Religious freedom, properly understood, is a shield that protects us from impositions from government, religious majorities, employers, and others in power who might otherwise threaten what we see fit to think and do.
When he wrote these words in 1755, he was in the midst of a brewing revolutionary war, one that would be fought in part because the British were restricting liberty in the name of security--from the imposition of taxes to pay for wars against the French to limits on internal migration.
The left needs to relearn from co-operatives that to regain their potential for innovative thought and to build a social movement, our politics need to be learned from action, and not from the imposition of academic thinking on to groups perfectly capable of representing themselves.
Unfortunately, "The Wax" -- the title refers to a bikini wax Kate undergoes amid much symbolically resonant pain -- is disconnected in ways that arise less from character and situation than from authorial imposition.
In discovering the God-within we discover at the same time the depth of our own divinity from which arises a moral order free from despotic imposition while remaining subject to social consensus.
There might be a good deal of income shifting and converting again, if the rate went from 45p to 50p, which would reduce the take from the imposition of the higher rate.
The past week has, inevitably, spawned many knee-jerk policy proposals, from the imposition of a curfew and the eviction of convicted rioters from public housing to the introduction of water cannon and plastic bullets, previously used only in Northern Ireland.
