Samuel Sharpe

It is a startling fact that throughout history, freedom has been considered so precious that some individuals have preferred death to a life in which it is absent.

Samuel Sharp, the leader of a Jamaican slave rebellion, upon facing imminent execution in 1831, professed the immortal words, I would rather die on yonder gallows than live in slavery.

Yet freedom is no longer considered what the Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen called our finest treasure.

As the heroic cry of give me liberty or give me death has been replaced by what Aldous Huxley referred to as the cry give me television and hamburgers but don't bother me with the responsibilities of liberty.