With Liberty or Justice for All

by Tony Chavira

After finishing my previous article on the re-selling of Los Angeles Unified Schools, I wasn’t sure where the fine line should be drawn between public services and private ones. By leasing out the public schools to private companies the school district is, effectively, both relinquishing control of the program and admitting that a private school is just as competent as a public one in terms of quality of education and professionalism of staff (if not more so, as it can also self-finance). If we can entrust our children’s collective futures to the hands of private, corporate-owned teachers, then who’s to say that privatization is not a viable alternative system for any social service? Isn’t that essentially what the concept of “insurance” is? Angry crowds protesting in the streets of Washington D.C. may tend to agree with me, simply because any mandated social service would technically chisel away at whatever little freedom they feel we have left.

In spirit, paying taxes should feel like paying insurance fees and the United States government is simply a behemoth insurance company that provides a ton of services, with lots of local, state and federal tentacles attached. You fork over your hard-earned money and in return they answer your call when you dial 911. Oh, and we get to collectively choose the board of directors ... which seems fair if you think back to the days when taxation didn’t come with any representation. When you take the intentions of the founding fathers into consideration, paying for-profit insurance companies is a strange idea. Essentially you’re allowing these private organizations to take a certain amount of money from your wallet to insure something, but you don’t get to instill the fear of revoking their authority with an election. Some mysterious, profit-driven board of directors does. And instead of spending lots of money paying off insurance claims, I’d always hire whoever found the best way to make me the most money if I were on that board of directors. Wouldn’t you?

Which gets me to the point of this article: Why exactly did the founding fathers fight the Revolutionary War? Okay, we all know that the British helped the settlers fight off the Native Americans and French, and when all was said and done, the Brits just assumed that they had the right to tax American settlers. They even called them “the colonies” ... a term we still seem to accept as if it were the absolute truth today.

In a nation where we see a distinct faction that promotes true libertarian freedom (with no government involvement as a part of any social service) and one that promotes true justice (where social programs ensure that everyone’s treated equally, on an equal playing field), we cannot expect that we’ll ever achieve both of these ideals at once. In fact, the existence of “freedom” as an ideological paradigm inherently disengages justice: true freedom means the freedom to do whatever the hell you want to whoever the hell you want. If you want to exploit immigrant labor and kick them back over the border afterward, you’re absolutely free to do it. If you don’t want your children to go to public school and would rather teach them everything you know at home every day, you have the true freedom to do that too. If you want the government to have no regulatory or service role (police, firefighters and military included), then you’re free to liberate yourself from the confines of your government’s ever-lingering shadow. In fact, if you want to beat your wife and children or start up a home invasion racket, you have the liberty. When you’re free, you’re free to fend for yourself.

But if any of the above examples have made you writhe in discomfort, shake your head at the absurdity, or simply think to yourself “that’s not right” or “that’s not fair,” then you agree that there needs to be some level of assumed social responsibility. You need services like police to provide safety from the freedoms of a serial killer. You need firefighters to protect you from the freedom a pyromaniac might exercise. You need a wing of the government like the Food and Drug Administration, unless you trust that free companies will always sell you and your family the bacteria-free food. You need some sort of bus and train infrastructure just in case the truly free oil companies decide to cut your community off unless you all pay twice as much per gallon. Price regulations, sanctions on bad business practices, antitrust laws ... those are social services, and all elements of what we might consider “justice.” Do they impose on our unlimited freedom? Absolutely! But did our founding fathers fight revolt against a domineering oppressor in order to have true freedom or to develop a fair government of their own?

What is a civil society without some entity that ensures that it is civil? We can pay 100,000 individual insurance companies for the services we take for granted under the government’s wing, or we can simply pay the government. Of course there will be money wasted on ridiculous programs, programs that promote war or energy waste or programs that don’t come down hard enough on corrupt businesses ... government changes and evolves like any other large establishment. But there is no ideal organization of government, only a constantly-shifting system that seeks to streamline processes based on societal need. The better a government tends to your day-to-day needs (even if you don’t have any), the better it is as a system of government.

In this respect, I’d argue that the founding fathers weren’t necessarily fighting for the ideals of true freedom, or else why develop a republic at all? Instead, the Revolutionary War was fought to provide American settlers with a system that sought to provide justice for its citizens. More interestingly, as years have passed the definition of justice has never really changed. Instead, the notions of justice have come to apply to more people ... thereby guaranteeing that their ideals were not lost on the next generation. Although wealthy plantation owners had the freedom to continue their lifestyles, it was simply not just. With men dominating the political landscape, they were free to revoke women’s voting rights, but it was not a just decision. Both world wars were fought because Americans felt that it was the right thing to do.

In some ways it’s another form of freedom: the freedom to make certain that justice is done. Despite our political, social or economic differences, we all seek to improve the American system by making it more just, and that hasn’t changed since the nation’s inception.

And here, without anger or resentment I bid you farewell. Sincerely wishing, that as men and Christians, ye may always fully and uninterruptedly enjoy every civil and religious right; and be, in your turn, the means of securing it to others; but that the example which ye have unwisely set, of mingling religion with politics, may be disavowed and reprobated by every inhabitant of America.
—the last paragraph of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense

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