Anti-Climacus

One more post about this and I'm done, not least because it looks like Rick Santorum's moment in the sun is rapidly coming to a close. Following on the argument here, and last week's post about Front Porch Republic and their difficult conception of "freedom," it seems apropos to say that it's this dimension on which Santorum is a bad candidate. In traditional classical liberal discussions of liberty to note that it embraces at least two different meanings: freedom from coercion, defined as action by the state, and freedom from domination, defined as the type of social pressure that can be exerted by groups or individuals on a non-governmental level. (Rough differentiation: legal slavery is a problem of coercion; redlining is a problem of domination. Both are bad.) As a big-government conservative, Santorum seems poorly placed to address problems of coercion. This much seems obvious. But the vision of society he seems to want to embrace is one in which domination is the primary effect of social life. So I'm left uncertain as to whether there's a meaningful definition of 'freedom' he can claim.

(For the record: "freedom just means the freedom to do the right things" is not freedom at all. A quick and useful test on this sort of question: if the slogan you'd like to use can be applied equally well to Soviet politics ("freedom is freedom to do what the Party wants you to"), it's a problematic slogan.)