Wired Leadership

Liberty is a subject near and dear to our hearts here at Liberty Electronics.  Last time, we talked a little about the start of American liberty, but what exactly is liberty? Perhaps equally important – what is it not?  Join us again today as we continue to explore our “great experiment for promoting human happiness.”

Last time we talked about American liberty, we heard from courageous people who spoke out against twisted liberty that was harming others.  In this installment, we will hear from first-hand sources how difficult it was to obtain and keep the genuine liberty that has had such a profound impact on human happiness.  In this installment, we’ll go back to America’s earliest days and briefly touch on the cost that has been paid for this “great experiment” of ours.

William Bradford, one of the first pilgrims to the New World and the governor of the Plymouth Colony, wrote that “All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and both must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courage.”  William Bradford should know.  In his quest for liberty, he and his fellow pilgrims suffered from hunger, disease, and exposure.  Sadly, by the end of the first winter in the harsh wilderness of the New World, half the colony, including his wife, had perished.

John Adams, one of our founding fathers and the second president of the United States, understood the high price that early Americans paid.  He reminds us,  “Liberty must at all hazards be supported. We have a right to it, derived from our Maker. But if we had not, our fathers have earned and bought it for us, at the expense of their ease, their estates, their pleasure, and their blood.”  Another founding father and the third president of the United States, Thomas Jefferson, warned, “We are not to expect to be translated from despotism to liberty in a featherbed.”

The founders pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor for the cause of liberty. As the old adage reads, “all gave some, and some gave all.”  Their lives were certainly on the line.  Benjamin Franklin warned the other signers of the Declaration of Independence, “We must all hang together, or most assuredly, we will all hang separately.” Thomas Paine, an American patriot and author, summed it up when he wrote, “THESE are the times that try men’s souls.”  The trials and suffering at places like Trenton, Valley Forge, and Camden vividly illustrate his point.

A particularly poignant comment from the Revolutionary Era speaks to the debt owed by posterity to those who came before them. A printer, ironically named William Bradford, left his business, fought, and was wounded in the War for Independence.  His dying words to his children: “Though I bequeath you no estate, I leave you in the enjoyment of liberty.”

And speaking of poignant, it is hard to think of an example more moving than that of Sullivan Ballou’s letter to his wife before the First Battle of Bull Run in the Civil War. From his letter:

“My very dear Sarah: The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days — perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write again, I feel impelled to write a few lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more….  I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans on the triumph of the Government and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and sufferings of the Revolution. And I am willing — perfectly willing — to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.”

Sullivan Ballou was killed in action for the cause of liberty one week later.

At Liberty Electronics, we’re mindful of the high price that has been paid and continues to be paid for freedom, and the debt that is owed to these brave men and women.  We’re grateful to be able to serve a broad range of markets, but it is a special honor to be able to serve our customers in the defense industry in the cause of liberty.  If you are looking for a world-class, US-based electronic manufacturing services (EMS) contract manufacturer and would like to learn more about Liberty Electronics, we invite you to check us out.

Let freedom ring! https://libertyelectronics.com/

Liberty is a subject near and dear to our hearts here at Liberty Electronics.  Last time, we talked a little about the start of American liberty, but what exactly is liberty? Perhaps equally important – what is it not?  Join us again today as we continue to explore our “great experiment for promoting human happiness.”

In this installment of our “Thoughts on Liberty” series we’re continuing to look at some of the required constraints that have allowed what President George Washington called our “great experiment for promoting human happiness” to work so well for so long.  Join us as we continue to explore this vital and timely topic.

In the movie Dick Tracy, the mobster Big Boy Caprice proclaims, “Law without order is as great a danger to the people as order without law.”  He comically and incorrectly attributed his made-up quote to Thomas Jefferson.  However, Big Boy was on to something and he would’ve been closer to the mark had he cited Theodore Roosevelt. Roosevelt, our 26th^th president, similarly said,  “Order without liberty and liberty without order are equally destructive.”

A couple of hundred years earlier, Edmund Burke, the famed 18th-century Irish statesman, wrote, “Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”

It’s sad to say, but we’ve had and continue to have more than a few examples in our history when Americans and American institutions have failed miserably to chain intemperate appetites.  Thankfully, brave people of conscience have risen up at crucial times to drive home the necessity of doing, in the words of John Winthrop, “that which is good, just, and honest.”

One such person was an escaped slave named Frederick Douglass. He argued, “No man can be truly free whose liberty is dependent upon the thought, feeling and action of others, and who has himself no means in his own hands for guarding, protecting, defending and maintaining that liberty.” He declared, “I have shown that slavery is wicked—wicked, in that it violates the great law of liberty, written on every human heart—wicked, in that it violates the first command of the decalogue—wicked, in that it fosters the most disgusting licentiousness—wicked, in that it mars and defaces the image of God by cruel and barbarous inflictions—wicked, in that it contravenes the laws of eternal justice, and tramples in the dust all the humane and heavenly precepts of the New Testament.”

President Abraham Lincoln warned, “Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves; and under the rule of a just God, cannot long retain it.”

History shows that securing and keeping liberty is not easy, and that disciplined, selfless behavior is indispensable.

At Liberty Electronics, we emphasize hard work and discipline in our day-to-day operations. We view it as a key ingredient in our ability to consistently control processes to help our customers achieve success.  If you are looking for a world-class, US-based electronic manufacturing services (EMS) contract manufacturer and would like to learn more about Liberty Electronics, we invite you to check us out.

Let freedom ring! https://libertyelectronics.com/

Liberty is a subject near and dear to our hearts here at Liberty Electronics.  Last time, we talked a little about the start of American liberty, but what exactly is liberty? Perhaps equally important – what is it not?  Join us again today as we continue to explore our “great experiment for promoting human happiness.”

Noah Webster, the prodigious 19th-century American scholar, wrote that liberty “consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature.” In the early 1600s, John Winthrop, one of America’s earliest leaders, held this same concept of liberty. He said, “Liberty is the proper end and object of authority and cannot subsist without it; and it is liberty to that which is good, just, and honest.”

The Frenchman Marquis De Lafayette put it maybe more eloquently. He said, “Liberty consists in the freedom to do everything which injures no one else; hence the exercise of the natural rights of each man has no limits except those which assure to the other members of the society the enjoyment of the same rights.”

Lafayette’s boss, General George Washington, warned, “Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness.” Noah Webster explained licentiousness as an “excess of liberty; exorbitant freedom; freedom-abused or used in contempt of law or decorum.” George Bernard Shaw, the Irish playwright, summed up this idea of liberty when he declared, “Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.”

In her autobiography The Long Winter, Laura Ingalls Wilder provides a great illustration of liberty as personal freedom bounded by responsibility. Stranded during a brutal winter on the late 19th-century American frontier, Laura’s family and the people of her settlement were starving. Her future husband, Almanzo Wilder, and a friend risked their lives to search the prairie for a stash of wheat. They barely made it back to town with the life-saving provisions before another monster blizzard engulfed the landscape. When asked why he would volunteer for such a perilous undertaking his response was simple. He said, “the people of this community were in dire need. He continued, “this is a free country and I am free and independent.”

At Liberty Electronics, we get the idea of responsibility.  We take our responsibility to meet and exceed our customers’ requirements very seriously.  The central concept that informs our day-to-day operations is that people’s lives depend on the quality of our work.  This brings a high degree of focus and responsibility throughout our company to our workmanship.  If you are looking for a world-class, US-based supplier with a culture that emphasizes responsibility, we invite you to check us out.

Let freedom ring! https://libertyelectronics.com/

Given our name, it’s probably no surprise that we are big fans of American liberty here at Liberty Electronics.  In the coming weeks and months, we will look at this interesting and relevant topic, what some notable people have had to say about it, and how those ideas guide our work ethos at Liberty Electronics.  Pull up a chair and join us as we explore our heritage of unique American liberty and what President George Washington called our “great experiment for promoting human happiness.”

From the very beginning, liberty, imperfect and evolving, has been a defining theme of America. 400 years ago this year, the Pilgrims made the perilous trek across the Atlantic Ocean fleeing tyranny in England.  A few years later, John Winthrop also arrived here with the goal of living more freely.  Winthrop had a vision of America as a special place.  He wrote, “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”  In 1629, Winthrop was elected governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony and played an integral part in advancing the concept of liberty in America.  “Liberty,” Winthrop wrote, “is the proper end and object of authority.” 

One hundred and fifty years later, Thomas Jefferson expressed this idea in the Declaration of Independence. He wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”  After the resulting successful American War for Independence, General George Washington’s aide, the Frenchman Marquis De Lafayette, summed it up when he mused, “Humanity has won its battle. Liberty now has a country.”

Unfortunately, there were, and still are more battles to be won, but the foundation had been laid and America was on her way to becoming the “city on a hill” and a refuge for oppressed, “tired, poor and  huddled masses” of people from around the globe.

We at Liberty Electronics appreciate the manifold blessings of living and working here.  As an electronic manufacturing services (EMS) contract manufacturer, we’re privileged to serve a variety of markets with demanding quality, delivery, and cost requirements.  If you are looking for a hard-working, dependable, and knowledgeable, world-class, US-based supplier, we invite you to check us out.

Let freedom ring! https://libertyelectronics.com/