LIBERTY, SECURITY AND THE DEGENERATIVE CYCLE OF DEMOCRACY

• Main Author: William Barclay
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Institute for Research and European Studies 2016-06-01
• Series: Journal of Liberty and International Affairs
• Subjects: Liberty; Locke; Machiavelli; Montesquieu; Security; Tocqueville; USA
• Online Access: http://e-jlia.com/papers/5_5.pdf

Unfortunately, modern liberals have long misrepresented and misused the foundational principles of liberalism, in order to claim that the fundamental function of every democratic state is the pursuit of its citizens’ liberty, as well as to viciously attack all states and leaders that do not consider liberty to be sacrosanct. Via an appeal to the essential works of liberalism and realism, this paper has thoroughly contradicted the claims of modern liberalism and has definitively argued that security, not liberty, is the fundamental purpose of every state. Furthermore, this paper has comprehensively analyzed the USA, in order to demonstrate that, if a state sacrifices the liberty of its citizenry in order to maintain its national security, then the state’s actions are not merely just and ethical vis-à-vis its citizenry, but, rather, fulfill the state’s fundamental, protective, function and are, in fact, an inevitable, benevolent, aspect of the state’s existence.