You would never know from reading this piece by Henry Olsen, who doesn't define either term, that the meaning of "freedom" (used 3 times) and "liberty" (employed 10 times) have been contested throughout American history. /1 https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/05/13/radical-devotion-liberty-damages-conservative-movement-yet-again/

He doesn't consider the question of "whose freedom?" Violating social distancing orders or going maskless may feel like the exercise of freedom to a shopper; but those acts may well feel like an infringement to a cashier, who faces increasing danger of getting COVID-19./2

Olsen seeks to ground the idea that freedom should be "an important goal in American government" in the facts that that, "Our republic was founded on the idea that `all men are created equal' and that they have the `inalienable right' to liberty." But let's examine these./3

Neither of these claims from the Declaration of Independence support the notion that freedom as individual license to do whatever one wants, which is what Olsen implies throughout. Indeed, quite the opposite./4

The first claim is an explicit recognition of equality, which is certainly related to freedom but is not the same. Indeed, many thinkers, as Olsen does here, often pit the two against each other. (I should say I don't agree with this binary myself.)/5

The notion that everyone has "inalienable rights" problematizes, rather than supports, the idea that freedom is the right of one person to do whatever the heck they want, especially in cases where the actions of Person A attenuate the rights of Person B. /6

Also, Olsen's seeming inability to see that the meaning "liberty" and "freedom" are contested leads him to misapprehend FDR, who challenged rather than accepted the freedom/security binary./7

Olsen says, "FDR’s opponents often accused him of trampling...American liberties. He turned the tables on them, asking Americans in his fifth fireside chat whether they had `paid too high a price' in terms of lost liberty for economic security." But this is not quite right. /8

Rather than conceding that security would lead to "lost liberty," FDR challenged his critics conception of liberty. In the very next sentence, he said,"Plausible self-seekers and theoretical die-hards will tell you of the loss of individual liberty."/9

And then FDR asked, "Have you lost any of your rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action and choice?" So, far from conceding that they had "lost liberty" in exchange for "economic security," FDR challenged freedom/security binary./10

FDR did so in two ways, still relevant for our own times. First, he suggested that a small group of "self-seekers" and "die-hards" shouldn't get to determine the meaning of "individual liberty" for society as a whole. /11

Then, by asking the rhetorical question about whether the provision of economic security had led to the loss of "rights or liberty or constitutional freedom of action & choice," FDR argued that the answer was no: economic security promoted rather than detracted from them./12

It should be said that Olsen agrees with the FDR position. He writes: "For now, most Americans believe they have not paid too high a price in lost liberty in exchange for controlling covid-19." This is true as far as it goes./13

But it is quite likely the case that many Americans recognize, in Rooseveltian fashion, that framing "lost liberty" versus public health and an open economy is an unhelpful binary. /14