Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies

What President Obama Can Learn About Freedom

Presentation by J. Rufus Fears, Award-Winning Historian, Professor, and Author

Gallery

 
April 16, 2009 - Rufus Fears, political commentator and professor of classics at the University of Oklahoma, gave the keynote address at the Hauenstein Center's conference, "Barack Obama and the Lessons of Antiquity."

Dr. Fears is David Ross Boyd Professor of Classics at the University of Oklahoma, where he holds the G.T. and Libby Blankenship Chair in the History of Liberty.  Professor Fears earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University and is a fellow of many distinguished organizations, including the American Academy in Rome, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and the Guggenheim Foundation.  His research has been supported by institutions such as the American Philosophical Society and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Before taking his post at the University of Oklahoma, Dr. Fears held teaching positions at Indiana University, where he rose from assistant professor to full professor, and Boston University, where he served as Chair of the Department of Classical Studies.  Professor Fears is the author of four books, including The Cult of Virtues and Roman Imperial Ideology, and has published a three-volume edition of Selected Writings of Lord Acton, the British historian of liberty. He has also published more than 100 articles and reviews, and other writings on ancient history, the history of liberty, and the lessons of history for our own day.
 
Jim Kratsas, deputy director of the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, welcomed guests to Dr. Fears's talk.
 
Gleaves Whitney, director of the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies at Grand Valley, introduced Dr. Fears, whose Teaching Company lectures have made him a staff favorite.
 
“It’s an honor to be here," said Dr. Fears, "particularly because this time I have met Ralph Hauenstein."

"I have admired so much the Hauenstein Center for Presidential Studies and now what [Ralph] has done with the medical center [at St. Mary's].  He embodies what I want to say tonight about the importance of character.  That’s what ultimately tells about a leader.  It's what ultimately tells about a nation.  It’s a real old fashioned word — moral fiber — and part of that moral fiber is understanding that we are here to leave the world a better place.  He has made the world a better place, and it’s a great privilege to have met him.”
 
 “Leadership, President Eisenhower said, is something you learn by studying good examples.  It’s not a gift.  You learn it, and I think President Obama could take President Ford as a very good example.  To my mind, President Ford represents the kind of leader that is essential in the time of crisis.  Gerald Ford was, again to use an old fashioned word, a patriot.  He loved his country because he knew that [it] rested upon a special set of principles.  Gerald Ford understood that the United States has a unique legacy of freedom, and that it has a unique destiny to leave the world a better place.  More people live in freedom because of the United States.  I am willing to say that Gerald Ford was proud of his country every day of his life, and proud because it represented this tradition of freedom, which he and others fought for on the field of battle.”
 
“The American people must understand that high position in politics, and high position in the financial world, is a matter of trust.  Those who hold those positions must be accountable.  That is our great tradition of freedom.  To understand what we mean by freedom we must go back to antiquity and to Socrates, who said that the first step in understanding anything is to define your terms.  We have made a number of mistakes in recent years because we have used freedom in a very loose fashion.  What we call freedom, in fact, is a set of ideals that comprise three concepts: political freedom, national freedom, and individual freedom.  These three are not mutually and essentially inclusive.  In other words, you can have national freedom without either political freedom or individual freedom.”
 
“In this country we have achieved a unique balance of national freedom, political freedom, and individual freedom.  We have achieved such a unique balance in such a way that we think everybody else can achieve it.  In fact, it is not clear at all ... that freedom is a universal value.  Time and time again, people have chosen to receive the security of despotism over the awesome responsibility of freedom.  The society in ancient Egypt — the society that built the pyramids — did not even have a word for freedom.  In ancient China, there’s no word for freedom.  Russia, from its origins as a Viking nation right on down to Vladimir Putin, has time and time again chosen despotism over freedom.  [In the United States], we have national freedom to such a degree that we cannot imagine being conquered.”

Ralph Hauenstein, the Center's founding benefactor, and Gleaves Whitney listened while Dr. Fears developed his argument.

“Now, [let's talk about] political freedom.  We had a good turn out of voters in this last election.  But whenever we have not a very good turn out of voters it doesn’t bother me, because we take that political freedom for granted.  We took it for granted that at the time of the Civil War, 1864, there would be an election.  At the time of this economic crisis there would be an orderly transition of government.  That’s how deeply rooted our political freedom is.” 

“[As for] individual freedom: There is no where that you are more free to live as you choose as right here in the United States, but that has come about in a unique set of circumstances.  Consider how we gained our national freedom.  Consider that generation of statesmen.  This infant republic brought forth in a new world a galaxy of statesmen unsurpassed in history: Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, and George Washington, and James Madison.  Name me another country that has produced such leaders....  But how did they declare our national independence?  Did they sneak about?  No, they met the British boldly on the field of battle and they declared that independence on a set of principles.  The United States is the only nation in history founded upon principles.”
 
“How did you become an Englishmen in 1776?  You were born there, geographical accident, how did you get to be a German in 1776?  A German will still tell you it’s because you spoke German as your mother tongue.  Now we have always said you come from anywhere, you speak any language as your mother tongue, you adopt our principles, and you become an American.  And what were those principles?  “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal and they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” You should never let your eyes glaze over when you hear those words, and they are resounding statement of the influence of classical antiquity.  The ideal of natural law, founded in Athens in the 5th century A.D. stated in the play Antigone by Sophocles that the laws of God are higher than the laws of men, and then written into Roman law.  Now it doesn’t mean that all through history people have been treated equally, what it means is that is the ideal set by God...So we are founded on an ideal belief in God, and that governments are instituted in order to ensure those principles, that was our declaration of national independence.”
 
“[The Founders] were statesmen.  They had a bedrock of principles — freedom.  They had a moral compass.  They believed in absolute right and wrong.  They had a vision that there could be a strong national government, and they were able ultimately to build a consensus to achieve that vision.  But they had to set priorities, and that again is a lesson that President Obama must learn from ancient statesmen like Julius Caesar right down to the Founders of our country.  Their priority was a Constitution, and they knew they had to compromise.”
 
“I am a British citizen," an audience member told Dr. Fears, "but an alien resident of America who’s glad to live in America and also glad to be a British citizen."

"I’ve listened with great fascination to your talk about freedom.  After being in America for 10 years, you’ve cleared up something for me tonight.  I am very thankful for the distinction of national, political, and individual freedom.  But I still have two questions, and the first pertains to history and the fact that for all that the Revolutionary War did to fight for freedom, the British actually got rid of slavery before the Americans.  I’m also curious about whether the United States has reached a point at which freedom has become something of an idol.  I’m left with the question as to whether the number of massacres [Columbine, etc.] in America is actually a result of the abuse of freedom and the idealization of freedom.  I’m wondering, at what point does freedom actually become a curse?"
 
“Freedom can never become trivialized or an idol," Fears responded.  "It is the dearest of all human qualities.  The Revolution was fought for the idea that liberty is the end in itself.  It is not a means to an end.  The Constitution our Founders created has been so much better for freedom than the original model they had of the British Constitution.  They thought the British Constitution was the best that existed, but it needed to be purged of impurities.”
 
“Are we kind of ignoring the obligations that come with American freedom?" asked an Aquinas College student.  "Is its turning into our ability to just do what we want instead of what we ought?”
 
“The Founder’s definitely understood that for every freedom there is a corresponding responsibility," said Dr. Fears.  "It is that responsibility part that we don’t want to recognize anymore.  Jefferson said that if he had to choose between a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, he would choose the newspapers.  But with that freedom of the press goes responsibility to report truthfully, fully to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth.  We have left aside the responsibility part because it’s too burdensome.”
 
Rufus Fears and an audience member discussed the ways in which governments control and limit the amount of information citizens have access to in times of war.
 
Pictured, left to right: Gleaves Whitney, Rufus Fears, and Col. Ralph Hauenstein, founding benefactor of the Hauenstein Center

Fears and Hauenstein discussed the flourishing of medical science in Grand Rapids.
 
Rufus Fears and Gleaves Whitney previewed the Hauenstein Center's conference on Shelly Irwin's WGVU radio program.
 
Rufus Fears shared his reflections on President Obama's leadership dilemma with WGVU's Patrick Center.