A Liberal Dose, March 18, 2021: "The Social Contract and the Role of Government"

 

This week I am going to talk about what government is supposed to be, according to the worldview of the Founding Fathers (that is, the prevailing thoughts among philosophers and intellectuals whose works influenced the Revolutionary generation.) I know most of you already know the terms I am going to use, but I am still going to boil them down for you. We will start with “The Enlightenment.” That is the period in European history from the mid-1600s through the end of the 1700s, in which educated people began to rely on the scientific method and their own logic and senses rather than accepting things by tradition, superstition, or because church leaders said so. An Enlightenment figure everyone would immediately recognize would be Sir Isaac Newton.

In part, the Enlightenment came about as a reaction to more than a century of intense warfare between Protestants and Catholics after the beginning of the Protestant Reformation. Many people began to think there has to be a better way. One avenue of life philosophers began to examine was politics. Before the Enlightenment, you weren’t really the citizen of a nation, you were the subject of a king. The king ruled by Divine Right –that is, he is the king because God made him the king, otherwise someone else would be king, so you have to do absolutely everything he says or you are resisting God.

In the mid-to-late 1600s, two important English intellectuals enter the picture: Thomas Hobbes and John Locke. Between the two of them (and others) we got a concept of government known as The Social Contract. In this view, individuals become rulers because the people allow them to become rulers. Those rulers may stay in place as long as they carry out their part of the deal.

At some point in the distant past, after a long time of humans being part of nomadic hunter-gatherer groups, people figured out they needed to put certain people in charge to provide security for everybody else. In order to accomplish that, they had to give up some of their rights –by giving the leaders authority to make rules for the benefit and safety of the whole group. The citizens did not, however, give up their “natural rights” –what Thomas Jefferson called “unalienable rights” in the Declaration of Independence. “Unalienable” means you cannot be separated from them, and vice versa. Today we would call these “human rights.” They include the right to worship as you wish, to speak your mind, and so forth. So the rights you voluntarily give up are, I guess you could say, the “alienable” ones that are not basic human rights. For example, to keep the roads safe, society gives up their right to drive as fast as they want and gives the government the right to enforce speed limits.

We “give” the government these rights by participating in a representative democracy and exercising our vote. The implicit agreement is that if the majority of citizens decide differently than we do, we agree to abide by it even if we don’t like it. In return, the government we put in place agrees to, in the words of the preamble to the Constitution, “establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.”

They have to do that without violating our natural, or human, rights. If the government is not providing the services they are supposed to, for everybody, or if they are going too far and taking away rights no human being should be asked to surrender, they have violated the contract. And we are justified in kicking them out and making a new contract with new leaders, who WILL carry out their responsibilities.

Now, so far it may seem like I am not saying anything much different than a lot of conservative commentators: “if the government is tyrannous, kick them out!”

But there are some major differences. For example, if you truly understand the principle of the Social Contract (as the Founding Fathers did), you will understand the government is not automatically your enemy just because it is the government. The government is not automatically tyrannous just because it sets rules and laws. The government is not betraying you because it chooses to use some of the tax money you give it on programs that “promote the general welfare” or common good. All those things are part of the government’s job –the job the people gave it, and continue to give it by participating in democracy. And the people have a job, too. Their job is to have that civic virtue/civic duty and participate in that small-r republicanism I’ve spoken of in this column before. Their job is also to realize that the government is in place to protect the community AND the individual – a truly republican democracy is not a mob.

There is also a very high bar for what constitutes tyranny. “Tyranny” is not just something you don’t like, or did not vote for. It is a large-scale suppression of human rights. The participants of Shays’ Rebellion in 1786/87 believed (correctly) that Massachusetts tax laws were unfair. They also believed they had the right to start an armed rebellion over it –which was put down. This incident is what prompted George Washington to come out of his retirement (which he was enjoying) and start lobbying for a new political structure (the Constitution) that would give the national government the authority and ability to put down such rebellions in the future. This differed from the Revolution because the people of Massachusetts (the state) had political representation, whereas the colonists had not. The participants of the early 1790s Whiskey Rebellion believed (again, accurately) that whiskey taxes were unfair to farmers. This time Washington, president by then, personally led troops (at least partway) to quell the riot. My point is: George Washington had absolutely no patience for people who started armed uprisings against a government in which they were represented (as opposed to a king or a parliament that allowed you no voice). The proper way to address such issues is with the vote, not with guns, and not liking the tax law did not qualify as an excuse for rebellion.

Since the late 1970s, conservatives have doubled down on the idea that government is the enemy of the people. It strikes me as kind of funny how many people who claim to hate government run for government office. It is also funny how many non-politician conservatives hate government until their side is in charge, then they claim it cannot be questioned or else you are a traitor. And how many conservatives who consider any government actions for the public good as communist or even treasonous will start yelling for government help when it is THEIR state that is flooded or on fire.

Here's the deal. If you are going to claim the government works for you, you will have to admit that means the government actually has a job. A job that is supposed to benefit everybody, not just the ones who voted for it.

It’s in the contract.