OSSOFF: “FREEDOM IS RARE”

Freedom is rare. Stretching back beyond the horizon of recorded history, most humans who have ever lived have lived at the mercy of lords and masters and kings. But we're a nation founded on the rejection of kingdom. We're a nation founded on the radical idea that all human beings have a natural right to liberty.

— Senator Jon Ossoff

The radical idea, then, and (sadly) now, is that all human beings have a natural right to liberty. To freedom. After two hundred and fifty years of push and shove, of struggle and victory, only to be followed by struggle again, we find ourselves and our fellows hard at the defense of their natural right to liberty. After two hundred and fifty years, Senator Ossoff can say, in truth: “Freedom is rare.”

Think about that. If you’ve grown up in these United States, you’ve always been told that freedom is our natural right, “endowed by our Creator”. But look around, Ossoff tells us. There’ve always been “lords and masters and kings” - always, that is, until Thomas Paine said “No kings!” and Thomas Jefferson said the people have a right “to alter or abolish” the government, and replace it. The radical idea of freedom.

The Democratic Creed begins with an even more radical idea: that all people are created equal. If freedom is rare, equality is (or was then) simply unheard of. Yet, that is where the Democratic Creed begins.

If all people are created equal, then no one can claim a natural right to rule someone else. Freedom (Jefferson called it “liberty”) can’t be bestowed upon you, not by a king or an aristocrat or a government, not even by a popular majority. Freedom is a natural right because all people are created equal.

All people are created equal, with no natural right to rule over others. So, how is it that we have governments? Well, we freely consent to being governed, by asking others to govern us. But they do so under the law. It’s an employment contract, and just as we can choose who governs us, we can remove and replace them if they fail us.

Equality leads inexorably to freedom, to justice under the law, to the opportunity to thrive, to democracy through our consent to be governed.

This is the Democratic Creed - all of its principles tie together: Equality. Freedom, Justice, and Opportunity. Democracy. Not separate ideas, but ideas that depend on one another.

“Freedom is rare.” Indeed, it is. It flows naturally from our equality. A radical idea, 250 years old, surviving only because people have protected and defended it. Generations before ours and generations after ours - keeping that radical idea alive.