The problem with the phrase, you can’t make me, is not whether it’s true. The problem is that the very idea is fundamentally unjust.
Our present crisis is built on this simple idea.
You can’t make me.
Institutionally, we have ways of making people do things. We call them laws. And we hire people to enforce them.
So when the average person says “You can’t make me,” the institution often says “Yes we can.”
But now we’re seeing two related things happening.
We are seeing average citizens say “You can’t make me because I have a right to do whatever I want.” And we are seeing courts say, “Well, maybe he can get a pass on this.” We are also seeing our representatives write laws that preauthorize these exceptions. So they are literally creating cases in which we “can’t make them.”
This is leading to a pretty serious crisis around what liberty actually is.
Swinging Fists
The old adage, often attributed to Oliver Wendell Holmes (but it probably goes back much further) is a simple idea: that my right to swing my fist ends when it meets your nose.
It is a simple attempt to name the priority and the limit.
We want our liberty to be as boundless as possible so that we all might have it. So imagine every citizen spreading out in open fields and literally swinging around and never running into each other.
The problem with you can’t make me is not that it tries to enforce a liberty as boundless as possible. It is precisely that it eviscerates the all part. It is to say I want boundless liberty for me, regardless of them.
It unties certain people, allowing them to swing their firsts, regardless of the noses they contact.
This, of course, is fundamentally unjust. Not because the desire for boundless liberty is wrong, but because it is currently swinging its fist and striking people’s noses.
It also makes for a truly avoidable existential crisis. We don’t need those exemptions. We need to balance both boundless and all. And when we sway too far from that delicate balance, we must bring it back into balance.
The Executive
There’s a bigger problem when the Executive Branch of the U.S. government says “You can’t make me.” There are ways in which this can quite literally be true.
And what we are seeing is that norms, rather than laws, governed over the presidency. So when the president says “You can’t make me,” he’s telling the truth. But his invoking this sense of boundless liberty isn’t the only aspect and reason for the crisis. Even if it is its primary source.
The problem is that when the president says “You can’t make me,” the other two branches are saying “You are right.”
And they do that because they look at the law and they cannot see a way to enforce it. The law is deficient, as we have relied on mores rather than laws to curtail presidential excess in the past. And the means of enforcement are deficient, as the Congress doesn’t have its own courts or police.
What I would postulate is that answer to this crisis is quite similar to the first.
We start by responding to “You can’t make me” with “Yes we can.”
Of course, this will require new laws and lots of imagination. And certainly would need some bipartisanship in the current climate. But nothing is accomplished by quitting at the outset.
Ultimately, this crisis isn’t actually a technical problem. It isn’t one with an easy, neutral solution. It is a moral and far-reaching one as well. One not served well by pessimism.