Vetting Political Decisions via a Framework of Liberty

How did Satan become the devil? His final mistake was that he placed a desire to have everyone do what is right above a desire to have them choose for themselves to do what is right. When they all would all be funneled through doing the right thing, he would get all of the glory. (See here for some additional detail, from the LDS book The Pearl of Great Price.)

We often can figure out what is right and wrong; we inherently know, given a sick child who requires a simple $20 medication to get on the road to recovery, that we ought to be personally ready to donate the $20 if we can. But it also really tugs at our heart strings when there are millions of these situations all across the country and we can't solve them all. We are aware of that construct called the government that could seemingly allow us to make sure the problems are rectified, by getting all of our fellow citizens on board to solve the problem together. Surely if everyone donates some, we could cover it, right?

Agency and Liberty

Agency and its sisters liberty and freedom, are among the greatest gifts that we possess as inhabitants of this planet. That we have the ability to choose our actions is perhaps the one attribute that separates us from all other beings. Agency gives us the ability to learn, to experience life, and to mold and direct our experiences. Liberty bequeaths to us personal growth, knowledge, and ultimately the ability to express love, hate, fear, faith, and true charity.

Without agency, we are nothing. There would be no point to our existence, and indeed our very existence simply wouldn't matter. Not to put too fine a point on it, but our agency is a gift that is to be defended to the point of losing our lives, even if we die only in an effort to secure or guard agency for others to exercise. There is no limit to the good that can be done with the gift of agency.

If you will hear it, we all chose agency before we started our mortal existence on our little planet. All of us have cherished it at some point in our lives; even the most insidious murderers and tyrants that have lived thrilled with the discovery that they could control their actions, and produce desired consequences from those actions when they were children. That some of us choose to do evil things with our liberty does not diminish from the goodness and wonder of liberty itself; it only shows the power it engenders.

Liberty carries with it certain conditions. You can choose your actions, but you cannot always choose the consequences of your actions (except by acting or not). If a young girl becomes sexually active, chances are she will eventually end up pregnant. If a boy decides to smoke a cigarette, he may become addicted and have a very hard time breaking the habit later.

Another condition is that we are ultimately responsible for our decisions. Often there are powerful forces that make it very hard to choose alternate actions (sometimes due to our previous choices), but nevertheless we are responsible in great measure for what we choose to do. An obvious corollary of this screams loud and clear:

We ultimately have nobody to blame but ourselves, and the sooner we accept that the sooner we can begin fixing our actions.

We've all heard the excuse, "the devil made me do it." The truth is, Satan lost the battle and he was not given the ability to coerce our every action. He is a powerful influence, but we cannot blame him. We must be prepared to take the bull by the horns, and own up to our actions. We are the masters of our own fate. This understanding allows us to find our own limits, and at what point we must begin to rely on the goodness of others to accomplish what we desire. True liberty engenders humility, and a higher likelihood of people leaning on each other in a sincere and synergistic fashion to accomplish goals for the greater good of society and the individual, without compromising individual liberty. Collectivists should be ashamed of themselves for thinking coercion via government can do better.

Finally, we must note that our agency does affect others. Our right to do something ends when we limit the agency of others where it is not justified. In other words, when we act we must consider carefully the effects that our actions have on others. We are only to act in a way that limits the agency of others when it is strictly justified (and the 'just' part of the word is key): if our neighbor murders someone else, we as a society have the responsibility to enforce consequences on our neighbor, even if that means depriving them of their liberty (as they just did the their victim). But we cannot do so until they commit the crime, and we must only do so commensurately with the crime. There is more to this simplistic view, but nonetheless the principles are true.

Government

Herein lies the great dilemma of every good person on the earth. By passing a law to get everyone to do the right thing (whatever it is we think that may be), is it really the same as if we were to try to educate everyone and convince them via the evidence and proper emotional appeal that it's a good idea? To get them to act of their own free will given the facts? These suffering people need our help, do they not, so is any degree of coercion justified?

I wish to introduce a concept that has made a deep impression on me. I will let a better man than I teach it:

Government is not reason. It is not eloquence. Government is force; like fire it is a dangerous servant -- and a fearful master.

—George Washington, 1797

So, suppose we pass a law that guarantees all the little children are taken care of by everyone contributing a little via a system of taxation. Is it the same as if they chose to help, just as you would spring to help that one little child who needed the $20 medication? The answer is a resounding no. Government is force, and it cannot be thought of rationally in any other terms. It is to be used only when force is truly justified, and the criteria for this should be very restrictive for obvious reasons.

Let's illustrate this in a small microcosm to shed some light on the issue. Suppose we have a child who is very sick, and needs the $20 of medication. You are in the room, your neighbor is in the room, and a police officer (representing the government) is also there. You don't have all $20, but you and your neighbor combined could scrounge up the cash without too much trouble. So you turn to the police officer, and instruct him (with his trusty gun at his side) to go through your wallet and your neighbor's wallet and find $10 each, and go get the medicine for the child. You and your neighbor both are not bankrupted by this, and the child is cured.

There's only one problem. Curing the child by reaching into your neighbor's wallet is theft. If you had stolen money directly from your neighbor to buy the medication with the proclamation, "it is for the greater good!" would that be okay? Note that I didn't state whether the neighbor wanted to volunteer the $10 or not. It doesn't matter. You (and the officer) have violated your neighbor's individual liberty and effectively committed theft against his will to do something seemingly benevolent. You saved a child, isn't that worth it? If you think that is worth it, then at what point do you draw the line?

The line must be drawn as soon as the choice goes beyond your own. If your neighbor murdered the child in cold blood, then the officer should arrest him and he loses his freedom as a direct consequence for doing so. But if the neighbor is otherwise not involved with the child, then he has no requirement to pay the $10. He has a moral obligation to help where he can; but the government cannot and should not enforce that, or else the original motivation (charity and love) is lost.

Consider a few of the unanticipated consequences of forcing people to help others in this manner.

1. Those who are helped become dependent on the government, and may assume that they will always be helped. They may develop an entitlement problem, and begin to demand the government solve other problems for them at the expense of others. They are less likely to find a way to fix their situation for the long run, because they know that due to the 'benevolence' of the people via the government they'll be taken care of.
2. Those who are forced to hand over money to the government may then not go out of their way to help anyone individually, even when they can, because they are "doing their part" already as, say, a taxpayer. (Yes, our income taxation system in the US is definitely forced because if you don't pay, armed officers eventually arrest you and you face still penalties and/or prison time.)
3. The helper and the helped become disconnected, and people over time lose a sense of what it means to help, who they are helping, and whether what they are doing is helping at all. Those who are helped lose a sense of gratitude, and in fact begin to view the nameless masses helping them as if they are not hurt at all by any of this.

Negative knock-on effects from government intervention always show up in the long term, especially when it boils down to a question of agency.

How to Save the World

We all have an innate desire to provide relief from pain and suffering. There is nothing wrong with this desire; in fact, it is definitely a good quality to nurture. But how we choose to do the helping is a seminal question. The right question to ask is not just, "how do we save the world?" but rather, "how do we save the world, the right way?"

Think of the US invasion of Iraq in the 2003-2010 time frame. The US invaded, toppled the government, and established a regime that is based on democratic elections and a constitution (the latter being the more important aspect, but that's a discussion for later). Our soldiers fought insurgents and others, being told and believing that they were giving freedom to the Iraqi people. Those soldiers had the best of intentions, and their hearts were not in the wrong place. However, was it right for the leaders of the US to invade Iraq, even if the only purpose was to give the Iraqi people freedom (which it certainly was not)?

You guessed it: given the principles of agency the answer is no. You cannot force liberty on other people, just like you can't force them to do good things and expect the outcome to be the same as if they chose good willingly. If all of the Iraqi people rose up in rebellion against Saddam Hussein to establish liberty, they would have won. However, if they weren't willing to fight for it themselves then we have no business forcing it on them. Forced liberty is no liberty at all. Again, a quote from the founding fathers is appropriate. The whole speech is longer, so please digest it in its entirety:

Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America's] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.

But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.

She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.

She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.

She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.

--John Quincy Adams, July 4 1821

You very well could have the word 'she' above be replaced with 'liberty' and it would still fit perfectly because America and liberty should be synonymous. We should provide a good example, provide a convincing argument, and preach (yes, preach) liberty to all nations with a clear, unmistakable voice. We should be friends with all who will let us. But we should never coerce, we should not preemptively punish those who oppose even liberty, and we should not force our worldview on others, without violating even the core principle of liberty itself. Defending liberty means we fight for our own liberty and the liberty of anyone else who also fights for it. But those who do not value it enough to fight or work to secure it for themselves do not deserve it until they muster the desire to defend it to the death, as many of us have.

Now you know the way to save the world the right way. It is to be a good example, to be friends with all, to educate and persuade all that liberty and agency are worth living and dying for. It is to donate your own $20 to the child in need, and encourage your neighbor to do the same through all non-coercive means; but it never means to compel. It is to not shield others from the negative consequences of their actions, and it is to insist that people take as much responsibility for their actions as possible. It is to realize and teach others that liberty must be cared for and guarded vigilantly. It is to understand that our actions affect others and that our right to act unilaterally stops the moment we seriously affect the liberty of others. Saving the world even requires that we defend to the death the right of our neighbor to disagree with us, and the right of our neighbor to keep his money from that child who is sick and needs it.

It is heart-wrenching to know that some people do not choose the good with their liberty, but it is the very essence of humanity that allows us to choose the good, and along with it to be able to choose evil.

To force anyone to choose good is to destroy it. I, for one, will choose liberty even if it means that I die trying.