Dana asked:

I would like someone to answer this question I have been pondering for a long time. Where exactly
does our (your) "Liberty" come from? As many responses would help.

P.S. Not just the Constitutional argument for Liberty, but is there a natural right to Liberty?

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I am going to provide my answer from one particular philosophical perspective. There are other
philosophical perspectives that will result in quite different answers. So I really hope that you get more
than my answer to this question.

First, I must lay some foundation. "Life" is characterized by the unique fact that living things change
and move — "act" — through the directed application of internally collected, stored, converted, and
channeled energy. At a very fundamental level, the goal of all living behaviour is the maintenance of
the life that is behaving. It is that (not necessarily contiguous) stretch of the DNA (or RNA) molecule
that can be labelled as a Gene that is what must be recognized as the entity that survives and
proliferates — continuation of which is the goal of Life's actions. The actually observed behaviour of
all living creatures, both in general and individually, is highly flexible and variable but within the broad
genetically defined limits of continued genetic survival.

As an example of life, as an example of the species Homo sapiens, and as an individual
consciousness, our purpose is to ensure the continued survival and proliferation of our genes. To be
"Good" at anything is to do a quality job at fulfilling the purpose of that thing. A good Human Being is
efficient and effective, and fulfils with quality, the purpose for which the Human Being was built — to
ensure the continued survival and proliferation of our genes. To ensure the continued survival and
proliferation of our genes is a never ending struggle. There is never enough assurance that the job is
complete. There is always something extra that can be done, some marginal increase of assurance
that can be found. The struggle continues whether or not the individual is consciously aware of why
they are striving, or what they are striving for. Even if they are striving under misconceptions,
misinformation, or mistaken assumptions, the human animal is built to strive. The best situation is to
be consciously aware of why you are striving, and employ the best of your intellectual abilities to
make conscious rational choices of what to strive for. Happiness comes from knowing you are doing
a good job.

In order to best provide for the welfare of himself and his family, mankind has discovered that it is a
good thing to have the freedom to pursue whatever means seem to be the best available at the
moment. At the same time, however, mankind has also discovered that he can better the welfare of
himself and his family by co-operating with his fellow humans in projects of mutual benefit. A
co-operating social group, however, must necessarily impose some restrictions on the individual
freedoms of each member of the group. Otherwise, nothing would get done co-operatively. The
concept of individual personal freedom within the confines of a co-operating social group is the
source of the concept "liberty".

So — where does "liberty" come from? It comes from the mutual agreements arrived at by the
co-operating members of a social group. "Liberty" is the freedom of action allowed by the group to
each member of the group. More importantly, constraints on liberty are imposed by mutual agreement
amongst the members of the group on their respective individual freedom in order that they each may
best achieve the mutual benefits attainable from group co-operation.

So much for the meta-political theory. In actual practice, of course, especially in modern societies,
there is little in the way of "mutual agreement" in the development of what are deemed necessary
constraints on individual freedom in the interests of best achieving supposedly mutually beneficial
co-operative goals. In any event, our liberty comes from the determinations of the political processes
as to the extent of individual freedom we ought to have while we remain part of a social group.

I hope that the foregoing also adequately explains why we have no "natural right" to liberty.

Stuart Burns

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