Contending Notions of Liberty

Over the course of the ongoing health care reform debate the right has put forward a barrage of disingenuous, cynical, and hypocritical arguments against reform--not to mention the utter falsehoods disseminated by reform opponents. Republicans oppose reform because, they say, it will increase the size and reach of government, including government spending and taxes--yet the bill will actually improve the budgetary position of the federal government over the next decade and beyond, and is, in fact, a requisite to addressing long-term budgetary challenges.

This argument also flies in the face of the Republican's own 2003 Medicare Part D policy, which is in reality one of the largest expansions of government domestic spending in decades without offsetting spending cuts or revenue increases.

Then there's the Republican's hypocrisy when it comes to Medicare cuts. One of the more effective Republican talking points against reform has been that seniors will experience drastic cuts in their Medicare. Without delving into how patently false this is, such arguments are both hypocritical and highly cynical, coming from the party whose raison de etre has been to outright eliminate social programs, primarily Medicare and Social Security, since their inception. This is coming from the party that fought tooth and nail to block Medicare's passage in the 1960s and fought throughout the 1990s for drastic cuts.

And finally we have the outright falsehoods, such as "death panels" and insurance for illegal immigrants. Misrepresentations that alter the nature of debate, often forcing proponents (of the policy) onto the defensive, while significantly altering the narrative.

But there are those who will engage in an honest, open debate regarding the policy, and will even concede that the health care reform legislation--taken as a whole--will likely succeed in accomplishing what it sets out to do: (near)universal coverage, insurance reform, cost containment, etc. These folks, however, remain adamantly opposed to the legislation. Why? They see health insurance reform--and essentially any other government attempt at "correcting" or "addressing" social challenges--as misguided and as an infringement on individual liberty. According to this view, government intervention is "not the American way" and is in opposition to America's founding principles.

Once "liberty" has been invoked we've left the realm of policy and we've entered a philosophical debate, one that is much less receptive to facts, statistics, models, and policy arguments--however persuasive. (The same can be said when religious belief is invoked).

And who would want to be on the wrong side of liberty, however vaguely defined?Ah, but there's the rub: this is but one aspect of liberty, one part of a larger whole. A more complete conception of liberty puts an emphasis on balancing sometimes contending priorities: liberty as "freedom of" and liberty as "freedom from."

When conservatives invoke "liberty" when opposing government involvement in the economy or health care, they are thinking of liberty in its "freedom of" form. These are the types of liberties encapsulated in the The Bill of Rights: freedom of speech, freedom of religion, etc., and are usually thought of as the individual's liberty from government encroachment.

But this is a narrow--and in many ways antiquated--view of liberty. The types of liberties provided under the American Bill of Rights and other like documents are still very much essential today as they were over two hundred years ago. But these liberties do not take into account the ways in which the modern world--with its capitalist superstructure--can impinge on the human spirit, human worth, and human welfare. Forces out of the control of any one individual--a volatile market economy, unforeseen medical illness, a major financial crisis--can lead to outcomes that put the individual's very well-being in jeopardy. That's why liberty construed as "freedom from" cannot be dismissed and wholly trumped by "freedom of."

In an excellent essay in The New Republic, William Galston attempts to differentiate between these two types of freedoms, particularly in the context of health care reform. I recommend reading the entire essay, but here are some key passages:

The deeper question concerns not public sentiment, but, rather, the basis on which government may legitimately act under the Constitution. In 1933, FDR argued that that only the powers of government could be adequate to the exigencies of the moment. If so, he said, it could not be the case that our Constitution had disabled us from meeting a grave threat to the general welfare, and potentially to constitutional government itself. He won that argument: We live today in the legacy of his victory, and (I say this at the risk of sounding “progressive”), we’re not going back.

The alternative formulation of the dispute--Mansfield’s, I think--is that the issue isn’t the relation of means and ends, but rather the right of government to act in certain ways. If government doesn’t have the right, then considerations of efficacy are irrelevant. Even if government could bring about a good result by acting ultra vires, doing so would be an invasion of liberty, which is the most fundamental good. Rather than invade liberty, we should be prepared to live with the consequences of government forbearance. (I note for the record that if Abraham Lincoln had accepted this view, we’d probably be presenting passports at the Virginia/Maryland border.)

...

At the heart of the conservative misunderstanding of liberty is the presumption that government and individual freedom are fundamentally at odds. At the heart of any liberal understanding of freedom is the proposition that public power can advance freedom as well as undermine it.

In the real world, there is no such thing as freedom in the abstract. There are only specific freedoms, which differ in their conditions and consequences. FDR famously enumerated four such freedoms, dividing them into two pairs: freedom of speech and worship; freedom from want and fear. The first pair had long been recognized and enshrined in the Constitution. The second were a new formulation, and Roosevelt made them concrete when he signed Social Security into law, justifying it as a way of promoting freedom from want: "We have tried to frame a law which will give some measure of protection to the average citizen and to his family ... against poverty-ridden old age." Three years later, he declared that Social Security payments will "furnish that minimum necessary to keep a foothold; and that is the kind of protection Americans want."

...

The other face of freedom--"freedom from"--points toward circumstances that (it is presumed) we all wish to avoid. In such instances, the task of government is, so far as possible, to immunize individuals against undesired circumstances. Here, government acts to protect not individual agency and choice, but rather an individual's life circumstances against outcomes that no one would choose, or willingly endure.

I'm afraid that unless the divide can be bridged between these two conceptions of liberty, conservatives will be unable to accept a role for government in advancing human and societal welfare. The challenges we face as a society in the 21st century render this philosophical resistance extremely unfortunate. Many of the challenges and obstacles we face--financial sector volatility, global climate change and other eco-environmental challenges, health care cost inflation and inequity--require effective, knowledge based governance that promotes and protects the public good.