Thomas Jefferson once said, "The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots."
Most Americans respond to this statement with hearty approval. It indicates devotion to the liberty of men, courage, and refusal to compromise with oppression. It sounds a lot like Patrick Henry declaring, "As for me, give me liberty, or give me death."
Revolutionaries all over the world have always loved these statements, including those revolutionaries that Americans have not approved of in the least. American movements for social change of every kind, from unionizing workers to anti-government militias, have also drawn inspiration from them.
In this vision of liberty, liberty is about resistance to tyranny, defying wrong, and taking power from those who exercise it unjustly. Liberty is about being able to do what we want without being bossed around by someone else.
This liberty is so precious that those who fight for it somehow always find themselves justified in stepping on someone else in order to get it. Lenin said you can't make a revolution without breaking eggs, and in this he was just paraphrasing Jefferson. The eggs are men; revolution is simply a pagan religion of human sacrifice, a cult of Molech.
So long as liberty is being free to do what I think best, liberty implies having to deprive others of liberty when their liberty interferes with mine. The tyrannical nature of revolutionary regimes is not a defect; it's a fact of what they are. Communist tyranny is not a flaw in the system, military dictatorship was not a defect of the French revolution, and slavery and the support of dictators all over the world are not defects of American messianism (the belief in America as savior and rescuer of the world). These manifestations of tyranny proceed inevitably from the vision of liberty held by each of these ideologies. To whatever degree we give them place in our hearts, we will be tyrants too.
Their understanding of liberty is in the end the power of the strong to do what they please to the weak. Liberty means the choice to put the unborn child to death. Liberty for Patrick Henry meant organizing slave-catching patrols because the revolution couldn't afford to let its slaves get away. Liberty for American business and American consumers to do what they want and enjoy more, more, more stuff requires "stability" - meaning American hegemony over a terrorized and compliant world. From the beginning the American revolutionaries betrayed the truth. Abigail Adams wrote to her husband John during the First Continental Congress, "It always seemed a most iniquitous scheme to me - fight ourselves for what we are daily robbing and plundering from those who have as good right to it as we have." But having testified as they did that they knew this course to be iniquity, within two years they went right ahead.
There's no point in trying to reform this system or summon America to its ideals, any more than one could reform the Communist system by summoning it to its ideals. Real Communism was the fruit of Communist ideals, not their perversion. The American empire is likewise the fruit of the American revolutionary ideal of liberty. We haven't betrayed the ideals; the ideals have betrayed us, and they always will.
God's liberty is completely different. Abraham Heschel, in "God in Search of Man," makes the contrast as follows:
Is liberty alone, regardless of what we do with it, regardless of good and evil, of kindness and cruelty, the highest good? Is liberty an empty concept, the ability to do what we please? Is not the meaning of liberty contingent upon its compatibility with righteousness? There is no freedom except the freedom bestowed upon us by God; there is no freedom without sanctity.
In truth, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, is liberty." Liberty cannot come from ourselves. It is not the product of our striving, our self-assertion, our defiance, our self-justification, our self-righteousness. Liberty is the gift of God, from above. We don't get it the American way. How then do we get it?
Jesus said, "Release, and you will be released." He said, "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy." "The measure you measure will be measured back to you again."
Considering what we so often measure out, this last should be a terror to us all, when we're in our right minds. But there is great hope in it too. All God requires of us, if someone has us by the throat, is to release the throats in our grasp. If you really want to hear from God, here's one of the easiest and quickest ways: just ask Him persistently to show you who you have by the throat and to teach you how to let each throat go. You need power to seize liberty by force from another, but even the weakest can release his neighbor's throat.
Or can he? It doesn't take power, but we soon find that in ourselves we simply cannot let go. The alcoholic must keep turning the bottle bottom up, and the power addict must keep seizing people by the throat to feel safe. He fears that if he lets go they will fly at his throat. And they may, and he knows in his heart that he deserves it.
We don't need power, but we do need God. In God's law we read, "Proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants." The first and most important inhabitant of the land to proclaim liberty to is God. He at least does not fly at my throat if I let Him go, although He certainly brings upheaval. In Him I find liberty to grant liberty to my neighbors, to do both to God and man what I want done to me. He that waters is watered himself, says the proverb of Solomon. The tree of liberty does not drink the blood of men as Jefferson taught - the blood of Christ who rose again is sufficient. But the tree of liberty is watered by those who grant liberty to others and thereby receive the same from God, doing to others what they wish to receive.
How do we receive this liberty? We receive it by abiding in the truth. Jesus said to those who believed in Him, "If you continue in my word, you will be my disciples indeed, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free."
The struggle for freedom is no more and no less than the degree to which we are conquered by truth and become doers of it. To the degree that we walk in lies, we are slaves of the Lie, no matter what rights we think we have. Liberty is the freedom to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God. Do you have that? Do you want that?
True liberty comes from above and has nothing in common with the
proud
assertion of our rights which the religion of revolution teaches
us.
True liberty is not the American way, which seems right to so many and
ends in death. It is the way of life, and few there are that find
it.