“The end of national freedom is individual freedom.” That was Irish patriot Patrick Pearse’s reminder that the whole purpose of creating and defending a nation is to allow everyday people to live as they choose.

I would go even further: Not only should individual freedom be the end of national freedom; it is also the true source of national freedom and prosperity. Amidst modern pressures for centralized decisionmaking, it’s easy to start thinking that what’s important to a society is to have a powerful government, big companies, a glossy culture, lots of interventionist social institutions, and as many “world class” collectively funded entities as possible—from stadiums to shopping malls to state parks to school rooms to supersonic fighters. But truth be told, all these impressive creations are just side effects, the products of a system that puts individual freedom first. Making construction of strong institutions and slick stuff a higher priority than letting individuals carve lives of their own choosing will only produce a nation where few things work really well. 

Alexis de Tocqueville compared the monarchical France of his day (where gilded lords organized all the great projects) to democratically fragmented frontier America. He was “struck by the innumerable multitude of little undertakings,” and recorded his “daily astonishment at the immense works carried through…by a nation which, one may say, has no rich men.”

Reading through Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography recently, I noticed the American ordinariness of Franklin’s successes. Ben was just another smart kid, not categorically different from millions of other energetic 17-year-olds feeling stifled by their home town societies. In most eras and most countries, that stultification would just be tough luck. But Franklin lived in an unusual civilization which allowed individuals to dramatically change the direction of their lives. And once he found his natural niche, he began to gush out productive innovations.

Individual invention is the story of America. We have unprecedented opportunities to choose our own course, and in the process we often break down old problems in dramatic ways. Of course, different people will take advantage of this rare freedom to different degrees, in different ways, and at different stages of their lives. Lots of folks, displaying an eerie lackawanna, will never quite get out of their easy chairs. A few will be like Bob Coté (profiled on page 20), who literally pissed the first decade or so of his adulthood into a gutter before rising to become a swirling dynamo of life-transforming activism. Then there are Andres Duany-types who erupt with red hot energy and fresh ideas nearly every waking hour (page 14). Others such as Linda Chavez (a small portion of whose new autobiography we extract on page 34) seem driven by ghosts to escape the limitations imposed on them by birth or fortune.

Americans like the Western sodbreakers Blake Hurst interviews on page 28 just chug away quietly over a lifetime, exhibiting great stamina in the face of obstacles thrown in their path by tyrants abroad, autocrats at home, and harsh nature. It took the Reverend Hudson Stuck—a bookish Englishman who reinvented himself as a saver of Indian souls—until he was nearly 50 to become a mountain-climbing hero (page 36).

The aim of this installment of The American Enterprise is to sketch and analyze a selection of strong, quirky, and independent “American Originals” like these. We believe you’ll enjoy their stories, but our deeper purpose is to help you think through the influences that produce thick crops of similarly impressive men and women in communities all across our nation. Such citizens are no small matter, for a country is ultimately defined not by its laws or its economy or its geography, but by the quality of its people.

Baby bees, an acquaintance of a beekeeper tells me, must force their way, with great effort, out of the wax capsules in which they mature. It is a difficult struggle, but the effort of pressing through the sealed cap cleans the bees’ wings of sticky substances that could otherwise inhibit their flying. Occasionally, moths will get into hives and eat the tops off of the nursery cells. This allows the baby bees to emerge effortlessly, but because the coatings on their wings are not rubbed off in the process, many of these fledglings are unable to fly.

For humans as much as bees, struggle is often necessary for the creation of a strong and durable character. Certainly Bob Coté’s success in reforming derelicts stems in large measure from the hard lessons he learned and the tenacity he developed in first rescuing himself from dissipation. Take away his misery and you’d take away his potency. That’s a sobering observation for us air-conditioned, shock-absorbed, increasingly coddled Americans.

Another admonition that emerges from Coté’s story is the importance of individual accountability, and of the personal touch. Oscar Wilde once wrote that “the chief advantage that would result from the establishment of socialism” is that it “would relieve us from the sordid necessity of living for others, which presses so heavily upon almost everybody.” Wilde wanted the state to take care of the less fortunate so he’d be off the hook. Against this way of thinking Coté is a walking, talking thunderclap. Material help disconnected from human concern and close monitoring not only won’t help the less fortunate, he says, it will actually make their lives worse. So don’t expect cool, distant bureaus to replace active individuals as solvers of tough social problems. It won’t work. We’re always going to need ardent American Originals.

Vigorous, free-living people are, by definition, often jarring. Bobby Knight, scrutinized on page 24, is a prime example. Certainly no one will ever mistake Mr. Knight for Mr. Rogers. Most of the Bobby-Knight-is-a-psycho image, however, has been manufactured by pithless journalists who are either intimidated or offended by his hard-nosed masculine personality. Knight-haters seem to be more motivated by a censorious political correctness and a disdain for fierce men than by any fair assessment of his career. And if an American in Knight’s line of work isn’t allowed to be ferocious, who is? Do we really want all our male leaders to be fuzzy-eyed teddybears?

The unfortunate reality is that many of the American Originals we profile in this issue have run awry of the sensitivity police in one way or another. Like Knight, Bob Coté and Linda Chavez have been hounded by the perpetually offended. The plucky Klamath Basin farmers whose tale we tell in our third feature have come under attack from the liberal establishment in ways that directly imperil their way of life.

Each of these worthies has fired back, often along the lines of the historic declaration of rebellion made by Clarence Thomas (another American Original who often finds himself in left-wing crosshairs). In 1998, Thomas declared to a cluck-clucking National Bar Association convention, “I come here today…to assert my right to think for myself, to refuse to have my ideas assigned to me…. I come to state that I’m a man, free to think for myself and do as I please.” That is the unstifled cry of American Originals everywhere.

Fortunately, ample courage, originality, and native wit exist to keep us supplied with leadership from American Originals for the foreseeable future. I run into fresh, pungent, impressively independent characters in many parts of the country. Just a few weeks ago, while backpacking in Wyoming, I met a handsome woman in her early 20s working alone as a ranger in a wilderness cabin with no electricity or phone, surrounded by challenging topography and predatory animals. She works armed with a can of pepper spray to slow down grizzlies, a map/compass/and GPS receiver, a hip-mounted water bladder, and a knife and automatic pistol with several extra clips on her belt. Tough gal. One of five children of a railroad mechanic, raised in splendid isolation on a ranch, with a brother who makes his living riding broncos bareback in rodeos. She’s an anonymous Westerner, not a celebrity or a politically important person, but just the kind of sturdy, self-reliant citizen who keeps this nation hard and unbought.

American Originals needn’t be rural autarks. My partner on this fathers-and-sons backpacking week was a pal who had never slept a night on the ground before our trip. A real city and computers and civilization guy. But also a very tough cookie, and someone who has created an impressive life for himself from scratch. His father came to this country from Greece, and reached the end of his days as he had begun them—essentially illiterate. Son George studied his way into Cornell University and then law school; now he’s a district attorney in New York state. Another American Original.

They’re around you—if you look. Praise be.