Populo libertatem ut quod velint faciant  (Marcus Tullius Cicero) 

People have liberty when what they will becomes reality. Cicero, as quoted here, was specifically referring to political freedom, which he distinguished from the license (i.e., licentia) or permission to do whatever one pleases. Political freedom implies very specific responsibilities, not laissez faire permissiveness. Our founding fathers did “ordain and establish” the American Constitution wherein they specified our freedom “to form a more perfect Union” as an individual right to “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Further, our forefathers defined this liberty in the Ciceronian sense, for they qualified it in the same sentence with the necessity to “establish justice… insure (sic) domestic Tranquility… provide for the common defence (sic)… promote the general Welfare… (and thereby) secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Constitutional liberty then is both specific and universal—both personal and societal. As a result, it must be the shared responsibility of every American citizen. Otherwise, democracy or “rule by the people” would not be viable and Congressional compromise impossible, resulting inevitably in deadlock or worse. Stated bluntly, there might only be chaos.  

Adherence to our Constitution and its stated objectives is the foundation of American citizenship and our legal system. Our government then must reflect and consolidate both our Constitutional values and the people’s will, otherwise any unity of purpose would likely collapse into chaos. And that collapse would spell the end of any democracy. To quote our first President once again, “your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.” ¹ The union that Washington demanded to secure our liberty was—and must still be—the dedication of each and every American to the Constitution and the democratic values it has defined. That union not only secures our liberty but demands compromise of our elected officials. To what other end should our elected officials aspire if not the preservation of our democracy and its blessings of liberty? Without compromise, there is no union. Without our union, neither democracy nor the liberty it provides would or could endure. 

Our founding fathers could not have foreseen the America of succeeding centuries, nor the evolution of our democracy. Certainly, they were aware of the ignominy of slavery but seemed impervious to the implicit misogyny reflected in women’s inability to own a home or to vote. But our democracy has evolved and expanded to grant citizenship to former slaves and to expand the rights of women to own property, to vote, to earn equal pay, and even to run for the highest office in the land. This evolution, however, always comes as a challenge to Americans’ adherence to our Constitutional values. Periodically, we are tasked to reapply—or even redefine—the blessings of liberty. And challenges of this nature often result in legal battles or even physical confrontations between citizens. The Civil War and the women’s suffrage movement, however, were not the only challenges to our democracy, though perhaps the most dramatic confrontations.  

Chaos is always knocking at the door of American democracy for our freedoms are often challenged by unforeseen circumstances, such as foreign wars, natural disasters, or civil unrest. The latter is indicative of a free democratic society where change is often spurred by argument or even by demonstrations. For politics in a free society is nurtured by the struggle of citizens to realize their Constitutional values in changing times. But that struggle can too easily be lost by those who choose to ignore or oppose those values. The irony here is that this opposition can often cloak itself in a false sense of freedom where license is actually intended. Self-interest then dominates over communal benefit. What becomes questionable then may be how we define democracy and whom we deem worthy of its “blessings of liberty.” 

Do immigrants escaping disasters and/or life-threatening poverty deserve the same freedoms guaranteed to American citizens? Should fugitives fleeing oppressive regimes be welcomed into American society? Historically, both immigrants and fugitives have been admitted into America, even welcomed by the words engraved in the Statue of Liberty. ² The key word in this welcome is “free.” Those who seek freedom in America must swear to uphold the Constitutional values that define our freedom as Americans. Citizenship in our democratic republic demands acceptance of and adherence to the Constitution, including the laws and judicial system derived from it.  

America was not born from native inhabitants, but from settlers and migrants from other countries “yearning to breathe free.”² Our founding fathers were students of Europe’s “enlightenment” who sought refuge from competing philosophies, religious wars, and sovereign oppression. While redefining “liberty,” they redefined citizenship and the responsibility of every citizen to support and adhere to the common values expressed in our Constitution. Our freedom has a price that definitively excludes the license to serve oneself at the expense of other’s right to the blessings of liberty. And the American Constitution realizes the promise of Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence wherein he recognized our equality at birth and the rights of all Americans to secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.    

Remember when we all used to begin every school day with America’s pledge of allegiance . . . “to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands with liberty and justice for all.” This pledge reiterates the promise of our Constitution, to which every officer of our country must all swear allegiance. Wherein that allegiance do we find ourselves today? And does not that allegiance serve to assure the blessings of liberty for all of us and our posterity?  

But some may not be included in the blessings of liberty. America’s immigration policy, for example, is not fully funded to either refuse ineligible migrant admissions or administer court directed decisions regarding migrants’ requirements for admission to our country AND their requests for citizenship. In addition, the time required to gain citizenship can be years, creating a backlog and family separations for insufferably long periods of time. Does our immigration policy extend the blessings of liberty to today’s immigrants as it once did for many of our ancestors? Or do Americans choose to exclude the blessings of liberty to those not born in America? If this exclusion is what we will then most Americans do not merit the blessings of liberty, for our ancestors entered America as immigrants. Are not most Americans, in fact, descendants of immigrants? And do not the Constitution’s blessings of liberty, therefore, extend to all Americans whether born here or naturalized? 

In like manner, how can voter suppression laws and gerrymandering assure fair elections when they demonstrably invalidate citizens’ voting rights? No democracy can assure the blessings of liberty without fair and untampered elections.  

As a corollary to this liberty principle, no candidate can represent democracy who claims he/she cannot be defeated except by a rigged election. Unless evidence is provided, this mere accusation reveals nothing other than the fear of losing? For example, a child about to play a competitive game could either quit the game for fear of losing or accuse his/her opponent of cheating beforehand. This latter option is dishonest for it reveals the fear—even foreknowledge—of losing. In a democratic election, this accusation is also un-American for it preempts voter consensus (i.e., democracy or “rule by the people”) and the “Blessings of Liberty to Ourselves and our Posterity.” Besides being dishonest, it is downright childish, as demonstrated by Donald Trump, a current candidate for the Presidency. 

Yes, America is currently embroiled in a Presidential campaign like no other in its history.  Washington, our first President led us to victory in our war of Independence and validated the peaceful transfer of executive power in our nascent democracy. Lincoln was our sixteenth President. He preserved the principles of unity and freedom inherent to our democracy by his conduct of the Civil War and his Emancipation Proclamation. Roosevelt was our 32nd President. He led us through our worst Depression and a World War.  Donald Trump was our 45th President during the worst pandemic in nearly a hundred years. To his credit, he did endeavor to fund development of the vaccine required to stem the spread of the Covid pandemic. But President Trump never fully rose to the challenge Covid presented to the American people. He never developed an effective plan to deliver the Covid vaccine or address the suffering of hundreds of thousands of people and their rising death toll.³   Certainly, sickness and a rising death toll do not administer the blessings of liberty to the American people. 

As President, Donald Trump ran up the greatest debt of any President in American history by granting massive cuts in taxes for the richest Americans and businesses. The Trump debt will impact future government programs intended to benefit the American people and further the blessings of liberty and our individual pursuit of happiness.  

He did, however, end our costly war in Afghanistan, but only by reaching an agreement with the Taliban that made no mention of power sharing with the existing Afghanistan government. As a result, this agreement freed Americans of a long-term commitment to a Middle Eastern country, but at an unintended cost in lives and the future of a free Afghanistan.4   

Instead of truly noteworthy achievements, Trump’s Presidency offered outlandish episodes of self-aggrandizement where he claimed himself the greatest President “the likes of which have never been seen before.” In truth, Americans never had a President who appointed sycophants to undermine the departments assigned to them (note the previous blog and its references). Nor did Americans expect him to undermine NATO and brag about his relationships with and admiration for dictators like Vladimir Putin or Kim Jung-un. Nor did Americans expect his promise to lower taxes transform into a huge decrease in taxes for the highest earners and richest corporations at the expense of average Americans—and, as a result, the largest increase in the national debt of any preceding Presidential term.   

The current Presidential campaign is like no other for multiple reasons. First, we have the first woman candidate with a record of civil service several times greater than any Presidential candidate in most of our lifetimes.5 And then we have former President Trump, a man who excels at playing the man-in-charge—like his character in the Apprentice. But his showmanship has offered nothing in the form of real achievements. Nevertheless, he is a formidable campaigner, equipped with antidotes that entertain his admirers and with schoolyard insults that belittle or shame an opponent or adversary. He seems unusually defensive around women—meaning he becomes especially obnoxious. For example, he seems to address professional women as adversaries by putting them down as “not my type” or “nasty” if they challenge him with a question. He is especially reactive to black women—perhaps because they trigger both his racism and misogyny. He needs little cause to act like the characteristic schoolyard bully that he so well exemplifies.  

And, finally, there is Project 2025: a blueprint for turning our democracy into a puppet government with just one man holding all the levers of power. And this is the man who seems to believe whatever he imagines as reality. For example, does he not think tariffs are paid by governments that export goods to America? Of course he does. But we pay for the tariffs when we purchase their exports. Does he not think we are freer without public education, the EPA, the CDC, reasonable gun legislation, the Federal Reserve, or the other governmental institutions created by our legislature to serve and protect the American public? Of course he does. Does Donald Trump in any way serve the Constitution he says he would like to replace? Of course he does not! In fact, he only recently discovered Article II and showed no interest in exploring the rest of that document. This man lives solely within his own ego. Why would he concern himself with securing the blessings of liberty for us?

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1 George Washington, “Farewell Address,” 1796. 

2 The poem written by Emma Lazarus in 1883 and inscribed on the Statue of Liberty: 

“Give me your tired, your poor, 

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, 

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. 

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, 

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” 

3 Instead, President Trump said “it (Covid) will just go away.” But it did not even begin to diminish until a few months after his term in office, and only after a massive effort was organized by his successor to vaccinate millions of Americans and enhance treatment availability for those already infected. According to CDC estimates the number of Covid-related deaths would be about 1,120,000 (often compared to the Spanish flu epidemic death toll of 675,000 in 1918). Although the infection rate dropped significantly with the advent of the Biden administration and its efforts to deliver the vaccine nation-wide, 470,000 had already died before Biden took office. It would take another two years before the epidemic would be considered only as seasonal a threat as the standard flu. 

4 Trump had committed a withdrawal of all American forces by specified dates. In effect, he had set the stage for the speedy fall of the American supported Afghan government and a hurried withdrawal of all American forces and equipment. In the ensuing chaos, Taliban forces overran Afghan cities, including the capital, and threatened the evacuation of both Americans and Afghans not affiliated with the Taliban. Neither in America’s hasty withdrawal from Vietnam nor in its staged withdrawal from Iraq, has the American military been faced with a greater challenge and within a shorter timeline. Although the Biden Administration managed to extend the timeline for withdrawal, it fell short of evacuating all endangered Afghans before a single explosion killed thirteen American soldiers and hundreds of fleeing Afghans. Neither the Trump nor the Biden Administrations succeeded in planning the end of the Afghan war in concert with an orderly and safe withdrawal from Afghanistan. 

5 Before Kamala Harris became a candidate for the Presidency, she served as a prosecutor, public defender, attorney general, state senator, and Vice President. Her opponent has no public service record before becoming the 45th President of the United States. Instead, he came into office with a history of bankruptcies (6), and indictments for tax evasion and fraud, and accusations of sexual abuse. He had also been convicted in two fraud cases. He was fined 20 million dollars for the Trump University fraud case and ordered to close the Trump foundation which the court found he used as his personal checking account.  

Generic Footnote: 

Currently, he is competing against Ms. Harris to return to the Presidency, even though he has recently been convicted of 34 felonies involving business fraud and held liable for sexual abuse. And he is also under multiple Federal indictments: 

1. for conspiracy to defraud the United States and Conspiracy to Obstruct an Official Proceeding;
2. for willful retention of National Defense Information (32 counts), for conspiracy to obstruct justice, for withholding a document, for corruptly concealing a document or record, for concealing a document in a Federal Investigation, for a scheme to conceal, for false statements and representations, for altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing an object, for corruptly altering, destroying, mutilating, or concealing a document record or other object;
3. and for 13 felony counts under Georgia State racketeering laws.

Reference: The Trump Indictments: The Historic Charging Documents with Commentary, Introduced, Annotated, and with Supporting Materials by Melissa Murray and Andrew Weissmann.