We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different but incompatible things. Abraham Lincoln
I had a long airplane trip, so I chose to read F.A. “Baldy” Harper’s Liberty: A Path to its Recovery (1949, Foundation for Economic Education).
Why We Don’t Understand Liberty
“The reconciliation of liberty with authority is perhaps the central problem of political philosophy,” Harper explained.
History is replete with philosophers trying to balancing the claims of liberty and authority. Liberty requires the freedom of individuals or the groups they form from external restraints by other individuals, groups, government, or society, but authority insists civil responsibility requires restraints on individual behavior for community welfare and security.
Catch the dichotome here? Two groups - one that seeks individual freedom in voluntary association with others, and the other that insists individuals doing liberty is akin to toddlers running with scissors.
It’s an old problem. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton argued over it. Harper ruminated over it in his book. It’s a very difficult conundrum that we are still battling over nearly 70 years later.
Liberty comes in many varieties: religious, political, cultural, social, civil, and economic. The importance of these varieties has changed over time and place. Some areas of the world absolutely restrict the right to worship. In the Christian world, religious liberty took over 1600 years and numerous bloody wars to secure. Personal liberty was only secured in the English-speaking world toward the end of the 18th century. Prior to that, individuals had no promise of freedom pretty much anywhere in the world. Although the US Constitution guarantees the right to associate in large numbers, the actual freedom was gained only in the 19th century. The right to vote and hold public office was largely unknown before the 19th century. And civil liberties like freedom of the speech and the press really became widespread only after they were anchored in the US Constition.
Let’s also remember that these rights were only acquired for racial and ethnic minorities in the 20th century.
While there were a few influential philosophers and economists of the 18th and 19th centuries who called for governments to intervene to protect the liberties of the poor and weak, urging for enlargement of “liberty”, Harper viewed such intervention as the antithesis of liberty.
Harper grounded all liberties in the womb of economic liberty. You have a right to life, which means to sustain your own life through labor, which is identical to the right to own the fruits of your labor. The right to ownership is basic to all liberties, arising in the production process and remaining with the producer until he chooses to consume the product or exchange it for other economic goods.
Any bill of rights excluding the right to private property is doomed to failure.
That is as true today as it was in 1949 when President Truman asked for new taxes and proposed a universal military training program.
Defining Terms
We all declare for liberty, but in using the same word, we do not all mean the same thing. Harper
Some say liberty means “do what you want.” Others think liberty only applies to special people to do what they want to others. And the first group calls the second group tyrants and dictators whle the second group calls the first group libertines and anarchists. Both side sees their side as “right.”
Lincoln was right that opinions on liberty vary widely. A frequent visitor of my “liberty conversations” on Facebook insists there’s no tyranny in the world today, that we’re just complaining about the necessary constraints placed upon us by living in society. This only highlights how far we’ve strayed from an understanding of liberty. To correct that we need to open our minds to challenge our own beliefs and question whether we even understand liberty as the Founders envisioned it.
Liberty is endangered so long as it is exercised in society. Hermits needn’t worry about their liberty being taken away. It can only be lost if there is some danger of it being take away and that is only possible if people seek to control one another. Since hermits have no neighbors, they’re the only true free people.
Liberty is not a thing of individual conduct, but stems from all those things that comprise “society” — purchases and sales, voting, who we chose to listen to, and what we choose to say in the company of others. Because we all have a zone of liberty surrounding us that others should not violate — rights, personal space, property — living in society imposes certain limitations on our freedom.
We are free, but we’re not at liberty to violate the rights of others.
The Declaration of Independence declared liberty to be an inalienable right (incapable of being surrendered or lost), but Harper pointed out that liberty becomes alienable the moment you join society. As long as someone is put in charge of maintain order, they will assimilate the authority to violate the rights of some and not others.
Liberty is always under threat in human relationships, but it doesn’t need to be surrendered because of these relationships. The preservation of liberty is required for continued social development and a growing civilization.
Liberty is safe in voluntary relationships because everybody is participating voluntarily. They are exercising liberty. Liberty is only violated when the relationship becomes involuntary. Relationships are only voluntary when they are free from coercion.
Thus liberty can be defined as freedom from coercion. And therein lies the difficulty — human beings love to coerce one another for “public safety.”
Lela Markham is an Alaska-based novelist and commentator who loves the concept of liberty enough to ask serious questions about it. If you don’t get an immediate response to a comment this week, it might be because she’s traveling. She promises to get back to everyone when she has internet.
The cancellation of Jefferson and Madison in the popular narrative should give us all reason for concern.
“ What we obtain too cheaply, we esteem too lightly; it is dearness only that gives everything its value. Heaven knows how to put a price upon its goods, and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as freedom should not be highly rated." -- Thomas Payne