An unsavoury developement of Le Web 3 in Paris, a conference about and for bloggers organised for the third time by Loic Le Meur of Six Apart. I have always considered Loic as one of the clued up people in this area and I will give him the benefit of the doubt as to what really happened. Politicians are a toxic breed. Dealings with them tend to backfire and so I’ll wait to hear his side of the story. Jackie has more on this. Following a link from her post, I came across a comment that captures one of the fundamental differences between the Anglosphere and ze Europe.
The very notion that liberty can be restricted by rules and STILL be called liberty is very difficult for English or American people. Actually, I don’t really know about the notion of liberty in the UK, but I do know that the Americans tend to define it as the absence of constraint (especially from the State… constraint from the dominant Opinion is still quite strong and widely accepted).
Now for the French side: liberty is defined as the ability to do what you want INSIDE of a collectively defined set of rules. See Rousseau on that matter.
I’m not pretending that any of these view is better than the other. But I think it helps why a Frenchman can say that liberty should be bound without (French) people gazing at him like he was a madman.
Freedom with lots of caveats does not really seem like freedom to me. In my reading of French history I don’t think the liberty, fraternity and egalite had an asterix next to the word liberty.
Anglosphere liberty has always existed inside a web of constraints. What distinguishes it from the Continental version is that the constraints tended to be confined to those needed to make a framework function for a generally free society, or to accomplish a major end on which there was general social agreement (e.g., maintaining a Navy adequate to deter or defeat invasion, thus freeing up society from the general mobilization of people and wealth needed to maintain a big land force.)
The Continentals have always been obsessed with the idea of a society in which the enlightened guardians of society (whether priests, bureaucrats, or intellectuals) determine the one right way to live, and impose it on everybody through the State. In the Anglosphere, there has for centuries been the supposition that individuals can figure out for themselves the right way for them to live. As for Opinion, has the commenter never considered the option of developing a little independence of character?
Well, one could define a collectively defined set of rules as a choice between poked in the right or left eye. Neither is a great option, but you have the freedom to choose which.
We in the United States are just as “collectivist” (workplaces, families, bowling leagues) minded as Europe. It’s simply the question of being free to move in and out of sub-collectives versus being compelled by Force to adhere to one overarcing, fuzzily defined collective. Yet we still have one, perhaps the largest, regardless.
The only person of foreign birth that I have been able to consistenly discuss political/economic matters routinely is a German of Greek extraction (in his 70’s if that matters). He is a Social Democrat (or whatever it is called in Europe today) and believes that his is the model for freedom. All that is required is relatively heavy taxes, state control of utilities, and fighting some wars but not others (e.g. supported Clinton’s and denounces Bush’s). The inherent problem in his view is that it is a priori Statist, and like a religion, there is no setting aside of it during debates. There is absolutely no frame of reference other than one in which the State has a large portion of the economy under its belt. Concepts like tax being a short circuit of valuation cycles and the State being made up of the same fallible humans as any other association is completely lost. Any attempt to examine such questions is deemed silly. State and Good are inseparable.
The real question is WHY. Why the a priori Statist mentality? In the broadest possible context, it seems that the older the culture, the more Statist it becomes and will continue to be. The Leaders of Men become more deft at making people less free while maintaining their belief that they are. As long as people aren’t brow beaten everyday, you can haul off as much of their labor as possible. Make all sorts of promises, and put the IOU’s in a box for someone else to handle. And make certain that any other notions of civil society are weeded out from birth.
I do not think you understand the semantics of the term being used here… collective is not collectivist. A company is a collective, a club is a collective, a kubbutz is a collective, but as you can join or leave them without coercion, they are not collectivist. The ‘-ist’ bit is what implies coercion. Joining a club does not make you a collectivist, it just makes you socially minded.
WARNING: pragmatist balancing act follows.
Arguments about “what constitutes Liberty” are always hampered by misinterpretations about “Ideals versus Reality”, and never have attained – and almost certainly never will attain – a concrete definition acceptable to all.
When compared to any form of regulated society, complete liberty = anarchy: a total lack of regulation or constraint. You can do whatever you like, whenever you like, to whomever you like. As societies balance welfare of their members versus personal liberty, it’s usually this last point that causes the most trouble. History suggests that complete liberty is incompatible with society, because inevitably somebody’s liberty is going to clash with somebody else’s, and social controls must be instituted to prevent bloodshed.
So once again, the world retreats from “black / white” into “grey”, and the debate over “too much” versus “too little” rages ad infinitum. In the aftermath of Iran’s holocaust-denial conference, a perfect example offers itself: Freedom of Speech.
One of the great banners waved-aloft by democracies, Liberals and Main-Stream Media alike, Freedom of Speech has never really existed between people. Back to the dawn of history, a man’s Word was his Bond and lack of rapid communications made it impossible to check on his word, and calling a man a liar was a killing insult. Some famous U.S. libel law cases from the days of the great newspaper barons, made it expensively clear that you could write whatever you wanted about another man – but even being able to prove that every word was true, would not guarantee you’d avoid punitive damages.
Holocaust denial is a crime in most western countries at the moment – if speech is truly free, why should a person not be permitted to say whatever he wants about the Holocaust? – simply because in practise, people who deny the Holocaust are usually doing so for sinister and ugly purposes of mob-incitement to further mischief for their own crooked ends.
A Disclaimer – I most definitely DO NOT deny the terrible events of the Holocaust, in case you were wondering. But criminalising Holocaust denial is the right-marker of the entire PC spectrum of Things We May Not Say without getting into trouble. Numerous other controls, some of them stupid, some of them exceedingly irksome, many of them utterly futile plague social life. With a robust personal philosophy, one can live reasonably well under any western democracy – and if the local ordinances are fomenting ulcers, one can move.
How does one set one’s course? I offer you Jesus’s take: “Love thy God, and treat thy neighbour as thou would’st have him treat thee.” Merry Christmas! (- and if anybody’s nose is knotted by my use of the “C”-word, oh well…)
Jim, again, semantic problems. What you describe as liberty is ‘licence’… ”
But (for example) the ability to murder someone else is not ‘liberty’. Liberty is the ability to do whatever you like, whenever you like, to whomever you like, if they consent. A situation in which people can do whatever they like to anyone regardless is not ‘anarchy’, it is chaos, which is not the same thing at all.
In France there is only one classical liberal (or free market liberal) party : Alternative Liberal. And this is a little party with 9 month-old !
Hhmmm …
So you believe those that fall at the hands of others are experiencing ‘liberty’? Not hardly. You and some others (particularly the socialist end of the spectrum) are advocating for positive rather than negative rights.
“Complete liberty” is not the tight to act on others without “regulation or constraint”. It is the right not to be acted on by others without “regulation of constraint”.
I would venture that the difference is that the Englishmen recognises, or at least used to, that every law is, by definition, a restriction on liberty wheras the Frenchmen operates under the erroneous belief that laws constructed in a particular manner (e.g. in accordance Natural Law) can alchemically play some role in actually increasing freedom.
Thus the Englishmen accepts some restrictions on his liberty in order to escape a barborous war of all against all, but because he understands what he is doing is always watchful that the inherently repressive state does not extend itself. The Frenchmen, due to his delusion, does not have this watchfulness and, indeed, actively encourages the state to grow as large as possible in order to give him “positive liberty”.
I think the following quote more or less sums it up. It’s from Quesnay founder of the physiocrats, who, in French terms are regarded as prototype liberals of the old school.
I should mention that some American revolutionaries, such as Jefferson on his off days, were prone to think more like a Frenchman than an Englishman.
***I do not think you understand the semantics of the term being used here… collective is not collectivist. A company is a collective, a club is a collective, a kubbutz is a collective, but as you can join or leave them without coercion, they are not collectivist. The ‘-ist’ bit is what implies coercion. Joining a club does not make you a collectivist, it just makes you socially minded.***
I do, and that is what I was trying to express, poorly I guess.
My premise was that humans join together for all sorts of joint actions, and become motivated to exit again, many times, hence my statement of moving freely in and out of “sub-collectives”. I guess I was using semantically heavy words to illustrate that we too, even though individualist, are joiners (mostly) but keep an eye on the intention of the joint effort, and are grounded in sound economic reality.
Also, annoyingly perhaps, I have a habit of using lower case and uppercase to illustrate the difference between a basic use of a word and the inherent Statist/Romantic/Fantastic element to that word (e.g. science to describe the use of the related method, and Science, quasi-religious sets of theory that uses a basis of science to extrapolate all sorts of interventionist public policies). One could say that joining any group is a “c”ollectivist, while “C”ollectivist connotes Gauleiters and Apparatchiki and the rest. Again semantics, and who am I to bend common sense meanings of words, but the origin lies in many an argument with left (and right) leaners who assume individualism is some form of ascetic, mountainman-esque hyper-self sufficiency. Using a loaded word like collectivist is an attempt to show that man is a social creature, but doesn’t necessarily have to be Socialist.
And finally, I don’t use the upper case/lower case convention to be cute, it is used to show those Romantics the fantastic nature of their beliefs. Any common word can be distorted out of all meaning under a Statist mind set (like “services” that means surveillance) but I slap a capital S on it so that it doesn’t just slip by so easily.
The French Constitution of 1791 guaranted the right of every man to speak, write, print and publish his ideas, without their being submitted to censure or inspection before publication
(I couldn’t see anything about after.)http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_de_1791 – my translation
The Constitution of 24 June 1793, which was never applied, states (Article 7):
The right to display one’s thoughts and opinions, either in the press or in any other medium…cannot be forbidden. The necessity of proclaiming these rights supposes either the presence or the recent memory of tyranny.
http://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_du_24_juin_1793 – my translation
The Declaration of the Rights of Man of 1789(Link) states:
10. No one shall be disquieted on account of his opinions, including his religious views, provided their manifestation does not disturb the public order established by law.
11. The free communication of ideas and opinions is one of the most precious of the rights of man. Every citizen may, accordingly, speak, write, and print with freedom, but shall be responsible for such abuses of this freedom as shall be defined by law.
Presumably they were nervous of Catholic mobs demanding satirists be beheaded; as today, liberty was constrained by the readiness of hysterics to disturb public order.
I believe it was Alvin Gouldner who first formulated this distinction:
“There are societies where everything not specifically forbidden is allowed; and societies where everything not specifically allowed is forbidden.”
Trouble starts when societies starting from one or the other of these opposite premises come under pressure or into conflict. Relatively “mature” societies fudge it: that is, they become pragmatic, or small-l liberal systems.
Relatively “immature” societies migrate towards their initial premise. Thus “tight” societies become more doctrinaire and controlling; “loose” societies become more compromising and appeasing.
Years ago when I was starting a now defunct magazine with a French friend, he asked “Where do we go to get our ‘permis de publication?”
I pulled out one of those little red copies of the US Constitution that The CATO Institute used to hand out and gave it to him with the words “It’s right here.”