Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Sunday, October 18, 2020

On Freedom

Much attention is being paid to this essay in the NYT by Michael Tomasky, and I endorse it. So read it. Now I will offer my own thoughts on this subject.

The words "freedom" and "liberty" resonate powerfully in American political discourse. The so-called American Revolution (it wasn't actually a revolution in technical political science terms, but a war of secession) was animated by rhetoric of liberty. The underground resistance leading up to the Declaration of Independence was called the Sons of Liberty. The Declaration of Independence asserts three rights which purportedly belong to "all men":  Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. So liberty is the second most important right after existence. The preamble to the Constitution, after proclaiming practical ends such as domestic tranquility and national defense, proclaims the purpose of the document to be to"secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity."

The word freedom does not come up prominently until later, in the First Amendment:

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Freedom was also central to the rhetoric of abolition, and of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1950 and 1960s, which also came to be known as the Freedom Movement. Which reminds us of the obvious points that slaves had none of the liberties or freedoms asserted by the founding documents, and their descendants have been winning them only gradually and grudgingly, against horrific violence, in the century and a half after the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th and 14th Amendments. 

This should remind us also that the slaveholders argued that abolition would be a violation of their rights, as were attempts by non-slave states to shield fugitives from the slavecatchers. Specifically, these were violations of their property rights. To libertarians, property rights are the most essential. Liberty means the right to do as you wish with your own property, and property is itself a kind of "natural right," which precedes law and custom.

Perhaps you begin to see the problem. Granting unencumbered liberty to one person or group of people inevitably means depriving others of liberty. If there is a right to own slaves, then the right not to be a slave cannot pertain to "all men." And yes, I haven't specifically mentioned gender so far but that's another glaring deficiency in the concept of liberty as inscribed in the Constitution, although the First Amendment is good enough to use the term "people." 

And this is true of all property rights. If you dump your toxic waste in the river, I can't drink the water. If you own a monopoly over a good or service, I can't buy it from anybody else and I can't seek employment in the industry from anyone but you, which means you can overcharge me and underpay me. 

More generally, people with a lot of money have a lot more liberty than people without much money, but contrary to mythology, having a lot of money is mostly a matter of luck. Not only who you were born to but also just plain, dumb luck. There seems to me no way to justify inheritance of vast wealth -- the Koch brothers don't deserve to be rich, or even mildly privileged. But even success in business for the self-made is contingent on good luck at least as much as it is on hard work. 

But the rhetoric of liberty is useful to plutocrats who want to keep their privilege and prevent a real revolution. The American war of independence was not a revolution in the technical sense because it did not expand political rights and participation. The same class of white men of property who ran things before continued to run it afterwards, and the Constitution was written to make sure of that. The ruling class just didn't have to put up with the King of England any more. And still today, if the Koch brothers and their plutocratic friends can convince working people that making the rich pay taxes, and not allowing them to dump their toxic waste in the river, and not letting them underpay their employees or put their lives and health at risk, are violations of the sacred rights to liberty and property, then they can get people to vote against their own interests and fail to demand what should be their own rights.

When this utterly warped ideology makes people refuse to wear a face covering because they have a sacred right to spew a deadly pathogen on their neighbors, then it ought to be pretty damn obvious that it makes no sense at all. Libertarianism is internally inconsistent, and inconsistent with observable reality. That is all.


4 comments:

roger said...

there seems to be a lot of crossover between the "freedom for me to not wear a medical indicated mask" and the buffoons who demonstrate their penile insufficiency by carrying comically large guns.

Don Quixote said...

"Words are the source of all misunderstandings."

--Antoine de St. Exupéry

And no group is better at obscuring meaning with words than the Republicans in 2020. Are they confused, cynical, or both? Who knows?



Eddie Pleasure said...

Well, my 95 year old uncle has been hospitalized for the second time in two weeks, and tested positive. He was confused somehow, and fell on his outside porch at 6:00 a.m. My blind aunt found him, and pressed his call button (they live at home on the farm.) He is currently on supplemental oxygen. Other than not having any broken bones (this time; the first time he broke his nose and an orbital bone) that is all I know of his condition.
My father visited him at home last week. My father wore a mask during the visit; I don't think my uncle did. The daughter who has been taking him to appointments is also positive. Don't know about my aunt. How they contracted it is still unknown.
My parents are feeling well so far. I recommended that they contact their physician to see if they should be tested.
And the numbers continue to increase at my workplace. Three more reported on Friday.
Makes me sad and tired and puzzled, all at the same time.

Don Quixote said...

Sad and tired and puzzled. How else would one feel in a country that has a certifiably crazy person for a "leader"?

Some of my close friendships with people I know in the South may not last. They may not be Caucasian supremacists, but how can they vote for one?

How can I forgive them for voting for a crazy person to be a president?

So many people have grown up in dysfunctional homes in this country--with rageaholic parents, alcoholic parents, drug addict parents, emotionally distant or abusive parents, physically abusive parents, or other adults in their lives (coaches, teachers, doctors, etc.). Child abuse is endemic in the USA. So people who haven't entered recovery in one form or another (AA, other 12-Step groups, therapy, other vehicles for leaving the "cave:) see a person like Shitler--broken, raging, abusive--and it feels like "home" to them.

But to those of us whose eyes and hearts are at least partially open, we see it for what it is: insanity. Having to regard a crazy person on a daily basis makes us feel sad, tired, and puzzled--all at the same time.