Talk:Liberty

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"When in peril, it is most often defended by Agoura High School Junior Ethan Kuperberg." End of first paragraph after contents...Who the fuck is Ethan Kuperberg? Is this somebody's idea of a joke?

Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not a dictionary. What is the reasoning behind turning this page into a dictionary definition of the word Liberty? I see no reason why such definitions cannot be included as part of a disambiguation page. Mintguy (T) 01:01, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Much of the material about ancient Jewish history here seems wrong: imperial powers in ancient times had to deal with hundreds of revolts, and were the Jews any more devoted to liberty than the Paphlagonians or the Iceni or the Samnites? Mark O'Sullivan 10:10, 25 July 2005 (UTC)

Or the rebellious gladiators? "I am Spartacus!" But Spartacus didn't leave any books behind that are now regarded as sacred by believers in three world-religions, so whether he thought he was fighting for liberty is less interesting that whether Moses did. --Christofurio 14:13, August 21, 2005 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] SOMEONE MADE A FUNNY

Middle Eastern civilization

The Jewish religious tradition features several individuals who stood up to statist power at crucial moments, including of course Moses, who demanded that the Pharaoh of Egypt "let my people go." Also, Korah, who stood up to Moses's authority while the Israelites fish were in the desert. The Maccabees rebelled against mandatory assimilation to Greek culture and the Zealots (less successfully) rose against the Roman Empire.

Moslem jurists have long held that the legal tradition initiated by the Qur'an includes a principle of permissibility, or Ibahah, especially as applied to commercial transaction. "Nothing in them [voluntary transactions] is forbidden," said Ibn Taymiyyah, "unless God and His Messenger have decreed them to be forbidden." The idea is founded upon two verses in the Qur'an, 4:29 and 5:1. --Fibulator 13:12, 21 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Liberty

In the United States Declaration of Independence to the King of England King George III, of the year 1776, the United States declared life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness (it was originally property, but former President Thomas Jefferson decided that might lead to something undesirable) as their liberty requirements. In the United States Constitution in the 14th Amendment after the bloody United States Civil War and because of the bloody United States Civil War the words life, liberty, and property were added. The United States has legal requirements and legal definitions of life, liberty, and property where all three are considered requirements for liberty, so a very large nation and fifty States practices the principle liberty in law.

Could people sign after editing, please? —Twilight Princess

Liberty is evidenced by movement and speech; but the essential blessings of liberty are the foundation of republican government. Justice, tranquillity, heart, and equality are the responsibility of 'we the people' to establish, ensure, provide, and promote, and secure to posterity.

[edit] I would like to do a complete re-write

The article is poorly laid out. It's sort of silly to divide "liberty" into sections according to various centuries of philosophy. First of all, there has been relatively little difference between Classical and Enlightenment conceptions of liberty. Kant was an Enlightenment philosopher, not a Classical philosopher, so he shouldn't even be mentioned in the section on Classical philosophy.

The article tends to diverge from the subject of liberty, on into Spinoza's views on free will (one could devote an entire article to discussions of free will), and then goes onto discuss Economics. The entire paragraph about Hayek is unnecessary. A proper article on liberty would be the entry on it in Stanford's philosophy encyclopedia [[1]]. I'm doing a complete re-write now, based off of their article.

I mean, really. This sentence is laughable:

The Jewish religious tradition features several individuals who stood up to statist power at crucial moments, including Moses, who demanded that the Pharaoh of Egypt "let my people go."

Robocracy 02:43, 12 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Speaking As The Author of that Laughable Sentence

Let me just say that I am, as a good wikipedian, always happy to have my work improved upon. But the article has some glaring problems. First, there is the idea that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" didn't become a justification for authoritarianism until the cold war. Bosh. And POV bosh at that. Even more pressing,m there is the claim of priority for J.S. Mill on the distinction between two conceptions of liberty. What about Benjamin Constant? I'll see if I can improve on these points soon. --Christofurio 14:12, 21 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Liberty and freedom

I looked at the article, as I wanted to know wether there was a difference between Liberty and Freedom. Being french-german, I have no clue at all because "Freiheit" seems to be nearer to freedom and "liberté" nearer to liberty... Does anyone know anything about that? -- pagin 12:14, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wait a you-know-what kind of minute!!!

There is so seriously overt problematic bias going on in this article! The statement, "In this, [Socialists] are confusing liberty with Egalitarianism. In practice, socialism and Libertarianism are diametrically opposed to one another; as a socialist government forcibly takes from one in order to provide to another." First, the idea that any one political philosophy, organization, or body is confusing one thing with another is outlandishly and self-righteously biased in that person making the argument is committing a fallacy in thinking that those he/she disagrees with are "confused." This is piffle! Secondly, Socialism can not really be said to be or to have ever been "in practice." This is simply a "Red Herring" and a Misnomer. Finally, it may be true semantically that "Libertarians" are "diametrically opposed" to Socialists by "libertarianism" is verifiably open to variations of categorization. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlon (talk • contribs) 20:15, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Crap???

Is this article just crap or what??? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Carlon (talk • contribs) 20:21, 25 September 2007 (UTC)


[edit] Mormonism the Only Religion to deal with Liberty?

This section must be either expanded or the reference to Mormonism removed. It looks like special pleading without additional reference to ancient, Jewish, Christian and Islamic ideas (to name a few). —Preceding unsigned comment added by SABRE12 (talk • contribs) 10:27, 19 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed. Ill remove it.

[edit] Remove "Positive Liberty"

I'd like to see (the so called) "positive liberty" removed from this article. (And only have what this article is currently calling "negative liberty") Or at the very least, not give "positive liberty" such prominence.

"Positive liberty" is not liberty at all, but a political agenda.

Much like that of Positive Christianity.

With both Positive Liberty and Positive Christianity, the strategy is to label the old (and real) form of the concept negative to detract from it and to confuse the meaning of it. And label whatever concept is wanted to replace the old concept as positive.

(Or in layman's language... call the old and real concept negative, because nobody wants something that is negative. And call the new false concept positive because people want positive things.)

When you look at classical works, the word liberty is defined as what this article is currently calling: negative liberty.

--Charles Iliya Krempeaux 17:28, 3 December 2007 (UTC)


Unless there is any further argument, I suggest we go ahead and remove positive liberty and leave it for the philosophy article--Yourmanstan (talk) 21:02, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Why was negative liberty removed?

I edited this article a long time ago and it was in pretty good shape. And I have to ask: Why was the section on negative liberty removed? Zenwhat (talk) 17:08, 2 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] positive vs negative liberty

am i the only one who is extremely confused by this positive/negative liberty? I have read these over and over, and they still appear to be the exact same thing.

positive = opportunity and ability to act to fulfill one's desire negative = freedom from restraint

if you are restrained, then you aren't able to fulfill your disire. if you are not able to fulfill your desire, then you're restrained. they appear to be dependent and equal. at the very least, their prominence on this article is WAY over done. this section should be consolidated, shortened, moved to the end, or perhaps removed. if one is trying to educate themselves on liberty, the 'liberty and political thought' is MUCH more relevant and topical.

also, i think citing specific examples of positive/negative liberty would be helpful to illustrate the differences between the two —Preceding unsigned comment added by Yourmanstan (talk • contribs) 10:52, 14 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Definition of liberty on Wiki should include origins

There has been, over the last 30 years or so, a growing body of evidence that modern European ideas of liberty stem from contact with the Americas. That the British colonies in North America lived side-by-side with nations of people who influenced not only their system of government, but concepts of liberty. People writing on the European side of the Atlantic were influenced to a significant degree by reports coming out of North America concerning the nature of societies in the North American Nations...Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Diderot, Bougainville, Montaigne, Lahontan, Charlevoix....many influential thinkers and politically motivated writers contributing later to the French and American revolutions used the comparison of European lack of liberty and Indian America's presence of liberty to spark political changes for themselves.

This article, depressingly, has not too much of this. It would be wonderful to add the conception of European notions of Liberty as part of this entry. I would start with historian William Brandon, and then lay your hands on anything concerning North America's Indian Nations' structures of government/notions of liberty. Jared Diamond, I believe, also laid point to concepts of liberty being stressed, as William Brandon does, with the lack of pastoralism in the Americas.

Check it out. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Neoteotihuacan (talk • contribs) 00:08, 23 April 2008 (UTC)