What I get from Dewey's article is that liberty is directly parrallel to the amount of power you have. If you have more power, you have the liberty to do more than someone with less power. "It (Liberty) is power, effective power to do specific things". Liberty has to do with the fact of "what a person can do and what a person cannot do". He goes on saying that the possesion of power has to deal with the distributuion of power. Also thirdly he goes on to say how there is no absolute liberty. That a persons freedom can be taken away at any moment.
I believe that many of the things Dewey states is true, but it should not be this way. Everyone should have equal liberty, and liberty should be absolute.
1 comment:
I wish the same as you that everyone could have all equality, all the time, but in the words of George Orwell, "Some are more equal than others".
In an idealistic world I would wish for what you propose, but unfortunately our populace is so diverse and the world faces many different risks that sometimes a lack of freedom is ok.
Dewy is trying to say that taking away certain freedoms is better, like compulsory education. This provides opportunity to learn. If people were not forced to do many things I think one might find that the nation would be more divided than one would expect.
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