1033. (12-7-2010) Though freedom is not a state of nature but an artifact of civilization, it did not arise from design. The institutions of freedom, like everything freedom has created, were not established because people foresaw the benefits they would bring. But, once its advantages were recognized, men began to perfect and extend the reign of freedom and, for that purpose, to inquire how a free society worked. This development of a theory of liberty took place mainly in the eighteenth century (1700s)ATJ. It began in two countries, England and France. The first of these knew liberty, the second did not.
- Friedrich A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty, 1978
1036. (12-7-2010) (After all the reading on Liberty, Freedom, Democracy and all the names of the key players for or against a certain way, I decided it would be a good idea to show here who is on which team.)ATJ “Roots of British Liberty – the freedom of the individual under law: David Hume, Adam Smith, and Adam Ferguson (Scottish Moral Philosophers), Josiah Tucker, Edmund Burke, and William Paley (English contemporaries). Opposed to them was the tradition of the French Enlightenment, deeply imbued with Cartesian rationalism – the reasoning of man will perfect us – without God: the Encyclopedists and Rousseau, the Physiocrats and Condorcet….Frenchmen like Montesquieu, ...Benjamin Constant and above all, Alexis de Tocqueville, Turgot and E.B. de Ondillao are probably nearer to what we have called the “British” than to the “French” tradition (Socialism). And, in Thomas Hobbes, Britain has provided at least one of the founders of the rationalist tradition (Socialism)….the whole generation of enthusiasts for the French Revolution,…Godwin, Priestly, Price, and [Thomas] Paine, who (like Jefferson after his stay in France) belong entirely to it [French liberty or the Roots of Socialism]” (- Friedrich A. Hayek – The Constitution of Liberty, 1978) (To understand some of the stark differences, it is necessary to look at the history of both the American Revolution and the French Revolution, including the leaders and philosophers and their basic ideals. What stands at the forefront of this battle of ideas is the battle for liberty by the freedom of the individual to choose and/or the liberty that a few elite men of reason offer to the rest on their terms believing that human intellect can either fashion the most organized and freest society, or with the guide of good laws, free men can lift themselves and others around them, fashioning a free society on good principle. The question is and has been before the world was, shall we freely choose to be good or shall we be coerced, forced to be good?)ATJ
- Andrew T. Jackson 1970-Present
1037. (12-7-2010) (Another way to see the differences of the two traditions of “liberty” is said this way:)ATJ One finds the essence of freedom in spontaneity and the absence of coercion, the other believes it (freedom)ATJ to be realized only in the pursuit and attainment of an absolute collective purpose; one stands for organic, slow, half-conscious growth, the other for doctrinaire deliberateness; one for trial and error procedure, the other for an enforced solely valid pattern.
- J.L. Tabuon