@blatham,
blatham wrote:
Quote:What does freedom or liberty mean, other than the absence of external restriant? In the case of politics the reference is usually to the absence of constraints imposed by government or law. If you have a different definition in mind please specify it.
There is no uncertainty or convenience associated with it.
On the issue of convenience, you quite conveniently beg the question in the bolded sentence. That is, you define "liberty" in a manner that gets the answer you want. Government or law are the sources of restraint of liberty. And you add, to further close off the matter, this is a certainty.
This was the usual approach of the authoritarian socialist systems that so devastated the 20th century. Under Lenin, and then Stalin, Soviet citizens were "free" to find fulfillment in behaving as the Marxist theorists imagined the "new socialist man" they were creating would do. The alternatives were usually pretty grim. Unfortunately the "system" these theorists created didn't work very well. Millions of Ukranian pesant landowners resisted the collectivization of their holdings and were transported to the early Gulag where most perished. Soviet agricultural prodictivity never recovered after the collectivization of agriculture. Despite that state propaganda persisted in the mythoilogy of happy propperous socialist collective farmers. It turned out that, once again, the real world failed to live up to the imaginings of authoritarian progressives, intent on organizing everything for everyone else.
In short you too are defining "liberty " to rationalize the answer you want. Unfortunately the lessons of history are not with you.
I agree that laws involving some restrictions on liberty are necessary to achieve a safe environment to enable all to enjoy the freedoms they have. However, they should address the essentials only, and leave individuals as much freedom and initiative as possible. History is pretty clear on that point as well. ( What do you think of the Bolivaian paradise now unfolding in Venezuela?).
blatham wrote:
Imagine a despot, happy and content in his absolutist control over all the people in his court or any who might influence his court or his control or his ability to satisfy the slightest personal whim no matter how immoral or selfish. Imagine further that he cares only about such things and cares not at all concerning his principality or kingdom or nation. Anything that goes on out there, totally without relevance to him. And out there, whatever "laws" that exist relate only to treasonous (as he, in his self-concerns, defines that) behavior. And out there, he has no "government" other than soldiers and tax-collectors. Pirates raid, rapists rape, bullies murder, thieves steal, tanners dump poisons into the local well, children are forced into gruelling labor at five years of age by local thugs, artisans seeking to organize are murdered, etc.
Talk to me about the desirable state of liberty enjoyed by those in that community, george.
This is certainly a convernient, if fictitious product of your magination. Such things have existed but ususlly are quickly supplemented by the rise of civic/economic organizations that address the issues you describe. Those that don't usually pass from existence rather quickly. (Ironically your description here fits contemporary Venezuela rather well: that the path to such tyranny is often through the drream of some authoritarian progressive intent on organizing the perfedction of life for others, is one of the supreme ironies of the modern era.)
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