More on Liberty

I want to explore a bit more the central paradox of liberty -- that is, “liberty must be systemically constrained to allow for liberty at all.” To make this point, there are several threads that must be teased out, not least the relationship between “liberty” and “power.” Though a fascinating discussion in its own right, here again, I don’t want to quibble too long over definitions. At a fundamental and colloquial level, to have “power” is to have the ability to what one wishes -- to have power over others is to have the ability to do what one wishes to or with others. The slipperiness of prepositions is important. It makes a difference whether we use our powers and do something to someone or we use them to do something with someone. Ultimately these distinctions have ethical implications, and so are not trivial. It makes a difference if we do something for someone or to someone. One can quickly get lost in these linguistic mazes, but for the moment our general sense of “power” is sufficient-- that is, one has power when one can do what one damn well pleases, regardless whether one is pleased by doing good or doing ill.

My immediate aim is to point out the deep, but asymmetrical connection between “liberty” and “power” -- one can have “liberty” or “freedom” in some formal sense, but not have the “power” to actually do what one pleases. Setting aside the adolescent, wish-fulfillment fantasy of “super-powers,” which serve well to teach us the converse lesson that reality is always a constraint, yet nevertheless illustrate that power is also bound up in another asymmetry -- the relative difference between what some can do and others cannot. My powers and your powers. To illustrate both, consider for example having the power to influence the outcome of an electoral campaign. What can I do? I can, of course, vote, and it is worth pointing out that I can do so because legal constraints on those with the big guns make it possible for me to do so. That was not always the case, as the history of women’s suffrage in the 19th century and civil rights legislation in the 20th century amply demonstrate. Having said that, beyond my one vote, I do not have much power to influence the outcome of a campaign. Up front, my vote is merely consent to one or another candidate who are chosen by others with considerably more influence. During the campaign, while I can choose my vote, I have severely limited ability to influence how others might vote. For that, one needs money and access to the media. In that regard, Robert Reich tells us that “hundreds of millions of secret dollars are pouring into congressional and state races in this election cycle,” and it is probably obvious that “hundreds of millions” will put a “message” before more people than the hundred or so dollars that I can comfortably spend. Nevertheless, “the Koch brothers (whose personal fortunes grew by $5 billion last year) appear to be behind some of it, Karl Rove has rounded up other multi-millionaires to fund right-wing candidates, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is funneling corporate dollars from around the world into congressional races, and Rupert Murdoch is evidently spending heavily.” Whether or not one sees a conspiracy, it is clear enough that the David and Charles Koch, Karl Rove, and Rupert Murdoch have much more power to influence electoral results than I have, and as Reich put it, the purpose of the cash infusion is “not to help America’s stranded middle-class, working class, and poor. It’s to pad the nests of the rich, stop all reform, and deregulate big corporations and Wall Street -- already more powerful than since the late 19th century when the lackeys of robber barons literally deposited sacks of cash on the desks of friendly legislators.” Whether one agrees with Reich’s politics or not, it’s clear enough that money talks, bull shit walks, and mostly what I have to offer is the latter.

At issue, of course, is “free speech,” which in some fundamental ways isn’t “free,” and its involvement with “power,” particularly the sort of economic power represented by the likes of David and Charles Koch whose combined personal fortunes are exceeded only by those of Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. Although no one I think would argue that their speech does not have considerable sway, in part because they can put their money where their mouths are, but nevertheless, as individuals, the Kochs, the Gates, the Buffets and I all equally have “free speech.” They might drown me out, but they cannot shut me up, and I have “free speech” because the power of government to censor or otherwise limit speech has been severely constrained. It is patently obvious, but worth pointing out that “government,” per se, although always comprised of individuals, is not itself an individual. Government is, for lack of a better term, a “collectivist legal entity,” and as such it magnifies the power of individuals. George W. Bush was not a particularly compelling human being -- certainly not on the order of Ghandi or Mandela or even for that matter Reagan -- but as the principle executive agent of the U.S. government, he was nevertheless in a position of considerable power. Most of us know that position within a “collectivist legal entity,” whether government or corporate, confers a disproportionate power on an individual, and it was precisely this disproportionate power that the framers of the constitution wanted to limit. The actual first amendment constitutional constraint on government reads as follows: “congress shall make n law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” So long as the constitutional constraint is in place, and so long as those in positions of power abide by it, we the people -- that is, we as individuals outside the “collectivist legal entity” -- can speak our minds.

My “liberty” as an individual comes at the expense of the government’s “liberty” as a collectivist legal entity, and this principle is so deeply held as to be virtually invisible, but I should be clear. The first amendment of the constitution does not say “all people are free to speak their minds.” The first amendment specifically places a limitation on the power conferred upon Congress in the body of the constitution itself, the power to make and enforce laws, and this limitation stems from a fundamental mistrust of individuals in positions of power, and this mistrust extended beyond the halls of government. Reich encourages us to read Justice Stevens’ lengthy dissent to the Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. In his dissenting opinion, Justice Stevens cites a letter from Thomas Jefferson to Tom Logan, on November 12th of 1816. “I hope,” Jefferson writes, that “we shall … crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial of strength and bid defiance to the laws of our country.” We have, or so I would suggest, long since lost the opportunity to crush the birth of corporate influence, and with the Citizens United decision, the Supreme Court may well have given away our last opportunity to protect individual liberty through constraints on the undue influence of people in positions of corporate power. Those who have put considerable money behind their speech. Our government may very well lose the challenge, the power struggle, and become what another framer envisioned as the primary purpose of government, “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority.”

In this respect, I think the so-called Tea Party activists, who apparently stand behind the Citizens United decision, are emotionally correct, but intellectually corrupt (or perhaps more precisely, intellectually corrupted) in their distrust of “big government.” They would follow the argument to its reducto ad absurdum -- to free the people entirely from government one must likewise abolish the government entirely. The argument is neat and has the appealing virtue of simplicity, especially when it is coupled with heartland American virtues -- love of Jesus, hatred of taxes, jingoistic patriotism, and the like. The flaw in the argument is this: abolishing government does not abolish coercive power. It is a maxim not worth repeating, but power, coercive power, will always find a way, and in the absence of government, even in the absence of effective government, those ways are often primitive and malign. Not to put too fine a point on it, if people are absolutely free to live as they damn well please, it won’t be long before it pleases someone to say, “great! I choose to live by pointing a gun at you, appropriating your treasure, raping your daughters, and instilling a healthy fear in you, those subject to my violence, by leaving the corpses of those who oppose me in the public thoroughfares.“ Although it’s unlikely that we will descend to this level, at least not in the near future, one needn’t look far or hard to find examples. The narco-wars just south of the border and the malignant political processes throughout Africa are sufficient, I think, to make the point.

The liberty paradox really boils down to this -- I can be free to live the sort of life I value, only if I am free from the coercive power of others. Of course, no one in the so-called Tea Party wants to abolish government entirely, or at least I don‘t think they do. They simply want to be free from the coercive power of government itself, and few would blame them, particularly if the government is corrupt and corruptible. One wants to ask, however, free from which coercive power? It is one thing to be free from prior censorship, quite another to be free from taxes. It is one thing to be free from constraints on one’s ability “to keep and bear arms,” quite another to be free from regulatory constraints on the market place. Just exactly what do we want to be free from? Here is an example may help make the matter clear. The Koch fortune has helped found and continues to underwrite the activities of the non-governmental organization, Americans for Prosperity, which in turn has sponsored and provided various support functions to Tea Party rallies. I do believe this to be less a conspiracy, more a convergence of ideological interests between the Koch corporation and the Tea Party supporters. As Jane Mayer’s recent portrait for the New Yorker puts it, “the Kochs are longtime libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry -- especially environmental regulation,” and as she goes on to point out, “these views dovetail with the brothers’ corporate interests.” That aside, Americans for Prosperity has, as one aspect of their stated mission, “cutting taxes and government spending in order to halt the encroachment of government into the economic lives of citizens by fighting proposed tax increases and pointing out evidence of fraud, waste and abuse.” Taxes in general? Government spending in general? As one example, most of us are dependent upon well maintained, tax-supported public roads. Although it is not at all difficult to find examples of genuinely bi-partisan, genuinely private-public collusion in “fraud, waste and abuse” in the creation of those thoroughfares, even in the great State of Utah, it doesn’t change the basic fact that most Chamber of Commerce members benefit greatly from the expenditures of tax dollars on public thoroughfares to and from their business. It strikes me that we need to be at least a wee bit cautious, lest we throw the baby out with the proverbial bathwater.

On the matter of regulation, nothing ends corruption, or what economists would call moral-hazard, quite as quickly as a declaration of its permissibility. Which regulations do we abolish? Few of us want to live in toxic environments, and I suspect the Kochs would have sufficient means to live in clean environments with well maintained roads regardless of their industrial activities, but they do stand to gain considerably from a declaration of the permissibility of polluting. As the Mayer article points out, “in a study released this spring, the University of Massachusetts at Amherst’s Political Economy Research Institute named Koch industries one of the top ten air polluters in the United States.” While one might suspect Greenpeace of bias in this regard, and Koch industries claimed their similar report “distorts the environmental record of our companies,” it nevertheless remains that “the Kochs vastly outdid ExxonMobil in giving money to organizations fighting legislation related to climate change, underwriting a huge network of foundations, think tanks, and political front groups.” While they have avoided direct involvement, their political front groups, including Americans for Prosperity, have provided a broad range of support to the so-called Tea-Party movement. “Indeed,” as Mayer points out, “the brothers have funded opposition campaigns against so many Obama Administration policies -- from health care reform to the economic-stimulus program -- that in political circles, their ideological network is known as the Kochtopus,” and “by giving money to ‘educate,’ fund, and organize Tea Party protesters, they have helped turn their private agenda into a mass movement,” a deeply cynical move. Koch industries supports deregulation and lower taxes -- supports freedom from government -- in order to be free to do, more and more, as they damn well please, and what pleases them, no doubt, is a greater and greater concentration of wealth, a greater and greater concentration of power, in their own hands. Little or nothing in their behavior, or corporate behavior generally, would suggest otherwise, and Tea Party members are enthusiastically supporting an agenda that stands to benefit them very little and portends to harm them, their children, and grandchildren a great deal.

Nevertheless, I can hear the Tea Party saying of their weekly pay check, “it’s my money, I earned it, and I have a right to keep it.” I suspect they would say of the Kochs that “it’s their money, they earned it, and they too have a right to keep it -- more power to them.“ All of which brings me to another thread that I should tease out -- the deep connection between “liberty” and “rights.” Most famously, perhaps, Jefferson writes that all men “are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” The sentiment had their original, if I am not mistaken, in Locke’s Treatise on Government, where the concern was less the pursuit of happiness, per se, and more with the pursuit of property. The same triad of cumulative “rights” appears in the fifth amendment, where government is prohibited from depriving any person “of life, liberty, or property without due process of law.” It goes without saying that the pursuit of happiness and the pursuit of property are not exactly synonymous, but it also goes without saying that certain “properties” are fundamental to happiness -- food, for example, it being generally difficult to imagine a starving person as “happy,” with the exception of a few aesthetics. I will return to the “right to property” shortly, but at the instant I simply want to point out how peculiar it is when Jefferson goes on to contend that “to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men.” Really? From the beginning, through the present, governments of all sorts have taken the lives and curtailed the liberty of their subjects with some dispatch, and they have done so often, very often, simply to preserve the power of those in positions of power. Machiavelli was perhaps the first to formalize this observation in a treatise, but certainly not the first or the last to recognize it. Might, after all, does confer “rights.” If we set aside questions of ethics, setting aside questions of “right and wrong,” the statement, might makes right, simply suggests the tautology that one can only do what one can do, with the implicit recognition that those in positions of power can often do much more than those who are not. We cannot, of course, completely set aside ethical questions. The statement, might makes right, carries with it also the deeply ironic recognition that those in positions of power can, and often do, act in ways that offend a sense of right and wrong, our sense of fairness and justice.

For those patient with the foregoing paragraph, there are at least three entangled senses of “right” -- a “right” conferred by my power to do what I can do and to keep what I can keep, a “right” conferred by our ethical sensibilities, and a “right” conceived as an entitlement. The latter is perhaps most in question. My entitlement to life is secure only insofar as the power of others, those who would do me mayhem, is curtailed. My entitlement to liberty is secure only insofar as the power of others, those who confine me or compel me to tasks, is curtailed. My entitlement to property is secure only insofar as the power of others, those who would rob me, is curtailed. The same could be said of any other entitlement. Whether governments derive “just powers from the consent of the governed,” or unjust powers from the point of a gun, one’s “rights,” one’s entitlements, are typically secured by government. Indeed, if one follows through on the Jeffersonian line of thought, the security of our entitlements is the sole purpose of government, and it is the radical peculiarity of our government that it secures our entitlements, not only against the encroachment of others, but for the most part against its own encroachments.

There is a third strand that needs to be teased out, and it is the notion of obligation. I believe it was John Searle who suggested that rights, particularly those in the sense of entitlement, will always entail a corresponding obligation, and universal rights will entail universal obligations. Consider, again, my entitlement to “free speech.” My right to speak my mind freely, so long as it is a right extended equally to all, entails a corresponding obligation on the part of others to tolerate my blather, even if they’re not listening. Conversely, the others right to speak his mind freely, so long as it is a right extended equally to all, entails a corresponding obligation on my part to tolerate his blather, even if I have no intention of taking it heart or paying it any mind. The same might be said of worship. My freedom to worship as I choose entails an obligation of tolerance on others, just as their right to worship as they choose entails an obligation to tolerate me. This reciprocal obligation requires nothing more than tolerance, but it does require tolerance, and anyone who has listened to some benighted boor prattle on about his religion knows that tolerance comes in a limited supply, particularly among those who are in positions of power. The Socratic insistence upon truth, particularly the truth concerning the relationships between power and justice, tested the limits of Athenian tolerance, and serves now, as it did then, as a cautionary tale about the limits of free expression.

Having said that, not all rights are, so to speak, created equal, and it is perhaps a signal quality of Jefferson’s genius that, in his triad of inalienable rights, he listed the pursuit of happiness, not one’s purchase on (or of) property. Quoting Madison’s assertion that “in a just and free government the rights both of property and of persons ought to be effectually guarded,” our own Socratic gadfly, Noam Chomsky, split’s the hair into several strands:

In this case too it is useful to look at the doctrine more carefully. There are no rights of property, only rights to property: that is, rights of persons with property. Perhaps I have a right to my car, but my car has no rights. The right to property also differs fro others in that one person’s possession of property deprives another of that right: if I own my car, you do not; but in a just and free society my freedom of speech would not limit yours. The Madisonian principle, then, is that government must guard the rights of persons generally, but must provide special and additional guarantees for the rights of one class of persons, property owners.

Although he quibbles well against the subtle perversion of language -- the rights of property -- he nevertheless oversimplifies. It is not only a matter of who does, or does not, have a putative right to any particular automobile. I suspect Chomsky would be as miffed as the next guy if he came out to discover his parking space empty and his automobile appropriated to another’s purpose. Moreover, we can recognize universal property rights within a set of reciprocal “hands-off” obligations, insofar as we recognize the distinction maintained within the fifth amendment between public and private property. One is free to own private property, and do with it as one pleases, insofar as one is free from the government’s power to appropriate it. Moreover, as a universal right, I have an obligation to respect others’ rights to their property, just as, in return, they have an obligation to respect my rights to my property. The “right to” property, however, does not entail that one will actually have property, any more than a “right to” speech entails that one will actually have something intelligible to say. Chomsky may own a new Toyota Prius, and I might own an old Ford, and that might be a matter of invidious comparison between us, but fundamentally, with respect to freedom, to liberty, and the reciprocal rights and obligations entailed in property ownership, there is no difference between speech and property. Given the means, I am perfectly free to buy a Toyota too.

Madison was concerned with a “just” and “free” society, and there is the rub. It is, as I have argued in previous posts, questionable whether a government can both be free and be just, with perhaps a couple of notable exceptions, freedom of speech and freedom of religion being perhaps cases in point. Our notions of justice are deeply intertwined with our notions of equality, and it is worth pointing out that Jefferson’s phrase, “all men are created equal,” today at least, offends our sense of justice, though I have faith that Jefferson, were he writing the declaration today, he would have said “all people are created equal.” We have equal rights, not disproportionate rights, and it is an affront to our sense of justice when we discover that women, in general, still do not receive equal pay for equal work. It likewise offends our sense of justice when we discover that monies appropriated to public use -- our tax dollars -- have gone to benefit only a select few, as seems to have been the case recently in the outrage following the discovery that public bailout monies for the financial sector helped provide exorbitant bonuses for the executives of failing firms. Theoretically at least, when government violates our free possession of property, when government takes my money in taxes, that money should go to benefit all equally.

I’ll talk more about justice and equality in a later post, but suffice it to say that Chomsky has a point when he writes that “my freedom of speech would not limit yours,” and a sort of reciprocal equality is preserved to the degree that it can be maintained. I am not suggesting, of course, that all speech is equally attended, or that all speech has the same range. Beyond the inherent persuasiveness of one’s speech itself, any injustice in the attention given to speech or its broadcast range is contingent upon possession of property. One’s money, if one has enough, creates a heart felt attention to what one has to say. It would surprise no one, as the Times Eric Lipton reported last month that Mr. Boehner, potentially the Speaker of the House after the mid-term elections in November, “maintains especially tight ties with a circle of lobbyists and former aides representing some of the nation’s biggest businesses, including Goldman Sachs, Google, Citigroup, R.J. Reynolds, Miller-Coors and UPS,” or that they have “contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to his campaigns, provided him with rides on their corporate jets, socialized with him at luxury golf resorts and waterfront bashes and are now leading fund-raising efforts for his Boehner for Speaker campaign, which is soliciting checks of up to $37,800 each, the maximum allowed.” It would surprise no one, but it does offend our sense of justice that corporate wealth would have a greater claim on Mr. Boehner’s time and attention than the average citizen of his 8th Ohio district.

I am suggesting, however, along with Chomsky, that the right to property is nevertheless qualitatively different than the right to speech or religion, not as a “right” per se, but in its upshot. My right to a particular piece of property does deprive others of any right to that particular piece of property, and the free acquisition of wealth -- that is to say, the unfettered acquisition of wealth -- has always been morally suspect, in part because power confers wealth and wealth confers power, a vicious circle resulting in super-sized wealth and super-sized power, and as we all recognize might makes its own right. The accumulation of wealth, that is, has always been morally suspect with the possible exception of that resulting directly from labor, where there is a direct relationship between the disciplined expenditure of effort and the reward -- a relationship that preserves our basic sense of equity and fairness -- of justice. Equal pay for equal work. As others have no doubt noted, the Marxist paradigm emerges less from an historical imperative, less from economic imperatives, more from a sense of equity and justice. Marxism is a moral imperative. Within the industrial economies observed by Marx, not unlike the agricultural economies before, those who owned the means of production, the factories and arable land, profited from the labor of others and in the process violated the equivalency between the disciplined expenditure of effort and the reward. The laborer did not get all that he worked for, only a portion of what he worked for, the remainder going to the pockets of the owners. So long as the supply of labor exceed the demand for labor, their portion grew smaller and the owners portion grew larger. The reducto ad absurdum, the lower and upper limits come when the wage earned is literally no longer a “living wage,” and as the history of famine has demonstrated again and again, “owners,” however conceived, seem willing and able to push the wages of labor below the “living-wage” limit. For Marx, of course, the simple and elegant solution was to remove “ownership,” give it to all equally, and restore the equitable balance between labor and reward.

As with most attempts to create a moral state, a just state, Marxism failed, and did so to the misery of millions. The simple and elegant solution turns out to be more simplistic than simple, more egregious in its errors than elegant, in part because it violates a human element as fundamental as our sense of fairness -- that is to say, our sense of “mine.” Whether nature or nurture (I suspect nature) children at a very young age learn to say “mine!” I know of few parents who expend effort teaching children to take ownership of their toys, but many who expend considerable effort cajoling them into sharing. The various forms of socialism are predicated more on wishful thinking than human nature, on the ethical imperative to share equally than any observed behavior, whether historical or current. Any compact to share equally must, that is, be enforced, and those who have been given the power to enforce it have also been given the power to violate it, and often did, seizing for the public owners privilege subject to the same abuses as the private owners before them. As any parent of a five year old will tell you, or better the parent of any adolescent will tell you, Nietzsche got it subtly wrong (or perhaps I am getting Nietzsche subtly wrong). The will to “power” is the will to “liberty,” to be unfettered in one’s actions, to do what one can do. It is not that “liberty” stands as an inalienable right. It is rather the inevitable desire to do what one can, and for the five year old on the playground, the one recognizing his power, it is the stronger’s upwelling desire to take possession of that toy, declare it “mine!” and to do so over the weaker’s impassioned plea for justice, “mom!” -- it is the inevitable desire to take possession of that toy, not because the stronger has any legal or ethical right to the property, but simply because he can, because he feels his superiority and feels likewise compelled to act from within that superiority. The fifth amendment recognizes this basic human tendency when it stipulates that private property cannot be taken for public use “without just compensation” -- and here again it is worth noting that there is little doubt what “just” means in this context -- a compensation equal to one’s alienated private property. Our sense of justice is outraged by thievery, the alienation of property through stealth or power, regardless whether the thief is public or private.

As I’ve suggested, sometimes it is good to return to basics, the playground, so the issues at stake come clearly to the foreground. Freedom, and the power to exercise it, is thoroughly human, but amoral. In and of itself freedom has no moral or ethical value, only what we do with it, and I know of few cases where freedom, left unchecked, has not led to abuses of power. I will not make judgments on the basic goodness or evil of human beings, in part because we already know the answer to that question and we learned it on the playground. Questions of good and evil do not concern the powerful. Questions of good and evil are of concern to those who need protection from the powerful, and it is perhaps to the point that when Adam and Eve learned the lesson of good and evil, they did not become like god as the serpent promised. They did discover their powerlessness, that god gives and withholds life itself, the ultimate expression of power, but he also gives and withholds the free enjoyment of property, the penultimate expression of power. We have felt the sting of death and the foreclosure from Eden since. While I will not make judgments on the basic morality of human beings, I will say, however, that we have what might be called a moral predisposition hardwired into our being, a moral predisposition predicated on a sense of “mine!” The child’s moral predisposition is outraged when the toy is appropriated, but the other child is no less outraged when parental authority intervenes and the toy is returned to its original possessor. Here again, liberty and justice are not complementary, but contradictory. One child’s justice is the curtailment of the other’s liberty to do what he can, and the question is this: which takes precedence, liberty or justice? Which form of parenting would we prefer to see, the parent who returns the alienated toy to its first possessor, or the parent who sits idly by letting nature, so to speak, take its course. It is easy enough to say the original owner has the better claim, that parental authority should protect his rights to property, but it is also easy enough to see that his possession and enjoyment of the toy deprives the other of its possession and enjoyment, and it seems reasonable for parental authority to intervene and demand that they share. It seems only “fair.”

As I have suggested, the issues seem clear enough when it is two children on a playground, because the stakes, ultimately, are not very high. What if it were, however, a matter of life and death, not figuratively, but literally. While we have not prevented death once and for all in this vale of tears, it is clear that we have the ability to keep it momentarily at bay. It is also clear that, to do so, involves a bit of work and the consumption of resources, and so too it is probably to the point that, beyond the gates of Eden, Adam must earn his bread through the sweat of his brow. Beyond the gates of Eden, sustenance does not come free, and for the resources we need to sustain life there is an exchange of labor, if not directly, then indirectly. When I hand the cashier money, or more likely scan my debit card, I am exchanging my labor the labor of a whole host of people involved in the production of my Honey-Nut-Cheerios. The exchange seems fair enough -- at least I freely consent to it -- and if my Honey-Nut-Cheerios seem exorbitantly priced, I am always free to choose a more modestly priced generic brand, one more within my means, and free market competition, we can be thankful, has provided us with a number of options to ward off starvation. As Weber among others has explained, this deep connection between labor and reward -- the so called protestant ethic -- is core to our morality. One must be free to sell one’s labor if the virtue of industriousness is to be rewarded, the vice of sloth punished, and so the free market becomes the playing field of god, where winners and losers are determined relative to virtue and vice. As an aside, this deep connection between labor and reward explains the moral repugnance of usury. It breaks the basic covenant, and one’s property itself, not one’s labor, begets even more property to our own and others deprivation.

It seems rather silly to ask, but to what extent is “life” an inalienable right? Clearly, when people are free to do what they can do, whether from the absence of constraint or the ineffectuality of enforcement, much mayhem often results, with much less compunction than we might wish. A violation of one or another’s sense of “mine!” usually occasions it, and oddly we often speak of “life” as though it were property and our “right to life” congruent with our property rights. It is “my life,” after all, and I am free to enjoy it, such as it is, only when I am free from the violence of others against my person and against such property as it takes to sustain life. Few would quibble, and we do have a whole panoply of laws restricting our freedom to inflict mayhem on our neighbor because his dog has pooped in the petunias, though we might be sorely tempted -- that is, a whole panoply of laws enforcing the “live and let live” reciprocal obligation implied in the “right to life.” Having said that, however, there are significant qualitative differences between a “right to life” and “rights to property” per se -- my right to live and my right to own the latest version of the iPhone. As anyone who has been robbed a gun point will tell you, if “life” is a property right, it is the first and last piece of property one possesses, and its loss renders all other rights moot.

So, having said that, how far does my right to life extend? As a property right, is it protected along with all other property rights? A simple example will illustrate the point. Let us imagine that at the end of the harvest season there is sufficient food available to ward off starvation for a village of 100, but let us also imagine that, by dint of fortuitous circumstance, that I possess half of the available food. The other half is equally divided among the other 99 villagers, but their share is insufficient to ward off starvation. If I am free to behave as I damn well please, the moral question raised pertains to me and me alone -- should I or should I not distribute my disproportionate share among the others? I could, of course, distribute most of my share equally among the 99, but that might not be prudent. The same circumstances that prevailed to create the dilemma might exist in the coming year as well, and so prudence and the preservation of my own life might dictate that I set aside a reserve (just in case things are even worse) and distribute a portion of the remainder to a select few, those most able to provide security for my share and assure a good harvest in the coming year. As fodder for an introductory ethics class, I could go on teasing out the various implications of what I should perhaps do, but for the moment I am simply pointing out that, despite the qualitative differences between “life” and “property” per se, the two are inextricably intertwined insofar as property sustains life. Also, I am pointing out that “liberty,” when coupled with protected “rights to property,” centers the moral decision within the individual. The 99 slowly starving villagers also have individual choices to make. They could, for example, gather the remaining food into a single pot, decide how many it will sustain, and draw straws to see who the lucky few will be. They could also gather up their pitch forks and revolt. Though the villagers might feel differently, so long as I do no violence and simply mind my own property, I am not in any active sense depriving them either of their right to life or their rights to property, even if I fail to distribute a portion of my food. I would be deprived of my rights to my property, my rights to my food, my freedom to enjoy my good fortune, however, if the villagers gathered and forcibly took my stores. It seems that I am well within my property rights to watch them slowly waste away, and insofar as it is the obligation of government “to protect the minority of the opulent against the majority,” or at least within the Madisonian version of the government’s role relative to property rights, I could expect then assistance from the militia should the villagers revolt. Nevertheless, it is a choice they could make. It goes almost without saying that my choices are much better than the villager’s choices, and no one, no rational human being, would choose such a social arrangement, particularly if there were some question where one would end up, as the lucky one or among the unfortunate many.

There are numerous contexts within which one could explore precisely this question: does my “right to life” trump your “right to property?” The current health care debate is one such case in point. I strongly suspect that there is sufficient capacity to provide quality health care too all, but it is not a question of capacity, but rather the ability to pay. Those who have the ability to pay -- whether that comes through employer subsidized health care plans or simply out of pocket -- will get health care. Those who do not have the ability to pay will not get health care. On the assumption that the new regulations will require some redistribution of property and that corporate entities act on their self interest, it is not surprising, as Jacob Hacker and Carl DeTorres report in the NY Times, that insurers “have been dragged kicking and screaming at every step,” and that “an increasingly consolidated insurance industry is also fighting back, with the largest insurers considering bankrolling an organization to help elect candidates for Congress who will side with them on crucial regulatory disputes.” Lest we think this is an altruistic dispute about how better to provide maximal coverage, as Reed Abelson reports, “as Obama administration officials put into place the first major wave of changes under he health care legislation, they have tried to defuse stiffening resistance -- from companies like McDonald’s and some insurers -- by granting dozens of waivers to maintain even minimal coverage far below the new law’s standard.” As he goes on to point out, “several leading insurers, including WellPoint, Aetna and Cigna, have also objected to new rules requiring them to cover even those children who are seriously ill, warning that they will stop selling new policies in some states because the rules do not protect them from having to cover too many sick children.”

We could also discuss social security and medicare, but my the point is clear enough. As a nation, we are increasingly answering the question that right to property, to include the unregulated freedom to profit from fortuitous circumstances that privilege some over others, trump the right to life, apparently even for “sick children.” In the end, it should be obvious to all that a “right to life,” if that right extends to anything more than the reciprocal obligation to abstain from direct violence, will require some redistribution of property. It should be obvious to all that a “right to life,” if that right extends universally to all, will require some redistribution of wealth. Although the McDonald’s corporation sponsors wonderful charity work through the Ronald McDonald houses, providing care to children who might otherwise not receive care, it seems odd that the same corporate structure, in the protection of its assets, would threaten to deny its employees of their health care. As Sen has suggested, rarely is famine caused by "not enough food." It is more often caused by "not enough money" to pay for food. Within democratic societies, with protected rights to speech, public outrage has served effectively to prevent famine through some redistribution of wealth. I wonder when there will be sufficient public outrage to prevent an d to treat disease. In the meantime, it seems that we are hell bent on protecting corporate freedom, corporate wealth and power, and corporate rights to property.