CHOICE OR DUTY

I have, at various times in this blog, mentioned that an earlier view of liberty in our national history was the notion that we should be free to do what we should do and not what we want to do. You might have attributed such a notion to a more religiously anchored popular view. And if you have, you would be mostly right – at least according to my understanding. But apparently there is another basis for such a view. The other contention is that while people have choices in terms of their behavior, they have no choice in terms of their conscience and beliefs.¹

The theory is that you as an individual are exposed to information as you go through life. That information is processed and from it your inner voice, your conscience, draws conclusions as to what is good and what is evil. These are your moral beliefs. There is no intent in the process; it just happens. Your intent enters when you decide to either behave in accordance with that conscience or not. So when the right of religion is considered, the right refers to the duty you feel in terms of the dictates which constitute your conscience.

Madison and Jefferson understood religious liberty as the right to exercise religious duties according to the dictates of conscience, not the right to choose religious beliefs. In fact their argument for religious liberty relies heavily on the assumption that beliefs are not a matter of choice. … In this assumption Jefferson echoed the view of John Locke, who wrote in A Letter concerning Toleration (1689), “it is absurd that things should be enjoined by laws which are not in men's power to perform. And to believe this or that to be true, does not depend upon will.”²

If we have no choices in this realm, we therefore have an inalienable right to our beliefs. Such a view of beliefs and conscience is foreign to our modern ear.

The modern view is that of the natural rights mental construct. Central to the construct is the belief that the individual has the right to determine what values, including moral ones, he/she adopts. This strongly indicates an ability to do what Jefferson, Madison, and Locke believed was impossible. More critically, it undermines the function of beliefs. They, as being beyond choices, reflect more centrally our essential self, our identity. Once one accepts that one has the ability to choose values, beliefs, the content of our conscience, one prescribes a transitory, potentially changeable aspect for oneself – changeable by the whims of events and times. In the eyes of our traditional forefathers, on the other hand, that part of us becomes so much a part of who we are that a conscience is central to our being.

Does all this have a practical angle? Take the case of Thornton v. Caldor, in which a Connecticut law allowed for individuals to select which day of the week they could observe the Lord's Day. What the law did was allow Jews to observe the sabbath on Saturday by allowing them to take the day off from work. The rationale was that people don't choose what day of the week their religion selects as the day of their observance. The Supreme Court struck the law down. In its opinion, it furthered the notion that this whole issue falls under the realm of choices. Some workers are Christians, some are Jews, and some don't believe in any religion. To give workers the right to choose what day they can take off would be to allow them an unreasonable choice to the detriment of their employers. Whereas the more traditional view holds that this matter is the exercise of a duty, Jefferson would view that a Jew didn't choose to be a Jew and didn't choose to value observing the sabbath on Saturday. The choice comes into play when a Jew decides to observe the sabbath or not; whether or not to abide by the duty his/her religion holds sacred. Surely, the law could have been worded better, but the case illustrates the distinction between choice and duty. The inability of the court to settle on one or the other principle has led to contradicting decisions by the courts.

I believe this whole notion is fundamental to our civic expectations of citizens. How do our civics students perceive their role as citizens? Are they having the experiences that enable the development of a sense of duty toward the commonwealth? These are basic questions civics educators need to address.

1Sandel, M. J. (1996). Democracy's discontent: America in search of a public philosophy. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. This whole concern is taken from Sandel's book.

2Ibid., p. 65.