“Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it is freedom that oppresses and the law that liberates.”
Henri LACORDAIRE (1802-1861)
I have had a few rare occassions, when someone was complaining because they wanted more freedom, someone who was very free already, and I asked, “how much freedom do you want? Do you want the freedom to enslave others?” They had to think about that
If they had to think about it, then they truly do not know what they want or what they ask for.
Well. At least they appear to be thinking. Bertrand Russell said it’s important to allow for that in any difficult topic. We can’t work everything out in every conversation.
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That is a good point, although it only applies to Western Europeans.
That is an interesting observation.
I have always maintained that freedom can only exist within boundaries.
The Limits of Freedom and the Freedom of Limits
Jason Lambacher
Pages 385–398
- Published: 07 March 2016
Abstract
When we conceive of “freedom” as the absence of limitations, it is easy to associate green politics with coercion and restriction. This troubling linkage frames environmentalism as hostile to freedom as such, and even leads many green theorists to doubt its relevance to environmental political theory.
Is this, however, a narrow way of thinking about the concept of freedom and its relationship to environmentalism? Can freedom be greened to enhance ways of life that advance environmental goals? There are good reasons to think that it can. Green concepts of freedom not only offer salient critiques of ecologically destructive modes of freedom, they also open up creative aspirations to live autonomously and meaningfully within ecological constraints.
Ignoring the potential of freedom as a productive concept in environmental political theory overlooks powerful sources of motivation, experimentation, and political resonance. Green theorists should therefore work with, and not avoid, discourses of freedom in order to explore visions of individual, social, and ecological flourishing.
https://academic.oup.com/edited-volume/28363/chapter-abstract/215230206?
Quite true. Maybe sometimes people do need to think in order to understand what they are asking and wanting.
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Says the white masters of the universe.
Guy, do you ever stop to think about what you are writing?
Do you ever try to learn about history?
By: James Poskett
I could ask the same of you, since you’re talking about an entirely different topic.
I don’t know.
I think what binds them is that blinding sense of exceptionalism.
“Between the strong and the weak, between the rich and the poor, between the master and the servant, it is freedom that oppresses and the law that liberates.”
It makes for a nice jingle since there is something to it, but when I really try through its implications, it dissolves into puffery.
The balance between freedom and law within society is a deep topic. Including civility, duty and honor and such. It deserves more than one liners and gotchas. 
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