"I think many from my side of the isle are starting to be a bit paranoid about encroachment on personal liberty from the Left."
I'm worried about RW's anarchy assault on the common good.
Sometimes, the common good outweighs individual freedoms, like wearing a mask or going the speed limit [opinion]
STEPHEN MEDVIC | Special to LNP | LancasterOnline May 19, 2020
One of the most fundamental tensions in democratic political systems arises from the attempt to balance the protection of individual liberty with the pursuit of the common good.
Too much emphasis on liberty and the well-being of the entire nation may suffer; too much focus on what’s best for the public at large and the interests of some, perhaps many, individuals may be trampled.
Few countries achieve a perfect balance of the two, and the tendency to favor one side or the other is rooted in a nation’s political culture. Countries with a communitarian culture, like those in Scandinavia for instance, tend to err on the side of the common good. Those with a more individualistic culture, like the United States, lean toward liberty.
Since liberty has such resonance with those of us in the United States, it’s worth pondering the basis of our liberties and contemplating the demands liberty makes on us. That’s particularly important during a state of emergency, as in the COVID-19 pandemic. In unprecedented times like these, we must protect liberty while acknowledging its limitations.
To a degree, we all relinquish some autonomy by living in an organized society. Political philosophers in the social contract tradition, such as Thomas Hobbes and John Locke, ask us to imagine life before the advent of government. In this fictional “state of nature,” humans would find themselves in a “war of all against all,” to use Hobbes’ famous phrase, as we each compete for survival. The strongest would dominate the less strong and no one but an even stronger person could stop them from taking what they want. Life in these conditions, says Hobbes in an equally famous phrase, would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”
To obtain a level of safety and security, we can easily imagine early humans agreeing to form governments. We’d no longer be able to do whatever we’d like, but we would be protected against others who would violate our most basic rights (e.g., to life and property).
But what if the government itself became a violator of rights? Liberal democracy developed as a check against such abuse. In systems like ours, civil liberties are guaranteed even to unpopular groups who are in the minority.
Of course, those liberties are not unlimited. We are not, for instance, allowed to harm others by our actions. I cannot physically assault you, and you, in turn, cannot steal my car or vandalize my house.
Even in the absence of actual harm, we curtail our behavior and that of our fellow citizens in all sorts of ways. For instance, I cannot drive 90 miles an hour in a residential area even if I don’t harm anyone else. The risk to others is simply too great to allow me the freedom to drive as fast as I’d like.
We are all better off in a society in which the laws protect us not only from harm but from considerable and demonstrable risk of harm. This is why, even in a system that places great value on freedom, the common good sometimes outweighs individual liberty. There are behaviors that are so harmful, or so potentially harmful, that allowing them would diminish our collective well-being.
Living in an organized society obligates us to accept this fact. The freedoms we enjoy as citizens in a liberal democracy come with a duty to follow legitimate laws that have been established in the public’s interest. Of course, what makes a law legitimate — particularly during a public emergency — is a complex question I hope to address in a separate column next Sunday.
Nevertheless, individuals may occasionally decide that even a legitimate law is inconvenient, or oppressive, to them. In most cases, the aggrieved individual will work through the proper democratic channels to attempt to fix the law. Sometimes, however, individuals choose to ignore the law altogether.
Of course, breaking the law comes with sanctions from the state, acting on behalf of the citizenry. If the lawless behavior results in harm to others, those sanctions will be severe. If I speed through a residential area and get caught, I’ll pay a fine. If I kill a pedestrian while speeding, I’ll face time in jail. Individuals can decide to flout the law, but they’ll be held responsible for their actions. This is what separates a civilized society from the state of nature.
Part of what makes the pandemic we’re currently struggling with so malicious is that it disrupts all of the normal processes we have in place for organizing society. Normal politics, for instance, are upended as chief executives are called on to make vital decisions unilaterally. This is as it must be in an emergency but it is not without potential abuse. And, here, the irony must be noted of those protesting governors’ stay-at-home orders as tyrannical while waving banners in support of a president who has claimed his power is “total.”
Another disruption the pandemic causes — and one that strikes at the heart of this column’s subject — is the decoupling of the behavior of individuals from responsibility for the consequences of those behaviors. Because one can be an asymptomatic carrier of the virus, individuals may infect others without even knowing it. You may be the cause of another person’s — or dozens of people’s — illness or even death and there is no way to hold you accountable for this. No amount of testing or contact tracing will enable us to hold individuals responsible for the decision to go out in public during a pandemic.
Those defiantly refusing to wear masks in public, and even those willing to wear masks but demanding the ability to work in confined areas like bars, restaurants and shops, want the freedom to determine their own actions. That’s perfectly understandable. But the nature of the pandemic means we won’t be held responsible if our actions harm others. That’s not the liberty of a liberal democracy — that’s the anarchy of the state of nature.
The coronavirus puts us in an extraordinarily unusual circumstance. While we face this temporary threat to public health, we have to rethink our normal understanding of liberty. It doesn’t mean sacrificing it entirely, or forever, but it does mean reassessing how liberty coexists with the well-being of the entire community.
For the time being, the delicate balance between the two must shift toward the common good.
Stephen K. Medvic is the Honorable & Mrs. John C. Kunkel Professor of Government at Franklin & Marshall College.
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