Although liberty has been analyzed from the pre-Aristotelian to the postmodernist philosophers and the preeminent psychologists of the twentieth century, do we know what the founders had in mind when they used that word?  I contend that the way liberty is thought about today is not what the founders intended.  The set of ideas that was originally connected with liberty has changed.  I have come up with a musical metaphor–a four note-chord–to  to help capture the network of thoughts that were activated when the word “liberty” was spoken.

The four notes are: (1) personal liberty—the ability to do as one pleases within the rule of law, (2) political liberty—the right to participate in the government that makes those laws, (3) internal liberty—the ability to gain control over selfish passions and destructive impulses that prevents a person from making good choices and passing good laws, and (4) public good liberty—a benevolent consciousness of, and participation in, the welfare of the community.  All four types of liberty were understood as necessarily working together.  No single idea rang louder than the others; nor were they ranked in order of importance.  In the four-note chord of liberty, personal and internal liberty were balanced and a virtuous person would to a large degree self-limit behavior that was harmful to the public good.

To extend the musical metaphor, just as various sound vibrations are related to different emotional states, different types of liberty can lead to dissimilar end states.  The notes may be played separately, but when heard together it is a qualitatively different experience.  The effect of the four-note chord of liberty was a dignified state of virtuous living—a life that was in tune.  This is what the founders had in mind when they used the word “happiness”  There was a harmony within the person and a harmonizing within the community.  Liberties were not just “things” that citizens possessed; with each deciding on their own what to do with their freedom.  The founders knew what should be done: elevate the human condition.

Personal liberty without internal liberty could lead to extravagance, wastefulness, and licentiousness—a generally disordered life.  If one lacked the understanding of when not to act, then liberty simply collapsed into personal chaos.  Neuroscientists know that the balance between action and restraint is true down to the smallest unit of behavior—the firing of the neuron.  There can be no behavior if neurons do not fire; but for a neuron not to fire and to inhibit action requires more brain energy.  The ability to moderate behavior by inhibiting immediate impulses is one of the most important functions of the mature and healthily functioning frontal cortex—the crowning achievement of human evolution. 

For the founders, the ideal of moderation was the lynchpin virtue of the intelligent life.  From the philosophers of antiquity to the Enlightenment, moderation was the cardinal trait for the achievement of the happy life.  Liberty to simply “do your own thing” was liberty misunderstood.  Montesquieu, one of the founders’ favorite political philosophers, wrote, “liberty in no way consists of doing what one wants…liberty can consist only in having the power to do what one should want to do and in no way being constrained to do what one should not want to do.”^[1]   Or as Cicero, another founders’ favorite, wrote, “a very distinguished philosopher, was once asked what his pupils achieved, he answered that they learned to do of their own free will what the laws would compel them to do.”^[2]

 [1] Charles Louis de Secondat de Montesquieu, The Spirit of the Laws, ed. Anne M. Cohler, Basia C. Miller, and Harold S. Stone, (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 2009), 155.

[2] Marcus Tullius Cicero, Cicero: On the Commonwealth and on the Laws, ed. James E. G Zetzel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), 3.