#6 Positive Freedom: Resistance Isn't Enough

Drawing on historian Timothy Snyder's book On Freedom, this episode explores why resistance alone is never enough. Using the story of Mariia, an 85-year-old Ukrainian woman living in the aftermath of Russian occupation, Snyder introduces a distinction that cuts to the heart of our current political moment: the difference between Negative Freedom — freedom from oppression — and Positive Freedom — freedom to build systems that support human flourishing. 

In today's America, millions are united in opposition to authoritarian rule. But what happens after the resistance succeeds? This episode argues that defeating Trump is necessary but insufficient — that true freedom requires not just restoring what we had, but constructing something better. And that building the broader Yes coalitions capable of that work requires us to confront the deepest assumptions we hold about democracy, human worth, and what a just society is actually for.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 1:02 Timothy Snyder - On Freedom
• 4:58 Positive Freedom - Restoration
• 6:47 Positive Freedom - Reconstruction & Re-imagining
• 8:54 No Coalitions & Yes Coalitions
• 12:13 Looking Ahead - Mindsets That Restrict Positive Freedoms

Transcript

RESISTANCE IS NOT ENOUGH

INTRODUCTION

Hi. This is Michael C. Patterson. Welcome to the 2026 version of the Flourish As You Age podcast. I’m calling this series Flourish in Times of Struggle. 

“Each episode in this series is an invitation to think together about how older adults can stay steady, compassionate, and engaged in a time when cruelty, corruption, and division have become increasingly normalized. We focus on what helps us—and the people we love—flourish even when the social and political landscape feels unstable. Together, we can begin to envision—and work toward—a future in which we and our grandchildren can flourish with dignity and purpose.”

In this episode we focus on two kinds of freedom; negative freedom and positive freedom. 

ON FREEDOM

Historian Timothy Snyder opens his book, ON FREEDOM describing a visit with 85-year-old Mariia in war torn Ukraine. Mariia's home had been destroyed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. She has escaped homelessness through the help of family and volunteers and now lives alone in a metal domicile provided by an international relief organization. She expresses pride in how she has managed to make do with what little she has left.

Life is better than it was during the Russian occupation of her town. Now that the town has been liberated, she no longer faces the daily threat of violent death and the fearsome presence of murderers and torturers. Still, a passing plane caused Mariia to nervously look towards the sky. She still lives with fear. She said to Snyder with a sigh, "Everything happened, and none of it was necessary."

Snyder uses Mariia's situation to begin his conversation about the meaning of freedom. He notes that he and Mariia used the Ukrainian word for de-occupation rather than the conventional English term liberation to describe the withdrawal of Russian troops from her town.

The term, he says ". . . invites us to consider what, beyond the removal of oppression, we might need for liberty." The removal of bad people—as important as that is—does not, necessarily, create conditions that liberate Mariia, nor does it provide her the conditions she needs to flourish, to be truly free.

Snyder says, "Freedom is not just an absence of evil but a presence of good." His core point is that we need to differentiate between two kinds of freedom. Negative Freedom is freedom from some sort of oppression while Positive Freedom refers to the opportunity to achieve those things that enable us to flourish.

Negative freedom can be very important. We want everyone to be free from suffering. But it isn't sufficient for true freedom and flourishing.

Mariia and her neighbors in Ukraine are far better off without the presence of Russian troops on their streets — without direct oppression. But Russian bombs destroyed much of the infrastructure that supports normal living. Normal operation of government and the economy have been disrupted. Mariia has no running water, nor an indoor toilet. Access to food is still limited. She and her neighbors still live with the stress and trauma that accompanies the threat of another invasion.

Mariia enjoys some negative freedom — freedom FROM — but has yet to achieve the positive freedom she needs to flourish.

In today's America, we face a similar need for Negative Freedom. The Trump administration is systematically dismantling America's institutions of democracy and working to install itself as a permanent authoritarian regime. Those who oppose Trump's push towards authoritarianism easily coalesce around the need for freedom from Trump's oppressive policies.

It is harder, however, to find consensus about the kind of positive freedom that should be constructed instead. If Trump is removed and fascism is defeated, what will replace it?

What does positive freedom look like?

POSITIVE FREEDOM

So, what does positive freedom look like in this context?

In one sense, positive freedom can look like restoration: We need to restore order. We need to restore the basic structures of democracy that have been eroded and dismantled—the rule of law, checks and balances, human decency. We need the institutions that once served to check abuse and corruption to become functional again to help reverse the slide towards authoritarianism.

We need to restore a Justice Department that stops criminal behavior rather than protecting it and covering it up. We need Federal agencies staffed not by incompetent loyalists but by professionals who know how the systems work. We need to restore the checks and balances articulated in the Constitution.

This restoration matters enormously. But it isn't sufficient.

Snyder pushes us to go further, beyond restoration. He asks: If we only restore what we had before, are we truly free? Or are we simply recreating the conditions that robbed us of freedom in the first place? Will we have greater liberty and greater opportunity to flourish if we just reinstall the political, economic and social systems that brought us to our current state?

Were we really free in the democracy that preceded Trump — a democracy that gave rise to vast inequalities of wealth and power, and that proved vulnerable to authoritarian capture by a class of elites?

True positive freedom — the freedom to build a democracy that actually serves everyone, and cannot be easily manipulated to concentrate power and wealth in the hands of the few — requires not just restoration but reconstruction or even re-imagination.

It isn't enough to remove bad actors if the systems they manipulated are left in place. Another bad actor will learn to manipulate the flawed structures. The systems themselves must be redesigned to distribute power and opportunity more equitably and to protect against malign manipulation. And, obviously, that redesign cannot be led by the privileged few who have no interest in change; they will continue to structure institutions to serve their own interests.

Democratic institutions that will serve the people must be designed with input from those they are intended to serve—the people, workers. And, democratic systems must be redesigned to meet people's basic needs: food, housing, healthcare, childcare, economic security. Systems that provide what people need to work their way out of trouble—to prevent the loss of liberty—rather than systems that wait to punish and police people when they struggle to restore their freedoms.

Which brings us back to Snyder's core insight: Freedom isn't just the absence of oppression. It's the presence of systems that support human flourishing. And building those systems — not just imagining them, but actually constructing them — is the work of positive freedom. To secure a better world we must first resist dictatorship, and then construct an improved democracy. Negative freedom and positive freedom — two essential, interdependent tasks.

PARADIGM SHIFTS

Leah Greenberg, co-founder of Indivisible — one of the most effective grassroots organizing networks in the country — draws a crucial distinction between what she calls No coalitions and Yes coalitions.

No coalitions form in opposition to a common threat. They are powered by Negative Freedom — the urgent need to stop something harmful. No coalitions are relatively easy to build because the target is clear and the shared grievance is obvious. The millions of people who have filled the streets for No Kings marches represent exactly this kind of coalition — immigrants and climate activists, reproductive rights advocates and LGBTQ organizers, economic justice workers and defenders of democracy, all united by a single shared conviction: that Donald Trump and his policies make things worse for everyone.

That unity is powerful. But it is also fragile.

History teaches us that No coalitions tend to fragment once the common enemy is weakened or removed. The broad coalition dissolves back into its constituent parts, each group returning to its own specific agenda. Immigrant rights workers focus on immigration reform. Climate activists focus on environmental policy. Each of these efforts is necessary and worthy — and each will need to develop its own Yes coalition, its own positive vision of what it is working toward, not just what it is working against.

But here is the strategic challenge Snyder's framework forces us to confront: issue-based Yes coalitions, as essential as they are, tend to address symptoms rather than root causes. The open wounds must be cleaned and stitched before we go in search of the assailant — but if we never go in search of the assailant, the injuries will keep coming.

What we need, alongside these targeted efforts, is a broader Yes coalition — one built not around a specific issue but around a shared vision of a more just and equitable democracy. Not a restoration of what we had before, but the construction of something better. A democracy designed, from the ground up, to serve everyone — not just the wealthy and powerful.

Building that broader Yes coalition is harder than building a No coalition. It requires us to move from opposition to imagination — to articulate not just what we are against but what we are for. It requires confronting deep assumptions about human worth, about the purpose of government, and about what democracy is actually for.

LOOKING AHEAD

In upcoming episodes, we'll explore the mindsets that make exploitation and extraction seem natural and inevitable — the stories we've been told, and have come to believe, about human nature, about who deserves what, and about what democracy is actually for. Stories that constrict our imagination and restrict our ability to imagine and build structures that nurture Positive Freedom

We'll examine why those stories are so difficult to escape, and what it would take to replace them with something more honest and more humane — frameworks that help us see people as worthy of care rather than as resources to be used, and democracy as a system designed to support everyone's flourishing rather than to protect the privileges of the few. That shift in thinking isn't a luxury. It's the foundation on which broader Yes coalitions — and a better democracy — must be built. Positive freedom isn't just an idea. It's a way of being that we can achieve, if we share the vision and work together.