Liberty: What Did the Founders Mean?

“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...”

It’s hard for us to imagine how radical these words from America’s Declaration of Independence were in 1776. Throughout history, people had believed not in equality, but in its opposite: inequality. Some people were regarded as “superiors” and others as “inferiors.” That, most people supposed, is just the way things are.

Speaking for the American people, however, Thomas Jefferson and our country’s other Founders proposed a new course: to build a republic on the principles of equality and liberty.

Liberty?

Yes, as equals, people have the right to lead their own lives, without being constantly told what to do by their governments. The principal role of governments, rather, is to secure “unalienable” rights, such as the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

But what did the Founding Fathers mean by liberty? As we approach the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence and our nation’s founding, we should reflect on that question.

A synonym for liberty is freedom. Philosophers sometimes distinguish two types of freedom, namely, freedom from and freedom for. Mere “freedom from”—the freedom to do what one wants, whatever one wants—is what our Founders would have rejected as mere license, not true liberty. True liberty is freedom for people to pursue honorable and righteous ends.

Here’s an example. Our Constitution, in its First Amendment, recognizes “the right… peaceably to assemble and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” As a “negative liberty,” it is freedom from the government’s breaking up a peaceful demonstration or punishing people for participating in it. As a “positive liberty,” it is the freedom to advocate on behalf of a just and righteous cause.

Of course, people sometimes abuse their liberties by promoting unjust and unrighteous causes. And such abuses must be tolerated precisely because we wisely decline to entrust government officials with the power to decide whether criticism of their policies is warranted. Still, the reason for recognizing the freedom to protest is precisely to enable people to advocate for just and righteous causes.

It's clear, then, that our Founders, in proclaiming and protecting liberty, were not indifferent to the distinction between good and bad, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and injustice.

In distinguishing liberty from license, they counted on our moral and religious convictions—shaped by our families, religious communities, and other institutions of civil society—to restrain us from immorality and injustice. 

As John Adams observed, our Constitution “was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” 

Ben Franklin made a similar argument. “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt…they have more need of masters.” 

And throughout American history, reformers like Abraham Lincoln have appealed to the Declaration of Independence in dismantling — as we have done, albeit slowly and with great struggle — the systems of racial oppression that contradicted the principles of equality and liberty expressed in that document. 

But beginning in the 1960s, the concept of liberty underwent a change as many Americans lost their grip on the distinction between liberty and license. Mere “freedom from” came to be viewed by the so-called “me-generation” as true liberty. They forgot about what freedom is for.

A cultural revolution advanced the thesis that true liberty amounts to setting aside allegedly “oppressive” moral norms in order to indulge one’s desires, emotions, feelings, and passions.

“If it feels good, do it,” the mantra went. And many people, alas, embraced it.

Licentiousness masquerading as liberty is a stark departure from what the authors of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution understood to be the guiding principles of our republic. 

The Founders believed that our God-given rights were not meant to facilitate our passions—but, rather, were intended to allow us to direct our actions toward what is true, right, virtuous.

When properly understood, America’s promise of liberty—the concept that our Founders embraced, even if they did not always live up to it—is demanding, bold, and courageous. It calls us to become our best possible selves—people capable and worthy of self-government.

But when distorted on behalf of destructive cultural fads, our nation’s promise of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is no longer a profound universal truth, but a set of platitudes, a few sweet-sounding words that can justify virtually anything. 

I’m Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and Director of the James Madison Program at Princeton University for Prager University.