Editor's Notes: A Convergence of Ideas

Dear Readers,

I get a fair amount of e-mail from people who are looking for more details about what Free Liberals believe in. There seems to be a real desire to pin Free Liberalism down, define it, put a label on it, and be done.
One of the problems with this is that Free Liberalism is a group of ideas, not just one idea. It’s not axiomatic. But, neither is it completely arbitrary. It is a holistic approach to liberalism.

Put simply, Free Liberalism is what Free Liberals believe. As in, if you’re eating Burger King’s Angus sandwich, you are on the Angus diet. Circular argumentation? Not quite. Low brow intellectualism? Perhaps.

A Convergence of Ideas

This publication, as well as what we are calling Free Liberalism, was not started by setting out a definition and then proceeding to find people who agreed with it. It was an organic process involving several different people who seemed to be thinking along the same lines.

For years, I had been thinking about economics of philosophy and how neat it would be to put together a mathematics of ideas, or an accounting of subjective values. Through such a system one would be able to find the optimal solution by looking to maximize both libertarian and utilitarian goods – things that people consider right, and things that make them healthy and happy. I’m not sure it is possible, but it was fun to think about.

My work in the Libertarian Party led me to Carl Milsted, who has been working on the idea of marketing liberty, not just selling it. He began by gathering data through Quiz2d, which is a more detailed version of the widely circulated “Nolan Quiz” that Libertarian Party activists like to pass out. He found again and again, that there are a great number of people who are interested in freedom. But, they like other things, too.

Carl was also looking at the bottlenecks to political change, and the economics of various political methods. He concluded that the Libertarian Party’s problems originate not in its methods, but in its failure to adopt a more holistic philosophy. See Quiz2d.com and HolisticPolitics.org for more information about this work.

More than One Kind of Freedom

In his essay, “A Coherent Vision of Freedom,” Milsted argued that there is more than just one kind of freedom. He listed three.

1. Freedom from the policeman and the bureaucrat.
2. Freedom from the boss.
3. Freedom from everyone else.

Freedom from government is only one kind of freedom. People also have a desire to control their own time, to not be turned into a cog in the machine – worn down, and then thrown away. The desire for this freedom comes out in the rhetoric of socialist anti-corporatists and anti-globalists. Their proposed solution is to supplant one tyranny (big multinational corporations) with another (big government), but that is because the much of the Left is also lacking in holistic thinking.

As Patrick McGoohan said in The Prisoner, “I am not a number, I am a free man.” Why should we not tell this to both big government and big business?
Milsted’s third freedom is embodied in environmentalism -- the desire to leave all of society and to commune with nature as if it were 200 years ago. Freedom from everyone else is one that people enjoyed to a greater degree before society dominated the land with mini-malls, parking lots, and cul-de-sacs.

Integral Thinking

Another person I met through my adventures in politics was Michael Ostrolenk. Michael introduced me to the concept of integral thinking. As opposed to solely thinking about the political sphere, integral seeks to analyze and better society from several aspects: psychological, cultural, behavioral, and social.

Individuals Vs. Concentrated Power

When I was still working on the Beltway Free-Marketeer, a radical libertarian publication based at George Mason University, Michael Ostrolenk set me up to do an interview with his friend, Jim Turner. As it turned out, the interview convinced me that I wanted to go in a new direction. His interview was featured on the cover of the first Free Liberal.

Turner articulated a vision of the individual versus centralized power. The power emanates both from big corporations and from government, and he argued that we need to limit its control over us. He said:

“Individuals running at their fullest capacities will generate the things that make life worthwhile. They solve problems and create a better world. Most of the institutions that we’ve generated tend to want to mediate individual tendencies to be idiosyncratic and creative and dynamic. The institutions perform a very valuable function in keeping people away from the truly bad things. But more than that I don’t think they can do. Institutions can’t move people toward the truly good things. People will move themselves towards the truly good things.”

The Future

Free Liberalism continues to grow, as more people bring their own insights and values into the mix. Free Liberalism is hard to label because it is a process, not a fixed thing.

I mentioned Carl Milsted, Michael Ostrolenk, and Jim Turner as key players in defining Free Liberalism, but every member of our team has contributed to the ideas that make up the growing philosophy. We are seeing more and more connections from contemporary thinkers, and also seeing parallels with those who have already left this earth, such as John Stuart Mill, Henry George, and Murray Rothbard.

I think it is important that we not try to reign in the idea of Free Liberalism too tightly. We do not need another term that is used to include some people and exclude others. Puritanical purges don’t suit my nature. Free Liberalism is a transpartisan philosophy that is about building bridges, not waving banners and sticks at the Enemy across the river.

I see Free Liberalism as an opportunity for all of us to grow. To recognize how our individual philosophies are somewhat like jigsaw puzzle pieces. Once we recognize the shape it takes, we can see how it fits with the philosophies of other people and how they complement each other when looking at the big picture.

I hope you will continue on this journey with us.

Cheers,

Kevin D. Rollins