Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea (6 page)

Another common metaphor for the idea of achieving a purpose is the idea of getting a desired object. According to this metaphor,
the freedom to achieve one’s purposes is, metaphorically, the lack of any interference in getting and keeping desired objects.

This fundamental metaphor thus creates a conceptual link between freedom and property: Freedom is, in this metaphor, the freedom to acquire and keep property. Moreover, the property itself can be metaphorical, such as intellectual property.

But there is also a literal link between freedom and property. Considerable wealth can buy many kinds of freedom—the freedom to travel and live where one wants, to acquire objects, to have protection (guards, gated communities), to do things the less wealthy cannot afford to do. Both literally and metaphorically,

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Property means freedom
.

But it is often contested whether certain property is properly yours. Take the issue of taxes. Conservatives say, “It’s your money. The government wants to take it away.” But almost everyone gains part of his or her income through the use of a government-supplied infrastructure (highways, the Internet, the banking system, the courts). Is there a moral debt to pay to maintain that system? If there is, then not all of your income is “your money.” You may have it in hand, but you owe some to your country. “Your money” is your income minus that debt, that is, minus taxes. Needless to say, this is a contested idea.

If harm, coercion, and limitations on property interfere with freedom, then security is a guarantee that such freedom will be preserved. Just as physical harm and physical coercion are the prototypical forms of harm and coercion—what we first think when we think of harm and coercion—so physical security is the prototypical form of security. Physical security of oneself and one’s property is central to the concept of freedom.

And just as harm and coercion come in many forms—economic, social, psychological—so security does as well. If economic harm is a loss of money or property sufficient to affect normal functioning, so economic security is a protection from economic harm.

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Security guarantees freedom from harm
.

What is contested here is: Who is responsible for guaranteeing which forms of freedom, the individual or the state? With Social Security, there is a government guarantee of at least some freedom from economic harm in old age. Conservatives say that the moral obligation to guarantee freedom from economic harm in old age rests with the individual, not the government.

Rights are understood via a small complex of metaphors. First, they are metaphorical possessions, things you can have and that people can try to take away. Rights are a metaphorical form of property.

Second, rights are like metaphorical tickets to a certain kind of freedom; a right grants you free passage to a desired situation, that is, a situation in which you can engage in a desired course of action (a right to speak your mind) or receive some benefit (a right to unemployment insurance).

There are kinds of rights; for example, moral rights, legal rights, and political rights. Rights are specific to particular domains: morality, law, and politics. A moral right may not be a legal right or a political right.

Some rights are quite simple-minded. Suppose you buy a ticket to a movie. That ticket gives you the right to a seat for the duration of the film.

In law, real property (real estate) is understood as a bundle of
rights, rights of use, access, extraction, and transfer. Each of these confers a different kind of benefit. Since the rights that constitute property are themselves understood as kinds of property, it is not surprising that such rights can be bought and sold.

Other rights cannot be bought, sold, or transferred. Laws specify which rights function in which way. For example, a couple may give a child up for adoption, that is, they may transfer to others the right to raise their child. Other rights are not transferable, such as spousal rights, the right to file a joint tax return, the right to community property, or the right to receive pension benefits upon the death of a spouse. Rights may be property, but there are laws governing the transfer of property.

Because rights are conceptualized as property, and since taking away property is conceptualized as a form of harm, taking away a right is conceptualized as an imposition on freedom.

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Taking away a right is imposing on freedom
.

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Guaranteeing a right is guaranteeing a freedom
.

What is contested here is whether a given right exists, or should exist. For example, does a homosexual couple in a stable and loving relationship have a right to marry? Should they be
free
to marry? Should a farmer whose farm is in a no-sprawl zone that prevents housing developments have the right to sell his farm to a developer? Should he be
free
to dispose of his property in any way at all that he chooses?

The link between freedom and human nature brings up the question of inalienable rights—human rights, rights that we have simply via our human nature and that cannot be given up or taken away, since we are and remain human beings. The Bill of Rights specifies those rights that cannot be taken away by a government.
They are specified in terms of freedoms: freedom of speech, association, religion, and so on.

There is a general principle behind inalienable human rights:

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Human rights confer the freedom to do what is natural and normal for any human being
.

It’s natural to eat and drink and sleep and to sit down when you’re tired. When African Americans were denied access to Woolworth lunch counters, to water fountains, and to hotels, they were being denied their inalienable rights. When Rosa Parks sat down on that bus, she asserted a human right.

If guaranteeing a right is guaranteeing a freedom—either a freedom from harm or coercion or a freedom to achieve some desired state—then someone must be responsible for guaranteeing that right. For every right, there is a responsibility. The freedoms that come from rights are meaningless in the absence of people carrying out those responsibilities.

In certain cases of legal rights, governments hire and pay people to carry out the responsibility of guaranteeing rights, the police and the courts. But, for the most part,

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A free society requires that its citizens, as a matter of civic duty, be responsible for helping to guarantee the rights of others, as well as our own rights
.

In short, rights are possessions that you acquire, and there is a debt to pay: civic duty, the responsibility to see that the rights of others are guaranteed.

Rights cannot be taken for granted. If not exercised, rights—the rights of all—may cease to exist. It is thus a civic responsibility to exercise one’s rights.

Responsibilities are often contested. If the indigent have a right to food so they don’t starve to death, who has the responsibility to feed them? Is it the state, through supplying food stamps paid for by taxes? Progressives see feeding the poor as a responsibility
required of the citizenry. Some conservatives argue that using tax money forces the responsibility on the public and that the responsibility should be freely undertaken, say, by private charities or churches. They see this as a matter of freedom—freedom from the forced imposition of a responsibility for someone else.

Justice is commonly understood in terms of moral accounting, a metaphorical system in which well-being is understood as a form of wealth, and harm as a taking of wealth. Justice, in this metaphor, is a balancing of the moral books—either punishment of the wrongdoer (paying one’s debt to society) or compensation of the victim by the wrongdoer (paying in recompense for the harm done). The books may be balanced in various ways: retribution—harm to the victim is balanced by harm to the perpetrator; and restitution—harm to the victim is balanced by a contribution to society, say, being sentenced to clean up the freeway or work in an AIDS hospice.

Imprisonment—taking away freedom—is a metaphorical (as well as a quite real) form of harm. Punishment by imprisonment for harm (physical or economic) is the metaphorical balancing of harm with harm, retributive justice.

The civil justice system uses lawsuits to punish a corporation for harming people (retribution) by forcing it to pay the victims (restitution). Under the metaphor of well-being as wealth, monetary compensation for harm (taking away well-being) is restoring the balance by giving real wealth to counter the loss of metaphorical wealth (well-being).

What does justice have to do with freedom? They are intimately intertwined by the following logic.

In punishing those who do harm (physical harm, economic
harm, or interference with one’s rights), we take justice to be a necessary deterrent that promotes freedom from harm, threat, and fear. In addition, through imprisonment (the taking of freedom), it can remove from society, at least for a time, those who have taken freedom from others both literally (through assault, rape, and murder) as well as metaphorically, that is, those who have caused harm, imposed coercion, or taken property.

Thus,

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Justice is required for freedom in a free society
.

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Injustice is therefore an imposition on freedom
.

Injustice—the failure to punish or compensate, or the punishment of the wrong person—leaves those who impose on the freedom of others free to continue to harm the innocent directly and contributes to a failure of deterrence, which contributes indirectly to the harm of those who are innocent. That is what makes injustice an imposition on freedom.

The converse is true as well.

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Freedom is required for justice
.

In a society run by tyranny or corruption, justice can be denied by the will of the tyrant or through corruption. For a system of justice to work, a minimal condition is freedom from tyranny and corruption. In our system of justice, the jury that decides the case must be able to exercise free will, tempered by reason and good judgment, which are to be checked by the other jurors. Moreover, a defendant must be able to be free to put up the best defense possible. Justice is denied if the jury is intimidated (and cannot exercise free will) or if the defendant is denied the opportunity to (that is, is not free to) put up his or her best defense.

Where is the contestation?

Progressives argue that, in many cases, justice—taken to be a strict eye-for-an-eye balancing of the moral books—is not required for freedom. Take the death penalty. It does not deter
murders, and so it does not contribute to freedom from harm. On the contrary, it violates human rights. It increases the amount of harm done in the world without preventing any. And it makes the state an agent of murder—an agent of ultimate harm toward its own citizens.

Conservatives counter that, without such punishment, our entire system of morality would break down. Without the death penalty, the books cannot be properly balanced. Moreover, the families of murder victims have suffered a loss. They often feel that their loss should be balanced by the loss of the murderer’s life.

Conservatives argue against the United States submitting to the jurisdiction of the World Court, which would probably convict some high U.S. officials as war criminals. Conservatives argue that, in giving up any sovereignty at all to a world body, the United States would be surrendering its freedom. Progressives counter that war criminals
should
be brought to justice no matter who they are, and especially if they are high U.S. officials, thus protecting people from harm and enhancing their freedom.

The rule of law has two aspects: the laws and their enforcement. Laws are guidelines for action.

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Ideally, laws function in the service of freedom, attempting to guarantee that there will be no serious harm, no undue coercion, and no taking of—or restricted access to—property
.

Enforcement is the use of force to guarantee that the laws will be followed. This use of coercion is seen as functioning positively in the service of freedom.

This idea was most famously expressed by Rousseau in his metaphor of the social contract—the exchange of absolute freedom
and its dangers, which threaten freedom, for freedom within a social order maintained by force, where most of the threat to an individual’s freedom from another’s violence is removed. Absolute freedom is exchanged for security, which guarantees other freedoms. Security yields order. Order is necessary for freedom.

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A threat to order is a threat to freedom
.

Progressives have long contested the absolute version of this principle, arguing that civil disobedience is often necessary for freedom, especially when the guardians of order are themselves unjust. But civil disobedience, which is usually limited and nonviolent, is conducted not to overthrow order and the rule of law, but rather to make them more just. Progressive protests of all sorts use civil disobedience, demonstrating for civil rights, workers’ rights, women’s rights, immigrant rights, gay rights, and so on. Recently, conservatives have discovered civil disobedience, with demonstrations for the “right to life” in cases of abortion, stem cell research, and euthanasia.

Freedom, equality, and fairness are linked, in the uncontested cases, by a tight logic. Rules by a dictator create inequality and unfairness. Only freedom—understood as self-government—permits equality and fairness. It is equality under the law that justifies the rule of law in a democracy. Justice—a balancing of the moral books—is seen as fairness and hence as equal treatment.

Fairness is, however, highly contested, as is equality. Here are some examples of what is considered fair:

• Equality of distribution (one child, one cookie)
  

• Equality of opportunity (one person, one raffle ticket)
  

• Procedural distribution (playing by the rules determines what you get)
  

• Equal distribution of power (one person, one vote)
  

• Equal distribution of responsibility (we share the burden equally)
  

• Scalar distribution of responsibility (the greater your abilities, the greater your responsibilities)
  

• Scalar distribution of rewards (the more you work, the more you get)
  

• Rights-based fairness (you get what you have a right to)
  

• Need-based fairness (you get what you need)
  

• Contractual distribution (you get what you agree to)