Yes Virginia, Laws Interfere with Individual Freedom

There is much discussion today about more government or less, more regulations or fewer, too many laws or not enough. Much, though not all, of the discussion really can be boiled down to two issues; the cost of government and who should pay for it and the restrictions on business activities and personal freedoms. Success here and in fact in most of life’s endeavors comes in great part from the ability to balance disparate issues such as these. The beauty of our system is that until now we have been able to achieve a reasonable balance. The pendulum swings to the left and right and for short periods rests in the middle and as long as it is allowed to return, we as a nation will be fine.

The Buddhists call this traveling the middle path (I think). Socrates spoke of individual virtues with bravery being the balance between cowardice and brashness. Jumping between two twenty story buildings separated by fifty feet to save someone is stupid. Not jumping between two buildings separated by ten feet is cowardly but jumping when buildings are separated by twenty feet where there is a real chance, however slim, is bravery. In family life there is a need to balance time put into work with time spent with family and a bit of time for independent personal development and pleasure. Inability to strike some sort of balance leads to divorce or familial misery. To be truly successful, a football team needs to balance the running and passing games. Can’t get into the Super Bowl without it. And so balancing the drive for individuality with the needs of society is a government’s major role.

Genetically we humans are programmed to ensure our survival and that of our offspring while satisfying our urges for pleasure. This instinct obviously served us well before we started living in communities extending beyond our immediate families. As the number of us grew, we had to gather into communities to survive and to survive within a community, be it a village, a state or a notion, some basic instincts had to be compromised. The challenge become balancing individual freedom with the well being of society. Since man started living in communities this challenge has existed. At the extremes on either side of the middle are totalitarian regimes such as existed under Stalin and Hitler at one end and a Libertarian Utopia that to my knowledge has yet to exist, at the other.

Basically all laws, be they just or unjust, restrict someone’s individual freedoms. Nature has prepared females of our species to bear children at the age of 12 or 13 (and getting alarmingly younger) but over the years society had decided that for a variety of good reasons that was too young and in the industrialized countries laws exist that have elevated the age of child bearing to the late teens and custom to the twenties. Humans by nature may not be loyal mates so laws came down in the form of one of the Ten Commandments not to covet thy neighbors wife or governmental laws in some primitive Muslim societies punishing infidelity by stoning a woman to death. We cannot decide to drive on the left side of the road or up a one-way street. I imagine very few would argue against such an abridgment to our liberty. Other laws that infringe on freedom are open to debate. Should the government restrict smoking in a private facility even though it is used by the general public? Should government dictate what sex and between whom should be allowed? There are other laws that most people today would have issues with such as the law against interracial marriage. (There was a survey conducted in Mississippi last year asking whether such a law should be reinstated. Less than one half of the respondents thought it should not. The majority either thought it should or didn’t have an opinion.).

In a primitive village it is the chief or the council of elders who shoulder the responsibility of this balanc. In Medieval Europe or in today’s backward societies, much of the balance was in the hands of the clergy. In nation states today, the chore falls to the governing body. Our governments set the rules that interfere with our “freedoms”, some out of necessity, others out of custom or in response to screams by the general society or unfortunately, by special interest of smaller groups with loud voices. It is “common wisdom” that the conservative want fewer laws and the liberals more. The fact of the matter is that they both want laws, but ones that support them and their understanding of how the world turns. All laws whatever their end intent is, do interfere with individual freedoms. If we all, by nature drove on the right side of the road, or had no sex drives or any genetically driven instincts contrary to the interest of society at large. there would be no need for a laws whether mortal or divine.