Locke's freedom
Locke’s liberalism is boring, said Michael Oakeshott. Or I say, paraphrasing Oakeshott. I include Locke’s portrait to confirm it.
The moderate individualism of Locke has no attraction for those who have embraced a radical, an Epicurean individualism. Locke’s ‘steady love of liberty’ appears worse than slavery to anyone who, like Montaigne is ‘besotted with liberty’. Democracy, parliamentary government, progress, discussion, and the ‘plausible ethics of productivity’ are notions - all of them inseparable from Lockean liberalism - which fail now to arouse even opposition; they are not merely absurd and exploded, they are uninteresting.
I mention Oakeshott’s Locke because freedom as a political value has come under attack in recent weeks because the still current Prime Minister, Liz Truss, has made it a central part of her conservatism. The important thing to remember here is that the freedom in question is Locke’s freedom. And it is, therefore, boring. It is the freedom of democracy, parliamentary government, progress, discussion and ‘the plausible ethics of productivity.’ It seems unlikely that if Truss falls these will fall with her. Make of that what you will.