Is it true that "None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free" as Goethe wrote?

Question

Do you think that this thought could well apply to large numbers of American citizens in our time? With recent Presidential and Congressional assaults on the Constitution and our individual liberties, how can Americans believe themselves to be as free as they were before 9/11?

Answer 1

Quite possibly. I know my dad is not as free as he was. He is of Lebanese descent and an electrical engineer. He is very smart and hard working. He gets checked at security and hates it. It is incredibily unfair. My dad is a really nice guy. He's a nerd. He also was brought up Catholic but has little to do with religion. He has a lot of problems with Catholicism.
Fortunately, I haven't been subjected to much. I'm dark but people tend to think I'm Italian. Don't you love it when people make snap judgments and they are wrong? It happens all of the time. I do it too, as much as I try not to. I understand why it happens. But I at least make the effort to correct. Some people just go on and on as if they couldn't care less. I try to distance myself from those people.

As for the rest, it may be yet to come. God only knows what we are setting ourselves up for. Didn't Benjamin Franklin say something about people that are willing to give up their freedoms don't deserve to be free?

The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. Benjamin Franklin

Answer 2

The idea of civil liberties is an illusion. They exist only so far as those in power allow them to. The moment that these liberties and the exercise of them becomes a threat to the power structure and the desires of the ruling elite, they can and will be limited/taken away. Just look at what happened during WWI, when people were jailed for making statements against the war and the government (which I'm sure more than a few of the neofascist dullards trolling YA will think a fine thing to reinstitute). We're just seeing another crack in our illusion.

Answer 3

No, logically, no. the main entrapped are people who do no longer provide any credence to reason in any respect. They understand no actual or fake. and people who have self belief something to be actual it relatively is fake could consult with those issues that have not any continuum of certainty. yet those on a continuum are the main serious. No, as long as you're looking,, a misjudged emphasis on actual/fake is the actual enslavement.

Answer 4

UH...It was meant to be a STATEMENT of observational TRUTH, NOT a question! But to make you happy, YES...judging by what I see in America it IS true!

Answer 5

Most people these days, it seems, do not really want to be free. They SAY they want freedom - freedom of speech, expression, etc. - and then they take take take from the government, PROVING that they really do not want to be free, but that they have chosen security instead. They're nothing but big children, wanting to DO whatever they want, but have no responsibility to care for themselves. (Find me a job; give me job security; make sure my job pays me no less than this amount; pay for my kids to go to school; pay for my kids' health care; blah blah blah blah.)

If people TRULY want to be free, they have to stop accepting government handouts and expecting the federal government to hold their hands -- they have to CARE FOR THEMSELVES. The government is supposed to protect me from YOU -- it's NOT supposed to protect me from ME! You can't tell the government you want it off your back ... and then go ahead and invite it on. (Like Jerry Seinfeld said, "Government is like parents for adults.")

And - Sahara - people are suspicious of Arab-looking folk because these are the people who have chosen to either FORCE people to convert or to murder them if they don't agree with them. No matter how few and far between these people may be in ratio to the sane ones, the majority of terrorist acts have been committed by these people, which means that a judgment in favor of self preservation is anything but "snap."

And - Ben Franklin was talking about choosing to be taken care of by the government when he made his famous quote. He wasn't talking about preserving yourself and your country by properly identifying the enemy.