Individual Liberty In The Crucible Of History: 5. The Road to Collectivism

Dr. Carson has recently transferred from Jack­sonville State College in Alabama to his new post as Professor of American History at Grove City College in Pennsylvania. This is the fifth of six articles in a series on Individual Liberty in the Crucible of History. The sixth and con­cluding one, "A Rebirth of Liberty," appears next month.

Americans came upon the road to collectivism by diverse ways and from many paths. The signs that pointed toward this broad road filled seeker’s hearts with hope by such disarming labels as "General Welfare," "Social Justice," "Eco­nomic Security," and "Freedom from Want." Some came in large groups which had been organized to advance special interests, while others came as individual strag­glers. There were those drawn from the path of liberty by the siren song of utopian reformers. Tender-hearted men turned toward collectivism in the belief that it offered the best hope of alleviating the suffering which they saw or read about. The obstacles in the path of liberty— the difficulties in the way of achieving economic independence, the hardships of the individual route to personal fulfillment— convinced many of the "necessity" for joint effort. Budding intellectuals discovered a new faith in the organic concep­tion of society, and the unsuccess­ful could excuse their failures as the fault of society. The destitute succumbed easily to the explana­tion that they were victims of op­pression. Some men may be hon­estly convinced that they know what is best for all of us; at any rate, collectivism offered a mode for reformers and planners— men caught in the grip of a compelling yision— to use government to em­body their ideas in law and prac­tice. By these and other paths did Americans gather upon the road to collectivism.

Historically, however, the shift to collectivism was made in the following manner. Men organized themselves in interest groups for the pursuit of common goals. They included such groupings as farmer alliances, labor unions, business associations, and professional or­ganizations. These organizations frequently sought privileged status at law, and to bring the force of government to bear upon Americans to make them accede to their demands. When they suc­ceeded, they contested with one another for superior position, and preyed upon both unorganized in­dividuals and other groups as well. This neofeudal system (strangely enough, many "liber­als" called it progress where labor unions were concerned) created a situation rife for the United States government to step in and "adjust" these demands in the public interest. This last is the face that collectivism presents in our day.

So stated, the development ap­pears logical and "inevitable." Is there anything strange or irregu­lar about men grouping together to advance common interests? What could be more appropriate than the harmonization of con­flicting interests by action of the national government? Is not a part of American freedom the freedom of men to associate for common ends? Was not the re­publican government of these United States erected to resolve the conflicts among contending parties and to "promote the gen­eral welfare"? In short, have we not come to collectivism by a logi­cal extension of the very ideas which informed the Constitution and have for all its days been a part of the American tradition? Or, did we reach collectivism by evading the Constitution and a profound departure from the American tradition?

Transitional Movements

These questions are of such moment for everyone— not just for historians— that they must be answered very carefully. Let us search out in our history those transitional movements from in­dividualism to collectivism. By un­covering them, we should be able to decide how we came to this pass within a proclaimed frame­work of constitutionalism and a never-announced departure from liberty. What was done to effect the change is important, if the information is to be useful in finding our way back to liberty.

The Trouble with Groups

The mere existence of groups and organizations in a society is no indication that collectivism prevails. Alexis de Tocqueville noted in the first half of the nineteenth century that Ameri­cans were prone to the formation of all sorts of groups. Freedom to associate for common purposes is a basic freedom which to prohibit would be to circumscribe severely the liberty of the individual. The social and charitable functions of such groups can and have amelio­rated the severities of individual responsibility and helped the in­dividual to undertake what he could not do alone.

Associations become a matter of public concern primarily when they use force or coercion in pur­suit of their ends. So long as the individual can join and quit a group voluntarily, so long as the group is inhibited (by law and fear of punishment) from forcing its way upon others, no great harm need result from its exist­ence. In practice, when groups have no special exemptions or privileges in law and cannot use the power of government to force others to yield to them, individual liberty can prevail regardless of the number and variety of groups in our midst.

By turning these last two points around, it is possible to see what collectivism is. It is the institu­tion of group force to attain the goals of groups within a society. That this is usually done in the name of society should not mis­lead us, for where men are free there will be conflicts as to goals, and no man’s interests are fully merged with that of society. It can be shown, of course, that every man should be interested in protection from the use of force upon him, but beyond that men will have interests and interpreta­tions quite divergent from one an­other. For these reasons, collec­tivism must always be nothing more than forcing the interests of some upon all. The thrust of collectivism is to merge all men into a common mass. For it is only by ignoring or lopping off all that is unique in the individual and dealing with that which is com­mon to all men that collectivism can be justified.

The difference between a collec­tivistic society and an individual­istic one can be succinctly stated. Where individual liberty is the goal, the government will exist, in considerable part, to disarm col­lectives. In a collectivist society, government will act to empower groups. The shift for America, then, came at those points when governments ceased to disarm groups effectively and began to empower them.

To Disarm Collectives

That the Constitution of these United States was designed to disarm collectives and prevent them from using the power of government to work their ends is attested to by no less an authority than the Father of the Constitu­tion, James Madison. This is the burden of his argument in the justly famous "Federalist" Num­ber 10. The problem, as he defined it, had been to erect a government that would have a "tendency to break and control the violence of faction." He explained further, "By a faction I understand a number of citizens, whether amounting to a majority or mi­nority of the whole, who are united and actuated by some com­mon impulse of passion, or of in­terest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the perman­ent and aggregate interests of the community." It is well to note, too, that the question of whether a majority or minority wanted the action interested him only as it affected the likelihood of its en­actment. Madison believed that the danger to liberty and the gen­eral welfare lay in the factional use of government for partisan ends.

He went on to explore the pos­sibilities of preventing the parti­san use of government. It could be stopped by taking away the liberty which gives rise to fac­tions or "by giving to every citi­zen the same opinions, the same passions, and interests." Both of these alternatives are rejected: the first because it is undesirable and the second because it is im­practical. The problem then be­comes one of preventing the ef­fects rather than removing the causes of faction. Madison held that republican government— by which he meant representative government— would be the one most likely to bring to nought the effects of faction. Specifically, he maintained that the Constitution as drawn would provide such a government. By spreading repre­sentation over large constituen­cies, by having the houses of Con­gress chosen in a different man­ner, he thought it would be diffi­cult for any collection of men to attain its end. The separation of powers would add to the difficul­ties of groups seeking special privileges and partisan goals. It should be pointed out, though, that developments in communica­tion and transportation since Madison‘s day have swept away much of the importance of the vastness of the country in deter­ring concerted action by groups.

The point, however, is that the purpose of the Constitution was to disarm rather than empower collectives. Madison saw clearly that the great danger of popular government was its susceptibility to use for partisan ends. He de­sired a government which could maintain the needed unity for ex­ternal defense and internal accord but which would be inhibited by its organization from taking precipitate and arbitrary actions that would intrude upon the liber­ties of individuals. This wish he shared with many of those who did and many who did not ap­prove the Constitution as drawn in 1787.

Let us follow Madison‘s reason­ing that it is not the existence of factions (or collectives) which really endangers liberty but their gaining sway. It is not, for ex­ample, the presence of lobbyists that corrupts legislatures but the bowing of legislators to their will. Churches limit individual liberty when they can use the powers of the state to enact their morals or enforce their goals on society. Business associations and corpor­ations delimit liberty when they bring government to bear in se­curing special privileges. Labor unions endanger both public inter­est and individual liberty when they use coercion with the conni­vance and support of government.

That Americans have largely left off thinking in terms of in­dividual liberty and gone over to collectivism is mirrored in cur­rent language. One hears and reads regularly of minority rights, majority rights, the rights of or­ganized labor, the rights of busi­ness, the rights of children, the rights of women, the rights of the farmer, the rights of the people (considered collectively), and even of the rights of governments.

Rights or Privileges

When President Kennedy brought the influence and indirect coercive power of government to bear upon steel companies to in­duce them to forfeit an announced raise in prices, many of those who objected did so on the grounds that it was an attack on "business." But this is a tacit acknowledgment that "business" has special rights and privileges. From an individualist point of view, the President was either attacking the rights of all Amer­icans, or he was threatening the rights of no Americans. The real principle involved in the steel af­fair (so far as individual liberty was concerned) was whether or not individuals and voluntary as­sociations of men may act, with­out force, to raise or lower prices. In short, are men free to offer goods and services at whatever price they see fit, or are prices to be determined by executive fiat? The matter of monopolies and price fixing in an industry is im­portant to liberty, but it was clearly not the issue here. The President wanted to fix the price in the name of the public interest. If he succeeds in this aim, he will have achieved a greater restric­tion upon liberty than any mo­nopoly could without the force of government, for he acts with the force of government.

Secondary Consequences

What we have, in our situation, is that government, having recog­nized and empowered various group interests, then tries to har­monize them. It can only do so at the expense of the liberty of all individuals, though some may believe themselves more than adequately compensated for their loss by the greater power they have at their disposal. The his­torical task is to point up those events and developments which marked turning points from in­dividualism to collectivism.

There has hardly been a time in the history of these United States when contending factions were not prominent. Manufac­turers early sought a protective tariff. Veterans of the Revolu­tionary War pressed for special privileges. Land speculators and farmers contended for different systems of dividing and pricing public lands for sale. Representa­tives from the East sought to hamper the westward movement, while Southerners and Westerners sought to use the federal govern­ment to acquire more and more lands to the west. Even the most careful efforts of writers of the Constitution had not managed to design a government that could not on occasion be used for par­tisan purposes. Indeed, the con­stitution-makers yielded to fac­tion in permitting the counting of a proportion of slaves for de­termining congressional represen­tation. The Whiskey Tax was al­most certainly legislation aimed to penalize a particular group—the small entrepreneurs of the back country. The Bank of the United States, as set up, may have forwarded special interests. Cer­tainly, the protective tariffs en­acted periodically from 1816 on provided special privileges for manufacturers and were disad­vantageous to some shippers.

Much as one may deplore these successes of groups and factions, however, they do not indicate that America was from the begin­ning collectivistic. To think that they do is to confuse aberrations with central tendencies. For how­ever much Congress, the Presi­dent, or the courts might have yielded to special interests on oc­casion, they had not yet formally acknowledged their existence. Jef­ferson may have been moved by agrarian sentiments to acquire Louisiana, but it was not officially done for "agriculture." Perhaps Daniel Webster had questionable relations with "business," but he spoke for the unity of America.

The Turning Point

The turning point from individ­ualism toward collectivism should be located at the time when formal recognition was given to groups, when the federal government began to act in the name of fac­tions, and when the constitutional inhibitions against such actions began to break down. Until that point we are dealing with sus­picions of motives rather than definite effects.

Several events occurred in the 1880′s which suggest that the turn should be located there­abouts. In 1886 the Supreme Court decided, in the Santa Clara Co. case, that a corporation was a "person" in the meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment. By so doing it gave special status to one kind of association— the cor­poration. Congress made an equally substantial break with the past by the passing of the Inter­state Commerce Act in 1887. Legislation aimed at any particu­lar group is dangerous to liberty,1 but this act had even more direct import. It provided for an Inter­state Commerce Commission. As one history describes it, "The In­terstate Commerce Commission was the first permanent federal ad­ministrative board to which Con­gress delegated broad powers of a quasi-legislative, quasi-execu­tive, and quasi-judicial nature. Its establishment was a landmark in American constitutional history…. The Commission… repre­sented a fundamental departure from the principle of the separa­tion of powers."`’ Through the years other such bodies were added— Federal Trade Commis­sion, Federal Communications Commission, Securities and Ex­change Commission, National Labor Relations Board— which had the cumulative effect of bring­ing to nought the means set up in the Constitution for disarming groups.

Another signal departure came in 1889 with the raising of the Department of Agriculture to cabinet rank. This was the first such recognition of group or class interests by the central govern­ment, but not the last. Predictably, of course, other factions vied for similar recognition. A Depart­ment of Commerce and Labor was created in 1903, and separate de­partments for each were set up in 1913. Within a three-year period— 1886 to 1889— the break with the tradition had been made in the legislative, judicial, and execu­tive branches of our government.

But the way was prepared be­forehand for the break. The rise of the Republican Party just be­fore the Civil War was a land­mark of sectionalism, for it was the first party with so exclusively a sectional following to gain the Presidency. Its successful organ­ization spurred the formation of even more factional parties in the South. The short-lived Freedmen’s Bureau, set up toward the end of the Civil War, was a special agency of the federal government to look after the freed Negro. The

Fifteenth Amendment to the Con­stitution— forbidding the exclu­sion from voting privileges on the grounds of race, color, or previous condition of servitude— adopted in 1870, may have given credence to the budding notion that there are minority rights. It was obviously intended to enfranchise a mi­nority.

Giving Them Power

National groupings according to economic interests made their appearance in the latter part of the nineteenth century. It should be kept in mind, however, that it was not the existence of these or­ganizations that effected collec­tivism but their empowerment by government. Accompanying the spread of large businesses operat­ing throughout the United States was the organization of nation­wide labor unions. The National Labor Union was organized in 1866, but expired a few years later. Much more important and influential was the Knights of Labor which was organized in the 1870′s. The first strike on anything like a national scale was the Railway Strike of 1877. The American Federation of Labor was organized in 1886 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers. Farmers, too, turned to organiza­tion as a means of effecting their ends. The Patrons of Husbandry (or National Grange) was founded in 1867, and shortly began spon­soring regulatory laws. Business­men formed the National Associa­tion of Manufacturers in 1895. The American Anti-Boycott Asso­ciation (1902) and the Citizens Industrial Association (1903) came into being to counter cer­tain kinds of union activity.3

The increase and growth of cor­porations needs mention also. By 1900 two-thirds of all manufac­turing in the United States was carried on by corporations. Incor­poration confers a special privi­lege— that of limited liability. In return for this privileged status, corporations have long been reck­oned to have a public character and to be subject to public limi­tations on their activities. How­ever, in the latter part of the nineteenth century, due mainly to the fortuities of our federal sys­tem of government, many corpora­tions managed to hold their privi­leged status and avoid onerous limitations. Corporate charters could be obtained in a single state, but the resulting corpora­tion could operate in all states. Some states— notably New Jersey and Delaware— provided unusu­ally generous terms of incorpora­tion. When this condition was coupled with court treatment of corporations as persons, corpora­tions were extremely difficult to reach by regular lawful means. The resulting confusion of indi­vidual liberty with corporate "lib­erty" has not yet been disentan­gled. It created a situation ripe for governmental limitation of in­dividual liberty in order to control corporate activity. It gave im­petus, too, to the setting up of arbitrary commissions to deal with business activity.4

New Parties for Political Favor

New political parties in the latter part of the nineteenth cen­tury definitely appealed to econ­omic interest groups. There was the Greenback Labor Party (or­ganized 1878), the People’s Party of the U. S. A. (Populist Party, organized 1891), and the Socialist Labor Party (organized 1877 but only achieved national importance in the 1890′s). Those historians who attribute this rise of third parties to a feeling among farm­ers and laborers that their inter­ests were not being looked after by the major parties may be right. Certainly protective tariffs, land grants and subsidies to rail­roads, and monetary policies fre­quently provided advantages for financiers and industrial entre­preneurs. But the important point is that factions organized them­selves to secure political action in their favor. They had only a limited success in the nineteenth century, however.

The progressive movement of the early twentieth century occu­pies an anomalous position in the march of Americans toward col­lectivism. This is so mainly be­cause people of many different persuasions— socialists, national­ists, welfare staters, and free traders— adopted the rubric or have been called progressives by historians. In their stated aims, Woodrow Wilson and Eugene Debs (the candidate of the Socialist Party) in 1912 were almost as far apart as it would he possible to get. Yet they are both treated under progressivism because they were reformers. The confusion is compounded because all shades of reformers did generally accept the organic conception of society. They all wanted to use the United States government to achieve posi­tive social ends. Moreover, the idea of progress and the belief in successive stages of the develop­ment of society permeated reform thought. For these reasons, it maybe that those historians who have lumped reformers together are nearer the truth than those who have made rigorous distinctions among them.

Legislative Departures

Progressive legislation does in­dicate that collectivism was mak­ing headway. The scope and au­thority of the Interstate Com­merce Commission was broadened by several acts. The Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat In­spection Act, both of 1906, show the federal government entering the arena of protecting the con­sumer. The Mann Act of 1910—prohibiting the interstate trans­portation of women for immoral purposes— extends the principle to the protection of people from themselves. Here was a clear limi­tation upon liberty which deals neither with the use of coercion nor even the performance of an immoral act. It deals with motives and restricts transportation. It is class legislation in that presum­ably men can be transported across state lines for immoral purposes without fear of penalty.

It is true that Woodrow Wilson, in 1912, proclaimed the New Freedom and declared it to be his aim to restore liberty by breaking up the trusts and removing spe­cial privileges. Yet once in office he approved the Clayton Antitrust Act which exempted labor from its provisions and provided the opening wedge for the crea­tion of a privileged status for or­ganized labor. The Underwood Tariff Act did free trade to some extent, but the Federal Trade Commission and Federal Reserve Board— whatever their purposes— were agencies beyond the sepa­ration-of-powers principle. The Adamson Act provided for an eight-hour day and time-and-a ­half for overtime on interstate railroads, an undeniable use of government power for a faction.

The Shifting Role of Government

Once the United States entered World War I, Wilson swiftly abandoned such relics of the New Freedom as he had held on to and turned to what might more aptly be styled the New Tyranny. The government turned from at­tempting to enforce competition to the co-ordination of the econ­omy. Boards and commissions were created to deal with the vari­ous economic interests— War In­dustry Board, War Labor Board, Food Commission, and so forth. The Presidency supported the direct use of propaganda by way of the Committee on Public Informa­tion. The Sedition Act of 1918 re­stricted liberties in a manner that had not been done since the days of John Adams. The railroads were taken over and run by the government.5

The constitutional amendments adopted under the impetus of pro­gressivism provided some of the legal foundations for collective ac­tion. The Sixteenth Amendment (income tax) paved the way for a redistribution of wealth and for tax policies that could be (and have been) used for the advance­ment of class interests. The Seventeenth Amendment (direct election of Senators) altered the republican character of the gov­ernment somewhat and may have weakened the inhibitory powers which Senators would exercise on legislation. The Eighteenth Amendment (prohibition )empow­ered the Congress to legislate in matters of morals and to send out federal agents over the land to inquire into the activities of Americans. The Nineteenth Amendment (woman’s suffrage) gave color, though not substance, to the notion that groups have rights.

The reaction to restrictive ac­tion by government was hardy and vigorous, though frequently misdirected, in the 1920′s. Rail­roads were returned to private ownership, but the act that re­turned them empowered the Inter­state Commerce Commission to foster mergers. The Tariff Act of 1922 not only raised rates— pro­tecting American industries as well as making it virtually impos­sible for European countries to pay debts, but also it carried a provision against the importation of obscene books, a provision which was sometimes interpreted to exclude works now recognized as classics. Founders of patriotic organizations were probably right in believing there were threats to Americanism, but their indis­criminate activities were hardly calculated to preserve it. Commu­nists were driven under ground by the Palmer raids, but constitu­tional liberties were ignored in the effort. So confused had the American tradition become that many writers and artists attribu­ted violations of civil liberties to an American tradition of mob rule and lynch law.

Roosevelt‘s Hundred Days

The culmination of the trend toward the empowering of groups came with dramatic swiftness. In the "Hundred Days" following his inauguration in 1933, Franklin D. Roosevelt pushed through Con­gress bills which presented the country with collectivism as a fait accompli. All the steps toward it thus far had been but background and prelude. The central pieces of legislation were the Agricultural Adjustment Act and the National Industrial Recovery Act. By the Agricultural Adjustment Act Con­gress acknowledged itself as care­taker of the needs of farmers, and proceeded to provide for them by regulation, subsidies, and parity payments. Industries were invited to control themselves by fair trade codes under the NIRA. Labor was provided for by the section of the Act which guaranteed labor’s right "to organize and bargain collectively through representa­tives of their own choosing." A National Labor Board was created to enforce this provision. While these actions marked a climax of the empowering of factions, their aim has been fully pointed out by Rexford G. Tugwell, one of the architects of these acts. "NRA could have been administered so that a great collectivism might gradually have come out of it, so that all the enormous American energies might have been disci­plined and channeled into one na­tional effort to establish a secure basis for well-being."6

Although the surge into collectivism came with almost lightning quickness, the way had been pre­pared for it. The Depression of­fered the occasion, but it was not the efficient cause. For over fifty years the numbers of dependent farmers and workers had been in­creasing. The impotence of the in­dividual was accentuated by the increase in size and complexity of institutions and organizations in America. A new ethos— the col­lectivist curvature of the mind—provided the mental bent for col­lective action. Actions taken dur­ing World War I provided the pat­tern for governmental action. The voluntary trade associations of the twenties made NRA appear to be a natural next step. Never-ending protective tariffs had ac­customed Americans to collective action for particular interests. Organized labor’s special status had already been recognized by the Norris-La Guardia Anti-in­junction Act of 1932.

The NIRA and AAA were nulli­fied by the Supreme Court, but these decisions did not stem the tide of collectivism. Even before the courts nullified these laws, Roosevelt had launched upon a different course. Business lost much of its privileged status when NRA succumbed, and the adminis­tration cast it into that limbo in which it has usually existed since—subjected to harassment, regula­tion, and periodic threats of in­vestigation and dismemberment. Meanwhile, Roosevelt and his con­gressional followers turned to providing protection and benefits for the "underprivileged" and "unfortunate." (The argot of the New Dealers implied that all wealth and station resulted from special privileges and good luck.) The Social Security Act was class legislation to provide benefits for wage workers. Massive relief was provided from 1935 to 1939. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 gave organized labor in­creased status and included pro­hibitions of employer activity against unions. The Revenue Act of 1935 increased the surtax rate on individual incomes, raised rates on large corporations, and estate and gift taxes were increased. In 1937 the Farm Security Adminis­tration was set up to aid tenant farmers, and in 1938 a new Agri­cultural Adjustment Act was passed, reenacting the protected position of farmers.

Recent Developments

Over the years since, organized labor has consolidated its privi­leged position. Farmers have be­come accustomed to subsidies and crop controls. Government aid has been extended to more and more of the population by way of ex­tension of Social Security and through such devices as FHA loans. Many businesses became ac­customed to cost-plus contracts during and after World War II, and have managed by manipula­tion to acquire privileged posi­tions. Minimum wages and hours coupled with wage bargaining by industry has tended to make prices inflexible and to stifle com­petition. Amidst the pulling and hauling of privileged groups for a greater share of the "national income," the cry increases for government to act to harmonize these interests. Some want laws prohibiting labor unions from striking; others want wage, price, and rent controls. Governmental action during World War II set further precedents for control which have not yet been extended to peacetime use. One more good emergency should provide the set­ting for wiping out the remaining vestiges of liberty in America, since we have both the practice and the beliefs for it.

The road we have taken toward collectivism has now been pointed out. It was made possible for us to come upon this road by ignor­ing and evading the Constitution. Groups were empowered rather than disarmed as they gained rec­ognition and privileges from gov­ernments. Once this has happened, it can be made to appear that the completion of the circle is inevita­ble. If farmers can use govern­ment to raise food prices, if or­ganized labor can use force aided and abetted by government to drive up wages, if corporations can operate with only arbitrary limitations, who is to protect the public interest? The obvious an­swer is that the United States government must act to resolve conflicts and protect the general welfare. But it is not the only an­swer. If liberty be accepted once more as the goal, if government will once again disarm groups, we can return to liberty. By marking out the trails by which we have come to collectivism, I have also uncovered the signs which we may follow to recover the path of liberty.

***

You CAN WIN an election and still lose your liberty…. You do not waste your vote when you lose an election; but, you certainly do waste your vote when you lose your principles.

Joseph A. Galambos

Foot Notes

¹ Government by law rather than by men requires that laws be of general ap­plicability. As F. A. Hayek says, "Law in its ideal form might be described as a `once-and-for-all’ command that is direct­ed to unknown people and that is ab­stracted from all particular circum­stances of time and place and refers only to such conditions as may occur any­where and at any time." The Constitu­tion of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), pp. 149-50.

² Alfred H. Kelly and Winfred A. Har­bison, The American Constitution: Its Origin and Development (New York: Norton, 1955), p. 549.

³ George E. Mowry, The Era of Theo­dore Roosevelt (New York: Harper, 1958), p. 12.

⁴ This is no attack on the corporation. I am trying to make clear that there is a valid and valuable distinction between individual and corporate activity. When this distinction is restored, it will make possible both the extension of individual liberty and regular lawful means of lim­iting the scope of corporate activity.

⁵ There are two very good reasons why I do not take up the question of whether or not these actions were "necessary" for the war effort. In the first place, I don’t know—nor do all those historians who say that it was. In the second place, necessity does not alter the effects of actions, which is my concern.

⁶ Quoted in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Politics of Upheaval (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1960), p. 214.