Liberty
Liberty is the foundation that our country was based on. Liberty can be defined primarily as freedom…primarily but not all. What do you do if everyone is free? Does everyone have unbridled freedom to do whatever they want to anyone else? No. We wouldn’t want a totally free society. In a totally free society one is free to do anything: to kill, to steal, to vandalize, etc. That is why the term “Liberty” is used. Liberty is freedom + morality. It is the concept of how a free people interact with one another while yet respecting each others freedom. Liberty is based on the concept of natural law and the following volume deals with this subject in detail.
The Ethics of Liberty
In this volume, the reader is first familiarized with the concept of Natural Law theory. Many do not realize this but; this is what our country was founded upon. In fact, the Declaration of Independence is an assertion of this Natural Law. After this ethical introduction, this work goes on to address numerous ethical issues, showing how liberty is in the right in every case. In the final two sections, the state’s role in society as inherently anti-liberty is enumerated and details of the structure of the alternate theories of liberty are brought to the fore. The word “ethics” in the title is not quite appropriate, since the author does not attempt to discuss matters of good and bad, right and wrong; what he does undertake to discuss is what kind of actions should be legally prohibited and why. You can read it in PDF format HERE or you can listen to the audio version below.