Are there limits to institutions’ regulation of our actions?

Larry Kummer, Editor

6 years ago

Summary: Look at the growth of our institutions’ – government and corporate – ability to regulate increasingly intimate aspects of our lives. Personal autonomy is so over. What gives them this power? What are the limits? At what point will this erode away people’s support for our society?

It’s our future: happy authoritarianism for America!

Racism, sexism, age, inappropriate use of your eyes (e.g., staring for more than 5 seconds), inappropriate dating – there are so many forms of interaction between people that the government regulates. These are forms of free association and use of one’s eyes. What level of bodily autonomy remains untouched by a government that allows institutions – including itself – to regulate these things? And more regulations are coming!

Liberals were the defenders of personal autonomy and liberty. Now people claiming to be liberals are the ones claiming the right to regulate – everything. At what point do these growing powers mock the Constitution and the concept of limited government?

Did the Founders want the
government to limit speech?

Most of the behaviors being regulated are ephemeral to the workings of the Republic. Regulating speech attacks a core right, putting us on the fast track to tyranny. This is more than forbidding saying “fire” in a crowded theater – which was a paraphrase of Justice Holmes’ justification in an odious 1919 Supreme Court ruling overturned in 1969 (description here; Wikipedia entry). Now liberals (or Leftists, or whatever) are going for the heart of the Republic. Free speech has been pretty well crushed on major university campuses. Now the Left seeks to extend that control across America.

“Free Speech Is Killing Us“, an op-ed in the NYT by Andrew Marantz. He is a staff writer at the New Yorker, one of the nodes of the Left.
“Free Speech and Its Present Crisis” by Allen C. Guelzo at City Journal – “In today’s America, the right to express one’s opinion is threatened by activists and authorities alike.”
The Left wants free speech for them but not their foes: “How Conservatives Weaponized the First Amendment“, a news article (not an op-ed) by Adam Liptak in the NYT.
“The Philosophical Reason for the Attacks on Free Speech” by Jeffrey A. Tucker at the American Institute for Economic Research.
What do many of the Democrats’ presidential candidates say about regulating speech on social media? It is a good start, even if unconstitutional. Details here.

This battle has just begun. If we lose, we will lose much.

How do we regard beauty? Lots to regulate!

“Lookism is discriminatory treatment toward people considered physically unattractive, mainly in the workplace but also in dating and other social settings.” {From Wikipedia.}

It is easy to mock the ambitions of the Left’s activists. But during the past they often become tomorrow’s government policy. Just as the almost instantaneous enactment of protecting the new rights of the transgendered became paramount government policy (without the tiresome bother of legislation) – with ever-broadening ripples across society.

Cutting-edge Leftists have even broader goals, which will give the government new and perhaps unimaginably intrusive policies. For example, both the ugly and the beautiful are discriminated against. As explained in many books and articles, such as this …

The Beauty Bias:
The Injustice of Appearance in Life and Law.

By Deborah L. Rhode, law professor at Stanford,
(2010). See her faculty page and Wikipedia entry.
Author of 20 books; a leading scholar of law and gender.

“Congress and the courts recognized that the most effective way of combating prejudice was to deprive people of the option to indulge in it.”

“The Beauty Bias explores the social, biological, market, and media forces that have contributed to appearance-related problems, as well as feminism’s difficulties in confronting them. …

“Appearance-related bias infringes fundamental rights, compromises merit principles, reinforces debilitating stereotypes, and compounds the disadvantages of race, class, and gender. Yet only one state and a half dozen localities explicitly prohibit such discrimination. The Beauty Bias provides the first systematic survey of how appearance laws work in practice, and a compelling argument for extending their reach. The book offers case histories of invidious discrimination and a plausible legal and political strategy for addressing them. Our prejudices run deep, but we can do far more to promote realistic and healthy images of attractiveness, and to reduce the price of their pursuit.” {From the publisher.}

Other feminists have made similar proposals, such as Bonnie Berry in Beauty Bias: Discrimination and Social Power (2007). More such proposals are coming.

What next?

And after that, there will be new frontiers of our behavior to regulate. The lust for power is not quenched by success, any more than fire is quenched by kerosene.

What can’t the government regulate?

Other than abortion (at least in the Left’s thinking). Where does the Constitution give the government the authority to do these things?

Many of these actions are taken by private entities. What are the limits on the power of America’s great institutions – corporations, schools, universities – to regulate the little people in them? Or are we powerless before them? We can hardly run away, since they act in concert.

The web of regulations grows deeper and more intrusive. Where will it end? At what point does this begin to erode people’s belief that the government – the political regime that governs America – has become illegitimate?

That is a trick question. Of course we have already passed that point.