This is my second in a three-part series on a secular approach to how to come to a voting decision. My first was on related concepts of earning, value, and property, and how these are societal constructions. (See http://amusingbeam.blogspot.com/2012/10/voting-thoughts-part-1-foundational.html ). This entry will first touch on the concept of liberty, which will be my last "pure philosophy" concept, then I will switch to the role of government. In particular, I will discuss the philosophy of legitimate government, then with what I think should be the focus of a "good" government. Finally, I will discuss how our governments have worked historically. (Those enamored with our Founders and their concepts of liberty might take particular interest in that section.)
Liberty
Some ideas of liberty focus on being free from coercion, and these are sometimes classified as negative liberty. I should not be compelled to believe a certain religion, or work in a job I don't like, etc. Other conceptions focus on the ability to act, which is a positive liberty. I can exercise my religion without interference. Obviously the ability to act must stop somewhere, and the normal place specified is where you infringe upon someone else's liberty. My right to swing my fist stops at the tip of your nose. Positive liberty can sometimes infringe upon negative -- for a black person to have the right to go into any hotel open to the general public, you have to limit the proprietor's right to be free from the coercion to allow those not desired in.
Liberty is certainly protected in our government, but there is no definitive statute or constitutional interpretation that authoritatively makes the distinction in all cases. Obviously Brown v. Board of Education chooses a more positive approach.
One way to make the decision would be to assume that pursuit of happiness should be relevant. If so, then a positive conception of liberty might be best. This view is anything but universal. A flip side would be that liberty through coercion is not truly liberty, so positive liberty is a delusion. This view is a bit problematic in that liberty is not a right unless it is somehow enforced, and that enforcement will always be a coercion (even if only of the people making the laws).
Something very important to note here is that many who focus on liberty have decided to focus specifically on liberty from governmental coercion -- indeed, some include government action in their definitions of liberty. There is a good reason for this focus -- in the recent past, governments have been, by far, the most likely forces to keep people from doing what they want. However, governments are instituted because, without them, we have far fewer freedoms. Who cares what you say your rights are if there is nobody to enforce them? (More on this in a second.) So, the conception of liberty can be extended beyond such simplistic with/without government and include other powerful forces.
How you think of liberty, and whether you think it should be the only important value, should influence your vote.
Small trip into social philosophy
One way to think about base notions are that we are all selfish. That definitely means a desire to survive and prosper, but it also means a desire to have those like us do the same. One way of contemplating societal morality is through thinking of ourselves in increasingly large circles. Self-->Family-->Tribe-->Nation-->World
An arguable approach is to try to push beyond our selfish desire to have those that are closest to us prosper (family, tribe, and nation), and instead to push outward all the way to humanity. This is one value -- the betterment of humanity.
If you want to better any society, though, one of the most powerful forces for doing so is to harness each person's selfishness. One recognized method of doing this is taxation and capitalism. Throughout history, functioning civilizations have needed to retain the right amount of inequality, however, else the civilizations collapsed. If there is too little inequality (such as in communism), nobody has an incentive to earn, to strive, to use her own abilities to do better; selfishness will keep her from doing so, without personal gain. If there is too much inequality, a small group will own virtually everything, and the larger group of poor will either have fewer and fewer rights, or they will eventually revolt.
Governments
Without government, each person has very little because there is no security, which means no way to be certain of property, liberty, or happiness. As John Locke put it: "The end of the law is, not to abolish or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.... For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence from others, which cannot be where there is no law." Without these basic things, there can be no commerce, no division of labor, no organized aggriculture ... no civilization to speak of.
So, a fundamental reason for government is to try to solve the problem of unfair power. Without government, the biggest bully wins ... and eventually there will always be a big bully. Government creates a safe playing field, with rules that everyone must follow, and effective means of enforcing those rules.
In agreeing to be part of a group, to form a government, we must cooperate socially. We have to agree to fair treatment of some sort (at least for the ones making the decisions). We have to agree that others are important (at least the ones that we want to convince). Those forming governments are usually not timid followers, and certainly our American government was not founded by cowards. Immediately it becomes obvious that absolute consensus is usually unworkable. People have to agree on what to do in that scenario, and the most often compromise is some form of majority (simple, super, whatever).
This first agreement is incredibly important. Governments gain power through accumulating it (such as through arms and statesmanship , but it gains authority through its people; it gains rightful authority through honest, informed agreement. This is why our Constitution begins "We, the People...." In forming governments, the people are agreeing to be bound perpetually, and they are ceding control over many important aspects of life to the government (which is, after all, just a group of other people that are also a party to the agreement). Most present-day thinkers would agree that the better governments include many safeguards for the people.
Why? The biggest problem in forming a working government is that you create a potential huge bully. This is definitely seen historically: governmental power has often been horrifically used. (For a timely example, see Syria.) One of the most conscious portions of the American experiment was the idea that no one group could be trusted. There were lots of groups, and that was generally seen as a bad thing ... until we decided to keep the opposing factions watching each other, and require them to work together in order to exercise their power. This actually made the extra factions a perk, as they kept any one faction from gaining too much power.
As you are forming the government, another important aspect of the American experiment comes into play: limitations and purposes. If you limit the government's authorized powers, and give the government purpose, it is much less likely to be a huge bully (if you can keep it in bounds, probably through the various factions).
So, here are some possible governmental values: Security, Life, Liberty, Equality, Welfare, and the Pursuit of Happiness. These are all either spelled out explicitly in our Constitution or they are implied through the wording. (You can also look to the Declaration of Independence, but it has very little legal weight -- it was designed to justify what Americans did rhetorically, not legally.)
Even with these values, though, majority rule leads to problems. Simple mob rule leads to minority oppression, so history has shown us that even the majority must have some limits, and that some factions should have power to deal with the problem of minority rights. (In our system, the most obvious groups for this are the judiciaries.) It is also possible that a society may choose to set certain minimal rights, such as the right to have accessible food, or shelter, or health care. These rights are more "substantive" in that you get something instead of only having the ability to be left alone.
Another aspect to consider in governmental policy is how to keep appropriate amounts of inequality. Too little stifles growth and innovation; too much encourages tyranny and rebellion.
How our government is set up
Each upper layer of the government trumps all below it. At the very top is the Constitution. Also at the federal level are treaties, statutes, cases, and regulations. Below this level are the various legal enactments of the state governments, which often mirror those at the federal level. Below this are the municipal governments, then the quasi-governments (such as POAs, etc.) Most laws are still at the state or lower level: Property, family, criminal, etc.
Each layer has limitations, but the most important is that federal power is limited to enumerated powers in the Constitution. This power has grown substantially through the Civil War and through the Commerce Power (during FDR's tenure), but there are still many meaningful limitations.
We all know about the branches of the government. These internally defined factions (Legislative, Executive, and Judicial) have their own powers that I won't go into. Importantly for present purposes, the Supreme Court makes a lot of important decisions. Justices are appointed by the President, then the Senate has to vote to consent to the appointment. Presidents have a hard time getting through hardliners, but Presidents make the choice, so they choose how the Court is shaped.
All of these considerations are important to how you vote.
A note on mistaken notions of history and sovereignty
Many often think that our original Constitution enshrined the notion of the right to be left alone. This is not even close to the truth. At time of adoption, states were virtually unlimited in what they could do. They could--and DID--limit speech, religion, press, whatever. As just one example, there were state religions, and you had to be a member in good standing to hold a government post. There were almost no limits to what states could do, with the exception that they had to actually pass laws in advance before arresting someone, and the states had to show that they were using those laws when they arrested someone. The substance of those laws was up to the states. Capital punishment, torture, whatever, for virtually anything the state decided. The state could compel you to do things, too, to whatever extent it wanted, as long as it passed a law first. It could say you had to walk up to the capitol, naked, reciting "Allahu Akbar," every Friday night at precisely 6:21 p.m., and if you didn't, you could be tortured. (They didn't, but nothing in the Constitution prevented this.)
The point is that the personal liberty was NOT something that greatly worried the Founders, at least not at a small state level. Majority rule (or whatever rule was in their home states) was just fine. They were worried that the federal government would accrue power and take over the sovereign state's abilities to control people. Probably because the sovereign states did what these white men said, they didn't want to lose their ability to decide what everyone else did.
This state of affairs continued for "four score and seven years." During this time, slavery grew more and more powerful, and the state governments often treated its residents horribly. I say "residents" because black people had no rights which white people had to respect (see Dred Scott v. Sandford). Women had few rights, including the right to own or earn property. People that didn't own real estate often could not vote, nor could those that didn't have enough money to pay the voting ("poll") taxes. Only a few people -- the ones like the ones that started the governments -- were able to enjoy "personal liberty."
And then an abolitionist was elected President, and the prospect that personal liberty might be legally extended to those with great amounts of melanin was so detestable to those that controlled the South that they rebelled. One great question of the Civil War, untested until that time, was whether a state could secede from the nation. The answer was a resounding "No!" After they were defeated, the states lost a lot of power.
Up until the 14th Amendment, the Constitution was devoted, almost exclusively, to discussing specifically enumerated powers for the federal government, and limiting what the federal government could do. After states showed that they dramatically repressed people and were willing to take up arms to keep that repression from being made illegal, the 14th Amendment did a 180 degree turn and gave Congress the ability to pass laws to control the states. The language was very broad, explicitly overruling Dredd Scott and tracking the Declaration of Independence.
All the sudden (well, within a few generations), the states could no longer have religions, or abridge free speech, or do anything that disagreed with most of the Bill of Rights, plus a few other personal liberties (like the ability to educate your child at home). Making senators elected directly by the people also decreased the importance of the states -- until then, the state legislators could choose people that would represent their (the states') interests, whereas the people might elect those that would not care about the "state" at all, but instead about what the people in the state wanted. Arguably, the most important reason for the 2nd Amendment (as a bulwark of power to keep the federal government from taking too much power) was resolved in the Civil War, too.
If we had left it where the Founders put us, majorities in our states would be able to do virtually anything. So, leaning too heavily on the early Constitution for arguments from liberty is strongly misplaced. (This shouldn't be surprising to anyone familiar with the slave ownership rampant among these proponents of liberty, including Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, to name just two obvious examples.)
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