The Politics Of Personal Responsibility
By Steve GillmanA politics of personal responsibility demands that we understand the consequences of laws or government actions that we support. We should also consider political candidates we support as our “agents” meaning we’re somewhat responsible for the choices they make since we hire or elect them. With that in mind, I have decided on a new rule for what or who I can support. I’ll get back to that in a moment, but first I have to relate the true story that inspired me to write this.
The Associated Press on September 29, 2009, reported on the case of a woman in Michigan who watched her neighbors children for them. They had to go to work, so several left their kids with Lisa Snyder for about an hour each morning until the school bus picked them up. A few days into the school year, though, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services. She was informed that if she continued, she’d be violating the law, since she did not have a license to operate a day care center. In other words, she could go to jail for helping her neighbors.
Virtually everyone agrees that this is unfair, including the Governor, who is calling for a change in the law. However, changing the law will not resolve the more fundamental problem with using law and force to regulate behavior of supposedly “free” individuals. The current law limits caring for non-related children to four weeks annually without a license. Change it to allow an hour each morning and there will inevitably be a case where someone is watching their neighbors kids for two hours. Should that peson then be thrown in jail?
Let’s just get back to the core idea of licensing day care. Suppose a person watches children for money and does them no harm, but has no license. The service is apreciated by the parents using it, who know the operator is unlicensed, but trust him or her nonetheless. Should that person be sent to jail?
In a moment I’ll tell you what I’ve decided about these issues of law and politics. But first I have to point out that all law proceeds from the point of a gun. It may not appear that way if you go along following all the rules, but if you break them, enforcement is not done by a polite request that you put yourself in jail if you feel like it. The threat of force is always there and the guns to back it up are. They have to be or laws would be meaningless. There are certainly laws I wouldn’t obey if it not for the guns and threat of their use.
Since law requires force or at least the threat of it, it seems that we should be very careful about what laws we make, right?
Now, when I read that news story I had to ask myself a question which became the basis for my politics of personal responsibility. If I knew of a neighbor who was watching kids without a day care license, and no one else was available to enforce the law, would it be right for me to go and use force to drag her off and lock her up? My answer is no. I wouldn’t do it, and I couldn’t justify it in any way - even if I was a police officer. It would be wrong.
Now, if I am not willing to do from an ethical standpoint, how could it be right for me to support a law that results in others doing that? It isn’t right. There is no moral justification for hiring others to do what is morally wrong for me to do. There is no special exemption from ethics by way of majority vote as a way to make law. That gets me to my own new rule:
If it is morally wrong for me to do something, it is morally wrong for me to vote for a law that seeks to do the same thing or to support such laws.
It is too easy to accept the given, but think back for a moment to before day care was licensed. Suppose that a woman was watching children for a fee. The parents are happy with the arrangement and she does no harm - if she does there are laws for that.
Now, I come along and say she has to have my permission to do this just because I think it’s a good idea for her and others doing this to have some training or monitoring (or whatever my excuse for power is). She disagrees and doesn’t obtain my permission slip or license, so go into her home with a gun to head and put her in a jail cell as punishment.
I can’t see how I could be right in doing that. Force a human being to live in a cage because she doesn’t have my “permission” to do watch kidds for parents who want her to? And if I can’t find any right to assume this power over her, I don’t see any way it becomes right if I get together with others to hire others (our government) to do it.
It is a simple rule, and it is easy to see in our hearts that what we have no right to do does not become right by a vote. But we are above all else a hypocritical people when it comes to issues of law and control. For example, most of us have broken some law that covers a “victimless crime” (what a twisted concept) or have friends who have, yet we have no intention of turning in our friends nor ourselves. Yet we are perfectly content to see the “bad” law breakers - you know, the ones that are not like us - locked up for their “crimes.”
It is time for a politics of personal responsibility.
Note: In case you missed it, I have a new website. It is all about the meaning of money. How to make it, save it and invest it, but above all how to think about it. Here’s a link to the site:
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Tags: day care, law, personal responsibility, politics