Why It Must Be the People Who Preserve the Flame of Liberty | Barry Brownstein

https://fee.org/articles/why-it-must-be-the-people-who-preserve-the-flame-of-liberty/
We are learning that the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are not enough to maintain liberty. Freedom is maintained when a critical mass of the public acts in adherence to the timeless principles of individual liberty bequeathed to us.

The words in the Constitution, explains Eric Metaxas in his book If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty, “are merely deaf, dumb, and mute shapes of inert black ink.” “We the people,” not politicians, were intended to be “the keepers of the flame of liberty.”

In a 1787 letter, Ben Franklin wrote,

Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become more corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.

The Core American Virtue Is Vanishing
Virtue begins when we want the same freedom for others that we want for ourselves. If we love liberty, we “have a conviction that each individual is created equal to all others and that he has the same unalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

There is a growing conviction in America that only some have the right to free speech and not all have the right to be free from violence.

On college campuses, a recent survey shows that 46 percent believe First Amendment rights to free speech are outranked by “efforts to promote and enforce an inclusive society.”