Liberal Law Takes Freedom Away

The problem is fairly simple. It is the tangle introduced into the law by powerful government. Today we have the notion of law as the balancing of interests competing with the liberal law of “rights” all gummed up with the forest of adminstrative law that arises out of the enormous reach of government.

President Obama has called for a new era of responsibility, writes Philip K. Howard. It’s a wonderful idea. Just don’t try it out yourself or you’ll get creamed.

But there’s a threshold problem for our new president. Americans don’t feel free to reach inside themselves and make a difference. The growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralyzing uncertainty into everyday choices.

The examples are all around us.

Most doctors say they wouldn’t advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling. Make a difference? You can’t even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.

Again. It’s not that hard. These problems are all problems because politicians, acting with the consent of the voters, have injected government power into areas that didn’t used to have government involved.

We have taught people to expect miracles from medicine. So people sue when medicine isn’t perfect. We have created vast bureaucracies to second-guess private actors. And it’s not surprising that teachers need to watch their step. They are acting as custodians of the nationi’s children in government custodial facilities. Of course their every action should be governed by administrative law.

Philip K Howard thinks he has a solution. He just wants to create a zone of freedom.

Freedom has a formal structure. It has two components:

1) Law sets boundaries that proscribe what we must do or can’t do — you must not steal, you must pay taxes.

2) Those same legal boundaries protect an open field of free choice in all other matters.

That’s all very well, but you can’t allow government officials “an open field of free choice.” The whole point of government is that government spending and regulation must be tightly regulated or it will descend into corruption, and spending money for no return.

If you want an open field of free choice then you’ve got to take the government out of it. So if you want teachers to touch children again, you’ve got to scale back government schooling. If you want doctors free of lawsuits you’ve got to take 3rd party payment out of the equation so that doctors have a one-on-one relationship with their patients.

But that goes against the very grain of modern society. The whole idea of modern society is that an educated elite gets to call the big shots on everything, generally through big government adminstrative programs or through big government administrative law.

You can’t have responsibility in that kind of a culture. Instead you get jealously guarded rights and endless second-guessing and punitive lawsuits.

Don’t like the era of rights and second guessing? Then get government out of the way.

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Christopher Chantrill blogs at www.roadtothemiddleclass.com. His Road to the Middle Class is forthcoming.

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Faith & Purpose

“When we began first to preach these things, the people appeared as awakened from the sleep of ages—they seemed to see for the first time that they were responsible beings...”
Finke, Stark, The Churching of America, 1776-1990

Mutual Aid

In 1911... at least nine million of the 12 million covered by national insurance were already members of voluntary sick pay schemes. A similar proportion were also eligible for medical care.
Green, Reinventing Civil Society

Education

“We have met with families in which for weeks together, not an article of sustenance but potatoes had been used; yet for every child the hard-earned sum was provided to send them to school.”
E. G. West, Education and the State

Living Under Law

Law being too tenuous to rely upon in [Ulster and the Scottish borderlands], people developed patterns of settling differences by personal fighting and family feuds.
Thomas Sowell, Conquests and Cultures

German Philosophy

The primary thing to keep in mind about German and Russian thought since 1800 is that it takes for granted that the Cartesian, Lockean or Humean scientific and philosophical conception of man and nature... has been shown by indisputable evidence to be inadequate.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Meeting of East and West

Knowledge

Inquiry does not start unless there is a problem... It is the problem and its characteristics revealed by analysis which guides one first to the relevant facts and then, once the relevant facts are known, to the relevant hypotheses.
F.S.C. Northrop, The Logic of the Sciences and the Humanities

Chappies

“But I saw a man yesterday who knows a fellow who had it from a chappie that said that Urquhart had been dipping himself a bit recklessly off the deep end.” —Freddy Arbuthnot
Dorothy L. Sayers, Strong Poison

Democratic Capitalism

I mean three systems in one: a predominantly market economy; a polity respectful of the rights of the individual to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; and a system of cultural institutions moved by ideals of liberty and justice for all. In short, three dynamic and converging systems functioning as one: a democratic polity, an economy based on markets and incentives, and a moral-cultural system which is plural and, in the largest sense, liberal.
Michael Novak, The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism

Action

The incentive that impels a man to act is always some uneasiness... But to make a man act [he must have] the expectation that purposeful behavior has the power to remove or at least to alleviate the felt uneasiness.
Ludwig von Mises, Human Action

Churches

[In the] higher Christian churches� they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a string of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it every minute.
Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

Conversion

“When we received Christ,” Phil added, “all of a sudden we now had a rule book to go by, and when we had problems the preacher was right there to give us the answers.”
James M. Ault, Jr., Spirit and Flesh

Living Law

The recognition and integration of extralegal property rights [in the Homestead Act] was a key element in the United States becoming the most important market economy and producer of capital in the world.
Hernando de Soto, The Mystery of Capital

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