From Lockdowns To Liberty EP22 : Monologue
Let's talk about the relationship between authority and liberty. In light of the peaceful protests that have now gone global involving truckers and their supporters the Corporatists in our opposition have been forced to acknowledge the authority that the people have in mass. For most of us in the liberty movement this has always been apparent. It's just been the weapon used against us.
The concept of liberty has 2 heads, at least according to the work of Isaiah Berlin, and those are positive and negative. The positive side often looks to gain something where the negative side often looks to defend. The positive end uses force as a means to enforce its will while the negative uses its will to set up boundaries and will only use force to ensure that those boundaries are upheld.
An example of positive liberty is someone claiming that it is their right to have X provided for them, often by the state. That X can be anything from state provided healthcare to protection from the unvaccinated. You can see where the conflicts begin right away, right?
Positive liberty ends up costing someone else their liberty. You do not have liberty if you are forced to provide labor, goods, etc to another. Positive liberty then, in this example at least, overrides the value of individual liberty. Now you might be able to see why the concept of liberty, that corporations and government and now the tag team of them both, has been the positive one. Because it gives them something to sell you.
Positive liberty is transactional. Just like the Corporatists that use it against us. Positive liberty can be driven by the masses or the mob, it can be exploited (like our intelligence agencies and the tech companies that work with them do, more on that later), and through that exploitation the institutions used or devised to ensure whatever that new right may be, become the arbiters of it. So the ends of positive liberty become collectivist if not authoritarian.
That sort of leaves us with negative liberty. Negative liberty is a stop sign. Its a suggestion. It finds itself in a place of abstraction that only can be recognized by the collective through its voluntary actions. The beautiful thing about it is that it requires no per-requisite to obtain. You are born with the right to life and the pursuit of happiness. But just because you have the right to be alive and happy doesn't give you the right to steal from others to stay alive and if victimizing others makes you happy your liberty is unlikely to be recognized for very long.
This is the paradox that we find ourselves in these days. How do we convince the masses to acknowledge their inherent rights and liberty without victimizing others and using only volunteerism?
How can you take a concept that highlights the individual and use it to provide a collective change in society?
This is the moral crusade of the new century. Where others sought to end monarchies and slavery, the people of the new liberty movement including us here at The New Prisoners, seek to end the isolation of the individual's liberty and connect them to one another similar to nodes in a computer system. Connecting the liberty minded through the use of technology, logic, and appeals to emotion are all valuable tools in this mission. We also have to tread carefully not to cross to far in our demands into positive liberties either.
You can see why people throw up their hands and opt to rather return to isolation or just give up and join whatever the popular collective may be at the time. These intellectual and moral concepts can be far too complicated for most people. People prefer A or B choices not A subsection xxi paragraph two lines 3 and 4 vs B subsection xxii paragraph 5 lines 16-19. Did your eyeballs roll back in your skull when I said that?
If so, its ok, you're only human. Humans prefer reductionist arguments. We love good vs evil. Right vs wrong. Even if they are false dichotomies (maybe why they work so well, huh). But we lose the details when we reduce and by that when we use reductionist methods to explain things it makes other things harder to define and therefore explain. Theories and facts blend. Morality and immorally can as well. Again, you can see why we on the liberty side can be so detail oriented, because we know that you cannot construct a stable reality out of fantasy or lies.
This is why we knew that the lockdowns wouldn't work. Or that the preventative measures like distancing and masking wouldn't work. And ultimately why the injections wouldn't work (and they haven't). That's because the people who were responsible for coming up with and enforcing those mandates and measures didn't know the full story and we did. I say it all the time, it's like we're from the future.
But now I can see that the knowledge of history and of abstract concepts like positive and negative liberty contributes to that feeling of isolation and loneliness. Almost like what was caused by the failed lockdowns. Too bad a lot of us have already felt that way most of our lives. We were made for this shit.
The one thing that has escaped the liberty movement around the world, the ones who cheer on negative liberty and volunteerism, has been the collective embrace of those values. Now, thanks to the actions of people in Canada and now around the world we can see that our turn at bat is here. That the concepts of negative liberty no longer have to be isolated to our curated realities on social media or in the mainstream. That no matter what the Corporatists have tried that they have pushed our people too far. They broke the spell of comfort and complacency that their distractions were meant to provide us. The giant is now awake and it's angry but the end to this story may not be a violent one, because all the giant needs to do to ward off the attacks of cowards, is to simply act like a giant. Stand tall, hold it's ground, and flex a little bit to make sure that the tiny authoritarians below understand where their power ends.
This week we have on Ms. Liberty Howl. A lover of freedom and animals. A straight shooter and relatable, she represents so many in our audience who desires better for her fellow man and the many creatures of our beautiful planet. It was a delight to hear from her as it is to hear from you, our audience. So be sure to listen but to also comment where you can. Let's all stay in contact. That way the more our opposition does to deny us the stronger our bonds become.