Freedom

If Freedom is the point, then fighting is the only way to achieve it.

This is what the Spartacus Rebellion of 73-71 BC teaches us.

What would have been the motivation that drove enslaved men to rise against their masters to try regain that which had been lost years or decades before?

In my mind, Freedom is the only altar worth sacrificing our Lives to.

Think on it! You take men who have nothing. Whose lives became forfeit the moment they laid down their arms at the behest of their leaders, before Rome indefatigable SPQR-adorned acquilas. You take them and subject them to all the iniquities the word SLAVE evokes: rape, degradation, servility, obeisance, compulsions of every kind.

You do that long enough to anyone, and people truly become tools with voices, as Aristotle put it best.

Only Freedom, that overarching principle of the human ethos, only Freedom could guide a man through this storm of iniquity and debasement. But what is the point, what is the limam as the Turks call a port or a safe haven? What for?

Freedom encompasses its own rewards. It has its own innate merits.

To be Free is to be able to aspire to greatness or nothingness, as your heart and mind desire it.

To be Free is to honour God, who is the purveyor of our Free Will, without which there can be no meaning to our Lives.

And that is exactly why Spartacus and his brethren took on the mighty Rome at its absolute height, at a time when Crassus, Caesar, Pompeii were coming of age. And when to defy it meant absolute death for a patrician, a plebeian, or a slave.

That is why Spartacus cut the deal with the Pirates who defrauded the Serviles and left them to rot in Campania (Italy).

That is why Spartacus’ army kept fighting when there was no hope to defeat the Roman legions.

And that is why 41,000 slaves and 20,000 Romans died.

And that is why only 1 in 4 slaves ended up crucified like our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.

It was all for freedom.

Do you know why I love Mexico?

Not just because I find Mexicans extremely nice and good people. It is because they are moral people, too.

Mexico is among the few jurisdictions (or maybe the only one) that doesn’t punish escaped convicts who break out of prison. All other jurisdictions consider jailbreaking a separate offense, and will add years in prison to their original conviction. Not Mexico! No, senor!

Mexico considers the human condition. A person who is justly convicted for a crime, remains a human being still. And as such they have the unquenchable desire to break out of prison. When and if they manage to do so, without hurting anybody in the process, and they are recaptured and brought into custody by law enforcement, Mexico doesn’t treat it as a separate offense.

Mexico recognizes this the natural occurrence that it rightly is. The desire to be free supersedes any legal considerations. That a convicted person must serve their sentence that is beyond a shadow of a doubt. That they must not be punished for wanting to be Free that is also something that Mexico teaches the world about.

In any case, they don’t make men like that anymore!