"Liberty, according to my metaphysics, is an intellectual quality; an attribute that belongs not to fate nor chance. Neither possesses it, neither is capable of it. There is nothing moral or immoral in the idea of it. The definition of it is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power; it can elect between objects, indifferent in point of morality, neither morally good nor morally evil. If the substance in which this quality, attribute, adjective, call it what you will, exists, has a moral sense, a conscience, a moral faculty; if it can distinguish between moral good and moral evil, and has power to choose the former and refuse the latter, it can, if it will, choose the evil and reject the good, as we see in experience it very often does"John Adams, Letters to John Taylor (1814)
"The definition of [Liberty] is a self-determining power in an intellectual agent. It implies thought and choice and power... "
"Agency is the ability and privilege God gives us to choose and to act for ourselves." -Gospel Topics:Agency
It seems to me that Liberty and Agency are one and the same.
"God has granted us agency. I believe that moral agency is one of the greatest gifts of God unto His children, next to life itself." -President Uchtdorf
If Agency and Liberty are the same thing, then President Uchtdorf's statment could be rendered:
"I believe that [liberty] is one of the greatest gifts of God unto His children, next to life itself."
Are we as courageous in defending our liberty as we are in defending our lives?
"Moroni was... a man whose soul did joy in the liberty and the freedom of his country, and his brethren from bondage and slavery... if all men had been, and were, and ever would be, like unto Moroni, behold, the very powers of hell would have been shaken forever..."
Alma 48:11,17
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