The Freedom To Leave

Sometimes a blog post doesn’t need to be much more than the juxtaposition of quotes from two articles you happenstantially read more or less in the same sitting.

First, here’s Nicholas Smaligo writing for Ill Will about David Graeber and David Wengrow’s The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity.

Against a generic and propertarian concept of a “classless society” Graeber and Wengrow propose a theory of “free peoples,” all of which, whatever their inequities, manage to institutionalize three basic forms of political freedom: the freedom to leave and expect you will be welcomed with hospitality elsewhere; the freedom to disobey the commands of others; and the freedom to participate in reshuffling social arrangements, seasonally or permanently. These freedoms, they argue, were taken for granted for much of human history, and are always, to some degree, present in all human civilizations. But “free peoples” make these into fundamental principles of their social organization.

Second, here’s Brynn Tannehill writing for The New Republic about the Supreme Court’s trajectory toward the undoing of federalism.

But the real Dred Scott moment will be at hand when red states begin trying to extradite people from the blue states for the crime of getting abortions, providing abortions, or providing transition-related care to transgender people. Deep blue states have been creating haven and sanctuary laws to protect women, doctors, transgender people, and parents of trans youth. Both California and Massachusetts have passed sanctuary laws that would prevent people from being extradited for seeking abortions in their states. […]

Emphasis added.