This is a sort of fundamental Maggie's political post, so I urge our readers to spend a little time with it: To what extent do Americans really want liberty?

Categories

Query failed:

SELECT  c.categoryid,
                           c.category_name,
                           c.category_icon,
                           c.category_description,
                           c.authorid,
                           c.category_left,
                           c.category_right,
                           c.parentid,

                           a.username,
                           a.username AS loginname,
                           a.realname
                      FROM csg_category AS c
           LEFT OUTER JOIN csg_authors AS a
                        ON c.authorid = a.authorid
           LEFT OUTER JOIN csg_authorgroups AS ag
                        ON ag.authorid = c.authorid
           LEFT OUTER JOIN csg_access AS acl
                        ON (ag.groupid = acl.groupid AND acl.artifact_id = c.categoryid)
                           
                           GROUP BY c.categoryid
 ORDER BY category_name ASC

/ Got error 28 from storage engine

All categories

Quicksearch

Blog Administration

Open login screen

RSS Readers

Wednesday, November 16. 2011

This is a sort of fundamental Maggie's political post, so I urge our readers to spend a little time with it: To what extent do Americans really want liberty?

Has individual liberty been a prime value in American politics and policy since Coolidge? (We are defining liberty as freedom from the power and interference of the state.)

For starters, this excellent Robinson interview with Prof Paul Rahe, most recently author of Soft Despotism: Democracy's Drift:

Do Americans talk liberty, but desire utilitariansm? Is real freedom too difficult or scarey for most people nowadays?

Secondly, three guys including Will Wilkinson discuss Libertarianism and Liberty in serious depth at Boston Review. At Maggie's, we believe that the "liberty cost" has to be a large factor in any policy equation, or else we aren't America anymore.

Today, you hear more about financial cost, health cost, and environmental cost, than about liberty cost. (Can I trademark the term "liberty cost," or has somebody else done that already?)

Seems to me that Repubs talk more liberty than the Dems, who have eliminated it from their political calculus since Woodrow Wilson. However, the Repubs talk it better than they act it. Have pols simply learned that, when it comes to voting, people want stuff more from the feds than they want freedom?

Posted by Bird Dog at 16:53 | Comments (16) | Trackbacks (0)

Trackbacks

Trackback specific URI for this entry

No Trackbacks

Comments

Display comments as (Linear | Threaded)

No comments

Add Comment

Name
Email	(Your e-mail will not show in your comment)
Homepage
In reply to
Comment	By commenting on this site you agree to the site rules listed here. Email addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for email notifications. Quick reference guide: [i] italics [/i], [b] bold [/b], [u] underline [/u], [url] (web address) [/url]. More tips here. Enclosing asterisks marks text as bold (word), underscore are made via _word_. E-Mail addresses will not be displayed and will only be used for E-Mail notifications. To prevent automated Bots from commentspamming, please enter the string you see in the image below in the appropriate input box. Your comment will only be submitted if the strings match. Please ensure that your browser supports and accepts cookies, or your comment cannot be verified correctly. Enter the string from the spam-prevention image above: BBCode format allowed
	Remember Information? Subscribe to this entry

Maggie's Farm

Our Recent Essays Behind the Front Page

Categories

Quicksearch

Links

Blog Administration

RSS Readers

Wednesday, November 16. 2011

This is a sort of fundamental Maggie's political post, so I urge our readers to spend a little time with it: To what extent do Americans really want liberty?