Original Promise of America: Liberty - Noah Webster Library - September 19, 2024

Early Americans universally celebrated liberty. The white men among them probably enjoyed more of it than any other people of their time. Yet even they distrusted liberty so much that they seldom allowed the word to go around unchaperoned. Orators, writers, politicians, and clergymen typically assigned “liberty” an adjectival minder: “ordered liberty,” “rational liberty,” “Christian liberty,” “temperate liberty.” The liberty Americans lauded had no resemblance to individualism, and it had absolutely nothing to do with license. The right kind of liberty was really self-government, “a freedom within bounds” set by laws, founded on property ownership, and ideally guided by virtue. Washington and Franklin, towering model citizens, personified American liberty as it should be.
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