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Main article: Political systems
Main article: Philosophy of John Rawls
Main article: Community
There is a natural conflict between community needs and individual basic liberties. Sometimes, under exigent circumstances, the community will have to impose on its members to the point of taking away their basic liberties. In extreme cases this might include their life.
One way to ameliorate this problem is to have a contract upon admission to the community in which the prospective member agrees in advance to these impositions. If the member was “born into” the community then they would do so at the age of majority, eg 18. In the US, and most other countries, natural born citizens are generally not asked to sign any such contract. Naturalized citizens are asked if they would be willing to fight for the US but it is not clear what happens if they say no. The interviewing officer has quite a bit of latitude in asking the question in the mildest possible terms (pretend aliens are invading and threatening your children. Would you defend them?). In any event, the Q/A is not contractual. A ratings-based society, however, can create a proper contract upon membership and go over a comprehensive list of scenarios where the member might be asked to surrender their liberties.
This certainly helps and should be part of any member-community arrangement. But it does not completely resolve the moral problem of community imposition on individual liberties. One issue is that, according to Rawls, basic liberties are inalienable – in other words you can’t make a deal with someone in which you voluntarily forfeit your liberties. In a battle between an admittedly free contractual agreement and basic liberties, the liberties will prevail. This principle seems correct, at least when looked at broadly. If we think of basic liberties as the central foundation of our society, then it seems we shouldn’t allow individuals to chip away at them in deals that, while perhaps beneficial to them in the moment, end up corroding the benefit of liberty throughout all of society. We should also be suspicious of deals that may be the result of coercion (or coercive circumstances) or uninformed decision-making.
Of course, in some sense this principle is itself an imposition on individual liberty. But according to Rawls, liberty can be restricted under the condition that doing so protects or enhances the overall system of liberties. In this case the freedom to contract is subsumed by the very same basic liberties the contract would deny. Furthermore, the freedom to contract is seen (generally) as less fundamental than the right, for example, to free speech, political liberty, etc.
This brings up the conditions under which liberty can, in fact, be restricted. We’ve mentioned the first one, that doing so must be in service to overall liberty. Another is that the restrictions be acceptable to those likely to make the sacrifice. This is an obvious case where contracts become important. We clearly need to ask and ensure that the people being affected (potentially the entire community) are ok with an imposition on their liberties. Alongside this condition is the proviso that the restriction be the mildest it can be to accomplish whatever community goal we seek the restriction for.
So contracts are necessary but still seem insufficient by themselves. The community, even after gaining contractual agreement, still has to tread very carefully in imposing on the basic liberties of its members. These include using the least restrictive means to accomplish its goals. They also include performing the imposition fairly, taking care of members who are being imposed upon, optimizing whatever policy is being pursued carefully to gain maximum benefit for minimal cost, etc. Contracts are a necessary part of this arrangement but the community has a duty of proper performance in many other related areas as well.
Intuitively, this seems right. Even if Bob has agreed in principle to serve in his community’s army in time of war, he will still feel imposed upon when he is drafted. It is better that he agreed, of course, but to more fully ameliorate the imposition he should see his community trying hard to lessen his sacrifice and optimally planning the policy he was asked to sacrifice for. Indeed, in his future with the community, the sacrifice should be remembered and compensated. Societies like ours who do a reasonable job of this (US in WWII) vs those who do not (US in Vietnam) see a large difference in how their veterans view the imposition.