July 4th was Independence Day here in the United States. Since I was on a plane on the way home from vacation that day, I missed the usual festivities: barbecue, fireworks, and the like. Not being a huge fan of potato salad, I didn't mind that so much. :-) It seemed an equally fitting (and perhaps less gastronomically unsettling) way to observe the occasion to contemplate, in whatever place I happened to find myself at the moment, what the occasion means to me. Perhaps because I was traveling, amid the heightened airport security that exists nowadays, I found myself thinking in particular of the opening of Paul Craig Roberts' article, "The Constitutional Protection of Economic Freedom", which I didn't have with me at the time but can quote from now:

"A person born in one of the Western democracies before the turn of the [20th] century was born a private individual. He was born into a world where his existence was attested by his mere physical presence -- without documents, forms, permits, licenses, orders, lists of currency carried in and out, identity cards, draft cards, ration cards, exit stamps, customs declarations, questionnaires, tax forms, reports in multiplicate, Social Security number, or other authentications of his being, birth, nationality, status, beliefs, creed or right to be, enter, leave, move about, work, trade, purchase, dwell. He was born into a world where a person could travel anywhere on the face of the earth, except Russia and Turkey, without need of a passport, visa, or identity card. He was born into a world of freedom of movement of people, money, and ideas. A confident 19th-century futurology predicted that the 20th century would find him freer still."

The passage had stuck in my mind, I think because it casts an interesting and uncommon light back in time toward the classical liberal values that animated the American Revolution: deliberate constraint of government power, respect for the natural rights and diverse objectives of individuals, and a passion for liberty of all kinds. David Kelley's recent article, which skillfully tied those values back further still to key elements of Enlightenment philosophy, was also in the forefront of my mind. Imperfect though my country is, I do love it dearly when it holds true to these founding principles, and admire others when they do the same. I hope the world hasn't yet seen its last golden age of freedom...