When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!"
--Martin Luther King, Jr.

If I leave here tomorrow

Would you still remember me?

For I must be traveling on, now,

'cause there's too many places I've got to see.

But, if I stayed here with you, girl,

Things just couldn't be the same.

'cause I'm as free as a bird now,

And this bird you can not change.

Lord knows, I can't change.

--Skynyrd! (Freebird... Freeeeebirrrrrd!)

Joe here. You might not know what prompts all this, but it's a good thing. It rules in fact. But before I'm overtaken by this mysterious glow, perhaps a couple more quotes:

Man is tormented by no greater anxiety than to find someone quickly to whom he can hand over that great gift of freedom with which the ill-fated creature is born.
--Fyodor Dostoyevksy

Free, do you call yourself? Then I would hear your ruling thought, and not merely that you have escaped from a yoke.

Are you one of those who had the right to escape from a yoke? Many a one has cast away his last worth when he has cast away his servitude.

Free from what? What does that matter to Zarathustra! But your fiery eyes should tell me: free for what?

--Friedrich Nietzsche

-Joe