Guest Column
Freedom: The History of an Idea
Freedom: The
History of an Idea
B J. Rufus Fears
Foreign Policy Research Institute
We live in a moment that is as critical for freedom as the
American Revolution, the American Civil War, or the days
following Pearl Harbor. In each of those moments, America moved
the cause of freedom forward. In the Revolution, we declared our
independence from the greatest empire of the day, fought for and
won that independence, and then went on to establish a
constitution that still gives us liberty under law more than
two hundred years later. In the Civil War, we removed the great
moral wrong of slavery. After Pearl Harbor, we shouldered the
burden of World War II and the subsequent Cold War.
Sept. 11 represents a time just as critical in the history of the
freedom. As we judge the generations of the American Revolution,
the Civil War, or Pearl Harbor by their heroic response, so we
shall be judged. We are engaged in what I believe is a noble
crusade to bring freedom to the world. But that crusade is
faltering now, in part because we have failed to ask some very
fundamental questions.
This essay is intended to ask the most fundamental of those
questions: Is freedom a universal human value, which all people
in all times and places desire?
HISTORY OF FREEDOM
Our foreign policy since the time of Woodrow Wilson has been based
in the belief that freedom is a universal value, one that is
wanted by all people in all times. But why, if freedom is a
universal value, has the history of the world been one of tyranny,
misery, and oppression?
Socrates taught that our first task in any discussion is to define
our terms. Thus, the starting point here is identifying
what we mean by freedom. We never disagree, Socrates tells us,
about empirical questions; it is about values that we disagree.
No value is more charged with meaning than that of freedom.
If we carefully examine the ideal and reality of freedom
throughout the ages, we come to the conclusion that what we call
"freedom" is, in fact, an ideal that consists of three component
ideals: (1) national freedom; (2) political freedom; and (3)
individual freedom.
National freedom is freedom from foreign control. This is the
most basic concept of freedom. It is the desire of a nation,
ethnic group, or a tribe to rule itself. It is national
self-determination.
Political freedom is the freedom to vote, hold office, and pass
laws. It is the ideal of "consent of the governed."
Individual freedom is a complex of values. In its most basic form
individual freedom is the freedom to live as you choose as long as
you harm no one else, Each nation, each epoch in history, perhaps
each individual, may define this ideal of individual freedom in
different terms. In its noblest of expressions, individual
freedom is enshrined in our Bill of Rights. It is freedom of
conscience, freedom of speech, economic freedom, and freedom to
choose your life style.
In the United States, we tend to assume that these three ideals
of freedom always go together. That is wrong. History proves that
these three component ideals of freedom in no way must be mutually
inclusive.
You can have national freedom without political or
individual freedom; Iraq under Saddam Hussein and North Korea
are examples. In fact, this national freedom, this desire for
independence, is the most basic of all human freedoms. It has
frequently been the justification for some of the most terrible
tyrannies in history: Nazi Germany had national freedom but denied
individual and political freedom in the name of this national
freedom.
It is quite possible to have political and national freedom but
not individual freedom. Ancient Sparta had national and political
freedom, but none of the individual freedoms we expect today.
The Roman Empire represents two centuries that brought peace and
prosperity to the world by extinguishing national and political
freedom, but in which individual freedom flourished as it
never had.
From the Declaration of Independence to the First World War, the
history of our own country provides a dramatic example of the
separation of these three component ideals of freedom. After
1776, the United States had national freedom. Adult white males also
had political and individual freedom. White women had a
considerable degree of individual freedom but no political liberty
until 1920 and the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment.
Until after the Civil War, African-Americans possessed neither
political nor individual freedom. In 1857 the Supreme Court
formally ruled that African-Americans did not have the right to
individual or political freedom. The soldiers of the Confederacy
fought valiantly for their political, individual, and national
freedom while defending their right to deny individual and
political liberty to a considerable proportion of their
population.
Thus, clearly, throughout history, these three components ideals
of freedom have not been mutually inclusive.
Had we learned this lesson of history, Americans might have avoided
crucial mistakes in our recent foreign policy in the Middle East.
History demonstrates that one of the most basic human
feelings is the desire for national freedom. You may hate your
government, but if someone invades you, you may very well fight
in defense of your country. Napoleon learned this in Spain. History
should have taught us to be skeptical of the claim that we would be
welcomed as liberators in Iraq.
A second lesson of history we should have pondered is that freedom
is not a universal value. Great civilizations have risen and
fallen without any clear concept of freedom. Egypt-the
civilization that built the pyramids, that created astronomy and
medicine, did not even have a word for freedom. Everything
was under the power of the pharaoh, who was god on earth.
Ancient Mesopotamia had a word for freedom, but that word had
the connotation of liberties. It was something that the
all-powerful king gave to you, like exemption from taxes, and that
he could also capriciously take away from you.
In fact, it can be argued that the Middle East, from the time
of the pyramids down until today, has had no real concept of
freedom.
Russia from the time of Rurik, the first Viking chieftain of Russia
in the ninth century, down to Vladimir Putin, has never
developed clear ideas of political and individual freedom.
Thus we should not have been surprised when the Russian
Revolution led not to freedom but to Stalin and one of the
bloodiest despotisms in history.
China has no tradition of political or individual freedom. The
noble teachings of Confucius are all about order, not freedom.
In fact, the very beginning of civilizations in the Middle East
around 3000 BCE and in China around 1700 BCE represented
the choice of security over freedom. Civilization began
with the decision to give up any freedom in order to have the
security of a well regulated economy under a king. Time and again
throughout history people have chosen the perceived benefits of
security over the awesome responsibilities of freedom.
History thus teaches that freedom is not a universal value. Our
Founders knew and acted upon the lessons of history. The Founders,
unlike us, thought historically. They used the lessons of the
past to make decisions in the present and to plan for the future.
They understood that tyranny and the lust for power, not freedom,
is the great motivating force of human action and of history.
But the Founders also believed that the United States could
chart a unique course in history
Our country does have a unique legacy of freedom. That is both a
cause for hope and a caution as to whether our unique ideals of
freedom can be transplanted to the rest of the world. For in the
U.S. we have achieved a unique balance of national, political, and
individual freedom.
We have never been conquered; we simply cannot imagine what it
would be to be under the rule of a foreigner. Our experience
is very different from that of France, for example, or
Germany.
We take political freedom for granted. We have regular
elections no matter what the circumstances. In 1864, in the midst
of the greatest war in our history, we held elections. The
Europeans wondered after 9/11 what would happen to America; we
went ahead with another election. In a way it is a good thing we
are so secure in this freedom that we take it for granted. With
that comes our deep love of the Constitution. Of course,
Americans may not know what is in the Constitution, but they know
it is good and resent any effort to tamper with it.
As to individual freedom, where could one have so much of it,
including the basic freedom to create a better life for yourself
and your children? People clamor to get into America,
because individual freedom opens up a whole new world.
So how did we come to this unique legacy of freedom? Again, history
is our guide. Our American legacy of freedom is the product of a
unique confluence of five historical currents.
First, there is the legacy of the Old Testament, the idea that
we are a nation chosen by God to bear the ark of the liberties
to the world. Our Founders believed that deeply. Abraham Lincoln
believed it deeply. Franklin Roosevelt believed it.
The second current comes from classical Greece and Rome. The legacy
of Greece and Rome is the very basic one of self- government,
consent of the governed. The kings of Babylon were chosen by
God, Saul was chosen by God. The pharaoh was God on earth. But in
Greece and Rome, men said "We are free to govern ourselves under
laws that we give ourselves."
Thirdly, Christianity took the idea of Natural Law from Greece
and Rome and turned it into the belief that all men are created
equal and endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights,
among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The
freedom that for the Greeks and Romans had been limited to the
citizens of Athens or Rome now became a universal proclamation under
Christianity.
Fourthly, England gave us the notion that government is under
the law, no matter how powerful that government is. In the
Watergate hearings, Sen. Herman Talmadge (D-Ga.) quoted the old
saying that "the wind and rain might enter the cottage of a
poor Englishman, but the king in all his majesty may not."
The law governs the king himself, and our Congress, senators, and
president. As Harry Truman said, any time an American president
gets too big for his britches, the people put him back in his
place.
Fifthly, there is the contribution of the frontier. From the very
beginning, America has been about the frontier. It is what led
men and women to Jamestown and Plymouth. The frontier was the
vast, seemingly endless land stretching before us. The frontier
meant equality of opportunity. Even the best ideals of Greece or
Rome or England could never flourish, because they were always
cramped. But here there was land and the ability to start over
again. This mattered more than all the ancient hatreds and class
frictions that had existed under the old world. We cannot
understand why Bosnians, Serbs, and Croats speak the same language
but kill each other. Their hatreds have been festering for
centuries, but here they pass away. That has been the unique gift
of the frontier.
The existence of these elements in other nations and
civilizations only underscores the uniqueness of the
American experience of freedom. Russia has the tradition of Greece
and Rome, Christianity, the tradition of the Old Testament;
and it has a frontier. But it lacks that English sense of
government under the law. So the frontier in Russia becomes the
home of the gulag. Latin America has the tradition of
Christianity and the Old Testament, and of Greece and Rome,
and of the frontier. But Spain lacked the powerful English concept
that government is under the law. Thus Latin America, despite its
industrious and intelligent population and its natural resources,
has never developed a stable basis for political and individual
freedom.
Our heritage of freedom has been forged in war and hardship as
well as in prosperity. Our national independence was proclaimed
in the Declaration of Independence. Name another nation in history
founded on principles. An Italian or German will say you are
an Italian or German because you speak Italian or German.
Traditionally, you were born an Englishman; you were
geographical accident. But in America we have said from the start
that everyone can come here from wherever they wish. They can
speak whatever language is their mother tongue and practice
whatever religion they want. They become an American by adopting
our principles.
The principles proclaimed in 1776 are the noblest of all
principles: we hold these truths to be self evident, that all
men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with the
unalienable right of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
The proclamation of these ideals in the Declaration of
Independence is based on the belief in absolute right and
absolute wrong. You can deny that today. We seem to have a society
that believes there is no such thing as truth. Ethics is all
a matter of circumstances. But the Founders believed in eternal
truths, valid in all places and all times. And they believed
that governments are instituted among men to achieve those
goals. That is the purpose of government. And if a government
does not fulfill those goals, you have not only the right but the
duty to overthrow it.
The absolute truths of the Declaration of Independence are founded
on a belief in God. God appears four times in the Declaration of
Independence: "Nature's God," the "Creator," "Supreme Judge of the
world," "Divine Providence."
Thus our national freedom is founded on absolute truth and upon a
belief in God.
As the Declaration of Independence is the charter of our
national freedom, so the Constitution is our charter of
political freedom.
When that constitution was brought fourth in Philadelphia, we
were thirteen straggling republics along the eastern seaboard.
If Benjamin Franklin or George Washington wanted to go somewhere,
they went in the same way Cicero or Caesar did: they walked,
rode, or sailed. If they wanted to communicate, they did it
the same way Caesar or Cicero did. George Washington received
inferior medical care to what a Roman gladiator got in the first
century CE. And yet that same constitution gives us liberty under
law and prosperity in a world of technology that Benjamin
Franklin could not even have imagined and when we are superpower of
the world. We should never take this extraordinary achievement
for granted.
The American people in their wisdom would not ratify this
constitution without the promise of a bill of rights. It seems
to us extraordinary today that the first Congress kept its promise;
and in short order set down and produced the Bill of Rights,
which still guarantees these fundamental freedoms of individual
liberty.
But there was still slavery, written into the Constitution. God is
not mentioned once in the Constitution, but slavery was made the
law of the land. To remove that wrong of slavery we fought the
bloodiest war in our history, in which 623,026 Americans died. It
produced men of great honor and integrity on both sides. It
was finally resolved at Gettysburg.
When Abraham Lincoln went to Gettysburg to redefine our
mission, he started with the Declaration of Independence. "Four
score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this
continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated
to the proposition that all men are created equal." It was
unique because it was dedicated to the proposition that all
men are created equal. In one sentence he told Americans why they
were fighting the war, to see whether any nation so conceived
and dedicated could long endure. In all the rhetoric we had
about Vietnam and all that we have heard about Iraq, we have
not been told so simply why we were at war.
Lincoln then went on to state that this civil war was a
challenge laid upon this nation by God. The more Lincoln
grappled with why this terrible war had come, the more
convinced he had become that it was sent by God to punish us for the
fundamental wrong of slavery. He told Americans that we must
resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain and that this
nation under God should have a new birth of freedom. And that
government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall
not perish from the earth.
So this war that had cost so many lives was resolved in a way
that no other nation would have. The Confederates simply pledged
their word not to take up arms and to go home. The reconciliation
began. I think that too is unique in history.
With the Civil War we see the growth of democracy, the move towards
extending the franchise to women, 18 year olds. They all become part
of this political freedom.
This nation has continued in a unique course of freedom.
In World War II we fought and won the war in the name of
democratic freedom. We could have withdrawn the way we did after
World War I. But we recognized that isolationism had been a
mistake. So we shouldered the burden of the Cold War.
Now we have been called again, and the question is, will we find
the leadership to tell us why this great challenge is there? Will
we find the will to resolve this struggle? Will we find the
understanding among ourselves to see the great task that, as
Lincoln said, is still before us?
I speak to you not only the legacy of America, but of
destiny. I believe that no people in history have ever been more
magnanimous, generous, courageous, willing to forgive and forget,
and willing to help the world than have the Americans. So after
World War II, we raised Germany and Japan up. This remains our
greatest foreign policy triumph. We took those two nations that
had no long tradition of freedom and made them into viable,
prosperous democracies.
Today, because of the United States, more people throughout the
world live in freedom than any time in history. If we are
willing to accept the challenge, it may yet be our destiny to
change the course of history and to establish freedom as a
universal value.
____________________________________________________________
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please contact Alan Luxenberg at
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FOREIGN POLICY RESEARCH INSTITUTE, 1528 Walnut Street, Suite
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For information, contact Alan Luxenberg, (215) 732-3774, ext. 105.
FREEDOM: THE HISTORY OF AN IDEA
by J. Rufus Fears
Vol. 12, No. 19
July 2007
J. Rufus Fears is the David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma, where he holds the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Freedom. He is the David and Ann Brown Distinguished Fellow for Freedom Enhancement of the Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs. This essay is based on his presentation at Living Without Freedom, a History Institute for Teachers sponsored by FPRI's Marvin Wachman Fund for International Education, May 5-6, 2007, held at and co-sponsored by the National Constitution Center and the National Liberty Museum in Philadelphia. FPRI's History Institute program is chaired by David Eisenhower and Walter A. McDougall and receives core support from the Annenberg Foundation. The program on Living without Freedom was supported by a grant from the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. See www.fpri.org for videocasts and texts of this and other lectures.
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