The Price of Liberty

When I absolutely have to wear a tie at this time of year, which I’m glad is rarely, I like, if possible, to whip out an old Snoopy tie of mine.  Snoopy, you recall, is the beagle in the Peanuts comic strip who is truly the blithe spirit among a horde of often over-wrought kids (a little book, The Gospel According to Peanuts, provides a theological interpretation, which is my lame excuse for wearing the tie to church, that Snoopy represents the Holy Spirit trying to lighten up a bunch of overly striving Earnest Christians.) My Snoopy tie shows him in swimming trunks traipsing across the beach, whistling and wearing sun glasses; on the back of the tie it says, “My body may be at work but my mind is on vacation.” I’m just returned from an orgy of vacationing, including short trips to Canada and to Chautauqua, New York, sandwiched in between two separate weeks at the beach; my mind is still back there somewhere, whistling and hiding from me. Eventually, it’s bound to show up.

Meanwhile, I’ve been catching up on old opinion columns, and in the process found a few that as usual make a mishmash of the difference between Liberty and Freedom (one of the most common vices among all of us.)  One was in a column by Robert Samuelson, which reflected on the current crisis in capitalism in a serious way that deserves consideration. First, we all need to keep in mind that Freedom is the absence of all external constraints, while Liberty is the absence from the constraints of arbitrary or despotic government.  That difference is important.  Freedom is the fervent desire of every teenager; Liberty is the mature desire of adults to live together in an orderly society that recognizes and respects the needs of the individual while providing ground rules that enable all to live and work together peaceably and happily.  Freedom implies no obligations on anyone’s part; Liberty implies reasonable and non-arbitrary mutual obligations on the part of all of us.  Freedom implies the State of Nature in which we are all equally unconstrained and vulnerable; Liberty implies the Social Contract.

Samuelson writes in two different columns about democracy and about capitalism in a way that is subtly contradictory.  In one, about the bitter political strife in this election year, he writes that Americans are torn between their love of freedom and their love for equality to the point that it constitutes the great divide between conservative and liberal thought.  He cites de Tocqueville as a source of his belief that we seek equality because of our innate greed, and that egalitarianism will eventually win.  In the other, about the crisis of capitalism, he acknowledges that the implicit bargain that capitalism makes in exchange for the freedom of its profit making is that large returns on investments will be reinvested in ways of benefit to all, and that the bargain is being broken when companies just hang on to profits without reinvesting them productively.  He recognizes that lack of reinvestment is a big factor in the current recession, to the detriment of all.

Samuelson is right when he talks about our individual greed dragging us down, but wrong to forget that we are social animals, tied together by bonds of empathy and mutual accommodation.  Biology tells us that has been the key to our success as a species.  Even a small child knows instinctively what’s fair and what’s not.  Samuelson seems not to recognize that what he characterizes as greedy egalitarianism in us is that small child shouting, “That’s not fair!”  The violators in this case are the one-percenters and the corporations who are not doing their part in keeping our society going.  Paying taxes, reinvesting, refraining from price gouging, responsible treatment of employees, all are fundamental ethical practices required for a free society.  Miss Manners, in an article years ago in the American Scholar, commented that the enactment of a law represented the failure of an ethic.  Regulations are the consequence of unethical behaviors.  If businesses desire less regulation, then the key first step for them is to become models of ethical practice. The price of Liberty is not just eternal vigilance, it’s also responsible participation.