FREEDOM IS UNAMERICAN:

If, however, we distinguish between one interpretation of freedom--liberty--and another--license--we are able to use the word with accuracy. In John Milton's Paradise Lost, a poem that illustrates the human fall from reasonable and just into slavish and unjust creatures, the angel Michael explains to the postlapsarian Adam that he has lost "true liberty" because it was "twinned" with "right reason." Liberty, in this rendering, is freedom to act according to reason. For those of us predisposed to think of freedom as "doing whatever we want," we may be surprised to hear the traditional definition of freedom. Writers such as Milton--and before him Dante, Boethius, and others--considered an autonomous individual let loose to pursue her desires freely to be a soul enslaved. The "freedom" to consume, to surrender to your appetites, or to pursue your goals at the expense of others, in the traditional understanding, would be called "license." On the heels of Milton, political philosopher John Locke considered such license detrimental to society. Only liberty was an appropriate freedom within a society.

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