If you are reading this right now, there is a very good chance that you have been feeling "politically homeless" recently. You may find yourself torn between progressivism and libertarianism, and have thus sought out what we call "progressive libertarianism". You may strongly oppose lockdowns and related restrictions as egregious violations of civil and human rights, but yet still just as strongly support things like Universal Basic Income, single-payer Medicare For All, fair and progressive taxation, labor rights, racial justice, gender and reproductive justice, environmental justice, and stuff like that. And take it from us, you are NOT at all alone.
One thing all tyrants and their lackeys both today and throughout history have in common is that they convince the masses that negative and positive liberty ("freedom from" vs. "freedom to", respectively) are somehow at odds with one another or even mutually exclusive, when in reality they are (when properly understood!) two sides of the same coin. And those who follow the "power-over" or "dominator" paradigm of social interaction (as opposed to the "partnership" paradigm per Riane Eisler) simply cannot see that you really can't have one without the other. That is true whether one is a Marxist or Neo-Platonist (preferring only positive liberty at the expense of negative liberty), or a Republican or Libertarian (preferring only negative liberty at the expense of positive liberty). And by cynically pitting one type of liberty against the other, We the People ultimately end up with neither as a result.
If literally everything has strings attached and/or requires one to beg permission from the state or others higher up in the social dominance hierarchy, can one really consider oneself to be free?
If there is no firm social floor below which one cannot fall, then there is a "race to the bottom" which inevitably results in economic coercion. And economic coercion makes negative liberty into a cruel joke: the "freedom" to starve under a bridge in a world of natural abundance but artificial scarcity.
The same is also true for individual rights vs. collective/community rights as well, by the way.
To quote the late Mikhail Bakunin, "We are convinced that liberty without socialism is privilege, injustice; and that socialism without liberty is slavery and brutality." Simply insert "negative" before "liberty", and replace "socialism" with "positive liberty" and the quote in fact makes even more sense, regardless of how one feels about that rather nebulous snarl word, "socialism". That basically sums it up. QED.
We at the TSAP have one and only one agenda: liberty and justice for all. What's yours?
Agreed. It is important to combine both the ideas of Libertarian ideology and progressive ideology together. Living wages, reasonable gun rights among other liberties is the way forward. This would attract more people to the Democratic Party. In doing so, this combination can drive off the threats to our country: the growing Neo-Confederacy movement and Boogaloo. These threats to our country should not be underestimated.
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ReplyDeleteAdded to this is the growing Evangelical movement in the United States, which doesn't care about civil rights and civil liberties. Fascism could very well come in the form of an Evangelical government in this country.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, very true, Edwin.
ReplyDeleteIt's true, unfortunately.
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