The tradition of liberty

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Part of The Cabletow

Title: The tradition of liberty
Language: English
Source: The Cabletow Volume XXXIX (Issue No. 4) October 1963
Year: 1963
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Fulltext: The Tradition of Liberty By ROBERT B. ANDERSON, 33° Assistant Secretary of Defense Washington, D.C., U.S.A. 'pHE written retold of human his tory extends back some six thousand years. Perhaps one of the most damaging things to be record ed in its pages is that, during these centuries, the conditions of life for the majority of people have never teased to be harsh and unsatisfac tory. The human drama is, for the most part, the story of the efforts men have made to change these condi tions to their own advantage. Some have immensely benefited the world through their work; others have brought down catastrophe upon hu manity anti themselves. Fortunate ly lor mankind, the net result has been an increasing measure of pro gress. One vital lesson to be learn ed is that in a world of men, most of whom aspire to something better, there is no permanent status quo, no social structures or relationships which will not some day yield to change. The challenge which has always tonfrontetl men is how to pursue these social values which are time less anti perfect by means of insti tutions which are passing anil faul ty, and to avoid tonfusing the two. Otherwise, the perpetuation of the institutions tends to become the main objective rather than the va lues which those institutions were supposed to maintain. The status quo then becomes not a set of rela tionships, but a moral order, often defended as sacrosanct anti inviola ble, yet in reality empty anti sterile, until it either collapses or is pushed into oblivion by the architects of a new order. These great social values of life, liberty, justice: anil equality which stir the hearts of men tlid not come into being by the simple artifice of a pronouncement or declaration. Words are merely symbols, there is no magic in them, except as people recognize anil are guided by the realities which they symbolize. Our own Declaration of Independence, setting forth for the first time in human history a new philosophy of government of and by the people, obtained its primary significance from the fact that it expresses the accumulated faith and convictions of an impassioned group of men. Indeed there could have been no Declaration if men had not, long before, brought to these shores the living concept that the individual had the inalienable right to live in freedom restricted only by his res ponsibilities to other men; that he 132 The Cabletow might freely choose his own govern ment; that he might stand as the equal of all other men in the eyes of impartial law. How is it that a new concept of human relationship is born? Whence came these basic beliefs which im pelled men to leave the comparative security and comfort of an establish ed community and seek a new life in the wilderness? How was it that some men would willingly give up their lives for the right to speak, think or worship at cording to their conscience and their earnest desires? We have a name for this body of beliefs which reflects man’s deepest and most strongly held convictions. We call ii an ideology. No society is healthy or strong unless it has such a set ol convictions, accepted intellectually and deeply felt with moral certainty, that give meaning and purpose to individual and group life. File beginnings of the convic tion which lorm the bases of out own way of lile go back to the time when men had painstakingly assem bled enough strands of truth and knowldege to come to some funda mental conclusions about themselves. The lirst of these insights was that man was not alone in his uni verse. There was not only man; there was God. The Hebrew reli gion perceived Him to be a personal Deity, one who could be sought out, who would answer players, a Heav enly Father who looked alter his children and kept order in the uni verse. From this great insight there followed a second, that these earth ly children must be individuallv important, since lie watched over them, answered their prayers, was angry or pleased with them accord ing to their behavior. Since He dealt with them as individuals, it meant that the individual, not the group, was the basic social entity. As in dividuals, they were fully credited with the right of free choice, and equally bound to the consequences which flowed from the exercise of that right. And this, if logically pursued, could lead only in one direction: If the individual were really to be a creature of free choice, he had to be given the personal freedom needed to make his choice meaningful and to assume the res ponsibility which all freedom de mands. We should remember that the stu dents of the Prophets had no mono poly upon ihis concept of individual ireedom, rights and responsibilities. File citizens ol the Greek cities and, later, of the Roman Republic had more or less independently arrived at similar conclusions, but from dif ferent sets of premises. To this con cept of the worth and importance ol the individual, the Hebrew philo sophy mad-.- an enormously impor tant contribution, It said that, while the individual was important, he was not supremely so. The very lact that man owed his existence to a Heavenly l ather who created him constituted a denial of his own ulti mate sown ignty. It implied the existence ol a moral order and a sys tem of absolute values entirely be yond the ieach of man, which he might perceive and be guided by, but which he could never change or abrogate. Il meant that man is ac countable lor his actions on the ba sis of certain standards set for him by a power beyond his own author ity and his own will. He does not propound this moral order; lie lives within it. and lie remains forever subject to in dispensation. 133 Tims the Judaic culture, together with that of the Greeks and Ro mans, had developed a substantial body of doctrine by the time the Republic became the Empire. The great difficulty was in determining the limits ol its application. To the ancient Hebrews, it meant the des cendants of Abraham. To the Athenians, it meant the citizens ol Athens; to the Romans, the citizens of Rome. Thus a doctrine of uni versality was sought to be divided, and by this very process it lost the essential precepts it sought to teach, for, if these blessings could be ex tended to some and denied to others, then no one's tight to them was really fixed and secure. Then there moved across this con fused and troubled scene the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. He had noth ing whatever to say in support ol the artificialities of a society which divided its people into pias ter anti slave, ruler and subject, Roman anti Greek. Jew anti Gentile, publican and Pharisee. He . said only that men were brothers, loved alike of God. and equal in His sight. In a single, tremendous sen tence — “I.ove ye one another" — he pronounced the unity of the Broth erhood of Man, and with it the universality of all human rights anil responsibilities. For, if men were equal in the eyes of God and equal lv accountable under His moral order, it meant that they were like wise equally blessed out of His bounty. Brotherhood, justice and liberty, equally available to all individuals under the moral cutler of a single, omnipotent Father — this, nearly two thousand years ago, was the simple thesis which came eventual ly to form the basis of our Ameri can Way of Life. It might have been everywhere acclaimetl and made functional in the ways of man and his society; but, for a thou sand years after its formulation, it lay subjugated anti subordinated to the will of the earthly rulers among the relics of a worltl sunk in ignor ance and superstition. The tallies were acknowledged, but to most peo ple they had a transcendental look about them. They were something to be looked for in the next worltl, not in this one. Gradually, however, the revival of learning began to fill in the vasL empty spaces in men’s understand ing. Ihe maiter-of-lacl study of history and science began to suggest the outlines of a universe which was not nearly so ominous and mys terious as bail once been imagined. Ihe intellectual revolution which took place between the fifteenth anti eighteenth centuries established the promise for the modern doc trine of progress, namely, that it lay within the power of men to im prove infinitely the conditions of their existence on this earth. Rea son would rule, and a physical world which behaved in a manner understandable to human reason might ultimately become subject to man’s control. Moreover, as it swept away the ignorance and superstitions of the ages, reason exposed the shallow foundations on which the eighteenth century kings and nobles had based their authority. What then hap pened is generally known to you. Beginning here in America, and ex tending around the worltl, the ordi nary people asserted their right to govern themselves. Some succeeded: others failed; but the important thing is that this time they acted 134 The Cabletow more out ol hope lor the Inline than of protest over the past. Their ideology had lost some of its trail sccndental quality. It assumed first the posture ol the possible and then the fabric of reality. It was something to be conjured with, here, now, oil this earth. Even with a new faith transform ed to an adopted philosophy of life’s reality and expressed in instru ments of government and existing policies of law and order. This was not enough to open the vistas ol hope that there might actually be a new world order. Il remain ed for the technological revolu tion of the following two centuries to supply the democratic concept with the weapons and physical capa bilities which gave the advocates ol liberty both their greatest op|>ortunity and greatest challenge. The en lightenment had gone far to free men's minds, but until about two hundred years, ago, the world’s work was done principally by the muscle power of men and animals. The margin between what was produced and what was consumed was so des perately thin that the majority ol the population stayed virtually al subsistence level, li look the labor of five men in ihe field to produce ihe lood required by one man work ing in the town. for one man to live well, ten had to live in abject poverty. In these- circumstances the prospects for real freedom for all men seemed el let lively cut off by practical economic necessity lor hu man toil to provide an energy re quirement that could be obtained in no other way. There seemed to be no way to reconcile political freedom, which the ideology stipu lated, with economic serfdom, which the community seemed to require as a basic source of energy. Then, after thousands of years of virtually no progress in energy de velopment, men learned to produce mechanical energy through the burning of wood and coal, and thereafter through the burning of petroleum distillates and gases. We are now on the threshold of an era in which the enormous potential of atomic energy is being made in creasingly available to the peaceful purposes of human endeavor. More over, the sciences established during the previous three centuries opened up the floodgates of man s practical inventiveness, and there pouted out a torrent ol new machines, ail de signed to case in some way the bur dens of man's physical existence. The eflec i has been staggering. The eighteenth century published to a world of suffering, oppressed and povertv-ridden people the thesis of a (.olden Age. not alone in some remote and shadowy other world, but as a possible future stale on earth <>l man’s own devising. The twentieth, in the example of America, sullied to come c lose to vindicating that thesis. Il has raised the incredible proposition that ;t might be possible to abolish poverty and oppression, and — most lantastic innovation of all — that ordinary men might actually come to enjov their cxisiciui. and, through this enjoyment, to learn the rewarding experience that comes from lhe pri vileges of work that contributes to man’s total store of understanding and development. Such, briclly, has been the story of the human hopes and aspirations which have reached their epitome for us in the American Way of Life. It is the stoiy of what can lead to emancipation of human beings - October 1963 135 the gradual uplifting of men’s minds out of the mire of ignorance and superstition, the partial rescue of their spirits from fear and avarice and distrust, the release of their bodies from drudgery and toil. The great tragedy of our time is that, after all these thousands of years of suffering and sacrifice to gain a measure ol freedom from the human spirit, there are now those who would reverse this great move ment and direct its impetus in the direction of the autocracy of an allpowerful state. Ironically, this is being done in the very name of a people's government and what is brazenly described as the popular will. Yet there can be nothing more autocratic than a collectivism in which all slaves of the state, nothing more degrading to the individual, nothing more destructive of his rights and opportunities. Oddly enough, these specious offci ings-havc the ring of plausibility because Communism offers itself as an ex tension of the forms of democracy. Under it people can step forward and cast some meaningless ballot; they can console themselves with the equality that results when all are equally enslaved and equally miserable; they can even find some measure of economic security, though it be the security of regi mentation or a prison house. What they cannot find within the Communist concept, because it can not be corrupted, is liberty. Liber ty is the property of the individual, tile only thing that can give his in dividuality any meaning. He either has it or lie does not. ft is the one really strategic value of the liberal ideology, because, unless and until liberty is secured, none of the others arc possible of achievement. In this period the most dangerous policy our society can follow is to try to ignore what is going on around it, outside it and within it. We are most vulnerable when we stand still. Some of our greatest troubles have come upon us because our enemies seizing upon the knowl edge things must move, seek to ex ploit what they regard as a free so ciety seeking to maintain only a stagnant stability and not a forward march. They then use their full oflorts to try to make a case against us in the court of world opinion. We arc accused of imperialism and the exploitation of colonial peoples, ironically enough by the most ruth less colonial power since that oT Genghis Khan. They never fail to remind us of what they would de scribe as the inadequacies and im perfections of our own system. Only ■when we are not militant arc they vocal. Their very conduct gives eloquent voice to the principle that liberty never stands still. Not only its progress but its very existence de mands - unceasing expansion — the continuing necessity for it to be ex tended toward the grasp of those whose hands stretch pleadingly for the opportunities of freedom’s world. When we move forward in the right direction, our enemies are strangely silent. The reaction of Moscow to the Iran Oil settlement, the Suez agreement, the Trieste ac cord, and the recent London and Paris Conferences has amounted to scarcely a ripple. It is almost as if they Tecognized that Communism’s only opportunity comes into being when we fail to move forward with the current of humanity’s rising ex pectations. 136 The Cabletow 'I'lic real revolution ol our time is the emancipation ol man. Com munism is not the wave of the fu ture. It is the wave of the dead past — a throwback to all that is cruel anti ignoble in the character of man. Tyranny and dictators are as old as the pyramids. The world knew Caligula and Nero long be fore it knew Stalin and Malenkov. What is basically new in the world is the substantial possibility and the ordinary man might some day have enough to cat, enough of the world's goods to keep him in reasonable comfort; that he might order his own allairs under a government ol his own choosing; that he might lilt up his head and proudly give thanks t<> ihe Cod who created hint a man. America grew up in a tradition ol liberty, and it has never been backward about acknowledging 'its icsponsibility to extend that concept of liberty to other peoples. This we must continue to do. We have the icsponsibility through our own example, and through what help we can give to other people, to loster and introduce the liberal tradi tion wherever in the world it can flourish. Because we are its greatest beneficiaries. it is out duty, more than that of any other people, to see that the revolution is not be trayed, that the wave of lhe past does not overtake the wave of the future. This means, importantly, military strength and solidarity for ourselves and our allies. But it means, just as importantly, an in tense, continuing preoccupation with the ways to make life mote decent and I tee and rewarding lor the world’s people. This can only be done in concert with other peoples, and more than that, it is in a larger sense a con ceit between us and all those who had and all those who will have a part in bringing that goal closer to realization, lot, wrote Edmund Burke: ■Society is a contract... It is a partnership in all science; a partnet ship in all art; a partnership in everv virtue, and in all perfection. And. as the e nds of such a partner ship cannot lie obtained in many generation, ii becomes a partnership not only between those who ate liv ing; but between those who ate liv ing. those who are dead, and those who are vet to be born.” - The \e ;<- . Mai'h ] <)55 NOTICE The new edition of the Constitution (Masonic Law Book) is now available at the Grand Lodge. Please order your copies from the Of fice of the Grand Secretary. Prices 1 copy, paper bound ................................................... P 3.50 each 20 copies or more ..................................................... P 3.25 each 1 copy, de-luxe issue................................................... Pl 1.00 each Gold lettering for de-luxe issue........................... P 1-00 per line October 1963 137