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Mixed Emotions

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.

There is strange comfort in knowing that no matter what happens today, the Sun will rise again tomorrow. Freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose. Liberty without Learning is always in peril and Learning without Liberty is always in vain. Of course. That's what people do in a disordered world, a world of freedom and choice: they leave when they want. They disappear, they come back, they leave again. And you are left to pick up the pieces on your own. The foolish who are trying to read the Second Amendment out of the Constitution by claiming it's not an individual right or that it's too much of a public safety hazard, don't see the danger in the big picture. They're courting disaster by encouraging others to use the same means to eliminate portions of the Constitution they don't like. Freedom is the will to be responsible for ourselves. Everything is relative in this world, where change alone endures.

You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom. At first, man was enslaved by the gods. But he broke their chains. Then he was enslaved by the kings. But he broke their chains. He was enslaved by his birth, by his kin, by his race. But he broke their chains. He declared to all his brothers that a man has rights which neither god nor king nor other men can take away from him, no matter what their number, for his is the right of man, and there is no right on earth above this right. And he stood on the threshold of freedom for which the blood of the centuries behind him had been spilled. We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else. I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

It is when we think we can act like God, that all respect is lost, and I think this is the downfall of peace. We lie if we say we do not see color and culture and difference. We fool ourselves and cheat ourselves when we say that all of us are the same. We should not want to be the same as others and we should not want others to be the same as us. Rather, we ought to glory and shine in all of our differences, flaunting them fabulously for all to see! It is never a conformity that we need! We need not to conform! What we need is to burst out into all these beautiful colors. I have never thought, for my part, that man's freedom consists in his being able to do whatever he wills, but that he should not, by any human power, be forced to do what is against his will. After all, if you run far enough, no one can catch you. The personality susceptible to the dream of limitless freedom is a personality also prone, should the dream ever sour, to misanthropy and rage. A man is as free as he chooses to make himself, never an atom freer.

Today only the person who no longer believes in a happy ending, only he/she who has consciously renounced it, is able to live. A happy century does not exist; but there are moments of happiness, and there is freedom in the moment. Within each of us is a light, awake, encoded in the fibers of our existence. Divine ecstasy is the totality of this marvelous creation experienced in the hearts of humanity. Man's right to know, to learn, to inquire, to make bona fide errors, to investigate human emotions must, by all means, be safe, if the word "freedom" should ever be more than an empty political slogan. Someday, the realm of liberty and justice will encompass the planet. Freedom is not just the birthright of the few, it is the God-given right of all His children, in every country. It won't come by conquest. It will come, because freedom is right and freedom works. It will come, because cooperation and good will among free people will carry the day. My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

Only a mind free of impediment is capable of grasping the chaotic beauty of the world. This is our greatest asset. Life's trials will test you, and shape you, but don’t let them change who you are. The only real battle in life is between hanging on and letting go. We live in a world in which people are censured, demoted, imprisoned, beheaded, simply because they have opened their mouths, flapped their lips, and vibrated some air. Yes, those vibrations can make us feel sad or stupid or alienated. That's the price of admission to the marketplace of ideas. Hateful, blasphemous, prejudiced, vulgar, rude, or ignorant remarks are the music of a free society, and the relentless patter of idiots is how we know we're in one. When all the words in our public conversation are fair, good, and true, it's time to make a run for the fence. You know, there are two good things in life, freedom of thought and freedom of action. .A man is nothing without dreams. A man is called idiot while he dreams. Whatever he does, he'll be judged and thrown away from the circle of clowns. And yet he needs acceptance and security from sick society, which is discriminatory far too often. But a man is blinded by other people opinions. He wants to fly and they say, “You moron, you can't do that, it's forbidden, it's stupid.” And a man gives up on his dreams.

When faith in our freedom gives way to fear of our freedom, silencing the minority view becomes the operative protocol.

At It's Finest

Our democracy should aspire to be more democratic.

All humans are equal, but not everyone has the mental capacity to decide what's best for harmony and progress of a people. It makes people feel good to say that all opinions are equal, because somehow, they correlate equality of opinions with equality of human dignity. And that's exactly where lies one of the most disgraceful and harmful perceptual errors of the society. For the people to have power, it is imperative that the people are competent, not simply intellectually, but in their entire psychological realm. Confrontation of the voice of dissent must be prevalent in a healthy democracy. However, it's also imperative to ensure that a significant amount of energy should not be wasted for someone else's utter foolishness. What is democracy? If it is the rule of the majority, ignoring the rest, then it is not good, it is very bad! But if it is the rule of the whole citizens, caring the wills of both the majority and the rest, then it is good, then it is real democracy! And the purpose of every real democracy is to be a modern country, to be a modern structure.

There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge. Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them. Elections belong to the people. It's their decision. If they decide to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will just have to sit on their blisters. The end may justify the means as long as there is something that justifies the end. I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts. The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerated the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism: ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or any controlling private power.

Democracy doesn't mean spreading terror. In this possibly terminal phase of human existence, democracy and freedom are more than just ideals to be valued they may be essential to survival. A tree has roots in the soil yet reaches to the sky. It tells us that in order to aspire we need to be grounded and that no matter how high we go it is from our roots that we draw sustenance. It is a reminder to all of us who have had success that we cannot forget where we came from. It signifies that no matter how powerful we become in government or how many awards we receive, our power and strength and our ability to reach our goals depend on the people, those whose work remain unseen, who are the soil out of which we grow, the shoulders on which we stand. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. Objective truth is difficult to come by, and even if you have it, what you can pass on to the next person is the story that you tell about it. In order for truth to be recognized as true, it has to be wrapped in plausibility. Just the same as lies.

We are not afraid to entrust the American people with unpleasant facts, foreign ideas, alien philosophies, and competitive values. For a nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. To know and not to know, to be conscious of complete truthfulness while telling carefully constructed lies, to hold simultaneously two opinions which cancelled out, knowing them to be contradictory and believing in both of them, to use logic against logic, to repudiate morality while laying claim to it. Democracy is not just the right to vote, it is the right to live in dignity. It is an axiom in my mind, that our liberty can never be safe but in the hands of the people themselves, and that too of the people with a certain degree of instruction. To view the opposition as dangerous is to misunderstand the basic concepts of democracy. To oppress the opposition is to assault the very foundation of democracy. Everybody feels the evil, but no one has courage or energy enough to seek the cure.

In a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. A great democracy has got to be progressive or it will soon cease to be great or a democracy. Freedom of speech is unnecessary if the people to whom it is granted do not think for themselves. it is the people who control the Government, not the Government the people. This is the permanent tension that lies at the heart of a capitalist democracy and is exacerbated in times of crisis. In order to ensure the survival of the richest, it is democracy that has to be heavily regulated rather than capitalism. If we put our trust in the common sense of common men and with malice toward none and charity for all go forward on the great adventure of making political, economic and social democracy a practical reality, we shall not fail.

Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.

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Listen Here: https://youtu.be/bePhOckTO3k

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Bandcamp: https://djspivey.bandcamp.com/track/diamonds-spiveys-underground-dig

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