Tag Archives: Personal Liberty

“In the state of nature, liberty consists of being free from any superior power on Earth. People are not under the will or lawmaking authority of others but have only the law of nature for their rule. In political society, liberty consists of being under no other lawmaking power except that established by consent in the commonwealth. People are free from the dominion of any will or legal restraint apart from that enacted by their own constituted lawmaking power according to the trust put in it. Thus, freedom is not as Sir Robert Filmer defines it: ‘A liberty for everyone to do what he likes, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws.’ Freedom is constrained by laws in both the state of nature and political society. Freedom of nature is to be under no other restraint but the law of nature. Freedom of people under government is to be under no restraint apart from standing rules to live by that are common to everyone in the society and made by the lawmaking power established in it. Persons have a right or liberty to (1) follow their own will in all things that the law has not prohibited and (2) not be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, and arbitrary wills of others.” –  John Locke

Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century by Gerry Spence

Give Me Liberty: Freeing Ourselves in the Twenty-First Century Hardcover –  by Gerry Spence

“We are slaves. All of us,” writes Wyoming superlawyer Gerry Spence with his trademark exuberance. “The New Master is an entanglement of megacorporations on the one hand and an omnipresent national government on the other, each stuck to the other like a pair of copulating dogs, each unable to move without dragging the other behind it, each dependent upon the other, hating the other, but welded to the other in a dissolute enterprise.”

Gerry Spence is one of “My” Personal Heroes. Care to tell us about some of yours?

Other Voices

“The Only Change You Can Believe In”

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For anything significant to change, people must stop playing “follow the leader.” But, if people stop following the leader, then who will lead them? The answer: No one! You must lead yourself.

But self-leadership cannot be bought, given, or imposed. It has to come from within. It begins with expecting nothing from your “leaders” and understanding that everything has to come from you. It means having the courage not to cower to power. The dignity to claim your rightful and sacred place on earth. To respect yourself, demand it of others and show respect to all who merit it … regardless of class or status. The integrity to keep and live by your word. And the passion to live a life of meaning and conviction; for your heart to feel what your mind knows.

This is not an “every man for himself,” manifesto. Rather it is a call for a cooperative of individuals with the courage, dignity, respect, integrity and passion to chart a future that is not dictated and imposed upon them by ruling political parties and the unprincipled and oppressive systems they represent.

There is no “We the People” until “I the Person” is willing to stand up and speak for himself or herself.

For the future to change, the individual must change. When enough individuals change, everything changes.

From Trends Journal, August 2012, by Gerald Celente