The Two Types of Liberty

What is Liberty? What are the two types?

Liberty can be defined as the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one plane of life behavioral political views or alternatively the power or scope to act as one pleases. This is all well and good but what exactly does this mean? I am by no means a philosophical expert but neither were the founding fathers when they first started to think about such things; allow me to explain my views in the hopes that you more clearly understand your own.

One philosophy of thought says that there are two ways to view liberty: positive liberty and negative liberty. I tend to follow this line of thought. We experience both types of liberty every day and it is important to note the difference. In order to defend liberty one must understand what it is they are defending, else they fight for the wrong cause. Many thousands of words and hundreds of pamphlets have been published on the subject, so I will attempt to be brief. I highly encourage the readers to seek out other writings and discover for themselves what liberty means and them.

When people talk about having liberty they are often referring to negative liberty. This form of liberty means that one is not restrained from action. Rather with negative liberty one is protected from tyranny or over exercise of authority. It also means that other persons will not interfere with one's own choices. This is the sort of liberty that most governmental institutions are designed to protect.

Second form of liberty is positive liberty. This form of liberty means that one has the opportunity or the resources to act. As of late, citizens of the United States seem to believe that this is the primary purpose of government; to ensure positive liberty. The trouble with ensuring positive liberty is that it means others must provide. While negative liberty simply means "I stay out of your way," positive liberty means I have all the resources I need and opportunities I need to accomplish what I want. If an entity is to ensure my positive liberty it must therefore ensure I have both resources and opportunity available to me. If that entity is the government, it means the government must take from some citizens and distributed to others.

This is not to say that positive liberty is a negative thing. In most social groups the family church philanthropic group or even your ranking buddies in members of this group work to ensure positive liberty of all its members. In this case it is a voluntary action by its members to ensure the well-being of its others the question before us is always yes does the government have a duty to provide for our positive liberty.

One could argue that the government has a role in ensuring positive liberty if only by making sure one has the opportunity for action. In this manner the government appears to not be taking anything from citizens but rather protecting one's ability to act.

I disagree. I believe that the government's only purpose is to ensure others do not interfere with your negative liberty by ensuring your negative liberty the government allows you to seek out and take a batch of any opportunity that comes your way. To provide opportunities one must either manufacture set opportunities or prevent others from having access. While not as obvious as distribution of resources, the distribution of opportunity at the same affect.