Freedom and Its Future - Os Guinness

Os Guinness

Freedom and Its Future

Another brilliant talk.  Another equally brilliant talk on the same theme:

at Socrates in the City

Sustaining Freedom

[Before starting his talk on Freedom, Os made remarks about the Religious / Christian Right that are worth capturing in print: (i) theological unfaithfulness, (ii) political ineffectiveness, and (iii) cultural counter-productiveness.  "The Religious Right is one of the main factors stoking anti-religious, anti-Christian sentiment..."

"...always free, free always"

Three Tasks:

1. Winning freedom.

2.  Ordering freedom.

3.  Sustaining freedom - by far, the hardest.

- Yes, Constitution, but more... AND

- "Golden Triangle of Freedom": (i) Freedom requires (ii) virtue, which requires (iii) faith, and faith requires freedom.

Three Menaces to Freedom:

1.  External menaces.

2.  Polybius "corruption of customs" "habits of the heart"

3.  Passing of time, "the injury of time" for fall of Rome.

Three Shifts from Founders:

1.  Privatization of religion.

2.  Rise of "proceduralism" or "legal secularism" (Rawls)

3.  Rise of "post-modernism" (no truth, will to power)

Contemporary Menaces:

1.  Alienation of leaders.

2.  Breakdown of transmission of American virtues

e.g. public education (custodians of handing down American virtues), immigration (citizenship education)

3.  Corruption of customs.

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