Articulating Principles

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty, and justice for all.

Liberty and justice stand in tension one with the other—and this tension by itself provides the rationale for government. Justice for all implies limitations on liberty—lest liberty turn into license. John Locke, in Of the State of Nature, gave formal arguments for this in the seventeenth century. Limited government, similarly, arises from the same tension. Liberty must be curbed for the sake of justice—but not more than justice demands.

And what applies to government applies with equal force to the exercise of any power—be that of a parent over a child, the head of a household over a family, a corporation, agency, etc. But if power must be curbed, the national government ultimately is the point of last recourse; but of course it is itself a power—and must be curbed in turn. And thus arises the notion articulated in the Declaration of Independence that government derives its power from the consent of the governed.

Is it really necessary to rehash all these old ideas once again? We know all this, don’t we? Well, we live in an age when the meaning of words like “is” is debated in grand jury hearings by sitting presidents; thus it may be a good idea to ponder fundamentals. Not least words like “all,” as in “justice for all.” And “justice” for that matter.

You might say that every time a tension appears, parties will form to either side. This seems to be the situation in our politics today. We have a party of liberty trying to maximize the limitation of government—and a party of justice, trying to maximize the justice for all. The tendencies are illustrated in the only passages, within the 2008 platforms for the two parties, one passage in each, that mention core principles at all:

From the Democrats:

Today, we pledge a return to core moral principles like stewardship, service to others, personal responsibility, shared sacrifice and a fair shot for all–values that emanate from the integrity and optimism of our Founders and generations of Americans since.

From the Republicans:

Republicans will uphold and defend our party’s core principles: Constrain the federal government to its legitimate constitutional functions. Let it empower people, while limiting its reach into their lives. Spend only what is necessary, and tax only to raise revenue for essential government functions. Unleash the power of enterprise, innovation, civic energy, and the American spirit—and never pretend that government is a substitute for family or community.

These two most recent formal platforms are here (Republicans, Democrats).

Now the difficulties here are to determine how to measure justice for all. In effect it is impossible, but there are certain indicators that might be meaningful. A clear one, from my perspective, is income inequality. It strikes me as a meaningful pointer indicating the slippage of justice in the United States that the Gini Coefficient, which measures income inequality, stood at 0.397 in 1975 and at 0.469 in 2010. The higher the Gini, the greater the inequality. This means that in the last 35 years income inequality has increased by 18 percent. Now a certain inequality is natural, of course. But what level is too high? Consider what the military pay differentials are. A four-star general earns 11.5 times more than a private does. In our economy, the top quintile of the population earns 15.4 more than the lowest quintile. Now while the number of four-star generals is a tiny fraction of all soldiers, the top quintile of the population is a full fifth of it. Therefore that 15.4 multiplier means more.

Liberty, to be sure, will minimally produce economic inequality—so that some, but not all, will have much greater wealth. The perception, at minimum, of “justice for all” erodes when this happens; and as it does, disorder mounts. Now, of course, this is a free country. Those who wish to work to maximize justice (thus constraints on the economy) and those who wish to maximize liberty (hence inequality in wealth), are free to do so. But it would certainly help if the underlying principles were spelled out and more openly discussed in debates and punditry than they are. Some people, indeed the masses, don’t seem to understand what is is.

A Ring to Rule Them All

Herewith a story:

According to the tradition, Gyges was a shepherd in the service of the king of Lydia; there was a great storm, and an earthquake made an opening in the earth at the place where he was feeding his flock. Amazed at the sight, he descended into the opening, where, among other marvels, he beheld a hollow brazen horse, having doors, at which he stooping and looking in saw a dead body of stature, as appeared to him, more than human, and having nothing on but a gold ring; this he took from the finger of the dead and reascended.

Now the shepherds met together, according to custom, that they might send their monthly report about the flocks to the king; into their assembly he came having the ring on his finger, and as he was sitting among them he chanced to turn the collet of the ring inside his hand, when instantly he became invisible to the rest of the company and they began to speak of him as if he were no longer present. He was astonished at this, and again touching the ring he turned the collet outwards and reappeared; he made several trials of the ring, and always with the same result—when he turned the collet inwards he became invisible, when outwards he reappeared.

Whereupon he contrived to be chosen one of the messengers who were sent to the court; where as soon as he arrived he seduced the queen, and with her help conspired against the king and slew him, and took the kingdom.

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point.

And this we may truly affirm to be a great proof that a man is just, not willingly or because he thinks that justice is any good to him individually, but of necessity, for wherever any one thinks that he can safely be unjust, there he is unjust. For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more profitable to the individual than justice, and he who argues as I have been supposing, will say that they are right. If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another’s, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another’s faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suffer injustice. Enough of this. [Glaucon speaking, in Book II of Plato’s The Republic, Benjamin Jowett’s translation]

A collet is a flange that holds the precious stone on the ring. I found this quote thanks to Brandon at Siris who, in this post, made me aware that hidden in Plato is one of the earliest suggestions of cyclic civilization, moving from timarchy (rule by honor, by the best), to oligarchy, democracy, and then to chaos—by very arrangement suggesting a down-ward spiral. I was too young and ignorant in college when last I looked at the Republic and read only selected parts of it as part of a survey course. At the same time I am fairly certain that J.R.R. Tolkien, certainly a scholar, must have read the whole of it. If I had read it, I would certainly have remembered it.

A Finnish Lesson

In Europe Finland came very close to refusing the bailout of Portugal, a package of around $115.5 billion (€78 billion). On April 17, the True Finns won 39 seats in the 200-seat Finnish Parliament (third in size). The party, while left-wing, is nationalist, anti-globalist, and culturally conservative. It’s only been around since May of 1995. With the party’s sizeable gain in seats came buzz that Nazism was back in Finland and comparisons of True Finns to the U.S. Tea Party came instantly as well. The party polarized the Finnish population on the subject of the Portuguese bailout and hence has been denied a role in a governing coalition. Just how stable the Finnish government will be hereafter is another matter.

Now, mind you, Portugal is in the ditch and Finland is among the leading economies of Europe. Just a few weeks ago Brigitte and I marveled at some tables obtained from the European Central Bank showing that in crucial measures of competitiveness, only Germany topped Finland’s performance in recent years. But huge economic meltdowns always hurt an element even of the best-off populations. And it is this element—the people who are hurt—who undoubtedly formed the energy behind the rise of the True Finns. We work like crazy, we’re disciplined, and then some careless, free-spending, indulgent people, far away, Greece, Portugal, whatever, get themselves in trouble, and when it’s time for them to buckle down and suffer the consequence, No, none of that. Here they are at our door and ready to take our money so that they can party on.

Is this a caricature or is this reality? Just yesterday I wrote elsewhere about evil and called it an absence of empathy. This morning’s news brought—if not a corrective to that view then at least a meaningful enlargement of the concept. I learned just how narrowly the EU escaped disaster because the Finnish Parliament narrowly backed the bailout after all. The Finnish lesson for me has been to realize that empathy among people will rapidly thin out if justice is not seen to be visibly applied to all, in like measure, everywhere.

Visible justice. Yes, we need it. When people are hurting, they will balk at pragmatic fixes to collective problems that minimally have the appearance of injustice—and where smoke, there fire. This is certainly the case in Europe where the “union” is new, thin, and where the competent and disciplined are called upon to rescue the apparently neglectful and possibly corrupt. Big mess. And it is precisely in times like these, erupting with righteous rage out of the poorest elements of the population, that ugly political movements rise and sometime, with disastrous consequences, gain the hammer hand.

But the problem of justice, even-handedness, of consistency also arises when we are watching dramatic interventions in favor of political resistance in Libya—but not in Syria. Just to name a single pair. Arises when we watch one or two billionaires tried in the courts but others bailed out with billions of taxpayers' money because they did not technically violate any laws…

Having commented on Swedish influence in Finland in earlier and other contexts, a lighter moment came as I pursued my research. I discovered one of the important party platforms of the rigorously nationalistic True Finn Party. The party’s top cultural demand is the abolition of the mandatory teaching of Swedish to all Finnish pupils from primary school on up to vocational universities. I found this delightfully meaningful, especially that word “vocational.” The lower classes in Finland, surprise, speak Finnish—and nothing but. They must be taught Swedish so that their bosses don’t have to learn Finnish.