What is the meaning of Freedom?
Andre Gide “To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.
The test of one’s strength is not hard times. We learn from the Bible, from the story of the Exodus, that real challenge is not poverty, but affluence, not slavery but freedom, not homelessness but home(p88).
Freedom is defined by Merriam Webster as the quality or state of being free, such as: the absence of necessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action: liberation from slavery or from the power of another: boldness of conception or execution.
In the beginning, Adam and Eve lived a lovely life. Everything was given to them. There was one demand – do not eat of the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. Eve was seduced by the serpent, she ate of the fruit and convinced Adam to taste the apple and he lied to God.
And so ended Paradise.
I suggest that there is within us a desire to go back to the Garden, where we are cared for, protected. I think it is much like a child, no matter the age, wanting his mommy in times of trouble – a desire to go back to the womb – where it is safe. Fear leads us to submit and when government promotes fear, too many bend the knee and give up their freedom in order to be cared for.
Aung San Suu Kyi: “The only real prison is fear, and the only real freedom is freedom from fear.”
But we live in a world where we must make decisions. In the West, we have free will-because the West is rooted in the teachings of the Hebrew Bible and in that Bible we are taught that all life is sacred, we all have equal intrinsic value and we have free will. “If humans are free then they need a free society within which to exercise that freedom(p120). Free will is not found in countries not based on the teachings of that Bible.
Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote that the Hebrew Bible served as “a model for how to undertake the journey from slavery to freedom, from oppression to law-governed liberty.” (p55)
Abraham Lincoln wrote that Americans were the “almost chosen people” and their destiny, like the Israelites of old, was to serve as a model for the rest of the world of a free and just society (p55).
John Adams wrote:
“I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize men than any other nation. If I were an atheist, and believed in blind eternal fate, I should still believe that fate had ordained the Jews to be the most essential instrument for civilizing the nations. If I were an atheist of the other sect, who believe or pretend to believe that all is ordered by chance, I should believe that chance had ordered the Jews to preserve and propagate to all mankind the doctrine of a supreme, intelligent, wise, almighty, sovereign of the universe, which I believe to be a great essential principle of all morality, and consequently of all civilization.”
The American Declaration of Independence speaks to the consent of the governed.
Liberty has never come from Government. Liberty has always come from the subjects of it. The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.’ – Woodrow Wilson
The most important election of our time is about to take place. You do not have to be an American or live in America to realize the repercussions of the 2024 election. It is not about the economy, the border, gas prices, the Green New Deal. It isn’t about racism or equity,or transgenderism or abortion. It is about FREEDOM. Will America be a free people after 2024 or will it fall into the waiting arms of the elites? If America falls, the West falls into the arms of unelected people who “know best:” The UN the EU, NATO, WHO, the WEF, who know about controlling climate and prices, land use, the type of cars we drive, the homes in which we live. Will voices, like John Kerry, who fears free speech and that democracies may not be acting fast enough for the challenges he says we are facing, take over? Well, he has embraced the WEF, a transnational organization that wants to take away individual freedom.
Will people like George Soros, a member of the WEF become an unelected leader working through Kamala Harris?
William Faulkner:“We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it.”
Ronald Reagan: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”
Freedom requires balancing rights with responsibilities – personal responsibility, not leaning on the government to care for you from cradle to grave. Nothing in life is free.
Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.’ – George Bernard Shaw
The test of one’s strength is not hard times. We learn from the Bible, from the story of the Exodus, that real challenge is not poverty, but affluence, not slavery but freedom, not homelessness but home.(p88)
I suggest the Democrat Party has become the party of no-will, of oppression, of slavery – again. Only a different kind: A government that makes you dependent on them as if you were a slave.
Government – to Kamala Harris, the Democrats, is about:
“investment” (translate: spending taxpayer dollars) in “aspirations, ambitions and the dreams of the American people.” Um, no. The government is NOT supposed to be “providing” for me, it’s supposed to get out of my way so I can provide for myself. It is supposed to be “providing for the common defense,” i.e., things like protecting the country and our borders, which she has failed to do. Spending more by promising freebies to get elected doesn’t solve inflation, it makes it worse. But either she doesn’t understand that, or she can’t keep her socialistic aspects in check. And “The United Nations represents the pinnacle in the failed effort to create transnational governance”-
Thomas Paine: “Those who wish to reap the blessings of freedom must, as men, endure the fatigue of defending it.”
‘At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.’ – Abraham Lincoln
Will America remain a people governed by consent or governed by elites?
Or will the American people live with the knowledge that they are the subjects of their destiny and not the object of fate?
Bob Dylan: “I think of a hero as someone who understands the degree of responsibility that comes with his freedom.”
FREEDOM IS NEVER FREE: FIGHT! FIGHT! FIGHT!
From the Ethics of the Fathers: “Rabbi Tarfon used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it.”
Diane Weber Bederman
