The late 1940s were a treacherous time in international politics. The excitement of victory over fascism in World War II faded with the rise of new Communist regimes in China and Eastern Europe, which posed a threat to Western democracies and made a third world war seem frighteningly possible.
Western leaders proposed many ideas to prevent another global conflict. These ranged from using the United Nations as a forum to resolve international disputes, to forming a military alliance between Western democracies (aka NATO) to counter a Communist attack, to forming a Western political federation (a concept known as Atlantic Union).
Edward Meeman, editor of the Memphis Press-Scimitar, felt that a philosophical statement of principles shared by democratic nations might boost hopes for Atlantic Union. He called his statement the “Freedom Manifesto.”
Meeman’s manifesto never went anywhere. It was a missed opportunity. Supporters of freedom and democracy could really use a clear statement of what we believe in.
A Vision for “A Century of Hope”
Edward Meeman spent his career in the newspaper business, but he was deeply involved in political causes. As editor of the Knoxville News, he advocated for creation of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. In Memphis, he fought for civil rights and against political bossism and corruption. He waged a long-running campaign against Memphis boss E.H. Crump; Meeman’s support was critical to Estes Kefauver’s election to the Senate in 1948 over a Crump-backed candidate.
Meeman strongly supported the idea of a federal union between Western democracies. In January 1949, Meeman unveiled his “Freedom Manifesto” in a speech at the University of Florida.
The previous year marked the 100th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto’s publication, and Meeman felt it was time for supporters of freedom and democracy to produce a manifesto of their own.
“We are in this year of 1949 starting a new century,” he told his audience. “Let us make it a century of hope.”
Much of Meeman’s Freedom Manifesto described his vision of the economic system in free societies. (Perhaps this was inevitable, given that his manifesto was a rebuttal to Marxism.)
The first section, on economic freedom, rejected two key tenets of Marxism: first, that man is primarily motivated by materialist impulses; and second, that capitalism is destined to be replaced by socialism. The next section presented a vision of a mixed economy in which “various economic forms exist side-by-side, in competition with each other, and flourish as they meet human needs and conceptions of the good life.” Those forms included self-employment, partnerships, cooperatives, and corporations.
Meeman saw corporations as necessary to a free society, but he envisioned significant reforms in their operation, including profit-sharing with workers and a stronger voice for stockholders. He floated the idea that “corporations need to develop and perhaps can develop souls.” It was an intriguing concept that, alas, he did not elaborate.
Meeman saw public ownership of some businesses as a valid option for a free society. He envisioned these operations being regional cooperatives like the Tennessee Valley Authority, rather than centrally planned operations.
He felt that the government should be able to purchase corporations when it was in the public interest; on the flip side, he argued that privatizing government operations should be an option if a public-owned business is too bureaucratic or ineffective.
“Experience and a sense of values, not dogmatic theory, will determine their decisions,” he said. “We find what is better by never-ending thought and experiment.”
In a direct rebuttal to Marxism, Meeman argued that “[t]he right of private property is fundamental. The institution of private property is not evil; it is a positive good.” State ownership of property, he believed, was a sure road to dictatorship.
He ruled out government confiscation of private businesses or property, including excessively high taxes in his definition of “confiscation.” He argued that “[p]roperty is necessary to the freedom and dignity of man,” claiming that a person without property “cannot be an effective citizen in a vigorous democracy.”
However, Meeman was no libertarian; he believed that “[w]e need to have property more fairly acquired [and] more widely distributed.”
As Meeman saw it, the widespread ownership of private property would invalidate the Marxist divide between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. In his free society, workers would be owners – not just of property, but of stock in the companies they worked for – and owners would also be workers.
In this free society, labor unions would still exist, but instead of leading strikes and battling management, they would seek to help companies increase the well-being of the worker-owners. Since the company’s success would also benefit the workers, as Meeman saw it, unions wouldn’t need to be adversarial.
Meeman believed that in his idealized economic system, “there should be few periods of recession or depression.” (Feel free to laugh yourselves silly at this idea.) He argued that businesses should carry enough reserves so that could pay their workers proper pensions and avoid layoffs during periods of lower demand. Meanwhile, individuals would be expected to build up enough private savings to tide themselves over during hard times.
Meeman’s free society was full of thriving businesses, but only those producing things he considered worthwhile. “The object of mass production should not be something not needed or to be thrown away after a single use,” he said. Among those things “not needed” were manufactured food and cheap clothing; he felt that members of a free society should tend their own gardens and mend their own clothes. He also rejected “[e]xaggerated, high pressure advertising” designed to make people buy things they didn’t need.
Meeman also considered a free society to be a decentralized one. “A healthy rural life is the foundation of a free society,” he said. “A family living on its own acres is the ideal.” He considered modern cities too large and felt that society should spread out. All cities would be surrounded by “greenbelts” to “[b]ring the country to the city.”
He also believed that a free society should be a religious one. “Religions do not agree on the reasons why men should be good, but they substantially agree on what men should do,” he said. “The need is to get those teachings practiced.” He called for denominations to create lay groups to study and encourage religious practice, as well as interdenominational “cells” to encourage good citizenship.
Naturally, this free society would be a democracy. Meeman oddly had little to say on this topic, apart from a general endorsement of “a vigorous political democracy” and a call for citizens to take responsibility for their own local government, rejecting bossism.
The Manifesto devoted more space to sketching out Meeman’s vision of Atlantic Union, or the “great Union of the Free.” The union would initially consist of the NATO member nations; other countries would be permitted to join once they had “established within themselves the practice of freedom and democracy.” The union would have a shared foreign policy, a common defense force, a common currency, common citizenship, and a customs union. (Picture the European Union on steroids.)
This union would not be an insular one. He called for closer relations with Latin America and for the union to back Chiang Kai-Shek’s Chinese Nationalist government against the Communists.
Meeman felt that such a union was essential for democracies to protect themselves against the Communist threat. Britain was no longer capable of being controlling world affairs, and the United States wasn’t yet ready to step up to the task. Meeman supported the United Nations, but recognized that its usefulness was limited as long as Russia refused to abide by its decisions.
By contrast, the Union of the Free would offer “a power so vast that the men of the Kremlin would not dare attack,” Meeman argued. The union would control what he called “the four aces”: a large population and productive economy, vast natural resources, a dominant military, and “preponderant moral power.”
Another key asset would be a free and independent press. (Meeman mentioned this in his speech but inexplicably excluded it from the text of the Manifesto.) “Freedom and democracy cannot exist without free newspapers,” he argued.
Not only should the press be free of government control, it also should not be beholden to any political party, church, business, or labor union. “[T]he ideal ownership of a newspaper… has no large economic interest except in newspapers,” he said, “and hence no client but the public.”
A Promising Discussion Disappears
Meeman considered this merely a first draft; he encouraged others to chime in with suggestions, additions, or corrections. He sent copies of the Manifesto to newspapers around the country.
Several papers published it, either in part or in full. Those that commented on it generally offered praise.
The Northwest Arkansas Times said the Manifesto was “all worth careful consideration” and proclaimed, “[W]hen it is completed and ready for publication, all America should learn it by heart.” The Shamokin News Dispatch said that it “contains a lot of good sound philosophy.” Columnist Wright Bryan in the Atlanta Journal praised the Manifesto for its “active, articulate support” of freedom.
Other outlets offered some constructive criticism. The Casper Star Tribune praised the effort but suggested that the economic sections reflected Meeman’s personal preferences rather than broadly true statements about free societies. They cited his praise of TVA as an example: “These authorities are, in fact, viewed in some quarters as socialistic and foreign to the free society idea.” By contrast, the Star Tribune concluded, the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution “are timeless because they set forth great principles.”
Despite these criticisms, it looked as though Meeman had sparked something. Kefauver entered the text of the Freedom Manifesto into the Congressional Record in June 1949. The Voice of America broadcast it around the world. The pro-Atlantic Union magazine, Freedom and Union, published the Manifesto in January 1950.
And then… nothing. The conversation around the Manifesto died as quickly as it started. If Meeman ever produced another draft, he never published it in his newspaper. While efforts toward the proposed Atlantic Union continued for more than a decade, the Manifesto itself was not part of the discussion. The idea of Atlantic Union eventually faded in favor of Pax Americana, which governed global affairs for the next 75 years.
An Idea Whose Time Has Come – Again
There’s no doubt that Meeman’s draft had plenty of room for improvement. As the Casper Star Tribune noted, Meeman’s economic vision was too personalized to gain widespread acceptance. The Manifesto could have used a lot more language on democracy. And I’m sure black people in Jim Crow America, and people living in colonial states in Africa and Asia, would debate the degree to which Western countries had “established the practice of freedom and democracy.”
All that said, we would have benefitted from a clear statement of principles about what life in a free, democratic society should look like. We still look to founding documents like the Declaration and the Constitution for those principles. But it would have been valuable to have a modern update, projecting those principles into an interconnected world.
I think it would be especially valuable to have a statement like that now. We live in a world where Pax Americana, if not dead, is in its dying throes. We have a President who disdains the value of NATO and alliances in general, and who seems to believe that any motivating larger than self-interest (personal or national) is for suckers. He wants America to be “great,” while simultaneously shrinking from the responsibilities of world leadership.
His followers seem to view (small-l) liberalism and democracy as passe; they’re trying to redefine our nation on blood-and-soil lines, rather than on belief in shared creeds. Too many Americans seem to view their fellow citizens as enemies to be oppressed or expelled, rather than as brothers and sisters in our shared national project.
For decades, we didn’t think we needed to make the case for freedom and democracy. Now we do. In a recent article in The Atlantic, George Packer noted that right-wing “post-liberals” have, for better or worse, a series of intellectual theories undergirding their beliefs. Packer argues that supporters of freedom and democracy “need their own theorists and influencers, their own institutes and manifestos, to undertake the historic task of not only reversing America’s self-destruction, but showing the next generation why liberal democracy offers the best chance for a good life.”
We could do worse than dusting off Meeman’s old Freedom Manifesto and updating it to make that case.
Estes Kefauver for President 
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