Liberal democracy, humane treatment, and learning to embrace our freedom
There are a million ironies to force and harsh treatment as an attempt to produce progress.
A just cause, like the American civil rights movement or the Indian independence movement, should give us pause that any society knows best always what and how to punish appropriately.
And the contradictions of our most powerful modern day social movement being in peaceful nonresistantance and civil disobedience to the law and the current fetish with power and force and layers of law to solve problems should give thinking people pause, though many very smart people have ignored those lessons.
The failures of alcohol and drug prohibition should give us serious pause, given the correlation between alcohol and drug prohibition and the murder rates in the United States, though they too often do not, tragically.
The wrong-headed and failed efforts to enforce sexual morality through prohibitions on pornography, adultery and homosexuality should give us pause, though they too often do not.
There are a million ironies to harsh treatment.
But the single most serious irony, I think, is that all lessons, no matter how serious or minor, are only learned when people understand the lesson and not a moment earlier. If they understood the lesson, it would already be learned. And punishment does not learn lessons for people. At best, it can serve as a warning, that always eventually wears off, no matter how serious the crime or deed. And it can protect people from someone who is likely to engage in something that it physically dangerous to others until they take responsibility for their behavior.
But punishment cannot learn a lesson for anyone.
Learning and understanding, are, ultimately, the only and most sustainable means of changing behavior. And learning and understanding necessitate mistakes. Meaning, to internalize a lesson, rather than just being afraid but not really knowing anything, we often (though not always; we don't need people committing murder to learn the lesson that murder is wrong) need to screw it up.
And we only learn a lesson when we learn it. It takes time to figure it out. And we only learn it when we finally internalize it. And internalizing it can't happen a moment sooner than it does.
And no amount of harsh treatment, no matter how harsh or how light, can learn a lesson quicker than it takes for us to learn it.
Sometimes, people may attribute their learning the lesson to the harsh treatment. And sometimes harsh treatment can signal us that something is wrong. If I kill your mother when your rent is late, you'll probably figure out to get rent to me on time. But that doesn't mean that killing your mother taught you a lesson. You're afraid of me and so you do what I want because you're afraid of who I will kill next. And fear isn't internalizing the lesson, which explains why a lot of people do bad things when they're fear eventually wears off.
We can only genuinely choose to be a good person of our own free will when we internalize the need to choose it. Otherwise, we are being good out of fear. Which means we have not internalized the lesson at all. And which makes us seriously vulnerable to manipulation by others, especially when they are doing bad things in the name of doing good. That would explain why a lot of people support dictators and autocrats and authoritarian leaders and other ugly figures and why free people are less likely to do so. Because many if not most people are seriously vulnerable to manipulation because they are always looking to others, rather than to their own consciences and independent judgment, for whether they are doing good or not. That is how Naziism dominated Nazi Germany. That is how Communism dominated the Soviet Union and China and Cuba and North Korea. That is how Fascism dominated in Italy. That is how Islamic theocracy dominates in much of the Middle East and the Muslim world. That is how dictatorships all over the world maintain their power.
But liberal democracy offers people the freedom to remove themselves from those social, religious, political, and legal pressures to become authentically free. Often, as in America and the West, despite those social, religious, political, and legal pressures. Often despite the political and legal systems altogether.
Liberal democracy is, at its heart, a cultural and social and political attitude and thought process, much more than a set of institutions. Institutions are valuable, especially in teaching and offering space to learn and elaborate on liberal democratic values. Educational institutions - below college grade and at the university level - are among the most important institutions in the society, as a consequence (after and co-joint with family) I am convinced, as important as other institutions like the institutions of government, of criminal justice, of the military, the free press, libraries, film, music, literary institutions, business and industry. But education holds a very special place, in both schools and in the family, in guaranteeing (and, sadly, too often, undermining) the strongest values of a liberal democratic society.
And the clear trend, for good reason - because it reflects our commitment to our highest humanity -- is towards more decency and less harsh treatment. And the reason why that is so important is because more decency and less harshness, in our interpersonal relationships with our children and our parents, our students and our teachers, our family members and loved ones, our employees and our employers, our partners, our customers, and those we do business with, our political and legal opponents, our judicial and political and military authorities, our police and civil servants, and even our military enemies, except when force and aggression are necessary and then the least necessary aggression and force should be used as much as possible (overwhelming force, in the form of military force, is often, but not always necessary, and it shouldn't be rationalized, as too often is, in the name of victory except when no other options exist), but also in our more general political, business, and legal dealings, is critical to developing an authentic liberal democracy of self-governing citizens because the freedom is critical to supporting the growth of self-governing and responsible adults who are genuinely committed to liberal democratic values and to the growth of the culture, to their own growth, and to doing good in the most proactive and responsible ways.
Freedom is the basis by which that kind of liberal democratic culture grows and is maintained. And our highest values are more genuinely actualized, as are individuals more genuinely self-actualized, the more freedom is offered and assumed by liberal democratic citizens to more genuinely commit themselves to doing good.
The larger problem in liberal democratic societies since their inception as thinkers like Milton Friedman have alluded to, is that liberal democratic cultures lack confidence in their liberal nature. Liberal cultures embrace freedom, on the one hand, but are perpetually plagued with handwringing about how much freedom is too much as they face difficulties and insecurities about the future. They do not appreciate, well enough, how the very freedom that they are afraid of is exactly what distinguishes their rich, developed, and stronger cultures from weaker, more insecure and more repressive societies that resist liberal values.
When faced with the choice between looking more like the societies that terrorists and Jihadists fantasize and create when they have power, as in Palestine and Afghanistan, or more free and democratic, liberal societies in the last 6 years as with other regressive periods in their history, have chosen more repression and force as a mutually-exclusive substitute for more freedom and liberality. And that choice, as with the choice of Hamas in Palestine and Ahmadinejad in Iran, is borne of a deep insecurity and fear by liberalizing, democratic societies, that their expanding freedom, rather than their older more entrenched repression is responsible for so many of their societies' ills. It is a mistake that liberal democratic societies can see clearly in the choice of Hamas and Ahmadinejad, but they are blind to in their own governments and cultures. And it is a mistake with serious and tragic consequences.
Why liberal societies that spent the entire 20th century fending off challenges from more authoritarian, autocratic, and totalitarian societies and successfully persuaded many of those societies, the Soviet Union, in particular, to adopt more liberal, democratic ways would turn to the very governing philosophy of force which was the central features of those governments and societies they challenged and fought for a century is one of the more serious puzzles and tragedies of the early 21st century, I think. It is a reality borne of that insecurity, I believe. And it is a choice that will only change as these more mature liberal democracies face the failure of force to deliver what only freedom, equity, and democratic self-governance can.
