Liberty- the freedom to act as one chooses, with some reasonable restrictions, of course.
Webster’s Dictionary from 1913 lists several definitions for liberty. The third one has some interesting phrasing; “a privilege conferred by a superior power.” That’s noteworthy to Americans because the Declaration of Independence identifies that superior power as God and not a government. Anything a government can give, that same government can take away. That is why the principle of liberty coming from God is so significant to the plight of mankind. We hold certain rights to be untouchable from any Earthly creature while we acknowledge God as the true Founder of our liberty.
Senator Tim Kaine, a Democrat from Virginia, somehow disagrees with this fundamental American definition of liberty. Kaine said, “The notion that rights don’t come from laws and don’t come from the government, but come from the Creator — that’s what the Iranian government believes.” Kaine’s criticism demonstrates a misunderstanding of American Exceptionalism. Our Founders chose a higher power than themselves for origins of our most basic liberties. Doing so they explicitly rejected the idea that Kaine is advocating; that a government, or in the Founders’ case, a king, decides what is and who has liberty.
“Liberty means to be free of physical constraint or force,” writes C. Bradley Thompson in his book America’s Revolutionary Mind. Thompson continues, “American revolutionaries used the concept ‘liberty’ in two different but related senses: first, they understood liberty to be an existential fact of human nature…, and, second, they also understood liberty to be a moral requirement of human flourishing.”