Freedom and Obligation – Part 3

The following is adapted from a speech “Freedom and Obligation” delivered on May 14, 2016, at Hillsdale College’s 164th Commencement ceremony.

Being at Hillsdale College, it is appropriate that we should reflect briefly on our ancestors’ understanding of what was to be earned and preserved. America’s Founders and many successive generations believed in natural rights. To establish a government based on the consent of the governed, as the Declaration of Independence makes clear, they gave up only that portion of their rights necessary to create a limited government of the kind needed to secure all of their rights. The Founders then structured that government so that it could not jeopardize the liberty that flowed from natural rights. Even though this liberty is inherent, it is not guaranteed. Indeed, the founding documents of our country are an assertion of this liberty against the King of England—arguably the most powerful man in the world at the time—at the risk of the Founders’ lives, fortunes, and sacred honor. Over the lifespan of our great country, many occasions have arisen that required this liberty, and the form of government that ensures it, to be defended if it was to survive.

At the risk of understating what is necessary to preserve liberty and our form of government, I think more and more that it depends on good citizens discharging their daily duties and obligations. Here I resist what seems to be the formulaic or standard fare at commencement exercises—a broad complaint about societal injustice and an exhortation to the young graduates to go out and solve the problem and change the world. Having been a young graduate myself, I think it is hard enough to solve your own problems, which can sometimes seem to defy solution. And in addressing your own obligations and responsibilities in the right way, you actually do an important part on behalf of liberty and free government.

Throughout my youth, even as the contradiction of segregation persisted, we revered the ideals of our great nation. We knew, of course, that our country was flawed, as are all human institutions. But we also knew that our best hope lay in the ideal of liberty. I watched with anguish as so many of the older people in my life groped and stumbled through the darkness of near or total illiteracy. Yet they desperately wanted to learn and gain knowledge, and they understood implicitly how important it was to enjoy the fullness of American citizenship. They had spent an aggregation of lifetimes standing on the edge of the dual citizenship that is at the heart of the 14th Amendment.

During the Second World War, they were willing to fight for the right to die on foreign soil to defend their country, even as their patriotic love went unreciprocated. They returned from that horrific war with dignity to face the indignity of discrimination. Yet the desire persisted to push our nation to live up to its ideals.

I often wondered why my grandparents remained such model citizens, even when our country’s failures were so obvious. In the arrogance of my early adult life, I challenged my grandfather and doubted America’s ideals. He bluntly asked: “So, where else would you live?” Though not a lettered man, he knew that our constitutional ideals remained our best hope, and that we should work to achieve them rather than undermine them. “Son,” he said, “don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.” That is, don’t discard what is precious along with what is tainted.

This is Part Three of a multi-part series. Keep watch for the next installment!

Reprinted by permission from Imprimis, a publication of Hillsdale College.