Thinking About Freedom in the United States of America

David Bernell

Amidst the immediate concerns of the Biden transition, runoff elections in Georgia, and the necessity of pursuing public health and economic stimulus measures to combat COVID and its impacts, there are also questions of making our democracy stronger and our political climate less divisive. These are the types of goals President-elect Biden has espoused in his speeches both during and after the campaign, but the proposed solutions, like just about everything else in our politics, have been divided among party lines, and they derive in part from competing visions of what constitutes a good society.

One way I think of this is that we’re having a problem with freedom in the United States. We can’t agree on what it means and how to pursue it. And this is one of the things that makes our politics increasingly hostile, and our society increasingly divided.

On the one hand, there is a view that freedom means that the reach of government is limited. The achievement of freedom, in this view, entails continually striving to block the expansion of government into people’s lives, whether this comes in the form of taxes, health insurance mandates, regulation, and even at times law enforcement. Along the political spectrum in the United States, there can be selective application of these views. The Republicans are supportive of restrictive laws and regulations that have a significant impact on women’s reproductive health and their freedom from government interference in this realm. They also have sought to ban same-sex marriage, another example of government hindering people’s freedom. At the same time, the Democrats have found themselves in the unusual position of championing the concept of state-level prerogatives during the Trump Administration. An example of this involves the adoption of laws legalizing recreational marijuana usage in a handful of states. (Democrats have not used the term “states rights,” which is closely connected to slavery and the Civil War, and more recently to upholding laws and practices that permit racial discrimination and the violation of civil rights).

In spite of these selective applications, it is the conservative movement and the GOP that overwhelmingly subscribes to this view of freedom as the curtailment of government powers and programs. This view has been manifested in recent years in the Tea Party movement, the Freedom Caucus in the House of Representatives, and numerous legislative proposals to cut or privatize government programs, even popular ones like Medicare and Social Security.

At the same time, there is a second view of freedom in the United States that gains wide acceptance. In this view, freedom means that individuals have the right to equal protection of the laws to pursue their interests and goals. In practice, this means that the populations that have been most vulnerable, marginal and discriminated against – in both public policy and their private lives – are in need of government action to secure their political and social equality. This includes racial, religious and ethnic minorities, women, people with disabilities, and those whose sexuality or gender identities are seen (by themselves and others) as being different from the majority of the population. 

Those who subscribe to this view of freedom see the need for greater government action, policies and programs to rectify the sins of the past and present, and to secure the ability for all to be free from political and social discrimination and marginalization. This view also tends toward supporting public policies that regulate and police business and market activities (minimum wages, workplace safety, financial regulation), and that redistribute wealth toward the poor and the elderly, with the aim of diminishing the burden of poverty, and ensuring that those with higher levels of income and wealth are not able to unfairly exploit those advantages at the expense of those with less income and wealth.  The common theme in the support for this range of policies and government actions is seen as the protection of vulnerable populations. This is the territory that Democrats overwhelmingly occupy.

These two understandings of freedom, and what the American ideal of freedom means in practice, have increasingly come into conflict with one another in our political discourse. One view necessitates that the scope and reach of government be reduced, or at least limited. In theory, this sounds reasonable. Who wants government extending deep into their lives? But as critics point out, in practice this seems to mean that those with power, wealth and status are better able to preserve those privileges, and to do so at the expense of limiting and withholding things from others with fewer of these advantages. 

The second view of freedom, by contrast, requires that the role of government is necessary to maintain or even extend in many realms. In theory, this also sounds quite reasonable. Who doesn’t want equality of all enshrined in the law? (Unfortunately, it looks like plenty of people in the country these days.) But as critics point out, equal rights also tend to look like special privileges and rights, when employers and universities take race, ethnicity and gender into account in hiring and admissions. The supporters of each of these views are quite adept at highlighting the inherent goodness of their theoretical ideals, while criticizing the practices and impacts of the other side. This is both a common, and often effective, debating strategy. (As he often did in many ways, that great philosopher and catcher for the New York Yankees, Yogi Berra, captured this paradoxical dilemma when he said, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”)

What can we do about this political and social divide? Are these irreconcilable differences? Is it our tragic fate in this country to have the Democrats and Republicans try and wrest control of the federal government to enact the policies that privilege one view over the other, only to revert back again when the opposition controls the government? This situation, as George Washington pointed out, seems itself to be a form of tyranny. As our first president said: “The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enemies, is itself a frightful despotism.”

I’m not sure of the answer to these questions, but I do believe that freedom is not a “finite good,” limited in the amount that can be achieved. Some things can be used without being used up, and freedom is one of those things. It should be possible for a black man to walk down the street without fear of police violence against him, a lesbian couple to marry, an immigrant to get a job, a Mexican-American student to gain admission to college, and a poor or unemployed person to get health insurance without diminishing the freedom of white, straight, wealthy and/or Christian men.  By the same token, that white, straight, wealthy Christian man should be able to have some measure of freedom from undue government interference in his life and business without necessarily taking something away from anyone else's access to opportunities to advance their own freedom.

This ideal suffers from the same defect I pointed out above, because the disconnect between theory and practice tends to be significant. It also suffers when both political parties see the other as pursuing illegitimate goals that diminish freedom. The Democrats talk about a GOP that wants largely to serve its voters and no others, and it's fine with restricting democracy and civil rights along the way as long as it produces their desired goals. The GOP talks about a Democratic party that supports socialism, the end of freedom, and that it represents an existential threat to the country. 

My own view is that the view of the Democratic party is correct, and that the GOP is not standing on solid ground. The two parties don't bear equal responsibility for our current political dysfunction. It's not even close. But assessing blame and finding a way through the impasse -- or at least a path forward for the incoming Biden Administration -- are different tasks.

 

(An earlier version of this essay appeared in the James Madison blog [http://jamesmadisonblog.info/]  under a pseudonym.)