Quote:
Originally Posted by scottw
iCarl T. Bogus - National Review Online
money quote:
"Conservatives value above all else what Berlin called the negative vision of liberty, namely, freedom from coercion. Liberals are more willing to balance that against the positive vision of liberty — that is, having a reasonable opportunity to realize one’s potential. The negative vision focuses conservatives on restricting the government’s ability to interfere in people’s lives. The positive vision leads liberals to believe that government has a role in guaranteeing baseline minimums in education, medical care, and healthy communities."
This is pure doublespeak--making the positive negative and the negative positive. A "negative vision of liberty" would see liberty as a negative force to be reigned in. A "positive vision of liberty" would see it as something not to be constrained. They see the "positive vision of liberty" as a "balance" to the so-called negative vision, by providing "baseline minimums." As we so painfully see, and as Scott has pointed out, this "positive vision" is not free. And Government mandates that must be payed for by some and obeyed by others are not liberties. It is not liberty to be forced to attend government sponsored or approved schools or forced to participate in government mandated health plans. And what would a "neutral vision of liberty" be--that is, what IS liberty? Isn't it what Berlin and Bogus refer to as the "negative vision"--freedom from coercion? And wasn't this the Founder's vision of liberty? And wasn't the Founder's vision an unalienable right endowed by a creator, not by government. This liberty was granted by "the laws of Nature and of Nature's God." This "negative vision" was the only "positive vision of liberty" spoken of by the Founders. They did not have negative or positive visions of liberty, they merely saw it as freedom from coercion, and they saw that government was not the source of liberty, but could only act to abridge it.
The Founder's "positive vision" endowed individuals with the Berlin and Bogus "negative vision of liberty"--freedom from coercion. And they provided this with a Constitution that negatively constrained the liberty of Government from abridging the liberty of the people except to the degree that the people consented.
this also falls right in line with Obama's claim and belief that the Constitution is a document of "negative liberties" and is missing something...which is said to be the series of statements of things that the government must or should do for you  |
It is this bogus concept of "negative and positive liberties" that has driven progressives for the past 100 years to change the Constitution through "interpretation" rather than amendment--the same dependence on linguistic tricks rather than Constitutional methods to change how we govern. The so-called interpretation has been a willful, deliberate rewriting of the Constitution with full knowledge that what has been done is not what was intended. The progressive view is that the Constitution as written is anachronistic, unsuitable for modern times, but can be saved as a "living" document that can be changed with modern views to modern problems, nevermind that it is a system of governance, not a codex of laws written during different circumstances. The system of delegating powers to branches and levels of government, and of protecting individuals from unconsented power is not time dependent. Until human nature changes, until we become some other being, this system is timeless.
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