A republic of virtue

We celebrate the American achievement of human liberty this Fourth of July. Every July 4, everywhere in America, we see liberty extolled. But what does liberty mean? Does every individual have the ability to do what they will, or does true liberty entail limits? A consideration of the meaning of liberty is as important today as ever, as our culture applies liberty to all sorts of activities and ideas that are harmful to human dignity and human flourishing.

Liberty—and freedom, a synonym for liberty—is an ambiguous word. Everyone who uses it assumes that everybody understands what it means and agrees on how it should be used. The word liberty is a lot like the word love, but we know that love has different meanings and different applications, even though we all assume a universal understanding for what it means. Misuse of the term love, as in the expression “love is love,” comes from the problem of ambiguity. In a similar way, misunderstanding of liberty, illustrated in the expression, “my body, my choice,” comes from the same problem. We need to be careful about how we understand what freedom means, and what it does not mean.

At the core of American political philosophy is a commitment to liberty. The Preamble to the Constitution, precisely and explicitly articulates the purpose of government in America, which is to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” The role of government is not to define the common good, but to set the conditions by which citizens can discover the good for themselves.

The Founders understood liberty to be the birthright of every individual, drawing on the Western tradition going back to the second century. Liberty is based on natural rights and is only possible under the rule of just law. Liberty is expressed in specific contexts—there is religious liberty, which entails a disestablished church and the ability to practice faith in public and private. There is economic liberty, based on the sanctity of private property, which is the product of mixing one’s labor with the stuff of the earth. Once a good is produced by an individual laborer, that good cannot be taken away without the consent of the laborer, and the laborer has the ability to dispose of his property in the way that he chooses. There is political liberty, in that government is limited as to what it can do. As James Madison famously wrote in Federalist 51, “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” And one of the great limitations to governmental power is that all government is by consent of the governed.

In short, liberty can be understood in two ways, one negative and one positive. In negative terms, liberty is the freedom from being coerced by a tyrannical force. Positively, liberty is the ability to pursue the good according to one’s own reason. When Thomas Jefferson penned these famous words in the Declaration of Independence, “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,” he was referring to positive liberty in the context of the tyrannical rule of King George III. In 1776, and in 2026, the blessings of liberty are found when the government does not exercise unjust coercive power, leaving citizens free to enjoy their natural rights under just laws adopted with consent of the governed.

All of this should be sharply distinguished from misconceptions of liberty, namely, that the individual has the power to determine reality for “ze-hir-hirself.” This is liberty defined in terms of acting however one wants, otherwise known as license. Liberty is limited by natural law and just civil laws. License is the stripping away of all natural and civil limitations, in order that the individual may live as they will with no negative consequences. Abortion, gay marriage, and gender transitioning are all classic examples of license because these all seek to burst the bonds of moral and natural limitations.

License is not true liberty, but slavery to the passions and to disordered desires. Humanity is a mass of disordered desires, which stem from our fallen human nature. And while some individuals do indulge those disordered desires, they do not get to dodge the unpleasant consequences that inevitably follow. I can decide to go out and get drunk, but I cannot decide to avoid the destruction that will come to my family, my career, and my health if I practice drunkenness. Adam and Eve had the freedom to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but they did not have the freedom to eat and live. They ate, and they died. That is why license is not liberty, but slavery.

True liberty exists only when there are natural and just limits that channel our desires in the direction of the good. The role of government is to identify and uphold those limits through just law, in order that we may enjoy true liberty, that is, liberty from tyranny, and liberty to live as we ought. Let’s remember on this 250th observance of our independence that liberty does not exist in a moral vacuum. Liberty can only exist in a society that honors virtue.