The Fragility of Freedom

On January 5th, 1967, Ronald Reagan was sworn in as Governor of California. In his inaugural address, the “Great Communicator” reflected on a truth so familiar to us that we scarcely notice it anymore: the peaceful transfer of power:

To a number of us, this is a first and hence a solemn and a momentous occasion, and yet, on the broad page of state and national history, what is taking place here is almost a commonplace routine. We are participating in the orderly transfer of administrative authority by direction of the people. And this is the simple magic of the commonplace routine, which makes it a near miracle to many of the world's inhabitants. This continuing fact that the people, by democratic process, can delegate power, and yet retain the custody of it. Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it's never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.

Reagan’s warning cuts to the bone: nothing of value, no matter how seemingly permanent, sustains itself. Freedom survives only because people choose, in every generation, to preserve it. The moment a society assumes its treasures will simply continue – the moment we take our inheritance for granted – it begins to slip through our fingers like sand.

Here lies the terrifying paradox of human nature: the very success of one generation breeds the complacency that destroys the next. When freedom works, when democracy delivers, when prosperity flows, we begin to believe these blessings are automatic, natural, inevitable. We forget that they are anything but. We stop teaching our children why these things matter. We stop remembering what life was like without them. And in that forgetting, we open the door to their loss.

This insight is not a modern phenomenon; it cuts across millennia of human experience. In fact, it echoes the words of another great communicator, Moshe, who understood this pattern with devastating clarity. In this week’s Parsha, Moshe tells Israel something that should chill us to the core. In his final speech to the people, Moshe doesn’t warn them that they might fall into sin, he promises them they will:

When you have begotten children and children’s children and are long established in the land, you will act wickedly… (Devarim 4:25)

This is not a prediction but a promise – you will surely sin and be exiled from the land. The inevitability is stark, almost fatalistic. But why? What makes this moral decline so certain? Why does Moshe speak not of if but when?

The answer is to notice the timing. Moshe doesn’t say that the people will sin immediately upon entering the land. He says it will happen “when you have begotten children and children's children and are long established in the land.” In other words, when success has bred complacency. When the struggles that forged their character have become distant memories. When the generation that knew slavery, wandering, and divine revelation has been replaced by those who inherited the land without paying its price.

This timing reveals something profound and unsettling about human nature itself. Moshe understands that moral clarity doesn’t perpetuate itself. It requires active maintenance, constant renewal, deliberate transmission from one generation to the next. Without this conscious effort, entropy takes over, memory fades and decay sets in.

The defense against this calamity lies in the seemingly disconnected preceding verses in the same passage:

But take utmost care and watch yourselves scrupulously, so that you do not forget the things that you saw with your own eyes… And make them known to your children and to your children’s children (Devarim 4:9)

Take care, then, not to forget the covenant that your God concluded with you (4:23)

Moshe tells the people that their covenant with God, their moral clarity, their identity as a people, none of it will last by default. It must be constantly guarded, renewed like a daily covenant, and transmitted like life itself. The language is urgent, almost desperate. “Take utmost care.” “Watch yourselves scrupulously.” “Do not forget.” These aren’t gentle suggestions – they are emergency instructions for a civilization in need of constant renewal.

History bears this out with brutal consistency. Our memory proves even shorter than “our children’s children.” The very generation redeemed from Egypt – the people who had witnessed the plagues, crossed the Red Sea, and stood at Sinai – longed to return to slavery just a few months later. Similarly, forty years later, the tribes of Reuven and Gad, standing on the edge of the Promised Land, sought to remain outside, forgetting the tragedy of the meraglim who had requested to remain in the desert.

The same malady is found throughout Shoftim and Melachim. We witness the pattern repeat with maddening predictability: idolatry, disaster, repentance, redemption – and then, as soon as memory fades and prosperity returns, the slide begins anew. Each generation seems determined to learn these lessons afresh, refusing the wisdom bought with their ancestors’ blood.

This isn’t just a biblical phenomenon but a universal law of human societies. The poet T.S. Eliot, writing in a different context about literary culture, grasped the same truth in Tradition and the Invidual Talent. He wrote that “tradition… cannot be inherited, and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour… the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence.”

This idea, the “historical sense,” is what Moshe demanded and what Reagan understood. It’s what every civilization that has ever survived has required.

But here’s what makes this so difficult: the very nature of success works against memory. When freedom works, we stop thinking about tyranny. When democracy delivers, we stop worrying about authoritarianism. When tolerance prevails, we stop remembering the costs of hatred.

How painfully, urgently relevant this proves today. We are living through exactly what Moshe predicted and Reagan warned against. As the generation that learned the lessons of unchecked antisemitism fades into history, those ugly ideas have not just reappeared – they’ve exploded across our universities, our streets, our public discourse with a virulence that would have been unthinkable just decades ago. In just a few generations since the 20th century – the bloodiest, most instructive century in human history – we seem to have reversed much of what we learned.

We are witnessing in real time what happens when a civilization forgets its own hard-won wisdom. When the “historical sense” fails. The only response is the one Moshe prescribed: vigilance that borders on obsession. We must reclaim our society by renewing the lessons of old with the urgency of those facing extinction. We must learn history not as academic exercise but as survival guide. We must internalize its lessons not as interesting facts but as living wisdom. We must live each day with the moral clarity earned by generations who paid in blood for truths we’re tempted to take for granted.

Only through this kind of active, conscious, daily remembrance will we be safe from the ancient malady that has claimed every great civilization before us. Only then will we ensure it survives to the next generation – and the next, and the next.