A look at types of freedom...interesting questions and topics to consider

46 Clues You’re Enslaving Yourself Voluntarily

by Stephen Palmer  at http://www.thesocialleader.com/2013/07/voluntary-servitude/
 
It’s ironic how many captives proudly pledge allegiance to the flag.
Funny how fervently we proclaim we’re willing to die for freedom, but are unwilling to live free in our daily lives.
Strange how much lip service we give to being grateful for our freedom, while constantly trampling on that precious gift with poor choices.
We don’t need chains, whips, and jail cells to be held captive.
Involuntary servitude is a crime against humanity. But voluntary servitude is a crime against nature, as it stifles our joy and constrains our potential.
As I explain in my book, Uncommon Sense, Viktor Frankl locked in a concentration camp cell is more free than the drug or pornography addict in America.
Voluntary servitude — and its opposite, personal freedom — come in five forms: spiritual, mental, emotional, physical, and financial.
Answer the following questions to determine just how free you are in your life:

1. Spiritual Freedom

To be spiritually free is to have a close relationship with your Creator, adhere to your conscience, serve your fellow man, and to know and live your purpose with faith and courage.
To be in bondage spiritually is to be a stranger to God, to indulge the lusts of the flesh, to be fearful and selfish, and to wander through life without the rudder and North Star of purpose.

• Do you pray daily, sincerely, earnestly?
• Do you meditate daily?
• Do you study your spiritual text daily?
• Do you have a close, meaningful, and personal relationship with your Creator?
• Do you follow spiritual promptings you receive without hesitation?
• Do you view pornography?
• Do you routinely watch movies or listen to music that are below your values and spiritual standards?
• Do you honor your marriage vows in thought, word, and deed?
• How often do you serve others with no thought for getting anything in return?
• Do you have a clearly defined life purpose? Are you in tune with your calling? Do you know what you were born to do and become?
• Do you know what you’re trying to make happen in the world and how you will measure success?
• Is your life purpose written down, and do you read it daily?

2. Mental Freedom

To be mentally free is to know how think analytically, holistically, and creatively and to know the ideals one should strive for through liberal education.
As Leo Strauss said,

“Liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.”

Liberal education is gained by studying the greatest thinkers, ideas, and works in history: the Bible, Shakespeare, Aurelius, Aristotle, Plato, Calvin, Tolstoy, C.S. Lewis, Gandhi, etc.
Mental bondage is ignorance, to be a robot in conveyor-belt education, to never question why we do things or how to do them better.

• Do you engage in formal education primarily for job training?
• Has your education fostered, encouraged, and rewarded creativity, initiative, “outside-the-box” thinking?
• Do you know what the “good life” means and how to live it?
• Do you regularly read works from the authors listed above, and from others like them?
• Are you actively engaged in the “Great Conversation”?
• Do you spend more time watching TV than reading good, inspiring books?
• Do you read merely for entertainment, or to seek truth, expand your soul, and become more virtuous and wise?

3. Emotional Freedom

To be emotionally free is to be healed from wounds through forgiveness and gratitude, and to be consistently joyful.
Emotional bondage is to be a victim, a reactionary puppet on the strings of our wounds.

• Do you harbor hurt feelings and anger toward people who have caused you pain?
• Do you have a hard time forgiving?
• Are you easily offended?
• Do you often lose your temper and say things you regret?
• Are you generally optimistic, or pessimistic?
• Do you suffer from depression?
• Is your self-talk negative and limiting?
• How often do you express heartfelt gratitude to God, family, and friends?

4. Physical Freedom

To be physically free is to be free from physical addictions and the agendas of agricultural corporations and to enjoy maximized health and wellness through proper diet and exercise.
Physical bondage most often manifests as obesity, chronic illness, addictions to physical substances, and dependence on prescription drugs. (And clearly, there are biological factors beyond our control that affect these.)

• Does your diet consist primarily of processed foods?
• Do you garden? If so, do you use GMO seeds?
• Do you exercise regularly?
• Is your weight healthy?
• Do you often use prescription drugs to deal with ailments?
• Do you treat illness by simply masking symptoms, or by dealing with root causes?

5. Financial Freedom

To be financially free is to be debt-free and economically self-reliant.
As Garrett Gunderson and I detail in Killing Sacred Cows, financial bondage is to be indebted to banks, to fall prey to financial propaganda from institutions with vested interests, to be dependent on corporations, and to work for benefits and security rather than for purpose.

• Do you dislike your occupation but stick with it primarily for money, benefits, and “security”?
• Is your occupation a worthy expression of your values, talents, passion, and purpose?
• Does your occupation fill you with a deep sense of fulfillment?
• If you were to get fired today, would your knowledge, skills, grit, and initiative allow you to replace your income quickly — even outside your current field?
• Do you earn money living your purpose?
• Do you have three to six months’ of expenses in a savings account?
• Do you save 10 percent of your income?
• Do you have any credit card debt?
• Are you making monthly payments on any depreciating liability (car, furniture, etc.)?
• Have you ever bought on credit because of a deal like “90 days same as cash” or “1 year interest free”?
• Are you “invested” in a 401(k) or other mainstream financial product, such a mutual fund? If so, do you understand in depth what you’re “invested” in?

I don’t know about you, but I have some work to do.
I ponder the words of John Quincy Adams:

“Posterity: you will never know how much it has cost my generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”

Freedom without Virtue?...impossible.

Here is a post about freedom and virtue, with some links and resources:

There are some things worth getting mad about...

Freedom is one of those. Or at least, the lack thereof. 

Movies like "Amazing Grace" and books like "Les Miserable" stir something deep within me as I see people battling for the cause of freedom.  It is one of the things I am born to do: champion the cause of Liberty and learn the language of Freedom, as I call it.

My definition of "the language of Freedom"? To be able to articulate, persuade, and reason in behalf of the cause of liberty and freedom.  Very few things are more important to me than that; in fact, God and family are the only ones.

In order to learn how to this, I felt inspired to turn to something called "Leadership Education." According to Oliver DeMille, in his powerful lecture last year titled "7 Keys and 4 Phases,"  the key ingredients in a leadership education is the study of classics and the study of history.  

When I heard him say that last year, I though, "Great!  That's what we are doing in our homeschool!" 
 For the past few years, we have been working our way through an incredible historical series by Susan Wise Bauer:


These books have everything in them...all from sources as original as you can get!  You read all sorts of crazy things about kings and messengers, generals and slaves, sometimes in their very words :).  Her writing style is incredible, with stories that are written as they were lived...as an adventure and about real people!

And, in studying this history, I can see how important it is to know our history so that we may learn from it!

In all the cultures and time periods I have studied so far, government cannot be good government without virtue of the people!  Time and again, a virtuous person will come to power, do good on his or her "watch" in power, and then the society will topple and be overthrown by the corruption and deviousness of the next individual or group in power.  Time and again.  You get people in power who are trying to use the power of the government to do good things and find that they have to fight continuously against the corruption of people around them!  One poor chap in China tried to abdicate three times and retire to a monastery just so he could get away from it all...but he was too good and the people would not let him go!

So, going back to my original passion about freedom, I want to talk about that a little bit more. Want to really get my dander up? (Listen carefully, Daddy Clyde :)...here's what you've always wanted: the key to making me ready to fight!)  

Tell me the government has "told" me yet another way to run my life.  

Do you know who "the government" is?  My neighbor.  It is no all-powerful, all-knowing entity of accumulated knowledge.  It is the body that we have given the power to create laws on behalf of all of us to maintain our freedom, by securing some rights.

And do you know something else?  We lose freedom when people worry about personal "rights" that they want "secured" out of fear of the lack of virtue in others.

Let's look at that word: Virtue.  To me, part of that word "virtue" is the quality in a person that drives them to take responsibility for themselves and those in their stewardship in a way that respects the rights and responsibilities of others...all with a sense of accountability to some higher good.

Here is another way to look at it :):



Look familiar :)? We can also look at Cicero's summary of what he calls "natural law."  What is natural law? First of all, Cicero defines Natural Law as "true law." Then he says:

"True law is right reason in agreement with nature; it is of universal application, unchanging and everlasting; it summons to duty by its commands, and averts from wrongdoing by its prohibitions.... It is a sin to try to alter this law, nor is it allowable to repeal any part of it, and it is impossible to abolish entirely. We cannot be freed from its obligations by senate or people, and we need not look outside ourselves for an expounder or interpreter of it. And there will not be different laws at Rome and Athens, or different laws now and in the future, but one eternal and unchangeable law will be valid for all nations and all times, and there will be one master and ruler, that is God, over us all, for he is the author of this law, its promulgator, and its enforcing judge. Whoever is disobedient is fleeing from himself and denying his human nature, and by reason of this very fact he will suffer the worst punishment." (The Five thousand Year Leap, p. 40)

Just think.  If everyone observed these simple maxims, found in the 10 commandments and their consciences, and echoed in Cicero's "Natural Law," would we need government?  No.  Of course not, other than perhaps as some minor local tax collector who would gather funds to build roads or as some judge between minor cases of misunderstandings.  People would do what is good and right and fair, without anyone trying to force them to do it, and without anyone trying to get out of it :).

So, going back to what I have read in history and in my study of governments and society, there is no possible form of government where people can be free to obtain and use their money and resources to support their lives and families without virtue of the people. None. There is no such thing as a government powerful enough to force people to do good, without giving it the power to force them to do evil.

Historic and modern events support the common idiom:

Absolute power corrupts...absolutely.

The Founding Fathers of the United States of America knew this from their own study of history, thus creating our Constitution with important limitations and safeguards.  However, even they knew that only with virtue of the people would we be able to reap the benefits of their work, and use the Constitution for the intent for which it was created.

We must echo Elaine Dalton's call for a "return to virtue" as we look at society.  As people look to their hearts and their God, in whatever form they worship Him, they will know what they must do, and what that answer is for themselves.

Ahhhh.  But how to encourage people to do that, to choose to sacrifice and be virtuous over the pursuit of selfishness?  How do we encourage people to not be dishonest, to not take advantage of one's neighbor, to honestly look at what they have and what they need and use the excess to reach out and help others?  

That remains the question to be answered before we can answer the question how to maintain a government that perserves our freedom.

It must begin, one person at a time, and it must begin today...with you and with me.d

Obviously, I have a long way to go in my effort to learn how to make my passion for freedom articulate and clear :).  I will trust in God and keep doing what I can, one day at a time. 

**************************
Excerpt from "The Divinely Inspired Constitution"

U.S. citizens have an inspired Constitution, and therefore, what? Does the belief that the U.S. Constitution is divinely inspired affect citizens’ behavior toward law and government? It should and it does.

U.S. citizens should follow the First Presidency’s counsel to study the Constitution. ¹⁷ They should be familiar with its great fundamentals: the separation of powers, the individual guarantees in the Bill of Rights, the structure of federalism, the sovereignty of the people, and the principles of the rule of the law. They should oppose any infringement of these inspired fundamentals.

They should be law-abiding citizens, supportive of national, state, and local governments. The twelfth Article of Faith declares:

“We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

The Church’s official declaration of belief states:

“We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and that he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them. …

“We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside.” (D&C 134:1, 5.)

Those who enjoy the blessings of liberty under a divinely inspired constitution should promote morality, and they should practice what the Founding Fathers called “civic virtue.” In his address on the U.S. Constitution, President Ezra Taft Benson quoted this important observation by John Adams, the second president of the United States:

“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” ¹⁸

Similarly, James Madison, who is known as the “Father of the Constitution,” stated his assumption that there had to be “sufficient virtue among men for self-government.” He argued in the Federalist Papers that “republican government presupposes the existence of these qualities in a higher degree than any other form.” ¹⁹

It is part of our civic duty to be moral in our conduct toward all people. There is no place in responsible citizenship for dishonesty or deceit or for willful law breaking of any kind. We believe with the author of Proverbs that “righteousness exalteth a nation: but sin is a reproach to any people.” (Prov. 14:34.) The personal righteousness of citizens will strengthen a nation more than the force of its arms.

Citizens should also be practitioners of civic virtue in their conduct toward government. They should be ever willing to fulfill the duties of citizenship. This includes compulsory duties like military service and the numerous voluntary actions they must take if they are to preserve the principle of limited government through citizen self-reliance. For example, since U.S. citizens value the right of trial by jury, they must be willing to serve on juries, even those involving unsavory subject matter. Citizens who favor morality cannot leave the enforcement of moral laws to jurors who oppose them.