Our Revolutionaries' Rallying Cries (essay)

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It's useful sometimes to ponder the inspirational writings of other times which most of us today apparently still revere, in order to think about how well our policies and actions today fit the ideals our forefathers set out before us more than two centuries ago.

Among these are, of course, the inalienable rights articulated in the American Declaration of Independence: (1) the fact that all of us are equal to each other at the time we are born, and (2) that we all equally have - and cannot lose -  certain rights including, but not limited to (a) the right to live, (b) the right to be independent and free, and (c) the right to pursue our own well-being, self-interests, ambitions, and prosperity.

Also worthy of re-examination are the three aspirations in the rallying cry of the French Revolution from about a dozen years after the distribution of the classic American document:  "Liberté," "Egalité," and "Fraternité."

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It cannot be entirely overlooked that these two iconic slogans come from quite different kinds of expression - the American document being a sober, closely reasoned explanation for the several colonies along the American east coast to separate themselves and their political institutions from the British state in order to establish an independent nation; and the three-fold exclamation of the French being a rallying cry of the revolutionaries in the streets as they set out to destroy the government and the social order that had been oppressing them.

This difference does not invalidate all comparisons between the two statements, however, although as we try to apply their significance to our own situation today, we should keep in mind the differences in the social and political situations in which each proved vital.

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Of course it is tempting to consider, from the Americans, the inalienable right to "liberty" as the same ideal as that espoused on the streets of Paris in 1789: la liberté.  But we should at least pause to note that the Americans were thinking perhaps even more of the one meaning of "liberty" than the other, of the independence of their political state from the mother state across the Atlantic perhaps even more than the individual's personal freedom to act according to her or his own will, without coercion by others.  The latter was the sole preoccupation of the French revolutionaries, whose personal freedom had been much more severely limited in Europe than had the personal freedom of most Americans for several generations.

The American right to "liberty," then, was more complex semantically than the French "la liberté," and - we might add - more coolly and rationally experienced too than the passionate French cry in the streets.

But it is fair to say that the personal freedom to live as one chose was a core value for both the American and the French revolutionaries.

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The concept of equality at birth in our Declaration of Independence seems exactly the same as the French call for "égalité" generally throughout the population.  Both in France and America, sentiment was strongly opposed to rigid social hierarchy, to a ruling aristocracy of the noble and rich in a social order in which it was virtually impossible for a person to move from a lower social position into which she or he happened to be born into a higher class of wealth, respect, and power.

Yes, the American colonies themselves had already provided "new beginnings" for many to move upward in social wealth and class while France had not provided such opportunities.  But for both the French and the Americans, it was considered an essential good that no one born into poverty or financial insecurity and absence of social distinction should be entrapped at the bottom for one's whole life.

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So in regard to personal Freedom and Equality of opportunity, the French and American revolutionaries were espousing and pursuing the same elevated goals.

Incidentally, it was also a shared value to claim these as natural rights, rights with which a person is endowed merely by virtue of being a living human being, rights which do not need to be earned and which may not be lost.  To the Americans, as we can all recall, it was "self-evident" that life, equality, freedom, and the pursuit of one's own good are "inalienable" rights, rights that may not be "alienated" or separated from the individual.  The three-fold French rallying cry was soberly articulated in "La Declaration universelle des droits de l'homme [The Universal Declaration of the Rights of Man] in which one's sacred rights are called "impréscriptible" - a legalistic term meaning "indefeasible," that which cannot legally be annulled, cannot be given away by or taken away from the individual.

Indefeasible and inalienable are very nearly the same.

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So Freedom and Equality are for both American and French leaders innate, sacred rights.  That leaves undiscussed, from the American document, Life and "the Pursuit of Happiness" and, from the impassioned French motto, that perhaps puzzling ideal of "Fraternité."

The natural right to Life seems easy enough to understand.  It is not listed by the French presumably just because it was presumed.

"Fraternity" (sometimes translated as "brotherhood") is a state of mind in which the individual considers every other individual as an equal member of her or his own family, as an equal sister or brother.  It is not a right to feel this way toward all others, not a right to treat all others as though they were equal members of your own family.  It's the other way around.  One's right is to be considered and to be treated as though one were an equal sibling of everyone else.

This is a powerful French moral commandment, perhaps not mentioned among the American inalienable rights only because consistent faithfulness to such a rigorous moral imperative seems unrealistic.  Wouldn't it be something if every American today could live knowing that all other Americans would consider him a brother or her a sister!

By the way, modern French culture is considered among the world's most secular, but this fundamental French ideal seems about as Christian an aspiration as one could imagine.

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What did our forefathers mean by "the pursuit of happiness"?  It is an inbred right for an individual to seek to achieve his or her own "happiness."  We are not talking here, in other words, about seeking a good thing for everybody else or for all people.  That's not prohibited, of course, but it is not the natural right being considered here. 

"Happiness" also seems not to be something superficial either, a state of pleasure that quickly passes away.  It would seem out of place to mention seeking sensual delight along with life and liberty, wouldn't it?

On the other hand, it might be going too far to recall that for the educated elite of the 18th century, it was commonplace to say the greatest happiness is achieved by maintaining the highest virtue.  That kind of preachy platitude would also seem out of place here.

But our forefathers did want to guarantee that everyone would feel empowered to pursue the basic things needed to make anyone happy: enough money, adequate shelter and food, security - that sort of thing - along with the freedom to go where one wants and to do what one thinks best, and together with an equal chance at success as everyone else.

So I would paraphrase "the right to pursue happiness" as "the right to strive for our own well-being, our own self-interest and ambitions."

This kind of concept is not articulated in the French call for "Freedom, Equality, and 'Brotherhood,'" but in the Universal Declaration of the Rights of Mankind, both "security" and "property" are listed as "natural rights."  In the largely agricultural economy of 18th century France (or America), assured ownership of land ("property") was considered the key to one's well-being, and the pursuit of happiness might usually consist of one's seeking to own property.  The more general formulation of the American Declaration  - "the right to pursue happiness" rather than "the right to own property" - helps apply the principle to more varied times and conditions, but is not significantly different in meaning from the French document.

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Assuming, then, that we generally understand the foundational ideals of both the American and the French revolutionaries, how are we doing today in our attempts to live up to their ideals?

First, I suppose someone might point out the contradiction between early Americans' saying that Life itself is a right that cannot be taken away from every human individual and, on the other hand, the practice of capital punishment in 32 American states today.  Most of those executed are African-Americans or Latinos, or mentally ill, if not both.

Also, I don't think we need to point out that the French revolutionaries' call for all of us to consider everyone else as our brothers and sisters is a noble aspiration but perhaps a naive expectation.

But what about the rights of Equality, Freedom, and the Pursuit of one's own well-being?  

  

8 - The Pursuit of "Happiness"

The curious thing to us might be the felt need in 1776 to even mention that a person has a right to seek his or her own good.  It seems only normal: of course, a person would try to secure advantage for oneself and one's family! What else can we expect?  That the individual has an innate right to strive for what's needed for one's own well-being is today so non-controversial as to seem to many of us as not even worth mentioning.

It is striking, then, to recall that indeed both in France in 1789 and in British America in 1776, it was controversial to say that seeking one's own advantage is a sacred right for any person regardless of birth, wealth, or social class.  Without even mentioning the dark-skinned slaves in America - who had no rights at all, natural or legal - we have to remind ourselves that most people in the world in the 18th century were considered to be right where they should be, doing what they should be doing, and it was considered not normal but something close to criminal for a peasant to try to make himself into an artisan or a merchant, or for a house servant to seek to go out on her own, or for a farm laborer to work toward buying his own farm, or for anyone just to move to a different community where conditions might be better.   

So it was a bold, indeed a revolutionary statement in 1775-1790 to claim that every human being, just by being human, had an irrevocable right to pursue his or her own well-being, and was not forced to depend on the largesse (or the whim) of someone else just to get along.

But today, that right is granted by everyone to all.  Success!

9 - Equality

But let's not get carried away.
 

How are we doing in insuring that all men and women are treated equally by all?  Does a Latino born to a poor family in an unhealthy, crime-ridden neighborhood have an equal chance to succeed in America today?  An African-American?  A recent immigrant with a Muslim-seeming name?  No one would seriously make such a claim, would they? 

a.  The quality of schools in poor neighborhoods is lower than in richer neighborhoods, not to mention in the most expensive private schools that only the richest families can afford.  

b.  We seem to discover more every day how unequally law enforcement officers and court systems treat minority and poor Americans.

c.   High quality health care is not as accessible to the poor, the working poor, or even those solidly in the middle-class in our country and time as it is to the wealthiest around us.

d.   Even quality nutrition is unequally available to various subcultures in America today.

I don't know about France, but in America today in our laws, policies, and practices we are clearly failing to honor the most basic truth which was self-evident to the founders of our nation.  All men and women are created equal.  But we don't mind treating others as though a few of them were better than we are, and many of those others are probably inferior, beneath our notice.

We don't mind that the families and the neighborhoods into which boys and girls are born are far from equal and that the probabilities are stacked against them in modern America just as surely as they were against the poorest peasants in feudal Europe centuries ago.

Do we need revolutionary cries in the street to wake us up again?
  

10 - Freedom?  

The very heart of the revolutions in America and France almost 250 years ago was to overthrow the rigid regime of a brittle social order unfairly and brutally imprisoning men and women who were willing to work hard and to be responsible, imprisoning them in positions of weakness, insecurity, moral hazard, and relentless oppression.  To free one and all from the strictures of a super-rich aristocracy whose wealth and power put everyone else in their less-lofty places and held them there till they died: that was the goal of our revolution.

We claim to agree with our founders' basic values, with their views of the most fundamental self-evident truths.  

But we have created systems and institutions and have inculcated cultural values that have made a mockery of our professed convictions about our natural rights.  The extraordinary chasm that today divides the Rich from the Middle-Wealthy, and the Super-Rich from all the rest of us has stolen from the vast majority of Americans  any realistic possibility to move from a position of relatively low wealth and power higher up in the social-political order.  Like the lower classes in the 1600s and 1700s in America and Europe, Americans today are destined by the accident of their birth into a particular social stratum to remain there or nearly there despite all their efforts to better themselves, to strive for their own self-interest and ambitions, their own well-being.

We have succeeded in taking from them their inborn right to the pursuit of happiness by denying that all of us are equal, deserving equal respect and social privileges, equal opportunities to move ahead.

And by denying their right to equality, we have cut them off from the freedom that they deserve and that they need in order to go after the social mobility all Americans have been promised since the Declaration of Independence.

Let's begin today to make the changes necessary so that we as a people can return to the paths of virtue and honor put forth for us by our ancestors.



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