Freedom is dangerous How can I be free, if I expect anyone else but me to have the ability to ensure my freedom? "None but ourselves can free our minds..." These are thoughts that resonate with me, as I sit down with a few minutes to think. My husband celebrates our country's independence day this year as his first year of being an official U.S. citizen in the thirty or so years he's lived in this country. I celebrate as a lifetime American who's also become an official citizen of Nowhere Island. An email was sent to we Nowhereians in which John Stuart Mill was quoted, and I recalled days of sitting in Oakland's public library reading his words. Why was I obsessed with this author's words in my late teens/early twenties? It all comes back with more meaning now, as I read the words he was quoted, John Stuart Mill, Principles of Political Economy, 1848 (courtesy of Immigrants: Your Country Needs Them by Philippe Legrain, 2007) And I admit, I do not keep up with politics enough to be well informed in what I write about such topics. Freedom itself is a touchy topic. "Freedom must be at the core of a free society, and this means that government cannot be granted control over our civic and private life. A new nation must learn from past mistakes. The UK’s state bureaucracy has created a deadening de-humanising system of licensing freedom. In other words, we are permitted certain freedoms as long as we perform to the state’s regulations. This cannot be allowed to happen in a new nation, and I propose three fundamental areas where a state should have no involvement in meddling with: free movement, free expression and free association."We all want it, don't we? Yet so easily, we give it away. Where would I be today if America closed its doors to immigrants?”Ayn Rand - (note to self: you've always been a fan of Atlas Shrugged.) "A new nation will never be paradise on earth or a utopia. Free citizens means being autonomous agents negotiating a new morality – it will be messy, tempers will flare, freedom is dangerous, and the rule of law should only be enforced to protect individuals from physical violence and harm, and conversely the state should play no role in implementing violence through militarism and coercion." http://nowhereisland.org/resident-thinkers/26/ Yes, my writing is blotchy. And just where am I going with my thoughts? I don't know. But this is just me, collecting thoughts on freedom that have entered my world. | |||
