These arrangements provide the flexibility necessary to ensure security and the restraint essential to safeguard liberties.Ī dramatic example came with President Truman’s attempt to seize private property to further the Korean War effort. Foremost is the separation of power between the three branches of the federal government, as well as between the federal government and the states. The Constitution’s Framers placed their faith not in specific guarantees of rights-those came later-but in an elegant system of checks on government. #If you give up your freedom for security free#"iberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others." - John Lockeīut it has not happened in America. History is replete with examples of such oppression, and it remains common today. The problem they faced was the one identified deftly by Ronald Reagan: “The kind of government that is strong enough to give you everything you need is also strong enough to take away everything that you have.” Any power delegated by the people to their government may be abused and used against them. This problem was the Framers’ chief concern in drafting the Constitution, and their solution was radical and brilliant. Yet they are essential to preserving both security and liberty. Limits on the power of governments are rarer, and more complex. “In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men,” observed James Madison, “the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” Almost all nations achieve control of the governed, though more often by force than by consent. Rather, as the Constitution recognizes, the two are reinforcing: we “secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” A threat to America’s security is also a threat to Americans’ liberties. Protecting individual liberty does not invariably hobble the nation’s defense. Policies that make the nation more secure, particularly against foreign threats, do not necessarily undermine its people’s liberty. From the first, Americans saw liberty and security as one and the same, and not in opposition.Īlthough we often speak of the proper “balance” between security and liberty, the two need not be in tension. In such circumstances, “it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”Īnd so they did, and the nation was thrust into war. To the Founders, these were violations of both man’s natural rights and of the security that a sovereign is obliged to provide the people. The litany of British abuses and usurpations is cited in the Declaration of Independence: lawless decrees, the quartering of troops, wholesale plunder, and deprivation of liberty and life according to whim, not law. The founding generation knew firsthand the oppression of tyranny. “Among the many objects to which a wise and free people find it necessary to direct their attention, that of providing for their safety seems to be first.” So wrote John Jay in The Federalist, in which the Constitution’s leading Framers explained the government on which they hoped to build America. How must America balance security and civil liberties? Yet the healthy fear that one or the other will disappear has been present in every era since the Founding. America has avoided the fate of nations that have traded freedoms for promises of security, or security for unlimited freedom, and achieved neither. Since then, America has been the world’s freest country and has become its most secure, with a military equal to any threat. The United States was born into war with the Declaration of Independence, the most important statement of liberty and natural rights ever made.
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