Conflicting ideas about freedom are a mainstay of politics today. To name just a few: In certain sectors of the right, COVID restrictions and mask mandates have become central animating issues. The right to own guns and the freedom to carry them have been key issues for decades of Republican politicians.
Great piece! Strongly ironic (Frankensteinian tragedy)This is clearest explanation I have seen of our current socio-political circumstance. Definitions do in-fact change paradigms. Liberty to me is like a boat that loses it’s coarse, it needs tacking and re anchoring. We need to continually revisit what Liberty means (we’re Americans for goodness sake) not only emotionally, but spiritually and intellectually as it appeals to reason. I suspect that the cause of our being lost at sea is that no one is reading from the Canon of the Western World, to have the greater perspective or wisdom: the philosophical map that we desperately need today. We would have perhaps reasoned with Mill and had a crusade of a debate with him to prevent the sinking of our ship.
so on point:
Government exists precisely to protect peaceful individuals from coercive interference by others, not to impose its own coercion upon citizens.
and : Any case of social pressuring, particularly when it involves the possibility of economic harm, can be considered a violation of liberty. (precisely what COVID lockdowns achieved)
As Mill puts it, “men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.”
Adam Smith played the middle by saddling between laisser faire and a would be mixed Capitalism ( I personally cannot see how Mixed Capitalism will not lead to Socialism) as he wisely noted of the Government’s role in the market: “ let it’s protecting influence extend only to the removal of such obstacles as avarice or ignorance have raised up to unlimited liberty of industry and commerce”
It seems that Mill may have been “bitten” as described in
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. I need to read On Liberty.
I have been impressed by Mortimer Adler and Keslo’s take on Capitalism with their cowritten Capitalist Manifesto. The main idea is diffused private ownership of Capital. In essence what they declare is that Pure Capitalism is the only means to economic and political freedom and the only reason it has not been achieved is because mixed capitalism got in the way. I will be writing on that shortly.
Great piece! Strongly ironic (Frankensteinian tragedy)This is clearest explanation I have seen of our current socio-political circumstance. Definitions do in-fact change paradigms. Liberty to me is like a boat that loses it’s coarse, it needs tacking and re anchoring. We need to continually revisit what Liberty means (we’re Americans for goodness sake) not only emotionally, but spiritually and intellectually as it appeals to reason. I suspect that the cause of our being lost at sea is that no one is reading from the Canon of the Western World, to have the greater perspective or wisdom: the philosophical map that we desperately need today. We would have perhaps reasoned with Mill and had a crusade of a debate with him to prevent the sinking of our ship.
so on point:
Government exists precisely to protect peaceful individuals from coercive interference by others, not to impose its own coercion upon citizens.
and : Any case of social pressuring, particularly when it involves the possibility of economic harm, can be considered a violation of liberty. (precisely what COVID lockdowns achieved)
As Mill puts it, “men might as well be imprisoned, as excluded from the means of earning their bread.”
Adam Smith played the middle by saddling between laisser faire and a would be mixed Capitalism ( I personally cannot see how Mixed Capitalism will not lead to Socialism) as he wisely noted of the Government’s role in the market: “ let it’s protecting influence extend only to the removal of such obstacles as avarice or ignorance have raised up to unlimited liberty of industry and commerce”
It seems that Mill may have been “bitten” as described in
Mikhail Bulgakov’s Heart of a Dog. I need to read On Liberty.
I have been impressed by Mortimer Adler and Keslo’s take on Capitalism with their cowritten Capitalist Manifesto. The main idea is diffused private ownership of Capital. In essence what they declare is that Pure Capitalism is the only means to economic and political freedom and the only reason it has not been achieved is because mixed capitalism got in the way. I will be writing on that shortly.