Question: When is a liberty no longer a liberty?
Answer: When it turns into a special interest.
During this past week I attended the NEARC conference in Hyannis, Massachusetts. I am GIS specialist, a computer cartographer, and this conference featured different applications of the GIS software we use. A veritable smorgasbord of applications are presented and we get to pick and choose which ones we want to attend. We come away with new ideas for how to apply our trade.
A conference that offers a smorgasbord of ways to apply a trade is different from a conference that offers a smorgasbord of topics about how we should think. This was the objective of the Connecticut Liberty Forum, a weekend conference that ended today. I learned about the conference through a spam message sent to one of the liberty posts on The Middle Class Forum. There is irony in a “liberty” conference advertising through spam, and the irony does not stop there.
Among the presentation topics at the Connecticut Liberty Forum are immigration, gun rights, parent’s rights, taxpayers rights, freedom of the press and downsizing government. Many of these liberties are not embedded in our natural rights to the freedom of labor, thought and belonging as listed on this Forum. Most fall under the category of cultural entitlements as detailed in the previous entry. A more precise term for the conference would be the Connecticut Entitlements Forum.
I have neither blanket acceptance nor denial of the various cultural entitlements we call liberties. I tend to accept our cultural entitlements as warranted unless a liberty that provides a cultural entitlement infringes on what should be a liberty protecting a natural right. Precisely because the Connecticut Liberty Forum chose to bundle the presentation of various liberties in a conference format the natural right to the freedom of thought was constrained. To explain this better I will focus on one of the presentation topics at the conference, immigration.
Opposing sides of the immigration controversy both appeal to liberty in support of their cause. The cause presented at the Connecticut Liberty Forum is the Minuteman Project, which you can learn about at their web site. I am not going to weigh in on either side because that will distract from the main point here, which is that presenting just one side in a “liberty” conference constrains our freedom of thought. It’s not just that there are two “liberty” sides to this same immigration coin, there are regional nuances to the immigration topic. The point of liberty in a democracy is to gather as much independent, decentralized perspective from a citizenry as possible. That leads to wisdom, as will be discussed in future entries.
The speaker for this topic has the same dogmatic view to present regardless of where his audience is located. That is fine and part of the democratic process. To give a professional stamp of liberty to one dogmatic side of an issue is not. That borders more on brainwashing than the liberty to freedom of thought.
This brainwashing is ratcheted up a notch by bundling immigration with other liberty topics. This is a type of “you are either for us or against us” approach. The constraint on the freedom of thought being applied by the “liberty” conference runs along these lines:
“You support liberty, right? You support our presenters on taxpayers rights, downsizing government, etc., right? Then of course you must agree with our view on liberty in the matter of immigration policy, regardless of who you are or where you are from.”
This same subtle pressure is in effect for all the topics bundled together by this conference officially championing liberty. When constraining the freedom of thought gets to this level of subtle pressure, packaging and support “liberties” have transcended into the realm of special interests. The Connecticut Liberty Forum becomes the Connecticut Special Interests Forum; in which case this weekend featured the dogmatic constraints to freedom of the Connecticut Anti-Liberty Forum.
Tags: Independence, Interest Groups, Middle Class Politics, Natural Rights, Political Misinformation
First of all we did not “advertise through spam”.
Secondly, you certainly did not attend this event otherwise you would know this was not about entitlements or special interests at all.
Every speaker spoke about an aspect of the Constitution and a specific right or liberty that is currently being eroded by our government – as well as action that one can take to stop that erosion.
No one was brainwashed or forced to agree with ANY speakers opinion – and all points of view were allowed discussion. In fact, not all speakers agreed with other speakers. This forum did in fact include diversity of opinion and freedom of speech. We do not agree with all aspects of every presenters opinions – even Jim Gilchrist’s (The Minuteman Project) – and for you to say that we constrained any thought is completely bogus.
You clearly were not there. And if you were you clearly didn’t “get it”.
You are certainly within your rights to criticize – but if you did not attend then you have no basis to say what happened and what was said. You are basically painting this event with your own prejudices and assumptions. Your assumptions are wrong and totally off base. What is clear is that you did not approve of who we invited to speak. How about you organize your own forum and invite who you want to see.
I suppose if people do not agree with your opinion then it is wrong and should be suppressed. We disagree, and we allowed for discussion and presentation of various points of view, even those we didn’t agree with.
By the way – every single participant who attended this event enjoyed it – and came away with something worthwhile. Lots of networking and valuable connections were made. That’s the point. But you weren’t there so how would you know?
Thank you for your reply. Before I get to your concerns, please allow me to point out some details you may have missed. My comment policy calls for people to leave their names and their home towns, in the spirit of community rather than the anonymous dogmatism that tends to occur on the Internet. I’m making an exception in this case, for various reasons, but please respect that policy from now on.
I called the original comment “spam” precisely because whoever left it could not have bothered to look at the comment policy, nor even the blog to which it was “commenting” on. It contributed nothing to that particular topic of liberty as a right, it purely served an agenda apart from furthering discussion. I call that spam. If you don’t, we will just have to disagree.
Whether your event involved entitlements or not, from my view, depends on the distinction I made in my posts between liberties as natural rights and liberties as entitlements. I’ll repeat it here, since it seems you might have missed the point the first time (or never read the pertinent blog). Entitlements are not necessarily bad. They just happen to be liberties granted to us by culture and are not inherent to our nature. I think privacy is a wonderful right but, ironically, is a right defined and asserted by culture and not our nature as an altruistic species.
You are right that I did not attend the conference. I did read fully all the literature on your site and, by my definition of something granted to us by government rather than nature, you included entitlements. That is only a bad thing if, in the process, you infringe on a natural right.
I alleged that you did, concluding that from reading all the literature only. You bring up a very fair point about me not attending the conference. That would be more pertinent if I was critiquing anyone’s position, which I wasn’t. I was critiquing the overall irony of a “liberty” forum that was not encouraging diverse viewpoints.
I’m afraid you are the one missing the point with this comment: “What is clear is that you did not approve of who we invited to speak. How about you organize your own forum and invite who you want to see.”
I agree with some of the presenters you invited, but I daresay you can’t tell me which ones I”m “prejudiced” for or against. You can’t even tell whether I agreed with the Minuteman Project or not, just that it was dogmatic (as would a presenter be for the opposing side, no doubt). The rightness or even the dogmatism of a position was not my point. My point is the best way to allow freedom and diversity of thought is within community settings, allowing people to weigh “dogmas” from both sides. Your setting was such as to endorse certain ways of thinking over others, at least subtly, in a forum that would inevitably encourage groupthink. Groupthink is, in itself, an infringement on our natural rights to think independently.
I don’t doubt that “Lots of networking and valuable connections were made.” That tends to happen among special interests. Special interest groups encourage groupthink. That is not always avoidable nor always a problem. But encouraging groupthink in regards to liberty issues is at best ironic and, at worst, against the very spirit and purpose of a democracy.
I welcome you to prove me wrong in that assumption. You said that there were presenters that did not agree with each other. Excellent! You can destroy my position by replying to this comment informing people as to what two presenters advocated fundamentally different positions to any particular liberty. You don’t even have to establish that you did that as a general practice for your forum (which truly would have promoted freedom of thought). If you can just pick one liberty for which you had presenters give directly opposing talks, I welcome you to share that and then dictate the terms you see fit for my contrition.
But please remember to include your name and home town. Like this.
Kirk Sinclair
Norfolk, CT
I suppose anything can be called a special interest – your blog is a special interest. You are promoting your agenda and ideas – not that that is bad or not. You are trying to educate people to your position. I don’t see that as an infringement on anything. That was what we did – educate people on lots of positions and also about events/issues going on, what rights are spelled out in the US Constitution and how to protect those rights.
I think many people would disagree with you that privacy is a right granted to by culture. Personally I think privacy is all part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. But that’s another topic all together. But I digress…
My point was that since you did NOT attend the conference that you had no way to actually know if diverse opinion was presented or encouraged. Had you been in attendance you would have seen that it was on many levels.
For example:
There was discussion about whether it is proper to legislate from the bench. Some thought that was a good idea if it supported freedom and others said it was a bad idea because it could also restrict freedom. Robert Levy spoke about the Supreme Court interpretations of the Constitution and Deborah Stevenson talked about whether they had the authority to interpret the Constitution at all (Marbury v. Madison).
Here is another: regarding privacy rights and RFID’s – Some said RFID’s in tennis shoes are an invasion of privacy and others said that it is the right of the Store/manufacturer to sell what they want and how they want (market freedom) and discussion about whether they are obligated to tell the consumer.
We had an exhibitor give out information about choice in education, (vouchers from the government) and others who believed education should not be regulated and/or dictated by the state at all.
We had people who did not agree with Gilchrist’s positions on immigration because they don’t believe in allegiance to any state, or because they thought his position was too harsh. Gilchrist wasn’t trying to “convince anyone” – but he was of course presenting his case. The nice thing was that people listened to what he had to say whether they agreed with him or not (and that includes other presenters who sat in to hear him).
Every single speaker welcomed opposing viewpoints. We had very civil discussions and exchange of ideas. That’s not Groupthink. And we never said that any one presenter was right or wrong or was the last word with regard to liberty. People had every chance to question and exchange with the presenters.
This topic is that you have made false assumptions about what happened at this forum and I objected because you were not even there to observe or hear what was said. There was no “Groupthink” – what there were were many people sharing ideas and viewpoints – having healthy discussions and just generally having a good time meeting new people.
The common thread that brought them together was preserving and celebrating freedom and liberty and how to protect the rights we have and regain the ones we have lost which are supposed to be guaranteed to us by the US Constitution. There are many ways to do that. If you want to say we had an “agenda” then that was it.
Thanks for the discussion. I hope you will attend this event next year.
Judy Aron
West Hartford, CT
One of the organizers of the CT Liberty Forum
Greetings Judy,
Thank you for your thoughtful reply, it was quite well done. I apologize for not approving it sooner, it slipped under the radar somehow. I’m still new to blogging and there are still many things for me to learn.
I will have to concede, based on the information you provide in this post, that you did not discourage the freedom of thought — to me the most important natural right related to liberty. Yet I’m not totally convinced you encouraged it. You mention several instances of discussions of opposing viewpoints, but I did not pick up that there were official presentations of opposing viewpoints. From your web site I did not detect presenters giving talks of opposing views, and some presentations that were advertised were strongly/rhetorically worded. To me that is the key point. If I’m mistaken I would very much welcome you still to point out to me which presenters were making official presentations of opposing views. Otherwise, my “contrition” is not quite full.
You bring up a perceptive point that I figured someone would make eventually. Aren’t I promoting a special interest? Aren’t we all promoting special interests? If I can address that question adequately I hope you will understand where my problem lies with something titled “Liberty” not PRESENTING more than one view (even though allowing for discussion of various views).
In the cultural essays I have written I come down hard on special interests, so I’m exposing myself to charges of hypocrisy if The Middle Class Forum is also just another special interest forum. The position I establish is centered around notions of empiricism versus scholasticism, and whether beliefs can be altered by experience or held as fixed dogmas.
Here’s the thing. One is either willing to negotiate with others regarding their beliefs in the experience of a community setting; or one ignores community experiences to bond with others of the same beliefs that they try to promote broadly, regardless of local differences or any other type of mitigating circumstances. I have strong opinions, sure, but I value my community more than my “dogma.” I will compromise my beliefs for the sake of what might best promote harmony in a community setting, rather than ignore the experiences of my community to hold dogmatically to my beliefs.
Political parties are the ultimate special interest groups. People who pull the party lever are people who are not going to let experience or community get in their way. These are the least free people I know. A “Liberty” Forum that packages together presentations of just one side of various liberties is like a political party platform. Sure there are dissenters in the party ranks, and I applaud you for allowing and perhaps even encouraging such dissent. But, once again, unless that “platform” actually had two official presentations contradicting each other, I’m not sure your Forum is that much different in nature than a political party platform.
You extended me the invitation to attend your Forum next year. That was gracious of you and reflective of your thoughtful comment. Let me make a counter invitation. Make it plain on your web site for next year that you are actually having presentations, not just discussions, that are in opposition. If you do that please alert me and I will attend if scheduling permits.
Then we can have that discussion about privacy.
Kirk Sinclair
Norfolk, CT