Liberty and Dignity (aka, Liberty and Equality Are Always in Tension)
When I was thirteen years old, I took a family trip to visit Europe. Among the highlights of the trip was traveling by bus to the Berlin Wall and passing through Checkpoint Charlie. The year was 1987. The gaps on both sides of the cement wall, the barbed wire fencing, and the guards with guns standing patrol were all stark reminders of how borders divide and secure access to nations. The conspicuous contrast moving from west to east beyond that wall quickly appeared in a comparative picture of architecture and road vehicles. So many vehicles on the road all looked the same, just different colors. The buildings had some grand architectural style but pervaded a sense of aged decay. Arriving at the Soviet War Memorial, I witnessed German soldiers closely positioned near visiting Russian soldiers. The stiffness in sizing up “the other” was easy to see. Distrust and perceived conflict can manifest in our physical senses in such moments.
The East German side was clearly more equal, but it was not obviously desirable. It was a glaring example of the stark fact that equality of material distributions can only be achieved by lowering standards until everyone is forced into the average allotment. Equality is driven by reduction, not elevation. Equality is a beautiful principle of human aspiration, but almost always turns into a political catastrophe when elevated as a main goal of public policy.
The equality referenced in the Declaration of Independence, that all men are created equal, has to do with the idea no one has the authority to rule over another person without their consent. There is no “born to rule” and “born to be subservient” program that naturally or rightly governs humankind. This is the crux of political equality. Of course, the horrors of slavery left a sharp wound in the legitimacy of the consent of the governed as envisioned by the founders.
Political equality is, in part, the extent to which citizens have an equal voice in governmental decisions. For example, equal consideration of the preferences and interests of all citizens is one manifestation. We see this exemplified in one-person/one-vote and equal rights of free speech. Equal consideration of the desires of all citizens is fostered by equal access to political participation. The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution was included to ensure certain aspects of political equality would endure as the structure of government evolved to meet the needs of the citizens.
Americans have learned that it’s important to strive for equality in certain defined circumstances. Equality before the law demands no favoritism for perceived connections or preferential status. Equality of opportunity is the American way to ensure that mobility is accessible to all.
But equality of outcomes destroys freedom to pursue interests that are not evenly shared by all people. The more we seek to conform equality to set standards, the more we risk losing diversity in the natural human experience. However, when assessing material standards of living, inequality can destroy the favorable relations that must exist between citizens of a democratic republic. Enormous class differences and divisions can undermine democracy and push a capitalist economy toward dysfunction. Often, those with means use the political process to their advantage, while those with lesser means feel sidelined by the burdens of daily living based on constant competition. As Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem.”1
Author and political thinker, Yuval Levin, has explained some of the core tensions that exist in classical liberalism. His book, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left, spells out many key issues that were debated during the times of the American Revolution and the French Revolution. Regarding equality in the many social stations of life that govern public and private resources, he noted as follows:
Societies should seek to be well governed, rather than to merely play out the implications of an abstract ideal of political equality, and to be well governed requires giving more authority to those better able to govern. Societies whose core concern is social equality not only will tend to fail to elevate the worthy, but will even tend to elevate and celebrate those most poorly qualified to govern.2
Battles for equality beyond a limited set of individual norms can turn a free state into a regulatory state that becomes oppressive and ultimately tyrannical.
Diversity and Freedom
Diversity in society is vital for growth, differentiation, human development, and societal functioning. Diversity means different things to people—the current cultural reading of diversity seems to exclusively focus on racial and sexual differences. In some places, these conversations may be helpful, but in many places, they are proving to be misguided or hurtful. Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) is suddenly a common administrative layer in institutional governance. DE&I has many well-intentioned goals. It also seems to carry heavy side effects. The hyper-focus on identity poses risks in cultural formation.
Because Americans have valued freedom for centuries, we tend to experience a society that has vast gaps in outcomes. Some refer to this as privilege, but that misconstrues the situation. These gaps in outcomes have been responsible for the groundswell of movements calling for justice. Capitalism, especially based on inherited property over generations, produces vastly different economic outcomes. Social justice, economic justice, environmental justice—all such movements address unequal outcomes in society. Assuming freedom remains the mainstay of American cultural desires, at least two reforms are likely needed: 1) the challenges created by our system of capitalism-augmented-by-corporate-structures must undergo a reset for the common good of the American people, and 2) the emphasis on equality after such reforms may need to give way to a broader concept that addresses human needs while accepting vast differences in outcomes—a new focus on human dignity. We will deal with capitalism in a series of essays in Part III of The Common Sense Papers, but let’s continue with dignity. For the rest of this essay, the thoughts may ramble, but we should arrive at the destination before long.
Thoughts on Dignity
The concept of dignity is hard to capture, not only in words, but more especially in public policy where broad disagreement can and will be manifest. What are the rights of citizenship? What public support is just in a free society that doesn’t guarantee property from birth necessary to maintain survival?
Dignity begins with the state or quality of being worthy of respect. To respect is to confer due regard for the feelings, wishes, rights, or traditions of others. Due regard is not equal preference, but it stems from compassion and validation. It includes fair consideration. The word compassion comes from the Latin root compati: “suffer with”, com — together or with, and pati — to suffer or feel intensely. Compassion is the art of being with those who are suffering. Dignity is the art of recognizing the meaningful value of people solely on account of their humanity. Dignity is respecting another’s inherent humanity without rendering judgment of superiority or inferiority according to any arbitrary—or necessary—standard of judgment. To render dignity to another is to accord the opportunity for self-expression and mutual comprehension—to listen, to confirm, to clarify, to validate.
To live by a standard of dignity for all incorporates an underlying intent to accord equal standing to someone regardless of the ability to alter or control outcomes that naturally flow from socially accepted practices. At the very heart of dignity is the absolute necessity to ask questions: to encounter humans as individuals, not just groups or identities, and to ask a sufficient number of questions to reveal feelings, wishes, and traditions that are deeply held.
Dignity comes into play in public policy discussions when baseline standards of living are at issue. Dignity impacts how information is made available. Dignity encompasses how ideas are expressed. Dignity has much to do with shared norms and expectations for how decisions are made that impact the public resources and institutions that guide and support the substance of our lives.
Dignity encompasses the belief that there are many ways to live a good life. Hence, the embrace of pluralism in society is fundamental to success moving forward. Multiculturalism is a necessary manifestation of such beliefs, which also requires the political flexibility of our frameworks to accommodate a broad spectrum of views.
The ability to confer respect on human beings can encompass so many familiar experiences in life. Many people experience a distinct sense of feeling “at home” or not feeling “at home”—feeling a stranger to the world at large is rather common to the human experience. Living through hard times and watching others do the same is a form of human initiation. We know there’s a lot going on under the surface of life—things that trigger feelings of dread, resentment, guilt, and loneliness. Anger, the precursor to violence, is a common companion to life in society; anger can set things ablaze in the flash of a heated moment. It should be our goal to preserve dignity even when we routinely disappoint one another in our state of humanity.
We live in a time when the traditions and ideas that pass from generation to generation seem less stable—less useful as the currency of our common realm. Among the most enduring social currencies of community life is the performance of service. Service in the face of pressing needs is appreciated and supportive of human dignity. Service that is rendered when entirely unnecessary can convey respect and worth to the recipient. Just think about walking through a cemetery—does where you step matter as you make your way across the grounds? Does the way you occupy space in a place dedicated to being the last resting place of those who preceded you in living say anything about the respect accorded to the equal validity of the lives such previous persons lived? I recall this phrase from the novel Dune: “The meeting between ignorance and knowledge, between brutality and culture—it begins in the dignity with which we treat our dead.”3 When we encounter situations for which no good service seems adequate, we feel helpless. Helplessness, as experienced by those who are highly capable, is empathy robbed of right action. Perhaps in such cases, only by performing unneeded service can individuals render due benevolence and dignity in a way that fulfills human compassion. Sometimes, this is how we pay something forward.
It's just human nature to brush up against disaster. Unexpected survival while traversing through our worst fears yields the stories and laughter that fill volumes of reflections when we grow old.
Sometimes dignity is manifested in and by those who show an “earned innocence.” To earn innocence, one must be acutely aware of the harm that one may cause to another. Taking precautions to avoid harm, settling feelings that ensure mutual understanding is achieved without hard feelings or coercion of thought, and engaging in one-on-one dialogues that convey something akin to an interpersonal customer satisfaction survey—these are hallmarks of those individuals who demonstrate earned innocence. Of such people, we say they wouldn’t kill a fly—the nature of doing harm to another being is so reprehensible to their sensibilities.
It often seems true that the majority of people you encounter want to be useful in some aspect of daily living. To be useful is a condition that allows people a somewhat rational basis for conferring dignity upon themselves. Self-dignity, like self-love and self-care, is a human need that manifests best when aimlessness has been conquered through efforts that render goodness to those whom we encounter during our journey in life. For some people, to be aimless is their worst fear. This underscores the need to consider the dignity of work in modern society.
A commitment to dignity—first and foremost—in a free society is a bedrock foundational principle to the enjoyment of a just democracy—both in its participatory aspects and in its representational aspects.
Final thought: Equality is inherently challenged by allowing liberty to drive vast differences in economic, social, and generational impacts. Battles for equality beyond a limited set of individual norms can turn a free state into a regulatory state that becomes oppressive and ultimately tyrannical. Dignity can be honored in both political processes and policy outcomes. Using governmental resources to support human dignity while still securing and protecting common rights of citizenship can support the free flourishing of human creativity.
Joe Cortright, "Dr. King: Socialism for the Rich and Rugged Free Enterprise Capitalism for the Poor," City Observatory, (January 21, 2019), https://cityobservatory.org/dr-king-socialism-for-the-rich-and-rugged-free-enterprise-capitalism-for-the-poor/ (accessed August 26, 2023).
Yuval Levin, The Great Debate: Edmund Burke, Thomas Paine, and the Birth of Right and Left (New York: Basic Books, 2014), 85.
Frank Herbert, Dune (Dune Chronicles, Book 1) (New York: Ace Books, 2005), 397.
Hugely enjoyed this measured and thoughtful essay.