Freedom, by Rick

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When Santorum holds sovereignty or becomes president, we can expect that he will rigorously apply the "rule" of freedom. Freedom, to Santorum, is "rigorous" because he, Santorum, has clarity. He therefore may be expected to apply his absolute rule of freedom as he see that rule, in accordance with said clarity.
     This may be similar to I. Berlin's "equality" [see expertly cut-and-pasted document below]. Just as any sovereign may apply "equality" as a rule, for a "given society," so too may Santorum impose freedom, but all we do is we switch "freedom" for "equality." Which does not sound like a big deal. Meaning I guess that he is going to whip his freedom thing on us. And it is going to be so big --- the freedom thing --- and clear, and absolute. Under Santorum, we can expect to be whipped regularly, with the chains of freedom.


Here is the idea of equality in terms of "the irreducible minimum" statement of the concept:      "Every man to count for one and no one to count for more than one."

     This formula [says Isaiah Berlin], much used by utilitarian philosophers, seems to me to form the heart of the doctrine of equality or of equal rights, and has coloured much liberal and democratic thought. Like many familiar phrases of political philosophy it is vague, ambiguous, and has changed in connotation from one thinker and society to another. Nevertheless, it appears, more than any other formula, to constitute the irreducible minimum of the idea of equality. Moreover it is not self-evident in the sense in which many simple empirical propositions seem [to be]; it has not been universally believed; and it is not uniquely connected with any one philosophical system. The notion of each man counting for one and only one...does not depend on belief in rights, either natural of positive...The statement that each man is to count for one may, of course, be conceived as flowing from the recognition of natural rights possessed by all men as such---rights "inherent" in being a man at all---whether innate, or conferred at birth by a divine act---and so an "inalienable" element in the "ultimate structure" of reality. But equally it may be held without any metaphysical views of this kind. Again, it may be regarded as a rule...But again it need not depend on this. One can perfectly well conceive of a society organised on Benthamite or Hobbesian lines, in which rights did not exist, or played a small part, and in which the principle of "every man to count for one" was rigorously applied for utilitarian reasons, or because such was the will of the despot, or of the majority, or of the legislator or whoever held sovereignty in a given society


[copied, word for word, from "The Concept of Equality," Burgess Pub. Minn; 1969. orig. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1966]