I've once again encountered one of those people who likes to believe that the word "liberty" means something along the lines of "with the permission of an authority". This is mostly based upon the military's long-standing intentional misuse of the word.
It's similar to authoritarians' intentional misuse of the word "anarchy" to mean socialistic nihilism.
And the way the word "literally" is so often used to mean "figuratively", which is literally the word's antonym; its polar opposite.
Make people confused over what words mean and you can control how they think... or if they think.
Freedom is doing whatever you want. Nothing more; nothing less. You can say, as some do, that freedom carries responsibility, but then it wouldn't really be freedom, since so many don't want the responsibilities, and they wouldn't be "free" to reject them.
Liberty is doing what you have the right to do. And you have the right to do anything and everything which doesn't violate someone else's equal and identical rights. In this way liberty is self-limiting; there can never be "too much" liberty because you never have the liberty to violate others. But you do have the freedom to violate others if no one is holding you at gunpoint to prevent it and it's what you want to do.
Because too much freedom can be a problem, and if they can get you to confuse freedom for liberty, and liberty for "with permission", they can get you lost in the swamp. If you can see the downside of too much freedom you can be manipulated into believing there can be "too much" liberty. And if you're lost in the swamp that badly you aren't a threat to them and you won't be much use to yourself.
One of the worst things the military has done-- besides the mass murder, oppression, and destruction-- was to take a good word and fool people into believing it means the opposite of what it means (and even get it into the dictionary), and then convince them to fight to preserve the perverted, wrong meaning in order to keep people on the wrong track. I guess that's an example of "military intelligence"; intelligence to serve evil.
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Reminder: I could really use some help.
Freedom is only limited to what you are able. You're free to do anything you can or want to do. Liberty is freedom governed/restricted by respect for the rights of others. You are at liberty to do anything that doesn't violate/abuse people.
ReplyDeleteLiberty is about a considerate restriction. Limitations set out of respect for something. ...like; "I am not at liberty to discuss that information."
Liberty in the military is about being free of your official duties, but being on your best behavior in regard to your position and obligations. You're off duty, but still have to maintain a certain standard of behavior because you're essentially a 24/7/365 diplomat/representative of the military and state. You're never really "off-duty", you're at liberty to act within a set of terms and conditions, parameters, etc.