Courting Lady Liberty

Reviewed by Henry Olsen

Modern Liberty and the Limits of Government
by Charles Fried
W.W. Norton & Company, 2007, 217 pages.

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That principle is what Fried calls “the spirit of liberty.” Fried’s example of sexual behavior shows that political decisions depend upon reasoning, and that political reasoning takes place in a political context. Such decisions can be taken with the spirit of liberty in the forefront of our minds, or they can be taken in its absence. This becomes obvious when we look at specific examples. Let’s take security: When there is no obvious physical threat to their existence, societies are more willing to let people come and go as they please, without the burden of, for example, checkpoints. Clearly an individual’s physical mobility is fundamental to liberty, and in normal times this “right” is recognized by modern societies. But introduce a greater threat, like the one Israel faces on a daily basis from suicide bombers and the like, and society imposes upon itself more stringent restrictions than it would otherwise prefer, without removing the basic idea of liberty. Or, to use an example Fried himself often returns to, let’s take income redistribution. Fried argues that liberty demands some income redistribution because

People with little or no property are liable to suffer every kind of pain of body and mind. They are humiliated, dependent, and lack any real opportunity to enjoy the individuality of which liberty is the normative manifestation. No reader of mine will or should follow an argument that is indifferent to such suffering of his neighbor. (Emphasis added.)

An admirable sentiment, but it raises an immediate dilemma: How does one determine the degree of income redistribution that will ensure that a person has enough wealth to “enjoy a decent life”? And when does redistribution go too far and severely violate the property rights of the individual? Fried himself admits that there is no clear answer to these specifics, saying only that, “I know the spirit in which we determine that point…. It is the spirit of liberty.”

The importance of this principle is underlined by an examination of how liberal and illiberal societies use the existence, or fear of, extreme poverty to guide their actions. Societies that value liberty may build welfare states, but they also preserve basic economic freedoms. This is unsatisfying to the classical liberal who rejects the idea that non-physical externalities can justify public action, but it retains more of the spirit of liberty than do onerous policies. Illiberal societies, such as Hugo Chavez’s Venezuela or countless African dictatorships, for example, use the same poverty as justification for suppressing liberty and amassing political and economic power in the hands of a non-accountable, centralized state. If we want to understand the difference between these societies we must bear in mind the political context of public opinion: Liberal societies value liberty, and hence curb themselves; non-liberal societies, or political actors within such societies, do not, and act accordingly.

There are risks to this approach. “The spirit of liberty” is a vague notion, and thus easily abused. As Fried himself notes, certain players in the social and economic arenas often invoke the public good in order to serve their own selfish interests. Unions and businesses can seek to protect themselves from competition. Environmentalists, religious groups, and other non-governmental organizations can use democratic laws to force others to live according to their dictates. And the myriad abuses of income redistribution are simply too numerous to name. The United States was founded, after all, in a revolt against the tyranny of improper taxation. Worse still, the most horrible atrocities in history were often committed in the name of the loftiest ideals—“liberty” being one of them.

But there is no avoiding these risks. Fried at one point rejects a strict libertarian argument that opposes any income redistribution on the grounds that charity alone will suffice, insisting that, “it is enough to say that such regimes have never been tried.” So, too, with politics: Look where you will, you will not find an example of a regime without politics. It seems that liberty, if it is to be valued, must find its realization in the political sphere, and as such must manifest itself in the hearts and minds of the people who make up a particular polity. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Our defense is in the preservation of the spirit which prizes liberty as the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere.”

Such a defense is assuredly not hopeless. Contrary to common wisdom, political debates and actions in modern societies do not occur on a merely instrumental basis. They necessarily involve weighing competing claims to action, which by definition demands an explicit discussion of justice, i.e., the obligations people owe to one another. If people believe, like Lincoln, that liberty is “the heritage of all men, in all lands, everywhere,” then they are likelier to protect it and to resist infringements upon it.

Friends of liberty like Fried are enjoined to remind us that liberty is an important component of justice, one which engages our mind and our hearts. He does this best by recourse to anecdotes and concrete examples. When Fried tells us about the grandmother who could not order an English-speaking doll for her Quebecois grandchild because to do so violated the French language law, her plight garners our sympathy. When he argues that a law banning Wal-Marts from Vermont prevents people from buying goods they want at prices they can afford, we are understandably upset. And when he argues that some income redistribution is justified in order to avoid the fetid streets of Calcutta, we may not agree, but our moral sensibilities are effectively engaged.

It is this spirit of sympathy that is essential to modern liberty. It clearly invites—perhaps even requires—an idea of the natural, pre-political rights of the individual by which political decisions should be judged. I readily grant this likelihood, even this necessity. However, it is important to remember that such sympathy would not have been evoked in many places and times in human history. It seems to me that, contrary to Fried’s intentions, he has written a book that is, at heart, a political defense of liberty—one that takes the idea of an autonomous individual as its touchstone, but which recognizes that the devil is always in the details, and the details are sorted out by men acting in contexts—that is, through politics.

As a defense of liberty, Fried’s book is to be warmly welcomed. Nonetheless, the conceptual problems of clarifying the foundations of liberty and its limits remain. Those problems, insufficiently addressed by Fried, have to be dealt with, so that the individual and his freedoms will be made more secure.

Henry Olsen is a vice president of the American Enterprise Institute and director of its National Research Initiative.

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