On Liberty

 

Is your first thought really to have sex wth her?

We are all endowed by our creator, say the US Declaration of Independence, with inalienable rights to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”

Have you ever wondered why there are three items in that list, and not two? Doesn’t liberty mean liberty to pursue happiness? Was Jefferson only padding his list?

No; we misunderstand what liberty means. Liberty means, and meant to the founders, liberty to obey one’s conscience. The right to act as a moral being, exercising our free will, without which we have no chance at salvation. Genesis tells us this is the reason we are here. This is why the first words of the first amendment to the Constitution are “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.” After life itself, this is the most essential right.

This has been lost in recent years, as our devotion to religion has waned. Now we think liberty means doing whatever we want to do.

But liberty does not imply the right to pornography, for example, or gay sex, or alcohol, or recreational drugs, or abortion. Which is why, until recent years, no legislature or court thought there was a problem with laws against them. For nobody feels obliged by their conscience to make or view pornography, or to have sex with someone to whom they are not married, or get drunk, or to abort their child. All are only pursuing pleasure. Religious liberty also need not extend to any faith that does not impose demands on one’s conscience: it does not require respect in law for atheists, or satanists, or pagans who worship their gods only out of fear or hope for favour. Nobody until recently thought it did.

These can, on the other hand, be understood to be covered by “pursuit of happiness.” Although until recently, courts and legislatures have not taken this right seriously. Pursuit of happiness indeed seems to imply one has a right to anything that in your own opinion makes you feel good, so long as it does not harm your neighbour.

The classic source for the idea of these inalienable human rights, although they have earlier antecedents in the Christian tradition, is John Locke. But his triad was “life, liberty, and possession of property.” Jefferson and his committee changed the third right. I think Locke’s formulation makes better sense. 

For one thing, protection of property from theft is in practical terms one of the primary reasons to institute government among men. One does not need government to pursue happiness. Property ownership is also essential to a functioning democracy. It can allow for self-sufficiency, and so one can, if necessary, stand up to government in a crisis.

Perhaps more importantly, one can never achieve happiness by pursuing it. That leads too many down a primrose path to addictions and ennui and ruin; we are seeing this more and more today. Simply having this so famously in the Declaration may have misguided many.