Sometimes freedom is the freedom to destroy.
Okay, last and final word on this. To further illustrate that the common good, like liberty or democracy or due process or equality, is another normal political criterion on which we deliberate collectively in the practice of politics, I thought I could turn Charlie’s question around. He asks, appropriately, of common good talkers, What do you want to do? That’s good. A better question might be, What do you want to establish? I answered in terms of our strengthening family institutions, our national independence, sovereignty.
For freedom conservatives, I might ask: What do you want to liberate me from? Or what institutions do you want to alter, dissolve, or disestablish?
I’m guessing Charlie, being a classical liberal, wants to liberate me from arbitrary state authority. Because he isn’t totally libertine and mostly traditional, I’m guessing he doesn’t want to liberate me or my children from the institution of the family; and so therefore he would oppose attempts, in the name of freedom, to pass broad laws of child emancipation, something like no-fault divorce for kids. Because social institutions are often strengthened by having more economic functions, and because he dreads dependence on government rather than on the institutions of civil society, perhaps he would abolish Social Security, to further restore the economic duty and social pressure on adult children to take care of their aged parents. But, I’m also guessing he would hesitate to pass laws restricting divorce too much.
Because he respects religious institutions, he would not establish a right to get a Catholic marriage or receive other sacraments if the Church itself objected or barred it. And he would allow all churches to govern themselves according to their own rules. If Congregationalists want a lay board, let them have it. If Catholics have bishops appoint parish pastors, or not — he respects their rights.
But Charlie is not that traditional either, and so he supported the state recognizing the right of two men to call their partnerships a marriage. Tradition in marital law, in this case, was disestablished in 2015.
Does he want to liberate us from oppressive gender constructs and social performances? Some do, and naturally it follows that if a man conceived of himself as a woman, he will demand the government treat and recognize him as such. Charles, believing that government ultimately cannot and should not liberate us from these things, would side with the conservative institutionalists.
But others, in the name of freedom, would grant rights and “freedoms” to people in such a way as to destroy the control of bishops over parishes. With Senate Bill 1098 in 2009, Connecticut flirted with such a law a decade ago that would have rendered Catholics more like Congregationalists.
How does he feel about the market in human eggs and sperm and surrogacy? Do children belong to their natural parents by default, or does the adults’ right to contract or privacy trump it? He may think the state isn’t a great forum to adjudicate this, but ultimately a state must decide whether contracts in the flesh of children should be honored and enforceable or not.
Charlie and I sit closely adjacent to each other on the broad political spectrum. But many people, in the name of freedom or equality, would grant rights to individuals, which would be asserted against their churches, their families, their employers, or social clubs, etc.
The WSJ was so keen on the freedom of people to move where they wish that they proposed a constitutional amendment “that there be open borders,” which I think dissolves and disestablishes an important feature of the nation-state. They wanted to liberate people from the arbitrary authority of nations. Sometimes freedom is the freedom to destroy.