Archive

Sunday, August 15, 2010

On GZ Mosque, Obama and Ghettos: The Challenge of Difference in a Liberal Society

I have been engaging in email exchange with Eric Dondero, Publisher, LibertarianRepublican.net. Yesterday, I posted a blog showing our back and forth conversation (http://libertyandcapitalism.blogspot.com/2010/08/is-engagement-futile-progressive-and.html )

I’m not sure I’d call it a respectful conversation yet, but it is at least a conversation between people who fundamentally disagree with each other. I for one welcome engaging Eric and other libertarians directly.

I wanted to pick up on Eric’s last email to me:

From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 11:46:43 AM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
Yes, you may quote anything I said, but not as Anonymous. As Eric Dondero, Publisher, LibertarianRepublican.net

And most certainly do quote my comments about pro-life and marijuana.

I think we are dangerously close to Civil War in this country. Obama's actions yesterday with the GZ Mosque have royally pissed a lot of people off. This guy truly hates America. I mean there's no dancing around it any more for liberals. I'd have a lot more respect for your side if you just admitted that yes, our guy Obama, does really hate America, hates Americans, and wants to see this Nation destroyed.

Why is it so hard for your side to come clean on that? Just admit it for gosh darn's sake.

Again, the only "compromise" I see is through private property rights. You all set up a bunch of Kibutzes for your collectivist strategies, isolate yourselves, and leave the rest of us real Americans the hell alone.

Problem is liberals don't want to do that. They want to jam their communism down the throats of the rest of us.


My reply:

Eric,
There are several points I would like to respond to in this email. Each of them probably deserve their own blog.

Your comment:
Obama “truly hates America”….Why is it so hard for your side to come clean on that? Just admit it for gosh darn's sake.

My response:
I completely disagree. And the issue I think is whether someone you fundamentally disagree with necessary “hates America”. I fundamentally disagree with you but I think you love America. We just have very different visions of what America is. The fact that you have a very different vision than me doesn’t mean you hate America. Nor does it mean I hate America. The same is true of Obama. He loves America just like you do. Only he has a different vision of America than do you. My vision happens to be much closer to his.

In fact, I guess, a vision of freedom is ultimately about how we live in the same country with people who make us feel hate and who have fundamentally different views.

Your comment:
Obama's actions yesterday with the GZ Mosque have royally pissed a lot of people off.

My response:
I can understand why many people feel very vulnerable and emotional over a mosque close to ground zero. Many Americans still associate any form of Islam with the attack on America. But I believe there are various forms of Islam. There are militant forms of Islam that are trying to destroy America and that feed the ideology of Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, among other militant Islamic groups. But I also believe there are more moderate, ethically oriented forms of Islam as well. Religion definitely has the capacity to produce intolerance and hate. But that is true, not just of Islam, but of Christianity and Judaism too. Take the Christian crusades in the middle ages and the number of Jews and witches burned at the stake. Christianity had its violent side as well until the enlightenment in the seventeenth century when thinking about the nature of religion fundamentally changed. The idea of liberty, incidentally, was born in the same period and I would argue was closely tied in to a new understanding of religion that made it more tolerant. I would agree that Islam needs that kind of encounter with enlightenment, but I worry as much about fundamentalist Jews and Christians as about fundamentalist Muslims. In my view, there are only two forms of religion in the world, those who are fundamentalists and those who are not.

So back to the GZ Mosque. I can see why the Mosque being built near ground zero is painful to so many people. But I also believe that enlightened and reflective Muslims can be a part of America just like Christians and Jews. Yes, I am a Jew and have special sensitivity to minority people’s and religions because of the history of my own people.


Your comment:
Again, the only "compromise" I see is through private property rights. You all set up a bunch of Kibutzes for your collectivist strategies, isolate yourselves, and leave the rest of us real Americans the hell alone.

Problem is liberals don't want to do that. They want to jam their communism down the throats of the rest of us.

My reply:
Hmmmm….I hope the statement about Kibutzes is not intended to be anti-Semitic. I am in fact a Jew and the reference to putting us in kibbutzim (plural for Kibutz) can stir up anti-Semitic fears of ghettos in Europe. I’m going to assume you didn’t want me to feel you were saying that because accusations like that they don’t get us anywhere. I’ll assume you mean that you want to put liberals into their own political communities but not allow them to vote and therefore impose their views on libertarians.

But how is that a liberal society, Eric? Are you saying that all non-libertarians should not be able to vote? Isn’t that the opposite of liberty? Isn’t liberty by definition the running of government by the people and isn’t the structure of the legislative branches to enable diverse viewpoints to express themselves and ultimately come to resolution. Isn’t this the vision of the founders? How do you reconcile your with freedom of speech? I get it that you feel that your liberty is being compromised when liberals win the election and get to impose more taxes than you like, or want to support seat-belt rules, or limit guns, or impose non-smoking rules. You feel like the Communists or Socialists have taken over.

The real question, Eric, is how should a liberal society define where the boundary between individual rights and government. You assume liberals are embracing Communism because we want to enforce more taxes than you like, we want to support seat belt rules, and non-smoking rules, and have regulations on the oil companies and the financial markets. But there is a huge spectrum, in my view at least, between libertarian views and Communism. There can be many regulations in a society without it being Communist or Socialist. Indeed, I would argue that the notion that government should regulate society was at the heart of the liberal vision defined by John Locke and other early advocates of natural rights. What differentiates regulation from Communism or Socialism is the right of representation. The rules imposed by government grow out of a political process that allows Americans to weigh in through voting. It is through representation that the founders believed ensured that taxes and regulations would be by the people.

I am sometimes as frustrated as you by the outcome of the political process. When Republicans are in office I also feel they shove down our throats policies that I find offensive. When George Bush led us into war with Iraq, my money was spent on a war that I could not understand or defend. And when Republicans or Libertarians defend the lack of regulations that can lead to disastrous oil spills such as we recently saw in the Gulf, or lack of regulations that in my view generated the housing market bubble burst and the ultimate economic melt-down, I too feel sickened and angry.

But it seems inevitable that in a liberal society some group or groups always feel that the majority are imposing their views on the minority (within the limits set by the Constitution and the court). Is that not what representation is ultimately about. One side winning and another losing.

I don’t yet want to go as far as you and imagine putting Republicans or Libertarians into Kibbutzim or Ghettos. Ultimately, of course, if both sides feel passionate enough, the political process could simply break down. We could end up in Civil War (I hope not!). Perhaps we will have to divide America into Liberal and Libertarian States. I live in California so I’m safe I guess. But then it is going back to the days before the Constitution of 1787 when each state was its own autonomous political unit. And if we do that, then America as a country will not be able to act as a unit and will lose the dominance in the world and be more like Europe a bunch of countries that have an alliance. Perhaps that is the inevitable outcome, and perhaps the consequences will be good for the world. Otherwise, we have to learn to live together.









Saturday, August 14, 2010

Is Engagement Futile?: A Progressive and Libertarian Exchange On the Meaning of Liberty

I recently had an interesting and sad exchange with Eric Dondero, Publisher, www.libertarianrepublican.net after I published an earlier version of my critique of the Tea Party Principles (http://libertyandcapitalism.blogspot.com/2010/08/tea-party-manifesto-why-tea-party-has.html).

The exchange saddened me because I was hoping to engage in serious conversation across the divide that separates the progressives and libertarians on the question of liberty. I thought since I had studied and thought deeply about the question of liberty we could have a real conversation that might be of interest to a larger audience. The exchange illustrates the seriousness of the divide that separates us. The question is ultimately whether conversation is futile or whether the only way of addressing the deep disagreement is via civil war.

The exchange began when I posted an earlier version of my blog critiquing the Tea Party principles. Eric has kindly given me permission to reproduce our exchange on my blog.

The discussion began when I received the following email from Eric:
________________________________________
________________________________________
From: Eric Dondero
To: "hsaccount@yahoo.com"
Sent: Tue, August 10, 2010 10:15:31 AM
Subject: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights


Liberty has nothing to do with Collectivism in its various forms - Naziism, Communism, Fascism, Socialism, Welfare Statism. It is the exact opposite of these authoritarian ideologies. My gosh, you don't know the first thing about Liberty or Libertarianism. You are completely clueless.

Your article was almost a parody. It was so awful, I almost thought you were some conservative or libertarian posing as a liberal to help us to prove our point on the ignorance of the Left.

Please confirm for me that was a sincere piece, and not parody?

Thanks

Eric Dondero, Publisher
www.libertarianrepublican.net

If it was a true piece, would you mind if I reprinted it at LR to show how idiotic the beliefs of the Communist Left really are, for my readers? Thanks


My Reply:

From: Howard Schwartz
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
To: "Eric Dondero"
Date: Wednesday, August 11, 2010, 10:32 PM
Hi Eric,
Thanks for your email. I disagree with you profoundly as you can see. There is something between "individuals-only" and "communism". This was a sincere piece. I'd be fine if you want to publish it. I might want to review it and beef it up/clean it up a bit before you do. What is the length you can accept? I'll work on giving you a cleaned up version if you like. Happy to engage. I've done a lot of reading and thinking on the topic. Having a different opinion than you doesn't make me clueless.

I'd be happy to engage with you on the topic.

Eric’s Reply:
From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Wed, August 11, 2010 2:40:02 PM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights

Re-format it and edit to fit the format of my blog www.libertarianrepublican.net and send it along. I'd be glad to run it, without edits from me, so as to portray the cluelessness on libertarianism of the Left.

My reply

From: Howard Schwartz
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
To: "Eric Dondero"
Date: Friday, August 13, 2010, 3:53 PM
Hi Eric,

Here is a version I cleaned up. Will this work or is it too long?
I want to do one final read but its pretty much ready to go

Howard Schwartz

Eric’s reply:
From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Fri, August 13, 2010 8:22:31 AM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights

Yes, this will work. I'll run it tomorrow. Would be helpful, and add to the piece if you could send me a jpg. or youself?


After I sent Eric a rather nice picture of myself I got this reply:

From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 5:46:52 AM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
Howard, this is going to suck. You're not going to be happy.

I woke up this morning and learned that our "President" (sic - the fucker wasn't even born here in the United States), has sided with Muslim Terrorists, and has come out in favor of allowing these Terrorists to build an Al Qaeda/Hamas linked Terrorist Training Center in southern Manhattan, two blocks away from Ground Zero.

You see like a nice guy. But I have decided not to publish your piece.

You Liberals/Leftsts are America's enemy. There's no mincing words, no soft-peddaling about it. You all Hate America, and want to see our Great Nation destroyed.

I could not live with myself, if I gave even one millimeter of space on my Pro-Liberty/Pro-America blog, to my enemy and an enemy of our Great Nation.

Sorry. I know you put some time in editing the piece for my site. And what I'm doing really sucks. And if you ever see me in person, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to just punch me in the face, and kick me in the shins. You'd have that right.

But I've made my decision.

My reply
From: Howard Schwartz
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
To: "Eric Dondero"
Date: Saturday, August 14, 2010, 6:08 PM
Hey Eric,

It’s your blog so of course you have to make the final judgment. I'm perfectly okay with your decision, a bit disappointed mainly because I would like to find a venue to have a real dialogue.

You and I both have strong feelings about our positions and commitments. That is really a good thing. Liberty (for better and worse) allows people to end up in positions that the other sides hate. That is what freedom of ideas is about. When I read the founding period such as 1787 Constitutional Convention and the debates between the Jeffersonians and the Federalists it seems this tension and emotion was there from the very beginning (maybe it is endemic to democracy?).

I'm disappointed only because I was hoping to find a way to talk meaningfully across the divide and you seem like someone who thinks deeply on the other side. May I blog about your email to me on my site as a way to talk about that dilemma?

Regarding your comments that
"You Liberals/Leftsts are America's enemy. There's no mincing words, no soft-peddaling about it. You all Hate America, and want to see our Great Nation destroyed. "

Me (Howard): That isn't true. At least I don't feel like an enemy of America. I love America but you and I have different visions of America. The question in my view is whether we can both have an America that we can live in, though we disagree. That is the interesting issue in democracy I think. I hope we can and that is the hope I have. Isn't there a way you can see me as a passionate person you can respect who has a different view and ultimately cares about America too?

Your comment:
I could not live with myself, if I gave even one millimeter of space on my Pro-Liberty/Pro-America blog, to my enemy and an enemy of our Great Nation.

Me (Howard): I understand if you don't want to publish my views in your blog. But how do we try to talk across our differences and come to understanding?

Your comment:
Sorry. I know you put some time in editing the piece for my site. And what I'm doing really sucks. And if you ever see me in person, I wouldn't blame you if you wanted to just punch me in the face, and kick me in the shins. You'd have that right.

Me (Howard) I am not angry at you for this. You at least reached out to me to "converse". I have no desire to punch or kick you...I would even shake your hand and ask if you'd like to have coffee and talk..... maybe someday?

Howard Schwartz
hsaccount@yahoo.com

Eric’s reply:
From: Eric Dondero
To: Howard Schwartz
Sent: Sat, August 14, 2010 11:22:47 AM
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
Sure, you have my permission to say what you wish about this incident or my comments on your blog.

You seem like a decent guy, so it pains me to say this, I honestly believe there's absolutely no room at all for dialogue between liberals and libertarians/conservatives. You all are the enemy. There is very, very, very little that we can agree on.

Hell, I once thought liberals were good on marijuana, and abortion. But alas, you all want to tax marijuana once it's legalized, and even though you're pro-choice on abortion, you want government funding, plus to add insult to injury, you want by pro-life conservative friends to be forced to cover those abortions with their tax dollars.

So, even on the two issues that there might have been agreement between liberals and libertarians, there really isn't any.

No truce, no cease fire, no nice intellectual dialogues, not for me. You may find other libertarian/conservatives willing to do this, but not me. I have dedicated my entire life to the destruction of liberalism/socialism. And I will go to my death bed cursing you all to eternity.

Then Eric wrote me again:
Subject: Re: Howard, Liberty is all about Individual Rights
Yes, you may quote anything I said, but not as Anonymous. As Eric Dondero, Publisher, LibertarianRepublican.net

And most certainly do quote my comments about pro-life and marijuana.

I think we are dangerously close to Civil War in this country. Obama's actions yesterday with the GZ Mosque have royally pissed a lot of people off. This guy truly hates America. I mean there's no dancing around it any more for liberals. I'd have a lot more respect for your side if you just admitted that yes, our guy Obama, does really hate America, hates Americans, and wants to see this Nation destroyed.

Why is it so hard for your side to come clean on that? Just admit it for gosh darn's sake.

Again, the only "compromise" I see is through private property rights. You all set up a bunch of Kibutzes for your collectivist strategies, isolate yourselves, and leave the rest of us real Americans the hell alone.

Problem is liberals don't want to do that. They want to jam their communism down the throats of the rest of us.

My comment:
I plan to send Eric a response to this last comment. But let me post this exchange so far and pick up my response in my next blog after he gets an opportunity to see my response.

The Tea Party Manifesto: Why The Tea Party Has It All Wrong.

I recently received in an email a document called “Call To Action Principles of the Southwest Metro Tea Party Patriots” (August 4, 2010). There are so many mistaken assumptions in the Tea Party platform that it is hard to know where to begin a critique. Basically the Tea Party is wrong about most of its core assumptions about what freedom and liberty mean.

The Tea Party’s core values, as defined in this call to action, are defined as:
• Constitutionally Limited Government
• Free Markets
• Balanced Budget and Minimal Taxation

To summarize their convictions, Tea Partiers have written the following illustrating many of their major problematic assumptions. This is a quote from a much larger document but illustrates some of the fundamental assumptions of the party.

First God made the people. Then the people came to America and made the colonies. Then the colonies made the states. Then the states separated from the tyrannical British government and established a constitutional republic that guaranteed sovereignty of the people, which meant that government was the servant of the citizens.

But the Founders sternly warned us about the consequences of losing a natural rights worldview should we begin to see the government as the source instead of the protector of liberty. They knew that to violate the morally absolute natural rights enshrined in the Declaration of Independence would be the death of freedom. [emphasis in original]

This short introduction to the Tea Party position illustrates a number of problematic assumptions.

Principle: Liberty means only individual rights
Not so. In fact, liberty was often tied into notions of social responsibility and public good. That part of liberty is generally absent or downplayed in Tea Party and Libertarian discourse. Notions of social responsibility and public good were central to the development of the idea of liberty in the seventeenth century, when the influential notions of natural rights were developed, and in the writing of the American founders. Liberty was never only about individual rights. Public good and social responsibility were themselves part of the liberty concept and understood to involve a sacrifice of individual rights for the larger good of society.

Principle: “First God made the people. Then the people came to America”
Many Tea Partiers, though not all, assume that “liberty comes from God.” This is often another way of saying we have natural rights. Not all Tea Partiers or libertarians base their view of freedom on this religious basis. But many do and thereby smuggle in religion to their discussion of rights. The Tea Party Platform I have in front of me makes the clear link between religious conceptions and liberty conceptions.

In fact, if Tea Partiers were really concerned about liberty they wouldn’t base everything on God. Not everyone believes in God and even those who do believe in God have very different notions of what that God is like. If Tea Partiers were really interested in individual rights they would not tie everything back to a Judeo-Christian view of God and instead find a worldview that was more inclusive, not only of other religions but the non-religious as well.

Indeed, some religious Tea Partiers want to base their views on God because they want to link a libertarian set of views to their religious convictions. While there are other, economic and “consequentialist” ways of arguing for individual rights (e.g., Friedman and Hayek and others), many Tea Partiers want to tie their arguments back to God (not unlike John Locke, and some but not all of the founders). Ultimately they end up using the notion of liberty to help justify protecting a Judeo-Christian view of the world.

Furthermore, the history of the liberty idea, which they generally ignore, shows that notions of individual liberty grew out of an attempt in part to make society more tolerant of religious diversity. The idea of natural rights, articulated by John Locke one prominent champion of natural rights in the seventeenth century, was a reaction in part to the disastrous Christian religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth century. The idea of natural rights was in part an attempt to explain how people who fundamentally disagreed with each other about God and salvation could manage to live together without killing each other. That was no small issue for Christians after the religious wars spawned by the Reformation.

Yet the language of Tea Partiers, at least in this Southwest manifesto, ultimately abandons that view of tolerance and explicitly endorses a “Judeo-Christian” world view. “The principles in the Declaration of Independence and the symbols engraved on government buildings throughout Washington DC [sic] reflect a Judeo-Christian worldview. We pledge allegiance to divine providence and to our divinely inherited rights which government is legally required to protect, not usurp. We vehemently oppose secular humanism, nihilism, post-modernism…” A true endorsement of liberty could make room for atheists and people who don’t embrace a Judeo-Christian worldview. And it would also realize that our core notions of liberty developed in part under the influence of the modern enlightenment which was breaking out of the traditional Judeo-Christian worldview.

Principle: The Founders Embraced Natural Rights (and only that view of rights)

Many Tea Partiers want us to believe that “the founders” had a single uncomplicated notion of natural rights. They often assume those natural rights came from God (hence the emphasis on God). There are a number of problems with this position.

First, the founders themselves were not all of one mind on the matter of natural rights. I have written extensively about this in a series of essays on my Website (www.freedomandcapitalism.com) and a forthcoming book, Jefferson, Natural Rights, and The Declaration of Independence (Other Publications Press, forthcoming). The founders in fact had doubts about natural rights and they disagreed with each other on the foundation of America rights. In fact, Thomas Jefferson and his colleagues disagreed with each other about the foundation of American rights.

Second, even if the founders did endorse natural rights, the very notion of natural rights itself is problematic. There are not a clear set of rights that everyone can or does agree upon. The original idea of natural rights, as articulated by Locke and others, assumes that natural rights are self-evident to Reason, and came from God. But both of those assumptions are problematic, as the history of Western Philosophy realized under the influence of many thinkers such as Hume, Kant and others just to name a few. Not all reasoning people come to the same conclusions about the origin or nature of rights and not everyone believes in God or, even if they do, embraces the same view of God’s nature.

Third, it does not really matter what the founders thought anyway. The notion that the we should embrace the founders’ views simply because they were the founders is problematic. Not only was there a diversity of views among the founders, but ultimately many of the founders envisioned that the very notion of what the boundaries of rights would be would be subject to an evolving discussion. The ability to amend the constitution built into the founding framework the notion that our thinking about rights may change over time. One could in fact argue that the founders understood that the very boundary between government and individual rights was a constantly negotiated boundary.

The upshot is that we cannot appeal to some generic view of natural rights that was embraced by the founders (there was no single view) and the notion of natural rights is problematic anyway and not a good foundation on which to discuss notions of rights. There is worthy of a much longer exposition than is possible here in this context.

Principle: The Declaration Endorses Natural Rights

The Tea Party Call To Action writes as if God created humans and then Jefferson wrote the Declaration with nothing in between! There are three problematic assumptions in the Tea Party’s appeal to the Declaration to prove the founders endorsed natural rights.

First, the Declaration actually papers over differences in the founders’ view of rights. There is clear evidence that many of the founders had doubts about natural rights theory and the idea of a social contract. Even Jefferson had an alternative view of rights that differed from and was rejected by his colleagues. There were in fact at least three or more fundamentally different views about the foundation of American rights. Jefferson’s view of rights, for example, was rejected by the First Continental Congress. Jefferson tried to get his view of rights back into the Declaration but it was rejected during the editing process. The result was that the Declaration actually hid complex disagreements among the founders on the nature of American rights. I’ve outlined these in my forthcoming book, Jefferson, Natural Rights, and the Declaration (Other Publications Press, forthcoming).

Second, it is not at all self-evident that the Declaration should be the basis of the view of rights in the United States. The Declaration declared that the colonies should become independent political states. The Declaration did not envision that there would be a United States under Federal powers.

The notion of a “United States”, which would have Federal powers beyond the states, was not fully defined until the Constitutional Convention of 1787. The views in that Convention, much more than the Declaration, should define the notion of rights by which we understand the Constitution. In those debates, there was clearly a winning view that the Articles of Confederacy were too weak and that stronger Federal powers were needed. That was the primary drive to adopt a United States Constitution and that view was ratified by the states. The Constitution therefore marked a transition to a view that the Federal government had to be stronger than it had previously been under the Articles of Confederation. Not all agreed with this view as is evident in Madison’s Notes on the Convention. But the Constitution was ratified and therefore the views prior to the Constitution, such as the Declaration, are arguably irrelevant to the United States definition of rights.

Third, it is arguable that the very notion of what rights to be protected was always something that was understood to be evolving and that the Constitution itself protects a process that allows the very definition of rights to evolve. There is after all a process in the Constitution for changing it. And the very boundaries between what government can do is always defined in part by a process between the legislative and judicial branches. If that is so, then a specific notion of rights, such as “natural rights”, is itself up for grabs in the political process. There is no single founders’ view of rights that we have to adapt and instead we are thrown back to the values by which people want to live in social life. Those values evolve and change. But the Tea Partiers are claiming, not unlike religious fundamentalists, that the founders’ intent has to somehow define the way we define liberty. Ultimately in a free society the very notion of where to draw the boundary between government intervention and individual freedom is itself part of the liberty that is granted to people in society.

Principle: Liberty means limited government

The matter is much more complex than this. The Tea Partiers assume that liberty implies limited government. But that is not what liberty always has or necessarily should mean.

If one reads the classic sources on liberty, such as John Locke, one realizes that a very different notion of liberty is operative. Locke, by the way, is important because he is often cited as having articulated the classic view of natural rights and the Tea Partiers assume that our country was founded on a vision of natural rights.

So if that is so, it is surely interesting that Locke has a more complex different notion of liberty. For Locke, people not only are protected by government but they have to give up some of their liberty to enter into political societies. This was a key part of Locke’s social contract that most Tea Partiers seem to overlook or ignore. According to Locke, one relinquishes some of one’s original liberty when one chooses to live in a society or join the social contract. In entering into a social contract with others, one agrees to abide by the decisions of the majority in exchange for the benefits of society including the protection of one’s life, liberty and property. In Locke’s view, the social contract involves a trade. One gives up something (some of one’s freedom) for the benefits one gains by living in society. In this view, liberty comes with shared responsibility for others.

Locke argues that natural rights mean that “no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.” (Second Treatise 2, 6). It is clear that Locke has a more expansive notion of natural rights than we typically hear from Tea Partiers or Libertarians. He includes “health” in his list of natural rights. Where was that in the discussions of the health care bill?

Furthermore, Locke acknowledges that one has to pay taxes. If one took a strict view that government should not infringe on our rights at all, then there should be no taxes whatsoever. But if that were so there could be no government either. Government cannot exist without taxes. For Locke, taxes are set by the will of the majority. Therefore, in Locke’s view, there is no difference in the amount of liberty one has if one is taxed a dollar or 10,000 dollars as long as the majority set the taxes and the decision was based on a form of representation.

This is because Locke realized that ultimately one cannot define in advance what a given society will define as liberty. Whether the government should build missiles, pave roads, provide healthcare, support a judicial system, regulate commerce, manage a “standing army” are all notions that change over time and based on values. The founders’ complaint against the British Parliament was similar in the period before Independence. They complained because they were taxed without representation. They did not complain about being taxed in general.

Principle: Liberty is the same thing as free markets

Not so. This is the second frequent justification of liberty. The view that liberty necessarily implies free markets is a view that has been articulated by Milton Friedman and Frederick Hayek, among others. According to Friedman, economic liberty is part and parcel of liberty. It is part of liberty by definition.

But this view is wrong in a number of respects. First, it mixes up the question of individual liberty with the question of institutional regulation. Regulating an institution and the economy is not the same thing as imposing rules on individuals. The founders were fighting for economic liberty from the British government and from a Parliament in which they did not have representation. They never said that their own governments in which they had representation couldn’t set limits on trade. And one of the drivers from the Articles of Confederation to a United States Constitution was the problem of regulating trade among the colonies.

Second, the view that “liberty = free markets” prescribes a particular view of what liberty means. But liberty itself protects our very right to debate the very question of where the line between government and individuals should be drawn. That question is ultimately a value judgment as to what is good for the maximum number of people. Some economists believe that free markets generate the most benefit for the most people. But not even all economists agree with that view.

In any case, that question – “what does liberty mean”- should ultimately be decided by democracies, not imposed by government itself. Therefore the amount of government control in an economy is not an infringement of individual liberty but a decision that is and should be made within a liberal society. To prescribe a predefined answer to that question, as Tea Partiers do, is ultimately to take away the very liberty they claim they want to defend. The question is always what values should define that boundary between the public good and individual rights.