Too much individual freedom?

Rod,

Was unaware that the quoted passage in your excellent USA Today piece had triggered opposition, although perhaps a few misread its meaning.

To me, your point was that we're abusing the freedoms we've enjoyed and that self-governance by all (including the prudent governance of our appetites) is necessary if this historical experiment we call America is to last.

Don't always agree with everything you write [and, besides, a lot of it is over my head anyway :-)] but you're on the right track.

It has long struck me that the conservative liberal defense of individual freedom rests on the assumption that greed is the least harmful of the vices, less toxic and damaging to society than lust. Moreover, greed provides the incentive for people to work hard. So, not only is greed the least bad of the vices, but it is also the most economically productive, and has the most positive impact on society. It thus generates a system that is “practical” inasmuch as it brings wealth to large numbers of people, but only so long as resource scarcity is not a problem. Once the fact of resource depletion enters the picture, liberal societies, if they choose not to go to war over dwindling stocks of petroleum or access to fresh water, will invariably award some other vice the status of least harmful/most productive. My nomination is for sloth, if there is just enough energy available to power the video games for the increasing ranks of the jaded and disillusioned while they live off government rations of powdered milk, myriad corn products, and spam.

I'm a conservative, Robert, and George W. Bush is not my leader. He's not a conservative, either. He's a classical liberal with a religious bent. Reagan was another one of those, although he at least had done some thinking.

Mr. Walker has it exactly right.

From what I read, Rod, you are precisely and completely wrong.

What we are suffering from is the opposite of personal freedom. Personal liberty or freedom includes suffering the results of our actions, so we learn from it.

If you think that reducing personal liberty is the key, you could not be more wrong. It is necessary that we both indulge, and suffer, in order to establish the lessons that are learned and passed on from generation to generation. Every now and then, they get forgotten.

The response that says "freedom to make mistakes" is wrong, because you can never legislate virtue among people.

This position, in my estimation, makes you nothing more than a modern radical liberal, but with different policy stances.

Re: He's not a conservative, either. He's a classical liberal with a religious bent.

That's exactly how modern American conservatism is defined, at least in my lifetime.

I agree both with Rod's diagnosis of the problem, and Mr Cosimano's skepticism. By what mechanism does our Walmart-door-trampling culture take a look at itself and voluntarily choose to be more responsible?

I think you should have said we have too little personal virtue instead of too much personal freedom. Even better you could have written that we have too much freedom for a nation of such low virtue.

For the [conservative] [the cop] also serves as the enforcer of conservative values/conscience.

Well, yes. That's exactly Colson's point. If individual consciences don't regulate themselves, it will, eventually, fall to an external authority by necessity.

Richard

I still think you phrased it incorrectly. Your description of the individual failings are pretty good, but I think you should recognize this a a lack of personal responsibility rather than too much freedom. Maybe it's just semantics, but there is a difference.

Steve

Mike Huckabee made these points during the past election season.

John @ 8:17 AM writes:

“I agree both with Rod's diagnosis of the problem, and Mr Cosimano's skepticism. By what mechanism does our Walmart-door-trampling culture take a look at itself and voluntarily choose to be more responsible?”

The problem is less one of too much freedom than of an insufficient amount of what might be called “structure”, or a commonly-held framework for personal ethical decision-making. These rules are usually unspoken, taken for granted as part of the “of course” of the society. The notion of obedience to the law is part of this structure. The notion of putting aside one’s current business to help an injured person is part of structure. Even the idea of taking turns is part of structure.
These structures can (and most often do) come from some sort of religious-cultural background. Consider the figure of the Good Samaritan; an expression of a cultural ideal (the person who stops to help another) that virtually everyone, even atheists, have heard of. It comes from an expressly Christian worldview. There may be more than one moral structure operating in a society, but there is usually only one structure that is dominant. An example of this might be a Hindu family living in a country mostly populated by Christians. The Hindu parents may make their children pray to Shiva, Vishnu or Ganesh, but they can be held accountable for their actions according to a criminal code based on Christian principles.
Post-Western European and American societies are attempting a unique experiment: an exercise in building a society with high technology as its moral foundation. There have been many, many attempts to overturn societies’ cultural foundations (from the Diggers and Levelers of medieval Europe to the Tai’ping Rebellion in China), but none using advanced technology as its starting point.
In essence, technology is considered an insulator; an “institution” that keeps individuals from being affected by the consequences of their actions. Consider our social response to AIDS; deviant sexual behavior is a major cause of this virus’ transmission, yet “activists” for the groups affected by it agitated for State funding to develop a cure or vaccine for the disease, rather than agitating amongst themselves for self-restrictions on the behavior that causes the transmission of the disease.
A large and direct part of our current problem can be traced back, in pertinent part, to the ascension to dominance of the 60s-era ethics of “if it feels good, do it” and “it is forbidden to forbid”. The first encourages a solipsistic hedonism that disregards not only the welfare of others, but their essential status as Human beings. This is why so many of the stampeders were annoyed at the efforts of paramedics to treat the wounded—it interfered with their pursuit of Wal-Mart’s famed low prices.
The second ethic–and this one is of more modern origins---prevents the ability of virtually ANY institution–Church, state, whatever—that advocates any kind of external restraint on personal behavior—from rising to and maintaining any sort of moral authority. Any institution that does attempt this advocacy (and there are many that try) is shunted aside as illegitimate.

These ethics,. as I pointed out, are not new. What makes them hardier and more difficult to dislodge today is the “insulating”effect of 20th- and 21st-century advanced technology. This “New Age” is backed by a “god” that actually can (in some circumstances) seem to produce the miracles we demand of it. This new god, however, is a very imperfect God; it offers no solutions to the long-term ethical issues of “Life, the Universe and Everything”. What it does, instead, is to permit its adherents to sidestep the problem, to pretend it doesn’t exist.
The most likely solution to John’s problem is a catastrophe or disruptive event that is either: a) unstoppable by modern technological means, or b) one that arises as a result of the misapplication of modern technological means, that wipes out large parts of both the society and its technological base. A war-plague that escapes the confines of a lab, for instance, or multiple uses of small nuclear/chemical weapons that disrupts essential infrastructure. Such a happenstance would “burst the bubble”, so to speak, and remove the barriers between individuals and the natural world that affects them and imposes constraints on their behavior.
We could also choose to impose “self-discipline” on ourselves and not engage in what we see as dangerous forms of behavior (everything from risky sexual behavior to not saving for the future), thus minimizing the risks we face as both individuals and as a society.
I say that strictly for completeness’ sake, however. Our “Wal-Mart door-trampling culture” is not terribly hospitable to anything resembling self-control, personal discipline or even individuals recognizing each other as distinct Human beings.

Your servant,

Lord Karth

P.S. I apologize for the extreme length of this post, but this was the shortest way I could find to address the detailed and complex questions Mr. Dreher’s thread raised. My apologies to all.

Karth, a gentle suggestion: Quit apologizing and launch a blog of your own. Your posts are outstanding; next to Rod's they're the best draw here.

What fragments the family is not necessarily too much individual freedom, but too much corporate freedom. We presume that the individual is responsible for going wherever necessary to find a job, and moving when the job moves. As a result,most middle-class families now have one end in Minneapolis and one end in Phoenix, or whatever, and caring for aging parents becomes horrendously difficult. I used to tell my students, "Marry outside your faith, marry outside your race, but never marry somebody whose parents are going to retire 2000 miles away from where YOUR parents are going to retire, or you'll never have a real vacation again." But these days, it isn't even possible to make such choices with any degree of certainty.

Karth, you should peruse the above blog and see the long list of authors it hosts. I think it would be a nice fit for them (us!) and you.

I'm a bit miffed by your recurrent citation of the Christian worldview. Your point about ethics works just as well without it. I am, perhaps, glossing over that it fits the context of the post, thus exposing my bias.

For example, the example of the Good Samaritan does not originate in Christianity. Charity to strangers, indeed, is a recurrent theme in many oral histories, driving both good and bad outcomes for the subjects of the stories.

Morality is variable. Put ten Christians in a room, somehow non-fatally force them to be completely honest, and you will fall (far) short of 100% moral agreement between any two, let alone amongst all of them. Extend that to non-Christians, and what you end up with is an ethical structure much like that created by the founders and evolved over the centuries (as well as ignored and trashed, of course).

In short, one can cite a specific source for the law, but one cannot fall back on that source with anyone who does not hold to that source, but is expected to comply with the law. It must be generic, or it will fail sooner or later. Indeed, I don't see how our republic can go on much longer without the commitment from non-Christians to support it and uphold it in the face of a majority Christian culture that is failing to do both of those things.

Francis Beckwith says

Rod, put down MacIntyre and read George Gilder......

Thank you Francis Beckwith for the most concise, lucid and rather brilliant few sentences ever written in here. You made the point so correctly.

I see this whole mess as the result of extreme liberalism and thus somehow I think Rod's point remains then correct. We are facing the profound decline of self-discipline and the extreme of greed working together on a common trajectory. It is a moral crisis generated by progressives.

Rod the problem is not conservative thinking it is conservative leadership. Scott Walker is correct. Bush is no conservative, the Republican party in the main is not conservative, they are simply co-opting the term. Listen to them speak on the environment. They refuse to get it. I doubt that any true conservative thinker would ever abandon concern for his environment as Republicans have done.

Conservative does not mean materialist, that is the way of the progressive yet we have absorbed their terms and now they trump us with claims that should have been ours.

We need to get leaders who in fact represent conservative thinking before we rail that all is bankrupt. To my mind it has not even been tested. The good news though is that possibly, right now the left is going to gets its way with the current admin. I predict this will take us over the edge. The debate may actually in the end be settled and we will by necessity return to what Francis articulated so well.

I don't know whether anyone caught the story of The Today Show this morning - two teenaged girls in Minnesota have been arrested for sexually, verbally and physically abusing the elderly residents of a nursing home, for whom they were supposed to be voluntary caretakers.

I just looked at the story on the MSN homepage, and it shows the two girls "glamour shots" presumably from their Facebook or My Space accounts. It also says they are being charged with several "gross misdemeanors" but will probably receive probation. My first impulse, on hearing the story, was that they should be given 10-year prison sentences and asked, as a condition of early release, to be voluntarily sterilized. They should never be allowed to have, or adopt, children.

The people who trampled the Wall Mart employee don't hold a candle to these two monsters.

Freedom includes the choice to be responsible. We are free to drink and become drunk, but we are not free to impinge nor harm another because of inebriation. And should we fail to be responsible, then we are punished (provided first there was a lawful arrest and fair trial). So I would define a core principal of political thought

Conservatism rests on the notion of allowing the individual the freedom to act (conserving personal freedom), and to deal with the consequences.

Liberalism rests on the notion of disallowing the individual the freedom to act (liberating public power), to prevent the consequences.

Given this framework of understanding, conservatism allows the individual to be irresponsible about their rights - for example, by eating too many, and the wrong kinds, of food - and more importantly, prevents society from interfering with this choice (unless it harms another).

But liberalism allows society to be responsible for the rights of every individual - for example, by regulating the amount and kind of food to be consumed - and more importantly, prevents the individual the freedom to make a different choice even if it would not harm that particular individual.

Really good summation by R Hampton. The idea that conservatives should actually use the coercive power of the government to interfere in private matters stands the very term "conservative" on its' head. The word becomes meaningless in any context. Freedom of thought and action will inevitably bring a host of consequences, and there is no good reason for the government to get involved without an overwhelming need (like protection of life, criminal behavior or protecting minors) to do so. (note, I am talking about individual liberties, and not dealing with regulating corporate entities here. I am not at all dogmatic on that point, as there is utterly demonstrable need we can see right now that regulation of the economy is needed and I would even consider it a national security issue)

We see here the core tension between Theo-conservatives like Rod and Libertarian Republicans like me. I always err on the side of freedom. Rod thinks we have too much of it. We don't really play well together.

Mr. Deuce:

You seem to believe that regulation infantilizes (if that's a word) Americans, i.e. regulation promotes an infantile populace.

I'm sorry but I disagree.

Does requiring drug manufacturers to properly test their products before selling them as the latest life-saving advancement cause me to be infantile?

What about product safety?

I agree that sometimes things can go too far: I do not need to be reminded that coffee is hot or that I should not let an infant use a plastic bag as a Halloween mask.

But I have no control over many aspects of my corporate-controlled life in modern society. I can choose to be Amish or I can choose to be a regular American. If I am a regular American, I expect some regulation.

Re: People have not suffered the consequences of their behavior for far too long

I'm not sure I see this. If we're talking about people who intemperate behavior (smoking, over-eating etc.) leads to health problems, then those very health problems are the consequences of their actions and they do suffer them. The problem is that the cosnequences are much-delayed, often not being produced for years later. And this has always been true. We humans are better than other creatures when it comes to perceiving the future, but our time window for seeing cause and effect, other than in a purely abstract way, does seem to be a bit brief. We know not to stick our hand in a flame bcause the pain is immediate. But no such reflex warns us not to smoke.

Freedom without obligation doesn't even make a person happy, let alone what it does to a society. You can have all the liberty you want, but fulfill your obligations, all of them. It's what being a grown-up means.