EP 39: Thoughts On Liberty

With the 4th of July just around the corner, it's a good time to reflect on the liberties we enjoy. It's important that as mothers raising the next generation, we work hard to understand our national heritage, our political liberties and most importantly, how those liberties are tied to our personal understanding of and adherence to truth.  As the saying goes, "Freedom isn't free." What, then, is the cost? And what does freedom for our children and grandchildren require from us?  Join Audrey as she explores ideas and insights from great men and women who have thought deeply on these principles  and can lead us to the greater personal and societal freedom! Listener's Guide: Use the time stamps below to skip to any part of the podcast.  2:04  Audrey's experiences as a liberal arts student learning about American history 3:50  Alexander Solzhenitsyn and loss of freedom in the East 6:47  Connection between freedom, truth and responsibility 9:28   Story of Laura Ingalls Wilder discovering this connection 17:38  What "liberal" and "liberal arts" have come to mean 21:48  Hayek and how the loss of the term "liberal" is decreasing liberty 25:40  How liberal education is traditional American education and increases liberty 29:20  Jordan Peterson and how he summarizes these ideas Quotes from this episode: “We come because we realize that the only road to freedom lies through a knowledge of the truth." ~Calvin Coolidge  “Under [George Washington] the Americans made a sacrifice for liberty which was not local; it was universal. That sacrifice resisted then, and has ever since been successfully resisting, despotism everywhere. America in its beginnings was doing the work of the world." ~Calvin Coolidge   “Your natural freedom--your control over your own life-energy--was born in you along with life itself. It is a part of life itself. No one can give it to you, nor can you give it to someone else. Nor can you hold any other person responsible for your acts. Control simply can't be separated from responsibility; control is responsibility." ~Henry Grady Weaver  "She thought: Americans won't obey any king on earth. Americans are free. That means they have to obey their own consciences. No king bosses Pa, he has to boss himself. Why (she thought), when I am a little older, Pa and Ma will stop telling me what to do, and there isn't anyone else who has a right to give me orders. I will have to make myself be good. Her whole mind seemed to be lighted up by that thought. This is what it means to be free. It means you have to be good. 'Our father's God, author of liberty--' The laws of Nature and of Nature's God endow you with a right to life and liberty. Then you have to keep the laws of God, for God's law is the only thing that gives you a right to be free." ~Laura Ingalls Wilder "I use throughout the term 'liberal' in the original, nineteenth-century sense in which it is still current in Britain. In current American usage it often means very nearly the opposite of this. It has been part of the camouflage of leftish movements in this country, helped by the muddleheadedness of many who really believe in liberty, that 'liberal' has come to mean the advocacy of almost every kind of government control...The essence of the liberal position, however, is the denial of all privilege, if privilege is understood in its proper and original meaning of the state granting and protecting rights to some which are not available on equal terms of others." ~F.A. Hayek "The polity will function if people attend to their consciences. That's the overlap of those conceptualizations. I think that's the case. If we assume that the political state is something like the emergent consequence of the decision of all its citiz...