Only the People Can Preserve the Flame of Liberty
Do we need a remedial course in cherishing and defending freedom?
It’s always important to remember @DouglasKMurray sage advice: when people complain about the failings of America (and surely there are many) you always have to ask, “Compared to what?”
America’s exceptionalism—historically, economically, scientifically, politically—is a fact of history. And if we want to keep the freedoms we all (or at least most of us) claim to admire, we have to understand that we have something very special to begin with.—Greg Lukianoff
In 1775, Edmund Burke told the English parliament, “In [the] character of the Americans, a love of freedom is the predominating feature which marks and distinguishes the whole.”
Two hundred fifty years later, clearly, that is no longer true. During COVID, for example, many Americans believed they had the right to force you to vaccinate. Today, millions of students go to college to be indoctrinated in anti-Western civilization ideologies. No doubt, you can add many more examples.
Burke continued, Americans are “not only devoted to liberty, but to liberty according to English ideas, and on English principles.” He observed, “In no country perhaps in the world is the law so general a study.”
The English principles Burke was referring to included natural law as taught by John Locke. Sadly, those principles are mostly now dead in England.
Burke continued,
This study renders men acute, inquisitive, dexterous, prompt in attack, ready in defence, full of resources. In other countries, the people, more simple, and of a less mercurial cast, judge of an ill principle in government only by an actual grievance; here they anticipate the evil, and judge of the pressure of the grievance by the badness of the principle. They augur misgovernment at a distance; and snuff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze.
Two hundred fifty years later, many Americans not only don’t foresee tyranny, they cheer for it.
Reading Burke, we understand why the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not enough to maintain liberty. Freedom is maintained when a critical mass of the public acts in adherence to the timeless principles of individual liberty bequeathed to us.
The words in the Constitution, explains Eric Metaxas in his book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, “are merely deaf, dumb, and mute shapes of inert black ink.” “We the people,” not politicians, were intended to be “the keepers of the flame of liberty.”
In a 1787 letter, Ben Franklin wrote, “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.”
Other Founders felt the same way. Madison warned:
Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks, no form of government, can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.
“For the first time,” writes Metaxas, “a nation was created that was not merely a group of ethnically or tribally similar people. Nor was it a nation composed of disparate groups held together by a strong leader.”
Nor did the Founders bequeath us a nation where the majority subjugated others under the pretense of democratic voting. Instead, our government was to be one with few and defined powers whose primary function was to protect inalienable rights.
Virtue begins when we want the same freedom for others that we want for ourselves. If we love liberty, we “have a conviction that each individual is created equal to all others and that he has the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
There is a growing conviction in America that only some have the right to free speech, and not all have the right to be free from violence.
On college campuses, a recent survey shows that 46 percent believe First Amendment rights to free speech are outranked by “efforts to promote and enforce an inclusive society.”
No doubt, these students see themselves as more virtuous than others, yet their convictions are a threat to freedom. They do not understand that their right to free speech is only as strong as their support of the rights of others to free speech. Today, they curtail the free speech of others, and tomorrow, nothing will stop the government from curtailing their rights.
We are free to intellectually reject for ourselves the liberty we have inherited, but we are not free to establish what our inheritance is. “To Jefferson,” writes Jon Meacham in his book American Gospel: God, the Founding Fathers, and the Making of a Nation, “the ‘Creator’ invested the individual with rights no human power should ever take away.”
Americans in the Revolutionary era, Metaxas tells us, “were well practiced in living with those who held different beliefs from their own.”
Meacham writes, “What separated us from the Old World was the idea that books, education, and the liberty to think and worship as we wished would create virtuous citizens who cherished and defended reason, faith, and freedom.”
About unbridled passions, John Adams would say, I told you so.
We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution is designed only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for any other.
Do we need a remedial course in cherishing and defending freedom?
The Founders believed in God and religion as a basis for morality, yet they saw there were other pathways to a moral life. Meacham writes: “Part of the genius of the Founding was the creation of a culture in which men and women of goodwill—whatever the wellspring of that goodwill, be it a fear of God or a secular moral framework—could live together and prosper together.”
They saw themselves as an “infinitesimal part” of a Whole they could never fully comprehend. John Adams said:
I hate polemical politics and polemical divinity. My religion is founded on the love of God and my neighbor; on the hope of pardon for my offenses; upon contrition; upon the duty as well as the necessity of [enduring] with patience the inevitable evils of life; in the duty of doing no wrong, but all the good I can, to the creation of which I am but an infinitesimal part.
Jefferson writes Meacham, “cautioned against reflexively assuming a cause-and-effect connection between religious belief and moral conduct.”
On the dogmas of religion, as distinguished from moral principles, all mankind, from the beginning of the world to this day, have been quarreling, fighting, burning and torturing one another, for abstractions unintelligible to themselves and to all others, and absolutely beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
Lovely is the term Adam Smith uses in his book The Theory of Moral Sentiments to describe individuals who are “worthy of being loved” because of their character.
We will be reading selections from The Theory of Moral Sentiments during our next sessions of Mindset Shifts U which begin July 26th.
In How Adam Smith Can Change Your Life, economist Russell Roberts builds on Smith’s The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Roberts describes the role “each of us plays in creating a moral society.” As we live our lives, we are "creating our civilization.”
Individually, we decide what is virtuous. Collectively, as we act on our decisions, we determine the societal culture in which we live.
If intolerance toward others different from ourselves increases, freedom will continue to vanish. If politicians work to restrict commerce and confiscate wealth from others, freedom will continue to vanish. If crony capitalists continue to demand subsidies, freedom will continue to vanish. If colleges continue to eliminate the study of the core values of American and Western civilization from their curricula, freedom will continue to vanish.
As for those who say America was never virtuous, Larry Reed, president emeritus of FEE, has the perfect analogy.
Imagine if we could bring the Wright Brothers back to life for an hour so the critic could berate them. He would say, “You dummies! You two made this rickety flying machine and didn’t even install seat belts and tray tables, let alone in-flight movies. What good were you?!”
Do we want to justify our lack of virtue by pointing to the lack of perfect virtue in others? Metaxas asks this question:
If America was indeed a country created not because of ethnic or tribal boundaries but instead because a people had come to believe—and therefore embody—a set of ideas, how could America be said to exist if almost no one anymore knew what those ideas were?
Our future depends on our answers.
An earlier version of this essay was originally published at the Foundation for Economic Education.
America was built on principles, not tribes. Notice the warring “tribes” in your mind; today, this person is an “enemy” over some insignificant infraction, and tomorrow, another person takes their place as an object of your mind’s projections. With your mind in turmoil, you will have no personal freedom.
Societal freedom depends on our decision to value inner freedom. When you upgrade to a paid subscription, you gain access to all sessions of Mindset Shifts U. The greatest thinkers in history will guide you in strengthening your inner freedom.
"America was built on principles, not tribes."
Coincidence: there is trouble brewing among my sibs over politics, and I think it is all to do with tribalism. We six are very dispersed geographically (IA, CO, GA, UK). Four sisters, two brothers including me. We started doing a weekly Zoom meeting during COVID and kept it going—a great way to stay in touch, share news, reminisce.
But then as the 2024 election season got underway, all four sisters started whinging on about Trump "threatening democracy", etc. Imagine trying to talk about politics with people who read nothing but the NYT, and who never questioned anything they read there, and who believed that there was nothing else worth reading.
I just don't engage them. There would be no point in trying to debate, because the sisters are not equipped to debate, but only able to recite tribalist talking points. Also, they are all very simmeringly angry about the election, so anything they say becomes strangely and awkwardly emotional.
I think what has happened is that my sisters imagine they are "doing politics", but really they have abandoned politics—which I think of as a realm of argument, tradeoffs, compromises, negotiation—and have become merely tribalist advocates (I enjoy political debate, bc I like examining ideas, and am thoroughly non-partisan).
I also think that this sort of switcheroo from good-faith political engagement to bad-faith invective and reflexive opposition is giving in to the dark side of human nature. It's as if Trump's appearance in American politics gave people the "permission structure" to devolve into something very un-American. To them, Trump is not a politician; he is a monster/would-be king who is out to destroy the country. He is beyond politics, and so he must be opposed by any means necessary.
Personally, this is kind of tragic, because I love my sisters, but they have become so saturated in this tribalism that they find it very difficult to refrain from talking about it (which I insist upon during the Zooms). I feel we are drifting apart over this, which is too bad at this point of life (the youngest of us is 60).
I wish I knew what to do.
Another good and timely article - A needed pep talk for my recent slogan of "Be the Neighbor you want to have".
One point of disagreement though, re the paragraph about traits with the result "Freedom will continue to vanish".
The behaviors listed are bedrock to human nature. We cannot eradicate them. Our only hope is having a government with authority too weak to accommodate and promote those behaviors. That starts with turning away from DemoPublican politics, voting in their election charades, patronizing their corrupted media, and supporting their "schools".