Duties, both personal and professional, kept me from penning a column over the weekend. Back tomorrow with a fresh DJ. In the meantime, a piece from 2007 about protecting the public from contagions.
RALEIGH – As I have observed frequently in this space, the tone and direction of political and philosophical conversation are often set by the participants’ choice of terms. Disagreements often derive from a lack of shared definitions of those terms, not necessarily a lack of shared goals or values. When we argue about what government should do, for example, we often talk past each other because we don’t have a shared definition of what “government” means. As this is an important matter, one can safely assume that John Locke said something insightful about it, as indeed he did:
There is no such way to gain admittance, or give defense, to strange and absurd doctrines, as to guard them round about with legions of obscure, doubtful, and undefined words, which yet make these retreats more like the dens of robbers, or holes of foxes, than fortresses of fair warriors.
One of the most expansively defined terms in today’s political discourse is “public health.” Politicians, regulators, and activists use the term to justify a depressing array of new encroachments on individual freedom, such as smoking bans on private property, restrictions on advertising food to children, the elimination of video-poker machines, and the use of eminent domain to transfer “blighted” properties to real-estate developers.
In its original definition, public health was very much a legitimate function of any limited, constitutional government. Individuals have the right not to be forced to assume significant risks to their health and safety on their own property, on in the public “commons.” That is, if burning waste on your property puts dangerous chemicals in the air I breathe on my property, I have every right to seek redress, by government coercion if necessary. Similarly, if an ill-tended home becomes a nest for disease-laden pests, or an industrial plant impairs the quality of the local water supply, or an outbreak of a communicable illness in one place threatens the health of others, government has the right and duty to intervene.
In order for the term “public health” to retain a useful meaning, however, it must be capable of exclusion. There must be such a thing as “private health.” There must be such a thing as a health or safety risk that individuals bring on themselves by their own choices, as unfortunate as that may be, and are not imposed on others against their will. For example, it is a matter of private health, not public health, if I choose to enter your private property even though I know you or another of your guests may be a smoker.
As friends, family members, co-workers, and neighbors, most of us believe that we should care very much about the private health of others. We should counsel them to make healthful choices, to be prudent, to enjoy food and drink in moderation, and to give up self-destructive behavior. We might even go beyond words to try to change their behavior, such as offering incentives to encourage good choices. But this process remains persuasive, not coercive. We don’t assume that because we have good intentions and (we think) valuable knowledge or fortitude that the other person does not, we have the right to steal his smokes, rifle through his groceries, or compel him to do jumping jacks on our front lawn so we can see how high he leaps.
Instead of confining its public-health interventions to communicable diseases, clear and present hazards to neighboring lives and property, and pollution in the commons, too many governments seek to limit our freedom “for our own good.” Freedom is a package deal, though. You have to allow people to be foolish and self-destructive if you believe there is any value to protecting their freedom to be wise and virtuous.
Consider the problem this way: If the logic behind the current tyranny of public health is valid, why should it stop at policing the likes of smoking and gambling? Behavior flows from thoughts. Public-health officials aren’t just trying to punish us for doing wrong. They’re trying to make us adopt their more-healthful attitudes, after which we’ll presumably behave.
One of the greatest threats to the health and safety of any people is socialism. It has caused devastating wars. It led to the deaths of nearly 200 million people by the hands of their own governments during the 20th Century (a greater death toll than from military conflicts, by the way). It has impoverished or brutalized many more hundreds of millions of people. And it has proven to be an ideological virus remarkably resistant to eradication and inoculation, given its persistence among otherwise-intelligent people around the globe, some even outside of the confines of Western universities and the palaces of lunatic dictators.
Why shouldn’t government ban the propagation of socialism? It’s dangerous and seductive. One might even call it addictive. Doesn’t the public deserve to be protected from this contagion?
I assume you’d answer in the negative. Think hard about why.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.