I have used the phrase "creating enough liberty"--as if the freedom of man were a commodity; _and it is_. So long as we think of it as a great abstraction, it will remain one; the moment we _make_ liberty it becomes a reality; the Declaration of Independence _made_ liberty, concretely, out of taxes and land and jury trials and muskets. Liberty, like love, has to be made; the passion out of which love rises exists always, but people have to _make love_, or the passion is betrayed; and the acts by which human beings make liberty are as fundamental as the act of sexual intercourse by which love is made. And as love recreates itself and has to be made, in order to live again, liberty has also to be re-created, or it dies out. Whatever lovers do affects the profound relation between them, for the passion is complex; whatever we do affects our liberties, for freedom rises out of a thousand circumstances; and we have to be not only eternally vigilant, but eternally creative; we can no longer live on the liberty inherited from the great men who created liberty in the Declaration of Independence. All that quantity has been exhausted, stolen from us, misused; if we want to survive, we must begin to make liberty again and proclaim it throughout the land, to all the inhabitants thereof; and it shall be a jubilee unto them. * * * * * +------------------------------------------------------------+ | Typographical errors corrected in text: | | | | Page 54: "what the trust were" replaced with | | "what the trusts were" | | Page 83: "given by the the people" replaced with | | "given by the people" | | Page 156: enterprizes replaced with enterprises | | | | ------------------------------------- | | | | NOTE that on Page 85 there are words missing from the | | quoted section of the Declaration of Independence. | | The missing words "to our British brethren. We have warned | | them" have been inserted in the paragraph that begins: | | "Nor have We been wanting in attention (to our British | | brethren. We have warned them) from time to time of | | attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable | | jurisdiction over us." | | | +------------------------------------------------------------+ * * * * *