05/30/06: Time to Level With the People about Freeborn John

Churchill was right, “Everything new in the world is the history we do not already know.” Our political arena could use a fresh dose of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the Chartists, the Putney Debates and the Levellers. These agitating groups, mainly during the 17th century, played critical roles in the development of a free and democratic England. The Levellers would be our favorite.

The primary mouthpiece of the Levellers was Freeborn John Lilburne. Active during the English Civil War, Freeborn John sounds a lot like our Jefferson and Madison did over one hundred years later. This kinship, however, is often overlooked.

“The American Revolution left embedded in American constitutional theory the principles of John Locke. The idea that God created man free of subjection to government, the idea that the laws of nature protected the safety and happiness of individuals before government began, and continued after the formation of human society to protect the individual against the tyranny of his ruler; the idea that all just government originates in the consent of the governed; all these American political theories were stated by John Locke a year after the revolution of 1688. They had been stated by the Levellers forty years earlier in the revolution of 1640-1660,” (See The Leveller Movement, Dr. Theodore Pease).

In a careful reading of the Leveller Manifesto, entitled the Agreement of the People (1649), one discovers the seed bed of American Constitutionalism:

Included in the Agreement of the People (1649):

- right to for all people to vote for their representatives
- right against self-incrimination
- freedom of religion and press
- equality of all persons before the law
- no judgment touching life, liberty or property but by jury trial
- abolition of capital punishment except for murder
- no military conscription of conscientious objectors
- no monopolies, tithes, or excise taxes
- taxation proportionate to real or personal property
- grading of punishments to fit the crime
- abolition of imprisonment for debt

More importantly, the Levellers imagined a world ordered from the bottom up. Consent of the governed meant something. Equity and access was not mere lip service but a commitment to excellence.

As new democratic seeds are planted around the world, we best relearn our history. Democracy has always derived from the people. It cannot be institutionalized from the top down.

I wish such levelling was done three years ago. Such was the intelligence we all can take some blame for not having. We have much to be thankful for in Freeborn John and the Levellers. Those are two dots we can easily connect.

Please, would somebody inside the Beltway subpoena this blog.