MODERN DEMOCRACY. The United States of America was
born with a number of conceptions of liberty: political,
economic, social, and religious. Thus, liberty became
the rallying cry of a diverse number of groups, classes,
and regions in the American Revolution and in formu-
lation of the U.S. constitutional republic. For example,
the North American colonists’ political liberty meant
local community self-governance against the distant
British Parliament and MONARCHY. Social liberty meant
freedom from the bonds of traditional British HIERAR-
CHICALclass social structures. Economic liberty of free-
market CAPITALISM meant individual property
ownership and free-enterprise commerce instead of the
controlled trade and monopolies of the British Empire.
Religious liberty meant the freedom to believe, wor-
ship, and evangelize as different churches and individ-
uals chose, rather than the legal conformity of the
established, official, state church of England. So,
despite differences of region, faith, class, and national-
ity, the American colonists could agree on their desire
for liberty. Since then, the term has signified claims of
individual RIGHTS(CIVIL LIBERTY) and individual prefer-
ences. Primarily CONSERVATIVE groups (businesses,
Republicans, EVANGELICAL CHRISTIANS) employ the lan-
guage of liberty, but LIBERALgroups also use it at times
(the American Civil Liberties Union, abortion rights
supporters, HOMOSEXUALrights lobby, etc.).
The ideal of liberty has always been ambiguous.
Taken to an extreme, individual liberty leads to ANAR-
CHISM or LIBERTARIAN thought. Others value order,
EQUALITY, JUSTICE, and morality. So, the early American
PURITAN political thought of John WINTHROP defined
two kinds of liberty: moral liberty and natural liberty.
In his Calvinist theology, natural liberty was the
human sinful, selfish desire to do whatever one
wanted, even to kill, steal, and lie. This liberty should
be restrained by LAW. The moral liberty is “freedom
where with Christ hast made us free”—the liberty God
has given us to choose the good and to do it by the
power of the Holy Spirit.
John LOCKEargued that human reason taught hu-
mans a law of nature to never use their liberty to harm
others. This made widespread social freedom possible
because individuals were self-governing. Republics
rely on such personal self-restraint; TOTALITARIAN
regimes require more external pressure on individuals.
Thus, liberty is not a value in FASCIST, COMMUNIST, and
aristocratic states, but is a value primarily in DEMO-
CRATICgovernments.
Formal, CONSTITUTIONALliberties are often declared
and protected in a Bill of Rights.Further Readings
Garvey, John H. What Are Freedoms For?Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 1996.
Hayek, F. von. The Constitution of Liberty.Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1960.
Machan, T. Human Rights and Human Liberties.Chicago: Nelson
Hall, 1975.
Skinner, Quentin. Liberty before Liberalism.Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1998.Lincoln, Abraham (1809–1865) U.S. political
philosopher, lawyer, statesman, and president of the
United States (1861–1865)
Known chiefly for freeing the African-American slaves
during the American Civil War, Lincoln’s emancipation
of enslaved Southern blacks grew out of deeply held
religious, philosophical, and political ideals.
Abraham Lincoln saw the enslavement of human
beings in the United States as undermining the foun-
dations of the U.S. REPUBLIC: respect for basic HUMAN
RIGHTSto life, LIBERTY, and PROPERTY. If a social practice
violates the fundamental NATURAL RIGHTS that John
LOCKEsaid formed CIVIL SOCIETY, the whole system of
DEMOCRATIC self-government is endangered. Just as
contemporary opponents to ABORTIONargue that disre-
gard for preborn life threatens regard for all human
life, Lincoln argued that violation of African-Ameri-
cans’ liberty threatens every citizen’s liberty.
Lincoln specifically attacked the non-natural-rights
philosophies of his day: John C. CALHOUN’s concur-
rent-majority theory that placed a regional majority’s
desire over individual human rights, and Stephen
Douglas’s theory of popular sovereignty, allowing
expansion of slavery into the Western territories. In
terms of philosophical ETHICS, Lincoln held that right
and wrong are moral absolutes even if a sizeable
majority reject or are apathetic about them. If an
indifferent or apathetic (or evil) majority can deny the
traditional Judeo-CHRISTIANmoral standards underly-
ing the United States, God’s wrath could destroy the
country. Sounding like the Old Testament prophets
Jeremiah or Isaiah, Lincoln described the terror and
bloodshed of the American Civil War as God’s terrible
punishment for the sin of slavery. “The Almighty, has
his own purposes. ‘Woe unto the world because of
offenses!... woe to that man by whom the offense188 Lincoln, Abraham