Month: October 2013

The Conservative Fear of the Community

Conservatives believe in individual autonomy and fear ceding any individual control to others. This view undergirds their disdain for any type of collective or communal activity. It is why they don’t like unions, why they don’t like the government, and why the disdain communism more than anything.

Unfortunately this hostility toward collective action shows a surprising ignorance of human nature, human history, and human behavior.

Human Nature: Humans are a social animal and cooperative species. We evolved in kin groups and evolved with a learned sense of living with, working with, and cooperating with, other human beings. While humans are not herd animals like bison, they are also not lone animals like wolves or sharks. Humans are primates, and virtually all primate species are social animals that live in extended family groups. Humans evolved with a sense of sharing and cooperation. Human survival depended on the ability of each person to work with the people around them.

Human History: Society is perhaps the greatest human invention. Humans began to dominate the world when they began to live in larger and larger groups. Humans only thrived when we became communal, when we invented civilization.

Human Behavior: Conservative disdain for group behavior seems based on faulty logic. They don’t seem to understand that there is a difference between cooperative behavior and outside control. Humans often work together, and there are various levels of interaction. The lowest level might be cooperation, where two or more people work individually but on a group project. A neighborhood pot-luck dinner might be an example. Everyone brings something to share. The next level might be collaboration. Same neighborhood, but now a Halloween Party where a couple of families arrange for the food and drinks, and invite everyone else. At the far extreme would be communism, where all property is owned communally. An example would be a Kibbutz in Israel.

There are undoubtedly many levels between cooperative behavior and communism, but most conservatives conflate it all. Any group effort, of any kind, is, in their mind, the first step toward the commune.

A Deep Fear of Human Nature

Yesterday Kentucky Senator Rand Paul gave a speech at Liberty University where he warned against eugenics, or the use of scientific biological engineering to selectively breed people. He said that the combination of abortion and advanced medical technology could allow people to selecting “out the imperfect among us.” Paul Warns About Eugenics

It was typical Paul hyperbole, and amusing since it turns out that he lifted much of the speech from the Wikipedia page for the movie Gattaca, which he referenced in his speech. Paul Lifts Anti-Abortion Speech

Paul made the remarks while campaigning for Virginia Attorney General, and gubernatorial candidate, Ken Cuccinelli. Most of the commentary about the speech accused Paul and Cuccinelli of being anti-science. They noted that Cuccinnelli sued the University of Virginia under state anti-fraud laws to stop research on climate change. There is no doubt that Cucinnelli is anti-science, as is most of the modern Republican Party, and it is more than a little likely that Senator Paul is also anti-science.

But the real issue, in my view, is what this says about Paul’s view (and by implication Cucinelli’s view and the beliefs of much of the conservative movement) about human nature. Paul doesn’t just fear science. What he fears is that people will misuse science. In fact, Paul seems convinced that, given a tool, scientists will misuse it. This shows a deep disdain for human nature. This deep skepticism of human nature is a common current running through much of, if not most of, conservative thought. They are tough on crime because they believe that most people, if given the opportunity and believe that they can get away with it, will commit crimes. They fear government because government is run by people. They fear government most when it is run by liberals, whom they are predisposed to believe are inherently evil.

Most conservative policies are defined by this belief that people are inherently bad. And the one thing that seems to unite all segments of conservatism, from libertarians to free-marketeers to Christian conservatives to the members of the Tea Party, is a deep and abiding fear of humanity.

The First Amendment and Campaign Finance Laws

One of the first cases heard by the Supreme Court this session was McCutcheon v. FEC, a case which deals with campaign finance laws. The main question is whether campaign contributions are a form of speech, and whether it is legitimate for Congress (through the Federal Election Commission) to place limits on the total amount that an individual can contribute in any election year.

This case raises two important issues regarding First Amendment rights, and by implication all constitutional rights.

First, all rights, even constitutional rights, are not absolute. There are many, many limits on our right to free speech. This is true, even though the First Amendment says that “Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press.” There are literally dozens (if not hundreds or thousands) of laws passed by the U.S. Congress, and by the states, that restrict or limit the ability to speak freely. Copyright laws limit speech, as do defamation laws (slander and libel), obscenity laws and broadcast decency laws. Localities have what are called “time, place, and manner” restrictions on speech. These allow a city to prevent a person from driving around in a sound truck late at night blasting their message. A city also has the ability to limit and control parades, and limit demonstrations to certain locations. All of these laws, and many others, limit the right to speak freely, and seem to directly in the face of the explicit language of the First Amendment.

The reason that these laws can exist – as most lawyers know but most political commentators ignore – is that all rights, even enshrined constitutional rights, are subject to reasonable limitations. Otherwise there would be chaos. Imagine if your neighbor decided that he wanted to let his son’s band practice at full volume on the front lawn every night. There has to be some limit on rights, and the question is balance. For restrictions on First Amendment rights the balance is if there a reasonable opportunity to express an opinion and whether the restrictions are content neutral and not unreasonably burdensome?

This same balance should apply in deciding whether campaign contributions can be limited. The question in this case is whether there is a legitimate social interest in the restrictions on money in politics, and whether the ‘speaker’ (in this case the donor) has a reasonable opportunity to express an opinion and if the particular restriction is burdensome.

I honestly don’t know the answer to that, which brings me to my second point:

Just because something is allowed as a “constitutional” right doesn’t mean that it is automatically good. Even important rights can produce negative consequences. We know this from the First Amendment. We know that some speech, or some expression, can be harmful. That’s why we allow limits on obscenity.

The free-for-all of American culture is the byproduct of the First Amendment. And there is no doubt that vast segments of our culture are a squalid wasteland. The right may be valid, but that doesn’t mean that every by-product is inherently good. And so, in this case, the First Amendment may protect the right to give freely to political candidates, but that doesn’t mean the end result will be good, just that it is constitutional.
Finally let me note that this idea applies to all rights. All rights, even constitutional rights, are subject to reasonable restrictions. And just because something is allowed by the Constitution doesn’t mean that it is socially beneficial.