Liberty

I guess I am easily pleased.  The latest speech I am reading is by a guy called Harold Ickes.  He was talking about the war against Nazi Germany, but to me his words ring true today as well.
Some of the things he said that I like are “nothing in human nature is mechanical or inevitable.”  That is one of the inadequacies I see with “big data.”  It predicts the future based on the past.  Mostly it is right, but not always.  My choices are not predictable.  To me, every day is a new day and I can choose which way I want to go.
It seems to me our freedom to choose is one of the reasons why someone does something out of left field, and often the police say “they were not even on our radar.”  In other words, they acted differently than what they did before. 
I may be a loser, but that does not mean I am a loser for life.  I have a choice.
I really like that he talked about one generation instilling in the next the benefits of freedom, and how, as a result, they will settle for nothing less.  What he was against big time was a rolling over and playing dead.  He saw appeasement as leading to slavery and the lack of freedom.  That does not mean there is no room for compromise, but I reckon there needs to be some things that are non-negotiable.  Today there seems to be a school of thought that stands for nothing and to me it is a slippery road.
Reminds me of the bug eating plants I saw on Gardening Australia.   The bugs are lured to the plant.  It promises so much.  But it is a trap.  The curator opened up the plant to show it was full of bugs.  The method was that the bugs would wander in, but the hairs on the plant were shaped in such a way that the bug could not get out the way it came.  So it continued on its track.  Eventually it came to a liquid and drowned.  By the number of bugs in the plant it was a successful strategy.
Another thing he said that I liked was “…men with democratic hearts will experience comradeship across artificial boundaries.”  To me it is the goal that matters rather than the methodology.  That does not mean the end justifies the means, but it does mean within a set acceptable framework, we can achieve a common goal, no matter how we go about it.
We saw this with the table tennis club.  We achieved a measure of success and popularity even though we went about things a different way.  We had the same goal as Table Tennis Queensland (TTQ).  One group complained to TTQ we were too aggressive.  If trying to attract new members from within our field was too aggressive, then yes we were.
There was more he said but another sentence in the speech that really stood out to me was in part “…hundreds of millions of liberty loving people, now oppressed, constitute the greatest sixth column in history.”
To me it all comes down to my choice.  I can be a bug that wanders into a plants trap or I can have a goal that leads to liberty.  The choice is mine every day.