Average Freedom (1)

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Average Freedom

By figuring out the average features of hundreds of faces (distance of eyes from one another, seize of ears, geometrical ratios etc.) we come up with the average face. And it so happens, we tend to perceive beauty in the mean.

There are numerous faces of liberty. Each is claiming to stand for freedom, but none fulfil their ambition. 

If we want to capture, better understand and represent liberty as an attractive feature of our real lives, we may have to resort to some kind of face-averaging.

It seems to me, this is exactly what Stephen Holmes has accomplished in his essay "The Liberal Idea" in his book Passions & Constraints. On the Theory of Liberal Democracy.

Liberalism's Death by Compartmentalisation

Defences of liberty tend to be the prerogative of various types of liberalism, and these tend to fail to mobilise mass support or even mass attention either because they are esoteric, algorithmic or diluted by more bold and simple stories of the good society. 

By esoteric I means efforts such as those of political liberalism, which is hard to access, as it requires extensive specialised research, and on inspection turns out to be rather arcane. With either little or nothing to carry over into the business of canvassing the popular mind.  

By algorithmic I mean an ambition to fully absorb the world around us into an "algorithm" that puts out stereotypes cut from a uniform body of creed. They are producing pieces that are supposed to fit together to a fully patched, solved puzzle. What they seem to gain in terms of consistency they loose in terms of  extra-sectarian credibility - not all buy into the picture, and many cannot recognise their world in the picture. And, of course, the closure of algorithmic liberalisms aims at a sectarian desire for general applicability and truth, rather than an accurate response to the complex flow of reality.

By diluted I mean, the fact that feasible freedom as it has developed and entrenched herself over a period of two hundred years has been able to accommodate political attitudes that comprise and rest on  a vast ground work of liberal ideas and institutions but are more visible with their own add ons than is the liberal base. The diluters' add ons may indeed differ from liberally admissible features, but more often than not they are either simply presented in shriller and more radical way or they are truly liberally admissible but not presented or recognised as just that. So that a lot of credit that is really due to freedom in a liberal sense goes to parties that like to dissociate themselves from liberalism.

A Comeback of Liberty via Average Freedom

We have become used to look at the individual faces of freedom and thereby unlearned to see the full picture of her. 

Stephen Holmes' masterly accomplishment is that by averaging the diverse rationalisations of freedom found among the countless liberalisms he opens our eyes to the ubiquitous presence of liberty in our societies, partly but most significantly by demonstrating that many of the seemingly distinctive add ons of the diluters are really part of the liberal body. Thus he uncovers from the buried tradition that a strong, if you like big, government is not only compatible with average freedom, it is desired by her. Providing welfare to the needy and those standing to access better opportunities is a profoundly liberal aspiration.

To be continued in Average Freedom (2)