One of the very first discussions of my book "On Freedom," from Kyiv with Scott Simon. www.npr.org/2024/09/14/n... - ThreadSky

timothysnyder.bsky.social • 4 days ago

One of the very first discussions of my book "On Freedom," from Kyiv with Scott Simon.
https://www.npr.org/2024/09/14/nx-s1-5106875/timothy-snyders-on-freedom-explores-how-we-misunderstand-the-concept

Comments

informedalarmist.bsky.social•3 days ago

Beautiful book. Thank you.

mikecorgan.bsky.social•3 days ago

https://youtu.be/CAKrIdSPkHI?si=p62djRLPVutjZ8M5

kfanyo.bsky.social•4 days ago

Freedom--at least as designed to be practiced in the US--is the ability to assume and fulfill responsibility. To the extent you can exercise this ability, you are free. To the extent you cannot, you aren't.

Every facet of American Gov't was originally designed to foster and protect this ability.

kfanyo.bsky.social•4 days ago

Freedom is indeed not free. The glory of the US is that freedom in the US was designed to be limited only by the ability of the people to practice it and not by the leave, or permission, of the government to possess it.

That's how it was designed. We're still getting there.

field907.bsky.social•4 days ago

In the book, professor Snyder actually argues that this view of freedom is not entirely correct. The absence of government in our lives is not freedom, because freedom is not negative. It is not even the absence of physical restraint, as we so often assume in the US.

kfanyo.bsky.social•4 days ago

Understood. But I'm not defining freedom as a feature of the political system. The opposite is correct and this is the genius of the Founders, that is, that the Federal system is defined as a feature of the freedom--as I defined it--of all the individuals in the society.

kfanyo.bsky.social•4 days ago

No one's freedom is absolute in a society because any individual is also someone that someone else wants to be equally free of. The genius, again, of the founders was in making it possible for an individual to decide the amount of freedom they might or might not have, an act of freedom in itself.

kfanyo.bsky.social•4 days ago

A proper government does not guarantee the freedom of anyone. A proper government attempts to guarantee that the freedom of everyone will be respected by everyone else.

It may appear on the surface to be an almost semantic difference, but it actually is the "loophole" that virtually all the

field907.bsky.social•4 days ago

Instead, he argues that freedom is the presence of things, like institutions, that give us the ability to pursue life on our own terms. In this way, the very things seen by many in the US as “government overreach”. (Social programs especially) are essential to true freedom for everyone.

revjss.bsky.social•3 days ago

📌

lachatachingona.bsky.social•3 days ago

Checked out from the library yesterday.

svein-gasver.bsky.social•3 days ago

Stop press. PUTIN is way too crazy to be comprehended by normal people. And, why bother ? Leave his ultimately failed country alone!! A shithouse in the world.

majorpaincake.bsky.social•4 days ago

There are far left critics of you who point out to your silence on Palestine, especially in the context of “do not comply in advance” and your deep knowledge of genocide.
Are you preparing an answer or is it too soon to weigh in on this?

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