[dfwgator]

I’ll stick with what Pope John Paul II said, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

[Greg F]

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”
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The terrible thing about our situation today is that we are restricted in our ability to do what we ought (for example it is difficult to organize and speak out during elections because of campaign finance regulations). Meanwhile the rights to do what we ought not are aggressively protected and expanded (for example the right to publish and promote pornography). Another example, spanking a child can lead to the state siezing custody from caring parents while the “right” of homosexuals to adopt or act as foster parents is expanded. Another, we cannot teach children in state funded schools about the Bible from a Christian perspective but we must teach children about homosexual sex from a secularist perspective.

[RKV]

I could not write a worse definition of freedom. I am not at all surprised to find that JPII wrote that, since he is the guy who gets to define what it is we ought to do.

[CatoRenasci]

“Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.

Any totalitarian could make that statement, it's just of question of what we "ought" to do. This is kind of thinking that burns heretics who won't recant, starves kulaks who won't abandon bourgeois thinking or upper middle peasants who don't embrace Mao-tse Tung Thought.

[SubGeniusX]

I’ll stick with what Pope John Paul II said, “Freedom consists not in doing what we like, but in having the right to do what we ought.”

see ... the thing is Pope JP II was not a Founding Father of this Country ... so I'll stick with TJ when discussing contitutional principles... as this country was not founded as a Theocracy...