Deliberative Republicanism and the Triumph of the American Founding
This essay is adapted from remarks delivered at an event hosted by the University of Florida’s independent, student-run publication The Florida Finibus.
As Americans celebrate the 250th anniversary of our Republic’s birth, our attention naturally turns to the Declaration of Independence. The document flames with eloquence; its stunning phrases and stirring call to action are at the heart of our political tradition. American history cannot be understood apart from the principles it declared. Our greatest statesmen have always referred to the Declaration to summon the people back to the “better angels of our nature,” because its soaring poetry reminds us of who we really are.
Yet, the Declaration was by no means the end of the American Founding. After declaring independence, the Continental Congress still had a war to win—a task that required the toil and bloodshed of seven long, hard years. It took even longer to establish an effective form of government for the thirteen independent states. Despite these immense struggles, the Founders were committed to a principle they announced in the Declaration: “when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.” In those “new guards” they provided us, we see the true meaning of republican liberty made manifest.
Among the most impressive, of course, is the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. Although the Bill of Rights was mostly a concession to opponents of ratification—a reassurance that the newly framed government would not become a consolidated tyranny—the protections it outlines have become among our most precious constitutional provisions. The amendment’s five freedoms (speech, religion, press, assembly, petition) do more, however, than simply carve out a space for individual liberty; they form the principal way we can participate in the life of our republic as citizens. That is to say, the First Amendment offers us the possibility of deliberation. Together, “we the people” have the right to shape the country’s future through discussion and debate. The independence we are celebrating this year—and the constitutional edifice built to defend it—means we have the right to define who we are for ourselves.
For all our successes as a nation, for all those freedoms we enjoy, the American Republic has many critics. On the Right and the Left alike, many feel that our Founding principles have somehow failed; from any number of ideological perspectives, it seems that the “new guards” we were provided have not secured justice. The solution proffered by many is illiberalism. “Why should we allow freedom of religion when heretics and apostates might use it?” the illiberal right asks. “Why should we allow freedom of speech when racists and fascists might use it?” the illiberal left asks. The ideologue does not want to tolerate wrongness in the world; he seeks to make society virtuous by whatever terrors are necessary. “Let justice reign,” he proclaims, “though the heavens may fall.”
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