My point being that it is actually the balance of freedom and constraints, and the way the latter are conceived, that describe what we call liberty. Some constraints are legally based, some are defined on an ad hoc basis, and some are the result of custom and good manners. Absent constraints, freedom is synonymous with anarchy. In a system of anarchy, tangible power, rather than justice, differentiates individuals.
http://www.monbiot.com/2011/12/19/how-freedom-became-tyranny/
"Freedom: who could object? Yet this word is now used to justify a thousand forms of exploitation. Throughout the rightwing press and blogosphere, among thinktanks and governments, the word excuses every assault on the lives of the poor, every form of inequality and intrusion to which the 1% subject us. How did libertarianism, once a noble impulse, become synonymous with injustice?
In the name of freedom – freedom from regulation – the banks were permitted to wreck the economy. In the name of freedom, taxes for the super-rich are cut. In the name of freedom, companies lobby to drop the minimum wage and raise working hours. In the same cause, US insurers lobby Congress to thwart effective public healthcare; the government rips up our planning laws(1); big business trashes the biosphere. This is the freedom of the powerful to exploit the weak, the rich to exploit the poor."
The end of John Clare's poem, which is worth a read in full:
"No matter - wrong was right and right was wrong,
And freedom's bawl was sanction to the song.
- Such was thy ruin, music-making elm;
The right of freedom was to injure thine:
As thou wert served, so would they overwhelm
In freedom's name the little that is mine.
And there are knaves that brawl for better laws
And cant of tyranny in stronger power
Who glut their vile unsatiated maws
And freedom's birthright from the weak devour."
http://www.poemhunter.com/best-poems/john-clare/the-fallen-elm/
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