Hearing the Victims of Arbitrary Domination
A Philosophical and Scriptural Reflection for the 3rd Sunday of Lent, Year C
The political philosopher Philip Pettit argues that, if we want to understand political freedom, it helps to consider the situation of two hypothetical groups of slaves in a slave-owning society like ancient Rome or the antebellum United States. One group is owned by a cruel master who violently abuses the slaves, separates them from their families, and exercises tight control over their activities to further his own interests. The second group, as chance would have it, are owned by a relatively indulgent master who provides those slaves with significant discretion over their own lives.
According to contemporary Western society’s most prevalent view of political freedom—that freedom is the ability to do what one wants without outside interference—this second group of slaves is relatively free, and especially so in comparison with the first group. But, Pettit continues, this likely strikes our moral intuition as misguided. For one, it seems contradictory to claim that those living in a state of slavery are nevertheless free, or even relatively so. More particularly, this conclusion seems wrong because whatever freedom the second group of slaves experiences exists solely because of the arbitrary whims of the slaveowner.
Pettit therefore proposes that political freedom is better understood as non-domination, or the absence of a relationship in which an individual or group has arbitrary control over another, even in cases when that control is not currently being exercised. If this ideal of freedom was embodied, it would necessitate not only the abolition of slavery, but also establishing republican institutions that preserve individual liberties and that ensure that when authority is exercised, it is governed by the rule of law. Pettit recognizes that governing a complex, modern society makes it necessary for some people to exercise power over others; the key question is whether or not that power is exercised arbitrarily or is governed by the rule of law. Crucially, the governed have the right to challenge the decisions of those with power over them and to hold leaders accountable to the law.
We can draw one further lesson from Pettit’s argument. Consider a third group of slaves, but in this case the slaveowner is cruel toward some of the slaves, indulgent toward others based on the preferences of the owner, or perhaps on whether the slaves have learned to please the master or not. In such a situation, it may be tempting for those slaves who are treated better by the owner to see this situation as to their advantage, or even to imagine that their relatively better condition is dependent on the harsher treatment of the other slaves. But this would be a mistake. Those slaves who receive preferential treatment nevertheless share in the essential condition of those treated cruelly, despite their obviously differential treatment, and the former are just as subject to cruelty as the latter if the master’s preferences or whims change.
Two weeks ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested and detained Mahmoud Khalil, a student at Columbia University and an organizer of last year’s protests there against Israel’s military action in Gaza. A Syria-born Palestinian permanent resident of the US (or green card holder), Khalil has not been accused of any crime; the Trump administration has appealed to an obscure law that allows the Secretary of State to call for the deportation of green card holders whose activities “would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences,” an incredibly broad standard that could potentially cover virtually any criticism of US foreign policy.
Then a week ago, the US deported over 200 Venezuelan migrants alleged to be members of the “Tren de Aragua” gang to the country of El Salvador, where they were imprisoned in that country’s notorious Counter-Terrorism Containment Center. The US government has not explained how it determined that the deportees were involved in gang activity—indeed, there is growing evidence that at least some were not gang members, or even criminals of any kind, at all—and the latter were sent on planes to El Salvador despite a judge’s order requiring further review of their cases. The US government has continued to resist the court’s efforts to assess the case, and it’s not clear how the deportees’ rights can be protected now that they are in the custody of a foreign government.
The Trump administration has demonstrated, then, a willingness to detain or deport individuals without due process in cases it claims are in the national interest. The administration has shrewdly focused on groups either reviled by most Americans, such as (alleged) gang members, or whose political views are seen unsympathetically by many Americans, such as Palestinian rights activists. Indeed, some political leaders who otherwise oppose President Donald Trump have expressed sympathy for these moves. But this is a grievous mistake. The powers being claimed by the executive branch to summarily detain or deport individuals are not limited to members of unsympathetic groups, but rather extend to practically anyone present in the US, including citizens. The United States is at a dangerous crossroads. How should Christians respond?
