Hopewit

“Leven zonder vrijheid ist geen leven,” is a Dutch, proverb-like sentence Duo-lingo includes as a learning sample. Life without freedom is no life at all, is easily memorized ... in either language. Another jingle springs to mind: “Free to be, you and me.” which in Dutch would be, “Vrij om te sijn, jij en ik.” (I don’t know much Dutch, but my interest in it is routinely whetted by Agnes’ practising of the language ... plus Google Translator in this case, of course.)             I think we can agree that it’s freedom and not license that’s being referenced here. And although freedom is more easily defined if we limit ourselves to movement—as in incarceration—in a democracy like Canada, defining freedom of speech, for example , isn’t simple at all.             In WWII, Londoners were required by government decree to shutter their windows so no light would show that mig...

The Scales of Justice     We all face moments when our consciences and our preferences wrestle with moral dilemmas.   Very few of us will face the big moral dilemmas, like President Harry Truman giving the OK to drop a nuclear bomb on Hiroshima, but smaller moral dilemmas face us almost daily. We love pineapple and buy one even if we know that people far away were dispossessed of their land to allow big business to grow this very one at a profit.                In an age of climate-change worries, a twinge of conscience surely afflicts many of us when we take our car even though our errand is only a few blocks away. Or when we shovel a pile of rhubarb leaves, carrot tops and other garden-harvest detritus into the garbage because the composting service is just too inconvenient.                Indeed, effort-saving convenience ...