Liberty versus Existence

“Give me liberty, or give me death!” Patrick Henry, The Second Virginia Convention, 1775

“Not all democracies do a good job of defending liberty, but all the political systems that protect liberty are democracies,” Larry Diamond, Ill Winds: Saving Democracy from Russian Rage, Chinese Ambition, and American Complacency, 2019.

Liberty is not just the foundational principle of our constitutional democracy. Liberty is an indefatigable human instinct. Societies that don’t recognize this suffer in prosperity. But even governments that recognize liberty as an essential protectorate are challenged in their roles. When governments go to war, enact environmental controls, impose new standards of justice, or tax for a new bridge, that government is treading on the very liberties it presumes to maintain. When those choices become too restrictive to liberty, democracies can select new governors. A messy, ideological swap meet, but necessary lest liberty is forfeit to over-bearing governance.

There is a naturalness in the tendency of governments to seek more authority. Good people serving a demanding public seek to make themselves more effective. There are parts of that we like. But single-mindedness and the lack of competition cause pervasive drift in one direction – growth of government with subsequent encroachment on liberty. Historically, our democracy has had a corrective mechanism when public patience wears out. In 1980, that was manifest in the election of President Reagan who famously said, “In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem.” Similarly, after a troubled first term, in his 1996 inaugural President Clinton declared “The era of big government is over.” Presidents from both parties felt compelled to check the growth of government in their circumstance.

Do today’s existential crises override our democracy’s obligation to defend liberty? Armageddon, induced by nuclear disaster, climate change, rampant injustice, or global pandemic, is now open conversation among our leadership. One no longer wonders whether the world will end, or civil society will die, but which crisis will catalyze it. Left unchecked, humans may eat steak until cow farts destroy the earth. Election deniers may end democracy by voting their will. Climate change is on the ballot! Democracy is on the ballot! Pandemic death is on the ballot! We are not just voting for public servants. We need public saviors!

Unfortunately for salvation, I can’t identify a time in recent history when there was less inspiring global leadership. Those in power tend to agree on only one thing: that society must be transformed around yet-to-be-established norms, authored by them, that acknowledge a failure of liberal democracy. Xi, Putin, and the last three US presidents all share some version of this sentiment.

Xi and Putin are unabashedly authoritarian. Too bad for them. I’m not worried about either one of them outthinking 330,000,000 US citizens, assuming each citizen has the liberty to do their best. Whatever benefits those authoritarians have stolen from thirty or forty years of liberal interaction with the west will evaporate in a generation.

However, I am not convinced liberty remains a paramount virtue in the view of our recent administrations. The current administration makes it obvious, even if not specifically stated. In his Philadelphia speech on September 1st this year {Read the Full Transcript of Biden’s Speech in Philadelphia - The New York Times (nytimes.com)}, in reference to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, President Biden says, “These two documents and their ideas they embody — equality and democracy — are the rock upon which this nation is built.” Liberty is notably not mentioned, although it is the main feature of both documents. The current focus is equality – which unfortunately sits on the scale opposite liberty. In July this year, President Biden also declared, “Climate change is an existential threat…  this is an emergency, an emergency, and I will look at it that way!”

This isn’t a tirade against the current administration, even if there may be some things to answer for. Being President is hard. President Biden is the one we have. There are myriad issues to deal with. Each of the prior two administrations used similar hyperbole on everything from border security to equal justice to pandemic control to health care. Remember President Obama? “I have a pen and I have a phone!” President Trump’s numerous authoritarian antics are still fresh. It seems to this skeptical observer that regardless of party our political leaders repeat a common message. “Empower me with more executive authority over you, or democracy and the world may cease to exist!”

Common sense dictates that if a planetary issue is truly existential, some forfeiture of liberty may be a consideration. After all, any new law is just that. Whether now is the time for such forfeiture is justifiably debatable. But to forfeit liberty to sustain a democracy founded on liberty is an absurdity. In either case, the arguments require someone to represent liberty. In the opening citation, Mr. Diamond rightly points out that democracies are necessary to sustain liberty, but they don’t always do it well. Right now, if there is a champion for liberty among our democracy’s political leaders, I’m not hearing them. Where is Patrick Henry when you need him?