Liberty vs. License

It's Every Generation's Struggle

All the issues of 2024 come down to a choice between liberty and license.

Everyone loves the Declaration of Independence.

“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.”

Too few accept what comes next. “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men.” 

Without a government charged with enforcing order, there can be no liberty.

There can only be license.

License is what I want. Trouble is, we all want different things. License closes all avenues to change save mass murder.

Today license unites the extremes of our politics. It’s most prevalent on the right.

Trump unleashed the demand for license. It’s his personality. He demands license to do what he wants, to say what he wants, to lie and to steal and to cheat all he wants, without boundaries. It’s what his fans love about him.

The idea of license is what unites the groups behind Trump. They reject the messy compromises liberty makes necessary.

The Global Struggle

Oligarchs want an end to the “administrative state,” the whole panoply of federal, state, and local laws and rules built over a century that keep them from doing whatever they want. Christianists want only their specific religious dogma accepted, in schools and the councils of power. They see their reading of the Bible as the only proper one, and all other faiths illegitimate. Libertarians think you can have liberty without laws.

What unites all Authoritarian governments is this idea of license. Russians can’t speak against Putin. Chinese can’t speak against Xi. Arabs can’t speak against MBS and Iranians can’t speak against Shia. Liberty in all these countries exists only for the rulers. Everyone else must shut up and do what they’re told.

This is what 2024 comes down to. The question is whether America will be governed by the messy, complex process of ordered liberty, or by the fiat of license?

The story is as old as the Republicl and the progress hasn’t always been forward. Vietnam evolved ideas Christianists now want to stamp out by force. The Republican “America First” movement made common cause with Hitler. Now many ally with Hitler’s heir, Vladimir Putin. Labor and capital fought pitched battles in the 1890s. Confederates lost their war for slavery in the 1860s, but evolved to create called Jim Crow.

All the losers’ ideas remain dormant, like cicadas. They’re ready to come out and kill their enemies with any provocation. Trump gave them that provocation.

If you confuse liberty and license, you’re my enemy. This has been an eternal struggle, and ours just the latest chapter.

Demand Ordered Liberty

America’s ideals are all about ordered liberty, embodied in the Constitution. Amendments after 1865 are as much a part of the document as the original text. The ideals represented by it spread around the world in the fight against Hitler.

Our children and grandchildren will have to struggle for liberty just as we have had to. Will they fight it with guns, as Ukrainians are doing today, or can they struggle peacefully, today’s ordered liberty intact.