"Liberty": A Relfection

Montesquieu has an interesting take on liberty, a take with many different implications. For example he writes “Liberty also requires that the laws concern only threats to public order and security, since such laws will protect us from harm while leaving us free to do as many other things as possible.” This belief is very easily contested because there are a number of things that we have charged the government with handling that do not pertain to public order. There are numerous examples of this pretty much any large scale infrastructure, roads, bridges and the like were funded by the government. Now of course it is perfectly possible that when he says this he is referring exclusively to criminal law which if that is the case then it is very poorly written. Also there is the interesting idea which is simply to contest the idea that with more liberty people's sense of security is better and that the sweet spot is closer to liberalism than it is to authoritarianism. An example of how authoritarianism can provide a good sense of security for its citizens is of course China and though it has its own good deal of tyrannical behaviour in large part its citizens are happy and are not scrambling to leave china. Overall I think his beliefs are mostly reasonable and rational although they all center around a very democratic form of government and the base assumption that liberty is good in the first place. Which I think is fine although I think it is important to preface with that discussion.