The Subtle Art of Undermining Rights for 'The Common Good'
How Benevolent Policies Mask Autocratic Tendencies.
Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash
“We are restricting freedom, but we're doing it for the common good. You will see throughout our constitution, yes, you have rights, but they are restricted for the common good.”
“If your views on other people's identities go to make their lives unsafe, insecure, and cause them such deep discomfort that they cannot live in peace, then I believe that it is our job as legislators to restrict those freedoms for the common good.”
Irish Green Party Senator Pauline O'Reilly spearheaded a contentious speech law in Ireland, marking a significant shift in legislative boundaries. This proposed law, (Criminal Justice “Incitement to Violence or Hatred and Hate Offences” Bill 2022), arguably the most extreme of its kind in the West, seeks to criminalize the possession of any materials — ranging from books and videos to seemingly innocuous memes — if they are deemed likely to incite violence or hatred. It's a move that demands careful scrutiny and raises serious concerns about the implications for freedom of expression.
Politicians worldwide often use the concept of "the common good" to justify policies that infringe upon their constituent's freedoms. I wonder: what constitutes "the common good"? For whom is it intended, and who truly benefits from such policies? When elected officials start gradually eroding liberty with the justification that it benefits society at large, my Spidey senses start tingling. I've seen enough over the past three years to know where the slippery slope begins and where it lands.
The parable of the boiling frog perfectly illustrates the gradual erosion of freedom. In this allegory, a frog is placed in lukewarm water and then slowly heated. Unaware of the gradual increase in temperature, the frog only perceives the danger once it is too late, ultimately succumbing to the heat. This story is a metaphor for how citizens might slowly lose their rights without immediate realization as changes are introduced incrementally under the guise of "the common good."
Take the trajectory of recent global events and policies as an example. The pandemic started with seemingly minor and temporary restrictions for public health: businesses were closed for a few weeks, which extended indefinitely; face masks and vaccination mandates were introduced as interim measures but soon became a norm. Initially introduced as necessary for public safety, these restrictions gradually set the stage for more invasive policies.
The scope of 'the common good' has since expanded significantly. Policies range from speech restrictions to prevent discomfort to certain "marginalized" members of specific societies. We've seen government policies regarding dietary changes like discouraging meat consumption, shifts in transportation such as banning the future sale of gas-powered cars, and encroachments on parental rights in education - all have been introduced under this banner. We've seen that prohibiting certain household appliances like gas stoves or determining criminal motives and punishments based on perceived hate and subsequently increasing prison time based on that, are justified as being for the greater good.
Each of these steps, while well-intentioned, contributes to a climate where personal freedoms are increasingly viewed as secondary to collective goals. But who defines these collective goals? Who benefits from these regulations, and at what cost to individual liberty and autonomy?
This trend raises the alarm about the trust in politicians who advocate these measures. Their intentions, which may start as benevolent, risk becoming avenues for power consolidation and overreach. It's more than just a loss of freedoms; it's about transforming societal values and norms under the pretext of communal welfare.
While ensuring public safety and welfare is important, it shouldn't undermine the fundamental liberties that define a free society. The narrative of "the common good" must not become a blanket justification for unchecked governmental power expansion.
The situation calls for citizens to be aware of this kind of language and people to hold to account the elected leaders in any way possible. Continuous scrutiny and debate over the necessity and scope of each measure introduced for "the common good" are essential. The boiling frog parable is a stark reminder: realizing lost freedoms often comes too late.
Both the governed and the governors are responsible for ensuring that the pursuit of the greater good doesn't lead to a lesser state of freedom. The accurate measure of "the common good" should always be calibrated against the backdrop of preserving individual rights and liberties.
Clayton Craddock is a devoted father of two, an accomplished musician, and a thought-provoker dedicated to Socratic questioning, challenging the status quo, and encouraging a deeper contemplation on a range of issues. Subscribe to Think Things Through HERE, and for inquiries and to connect, email him here: Clayton@claytoncraddock.com.
This is yet another in a lifetime's worth of examples I've seen passing through history, of how these political superstitions of there being any such things as ideologies which can be distinguished as 'left' and 'right' are little more than wishful thinking on the part of those who think they prefer the excesses of the one over the other, in terms of how they seek to rationalize their own chosen faction's infringements on liberty and rule of law as being acceptable while the other side's are not.
In his epic masterpiece 'Life and Fate', war correspondent/novelist Vasily Grossman tells his tale of the world war of the 1940s, focusing primarily on the battle of Stalingrad and the activities of the scientific intelligentsia carrying out wartime nuclear research for the Soviet state, by proceeding on the assumption that the Nazi and Soviet regimes, currently at war with one another, are far more similar than either side's propaganda would have anyone believe. The differences between them are more matters of rhetoric, emphasis and methodology than of one's being any more morally defensible than the other, but the result ultimately is two different approaches to managing the behavior of a people which each in their own way license privileged castes to sustain the only realistic rights or opportunities either state is willing to afford anyone, while each maintains a massive apparatus specifically tasked with identifying and brutally punishing anyone else who can be called out as enemies of the state, for any reason or none at all other than the meeting of quotas as required by the state in its processing of casework.
Similarly, I have long viewed this supposed divide, this 'culture war' if you will, of the current era as being the same sort of thoroughly false dichotomy: neither 'liberal' nor 'conservative' factions anywhere in the world where such mythologies persist are motivated by any genuine allegiance to their own claims and talking points on the nature of good versus evil, but rather purely driven by the amassing and sustaining of political power and economic advantage for their own separatist elites. The ideologies of 'left' and 'right' are neither sincere nor held as particularly crucial as guidelines for the behavior of the powerful, and are little more than management devices, ways to tell their own adherents who their enemies are and why powers to oppose them must be deployed at the expense of ordinary people.
As such, just to cite some random examples, I have never taken on face value any evangelical conservatives' claim to be in favor of any 'right to life' for the unborn, nor have I been willing to accept that mouth-foaming traffic-stoppers shouting slogans about 'climate change' bear any genuine convictions about fighting to preserve the future of the planet. Each says these things because they are what the current fashion trends within their own political factions name as the correct things to say. Individuals might think they believe such ideas to be authentic or even heartfelt convictions, right up until the moment a pastor's teenage daughter has an unwanted pregnancy inconvenient to his personal brand, or a climate activist feels like burning up thousands of gallons of jet fuel to arrive at a preferred vacation spot.
These days when I hear one western campus socialist after another preaching secular sermons about how the war in Ukraine is about preserving 'liberal democracy' there, I just have to laugh at the misinformed irony of what these terms are actually supposed to mean.
If to be liberal means, as it appears to in the practice of so-called liberal politics west of the Dnipro, that more public funding must be spent on managing the thoughts, expressions and ideas of the populace in order to protect the state from threats posed by such things as the state does not approve of, then it can be readily argued that there is no more 'liberal' regime on earth than the Putin Kremlin: between foreign-agent laws, forcible deportation of children for the crime of speaking the wrong language, anti-gay measures in both media and law enforcement realms, and criminal penalties of seven years for swapping out grocery store shelf tags with anti-war slogans, the Kremlin over these past two years has exercised more official power at public expense to micro-manage the behavior of its citizenry than our Irish comrade above in the article would ever dare hope to get her hands on. That Russians are being rounded up and prosecuted for being homosexual, Ukrainian, or pacifist is merely a question of emphasis, while another faction in some other part of the world seeks to expand its own powers to round up its enemies for being climate deniers, hate speakers, or religious enthusiasts.
And in terms of what is or is not 'democracy', how much different are Russia's exercises in foregone conclusion such as their staged 'elections' or their rubber-stamp legislatures, than the appalling pageantry of factional manipulation of public sentiment which bears that name in the west? Does either approach to selecting government officials or enacting laws better represent some elusive 'will of the people' (Vladimir Putin's favorite slogan) than the other's?
If the choice between 'left' and 'right' in political sloganeering and factional alignments is all this 'democracy' has to offer, I'm with author Grossman in asserting that it makes scant difference which one ends up deciding for the people what is best for them or what happens to them if they don't agree. In his tale of a war which began with two bitter enemies signing a non-aggression pact and then carving up half of Europe between them by prior agreement regardless of what the citizens of those affected nations might have wished for themselves, you got your Molotov, and you got your Ribbentrop, and I for one am hard put to distinguish between them in terms of which one's boss I'd prefer being ordered around by, just because their functionaries signed some documents, and their overlords had some powers to exercise their own will on their own terms.