Taking Liberties. Many times, one may be free to choose suicide, but once the choice is carried through, liberty is nullified through the act of oblivion.
Once upon a time in America, a group of people who called themselves "Confederates" fought to be free to own slaves. Think about it: they-fought-to-be-free-to-have-the-right to-own-slaves.
Typically, slave owners denied the "natural right" of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness to their slaves. If slaves attempted an escape to liberty and were caught, they might have a foot cut off, or worse, have their heads chopped off and put on a wooden pole as warning to others yearning to be free. Once upon a time in America.
Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Pictured here: Opening image of Luis Buñuel's Le Fantôme de la liberté / The Phantom of Liberty (1974): Goya's Los fusilamientos del tres de mayo / The Third of May 1808. Napoleon's variation on the above motto: Liberté, Ordre public / Liberty, public order.
By Order of Alfonso, King of Castile, León and Galicia and King of the Germans, 1265 A.D.:
ON LIBERTY. All creatures of the world naturally love and desire liberty, especially men who have authority over others and, for the most part, those who are of noble heart.
Law 1: . . . Liberty is the power that every man has by nature to do what he wants, except in those areas where the power or the right of law restrains him.*
*Source: Women and Slavery in America: A Documentary History, edited by Catherine M. Lewis and J. Richard Lewis (University of Arkansas Press, 2011), page [1].
Today's Rune: The Self.
5 comments:
Perhaps the reason for so many Conscientious Objectors in the Army of late.
People of deep moral sense realize the hypocricy. Wars fought for the wrong reasons. The shibboleth of "Freedom" for Afghans, for example but not for those in Saudi Arabia or most Arab states until lately.
Sometimes I think we all might need to free our minds before we could ever truly be free. :p
I believe I am at liberty to take my freedom without the constraint other than the ones I impose on myself. If i butt head with law or society then i guess because like slave owners they will do what they have to do but I will still be at liberty to be free. Freedom is in the mind not the body. Bodies break and malfunction but the mind can remain strong and free long after that occurs.
I'm still trying to figure out what that image is. A pink buttocks holding a liberty torch? Weird.
Hey, thanks y'all for the comments. Ivan, AD,WM, amen. Charles, it's weird, indeed!
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