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May 16, 2005
Give me liberty, or
give me death!
Fifth grade is the
year for American history, when the Constitution is broken into three
branches of government, the Bill of Rights is memorized, and famous
patriots stir our imagination. American children grow up, nurtured on
the ideals of independence and freedom.
Patrick Henry lives
on today at Colonial Williamsburg, America’s largest living history
museum. In body and voice, Richard Shumann recreates Henry and the
words he used to stir colonists to battle.
In March 1775,
Patrick Henry urged his fellow Virginians to arm in self-defense,
closing his appeal (uttered at
St. John's
Church in Richmond, where the legislature was meeting) with the
immortal words: Is
life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of
chains or slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course
others may take but as for me; give me liberty or give me death!
Henry, "a Quaker in
religion but the very devil in politics," mobilized the militia only a
few hours after the British march on Concord. His words are said to
mark the beginning of the American Revolution in Virginia.
Liberty,
the cause of the American Revolution, burns bright in the minds of
Americans as the ultimate cause worth defending. We want our
freedom. Independence.
Liberty. No one is going to bar our way, get in our face, tell us
what to do.
America is the land
of the free.
But there is
another Henry. And another quote. This Henry speaks of liberty,
too. But more to the point, he speaks about the purest essence of
liberty, the distillation of what our freedom must be in order to
allow us to be free.
Where there is
no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the
least of real liberty.
--Henry M. Robert
So, who is this
Henry?
Henry Martyn Robert was born
May 2, 1837, in Robertsville, South Carolina. Active in his community,
he was chosen to chair a committee and was embarrassed by his
inability to handle their meetings effectively.
Henry’s work in the army allowed him to travel and study the different
systems used in various communities to order their meetings. He
envisioned a uniform set of rules used by all people that would allow
people from different towns to work together effectively.
Encouraged by friends, Henry wrote a book and finally found a
publisher willing to gamble on a printing of 4,000, enough copies to
last a couple of years. Instead, the first copies of
Robert’s Rules
sold out in a few months.
Henry M. Robert died in 1923 in New York, leaving us an important
lesson about liberty. Unfettered and unrestrained, liberty is a
freedom that will enslave us. Order, rules, and governance are the
friends of freedom that protect us from ourselves.
Too much liberty
corrupts us all.
--Terence (185 BC - 159 BC)
Liberty:
Defined in simple terms, it is the power to do as one pleases.
But if one is thorough in reading to the end of the definition, the
reins on freedom are spelled out: permission especially to go
freely within specified limits.
Libertine:
A word no longer needed in America where everything goes, it has a
lesson to teach. A person who is unrestrained by convention or
morality; specifically : one leading a dissolute life…a life
dissolving through unrestrained liberties?
Dissolute:
lacking restraint; especially : marked by indulgence
in things (as drink or promiscuous sex) deemed vices <the
dissolute and degrading aspects of human nature. Is this a
concept Americans are able to...even willing to...understand?
As we work to teach
our children the value of saving sex until marriage, we must look
ourselves full face in the mirror. We must admit that our culture has
used our love affair with liberty to enslave us to our passions.
In a culture that
celebrates excess, we must restore the truth about liberty. Give us
liberty. Yes. But give us also the courage and character
to submit our liberty to restraint.
Civilization
begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.
--Will Durant
(1885-1981)
Law is order in
liberty, and without order liberty is social chaos.
--Archbishop
Ireland
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