7 Ideas That Set Us Free

On Friday, millions of Americans will mark our nation's 232nd birthday with fireworks, parades, and other celebrations of freedom. So today, we've got a special, double-length issue that explores what freedom really means--or at least what it meant to America's founders.

If you look back at America's early history, you'll discover at least seven different ideas about how people get to be free. Three make up a "Bill of Rights." Three make up a "Bill of Responsibilities." And one is the crucial hinge between them.

A Bill of Rights
You're Free . . .

By Law. Thomas Jefferson once wrote that a government's most sacred duty is "to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens." Toward that end, America's founders tried to create a political system that would guarantee equal protection under the law. We've been arguing about what "equal protection" should mean ever since.

Historically, equal protection means the rule of law itself, as opposed to the arbitrary whims of a king. Starting with the Magna Carta in 1215, English common law placed increasing restrictions on the rights of kings--and, by extension, on all other governments and governors. Kings lost the "divine right" to rule. Instead, the people agreed to abide by a set of common laws. They agreed to a "social contract."

Social contract theory was crucial to the American Revolution. But it was also crucial to the two 17th-century English revolutions that preceded it: the English Revolution and the Glorious Revolution. In fact, as late as the 1760s, American colonists phrased their objections to "taxation without representation" primarily in terms of the rights due them as "freeborn Englishmen."

By Nature. "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." This sentence--the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence--is perhaps the most famous sentence in American political history.

The belief that we humans enjoy certain rights simply because we are human is central to what historians call the "liberal tradition" (not to be confused with today's liberal politics). Historically, "liberals" were suspicious of social institutions, like the state and church, that governed people's lives. They didn't believe those institutions had special insight into the proper moral order. Instead, they believed it's generally best to let people sort things out for themselves.

"I would rather be exposed to the inconveniences attending too much liberty," wrote Jefferson, "than to those attending too small a degree of it." Still, Jefferson had more than pragmatic tradeoffs in mind when he wrote about unalienable rights and self-evident truths. By then, liberals generally believed that governments existed to preserve each individual's natural or God-given rights.

By Yourself. Individualism has played a crucial role in American self-understanding since the earliest days of the frontier. And where the liberal tradition is concerned primarily with restricting governments, the individualist tradition is concerned primarily with empowering individuals.

Individualism treats individuals and their rights as the central good, the core value against which all other values are measured. At its most extreme, it makes a virtue of selfishness. Yet it also demands that we all make the most of our lives, and not simply rely on others to take care of us. It demands independence--the sort of independence shown by yeoman farmers settling frontiers.

Of course, even America's frontier farming forefathers relied on the work of others, especially their wives and children. Their individualism was more an individualism of the family than of one person acting alone. This points to individualism's central tension: its place in the community. No one is an island. If the highest value is the individual, what do we do when "me and my rights" interfere with you and yours?

A Bill of Responsibilities
You Must . . .

Be Reasonable. Plato's Republic-–perhaps the founding document of western political theory--argues that true freedom is more a matter of psychology than of politics. For Plato, freedom comes in the self-mastery people achieve when they submit fickle emotions and desires to the rule of reason. Plato wasn't alone in this. The Stoic philosophers of Rome pretty much believed the same thing.

For Plato and the Stoics, responsibly governing a state--governing other people-–presupposes self-governance. As Hamlet put it, "Give me that man that is not passion's slave, and I will wear him in my heart's core." Otherwise, by implication, I'll trust him as far as I can throw him.

Today, some people attack the idea that reason can, or even should, rule. They ask whether emotions and desires might not sometimes be better guides, especially in moral matters. Yet the ability to control oneself-–within reason-–remains a precondition for political participation to this day. People deemed insane, mentally deficient, or too young to reason are excluded from the political process.

Be Virtuous. We don't use the word "vice" much anymore--except for a squad in the police department. But ideas about virtue and vice were key to discussions of freedom during America's founding. Even Benjamin Franklin, no strict moralist, wrote, "Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom."

According to Christian theology, we humans are enslaved by sin. We are servants of greed, ambition, and pride. Our only hope for true freedom lies, paradoxically, in becoming servants of God--or, more secularly, in submitting to a moral code. Thus the Puritans of Massachusetts espoused what John Winthrop called "a liberty to do only what is good," and contrasted this with any sort of liberty to do evil.

It's a distinction some of the founders would have made as well. Unfortunately, "a liberty to do only what is good" turns out to be quite compatible with severe (even "puritanical") restrictions on behavior, speech, and religion. But it doesn't have to extend that far. Isn't our fascination with political scandals at least in part a result of our belief that political leaders should be virtuous?

Be Political. In his Politics, Aristotle famously claimed that "man is a political animal"--and he didn't mean that we're a primate species that happens to vote every couple of years. His claim was that we realize the proper ends of our nature only through political engagement and action. If we want to realize our highest potential, we must be political.

This idea lies at the heart of what historians call the "republican tradition" (not to be confused with today's Republican Party), which extends back through America's founders to Renaissance Florence, ancient Rome, Aristotle's Athens, and beyond. In the republican tradition, freedom comes when we participate in the public life of our communities. We owe our communities this, as they couldn't exist without the hard work of at least some members.

Of course, the responsibility to be politically engaged implies the right to participate equally and freely in the political process. Just as importantly, however, it implies a duty to serve--not only in the voting booth, but also on juries, in the military, or wherever the community may need us. For "republicans," true freedom comes when we transcend personal interests to serve the community's greater good.

Ante Up!
Because Economic Independence Means Freedom

Now, there's a catch to all this. Along with the English political theorists from whom they learned many of their lessons in government, America's founders generally believed that "dependents" had no real stake in the game--and were thus to be excluded from participation in public affairs. Thomas Jefferson, for example, argued that economic dependence produced "subservience and venality" and that it "suffocated the germ of virtue." Even working for wages was considered incompatible with real freedom.

So it should come as little surprise that property qualifications for voting were as prevalent in the early United States as they were in old England. To be politically free, one had to be economically free. Unfortunately, this was not a matter over which most people had any real control. Few if any opportunities existed for women, slaves, and indentured servants, who made up the majority of the population. People in these groups were economically dependent, and so they were considered incapable of political independence.

We no longer believe that owning property is a prerequisite for political participation. And we've learned that when we say "all men are created equal," we really mean "all people"--not just white men of means. But the importance of economic independence remains clear. After all, the idea of freedom is meaningless if we lack the means to enact and enjoy it.