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The Platypus and Freedom

National Banned book week is coming up. All over the country, people will be gathering together to read books currently banned by the U.S. government in support of Freedom of Speech and Freedom of the Press. The slogan in one college newspaper runs: "Exercise your Right to Freedom of Speech". And I realized that a shift in our understanding of freedom has occurred. For Locke and the American Founders, Freedom was about being left alone to pursue life, liberty and property. Today, our understanding has changed. Freedom is no longer a state of governmental non-interference, but an action, an assertion of will. Do you catch the shift? It has moved from a negative, a lack of governmental interference, to a positive, asserting one's "rights". It has turned from "let me be" to "I will". The Founder's view is simply the Founder's view. I am not asserting that since it is prior, it is on that basis "correct". What interests me is the shift and what it bodes for our nation. What does a society look like that reveres freedom and understands freedom as the action of pushing against any boundaries that inhibit the will? It is a society in perpetual revolution, perpetual revolt. It is a society defined by doing, not by being. It is progress for progress' sake.

"I held it truth with him who sings to one clear harp in diverse tones, that men may rise on stepping stones of their dead selves to higher things, but who can so forecast the years and find in loss a gain to match, or reach a hand out as if to catch the far off interest of tears?"

The world is much larger than politics.
Then why does the wind howl so loud?
It is the illusion of movement.

The wind blows wherever it pleases
you hear its sound but you cannot
discern where it has come from or
where it is going -so is it with everyone
born of the spirit.

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