I’m sure you’re aware of this, but from a UK perspective, this argument pretty much exactly matches arguments by thinkers in the Labour Party tradition for the claim that social democratic interventions by the state - the welfare state, state provision of public services such as health, economic regulation - increase rather than decrease freedom, at least for the vast majority (cf RH Tawney’s remark that “freedom for the pike is death to the minnow”). Indeed, many UK Conservative Party politicians in the “One Nation” tradition (or their Christian Democrat equivalents across the Channel, more visibly influenced by Catholic social thought) would traditionally have agreed with the thrust of that too.
Very much agree George! The modern antagonistic view of the political community’s relationship with the individual citizen, family, and local community, is quite a recent and very bad invention.
Absolutely. The resemblance isn’t accidental; it arises from the echoes of classical orientation to the common good that used to be found in certain strands of European social democracy and Christian democracy. (Whether they still are present, I leave as a question).
in the USA's Old Republic, liberty and order/communal purpose weren't treated as opponents but instead as mutually reinforcing within a decentralized framework. The Old Republic's system was built on layered sovereignty and institutional pluralism, public goods and collective aims were worked towards not through a mighty central authority, but through distributed sovereignty, checks and balances across levels of government, distributed functions that were geographically diffused, and real democratic access through varied publicly accessible institutions. the traditions you reference legitimize centralized authority on moral grounds, but the American tradition insisted that, at least in a vast system like America's, only a plural and distributed architecture could guard against coercion, sustain liberty, and allow many communities the semi-autonomy to define and apply their intellectual abilities, creative abilities, and pursue the common good on their own terms
Great article. Generally on this topic, I've always thought that in US Locke's opening segment of section 22 of the Second Treatise (Chap. 4: "Slavery")--"to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of men but to be ruled only by the law of nature"--is far more popular and often cited versus his statement later in the same section: "Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, namely a liberty for everyone to do what he wants, live as he pleases, and not be tied by any laws. Rather, ·freedom is one of two things·. •Freedom of nature is being under no restraint except the law of nature. •Freedom of men under government is having a standing rule to live by, common to everyone in the society in question, and made by the legislative power that has been set up in it; a liberty to follow one’s own will in anything that isn’t forbidden by the rule . . . "
I’m sure you’re aware of this, but from a UK perspective, this argument pretty much exactly matches arguments by thinkers in the Labour Party tradition for the claim that social democratic interventions by the state - the welfare state, state provision of public services such as health, economic regulation - increase rather than decrease freedom, at least for the vast majority (cf RH Tawney’s remark that “freedom for the pike is death to the minnow”). Indeed, many UK Conservative Party politicians in the “One Nation” tradition (or their Christian Democrat equivalents across the Channel, more visibly influenced by Catholic social thought) would traditionally have agreed with the thrust of that too.
Very much agree George! The modern antagonistic view of the political community’s relationship with the individual citizen, family, and local community, is quite a recent and very bad invention.
Absolutely. The resemblance isn’t accidental; it arises from the echoes of classical orientation to the common good that used to be found in certain strands of European social democracy and Christian democracy. (Whether they still are present, I leave as a question).
in the USA's Old Republic, liberty and order/communal purpose weren't treated as opponents but instead as mutually reinforcing within a decentralized framework. The Old Republic's system was built on layered sovereignty and institutional pluralism, public goods and collective aims were worked towards not through a mighty central authority, but through distributed sovereignty, checks and balances across levels of government, distributed functions that were geographically diffused, and real democratic access through varied publicly accessible institutions. the traditions you reference legitimize centralized authority on moral grounds, but the American tradition insisted that, at least in a vast system like America's, only a plural and distributed architecture could guard against coercion, sustain liberty, and allow many communities the semi-autonomy to define and apply their intellectual abilities, creative abilities, and pursue the common good on their own terms
Great article. Generally on this topic, I've always thought that in US Locke's opening segment of section 22 of the Second Treatise (Chap. 4: "Slavery")--"to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of men but to be ruled only by the law of nature"--is far more popular and often cited versus his statement later in the same section: "Freedom then is not what Sir Robert Filmer tells us, namely a liberty for everyone to do what he wants, live as he pleases, and not be tied by any laws. Rather, ·freedom is one of two things·. •Freedom of nature is being under no restraint except the law of nature. •Freedom of men under government is having a standing rule to live by, common to everyone in the society in question, and made by the legislative power that has been set up in it; a liberty to follow one’s own will in anything that isn’t forbidden by the rule . . . "