Freedom-Fighters Forum

By William J. Dell – 23 November 2011
Amore Dei, Familiae, Patriae ducit !

In a previous article I wrote, “To be an American is to have the Light of Liberty radiating within your soul because the Fire of Freedom is burning fearlessly and determinedly [fiercely] in your heart not just for yourself but for all men everywhere.” Some have suggested that Liberty and Freedom are synonymous. This seems to be true when using a current dictionary, but during our Founding Fathers era I do not believe this was so.

It might be of interest to know that the word Liberty is used three time in the Constitution, once each in the Preamble, the Fifth Amendment and the Fourteenth Amendment. Each of these references refer to our unalienable right from God to Liberty. The word Freedom appears but once in the First Amendment. This reference is associated with our freedom of religion, speech, press and right to assembly.

In the following treatise, I use Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary to define the terms “Liberty” and “Freedom” because his listed definitions would be much closer to the understanding of our Founding Fathers. The semantics of a word often changes as time rolls on from year to year. Often it is therefore important to return to the past to understand what was being written in our founding documents. I believe it is very important for We the People, individually and as a nation, to understand the difference between Liberty and Freedom if we are to preserve the VISION of our Founding Fathers and the Constitutional Republic they gave us.

In the Declaration of Independence our Founding Fathers wrote, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” A “self-evident” truth according to Noah Webster’s 1828 Dictionary is one which is evident without proof or reasoning or that produces certainty or clear conviction upon a bare presentation to the mind. To be “endowed” with an “unalienable right” is to be indued, clothed or invested with a “right” that may not be transferred. Therefore, the “self-evident” Liberty mentioned in the Declaration of Independence is an endowment or gift to “all men” from their Creator [Almighty God] that may NOT be transferred. Further because our Liberty comes from God, it is self-evident that no man has the power or right to abridge another man’s God-given right to Liberty without the permission of that man.

Noah Webster defined Liberty as follows:

Freedom from restraint, in a general sense, and applicable to the body, or to the will or mind. The body is at liberty, when not confined; the will or mind is at liberty, when not checked or controlled. A man enjoys liberty, when no physical force operates to restrain his actions or volitions.

He further defined what he called Natural Liberty as:

Consists in the power of acting as one thinks fit, without any restraint or control, except from the laws of nature. It is the state of exemption from the control of others, and from positive laws and the institutions of social life. This liberty is abridged by the establishment of government.

I believe that from these two definitions of “Liberty” we can understand what the Founding Fathers considered as man’s unalienable right of Liberty mentioned in the Declaration of Independence.

You must be absolutely free to exercise your God given unalienable right of Liberty. When men mutually come together to form a “civil society” [defined as a community, state or nation] for the benefit of all, as Noah Webster indicated, they voluntarily surrender a portion of their “Natural Liberty” which they received as a gift from God. They agree that for the benefit of the civil society that they will be considerate of the “liberty” of others. Noah Webster called this self-imposed restriction on our unalienable right of Liberty – Civil Liberty. He defined Civil Liberty as:

The liberty of men in a state of society, or natural liberty, so far only abridged and restrained, as is necessary and expedient for the safety and interest of the society, state or nation. A restraint of natural liberty, not necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression. Civil Liberty is an exemption from the arbitrary will of others, which exemption is secured by established laws, which restrain every man from injuring or controlling another. Hence the restraints of law are essential to civil liberty.

Once a civil society establishes “Civil Liberty” through law, as in the case of We the People’s grant of power to the federal government through our U.S. Constitution, Freedom is born! We the People, as individuals, continue to retain our unalienable right to Liberty from God, but We the People, collectively, agree to “limit” our individual exercise of our God given Liberty for the good of the nation.

The Freedoms defined by We the People through our Constitution establishes two sets of limits. First, for the federal government, the Constitution limits by written law what they may do and by the Bill of Rights to what they may NOT do. Second, for We the People, as individuals, the Constitution defines the self-imposed limits on our God-given individual unalienable right to Liberty within our civil society, our Constitutional Republic and informs the federal government through the Tenth Amendment that “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, non prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” [Emphasis added.]

We, as individuals, may then exercise our Freedom(s) provided we do not exceed the limits We the People have established by our civil society’s laws, our Constitution. As Noah Webster says in his definition of Freedom, we are in a “state of exemption from the power or control of another” or the civil society as long as we are in compliance with the constitutional laws of the civil society in which we choose to live, our Constitutional Republic.

So it can be seen that Liberty is greater than Freedom because Liberty is an unalienable right – a gift from God. Freedom is established by man through law. Therefore, Freedom is a subset of our unalienable right to Liberty.

Noah Webster further stated, “A restraint of natural liberty, not necessary or expedient for the public, is tyranny or oppression.” When the government of our Constitutional Republic exceeds the mandate of We the People contained in the Constitution, it has usurped, contrary to the Tenth Amendment, power(s) not granted. Such usurpation, by necessity, unlawfully abridges the God given right of Liberty granted to We the People, individually, beyond what was granted or intended and further restricts our individual and collective Freedom(s). By definition, this is TYRANNY!

It was John Pilpot Curran who stated, “It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights [Freedoms] become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God has given Liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” We the People cannot have an attitude of both vigilance and apathy as they are mutually exclusive of each other. The Freedom to exercise your God given Liberty, within the constraints of a civil society – our Constitutional Republic, is something each citizen has to be vigilant about and sometimes fight for.

You fight for your unalienable right of Liberty with Freedom being the result within your civil society if you are victorious. If you cease to be vigilant and lose your fight, you are brought into a condition of servitude or slavery by a tyrant [dictator or king] or by a tyrannical government [an oligarchy]. A measure of freedom may then be granted to you even under these conditions of servitude or slavery, but your Liberty as a servant or slave remains unabridged because it is a gift from God to ALL men. You are only prohibited from exercising your God given Liberty beyond the limits “granted” by your oppressor(s).

So to be an American, one must understand that Liberty is a gift of God and that with this understanding we are required to “proclaim Liberty throughout all the land [world] unto all the inhabitants thereof.” [Leviticus 25:10b] As we do this the Light of Liberty will radiate within our soul. Further, because of our divinely inspired Constitution and the establishment of our Constitutional Republic by We the People, we should have the Fire of Freedom burning in our hearts to guard against our elected representatives [politicians] penchant for political power. The truth of Lord Acton’s statement, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” is certainly true of politicians. Rare it is to find within our Constitutional Republic, or any other civil society, Statesmen of the caliber of Washington, Jefferson, Madison and Lincoln. Statesmen who have NO desire to usurp power(s) not granted in our Constitution thereby abridging We the People’s Freedom(s) beyond the Constitutional mandate granted to them.

This writer believes that “Statesmen” and “Politicians,” elected or unelected, are on opposite ends of the continuum of “Public Service.” Statesmen are on the right side of Public Service supporting Liberty and Freedom, but Politicians are on the left side of Public Service supporting servitude and slavery. As it says in Ecclesiastes 10:2, “A wise man’s [Statesman’s] heart is at his right hand; but a fool’s [Politician’s] heart at his left.” In our Constitutional Republic, the continuum of “Public Service” is defined and limited by the mandate from We the People as set forth in the U. S. Constitution. Therefore the principal determination to be made in deciding if someone is acting as a Statesman or a Politician is: Does his or her actions serve the long-term best interests of our Constitutional Republic, our civil society, by preserving the citizens unalienable rights from God to Life, Liberty and Property or does his or her actions erode and destroy the Freedom(s) mandated by We the People as defined in our Constitution thereby moving We the People toward political and/or economic servitude and slavery in a Welfare Socialist State? More simply stated, does his or her actions support self-reliance and self-determination or does his or her action make one dependent upon the state? Truly, “When the righteous [Statesmen] are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked [Politicians] beareth rule, the people mourn.” [Proverbs 29:2]

In this our Constitutional Republic, our civil society, We the People must always remember that Liberty is a gift from God and that our Freedoms were established by our Founding Fathers through Judeo-Christian principles written into our Constitution, a Constitution that established a “government of the people, by the people, for the people.” I pray that those principles and Freedoms “shall not perish from the earth.”

May God Bless and Save the United States of America.
Our Constitutional Republic !