Saturday, December 03, 2011
Refreshing the Tree
The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.
-- Thomas Jefferson
Listen to this interview with Samra Naas of Libya. Her husband, Mohammed Nabbous, just received the Lyons Award for Integrity in Journalism from Harvard's Nieman Foundation for Journalism...posthumously. The story is horrible, heartbreaking, and extremely beautiful.
So long as there are people like Nabbous, and Naas, and Mayar, there'll be freedom.
When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything — you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him.
-- Robert Heinlein
