Égalité

"Eternal vigilance is the price of freedom." We have heard that many times. What is also the price of freedom is the toleration of imperfections. If everything that is wrong with the world becomes a reason to turn more power over to some political savior, then freedom is going to erode away. . . Ultimately, our choice is to give up Utopian quests or give up our freedom.

-- Thomas Sowell, 8.4.09


Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Motto of the French revolution, of France, and, unofficially, of the European Union (see EU flag in illustration). “Freedom” and “siblinghood” are both in the spirit of the French and American revolutions. It’s “equality” that defines the main division in American politics today: people who want government to bring about equality v. people who value personal freedom for all.

Sowell has the essence of what Isaiah Berlin laid out in his famous 1958 inaugural Chichele Professor of Social and Political Theory lecture at Oxford. Berlin gently suggested that the difficulty with what he called “positive liberty” was its granting permission to some select minority to fix things on behalf of us all, starting us on the road to less freedom, even tyranny.

We elect leaders to help us toward a “more perfect” world, so what’s the problem with that? Well, as Berlin suggests and Sowell says, the problem comes when leaders actually believe perfection is possible; that they themselves are above human imperfection.

Better the built-in modesty of Berlin’s “negative liberty.” Better the freedom to make mistakes.