Free to be You and Me - My Thoughts on Stone Ch. 5 - Liberty

Liberty is probably the central American value. Freedom is an inherent aspect of the American Revolution and an important part of the American story. We are fairly certain that we know what we mean when we say liberty or freedom, but when we take such a grand ideal and operationalize it into policy action, it is just as complex as all of the other values. In the United States, we tend to focus on negative liberty or freedom from restraint. This is the idea behind our Bill of Rights. Government cannot restrict your ability to practice religion as you choose or to speak your mind. We could also take the lead of some European countries and define liberty as positive rights or rights to the prerequisites of freedom. A right to health care would be one such right, as would the right to a basic living wage. The right to a basic education and the right to emergency medical care are two such positive forms of liberty that we practice in America, but negative liberty is still dominant in the United States.

Stone asks two important questions about liberty on p. 109. "When, if ever should community or social purpose be allowed to trump individual choice? Under what circumstances should public policy ever limit individual privacy and autonomy?" Many political theorists would turn to the work of John Stuart Mill to answer these questions, as does Stone. Mill's On Liberty argues that society can only restrict an individual's liberty if it causes harm to others. This brings to mind the "fist-swinging" analogy. I can swing my fist around in the air as much as I want as long as you are not close enough that I would hit you.

This can be considered the standard of bodily harm. It sounds like a simple standard to uphold, but as you know by now, nothing is ever simple in the polis. There are bodily harms that affect some people more than others, for example air pollution affects asthmatics, young children, and the elderly more than the general population. There are bodily harms that accumulate over time, for example exposure to small doses of toxic chemicals may not be hazardous in the short-term but may cause cancer in the long-term. There are indirect bodily harms, for example a budget crisis could lead to a lay-off of air traffic controllers, which could cause the remaining controllers to be overworked, which could lead one to falling asleep on the job, which could lead to an accident. We then must also ask the question, which action should we take to prevent these harms. Do we keep asthmatic children inside for recess on bad air quality days, regulate air pollution, or both? Both of these solutions restrict someone's liberty. The problem of bodily harm is rarely ever the simple issue of one person intentionally causing an immediate harm to another.

Of course, if you think about our criminal justice policies, causing bodily harm is not the only standard of harm that we use as an excuse to restrict liberty. We are also not allowed to inflict material harms on others. We cannot take our neighbor's new big screen television, even if they are on vacation, it is not being used and there is no way we would inflict any bodily harm on them. This would not only be illegal but it violates the norms and values of society.

Stone discusses two types of material harm on page 112: harm that destroys property and harm that destroys the market value of property. The latter reminds me of proposition 2, which Phoenix residents rejected in the last local election. The brief summary of the proposition is that it would have allowed the re-zoning of a plot of land so that a gas station could be built on a vacant lot in East Phoenix. Neighborhood residents opposed the station because they argued that it would bring crime to the area. In other words, it would indirectly harm them. While it does seem like a bizarre issue to bring to referendum, it seems like a perfect issue to discuss in this context.

Residents of the neighborhood could also have argued that the gas station would have amenity effects. They could have said that the 24 hour gas station would make the neighborhood less pleasing because the lights will be on all of the time and it will bring late night traffic to the area. Certainly, a gas station is not aesthetically pleasing. It could have also been argued that a gas station is more aesthetically pleasing than a vacant lot. Of course as Stone points out, now that we are dealing with harms that are not physical we are engaging in argument, debate, and claims-making.

The most abstract harms are emotional, psychological, moral and spiritual harms. Many of these harms would not have been recognized 50 years ago. Should we restrict an individual's liberty because it causes stress to another individual or group of individuals? What if it violates the religious or spiritual beliefs of another individual? Should a pharmacist be able to refuse to fill birth control prescriptions because it's against his or her religious beliefs? Should a group Muslims be able to build an Arabic cultural center a few blocks from Ground Zero? Should Westboro Baptist Church be able to protest the funerals of soldiers killed in battle? Although emotional, psychological, religious, and spiritual harms are relatively new issues, they have certainly been hot policy topics over the past few years. Of course, if we granted protections based on  these harms, we would likely be harming others; specifically women seeking birth control, the Muslim community, and the families and friends of military heroes. We must find the delicate balance here.

Of course, in the polis we also have harms and liberties related to community. Mill argued that there are some community duties that individuals can be compelled to perform. We often restrict the liberty of individuals for the good of the social order. Citizens have to pay taxes, serve on juries, and obey the laws. In America, all males 18 and older have to register for the draft. Structural harms are a community harm that affects the ability of a community to successfully function. Stone uses the example of school vouchers as a structural harm because it reduces integration and the visibility of the public education system. Another structural harm could be google books because it reduces the use of the library by relatively well-off citizens and makes the library less important as a community meeting place. Of course, in both of these cases, removing the structural harm would likely cause individual harms. Accumulative harms are actions that are not harmful in isolation but become harmful when everyone in a community does them. The individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act is based on this logic. If one healthy person does not buy insurance then it won't raise premiums by much, but if every healthy person does not buy insurance than premiums will sky-rocket and the health insurance industry will go broke. Finally, we can extend individual harms to examine their effects on the community. Remember, in the polis all actions have ripple effects. Here again, we must strike a delicate balance.

Stone firmly believes that we cannot restrict our understanding of harm and liberty to the individual. Corporate actors including businesses, churches, non-profits, and government agencies can harm people and be harmed. Further, because they generally have a much larger reach than an individual, the harms they cause can have a greater impact on the community as a whole.

Once again, Stone ends her chapter with a discussion of trade-offs. This time we have two: liberty and security, and liberty and equity. Starting with liberty and security, Stone presents the traditional or conservative understanding of the relationship between the two: security creates dependence, self-sufficiency is necessary for liberty, and government paternalism reduces freedom. She then presents her understanding: individuals cannot make free choices unless they have basic security, no one is ever truly self-sufficient, and policy can make determinations about who is competent to care for him or herself and who is not. The liberty and equality trade-off is presented similarly. The traditional or conservative understanding is that redistribution for the sake of equality reduces the liberty of the well-off, either you have complete liberty or none at all, and coercion by public policy reduces liberty. She believes that equalizing power, wealth and knowledge leads to positive liberty, liberty is measured in degrees, and society's control of some problems can expand human freedom.  I am guessing that if you have not agreed with Stone's argument in the previous chapters, you will not agree this time. Either way, I hope you have taken the time to understand both arguments.