Hendrick Hertzberg's hierarchy of rights, cont.

In a prior post, I raised some questions about Hendrick Hertzberg's assertion that he values "political liberty and political rights" more than "economic liberty and economic rights." Hertzberg has done me the honor of a response:

One more point. Andrew Sprung also says that because, in his view, “no real freedom of thought is possible without basic property rights,” he doesn’t see much meaning in my saying that I value liberty of thought, belief, and speech more highly than I value property rights (or, for that matter, the right to vote). Again, he may be correct that, as a matter of historical evolution, “basic property rights” are previous to freedom of thought, etc. But does that make them more valuable?

That closing question clarifies for me what has disturbed me about Hertzberg's hierarchy of values as asserted throughout this discussion thread, particularly in his response to a Daily Dish reader who rather dogmatically asserted the historical priority of property rights over 'the right to vote.' It's this: what is more valuable really can't be divorced from what depends on what, or from the historical evolution of our various freedoms. Freedom of thought, conscience and speech don't exist in a vacuum. They are, I think, unimaginable without property rights. The historical evolution* of the rights we treasure matters too, insofar as it provides clues to their interdependence. 

Unless, that is, by "property rights" you mean mainly the "right" not to be taxed heavily.  I suspect that this is where Hertzberg is really coming from, since he began the thread in dialogue with a Texas conservative who opposed his own credo to Hertzberg's, asserting,  "We want government to encourage equal opportunity, but we don’t want it to enforce equality by redistributing wealth."

Hertzberg's left, Sullivan's right: busy getting dizzy

A blog-a-log started by Hendrik Hertzberg and picked up by Andrew Sullivan and his readers about the priority of values held by liberals and conservatives is going off into the ozone, I fear.

In response to a Daily Dish reader (DDR) who asserts that property rights are more fundamental than the right to vote, Hertzberg argues:

But voting, like property rights, is mainly instrumental. Voting is generally a good thing not because elected governments always make wiser policy decisions than absolute monarchs, but because experience shows that countries that elect their governments are more apt to have freedom of thought, conscience, and speech than countries that don’t. I’d rather live under a hereditary monarch who tolerates those freedoms than an elected president who doesn’t.

I'm not sure that the various goods under discussion can be placed hierarchically.  With that caveat, I"m not sure that preservation of "thought, conscience and speech" is the primary good of democracy. In my view, democracy is essential because it holds governments accountable, and gives the people the power to throw the bums out, and so allows for course corrections when government policy is leading to disaster or when it allows those in power to steal all the wealth.  An elected president who curtails freedoms, but nonetheless allows for an unrigged election -- if such a thing has ever existed -- would be preferable in my view to an enlightened despot who hands absolute power to an inheritor of unknown disposition.