On Board
I probably won’t come as a surprise to most folks who read “Our America”, that I participate in a “political” online discussion board. Sometimes that board can get out of control. Occasionally there is a reasonable discussion, but mostly it’s folks venting their views. When I write, I try to take a “moderate” approach –tempering idealism with practical politics. It’s tough – sometimes I feel like I’m the “President of the Joe Manchin fan club” – and I’m not. But there does seem to be a lot of my fellow Democrats who are willing to – as Mom would say – “cut off their nose to spite their face”. Kicking Manchin out of the Democratic Party does not solve any problem, but it does mean that the Democrats lose all control in the Senate.
Wide Awake
So in the middle of last night I was in a discussion (hoping to fall back asleep). The issue: what conservatives think about their “liberal” friends. In case you missed it, I am a liberal, in the classic, 1960’s Robert Kennedy/Hubert Humphrey sense. I don’t even like the term “progressive”, it’s an alternative definition accepted because Republicans somehow managed to demonize the word “liberal”. It’s my term, it’s my ideology, and I’ll call myself what I want, and what I am: a liberal. So there.
The “conservative” defined a “liberal” as someone who is uninterested in individual liberty. Conservatives, he said, believed in the rights of individuals. Individuals ought to be able to do what they want, without government interference. He essentially quoted Jefferson’s inalienable rights – life, liberty, and the pursuit of property. (Yes – I know Jefferson said happiness, but Jefferson was paraphrasing John Locke – and Locke used the term property as a symbol of economic success. Jefferson meant economic happiness, kind of the same thing.)
Personal Freedom
“Liberals”, in his interpretation, believe it is the role of government to intervene and restrict those rights. And by doing so, they violate the very tenets of American governing philosophy: the ascendence of the individual over the group. Conservatives believe in the absolute importance of individual freedom, so much so, that when the government tries to “take from the individual” to aid another individual or group, it’s just wrong – to them it’s Un-American.
As a liberal, I agree with my conservative friend on the importance of individual freedom. Where he and I differ is a matter of balance. In his view, individuals need to have the “freedom” to deny their services to others based not just on their ability to pay, but on their identity, or their race, or their gender, or their ethnicity. “My freedom is to not serve you in my restaurant, or bake you a wedding cake, or allow you to stay in my hotel. It is more important than your freedom to your sexual identity, or your ethnicity or race”.
Separate but Equal
This is the same argument used in the Jim Crow Era – the famous “separate but equal” of the Plessy versus Ferguson Supreme Court case. That was about Black people riding in “White” railroad cars in Louisiana. The state had a law separating cars by race. But ultimately the railroad was a privately owned company – and the railroad owner had an inalienable right to happiness. The Court ruled that as long as that individual provided a “separate but equal” car, then it was OK. Plessy codified Jim Crow segregation from the 1890’s until 1954, when the Supreme Court ruled that separating by race was inherently unequal, taking away the individual freedom of those separated out.
As a liberal, that’s my point. Individuals freedom is not as simple as “I do what I want”. It also has to deal with how one person’s actions impacts another’s freedom to do what they want. And that is not just an individual liberty balance, it’s also an economic balance. If one has a greater economic power, then they are able to exercise their freedom “more” than those who did not have the means.
Means Testing Freedom
Freedom shouldn’t be based on the ability to pay. Freedom should be exactly as Thomas Jefferson wrote: an inalienable, granted by our Creator, right. So government has a bigger job than just saying – you have freedom, go for it. Government must balance the freedoms of all individuals, and guarantee the optimum freedom to all. That “optimum” may not be “maximum” freedom, because “maximum” for one may well infringe on the “maximum” for another. And that’s the balance that liberals look to the government to provide.
And liberals would expand on Jefferson’s “happiness”. If you can’t feed yourself, or your children, you aren’t happy. If you can’t express your ideas and beliefs in the public space, you aren’t happy. So it’s more than just a balance of individual rights, it’s an economic balance to provide a “base line” of “happiness” for all. And that’s where my conservative friends jump off of the train, segregated or not. They believe that our government goes “off the tracks” when it tries to balance economic opportunities for all. As a liberal, I believe that the government has a duty to make sure that the basics of life: food, shelter, health, and education are provided.
I don’t think my conservative friend agrees with that. He used what he thinks is a “derogatory” word to describe my version of Jefferson’s ideal: socialism. I don’t agree with that description, I believe it is what every enlightened democracy should provide for all its people, a social-capitalism. Social-capitalism is Jeffersonian individualism tempered by recognition that not everyone can economically “compete” equally.
That’s the discussion that went on a 2:47 AM. Then it was time to get back to sleep – counting railroad cars instead of sheep – and have sweet social-capitalistic dreams – Good Night!!
