Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
Freedom in my opinion is the ability to do what you want as long as it is not hurting your neighbor. Sounds good--in line with how the Founders saw it. Freedom is allowing bass master and fish wee wee to have a raging province town wedding. So long as it is not hurting your neighbor? Freedom is a Jewish family, a Muslim family, a Muslim family and a bunch of hippies living in the same sub division neighborhood with a condo association.
Freedom is not imposing your religious beliefs on others, nor your personal beliefs and life style choices on others as well? holy wars based on oil fields and political oligarchy serving a few handful of interests. That's fascism  or political wars on religious beliefs and "traditional" values?
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Nebe
Freedom is the buzzword of fools.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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Freedom may be the buzzword of some fools, especially those who equate it with license. But it is also a word, if used wisely, that describes a universal human yearning to be rid of oppression, whether from such oppressions as hunger or fear as FDR envisioned freedom to be, or, as the Founders intended, from human coercions among which would be despotic government. But the two views disagree on the source of freedom.
The Founders believed the source was beyond the capacity of humans to give. That freedom was essentially inalienable and should only be limited by societal agreement. That we are essentially born free to do whatever we are capable of doing, but, in order to preserve that freedom for ourselves and others, that we should be responsible for our actions, and agree not to impinge on others' freedom to do the same.
FDR and his progressive cohorts, believed that the source of freedom was government. And therefor, the people are free to do what the government allows. A rather harsh version of this is explained on a quote attributed to Stalin:
So, society (and not just "bourgeois" society) sets the limits of individual choice, even (and maybe especially) while those limitations are invisible to casual view. These limitations are seen as the utmost of freedom, because they are accepted by members of the society as the "definition" of "freedom". If the limits of your chains are the definition of freedom - then, by definition, the length of your chains is "freedom".
The question is who puts the chains on whom. The Founders say that the chains are put on government which is in turn allowed to place very limited chains on the people. Marxists, socialists, progressives say that government is unlimited in its choice of chains for the people.
Both systems, the constitutional and the progressive, still depend, at least outwardly, on votes by the people. But if all that is required to enchain the people is the gathering of votes, then freedom in the founding sense, is at the mercy of the highest bidders and/or the most determined or persuasive tyrant. That is the condition the progressives have created and is the most advantageous to their power.
Constitutionalism, on the other hand, if adhered to, safeguards against that despotism.
Whether Bernie would govern progressively or constitutionally is the important distinction on which you should vote, not on nice promises of what he will give you.
If freedom is merely a buzzword for you and not worth an iota of a promised security which you are not capable of achieving yourself, Bernie may be your man.
I still believe that Franklin's "Those who surrender freedom for security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one" applies to your choice.
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