Freedom or Justice?
Bill Whittle asks which we would prefer
on 11/30/2007 at 03:26 PM
"These are not my definitions of freedom, or especially of “justice.” Referring to the latter, it is the definition of “justice” put forward by the left: ‘economic justice’ means to them that there is no major disparity of income.”
Phew ... otherwise I was going to have to be critical of Bill Whittle and say he had his head on backwards ... and the whole darn VRWC would come down on me.
So I guess this short piece was an excercise in showing the shortcomings of lefty logic.
And in a perfect world of perfected people, you could have pure freedom, or anarchy as some call it, and have no worries, because perfected people would respect other people’s freedoms without even thinking about it. So there would be no tresspass, rape, or theft because there would be cultural honor. As commenter Stephen Macklin put it, “There is a vast difference between liberty and license. Liberty is the freedom to act up to the point where you are infringing the liberty of another. License is being able to do whatever you damn well please.”
Drew, how about mutual liberty?
I have the right to go anywhere and take anything, and you have the right to open up on me with that Kalishnakov if you feel so mandated? Reckon we could work out an understanding?
Perhaps if the guvmint started ‘easing out’ of private affairs, just a bit at a time - which they seem to have done as far as the villains are concerned - us citizens could acclimate.
Archie, I guess my working definition of freedom and liberty put in “reasonable restrictions”
, though those restrictions wouldn’t be law; they’d be moral.
I’ve heard it argued that the reason most people don’t commit crimes is because they’re afraid of the punishment. My thought takes that one up a notch, and says people don’t commit crimes because they know that doing so is wrong. Wrong because “God said so” or because you are smart enough to put yourself in my shoes and wouldn’t want any of your stuff taken; the reason doesn’t matter as long as the moral is in place and universal throughout the culture. So I’d never have to point my Weatherby in your direction because you’d never even think of taking something that was mine. And as for the tresspassing, come on over, I’ve got extra beer.
Drew, that’s pretty much what I was going for.
In the New Testament, Paul wrote, “Everything is lawful to me, but not everything is profitable.” In other words, just because I may do something doesn’t mean it’s smart to do it.
In a society, we normal folks refrain from taking the neighbor’s mule or fooling with the neighbor’s wife because we understand that mutual trust is what holds us together. Conversely, and absent artificial government constraint, I don’t raid your chicken coop at night because you will defend it. Nor you mine. That’s a form of mutual respect.
We make some laws. We know that some will not honor the trust and respect we as citizens and neighbors hold. So we make certain things punishable, that we have an orderly and systematic way of dealing with those who break the trust and respect of society.
Laws have never maintained proper behavior, law simply punishes improper behavior. (Unless one is a liberal, of course. For a liberal, publishing another silly law makes improper behavior impossible. Yeah.)
Liberty is the honorable, trusting, respectful excercise of freedom.
When government makes one class of citizens ‘victims’ by allowing the peace breakers to run free, government has abdicated its proper place.
By the way, I live in Southern PDSR California. Where are you? I might take you up on that beer offer sometime.
