This stupendous interview makes many points of diplomacy clear. These quotes captures a takeaway that cannot be ignored:
"But if you told them the way you're going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that's ridiculous. But that's a view of democracy that is pene…
This stupendous interview makes many points of diplomacy clear. These quotes captures a takeaway that cannot be ignored:
"But if you told them the way you're going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that's ridiculous. But that's a view of democracy that is penetrating Western democracies and is very, very dangerous. It's not going to sustain them."
"It would be a tragedy if the United States abandons its role and stops believing in its mission to be the beacon of liberty and the world. "
"Get on with a program of liberty."
Americans have forgotten the difference between liberty and freedom. We use them interchangeably. This is a mistake. Bibi implies that he, for one, knows the difference, and is putting it to work in Israel.
Freedom as the political program promises to hoodwink reality by making it someone else's job to guarantee your freedom of speech, worship, want, and from fear. Liberty is political freedom, meaning freedom from the polity (elected and unelected) who want to rule your life's every breath.
I am pleased to see that Common Sense is taking us back to the days of its namesake, when everyone knew the difference between liberty and freedom. Thank you, Bari Weiss for this important interview with Bibi.
I find your distinction between liberty and freedom interesting, Ilene. What kind of liberty do you think Netanyahu himself will have when he could be leveraged by his soon to be partner Hamar Ben-Gvir, ultra-nationalist (and proclaimed terrorist by both Israel and the US back in the day..) for a senior position in a coalition government (defence?). The ends justify the means - and I think BiBi will cede to 'the anointed few', give them influence - all for him to claim power.
You make a very interesting point, Lee. I think Bibi himself will have the same kind of elite government as all the others who tout democracy -- that may explain why he comes in and then gets ousted.
This means he's a cut above those who don't recognize the difference between liberty and freedom, but is in the same boat as them when he tries to lead.
In the interview, he hints at a distinction between liberty and freedom in his talk. He warns about the dangerous problem for democracies. He doesn't pursue the issue in depth, and you wouldn't expect him to. After all, he's a politician, not a theorist. He doesn't know how to avoid that danger, and maybe he will figure it out when it looms next time.
I agree with him that the danger is real and ominous. At this juncture, it’s enough to get people to understand that. Getting most people to recognize the problem as a problem will be a tremendous job.
Promises of liberty preserve the rights of the individual. Guarantees of freedom in the FDR sense enslave some individuals to others.
Our Constitution is a shell of its original form. Most checks and balances are gone. The remaining are under attack -- the number of justices in the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, the regulatory power of unelected bureaucrats, etc.
The distinction between liberty and freedom is real. It's existential. It's not going away. A society that champions freedom over liberty is doomed unless it learns the difference, takes heed, and implements a solution.
I am not a Constitutional scholar. I am a systems analyst, designer, and implementer. I have a lifelong interest and much success in getting to the bottom of things, and this is a problem that intrigues me.
You make a profound point. Do I assume that in your opinion liberty is ordained - with freedom merely proclaimed? By us? By a document?
Is liberty to be construed as individual, to be claimed by right? - but freedom viewed as collective, by statute? And how are the two entwined? Because, as I think you and I both would agree, the two are related.
Do I assume that in your opinion liberty is ordained - with freedom merely proclaimed? By us? By a document?
<<Neither ordained or proclaimed.>>
Is liberty to be construed as individual, to be claimed by right?
<<Both liberty and freedom are claimed by right. Both are legitimate concepts formed by people thinking about the need to understand how to live their lives. >>
- but freedom viewed as collective, by statute?
<<I view the collective as a shame, always.>>
And how are the two entwined?
<<There are groups of individuals, but no group has more rights that any one individual. Freedom and liberty have different functions in human life, as compared below.>>
Because, as I think you and I both would agree, the two are related.
<<Yes the two are related.>>
And which is the more valuable?
<<Value depends on context. On a desert island, devoid of population but yourself, liberty is of no consequence. Freedom is everything.>>
I think both, equally.
<<Liberty builds on freedom. They are not equal, they are blocks of the same safe-house, but one (freedom) is more fundamental. The other (liberty) is indispensable in an advanced society. >>
Freedom and Liberty Compared:
Freedom is the relationship of a human to reality in a state of Nature, as John Locke might have put it. No government directly impacts his life. He is free to work. Free to take responsibility. Free to refuse to take responsibility. Free to starve. His life, his work, his pursuit of happiness is his own.
Liberty is the relationship of the human individual to other individuals in a social context, in which a government has been formed to preserve the group from foreign aggression and the members of the group from internal aggression. Taking the fruit of another's labor by force or fraud is internal aggression. Governments are formed to prevent internal and external aggression.
However, it is aggression by the polity, the machinery of government, that is the root of tyranny. Safeguarding against tyranny is always the greatest danger of government. It has been thus since governments were formed.
The Founders knew, in colonial America, that the overreach of the King of England was the biggest threat to their lives. Not the Indians, the French, or any thieves or scoundrels among them. The litany of wrongs in the Declaration of Independence is a list of usurpations of power by King George III.
The complaints in the Declaration of Independence begin with this sentence,
"...let Facts be submitted to a candid World...."
There follows about 30 points of complaint, ending with,
"A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free people."
As we look around us, tyranny is obviously an unsolved problem. Liberty is the concept of political freedom -- freedom from the polity, meaning freedom from the people in power to use power for their own purposes or for the benefit of some at the expense of others.
The word, "Liberty" appears in the Declaration only once in the statement of inalienable rights. However, the long list of complaints clearly defines what the Declaration of Independence is about: the usurpations of King George III. The concept of liberty is the protection against usurpation of power.
Liberty is the soul of the Declaration of Independence. The world needs to recapture that soul.
Thanks to you and Lee for this utterly fascinating discussion of the difference between liberty and freedom.
A question on the latter, though. Who decides whether a government action is necessary or a "usurpation of power?" For every person who believes (for instance) taxes are necessary to manage a society, another insists that all taxes are theft.
So how do you maximize "liberty" and still have a functioning society?
You maximize liberty and freedom together by defining the concept of tyranny precisely.
Then you define government to prevent tyranny, and even the smallest step toward tyranny. How does tyranny begin? It begins when people choose the lesser of two evils. If the choice is between the lesser of two evils, evil wins.
I know this response is incomplete. I believe a complete, factual and sensible solution is possible. I also believe that recognizing the problem and accepting the possibility that there could be a solution is the biggest hurdle facing the human race. If an actual, permanent solution is inconceivable to humanity, the solution may not be discovered in my lifetime.
Unless the human race self-destructs, there will be enough evidence for later generations to solve. There is a possibility of failure in the short run. Eventually, someone will figure it out.
The specific transition from failing democracies and authoritarian states to maximum freedom and liberty will take time, but it will be the "idea whose time has come" when it arrives.
I have thought and have read that Liberty is equal to Freedom plus Responsibility. Freedom without Responsibility is Anarchy. And Responsibility with Freedom is Totalitarian.
No. That's the definition used to muddy the waters between liberty and freedom. You are born with responsibility for your own life. No one else is born with that responsibility for your life. That's a fact of nature.
In an advanced society, to bring a child into the world is to choose an obligation to raise that child to be self-sufficient. The individual has that responsibility from birth. Parenting is a voluntary multi-year obligation to prepare the child to assume a place in society.
Liberty is freedom from the political forces who would have you do their bidding: fight a war, get a vaccine, use new pronouns, stop using electricity so people with electric cars can drive their cars, pay the pols money for their privilege of telling you what to do.
Where would I get a right to force my ideas and actions on you, or anyone else? Where would I get a right to do your thinking for you? Where would I get any rights except to defend myself against force in an emergency. Where would I get a right to vote someone’s rights away?
If you believe that it is right for you to dictate her rights to the woman and take her rights away for the term of her pregnancy, you do not believe In inalienable rights. If all rights are conditional, then you believe we live by permission. You can assign agents of God on earth (bureaucrats) to carry out God’s will on Earth. You are presuming much and not letting the woman be responsible for her own life and soul.
If I believed in making case by case decisions for people I don’t even know, then there is a government of men, not objective law.
I don’t have this right and neither do one million people together have that right.
Murder is wrong. Abortion is a medical procedure before birth. If you don’t agree with it, don’t help the woman or support the practice. But it’s none of your business unless your government forces you to support it or you want your government to force people to punish it.
You then witness the erosion of all rights when those in power use that power to make you pay for a procedure you have every right to hate and refuse to bare the burden.
If the fetus’ “right” to life is more important to you than your own right to life, eventually no one will have any rights at all, and the tyranny of procreation by committee will be the least of your the problems. We see that now more clearly with other incursions on our rights and freedoms.
I think this is the Libertarian pro-abortion argument?
But, respectfully, you still want to ignore the humanity of the being within the womb, for expediency, convenience, mental health, etc… (actual threats to physical health such as treating an ectopic pregnancy do not count as abortion by moral philosophers).
“Murder is wrong” [but, implied] “Abortion is [just] a medical procedure” is a loaded assertion. If a developing human were slated to be murdered, and it was legally someone’s right, you’ve just drawn a line at the cost of that human. Dems often accuse Republicans of not wanting to care for children “once they’re born,”…but…with all the care centers and collection baskets religious people gather, outside of government, to assist the poor and desperate woman with her newborn and toddler… isn’t that pretty disingenuous? Mightn’t the opposite be true?
What if morally, we as women, first of all, must hold and accept that the developing being within a womb is a human being? If WE women don’t hold to that, don’t protect that truth and that life and that right of that human being to life, and stand by it as a principle, is there a viable consistency to human rights in a society dominated by tyranny of the strongest and fittest and most utilitarian?
In a society which seeks to separate freedom and pleasure from responsibility? What makes murder wrong in that society anyway?
"I think this is the Libertarian pro-abortion argument?"
I am pro-liberty for all individuals, which is entirely different from Libertarian, as follows:
With all respect for you, the woman who has to make a decision, and myself (three individuals), I propose a civilized society that promotes positive actions and moral restraints on those who would compel others to their bidding.
You propose to compel the woman to have the baby. Your high-flown language ignores the right of the woman to her own life. That's appalling to me. I want no part of compulsion whatsoever. Where do you get the right to tell me and anyone else that she has to have a baby? You want to compel others to your will "for a good cause." Compulsion is immoral, no matter how "good" the cause is. There is no compromise to propose evil against the woman because you think the potential baby is more important to the world than her life. I find that horrifying.
If you are convincing, go out and convince people. But if you are in the mindset of getting people to ban abortion by law, you are promoting compulsion (force) as a means to an end. The woman is not threatening you or me. She didn't do anything to warrant your threatening her. If she could take a morning-after pill, I wouldn't stop her. I would welcome a solution for the woman to act independently without either one of us (or anyone else) having to agree. The woman is the only decider in this case. If she needs help, I might help her, but you would not. Fair enough. I'm willing to mind my own business, but you are not. You are campaigning to compel others to agree and stop abortions, except for the rules you want. Different anti-abortion groups have different laws. Religions have different rules.
The proliferation of different rules indicates that all the rules are wrong and that no rational solution is possible. The government should clearly define murder as killing an individual. The murder or mutilation of a pregnant woman resulting in a fetus's death, can have a more significant penalty than the attempted murder of an individual. I can see the logic of that change when the woman has a fetus removed or killed by an assailant. The aggressor violated the woman's rights and destroyed a potential baby in her body that she wanted. Her body belongs to her by right.
I stand by my statement that murder is wrong and abortion is a medical procedure. I said it outright. I stand by that statement.
Regarding people using government money to assist women, babies, and toddlers, you know I'm against that. Private help is wonderful. I've made myself clear before this post, and you don't need to bring it up. It only shows that two wrongs don't make a right. A right and a wrong make a muddle, and that's the truth.
I tried not to get you worked up, but it happened anyway because some women cannot fight for both woman and unborn child.
I agree this is the most complex and fraught difficulty but we should be together on the need to create a society in which woman and unborn child are protected. You offer no consistent basis for even a def of murder, because we can kill an unborn child at will, if it’s inconvenient or distressing, or unwanted; you have no answer to freedom and pleasure without responsibility, and you call this simple logic that is distressing you, “high-flown language.” I’m sorry for distressing you but not for speaking truth about man and woman’s mutual responsibility towards the human beings they conceive, before they are born.
Thank you for noticing that I am worked up. I hope this answer helps you understand my position. I am worked up because I thought we were close to a meeting of the minds, but now it looks to me that we're miles apart. Maybe the following words will help you see my point of view.
You want to create "a society in which woman and unborn child are protected." Fine. Create a society in which women and men who agree with you join willingly. Allow them to change their minds, because thinking is an aspect of learning, and thinking changes over time.
You said, "You offer no consistent basis for even a def of murder...." I have consistently said that murder is the killing of an individual. I assumed you know that self-defense is a valid if someone is initiating force against you or another individual.
You said, "because we can kill an unborn child at will, if it’s inconvenient or distressing, or unwanted...." Yes and no. I said consistently that if the woman can find a willing doctor, hospital, and financial resources to pay for her abortion, she should be able to get an abortion. You've ignored that, as if I hadn't said it at all. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I hope that you see it more clearly now.
You turned it into a "we can kill at will." No, we can't kill at will. I consistently stated that all the parties who are going to act must agree. Forcing anyone to insure, pay, perform or endorse abortion is wrong. Abortion is a private matter. Forcing anyone to have a baby is wrong.
Then you said, "you have no answer to freedom and pleasure without responsibility...." My answer has been the same since this conversation started. You haven't understood my answer. Freedom, pleasure, and responsibility are individual. When you presume to take over someone's freedom because they are irresponsible, you enable them to continue to be irresponsible, but avoid the consequences of their irresponsibility.
If you initiate force or fraud against an individual, you are wrong. Then you are charged with a crime and judged accordingly.
The fetus is not an individual. Individuality begins at birth. Parents bear the responsibility for the baby who is too young to exercise the birthright. It takes years of nurturing and training to raise a child to maturity.
You can leave me out of your society. I believe in personal responsibility, not communism or socialism or mob rule trampling the rights of individuals to decide their future for themselves.
If you offer acceptable voluntary alternatives before you assume that you have the lock on a solution for the mother, I will listen. Your answer presents itself as "the need to create a society in which the woman and the unborn child are protected." However, your method chooses to protect the child, not the woman because you have decided that you know better than the woman what her responsibility is to the fetus.
I would never demand fealty to any idea that pitted the woman against her unborn child. If she wants it, she has to take the responsibility to have it. If she doesn't, she has to take the responsibility to get rid of it. I believe it's up to the woman alone. If she can't find people to help her, she can seek to have the baby adopted. It's totally her call. The government has no role or valid interest in the continued existence of the fetus whatsoever.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my opinion. Maybe you'll think about it. [sigh]
(Ilene…I am acutely sensitive to the fact that many women who think as you do, have had personal experience with abortion and even aborted their own child, and struggle at various deep levels, even suffer profoundly if it were to be admitted. Please know I am not judging you but loving you. I have many friends like this. If you like, check out rachelsvineyard.org, or silentnomore.org. Peace.)
More questions: did the availability of abortion save Hollywood actresses? Trafficked women and girls? Molested daughters and nieces? Women from date rape and unwanted date sex and sex pressure?
Or has it enabled our society to once again tilt to men’s wishes?
[This is a generation gap question. I’m horrified by what the sexual aspect of the sexual liberation movement did to women and girls in the last 50 years. Who it really empowered.]
You’re welcome, Ilene, and I *have* been thinking most carefully through your thoughts. We *are* miles apart but we can come closer together if honesty, consistency, and logic is involved.
You missed that I asked you, actually, a bunch of hard questions on the prior posts. Also, you put words into my mouth about “putting others to my Will ‘for a good cause’”.
You assert that murder is wrong, but don’t give me a basis… without a source of morality, such as “rights endowed by our Creator”…I am asking you, is there any basis for any of our rights? Do we get rights from the State, like in Communism? Do we get rights from each other? Who gets to decide who gets rights then?
I asked you very tough questions from the start and I’m not getting satisfactory answers. Only how you want your society to be. Freedom to do what you want and be left alone. I AGREE WITH THAT! But.
I’m saying, you can’t have it both ways.
Freedom comes with responsibility. To ourselves but also to each other and society.
Sexual pleasure comes with the possibility (and natural purpose) of conception of a new human being…and the lifetime of responsibility/attachment/new family tree that comes with that.
I am *not* ignoring what you said about, “…if a woman can find a willing doctor, etc…she should be able to get an abortion.”
*You* are choosing to ignore the medical humanity of the unborn human being, out of convenience and simplicity just dropping him or her from the equation.
I cannot.
If one of my friends wanted to commit suicide, should I help her find a willing dealer, just because she says it’s right for her? Does it depend on the circumstances? Not to me. She won’t like me for a little while, she may drop me as a friend, but I will stay consistent. Because murder is wrong.
“Murder is wrong” —and ignoring the reality that an unborn human being (and it gets sick if you defend that “life begins at birth”) — is the one being subjected to the mere “medical procedure,” so there is MUCH more at stake here, another human life, and the question, the deep moral question at hand, is MUCH MORE CRITICAL than simply, can she find a willing accomplice?
I would clarify your thought here only because common sense and human instinct have become so muddied today: You are *not* “born with* the responsibility for your own life. Children do not have the responsibility for their lives “from birth.”
The parents who conceived them have the responsibility for their children’s lives from conception until that moment their child is responsible for his or her own life. You see what I’m saying.
Yes, you are right. My comment needs clarification. I was using the wrong word.
I was talking about the physical capacity to survive outside the womb given the proper sustenance and protection. So I meant responsibility in a limited sense. Therefore, I would say that normal human babies are born with the potential to take responsibility for their own lives. Your point about the parents' responsibility need's also to be nuanced, and the parents' responsibility is to nurture the child to be self-responsible.
As far as responsibility from conception, that choice is for the mother to make, and for her to find a willing partner to help her or a willing person to help end the pregnancy. Unwilling, coerced individuals may make bad parents, and especially bad mothers.
When the time comes that science has advanced far enough, women who don't want the baby, and women who do want a baby but cannot have one, could arrange for a proxy female to have the baby. Our government won't allow this, but some others countries do. In addition, eventually science will advance until the fetus is able to survive and come to term in an artificial womb.
I suggest that the responsibility from conception is a religious theory that has no place in objective law.
With continued respect, Ilene, I think that the notion of parents not having responsibly from conception—the highest mutual moral human responsibility for the human beings they mutually conceive— while in utero, is entirely a construct, and a modern and even self-serving one at that! And the loss of humanity that you describe heedlessly therewith!
To She Has Invisible Friends: Without a doubt, I like your style. I agree with your assessment of parents who conceive a child and suffer a change of heart. However, no one has a right to deprive the pregnant woman of her right to end the pregnancy. She can find a willing doctor, a willing benefactor, or jump off a bridge. She has no right to coerce anyone into agreeing with her plan.
Well, being free to choose— good or evil— is the very definition of free will.
Having the choice says NOTHING about the morality of the options. The “right” to choose a wrong—
I am always “free” to do wrong. I can assert I have a “right” to do wrong— but it says more about me than about actual morality and rights!
And *I* didn’t say anything about the child being conceived intentionally or not, having ANYTHING to do with the parents’ level of responsibility towards it.
No. One. Said. the moral choices are the easy ones. The easy choices are rarely the moral ones.
Thank you for this thoughtful answer. I LOVE your last line. In it, you underscore the problem not with choice but with the world's conventional view of morality and mistaken ideas about free will.
Many people think that free will means you get to choose, but you are "free" of the responsibility for the consequences of your choice. People campaigning for zero abortions, restricting abortions, and unrestricted abortions all have this view. In their opinion, the choice is the only issue, and society must shoulder the burden of whatever the law dictates, and consequences ensue. I would call that tyranny, not morality.
My view of morality is this. Free will and personal responsibility cannot be separated except by force. An assailant may initiate that force. When the government initiates force, it is a form of tyranny.
The alternative to force is free will. In the case of abortion, it's the woman's responsibility to decide. Whatever her decision, she alone has the responsibility for it. She has to find helpful resources and people, whether she already has the means or can get family, friends, or philanthropic organizations to help her. The funding of such organizations by the government is an abomination.
The simple fact of life is that as the pregnancy progresses, fewer and fewer people are willing to help her have an abortion. Many more would help her have the baby. That's as it should be—society caring for its own, personally and without force.
The longer the woman delays her decision, the more difficult it will be for her to find help. That's also as it should be. Pregnancy is truly one of those issues where time is of the essence.
Personal responsibility makes moral choices clear and more straightforward.
Thanks again for this conversation. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss this controversial topic with you. I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Hmm. I want to do your thoughts justice. Hope these make sense.
But I can’t give any moral ground in killing a human being even newly conceived. Even in the worst cases, you have to be morally consistent.
So there’s nothing for me to talk about there.
I’m certainly not going to help anyone murder their baby or kill a person of any age, for any reason; when I’m in the breach I hope I can step up to save and bless the lives involved.
Humans around need to step up into the support, as you’re saying. Evolutionarily, that matters. But not to aid a woman — and man— in murdering their child!
But historically, it’s only the [true] Christians, Christian society, who put value, infinite value, on every human being created, even the unwanted ones. It was *totally radical*. The rest, we see validifying infanticide, abortion, eldercide, murder and discarding the weak, sick and impoverished [not that individual Christians are guilt-free!!). No matter what, it’s murder, murdering a human life, which only religion of the monotheistic J-C type really presses us on— non-theism has no answers on. Just a void. Create-your-own-morality on a case-per-case basis.
Yet even some non-theistic codes have problems with taking seemingly useless invertebrate life…but then we can conscion taking a human life on some grounds?
Is stealing a candy bar from Susie ok if Susie has 800 candy bars?
But as our society develops further and further from grounded J-C morality, into secular practical atheism, *license* reigns free…more than freedom, more than responsibility.
Do we get to have the State aid us in doing drugs, or binge drinking, or recreational consequence-free sex, or creating porn, or killing ourselves? If not, do we get to create “philanthropic” organizations to do such, to meet those “needs”? And we will not eventually destroy our society through the implosion into our human vices?
Everywhere the grounding Christian faith dies, faith in life, the people and the culture are an endangered species.
Thank you again for your answer. I can see the distress the subject brings. I want to take time to this about how I answer being a non-theist, but at the same time realizing your distress coupled with your thoughtfulness in what looks like an untenable position.
I believe in discussion not coercion. I believe in the application of the principle of justice to daily living -- not the court type of justice, but the type of affirmation you get when you are glad, and even proud to have lived this day, staying true to yourself.
I have a busy rest of the week. More to follow in a couple of days. Thanks again.
This stupendous interview makes many points of diplomacy clear. These quotes captures a takeaway that cannot be ignored:
"But if you told them the way you're going to secure democracy is by giving the power to the anointed few who will decide for the unwashed many? They’d say that's ridiculous. But that's a view of democracy that is penetrating Western democracies and is very, very dangerous. It's not going to sustain them."
"It would be a tragedy if the United States abandons its role and stops believing in its mission to be the beacon of liberty and the world. "
"Get on with a program of liberty."
Americans have forgotten the difference between liberty and freedom. We use them interchangeably. This is a mistake. Bibi implies that he, for one, knows the difference, and is putting it to work in Israel.
Freedom as the political program promises to hoodwink reality by making it someone else's job to guarantee your freedom of speech, worship, want, and from fear. Liberty is political freedom, meaning freedom from the polity (elected and unelected) who want to rule your life's every breath.
I am pleased to see that Common Sense is taking us back to the days of its namesake, when everyone knew the difference between liberty and freedom. Thank you, Bari Weiss for this important interview with Bibi.
I find your distinction between liberty and freedom interesting, Ilene. What kind of liberty do you think Netanyahu himself will have when he could be leveraged by his soon to be partner Hamar Ben-Gvir, ultra-nationalist (and proclaimed terrorist by both Israel and the US back in the day..) for a senior position in a coalition government (defence?). The ends justify the means - and I think BiBi will cede to 'the anointed few', give them influence - all for him to claim power.
We'll see how long that lasts..
You make a very interesting point, Lee. I think Bibi himself will have the same kind of elite government as all the others who tout democracy -- that may explain why he comes in and then gets ousted.
This means he's a cut above those who don't recognize the difference between liberty and freedom, but is in the same boat as them when he tries to lead.
In the interview, he hints at a distinction between liberty and freedom in his talk. He warns about the dangerous problem for democracies. He doesn't pursue the issue in depth, and you wouldn't expect him to. After all, he's a politician, not a theorist. He doesn't know how to avoid that danger, and maybe he will figure it out when it looms next time.
I agree with him that the danger is real and ominous. At this juncture, it’s enough to get people to understand that. Getting most people to recognize the problem as a problem will be a tremendous job.
Promises of liberty preserve the rights of the individual. Guarantees of freedom in the FDR sense enslave some individuals to others.
Our Constitution is a shell of its original form. Most checks and balances are gone. The remaining are under attack -- the number of justices in the Supreme Court, the Electoral College, the regulatory power of unelected bureaucrats, etc.
The distinction between liberty and freedom is real. It's existential. It's not going away. A society that champions freedom over liberty is doomed unless it learns the difference, takes heed, and implements a solution.
I am not a Constitutional scholar. I am a systems analyst, designer, and implementer. I have a lifelong interest and much success in getting to the bottom of things, and this is a problem that intrigues me.
You make a profound point. Do I assume that in your opinion liberty is ordained - with freedom merely proclaimed? By us? By a document?
Is liberty to be construed as individual, to be claimed by right? - but freedom viewed as collective, by statute? And how are the two entwined? Because, as I think you and I both would agree, the two are related.
And which is the more valuable?
I think both, equally.
You make a profound point.
<<Thank you.>>
Do I assume that in your opinion liberty is ordained - with freedom merely proclaimed? By us? By a document?
<<Neither ordained or proclaimed.>>
Is liberty to be construed as individual, to be claimed by right?
<<Both liberty and freedom are claimed by right. Both are legitimate concepts formed by people thinking about the need to understand how to live their lives. >>
- but freedom viewed as collective, by statute?
<<I view the collective as a shame, always.>>
And how are the two entwined?
<<There are groups of individuals, but no group has more rights that any one individual. Freedom and liberty have different functions in human life, as compared below.>>
Because, as I think you and I both would agree, the two are related.
<<Yes the two are related.>>
And which is the more valuable?
<<Value depends on context. On a desert island, devoid of population but yourself, liberty is of no consequence. Freedom is everything.>>
I think both, equally.
<<Liberty builds on freedom. They are not equal, they are blocks of the same safe-house, but one (freedom) is more fundamental. The other (liberty) is indispensable in an advanced society. >>
Freedom and Liberty Compared:
Freedom is the relationship of a human to reality in a state of Nature, as John Locke might have put it. No government directly impacts his life. He is free to work. Free to take responsibility. Free to refuse to take responsibility. Free to starve. His life, his work, his pursuit of happiness is his own.
Liberty is the relationship of the human individual to other individuals in a social context, in which a government has been formed to preserve the group from foreign aggression and the members of the group from internal aggression. Taking the fruit of another's labor by force or fraud is internal aggression. Governments are formed to prevent internal and external aggression.
However, it is aggression by the polity, the machinery of government, that is the root of tyranny. Safeguarding against tyranny is always the greatest danger of government. It has been thus since governments were formed.
The Founders knew, in colonial America, that the overreach of the King of England was the biggest threat to their lives. Not the Indians, the French, or any thieves or scoundrels among them. The litany of wrongs in the Declaration of Independence is a list of usurpations of power by King George III.
The complaints in the Declaration of Independence begin with this sentence,
"...let Facts be submitted to a candid World...."
There follows about 30 points of complaint, ending with,
"A Prince, whose Character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the Ruler of a free people."
As we look around us, tyranny is obviously an unsolved problem. Liberty is the concept of political freedom -- freedom from the polity, meaning freedom from the people in power to use power for their own purposes or for the benefit of some at the expense of others.
The word, "Liberty" appears in the Declaration only once in the statement of inalienable rights. However, the long list of complaints clearly defines what the Declaration of Independence is about: the usurpations of King George III. The concept of liberty is the protection against usurpation of power.
Liberty is the soul of the Declaration of Independence. The world needs to recapture that soul.
Thanks to you and Lee for this utterly fascinating discussion of the difference between liberty and freedom.
A question on the latter, though. Who decides whether a government action is necessary or a "usurpation of power?" For every person who believes (for instance) taxes are necessary to manage a society, another insists that all taxes are theft.
So how do you maximize "liberty" and still have a functioning society?
You maximize liberty and freedom together by defining the concept of tyranny precisely.
Then you define government to prevent tyranny, and even the smallest step toward tyranny. How does tyranny begin? It begins when people choose the lesser of two evils. If the choice is between the lesser of two evils, evil wins.
I know this response is incomplete. I believe a complete, factual and sensible solution is possible. I also believe that recognizing the problem and accepting the possibility that there could be a solution is the biggest hurdle facing the human race. If an actual, permanent solution is inconceivable to humanity, the solution may not be discovered in my lifetime.
Unless the human race self-destructs, there will be enough evidence for later generations to solve. There is a possibility of failure in the short run. Eventually, someone will figure it out.
The specific transition from failing democracies and authoritarian states to maximum freedom and liberty will take time, but it will be the "idea whose time has come" when it arrives.
I have thought and have read that Liberty is equal to Freedom plus Responsibility. Freedom without Responsibility is Anarchy. And Responsibility with Freedom is Totalitarian.
No. That's the definition used to muddy the waters between liberty and freedom. You are born with responsibility for your own life. No one else is born with that responsibility for your life. That's a fact of nature.
In an advanced society, to bring a child into the world is to choose an obligation to raise that child to be self-sufficient. The individual has that responsibility from birth. Parenting is a voluntary multi-year obligation to prepare the child to assume a place in society.
Liberty is freedom from the political forces who would have you do their bidding: fight a war, get a vaccine, use new pronouns, stop using electricity so people with electric cars can drive their cars, pay the pols money for their privilege of telling you what to do.
Where would I get a right to force my ideas and actions on you, or anyone else? Where would I get a right to do your thinking for you? Where would I get any rights except to defend myself against force in an emergency. Where would I get a right to vote someone’s rights away?
If you believe that it is right for you to dictate her rights to the woman and take her rights away for the term of her pregnancy, you do not believe In inalienable rights. If all rights are conditional, then you believe we live by permission. You can assign agents of God on earth (bureaucrats) to carry out God’s will on Earth. You are presuming much and not letting the woman be responsible for her own life and soul.
If I believed in making case by case decisions for people I don’t even know, then there is a government of men, not objective law.
I don’t have this right and neither do one million people together have that right.
Murder is wrong. Abortion is a medical procedure before birth. If you don’t agree with it, don’t help the woman or support the practice. But it’s none of your business unless your government forces you to support it or you want your government to force people to punish it.
You then witness the erosion of all rights when those in power use that power to make you pay for a procedure you have every right to hate and refuse to bare the burden.
If the fetus’ “right” to life is more important to you than your own right to life, eventually no one will have any rights at all, and the tyranny of procreation by committee will be the least of your the problems. We see that now more clearly with other incursions on our rights and freedoms.
I think this is the Libertarian pro-abortion argument?
But, respectfully, you still want to ignore the humanity of the being within the womb, for expediency, convenience, mental health, etc… (actual threats to physical health such as treating an ectopic pregnancy do not count as abortion by moral philosophers).
“Murder is wrong” [but, implied] “Abortion is [just] a medical procedure” is a loaded assertion. If a developing human were slated to be murdered, and it was legally someone’s right, you’ve just drawn a line at the cost of that human. Dems often accuse Republicans of not wanting to care for children “once they’re born,”…but…with all the care centers and collection baskets religious people gather, outside of government, to assist the poor and desperate woman with her newborn and toddler… isn’t that pretty disingenuous? Mightn’t the opposite be true?
What if morally, we as women, first of all, must hold and accept that the developing being within a womb is a human being? If WE women don’t hold to that, don’t protect that truth and that life and that right of that human being to life, and stand by it as a principle, is there a viable consistency to human rights in a society dominated by tyranny of the strongest and fittest and most utilitarian?
In a society which seeks to separate freedom and pleasure from responsibility? What makes murder wrong in that society anyway?
"I think this is the Libertarian pro-abortion argument?"
I am pro-liberty for all individuals, which is entirely different from Libertarian, as follows:
With all respect for you, the woman who has to make a decision, and myself (three individuals), I propose a civilized society that promotes positive actions and moral restraints on those who would compel others to their bidding.
You propose to compel the woman to have the baby. Your high-flown language ignores the right of the woman to her own life. That's appalling to me. I want no part of compulsion whatsoever. Where do you get the right to tell me and anyone else that she has to have a baby? You want to compel others to your will "for a good cause." Compulsion is immoral, no matter how "good" the cause is. There is no compromise to propose evil against the woman because you think the potential baby is more important to the world than her life. I find that horrifying.
If you are convincing, go out and convince people. But if you are in the mindset of getting people to ban abortion by law, you are promoting compulsion (force) as a means to an end. The woman is not threatening you or me. She didn't do anything to warrant your threatening her. If she could take a morning-after pill, I wouldn't stop her. I would welcome a solution for the woman to act independently without either one of us (or anyone else) having to agree. The woman is the only decider in this case. If she needs help, I might help her, but you would not. Fair enough. I'm willing to mind my own business, but you are not. You are campaigning to compel others to agree and stop abortions, except for the rules you want. Different anti-abortion groups have different laws. Religions have different rules.
The proliferation of different rules indicates that all the rules are wrong and that no rational solution is possible. The government should clearly define murder as killing an individual. The murder or mutilation of a pregnant woman resulting in a fetus's death, can have a more significant penalty than the attempted murder of an individual. I can see the logic of that change when the woman has a fetus removed or killed by an assailant. The aggressor violated the woman's rights and destroyed a potential baby in her body that she wanted. Her body belongs to her by right.
I stand by my statement that murder is wrong and abortion is a medical procedure. I said it outright. I stand by that statement.
Regarding people using government money to assist women, babies, and toddlers, you know I'm against that. Private help is wonderful. I've made myself clear before this post, and you don't need to bring it up. It only shows that two wrongs don't make a right. A right and a wrong make a muddle, and that's the truth.
I tried not to get you worked up, but it happened anyway because some women cannot fight for both woman and unborn child.
I agree this is the most complex and fraught difficulty but we should be together on the need to create a society in which woman and unborn child are protected. You offer no consistent basis for even a def of murder, because we can kill an unborn child at will, if it’s inconvenient or distressing, or unwanted; you have no answer to freedom and pleasure without responsibility, and you call this simple logic that is distressing you, “high-flown language.” I’m sorry for distressing you but not for speaking truth about man and woman’s mutual responsibility towards the human beings they conceive, before they are born.
Thank you for noticing that I am worked up. I hope this answer helps you understand my position. I am worked up because I thought we were close to a meeting of the minds, but now it looks to me that we're miles apart. Maybe the following words will help you see my point of view.
You want to create "a society in which woman and unborn child are protected." Fine. Create a society in which women and men who agree with you join willingly. Allow them to change their minds, because thinking is an aspect of learning, and thinking changes over time.
You said, "You offer no consistent basis for even a def of murder...." I have consistently said that murder is the killing of an individual. I assumed you know that self-defense is a valid if someone is initiating force against you or another individual.
You said, "because we can kill an unborn child at will, if it’s inconvenient or distressing, or unwanted...." Yes and no. I said consistently that if the woman can find a willing doctor, hospital, and financial resources to pay for her abortion, she should be able to get an abortion. You've ignored that, as if I hadn't said it at all. Maybe I wasn't clear enough. I hope that you see it more clearly now.
You turned it into a "we can kill at will." No, we can't kill at will. I consistently stated that all the parties who are going to act must agree. Forcing anyone to insure, pay, perform or endorse abortion is wrong. Abortion is a private matter. Forcing anyone to have a baby is wrong.
Then you said, "you have no answer to freedom and pleasure without responsibility...." My answer has been the same since this conversation started. You haven't understood my answer. Freedom, pleasure, and responsibility are individual. When you presume to take over someone's freedom because they are irresponsible, you enable them to continue to be irresponsible, but avoid the consequences of their irresponsibility.
If you initiate force or fraud against an individual, you are wrong. Then you are charged with a crime and judged accordingly.
The fetus is not an individual. Individuality begins at birth. Parents bear the responsibility for the baby who is too young to exercise the birthright. It takes years of nurturing and training to raise a child to maturity.
You can leave me out of your society. I believe in personal responsibility, not communism or socialism or mob rule trampling the rights of individuals to decide their future for themselves.
If you offer acceptable voluntary alternatives before you assume that you have the lock on a solution for the mother, I will listen. Your answer presents itself as "the need to create a society in which the woman and the unborn child are protected." However, your method chooses to protect the child, not the woman because you have decided that you know better than the woman what her responsibility is to the fetus.
I would never demand fealty to any idea that pitted the woman against her unborn child. If she wants it, she has to take the responsibility to have it. If she doesn't, she has to take the responsibility to get rid of it. I believe it's up to the woman alone. If she can't find people to help her, she can seek to have the baby adopted. It's totally her call. The government has no role or valid interest in the continued existence of the fetus whatsoever.
If you've gotten this far, thanks for reading my opinion. Maybe you'll think about it. [sigh]
(Ilene…I am acutely sensitive to the fact that many women who think as you do, have had personal experience with abortion and even aborted their own child, and struggle at various deep levels, even suffer profoundly if it were to be admitted. Please know I am not judging you but loving you. I have many friends like this. If you like, check out rachelsvineyard.org, or silentnomore.org. Peace.)
You are getting too personal. Take this offline, please.
More questions: did the availability of abortion save Hollywood actresses? Trafficked women and girls? Molested daughters and nieces? Women from date rape and unwanted date sex and sex pressure?
Or has it enabled our society to once again tilt to men’s wishes?
[This is a generation gap question. I’m horrified by what the sexual aspect of the sexual liberation movement did to women and girls in the last 50 years. Who it really empowered.]
You’re welcome, Ilene, and I *have* been thinking most carefully through your thoughts. We *are* miles apart but we can come closer together if honesty, consistency, and logic is involved.
You missed that I asked you, actually, a bunch of hard questions on the prior posts. Also, you put words into my mouth about “putting others to my Will ‘for a good cause’”.
You assert that murder is wrong, but don’t give me a basis… without a source of morality, such as “rights endowed by our Creator”…I am asking you, is there any basis for any of our rights? Do we get rights from the State, like in Communism? Do we get rights from each other? Who gets to decide who gets rights then?
I asked you very tough questions from the start and I’m not getting satisfactory answers. Only how you want your society to be. Freedom to do what you want and be left alone. I AGREE WITH THAT! But.
I’m saying, you can’t have it both ways.
Freedom comes with responsibility. To ourselves but also to each other and society.
Sexual pleasure comes with the possibility (and natural purpose) of conception of a new human being…and the lifetime of responsibility/attachment/new family tree that comes with that.
I am *not* ignoring what you said about, “…if a woman can find a willing doctor, etc…she should be able to get an abortion.”
*You* are choosing to ignore the medical humanity of the unborn human being, out of convenience and simplicity just dropping him or her from the equation.
I cannot.
If one of my friends wanted to commit suicide, should I help her find a willing dealer, just because she says it’s right for her? Does it depend on the circumstances? Not to me. She won’t like me for a little while, she may drop me as a friend, but I will stay consistent. Because murder is wrong.
“Murder is wrong” —and ignoring the reality that an unborn human being (and it gets sick if you defend that “life begins at birth”) — is the one being subjected to the mere “medical procedure,” so there is MUCH more at stake here, another human life, and the question, the deep moral question at hand, is MUCH MORE CRITICAL than simply, can she find a willing accomplice?
That is the problem.
I would clarify your thought here only because common sense and human instinct have become so muddied today: You are *not* “born with* the responsibility for your own life. Children do not have the responsibility for their lives “from birth.”
The parents who conceived them have the responsibility for their children’s lives from conception until that moment their child is responsible for his or her own life. You see what I’m saying.
Yes, you are right. My comment needs clarification. I was using the wrong word.
I was talking about the physical capacity to survive outside the womb given the proper sustenance and protection. So I meant responsibility in a limited sense. Therefore, I would say that normal human babies are born with the potential to take responsibility for their own lives. Your point about the parents' responsibility need's also to be nuanced, and the parents' responsibility is to nurture the child to be self-responsible.
As far as responsibility from conception, that choice is for the mother to make, and for her to find a willing partner to help her or a willing person to help end the pregnancy. Unwilling, coerced individuals may make bad parents, and especially bad mothers.
When the time comes that science has advanced far enough, women who don't want the baby, and women who do want a baby but cannot have one, could arrange for a proxy female to have the baby. Our government won't allow this, but some others countries do. In addition, eventually science will advance until the fetus is able to survive and come to term in an artificial womb.
I suggest that the responsibility from conception is a religious theory that has no place in objective law.
I’m glad we clarified that and agree, Ilene.
With continued respect, Ilene, I think that the notion of parents not having responsibly from conception—the highest mutual moral human responsibility for the human beings they mutually conceive— while in utero, is entirely a construct, and a modern and even self-serving one at that! And the loss of humanity that you describe heedlessly therewith!
It is its own rebuke.
To She Has Invisible Friends: Without a doubt, I like your style. I agree with your assessment of parents who conceive a child and suffer a change of heart. However, no one has a right to deprive the pregnant woman of her right to end the pregnancy. She can find a willing doctor, a willing benefactor, or jump off a bridge. She has no right to coerce anyone into agreeing with her plan.
Well, being free to choose— good or evil— is the very definition of free will.
Having the choice says NOTHING about the morality of the options. The “right” to choose a wrong—
I am always “free” to do wrong. I can assert I have a “right” to do wrong— but it says more about me than about actual morality and rights!
And *I* didn’t say anything about the child being conceived intentionally or not, having ANYTHING to do with the parents’ level of responsibility towards it.
No. One. Said. the moral choices are the easy ones. The easy choices are rarely the moral ones.
Thank you for this thoughtful answer. I LOVE your last line. In it, you underscore the problem not with choice but with the world's conventional view of morality and mistaken ideas about free will.
Many people think that free will means you get to choose, but you are "free" of the responsibility for the consequences of your choice. People campaigning for zero abortions, restricting abortions, and unrestricted abortions all have this view. In their opinion, the choice is the only issue, and society must shoulder the burden of whatever the law dictates, and consequences ensue. I would call that tyranny, not morality.
My view of morality is this. Free will and personal responsibility cannot be separated except by force. An assailant may initiate that force. When the government initiates force, it is a form of tyranny.
The alternative to force is free will. In the case of abortion, it's the woman's responsibility to decide. Whatever her decision, she alone has the responsibility for it. She has to find helpful resources and people, whether she already has the means or can get family, friends, or philanthropic organizations to help her. The funding of such organizations by the government is an abomination.
The simple fact of life is that as the pregnancy progresses, fewer and fewer people are willing to help her have an abortion. Many more would help her have the baby. That's as it should be—society caring for its own, personally and without force.
The longer the woman delays her decision, the more difficult it will be for her to find help. That's also as it should be. Pregnancy is truly one of those issues where time is of the essence.
Personal responsibility makes moral choices clear and more straightforward.
Thanks again for this conversation. I appreciate this opportunity to discuss this controversial topic with you. I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Hmm. I want to do your thoughts justice. Hope these make sense.
But I can’t give any moral ground in killing a human being even newly conceived. Even in the worst cases, you have to be morally consistent.
So there’s nothing for me to talk about there.
I’m certainly not going to help anyone murder their baby or kill a person of any age, for any reason; when I’m in the breach I hope I can step up to save and bless the lives involved.
Humans around need to step up into the support, as you’re saying. Evolutionarily, that matters. But not to aid a woman — and man— in murdering their child!
But historically, it’s only the [true] Christians, Christian society, who put value, infinite value, on every human being created, even the unwanted ones. It was *totally radical*. The rest, we see validifying infanticide, abortion, eldercide, murder and discarding the weak, sick and impoverished [not that individual Christians are guilt-free!!). No matter what, it’s murder, murdering a human life, which only religion of the monotheistic J-C type really presses us on— non-theism has no answers on. Just a void. Create-your-own-morality on a case-per-case basis.
Yet even some non-theistic codes have problems with taking seemingly useless invertebrate life…but then we can conscion taking a human life on some grounds?
Is stealing a candy bar from Susie ok if Susie has 800 candy bars?
But as our society develops further and further from grounded J-C morality, into secular practical atheism, *license* reigns free…more than freedom, more than responsibility.
Do we get to have the State aid us in doing drugs, or binge drinking, or recreational consequence-free sex, or creating porn, or killing ourselves? If not, do we get to create “philanthropic” organizations to do such, to meet those “needs”? And we will not eventually destroy our society through the implosion into our human vices?
Everywhere the grounding Christian faith dies, faith in life, the people and the culture are an endangered species.
Thank you again for your answer. I can see the distress the subject brings. I want to take time to this about how I answer being a non-theist, but at the same time realizing your distress coupled with your thoughtfulness in what looks like an untenable position.
I believe in discussion not coercion. I believe in the application of the principle of justice to daily living -- not the court type of justice, but the type of affirmation you get when you are glad, and even proud to have lived this day, staying true to yourself.
I have a busy rest of the week. More to follow in a couple of days. Thanks again.
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