The Reformation of the Jeffersonian Trinity

Since white landowning males founded the American republic in 1776, the American people have endorsed the Jeffersonian trinity of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. While more Americans over the last two centuries have been able to enjoy more liberty and participate in the political process through the 15th, 19th, and 26th amendments in the U.S. Constitution , today more Americans associate the Jeffersonian trinity to consumption, self-gratification and self-indulgence. Obsessed with a relentless personal quest to acquire, consume, and shed whatever confines that might interfere with those desires, most Americans have become oblivious of the ever-continuing decline in the civil liberties they enjoy and the quality of the democracy in their country.

The extensive media coverage of consumers standing in line for stores to open at 4 am in the morning, while the more important story of the government further increasing its power under the pretext of security, is an excellent example of how Americans equate their level of freedom and liberty through a quantitive perspective and not through a qualitative perspective.

In the book, Limits of Power- The End of American Exceptionalism by Andrew Bacevich, the professor of international relations at Boston University identifies the Reagan administration and subsequent administrations as embracing a new ideology which put more emphasis on quantity in America instead of quality.

As Bacevich writes:

Whereas President Carter had summoned Americans to mend their ways, (because of the energy crisis of the 1970s) which implied a need for critical self-awareness, President Reagan obviated any need for soul searching by simply inviting his fellow citizens to carry on. For Carter, ending American dependence on foreign oil meant promoting moral renewal at home. Reagan- and Reagan’s successors- mimicked Carter in bemoaning the nation’s growing energy dependence. In practice, however, they did next to nothing to curtail that dependence. Instead, they wielded U.S. military power to ensure access to oil, hoping thereby to prolong the empire of consumption’s lease on life. Carter had portrayed quantity (the American preoccupation with what he called the “piling up of material goods”) as fundamentally at odds with quality (authentic freedom as he defined it). Reagan reconciled what was, to Carter, increasingly irreconcilable. In Reagan’s view, quality (advanced technology converted to military use by talented, highly skilled soldiers) could sustain quantity (a consumer economy based on the availability of cheap credit and cheap oil).

The reformation of the Jeffersonian trinity is evident when the media recently went from focusing on stories about new security procedures by the TSA and the forfeiture of some civil liberties, to news coverage of Americans buying consumer goods on Black Friday.

Perhaps it was no surprise that the government started the new contentious security procedures the same week as Black Friday.