This essay is interesting because it attempts to stab in the direction that I would like to see the left in this country move - there is a need for a liberal-tarianism that seeks to maximize personal *individual* liberty, as opposed to the libertarian movement which seeks the lowest sustainable rate of taxation, and as opposed to the liberal movement which sees the state as a way to control behavior that they find objectionable (in exactly the same fashion as the conservatives they despise).

There are a variety of circumstances in which individual *economic* liberty and lower taxation are mutually exclusive, particularly with respect to the middle and lower classes whose choices are limited by their means.

For example:

The politics of freedom does not dismiss the value or importance of state resources. But rather than conceiving of them as protections against the hazards of the market or indices of public compassion, it sees them as sources of power, as the tools and instruments of personal and collective advance. Armed with universal healthcare, unemployment benefits, public pensions and the like, I am less vulnerable to the coercions and castigations of an employer or partner. Not only do I have the option of leaving an oppressive situation; I can confront and change it—for and by myself, for and with others. I am emboldened not to avoid risks but to take risks: to talk back and walk out, to engage in what John Stuart Mill called, in one of his lovelier phrases, “experiments in living.”

I've argued elsewhere that enabling this kind of liberty makes the economy more dynamic and innovative because people have the freedom to take risks in their working life without being independently wealthy. The libertarian movement is absolutely tone deaf regarding these issues. The failure of libertarians to recognize these realities (as well as comprehend basic economic concepts such as negative externalities) makes the whole movement look like a silly cult to me, in spite of my sympathy with their general desire for freedom, my shared concern about rent seeking and corruption in government - I can't take libertarianism seriously anymore.

However, I am concerned that liberals cannot create a new movement unless they clearly draw a line in the sand regarding the liberal proclivity so see the state as a convenient mechanism for social control, and they vocally reject parts of the liberal movement concerned with social control, just as libertarians reject parts of the conservative movement associated with social control. It is here where unfortunately I do not think this author "gets it." Note the following:

The politics of freedom similarly understands liberty as, above all, a claim against—and a movement to overcome—oppressive forms of power, particularly in the private spheres of the workplace and the family.

That is why the politics of freedom refuses to view the state as the conservative does: as a constraint. Or as the welfare-state liberal does: as a distributive machine. Instead, it views the state the way the abolitionist, the trade unionist, the civil rights activist and the feminist do: as an instrument for disrupting the private life of power. The state, in other words, is the right hand to the left hand of social movement.

Reclaiming the Politics of Freedom | The Nation