Liberal Rights, Liberal Virtues

Posted by Paul

Last week Chris had a great post whose thesis was this:

A lot of political discourse seems to work this way. Facts that are uncontroversial, or ought to be uncontroversial, become politicized. When that happens we (often reasonably) end up paying as much attention to the role that citing them plays in our political discourse as to their truth.

Chris's point is not that we start with a stock of truths and then try, in political discourse and debate, to determine their particular relevance for political purposes. That would be a healthy, constructive dialogue that should be welcomed by all parties. Rather, the point is that the truths that one side thinks are true and relevant are taken to be shibboleths by those who either reject the truth or (more likely) reject the views those truths are used to support. Chris notes a few examples, and you should go reread the post for those and his full discussion. But we've all encountered this, whether in the benign, professorial nod one can elicit when a "But what about..." is met with the other's assessment that you haven't yet thought the whole thing through yet, or when in the heat of debate the adducing of a commonly accepted empirical claim sparks a "NOT THAT OLD SAW!" response.

Along similar sociological lines, I want to discuss a phenomenon that can be observed when the ideas of political rights and political virtues are in play. This feature of political discourse can perhaps best be illustrated with an example. Consider Ralph Nader. While I am by and large sympathetic to Nader's political outlook (his defense of Terri Schiavo's parents notwithstanding), I was also sympathetic (at the start of the campaign season) to the view that he should not have run. Nader of course got quite a bit of media attention at the time--not, of course, for his rather reasonable positions on topics from economic justice to Israel, but for his recalcitrance in the face of pleas by many of his most staunch supporters to forego a candidacy. When confronted by journalists for his response to the requests, Nader expressed indignation at the thought that anyone would ask such a thing:

"It's a marvelous demonstration by liberals, if you will, of censorship. Now mind you, running for political office is every American's right. Running for political office means free speech exercise, it means exercising the right of petition, the right of assembly. And so when they say 'Do not run,' they're not just challenging and rebutting; they're crossing that line into censorship, which is completely unacceptable."

Why was this response appropriate? As far as I can recall, no person, Democrat or Green or whatever, claimed that Nader did not have a right to run for president. He's older than the requisite age, and he was born in America, and he has not been convicted of treason, and so forth. My guess is that Nader understood that the strict meaning of the sentences he was using did not jibe with the specific claim his detractors were making, but that he also appreciated that rights-talk weighs with people in sometimes knee-jerk ways. "This is America! I have rights!" Perhaps he thought the accusation that people were attempting to infringe upon his rights would distract listeners just long enough for his positive insights to take hold in their minds. And perhaps he was right. The important point was that one of our more intellectually sophisticated politicos was confusing (intentionally or otherwise) claims about rights and virtues.

The distinction between rights and virtues is familiar from daily life. We all believe that persons have some rights to perform actions that ought not be performed. This goes for political rights as well as moral rights. I have a political right to vote for racist candidates, but I ought not vote for him. And--to use an example from Philosopher Joseph Raz's The Morality of Freedom--I may have a moral right to refuse my neighbor access to my telephone when he has locked himself out of his house, but surely a full appreciation of moral virtue, if not decency, would lead me to welcome him into my home (assuming, of course, that I know the guy's not a threat to me).

I believe that a lot of this is pretty evident and not controversial. We all believe that there are political rights and political virtues counseling against certain invocations of those rights in action. It is perhaps just as evident that it can be a difficult task to determine which rights exist, and which virtues we ought to heed when contemplating action in accordance with those rights. It is interesting just how much political disagreement can be accurately described using these two concepts. Consider: pace many Republicans who love to invoke the US Constitution as an argument against liberalism, the US is a liberal constitutional democracy. There is a reason that Milton Friedman in Capitalism and Freedom and F. A. Hayek in The Road to Serfdom refused to cede the term "liberalism" to those who espouse left-liberalism instead of some libertarian version. The US constitution enshrines certain liberal rights guaranteed citizens because of their status as free and equal moral persons. Rights of free speech, expression, association, assembly, the vote, contract, etc. are all liberal rights because they give each citizen a sphere of liberty that cannot be infringed upon because more "good" could be done if some individuals' rights were not as secure as others'. But given that reasonable people can disagree about not only the existence of certain rights, but also about the right way to adjudicate between them when they conflict, political disagreement about rights is inevitable.

Just as inevitable is the failure by some to maintain the important distinction between rights and virtues. Because of the soundness of the distinction, it should be a default position of citizens of a liberal democracy to wonder seriously whether their policy preferences constitute an objectionable predilection to forge virtuous citizens through the use of the coercive apparatus of the state. I think it is a part of most reasonable moral positions that true virtue cannot be engendered using the carrot-and-stick method. To use a phrase of Rawls's, that would not be virtue for the right reasons.

But even that seemingly good reason may not be a good liberal reason so to refrain. For such a view would still have to be motivated by the endorsement by the government that it is the job of governments to make virtuous citizens. That indeed was Aristotle's view, but it seems not to comport with the modern left- and right-liberal view that while government needs to rely upon some idea of what is good for citizens, it should not legislate on the basis of some view of the best-life-for-humans that hopes to answer most moral questions. The liberal view seems to be that those questions ought to be left up to citizens not just in the sense that governments might stymie their goals if they try to legislate virtue by force, but in the sense that those are not the right goals for governments. I shall write more on this idea later.

If anything along these lines is correct, one might reasonably wonder whether this story leaves any room to embrace left-liberalism. Isn't insisting that corporations pay a living wage an objectionable legislating of virtue akin to forcing citizens to give to charities or donate to soup kitchens? That is, which rights can this view of liberalism vindicate, and which (if any) traditional social-democratic policies can it judge permissible for public policy? These are tough questions, and I understand that many politically active persons might refuse to stop to answer them. But I believe a full appreciation of the truth of liberalism must await their answer. Only then will we understand which bare-bones scheme of rights is consistent with the abstract idea of liberalism that most Americans--Republican and Democrat alike--endorse, and which robust left-liberal policies are at home in a liberalism that shies away, on principle, from the legislation of virtue.

Posted by Paul at April 11, 2005 06:04 PM