Similarly, the political ideal of freedom echoes modern humanism. It is a freedom from public representation of divine command or the scared common good; it is freedom to determine one's own will by entering into contracts in the marketplace; and it is freedom to master a portion of nature or dispose of one's property as one pleases. Lacking public representations or manifestations of a common good, free and open debate must necessarily settle on such individual freedom as its lowest common denominator.Once guarding against threats to the individual or property becomes the essence of the common good, then manipulation of fear becomes the pre-eminent tool of governance, and absolute rule by the state may be sanctioned to defend against an emergency. Yet this very perception of the primacy of threat and consequent absolutism derives not from taking freedom and property as ontological points of departure. Instead, the positing of freedom and property as a basis derives from the mechanisms of representation and discussion themselves. For freedom and property alone have universal appeal to immediate interests."
Philip Goodchild Theology of Money (2009) p.53