Today, we talk about the absolute natural right to liberty.
It's supposed to be for everyone.
That is next.
Hey, welcome back to The Berry Fair Show.
It's great to have you with us.
I hope you're doing really well.
Today, we talk about the right to liberty.
This is an absolute right, a natural right.
But as you can easily observe, not everyone in our government and not every government
believes that you actually have an unabridged right to liberty.
In the previous episode, we looked at the issue of slavery.
It's been used by the left to discount the value of the concept of the right to liberty.
In that discussion, we looked honestly at how a number of the founding fathers were
muddled, saying they were against slavery while still owning slaves.
Other founders never owned slaves and always thought it was immoral and wanted to start
the country clean.
Those with that moral authority wanted to be the first major country in the world that
outlawed slavery.
All the other major countries in the world, from Great Britain to China and India, the
countries of the whole continent of Europe and Africa and all of South America had laws
that allowed for slavery.
We should have expelled it up front.
We didn't get that right until the 13th Amendment outlawed it.
But the fact that these men had human flaws in the context of their culture doesn't denigrate
the purity of the actual message.
You have an absolute right to liberty.
Today, we look at two other essential components of liberty, the philosophy of liberty from
the Greco-Roman and biblical thinkers, and we'll look at the gift that was uniquely
brought to the world by America's founding.
Our freedom rights are based on natural rights.
They're non-negotiable.
They come from God.
Or if you don't believe in God, they come from nature.
They're logical.
They can't be violated.
The three freedom rights are pillars.
They can be seen from a distance.
They can be admired and respected.
But those pillars of freedom won't last if they don't have a proper foundation, whether
it's the right to life, the right to liberty, or the right to the pursuit of happiness.
The foundation must be that the government accepts its limited role.
Our country was built in a unique way.
Its foundation is based on an explicit belief that the government serve its citizens, not
rule over them.
In previous episodes, I described this foundation as your seven citizen mandates.
The Constitution was a social contract that was based on the explicit or implicit understanding
of these seven mandates.
Here's a quick review.
Government shall be limited.
It isn't the answer to every problem.
Government shall obey its own laws.
It can't make you do one thing and not comply with that same requirement itself.
I wish that was applicable now.
Government shall apply all laws equally.
No favoritism.
Can't give one guy a pass and prosecute another just because you don't agree with him for
the same offense.
Government shall protect the rights of the individual.
You as an individual, regardless of your rank, have the right to vote in secret.
There's no religious test for you as an individual to run for office.
And that the individual should be preeminent over the government.
Number five, government shall support economic freedom.
You've got a total right to the rewards of your efforts.
It's your property, your asset, your business.
Number six, government shall be governed under the consent of the people.
It's your government.
Government officials work for you.
And finally, government shall honor freedom rights as preeminent over all others.
All legislation should subordinate to the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness.
If laws violate or interfere with one of those rights, the legislation should be voided.
So based on that foundation, we have the second pillar of freedom.
The second freedom right.
The right to liberty.
There's a philosophy that established this right.
One element of that philosophy was the notion of being liberated within.
In other words, understanding and embracing your own right to liberty.
Having the personal internal equipment to think like and act like a liberated person.
For this right to remain strong and to be properly understood, the hope was that citizens
would be educated in some rendition of a classical education.
This would provide an education that was coupled with a purpose.
To be educated for a purpose comes from two powerful influences.
The first is biblical.
The second is from the philosophers of the Graeco-Roman era.
From the Greeks, we learn about a classical education.
This education model was designed to liberate you.
You could be a stonemason, but that was just your profession.
Your education could enhance your life and set you free from within.
Though Plato is credited with establishing the seven liberal arts to enable you to be
a philosopher king, the reality is they were refined to build an exemplary person.
The Greeks
established the seven liberal arts of grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, music,
and astronomy. Grammar would give you a command of the language, enable you to articulate cogently,
you'd study written classical texts, you'd learn the diagram of the different parts of speech,
or you'd learn to diagram the different parts of speech. You see how good I am at it.
You'd learn to spell and how to expand your vocabulary.
Logic would empower you to think rationally, define a problem, evaluate the alternatives,
critique the alternatives, and determine a solution. You'd learn how to investigate truth
and test opinions. Rhetoric would equip you to handle debate and to be able to debate someone
with intelligence. You'd learn how to express your ideas, make a case for your opinion. You'd
learn how to analyze and discuss arguments that were in the classical works, and that had this
auxiliary benefit of teaching you how to be a good reader. Arithmetic would provide you the tools to
assess reality. You'd learn how to add, subtract, multiply, and divide. Geometry would give you the
ability to measure in motion. You would learn practical applications in architecture and
surveying. Music would provide you with an appreciation of beauty. You'd learn the forms
and instruments, and you'd understand how to actually create some music and how to appreciate
it. And then finally, with astronomy, it would teach you about first beginnings and navigation.
You'd learn how to determine dates from the stars. Today, you can prove to the 14th decimal point,
the beginning of the universe means there has to be a beginner. This built into a young person
the ability to think, speak, reason, appreciate beauty, and find God. But its primary purpose was
to liberate the student. What does this create? A capable citizen. With these tools of reasoning,
and expression, and analysis, and appreciation, students can move on to study more complex topics.
But with these skills in hand, a citizen can dialogue with anyone and reason their way through
almost any topic. The founders were nervous that if the country was a pure democracy,
which it isn't, where everyone just votes in the most popular guy, that it would decay quickly to
the lowest common denominator. But if the citizens had a good grasp of a classical liberal arts
education, they'd be good at self-expression, critical analysis, and rational inquiry. So the
founders had a variety of educations, but they all had some rendition of this classical approach,
even the ones that were self-educated. They all understood the concept of liberation from
the Greeks and the Romans. The other guiding philosophy of liberty was based on biblical
authors and post-biblical thinkers and philosophers. They articulated the concept
of natural law. We discussed that in detail a few episodes ago. But then there's also this
great warning that comes from the Bible. This comes from an ancient period of about 560 BC.
So one of the 40 authors of the Bible, a guy by the name of Samuel, was writing about a conversation
he's having with God about setting up a monarchy to rule over Israel. God basically told Samuel
that it's going to end up in disaster. God says that a king will expand his control in every
direction. He'll tax you. He'll take your daughters into his palace. He'll take your
sons into his wars. He'll take the best of your land and give it to his employees. You'll lose
your freedom. It's not the best form of government. Don't do it. But the people still wanted the king.
So God allowed it out of punishment. The philosopher Aurelius Augustine, or Augustine,
I think is the proper way to say his name, but it's so hard to say it that way.
Looks like Augustine. Anyway, Augustine lived from 354 to 430, and he was a giant. And just
about every theologian since him has referenced him because his work was so powerful. His work,
along with the theologian Thomas Aquinas, who lived in the 1200s, further explained the notion
of liberty on a civic level through an interesting lens. It's liberty through the lens of being set
free personally and spiritually. Civic authority should be limited to allow people to find God for
themselves. They argued that in the Old Testament there's this concept of freedom that's clear.
The laws of due process and private property rights and one man not being under the control
of another were introduced in Genesis, clarified in Exodus, detailed in Leviticus, and the blessing
of all these fair laws and civic freedom were articulated in Deuteronomy. Later, the theologian
whose materials architected the Reformation and who is credited with laying the conceptual framework
of the American Republic is a Geneva whiz by the name of John Calvin. He was a prolific writer and
speaker. His institutes and commentaries occupy over 15,000 pages, no matter how you look at it,
in small font. And these are
complex discussions. Let me show you. That's it. That's some of Calvin's work. And that's amazing.
What other thing to look at in his work? I'm just going to show you. That small font. I mean, it's
crazy. A lot of stuff he wrote. So for those of you who are just listening, I'm showing the
Institutes and some of his commentaries, and it takes up a chunk of the bookcase behind me. He
was one of history's most influential guys, and he lived before computers. In the 1500s, how'd he
have the time to write all that stuff, in addition to all of his speaking engagements? Well anyway,
Calvin's materials went everywhere, and people came to him from all over. Now you know Switzerland to
be the neutral state, the place where Europeans would escape to get away from the Nazis. Well,
long before it was established, which was 1848, Geneva was a refuge. During Calvin's time, Geneva
offered shelter to religious refugees from France, England, Scotland, the Netherlands, Germany, Hungary,
Italy, and Spain. These guys got their learning, and they got their education, and they returned
home with all these ideas from Calvin in their heads. So his French followers set forth the
concept that would undermine the French monarchy. His Dutch followers set the stage for the resistance
to the Spanish dominion. His Netherland followers went back and created a whole new Netherlands and
established an independent kingdom. His English followers influenced those who influenced the
American founders. He talked about nearly every important subject matter, but in terms of liberty,
he saw it in two forms. There was spiritual liberty, and there was civic liberty. In terms of
spiritual liberty, it goes like this. Since the devil curses and Jesus heals, since the devil
offers eternal death while Jesus offers eternal life, and since the devil binds people to their
unhealthy addictions while Jesus sets people free, all people should rationally see it as much better
to be spiritually set free. To Calvin, everything was integrated. The spiritual matters were the most
important, but they all had economic and civic ramifications. So when he spoke in terms of
civic liberty, Calvin promulgated a thoughtful new form of government. Everyone had the right to be
liberated from tyranny, but he also advocated for government. He was explicitly opposed to anarchy.
So how in the heck do you advocate for some government model that hasn't yet been seen?
He laid out this broad governing principle. First, government should apply all laws equally. Second,
government should submit to the concept of natural law, which is available and applicable to all
people. Finally, all laws should be tested by the perpetual concept of love. So here he believed
civil government should protect the lives and property of its citizens, and if the occupants
of government were ruled under God, he said that that government could also do some limited good
with schools, roads, and hospitals. So what's the model? Well, there were democracies that were
actually failing left and right. The Machiavellian concept of coming from the prince,
gaining absolute power as a monarch, was actually on the rise. So he proposed a government that was
similar to the new church model that he was promoting in Geneva. This is where ministers,
elders, and deacons would run it, but as a counter to the top-down autocracy for the church at the
time, those posts would be elected by the members. He was opposed to an authoritarian form of
government. He proposed a distributed authority model. He wanted the church to influence the state
with biblical teaching, but the church was not to rule the state. He proposed government have some
combination of a democracy and what he called an aristocracy. He's credited with being the
forefather of the republican form of government that we have in America, and we really do have a
pretty brilliant set of checks and balances. I mean, even our judges have a check on their
behavior with a jury of our peers to keep them from taking bribes. So Calvin stressed that no
society will prosper for long without a government that is in submission to God. At the end of the
day, if people aren't honoring God, they're not going to be good enough people to be governed
anyway. So there you have it. Some of the philosophical underpinnings for the founder's
concept of liberty. And naturally, you can see why the left is so opposed to it. Our form of
government is directly linked to the thinkers, authors, and philosophers who believed in absolute
and shaped the world. An absolute right to liberty.
But there's one more thing, and that's life experience.
The founders were real people with real life stories.
So let's look at our first president, George Washington. His great, great
grandfather,
John Washington, fled England to come to the United States because he wanted liberty.
He may or may not have read Calvin, but he knew that he did not want to live in
England.
He wanted freedom. This was in 1656, and John Washington was just 25 years old at
the time.
He left his southeastern England home
and boarded a small merchant vessel that was bound for the English colonies in
North America.
Now what was in John Washington's head?
Well, I don't know, but we can make a pretty educated guess by looking at his
upbringing and his behavior.
His dad, Lawrence Washington, was part of the official Church of England.
He had a high-paying job under King Charles I,
but King Charles I was hated for a whole bunch of understandable reasons.
So King Charles I was executed for being a tyrant,
traitor, murderer, and public enemy to the good people of this nation.
That's if you read the actual death warrant. Now John Washington is 11 when
the Civil War starts
and 18 when it ends with King Charles
getting his head lopped off. His dad,
Lawrence, was on the wrong side of the Civil War in England,
which started when John was 11. So at the end of the Civil War, the king had been
executed and Oliver Cromwell was in charge. Oliver banished over a hundred
priests who were connected to the Church of England,
and Lawrence, John's dad, was one of those guys.
So he was sent to a parish so poor that his kids,
including John Washington, could not go with him. So in 1643, when John was 12,
his dad, Lawrence, was cruelly all alone
at this impoverished church until he died when John was 21.
That'll affect you. John died
when he was just 46, but not before he could totally reset the trajectory
of his legacy. So this neighborly family, the Sandys, took him in.
Ed Sandys was a treasurer for the Virginia Company,
and it was here that young John Washington learned a trade. Officially, he
was supposed to be part of a minor trade voyage to transport tobacco to the
colonies.
But secretly, John had no intention of ever returning home to England. He wanted
to sail away from England
and start a new life in America. Back in 1656,
Britain had no regard for your basic freedom. I mean, it was honestly a pretty
miserable place.
There were a series of civil wars from the 1640s on
that left the country impoverished and chaotic, leading to the dictatorship of
Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell, in theory, was supposed to be on the side of the commoners who wanted to
limit the power of the monarchy.
But after installing himself as Lord Protector
in 1653, Cromwell turned out to be just as dangerous
and autocratic as many of the tyrannical kings.
Winston Churchill said he was worse. Here's his quote,
The rule of Cromwell became hated as no government has ever been hated
in England before or since. What was so
bad about him? Well, he fought these costly, unnecessary wars of ego
and he paid for it all by raising taxes far beyond his predecessors.
Yet, despite the high taxes, he ran a massive budget deficit
that further indebted the country. Cromwell was waging genocide against
Irish Catholics while hypocritically preaching unity and
tolerance. His administration jumped into bed with big business like the East
India Company, which bribed him
with the princely sum of 60,000 pounds, millions in today's money.
He had over-regulated artisans. He over-regulated merchants and small
shopkeepers.
They were all going out of business while he was making money. He even confiscated
property of those who couldn't prove
that they had been loyal to him. It was this hatred for Cromwell that prompted
countless people to flee
England forever and John Washington was one of those guys.
He settled in Virginia and had a family there.
It wasn't easy. John owned this 50% interest in a ship that was named the
Seahorse
and his business partner of his was Edward Prescott.
Their ship, loaded with tobacco, ran aground on the sandbar in Potomac River
and it sank. That's 1657.
It's not a real good start. So John, out the gate, owes Prescott
money for half of the damages. He didn't have the money.
But John had already made an influential friend, thankfully,
by the name of Nathanael Pope. Pope offered John Washington
a way to clear himself from Prescott. He gave Prescott beaver pelts
to pay off John's debt. But that, of course, made John Washington indebted to Pope.
Well, guess what happened? John Washington married Nathanael Pope's
daughter, Anne, in 1658.
Call it love, call it money, but that's what happened.
Two years later, way before John Washington can pay Pope back, Pope dies.
This had the happy result of canceling Washington's debt.
So these Washingtons, man, they really are good at picking these wealthy women, noticing
that.
Anyways, he got 700 acres of land out of the deal.
Let's give John some credit where credit is due, though.
In a few short years, he had carved out a large estate in Westmoreland County, served
as a vestryman of this parish in 1661, the Justice of the Peace in 1662, became a major
in the militia, and then eventually he rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel, was elected
to the House of Burgesses.
So by 1668, Colonel Washington was busy growing tobacco on holdings that exceeded 5,000 acres.
And Anne was cranking out babies.
They had five children.
Only three of them, though, lived to maturity, which was kind of common back then.
And that same year, Anne died.
No way was John going to raise three kids on his own.
So John married again, to another Anne.
I guess he just wanted to make sure that he never messed up when he called for her.
Anyway, a few years later, his second wife died.
Life was tough.
Two kids and two wives died on him, but he picked himself up and married for the third
time to Frances.
She was the daughter of Dr. Thomas Gerard.
She had previously been married three times.
All those guys died on her, too.
His eldest surviving son was Lawrence.
I mean, it's not funny to them back then, but a lot of people were dying on you.
His mom died.
Lawrence's mom, the son of John, died when he was a child.
Lawrence becomes a lawyer.
He inherits 4,350 acres of prime land.
2,500 of those acres later become known as Mount Vernon.
His son is Augustine.
Augustine Washington watched his father, Lawrence, die when he was just four.
It's tough.
His first wife died 13 years after they got married.
His second wife was the mother of George Washington.
So there you have it.
Life wasn't so easy, even for those who navigated the economics of it pretty well.
Every founder has a personal story.
They all knew of Oliver Cromwell.
Cromwell was supposed to be a good guy.
He wasn't a king, and he wouldn't even take the title of king, and he dispatched of a
bad king.
But once he had total power, he restricted freedom and liberty too.
That's why the founders were not very interested in a government that didn't have a very strong
sense of checks and balances.
Cromwell was responsible for the massacre of the garrisons and hundreds of civilians.
In the four years following Cromwell's departure from Ireland, while he was still commander-in-chief,
one-fifth of Ireland's population died as a result of the violence, the starvation,
or the disease, and tens of thousands of civilians were transported to the Americas
as indentured servants, white slaves.
This was a systematic destruction of the infrastructure, agriculture, and people, and this was an act
of deliberate policy.
This was ethnic and religious hatred.
Cromwell's legacy was to set England and Ireland on a collision course, a path of bitterness
and violence that lasted for 300 years.
So John Washington had the courage and the personal power to leave a brutal dictatorship
behind for a place that had promise, at least the promise of a legit shot at liberty.
And more than a century later, his great-grandson, George, helped found a new nation.
What made America special is that freedom was established as a political right.
When you became an American citizen, by birth, or legal immigration, you received the right
to liberty.
Most countries were established with a territory in mind, some conquest.
America was established with an idea.
So what is the idea of liberty?
Well, it certainly includes the basic freedoms, the freedom to go where you want, to do what
you want, and say what you want.
Liberty also includes the social science concept of feeling free.
In other words, the environment around you allows you to feel like most people in America
have most of the time, free.
Now, how did that come about?
Well, after the Declaration came the Constitution.
Soon after the Constitution came, the Bill of Rights came.
And then you have the first 10 amendments.
After that, other amendments, including the very important 13th and 14th amendments that
more broadly articulated are freedom rights.
But the three freedom rights from which all other freedom rights come are the right to
life, the right to liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
And today, we looked at the right to liberty.
You have the right to free movement.
The government can't ask you why you're going from one place to the next.
Not their business.
They shouldn't be tracking you.
You have the right to work where you want.
You have the right to marry whom you wish.
You have the right to express yourself in any manner.
you wish politically, religiously, as long as it's peaceable. In other words, assuming you're not
using your right to liberty to impose restrictions on other people's freedom, your right to liberty
means there should be no coercion on you at all. When there's freedom, you're not bullied to get
on your knees. When there's freedom, you can believe what you want. You can worship in
accordance with your beliefs and assemble with whom you choose. And there's no censorship. When
there's freedom, you can rest assured that you can say what you want. No fear of reprisal. No
censorship, big tech. You hearing that? No censorship. People came to America in search of
liberty. They were looking for freedom from oppression, freedom from want, freedom to be
ourselves. Now, I don't believe liberty is a ruthless, unbridled willpower. That's not freedom.
We learned from past and current tyrants that unchecked license only allows the savage thugs
the freedom to oppress everyone else. Liberty is the opposite of that. Liberty creates a safe place,
a safe environment to rejoice when someone else achieves his or her aspirations. Do not
let the radical left rob you. The hope of liberty for our nation is that it must be deep, deep in
your heart. If you let liberty die, there's no law, no document, no court that can hold it up.
Liberty must be preserved by those who have a belief in absolute truth. You are absolutely,
absolutely given the right to liberty. Liberty should be expressed by you. Liberty is your
God-given right. Liberty allows you to grow personally with a sense of humility, to honor
an all-powerful God to your freedom. God bless you.
Hi, I'm David Farah. Thank you for listening to my dad's podcast, The Barry Farah Show,
Culture Shift. Click subscribe now to be sure you don't miss an episode. Share this podcast
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