What Liberty Forgets: Reclaiming the Narrative
In the American moral imagination, liberty is sacred. But like any sacred symbol left untended, its meaning has drifted, and it has been hollowed out by time and fractured public discourse – it is a neglected term and a mere rhetorical device, splintered by politics and repurposed by competing agendas.
What once unified now divides.
We speak of freedom daily, but we no longer speak the same symbolic language. We use the word “liberty” as if we agree on what it means—when in truth, we are talking past one another, each invoking different ghosts, fears, and dreams.
My work lives in that fracture.
As a veteran, educator, and narrative philosopher, I don’t approach liberty as a policy debate or a partisan flashpoint. I approach it as a contested myth—a sacred story that once gave shape to a shared identity, now drifting in symbolic erosion. I believe the crisis of American democracy is not simply political or procedural—it is symbolic. We’ve stopped dreaming in the same metaphors. We’ve lost the rituals that once bound us together. The meaning of liberty itself is slipping out from under us.
Liberty isn’t a settled truth—it’s a story we keep retelling. In this reflection from Governor’s Island, Dennis Stevens, Ed.D. explores the tension between freedom and belonging, inviting us to reimagine the myths that shape American identity
In my video above, Unveiling Liberty, I explore two classical yet competing visions of freedom:
- Negative liberty—freedom from restraint
- Positive liberty—freedom through agency; the power and resources to shape one’s own life
I recorded the above video in the Fall of 2021, and in the Fall of 2023, I authored the original Wikipedia entry on ordered liberty; this is a foundational concept in American constitutional law, rooted in natural law theory and then later shaped by the evolving jurisprudence of the Fourteenth Amendment. The term captures the enduring tension between individual rights and the legal and cultural frameworks that uphold a free and stable society.
My contribution to Wikipedia wasn’t to coin the phrase, but to trace its intellectual lineage, history, and symbolic weight and then, to reveal how what appears to be a legal doctrine is, in fact, a living myth embedded in the American psyche that we keep looking away from again and again, because we are human. For reasons I can only speculate, no one had yet taken up the challenge of capturing the term’s full complexity.
So I did what I often do: I wrestled with it—philosophically, historically, and narratively.
Ordered liberty is more than a compromise between freedom and order; it’s a narrative container for the American psyche, torn between autonomy and accountability, self-expression and shared responsibility.
In my 2010 dissertation, The Aesthetics of the American Dream: Experiencing the Visual as Meaning Beyond Truth, I argue that in post-industrial America, the definition of liberty is shaped by a deep tension between two forces: self-interest and social obligation. These aren’t just political ideas—they reflect how Americans understand freedom itself.
On one side, self-interest emphasizes personal freedom and individual rights. On the other hand, social obligation calls for responsibility to others and the common good. Ordered liberty tries to balance these, but in practice, it often reflects the ongoing struggle between them.
Rather than resolving the conflict, ordered liberty becomes the stage where it plays out—shaping how Americans see freedom, justice, and what it means to live in a shared society.
This duality is what I explore in my work—not as a lawyer or political theorist, but as a narrative philosopher. Whether in the founding myths of the Republic or in the moral confusion of modern men, I’m interested in how we hold opposing truths at once—and what happens when the story holding them together begins to fray.
Standing on the edge of Governor’s Island, where I once served as a military police officer, I recorded this reflection with the Statue of Liberty in view, as a symbol in need of re-reading.
I recorded the above reflection with the Statue of Liberty behind me as a contested symbol in need of deeper engagement.
Liberty, in its mythic form, has always carried contradictory meanings: liberation for some and exclusion for others. But even in its contradictions, it carries emotional and ethical weight.
It is a signal from an older civic myth—one that both elevated and erased, that now demands not blind reverence, but creative reinterpretation.
We can’t afford to forget it. But we must learn how to hold it differently. This is what I am developing through the concept of SEMPERGEIST:
+ I am bridging psychology and philosophy, myth and trauma, civic ritual and cultural grief.
+ I am offering essays, books, workshops, and digital spaces that speak to what we feel but cannot name.
Liberty isn’t dead—but it’s disoriented. So are men. So is America.
We’re living in a state of symbolic dissonance, where the stories we tell no longer match the structures we inhabit. To move the conversation forward, we don’t just need reform, explanation, or prediction—we need re-storying to develop a new interpretation and understanding.
To do this, we must once again remember how to speak in symbols, to dream in metaphors, to feel our way through the dissonance, fracture, and ambiguity.
Civic life is not merely a system to fix. It’s a myth we must learn to retell—with more honesty, more complexity, and more soul.
If you're ready to listen to the quiet silence beneath the shouting, welcome.
