EDITORIAL Sweet land of liberty We hear a great deal about individual rights these days and how they are unalterably more important than the rights of the State. Although few U S . citizens openly oppose this statement, many are deeply disconcerted over the burdensome mechanisms with which governmental institutions implement the principle. The environmental movement like other contemporary social reform efforts is being affected by concern over these mechanisms. The common perception seems to be that the evolution of a growing list of “rights” has had the curious effect of detracting from our freedoms. The feeling holds that we have more rights than we can count; the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; the right to live where we choose and work where we are qualified, without racial, sex or religious discrimination; the right to equal pay for equal performance and the right to a healthful environment. Even though the list grows, less freedom is actually perceived by students when applying to competitive professional programs, wage earners when totaling payroll deductions and industrialists and administrators when marketing new materials, siting new facilities or hiring new staff. Whether or not our rights are innumerable or even excessive is speculative. More certain is the seemingly unavoidable tendency for bureaucratic process to turn well-intentioned guidelines such as affirmative action plans and environmental impact assessments into mindless exercises. Some of the actions designed to protect rights such as requirements for expensive pretesting or extensive study in advance of proposed actions may actually constitute violation of other rights, Le., the right to be innocent until proven guilty. The result is often confusion, anxiety and, ultimately, institutional paralysis. There may be a social analog to theuncertainty Principle that forbids the simultaneous possession of personal freedom and an extensive array of individual rights. The rights exist, of course, but concerted efforts to measure, regulate and oth-
erwise secure their existence often seem counterproductive. It was Jefferson who cautioned, “Jf you give up some freedom for some security you will have neither .” Is there a tradeoff between rights and freedom? Certainly our freedoms have decreased as a result of social and technological advance. One can be “free” through ignorance, and the relative lack of constraints upon our actions in earlier times must be at least partially credited to an unawareness of how our actions affected the well being of others. The essence of the problem, however, is not the relative number of our rights or freedoms. It is liberty. Inefficiency in necessary bureaucratic mechanisms must not be permitted to mask what is really a fundamental exercise in liberty, Le., the power of freely choosing to constrain those actions that are harmful to others. The principle is sound as we have freely agreed to voluntarily curtail some freedoms in order to protect more precious ones. The process involves enumeration of rights through legislative actions such as NEPA, Safe Drinking Water Act and the various amendments to the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. These statements authorize the use of administrative law by selected Federal agencies, which constitutes both what Hardin has called “mutual coercion mutually agreed upon,” and a source of irritation when the implementation is handled poorly. The greatest hazard to our national purpose is not the loss of freedom or unbearable irritation. It is the unchallenged overextension of authority by implementing agencies. So long as the testing of agency decisions through social and professional challenges is emphasized, we have preserved what is our most precious heritage-liberty.
Volume 12, Number 2, February 1978
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