Substitutes for Freedom – Sunday, July 03, 1949
Throughout all the ages all manner of substitutes for freedom have been fostered. Ambitious or misguided leaders and aggressive and misdirected peoples, times without number, have induced others with promises of plenty, or with fear, or with force, to yield their freedom. Peoples and individuals alike have often been known to exchange freedom for the promise of plenty, freedom for the supposed certainty of security—freedom for everything conceivable—and they have all made bad bargains, no matter what they got or how long they kept it—for freedom once yielded is costly to buy back.
Ultimately, and sometimes after much wandering in the wilderness, nations and peoples come to learn that neither a supposed efficiency nor a ready-made way of life is an adequate substitute for freedom, even though it attempts to anticipate every need and every want. Knowing the weaknesses of men, knowing the abuses of freedom, knowing all the alleged inefficiency of freedom, we are still faced with the inevitable fact that no other formula leads to the same degree of happiness or progress or plenty, as does the formula of freedom—all other plans and purposes to the contrary notwithstanding, whatever their source and whatever their intent. And while security is exceedingly important, freedom itself is its only guarantee: freedom to work, to worship, and to shape our own lives.
Freedom isn’t something you give up to get. It is something that you cling to tenaciously if you have it and that you buy back at great cost if you lose it. This is the lesson from the patriots of the past; this is the lesson of all times past. And be who trades his freedom for the promise of plenty or for the supposed assurance of security has lost both. The message of this day is this: There are no acceptable substitutes for freedom.
‘The Spoken Word,” heard over Radio Station K S L and the nationwide Columbia Broadcasting System, from the Tabernacle, Temple Square, Salt Lake City, Sunday, July 8, 1949, 11:30 to 12:00 noon, Eastern Time. Copyright 1949
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July 03, 1949
Broadcast Number 1,037