F | FREEDOM

F | FREEDOM No idea in our political lexicon is as deeply mired in paradox as freedom. One is wholly alive, wholly human, we are often told, only when one is wholly free. Free to move, free from constraint, free from tyranny. And yet, also comes with this liberty from constraint—this thing the Latvian-British historian and philosopher Isaiah Berlin almost 70 years ago famously called “negative liberty”—the dangerous license to violate others, to disparage and desecrate the lives of others, to be so drawn to cruelty as to become anti-human, pure and simple.