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From: esk@wucs.UUCP (Paul V. Torek)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: freedom, democracy, etc
Message-ID: <630@wucs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 17:32:13 EST
Article-I.D.: wucs.630
Posted: Thu Jan 24 17:32:13 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 09:02:34 EST
Distribution: net
Organization: Washington U. in St. Louis, CS Dept.
Lines: 73

[]
> = mwm@ucbtopaz (<mike)
> > = faustus@ucbcad.UUCP (Wayne)

> > What I have trouble with is why, out of all the possible "basic goods"
> > people could want, libertarians seem to have a fixation for freedom
> > from force.  Whenever a philosophical position claims that one thing
> > is an absolute good, to be followed to the exclusion of everything
> > else, I think that this shows there is something fundamentally wrong
> > with it. 

Exactly.

> > What is wrong with saying, "coercion only in a few cases where
> > the situation justifies it"? Or, "coercion only when the majority
> > opinion is in favor of it"? 	 	Wayne

> First, "the will of the majority." ... [Slavery in the US] was the will of 
> the majority, but was it good? 

Examples like this show that democracy is absolutely the worst system of 
government.
Except for all the others.
Including libertarianism.

> Now, "only when the situation justifies it." We are now getting to the
> heart of the matter. *How* do you decide that "the situation justifies it?"

Reason and experience.  (Ask a simple question ...)

C > = carnes@gargoyle.UChicago.UUCP (Richard Carnes)
Y > = Gary F. York
R > = renner@uiucdcs (Scott Renner)

C > Libertarians also seem to think that freedom is merely the absence of
C > coercion. ...

Y > Correct!  My dictionary thinks so too.

Mine doesn't.  Carnes's doesn't.

When the dictionaries disagree, we should take a look at ordinary usage.  
People commonly say that, for example, having easily available transportation
(a car, for instance) increases their freedom.  Are they misusing the word?
You had better have good reason for saying so.  Oh -- and "it doesn't fit
my ideology" won't do.

R > Abraham Lincoln couldn't buy a television set
R > or ride a plane to Washington, and I can; was he less "free" than I?

You mean, do such opportunities increase our freedom?  Yes.  If you were not
coerced or manipulated by others, yet were constrained by poverty, illness,
and technological and cultural backwardness -- how free would you be?

C > Libertarians, beginners in the study of political philosophy, and anyone 
C > who believes that "the absence of coercion" is the only meaning that may
C > legitimately be attached to the term *freedom* (or *liberty*, which I am
C > treating as synonymous), may wish to read the essay "Two Concepts of
C > Liberty" in Isaiah Berlin's Four Essays on Liberty (not that I am in
C > complete agreement with Berlin).  Berlin brilliantly delineates the 
C > concepts of "negative" and "positive" liberty and traces their history 
C > in political thought.  It is the positive sense that I am bringing into 
C > the discussion and that is either ignored or dismissed by libertarian 
C > thought.

But Carnes, don't you know that libertarians have found the One True 
Definition of freedom?  How dare you suggest that it admits of multiple
meanings?  Blasphemy!  Next thing, you'll be suggesting that we ask ourselves
which kind of freedom is most worth wanting ...

		"One good horse-laugh is worth a thousand syllogisms"
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