For our Founders and most of the enlightened thinkers of the late 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, liberty was most definitely thought to be a natural and moral principle grounded in the nature of mankind. For a society to flourish, moreover, for it to be happy, liberty was believed to be absolutely essential. I would tend to endorse that understanding, but in another sense, it is in fact quite unnatural, and this, unfortunately has become more painfully apparent at all levels of society from the man on the street to the highest courts in the land, from our city halls to the halls of Congress.
Everywhere the idea of liberty has simply become confused, even deranged. The pieces of a once-glorious tradition have been shattered, and the shards have been taken up as dueling implements in an all-out street fight, as right is pitted against right, freedom against freedom. Indeed, understanding liberty has become, for our people at least, entirely too complicated and even unnatural.
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