Actually, you'd be surprised by how many people - regular people - are
willing to turn a blind eye when their freedom is being taken away just
because it's too inconvenient to stand up. Everytime you bribe a cop of
govt official, you're trading your freedom for convenience. Everytime
you give in to a rickshaw overcharging you, you trade freedom for
convenience. Everytime you let an immigration officer photograph and
fingerprint you before letting you into that big collection of states in
the west, you trade freedom for desire.
Everytime you agree to do a job that you'd rather not do, you trade your
freedom for job security. Don't say it doesn't happen, because you can
search this list's archives for instances. I remember telling people to
stand up to their companies and colleges and the response I get is that
I may be able to do that, but they can't. Why? Because they're afraid
of losing the little that they have.
People like Amol, Nag, JTD and me can stand up for our freedom because
we've been around for a long time, we've tasted freedom, and we've
fought to hold on to it. People growing up today in a world where
freedom is limited (think Rs500 fine for kissing in public) or taken for
granted won't realise how important it is.
What I understood of Russ' post was specifically this difference, and
perhaps he wound around a bit, just like, perhaps, I'm doing.
One need is for those who've experienced freedom and the loss of it to
fight, and the other is for those who've never experienced the two to
experience it first hand and not through the words of others.
--
Killing is stupid; useless!
-- McCoy, "A Private Little War", stardate 4211.8
--
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