When asked to contribute to the Spectator’s ongoing
“Freedom Watch,” series, I welcomed the opportunity, as I don’t
think those of us involved in the political scene spend enough time
talking about freedom, beyond the sound bites and rallies and
speeches that pass for today’s political theater.
I say this because I believe there is a battle taking place for
the future of America, a battle whose lines have been drawn with
government on the one hand and liberty, the hallmark of the
American experiment, on the other. It’s a battle those of us
aligned with liberty are in danger of losing—although our banner
still indeed waves.
We live in an era in which conservatives have not effectively
outlined the proper and limited role of government, and as a direct
consequence of our failures, more and more of our citizens are
turning to an ever-encroaching government in times of crisis. Yet
to allow the balance of power in this nation to continue to shift
further and further toward government and thus further and further
from liberty is to surrender the very thing that makes America so
historically unique.
We must push back against this in three ways. First, we should
recognize that what Charles Murray calls our “cultural capital” is
in peril. In a recent address to the American Enterprise Institute,
Murray credited much of America’s greatness to “the cultural
capital generated by the system that the Founders laid down, a
system that says people must be free to live life as they see fit
and to be responsible for the consequences of their actions.” Yet
current events reveal us to be in a very different situation— one
in which “chosen” businesses receive bailouts and in which the
Supreme Court rules that a government can seize private property
because some bureaucracy thinks a shopping mall is in the best
interests of a town. The stark reality is that we’re in severe
danger of losing what our nation’s Founders risked their lives and
sacred honor to create.
Second, we need to realize that this is more than just a
philosophical problem. We’ve had a front-row seat to its practical
implications over the last six months, as the financial crisis has
given way to the most significant expansion of government in
generations. And now, as outlined in his budget, our ambitious new
president is poised to grow the federal government into the central
force in American health care, education, and energy—accepting
deficits stretching well into the trillions of dollars to do
so.
Lastly, we cannot forget that each of us can make a difference.
No matter how clichéd that may sound, the fact is our Founders
created a nation centered on the simple notion that the individual
was the sole repository of political power. This idea, that the
individual and not the government or the ruling elites could alone
determine the course of a nation, was in practical terms entirely
new. And how powerful an idea it has proven to be.
It’s that notion, for instance, that enabled a seamstress named
Rosa Parks, riding the Cleveland Avenue bus line and living to that
point a normal, unremarkable life, to change the course of history
by having the courage to say “No” regardless of the consequences.
And it’s the same notion that allowed a humble backwoods lawyer
with no formal education named Abraham Lincoln to rise to the
pinnacle of this nation, right our greatest wrong, and ultimately
preserve our Union.
My overarching point is this: every one of us has great power in
determining where we go next as a civilization, and with that great
power comes an equally great responsibility. It is up to each of us
to do in our time what our conservative forebears did in theirs,
that being whatever is in our power to halt the relentless drive of
government to encroach on our liberty. Ronald Reagan once remarked
of freedom that it “is a fragile thing and is never more than one
generation away from extinction.” As conservatives, and more
importantly as Americans, our ultimate aim can be stated simply: to
ensure that ours is not the generation that lets freedom die.
