10 | SAM MAGAZINE 4/25 KOLUMNI But it is also constantly threatened by the very government I have created. In the American view, after all, government is a human institution not a divine one. It is in the nature of every human institution to seek ever greater power. No matter how good the constitution which created it, and no matter how wise the people are in selecting those who will run it, government will tend to grow, increasingly regulating life and reducing liberty, and increasingly taxing and depriving individuals of the fruit of their labor. Even the wisest and most beneficent government, one truly dedicated to the well-being of its citizens, will become tyrannical over time if it is permitted. Freedom as a safeguard against tyranny To avoid the emergence of a government that denies freedom (that is, to prevent the emergence of a government that sees its role as advancing what it perceives as the “social good” rather than protecting individual rights), Americans have assumed that two things are necessary. First, the government must be organized in such a way that each governmental institution is suspicious of every other and works to frustrate and stalemate other institutions’ attempts to obtain or use power. Second, it is necessary that the people constantly oppose and restrain that government. Effective opposition to government, however, requires that individuals continue to possess certain freedoms or rights. In other words, in the American perspective, freedom is not simply a desired outcome. Certain freedoms are also an instrumental necessity. To understand this American insistence on the preservation of certain freedoms for their instrumental value, rather than purely for the intrinsic value, it is useful to consider the American “Bill of Rights” – the first ten amendments to the American Constitution. The creation of America’s federal government (that is the creation of a “United States” as a supplement to the existing 13 sovereign American states) was vehemently opposed by a substantial part of the American public, which feared that such a large and distant governmental institution would very quickly become tyrannical. Prior to accepting this federal constitution and creating a federal state, therefore, the American people insisted on amending the constitutional document to provide explicit guarantees that this new federal government would not take certain actions which would, in the eyes of the American people, undermine the people’s ability to resist that government. Freedom of speech and of assembly, for example, are not only inherently desirable, they are also instrumentally necessary if the tendency of government to grow is to be monitored and held in check. Other freedoms – such as the right to “bear arms” – might not be inherently valuable but were identified as essential to preserving the ability to resist a “tyrannical” government bent on imposing its vision of an ideal society on the individual. This culturally and institutionally embedded view of individual freedom and of the government’s limited purpose goes a long way to explaining some of the peculiarities of the American political tradition. Denying, as it does, a government role in improving society (except to remove societal barriers to individual liberty), it has served to largely inoculate America against the “normal” range of modern democratic contention. Not only has America never had a serious communist or fascist movement, it also has never had a significant socialist tradition -- nor even any tradition of social democracy or Christian democracy. All of these assume a government role in shaping or controlling society which the American conception of freedom rejects. In the American view, after all, government is a human institution not a divine one.
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