Freedom is not a treasure to hoard but an inheritance for Americans to pass on - The Dallas Morning News

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Three weeks separate the anniversary of the Constitution’s ratification from our commemoration of independence from Great Britain. There’s something poetic in first observing the adoption of our final and continuing form of government, followed by celebrating the declaration of self-determination which it fulfills. The quick succession of Ratification Day and Independence Day offers a special opportunity for national self-reflection.

But it’s an opportunity we almost always miss. The story we tell ourselves about our triumphal march from ragtag rebels to self-governing citizens omits the middle chapter. The Constitution wasn’t our first constitution. Why do we hear so little about the space between “We hold these truths to be self-evident,” and “To form a more perfect union”?

Before we had union, we tried confederation. The Second Continental Congress approved the Articles of Confederation, our first national charter, in 1777. The states officially ratified it in 1781. The Articles governed the new nation from the start of the Revolutionary War to the ratification of the Constitution.

Our national memory has little room for the Articles. That’s a shame. Without giving this document and the government it created its due, our political self-understanding will never be complete.

Few Americans even know what the Articles are, but those who do tend to think little of our first constitution. Excessive concern for state sovereignty created a central government that was weak, indecisive and ineffective. In contrast, the Constitution embraced a much stronger and more expansive national state, one empowered to govern according to the public good.

However, this casual dismissal can’t be sustained by the weight of historical evidence.

It’s true that ambitious nation-building schemes were impossible under the Articles. That was a feature, not a bug. The intention of the Articles was to preserve freedom through decentralization and concurrence.

As historian E. James Ferguson, an authority on the early republic, writes, “The Articles of Confederation ... [emphasized] defense of local rights against central authority. The Articles were designed to safeguard liberty.” Contrary to the narrative of dysfunctional public finance and civil turmoil, government under the Articles was mostly lawful and orderly.

When ideas are forgotten, it usually has to do with those whose profession is cultivating and transmitting ideas. Most historians and political scientists treat the Articles with contemptuous neglect. The reason is likely the same as why they lionize the Federalists: intellectuals are inordinately fond of grand political projects that combine the romance of revolution with the apotheosis of ambition.

And to be fair to the intellectuals, the Constitution is far more interesting than the Articles. The question facing the colonists-turned-statesmen was how to create a government that would respond to the needs of citizens without abusing its power. The solution embodied in the Articles was as effective as it was inelegant: states retained their sovereignty and the confederal government only had those powers that were expressly delegated. (Unlike the Constitution’s 10th Amendment, the word “expressly” was included in the Articles’s relevant portion.)

This approach might best be summed up as: The only winning move is not to play.

But ever since philosophers advised the tyrants of ancient Greece, intellectuals have wanted more than anything to play the game. And with the Constitution, they have a beautifully set-up game board. The political architecture — checks and balances, separation of powers, reserved rights — designed to empower a protective and productive state, while forestalling a predatory state, is elegant indeed.

Furthermore, the Constitution’s intentional ambiguity on several issues means the nature of the republic will be forever shaped by the intellectual battles of the age. This whets the mind’s appetite like nothing else can.

It matters that we remember the Articles. Without acknowledging the transition from confederation to union, our civic commemorations each summer inadvertently devolve into complacency. Freedom is never a completed event or finished project. There’s no such thing as one-and-done when it comes to self-governance. The Articles remind us that each political decision is simultaneously small-c constitutional craftsmanship. By its very nature, liberty is a continual choice.

To borrow from St. Paul: America is free, she is becoming free, and she hopes to be free. We forget who we are if we focus only on the first of these. Overlooking the second act of our national performance causes us to treat freedom as a treasure to hoard. We’re supposed to treat it as an inheritance pass on. By remembering the Articles of Confederation, we become better stewards of our birthright.

Alexander William Salter is an associate professor of economics at Texas Tech University and a research fellow at the university’s Free Market Institute. He wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.

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