These Monday morning words of awesome are brought to you by Stephen L. Hall.
***
The topic arose concerning the distinction between freedom and liberty; and like most conservatives, I joined in the smug differentiation of the terms. The truth is that the founding fathers really made no distinction between the terms.
It is not unnatural to make a distinction between two words of similar meaning such that those words come to have a clearly different meaning and express unique ideas. The English language evolved from the peasantry speaking variations of German while the aristocracy spoke predominantly French. The language took words from both but created distinct meaning for those words unique to English.
For example, in both German and French, the expression for different kinds of meat would be expressed as the meat of the cow, or the meat of the pig, or the meat of the bird. But no English manor house would have been complete without a French chef. So the farmer speaking German would tend the cows in the field, but the chef would fix a dish called “boef”, the olde French word for cow, which became beef; the farmer raised swine, but the chef prepared dishes of “porque”, which became pork; the farmer raised birds or fowl, but the chef prepared “pouleterie”, or a pullet, which became poultry. The meat took on the French name, the animal kept its German name, to help make English a richer, more complex, language.
So it is not beyond reason for conservatives, traditionalists, to employ the word “freedom” to express the idea of a libertine excess without regard to the consequences to others as opposed to the word “liberty” expressing the idea of behavior constrained by moral boundaries defined by the limits of the behavioral boundaries of others.
What we all try to express is really an expression of a more complex philosophical perspective through a division of words. The idea that a freedom unbound by moral and legal constraints of basic civility is more akin to anarchy, or what Thomas Hobbes refers to as that natural state of war which exists between men without the interference of government.
Hobbes imagines that the choice of society is between unbridled and unrestrained libertines stealing, fighting, and cheating each other in unremitting chaos or to have a society where absolute authority lies in the state, even unto the smallest detail, limited only by the practical expediencies of the state.
It is thus tempting to classify as a balancing act between these two extremes the concept of a limited government as embodied by our republic in the Constitution. The problem is . . . that in defining the problem as a balancing act . . . the balance will eventually always be lost. Never define for yourself a problem for which there is no solution.
Modern courts engage in such foolishness on a regular basis proposing weighing tests rather than tests based upon principles. They even create weighing tests for their analysis of laws which infringe upon the rights of citizens because they have lost their faith in absolutes, in principle. It is better to have a strong footing on the solid ground of principle that to be a performing tightrope walker swaying in the breeze.
Ergo, liberty is not a definition of the limitation of government, that we defined as rights, separate from the concept of liberty. We define crime as that behavior which is prohibited to the individual because it directly harms other persons.
So liberty would be that realm of behavior not prohibited to either the individual or the state. But that prohibition is limited by the principles which define crimes and rights. In short, liberty is behavior limited by principle. Which leaves freedom to be defined as unlimited behavior.
Could such definitions hold up to a less biased scrutiny? While conservatives accept the idea that our behavior is naturally limited by principle, that behavior carries with it responsibility for the consequences, such a definition would leave us with the precept that libertines crave not liberty but freedom.
Perhaps we should look into the word freedom a little more, or at least the root word of free.
When asked why we fought the Revolutionary War most modern children will respond that we fought for our freedom. Those of us educated in a more enlightened age immediately recognize the fallacy of this common answer because we learned of the alternate name for the Revolutionary War as the War of Independence. Thus we know that the war was fought to attain political independence from the United Kingdom and not our freedom.
In a work published that same year as our Declaration of Independence, Adam Smith refers to Englishmen as freemen. People both in England and in the colonies thought of themselves as free men before the war, which came from over five hundred of economic and political development moving from a feudal through a mercantile system towards a capitalistic system.
But the name “freeman” went all the way back to the early years of the feudal society which was once England, and it was not the pleasant term it would later become. A freeman was a man free of feudal obligation. Feudal obligations were the terms of service or rent owed to one’s lord. Typically a peasant or serf, later a tenant farmer, would pay their feu, or rent, to their lord, or landlord, in exchange for the use of the land to farm.
In medieval parlance a “lord” was simply the person who owned the land; whereas a “master” was simply the employer, one who employed the use of tools or servants.
A freeman did not owe a lord rent, nor a master service. A freeman was essentially a day laborer who looked for whatever work whenever and where ever he could. To be a freeman in a feudal society was to be poor virtually an outcast from society, one step above an outlaw. (Which, incidentally, literally meant to be outside the protection of the law.)
In a society built around obligation to society, duty and fealty to one’s lord or master, service to the state, being free is an affront to your fellow citizens. You are at liberty, but without resources. In the feudal world, the libertine was someone with enough wealth to do as they wanted but no commitment to society; liberty was irresponsibility. Freedom was irresponsibility without wealth.
It is the individual not controlled by the state which the Hobbesian fears, so why promote the libertine in the “Social Justice Warriors”? Because the SJW calls for ever increasing state control over individual behavior. Let the SJW call for less government and watch the “liberals” turn on their minions instantly. They are not called useful idiots for nothing.
Liberty we want to define as behavior constrained by principle; but that is not its original meaning. Freedom we want to call unrestrained behavior, but it used to mean a poor man’s liberty. Statists oppose liberty by promising fools hedonistic, libertine freedom if they will bind and constrain others without any regard to principle giving ever more power to the statists.
In a quote attributed to President John Adams, “Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.” In another, “Children should be educated and instructed in the principles of freedom.” If we do not educate our children in the principles of freedom, their liberty will be lost forever.
