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What I Learned from Isaiah Berlin About Today’s Political Debates in America

yashenghuang.substack.com · 1,071 words · saved by 1 readers

If you follow American politics casually, as I do, you hear these words constantly—“freedom,” “liberty,” “rights” from people who advocate different and even opposite policy positions.

If you follow American politics casually, as I do, you hear these words constantly—“freedom,” “liberty,” “rights” from people who advocate different and even opposite policy positions. For a long time, I found this a bit confusing. How could two camps that seem so far apart politically both claim to be defending the same thing? It eventually hit me that they are not really talking about the same thing. They are using the same language, but they are relying on two very different concepts altogether. I found Isaiah Berlin’s Two Concepts of Liberty especially helpful in making sense of this.…

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