What does it mean to be true to liberty?

For folks like Frederick Douglas and Abraham Lincoln I think “being true” meant to be loyal, steadfast, committed, uncompromising, self-sacrificing, and universal in liberty’s championing and application — and most particularly in the context of how liberty is defended, reenforced, and facilitated through prudent and generous governance, and a wise shaping of the rule of law. Such passion and devotion to human liberty was, after all, one potent impetuous for the U.S. Constitution itself.

Being “true to liberty” today, however, apparently has much more to do with one’s “right” to:

- Consume conspicuously and destructively

- Maintain unearned, inherited privilege and wealth

- Be free from any consequences or accountability for wrongs committed

- Provoke acts of violence, hatred, and vicious racism and xenophobia through “free speech” across social and mass media

- Hoard military style weapons of mass lethality

- Whine constantly about being a “victim” while perpetrating horrific abuses and unlawful acts

- Proudly promote policies that undermine one’s own fundamental civil rights and economic interests

So things are a bit upside down today, at least among those who bray the most loudly about being true to “freedom” and “liberty” as they have redefined it.

My 2 cents.

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