ABSTRACT
There is general agreement among Americans that the central political issue of our time is the world-wide conflict between Communist totalitarianism and political freedom, that freedom whose principles are affirmed in such documents as the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address. Free government rests upon the consent or opinion of the governed. Law is an expression of opinion, and the opinion upon which the law rests is more fundamental than the law itself. To be guided by the laws of Nature and of Nature's God means to be guided not by multiple fantasies but by the unitary ground of actual existence. Present-day skepticism as to the laws of nature mentioned in the Declaration, does not supply us with an alternative ground for justifying civil liberty. John Stuart Mill is the most famous of those who have or seem to have demanded absolute freedom of thought and expression.
