Whither Liberty?

The gay marriage issue appears settled, in both the United States and much of the western world. That's not surprising, considering the widespread application of 'liberty' we have seen over the last few decades. We have no problem with liberty per se, of course; a well regulated liberty is to be sought and prized. But we wonder how many folks actually consider what a well regulated liberty means.

It surely does not mean that we can do absolutely anything we want. Were that to be the case, then we would be supreme hypocrites to call any action by anyone else wrong. It would impossible to call the terrorists, not to mention the murderers and rapists, wrong. So there are barriers to liberty. Or, at least, as any rational observer would say, that we are not at liberty to do ill to others.

The next question becomes, then, are we at liberty to do anything we want with ourselves? This question involves the aspect of liberty which calls on us to be self regulating, and, interestingly, it is also the aspect of liberty most libertarians, we think, anyway, wish to avoid. We cannot help but feel they would like if it did not exist at all, for it demands of the individual that he, perhaps, should not do things he may very well wish to do. Regulating the self means telling the self that some things may be wrong even if they don't, on the surface, violate that old libertarian bugbear of not doing violence. It may mean being forced to admit that violence against another is more than an overt act. It may mean having to conclude that violence against another may constitute actions which seem wholly personal but in fact still harm the body politic as well as the person.

It goes almost without saying, though it must be said so that everyone hears, when you do wrong, it may encourage others to do wrong. That's simply the other side of the equation which involves doing right; if we lead best by example, as is so often said, then examples of doing wrong surely encourage wrongdoing. Even when the wrongdoing 'doesn't hurt anyone'.

This puts the civil libertarians in a pickle. They must either argue that we don't need to be self regulatory, or they must argue that certain (presumably nonviolent) acts almost universally accepted as wrong (before now, anyway) are in fact right either on their own standing or, as the supporters of gay marriage and the like argue, if the person or persons involved think so.

The obvious problem is that, should such be true, then all any person would need to do to justify doing wrong is to assert that it's right for them. What we have here in the long run is a recipe for the end of all liberties, real or imagined. If we are not obliged to be self regulatory, if we are not obliged to ask ourselves whether we should commit an act or not even if it seems to affect no one else, then we have no obligation at all. And if we have no such obligation at all, any talk about freedom and liberty is spurious.

We have said before that we believe libertarians to be moral relativists. We stand by that assertion. This is why.