Part of my college essays series: This is one of the essays I wrote during the political theory general exam for my PhD. The exam was an approximately 15-hour marathon session, involving 6 out of 12 essay questions, for a final total of 33 double-spaced pages written without access to any notes or sources.
In this essay I will address how the American framers conceived of liberty as well as how the Constitution they designed was supposed to secure it and whether it has in fact done so. Stating my conclusions right out, which I will then seek to explain and justify as best I can in the space and time allotted, I think that though the Constitution was a grand and very admirable attempt at securing liberty it was at the outset doomed to failure in the long run in large part due to inner contradictions and inadequate safeguards.
By and large the framers, and the American people in general, conceived of liberty in Lockean and republican terms. Locke’s influence was particularly prevalent owing largely to the influence of John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon’s Cato’s Letters, which popularized and enhanced the popularity of Lockean individual rights arguments. This is not to neglect the importance of republicanism and of Christianity; the framers in particular were steeped in republicanism, and Christianity was indeed a formative influence on the early Americans, particularly through the thousands of fiery political sermons of the day, many of which also employed Lockean rights language (such as Elisha Williams in particular, but also Jonathan Mayhew and John Allen).
However, liberalism and republicanism were in tension from the outset, and Christianity has been employed effectively in support of both sides. On the one hand, the sole justification and purpose of government is the protection of each and every individual’s rights to life, liberty, and property. Consistently applied this means that all morals legislation and economic regulation are unjust and invalid. On the other hand, republicans like Algernon Sidney and John Adams feared that liberty unrestrained will degenerate into license, that virtue ought to be promoted and/or required, and vice discouraged and/or prohibited, with the coercive and legal power of the state; and that republican or civic virtue is necessary and must be somehow enforced and inculcated in the people if liberty and the republic are to be sustained. While some liberals have and continue to deny the virtue of virtue, ethical neutrality or relativism is not an inherent feature of liberalism and many liberals do indeed hold and advocate firm moral convictions.