07/26/2026
Today Marks the 36th Anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. 🔴
Former President George H.W. Bush signed the fledgling bill into law on July 26, 1990. His doing so, by unilaterally supporting a virtuous cause without partisan inhibitions, bridged an otherwise frustrating gap in American society and furthered American excellence. Our founding fathers were foremost enlightened thinkers, meaning that they valued empiricism, rationality, and logic as mechanisms for determining truth over dogma, superstition, and unimpeachable divine authority. Accordingly, they defined liberty in the negative - against the external pressure and coercion of King George III's tyranny - because that was where the overwhelming amount of empirical data was at the time. It was clear that monarchy - and by extension tyranny - were absolutely awful for the human experience, for freedom, and for individual self-determination. Thus, a necessary condition for freedom is the absence of unaccountable and unelected rulers.
This is an excellent foundation for an unrestrained and prosperous society. Still, for liberty to be complete, to fully realize its promise, it must run downstream from the idea of positive liberty. First narrowly defined by philosopher Immanuel Kant, positive and negative liberty can most easily be understood as both the "freedom from" and the "freedom to." Negative liberty is the freedom from tyranny and oppression, whereas "freedom to" is your material ability to do things and self-actualize.
Philosopher Isaiah Berlin correctly identified that negative liberty without positive liberty is functionally impotent. Consider a person with a disability that necessitates the use of a wheelchair - it's wonderful that they are allowed to exist without question and that they are afforded the same protections under the law as everyone else, but what are they to do when, upon reaching the grocery store, they realize they can't get inside because there's no ramp? What good is their freedom from tyranny when they don't have the freedom to feed themselves?
The ADA filled precisely that gap, resolved the apparent paradox, by allowing people with disabilities to participate meaningfully in their communities and realize their right to self-determination through access. They were finally afforded autonomy over where they worked, where they shopped, etc. Beyond that, it's helped us realize our mission of empowering people with disabilities to lead fulfilling, independent lives. So, from everyone here at Threshold, thank you to all the brave people, legislators, and voters who made the ADA possible.
