There’s a seemingly unending debate about what “my liberty ends where yours begins” really means.
The initial saying was a little longer, “Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins.”, and had been coined during the disputes between those who tried to impose the Prohibition and those who opposed it.
In that context, it made sense.
‘How close to my house – a teetotaler, should you be allowed to open a bar and why should I be able to tell you what to drink/serve in your house.’
In a wider setting – individual rights, for instance … not so much!
‘Your right to swing your arm leaves off where my right not to have my nose struck begins’ only if at least one of the following is true:
– My arms are as long as yours AND I’m willing/able to defend my nose.
– You are a civilized person.
– We, the entire community, have reached the conclusion that we are better off, together, if we observe – and enforce, this rule.
The first sentence describes a situation of generalized conflict. Not necessarily ‘hot’ but, nevertheless, always ‘waiting to happen’.
In the second situation, ‘one side’ depends, decisively, on the ‘other side’ behaving ‘properly’. Nice and commendable but what happens when one of them goes berserk?
The third describes the de facto functioning of any civilized nation. Which nation, any nation, is composed of individual people. ‘Endowed’ with ‘free will’ and not always ‘well behaved’.
Hence the danger of narrowly defining freedom as a collection of individual spaces where each of us might do as they please – as long as the consequences of their actions remain inside that space.
Which spaces would have to be constantly defended.
Or could be extended, whenever any of the neighbors wasn’t on the lookout.
How about ‘our mutually respected individual liberty is the well deserved consequence of our collective effort to enlarge OUR freedom’?
nicichiarasa 