Liberty: yesterday and today
Here are some quotes about liberty that seem timely today. Perhaps quotes about liberty are always timely.
“The time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves.”
From Ronald Reagan:
“It is freedom itself that still hangs in the balance, and freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.”
Or less than one generation.
Here’s another timely quote, if not about liberty exactly, then about the sensation of the threat today and our current reaction:
“We are, I am afraid, drifting in a state of semi-animation, towards the rapids.” Those were the words of Hugh Dalton, Clement Attlee’s chancellor of the exchequer, describing the state of Britain in the winter of 1947, on the eve of the end of Empire.
Seems very apt, doesn’t it?
I’m rather fond of composer Randall Thompson’s Testament of Freedom, a 1943 setting of Thomas Jefferson text in overtly militant tune. No trifling with the primary business there. part 1 of 4
The whole Testament published on youtube on Nov. 13th 2015. The chorus is pretty damn good in performance terms, while the brass choir leaves something to be desired.
There’s also the tree of liberty and what kind of water it needs to sustain itself.
Konrad Adenauer wrote: “History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.” Too bad we are not in the business of avoiding our descent into bondage.
Liberty: yesterday and today
Noah Nehm Says:
December 11th, 2015 at 1:01 pm
Konrad Adenauer wrote: “History is the sum total of things that could have been avoided.” Too bad we are not in the business of avoiding our descent into bondage.
Oh HISTORY?
“History is always written by the winners. When two cultures clash, the loser is obliterated, and the winner writes the history books-books which glorify their own cause and disparage the conquered foe. As Napoleon once said, ‘What is history, but a fable agreed upon?”
― Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code
There’s a good book about Natural Right and History. Might aid in working through the problems of freedom, and the triumph of history in our age.
How about this liberty quote:
Si vis pacem, para bellum
“If you want peace, prepare for war”
Book 3 of Latin author Publius Flavius Vegetius Renatus’s tract De Re Militari (4th or 5th century)
Putin gave the order “to strengthen Russia’s strategic nuclear forces amid rising tensions with the U.S. over the global balance of power.”
According to Russia’s Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, Russia’s military will have five new nuclear regiments equipped with modern missile complexes next year, adding that more than 95% of the country’s nuclear forces are at a permanent state of readiness.
About 56 percent of Russian nuclear weapons are new, including modern missiles, upgraded aircraft and a strengthened submarine capacity, Shoigu said. Russia has also expanded the military’s combat capabilities by reinforcing its western and south-western army groups and building four bases in the Arctic region, he said.
Just in case it was unclear before, it is clear now: the nuclear arms race is not only back, but the probability of an accidental launch, in this day and age of “hackers” is so much higher.
Liberty?
“That’s not who we are.” Barack H. Obama.
Fred Says: History is always written by the winners….
“History is written by victors” may itself be an example of history written by the losers!
http://historyhalf.com/cold-war-history-written-by-the-losers/
The easiest most common example i can give you is whether you read American History or Social Studies, and whether the textbooks are based on actual history or A Peoples history of the United States by communist Zinn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People's_history
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth_by_consensus
there is a lot more, but but but… its verboten…
Sometimes it does seem as if the lights are going out all over. But then, I felt the same circa 1975.
Yeah, this has been going on for some time. It is curious though, how upset the very proponents of that doctrine become if you simply lay out the implications for themselves of that principle. If no X is human in any objective sense and therefore entitled to a categorically imperative recognition of its life and existence as such, and if your “friend” is such an “X”, then your friend does not bear such an entitlement to intrinsic respect.
In exchanging comments with a man who vehemently denied the doctrine of the “soul” however understood, I casually referred to him as soulless on the basis his own stipulation. A great display of indignation followed.
One wonders why. He was himself not able to say, other than by exclaiming that he possessed virtues of soulfullness; having something metaphorical to do with sensitivity and depth of emotional feeling.
A virtue ethicist, tired of arguing: “Yeah ok, if you say so. I now grant that you are just a moist robot, having a conditional social utility relative only to my subjective aims and tastes.
Historicist: “How dare you attempt to dehumanize me like that!”
Which is why with them, it begins and ends with emotion.
Actually, the derisive term “moist robot” was probably not the best to use, and only popped into my head because someone here referred to it the other day.
It doesn’t quite bear all the freight a radically historicist interpretation of human life requires. You could even argue that to use such a term seriously, could lead to some, minimal at least, intrinsic teleology.
And an intrinsic nature, and any connection between moral recognition and obligation on the one hand, and such an inherent nature on the other, is exactly what an historicist anthropology aims to exclude.
It’s Niccolo Machiavelli’s world . . . and we’re just living in it.
DNW
featherless biped
Used throughout the history of western philosophy as an example of an unsatisfactory definition of the term “human being”.
When Plato gave Socrates’ definition of man as “featherless bipeds” and was much praised for the definition, Diogenes plucked a chicken and brought it into Plato’s Academy, saying, “Behold! I’ve brought you a man.” After this incident, “with broad flat nails” was added to Plato’s definition.
All Eastern cultures are based upon the teachings of Plato who believed that reality as we perceive it doesn’t really exist. All Western cultures are based upon the teachings of Aristotle who believed that it did.
What nonsense.
“All Eastern cultures are based upon the teachings of Plato who believed that reality as we perceive it doesn’t really exist. All Western cultures are based upon the teachings of Aristotle who believed that it did”
Not to veer to far off-topic, but quantum mechanics and the experimental results of the last 30 years starting with Alain Aspect. has in some sense shown that Plato was more right than Aristotle. Just to some google search for EPR experiments, etc.
No, go ahead and venture.
I for one would be interested in hearing what you have to say.
Of course we have to be mindful of just what is being asserted, since there are a number of ways of describing the limitations to which you are referring.
We might say for example that we don’t have in principle (though how would one know that) the mental and perceptual apparatus, even aided by measuring equipment and heuristic devices, to ever adequately conceptualize the reality in which we find ourselves, or even to understand ourselves.
Or one might say that that is not the major problem, but that reality is in itself unintelligible ultimately, because it only gives the superficial appearance of regularity and lawfulness.
Or one might say that extramental reality is in principle explicable, but that we only grasp the phenomenal at best.
So there are lots of ways of angling at the issue, but I would like to hear yours.
Regards ….
Because we know that the kitchen table is composed of molecules and atoms with electrons spinning furiously around their nuclei (and those atomic particles are composed of even smaller particles) doesn’t invalidate the fact that a table is still a table. When you open the door to the idea that the human mind is incapable of comprehending “true” reality, you also open the door to every atrocity that has ever been perpetrated on earth. Read Plato’s Allegory of the Cave and tell me if that’s what YOU believe.
Read the first word of the Republic. Just the first word.
Yeah …
The question is, I guess, just what atoms are and: how and “where” they exist.
Nonetheless, I tend to agree and think that while billiard ball materialism has proven its inadequacy, and that many of the concepts we have are subject to serious revision, that theories that reality is radically unintelligible, or that it is fundamentally illusory, are misplaced.
An illusion that burns still burns.
Though we have no evidence that animals employ concepts, they certainly discriminate among many of the same features of the world that we do; so it isn’t just our human psychology that is creating the world. And where our sensory powers are proven less or greater, it is still the same reality – or a portion of it – that is being addressed; the ultraviolet invisible to us, is not a gateway into another reality altogether, or an acid that dissolves ours.
The IBM video a boy and his atom seems to me to indicate that at some level, atoms have quite a substantial reality.
However, just as we don’t know what dark matter is, or what it implies, we may not at present grasp nearly as much of reality as we imagine even on the most obvious level.
And just look what has happened with the concept of “junk DNA” recently.
I trust that the phenomenal is real, but can accept that our accumulated experience of it, may be to our surprise, the barest slice.
” sdferr Says:
December 11th, 2015 at 5:59 pm
Read the first word of the Republic. Just the first word.”
Socrates?
You’ll have to ‘Splain.
But I have to go home for now.
“Socrates” there is a fictional character name just as you might find at the beginning of any Shakespearean play. Would that be the first word I am referring to? No. The first word is “katebéªn“: 1st, singular, aorist, active, indicative: roughly translated “I go down”
And then? And then Socrates’ ascent is thwarted. And the Republic ensues.
sdferr asks, “just read the first word of The Republic”. OK, I brought up the link you provided. The first word is:
ΣωκÏάτης
Thanks. That explains everything! /sarc
Lest anyone think that this discussion of metaphysics is off topic, it’s not. If you believe, as Plato did (and apparently sdferr does), that reality as we know it consists of only shadows cast by a campfire on a cave wall, then you will need a “strong leader” or “prophet” in to order guide you through life. Once you decide that your senses and your mind are impotent, you’re lost in the dark.
This is exactly why Muslims don’t believe in freedom. They have Imams and a holy book to tell them what to do in every situation. Plato taught them that.
You misread rather willfully snopercod. You neither understand Plato’s intent, nor mine.
““We are, I am afraid, drifting in a state of semi-animation, towards the rapids.”
Translation: “We’re up shit creek without a paddle heading towards the falls.”
snopercod, DNW, physicsguy -i will try to make sense of your points snopercod, the east never heard of plato, so no, they do not side with that. two i THINK that what physics guy is getting at is the schrodingers cat stuff that leads to the universe not really existing outside an observers view as it makes no choices until that time.
but this is more easily explained if one thinks that one does not exist in the reality outside their body, but that their brains use senses to reproduce a model of reality in your head and put you into it.
you dont have to get down to atoms, and subatomic properties of wave particle dualities to get that all the funky weirdness of the brain and its abilities and even deseases can be stuck in that one modeling framework.
it HAS to make this model to function, and a side effect of the model existence is the stuff that can go wrong and the way we think and some requirements we never think about. perception is constantly updating the model and we correct it. so if you wear eyeglasses that turn the world upside down, in a short time your model will correct for it. if the model is broken, or you take certain chemicals, the model may generate not real people in the model like nash rather than generate people as a way to include them in the reality. it also gives imagination as you imagine that your thoughts about the model are about the real world
so even if the table is real and not real, what you live in is a world that your brain has constructed from its experience during your life, and what you perceive and experience is what makes the model richer or poorer along with IQ.
as an aside this model method has an interesting effect. get the model right with more valid information and more and more, and the model allows you to intuit its principals by its alignment. This is how einstein could intuit what could not be measured till after it was conceived. we can even use imagination to use a part of the models methods to create an artificial sub reality and model principals or change them in the model to imagine what would happen.
this is the one brain model in which all the pieces fit neat in terms of jobs, functions, how it scaled and how lesser versions work, what or how odd effects happen, and what the parts jobs are in terms of the part of the model they act on. one can even be drawn into the model until the perception no longer inputs to it and you can live in the model and starve to death.
current science does not necessarily look at it that way, they look at it more like its a programming problem not a neural net problem. so they imagine somehow processing the input and that does not explain most of what is there its just assumed it does. there is similar truths with genes and cancers and living a lot longer – and where the model is “stored”. this latter issue i have sat with geneticists where i work, and we hammered it about for years in that they really dont understand information, and systems in and of themselves as concepts so they don’t get what they necessarily are looking at in a bigger picture way. the blueprint certainly does not match the models actual concept in all but the loosest and misleading ways. though they DO get the parts as parts and functional parts even if they dont see other things that would help them.
we did have fun when i was tasked to do an analysis of codon expansion from 2 place code to 3 place code, and after i did that from an information standpoint looking at it in terms of what happens when a data point is expanded as would happen in the earlier days of programming when memory was doled out. it matched someone elses work that was based on extremophiles codes and other temperature based analysis.
The Shah of Iran and the Shahbanou of Iran present Jimmy Carter and Rosalynn Carter with a Tapestry of George Washington11/15/1977
Ravel’s “La Valse” comes to mind.
The liner notes on my parents’ album said that it was evocative of the Gilded Age dancing heedlessly towards the precipice of the Great War. (Ravel of course denied any programmatic intent, but it still feels right to me.)
Here’s Lenny’s version.
http://tinyurl.com/h2v5cke
After reading this thread, I think you all will appreciate my one philosophy joke. Two friends of George Berkeley had engaged him in a lively discussion of the nature of reality. When Berkeley at length took his leave of them, one turned to the other and remarked with as smile, “Thou seest when Bishop Berkeley leaves a room, he goes out by the door.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley
Worthy of note: the bishop was a staunch Christian, and his theory of the mind of God is at the link.
Artful, I’d be interested in what you think of Berkeley’s idea.
Enoch Powell’s 1968 “Rivers of Blood” speech.
He was excoriated for it, and it effectively ended his political career. But talk about prophesy.
“The lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our life-time,” British Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey may have remarked to a friend on the eve of Britain’s entry into the First World War. First published in Grey’s memoirs in 1925, the statement earned wide attention as a correct perception of the First World War and its geopolitical and cultural consequences.
Enoch Powell was eloquent. He spoke for the Englishmen in England.
>>But while, to the immigrant, entry to this country was admission to privileges and opportunities eagerly sought, the impact upon the existing population was very different. For reasons which they could not comprehend, and in pursuance of a decision by default, on which they were never consulted, they found themselves made strangers in their own country.
They found their wives unable to obtain hospital beds in childbirth, their children unable to obtain school places, their homes and neighbourhoods changed beyond recognition, their plans and prospects for the future defeated; at work they found that employers hesitated to apply to the immigrant worker the standards of discipline and competence required of the native-born worker; they began to hear, as time went by, more and more voices which told them that they were now the unwanted.
They now learn that a one-way privilege is to be established by act of parliament; a law which cannot, and is not intended to, operate to protect them or redress their grievances is to be enacted to give the stranger, the disgruntled and the agent-provocateur the power to pillory them for their private actions. <<
From Powell’s speech:
Is that not where we are today in America, with affirmative action? Blacks are disproportionately hired for government positions, and thus wield entirely unearned and undeserved power over white private citizens. And affirmative action hires are notoriously almost impossible to fire, no matter how incompetent or malevolent they prove to be.
@ ArtfldgrsGhost
Most Americans haven’t either, but the writings of Plato did influence early Islamic scholars. The Republic was translated into Arabic and available to them. See: Platonism in Islamic philosophy. It fit perfectly with the Muslim philosophy of fatalism.
Whether the early Chinese ever heard of Plato, I can’t say, but here’s a concise summary of the difference between Eastern and Western philosophy:
Ymarsakar Says:
December 11th, 2015 at 12:51 pm
There’s also the tree of liberty and what kind of water it needs to sustain itself.
%%%%
It’s choking on organic fertilizer as it stands.
The question then is :
Drip irrigation ?
Flood ?
rickl Says:
December 12th, 2015 at 2:10 am
From Powell’s speech:
%%%
Didn’t you notice that at the San Bernadino shooting ?
It, the staff, was over loaded with aliens and first generation immigrants — to an absurd degree.
In the 18th, 19th, 20th Centuries, such civil service slots were preferentially given to veterans and natives, for all the obvious reasons.
It’s the California Democrat party that has slotted these noobs.
Barry Soetoro has slotted Muslim jihadis all over our security state.
The KGB is drooling with envy.
When I think Liberty, I think, ” Be back on board by 0800 “.
Ymarsakar Says:
December 11th, 2015 at 12:51 pm
It’s currently being watered with Brawndo.
rickl Says:
December 12th, 2015 at 2:10 am
Impeachment is off the table.
To say impeachment is off the table is sufficient to say the Constitution is off the table. Which is what was to be proven, as Euclid would say.
Or to be done, as ClownDeceptor would say.
We may suppose we must give ClownDeceptor credit for comprehending this arrangement going in (he saw the shadows on the cave-wall). He had our number.
Every time I see a thread about “Liberty” I can’t help but recall my own childhood from the 1950’s and 60’s and compare all the simple freedoms I enjoyed to the ever-more-restrictive and closely monitored lives of the last two generations. Pick up ball games. Leaving home most Saturday mornings knowing that I could go wherever I wanted for as long as I wanted, as long as I was back home by suppertime.
Most of us here are Boomers who had similar childhood freedoms. Now fast forward to the present and imagine the horror you’d have if your own grandchildren attempted to engage in the same childhood pastimes you did.
We’ve come a long way baby.
FREEDOM!
A Canadian transgender father left behind a wife and seven children to begin a new life as an [adopted] six-year-old girl.
Warning, pict of Stefonknee Wolschtt at link.
If seen cannot be unseen …
physicsguy Says:
December 11th, 2015 at 5:24 pm
“All Eastern cultures are based upon the teachings of Plato who believed that reality as we perceive it doesn’t really exist. All Western cultures are based upon the teachings of Aristotle who believed that it did”
Not to veer to far off-topic, but quantum mechanics and the experimental results of the last 30 years starting with Alain Aspect. has in some sense shown that Plato was more right than Aristotle. Just to some google search for EPR experiments, etc.
%%%
The Uncertainty Principle has to mean that you can’t find the second ‘paired’ box to look inside of in the first place.
So, Bohr’s scheme is more heuristic than solid.
Even the Thought Experiment is making assumptions about opening boxes that can have no meaning in the world of the ultra small.
You can’t even find the second box to open it — EVER.
So the information — while it exists — is poisoned to macro observers.
Rather like trying to detect an object by radar (EM waves) that are hopelessly long relative to the size of the object.
The object is there, but the observation mechanism is blinded from the first.
From the first attempt observing it.
Poorly drafted, I know.
We are at war and must behave accordingly. We are all Jews now – Jews and gentiles, Christians and atheists, liberals and conservatives, warmongers and pacifists. All these distinctions mean nothing to our sworn enemies. Enoch Powell was right warning us 50 years ago about dangers of unrestricted immigration. Rivers of blood lie ahead, and we must cross them on foot, up to throats in it.
Even Larry Kudlow got it at last. See
realclearpolitics.com/articles/2015/12/12/ive_changed_this_is_war_seal_the_borders_stop_the_visas_129021.html
Sergey Says:
December 12th, 2015 at 11:16 am
Enoch Powell was right warning us 50 years ago about dangers of unrestricted immigration. Rivers of blood lie ahead, and we must cross them on foot, up to throats in it.
It has happened before:
Like the Roman Empire, Europe has let its defences crumble
Key sentence:
At the same time it has opened its gates to outsiders who have coveted its wealth without renouncing their ancestral faith.
Again and again …. tedious.
I heard Dennis Miller “roughly quoting” one of our Founding Fathers(He “thought” it was Ben Franklin)a few years ago which I love, use and cherish: “EQUALITY(Maybe the ‘Founder’ used “Democracy”…)is 2-wolves and a sheep sitting down for supper. LIBERTY is the sheep coming to table fully armed and ready to contest the meal.”
_____________________________
No wonder us Evil Cons & Neocons far, FAR prefer Liberty. Baa-Daa-Bing.
carl in atlanta @10:46:
What Americans did not willingly surrender in the 1960s was taken away from them then. We gave half of the “store” to the looters, and the looters rewarded us by stealing the other half.
We’re done. Neo may not agree, but so it goes.
carl in atlanta said:
“Every time I see a thread about “Liberty” I can’t help but recall my own childhood from the 1950’s and 60’s and compare all the simple freedoms I enjoyed to the ever-more-restrictive and closely monitored lives of the last two generations. Pick up ball games. Leaving home most Saturday mornings knowing that I could go wherever I wanted for as long as I wanted, as long as I was back home by suppertime.
Most of us here are Boomers who had similar childhood freedoms. Now fast forward to the present and imagine the horror you’d have if your own grandchildren attempted to engage in the same childhood pastimes you did.
We’ve come a long way baby.”
Carl,
I’m 77 years old and went to high school in the 50’s so I remember those days as well. When I was 11 years old, I used to go to Dallas Eagles baseball games at night…had to take a bus to downtown Dallas….transferred to a street car to get to the game…and reversed that route to get home at about 11:00PM….all by myself with no adults accompanying me. I used to go to the library in downtown Dallas and spend hours there all alone. I delivered circulars in the worst parts of Dallas in the summers…got there on buses and spent all day doing it…no adults present.
Ah….those were the days…And I really don’t think our lives are better now.
I want to add something that’s somewhat off topic…there’s been a lot of discussion here on this blog about how bad Trump is. I think he’s onto something important…namely the professional political class running things in our government and people getting sick and tired of “political correctness”.
Our founders were from all walks of life…they were NOT professional politicians. And many weren’t lawyers…letting lawyers make our laws is like letting a fox guard the chicken house.
And if you think Trump is bad for our country, the problem isn’t Trump….the problem is our ill informed, unthinking electorate. Until we we get a better electorate (not holding my breath), we won’t have a quality government.
And if you think Trump is bad for our country, the problem isn’t Trump….the problem is our ill informed, unthinking electorate. Until we we get a better electorate (not holding my breath), we won’t have a quality government.
Obama and retinue will be gone someday, their voters will remain.
They’re petulant:
COLORADO ACLU CHAIRMAN RESIGNS AFTER WRITING ABOUT SHOOTING TRUMP SUPPORTERS:
[Loring] Wirbel’s Facebook post read: “The thing is, we have to really reach out to those who might consider voting for Trump and say, ‘This is Goebbels. This is the final solution. If you are voting for him I will have to shoot you before election day.’ They’re not going to listen to reason, so when justice is gone, there’s always force, as Laurie would say.”
It is possible to recollect a liberal arts college motto: Facio liberos ex liberis libris libraque — translated: I make free men out of children by means of books and a balance
Taking the offer or claim at face value, perhaps America could use the help — I doubt it would be an injury to try.
They’re petulant:
Per Perlstein, Trump has unleashed forces in his supporters “that are more animalistic than human.” Perlstein added that spectacle of the US losing to ISIS has filled Trump fans with “childlike, impotent rage.”
Pict warning: hipster dhimmi beard…
Wirbel, Perlstein, round up the usual suspects …
Texexec: You had it a bit better than I did 12 years later, but I had it great. We rode the buses in Atlanta as well; went wherever we wanted. Those days are gone; neither our children nor grandchildren can even conceive of the freedoms we had growing up. I’m afraid Frog is correct.