Liberty_and_Equality

 http://frankteller.deviantart.com/art/An-essay-on-liberty-and-equality-385502404 Research paper on Liberty and Equality. At the heart of modern liberalism are the values of liberty and equality. An important part of liberalism is the belief that these two values are compatible, and that both of them have merit. A number of political ideologies can be roughly understood by the weights they place on these values, and the extent to which they find them compatible. NEITHER LIBERTY NOR EQUALITY Right-wing authoritarians, such as fascists and theocrats, value neither liberty nor equality. They generally have other values that are incompatible with liberty and equality, such as strong nationalism, militarism, or extreme obedience to a particular interpretation of a particular religion.  Sometimes, right-wing authoritarians will embrace liberty to the extent they find it useful to their ends. For instance, a right-wing authoritarian in a liberal society might embrace free speech because it useful to his or her agenda, not because he or she sees it as intrinsically valuable. The liberal society does well to tolerate right-wing authoritarians to a certain extent. For instance, a legal structure that prosecutes hate speech can too easily be turned against expression of other ideas. A good contemporary example is Rwanda, where the government has banned nearly all opposition to government policies under the pretense of suppressing racist hate speech. Rwanda's history may make this seem understandable, but it is only understandable in the sense that it makes Rwanda particularly vulnerable to this kind of despotism. Many have been slow to criticize the Rwandan Patriotic Front because of the role it played in stopping the 1994 genocide, but this does not mean that it should be given a free pass. However, we must not let our tolerance reach the point of allowing right-wing authoritarians to achieve their objectives. The hatred most people feel toward fascism is well earned. Early twentieth century fascist were not anomalous. A viewpoint that seeks to promote one's own nation above others through violence is a threat to civilization. Ironically, the only way to stop Hitler's war of aggression was through war. Theocrats are no less dangerous. Which religion they promote is as unimportant as which nationality fascists promote. Those who would exterminate anyone who does not follow their religion must be stopped. Unfortunately, this is exactly what groups like Al Qaeda promote. (The answer is not a war on Islam, which would be committing the exact crime we are trying to prevent.) LIBERTY WITHOUT EQUALITY Right-libertarians value liberty above virtually all else, including equality. They often appeal to distrust of government, which is an entirely sensible standpoint given how much harm tyrannical governments have done. Right-wing libertarians and anarchists in the United States often favor policies that are completely unrealistic, however. Some of them claim that taxation is theft, echoing Proudhon's equally nonsensical statement that property is theft. US tax resisters rely on such frivolous arguments as that the Sixteenth Amendment was not properly ratified and that wages are not income. Courts uniformly and rightly reject such arguments as bad faith efforts to escape taxation. Another problem with right-wing libertarianism is that it undervalues equality, resulting in liberty only for some. Libertarians generally claim to support equal rights, but in practice, their extreme anti-government views get in the way of promoting equality. For instance, 1964 Republican Party Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater voted against the Civil Rights Act because he thought it gave too much power to the federal government. For the first time in US history, the Republican candidate got almost no support among African American voters, who recognized Goldwater's stance, however motivated, as enabling segregation. Some individuals who identify themselves as libertarians have expressed views that suggest that they are truly racist. For instance, Ron Paul published newsletters in the 1980s and 1990s expressing open hostility toward African Americans. Some defenders have attributed the articles to Lou Rockwell, a libertarian activist with close ties to Ron Paul. In any case, it undermines the credibility of the libertarian movement. Many times, libertarians have allied themselves with supporters of "states' rights" because both favor greatly shrinking the size of the federal government (though they differ on how powerful state governments should be). Any astute observer of US political history should recognize the term "states' rights" as a segregationist code word. Although it technically refers to the view that most policy matters should be left up to the states (and inaptly, as states have powers, not rights), a common motivation behind "states' rights" was opposition to the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which requires the states to provide "equal protection of the law" and has been interpreted by the Supreme Court as extending the Bill of Rights generally to the states. Another problem with right-libertarianism is that it is too narrowly aimed at repression by government. US-style libertarians (there don't seem to be very many of them outside this country) have no problem with abuse of power by corporations, for instance. They applaud Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, in which the Supreme Court held that laws restricting corporate spending on political campaigns violates the First Amendment. Their style of thinking motivated the Supreme Court to hold in Lochner v. New York, a long ago repudiated opinion, that a state law that limited bakers to 12-hour workdays unconstitutionally restricted freedom of contract. EQUALITY WITHOUT LIBERTY Left-authoritarians see liberty and equality as incompatible, and reject liberty. They do not agree amongst themselves and often dispute the source of inequality and the oppression that they would eliminate only to replace with a different kind of oppression. Perhaps the oldest and best known form of left-authoritarianism is communism. Most communists trace their ideas back to Karl Marx, although they differ in how to interpret him. Marx wrote in opposition to the very real injustices of early capitalism. While conditions have improved in wealthy countries like the United States, the conditions he detested still exist in developing countries like Bangladesh, where the most basic worker protections either do not exist or are not enforced. Marx described this oppression in strong terms such as "wage slavery." He said that capitalism (a term he invented) was rule by the owners of the means of production, whom he saw as providing no more value than aristocratic landowners who extract exorbitant rent from their workers and do nothing to earn their wealth. Marx saw little value in "bourgeois" values like freedom of speech and freedom of religion. He described religion as the opiate of the masses and said that it must be eliminated in order to reach true equality. He saw little value in electoral democracy, and instead advocated a violent revolution that would bring about a "dictatorship of the proletariat." Perhaps most troublingly, Marx opposed reform efforts on the grounds that they would undermine support for the revolution. This sort of all or nothing thinking is dangerous in any context. Marx predicted that revolution would occur at a certain stage of economic development and that it would therefore happen first in wealthy countries. Revolutionaries in countries like Russia and China overlooked this inconvenient fact. Marx also called for a global revolution, quite at odds with Stalin's "socialism in one country." In short, self-described Marxist leaders have cherry-picked him no less than do modern Christians who ignore the parts of the Bible that condone genocide and slavery. However, it is a plausible reading of Marx that, while he laid out a general roadmap of how the revolution would proceed, he could not foresee all of the details. In this respect, Marxists are on stronger footing than Christians who claim that every word of the Bible is true but take it back when confronted with atrocities, historical and scientific inaccuracies, and internal contradictions. Marx never claimed to have access to revealed truth. However, some of his followers seem to treat his writings as exactly that. Communists who advocate violent suppression of "counterrevolutionaries" and "revisionists" are no less dangerous than religious fundamentalists who promote violence against "heretics" and "apostates." Authoritarian thinking is dangerous regardless of the arguments and terminology used to defend it. Other strains of left-authoritarianism have identified different sources of oppression. For Marx, almost everything collapsed to economic exploitation. Marx claimed that racism, nationalism, and militarism were simply divide-and-conquer tactics used by those in power to prevent working class unity. Most modern leftists recognize these as distinct evils. Radical feminism is a form of left-authoritarianism focused on sexism. Feminists, and not just the authoritarian variety, argue for a male-centered power structure known as the patriarchy. For mainstream feminists, this is a type of oppression. For radical feminists, it is the root of all oppression, and other social evils such as racism, militarism, and economic exploitation are simply manifestations of it. Radical feminists would criminalize pornography, sometimes defined quite broadly, as sexist hate speech. There is no country where radical feminists have taken over completely, although their influence can be felt in certain sectors, such as in a number of universities. Critical race theory is essentially the same thing but focused on race rather than sex. Both are strongly interwoven with the concept of social constructs, which shall be the focus of another essay. The social construct view seems on stronger footing with regard to race than to sex, though there are significant respects in which gender roles are social constructs. Unfortunately, radical feminists do not know when to stop on the issue of social constructs. For instance, Simone de Beauvoir claimed that the maternal instinct is a social construct. Radical feminists are often motivated by such bizarre beliefs as that women have no intrinsic sexual desire, and that sex is inherently degrading to women. Radical feminists do not all agree with each other, however, and little of the above applies to all of them. For instance, some radical feminists accept that there are intrinsic differences between men and women and see the masculine and feminine perspectives as simply different, with one not being better than the other. It should be obvious to most people, however, that if there is such a thing as a male or female point of view, it is quite minimal. LEFT ANARCHISM According to left anarchists, also known as libertarian socialists, government is the enemy of both liberty and equality and should be abolished. Anarchists argue that government is inherently hierarchical and that true equality can only be achieved in its absence. Marx was closer to this position than one might expect. For Marx, after the transitional dictatorship of the proletariat, the state would wither away, leaving an egalitarian society in which government was no longer needed. Anarchists reject the dictatorship of the proletariat, instead favoring a revolution that would be followed by no government at all. Anarchism has a very bad reputation. This is partly due to the violent nature of many who have promoted anarchism. Marx argued for a slow progression and did not believe that the revolution was imminent. He was not clear about the exact timeframe, and some Marxists argue that all of his predictions will eventually come true and that "communist" states like the People's Republic of China and the former USSR are impostors. Anarchists often argue, on the other hand, that the time for revolution is now. This makes them a much greater present threat to the establishment (whether this is a good thing or a bad thing). Violent anarchists like Leon Czolgosz did little to help anarchism's reputation, and much of the anarchist movement sought to distance itself from him. (The proudly imperialistic President William McKinley was not exactly a random target of anarchist violence.) One can hold anarchist ideals without promoting violence. In fact, strict pacifism entails anarchism, as a government that does not use force is impossible. Neither does the rejection of government entail left-wing views, as illustrated by right-wing anarchists like Timothy McVeigh. However, anarchism may seem to be the ultimate achievement of liberal goals: it is uncompromisingly pro-liberty and pro-equality. That does not mean that liberal should embrace anarchism. Just because one holds to a particular ideal does not mean that one should take it to its logical extreme. In fact, extremist movements often either fail to achieve their stated objectives or use them as a facade to do something else. Communist countries like the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea are far from worker's paradises. In fact, actual working conditions are better in the United States than in either of these countries (though the US is far from number one). THE LIMITS OF IDEOLOGY A lot of conditions are externally driven. For instance, the poverty that is so widespread in Africa is largely the result of resources being looted by European governments and later by multinational corporations. Much of the prosperity of the United States and Europe is rooted in stolen wealth. No reasonable person would suggest that the United States deserves what was stolen from Native Americans and slaves imported from Africa, or that Britain's wealth affirms the righteousness of its imperialistic past. Those who denounce Africa's "backwardness" should take a hard look at the actions of European invaders like Belgium's King Leopold II, who by any plausible standard would rank among history's great mass murderers. While anarchism is extreme and unrealistic, it, unlike fascism, laissez faire capitalism, or communism, is at least headed in the right direction. Liberty and equality are not the only things that matter, but both are important. A society that truly values liberty and equality will find that nationalism, militarism, and large concentrations of wealth, are fundamentally incompatible with both. The hands-off approach of laissez-faire capitalism, and its modern counterpart, right-libertarianism, abdicates responsibility to the private sector, which is driven by greed. It is better than fascism and communism only insofar as the private sector does not tend to concentrate power quite as much as happens in an authoritarian government. However, when the government and private sector join forces, society is well on its way to fascism, which combines the worst of capitalism with the worst of communism. Because the name of fascism has been so thoroughly discredited, few today identify themselves as fascists, but fascist thinking is far more widespread. The loans that the US government gave to big banks a few years ago represent the fascist approach to economics. The foreign policy of the US is a lot closer to fascist-style imperialism than either the Democratic or Republican Party will ever admit. The US still has a lot of freedom; that I can publish this without fear of imprisonment shows that the US is not a fascist dictatorship. (Similar freedom does not exist in a lot of countries today, including all of the countries that self-identify as communist.) However, Americans (a term I find rather odd, as "America" technically refers to two entire continents) are not as free as we like to think we are. There is a great deal that our government seeks to keep secret; much of it for entirely illegitimate reasons. We have kept hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay without access to our courts, in blatant disregard of our own Constitution, for more than a decade. Our government seeks to imprison those, like Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, who would reveal what our government is really up to, and we have gone so far as to kidnap foreign leaders in our attempt to do so. National security has been so widely abused as a justification for suppression of dissent and information that governments wish to conceal that any real democracy would have a very strong presumption against classifying anything as a national secret. To be sure, there is some information that really is too dangerous to disclose, such as how to make a nuclear bomb. However, this sort of information probably constitutes a minute portion of what is classified, even in so-called free societies. There has never been a truly democratic country, and there probably never will be. Anarchists recognize this, and insofar as they do, they are far more honest than communists, who describe as "democratic" countries whose human rights abuses make the US look like "the land of the free." (I use democratic here to mean a government freely chosen by, as nearly as possible, the entire population, with strong protections for minority rights. I do not mean the sort of "direct democracy" that existed in Ancient Greece, where the vast majority of the population had no say at all in how they were governed.) The main problem with anarchism is not that its goals are wrong, but that eliminating all power structures is impossible. In the absence of government, some power structure will arise just as surely as people will seek to exchange goods and protect themselves. The non-hierarchical society is just as mythical as the invisible pink unicorn. [pic] REFERENCE: 6 Public Committee against Torture v. The State of Israel and the General Security Service (1999) 7 B.H.R.C. 31. Khumalo v. Holomisa 2002 (5) SA 401 (CC). Law v. Canada, see above, note 74. Life Imprisonment Case 45 BVerfGE 187 (1977). Bernstein v. Bester 1996 (4) BCLR 449 (CC); and National Coalition for Gay and Lesbian Equality v. Minister of Justice, 1999 (1) SA 6 (CC). Abortion Case, see above, note 56. Tyrer v. United Kingdom, Eur. Ct. H. R., Judgment of April 25, 1978, Series A, No. 26. The Dwarf Throwing Case, discussed in Feldman, “Human Dignity as a Legal Value”, see above, note 51, p. 701. Luftsicherheitsgesetz Case, BVerfG, 1 BvR 357/05 of February 15, 2006; See Moller, K., “On Treating Persons as Ends: the German Aviation Security Act, Human Dignity, and the German Feder