On Liberty.

Freedom is a slogan. Liberty is an abstraction. These words are
misused so often that their meaning becomes confused. Let's suppose
that freedom really is an ideal; what are the implications?

THE NECESSITY OF VICE. Consider a few basic rights: free thoughts, free
speech, free faith, free association. Freedom means the choice of what
to think, what to say, what to believe, whom to befriend -- to live at
one's own direction and not somebody elses. It means the ability to
choose what someone else will not approve.

Ponder that. Freedom to do what someone else thinks best is a choice of
one action, that is, no choice at all. If freedom is an ideal, then it
follows that vice must be tolerable. It means that a person must
tolerate unkind dispositions, absurd opinions, the popularity of
unworthy persons, and vicious habits of every variety. It means the
right for a person to do whatever he wants, as long as he hurts only
himself and nobody else. In particular, freedom means tolerance for the
usual vices of gambling, drunkenness, and fornication. Also worth
mention are drug use of all kinds, prostitution, polygamy, usury,
recklessness, fanaticism, ignorance, apathy, sloth, bestiality, cults,
divorce, decadence, advertising, dancing, SUV's, blasphemy, and mascara.
Which is not to say that any of these are necessarily good things, but
they are what freedom means: a person is allowed to make his own
decisions. If an act is forbidden, freedom is lessened, by definition.

It should not be surprising that historic champions of liberty have not
been pinnacles of virtue. King Henry VIII broke the power of the Roman
Catholic Church. Oliver Cromwell broke the power of kings. Neither is
remembered as a hero.

FREEDOM IS UNNATURAL. Now if liberty in the abstract is espoused by
almost everyone, why is it that so many of the real freedoms I've listed
are under assault and often illegal?

1. Leftists claim that hate is a learned thing. Quite the opposite:
tolerance is learned; xenophobia is innate. Social psychology has found
that formation of a group causes hostility to the out-group. Violence
against foreigners is not a sickness of the modern world. War is the
constant throughout history, back through legend, and into myth. Even
the ants fight each other. Is it surprising, then, that is easy to
condemn the evils that one does not practice? [For a full discussion of
the importance of intergroup conflict, see Howard Bloom, The Lucifer
Principle.]

2. Cognitive psychologists have shown that human reasoning about moral
questions is predictably biased. Faulty logic that opposes a person's
opinion is detected, and faulty logic that supports that opinion is
quietly accepted. [See the work of Paul Klaczinski.]

3. Even worse for Liberty, it has been proven that a person tends to
believe that others are more similar to one's self than they really are.
A famous study where college students were asked to walk around campus
wearing message boards reading "Eat at Joe's," and asked what percentage
of other students would consent, overestimated the number who would have
chosen the same as themselves. [Ross, Greene, House, 1977] As Dawes has
argued, it not strictly an error to use one's own choice as a cue to
predict the behavior of others. Nonetheless, it is a predictible and
consistent divergence from correct prediction of others' behavior.

The upshot of which is simple: a person underestimates the degree which
othes differ from him. He despises the differences which he does notice.
These natural dispositions constitute a human tendency towards
illiberty, which it is the duty of Liberals to oppose.

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A SWAMP OF LAW AND PHILOSOPHY. Though I may appear to ramble, this rant
is going to come back to topic.

Consider the United States Constitution. The 14th Amendment reads in
part, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the
privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any
State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due
process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal
protection of the laws." The phrase "equal protection of the laws" is
vague. If it just means that laws must be enforced consistently, it
says nothing new or interesting. To say that the law must treat
everyone equally borders on nonsense. The very purpose of the law is to
distinguish, to separate the guilty from the innocent.

According to traditional interpretation, "this language does not prevent
reasonable classification as long as all within a class are treated
alike." [T.J. Norton, The Contitution of the United States, its Sources,
and its Application, NY: World Publishing Co., 1922, 1940.]

A little insight as to what the government was thinking comes from the
15th Amendment, approved five years later. "The right of citizens of
the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United
States or by any State on account of race, color, or previous condition
of servitude." So one of the privileges of a citizen is to vote and a
classification which is not permissible is race.

The problem with these Amendments is that they don't tell the judges
where to stop. It is left to their whim what classifications are
reasonable.

The caprice of classification isn't limited to activist judges. Rather,
it has taken the central place in the ideology of modern leftist
liberalism, in which "Discrimination" has become the cardinal sin.
Their tactic is to tar opponents as hateful bigots and they apply it
consistently and with remarkable success.

It's very idealistic to say that a person may be judged on what he does
and not on what he is ; that actions freely chosen can cause a
distinction between persons but to discriminate on anything a person
does not choose is wrong. This seems to be the unspoken rationale
behind gay rights rhetoric. Admittedly, the value of Equality is a
lofty-sounding ethical principle. But try to live by it!

Men are not created equal. It is better to be strong than to be weak,
better to be smart than to be stupid, better to be friendly than to be
mean. Nobody would choose otherwise. Nobody argues that cripples
should be firemen, or morons physicists. So what does Equality mean?
A meaningful way to define it is to say that happiness of one person is
of equal to another's. Everyone counts for one, and nobody counts for
more than one. [J. Bentham, Morals & Legislation, 1789] Kant and Rawls
and other philosophers have given meaningful suggestions. But the
philosophers are irrelevent to the vitriolic leftist dogma, perched on
the border between sense and nonsense. In this twilight zone,
depression is mental illness and illness is not chosen. So if I'm just
cranky, I can be fired from my job, but a depressed worker is entitled
to accomodation. That's the exact opposite of treating persons on their
actions, based on dubious expertise of psychiatrists on what is or is
not "free choice."

A CLASH OF VALUES. The value of Equality necessitates figuring out what
free will is. I'll leave that question for now to the philosophers. If
Equality is rejected the question becomes idle. It is enough for
present purpose to recognize that Equality conflicts with Liberty and it
does so on the hallowed ground of the civil rights movement.

In America, racists are hated next to child molesters, Martin King is a
secular saint, and nobody dares question the results of the civil rights
movement. I don't have much to lose, so here it goes: It is a matter of
liberty for a person to decide whom to befriend or do business with.
Civil rights legislation takes away this choice. That doesn't mean it
was wrong ; Liberty may not be the only good or the ultimate good, and
the rights of one person conflict with another. Nonetheless, a person
must be honest to recognize when he has compromised one value against
another.

To illustrate, consider an egregious example. Two women did some
volunteer work with a social club. The club did not admit women as
members. They sued, and won grudging admission. What kind of victory
is that? How can the government require that somebody like a person?
Only a tyrant could enforce that. To mandate who must be admitted to a
private organization is the rejection of the right of free thought, of
difference of preference, the most basic of rights.

In the case of segregation involved large, powerful organizations, an
oppressed minority against an intolerant society. The rights of
Afro-Americans could only be achieved by curtailing other rights. This
is justifiable, it is even liberal. The case for certain civil-rights
protections for homosexuals is also reasonable. Everybody must be able
to find a job and a place to live. These laws are needful because the
minority groups face oppression from the majority.

WHERE DOES IT END? Where do you stop sliding down a slippery slope?
Jonathan Baron wrote, "Maybe the best precedent is to make the best
decision." Present civil rights laws forbid discrimination on race, sex,
sexual orientation, disability (within "reasonable accomodation,"
another swamp of judicial discretion), national origin, and certain age
groups. This is okay. There may be some other classifications which
should be added. I'm no expert here.

The real threat to liberty comes not from adding more minorities to
civil rights, but to expanding the realm of its application. It's one
thing for government to regulate the conduct of government, and of big,
powerful organizations. It's something else for it to dictate to
private citizens. Telling a private club what its standards for
admission must be is an absurdity.

Hate crime laws are worse. Murder and assault are already illegal. The
additional penalties are a way of punishing the criminal for what he was
thinking, which is to take away freedom of thought. A few years ago,
Seattle was declared a hate-free zone. It's as absurd as declaring it a
vanity-free, lechery-free, greed-free zone. Yes, freedom of thought
means the freedom to think wickedly. Yet worse than vice is tyranny!

Hate-crime legislation only affects persons who are felons anyhow, so is
comparitively unimportant. But freedom of speech is under assault also.
In Canada, it is now illegal to say that homosexuality is immoral.
Liberals of the non-leftist variety must keep a close watch to prevent
hate-speech laws from being enacted in America.

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THE TOLERANCE PARADOX. Some groups will the destruction of others. To
tolerate everybody would mean to tolerate those who would destroy
oneself, and the tolerant people would pass out of existence. Thus,
perfect tolerance is impossible.

Abstract as this sounds, it has a ready application. If the government
fights terrorism, it next looks to fight those who recommend it. This
puts the government at war with anybody who finds the law truly immoral.

A tolerant group must always risk its survival if it is to preserve its
freedom. There are many degrees of resistence to authority. A tolerant
society must permit some resistence to its power. The civil-rights
movement presents a good example of the use of disruption rather than
destruction to achieve its ends.

EXHORTATION. American history has been a mixed bag for the progress of
Liberty. It has seen the abolition of slavery, and racial and gender
equality at least on paper. These increase individual rights. It has
also seen the enaction of onerous vice laws, and safety regulations to
protect individuals from themselves. Consolidation has reduced
independence. Business, academia, government have all grown and become
more centralized, undermining independence and competition. Let's not
permit the past sacrifices be squandered. To choose freedom, one must
give up purity and safety. One must also be willing to compromise and
tolerate opposition.

The task is not easy. Perhaps the best that can be done is to slow down
the inevitable growth of central power. The task of the activist is
like that of the physician, to let the patient die at the slowest
possible rate. Liberal civilization could have a few more centuries
left in it, but only if citizens recognize what it is and are prepared
to defend it.
--Andy A. 2007-2008