Chapter 5. Rules Of Conduct In A Liberal Society

CHAPTER FIVE

RULES OF CONDUCT IN A LIBERAL SOCIETY

LIBERTY HAS BEEN DEFINED in this discussion as a strictly individual matter. Further, as a problem of our concern, it has been limited to the area where relationships exist between persons, “society.”

All who favor liberty, therefore, must favor the liberal society. They must favor “liberalism” (liber = free; al = pertaining to; ism = a doctrine or practice).

The structure of a liberal society is that which promises to preserve the greatest possible degree of liberty among those living in that society. The design of a liberal society requires the formulation of rules, acceptable to the participants, that will accomplish this purpose. The rules must apply to all situations where overlapping desires might otherwise arise to destroy liberty, such as when two persons desire to stand in the same place at the same time. Under adequate rules accepted by the participants, each will refrain from trespassing on the rights of others. The rules for conduct in society are accepted in the same spirit and with the same respect as a person accepts the dictates of physical law where the connection between cause and effect, between the breaking of the law and its consequences, is fairly conspicuous.

If the rules of the game are to be acceptable to the participant, they must be in accord with his sense of justice. But this sense of justice must, in turn, be in harmony with sound principles. “Just any old rules” will not suffice, because if in their operation they fail to perform their purpose in coping with the problems that continuously arise, respect for them will end and they will be rejected by the participant.

Under liberty, one person has no inherent right to control another. One person may influence another by appeal to his wisdom and conscience without violating liberty, because self-control and self-restraint are respected guides to action under liberty. Everyone is, in effect, a sworn-in policeman over his own acts; conscience allows neither evasion nor escape from self-responsibility.

This concept of liberty rests on the supreme dignity of the individual. Shunning responsibility for one’s own acts is impossible because no one else has control over him with responsibility for his acts. Rights under liberty have their counterpart in duties under liberty.

Liberty (freedom to do whatever one desires according to his wisdom and conscience) in no sense means that one must ignore all the experience of the ages and wisdom of the sages. Evidence and guidance which one person chooses to accept from another, or from recorded history, is no violation of liberty. Liberty does not preclude learning from others. On the contrary, the absence of liberty prevents the process of free access to others and the free exchange of ideas.

One who chooses to accept all the accumulated knowledge of the ages as interpreted by his physician is free, under liberty, to accept his physician’s advice and buy his pills. But liberty also allows him to patronize either of the two physicians who differ as to the possible cure; or it allows him to patronize neither and to be his own doctor.

The same reasoning applies to all other human relationships, and to the designing of rules of conduct in a liberal society. Intellectual and moral guidance, voluntarily accepted by the follower, is no violation of liberty; it is, in fact, a main purpose of liberty so that the blind are free to follow those who can see. The danger is that in the absence of liberty the blind may become authorized to lead those who can see — by a chain around their necks!

The terrific urge to prevent another person from making a “mistake” must be resisted if liberty is to be preserved. The “protective spirit” that leads a fond parent to prohibit his child from acquiring mature judgments, as he substitutes his own opinions for those of the child, leads the dictator to act as he does in “protecting” his political children. There is no possible way to allow a person to be right without also allowing him to be wrong. The only way to avoid responsibility for another’s mistakes is to allow him the full glory and reward of being right, as well as the full dishonor and penalty of being wrong. Only in this way can one person isolate himself from the mistakes of another, whether it be a Stalin or a neighbor.

The rules of a liberal society must be in harmony with those forces beyond the power of man to alter, where any violation brings certain penalty. Similar forces prevent the mathematician from having the license to decree that two plus two is five or three; in observing these superior forces of truth, he is thus protected from a whole series of impossible mathematical situations. And similarly, the engineer and the physicist, if they are to avoid disaster in their projects, must work in harmony with the law of gravity rather than in defiance of it. The mathematician, physicist and engineer all know that they are not God with an unlimited control over matter and over “truth.”

There are forces of a similar nature that cannot be defied in the conduct of a liberal society, if disastrous results are to be avoided. It is impossible, for instance, to grant to everyone a valid right to use whatever land he desires, at any time; it is inadvisable to permit plunder and pillage. Any such attempts to flout natural and moral law will bring disaster to liberty and to the society that practices it. It is not intended to propose here a complete listing of the “natural moral laws” requisite to liberalism. But it is at least important to note their existence and to suggest their nature.

The Golden Rule — the rule of doing unto others what one would have them do unto him — would seem to be one requisite of the code of liberalism. This is because, in the moral realm, the Golden Rule serves the necessary function of impartiality; it is no respecter of privileged persons, not even one’s esteemed self. It is the equivalent of the impartiality of rule by law instead of rule according to the whims of the administrators.

But the Golden Rule alone is not sufficient. Lacking any other moral guides, the Golden Rule may even be used to rationalize thievery; the thief may claim in self-defense: “If I were in the victim’s place, having two cars, I would be willing to have someone without a car take one of mine.” Additional guides such as the Ten Commandments, or perhaps the Cardinal Sins, are necessary.

A set of rules, thus properly designed and accepted, is the requisite of a liberal society. When this objective is attained, liberty will be complete and undefiled in a society where persons are constantly engaged in all sorts of economic and other relationships with one another.

Such a set of rules prescribes the range of a person’s actions in his relationships with others which, if observed by him and by others alike, allows full liberty to be enjoyed by all. Each knows that he is free to operate over a certain range and no more; if he is not free to operate over this range, he can be assured that others are imposing on his liberty; if he exceeds this range, he will know that he is infringing on the liberty of others. Such is the nature of liberal justice, without which liberty cannot be preserved.

Liberty, or the right to act as one wills according to his wisdom and conscience, is sometimes charged with being “license” and totally irresponsible conduct. But, on the contrary, responsibility of the highest order is required in a liberal society. What social design could be more challenging, in terms of responsibility, self-discipline and self-control, than that of liberalism in its requirements of self-restraint; in avoiding trespass on the rights and the property of others; in its respect for the rights of others to disagree without precipitating conflict? Liberty requires the highest order of conduct in its practice.

The disciplines of liberty, however, have their rewards. “Every man a king” has had great appeal as a political slogan. The nearest possible approach to it is to be found in a liberal society, in which everyone is king over his own affairs to the greatest possible extent. At the other extreme, one man is king over all men instead of every man being king to a degree.

RULES OF SOCIETY come into existence in different ways. Whereas this study deals primarily with government in its relation to liberty, it may be helpful to note briefly the other devices for developing the rules of society. Their record in attaining the ideal of liberalism varies throughout history, and the record of no one of them seems to offer a panacea.

Presumably the earliest rules for social conduct were those developed in the family, as an early social unit. They differed from family to family, but in all instances they were informal and easily changed.

Perhaps next in time of origin was “custom.” Custom operated to develop rules of society in the same manner as Topsy developed — they “just grew up.” Custom is an unwritten code of conduct, voluntarily accepted and enforced by self-discipline, assisted by the frowns and the approving smiles of friends and neighbors. The force of custom has been terrific at different times and places. But it is not a certain route to liberty, in any sense, though there is an important virtue to be found in its voluntary nature.

Both religious belief and the operations of the organized religious bodies have played an important role in designing rules of social conduct. They have varied; some have been formal and others informal; some voluntary and others users of force; some with rewards and penalties imposed here and others merely promised for the hereafter; some independent of government and others in collusion with government.

Many forms of social and fraternal organizations, operating as cells within society, have also established rules of conduct for their members.

In earlier days, the tribe was important in formulating rules for social conduct. In modern times, “government” has to a large extent replaced the functions of the tribal organization, and has become a major factor in the development and enforcement of rules for social conduct. Because of its growing importance and its threat to liberty, government is given special attention in this study;