Great Ideas

Every great idea, since our ancestors first developed the faculty of thought, has been a liberal idea. That is not to say that every liberal idea is a great idea; many I could name have proven to be impractical; some have been simply foolish. But, all progress from the very beginning has resulted from liberal notions.

Bringing fire into the cave must have been regarded as truly heretical by our more conservative troglodyte forebears. And every subsequent advancement:
from the dark security of the cave out into the uncertain sunlight of the future;
from endless wandering across a barren plain to the domestication of animals and cultivation of the soil;
from landlocked sequestration to an unknown destiny across the trackless seas;
from painstakingly memorized oral tradition to enduring written word;

every single step on our journey from the murky depths of ignorance and superstition upward into the light of reasoned debate and scientific investigation was driven by liberal thinkers against a formidable tide of conservative resistance, dedicated to dragging us backward into our past – ultimately back into the enveloping darkness of the cave from which we emerged so very long ago.