The Discussion Continues

Ed Brayton was kind enough to reply to my “quick rejoinder” at Postiive Liberty. I have a little more fuel to add to the fire, I think and will try to examine his reply in more detail … below the fold.

As I had enjoyed, and I think learned much, from Mr Fischer’s book Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America … I bought a few more of Mr Fischer’s extant works. Specifically on this question, the book Liberty and Freedom which I have only read a few dozen or more pages. This book is an exploration of the diverse meanings and symbols which American’s have attached to the two words Liberty and Freedom during our Nation’s brief history. He starts out with an interesting exchange, in 1843 it seems a scholar named Mullen Chamberlain was looking into origins of the American Revolution. This scholar found a survivor, one Levi Preston, who fought at the battle(s) of Lexington and Concord. He asked Mr Preston why he fought. Did he oppose the Stamp act? Answer, “No.” He never saw any stamps and he understood that none were ever sold. The tea tax perhaps? Nope. He never drank tea. Did he read, Harrington, Sidney, and Locke and know about the “eternal principles of Liberty”? No again. The only books he read, was the Bible, The Catechism,Watts’ Psalms, hymns, and the almanacs. So why did he fight? Because, “we always had been free, and we meant to be free always. They didn’t mean we should”. The 68 cent question is, what did Mr Preston mean by “free”?

This book of Mr Fischers is not the first text or methodology to approach the history of the meaning of Liberty and Freedom in our Nation. These methods include:

• Text and context methods, examining the different text on Freedom and Liberty through American history. This ends up concentrating on the controversies.
• Another method (we are told), by Michael Kammen in a book called Spheres of Liberty he examines the meaning of Liberty by how it has been coupled thoughout our history, e.g., Liberty and Prosperity, Liberty and Freedom, Liberty and Democracy, and so on.
• Another method, Mr Fischer terms, the Philosopher’s stone, which is by reflection rather than research. An example (again we are told, I am unfamiliar with all of this material) is Isaiah Berlin’s essay, “Two Concepts of Liberty” which reflects on positive and negative ideas of liberty.
• The approach used in the above mentioned book, Liberty and Freedom, is to look as these two words, for American’s as “habits of the heart”. Mr Preston mentioned above, did not think of liberty and freedom as an abstraction, a set of texts, or a sequence of controversies, but instead as inherited values they learned deeply in life and deeply believed. So in his book, Mr Fischer sets out to examine the visions and images that Mr Preston and the rest of us have used to talk about Liberty and Freedom throughout our 200+ years as a Nation.

This has something to say about our discussion of Liberty, the folkways, and our founding document. Did Mr Jefferson and his committee, draw only from their philosophy when they discussed and in the document in question wrote the term, “Liberty” or did they also draw upon the “values of the heart” that were in place in the folkways from which they belonged? I want to make it clear, I am not in this matter a “textualist”, in the sense that I don’t think that I, or anyone for that matter, should “change their view of Liberty” just because … perhaps … Mr Jefferson might have been influenced by ideas in his daily life and practice, if not in the penning of the Declaration, by ideas of Viriginian hegemonic liberty. (As an aside this is also why I’m perpetually confused by Jonathan Rowe (and those he writes again) in declaiming about the theology of our founders. I find it odd that anyone might be swayed in any way in their beliefs of any sort by knowing how (or what) Mr Washington worshipped would change life today).

• On the hypocrisy “gambit” for explaining Mr Jefferson’s slavery (and possibly) other habits as why he might have written (later I think) against slavery but own slaves … I think I explained another alternative view on that in the comment to that post. Mr Kuznicki had pointed out in an earlier post that when we see inconsistencies or oddities in their remarks, it is the job of the historian to find out how the meaning (and context) of those words might have differed then and why what was said was not hypocrisy or “odd” but explainable in the context in which that individual lived. It seems to me that the surrounding hegemonic/heirarchical ideas of Liberty might have influenced Mr Jefferson just as the writings of Mr Locke did.
• He claims that our modern ideas of Liberty are in line with Jeffersons (from his writings) and not the Quaker then either New England or Virginia. Well, what he doesn’t do then, and neither have I, is to undergo a study of the concept of Liberty … by region … and how our modern concept came to be what it is. Do we owe our ideas of Liberty from Jefferson or a merging of folkways and “habits of heart”? Was the Civil War, which certainly did violence to the Virginian folkway, a necessity from a philosophical standpoint or a clash of folkways? I dunno, and I suspect neither does Mr Brayton.
• On pp 841-844, Mr Fischer discusses some of the Adams/Federalist ideas which sprung from New England ideas of collective liberty and trying to enact these on a national scale. These included: an active role for government, increased taxation, a strong navy, an expanded judiciary with broad common law jurisdiction, narrow restriction of immigration, a more active regulation of commerce, an active attempt to suppress dissent, and a moralistic tone to government which was deeply resented by others of different persuasions. The acts are the Alien and Sedition act (which Mr Brayton mentions), the Naturalization act, the Navy and Army acts, the Bankruptcy Act, the Judiciary Act and many new taxes, included a direct tax, one on salt (and a stamp tax). The rejecting of this idea or ordered liberty is consistent with community liberty ideas of New England and therefore not necessarily hypocrisy on Mr Adams part, just a different idea that he and his New England Federalists had “in their hearts”.
• Finally, I think the most useful thing I can do for this discussion is try to dig out and explain better what is meant by the New England concept of community Liberty. From pp 200-201 of Albion’s Seed
  

  This idea of collective liberty, or “publick liberty” as it was sometimes called, was thought to be consistent with close restraints on individuals. In Massachusetts these individual restrictions were numerous, and often very confining. During the first generation, nobody could live in the colony without the approval of the General Court. Settlers even of the highest rank were sent prisoners to England for expressing “divers dangerous opinions,” or merely because the Court judged them to be “persons unmeet to inhabit here.” [ ... ]
  This idea of collective liberty was also expressed in many bizarre obligations which New England towns collectively imposed on their members. Eastham’s town meeting, for example, ordered that no single man could marry until he had killed six blackbirds or three crows. Every town book carried many such rules. [ ... ]
  New Englaners willingly accpeted individual restraints, but insisted that they should be consistent with written laws which they called the “fundamentals of the commonwealth.” Further they demanded the liberty to impose these restraints upon themselves in their own way. This was what they meant by the “publick liberty” of New England. “Publick Liberty” was not merely a “theoretick idea”, as many a brave British soldier learned. New Englanders were not a warrior people, but many times from 1635 to 1775, they showed themselves willing to defend their “publick liberty”, even to the death. [ed: emphasis mine and the [...] indicated elided text]

Oh, a final note for Mr Brayton, just wait, next week I’m going to write an essay about the backcountry folkway in the light of it as a real-life (not “theoretik”) implementation of Libertarian ideas and how … well … not so great it was indeed from a modern perspective.