Whose Freedom?: The Battle over America's Most Important Idea Page 8

  The flip side of this freedom to is a freedom from—freedom from the impositions of industrialization; from the noise, pollution, and crowds of cities; from jobs that keep one indoors at a desk for long hours; from the sprawl of monotonous suburbs; from advertisements; from the wasteland of TV and radio; from the less wonderful aspects of civilization: war, crime, unscrupulous businesses, and all the rest.

  Another form of environmental freedom is environmental health. We are harmed by the pollution of our air and water, mercury in the fish we eat, chemical poisons in our everyday lives—in cosmetics, vinyl, glue that holds down rugs, paint and varnish, cleaning fluids. As we have seen, harm interferes with freedom. Cleaning up our environment and building with green materials is in the service of freedom from environmental harm.

  Environmental harm, of course, is not just harm to us via the environment. It is also harm to the environment itself—harm to habitats and the species that need them to live, harm to frogs and fish and animals, harm to animal corridors, to rivers, to forests, to wetlands. Harm to the environment means less freedom to connect with nature and to sense who you are as an animal and where you came from evolutionarily. Harm to the environment also runs counter to empathy and responsibility for the natural world, and is destructive of the common wealth of future generations.

  Environmental freedom is achieved through the commonwealth principle, which is implicit in the progressive worldview, shaping our understanding of virtually every political issue. Because it is unconscious, it is not overtly stated, though it forms the basis of a great deal of progressive thought and is implicit in a wide range of policies.

  Most of the common wealth comes in the form of taxes. In feudal and colonial times, taxes were imposed by kings and nobles, who took a share of what the common people worked for and earned so they could pay for their lifestyles and support their armies. It is this view of taxation that the American colonists rebelled against. The kings and nobles were taking their property by force or intimidation. Property meant freedom and a loss of property meant an imposition on freedom. In the royal government frame, which characterized our understanding of government by kings and nobles, the benefits went to the kings and nobles, not to those who paid the taxes. Taxes in that frame were indeed an imposition on freedom, except to the extent that the king’s armies protected you.

  The reverse is true under the commonwealth principle: Citizens, who govern themselves, tax themselves collectively and receive the benefits, benefits coming from the pooling of resources—benefits far greater than their individual tax money, spent one person at a time, could possibly pay for. Fairness is seen as the principle that each should pay according to benefits derived, with higher tax rates for the wealthy than for the poor.

  The commonwealth principle is about taxation and the role of the state, which are absolutely required for freedom from a progressive perspective. Taxation pays to create and maintain the commonwealth, which makes freedom possible. Political freedom is not just about protection—from enemies, criminals, and the state itself. It is also about how the state builds the infrastructure of freedom.

  The common good is, furthermore, seen as being served when the common wealth is used to make sure that everyone is as free as possible from want and fear. The basis for this, as discussed below, is empathy.

  This is the traditional American idea that has been challenged seriously only recently in the radical conservative movement.

  FROM SIMPLE FREEDOM TO

  PROGRESSIVE FREEDOM

  It is now time to show how the nurturant parent model fills in the blanks in the overly vague simple freedom model to yield progressive freedom. Here are the blanks subject to contestation from Chapter 3:

  Harm: Harm comes in many forms—physical harm, poverty, discrimination, illness, lack of education, pollution, joblessness, and so on.

  Coercion: Freedom from being coerced to do things that are for neither your good nor the public good. (Don’t impose.)

  Property: Wealth and other forms of property can bring one freedom of many kinds. Correspondingly, failure to be paid fairly for the work contribution one makes to society can greatly restrict one’s freedom.

  The infrastructure of freedom is used by the wealthy more than by anyone else. The wealthy therefore have by no means earned all their property by themselves; the infrastructure of freedom, paid for by Americans in general, provided them much of their property, and they have a responsibility to pay other Americans back for the use of that infrastructure, and to maintain it in the future for others.

  Correspondingly, low income workers do essential labor to uphold the lifestyles of upwards of three-quarters of Americans. They work for a living but do not earn a living. They have earned more than they are being paid and deserve a bonus from the economy as a whole.

  Security: Protection is a progressive value—physical protection, as well as consumer protection, worker protection, safety nets, etc. Protection from harm contributes to freedom.

  Rights: Empathy and responsibility lead one to care about, and act to advance, the civil and legal rights, and hence the freedom, of oneself and others.

  Human rights: Empathy leads one to inalienable rights—the right to the basic things people need to survive and thrive, and experience basic freedoms.

  Justice: Nurturant morality stresses restitution over retribution whenever possible—especially for nonviolent people, the idea of rehabilitation over punishment for punishment’s sake.

  Responsibility for freedom: Responsibility (for both oneself and others) is a central nurturant value. Freedom is maximized when the members of a society take responsibility for the freedom of others. Freedom is lost when corporations carry out governing functions on a private basis, driven by profit, not responsibility, without accountability to the public. Privatization is thus to be disfavored whenever corporations might take on a function governing the lives and well-being of citizens.

  Order: People cannot function freely in physical, social, or political chaos—as our experience in Iraq shows all too painfully. Empathy requires that people be able to function, which requires an orderly society. Responsibility requires that each citizen contribute to that order—except in the case where nonviolent civil disobedience is overwhelmingly required for the sake of central freedoms.

  The rule of law: Empathy requires the protection of the law—for freedom not only from physical harm but also from the harmful effects of unscrupulous or irresponsible corporations. Prevention of harm is preferable. Harm interferes with freedom. That’s why policing and government regulations that prevent harm serve the cause of freedom.

  Where harm has occurred at the hands of an individual, the courts are needed to isolate the harmful person from the community, to rehabilitate the harmful person when possible, to punish so as to act as a deterrent in those cases where a deterrence effect is real, and/or to assign restitution, where there has been no violence or harm to others.

  Where harm has occurred at the hands of a corporation, the civil justice system is required in order to guarantee that substantial compensatory and punitive damages are paid by the guilty defendant in order to provide financial compensation to victims, financial deterrence to corporate wrongdoers, and payment to civil justice attorneys both for legal services rendered and for doing the work of the police and the prosecutor. Without substantial damages paid out to law firms, the system will break down because lawyers will no longer be able to function as police and prosecutors.

  Nature: Natural forces don’t count as interfering with freedom. Markets are not seen as natural; they are man-made for certain interests and not others. Markets can harm people when they are constructed for the interests of others.

  Since empathy and responsibility imply protection, failure to offer adequate protections from or assistance after natural forces does count for progressives as interfering with freedom. For example, prior to Hurricane Katrina, the Bush administration, as a matter of conservative political policy, re
directed levee repair funds to provide a tax break for the wealthy and to fund the Iraq War; ignored class-five hurricane warnings based on global-warming research; weakened, demoted, and defunded FEMA so that it could not respond quickly and forcefully to a class-five hurricane on the gulf. These were human causes, not natural causes, of the Katrina disaster and hence interfered with the citizens’ freedom.

  Competition: Winning competitions is not seen as harming other competitors and thereby restricting their freedom. But competitions must be freely entered into by all parties, and their rules must be fair—as empathy and responsibility require. Otherwise, the competition frame is not met and “winning” may be harming others and thereby restricting their freedom.

  So-called free-trade agreements often violate these conditions for competition. These agreements are often unfair, having been negotiated to the advantage of U.S. corporations, leaving out the consent of the individuals governed, especially indigenous populations, subsistence farmers, and factory workers in third-world countries.

  The agreements have often had the effect of making it impossible for indigenous populations to continue supporting themselves, forcing farmers off the land and into cities where they have no alternative to working in poverty, with horrendous labor conditions. They have also had the effect of outsourcing American jobs to other countries, lowering wage scales here, and forcing more Americans into the cheap labor trap. When this occurs, so-called free-trade agreements in the name of competition work against freedom both here and abroad.

  Self-government: The government should care about citizens and accept the responsibility to maximize their freedom while maintaining social responsibility.

  Openness: Freedom is best served when the government is open and honest, and works by trust.

  Fairness and equality: The government should empathize with those in need. The vastly unequal distribution of income and assets is undemocratic. Those who have more should contribute more. Political equality means that money and the influence that goes with it should be taken out of politics.

  These examples should show in detail how the values of the nurturant parent model apply to simple freedom and fill in the blanks to arrive at a concept of progressive freedom. In each case, the central progressive values of empathy and responsibility flesh out a progressive interpretation of concepts like harm, security, nature, and competition, extending simple freedom to progressive freedom. The result is a systematic extension: The same nurturant parent model extends all the concepts uniformly.

  In Chapters 8–11, we will examine how the strict and nurturant models apply to extend simple freedom in much greater detail for four cases: personal freedom, economic freedom, religious freedom, and freedom in foreign policy.

  EMPATHY AND FREEDOM

  Empathy forms the basis for the progressive worldview. It is empathy that makes us concerned about the freedom of others.

  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.

  THE FREEDOM MOVEMENTS

  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.