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Friday, November 25, 2011

The Perversion of Liberty by the Tea Party and Right Wing

The Republicans and Tea Party advocates have perverted the concept of liberty. When they appeal to “individual rights” and “liberty” to critique the American government, they are reframing key American ideas in new ways and in ways that are arguably perverted. But they pretend they are the same ideas with which this country was founded. Any student of religion knows that the same is true of religious faiths. Every religious group finds its own ideas in the ideas of Moses, Jesus and so forth. The founders can always be made to appear like one wants them.

It is true that the liberty idea was one of the core ideas in the American founding. But the context and meaning of that idea were different then from now. Then, Americans were breaking away from an imperialist British Empire that was economically and politically suppressing the American colonies. Americans had no representation in the British Parliament that made decisions about their taxes. It was taxation without representation. They did not vote for their elected officials nor did they send members to Parliament.

We by contrast live in a government structured the way the founders wanted. It is a republican government elected by the people with a balance of powers built in to protect the minority from the majority. We do have representation in the government that makes laws over and for us. One can argue that the government is no longer working. But that is a different argument. As long as we are represented by a government that we collectively elected, the system is a free one, even if it is a broken one. “Being broken” and being “not-free” are different things, at least theoretically. In fact government always seems broken to someone or some group, by definition. Liberty as the founders envisioned it was living under the rule of a government that was structured to give the people a significant voice but also to balance the risk of majorities suppressing minorities.

Republicans and Tea Party advocates talk as if the United States suppresses individuals the way the British Empire suppressed the colonies. The context is different, the problem is different and an appeal to liberty is misleading and in many ways perverted.

Saturday, November 12, 2011

Tea Party: Is government taking away my liberty?

Many people tell you government is the antithesis of your liberty. But is that so?

The current rhetoric of the Republicans and Tea Party is that my liberty is compromised by government which is too big. Government that gets too big compromises my liberty. The key question is, "What is liberty?" And "How does one know that government has compromised it?"

The key problem with the Tea Party and with Republican positions on liberty is this: they have no way of distinguishing what is a valid constriction on my liberty from what is not. When government sets rules about how fast we can drive is that a violation of my liberty or is that a protection of my life, which is a protection of my liberty? Or when government says I can’t put my 16 year old daughter in a tank and let her drive down the streets of my town, is that a violation of my or her liberty? Well, yes, of course it is a limitation of our liberty. But we accept and appreciate these kind of rules and restrictions because we are all trying to figure out how to live together without killing each other.

A constriction on my liberty is part of my liberty. Rules make possible an enlarged liberty. Tea Party and Republican “liberty” advocates hide this fact. Our liberties become possible precisely because we have government and rules. That is not to say that government can’t overstep the bounds of what it should legitimately limit. That is possible. But that is a different question from how we set the boundaries over the rules government may legitimately produce and enforce and those they may not. That is much more nuanced than the generic claim that government infringes on my liberty. Tea Partiers and Republicans forget that government also makes liberty possible. And it does so by protecting me from you and you from me and all of us from the Tea Party!