Liberty in two flavors

The two quotes at the bottom perfectly represent two opposed views of human freedom, something Isaiah Berlin wrote about at length as negative vs. positive liberty.

Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles and constraints that would keep the individual from doing what he wants to do. That is the kind of liberty associated with classical, individualist, free-market liberalism. Councilman Faulconer expresses the core idea of negative liberty when he says the government has no business restricting people's shopping choices. If you ask people what they mean by 'freedom,' almost all will answer with some version of negative liberty.

Positive liberty is providing the social conditions that encourage people to do the right thing, as that is defined by somebody else's idea of what would be best for that other person to do. Thus, taking away a hermit's freedom to smoke in his own home would be an advance in positive liberty. Or, for another example, freedom from unemployment is more important than freedom of job choice. In this view, people are seen primarily as members of collectivities, rather than as individuals; the untidiness of the marketplace is rejected in favor of government-enforced social and economic planning. Councilman Young expresses the core idea of positive liberty with his "vision" of what his community should look like, and his desire to impose it on all the citizens of San Diego for their own good. For him, freedom is not a matter of individual choice but rather of the larger social good, as decided by him. He is confident that individuals will be better off as a consequence. In fact, from this view, too many choices is itself a form of repression; see Marcuse on "Repressive Tolerance".

While classical liberalism tried to maximize negative liberty, the idea of positive liberty unfortunately has become a primary theme of "liberalism" as it exists today. This explains why today's liberals can favor (and succeed in passing at many colleges) something as atrocious as a campus speech code: Even in a university setting, freedom of unimpeded speech is considered less important than positive freedom of from the possibility of having your feelings hurt or your beliefs challenged.

Positive liberty is an Orwellian concept, and it represents the totalitarian mindset in embryonic, do-gooder form. It needs to crawl back onto history's junk pile where it belongs.

Byron

San Diego to Ban Wal-Mart Supercenters
By ELLIOT SPAGAT
AP Business Writer

SAN DIEGO (AP) -- The City Council here voted late Tuesday to ban certain giant retail stores, dealing a blow to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.'s potential to expand in the nation's eighth-largest city.

The measure, approved on a 5-3 vote, prohibits stores of more than 90,000 square feet that use 10 percent of space to sell groceries and other merchandise that is not subject to sales tax. It takes aim at Wal-Mart Supercenter stores, which average 185,000 square feet and sell groceries.

"Quite simply, I do not think it is the role of the San Diego City Council to dictate where families should buy their groceries," said Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who opposed the ban.

Councilman Tony Young, who joined the 5-3 majority, countered, "I have a vision for San Diego and that vision is about walkable, livable communities, not big, mega-structures that inhibit people's lives."

Bad Karma

The train wreck proceeds apace. The photo below is from a NC peace rally, where the absence of any sense of history is so complete that the placard shown can be hoisted without a trace of irony.



That's just shooting par on the dimwit Left, but on the Right, it's looking no better. The James Baker group (plus Henry Kissinger from the sidelines) is busy pumping the idea of a quickie duck-out from Iraq by enlisting the aid of Syria and Iran to cover our rear ends as we flee in disgrace. What do you suppose comes next?

This is the old "realism," the kind of balance-of-power realpolitick that brought us the Mideast mess to begin with. Screw democratic ideals and long-term solutions, and screw all the people who took that idea seriously. We're getting ready to kick the can down the road -- the kids and grandkids can deal with an emboldened terrorist enemy and an empowered and nuclear-armed Iran. We wish them all the luck in the world with that, really we do.

Peace in Our Time! (Notice to the Israelis, the Kurds, and all Iraqis who trusted America: You are not part of the plan, so you'd best keep an eye on the exits.)

Do the bright people who make up the Baker Group really think there is any genuine strategic point to deals between nations when the key actors are not nations, but shifting, trans-national, non-state entities like al Qaeda and its clones? Of course not. Does the Baker Group understand that Al Qaeda doesn't make deals, and that it's not controlled by anybody who does? Of course. Does the Baker Group think anything good will happen in that region when our last helicopter flies off the embassy roof? Nah.

The depth of cynicism here is breathtaking, staggering, sickening. The plain fact is that there was NEVER any long-term strategic plan for defeating terrorism other than the one Bush embarked on, and there still isn't. There still isn't. No "alternative plan" ever existed as anything but an empty term, something for the anti-war fantasist Democrats, the viciously defeatist media, the self-justifying "realists," and the pusillanimous Europeans to play word games with. If Bush folds, then we will get to see what the true alternatives were, and are.

Byron

How GOP went wrong

This is a good analysis of why the GOP will lose seats, and deserve to. In a nutshell, Congressional Repubs have been a weakly-led and disappointing bunch, and Bush didn't provide the kind of leadership influence on the Hill that he should have, either. It was a prescription for a lot of disorganized, ineffectual free-lancing, and that's mostly what we got. As a result, Social Security reform just died, and the immigration issue was badly fumbled. The only reason this election won't be a blow-out is that the feckless Dems couldn't manage to come up with any kind of positive, attractive platform:

Could Have, Would Have, Should Have
How Republicans could have avoided the trouble they're in

(San Pedro Creek PS: Voting at La Madera took about 5 minutes at 7:45 this morning, no line at all, just walk in and vote. I wonder if that means turnout will be low, or if I just hit the right time. But, also, the paper ballot goes faster than machine voting, because there are tables for at least a dozen people to be filling theirs out, compared to only 2 or 3 machines.)

Byron

Oh, well

Bye bye Israel
daniel - Holland
10/31/2006 10:14
I am sorry to see you go. Not only because I like Israel a lot, I also know that we here in Europe are next. Oh well, all things must end.

Oh, well, whatever. That comment above, succinctly expressing our intrepid European allies' approach to the world, is in response to the article excerpted below, which describes the consequences to Israel of having elected Olmert and his version of the U.S. Democratic Party. The UN now shields and enables a legitimized Hezbollah and its supply line from Syria, Egypt shields and enables Hamas and its supply lines across Egypt and Sudan, and the Iranians move forward unimpeded toward their constantly-stated goal of wiping Israel off the map with atomic weapons. Why, you'd almost think there is some larger purpose here.

Ayatollah Khomeini spent his exile years in Paris carefully mapping out an Islamic vision of the future, beginning with the toppling of the Shah, and it continues to unfold better than he had any right to expect. He saw that Europe was culturally weak, but how could he have guessed that the Europeans would fall this easily onto their own sword of affluent, secular, pacifist, flaccid-liberal multiculturalism? It probably wasn't possible for a man like Khomeini to imagine hollow men quite as hollow as these are tuning out to be. Somewhere, try as he might to maintain his stern visage, the old man just can't keep from smiling. And, really, as he reads Daniel's "Oh, well" from Holland, who could blame him if he threw his head back and laughed out loud?

Byron

Our World: Israel's encirclement
By CAROLINE GLICK

"Over the past two and a half months, the Olmert government has deliberately and willingly enabled Israel's encirclement by hostile forces... As if having hostile Europeans guarding genocidal Iranian proxies in the north, and hostile Egyptians guarding and arming genocidal Palestinians in the south weren't enough, Sunday it was reported that the Olmert government is considering allowing thousands of armed PLO terrorists from the Badr Brigade in Jordan to relocate to Gaza."