Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

It's difficult to discuss liberty because so many people outside, and even inside, America have a different definition. For example, both the newly emerging nation of America and revolutionary France were based on liberty, but the definition was not the same. This was against a backdrop of kings & priests whose rule was divine. At the time of The Enlightenment, liberty wasn't personal autonomy as much as breaking away from authoritarian rule using democracy. In fact, the French kept that definition and have State-sponsored liberty, where the group determines how everyone must live, while the Americans imagined liberty at an individual level; the person is paramount. Any past or modern reference to "liberty" outside America is a conflation with freedom, not the personal liberty Americans enjoy, which is making decisions for yourself and reaping the rewards or suffering the consequences of your own actions.

The Right in America are the noted champions of this kind of liberty, while The Left espouses the State-sponsored version. Right-wing liberty overlaps Left-wing liberty concerning freedom, and both are bounded by law, but they differ in that Left-wing liberty does not include the concepts of consequences or personal responsibility, nor is it limited by the liberty of other individuals. The goal of The Right is to increase personal liberty with fewer laws, while the goal of The Left is to expand State-based liberty with more laws. Both sides can argue they support liberty but like all Left vs. Right ideology, the differences makes the two liberties completely incompatible.