@Grimlock,
Grimlock wrote:Ok, I agree with you; "freedom" in the common conception of the term is defined in terms of relations with other people. In a more grounded sense, no one is ever really free, as complete freedom would be...omnipotence. We are always restricted by the physical reality in which we find ourselves and the extent of our freedom is a factor of our power over and control of that physical reality. The idea that man is "born free" is little more than a quaint moralist atavism. But that is all obvious enough.
The entire American political framework (the "social contract" and justification of state-imposed restrictions on individual liberty) depends on the old Lockean "state of nature" as a sort of moral release valve. If you don't like what the state offers, just go live among the bears, then. Fair enough, but even Locke must have realized at the time he wrote it that he was dancing around the issue. There is no more stateless territory on this planet, and Locke's thin linking of natural rights and statehood is thus fully worn through. What is a social contract if you're forced to sign? That's no contract, at all.
This is not an argument against democracy, per se, just an effort to point out that the old natural rights argument (to which Jefferson appealed) has some gaping holes in it, even if the existence of extrapersonal moral values is accepted as an axiom. Locke was reasoning backwards, anyway, in attempting to link a fairly absolutist conception of natural rights to the existence of the nation-state. A noble effort, but the whole "state of nature" business was really a shocking obfuscation and rational surrender on his part.
Well there seems to be a good deal of the noble savage in our conception of the rights of man, in that when we say individual freedom we some how believe that the individual is endowed with moral virtue that his society is not. You must know that natural law came from the Roman law of nations which for the first time put forward the notion that all people were equal, and though the world spent another five centuries perhaps denying that fact, it gained enough support to drive through a long and bloody revolt. If you look at English Common Law, it has never been much amended because every one accepted that it sprang from the heart and good sense of the English people. Which tends to make the point that what is moral for one is moral for another, and also that people left to themselves, expressing human equality no matter what their state of bondage, give themselves the best law and government that can be imagined for them. A good book to read is Law and Revolution, it being a history of Western Law, which only came into its own about a thousand years ago. Whatever may be said of western law as a whole, England is an exception because European Law drew much more from Roman tradition, and it took many centuries, but England new feudalism later, and freedom earlier than anywhere is Europe, and we followed that tradition to freedom, limited, but freedom. The remarkable thing is that law tamed the German and Celtic savages, so we still have some idea of their behavior before and after. And it is not disimilar to the American Indian savages and their behavior. What is curious is that within their communities they knew something like perfect freedom, but outside ethical considerations ruled them. There are account of people quite near my childhood home torturing to death some Iroquois. Strange as it may seem, they invited it, and endured it in good cheer, and this was ethical in that it brought honor to their people. If they had shown themselves weak it would have invited attack, but it was a reminder to all that if they fell into the enemy's hands theri fate would be the same as the one they enjoyed. If ethics troubles people it is because taken out of its context, which is of an honor society it does not make sense. Why would people let themselves be cut up and burned, not cry out, or beg for mercy? The were simply paying a debt of honor to those who had given them life, learning and protection. Sometimes they were giving up to their torturers what they had taken. When one was told to be brave and that he would be burned, he replied: good, for I have eaten of all nations. So, if you get my point, when you are surrounded by blood thirsty savages you might be inclined to give all those in the same situation all the freedom they think they may need. If you don't think you need the people in your community you might be inclined to act unethically toward them. I find it interesting that today we face threats with curtailed freedom while savages had a maximum of freedom because they were everywhere threatend
