In his recent book Last Call for Liberty, Os Guinness adopts as his theme the idea that our culture is riven between those who walk in the traditions of two historical revolutions: The American revolution of 1776 and the French revolution of 1789.
Borrowing Guinness' motif we might ask which of these traditions informs our own thinking. How do we regard the freedoms vouchsafed in the first two amendments to the United States' Constitution? Indeed, how do we think of freedom itself?
Do we believe, for instance, that individuals have the right to voice whatever they believe to be true as long as they neither inflict nor encourage physical or economic harm to others?
Should individuals who disagree with the consensus on matters of race, science, gender, politics or religion be free to express those views without being sanctioned and compelled to silence? Should people have to risk being assaulted, losing their jobs or being shouted down merely because their views are unpopular?
If you believe that certain unpopular views are offensive and hateful and that no one should have the right to voice them publicly then you stand in what Guinness calls the tradition of 1789.
If you believe that minority views should be granted the same rights as majority views and that minority opinions should be countered not with rudeness, violence or the loss of one's livelihood but with superior arguments respectfully formulated, then you stand in the tradition of 1776.
If you believe that people should be free to practice their religion even if it inconveniences someone else, as long as it does others no physical harm, then you stand in the tradition of 1776.
On the other hand, if you believe that those who hold religious beliefs that run counter to the popular consensus on race, science, gender, etc. should be compelled to conform to the consensus beliefs then you stand in the tradition of 1789.
The French philosopher Jean Jacques Rousseau wrote in 1762, that "Whoever refuses to pay obedience to the general will (i.e. the state) shall be liable to be compelled to it by the force of the whole body. And this is in effect nothing more than that he may be compelled to be free."
Rousseau's disciples have ever since taken him to be condoning state coercion of not only behavior but also of speech.
Liberty encompasses freedom to and freedom from. In the 1776 tradition the freedom to hold and voice opinions, to practice one's religion and to be free from needless government constraint are prized.
Another French philosopher, Voltaire, has been credited with having declared that he may disagree with what you say, but he will fight to the death for your right to say it. If he indeed did say this then he walked in the tradition of 1776.
Those who today impose speech codes on campus, who police politically correct expressions, who shout down speakers with whom they disagree walk arm in arm with those who imposed the French Terror in the wake of 1789.
Moreover, if you believe that the second amendment confers upon individuals the right to defend their families, themselves and their property you're following the path of the American founders. If you believe that no such right accrues to individuals, nor should accrue, then you're following the path of those who rose to power in the immediate aftermath of the French revolution.
The 1776 tradition holds that individual persons are significant because each is endowed by his or her Creator with certain inalienable rights. The 1789 tradition, or at least the mindset that arose in the wake of 1789, holds that the individual is simply a cog in the grand machinery of the state and has only those rights which the state deigns to grant. The state is everything, the individual is nothing.
The thinking of 1789 led quickly to a bloodbath by guillotine from 1792 to 1794 in which as many as 40,000 persons were slaughtered, and that pattern reemerged in the Russian revolution of 1917 which produced Stalin and the deaths of millions, and also in Mao's Cultural Revolution in the 1960s which led to the deaths of millions more.
If you believe that individuals have dignity, worth and certain inalienable rights you will feel a kinship with the American founders. If you believe that individuals are of value only insofar as they're useful to the state then you'll feel a kinship with the French Jacobins, the Stalinists and the Maoists who sought to carry this view to its logical conclusion and who would do so again today in Europe and in the U.S. if ever they're allowed to rise to power.