With Liberty and Justice for All. A Liberal’s Guide to Liberty

By Zoe Roberts

A look at the real meaning of liberty and how it's been distorted through time to mean the exact opposite of its real meaning.A look at the real meaning of liberty and how it's been distorted through time to mean the exact opposite of its real meaning.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Zoe Roberts
• Release date: Jun 2, 2023
• ISBN: 9781960453105

Book preview

Acknowledgements

There are special people that deserve more appreciation than I can express here. To my friend Dr. Selika Ducksworth-Lawton: you are an inspiration within my life. Your incredible knowledge and guidance have helped me create this book and transition to my career in politics. Our coffee discussions are memories that I will never be able to forget. I can only hope that this book lives up to your high standards. To Angelique Rogers: thank you so much for teaching your practical working knowledge of politics to me. I look forward to learning more from you. To the Eau Claire Democratic Party: you folks are like family to me and offer me so much support. Thank you! To the University of Wisconsin – Eau Claire: though I graduated many years ago now, the education afforded me through you has provided me with the skills to undertake almost anything I set my mind to. And to the Professors therein, thank you for teaching and sharing your knowledge. And finally, to my friends and family: thank you for being constant sources of support and guidance.

About The Author

Zo ë is a former Eau Claire County Board of Supervisors member. As an elected leader she authored and passed numerous resolutions focusing on societal equity and fairness. She was also the Statewide Field Director for Citizen Action of Wisconsin, a political non-profit whose political goals put people over profits. Additionally, Zoë has managed political campaigns from the local level all the way to the Congressional level. Her political expertise comes from real world activity and research conducted because of her passion to create a positive change within her community and our greater society.

Contents

Acknowledgements

About The Author

Introduction......................................6

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Introduction

This book is the product of over two years of research into multiple fields, including political science, sociology, psychology, marketing, and history, among others. I’ve attempted to write it with the angst of the late 1970s and early 1980s punk rock ethos, a period of bold music that put truth to power regarding politics.

It is intended to educate the reader and, in the end, motivate the reader to take action to correct the current trend in American politics of apathy and cynicism. Hopefully, readers of this book will no longer be asleep behind the wheel. We’ve let a tremendous amount of injustice occur, much of which corresponds to the removal of our civil liberties. Within its pages, the reader will be on a rollercoaster ride through the history of America from the standpoint of liberty. The general idea of this book is to reconstruct liberty as a concept that is not used synonymously with freedom. The two concepts are related, like brothers and sisters, but they are not the same. My approach to liberty is about having the choice or ability to pick what you think is within your best interests, provided we stay within the means of the law.

In this book, liberty is an essential concept that must be fought for and preserved—something at which we’ve not done a great job in recent history. Liberty has been and always will be a liberal concept. Our problem with politics today is that it has been hijacked by the right and substituted as justification for oppression. Therein lie the myths that will be deconstructed and analyzed in order to provide you, the reader, with a better understanding of what liberty should mean, and did mean, to our Founding Fathers at the time the Constitution was drafted.

We first discuss John Stuart Mill and his contributions to the concept of liberty. Mill is used throughout the book to provide us with a foundation of what liberty meant to the Founding Fathers during the Age of Reason. The time our Founding Fathers drafted and ratified the Constitution. I go further and provide the reader with an ancillary tool to assess liberty using a Venn diagram concept of my own invention. Hopefully, between my tool and Mills’ vices, the reader has a good foundation for what’s coming.

The first chapter tells the story of the origins of liberty and the story of King John of England and the rebellious barons that challenged a King to obtain it. It then provides us with a comparison of the Magna Carta with that of the United States Constitution to compare their similarities regarding the liberty concept. We then review some of Thomas Paine’s works and his contributions to the creation of our Declaration of Independence and the United States Constitution, and finally wrap up a model of my own creation that allows us to evaluate policy based on liberty, freedom, and justice. When combined with the vices Mill defines, this tool provides us with the weaponry needed to evaluate what liberty is and how it should be used when making policy decisions.

The second chapter starts with Christian nationalism, but in a nonconventional way. It compares the story of the Puritans with that of Thomas Morton and segues into modern white supremacy to see the impact of religious obsession on politics. Discussing how Christian nationalism will fail for the same reasons the Puritans failed. They struggled with trying to rule based on religious zealotry and fervor because religion and governance don’t mix well when put together. It provides excellent insights into why our country is supposed to have a separation of church and state. I also dig into proving that our Founding Fathers were not Christian and that church and state are supposed to be separate by design.

The third chapter discusses Evangelical participation in politics and how it’s impacted our modern world. It uses the Moral Majority and Anita Bryant’s fight with Harvey Milk as examples to help make the case to the reader.

The fourth chapter discusses white supremacy in America along with how damaging it’s been to our development as a nation. As well as tying white supremacy to Christian Nationalism and Evangelicalism.

The fifth chapter is about proscription, or what most people know as bans. This is important because it builds off the previous three chapters on the policies created by white supremacy and their detrimental impacts on American society through policy creation, like that of the Jim Crow era.

The sixth chapter discusses the corruption of the Supreme Court of the United States, revealing to the reader at least one source of corruption. It also evaluates several major rulings issued by the Court that have had profoundly negative consequences for American society while simultaneously discussing why the rulings are corrupt and incorrect, including their ties to the Federalist Society and other extremist organizations and white supremacy.

The final chapter is really a call to arms. A chapter to motivate the reader to take action and get involved in politics. Whether you’re running for office, volunteering for the local Democratic Party, or knocking on doors. This book hopes to hammer home the importance of your involvement in protecting democracy and saving our country from what is truthfully a far-right fascist movement.

I hope you enjoy the read!

Zoe Roberts

Chapter 1

Liberty and Policy

The intent of this book is to aid voters, campaign staff, and candidates in understanding the historical origins of our politics and what has brought us to this rather absurd point in our nation’s history. And to explain the importance of liberty if used correctly in determining policy, discussion, and debate within our society. In order to begin telling this story, we need a reasonable starting point. In my opinion, that starting point needs to define liberty, its origins, its importance in the creation of our Constitution and Bill of Rights as well as how the Framers of our nation applied it. Additionally, we need to debunk the way the term liberty is used in our modern political landscape. This chapter explains foundational concepts of American democracy while at the same time providing us with a lens to review the rest of our history. The chapter itself then will challenge the reader to understand the circular nature of policy within this country and its profoundly unhealthy relationship with our future in the 21st Century.

Much of the motivation behind this book is the modern use of the term liberty. The way the term is used is nearly the opposite of what the word actually means, so it’s time we take this term and reset its meaning back to the way it was applied when our nation was formed. Republicans today use the term incorrectly. Ian Haney López sums it up in his book Dog Whistle Politics by providing us with three misconceptions they have about liberty.

● Liberty from the government.

● Freedom to exclude.

● The government is a threat to liberty.

To them, liberty is about rugged individualism, racism, bigotry, misogyny, and tax cuts. None of how they use liberty is about creating equality, a fundamental concept of democratic norms and values. What follows will make a case for what liberty means and should constitute within our country. It’s time now to reclaim liberty for its true meaning and intent.

We will discuss the creation of the Magna Carta, also known as the Great Charter for Freedoms, its principles, and how they were applied to the drafting of the United States Constitution. In these pages, I will quote and use select pieces of the Magna Carta to make my case.

To begin with, though, we need to develop a good sense of what liberty is and why it remains so important in our everyday lives. This must be accomplished while still evaluating the fairness and imposition or infringement of freedom through legislative and judicial actions.

According to John Stewart Mill in his book On Liberty, there have been two ways in which liberty has been attempted to be granted to the people, first by obtaining recognition of certain immunities, called political liberties or rights, which were regarded as a breach of duty in the form of a ruler to infringe, and which, if he did infringe, specific resistance, or general rebellion, was to be justifiable. This first premise may sound appealing to some people, but we must remember to apply this to our modern society. Attempting to grant liberty through such means in our modern world would likely result in chaos, vigilantism, and injustice. So, therefore, we need to more closely examine the second way in which liberty has been granted to a nation’s subjects.

The second way people have attempted to obtain liberty is through the establishment of Constitutional checks, by which the consent of the community, or body of some sort, is supposed to represent the community’s interests. Which are a necessary condition to some of the more important acts of governing.

This second form is most consistent with the present formulation of how the United States government is structured. Though we are a republic, we are also a representative democracy whereby we elect leaders to office to represent our best interests. We practice this form of representative democracy from the local level to the federal level. Mill also recognized that what this really translates to is that our government’s representatives result from the will of the most active members of our citizenry. Acknowledging that this form of government may result in the desire of the most active to oppress a part of the population whose opinions they do not agree with. Whether that oppression is the result of skin color, LGBTQ Status, or the like, he viewed discrimination as an abomination. This is why, as he correctly points out, the representatives need to be regularly held accountable to the community. Which we presently do through the process of holding elections.

Mill also recognized that liberty is to be held in check with the law. He cautions us about using what is customary in society because it breeds conformity and obedience of thought. These two concepts are central to the understanding of what liberty is because of the desire of most people to conform to the status quo. Therefore, freedom is to be extended to those who will challenge conformity and society through what Mill describes as eccentricity.

He provides us with numerous liberties and cautions us that if these concepts are violated, we will lose liberty and, therefore, many of the freedoms our society is meant to provide us. Among them are:

● Liberty of conscience.

● Liberty of thought and feeling.

● Liberty of opinion (Absolute) on scientific, moral, and ethical issues (Heretical opinions, in Mill’s view, were never properly discussed).

● Liberty of tasks and pursuits (Including writing, press, etc.).

● Liberty to peaceably assemble.

If you think about these liberties, they’re really meant to provide a foundation that we should respect because the intent is for us to be free, provided we are not damaging the lives of others. He wrote that each person is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, mental, or spiritual. A view at odds with out current political situation regarding abortion, gender affirming care, and other issues.

Mill provides us with four elements for freedom of expression, of opinion and freedom of opinion that again are foundational concepts to the modern exercise of liberty that must be included here for discussion:

● If any opinion is compelled to silence, that opinion may, for aught we can certainly know, be true. To deny is to assume our infallibility. Keep in mind that humans are fallible and mess things up.

● Though the silenced opinion is in error, it may, and very commonly does, contain a portion of truth; and since the general or prevailing opinion on any object is rarely or never the whole truth, it is only by the collision of adverse opinions that the remainder of the truth has any chance of being supplied.

● Even if the received opinion is not only true, but the whole truth, unless it is suffered to be, and is, vigorously and earnestly contested, it will be by most of those who receive it, be held in a manner of a prejudice with little comprehension or feeling of its rational grounds.

● The meaning of the doctrine itself will be in danger of being lost, or enfeebled, and deprived of its vital effect on the character and conduct: the dogma becoming a mere formal profession, inefficacious for good, but cumbering the ground, and preventing the growth of any real and heartfelt conviction, from reason or personal experience.

What Mill is getting at here is that if you don’t like something because of what you