Thought for today:
"Freedom unfortunately doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches. It can in reality be denied yet exercised in rebellious action or granted without ever being truly expressed.
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. It is not a thing that is freely given and must be fought for to both achieve and maintain.
Freedom is found and is given life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and women and so it must be daily earned and refreshed; else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. Once obtained it must be nourished and secured. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition. Freedom cannot be experienced by you if you deny it to others.
There is an irony in the freedom of so called democratic states. Men fight for freedom; then once acquired they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves and others. All freedom comes with responsibility. There are essentially two opposing freedoms; a false and a true freedom. The false is where the person is free to do as he desires and the true is where he is free to do as he ought!
So guard your freedom which the soldiers of the last century fought for you to have in the great World Wars. Guard your freedom of ideas, your freedom of speech and your freedom of expression at all cost. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others, to oversimplify and to divide and rule. Finally, don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to exercise public and unhampered expression in return.
For myself, Nature shows us freedom in unbridled form whether it be the simple frog 'hanging out' in the sun or the hare who knows freedom best when it is easy in its stride and is without harness at the break of day." William Forde: August 14th, 2014.
"Freedom unfortunately doesn't work as well in practice as it does in speeches. It can in reality be denied yet exercised in rebellious action or granted without ever being truly expressed.
Liberty has never come from government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of resistance. It is not a thing that is freely given and must be fought for to both achieve and maintain.
Freedom is found and is given life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and women and so it must be daily earned and refreshed; else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die. Once obtained it must be nourished and secured. He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from opposition. Freedom cannot be experienced by you if you deny it to others.
There is an irony in the freedom of so called democratic states. Men fight for freedom; then once acquired they begin to accumulate laws to take it away from themselves and others. All freedom comes with responsibility. There are essentially two opposing freedoms; a false and a true freedom. The false is where the person is free to do as he desires and the true is where he is free to do as he ought!
So guard your freedom which the soldiers of the last century fought for you to have in the great World Wars. Guard your freedom of ideas, your freedom of speech and your freedom of expression at all cost. Be alert that dictators have always played on the natural human tendency to blame others, to oversimplify and to divide and rule. Finally, don’t regard yourself as a guardian of freedom unless you respect and preserve the rights of people you disagree with to exercise public and unhampered expression in return.
For myself, Nature shows us freedom in unbridled form whether it be the simple frog 'hanging out' in the sun or the hare who knows freedom best when it is easy in its stride and is without harness at the break of day." William Forde: August 14th, 2014.
