The freedom of conscience and thought...
David McCullough, one of the nation's most respected historians, is interviewed in this week's USA Weekend by descendants of Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, and Patrick Henry...
http://www.usaweekend.com/06_issues/060702/060702founding_fathers.html
It's fascinating the perspective that McCullough has to offer about how human and yet how idealistic the founding fathers were...and his analysis of John Adams' last words to some of his supporters when asked what they should say on his behalf at a ceremony commemorating the 50th Anniversary celebration of the Declaration of Independence, the July 4th that both he and Thomas Jefferson died...
He replied...
"'Independence forever.' They asked him if he'd like to add a little bit more to that. He told them, 'Not a word!' He was thinking about independence of the mind -- the freedom to think for yourself -- not just freedom of religion or speech. To many, this is one of the greatest of freedoms."
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, ideological and political rivals during much of their political careers, reconciled their personal relationship later in life and wrote letters that are some of the more thoughtful reflections on American democracy of that time and, McCullough argues, of all time...
They both died the same day...July 4, 1826...the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of the Independence...
And it's interesting to me that McCullough would affirm what I agree was probably the most fundamental of freedoms that the founding fathers offered us...
The freedom of conscience and thought...
It's a freedom so often taken for granted...and yet so fundamental to who we are, today...one that we have much work and thought to reconcile with our policies and ideas about how to improve humanity and our country...but one that is our most fundamental guide to resolving the questions and issues we face...
Gordon Woods, another most respected historian of the American Revolution, argues in The Radicalism of the American Revolution, one of his finer histories of the Revolutionary War period, that the history of America is not only progressive, in the sense that it improves over time and that it follows ideals that are both held and discovered over time by each generation...but that it is also guided, ultimately, by the only most important power, alone...
The power of ideas...
His Radicalism of the American Revolution both details the radical elements -- both in the contemporary sense of radicalism, meaning extremes on all sides of political questions of the day, but also in the classical sense of radicalism, as in the affirmation of democratic principles and reform, such as universal suffrage -- but how the great shaping force of American history during this period was the slow evolution of thought...
From monarchy to republicanism to democracy...
It's a brilliant book, if you ever get the chance...and one of the most deeply insightful histories of the American Revolutionary period that I have ever read...
The book is divided into the progression of that history along those three ideas...how monarchy, republicanism, and democracy each hold, lose, and then gain sway over the American imagination...and often in ways that framers never imagined and, at times, never intended...
It's brilliant...and a brilliant illustration of how ideas and ideals are the great animating forces of the progression of history...and a powerful and difficult to rebut illustration of both the idea that history is progressive and that people improve, over time, and that it is the highest ideals and the strongest ideas that lead us in more progressive directions...
The American Revolution, Woods argues, was not the kind of social revolution embodied in the French Revolution...it was a much more orderly transition from more hierarchical relationships between governors and the governed, patriarchs and plebians, fathers and sons to a more democratic and egalitarian society invested with faith in middle class virtue...and a progression of ideas, from more monarchical to more democratic thought and relationships...
And it is likely, I think, that the animating nature of thought was the reason why founding fathers like Adams and Jefferson believed that independence of thought, freedom of conscience was one of if not the most important freedom that the American Revolution and the American democratic experiment offered Americans and the world...
We so take it for granted...our freedom to think for ourselves and to exercise independence of thought...the Founding Fathers did as well...Adams is famous for passing the Alien and Sedition Acts, some of the most restrictive legislation on freedom of speech and conscience in American history, repressing criticism of the new American government, especially in war time...
But he and Jefferson, both, had lived through a period of world history where that freedom was not so easy to come by...and they finally decided that they would be willing to risk life and limb to secure that freedom, so that their progeny would be able to take that freedom for granted and work to affirm it at every point at which it was challenged...
This Independence Day offers us the opportunity to reflect on that freedom and the way that it animates our lives and how, like the Founding Fathers, we are human even a we strive for ideals, and how we often take that freedom -- the freedom of conscience and thought -- for granted...and how opportunities for reflection can give us a better appreciation for how important that freedom is...
I hope everyone has a great 4th of July...a time to reflect humbly on the powerful ideals that shape our lives...
Love,
Ben
