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Freedom of speech means freedom for those who you despise, and freedom to express the most despicable views. It also means that the government cannot pick and choose which expressions to authorize and which to prevent.
Alan Dershowitz
As Mencken observed nearly a century ago "The fact is that the average man's love of liberty is nine-tenths imaginary, exactly like his love of sense, justice and truth. He is not actually happy when free; he is uncomfortable, a bit alarmed, and intolerably lonely. Liberty is not a thing for the great masses of men. It is the exclusive possession of a small and disreputable minority, like knowledge, courage and honor. It takes a special sort of man to understand and enjoy liberty ā and he is usually an outlaw in democratic societies."
Why do men, who call themselves learned, dedicate whole lifetimes to making theories to prove that violence employed by authority against the people is not violence at all, but a special right?
Lev Tolstoy, The Kingdom of God Is Within You, trans. Constance Garnett (New York: Barnes and Noble, 2005 [original Russian composition 1893]), p. 242.
The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without Authority, there could not be worse violence than that of Authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require the protection of governmental powerā¦ There can be only one permanent revolutionāa moral one: the regeneration of the inner man.
Lev Tolstoy, āOn Anarchyā (1900).Ā
On the other hand, Tolstoy indicates that the vision of Jesus seems more that men acknowledge the true nature of leadership and authority, and consequently live as free men in his previous works such as The Kingdom of God is Within You. Any social applications of this as a system ābubble upā and may, if the individual changes are society wide, will transform it.
So numberless were those bad angels seen Hovering on wing under the cope of Hell āTwixt upper, nether, and surrounding fires.
ā John Milton, Paradise Lost.Ā
St. Paul preaching to the philosophers at Athens (painting by Raphael, c. 1515). Finding them interested only in splitting philosophical hairs, Paul moved on, satisfied to have planted a seed in the rocky Athenian soil.
āThe God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. āFor in him we live and move and have our being.ā As some of your own poets have said, āWe are his offspring.ā ā ā Acts 17: 24-28.
And behold, a lawyer stood up to put him to the test, saying, āTeacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?ā [To which Jesus asked him what the law required and, after the lawyer had answered, he told him to do as the law required, which included loving his neighbor as himself] But he, desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, āAnd who is my neighbor?ā [Whereupon Jesus related the parable of the Good Samaritan, and asked him] Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?ā He said, āThe one who showed mercy on him.ā And Jesus said to him, āGo and do likewise.ā ā Luke 10: 25, 29, 36-37.
In this part, one gets the impression he was expending copious amounts of patience and tolerance in disdaining to speak with the statist types and new theocrats, what with their clever trickeries and smarmy attitudes. Whether Jesus actually said it, Luke made it up, or it never happened, I think the idea that you should love every man as yourself is exactly what we need. We must dissolve egoic boundaries between one another if we hope to live in harmony and peace. If you cannot love your enemies then that is your choice, but do not expect peace in your heart or harmony in your relations. As Jesus indicates that āyou will not be punished for your anger, but by your angerā, it is the main idea. Hate is toxic to the body. This isnāt woo-woo mumbo jumbo thatās science. Your emotions and mental state have a direct correlation to your physical well being. So what is rational? What provides for the best possible outcome? Harboring hate and anger toward thine enemies? Or to understand that they act in ignorance, they know not what they do, and to love them and wish for their enlightenment for their sake and our own. Why seek to perpetuate the division among men and not our unity? Even if impossible, is it not a worthy ideal to guide your action?
In this sense, Jesus indicates that we, as humans, are shackled to an unpleasant life, hate and that the worst of it is that humansā imprisonment is of our own failing nature. In this story, the lawyer can be seen as representative of every man.
āSo faith, hope, love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.ā ā 1 Corinthians 13: 13.
āWatch, stand fast in the faith, be brave, be strong. Let all that you do be done with love.ā ā 1 Corinthians 16: 13-14.
āA new commandment I give unto you. That you should love one another, as I have loved you, that you should also love one another.ā ā John 13: 34.
āBut the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.ā ā Galatians 5: 22-23.
āLet love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold fast to what is good; love one another with brotherly affection; outdo one another in showing honor.ā ā Romans 12: 9-10.
Pilate said to them, āWhat then shall I do with Jesus who is called Christ?ā
They all said to him, āLet Him be crucified!ā
Then the governor said, āWhy, what evil has He done?ā
But they cried out all the more, saying, āLet Him be crucified!ā
ā Matthew 27: 22-23.
Pilate therefore, willing to release Jesus, spake again to them. But they cried, saying, Crucify him, crucify him. And he said unto them the third time, Why, what evil hath he done? I have found no cause of death in him: I will therefore chastise him, and let him go. And they were instant with loud voices, requiring that he might be crucified. And the voices of them and of the chief priests prevailed. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required. ā Luke 23: 20-24.
As Henry Adams noted, āPolitics, as a practice, whatever its professions, has always been the systematic organization of hatreds.ā Like nearly every administrator, Pilate just wanted people to settle down and stop making trouble for him. He himself had no dog in the fight, so he chose the easiest avenue out of the situation. In other words, it was democracyās finest moment. A politician/governor actually, for once, set aside his own personal feelings and beliefs, and ordered the will of the people carried out by duly appointed agents of the law. As Matthew 16: 26 indicates, āFor what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?ā How tragic that those who seek to become successful statesmen or to wield state power in another capacity did not deliberate more seriously on this question before setting forth on that wicked path.
āDepression and cynicismā¦ go hand-in-hand, along with their nasty little sister, anxiety. When the three of them get going, they just eat hope as quickly as it can be summoned. That leaves despair and despair is exhausting, not just for those who experience it, but for the people around it as well. So we keep it to ourselves because we donāt want to be a burden. And then it gets to be too much.ā ā Rich Larson
This subject is one of the few about which I feel that I have genuine expertise, indeed, a lifetime of such expertise. All of us wish that we could live without pain and loss, but in life as we know it, we must often suffer. There is so much difficulty, negativity, animosity, envy, hatred, and violence in our world. The world gives us spiritual anxiety and rootlessness; fascination with culturally superficial and ephemeral foolishness. In the shadows, Kafka smiles knowingly. Of course, this situation is hardly new; it is more like the human condition. But it is no less deplorable, regardless of its antiquity. It really is hard for the fish to avoid being in the water but the literature transforms my sadness into a thing, a beauty. Literature to give hope to the seemingly hopeless, to inspire gratitude for all the marvels around us, the strength to carry on in the face of all adversity and inspire compassion and love for all.
As it is said in Revelation 21: 4, āAnd God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: for the former things are passed away.ā
After healing a crippled man, Barnabas and Paul protest the peopleās attempt to make sacrifices to them as if they were gods ācome down to us in the likeness of menā:
āSirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you, and preach unto you that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, which made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and all things that are therein: Who in times past suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. Nevertheless he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave us rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, filling our hearts with food and gladness.ā ā Acts 14:15-17.
Contrast our rulers, who, having healed no one, yet demand that we make sacrifices to them as if they were gods come down to us in the likeness of men and women.
Maybe they are.
Sausade: It describes a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.
George Elgar Hicks - On the seashore (1879).
Tolkien understood.
Indeed, nothing except virtue is more glorious than liberty, if however liberty is properly separated from virtueā¦ none has ever trampled on liberty except for the manifest enemies of virtue.
John of Salisbury, aid to Thomas Becket and bishop of Chartres, AD 1159 Policraticus, Book VII, 25
Gold bracelet found in a woman near Pompeii, inscribed āDominus suae ancillaeā, "From the master to his slave girl".Ā Serpent gold bracelet was found on the arm of a woman who apparently sheltered in a building in Agro Murecine [modern Moregine] near Pompei.Ā
The ring has an original pagan dedication to Venus but a secondary Christian inscription "Senicianus lives in God".Ā The "Silvianus Ring" was inspected by a young J.R.R Tolkien who soon after began writing "Lord of the Rings".Ā