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Editorial

Liberty & Equality

by Rick Lewis

“The finest opportunity ever given to the world was thrown away because the passion for equality made vain the hope for freedom.” (Lord Acton)

The most famous motto of the French Revolution was Liberté, égalité, fraternité. Yet the ink was barely dry on their badly printed leaflets and posters before les révolutionnaires began to squabble among themselves about how exactly the three terms should be understood, what order they should have been printed in and whether they were even compatible with each other at all. And those disputes have continued ever since. For the trouble with any moral or political system which is built on more than a single underlying value is that you can get tension between the different things that it values.

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