Moving a Sofa – or a Nation
Wisdom sometimes comes from unexpected places. Late one evening a couple of years ago, I was watching one of Chris Rock’s comedy specials. He was talking about how to get things done even when you are at war with your spouse. Concluding that biting his tongue and cooperating was the way forward, he said “It’s a hell of a lot easier for two people to move a sofa than for one person to do it.”
I laughed at the time, but this comedic riff stuck with me. Eventually, I came to realize that this was the simple, clear answer to a long-running political controversy in America. That controversy has been about whether we are all in this together, or whether it is every man for himself.
On this question, we are frequently treated to a lot of blather about how this country is all about strong individuals with the constitutional right to do as they please without government intervention. This is the John Wayne myth of American politics. It is the libertarian ideal that gets played out in legislative debates in Charleston and Washington. It is the Fox News playbill. But all too often, the libertarian approach not only doesn’t work, it is downright dangerous.
Don’t get me wrong. I get as annoyed as the next guy over petty rules and regulations. But I’m not talking about petty issues. Here are some examples where the libertarian approach leads to insane results – and these are just the tip of the iceberg. Take highway speed limits. Speed limits control personal freedom in a basic way. Although speed limits are often ignored, imagine the chaos and destruction that would result from eliminating them.
And how about municipal zoning regulations? Sure, we want the freedom to decide how to use our own property. But that freedom requires limits that protect the whole community. Otherwise, your next-door neighbor could decide to put a trash incinerator on his property to make a few extra bucks.
Closely related is the concept of eminent domain, under which the government or a private entity engaged in infrastructure development deemed to benefit the public can seize private land. In these cases, the individual’s interest in property is subordinated to the public good. Without the right of eminent domain, there would be no railroads, no interstate highways, no water plants, and no electric transmission systems. In short, no modern life.
In West Virginia, mandatory school vaccination is a hot topic. Parents have asserted all sorts of reasons for not vaccinating their children, from fear of vaccine side effects to religious scruples. But I suspect a lot of this is simple resistance to the government telling them what to do. Vaccination laws are designed to protect the larger community. In this life-and-death matter, community interest must prevail over the individual’s. The rising number of preventable deaths from measles among unvaccinated children has tragically confirmed this.
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects, among other things, individual free speech and free exercise of religion from government intrusion. But our libertarian friends are wrong to cite the First Amendment as a basis for unlimited freedom in religious exercise or speech. None of the rights in the Constitution is absolute.
One need look no further than the vaccine dispute in West Virginia for proof of this. The Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals recently ruled that the absence of religious exemptions in the West Virginia vaccine law does not violate the First Amendment, saying:
Rights, as important as they are, do not swing free and clear of the larger social compact. We live in a society that accords its citizens enormous benefits. In return, states can, in a measured way, require certain exactions and accommodations to the broader social interest.
Uber-individual thinking and behavior stick out like a sore thumb in a collective society. There is no room for it. Those who make law and policy in times of crisis know this. In times of war, we draft the unwilling. During a pandemic, we enforce quarantines and curfews. My point is not that top-down edicts solve problems by controlling recalcitrant individuals. It is that problems of all kinds, large and small, are best solved when we place the highest value on the collective good. In other words, problems get solved when the planet’s most successful species remembers that we succeeded because we are social animals, not rogue individuals.
We can cut through the debate about individual versus collective rights at a moment’s notice by asking ourselves how important our objective really is. Is it moving a sofa or moving a nation? If our objective is hugely important – maybe existential – we know the answer. We have demonstrated time and again that the collective approach is the only way. After all, we are in this together.
