The Price of Freedom

The American Revolution isolated the nation from its European heritage for eight generations. The majority of new immigrants are from the lower classes. Few noble families came. The pioneering result in the New World produced a remarkably wealthy technocratic society which is basically rootless and migratory, with little respect for traditional family values and love of estate.

Love of money in the bank does not equal reverence for cultural tradition. It takes tens of generations to build up a noble viewpoint that sees wealth in character beyond the dollar. Americans need to reconnect in a far more familiar way with their ancient Old World lineage and draw on that wealth of ancestral investment. In this way they can become true leaders of the New Age

What you are talking of is Honor… Where money is dear, honor is cheap; but honor is essential to every community and community is essential to every defense of rights and freedom… It may be too much to ask that a people who stole this country from their king and from the natives should have any of the honor that only complete communites can give to their members… We need it to keep it; and with everyone out for themselves a price is put on honor just like every thing else…If you have it you know you will pay a price for it…You will find you cannot exploit people…You will find you will not wrong others…You will find you cannot steal… In other words, if everyone had honor you would have no capitalist economy… But then you would not have a fraction of the population empoverishing the rest just as quickly as the law will allow… There is a reason people in honor economies have honor and put honor above all virtues…Usually honor societies are primitive and poor… Sometimes their members must go far to earn little…If they could not trust their wives and their children with their neighbors on their honor, no one could leave to make a living, or even to go hunting…When wealth comes into societies the honor goes out…People begin to think they can afford infidelity, but such dishonor weakens all societies… We think we are strong because we are wealthy… Wrong, we are weak because we have no honor… Honor is obligation… Where is the obligation when one puts his life on the line for the same country another will not support with taxes??? What good is law when honor is nothing??? If laws are not obeyed by common consent, because all people value their honor more than wealth, then no amount of law and no number of police will bring peace…What we need for peace among ourselves we need as well for international peace… If our words are good for nothing, then our treaties will be good for nothing, and our contracts will be good for nothing, and we will not be safe without force of arms anywhere on the planet… The price of freedom is honor… When we pledge allegience to the flag and the republic with liberty and equality for all, our word must have meaning and rest on our ability and intent to defend our words withour lives, or they are just words… We say liberty and justice having no sense of their meaning, unwilling to give them meaning with our work and our lives… We cannot make slaves of our neighbors, and deny the equality our fathers have bought with dear blood and deserve freedom… The price of freedom is honor, and honor is an obligation…