“Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” What Patrick Henry’s Rhetoric Means in the Digital Age
“Give me liberty or give me death!”
Sunday, March 23, 2025 marks 250 years since Patrick Henry’s famous declaration. As America approaches its 250th birthday in 2026, R Street is celebrating our founding-era principles and how they intersect with today’s policy challenges. Explore more from our policy teams.
On March 23, 1775—exactly 250 years ago Sunday—Patrick Henry stood before the Virginia Convention and famously declared, “Give me liberty or give me death!” Not merely a declaration of defiance, these words were a deliberate call to action. For Henry, liberty was neither freely given nor permanently secured; rather, it was a condition to be actively upheld through our collective will to preserve it, fortitude to recognize and confront emerging threats to it, and readiness to make the necessary sacrifices to defend it. To secure liberty in the 18th century, Henry and his fellow colonists had to be willing to risk everything: their reputations, their livelihoods, and—if it came down to it—their lives. Today, although the landscape of liberty has shifted, the perceived tension between security and freedom remains.
Physical borders alone no longer define the frontlines of liberty; instead, they are embedded in the very architecture of our digital world—woven into the networks we rely on, the data we generate, and the algorithms that shape our interactions and experiences. Our identities, discourse, commerce, education, and even political movements increasingly exist online, rendering cyberspace and the technological innovations that shape our world both an extension of our freedoms and an evolving frontier where we must defend those freedoms against emerging threats from malicious actors, government censorship, or well-intended but unbalanced policies. Today, the fight for liberty is at our fingertips, with every click, search, and transaction leaving a digital impression. This shift demands that we rethink what it means to secure our liberty in an era where information moves seamlessly across borders—and where those who seek to undermine it can do so with unprecedented speed, scale, and sophistication.
In the 21st century, threats to our liberty are not always obvious and rarely announce themselves through overt force. Instead, they emerge in the government’s quiet expansion of its digital surveillance of American citizens, the temptation to increase regulatory authority, and efforts to compel or restrict constitutionally protected speech—all under the guise of safety. Policies and regulations shaping artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, telecommunications, data privacy, and online content are often framed as necessary safeguards; however, these precautions can inadvertently suppress free expression and stifle competition if misapplied. While these trade-offs rarely present themselves as direct threats to liberty, history has shown that once freedoms are surrendered for the promise of safety, certainty, or even convenience, they are rarely restored without a struggle.
This is where Henry’s rhetoric remains as relevant today as ever before. His speech was not simply about resisting oppression—it was a challenge to recognize the fragility and cost of liberty. Today, we must ensure that policies governing emerging technologies work to reinforce American liberty rather than serving as control mechanisms. This is the core of our daily efforts: To ensure that, in shaping the systems and policies of the future, we do not trade away the principles that made our nation’s founding possible.