Andrew Cuomo, governor of New York State, recently issued a decree that the State of New York will not do business with any entity that engages in boycotts of Israel and Israeli businesses. The BDS movement is an effort to apply economic pressure on Israel for that nation’s alleged transgressions against Palestinians.
Regardless of one’s stance on the Israel/Palestine issue, a lover of liberty should simultaneously accept the BDS movement’s existence and denounce Cuomo’s decree on principle. Too often, people, and especially politicians, forget that there are different rules for governments than there are for individuals and private-sector entities.
Any individual or business in the private sector is free to voice opinions by choosing with whom to do or not do business (the gross violation of liberty that is public accommodation theory notwithstanding – but let that be for now). In fact, boycotts and other forms of voluntary pressure are important elements of free speech and vital tools in an evolving society.
Conversely, government isn’t supposed to engage in such activities against citizens and businesses owned by citizens. To declare that the government will not do business with an individual or business engaged in a boycott or other form of speech will have a dampening effect on such speech, thus violating the First Amendment’s stricture against abridging free speech.
Cuomo, like so many other statists, forgets or ignores that line, that wall of separation between “government” and “not government.” Normally, we associate wall of separation with religion, typically when non-religious sorts want to keep religious sorts from commingling religion and government. While it is true that wall of separation does not appear anywhere in the Constitution, and while it is also true that the phrase was written by Thomas Jefferson specifically with reference to religion, the wall metaphor is fully applicable to our other rights.
A recent example, the saga of gay marriage and the county clerk, exemplifies the point. Kim Davis, the Kentucky County Clerk who was jailed for refusing to issue marriage licenses to gay couples, was entirely within her rights to voice opposition to gay marriage when acting as a private citizen, but entirely wrong in refusing to issue licenses in her capacity as an agent of the government.
Cuomo’s decree would have been fine were he the chief executive of a private-sector corporation (no matter how big). He and it would be judged by the free market. Some would select his company for their own counter-boycotts, and some would increase their patronage to show approval. Everything would be voluntary and outside the coercive power of a monopolistic government. However, as chief executive of a state, he is obligated to operate under a different set of rules. He’s on the other side of the First Amendment, the other side of the wall between “government” and “not-government,” and is subject to the “shall make no law” part rather than the “freedom of speech” part.
Politicians (and the people that vote for them) need to be reminded that they have very different obligations than private-sector individuals do. What our government does, to us and for us, is supposed to be dispassionate and unbiased. What we do, how we spend, what we say, how we act, on the other hand, can be passionate, stoic, logical, biased, reasoned, baseless, bigoted, arbitrary or whimsical. That’s what liberty is about, and that’s what government is supposed to ensure and protect. If government acts as we might, though, it fails in its duty to ensure and protect that which is reserved for us.
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