RALEIGH – The problem with freedom is that other people may do things that trouble, annoy, or even anger you. In a free society, you have no authority to stop them.
Strictly speaking, that’s not a problem. It’s a solution. Throughout most of human history, much suffering has derived from a lack of freedom. One faction obtained government power, wielded it to impose its moral, social, or political values on others, and then either successfully or unsuccessfully made its imposition stick with violence or intimidation. Another faction, aggrieved, eventually obtained power of its own, and the cycle of strife recurred.
Freedom is a solution in a world of conflicting values – which is, in fact, the only world we’ve got. If you are free to worship Baal and I am free to worship God, one of us is likely to be in dire moral peril. But at least I am not also fearful of being tyrannized or killed for acting on my beliefs, and you can say the same. Moreover, in a free society I have more than just the right to worship as I please. I also have the right to attempt to evangelize you, just as you have the right to try to sell me the full Baal-Believers benefits package, complete with free ginzu knives for ritual sacrifice (did you know they can cut through these tin cans as easily as through a ripe tomato?)
Of course, in a free society, there’s nothing that says one has to listen. Therein lies the problem. In my experience, liberty lovers fail to appreciate how difficult it is for most human beings to handle not being listened to, and to be confronted with the fact that others are doing something self-destructive or wrong but can’t be enjoined from continuing. Such psychic pain is also an inalienable facet of human nature. It can be excruciating. Yielding to the temptation to use government coercion to make this pain go away is wrong – no less than yielding to other kinds of injurious temptations – but surely one can understand why it happens.
It has become fashionable in modern society to attribute this behavior primarily to religious conservatives, typically portrayed as puritanical busybodies or hypocrites. For example, some North Carolina activists are waging a spirited battle against a proposal to allow people to hunt on state-regulated land on Sundays. Opponents believe that because the God of Exodus commands us to remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy, activities such as hunting, shopping, or consuming alcoholic beverages should be discouraged on Sundays. Fair enough. They also believe government should do the “discouraging.” That’s unfair and too much.
But I find at least as much willingness among groups on the political Left to use governmental coercion to impose their beliefs at the point of a gun. They favor the passage of laws making it illegal to refuse to rent a garage apartment to, say, gays and lesbians. They enact speech codes on public-university campuses. They seek restrictions on advertising, either because they don’t like the products being sold or they don’t like consumers are smart enough to understand the claims made. They assert the right to impose restrictions on wages, prices, working hours, and other conditions of employment regardless of what the parties to an employment contract may seek or think is fair. They think it’s okay to force taxpayers with strongly held moral or religious views to pay for obscene art. They want to ban smoking (but wouldn’t accept the label of puritanical prohibitionists).
Freedom isn’t easy. It requires us to be grown-ups, to settle for living in a society in which some people, no matter how hard we try, just aren’t going to do what we say or believe what we believe. It requires hippies to respect the rights of Southern Baptists, and those with less material wealth or earning potential to respect the rights of those with more, and gays to respect the rights of straights, and pacifists to respect the rights of hunters. Yes, it also means the reverse in each case. It works both directions, all directions.
Yielding to the temptation to coerce inevitably creates a more serious problem than the problem of learning to live with daily annoyances and outrages – just as yielding to a strong temptation to drink or overeat can make one feel good in the short run but cause severe harm in the long run. Guess it’s time for a new 12-step program.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation.