9 posts tagged “freedom”

The history of liberty is a history of resistance.  The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it..

Dissent is Patriotic

The Andrew Meyer case has disturbed me greatly.  What disturbs me is the lack of perspective through which most people seem to be viewing what took place.  People who only saw an obnoxious person being disruptive and getting what he deserved have missed the point entirely.  Whatever Meyer's motives were, his actions were classic dissent. 

Dissent--the stuff that built the United States of America. 
Dissent--the quintessential act of patriotism. 
Dissent--freedom spreading its wings and demanding to fly. 

There was a time when people understood that dissent is the American way.  Unfortunately, now it's considered obnoxious, unpatriotic, and even treasonous in some quarters.  History has shown us that when government/authority turns a blind eye and a deaf ear to the will of the people that dissent is how Americans demand change.  One only has to look as far back as the events leading up to the War for Independence to find the facts that bear this out.  Our culture is now conditioned to hold dissent in disdain and that will the undoing of our freedom. 

Oscar Wilde said "Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation."  When the voice of dissent is silenced because the speaker is deemed to be a disruption, we are sacrificing progress in exchange for the status quo.  We have become a nation of sheep.

In 2006, Timothy Sexton of Associated Content wrote Dissent Built America; Why is it Considered Un-American Now?  It was relevant then and is even more so today.  I strongly recommend it as a good read.

ACLU: we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States

Related to the my previous post Papers Please: This Is A Free Country?, check out what the ACLU is now up to!

The American Civil Liberties Union today announced the launch of a new "Surveillance Society Clock" to symbolize the reality that we are fast approaching a genuine surveillance society in the United States. The clock is set at six minutes before the "midnight" of a dark end to privacy. Also being released is a new report summarizing the state of privacy today and the video of a new piece about surveillance by spoken-word artists Steve Connell & Sekou (tha misfit).

"We are rapidly moving toward a future where our every move, our every transaction, our every communication is tracked and may be used against us," said Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s Technology and Liberty Project. "Too often that big picture is lost amid the stream of daily privacy stories. The Surveillance Clock is part of our efforts to keep people focused on that big picture and dramatize what’s happening to America."

Read more at ACLU.org

Your papers, please.

Papers Please: Arrested At Circuit City

I haven't seen any coverage of this story in the media, but then, I've not been watching the news much lately, so who knows? I wouldn't be surprised if the media turned a blind eye to this.

I've accumulated several articles I wanted to post on over the past few days and never got around to doing so.  Rather than posting each one, I'm just going to group them as Good Reads--which they are.

• Trampled And Twisted By Conservatives, 'L-Word' Should Be Revived: Clarence Page bemoans that the 'greatest triumph that conservatives ever achieved is to make liberals embarrassed to call themselves "liberal."'
  
  
• In Freedom Isn't Free, Frank asks some frank questions such as "In relation to the community we occupy - how do we negotiate our individual freedoms?"
  
  
• 7 Clever Google Tricks Worth Knowing:  Self explanatory.  Check them out.
  
  
• Oh those devilish Normans!  Were the Normans responsible for the upsurge in demon possessions that swept England after the 1066 AD invation?  One study suggests so.

It's not my usual practice to post entire articles.  However, C.T. Rossi's article "on the ancient philosophical battle against the neocons" makes so many excellent points that it defies my ability to summarize or choose an excerpt that characterizes the whole.

    Lord Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
    Hamlet: Words, words, words.
    Lord Polonius: What is the matter, my lord?
    Hamlet: Between who?
    Lord Polonius: I mean, the matter that you read, my lord.

– Hamlet, II, ii, 191–195

Perhaps the greatest crime against Americans has been the debasement of our currency – though I am not talking about fiat money. What I am talking about is the debasement of our words and ideas.

There is something about words. Essentially they are the vessels of our ideas. It was Cicero who observed that only two things separate man from the beast, ratio et oratio – reason and the ability to speak. If we are robbed of our ideas or the means to pass our ideas along to others, our intellectual economy is destroyed and with it the underpinnings of society itself.

There is something sacred about words. Christ Himself is worshipped as the logos – a Greek word infinitely richer than our word for "word." Is there any greater joy than that of a parent watching their infant progress in the development of the ability to recognize, react and speak? Is their any greater sadness than a child watching a parent descend into the foggy mists of dementia, the second childhood?

But awe-inspiring as meaningful words are, words without meaning are vampiric monsters of the mind. Nature abhors a vacuum, and these empty words tend to suck the life out of all that they encounter. The wastelands which such words naturally inhabit are the wilds of political speech. The words of politicos are crafted to be empty, like an intellectual dribble cup. They are designed to fill the belly and pacify, if not stultify, the listener. Meanwhile, the political ideas of our leaders remain shrouded behind the shield of blather.

While politicians have most certainly always been men whose stock and trade was the empty phrase, a critical eye turned to today’s political establishment shows that we have done history a turn worse. Our politicians have ceased to believe in ideas themselves, as noted by the White House aide who presciently remarked that, as the vanguard of the American Empire, the neo-cons are free to "create our own reality."

Notable intellectuals have commented on such folly. Richard Weaver charged us to remember that ideas have consequences. Fyodor Dostoevsky, in his Brothers Karamazov, explored the theme that if God does not exist, everything is permissible.

As fantastical as it may seem, the rise of the neo-con empire of self-creating reality is the latest chapter in a battle between two medieval scholastics – St. Thomas Aquinas and William of Ockham.

Without descending too deeply into the world of metaphysics (and vastly simplifying it as well), Thomas held the moderate realist position, that the idea, or form, of something is really found in the things themselves (hence the term metaphysical "realist"). William’s position was that we just give things names for the sake of convenience. William, therefore, was a nominalist.

Thomas would say that there is a quality of "treeness" found in certain objects in the world and so we call them trees. William counters that every tree is different from every other tree and so we just label them as "trees" to make things easier. Botany aside, this is not the silly little argument it may seem.

Instead of trees, let’s use the word "freedom." The followers of Thomas would look at human interactions and relationships and see if there was any common "freedomness" that could be detected, i.e. individuals being allowed control over their own minds, bodies, associations, and speech. Meanwhile, Ockhamites would say that "freedom," like every other word, is a mere linguistic convenience. If our Ockhamite was also a "patriotic" American, he might say that since America is a "free" country, "freedom" is shorthand for whatever it is that Americans do. And since it is too difficult to say what every American does, it’s even a better, more efficient shorthand to link freedom to what the American government does.

How many times have you heard the argument that Americans are free because we have elected leaders or because of "checks and balances" or because we have a Constitution? Do you ever hear that Americans are free because they may have liberty to do as they please, keep all the property that they have acquired by their own labor, and speak boldly and candidly their thoughts? The reason you never hear the second descriptors used to describe American freedom is the result of nominalists (most of our current political, intellectual, media and judicial elites) reading documents written ostensibly by realists (the Founders) – they just don’t get it.

In the current race for president, Ron Paul is the only man who speaks like a metaphysical realist. His unassuming personality takes a backseat to what he calls the "message of freedom." In his speeches he addresses those particularities of "freedomness" that are the essential elements of real freedom. What is most striking about Dr. Paul, and what makes him most dangerous to the establishment, is that he actually believes that freedom is real and that people can obtain it.

By contrast, the dominant nominalist metaphysics of the other candidates, Democrat or Republican, is apparent in their words. They talk as if reality is optional, as if it were a cake which they can prepare in their own signature style. They promise a reality where there is complete "security," a reality where property is "reallocated" from rich to poor, a reality where "money" is printed at will to "keep the economy strong." These alternative realities (impossible to really create) may sound attractive to some people but one thing is for sure – none of them bear the indicia of "freedomness." These political visions also make it clear that none of the "mainstream" candidates seem to have ever considered that freedom is anything more than an empty word – a paltry slogan.

Regardless of whether Ron Paul is successful in his bid for the White House, he has shown that most Americans are instinctually Thomistic in their belief that freedom is a real thing. He has also shown that our would-be emperors not only have no clothes, but have no idea what freedom even is.

From LewRockwell.com

Federal regulators, concerned about the effect of television violence on children, will recommend that Congress enact legislation to give the government unprecedented powers to curb violence in entertainment programming, according to government and TV industry sources.

The Federal Communications Commission has concluded that regulating TV violence is in the public interest, particularly during times when children are likely to be viewers -- typically between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., FCC sources say.

There more bullshit where this came from but this little bit is enough to prop me up on my soap box.  As a libertarian, I'll always be opposed to ceding federal government power of any sort because doing so requires that power and freedom be stripped from the states and the people. Clearly, the founders of the United States intended for its government to have the specific powers designated within the Constitution and nothing more.  Check out the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights if you doubt this. 

That the FCC would encourage the Congress take this action because it "is in the public interest" is a slap in the face of every American parent.  Are Americans no longer capable of assuming their responsibilities as parents in choosing what is acceptable for their children to view?  Or do we now need big brother looking over our shoulder, dictating our values, and making decisions about our children? 

What?  The article doesn't mention values?  Look again:  "...any laws governing TV violence would have to define what violence is."  Just as any laws governing obscenity and pornography would have to define the nature of obscenity and pornography and thus be a subjective value judgment so would any law defining what violence is.  The Constitution gives the federal government no authority in determining morality.  Moral judgments are the domain of the people. 

I could go on...

Suffice it to say Americans should fear for their freedom.