As I ponder our currently rancorous political system and the general breakdown of national purpose and shared ethics, I wonder if it might be the result of the collapse of our “social contract”.   In the 18th Century, when our forebears were pulling us up by their bootstraps, many of the learned thinkers were familiar with John Locke.  Locke considered that in a “state of nature”, human beings owed no allegiance to anyone but themselves.  He argued that societies and political systems are conscious agreements (a social contract) between the people who choose to unite their fortunes.

When Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence “that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed“, he was referencing Locke’s thesis.  Jefferson, and by extension all of our Founding Fathers, were baldly stating that governments (and societies in general) exist solely because we want them to.  There was no “divine right” to govern, indeed governments were unnatural in their view- they are purely artificial constructs of Mankind.  Just as screwdrivers and automobiles do not exist in Nature, governments and societies are created by people to serve a purpose.

But what is that purpose?

I propose that our present social and political ills issue from a lack of shared purpose- a lack of any valid social contract by which we might all consider ourselves bound.  At the time of the founding, Americans were largely a homogeneous group.  Though they had numerous small differences- in religion, in diet, in courtesies… they were overwhelmingly English in heritage.  Even those of Celtic background had often been extensively Anglicized either before or after their crossing to the New World.

The result was a social contract that differed more in the nuances than in substance.  When the Framers crafted our Constitution, they wrote around the edges of a preexisting social contract that all of them understood and held as valuable.  They had many differences between them to be sure, but how many of them advocated full citizenship for women or Blacks?  Their social contract didn’t recognize such people as equals deserving of respect, but rather as chattels to protect and use for the gain of the male “citizens”.

Since then, our society has changed greatly.  As a result, many people advocate changing, even abolishing, our current Constitution.  Perhaps that is ultimately necessary, but I believe that without a shared social contract we cannot hope to succeed.  Take any one hot button issue- guns, abortion, drugs, military spending…

How can we possibly write new rules for a government when we can’t even agree on what that government should and shouldn’t be doing?  The framers of our Constitution left a great many things out of that document precisely because they held them to be so universally understood that writing them down would place them in jeopardy.  Alexander Hamilton, for instance, argued against having a Bill of Rights at all:

I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colorable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do?

Clearly, he felt that there was a wide understanding that the Federal government was so far removed from the daily lives of the American people that it could never directly harm them.  Thankfully, more cynical heads prevailed, ensuring that there were at least some protections for the average citizen.  Unfortunately, it is now abundantly clear that the Bill of Rights did not go far enough, nor was the Constitution explicit enough in limiting the power and scope of the Federal government.

I submit that were the Founders and Framers to magically appear in Washington D.C., they would be as horrified by what our government has become as they would be fascinated by our technology and wealth as a people.

How then, do we fix this?

We can’t simply draft up a new constitution and hope that it sticks.  It wouldn’t.

We must instead work to first establish the social contract around which we might craft a better system of government.  Without explicit agreement on the purpose and scope of our governments, we cannot even begin to have a meaningful discussion about what it should look like.

To that end, I propose that we begin drafting an American Social Contract. As Heinlein suggested, such a contract would consist of “customs” that are the basis for understanding and interpreting our laws.  The customs might change over time, but they should be explicitly documented and clearly laid out before every American.

Think about the claims that Judge So-and-so is an “activist judge”.  These claims stem from the idea that a judge is interpreting the law according to a different social contract than our own.  With a clear, formal contract, it becomes harder for such cases to occur.  Rather than substituting their own personal notion of American values (the “Living Constitution” or “Evolving Standards” argument), they have a clear set of guidelines to work from.

So, what might a social contract look like?

Well, how about we start with the idea of a business contract:

We the undersigned agree to…

That seems reasonable to me.  Indeed, our Constitution starts off in similar terms before launching into a set of more technical descriptions of what the Federal government should look like.

Now it gets tricky.  What are we agreeing to?  How about something along the lines of:

Not to injure each other and to protect each other from harm by other people.

That seems pretty straight forward, though I suspect that there are some people who would object.  For instance, there is the question of what does “injure” mean?  It is purely physical, or can it mean emotional, financial, or social damage?  Other, more cowardly people might object to the notion that they are personally responsible for protecting other people from harm.

Personally, I think that our new American Social Contract needs to start out something like this:

We, the American People, individually agree to and take personal responsibility for living up to this Social Contract:

• We agree to allow each other to live and let live, minding our own business and not trying to control each other.
• We agree to do our best not to hurt each other in any way and to protect each other from people who would do us harm.
• We agree to deal openly and fairly with each other.
• We agree to maintain an open, competitive, and free economy and that the only restrictions on our economy should be the minimum needed to protect us and our economy from manipulation, fraud, and other deliberate harm.
• We agree to provide for a shared public infrastructure to enable commerce and communication free from unnecessary restrictions and costs.
• We agree to provide for the public education of every young person who is lawfully living in America, that they might grow into the kind of citizens we are proud to welcome into our Social Contract.
• We agree that in acquiring our personal needs and wants we will ask as little as possible from each other and from any governments that we might create- excepting of course for when we are able to openly and honestly exchange value for value in a fair trade.
• We agree that those who possess greater power have greater responsibility to use that power to uphold this Social Contract and to protect the American People.
• We agree to form governments to execute this Social Contract, to uphold it, to enforce adherence to it, and to protect the American People, collectively and individually from such harm as might not be reasonably defended against by individuals alone or in small groups.

I know that this is wildly incomplete, but it’s a place to start a conversation.  What do you think?  Post your ideas for a new American Social Contract on your site with a link back here.