Principles
Dave Price
There's really only one basic principle I carry around and try to apply philosophically, which goes something like this:
Liberty is both a universal aspiration of human beings and the mechanism by which individuals and societies can achieve the greatest prosperity and happiness, thus our actions and policies should always strive to increase the sum total of human liberty.
This was, incidentally, the realization that pushed me from movement conservative to classical liberal or libertarian. Certain aspects of the conservative agenda that were demonstrably, empirically successful -- free markets, free trade -- tended to argue this way, but the principle they proved conflicts with other tenets of conservative thought, such as the need for a "war" on what chemicals people choose to ingest and the dogmatic illiberalism some social conservatives find in the Bible.
So some might dismiss it as too general for decisions on specific issues, but I think it's always a useful lens through which to view any policy -- and the farther one departs from this principle the farther from truth one will end up, in my opinion.
For an Englishmen the right to cross the land is an ancient, closely-held right. I've met any number of Englishmen for whom preventing such action was an intolerable abridgement of their liberty. For many Americans the inability to secure one's property from such trespass would be equally intolerable.
While liberty may be a universal human aspiration, what constitutes liberty is not similarly universal.
In the United States you do not have the freedom to enter into an enforceable personal services contract. In Germany you do.
Dave Schuler: Believe it or not such things can be measured. As with any form of science, you merely have to have a consistent set of boundary conditions against which falsifiable predictions may be made.
The political science data set I use, as you know, is Freedom House's Freedom In The World reports. Freedom House has been measuring these things for over half a century using fairly consistent sets of standards, and has been using its current set of standards to measure every country since 1973. Their methodology is pretty solid. Yes, they don't measure some things which are controversial, such as drug policy, firearm policy, etc. But they do measure a great many things that are found in the universal declaration of human rights: free speech, free press, free elections, freedom to travel, freedom to assemble, freedom of religion, minority rights, women's rights, etc. Using a consistent set of standards, they can also make strong and falsifiable predictions with them.
I agree 100% without equivocation or qualifier.
But I do not use democracy interchangeably with liberty; I think far too few of us in this debate have read Fareed Zakaria's book.
It's a kind of liberty: the liberty to choose our leaders.
I've read's Fareed book, and yes, democracy can have illiberal consequences (just ask Socrates). That's been the main problem with democracy all along. But democracies are also much more likely to liberalize than nondemocracies, which tend to (correctly) view liberty as a threat to their rule, and holding onto power is generally their chief concern.
No, there is objective truth on these issues, and empiricism eventually bears the truth out. If we're smart, we can learn to discern that truth.
It used to be argued, for instance, that the Soviet system produced more liberty than the Western system. The argument was they had economic liberty, superior to our political liberty.
Based on the evidence today, I don't think many people would argue that anymore.
Well, it's a shared delusion of statists and social conservatives, for similar reasons. But politics is more of an n-dimensional continuum than a linear left/right paradigm.
With many concrete issues, the only empirical test as to what people want is to look (empirically) at how a culture has developed over many generations. So England has adopted one practice and the US another. So?
But you aren't hunting on my land, you aren't setting up camp, you aren't making a habit of it and creating a defacto right of way.
And even if there is a mythical englishman who thinks that is their birthright - is that basically the law there ? Are there no properties into which any person can enter at any time, or land they can cross whenever they choose ? I find that assertion dubious to say the least.
Kind of a minor point, but you can't make a argument on the back of a single anecdotal case when the truth of that case may be in doubt.
Of course we all lose our tempers now and then. Dean freely admits to being imperfect in this regard, which is why regulars to this establishment will generally be cut more slack than people who we don't know very well.
Still: behave like an adult, or go find somewhere else to play. Thanks.