Political foundations
Modern political discussions ignore what actually matters
You’ve got to stand for something, or you’ll fall for anything.
We’ve all heard this saying many times. But let’s unpack this and try and apply it to today’s political discussions.
Most people in the US identify with either the Democrats, Republicans, or consider themselves to be independent. More often than not, which of those we tend to align with comes from our family history or people we trust. We like the things we hear from what I refer to as our “team.” (We’ll talk about political spectrums in another post.) We surround ourselves most often with news and media that confirms our existing beliefs, and dismiss news and media that does not. And the media and politicians are very adept at turning every issue du jour into a black and white, our team vs their team mentality.
Each issue is an opportunity to further solidify people who agree with them to be in their camp. They resort to numerous logical fallacies, distort the root of the issue, and create further divide between “us” and “them.”
The danger here, is that often times people will be convinced of a particular position on an issue because the person or persons they trust most, lay out seemingly reasonable points. But is it actually the belief they hold, or instead is it the allegiance to the people they heard it from? There’s some evidence to suggest that people will support an opposing position on an issue if it’s presented to them as being from their own “side.”
Interviewer: “Hi, what’s your political affiliation?”
Person: “Party A.”
Interviewer: “Great, do you support their main candidate?”
Person: “Yes.”
Interviewer: “Do you support his idea to <do some opposite, Party B thing>?”
Person: “Yes, absolutely.”
The root of the problem, is that as citizens of the US, we’re not really adequately prepared in any meaningful sense how to discern what we actually stand for. We kind of just go with what sounds good or what feels good. In my opinion, we must get back to a solid, unmoving foundation. A guide and reference by which everything we see and encounter can be compared to.
Ideological foundations
So let me ask you: what do you stand for?
A wise person once told me “Americans and people everywhere, regardless of political affiliation, by and large believe the same thing: that people should be able to work a job, pay their bills, and raise a family in a safe environment.” I’ve found that to be stunningly accurate. When I started keeping this in mind while talking to people about various issues, the underlying truth was evident in the things they were saying. (I’ll be writing later about how to have better political conversations in another post.)
So is that something to stand for? A safe and happy life?
Not so fast. Because everyone for the most part wants that, yet we’re as divided as we’ve ever been before. Everyone has their own thoughts on how we get there. But this isn’t a foundation. It’s an outcome, a goal. It’s too far downstream. Instead we have to go upstream of those outcomes, to the underlying principles. If there is a problem upstream, then everything downstream will be affected and cannot be adequately solved.
I would argue that everything in life, in politics, comes down to one key principle: our natural rights. These are rights that are endowed to us by our creator, whomever that may be for you, or simply by our very nature of existing.
The Bill of Rights, written in 1791 enumerates many of these natural rights, agreed upon by the founders. But the intent of the Bill of Rights was never supposed to be a list of all of our rights. And it was feared by some, notably Alexander Hamilton that by listing our rights, others which were not listed would fail to be protected:
In Federalist Paper No. 84, published in 1788, Alexander Hamilton warned that a bill of rights could even be dangerous, because defining certain rights vaguely would leave them subject to misinterpretation or violation, where previously no such power had existed. Moreover, some important rights would be left out and therefore endangered.
Clearly the Bill of Rights is problematic as a reference. We have to go back further to 1689.
In the Two Treatises of Government, [John Locke] defended the claim that men are by nature free and equal against claims that God had made all people naturally subject to a monarch. He argued that people have rights, such as the right to life, liberty, and property, that have a foundation independent of the laws of any particular society.
Life, liberty and property. These are foundational rights. Let’s look at them individually.
Life - This is clear. You have a natural right to live. To exist, to be alive. You also have a natural right to defend your life, and the life of others.
Liberty - This one gets tricky. It is the right to make your own choices, decisions, and to act and behave how you choose. That no government or other entity should deprive you of the right to choose for yourself. The question then becomes: “Does that mean I can choose for myself to harm someone else or their property?” It does not, not within this framework. More on that in a minute.
Property - The right to own things. Libertarians will sometimes modify that for clarity and say “justly-acquired” property, which is property you’ve exchanged or traded for, and acquired without theft, deception, coercion, or force.
Within each of these rights, there are two distinct categories: negative rights, and positive rights. A great primer on how those work:
Negative rights: the right to not be stopped from acting. If a person has a negative right to food, then they have the right to not be stopped from acquiring food. They must make this acquisition through purchase, trade, growing, preparation, etc. And nobody should be legally allowed to stand in their way.
Positive rights: the right to have something provided for a person. The police say “You have the right to an attorney and one will be provided if you cannot afford one.” A positive right means someone or something else has an obligation to provide the good or service. It means someone has a legal claim to something or someone. In the food example above, a positive right to food means that food must be provided to the person that wants it. And that means that the provider’s labor is owned by the person requesting it. If we’re legally obligated to do something, then we do not own our body or our labor, we’re serfs.
OK, so what?
We hear often that the United States is fairly unique in that we have “freedom.” But over a hundred other countries around the world have “freedom,” too. What makes us so special?
The difference is that our rights are (at least declared) in our foundational documents to be pre-existing before government comes into the picture. Our government doesn’t grant our rights, rather, our government’s stated job is to protect our rights. Which rights? Our negative rights. This concept is the key to understanding everything in modern politics.
Understanding that everyone, by nature of being human, is endowed with the negative right to life, liberty, and justly-acquired property. We do not have a positive right to the life, liberty, or property of another person. Conversely, if we have a negative right to our own body, then nobody else, including the government has a positive right to it.
Rights and the role of government
Therefore, if the government is to have a role to play in our lives, it is to protect these negative rights. We see this clearly written out in the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Foundational discernment
Every single:
elected politician
piece of legislation
political candidate plan/promise
government program
prohibition
regulation
action carried out by government
should be weighed on the merits not by how much we think they would be helpful, with no real ideological foundation to measure against, but instead by how they affect our negative rights to life, liberty, and justly-acquired property. “Is this a positive right being asserted, or a negative right?”
When we start to think about what our government is doing, this ideological foundation very quickly clarifies issues.
Let’s look at negative rights on an issue currently being wrestled with: cannabis/marijuana legalization.
The Democrats will argue that the government should not continue prohibition of this plant and will list a handful of seemingly persuasive reasons. “It has medicinal benefits.” “It’s not as bad as alcohol.” “People are already doing it, it’s not that big of a deal.”
Yet, none of those reasons actually matter. They’re all downstream of the concept of our natural rights. They’re all framed around the premise of needing to convince a government that has decided what we can and cannot own or put into our own body to allow us just a little freedom. It’s like negotiating more yard time at a prison: even if you win, you’re still an inmate. And it’s the wrong approach, because it lacks the foundational concept of natural rights, and continues to treat the government like a monarchy, with absolute authority and ownership of our bodies and property.
The natural rights approach goes something like this: “Do I live in a country that is built on the foundational concept of negative rights? One which should protect my negative right to own something and/or put something in my body, provided it does not infringe on anyone else’s rights or harm anyone else?” If the answer to those questions is yes, (which it is in the United States), then not only does the government have no right to stop me, but it also must protect that right. This means that nobody, including my own government, should be able to legally stop me from purchasing, possessing, and using cannabis. That’s a very different perspective than simply begging and pleading for permission.
Now let’s look at positive rights with regards to healthcare.
We commonly hear people say “Healthcare is a human right.” So how do we deconstruct this?
Let’s assume that they mean “Healthcare is a positive human right.” Given what we covered above, the effect of such a policy put into place would mean that if I want or need healthcare, then someone must provide it to me. So if I go to the local government hospital, and I need a surgery, but there are no surgeons, now what? Either my right to a surgery goes unfulfilled because of scarcity of resources, or someone must be compelled to come operate on me. For my positive right to be fulfilled, someone must be my slave, or a slave of the government. Clearly, simply declaring a good or service a “human right” does not make it immune to scarcity.
These two issues illustrate clearly a stark difference between the two types of rights and why we must think very carefully about any legislation which binds the government to declare something a positive right. For negative rights to be respected, the government simply has to refrain from interfering and prevent others from interfering.
Understanding the difference between types of rights, and how our system of government was intended to work helps us find clarity in any issue that pops up and gets debated endlessly by pundits and politicians. And if you look carefully, you’ll notice that none of them get the right answer because they don’t address the issue within the framework of negative and positive natural rights.