Jefferson on Freedom and Independence
I have not been pleased with the efforts of the New York Times latest conservative Op-Ed writer, Bill Kristol. He has seemed to be much too predictably right. However, on June 30, he weighted in with a column on the Declaration of Independence and Jefferson that would make any liberal proud. It seems that his family does a yearly reading of the Declaration of Independence on July 4th. And this year he intends to add Jefferson’s letter to Weightman declining an invitation to take part in the July fourth celebration written just a few days before his death.
Writing of the Declaration, Jefferson says: “May it be to the world what I believe it will be, to some parts sooner, to others later, but finally to all) the signal of arousing men to burst the chains under which monkish ignorance and superstition has persuaded them to bind themselves, and to assume the blessings and security of self-government.” Jefferson goes on to see this as the result of the Enlightenment of the Eighteenth Century, and thus as part of the general progress of science. It reminds me of Fukuyama’s “End of History” thesis. Jefferson’s optimism was a little premature. Yet, I would argue, not wrong.
But as we read Jefferson’s comments, we are reminded that he was not thinking so much of forms of government as the human rights of freedom and self-determination. All people would eventuyqally realiza that people were equal and needed to be treated as such. One people or class should not have another telling them what to do. This brings us back to the more general question of what we mean, and what most people in the world mean by “freedom”. Thus it appears that the Afghans and Iraqis and many others would rather have independence than democracy. Democracy is a method of governing and not in itself a value for most people, perhaps not even for Americans who are well known to be reluctant participants in democratic processes.
