WHAT THE lEFT/rIGHT OPPOSES:

Suppose I ask, "Which of the ancient pagan philosophers believed that if you are talking about liberty apart from virtue, you're not talking about liberty at all, but license, and license enslaves?" I don't have to go to Saint Martin. I can go to the pagans he witnessed to. Well, it's a trick question. They all did. Even the Epicureans did, and they had least cause to, as they believed that life was all about securing pleasure and avoiding pain. So did the authors of Scripture. Think of the sad final sentence of the book of Judges: "In those days there was no king in Israel, and every man did what was right in his own eyes" (21:25). In other words, there was no real society, but confusion and injustice. "What is liberty without wisdom," said Edmund Burke, "and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint." It is a rope to hang yourself with.

But if we look at the Latin libertas, the origin of our word, we don't find any notion of doing whatever you like. Libertas is what you inherit from your fathers, the condition of a liber, a free-born citizen: hence the word liber came to refer to a free-born child, one who would grow up to share in the laws and the goods of a free self-governing land.

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