“Your liberty to swing your fist ends where the tip of my nose begins”-Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. This quote has been invoked many times over the centuries in various forms to inform the individual and or masses of the absolute limits of individual liberty. The very spirit of this idea was omnipresent from the inception of the Magna Carta in England, through the Mayflower Compact, and consequently, through all subsequent domestic documents that form the basis of our collective local, state, and federal governments. The thrust of the idea could be felt when the Puritan minister Reverend Thomas James Jr. of East Hampton defended the free will of his congregation to resist the seemingly arbitrary whims of the English King to force the people of English Long Island to forever change their way of life by becoming a part of the colony of New York; thereby giving up their rights and liberties as Connecticut Puritans, which for its time, was the most liberal in its offerings. In his sermon that led to his arrest and imprisonment, he quoted a bible passage that says: “Remove not the ancient landmark, which thy fathers have set”. In his words he directly accused the Governor of deliberately ignoring the charter of the town. Meanwhile replacing it with one of much lesser value undoubtedly exposing his congregation to unjust taxes and rules that completely ignored the way of life that these people had built for themselves through their own good works. He was deliberate in his language because he had in-fact personally requested a copy of the Connecticut Combination and through his diligent hard work, a charter for his town was drafted and approved. James knew that it was he who was responsible to provide stewardship for it, much like the Surety Barons of the Magna Carta of whom he descended. He was not going to let the arbitrary will of the King take it away through the use of his colonial Governors, who would impose a moral hazard on his subjects through his corrupt rent-seeking modus-operandi. He understood then that it is the duty of the local governing body to make explicitly known to its congregation/constituency, the very liberties that they stood to lose at any given moment.

 These ideas are as important today as they ever were. We as a citizenry have the obligation to demand from our governing bodies that they be aware of and be prepared to define and defend at any time those liberties that we may stand to give up. It is not the obligation of the individual citizen to understand the nuances of how the proverbial “sausage is made” in terms of government processes etc. Furthermore, it is not the responsibility of the citizen to attend every meeting of the government body, if any. Why? The answer is quite simple. The citizen elects a representative. It is assumed that that representative has expert knowledge in that area, or will be quick to learn the required knowledge and thus has a mandate to carry out the will of the citizenry that elected him. The citizen has the right to, at any time, decide to attend a meeting and hold his representative to account by asking questions; an audit on the representative. If the citizenry doesn’t like the answers he gets from the representative, that individual can then be recalled by election processes or other approved methods.

Why is tradition important? Our agricultural areas of New Jersey are deeply rooted in tradition. For example, Frelinghuysen Township has been an agricultural jewel of Warren County since prior to its inception in 1848. It is named for The Dutch Reformed theologian Theodorus Jacobus Frelinghuysen, who came to the New Jersey colony in 1720. He had proposed and supported the idea of having a college in the area to develop ministers of the Dutch Reformed faith right here so that students would not have to return to the Netherlands to study the ministry. His efforts eventually led to the 1766 charter of Queen’s College which later became Rutgers University as we now know it. Recently the agricultural traditions of Frelinghuysen township have come to be challenged. There is a proposal to install an industrial cannabis facility on a plot of farmland that is located literally at the top of the hill where Route 94 leads its traveler to the open expanses of the scenic ridge and valley section of rural Sussex County. This intersection of place and time causes me to call to mind words that were uttered by Massachusetts Bay Governor John Winthrop upon his passage in 1630 to the new world. It reads: “For we must consider that we shall be a city on a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our god in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword through the world”. It is at this time and place that Frelinghuysen Township finds the eyes of the region upon them. There is an uncharted course that is underway and it is the responsibility of the citizenry to demand from its elected officials and their appointed committees to strive to be at least as excellent in their pursuits as our forefathers who in their time,  made it their business to put the people first and do their best to understand always all that is at risk, to be pragmatic in their efforts, to conserve what needs to be conserved and to preserve that which needs preservation. To understand that liberty doesn’t reside in mutual exclusion among its citizenry but is a visceral medium that ought to be understood by all participants and that should be the main focus of exploration and commentary. To realize that some places ought to be saved for future generations because of its natural beauty that once lost, can never be reclaimed. It is important that the citizenry require the respect to be seen and heard, even if they don’t understand the processes. Taken directly from the Frelinghuysen town website: As long-time Township resident Sam Moore wrote in 1989, “Today, Frelinghuysen is still an attractive rural community, though it feels more and more the pressure of an expanding metropolitan area. Frelinghuysen is fighting hard to keep its country character.”

-Douglas E. Hahn

  Blairstown, NJ