Citizen Competence and Conditional Rights

By Ian Jobling •  10/8/09

So far in this series of articles on a political philosophy for the pro-white movement, we have examined the arguments for liberal democracy as expounded by John Rawls. The last article concluded that, provided his assumptions are correct, Rawls makes a strong case that a state set up along the lines he recommends would be a stable, secure, and prosperous one.

Now that we have said everything we can for liberalism, it is time to examine the key assumption behind it: that people universally possess the moral and intellectual qualities necessary to assure the stability of the just state. Since all citizens have the power to choose their rulers in liberal democracies, it is crucial that citizens be able to understand what justice is and act on this understanding. If citizens are not competent to make these judgments, they will choose unjust rulers, which will lead to the erosion of the just state. An immoral citizenry can destabilize the just state in other ways as well; for example, through high rates of crime.

We commonly speak of “natural rights” or “human rights,” implying that people are entitled by the mere fact of their humanity to the rights normally granted to the citizens of liberal democracies. However, this conception of rights is erroneous: granting rights to those who are not competent to exercise them responsibly tends to undermine the stability of the just state. Rather, rights ought to be granted to citizens only on the condition that they are competent to fulfill the responsibilities that accompany rights.

Even if rights are granted on a conditional basis, it would be reasonable to grant them universally if all normal people possessed the moral and intellectual attributes that are necessary to maintain a liberal democracy, as Rawls believes they do. While he recognizes that many people act unjustly today, he attributes this behavior to the unjust state of society. Once a just society is established, people’s natural “sense of justice” will flower and cause them to become responsible citizens. Rawls’ justification of this theory is, however, weak, and it needs to be tested against the evidence of history and the human sciences.

The free rider problem

As you will recall from my previous articles, Rawls argues that fairness is the basis of morality. His masterwork, A Theory of Justice, deals primarily with the problem of justice, or the moral rules governing the basic structure of society, such as the government, the law, and the economic system. The book also contains some remarks about ethics, or the moral rules that govern informal relationships between people. Rawls begins with the premises that people naturally desire social goods, like rights, liberties, opportunities, wealth, and self-respect, and argues that these goods must be distributed fairly in order to maintain a stable system of cooperation. Rawls’ basic principle for the fair distribution of these goods is: act according to those rules that impartial people would agree to live by. To illustrate what impartiality means, Rawls uses the thought experiment of the original position, in which the parties to his social contract decide on principles by looking at moral problems through the veil of ignorance. From the basic principle, Rawls derives the principles of justice—the principle of basic equal liberties, the principle of fair equality of opportunity, and the difference principle—, and also principles of ethics, such as the duties of mutual respect and mutual aid.

So far, our examination of Rawls has addressed only one dimension of the decision process that the parties to the original position would have to complete in order to arrive at workable principles of justice. The principles that Rawls lays out make perfect sense to the parties themselves, who view the world impartially without bias towards their own interests. However, they are not making laws for impartial people. People in the real world do not look on moral problems through the veil of ignorance, but with their own interests in mind. Therefore, principles that seem reasonable to the parties may not be valid for the real world. Before deciding on principles of justice, the parties must be confident that people in the real world will comply with the principles that they decide on. If they are not confident, the parties must choose other principles.

Now my last article painted such a happy portrait of a world in which everyone did respect Rawls’ principles that it would seem unlikely that anyone would mar this utopia by violating them. As Rawls argues, justice is in everyone’s interests because it establishes a stable system of cooperation that yields valuable public goods.

However, despite all this, it is still reasonable to suspect that the citizens of a just state would be tempted to behave unjustly. Though the laws that Rawls describes may be the ones most conducive to the human good, it is still possible that individuals could gain an even greater share of the goods they desire by violating the law. Indeed, it would seem that an individual could maximize his good by being the sole unjust person in a just society. As long as he could conceal his crimes, the unjust person could easily profit off of the prosperity that the just society would create, whether by burgling the homes of his fellow citizens, or embezzling money from a corporation, or even by simply not paying his taxes.

This type of problem is labeled a “free rider problem” by social theorists. Morality requires that individuals sacrifice their interests in the short term in order to secure greater long-term benefits. For example, instead of using all their money to buy goods that they desire, citizens must devote a certain portion of it to taxes that fund institutions of the government, such as national defense and the legal system. The continuance of the just state also requires that a citizen vote for the candidates in elections who are most likely to uphold the principles of justice, rather than the ones who would bring the greatest benefits to the voter personally. Of course, justice demands that individuals not advance their interests through crime either. Such sacrifices of short-term interests can be called the “costs” of a just state.

A free rider is someone who violates the basic principle of morality by enjoying the benefits of public goods without paying the costs, whether by committing crimes or voting for a corrupt candidate who is biased towards the free rider’s interests or in any other way. In a just society, a successful free rider will naturally tend to gain a greater share of goods than moral citizens do.

Another way of understanding the free rider problem is through the common idea that all rights are accompanied by responsibilities. If citizens are given the right to vote, they must exercise this right responsibly by voting in a public-spirited manner, rather than in their own narrow self-interest. If they are given the right to choose freely how they live, they have the responsibility to choose lives that comport with the basic principles of morality. If they have the right to welfare benefits, as the least advantaged would in a Rawlsian society, then they have the responsibility of doing their best to become productive citizens as soon as possible.

Sources of instability

The benefits of being a free rider give people a temptation to behave immorally, and if the moral sense of the citizenry of a just state is not strong enough to resist this temptation, the state will be unstable, and justice will decay.

One way in which immoral people can undermine the just state is through high rates of crime. The essential feature of a just society is that it respects people’s rights, and crime is by definition a violation of rights. Murderers disrespect people’s right to the integrity of their persons, and thieves disrespect their right to property. Even biased hiring decisions would be crimes in the Rawlsian moral scheme, as it requires fair equality of opportunity. A society in which crime is committed at low or even moderate levels is still a just society, as people’s rights are normally respected. However, if crime has a pervasively harmful effect on people’s lives, their rights can no longer be said to be respected, and the society is not a just one.

There are also ways in which immorality can destabilize society even if it stays within the bounds of the law. The duty of justice requires not merely that we refrain from committing crime, but also that we make a positive effort to uphold the principles of justice. For example, this duty requires citizens to vote for the candidate in elections whose policies are most in accord with the principles of justice. In a just society containing rival ethnic groups, unjust members of one ethnicity could destabilize the state by voting for leaders who pledged to restrict the rights of rival ethnicities.

Immoral behavior on the part of a segment of the citizenry also threatens to destabilize the just state because it imposes an unfair burden on moral people. Take tax payment as an example: moral people pay taxes to make possible public goods like garbage collection and national defense. An immoral person who does not pay taxes receives an unfair benefit from public goods without paying the cost. A state that requires that one segment of society to obey the principles of justice while allowing another segment to flout them is not a just society at all, but a racket for exploiting moral people. The moral will justifiably resent being exploited, and this resentment will further destabilize the state.

Citizen competence

It appears then that, in order for a just state to be maintained, there are certain minimum requirements that citizens must meet. These requirements make up what I will call “citizen competence,” or citizens’ ability and willingness to meet the responsibilities that are concomitant to rights.

What are the components of citizen competence? First, citizens must have a moral nature such that they voluntarily uphold the principles of morality. Such a moral nature is necessary, to begin with, to prevent them from committing crime. If a large segment of the citizenry is intent on committing crime, then mere law enforcement cannot preserve the just state. Rather, its stability requires a citizenry that refrains from crime because it realizes that the law is in its long-term best interests.

A moral nature is also necessary to fulfill the positive requirements of justice. Only a citizenry with a strong moral sense will vote in a public-spirited manner. Besides, a moral nature is necessary to deter others from wrong behavior. A good man will have the courage to stick up for the principles of justice where he sees them violated. Thus, for example, if someone sees that his corporation is hiring on the basis of nepotism rather than on the basis of merit, a violation of the principle of fair equality of opportunity, he is obligated to try to stop it even if doing so entails costs to him. A certain minimum level of such moral courage on the part of citizens is probably required to maintain a just state.

Also, justice requires that people respect not merely the law, but also that they treat each other decently according to basic principles of ethics. Suppose in a just society, there are two ethnic groups that are in the habit of slandering each other, thus failing in the natural duty of mutual respect. Even if the citizens of this society respected the law, this failure of respect renders the just state unstable and is likely to lead eventually to ethnic tyranny. Failures of ethics tend to lead to failures of justice, so if ethics decays, justice will soon follow. Indeed, since, as Rawls says, justice and ethics are both rooted in respect for one’s fellow man, it is natural that they accompany and reinforce each other.

Besides the moral requirements for citizen competence, there are plainly intellectual ones as well. Obviously, people cannot vote for just candidates in elections if they cannot understand the issues at stake, nor can they advance the interests of morality in any meaningful way in public affairs.

Rawlsian justice makes even more stringent demands on people’s intellects, as Rawls believes that people must be able to understand philosophy in order to be good citizens. While he thinks people have a kind of instinct for justice, one is not truly moral until one has actually understood the principles of justice explicitly.¹ If Rawls is to believed, a citizenry with no taste for philosophy could never be truly just.

Conditional rights

We are accustomed to refer to “natural rights” or “human rights,” which both imply that people are entitled to rights simply by virtue of being human. Such is the concept of rights stated in the United States Declaration of Independence. This concept of rights is also assumed in the US constitution and those of other liberal democracies, as well as “The Universal Declaration of Human Rights” proclaimed by the United Nations.

Given the preceding, however, it appears that it is an error to think of rights this way, as a just state that grants rights to incompetent citizens is unstable. Rather, we should think of rights as being conditional on citizen competence. Rights should be granted universally only if citizens are capable of fulfilling the concomitant responsibilities.

Thus, if a segment of the citizenry is incapable of understanding or acting on the principles of justice, they cannot possibly choose just candidates for office, and it is legitimate to restrict their right to vote. Or if a population is incorrigibly inclined to crime, the state is justified in restricting its rights as necessary to stop the crime, whether by curtailing its right to move about as it sees fit or its right to free speech, and so forth.

On the doctrine of conditional rights, it may be necessary to deprive some people of rights permanently. The contemporary study of psychology has found that intelligence and personality traits have a strong genetic component, such that about half of population variances in these traits is heritable. Certainly, intelligence is one of the most strongly heritable traits, and it cannot be doubted that moral traits, the other component of citizen competence, are also largely influenced by genes. It follows that there may be populations that are who are simply genetically incapable of behaving justly, and a just state would be entitled to deprive them of rights permanently.

Rawls on citizen competence

Now this whole line of thinking might seem entirely alien to Rawls, representing as he does a liberal tradition founded on the idea of universal rights. However, this is not so; Rawls does believe that rights ought to be granted only to competent citizens. In fact, all I have been doing here is working out the consequences of Rawlsian philosophy, and I believe that Rawls would be compelled to agree with everything I have said here, though he might do so reluctantly.

As we saw in the last article, Rawls believes in the reciprocity of justice. People are to be treated justly only if they treat others in the same way, that is, if they are competent citizens who are willing and able to shoulder the responsibilities that are concomitant to rights. Thus, Rawls writes that if a movement based on religious intolerance emerged in a just society, the state would be entitled to restrict its rights. “Justice does not require that men stand idly by while others destroy the basis of their existence”—this sentence encapsulates not only Rawls’ thoughts on the reciprocity of justice, but also the thesis of this article.

Rawls, however, denies that it could ever be just to permanently restrict the rights of a population permanently because he believes that the capacity for citizen competence is universal among normal people. Human beings naturally possess a “sense of justice,” which he describes as a “strong and normally effective desire to act as the principles of justice require.”² The sense of justice is one component of a “moral personality,” which in addition includes the capacity to make a rational plan for one’s life—this means that moral people can recognize their good and design their lives so as to achieve it. A few people lack a moral personality, but they are so rare as to be negligible for practical purposes. Rawls recognizes that there is enough injustice in the world to make one skeptical of his claim that all normal people desire to act justly. However, his answer to doubters is that the prevalence of unjust behavior is due only to the current state of society. Once a just society is established, the universal sense of justice will flourish.

When someone lacks the [capacity for moral personality] either from birth or accident, this is regarded as a defect or deprivation. There is no race or recognized group of human beings that lacks this attribute. Only scattered individuals are without this capacity, or its realization to the minimum degree, and the failure to realize it is the consequence of unjust or impoverished social circumstances, or fortuitous contingencies.³

Indeed, the sense of justice is so common to mankind that “we cannot go far wrong in supposing that [this] condition is always satisfied.”⁴ In short, Rawls believes that “those who can give justice are owed justice,”⁵ and everyone is capable of giving justice under the right conditions.

The universal possession of the sense of justice is the “basis of equality.” It is the grounds on which people deserve equal treatment, that is, are equally subject to the principles of justice.⁶

We should not exaggerate Rawls’ optimism. He acknowledges that even in a just society law enforcement will be necessary in order to prevent the free rider problem, which he briefly discusses. Nevertheless, he speculates that crime may all but vanish once ideal social conditions are established: in a just society, criminal “sanctions are not severe and may never need to be imposed.”⁷

Rawls explains why he thinks people will behave morally in a just society. Such a society will promulgate a public conception of justice with strong philosophical foundations: having read Rawls in school, the citizens will understand what justice is, how it benefits society, and why it is rational to accept it. Also, the incentive for injustice will decrease because justice will strengthen the ties among citizens. Friendlier relations among citizens will make them disinclined to harm one another. Thirdly, a just society is a “great good” that people naturally want to participate in; however, they cannot fully participate in a just society if they do not themselves behave justly.⁸

Rawls’ treatment of the question of citizen competence is ultimately unconvincing, however. The problem is that he makes no attempt to test his claims against the evidence. How does he know that a strong sense of justice is universal in mankind or that immorality is due to the unjust state of society? Besides, Rawls does not even deal with the question of intelligence as it relates to citizen competence: are all normal people intelligent enough to make political decisions or even to understand philosophy, as Rawls requires that they do? Of course no perfectly Rawlsian society exists, so we cannot know with certainty how people would behave in one. Nevertheless, some societies correspond more closely to Rawls’ vision than others, and societies become more or less Rawlsian with time. It is possible to test Rawls’ claims by examining whether people behave more morally as societies more closely approximate the Rawlsian ideal. That will be the subject of my next article.

Conclusion

Having reviewed the merits of liberalism in my first two articles on political philosophy, we have now pinpointed its key weakness: the unproven assumptions that a capacity for citizen competence is universal and that the prevalence of injustice is merely due to unjust social conditions. If these assumptions hold good, then liberalism would seem to be beyond reasonable criticism, and we would be compelled to accept it. After all, if the moral personality will flourish in a society that treats its entire citizenry with respect and nurturance, then we would not only be obligated to respect people’s rights, but also to favor the least advantaged through public assistance and affirmative action. Indeed, if the liberal assumptions are correct, then the attitude that I have labeled “leukophobia,” and which other people call “white guilt” or “anti-white racism,” would be thoroughly justified. For, on liberal assumptions, if blacks and other minorities exhibit high rates of crime and other types of immoral behavior, it is merely because of unjust social conditions, rather than any defect in their nature. White Americans, still dominant today and even more so in the past, would have to be blamed for failing to create the conditions in which the morality of minorities can be realized.

However, if the assumptions are erroneous, then liberalism is not merely wrong, but deeply unfair and pernicious. If a large minority, or even a majority, of citizens do not possess the capacity for citizen competence, liberalism sets up a system in which the moral are unfairly scapegoated and exploited. Not only does liberalism unjustly require that the moral treat the immoral as their equals, but actually blames the former for the misbehavior of the latter. To add insult to injury, liberalism requires that the moral people pay to support the immoral by providing funds for public goods and welfare benefits. If the assumptions are wrong, no philosophy would seem better set up to encourage contempt for morality than liberalism, for the liberal system of government would be a racket through which the immoral exploited the moral.

Therefore, much hangs on the questions that we are left with, and which will be addressed in the next article: Do people universally possess a capacity for citizen competence? And will this capacity be realized if societies are set up along liberal lines?

1. John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, revised ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 414. ↑
2. Ibid., 398. ↑
3. Ibid., 443. ↑
4. Ibid., 443. ↑
5. Ibid., 446. ↑
6. Ibid., 441-49. ↑
7. Ibid., 211. ↑
8. Ibid., 499-500. ↑

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