Labor Day 2021

There is a still lively debate as to whether Peter McGuire or Matthew Maguire should be credited as the Founder of Labor Day. You can review the particulars of the debate on the Department of Labor's "History of Labor Day" page. What is not in dispute is that on June 28, 1894, President Grover Cleveland signed a law making the first Monday in September of each year a national holiday. The origin of an annual holiday to honor working men and women was clearly rooted in the organized labor movement, and it is certainly appropriate, on Labor Day, to acknowledge the generally positive historical contributions of private sector (non-government) labor unions to the nation's economic progress.

But here I wish to draw attention to the relationship between the labor of individuals, the creation of private property by virtue of such labor, and freedom. To do so, below is material that I have largely published previously, including on previous Labor Days. To my mind, while I will happily credit either Peter McGuire or Matthew Maguire as a founder of Labor Day – by the way, they both attended the country’s Labor Day parade in New York City in 1894 – for my purposes, it is more important today to recall how Abraham Lincoln resorted to the Declaration of Independence and the nation's Founders in thinking about the connection between labor, property, and freedom. (My colleague, Seth Cooper, the Free State Foundation's Director of Policy Studies, deserves credit too for the research and writing that led to the previous publication of much of this material.) 

 

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Though Lincoln is not often associated with, or quoted on, Labor Day, a holiday first observed a quarter century after his assassination, there is good reason, on Labor Day and every day, to consider his views on what, before the Civil War, was called the "free labor" movement.

An integral part of the anti-slavery "Free Soil" movement was rooted in a "free labor" philosophy. Here is how prize-winning historian Eric Foner put it in Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War:

For the concept of ‘free labor’ lay at the heart of the Republican ideology, and expressed a coherent social outlook, a model of the good society. Political anti-slavery was not merely a negative doctrine, an attack on southern slavery and the society built upon it; it was an affirmation of the superiority of the social system of the North—a dynamic, expanding capitalist society, whose achievements and destiny were almost wholly the result of the dignity and opportunities which it offered the average laboring man.

In his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln famously called for a "new birth of freedom." Given his background and his philosophical grounding in "free labor" antislavery principles, which he consistently related to the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence, it is not surprising that Lincoln often cojoined freedom to an individual's natural right to enjoy the fruits of his own labor. For Lincoln, this natural right was inherent in the Declaration's pronouncement of the self-evident truth that all men are endowed with the unalienable right to "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."

As far back as 1847 speaking at a Whig event, Lincoln said this:

I believe each individual is naturally entitled to do as he pleases with himself and the fruit of his labor, so far as it in no wise interferes with any other man’s rights and that the general government, upon principle, has no right to interfere with anything other than that general class of things that does concern the whole.

And Lincoln frequently reminded his audiences that, "I always thought the man that made the corn should eat the corn."

This colloquial Lincolnian expression is stated in a decidedly less philosophically formal fashion than John Locke's famous injunction contained in his Second Treatise of Government:

[E]very man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property.

As President, Lincoln affirmed this Lockean view of labor in his Reply to the New York Workingmen's Democratic Republican Association in 1864:

Property is the fruit of labor...property is desirable...is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another; but let him labor diligently and build one for himself….

As Seth Cooper and I show in our book, The Constitutional Foundations of Intellectual Property, Lincoln's views regarding free labor and property rights extended to protection of intellectual property as well. In Chapter 10, "Adding Fuel to the Fire of Genius: Abraham Lincoln, Free Labor, and the Logic of Intellectual Property," we discuss Lincoln's 1859 Address to the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, where he said this:

The prudent, penniless beginner in the world, labors for wages awhile, saves a surplus with which to buy tools or land, for himself; then labors on his own account another while, and at length hires another new beginner to help him. This, say its advocates, is free labor – the just and generous, and prosperous system, which opens the way for all – gives hope to all, and energy, and progress, and improvement of condition to all.

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 As we celebrate Labor Day in 2021, at a time when many in America seek, sometimes mightily, to divide us based on all manner of discrete "identities," including race, gender, religion, and class, it is worth taking more than a moment to reflect on Lincoln's understanding of the importance of the "free labor" concept, and especially its integral relationship to a proper understanding of private property rights – and then, to a proper understanding of freedom itself.

On Labor Day, and every day, we should never forget the dignity that is inherent in an individual's natural right to enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor, or as Eric Foner put it, free labor's central role in America's "dynamic, expanding capitalist society, whose achievements and destiny were almost wholly the result of the dignity and opportunities which it offered the average laboring man."

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 Best wishes to all for a happy and safe Labor Day!

Memorial Day 2017

This Memorial Day message marks the eleventh consecutive one – the beginning of the second decade’s worth, I suppose. As important as I might like to think the Free State Foundation’s regular fare of work may be on any given day – and I don’t want to minimize its importance – I am never under any illusions about this: It is far, far more important that our citizens share a common appreciation of the true meaning of Memorial Day than of, say, the ins and outs of “net neutrality.”

The true meaning of Memorial Day is simple to declare – to honor those men and women in our armed services who paid the ultimate price defending our country and protecting our freedom. There are only so many ways to express this simple injunction. But Lincoln’s words, delivered at Gettysburg on hallowed ground, if not on the first Consecration (Memorial) Day, are difficult to improve upon as a remembrance of the fallen:

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

This much we should “highly resolve” each Memorial Day.

In my Memorial Day 2009 message, I recounted an early morning stroll on the beach in Ocean City, New Jersey, on Memorial Day 2008. I was startled when Lee Greenwood's "God Bless the U.S.A." began blaring over a loudspeaker. And then I saw our flag rising on a boardwalk pole.

All the early morning “board-walkers and “beach-walkers,” stroller-pushers, bicyclists, and vendors came to an abrupt halt as they became aware of the flag-raising. Some put their hands over their hearts. Other simply stood still. Old men who once had been soldiers and young boys who one day would be. Grandmothers, mothers, mothers-to-be, and daughters.

As the flag unfurled and Lee Greenwood’s voice was carried by the summer morning breeze, nobody moved.

In fact, no one moved until "God Bless the U.S.A." ended.

I understand that the flag-raising in Ocean City that Memorial Day was not unique. Indeed, the scene was being reenacted all over America. Nevertheless, Lee Greenwood's anthem, also known as "Proud to Be an American," was especially poignant that morning when the boardwalk stood still.

You can listen to the song here, but this is part of the refrain:

"And I'm proud to be an American
Where at least I know I'm free
And I won't forget the men who died
Who gave that right to me…"
As we enjoy our beach outings or backyard barbeques – or maybe both! – this Memorial Day weekend, let’s be sure to pause to remember all those brave men and women who, as Lincoln put it, “gave the last full measure of devotion” to preserve the freedom we enjoy. And to remember and be grateful to those who are risking their lives to protect us even as we celebrate.

There will be time enough to debate the differences that divide us come Tuesday. Now is the time to focus on what, without doubt, should unite us – reverence and respect for those who paid the ultimate price so that we can still live in a land “Where at least I know I’m free.”

Very best wishes for a safe, happy, and meaningful Memorial Day!

PS – My past Memorial Day messages are here: 2016, 2015, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2011, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007

PPS – Please remember also the victims of the horrific, evil terrorist attack in Manchester and their relatives. This Memorial Day Weekend, and always, if you “see something, say something.”

Thanksgiving Day 2012

Five years ago in my Thanksgiving message, I explained that I eagerly awaited the Wednesday-before-Thanksgiving Wall Street Journal almost as eagerly as the Thanksgiving Day turkey and stuffing. Well, almost, but not quite. 

But I do look forward each Thanksgiving eve to the Journal’s reprinting on its editorial page of the very same two lead pieces that have appeared each year since 1961. The first, “The Desolate Wilderness,” is a chronicle, based on the account of William Bradford, of the Pilgrims taking leave of the port of Delftshaven in 1620, crossing the Atlantic, and settling in Plymouth Colony. 

Of the Pilgrims’ journey, William Bradford's account ends this way: 

“Besides, what could they see but a hideous and desolate wilderness, full of wilde beasts and wilde men? and what multitudes of them there were, they then knew not: for which way soever they turned their eyes (save upward to Heaven) they could have but little solace or content in respect of any outward object; for summer being ended, all things stand in appearance with a weatherbeaten face, and the whole country, full of woods and thickets, represented a wild and savage hew. If they looked behind them, there was a mighty ocean they had passed, and was now as a main bar or gulph to separate them from all the civil parts of the world.”

The second, “And the Fair Land,”  written by long-time WSJ editor Vermont Royster, ends this way:

"But we can all remind ourselves that the richness of this country was not born in the resources of the earth, though they be plentiful, but in the men that took its measure. For that reminder is everywhere -- in the cities, towns, farms, roads, factories, homes, hospitals, schools that spread everywhere over that wilderness. We can remind ourselves that for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators. Being so, we are the marvel and the mystery of the world, for that enduring liberty is no less a blessing than the abundance of the earth. And we might remind ourselves also, that if those men setting out from Delftshaven had been daunted by the troubles they saw around them, then we could not this autumn be thankful for a fair land." 

When these two pieces are read together – and at our Thanksgiving meal we usually read aloud "The Desolate Wilderness" before cutting the turkey – and when we consider America's journey from the land with "a wild and savage hew" in 1620 to the "fair land" described by Vermont Royster in 1961, it is evident we have much for which to be thankful. 

It is worth reminding ourselves, and perhaps particularly so after a closely contested election, that, as Vermont Royster said, "for all our social discord we yet remain the longest enduring society of free men governing themselves without benefit of kings or dictators." 

If the idea of America is about anything, it is about the aspiration of those who inhabit our land to live in freedom under the rule of law, not under the rule of men. This is not to say that the reality of America has always lived up to the idea of America. It obviously hasn't. 

But that should not detract from the fact that the Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock did not come to America primarily seeking riches; they came seeking individual freedom – freedom to worship, speak, and think as they pleased. And most of those who have followed the first Pilgrims to our shores have not come primarily seeking riches; most have come seeking the freedom that America offers, and the opportunity for personal fulfillment that individual liberty provides. 

For me, Thanksgiving is a holiday, of course, for giving thanks for America’s bounty. But it is also a holiday for celebrating, and giving thanks for, the freedom we enjoy, as a self-governing people, under our constitutional system of limited government, separated powers, and checks and balances. 

So, as we celebrate this Thanksgiving, it is worth remembering Ronald Reagan’s injunction: 

"Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free." 

At the Free State Foundation, we are thankful that we live in a land – unlike many lands around the world – where we are free to advocate the principles in which we believe: limited government, free markets, property rights, the rule of law, and especially, in the context of much of our work in the communications law and policy field, free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment. 

As you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday, we want you to know we are grateful for your support for our work, and, most of all, for your friendship.

Independence Day 2012

A Washington Post story a couple of weeks ago reported that Chen Guangcheng, the blind Chinese legal activist, newly arrived in America, has been using the Declaration of Independence as a makeshift textbook. As the Post story put it: "The 236-yesr-old document can make for difficult reading, but for a man who spent most of the past decade imprisoned in China while fighting for the rights of his fellow villagers, it resonates deeply." 

What a marvelous text for an English vocabulary lesson! "Equal" and "Truths" and "Liberty" and "Consent of the Governed" and "Unalienable Rights." (Yes, it is "unalienable," not "inalienable," in the Declaration's text.)

At a time when, according to a Boston Globe story, a third of American citizens don't know when the Declaration of Independence was signed, perhaps we can take some comfort – as well as some inspiration – from the fact that Chen is drawn to the Declaration as his vocabulary textbook. 

Chen is quoted as stating that "China is on a march toward rule of law and democracy," and when that time comes, concepts like those proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence "will play a vital role." 

The Free State Foundation's website proclaims one of our purposes is to promote understanding of "rule of law" principles. The "rule of law" is a term often bandied about, but sometimes little understood. So, with Chen's hard-won freedom in mind, it is appropriate to examine what the "rule of law," properly understood, means. 

While there are some variations in formulation, for most commentators, crucial elements of a rule of law regime are: (1) fidelity to rules, (2) of principled predictability, (3) embodied in valid authority, (4) that is external to individual government decisionmakers. Putting these elements together somewhat less formally, in his book The Rule of Law in America, Ronald Cass explains that the rule of law "pulls society in the direction of knowable, predictable, rule-based decision making, toward the alignment of power with legitimacy." 

I don't know for sure, of course. But I suspect that Chen, here in America celebrating his first Independence Day on our shores, will probably take time from his English lessons to reflect on how the Declaration of Independence proclaims principles consistent with the promotion of the Rule of Law, and how our Constitution, properly understood, secures our rights and protects our liberty under such a rule of law regime. 

It would not be a bad thing for us to pause and reflect along with Chen. 

And my very best wishes to all for a celebratory, as well as reflective, Independence Day. 

PS – Previous Independence Day messages are here: 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010; and 2011.