cobaco (aka Bart Cornelis) wrote:
Anyway it seems to prove that the idea of freedom was current round
about 1776. Interestingly the idea of freedom and parliamentary
democracy always refers to the (g)olden days of the 18th century and the
American and French revolution.
here are some more more recent uotes:
"No man is entitled to the blessings of freedom unless he be vigilant in its
preservation." -- General Douglas MacArthur
"History does not long entrust the care of freedom to the weak or the
timid." -- Dwight D. Eisenhower, First Inaugural Address, Jan. 20, 1953
"Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never, -- in nothing
great or small, large or petty -- never give in except to convictions of
honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently
overwhelming might of the enemy." -- Winston Churchill
"Abuse of power isn't limited to bad guys in other nations. It happens in
our own country if we're not vigilant." -- Clint Eastwood in an essay he
wrote for the January 12, 1997 issue of Parade Magazine
It seems to me that there is a double edge sword to these issues and
their expression as in the quotes above.
Enough so, that while the issue that began this thread is, I agree,
worth ruminating over a bit - not so much in an 'us vs. they'
sort of way.
Can we identity freedom/democracy with reason, then despair over our
ability to distinguish, with reason, the distinction between true
assaults on our freedoms from necessary vigilance in defense of those
freedoms.
Further - "we" are they. In delivering powerful technology into the
anxiously awaiting hands of the bureaucracies, we are empowering any
pre-existing trends toward standardization, centralization,
dehumanization. Technologist - of either the open or closed source
varieties - have no basis to separate themselves from "they". There are
reasons I support the Open Source alternative - but at the same time
find the basis on which the community congratulates itself as the
righteous players in this developing future - to be too little.
I had once, for example, raised the question here whether there were
ethical issues that should be addressed in connection with the inclusion
of a particular piece of software in an educational related Open Source
distribution - issues that were unrelated to its license. I was told
pretty roughly that I was being irrelevant.
I was disturbed.
Art
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