Positive and Negative Liberty
Thomas Jefferson in his first inaugural address, on the role of government in the preservation of liberty:

“A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement…

or Julian Baggini explaining the socialist concept of ‘positive freedom’

“But the left has always recognised another from of liberty…the practical ability to actually make choices and live your life in the way you want…

When Isaiah Berlin coined the terms, he did so to make a distinction between the two ways a government can function. Succinctly put–from Wiki–”Positive liberty is often described as freedom to achieve certain ends, while negative liberty is described as freedom from external coercion.” Jefferson espoused a government that acted in the negative, preventing the removal/erosion of liberty. The left, on the other hand, pushes for a government that acts in the positive, actively conferring ‘liberty’ upon you.

Where he’s incorrect is not in the positive/negative distinction, but in the use of the word ‘liberty’ itself. These two forms of government are stewards of two entirely different things, as I’ll attempt to show in the rest of this post.

The History of the Idea of Liberty
Here’s a few quotes from some really old, really dead people on liberty:

“Liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others”

John Locke (1632-1704)

But rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others.

Thomas Jefferson

“That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.

John Stuart Mill (1806-1879)

Although I didn’t quote him, Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) was probably the first proponent of the above conception of liberty in works such as Leviathan. Liberty had been oft mentioned in reference to philosophy and government in times past, but Hobbes was perhaps the first to articulate concretely what liberty is and how government should protect it.

Liberty, then, has enjoyed a long tradition of being thought of in a rigorously defined ‘negative’ sense. Don’t mess with me and I won’t mess with you. Government will make sure of that. Yay. We’re free. End of Story.

A New Kind of Liberty? Or Something Else Entirely?
‘Positive liberty’ had a couple of false starts in philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau briefly discusses it then discards it as not liberty at all. John Stuart Mill does much the same thing 100 years later. And then, Isaiah Berlin picked it up and ran with it in the late 19th/early 20th century:

FDR further redefined the concept [of freedom] to include social protection from the ills of want and fear. JFK invoked service to country in freedom’s cause…What united all these new visions of liberty was the idea that freedom is not necessarily diminished by government but can often be advanced only through the vigorous actions of government.

William A. Galston

That’s why the left sees the state as having an enabling role. Freedom only becomes real if people are empowered to make choices for themselves, and they may need the help of others to do so.

Baggini again.

A much younger conception of ‘liberty’. One that seems to be pulled out of thin air and isn’t readily connected to the earlier conception. The important phrase here is ‘freedom from the ills of wants and fear.’ This changes liberty from a default state to one that must be actively maintained. On one hand, government just sits around in case liberty is impinged upon. On the other, government has to work its butt off to give you ‘positive liberty’…and in order to do so must restrict and manage the lives of all…kind of contradictory.

Though Long Dead, the PrescientOld Men Manage a Rebuttal
If you still think that ‘positive liberty’ is any form of liberty at all, one must merely turn back to the old dead guys…

“A man is free with respect to those activities which by his strength and wit he is able to do”

From Hobbes himself. So long as your intrinsic qualities aren’t stifled, you’re free, no matter how poor you are. As JL Hill says in discussion of the above quote, “One is not “unfree” by virtue of lack of capacity to perform an act.”

That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.

John Stuart Mill again, saying that using power in order to ensure your own prosperity isn’t rightful. FDR must have missed that, since ‘protection from want or fear’ is exactly that.

Compatible Ideas Nonetheless?
So they’re clearly different entities. But could they be complementary? FDR certainly claimed so in defense of the clearly unconstitutional New Deal provisions. All liberals, and sadly many conservatives certainly think so as well. All I need here is a couple of pictures, masterfully rendered on a 1999 IBM thinkpad running MSPaint.

The first demonstrates liberty as properly defined:

The dashed lines represent the proper role of government. Notice that the lines are dashed, not solid. This is because a good government isn’t noticed unless you try to harm another, in this case that dashed line acts as a barrier. As Oliver Wendell Holmes once famously said, “My right to swing my fist ends where the other’s nose begins.” You can wave that fist as close to the other as you please, that dashed line doesn’t impede you. Yet should you attempt to assault your neighbor, that line becomes a rock wall, stopping you in your tracks and preserving everyone’s right not to be harmed by others.

Then a depiction of ‘positive liberty’, “freedom from wants”:

As Galston and Baggini said, vigorous action of the government and the help of others is necessary. When the size of the circles are fairly equal, this is no big deal, by happenstance everyone comes out approximately the same as before. When they’re unequal, as on the right side of the picture, the impact of government becomes quite dramatic, yellow and brown are practically hemorrhaging like Marburg ebola victims as seafoam green and peach genuflect at the feet of big government, worshipping the giver of such largesse.

And ‘freedom from fear’ added to the picture:

The esteemed Mr. Holmes is no longer allowed to wave his fist all that close to his neighbor’s nose. Because, after all, a man waving his hands around can be quite scary, and everyone should be free from such a thing. Instead, Mr. Holmes and Mr. Baggini stand on opposite sides of their backyard fence, screaming at each other like neighbors quarreling over who borrowed who’s rake. Mr. Holmes has lost the freedom to benignly swing his fist. His neighbor, on the other hand, is no longer scared. And yet more liberty lost.
————

While we’re on this train of thought, we should ask ourselves if there isn’t another much more basic difference between ‘positive’ liberty and the real thing. This can be done by asking how to judge whether a man is free or not.

Traditional-if neither government nor other citizens restrict him from behavior that harms no one else, a man is free.

‘Positive’-a man is only free when he neither needs nor fears. He must have adequate food, clothing, and shelter, and must find himself in good spirits.

The big difference here is extrinsic qualities versus intrinsic, objective versus subjective. In the traditional sense of the word, a man’s freedom can be judged without asking him a single question, simply by observing his social and political surroundings. To determine whether or not he’s free in the ‘positive’ sense we must ask him his opinion.

Conclusion
‘Positive liberty’ can only be achieved through restriction and burdens upon actual liberty. It is not complementary with true liberty. Those who advocate the former stand against the liberty espoused by Lao Tzu, the ancient Greeks, Buddha, a host of western philosophers, and our founding fathers.

Furthermore, ‘positive liberty’ does not even deal with the same thing as liberty proper. Liberty is about a man’s place in society. ‘Positive liberty’ is about a man’s state of mind. There is a word for issues surrounding the state of one’s mind: psychological. Funnily enough we find that one of the most important and useful psychological theories deals handily with this subject. This would be Abraham Maslow’s Heirarchy for Human Needs.

The use of ‘positive liberty’ as a basis for government in any form, from England’s Nanny State attitude toward self-defense, to Cornell’s Racial Program House system, is tyranny of the worst sort. It is a tyranny that plays to our most basic fears, making us feel so helpless that we turn to the ultimate arbiter in mediocrity to protect us.

Remember Mill’s words, that “the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant [for the wielding of government power].” To allow it the power to be anything else is to build your own cage.