In Defense of Love and Freedom

by Peter Falkenberg Brown

September 2, 2022

This is a speech Brown delivered at the program
“Defending America: The Present Threats to Freedom,”

hosted by the Gray Republican Committee of Gray, Maine and 53 co-sponsors, on June 14, 2021.

Brown shared the stage with three other speakers, including Dr. Dana Cheng, a co-founder and VP of The Epoch Times newspaper, speaking via live video feed from New York City on the threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

Tonight, I speak in defense of love and freedom. One might think that they need no defense, but tragically, love and freedom are continually under attack. If human beings fail to defend them both, they will lose them both, for they are inseparably intertwined.

In this discussion, I’m speaking of the love rooted in “agape: the love of God or Christ for humankind.” I’m referring to the sacrificial love that embodies the highest virtues, described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 13 when he wrote that:

“4 Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; 5 it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; 6 it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. 7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”

When we experience and embody this kind of unselfish love, we naturally want to bring joy and freedom to those whom we love. With this definition of love, I offer this premise:

“Love is the reason and justification for freedom. Love gives birth to freedom, and ‘the Death of Love’ destroys freedom. At the same time, freedom is the garden in which love can blossom.”

It’s not difficult to demonstrate the relationship between love and freedom. Examine the life of any tyrant, and you will find a man or woman who has lost touch with the love that dwells at the center of their soul. When pain and coldness overwhelm a person, when love is replaced by resentment and hatred, cruelty soon follows. Tyranny begins with small actions of dominance over others and then grows if left unchecked. Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler, and Mao Zedong were small children once, but as their love died, they became monsters.

President Xi Jinping of China and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey, who both want to create a global hegemony of enslavement, are not focused on a compassionate love for all human beings. President Xi feels no pang of conscience as he orders the Muslim Uyghurs to be tortured, while President Erdoğan is supporting the continued Islamic genocide of Armenian Christians as he works to build a new Ottoman Caliphate. If these two men succeed in their plans, the world will be divided between Marxist and Islamic empires.

How many freedom-loving people will die in the process? Over one hundred million innocent civilians were murdered by Marxist governments—death by government—in the twentieth century when the United States was at the height of its power. What will totalitarians do to the world if America no longer stands against them?

And then, of course, we have the orthodox Islamic tyrant from Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wants to turn Israel into a nuclear mass grave. And let us not forget the equally insane North Korean, His Plumpness, the Cannon Meister Kim Jong Un, who likes to shoot his relatives with anti-aircraft guns.

These are not men who are resonating with the virtues of kindness and the Golden Rule. They are dead inside, even though they, too, were created by God to become Beings of Love. How tragic it is that they did not fulfill their original destiny.

(View the video above for the remainder of the speech.)

E-Mail Peter Falkenberg Brown: peterbrown@worldcommunity.com

Website: https://peterfalkenbergbrown.com