Liberty Lies in the Hearts of Men and Women

I often wonder whether we do not rest our hopes too much upon constitutions, upon laws and upon courts. These are false hopes; believe me, these are false hopes. Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, not law, no court can even do much to help it. While it lies there it needs no constitution, no law, no court to save it.

Judge Learned Hand, “The Spirit of Liberty Speech.” Cited by Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg.339.

A Human Paradox

It is a human paradox that to be free we must abide by laws that constrain our freedom. Either we must discipline ourselves to submit to an orderly way of life, or we will be forced to submit to tyranny. As Edmund Burke said, “Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere, and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

Jeff Myers & David A. Noebel, Understanding the Times: A Survey of Competing Worldviews, pg.339.

Which Do YOU Love?

 

Never Stop Fighting For Liberty and Freedom

Liberty and freedom are so very precious that you do not fight and win them once and stop. They are prizes awarded only to those peoples who fight to win them and then keep fighting eternally to hold them!…I think any man who talks against the interests of his own country ought to be arrested and put in jail, not excepting senators and colonels.

Medal of Honor awardee Sergeant Alvin C. York, January 1941, in an address a the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Are You Really Free?

Philosopher Johann Wolfgang von Goethe explained that “no one is as hopelessly enslaved as the person who think’s he’s free.” That’s becoming an apt description for Americans who are oblivious to—or ignorant of—the liberties we’ve lost.

Walter Williams

Be Prepared

If you are not prepared to use force to defend civilization, then be prepared to accept barbarism.

Thomas Sowell

Are You Enslaved?

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free. The truth has been kept from the depth of their minds by masters who rule them with lies. They feed them on falsehoods till wrong looks like right in their eyes.

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German poet and playwright; 1749-1832)

Disobedience Can Be Freedom

You simply disobey. Peaceably, yes. Respectfully, of course. Nonviolently, absolutely. But when told how to think or what to say or how to behave, we don’t. We disobey the social protocol that stifles and stigmatizes personal freedom.

Charlton Heston

Own Yourself

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened ─ but no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

Rudyard Kipling

Fight for Freedom

It is easier to fight for freedom than to preserve it, and the children of World War II vets passed judgment on their fathers during the 1960s and 1970s. 

Somehow I feel my generation is responsible for the children of the lost decades who rejected most of the values and liberties we fought for and many died to preserve. Blood-bought freedoms are seldom cherished by those who have not suffered or fought to preserve them.

Paul B. Long, Citizen Soldiers of World War II, pg.155

LEFTISTs Hate Liberty

Clearly, the radical left despises liberty. The possibility that they might hear something that is offensive or that does not conform to their cherished beliefs makes them retreat into “safe spaces” where they can deal with what they view as their marginalization and unappreciated victimhood. They long for an echo chamber where they hear only the sound of their own voices and grievances. 

Erwin W. Lutzer, We Will Not Be Silenced, pg.120

We Will Soon Lose Our Freedom

 

Liberty Is Becoming Meaningless

Liberty is meaningless where the right to utter one’s thoughts and opinions has ceased to exist. That, of all rights, is the dread of tyrants. It is the right which they first of all strike down.

Frederick Douglass

We Are On the Way To Living in Fear

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition it has only one way to go and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear.

Harry S. Truman

Religion and Morality Needed for Freedom

Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone, which can establish the Principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.

John Adams, letter to Zabdiel Adams (21 June 1776)

Do Your Own Thinking!

These Again Are Times That Try Men’s Souls

These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated.

Thomas Paine (1737-1809)

We Must Fight to Keep Liberty

Men fight for liberty and win it with hard knocks. Their children, brought up easy, let it slip away again, poor fools. And their grandchildren are once more slaves.

D.H. Lawrence

Freedom vs Safety

 

One Piece at a Time.