Liberty, Liberally March 2023

Liberty, Liberally

Words (are Weapons) of Wisdom

by Joshua Fryfogle

Tyranny isn’t afraid of your guns

Go to the gun store, buy every one

Tyranny controls your guns with your fear

Go to the gun range - plug up your ears

Tyranny is the State of man

Go any place, in every land

Tyranny fears the littlest seed

“Education is the key to unlock the golden door of freedom.”

- George Washington Carver

Just because you are ignorant doesn’t mean that you’re stupid. People feel stupid when they realize that they are ignorant about something, but ignorance is just a lack of knowledge. Stupidity would be to not care that they are ignorant.

“Not ignorance, but ignorance of ignorance, is the death of knowledge.”

- Alfred North Whitehead

People on the political right have in recent years had a renaissance of sorts. It’s encouraging to me, to see our nation at the beginning of what might be a real revolution - a continuation of that original American Revolution. Unfortunately, there are those who seek to convert revolution into totalitarianism instead of Western Liberalism.

The founding fathers only started a process, and they knew it. They acknowledged that education was the key to continued Liberty of the individual. They knew, because they were highly educated men. In a time without public school, education was valued because only the powerful had an education. Knowledge is power, so the saying goes. “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people.”

- John Adams

American mythos is that a woman asked Benjamin Franklin, as he left Independence Hall at the end of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, “Well, Doctor, what have we got, a republic or a monarchy?” to which Franklin responded, “A republic, if you can keep it.”

The Founding Fathers are celebrated by United States patriots today, but the founders would be amazed at our general ignorance of what they did, and why.

These men had a classical education, including the literature of the world, rhetoric and discourse, along with Latin and Greek studies to make them aware of the etymology of words. Most people today don’t even know the word ‘etymology’, much less what it means.

etymology noun

US (/ˌet.ɪˈmɑː.lə.dʒi/ ET-im-OL-ə-jee)

The study of the origin and history o words, or a study of this type relating to one particular word

Uneducated people are easily controlled. So it follows that if our society is being controlled by an educated elite class then we must be ignorant. We ignore the institutions of academia, and as a result we are unarmed in the warfare of words. And government is words, on paper.

“Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

- James Madison

What did the founders write, on paper? They wrote out guarantees and acknowledgements of our inherent,

God-given rights. This was an effective argument at the time, because it inverted the concept of the Divine Right of Kings: that we should submit to the King, because God decides who is king. The founding fathers adhered to the philosophy of individual Liberty, using similar reasoning. They reminded their readers that God gave everyone free will, just as he made the king into a ruler. It was genius, really. But only an educated individual, who truly understands the words that are used to justify our laws, could have made such an argument. It’s an educated argument, profound and succinct.

Some of the smartest people I’ve ever known were ignorant. People who have shaped my life in the most important ways, who taught me life lessons that I treasure, were not well-educated. This essay is not an attempt to shame people for being ignorant. This is my contribution to the momentum of this moment, when society seems to be awakening to our loss of Liberty. It’s been happening for decades, slowly but surely, like an alarm clock that we’ve ignored, and snoozed, until this late hour.

To be free, in theory, is an idea that all the great philosophers and their students have explored. Our ability as human beings to go against the herd is what separates us from the animals. The human, being human, is capable of being more than their instinct compels them. Our ability to use language to communicate and educate, to innovate and renovate our reality to suit our free will, sets us apart from each other, and from the beasts of the field.

“I know of no safe repository of the ultimate power of society but the people themselves, and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education. This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power.”

- Thomas Jefferson

The founders understood this, all too well. Sure, they understood that we needed to be armed with physical weapons, as a last resort, but to always be ready with a retort. They knew that we would be free, on paper, but that to truly BE free is to learn and grow in our Liberty all the days of our lives. To be free, in practice, requires that we be educated, as were the founding fathers. We celebrate them for taking up arms, and we celebrate the constitution and Bill of Rights, but the education and insight that went into writing those laws is what really protected future generations. The second amendment was and is necessary, but first things first.

The First Amendment was written, on paper, as a reminder. It’s a single sentence, with a primary clause, followed by a series of subordinate clauses, separated by semicolons. The grammar here is very important to understanding the intent of the First Amendment ...

ARTICLE CONTINUES ON THE NEXT PAGE

More than the guns you think that you need

Tyranny likes that you think you are free

Let’s you have guns, but won’t let you see

That all of these weapons of war are so weak

Compared to the truth and the wisdom to speak...

...wordswordswordSWORDSwordswordswords...

Liberty Is Lovely

Liberty is she whom every individual yearns for, and it is in that yearning that our learning of Liberty becomes amorous.

Liberty is what the subjugated masses in time desire, each and every one of us. It’s the freedom to do no harm, but to otherwise freely express our most beautiful Self.

Liberty lets art flow from the fingertips, it lets relationships and culture grow, peacefully, like a garden.

Liberty has grace, and with kindness by her side, her mere appearance will silence those who doubt her. She is striking to behold.

Liberty is the gift of Self, the free will to decide how you will be in the world. Life is your only chance to dance, in her thrilling embrace, this face to face union...

Liberty sings a song that, once heard, makes the heart feel forever full, like a pool, with a fountain.

Liberty decorates the drab, destitute world, freely and without force.

Liberty need not force anything... she allows.

Liberty is lovely.

“I can’t believe what God has done Through us He’s given life to one But isn’t she lovely made from love?”

-Stevie Wonder, Isn’t She Lovely

... It’s about protecting our ability to become aware, to learn and teach and share with each other, all in service to our individual consciences.

First, in its primary clause, the First Amendment acknowledges the liberty of Religion, and protects even the idea of Religion from being defined or refined by the State. Ultimately, it protects the individual’s freedom of conscience, to think for themselves. Without the ability to think and believe as one might, their liberty is snuffed out from the start. The following clauses establish lawful guarantees of rights that naturally follow that of freedom of conscience. These include the right to speak freely what we have thought about and believe, to even print and publish freely, to gather freely, and at the end of this process of thought, to petition the government our shared concerns and to receive a response to those concerns.

The first amendment establishes our right to think as being guaranteed by the State, and had the founders not been educated men, we would have never had

the opportunity to truly live as free people, because we would never have been free on paper.

Education is the key to maintaining our Liberty. Not the kind that ends, but the kind that endures. It’s a process of education in our everyday lives, a lifestyle of learning, that the founders modeled for us. Their own lives, those few who stood up and fought for freedom, were dedicated to learning.

Today, it’s sad to say, those who proclaim freedom loudest are least likely to know anything about it.

“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest.”

- Benjamin Franklin

Here are some texts and resources that influenced the founding fathers when they wrote the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights: Any of the writings of John Locke, Montesquieu, The Federalist Papers, The Magna Carta, the works of William Blackstone, Voltaire, Rousseau, Adam Smith, the Iroquois Confederacy, and Thomas Paine. There are countless resources online, both written and video, to help you on your way.

Speak Freely

Song Lyrics by Joshua Fryfogle

Liberty, Liberally, is at the center of The People’s Paper, literally and philosophically.

Liberal Arts are synonymous with philosophical thought.

This publication (Liberty, Liberally) is actually mine, whereas The People’s Paper (and MAS Magazine) are made public by members of the public each month. I’m not the publisher of those papers - I’m a steward instead. My team works hard to facilitate freedom for the People in our community.

My sense of duty to those publications

(The People’s Paper and Make A Scene) is expressed earnestly, here in the pages of Liberty, Liberally, which is found here in the center of the pages of The People’s Paper. My heart is opened up, here in your hands, to help you understand why I would devote my life to lifting your voice.

Liberty isn’t something that can be represented. It can’t be assigned to a proxy. The People’s Paper doesn’t publish anything, the People do. They make the decision to send it in, to make it public, and we agree to print their sincere expressions of conscience.

But Liberty, Liberally, allows me to remind our readers why The People’s Paper exists.

The supporting philosophical orientation that is required for The People’s Paper to remain true to its mission is broad. It is the Liberal Tradition, it is the founding philosophy of the West, that each individual is, by nature, free already, and that they need only realize their freedom. This happens in the mind before it happens in the social milieu.

I’v been writing my whole life. Songs, poems, all manner of writings, really. My interest in the liberal arts is lifelong.

At the center of my working life, in everything I’ve chosen to do with my professional life, is this aspiration to amplify the voices of the community, and to vivify their communication. It is this idea, that a Free Society can be peaceful and prosperous if individual rights are respected, that steers my ambitions.

My decision to start publishing my writings was arrived at after nearly 15 years. I could have published my writings all along, alongside the other community members who make use of our public service. (I’ve written much more than I’ll ever publish.) My worry was that as the attendant of The People’s Paper, and thus the People, my own use of the pages of The People’s Paper would send the wrong message. For this reason, I’ve only occasionally published my own writings in Make A Scene or The People’s Paper.

It’s a conundrum, really. Liberty, Liberally, solves that problem.

Though I would have been within my rights, and within my purview to publish my own essays in The People’s Paper, I would have risked reinforcing the idea that you, the reader, are only that. But you, dear reader, have all the rights that I have. You, the individual, have just as much right to freedom of the press that anyone else has, regardless of academic credentials. Freedom of press is for everyone.

I’ve tried to explain this ethos to as many as would listen these last 15 years. But I’ve also tried to avoid the pitfall that other media companies have always fallen into. By not publishing my writing in every issue, and sparingly when I do, The People’s Paper could not be confused as The Josh’s Paper. Sometimes, it’s what you don’t say that says the most.

You can respond to what you’ve read, or write what matters to you.

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