Liberty, Self-Esteem and Self-Governance

Our inalienable right to happiness and the rhetoric of self-esteem experts notwithstanding, we do not have a right to feel good about ourselves; instead, thanks to the First Amendment, other people have a right to make us feel bad.  While we may be subject to legal restrictions on public smoking or taxes on foods that make us fat, we should be spared legal efforts to regulate photo-shopping.  Europeans are not so lucky. The New York Times reported this week that lawmakers in Britain and France have proposed requiring disclaimers and warning labels on photo-shopped images of models. 

Given increased consumer awareness of photo-shopping and the emergence of blogs devoted to debunking it, government action seems especially unnecessary, as well as intrusive; but advocates of regulation are undeterred:  "When teenagers and women look at these pictures in magazines, they end up feeling unhappy with themselves," a British MP explained, as if government power to secure the happiness of women and girls was simply self-evident.
   
This is not harmless official maternalism: a government that concerns itself with the happiness or psychological well-being of its citizens is a government that will prohibit conduct or speech deemed psychologically harmful, or simply not conducive to happiness. Also known as a government actively hostile to liberty.  In Britain, as Reason magazine reported two years ago, you can be served with an "Antisocial Behavior Order (ASBO) for engaging in conduct considered likely to cause others alarm or distress. This past year a woman subject to an ASBO was arrested for indulging in noisy, consensual sex in what is apparently no longer the privacy of her own home. I suppose you could call ASBO's a form of democratization: what was once the prerogative of kings--the power to secure the arrest of people who irritated or "distressed" them--is now extended to peevish citizens who can invoke it against each other.
   
American nannyism isn't quite as advanced as this (except perhaps on college campuses, where policing of presumptively anti-social or offensive speech is common).  But while Congress has yet to attack the scourge of photo-shopping, it is considering restricting the right to "distress" other people substantially.  Today, September 30, the House is holding a hearing on a cyber-bullying bill, the Megan Meier Cyberbullying Prevention Act, introduced by California Democrat Loretta Sanchez.  The Act would effectively criminalize speech that results in people "feeling unhappy with themselves" (You can find a quick analysis of its broad application to internet speech here.)

Like so many crime bills named after deceased children, the Megan Meier Act was prompted by a horrific case involving the suicide of a teenage girl who'd been taunted on MySpace.  Her suicide was tragic; the sheer meanness that apparently provoked it was unforgivable, but it wasn't and probably shouldn't be criminal.  Human malevolence is a problem the law can't solve and often can't even punish, without grievous infringements on liberty. The cost of a right to feel good about yourself is everyone's right to be free.

Photo Credits: Flickr Users Tammy Manet and LoopZilla