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FELLOW
TRAVELER |
Jefferson
on American Liberty
by Gary
M. Galles [author,
academic] 7/4/06 |
It is Independence
Day again. Since Thomas Jefferson penned the Declaration of
Independence we commemorate,
and also died on its 50th anniversary, we should take a moment
to remember the central ideas of the most prolific of our
founding fathers on the topics of our rights and the liberty
which America
was to preserve and protect.
Our government
exists only to defend our pre-existing rights
“A
free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of
nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”
“The
true foundation of republican government is the equal right
of every citizen in his person and property and in their management.”
“It
is to secure these rights that we resort to government at all.”
Contributor
Gary M. Galles
Mr.
Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine
University. [go to Galles index]
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Our
liberty is limited only by others’ equal liberty
“...rightful liberty is unobstructed action according
to our own will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights
of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law,’ because
law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when
it violates the right of an individual.”
“No man has
a natural right to commit aggression on the equal rights of
another, and this is all from which the laws
ought to restrain him.”
“What more is
necessary to make us a happy and a prosperous people?...a wise
and frugal Government, which shall restrain
men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free
to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and
shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned.
This is the sum of good government...”
Our government cannot take away our rights
“Our legislators
are not sufficiently apprised of the rightful limits of their
power: that their true office is to
declare and enforce only our natural rights and duties and to
take none of them from us.”
“The legitimate
powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious
to others.”
“...the minority
possess their equal rights, which equal laws must protect,
and to violate would be oppression.”
“The right of
self-government does not comprehend the government of others.”
“It [is]...ridiculous
to suppose that a man had less rights in himself than one of
his neighbors, or indeed all of them put
together. This would be slavery, and not that liberty which the
bill of rights has made inviolable, and for the preservation
of which our government has been charged.”
Our
property is ours, not government’s
“...[The] pillars
of our prosperity are the most thriving when left most free
to individual enterprise.”
“The policy
of the American government is to leave their citizens free,
neither restraining nor aiding them in their pursuits.”
“To take from
one because it is thought that his own industry and that of
his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare
to others, who, or whose fathers have not exercised equal industry
and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association--the
guarantee to every one of a free exercise of his industry and
the fruits acquired by it.”
“Our wish is
that...[there may be] maintained that state of property, equal
or unequal, which results to every man from
his own industry or that of this fathers.”
Jefferson
once asked a seminal question. “Sometimes it
is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself.
Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” Our
founding documents were designed to answer that question for
America. Our government was given only limited, enumerated powers
necessary to sustain our rights and our liberty. This was to
minimize the extent that some Americans would govern others,
rather than letting them govern themselves.
On the anniversary
of Jefferson’s most famous words, Americans
should consider how far we have departed from our founding principles,
and how be can reclaim the vitally important liberty we have
lost. CRO
copyright
2006 Gary M. Galles
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