A Quote by Lincoln Kirstein
In liberal democracy and anxious anarchy, the traditional classic dance, compact of aristocratic authority and absolute freedom in a necessity of order, has never been so promising as an independent expression as it is today.
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Rights are not the language of democracy. Compromise is what democracy is about. Rights are the language of freedom, and are absolute because their role is to protect our liberty. By using the absolute power of freedom to accomplish reforms of democracy, we have undermined democracy and diminished our freedom.
The Magna Carta is an early reminder of the crucial difference between freedom and liberty. Liberty is freedom that is unique to humans, it is guaranteed by law. All animals are free, but in a system of humans total freedom is anarchy. Humans have thrived by letting a dominant authority regulate freedom. Liberty is a freedom that the authority has granted or has been persuaded to grant. For centuries, the state and the people have negotiated, peacefully and violently.
A classic liberal is more like a libertarian. I'm sorry. Classic liberal, actually, from the 1800s has a totally different meaning than a liberal who is [modern] classic.
To those who cynically say today that liberal democracy would be 'obsolete,' I reply: liberal democracy, human rights, freedom of the press and the rule of law were the right way, are the right way, and will be the right way.
I - it's simply not for me to evaluate an independent rating agency's processes. But I will say that there was reason to be anxious - absolute reason to be anxious.
Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline.
The States then being the parties to the constitutional compact, and in their sovereign capacity, it follows of necessity, that there can be no tribunal above their authority, to decide in the last resort, whether the compact made by them be violated; and consequently that as the parties to it, they must themselves decide in the last resort, such questions as may be of sufficient magnitude to require their interposition.
The Anarchists are right in everything; in the negation of the existing order, and in the assertion that, without authority, there could not be worse violence than that of authority under existing conditions. They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by a revolution. "To establish Anarchy." "Anarchy will be instituted." But it will be instituted only by there being more and more people who do not require protection from governmental power, and by there being more and more people who will be ashamed of applying this power.
A vigorous democracy a democracy in which there are freedom from want, freedom from fear, freedom of religion, and freedom of speech would never succumb to communism or any other ism.
Modern life means democracy, democracy means freeing intelligence for independent effectivenessthe emancipation of mind as an individual organ to do its own work. We naturally associate democracy, to be sure, with freedom of action, but freedom of action without freed capacity of thought behind it is only chaos.
But it also came at a significant cost for human rights, and today's restricted freedom of expression, self-censorship and stunted multiparty democracy.
Only a law-order which holds to the primacy of God's law can bring forth true freedom, freedom for justice, truth, and godly life. Freedom as an absolute is simply an assertion of man's "right" to be his own god; this means a radical denial of God's law-order. "Freedom" thus is another name for the claim by man to divinity and autonomy. It means that man becomes his own absolute.
The error is in the assumption that the General Government is a party to the constitutional compact. The States ... formed the compact, acting as sovereign and independent communities.
A free and truly independent press - fiercely independent when necessary - is the red beating heart of freedom and democracy.
The great ideas of the West - rationalism, self-criticism, the disinterested search for truth, the separation of church and state, the rule of law, equality before the law, freedom of conscience, thought, and expression, human rights, and liberal democracy- quite an achievement, surely, for any civilization- - remain the best, and perhaps the only, means for all people, no matter of what race or creed, to reach their full potential and live in freedom.
There are different forms of anarchy and different currents in it. I must, first say very simply what anarchy I have in view. By anarchy I mean first an absolute rejection of violence.
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