New Hampshire’s “live free or die” motto expresses a core value deeply embedded in our culture and our government.
People who cherish freedom don’t need large government. They don’t to impose their beliefs with a book of codes enforced by the point of a sword.
That’s what unfree societies do.
These reflections come to mind on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
Al-Qaida didn’t have an official motto. But its leader, its cells and its foot soldiers lived by a code that functioned as one: “a book that guides and a sword that leads to victory,” as the head of ISIS phrased it.
Variations of that quote appear throughout jihadi messaging.
That’s the polar opposite of “live free or die.”
If you think of political ideology as a range from anarchy to totalitarianism, New Hampshire would not be all the way in the libertarian zone. But you could see it from the top of Mt. Washington.
On the other end is a cluster of ideologies that value uniformity of belief. Whether they’re left-wing or right-wing, religious or secular, individual freedom is a not a cherished value.
The 25th anniversary of the September 11th attacks is a time to reflect on many things, among them the heroism so vividly displayed by everyday Americans suddenly confronted with unimaginable terror.
As you read the tributes and the think pieces, it’s worth taking a moment to be thankful for the legacy of liberty that was tested that day.
No state has weathered that test better than New Hampshire, where generations of Granite Staters carved a free and open society from the rocky hills and valleys of this pretty little plot of earth.
It might not have gone this way. New England was not always so free. Our history has its own dark periods of intolerance, repression and government-imposed conformity. Thankfully, through trial and error, anger and shouting, deliberation and debate, our ancestors chose liberty.
This year’s anniversaries—250 years of liberty, 25 years of a rebirth of barbarism—make it easy to speculate about the next 250 years.
Will our children and grandchildren build communities that embrace our values? Or will they reject the “boisterous sea of liberty,” as Jefferson put it?
An enduring legacy of September 11 is an accelerated collapse of trust in American institutions combined with a rise in safety-ism. Voices on the left and right urge us to grant the government ever greater power to protect citizens not only from external threats, but from all manner of internal ones, real or imagined.
Madison warned repeatedly of this.
“Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of the freedom of the people, by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power, than by violent and sudden usurpations,” he said in his speech to the Virginia Ratifying Convention on June 6, 1788. “But on a candid examination of history, we shall find that turbulence, violence and abuse of power, by the majority trampling on the rights of the minority, have produced factions and commotions, which, in republics, have more frequently than any other cause, produced despotism.”
In 1802, an 80-year-old Samuel Adams shared with Thomas Paine his worry that the new nation would lose its liberty in the constant struggle of one faction to impose its will on others.
“Neither religion nor liberty can long subsist in the tumult of altercation, and amidst the noise and violence of faction,” he wrote.
As we reflect on the meaning and legacy of that awful September morning, we should also remember the warnings our Founders left us centuries before. They foresaw that their descendants could lose their liberty in the convulsions caused by terrible events.
Our children and grandchildren will one day look to us for guidance when they face their own tribulations. What will they find? Will they see that we held our inheritance firmly? Or will they see that we loosened our grip, letting it drift away on clouds of dust and darkness?
