Friday, December 19, 2014

Quote of the Day

"“In the end, more than freedom, they wanted security. They wanted a comfortable life, and they lost it all – security, comfort, and freedom. When the Athenians finally wanted not to give to society but for society to give to them, when the freedom they wished for most was freedom from responsibility, then Athens ceased to be free and was never free again.”
– Edward Gibbon, Epitaph for the People of Ancient Athens"
Anyone who fights to achieve "freedom from..." is a totalitarian at heart. Liberty lovers fight for the "freedom to...", and against "freedom from...".

The confusion comes from erroneously equating the freedom from morality with the freedom to commit libertine, licentious acts at will, and that sort of moral anarchy requires the suppression of all actual moral principles. As Gibbon said, it reduces to non-acceptance of responsibility for one's own character. But that involves the destruction of others who are caught in the anarchists' wake, and ultimately those anarchists as well.

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