As someone I greatly respect once said, "you are only as free as you know." in other words, if you don't know your rights, they can be taken away without your knowing.

What he is saying is that without laws, natural or otherwise, no one is free. Anyone could enslave who they wish, murder who they wish, thieve what they want, ect. Locke is simply stating a simplified version of what I just said (and I don't at all mean that in a vain way).

When he says "qualified" he means we all (excluding the registered mentally handicapped) have the capacity to think and make our own decisions on the issue, whether they be right or wrong. Some of you, I think, are taking the words "qualified" and "evaluate" used in the quote way too literally. Some words and phrases meant very different things 350 years ago (duh). As for the argument about Clinton and Bush, Clinton is a scum bag who never should have been in politics and Bush is a bit of a social liberal who didn't do that great with some of his policies anyway. BTW, I'm only 15 years old and I'm laughing at some of the breaks in logic some your arguments are supplying.

You people are CRAZY! gosh get a life dudes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Imagine the world as a seed. It has energy inside it energy needed to grow and expand into the world. Imagine if the cells inside the seed decided to use all that energy so that they could talk on cell phones all day and walk around ten acre car lots with their lights on all night and so on. The seed would never grow and reach its potential, it would eventually use all of the energy up and die before it ever reached the surface of the earth and saw the sun. The earth is a seed in this universe where life can expand and create a universe of life that can live, die, evolve, and expand until the end of time.

We are living in this era that President Lincoln is talking about. An era is defined as a historical chronological period of time often made up of several periods of change which can extend over hundreds of years. He did not start the period of decay because it was inevitable but this spoiled way of life could only last so long before it began to become obviously unsustainable. This life of synthetic s and bright lights is so incredibly wasteful it will eventually be thought of as a utopian era of time in which mankind was enabled to learn almost everything mankind has been wondering for hundreds of thousands of years. Where we had the power and knowledge to expand into the universe and inhabit and teriform other planets expanding into infinity inhabiting the lifeless universe. Unfortunately we've wasted this knowledge, resources, and money on entertainment, fast cars, private jets, shortsighted fun and corporate greed.

I think that this is even worse han 1984. Orwell failed, he predicted a fictional utopia compared to that non-fictional reality.

One cannot think words actually mean something then disavow any responsibility for those words. Slander, libel and false alarm steal the freedom of people to make rational judgements; and in the midst of war, to engage in agenda driven mendacity rather than debate the points at hand is the stuff of not disagreeing but being on the other side. Facts, gentle people, debate the facts not phantoms.