Worth Killing For
Jeremy GayedThis is less of an essay, and more of an observation submitted for comment.
American liberty is supposed to be the freedom to swing your fist wherever you choose, provided you’ll be punished if you strike another man’s nose. In other words, the concept is that we’re free to do as we please so long as we don’t interfere with the freedom of others.
In other words, a good man is free to believe good, and to do good, but he must permit an evil man to believe evil, and do evil.
Does this not value political liberty over moral good? And, if so, is there any justification for doing so other than to question humanity’s capability to know good with certainty?
July 23rd, 2008 at 4:28 pm
Yes and yes.
It seems to me that this is the same defense against the problem of evil. God prefers that our will freely choose good than that it be forced. If, indeed, this justifies a will being free, then (I think) it must too justify political liberty over forced morality. The perceived doubt around having the ability to know moral goodness is secondary.
July 24th, 2008 at 9:02 am
I like the comparison to the problem of evil–but I’m not sure I buy it. If we believe we can comprehend good well enough to understand at least that some things are evil, how can we justify tolerating the continued existence of evil?
I guess another way to frame the issue is this–freedom only has any real value insofar as it is freedom to do good. I buy that we permit freedom to do evil as well in deference to our imperfect knowledge of what is good, and as a pragmatic recognition that freedom to do both good and evil is the only way to ensure freedom to do good in a corrupt world. But I don’t buy that there’s any moral value in permitting someone the political freedom to do evil (i.e., to do evil without secular consequence) so that they can choose uncoercedly not to do it.
July 28th, 2008 at 8:49 am
Well, I think there’s another angle of this issue to consider — one which is not tied to humanity’s ability to know good so much as to humanity’s ability to be good. That issue is the rightful bounds on the authority of human governments to mold the souls, or at least the morals, of its citizens — to promote not just political liberty but also moral good.
It seems that the only form of government that has a legitimate claim on such a task is theocracy. Only if the state and institutional religion are one does the state have the right to concern itself intimately and directly with the moral development of its citizens. As C.S. Lewis said, however, “Lilies that fester smell worse than weeds.” That is, the greater or loftier a government’s intentions, the worse it can potentially become. Theocracy, while the best of all possible forms of government if all citizens share the same faith and those in government remain honest and uncorrupted, quickly becomes the worst of all forms of government when those conditions aren’t met.
Human sinfulness necessitates that the state NOT directly inject itself into the moral development of its citizens because of the potential for abuse in such situations. Only saints (in the more specific sense of supernaturally faithful Christians, not in the more general sense in which all Christian believers are “saints”) can be relied upon to run such a government. The lures of power and the nature of government being what they are, however, the people running governments are almost never saints; they are flawed, ambitious, and often corrupt. In a state that doesn’t try to make its citizens “good”, their flawed, ambitious, and corrupt natures would have limited opportunities to tyrannize citizens. In a theocratic state the likes of which would be required to inculcate moral good (instead of political liberty), however, the opportunities for their corruption and ambition to tyrannize their fellow citizens would be virtually limitless.
Simply BECAUSE men are not all good (or all-good), no one should seek to make his fellow citizens good through the powers of the state. That way leads to a tyranny so complete and odious that only a bloody revolution could ever free men again; a tyranny that would discredit for generations the very standard of goodness that the well-intentioned people sought to impose in the first place.
The best the state can do is create the general conditions under which men can be good if they choose to be. If people choose to not be good, however, the state should not and must not punish them for this decision per se. It should only punish actions (flowing from such a decision, yes) that have a more direct negative effect on the public. It should stop them when they go wrong badly, or in particularly bad ways, but it must not force them to go right.
July 28th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
I take your argument to be that the state must not force men to go right ONLY because we cannot, pragmatically, trust the state to remain an uncorrupted and wise arbiter of what is right. History agrees, and I do, too.
But what I’m trying to figure out is whether that’s the only justification we have for Madisonian liberty.
July 29th, 2008 at 11:55 am
I don’t see any other justifications for it (beyond the free will argument, possibly), quite frankly.