Positive freedom for the Post

An actual submission, this time

Dear Friends,

Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post, has announced a new editorial line, in which, to quote, “We are going to be writing every day in support and defense of two pillars: personal liberties and free markets.” There are deep problems with such an approach, which I tried to suggest in the satire yesterday. For now, though, I wanted to take the opportunity to propose to the Post an op-ed about just what it would mean to support freedom. As you all know, I think a deep American problem is our use of that word in ways that drain it of meaning. I spent the last seven years thinking about the subject, and thought it would be worthwhile to try to discuss the positive sense of freedom. The pitch to the Post is below. More soon.

TS

Dear Editors,

I am a historian who has written several books about both the history of political atrocity and the possibility of human liberty.

It occurred to me that now might be a good time to try to define freedom on your pages, drawing from my recent book On Freedom.

I would draw in the op-ed from personal experience to flesh out the argument that I summarize and pitch below. Thank you for your consideration.

Best wishes,

Timothy Snyder

If the task of a newspaper were to endorse liberty, what would that mean? The term in our American English has become something of a cliché, comfortable but empty. Freedom really is the core of good politics and a good society, but not for the reasons we think. We treat freedom as only negative, as an opposition to oppression, often just as an opposition to the government, or whatever gets in our way. But the barriers only matter because of the people behind them, and their freedom means not just the removal of something bad but their ability to affirm the good things in life. Freedom is the value of values, it comes before all else, because it is the condition in which we can choose among and develop all of the other virtues. Freedom is therefore positive ethically, in that is the virtue that animates all the others. And it is positive politically, in that we have to work together to create the conditions in which we can all be free.