I've seen a few references to Patrick Henry's famous 1775 line "Give me liberty or give me death" floating around in reference to our current situation. Everytime I see that quote I think of the 1st page of this article, which might be instructive context for today's Henry fans. 
This is the operative point. When faced with the prospect that his dominion over the enslaved people who made his economic liberty (and that of his fellow powerful Virginians) possible, the limitations of Henry's commitment to the principle of "liberty" became glaringly clear.
"Liberty for me, but not for thee" is frequently the moral code of those who are drawn to decontextualized quotes like Patrick Henry's "Give me liberty or give me death."
The article quoted at the beginning of this thread is Peter Wood, "Liberty is Sweet: Af-Am Freedom Struggles in the Years Before White Independence." It reveals the tensions that surfaced when a slaveholding society fought a revolution on behalf of "liberty."
Liberty has never been the decontextualized, individual possession that modern Patrick Henry stans claim it to be. Henry and his fellow enslavers knew full well that their economic liberty *depended upon* the lack of liberty experienced by their enslaved workers.
And enslaved workers knew full well that when white Patriots talked about their deep and abiding belief in "liberty," almost all of them never intended for that principle to be extended to black people.
How to craft a society in which "liberty" is a possession we all share is one of the great puzzles of American politics. Some, like Patrick Henry and most who have uncritically mouthed that quote of his, have refused to seriously grapple with that problem.
Here's a thread on an American political tradition that W.E.B. DuBois called "abolition democracy" that, to my mind, is much more worth remembering and continuing to revivify.
