1 - compared to a rock, all humans are equal (note: this is not a political statement and has no relationship to theocracy)
2 - if a unit of food sits on the ground between two people, they are free to behave however they want, either can choose to pick up the food or not - this is liberty
3 - given that a unit of food when found will be split evenly (by some process out of an individual's control) their behavior no longer matters - this is not liberty
Shouldn't, for it to be true liberty, one of those people own that food by virtue of a piece of paper stating a government granted monopoly over it because his ancestors enslaved the ancestors of the other, and be allowed to call an army of police with guns to take it no matter how small and weak he is? And perhaps, if he sees fit and deems the other person worthy, the owner will rent a fraction of it to the other to plant as a seed and keep the yield for himself, divvying out exactly enough food for the other to barely survive and continue working?
This is exactly liberty, no?
I have a lot of time for liberal philosophy including even those like Milton Friedman and others from his (and our) era, where I tend to disagree with many of their conclusions. But, most liberal thought tends towards very hard definitions, of things that are (IMO) not that hard (objectively true in all cases) in reality.
It's an obvious problem in moral philosophy. You start from benign definitions of good and bad, like "greatest good for the greatest number." Then liberal philosophers push that to the extreme, usually weird moral dilemma scenarios. Killing fat men with mining carts to save skinny people. Infanticide. Involuntary euthanasia. Instead of admitting that your "moral maxim" or whatnot is really more of an approximation or a guideline really, they conclude that all this stuff which seems really bad and immoral is actually good.
The american liberalism (or conservatism, libertarianism and other bad, illogical names for it) is rife with this sort of thing, IMO. The concept of liberty is defined using simple, made up examples. Platonic ideals. Then it's applied to the real world. At some point, using the term "liberty" to describe it becomes defensible only by very academic, long winded philosophical argument. To the person who's liberty is supposedly at stake, it seems odd that these philosophers are calling it liberty.
I suspect this is why only very academic, extremist or philosophical types (or australians) call it liberalism or libertarianism (this one carries its own ironies). Everyone else just calls it conservatism.