POLS 303 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Pol Pot, Positive Liberty, Negative Liberty
14 Mar 2018
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The trap we will force you to be (cid:862)free(cid:863) Isaiah berlin important thinker; born in russia, later worked in the west. Systems should be built to constrain power of leaders, because they will inevitably (cid:271)e(cid:272)o(cid:373)e tyra(cid:374)ts, as predi(cid:272)ted (cid:271)y . Aristotle: democracy is the least-bad form of government, because over time, any form of government will devolve into self-interest; democracy is the least bad form of self-interested government. People are intellectually trapped by the societies they live in, and have no true idea of freedom. The only way to achieve true freedom is to free yourself from the restraints of bourgeois society through revolutionary means. Became the justification for many third world revolutions. Pol pot: believed in this form of revolutionary freedom, killed millions of his own citizens, because he believed that killing them was the only way for the rest of society to truly live freely. Came to believe that it was their job to protect freedom globally.
