Freedom, and its near-synonym liberty, shows up everywhere in the canon of American civic texts: in the Declaration of Independence, “The Star-Spangled Banner,” old war posters, patriotic songs, and protest anthems.
And this is more than just national mythology. Many of the facets of our country I personally hold most dear are rooted in the idea of freedom: slave resistance and abolitionism, the labor movement, the struggle to end Jim Crow, and so on. It really has moved Americans, in different and not infrequently contradictory ways, in shaping our common life. Thus, for example, the same idea can fund both support for untrammeled private enterprise (as freedom from unaccountable bureaucrats, pesky regulations, and useless red tape) and government and union involvement in regulating economic life (as freedom against the private tyranny exercised by unaccountable bosses over workers).
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