The Real American Revolution; G. C. Roche, III

Fully 150 years before the American Revolution, our colonial ancestors had enjoyed a large measure of self-government. From the first, the American colonial experience had drawn heavily up on the traditional liberties of the British.subject, upon the heritage of Magna Charta and centuries of common law, stressing property rights and the guarantees of in dividual freedom. Dr. Roche is President of Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan. This article is from his remarks on April 26, 1973 at the American Patriot Award Ceremony, a First Bicentennial Salute by the Pittsburgh Committee of '76 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. American Revolution By the 18th century, however, the British were pursuing a new goal. A new economic idea, mer cantilism, had gained dominance in British thinking. King George III and his advisers had accepted the idea of what today would be called the planned economy, the mistaken belief that the individual could not be trusted to discharge his own responsibilities. Large amounts of government planning and control were to be used to regulate society and manipulate the individual.

Today the same idea masquer ades under many names: Com munism, Socialism, the Welfare State - all systems of coercion having in common a basic-distrust of individual freedom and respon sibility. By the concluding third of the 18th century, the American people were running out of patience with 395 396 THE FREEMAN July this growing governmental inter ference in their affairs. In the summer of 1776, a man named Thomas Jefferson retired to the upstairs bedroom of a bricklayer's home in Philadelphia, where he penned a short document which was destined to write a new chap ter in human history. In that document, the Declaration of In':' dependence, Americans served no tice that they would no longer tolerate governmental interference with their lives and property. The Declaration charged King George III with various abuses of political power against the colo nists. But the document was not merely a bill of indictment against George III - it was serving notice, for 1776, for 1976, and for as long as the American Republic endures, that the American people will never tolerate centralized bureau cratic control of their lives.

A Jurisdiction Foreign to Our Constitution Consider for a moment the lan guage of the Declaration of Inde pendence: He has erected a multitude of new offices and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people and eat out their substance. He has combined with others to subject us to a juris diction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws. In those ringing words we hear the determination of a nation of free men to protect their heritage of liberty and to fight for that heri tage when it is threatened. Actually, Tom Jefferson and the Declaration of Independence are only one-half of the revolutionary story in that exciting summer of 1776. That san~e summer, a book was published thousands of miles from the American colonies, a book which was destined to have a profound effect on the real American Revolution. The author was a Professor of Moral Philoso phy at the University of Glasgow, a man named Adam Smith; and the book was entitled The Wealth of Na,tions. Smith was not an economist. There were no such things as economists in the 18th century. The world was a brighter and happier place.

Smi th was a moral philosopher. And as a moral philosopher he perceived a truth which escapes all too many of us today. Men must be free to make their own decisions. If they are not, a moral paralysis soon sets in. Free choice is a prerequisite for a working moral framework. Building on that premise, Adam Smith examined mercantil ism in England and discovered that this early form of the plan ned economy was denying men free choice and thus was dis1973 THE REAL AMERICAN REVOLUTION 397 torting British society. Economic harm was also being done by the new system. Scarce capital re sources were being channeled into less productive areas; individual creativity and productivity were being stifled. In short, Smith dis covered that mercantilism was strangling the very economic growth that the planned economy had set out to achieve. Smith also speculated that free men, men in charge of their own lives, would "be productive and ef fective, both for themselves and for society as a whole. His book was destined to have a greater impact than he could ever have guessed.

A Model lor Nations Eleven years after the publica tion of the Declaration of Inde pendence and The Wealth of Na tions, our Founding Fathers met once again, this time to draft a constitution charting the course for a new nation. The resulting document has since served as a model for the entire world. The fifty-five leaders of American so ciety who met to write our Con stitution were motivated primarily by two ideas: the Tom Jefferson limited government idea and the Adam Smith-free enterprise idea. The Constitution of the United States is in a sense the most revo lutionary of all documents. It is premised upon the truly radical idea that men should be left largely free to pursue their own affairs. For the first time in the history of the world, a major na tion was attempting an experi ment in freedom. The real American Revolution began at that moment. In free dom, America rushed forward to produce more material wealth than had any previous social order. More important, that wealth found its way into the hands of more common men, more ordinary citizens, than had ever before been the case in the entire history of the world. America became vastly powerful, while the American citi zen became the most prosperous and the most free man on the face of the earth.

Freedom worked well for Amer ica. Freedom worked well because free men are more productive than slaves. Freedom worked well because our Founding Fathers knew that political power must be kept with in strict limits. They knew that most of the decisions made in a healthy society must be made by individuals, by families, by volun tary associations of free men. Abbve all, our Founding Fa thers knew, as the Declaration of Independence announced to the world, that "Men are endowed by 398 THE FREEMAN July their Creator with certain inalien able rights." Since men are endowed "by their Creator" with these rights, it fol lows that God and not government is sovereign, and therefore that government must be without au thority to interfere with "certain inalienable· rights," such as self government and sustenance; that is, the right to freedom, and the right to property as a means of making that freedom meaningful.

America has prospered when it followed its faith in free enter prise and free men, a faith based upon a fundamental belief in God. Today we are beset with problems on every hand, problems caused in large part because our faith in free men sometimes falters. All too often we seem to believe today that we can turn our problems over to government, that we can find someone else to deal with our responsibilities. America .is not going to fail. There are no vast, impersonal forces of history about to. engulf us. This nation of courageous in dividuals, this nation of free men, has always been able to handle the problems which arise. We can do so again - if we are true to our selves, true to our magnificent heritage, true to the basic Ameri can faith in free men and the faith in God which is the ultimate cornerstone of our system. I ask you to join with me in asking God to grant this nation the continued blessing of individ ual liberty and the courage to ful fill our individual responsibilities as free men and loyal American citizens. , IDEAS ON LIBERTY Self-Government I COULD NOT OMIT to urge on every man to remember that self government politically can only be successful if it is accompanied by self-government personally; that there must be government somewhere; and that, if indeed the people are to be the sovereigns, they must exercise their sovereignty over themselves individually, as well as over themselves in the aggregate - regulating their own lives, resisting their own temptations, subduing their own passions, and voluntarily imposing upon themselves some measure of that restraint and discipline which, under other systems, is supplied from armories of arbitrary power.

ROBERT c. WINTHROP, American Statesman (1809-1894) EDMUND A. OPITZ OUR disORdEREdlivEs THE COLONISTShad won a war and, desiring to set up a republican form of government, they installed a Constitution designed to limit the public authority and thus maximize personal liberty. Now that they were free, what did these early Americans do with their newly won liberty? For one thing, they worked. They had to provide their own food, clothing and shelter, so work was a neces sity of survival. Moreover, these people remembered the poverty enThe Reverend Mr. Opitz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for Economic Educa tion, a seminar lecturer, and author of the book, Religion and Capitalism: Allies Not Enemies. dured by their ancestors in Europe and how life was demeaned there by.Now that these Americans were free to enjoy the fruits of their toil they became more productive, and with the gradual increase of wealth came a new sense of human dignity which accompanies modest econ omic success. The Puritan Ethic was sound when it endorsed work, thrift and frugality. This ethic fit ted in well with the burgeoning in terest in the new science of econ omics, masterfully set forth in 1776 by Adam Smith. It is significant that more than twenty five hundred copies of Wealth of Nations were sold in this country within five years of its appearance. Obviously, 399 400 THE FREEMAN July the book addressed itself to a real need.