The Core Democratic Value of Liberty

The concept of liberty is as old as mankind, tracing back to the earliest of recorded history, and following suite up to the modern era. Lord Acton, the great defender of the moral conscience of the Victorian Era, confident to Gladstone and Queen Victoria, and finally a historian of merit, planned to write on the history of liberty, and trace its emergence, and evolution throughout the recorded history of man. While he never succeeded in the completion of his objective, his lectures on liberty, annotated from his university lectures at Cambridge, give valuable insight into the pursuit of our subject.

A careful study of liberty confirms that of all values so associated with humanity, this core virtue is the most closely allied with mankind. What is liberty, and how has that definition changed throughout history? At what lengths have men gone to destroy or preserve its influence? These are questions for a much larger venue of consideration, but a brief look cannot help but imbue the reader with a sense of its importance and value.

Sources agree that the first mention of such an idea as freedom may hale from the ancient Sumerians in their word—Ama-gi, which means to “return to the mother.” How the word and its definition relate to the idea of freedom has been regrettably lost to posterity. The Latin word, “libertas” means “to love.” Both positive and negative connotations have come down to us from ancient understanding.

In a negative sense, we see freedom from such evils as an unwillingness to be subjugated or forced into someone’s mold or servitude. The positive aspect is the idea of having the liberty to act and operate according to the dictates of the will or conscience. As Lord Acton supposed, this word may reflect the historical significance of much of mankind’s struggles.

Gertrude Himmelfarb, in her book The Roads to Modernity, talks about liberty being the product of the American Enlightenment. The American experiment, as it is sometimes referred to, came about after more than 300 years of thought on liberty and the rights of man. England’s Revolution in 1688 opened a new understanding of the country’s ideas of freedom, and the American Revolution was the next step in that understanding. The outward reasons for the Revolution, such as taxation, or quartering of British troops in American homes, were manifestations of a higher sense of the rights of man. Liberty was the product of that understanding, both in the positive and negative aspects. The American colonists chafed under a British sovereign, who by his actions attempted to subjugate them and force their subservience to king and country. By the same token, they sought to live, worship, and enjoy life according to the dictates of their own will and conscience.

I do find it rather odd that while Himmelfarb’s argument that liberty was the fruit of American Enlightenment, and since most of the Founding Fathers were deists and Enlightenment thinkers, including Jefferson, Franklin, and Paine, among others, that the current Religious Right seeks to rewrite this history of the founding to promote their own views of American history, while crying foul and portraying those of us in favor of the more apparent and defensible version of American history are portrayed as “revisionist” who seek to pervert the country and lead it to some socialist panacea.

Historically, the United States has served as a beacon of this core idea. The inscription on the Statue of Liberty summarizes the sentiment well when it says, “Give me your tired, your poor your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free. The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest – lost to me. I lift my lamp beside the golden door.”

Throughout the three centuries of American history, the people of the world viewed us as a beacon where mankind lived by the conscience and will of her people. At times the prospect of liberty has been severely tested, and its efficacy has waxed and waned, from wars, economic disasters, and even terrorist attacks, and yet the idea of liberty is still very much alive, as witnessed in the recent events. No matter what the party affiliation, the process, and possibility of America resurged as Americans found the core concept of liberty within themselves, and expressed in an orderly manner, how they felt. This is one of the aspects of liberty which is most troubling recently when evidence of vote tampering by outside powers in our presidential elections did not result in a groundswell of disbelief and a demand for action against any power which would seek our downfall at the very basic level of our liberty, a presidential election.

In countries around the world, and in unsettling times, people express their core values or lack thereof. Only in the United States do the core values of democracy and liberty find expression in such peaceful and systematic ways. Liberty to vote and express an opinion, rights to peaceful assembly, right to worship according to the dictates of the heart, etc. are all manifestations of this core value, so long valued by Americans and the world. In recent testimony, a military officer, decorated and respected, made the statement that in America these values mean something, and yet we question that very assumption with our silence and inaction as a people.

In the past three years, our views of liberty as Americans have been sorely vexed. We had gained so much progress in the preceding administration towards freedom, whether it be in allowing any person who loves another person the freedom to love and marry, or in welcoming those of other countries who were hunted and haunted by a less than free government, that it reawakened old fears always present even in a place where liberty’s light was the brightest. We should find it amazing that light like liberty often is surrounded by the blackest and darkest of nights, and America is no different. Those who elected Donald Trump allowed their fears of change to rally them to his cause, and to use any effort to stop progress and change, which scares them most. The religious backbone of America, Christians were among those most afraid.

Enlightened minds are the greatest threat to darkness. Sadly, religion, which portrays itself as a great light, seeks the darkness to do its greatest work. Too often it is a world of “do as I tell you” and discounts a questioning mind and desire to learn and grow.

It is this very attitude that led Martin Luther to the Protestant Reformation against a Catholic Church which prevented the rank and file from owning and reading a bible. Luther’s “read the Bible for yourself” within fifty years had provided a fractured Christendom more in tatters than before the Reformation, and fear drove the new entities to set up systems of religion more dangerous than those from which they came.

Religious fundamentalism is predominantly a monotheistic trait. You rarely see it expressed outside the three monotheistic religions, and historically all three turned away from progress and modernity after World War I and went back into the dark ages and became the enemy of moving the world forward. It is interesting that at the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 that they added a symposium on World Religion. It was an attempt to show Christianity as the most enlightened world religion, and all religions were invited to the show.

Within twenty years of World War I, this allusion was shattered with Christians killing Christians in what is often billed as “the war to end all wars.” From then until now, the more radical, fundamental element of Christianity in America has waged a culture war involving race, abortion, and more currently gay rights to force their views on the American populace, arriving at the Trump-Pence partnership, in which Pence is more dangerously religious and fundamentalist than Trump, and who plays the false prophet to Trump’s Antichrist.

All of this comes at the expense of liberty. Freedoms we have long cherished have eroded in past administrations, and the rate of decay increased after 9-11 with freedoms surrendered and actions taken again our enemies which would have caused a concerted protest in other less scary days. Fears are a very real motivator. It was the fears of the Germany people which drove them into the arms of Adolph Hitler. Religion was a stage prop in that historical scene as well.

So, in summation, what should be the response of any caring American who is watching freedoms erode and a return of America to a troubled past with all our old prejudices having the bandages of healing ripped off and new wounds festering? We would do well to throw off the blinders and realize that a strong delusion had covered the land and moved us by our fears to accept things that do not reflect who we are as a people. And we need to rise against the prevailing winds which threaten our liberties just as our forefathers did at the beginning of America, and take back our country, and attempt to return it to the land of the free and home of the brave that it once was.