Liberty on the 4th of July

On a day when illuminating the sky with fireworks and intoxicating ourselves with cheap beer is passed off as patriotism, it may seem off color to question our conception of liberty, but it is most certainly not off topic. Today we celebrate the birth of a country, and we celebrate primarily because that country is a place where freedom and liberty reign. But what are freedom and liberty? These words are tossed around mindlessly as the masses “ohh!” and “ahh!” at flashing colors in the sky that even the 9th century Chinese would fail to find impressive.

Is liberty nothing more than a hollow concept that has the ability to galvanize a nation for the day?

 Liberty is a double edged sword. If by liberty we mean the ability to do whatever we want, it can be one of the most destructive forces in the world. Liberty is not a license for licentiousness, at least that is not the conception of liberty that this country was built on. Liberty loses it’s ability to liberate if it is left unchecked. In a society that hopes to survive, liberty must be guarded and ordered by something larger and greater than itself. (How is that for patriotism on the 4th of July?)

True liberty is fundamentally tied to a moral foundation. Tocqueville expressed this sentiment in his Democracy in America, when he approvingly quoted an excerpt from a speech by John Winthrop:

“There is a liberty of corrupt nature, which is affected both by men and beasts, to do what they list; and this liberty is inconsistent with authority, impatient of all restraint; by this liberty, Sumus Omnes Deteriores (we are all inferior); ‘tis the grand enemy of truth and peace, and all the ordinances of God are bent against it. But there is a civil, a moral, a federal liberty, which is the proper end and object of authority; it is a liberty for that only which is just and good; for this liberty you are to stand with the hazard of your very lives.”

Religion being set as the foundation of moral and social order is not an arbitrary, outdated, imposition. Rather, the decrees of God control licentious, liberal, liberty, which in the end enslave mankind in a prison of their own devices and desires. Liberty detached from Religion ends in blood. Tocqueville knew this all to well, as many of his family members were slaughtered in the names of “liberte, egalite, fraternite.” Tocqueville quickly realized that “the spirit of religion and the spirit of freedom go hand in hand. Freedom sees in religion the companion of its struggles and its triumphs, the cradle of its infancy, the divine source of its rights. It considers religion as the safeguard of mores.”

On a day we celebrate liberty, let us pray that we are never given complete liberty. Let us hope that liberty is always kept safe and warm, just barely out of our grasps, wrapped in the divine decrees and laws of the Great Lawmaker. Thank God for a lack of liberty, which is the runway to freedom.