we’ll all be living in a muddy hole in the ground, and the political debates for state office will be about eating daily free lobster and filet mignon from the government. “Buddy, I’ll fill that muddy hole in the ground where you live with the biggest free diamonds you’re ever seen.” They’re out of money, they’re out of sanity, they’re out of logic, and they’re out of honesty. Why, boys, out in Californee, they go lakes full of hot stew, and the rivers flow with the finest whiskey.

The combination of getting less and being promised more seems to be inevitable, making politics an exercise in filling psychological holes. You’ll go to bed hungry, but debates will be a buffet. Hobos dream big.

Willingness..................

 

So it's not about whether we feel depressed or happy; rather, it's about our willingness and ability to participate fully in any and all of our feelings.  The experience of freedom arises not from acquiring our preferred lifestyle and our preferred state of mind but from a willingness to stay with ourselves—to be completely committed to experiencing our lives—regardless of circumstance.

-Bruce Tift, Already Free: Buddhism Meets Psychotherapy on the Path of Liberation

bred...........................

 

      There were many specific events that pushed Franklin across the line to rebellion: personal slights, dashed hopes, betrayals, and the accretion of hostile British acts.  But it is also important to take note of the core causes of Franklin's evolution and, but extension, that of a people he had come to exemplify.

      When Englishmen such as his father had immigrated to a new land, they had bred a new type of people.  As Franklin repeatedly stressed in his letters to his son, America should not replicate the rigid ruling hierarchies of the Old World, the aristocratic structures and feudal social orders based on birth rather than merit.  Instead, its strength would be its creation of a proud middling people, a class of frugal and industrious shopkeepers and tradesmen who were assertive of their rights and proud of their status.

     Like many of these new Americans, Franklin chafed at authority, which is why he had run away from his brother's print shop in Boston.  He was not awed by establishment elites, whether they be the Mathers or the Penns or the peers in the House of Lords.  He was cheeky in his writings and rebellious in his manner.  And he had imbibed the philosophy of the new Enlightenment thinkers, who believed that liberty and tolerance were the foundation for a civil society.

     For a long time he had cherished vision of imperial harmony in which Britain and America could both flourish in one great expanding empire.  But he felt that it would work only if Britain stopped subjugating Americans through mercantile trading rules and taxes imposed from afar.  Once it was clear that Britain remained intent of subordinating its colonies, the only course left was independence.

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

Good questions.......................

 

If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?

-Frédéric Bastiat

occasional messiness........................

 

     Modern election campaigns are often criticized for being negative, and today's press is slammed for being scurrilous.  But the most brutal of modern attack ads pale in comparison to the barrage of pamphlets in the 1764 Assembly election.  Pennsylvania survived them, as did Franklin, and American democracy learned it could thrive in an atmosphere of unrestrained, even intemperate, free-expression.  As the election of 1764 showed, American democracy was built on a foundation of unbridled free speech.  In the centuries since then, the nations that have thrived have been those, like America, that are most comfortable with the cacophony, and even occasional messiness, that comes from robust discussion.

Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

the virtue of free expression........

 

     The opinions people have, Franklin wrote, are "almost as various as their faces."  The job a printers is to allow people to express these differing opinions.  "There would be very little printed," he noted, if publishers produced only things that offended nobody.  At stake was the virtue of free expression, and Franklin summed up the Enlightenment position in a sentence that is now framed on newsroom walls: "Printers are educated in the belief that when men differ in opinion, both sides ought equally to have the advantage of being heard by the public; and when Truth and Error have fair play, the former is always an overmatch for the latter."

-Walter Isaacson, Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

real freedom.............................

There are all different kinds of freedom, and the kind that is most precious you will not hear much talked about in the great outside world of wanting and achieving and displaying. The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty little unsexy ways every day. That is real freedom.

-David Foster Wallace

Many paths.............................

 

When people were committed to the idea that in the field of religion only one plan must be adopted, bloody wars resulted. With the acknowledgment of the principle of religious freedom these wars ceased. The market economy safeguards peaceful economic co-operation because it does not use force upon the economic plans of the citizens. If one master plan is to be substituted for the plans of each citizen, endless fighting must emerge. Those who disagree with the dictator's plan have no other means to carry on than to defeat the despot by force of arms.

-Ludwig Von Mises

consequences..................

 

You are free to do whatever you like.  You need only face the consequences.

-Sheldon B. Kopp

On free speech......................

 Whether Trump’s policies turn out to be right or wrong evidently matters. But the resumption of the great American debate, of speech that is unencumbered and unafraid, of a Jeffersonian open society, matters much more, since it will enable progress.

-Martin Gurri, from here

It's a conundrum...................

 ..................Arnold Kling gives some thought to our health care system:

The most important policy problem is that people want unlimited access to medical services without having to pay for them. When the political system tries to accomplish this, the result is excessive spending on medical care.

Martin Gurri.........................

..............................on the New Censorship:

 A remarkable transvaluation has occurred since that idealistic time. In essence, the postmodern establishment Left has reversed the terms of the Jeffersonian ideal. The threat to democracy is now society—a realm of injustice and oppression, in which human wolves perpetually devour the weak. Trump and Musk stand as archetypes of the predator. They represent the authoritarian impulse, and they can manipulate the dull-minded masses, even unto insurgency, by spreading falsehoods and fake news. The pandemic showed them willing to kill with their lies, to undermine the authority of science.

Only a powerful, watchful government, in the hands of the Party of Truth, can impose democracy on a troubled society by controlling the words said, as well as the means of communication that convey them, to the public. A wise guardian class, advised by specialists, must be mobilized to assume control of politics and culture. In this framework, opposition can never be legitimate—it belongs to the Party of Lies. Those who follow Savio’s exhortation and throw themselves on the gears of the great institutions will be ground to pulp—for their own good.

On being unmoored..............

      It is impossible to be one's own pope.  For some, the moral life becomes an endless, solipistic quest to figure out "what my true self stands for."  Many feel they have to reinvent the moral wheel daily, which is the height of arrogance, not to mention utterly exhausting.  Still others externalize all of the conscience's furies, directing them against the faults of others or those of social and political systems.  Worse, too many simply learn to tune out the conscience's voice, now lowered to a murmur for lack of authoritative supports.

     The think-for-yourself culture celebrates all of these groups for their "free minds."  Yet we know that most people sway, feather-like, to the prevailing winds of news and social media, fashion and fadism, public and "expert" opinion, P.R. and propaganda.  Large corporations, especially, what nothing more than for our minds to be independent—that is, unmoored from absolute, unbendable moral authorities that might challenge corporate agendas.  And how much the better for the powers that be if pliant consumers and docile workers fancy themselves rebels and radicals.

-Sohrab Ahmari, The Unbroken Thread:  Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos

partial, imperfect fulfillment.........

         By contrast, the African-American poet Langston Hughes sang in 1935: "O, let America be America again— / The land that never has been yet— /And yet must be—the land where every man is free."  Free to move, to invent, to persuade, to offer a dollar, with no master in charge.  The result of liberal democracy's partial, imperfect fulfillment has been a slow but in the end spectacular approach worldwide to flourishing, in which fewer and fewer people are pushed or bossed around without their voluntarily given consent or contract.

-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,  Why Liberalism Works:  How True Liberal Values Produce A Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All

Ideal..........................

      The American ideal is about your liberty, not their power.

       It's no longer Republican versus Democrat.  It's not about good government or bad government.  It's not even "liberal" versus "conservative."  It's about limiting the government's monopoly on force and unleashing our freedom to try, to choose, to take responsibility, and to make things better.  It is about the political elites and the insiders they collude with versus America. 

-Matte Kibbe,  Don't Hurt People And Don't Take Their Stuff:  A Libertarian Manifesto

The interesting thing..........................

 .........................................about feed-back loops:

Find a feedback loop and you will find people who underestimate how crazy prices can get, how famous a person can become, how hard it can be to change people’s minds, how irreparable a reputation can be, and how tiny events can compound into something huge.

Freed.............................

"Refusal to forgive leads to a self-imposed imprisonment.  It's time we freed ourselves by letting old pain dissipate into the darkness, so that new opportunities can take us to greater heights of joy."

-Marc & Angel Chernoff,  1000+ Little Things Happy Successful People Do Differently

slow but spectacular.................

    By contrast, the African-American poet Langston Hughes sang in 1935: "O, let America be America again—/ The land that never has been yet—/And yet must be—a land where every man is free."  Free to move, to invent, to persuade, to offer a dollar, with no master in charge.  The result of liberal democracy's partial, imperfect fulfillment has been a slow but in the end spectacular approach worldwide to flourishing, in which fewer and fewer people are pushed or bossed around without their voluntarily given consent or contract.

-Deirdre Nansen McCloskey,  Why Liberalism Works:  How True Liberal Values Produce A Freer, More Equal, Prosperous World For All

Free speech..................

..............what follows is a longish excerpt from a read-worthy Jason Richwine essay on the subject:

Presumably, the founders believed open debate is essential to a free society, and the threat of government persecution would discourage that debate. Of course, the First Amendment restrains only the government, but if we take the wisdom of it seriously we should value its principles more broadly. After all, if open debate is truly desirable, we should be concerned not just about government suppression of unpopular views, but about non-governmental suppression. As chilling effects go, “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk going to jail” is not all that different from “I would speak out, but I don’t want to risk losing my friends and my livelihood.” The end result is the same—less speech, less debate, less openness.

Some people assume non-governmental censorship limits only a vitriolic fringe. I see no evidence of this. James Damore hardly expressed a fringe or hateful perspective when he internally criticized Google’s diversity ethos, but the company fired him anyway. Mozilla CEO Brendan Eich donated to a ballot initiative against same-sex marriage that won, but he lost his job anyway. The message from both companies was that people with contrary views—even widely-held contrary views—should get with the ideological program or lose their jobs.

Another misleading assumption is that private-sector censorship is only about defending the powerless from harassment. Actually, it’s often about defending the powerful from criticism. CNN once threatened to dox a blogger who had created a pro-Trump meme mocking the network. It backed down only on the condition that the blogger apologize and promise never to do it again. Who exactly was the powerless one in that situation? Dr. Noah Carl was fired by St. Edmund’s College because his research on group differences was “problematic,” but the administration cited no actual errors in his work. Was the university speaking truth to power, as the saying goes—or speaking power to truth?

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