Common Good vs. Individual Freedom
When the English Parliament and Crown enclosed their views with undue fiscal and theoretical restrictions upon the citizens of the North American colonies, the men who would become known as America's Founding Fathers rejoined with a quick, powerful, rhetorical and later military response. These politicians cum philosophers approached the legal authorities with the disdain of an unjust ruler, purporting instead a policy of individual rights protected by a government that allows for the common good. To the leaders at the Continental Congress in Philadelphia, the liberties of all men were clear; "They are entitled to life, liberty, and property."1 In their actualization of these beliefs, they created a system that mixed the importance of individual liberties with the great need to protect the common good in a careful balance that is the basis of the American political paradigm. The great thinkers of pre-Revolution America adopted a synthesized political ideology that made use of newly en vogue democratic approaches and common sense in the creation of a new republic. Both before and after July 1776, American republicanism melded the call for the protection of liberties that ought to be guaranteed the individual with the need to
As the colonies struggled to insert themselves in the supposedly-involved government provided by the English Constitution, they found that they were unable to participate. "The foundation of English liberty," they conclude in their Declaration of Rights (1774) at Philadelphia, "and of all free government, is a right in the people to participate in their legislative council."4 This right guarantees both the protection of the individual and that of the common good in the balanced format that colors of all American politics. They further define this balance in the next resolution, "That the respective colonies are entitled to the common law of England, and more especially to the great and inestimable privilege of being tried by their peers of the vicinage, according to the course of that law."5 III.That it is inseparably essential to the freedom of a people, and the undoubted right of the Englishmen, that no taxes be imposed on them, but with their own consent, given personally, or by these representatives.6 II.That His Majesty's liege subjects in these colonies, are entitled to the inherent rights and liberties of his natural born subjects within the kingdom of Great-Britain. The Founding Fathers' obsession with republican formulas is bound in the documents and lives of Jefferson, Adams, Hamilton, Franklin, Madison, and others. Each make use of texts external to the colonies, like Common Sense by Thomas Paine. Paine, a corset maker's son who turned down his apprenticeship for scholarly examination of the public realm, directly influenced Benjamin Franklin with his plea for American Revolution and a further republican discourse in The Rights of Man. "These are the times that try men's souls," he writes.3 govern a large amount of people and protect their common g
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Approximate Word count = 1204
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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