The phrase 'to secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and posterity' appears in the Preamble to the Constitution. The last word is posterity, meaning children and future generations, rather than prosperity or wealth. The meaning is that one of the Constitution's purposes is to protect freedom and the benefits of being a free country for the people who wrote the Constitution and future Americans.
The point of this phrase in the Preamble, and the constitution as a whole was to help protect the country's hard-earned rights for liberty, unjust laws, and freedom from a tyrannical government.
The American founders certainly did not confuse liberty with anarchy. Their writings are peppered with comparisons between the two whose conclusions were unequivocal. Indeed, fear of anarchy was one of the major propellants toward constitutionalism for most of the American leadership, Federalist and Anti-Federalist alike. This fear was enhanced by the very fact that they were making a republican revolution and historically both revolutions and republics had been noted for bringing about anarchy.
one of the basic myths of the American experience, the idea that in this new world of nature, humans are also freed from the shackles of society to become "natural men."2 For the most part, the hidden or not so hidden assumptions behind the myth of natural liberty were that human society is corrupting while human nature is unequivocally good and therefore what needs to done is to emancipate humans from the chains of society so as to enable their better natures to flourish unimpeded. Although this myth was presented most systematically by Jean Jacques Rousseau, it can be found back at the very beginning of the age of the discovery and exploration of the Western Hemisphere. There were those who saw in the native Americans natural men and, hence, happily living in paradise. It was not difficult for them to take the next step and to hope that Europeans arriving on the shores of the New World could emancipate themselves from the bonds of society and regain their true natures as well.
The point of this phrase in the Preamble, and the constitution as a whole was to help protect the country's hard-earned rights for liberty, unjust laws, and freedom from a tyrannical government.
The American founders certainly did not confuse liberty with anarchy. Their writings are peppered with comparisons between the two whose conclusions were unequivocal. Indeed, fear of anarchy was one of the major propellants toward constitutionalism for most of the American leadership, Federalist and Anti-Federalist alike. This fear was enhanced by the very fact that they were making a republican revolution and historically both revolutions and republics had been noted for bringing about anarchy.
one of the basic myths of the American experience, the idea that in this new world of nature, humans are also freed from the shackles of society to become "natural men."2 For the most part, the hidden or not so hidden assumptions behind the myth of natural liberty were that human society is corrupting while human nature is unequivocally good and therefore what needs to done is to emancipate humans from the chains of society so as to enable their better natures to flourish unimpeded. Although this myth was presented most systematically by Jean Jacques Rousseau, it can be found back at the very beginning of the age of the discovery and exploration of the Western Hemisphere. There were those who saw in the native Americans natural men and, hence, happily living in paradise. It was not difficult for them to take the next step and to hope that Europeans arriving on the shores of the New World could emancipate themselves from the bonds of society and regain their true natures as well.