What Kind of Liberal Are You, Anyway?

As Americans we are all liberals. We often forget that America was founded on principles to rid ourselves of tyranny of the king, the aristocracy, the despot. Our history is one of establishing protections for the individual against the state. It is still quite a liberal thing, even 232 years after the country’s inception, to have a government that is based upon the rule of a constitution rather than the rule of a strongman or a strong group. We forget that a constitution empowered only by our trust in each other to adhere to it and forged to protect the individual above all else is a celebration of the dignity and worth of the individual. This is a liberal concept.

But the Constitution is not an exaltation of unfettered individualism. If it were it would establish a true democracy and would let each individual form the associations to which chance and natural ability would lead. It would allow a market place of opinion and power where the joining of the like-minded majority would rule; the minority be damned.

Instead the Constitution established controls so that certain base-line rights of individuals would be protected even if the majority would have otherwise. The Constitution honors the individual but in two ways. It balances the individual's power with the individual's humanity. It balances of the individual’s right of association and to vote with others who are like-minded to determine the rules of the governed with the individual's humanity in which the individual possesses rights that are inalienable, even by the majority. It is a balance between freedom from the strongman and freedom from the majority.

In our current presidential election the issue of whether we have a big government or a less intrusive one comes down to where you feel this balance is achieved. Are you about individual self-determination and preserving your right to association and forming a majority on issues that matter to you? Or, are you about restraining the majority to protect rights of individuals who may be crushed by the majority rule? Are you about freedom from the tyranny of the king or are you about freedom from the tyranny of the majority?

Is the majority’s need for national security sufficient reason to curtail rights to privacy, counsel or habeas corpus? Is the right to health care an inalienable right? Must it be protected from majority rule that would (that does) subject health care to the economics of the marketplace? What about poverty? Is it an issue of individual autonomy and the marketplace or should the strongman enter to ensure the poor receive equal protection of the law? Where do we draw the line and say “this right” is not inalienable and the majority will not be held hostage to protecting it above the general interest?