Thursday, August 19, 2010

Liberty, Freedom or just plain Tolerance?

Says Hayek in Road to Serfdom (page 14):
"Freedom" and "liberty" are now words so worn with use and abuse that one must hesitate to employ them to express the ideals for which they stood during that period [the Renaissance]. Tolerance is, perhaps, the only word which still preserves the full meaning of the principle which during the whole of this period was in the ascendant and which only in recent times has again been in decline, to disapper completely with the rise of the totalitarian state.
Perhaps something to keep in mind in todays political climate where "freedom" has begun to mean "slavery" and vice versa? Tolerance for the free activities of men is on huge decline. Everywhere, some planner has an idea on how to "revise" the free actions of humans, to obtain some socialist ends (e.g. equal distribution of wealth or equal access of all to the property of few).

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