Depending on how you answer that question, someone could likely place you on the political spectrum. That’s because liberty makes up one half of the final moral foundation described by Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. This is the liberty/oppression moral foundation.

Haidt writes:

“The liberty/oppression foundation, I propose, evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of living in small groups with individuals who would, given the chance, dominate, bully, and constrain others.”

He argues that anything even resembling oppression can activate this foundation. And it’s here that we begin to see just how differently people across the ideological spectrum view the world.

Those on the liberal end of the spectrum tend to apply this moral foundation to society as a whole. That is, they are sensitive to oppression on both global and local scales. Conservatives, on the other hand, experience this foundation at the individual level. They tend to be triggered when their personal freedom feels constrained. For liberals, liberty often aligns closely with equality, while conservatives make no such connection.

Can you begin to see how these two perspectives might create a divide that’s difficult to bridge?

Addressing liberal concerns within the liberty/oppression matrix often requires limiting what conservatives perceive as individual liberty. For example, to achieve equality of outcomes, liberals may advocate for taxation. They see this as a worthwhile sacrifice—redistributing resources to increase liberty for those facing systemic disadvantages. This also draws in the care/harm foundation. All these moral foundations are interconnected, informing and reinforcing one another.

When a liberal sees a system that causes harm to vulnerable individuals, they often feel morally compelled to intervene and correct it—even through large-scale efforts like redistributive taxation. Liberal-leaning governments tend to support higher taxes, viewing them as a means of combating oppression and creating more equal outcomes.

Conservatives, in contrast, often view taxation itself as a form of oppression—a forced seizure of what they have earned. From this perspective, true liberty is about individual autonomy: choosing how one’s money is spent, creating opportunities through personal effort, and helping others voluntarily. A conservative might say, “I’ll fund road maintenance because I use and value good roads,” or “I want to help someone in need, but I should choose when and how.” For them, liberty means maximizing personal freedom and minimizing external control.

If you’re like most people, one of those last two paragraphs probably frustrated you, while the other resonated. That’s your liberty/oppression foundation being triggered—likely stirring an emotional response.

I believe this moral foundation might be the most significant of them all because it’s felt so viscerally and in ways that often seem fundamentally opposed. When I scroll through social media, I see it play out constantly. Of course, it’s often intertwined with the other moral foundations, and it’s hard to separate them entirely—but once you start noticing the liberty/oppression dynamic, it becomes almost impossible to unsee.

The hard part is building a bridge across the divide. Each of us lands somewhere along this spectrum. One of the most difficult things we can do is identify our own position and then genuinely listen to someone else’s. Honestly, most of us don’t. I know I sometimes try, and sometimes I don’t—because it just takes too much energy. When I don’t try, that’s when the arguments turn futile and people talk past one another.

How about you?

Do you think you’re able to understand someone else’s position on this moral foundation?
What might happen if we were intentional about doing so?
How might our conversations change?