The Meaning of Liberty

I have seen throughout my readings of historical documents that the words and concepts of liberty, equality, and power have had many definitions and many more advocates. Each individual throughout history has had his or her own understanding of how these things relate to him or her in their particular situation. The concept of liberty therefore has always been in a state of flux defined by the culture of the time.

Words mean things. As definitions and spelling can change in as little as five years it is important to trace the context in which words are written. For instance according to www.etymonline.com in the 13^th century to call someone ‘nice’ meant they were somewhat foolish or stupid and it has evolved to describe someone who is pleasant to be around or kind, another instance is the word ‘awful’ originally meaning ‘deserving of awe’.

The change of a words meaning can vary between generations or from one geographic area to another. Words are changed by the culture in which they are used, so history can be as much a study of the mindset of a time in the past as it is a study of how we came to be where we are. Therefore the study of history should lead us to make better decisions in the future.

The word Liberty is no special case. I define liberty as the ability to govern one self. This would include taking responsibility for ones own actions, good and bad, and the ability to go and do whatever a person desires on his or her own schedule. I exercised this understanding by living several years chasing hailstorm and hurricane damage across the southeast to make my living in the construction trades.

My perception, with this definition in mind, is I gave up a portion of my personal liberty when I chose to marry. Now my wife and I operate in a new definition of liberty that places the prosperity of our family and safety of our children above meeting our own desires as individuals. Liberty within our marriage requires mutual equality on many levels. This means that each person is just as important as the other and each person’s opinion counts.

Based on study of American history in particular it can be assumed that the majority opinion isn’t always right. We also see that when one person is given control over everything, such as a King, then liberty and rights, God given or otherwise, can be trampled upon. This is why the Founding fathers and any reasoning individual see the need for checks and balances. A republic with an individual leader and a house or parliament or two in a representative capacity to voice the needs of the people was seen as the best way to preserve the liberty and equality of the citizen.

Power is the ability to influence events and circumstances beyond the control of the average person. As America was set up with a representative government, power then, was meant for those who would do the most good for the Nation as a whole. In the mind of the founding fathers these were those individuals with will enough to be successful in the current economy and had a philanthropic mindset towards their fellow man. In theory success was a blessing from God and an indicator of virtue. It was assumed that the mutual accountability built in to the government and division of the power among enough people would ensure that the rights, liberty, and equality of individuals would be best protected.

Since the colonization of the Americas began in the late 1400’s equality has been a relative thing. Class limited European views of equality. At that time your equals were the members of your sex and class. Those above you in wealth and influence were your betters and you remembered and kept to the station in life you were born into. The opening of America to colonists gave the lower class the ability to become upwardly mobile, to rise above their station, and forced a change in the perception and definition of equality.

As the role of the indentured servant faded and the slave took his or her place the definitions of liberty and equality changed subtlety to ease the conscience of the new slave owner. A new class was integrated that was perceived to be lower because they came from a world away with little or no knowledge of western culture. As slaves needed educating in many things that Europeans and Americans took for common knowledge they were assigned the place of a simpleminded people.

At the time of the Revolution when the founding fathers fought for liberty and freedom from tyranny. The founders of our nation believed that power should be in the hands of the people, colonies should govern themselves and have representation in the governing body that made laws that included input and compromise from every colony preserving a united front to tyranny.

As the United States grew in its infancy diverging concepts of liberty and equality developed along economic lines. The North though holding onto the superiority of one ethnic group over another began to believe that all people we born equally free, though not equally stationed. In the agricultural world of the Southern Democrat the belief was that by Gods judgment in some fashion, certain peoples of the earth were born with a need to be subjugated and that the earth would drop into chaos if their perceived and perverted understanding of natural order were not preserved.

To the individual whether uneducated or college graduate, male or female the concepts of liberty and equality cannot be severed from one another. Once the group in which the individual is in achieves liberty equality is not far behind and power within society follows. That at least is the pattern I have seen through my limited study. Once liberty of a group is achieved the real struggle begins to define the responsibilities of the said group in what is virtually a new society. Who is protected under this newfound freedom? Which group needed to do the work of preserving these rights? Who must be sacrificed for the preservation and greater good of the rest of society?

As far as who must be sacrificed was easy to see in history. Each era saw as a threat those that they did not understand and perceived as somehow a threat to the new norm. Slaves, immigrants, women, and the working poor have all taken their turns as the whipping boys of society. The lower and middle classes have always been the bulk of every war effort and have been called to rally to whatever cause or swallow the cost passed down the line or take the pay-cut like the Lowell girls when the upper class feels a little extra greed or the local, state, or federal government taxes whomever they define as the rich of the time and calls for the redistribution of property for the greater good or for the children depending on the year and circumstances.

Liberty, equality, and power as concepts have specific meaning to several groups in our societal and cultural past. The six I suggest you explore are the Founding Fathers, Roger B. Taney, the Northern Yeoman Farmer, slave owners, Industrial Workers, and Slaves.

The Founding Fathers created a republic. Liberty was the freedom to run ones own life within the parameters of the law protecting the good of all people. Equality meant every man had equal opportunity to move up in the world by his own achievement. This is why the founding fathers saw the right to vote as a privilege not a right the average citizen is born with. The same idea that limited voting rights to a privilege and saw the landowner as more virtuous had turned into a general distrust of the common people by the at the time our current Constitution was written.

The definition held by Roger B. Taney gave liberty to the citizen, especially the businessman who put in infrastructure and improved the area in which he set up. He also enforced Jacksons order to dissolve the national bank in favor of supporting the states banks, later referred to as Pet Banks. Through my readings when he shows up he is of a decidedly Southern Democratic persuasion.

Of equality Taney showed an affinity toward the industrial entrepreneur is his decisions as Chief Justice. The black man was worthy of note to him only because of the great turmoil of the time. In the Dred Scott case he delivered the majority ruling and included the thought that blacks because of their ancestors being slaves could never become part of the political community and therefore have no citizenship or rights that white men are bound to respect, to paraphrase Mr. Eric Foner.

Slave owners did not take a much better view of what liberty and equality meant than did Taney. While teaching people they could rise into the upper Escalon of society, slave owners participated in a patriarchal society that kept power in the more “enlightened” families. They saw as a God given liberty the right to have unbridled control of another human beings life just because they were perceived as inferior based on skin color and lack of so called “civilized” education. The northern and southern slave owner both believed it was their duty to keep slaves as an act of mercy to a race that couldn’t make it on their own.

The Northern Yeoman Farmer linked Liberty and independence very closely. Typically the Yeoman Farmer was at least partially self sufficient, occupied small tracts of land, and used family for labor like the small family farmer found in much of American history. Land gave them equality with their fellow Americans. Answering to none but their own convictions gave them freedom.

Industrial workers, at the time mostly women from small farms, saw the opportunity to do away with the old traditions of being a women in America. Earning money by their own labor gave the woman a newfound freedom and ability to make decisions of their own. Liberty to choose how to spend their own money, choose whom to marry, if they wanted to marry, and even became empowered to start their own businesses from the knowledge gained. In the process of fighting for rights and opportunity in the workplace these women expanded the liberty of those who would follow them and paved the way for equality in the workplace down the road.

Industrial workers as a whole fought for their liberties in wage negotiations and unionized to secure fare treatment from employers and safe working conditions. True they traded their personal liberty by the hour for a wage but it was part of working toward a greater goal of caring for the family back home or making a way to live comfortably.

To the slave liberty was a dream barely within grasp. The longing for freedom is as inherent to every human being as the desire for acceptance and love. The slave did not typically dare to dream of equality because submission had been beaten into them generation after generation, but freedom, freedom was only a few horizons away. Freedom, liberty with no master or whip to scar the back that was the thing that songs were made of. Dreams of the afterlife when it seemed like death was the only way to find peace and a rest from a life fenced in.

I remember that horribly acted film with the good musical score by Mel Gibson. A militiaman asked the black slave who was signed over to fight in his masters’ place, “Freedom! What would a black man know about freedom?” I think the ones that don’t know about freedom or what to do with it are not relegated to one skin color. They simply tend to not think much about where they are going and how they relate to the world around them or currently stay in prisons of their own making,

Before I forget my topic and go on with filler and the usual B.S. of the typical blogger let me get back on task. Liberty is the founding concept of the United States. Even with the trial and error of the past couple hundred years and the atrocities America committed upon herself and others the strength of America exists in a government and law based on compromise. Our darkest hours as a Nation occurred at the time when the willingness to understand each other and compromise fell apart. A country dominated by one mindset and that has one or two parties seeking to control the rest of the people cannot last and will not be allowed to last. I fear for the future of my country. I pray my generation and my children's generation learns and seeks council from the past. I pray that competent leaders take the place of those who run the circus that is my home from all facets of government and sides of aisles.