American Liberty as an N-Dimensional Hypervolume

By Bob Ferris (this is cross-post from my Green Dreams site)

I have always been fascinated with the concept of an ecological niche being characterized as a n-dimensional hyper-volume defined by an infinite number of changing and interacting bio-physical factors.  Phew.  It makes my mind happy.  I like to think about stuff like this on my morning beach walks.  Unfortunately, this idea recently collided with an electronic discussion that I had involving members of a Libertarian organization trying to imply that Oregon was heading towards a "civil war." Their evidence was the recent corporate-sponsored senior prank executed by a group of Republican legislators who walked out and hid during the legislative session to avoid a vote they knew they would lose on cap and trade legislation.  A baby step towards doing something about climate change.  My discussions with the Libertarians really came down to a disagreement over liberty and how it was defined.

The group headquartered in the Northeast and wanting to spread its wings geographically sided with the pranksters as well as the militias and repeatedly argued that you were either with them (i.e., for liberty) or you were a Communist.  There did not seem to be any middle ground.  The bold boys (and they were all male) evidently held that liberty was a single point or maybe a collection of points along a line or in a geometric plane that was free from regulations, taxation, or any form of governmental control or interference.  I disagreed as my sense is that liberty as it was envisioned for the country is more of a hypervolume just like those ecological niches.

I suppose that liberty can be a jumble of points or perhaps a line if you have one person living on a desert island all alone.  But add another person to that island and liberty becomes an exercise of protecting your own and not compromising another's.  Liberty in a multi-person context becomes a set of rights and responsibilities.  No longer can you sing show tunes at three in the morning or pee wherever you want.  With each additional person the structure of liberty and the approaches to protect it become more and more complex.  I think the Founding Fathers understood the tricky and interactive nature of national-scale liberty.

When I was in school I was taught one idea per sentence and one theme per paragraph.  I suspect that Gouverneur Morris who wrote the Preamble was taught that too (in at least a couple of languages) and I suspect that is why the Preamble of the US Constitution reads like a carefully ordered recipe for achieving the desired level of liberty, for the most, and for the longest possible time.  Given the sensitivity for the individual, it was probably an optimization approach rather than one designed for maximization.  I would think that the nod to some individual liberties is a little like the carbon added to iron to make it steel (see below quote).  The iron and carbon analogy is helpful when looking at liberty as our Libertarian friends want all the carbon (personal liberty) they can get which is the recipe for steel blades that break or what is commonly known as pig iron.

“the dignity or moral importance of persons may compensate numbers.” Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746)

Essentially, American Liberty is probably a kind of a highest common denominator concept.  Moreover, this single-sentence paragraph weaves the fabric of national-scale liberty in a manner which implies that weakening any or all of these contributing factors lessens the probability of the latter.  It also is a cloth colored by inclusive words such as union, common, general, and our which give structure to the idea and set the theme of this applying to all of us together.  Roughly a century later Minister Francis Bellamy [1] wrote the Pledge of Allegiance that echoed this collective idea of "liberty and justice for all."  But others came before either.

"The good and happiness of the members, that is the majority of the members of the state, is the great standard by which every thing relating to that state must finally be determined." Joseph Priestley in The First Principles of Government and the Nature of Political, Civil and Religious Liberty (1768)

When you look at the above quote, and similar writings by Francis Hutcheson [2], Jeremy Bentham and other Utilitarians (all influenced by Epicurus), you understand too that the inherent principles of the Preamble did not form in isolation but came from other thinking before, during, and beyond the Revolution.  Few know Priestley now but he can be thought of as the Albert Einstein [3] of the 18th century in that he was a prominent scientist, theologian, and philosopher who left his native England for the intellectual freedom of America.   Joseph was also a friend of Thomas Jefferson as evidenced by more than 150 letters that passed between them and Dr. Priestley is said to have had a "...disproportionate influence on the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence and who framed the Constitution of the United States."

"...convinced that by ruining my family and distressing my friends by risking either, would only gratify the ignorant and malignant, I shall seek that livelihood in another land which I cannot peaceably gain in this."  Joseph Gales Sr. 1794

Priestley was also active in the founding and promotion of the Christian Unitarian Church which acted to reconcile religion and science and attracted the likes of English journalist Joseph Gales Sr and his wife Winifred Marshall who were chased out of England at about the same time as Priestley in 1794.  Gales was a friend of Thomas Paine and published Paine's works as well as those of Priestley.  I know Joseph and Winifred and this story because they are the last immigrants in my bloodline to come to the new world.  I remember a lot of these lost players and discussions for family reasons but others over the years have remembered them as well.

Gifford Pinchot in setting up the US Forest Service coined the phrase: The greatest good to the greatest number of people for the longest time.  His slogan riffs on the words of Jeremy Bentham and also incorporates themes expressed in the Preamble by adding the dimension of time.  Pinchot would have appreciated the idea of the hypervolume as he embraced science and helped found the Yale School of Forestry with the backing of his father.  Pinchot and his brother Amos also joined with Theodore Roosevelt in 1912 in the founding of the Progressive Party which became know as the Bull Moose Party when Republicans of the times were divorcing themselves from the conservation movement launched by Roosevelt and others such as John Muir.  Additionally, Roosevelt was also a fan of Gouverneur Morris so much so that he wrote his biography.

But back to the idea of American Liberty as a hypervolume.  Some might object to my mixing of this scientific terminology with the political.  Too eggheaded.  Too complicated.  I do it for two reasons.  The first is that my idea of ideal liberty is probably different than yours which means that my liberty is defined by a different axis (i.e., dimension) or volume (set of axises) than yours.  Much as I'd like to think mine is a straight and consistent vector it is not and changes with time and conditions as I suspect the vectors of others do as well.  We are human too so we blink on and then off, we multiply, and we move.  Since a hypervolume happens when the dimensions number four or more we are clearly there with nearly 330 million of these often squiggly constructs to consider.

My second reason for using the term is that it is applied to a concept developed nearly two and half centuries ago by some extremely well-educated men who fully embraced the most modern and scientific concepts of their time.  They were hungry for these ideas and proudly carried the banner of the Age of Reason.  I am confident that they would embrace this or something similar to this usage.  They would gravitate to the most complicated and then slice it and dice it in order to understand it. 

In ecological niches those conditions within the confines of the hypervolume tend to support the critter's existence and those outside tend not to.  Viewed through this ecological lens the fossil fuel industry externalizing the environmental costs of their pollution and corrupting legislatures to facilitate that while curbing needed actions on climate change would clearly be outside of even the most generous interpretation of this optimized hypervolume of liberties.  The same would be true of operations like Walmart where society enables the family's profits by subsidizing their workforce while greasing the skids of our manufacturing decline and adding to trade deficits with China.   And I would add that this hypervolume defined by the Preamble would not include nor even consider the notion that everyone has the right to own whatever ordinance in whatever amount they so desire just so arms companies can expand or maintain sales in times of relative peace and that individuals can spray the landscape with lead.  Translated into biological terms it is easy to see why conditions equivalent to these would limit the life expectancy of an animal or population.   Why is it so hard to understand that in the world of the economic and political?

As one can see from the above and the supporting notes below I feel that the Declaration of Independence, the Revolutionary War, and the US Constitution are a little like a Family and Friends plan [4].  This is probably why I was so offended by Trump's 4th of July performance where it was all about the military and very little about the Founding Fathers on the day meant to celebrate their ideas, courage, and sacrifice.  It is like wanting to celebrate the achievements of the honor society at a school but spending your time talking about the football team.  But it is more than that.

The Founding Fathers were thought leaders taking us away from the blind faith and mysticism of religion (while maintaining the best of its moral teachings) and towards developing science and enlightenment.  That is why thinkers, scientists, and journalists like Paine, Priestly, and Gales came to America and flourished [5].  Trump, his evangelical choir willing to believe anything, and others like those who freaked out when the Declaration of Independence was tweeted by NPR in 2017 or the Libertarian group above are madly throwing salt on the fertile fields where this great experiment was launched.  It is not hard to imagine hearing the sound of 56 disapproving cane tips pounding angrily on the floor of Independence Hall in protest.  Hopefully enough others hear the din too in order to affect change.

*****

On a More Personal Note:

[1]

"Bellamy was a Christian socialist who "championed 'the rights of working people and the equal distribution of economic resources, which he believed was inherent in the teachings of Jesus.'" In 1891, Bellamy was "forced from his Boston pulpit for preaching against the evils of capitalism", and eventually stopped attending church altogether after moving to Florida, reportedly because of the racism he witnessed there. Francis's career as a preacher ended because of his tendency to describe Jesus as a socialist. In the 21st century, Bellamy is considered an early American democratic socialist."  From Wikipedia biography of Francis Bellamy

It is interestingly ironic that elements of the forces that argue for the more individualistic and selfish vision of liberty often cling to and revere both the "We the People" phrase and the Pledge of Allegiance not knowing the history of either nor the strongly held beliefs of the authors.  Gouverneur Morris who penned the Preamble and most of the Constitution was an advocate of a strong federal government who wanted to limit state power.  Reverend Bellamy was a Socialist Christian minister who also believed in an absolute separation between church and state.  Both men have ties to Revolutionary War financier Robert Morris in that Gouverneur worked for the older and unrelated Robert and Francis was born in Mount Morris, New York that was named to honor the gentleman who stepped forward with money when it was needed.  My mother read a biography of Robert Morris while she was pregnant with me.  My middle name of Morris relates to brothers Lewis and Gouverneur, but my mother insists that my love of fishing comes from her reading that book as Robert Morris loved to fish and often did so with George Washington and Gouverneur Morris (see Washington as an Angler here)

[2] Francis Hutcheson was a prominent Presbyterian minister and educator in Dublin at the same time as my ancestor Robert Alexander was training for the ministry before heading to the Colonies in 1736.  It would have been hard for Robert not to have had contact with Francis and his ideas.  And harder still for Robert to not pass lessons learned on to his students at the Augusta Academy which eventually became Washington and Lee University after spending time being Liberty Academy about the time of the Revolution.  Robert's grandson Archibald was the fourth president of Hampden-Sydney College (James Madison and Patrick Henry were early trustees) and the founding president of Princeton Theological Seminary.  Hampden-Sydney named for two champions of and martyrs to personal and religious liberty (John Hampden and Algernon Sydney) and started in late 1775 near settlements of displaced Scotch-Irish in Virginia was probably like a match thrown in a pile of already warmed gunpowder.

"Indeed, the original students eagerly committed themselves to the revolutionary effort, organized a militia-company, drilled regularly, and went off to the defenses of Williamsburg, and of Petersburg, in 1777 and 1778 respectively. Their uniform of hunting-shirts - dyed purple with the juice of pokeberries - and grey trousers justifies the College's traditional colors, garnet and grey."  From the History of Hampden-Sydney College.

[3] It has also been said that Priestley was the Abbie Hoffman of his time but I think that works for Thomas Paine better.  It is illustrative to read Paine's critique of Gouverneur's oration at the funeral of Alexander Hamilton to get a notion how Paine might attack those who were once colleagues when they digressed from the purity of Paine's democratic vision.  There is a little bit of the personal here as Gouverneur had both a withered arm and was missing a leg.   I suspect much of that was due to Gouverneur's lack of effort to get Paine released from French prison when Morris was serving as American Minister to France, Paine was a man of fans and detractors.

[4] I have often struggled with the task of characterizing how and where my family participated in the events leading up to the American Revolution and the forming of this nation which is an exercise every bit as complicated as this notion of a hypervolume.  Some of it is easy.  Lewis Morris signed the Declaration of Independence as a representative of New York.  Lewis and the Lewises who came before him are direct ancestors making Gouverneur Morris a long ago uncle celebrated in the middle names of my great-grandfather and my grandmother.  Similarly Joseph Gales Sr. is remembered in the names of my great-great-grandfather, great-uncle, and my sister.  George Washington was a friend of Gouverneur's, but also of Quaker ancestor Benjamin Chew and dined with a young Andrew Ramsay and his wife at Mount Vernon.  It goes on and on much like a well-stirred bowl of spaghetti with strands of angry and educated Scotch-Irish from Ulster, a smattering of exiled Scots that didn't bounce first in Ireland, a fistful of Huguenots, and a collection of Englishmen and women booted or pushed across the pond for various reasons--some religious and others political.  Been there, done that, have the t-shirt.  

[5]

[] I believe that the reverse of this is true as well in that scientists want to leave or not go to areas that do not welcome or respect new ideas or eduction.  The Agricultural Department scientists objecting to being transferred from Washington, DC where 53% of the population have college degrees to Kansas City where only 33% have obtained this level of education is a good example of scientists gravitating to or wanting to stay in areas of enlightenment rather than those where education appears less valued.