Abraham Lincoln: We all declare for liberty…
May 3, 2008 · Category: Individualism, Politics
This quote from Abraham Lincoln does an excellent job of distilling the difference between “negative” and “positive” rights, and the implications of each:
We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word, we do not mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name, liberty.
Nathan Griffith (with whom I attended junior high school in the mid-80s) brought this quote to my attention several years ago — and I’m very glad he did.
2 Responses to “Abraham Lincoln: We all declare for liberty…”
Personal Blog vs LJ…ah, the fight begins.
This is an area of information theory and social modeling I happen to work on a great deal.
Clearly what you really want is to have both…such that replies are posted in both places. When viewed from either, one knows from which they were posted as well.
The problem is that the “creator” of content should have the “liberty” to select from which interface (or frame) they wish to post. For example, when I followed your request to post from your personal blog, then I lose out on my ability (let alone freedom) to keep my data together on LJ.
I have a thought though, is it possible to set up LJ to pull the comments from Mudita, and post them just below your entry, which would then be followed by the LJ reply area. And, in theory, you could do the same the other direction. Although replies would not be interleaved, it might create for an interesting affect.
As to “liberty”, other languages have greater subtly, for example, “Gratis” (without cost, monetary for example), and “Libertà (Freedom -Fem).
So this confusion does not happen so easily…
Perhaps though, it is this confusion by semantics alone that make us “more free”. Hmmm…
Yeah, I agree that would be ideal. If I found a plugin that did all that, I’d consider using it. In the interim, though, it would be a lot of trouble over a fairly academic distinction: Does it really that much, for practical purposes, where one’s comments are stored?
The only practical distinction I’m aware of is that LJ will notify you when someone responds to a comment (which is nice). And their commenting system is more advanced in general (indenting threads to you can follow them).
But one very big disadvantage to LJ is the lack of configurability and widespread plugin support that you can get from something like WordPress. Or maybe I’m just not up to speed on whatever options LJ offers. In any case, I’ve found WordPress to be an extremely versatile platform for myself and my clients who ask me to install blog/CMS systems on their web sites.