'Freedom' Doesn't Mean What You Think It Means

Jefferson Cowie, Professor of History at Vanderbilt University and author of Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power joins the program to discuss how freedom is defined in the United States.

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Matt Binder DOOMED

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I want to go back to Freedom just for a little bit. just for another moment. because some of this came from I guess Orlando Patterson's writing on some level of freedom and he speaks of three different elements. Is it three different I think it was elements of freedom? yeah. you just go through those things because I think like it's I mean it's obviously counter-intuitive on some level to think that Freedom means freedom to enslave. but it's also that construction is really fascinating to me. because we hear that in the context of tolerance and intolerance almost like the inverse. like you guys say that you're so tolerant yet you're intolerant of our intolerance. and right and we see that it's almost like the inverse of that Dynamic. but will you go through those concepts of freedom and explain the sort of like and these ones are broadly in the western hem you know I guess psyche if you will. That's right, yeah, so Orlando Patterson wrote two enormous books on the idea of freedom in the West going all the way back to ancient societies. and his basic model if we're going to distill you know 1500 pages of dense Prose. That's right. That's why they paid me the big bucks. is to he says that freedom is a cord. like a musical chord. and that it consists of three primary notes the first note is kind of the type of Freedom. that we all cherish the Bill of Rights kind of Freedom, the one that we have the freedom to dissent, the freedom of speech, the freedom that people cannot impinge upon our civil liberties basically. okay, so I think most Americans more or less kind of agrees on that one. The second one is one we as Americans don't take seriously but we should and that is the freedom to engage in a political community. the freedom to vote. the freedom to have the capacity to build a political Community. to have a voice in that Community. essentially Civic rights. and then the third one is the problematic one. the dark note in the chord. the sort of sinister-sounding part of this and that is the freedom to dominate. he calls he uses the word survival Freedom here is the sovereignty you have over a people a land a place.