Freedom Isn't Free

The question of the free agency is foremost among the issues confronting mankind at this moment⎯the principle around which revolve the absolute essentials of peace and progress, and of man’s opportunity on earth⎯and, indeed, ever after. “The history of Liberty,” wrote Edward Everett, “-the history of men struggling to be free . . . forms a subject which we cannot contemplate too closely. This is the real history of man.”

Also involved is the basic question of character⎯for coercion is not compatible with responsible, resourceful qualities of character. “The history of our time,” wrote David E. Lilienthal, “will be written by what happens in the everyday lives of the men and women we see upon the streets and in the factories and on the farms and in the colleges and city halls and the legislatures and the administrative offices and the business establishments.”

In all the tension of these times let not the main theme be obscured, nor men’s minds diverted to side considerations. We must ever remember what the issue is: free agency⎯liberty within law⎯the freedom to live as God gave men the right to live, responsible, resourceful, clean, honest; with truth and decency; with soundness and solvency, and with the moral and mental character to live in liberty within the law.

“No free government,” wrote Andrew Jackson, “can stand without virtue in the people and a lofty spirit of patriotism.” And, said Somerset Maugham, “If a nation values anything more than freedom it will lose its freedom; and the irony of it is that if it is comfort of money that it values more, it will lose that too.”

The fact is⎯and we must face it⎯that freedom isn’t free, isn’t always comfortable, isn’t always convenient; yet it is among the greatest gifts that God has given, for which we must be willing to work and to serve, not misled by lesser and incidental considerations, but with our eyes and efforts always on the basic issue: that “this land shall be a land of liberty” and of law.

To cite a sentence from an eminent source: “Only the disciplined are free.”