By Stephen Smoot
Americans have long held to the principle of natural rights, with most understanding that the basic rights of every human being to free speech, to assembly, to obtain weapons for defense of individual, family, property, or nation, as well as others, come not from government, but from God.
The boundary of a natural right lies in the fact that the person received the right a priori and only requires his or her own agency to exercise it. Some argue that health care or education from schooling represents a right, but that is not the case. If, in its furthest extreme one would have to enslave another to received that “right,” it is what Frederic Bastiat called an “acquired right.”
Acquired rights require another person for fulfillment. One has a natural right to pursue an education and can do so through attending classes, going to the library and reading books, or a number of other ways of edification or education. A right to an education as understood in the modern left-liberal sense means that the student has a “right” to attend school regardless of whatever problems that one person might bring to a teacher, a classroom, or the learning of others – even if he or she disrupts the learning of all to “enjoy” a right to sit there in a classroom.
Beyond the narrow spectrum of natural rights lies liberties, freedoms, and privileges that come from living in a free society. All too often, clear boundaries between socially acceptable and lawful do not always match up, leaving gray areas in the law and its enforcement.
These gray areas, in a well functioning free society, cause few or no problems if the people as a whole have embraced virtue as a guidestar to their behavior.
In the early 1800s, the French intellectual and writer Alexis de Tocqueville traveled in the United States to write about the democratic society emerging there only a generation removed from independence.
His analysis pointed out the positives and negatives of the American version of democracy. The word itself has a history that swings pendulum style. From ancient times until the presidency of Andrew Jackson, most saw the word as Aristotle did. Many saw it as meaning “mob rule.” James Madison called it more eloquently “the tyranny of the majority.”
Americans eventually saw the word as meaning something more than mob rule and something much more than simply a majority rule government. To Americans, the word reflected Thomas Jefferson’s words “all men are created equal.” Every white male citizen occupied the same legal position regardless of their economic or social status. Deference in America was the choice of the person deferring, not the one deferred to.
Americans, still living in the residual ferment of The Great Awakening, knew religion even if not religious. The Western argument against a lasseiz-faire based free society with few laws governing many men lies in Judges 21:25.
This verse reads “in those days there was no King in Israel, every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” It sounds much like the postmodernism of Martin Heidegger and others who argue that no objective truth, especially morality, exists.
De Tocqueville explained that Americans two centuries ago avoided the pitfalls that come from a society not of freedom, but of license. He said that Americans “therefore do not deny that every man may follow his own interest; but they endeavor to prove that it is the interest of every man to be virtuous.”
He credited not the laws that set social boundaries, but the behavior of those governed by them. De Tocqueville uses the word “manners” as modern minds would “behaviors.” To him, those “manners” served as the foundation of a free society, explaining that “my aim has been to show, by the example of America, that laws, and especially manners, may exist which will allow a democratic people to remain free.”
Americans needed few laws to guide their actions because, by and large, society embraced the values of virtue. Enough lived lives of virtue that the cost of license did not affect society greatly in the negative.
Things have certainly changed in America since.
Last week, Harrison County Commissioner Patsy Trecost expressed his frustration over the continual release of fireworks at obnoxious times of the day and night in or near the community of Enterprise. This came after the Commission passed an ordinance that could cost violators up to a $1,000 fine. Apparently, those violating the public peace before passage held no concerns about violating the law after.
All summer long, citizens have registered complaints over fireworks explosions late at night, early in the morning, and during the business week. They terrify veterans suffering from PTSD, pets, and many senior citizens.
Many years ago, West Virginia sported extraordinarily restrictive laws concerning fireworks. Those rolled back when a more freedom-oriented Republican State Legislature assumed authority.
Repealing restrictive laws serves as part of an unwritten contract between government and citizen when the scope of freedom expands. Within that scope of freedom, citizens must exercise virtue and self-discipline, making reasonable decisions on how to exercise freedoms.
Those setting off fireworks in the Enterprise area have, conversely, turned their backs on virtue. What they have assumed, however, is a pathetic kind of power. They seized the power to disturb the peace of others whenever they desire.
It is not the brilliant colors of the fireworks they enjoy, but actively disrupting the lives of law abiding citizens. They enjoy the sad level of power created by extreme annoyance and disruption. Until consequences can be brought to their doorstep in the form of a $1,000 fine, they will continue flaunting their ability to annoy.
Of course at that point the perpetrators would cry poverty over the stiff fine, which brings the question back to a statement made by Trecost last week. He asked where these people get the money to purchase so many devices and said he couldn’t even afford to buy that many.
In the 1990s, American cities improved as they, one by one, adopted the “broken windows” approach of Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in New York City. If one treats every crime, no matter how seemingly minor, as important, it has a proven deterrent effect on more serious criminal behavior.
In the past decade and a half, however, cities have backslid into crime, violence, rampant theft, and a declining quality of life. The wealthier communities, which spawn most of the Leftists, never see the effects and rarely experience the crime. Other neighborhoods with less pull and resources must bear the brunt of the urban government’s lack of will to make where they live a decent and safe place for families and the elderly.
Quality of life can make the difference between a community of growth and a community in decline.
America is a free society, but America also has always been a country that celebrated virtue until very recently. Losing the notion of virtue and also the ideal of citizens respecting each other’s space and comfort means that America loses the true foundation of its free society.