The Changing Contours of American Freedom: An American History

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Give Me Liberty!offers a narrative of the facts of American history,but it is also an interpretation.It emphasizes the events, individuals, and themes that I consider most important.It attempts to pay due attention both to prominent leaders and to the experience of ordinary Americans and the diverse groups that make up American society.

《美国历史：理想与现实》是一部关于美国历史事实的叙事，但它同时也是一种历史解释。它所强调的事件、个人和主题，在我看来，都是美国历史上最为重要的。它希望既关注那些声名显赫的领袖人物又关注平凡普通的美国人的经历，并关注那些构成美国社会的不同群体的经历。

[2]The unifying theme of freedom integrates the narrative.Americans are hardly the only people on earth to cherish freedom, of course.The past century has witnessed struggles for freedom in countries across the globe.But given the central place the idea occupies in American life, no one can understand American society without coming to terms with its history in the United States.

[2]将这部叙事连贯起来的是自由这一主题。美国人当然不是地球上唯一的热爱自由的人民。20世纪见证了发生在世界上不同国家的争取自由的斗争。然而，正是因为自由的思想在美国生活中占据了中心的位置，如果不了解自由在美国发展和演变的历史，我们便无法懂得美国社会。

[3]Attention to clashing definitions of freedom and the struggles of different groups to achieve freedom as they understood it offers a way of making sense of American history as a whole.Freedom is the central word in Americans’ political language.But freedom is not a fixed, timeless category with a single unchanging definition.Rather,the history of the United States is, in part, a story of debates,disagreements and struggles over freedom.Crises like the American Revolution, the Civil War,and the Cold War have permanently transformed the idea of freedom.So too have demands by various groups of Americans to enjoy greater freedom.The meaning of freedom has been constructed not only in congressional debates and political treatises, but on plantations and picket lines, in parlors and even bedrooms.For some, freedom has been what some scholars call a “habit of the heart,” an ideal so taken for granted that it is lived out but rarely analyzed.For others, freedom is not a birthright but a distant goal that has inspired great sacrifice.

[3]关注自由概念本身拥有的相互冲突的定义，关注不同群体如何为争取自己所理解的自由而进行的斗争，是一种将美国历史作为一个整体来理解的方式。在美国的政治语言中，“自由”是一个核心词。自由并非只有一种亘古永恒的表现形式，它的定义也不是单一的或固定不变的。事实上，美国历史的相当一部分就是一个围绕自由而展开辩论、表示异议和进行斗争的故事。类如美国革命、美国内战和冷战等危机永久性地改变了自由的思想。不同群体为享有更大的自由而提出的要求也同样改变了美国自由的内涵。自由的内涵不光是通过国会辩论和政治学说来建构的，而同时也是通过发生在种植园内、罢工纠察线上、普通人家的客厅里甚至卧室中的事件得以建构的。对一些美国人来说，自由一直是一种被学者所称的“心灵习性”，一种人们可以理所当然地享受，却很少去分析和研究的理想状态。然而，对于另外一些美国人来说，自由不是一种与生俱来的权利，而是一种虽然遥远但能激发他们为之做出极大牺牲来争取的目标。