Defiance of authority out of love of liberty is as old as 1776 on these shores, and it’s happening right now in Hong Kong. In that former British colony, photos of freedom-seeking protesters being wrestled to the ground by police and rushed to prison remind us that freedom is not free.
Those who signed their names to our Declaration of Independence did so knowing that they could be tracked down and imprisoned by the British authorities. As Richard Brookhiser says of the brave American signers in his marvelous new book, Give Me Liberty, the act itself “technically made all the signers traitors.”
As it turned out, Richard Stockton, who signed for New Jersey, was captured and imprisoned by the British and held freezing and hungry for five weeks before being released on parole. Georgia signer George Walton and South Carolina signers Thomas Heyward, Arthur Middleton, and Edward Rutledge were made prisoners of war and held for months. Yes, they learned quickly that freedom is not free.
But why? Why was it then, and now, so important? Why freedom? Why a revolution to attain it?
Brookhiser offers deep and meaningful answers to these questions as he draws on Thomas Jefferson’s notes and the Declaration of Independence. As Jefferson put it, “Prudence … will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes.” Those members of the Continental Congress who wrestled with the decision to establish a new nation had concluded that the problems they faced were neither “light” nor “transient” and that a new nation resting on new and right principles was required.
Theirs was not a call for an impeachment, a new ruler, or another political party but for a new nation — one resting on the consent of the governed that would secure the people’s God-given rights. And what should be chief among those rights and the new nation’s purpose? Three cherished ideals: life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
This year’s Fourth of July celebration comes in the midst of the craziness generated by our nation’s best efforts to guard against a life-threatening coronavirus. Holiday fireworks will light the skies at a time when racial division and discord generate protests and calls for more sensitive recognition of God-given rights. They will come at a time when there are growing debates about how far and for how long our nation should deploy men and women to other nations and places, somehow in the name of preserving liberty and freedom.
But in all this, we will remember that freedom is not free, and that a government derived from the consent of the governed that secures the God-given rights of its people is rare indeed. It’s one that each of us should struggle long and hard to preserve.
Bruce Yandle is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a distinguished adjunct fellow with the Mercatus Center at George Mason University and dean emeritus of the Clemson University College of Business & Behavioral Science. He developed the “Bootleggers and Baptists” political model.
