perhaps think of freedom as a supreme
value in itself. Some think of democracy more in terms of its internal
conditions or its results. They think of freedom as a means of
_accomplishing_ good, not as merely _being_ a good. They believe that
the good of the individual is not necessarily represented by the
satisfaction of his desires, and so perhaps think of the law and order
of the democratic community, the control and regulation of the
individual in his daily life by the will of all, as the essential
feature of a democracy.

Here in America, taking our history and our life as a whole, it seems
certain that the dominating mood has been the love of _individual
freedom_. Our democracy is founded upon the idea of the _rights of the
man_. But these rights and privileges of the man can be secured only
by social organization that immediately takes away some of them. So
our national life, just because of the strong individualism with which
it began, also began with a firm principle of law and order modifying
the idea of freedom. Some would say it began thus in a paradox or a
delusion. Even to be morally free was not allowed. The group, in the
Puritan society at least, exercised strict supervision over the moral
life of the individual. Giddings says, in fact, that this experiment
in moral control on the part of the people over all individuals is one
of the chief characteristics of American life.

_Our history is the story of an experiment in freedom_, in which
according to some we have more and more suppressed the individual.
Grabo says that the history of democracy here is the story of a dream
rather than an accomplishment. Such views, however, do not appear to
be true representations of the case. They assume that the independence
of the individual is more real or more realizable than it can be in
any society. Is it not rather true that _our apparent relinquishment
of the idea of freedom is the reverse side, so to speak, of the
persistence throughout our history of an impossible ideal of
independence of the individual_? It is individualism, rather than
control, that has increased. The original freedom was a freedom such
as comes from the willing participation of the individual in an order
in which the control was immediate and vested in the whole. Control
has become more definite and precise as the individual has become
further removed from the direct influence of the social environment.
We have developed relatively too much