Challenge to Liberty

Sometimes history gets it wrong. Mention his name, and a stereotype comes to mind. We think we understand, have it right, but not always. Only decades later does the truth really emerge.

If you read his name, most instantly think of the Great Depression, tend to blame him for things, imagine signals missed or fumbled, and a lack of caring or intelligence. Actually, that is…wrong.

He was a Quaker, early graduate of Stanford University in 1895. A trained engineer, he travelled the world, explored China, Australia, and built strong relationships. In World War I, as Americans struggled for food, Democrat Woodrow Wilson made him the “food czar,” and he helped millions through such a difficult time.

When World War I ended, Europe was shattered, millions starving. He created the American Relief Administration, a “Marshall Plan before the Marshall Plan.” He wanted liberty to live.

In time, he ran for president. In 1920, he lost to Warren G. Harding, but served as his Secretary of Commerce, then again under Calvin Coolidge. For a decade, he served, developed American air travel, promoted radio, managed natural disasters – which occurred then too – and kept stepping up.

And he wrote. He liked to write and was good at it. He held forth on everything from mining and engineering to politics and crisis response, post-war demobilization, education, and anti-discrimination.

He was finally elected president in 1928, and was dealt a low card with the stock market collapse. He struggled to get America back on track and was blamed. Only gradually has history rethought his legacy, his example of intense effort for others, volunteerism, and innate, remarkable capabilities.

After the presidency, he befriended patriots, including JFK. He died in 1964, a year after JFK was assassinated. His biggest contributions, however, might be his ideas. In 1934, he wrote “The Challenge to Liberty.”

Reading it, one shivers. World War II had not yet begun, not even on the horizon. World War I is a decade and a half behind him. Yet what he wrote presciently, and his words apply even today.

This former president wrote, with conviction: “Not only in the United States, but throughout the world, the whole philosophy of individual liberty is under attack…Peoples and governments are blindly wounding, even destroying, those fundamental human liberties which have been the foundation and the inspiration of progress since the Middle Ages.”

“The great question before the American people is not whether these…abuses can be mastered…these new and powerful forces organized and directed to human welfare, but whether they can be organized by free men…whether we will abandon the heritage of liberty for some new philosophy…which must mark the passing of freedom.”

He was not done. Liberty, he said, “is not a catalogue of political ‘rights.’ Liberty is a thing of the spirit – to be free to worship, to think, to hold opinions, and to speak without fear – free to challenge wrong and oppression with surety of justice.”

“Liberty conceives that the…spirit of men can be free only if the individual is free to choose his own calling, to develop his talents, to win and to keep a home sacred from intrusion, to rear children in ordered security…He must be free to earn, to spend, to save, to accumulate property that may give protection in old age and to loved ones.”

Tying political and economic liberty together, he observed liberty “insists equally upon protections to all these freedoms or there is no liberty…No man, no group, may infringe upon the liberties of others” because liberty “demands freedom from frozen barriers of class…and equal opportunity for every boy and girl to win that place in the community to which their abilities and character entitle them.” There, in a nutshell, is the American Dream, “content of their character.”

A keen student of history, he wrote: “In every generation men and women of many nations have died that the human spirit may be thus free…at Plymouth rock, at Lexington, at Valley Forge, at Yorktown, at New Orleans…at Gettysburg, at San Juan Hill, in the Argonne, are the graves of Americans who died for this purpose.”

“From these sacrifices…there grew a great philosophy of society…The high tenet of this philosophy is that liberty is an endowment from the Creator of every individual man and woman…which no power, whether economic or political, can encroach…,” including a government.

“The whole purpose of government is to nurture and assure these liberties…No man long holds his freedom under a government which claims men’s liberties,” which is why we limit government.

As that book progresses, he argues America “marks the high tide of a thousand years of human struggle.” Celebrating liberty, “our country has grown to greatness, and has led the world in the emancipation of men.”

He closes with a caution: “When the boundaries of liberty are overstepped, America will cease to be American…” and we may accidentally “eclipse…liberty.” 

Who was this thoughtful, maligned, prolific, today newly respected leader? None other than Herbert Hoover. So, next time someone derides him, point them to his “Challenge to Liberty.” He was ahead of his time.

Robert Charles is a former Assistant Secretary of State under Colin Powell, former Reagan and Bush 41 White House staffer, attorney, and naval intelligence officer (USNR). He wrote “Narcotics and Terrorism” (2003), “Eagles and Evergreens” (2018), and is National Spokesman for AMAC.