Liberty Dog's commenters on freedom
Liberty Dog posted a brief fisking of a couple commenters' statements about a supposed conflict between the "common good" and what they called "freedom."
One commenter said, "To live in a world of utter freedom would be to live in a world where every debased appetite could find expression, all in the name of liberty."
Another commenter said, "I believe I speak for the overwhelming majority of the nation as well as most of the Founding Fathers when I say that the Constitution was never meant to protect freedom of depriving rights to other citizens while realizing one's own."
This is a perversion of the words "freedom" and "liberty."
Here are the definitions which are adopted by our Founders and the vast majority of libertarians, whether Randian, Hayekian, Rothbardian, or Jeffersonian, or other variants. I will highlight those portions of the definitions which conform to the usage as limited by libertarians.
Funk and Wagnall's 1949 New Standard Dictionary of the English language:The phrase "common good," can only mean the universal welfare of each individual, the equal protection of rights, and is incompatible with the violation of the rights of some for the benefit of others. It can have no other meaning unless one defines "common," so as not to mean equally applicable to each individual, that the good of each individual requires that harm come to some individuals. To do so is to transform the phrase into an arbitrary claim that some individuals are fodder for the violence and amusement of others, and to uphold this parasitic relation as a universal claim to liberty.
Common: 1. Belonging or pertaining equally to more than one, or to many indefinitely. 2. Belonging to all, that is, either to the human race generally, or to all the people of a certain country, region, or locality; general; universal; public.
Liberty: 1. The state of being exempt from the domination of others, or from restricting circumstances: opposed to slavery, subjugation, or bondage; as Liberty of speech or trade
Webster's 1938 Universal Unabridged Dictionary
Free: 1. Being at liberty; not being under necessity or restraint, physical or moral. 2. In government, not restrained; not in a state of vassalage or dependance; subject only to fixed laws, made by consent, and to a regular administration of such laws; not subject to the arbitrary will of some sovereign or lord. 3. Instituted by a free people or by consent or choice of those who are to be subjects, and securing private rights and privileges set by fixed laws and principles; not arbitrary or despotic.
Webster's New Twentieth Century Unabridged Dictionary
Free: 1. Not under the control of some other person or arbitrary power; able to act or think without compulsion or arbitrary restriction; having liberty; independant. 2. Having or existing under a government that does not impose arbitrary restrictions on the right to speak, assemble, petition, vote, etc.
Liberty: 1. Freedom or release from slavery, imprisonment, captivity, or any other form of arbitrary control. 2. The sum of rights and exemptions possessed in common by the people of a community, state, etc.
Liberty and freedom are negative principles: the absence of the initiation of coercion, the arbitrary will of another exerted by force; and the defense of this condition against those who would force their will on others. To claim that liberty is restricted by such a "common" good, is to maintain that liberty is applicable to only a portion of the society, and that some individuals can claim to initiate coercion against others. It is to divorce liberty from its origin in the nature of all men, and to redefine it in terms of what those privileged few view the "common good." It is to rob these words of their meaning and to use them in propagandistic fashion toward their antithesis: the use of coercion according to the arbitrary will of some, according to laws which are not fixed, but which flow from a mutable concept of "common good," which claims applicability to a limited portion of the population. It is a deceitful expropriation of the words of liberty toward what boils down to someone claiming a privilege to violence.
"Utter freedom" could mean no more than the "utter lack of the initiation of violence against men by their fellow men, the utter limitation of force by fixed and isonomic laws toward the protection of rights." To expand the concept of "freedom" to include acts of coercion against others, is to include the antithesis of freedom, and to deprive it of all meaning. To use the word "freedom," where one means "infringing the freedom of others," is another attempt to limit the concept of freedom to be applicable only to a few by rendering it meaningless- to transform it from a negative concept to a positive concept, and to divorce it from its origin in the nature of man.
These limited usages are nonsensical and harmful. They advance violence in the name of peace, violation of rights in the name of protection of rights, and arbitrary, specific law in the name of fixed and isonomic law. They are useless in arguing with those who more honestly term their belief that humans can and should live under threat of force. You cannot argue for freedom proper with a communist if you use the word in the same way he does. It is not an excuse to plead carelessness with one's words.
If I err, drop a comment.
Update 2:11 am: I added a semicolon where needed, and restated "initiation of force," as "the arbitrary will of another exerted by force," for clarification.
Posted by: Tom "The Pooklekufr" Treloar at May 31, 2005 22:43 EST |
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