Greeny News

is the disguise used by those wishing to operate without restrictions, denying the need for the State to protect the 99%

Freedom: who could resist? However, this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the press and the blogosphere right, including think tanks and government apology every word assault on the lives of the poor, all forms of inequality and the intrusion into the reserve of 1% of us. How did liberalism, once noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?

the name of freedom - freedom from regulation - banks have been allowed to ruin the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes on the super-rich cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to abandon the minimum wage and increased working hours. In the same case, the U.S. Congress Hall of insurers to effectively prevent public health, the government began to plan our laws, big business destroys the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful exploit the weak, the rich exploit the poor.

law recognizes certain legitimate constraints on the power to act, regardless of the impact on the lives of others. The UK is the force promoted by groups like the Alliance of taxpayers, the Adam Smith Institute, Institute of Economic and exchange rates. His concept of freedom seems to me nothing more than the justification of greed.

Why have we been so slow to challenge the notion of freedom? I think one reason is the following. The great political conflict of our time - between neoconservatives and the millionaires and corporations that support the one hand, and social justice advocates and environmentalists on the other - was mistakenly identified as a clash between freedom negative and positive. These freedoms have been more clearly defined by Isaiah Berlin in his essay of 1958, two conceptions of freedom. It is a work of beauty: the reading is like listening to a glorious piece of music at hand. I'll try not to destroy too bad.

briefly and bluntly, negative freedom is freedom to be or to act without interference from others. Positive freedom is freedom from inhibition: the power to transcend the limits acquired social or psychological. Berlin, explained how the positive freedom has been abused by tyrannies, particularly by the Soviet Union. Which depicts the brutal system of government that the empowerment of people, which could lead to greater freedom of subject only to the collective will.

right libertarians say the defenders of social justice are green and closet communists trying to resurrect the Soviet conceptions of positive liberty. In fact, the battle consists mainly of a confrontation between negative liberties.

that Berlin said: "Human activity is not as private as not to disturb the lives of others in some way" freedom of the pike is death for the small fish ".. " Thus, he says, the freedom of some people may need to be reduced "to ensure the freedom of others." In other words, the rotational freedom of your fist ends where my nose begins. Negative freedom not to have the Nez Perce is the freedom that advocates for social justice and green, illustrated by the movement is there to defend.

Berlin also shows that freedom can intervene in other values ??such as justice, equality and human happiness. "If the freedom of me or my class or a nation depends on the misery of a number of other human beings, the system that promotes this is unjust and immoral." It follows that the state should impose legal restrictions on the freedoms that interfere with the freedoms of others - or in conflict with the law of freedom and humanity