Although we give lip service to the notion of freedom, we know the government is no longer the servant of the people but, at last has become the people's master. We have stood by like timid sheep while the wolf killed - first the weak, then the strays, then those on the outer edges of the flock, until at last the entire flock belonged to the wolf.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the loss of freedom and the government's dominance over the people.
Gerry Spence's quote highlights a disturbing reality in which the government, instead of serving the public, has assumed control and power over the populace. Through the metaphor of sheep and a wolf, it illustrates how individuals have passively allowed this transformation, resulting in a collective loss of freedom where the government acts more as a master rather than a servant, ultimately leading to the domination of the weak and vulnerable within society.
In practice
In a discussion about civil liberties, this quote can emphasize the importance of being proactive in preserving freedom.
Today the insatiable quest for profit promotes the new slavery. In bewildering ways, the new is more pernicious than the old, for the New American Slave is told he is free, and he clings to that myth as if his life depended upon it, a suspicion that cannot be totally ignored.
The best antidote for crime is justice. The irony we often fail to appreciate is that the more justice people enjoy, the fewer crimes they commit. Crime is the natural offspring of an unjust society.
When any system has for its goal the advancement of the system over the betterment of its individual members, such a system is embedded in slavery.
The erosion of a nation's concern for life and for individual rights, has always preceded the intrusion of tyranny.
The true test of liberty is the right to test it, the right to question it, the right to speak to my neighbors, to grab them by the shoulders and look into their eyes and ask, βAre we free?β I have thought that if we are free, the answer cannot hurt us. And if we are not free, must we not hear the answer?
The function of the law is not to provide justice or to preserve freedom. The function of the law is to keep those who hold power, in power.
Sinners in their natural state lie dead, lifeless, and moveless; they can no more believe in Christ, nor repent, than a dead man can speak or walk: but, in virtue of the promise, the Spirit of life from Christ Jesus, at the time appointed, enters into the dead soul, and quickens it; so that it is no more morally dead, but alive, having new spiritual powers put into it, that were lost by Adam's fall.
Place is security, space is freedom.
It is impossible, in principle, to explain any pattern by invoking a single quantity.
I have a kind of magnetic attraction to situations of violence.
I went inside my heart to see how it was. Something there makes me hear the whole world weeping.
The individual can maintain himself in a society definitely organized only through possessing an equally definite mental and moral constitution. This is what the neuropath lacks. His state of disturbance causes him to be constantly taken by surprise by circumstances.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.