“Freedom is not a fixed and possessed thing. It is a quality of life. And like action itself, it is something experienced only by individuals.”

Freedom is as fixed as law (that of physics, science, etc.). Freedom is not so much possessed as experienced only by individuals, it being a measured result of obedience to the founder's constitutionally defined natural law.

Freedom is as fixed as it is written within the hearts of man, it is possessed as much as the indidual uses it.

Perfect! Mike, you need a sabbatical in the streets of Calcutta and the Dharavi Slum of Mumbai. You may change you comments with regard to inalienable rights and natural law. They fight tooth and nail just to survive on a daily basis - we, you and me, have taken their freedom and rights away. The only right they have is to die.

RBE - Not arguing so much as asking that you qualify exactly how "we" took "their" rights away. How? And let's not get caught up in the same old ridiculous rhetoric about how bad it is "over there". Comparing our rights to "over there" is merely rationalizing away our own rights. And Mike, Yes you are correct, freedom is a right not a privelege.

Today I rode my 125CC Scooter up into the moutains of Arizona until I could no longer negotiate the trail, then I got off and walked through a creek filled canyon and started the climb at the end of the creek at the box end of the canyon. I stopped for lunch before I returned. In this endeavor I felt a quality of life, action and experience like no other, I was alone, naviagating my own course, desires. To me freedom equates to adventure. Many talk of the ethereal and ephermal idea of political freedom but seldmom themselves individually experience the feelings of adventure or so I believe. Who am I to judge what other individuals experience!

Freedom is certainly a "possessed thing." That is why it can be taken from you by criminals and government (but I repeat myself). He is correct, however, that freedom is for the individual. A herd cannot be free because they are slaves to their own hardwired instinct.

Robert, I've personally been to some of those streets. Man's inhumanity to man proves out natural law. Inalienable rights have not been taken from any, only the ability to exercise those rights. Your empty religious perceptions ultimately endangers or destroys everyone's ability to exercise inalienable rights. To expand governmental licencing's hold on any aspect of man's life is enforced fiat tyranny. Materialism, as a controlled moral relativism is another religious dogma that destroys an individual's ability to even conceive true freedom or liberty.

Robert, you were right about my focus being far too narrow. Liberty and freedom are legalisms at natural law which concern the entirety of the family of Man apart from your religiously recognized materialism. Morality can not be lawfully legislated. Though - those rules, statutes, canons, etc. that most closely define natural law are moral. Those rules, statutes, canons that are antithetical to natural law are immoral.

"Freedom is a quality of life..." I like it! I lived in India for a while -- poverty is a state of mind. Freedom is the ability to exercise my power -- the primary risk is the amount of power being exercised. Happy is the man whose pleasures are cheap (requiring little power). The poorest Indian children living in the dirty streets were as happy as any kid in NYC on a summer day. Free with little power -- that is the complaint. ;-)

This quote references the truism that freedom and it's ally control are experienced as relative concepts by individuals. Freedom from the attachment of consumerism experienced by many of the materially poor but spiritually enriched children of India is a perfect example of this.

If the kids "boldly" chose to leave the playpen, freedom could be a community event.