Since I have been invoked at the beginning of this blog experience, I thought I would contribute a couple of excerpts from a piece I have been working on for quite some time. It addresses the ideas of Freedom and Liberty and the difference between the two. I begin with a hypercritical commentary which I defend because it has always frustrated and saddened me that we take our inheritance so much for granted and fail to live up to the expectations of our forefathers. I have ended this contribution with an outline of my vision of America which I call on all my fellow citizens to consider with due reverence.
R.A. Kunz
On a most momentous day in history -- September 17, 1787, last of the constitutional convention -- Benjamin Franklin rose to speak, urging unity, entreating his fellow delegates to unanimously endorse the document over which they had labored for months. He offered this insight, “…there is no form of Government but what may be a blessing to the people if well administered, and believe farther that this is likely to be well administered for a course of years, and can only end in Despotism, as other forms have done before it, when the people shall become so corrupted as to need despotic Government, being incapable of any other.”
That Franklin’s prophetic words would come to pass has been a long time coming. The truth is Americans no longer believe in self-government; there is no one left with the fortitude to assume the responsibilities it demands. Through neglect, the vision of our forefathers is vanishing. Therein lies the corruption -- far more insidious than Franklin could ever imagine – an incontinent virus flaring across our culture affixing itself to our sense of reality, attacking antibodies of common sense and rationality. Such a learned intellectual as Franklin could never conceive of a people so incapable of processing abstract thought into their construct of reality. Liberty and Freedom -- mere words now -- words which won’t pay the bills, put food on the table or add to a 401(k); words which no longer guide our choices, substantiate our values, or conform to the meaning we attach to our lives.
On that final morning it had come time to sign. Franklin attempts to drag his fellow framers over the last hurdle. For months they had debated, disagreed. The venerable document was a product of the difficult task of compromise which can be defined as working together while disagreeing. In his speech Franklin laid out the conditions of liberty. “I can not help expressing a wish that every member of the convention who may still have objections to it, would with me, on this occasion doubt a little of his own infallibility, and make manifest our unanimity.” This was in part the truly revolutionary concept fashioned in Philadelphia. Their differences could have been settled using the age-old solution: Method 1. Either by force of will or force of arms a government could have been fashioned. But would it have lasted? The colonies were fearful of their vulnerability; surrounded by rapacious world powers on all sides who, as Franklin reminded them were, “waiting with confidence to hear that our councils are confounded…and that our states are on the point of separation only to meet hereafter for the purpose of cutting one another’s throats.” --
-- Nothing unites like fear.
No. This group, having studied, not only history but human nature, rejecting all previous forms, drew up a blueprint for a new form of government based on the principles of Method 2, a self-governing citizenry, their consensus the source of its power, its future entrusted to the care of each succeeding generation. Many rich and powerful nations have come and they have gone. These could not last, founded as they were on temporal matters which, by decree of nature, must return from whence they came. Only one nation has been built around an idea centered on the human spirit: a power transcendent of time and space – a power flowing eternal. Despite their disagreements, together these men wrote a score of ethereal genius, intended to unite, imperfect, unfinished, leaving it to others to execute, to improve, bring it closer to the fuller truth.
We did not win our independence by calling people names or form our government with catchy phrases and colorful hats. What made America great was the courage to fight for our ideals and the wisdom to put into words a vision slowly growing in the hearts of humans from the beginning of time; to set their own destiny and grant to each other the rights which had been only a dream for millennia; a dream enshrined in our constitution – a living document entrusted to our care, dependent on our defense. America is not defined by geographic boundaries. America is a set of ideals – a vision of what is possible when humans live together united in their dedication to equality for all. The majesty and breathtaking scope of the American Experience lies not in the vacillations of a superficial stock market or the gluttonous growth of Gross Domestic Product. It is not measured by a count of tanks and bombs. It is not calibrated by physical attributes or social distinctions. It is neither glamor nor glitz, celebrity, or the trappings of conspicuous consumption. These are false obsessions captured in the black hole of comparative values. No, for those with wisdom to envision, it is held in the spirit of a people strong and wise enough to govern themselves.
Property of Richard A. Kunz
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