The great American virtue of liberty is dying and the healers are drunk with apathy. In 1776, our founders proclaimed liberty the primary American virtue. This declaration brought with it unlimited potential and unlimited responsibility for every American. All the achievements of mankind have depended upon one essential condition: liberty, a condition in which one has the power to act without confinement, servitude, or control. It has been, and will continue to be, through liberty that the creative power of the human mind is unleashed by experimentation and entrepreneurship. Today liberty is dying. New laws, ordinances, and regulations conjured up by politicians are eroding our foundation of liberty under the illusion of good intentions. Encroachment or degradation of liberty leads to the stagnation of the people because it robs them of their ability to learn through agency and experience. If unchecked, this stagnation grows into, at minimum, dependence upon the state and at worst, slavery. Few scenarios justify this forfeiture of liberty. Scenarios requiring the encroachment of the liberty of the people demand serious thought and vigorous debate before liberty is sacrificed. There are two justifications for this sacrifice: the protection of the liberty of the people as a whole, and the protection of an individual’s liberty. In America today, our lawmakers disregard these limits; they find innumerable ways to reach into our lives and rob us of the inalienable right of liberty.

First, let’s clarify the two cases in which liberty may be appropriately infringed. Liberty of the individual may be temporarily restricted when the liberty of the people as a whole is at risk and protection from imminent threat is required. When threatened in this way, mechanisms for the rescinding of these encroachments must be put into place to ensure the liberty of the people, as the proper state, is respected and restored. A clear example of this occurred during WWII for our national defense. President Roosevelt signed the Selective Training and Services Act of 1940 which drafted citizens into our military forces, an encroachment of individual liberty. This action was justifiable because of the clear and present danger of Germany and Japan to the survival of our nation and its people. The act had important restraining provisions including the limiting of service to 12 months and the conscientious objection clause. While some may debate whether these provisions went far enough, they are an acknowledgement that even in times of national emergency all aspects of liberty may not be wholly discarded and that time limits on encroachments of liberty are proper.

The second way in which liberty may be appropriately infringed is for the protection of another individual’s liberty; societies cannot allow one individual to overpower and force another into submission on the grounds of liberty. In this type of society anyone could be found in the position of the slave and therefore liberty is secured for none. Therefore, liberty’s power ends where the liberty of another begins. In practice, great care must be taken in the evaluation of this limit. There is a significant difference between what does affect another’s liberty and what may affect another liberty. Laws are appropriate in the former and rarely in the later. Increasingly, legislators have allowed lesser virtues such as compassion and equality to rob the greater virtue of liberty of its power. Allow me to provide an illustration: an employer may grant to an employee extra vacation days because his child has a severe illness. This is an act of compassion that came as the exercise of liberty on the part of the employer. Both parties have been edified because liberty was employed rather than overruled. However, if the government, knowing that many people have children and many of those children may have illnesses, mandates extra vacation days then what has occurred is that compassion, in the name of what might be, has robbed liberty. One party has been robbed of liberty and the other has provided that which was not required. Providing for those who are not in need or who have not endeavored to provide for themselves feeds dependence and the mentality of entitlement; both debilitating vices. Entitlement is the claim to an item of value without regard to how that item should be earned. Entitlement rewards men for reasons other than industry. Independence and liberty are virtuous because they enable and require men to be industrious. Entitlement is the enemy of independence and liberty.

Liberty is the primary American virtue. We declare it on every coin and monetary bill. It is upon liberty that all other virtues depend. Without liberty the myriad of other virtues that we hold dear: tolerance, compassion, honesty, justice, and the conditions which are derived from them: diversity, friendship, education, religion, entertainment, competition, speech, etc. lose much or potentially all of their value for the simple reason that we may not be able to realize these conditions, and many cannot exist without liberty. Speech may be outlawed, friendships may be predetermined or restricted, education may be indoctrination or propaganda, diversity may be prevented, and so forth. All of these things can only be experienced to the fullest with the catalyst of liberty. The more liberty is restricted, the more one prevents growth of both the individual and of society, because all other virtues are restricted as a result. Liberty and equality are not harmonious; when free men exercise their agency in pursuit of their dreams in accordance to their individual appetites the destinies they realize will be as varied as the men who pursue them and thereby vastly unequal. This is good and right.

The people of this great Republic must awake and remember the primary virtue of liberty upon which we were founded. We must protect her and seek out her enemies, chief among them being dependency, entitlement, ignorance, and indifference. When found, we must be bold and aggressive in destroying these vices. We must find leaders that will ride at the head of the charge and keep our eyes fixed on the goal. We must remove those who would protect the flaws in the system that allow them comfortable dependence. We have been a free people, and can ensure that it will ever be so if we will take on the mantel of sovereignty and sail America away from the shallow waters of lesser virtues and into the deep waters of the future, being pulled first and foremost by the sails of liberty.