The language of liberty

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MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Good morning! This is The World and Everything in It from listener-supported WORLD Radio. I’m Myrna Brown.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

As we celebrate America’s Independence Day this weekend, we’re talking with Eric Metaxas about his new book Revolution — This longer interview will dig into what actually happened during the founding, how faith shaped it, and what it all means today. That interview will be available tomorrow, right here in your podcast feed.

BROWN: And now, here’s George Grant with Wordplay for Independence Day. Today, the language of liberty.

GEORGE GRANT: G.K. Chesterton once quipped that America is the only nation in the world that is founded on a creed. Other nations find their identity and cohesion in ethnicity or geography or partisan ideology or cultural tradition. But America was founded on certain ideas—ideas about freedom, about human dignity, about social responsibility.

It was this profound peculiarity that most struck Alexis de Tocqueville during his famous visit to this land at the beginning of the 19th Century. He called it American exceptionalism.

It is noteworthy that this exceptionalism was articulated at its inception with exceptional language. The creedal ideas of liberty enshrined in the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, the Federalist Papers, and the Constitution are often framed in eloquent classical rhetoric, rife with exceptional stylistic flourishes.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

“All men are created equal.”

“They are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.”

“Among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.”

“We, the People of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity...”

“...deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

“Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.”

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

“Power is of an encroaching nature, and it ought to be effectually restrained from passing the limits assigned to it.”

“If men were angels, no government would be necessary.”

In addition, the founding documents marshal an exceptional formal terminology drawn from Western Christendom’s rich historical, philosophical, and theological literary legacy.

There are Latinate terms like arcana, those mysterious or secret bits of information, and desideratum, the needful or desired end; or éclaircissement, the clarification of obscure matters; and obviate, a prescient preventive action; or opprobrium, a harsh criticism or public scandal; and usurpation, the wrongful seizure of authority or power.

There are also innumerable technical legal terms like bill of attainder, a legislative maneuver to sanction without judicial proceedings; and ex post facto, retroactive enforcement; and emolument, the remuneration received for public service; and evince, to indicate or show clearly.

James Madison asserted that “No language is so copious as to supply words and phrases for every complex idea, or so correct as not to include many equivocally denoting different ideas.”

Understanding this, the founders stretched the limits of the English vocabulary using other obscure terms like factious, remonstrate, adventitious, detractable, exigencies, imputation, indissoluble, palliate, venial, promulgate, aphorism, disquisition, odium, votary, and innervate.

If America’s great 250-year-long experiment in liberty is indeed exceptional in the course of human events, it should not surprise us that it was best expressed early on with exceptional language.

Lofty ideas warrant lofty vocabulary.

I’m George Grant.

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