It is sometimes claimed one of the central conflicts in politics is between freedom and tyranny. If there is any truth in this, it is a strange conflict in the sense that there exist almost no people who would say they support tyranny and stand against seeing at least some virtue in freedom. However when we speak of a conflict of this kind what we really mean is that there exists a tension in implementing a policy between erring towards more freedom or less. The “freedom vs tyranny” dichotomy is typically a way for the more libertarian minded to frame a conversation about policy such that anyone who is not “for” all the freedoms they themselves are for is said to be “for” some degree of tyranny. It is then that the caricaturing on both of the actual sides in the real world political debate begins. 

For those who take a view that libertarianism is a misguided ideology ignorant of the real world effects of how conflicts arise and are resolved between people, a more socialist solution to organising societies is typically suggested. And this is because, so it might be argued in the extreme case, that if libertarians had their way there would be something between the extremes of chaos or a great exacerbation of the problems that already face society. It is telling that the most extreme of the libertarian political stances that exists - sometimes known as “anarchy” - has become synonymous with chaos; that for example violence in the Sudan is an example of actual anarchy in action. But does anyone involved in serious political thought really think that chaos and crime is a desirable way a society should be arranged? Putting aside crime and riots and those who would dismantle the system as it is through revolution, an ongoing state of chaos is clearly not in the interests of anyone - even of anyone who might say that is what they support. To caricature libertarianism as a politics of chaos is to deliberately ignore the nuance. Freedom does not entail the right to commit murder. It does however entail the right not to be murdered. This is because freedom is not the freedom to take freedom. Lest that be seen to be too clever by half understand that what libertarians mean by freedom is simply the ideal of enjoying life free from the coercion of others. The ideal, mind you. In practise of course there exist criminals and governments who use force. Freedom, it has been understood by many over many centuries, to be that ideal which can (if given a chance) govern the interactions between people such that everyone has a maximum amount of it such that no one else’s freedom impinges upon your own. So libertarian type freedom is not about the “freedom” to take someone else’s television just because you want it despite their protestations. Freedom is the ideal governing an entire “problem situation” and in such a circumstance the person who owns the television is, ideally, free to continue to enjoy it. And because there are no conflicts in reality, there cannot be a simultaneous freedom that exists of anyone else simply taking that television. There is not “my freedom” and “your freedom” in this sense. There is simply “freedom” and freedoms cannot conflict in reality. But some people do deny the universality of the ideal that is this sort of freedom. 

On that other side - the side that says unbridled freedom must be tempered lest society collapses into chaos - we have almost everyone involved in politics. Those people are broadly speaking the “pro-government” or “pro-state” side of the debate: it is simply a matter of degree. Both conservatives and left-leaning liberals will charge each other - sometimes - with some degree of tyranny. They argue of each other that if they got their way, we would have a government so strong and intrusive that people would be monitored night and day and their every interaction - social, commercial or spiritual would be watched. Of course this too is a caricature - although less so. While stateless violence such as we see in some parts of the Congo have almost nothing of what a libertarian would see as ideal, there is not nought in the claim that many on the pro-government side of things do not see some good in the models of say China or North Korea. It is unknown for Americans  - even prominent ones - to point to Cuba and praise their "free" healthcare.

Can a libertarian be pro-government or pro-state? I think they can. Libertarianism is a political ideal. It is a principled stance about the elimination of coercion from the interactions between people. But a libertarian can understand that the principle is not what can possibly happen immediately in practise. There is the small matter of persuading everyone else to be a libertarian as well. But how can a libertarian actually say they support the state even while accepting it is simply the (evil!) reality. A libertarian can support the state by accepting that the state - and the government is a very real solution (and thus an inherent good) to the very real problem of how to manage interactions between large groups of people. It is a solution that is not perfect - but should we expect that replacing the entirety of government is expected to generate a solutions to all those situations in which government is involved? 

So, again, it is not entirely wrong to say that one way to view tensions in politics as being between freedom and tyranny even though none would say they are for tyranny and against freedom. We know freedom is a virtue and tyranny a vice. It is likewise not entirely wrong to say that a way to view tensions in politics as being between chaos and order. If certain kinds of order are arbitrarily or too quickly deleted from our social fabric we really can descend into chaos.  But again, almost no one will say they are for chaos and against all order. Chaos is rightly regarded as a vice and while perfect order would be its own tyranny some amount of it is required if only we are to get from point A to point B either driving down the street or reading our way to the end of a grammatically well formed sentence.

These dichotomies: freedom versus tyranny and order versus chaos suffer from the fatal flaw that there really is a bad side to pick and almost no one picks it. No one makes the argument for (ideal, always and everywhere) tyranny or (complete and utter) chaos.

There is a better lens through which to look at tensions in politics. And on one side of it does indeed lurk freedom (of a kind) - an ideal we can debate the meaning of but which almost all can admit there is some virtue in however we define it. It is freedom - not versus tyranny - but freedom  to create versus tradition. Which is to say: innovation versus tradition.

Innovation and tradition is the true dichotomy that people split along. Should things remain much as they are, or should we implement something new? There exists knowledge in our traditions that many people - especially those who err libertarian - fail to understand. Meanwhile many conservatives conserve for little reason other than “this is simply the way things have been done” or “I personally prefer it this way”. The truth is that we simply do not know how to organise societies well, or to improve societies in many ways. Almost all changes constitute experiments - some of them already known to fail. For this reason, the peaceful anarchists cannot hope to build a society that allows for rapid progress. Because we do not know the societal conditions under which rapid progress can happen in a stable fashion. What we have managed in our traditionally innovative society is incremental changes. Innovations. Now the point about innovations is that they should be incremental if we hope to correct them just as quickly should they go wrong. Evolution and not revolution should be the order of the day.

The reason why we should want to innovate - to change things - is to make progress. Not for no reason or for the sake of it - but to actually solve some problem. And the reason we should want to preserve a tradition - to keep things the way they are - is not for no reason - not because “that’s just the way things are done” but rather because we know of no better way…yet.

How do we know whether to incrementally make some change or to preserve some tradition? It is when we are failing to meet some ideal we know about in theory - which our best moral and political knowledge tells us is indeed a virtue - and we know of a way to get there or not. If we know of a way to get there then we should try the innovation with an explanation of how it will work and why. Absent an explanation for why the change should work, we have a form of instrumentalism applied to political theory: an experiment where all we are concerned about is the outcome without any understanding of how that outcome will indeed make things better.

Now I want to apply this idea to a present problem that exists in some communities. And that problem is of police violence or police over-reach as it might be called. Now the problem is that sometimes some innocent people are arrested in a violent way and - effectively - assaulted by the police. In rare cases some people are effectively murdered or even executed by the police. This is an utter abrogation of the way a legal system should work in an advanced society. The police should be seen as instruments of the state and servants of the citizens. They are citizens policing citizens and are subject to the same laws as those citizens. They are not an occupying military force.

Now we can recognise this is a real problem in some places. The police too often exacerbate a situation rather than help solve the problem at hand. A petty criminal - say - accused of minor theft, is arrested in such a way that they lose their life. In an age of modern technology and surveillance, it could well be argued - especially when we consider that error is the usual state of things (even in arrests) that if an arrest is likely to cause grave injury, then leave it until some later time. The person is probably on camera and more or less easy to identify and locate at some later date in safer circumstances.  Whatever the case: we have a problem of police violence or police brutality or police over reach. Call it what you will. Now here is one “solution”: abolish the police. Or, perhaps less dramatically: severely reduce the funding of (i.e: “defund”) the police.

Now that “solution” is a wholesale change to an institution. It is not an innovation and nor should it be expected to lead to progress. It “solves” the problem of police violence but leads to a far greater problem. How to solve or address or those other kinds of violence in society? If there is no police force - or an ineffective police force - what is the explanation for how to protect people against arbitrary violence from criminals?

The police are an institution that has a long tradition. Slowly that tradition of policing has evolved over time. Like an organism that has evolved to fill a particular niche it cannot be expected to be perfectly suited to that environment. Small changes can have disproportionate affects upon its fitness. But it has evolved slowly over time by encountering problems in that environment and we human beings do not always know all the reasons why it has been successful and survived. And we know in either case it cannot be perfect. 

An institution like the police works to some extent. It cannot be expected to be perfect. But, and this is key, not all the reasons why it works can easily be made explicit. We can try to articulate some of the reasons why and we could make a long list - but it might never be exhaustive. We could similarly make a list - which may be long - of all the problems we are aware of that this institution causes. But none of this process would ever allow us to come up with some entirely new system which could simply replace the police without actually being a defacto police force. 

Now my purpose here is not to write about the issues with policing in the western world. It is rather about traditions and how to change them - and when. We should be extremely hesitant for the most part to go tinkering with traditions that do indeed solve some problem. Societies have evolved gradually and under much pressure from encounters with opponents within and without. Unsuccessful societies and civilisations are countless and we should be very aware of all those many that have failed. We know many of the reasons why those societies fail: not least is the privileging of tradition over everything else. That is: when a society fails to criticise its traditions, it can become what David Deutsch calls a “static society”. Only ours: a “dynamic society” has this unique feature: a tradition of criticism. Which, as David says, “is a very strange thing” because traditions are supposed to be about things not changing. While in our society we have a tradition of things changing. 

But we must be wary. This tradition of criticism - the very precondition for progress and for things improving - is not merely about change for change’s sake. It is about the incremental ratcheting up of improvements. But sometimes purported improvements just aren’t so and we need a similar mechanism to go back and correct missteps. It is for this reason our changes are incremental - that's the digital part of change. And the changes are towards some ideal, with the intention of solving some problem - typically a systemic problem because of the way traditional thinking has operated on society over millennia or centuries. Deeply ingrained misconceptions about how culture, society, family and individual lives should be lived. We all hope for something better - solutions to problems - and we dream of some kind of better place. But we need somewhere to aim. Those are our ideals, our principles - broad, guiding maxims about what is better. Not because we need to browbeat our fellow travellers into submission in the hope we can get there tomorrow in some great revolution. But so we can discuss, evaluate and move towards some better place - with less suffering, less sickness, more hope, joy and fun. For this is our purpose. We exist in a state of error and infinite ignorance, but with some effort we can make things better. Objectively.