Political Liberty Today: is it Being Restricted or Enlarged by Economic Regulation?

T. V. Smith

American Political Science Review, 1937, vol. 31, issue 2, 243-252

Abstract: The liberty of any given citizen is inhibited by four great enemies. The first enemy is outer—the inhibition of the liberty of one by the liberty of others. The other three are inner enemies—illness, poverty, ignorance. The outer enemy is commonplace to political scientists. And so it is this inner triumvirate against freedom which I wish first and mainly to discuss. Worst of the three is ignorance.Pure liberty would consist simply in doing what one wants to do. Illness is enemy to this ideal not merely because illness weakens wants, but also because it aborts the very formation of virile wants. Poverty is enemy not only because it stunts the growth of healthy wants, but because it circumvents efficacy of efforts to fulfill any and all wants. Ignorance, however, is worst of the three, not only because it fortifies the other enemies, inner and outer, but because it also converts such regulation of elemental wants as is made inevitable by civilization into the psychological poison of aggression and thereby estops fructifying sublimation of the crasser forms of freedom.

Date: 1937
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