Milton’s warning still echoes: Liberty survives only when citizens defend it

By Cory Gaines | Commentary, Colorado Accountability Project

A lesson and inspiration about standing up for liberty from Milton

I have been listening to a lecture series on English literature and busily adding things to my reading list as I go. If you remember a Friday a ways back where I put up an anonymous poem “Yesterday’s Flowers,” that poem was one of them.

I wanted to share another, this time directly related to politics: it’s Milton’s Areopagitica.

The piece is an essay by Milton, a defense of free speech specific to a free press (in the context of defending himself and what he’d said).

I will leave it to you to read the essay and/or an essay by the group FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression) on Milton’s piece, linked second below.

What I want to do before ending is to make a similar case to that made by FIRE: the struggle for liberty, for freedom of expression, and freedom of information are nothing new. In Milton’s time, the recognition of the natural rights of man to have the freedom to say what you’d like and say things the government might not like were beginning.

In our time, in our state, the recognition of a natural right to government transparency is likewise just starting to stand on its legs and take its first halting steps.

Working for liberty and natural rights is best seen as an ongoing fight. While the arrow of progress has pointed up with time, the line has not been one of constant increase; we will never hit perfection. We must be constantly vigilant. We must be constantly involved in defending them.

If you aren’t yet, I urge you to start. Pick some thing. Get involved in some way. I’m not talking about any particular political candidate or party. I’m talking about some issue that speaks to you.

By doing so you join something that stretches back centuries. By doing so you continue the vital and meaningful work begun long before America was even conceived.

**From the Wikipedia explainer linked third below (with links intact): “It takes its title in part from Areopagitikós (Greek: Ἀρεοπαγιτικός), a speech written by Athenian orator Isocrates in the 4th century BC. The Areopagus is a hill in Athens, the site of real and legendary tribunals, and was the name of a council whose power Isocrates hoped to restore. Some argue that it is more importantly also a reference to the defence that St Paul made before the Areopagus in Athens against charges of promulgating foreign gods and strange teachings, as recorded in Acts 17:18–34“

https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/608/pg608-images.html
https://www.fire.org/research-learn/why-john-miltons-free-speech-pamphlet-areopagitica-still-matters
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Areopagitica

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