SHALLOW CLAIM FOR LIBERTY

Advanced nations and their social structures tend to be pluralistic, at least by historical standards. The economic opportunities that characterize these nations act as magnets culling immigrant workers from areas of the world where such opportunities do not exist. In nations where such diverse populations exist, they struggle to find some semblance of social harmony. In pluralistic societies, where a common vision of the good is difficult, it is highly daunting for a political system to count on such a uniting vision. At its core, this is the allure of a natural rights conception – or known philosophically as a liberal conception – of political governance. Where there is little to no chance of formulating a set of aims and goals that reflects the vast opinions and desires of a population as to what is worth attaining, then a system, according to natural rights advocates, should organize itself around the notion that everyone be free to define what is the good for him or herself. Of course, there is the exception to those values that seem to be universal; the value for peace and the protection of property should be recognized as transcending values. The value of stability, if you will, can be the basis by which a nation can be established and even advance as each member of the society strives to advance his or her interests. Perhaps the words of Michael Sandel can express this idea better:

Society being composed of a plurality of persons, each with his own aims, interests, and conceptions of the good, is best arranged when it is governed by principles that do not themselves presuppose any particular conception of the good; what justifies these regulative principles above all is not that they maximize the social welfare or otherwise promote the good, but rather that they conform to the conception of the right, a moral category given prior to the good and independent to it.¹

By the “right,” Sandel simply means what we consider our rights – those areas of behavior we are free to pursue, such as speech and religion. If one is at a loss in trying to promote a notion of the good authoritatively, the solution is to get the government, as much as is humanly possible, out of meddling with questions of what is good and what is not good, especially if any such effort interferes with a person's rights.

And here comes the word games: the Constitution identifies in its Preamble a list of goods and one in particular goes beyond the ideal of peace, protection of property, or stability. That good is the promotion of the general welfare. Given this aim, it follows that in order to pursue a more perfect union, we need to define – in particularly concrete terms – and promote something called the general welfare. This state of a general welfare is not stated in our founding document as individual welfare – as in a phrase, “to advance each citizen's opportunity to maximize his/her interests” – but it is stated as a common state inclusive of all citizens as a whole. Now, natural rights devotees might argue that only through a system that allows all individuals to pursue his/her interests (that is, through a free market) will the general welfare be pursued. But now, with this admonition, the “good,” in this natural rights perspective, takes on more substance. When one argues for such a system, a whole array of goods seems to come into play. To establish and maintain a viable free market, a whole style of life becomes operational. And not only is such a style extensive, but it is downright inimical to many people's vision of a good life. You can include, for example, traditional ways of life that one can associate with those immigrating from lesser developed nations.

This stream of argument that natural right advocates present, such as for liberty and getting government out of our lives, seems very shallow. When we view how the defenders of the free market have used government agency to further their aims in our history – the use, for example, of coercive means to put down labor unions or, more recently, the use of government to interfere with reproductive rights – then one wonders how sincere these claims for liberty are. For each of these uses of government, there are rationalizations, but I think it is quite fair to say that those in power, including those who lead in “liberal” economies, tend to lean toward the power of government when it comes to promoting their visions or versions of the good.

1Sandel, M. (1998). Liberalism and the limits of justice. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Quotation on p. 1. Emphasis in the original.