A Book for Global Peacemakers

Richard Brookhiser looked at competing factions and went back to the development and struggles associated with writing 13 key documents to find a structure for satisfying the human desire for liberty. Rather that produce a ponderous tome for scholars, in 262 readable pages, his Give Me Liberty identifies a peaceful foundation for countries.

     Liberty is closely related to other ideas: consent of the governed, freedom, democracy, and the God-given human rights of equal individuals.

     Beginning with the first English settlement in 17th century Jamestown, Virginia, on the North American continent, colonists objected to sole rule by the London-based Virginia Company's royal governor. They elected members to a general assembly empowered to decide local matters by a majority vote. Although the governor could veto these decisions, it took four months of ocean voyages before the assembly learned his wishes. By 1699, the assembly decided to move to Williamsburg, Virginia, and its elected members became an independent body. The governor retained a veto, but a principle, consent of the governed rather than fiat, was established. There would be "no taxation without representation."

     Back in Jamestown, the first general assembly acknowledged "men's affaires doe little prosper where God's service is neglected." In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson would write: "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 them are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness." In short, human rights are Creator-given to all mankind as part of their human nature. When human rights, which are derived from God, are trampled, as the colonists claimed they were by George III, the Declaration of Independence noted rebellion is justified.

     Around the world, liberty continues to roll out much too slowly for slaves, women, and immigrants. James Madison justified excluding the word, slave, from the U.S. Constitution, because it would be wrong to admit men could be property.  In his 1863 Gettysburg Address, President Lincoln finally affirmed the United States." was conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal." Two years later the Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, but 100 years after the Gettysburg Address, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. told a March on Washington the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were promissory notes still unpaid.

     At the first women's convention in 1848 at Seneca Falls, New York, the former slave, Frederick Douglass, and the only black person who attended, concluded, "(I)f that government is only just which governs by the free consent of the governed, there can be no reason in the world for denying to women the exercise of the elective franchise." Not until 1920 did the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution eventually grant suffragists the right to vote. Unlike other countries in the world, as yet no woman has headed the U.S. government.

     In opposition to Jewish, Irish, German, Italian, and Scandinavian immigrants, a U.S. voting bloc formed the Know-Nothing Party. In contrast, Emma Lazarus, who was proud of a country willing to take in the poor and oppressed, wrote a poem honoring the waves of immigrants "yearning to be free." With the help of the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, and funding from Joseph Pulitzer, a Statue of Liberty rose in New York harbor in 1886. Ms. Lazarus preferred calling the statue, "Liberty Enlightening the World." and her poem became the message on the statue's base.

     The Monroe Doctrine began an effort to guarantee liberty throughout the world. On December 2, 1823, U.S. President Monroe sent an open letter to Congress announcing the Americas were closed to conquest. Outside interference, he claimed, would be viewed as "an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." Some 107 years later, in a "Fireside Chat," President Franklin D. Roosevelt prepared the United States to enter World War II by noting the Western Hemisphere was no longer protected by the Atlantic Ocean. A year later Japanese airplanes bombed Pearl Harbor in Hawaii and proved the Pacific Ocean no longer shielded the country either. Liberty needed a defense everywhere in the world.

     By 1980, when Ronald Reagan became President of the United States, the Berlin Wall symbolized 40 years of unchecked Communist expansion. At the Brandenburg Gate in the wall separating West and East Berlin, President Reagan, in 1987, chastised the godless, totalitarian Soviet regime for restricting "freedom for all mankind." He told General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, "(T)ear down this wall," and on November 9, 1989, free men tore down the Berlin Wall.

     It seems, as long as people lack liberty, peace is not possible.
     

   
   


       

A New Start

As 2019 approaches, it's time for a new start. An African-American panelist discussing race relations in America observed the Civil Rights Movement offered a more promising starting point from which to consider future race relations than the era of slavery. Nelson Mandela emerged from apartheid and 28 years in prison in South Africa with the same idea. Basically, he asked, what is gained by doing the same thing to whites as they did to blacks, when blacks are in power?

     When blacks gained power in neighboring Zimbabwe, the government ignored Mandela's advice, seized white farms, plunged the country's economy into a rapid decline, and left the population dependent on food aid to avoid starvation.

     The point is, at the beginning of 2019, we are free to choose where we want to begin. There are some great starting points: the 10 Commandments, the U.S. Declaration of Independence's declaration that all men are created equal, and the UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Beginning 2019 with this 70-year-old declaration in mind, countries could avoid pre-World War II conditions: genocide, refugee migrations, Middle East conflict, abortion, proliferation of weapons, human trafficking, squandering natural resources, and polluting the environment.

     Happy New Year!
   

Self Help for Human Rights

On the "Jeopardy" TV quiz show June 25, 2018, three bright contestants did not recognize the last line of the US. Declaration of Independence. Today's emphasis on science, technology, engineering, and math does nothing to foster the value and rights of a human being.

     The philosophers and religious thinkers of the United States who justified independence from England and forged a Constitution were schooled in the liberal arts, Greek and Roman statesmanship, and the rights confirmed on humans by natural law. What percentage of the world's seven billion plus population now considers self evident the truths that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights?

     Williamsburg, a restored early American historic village in Virginia, published the following quiz that invites us to match U.S. revolutionaries with quotations they used to inspire followers. Their words provide an ongoing self help reminder for humans.

1._____I write so that King George III may read without his spectacles.

2._____If this be treason, make the most of it.

3._____I desire you would remember the ladies and be more generous and favorable to them than   
             your ancestors.

4._____The British are coming.

5._____ I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.

6._____Don't fire till you see the whites of their eyes.

7._____I have not yet begun to fight.

8._____In every human breast, God has implanted a principle, which we call love of freedom.

A. Nathan Hale, a spy for the colonists
B. Abigail Adams
C. John Hancock
D. Patrick Henry
E. William Prescott
F. Phillis Wheatley, a slave
G.John Paul Jones
H. Paul Revere

(You'll find answers in the earlier post, "The Perfect Test.")