“Where The Spirit of The Creator Is, There Is Liberty”

Answers to a series of questions about faith, God and the human condition/potential by Robert ‘Gagdad Bob‘ Godwin:



From Where The Spirit of The Creator Is, There Is Liberty:

One of the cultural problems that has arisen since the 1960’s is a persistent misunderstanding of the notion of freedom. For example, if you ask me if I am free to play the saxophone, the answer is “no,” the reason being that I have not put in the requisite time to study music and practice the instrument. Of course, I am “free” to pick up a saxophone and randomly blow into it, but what kind of freedom is that? Only through intense discipline and long years of practice am I free to produce something musically satisfying on the instrument, that is, to achieve aesthetic depth.

All meaningful human freedoms are analogous to that. Freedom is not just the absence of constraint or the ability to indulge one’s whims in an aimless fashion. Rather, real freedom always involves discipline, boundaries, and most importantly, a higher goal or standard toward which the freedom is directed. Otherwise, mere freedom itself is by no means a morally or spiritually constructive thing. In the absence of higher goals and standards, people are abandoned either to a passive, rudderless, aimless existence or to a more impulsive acting out of various psychological patterns…

We have heard from the wise that a Creator supposedly endowed us with “liberty,” which is to say free will. But every leftist knows that we don’t really have free will. Rather, we are victims of our environment and our genes. For example, poverty causes crime. Unless you happen to be rich. Then greed causes crime. Unless you haven’t committed any crime. Then it’s just a crime to be rich. But don’t be confused — there’s no objective right or wrong anyway. Multiculturalism is the doctrine that race, not values, determines consciousness and truth.

In reality, as expressed by Frithjof Schuon, “There is no knowledge without objectivity of the intelligence” and “no freedom without objectivity of the will.” Freedom is a paradoxical thing, for if it simply means that we are subjectively free to do or believe whatever we want, what good is it? It’s just another, more subtle form of tyranny, the tyranny of unconstrained, arbitrary, and ultimately meaningless choice on the horizontal plane.From We Are Not Worthy Of Being So Unworthy!

…In order to know the divine, humility is a key that opens many mysteries. But as we begin to receive genuine gnosis (which simply means spiritual knowledge), we are humbled by it…

It is also important to point out that humility hardly equates with “low self esteem” or being a shrinking violet. To the contrary, low self esteem is just the other side of narcissism, and will likely produce similarly bad results. Humility is really just accurate self assessment. It is seeing oneself as one is, not better or worse than one is…

God is a fisher of men, but first there must be a fissure in man where God can operate. Man is not a given fact, but a possibility, and the possibility of a divine-human partnership takes place in the transitional space between you and your highest aspiration — between you and your future self. This is a polarized space, and it is the polarization that creates the dynamic electricity. If you like, you can think of it as analogous to the sexual tension that fills the space between man and woman. There is a spontaneous, natural, innocent, and idealistic form of this energy, as well as many perverse and deviant versions.

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A Jacksonian: UNITED STATES IS A REVOLUTIONARY NATION

America seems to have forgotten what it means to *have* liberty and freedom. And has forgotten the dear cost of that fight... the Universality of the Rights of Man as Individuals was not something that was conceived of as a mere 'talking point' and to be discarded whenever a fight got a bit too hard.

The Left, in particular, has forgotten that the United States is a Revolutionary Nation all the way back to its founding. The Right has also forgotten this in the long decades in which an established Nation could wander from its path and yet still be corrected back to it by its People.

Today the People are wandering from the path, the political realm is all over the landscape and those that espouse the basic, and to this day still, Revolutionary outlook of the Founding are now finding resistance to it.

That does not lead to Freedom or Liberty for *anyone* in the long run.

It is a path to Despotism.

A path to Tyranny.

Because bias and Nationalism are perfectly acceptable... if you support the Universal Right of the Individual to come together and form societies and Nations. The Founders worried that this Revolutionary Path would be side-tracked or lose, in the end. Right they were to worry about.

When Bejamin Franklin was asked in 1787 what the New Government would be, his response was clear and succinct: "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it."

Best we remember Mr. Franklin editor of the Declaration and Constitution. He realized just how abnormal the United States was and would continue to be.And the Republic is *still* ours.If we can keep it.

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