00:00Should Americans get to own guns?
00:03If you live in the U.S. like I do, you can't get away from this debate.
00:08And it feels like there's no agreement in sight.
00:11Some people argue that they have a constitutional right to own guns.
00:15Meanwhile, others argue that they have the right to live in a country free of gun violence.
00:22The thing is, in a liberal democracy like ours, both arguments kind of hold up.
00:27Which raises the question, how do you protect everyone's rights at the same time?
00:33I'm Ellie Andersen, and this is Crash Course Political Theory.
00:42Last time, I asked if democracy is failing.
00:45And a big reason it can feel that way is because we can't agree on what liberalism,
00:50the bedrock of democracy, actually means.
00:53How liberal rights and how the government protects them are core questions of liberalism.
00:58And no, I don't mean liberal as in your cousin who wears Birkenstocks and voted for Obama.
01:03Liberalism is a political philosophy of its own.
01:06A centuries-old one that focuses on liberty, or freedom.
01:10To understand how we got here, I had to go on a bit of a journey.
01:14All the way back to the 1600s.
01:17Back then, most of Europe was ruled by churches and noblemen.
01:21That system was great for the people in charge.
01:24They had a lot of rights.
01:26But not so much for the people they ruled.
01:28Turns out, you get to do whatever you want when you're running the show.
01:31Must be nice.
01:33So, a few philosophers proposed a fairer system,
01:36where all people have certain essential rights and the government protects those rights.
01:41But there was a catch.
01:43To get that protection, the citizens would have to give up a little of their freedom.
01:47To me, this sounds like a terms-of-service agreement.
01:51Before you call a car with a ride-sharing app, you have to agree to some terms.
01:55You'll give the service your real name, pay for your ride,
01:59and let them track your location while you're in the car.
02:02They promise to send a car that's safe to ride in, protect your information, and charge a fair price.
02:08You give up some of your freedom, and the service provider agrees to protect the freedoms you still have.
02:13That was the bargain that thinkers like Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau proposed.
02:20Give up some of your freedom to the state, and the state will protect the rest.
02:26Rousseau named this theory the social contract.
02:29And if you didn't have a social contract, well, Hobbes thought life would be pretty bleak.
02:34He worried if everyone had the freedom to do whatever they wanted, it would be chaos,
02:39a lawless dystopia to rival the exodus at the end of Coachella.
02:42We're trapped!
02:43He called this the state of nature, and said the only way to avoid it was to make a government.
02:49But not just any kind of government.
02:51Hobbes thought the best way to enforce a social contract was to give all the power to one absolute authority,
02:58which he called a Leviathan.
03:00Unfortunately, he wasn't referring to a giant sea monster, which would have been metal.
03:04On the other hand, Hobbes' contemporary John Locke wasn't into the whole single authority thing.
03:10He pointed out that an all-powerful government would probably create your garden-variety oppression.
03:16But he did agree that the key to a healthy society was individual rights, especially the right to property.
03:23This idea is the seed of libertarianism.
03:26But the more I read these thinkers, the more I realized that they really only cared about liberty for some.
03:31Like, Locke helped draft the Fundamental Constitutions of Carolina, a legal document that aimed to give every free man
03:39quote, absolute power and authority over enslaved people.
03:44He wanted liberty for all free white men.
03:48Bit of a flaw in your logic there, John.
03:50The social contract and the right to personal property make up the core of classical liberalism.
03:56And Europeans brought them along when they founded the United States, along with guns, wheat, and a lot of disease.
04:03But Locke and Hobbes don't quite cut it in terms of understanding what liberalism really is today.
04:09In order to get closer to my answer, I had to jump forward to the 1970s.
04:14Let's go to the tape.
04:18The civil rights movement had recently ended, securing more rights for Black Americans.
04:23Second-wave feminists were marching for women's equality.
04:26And the income gap was widening, calling attention to the gulf between rich and poor.
04:32So the question became, in a diverse society, how do we make sure everybody has liberty?
04:41Some philosophers tried to answer this question with modern liberalism,
04:45which wouldn't just protect individuals, but would also, ostensibly, produce a more just and equitable society.
04:52One guy you really can't avoid once you start reading about this stuff is John Rawls, who floated a thought experiment.
04:59Imagine there are a bunch of people in a room trying to make a fair society.
05:05They don't know what their life is like outside the room, what race or gender they are,
05:09if they're rich or poor, disabled or not, etc.
05:13They're behind what Rawls called the veil of ignorance.
05:17And they have to choose some principles of justice that will be good for everyone.
05:22Rawls thought a just world is one where everyone benefits.
05:26This is the theory of justice as fairness.
05:30He figured everyone in the room would pretty much agree on the equality principle,
05:34that everyone should get the same access to rights and opportunities.
05:38If one person has the right to own property or go to school or eat a whole pizza in one sitting,
05:44don't judge me, everyone has that right.
05:47But that wouldn't mean everyone has the exact same life.
05:49Rawls thought there would always be some inequality.
05:53And that was okay, as long as two things were true.
05:57First, everyone should get the same chance at a better life.
06:01Someone can have a higher paying job as long as everyone has an equal opportunity to get that job.
06:06And second, inequality should give the most benefit to the people who have the least.
06:11Like, the person getting paid more should have a job that helps everyone, especially the least advantaged.
06:18He called this the difference principle.
06:20This is where we can see partisan views of Rawls in some of our most pressing political debates today.
06:27A progressive interpretation says government works only if it helps the most marginalized people.
06:32If it doesn't, it's unjust, and it's the state's responsibility to correct it.
06:38This might mean establishing a universal basic income or health care for all, what's called distributive justice.
06:44A conservative interpretation says more or less the opposite.
06:48If everyone has the same access to opportunities, then inequality is the result of individual choices.
06:54This is part of the anti-welfare argument that giving people so-called handouts doesn't serve them or the broader society.
07:02Which brings us back to one of the trickiest and most persistent problems liberalism faces.
07:08What happens when one person's freedoms conflict with another's?
07:12Like, should someone's right to self-defense trump another's right to live?
07:17Does a right to free speech cover hate speech?
07:20Should governments have access to private data if it lets them prevent crimes against children?
07:26My questions could go on for days.
07:29Luckily, 20th century theorist Isaiah Berlin helped me out.
07:33He describes two ways of thinking about liberty.
07:36But when I was first getting started in this field, I made myself a solemn promise.
07:41Never try to approach dense political theory without being properly prepared.
07:45So here are the two ways of thinking about liberty.
07:54Negative liberty is the absence of obstacles.
07:58If you have negative liberty, nobody's interfering in your life or blocking your way.
08:03This is that classical liberalism kind of liberty.
08:06Leave me and my stuff alone.
08:08Positive liberty, on the other hand, is the presence of self-determination.
08:12If you have positive liberty, you can have control over your life and make the decisions you want.
08:19Here's another way to think about it.
08:21Imagine that a person decides to apply for a job at the mall.
08:24She goes right up to the store, resume in hand, and nobody stops her.
08:28This is negative liberty.
08:30No person or entity is interfering in her decision to apply.
08:34Now, let's say this person's real dream is to study archaeology.
08:38But she comes from a low-income family, so she's unable to go to college and pursue that dream.
08:44In that way, she's driven by her circumstances, not her own sense of purpose.
08:50She doesn't have positive liberty.
08:52Berlin thought positive liberty was too abstract to work in the real world.
08:57Like, how can you attribute everything to self-determination when there are always so many factors?
09:02But others argue that focusing on negative liberty, overt obstacles like laws against women or people of color attending college, for instance,
09:12ignores the fact that people and the choices they make are shaped by their social environment in subtler ways, too.
09:19Even without those kinds of obvious obstacles, other things interfere, like race and class privilege, social norms, and even language itself.
09:29Like, maybe our jobseeker's family has limited income in part because of bygone racist housing laws.
09:35The obstacle has been removed, but there's still inequity there in terms of generational wealth.
09:42Or say every professor in the local university's archaeology department is white and male.
09:47Even if she could afford to go there, she may not be set up to succeed by the culture of the institution.
09:54So here's what I learned.
09:55Whatever way you slice it, liberalism is all about individuals' rights.
10:00And protecting them means stopping people from interfering in the rights of others.
10:04But in a diverse society with legacies of inequality, that's easier said than done.
10:12To maintain equality, should a society ignore the differences among people, or should it emphasize difference?
10:20Some philosophers, like Chandran Kukathas and Kwame Anthony Appiah, say that liberalism already protects people of all cultures.
10:29If everyone has individual liberties, we don't need to do anything special for particular groups.
10:35Thinkers in this tradition advocate for less intervention from the state.
10:39Which is why some argue against measures like affirmative action,
10:43saying that it's an overcorrection that could create unfair advantages.
10:48Others, like Will Kimlicka, think we need to go beyond individual rights,
10:52and give people with historically marginalized identities group rights too.
10:58He says that we need to reinterpret classical liberalism to make it multicultural,
11:03which would mean rebalancing the scales to correct legacies of unequal treatment.
11:08And then there are the thinkers, like Bhikkhu Parekh, who think we need to upend the whole system.
11:14Liberalism can't solve the problems it created, he says,
11:17especially when it's rooted in European colonialism.
11:21Because, spoiler alert for every Crash Course History series,
11:25colonialism created a lot of inequality.
11:28These debates are ongoing, and they'll keep shaping the future of American politics.
11:34How do we protect everyone's rights?
11:37And what do we do when they conflict?
11:39Journeying into liberalism gave me a framework for answering these kinds of tricky questions.
11:44But it's definitely not a blueprint.
11:46Applied to different situations, the path forward can look different.
11:50But understanding liberalism better is essential to making sense of American politics.
11:57And deciding what we want liberty to look like today.
12:01Next time, we'll dive into identity politics. See you then.
12:04Thanks for watching this episode of Crash Course Political Theory,
12:07which was filmed at the Bastille Studio and was made with the help of all these nice people.
12:12If you want to help keep Crash Course free for everyone forever, you can join our community on Patreon.
12:20Click
12:21And
12:29Trust
12:30To
12:32Maybe
12:34To
12:35To
12:38To
12:44To
12:45To
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