Interview with Tom Palmer

Tom Palmer has an international reputation in reader development. He is a coordinator of the Reading Partners consortium, works with The Reading Agency, Booktrust and the National Literacy Trust, and has been the official writer for the Premier League Reading Stars scheme for five years.

vidyohs,

You say: "Human freedom is not a constituent element of a good life, it is the good life. Freedom, IMHO, can not be said to exist if it is compromised in even the most minor way. There is no gradient scale for freedom."

If there is no gradient scale for freedom, then this seems to suggest that we can't say the people of South Korea are any freer than those of North Korea.

Furthermore, by your "all or nothing" standard, there has never been a free person in the history of the earth.

Both results seem a bit odd, don't you think?

Ah sir,

Nothing odd about what I said, or the way I said it. What is odd is that somehow you have the belief that all men, reaching back into the dim beginnings of evolution or creation, have had an outside force imposing on them against their free will.

What is illustrative of our people here in the USA today is that I seem to be the odd man out in knowing and understanding freedom. The founders would have no problem understanding what I said, neither would most of your great grandparents here in America.

You've had freedom taken away from you.

I assume that most reading this Cafe would know the difference between rights and privilege. Rights I have as a gift from my natural creator, privilege is what is given by all others. Freedom, complete and total, is the equal right of all men. Privilege is what is dispensed by other men, as individuals or as groups, such as states; and can be unequal, generally is, in its disbursement.

My all or nothing standard does allow me to say that the people of South Korea are indeed no more free than the people of North Korea, only the people of South Korea are simply more privileged.

Why do I say that? Because both labor under government with the belief that government has some sort of mystic right to them and their allegiance.

The people of both countries lock themselves in by never challenging their enculturation, thus on any kind of scale can not be called free.

And, did you miss this, sir:
"Of course you can't and I have only said that a million times here on the Cafe. True and complete freedom carries with it the responsibility for self, and requires that one control one's choices to act responsibly and not violate natural law.

I can choose to limit my actions in accordance with natural law without diminishing my freedom in any way; if I act in accordance with natural law, you can not diminish, inhibit, or limit my freedom in the slightest without it being fairly said that you have taken my freedom."

With that statement I can acknowledge that there have free men all through history of mankind, from the remote ancestors to me.

When I self limit to meet the responsibilities I freely choose to take on, that is not a loss of freedom but an expression of freedom, being my choice. There is no coercion or force required for me to do what I choose to do freely.

Groupings of people, family, community, states, can not impose a responsibility on me without in the same breath using coercion or force by assigning a punishment for non-completion of the responsibility. No matter how trivial the imposition, the promised coercive punishment converts me to the privileged class, I am privileged to live my as before with the illusion of freedom as long as I just do this one little thing. If I do not comply I get hammered by the group.

You sir, live an illusion of freedom because you mistake privilege for rights; you'll continue to do so until you are slammed against the cell walls, not just merely faintly brush them on occasion.

Just think of how many young men in the past thought of themselves as free, but then came a notice from the government, "Report to such and such a place for military service, you are drafted." This is obviously the most dramatic example, but it is by far not the only one. I am sure you could even think of some examples yourself.

"My all or nothing standard does allow me to say that the people of South Korea are indeed no more free than the people of North Korea, only the people of South Korea are simply more privileged."

This makes the whole notion of 'political freedom' superfluous, as everyone is already "free" by your understanding, just more or less "privileged." It also seems to introduce an unnecessary confusion into the language, as this is certainly not how ordinary people employ the terms 'freedom' or 'liberty' (which, like Hayek, I take as roughly synonymous.)

I have no quarrel with your concern over lost freedoms;indeed, I share it; nor do I disagree here with the existence of natural rights. What I question is merely the odd claim that political freedom is not conceptually divisible. You seem to equate freedom with natural right. But why not acknowledge that while people have natural rights, they may enjoy more or less of the particular freedoms to which they have rights?

Contrary to your claim, this distinction between rights (which everyone has) and freedoms (which many lack) seems to have been be well understood by the founders. James Madison, for example, wrote of the European poor that "I have no doubt that the misery of the lower classes will be found to abate wherever the government assumes a freer aspect & the laws favor a subdivision of property." (Letter to Thomas Jefferson 19 June 1786) Jefferson later responded to Madison by expressing his hope that as people become educated they would become more sensible, which, "we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty." (Jefferson to Madison, 1787.) He earlier looked forward to events that would call forth "the opposing voice of the freer part of the people and proved them to be the majority, even in these colonies;" (Jefferson's Convention notes of July 7, 1776)

There you have it. Some governments assume a "freer aspect"'; some exhibit a "due degree of liberty" and the colonies had "a freer part of the people. It seems clear that these two founders, at least, understood that political liberty/freedom exists by degrees.

If you disagree with that proposition, this suggests you might also object to attempts to rank countries by degrees of freedom
(http://www.heritage.org/Index/ ). Do you find such efforts confused?

We seem to headed for those dreaded circles where you intentionally misrepresent what I said, and then I am supposed to chase you in an effort to clear it up, which just gives you more opportunity to misrepresent what I said, it becomes an endless game in which no one can tell the monkey from the weasel.

Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary 1973

Free 1 a: having legal and political rights of a citizen b : enjoying civil and political liberty c : enjoying political independence or freedom from outside domination d : enjoying personal freedom : not subject to the control or domination of another 2 a : not determined by anything beyond its own nature of being : choosing or capable of choosing for itself......

Freedom is the state of being free, nothing in the definition above can be qualified or graded without altering the definition so that the word free no longer applies.

I find it frightening to know I share the planet, the area, with people who assume that someone or a lot of other someones have a legal and moral right to restrict all individual freedom. That there is somehow grades of freedom, I am more free than you, and you are freer than that guy. That is insane.

I have no idea why you would bring the interpretation of ordinary people into this, as the ordinary person has no clue as to what freedom is, much less liberty or privilege. The ordinary person lives his entire life in knee jerk reaction to his enculturation and can't be bothered to think, much less care until they kick his own door down and haul him away.

This was Monday the day after the Super Bowl, what was the ordinary person thinking and talking about today? Obama and the socialist attempt to push through the seizure of the entire health care system, or was it details of a football game, and more likely how cute and clever the commercials were.

Because I know that freedom can not be quantified, qualified, or graded I understand that the Heritage Foundation used misleading language in calling the rankings as freedom rankings when it is clearly privilege rankings. If people really were free, then there would be two rankings, those with freedom and those without.

If a man in France truly understands his natural right to total freedom is it really satisfying to that honest man in France to say to himself, well at least the Heritage Foundation says I am more economically free than that man in Zimbabwe, when in fact he knows that neither are free, it is just his restrictions are less.

Put two horses in a pasture with high strong fences, leave one untethered and tether the other to a staked down rope. Which horse is free?

More free? How can that be? That is like saying this is more unique than that.

I said the founding fathers would understand what I said, not that they would try and build a government on it.

Enough, you think others have a moral and legal right to restrict your freedom and in doing so can determine gradients of freedom, and I do not. There we stand.

If I've misrepresented your position (and I honestly can't see where I have), it certainly hasn't been intentional. What would be the point of misrepresenting something that appears on the same page and can speak for itself? You've mistaken my views, however. (I'm trying to be charitable here and encourage you to try the same.) To be clear, I certainly do not recognized anyone's right to infringe on my liberty and cannot imagine why you'd interpret me otherwise. I simply claim that even with the immoral infringements, I remain freer than many people.

You apparently disagree. Fair enough. I'll avoid getting into a discussion on conceptual analysis as your remarks in that direction suggest you're inclinded to disagree with anything I say there as well, though I will suggest that the dictionary definition you offer is quite consistent with liberty by degrees. Again you disagree, so rather than prolong this, let's just sign off and allow the flew readers who've slogged through this to decide which of us has the stronger position.

Well, I guess I am indeed more unique than you.

LOL, of course if we put the debate to the vote of the people your presentation will be the one most likely accepted by the majority. Not because it is correct, but because it is their enculturation just as it is yours. No one can fight enculturation until they know it exists, do enough introspection to learn the parameters of that enculturation, and filter all future decisions through the knowledge gained from that introspection. Furthermore, thinking is work, why work when enculturation will get one through.

More free, freer, the freest, are all the concepts of accepting, lazy, and imprecise thinking, and the way people became accepting, lazy, and imprecise in relation to politics and government, particularly in language, is part natural evolution and part encouragement from government. Accepting, lazy, and imprecise people are less likely to question their state, accepting of the status quo, and are therefore easier to control and dominate. It is logical to suggest that anytime one believes that it is accurate to grade freedom and say that some one is less free, then it is equally legitimate to say that some one is more free; and, that leads to the question of how does one become more free than free?

Natural evolution, in that it is work for a parent to teach and demand precision in language and therefore efficiency in communications, so my observation going back some 55 years is that it isn’t being done and hasn’t been done for even longer than those 55 years.

Government encouragement, in that the Federal Fool system has been dumbing down since FDR, and it accelerated in the 1960s, now what once took two sentences, one each from two different people, to accomplish the passing of information, now takes as much as 15 minutes in conversation, and God help you if it has to accomplished by writing in any medium.

This degeneration of the language simply causes misunderstandings and confusion, and again makes it easier to hide the individual’s true nature vis-à-vis the state. It has gone on so long now, that even when confronted with the truth the majority just shrugs and is content with their privilege because freedom is prickly and risky. God forbid anyone would miss their sixpack and those cute commercials during the superbowl, for something as stupid as freedom.

That we are having a discussion about the nature of freedom speaks volumes to the accuracy and truth of what I am saying.

Go back to my two horses in the pasture, you didn’t tell me which one was free. How do you grade free when you know there is none?

If you were planning a business venture into a foreign nation, one listed on the Heritage Foundations list, and that nation was listed in the middle of the rankings, what would be the first question you would sensibly ask and investigate for an absolute necessary answer? Why, of course it would be, “What does more freedom mean in practicality?” How much privilege does that government extend to businesses and the people? I phrase it that way because if the government takes, or is given, the authority to allow anything, the government can take it away. Meaning the word freedom is an illusion. That people are lazy enough to be imprecise and not say privilege is indicative not of reality but of their accepting, lazy, and imprecise thinking, caused by piss poor education.

If you are lucky enough to live near enough to natural open spaces, look out your window. See that bird there in the tree. Is it free? You only have two responses, one is that it is free, and the other is that it is lying on the branch dead.
How does that bird become more free? What can any force on the face of this Earth do to make that bird more free?

How does that bird lose its freedom? You capture it, control it, dominate it, and restrict it to physical confinement. Can you partially capture it, allowing you to partially control, partially dominate, partially restrict it? Does it make the bird more free if its cage is bigger than the one you put yesterday’s bird in? Will it make the bird more free if you take it out of the cage and tie a 12’ string around its leg, then tie the other end to the branch of a tree? Sure it can now fly 12’ in any direction, but is it free?

Go to a hospital maternity ward. See that newborn, just minutes old. Is it free? By natural law, it is. How do you capture that baby? You lie to it. Why do you lie to it? Because you are repeating what you’ve been enculturated to believe is true and have been too lazy to investigate or think about. You begin right from the first to teach it the language of submission. You teach it that it must suffer assigned duty and obligation, to worship and value the group over the individual, you purposely prevent instruction in natural law and the rights accrued therein. In other words you capture it by enculturating it obedience to whomever is pulling the strings at any given moment.

How do you capture a people? You construct the cage that confines them slowly and carefully, bits and pieces at a time, you take away the language that defines what they are losing, and that takes away their ability to communicate competently about it. You do this relentlessly, and in some short 30 or 40 years you have a docile, lazy, imprecise, ignorant, and content people, who will not question even their own cages are rattled. All they will do, as evidenced here in America, is hunker down in their cages and pray the shaking goes away.

Good interview and makes a good point about the common man being as much of an actor in any outcome as are the intellectuals, perhaps even more so because anything has to be taken to the street to prove its bonafides.

I quibble with the last answer only in that I think he hedged a bit.

Human freedom is not a constituent element of a good life, it is the good life. Freedom, IMHO, can not be said to exist if it is compromised in even the most minor way. There is no gradient scale for freedom.

You are either free or you are not. Compromised freedom is privilege.

And, please, no one bother nattering at me about how "You can't just do what you want."

Of course you can't and I have only said that a million times here on the Cafe. True and complete freedom carries with it the responsibility for self, and requires that one control one's choices to act responsibly and not violate natural law.

I can choose to limit my actions in accordance with natural law without diminishing my freedom in any way; if I act in accordance with natural law, you can not diminish, inhibit, or limit my freedom in the slightest without it being fairly said that you have taken my freedom.