What do liberals say about the notion of freedom?

Answer 1

It's it's hard to answer this, because we need to know what you mean by liberals, but I will give you a generalization. First, we need to distinguish between Liberal with a capital L, which characterizes the political theory of folks like John Locke and JJ Rousseau, who closely resemble today's libertarians. You can think of an axis where you can divide ideology between categories of economic and social freedom at the top, and liberal and conservative to the left, with liberalism mirroring Democratic politics and conservativism mirroring Republican philosophies. Liberals believe that government should be involved in the economy so that no one dies from poverty, particularly the weakest among us, like children, the elderly, and the disabled. They lean towards a socialist democracy model. Conservatives think that capitalism is fine as is and that the government should stay out of economics because that threatens the freedom of business people. Liberals think that on social issues like abortion, gay rights, and censorship, that the government should stay out. People should have the freedom to choose their partners, what to do with their bodies, and what to publicly say or write. Conservatives think that government should be able to regulate abortion, restrict gay marriage, and censor expressions like anti-government sentiment during wartime. The libertarians I mentioned earlier think that government should be kept out of both the personal/ social realm and the economic realm. The most radical expression of freedom I've ever seen was by Emma Goldman, the anarchist who argued that we should not have a government because it restricts freedom in every sense of the word.