American libertarianism has a dangerous bottleneck: it lacks social interdependence
By: Ryan Patrick Kirby
Tags: Politics, Education, Society, Self-awareness, Writing

John Locke dons the badge awarding him pioneer of modern American liberty with a sort of historical certainty. In contemporary libertarian discourse (and in buzzing, anti-aesthete, off-white chat rooms alike) his ideas concerning personal property are typically received with originalist sentiment — still, the idea of what counts as one’s property is a white-hot debate, especially as Americans begin to struggle paying their rent and mortgage during their battle against covid-19. Dwellings and homes are propertied, yes: But it doesn’t seem too utopic for me to suggest that guaranteed housing should always be federally subsidized, not just with pithy, dystopic stimulus checks. This idea is made even more obvious now that Americans can see — in no uncertain light — just how conditional their property truly is.

Though born in now-Wrington, United Kingdom, in 1632, Locke’s monographs over liberty — and the way we ought to express, share, and declare the philosophy — give us searing insight into the reasons why some Americans refuse to understand that their freedoms affect other people. Say, those not social distancing as the US beelines to hit 500,000 confirmed cases in the very ugly near future. As such, Locke’s libertarian philosophy might be encapsulated best by the following maxim: “Being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, health, liberty, or possessions.”

So, what if what you do doesn’t harm you, but harms other people? This is the staple “don’t scream ‘fire’ in a movie theatre” libertarianism-for-dummies footnote, though, arguably, there has never been a better time to answer the question: What are the limits of personal liberty when we are all potentially contagious and, as such, equally dangerous in our infectious potential?

Citizens who reside near Goshen General Hospital, which is pinpointed in Goshen, Indiana, recently enacted several community “drive ins” to the medical unit’s parking lot with the intent to uplift healthcare staff at the medical centre. This course of actions is a welcomed alternative to the situation which cropped up one week ago, where people got together in sizeable, high-contact groups to initiate a group prayer. Goshen General Hospital is now a designated novel coronavirus testing site, pushing past the idea that in-person prayer — complete with heartfelt, less-than-six-feet-between contact — is a good suggestion.

Similarly, a man was recently arrested in Hawaii after having traveling there from Washington state, thereby violating a fourteen-day quarantine court order.

The honor system is not inherently broken — one need only look at Wuhan’s numbers after mass-quarantine to see how the stark efforts of wilful social distance pay off. So, why does “obeying” the honor system in America conjure up ideas of Orwellian doom for those who admire freedom in ways that are unhelpful and, at worst, harmful to others?

It isn’t so much private knowledge that Americans can be a prideful, liberty-wielding bunch — Americans are also at the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak, a position not assembled by random chance, but the result of US citizens’ particular proclivity to interpret data in ways that align with their individual idea of reality. Freedom is a glamorous idea, which largely explains why there are still a concerning amount of Americans who are refusing social distance, despite the fact that two-thirds of the country’s population is under clear instruction to quarantine.

But we are finding that our collective efforts of social distancing do cash out (if not in the girth of stimulus checks, then in the prize of curbing contraction). The pace is dizzyingly slow, though the payoff from listening to CDC guidelines is unbelievably promising: Until we can again enjoy the rewards afforded by making contact with routine society, though, the expression of our individual liberties during the pandemic will be largely defined by what those liberties secure for those other than ourselves.

What about the “guts” of liberty, then? As it turns out, we can trace the history of the idea.