The notion of freedom must include a strong dose of self-discipline and restraint. Without this, men cannot be free. The following quote from Edmund Burke (1729-1797) contains timely wisdom for the present.
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites… Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
