I hope this link works:
Liber & Public Virtue
It is a speech given by Oliver DeMille. Shanon Brooks published it as a tribute on the 4th of July.
I think it has some really important information. You're better off going to read it yourself than trusting my synopsis, but if you really don't feel like clicking on the link, (or if it doesn't work)...
It explains what Liber means, "which means the body of citizens reading the classics and history and knowing what is required to remain free," and how it is the root of liberty, libros (books), library, and the Liberal Arts which are "the knowledge and skills necessary to remain free...
What are those arts? Well, for the founders they were the arts of reading the classics and thinking clearly and independently."
There's more there that I wish I wasn't skipping, but I didn't just want to copy the whole thing, except for this paragraph:
"History has proven that freedom is not free. It must be earned. And one of the ways the founding generation earned it was in becoming Liber: getting the kind of education required to remain free. And by education they didn’t mean diplomas or degrees, but knowledge gained from reading the classics of history, law, government, and the arts."
The next two paragraphs are really good, too, though I already took a short quote and put it above. They basically say that if we lose the understanding necessary to remain free, then we will lose our freedom.
But the classics are still there, all we have to do is dust them off and read them. Well, that and do the hard work necessary to understand them.
Then it goes on to explain Public Virtue:
"In 1776 the term Public Virtue meant voluntarily sacrificing personal benefit for the good of society."
And it has really good examples and is pretty long and I haven't read it all, yet. Ha.
