Outlook for Freedom

He replied, in effect, that there was now as much chance of achieving freedom as at any time in the history of the world. He emphasized this view by asking a simple question: “Have not you and others as much capacity for understanding as those who came before you?” He would then go on to explain what he had found in his own search for truth: that freedom is the virtue of a person; that this virtue consists of beliefs and actions consistent therewith; that the belief in the use of force to achieve social performance negates freedom, it being but a belief in the “goodness” of badness; that for man to be fully free he must first appreciate that others, as well as himself, are responsible and self-controlling and that they are, therefore, quite properly beyond his dictation, beyond the possibility of being cast in his image against their understanding and will; that there can be freedom only if there is as firm a belief in the capacity and right of others to act freely and rightly as the belief in one’s self to act freely and rightly; that it is only when these beliefs are mastered, firmly held and lived by, that one can have any salutary influence in releasing man’s spirit and energy.

He went on to explain the error found in this common contention: We must choose between freedom and security. He said that slavery, not security, is the alternative to freedom; that slavery provides only a security against living one’s own life; that the opportunity to complete one’s self, to finish out one’s own creation, is what he and most other people really want; that the security which results from such opportunity is the only security consistent with the purpose, aspiration, and dignity of man.