By Dr. Earl R. Smith II
Chief@ComeOnSense.com
www.ComeOnSense.com
As we approach the end of the first decade of the 21st century, it’s a good idea to look back to the early days of the country – those days between the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the ratification of the Constitution in 1789 – and realize just how revolutionary a vision of citizenship the founding fathers embraced. Theirs was a vision which they hoped would completely reverse the traditional relationship between government and the governed. In fact, their vision made it unwieldy to refer to the parties in that way. In America, it was the government which was to be governed by the citizenry.
Early on in the debates a distinction was made between freedom (an overused and now mostly meaningless word)[1] and liberty. Benjamin Franklin put it this way:
“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.”
In Franklin’s view the lamb – the American citizen – needed to be well armed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. He took it as an article of faith that citizens would never ‘sleep through’ the theft of their liberty or make a ‘fools bargain’ that caused them to loose it. He did, on a number of occasions, warn of the consequences of such a short-sighted transaction:
They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither safety nor liberty.
Remember that the Americans of Franklin’s day were frontiersmen and pioneers. They were going about building a new country. The evils of governments which dominated its subjects were fresh in their minds. Even so, Dr. Franklin felt it necessary to warn:
Make yourselves sheep and the wolves will eat you.
The founders based their hope for the new country on the belief that Americans would never quail before their government – never feel powerless and insignificant – never stop being vigilant – never willingly become subjects – and always govern instead of being governed. Franklin was specific in his proscription.
This will be the best security for maintaining our liberties. A nation of well-informed men who have been taught to know and prize the rights which God has given them cannot be enslaved. It is in the religion of ignorance that tyranny begins.
The faith of the founders was placed in the American people – not in the government which they were forming. For them any government was inherently dangerous and, by its very nature, a danger to the liberty of the people. Only constant vigilance and insistence on the subjugation of government to the will of the people could liberty be protected. Franklin understood that all governments – indeed all nations – will eventually become corrupt. Subservience to such governments was the beginning of ‘the religion of ignorance’.
Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.
The great hope of the founders was that the government which they were forming would be inoculated against this tendency by the powers which they saw as appropriately in the hands of the citizenry. The burden which they placed on citizens was heavy – their hope was that Americans would never put down this burden in exchange for ‘safety’.
It is the first responsibility of every citizen to question authority.
Franklin saw two major challenges which Americans would need to constantly meet and overcome. The first was the false inducement to trade their powers and liberty for money.[2]
When the people find that they can vote themselves money that will herald the end of the republic.
In modern terms, Franklin’s quote needs to be revised. When the people can be induced to give up their liberty for the illusion of money that will herald the end of the Republic.
The second challenge was that they would become observers – what are called ‘process wonks’ today. If Americans come to feel that their only role in their own governance is to comment, criticize and condemn their government and each other, then the Republic would be lost to those factions which were anti-democratic.
Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain and most fools do.
Today we stand at a great crossroads. Americans have mostly given up their role as guardians of their own liberty. We more resemble modern British subjects than the early American colonists. In the area of free speech for instance, we have willingly subjected ourselves to the false god of political correctness. Things which could have been openly discussed just a few decades ago cannot be broached without drawing waves of criticism from the self-appointed censors of our public dialogue.[3] Americans are more restricted in what they can s than at any time in their history – our public dialogue is marred by the intrusion of this political correctness – our media is humbled by its force.[4] Franklin saw this danger.
In those wretched countries where a man cannot call his tongue his own, he can scarce call anything his own. Whoever would overthrow the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.
Do we now live in one of those ‘wretched countries’? I believe that Dr. Franklin would think so. His proscription was clear – as was his fear of the danger of giving up the right to free speech. Freedom of speech is not just the right to speak freely – it is also the right to think freely. The two are bound together and the real objective of censors is to restrict what we think and to have us always think about their power when we choose to think and speak at all.
Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech.
Americans need to get back in touch with the citizenship that the founders had in mind when they formed the country. We need to become again what they hoped we would always be – the governors of our government. It is the single most important thing which has distinguished Americans from the rest of the people on the planet and we are in danger of losing it. We have been maneuvered into becoming subjects of that government – told that our role in society is limited to voting in elections which seem to represent very limited choices among candidates who mostly share the same agenda and dedication to raising government over the citizens. It is time to get back to fundamental principles. As Franklin suggested:
…a frequent recurrence to fundamental principle … is absolutely necessary to preserve the blessings of liberty and keep a government free.
The first step on the road to recovering American revolutionary citizenship is to take back the right to free and open speech. If we are unwilling to take that first step then Dr. Franklin is surely turning in his grave.
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Dr. Smith is a political and social theorist who lives in Washington DC
© Dr. Earl R. Smith II
[1] When action is considered within the limits set by a tyrant, a rat is completely free to move within a maze as long as he accepts the boundaries of the maze without question. Hegelians argue that the only way an individual is free within society is by obeying its rules and complying without question with its strictures – in other words, they are proponents of tyranny. The founding fathers argued that only the liberty to speak, read, believe and act as a person decided was in their best interest – and that liberty would overcome this false freedom – that is why it is called the liberty bell – not the freedom bell.
[2] The current tendency of government to offer the illusion of lower taxes while piling up massive amounts of public debt is a good example of this strategy.
[3] If you don’t believe me just watch any movie on television. One of my favorites – Blazing Saddles – has been so heavily censored that it is virtually unintelligible. In another – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner – Spencer Tracy has a wonderful scene in which he is finally coming to terms with his daughter’s intention to marry a black man. As he comes to the realization, he says ‘I’ll be a son of a bitch’. The censors decided that Americans should not hear such a thing and removed the entire scene. In the 60s – when I came of age – artistic integrity was the great defense against censors and movie goers would rise up in protest if a film was so defaced. But now the censors rule and artistic integrity has been consigned to the dust bin!
[4] First it was the ‘N’ word – lately there is also the ‘B’ word and a raft of others as Americans seem to be retreating into a kind of repressed adolescence. Comedians like Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor and George Carlin spent their lives trying to teach us that they way you disarm bigotry is to drag their language and hatred into the spotlight of public dialogue and make fun of it. But now Americans seem afraid of words and language. Maybe George Orwell was right – just a decade or so off – when he wrote 1984.
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