Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea (11 page)

It is no accident that the nurturant parent model begins with empathy. Progressive morality is centrally about empathy.

We are born wired for empathy. Our brains come with the neural circuitry. One piece of the circuitry is the mirror neuron system, a structure of neural connections linking the premotor cortex (which “choreographs” complex movements) and the parietal cortex (which integrates sensory information). Through experience, the mirror system appears to become “tuned” to link
the control of one’s actions with the perceptions of others performing those actions. Neurons in the mirror system fire when you perform an action or perceive someone else performing the same action. That is how you can imitate an action or tell when someone is doing the same thing that you are.

Another piece of circuitry links the mirror system to the emotional centers of the brain. This circuitry is responsible for the physiology of emotion—the muscles in your face and body whose activity correlates with being happy, sad, angry, afraid, or disgusted. The physiology of the emotion system and the mirror system operating together enable you to tell what emotions others are feeling—or apparently feeling, if they are good actors. Many scientists believe that these systems, working together, are the physiological basis for empathy—for connecting us to others, both people and animals, and to the world. It is through empathy that we can “mind read,” that is, feel someone’s pain and joy, tell what others are feeling and what they are in the midst of doing.

Though we come wired for it, that neural wiring still has to be developed and used or it can decay or fail to develop further. Feeling someone’s pain and joy—feeling what another feels—is the mark of empathy.

Empathy is at the center of progressive values. Caring about others as well as yourself is at the heart of the value system. Its natural companion is responsibility, the responsibility to help—to act on your empathy. Empathy without responsibility is hollow. It would be like identifying with a crying child but doing nothing about what made her cry—not trying to alleviate her hunger, fear, or frustration. In the progressive worldview, progressives, as citizens, should be both empathetic and responsible.

Empathy and responsibility combine to characterize the relationship between the common good and individual freedom. Empathy for those in need—connection to them as fellow human beings—requires us to have a form of government that is
“
for the people
.” Empathy leads to fairness and equality as values. Responsibility for others requires that we do more than express compassion, that we act on these values and respond to another’s suffering. And responsibility for oneself—the idea that you cannot take care of others if you don’t take care of yourself—leads to a serious consideration of how self-interest balances with other values.

Empathy also places an important constraint on freedom.

The consideration principle:
The exercise of your freedom should not interfere with the freedom of others.

It is immoral to harm, enslave, or deny the fulfillment of others through the exercise of your freedom. This is a central principle of progressive thought. Consideration for the freedom of others is a progressive moral mandate. Consideration of others, when applied only to individuals, sounds like a limitation. But when applied to everyone, it becomes an optimization principle, because others would be applying it to
you
—working to guarantee you as much freedom as possible. It is a form of the Golden Rule.

The consideration principle (generalized):
Everyone gains more freedom when everyone interferes the least with the freedom of others.

This is a central component of the progressive notion of a free society. But it is only half of the story, the empathy half, which is about freedom from—from the interference of others. The responsibility half has to do with positive action, not just noninterference. Empathy says that because you want to be free, you, as an empathetic person, will want others to be free as well. Responsibility says that you have a moral requirement to act on your empathy—a responsibility to act to help make others free as well. That is what social responsibility is all about. Empathy plus responsibility together entail a broader principle than the mere consideration principle.

The responsibility-for-freedom principle:
Everyone becomes most
free when everyone acts positively to maximize the freedom of others.

This, of course, includes not interfering with the freedom of others. But it goes much further. Social responsibility requires positive action to ensure the freedom of others, rather than passively not interfering with it. This too is central to the traditional American approach to freedom. It arises from empathy plus responsibility—the defining values of nurturant parenting. It is because Americans have adopted the responsibility-for-freedom principle that so many progressive freedoms have been expanded over the generations. It is because Americans have traditionally taken responsibility for freedom that freedom has been progressive and dynamic.

For me, the proudest moments in American history have been our gains in freedom. It began with America’s independence from the rule of King George III and the establishment of a democracy—beautiful, but with imperfections. We gained freedom from external authoritarian rule, but there was still freedom to be gained at home. The freeing of the slaves was a momentous step. Woman suffrage followed, freeing women to vote. And the establishment of the national park system was a great step forward in environmental freedom.

The New Deal was a milestone: Crucial freedoms—freedom from want and fear—were deepened by extending the use of the common wealth for the common good in the name of freedom. The labor movement, freeing working people from the authoritarian economic domination of big business over individual workers, championing and getting the eight-hour day and five-day week, fairer wages, and benefits. The defeat of fascism—
overcoming the idea that some races and nationalities are inherently better than others and should rule those that are “inferior” by brute force, slaughtering those deemed so inferior they do not even have a right to live. The fascist idea is the very opposite of America’s responsibility-for-freedom principle.

Then came the great freedom movements of the ‘60s and ‘70s—advancing freedoms for racial and ethnic minorities and women, and the environmental movement that made enormous progress in all areas of environmental freedom. Another move toward freedom was the recognition of past outrages against freedom by Americans—outrages against our own population, the slaughter of Native Americans and the internment of Japanese Americans.

These are advances made possible by empathy and responsibility. Empathy turns the visceral sense of another’s lack of freedom into your lack of freedom. Responsibility calls on you to do something about it. What goes with responsibility—strength, competence, and endurance—has mattered greatly as well: the strength and competence of those who built the freedom movements and their endurance over decades to keep fighting in the face of great hurdles. These freedom movements, and the people who created and sustained them, have made me most proud to be an American.

E pluribus unum
, the ideal of a united America, is made possible through empathy, which connects us to each other and insists that freedom for me is possible only if there is freedom for you. We saw a revival of this ideal just after September 11, 2001, when all Americans were New Yorkers, and New Yorkers—as well as those who flocked to New York to help—showed not a hollow empathy but a progressive empathy made real by responsibility, strength, competence, and endurance.

There are six basic kinds of progressives, based on the principal modes of progressive thought, each with its own basic understanding of freedom.

Freedom is fundamentally social, political, and economic in character. It consists in sufficient social, political, and economic resources to enjoy basic freedoms:

• Pay in proportion to contributions to society through work
  

• Equality of social and political power
  

• A baseline of property sufficient to live a healthy life with basic needs met
  

• A baseline of social capital sufficient to function effectively in society
  

• Sufficient collective economic power to bargain effectively for wages and benefits
  

The labor movement has historically been central to these concerns, as has the antipoverty movement and other social justice movements.

In the international arena, socioeconomic progressives have seen foreign policy as fulfilling the UN Declaration of Human Rights in the UN Charter. Accordingly, they have turned their attention to human-level issues: human rights in general; women’s rights and population issues (governed by the level of women’s education and participation in society); the international slave and sex trade; global public health and environmental issues; third-world development, poverty, and hunger;
genocide, political violence, and refugee issues; the rights of indigenous peoples to maintain their traditional culture. In the service of these concerns, they have looked to international cooperation across nations, to international organizations concerned with these issues; and to person-to-person interventions (for example, Doctors Without Borders).

In the arena of Islamic terrorism, socioeconomic progressives have promoted nonviolent forms of international cooperation and intervention: cutting off financing for radical Islamic schools and offering free educational alternatives, promoting alternatives in popular culture, religion, and education to radical Islam; promoting women’s rights and education in Islamic countries; promoting economic development in places where that could curb a culture of terrorism. They have also promoted sensible forms of homeland security—security of ports, containerized shipping, railroads, chemical factories, and nuclear power plants—as well as strengthening responders like firefighters and police.

They are members of, or represent, groups that have been or currently are oppressed, economically and socially. They seek redress, as well as recognition for their diverse contributions to culture.

They support the promotion and preservation of environmental freedom in all its forms:

• Freedom of connection with the natural world
  

• Freedom from environmental harm
  

• Freedom from destructive impositions of industrialization
  

This requires preservation and extension of common property (parks and preserves, rivers, oceans, and wetlands); protection of species and their habitats; protection from pollution and poisoning; and the maximal separation of the built-up and natural landscapes.

Freedoms here are the basic political liberties: freedom of speech, the press, information, assembly, and religion; protection of rights: voting rights, right to a fair trial, right to privacy, equal rights before the law; the right to earn a living—get a job without discrimination, to start a business, and so on.

Progressive libertarians focus on or campaign for such things as freedom to copy files over the Internet and free use of certain forms of intellectual property: computer operating systems; computer programs; artistic products such as music, videos, movies, newspaper and journal articles. They also campaign for protection of private information on the Internet or in computer files.

In traditional Western religions—Judaism, Christianity, and Islam—God is seen as a nurturant parent, offering unconditional love with a nurturant morality, and calling for empathy with responsibility for those less able to take care of themselves. Spiritual freedom lies not in heaven but living a moral life on earth.

Some spiritual progressives have no notion of God as a person (Buddhists, Taoists) or no religion at all. What makes them spiritual progressives is a nurturant morality that calls for an empathetic connection with others and with the physical world
that includes a commitment to an alleviation of suffering in oneself and others.

Nurturant morality shuns the illegitimate use of power over others to gain advantage or to harm. Antiauthoritarian progressives focus on freedom from such illegitimate uses of power, whether by government, corporations, religions, or individuals, in all areas of life.

For example, the antiwar movement focuses on the illegitimate use of military power and inhuman military weaponry, such as nuclear weapons. The business ethics movement focuses on the power of corporations to harm. The means used is public shame—shame on the administration for starting a war on false pretenses, using tactics that impose large numbers of casualties on innocent civilians, and using torture; and shame on corporations for producing products that harm consumers or the general public.

In addition to these six modes of thought, there are five types of progressive attitudes. Some progressives are idealists, unwilling to compromise their principles and unwilling to accept half measures. Some are pragmatists, who want to optimize their principles but are willing to compromise in order to get things to work. Some are real-world pragmatists, who want the economy to function, the educational system to teach children, the health system to keep us well, the Social Security system to keep people out of poverty in old age. They are willing to compromise their principles when their principles are at odds with how the world
works. Some are political pragmatists, who want to maximize their political clout and are willing to compromise their principles for that purpose.