Frederich Douglas: Self reliance and community

"Perhaps the closest we can come to capturing the spirit of Douglass’s political philosophy in our time is to adopt the critical disposition he endorses in an essay he wrote in 1860 entitled, “The Prospect in the Future.” In that essay, he lamented the fact that “narrow and wicked” selfishness allowed Americans to proclaim their love of liberty while at the same time denying basic rights to so many human beings. Douglass wanted to resolve this “terrible paradox” by convincing Americans to move from “the downy seat of inaction” and replace their narrowness with egalitarianism, their selfishness with humanitarianism. In those moments when we are willing to ask ourselves how “narrow and wicked” impulses haunt our love of liberty—and when we ask how to close the gap between the ideal of liberty and the realities that surround us—we come closest to acting as the legitimate heirs of Frederick Douglass’s political project."

Nicholas Buccola is an assistant professor of political science at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. His book, The Political Thought of Frederick Douglass: In Pursuit of American Liberty, will be published by New York University Press in April.

http://dissentmagazine.org/online.php?id=585