I was listening to a podcast episode of the Ezra Klein show the other day, where he interviews Patrick Deneen. Patrick Deneen is a right-wing writer, Ezra Klein is from the left. One of the things Klein was trying to close Deneen on was- what specific policies do you want to see enacted… or what specific freedoms do you want to see rolled back or taken away… in order to accomplish your vision for America?

I have thought about this a bit, because it’s a fair question. Klein is obviously big on particular policies, and Deneen wasn’t. He was more of a philosophy guy than a policy guy. Klein said this was ok, but in order to accomplish things, we need specific policies.

One of the things that I was struck by was that often, we, as conservatives, don’t have a lot of specific policies that outline goals. A big part of that, I believe, is because the left tends to look to government to implement big policies, and the right tends to act as a restraint on that, partly as a philosophical outlook, but also because for the most part, we just want to be left alone.  

I’ve often found this kind of response when engaging with those on the left: So you don’t like our big government plan to solve this problem, so what’s YOUR big government plan to solve it, huh??!

Uh, we don’t have a big government plan because we don’t want more big government.

I more and more feel like society functions best with a tension between the left and the right. The left proposes hair-brained plans, and the right says no. This means that the left will be mostly responsible for moving in whatever direction, and the right will act as the counter-weight. But the left can reasonably then say that the right never accomplishes anything. In part, it’s true. That’s the nature of conservatives. Their usefulness is more in holding back nonsense, not necessarily in moving towards some goal.

But one of the things that Klein said took a while for it to register: what specific freedoms do you want to see rolled back or taken away?

Deneen of course questioned that framing as well. What I am hearing though is perhaps a fundamental difference in the way we approach rights. The question seems to imply that Klein thinks rights come from the government… and really from government programs.  

Let me approach this from a different angle. I just finished reading the Federalist papers, and in the last two, Hamilton explains why a bill of rights was not included in the initial constitution. He felt that there was no need to since those rights were already included in the nature of free citizens of the republic. There was no need to outline freedom of the press if the government had no express rights to repress it. It’s assumed that the press would have that right. It’s assumed people would have the right to bear arms. It’s assumed they would have the right to religious freedom, etc.

Perhaps after 100 years of progressives (starting with Woodrow Wilson) government has in fact reached the point where our rights are being increasingly defined by government, rather than being assumed as ours by dint of being free citizens of the republic. But I can see this difference implied by Klein. Is someone’s right to be ‘trans’ or not given by the government? The government need not touch that issue. We should assume people are free to exercise their freedoms as long as they don’t impinge on those of others. Right now, abortion rights are being spoken of, and one side or the other feels that the government has to pronounce- you have the right… or you don’t have the right. Why would we assume that? Have we been conditioned to feel that unless the government expressly gives us a right, we don’t have it? That’s the opposite of what Hamilton had assumed when he wrote his paper in 1788.  

For the statists, of course a right to something might rather mean that activity is being funded and made freely available by the government. But that certainly isn’t the conservative understanding of our rights. You have the right to do things, go exercise that. Leave the government out of it.  

I think this helps me clarify a little more one of the fundamental differences between the left and conservatives.