November 2, 2025

By Stephen Stofka

In 1776, the 13 American colonies declared independence from Britain. The entire first half of that Declaration was very much a proclamation of freedom. The second half was a declaration of grievances against the King of England. Many colonists had grown intolerant of the king’s ‘usurpations,’ an unlawful taking under the cloak of authority (Source). The word is unfamiliar to modern readers, but the protection against the taking of private property is enshrined in the Fifth’s Amendment’s final clause, “nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation” (Source). The 56 signers to the Declaration of Independence argued most over this second half of the declaration, for it was their justification for rebellion. They hoped to win the sympathies of European countries, particularly the French in the long feud between England and France.

This week I want to focus on two ideas as axes of analysis, freedom and tolerance. The two seem to have an inverse relationship. As the colonists felt more empowered to claim their freedom, they became less tolerant of the crown’s impositions. It’s not clear to me which is the more powerful force, the intolerance or the thirst for more freedom. The colonists had to pay taxes to support the soldiers and administration that kept them in line. Only in Connecticut and Rhode Island did the colonists elect their governors (Source). Colonial governors appointed by the king often overruled the wishes of popularly elected assemblies. The colonists wanted more autonomy.

In his book Leviathan, the 17^th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588 – 1679) wrote that we exchange some freedom for security in what would otherwise be a raw state of nature, an “every man for himself” kind of world. The book, published in 1651, justified a monarchy to preserve the peace between members of a civil society. More than a century later, the colonists asked themselves how much freedom they had to give up for that security. They had reached the end of their tolerance.

We speak of the colonists as they shared a single sentiment but that was not the case. Americans have always been divided about important issues. Writing almost 40 years after the Declaration, John Adams (1856), our second President after George Washington, recalled that a third of the people favored independence, a third were more favorable to England and a third were neutral. Robert Calhoon (2000), a scholar of American Loyalists, estimated a smaller percentage, perhaps 15 – 20%, favored the crown.

We are less tolerant of encroachments on our own freedoms than on the freedoms of others. The generation that wrote and ratified the Constitution exemplified that principle. In 1787, thirty-nine delegates to the Constitutional Convention signed the Constitution. As many as half of them had owned slaves during their lifetime, including Washington and Madison. Jefferson praised the sanctity of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration but owned almost 200 slaves which he listed in his Farm Book (Source). A case of ‘liberty for me, not for thee’?

People are less free when they are poor or in a minority with less opportunity. They may sometimes act with an air of intolerance, but their income constrains their freedom. They must navigate many social and economic obstacles that stretch their tolerance capacity. Joanna Burke (2014) recalls the thinking among 18^th and 19^th century physicians that laborers and colonized people felt less pain than those of more refined socio-economic status. Their bodies were hardened by deprivation and needed less care so that they were able to withstand the harsh working conditions of 19^th century industrialization.

People with lots of money can afford to be less tolerant of inconveniences. They enjoy a lot of freedom; some test the tolerance of those around them. Leona Helmsley (1920 – 2007) was a rich real estate and hotel owner who was known as the “Queen of Mean” for her harsh treatment of employees. In 1987, she was convicted of tax fraud but served only 18 months of a four-year sentence (Source). In testimony, she was quoted as saying, “Only the little people pay taxes.” Others with enormous wealth and freedom cannot tolerate the misery that afflicts the less fortunate. Through his foundation, Bill Gates has donated many billions to improve the health of those living in poor countries.

In its 2008 decision District of Columbia v Heller, a divided Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment was an individual right to bear arms. The decision overruled more than a century of jurisprudence that the right to bear arms was circumscribed by an individual’s service in a state militia (Source). In extending a wider range of freedom to some individuals, the court ruled that the burden of tolerance is on the majority of individuals that do not own guns (Source).

Why do we tolerate some actions from one person but not from another person? We tolerate lies from a political candidate we favor but not from a candidate of the other party. Trump is a practiced liar, a smooth operator with little loyalty to any facts. Supporters are accustomed to his exaggerations and fabrications. They tolerate his lies. He has an army of lawyers who protect him from legal responsibility for his actions. His lawyers include the conservatives on the Supreme Court who gave him immunity for “official acts” in the 2024 opinion in Trump v United States (Source).

Donald Trump acknowledges few boundaries to his behavior. His entire goal may be to test the tolerance of the American people and the world. He is truly free. His supporters, many of them bent by the burden of uncomfortable socio-economic truths, cheer Donald Trump on because he has escaped. In Ken Kesey’s novel and movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, we cheer on Chief Bromden, who tosses a piece of equipment through the window of a mental institution and escapes. To some, Trump is the hero who has escaped the bounds of convention. Unlike Icarus of Greek mythology, he has flown close to the sun and not fallen.

In the past sixty years, we have grown to tolerate a 70-fold increase in presidential campaign funding (Badarasan, 2024, p. 114). Why? Over several decades the Supreme Court has curtailed the freedom of the people and the state legislatures to institute guard rails around corporate spending on elections. The court’s 2010 decision in Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission ended the last restraints on campaign spending (Source). The Supreme Court has ruled that artificial persons like corporations enjoy the same freedom of speech as natural persons like ordinary people. Now, corporations and wealthy donors enjoy a greater degree of freedom while the broad public must tolerate the power and influence that comes with those freedoms.

The Boston Tea Party was a demonstration against the powerful East India Tea Company that was granted a monopoly on tea imports by the British crown (Source). 250 years later, we have come to tolerate what the Boston colonists could not abide. We have given up some of our freedoms to a new Leviathan, the few unelected elite on the Supreme Court.

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Photo by alexandre alex on Unsplash

Adams, J. (1856). Letter to James Lloyd, January 1815. In C. F. Adams (Ed.), The works of John Adams, second president of the United States (Vol. 10, pp. 172–173). Little, Brown and Company.

Baradaran, M. (2024). The quiet coup: Neoliberalism and the looting of America. W. W. Norton & Company.

Bourke, J. (2014). The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers. Oxford University Press.

Calhoon, R. (2000). “Loyalism and Neutrality,” in A Companion to the American Revolution, ed. Jack P. Greene & J.R. Pole. Blackwell, p. 235.