Loving Liberty
A deeper understanding and love for liberty is essential to America recovering its identity.
Happy Juneteenth as it became an official federal holiday! The celebration of slaves learning of their freedom was a monumentous occasion as this country lived up to the ideals proclaimed in its founding documents. The fuller realization of those ideals is a worthy thing to celebrate annually.
Liberty for All
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” -Declaration of Independence
As evident from the above quotation, liberty was central to the United States' founding and remained a central part of American identity. Seen in the names of Liberty Hall, the Liberty Bell, and the Statue of Liberty, Americans have inherited a legacy of liberty that ought to provoke contemplation on its meaning and substance. Unfortunately, this contemplation not only fails to occur but any interest or concern regarding liberty has largely fallen out of favor. Even worse, a form of the word has been corrupted in some circles in order to pursue political ends using means that very often contradict the essence of the word (think sexual liberation and liberation theology).
Because liberty is so central to the American identity, its absence or corruption has left Americans feeling like the Israelites who wandered through the wilderness for 40 years before entering the promised land. We are a homeless people, worried and complaining about the present, with no shared vision for the future, and a sense of hopelessness about what the future holds. While reigniting a love of liberty is not an ultimate solution, it is a step towards building up a culture that is seemingly on the brink.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the word liberty comes from a combination of the French word “liberté” and the Latin word “lībertāt." These two origins provide separate but related meanings that provide a full picture of the meaning of our English adaptation “liberty.” The French “liberté” connotates freedom from a burden of constraint or necessity imposed on someone. The Latin “lībertāt” connotates a civil status bestowed on someone by a community or society. In other words, liberty means being free from external coercion (per the French) while maintaining some obligation as a member of a community (per the Latin). It is these two components that I want to discuss.
Freedom From Others and Government
First, I want to start with the French “liberté” component. I’ll begin with the converse of what it looks like to not be free from external constraint: slavery. When slavery was practiced in the South, slaves were forced by their masters to perform whatever duty was expected of them. This was primarily the laborious task of working in the cotton fields day in and day out, though house slaves and other forms of labor were practiced as well. Any refusal or disobedience in performing whatever assigned task was met with immediate punishment usually of unimaginable cruelty.
A central claim of abolitionists like Frederick Douglass was that this practice of slavery was antithetical to the very core of the founding of America. Douglass and others could claim this because they understood that it was impossible to say that America was a land of liberty while an entire race was under the constraints of another race. They did not want to do away with America’s claim to be a nation of liberty; they wanted America to live up to the claim by actually being a nation of liberty. William Brown, a former slave, writing in his slave narrative wrote, “The love of liberty, that had been burning in my bosom for years, and had been well-nigh extinguished, was now resuscitated.” Even while enslaved, Brown had a deep desire to be free from the constraints imposed by slavery and experience genuine liberty.
Slavery was allowed to exist because the government refused to do its duty to ensure all its citizens lived in liberty. Once slavery was outlawed after the Civil War, the government began to fulfill this obligation and was ultimately necessary to ensure the rights of blacks were protected. The first condition for liberty to exist is a government that has the power to maintain order and ensure the rights of its citizens are protected from other people. Apart from order, liberty cannot flourish.
However, while slavery was the antithesis of liberty, the founding fathers were not enslaved and yet fought a war because they claimed they didn’t have liberty. Most people are aware of Patrick Henry’s famous declaration (even if they don’t know its originator) “Give me liberty, or give me death!” but what did Henry want freedom from? He wasn’t owned by another human being like William Brown was but the two sound awfully similar. Henry, like the other founding fathers, wanted freedom from a tyrannical government that infringed on the rights of its citizens.
In the context of slavery, most people keenly understand that the owner of the slave is the object standing in the way of the enslaved living in liberty. Unfortunately, people do not as keenly understand that a government can (and often does) play the same role as an object standing in the way of its citizens living in liberty. In fact, very often people believe the opposite to be the case: the government is an instrument to be used by the people to improve their lives. The power of the government is not something to be fearful of but is something to be used towards productive ends.
Thus, the paradox at the heart of liberty’s relationship with the government: it is necessary for liberty to flourish but is very often the object that prevents liberty from flourishing. The framers of the Constitution understood this paradox and formed a government that was powerful enough to protect liberty but limited in its ability to become tyrannical and infringe upon liberty.
Duty to Others and Government
With that said, freedom from constraint does not fully encompass the entirety of what liberty means. If freedom from external constraint were the only meaning of liberty, then we would be left to our own devices to figure out the best way to live. While this may sound like the ideal to some, this ultimately leads to what Emile Durkheim called anomie. Instead of feeling free and fulfilled, individuals feel cut off from society and have a sense of hopelessness, anxiety, or angst.
This why the Latin word “lībertāt” is vital to a complete understanding of the word liberty. As previously stated, “lībertāt” connotates a civil status bestowed on someone by a community or society. A certain status or position within society is given to an individual by a group with the expectation that that individual will fulfill whatever obligations come with their assigned role. Failure to fulfill one’s obligations will lead to that individual being stripped of their status and face social consequences. In a sense, this means that a person willingly sacrifices their freedom from external constraints by taking on responsibility and subjecting themselves to social constraints.
In other words, liberty does not mean being able to do whatever one wants because one is still part of a group that holds him to a certain social standard. The group that one belongs to varies by individual and by size depending on the context. For example, one most likely belongs to a family unit that brings with it certain expectations and constraints on behavior. Similarly, the President of the United States holds a certain position within a group, albeit a much larger one, that brings with it expectations and constraints on behavior. Furthermore, an individual can simultaneously be a member of multiple groups varying in sizes such as being a father and a member of a local church. In every instance, the individual is held to certain standards that he is expected to meet.
While it is tempting to view these social constraints as restricting freedom, therefore oppressive, these social obligations are part of what gives an individual purpose and meaning. They are also what allows for a functional society to operate. As an individual fulfills his role in a smaller context, that individual can be entrusted to fulfill his obligations in a much larger context. For example, as a father leads his family well, he can be entrusted to lead a church well, hence the Bible’s qualification that an elder manages “their children and their own household well” (1 Timothy 3:12). Ideally, leaders of large groups have proven themselves capable of leading smaller groups and worthy of entrusting with immense responsibility.
As citizens of the United States, a country founded on liberty, we have certain obligations to elect representatives who have proven themselves worthy of leading, obey the law passed by those representatives, and civically participate to promote the welfare of the nation. It is imperative that each of us seeks to fulfill these obligations and expect others to do the same as our country was founded on that assumption.
Liberty
When we put these two roots words together, we are left with a fuller picture of what the founding fathers had in mind when they proclaimed the United States as the land of liberty. They envisioned a country where citizens were free from being oppressed by others and/or a tyrannical government while also fulfilling their social obligations.
Both aspects of liberty are essential because they are two sides of the same coin. When people are not diligent about ensuring freedom from a tyrannical government, the government will soon consume areas of social life making people feel oppressed and resistant in fulfilling their social obligations. Conversly, when people neglect their social obligations then it is necessary to expand the reach of government to force people to fulfill them.
Today, the casting aside of both aspects of liberty can be seen in too many to identify so I will only mention a few. First, federal social welfare programs, such as government housing, food stamps, Medicaid, etc., at their core are the government putting a gun to the head of Americans and forcing them to give money to the poor. As a member of a community, a social obligation most likely includes helping out those within the community that need help. When individuals within a community refuse to do this, then it seems necessary to use the force of government to make them. At the same time, the government’s implementation of these programs make people less willing to help those in need within their community as they already get so much from the government.
Similarly, the call for many people to have the government crack down on Big Tech’s suppression of free speech is a call to use the force of government against a private company. This infringement on freedom from external constraints is seen as necessary because those companies have demonstrated an unwillingness to fulfill the social standard of fairness in their application of their terms of use. Their failure to live up to this social standard creates a desire to involve the government, but as the government gets involved in what a company can and cannot promote, the very principle of free speech is threatened.
Finally, social justice is another realm in which both aspects of liberty have been cast aside. There is a social expectation that people will treat each other with respect regardless of differences that they may possess. When people do not feel like they are being treated with respect, they feel the need to turn to the government to enforce respect. When the government gets involved, the other side will feel like their rights aren’t being respected which will increase their hostility towards others.
This country requires individuals to love liberty; both freedom from and duty to others and the government. Embedded in the DNA of this country is this love of liberty and a failure to recapture this love will mean a continued loss of identity. When a group loses its central identity, infighting, divisions, and hostilities threaten the very unity of the group. May all Americans proclaim as Benjamin Franklin did, “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”
God Bless,
Hunter Burnett