Independence Day and the Recovery of True Freedom

... freedom is not "doing as one likes," which is not true freedom, but what the 18th century called license, a selfish indulgence that cares nothing for the good of the state as a whole, but everything for the needs and ambitions of one faction or ideology.  This selfishness breeds tyranny and the loss of freedom, for to act on whatever selfish appetites and passions that arise in one, is to enslave the soul to them and subject the self and the political community to their destructive effects....

Genuine freedom, then, is defined by restraints and limits on human nature's destructive "passions and interests," as James Madison called them. And the most dangerous passion is the lust for power...

Our modern tyrants, the big-government progressives, have created Tocqueville's soft despotism, which has been as effective as violence in destroying true freedom. Ordered liberty has indeed been reduced to mere license, as the ancients predicted. The first step in this process in our time has been secularization, the driving of religion from the public square and the reduction of it to a private lifestyle choice. In this way the moral order sanctioned by "Nature's God" and the "Supreme Judge of the world," as the Declaration describes the divine order, that once enforced limits on license and self-indulgence, now can be marginalized and bereft of its power to sanction destructive behavior. This leaves the state as the only authority for regulating people's lives.

Next, as Polybius says, the redistribution of property through taxation and entitlement spending also erodes the autonomy of the citizens by fostering dependence, at the same time the state has to grow ever more powerful and intrude ever more intimately into private life in order to manage and control this distribution. The citizens gradually become more and more hooked on various transfers and subsidies from the state, even as they surrender more and more autonomy over their lives to ensure that the state-funded benefits keep coming.

Meanwhile, this erosion of their freedom is masked by the short-term pleasure of getting something for nothing. Virtues like self-reliance and self-responsibility, vital for political freedom, weaken, even as the Constitution's balance of powers is disrupted by an activist judiciary and an overweening executive branch and its massive and minutely intrusive federal bureaucracy. The traditional limits on license thus disappear, paving the way for governmental tyranny and the decay of freedom....

Trump has taken the first steps necessary for restoring our freedom and autonomy: fighting the federal government and attacking its hubristic powers. Whether he and we the people can continue the fight for freedom, not just in our politics but in our daily lives, remains to be seen. But this Fourth of July let's take a moment to appreciate that we now have the best chance since Ronald Reagan to achieve that aim.

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