Opinion: How Republicans Distort Founders’ Meaning, Mission of Freedom
The founders conceptualized freedom as a social mission, a social obligation, the chief goal of which was to serve the public good, not one’s narrow private interests.
The founders conceptualized freedom as a social mission, a social obligation, the chief goal of which was to serve the public good, not one’s narrow private interests.
Writing in 1782, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, Thomas Paine exclaimed, “We are now really another people.†What Paine meant, in part, was that the new republican form of government required a new and different kind of person, a new kind of citizen. People were used to being subjects of the Crown, ruled…