A Discussion of Oliver DeMille’s 1913 Chapter 6 “The Founding of Freedom in Modern Times”
Oliver DeMille shifts his focus from the first five chapters where he laid out how we broke the founders’ design to an exploration of how we can fix things.
He cites economist Murray Rothbard’s observation that you can categorize human interaction into seven major actions.
- Charity/gifts/service
- Voluntary exchange
- Assault
- Robbery
- Slavery
- Murder
- War
The first two are the good ones; it would be nice if that were all that happened. However, in the fallen world we live in, we need protection from others initiating the other five.
And this gets us to the essential problem of government. We need government as a force to protect us from the bad five types of interaction, but for it to be effective we have to give it enough power that government itself could become the problem.
In short, government is necessary to help stop assault, robbery, slavery, murder and war — but it can also use its power to engage in these things. Through history, in fact, more governments have abused power than have not. (p. 87)
This of course is what drove the founders of the U.S. Constitution to design our system with checks and balances to thwart the government’s tendency to use power against the people it was set up to protect.
With the government in check, freedom is maximized for participating in the two good interactions without concerns of bad people participating in the other five.
Freedom incentivizes great things from people, and the Constitution released the potential of the American people and all those who would eventually call America their home. (p. 77)
DeMille notes there are three lessons we can learn from the founders that would help us today if we could restore them.
- A Wise Citizenry
- Created Equal
- Auxiliary Precautions
Applying each of these lessons, he says, would restore much of the freedom we have lost since the world-shifting events of 1913.
A Wise Citizenry
This one has me worried!
The first lesson of the American founding is that the whole citizenry must understand freedom, or it is unlikely to last…Without a wise populace that understands how freedom works and takes an active part in maintaining it, no free society has ever lasted. (p. 78)
Our low voter turnout shows that we are not taking an active part. A midterm election seldom has 50% of eligible voters turn out while years with presidential elections tend towards 60%.
Without voters holding politicians accountable, it gives them more room to grow the government for the betterment of their special interests, lessening the freedom of the people.
Americans at the time of our founding were more broadly educated than we are today. DeMille cites a quote from John Adams that is often misunderstood.
Adams wrote in 1765, “A native of America who cannot read or write is as rare…as a comet or an earthquake. It has been observed that we are all of us lawyers, divines, politicians, and philosophers.” (p. 78)
DeMille says that we tend to take that quote to mean that America was made up of people in various occupations such as lawyers, pastors, politicians, or philosophers.
However, his actual meaning was each person had the education of a lawyer and a pastor and a politician, and a philosopher.
DeMille concludes, “Adams’ point was that the average American education combines the wisdom and knowledge of all those fields of learning.” (p. 79)
I know those “man-on-the-street” interviews various comedians and YouTubers like to post for laughs may not be a representative sample. However, the number of people who retained nothing from school appears high–information like how many states are in the U.S., the name of any country in Africa, or even the knowledge that Africa is a continent, not a country.
People who do not know the ideas of the founders, who do not know the history of authoritarian governments, who do not know that they are born with inherent dignity and freedoms but think that all things that come from the government can never be a free people.
DeMille references The Federalist Papers as an example of how far we have descended in our education.
…the Federalist Papers — which challenge the average law students today — were written as simple newspaper articles for typical farmers and merchants in 1789 New York. As intricate, deep, and detailed as the Federalist Papers are, it is clear that the typical political education of the citizen in 1789 America was much more advanced that that of most Americans in our time. (p. 80)
This matters because to be a free people we need to all have the same understanding as the judges and politicians that are in power. If not, then we are simply the masses being ruled over by the aristocratic leaders.
We have more higher education today, but more knowledge in specialized areas is not enough. We are then just specialized educated masses still being ruled over by aristocratic leaders.
In short, freedom exists when the masses of people are deeply read in the ideas and principles of freedom. When the people stop reading and considering the concepts of political and economic freedom in a consistent way, they always lose their freedom. (p. 81)
Created Equal
As DeMille notes, the Declaration of Independence got this right when it said, “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.”
The second lesson from the founders is that all are created equal.
Unfortunately, the political need to make concessions to keep all 13 colonies on board resulted in keeping slavery legal at the time of the Constitution.
It took the civil war, the women’s suffrage movement, and the civil rights movement before we could live up to the intention behind the Declaration.
However, the framework of the Constitution held strong as these errors were corrected in society.
Freedom for a few, while the rest of the people are denied freedoms, isn’t freedom at all. Where political freedom is concerned, inalienable rights and freedoms must be applied to everyone equally. This is the main purpose of government, and when it falls short of this (or tries to do much beyond protecting equal rights), freedom for all is decreased. (p. 82)
All people need to be treated equally under the law; one group having more freedom than another lessens freedom overall.
Auxiliary Precautions
DeMille says the third lesson from the founders is “that it is the nature of power to centralize and then expand.” (p. 83)
This is the reason they created a federal system broken into three branches and further distributed power to the states and local governments.
That is why all the powers not delineated in the Constitution are left to the people. It is up to the people to be the real leaders of the country. The people were the final check on the power of the government.
The people were likely to do this, the framers said, as long as they were moral and virtuous, widely read and well educated in the principles of government and economics and all the arts and sciences, willing to voluntarily sacrifice for the good of the nation, quick to voluntarily help others in need (not primarily through government channels), and actively involved in the daily actions of government. If such citizens led the nation, freedom would not be lost. (p. 84)
I’m feeling worried again!
DeMille likens an auxiliary system to having a backup generator if the power goes out. Your primary system is being connected to the grid, but if it fails, your auxiliary system kicks in as your generator takes over. (p. 84)
In this case, the founders saw six auxiliary precautions. (p. 85)
- A written Constitution that clearly showed what the government could do
- A statement in the Constitution that prevented the government from doing anything not designated therein
- The separation of powers as detailed above
- Checks and balances between and among the levels and branches of government
- Limiting the federal government to the designated 20 powers.
- Periodic elections so politicians could be regularly removed
As DeMille observes, “the people stopped fully leading many decades ago, and today even the auxiliary precautions are beginning to wear thin.” (p. 86)
Conclusion
Thus DeMille is telling us that step one in retrieving the country falls on us, the people of the country, to educate ourselves on the role of government, to take on our responsibilities of being actively involved with governance, and foster a love of freedom in everyone that trumps all.
Most political discussions today instead are about what more the government should do. The idea of how to solve problems ourselves as a community is seldom raised.
As bad as that is, an even worse phrase is popping up more and more in these discussions: a public-private partnership. This is either the government using its power to force private businesses to do certain things, or it is the government using private enterprise to accomplish things the people would not vote for.
Essentially our government that was designed to be checked so freedom could thrive is devolving into the tyrannical fascist state our founders feared.
Reference: DeMille, Oliver, 2012. “The of Freedom in Modern Times” Chapter 6 of 1913, Obstacles Press, Inc., Flint, Michigan.
