Saturday, July 05, 2008

LIBERTY NOT AN ARGUMENT BETWEEN THE LEFT AND RIGHT?

POSTED RESPONSE TO A COLUMN BY WILL HUTTON IN THE GUARDIAN

Yours is a somewhat muddy argument.

It depends clearly on the definition of "liberty." Also the adjective "fundamental."

You can define "liberty" to include an individual's freedom to do pretty much whatever he or she can to profit and get ahead - a definition embraced by American libertarians, many American corporations, and certainly much of its large wealthy class.

And if you qualify that liberty with "fundamental," then we have a fundamental social division.

This Right Wing conflation of meanings in America is what enables it to invade other states in the name of something so high-sounding as liberty - that is, the liberty of corporations like Coca Cola or McDonalds or the United Fruit Company to freely function, effectively dominating, in the place being invaded.

Also, to the left of center, every time one conceives of some regulation to protect one liberty when it clashes with another - as they so often do - you need the force of law, the force of the state. Those on the Right generally regard this as a suppression of liberty.

We quickly get to some very basic issues here.

Do you have the liberty to put Christian principles into some aspects of government?

Do you have the liberty to deny The Holocaust?