Penny Thoughts: The Blessings of Liberty and Freedom

During the long moments of any “campaign” season – you know, that time when all else revolves around the invective and venom candidates for whatever office hurl at each other in the hopes of convincing us that their message is the one we should accept – candidates uniformly conclude that, by extension, we will accept and approve of them for that special office to which they aspire.

They saturate us with their definitions and examples of, let us say, “freedom” or “liberty”. The irony is that each has her/his own very well-defined concept of those two fundamentals of our American cultural heritage. They, furthermore, present them in such diametrically opposed applications that it borders on the comical. 

A case in point is the recent impeachment of President Trump attempts by the Democrats. Both sides presented their positions in this context: “We are dong this to save our liberty…or save our freedom,” and they blathered on with such nonsensical palaver – love that word…my Scottish Great-Grandmother used it all the  time – that it made my head spin!

All this has prompted me to re-examine the notions of freedom and liberty. In so doing, I have tried to consider more closely how we apply these rudimentary principles of our democracy in our discussions and in our approaches to our interactions with the rest of our world.

Taking a look at definitions of both “liberty” and “freedom” shows that in the Oxford Dictionary, “liberty” is “the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.”  And the Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “freedom” as “the quality or state of being exempt or released usually from something onerous.”

A further analysis of liberty was offered by Isaiah Berlin in his iconic publication, Four Essays on Liberty (1969).  Berlin theorizes a further assessment which differentiates a “positive” liberty from a “negative” liberty in which he posits, “Positive liberty is the possession of the capacity to act upon one’s free will, as opposed to negative liberty, which is freedom from external restraint on one’s actions.”

From this, I have developed a concept that the essential difference between liberty and freedom can be reduced to the following proposition: freedom is the release or exemption from institutionally or structurally imposed regulations and strictures; whereas, liberty is the exercise of unrestrained individual free will in one’s life, expression, behavior or political views.  Hence, it can be said that liberty has to do with will and freedom has to do with practice.

So now, by definition and commitment, you can see why my political party is the Libertarian Party.

Thus, from my analysis, it can be deduced that liberty has more to do with the individual free will, and, on the other hand, freedom is a reflection of the necessary separation of the individual’s behavior from institutional limits.

Why is it important to make such nuanced differences between liberty and freedom? For all practical purposes it could be just another of my esoteric ventures into “onion peeling”. Still, I believe that the more distinctions we can develop when it comes to fundamental concepts we exercise in our daily lives, the more informed we can be, and the less we can be made subject by those who would limit us.

Further, it seems to me that the difference between liberty and freedom can be seen in the differences in laws which affect either one of these two rudiments of our American societal and political order.

Given that every law takes away another of our freedoms or liberties, when we focus on the specific intent of a given law we can begin to see which is limited more – our freedom or our liberty.

It is vital in my perspective to keep in mind that the founders of our Nation in large part were motivated by two facts of their existence: 1) the oppression of King George and the excesses of his dominion; and 2) their philosophical belief in the sacredness of the individual and in the sacredness of the individual’s exercise of free will.

We see this in the structure and the intent of our Constitution, and more specifically in our Bill of Rights. The structure of our government is predicated upon a clearly defined “separation of powers” and the Bill of Rights was/is a specific response to the declaration and protection of individual liberties. I mull these over every time I hear of a new law, or new regulation, or new “Department of…(whatever)” is about to be introduced.

It can be frightening, and it should be! Understanding the liberties and freedoms upon which our Nation has been founded is absolutely vital in protecting and preserving it.

Still, it is not in just “understanding” them. It is in understanding the means by which they can be taken away from us!