Thread: If Freedom Isn't Free ....

In a single sentence freedom is the absolute ability to do and say things without repression or oppression or suppression or violence, and being able to extend it to one's enemies without being reneged on. Also known as self-ownership, and the Natural Law by John Locke. In turn, I believe everyone has an explicit right to protest, unless the protesters initiate violence. More than that, any individual has an explicit right to buy up any such property, whose only expectation ought be a lack of any violence manner, whether it's the state or any person or group of persons. Otherwise, my views of freedom can be wrapped up by several dozen quotes. See more Adlai E. Stevenson Jr. - My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular. Click to expand... Brad Thor - I live in America. I have the right to write whatever I want. And its equaled by another right just as powerful the right not to read it. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to offend people. Click to expand... Edward Abbey - Freedom begins between the ears. Click to expand... Emma Goldman - There is no greater fallacy than the belief that aims and purposes are one thing, while methods and tactics are another, This conception is a potent menace to social regeneration. All human experience teaches that methods and means cannot be separated from the ultimate aim. The means employed become, through individual habit and social practice, part and parcel of the final purpose they influence it, modify it, and presently the aims and means become identical. Click to expand... Frederick Douglass - The whole history of the progress of human liberty shows that all concessions yet made to her august claims have been born of earnest struggle. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. Click to expand... Henry David Thoreau - Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves. Click to expand... John Acton - By liberty I mean the assurance that every man shall be protected in doing what he believes his duty against the influence of authority and majorities, custom and opinion. Liberty is the prevention of control by others. This requires self-control and, therefore, religious and spiritual influences education, knowledge, well-being. Click to expand... John Locke - Any single man must judge for himself whether circumstances warrant obedience or resistance to the commands of the civil magistrate we are all qualified, entitled, and morally obliged to evaluate the conduct of our rulers. This political judgment, moreover, is not simply or primarily a right, but like self-preservation, a duty to God. As such it is a judgment that men cannot part with according to the God of Nature. It is the first and foremost of our inalienable rights without which we can preserve no other. Click to expand... Leo Tolstoy - There can be only one permanent revolution a moral one the regeneration of the inner man. How is this revolution to take place? Nobody knows how it will take place in humanity, but every man feels it clearly in himself. And yet in our world everybody thinks of changing humanity, and nobody thinks of changing himself. All violence consists in some people forcing others, under threat of suffering or death, to do what they do not want to do. Click to expand... Ludwig von Mises - The meaning of economic freedom is this that the individual is in a position to choose the way in which he wants to integrate himself into the totality of society. A free man must be able to endure it when his fellow men act and live otherwise than he considers proper. He must free himself from the habit, just as soon as something does not please him, of calling for the police. Click to expand... Martin Luther King, Jr. - Tolstoy, the Russian writer, said in War and Peace I cannot conceive of a man not being free unless he is dead. While this statement sounds a bit exaggerated, it gets at a basic truth. What Tolstoy is saying in substance is that the absence of freedom is the presence of death. Any nation or government that deprives an individual of freedom is in that moment committing an act of moral and spiritual murder. Any individual who is not concerned about his freedom commits an act of moral and spiritual suicide. Click to expand... Mohandas Gandhi - If individual liberty goes, then surely all is lost, for if the individual ceases to count, what is left of society? No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man. Every individual must have the fullest liberty to use his talents. Individual liberty and inter-dependence are both essential for life in society. Click to expand... Naom Chomsky - Of course, everybody says theyre for peace. Hitler was for peace. Everybody is for peace. The question is What kind of peace? If we dont believe in free expression for people we despise, we dont believe in it at all. Click to expand... Samuel Adams - Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these First, a right to life Secondly, to liberty Thirdly, to property together with the right to support and defend them in the best manner they can. These are evident branches of, rather than deductions from, the duty of self-preservation, commonly called the first law of nature. The natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on Earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but only to have the law of nature for his rule.It is a very great mistake to imagine that the object of loyalty is the authority and interest of one individual man, however dignified by the applause or enriched by the success of popular actions. The truth is, all might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought. All men have a right to remain in a state of nature as long as they please and in case of intolerable oppression, civil or religious, to leave the society they belong to, and enter into another. It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defence of those very rights the principal of which, as is before observed, are Life, Liberty, and Property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave. Click to expand... Salman Rushdie - Free speech is the whole thing, the whole ball game. Free speech is life itself. Click to expand... Stephen Fry - It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' as if that gives them certain rights it's actually nothing more... it's simply a whine. It's no more than a whine. 'I find that offensive,' it has no meaning, it has no purpose, it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that,' well so fucking what? Click to expand... Thomas Jefferson - Of liberty I would say that, in the whole plenitude of its extent, it is unobstructed action according to our will. But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add within the limits of the law because law is often but the tyrants will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual. Click to expand... Thomas Paine - Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it. Men who are sincere in defending their freedom, will always feel concern at every circumstance which seems to make against them it is the natural and honest consequence of all affectionate attachments, and the want of it is a vice. But the dejection lasts only for a moment they soon rise out of it with additional vigor the glow of hope, courage and fortitude, will, in a little time, supply the place of every inferior passion, and kindle the whole heart into heroism. Click to expand... Voltairine de Cleyre - The sin our fathers sinned was that they did not trust liberty wholly. They thought it possible to compromise between liberty and government, believing the latter to be a necessary evil, and the moment the compromise was made, the whole misbegotten monster of our present tyranny began to grow. Instruments which are set up to safeguard rights become the very whip with which the free are struck. Click to expand...