Freedom of expression and the enlightenment

A Short History of the French Revolution
(Boston: Prentice Hall, 2010), 152-6.
117
George Thomas, “John Locke’s America,” 
Society
50, no. 5 (October 2013): 464, SPORTDiscus with 
Full Text, EBSCOhost.

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49 
to the war, when the tensions with the British were building, many thinkers, both in the 
colonies and in England, were contemplating the likelihood and justifiability of war. For 
example, one British supporter of revolution thought that “government is just an agency 
for executing the will of the people in the interest of the majority” and that “Britain 
sought to tyrannize over the American colonies.”
118
So, if the colonists were not happy 
with their government, they should be able to change to a government that was 
responsive to their will, much as Spinoza suggested. John Adams, one of the founders, 
sought to justify, even encourage, a revolution. He was an “American pro-Revolution 
conservative” who used Locke to shape his “doctrine of justified resistance” against what 
he believed was an unlawful tyranny of the British.
119
Thomas Jefferson, framer of “The 
Declaration of Independence,” was also opposed to what he called the “many 
unwarrantable encroachments and usurpations, attempted to be made by the legislature of 
one part of the empire, upon those rights which God and the laws have given equally and 
independently to all.”
120
Even before the war, the notable thinkers of America were 
already concerned with protecting their rights, the rights to which the Enlightenment had 
told them they were entitled. Just a few short years after that statement, Jefferson 
rephrased some of Locke’s words from 
Two Treatises of Government
in the opening 
statements of “The Declaration of Independence”: “we hold these truths to be self-
evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with 
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of
118
Israel, 
Democratic Enlightenment
, 447-8.
119
Ibid, 448-9.
120
Ibid.

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50 
Happiness.”
121
Liberty and rights were two of the optimal terms in frequent use in this period. 
After the Articles of the Confederation proved to be inadequate and the new Constitution 
was proposed, arguments both for and against the constitution used these words to defend 
their positions. One common argument was that too much blood was shed and too much 
effort was put into the war to let the rights that were fought for be lost; thus, Americans 
needed something stronger to protect those rights. For example, one anonymous writer 
claimed that “American blood and treasure have been lavished [for liberty].”
122
Another 
writer similarly claimed that a new constitution was needed because “Americans will not 
consent that the fair fabric of Liberty, which they have established with their blood, shall 
be endangered.”
123
Americans were proud of the rights that they had fought hard for and 
believed that “by the revolution [they] have regained all their natural rights, and possess 
their liberty neither by grant nor contract.”
124
The Enlightenment endowed the residents 
of the new country with the belief that their rights were important and inalienable and 
that they should not be taken away. Freedom of expression was one such right, and the 
framers of the United States Constitution agreed on the importance of these rights 
concerning expression.
The framers got some of their ideas about freedom of expression from reading 
many Enlightenment writers. They also incorporated many Enlightened ideas in the 
Constitution. In fact, if the Enlightenment had not promoted new ways of thinking and 
121
“The Declaration of Independence,” in