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 Long Footnote to "Property"

One must always remember that to the mind of the Middle Ages a man’s lawful property was an extension of his personality—an exterior body, as it were, and, like that body, a sacred trust to be used and not abused, either by himself or by others.

Thus wrote Dorothy Sayers in her commentary to Dante’s Inferno, Canto XXIV, the first of two that deal with the fate of thieves in hell. To this she added, “This accounts for the severe view which Dante takes of offenses against property.” Sayers had introduced this point in her commentary on Canto XI already, saying at that point:

Property is regarded, in accordance with Roman law, as an extension of the personality. Consequently, to damage or destroy one’s or one’s neighbor’s good is a sin of the same type as the damage and destruction of one’s own or one’s neighbour’s body.

Indeed, this view of property really arises from Natural Law. Not surprisingly, therefore, we find it present in most legal codes, not least in African customary law and in Islamic law. The interesting aspect of this interpretation of property is that, much as in John Locke’s thought, which as simply an updating, in is own time, of natural law thinking, property is linked to the body because it is linked to life. It is an “extension of the person” because the person depends on property in order to make his/her livelihood. Land, cattle and tooling were, together, the foundation of agricultural survival; tools and materials were the extensions of the craftsman without which he could not practice his trade. I would also note that we also experience this extension psychologically—and law recognizes this feeling. The following excerpt from Harmful Thoughts: Essays on Law, Self, and Morality, by Meir Dan-Cohen (Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 217) will illustrate that:

Tort liability often extends beyond the unintended consequences of one’s bodily engagements. The famous tort cases involve escaping water and straying animals, but for our purposes a more mundane example will do. An unexpected wind blows a vase out of my living room, and the vase lands on a passerby’s head. Even if I had not myself placed the vase or been otherwise involved, I would be mortified more intensely than, say, my neighbor, as we both helplessly watch the vase traveling toward the passerby, and I would be expected and inclined to rush to the rescue with greater urgency than any Samaritan who happened on the scene.

Notice first how closely the phenomenology here resembles the win-spilling case [described earlier]: just as bodily involvement was the source of responsibility for the win-spilling, ownership of the vase links me inexorably to the passerby’s injury.

We have here, therefore, a logical basis for property-as-extension-of-body (meaning its economic support functions), a psychological identification because we own something, and a legal recognition of that fact.

Now to this I would add some observations. First, property as an extension of the body for its maintenance made a lot of sense in pre-modern times when property, for the vast majority, was the means of making a living—be it by agriculture or trades. In those days property had a functionally closer association with life than it has today. If we were to bring natural law up to date, to modernize it properly, as Locke was doing for his time, we would include as an intimate core, of the concept of property, that which provides us our actual, continuous source of income—much like a shop-materials-tools or land-cattle-and-implements functioned in medieval and in earlier times. And that functional equivalent would be — our job! But we don’t have a right to jobs. Not like medieval man had to property. If you apply the life-liberty-property slogan to the ordinary modern human, you would see that, in our age, we are actually deprived of one element in this trinity—despite all the endless talk about the sanctity of property.

Worth thinking about.

Life, Liberty, and Property

The state of nature has a law of nature to govern it, which obliges every one: and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind, who will but consult it,that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions. [John Locke, Two Treatises of Government]

Locke [1632-1704] is the source of the slogan that heads this post. The words of the slogan are a modification of the quote shown above. In that same book Locke uses much the same phrase three times more. In one case he speaks of “life, liberty, or estate,” in another of “a power…to preserve his property, that is, his life, liberty and estate,” and finally he speaks of “life, liberty, or possessions” again, but this time leaving out health. From this we get Jefferson’s elegant edit in the Declaration of Independence: “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.” The modified phrase also appears twice in the U.S. constitution, in the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments. Both prohibit depriving persons of “life, liberty, or property”; in both cases the same qualifying phrase also appears: “without due process of law.”


In thinking about government and rights, Locke relied on natural law doctrines that find their rootings in antiquity. His own intention was to erect rational fences to defend the people against arbitrary government and offered justification for overthrowing rulers who violated natural law.

But natural law also deals with humanity in the collective, thus with communities and states, both of which, it turns out, are necessary features of individual liberty. Collectives also have rights, and these in turn limit individuals rights. Collectives may restrain some to protect others; they may defend themselves and, in the process, cause (at least indirectly) the death of their warriors; and they can require contributions necessary to maintain their activities. Life, liberty, and property, therefore, are not absolute rights but delimited in complex ways when the one and the many must both be accommodated in our thought.

Taxation is not theft. Extreme forms of right-wing thought maintain that it is, but what such advocates demonstrate is their own irrationality. We do have anarchists among us. But when such modes of thought begin to influence the masses, one begins to see the consequence of neglecting or outright banning ethics in school in favor of “social studies.”