Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea Page 13
Here is what the liberty frame looks like:
There are within society oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior, or political views.
Liberty is freedom from those oppressive restrictions.
Liberty is also freedom to do positive things you feel you have the right to be free to do given your way of life, or the way of life you think you should have.
To a conservative populist, the oppressive restrictions are called political correctness. They are seen as imposed by a liberal elite. Conservative populists resent that elite.
Exactly what is oppressive to a conservative populist, and why? So far as I can tell, the following are the sources of such oppression:
Their way of life is governed by strict father morality, which can determine what positive things they feel they have a right to do.
The oppressive restrictions arise from the condition that one is not free to interfere with the freedom of others. The question is, What counts as interfering with the freedom of others?
Suppose that “interference” either involves systemic causality, which they do not recognize as valid, or assumes nurturant morality, which they reject. Any such restriction against interference will not be seen as valid.
The everyday things they feel they should have a right to do are being blocked by either a liberal view of morality or a liberal understanding of systemic causation. That feels like oppression by uppity liberals who think they know what’s right and how ordinary folks should live.
Liberals who speak of such interference are seen as either crazies, extremists, elites who don’t know how real people live, or uncaring authoritarians.
Conservative Christians often speak of “religious liberty”—what they see as the political freedom to practice their religion as they choose to. That practice includes spreading the “good news,” the truth of Gospel. They do not see this as an imposition on the freedom of others, since they are helping others by communicating to them how to avoid the torture of hell and achieve the bliss of heaven. Displaying the Ten Commandments in schools and courts is seen as offering freedom from hell, not imposing on freedom. School prayer is a perfect example of direct action: one child saying one prayer on one occasion. Saying a prayer, or reading a passage from the Christian Bible, is simple and natural in that way of life. To see school prayer as a harmful act requires, first, empathy with non-Christians and atheists—sinners who are going to hell—and second, the effects of peer pressure and fears of in-group exclusion, which are complex.
Other conservatives speak of owning and using guns in terms of liberty, of freedom from taxation as a liberty issue, and of liberty being at stake in restrictions on suburban and exurban development.
The word “liberty” tends to be used more by conservatives than by progressives because it focuses on individual freedom of choice and not on the imposition of that choice on others. And it tends to be used more by, and for audiences of, conservative populists, who see themselves as culturally oppressed by values they don’t believe in or views of causation that make no sense to them.
Progressives, because of empathy and their sense of systemic causality, pay particular attention to how everyday acts can impose on the freedom of others: how driving SUVs can dirty the air and contribute to global warming; how secondhand smoke can be harmful to nonsmokers; how taking water from a river can kill the fish and other aquatic life; how dams can lead to salmon extinction; how hate speech both reflects and reinforces hate, and contributes to violence; how Wal-Mart’s low prices lead to low pay, no benefits, higher taxes, and the destruction of communities; how cutting down old-growth forests eliminates habitats for species. Conservative populists often see these acts either as imposing on their values, or as not making any sense.
POPULISM AND IDENTITY
Conservative populism is also about identity as an ordinary American. The main areas of identity are family, religion, community, love of the land, forms of recreation, work, and health.
Here are some examples of conservative freedoms—or liberties—that conservative populists claim are either under attack or already taken away and need to be reclaimed.
The freedom to decide what is going to be taught to my children—what is taught about history, science, sex, religion, and morality—should fit my values.
The freedom to use or dispose of my property as I see fit—without government intervening with antisprawl laws, or zoning, or environmental regulations.
The freedom to get rid of waste in the easiest and cheapest way—burning leaves, dumping waste in streams, burying garbage in the earth or the ocean.
The freedom to have a wood fire in my fireplace—regardless of its contribution to local pollution.
The freedom to defend myself and my family with any kind of gun I decide I need—even automatic weapons.
The freedom to hunt—regardless of whether I am hunting an endangered species.
The freedom to use any kind of vehicle anywhere—an SUV to drive over rough terrain, a snowmobile in Yellowstone, a dune buggy in the desert, a speedboat on a lake—without having to worry about sensitive habitats or other people’s sensibilities.
The freedom to extract and use any natural resource to make a living—without having to care about environmental effects.
The freedom to take water from a river to irrigate my farm—regardless of its consequences for fish or other aquatic life in the river.
The freedom to make as much money as I can, as long as it is legal.
The freedom to hire or promote or fire anyone I please—without having to worry about discriminatory hiring or labor policies.
The freedom to offer any wage to an employee—with-out having to worry about unions, minimum wage laws, working conditions, or medical benefits.
The freedom to make and sell any kind of product—free of governmental agencies judging whether it is safe or effective.
The freedom to grow and sell any kind of food—with-out having to worry about pesticide use or food safety regulations.
The freedom to build and develop anywhere—wet-lands, sensitive habitats, beaches, riverbanks, flood-plains.
The freedom to say anything to anybody—even if the language is degrading or hurtful.
The freedom to practice and promulgate my religion—even in public, using public facilities.
The freedom to do business without the threat of class action lawsuits.
The freedom to choose among the widest range of consumer products possible at the lowest possible prices—without having to worry about third-world sweatshops, employee working conditions, effects on small businesses, old-growth forests, pollution, monocultures.
The freedom to decide how I spend the money I earn.
The freedom to live in a community without threats to myself or my family from immoral people—drug addicts, ex-convicts, sexual predators, pornographers, gays.
The freedom to live in a country and a community with values I identify with—values that do not threaten my sense of who I am, what I should be, or how I should bring up my children.
To ideological conservatives, these are fundamental freedoms, and the threat or loss of them constitutes tyranny, a threat to America’s defining ideal—liberty—a threat so visceral it threatens their very identity and way of life. This threat is what fuels the culture wars and defines conservative populism.
What makes these conservative views of freedom? And what makes these freedoms to conservatives?
The answer is strict father morality, as contrasted with nurturant morality. Strict father morality says that every moral adult has incorporated the right values and the right discipline, which has earned him or her the freedom to be his or her own moral authority. The natural and moral mechanism for this freedom is, as I have explained, the unconstrained free market, in which the free pursuit of individual self-interest maximizes the self-interest of everyone and thus best serves the community and the country.
Conserv
ative freedom is the ultimate in freedom to and freedom from for each person, individually. It maximizes individual initiative and individual responsibility. Strict morality contrasts with nurturant morality, which you’ll recall focuses on individual responsibility (taking care of yourself) and social responsibility (caring about and working actively for the freedom of others).
Each of the above forms of freedom fits strict morality and violates nurturant morality. The violations occur in the area of empathy, the responsibility to act on that empathy, the recognition of systemic causation, and the social necessity to build a shared infrastructure that is necessary for the achievement of individual goals.
For example, many of the conservative freedoms—say, unlimited property rights or unconstrained business practices—can adversely affect other people, thus interfering with other people’s freedoms. Under nurturant morality, that interference with the freedom of others disqualifies the practice as a freedom; it need not under strict father morality, if the interference doesn’t count as interference under strict father morality, or if the causation involved is systemic, not direct.
A PROGRESSIVE POPULISM
Conservative populism is based on strict father morality, its role in personal and cultural identity, and the way it extends simple freedom to the conservative version of freedom. The conservative message machine has created conservative populism by branding liberalism as an oppressor and conservative values as patriotic. The result has been to forge a conservative populist identity, within a moral and cultural war of conservative liberty versus oppression by the liberal elite.
Just as conservatives are more aware of, and able to articulate, their moral values, so they are more aware of the freedoms implied by those values. Progressives are less aware of, and less able to articulate, their implicit (real and felt) moral values and so are less aware of the concept of freedom that implicitly follows from those values but is rarely explicitly discussed. Progressives have a sense that conservatives are in the process of taking their freedoms, but those freedoms must be articulated if they are to be preserved and expanded. Here are progressive freedoms that are now being threatened or have been lost:
The freedom to be told the truth by my government: freedom of open information.
The freedom to have my children taught the truth and taught about the diversity of values in our culture and other cultures.
The freedom to find a good job and make a decent living at it through work.
The freedom to use or dispose of my property so as not to interfere with the freedom of others, and the freedom from the harmful use or disposal of property by others.
Freedom from pollution by others.
Freedom from the threat of those possessing and able to use deadly weapons, except for those exercising legitimate police powers.
The freedom to connect with the physical environment and the living things in it, and to see both preserved so that my progeny and progeny of others can do so as well.
The freedom to explore our common natural heritage without harming it.
The freedom to enjoy the preservation of our waterways and oceans and the aquatic life therein.
The freedom to live in a country free from discrimination and committed to reversing the harmful effects of past discrimination.
The freedom to buy safe products—guaranteed through regulation.
The freedom to eat safe food—food that is pesticide free, hormone free, antibiotic free, free of genetically modified ingredients, healthy, and uncontaminated.
The freedom to speak freely without harming anyone by the use of degrading or hurtful language and without being so harmed.
The freedom to practice my religion, if I have one, privately, without imposing it on the public or using public resources to support or promulgate it, and without having any other person’s religion imposed on me.
The freedom to do business freely and ethically—with the public protected through both government regulation and the civil justice system.
The freedom to choose among the widest range of consumer products possible at the lowest possible prices produced by ethical businesses—businesses that avoid third-world sweatshops, child labor, detrimental working conditions, detrimental effects on small businesses, preserve old-growth forests, minimize pollution, do not impose monocultures.
The freedom to make use of the common infrastructure provided by the use of the common wealth for the common good—highways and other physical infrastructure, public schools, communication systems, public health systems, disaster relief systems, the banking system, the courts.
The freedom to live in a community where my family and I are as secure as possible and where everyone is treated fairly and humanely.
The freedom to a private life not only free from government interference but also where government actively protects privacy—of personal information, of communication, of personal and family medical decisions, of sex lives, of personal associations.
The freedom to live in a corruption-free political system minimally affected by concentrations of wealth.
The freedom to live in a balanced economic system where assets do not unduly accrue to the wealthy and where there is no transfer of wealth from the general populace to the wealthy.
The freedom of access to information through media minimally affected by concentrations of wealth and political power.
Freedom from corporations exercising governing powers over one’s private life with no accountability—HMOs making fateful decisions about permitted medical treatments, insurance companies determining whether you can be insured, auto companies deciding how much gas you will have to use, food companies deciding how healthy your foods will be, credit card companies deciding what you will pay to borrow money.
The freedom to live in a country and a community governed by the traditional progressive values of empathy and responsibility—where leaders care about people and act responsibly toward them and where citizens care about each other and act responsibly toward each other and toward their country and their community.
These freedoms are consistent with progressive values—traditional American values. They are the freedoms we ought to have. Some of them have been taken away. Some are being taken away. In other cases, America has made progress toward them and the progress has been, or is being, reversed. Still other freedoms are implicit in our values but as yet unrealized.
Some of these are discussed widely, such as freedom from discrimination, from the effects of wealth on elections, from government intrusions into privacy. But the generalization is rarely made: These are all progressive freedoms. They all come from the same source, the traditional progressive values of empathy and responsibility. These are the values that lie behind our Constitution and our principal founding documents. And it has been the expanding realization of the freedoms defined by these values that we are most proud of.
Moreover, these are the freedoms that should underlie a truly progressive populism, not merely an economic populism. Populism is about identity—identity as an ordinary American, not just economic self-interest. One of the major components of identity is one’s value system: strict, nurturant, or biconceptual (strict in some areas, nurturant in others). Conservatives have swung a preponderance of biconceptuals to their side by repeating conservative values—including conservative ideas of freedom—over and over on issue after issue, while putting down progressive values. But biconceptuals have progressive values as well as conservative ones. Progressives can appeal to biconceptuals through communicating progressive values and progressive ideas of freedom—conveyed honestly, assertively, and repeatedly, while criticizing conservative values, either explicitly or implicitly.
The key to appealing to biconceptuals is understanding which nurturant values are identity defining. Here are some of the key forms of identity that embody nurturant values:
Identification with the land: either through its beauty, a sense of place, the way one makes a living (farming, ranch
ing), or recreation (hunting, fishing, hiking, camping). Protection of the land can be seen as protection of the self; a threat to the land can be seen as a threat to the self. Freedom is the freedom to continue enjoying or using the land.
Identification with one’s community: Biconceptuals seem to prefer nurturant communities, with leaders who care about the citizens and are responsible to them, and where citizens care about each other and are responsible to each other and to the community as a whole. A threat to the community is a threat to the self; community improvement is self-improvement. Freedom is the freedom to live in and serve such a community.
Identification with one’s religion: Most Christians are progressive Christians, seeing God as a nurturant parent offering unconditional love, grace (metaphorical nurturance), understanding, forgiveness, and protection, and Christ as a model of caring about others and acting responsibly on that care (healing the sick, feeding the hungry, protecting the oppressed, uplifting the downtrodden, serving the poor). Freedom is freedom from the burden of sin, attained through good works (which earn restitution and forgiveness). Progressive Christians reject the idea of God as a punitive strict father, commanding obedience, demanding discipline, severely punishing, and threatening hell. Biconceptual Christians can be appealed to through their progressive side.