It is apparently a self-conceit of progressives/liberals that they are friendlier to notions of liberty than are conservatives. While Libertarians (who are concerned with matters of liberty) disagree with that, today in a comment this was offered:

Name a liberty or freedom other than “the freedom to not be taxed” or “the freedom to screw over others” and progressives support it. (Guns is the only possible exception, but I’d argue that progressives who oppose gun rights generally throw it into the “freedom to screw over others” category.)

Just this week, I was inquiring at my daughter’s middle school whether I could get her excused (for the year) from gym class. She spends 20+ hours a week outside of school training at gymnastics and doesn’t lack one bit for physical exercise. What she does lack is time for homework. I had a nice chat with the school principle who informed me that he would love to do that, but state laws prevent that. It seems that somebody decided that there is a problem with childhood obesity and to help with that they’ve put a stop-gap to anyway of getting dismissed from gym class. He told me that another parent of a gymnast has been trying for 2 years to find a loophole unsuccessfully. Just another example of progressive nanny-state legislation snip snip snipping your freedom away. 

From the wiki article on “nanny state”:

For example, politically conservative or libertarian groups in the United States (especially those that support the free market and capitalism) object to excessive state action to protect people from the consequences of their actions by restricting citizen options.

Liberals on the other hand have used the term to describe the state as being excessive in its protections of businesses and the business class —protections ostensibly made against the public good, and the good of consumers. This usage applies to the international context as well, where the “public good” is used to refer to people in general, and where the state is viewed as being excessive in its protection of native business over foreign (rival) businesses

[Emphasis mine]

I’d point out I have not ever seen the liberal usage noted above, however the point in question in the above is that liberals in fact (as viewed by non-liberals) continually push state actions which prevent people from the consequences of their own (voluntary) actions. This is a restriction of freedom which does not fit into the “not to be taxed” or “screw others” category. The sorts of actions which this includes are countless and continually pushed and have been pushed more and more over the years. Apparently progressives (like JA who offered the above comment orginally) are not even aware that these sorts of regulations and laws are a restriction on our freedom. 

If you ask a Libertarian about the differences between the right and left regarding liberty they (and bloggers Shannon Love at Chicago Boyz and Timothy Sandefur at Freespace) who are both self-professed libertarians assert that while conservatives fall short of liberals regarding freedom in two categories of liberty (sexual and procreative) in all the other matters the left either falls short  or is the same (e.g., religion) and in both of their estimation when these were weighed together all in all the right was either more favorable for liberty than the left. 

Related posts:

  1. Three Values and Three Movements
  2. Ontological Freedom, Christians in the Public Sphere, and Liberatarian Ideas
  3. Freedom Requires Responsibility and Morality
  4. Scholastic Debating: On (One of) the Bush Doctrine(s)
  5. Democrats Against Religious Freedom

Filed under: Conservative • Liberal • Mark O.

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