Why Responsibility and Freedom Are the Most Important Social and Civic Values

     I composed the following article as a response to a question on civic virtues, stemming from a university survey collecting information for an experimental video game called The Perfect City.

     The following is my explanation of why I think responsibility is the most important social value of all, but also why I think that responsibility is rendered meaningless if freedom, and also mutual trust, do not back it up and balance it out.

     The question, as originally phrased, read: “What is the core social value that you think is important for a perfect citizen? Example: responsibility / honesty / respect.”

     Here is my response:

     I think that responsibility is the most important social value that makes a good citizen, but it must be balanced with freedom. Freedom without responsibility is chaos, and responsibility without freedom is slavery.

     In particular, personal responsibility is what matters: the duty to be responsible and responsive for one's actions, the responsibility to mind one's own business, and exert self-control, so that others don't feel invited to interfere.

     The moment we take control over ourselves and our own lives, government will no longer have any need to try to control us. To try to do so would only inject chaos into the system, by imposing an obviously wrong morality on us, which alienates us from our own personal and social senses of morality that exist regardless of what the law says.

     To me (and to paraphrase Barry Goldwater), a balance between freedom and responsibility includes the right to associate with others, but also the right to refrain from associating, and the right to be left alone, and to not be interfered with unless you're harming someone.

     I think that if people did more things for themselves, and if we counted less on other people to do these things for us, then we would have a more responsible society, with more independent people. And the desire for self-sufficiency would not be so closely associated with people who just want to hoard, be greedy, and stockpile supplies for themselves.

     I chose responsibility because I value independence, and I think responsibility is the best way to get it. That's because I believe that personal responsibility - and, as Thomas Jefferson said, "eternal vigilance" - are the costs of living in a free society. Especially when the government is small and limited.
     I'm not sure whether freedom and independence are really social values. To me they're more like personal values, because their focus is on the individual. Someone can be free or independent without anyone else being involved, whereas responsibility requires that you be responsive to somebody (like, for any actions of yours that might have affected them).

     ...I'm very skeptical about government and the state, so I seek to, as much as possible, limit government's ability to control us.

     I have serious doubts about whether there is such a thing as a perfect citizen. Not because I doubt the citizen, but because I am concerned that government policies are tempting citizens into irresponsible social and financial behavior (moral hazard). Then government bails people out of the bad decisions it just told them it was safe to make, and claims to be the hero. Government creates problems in order to prescribe pre-planned solutions (racketeering). [Also called “problem-reaction-solution”.]

     I'd like to think that "perfect citizens", or perfect government, or perfect limitations on government can exist. But the more I think about it, the more I'm convinced that not only can we live without the state, but also that it is a hazard to us (not only morally, but physically, financially, socially, etc.)

     We assume that some item or practice is safe and beneficial, just because we're told that it's being regulated. Then we're told that "deregulation" will screw everything up, even if ending the regulations on the item would abolish or repeal some unreasonable controls over our access to the item, or the way we use it, etc..

     So we put up with paying for licenses and permits to use the item. We pay as much as government demands, for the papers they require of us. And we do it in the currency that they create for us to use, which they decide the value of. How some people don't see money and government as control tools, amazes me. We pay all these fees, and fill out all these forms, as the cost of exercising freedoms that we were born with. These are freedoms that the government (arguably) played no part whatsoever in securing for us.

     Although politicians' promises about Iraq didn't come true - ("as the Iraqis stand up, the U.S. Army will stand down") - I do believe that as the American people stand up (to restore their communities), the government will begin to stand down,and it will stop trying to use the law and the tax code to force us to do the things we already want to do to improve our lives (that is, physically and morally restore our communities. Ironically, we're being taxed more, not less, every time we improve the value of our homes).

     But in order for the people to stand up while government stands down, a free society requires a good, decent, honest, moral, and (most importantly) a responsible people; who have a reciprocal, mutually beneficial sense of responsibility to one another, so that they can work together and trust each other, and solve problems in society and the economy without unnecessarily politicizing issues that have nothing to do with politics, and without inviting government to resolve disputes that the government has nothing to do with.

     I believe that a more responsible society, along with limited government, will lead to fewer career politicians, more citizen involvement in government, and better ability of ordinary people to represent themselves in legal proceedings. Also, the replacement of "police on the beat" with "officers of the peace": people whom the citizens can trust, because they're one of their own, and because they wouldn't go out looking for otherwise innocent people to make monsters and criminals out of. As Ayn Rand said, "when there are not enough criminals, one makes them. One makes so many laws that to obey all of them would be impossible."

     In a free society, a person might engage in "victimless crimes" and harmless vices. But as long as he stays responsible for himself, and doesn't affect other people negatively with his behavior, then he is a danger to nobody but himself.

     Once we learn to tolerate harmless (but technically illegal) behaviors (like mild drug use, bootlegging, internet piracy, and tax dodging). then we will no longer have to fear that our friends, or cops, or government might get unnecessarily involved in our problems, and pass judgment on us, and pressure us into entering relationships and agreements with them that risk undermining our independence, and our ability to make our own decisions.

     That's because we can only be responsible for decisions that were ours to make in the first place. You can't take responsibility for doing something bad by saying that someone told you to do it, so you had to do it. You still had the choice to say no.

     I believe that, once we have a society that balances freedom with responsibility (as Ron Paul recommended), then people will have security in privacy, instead of government intimidating them into giving up some of their privacy in exchange for the mere illusion of security (as Benjamin Franklin warned us), which disappears the moment the government shows up to provide it.

     The day after sending this response, I was asked to list three types of behavior which a person can engage in every day to promote the social value which I chose as the most important civic virtue necessary to create a so-called “perfect citizen”.

     My responses were: 1) Don't spend money you don't have; 2) Follow through on promises you make to other people, as long as they follow through on their promises to you; and 3) Mind your own business, and don't interfere in anyone else's affairs unless they're harming somebody [or appear very likely to harm somebody].

Main Body of Text Originally Written on November 9^th, 2018

Post-Script Written on November 10^th, 2018

Notes in Brackets Added on November 14^th, 2018

Originally Published on November 14^th, 2018