https://whitecatgrove.wordpress.com/2013/01/12/of-freedom-guns-and-war/

OF #FREEDOM, #GUNS AND #WAR
Posted on January 12, 2013 by #whitecatgrove

..."Interestingly, the concept of #soldier is essentially tied to that of #capitalism. It derives from Latin, meaning “one who is paid,” i.e., an employee — distinguishing a soldier from a #warrior who, in some senses, fights for honor or pride. Warriors are, at the root of it, people who engage in war. And what does war mean? According to the handy online etymological dictionary, there was no common Germanic root for the word, and thus no Proto-Indo-European one. “Cognates suggest the original sense was ‘to bring into confusion,'” Douglas Harper writes.

Ah. In the root, we find the truth. War is a mass of confusion. It rips the sense out of the world. Just as a gun does when turned on a classroom of first-graders, or an English language class in a local immigrant center, or any other episode of casual or organized violence you care to cite.

And why, then, is having a weapon freedom? And what is freedom, anyway?
...
Freedom is not force; it is not the ability to take the choices of others away so you can exercise your whim and will. Freedom is joyful, willing obligation and responsibility.

Those who are free are not the soldiers or the warriors. I am reminded of Gandhi on his hunger strikes, the many women and men who were beaten for the right to sit at the lunch counter, or the front of the bus, or to vote. I am reminded of Martin Luther King Jr. at the end of a gun-barrel. Those who give their lives to extend the community of care to all involved are the truly free, because you cannot chain them with force. You can beat, threaten, shoot, kill, but they remain essentially free. "...