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The confusion comes from the conflation of 'liberty' and 'freedom' as meaning the same thing. Your "stupid redneck" is right if by 'freedom' he really means 'l

The confusion comes from the conflation of 'liberty' and 'freedom' as meaning the same thing. Your "stupid redneck" is right if by 'freedom' he really means 'liberty', and to most people these two terms are completely interchangeable. Far from being the same thing, these two ideals are actually contradictory. As you touch on, negative rights must be violated in order to secure positive rights. Now, If you want to claim one is more legitimate than the other, I have a John Locke to match your Friedrich Hegels.

mustafa_pasi 6y ago
I think the point of the OP is that both definitions of freedom and liberty are going to be understood to mean different things depending on what people you are addressing. You go ask the Kashmir people what they think liberty and freedom are, and I bet they will define it in terms of Islam and Hinduism. Those particular definitions that you take for granted are a product of America being an immigrant nation populated by people who had at the time, little shared identity. Now to your credit I will say, the Americans are probably the most far ahead in this domain. Most of the rest of the world are still stuck with a freedom-with-exceptions mentality.
- yossarian1408 6y ago
  That is a very interesting idea. I never considered that freedom can either contain or exclude liberty, depending on who you are talking to. But i'm still pretty sure that you can't confuse the term 'liberty', as it has a more defined meaning, regardless of cultural contexts. What changes is the value associated with the ideal. Every people on Earth strives for freedom, but the form of this freedom may be different in every cultural context. In the Western tradition, as developed by John Stuart Mill, Frederick Bastiat, Thomas Paine and John Locke, etc., this means liberty which is characterised by an emphasis on negative rights, freedom from government, and individualism. I do not think that the people of Kashmir consider liberty when they ask for freedom, but rather mean freedom in the way that the OP defines it, as only being democratic self-governance.
rklaehn 6y ago
Interesting. In German there is no such strong distinction, so I was not aware of this distinction in English. E.g. the word "Vogelfrei" refers to somebody who is free but excluded from society, an outcast. So definitely not a tiny bit of positive freedom there.

mustafa_pasi 6y ago

I think the point of the OP is that both definitions of freedom and liberty are going to be understood to mean different things depending on what people you are addressing. You go ask the Kashmir people what they think liberty and freedom are, and I bet they will define it in terms of Islam and Hinduism. Those particular definitions that you take for granted are a product of America being an immigrant nation populated by people who had at the time, little shared identity. Now to your credit I will say, the Americans are probably the most far ahead in this domain. Most of the rest of the world are still stuck with a freedom-with-exceptions mentality.

yossarian1408 6y ago
That is a very interesting idea. I never considered that freedom can either contain or exclude liberty, depending on who you are talking to. But i'm still pretty sure that you can't confuse the term 'liberty', as it has a more defined meaning, regardless of cultural contexts. What changes is the value associated with the ideal. Every people on Earth strives for freedom, but the form of this freedom may be different in every cultural context. In the Western tradition, as developed by John Stuart Mill, Frederick Bastiat, Thomas Paine and John Locke, etc., this means liberty which is characterised by an emphasis on negative rights, freedom from government, and individualism. I do not think that the people of Kashmir consider liberty when they ask for freedom, but rather mean freedom in the way that the OP defines it, as only being democratic self-governance.

rklaehn 6y ago

Interesting. In German there is no such strong distinction, so I was not aware of this distinction in English. E.g. the word "Vogelfrei" refers to somebody who is free but excluded from society, an outcast. So definitely not a tiny bit of positive freedom there.