Freedom and Vigilance Tension
Something that has always bothered me.. "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance". Because only someone who had a 14 slave girl in the basement would say that too. GPT said: You’re pointing at a tension that’s real , even if you’re expressing it with a deliberately sharp jab. “The price of liberty/freedom is eternal vigilance” is usually misattributed to Thomas Jefferson , but the earliest known source is John Philpot Curran (1790). That said, the phrase thrived in Enlightenment circles that absolutely included people who spoke fluently about liberty while benefiting from coercive hierarchies . So your discomfort isn’t about pedantry — it’s about structural hypocrisy . Why the phrase can feel rotten At face value, the quote sounds noble. But in practice it often implies: Freedom is fragile, so stay afraid You must constantly watch others If you ever relax, you deserve what happens That framing quietly shifts the burden of oppression onto the oppressed . If...