Positive Liberty

Rock music is still the most popular genre in the United States. I’ve been told recently that country and hip-hop have both eclipsed it. It might even be true, but I can’t pin down the numbers for it. For the moment, rock would seem to be king.

It would only make sense, then, that in this important matter we should establish the will of the majority as a matter of law. Because rock music is the most popular, I argue that only rock stations should be allowed on the air. If people want to listen to hip-hop, country, classical, or whatever, they still can do it–but only in the privacy of their own homes. We shouldn’t use the airwaves for something that the largest segment of the population doesn’t even like.

I really hope you’re scratching your head at this point. The truth is that I believe nothing of the sort.

Personally, I subscribe to the argument that we should abolish the FCC entirely:

the FCC exists to dictate what can be said on-air. Each year since the early days of radio, every broadcast station must apply to the FCC for permission to use the airwaves. In exchange for their licenses, broadcasters must promise to serve the “public interest.” Stations that the FCC regards as having failed to do so can be fined, or even shut down, at the FCC’s sole discretion.

The putative justification for the FCC’s regulation of broadcasters is that the airwaves are public property. But just as the government does not own–and so has no legitimate control over–the presses of the New York Times, so it has no business regulating what may be broadcast over airwaves. The airwaves, which would be useless without the transmission networks created by radio and television stations, belong to the individuals and companies that developed them. Broadcasters should not have to plead to the authorities for annual licenses, any more than a homeowner should have to beg for an annual license to use the patch of land he has developed.

It is, of course, quite illegal to propose that only rock stations should be allowed to broadcast. It is a clear violation of the First Amendment and a dreadful idea all around.

And yet the FCC does much the same thing–only so far it’s to a much lesser degree. The agency’s own argument–that the broadcast media are so easily and accidentally accessible that they absolutely must be censored–would seem to fall squarely upon the Internet as well, only so far that hasn’t happened.

While we’re still on the subject of abolishing the FCC, it should be noted that these days the non-broadcast media are just about as accessible as anything on the airwaves. Almost all households have cable TV or an Internet connection, so it can’t be said that we protect (er, censor) the broadcast media for the sake of the innocents among us. If ever there was a time that this double standard made sense (a point that I do not concede)–then that time has surely passed long ago. We should dismantle the entire regulatory (err, censorship) mechanism right now, before it spreads into the new media.

But there’s a reason I want to explore the nonsensical argument I’ve given above about music preferences and public policy. You will probably note that there is something oddly familiar about it:

The people are sovereign. The majority must prevail.

Let’s call this the Argument from Democracy. In many other contexts, we see it all the time, and nothing could sound more plausible. We employ the Argument from Democracy in justifying our selection of elected officials, in holding ballot initiatives and referenda, and in the day-to-day voting of both Congress and the Supreme Court. On issues where the electorate finds it appropriate, the Argument from Democracy virtually settles the issue. On other issues it fails absurdly, as in my radio example above.

If we were to argue seriously against this initiative, there would probably be two different ways of going about it.

The first one would be to answer the will of the people with what might be called an Argument from Justice. In essence, we would say that radio station owners have a right to choose their own programming as a part of their fundamental rights as citizens. These rights inhere in every adult individual, and thus it is unjust to take them away. We may get to this point by various means, but the argument’s payload is substantially the same: In questions of right, the majority most certainly is not sovereign. The Argument from Justice says that rather than listening to the will of the majority, good government must give to the wicked their proper punishment–and give to the good their proper reward. Varying theories of justice propose doing this by varying means; often, as in libertarian thought, the largest part of justice is simply laissez faire. What unites all of these arguments, however, is that the will of the people is not sovereign: However we conceive of it, Justice is.

A second argument against the policy I’ve given above might be termed the Argument from Pluralism. It goes like this: In our society, we make an effort to recognize the value of competing interests. It simply will not do to have one hairstyle for everyone; one size does not fit all. Religions of all types should be left alone, even–or perhaps especially–if you think that they are mistaken.

The Argument from Pluralism presupposes that we don’t have all the answers to life’s big questions. It accepts that there are multiple ends toward which different lives may aim. It looks wherever possible to make space for them all. When we make an argument from pluralism, we do not propose to plumb the fundamental justice of an idea; we merely suggest that the best course of action is to leave it alone.

The Argument from Pluralism may well be a subset of the Argument from Justice as outlined above, particularly if we agree that it is merely doing justice to allow adults to choose among many different courses of action.

Some Arguments from Pluralism don’t really look that way, however. For example, many commentators will claim that they despise pornography, saying that it is wrong or immoral–and yet they would defend the free speech rights of pornographers. It is difficult to see this as an Argument from Justice, because if pornography is immoral, justice alone would dictate that it should be suppressed. When someone claims to dislike pornography on moral grounds and yet defends the pornographer’s right to make it, they are making an Argument from Pluralism.

I submit that in general, almost all arguments in American public policy debates today can be collapsed into one of these three groupings. Almost always they are either Arguments from Democracy, from Justice, or from Pluralism.

I plan to say a bit more about these arguments in the future. Some exceptions do exist, I think, and I’m curious whether you will find the same ones I have. More posts on this topic will be coming later in the week. In the meantime, please discuss.