[Avodah] Social Contracts and Covenents

[Micha Berger]

On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 5:44pm EDT, Zev Sero wrote to Areivim about
the authority of a government to tax its citizens (in particular,
citizens living abroad; e.g. American olim):

: A secular answer is that a government always acts as the agent of one or
: more of its citizens, and therefore can only have the right to do that
: which some subset of its citizens have the right to do as individuals.
: It derives the right to punish wrongdoers from the victim's natural right
: to do justice for himself.

There is a Jewish answer that derives it from shutfim as well.

But I think the US claims to be contractual. My own theory is that
the US gov't is largely the product of a bunch of Masons who wanted
to set up a Lockian (Locke was also a Mason) republic. Compare Locke's
inalienable rights to "life, liberty and property" with the Continental
Congress's "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." Property was
voted out of the final document because they were afraid of sounding
like promising something we would identify with Communism (but Marx
wasn't around yet). I don't say this conspiracy theory too loud or too
often, out of feat that someone will send the guys with butterfly nets
after me. Locke's notion of government was based on the social contract,
and that idea was popular among other philosophers of the era (Hobbes,
Rousseau) as well.

The constitution is quite explicitly a formal social contract.

Presumably one would need to renounce one's citizenship in order to
terminate the contract.

If you object to the notion of a contract that one party didn't enter
into willingly... Well, yeah, that was Hume's objection too. James
Madison therefore called it a "social compact".

Perhaps we can make a similar chiluq between a contract and a covenent.
A party to a contract is accepting a set of terms in order to get in
return something (hopefully) of greater value to him. A beris defines two
people joining together together for the common good of the unit rather
than each seeking their own good by giving up something in exchange.

Thus, we could invoke zakhin le'adam shelo befanav -- if it weren't
circular reasoning to invoke something from the content of the beris
(and thus non-existent until AFTER the beris is entered) to legally
justify the means of entering it.

-Micha

-- 
Micha Berger             Zion will be redeemed through justice,
micha at aishdas.org        and her returnees, through righteousness.
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