Negative Liberty Not Always Justified

Civil Liberties vs. Government

The role of government in regulating the behaviors and activities of certain people and/or in certain situations is not generally questioned by most people. On the same note, the right of people to generally live their lives and be left alone is also presumed to be true in many to most cases. However, those two paradigms inevitably collide because they cannot both be true at the same time in all situations. There are situations where government should or must step in just as there are situations where they should leave people alone and let them live how they wish. The million dollar question is where that line precisely exists in certain situations because it can be far from clear what that answer is.

Analysis

One source that the author of this report focused on was the definition of positive and negative liberty. The latter one, that being negative, is a focus on not being "harassed" or harangued by the government about one thing or another. Whlie that may be a noble thing to demand in many instances, government does indeed exist for a reason and there are certain situations where they can and should intercede and intervene. For example, the author of this report would hold that a government giving a seven-year-old static for operating a lemonade stand without a business license is more than excessive, the same is not true is a child is not going to school as they should be or there are signs of abuse such as marks, malnourishment and so forth. There could be innocent reasons for any of those things but there could also be more insidious ones. Perhaps the parent of a child with marks just has a clumsy child or perhaps they just need some assistance from the food pantry. That is what social services are for and it could be the pride is preventing them from getting the assistance they need. However, if the parents are actively abusing the child and/or not feeding them what they should even though they have the resources, that is another matter entirely. In those cases, negative liberty goes out the window and the interests and safety of the child usurp all notions of liberty relating to the parent who is failing the child (Carter, 2012).

However, there are some areas that are much grayer than the one above. For example, the targeted killing of terrorists with no trial in the Middle East is an example. Even though acts of war are not treated the same way as a common crime like theft, the collateral damage and lack of due process is concerning to some (McKelvey, 2011; Wilke, 2005). There is also the plight of people who come to the United States illegally in search of a better life and then get stuck in a system that is clearly dysfunctional yet also victimizes people that are trying to immigrate the right and legal way (Hall & Sutton, 2003). Even so, the execution of laws as written with the immigration debate has a lot of people very angry and despodnant about what would happen to those that would be deported as a result while others say "the law is the law." The debate becomes whether and to what extent discretion should exist (Alexander & Richmond, 2007).

Conclusion