They believed every man must find his own place in a world in which a place has been made for him".
Ralph Husted an Indiana businessman and classic-liberal wrote those words in reference to the Founders in an essay entitled
The Moral Foundation of Freedom. The subject of his essay was the underpinnings of our republic and the interdependence of certain freedoms. Husted defined three basic freedoms and argued none of them are separable from the others because the security of any one hinges on the legitimacy of all. De-legitimize any one of these three and you have undermined the legitimacy of the remaining two. The three freedoms he listed were: religious economic and political. He said nothing of other freedoms enshrined in our Bill of Rights and Constitution not to mention a whole raft of freedoms since discovered claimed legislated and accommodated by various factions. A case can be made that some of these other rights (e.g. life self-defense) are more or equally fundamental and indivisible. Be that as it may his argument is solid as to the interdependence and indivisibility of these particular rights.
It can and should however be noted those rights placed in our Bill of Rights have even greater interdependence and indivisibility by reason of the manner in which they were placed off limits and by the covenant that was created between government and governed respecting those limits. Rights unspecified in this manner may be of equal or greater validity and consequence to liberty but other than the vague wording afforded them have no legally established presence; and are therefore subject to debate. This may seem hairsplitting but denying the existence of abortion rights having little Constitutional protection or recognition does not hazard Constitutionality the way denying or subverting 2
nd Amendment
protected rights hazards 1
st Amendment
protected rights.
Husteds simple declaration of something the Founders undeniably believed goes to the root of what it meant to be free in the context of their America. In an ordered and orderly society where places were assigned by birth such a statement would have ranked as heresy and would have earned a flogging at the very least. Yet by the late 18
th century that presumption was fast crumbling and something new and less ordered was taking its place. America had the advantage of a clean slate. A century and a half of Europeans accommodating themselves to and borrowing from a native culture much closer to mans primitive state than known in Britain had much to do with that. Theirs was an environment in which each man finding his own place was the norm and not some novelty to be considered before accepting or rejecting. Ergo the Founders did not suddenly discover and subsequently accommodate themselves to this novelty. They were already well steeped in it. It was part of the very air they breathed from birth and they rebelled because those freedoms were suddenly and arbitrarily snatched from them. The crown thought it was within its rights to do so but British colonists saw themselves as operating within a system on a par with other Brits politically. They also saw themselves as part of a political tradition that proudly and automatically resisted encroachment (i.e. English Civil Wars and the Glorious Revolution of 1688). It mattered little to them they were in fact more free this side of the pond than the average British commoner. Each man finding his own place was for them a given; something none of them gave much actual thought to. Yet it was also something all of them regardless of faction implicitly believed and would have heartily defended as their right. That none of them brought it up either then or later is because it was to them too obvious to require discussion. Yet this idea of
finding ones own place is key to understanding the system they created. Without that understanding their creation is soon lost to other considerations. That socialists enthusiastically attack their creation is in large part due to a cultural-disconnect occasioned by an education bereft of values such as theirs.
Closely related to Husteds finding ones own place theme is the American tradition of self-reliance. There have been numerous attempts of late to explode this tradition as mythology. I agree self-reliance was less important than it became later on (i.e. during the great westward expansion) but it was still an essential ingredient of our colonial makeup not least among Revolutionary leaders many of whom were self-made men. Colonial culture was a mix of settled and frontier with a great deal of mobility between the two. Enterprise speculation risk-taking and assertive attitudes were common among them and their supporters as well as among the Tory opposition. It is found in the literature of the day in opinionated broadsheets diaries sermons political tracts speeches and collegial essays. It is an oft repeated refrain of Poor Richards Almanac (Ben Franklin). It is read in Jeffersons advice to a young nephew to act independently boldly and to learn the arts of self-defense so that he need not rely on others for protection. Regardless how ordinary Americans may have behaved individually the literature alone makes plain they regarded self-reliance an important asset. Given its cultural importance we can safely assume many would have conformed to the ideal.
Imagine if you will just how far their Revolution would have gotten without a strongly self-reliant ethos. Americans from the start had little reason to think they would succeed and by the first winter had plenty of reason to quit. Many did melt away but enough stayed as kept the fight going. Freedom became their commonest battle-cry and was not the cry of those who have never known such freedom or its personal costs. Theirs was the cry of those who knew freedoms harsh realities yet preferred it to the kind of safe docility we know today. The next six years saw far more defeats than victories and none of the victories put much of a dent in Britains capacity or will to fight while taking a heavy toll on patriots and their families. Yet they persisted. What this tells us is ordinary Americans of the day were long on character; and character is shaped by the culture they breathed. Self-reliance really was something they esteemed greatly and they identified that with their liberties (however imperfectly practiced). Todays equivalent might be environmentalism. You may disagree and think environmentalists are all hypocrites who talk the talk more than they walk the walk but that has not been my experience of them. The same was true of our Revolutionary era patriots.
The other side of the Atlantic was and remains a different matter. The French Revolution was deeply mired in questions of class and the preservation v. elimination of existing social orders (i.e. estates). For the French to achieve results similar to ours required a major overthrow not only in the way things were done but also in the ways they thought about class government and the role of those structures in their lives; and that could not happen until thought caught up to practice. This difference in hurdles became obvious within months and acculturation to the new ideas required generations. Where Americans easily made the transition from lightly-ruled to self-rule the French attacked one another in an orgy of blood made multiple false starts wasted time splitting hairs burdened their various constitutions (15 of them) with minutia lost and regained faith and lost it again and eventually settled for something terribly out of sync with ours. Unsurprisingly freedom is viewed differently in France and America even today. There is some convergence yet there is also a great deal of resistance to that convergence. The French both then and now admire our Founders and their values but not all of them or to the same extent. Husteds declaration in particular is unlikely to resonate with liberty loving Frenchmen the way it does with us.
The American Left and Right view freedom differently also with the former invoking ideas originating from France (and elsewhere) more than here. Conservatives and libertarians often talk at cross purposes with liberal-socialists arising out of differences in the way they and we define things. Freedom is one of those terms we both use but mean by them very different things. With all this modern confusion youd think settling what it means to be free would be a hot topic at every dinner table yet it is almost never discussed even among ideologically divided families. Ideologically compatible families never discuss it for much the same reasons our founders didnt (i.e. too obvious). Husteds simple statement of fact is unwelcome among leftists and probably confuses a great many that look to government to secure places for them. Yet the second half of Husteds remark (taken out of context)
… a world in which a place has been made for him" might actually resonate and be mistaken by them as an affirmation of their worldview. The Founders view as captured by Husted was that finding ones own place is a right and not some arbitrary condition of existence subject to societal re-engineering. Having to find ones own place may seem a daunting prospect to those conditioned to certainty and safety nets but the alternative is having your place assigned by others whose arbitrary dispositions are more likely to damage as improve your lot. The latter half of the sentence nonetheless implies …
a place has been made for …" each one of us. If so then by whom was it made if not by those who lord it over us. Husted makes clear who in the sentence just prior to this one where he asserts …
they believed in God." Gods existence is pivotal to what follows in Husteds reasoning as God has with few exceptions provided each of us with everything we need to survive and thrive.
The modern American Right is generally in denial the Founders were true deists. The American Left equally asserts they were mainly and truly deists and hotly deny they had any faith whatsoever in a creator. Neither side quite gets (or admits) being deists still marks the Founders as believers in an externally ordered universe (aka God). Deism was not so much a religion as an approach to religion one that typically resulted in greater personal faith (which is the opposite of what most people assume about deists and deism). We see this still today. The more we grapple with religion (e.g. metaphysics morality &c) the more we stumble over limits to understanding; and the more we come up against those limits the more we are forced to admit our universe can only be explained by an external agency that is almost certainly aware of its creation and directs it in some degree. The only alternative to admitting this is to trap ourselves into convoluted and extremely unlikely alternatives. Some of the
theories posited for a creator-less universe are actually quite brilliant but that does not make them true or even likely (unless and until someone can either find proof it actually happened as theorized). Many squirm and deny these limits exist and persist in believing it is just a matter of time before someone finds that one vanishingly small loop-hole through improbability as validates the obstinacy. Most of us yield to logic if we are intellectually honest. The Founders were men of great integrity so it is unsurprising most of them acknowledged such a deity does in fact exist and that he took a favorable interest in the success of their labors.
The Left also makes a fuss over the use of providence in the Founders lexicon which they mistake as proof the Founders were uncomfortable saying God. Their use of providence however is easily attributed to a popular convention of the day that in no sense suggested a diminished faith. To the contrary the Enlightenment encouraged personal discovery of faith. The Founders saw themselves as part of this grand movement (the Enlightenment) and readily adapted themselves to its conventions. One of those conventions was to make religion less superstitious and more scientific. The Enlightenment challenged and updated a great many existing ideas yet discarded very little. Yes faith did wane in some places but also waxed in the America of their day. Overall faith increased from the start of the Revolution through the Convention and well into the early-Republic; and not least among deism-espousing Founders. Both the frequency and fervency of the use of terms like providence creator heaven &c increased overtime; as did personal endorsements of religion (both public and private) during their era (a fact much overlooked even by conservatives).
American deists tended to a great deal of unorthodoxy to be sure (i.e. free-thinkers). Yet few of them actually abandoned faith in a creator (Thomas Paine was a rare exception to this rule). The faith of most of them is known to have increased as a direct result of the Revolution and Constitution in which theyd played a part. The successful conclusion of that struggle after much suffering and doubt was viewed by them as nothing short of miraculous. The struggle to keep the Confederation from falling apart tested their faith yet again; and the successful launch of the Constitution was again seen as proof of a divine providence (i.e. God assisting) in their affairs. However they described it the agent of that providence was the same God worshiped by their fore-bearers and countrymen (i.e. that of the Bible). We need go no further than
Jefferson who made clear statements supportive of religion throughout his life and career; and who as late as 1823 gave proof he was a Christ-follower (though he denied believing in Jesus divinity). In an 1821 letter Jefferson spoke of rational Christianity which combined his approach to religion with a Christian self-identification. Most deists varied from agnostic to evangelical and everything in between with most tending a little more toward the former than the latter. Washington probably flirted with deism but soon dropped it. Overall he remained steadfastly Episcopalian (Anglican) and he many times expressed faith in a creator and the strong need of religion for the preservation of our republic. Washingtons faith is often discounted by leftists who regard him an intellectual lightweight in comparison to Jefferson Madison and others. But close examination shows he was no lightweight and was fully capable of holding his own in their company. He got some of his ideas from them to be sure and was less intellectual. But he also formed opinions of his own and added some ideas of his that found their way into Founding legacy. Virtually every Founder has left us with clear expressions of faith and of an uncompromising support for religion as the maintenance of republican virtue. The only exception for this of which I am aware is Paine who regarded all religion as superstition.
What I do concede is Deism and the Enlightenment gave rise to the secularism that soon followed. It is not accidental that Darwinism followed so close on the heels of freedom and was in part an expression of Darwins personal religious antipathy and freedom to express same. Nor is it surprising that anti-theists of the day found in both Darwinism and Deism ready vehicles for undermining religion. Atheism was not something new but it was something that had long lain dormant only awaiting the kind of tolerance of bad ideas freedom enables. Not all Deists found reason to believe as our Founders did and some simply abused deism to justify an already fixed atheism. Some honestly lost faith as a result of these inquiries but others used deism as a means to undermine faith in others. That happened far more in Europe and Britain than here. The French (
including some recognizable deists) in particular attacked religious orders and excluded them from political participation in later stages of their revolution. This
anti-clericalism predates their revolution but the revolution itself marks the main anti-clerical attack of the period. Thus the French were far more anti-religious and their deists far more inclined to secularism and atheism than our own. Much of the confusion regarding our own deists appears to stem from this difference in the way deism played out there versus here.
The Founders regarded some rights as essential to freedoms preservation and so took care to list them in a Bill of Rights as a safeguard against later misconstruction. This Bill of Rights was itself a sore subject among them as many felt listing some rights to the exclusion of others set a bar against those left unspecified. That hasnt proved much of an impediment to formulating new rights nor to recognizing some which the Founders would have approved (e.g. privacy) and some they would almost certainly have disapproved. Rights they would unhesitatingly support are those they (and we) regard natural preeminent among those being life liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Our Bill of Rights affirms and warrants our most vital political rights against the usurpations of government. Among these we find: religion speech the press assembly petition of government personal armament property (i.e. search & seizure quartering probable cause oath before magistrate describing place & items) due process (i.e. indictment double-jeopardy speedy trial trial by jury confront witnesses nature/cause of accusation counsel reasonable bail cruel & unusual punishments and self-incrimination) state-rights and powers not granted to be retained by states and people respectively. Amendments 15 19 and 26 establish and guarantee specific voting rights. Are these all the rights guaranteed by our Constitution? Article 3 section 3 of the Constitution provides:
No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act or on Confession in open Court" and …
no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted" which protects against a particular abuse of power against individuals. While this establishes no explicit right it implicitly recognizes existing rights of people and in their property. Finally Amendment 9 states
The enumeration in the Constitution of certain rights shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people" and Amendment 10 declares powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the States respectively or to the people". Both collectively and individually these tell us the Founders recognized additional rights existed beyond those enumerated either in the Constitution or Bill of Rights.
As said before the Founders were strongly divided regarding this idea of putting rights into written form. The British Bill of Rights on which it was based was mostly unwritten and had for nearly a century served the British quite well. Because of that many felt there was greater security in unwritten (yet well and widely understood) than in written rights. The period beginning with the English Civil Wars and ending in the American Revolution fixed many of these rights in English common law: in court rulings in the political writings of Locke and others in royal and parliamentary proceedings and in tavern debates. Already it was seen that codified laws and rights had a tendency to inflexibility and were susceptible to reinterpretation by those in power (with little to no influence by those out of power). It must also be understood how jealous the citizens of each of the ex-colonies were regarding sovereignty and how they identified primarily with their own states. Many were not ready to accept the Federal government as primary arbiter of their rights and opposed Madisons proposal on that ground. Some wanted rights to evolve in each of the states gradually building up a framework of rights the best of which would then spread to the other states and territories (i.e. living laboratory). Thus the early republic was a loose collection of jealously guarded sovereign states bound only to the federal power for those shared objects specifically granted under the Constitution. That made any national bill of rights controversial as it trespassed on the states rights of establishing rights of their own applicable to their own citizens only and independently of the new central power and strongly opposed Madisons bill as a kind of usurpation.
The Left has taken this simple idea of un-enumerated rights to fashion new rights our founders never intended and would find quite strange. We now have declared rights to: gay-marriage a minimum-wage free-stuff old-age pensions clean air & water green-technology social-justice an unvarying climate open-borders sexual-equality (regardless of context) legal representation at taxpayer expense & endless appeals a college education gun-free zones inoffensive-speech abortion an absence of tobacco smoke and even animal-rights to name but a few. They are not altogether wrong in their premise un-codified rights need expounding or that real freedom should be broadened to the degree feasible. Nor are they entirely wrong that changes in our societal makeup require we recognize the occasional need to revise. But I am at a total loss how any of the above so-called rights make any of us freer unless it is at the expense of someone else.
The right of gays to marry one another may make them feel they have achieved something but close examination of that particular controversy makes clear gays now fall under the same regulation as the rest of us making their new status a restriction on what they previously did without reference to government. What the rest of us should by now realize is that state licensing of marriage and its subsequent grants of privilege (i.e. marital deduction hospital visitation &c) are intrusions on what previously were matters between spouses and God with only priests acting the momentary intermediary. Now marriage has become a three-way affair with government assuming a dominant and never-ending role in our lives. At what point did we relinquish to government our freedom to marry and live together as we see fit? States do of course have some legitimate right to intervene when things get ugly (e.g. negative on marrying children animals coerced-marriages spousal or child abuse &c) but otherwise should butt out. If my gay neighbors want to call what they do a marriage and it makes them more devoted then fine. Just dont force me to call it a marriage if it doesnt accord with my ideas on the subject (or bake wedding cakes for them).
Clean air and water green-tech and an unvarying climate may be good ideas (or not) but are hardly rights. Social-justice is simply too vague and subjective to be a right. Besides freedoms that do not abuse the rights of others are themselves the greatest social-justice. I agree you have a right to be un-harassed (i.e. speech codes) in your own private space. But public spaces (i.e. taxpayer-subsidized universities streets public gatherings &c) dont qualify for that. If you dont like what is being said in public (assuming it is sufficiently civil) then you are free to stay and make your own points or leave if hearing the truth is just too painful. The right of pregnant women to abort babies is a moral dilemma even Solomon could not resolve. That modern courts have gotten around this dilemma by invalidating every unborn childs person-hood does not make it okay. You still end up feeling like a lousy rotten person (else become rotten) from aborting what would have been your kids. Your right to a minimum-wage free-stuff an old-age pension equal pay (gender adjusted) racial/gender preference and a free education may sound great but who pays for it. The answer is you do. It may seem free today but we all end up paying for it eventually. If you do not pay for it in cash you will pay for it as a limitation on how much you can earn without it affecting your entitlement (assured poverty). Meanwhile the creep of a politician who sold you on the idea is getting filthy rich and powerful as a result of our willingness to go along. As a non-smoker I am sympathetic with those who want a smoke-free environment. Yet as a libertarian and someone who knows a lot of smokers I am also respectful of their right to pollute themselves. Neither side really has a distinct right here but both have some skin in the game. I believe our Founders would generally agree with the idea of animal-rights though not to the same extent as modern animal-rights activists. Where we are stuck is on this rights business because it confers on animals a capacity for reason and in many cases gives them greater protections than we give humans. Lets agree to call it animal-protection instead of animal-rights and I think well make better progress on that one. Your gun-free zone may make you feel safer (right up to the moment some madman marches in armed to the hilt and blows you away) but it is putting the rest of us at considerable and rather pointless risk. Finally open-borders and endlessly legal representation for convicts have long been shown to have negative and destabilizing effects on society and good order. These may make you feel good about yourself but they really do harm others; and most of those harmed are those the government enablers most bemoan the extremely poor jobless and homeless.
Being free means I can do as I please subject only to certain minimal rules of conduct. I am not free to physically abuse others. Nor am I entirely free to abuse others verbally or through proxies. I am not free to steal or cheat others of what rightfully belongs to them. If I have less than they do I am free to acquire as much through my own efforts and ingenuity as they have. I am free to worship God as I believe God expects to be worshiped. As such I am not entirely free as God does command us to worship. Yet I also believe worship should never be coerced and that God does not want it coerced. I am free to speak my mind to government. And I am free to plead my case before its courts and/or a jury of my peers whenever accused of wrongdoing. I am free to think outside the proverbial box even if that offends some people convinced there is only one proper way to think. I am free to lie but not if that harms another. Why you would want to lie is a mystery as it usually brands you a liar no one trusts. But that is another matter. Lying in court (perjury false witness) is never okay because it invariably harms. I am free to covet but like lying it has negative repercussions on my character and soul.
This business of lying and the freedom to lie extends to the political realm. We all know the old joke about lying-politicians (i.e. How can you tell a politician is lying?). However it is not just politicians who lie about political matters. If I tell you the sky will fall if you dont act immediately and as I direct to prevent it falling you would brand me a loon. If I then pressure Congress to pass a sky-is-falling tax to pay for the action I want anyway youd be justified in branding me a thief (even if I gain nothing from it). But if an ex-vice president insists the climate is heating up that we (and the planet) are all going to hell as a result does this using provably (and knowingly) fraudulent proofs and grows wealthy from lying about it then apparently he is some kind of genius. Even politicians get in on the lunacy if it has enough of the right kind of traction. The example I just gave is of a politician capitalizing on the demands of a lunatic fringe by taking their cause to a logical objective his own aggrandizement. Just how free should he be to knowingly lie in this way? We imprison those who swindle a mere handful of people so shouldnt we be held liable for swindling an entire nation in this way? In our political system we assume enough of us will see through the fraud and vote such hustlers out of office. But sadly that happens infrequently. Meanwhile a great deal of harm is done in our name. We could of course demand Congress pass yet another law outlawing such exploitation by ex-VPs but that is always a mistake. Politicians look out for themselves first and are certain to craft the law in such a way as censures without it having any real teeth; its only real effect being to constrain everyone else but them (which is just another erosion of our freedom of action). As for the non-politicians who abuse the political process to get their way the best remedy is to take these loons seriously call attention to the lunacy and make a better case against their propositions than they can make for them. The alternative is to relinquish all freedom now in the expectation government will have no further need of manipulating us thereafter.
In researching my topic I looked for how others define freedom on the assumption there will be differences of opinion. Over at Debate.org someone posed the question
Does freedom exist? Several of the respondents (or one posing as many) are of an opinion freedom is illusory. The nays all sound like folks who want there to be more of it but are frustrated by excessive regulations. The yeas appear to be of an existential bent who give us no specifics as to what constitutes freedom and appear to seek it in the grey areas between oppression and anarchy or tucked safely away inside our heads where none can see it or snatch it away. Of the two I have to score the nays higher on actual points. However unsatisfying the responses the question was a good one and deserves better.
This next fellow grapples with the meaning of freedom and then decides that somehow trumps liberty based on extensive science-fiction readings. My own experience has taught me abstractions like freedom are best understood by contrasting them with their opposites. I am guessing our ex-Libertarian has little experience of oppression that he condescendingly opines so freely on the failures of the rest of us to grok the difference between freedom and liberty. Slightly more thoughtful was
this Indian site all of whom seem to be looking for a perfect balance of freedom with security and disqualifying rights known to be critical to freedoms preservation in the process (e.g.
When everyone has the freedom to carry firearms then personal security is threatened"; actually the opposite is true). I found lots of opinion regarding specific freedoms (e.g. speech religious trade taxation &c) but little as to what it actually means to be free. You will also find discussions of legitimate v illegitimate freedoms (i.e. not a license to harm others needs structure to be sustainable natural v conferred).
All of these ideas of freedom have some validity but the Founders had a particular shared vision of it one that resonated around the globe. That vision turned on the personal freedom of each to seek his destiny to find our own place unfettered by either a surfeit of regulations or the cloying concerns of others. This was something they understood innately valued highly and fought to keep. I have known that kind of freedom and can tell you it is not safely tucked away in my head; it is out there for all to see. It can be seen in the way some of us live our lives un-dependent on others refusing all assistance not actually necessary to our survival. It can also be seen in communities and countries that go their own way regardless the scorn heaped on them (e.g. Israel). Real freedom is not merely moral just or economically sound it is positively energizing. Some countries have yet to liberate themselves in this way and others have briefly attained it only to lose it again. America is exceptional not only as the birthplace of this idea (yeah there are some Brits who disagree on that point) but also as the longest surviving instance of that vision within a fully flourishing and vibrant nation. It is enshrined in our Declaration of Independence Constitution and Bill of Rights and that is a large part of our secret. The vision has been diluted corrupted and trampled underfoot; yet lives on occasionally bursting forth in fresh demands by freedom-loving Americans to restore and preserve it for future generations. Few nations on earth have quite the same veneration of freedom we do; and I pity them that dont.
Freedom is a messy business. The Founders understood that yet so great was their desire to live free they gladly traded the orderliness of what would have been an easy-sitting despotism for it. The demands of the British crown were less onerous than the demands of our present government. They knew that in time our own government would grow in power; and with great power would come oppression. They gave us the tools with which to stave off this oppression and the knowledge to use them. I grew up believing in freedom and because I was taught to look to myself first to see to my needs I had some inkling what that meant. And I have seen our most cherished freedoms watered down to the degree some are ignored. The children of today are not taught the value of freedom as we were nor any of the relevance of our hard fought war of independence. That failure to educate concerns me greatly. We have been told our kind of freedom is overrated that cradle-to-grave personal security takes precedence. I disagree and view personal security without the freedom to see to our own security a fools errand. It is still possible to regain much of that freedom if enough are willing. For that to happen we need to educate (and re-educate) our people so that they too understand the value of freedom and what it means to have and then lose it.
Additional readings:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/patrick-stephenson/what-is-freedom-anyway_b_5666154.html - how a liberal defines freedom; quickly devolves into a rant against conservatives. The article never actual addresses what it means to be free as its title suggests. I decided to not include this in my paragraph on how various people define freedom both because of the disrespect and failure to deliver. I include it here only to show how some people abuse the opinions of others to no actual purpose. The writer informs us he is a former speechwriter to a NATO secretary general. Id expect greater diplomacy from someone whose job is to build (not burn) bridges. I can only assume he didnt last at the job.
