Published: July 03, 2008 11:10 pm         

ARTHUR FOULKES: Taking a look at American Revolution more than two centuries later

TERRE HAUTE — Happy birthday, America.

The American colonies, through the Declaration of Independence, broke from Great Britain 232 years ago. As we celebrate that event with fireworks, picnics and parades, it might be worth asking how the American Revolution is doing more than two centuries later.

As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights” including the rights to life, liberty and to pursue happiness. Governments, according to the Declaration, are formed to secure those rights. Indeed, as Jefferson wrote at another time, “It is to secure [natural] rights that we resort to government at all.”

For most of human history, individuals were seen as subordinate to a larger political entity. The significance of the American Revolution was its assertion that man enjoys freedoms that are his from birth. As Jefferson put it, “A free people [claim] their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their chief magistrate.”

A strong influence on Jefferson’s thinking was 17th Century English philosopher John Locke, who also wrote of natural rights and government. As Locke wrote, “The reason why men enter into society is the preservation of their property … [and] whenever the legislators endeavor to take away and destroy the property of the people, or to reduce them to slavery under arbitrary power, they put themselves into a state of war with the people.”

So closely aligned were Jefferson’s writings to Locke’s, some accused Jefferson of plagiarizing Locke’s work.

In one sense, the American Revolution has improved greatly since 1776. Slavery, which was essentially legalized kidnapping, survived for decades as a legal institution before being abolished. Sadly, it took Americans a long time to realize that natural rights were not reserved only for white Europeans.

In another sense, the American Revolution is failing. While the original revolution was a revolt against arbitrary authority over free men, we are coming more and more to accept such authority. We hear that free men “cannot be trusted” to raise and educate their children correctly, spend their money wisely, work for appropriate wages, take the proper drugs, eat the proper foods or save for their retirements. With each new sphere of life in which men “cannot be trusted,” more individual freedom and responsibility is necessarily lost.

For Jefferson, on the other hand, it was government that could “not be trusted.” As he wrote, “Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?”

Today, we are often told that nearly everything, from the money supply to the gas mileage of our cars, is the proper realm of government management. Individuals, we are told, acting in their own interest, cannot be trusted to act in the interests of “society.” So common is this way of thinking that a poster on the wall of a American presidential candidate’s Terre Haute campaign office recently included the slogan: “We must stop thinking of the individual and start thinking about society.”

Unfortunately true society, which is based on peaceful, voluntary exchanges, is very often confused with government. Where society is peaceful and based on mutually beneficial exchange, government is coercive and based on the use of force or the threat of force.

As the hands of government, which are generally all thumbs, move into more and more areas of American life, freedom and individual responsibility necessarily retreat. So significant has this retreat become that we may need to ask ourselves whether today we are celebrating the independence of the American people or the American government.

Economist David Boaz put it this way: “Is America great because we put a man on the moon or defeated Saddam Hussein? Or is America great because it’s the country that has offered more freedom to more people to pursue their own happiness than any other nation on earth?” How we answer that question will determine much about our next two centuries as a nation.

So as we watch fireworks, eat fried chicken and visit with friends this Fourth of July, we might do well to think about the ideals that motivated the American Revolution and the birth of our country. We may also want to ask ourselves whether we believe those ideals are still worth fighting for.

Arthur Foulkes is a Terre Haute native and longtime resident. The Tribune-Star reporter writes a column on business and economics. He can be reached at (812) 231-4232 or arthur.foulkes@tribstar.com.