Hi and welcome back! Today being the 4th of July, I thought I’d offer some past posts about freedom — and then some links our community has been talking about today. Happy 4th!
FREEDOM!
- Operation Pitchfork and a Moment of Crisis. A bunch of online game players decide to strike a defiant blow against tyranny that is absolutely doomed to fail—all for
space baconfreedom. Here’s why they were doing it. - Freedom 2015. A fundagelical conference that was largely about their desire to oppress and terrorize non-fundagelicals into complying with their demands.
- Freedom. Learning what it really is, as well as unlearning what it isn’t.
- A Choose-Your-Own-Adventure About Freedom of Speech. This was hard as heck to construct, but I thought it would help fundagelicals who don’t understand what this essential civil liberty really means. I’m super-helpful that way. (Also see: No, Nobody’s Violating Alex Jones’ Right to Free Speech.)
- And I Still Belong to Me. A friend of mine wrote a post that contained like two lines about her right to access all forms of reproductive healthcare, and forced-birthers freaked out and laser-focused on those two lines. This was my response to their attempt to control her.
- A Manifesto of Rights and Expectations. Offered by popular demand at the time.
- The Rights of Consumers in the Post-Christian Marketplace. I seem to remember a bunch of fundagelicals not liking this, unsurprisingly.
- Perfect Love Casts Out Fear. How I fell in love with the freedom of the open road.
- Al Mohler’s SlaveryGate. How Al Mohler accidentally defended slavery some years ago. (See also: How Literalism Creates Atrocity Apologetics; Atrocity Apologetics Must Stop.)
Observations about freedom from the R2D commentariat
Our commentariat brought their A game today and found these links.
Obschemie brought us a link to an 1852 speech by Frederick Douglass. It’s just incredible. In this speech, Douglass offers a serious indictment of Christianity for not only allowing slavery to flourish in the United States, but also maintaining and promoting it when it would have otherwise withered away as a practice. Here’s an excerpt:
The American church is guilty, when viewed in connection with what it is doing to uphold slavery; but it is superlatively guilty when viewed in connection with its ability to abolish slavery. The sin of which it is guilty is one of omission as well as of commission. Albert Barnes but uttered what the common sense of every man at all observant of the actual state of the case will receive as truth, when he declared that “There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery an hour, if it were not sustained in it.”
Word. If freedom isn’t everybody’s, then it is not freedom.
HairyEyedWordBombThrower brought us a tweet of James Earl Jones reading that speech. It gave me serious chills. What an incredible read. I found the YouTube video it comes from if you want to see it in non-tweet format.
This pic came from Mark in Ohio:
“Makes me want to rush right over and do nothing,” said Judyt54, and I agree. A number of folks noted that the rules probably came into place thanks to some drunken twits wrecking things for everybody, and yeah, that’s probably what happened. I’m pretty sure that 99% of the rules in the Old Testament are the same way.
And this came from Wan Kun Sandy. It’s an actual colorized photo of the actual War of Independence:
And that does it for our Super Special today!
Have a safe and happy 4th, however you spend it.
Super Specials are collections of posts on a theme to give you reading material for the day. Enjoy! Comments are an Off-Topic Wonderland as well. What’s on your mind?
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