(Editor’s Note: Welcome classicalliberal, a regular on the comments sections — this is his/her first post on monroerising.com)

My 15 year old and I were recently discussing the subjects he has been studying in school in “Global Studies” (remember when that was called History, American History or something of the sort?) and he began relating to me with great excitement what he was learning about ancient Greece and their “invention” of democracy and liberty. He proceeded to tell me this ancient Greek society was the source of our founders notions of liberty and democracy. Unfortunately this is a misconception widely held and taught to American students and it unfairly robs from our founders the true genius of their endeavors to be a free people in a free land with a freely elected and accountable limited government.

True, the Federalist Papers, the founders main defense of the Constitution mentions the Greek and Roman forms of governance and society about 30 times however the American experiment differs in it’s understanding of liberty which is what separates it from and makes it far superior to the Greek democracy of Athenian origin. You see the Greeks accepted and promoted “Positive Liberty” defined by the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy as “…the possibility of acting — or the fact of acting —in such a way as to take control of one’s life and realize one’s fundamental purposes…positive liberty is sometimes attributed to collectivities, or to individuals considered primarily as members of given collectivities.” Did you catch that? Positive liberty is an attribute of collectivism, individuals have liberty as a result of their membership in the collective…sound familiar? You a citizen are granted ‘liberty’ because you are a part of the whole. The positive notion of liberty plays a crucial, yet almost always implicit, role in many major political philosophies, such as direct democracy, socialism, and communism.

The founders on the other hand advocated Negative Liberty. Again from Standford “Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles, barriers or constraints. One has negative liberty to the extent that actions are available to one in this negative sense…negative liberty is usually attributed to individual agents…” The bill of rights provides the primary example of negative liberty in action, your rights enumerated therein are a result not of your membership in the collective of the American people but of your individual inherent worth endowed upon you by your Creator. The government cannot take your guns, because you have the right to have them inherently, for you, to protect you, and to provide food for your family. The government cannot enter your home and search or seize your “stuff” without due process and cause because as a person you have the inherent right to property and privacy…not because it benefits your neighbor but because it benefits you and your property (the same applies to your neighbor of course). Positive liberty is often described as personal ability/entitlement to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as freedom from being forcibly prevented from achieving those ends. Coercion and lack of coercion is the key to understanding how these two philosophies play out in our government today.True Liberals and liberalism “…tends to presuppose a negative definition of liberty: liberals generally claim that if one favors individual liberty one should place strong limitations on the activities of the state.”(Jeffersonian liberalism) Whereas “critics of liberalism (read Democrats and Republicans) often contest this implication by contesting the negative definition of liberty: they argue that the pursuit of liberty understood as self-realization or as self-determination (whether of the individual or of the collectivity) can require state intervention of a kind not normally allowed by liberals.”(Stanford). Medicare part ‘D’, Medicaid, Medicare, Welfare, excessive military intervention, income taxes, Social Security, the minimum wage, affirmative action laws etc…are all a result of our government leaders disposing of the founders vision of liberty in this nation. The government needs to create (so the philosophy goes) the path for you to realize your potential hence laws regarding wages, safety, disabilities, prices, affirmative action etc…because you the individual are incapable of beating your own path to success. Not so say the founders…limit the ability of government to hinder me from seeking out the best for myself, my family, and my property and by extension you will see me and other individuals operating under the same premise creating a more just and sustainable country (indeed world) for all to exercise their inherent liberties and freedoms given not by government but by God!

Isaiah Berlin a great defender of negative liberty in the 1950’s argued that “…the unbridled pursuit of positive liberty could lead to a situation where the state forced upon people a certain way of life, because the state judged that it was the most rational course of action, and therefore, was what a person should desire, whether or not people actually did desire it.” Individualist philosopher David Kelley argues against positive liberty, saying that it requires that persons be guaranteed positive outcomes which often requires the coercion of others to provide it. Meaning, positive rights “impose on others positive obligations to which they did not consent and which cannot be traced to any voluntary act”.Kelley notes that positive liberty evolved out of economic and natural risks such as poverty and old age. Rising living standards contributed to a visible difference between those improving their life and those left behind. Economic progress increased population size and allowed many to live who otherwise would have died, including many who could now live into old age.(1)

So we can see that although the founders themselves were not the mirror image of democracy in Greece as my sons “Global” teacher seemed to imply during his recent study of their society, the influence of the Greek notions of liberty espoused by communists and collectivists (read Democrats and Republicans) made their way into the American form of government anyway and perverted both our political system and political parties to the point where it is almost unrecognizable that our nation was ever founded on individual freedom and liberty…so to all the collectivist Democrats and Republicans and all the leaders of the Senate, House and to the President I say give me Negative liberty or give me death!