Liberty: safety from tyranny or doing what you like?

In this episode of Policy Provocations, Gene Tunny and I discuss liberty or freedom in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. As I argue, one can think about liberty in the way most of the demonstrators against lockdowns and vaccine or mask mandates did. They asserted their right to be free to make their own decisions. But I think that's freedom as licence. It's important that we not be needlessly constrained. So it is certainly important for people to raise those issues. But the ability to impose constraints is actually fundamental to liberty.

If you think of the London Blitz, imposing blackouts was necessary for preserving liberty. In this case, liberty from German bombing!

My point is not just that we impose some constraints on people because not doing so imposes harm on others. It is that what really matters to our liberty is the legitimacy of law-making. In that regard what is remarkable is that there are any number of relatively easy ways our constitution can be subverted by would be authoritarians. You'd expect the champions of liberty to be concerned with this. If they were concerned with liberty wouldn't we be making sure that governments don't appoint the Director of Public Prosecutions? If the US Republicans or the Democrats are really concerned about liberty, wouldn't they be bringing plans to the next election to reign in the presidential pardon power. This is as one presidential candidate openly talks about giving himself a pardon from gaol!

The blogpost I mention is here.

If you prefer watching the video, it's here.

00:00 Trailer 01:03 Liberty and Policy during the Pandemic 02:01 Contempt of Parliament 05:27 Government powers and safeguards 07:32 Government actions and citizen involvement during the pandemic 10:15 Government's reliance on opinion polling and the need for citizen juries 11:19 Pandemic policies: Scrutiny and overreaction. 15:02 Discussion and compromise in politics 17:35 Institutions to improve political discussion 20:09 Housing policy and crisis management 22:04 Crisis and the presidential Pardon power