The Collected Works
of
Leonard E. Read

Leonard E. Read

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Foundation for Economic Education

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Atlanta, Georgia 30309

Telephone: (404) 554-9980

ISBN (ebook): 978-1-63069-601-6

Original publication dates:

1937—Romance of Reality

1946—I’d Push the Button

1948—Pattern for Revolt

1950—Students of Liberty

1951—Outlook for Freedom

1954—Government: An Ideal Concept

1958—I, Pencil

1958—Why Not Try Freedom?

1962—Elements of Libertarian Leadership

1964—Anything That’s Peaceful: The Case for the Free Market

1965—The Free Market and Its Enemy

1967—Deeper Than You Think

1967—Where Lies This Fault?

1968—Accent on the Right

1969—The Coming Aristocracy

1969—Let Freedom Reign

1970—Talking To Myself

1971—Then Truth Will Out

1972—To Free or Freeze, That is the Question

1973—Instead of Violence

1973—Who’s Listening

1974—Free Man’s Almanac

1974—Having My Way

1975—Castles in the Air

1975—The Love of Liberty

1976—Comes the Dawn

1977—Awake for Freedom’s Sake

1978—Vision

1978—Liberty: Legacy of Truth

1979—The Freedom Freeway

1980—Seeds of Progress

1981—Thoughts Rule the World

1981—How Do We Know

1982—The Path of Duty

2017
Published under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Table of Contents

1937—Romance of Reality

Preface

I. Debunking the Labels

II. The Nature of the Problem

III. The “X” Factor

IV. Does Over-Expansion of Government Subvert the “X” Factor?

V. Government Intervention Subverts the “X” Factor

VI. The Subversion of the “X” Factor By Government Mis-direction

VII. Does Inflation Subvert the “X” Factor?

VIII. The Subversive Aspects of the “NRA” Idea

IX. What About Consumer Judgment?

X. Miscellaneous Subversions

XI. The Promotive Effects of A Good Government

XII. The Promotive Effects of Machinery

XIII. The Promotive Possibilities of Group Activity

XIV. Addendum

1946—I’d Push the Button

1948—Pattern for Revolt

Foreword

The Political Setting

Acceptance Speech at Smithville

First Campaign Speech at Kansas City

Eighth Campaign Speech at Los Angeles

Election Eve Message at Meridian

Inaugural Message at Washington

1950—Students of Liberty

Man Is Interdependent

The Principle of Violence

Policemen with Guns

Early American Experiment

Communism Rejected

The Reason for Government

Officials Are Still Persons

No Aggression

Protection and Dependency

A Vital Measure

The Evil of Tariffs

Violence Has Many Names

A Measure of Lost Freedom

A Sobering Comparison

Violence Breeds Violence

The Determination of Value

Minor Violence Leads to Major Violence

Alternative to Violence

Intellectual Caesarism

With Eyes to See

Two Types of Action

A Mania for Organizing

Organization Is Little Understood

Organization Can Be Useful

Organization Can Be Harmful

A Pernicious Idea

On Selecting a Logical Source

Danger of False Optimism

False Supporters of Liberty

A Positive Harm

Fear Is Not Understanding

Self-Improvement

Liberty Is the Absence of Coercion

An Infinite Pursuit

The Death of Creative Thought

Violence Retards Progress

New Name for Lost Liberties

A Student of Liberty

Destruction and Creation

Who Has Influence?

Who Is a Teacher?

In Search of Understanding

The Student Attitude

Moral and Intellectual Attitudes

Intellectual Integrity

A New Insight

Pre-Conditions to Understanding

Search Here

On Saying the World

The Wave Theory

Recommendations of Reason

1951—Conscience on the Battlefield

The Prologue

The Dialogue

The Epilogue

1951—Outlook for Freedom

A Growing Danger

Communism Is Not Geographic

All Except One

An Honest Man

Most Americans Believe in Socialism

Socialism Is State Ownership or Control

A Belief in Force

Public Education

The Post Office

Social Security

Government Golf

TVA, Rent Control, Tariffs, Wages, Prices

Two Paths to the Same Goal

Loss of Faith in Freedom

Morality Versus Legality

How NOT to Win Friends

The Nature of Influence

Two Kinds of Influence

How Are Teachers Selected?

The Student Designates His Teacher

You Can’t Shoot an Idea

Each Discovery Is Made by One Person

Hosts to Socialism

Negation is of Little Value

Affirmation Is Required

The Law of Probabilities

In Accord with Right Principle

Preparing for Truth

Ultimate Wisdom

Intellectual Integrity

Humility

Love of Freedom

Responsibility for Self

Principles and Ideals

Rejection of Force as a Creative Agent

Advancement of Understanding

Coinage to Stand Alone

A Spirit of Inquiry

Patience

Stance

Every Person Is Capable of Improvement

Freedom Is Not Outside of Man

Outlook for Freedom

Quality Comes First

What Would Christ Do?

Only the Right Is Practical

1954—Government—An Ideal Concept

Introduction

Foreword

Part I: The Concept Defined

The Positive Approach

Anarchy Is Untenable

An Inaccurate Term

No Ideal Theory

Two Defenses

Examining The Basis For Government

Each Is Different

Results Of Inhibitions

Our Dependence On Interdependence

Interdependence Is Good

Energy And The Exchange Problem

Human Energy Is Diverse

Kinetic Energy

Energy In Motion

Remove Inhibitory Influences

Absence Of Energy

Flowing Energy

Diverted Energy

Life Demands Differences

Personal Inhibitions

Unwilling Exchange

Society’s Problem

All Are Related

Not A Personal Problem

Justice In Organization

Equal Rights

To Recapitulate

Purpose Of Organization

Nature Of Political Agency

Russia Is No Exception

Choice Increases Efficiency

Unanimity Requires Common Interest

Limitation Of Government Prescribed By Its Justification

Two Types Of Force

Tool Of Liberty

Part II: The Concept Argued

From The General To The Particular

How To Stop Thinking

Explanations And Receptivity Required

Is Tax Collection Aggression?

Roots Into The Past

Shirking Obligations

Persons Their Own Rulers

Conscription

Obligations And Rights

Source Of Delegated Powers

Conscription Is Aggression

World Government

No Free Nations

Let Limited Government Concepts Be Extended

Responsiveness Of Local Government

Governments Aren’t Governed

Natural Boundaries

Increasing Trade

Depressions

Liberty Never Wholly Accepted

Unemployment

Purpose Of Statistics

Money

An Instrument Of Fraud

A False Base?

A Cue?

The Biggest Governmental Error Of All

Enemy Or Servant?

Blank Checks

The Servant As Sovereign

Too Much Government Causes Booms And Busts

More On Aggressive And Defensive Force

Stop!

From Defense To Aggression Is Simple

Public Housing, An Example Of Aggression

Parasitism And Viciousness Endorsed

That Which Is Not Seen

The Fate Of Aggressors

Nature of Aggressive Force

The Aggressor At Work

Urges To Aggression

Learning By Rote No Good

Necessity For Point Of Reference

Means And Ends

End Pre-Exists In Means

If There Were No Aggression At All

Faith In Free Men

Foreign Aid

But What About Aggression In Education?

Aggression Begets Aggression

If Aggressive Force Were Removed

Religion And Education

The Fool Is Always Someone Else

Child-Parent Relationship

Education A Life-Long Process

More And Better Education

Aids To A Restoration Of Faith

Opposing Aggressive Force In Education

Erroneous Reputations

The Free Market And Protagonists

Socialism And Protagonists

There Is No Free-Market Blueprint

The Free Market Is Humanitarian

Socialism Is Jungle Law

Energy And Energy Exchanges Illustrated

Things Received From Others

The World Of Miracles

Victims Of Hallucinations

Clichés

The Purpose Of Liberty

1958—I, Pencil

Introduction

I, Pencil

Afterword by Milton Friedman

1958—Why Not Try Freedom?

Foreword

1. Government—An Ideal Concept

2. Historical Approaches to Ideal Government

3. Current Deviations from Ideal Government

4. Causes of Authoritarianism

5. Libertarian Means and Methods

1962—Elements of Libertarian Leadership

Foreword

1. Faith and Freedom

2. Consistency Requires a Premise

3. Booby Traps

4. Why Do We Lose Liberty?

5. Emergence of a Leadership

6. Humility and Leadership

7. Integrity and Leadership

8. The Methods of Leadership

9. The Manners of Leadership

10. Aids to Leadership

11. Three Levels of Leadership

12. Can Busy People Become Libertarian Leaders?

13. Liberated!

1964—Anything That’s Peaceful

Introduction

1. A Break with Prevailing Faith

2. The American Setting: Past and Present

3. Strife as a Way of Life

4. Socialism Is Noncreative

5. How Socialism Harms the Individual

6. How Socialism Harms the Economy

7. How Pressure Groups Promote Inflation

8. Appoint a Committee!

9. Regardless of Choice, Vote!

10. On Keeping the Peace

11. Only God Can Make a Tree—or a Pencil

12. The Most Important Discovery in Economics

13. The Greatest Computer on Earth

14. Mail by Miracle

15. Whose Academic Freedom?

16. Education for the Sake of Others

17. Education for One’s Own Sake

18. In Pursuit of Excellence

Updated List of Works Cited

1965—The Free Market and Its Enemy

1. The Drummer I Hear

2. The Miraculous Market

3. The Enemy: A Psychosis

4. I Don’t Know

5. Incomprehensible Order

1967—Deeper Than You Think

Prologue

I. Causes Run Deeper Than We Suppose

II. Look to the Stars

III. What Seek Ye First?

IV. The Human Situation

V. Saying What You Really Mean

VI. The Robot Explosion

VII. The Measure of Growth

VIII. The Macro Malady

IX. When Wishes Become Rights

X. What Shall It Profit a Man?

XI. Concerning Self and Others

XII. The Origins of Power

XIII. The Political Way

XIV. The Natural Way

XV. Intelligent Curiosity

XVI. Darkness Recedes as Light Increases

XVII. A Formula for Happiness

XVIII. Economics for Boys and Girls

Epilogue

1967—Where Lies This Fault?

Accommodating Caesar

Easy Come, Easy Go

These Have Given Up The Ghost

These Are The No-thinks

These Are The Over-thinks

These Are The Remnant

Recruit Possibilities

The Fault Is Mine!

Freedom Cannot Be Rationally Defined

The Role of Awe

Wisdom is Awareness

1968—Accent on the Right

Dedication

1. The Source of Progress

2. On Thinking for Self

3. Accent on the Right

4. Find the Wrong, and There’s the Right

5. Right and Wrong, Side by Side

6. Count Your Blessings

7. To Each His Own

8. Coping with Poverty

9. In Harmony with Creation

10. Man’s Mobility

11. Accent on Awareness

12. Don’t Look Back

1969—Let Freedom Reign

Prologue

1. The Pollution Problem

2. A Role For Rationality

3. Let’s Be Philosophers

4. You Can’t Transplant a Faculty

5. The Miracle of a Meal

6. Confessions of a Rich Man

7. Governmental Discipline

8. Free Market Disciplines

9. The Bloom Pre-Exists in the Seed

10. Agree With Me!

11. If Freedom Had Only Enemies

12. The Art of Doing Something

13. The Magic Number is One

14. The Need is Mine

15. Students, Wherever You Are

16. Doctor, Whoever You Are

17. Let Freedom Reign!

Epilogue

1969—The Coming Aristocracy

1. The Coming Aristocracy

2. In Quest of Maturity

3. Expanding Selfhood

4. Finding Words for Common Sense

5. The Cartel Way

6. Faith in the Unimaginable

7. Consider the Alternative

8. Social Reformers as Keepers of the Peace

9. Rising Above Mediocrity

10. Faulty Correlations

11. The Myth of the See-It-All

12. The Law Without

13. The Law Within

14. Education, the Libertarian Way

15. Influence, the Libertarian Way

16. The Biggest Project on Earth

17. The Consistent Life

18. In Quest of Perfection

19. I See a Light

Appendix

1970—Talking to Myself

1. Go where the action is

2. Know them by their cheers

3. Talking to myself about excellence

4. Eduction versus propaganda

5. Getting results—here and now

6. Sinking in a sea of buts

7. The urgency argument

8. Why freedom is not trusted

9. When freedom becomes second nature

10. Getting to know beans

11. Games we play with labor

12. The dilemma of value

13. Don’t throw out the baby

14. The right to do as I please

15. Reflections on the guilt complex

16. Forget the common man

17. One big strong organization

18. Lump thinking

19. The decadence theory of reform

20. High time to awake

21. Read’s law

22. The “freedom” that leads to slavery

23. The fiction known as “we”

24. Civil obedience

25. Patience! It’s brighter than you think

1971—Then Truth Will Out

1. A Confession of Faith

2. The Kingdom on Earth

3. Who Are Your Friends?

4. The Wisdom in Knowing I Know Not

5. The Unruly Consensus

6. The King Can Do No Right!

7. Leave It to the Free Market!

8. How to Be a Benefactor

9. A Laborer Looks at Freedom

10. A Consumer Looks at Freedom

11. A Conservationist Looks at Freedom

12. Nothing Fails Like Something-for-Nothing

13. Progress Depends on Freedom

14. Behind the Synthetic Curtain

15. Why Flatter the Communists?

16. Defiance of Law

17. Resist Not Evil

18. On Spreading the Word

19. On Labeling an Ideal

20. A Return to Reading

21. Readiness Is All

22. The Will to Prevail

Addendum

1972—To Free or Freeze, That is the Question

1. How Loose The Talk

2. When Rationing Comes

3. To Execute a 180

4. The Crystal Ball Fantasy

5. Voluntary Parameters

6. The Quick Freeze

7. Adrift And Without Compass

8. Looking In The Mirror

9. To Avarice No Sanction

10. The Role of Rules

11. Harmonizing to Each His Own

12. How Everyone Can Gain

13. Economics: A Branch of Moral Philosophy

14. The Case For Dictatorship

15. Uncle Sam As Quarterback

16. The Worrycrats

17. Personal and Confidential

18. On Plagiarism

19. Speak For Yourself, John

20. Education, the Free Market Way

21. Am I Constantly Correcting?

22. Bonded to Conscience

23. Little Lessons From Big Themes

24. For Want of Light

25. Where Lies Our Hope?

26. A Time For Action

27. Emergent Energy

28. The World’s Most Important Person

1973—Instead of Violence

1973—Who’s Listening

1. Who’s Listening? I Am!

2. Thou Fool

3. Economic Readiness

4. You Rascal, You!

5. Pilot Errors

6. Sheltering Ideologies

7. What Do You Have Against The Poor?

8. Despotic And Hypothetic Authority

9. Great or Celebrated?

10. The Law of Action and Reaction

11. The Right I Owe You

12. Restraint or Release?

13. Two Ways of Living Off Others

14. Justice Versus Social Justice

15. The Winds That Blow

16. To Thine Own Self Be True

17. The Role of Exuberance

18. Ye of Little Faith

19. The Mystique of Wisdom

20. How to Be Like Socrates

21. Voices in the Wilderness

22. Open Versus Closed Minds

23. Leadership Redefined

24. Mr. Anonymous

25. The Connoisseur in Society

26. The Inmost and the Outmost

27. Off the Beaten Track

28. Is There Time Enough?

29. Actually, What’s the Hurry?

30. Finding Out

1974—Having My Way

1. How I May Have My Own Way

2. Humility: The Way of Freedom

3. The Meek Shall Inherit The Earth

4. Life Styles

5. Shoemaker, Stick to Your Last

6. The Blessings of Adversity

7. Appeal to the Intellect

8. Await Discovery

9. Say What You Mean

10. The Confession of Error

11. Penalty of Surrender

12. Worship, A Singular Thing

13. The Fear of Freedom

14. Inequality Enshrined

15. The Revealing Self

16. Railing Against Folly

17. Time-Lapse Thinking

18. Buy American

19. Reverence, That Angel of the World

20. Sisyphus

21. Evil Begun, Rarely Undone

22. The Glory of Work

23. Employment Redefined

24. How to Stop Inflation

25. How Not to Be Owned

26. If I Were King

27. The Right to Quit

28. The Role of Interference

29. Harmony Understood

1975—Castles in the Air

1. Castles in the Air

2. Freedom: A New Vision

3. The Mystery of Social Order

4. Priceless—But Not Free

5. Strive For the Simple Life

6. The Fear of Failure and Success

7. Controls Tell Lies!

8. Shortages Are Human Blunders

9. Political Hocus-Pocus

10. Wizardry

11. Reflections On Gullibility

12. The Blessings of Diversity

13. The Commoners

14. Law Versus Tyranny

15. On Being My Own Man

16. The Invisible Hand

17. From Instinct to Reason to Insight

18. Biting the Hand That Feeds

19. The Sanctifying of Plunder

20. Trust Thyself—Some Others Do

21. Aim to Be A Seer

22. Believe The Best of Every Man

23. I Like You, Too

24. The Greatest Game in Life

25. Who Is A Teacher?

26. The Rare Moment

27. Still More To Do?

28. Faith Works Miracles

1975—The Love of Liberty

1. The Love of Liberty

2. Liberty: The Golden Mean

3. Finding Words For Common Sense

4. The Material: A Source of Life

5. Learn How to Live With Wealth!

6. Those Things Called Money

7. The Costword Puzzle

8. The Roots of Concord And Discord

9. The Mischief of Myths

10. The Appeal of Arrogance

11. Socialism: The Offspring of Apathy

12. Socialism Grows Like Weeds

13. The Rise And Fall of Self-Reliance

14. Thank God For The Mess We’re In

15. Wringing Out The Mess

16. Police: Friend or Foe?

17. What We Can Learn From A Communist

18. From Whom Seek Praise?

19. Rising to Moral Heights

20. Ideas Are Real

21. On Giving And Receiving

22. Looking For The Magic Key

23. Be-Attitudes

24. The School of Mankind

25. The Point of Cure

26. Right Now!

1976—Comes the Dawn

1. Comes the Dawn

2. Life’s Greatest Occupation

3. The Heritage We Owe Our Children

4. Our Problems: Blessings in Disguise

5. The Role of Differences

6. Two Directions at Once

7. Pre-Emptors: Agents of Destruction

8. The Vagaries of Value Judgments

9. Idle Words

10. Are You Out of Your Mind?

11. Herded, Or Headed One’s Own Way?

12. How Measure Growth?

13. Idolizing Error

14. Freedom to Choose—But What?

15. Promises Men Do and Do Not Live By

16. The Case for Seeking

17. Am I a Part of the Problem?

18. Where Look for Our Emancipators?

19. Let’s Look to Our Principles

20. The Charitable Economist

21. The Good Life: A Flowing Action

22. The Wonder of Wonders

23. The Authentic Hero

24. Humility: The Right Estimate of Self

25. Let’s Count Our Blessings

1977—Awake for Freedom’s Sake

1. Awake For Freedom’s Sake

2. Opportunities Unlimited

3. An American Mirage

4. Eruptions of Truth

5. War and Peace

6. Kakistocracy

7. On Subsidies and Regulations

8. Attuned To Freedom

9. Weeding One’s Garden

10. Dear Me

11. Reformers: Victims of Vanity?

12. Ayes Versus I’s

13. Heads Up

14. Too Rare For the Wings of Words?

15. Life’s Achievement: Inner or Outer Directed?

16. To Make Good Ideas More Welcome

17. Evangelism: To Be Sold or Shared?

18. If You Can’t Lick ’Em, Jine ’Em

19. Thoughts: Fountain of Our Destiny

20. Evolve For Your Own Sake

21. Freedom: A Youthful Adventure

22. The Courage to Stand Alone

23. Emphasize The Positive

24. Through Darkness to Light

25. The Mystery of Attraction

26. It’s How We Use Our Liberty

27. A Word From the Wise

1978—Liberty

1. Liberty: Legacy of Truth

2. Faith: The Leaven of Liberty

3. Hope

4. Charity

5. Let the Objective Be High

6. Reflections on Hope and Fear

7. Seeking Saves Souls

8. Character

9. Courage

10. Order

11. The Captain is on the Bridge

12. To Tolerate or Not?

13. The Conservation of Energy

14. Violence: The Striker’s Tool

15. Socialism: Legalized Evil

16. Who Shall Rule the Rulers?

17. The Danger of Success

18. Problems Miracles Pose

19. Hollow or Hallow Days?

20. Elementary Education

21. In Search of Mysteries

22. The Pleasures of Aging

1978—Vision

1. Vision

2. Lessons From Afar

3. Loot

4. The Service Motive

5. Civilized: Ramrod Straight For Freedom!

6. Solving The Energy Crisis Is Simple

7. Changes and Exchanges

8. Why Freedom Works Its Wonders

9. The Guaranteed Life Is A Hoax

10. The Folly of Compulsion

11. Why Not Separate School and State?

12. Asleep at the Switch

13. Quoth the Raven. “Evermore”

14. This Tide of Unreason

15. Ignorance: Agent of Destruction

16. The Show-Off Is Way Off

17. On Going to Extremes

18. The Role of Self-Discipline

19. Why Seek The Light?

20. Explore and Explore and Explore!

21. Reflections on Praise and Criticism

22. Is There Time Enough?

23. Won By One

24. Out of Evil: Good!

25. Humility: The Remedy for Egomania?

1979—The Freedom Freeway

1. The Freedom Freeway

2. The Socialization of Sin

3. The Menace Of Meddlers

4. Coercion: A Popular Illusion

5. Dedication or Decadence?

6. Prophets of Doom

7. Utopia: Despotism in Disguise

8. The Infallible I

9. The Vagaries of Belief

10. Quote the Wise if Thou Would be Likewise

11. Liberty and Union: One and Inseparable

12. Why Let Worry Ruin Our Lives?

13. Teaching: Revealing the Unknown

14. Resolution: A Freedom Imperative

15. Perseverance: A Key to Freedom

16. Let There Be Light

17. Morality: Its Ups and Downs

18. Coping With Darkness

19. Nature’s Law of Change

20. Our Times Demand Statesmen!

21. The Idea With An L: Ideal

22. Reading and Writing

23. Glory Be!

24. Laws That Make and/or Break Mankind

1980—Seeds of Progress

1. Little Things: The Seeds of Progress

2. Political Bungling

3. Two Ways to Go Wrong

4. The Pretender’s Plague

5. Political Stealing

6. Living: By Rote or By What’s Right

7. Authority: To Be Embraced or Rejected?

8. Good Doers Or Do-Gooders?

9. Fickle Contradictions

10. “About Face”: Reformers!

11. Flowers: Emblems of Human Flowering

12. The Blessings of Moral Obligations

13. Twin Virtues: Responsible and Responsive

14. To Acquire? Desire and Aspire!

15. Believe In This Miracle: Freedom

16. The Glory of Our Worlds Galore

17. The Source of Wisdom

18. The Keys to Greatness

19. Living The Good Life

20. Influence: Its Eternal Radiation

21. Finding One’s Duty

22. So Highly Endowed

23. Toward the Ideal

24. As A Man Thinketh

25. The Power of Tomorrow

1981—How Do We Know?

1. How Do We Know?

2. Read Good Books For Improved Thinking

3. The Opponent of Happiness

4. Righteousness Leads to Happiness

5. Aflame With Righteousness

6. Faith Gone to Work

7. Our Hoped-For America

8. Sparked With Personal Liberty

9. Exerting A Useful Influence

10. Opportunity: The Great Art of Life?

11. The Triumph of Civilization

12. Our Duty and Its Rewards

13. The Steps to Greatness

14. The Pursuit of Virtue

15. The Unfolding Life

16. Yield Not to Temptation

17. Making the Most of One’s Self

18. Resolution Works Wonders

19. The Good Within Our Reach

20. Our Work? Time Will Tell

21. The Touchstone of Progress

22. All Is Mystery

23. The Steppingstones to Knowledge

24. What The Looking Glass Reveals

25. One Way to Assess the Future

26. Have A Strong Clear Purpose

27. Strive to Be A Nobleman

1981—Thoughts Rule the World

1. Thoughts Rule the World

2. Freedom is Not Free

3. Pre-emption: Legal Thievery

4. Good Intentions Gone Astray

5. Woe Betide Ye of Little Trust

6. Little Men Cause Big Government

7. Goodness: The First Step to Freedom

8. Dependence and Independence

9. The Free Mind

10. Love Makes the World Go Round

11. The Practice of Manners and Morals

12. Why the President Said No

13. Obligations Spawn Mental Growth

14. Our Mutual Obligations

15. The Role of Goals

16. The Voice of Conscience

17. The Emergence of Truth

18. Aspire to See Afar

19. From the “Known” to the Unknown

20. The Masters of Victory

21. The Power of Thinking Joyously

22. Thoughts: Dead or Alive?

23. Count Our Blessings, Not Miseries

24. Reaping the Blessings of Freedom

25. Perfection? Knowing Our Imperfections

26. Good News

1982—The Path of Duty

1. The Path of Duty

2. The Purpose of Wealth

3. How to Become A Millionaire

4. Vanity and Virtue

5. The Limits of Knowledge

6. Poverty Has Its Advantages

7. The Enjoyment of Truth

8. Several Facets of Freedom

9. Education For Virtue

10. My Rights Are Your Rights

11. Fearless and Free

12. Self-Improvement

13. Exalting the Common Good

14. Choose Statesmen, Not Politicians

15. The Source of Progress

16. Say “Yes” to Life

17. Kindness and Intelligence

18. Sublime Example

19. Earnest Resolution

20. Attraction

21. A Benefactor to Mankind

22. Govern Thyself

23. There is Time Enough

24. Sweet Land of Liberty

25. To Aspire After Virtue

26. Greatness

Romance of Reality

Leonard E. Read

1937

To LEONARD, Jr., and JIMMIE

PREFACE

That this work, from the standpoint of my motives, experiences, education and general background, may, to the unacquainted, be disrobed of the mysteries usual to anonymity, permit me the confessions of this preface.

I am thirty-eight. I have two sons, twelve and fifteen, for whom I desire an America of opportunity. However, my observations of current trends, made clearer than otherwise possible because of the nature of my work, leave me with some apprehensions as to what the future holds for Leonard, Jr., and Jimmie.

My background is a common one. Born on a Michigan farm near a little Irish-settled village, my boyhood was spent amidst the exacting necessities of people in our moderate circumstances. Disciplined in hard work, educated in reading, writing and arithmetic, I entered the era of responsibility at the early age of eleven upon the death of my father.

Up at four in the morning, milking cows, cleaning stables and general farm chores, I found time to run down to Fish Creek to inspect my traps. A hasty breakfast, to the village general store at eight to sweep out and arrange stock, school at nine, away from there at four to more chores, supper and to the store again until it closed at nine. Romance? More than any pampered millionaire’s son—I loved it!

1917 and War! Away I went—to England, Scotland, Ireland, France, Germany. Was on the “Tuscania”—it sank! Nearly two years over there, in the air service. Flyer? No, just a mechanic and only a private.

Back to America in ’19. Disillusioned? Not a bit. Went to work—first insurance, then as cashier in a factory. Then into the wholesale produce business—on a “shoestring” and knowing little about it. Worked like the devil, two in the morning until six at night. Six years of fight, a two-fisted business, that game. Romance? Plenty. A home, car, radio and I’m a man with a family. Went broke. Sold home, car, everything to liquidate with honest decency. Learned something about business from that.

Discouraged? No. That word wasn’t taught to Wolverine farm boys, then. Took the next train to California. Went to work first day selling real estate on commission. Did it a year—made a living.

Always trying something about which I knew nothing. Accepted secretaryship Burlingame Chamber of Commerce. Made fair record and was given better position at Palo Alto. Was offered, and accepted, position as assistant manager, Western Division, Chamber of Commerce of the United States. For more than four years now I have been Manager of that Division.

Little significance to all of this except it does indicate that opportunity was open to me. It suggests the results of work—27 consecutive years with a job of some kind—romance in all of it. That’s the kind of chance I want for my boys.

The present drift of political and economic currents, as I see them, portends disaster. No particular class of citizens—labor, business, politics, agriculture—seems to have a monopoly on social vice or economic virtue, but a direction away from true American liberalism or, more precisely, liberalism as I will presently define it, seems evident among all classes.

The problem, “Impoverishment in the Midst of Plenty,” on which I propose to offer some ideas, is one which I have a driving passion to solve, at least to find a formula by which it may be solved. We have come nearer to a solution in America than anywhere else. At times we were “warm” but apparently there has been no unanimity of opinion as to why we ever came even close to a solution.

Thus, the objective of this effort, like that ascribed to the collectivists, is worthy and lofty. But the method? Ah, there is the catch—the method. Solutions have ranged everywhere from the Single Tax to the Townsend Plan, the objective in each case being worthy. Nothing as automatic or as easy here. Rather the idea calls for the general practice of some difficult human virtues. The thesis is reactionary because it calls for reality. It is radical because it demands an overthrow of present indulgences. To the stickler for labels, what does that make me?

Such flaws as the reader notes can be blamed on my own thinking and on my inadequate ability to express ideas which, to say the least, are complicated. A few lines, here and there, have been lifted bodily from some speech or book. For instance, the quotation from “Iolanthe” appearing at the beginning of the first chapter, and the term “politically-managed labels” on the same page, represent pure plagiarism. They were taken from Mr. Nock’s article appearing in the October, 1936, issue of the Atlantic Monthly.

While I believe my general idea of identifying some of our behaviors as either promotive or subversive to the factor that makes for a wider diffusion of wealth to the population to be a good one, I fully recognize my shortcomings in detailing those behaviors. That is a field that should be reserved for, and incidentally undertaken by, the competent philosophers and economists. It is one of the compelling necessities of the moment.

This work merely represents a serious attempt at “thinking through” by one whose formal education contributed little to such processes. Quite naturally, such thinking results in many rough edges, which I hope the more skilled will tolerantly indulge for the sake of the broader argument.

The broader argument contends there is a definable factor which, if promoted, will tend to do away with poverty and unemployment and, conversely, if subverted, will tend to destroy the possibility of more goods and more services for more people. It is really an argument on the problem of wealth, approached in a different manner than is customary.

Time and again I did mental stumbles into economic blind alleys. When I had the wisdom to recognize my position and the good sense to admit my predicament, such friends as W. C. Mullendore, Professor Thomas Nixon Carver, Dr. George L. Hoxie, Philip J. Fay and James Mussatti came to the rescue. But in giving them much deserved credit, let no blame attach to their persons for my mistakes. A hesitancy to admit difficulties and a stubbornness to proposals from whatever source, have combined to keep this work a distinctly personal and therefore a highly fallible effort. But there is a theme here for which even I, in my humility, will make no apology.

—Leonard E. Read

CHAPTER I

DEBUNKING THE LABELS

“I often think it comical

How nature always does contrive

That every boy and every gal

That’s born into this world alive,

Is either a little Liberal

Or else a little Conservative.”

—W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe[1]

What a verse that rollicking fun artist could write today! To Liberal and Conservative he would have to add Radical, Reactionary and Progressive. Not that these labels did not exist when this verse was written—they did. But they hardly possessed the wide application or the confusion of meaning they do today. Nor were they so tangled among Democratic, Republican, New Deal, Red, Pink, Communistic, Socialistic and Fascist.

No sober discussion of public questions is possible at this time without first clearing the thinking atmosphere of these politically managed labels.[1] Few thoughts of others are accepted without first comparing colors, labels or isms. If these do not match, then the projector of a thought is obviously steeped in prejudice—he is a tool of the “interests” or of the masses—or he is, as one Washingtonian has said, “just too damn dumb.”

Perhaps if everyone, sporting a particular color, label or ism, had an exact and corresponding political or economic philosophy, we could readily grade the profundity of all utterance. But, alas, that is far from the case. If what Gilbert thought was comical, then what we are experiencing is the extreme of ludicrous burlesque.

By their opponents, New Dealers are called socialistic, red, pink, communistic, radical, and ofttimes reactionary. They call themselves liberal, progressive and, if appealing to business men, conservative. A Democrat may be a New Dealer or he may be a “Jeffersonian,” which has popularly come to mean just the opposite. A Republican may be a New Dealer or just the opposite also. If he is the opposite, he calls himself a conservative, if he wants election to office he is too liberal to be a conservative or, if he wants office badly enough, he may even confess to being a progressive. To a New Dealer, an anti-New Deal Republican is at best a reactionary, shrinking from there on to a Tory, an unreconstructed Tory, an Economic Royalist; or he may be so low as to be termed a “tool of entrenched greed.” It is just one beautiful mess of brotherly love and affection.

What chance has logic against these head-winds of hate? To criticize one’s government is to invite oneself before the firing squads of the literary mercenaries. To sponsor or defend an economic principle to which current passions may be opposed is to ask for the dunce cap of an odious label. Can this be designed to encourage free discussion and individual interest in state matters upon which the success of our form of government is supposed to be predicated?

Labels, however, can be untangled. It might be possible to give some vague meaning to them as they are presently used, but that would be to little avail for their meanings change as regularly as the sun sets. New meanings are given to any label when a change will serve a political purpose. Conclusion: we are the dupes of a politically managed glossary.

Only the literal meanings can be classified. Such classification is useful mainly to understand the reasons for the present distortions. Who likes to be called a Reactionary? And to be dubbed a Conservative has sadly become just a shade less nocuous. But to be called a Liberal is glorious! And why should it not be? Let us examine a few of these terms and see if we can unearth some of the reasons for these word distortions.

Liberalism as a movement was born when the Magna Charta was exacted from King John at Runnymede over seven centuries ago. It was born of an era when governments were characterized by their despotism and economic practices lived under feudalism. This liberal movement, liberal because it was aimed at the liberalization of the individual from government coercion, progressed slowly but surely and, step by step, over a period of five centuries, drew nearer to its ultimate realization—the American form of constitutional government and its relation to and observation of natural economic law. Thus was experienced a complete transition from the philosophy that the individual is the servant of the state to the American philosophy that the state is but the instrument and the servant of the individual. No small wonder then that the title Liberal is so avidly sought by political self-seekers whether they are liberals or not. Because of the centuries-old struggle for individual freedom which was Liberalism and which blossomed into full bloom as America, it is, of course, the smart thing to sail one’s political ship under the liberal banner irrespective of its philosophical cargo. In these United States it is just good vote-getting fly-paper.

A Radical is one who desires to uproot something. If he wants to uproot liberty he is anything but liberal. The liberal movement from the Magna Charta to The Bill of Rights was radical because it was a movement to uproot despotism, centralized political control and coercive economic practices. Therefore, as Liberal became synonymous with desirable political and economic movements, so, to the unanalytical, the term Radical—because of its age-old association with Liberal—has become synonymous with Liberal.

Present-day radicals have wrongly appropriated the word Liberal. Present-day radicals are bent on uprooting liberalism. They seek constitutional amendments so that bureaucracy, centralized governmental and economic control—the very essence of despotism—may be substituted for individual self-management and local self-government—the very essence of liberalism.

Reactionary means ultraconservative. As presently defined, it would mean a return to everything that characterized our practices and ways prior to the 1929 debacle, good and bad. Back in King John’s time it would have meant a return to all the practices of despotism and of feudalism, good and bad. However, it can have a narrower definition: a reaction against a contemporary event or events. Thus, a reactionary could be either a liberal or a conservative or, as pointed out later, both.

A Conservative is one who desires to conserve something. If he wants to conserve liberty he is both a conservative and a liberal. If he wants to conserve a coercive system of government he is both a conservative and a coercionist, the opposite of a liberal. A conservative is one who wants to conserve the best of the old order and who is not in sympathy with radical movements. Like Radicalism its meaning in relation to liberalism has become just the opposite of what it once was. The conservative of King John’s time did not believe in the liberal movement but rather wanted to conserve the best of the coercive monarchical government and the regimented feudal system. The conservative of today does not believe in the trend of the radicals back to centralized control or extreme government interference, which is the modern counterpart for the monarchical government and the feudal system against which our forefathers fought; but rather insists on conserving liberalism and the best of the order which found liberalism at its fullest.

Thus today, a conservative is a liberal and what a radical once was; that is, he is fighting to conserve what the radical once fought to achieve. A radical today is no longer a liberal but what a conservative once was. He is fighting to achieve what the conservatives of old were trying then to conserve. If the contemporary radical is attempting to revive the best in dictatorships or centralized authoritarian governments, then we may well let him off with the not too complimentary title of a “horse and chariot” conservative; that is, if “horse and chariot” properly implies a conservative of seven hundred years ago.

Those confusions, however much they may be caused from a misunderstanding of definitions, have their base in something deeper, perhaps in mass emotions, kindled, fired and fanned into devastating flames by the honeyed words, the cherubic smiles, the fantastic romanticism and the soul-stirring oratory of politicians whose behavior is too far removed from statesmanship.

These intriguing demagogues, by the subtle device of basking under self-made halos of liberalism and humanism, have been largely responsible for the popular and false assumption that righteousness and radicalism belong one to the other, that radical thought has a monopoly on virtue. That devilish device is still useful simply because the public mind, as yet, has not erased the indelible impression gained by a five-century association of the terms Radical and Liberal with humanism and everything else that was directed toward the public interest. The public mind has not yet dissociated Radical and Liberal. It has not yet perceived that these once synonymous terms are now antithetical terms.

A radical states his social objectives and, because they smack of righteousness and are generally acceptable, the masses too often leap to the indefensible conclusion that the methods proposed are equally efficacious. As a result of all this, i. e., the false association of Radical and Liberal and the false association of Liberal and Righteousness, the term Liberal has popularly lost much of its true meaning. There has developed the peculiar notion that Liberal, as today misapplied, is a synonym of virtue, moral rectitude, nobleness of intention and purity of character, and that Conservative is synonymous with an evil course, immoral intent, inhuman practices and economic privilege. The radicals and the demagogues have done a good job of foisting their designs on the gullible public, of perverting the English language to their own ends.

It is not considered merely conservative but actually reactionary to favor a balanced budget, to argue for tax reduction, to urge thrift, to defend individual liberty, to protect the fundamentals of the Constitution, to demand the sanctity of contracts or to insist on a stable currency. To support the Constitution was once considered patriotic—it is now partisan.

It is not considered radical but rather liberal to seek inflation, to abrogate individual rights, to usurp federally the prerogatives of local self-government, to spend beyond our capacity to pay, to peg prices artificially, to build bureaucracy, to stimulate class prejudices, and it is simply extremely liberal to advocate a Townsend Plan or a Share-the-Wealth scheme.

This misconception and mal-association of terms has developed many evils, not the least of which has been a serious destruction of faith in our responsible and competent leadership. The mere opposition of any measure which has been radical-labeled Liberal is of itself sufficient to nullify, in the public mind, experienced views of an opposer. Must not this oppositionist be a reactionary and therefore his aims inconsistent with the goal of the “new order”? Without reasoning through the separate measures, superficial conclusions are hastily accepted. Such an oppositionist, so it is thought, cannot possibly be thinking of the human side, cannot be thinking of society in general. Have his opponents not stated or at least implied publicly and oratorically that they are the sole possessors of such Christian qualities and ideals? Have his opponents not called him dishonest and earmarked him as among the “money changers to be driven from the temple”? Has he not been publicly and officially generalized as a culprit? He has no sympathy except for himself, why should his advice be heeded?

So runs the argument and on its face it is correct if the ministrations of some of our public officials are considered impeccable. But are they? Let us diagnose this person who dares not claim the liberal label and who by the radicals and self-styled liberals is called a reactionary in a voice that breathes of blasphemy.

In the first place this person may be a conservative because he wishes to conserve liberalism and the best of that order. He may be a conservative because he is opposed to the radicals who would uproot liberalism and take us once again to centralized, coercive and despotic governmental and economic control. He is not of necessity a reactionary because he may not wish to preserve the bad practices that grew up under liberalism. Is it not conceivable that he may want those eliminated? More likely than not, he is not among that small fractional per cent whose livelihood is gained by the “vulturizing” of others. No doubt he is the first to want the elimination of vicious, immoral and unethical practices, but he would not burn down the stately mansion to kill the rats. He is properly a liberal for precisely the same reason he is a conservative.

As stated in the preface, the writer has confessed to being a reactionary on one matter, a radical on another. Certainly, he believes himself to be a liberal and there are aspects of our former economy he wishes to conserve, thus giving him the tag of conservative. He wants a new deal from what we are now getting but he looks in vain through the whole roster of party politics for an enunciation of principles he can wholeheartedly support.

The throwing off of these political fetters clears the atmosphere. There is room to think—to approach our problem objectively and without an inherited prejudice. The discussion, however, must not be dispassionate. It would hardly be decent for an American to be calm when he speaks of his country and thinks of the times.

[1] See Preface.

CHAPTER II

THE NATURE OF THE PROBLEM

The present unrest in America, differing from unrest on other occasions in this and other countries, is not a religious issue. There is no conflict between the Church and the State. It is not a moral issue, at least in the broad sense. The chief public concern is not about prohibition, the gaming tables, Sunday baseball or individual immorality. Nor basically, is it a political issue, although it is rapidly becoming one.

The issue is one of an economic character. The people are not uneasy because they desire more religion, better morals or a different political system. They are uneasy because the desire for goods and services, for material things, for wealth, so notoriously exceeds their satisfactions. Many politicians promise more economic satisfactions under a different political order. If they, the people, can be made to believe this, then a different political order is inevitable, whether or not eventually it will increase satisfactions. Merely make ’em believe it!

This desire, fanned into a white heat, encouraged by demagogues who have mistaken their neuroses for mentality, will take almost any avenue that promises satisfaction. It is a safe wager if a new religion came along promising economic bounty, that it would get tens of thousands of clamoring converts. And some churchmen are obviously aware of this fact. Witness the church support given consumer cooperatives.

The fact that more desires are more nearly fulfilled in this country, even under our present strained conditions, than any other country at any other time, offers little solace and in no fashion tends to temper this headlong rush for more things for more people.

Unearthing the exact reasons for this unprecedented insatiability is not so easy. For one thing, human desires are unlimited. Kings, centuries ago, lived in a squalor, a filth hard to imagine today. Our poor do not, nor would we have them, seek satisfaction by such ugly comparisons. Rather they compare their position with their contemporaries better provisioned. Discontent, arising from, this cause, will be eternally evident for there is no system that ever has or ever will give material equality.

No discussion of this subject would be complete without at least quoting from Ortega y Gasset’s excellent work, “The Revolt of the Masses”:[1]

“. . . The world which surrounds the new man from his birth does not compel him to limit himself in any fashion, it sets up no veto in opposition to him, on the contrary, it incites his appetite, which in principle can increase indefinitely. Now it turns out—and this is most important, that this world of the XIXth and early XXth centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase. Even today, in spite of some signs which are making a tiny breach in that faith, even today, there are few men who doubt that motor cars will in five years’ time be more comfortable and cheaper than today. They believe in this as they believe the sun will rise in the morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.”

Certainly, the voice of the demagogue, who depends for his political ascendency upon existing discontent, or discontent he can create, has reached the ears of millions through the radio. In pre-radio days that type of person got little more than soapbox hearing, principally because he, with his nitwit ideas could never make enough money to get himself beyond city parks. In those days the man who couldn’t look after himself had little chance of promising many others how well he could look after them. But today, if he doesn’t get free time on the air, his followers will ante enough two-bit pieces to assure the American public of his Messianic message. The radio has brought many blessings to many people, but assuredly it has made a long-standing chronic problem a most acute one.

No doubt the motion picture is the radio’s able ally. Here again, millions, day in and day out, perhaps on a bare subsistence level, seat themselves in comfortable palaces and gaze at wealth unbounded, at extravagant luxury, at playboys and playgirls in security. What man, even in the ten-thousand-dollar class, has not come away from the cinema with a deep-seated yearning for something common sense dictates is beyond his grasp? What then about the man with a family—a man without a job? For two hours he rides the magic carpet, he is the hero in all his glory—momentarily happy. Time comes to leave this “Aladdin’s Wonder.” He walks from there into the world of stark reality. The contrast is appalling. He will have the things he wants and turns to the quack with the most glowing promises. Is it any wonder there exists such an unaccomplishable distance between desire and realization?

Yet, in the final analysis, these scientific achievements, the radio and the motion picture, modern transportation and many others for that matter, are blessings in disguise, even in respect to this problem of excessive desires. They have aggravated and therefore brought into better perspective an ailment we had with us anyway. They have assisted in bringing into the crisis stage a lingering economic sickness. This crisis stage should stimulate the better minds to consultation. The quacks may lose their lucrative practice. Some of the better citizens may be jarred from their confounded apathy—they may realize, once again, that the price of liberty, of individual rights, of representative government, is eternal vigilance. They may discard with the relics of intoxicated days that nit-witticism, “Let George Do It.”

While no economic system is possible or perhaps desirable that will completely satisfy all the desires of everyone, competent and incompetent alike, it is an obvious fact that we are flagrantly inferior to our potential achievements. And it is equally obvious that present trends are taking us deeper and deeper into the morass of national difficulty.

A national well-being could not help result from a proper mixture of a friendly climate, a productive soil, an abundance of natural and labor resources and human intelligence. Nature has been kind-more than generous—for we have the climate, the soil and the resources. The deficiency then, must be intelligence. It is a damning indictment that there should ever be prolonged want on the part of willing and able-bodied workers amid such favorable conditions. The price of stupidity and apathy is indeed high.

It was stated earlier that on occasion we had been “warm” in tagging the agelong objective of plenty, but that there never has been any unanimity of opinion as to the method of approach.

Were we not “warm” some years ago when a commission of Europeans came to this country to study our conditions? Here are some of the findings of that commission:

1. Seven per cent of the people in the whole world living in the United States under the American plan had more purchasing power than all of Europe.

2. This little group has created and owned more than half the wealth of the world.

3. From only 6 per cent of the world’s acreage we harvested more than half of the world’s foodstuffs.

4. We have half of the world’s communicating facilities.

5. We have nearly half the world’s railway and electric energy.

6. We produce 92 per cent of the world’s automobiles.

7. We have 22,000,000 automobiles in use that run over 600,000 miles of paved road.

8. This little 7 per cent of the world’s population enjoyed standards of living which enabled them to consume:

a. Half the world’s coffee.

b. Half the world’s rubber.

c. Three-fourths the world’s silk.

d. One-third the world’s coal.

e. Two-thirds the world’s crude oil.

Is it not possible that there is some factor in our system that is responsible for this approach to a national plenty? Perhaps we think it is one thing when it really is something none of us identify. What is this “X” factor, this mystery factor? Is not a search for it advisable? Would not that be preferable to tossing the whole system out the window and substituting for it some foreign system, in which perhaps this “X” factor cannot possibly exist? It is quite evident the Europeans came here to discover the “X” factor, but it is equally evident that they went away with a lot of statistics of our wealth, which is about all most of us know about it.

The main purpose of this thesis will be to restate the “X” factor. It is no secret. It has been explained and re-explained but perhaps not in a grammar that caught the imagination. People interested in the problem have gone right by it, trying to find a complicated solution.

Our picture today is something like this:

We have an abundance of investment money but what power can force business to use it unless business can sell the goods it would produce?

We have fine instruments of production—factories and farms—but why produce something that will not be bought?

We have millions of able people out of work and seeking employment but can anyone hire them to produce goods for which there is no market?

We have a wealth of natural resources, but again there is no market for their harvesting.

We have millions of people who need goods but they have no purchasing power.

There is our problem—“Impoverishment in the Midst of Plenty.” All of the instruments for the solution are available. What is the key to the puzzle? What is the “X” factor?

The forces of discontent, the radicals who are trying to change completely or seriously modify our social and economic order, are by no means confined to the impoverished. Nor are the impoverished, by any means, all in radical groupings. People in those groupings have a wide variety of incentives for their position:

Those who feel they can gain power superior to what they now possess by identifying themselves as friends of the poor.

Those who sincerely sympathize with the needy but have only fuzzy ideas of the remedial measures to be taken.

Those who, in the $250, $500 or $1000 monthly income class, feel that the present order does not sufficiently reward their abilities.

Those who have developed a passionate fetish for some form of socialism or other European ism or, in short, the Totalitarian State.

Those who feel that the laws of nature, of economics, of competition are cruel and inhuman and that they can devise an order that is better than that of the universe.

Finally,

Those who are really impoverished—who feel that any change, irrespective of its character, can do them no harm. They have, they think, everything to gain and nothing to lose.

Needless to relate, the last grouping serves as the nucleus around which the others build their case. It is the larder from which they get their emotional sustenance. It is the ember from which their fire is fanned. Impoverishment, in toto, can never be removed. Too many factors, other than economic behavior, have partial control. But the economic barriers can be removed; that is, it is scientifically possible. Once removed, impoverishment will be so inconsiderable that the forces of discontent[2] should go the way of the swarming locust when the sources favorable to breeding no longer exist.

[1] W. W. Norton and Co., Inc., New York.

[2] This statement requires some qualification. Material discontent, is caused by the lag between growing desires and supplied satisfactions. Discontent could conceivably get seriously worse under the most rampant prosperity, that is, should desires expand more rapidly than the prosperity. Many long periods among many poverty-stricken peoples have witnessed far less discontent than one observes in America today.

CHAPTER III

THE “X” FACTOR

Under our form of government we count, we do not weigh, opinion. The fact, therefore, that a certain sound principle may long be recognized as such by an economic-informed few is of little consequence. If the majority is wrong in its thinking, then the direction of the whole is more than likely to be equally wrong.

An important point around which there is much popular confusion is the distinction between price levels and costs. Popular reasoning: “When times have been prosperous, prices have been high. Therefore, the way to make times good again is to force prices up to a former prosperity level.” A perfect analogy of this type of thinking: “When I was rich I bought a Rolls Royce and took a trip around the world. Now that I am poor, I should, in order to be rich again, buy another Rolls Royce and re-circle the globe.”

Price-level changes mean little except disadvantage to the average man. His wages have a tendency to go down with prices—they go up slower than prices. On the whole, however, price levels are fairly meaningless. Prices are high—wages are high, or prices are low—wages are low. We merely change the figures with which we deal. After all is said and done, following a price level rise, we get no more loaves of bread for a day’s labor than before. During the boom years, a favorite American pastime was to mark all goods up and call ourselves rich.

But cost is something else again. If we can buy sixty loaves of bread instead of thirty for a day’s labor, our capacity to acquire wealth, is thereby doubled. Such increased capacity to acquire wealth can be accomplished by a sufficient reduction in the cost of the production and distribution of bread. Therefore, the ability to lower the costs of production and distribution of goods and services, which are the only things that compose wealth, is the paramount requirement in any design of more things for more people. The “X” factor, then, begins to take shape. It can be gradually discerned. Here it is in sharp definition:

The “X” factor is a combination of:

1. The ability to reduce costs;

2. The ability to organize idle labor, land and capital to produce additional goods and services.

3. The free play of forces that compel an exercise of these abilities.

Upon the promotion of this factor depends the extent to which more goods and services will be available to more people. Upon the subversion of this factor depends the extent to which impoverishment will exist in the midst of plenty.

The subsequent discussions of government, business, labor and other groups and forces will be confined to their behavior as they promote or subvert this factor. Assuredly, that is a justifiable basis for criticism or approbation of any action. If we can identify some of the major activities and principles that are either promotive or subversive, we will at least have contributed to the decline of befuddlement.

Should we determine the proper direction in regaining the road of economic progress and should we develop some unanimity of opinion as to the correctness of that direction, it is conceivable we might go in that direction. Certainly, no progress is remotely possible unless we first find the road to take and, second, get enough people to agree to take it. Ordinarily, to get ourselves out of difficulties, we would not need to identify a course of action and then get a lot of people to subscribe to it. Natural forces, normally, could be relied upon to do the job better and quicker than any human design. But we have encumbered natural processes with too many artificialities to place any reliance on their healing our present situation in a sufficiently short time. If we are again to witness progress during our generation, it will be necessary for man to disencumber that which he has encumbered. Such a recommendation is plainly reactionary, but it is a type of reaction that is profoundly human.

An Example of “X” Factor Subversion

You manufacture brick. You run a reasonably efficient plant and are able to compete with your two types of competitors, other brick manufacturers and those who fabricate lumber, concrete and the twenty other building materials. Your ability to keep your costs down enables you to engage in this lusty competition and therefore to maintain your employment.

Let us assume that you have one cost which makes up 5% of your overhead, clerical help, for instance. Now because of sheer carelessness, business ineptitude or because you have been politically sold the proposition that industry should increase employment whether that employment is needed or not, you permit this item of overhead to increase eight times. Absurd? Don’t get ahead of the example, we shall examine that later.

Anyway, you let this item of your overhead increase 800%. You do not require the extra help. How will this new, unnecessary cost react? Where will it find its payment? Out of surplus capital? That won’t last long. Out of profits? There are not enough in the first place and besides, no one will give of his best without some hope of legitimate reward. In an increased price for your product? Eventually, it has to land there. Will you be able to compete against your efficient competitors? No, the market won’t reward your carelessness, your ineptitudes nor your fallacious theories. The consumer will not buy your bricks. You will go out of business. Your employees will lose their jobs. You will have subverted the “X” factor!

An Example of “X” Factor Promotion

You are the same manufacturer, operating under precisely the same conditions. You introduce an efficiency into your clerical operations—perhaps a simpler system or maybe a business machine. That efficiency, one way or another, must affect the labor requirements in this department of your business. Let us assume this efficiency results in the release of one man from clerical work. If you let him out of your employ entirely, your unit cost of brick will be lowered. If you place him in another department where his efforts will increase production, your unit cost of brick will also be lowered. If every one of the many possible consequences of this efficiency is carefully examined, it will be found that it eventually results in a lower cost of the product.

When any product is available at a lower price (a lower price resulting from lower costs and not a price level change) the consumer’s capacity to acquire that product proportionately increases. If the consumer doesn’t want more of your products than he is now purchasing, notwithstanding the lower price, he will apply the money thus saved to the purchase of some other product that he otherwise would have been unable to acquire. The consumer’s capacity to acquire wealth will be increased.

No man with any ability will have difficulty finding employment when consumers can purchase the things they desire. Their desires are unlimited. Our instruments of production, running at full blast, could not fill the demand. We haven’t enough factories, enough farms nor enough labor. Our chief requirement, then, is to produce more goods and more services in relation to a given amount of human effort—a given amount of labor. Only new efficiencies, superior methods, can do this. Therefore, when you introduce an efficiency into your business, you promote the “X” factor!

CHAPTER IV

DOES OVER-EXPANSION OF GOVERNMENT SUBVERT THE “X” FACTOR?[*]

While different terms were used, the subversive aspects of unrequired government were well understood and simply recorded nearly thirty centuries ago. The following is taken from the eighth chapter of The First Book of Samuel:

And Samuel told all the words of the Lord unto the people that asked of him a king. And he said,

“This will be the manner of the king that shall reign over you: he will take your sons, and appoint them for himself, for his chariots, and to be his horsemen; and some shall run before his chariots.

“And he will appoint him captains over thousands, and captains over fifties; and will set them to ear his ground, and to reap his harvest, and to make his instruments of war, and instruments of his chariots.

“And he will take your daughters to be confectioners, and to be cooks, and to be bakers.

“And he will take your fields, and your vineyards, and your oliveyards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants.

“And he will take the tenth of your seed, and of your vineyards, and give to his officers, and to his servants.

“And he will take your menservants, and your maidservants, and your goodliest young men, and your asses, and put them to his work.

“He will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day because of your king which ye shall have chosen you; and the Lord will not hear you in that day.”

In 1890, all units of government, federal, state and local, took only 5 cents of each income dollar. By 1929 they were taking 16 cents of each income dollar. Political agents in 1936 spent 40 cents of each income dollar![1]

It is conceded that government has a legitimate claim to growth with the increases of population and wealth. An industry or a farm adds overhead as its business increases, but business management never permits a disproportionate ratio of overhead to production. If it does it fails. Governments, however, have not only permitted but encouraged an overhead out of all proportion to necessities.

The national income was many times larger in 1936 than in 1890. Why should not government overhead be maintained, somewhat in that ratio?[2] Why should governments today be taking much more than 5 cents for each income dollar? Why 40 cents? Why this 800% increase in political overhead?[3]

A previous statement implied as an absurdity the example of any business letting an item of overhead increase 800% when the business warranted no necessity for such increase. It was demonstrated that any such practice would force that business to close its doors and to place its workers among the ranks of the unemployed.

Yet, every business in America has and is participating to a marked extent in this type of an absurdity. Every business has increased its item of political overhead more than 800%! Government employees are on the payrolls of every business on an 800% greater scale than 1890!

Demonstration has been made of the way unemployment is created by an individual business permitting excessive costs. When the cost of government is excessive the effect is precisely of the same kind. It creates unemployment to the extent that government is excessive. It differs in its results only in that instead of bankrupting one or a few businesses, it filters its effects through all the units of production and distribution, partially harming them all. The aggregate unemployment resulting from excessive cost of government is the same as the aggregate unemployment resulting from a comparable excessive cost of a comparably sized business. The bad effects are merely better dissipated—the burden is more evenly borne. The total devastation is the same!

If the incidence, that is the shift, of these political excesses were more generally understood, if the unemployment and the discontent they create were blamed to these excesses, blamed where much of the blame really belongs, public opinion and public action would soon make short work of them. Instead, the public has been made to believe there is economic virtue in these excesses and has joined in support of the trend that insures its own destruction. Any government beyond the minimum of necessity is excessive and to the extent it is excessive, to that extent is the “X” factor subverted!

[*] So many different interpretations are placed on statistical data, too often molded to fit personal fancy, that the general figures used here may stimulate some disagreement. However, a principle is being argued, not statistics.

[1] There are somewhere in the neighborhood of 250,000 units of government involved in this increase. The federal government, for instance, spent $520,000,000 in 1900 and $8,879,000,000 in 1936, an increase of 1500%!

[2] No doubt the cost of government must rise more rapidly than the increase of population or wealth as a society becomes more complex. However, the deviation from an exact ratio should be modest—not on the pretentious order we are now witnessing.

[3] Many contend that a dollar’s worth of service from government for a dollar expended makes any increase in government cost justifiable. Suffice it to say that this writer disagrees with this philosophy. It involves an argument in socialism for which this thesis was not designed; nor is it admitted that present increases in cost represent corresponding increases in service.

CHAPTER V

GOVERNMENT INTERVENTION SUBVERTS THE “X” FACTOR

That sharply analytical historian, Albert J. Nock, recently made an age-proved observation concerning intervention by government:

“It seems to be very imperfectly understood that the cost of State intervention must be paid out of production, this being the only source from which any payment for anything can be derived. Intervention retards production; then the resulting stringency and inconvenience enable further intervention, which in turn still further retards production; and this process goes on until, as in Rome in the third century, production ceases entirely, and the source of payment dries up.”[1]

Back in the five-cent days, the federal government confined itself to such strictly political matters as the common defense, post offices and post roads, foreign relations, the coining of money, the issuing of currency, the collecting of moderate indirect taxes, administering justice and to some reasonable regulations.

An estimate of the increased intervention that has taken place, gradual until recently, but lately at a revolutionarily accelerated pace, can be obtained by scanning the activities now constituting the main business of the federal government:

• The ethics and morals and practices of business.

• The wages of labor.

• The prices of goods.

• The planting and financing and marketing of crops.

• The relations between employers and employees.

• The care of the unemployed and the aged.

• The planning and financing of municipal improvements.

• The manipulation of monetary value to conform with political ideas.

• The use of the taxing power to attain social objectives.

• The education of youth.

• The planning and building and financing of homes.

• The minute regulation of hundreds of kinds and forms of industry and commerce and agriculture.

• The launching and conduct of hundreds of economic ventures directly competing with the activities of individual citizens.

• The general business of setting the moral standards and governing the human relationships of a nation of 130,000,000 persons.

A consequence equally as grave as the cost effect results from this intervention. The instruments of production and distribution change from control by business management to that by political management. Political management must lead to complete political control and then ownership and that is socialism. When control is transferred from private to political management, the managers no longer are chosen on the basis of business acumen but rather on the basis of political sagacity. The main requirements for successful private management are low cost production and distribution, getting more goods and services to more people. The main requirements for ascendancy among political managers, as distinguished from those of statesmen, are devising sneak-thief methods of taxation to balance political deficits and making subtle speeches to cover up political errors. Political management lacks the incentives of private management to produce goods and services, therefore less goods and services are produced. Witness the political, lazy-man theory of scarcity—destroying pigs, cotton, wheat, etc. To the extent that political management fails to produce and distribute goods and services as well as private management, to that extent does government intervention subvert the “X” factor.

[1] “Our Enemy, The State”—William Morrow & Co., New York.

CHAPTER VI

THE SUBVERSION OF THE “X” FACTOR BY GOVERNMENT MIS-DIRECTION

Throughout this thesis runs the principle that when the consumer interest is served, the general welfare is served. The consumer interest must be the paramount objective. The national well-being is threatened any time that objective fails to be our guide post.

Yet, government growth and government intervention clearly develop a contrary situation. And, as will be seen, this situation aids and abets government growth and intervention, thereby creating a vicious circle. To appreciate properly this phenomenon, we merely need to recall that iron law of fundamental economics: man tends always to satisfy his needs and desires with the least possible effort. There are two methods or means, and only two, whereby man’s needs and desires can be satisfied. One is the production and exchange of wealth; this is the economic means. The other is the uncompensated appropriation of wealth from others: this is the political means.

We have plenty of evidence today of what happens when we permit the government to grow to unbounded proportions. We enlarge the avenue for the political means. And when man can satisfy his wants by this effortless process he simply will not take the sweat-of-the-brow route of production and exchange. Thus, as we make the political means available we wipe out of our national order the possibility of retaining the economic means.

Man, however, has little chance of exploiting the political means as an individual. So he organizes and does his exploiting as a group or as a class. Exploitation of the political means is carried on by industry, by agriculture, by labor, by relief workers, by veterans, by cities, states and other geographical entities. Likewise, government, interested principally in its own growth and affluence, generally finds groups and classes far more convenient with which to deal than individuals. Government prefers to wholesale its favors—it shuns retailing them.

To illustrate roughly, industry has used the political means to secure subsidies of one sort or another. Labor has used the political means to secure higher wages and monopoly restriction. Because of these and other comparable reasons, agriculture has found itself out on the limb unable to get its share of the national income. Has agriculture attempted to correct its position by minimizing the use of the political means by other classes and groups? No. It has compensated what it has thought to be wrongs on the part of others by adopting some wrongs of its own. It has employed the political means itself. It has confirmed the iron law of economics by satisfying needs with the least possible effort. It has said to the other groups, “All right, you have done some uneconomic things, I shall be uneconomic also.” And, as has been inferred, agricultural interests have no monopoly on this attitude.

Now, as this bad boy polity is pressed by each group seeking a superior position to others in the grab for the national income, government is itself enlarged, stifling production and distribution, thus resulting in less national income to be shared. And worst of all, the avenue of the political means is increasingly enlarged, making the lesser national production subject to the political raids of more and more groups.

Today we are witnessing thousands of groups and innumerable pet projects getting funds through the political means which now or in the future must of necessity come from the real forgotten people: those who have chosen or have been forced to make their way in the world by the economic means; i. e., the production and distribution of wealth, of goods and services. Government has encouraged groups to seek the political means for funds. These funds, in turn, have been extracted by the government from those who have acquired them by the economic means. This proposition is officially defended by the unsound argument that spending of itself is a virtue. Let any man who argues in favor of this idea condemn the plan of the California messiah, Dr. Townsend. Logically, if the spending theory is sound, the Townsend Plan is sound. The difference between the spending which is advocated and that which is condemned is merely one of degree and not of kind. The difference between WPA and OARP is simply one of astronomical proportions. The aged doctor has done nothing more than glorify, magnify and capitalize upon the fallacious theories that are finding hospitality in official and, may we add, all too many business circles.

The main point is that government, by absorbing the social functions, i. e., the functions of the individual and his private institutions, has given a mis-direction to our national behavior. It has been giving the medicine to the wrong patient and by its prestige has encouraged private groups to do likewise. Government has sought to bring back prosperity by making groups prosperous. The focus has been on the group or the class, not the consumer. As a consequence, consumers have forgotten their identity as consumers and now think of themselves as New Yorkers or San Franciscans, as laborers, ship owners, bankers, veterans, reliefers, farmers or industrialists.

These powerful alignments of classes, organized to exploit the political means, which is to say, organized to exploit other classes, has seriously retarded the advancement of the economic means, and consequently has resulted in the production of fewer goods and at higher prices. As this process goes on, goods and services are available only to higher and higher income consumers. The poor get poorer and the rich also get poorer. By what stretch of the imagination can we pit group against group, class against class, interest against interest, geographical areas against each other and solve the problem we started out to solve—the problem of impoverishment in the midst of plenty? Can we continually produce less and less at a progressively greater cost and have more goods to distribute? The elements of wealth, the things for which we materially strive, are goods and services. Can we have more of these for more of our people by creating less of them by fewer of our people?

This mis-direction at the hands of government, a mis-direction that inheres in the very nature of government, because the interest of its principals compels it, is a subversion of the “X” factor.

CHAPTER VII

DOES INFLATION SUBVERT THE “X” FACTOR?

Probably, this question could in no way be answered better than by the evidence of experience. Andrew Dickinson White, late President and Professor of History of Cornell University, wrote a small volume, “Fiat Money Inflation in France.”[1] It merits reading by every American with the welfare of his country at heart.

Some idea of inflation’s effects can be gleaned from the following selected lines taken from this amazing record, last revised in 1912:

“Early in the year 1789 the French Nation found itself in deep financial embarrassment: there was a heavy debt and a serious deficit.”

“. . . statesmanlike measures, careful watching and wise management would, doubtless, have ere long led to a return of confidence, a reappearance of money and a resumption of business; but these involved patience and self-denial, and thus far in human history, these are the rarest products of political wisdom. Few nations have ever been able to exercise these virtues; . . .”

“. . . There was a general search for some short road to prosperity. . .”

“. . . They had then learned how easy it is to issue it; (irredeemable paper currency) how difficult it is to check its overissue; how seductively it leads to the absorption of the means of the workingmen and men of small fortunes; how heavily it falls on all those living on fixed incomes, salaries or wages; how securely it creates on the ruins of the prosperity of all men of meagre means a class of debauched speculators, the most injurious class a nation can harbor—more injurious, indeed, than professional criminals whom the law recognizes and can throttle: how it stimulates overproduction at first and leaves every industry flaccid afterward; how it breaks down thrift and develops political and social immorality.”

“. . . Oratory prevailed over science and experience. . .”

“. . . Mirabeau. He was the popular idol—the great orator—hardly six months before—had spoken of paper money as ‘A nursery of tyranny, corruption and delusion; a veritable debauch of authority in delirium.’ But he yielded to the pressure:—partly, doubtless, from a love of immediate rather than remote applause, . . .”

“. . . His (Goury, who favored more assignats) demagogy bloomed forth magnificently.”

“. . . Singular, the man (Brillat-Savarin, who opposed more assignats) who so fearlessly stood against this tide of unreason, has left to the world simply a reputation as the most brilliant cook that ever existed!”

“. . . doubling the quantity of money or substitutes for money in a nation simply increases prices, disturbs values, alarms capital, diminishes legitimate enterprise, and so decreases the demand both for products and for labor; that the only persons to be helped by it are the rich who have large debts to pay.”

“. . . it began to be especially noted that men who had never shown any ability to make or increase fortunes for themselves abounded in brilliant plans for creating and increasing wealth for the country at large.”

“. . . Comic and, at the same time, pathetic, were evidences of the widespread idea that if only a goodly number of people engaged in trade were hanged, the par value of the assignats would be restored.”

“. . . Marat followed out his theory by asserting that death was the proper penalty for persons who thus hid their money.”

“. . . But what the bigotry of Louis XIV and the shiftlessness of Louis XV could not do in nearly a century, was accomplished by this tampering with the currency in a few months. One manufactory after another stopped.”

“. . . Commerce was dead; betting took its place.”

“. . . The Capitalist could put his surplus paper money into the government lands and await results; but the men who needed their money from day to day suffered the worst of the misery.”

“. . . The merchant was forced to add to his ordinary profit a sum sufficient to cover probable or possible fluctuations in value, and while prices of products thus went higher, the wages of labor, owing to the number of workmen who were thrown out of employment, went lower.”

“. . . Out of the speculating and gambling of the inflation grew luxury and, out of this, corruption. It grew as naturally as a fungus on a muck heap.”

“. . . Marat declared loudly that the people, by hanging shop-keepers and plundering stores, could easily remove the trouble.”

“. . . This very activity in business simply indicated the disease. It was simply legal robbery of the more enthusiastic and trusting by the more cold-hearted and keen. It was the ‘unloading’ of the assignats upon the mass of the people.”

This evidence should cause anyone to regard with alarm an increasing business activity accompanied by a mounting government debt. The suspicion that our revived business activity is too largely the indication of an inflationary disease, warrants an examination of this question. For certainly our present activity is accompanied by one of the largest government debt increases known to all history.

It is hardly necessary to detail the flagrant profligacy of government. Waste is in evidence on every hand. Projects, that have nothing whatever to do with economic necessity, are abundantly seen in every city, village and hamlet of the land. The theory of “spending ourselves rich” has political blessings and a wide popular acceptance. Groups and areas are organized to see which can best seduce money from a government that advocates financial seduction as an economic virtue.

An attempt in this thesis has been made to demonstrate that any waste, whether it be private or public, tends to destroy the possibility of more things for more people. Why is it then, that, as yet, all this waste has not resulted in few things for fewer people on a grander scale than now exists? Is it possible we have devised some magic formula that nullifies the penalizing action of natural economic law? That hope is too fantastic to find entertainment in the councils of serious men. Then, if that is not the case, it is obvious we have done something to forestall temporarily some inevitable and distressing results.

In principle, if not in amounts, we compare with France in 1789. We have a “heavy debt and a serious deficit.” France attempted a short road to prosperity by issuing assignats, notes against land. They used these assignats as a circulating medium. Momentary relief followed. We have likewise attempted a short road to prosperity but not in the form of assignats nor have we actually printed paper money.

Dr. White, in one of the previous quotations, uses the words, “Doubling the quantity of money or the substitutes for money. . .” Perhaps that word “substitutes” offers the clue; we have embarked on a gigantic credit inflation rather than a money inflation!

When the Federal Government needs a billion dollars what is done? Does the secretary of the Treasury call on the office where currency is printed and say, “Print another billion in thousand dollar bills?” No. But in effect he does call another printing establishment and say, “Print another billion in bonds.”

The government prints bonds and on these bonds is our collective promise to pay a given amount at some future date. At the request of the government the banks buy these bonds but they do not pay for them with depositor’s money—not with our earnings and savings. A bookkeeping credit is entered in favor of the government against which the government is entitled to draw.

It is well to observe at this point that the government has acquired a loan with no cash considerations whatever. Merely a bookkeeping entry and the government has all the money it wants! Now, when you do a job for the government like building an American pyramid or engaging in a little boondoggle, the government gives you a check against the aforementioned bank credit—you deposit the check in your bank and draw against it for the purchase of goods and services. Merely a building up of checking accounts by printing bonds! The government thus has created out of its fiat some purchasing power which enters the marts of trade. There is thus an inflation of bank deposits, and therefore purchasing power to the extent of the transaction and the merry process goes on its frolicsome way.

Our present condition can fairly be likened to the individual who is without means, who because of past performances has good credit and who on this basis, acquires all the elements of wealth. He moves into a new home for which he does not pay, takes delivery of a Rolls Royce on credit, charges a large stock of fancy groceries and even hires some servants on the promise to settle later. He can revel in his position until his creditors start repossession proceedings. The same thing can be said about our federal government; namely, “This spending puts people to work.” Of course it does. But, to use the vernacular; who takes the rap, this spender or the laborers whom he employs and cannot pay? The laborer does and he always will unless the spending which employs his services is the result of the production of something useful. This individual’s day of reckoning will not be so far ahead—neither will ours unless we rapidly mend our ways.

In this simple analogy the wage earner suffers because he doesn’t get paid. Suffering because you don’t get paid is not a bit different than suffering because the money that pays you won’t buy anything! No matter what the financial trick is, so long as it is a trick to avoid the production and distribution of useful goods and services, that trick spells suffering to the wage earner. There is little comfort in applying different adjectives to destitution. Furthermore, it makes no difference if the sponsors of schemes think their schemes will work to wage-earner advantage. The fact that they won’t work makes the indictment against them just as conclusive.

History teaches and economic reasoning confirms that inflation, whether it be by assignats, printing press money or printing press bonds,[2] breaks down production and creates unemployment. We work ourselves into a frenzied emotion about the subversive activities of communism. Are we interested in merely the kind of poison we take or are we interested in not taking any poison? No foreign ism, no practice can be more subversive than inflation.

France was seven years in cracking under the devastating influence of the assignats. The French, however, had a gold standard or its equivalent, by which they could and did watch the decrease in value of the assignats. By what are we comparing the value of the dollar? By gold? No. By the monies of other nations? No, the important nations are devaluing their currencies somewhat together. Thus, the process here may be slower than in France. Not until enough people see through this subtle process will it break down. But if we maintain the policy of spending more than we take in, if deficits become a national habit, the blow must inevitably fall. Excessive spending, or in other words excessive waste, must be met by excessive taxation which immediately results in fewer things for fewer people or, if not by that, by currency or credit inflation which forestalls that operation but sooner or later must strike with all of its accumulated vigor and national disaster. There is nothing more subversive!

[1] D. Appleton-Century Co., New York.

[2] Some people may quarrel with this comparison; it is accurate nevertheless. In the old days, government bonds were sold to thrift investors; what was built by the proceeds was built out of the people’s savings; there was therefore a limit beyond which government bonds could not be sold at a reasonable price.

In modern times such bonds are not really “sold” at all; they are turned over to banks in return for (artificial) bank-credit. Government then pays its bills by checks against that bank-credit. Those checks are then re-deposited in the banks by their recipients. So “dollars” are created by a combination of pen and printing press instead of by printing press alone. There is no limit to quantity in either case. The essential difference is only that the modern process does not frighten the people so much, since they do not understand it. (Of course, some small dribble of “baby bonds” is still sold to investors and such bonds are not, in the first instance, inflationary.)

CHAPTER VIII

THE SUBVERSIVE ASPECTS OF THE “NRA” IDEA

How many times have you heard an argument like this? “Our industry is in a mess. Most of the fellows are a decent sort. They keep prices up to such an extent that everyone can make a profit. But we have some ‘chiselers’ in our trade who are always cutting prices, sometimes selling below cost and they upset all our plans for stability. We ought to have a law—something to keep them in line—a law with teeth in it, so we could ‘crack down’ on them and make them behave. That is the only solution to our problem.”

That argument presupposes that a particular industry has a birthright to prosperity and all you have to do to guarantee that birthright is to pass a law sufficiently coercive. If that were the case and we could make these coercive laws work, then anyone could enter any business with an assured profit—everything to gain and nothing to lose. In other words, guarantee a profit to industry and guarantee a wage scale to labor so it can buy the products of industry and, presto!—you have the millennium. As naïve as the idea is, it is favorably entertained by tens of thousands of business men and millions of laborers.

This theory, crudely stated to be sure, robbed of its diverting verbiage and seductive embellishments is, nevertheless, the underlying philosophy of organized laborers, of “AAA” farmers and of “NRA” industrialists. Likewise, it is the driving motive that makes for the centralized government, the authoritarian State.

Walter Lippman, writing in the Atlantic Monthly[1] under the subject, “The Government of Posterity,” states the proposition excellently:

“. . . Thus it is that many have been persuaded that the importance of cheaper goods is a menace, that technological progress is a disaster, that to produce more is to earn less. They have the conviction that if only they could erect round their occupation a sufficiently high Chinese wall composed of holding companies, mergers, marketing contracts, production agreements, licenses, quotas, labor laws and labor contracts, a wall high enough to exclude new ideas, new methods, new men and unusual labor, they would enjoy the blessings of stability. They are quite right. A society which has organized itself elaborately must keep on until it has organized itself into rigidity. It must seek stability because it cannot advance. It must imitate the mollusk, which, though it can neither walk, swim or fly, and has only meagre ambitions, does seem to enjoy a reasonably well protected and stable existence.”

One of the really comic features of contemporary affairs is those business men who loudly hailed the death of the Blue Eagle on the one hand and are privately conspiring to erect another bird, differently bred but with the same intentions, on the other hand. General Hugh Johnson, in his first post-election syndicated article, recognizes the popularity of the idea:

“A third step in an immediate attack on unemployment is to determine the possibility of saving as much of NRA as can be done within the Constitution, with the cooperation of industry on a voluntary basis, quickly, simply and justly. Regardless of the adverse ballyhoo, there is a tremendous popular sentiment for this and a considerable sentiment in industry itself.”

Now, that statement, widely representative of business opinion, is a very pretty sentiment. Yes, we must do all this, “within the Constitution.” But does this merely mean we shall rewrite it in another fashion, retaining its former essential features? Does it mean we shall NRA, but henceforward we shall NRA legally? No, the idea must not be coercive any more—that didn’t work. We will do it “with the cooperation of business on a voluntary basis.” Does that suggest we shall from now on do voluntarily that which we formerly did, or tried to do, coercively?

There is a lot to be said for doing a thing constitutionally and not unconstitutionally—for doing a thing voluntarily and not coercively. Those maneuvers, laudable and necessary under our system, remove many opponents. But the fact that a practice is constitutional or that it is voluntary does not in any sense indicate that it is economically sound. Any action should be at once constitutional, voluntary and economic. If it cannot pass those three tests, it should never be graced with acceptance.

For instance, it is Constitutional to burn a fine crop of wheat! Conceivably, the action might be voluntary. But under no circumstances could it be considered economic, which disqualifies such action as a recommended national practice.

We are not here concerned with the constitutional or the voluntary aspects of the NRA idea, rather are we concerned with its economic aspects. We are concerned with its relation to the “X” factor. Does it subvert or promote it?

In the way of codes, there is little to be done, except in refinements, beyond that which the Federal Trade Commission has been supervising since 1919, codes formulated through the instrumentality of the Trade Practice Conference. That is, there is little more to be done if codes are to remain economically sound, voluntarily conceived and administered, and constitutional in their scope.

These codes have a dual purpose. First, the elimination of business practices, clearly illegal, such as secret rebates, false branding, trade-mark infringement, price discrimination in violation of the Clayton Act, use of false or deceptive selling methods, false advertising, commercial bribery, operation of lotteries and issuance of false invoices. Second, the elimination of business practices that are not necessarily illegal but which a given industry considers unethical, uneconomical or otherwise objectionable.

The Federal Trade Commission has the authority and the obligation to demand the removal of illegal practices and it encourages and assists the industry in self-policing the legal but objectionable practices. If more attention were given to the promotion of this type of code and less to the let-government-do-it-all type, our whole scheme of business relationships would be materially elevated.

The Supreme Court gave its blessing to this form of code-making in its Sugar Institute decision:

“Voluntary action to end abuses and to foster fair competitive opportunities in the public interest may be more effective than legal processes. And cooperative endeavor may appropriately have wider objectives than merely the removal of evils which are infractions of positive law.”

What, may we properly ask, does a revived NRA envision beyond the potentialities of the Trade Practice Conference code? Does not the motive behind the NRA revival spirit seek monopolistic permissiveness? Is there not embraced within this spirit the desire for production control and therefore price control? If these are not the objectives, then what is there to be obtained through a revived NRA that does not already exist in the TPC code? Because all industries will not submit to codes under the Federal Trade Commission? Then why would they voluntarily submit to NRA codes? The answer is, all of industry and business cannot be codified without coercion being applied.

Let us look at just one phase of the industrial structure and see where the application of coercion leads. Take the brick business. Brick, as we have indicated, is subject to two kinds of competition: intra-competition and inter-competition. Intra-competition is that within the industry, other brick manufactories, Inter-competition is that without the industry, other competing products such as lumber, concrete and the twenty or thirty other building materials.

The price of brick is as much regulated by the competition of other building materials as it is by the competition of other brick makers. Therefore, a code embracing production and price control for brick is perfectly useless unless codes are applied and sensitively adjusted to all the competing products. Experience under the defunct NRA taught us the interrelationship of codes of this sort. Once the process is started it must go the complete way, to all industry, thence to agriculture; in fact, to every product of production and consumption. If the thing is carried out to its logical conclusion, and it must be carried out if it is to work at all, consumption will have to be rationed. The citizens of free America will no longer be free—they will take their strawberries and cream according to the whims of a dictatorial bureaucracy—and like it!

Writing on this subject, Dr. Lionel Robbins, University of London, recently stated:

“There is a sort of snowball tendency about this kind of interventionism which has no limit but complete control of all trade and industry. Once a government starts to control important branches of industry, if they are not willing at some point definitely to reverse their whole line of policy, there is no stop to this process short of complete socialism.”

We may well consider the course of the AAA to prove the soundness of Dr. Robbins’ statement. Originally it was to apply to two crops—cotton and wheat. The restriction placed by the Federal Government on cotton growers caused the farmers to raise peanuts, which immediately affected the market on peanuts and further restrictions on that crop were made. Then they put their idle acreage into growing potatoes, which caused further restrictions, and so on until the original two crops were extended to cover twenty crops, and carried severe penalties in the form of excessive tax and criminal penalties.

Had the United States Supreme Court failed to check the AAA of Government control, we would have drifted into a complete dictatorial form of government supervision over all crops and raw materials with supervision and limitations on manufacturer, distributor and retailer.

Here we have an excellent example of the evil results of Federal Government tinkering with lawful operations and producing a system under which the first step makes inevitable the second step, the second forces the third and so on until the old order has disappeared and the new one has been completed.

The point is, the thing cannot work because there are no humans with the physical and mental capacities successfully to bureaucrat such a scheme. And to think it can be done piecemeal, just to certain industries, is as absurd as to think you can jump only part way from a stratosphere balloon! The real reason there is such a present popularity for the idea is that we already have so many rigidities that business men, laborers, agriculturists and others can see nothing else to do but impose compensating rigidities. One foot is tied down so let’s tie down the other one. Little thought is given as to how the first foot can be untied. It is easier to shackle than to unshackle, even though shackling makes for impoverishment.

Even if we had some gods on earth, endowed with superhuman powers of administration (we haven’t) and if they were tempted to try this scheme (no god would), the thing would be a colossal flop. It would be a flop for the simple reason that the NRA idea gives the medicine to the wrong patient. It conceives that classes and groups are the objects of our welfare affections. It loses sight of the real patient—the consumer. The NRA idea, even if voluntarily practiced and constitutionally okayed, would be an economic evil because it stifles competition, it fosters monopoly, it regulates production to an undeveloped demand—in short, it forces prices farther and farther out of reach of purchasing power. It produces less and less by fewer and fewer and therefore there is less wealth for few people. The NRA idea and the many varieties of its philosophy are without a doubt one of the most subversive elements to the “X” factor extant in America today.

[1] November, 1936.

CHAPTER IX

WHAT ABOUT CONSUMER JUDGMENT?

Here is an influence upon the “X” factor about which little can be done except to apprise consumers of its vagaries hoping, but not very expectantly, that thus apprised, some of the blame for some of our troubles will find its correct resting spot.

The matter cannot be dealt with intelligently unless we first agree that the problem to be solved is the elimination of impoverishment. The mere elimination of impoverishment does not presuppose a satisfaction of desires in any respect except that of food, clothing, shelter, heat, sanitation, health and literacy. Perhaps others would set a different standard for the non-existence of impoverishment, but for the sake of this argument this standard will suffice. The satisfaction of more desires is, of course, a worthy objective. But we would do well more unanimously to get out of the impoverished grouping.

Those in the impoverished group, hardly able to garner the requisites above stated, err if they make purchases of additional so-called necessities or luxuries. To the extent they thus engage themselves, to that extent will they be without these bare necessities. They will either be without them, thereby increasing their impoverishment, or they will throw themselves on the community to supply these needs. In either case the ultimate impoverishment will be the same for if they throw themselves on the community, that cost will eventually reflect itself in the purchases of the impoverished and they will be able to buy correspondingly less. In other words, a man who cannot provide his family with simple necessities, makes a sad mistake if he buys a radio or an automobile. This is one example of how bad consumer judgment makes the poor poorer and how it subverts the “X” factor.

We constantly hear the damnation of our production and distribution machinery. They are widely alleged to be the root of the impoverishment evil. Little or no thought is given to consumption behavior, which really is more the cause of our difficulties than the two combined! And pathetically enough, and contrary to all popular notions, most of the source of the trouble lies among the millions in the lower income groupings where remedial measures are extremely difficult.

The majority of these people have cast overboard the old habits of thrift which dictated the purchases of simple necessities previous to the acquisition of needless luxuries. Their yearnings for non-essentials, heretofore reasonably suppressed, have today been unwisely released. High pressure advertising and selling methods, plus the child-like advice of political and economic neophytes, have united in confirming their bad judgment. Money that should have gone for three quarts of milk, a loaf of bread and a peck of potatoes, is spent for five gallons of pleasure gas, a movie or a pint of “red eye,” and the economic system is denounced because they don’t have milk, bread and potatoes. This picture has more than fifty million variations!

We have indicated some of the effects of inflation: stock market, currency and government credit. Consumer judgment often creates an inflation almost as serious. When consumers go into the market and purchase goods for which they have not yet earned the money—when they charge goods for immediate use to possible future earnings—they are likely to set dangerous wheels in motion. The extent of the danger lies in the extent of the practice. Large-scale installment buying of luxury goods that have no relation to productive necessity starts a mushroom production in motion. Unless the mushroom expansion with its naked purchasing power goes on ad infinitum, and it cannot, there has to be a let-down, a depression and insecurity. Unemployment and serious maladjustments must result. All caused by an excessive anticipation of desires.

Those in the higher income classes do not assist the poor when they engage in the purchase of goods and services not useful to their productive efficiency.[1] It could be easily demonstrated that the waste of a pork chop by a family of affluence has a detrimental effect on the impoverished. There is no difference, except in degree, between the wasting of a pork chop and the “AAA” practice of destroying little pigs. Each practice lessens the supply in ratio to demand and therefore raises prices which places pork chops farther from the reach of those who cannot get enough pork chops. If the waste of a pork chop is regarded as an infinitesimal waste and therefore without consequence, merely multiply the wastes of all products by 130,000,000 people and the total wastage will be found to be terrific. Here is another example of the detrimental effects of bad consumer judgment.

A point, most imperfectly understood, is that the fruits of science, better methods and technological advance have been dissipated in a thousand and one ways of which bad consumer judgment is one. This dissipation has absorbed much of the advantage, many of the gains that should have gone to those who are today in the impoverished classes.

One finds many people of affluence, and therefore example-setters, who sincerely believe they are fighting the battle of the poor but who, because of a lack of knowledge of this simple economic truth, are not only wasteful and profligate themselves but are advocates of theories that make for more waste and more profligacy. They think to buy something for which they have no use is to give employment for the production of the useless article, thereby helping the poor. More than likely, many of these well-to-do people would see no harm, in fact they might see good, in buying a basket of bread and throwing it away. Many of them “caught on” to the fallacy of throwing away bread in the form of not planting wheat, but the equation in their personal case is more complicated and they have not yet thought it through.

It is precisely this type of thinking that has developed the American pyramid idea, the idea of boondoggling, of furnishing unnecessary work on useless projects. It is precisely this kind of thinking that demands that science produce a new industry, something like the radio or the automobile, which, because of the popularity of the product and the size of the operation, will absorb the unemployed. To reiterate, the very people who have emotionally dedicated themselves to the poor are the most ardent advocates of these theories. There is a world of difference between an emotional and a studious analytical dedication to a cause. From the standpoint of the poor, emotional intentions are divine, but their consequences are usually devastating.

These emotionally inspired people fail to see that frugality and conservation must ever remain a nation-wide practice, no matter under what sort of an economy or how far that economy may advance. They fail to see that when we divert our energies from the production and distribution of useful things—of necessities—we have less energy left to produce and distribute necessities. Assuming that the impoverishment problem is the one we want to solve, then useful things are food, clothing, shelter, heat, sanitation, health and literacy. When we wastefully divert energy from their production we lessen the supply and consequently raise their prices. That is inescapable and is as exact as two and two are four. As we raise the price, the necessity gets more and more out of reach of the poor.

It can be argued that if a person wants to waste something, that is his business. So it is. It can be argued that if a person wants luxuries, wants things beyond his necessities, that also is his business. So it is. But present waste and present extravagance would be ever so much less if people only knew the bad effects of waste and extravagance on the poor. Too many think these vices are virtues. Too many think they are helping when they are really hindering. They think they are solving a problem when they are actually aggravating it. The difference between intentions and performances on the part of many well-to-do, example-setting people is about as wide as the difference between desire and satisfaction on the part of the poor. Perhaps if the former were narrowed, the latter disparity would narrow also.

Compare with these well-intentioned people the trainer of a marathon runner. He is sincere, his objective is worthy—he wants his runner to win the race. However, he lacks experience in training marathon runners. Having once felt the exhilarating effects of a stimulant he reasons that ten stimulants would give ten times the exhilaration so he gives this advice to his entry. Being better able to comprehend the effects of excessive liquid stimulants than we are of economic stimulants, we readily imagine, without difficult thinking, what happened to our marathon runner.

Tracing any given behavior to its economic effect is, to say the least, complicated and confusing. Few minds, even those possessing the peculiar faculty for this type of thinking, arrive anywhere without laborious and studious effort. As a consequence, so very many conclude the direct opposite of the economic truth. Too many qualify for the kind of experts who avoid minor mistakes as they sweep on to the grand fallacy. This explains, in part, why so many devoted to the cause of the impoverished, actually practice and loudly advocate actions that directly contradict their intentions.

If a person wants to be wasteful, that is his business. If a person wants to buy luxuries that he cannot really afford, that is his business also. If one wants to buy non-necessities that he can afford, certainly that is his business. But, in the name of Heaven, let us put these practices where they belong—let us forever earmark them for what they actually are: personal indulgences and nothing else. Let us get it out of our heads, individually and collectively as governments, that these indulgences, except only as they stimulate the indulger to greater productive activity, assist in solving the problem of impoverishment. Rather if excessive, they aggravate it and serve as one of the impediments to its solution.

This whole question is a matter of objectivity. The right to indulgences, or, to be more generous, the right to luxuries and the finer products of life above the impoverishment level, should be regarded more as the result and less as the cause of progress. These benefits, these implements to an easier life, must be thought of as rewards for meritorious practices, as rewards for the virtues of abstinence, thrift, invention, frugality and efficient organization and never thought of as reasons for economic and social advance. If indulgences were the cause of progress, we could advance by encouraging drunkenness.

The correction of our thinking on this point alone would have an advantage more profound in its effect than most of us are willing to imagine. Correction of our thinking in this respect would put an end to “priming the pump” theories, to boondoggling, to highways that serve no economic need, to projects for the sake of sheer spending, to “buy more” programs, to waste for the purpose of helping someone and to numberless inanities that characterize individual and national behavior. What an incalculable boon just this one change in reasoning would be to the impoverished—what a world of wonders it would eventually work for more goods and more services for more people!

Many will describe these lines as those of a reactionary. On the contrary, these lines are more radical than the tenets of Communism! Why? Simply because they advocate more completely an overthrow of present trends and present thinking than does the Communistic formula! Our whole behavior is approaching the creed of the collectivists, the socialistic state and the proletarian thinking and control more rapidly than it is tending to contradict these recommendations.

Extra-necessities, those above the impoverishment range, and luxuries have, however, an important place in the solving of impoverishment. Man essentially is a selfish animal. Therefore, it behooves us to harness this selfishness the best we can in such a way that whatever man does will redound to the benefit of the whole society.

That is the reason we have developed an economy with many incentives. Americans have attempted to perfect a system that will reward merit in accordance with its perfection. We have proposed to induce man to produce wealth not only with the reward of necessities and extra-necessities, but with the promise of luxury if he does well enough. That this luxury, if used wastefully, adversely affects the impoverished is granted but, and this is all-important, the impoverished are better off, not relatively but really, than if the luxury had not been a reward. Without extra-necessities and luxuries as a reward, man would have produced only enough for himself and in most cases barely that.

If, with extra-necessities and luxuries as stimulants, a man does a ten-thousand-dollar job of production and a nine-thousand-dollar job of wastefulness, society has gained a net one thousand dollars.

It should be obvious then that tools, bare necessities and physical and mental equipment are not all that contribute to productive efficiency. The lure of something better, the extra-necessities and the luxuries furnish a stimulus to production in a very real and considerable manner.

A system that permits the attainment of luxury and at the same time keeps opportunity for luxury open to all is a system worth the struggle to preserve and to perfect. The purpose of this thesis has been to define the “X” factor and to demonstrate that its development is the key to wide-open opportunity.

The impoverished or those near to that classification, should take comfort in the fact—a fact imperfectly understood—that no man, whatever his wealth, can consume or use or enjoy a very excessive amount of necessities and luxuries. Frankly, there is a greater detriment to the poor from the indulgences of the medium income groups and likewise of the poor themselves, than from the indulgences of the very high income groups, not only because there are greater numbers of the former, but quite often because the indulgences of those with small and medium incomes are more excessive than those with higher incomes.

No matter how rich any man may become, there is a definite limit to the part of his wealth he can enjoy for himself. Professor Thomas Nixon Carver offers a cogent point:

“A rich man of today may own few . . . articles of luxury and self-indulgences. His riches consist mostly of producers’ goods, that is capital. An Oriental prince, with a room full of jewelry, is a rich man but not a capitalist. A rich capitalist may live on crackers and milk, wear very plain clothes and never indulge himself in any luxury.

“If you are rich as an Oriental prince is rich, your riches are for you and your favorites alone. Your riches do not have to work for anybody else. But if you are rich in capital, your capital must work for somebody else. If it does not, it is worth nothing to you and you are not rich. In order to get anything for yourself out of your capital, it must be put to work helping to produce what others want. No matter how selfish you are, the possession of capital harnesses your selfishness to the work of producing for others. Here is a clear case of harnessing the motive sometimes called selfishness, but more accurately called differential generosity, to the public interest.”[2]

That part of the rich man’s income, beyond that which he personally uses, is capital and, to do him any good, must find investment. Whether he invests it himself or permits a bank to do it for him is of little consequence. The point is, his investment goes into some form of production or distribution, creating competition in some field, forcing improvements and therefore lower costs, which bring goods and services within the range of lower brackets of purchasing power.

Over-indulgence, on the part of rich or poor, subverts the “X” factor. Nevertheless, to remove extra-necessities and luxuries from the field of opportunity would destroy incentives that cause more useful production than the producing energy they divert. To remove these incentives would be penny wise and pound foolish.

This matter of consumer judgment, in spite of its importance, is one about which little can be done beyond that which each consumer desires to do. Intelligent educational programs, a rebirth of the thrift theme, discouragement of uneconomic advertising and selling methods and the discovery of a “Maxim Silencer” for demagogic humbuggery appear to be requirements. No doubt a more felicitous behavior would result if all consumers perfectly understood the consequences of their actions. Anyway, the wasteful and the profligate, whether they be poor or rich, will look less foolish if they cease to advocate other methods of subversion to solve a problem to which they are no mean contributors.

[1] Productive efficiency is dependent upon a wide variety of factors of which the lure of luxuries, even needless luxuries, if such a term is admissible, is a most important factor. If a rich man would produce as well without being wasteful as he would produce if he were wasteful, the poor would gain by the behavior.

[2] Christian Science Monitor, June 17, 1936.

CHAPTER X

MISCELLANEOUS SUBVERSIONS

The major subversions to the “X” factor previously described, plus those discussed under this miscellaneous heading, by no means complete the list. However, most of those left untouched would, very likely, be similar in principle to those here treated. If not, we have at least stated a sufficient number to organize the problem.

Speculation

Play not for gain but sport. Who play for more Than he can lose with pleasure, stakes his heart—Perhaps his wife’s too, and whom she hath bore.

—George Herbert.

Gambling by anyone rich or poor, for pleasure or otherwise, may have its moral side. That issue is for the moralists. Some types may be illegal and others legalized, but that does not necessarily concern us. Of the innumerable kinds of speculation, some of which are economically sound, we are interested in ascertaining the effects on impoverishment of the gambling kind commanding large public participation: stock and bond market, real estate, installment buying and an infinite variety in which practically every person of mature age engaged during 1928–29.

Speculation by those who have surpluses of capital with which to play, capital which if lost or gained will not affect their necessity requirements, has a tendency to stabilize market conditions, that is, if the speculators win. It subjects the capital market to a well diversified cross-examination of its condition, it tends to put the market in its place. When speculation is confined to people of this wealth level and when these people confine their speculation to above-requirement surpluses, the public is not adversely affected. Looking at the problem broadly, there is no money made from speculation. That which one gains another loses. The capital used to speculate remains in the market—it merely shifts to different ownership or control as gains or losses are registered.

Broadly speaking, those who speculate do make money on occasion. They make money during a period of increasing productivity, when more goods and services are being made by more people. Those who speculate make money temporarily, and lose more later, during periods of inflation or when the market is under the influences of other artificial stimuli. But speculation, except as it perfects the market, is never the cause of increased wealth.[1] Leaving aside the artificial influences, speculation is simply a gamble as to whether or not increased wealth will be forthcoming.

An entirely different set of circumstances surround speculation when indulged in by those who do not have playing surpluses. Conditions bordering on national catastrophe can very easily result, and on at least one occasion have resulted, from mass speculation. For one thing, the market is subjected to an impetus to which it is unaccustomed and to which economically it is not, nor should it be, attuned. The unexpected stimulus given demand for ownership of productive and distributive ownership, which speculation can make possible, forces capital markets to unsupportable heights from which, sooner or later, they must tumble. During the rise, false prices and therefore false purchasing power result. Productive instruments are forced into the false economy to satisfy a false demand for goods and when the crash arrives there remains a confusing mess of maladjusted instruments, each, we have observed, seeking the political means to support its marginal position and to guarantee it an enduring, prosperous existence.

This sort of trouble would never plague the national economy if speculation were confined to those who have extra surpluses and who therefore have a right to speculate. No capital would enter the market that wasn’t earned capital. And who cares if extra surpluses swap rich men? Movement of capital in those brackets is more than likely to do no public harm.

When one with no surplus enters the speculative market, he purchases instruments of ownership, stocks and bonds, on a marginal account. The difference between the earned income representing his down payment and the value of the instrument of ownership, passing to his control, is indeed very considerable. That difference represents a false demand in the market for which, for the time being, there is no compensating deflationary supply. Millions ride the inflationary wave, for, as it goes up, it is very safe riding. In such a rising market, quick profits eliminate the necessity for covering margins and, therefore, anyone with almost nothing can get on the wave sending it ever higher to the unsupportable crest from which it must inevitably fall.

Here is a fair illustration of the evils of the gambling type of speculation by those who have acquired no surpluses: ten men, the heads of families, are seated around a table about to speculate on how some cards will turn. To make this example precisely correct we will assume that these men have their monthly pay in their pockets, that in each case it is the same and that their pay is exactly enough to purchase the necessities for their respective families during the coming month. The cards are turned again and again. As it finally ends, one man has all the money of the other nine. Nine families are left impoverished for one month. Groceries, coal, clothing and other provisions produced by the farmer and the manufacturer and stocked by the merchants for their use remain on the shelves. There is plenty but there is also impoverishment. Imagine a bureaucracy attempting to regulate supply to this kind of an unpredictable and self-destroyed demand.

Some will contend that the man who got all the money will purchase the goods which the others did not buy. Perhaps, to some extent. He can’t eat any more food than he did before, if what he had before was enough. He will not heat his house any warmer if the warmth before was sufficient.

Practically, in a national splurge of speculation, many of the gains will go to those who devote all their time to the management of their capital. Much of the gain going to the rich will be accounted for by millions of small losses of the poor. The “kitty” gets it all. The rich have everything they want or the near rich have nearly everything they want. They will not buy much more no matter how much more they may gain from speculation. Gains to them only mean the management of more funds. But the poor become poorer. The rich won’t buy any more and the poor cannot buy as much.

Speculation on the part of the poor or near poor must always destroy the genuine purchasing power of the nation. It diverts earned income from the purchase of necessities and throws it into investment pools. Because of the lack of the demand for necessities, this money must go to the production of extra necessities or luxuries, these being the only things for which there can be a demand exceeding supply. This process, in turn, takes producers out of the necessity field and places them in the luxury field, and that loss to the necessity field makes for higher costs of necessities.

People without extra surpluses may well invest in instruments of ownership, but such a placement of savings should be looked upon as an investment and that alone. Any mass movement looking to enrichment by speculation and not by production and distribution made possible by thrift, frugality and conservation, makes for a greater impoverishment and is subversive to the “X” factor to the extent it is practiced.

Consumer Cooperatives

This subject merits discussion because of the consideration given to it by the general public and not because of its present effect. That, at the moment, is relatively negligible. The intentions and designs of those supporting the present movement are the important points.

Consumer cooperatives, of themselves, are just as legitimate and just as economically proper as are individual business concerns or corporations. If a consumer cooperative can do a better job of distribution and can bring goods to the consumer at lower prices than existing agencies then such a cooperative should receive every encouragement. The private business concern that cannot stand against the competition of a fairly run cooperative has no rightful complaint, nor should it be the recipient of public sympathy.

Many people, lured to the consumer cooperative fold, come because they are given to understand that they will share in the profits, thereby making the cost of their purchases correspondingly less. There are two false notions at large here. First, the assumption that there is going to be a profit. What if there is a loss? More enterprises fail than succeed. Second, that the taking of a profit, if any, should be credited to lower prices for goods purchased. It would be as sensible to invest money in John Doe’s shoe factory and subtract the dividends from the cost of goods bought at the corner grocery. An investment in a cooperative should be considered the same as an investment in any other business. Investment in a cooperative is a risk just like other investments, it may lose and it may gain. Any loss or any gain should be regarded as just that and not as a subtracted or an added cost for goods purchased. How much profit can the cooperative make? Is it a better investment than some other enterprises? At what price does it sell its goods? Are the prices lower than those of other merchandisers? Upon the answers to these questions should consumers base their decisions to invest in and to buy from cooperatives.

The present consumer cooperative movement, however, is not based on the premise of fair operation. It has an advantage up its sleeve which is at once unfair and uneconomic. This newly stimulated movement and the hope for its success is founded on the movement’s expectations of employing the political means. It proposes to take unfair advantage of competing business by obtaining government subsidy and tax exemption. Having obtained such a considerable advantage, it can then pretend it is offering goods at lower prices because its costs are lower. Of course, the costs won’t really be lower. Its costs will be the same but a part of its overhead will be paid by government, which means by all of us including the merchants with whom the cooperatives propose to compete.

In these days of growing statism, movements of this kind must be resisted to the utmost. Independent merchants seeking discriminatory legislation against “Chains” had better be careful lest they establish legislative precedents permitting cooperatives to wipe them both out of business existence. The very structure of cooperatives gives them unrivaled political power. Politicians, sensing the handy advantage of compartmentizing the people, will bend every effort to aid and abet the aims of any such well compartmentized group.

Share the Wealth

This scheme fallaciously assumes that wealth is a static thing, that all there is or ever will be is in existence, that if one is to be wealthy he must somehow secure some of the wealth already possessed by others.

This nostrum, like most of the others, comes from a philosophy of despair. It fails to recognize that wealth is only slightly static, that the greater part of wealth, if there is to be any considerable amount of it, must be a constantly, freshly created thing, day in and day out, year in and year out, ad infinitum.

The only static parts of wealth are the instruments used in creating wealth: farms, factories, railroads, etc. To divide these would be silly. In most instances the present ownership, schooled in efficient operation by the hard master of acquisition, is far more competent to direct these instruments in producing goods for the use of others than would be any new politically directed breakdown and realignment of ownership.

The elements of wealth in which people are interested are homes, food, clothing, the other necessities, conveniences and luxuries. These things are produced daily. They are consumed daily. All that can materially interest anyone is the getting of a sufficient amount of these goods. Merely to divide the money in existence or to divide a billion or a hundred billions of “new money” among all the people, would not add a single slice of bread, another pair of shoes or a kilowatt-hour of electricity to the total wealth we now have.

On the contrary, any such division of existing wealth or division of fiat money would seriously subtract the slices of bread, the pairs of shoes and the kilowatt-hours of electricity we now have available to us. Not only would there be an impairment of our producing machinery by the installation of incompetent management, but the inflationary forces set in motion by the division of fiat money, as has been set forth, would throw this machinery out of adjustment and create a general impoverishment.

The mere fact that one capitalist has accumulated, let us say, ten million dollars, is not of itself a deterrent force in keeping anyone else from being rich also. He can use but little of that ten millions. He can only control it and, to be of any use to him, he has to put it to the use of others. He must control it wisely and there are many natural motives forcing him to do so. In most instances that accumulation makes riches easier for others.

So long as more things for more people is our objective, we need only concern ourselves with the processes that permit their production and distribution. Sharing the wealth, as it is legislatively planned, destroys this possibility—it subverts the “X” factor.

Thinking people will do well to examine current legislative proposals for subtle share-the-wealth designs. None of these proposals are as sweeping as the Huey Long brand, but many of them are doing by bits what he planned in one fell swoop. Economic death by inches or all at once? You want neither? Then get off this road—it’s bad! Share-the-wealth schemes have a “reverse English” effect. They bring results opposite to those intended.

“Work Less and Have More”

Under this heading fall two current panaceas having no inconsiderable support. These are “share-the-work” and the “thirty-hour week.” Ironically, the chief sponsors are labor organizations, embracing in their memberships the very people who would be most adversely affected by the adoption of any such plans.

“Work sharing” is a direct invitation to a lower standard of living. A worker making $1500 a year can purchase a few things beyond bare necessities. If his employment is shared, he has less, and the one with whom he shares his work has no more, if as much. The scheme limits the worker’s opportunity to produce and to earn. It, therefore, raises costs and reduces purchasing power.

More alluring, and therefore more devastating, is the plan for a six-hour day and the five-day week. It really is the “work-sharing” idea plus the proposition that the worker will receive the same weekly pay as though he worked, let us say, forty-eight hours. From the standpoint of the worker who refuses to go beyond shallow reasoning, the plan looks grand. He can work eighteen hours less per week, he gets the same pay, he has more time to spend and therefore to enjoy his earnings and, above all, someone in the ranks of the unemployed will have the opportunity to work the eighteen hours made possible by his magnanimity and at the same hourly pay.

On the basis of a dollar an hour, here is at least $18 per week (and possibly $28.80) added to the purchasing power of labor, so it is thought. Why should “business” complain? Will not “business” sell more goods?

It would be a great world, perhaps, if all our problems could be solved this easily. But they cannot. At least reason and experience dictate that they cannot. Provided the sponsors of this scheme are sincere, and one has to allow for a lot of naïveté to be without suspicion, their methods contradict their intentions. That which they offer as a solution only aggravates the problem. They may mean well but they do wrong. They “fall” for a fallacy and pursue it stubbornly and blindly. This “thirty-hour week” proposition, when compared with factual evidence, doesn’t make sense. When one is certain that such an idea, even when sponsored by labor, is inimical to the interest of labor, is one wrong in condemning it? Should “business,” recognizing the fallacy, sacrifice long-range public interest for momentary approbation from self-styled liberals and “friends of labor”?

The “thirty-hour week” philosophy gives a false credence to one point and fails to recognize the stumbling-block nature of two others:

A. Real purchasing power does not consist of money. If it did we could all be prosperous by the simple expedient of printing money at any time we wanted any commodity or any service. Real purchasing power is created when we make something or render some service which has a market, something which, if in excess of our own requirements, we can trade for something else we more ardently desire. Money has only two functions: first, it serves as a medium of exchange in facilitating this trading of products and services and, second, it serves as a repository of value so we can conveniently account for our position in this productive process. If we create goods and services of greater or lesser value than we consume, we register the credits or debits in the form of money. We have a surplus of money or we owe money. Money is only the symbol of purchasing power. Purchasing power comes only from production. If this point were better understood, more people would be producing rather than trying to get rich by symbol-tinkering.

B. When a forty-eight-hour worker, getting $48, works only thirty hours, still getting $48, and someone else works the eighteen hours’ difference, getting $ 18, the production remains the same and the cost jumps from $48 to $66, From where is this tremendous cost coming, this extra cost from multiplying $18 by millions of legislated eighteen-hour lay-offs? That cost must be added to the price of the products. Labor, with no more dollars per laborer, will pay higher prices for goods and services. Labor will be able to buy less, not more. Labor won’t need any extra time to spend its money—labor cannot buy as much on a $48 thirty-hour week as it can buy on a $48 forty-eight-hour week.

C. If labor could produce as much in thirty hours as in forty-eight hours, then perhaps something could be said for this idea. But that is sheer nonsense. To be sure, there is a point at which every person reaches the peak of productive efficiency, but that point, except in cases of physical or mental deformity, is far above thirty hours a week. The following is a sample of sound reasoning, typically perverted:

“It was progress when we reduced from a fourteen to a twelve-hour day and more progress when we reduced from a twelve to a ten-hour day. Therefore, will it not be progress if we reduce to eight, to six, to four—?”

What should be the duration measure of weekly labor? Until everyone has everything needed, the measure should be the point at which the greatest productive efficiency is reached. This point should not be subjected to a national generalization. It does not lend itself to that. Climate, class of workers and conditions of work unite to create a variety of efficiency points which in one circumstance might require a 20-hour week—in another, a 60-hour week. Hourly reductions in labor below this point, whatever it may be, should come only as rewards for achievement, as gifts from a perfected economic system. Fewer hours, below the productive efficiency point, can never be the cause of more goods for more people.

Another way of seeing this theory clearly: worker A can make four chairs in eight hours. These chairs are his purchasing power. In six hours he can make only three chairs. Therefore, in six hours of labor he will put less not more purchasing power in circulation. More pay for less work creates less and not more purchasing power.

The wage earner should recognize that he, more than anyone else, has the greatest stake in lower costs and therefore lower prices for goods and services. The normally well-to-do and the rich do not like a high cost of living. But twenty-cent bread, twenty-five-cent milk and twenty-dollar shoes do not keep these higher-bracket people from having bread, milk and shoes. These higher prices may force them to play less golf, to buy cheaper automobiles and to thin out their pleasure trips, but they will continue to eat all they want and to enjoy, to the full, the other real necessities.

What happens to the wage earner, with merely a necessity-furnishing income, when bread, milk and shoes and the other necessities double in price? The answer is obvious: he has only half the bread, milk and shoes and the other necessities. A commodity price raise in relation to labor income is the most disastrous thing that can happen to labor. Such a circumstance half starves the wage earner—it merely keeps the well-to-do from enjoying all of their accustomed luxuries. It pinches the rich man in his automobile—the poor man in his belly.

Yet, strange as it may seem, paradoxical as is the truth, the average labor organization sponsors measures that, if adopted, would assure this circumstance. On the other hand, enlightened business organizations, which labor is constantly admonished to regard as enemies, oppose these measures with all the vigor they possess. Labor will do well to scrutinize more carefully its alleged friends and its supposed enemies. Anyway, the opponents of “work less and have more” are the real friends of labor whether or not organized labor and its professional promoters ever recognize or admit it. These nostrums are viciously subversive to the solving of impoverishment.

Union Wage Scales

Only that relevant to our problem need be discussed on this broad subject. Present trends, however, seem to point to policies, likely of adoption, that must command more and more attention when considering impoverishment.

No one, having a philosophical understanding of the American system of free enterprise, will deny labor the right to organize, the right to bargain collectively or the right to charge for its work what the market will bear. That is, provided the collective bargaining does not assume monopolistic proportions. Industry bargains collectively when several small shoe factories merge into one company. But industry is not permitted to merge until there remains no competition. All the shoe factories in America cannot merge into one big corporation. Sound economics and the public interest demand that this condition shall never be otherwise.

All labor should be regarded as a commodity whether it is common labor, school teachers or corporation presidents. It should be regarded as that because it is a commodity, nothing less, nothing more. A university president is president only so long as there are more reasons for keeping him on the job than for employing others who may be seeking the position. His service is a commodity in competition with others able to render a similar service just as much as the products of a factory are in competition with comparable products from other factories. His service is subject to the same laws of supply and demand and the incident price-level variations as any commodity of common utility.

A monopoly of any commodity, except in rare instances like the telephone business, is contrary to the public interest. Monopoly cannot long endure, unless politically protected. Monopoly in industry exists when an industry is able to advance the political means to its side. Industry will tend toward the use of the political means to attain monopoly if the public will permit it to do so. The present business demand for another kind of NRA is sufficient witness to that statement.

Likewise, labor tends toward monopoly but can acquire it only if it can successfully employ the political means. It attempts to secure government backing for its wage scale and working conditions demands which, temporarily at least, would take labor—organized labor anyway—out of the market as a competitive commodity. Irrespective of the fact that competition is, in the long run, in the interest of business, labor and the public, most groups instinctively seek to exempt themselves from its many exactitudes. Most groups want competition for other groups, few ever demand it for themselves.

If a thousand plumbers said, “We have organized ourselves into a union; our work is superior to the ordinary run of plumbers; we will conform to certain specifications as to hours, grade of work, quality of work, etc., and we want $1.50 per hour for our work; we will work for nothing less,” that proposition, of itself, would be no different than Mr. Ford producing a car of known specifications and saying in effect, “The price is $650. F.O.B. Detroit. Take it or leave it.”

But if Mr. Ford attempted an industrial coup d’état, which amounted to a monopoly of the automobile market and said, “Here is a Ford car. The price is $1000. If you want an automobile take this one. There are no others,” we would readily understand this acute disadvantage and probably wouldn’t stand for it very long. As it is today, although few outside of the automobile business contemplate competition with Mr. Ford, we know that we are enjoying all the advantages of competition. Should the present manufacturers become inefficient, should they not follow their present rule of pressing for every possible price reduction and every possible improvement, some of us would not be long in organizing the capital and the technical staff to compete in what might be termed an “easy” market. The automobile industry has attracted some of the best men in the nation and the best men in the nation recognize these facts, are not adverse to competition, press for every improvement and lower prices and, as a consequence, they have brought the automobile within the purchasing range of millions of consumers.

Organized labor, today, is attempting to avert competition. When a union goes on strike it doesn’t say to the industry, “We refuse to work unless we get certain conditions and pay. If you think you can do better by employing some non-union labor, go ahead and see how you like it.” Oh, no, the attitude is far different than that. It says, in effect, “We refuse to work unless we get certain conditions and pay. We will prevent anyone else from working in our places. Those who do not choose to belong to our union cannot work in your plant and they will have no say-so whatever about working conditions or pay.”

Even this unjust attitude is not the worst in present practice. On the West Coast, where radical, left-wing labor leaders are in control of maritime labor, the issue is control of the “hiring hall.” These labor leaders are demanding control and are saying to the employers, “You not only cannot hire non-union labor, but you will have to take the union labor we dictate.” Here is a case of labor usurping the functions of management, a practice viciously destructive of productive efficiency. It is “dictatorship by the Proletariat” raising its ugly head in America—a condition in which the “X” factor cannot possibly exist.

While much of the present labor attitude is of this militant variety and not in the interests of even labor itself, there is also a semi-peaceful but nearly as uneconomic an attitude on the part of many organized labor groups. Some of the best unions, like the carpenters’ for instance, have monopolized the competent carpenter market and set a very high price on their services. They allow no competition to exist within their trade nor will they work on jobs where non-union men are employed, even in other trades.

To understand the effect of this monopoly, one must think of the annual national income as a whole. That income is the aggregate of all production. That aggregate is some given amount, say fifty billions of dollars. Monopolistic groups, like the well-intentioned carpenters, take from this national income an amount disproportionate to the service they render. When this is done, the unorganized, the less skilled, the agriculturists and others have just that much less for their share. They have to suffer for the greediness of the others. These maladjustments create impoverishment.

The answer to this by the collectivists would be, “Let the others organize also.” But, let it be pointed out, that organization would not increase the national income. It would merely increase the competition for exploiting the national income. Class strife would be even more in evidence.

The consequence of these rigidities, whether by wage fixations through union organization or price fixations on industrial goods through NRA regimentation, are lower standards of living. The ingenuity of man is given the wrong emphasis: business, laborers, agriculturists, bankers, veterans, home owners, and all the other compartments of a nation’s population get to thinking of their main objective as the grabbing of a disproportionate share of the nation’s income and not in terms of producing more goods at lower costs which will add to that income.

The carpenters, plasterers, plumbers, lathers, floor-layers, electricians, bricklayers and painters set up a Chinese wall within which they impose non-competitive wages, wages they wish and not wages the market commands; the manufacturers of lumber, concrete, plumbing, electrical supplies and paint hope to do the same sort of thing, and what happens? When they all get through with their non-competitive wages for labor and prices for materials, what happens? The price of a finished home is so great that only higher bracket income classes can afford to build one. And even they must build a home inferior to the one they otherwise would build.

Impoverishment is a relative term. If no one can afford a home then the people are impoverished in respect to homes. A home is only one of the elements of wealth. If everyone had a home, everyone would be wealthy in that respect. The same principles apply to acquiring a general wealth as apply to acquiring a wealth of homes. All we care about in solving the problem of impoverishment is that every element of wealth—homes, furniture, food, clothing, education, fuel, transportation, et cetera—be produced so cheaply that they will be within the price range of those in the lowest income brackets. This can only be accomplished by more and more production. Every impediment to production is an economic vice, including artificial wage levels or artificial commodity or service levels. If every group would comprehend that purchasing power does not come from high wages or high prices but that higher wages and higher prices are merely the symbols of greater purchasing power which, in turn, is based exclusively on production, our economic troubles would be little short of over. For we do possess everything but the correct thinking as to how our efforts should be directed.

As inferred previously, subversions to the “X” factor are almost without number. The few discussed here only scratch the surface—they are merely illustrative. Every folly, all our ignorances and mistakes, wars, class conflicts, ill-conceived legislation and the maintenance of out-moded institutions combine to effect impoverishment in the midst of plenty—tend to jam the natural flow of wealth to greater numbers of people.

What folly it is to suppose some panacea can create a material millennium when the real causes of our difficulties are rooted in the frailties and the weaknesses of millions of individuals!

There is no cure—there can only be modest improvement and even that depends on individual willingness to contribute many personal virtues. “. . . deducing the rules of right living in the world as it is . . . wearisome and commonplace tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over again in learning and doing.” For such is the price of a more abundant life.

[1] We do not here refer to the type of speculation in which a farmer engages when he plants a crop or in which a business man enters when he introduces a new product to the market.

CHAPTER XI

THE PROMOTIVE EFFECTS OF A GOOD GOVERNMENT

A distinguished economist recently said, “Unemployment can be absorbed only with a reviving industry. Will not industry revive and expand better under good government than under bad government?” The term “good government” opened a realm for speculation as to just what it would be like, what it would do and not do, and what its relationships would be to the citizens in their several classifications. Examination has disclosed a logical definition that gives such a government a most direct and influential bearing on lower costs—more goods and more services for more people.

The Significance of the New Relationships with Government

We are inclined to raise disdainful eyebrows when hearing of India’s Sacred Cow. This attitude on our part may be a little inappropriate for it is not so certain that we haven’t a Sacred Cow of our own. Recent events in the political elections and the behavior following the landslide of votes seem to suggest our Sacred Cow to be, “The people have spoken.”

Not admitting or denying that the successful candidate for President believes in or intends to practice what the return of ballots implied, it is no variation of the facts to assert that the landslide was an undeniable evidence of the people’s willingness, yes, demand, that government take over more of the responsibilities of individuals, that it do for the people what they have become reluctant to do for themselves.

The fact that a large majority of the people, on this particular occasion, entered such a decision at the polls in no manner stamps the decision as right—for example—Alberta’s social dividend fiasco. A mass decision may be, and quite often is, subject to greater error than individual decision. “The people can do no wrong” has no more validity than its older equivalent, “The King can do no wrong.”[1] When strong currents of unwisdom are on the rampage, and history is filled with classic examples, it hardly becomes those competent to counsel wisely, to forsake their posts of opposition and silently steal away to the ephemeral cloisters of comfortable acquiescence. Yet, “the people have spoken” has had precisely such an effect.

Thus, there has been added to the sins of political indulgence and to the frailties of a “will-powerless” race, the dignities of a “has been” leadership, crushed to impotency and brought “into line” by the mushy motives of a shallowly concocted socialmindedness and, incidentally, by the urge, “let’s make some money where and when the making is good.” While professing a thorough disagreement with their theories and methods, no indictment is intended of those who are socialists, of those who aspire to the order of the Totalitarian State, who believe such an order better serves society, socially and economically. Perhaps they are entitled to their opinions. At least their mere vigorous pursuit of them does not merit condemnation. As Voltaire wrote in his letter to Helvetius: “I do not agree with a word that you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

But little less than contempt can be awarded those who turn traitor to their convictions, who run at the sign of a fight, who forego the exposition of an order they believe superior, merely for the sake of momentary expediency. Our form of government cannot endure in the face of complete acquiescence to majorities. That the literary mercenaries have provided our modern “turn-coats” with phrases and sophistries to cushion their erstwhile thinking and with which to rationalize this bigamist wedding to the alleged new love, known as the “new order,” does little more than make ridiculous a position already untenable. “If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em!!”

So the case for a good government, as presently defined, can be of little more than academic interest. Its remaining supporters are few in number and write a grammar at once uncompelling and unappealing, certainly unmarketable. They have nothing to offer that is new or untried except a new degree of economic virtue, of personal abstinence, individual self-control and political morality. While their motives are as fine and their objectives as high as they think the potentialities of nature itself will permit, these motives and these objectives appear drab and colorless when competing with the promised millenniums conceived in the minds of very ordinary men, “Little things in trousers slightly jagged.” That all the Totalitarian States of all history have never delivered even a miniature millennium adds not one whit of support to the last defenders of the true liberalism and to the faith of our American fathers.

Responsibility is moving swiftly, surely, in currents at the moment unstoppable and unswervable, from the individual to the State. The American is shifting his position from master of the State to its servant. A few will remain behind, avoiding these currents, to mark the spot whence we departed so that, should we return, there may be a record of our earlier mistakes and suggestions as to the route wherein a greater achievement lies.

The Kinship of Government and Economics

William Graham Sumner, in his classic of individualism, “What Social Classes Owe to Each Other,”[2] made this observation:

“Unquestionably capital accumulates with a rapidity which follows in some high series the security, good Government, peaceful order of the State in which it is employed; . . .”

Had the profound Sumner been thinking in the exact terms of this thesis, he no doubt would have said something to this effect:

“Unquestionably the free play of forces which compels an exercise of the ability to lower costs, thereby promoting production and insuring a distribution thereof, is released and given a fertile soil in which it can thrive (follows in some high series), when government is good, stable and peaceful, and impartial and impersonal in its attitude.”

Some pages back, the “X” factor was defined as including “first, the ability to lower costs and, third, the free play of forces that compel an exercise of that ability.” It can readily be seen then that there is here the contention that the type of government has a direct relationship with the “X” factor, in other words, a direct relationship with more goods and services for more people, a direct relationship with the problem of impoverishment. That is precisely what is meant. The type of government does have a profound effect on the release or restraint of forces which must compel or repel an exercise of the ability to reduce costs.

To comprehend fully this major point, one should consider the nature and definition of economics. Economics is not an exact science like mathematics, physics, astronomy or chemistry. In exactness, economics is somewhat akin to medicine. Much is known—very much remains to be known. The physical laws of economics, such as diminishing returns, supply and demand and the like are well known and precisely definable, but the science of economics includes the reaction of human beings to these physical laws and it is in this field of human behavior that much remains for study. In this latter phase, economics can be said to be an exact science only to the extent that human behavior is constant. That makes it rather inexact. While human behavior has a constancy about it, much of which is already recorded, there are no known means of anticipating its unrecorded actions and reactions. Past experience is the only basis on which any human behavior can be anticipated. Anything beyond that is conjecture, pure and simple. And conjecture in this field has been conspicuously inaccurate and therefore costly, not only materially, but costly in human suffering. No one could be an economist on whom a dependency for untried plans should be reposed except one who has a complete mastery of mass psychology. And who will boast of any such attainment?

Here is a thought-provoking paragraph along this line, written by Herbert Spencer in his “Man Versus the State”:[3]

“Alike to the citizen and to the legislator, home-experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely succeed for long: the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in certain ways he foresees, and fulfil ends he wishes. Is there not a marvellous incongruity between premises and conclusion?”

The orthodox economist is one who has recorded human behavior in relation to a variety of conditions and bases his recommendations on the good results—his objections on the bad ones. He confines his experiments to the laboratory of speculative thinking and insists that the testing of new and untried ideas be confined to small and immunized operations.

The heterodox economist is one who discards and disregards the work sheets of experience and proposes to use a whole people as his laboratory. He thinks his proposals meritorious simply because his objectives are idealistically high. He, quite radically, fails to see any inhumanity in the not remote possibility that his brain-children won’t deliver to the level of his romantic expectations.

Economics, like psychology, is a study of human behavior in relation to a variety of given conditioning factors. A study of these conditioning factors is necessary. They embrace government as well as geography. Economics can grow as a science only as it is lived and meticulously observed and recorded. Changes in economic practice should be by the process of evolution, of necessity slow but, more important, orderly. The revolutionary process based, as it must be, on sheer speculation is dangerously destructive, therefore inhuman and anti-social.

Human behavior is profoundly influenced by the nature and type of government. Therefore, any consideration of the economic problem, “Impoverishment,” should include some observations as to the type of government under which economic results are most felicitous. The “X” factor finds its greatest possibilities for promotion under a good government, for subversion under its opposite.

A Good Government Defined

What is a good government? For one thing, it is a servant of all the people. It takes no sides. It can have no “teacher’s pets.” It cannot be a government that divides the population into classes of business, labor, agriculture, bankers, veterans, the North, the South, etc., and then take the side of one group or the other, which at the moment appears to be the politically expedient thing. Insofar as a good government should have any economic interests, those interests should be directed to the people as consumers. For the only common denominator in a population, economically speaking, is the consumer. The object of a good government’s economic affections should be the consumers and not groups and classes. In no other way can a government remain good. To shower its affection on a group or a class it must evidence a greater devotion to a group or a class than to the remaining groups or classes. In so doing, distinctions are created and the government becomes relatively unfriendly to those groups to which the overflowing cup of friendship is not extended.

A good government is one whose administrators must think of themselves only as representatives, as servants of the people, administering just laws, impartially and impersonally. They must never assume the notion that election or appointment to office places them in positions from where an undelegated, arbitrary attitude is permissible. They must never think, the minute they are in office, that they are the members of a new class, a different interest, that they must fortify their new positions by intrigues and favors to assure their permanency. Needless to relate, it has been because of a violation of these political ethics, that contempt has developed toward “politicians” and, in turn, that “politicians” have assumed a vested interest attitude toward their offices and have felt compelled to use every device to perpetuate themselves. What else but this politician-versus-people attitude could account for the applause by intelligent people given a recent book entitled, “Our Enemy, the State”? A government cannot be good when its officers and administrators feel that their interests are different from those of the people, any of the people, they represent.

A good government recognizes that the best interests of the people are served when government keeps itself to the very minimum compatible with actual necessities. Such a government will keep a vigilant lookout for any possible excesses in its growth and cost.

A good government will scrupulously observe a disinterested attitude in the behavior and conduct between its citizens and will interfere only to assure fair play among them. It will assume the rôle of umpire and realize that that is as far as its function goes in this respect.

A good government will maintain order, suppress crime and racketeering, assure justice, conduct international relationships, do a minimum of necessary duties beyond the powers of private enterprise to perform, regulate certain monopolistic businesses in the public interest and maintain a minimum national defense compatible with national safety. It will not engage in competition with its citizens (isn’t the State only All-of-us?) in affairs the citizens can possibly conduct themselves.

A good government will refrain from entering an activity, even if the government’s conduct of it can be proved superior, if, in so doing, a precedent is established or an initiation is given to a trend that eventually will prove dangerous.

In fiscal matters, a good government will set the example in economy, in controllable indebtedness and in the virtues of assets over liabilities. It will serve as a model in the high regard for sanctity of contracts. Government’s obligations must be kept inviolable. Its taxing system will be as fair and as equitable as highly endowed and disinterested individuals can make it. The taxing power will be used for securing revenues only, not used to achieve a partisan-conceived social reform nor ever used to punish groups in political disfavor. It will issue the currency and coin the money and its only interest in this respect will be to effect a stable medium of exchange, permitting long-range business transactions, and to insure a repository of value in which confidence can be reposed through succeeding generations.

A good government will resist to the utmost the efforts of any groups to use the government as a vehicle to their own ends. It will close the gate to the political means as an avenue for man to satisfy his wants. A good government will leave man only the economic means through which to seek his material satisfactions, but will so perfect every instrument of government that success through the economic means will be facilitated and made easier for everyone.

A good government will be a government of laws and not of men. A people must never be subjected to a “Do this. Do that” order, insured in a government of men, impossible in a government of laws.

There is one point transcending them all in any definition of a good government. It has to do with the government’s economic responsibility to the individual citizen. A good government will set itself in such order that its citizens can best find an expression of their abilities and their virtues. The arena for citizen activity will be kept in good playing order, decently policed and fairly umpired. But the government, as government, will not have a concern as to who wins or who loses so long as the play has been fair and the rules of the game properly interpreted.

A notion contrary to this has been and is responsible for much of our trouble. People failing to win in the game of life, have turned to the umpire demanding favoritism in the interpretations of the rules and are now asking the umpire to carry the ball for their side. In the first instance this idea may seem all right, but a precedent is established and as play, first here and next there, becomes unbalanced, the umpire finds himself hopping all over the field trying to help all sides to win. The dignity of the umpire becomes destroyed. He is a friend only when he is carrying our ball, an enemy when carrying the other fellow’s. The contempt for the umpire must soon become general and then there will be no ordered arena in which the citizenry can operate.

If government can do our job for us better than we can, then the case for socialism is complete. Why not admit it, all join the government and perform all duties through government? Why not stop right now and organize and plan the best possible kind of socialism? Why drift aimlessly on, attempting the merging of irreconcilable philosophies, toward that order, which at best, can be nothing more than a bastard socialism?

If socialism is not the answer, and we will frankly admit it, then government has no business taking any sides of any group or class against any other group or class. The point is, conceding we have an arena permitting equal opportunity, if we can’t do a thing for ourselves we had better consider it can’t or shouldn’t be done. To invite government interference in our behalf is to justify it in another’s behalf, which, sooner or later, must command national disaster. That will kill the possibility of success for any one, for all of us. A good government does not meddle in the legitimate affairs of any or all of its citizens. It merely keeps the arena in good shape for playing the game.

Certainly, no good government, as thus defined, would usurp any powers or prerogatives not specifically delegated to it by its citizens. As a matter of fact, it would frown on any delegation of powers, except in extreme emergencies, that was not done after long and careful deliberation, and then only sparingly. One searches the pages of history in vain for examples of delegated power later relinquished—short of revolution. A good government would be the first to avoid this destructive trend.

Is a good government as here defined a mere dream? Very likely. Too few are willing to sacrifice their present unsupportable positions (little recognized as unsupportable) to contribute the effort necessary for its fulfilment. Too many prefer filching the magnificent edifice of our national being to a life of personal contributions that made the edifice possible.

Is such a government merely idealistically high, impossible of attainment, practically not to be expected? Realism dictates the answers be somewhat in the affirmative. Nevertheless, a working, wealth-producing civilization, a personally satisfying body of aggregated humanity must have a contribution of virtues approaching the ideal. There cannot be a high order of civilization unless there is a substantial accompanying manifestation of these idealistic attributes. The law of the universe denies the bountiful blessings assured a perfected society to a people who refuse to rise above the level of paleolithic behavior. This law says: “You will learn and adopt civilized conduct or you won’t reap civilized results.”

Is a good government complicated? No, it is simplicity itself. “Shoemaker, stick to your last,” that’s all.

Is it reactionary? Yes, in the sense that it calls for a restoration of the virtues, ideals and realities characterizing some of our earlier nationals. Yet, in another sense, the idea is extremely radical. Our government, and most of the other governments of the world, are headed in the other direction so fast they are afraid to stop. Somewhat comparable to the drunkard who fears to stop drinking lest the shock kill him. Perhaps it would. But in stopping there is hope—in going on there is nothing ahead but the new name we will give an old order, all of the essential characteristics of which are found alike in Communism, Fascism and Nazism. It is radical to demand the overthrow of a present trend.

Promotion By Anti-Subversion

In appraising what would happen under a good government, we first discover that certain promotive effects are developed by the automatic elimination of several subversions previously discussed. For purposes of example only:

a. Government over-expansion with its economically enervating costs would cease. Expansion would go on in some sensible ratio to the growth of wealth and population.

b. Government mis-direction would no longer exist because a good government would not think in terms of groups and classes, and would play no favorites anyway.

c. Government intervention into the fields of private enterprise would not be so much as entertained.

d. Consumer Cooperatives, for instance, couldn’t employ the political means to gain a competitive advantage; neither could any other group.

e. Inflation, arising from mismanaged fiscal affairs, would be impossible.

f. Business could not get another “NRA” nor labor a “thirty-hour week,” nor any other group its pet competition-destroying Chinese Wall.

Now even these subversions to the “X” factor are not exactly inconsiderable. Patience would assure the listing of many more. No doubt, the elimination of merely these few would so favorably affect the economy that what we now call impoverishment would cease to be a leading national problem. But all of this is promotion by anti-subversion. Nevertheless, in many respects, is not a rectified evil equivalent to an achieved good?

Direct Promotions Responsive to Good Government

Now then, what is there actually promotive to be expected from a good government? For one thing, everyone (there could be no exceptions) would be forced to the use of the economic means to supply needs and to satisfy desires. There could be no other way, for the political means would be closed. Everyone would have to engage, in some manner, in the production and distribution of goods and services. These being the only elements of wealth, everyone would be engaged in producing and distributing wealth. Under a good government even the politicians would be included in wealth production, since a good government is essential to an ordered society, without which wealth production and distribution is impossible. Politicians, servants of the public interest, would be a very realistic part of the process.

As a rule man has produced his best when he has lived in a society where assurances have been given that he will be permitted to keep that which he has acquired, in a society where he has been guaranteed the fruits of his own labor. History demonstrates that man has been subjected to the predatory practices of government as well as by other men or criminals. A good government is a promotive factor because it engages in no practices that either unjustly absorb or take away from the citizen that which he has earned for himself. Thus, because of the behavior of a good government, man’s energies are released to the extent he possesses energies.

There is one other basic characteristic to a highly civilized economy that can only be preserved under a good government and that characteristic is economic voluntarism. Our American system, as we have known it, has been given a variety of titles: the competitive system, the system of laissez faire, private property, capitalism, the market economy and the profit system.

Professor T.N. Carver in his report on the problem, “What Must We do to Save Our Economic System?” has this to say:

“Our economic system is essentially a voluntary system under which men work together on the basis of voluntary agreement, or contract, rather than on the basis of coercion, or the authority of the few and the obedience of the many.

“It is not essentially a system of competition, though competition will exist under any voluntary system; of laissez faire, though within the field of useful work, men are let alone; of private property, though private property will exist in any voluntary system; of capitalism, though capitalism will exist in the absence of coercion; of markets, though markets will exist wherever men are free to buy and sell; of profits, though profits will exist wherever men are free to work for themselves.

“Voluntarism is more fundamental than any of the above-named characteristics of our system, since they all depend for their existence upon freedom from violence, freedom to work together by voluntary agreement, freedom to own, to buy and sell, and to enjoy what one has produced or purchased.”

It ought to be obvious to anyone who will ponder the problem that economic voluntarism, under which so many other factors absolutely essential to economic welfare are nestled, can exist at its fullest only under a good government. It cannot exist at all under the opposite of a good government—the Totalitarian State. There are many gradations between these two types of government. Voluntarism diminishes, it fades, and with it the possibilities for material welfare, as governments approach Totalitarianism.

The United States, today, is the wealthiest nation all history has ever known, not because government created the wealth but because, during the past three centuries, several hundred millions of individuals, working competitively and cooperatively, have made contributions to a startling aggregate of wealth. They have left as their heritage to succeeding generations an amazing array of productive farms, efficient factories, unrivaled transportation and communication facilities, homes, office buildings and other essential instruments to future welfare.

While, during these three hundred years, we probably have never had a 100% good government, we have had a government better than any other people have been able to devise. It has not been perfect nor can it ever be, but it has been nearer a neutral government and has interfered less than have the others. As a consequence, the spirit of the individual was unshackled. His energies were released. Initiative, resourcefulness, courage, inventiveness, confidence, specialized knowledge and individual objectivity fairly blossomed in this atmosphere of assured reward for demonstrated merit, all going to compose highly endowed individuals. They created the wealth. They gave society more than they used. These free spirits, protected against the ravages of criminal individuals and predacious governments, built our national edifice. The total of their contributions made our national wealth.

We talk a lot about programs. “If you’re opposed to this plan of government, what plan have you to offer in its stead?” is a common question. The inference is, “What alternate form of governmental planned economy have you to propose?” The answer is, “We do not want nor can the people prosper under any form of governmental planned economy.” About all we want in the way of a plan is a plan that will get the people to understand what their relations to government should be, what the functions of government should be, and how this relationship can be adjusted to release to the fullest the potential productive capacities, the energies, the enterprising attributes, the virtues and the genius of the individual.

As in a delicately made watch, the several mechanisms of which are all-important and essential but none of which can produce the desired result alone, so it is in this problem of more goods and more services for more people. Many factors, nicely balanced and smoothly running, are all-important and essential. None of them, however, can achieve the desired result by themselves. A really good government is the “mainspring” to progress. It is a first requisite to any promotion of the “X” factor.

[1] No doubt this phrase had its origin from “The King can do no wrong under the English Constitution.” See Blackstone—“Commentaries On the English Common Law.”

[2] Yale University Press.

[3] Williams and Norgate, London, England.

CHAPTER XII

THE PROMOTIVE EFFECTS OF MACHINERY

New machines, scientific improvements and the like, often referred to as “technological development,” have received more than their share of unwarranted abuse. Curiously enough, much of this abuse has originated with the laboring man, the very one whom the machine has helped the most. But, like a lot of other problems in the economic field, the answer in the case of shallow reasoning is the direct opposite of the answer in the case of thorough reasoning.

For instance, a laboring man seeing a huge machine doing the work of several hundred men, is all too likely to regard the machine solely from its labor-displacement angle. “What chance has a laboring man in competition with such contraptions?” he asks. All sorts of schemes have been suggested to keep out the introduction of new labor-saving devices. As an example, labor, today, is pressing with all its political ability for a law limiting the number of cars on a freight train on the theory that more trains will require more train crews. Better roadbeds and higher powered locomotives will be of little use if this idea should be embodied into the law of the land. It is one thing for government to repress bad practices and criminals but it is quite another to repress invention and technological progress.

The shallow thinker asks only the question, “Do not machines displace labor?” The obvious answer is, “Yes, most assuredly they do.” The thorough thinker asks a second question, “Is it possible machines create more jobs than they displace?” We can really get some place with the second question whereas, with the first, we were stymied by a lot of contradictory evidence.

Machines have been introduced in greater profusion in the manufacturing, construction and service industries than in any other branch of our productive and distributive processes. In 1820 the United States had a population of 9,638,000 and we had 439,000 people employed in these industries. In other words, one out of twenty-two of our population was employed in these industries. In 1930, we had a population of 122,775,000 and 14,111,000 people were employed in these industries. It can thus be seen that in 1930 we had one out of nine of our population employed in these industries. Quite a remarkable change and all the evidence supporting the machine as the creator of greater employment!

In the Cleveland Trust Company bulletin for March, 1935, Colonel Leonard Ayres shows that the number of people in this country, above 15 years of age, who are gainfully employed, has increased faster than the total population since 1870. While the population increased 319 per cent, the gainfully employed above 15 years of age increased 409 per cent. Again, according to the censuses of 1910 and 1930, the number of people above 20 years of age gainfully employed was 30.6 per cent of the total population in 1900. In 1910 the percentage had risen to 33.4; in 1920 to 34.6 and in 1930 to 35.9. This increase in the percentage of people gainfully employed does not indicate that machines had destroyed more jobs than they had created.

The reason for this sometimes-regarded phenomenon is apparent with but little examination. Take the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge or the Hoover Dam, for instance. Neither one of these projects, supplying labor to thousands over a period of several years, could have been built without the aid of machines. The automobile is another of hundreds of excellent examples. While it might be possible to make an automobile with only hand tools, it is readily evident to anyone that the cost of such a car would be so high that none but the very wealthy could afford it and probably none would buy it. Few, if any, would be employed in the automotive industries without the economies of machinery.

The question, “Is the machine the friend or the enemy of the laboring man?” finds no better answer than in a perusal of immigration records. Does American labor tend to drift to other countries with fewer machines or do we in this country, with more machines per capita than any of the others, find it necessary to erect barriers to keep foreign labor from sharing our superior labor markets? The answer is self-evident.

We want to find employment for our unemployed, do we not? How can that be done? By making more goods. But how can we make more goods when there is no market? Simply by creating a market. How do we create a market? By reducing the cost of goods so that they will be within the purchasing range of constantly smaller incomes, that is to say, so more people can satisfy their desires by being able to purchase these goods. How can we reduce costs? By introducing efficiencies, such as a mechanical device, that will produce a given product with less man energy, with less labor.

Shallow reasoning concludes that less labor per unit product means less labor for the manufacture and distribution of that product in the aggregate. Thorough reasoning and all the available evidence conclude that lower costs of a needed and desired product so greatly multiply the demand for the product that more labor is required in spite of less labor per unit product, which was responsible for the lower cost in the first place.[1]

After all, in dealing with the problem of impoverishment, employment is not the ultimate objective in and of itself. The ultimate objective is the supplying need, the creation of a national plenty. Employment is only an incident, although a mighty important one, to that objective. Most of us work not merely because we want to work. We work because it is the means we use to satisfy our desires, to supply ourselves with necessities, and luxuries, if possible. Therefore (to reduce the proposition to an absurdity), if machines could produce for us everything we desire, there are not very many of us who would kick or find fault because of no work to be done.

When laboring men and their organizations or politicians or any other groups place the blame for impoverishment and unemployment on machines they are confessing their ignorance. They are pointing their finger at the wrong cause. They are diagnosing the problem entirely incorrectly. Technological unemployment is a myth beyond relatively minor and temporary displacements. Of course, the buggy worker was forced out of buggy making when the automobile developed, but there are many more employed today in the manufacture of vehicles than there were then, in which group the buggy worker was no doubt absorbed.

The machine is the laboring man’s best friend because it materially assists in the reduction of costs of the necessities which the laboring man has to buy. That these reductions in cost have not always reflected themselves in a lower selling price of the products, in other words, that the benefits of the machine have not always been passed on to the consumer, is quite another problem. But that is not the fault of the machine!

What or where or who are the parasites that are sapping these benefits? These points are being developed and will be summarized later. Let it suffice here to shame the animate men who will blame the inanimate machine for man’s shortcomings. The machine is one of the greatest promotive instruments to the “X” factor.

[1] The automobile is an excellent example. As labor-saving devices were introduced, costs were lowered. The lower costs have always stimulated new demands requiring more labor than was used previously. To a very large extent the undermining of this principle, i. e., the absorption of the savings before they reach the consumer, has caused poverty and progress to march hand in hand.

CHAPTER XIII

THE PROMOTIVE POSSIBILITIES OF GROUP ACTIVITY

A little of each of the best of us

Must be voluntarily dedicated to all of us.

An earlier statement contended, and it seems the contention should be clear, that all the elements for the better solution of the problem of “Impoverishment” are available. We live in a friendly climate. Our soil is fertile and productive, at least we admit it when we engage in the puerile practices of crop restriction. Our factories are adequate, or if they are not, there is no lack of brick and mortar and steel to make more of them. We confess to no shortage of natural resources. We stagger under a load of unemployment which suggests no lack of a labor supply. We have millions of people who do not possess actual necessities and millions more who possess a profound desire for more of the comforts and luxuries of life, indicating no absence of a market. No country in the world has, or ever has had, an approach to our transportation and communication facilities and there are no material impediments to our having still more.

The mere existence of these facilities, of themselves, cannot solve the problem. Other countries have had, and do have, nearly as great a basic, natural advantage and yet their people are far more impoverished. The essential difference exists in the degree of human intelligence and ingenuity that can put these natural basic blessings together and make them work. A dunce could be given the separate pieces of a highly developed airplane motor but their value to him would be only so much junk metal. An intelligent mechanic could fit the pieces into a beautifully functioning mechanism, the value of which would be several thousand times the junk of the dunce.

The purpose of this chapter will be to explore the possibilities of developing intelligent action and behavior through the instruments of voluntary groups: chambers of commerce, trade associations and labor organizations. That many of these groups have been woefully inferior to their potential achievements in no measure closes the door to their future possibilities. If there are in them some inherent qualities, yet undeveloped, it behooves us to determine what they are and to see if these qualities will not fit the pattern of some of our pressing economic necessities.

Our Problem Requires a Certain Type of Leadership

One would have to be a fairy-tale victim even to hope that an uncoordinated mass of humanity could evolve an intelligent technique in correlating the confusing factors necessary to a perfected society and economy. That idea passes consideration. That anything beyond a mess of organized confusion could possibly flow from political management needs only the abundant evidence of our own experiences and of all history, for that matter, to support it. It is when politics enters this field that politics becomes what it ought not to become.

Representative government, a high order of which would be a good government, presupposes a wealth of voluntary leadership. This quality of leadership is as much an essential ingredient of our system as the institutional tenets upon which the system itself is based. But voluntary leadership does not arise from and ride on the wind. It requires a stimulus to birth and a vehicle to assert itself. On occasion, it is stimulated to birth by and rides on the vehicle of politics. That type has been dismissed for the purposes we here seek. Leadership is born in and rides on such institutions as churches, schools, corporations, private businesses, social welfare leagues, the military and a host of others.

The type of leadership we require in dealing with the problem of “Impoverishment,” or to state the problem positively, “More goods and more services for more people,” must be essentially economic in its purpose. Although it very likely will be drawn from professional, educational, religious and other groupings, as well as from business, it must be funneled through a vehicle that will give it an economic objectivity—through a vehicle that will emphasize the economic direction, to the substantial exclusion of the specialized interests which compose it. A vehicle must be found that will permit and encourage a general disinterest in matters extraneous to the economic purpose; that is, while this leadership is functioning through this vehicle and in the interest of this purpose.

In looking over the several vehicles, in which leadership is reared and given effect, there are none lending themselves so well to this purpose as chambers of commerce for geographical representation, trade associations for industrial representation, labor organizations for labor and farm federations for agriculture. If the behavior of many of these associations in the past deny the possibility of a better performance in the future, we are left in a discouraging position. There are no other existing groups so naturally equipped for the job.[1] New organizations, even if properly geared to present necessities, are most difficult to get under way.

The overhauling process, on a rather wide front, or a completely new construction, is the only hope of improvement. If the former, a new viewpoint must be supplied, the broader motive made clear. An argument, singularly compelling in its appeal to a new kind of enlightened self-interest, must find an ever-widening sponsorship. An ethic, moulding in the brains of a few idealists, must be brought into the open and given the life of practicability. Dormant leadership, everywhere in evidence, must assert itself and, if you please, do the overhauling of these very vehicles through which it must later function. The possibilities are here if we but have the vision to see them and the courage and ambition to affect them. The alternate road is so obviously Statism with its attendant bureaucracy, red-tape, political bungling, loss of freedom and a static, if not a retrogressive, economy, that the proposition fails to make argument. We will voluntarily do a constructive job of learning what ought to be done and then do it, or face the alternative of being coerced into mis-direction and assured disaster. These are the two real routes between which “America Must Choose.”

A Leaderless Economy Is an Under-developed Economy

One of our foremost statesmen made a remark recently something to this effect: “It is the responsibility of business to pass on to the worker and the consumer a substantial part of those benefits accruing from the machine and other scientific advance.” No truer statement was ever made. But of what practical consequence is it if business merely has that responsibility? What if “business” doesn’t know how? Go out and talk to “business” by the thousands: the corner delicatessen man, the haberdasher, the druggist, the grocer, the small manufacturer, the big manufacturer, the banker, the wholesaler, the bus line owner, the pickle packer, any and all of “business.” Ask the question, “How can more people have more goods and services?” Except in isolated instances, the answers will compare favorably with “Buy in Fizzleville,” “Run the Chains out of business,” “Spend ’til it hurts,” “Pass a law guaranteeing everyone a profit,” and “That’s Washington’s worry.”

The above is an example of democracy “in the raw”—democracy blundering along on one cylinder—democracy without that absolute essential: a dynamic, compelling and educational voluntary leadership. Not that there is a lack of thought, even excellent thought—there is plenty of thinking. But it is specialized thinking, thinking about me and my business, my specialty—right now! Not much given to the long pull.

Each of us to our own specialties—yes. But a highly specialized economy demands there be not only some highly specialized thinking about the correlations of all our specialties, but that there also be a fairly broad understanding of what the thinking is all about. It is in this field that we are distressingly weak. The old adage, “Everybody’s business is nobody’s business” has come to plague us in a very realistic manner. If there is any one characteristic among us that is nearly unanimously applicable it is, “let someone else do this type of thinking—it isn’t any of my concern.”

And what a pretty kettle of fish this attitude is serving up to us! Like a pack of hungry wolves, the political collectivists have stood avidly by, lapping to their coercive selves every drop of the voluntary function that we, either carelessly or lazily or incompetently, have allowed to slip from our fingers. With this passing of function from the voluntary to the coercive goes the key to the control and direction of our entire economic system. And it follows, as does day the night, that the control passes from men whose success must be predicated on business acumen to men whose success depends on political sagacity. “America Must Choose.”

A Realistic Look At Group Activity’s Past

Chambers of commerce, trade associations, labor organizations and farm federations were originally organized, for the most part, to promote the interests of communities, of types of industries, of laboring men and of farmers. And never think for a minute that a lot of them have not succeeded in acquiring, in a very substantial way, those objectives they sought in the beginning. Perhaps many of those objectives were not in the public interest. Perhaps they were not in the long-range interest, even the immediate interest, of the sponsoring groups themselves. But the point is, these groups have an unmistakable record of accomplishment.

These groups are instruments of power. They make articulate and give a direction to a variety of individual ideas and gradations of opinion which otherwise would amount to little more than a babble of ineffectualities. Because of this influence, these voluntary groups are in a position to do a measurable good if their direction is correct—they can be equally harmful if their direction is wrong. Thus, because of the sizable fraction of the citizenry for which they speak and because of the consequent influence which they wield, their standards, their moral concepts, their system of ethics, their social principles and, above all, their economic policies become matters of paramount importance.

That these organizations have been so glaringly ineffective in dealing constructively with the overall, broad problems, and the record of events furnishes us all the undeniable evidence necessary, has been partly because of a lack of consciousness of their relation to those problems rather than a lack of potential ability to so perform. They need nothing but the will to set themselves to the task.

Not that Chambers of Commerce haven’t gone beyond their local boundaries with their influence, that trade associations haven’t gone out of their markets, and that labor and agriculture aren’t familiar with Washington, D. C. On the contrary, they have tried their wings—plenty. But, on the whole, they have employed an ethic, they have pursued a course, quite the opposite of the one here suggested. To an extent, economically unpardonable, almost unexplainable in the light of present necessities, they have entered the broader field not as the Sir Galahads of obviously right principles, but rather as organized exaggerations of the specialized interests they represent.

To detail the cleverly planned raids on local, state and federal treasuries, to recapitulate the unsound subsidy legislation written on the statute books, to recount the complete sacrifices of principles earlier espoused in swap for some unworthy project, in short, to enumerate the economic sins committed by all these groups, farmers, laborers, veterans, business men and others alike would be to confess a condition of decay to which we are as yet unwilling to admit. A lot of these fall little short of racketeering, dignified by a “nest-feathering” legality and excused on the grounds of economic ignorance. In the commission of these sins, to what extent is suggested the use of the political means?

Not all of these groups have such an inefficacious behavior to their credit. There are some remarkable examples of just the opposite type. It is because of the record of the latter that we are certain a right course is not only possible but as practicable as it is desirable. From the experiences of these better groups will be based our deductions, our opinions, our arguments, our warnings and our recommendations. A constructive and economically sound course has failed to result from the group activity movement not because of any lack of potential ability to chart and sail such a course, but because the groups rigged and equipped to do so have been and still are in a striking minority. It must be obvious, then, that no success can be expected from these sources until the present minority becomes a future majority.

Quite often the best way to make constructive suggestions is to criticize present practices and to demonstrate existing weaknesses. If you turned your car over to a mechanic to repair the ignition system and you caught him puncturing your tires, it would be constructive to suggest he quit puncturing the tires. If, at the same time, he possessed a peculiar knack for fixing ignition systems, it would seem to be constructive to point out where he should be directing his attentions. Many of these groups have been puncturing the tires of our economic machine while possessing at the same time a peculiar adaptability for perfecting that machine.

It is not here necessary to detail the tire puncturing. Such practices are self-evident to those who have engaged in them, and they are the principal ones whom the indictments concern. But it does appear necessary to detail some of the underlying reasons that have resulted in these groups not performing the broader duties for which they are so well adapted and to which present necessities beckon so compellingly. Let us treat with the business organization.

The Local Business Function Broadens to a National Sphere

A decade or so ago business decisions concerning any particular business were usually made exclusively by the executives of that business. If the problem had a general relation to all in a given line of business, the decision was made by the trade association. Similarly, problems of a community character were usually decided within the boundary lines of a given community. On occasion something concerning the county seat or the state capital would arise but even these occurrences were the exceptions and not the rule. Business was, on the whole, executed within local or industrial boundaries.

But a centralization of affairs, economic as well as political, set in. Today, as everywhere discussed in this thesis, tremendous authority over the business function is reposed in Washington, D. C. The business decision is no longer local or industrial but, to a marked extent, national. Being national, the individual conducting a business no longer retains a complete control over the business he presumes to run. Nor has he, as an individual, any access to or “say-so” of what these national, centralized, bureaucratic decisions will be that so thoroughly decide the destiny of his enterprise. The former local or industrial economic function has become a present national, social function. That which was formerly one man’s business has become a nation’s business with those we elect to public office or their delegates in control.

Damn the trend all we will. Deny its right to existence. Berate the bureaucrats who tell us what we will or will not do. Work our heads off to change it. Nevertheless, this is an existing condition. It is a realistic thing with which we must deal or, short of dealing with it, accept the only alternate verdict: leave the conduct of our economic affairs in the hands of selfish, predacious, political minorities or perhaps majorities; does it make any difference?

Dealing effectively with our problems that have “gone Washington, D. C.,” is impossible, individually. We must do it through a voluntary, group activity. What or where are those groups? They are our Chambers of Commerce and Trade Associations. True, they were formed in the first place to promote the interest of communities and industries. But were they not formed to deal with those problems which lent themselves better to group treatment than to individual treatment?

It is at this point in the argument that there exists an imperfect understanding. These instruments we have set up for our use, business associations, were formed to deal with those problems we could better handle collectively than individually. The problems, by far the paramount problems, requiring this type of consideration, are no longer the ones we can still handle locally and industrially—they have become national in their character and still require local treatment, but on a nation-wide scale. Our leading problems have changed their position. Is it not obvious then that we should change our tactic to meet them? If we were playing safety on a football team, would we not shift our position to tackle an elusive half-back of the opposition? We probably would do some shifting or we wouldn’t meet that football problem. In our organizations we will shift our positions or we won’t meet our economic problems.

Now a change to this new tactic isn’t easy. As a matter of fact, it is quite difficult, which, in some measure, accounts for so many of our commercial and trade organizations remaining their same ancient selves. This change involves less of a disestablishment of existing routine than it does an acquirement of a new set of unfamiliar practices. Dealing intelligently with national affairs suggests a little different gearing than that required for getting out a folder, promoting a fair or a poultry show, enticing smoke stacks from other cities, running a banquet, sponsoring a bond issue, publishing a trade bulletin or signing the membership to a price agreement or production control program. Too many organizations have demonstrated a hesitancy to explore the technique of successfully operating in this field.

For one thing, this field lacks the ready opportunistic attractions which all too much have served as the guide in framing local and industrial associations’ programs. Literally hundreds of them have selected their program activities on the basis of immediate cash returns—on the basis of a thoughtless membership support and applause. And they have done this with little regard for right principles, not only because they haven’t stopped to inquire as to what constitutes right principle but also because they haven’t been able to resist that nation-pervading urge, “let’s take the money where and when the taking is good.” Some of these mis-doers, given to quick-wit rationalization, defend this sort of program-devising on the shallow pretext that the best test of any program is whether or not the membership will pay for it. Here again, is a reliance upon democracy “in the raw”—a leaderless democracy. The idea is pure poppy-cock.

“But this is only a small community; we have no interest in nor are we able to deal with such complicated problems,” opines the membership multitude. It is the membership multitude speaking, for urban America is little more than an aggregate of small communities. There are only twenty cities in this country larger than Indianapolis! Do the people in the small communities or the small industries wish to have the people in the large cities or the politicians dictate their affairs? Of course not! Granting this conclusion is correct, what is the answer? The obvious answer is: the people in the small as well as the large communities, the people in the small as well as the larger industries; in short, the people who compose the small as well as the large associations are going to perfect these associations to deal intelligently and effectively with their affairs that have gone beyond their individual reach. If they refuse to do this, if they fail to perfect these associations to their potential peak of usefulness, they are saying in language as clear as the English can be stated, that they are willing to submit to, or at least are unwilling to resist, a system wholly alien to the American way of life, a system diametrically opposed to the American philosophy of government and private enterprise.

What about the ubiquitous excuse, “The necessities of my business don’t permit me the time to engage in these affairs”? Well, there never was a proposition more clearly evident than the fact that these affairs are an integral part of every business. Unusual situations require unusual treatment. Such is the present situation. No man is doing a good job of management nor is he being complete in his duties unless these broader affairs are embraced in his activities. Especially is this excuse to be condemned when one considers the effectiveness and the conservation of each individual’s time that can be attained through perfected association work. That that work is oftentimes not on a perfected basis is solely the fault of those who have a right to be considered for leadership. Too many business men seek to escape any contribution of brain or effort by the executive gesture of writing a check. And, these days, to harbor the notion that in the conduct of our several pursuits we can confine our mental capacities and efforts to the four walls of our business, industry or community is to confess a singularly shallow understanding of the society in which we live. The society will not long be a fine edifice with that kind of thinking.

There is one other thought on this matter worthy of mention. If these broad, national problems are not the concern of the more enlightened people in your community—yourself, for instance—then whom do they concern? Is the next fellow better equipped? Does some other city possess better leadership? Is the superior thinking grass greener in Othertown? Have others the answer when you and your colleagues have not? No, the situation is about the same everywhere. If there are a few differences it is because some groups, here and there, have been discontented with mediocrity and have done something about it.

On the whole, however, these national problems seem as remote to the people of Baltimore as they do to the people in Prineville, Oregon. They seem just as difficult and confusing and there is the same general attitude to avoid them. If we don’t elevate ourselves to the place where we can meet them, we are fools to believe that others will. And short of this, we must leave them to unintelligent handling. For with the handling of these problems go the reins to our national economy. And that is a mighty attractive proposition to our many flocks of selfseekers, modern “carpet-baggers” and professional rein-grabbers. They are as eager and ready as they are incompetent to take over these reins. And the course they will steer cannot help, from the very nature of things, being one inimical to the public weal.

The Big, Bad Political Bugaboo

The foregoing might mislead some to believe that the effort to develop a worthwhile leadership through the medium of associational activities, has totally mis-carried because of an inability to rise above this failure to understand, this apathy and this “Let-George-Do-It” attitude. On the contrary, there have been many successful breakaways from these stupid impediments, breakaways that have given the sponsors of this grand experiment in democracy many reasons for a measurable encouragement. But just as a hard-fought-for progress has appeared evident there has emerged another impediment, with few exceptions, devastating in its effect. It has, for the time being at least, nipped in the bud the rising regiments of a voluntary leadership movement of which this country might well have become proud. This impediment is in the form of a dictum issued and engineered by and on behalf of the modern carpet-bagger: “Thou shalt not engage in politics.”

Now this is a very interesting dictum. On its face it appears sensible to a group devoted to the economic purpose. And because little beyond surface appearances have been examined, the dictum has found an all too ready acquiescence. It is only when we become realistic about definitions, it is only when we see for ourselves the broad field of activity the word “politics” embraces, that we comprehend the ignominy of our surrender to this subtle device.

Let us withdraw the drapes and behold the picture. Originally, with us, “politics” connoted a dealing in matters of strictly a political nature. It usually meant something of a partisan attachment to a party, its platform or its personalities. Because politics took such a minor part in the regulation and control of and actual participation in business, the two were considered as distinct fields of endeavor having little more than an academic relation one to the other. In spite of our many infractions of this concept, we have always held rather closely to the original distinctions. Retaining this view, we have been, particularly as associations devoted to the economic purpose, supersensitive to the admonishment, “Keep out of politics.” And this characteristic, at one time, wasn’t a bad one. Politicians looked after politics—business men looked after business.

But a change set in, first cautious and gradual, then with an ever-quickening pace. Politics went into business and in a very big way. But when politicians took over a business control or a business function, they insisted that that control or function lost its identity with the business interest and became, exclusively, the concern of politics. And business, inept in the fickleness of politically managed definitions, held to its old ideas and remained out of politics. And that is precisely in accordance with the designs of the political collectivists, for if they could keep business out of politics there would be no limit, whatever, to the extent politics could take over business.

Thus, the business association, the only medium for dealing with once local and private affairs, now gone national, has, to a large extent, been stopped in its tracks right at the moment when its greatest opportunity for economic and social usefulness was budding into apparency. Matters of the utmost concern, heretofore discussed and decided by associations as a matter of course, have, under the scare of the political bugaboo, become “untouchables.”

At just what point will the breakaway from this impediment develop? Will business permit this political invasion ad infinitum? Will business associations continue to be the unwitting victims of a mere confusion in terms? Business has not gone into politics. Politics went, and is still going, into business. Business still has a right to a voice in the affairs of business, irrespective of whether or not politics decides to impose an interest in those affairs. When politics puts its fingers in the business pie, politics can expect, or at least should expect, precisely the kind of treatment its actions deserve. And if meting out that treatment means that some politicians or even politically minded business men will charge business with “playing politics” then let them make the best of it. Their argument does not make sense.

The business association, heedful and acquiescent of this argument, has permitted itself a degeneration into economic sterility. Its opportunity for usefulness has faded away in exact ratio to the extent politics has invaded the business arena. Should the trend continue, the association will retain only those activities regarded as “trimmings” to any proper program. But it is not too late to cast off the bugaboo of politics.

The New Type Business Association Goes to Work

The chamber of commerce and trade association, meriting present-day membership support, while retaining many of their former essential activities, have substantially altered their approach to meet vastly changed conditions. For one thing, they have definitely gone into politics. By this is not meant a sponsorship of political parties, programs or personalities. With those they have no concern, as associations.

Rather, their function is to marshal economic facts and, upon the basis of such facts, to make, openly and above-board, recommendations to constituted public authorities, looking to the perfection and enactment of legislation which will most effectively accomplish local, public and national purposes.

And equally important, they recognize as their duty, the fearless opposition of proposals of an unsound or uneconomic nature from whatever source they may arise.

They maintain that local, state and federal governments, as governments, are entitled to the support and cooperation of their citizenship. That rule they hold to be universal. These governments also are entitled to the expression of honest criticism, based upon facts and experience, regarding any steps that may be proposed.

In short, these associations care not one whit under what political party sound policies are practiced, but they do care, and intend to see to it, that sound policies are practiced, irrespective of political parties.

Furthermore, these associations are rapidly organizing themselves to deal effectively and intelligently with these matters. They have study committees among their membership, composed of the most competent minds on these complicated matters. They have organized themselves not only to express their viewpoints to their senators and representatives and congressional committees, but they have devised methods of using the radio, newspapers, house-organs, employee bulletin boards, speaking programs and direct contact to inform their own people, the voting public, on the paramount issues of the day.

They realize the necessity of observing the wisdom contained in a statement by Abraham Lincoln:

“Public sentiment is everything. With public opinion nothing can fail; without it nothing can succeed. Consequently, he who molds public opinion goes deeper than he who enacts statutes or pronounces decisions. He makes statutes and decisions possible or impossible to execute.”

They are recognizing that the national issues are their issues, that if there is going to be any worthwhile business leadership, it must come from their industry or their community. They are insisting that they become the industrial, or the community, centers for sound economic counsel and they mean to find out precisely the significance of every popular or legislative proposal. They will sponsor or oppose these proposals, with all the indefatigable energy they possess, as they promote or defeat the consumer or public welfare.

For these organizations are developing a new kind of enlightened, self-interest leadership. They have discovered that their community or their industry has no chance of progress and prosperity in a downward national economy. The society in which they exist must be soundly conditioned. Hence, they are developing a technique of bringing forth leadership from all walks of community and industrial life that drops its specialized interest at the doors of the associational endeavor. The leadership, while serving through the association, functions objectively on a broader scale than would otherwise be possible. The leadership thinks in terms of the national economy. Its competitive and specialized interests are not permitted to deny or contradict the broader objectives.

While these organizations are acquiring a new ethic, they are not being deluded by the radical charges of “conservatism.” Most of them don’t believe conservatism to be a part of their former faults. But they are realizing that they need a new grammar to express their conservatism. In the past they have been inclined to take pretty much of a “stick-the-chin-out”—“I-double-dare-you” attitude in expressing their views. Regardless of how correct their views may have been, such attitudes constitute rather poor strategy in giving effect to those views, certainly in gaining public support for them. From here on they propose to take their case to the public and if it can’t be demonstrated to be in the public interest, they are not going to give it sponsorship. They recognize that sound concept: “To be in the interest of business, any measure must be in the public interest.” They further recognize that it is insufficient to merely have sound policies—these policies must also seem right.

Mr. W. J. Cameron, spokesman for the Ford Motor Company, in a nationwide radio broadcast, recently stated:

“But it is extremely difficult to get the simple fact considered that this nation, in its brilliant industrial expansion, has never produced enough to supply its own people. We have never fully utilized our productive facilities, never fully developed our resources or our domestic market, and until we do, no trouble will be permanently eased, no solution will be able to work. Someone somewhere has to grasp the need for a crusade to create more wealth if our people are to get their bearings on this question.”

These associations are going to take up this crusade to create more wealth, they are going to unearth the exact factors that will make it possible to produce more goods and more services for more people. There is no other source from which such a crusade can originate, there is no other type of medium that can command the type of leadership that will initiate this crusade and carry it to a satisfactory conclusion. It means the elimination of impoverishment to the extent it is practically and humanly possible to eliminate it.

They know that the success of any such crusade must first rest upon an identification of the economic course that creates more wealth and, as well, a fairly broad public appreciation of the wisdom of that course. Short of such an appreciation, the best laid plans will assuredly be voted out of consideration. They are not unaware of the difficulties of this crusade; they appreciate the great number of destructive ideas being forwarded under the usurped name of “liberalism.” This crusade will take them into politics; that is, the economic phase of politics, to waylay such situations as Herbert Spencer described as existing in England in 1860:

“See then what legislation has done. By ill-imposed taxes, raising the prices of bricks and timber, it added to the costs of houses; and prompted, for economy’s sake, the use of bad materials in scanty quantities. To check the consequent production of wretched dwellings, it established regulations which, in mediæval fashion, dictated the quality of the commodity produced: there being no perception that by insisting on a higher quality and therefore higher price, it would limit the demand and eventually diminish the supply. By additional local burdens, legislation has of late still further hindered the building of small houses. Finally, having, by successive measures, produced first bad houses and then a deficiency of better ones, it has at length provided for the artificially increased overflow of poor people by diminishing the house-capacity which already could not confine them!”[2]

Or a modern corollary, as recently phrased:

“Because of high taxes, and the high prices for goods and services which result partly from high taxes, many farmers have long since ceased to rotate soil-restoring, non-cash leguminous crops with soil-absorbing, cash crops. The obvious result has been an increasingly depleted soil. Now the government enters with a soil conservation program, causing more government and more taxes, which is bad enough, but it legislates crop restriction, to boot!”

The new ethic, to be effected because of its unquestioned practicability, will take the form of a series of business principles adopted and urged by the Chamber of Commerce of the United States:[3]

1. The foundation of business is confidence, which springs from integrity, fair dealing, efficient service and mutual benefit.

2. The reward of business for service rendered is a fair profit plus a safe reserve, commensurate with risks involved and foresight exercised.

3. Equitable consideration is due in business alike to capital, management, employees and the public.

4. Knowledge—thorough and specific—and unceasing study of the facts and forces affecting a business enterprise, are essential to a lasting individual success and to efficient service to the public.

5. Permanency and continuity of service are basic aims of business, that knowledge gained may be fully utilized, confidence established and efficiency increased.

6. Obligations to itself and society prompt business unceasingly to strive toward continuity of operation, bettering conditions of employment, and increasing the efficiency and opportunities of individual employees.

7. Contracts and undertakings, written and oral, are to be performed in letter and in spirit. Changed conditions do not justify their cancellation without mutual consent.

8. Representation of goods and services should be truthfully made and scrupulously fulfilled.

9. Waste in any form—of capital, labor, services, materials, or natural resources—is intolerable and constant effort will be made toward its elimination.

10. Excesses of every nature,—inflation of credit, overexpansion, over-buying, over-stimulation of sales,—which create artificial conditions and produce crises and depressions are condemned.

11. Unfair competition, embracing all acts characterized by bad faith, deception, fraud, or oppression, including commercial bribery, is wasteful, despicable, and a public wrong. Business will rely for its success on the excellence of its own service.

12. Controversies will, where possible, be adjusted by voluntary agreement or impartial arbitration.

13. Corporate forms do not absolve from or alter the moral obligations of individuals. Responsibilities will be as courageously and conscientiously discharged by those acting in representative capacities as when acting for themselves.

14. Lawful cooperation among business men and in useful business organizations in support of these principles of business conduct is commended.

15. Business should render restrictive legislation unnecessary through so conducting itself as to deserve and inspire public confidence.

These organizations have another proposal—this one to do with a weakness, heretofore characterizing their own behavior. They are going to acquire the technique of dealing with controversial issues. They are going to cease shying away from such issues. They are going to “take them on” in their stride, handle them as a matter of course, with about the same degree of concern a surgeon performs an operation. After all, they are aware that the new necessities require a realistic entry into the field of controversial issues. The big issues, the worth-while things meriting the time and attention of busy leaders, are all controversial—if not, how can they be issues?

This new leadership will next undertake its biggest task: an entry into the field of industrial relations, a field in which intelligent action has been woefully neglected. The present industrial strife, costing tens of millions of dollars daily, increasing impoverishment at an unprecedented pace, is plenty of evidence of this neglect. This leadership is unwilling to adopt that insipid gesture, smiled with such utter nonchalance by so many: “Strikes and labor troubles are merely the signs of returning good times—they always follow depressions.” No remark was ever a better indication of shallow reasoning or shirked responsibility or both.

This effort first requires an initiation of a crusade to create more wealth with a simultaneous adoption and practice by business of high principles and standards of conduct. Not only are these features preludes to any such effort, but it is equally essential that labor and the public recognize that this course is precisely the one business intends to follow. On the adoption of this course there can be no misgivings.

When we speak of business “putting its house in order,” we do not necessarily refer to dishonesty, stupid greed and economic viciousness. While these vices are not nearly as prevalent as most people believe, their inclusion in any program of house cleaning is taken for granted. No decent citizen condones them. Rather, what is meant is a correction of practices, honest in every respect, but economically unintelligent. The latter far exceeds the former in its destructiveness to more goods and more services for more people.

Obviously, these two features of the new program are no minor tasks—they are a challenge to the best leadership, irrespective of how efficiently organized, this country ever possessed. But the new leadership recognizes them as requisites to any promising entry into the difficult field of industrial relations. Once acquired, however, business will be in a position to deal firmly with radical leaders whose only objective is discontent, industrial strife, harm to labor, business and the public alike, looking eventually to a “new order” with themselves in control. Short of this ethically and economically sound position, it is inevitable that nothing but a guerilla warfare can result, for labors position is strikingly untenable. There can be no gains when both sides are wrong. There is a chance if one side is right.

The new associational effort will demonstrate in a grammar, at once simple and compelling, a series of principles upon which any system of industrial peace must, of necessity, be predicated. For instance, they will reveal:

• That the interests of employer and employee are not in substantial conflict—that the conflicts are only the minor, natural ones which exist between any two people. They will stress the real harmony of interests and show that when the conflicts are natural they lend themselves easily to friendly adjudication.

• That the present strife is not the result of natural conflicts, that present industrial problems are only surface problems, that they cannot be more than temporarily settled until deeper, basic causes are removed. These basic causes will be identified, both labor and business being made to understand they have a common purpose in their elimination.

• That the theory and present practice of negative profit (one side considering as a gain the infliction of more damage than received) is uncivilized and several steps below moronic expectancy, and finally

• That in a wealth crusade, requiring the best efforts of capital, labor and management, lies the only route of material interest to anyone. This, of course, will include a complete analysis of those factors going to destroy wealth and those going to create it.

One of the difficulties today is the fact that most of business and most of labor do not know how to deal with the problem of industrial relations in spite of the self-evident truth that a vast majority of both would like to do the right thing. This lack of knowledge of handling this problem is understandable. It is a most difficult and confusing one. It is a problem requiring specialized and laborious study. This study does not lend itself to individual thinking alone. The problem is one embracing the inter-relationships of a vast and intricate economic system. The study must be of a voluntary group character, the association serving as the vehicle for the development, the assemblage and the propulsion of a leadership widely representative and highly endowed in every respect. The attitude upon which this study is based and the views arising therefrom projected must be maintained on a friendly level regardless of opposing unfriendly gestures. In no other way can that essential, public confidence be won to the side of superior economic thinking.

A fair question at this point would be, “Where are these organizations with these attainments and lofty ideas—do they actually exist?” Here and there they do. In existing organizations is represented every conceivable gradation of attainment. Some are little better than mis-named jokes, but in them is always some worthy trifle to be admired. A few others are near-models of perfection but usually possessing some minor policy or behavior deserving censure. All of which is quite natural and to be expected. Aristotle left us an interesting explanation:

“One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one, which is why it is easy to fail and difficult to succeed—easy to miss the target and difficult to hit it.”

If eleven years of intimate experience in this field gives one the right to some opinions and the more questionable right of passing judgment, then the business association described here so glowingly, is a composite of the virtues, the improvements and the general excellencies found in hundreds of existing bodies. At least these ascribed activities appear to be virtues, improvements and excellencies when considered in the light of present necessities. Too idealistic? Absolutely not! The height of practicability lies in the nearest approach possible to the ideal. If we can merely determine the right thing to do, even if we don’t do it, we will have made a measurable gain. We will be less likely to do the wrong thing. For to do something merely to do something, if there is unwisdom in the doing, is transcendental folly. To do the right thing constitutes progress, but we first need to determine what is right. The answer? There is no infallible rule to follow nor will there ever be one. But the best answer available to us in the solution of our economic and social problems lies in that which representative government presupposes: a wealth of voluntary leadership!

The Labor Organization Needs Some Repairing, Also

There are many activities of present labor organizations that merit the highest kind of commendation. But these commendatory features are not the preponderant features characterizing recent trends in organized labor circles. To the contrary, they are submerged almost beyond recognition.

The present movement seems to deny the possibilities of any logical, rationalized base beyond that of a dead-end economy, an economy that can produce no more wealth, that the wealth which already exists is all there is—and that the proposition of dividing existing wealth is a proper tactic. If this criticism seems unfair, point out one, just one, major recent proposal bearing the official stamp of organized labor that will stand up under studied examination of its wealth-producing potentialities, No useful purpose is served in dwelling further on these points or the character of present labor leadership. Rather should we devote ourselves to the question: Has not organized labor an offensive rather than a defensive, a constructive rather than a destructive channel for its acknowledged, superior power?

Along what general channels can organized labor direct its efforts? It can and is attempting a division of existing wealth. This tactic is not a progressive one and should be dismissed as improper and uneconomic. There are three other channels to which labor may look for the betterment of its position: employer altruism, governmental statutes and the creation of new wealth.

Should labor place a sole dependency on either employer altruism or governmental statutes? No. Labor’s position should be secured by, its basic reliance placed upon, a favorable economic behavior in which the creation of new wealth and the destruction of the jams that hinder its flow are inherent features. Let altruism and statutes bring all the benefits they will but they do not constitute the best insurance for labor. Beneficence and the practice of the Golden Rule are blessed endowments, are to be encouraged and applauded, but they are fickle backlogs for anyone or any group in society’s present advancement. Honesty is the best policy but experience teaches that honesty is best practiced under favorable conditions. Different people become dishonest under varying degrees of adversity. Likewise, beneficence and the Golden Rule find their greatest observance when satisfactions are most general. Not that they should—but they do! Not to recognize this human failing is to be exceedingly unrealistic.

The way to examine employer altruism as a factor for insuring higher wages and better working conditions is to place any individual from the whole labor movement into the ownership or managership of a private business. Would he suddenly go altruistic? Would he pay $10 a day for common labor if his competitors were using $5 a day labor and he could get all of that kind of labor he wanted? Hardly. He probably would have a sufficiently difficult time making a profit paying only the wages the labor market demanded. At least the record of business failures would indicate he might have some troubles being successful. Very few entrepreneurs consider they are doing society a favor by failing in their enterprise.

The way to examine governmental statutes as an undependable factor for insuring higher wages and better working conditions is to examine the equally justified propositions of legislating prices for goods, profits for business, prosperity for farmers, in other words, to examine the question: can the satisfaction of desires be resoluted in the halls of Congress and carried out as designed? They cannot. Nor do the multitude of affirmative answers change this decision one iota. The proposition has never demonstrated more than parlor logic—more than that, there is no evidence in all history to support it. If the idea of legislating partial prosperity is tenable, why isn’t the idea of legislating a millennium reasonable?

The contention here is not that every device should not be employed to encourage employer pride in higher wages and better working conditions nor that government should not umpire and police both labor and business practices that are dishonest and vicious. Rather, the contention is that labor should not place final reliance on these sources for the support of its position. The only sensible route lies in entirely another direction.

If the labor movement were intelligently directed, relying less on political and professional opportunists and more on sound economic advice which exists in its own ranks, labor would have two broad objectives. In these two objectives is embraced a wide field of activity which if carried out would result in all the material advantages labor seeks.

The first objective would be the establishment of a healthy labor market; i.e., the bringing about of a condition in which the demand for labor exceeds the supply. Nor does this mean a program of reducing supply. The field for increasing demand is so unexplored that it can well occupy our sole attention for years to come. This can only be accomplished by encouraging those elements which go to promote the “X” factor and discouraging those elements which go to subvert this factor, for the simple reason that this is the only way more goods and more services can be available for more people.

When, and only when, goods and services are lower in price in relation to a given amount of labor, will the real, as distinguished from the inflationary, naked demand for goods increase. This demand will call for a greater production. This increased production will necessitate more employment. More employment will absorb the unemployed and establish a condition in which producers will want more labor to help them supply the demand than there is labor available. The wages for labor will then be decided as they should be: on the basis of competitive bidding for labor.

What employer, under these circumstances, could pay low wages? Each employer would be eager to hire each other’s labor force. Would not all employers be forced by the dictates of an unprejudiced, uncompromising and impersonal market to pay the best wages and maintain the very best possible working conditions? They would have no choice but to do so. And furthermore, in a flourishing situation of this kind, with goods being produced to satisfy an unlimited demand, would not the laboring man find his best opportunity to become a business man if he so chose?

The second objective would be very much related to the first. It would seek to destroy every single one of the factors which go to dissipate the advantages naturally flowing from technological improvements and working efficiencies. The identification of these factors would make an interesting job for most labor organizations. They might discover, to their astonishment, that a reversal of their position along several lines would be necessary. For instance, these organizations would have to discard the use of the political means and begin showing some hospitality to the economic means. Labor organizations, for instance, thus engaging themselves, would be far better and more successful proponents of governmental economy than business organizations have ever been.

Let the labor economists discover these factors. They are found among the subversions of the “X” factor, some of which have been discussed in this thesis. They are not difficult to find if the sole objective is the public welfare rather than some selfish, immediate aggrandizement. For one thing, labor will press for a development of economic voluntarism under which, and only under which, competition can survive. Competition is assuredly one of the best weapons labor has to force a passage of economic advantages to the consumer. Monopoly, price-fixing, and many other legislated rigidities will be included among the new enemies of labor.

Intelligently manned organizations, business associations, labor and farm federations, all have seats at the same conference table in any highly civilized economy. If the objective of each is what it should be—the public welfare, or, economically speaking, the consumer’s welfare—there can be little basis for more than friendly disagreement. The real problem is one common to all and should be so treated.

In conclusion, organizations for the sake of themselves, any of them—business, labor or agriculture—deserve no support nor any allegiance. The sound conditioning of the national economy is the thing. Only if these groups can be geared to implement this purpose do they merit existence.

They must, if they are to accomplish this objective, find a course that is at once publicly attractive and economically sound. For if their actions gain public disaffection, regardless of the rightness of their principles, their efforts will be less than effective. And to compromise with wrong principles is shockingly untenable.

There is a course that can and must be devised to meet this dual requirement. Very little is new about it. It has in some measure been attempted by some organizations, but the proper emphasis has been lacking.

In the first place, these groups will renounce their narrowly selfish and combative tactics, provided they have been practicing such tactics. Next, they will dedicate themselves genuinely, realistically and sincerely to an all-embracing, broad interest as distinguished from their former group, class or geographical interests that are contradictions of the broad interest.

They will dedicate themselves to a new lodestar, a new objective, the inherent features of which will meet, four-square, every social, humanitarian and economic test. It can be stated in a simple formula, although lending itself to an infinite variety of expressions:

CRUSADERS

FOR: more goods and more services for more people

(Two ways of saying the same thing)

AGAINST: poverty and unemployment

The direction of these organizations from this point is easily defined although the road, because of current trends, must be difficult. These voluntary groups will study (profoundly examine) proposals, measures, behaviors or practices, from whatever source they may arise, in the light of their effect on this objective. Their sponsorship or opposition, their endorsement or denouncement will be based on a proposal’s ultimate promotion or subversion of this objective. The pursuance of such a course will not only be right—it is the only one that can be economically right—and it will be demonstrable to the public as right.

Furthermore, the adoption of and adherence to this objective possesses the merit of insuring as well as labeling the activities of an organization as constructive. It is the only course that can lead to more and better business, to more profitable agriculture, to better wages and working conditions for labor, to an ever-widening diffusion of wealth to the whole public, in short, to a materially better America. Our future, very likely, rests on the answers to the question, “Who will volunteer for this crusade?”

[1] This point and the thought surrounding it may be easily misunderstood. The writer is referring only to groups and is not denying, in the least, the potential benefits that can flow from individual effort, particularly from well-known and statesmen-like leaders, whatever their field. For the most part, however, the vast majority of us, under modern conditions, do not qualify for effective individual leadership of the kind we are here seeking. Most of us are not these great men. There being an insufficiency of really great men, it is therefore necessary we give some character to our single voices that are only rustlings in the wilderness. Thus the significance of the group and the importance of its direction.

[2] “Man Versus The State,” Williams and Norgate, London, England.

[3] Resolution, Annual Meetings, 1924 and 1936.

CHAPTER XIV

ADDENDUM

Summarizing this suggested approach to the problem of our well-being, an attempt has been made to demonstrate:

1. That political labels, colors, isms and other convenient handles are confusing and misleading and in no sense can be used as a measure in determining an individual’s objectives or highmindedness and are no guide, whatever, to the soundness of one’s views.

2. That for a variety of reasons, a portentous discontent permeates the national atmosphere, a substantial removal of which is essential to the continuance of the American way of life.

3. That those actually impoverished compose the core of this discontent; that the amelioration of their position is a requisite to the removal of the threatening phase of this discontent.

4. That nothing is lacking for a program of more goods and more services for more people (this being the only way to relieve impoverishment) except the knowledge of how best to use existing facilities.

5. That the formula for creating more goods and more services for more people is precisely definable.

6. That many of our practices and much of our behavior unwittingly subvert the performance of this formula; that these subversions syphon the advantages that would otherwise flow naturally in a wide diffusion to the population; and that it is our duty to identify them and to discourage their existence.

7. That there are things we can do which will serve to promote the performance of this formula, the foremost of which are, first, improved relationships between the citizen and his government; second, technological advance and, third, the development of a realistic, dynamic, voluntary leadership.

8. That there are no short cuts to an abundant life, no panaceas or legislative resolution that can replace the homely virtues of individual endowment and, finally, that the mere recognition of right principles is the best insurance against want and material deprivation because such recognition, on a wide scale, would thwart the institution of further subversive behaviors.

It isn’t my intention to give the impression that I believe material welfare is all there is to this life on earth. Far from it. But it is the material problem, the economic problem, about which western civilization is making such an ado. Of course, if the moral standard were higher, if religious thinking possessed some of its earlier fervor, if man thought more in spiritual terms, he would, as a consequence, be less perplexed with his standard of living status. He would apply a different system of values—consequences would have different meanings.

But this is merely an “if” proposition—it is argument from a non-existent premise. Many of us wish that these really richer values had a greater significance. But they are as they are. What will restore them? Adversity? Or economic satisfaction? On this point, I confess no well-founded opinions.

Whatever one’s wishes may be concerning other values, it is the economic cauldron that is stewing. It is in this field that competent leadership, at the moment, is so sorely needed. And it is in this field that it should be and can be furnished. Furthermore, it can be effectively furnished. Such an admission, however, does not commit one to the proposition that it will be furnished. The liquidation of the difference between can and will is dependent on a lot of personal qualities which, right now, are only in smattering evidence. Nor is there any basis for estimating the extent to which these qualities will be developed and released. Any answers can be but reckless conjectures.

Some will continue to work and hope no matter how dark the clouds, how great the odds. They have concluded that there is some of God’s or Nature’s work to be done in perfecting a society and an economy in which man can best serve himself. They receive a spiritual satisfaction in contributing to an order that will minimize want and poverty. And they get an equal satisfaction from resisting currents which they sincerely believe will weaken such an order. Enough of this cosmic journey!

Changes, almost too extensive to comprehend, have already overtaken America. The people have voted for stability and security as though voting for these age-long desires would automatically result in their fulfilment. They have, willingly and gleefully, unburdened themselves of individual responsibility and tossed it, en masse, into a centralized, authoritarian government from which the millennium is supposed to emerge.

And the proposed millennium is well along in its legislation. Now, let’s be realistic. Most of these statutes are going to remain for a long, long time. Legislated social security, for instance, will have generations of experiment before it is popularly determined that statutes of themselves do not and cannot bring enduring and beneficial results. So it will be with many of the other collectivist measures. We are going to live with them whether we like them or not.

There are not very many, irrespective of contempt for these measures (contempt based on opinions of results and not based on alleged objectives), who want to see the national economy go smash merely to prove their point. Love for America far transcends these resentments.

Now the detrimental effect of the collectivist application, on its present scale, is much less in its direct cost than in its destruction of the philosophy of individual responsibility. Millions of people are working less and thinking in terms of working still less, harboring the comfortable notion that the government will make up for them that which they would rather not make for themselves. This is a perfectly devastating state of mind.

Assuming that the theory of the collectivists will continue to work this destruction to individual responsibility, isn’t it logical then that an opposite, compensating movement should be undertaken? Isn’t it obvious that we should do something to counteract this fading philosophy, which at the same time would support the errors of our ways? In other words, we have burdened ourselves with a thousand and one things. Should we not attempt to strengthen ourselves to bear the burden? Perhaps it is only in a newly developed strength that we can get rid of some of the burdens.

A wealth crusade (diagrammed along sound economic lines and projected along sound psychological lines) is the answer—more goods and more services for more people. It is the only possible way that these newly acquired burdens can be kept from destroying us. The idea could be given popular appeal. It could be made to win recruits. It could be made to focus men’s minds on the fundamental proposition that wealth can come only from production. It could be made to take the focus off legislative halls. It could be made to give us a new and valuable sense of direction. It could be made to put America to work—to useful and satisfying work. That is the kind of opportunity I am asking for Leonard, Jr. and Jimmie and for other American boys and girls.

“. . . God and Nature have ordained the chances and conditions of life on earth once for all. The case cannot be reopened. We cannot get a revision of the laws of human life. We are absolutely shut up to the need and duty, if we would learn how to live happily, of investigating the laws of Nature, and deducing the rules of right living in the world as it is. These are very wearisome and commonplace tasks. They consist in labor and self-denial repeated over and over again in learning and doing.”

—William Graham Sumner

“But he that knew not, and did not commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall much be required; and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.”

I’d Push the Button

Leonard E. Read

1946

I’d Push the Button

If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push!

This decision is not dictated by my having something to rent or something to sell on which I hope for higher prices. It is not dictated by any employers of mine. It is dictated by my long-run interest as a fixed income worker, as a consumer, and as one asking opportunity for children and grandchildren.

Here are my reasons for opposing wage and price controls[1] by government fiat. Ask yourself, as I did, the answers to these questions. If we act as citizens of other countries have acted isn’t it likely that we shall be burdened by the same economic results? For instance, will not the specialized, mass-production economy, from which so many economic blessings flow, if subjected to controls, run down, wither up, gasp, and actually, literally die? In its stead will we not get a degenerated economy, one of the primitive, self-contained types, one with some carry-over embellishments of the mechanical era, no doubt, but one, nevertheless, quite like those which have damned most of the nations of this earth for the most of time when controls of one sort or another have prevailed? Is there any historical evidence which refutes the conclusions these questions imply?

If these questions and their suggested answers be realistic, can we not assume that this city of Detroit, the greatest mass production center of all history, will, in time, become another Athens, different primarily in the type of antiquated art tourists will come to see? Or, as an alternative possibility, may it not liken itself to most European cities—a haven for bureaucrats? The reason for the answers I get to these questions is that I do not believe automobiles will or can be produced under controls. They cannot be produced, except for the carry-over energy and machinery of the past, any more than automobiles were produced prewar by Germany, France, Italy, Russia or Japan.

Automobiles and other items of large-scale production cannot be mass produced except in a free market. Of course a market is not a market unless it be free. In the absence of a market there can be nothing but a bureaucratic barter system in which such exchange as there is, is determined by politics and favoritism. This latter system is what the American people are being asked to accept in the place of a market economy. And many must embrace the idea for I am told the subject is controversial.

Why, for instance, hasn’t Russia mass produced good automobiles? Is it because the Russian people do not want them? I have noticed, when they come to this country, how their eyes sparkle when they entertain as much as the hope of having one. Is it because Russia is short of natural resources? She has more than we do. Is it because the land of the Soviets is lacking in fertile soils and friendly climates? She has these in abundance. Is it because she has no mass market? Actually, yes! But the lack of a market is due to the poverty imposed on her millions, not to any shortage of millions. There are more there than here. Is it because the people are indolent, lazy and without potential competence? They do as well in America as persons from any other country.

The answer to these questions is the same as it is to the question—“Why has Russia only one-sixth the standard of living of America?” That answer is, Russian citizens live under controls. Individual energies are not released. Decisions for daily, personal living rest with cops and councils. Authority for the discharge of responsibility does not reside in the person burdened with the responsibility. The Russians move as a herd—only as their shepherd directs. They do not act as persons exercising initiative. Self-direction, self-determination, self-reliance are concepts their powerful masters reject.

Russia has as much as one-sixth of our standard of living because her controls are only five-sixths effective. She has a one-sixth leakage of free human energy—energy that has not been stamped out by cops and councils, and this is why more Russians do not starve.

Government can only be police force, or a combination of police force and committees. Police force can only stop, arrest, restrain, restrict, prevent, destroy, it cannot create. Government’s possibility of being beneficial lies in the field of stopping that which is bad—stopping fraud, violence, predation, monopolistic abuse and the breaking of contracts. Government, or police force, is good only in the sense that two negatives make a positive.

Committees, with few exceptions, are pernicious things. A true committee rarely ever does anything good. The best a committee can do is to produce the lowest common denominator judgment of the group. Of course if a committee were composed exclusively of persons with perfect judgment, the lowest common denominator would be a perfect decision, but this philosophical possibility is hardly a probability. On occasion devices called committees render excellent decisions, but in these instances the devices are miscalled. They are, instead, an individual and his advisers, with the individual accepting or rejecting the advice in accordance with the dictates of his best individual judgment.

What have these police forces and committees—cops and councils—to do with price controls? Let me illustrate. There has been developed at the University of Pennsylvania an Electronic Numerical Integrator and Computer. In it are 18,000 tubes. At its first demonstration, it made a computation in two hours that would have required at least 200,000 man-hours of work by expert mathematicians. Here is a thing that is really automatic.

Now, let us try to bring the automatic parts of this electronic machine under man control. Let us station an expert mathematician at each place where an electrical impulse does a job, and instruct him to control the function, that is, to do the job himself. Would it get done in two hours? No! It would require at least 200,000 man-hours, and much more than that if the automatic operations were confusing to the experts.

The free market, that is, the free pricing system, works automatically. How complex is it? So complex that no man on this earth has the capabilities to enforce a price for one day on one simple item without causing more harm than good. If you doubt this, apply the project to yourself and see what answer you get. Free, automatic pricing is simple? It only involves all the goods and services produced in the world, multiplied by all the desires existing in the world, multiplied by all the competition for the effective purchasing power in the world. The electronic computer is simple compared to this.

Station a man at every one of the millions of posts where supply and demand impulses occur and instruct him to substitute his personal judgment for these impersonal automatic processes, and what will you have? Not merely the hideous inefficiency of individual barter. You will have this confounded by centralized, bureaucratic decision, with the individualistic aspect removed. Cops and councils, police forces and committees, will have substituted clumsy barter for efficient and fast-working commerce.

It is reasonable to inquire how one who believes as I do, accounts for the fact that our economy is not already in total ruin. There are several explanations.

1. All would-be controls are not observed. There is a tenacity of the social fabric, based on tradition and habits of exchanging things among one another, that defies the economic goose-step.

2. Those who would exercise these dicta set prices by mishap at or near where they would be anyway, thus causing little hindrance and, of course, thus not controlling.

3. Controls are not as yet attempted on all segments of the economy.

4. We are still managing with old automobiles, with old plants and equipment, with old houses, with old shirts and suits.

And how does one explain the official Washington statements that production is at a new high for peacetime? Here is the answer:

1. Production, per se, is meaningless. Only production that is in tune with the needs and wants of the people is significant. Conceivably, we could have a hundred and fifty billion dollar national income resulting solely from liquor. Would this be something to brag about?

Last year we had the greatest wheat production in our history yet we have a shortage of wheat products for human consumption. Why? Because ceiling prices forced farmers to feed wheat to pigs and chickens. From 85 to 98% of the caloric value of wheat is lost in this kind of husbandry.

Many low priced and much needed items are not being made. They have been OPA’d off the market. In their stead are many high priced and luxury items. Unit-wise and dollar-wise these look pretty good in any abstract evaluation of the national product. But the higher prices set upon them do not represent anything like a corresponding gain in value. Often they represent less in real worth.

2. The nation’s population is more than 10% greater than it was in 1935—the beginning of the 1935–39 period that government officials are using as a basis for present comparisons—a period marked by its comparative economic insignificance.

3. Present production volume expressed in dollar terms is all but meaningless. Dollars are depreciating in value and will continue to do so if recent fiscal policies continue. What must have been the national income in Germany when it cost thirty million marks to buy a newspaper? Will we be pleased about our national income when it reaches one trillion dollars and when most people have less in goods and services than they have had in this century? The idea is not fantastic. It is exactly the position to which national policy is pointing us.

4. Perhaps the most important element accounting for present high dollar production is the monetizing of debt which results in “savings” and which for a brief period creates a false market, always the preface to disaster.

5. Actually, our physical volume of production today is about 9% less than in November 1941. And our dollars of national income are up 43%. Can anyone with economic sense fail to read the real significance into this distortion?

If the aforementioned button were on this rostrum, the pressing of which would release all wage and price controls, would you join in pressing it? Or, would you, like most other pseudo advocates of the free market say—“Yes sir, except rents!”

An economist, at least he calls himself one, was discussing this point recently. He said that he wanted all controls off except rents. I asked, “why?” “Because” said he, “I don’t like landlords.” The House of Representatives of the United States of America voted to share the same prejudice only week before last. On roll call our Congressmen voted 259 to 137 to allow producers and distributors current costs plus a reasonable profit. However, the proposal to put rents on cost plus a reasonable profit on the value of the property was defeated 108 to 79. Of course neither proposal is any business, whatever, of Congress, but these are cited to show the extent to which emotion has been substituted for reason in public and official thinking.

Rent control seems to be the last fort planned by the price controllers. It is admitted by them to be their strong point. It ought to follow, then, that if the idea for rent control can be demolished that the case for all other controls is lost. I will concede that if a case can be made for rent controls that a case can be made for controls on anything and everything. But I insist that if there is no case for rent controls that there is no case for any wage or price controls. So let’s take on the argument for rent controls:

1. First of all it should be recognized that rents today are lower in proportion to average income than at any time for which we have records. In effect, relative to most family incomes, rents have been reduced since the establishment of rent ceilings. Therefore, most people can afford to pay more rent than they paid and to rent a more expensive place than they occupied in 1942. One of the first things an individual or a family tries to do as his income rises is to move to better living quarters. Millions of American individuals and families are today trying to do just that. This is the primary cause of the housing shortage. The shortage is directly due to rent control and inflation. It is due to a perversion of government, to an inordinate use of police force.

Don’t think for a minute that the demand for rooms at the Book-Cadillac and the Waldorf-Astoria is to be accounted for by the increase in population. Current fiscal policy, that is, giving millions of citizens fiat money, while at the same time putting ceilings on room rentals, combine to draw people out of the hills and to change them from small space occupants to large space occupants.

As a matter of fact, the people of the United States have more square feet of housing per capita, more bedrooms, more bathrooms and more living rooms than the people of any other nation have ever had. Yet these other nations, with less housing, were not conscious of any such housing shortage as we today are experiencing except when they adopted similar rent controls during inflationary periods. Then they always brought on a housing shortage such as OPA is creating for us now.

2. The government’s we-gotta-look-after-the-people argument assumes that renters are poor and that landlords are wealthy. There can be no other basis, whatever, for holding fixed the income of landlords (while their replacement and maintenance costs mount) in order to subsidize at landlord’s expense the income of renters. I happen to know more well-to-do renters than I do well-to-do landlords.

Did you ever contemplate the dilemma of a bureaucrat who berates a capitalist and holds out the hand of pity to him as a renter?

Let’s drop the landlord vs. renter argument and take up the argument between those who rent and those who want to rent. Let’s assume we have a situation in which there are one hundred houses and one hundred and one families. What is the fair way to distribute the one hundred houses among the one hundred and one families? Are we going to line up the folks in a row according to height and say that everyone can have a house except the last in line? That is about what the present “I got there first” situation amounts to. It might just as well be, as far as rationality or justice are concerned, the color of their eyes or the shape of their ankles. In a free society we know only one way to get a fair distribution of scarce items. That is to allow the one hundred and one families freely to compete as among themselves in bidding away from each other the right to occupy the houses.

It will be protested that this leaves the one with the least “ability to pay” out in the cold. That is no answer, however, because the supposed social problem is that someone has to be left out in the cold anyhow. If that is unjust for one family, it is just as unjust for the next family. Furthermore, when the price of something is high, the use of it tends to be economized. Look at diamonds, for example! Or fur coats! In housing this is tantamount to saying that someone who has to economize on housing will try to get others to share the rent expense by giving up some of his personal privacy and sharing quarters with someone else who is similarly situated.

In short, it would seem both good economics and good sociology to let the rents go up because that is the only way, short of peremptory quartering of some on others, to get everybody housed. Incidentally, it is also the surest way to get new houses built.

If the housing built since 1939 and the 5% or more vacancies existing at that time be compared with the increase in population you will find that there is housing enough for everyone. As a matter of fact everyone is housed now except for an occasional stray who has not forced his or her way into another place. And this is in spite of the fact that multiple dwelling units are used less efficiently than ever before, due to the fact that landlords unable to raise rents are trying to reduce costs by reducing the number of occupants per dwelling unit.

4. If rent controls were removed, would not the poorest, instead of the less poor, be without housing or be impelled to accept more restricted quarters? Is this unjust? Why is it less unjust for the middle-income doctor to be out in the street than for the village clerk? Is being more productive really a good reason for being less well housed? In a voluntary, individualistic society, each man must be allowed to deal freely and in competition with every other man. This means that each man is entitled voluntarily to exchange what he produces for that which others produce. The one who gives the most to the community is entitled to get the most from the community. If what the community has to offer is houses, then those who want them are entitled to bid them away from each other if they can. Rent control substitutes special privilege on the basis of happenstance occupancy for economic justice.

5. Why are many houses selling for double their prewar prices? There are two reasons. Rent ceilings create a demand in excess of the supply. Ceiling rents are not as enticing to landlords as selling the shanty at twice its prewar price. Therefore, would-be renters buy houses at high prices. These purchases of houses at high prices are simply rents in another form. Rent ceilings are being raised under another name, that’s all.

Price controllers would answer at this point, “Yes, that’s right, but let us put ceiling prices on the sale of houses.” This, I call to your attention, is the logical collectivist answer to wage and price controls. Go down that road and there is no stopping until everything is controlled, including your wage, how long you work and where you work and what you eat. If every problem of oversupply or undersupply created by government interference with prices is to be dealt with by new extensions of government authority, the trend toward authoritarianism cannot stop short of the slave state.

6. There comes, finally, the assumption that there is some bureaucrat who, without personal responsibility for his decisions, or experience in these matters, has the capacity to see into the millions of minds and to know everything they would do under every possible combination of economic provocations and deterrents. Tin’s is tantamount to saying that there are human mortals graced with an omniscient wisdom, that they can proclaim with certainty that a thirty per cent rise in rent ceilings would result in the building of X number of new houses and that a thirty-one per cent rise would not result in a single additional house. At this point Adam Smith comes to my rescue with an apt statement:

“The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals, would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted to no council and senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.”

Summarizing, we find the supporters of rent controls contending in favor of these fallacies:

1. That renters, rich or poor, are entitled to protection against landlords, rich or poor, and that landlords should subsidize renters.

2. That were ceilings done away with, rents would go so high that renters would be removed to the streets while houses and apartments remained empty.

3. That those who now rent have a right to government protection against those who want to rent.

4. That those who contribute the least in the way of productive effort have some sort of a case against those who contribute more in the way of productive effort.

5. That success in rent control is measured by OPA rent schedules and that the present high prices for property are not a part of the general rent structure.

6. That there are persons who, if invested with the police powers of government, are so omniscient that they can render personal judgments superior to the impersonal decisions of a free and automatic market.

One more observation on the efficacy of rent controls. Our housing problem is now in such a mess that we are told the only way to solve it is to restrict business construction. Food, clothing, fuel, luxuries and shelter are only results of efficient business operations. We are proposing to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs in order that we may have more golden eggs. And the persons who indulge themselves in this kind of economic abracadabra are those who, according to their own admission, are competent to rule the details of our daily lives.

As earlier suggested, I have dealt with rent control because it is the idea most difficult to demolish. All other controls, taken on one by one, would fall by the wayside more easily. The issue is, a controlled system or a free economy.

But, what to do? This question reminds me of an experience in War I. The chap ahead of me in medical line responded to the Doc’s “Well, what’s the matter with you?” with this one:—“Doc, I have a bad cigarette cough. What should I do about it?” The obvious response was made,—“Stop smoking cigarettes you dope and get the hell out of here.” Such an answer was all right for the Doc to make because he had no dependence on the dopey chap; but that kind of an answer, unfortunately, is hardly available to us, for in this case you and I are all tangled up in this mess ourselves and are very much dependent on what others do.

The equivalent of “stop smoking cigarettes” would be—“Stop putting bogus money into the economic bloodstream by using the printing press or its equivalent. Stop wage and price controls. Stop buying group favoritism with subsidies. Stop damming up the free market in commodities and labor.”

The removal of wage and price controls without doing away with the nefarious practices which seem to make them necessary, would not be a very important step in the restoration of a functioning economy. But their removal is one of the absolutely essential steps to this end.

Let’s assume that we shall do all of the things we ought to do. Would prices rise? Yes indeed they would, that is, money prices. Money prices, today, are not telling the truth. How high would they go were they to tell the truth? Here is a sample formula and you figure out the answer for yourself: There are more people who want automobiles than there are automobiles to supply the demand. These people have their share of some $135 billion of surplus purchase orders which we refer to as money—purchase orders that are just as fictitious as though they had been run off some counterfeiter’s press. And you must remember in making your calculations that each new automobile creates the purchase orders equal to its price; in other words, enough money with which to buy it. So, maybe there are as many as ten persons who want to purchase each car produced. There is a price, and this is the part of the problem I leave to you, where nine will drop out of the buying contest. Whatever price it takes to accomplish this will be the price for automobiles. The same formula will apply to all commodities and to each individual’s services. The price, I can assure you, when all of these purchase orders come to the market competing for goods, will be pretty rugged. Prices will not, as in the case of a balanced economy, tend toward costs. They will be set by the competition among surplus purchase orders for relatively scarce goods and services.

But let’s look this problem in the face. We have committed many economic sins. The piper is going to be paid—make no mistake about that. Broadly speaking, there are two ways of payment. One is the totalitarian way, with its restriction of output, waste of labor and consumption of accumulated wealth—the way of controls and cops and councils—the way we are now going. Take a look for yourself at all the models of managed economies on exhibit and determine if there is any one of them you want. On exhibit are Russia, Germany, Japan, France and even England. And don’t fail to look in the mirror and observe what it reveals.

The other way is what we have termed the American way. It is the way of economic liberty, of individualism and of voluntary action. Because of the extent to which we have sinned against this way, it cannot be ours to have without paying a high price for re-admission. The road is narrow and hard and calls for all the virtues known to man, for such is the price of realizing our birthright, freedom.

My conclusion has to do with the most important point of all—intellectual honesty, and by that I mean the accurate reflection of one’s best judgment. No person is capable of rising above his best judgment. Therefore, the best foot he can put forward, the best public relations program he can adopt for himself, is to state honestly and accurately what he, personally, believes to be right. In no other way will our national policy be determined by our best minds.

To illustrate: Recently I was discussing our economic problems with one of the nation’s distinguished editors. He sees things clearly. The journal over which he presides is owned and published by one of our leading business organizations. He said to me—“someone, sometime, must write the truth about our economic dilemma—must explain the only real way out of it.” “Why don’t you do it?” asked I. His reply—“Our organization would be pilloried and ruined.”

This man, like so many, thinks it is dangerous to be honest. He further thinks his damned organization is more important than his own honesty. Really, it is not important that his organization be popular. It is not even important that it survive. It is only important that it be right. I would gladly offer on the altar of national salvation all the trade and commerce organizations into which business pours some $130 mil-lions annually, and the labor unions into which wage earners pitch some $390 millions each year.

Here is what the editor I mentioned wanted to say and would have said had he not feared the danger of being honest:

We have $135 billion of surplus purchase orders—“money” to most people. The exchange system cannot work in this condition of unbalance. Somehow this surplus money has to be sterilized, destroyed. We are living in an atmosphere of supposed wealth, when actually we are bankrupt.

One way to accomplish a balance between purchase orders and goods, would be for every American to work hard for one year for nothing. The goods in stock would then be equal to the purchase orders. The economic books would be in balance. We could go on to undreamed of heights of prosperity. Obviously, such a program would not be subscribed to. It would not be practicable.

Nevertheless, this end must be attained. Divide the working for nothing over a period of five years or even ten years. If we spread this program over a decade, it would mean that we would get paid 10% less each year than we produced. At the end of the period our books would be in balance.

Practically, this means that we must quit “printing money.” It means that we must drop all controls except those which destroy fraud, violence and predation. It means that wages must not be based on the cost of living, but based on what one’s services will bring in a free market, and that these wages will buy only what a free market price for commodities will permit.

This, contrary to what most persons think, does not really mean sacrifice. It means sacrifice relative only to false conceptions of our present status. It means opening up the road to opportunity once again.

These are the words my editor friend wanted to write. These are the words that all thinking Americans who are lovers of liberty want to speak. Yet they still their pens and hold their tongues because they fear these words might not be popular. And why should you or I be popular? And is it, actually, dangerous to be honest? And, if it were, for what greater purpose than individual liberty could we face danger?

[1] By “controls” I mean decisions concerning the production or transfer of values that are enforced by the direct or delegated coercion of government.

Pattern for Revolt

Leonard E. Read

1948

“Let every man

make known what kind of government

would command his respect

and that would be one step

toward attaining it.”

•

THOREAU

FOREWORD

Let anything become valuable enough, or any name popular enough, and thieves will try to steal it. The name Liberal was made popular by a long line of British and American liberals from Adam Smith and John Stuart Mill to Herbert Spencer and John Morley in Britain, and from Thomas Jefferson and James Madison to Grover Cleveland in this country. These men all believed in the freedom of the individual and opposed the extension of government control. They made the name of liberal so popular that thieves are now trying to steal it and apply it to themselves, even when trying to extend the authority of government, which is the direct opposite of liberalism.

Leonard Read has made a brave attempt to rescue the word liberal from those who would prostitute it to base ends. I know of no more courageous crusader for individual liberty, or who is doing more to bring the word liberal back to its true meaning.

He is, of course, under no illusions as to the possibility of absolute liberty ever being attained among men who live together in large groups. Maximum liberty is what all liberals want. It means the minimum of restraint.

Restraint is of two kinds, physical and mental. Physical restraint consists of such things as walls, handcuffs and other such hindrances to physical motion. Mental restraint is mainly fear.

The kind of liberty which all liberals want is the minimum of fear. What is religious liberty except freedom from fear of persecution? What is freedom of speech or of the press except freedom from fear of punishment for one’s spoken or published opinions? Freedom of enterprise is freedom from fear of violence or fraud, which may be committed either by private criminals or political tyrants.

Pattern for Revolt comes like a breath of pure mountain air after one has inhaled for a long time the smoke and dust of political controversy with its smearing campaigns of misrepresentations, innuendo, and demagogic appeals. It throws expediency to the winds and does not compromise or give an inch of ground to sentimentality. It is a product of the intellect.

Probably every American has, at one time or another, dreamed of what he would do if he were president or, more particularly, what he would like someone else to do. Leonard Read has not only dreamed, but has set down in vigorous English the content of his dream. Imagining a true and uncompromising liberal to have been nominated, a man who actually preferred not to be in public office, Read, after presenting the political setting, begins with the kind of an acceptance speech he would expect to hear. This is followed by two campaign speeches, and an inaugural address, all on the same lofty, uncompromising level.

Needless to say, this book is not milk for babes. It is strong meat, probably too strong for stomachs that have long fed on government pap and can’t imagine how they can get along without it. To all such, my advice is, “Bite into it, chew and inwardly digest it. It can’t do you any harm and may do you some good.”

Thomas Nixon Carver

The Political Setting

Revolt by whom? Against what?

There are many American citizens, perhaps a majority, for whom this pattern is designed. They are genuine liberals—the lovers of liberty. This answers the first question.

Against what would they revolt? Against America’s present reactionary. Old World movement. If given the opportunity, they would revolt against all of those political devices and ideas incidental to government in the role of master.

There is little need for review. Something almost akin to a dynasty began in our country in 1933. A four-term president, heading an administration seeking and obtaining more and more power, and expounding a collectivistic, anti-liberal philosophy, has been succeeded by the heir-apparent. The 15-year old program aimed at the all-responsible, and its concomitant, the all-authoritarian, state marches on its merry way, not only unhampered and unchecked, but aided and abetted by an ever-increasing number of gravy-trained citizens.

The Republican Party, with Wendell Willkie as standard-bearer, was unable to head off the third-term aspirant, even though the American tradition bore heavily in his favor. The same party with Thomas Dewey performed but little better against the same aspirant in his fourth successful attempt.

I believe these failures were to be expected and that they were appropriate to the occasions. Republican success, along the lines attempted in 1940 and 1944, would have been undeserved and disastrous.

Furthermore, I believe that many of the millions who voted for President Roosevelt did so with no firm conviction that they were voting for a representation of their views. The same was true of the millions who voted for Messrs. Willkie and Dewey. Acceptance was not what the American people had for their political leaders. Their attitudes could better be described as an acquiescence in confusion.

However, I am not concerned with the present dynasty or with those who want what it stands for, but with those who would, if they could, vote it and all of its collectivistic policies out of office.

Had Mr. Willkie or, later, Governor Dewey, won the election, this country would have been without a party of opposition. Under our two-party system the responsibility for opposition to our present collectivistic dynasty would seem to lie with the Republican Party. With the political INs pursuing the government-as-master course it should be the duty of the political OUTs to pursue the government-as-servant course. This always has been, is, and likely always will be the fundamental issue as it relates to the organization of society. By the two parties taking opposite stands, individual citizens would thus be given a chance to choose the course they prefer. Having the choice is the thing.

But, what, actually, has been the case? The Republican Party, in the last two campaigns, took the government-as-master course, precisely that which the dynastic group was already and still is pursuing. Therefore, the people had no choice except between power-seeking personalities and groups, each promising a superior administration of government-as-master. Such a choice was and still is no choice at all.

Because it has been kept out of office, the Republican Party is still a potential vehicle for those millions who wish to travel the truly liberal course. Thus far, however, it has demonstrated no signs of hope for these liberals. However, in spite of collectivistic behaviors on the part of nearly every aspirant to its titular headship, the party has not been totally destroyed as an instrument of liberalism. It is possible for it still to direct its course toward freedom under limited government.

The Democratic Party, it is true, contains many genuine liberals, perhaps more than does the Republican Party, but, as everyone knows even if they won’t acknowledge it, control of its national organization has been taken over and successfully retained by the most collectivistic and illiberal elements in the nation. Until the liberals in the Democratic Party are again in control of that party, liberals have no political banner under which to sail except the Republican Party, as dim a hope as that is.

If there is to be any political hope for liberals, if they are to have any banner, if they are to have even a single candidate, such possibilities can be realized only if there be an understanding of how the Republican Party has erred and, understanding, proceed forthwith to the creation of a party of opposition as a replacement for one of only pseudo-opposition.

The error is simply explained. The Republican Party, on the occasion of the last two contests, as well as in the one now under way, listened to the voice of expediency. The party leaders, platform writers and their advisers, when determining a course of action, have in effect asked and are asking today, “What must we say and do to win votes?” The voice of expediency, and the question is addressed only to expediency, answers. “Endorse the Wagner Act. Advocate ‘Social Security.’ Stand for those things of the New Deal which have proved popular.”

The voice of expediency misled and is misleading the Republican leaders. This voice always misleads. Of necessity it must mislead because it represents the rejection of moral principles for the hope of temporary gain.

If we are to regain a two-party system the Republican Party leaders must divorce themselves, totally, from expediency. They must turn to the only other voice, the voice of integrity and moral principle. They must ask, simply and exclusively, “What is right?” They may never receive precisely the correct answer. A discovery of the whole truth, always, is impossible. But the pursuit of truth is the basis of all moral action. To this pursuit we owe our loyalty, to this and nothing more.

If the Republican Party had been a truly liberal party, the platform writers and the titular heads would have been asking, “How can we liberate the individual from the tyranny of the State?” The voice of conscience would answer, “Repudiate the New Deal farm program of government subsidies, loans, parity payments and crop controls. Advocate the repeal of all price-maintenance laws, including the Federal Wage-Hour Law. Repudiate the idea that national prosperity may be promoted by protective tariffs. Denounce the Wagner Act and the racketeering and restriction of output by labor unions or by any other type of organization. Show the fallacy of the Federal ‘social security’ program. Stand for the right of every adult citizen to make his own bargain, if he wishes, with anyone who wants to buy his goods or services. Tell the people what is honestly believed to be true. Disregard votes. Pay no attention to popularity. ‘To thine own self be true.’”

The voice of expediency, through the mouths of well-wishers, would whisper, “Heed the voice of conscience and you will lose five million votes on that Wagner Act statement. You will lose other millions if you do not embrace Federal ‘social security’.”

But remember, the voice of expediency is a cheat.

Nothing better affirms this reasoning than the political history of Mr. Willkie. He started out with a perfectly horrible political cross to bear. He was the president of a big utility! Yet, as he went about the country stating his economic and political convictions, he impressed people with his honesty and forthrightness. He gave the appearance of being unequivocal. The American people so admired what they believed to be his qualities that they nominated him by popular acclaim.

Then, something seemed to happen to his demeanor. For the first time it became obvious that he was thinking in terms of winning the election. It became clear that he was thinking of methods for capturing votes. He seemed to think less and less of being right. The voice of expediency persuaded him to say in his speech of acceptance that he believed in the Fair Labor Standards Act, a position at complete odds with liberal tenets. He went more and more down the New Deal path, as did Governor Dewey after him, not because either one necessarily believed in that course but because they must have thought it was the way to defeat the Roosevelt Party and to secure the office for themselves and their party. They acted from motives of expediency rather than from moral convictions. Yet this action proved to be not even expedient. By it they did not succeed.

The mere changing of parties or personalities is not important. The transfer of power from one party to the other is important only if the ascending party has principles which it is important to substitute for the principles of the party in power. Nothing else matters.

Governor Dewey spoke in the Los Angeles Coliseum before 95,000 people. Millions were listening on the radio. He espoused “social security,” a New Deal item, but a “vote-catching” plank in the Republican platform. Competent authorities say that he chose Los Angeles for this wholly anti-liberal presentation because that city was the birthplace of pension schemes such as the Townsend Plan and Ham & Eggs. The response was unenthusiastic. He had listened to the voice of expediency.

Had he and the Republican policymakers listened to the voice of conscience, he would have chosen Los Angeles as the place to expose the fallacies of “social security.” He would have done as Theodore Roosevelt once did, when speaking in Denver in 1900. The big issue of that campaign was the gold versus silver standard. Colorado was a silver state. Political advisers joined his Denver-bound train at Omaha and urged him to avoid the subject. Teddy faced his audience in what seemed minutes of silence. His legs were spread, his jaw set. His first words were, and he yelled them, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am for the gold standard!” The place was a bedlam of applause, not because the people of Colorado had changed their position on the silver question but because there stood before them an honest and a courageous man, a man devoted to what he thought to be right. He was unequivocal in his position, a trait in character that Americans love.

But back to Governor Dewey and Los Angeles. He lost the election. He might have lost it anyway. That isn’t the question. What did he and the Republican Party do for liberalism? They gave away the case! He testified before millions of radio listeners to the rightness of the New Deal. If he honestly believed in the rightness of the New Deal, he was the wrong man to lead the liberal movement, which the Republicans should have sponsored.

Think what might have happened. Citizens listen to candidates contending for high office. Statements have influence entirely out of proportion to their wisdom. That night in Los Angeles Governor Dewey could have so thoroughly exposed the fraud of “social security” that further extensions of it, even with the New Deal Party in power, would have been improbable. One more vicious trend toward totalitarianism could have been halted. And, in victory or in defeat, Governor Dewey would have become the champion of the liberals. As it is, he is neither the champion of the liberals nor of the New Dealers. Nor is he President.

I do not know when the next real election will be held. Most persons think it is scheduled for November, 1948. But in my book there will be no election unless there is at least one truly liberal candidate. Choosing among numerous aspirants to office who vie with each other as sponsors of public housing, socialized medicine, the nationalization of education and a host of other socialistic items is like choosing between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. That is not an election in any significant sense, that is, not in any ideal sense, but only in an unimportant, personality sense.

The way to begin is to begin! The time to begin is now, whether for November, 1948 or November, 1952. In any event, there are several things liberals should do:

1) Gain a widespread acceptance of the theory that it is not the label of the Party in office nor the name of the President which concerns us. We care only that liberal principles be re-affirmed and practiced.

2) Show that the responsibility of the Republican Party is to carry the standard of the opposition; that the espousal of liberal doctrines is its present and proper role. That and nothing else.

3) Begin a movement for the Party nomination of an informed liberal who loves liberty better than power and who does not want office.

The last point needs clarification. John Stuart Mill was a great British liberal. He did not want public office. Least of all did he want to be a Member of Parliament. But his friends were persuasive and solely out of a sense of duty he consented to become a candidate. Mr. Mill, not wanting the office, thought he would lose the election if he spoke his own liberal views, honestly and frankly. He avoided catch phrases and all of the devices supposed to be vote-getters. He made his first speech at a labor meeting. He berated the ideas they were sponsoring. At the conclusion of his talk a leader in the audience asked if he had not made such-and-such a derogatory remark about one of labor’s plans. Mill saw in the acknowledgment of the truth a chance not to be elected. He admitted the charge with some vigor. He was roundly cheered. Why? Because here was not a politician in the usual vote-seeking sense of the term but a man whose manifestation of honesty warranted the confidence of labor. Mill was elected to Parliament, and re-elected.

It was Jefferson who said, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”

The rottenness to which Mr. Jefferson referred was, no doubt, an abandonment of moral principle as a basis of action or, an acceptance of expediency, which is the same thing.

It may be argued that this rottenness ought not to set in. There are some cases in which men have desperately wanted public office and have been strong enough in character to hold fast to moral principles. But these cases are rare exceptions. For the most part, when once decided to seek public office, men undergo something as effective as a chemical change. Something does, indeed, set in. All experience attests to it.

However, there is another reason for securing a candidate who does not want the office. It relates to the axiom: the office should seek the man, not the man the office. This is a sound axiom though we rarely seem to observe it.

If the Republican Party nominates the man who demonstrates the most enterprise in getting himself nominated, and it more than likely will, the party will have made a mistake from which there is no recovery. Not only will this office-seeker resort to expediency to attain office but, once in office, his very enterprise will prove a handicap to the nation.

The point is explained thus: When man seeks the office he follows his natural expansionist inclinations. Man normally, and quite properly, tries to expand his wealth, his influence and the approval of himself by others. He not only tries to extend himself but, as well, those properties or offices he identifies as his. He measures his success by the degree of these expansions. A man who seeks and secures public office, in most instances, will try to make it a bigger and more powerful office.

Government should not be so expanded. If all of us were perfect we should need no government. While perfection is not possible on this earth it is, nevertheless, an appropriate objective. Men in government, therefore, should be those who aim at making government as unnecessary as possible. Contraction, not expansion, should be the aim.

Only those men who must be sought after for office are likely to be capable of wisely reducing the domain which they have been chosen to administer.

Find this man. He can be any one of a thousand, maybe of several thousand, American citizens. Persuade him that he should accept the nomination. Choose him for his ideas, not for the State from whence he comes. Select him for his principles and his abilities, not for the job he holds. If he turns out to be a Democrat, what of that? To hell with expediency! If courage for the right is not demonstrated in the nomination it will not be manifested in the nominee. Don’t confine the search to the well-known, it may be that he will not be found there. He, like a multitude of great Americans, has, in all probability, never been heard of, except by a few friends.

What kind of a man should he be? What ideas ought he to have? How should he regard himself in relation to the Presidency? In short, what kind of a man ought liberals to look for?

The following chapters, a few imagined speeches delivered following the summer conventions of 1948 or, perhaps more realistically, during the same period in 952, assume that a true, honest, courageous and unequivocal liberal has been found and nominated.

Does this political allegory, being but a sampling of what such a man might say, please you? Does this straightforwardness appeal to you as a necessary ingredient in political life? Is there a substantial minority left in our country who would give support to such a platform?

If so, then liberalism in America can be regained. If so, then honesty and frankness—actions on the basis of moral convictions—are a part of the pattern for revolt. Add as much wisdom as can be found and the pattern is complete.

A final thought: It is somewhat saddening that anyone should think a piece of this kind at all necessary, especially in a nation so brilliantly founded, so ably begun, so incomparably better than anything revealed by history, and yet so early in its youth.

L.E.R.

Bronxville, N. Y.

May, 1948

AT SMITHVILLE

Acceptance Speech

My Fellow-Citizens:

I accept the nomination by the Republican Party for the office of the Presidency of these United States.

Acceptance, based on the manner of my selection, is a duty which any good American citizen would feel impelled to assume.

You violated all the rules of the political game in choosing as your candidate the head of a chain-store organization and a resident of the State of Mississippi.

But you said that votes were not your prime objective. You contended that the espousal of liberal ideas was your central purpose, that votes were wanted only as liberal doctrine should be sanctioned by the American people.

You said you wanted a person who was opposed to present collectivistic trends. In this respect I qualify.

You said you were seeking a citizen who prefers his present employment even to the presidency. I prefer my own home to the White House, the operation of the business I built to the management of political structures built by others.

You said you wanted someone who believed in a Federal Government of limited powers, in free competitive enterprise, in freedom, generally, and in individualism. I am an ardent disciple of these tenets.

You said you wanted a man who wouldn’t shade a word in his faith to gain ten million votes. Let my performance speak for itself.

Your next requirement was an informed and thoroughly competent advocate of liberal principles. I cannot meet this requirement. As freedom is the ultimate in social achievement, so is an understanding of how to be free the ultimate in earthly wisdom.

In a sense, I cannot win this campaign. We cannot win it. It will never, finally, be won. We can make some gains, but maximum freedom, being social perfection, is impossible. No freedom at all can exist in the midst of effortless and ignorant living. It is attainable only to the extent that hard work, intellectual integrity and intelligence become universal.

Freedom is an assertion of man’s God-given free will, a resurrection of man from deadening arbitrary authority, whether this authority be exercised by democratic majorities through the instrumentality of the State or by oppressive men in anarchy. Authority of men over man exists in the presence of error and ignorance, folly and wrongdoing.

The principles which brought America to the greatest heights of freedom yet known on this earth are easily forgotten. Each generation, every individual, must acquire them anew. They endure only as they are learned and retained by an ever-flowing succession of citizens.

We shall win this campaign only as we succeed in substituting the good ideas and practices essential for freedom for the errors and wrongdoing incidental to arbitrary authority.

We do not need to care who is elected to the presidency if we carry our ideas. What could I do in office on behalf of liberalism if the people’s ideas were those of slaves? On the other hand, what will our collectivistic opponents be able to do in extending their authority if the people subscribe to the principle of liberty?

Let us start this campaign on the right basis and keep it there. Let us make it a contest in ideas and ideologies—but a vigorous contest. Personalities among our adversaries or among ourselves are unimportant. We betray our cause and our high purpose if we indulge in them. Encouraging hatred for any man is bad manners. On the other hand, idolatry for any human being is abandonment of individualistic principles.

It is now proper to ask, how can we achieve our purposes? What is the duty of each liberal? Since the nomination thousands have asked me, how are we to organize?

I do not favor organization in its commonly accepted sense. Again I ask, what is gained if I get into office without support among the people for our ideas? I succeed only in acquiring a job I do not want. And if you want me there under such circumstances your efforts are meaningless and this campaign is but another sham.

Our task is not to organize states, counties and precincts. Unwisdom efficiently spread is no service to our cause. Our assignment is to cultivate an understanding of freedom—in ourselves and in others. Such understanding is not acquired by a mass or a class. Only an individual can achieve wisdom.

Our campaign, then, is not one of ringing doorbells and rushing confused people to the polls. It is a much more difficult process.

It calls, first, for a personal conviction respecting the individual and his responsibility for his own welfare.

It calls, secondly, for a perfection of the individual—one’s self.

It calls for virtuous men, that is, men who are industrious, thrifty and of good faith; men distinguished by self-respect, self-reliance and self-control; men who aspire to wisdom and who prize a reputation for reliability. The virtuous man is a moral man, which is to say, one who puts being right ahead of any and all supposed expediences, whether laboring as a farm hand or contesting for the highest office in the land. The virtuous man is a good sport asking only for a fair field and no favors.

Our cause requires men and women who seek popularity with the ages, not with the moment—men and women who seek approval only of their God, their consciences and of those fellowmen whose judgments they respect.

Our fight needs those who perceive that general enlightenment begins with our own personal enlightenment: that we can become influential in any beneficial way only as our own understanding is superior in its quality. We shall hope and endeavor, first of all, to learn for ourselves rather than attempt to impose our wisdom on others.

Our campaign demands citizens who will acquire abilities in exposing the fallacies of socialism and who will strive to know how to reduce, rather than to increase, the use of coercion and restriction in our relations with one another.

In every field where arbitrary authority is imposed we shall inquire how it may be removed and replaced by a reliance on the initiative and enterprise of individual citizens. We must give to the art of self-government its American renaissance.

Our cause requires volunteers who will never give their consent to further extensions of the “Welfare State” idea. It calls for men and women who will aim to destroy the inroads already made; but at the same time, for those who are realists enough to know that perfection in freedom is only possible as individuals, themselves, become perfected.

We need patriots who will stand against wrong even though they cannot see the time when right will triumph.

Let us make one point clear to all who will listen. In our attempt to dislodge the ideas which make the present Federal administration possible, and thus to divest it of its derived power, we are not trying to acquire power for a few of us. Our aim is to take the brakes off the only real power there is—the power that is in the minds and hands of individuals.

For instance, the real power imagined of a president is fallacious. He has no more than others equally endowed with virtues. What he actually has is derived power—derived from others who, voluntarily, surrender some of their liberty to give power to government. This derived power, police force, if used beyond its properly limited purposes, merely magnifies the damage done by his mistakes which, being fallible, he must make. It is as though one were so strong that he breaks the bones in the hands he shakes; or kills the people on whose back he slaps a friendly paw.

Real power, that is, power properly acquired, comes only with the perfection of the individual—perfection to the point where others seek counsel and guidance. Real power comes only with moral and mental development. Derived power must be sparingly permitted only sufficient adequately to suppress fraud, violence (private coercion), predatory practices and monopolistic abuses. It is never a power we should permit anyone to seize for himself.

As we begin this campaign let it be understood that even we who think of ourselves as liberals and as individualists shall find many points of disagreement.

Our adversaries, on the other hand, those who wish a master chosen from fallible men, who seek for themselves human shepherds and sheep dogs, who would transfer their responsibilities to other shoulders, have a simple platform of agreement. They want to he led. To accomplish this, they need only to let themselves go—stop thinking and learning, stop working and saving, stop planning and trying. To lose freedom, no more effort or thought is required than that needed to fall down an elevator shaft. Acting in this fashion they can if they wish, choose someone to lead them or, failing even in this, there will be many professional “leaders,” (likewise among our adversaries), ready and anxious to assume for them that direction over their lives which they have so carelessly or lazily abandoned to others.

As liberals and individualists we can agree that we do not want to be led; that we do not want to “lead” by force; that government must be a servant and not a master. We can agree that we do not like what we are getting nor the direction in which we are trending. But, as there are thousands of ways to be wrong and only one way to be right, so there are thousands of variations in what even liberals believe to be a perfect freedom.

Freedom, like justice, is difficult to define. Justice is the absence of injustice. Acts of injustice can be identified and described, but who can describe a condition of complete justice? So it is with freedom. Freedom is the absence of restriction and coercion. Acts of restriction and coercion can be seen and felt. They can be attacked. This is why liberals are so often regarded as “agin-ers” and are referred to as destructive. The only way to guard freedom is to remove, to destroy, unwarranted restrictions and coercion.

However, our disagreements, which assuredly will be evident, must not discourage us. Variation is a primary fact of nature. We are all different in our ideas as well as in our physical make-ups. The genius of the liberal philosophy is that it recognizes these differences by denying that government shall make conformists of us. The liberal philosophy accepts the individual in his variety and insists that the State be only an instrument to protect these natural, variable conditions. If we do not disagree among ourselves we should look about us for something very wrong.

I shall make several speeches during the campaign period, but only the number necessary to make it plain what I stand for and what I stand against. These will be made at places convenient to our work and with an eye to the minimum of expense. Which state or states does not matter. Being in the Union is qualification enough. Any town is sufficiently large if it can accommodate the wire services and radio hook-ups. I am not going on a political parade, either around the country or within a town.

If our ideas are good they will travel under their own power. It is not your nominee who is at issue—it is the cause of human freedom. Therefore, it is our ideas and our philosophy which should be put on parade.

This is why I have come to Smithville for the acceptance speech. True, I was born on a nearby ranch to which some sentiment attaches. But making this speech in this village, where large audiences are impossible, symbolizes my belief that the personality should be subordinated to the principles one holds. An idea can be better appraised if detached from a person.

It is important to remember that the campaigning devices used by our opponents, such as glamorizing and idolizing an individual, radio trumpetry, being all things to all people, expediency, and appeals to mass emotions, are neither available to, nor wanted by, us. Should we use any or all of these we, as persons, might get into office, but liberalism would achieve no victory. We do not want victory without substance.

This campaign is not going to be organized by me or by any nationally-centralized, super-strategy board. It is going to be conducted as liberals would have the work of the nation conducted—by individuals working in their own way, using their own enterprise and initiative and responsible for their own actions.

Does this approach appear inadequate, impractical, a denial of effective organization? Then the appearance is deceptive. The persons who will respond to common-denominator prescriptions, and to platitudinous directives, or who can be “organized,” are not people who can spread our ideas.

The aid which we need primarily to hope for is that which arises from personal conviction that our cause is right. Men and women with convictions thus gained will apply that genius peculiar to their persons to their own areas of influence. Conformity to a pattern set by someone doing the thinking and the directing from above only frustrates individuals who act from honest convictions.

The power of organization can be as conducive to the promotion of evil, which is ignorance, as it can be helpful to the extension of good, which is wisdom.

Organization, therefore, to be useful, has to come into existence as the result of convictions born in wisdom.

The truly helpful organization work will originate among those inspired to our support, acting in those sectors with which they have familiarity; where they know what they are doing; where they are able to use the power of organization wisely.

It is spontaneous organization that we want, from and of individuals. This is the American method, already operating in infinitely various ways. We are so much a part of it, so close to it, that we are hardly aware of its nature, its strength or even its existence.

I shall do my best, in my own way, to state the liberal case. You do what you want to in your own way. Only if this proves sufficient is true liberalism possible.

AT KANSAS CITY

First Campaign Speech

My Fellow-Citizens:

A friend of mine, whose judgment I admire and whose criticism always proves useful to me, was sent a copy of this address. His comment, in part, was as follows:

“I think your address is courageous and sound, but I doubt that it will win any converts. Few of your listeners will get more than a dim impression that they have been berated. They will think of you as some kind of a strange, holier-than-thou creature who is probably a phony anyway, although what your game is they’ll swear they do not know.”

That comment determined me that this address would be a good beginning for the campaign. If the ideas to follow are to drive voters to cover, then the sooner we find it out the better.

First, I want to say something about words and their meanings.

It is the business of language to say what we mean; and it is a moral imperative to mean what we say.

Before this country embarked on a program of national socialism, and when there was a general acceptance of the idea that governments should have only limited powers and functions, economic and political terms, if uttered by one person, conveyed an accurate meaning to other persons.

Today, however, morality has been dangerously sacrificed for “practicality”—and terms and phrases are used to obscure the truth. Opponents of freedom, in this country as elsewhere, have pre-empted the language of freedom so extensively that we who attempt to speak on behalf of freedom now find it difficult to convey our meaning.

For instance, to speak of ourselves as liberals, without a careful explanation of the term, is to classify us popularly as New Dealers and socialists, although the term originally meant lovers of liberty. To say that we advocate free competitive enterprise is to take a position verbally with Earl Browder and a host of other collectivists.

F. A. Hayek, in his recent reference[1] to the methods of the statists has this to say:

“And the most efficient technique to this end is to use the old words but change their meaning. Few traits of totalitarian regimes are at the same time so confusing to the superficial observer and yet so characteristic of the whole intellectual climate as the complete perversion of language, the change of meaning of the words by which the ideals of the new regimes are expressed. . . . If one has not oneself experienced this process, it is difficult to appreciate the magnitude of this change of the meaning of words, the confusion which it causes, and the barriers to any rational discussion which it creates.”

Perhaps then, in the light of this situation, we shall have to coin some new words and give them clear definitions. Anyway, I have coined the word plunderstorm to convey the impression of an impending disaster, a kind of disaster that no other word seems adequately to describe.

To understand what I mean by “plunderstorm” it is first necessary to refer to a word having a German derivation. The word is plunderbund.

“Plunder” is a familiar word. We have always had, do have, and always will have individual acts of plunder. To suppress them we properly use the police powers of government.

Parenthetically, it may be said that there are three ways of making a living. First, a man may perform a service, or grow or make what can be exchanged for what he wants. This is work, and the results show up slowly. Second, he may get a gun and rob others of their possessions. This is risky business. Third, he may form or join a political party or pressure group to vote money for himself and his friends. This is plunderbundism, and its practitioners are plunderbundists.

The word plunderbund, therefore, means a bund of legalized plunderers. Legal plunder is the act of using the law to exact wealth from him who has acquired it, without his consent, and without compensation, and to give this wealth to him who has not produced it.

Plunderbundism, today, is an American institution. It is an American institution by reason of its general prevalence, by reason of millions who are both its perpetrators and its victims, and by reason of its broad acceptance as an instrument of national economic policy. Plunderbundism is so pervasive that it now looms in the economic skies as a plunderstorm.

The word “plunderstorm,” as I use it, means a lot of simultaneous plunderbunds. It means lawful robbery of the mass type, in profusion.

Let’s indulge in a few examples:

The sugar beet growers demand and receive protection and a subsidy from all of the American people, although the cost of this aid at times has been greater than the total value of sugar beet production.

The silver miners have long succeeded in getting the Federal Government to pay an artificially high price for silver. The difference between what would be the price for silver on a free market and the price the government pays is the amount of the subsidy. The subsidy is paid by the American people, the benefit accruing to the producers of silver.

Does your product bear a higher price than it otherwise would because of the protective tariff, and is the tariff applied for no other reason than to make this higher price possible? Then you are using the law to plunder other citizens—by reducing the purchasing power of their earnings.

Do you propose that government take other people’s money and make loans to help your business—to finance your exports by a World Bank, to stimulate home demand for your products by building unneeded post offices and dog-pounds, to raise prices by buying surpluses, or to save you from your own recklessness in borrowing or lending? Much of this money is never paid back and never intended to be paid back; it is plunder, pure and simple. But even if every cent were paid back, these loans would still represent merely another form of plunder. The funds thus loaned are obtained by the force of taxation or by the fraud of inflation. They are taken from other uses for which the rightful owners had intended them. What are these but forced loans, more plunder in the plunderstorm.

This is the center of a good farming section. Have you advocated government-supported parity prices for agricultural products? Then you also are a contributor to the plunderstorm which now darkens our future.

Suppose a carpenter should make an agreement with a builder in St. Louis to do a certain type of work for not less than twenty dollars per day, and suppose by reason of that single agreement the law of Missouri dictated that no carpenters should thereafter do that type of work in your state for a less amount. Wouldn’t this encourage and protect monopolistic plunderbunds? Yet, if you are an advocate of the so-called Fair Trade laws you sponsor that identical principle.

Have you been a Chamber of Commerce socialist? That is, have you voted for your Chamber of Commerce to seek money from the Federal Government for projects that would primarily benefit you and your section? Then you are a plunderbundist.

Have you asked your City Council to take some of everybody’s money to do something that was not of benefit to everybody? If so, be careful about taking out after other plunderbundists.

Labor unions use the force of government, as well as legally sanctioned intimidation, to exact uneconomically high wage rates. Thus, they raise costs of living and reduce opportunities for their fellow-citizens, including other wage earners. Again just plain plunder.

More illustrations would be easy to find but they seem unnecessary. Other monopolists, restrictionists and share-the-wealth “reformers,” deserving mention as much as those I have used as examples, are to be found on every hand.

Moreover, our plunderstorm economy is a matter of common knowledge. The many plunderbunds which go to compose the plunderstorm have become sacred cows which none but the most reckless politician or public figure dares attack. All the signs point to a long and successful run for these legalized rackets until the mounting plunderstorm reaches hurricane proportions. Why is this? Whence comes this plunderstorm? Why is it continually growing in violence and destructive power?

It seems to me there are several reasons. The first reason is a deep-rooted conviction on the part of millions that they have, by reason of their existence on this earth, a right to share in the property of others. The idea that this is a wholly immoral notion has never occurred to most of them. It hasn’t occurred to them any more than it has occurred to efficient monopolists, restrictionists or protectionists that they are destroying the property rights of others.

Perhaps you have taken care of an unfortunate relative over an extended period of time. If so, have you noticed how soon this care is taken for granted as a right?

On occasion, bankers accommodate customers by honoring their overdrafts. How quickly most customers regard this gesture of good will as a right can be attested to by any banker who has seen fit to call a halt to careless repetitions of the practice.

A second reason for the plunderstorm is that one plunderbund creates an appetite for another, and another. As one group achieves temporary security by the guarantee of fixed wages or prices it increases the insecurity of other groups by increasing tax burdens, raising living costs and reducing opportunities for employment. Chambers of commerce say, “Our community must pay for government’s leaf-raking expenditures in other communities. Therefore, we should get our share of the spending to help us pay for the relief projects elsewhere.”

Farmers say, “The city producers have their tariffs, monopolies and trade-union restrictions of output. Therefore, we need crop controls and subsidies to enable us to pay the higher prices resulting from the special privileges of those who produce the goods we farmers must buy.”

The result is this group-thirst for political plunder. It becomes the pig-trough philosophy of economic behavior.

For this situation there is no cure at all except to re-establish in the minds of people the normal boundaries of personal right. The present situation calls for an understanding of where personal rights end and infringement on the rights of others begins.

The third reason for this plunderstorm is the fallacious assumption that old people would live in poverty if we didn’t have public pensions; that we would have a shortage of sugar without subsidies; that silver would not be mined without artificial prices; that agriculture would perish without parity; that home towns would have no improvements without Federal hand-outs; that manufacturing would cease without protection; that wages would be pittances without minimum wage laws; that young folks would go unschooled without public education; that the mails would not arrive short of government delivery.

Now, even now, in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary, there are millions who believe that the blessings of electrical energy have been brought about by the Federal government’s invasion of this field with its TVA’s. When the government, following its present trend, has finally completed its usurpation of all public utilities, one will hardly dare to question the notion that these conveniences would be impossible were the government not conducting them. To dare to intimate that these utilities might be owned and efficiently operated privately will be quite like advocating, today, the possibilities of private education and private saving for one’s old age. It will be suggested that you do not understand the “dynamics” of a modern economy; that your thinking originates from pioneer and agricultural days; that we now have an industrial and an urban society; that you should “bring yourself up to date.”

A fourth reason for this plunderstorm is a conviction, as deeply rooted as the others, that plunderbundism is good economics.

It is assumed, largely in ignorant sincerity, that one group can take from another group and benefit not only the group which takes, but also the group which is robbed.

The pension people say, “Give us pensions which, of course, will benefit us, but you who are forced to give will also benefit because we shall spend our money for your goods and services.”

The farmers say, “Pay us parity prices, or incomes, so that we can buy the products of the city.”

The monopolists say, “Assure us high prices and we can pay high wages.”

Labor union leaders argue, “Pay us high wages and lots of social security benefits, and we can buy more of the products of industry.” Accepting this line of reasoning as a correct theory, I can enter your store, hold you up at the point of a gun, take the money from your cash drawer and logically contend that I am benefiting you because I shall spend all the money for your merchandise.

This is the infamous “purchasing-power” theory, perhaps the most mischievous economic fallacy in circulation. It has captured federal officialdom, it is the foundation for the Townsend Plan, for Ham and Eggs, and for the many vast, spending programs originating along the Potomac.

How do people reason in order to arrive at the conclusion that we can be enriched by paying government a huge overhead to take from all of us and give to some of us, or even to most of us? This merry-go-round in economic thinking is too confusing for me. Yet there can be no question of the fact that millions of our fellow citizens accept this idea as gospel truth.

The plunderstorm economy, therefore, originates in four false assumptions, namely: (1) that people have rights to the property of others; (2) that special privileges and legalized racketeering by one group justify pursuit of the same ends by every other group; (3) that special privileges are a necessary price of production or progress; and (4) that taking other people’s property is good for the exploited as well as the exploiters.

What has been the result? In the hope of plundering more from others than others succeed in plundering from us, we have voted away the inestimable benefits for which government and law were originally instituted.

We founded our government and wrote our laws on the premise that the individual citizen has certain inalienable rights and that government and law should protect these rights. But let me quote Frederic Bastiat, the brilliant French economist and social philosopher of a century ago:

“The law is the organization of the natural right of lawful defense.

“Unhappily, law is by no means confined to its own department. Nor is it merely in some indifferent and debatable views that it has left its proper sphere. It has done more than this. It has acted in direct opposition to its proper end; it has been employed in annihilating that justice which it ought to have established, in effacing amongst Rights, that limit which was its true mission to respect; it has placed the collective force in the service of those who wish to traffic, without risk, and without scruple, in the persons, the liberty and the property of others; it has converted plunder into a right, that it may protect it, and lawful defense into a crime, that it may punish it.”

While it is perfectly obvious that we should restore government and law to their proper functions, limit them as we originally intended they should be limited, it is equally obvious that this is now impossible until false ideas are removed, those false ideas which brought about the perversion of government.

As long as people entertain these false ideas about rights and property, so long will they seek their fulfillment through government and the law. When they use the government and the law for these purposes they are embarked on the road of communism. If we are a party to these purposes we are supporters of communism. Calling ourselves Republicans and Democrats and vowing hatred for everything communistic does not alter the fact in the slightest. The plunderstorm economy is communism.

This nation is in the grip of a plunderstorm. Of late, elections have been held merely to decide which party can offer the most attractive forms of plunder and the most effective administration of the plunderbund machinery.

It is different this time. You have a choice. You may vote for a continuance and a further elaboration of plunderbundism. Or, if you wish, you may vote for some of us who are dedicated to the proposition of eradicating it insofar as it is humanly possible.

Vote the Republican ticket and vote away whatever plunderbund booty you are now getting. But, of one other thing you may be certain: Plunderbund booty going to others, for which you are paying, will also come under our anti-plunderbund axe.

One point ought to be understood. Plunderbundism must go on to its ultimate disaster or it must be destroyed now. It is impossible to “drop an anchor,” to accept what we now have and let it go at that.

If the booty from public looting is not taken away from those who are getting it, those who are now without this booty will press their demands beyond the point of governmental resistance. The choice is only one of going on with the filthy business or getting out of it entirely. Our country cannot endure half robbers and half robbed. It is only my function to present the issue. It is yours to determine which course you wish to follow. It isn’t any of my business how you decide.

I would add, however, that citizens have three, rather than two, courses of action open to them.

The first, on behalf of plunderbundism, is frankly to acknowledge that the American ideal of a government of limited powers and functions, a government as the servant of the people, is only an unattainable ideal. Confess that it isn’t worth working for anyway. Take a stand for the Totalitarian State, the government that is the master of the people, your master. Assist in getting all the instruments of the economy under the control and the operation of the government.

The second course of action, more in favor of plunderbundism than the first, is just to let yourself go. Apply neither effort nor intelligence. Keep silent about your doubts and fears. Or else, play the expedient game. Compromise! Proclaim that you have faith in the American people while you haven’t even faith in being able to do anything about America yourself. Be like Nero and fiddle while Rome burns; in other words, be an optimist while the whole edifice in which you had your opportunity topples on your children’s heads. Boldly believe that a happy, prosperous America can be created with our present plunderstorm economy as a premise. Make your plans with confidence and, like the ostrich, with your head in the sand, ignore the hard, cold facts of monetary unbalance between existing purchase orders[2] and available goods and services. Fool yourself with the idea that we will out-produce all the fictitiously-created money of the past decade. Be wishy-washy: practice the life of a plunderbundist, but give lip service at every opportunity to free competitive enterprise and “the American Way of Life.” Comfort yourself with the notion that you can enlighten the so-called “masses” with catch phrases, and thus save the nation, while you support by word and deed the policies that are undermining the foundations of everything honest and right.

The third course of action is the difficult one. It is the moral course. The one I sketched in my Acceptance Speech. To repeat, it is the course of those who will stand against wrong even though they cannot see the time when right will triumph.

I began this address with a statement concerning it by a friend. I also asked another for his comments. What he had to say referred to the moral course just mentioned. He said, “You are absolutely right but you are impractical.”

This, only, would I add. If you and I do not adopt moral principles as a basis of action, be the action political or economic, many of our children will starve and they will kill each other in revolution. I leave it to your judgment whether morality as a basis of action is practical or impractical.

In short, it is for you to decide whether we go on with plunderbunding or whether we destroy it—whether you vote to maintain these ill-gotten and illusory benefits or whether you vote to take them away from everybody, including yourself.

Make no mistake—that is what we are voting about.

[1] The Road to Serfdom. (University of Chicago Press. 1944).

[2] Bank deposits and currencies.

AT LOS ANGELES

Eighth Campaign Speech[1]

My Fellow-Citizens:

In a variety of ways this nation has legalized plunder. Plunderbundism has become an instrument of national economic policy as we seek prosperity by the fruitless process of picking each other’s pockets.

Discussion of one of the more vicious forms of plunder—Federal “social security”—I have reserved for this final address, so that there can be no misunderstanding on election day of where I stand on this subject.

To demonstrate the meaning of Federal “social security,” as it is now conducted, is fairly simple. This is its substance:

First, government compels an extraction of money from my personal account in exchange for a pension promise. A legally prescribed sum of money is taken from my earnings, my property, regardless of my wishes.

Second, government compels a seizure of money from my employer. This levy is credited to my pension account. A legally prescribed sum of money, his property, is taken from him, regardless of his wishes.

Third, whatever sum of money is needed to balance my pension account, so that a legally prescribed number of dollars may someday be paid to me, is taken from everybody’s property, by government compulsion, regardless of whether everybody favors such a deduction or not.

Fourth, the monies thus coercively collected are spent by the Federal government on thousands of projects, from paying farmers not to grow wheat to subsidizing Federal projects in their competition with tax-paying citizens.

Fifth, an I.O.U. in the form of a government bond, a lien on my property and my earnings, is deposited in lieu of a portion of these monies which have been collected and spent.

All that can be said for this complex fiction is that the Federal government owes me a pension.

But what, actually, does this mean? It means that all-of-us owe some-of-us a pension—and with nothing, actually, saved with which to pay it. Governmental prestidigitation and political double-talk cannot change that simple fact. The whole process, as it is now practiced, means only that the Federal government owes us a pension. In order to pay, the hat must be passed again in order to collect the entire amount which is to be paid. And government force will back up the second levy as it did the first.

Some of you may expect me to promise that, if elected, I shall change the fraudulent features of “social security” and that I shall institute a more efficient administration of it.

Any such suppositions are wrong. I promise nothing except to use what influence I have to rid the national government of the whole system of compulsory security.

I do not wish to attack, on this occasion, the present administration of Federal “social security.” I wish to attack Federal “social security” itself. Good administration of a bad practice may be worse than a bad administration of it.

In principle, Federal old-age pensions and so-called unemployment insurance are quite alike. Both are compulsory. Both decree an arbitrary distribution of the fruits of one’s labors. Both invoke governmental management of the individual citizen. Both reduce security instead of increasing it. I shall, therefore, discuss the principle of “social security” rather than its details.

Of all the objectionable features to “social security,” the coercive features are given last place by most people, even by many who consider themselves liberals. Coercion is my first objection. Its unlimited application, which is unlimited power, is the most dangerous thing on this earth. No man has ever lived who has been big enough or competent enough to apply it, justly and wisely, to any responsible adult person, arbitrarily. Yet, coercive influence over others is as common an ambition as financial affluence. Tyranny is only arbitrary coercion carried to its logical conclusion.

The American Revolution was conducted and the American government was formed to deliver Americans from arbitrary coercion and to insure us against it.

Coercion has its place. It should be carefully delegated and, then, vigilantly watched, but sanctioned only for the purpose of suppressing fraud, violence, predatory practices and monopolistic abuses. Coercion, of which government and the laws of God should have a monopoly, has its place solely as a restraining force for the protection of the individual citizen’s life, liberty and property. Use of coercion to relieve the individual of responsibility, to direct his activities, and to dispose of his property, which is the self-support of life, destroys that which makes life worth living, and even life itself.

It is one thing to limit governmental coercion, which is police force, to the suppression of evil. It is quite the opposite to extend it for the doing of good. Coercion cannot do good; it can stifle evil. Coercion stifles whatever it touches, be it good or evil.

Using governmental coercion to protect your goods from a thief is proper. Using it to protect a thief in taking your goods is improper. It makes no difference whether the thief be a thug or a legally recognized pressure group, using democratic processes.

It is no more right for all-of-us to take from you by force something which you have legitimately acquired than it is right for you to benefit yourself by forcing something from all-of-us.

Here is how I stand on “social security” coercion: I do not even favor compulsory savings. That is, I am opposed to government using the police-power to compel you to look out for yourself—let alone coercing you and others to look out for you, which is the “social security” idea.

If you join me in rejecting the use of coercion as it applies to your earnings, which is your means of self-support, there is simply nothing left to talk about on this subject. Without coercion no Federal system of pensions or unemployment insurance would exist.

Given freedom of opportunity, protection from fraud, violence and predation and a dependence for our welfare on our own initiative, we can and will look out for ourselves better than will any other person or any governmental agency.

What is it that gives so many of us the idea that government can manage us better than we can manage ourselves? If we knew the answer to this we would know the source of the “social security” fallacy. Perhaps it is an hereditary trait cropping out in us from Old World tradition. After all, most of the peoples of most of the world for the most of time have lived under authority. Perhaps we have forgotten the purpose for which we fought our Revolution—to get out from under arbitrary authority.

Why not refresh our thinking with the question, “What is government?” Is it anything else but men and women, quite ordinary folks, to whom certain authority has been delegated, or by whom authority has been seized? Is it possible that the authority thus granted or seized has enhanced their worthiness or their abilities? We ought to doubt this. Power, delegated or seized, has more tendency to corrupt morals than it has to extend virtues. Seized power, whether by individuals or groups, establishes the seizers as the enemies of freedom and the foes of liberals.

All of us have our moments of greed for power, with thoughts of what we would do were we in the driver’s seat. It seems to be a natural weakness which only cold reason can overcome. Recently a distinguished scholar, Ludwig von Mises, gave me a never-to-be-forgotten example of good, liberal thinking. He was asked, “What would you do were you dictator of these United States?” Quick as a flash came the answer, “I would abdicate.”

I wonder if your experiences in this respect do not parallel mine. With a moment’s reflection I can recall the troubles I have had in managing my own life. My working associates, for instance, respond to my requests in ways different from my intentions. My children, on whom I try both suasion and scolding, behave in a manner quite unlike the designs I have for them. On occasion even my wife acts contrary to what I consider my excellent judgment. As a result, I have conceded that I am unable to manage the lives of those intimately familiar to me. How stupid to hope for efficiency in the management of a great mass of people, the bulk of whom I shall never see, the majority of whom have ways of life, interests, conditions and situations almost wholly outside my capsule of knowledge.

These have been some of my reflections about personal power, that is, unlimited police-power over others. I don’t want it for myself and I don’t trust any living person with it.

In what manner do the heads of the collectivist regimes, or their functionaries, in America or elsewhere, differ from you and me? These people who draft rules of life for millions of others? Have you ever had occasion to see how incompetently they manage their own little lives? It just isn’t possible that they have some mystic quality, some hidden superiority, that qualifies them for tasks for which you and I, if honest, admit no abilities.

No person, no set of persons, in or out of government, is capable of decreeing how much you should spend or save, or whether you should do either one or not. These are matters as personal as your toothbrush. They are not the concern of anybody else on this earth. For anybody to assume that they are, is an effrontery to your birthright of liberty and personal responsibility.

A governmental program of social security, however, makes your saving and your spending the business of other people. Your savings are confiscated for a supposed social good. Your savings are meted out to others by a coterie of governmental functionaries, and spent, in many instances, in the most useless of ways. Savings of others, to which you have no right, may be, eventually, meted out to you. The process is plunderbundism. It is immoral. It is an adaptation of the communistic principle of “to each according to need.” It is a denial of the American principle of “to each according to merit.”

As pointed out, the political danger of this program lies in the arbitrary use of governmental coercion.

The financial danger lies in political management of such vast funds. One has only to note the wasteful projects in which politicians “invest” the earnings coerced from us.

It has another danger that is at once economic, social, political and financial. Experience and knowledge of human nature alike teach that when people undertake to reduce the hazards of life by placing the primary responsibility on government and by depending on governmental action, in the end it is insecurity and not security of the individual citizen which is increased. Reliance upon government for protection against these hazards increases insecurity for these reasons:

1) It inevitably and immediately leads to reliance upon political pressure for a constant increase in forcible distribution of the wealth of productive citizens in order to satisfy the ever-increasing demands of non-producers.

2) The demand for the mere prevention of suffering rapidly changes to a demand that everyone shall be given an arbitrarily defined “decent,” or “American,” scale of living.

3) “Social security” becomes a leading political issue as political leaders and candidates for political office encourage the attitude that the beneficiary is asserting a right and is entitled thereunder to be given a higher and higher scale of living.

4) Once a democratic government assumes this unlimited responsibility, those who conceive themselves to be the direct and indirect beneficiaries of “social security” allotments wield the balance of power in elections. Hence, they determine by their votes the size of the “benefits” they will receive.

5) The change is always toward greater and greater allotments—toward larger pensions, larger unemployment and sick benefits, and toward expansion of the numbers and the hazards to be covered.

6) Political processes simply cannot lend themselves to decreases but only to increases in plunder, in the “take” from other people’s earnings.

Thus, the burden becomes heavier and heavier until it is no longer bearable and government bankruptcy ensues. We have many examples in Europe of just that sequence of events. It was not the failure of these governments to meet “human needs” that drove them into totalitarian socialism and impotency; it was their guarantee to meet “human needs” and their inability to meet the ever-growing demands and impossible responsibilities to which they thus exposed themselves. Indeed, it is not necessary to go to Europe for proof of the danger of government embarking upon this road of guaranteeing to meet “human needs.” Several of our own states, today, are carrying old-age pension burdens so great as to threaten their solvency, and this, after only a few years since beginning with a small pension! Surely, neither national nor state bankruptcy, nor serious inflation, advances a real social security. Just the contrary is true.

Federal “social security,” I repeat, is not security. Security is something we cannot vote to ourselves. Security comes as a result of our willingness to take risks. Every wealth-producing step we have made, every measure we have taken to lower costs, has involved chances for failure as well as promises for success. Every individual who has attempted to move into that niche which he thought better suited his abilities or appeared to enhance his position in life, has faced the danger of loss as well as the hope for gain.

Slaves and prisoners have security of a sort. They are housed and fed, though only as the master prescribes. They are told what to do and how to live, even when to quit living. This is the kind of “security” toward which we move when we attempt it by the ballot.

People living under completely authoritarian governments are slaves. People living under partially authoritarian governments are partial slaves. Slavery develops in proportion as governmental direction is substituted for self-direction.

It can be fairly well demonstrated that completely authoritarian governments can provide their people with only a fraction of the level of prosperity that can be attained by people as free as Americans have been. There is a direct relationship between the liberty which people enjoy and the scale of living they can achieve. Living standards go down as authoritarianism increases and, conversely, they go up as it decreases. There is a scientific reason why this is a fact.

Federal “social security” is a piece of authoritarianism. A portion of everyone’s income is brought under governmental coercion—the police force. If you doubt this, see how far you get by demanding that your next pay check be given you without a “social security” deduction.

“Social security” ought not to be increased. It should be abolished entirely. America was founded as an opportunity for the lovers of liberty, not as a haven for slaves.

In arguing against the policy of government guaranteed livelihoods and government “insurance” against non-insurable risks, in the face of an apparent widespread, popular acceptance of these measures, I am doing so because I believe governmental attempts at social security lead to failure and disaster. I cannot accept the defeatist attitude that it is useless to oppose these measures because they are popular. I believe the American people should be told the truth, and that it is the function of anyone speaking on behalf of liberalism to encourage our people to re-institute freedom and voluntary, individual and group action[2]—the new American way which succeeded in establishing the greatest social security in the world. Let us not revert to the old, European, government-guaranteed methods which have failed and which will fail disastrously if pursued under our political system with its numerous democratic characteristics.

I shall work with liberals, whether in or out of office, to promote and improve security by promoting and stimulating the source of security—individual and family responsibility, self-discipline, private enterprise and voluntary agreement.

Does all of this mean that I am taking a stand against the destitute and those who are ill-fed, ill-housed, and ill-clad? It does not. It means I am taking a stand against policies which will in the end reduce everyone to destitution. It means I am trying to do my part to stop a trend which, if continued, will lead America back to Old World conditions and standards of living from which they, slaves to authority, cannot remove themselves.

You ask me, then, how do I propose to deal with those who are now in distress? The answer is simple. I have no proposal for dealing with them through government. Under no circumstances is it a Federal job. It cannot be properly done at that level by me or by Congress.

While I shall not concede that the relief of distress ought ever to be a governmental function, at any level, this much I insist on: If government undertakes at all to give to any citizen a portion of the wealth that it takes from all citizens, let it be at local levels. There, it is destructive. It is fatal on a Federal scale.

The real reasons for most of the present and recent distress inhere in the suppressions of liberty, in the sabotaging, wittingly or unwittingly, of the free competitive economy, which alone produces general prosperity. Re-establishing a free economy is the only road to progress, to continued increase of real social security and to new opportunities. Free enterprise can be re-established only by the repeal of those laws, rules and regulations which impede it. I stand for their destruction.

Such relatively unimportant distress as would remain, were freedom of opportunity assured, should be relieved by private charity which, in the past, has shown itself not only adequate but actually extravagant.

Federal relief, or political relief at other levels, encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character. Political relief, that is, relief supported by coerced exactions, not only prevents but stultifies charity, that friendly sentiment which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

This brings the campaign to an end. This time you have had the issues presented. The two sides are as different as night and day. They are as far apart as the Old World and the New World. It has been for me to present the liberal point of view. This I have done as best I know how. It has been my mission to perform. Yours is the more critical mission. It is that of determining which way our ship of state will sail. The choices are as opposite as right and wrong, truth and falsehood.

[1] Our nominee made eight campaign speeches, mostly in small towns. He dealt with the Wagner Act and Fair Labor Standards Act which he vigorously repudiated. He gave his views on internationalism and world peace, in which he contended that wars were inevitable, except among free people. In another he condemned the World Bank and the international stabilization fund set up under the Bretton Woods Agreements on the grounds that these are means of plundering on a worldwide basis. The balance of the speeches were on several aspects of free competitive enterprise. He raised a furor when he contended that free markets should extend to services as well as to commodities. Only two of his campaign speeches are printed in this booklet to demonstrate the spirit of a liberal’s approach, which is the booklet’s purpose.

[2] The American insurance industry has a far greater responsibility in preaching the philosophy of private insurance than it has assumed. Too many in this business, as in banking, have “gone along” with socialistic invasions, not because of any change in their free enterprise shibboleth but because they have thought it expedient. Many have acquired that kind of public relations-mindedness which is nothing but a disease found among businessmen where totalitarianism is on the upswing.

AT MERIDIAN

Election Eve Message[1]

My Fellow-Citizens:

The civilization by which we live is a vast invisible web ever woven anew of countless acts of sacrifice, fortitude, faith and foresight by unnumbered nameless men.

Thread by thread these unseen strands of individual aspiration, effort, adventure and accomplishment are spun into those indestructible cords of endurance, industry, independence and integrity of spirit which bind society together.

This frail fabric from the ceaseless loom of generations of unremembered lives is the strongest and most precious substance in the world, for by it alone we hang suspended above the abyss of savagery.

We shall win prosperity only if we have the strength to suffer poverty; leisure, only if we have the will to labor endlessly; security, only if we have the courage to risk ail; and peace, only if we have the pride to die fighting for freedom, truth and honor.

[1] This is a Christmas message by Virgil Jordan. It is a beautiful expression of several liberal thoughts and appropriate for a nominee whose primary objective is not his own election to office, but the progress of human freedom.

AT WASHINGTON

Inaugural Message

My Fellow-Citizens:

In obedience to your decision I am about to dedicate myself, under the sanction of a solemn oath, as one of your servants.

You have given me this task not because of any qualities peculiarly mine, but because I am a spokesman for the philosophy of government which is an American heritage.

This philosophy does not admit of an official being a leader, that is, in the sense that Americans are to be led by those they select for servants. It denies that there are indispensable men, infallible men, omniscient men, supermen, which such Old World “leadership” implies.

This denial does not mean that we are common men. Americans are the most uncommon people this world has known. Nowhere else have men so successfully escaped from arbitrary authority—from men lording it over man. Only here, and because of our uncommonness, has the flowering of freedom shown promise.

The American philosophy insists that adult individuals shall be self-controlling, capable, each and every one, of varying degrees of self-reliance, self-development and self-discipline.

This American philosophy of government is premised on our countrymen being free men. That is what our birth as human beings gives us a right to be; that is what we ought to be; it is the object to which our Constitution commits us—all of us.

No position, no office, however elevated, must be permitted to impair this premise.

Those whom you select as your chief executive, from time to time gain no new qualities by virtue of your selection. Each one is, at best, but one of you to whom you have delegated limited duties. You do not place them in office to do you good. You place them there to assist in securing to yourselves that good which you can do for yourselves. To grant any president more than this is to impose an assignment he cannot fulfill and is to deprive you of responsibilities as necessary to your self-development as any rights.

Holding firm to these beliefs concerning the fallibility and the limitations of men, regardless of the station to which they may be raised, it becomes my duty, on this occasion, to outline how I shall apply myself to this high office. For if there are to be important changes in presidential policies you need to know of them. And there are to be changes, many, indeed!

To share my point of view it is necessary that you agree on one basic assumption: I am not, nor should any person consider himself, or be considered, the general manager of these United States.

To assume that the chief executive is general manager, a common error, is to betray the ways of freedom and to deny the concept of limited powers, upon which this government was founded. The people, the individual American citizens, are their own managers.

Properly, this office has only the function of executing the policing details which the Congress finds it necessary to impose and of managing such federal services as the Congress has, wisely or unwisely, thought it expedient to provide.

While the chief executive is the spokesman for his country in dealings with other nations, thereby giving a “general manager” impression, the idea induced is an illusion and contrary to American principles of government.

There is, also, a companion idea which I hope you will share with me. It has to do with a simple fact about organization. This fact is that authority for carrying out an administrative assignment must always accompany the responsibility for completing that assignment.

This means that I shall not appoint anyone to a position unless his authority corresponds to his responsibility. In practical application, this means that all appointees will be able to make decisions within the framework of their responsibilities. I shall select those in whose judgment I have confidence and “give them their heads.” They shall be responsible to themselves and to me for their actions. I shall be responsible to you for my selections.

Under this plan of organization I become the assistant to my appointees, aiding them if and when I can, but only if and when asked. This plan assures harmony for there is no short-circuiting of authority and responsibility. It achieves the maximum of efficiency. Without it there can be only loss of energy and inefficiency. Without it no two people can, in one kitchen, cook a Sunday dinner without friction. No man can be the sole dispenser of decisions, except those decisions which control his personal actions.

Appointments will be based on a devotion to the liberal philosophy. This means that appointees will aim at economy; that they will contract, rather than expand, their offices, whenever possible. The political party under which one is registered will not be given consideration. Neither will the places from whence they come. “What are your principles and how do you act in respect to them?” That is the question.

No patronage can exist in this form of organization. Patronage is simply inapplicable to it.

To those who object to this I say: Are there those among us to whom the emoluments of public office are so much greater than the rewards we could receive in private enterprise that we would rely on bribery to remain in office? If so, we do not belong here. We are here to perform a public service. We have submitted ourselves as the servants of the people. Is this a relationship we crave so dearly that we would force ourselves to continue it? Isn’t it rather a duty citizenship imposes? If we seek to falsify the imposition of these duties by patronage or other devices we are lacking in the virtues which these officers require.

If this Republic is to continue to protect the liberty of American citizens, and, therefore, the progress and prosperity of American society, public office must seek the man, not the man the office.

Another change which I propose to make is more profound in its significance than at first may be acknowledged. I intend to see to it that the executive branch of the government divests itself, immediately, of publicity and public relations personnel. It is not the function of the servant to exact money from his master in order that the servant may glorify himself in the eyes of the master. If we do good work we can rely on the representatives of a free press and a free radio to find it out. And if we do something worthy and it isn’t found out, just who has been injured? If we require a simulated adulation isn’t this proof in itself that the electorate erred in sending us here?

Furthermore, it is essential that we turn the spotlight of national attention away from Washington. It has too long been here. Let the spotlight shine in the souls of millions of individuals who are doing the real work of the nation. They are the source of energy, virtues and wealth. Nothing is in the nation’s capital except that which is taken from individuals.

Let Washington restore itself as the seat of a self-effacing government, where good men come to perform their unpublicized, unglamorized duty. May they come, and remain, unaffected by the popularity virus. For, it is well to remember, enough clever publicity can confer the awed stare of the crowd, the snooping curiosity of the multitude, the plaudits of the unthinking, on the ignorant as well as the wise, on the ass as well as the statesman, or on an old barn door as well as the pyramids. Popularity by publicity is commonly coveted by those who value thoughtless applause more than their own self-respect.

Now let me announce the first major act of this administration. I shall ask the Congress to co-operate with me in the appointment of a committee. I should like to call it “The Committee for Economic Liberty.” Its functions shall be to recommend to the Congress, and to me, every agency of the Federal Government which can be done away with, every business venture of the government which can be sold to private enterprise, and every economy in the Federal budget which can be effected. Further, it shall have the task of identifying every law, rule and regulation which impedes citizens in legitimate endeavors, in order that these impediments may be immediately removed.

This Committee will require funds for so large an undertaking. Rather than recommend an appropriation I shall ask Congress to approve a plan whereby the Secretary of the Treasury may receive voluntary contributions from the nation’s citizens. I know these contributions will be numerous. They should be small and anonymously given.

Generally speaking, government agencies fall into two classifications: First, those established by acts of Congress, and, second, those set up by previous administrations under permissive legislation.

The latter I can abolish by executive order, and many I will. However, I shall aim at orderliness in this dismantling process. The complexity and confusion of the bureaucracy is too great for me or any other one person to comprehend, or even grasp. Further, it is folly for me to issue an order unless it is sanctioned by your representatives. I would only abolish something that would soon be replaced by Congressional action.

I shall ask the Senate and the House to appoint three each of their members, to be joined by three from my Cabinet. It seems to me unlikely that I shall disapprove of any recommendations of the Committee for Economic Liberty when it proposes to abolish an agency, effect an economy, or repeal a law or rule. You know my philosophy of government. You know in what manner such influences as I have will be directed.

But of this be certain: I shall stick to my own job and will avoid assuming any responsibilities not clearly mine. The enactment or repeal of legislation, for instance, is the function solely of Congress. Whether the job is done well or badly is the responsibility of your representatives in Congress, not of your President. My job is to administer the government as it is. This, and nothing else!

I do not desire to reorganize the lives of other people under the pretext of doing them good, I have no heart for the administration of any kind of government except that which insures every person the fruits of his labor.

It is now time to turn your hopes from this place along the Potomac as a source of livelihood. It is the most unproductive spot in these United States. Any opinion to the contrary is because of the Robin Hood role it has played in the past. That role, let us pray, is but a bitter memory. May your Federal Government no longer be condemned for what it plunders from some. And may it never have applause because of the loot it bestows on others.

All of which suggests it is time to go to work. I can take my own hint; it is now time for me to go to work at my job.

Students of Liberty

Leonard E. Read

1950

Editor’s Note

This is an extension of remarks presented on April 4, 1950 before the students taking the course in “Comparative Economic Systems” at the University of Pittsburgh. Leonard Read is a member of The Foundation staff.

Students of Liberty

“I want less talk and more action.”

That sentiment of a business leader typifies the initial reaction of many persons when they suddenly awaken to the increasing dangers which beset their liberty. They demand action. In trying to understand this meaning, it would first seem necessary to examine into this stimulus for action.

To most people, in spite of this “let’s do something” attitude, the problem is all rather nebulous. Things are not quite right, it is readily agreed. There are strikes with their paralyzing effects; idle workers standing in front of work to be done; a growing national debt which, despite political assurances to the contrary, forebodes an evil day, perhaps not too far ahead; numerous individuals who, by the mere exercise of their capricious wills, can throw millions of American families into chaos; prices going higher; government getting bigger, and demands for vast extensions of the same as a cure for the ills it creates; a growing number of people in the world believing themselves the proper objects of our charity; class hatreds developing along occupational and other lines; bombs from A to H accompanying cries for a security that the mad mess denies; wars in the offing. No, things aren’t quite right. And the record, over a period of years, seems to indicate a whole string of costly, dismal failures in our attempts to set them right.

Clarity is hoped for. Most of us do not like to act in areas where we are confused. To do so might cause more harm than good. The question is: Is there some common fault which serves as the root of all these ills, a fault that can be defined and for which treatment can be prescribed? This tract is one man’s answer—in the affirmative!

Man Is Interdependent

The population in America would soon be at zero if every individual elected to live as a hermit. Perhaps as much as 99% of our present population would perish in even a primitive, foraging society. For instance, there were only several hundred thousand Indians here before us; their number was limited not by their inability to breed, but by the inability of a foraging society to feed. There are now 150,000,000 Americans with a higher standard of living than any people have ever known. Why? Because our economy is more efficient than hermitary or foraging. The further advanced the economy, the more people it will support at a high level of living. This is by way of saying that the size of the population and the standard of living it enjoys is ultimately determined by the perfection of specialization, division of labor, and exchange.

For man is interdependent! And his existence on this earth beyond a primitive state requires a recognition of this fact and a knowledge of how to deal with it skillfully.

It is true that this fact of interdependence is widely recognized. But how to deal with it skillfully is where divergence of opinion in social affairs originates. This divergence takes the shape of two diametrically opposed recommendations. One commends life in accordance with the principle of violence. The other commends life in accordance with the principle of love. It is important, at the outset, to call these two opposed principles for social conduct by their correct names.

The Principle of Violence

As will be developed later, the principle of violence finds widespread application all over the world, in America as elsewhere. But to illustrate what is meant by violence, I shall choose a modern instance, one among hundreds of familiar instances, one that most people, not having reflected on the matter, fail to evaluate in terms of violence.

The familiar instance is public housing. A citizen is compelled to give of the fruits of his labor to meet the housing “needs” of others. Freedom of choice as to what he does with his own capital and income (property) is denied him. Freedom of choice gives way to the dictation of an authority, a dictate backed by brute force—violence! Actually, in a strict sense, the only choice a citizen has in this instance is between obedience or death. This may sound extreme, but nonetheless it is true. Suppose, for example, that a person decides to exercise, absolutely, his freedom of choice concerning payment for a government housing project. Suppose that he decides not to pay his share of the cost because he believes that the building of houses is not a proper function of government. Suppose that he deducts this from his tax payments. What would happen?

Policemen with Guns

Since the government’s claim becomes the first lien on everything a citizen owns, a judgment for incomplete payment of taxes would finally be rendered against his property—his home, for instance. If the citizen still refused to pay his share of the government housing project—and if he refused to vacate his property that had been attached by government—policemen with guns would eventually appear to enforce the government order. Suppose that he still refused to acquiesce. Suppose that he met the use of physical force by using physical force in return, which would be his only remaining method of exercising freedom of choice and carrying out his initial intention. He would be shot! The justification for shooting him would be “for resisting an officer,” but the issue would remain the same. The citizen would have done nothing more than hold fast to his resolve not to support socialized housing, using the least violent means, step by step, to hold firmly by his convictions.

The reason that most of us do not think of government coercion as meaning obedience under penalty of death is because we almost always pay our part of the cost of government housing, electricity, and other similar projects before the shooting begins. Usually we acquiesce before the ultimate meaning of compulsion is realized. Thus we are unacquainted with its true implications.

Early American Experiment

The principle of violence found acceptance early in American history. The Pilgrim Fathers, after landing at Plymouth Rock, were in dire economic straits. Not unlike their progeny of our own times they thought they could not, during a period of stress and difficulty, rely on the actions of free men in production, distribution, or charity. Their interdependence, very plain and real to these forebears of ours, must, they reasoned, be attended to by some intervening authority. Men acting freely, the identical men who so clearly recognized their interdependence, could not, they thought, be trusted to act in their own interests! The answer: violence!

True, the Pilgrim Fathers did not call what they did by the ugly name of violence. But, as has been demonstrated, this is what the law is. The Pilgrim Fathers applied the law. They attempted to effect communalization by force. Every Pilgrim, regardless of how little or how much he produced, was required to deliver the fruits of his labor to a communal or community storehouse. He was permitted to withdraw the stores in accordance with “need,” not the individual Pilgrim’s idea of need but the law’s decree of his need. These Pilgrims put into effect, not by charity or the goodness of their hearts, a principle later stated by St. Simon, and still later held up as an ideal by Karl Marx: “. . . from each according to ability; to each according to need.”[1] They socialized the fruits of their labor. There was a common ownership of the means of production—communalization by force. They were communists in the term’s purest form. They had chosen to live in accordance with the principle of violence.

Communism Rejected

There was a most persuasive reason why the Pilgrims finally gave up communism. They began to starve. Many died. Violence, as a method to effect social conduct, was forsworn. Each according to merit became the rule—that is, to each the fruits of his labor. And they prospered. These practitioners began the pattern for the American way: individual freedom, and personal responsibility for one’s own actions.

This turned out to be superior to other ways. According to the record, this way was so good that Twentieth Century Americans applied violence (unwisely, I believe) to keep others out of our country, while many foreign governments resorted to violence to keep their people at home. This American way had several distinctive tendencies, among them:

1. The doctrine of individual immunity against governmental power. This immunity extended to the individual in respect to his property, in respect to his physical person, and in respect to his mind, or thought and expression.

2. A government of laws and not of men.

3. The doctrine of local self-government.

4. The principle that governmental mandate and office are a public trust, to be exercised in strictest independence of all personal interests, prejudices, or passions, for the maintenance of individual liberty and the preservation of the public order, all to be done as related to the welfare of all individuals.

5. Avoidance of entanglements in the politics of European or other countries, and the corollary of this doctrine which advises resistance to the interference of Europe or Asia in the politics of the American continents.[2]

The Reason for Government

A point worthy of note is that this American way was not entirely devoid of violence; violence was merely less exercised here than previously in other countries. This meant that government was strictly limited; that there was a minimum of organized violence.

But government, as a principle, had seemingly sound theory to support it. The reasoning went something like this: Each individual has an inalienable right to life. An essential concomitant of this right is the right to protect that life. Obviously, maximum liberty could not be assured by letting all citizens carry their own guns. The straightest shooters would soon be in command. What to do? Appoint an agent. Turn all guns, all force to be used for personal protection, over to him. Give him a monopoly of the coercive power, the sole and exclusive right to exercise violence. The agent, thus endowed with power, could then protect all citizens in the pursuit of their home life, their productive life, and their religious life. Each person would be free to do as he pleased up to the point of injury to others. And each would be responsible for his own welfare, with Christian charity to take up the slack. That was the theory.

Many Americans understood this agent, government, to be what it is: legal and organized police force. They had an appreciation of violence. They knew that it could be used to suppress, restrain, restrict, destroy. Restriction and destruction by government, to be useful, must be confined to that which is bad: fraud, private violence, conspiracy, and theft or other predatory practices. But police force—violence by government or otherwise—is, patently, not a direct, creative force. Thus, in the original plan, all creative functions were to be carried on by such voluntary, cooperative, and competitive elements as the population contained. Government was to be confined to the protection of personal liberty.

Officials Are Still Persons

These Americans who held to this societal arrangement were also keenly aware of the powers vested in their elected agent. After all, this agent was but a person or persons having normal weaknesses, including greed for power over others, plus the dangerous monopoly of the coercive weapons! It was because of a profound realization of this danger that these Americans attempted limitation of their agent.[3] The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, with their separation of the executive, judicial, and legislative powers, were among the devices they employed to avert the dangers of unrestricted power that political theory predicted and history confirmed. They had an unprecedented success—for a time.

It was because this practice of the principle of violence was on a lesser scale than ever before attempted that accounted for the mighty surge that was America’s. Here, in this country, was a greater release of free human energy than history reveals in any other instance.

No Aggression

Personally, I am opposed to the initiation of violence in any form, by anybody, or by any agency, government or otherwise. I cannot make inspired violence square with ethical concepts. Aggressive coercion, whether socialized medicine or initiating war with Russia, is at odds with principles which seem right. How this brute force can be used and be considered moral, except to restrain violence otherwise initiated, is beyond my capacities to reason. Even the American theory of government, which has always appealed to me, raises two questions to which, thus far, I have been unable to find answers:

1. Can violence be instituted, regardless of how official or how limited in intention, without begetting violence outside officialdom and beyond the prescribed limitation?

2. Is not limitation of government, except for relatively short periods, impossible? Will not the predatory instincts of some men, which government is designed to suppress, eventually appear in the agents selected to do the suppressing? These instincts, perhaps, are inseparable companions of power. As a private citizen, the predatory person is only one among millions. As an agent of government he becomes one over millions. If there be criminals among us, what is to keep them from gaining and using the power of government? Neither theory nor experience have, so far, supplied me with reassuring answers.

Let me repeat: Organized violence, though limited better than ever before, characterized early America. In addition, a horrible infraction of the American theory appeared in the institution of slavery. But, because these instances of the principle of violence were so minor as compared with the total energy, the people prospered better than had other peoples. Perhaps it was too good to be true.

Protection and Dependency

This haven of free and independent men, as decades passed into history, began to develop protected and dependent men. The exigencies of free immigration, free trade, free competition in services as well as in commodities, and responsibility for individual welfare, came to be thought of as credos for a hardier race of men, only for such men as had made our country what it was.

It isn’t easy to identify the growing items of violence which the accepted, limited violence initiated. Who can appraise the significance of immigration laws in a country begun only by immigrants? Who can assess the meaning of the protective tariff imposed by a people who got their start by overthrowing trade tyrannies imposed on them? What will be written in the final judgment book of a nation whose citizens were “educated” by force? whose “prosperity” depended on violence?

The answers to these questions are dependent on each individual’s value judgments. For my part, I have no faith, whatever, in any “good” that can come from these measures based on violence.

A Vital Measure

Certainly an important, if not vital, break away from the original principles of the Constitution and the limitation of violence against liberty and property occurred in 1913 with the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, the progressive income tax. Here, again, appeared communism in its purest form, no different in principle from that applied by the Pilgrim Fathers after their arrival. Here was the forced acceptance of “. . . from each according to ability; to each according to need.” Here was the socialization, in part, of the fruits of the labor of all, with nothing—absolutely nothing beyond fickle, political expediency—standing as a limitation against complete socialization. We have money which goes by force into the communal storehouse and which is withdrawn according to “need”; with the Pilgrims it was corn.

This communistic wedge, pounded by violence, opened an ever-widening crack in the wall of limitation on government. Here was formal acknowledgment of government as an agent of plunder. The only remaining limitation on the extent of the plunder against private property is everybody’s total property. Beyond that the plunderer cannot plunder.[4]

When considering the growth of plunder, dependent as it is on violence, it is well to reflect on a principle and to observe how violence expands and operates in a wealthy country. The principle: Man tends to satisfy his desires along the lines of least possible resistance. There are two ways, economically speaking, to satisfy desires: the economic means, and the political means.

By the economic means is meant the satisfaction of desires with the fruits of one’s own labor.

By the political means is meant the satisfaction of desires with the fruits of the labor of others.

The Evil of Tariffs

The tariff was one of the earliest applications of plunder by political means. In principle it admitted of numerous evils of which the progressive income tax is guilty.[5] In this respect—that is, as the breeder of other evils which it implicitly endorsed—the tariff stands as the justification for all the communistic ills that we have heaped upon ourselves. But in scope, in relative direct bearing on the total economy, the tariff has played a small, second fiddle to the Sixteenth Amendment and to many of the other devices of plunder. The tariff, itself, has not been an important octopus. Its role has been even worse: It has spawned octopi!

Both the tariff and the progressive income tax are resorts to the political means. Each is a plunderbund. The plunderbund is merely another term for communalization by force, or legal thievery. It is simply the political device by which citizens pool their votes to extort the fruits of the labor of others for the purpose of satisfying the desires of themselves, their group, their community, or their industry. Rent control, parity and support prices to farmers, “free” education, compulsory social “security,” TVA, public housing, wages by fiat, socialized health insurance, subsidies of all sorts, are but a few in the growing list of plunderbunds—life by violence.

Violence Has Many Names

Communalization by violence comes presented to the world in many forms, bearing numerous labels: communism, nazism, fascism, etatism, state-interventionism, fabianism, planned economy, welfare state, socialism, and new, fair, and other kinds of deals.

Regardless of the label, and irrespective of the means to the end, be the means “democratic” as in socialism or revolutionary as in Russian Communism, the end, in each instance, is always the state ownership and control of the means of production. One other characteristic these isms and deals have in common: They are all parasitical as distinguished from productive devices. One never heard of a society or nation of any account getting its start, for example, in socialism. The reason is that in the first instance there is nothing to loot or to prey upon. Communalization by violence presupposes the existence of a healthy economy precisely as mistletoe presupposes the existence of a live tree.

As a tree can stand a small bunch of mistletoe, so can a healthy economy stand instances of socialism. But as mistletoe could spread and destroy the tree on which it feeds, so can communalization by violence expand and destroy the society from which it derives its parasitical existence.

A Measure of Lost Freedom

Perhaps it is not possible accurately to assess the growth of this political parasitism, but an idea of the trend can be gained by measuring the loss of freedom of choice an American citizen has with his income dollar.[6]

Less than a century ago a citizen had between 95% and 98% freedom of choice with each dollar. The total take of government—federal, state, and local—was from 2% to 5% of all earned income.

This take of government has, of late years, been rapidly on the increase. Today it is in excess of one-fourth of all earned income. Many people argue that that is not so bad because, on the average, we citizens still have nearly three-fourths freedom of choice with our dollars. This is a dangerous assumption. Colin Clark, one of the world’s most distinguished statisticians, who made a study of the income behavior of nations over long periods, discovered an alarming fact: Whenever the take of government in any country reaches 20–25% of earned income, large segments of the population will support a depreciation in the value of the money as a way to “escape” the burden thus imposed.

Lenin was right when he said: “The way to destroy the capitalistic society is to debauch the currency.” This debauchery, this depreciation in the value of money, is but a subtly planned or unconsciously accepted device by which communalization is brought about by force. It is the road to communism through the back door, unapparent to those millions who will not take the time to reflect. Thus, it is a splendid device for those who would communize America.

A Sobering Comparison

Since we began the programs of deficit financing and the monetization of debt, we have more than quadrupled our money supply. Our behavior in this respect is remarkably like that of some of the larger countries of the world, the countries we think of as being in a financial and socialistic mess—such as Russia, Germany, France, and England. As short a time as 21 years ago the take by government of earned income in Russia was 29%, where we stand today. At that time in Germany the figure stood at only 22%; in France at 21%; and in England at 21%. I repeat, our federal, state, and local governments are now taking over one-fourth of our earned income. And if we were to suffer the unemployment we experienced in 1939, reducing our level of production and thus our earned income, this figure would automatically jump to more than one-third. No government has ever taken that much of any country’s earned income without the rapid disappearance of individual liberty and private ownership of property.

An instance in point is France. She began a program of “social welfare”—one form of society by violence—in 1915.[7] These programs, there or here, beyond the temporary expedient of confiscatory taxation, have no manner of “financing” except by inflationary processes—that is, by increasing the quantity of the medium of exchange. This quantity cannot be increased without resulting in a depreciation of the value of the money. In the brief span of 35 years (1915–1950) the franc has lost 99 1/4% of its purchasing value! Talk about the “security” of such a program! Think only of a young Frenchman in 1915 preparing himself for retirement in 1950, say at 1000 francs per month—a handsome income in the France of 1915. Today the 1000 francs would buy one good meal, but not at the best restaurants.

If I were to draw a conclusion from these observations, it would be simply this: We in America have debauched our currency to such an extent, and advanced parasitical socialism to such a degree, that we are no longer privileged merely to “drop an anchor,” to add no more to our evil ways, to remain in safety. We are now over the brink! And, unless we engage in the difficult and almost unprecedented political antic of cancelling out a great number of our so-called “social gains,” private property and freedom to compete in enterprise as institutions are doomed to wither away and to disappear here as they are disappearing in other countries of the world.

Violence Breeds Violence

Another conclusion: The cause of our ills is a reliance on the principle of violence. Violence breeds violence. The more of it we practice, the more of it will we rationalize as justified—even “needed.” Just as a poke on the jaw provokes a retaliatory poke on the jaw, so does a subsidy to one industry or to one community evoke the sentiment: “We must have a subsidy in order to get our share of what we are paying in.” Subsidies are among the numerous institutions based on violence. If one would appreciate the extent to which the principle of violence is in effect, let him imagine the subsidies and the “social gains” that would be paid for, and the services of the state that could be rendered, if all of these were put on a shelf, as in a grocery store, and bought only as the citizens of these United States would buy them—voluntarily. With the disappearance of the myth that someone else is footing the bill, which this serve-yourself plan would assure, what a whale of a difference there would be in the scope and cost of government!

The Determination of Value

The above thought will only confirm in the minds of many the necessity for the continued exercise of the principle of violence. This is true because most of these governmental activities can be maintained only under violence. Thus, under freedom of choice, many activities that different individuals think good, necessary, and valuable, would be dropped. But value, it has been conclusively proved, can be determined only by free market processes, not by the enforced will of one, or by any other authoritarian arrangements.[8]

As violence begets violence within nations, so does its existence within nations also beget violence between nations. War—violence on a vast scale—can originate only with people who practice violence themselves. What, for instance, is the difference in principle between plundering a portion of Joe Doake’s egg money and taking the life of a Japanese, a German, or a Russian? One does violence to that which sustains life. The other does violence to life. One is indirect, the other direct. The difference is in degree, not in kind. Persons who will advocate the one have no way, logically, of not advocating or condoning the other. People of violence will make wars and destroy themselves. This need not be written in the future tense. People of violence are making wars and are destroying themselves.

Minor Violence Leads to Major Violence

There is another way to demonstrate the inevitability of seemingly minor violences leading to major violence. Responsibility and authority go hand in hand. If, for example, you accept the financial responsibility for a widowed sister you assume a commensurate authority over her expenditures, or risk bankruptcy. It is no different in society. When we as citizens turn over to the state an item in the responsibility for our welfare, the state assumes a proportionate authority over our lives. Thus, as we turn over to the state item after item of our own welfare responsibilities, we eventually arrive at the all-responsible state. When we reach this point we will have over us, ipso facto, the all-authoritarian state. At the head of this state will be a gangster, a craftsman in violence, by reason of the nature of the job to be done: administering violence. Authoritarian states are, of necessity, headed by tyrants. Tyrants make wars. Logic says that they must. History confirms that they do.

Russia, for instance, has had many noted communists, soft-headed do-gooders, some of them doubtless sincere, who advocated the all-responsible state. They could not or did not dare to foresee the inevitable consequence of their acts: Stalinism. Present-day literature is filled with their wails: “But I didn’t mean this.” Little does this wailing avail them. Their bed of thorns has been devised with their own hands. Today they have no choice but to lie on it. Their day of choice has passed. That day was when alternatives could be weighed, and reason and the right to express it still existed.

Alternative to Violence

The alternative to violence is love. Love, as here used, refers to the application of the kindly virtues in human relations such as tolerance, charity, good sportsmanship, the right of another to his views, integrity, the practice of not doing to others what you would not have them do to you, and other attributes which result in mutual trust, voluntary cooperation, and justice. The distinction between violence and love, each in their extreme or pure form, was made in the Sermon on the Mount:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

It is not necessary to make the case for the principle of love. Most persons will contend that it is the principle we ought to practice but that it is impractical. But try to find the individual who believes it impractical so far as he is concerned. He doesn’t exist. Each person thinks only that it is others who are incapable of decency. I do not know who you are who is reading this. And I do not care, for it makes no difference to the answer whether you are man or woman, Jew or Gentile, employer or employee, student or teacher, American or Russian. Simply ask of yourself these questions: “Would I initiate offense on those who would not offend me? Am I unjust, naturally, to the point where violence is required to restrain me? Am I unable and unwilling to deal honestly with those who would deal honestly with me?” Your answer, as mine, to all three questions—whoever you are, wherever you are—thinking solely of yourself and disregarding allegiances and commitments to all groups, organizations, and to all political regimes, is: “No!”

Intellectual Caesarism

What I am asserting is that everyone thinks himself essentially good, and capable of the high performances which interdependence requires in accordance with the principles of love. Why, then, don’t we be done with violence? Primarily, the reason is because of an all-too-common inhibiting fallacy, a myth we have conjured up in our minds: “No one else is quite as good and dependable, if left to his own resources, as I am.” This is a form of intellectual Caesarism. In effect, the persons who hold this opinion aver that the world would be a better place in which to live if only others were cast in their image—a rather brazen indictment of God.

Reason will not support the idea of the principle of love as impractical. Experience, although abundantly supporting its practicality, is difficult to discern. We practice the principle of love in most of the aspects of our daily lives without recognizing it as such. If we did not practice this principle in large measure, we would perish.[9] But where violence once takes the place of love, most of us seem to consider the matter settled, and conclude that love has forever been ruled out as possible of application. Many examples of this forgetting process could be cited, but perhaps our new “internationalism” will suffice. Here is an instance where our “aid” to foreign countries is in no sense a voluntary act, but an act based on the principle of violence. Consider what would happen were you not to pay the Marshall Plan part of your tax bill! That this is violence, however, is not my point. The point is the extent to which aid on a voluntary basis has been all but forgotten as a possibility. Violence has so far superseded love in actual application that people are referring to this act of violence as charity! It is as if they insisted on doing good even though they had to kill someone in the process!

With Eyes to See

I repeat, it is not necessary to weigh the merits of violence and love. Where violence is taking us is apparent to everyone with eyes to see and with minds to understand. The practice of love is suspected to be the alternative, but there is too little in the way of firm convictions to support the fact that it is the alternative. Even many of the clergy preach violence while Christian banners and symbols decorate their pulpits. No one, however, except an avowed authoritarian, will deny the fact that this would be a better world if a trend away from violence could be begun and a trend toward love initiated.

With such an assumption it is proper to ask ourselves how this can be done. What are the conditions essential for this needed reversal in form?

Love prospers only in liberty. It generates and grows among free men; only with difficulty among men ruled by the principles of violence. As violence begets violence so does one personal act of kindness beget another. This point does not require any more proof than mere reflection on one’s experiences with others. It is self-evident.

Liberty, according to these views, is the key to the unravelling of our Gordian knot. The natural aptness of man, acting as a self-controlling, self-responsible person, is good. The restraint of this aptness is evil. It is, then, in liberty that man’s natural aptness evolves toward its potentiality and its goodness.

Now, to return to the beginning of this discussion and to the many persons who demand action when suddenly awakened to the increasing dangers which beset our country. I wish, before setting forth some of my personal thoughts as to how liberty can be advanced, to inquire further into this demand for action, and to use the inquiry as a means of appraising some of the actions which this demand seems to generate. The appraisals are offered in humility and in the spirit of “take a look at them for what they’re worth,” not with the set notion that my ideas will prove to be ultimately right and those of others assuredly wrong. All earnest seekers of liberty will weigh with care the strengths and weaknesses in all methods proposed for its advancement. Let this be known, too: Those who sponsor the ideas I criticize, outnumber me a thousand to one. However, the issue at stake is as grave as life itself, and this alone would seem to warrant my temerity.

Two Types of Action

As to action, how many types are there? Are there others than physical action and intellectual action? How could one create an absence of restraint—liberty—by using physical action except to use force against those who already engage in immoral restraint? To adopt this tactic, to employ physical force in any form or degree, except in self defense, would be merely to substitute a new form of compulsion for the existing forms of compulsion, trading violence for violence—revolution! At best, it is the court of last resort and is not, really, what most persons have in mind when they insist they “want action.” Most of them mean only that they want “something done,” and done quickly! They “want to fight peacefully.” The thought never as much as enters their heads to use fists or guns. They reject physical action, in their intentions, by not even contemplating it.[10] All that remains, then, is intellectual action.

A Mania for Organizing

How does one fight for liberty intellectually? The best thing to do even in an “intellectual fight” for liberty, think many, is to “organize.” Usually they think in terms of “organizing” someone else to do something instead of organizing their own time and energies. This damaging tactic is indulged in as though “organizing” had the power, somehow, to absolve individuals from doing any more than joining some organization. The fact that organization without persons is an impossible abstraction, is overlooked. This mania for “organizing” is usually little more than an effort, doubtless unwitting, to transfer responsibility from oneself to some other person or persons who are perhaps even less competent.

Responsibility and authority always go hand in hand. Thus, if this process of organizing succeeds, authority over one’s own actions is lost precisely in the degree that responsibility is shifted to someone else. The citizen who “wants action,” and resorts to this type of tactic, ends up further from his goal than ever. In fact, “organizing,” more often than not, is merely an attempt to “pass the buck.” Yet, oddly enough, the mere act seems to have the strange power of conferring a sense of accomplishment on the ones who “organize.”

Organization Is Little Understood

Organization, though much used, seems to be little understood. In the field of extending individual liberty—the only role of organization here discussed—organization has strictly limited, technical possibilities.[11] But, unless these limitations are scrupulously observed, organization will inflict on liberty more harm than good; thwart, not abet, the spread of its understanding. Sobering is the thought that if there were no organization there could not possibly be any socialism!

In committee-type organizations, it is customary for persons to speak and act as a collective—as resolutioners in unison—instead of as persons. The best that these synthetic arrangements of individuals can produce is the lowest common denominator view of the majority. Such a view is almost certain to be different from, and inferior to, the best thought of the individuals who go to compose the arrangement. And, even the best is none too good when it comes to the difficult problem of how to understand liberty.

Organization Can Be Useful

Organizations can, however, serve a highly useful purpose in developing and spreading an understanding of liberty if organization be confined to its proper sphere. For the purpose of advancing liberty, which depends solely on the advancement of individual understanding, the only usefulness of organization would seem to be to accommodate and to make easier the joint contribution to, participation in, and ownership of the physical assets that will aid in the process. These physical assets may include typewriters, buildings, specialized libraries, printing presses, telephones, and the many other helpful tools to individuals who are attempting to extend their understanding of liberty—physical accommodations enabling searchers for truth to exchange and disseminate ideas and knowledge more effectively. Primarily, these physical assets can be used to secure the advantages which derive from specialization and the division of labor. Organization, limited in this manner, is a useful and efficient means for achieving these desirable ends.

Organization Can Be Harmful

Organization, however, like government, if extended beyond its proper sphere, becomes positively harmful to the original purpose. This fact constitutes the need for much careful thought on organizational limitation. Just as government becomes dangerous when its coercive, restrictive, and destructive powers are extended into the creative areas, so do voluntary organizations pervert and destroy the benefits of intellect when the capacity to merge is extended beyond the amalgamation of things—physical assets—to the point of causing individual judgments to conform to that of another person or persons. Truth, as each person sees it, is the best that the mind of man has to offer. Its distortion, inevitable when achieving a collective chorus, does injury to understanding.

A Pernicious Idea

Next on my list of subjects for appraisal is a pervasive and, I believe, a pernicious idea. It is the notion that it is always someone else, rather than one’s self, who needs understanding. This ubiquitous idea is heard in several variations: “We are only talking to ourselves,” “Educate the workers,” “Sell the masses,” “Reach the man in the street.” The “masses,” “the man in the street,” apparently, are all persons except the one who uses these terms.

Singular, too, is the fact that the persons who harbor and give voice to this notion, tend to be those who are not advanced in their understanding of liberty and who are inexpert when confronted with the doctrine of coercive collectivism. An instance recently noted, and alarmingly typical, was a meeting of the Board of Directors of one of America’s largest business associations where the resolutions, every one of them, were socialistic, dependent for their application on the principle of violence:

1. A new transportation system for their community to be financed by federal, state, and local governments;

2. A federal subsidy to American shipping that it might successfully compete with foreign bottoms in delivering Marshall Plan aid to the beneficiaries of our largesse;

3. A subsidy to the community’s most promising industry.

And most of these Board members think of themselves as “already converted”!

This notion that it is always someone else rather than one’s self who is in need of improvement is based on several false assumptions. It denies any extension of understanding to the one person on earth on whom one has the greatest influence—himself. It stamps the speaker as thinking of himself as a finished intellectual product, as all-wise. And, finally, it ignores the idea of truth as an object of infinite pursuit.[12] This notion asserts a type of egotism in the presence of which learning cannot take place. It is death to the spirit of inquiry.

On Selecting a Logical Source

The advertising page is the way some demands for action find expression. But does this “action” contribute anything at all to the understanding and preservation of liberty?

It is true that people turn to different sources in their attempts to satisfy different desires. Many of them go to the Bible or to church to seek spiritual enlightenment; none go to the hardware store for this purpose. They go to the school to learn about geometry; rarely do they go to their clergyman for this purpose. Many books and magazines provide them with literary entertainment, but they do not rely on these entertainment sources for intellectual leadership. Nor are they accustomed to thinking of the advertising page as a source of intellectual sustenance! They turn to advertisements, and with good reason, to see what the seller has to sell, what he has to say about his product, and to find out how much it costs.

Before advertising can serve as an effective device for extending understanding of liberty, it will have to have a vastly different preparation, a different motive for preparation, for the most part a different talent in its preparation, and establish a totally new reputation over a period of many years. My misgivings on this point will become more apparent with the presentation, later on, of the extremely limited possibilities I am able to visualize for the advancement of liberty.

This, at least, should be borne in mind: Any attempt on behalf of liberty, unless eventually showing some accomplishment, tends toward the wasting of resources, both material and personal, and results in an unwarranted discouragement, hopelessness, and inaction.[13] It is of the utmost importance that we consider what not to do as well as what to do.

Danger of False Optimism

Of extreme indirect damage to liberty are the constant, unwarranted, optimistic statements about the future of business made by many businessmen. Whether these are made out of sheer lack of understanding of the underlying facts, or because of fear of market collapse if the unvarnished truth were told, makes little difference. Most lay people, today, do not look to business leadership for many answers to their numerous questions. But to one question they do seek the businessman’s answer, and they rely on it. The question is: “How’s business?”

If this answer comes back, “Never brighter” and they believe it—as most of them do—how can they possibly give credence to the warnings against “social gains” and the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul state? Is it any wonder that these warnings are not heeded? People are getting their materialistic “benefits.” Businessmen say the materialistic future is good. Why not, then, believe we can have our cake and eat it too?

False Supporters of Liberty

Then there are those who advocate subsidies for themselves and sponsor “free enterprise” programs for others to follow. Such people do injury to liberty by giving the appearance of being on its side:

The thorns which I have reap’d are of the tree I planted: they have torn me and I bleed. I should have known what fruit would spring from such a seed.

Precept and example, be they good or bad, are among the important seeds one plants. Then when words and admonitions are offered in a contrary vein they are obvious lies intended to deceive. But they do not deceive; they merely present the tragicomic spectacle of a man, supposedly endowed with rational processes, looking one way and going the other. “Dissimulation is the coward’s virtue.”

A Positive Harm

There are numerous individuals relatively advanced in their understanding of liberty who insist on meeting in forums and radio debates irresponsible people who advocate the idea of violence. Experience alone ought to demonstrate that this sort of verbal fracas generates more heat than light. It is a form of entertainment, no doubt. But it does a positive harm.

It was Aristotle who said: “There are a million ways to be wrong and only one way to be right.” Any irresponsible person can say: “The moon is made of green cheese.” The scholar cannot prove what the moon is made of in the few minutes allotted to him, and if he resorts to the tricks that will win the plaudits of an entertainment-bent audience, he will destroy the most precious thing he possesses: his reputation for being a thoughtful, scholarly person. Liberty will have lost one of the few who can aid others in its explanation.

This same scholar, before the invention of radio, observing a small crowd gaping at some soapbox orator, would not have set himself up on another soapbox to engage in debate. He would have gone his way. Radio has changed the magnitude of the situation, but not the elements which go to compose it: the exhibitionist, the scholar, the gaping audience.

One recent rebuttal to this argument was: “If we don’t debate these fellows we will give the appearance that our side has no spokesmen.” If we do debate these fellows “our side” will have fewer spokesmen. It is absurd to let the coercionists select the libertarian’s means of conveying his thought. Imagine the poet Goethe in a pub, getting himself into a fight with one of the barflies. How would the onlookers judge him? Would they consider his intellectual attainments in such a circumstance? No! They would rate him with the opponent he had elected to engage in contest. They would form their opinions of him only as a brawler. And, further, by such action, the libertarian unwittingly but implicitly acknowledges that violence and love, restraint and liberty, are on an equal footing and should be so debated.

Fear Is Not Understanding

“The cause of liberty is hopeless,” say some, “unless we reach people’s pocketbooks. Anything short of an appeal to their selfish interests is a waste of time. Show them that their jobs, their homes, their businesses, the education of their children, are at stake. There is no other manner of engaging their efforts for liberty.”

While these warnings, in my opinion, are justified, I rate an appeal to them very low as a means of generating interest and stimulating a spirit of inquiry. Fear in the heart does not initiate understanding in the mind. Fear tends to panic; if strong enough, to paralyze.

While it is true that all of us are ultimately motivated by self-interest, it is not true that self-interest is always appraised in the narrow terms of immediate, seemingly temporary gain. Such interpretation is unenlightened interpretation. The idea that people who cannot “see beyond the end of their noses” can be leaders in libertarian thought is expecting too much. These people have no role in this intellectual contest except as followers. This is not said disparagingly, because most of us are followers in most aspects of life; we are leaders only rarely.

Aptitudes vary. Only a few are educable in art. The same can be said for music, agronomy, cooking, medicine, the several crafts. It can also be said for social science and political philosophy. No one person knows in whom these aptitudes exist. Most individuals are even unaware of their own educability as relating to untried, unexplored fields.

It is educability, an aptitude for understanding liberty, that enables one to explain it and thus to have a value in this contest with violence. This is the trait in ourselves to be stimulated and encouraged. It is useless to expect that our fears will motivate us to a better understanding.[14] In short, the persons who count in this affair are those who are moved by a force of a higher order, those who take their positions in accordance with a sense of right and wrong, and those who give profound attention to determining right from wrong. Such persons conceive their self-interest to be best served by this higher determination.

Self-Improvement

All right, then. If the aforementioned methods and ideas for the advancement of liberty are held to be ineffective, what ought to be the direction of our efforts?

This is a proper question. My answer—self-improvement—is the essence of simplicity. The reasons which lie behind the answer, however, are complex. But without the complex reasons, the simple answer is useless. The inclinations to escape personal responsibility, and the conjured-up beliefs that somehow intellectual miracles can be wrought by us on someone else, are too persuasive for easy rejection. Unless we fully understand that these inclinations and beliefs are wholly without merit we will continue to indulge them. I wish to make the argument, as best I can, for self-improvement as the only practical course that there is to a greater liberty.

The problem of liberty, its understanding and how understanding is and is not spread, would be of no interest to a person living on a desert island. It is a problem of individuals who live in a society. It is the problem of how to preserve independence in a highly specialized society in which interdependence plays a major role. In short, understanding liberty is knowing how to live in a condition where voluntary efforts will be at the maximum, and the use of force against persons at the minimum.

Liberty Is the Absence of Coercion

Let it be said that this is a subject not easily mastered. Liberty—the absence of coercion or violence—is not readily comprehended. Relatively few among those who have lived on this earth have been able to visualize any order in society, or any progress by those who compose it, except as the will of some has been imposed on the actions of others.[15] History, for the most part, is a record of violence. Present-day talk and writing—history in the making—for the most part is an argument for the rearrangement of the rules of violence. An appreciation that progress is possible only when human energy is freed of restraint, has been gained by but few men. Is there one book or one article written by anyone at any time that can be designated as the final word on liberty? I doubt it. Perhaps the best that can be said is that the finest minds of all time have been in pursuit of its understanding and that now and then a tiny ray of new light has been thrown on what theretofore was darkness and lack of understanding. These few most advanced searchers have been among those who say: “The more exploration I do, the more I find there is to learn.”

An Infinite Pursuit

The reason for this difficulty in understanding liberty is that liberty, like truth, is an object of infinite pursuit, a quest without end, ever. Liberty does not lend itself to objective definition except to say that liberty is the absence of its opposites—restraint or coercion. These, to some degree, can be observed and talked about descriptively.

But there is difficulty even in defining restraint or coercion. They take many forms and cannot be defined to any person in any of their forms which he does not already recognize. The Negro slave, for instance, if asked to list the restraints exercised over him would have had little to offer.[16] He could not clearly define and describe a status unknown to him. A relatively free American, after having experienced a fair measure of liberty, and then suddenly put in the same bondage as the Negro slave, would have been better able to differentiate between his new slave status and the freedom he had earlier known. But many present-day Americans, when asked the question “What liberties have you lost?” are stumped for an answer. A creeping slavery progressively removes the contrasting experience that would give the basis for a full answer. They cannot, any more than the slave, discriminate between what is and what might have been in the area of the personally unknown. No better testimony of this point is required than the common reaction when anyone raises any question about the long-established public education system. It has become so much a part of the mores, so sanctified by years of acceptance and tradition, that any alternative to “education” under the principles of violence is quite beyond comprehension.

The Death of Creative Thought

Once the reliance on self is removed, once the responsibility for a portion of our being has been assumed by another—be that other a person, a set of persons, or the police force—we cease to think about or apply our ingenuity to the activities thus transferred. When the agency to which the transfer is made is the state, an agency of coercion, is it any wonder that creative thought diminishes to near non-existence? Creative thought is abandoned by man as a free and thus a creative agent, and assumed by man as an agent of coercion. Coercion, by its nature, is incapable of creativeness. One minus one plus zero equals zero! Understanding liberty requires that we think in these lost areas, in areas where there is no longer incentive for thinking except for the seemingly unrewarding and abstract objective of replacing violence with voluntary action.

Violence Retards Progress

As an example of this point, a publisher, libertarian both in his professions and accomplishments, wrote that he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to support a bond issue for an extension of the municipal sewerage system: “After all, my town has to have sewers.” Sewage disposal, not too dissimilar to that found in the Paris of Victor Hugo, is, by reason of its socialization, the victim of non-thinking. Who wants to get creative about anything as mundane as sewage? Certainly that is a function of government! It has been. And, we have what we have.

But imagine that this dirty job had no manner of handling except by voluntary action. Urbanization would be impossible without some form of disposal. Coping with the problem would be among the necessities of the first order. And cope with it we would. It is inconceivable that men who can find ways to release the power of the atom[17] could not find ways to dispose of sewage. All that is needed is to see that the responsibility for such a task remains with persons as creative, not coercive, agents. Without the possibilities of socialization we might, by this time, be vaporizing the stuff, or doing something even more “fantastic.”

New Name for Lost Liberties

The understanding of liberty requires these intellectual ventures into the areas of the unknown or, more likely, into the areas that have become unknown. Have you not noticed the vigor we employ when a present liberty is threatened and then, when it is lost, how soon we refer to it as a “social gain”? How can one who has been thus trapped, or who himself has lapsed into thinking of a new restraint as a “social gain,” possibly identify the liberties we have lost? He has lost his own knowledge and his own understanding to the same extent that he has altered his terms.

The individual who does not thoroughly understand, and is not able competently to explain, the fact of our interdependence and how it can be satisfied solely with voluntary effort, also cannot correctly say that he has mastered the subject of liberty. If this be right, then nearly every person I have ever talked with, read about, or heard of is a neophyte in his understanding of this subject.

A Student of Liberty

In brief, not a single person among us is justified in regarding himself other than as a student of liberty. It is wrong and destructive of our high purpose to assume the teacher attitude by self-appointment.

These self-appointments as teachers—activities seen all about us—are based on two false assumptions and are the cause of much mischief. The assumptions are (1) that a man becomes a teacher by self-designation and (2) that everything would be all right, or at least much better, if only everyone else could be brought up to the “teacher’s” intellectual level.

Destruction and Creation

Perhaps the reason that so many of us feel we can, at will, influence others in improving their understanding is due in a large measure to the success of influence programs in unrelated areas. For example, the force of government influences most of us to pay our tax bill. The fear of violence influences many not to walk through a picket line. Half-truths, lies, and insinuations have influence in defamation and character assassination. Barbarous slogans like “Kill all the Jews”—appeals to baser instincts—have influenced millions to follow a demented leader. These are influence programs for the purpose of destruction. Any fool can destroy in a few moments a building which was finally achieved after centuries of creative learning. The techniques to be employed in destructiveness and in creativeness are as different as these two forces themselves. Destructiveness is as simple as standing at the top of an elevator shaft and letting yourself go. Creativeness is as laborious and as difficult as the slow rise of civilization itself; it is, in fact, the same thing.

Who Has Influence?

The way to find the answer to the question “How is understanding extended?” is simply to ask: “To whom do I turn when seeking improvement in any activity—my profession, golfing, swimming, cooking, singing, or whatever? Do I turn to those whom I regard as knowing less than I on the subject? Or do I turn to those whom I regard as more expert than I?” The invariable answer is: “To the more expert.” And other persons do, in this respect, just as you or I.

Let it be said another way: A person does not influence others in expanding their understanding merely because he wishes to influence them. We have only to reflect on the daily experiences with those intimate to us to discover our own limitations in this respect. And what a lesser chance we have of influencing those beyond our immediate circle of activity, those who never heard of us!

Who Is a Teacher?

A person does not become a teacher either by self-designation or by designation of a third party—government or other. A teacher is designated solely and exclusively by the student. Many persons believe themselves to be teachers because they hold certain titles, or because they expostulate before audiences, or because what they write appears in some entertainment or news journal with large circulation. And they are especially certain that they are teaching if they hold attention and receive applause; they may be confusing histrionic qualities with education.

No person can force a change in the beliefs of another, even the belief that another has in his own omniscience. The best that can be done—in fact, all that can be done—is to submit new evidence, new data, new reasoning, and hope that one’s reputation for integrity and intelligence is such that the evidence will be considered. It is the student, the one with the receiving set, who does the “tuning in,” not the broadcaster. Thus, influence on others in the area of extending understanding is extremely limited. I need no more proof of these limited possibilities than to examine the manner in which others influence me.

In Search of Understanding

The road to influence as it relates to the creative task of advancing an understanding of liberty is self-improvement. It rests on one’s role as a student. As one advances in his own understanding and succeeds in out-distancing others, those out-distanced—at least those with a spirit of inquiry, the only ones who really matter, the teachable—will come in search of the understanding they do not yet possess. To the extent that one’s understanding is thus sought, and only to this extent, can one be considered a teacher; only to this extent can one be said to be a person of influence in this area.

The Student Attitude

Parenthetically, in selecting teachers of liberty for ourselves, a good way to examine their qualifications is to determine if their ideas for positive, creative action require violence (the force of the state, for example) to carry them out. If so, write them off. They are of another ilk. Those who advise the use of force in the creative areas are not even aware of liberty. They are, if terms have any meaning at all, authoritarians.

If it be true that one does not become a teacher of liberty until he has advanced himself as a student; if it be true that the principle of love prospers in a condition of liberty; if it be true that the principle of violence thrives in the absence of the principle of love; if it be true that the principle of violence is destructive of ourselves, of civilization, and of mankind; then it would seem to follow that the student attitude should head our agenda of required activities.

The student attitude is more than a matter of mere assertion. It is more than finding out what is known. It requires the rare quality of finding out that which is not known. The reporting of what is found out to those who are anxious to know is important but, still, even this is incidental to the search.

Moral and Intellectual Attitudes

There is one other difficulty. As one does not become eligible as a “graduate” student until certain scholastic conditions are met, so it is that one cannot advance as a student of liberty, or qualify himself as a searcher for truth, until certain moral and intellectual attitudes, antecedent to receptiveness, are adopted. One not truthful and not humble and not teachable can no more grasp the evasive qualities and meanings of liberty than can an idiot comprehend the science of nuclear fission. As Goethe stated it: “. . .  only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she [Nature] resign herself, and reveal her secrets.” The prime antecedent to receptiveness—intellectual integrity—again, requires more than mere assertion. As it is the most important virtue, so is it the most difficult of acquirement. Perhaps no man achieves it fully. And it is almost certain that no one comprehends its meaning or grasps its merit or sees its relationship to the releasing of one’s potential until after a dogged determination to practice it in every phase of life.

Intellectual Integrity

Intellectual integrity, as I see it, means the accurate reflection, in word and in deed, of what a person’s best judgment dictates as right. No one can rise above his best judgment. Only the quality of judgment can be improved. There is no way to determine what is right except as one’s highest judgment dictates. Even if the say-so of some other authority be accepted, it is still a person’s judgment which selects the authority. It is always a case of self-determination. To act honestly, to mean what we say and to say what we mean, is to present ourselves at our best. Beyond this it is impossible to go. The advancement of one as a student of liberty requires this high conduct. One frustrated with dissimulation, occupied with half-truths and lies, more concerned with appearances in the eyes of others than with investigation and contemplation, is in no condition to receive much more than is reported in the daily press. Aptness cannot exist prior to integrity. In short, integrity calls for the rejection of actions inspired by mere fashion, popularity, expediency. It calls for the adoption of actions in strict accordance with one’s own concept of rightness, not on the supposed but unassessable concept of others.

A New Insight

One of my associates called attention to the fact that the student argument set forth in this piece was somewhat at odds with the teacher approach which some of us originally had in mind for The Foundation for Economic Education. My associate has a good point. We have modified our approach and we will continue to do so whenever any new insight into the problem of liberty recommends a change. Today, each staff member, regardless of length of experience or degree of scholarship, aspires to the student attitude. True, we report what we find out, the ideas we gain—but we report them only to those who express the desire for such information. To the extent that others acquire ideas, reasons, facts from what we report, to that extent only are any of us teachers. They make that designation, we do not.

This much is true: Each person who comes to grips with any specific subject, be it the understanding of liberty or any other, becomes both a student and teacher. And a person’s competency as a teacher grows only as the result of his continuing advancement as a student. This advancing proficiency and integrity is what others, as students, will more and more seek. And the extent of this seeking by others determines the extent that one is allowed to serve as a teacher. This is determined by the student, not by the would-be teacher or by the “Minister of Education.” For example, these speculations on the problem of understanding liberty are being formulated and written as a student. These thoughts, such as they are, have resulted exclusively from a personal search for understanding. Others may wish to consider them as an aid to their own thinking, but even if I wanted to, I could not force any person to accept any part of what is here set forth. That is as it should be.

Pre-Conditions to Understanding

Numerous persons have strong feelings against the principle of violence and in favor of the principle of love, but rate their own competency as a student of liberty rather low and believe that this student approach, if adopted, would exclude them from any useful activity. This is a conclusion to be guarded against.

Most of the people who have become leaders in any field have been those who have developed their proficiency with great difficulty. Rarely is any unusual accomplishment the result of a natural, unworked-for gift. The advanced students of liberty, who are so greatly needed at this juncture in history, will spring from among those who properly rate their competency low but who are determined to raise it. These strong feelings, coupled with this attitude of humility, are among the most important pre-conditions to understanding. These are priceless virtues.

Lacking these pre-conditions, and in the absence of the understanding they presage, there cannot be that requisite sense of discrimination essential to distinguishing between freedom and restraint, between the principle of love and the principle of violence, between educational methods which will work and those which will fail. Lacking this understanding a person has no way of even knowing where to turn for guidance.[18] He is lost in this field and might better seek refuge in silence and inaction, that not-to-be-envied sanctuary where one’s destiny is in the hands of others.

Search Here

In searching for students of liberty, the search must be within ourselves. In the world of persons it is only within each of us that the unexplored areas exist. The best explorer of one’s self is one’s self. It is not possible to impart to others that which we do not possess. The most we can do is to make known a willingness to share what we have discovered by our own thinking, or what we find edifying from recorded thinking. Whether or not what we offer is, in fact, shared, is beyond our power, and we should realize this.

It is conceded that the student attitude, this search within ourselves, may at times appear unrewarding. But, if the understanding of liberty is to be advanced, the attempt must be persisted in, regardless of its seeming extravagance in time and effort. A statement ascribed to Christ is heartening if one will think of Him in the symbolic terms of ultimate truth and infinite goodness, and of our own weaknesses and inabilities as weeds and brambles, and of our own rare virtues and abilities as fertile ground:

Presently the Master appeared on the steps of the Synagogue and began to speak. It was immediately obvious that he had been aware of the rudeness of the crowd—and deplored it. He had been appointed, he said, to offer a way of salvation to the world; and that meant everybody. In a task so great as this, no prudent thought could be taken about the cost of it or the waste of it. His mission, he said, was to sow the seed of good will among men in the hope of an eventual harvest of peace. Much of this seed would be squandered. Some of it would fall among weeds and brambles where it would have no chance at all to grow, but the sower could not pause or look back to lament this extravagance. Some of the seed would fall upon stony ground where there was very little soil to nourish it and the tender plants would soon wither and die; but the sower must not be dismayed. Some of the life-giving grain would grow! Some of it would find friendly lodging in fertile ground![19]

On Saying the World

Another seemingly unrewarding, and to some a disappointing aspect of the student approach is that it reduces the chance of “saving the world” to the saving of only one person—one’s self. But it has its compensation: A person with this philosophy receives satisfaction from any increases in his own perception and, consequently, is not dismayed with the “faults” of others. Actually, there is no other way to “save the world.”

Why, may we ask, is self-improvement resisted by so many? Does the reward seem too little? Is it because self-improvement seems too much like helping one’s self rather than others? If these are the reasons, then each of us needs better to understand individualism, the dignity of his own person, the singularity of his existence, the meaning of rising to one’s potential, the satisfaction that can be derived from faithfulness to one’s conscience, judgment and personality—all as the first steps necessary to helping others.

Why should the integer one be ignored? In the universe of persons that’s all the world is made up of—just ones. The masses? Just ones. Labor? Just ones. Business? Just ones. I am one. You are one.

On which one can a person best exert influence? If he cannot accomplish any advancement in understanding liberty himself, what vagary of the imagination is it that suggests that some other one will look to him for explanation, enlightenment? Again, it should be clearly understood that the student selects the teacher.

The advancement of liberty will arise only from its intellectual refinement on the part of individual persons, and on nothing else. As this gets under way, individuals will emerge who will be so advanced in their understanding of liberty and so able to explain it expertly that the present trend toward total violence will be reversed. Others possessing a spirit of inquiry—students—will select them as their teachers and, in turn, these students will be selected as teachers by still others.

The Wave Theory

One might call this the “wave theory” or the “intellectual reproduction theory” of education. The process can be likened to the ever-widening, repetitive waves which result from a stone tossed in water. It operates as does the principle of geometric progression. Its effectiveness, however, is premised on and presupposes the existence of intelligent, ardent, and honest students of liberty, and on the observance of sound educational methods. We must also observe caution against demands for speed during an “emergency,” lest processes be adopted that would destroy the power of progression and set up counter waves—the progressive promotion of concepts the direct opposite of those originally intended.

If one will examine the significant, progressive movements of history, it will be found that they had their origin in a lonely perfectionism—that is, in the student approach. To illustrate: Christ understood the distinction between the law of violence and the law of love. He stated the law of love in its purity. It was He who lived a life worthy of emulation; it was He who employed the best of teaching tools, demonstration. Thus it was He who had the greatest influence: (1) He thoroughly understood the principle of love, and could competently explain it to those who selected Him as their Teacher, and (2) He lived without compromise or hypocrisy according to His principle.

Move on seventeen centuries to another student. Adam Smith understood the division-of-labor and specialization theories so thoroughly that he was able excellently to explain them in a book, The Wealth of Nations, which had, next to the Bible, perhaps the greatest single influence on western civilization.

Recommendations of Reason

Action? Intuition seems to commend that I try to tell others what to do and how to think. Reason supplies a contrary answer. It suggests that pursuit of my own personal understanding is the only practical action for me to take. Neither personal nor institutionalized evils exist among men who comprehend them to be evils. If I advance in my understanding of the true and the false, the understanding that I acquire will be sought. Reason recommends that I get the horse before the cart; that first I must learn; that influencing others will take care of itself. Reason says that influence in the creative areas can have no being prior to learning; that learning has no end.

Some agree with this line of reasoning and the conclusions herein set forth. They will assert them to be self-evident, but will argue that this suggested student approach—this process of self-improvement—is too slow to meet the challenge of these times. I am in no position to deny this. But, in my opinion, there can be no short cut. The only way to the Infinite, to Ultimate Truth—that is, to understanding—is through one’s own person. When we gain an appreciation of this principle, we will be on our way to as little violence and to as much liberty as can be in store for us.

[1] This implied criticism is directed against the application of this principle by the use of force; not against it as an individual’s rule for self-conduct with his own property.

[2] The points here set forth have been taken from Recent Changes In American Constitutional Theory, by John W. Burgess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923).

[3] The best treatise I have ever read on the function of organized force and the principles that should guide its limitation, is Frederic Bastiat’s The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education).

[4] Numerous European countries provide a case in point. Fabianism in Britain, for example, is at a dead end. The plunder at home, for all practical purposes, is over. But the parasitical idea of “. . .  from each according to ability; to each according to need” will not down. This is why the eyes of socialists are turned toward America. It is the last remaining pool from which to siphon.

[5] For instance, both limit freedom of choice as to the disposal of one’s income. Both apply violence in order that someone else’s “good” may be served.

[6] F. A. Harper, Liberty: A Path To Its Recovery (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949), Chapter XIII.

[7] Some will offer the excuse: “France was at war.” But the French people were being coddled by a government which hoped to spare them the burden of war’s waste. It couldn’t be done; it never can.

[8] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949).

[9] The statement that we practice the principle of love in large measure, signifying that the principle of violence is practiced only in small measure, and the argument that violence is the source of our ills, may appear as a contradiction. It is not. Imagine 100 people at a church social. Reflect on the total energy expended in walking, talking, gesticulating, conducting the meeting, preparing the meal, and so on. Then, consider the effect of an infinitesimal part, maybe only 1/10,000, of this energy turned to violence, say a punch on the nose of a deacon by the parson. Violence, like a deadly poison, has an effect disproportionate to its quantity.

[10] True, many want a law. But, unfortunately, they do not think of law as based on the principle of violence.

[11] Without voluntary organization in productive enterprise, for example, there could be no attention to our interdependent requirements. Most of us would starve.

[12] It is an interesting fact that those who propose statist programs start with the same assumption: The answers are all known!

[13] I have observed many men of energy and resourcefulness, having a well-earned reputation for integrity and intelligence, who, after “giving their all” to some activity aimed to save “free enterprise,” an activity predestined to failure, call it quits, “throw in the sponge,” retire to the woods, so to speak. These are losses of no small import. There may be no remedy for what has happened, but there can be prevention of what may happen.

[14] On pages 19 to 22 I stated some conclusions about the plight we are in. I have made identical statements before many and various audiences, here and abroad. And as frightening as these statements are in their implications, I have never observed a single instance where they served to generate a new interest in liberty. Any new interest has always had a moral or ethical motivation.

[15] “Law and order.” We have grown up with this idea. We accept “order” as unquestionably good. We accept “law” as the unquestionably good way to achieve this “good.” But some discrimination is required. Law can restrain private violence; this is good. Law can also restrain private creativeness; this is not good. Restraint, the characteristic of law, cannot aid private creativeness except as it restrains private violence. Order in creativeness is a matter between our individual selves and our Maker; it is not the concern of would-be makers. Order in creativeness is a problem that falls beyond the proper scope of man-made law.

[16] Perhaps a better example would be present-day Russians. They have so far lost sight of individual liberty that 99.98% of registered voters, according to their claims, cast their ballots for Stalin and his group. And they regard this as freedom!

[17] It is a common belief that government has been responsible for developing the use of atomic energy. But all of the theory was worked out by free, as distinguished from directed men. The principle of violence was applied to secure the funds to put the theories into an immature practice. Violent means achieved violent ends. Had the theories awaited the demand of a free market before being put into practice, atomic energy would eventually have been a boon, not a bomb, to mankind.

[18] Evidence of this bewilderment is the oft-heard statement: “But I haven’t time to read a fraction of the stuff that comes across my desk.” Of course not. No discriminating person reads everything, any more than one eats a dinner at every restaurant. This same person would make no such remark concerning a subject with which he had familiarity. Imagine a successful manufacturer saying, with a note of despair: “But I can’t possibly use all the inventions submitted to me.” Only the uninitiated would say a thing like that.

[19] Lloyd C. Douglas, The Big Fisherman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948).

Conscience on the Battlefield

Leonard E. Read

1951

CONSCIENCE ON THE BATTLEFIELD

THE PROLOGUE

My interest is the study of human energy, how to free it from restraints, and how to abolish coercion of man by man—in short, how to enlarge the area of individual liberty, economic and otherwise.

We, as a people, are bent on a contrary course from which there appears to be no possible return short of a willingness—indeed, an insistence—honestly to examine every tenet we now hold. An analysis of liberty that would, at this juncture, prove “popular,” would be useless. Of course, it does not follow that an unpopular analysis would be right merely because of its unpopularity. But it does follow that unless it is highly controversial, and challenging to a great number of persons, it cannot be consistent with the advancement of human freedom. For popular ideas and liberty are now not in accord. Indeed, they are at odds.

It is strange that war, the most brutal of man’s activities, requires the utmost delicacy in discussion. Yet, anyone who even presumes an interest in economic affairs cannot let the subject of war, or the moral breakdown which underlies it, go untouched. To do so would be as absurd—indeed, as dishonest—as for a cleric to avoid the Commandment “Thou shalt not steal” simply because his parishioners had legalized and were practicing theft.

War is liberty’s greatest enemy, and the deadly foe of economic progress. If war is evil there must be a way to avoid it; there must be a rationale, a type of thinking, patterns for living, that lead to peace. These ways cannot be simple or we would invoke them. They must be difficult to practice or we would employ them. They are not easily explained or we would know them. Thus, anyone who attempts an exploration of these ways certainly will suggest unfamiliar ideas. But such probing is the preface to understanding, and frankness is the prelude to intelligent discussion.

Now, as to the presentation which follows:

In February of 1918, some 2500 of us were aboard the troopship Tuscania when it was sunk by a German submarine. Many young Americans lost their lives in that disaster.

As a 19-year old kid, I did not indulge in any deep, philosophical thought about war while that ship was sinking, or during the seemingly hopeless hours spent in a collapsible contraption on a very cold and angry Irish Sea. My thoughts were mostly about how to keep from freezing and how to remain alive. But the more than three score years that have since passed have wrought their change. What would be my thoughts in a similar situation today? If, for instance, I were wounded and awaiting death on a Korean battlefield, what thoughts and ideas about war might I now have in my last moments of consciousness? If I could now come close to grasping what might pass through my mind under such a circumstance, isn’t it possible that my thinking might thereby be enriched?

Therefore, why not imagine a dialogue with myself—one character being my young, 19-year-old, warlike self, and the other character being even more than my present peace-loving self, shall we say, such Conscience and Understanding as I am able to muster today?

As suggested, I am well qualified for one part of the characterization: the above-mentioned experience during War I, ancestors in the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, sons in War II, plus many weaknesses of the flesh which account for wars.

Why should I not also try to capture the loftier side of the characterization? True, I haven’t lived this loftier side too well and, therefore, don’t know it too well. But lurking in my mental background, in a nebulous sort of way, are thoughts and a set of ideas rebellious to what I and many others have done. Why not by concentration and some imagination draw on the resources that lie hidden in the deeper recesses of one’s mind? Why not draw on the better thought of others too? Why should it be necessary to wait until that last moment of consciousness to find, as best one can, how one ought to have lived? The past cannot be undone, ’tis true. But cannot the past be drawn upon to make a better future? Cannot the past supply the stimulus for new understanding, for greater comprehension, in order that life may become finer in its wholeness?

The following dialogue is imagined to have taken place as I lay dying on a battlefield near the 38th Parallel in Korea. And let us also imagine that the thoughts were inspired by a passage I had read from the chaplain’s Bible a few days before: “Put up again thy sword into his place: for all they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.”

The talk is not hurried. Time, bordering on eternity, has lost all meaning.

Nor is the talk in final form. Quite likely it never will be on any subject requiring so much penetration.

THE DIALOGUE

Well, old boy, I guess this is it. Wonder what comes next.

Next?

Who are you?

I am you, a part of yourself with which you hardly got acquainted. I am your Integrity, your Intelligence, your Humility, your Reason, your Conscience. In short, I am such Harmony as you have with Ultimate Wisdom—shall I say, with God? You have kept me in the background, hidden away from your earthly life. You have had only dim notions of my existence.

Why do you appear to me now in this last moment of life?

Appear now? You talk as though it were I who does the coming and going. I have been here all the time. You simply haven’t seen fit to embrace me, to make me a real part of your earthly self. Frankly, this is the first time since childhood that you have been in an attitude to receive me. Your time has been occupied with other companions: approval and applause among men, fortune, fame, power, to mention but a few. They have now deserted you as they do everyone, at the end. You are alone with me. I am all you have left. Thus it is that you feel I have come to you. On the contrary, this circumstance of your earthly departure has merely made way for me.

Strange that I should wait until now to know you. What an about-face in my sense of values! Fame? Always I was wooing her. Now I see her shallowness. Concern about Immortal Judgment takes her place, a concern I have not known before. How, dear Conscience, will I be judged?

Have you not written your own credentials? Perfect justice will assuredly be accorded you. Everlasting Life will doubtless be an accurate mirroring of you as you have been. While in many respects you were an excellent person, the record shows that you killed many men—both Korean and Chinese—and were also responsible for the death of many women and children during this military campaign.

That is correct, and I regret that it was necessary. But we were at war, a good and a just war. We had to stop Communist aggression and the enslavement of people by dictators. That war was in accord with United States foreign policy.

Did you kill these people as an act of self-defense? Were they threatening your life or your family? Were they on your shores, about to enslave you?

No, they were not. But you don’t understand our foreign policy. It was very clever. It sought to thwart aggression by going to war against others before they could use aggression against us in our own homeland. It had the advantage of using someone else’s country as the battleground. True, this foreign policy sometimes confused me. But I always imagined I got my thinking straight by envisioning Mr. and Mrs. Jones, next door, getting into a battle royal. The winner might feel strong enough to attack me. So, why not take the side of the weaker party in order to forestall such a possibility? That would put an end to neighborhood trouble, wouldn’t it? In short, our foreign policy was represented as an act of self-defense. We merely anticipated the acts of our enemies by taking certain positive and necessary actions. We planned to lick them before they had a chance to become aggressive against us. Our motto was: “Never give up the initiative.” I hope it will turn out all right. I was dealt this death blow before the issue was settled. Conscience, what do you think?

In the first place, please understand that I don’t care to discuss what you call your foreign policy. It is too late for that. The judgment which now concerns you must be rendered on you as an individual—not on parties, or mobs, or armies, or policies, or processes, or governments. “All nations before Him are as nothing; they are counted to Him less than nothing. . . .” Governments and such are simply phrases, mere abstractions, behind which persons often seek to hide their actions and their responsibilities. Such devices may sometimes give the appearance of success, but how can they have any validity for you from here on? In the Temple of Judgment which you are about to enter, Principles only are likely to be observed. It is almost certain that you will find there no distinction between nationalities or between races. A woman is a woman. A child is a child, with as much right to an opportunity for Self-realization as you. To take a human life—at whatever age, or of any color—is to take a human life. You imply that you feel no personal responsibility for having killed these people. Why, then, did you personally accept the “honors”? According to your notions, no one person is responsible for the deaths of these people. Yet, they were destroyed. Seemingly, you expect collective arrangements such as “the army” or “the government” to bear your guilt. Yet you expect in Everlasting Life the bestowal of personal honors for virtues. Are you not struck with the absurdity of it all? Will you not stand before Judgment unadorned—just as a spirit, a recorded memory and conscience? Is this not all that will be dealt with there? Can there be any other trappings to consider beyond this spirit of you, once a person who lived and had the opportunity to choose between good and evil?

But, my Conscience, I had no choice. I had to do what others called my duty. Otherwise, my friends and fellow-citizens would have dubbed me a traitor. I would have been put into jail, disgraced before man, borne the name of a coward.

You are doubtless right about what would have happened to you, and at the very hands of those whose guilt is as great as, or perhaps greater than, yours. In my view there can be no distinction between those who do the shooting and those who aid the act—whether they aid it behind the lines by making the ammunition, or by submitting to the payment of taxes for war. Moreover, the guilt would appear to be even greater on the part of those who resorted to the coercive power of government to get you to sacrifice your home, your fortune, your chance of Self-realization, your life—none of which sacrifices do they themselves appear willing to make. They will face Judgment, too, in but another moment. And they will be judged as you will be judged. On the surface it would seem that more courage would have been required of you to attend strictly to Principle than to do what you did—than to take a part in tearing asunder what God has created. Deeper reflection, however, will reveal that you and others took on the characteristics of a herd, and by so doing surrendered your standing as individuals. By this drifting from personal action to mass action—a motion that only alert intelligence could have avoided—a dilemma was created for you and for all members of the collective: the choice of shooting others or having others shoot you for forsaking them; to do as the others demanded, or to risk the collective’s penalty for non-conformance.

You certainly put my evil in good company. According to you, nearly every man, acknowledged as great in our history, bears a guilt not unlike my own, as does about every American citizen of today. Isn’t that carrying condemnation a little too far?

In attempting to answer that question, it should be clearly understood that no single person is ever in possession of more than an infinitesimal fraction of all Truth. This condition would seem to condemn man to some error even when he exercises his best judgment. The capacity for self-improvement affirms this point. To argue otherwise would be to classify man as perfect—that is, as equal to God. To assert that any mortal could be wholly free from sin would be to make the same untenable argument.

Man, in spite of his individuality, lives with others. And having chosen to live with others, he cannot escape an accountability for his part of any collective action of society in which he participates. As part of the warp and woof of society, he is committed to some responsibility for its collective misdeeds, either by commission or omission. Thus, all men err. There are no exceptions.

To take one’s own life to escape the sin implicit in living, or to surrender life as the alternative to sinning, is to indulge a greater sin. The first duty of man is to be alive. Otherwise there is no opportunity to develop his God-given potential. Living man can only aim at sinlessness; he cannot fully achieve it. Having any part in coercive, collectivistic action is one way of insuring sin. The best one can do, then, finding some such action inescapable, except through death, is to mitigate his sin. While bearing his share of society’s sins he can at least refuse to be a sponsor of them; indeed, he can use suasion to spread the truth as he sees it. You should not, therefore, be too dismayed that you and those you hold in high esteem have erred. It is the lot of mankind. Among the cardinal sins, however, is the failure to make earnest attempts at minimizing error.

Thanks for the relief which these thoughts provide. But, one matter bothers me very much. Why did our leaders, including many supposedly moral leaders, tell us that we could not fail in this war because God was on our side?

It may well be that your leaders believed what they told you. But many of the leaders in what you call your enemy countries also claimed God’s blessings, and said the same things. I doubt, however, that you will be judged according to these claims of any earthly leader. Nor will a leader be judged for the acts of his willing followers. The greatest of earthly leaders will doubtless stand alone before God, on his own record, as you will stand.

Very well! I am beginning to see what you mean. But I shall argue for absolution on the grounds that I did not know that I was doing a wrong. These points you have made never occurred to me before.

Do not overlook the fact that you were born onto earth with God-given mental faculties, with the power to reason. You had me with you all the time, yet often ignored me. You should have realized from the simplest earthly observations that there is no evidence of any absolution of cause and consequence on the grounds of not knowing. For example, assume that you were unaware of the law of gravitation, and jumped from atop a high building. Would the fact of your ignorance have made the fall any less severe? Let’s say you had no suspicion of murder as an evil and, as a consequence, you killed people. Would they be any less dead by reason of your failure to know? Isn’t the untimely demise which you now face enough answer to these questions? In spite of your lack of understanding of the reasons for it, you are dying. If Conscience has any function, it must be as a guide to the avoidance of evil acts and their inevitable consequences. To put one’s self into communion with Truth is the first of all virtues. To do this one must live. Could you conceive of there being no penalty for ignorance, or reward for wisdom?

No, I could not, my Conscience. But, another question. Why do you say it is wrong to kill, and then imply that it is proper to kill, if necessary, to defend one’s life?

The answer becomes clear if we think in terms of who initiates violence. It is evil for any person or set of persons to initiate violence against another. But, if another initiates violence against you, and if he dies in the process of your protecting your life, does he not, in reality, suffer death at his own hand, as in suicide? He initiates the action in which he is killed. He, not you, is the author of the equation that destroys him.

I can plainly see that this is morally sound as relating to persons. But isn’t there a different standard for a nation?

No! There is no new right brought into being by reason of you and another, or you and 150 million others, acting collectively. Whatever is immoral for you as a person is immoral for a number of persons. Virtue is a quality solely of the individual. Multiplication of individuals does not change virtue’s definition. As it is proper for you to protect your life against violence initiated by another, so is it proper for a number of you to protect yourselves against violence initiated against your number. But that is all. There is no extension of moral rights by reason of how numerous you are. Were moral rights to exist in relation to number, a mob’s actions would have a basis for approval. Russians would have rights not possessed by Americans. And might would, indeed, make right.

But what about the protection of others, beyond our number, who have had violence initiated against them? Suppose I had observed a bully beating a child, or a ruffian attacking my neighbor’s wife? Should I have stood idly by as a mere witness to such outrages?

Not necessarily. It is presumed that in the case of a bully beating a child, or a ruffian attacking your neighbor’s wife, that you would have been as competent to judge initiated violence as if the violence were initiated against your own person. You asked this question because you think you see in it a situation analogous to the United States protecting South Korea. The situation is not analogous. You would not, of your own free will, give up your home, your business, even your life, to protect the South Koreans as against the North Koreans. And, for good reason. In many instances, you recognize your incompetence to assign causation even to your own acts. It is, therefore, next to impossible for you to determine the just from the unjust in cases that are remote to your experience, between peoples whose habits and thoughts and ways of life are foreign to you. Thinking only of yourself you recognize your own scope and the proper limits of your own actions. But interference in strange areas may make you the initiator of violence rather than the protector of rectitude. If, however, of your own free choice, you wish to protect the South Koreans, you have only your own judgment to account for. But there is a far greater accounting to make if coercion is used to cause others to do what you elect to do. Why, though, should you elect to do any such thing? You are as unaware of the forces at work in this Asiatic affair as you are of the causes of a quarrel between two headhunters. Am I wrong? If so, why have you been shooting Koreans and Chinese when the Russians are supposed to be the ones you fear? Are you expecting the North Koreans or the Chinese to invade the American shores?

Very well, my Conscience, but matters of national concern such as this cannot be left to the voluntary action of a free people. Few, if any, would be here in Korea. I doubt if many would voluntarily give up home, fortune, and life to protect the Philippines, or France, or even England. National interest demands that there be an authority to coerce us into proper action against communism.

Force! Coercion! Violence! Forever, it seems, people proposing force as a means to eliminate force! You do not seem to realize that the essential characteristic of communism is coercion. It is but the communalization of the product of all by force. Americans now practice communism in so many ways that the doctrine—not in name, but in substance—is rapidly becoming not only acceptable but “respectable.” There are people, many of them, who sincerely believe in this idea. Those who believe in it, and openly proclaim their belief in it, you call “Communists.” But you who practice it, and deny your belief in it, call yourselves “Liberals” and your countries “Democracies.” And you propose to rid the world of force by using force against those who admit they believe in force. In reality, you endorse their position. You make the belief in force unanimous. What, pray tell, can you do with guns to make them question the rightness of their beliefs? Can you do more than to confirm their belief in guns and to incite the wider use of guns?

This belief in coercion is an idea just as much as the belief in freedom is an idea. It is for this reason that I think you have mistaken the nature of the conflict. It is ideological, not personal; it is of the intellect, not of the flesh.

A ferment now goes on in the minds of men, ideas demanding violence as the means to a communal way of life. As in every ferment a scum rises to the top, as fungus on a muck heap. These bad ideas which rise out of the ferment are not to be destroyed by killing the persons who voice them. The swirls in the ferment will throw up replacements, endlessly. Killing merely agitates the process, as a poke on the jaw usually evokes a retaliatory poke on the jaw. It’s the ideas that have to be considered. The route to better ideas is evolutionary and peaceful, a matter you should have pondered long ago. Better ideas are not shot into persons with guns. Can you not see that gunners, except when acting in self-defense, have contracted the very disease they are bent on destroying?

What you are saying is that the people of the United States do not know their own interests; that coercion, the essence of the dictator idea, produces better results than man in free action. You are saying that your countrymen are ignorant if free, but that one or more of their number, politically selected, will force them to act wisely if given enough power. You are saying that wisdom is generated by the mere act of giving some person or persons a monopoly of coercion. If this be true, why do you not accept the Russian arrangement and be done with it? Does it really matter whether an American or a Russian has a gun in your back? I thought you were fighting for freedom. Isn’t it possible that the way to advance freedom is to behave like free men rather than like regimented men? You, I fear, have been spreading the very disease you claimed to be trying to destroy.

It is rather dreadful to think that I have met death in an action that spreads communism. The demand for unity, however, has always seemed sound to me. An early American slogan was: “In unity there is strength.” How else could unity be achieved except by some program insuring involuntary service?

There are two kinds of unity. One kind makes for weakness. The other makes for strength.

For instance, there is that type of unity exemplified by the goose step. It makes for a sameness in action, to be sure. However, it is nothing but a mass obedience to a master will. It demands a disregard of personality and its variation. Its theme is a tortuous cadence, mankind responding to the tick-tock of some fallible, human metronome. In this kind of unity there is but the appearance of strength. In substance it is a corruption and a weakness implicit in men, who, though gifted by God with reason, permit themselves to be led like oxen or driven like sheep. This is the kind of unity involuntary service produces.

There is strength only in that unity which results from like-mindedness. This originates with an individual’s actions being in unity with his conscience. In short, the type of unity that has lasting strength is born of integrity. Its extension depends on the consciences of men being similar. The result is similarity in action—actions dictated by conscience instead of by Caesars. That is the kind of unity voluntary service produces. Involuntary unity, however, will do even more harm than that of merely making its practitioners weak. Its false show of strength tends to create fears in other peoples, developing a like-mindedness in them as to what they should do to assuage their fears. It thus generates a voluntary unity and a real strength among the very people at whom the involuntary unity is aimed.

In one of the little-publicized chapters of War II, for example, one million Russian officers and men voluntarily joined the invading Germans, considering them as their liberators. The German dictator, hearing of this, ordered that these officers and men be imprisoned or killed. This action, dictated by Hitler, caused a like-mindedness among the Russian people. Their subsequent action at Stalingrad against the Germans became very much of a voluntary action. History records how like-mindedness created a strength where only weakness had existed.

This Korean affair is in no way dissimilar. Hardly an American favored this war if tested by his willingness voluntarily to sacrifice family, fortune, or life. This war could not have happened short of involuntary service. And as was to be expected under those circumstances, the result has been less security for America. Our excursion into Korea is creating a like-mindedness, the will to voluntary service against us on the part of the Asiatic people. These steps which are weakening an America that was strong are strengthening an Asia that was weak.

But, then, is it not also true that involuntary servitude and a show of military force by the Russian people tends to cause a like-mindedness, a will to voluntary service, on the part of Americans?

This would be the tendency, if let alone. But the involuntary service that has been initiated in America destroys this tendency toward voluntary unity in this field, just as, in the field of welfare, involuntary police grants-in-aid destroy the will to voluntary charity. Directed action is substituted for self-inspired action. Weakness takes the place of strength.

Involuntary service on the part of the Russians, if extended to the point of interfering with American life and property, would inspire an American voluntary service.

But, Conscience, wouldn’t this voluntary action on the part of the American people come too late to save us from invasion?

This prevalent idea overlooks the weakness from within that comes to the aggressor by reason of his continued involuntary service. It glosses over the fact that as the enemy extends himself and his supply lines he is faced with ever-dwindling resources at home. His extended position requires the opposite: progressively greater resources at home. Overlooked, also, is the strength that would remain with Americans by reason of the conservation of their resources and by reason of an undeniable determination bred by the like-mindedness of a people defending their homeland. They are as a tigress protecting her offspring.

To fight evil with evil is only to make evil general. To contend against involuntary action by involuntary action is only to make involuntary action general. Let a slave master organize millions of slaves into industrial and military divisions, and many people will think they observe a great strength. Let millions be free of any slave master, let their energies be released, let them work alone, or competitively or cooperatively as the mutuality of their interests suggests, and many people will think they observe a great chaos. These observations are but great delusions. People confuse appearance and substance one with the other. There is enduring strength only in free men. When the truth of this is learned to the point of its becoming a profound faith, then—and then only—will mass murders be removed from the agenda of men. Man will seldom kill if acting on his individual responsibility and under the guidance of his own disciplines. But he can be made to kill if and when he becomes an involuntary agent. In this condition he is no longer singular and self, but part of a mass, responding to stimuli beyond his own wisdom and conscience.

I begin to understand. The chaos I thought I saw in men acting freely was but the inadequacy of my own grasp of things; it was but the reflection of my own limited comprehension. Order, strength, to me, meant only an arrangement of men’s behavior that fell within the range of my own narrow knowledge. No wonder men had to goose step, to act in simple patterns, for them to give me the appearance of strength.

This chaos I thought I saw—others doing things I couldn’t do or understand—was but men in free and voluntary effort, each finding his greatest realization and productiveness in action of his own choosing. I had planned, after this war, to enter my chosen field, a highly specialized one, adapted to aptitudes peculiar to me. I now see how my own interest would have been better served by similarly having others specializing in the fields peculiar to their aptitudes in order that there might be an exchange among us with benefit and profit to all.

All sorts of things occur to me now. Human energy is expressed through the faculties of men. The non-use of any faculty, be it a muscle in the arm or the power to reason, brings on atrophy. Human energy is like electrical energy; it has strength only as it is flowing, as it is in use. These faculties of men through which their energy finds expression are not only different in all men but they are self-controlled. No man can control the creative faculties of another. No man can force another to think, or to invent, or to imagine. The only control one man can exercise over the faculties of another is a destructive or restraining control. One man can destroy all the faculties of another by shooting him. One man can restrain the use of the faculties of another by inducing fear of prison or ostracism.

Involuntary service, therefore, is the restraint of men’s faculties by another, the denial of self-control of faculties, the forced employment of someone else’s idea of one’s faculties, an idea that has no possible manner of being right. This explains why, in the army, I have noted good entertainers made into poor cooks, and skilled machinists employed as bad buglers. Involuntary service presupposes that there is some person or group of persons who know how to fit the peculiar faculties of all men into some master plan of action. In reality, though, such persons are fortunate if they even know what to do with themselves, let alone others.

I now see the strength in voluntary effort. I now see that no one—least of all I—can grasp or understand more than a fraction of the total effort of all persons. But I can see my own superiority as a free man as against a slave. And I need only to project this idea to all other persons to arrive at my own answer, the one you have been trying to impress upon me: Free men are strong men.

I wish, however, that you would elaborate even more on why most individuals will not kill on their own responsibility, yet will take a part in mass killings. If these acts of ours which turn out to be evil, were done in ignorance, why so wide the lack of understanding? All people seem to be similarly at fault in some degree.

I only wish you had called on me, your Better-self, ere this. Also, you could have called on others. Excellent answers to these questions have been made time and time again throughout history. You merely took no heed of them, nor of me. You repeatedly said you had no time to contemplate, to think, to read, to study—in short, to invoke my help. Unwittingly, you made mockery of anything really serious, of subjects that had a bearing on your Immortal Soul. You opened your ears and mind to the frivolous, to “easier” ways, to the fallacy that you could turn your responsibilities and problems over to government, to answers that declared you could take a part in evil and not be responsible for it. By your failure to reason you became a party to an absurdity: the notion that you could gain peace by the use of war; love by the use of violence.

The key to your mortal confusion, I believe, has been a failure to perceive, until now, the nature of the collective. You have admitted—and I believe you—that you as a person would not kill another person. But oftentimes men personally as virtuous as you have joined a mob, lynched and killed someone, and attached no personal guilt to themselves at all. The collective—the mob—was responsible for the deed, so they thought. But the mob, an informal collective, is not subject to eternal damnation or Immortal Glory. It is but a name given to an arrangement which consists only of individuals. Can other than persons be responsible for acts, be the acts done alone or in association?

But I was not acting as a member of a mob. I acted in response to my government.

Government, also, is a collective. It differs from the mob in that it is organized, legalized, formal force, presumably founded on deliberation rather than on impulsiveness of men. But government is no more subject to eternal damnation or Immortal Glory than is an illegal mob. It, also, is but a name given to an arrangement which consists only of individuals. They—and they alone—are responsible for what they do collectively as government. They—and they alone—are subject to Judgment.

Most persons believe some form of government to be necessary as a means of achieving maximum liberty. They, therefore, surrender more or less of their own energy—their personal rights and responsibilities—to government. Unless they understand the nature of coercion—its power only to suppress, restrain, destroy—they place but little limitation on that portion of themselves which they surrender to this coercive agency. They surrender to government far more than the logical function of collective and equal protection of the life and property of all citizens. Unless they understand the nature of coercion they will attempt to use this force of government even for creative purposes; they will attempt to bring to bear what is only a negating physical violence with the vain hope of accomplishing a positive good. Unless they comprehend coercion, many of them will use this medium of government to rob in the name of charity, plunder in the name of prosperity, and kill in the name of God.

I confess, I have been killing in the name of God, at least as I know God.

There appears to be another failure, too. It is failure to grasp the idea that when the right to act on behalf of one’s self is delegated to another, this cannot reasonably be done without an acceptance of personal responsibility for the results of the delegated authority. For example, self-discipline is exclusively the product of the individual. It is the quality—indeed, the virtue—in you which accounts for the fact that you would not kill another person in your own name. But let authority for your actions be transferred to government, a collective, without an exact accompaniment of your personal responsibility for that authority—without an equivalent transfer of that excellent discipline which controls your own actions—and, ipso facto, you will act without personal discipline as a result of the mistaken belief that there can be authority without responsibility. In short, will you not generate irresponsible action? And this, I submit, is the illogical process—call it foreign policy or whatever—which leads you to kill another person without remorse or a feeling of guilt. You label the action by another name, “the government,” “the army”; so you thoughtlessly conclude that the responsibility is attached to another name also. Does not the fault inhere in your not recognizing that the consequences of your actions are irrevocably yours, whether you personally conduct them or whether you employ government, a collective agency, to administer them?

Unless there is a strict awareness of the limitations that should guide delegated authority, and an equally keen realization that even a limited, delegated authority demands total personal responsibility, there will of necessity result a vast amount of evil action.

Were there none of my forebears who understood the nature of the collective?

Yes, many of them. One of your countrymen perceived these dangers and gave a warning that was little heeded: “That government is best which governs least.” It is only when the agenda of government are minor and incidental to the aggregate action of a people that the agenda can even be understood, let alone accepted personally as one’s own. If the agenda become numerous, or if they extend beyond the narrow confines of defending all citizens against violence and predacity initiated against them by others, the minds of most men will not be able to grasp what will be suffered in their names. However, as I said before, you should have sought my services sooner. While I, too, am finite and subject to error, I am as close to God as you can get on this earth. It was your task to join with me in order that together we might search for Truth—the vital element in your earthly purpose of Self-realization.

Thank you, my Conscience. But what hope is there for me now?

Your life is now about to end. Will you not from here on be judged for what you were? You will no longer be in the realm of the to be. What you have been will condition what you will be, or so it seems to me.

What has happened to your life is not at all uncommon. You simply elected to act in a way pleasing to some of your earthly contemporaries. You gave little weight or thought to Immortal Judgment. You chose to have your honors before your fellow men rather than before God. You gave preference to man’s medals and plaudits over and above the Reward you now seek. You were given your opportunity, and you made a choice. As a consequence, will not your spirit and influence go down through the ages as you elected they should? Were you not the judge, and have you not passed judgment on yourself by your life and the way you lived it? It seems to me that you have made the pattern for your life in the Everlasting World, a part of which you have made in this last moment of consciousness as a mortal being. Let us, since you and I are now one and inseparable, be eternally grateful that so much of it appears to have been good.

THE EPILOGUE

Hmm! The collective! Government and its over-extension! The process of de-personalization! The method that divorces action from conscience! Action and conscience together tend to virtue—apart, action has no anchor! Action and conscience together lead to justice—apart, action becomes indiscriminate! Action and conscience together, and I would not kill—but divorce them, and I become a party to mass killing. Why did I not think of these ideas and their meaning? Why did I not think. . . .

Outlook for Freedom

Leonard E. Read

1951

The substance for a thorough-going. Twentieth Century intellectual revolution is in the making, and is showing a vitality that can be accounted for only by the inextinguishable spirit of individualism—the insistence of man to complete his own creation. That this spirit at present is evident among only a minority need not necessarily deject the devotee of liberty. Everything begins with a minority of one, extends to a few, and then to many.

The following allegory is mostly an attempt at reporting—compacting—the ideas and experiences, failures and successes, of many associates and friends during the last two decades, relating to the most important issue of our time, and as they have taken part in this small but growing revolution in ideas.

Outlook for Freedom

A Growing Danger

There were six hundred at the banquet. Not less than a total of 10,000 years of formal education had gone into the makeup of these people to whom a distinguished American addressed himself. The speaker—informed, intelligent, and courageous, and manifesting the deep convictions which he felt—told of the growing dangers of socialism and communism. He documented his statements. He named names. The dangers were real, all right. The speech was received with obvious approval.

The dining room was quickly emptied. The ladies in evening gowns and the men in dinner jackets returned to their homes bearing a new concern for the future of their country. They had, quite properly, misgivings as to what the future held in store for their children. But what to do? How does one get at these socialists and communists? Where do they get their ideas? How does one go about setting them straight? If only the masses could be made to see things intelligently, like the six hundred at the banquet!

Communism Is Not Geographic

The sun rose as usual the next morning. The birds ushered in the day, singing as sweetly as ever. Besetting problems of home and office were as numerous as before. Breakfast was about as usual. The children continued to be mischievous, acting in ways thought unwise by their elders. The morning paper told of battles with the communists, reporting approvingly of the thousands that had been killed, and something to the effect that the United Nations Forces—or the Reds—had moved one or the other beyond or behind some parallel—as though the problem were geographic.

All Except One

There was a small item in the paper about the banquet of the night before. It brought recollections of the distinguished speaker, and what he had to say concerning socialism and communism, with somewhat the same consciousness as they remembered yesterday morning’s headlines, or “Ladies Night” at Rotary last year, when there had also been a good speaker. The affair came to be only a faintly recollected event to all of the six hundred—all except one.

An Honest Man

There was one who pondered. What the speaker had said lingered on and disturbed him. Socialism and communism are not conjured-up hobgoblins. There is something very real and very evil afoot. But what is the substance of this evil? He had heard many speakers inveigh against socialism, and damn communism. Always the speakers were naming names, always they were talking about someone else. How could there be this guilty “someone else,” he asked himself, if everybody talked about someone else. This someone else had to be somebody who himself was at fault, or all this talk was absurd. Guilt must come to rest somewhere. Could some of it be in him? In honesty he had to ask himself this question, for now he understood the absurdity of the shallow belief that all these faults belonged to “someone else.”

Most Americans Believe in Socialism

There aren’t enough people in the world, he reasoned, who admit to being socialists and communists to account for all the evil attributed to socialism and communism the speaker had told about. Could the evil possibly exist in those who do not themselves comprehend it and, thus, have no basis for admitting that they are infected? He then recalled reading a study made in 1949 by Link and Freiberg which showed that 75 per cent of the American people believed themselves to be against socialism, yet 66 per cent of them favored governmental measures that fell within their own definitions of socialism. Perhaps he was one of these and had the disease himself, shocking as was this honest and searching thought.

He could not avoid the question: Is there any of this inconsistency in me? What a venture in introspection his search for an answer turned out to be! Here he was, a man who had often proclaimed his faith in “the American way of life.” He had pledged allegiance to the flag. He had sung lustily about “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Now he was about to inquire into his own status as a possible socialist-communist. He had what it took: courage to make the inquiry and honesty to look at the facts regardless of what they revealed.

Socialism Is State Ownership or Control

This person already had some comprehension with which to begin his self-analysis. He had recently come to understand socialism to mean the state ownership or control of the means of production; communism to mean the communalization by force of the product of all. There wasn’t any distinction of principle between the two so far as he could see. Fascism, nazism, state-interventionism, Fabianism, the welfare state, and the planned economy all appeared to be of the same ilk; the differences, if any, were only in the details of organizing and administering coercion.

A Belief in Force

It was from beginning concepts such as these that the light suddenly dawned. He saw that all of these “isms” had an unmistakable, common characteristic: belief in the use of organized police force—government—as a means to attain social performance, that is, as a means to stimulate and to regulate and to control all forms of creative human activity.

Where to begin his self-examination? He first concluded that he was confronted with the task of exploring paths or areas new to him. This required abstract thinking, that type of inquiry which is difficult but which is responsible for all progress.[1]

Public Education

Possibly it would be best to begin a test of his new definition of communism—previously defined as a belief in the use of organized force as a means to attain social performance—against a reasonably familiar and generally accepted idea. So he took a critical look at perhaps the least challenged of all American institutions—public education.

How did government education stand up when squared with this new definition of the “isms”? There was force involved, all right—compulsory attendance, compulsory curricula in many respects, and in all respects compulsory payment therefor. Even so, was this anything to worry about, since no institution has ever had more respectable and conservative support than public education? In fact, in early times, most of the leading conservatives of America, including one of the most respected occupants of the White House, had much to do with popularizing the idea in the United States. But, he could not escape a deep concern by reason of his new definition; that regardless of the prestige of its forebears, and irrespective of the talents and high reputations of subsequent supporters, public education is still a denial of freedom of choice in vast areas. He could not logically deny that it is the communalization of the product of all, by force. He even recalled how, as a freshman in college, he had learned that public education was one of the primary objectives which Karl Marx set forth in his Communist Manifesto. However, maybe he ought to believe in some communism.

But why, he asked, in this “great nation of freedom,” had not his teachers in the several schools he had attended, raised questions about the use of force in “education”? Was it possible that they themselves had never thought of it?

The Post Office

He next looked at the post office. Let a private citizen try to carry the mails! And let him try to evade payment of his share of the government deficits incurred! If he tried it, his home would be taken for “non-payment of taxes.” Here, with only casual examination, he could see monopoly and communalization by force.

Social Security

What about compulsory social security which he had supported as a member of leading business organizations? The term “compulsory,” by itself, answered his question. The product of all put by force into a common pot, and doled out by authority. Coercive communalization!

Government Golf

What about the public golf course completed last year? He had supported that, too. Communalization by force! Joe Doakes’ widow and the wealthy Mr. Hemingway, neither of whom had any interest in golf, were forced to give of their mite or fortune, so that a few could enjoy a special privilege.

TVA, Rent Control, Tariffs, Wages, Prices

He could already see the extent to which his beliefs had wandered into an almost total faith in force as a means to attain social performance. He had written his congressman urging many other valley projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority. He had argued before the village council in favor of continuing rent control. He had accepted his father’s belief in the protective tariff. He had come to believe minimum wage laws to be good, as well as “support programs” and “parity prices” for farmers. As a matter of fact, he began to have difficulty in finding any areas in which he was not actually a practicing communist or at least a philosophical one. He naively believed, of course, that his business would never be taken over by the socialist-communist government to which he had been giving strength and power, and for which he, as much as anyone else, was responsible.

Two Paths to the Same Goal

This process of thought revealed to him the source of all socialism and all communism. He, a good American, was a typical “somebody else.” He lacked hardly a qualification as a socialist or communist, except party membership. At this point he realized that a party member was at least more consistent than he; the party member used and advocated force to obtain the authority to use force, while he advocated and used peaceful methods to obtain the authority to use force. He didn’t know whether his inconsistency was caused by cowardice or not. Or, was it merely that his ideas about strategy differed from the ideas of party members? He and they had the same end in mind! All of this was a horrible realization. What had happened? Why had his beliefs ventured into support of the very social forms he claimed to despise? WHY?

Loss of Faith in Freedom

First, his faith in the use of force as a means to attain social performance had been growing because of a diminishing faith in men attaining social performance by acting freely. Certainly this was true as related to public education. He had lost faith that education could become general—especially for the poor—if left to voluntary devices. He had come to believe that persons lack the capacity to look out for themselves, and to help each other voluntarily and individually in this important aspect of life; that force and policemen must attend to the educational program.

But it couldn’t have been entirely a diminishing faith in free men that had caused him to resort to the force of government to build a golf course. He knew that countless golf courses had resulted from voluntary action all over the country. Here and in similar affairs, like TVA, something else accounted for the fault.

Morality Versus Legality

It was after considerable thinking that he began to detect a conflict in his own beliefs. He thought he had always believed that any man should be allowed to enjoy the fruits of his own labor; that he should be permitted to keep or use his product, or give it away, or exchange it for someone else’s product—in short, to dispose of it as he pleased. He had always held that for someone else to steal this product was evil. For instance, would it be right for the people in Tennessee who wanted more power and light, to steal property from a farmer in North Dakota to accomplish their end? Obviously not! But suppose the robbery were legalized—that is, suppose a majority of the voters directed the police force to take the property in order to carry out their object. Would the mere legality change the morality of it? Well, hardly.

Here were two areas where our self-confessed but recanting communist found opportunity to do some hard thinking. The first had to do with the rehabilitation of his own faith in what men could do acting voluntarily, cooperatively, and competitively. The second had to do with ethics and morality,[2] in short, with justice.

How NOT to Win Friends

Realizing for the first time that communism to attain social performance is bad because it is force, and that the same principle is equally bad by any other name, our “100 per cent American” developed a passion for the propagation of his newly found understanding. Ideas he had never before comprehended now seemed simple to him. And he became exasperated with those who remained as he had always been. Incessantly he pestered his friends, trying to shove his new-found ideas down their throats even before they understood them. Polite ones would give the appearance of listening, but he sensed that they were not conscious of what he was saying; that intellectually they were turning their backs on him. People began to think of him as a bore and a crank. His wife wondered why her invitations to dinner found more and more people with “other engagements.”

Something wasn’t quite right and, as after the banquet speech, he had the good sense to ponder, to take stock of himself. Where was he falling down? Surely, the truths he had discovered about freedom—the rejection of force in all creative areas—must be accepted by others, or his discoveries were useless. Force and slavery would triumph if he were the only one who understood the principles of liberty! The man in the street, the masses, had to know what he now knew! He was a crusader all right, but admittedly he wasn’t influencing anyone. Perhaps he was even making enemies for freedom’s cause.

The Nature of Influence

Influence! Maybe he had better do some thinking about the nature of influence. So he observed how his adversaries accomplished influence over others. They were effective for their purposes. Persons who make false promises and hold out witchcraft cures to people in trouble—whether the trouble be in arthritis or cancer or poverty—seem always to gain followers. One demented political leader had even caused millions of people to follow him by the use of a mere slogan: “Kill all the Jews!” Millions of little leaflets containing half-truths, downright lies, character assassination and defamation, and the communistic trick of enshrining mediocrity—these and other devices combined to sway vast numbers of the population to the idea of the herd, to the worship of the collective and scorn of the individual. Why could he not use their methods on behalf of his cause?

Two Kinds of Influence

Slowly but surely he discerned that influence is of two kinds: destructive and creative. He thought of the building in which he was sitting, how centuries of creative study in engineering, architecture, and construction had preceded its creation by man. And then he reflected on how any fool with sense enough to light a match could destroy the building in a few minutes. The destructive influence is as easy as standing at the top of an elevator shaft and letting oneself go; the creative influence as difficult and laborious as the rise of civilization itself—indeed, all creation is a part of the civilizing process.

From this kind of thinking emerged the conclusion that devices for destroying society are not only useless but actually dangerous for the creative task he had in mind, namely, the advancement of understanding—his own understanding.

How Are Teachers Selected?

How is understanding advanced? He resorted to an old standby—try it on one’s self. He simply asked how others had helped him to advance his own understanding. Who were his real teachers? Were they self-appointed or did he select them? Who had an influence on his beliefs? The answers to these questions were clear cut. Then, to clinch the matter, he posed this final question: “To whom do I turn when I seek perfection in any field, to someone who knows less than I, or to the person whom I regard as knowing more than I?” Again, the answer was clear.

The Student Designates His Teacher

There followed these logical deductions: The true student—the person in search of knowledge—designates his own teachers. One cannot change the beliefs of another. New evidence can, of course, be offered to those desiring to consider it. Their desires, however, will be determined by their confidence in the integrity and intelligence of those who offer the evidence. I have no means, whatever, he then reasoned, of assisting others to understand these matters except as I advance my own understanding beyond theirs, and give them valid reason to have confidence in my intellectual attainment and integrity.

At first blush this seemed to make the situation hopeless; it is so slow. How can socialism and communism ever be stopped in this slow and laborious manner, before it is too late? The tormenting thought entered his mind that maybe liberty was something quite new in the world, that, like Christianity, it had never been fully tried, and that perhaps there were many answers yet unknown to anyone.

You Can’t Shoot an Idea

Nonetheless, he wanted to stop this social disease. But how? Again, he referred to his own past experience as a guide for future actions. Had someone stopped him from believing in the use of force as a means to achieve social performance? The speaker at the banquet had stimulated him to study the matter and test his own beliefs—that was all. What actually, had happened to his former beliefs in the use of force? Had someone else destroyed these beliefs? They still persisted in the minds of others, and he wasn’t certain that he himself was yet wholly free from them. He found, when reflecting on his own experience, that an idea or a belief is never destroyed; it is merely accepted or rejected by a person, nothing more. In his own case he had rejected his beliefs in the inordinate use of force because he had accepted a new belief that took their place, a belief that society can be best served by the release of human energy—that is, by men acting voluntarily and freely. This acquisition was a process governed by his own person. No one else had any command of the process except as he considered someone else to be ahead of him in understanding, and could thus be chosen by him as his teacher.

Each Discovery Is Made by One Person

In his efforts to find a cure for this social cancer whereby force is used as a means to attain social performance, he considered the problem of physical cancer. No doctor today apparently knows the cure. How absurd it would be if all medical scientists, in panic over the devastations of the disease, suddenly quit their research and “took to the road to explain the evils of cancer” to everyone in America! Only the quacks would do this.

How necessary it is that the skilled men continue their search until some one or a few individuals find the answer. And only one need find it. Nor need the discovery itself be clearly understood by all men; it never is on any subject. How many, for instance, understand the science of hybrid corn, or the workings of penicillin, or how to make an automobile? Yet the benefits redound to vast numbers all over the earth.

Hosts to Socialism

What then of this cancerous belief in the use of force as a means to attain social performance? Who knows how to cure it? He had no convincing evidence of any such person. It is true that there were many pretenders for the honor. In fact, most of the people at the banquet had thought it was this simple: merely cast everyone else in one’s own intellectual image. But now he realized that all who believed this were, unknowingly, infected with the very beliefs that they allegedly were bent on destroying. To make everyone else similar to them would only serve to spread this belief in force for an ever greater number of purposes.

Negation is of Little Value

He had observed numerous techniques to rid the country of socialism, like attempts to expose the fallacy in some specific bit of legislated force—techniques like the repetition of slogans, the use of comic-strips, name-calling, and even dignified and scholarly efforts at negation—and had seen that they were no panacea for our ills. They served in some instances to set people to thinking, like the speaker at the banquet had set him to thinking. A few of them performed, in a limited way, somewhat of a trigger function. These techniques had about the same value as proving that the world can’t possibly be flat. Get that done and you must still prove that it isn’t a prism, a cube, a cylinder, a rhombus, a dodecahedron, or any other of the infinite possibilities that shape can take. Unless such proofs set men to thinking what is the shape of the world, they are valueless.

Affirmation Is Required

Similar, as to procedure in finding a cure, is this social cancer, he thought. If a person proves only that one form of coercion is antagonistic to the spirit of inquiry—the essence of the educational process—there still remains the endless task of proving that each of the manifold forms and combinations of coercion is antagonistic to any and all creative performances. These techniques are not enough. The problem requires affirmation more than negation. It can have but a positive solution: the rehabilitation of a belief that social performance, whether in medicine, electricity, housing, education, or any other creative activity, can be best attained by men acting in response to free will and volition. As this faith develops, the beliefs in the use of force, as a principle, are rejected, discarded, forgotten—by the individuals of the new-found faith. True, the negative approach (the world is not flat) can and often docs drive away the single fallacy under attack by causing a person to reject it. But this accomplishes little more than to create a vacuum into which the next plausibility (maybe, then, the world is a cube) naturally finds its place. Affirmation and proof of a right principle or a fact, on the other hand (the world is round) leaves no room for any of the numerous errors.

The Law of Probabilities

One of these days, perhaps, some one person may arrive at such a high stage of understanding as to what man can accomplish in voluntary action, and develop so skillfully his explanations of what he has learned, and convey impressively enough the deep meaning of his insight and its significance to others, that people may accept the conclusions and abide thereby. This thought gave him hope. And he knew enough about the law of probabilities to realize that if ten thousand or a million were striving for this attainment, then the chances of some one person finally achieving it were greater than if only he and a few others made the attempt. The social cancer threat warrants every person potentially able to understand the meaning of liberty to lend a band. An emergency exists! He saw in this line of thought the justification for making available his own findings to such others as could be interested in knowing about them voluntarily. He saw the need for all helping each other in a necessary intellectual levelling-up process. And, further, he realized that his role was to search for understanding himself. Otherwise, what right had he to expect or even hope that others would or could assist in this grave situation?

In Accord with Right Principle

He had found a new strength, a relief from the evident failure which had attended his early efforts to “save free enterprise” or, in speeches, to frighten others into an acceptance of his ideas. He recalled, before he had learned a proper golf swing, how he had used all of his weight and muscles, and the weakness he had felt against the little golf ball which defied his awkwardness and wouldn’t go the distances or conform to the directions he had in mind. Finally, he had learned to swing his club more in accord with a proper physical principle and, for the first time, he began to feet his power. Likewise, in this instance. He had now discovered that the way to understanding, the exploration of that which was unknown to him, correctness in action—in short, his part in the way to freedom—was through his own person.

Preparing for Truth

Of course the task was not then completed. He had merely discovered what seemed to him to be the right formula. The answer to the problem was a matter of infinite quest. Little did he yet know about the nature of man; about the differences between true charity and police grants—the degrading doles collected and distributed by the force of government. Even less did he know about life in accord with the principles of love whereby the potentialities of men—in spirit and in energy—can be released from authority, as contrasted with life in accord with the principles of violence whereby energy and spirit are inhibited and suppressed; about how responsibility and authority in all tasks find their proper relationships only among free men; about poverty and criminality having most of their origin in the misuse of organized force.

He had, for the first time, a realization that his weakness had been in his own mental stagnation. He began, now, to think of himself as a person having capacities for intellectual evolution. It was in this manner that he set himself at the feet of Truth and thus, self-humbled, knew what Goethe had meant when he said of nature: “The man incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” He had resigned himself in order that Truth might resign herself to him. In short, he had qualified as a student—as one ready to search for Truth.

Now, his course was clear. He was in search of ideas that were at once morally clean, intellectually honest, economically sound, and spiritually elevating. There must be, he reasoned, pre-conditions to this search, certain attitudes and values which, if lived by and attended to, would facilitate this quest. He began to list the ones he recognized, with the acknowledgment of his own limitations to do so and with an awareness that there would be revisions as his understanding advanced.

Ultimate Wisdom

First, one should possess a belief in an Ultimate Wisdom. An individual who has no such faith, beyond his present perceptions, cannot logically arrive at any other than an authoritarian conclusion. Lacking this faith he must believe in his own omniscience, or that of some fellow dictator whose slave he willingly becomes. Such self-centered persons naturally seek to force their “enlightenment” upon their fellowmen. Is it any wonder that heads of totalitarian regimes smear a faith in God as “an opiate of the people”? The philosophy of freedom and the acknowledgment of a mystery of life, expressed as a faith in God, are inextricable parts of the same thing.

Intellectual Integrity

Second, one must perfect his own intellectual integrity: the faithful and accurate reporting, by deed and by word, of that which one conceives to be right. No man can rise above his best judgment. But the quality of that judgment can improve. Thus, expressing one’s best judgment, without any adulteration whatever, is the best conduct one can offer; it assures the rule of truth as nearly as it can be attained by man. Without the practice of intellectual integrity, freedom’s cause cannot advance.

Humility

Third is the necessity for humility in its proper sense, that is, humility before Truth rather than servitude to a mortal master. It is that spirit of inquiry which, during infancy and adolescence, causes us to seek the knowledge of those judged to exceed us in understanding. This spirit is lost whenever one becomes self-satisfied with his excess of knowledge over his contemporaries, rather than humbled toward what is unknown. Learning must continue for humility to persist. The person who is learning comes into possession of knowledge today that he was unaware of yesterday, and yesterday he found out something he did not know the day before, and so on. By projecting this experience into the future, he can logically assume that tomorrow promises enlightenment on what today he does not know.

Truth can thus be discerned as an object of infinite pursuit; full understanding is seen to surpass the attainment of any person. Comprehension of these facts assures teachableness—that is, humility, a mark essential to the intellectual upgrading of man.

Love of Freedom

The fourth pre-condition is a desire for individuality—a love of freedom that is born of reason. Variety is an essential fact of nature. Each individual has a vested interest in this variation—in people being different. If every person were cast in the image of any one person, mankind would perish just as certainly as though all the elements were to take on the properties of chlorine. It is error to want all others to be like one’s self. Desire only that others leave one free to be one’s self, and wish them free to be themselves so that all may voluntarily join their differing aptitudes and abilities into that harmony which makes for progress. Such a desire is consistent with the interest—indeed, with the preservation—of all.

Responsibility for Self

Fifth is an awareness that the responsibility for one’s self is the most important possession of man. Whom the gods would destroy, they first make dependent. Free people are independent and inter-dependent, not dependent. All virtues grow from personal experience. If a person is relieved of the problems of life, that person is also relieved of individuality. Absolve men from the penalty of their errors, or remove the rewards for their excellence, and the world will be peopled with fools. There would remain only the desire for a shepherd, and resignation to being driven by his dogs—the attitude of the serf, but not of a free man.

Principles and Ideals

The sixth pre-condition is the determination to follow principles rather than expediencies, ideals rather than conveniences. Expediencies and conveniences which are in conflict with right principles and high ideals are but the solace of the blind or the dishonest. A right principle is timeless. An expediency, on the other hand, is an act in which a timeless principle is violated. An act of expediency is, therefore, wrong; there is no such thing as a short-term good deriving from a long-range evil. An act which bears an ill effect in the future, no matter how distant, is an evil act when it is committed. Our blindness to the losses may give the appearance of net gain from an evil act, but it is only a false appearance. The failure properly to weigh the time dimension in our calculations, signifies the inability to think correctly. The person who urges and receives a low rent by reason of government coercion may favorably regard the money he has “saved” to provide other comforts. He may think of this as his gain. But this act which robbed the owner of his property is a part of the same equation which will eventually result in no new housing. If no new housing is not a gain but a loss, so are the acts which caused it. Principles and ideals, to be discerned, require thinking in terms of time, consideration for those who follow as well as for those presently among us.[3]

Rejection of Force as a Creative Agent

Seventh is a rejection of the use of coercion as a means to achieve creative ends. Coercion must be understood for precisely what it is, a force that can restrain, restrict, suppress, destroy. It is not a creative agent. The true believer in human freedom is one who never resorts to coercive methods for creative purposes, be it in the field of medicine, education, housing, farming, electricity, or any other.

The true advocate of freedom knows that only men in voluntary effort can attain these ends short of a resort to legal robbery. And he knows that a nation of robbers will soon destroy itself, and can seemingly attain the appearances of progress only while there is something remaining to rob. To insist on attempting to do by force what men will not do in free action is itself authoritarian; it is the attempt to cast others in one’s own image; it is that weakness in man which lets him try to play God.

Advancement of Understanding

Eighth is a recognition that action on behalf of freedom stems only from its understanding, including an appreciation of the manner by which understanding is reached. Were it understood that coercion is repressive and not creative, there would not be, for example, such a political device as “social security.” Understanding comes through individual endeavor, not by the process of haranguing others. We have no way of forcing a change in the beliefs of others. We can only submit new evidence, new ideas, new facts, new arguments for their voluntary acceptance. Each person is the captain of his own beliefs.[4] It is the student who always designates his teachers. It is the person with the receiving set who always does the tuning in, not the broadcaster. To be tuned in, to be designated by someone else as his teacher—the only means to constructive influence—requires his confidence in one’s intelligence and integrity, an achievement exclusively of the individual.

Coinage to Stand Alone

The ninth pre-condition for the advancement of freedom is a willingness to be with a minority, no matter how small, when the tides of unreason are on the rampage, even to the extent of being a minority of one. If his actions and beliefs are discordant with majority behavior, it should give the accomplished friend of freedom no particular concern. He is concerned solely that his words and deeds be in strict accord with his own conscience and concept of truth. Anything less than this intellectual strictness amounts to a weakness that becomes grist for the collectivistic mill.

A Spirit of Inquiry

Tenth is the spirit of inquiry. Without a persistent, endless search for truth, liberty is left stranded and unguarded against collectivistic cliches and other barbaric assaults. Knowing how to live in liberty is purely a product of the intellect, and to that extent is difficult of preservation. Its protection exists in depth of understanding, freshness in explanation, qualities that only a persistent spirit of inquiry can assure. Against these high qualities of the mind and spirit, the theories and promises of life by force have no impact, none whatever.

Patience

Eleventh is patience. If one would make haste, let him first be certain he is not hurrying in the wrong direction. The demand for programs of speed on the grounds that “time is running out” more often than not prompts actions which preserve the very ideas we wish to replace. Time does not run out, for time is infinite. It is ourselves that run out, for we are finite. We run out of ideas and understanding and patience. And when in panic, if instead of restoring our own intellectual larders, we adopt the methods and tactics of our adversaries, we join their forces while thinking we are opposing them. If the achievement of individual liberty depends solely on an advancement in understanding the principles of liberty, then it follows that liberty cannot be ours to experience faster than understanding can be advanced. If, as individuals, we gain an understanding of liberty and lend every possible encouragement to others to do likewise,[5] there is little more that we can do in the way of speed, and we should realize this fact.

Stance

The twelfth pre-condition is ideological poise or stance, the ability to retain hope and high-quality effort in the face of steady streams of daily announcements of men everywhere in the world putting shackles on man, seemingly a certain disaster to human liberty. Required are at least two strictly personal accomplishments. The first is the riddance of emotional hang-overs to faits accomplis. Events which have taken place can serve no rational purpose beyond information, instruction, and perhaps inspiration from which to construct the future. Second is a recognition that our beliefs have no more place in the consciousness of others than others elect to give them. These attitudes, if thoroughly perfected, are resignations to reason. It is in resignations of this sort that one is freed from frustrations, and unburdened of needless troubles. It is only when we render unto God that which is God’s that we can conserve strength for the evolution of individuality, a problem He has left with us. In limiting ourselves to our own perfection we achieve greater understanding, qualify for such help as others may give to or expect of us, and thus shape events yet in the making. It is as important to know our limitations as it is to be aware of our potentialities.

Every Person Is Capable of Improvement

The preceding twelve conditions to an advance toward freedom, he noted, all had their origin in the virtue of individuals. And it seemed that they were easier for him to formulate than to practice in his new pattern for everyday life. Much of his experience, and nearly all environmental influences, were at war with these dictates of his reason. Yet, as in everything else at which man tries his hand, he saw that with determination and constant attempts he was making progress. He became certain, for the first time, that he was capable of evolution during his own lifetime.

Freedom Is Not Outside of Man

Others, observing these changes in their friend, and aware of the object of his new and all-pervading interest, began to make inquiry as to the outlook for freedom. Most of them were thinking of freedom as something separate and apart from themselves and others as individuals—as though freedom had a capacity, independent of man, of coming and going as do comets or sun spots, as though it were beyond their own wills and conduct, as though it were a thing granted by the gods whose capriciousness their friend could discern and predict.

Outlook for Freedom

He replied, in effect, that there was now as much chance of achieving freedom as at any time in the history of the world. He emphasized this view by asking a simple question: “Have not you and others as much capacity for understanding as those who came before you?” He would then go on to explain what he had found in his own search for truth: that freedom is the virtue of a person; that this virtue consists of beliefs and actions consistent therewith; that the belief in the use of force to achieve social performance negates freedom, it being but a belief in the “goodness” of badness; that for man to be fully free he must first appreciate that others, as well as himself, are responsible and self-controlling and that they are, therefore, quite properly beyond his dictation, beyond the possibility of being cast in his image against their understanding and will; that there can be freedom only if there is as firm a belief in the capacity and right of others to act freely and rightly as the belief in one’s self to act freely and rightly; that it is only when these beliefs are mastered, firmly held and lived by, that one can have any salutary influence in releasing man’s spirit and energy.

He went on to explain the error found in this common contention: We must choose between freedom and security. He said that slavery, not security, is the alternative to freedom; that slavery provides only a security against living one’s own life; that the opportunity to complete one’s self, to finish out one’s own creation, is what he and most other people really want; that the security which results from such opportunity is the only security consistent with the purpose, aspiration, and dignity of man.

Quality Comes First

It is interesting to observe what happened. This devoted friend of freedom had given up the mass-production concept of educating “the man in the street,” of setting straight “the millions who have votes.” He had concluded that these others were not some vast impersonal collective that could be made to follow him in his designs. These others were persons, not too unlike himself. They had will and self-determination. They decided for themselves, the same as he, what they would think. From these observations he deduced that the freedom problem has to be approached qualitatively and not quantitatively. As for himself, he turned to the sole origin of quality to which he had access: his individual self, realizing that his only route to truth was through his own person. By this seemingly selfish approach more and more people sought his counsel because it was to their profit to do so. This demonstrated to his satisfaction the only manner of coping with the quantitative problem. “Chance comes to those who have prepared themselves for it.”

What Would Christ Do?

That he found the pursuit of his own perfection a task big enough for his intellect and energies was, as he confessed, the supreme understatement. Always, he was mindful of the enormity of his undertaking. Quite often, when in a dilemma, he would ask himself: “What would Christ do in this situation?” Once, when recommending this procedure to a friend who was in a quandary, he got back this unexpected question: “Well, what would He do?” On reflection he had to acknowledge that he did not know. Then it dawned on him that such a question had value only if asked of himself; that when this was done it called up from within himself that answer personally believed to be right—absolutely right, without any qualification whatsoever.

He concluded that if he would search for the right and concede nothing to the wrong, and act accordingly, then truth would have the best chance of comprehension by him. But he conceded that one more ingredient was needed: faith—faith that honest and diligent inquiry will be rewarded with revealed truth, and that if he made gains in learning the truth, the truth thus gained would serve to set him and others free.

Only the Right Is Practical

There were those who, when contemplating his line of reasoning, contended that it was right but that it was impractical. He gave no more acknowledgment to these contentions than personally to regard them as contradictions in terms. They amounted to nothing more than contending that an evil is practical. He, on the other hand, held to the view that the philosophy of freedom—that is, the freeing of human energy and the human spirit—is practical because it is right, and for no other reason.

[1] Abstract thinking is the act of projecting thought beyond one’s own experience. Without it there could be no progress, only an eternal repetition of the past.

[2] Sound moral principles, it is conceded, are based on social utility. “Thou shall not steal” is not useful merely because it is a Commandment. It is a Commandment because it is useful, because it is in accord with sound principles.

[3] The clergyman who said. “It is good to be well-born” expressed a time-dimension thought. This can be explained by an appropriate paraphrasing of the Golden Rule: “Do unto your progeny what you would have had your ancestors do unto you.”

[4] “No man believes or can believe except by his own effort; for no man can reason except with his own thoughts, or be convinced except by his own logic.”—Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, On National Education in the U.S., 1800.

[5] The phrase “lend every possible encouragement to others to understand liberty” covers an enormous field of activity. It requires a detailed treatment not suitable to this piece. But this should be said: All such activities by those who reject the use of force in creative affairs must be absolutely voluntary, devoid of pressure of any kind, be it economic, social, political, or otherwise.

Government—

An Ideal Concept

Leonard E. Read

1954

INTRODUCTION

Tracts and treatises about the nature of government are ever so many. Philosophers of all ages reflected on the system of social control which invests in some individuals the right to make laws and the right to enforce them. Some classified government by the number of individuals who hold the power of control: by one man, by a few, or by a majority. Others systematize government according to the distribution of power at different levels, distinguishing between unitary government (with the central government controlling many affairs) and federated or confederated government (with various degrees of autonomy of local government). Others yet distinguished between types of government according to the degree of control exercised by the men in power. Contemporary observers usually distinguish between the performance of functions such as the traditional ones of providing security, order, and justice, and those of the modern welfare state which seizes and distributes income and wealth, regulates the economy, and manages various services from education to health care.

To Leonard Read, government was neither a manager of economic activity nor an almoner of gifts to the people, but a necessary instrument of social order. Its only basis is justice, not pity. Government is represented by agents who are expected to enforce and defend man’s natural rights and protect him against wrongs of his fellowmen. But these agents should not do what the individual must not do. In Leonard’s words, “What I must not do, the government must not do.”

The agents of government should be men and women of integrity. Unfortunately, Read observed, political office tends to rob a person of modesty, humility, and integrity, which make it advisable never to accept a political office. “Office robs men of integrity because they get to thinking that their being in office is more important than integrity. There isn’t anything in life superior to integrity. It is the rock of character on which all else is erected.”

If political office tends to rob men of integrity, contact with the affairs of government must logically be one of the most corrupting of influences to which men are exposed. Contact with the welfare state in any form whether corporate, professional, or public, must be especially debasing. It breeds corruption and vice, creates irrepressible social conflict and class warfare, depresses economic activity, and impoverishes all but officeholders. In the end, a society thus torn by conflict and strife either will muster the strength for a new beginning in freedom and justice or sink into the abyss of civil war or a reign of terror.

Leonard Read’s eloquent discussion of the nature of government and a new beginning in freedom will endure as a principled work of great value to readers seriously interested in the limits of public regimen and the cause of liberty.

Hans F. Sennholz

To

W. C. M.

FOREWORD

This essay assumes, but does not document, that all is not well in these United States. The documentation is omitted because it would be a duplication of many studies already published by this Foundation.

The assumption which has motivated this thesis is that, generally speaking, we are experiencing a moral decline. Failure in this direction presages trouble of every kind, for only a people possessing a set of fairly high moral values can prosper for long—spiritually, intellectually, or materially.

In spite of our materialistic emphasis and the popular claim that “We have never had it so good,” there is evidence aplenty that we are, short of a change in our ways, slated for materialistic or economic difficulties. Further, what assertion is more in error than “We in America have solved the problem of production”? Persons who say this—their number is large and impressive—may very well not know what the productive process consists of. For the most part, they prove their lack of understanding by advocating measures which inhibit the productive process. All of this essay supports this point.

“Government—An Ideal Concept” is written neither for the elite nor for the masses. It is, instead, an attempt to clarify my own personal thinking.

Why, then, is it offered to others? Because of this belief: If one were confined to a wheel chair stationed by a swimming pool and observed a child drowning unnoticed by any of the other nearby adults, there would be a moral obligation to announce the impending disaster. Not to do so would be as immoral as though the person himself had shoved the child into the pool. Similarly in society. If one observes something going on which appears to be destructive, there is a moral duty to proclaim the observation. Failure to do so is as immoral as though the person himself had participated in the destructive action.

There can be added what is at once a selfish and a metaphysical justification for passing on to others what one thinks he understands. Insight, cognition, revelation—call it what you will—is denied to those who withhold what they receive. If one is to gain in thought and consciousness, a precondition is the communication of that which has been revealed.

Having said this much, it is reasonable to assert that one’s obligation to others goes no further. Do the best with one’s own thinking that one can and make it available! Impose it on others, never! One person has as much right as another to regard his own insight as valid.

Why set forth theories so greatly at odds with current thinking? What chance have they, even though they be correct, of immediate adoption? Herbert Spencer suggested the limit of what one can do and of what one can expect:

It is for each to utter that which he sincerely believes to be true; and, adding his unit of influence to all other units, leave the results to work themselves out.

Mr. Spencer might have concluded his statement as George Washington ended a similar theme: “The event is in the hand of God.” How much better the world would be were each of us to do his best and let it go at that, as contrasted with doing his worst by aggressively imposing himself and his ways on others!

Forecasting in areas where imponderable and little understood forces are at play is a hazardous business. Conceivably, however, an ideal theory of government, at this moment in history, may be utterly impossible of adoption. If this be true, it certainly rests in part on the fact that too many people have, for the time being, adapted themselves to governmental interventionism, to a way of life founded on downright viciousness.

Our real hope rests on the working of human forces far more profound and powerful than current adaptations to viciousness. Our real hope rests on (1) the general evolutionary tendency to grow, (2) the will to be free, freedom being the basic condition to any growth, (3) the striving for justice and truth, (4) the love of righteousness, and (5) a reaching for the ideal.

Thinking in terms of the ideal is the first step to moving toward the ideal. The accurate expression to others of one’s concept of the ideal is the second step. Not accurately to reflect what one believes to be truth is but another way of making one unworthy of its revelation.

The needed renaissance of this century consists of numerous individuals searching for the ideal and expressing their findings, unattentive to current applause or to popular condemnation. It would be the most practical movement that could possibly be gotten under way. The only way to aid a movement is to move to its aid.

L.E.R.

PART I

The Concept Defined

Government is said to be a necessary evil. The saying appears to be without merit. For can anything be at once necessary and evil? True, all governments have had a history of evil-doing, more or less. However, it does not follow from this experience that their good is indistinguishable from their evil. Governments—assuming a proper limitation of their activities—are necessary and not evil. Their evil begins when they step out of bounds. The only necessity is that their evil actions be discontinued. Such an achievement is unlikely until the principles prescribing the boundary lines are searched for and found.

In a sense, this essay is a defense of government—not of government as it exists any place in the world, but of government as one person conceives it ideally. It isn’t often that a person deeply concerned with the overextension of government will come to the defense of government in any form. Yet, there is a reason for approaching the subject positively: It is to make the case for limiting the scope of the political establishment.

Why not confine oneself to paring government down to its proper function instead of trying to portray an ideal government? There are two reasons. Foremost is a sobering fact: Government simply cannot be pared down enough in the absence of an understanding of why it should exist in the first place! There isn’t any background on which to work. It is as useless as fighting phantoms.

The Positive Approach

No apt analogy of this predicament seems to suggest itself, for in few instances among human institutions is the real justification for existence so vague, so hidden in error, so shrouded in legal mischief, so little understood as is the case for government. If the reasons for the existence of the church as an institution had never been any better comprehended than is the true purpose of government today, how futile would have been Sarpi’s enterprise three and one-half centuries ago in separating the state from the church![1] Had the purpose of the church not been recognized, Sarpi would have had to begin his project by showing why there should be a church. Sarpi, the Venetian priest, was more fortunate in his historic undertaking than are those of us who would limit government. We are confronted with the task of demonstrating over and over again why government should exist, in order to point out why and on what basis it should be limited.

Anarchy Is Untenable

There is a second reason, and a good one, for a libertarian, even in these days of bloated statism, to defend a legal organization by society. The reason has to do with the ineffectiveness of one’s anti-statist allies. For it is an observed fact that numerous students of liberty, particularly those who become extremely devoted to their cause, falsely reason right past properly limited government to the abolition of all formal government—as though limited government were nothing more than a convenient compromise for ideological weak-hearts who have no stomach for the whole truth. In short, some students of liberty arrive at philosophical anarchy and, in so doing, may well lose their effectiveness as libertarians. If this loss in effectiveness were the price of being right, then no just person could complain. But some of us, at least, hold that the loss is for the sake of a position that is untenable.

It will be the contention of this essay that the principles which point to the proper limitation of government are the very same principles which justify government; that for one not to understand the latter is for one not clearly to see the former. It would follow, then, that effective argument for limiting government must rest on knowing why government should be instituted.

An Inaccurate Term

There are, though, reasons for regretting that we in America ever adopted the word “government.” We borrowed an old-world term with all its connotations of “to govern,” “to rule,” in an overriding sense. Government with the aim of directing, controlling, steering is not what we really intended. We didn’t mean that our agency of common defense should “govern” us any more than we intend the factory guard to be the company’s general manager.

Actually, in spite of the original intent, government in the old-world sense is what we now have. Our federal agency and many of the state, district, and community agencies have far exceeded the bounds of protecting the life and property of all citizens equally, and invoking a common justice under law. They do far more than merely suppress and penalize fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predatory practices. Today our federal agency and many of the others are the citizens’ general managers—and autocratic ones at that![2]

It is not government as general manager of America’s citizenry that is here defended. Rather, the aim is to present and defend an agency of limited scope, not unlike what the Founding Fathers originally intended—except for the slavery and tariff features, they being infractions or compromises of the original intentions.

No Ideal Theory

As an introduction to this subject, my personal belief is that our original concepts about government grew out of a desire to protect ourselves from observed political evils rather than from the dictates of any well-defined theory. It is an oversimplification to put it this way, but it is my belief that our Founding Fathers had observed in the Old World that those governments which were the biggest and the most inclusive in their scope were the most tyrannical. They concluded from these observations that “That government is best which governs least.” In any event, is there in the recordings of the Constitutional Convention, or in other papers and books of the time, a principled, spelled-out, ideal theory of government or liberty?[3] One reasonable proof that no such theory exists is the fact that we never see it called into play today by those who are concerned about government’s being out of hand.

Two Defenses

An ideal theory of government and liberty is important. The lack of such a theory is disastrous. In the case of our own country, it is proving disastrous. As long as there were alive those who had learned from experience about tyrannical government, we in the United States were successful in keeping government limited. Succeeding generations were more and more remote to that experience. There came a time, perhaps around the turn of this century, when all connection with the experience was lost. Lacking an ideal theory, we had nothing anchoring us to limitation. Experience was lost. No theory existed. Today there is no more limitation on government than that which political expediency dictates. The advocates of nonlimited government are at work.

We have only two possible defenses against their advances. One is to let them succeed and for us, the people, to become experienced again. In time we will revolt against tyranny as we did before. But generations, perhaps centuries, are involved. The other defense is to frame an ideal philosophy of limitation. There is no short cut except the spelling-out and acceptance of a theory of government which is consistent with liberty. If it is right that society should evolve a formal organization to protect its members, and if it is right that the scope of this organization should be limited, there is, if we will but find it, a theory on which proper limitation can be imposed and maintained.

It is difficult to see how anything can reverse the present trend toward all-out statism except a properly prepared and presented theory of government and liberty. That this essay presents the ideal theory adequately is not claimed. But perhaps these views as to the requirements of such a theory will stimulate others to try their hands; and, if so, this argument will have served its purpose. Like it or not, we are now at the mercy of our own reasoning. Empiricism—trial and error—cannot serve us in the way it did our forefathers.

Examining The Basis For Government

Government would not exist, nor would there be any reason for its existence, if men did not have problems with one another. Therefore, to determine why we should have government and to find out how much of it we should have, we must first form judgments on (a) what aspects of man are social, (b) what aspects are individual, and then (c) by analyzing the nature of organized force (the distinctive feature of government) decide on the extent to which force should be employed in man’s relationship with man.

There can be no denying the assertion that man is a social as well as an individualistic being. Both the social and the individual aspects of our own lives are emphasized to us daily. These emphases are presented so numerously and in so many forms—indeed, so confusingly—that it is with difficulty we can tell one from the other. Some folks are so impressed with the social emphases that they see nothing individualistic about man, and others are so impressed with the individualistic emphases that they see nothing social about man. The former are likely to conclude as socialists; the latter, as anarchists—both being types of authoritarianism.

Man cannot live alone. This is meant, not as a figurative, but as a literal expression. Remove from any one of us all the rest of mankind, past and present, and no one of us could exist. We are an interdependent breed of creation. The writer of this essay, for instance, does not know how to raise the food he eats, to build the home in which he lives, to make the car he drives, to create the opportunities that are constantly presented to him, to write most of the books he reads, to get from the earth the gas that keeps him warm. Relative to the advantages that are his, he knows next to nothing. Alone he is impotent to the point of nonexistence. The same thing can reasonably be said about others.

Each Is Different

The individual does not exist as an isolated person or, at the very least, as the person he is, except by virtue of his cultural and social heritage. Deprived of the cumulative knowledge and experience of the race, man would be but another variety of curious animal—if indeed he would have being! This accumulation of knowledge, habit, custom, convention, tradition is man’s inherited energy, his natural environment—it is there for the individual to avail himself of it.

Yet society is an abstraction. It is but a handy generalization. Only individuals count. Each individual is vastly different from all others.[4] No two think alike, have the same aptitudes and skills, see alike, hear alike, have the same tastes or the same energies.

It is these variations among us and the exchange of our variable talents—be they manifested in goods, services, ideas, insight, knowledge—which account for our being alive. If, for example, everyone else were identical to any single person, all mankind would perish. No one could live, any more than that person could live alone. No one could have any more than he knows how to create. On that, neither he nor the rest of us could live.

Some will argue that if others were not performing the services and making the goods this person requires to live, he would be doing these things for himself. True, each of us has some elasticity in this respect, and in some of us it is quite great; but, by and large, the 160,000,000 American people exist in their present relatively advanced state by reason of their variable talents and the unprecedented exchange thereof.

Results Of Inhibitions

The above claim—highly relevant to this thesis—needs some explanation. Observe, for example, the Mayan Indians at Todos Santos or at Chichicastanango, or aborigines elsewhere, and note the few, if any, who evolve toward those aptitudes peculiar to each.[5] By reason of inhibitory influences, they remain for their lifetimes in primitive, similar activity. Rarely does one of them break from this tradition and become a musician, a painter, an engineer, a surgeon, an architect, a builder. Or, reflect on the American Indians who had another low form of cooperant society—a foraging economy. The whole area of these 48 states never supported more than a million of them.[6] As has been since proven, the limit of the population and its standard of living were in no way due to any lack of natural resources. Nor were these conditions caused by the absence of fertile soils and friendly climates, or by the Indians’ inability to breed. Limits to population and the standard of living were due to inhibitory influences which prevented the potential variability in each Indian from manifesting itself. And without any marked variation, there was no marked exchange. Without variation and exchange, there could be no substantial quantitative growth; nor could there be qualitative growth—material, spiritual, intellectual. Stability in the sense of fixedness follows the absence of variation and exchange.

Our Dependence On Interdependence

Inhibitory influences, broadly speaking, are of two types. There are the sociological influences, the kind man imposes on other men. There are the psychological influences, the kind man imposes on himself or, more accurately, from which he fails to free himself. These latter are traditional pulls—man not shaking off his more primitive background—superstitions, fears, rationalizations of laziness, taboos, and so on. For instance, the religion of many aborigines teaches that good or bad crops, ill or good health, hang on the caprice of so-called gods such as high mountain tops; that getting along in life is not a responsibility of self but rather depends on making supplications to the numerous idols.

Consider what has happened in our own homeland. If we were to collapse time into manageable proportions, reducing the life of this planet from its three to five billion years to one year, we would observe in the last two seconds 160,000,000 people living in relative luxury where less than 1,000,000 had lived before—if indeed we would, today, refer to it as living.

To summarize this phase of the argument: There are at least 159,000,000 of us in this country who exist by reason of a phenomenon that has taken place in these last two seconds! The chances are at least 159 to 1 that any one of us is in existence, is experiencing life, by reason of this phenomenon; that only 1 out of every 160 could endure the near self-containment of a foraging economy. This is another way of saying that more than 99 1/2 per cent of us are the offspring of a division-of-labor and exchange society, are dependent upon it, and have a vested interest as profound as life itself in its continuance and perfection. It is also another way of saying that most of us are a highly interdependent type of being and are dependent on the smooth working of the interdependence processes.

Interdependence Is Good

This condition of interdependence is something of which to be proud, rather than something to be deplored. It is a mark of progress. It is a forward step in the infinite evolutionary process, for man’s purpose on earth is to come as near as possible in his lifetime to the attainment of those creative aptitudes peculiarly his own. Going in this direction, the principle which guides variability will cause each man to become progressively different from other men. More and more will each refine his own unique capacities.[7] And more and more will each of us need to rely on the products of the energies of other unique individuals. Progress in specialization requires one important warning. It is that we specialists not lose our perspective; that we not lose sight of the forest for the trees; that we not become so immersed in our specialties that we become blind to the process on which our specialization depends. Education in the humanities must go hand in hand with our specialized education.

Energy And The Exchange Problem

The problem posed by an advanced division-of-labor society is one of energy exchanges. Human energy is one of the numberless forms of radiant energy, seemingly electrical in origin. The late Robert A. Millikan, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his measurement of the electrical charge of the electron, has this to say:

“All light or other short wave-length radiations are caused by changes in positions of electrons within atoms. All atoms are built up out of definite numbers of positive and negative electrons. All chemical forces are due to the attractions of positive for negative electrons. All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons. In a word, matter itself is electrical in origin.”[8]

The late Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, biochemist, most helpfully puts scientific theories about radiant energy into lay language (italics supplied):

“Constant change is a characteristic of the living organism and all physiological phenomena are energy exchanges.”[9]

“Every substance is a system of molecules in motion and every molecule is a system of oscillating atoms and every atom is a system of positive and negative electricity.”[10]

“Molecules are possessed of kinetic energy, that is, the energy of motion.”[11]

“The atoms, the ultimate constituents of matter, are systems of positive and negative electricity. Electricity is a form of radiant energy and atoms may be described in terms of energy.”[12]

“Of all living creatures, man alone has learned to free energy by conscious efforts. Machines, explosives, the utilization of water and wind to create power, all these are examples of man’s conscious utilization of potential energy. The food man ingests is derived from the stores of energy built by plant and animal. He utilizes this energy in the maintenance of his body, in work and in play and in the processes of intelligence and creative activity. It is by these latter processes that he may transform energy to a higher level, so to speak, and thereby may partake in creative evolution.”[13]

“. . . the individual organism is but a device for the building up of radiant energy into its higher forms as manifested in thought and consciousness. It is a product of the universal energy and yet a means for its further evolution.”[14]

Human Energy Is Diverse

Human energy, obviously, has its earthly configuration only in individuals. Human energy manifests itself qualitatively and quantitatively, psychologically and physiologically, and in numberless forms: thought, consciousness, memory, cognition, ability, physical strength, moral courage, spiritual insight—or, in the workaday world, in the kind it takes to run a typewriter, to acquire know-how, to bake bread, to drive a truck, to grow wheat, to be a catalytic agent in cooperative effort, ad infinitum.[15]

The reader may get the idea that the above is a deviation from this thesis on government. Quite the contrary! It is but the preface to the idea that an ideal theory of government and liberty is to be derived from the necessity for the free, uninhibited flow of all creative human energy.

Required, however, is more reflection on the nature of energy. There is potential energy and kinetic energy. A dammed-up pool of water is an example of potential energy. If the obstacle or inhibitory influence, the dam, is removed, the water will flow—the flowing water being an example of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is energy in motion. It is potential energy gone to work. In the case of hydraulics, there is a natural law, the law of gravitation, which attends to potential energy’s becoming kinetic energy once obstacles are removed.

Kinetic Energy

Each individual has numerous types of potential energy—for instance, it may be the type it takes to fashion sand into wearing apparel or the type it takes to hybridize corn. Assume only two Eskimos and only two goods, clothing and food. One can fabricate only clothing; the other can raise only food. If there are no inhibitory influences standing in the way, the potential energy of each which manifested itself as kinetic energy in the making of clothes and in the raising of food will continue as kinetic, productive, creative energy. They will exchange. The natural law attending to this is the will to live. If they do not permit their energies to flow, to remain fluid, to continue as kinetic energy, both will die. One will starve. The other will freeze.

Energy In Motion

It is of the utmost importance to realize that production in its broader and really significant sense—productive activity—is energy in motion, that is, it is energy in constant movement and complex exchange. Thinking of productive activity as taking place only up to the point of an automobile coming off the assembly line is as erroneous as thinking of exchange as taking place only when the automobile is sold for cash. The incontestable statement appearing later in this essay that no man on earth knows how to make an automobile is proof in itself that the manufacturing phase is a series of human energy exchanges. Indeed, these exchanges during manufacture are so complex and numerous that they cannot be comprehended by the mind of man. To stop these energy exchanges at any point, before or after manufacture, is to stop productive activity. Imagine, if possible, the absolute cessation of all trading in the American market. All prior exchanges, such as those involved in manufacturing, would also cease. Unless the moral, political, and business leaders among a people grasp the significance of energy exchanges flowing through space and time, it cannot be correctly claimed that the problem of production is either understood or solved.[16]

We are living in a world of 2,500,000,000 people. The potential energy of this population is of unimaginable proportions. Aptitudes and skills of people differ—some slightly at variance as in the case of aborigines, others vastly at variance as in the case of more advanced societies.

Remove Inhibitory Influences

The life and the progress of life—whether of the 160,000,000 in the United States or of the 2,500,000,000 in the world—depend on these static or potential energies becoming kinetic, useful, moving, flowing, dynamic energies. The total potential energies will tend toward becoming kinetic energies with the removal of inhibitory influences. Little else but the removal of inhibitory influences is required. The almost unanimous will to live, and perhaps other even more profound forces which we do not at all understand, will attend to potential energies becoming kinetic. We need only to be observant to appreciate the wonders these natural forces produce and to see that their results are as incredible as the phenomena of our own bodies, governed not by conscious directions but by forces which transcend present consciousness—our miraculous autonomic nervous systems, for instance. We need to learn, mostly, how not to injure or inhibit our endowed or natural or God-given creativity. Let this point be re-emphasized: These energy phenomena, whether of the body (heart pulsations, breathing, 180,000,000 new red blood cells per minute, and so on) or of society (interpersonal exchanges of goods, services, ideas, insights) cannot be bettered by any human dictatorial system. Experience seems to teach that man’s effort in this respect should be confined to increasing personal thought and consciousness and to guarding against everything which would hamper energy exchanges; otherwise, leave these phenomenal, miraculous processes alone! Their creative detail cannot, at this stage of evolution, be understood by man; and by no means can this detail be constructively managed by man. Personally we can behave—and societally we can organize—in ways harmonious to these natural currents of creative human energy. Man cannot, without loss, take over or control them.

Unless one is aware of our dependence—yes, our existence—on flowing energy, this theory about ideal government and its relationship to liberty may not be grasped. Therefore, let’s try to dramatize the point by several generalized examples in which human energy is assumed to, and unquestionably does, behave in ways not unlike electrical energy.[17]

Absence Of Energy

First, imagine 160,000,000 dead persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy. No energy would be put into the conduit by the dead persons. None could, therefore, be withdrawn.

Second, imagine 160,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with every one of them having a type of energy precisely like your own. Nothing but your type of energy could go into the conduit. Nothing but your type of energy could be withdrawn. There would be no variation. All would perish, as you would perish were you alone in the world.[18]

Third, imagine 160,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with the variation of their energies being no greater and no more perfected than the energies of the American Indians. Only the low energies incidental to a foraging economy would go into the conduit. Only the energies that went in could be withdrawn. All but one million of the total population would perish, for the same reason that the American Indians numbered no more than 1,000,000.

Flowing Energy

Fourth, imagine 160,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, having precisely the great variance of energies that the population of America has today. Imagine all of their many energies freely flowing into the conduit and any American being able to withdraw any of the input energies according to his own choosing, based on an equitable and voluntary exchange of his own energy. In such an arrangement, for example, the highly specialized type of energy required to compute mathematical formulas for releasing the power of the atom could be exchanged for the types of energy required to build houses, provide food, write books, make autos, furnish heat, and so on. In short, were all energies permitted to flow freely, any individual in this vast population would have readily available for exchange any one or more of millions of types of energy.

Diverted Energy

Fifth, imagine 160,000,000 live persons, as above, but with an effective control to keep everyone’s energy from going into the conduit. All would perish as if each were alone for, indeed, each would be alone, absolutely alone! There could be no exchange, nothing but one’s own energy.

Sixth, imagine 160,000,000 live persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy, but with 40,000,000 of them organized for parasitical purposes, using aggressive force or threats of aggressive force to draw off energy in the amount of their demands as distinguished from value-for-value exchanges.[19] To the extent that they succeeded in drawing off more energy than could be obtained by willing exchange, to that extent would the other 120,000,000 be compelled to accept less in exchange for their energies, that is, these others would have less livelihood by reason of the organized leeching.

As a final example, let us imagine 160,000,000 persons arranged in a huge circle. There is no master conduit equally available to everyone. Instead, there is one person standing in the center with all the individual conduits from the whole multitude attached to this single person. All energies must be directed to this person. Only he can dispense that which he has received. Here we have the dictator arrangement, applied totally. There would be, so to speak, 159,999,999 volts that could find passage only through a conduit of one-volt capacity. All of the 160,000,000, including the person in the center, would perish. Parenthetically, there are no political instances of 100 per cent dictatorship. Even in Russia the principle of authoritarianism is but little applied. There are vast leakages of free, human energy. Were there no free, human energy, all Russians would perish.[20]

Life Demands Differences

It can be deduced from the foregoing that no person, logically, should wish others to be like himself. Each individual has a vested interest in all others being different; in their variability; and in the excellence, the advancement, and the success of their creative specializations. Each person, like all others, is so specialized himself that his life depends on this variability, specialization, and exchange.

In energy types and in exchange requirements, we are all dissimilar. However, we have one common similarity, and one common necessity if we are to live and progress. It is that prohibitions against, or restrictions upon, the release and exchange of our creative energies be at the lowest minimum possible; that man not keep men from developing their variabilities and from exchanging the product thereof. Again, this removal of inhibitory influences—the kind imposed by man on men—serves to benefit all of us in common.[21]

Personal Inhibitions

Inhibitory influences of the psychological kind—one’s ignorance, fears, superstitions—are personal and not social, are one’s own and not society’s, are between oneself and one’s God and not between oneself and other men. This is true even of those situations where one man yields to the persuasions of another and consents to be the other’s pliant tool. The man who submits, if he does so willingly, has created a problem located only where he can get at it—in his own will.

Other men may regret another’s plight, may rue another’s lack of attainment and culture. But each person is faced with the problem of his own creative emergence, progress, development. This is the individualistic side of the problem. The individual is the only one who can attend to the degree and the perfection of his own variability. Others cannot, in a creative sense, do anything to him. If they would help, they must limit themselves to what they can do for him. For him, they can do little beyond attending to their own emergence—materially, intellectually, spiritually.[22] They can, by precept and example, set a standard to which he can repair. They can have goods and services to exchange, or knowledge and insight to offer. But whether or not he takes advantage of their offerings is a matter for his own election. No one else can decide. The creative side of man has to do with the individualistic aspect of man and must be so treated if damage by man to man is to be avoided.

Unwilling Exchange

Man, however, does not in every instance confine himself to his creative emergence, to getting ahead by his own competence and superiority. Failing in self-improvement and not satisfied with what he can obtain in willing exchange, he will, on numerous occasions, resort to unwilling exchange. He will draw energy from the kinetic conduit without exchanging an equivalent of his own energy. He will tap the power line, so to speak. All unwilling exchanges are examples of this: the thief who “exchanges” your horse for his own low-grade satisfaction, or the voters who legally take other people’s income to augment their own.

Variability and its perfection—that is, the creation of the infinite kinds of human energy—originate with individuals. While each individual in his own upgrading draws on other persons, present and past, as well as on his own gift of insight, this process of individual upgrading classifies as voluntary and cooperative. It builds only upon free will and volition. It is the inspired experience of the inner self. While each of us has a personal stake in everybody else’s upgrading, the upgrading is not, by virtue of this unanimity of concern, a social problem. It is not a social problem for two reasons: First, it cannot be dealt with through social instruments. Second, the emergence of creative energy is a personal matter, inhering in individuals as they act personally and as they choose to act with other individuals.

Society’s Problem

An attempt has been made in the above paragraph to establish the point that the potential energy of each variable individual is a personal and not a social problem. Earlier it was suggested that these infinite variations of potential human energy will translate into kinetic energy if uninhibited—that is, willing exchange will naturally take place if unobstructed, the will to live attending to this. It is now appropriate to discuss the obstructions or inhibitory influences, the actions of man which impair the source of creative energy and stifle its exchange, and also the actions which are parasitic on the flowing energy.

These last-mentioned actions present the social problem, the only social problem there is. All else is in the realm of the creative, the individualistic. Coping with the obstructions to the creation and flow of human energy and the siphoning off of the flowing energy without value for value is a social problem because:

1. These inhibitory actions inflict penalties on all human beings, presenting an in-common defense problem.

2. They cannot properly be dealt with personally.

3. They can be dealt with, in justice, only by social control.

All Are Related

The first point requires little in the way of appreciation except an awareness that variable human energy, to be useful to mankind, has to be dynamic, kinetic, flowing—as indeed does any other kind of energy—and an understanding that in a free market there is no person too remote to one’s self to be unrelated. Recently, I observed a disheveled old lady hanging around a Central American wharf. “How possibly could she be related to me?” thought I. Imagination supplied an answer: Perhaps she gathers the kelp that wraps the fish that feeds the hombre who loads the bananas which provide the dessert for the woman who cares for the man who runs the nursery that supplies the spruce from which the pulp is made for the manufacture of the cleansing tissue that takes the place of the less sanitary and more costly handkerchiefs we have been using. Who else wants to harvest kelp to wrap that banana-loading hombre’s fish? In the free market, every creative act, regardless of how lowly, is related to the kinetic conduit—is capable of giving energy to it and of taking other types of energy from it. An obstruction of any creative energy exchange, regardless of how minute it may be, inflicts a penalty against the potential wealth—material, intellectual, or spiritual—of all other persons. It is a penalty inflicted in common.

Not A Personal Problem

The second point is that these inhibitory influences against energy exchanges cannot properly be dealt with by each individual for himself. Generally speaking, these inhibitory influences are fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predatory practices. All are immoral, be they done legally or illegally. The problem here is to remove inhibitory actions. This can be accomplished by restraining aggressive force or by penalizing those persons who indulge in it. This is not an appropriate undertaking for each individual to do for himself, and for the following reasons:

1. It would be wholly impractical. No individual could possibly police the numberless instances of aggressive force—among tens of millions of people—harmful to him and to others, actions he would have no way of knowing about and practiced by persons most of whom would be beyond his acquaintance.

2. If every person were to be a law unto himself, we would have no less than 160,000,000 governments in America—the “law” of each varying daily with individual caprice.

3. No individual has the moral right to use aggressive force against any other individual. He has the moral right to use only defensive or repellent force. This is a distinction too subtle for noncodification.[23]

4. The offenders or marauders in society would soon be in command. They would be the government.

5. If the contention is correct that the removal of inhibitory influences is an in-common defense problem, then it follows that anything less than in-common or societal control of the problem is a form of authoritarianism.

Justice In Organization

The third point is that these inhibitory influences can be dealt with, in justice, only by social organization.

The right-to-life concept and its acceptance must serve as the premise for this point. If a person has a right to life, it follows that he has a right to protect and to sustain that life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s labor—one’s honestly acquired property. The right to life without the right to protect and to sustain life is meaningless. As suggested earlier, it is impossible in a division-of-labor economy to sustain life on one’s own specialty. Energy exchanges are as vital as one’s own produce. Therefore, the right to the fruits of one’s own labor involves the restraint or the removal of obstacles to exchange—not merely the obstacles to one’s own exchange, but the obstacles to other people’s exchange within any given society.

Equal Rights

Justice compels one other admission. If one has a right to life and livelihood, every other person has a similar right.[24] One must assume that life and livelihood are just as dear to every other person as to oneself—regardless of race, creed, color, occupational level, or wealth status. The universality of the will to live and the requirement that life and livelihood be protected are conterminous with society. The responsibility for society-wide protection cannot, in sound organizational practice, be vested in anything less than society. And where the responsibility rests, there also should rest the authority to discharge the responsibility.[25]

It is quite likely that this argument will appear valid only to those who grasp the interrelationship of energy exchanges; who become aware of the extent to which we are interdependent, or more precisely, dependent on these exchanges; who see the meaning of kinetic, flowing, dynamic human energy; and who acknowledge that, in this respect, we are all in one vast energy circuit which encompasses everybody.

What is everybody’s problem is nobody’s problem—a good adage in this instance. The argument here is that keeping the energy circuits open is not the responsibility of any one person nor of any division of any given society, but is everybody’s or society’s problem.

To Recapitulate

Before going further, let’s condense the central ideas of this thesis:

1. The source of all creative and variable human energy, in an earthly sense, rests in individuals. The emergence of the creative and variable capacities of each is itself a creative process that can only be attended to by the creative unit, the individual, in such voluntary and cooperative actions as he may freely choose to take. This is the province of the individual and not of society. This is the vast, unlimited area of liberty, of self-reliance, and of self-discipline.

2. Creative, variable energies will tend naturally to exchange to the benefit and life-extension of all in the absence of man-concocted obstacles. Obstacles to creative energy and its exchange—be they in the form of fraud, misrepresentation, violence, or predatory practices—adversely affect and subtract from life and from the potential life (emergence) of everyone and are, therefore, the problem of every human being equally within any given society. While the removal of social obstacles is the problem of everyone, it is not the responsibility of any one person. It is the responsibility of all—that is, it is a social responsibility. As man in America today is the product and has life by reason of division of labor and exchange, so does he inherit with birth this interdependent, social aspect of self. This is as much his inheritance as is the responsibility for his own emergence. The restraint and the penalizing of the obstacles to creative energy and energy exchange—not merely between oneself and another, but between all men—must be dealt with by social prohibitions, by the law! This is the relatively small, limited province of what we have come to call “government.” It is the appropriate area of disciplines exterior to personal disciplines.

If the purpose of man on earth is self-realization—coming as near as possible to the attainment of those creative aptitudes and potentialities peculiarly his—it follows that the law, the book of rules and prohibitions for social administration, can logically serve only the purpose of deterring man’s destructive actions for the sake of giving full flower to his creative actions. The law (social rules) can have no just object beyond removing social obstacles to the release of the human spirit. An organized arm of society, within its proper bounds, can be but the handmaiden of liberty; government, within its proper bounds, can be but the protective servant of all individuals equally against antisocial marauders.

According to the theories here set forth, individuals should delegate to society’s agency the responsibility for protecting all members of society against such destructive actions as some of its members may bring against others of its membership.

Society, per se, cannot assume responsibility, for society is an abstraction. Society can be given entity only as it is organized, only as its members are organized.

Purpose Of Organization

Organization is for the purpose of cooperation. There can be cooperation for creative purposes and cooperation for repellent or defensive purposes.[26]

Cooperation for creative purposes must be left to voluntary action. Men can cooperate to use force, but they cannot be forced to cooperate. Voluntary cooperative actions occur daily in numberless ways, most of them having almost imperceptible organization but some of them having highly formalized organization—corporations, partnerships, educational institutions, and so on.

However, cooperation for creative purposes requires, as an auxiliary, cooperation to annul destructive purposes. Cooperation for creative purposes requires that inhibitory influences against creative action be neutralized. In good theory, it is as members of society—not as members of a family or of a corporation or of a labor union or of a chamber of commerce or of any group having special interests—that individuals organize themselves into a police force to cooperate in maximizing their liberty by restraining those who would impede creative effort and exchange.

Nature Of Political Agency

We must recognize the nature of society’s political apparatus. It has, ideally, the single, distinguishing virtue of being able to inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. All personnel of the apparatus can do everything else better outside the apparatus than in it. What should be inhibited, restrained, penalized? Those actions of man which are characterized by aggressive force, namely, those actions which themselves inhibit, restrain, destroy, or penalize creative effort. Defensive force may be used to neutralize aggressive force, and such a use of force serves a social end. This use of defensive force should be the guiding principle of the political agency.

It is society that should organize the political apparatus—the state, the government, the agency of common defense. It is not proper that anything less than society should organize to impose restrictions which relate to all members of society equally. By the same token, it is not proper to organize society for creative effort, for creative aptitudes have their locus only in individuals. For example, it is absurd to organize society into an agency of aggressive force, as has been done in Russia, to make automobiles, to produce penicillin, or to run a chick hatchery. Interests and aptitudes for these creative specializations—governed by the principle of variability implicit in any and all progressive, evolving societies—are rarities and not generalizations. The rarities for creative effort find cooperation possible only by people voluntarily organizing themselves.[27] The benefits flowing from these voluntary organizations are available society-wide. But these benefits are available to all only because the organizations are voluntary. Energy flows in the absence of obstacles sufficient to stop it. That energies are often wasted and misdirected by persons in voluntary action is only to admit that man errs.

Russia Is No Exception

It is often argued that the Russians can, for example, produce airplanes by their use of aggressive force and that the production of an airplane is a creative project. It is! Admittedly, this thesis contends that force can be used only to inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. Is there not a contradiction here? No! The Russian airplanes—creations—are actually the product of voluntary, cooperative effort. And it is not the force that creates the airplanes. Force in Russia, as elsewhere, inhibits, repels, restrains, penalizes. Russians, in addition to defensive force, use vast amounts of aggressive force which destroys. In Russia the force is used to destroy a worker’s opportunities to pursue the vocation of his own choice. The worker in the airplane factory is denied the opportunity of being an artist, a cook, a musician, or whatever. Left to him, shall we say, are only two alternatives—building airplanes or dying. If he prefers the former to the latter and acts in accord with his preference, he has made a choice to produce airplanes. The fact that his alternatives are thus limited by the employment of force does not alter his act of voluntarily choosing between the two. Nor does it alter the fact that all of his acts in producing airplanes, whether in inventing or doing, are voluntary acts. A person cannot be compelled to act creatively.[28] But the areas where he would choose to act creatively can be ruled out of existence by the use of force.

Choice Increases Efficiency

When force is used, as in Russia, to limit opportunities, thus leaving open one or a few areas for creative effort, we observe many persons building airplanes when their best aptitudes are for painting, for cooking, for music, or something else. In a free-market society, where force would have to be limited to restraining social obstacles to creative energy and its exchange, we would find mostly those with aptitudes for airplanes building airplanes.

Obviously, an individual is more creative in an activity agreeable to his aptitudes than in an activity disagreeable to his aptitudes. A person knows his own aptitudes better than does a stranger—the dictator or any possible henchman. This is a primary fact of observation. It follows, then, that total energy will be higher among a people individually choosing their own work than among a people whose work is dictated for them by another individual.

The same principle applies to exchange. We will fare better—materially, intellectually, spiritually—if each of us chooses what he will communicate and exchange with others than if some other individual dictates what each shall communicate and exchange. It is these differences in the handling of creative energy and its exchange that account for the differences between Americans and Russians in production, invention, personal emergence, and so forth. The Russians apply aggressive force to creative activities and claim it to be good. Americans are now doing the same thing on a smaller but growing scale. Many of us, however, claim it to be bad, as does this thesis.

Unanimity Requires Common Interest

Cooperation is required among members of society to perform the negative function of prohibiting obstacles to production, communication, and exchange. The cooperation ought to be as nearly unanimous as possible. Cooperation can approach unanimity only if the activities of the defensive agency be limited to those actions which have a common benefit to creative effort. Ideally, the only dissenters would be those who want to live by predation. If the agency of defense finds itself being used as an agency of plunder (aggressive force)—as in the case of our government today—cooperation will not tend toward unanimity. For in this instance, some of the members of society cooperate to benefit themselves at the expense of the other members, employing the agency to achieve their ends. The plundered members find it difficult to cooperate with the plundering members.

Mere participation in the activities of society’s agency, such as unwilling military service or the unwilling payment of income to support the agency in overextended activities, does not qualify as cooperation. Cooperation in its highest form is a willing response, not the choice of the lesser of two evils. Willing response, approaching unanimity, is much to be desired. But it is impossible except as society’s agency is itself an accurate response to man’s single in-common social requirement: defense against those actions of man which inhibit creative energy and its exchange. Man is a member of society in common with all other men in this respect only. His social agency, to be useful and not harmful, must limit itself to this one small but extremely important function which all men have socially in common. Then reason and justice, at least, will supply the basis for unanimous cooperation.

Limitation Of Government Prescribed By Its Justification

Let the above ideas be emphasized in these terms: Any logical and just organization by society derives its existence from only one source: the common need for every man to protect himself against those who would limit his creative opportunities. Every human being is born with as much right to live his life creatively as any other man. Man, however, is incapable of protecting his life as a personal, individual project, and at the same time of realizing his human potential. That part of his inheritance which designates him as a product of society precludes this. By reason of this social circumstance, he is committed, in principle, to cooperating with his fellow men in the protective project of “one for all and all for one”; in a project that should make no distinction whatever as to persons; in a project where all ought to be regarded as equal; in a project where special privilege should be unknown.[29]

The principle which justifies society’s organization of a defensive arm—man’s inheritance as an interdependent being—also prescribes the limitations on what the organization should do. In short, the law’s limitation inheres in its justification.

Force is a dangerous thing. Therefore, society’s organized arm is a dangerous instrument. It is not, as some assert, a necessary evil. When limited to its proper defensive scope, it is a positive good. When exceeding its proper limitations and becoming aggression, it is not a “necessary” but a positive evil.

Two Types Of Force

Force of the kind here discussed is of two types. There is repellent or defensive force. There is aggressive force. The latter is always evil. There are no exceptions. No man has any moral right to use aggressive force against any other man. Nor have any number of men, in or out of societal organizations, any moral right to use it. One of the most distressing fallacies having to do with government and liberty is the assumption that the state, an agency presumably of the people, has rights beyond those possessed by the people. For example, the state uses aggressive force against an individual, compelling him to exchange some of his income for the alleged prosperity of Tennessee Valley residents. No reasonable person would sanction such an aggressive action on the part of any single citizen. Therefore, no reasonable person can logically believe that any such control belongs to a multitude of citizens. From what source does this extracurricular “right” of the state to use aggressive force derive? It has no derivation. It is an arrogation. This arrogation is as untenable as the divine right of kings theory; indeed, it is the same thing with the divine excuse omitted.

Any person has the natural and moral right to use repellent or defensive force against any other person who would aggress against him. No person on this earth has any moral right of control over any other person superior to the defense of his own life and livelihood. Two persons banding together do not acquire moral rights of control over others superior to the rights held by each before their association. No increase in the number of individuals involved morally alters this in any way—even when the number reaches the 160,000,000 of this nation. Rights not possessed by individuals cannot properly be delegated to an agency, political or otherwise. Society’s agency, then, will find the proper limits of its scope in exercising for everyone, without favor to any, the natural and moral rights inherent in its members.[30]

Tool Of Liberty

The above concludes what is little more than a bare outline—a skeleton, so to speak—of the ideas that need to be considered in arriving at the principles and the theories of government and liberty. Government—which no doubt is what we will continue to call our organized agency of society, even though it be limited to defensive functions—is, if properly employed, an essential tool of liberty.

Government organized strictly in accord with right principle is an object more to be ardently hoped for than seriously expected. Yet, right principle must be deduced and have some measure of understanding if political expediency, controlled as it is by demagoguery and special interests, is not to rule and eventually overcome us. Political expediency feeds on the destructiveness it breeds. Every evil it evokes sets in motion other “compensating” evils. Political expediency, by its very nature, inevitably leads to a dead end.

Right principle is man’s only compass. He often deviates from the course it suggests, but at least he can be aware of where he is by reference to it. Right principle is a beacon by which man can reverse himself after he has ventured into the evil ways which constantly beckon him.[31]

Right principle as relating to the limitation of government is deducible. Protecting the release of creative human energy and its exchange is suggested as the basis for sound deductions.

[1] “Uncompromising as ever, Father Paul [Sarpi] continued to write letters and publish treatises which clenched more and more firmly into the mind of Venice and of Europe the political doctrine of which he was the apostle,—the doctrine that the State is rightfully independent of the Church,—and throughout the Christian world he was recognized as victor.” Andrew Dickson White. Seven Great Statesmen. New York, N.Y.: The Century Co., 1915. p. 26.

[2] There are some 120,000 governmental units in the United States.

[3] This is not to deny that we adopted many excellent organizational principles: republican form of government, division of powers, a system of checks and balances, and many others. These were, however, for the purpose of effecting limitation. Lacking was a well-defined theory or positive rationale as to why limitation.

[4] For a remarkable and scientific dramatization of human variability, see Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty by Roger John Williams (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1953).

[5] For a factual account of Mayan Indian religious beliefs, without interpretations as to their inhibitive nature, see Two Crosses of Todos Santos by Maud Oakes (New York, N.Y.: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1951).

[6] We have only “guesstimates” on the Indian population. Most authorities would consider a million far too high. Perhaps 200,000 would be as good a guess.

[7] Specialization has been referred to as “analysis run riot,” This dim view of an expanding division of labor would be warranted were there no possible synthesis of the human variabilities. But there is a synthesis, potentially a perfect one. It is simply free communication and exchange. Its numberless, daily ramifications can never be envisioned, let alone comprehended, by any man or set of men. This synthesis, however, has the virtue of requiring no more understanding than an awareness to leave it alone except, of course, to protect it against crookedness, violence, and “management.”

[8] Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1943, Vol. VIII, p. 340.

[9] Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. New York, N.Y.: The Macmillan Company, 1938, p. 114.

[10] Ibid., p. 118.

[11] Ibid., p. 47.

[12] Ibid., p. 117.

[13] Ibid., p. 133.

[14] Ibid., p. 447.

[15] To think of energy only as the kind that can be manufactured from coal or other inorganic matter will miss the point in my use of the term. A rereading of the quotes from the scientists Millikan and Eulenburg-Wiener will convey the meaning I give to “energy” throughout this essay. If this wide scope given to “energy” is beyond the reader’s comprehension—something to stand in awe of, something beyond human knowledge and beyond the power of human authority and dictation—then I have established the kind of a definition I wish to make.

[16] See my account of the nurseryman beginning on page 134, particularly his use of the telephone.

[17] The following attempt at explanation has proved clarifying to some but not at all to others. At any rate, these are not written as farfetched examples. In principle, they are analogous to real life.

[18] By “alone in the world” I mean absolutely alone—that is, completely without what has been bestowed on others, present or past. Human energy, if unobstructed, flows in time, all time. Most of what any of us, and all of what most of us, possess—materially, intellectually, spiritually—is founded on cognition extending into the infinite past. Or, should we call it all “the eternal now”? See Living Time by Maurice Nicoll (London, England: Vincent Stuart Publishers, Ltd., 1952).

[19] See my Two Ways To Stop Strikes (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953. pp. 9–10).

[20] It is important to realize that authoritarianism-aggressive force, destructive energy—has an evil effect vastly out of proportion to its quantity. Imagine a church social of 100 people. Imagine the total energy expended by these folks in preparing the meal, walking, talking, gesticulating, and so on. Now imagine an infinitesimal part of this total energy, say 1/10,000th of it, turned into aggressive force—for instance, a deacon poking the minister in the nose! Contemplate the havoc wrought, and the point is clear.

[21] The voluntary exchange of the varying products of men’s energies is appropriately called the market. If man were not inclined to better his circumstances—that is, to satisfy his needs and pursue his ends with what he regards as minimum effort—he would not be led into specialization. As specialization cannot occur without the market, it is a basic human institution. It is the foundation stone of society. If the presence of the market did not better, but worsened, man’s circumstances, no feeling of comradeship (for which the socialists claim so much) would attend to exchange. There would be no market, no society, no man. Man has a natural and a worthy urge to economize his efforts in producing the satisfactions of his desires. It is this urge that leads to specialization and exchange, to the division of labor and the market. However, this is the same urge that, on occasion, causes some men to sabotage the market, to indulge in predatory practices. Stealing, in a sense, is the first and, certainly, the worst labor-saving device. Hence, a fundamental need—if specialization and the market are to exist—is protection against market marauders.

[22] This, of course, does not rule out charity of a type which aids another person to help himself rather than to destroy his potentialities by making him dependent. But before even charity can be extended, the giver must have provided himself with resources to give over and beyond his own needs and commitments.

[23] By noncodification is meant the absence of socially or publicly formulated rules, the absence of law.

[24] Recommended is The Source of Rights by Frank Chodorov (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954).

[25] When individuals, admittedly having the right to defend their own lives, delegate their defensive responsibilities to society’s agency, the agency is in full and exclusive charge of that function. In practice, the agency should redelegate the right to defend life as an individual act in certain instances. However, it is the agency that is in control of this function, specifying when and under what conditions individual defense is permissible. Society, however, at all times, should retain the power to employ and disemploy its agency.

[26] Just as kinetic energy can be destructive as well as productive or creative, just so can cooperation be for destructive purposes. For example, a gang of thieves can cooperate to rob a bank or a gang of voters can cooperate to take the property of some to “aid” others. This kind of voter cooperation is based on perverting government, inducing government to use aggressive force instead of confining itself to defensive force. In this stage of the essay, I prefer to discuss government ideally.

[27] Voluntary organizations (creative energies in cooperation) form in accord with complex human affinities that defy diagnosis, accurate prediction, and single-minded arrangement. The point is illustrated in the latter part of this essay.

[28] One critic of this reasoning suggests that slaves were compelled to and did act creatively. Slaves merely adapted themselves to their environment, their confinement, their limitation of choices. Within this framework, their creative acts were ail voluntary acts. Many human beings have submitted to floggings or have gone to their deaths because they chose these punishments in preference to the limitation of choices imposed upon them. This insistence of mine is not hair-splitting. That every creative act is a voluntary act is a basic point in understanding the limitations of force. Perhaps this will help my critic: Put the two of us in a room barren of all else but a lively fly. I command my critic to catch the fly. But to give the theory here advanced an honest test, he is to make not a single move except as I direct it. The fly will not be caught. The fly can be caught only if my critic acts in response to his own free will and volition. This acting in response to volition applies to the picking of cotton or to the building of airplanes as well as to catching a fly.

[29] It cannot be too much emphasized that human beings are not equal. Yet, we should all be equal before the law in the sense that we think of ourselves as equal before God.

[30] An excellent development of this idea is to be found in The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1950).

[31] What is right will, of course, always remain debatable as between persons. The nearest anyone can come to practicing right is accurately to follow that which his conscience dictates as right. “Right principle,” therefore, as I use it is obviously and necessarily right principle as I see it.

PART II

The Concept Argued

It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal.

From The General To The Particular

Now, let us assume that someone has succeeded in setting forth the principles which should guide men in prescribing the scope of their organized social agency. That would be a great, forward step. Yet, before much value could come from such an accomplishment, a most important, secondary step would be required. The argument would then have to proceed from the general to the particular; in short, the principle would have to be related to daily affairs. Many rules of right conduct are popularly paid lip service—Thou shalt not steal; Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not covet; and so forth. Yet these same rules are not only broken but also are rarely thought to be applicable when a number of persons become involved.

Is it any wonder that the federation of our states and the Constitution which prescribed and limited the scope of the federation required one of history’s greatest intellectual selling campaigns? It is doubtful whether anything ever equaled The Federalist in this respect.[1]

The ideas in this thesis are revolutionary today, although not as much so as were similar ideas in early America when contrasted with the doctrines of the Old World. We, at least, have some history of liberty to serve us. Lip service—even if no longer founded on deep beliefs—is still paid to “free enterprise” and to limited government.

But revolutionary ideas are revolutionary regardless of historical precedence. And today, as in the 1780’s, explanations and reassurances, in quality and conviction not unlike the excellent works of Madison, Jay, and Hamilton, will have to appear. For few among us, softened as we are by “success” and by the doctrines of police-action “welfare,” can imagine how we could prosper short of the state’s interventions in our creative activities.

How To Stop Thinking

This growing belief in the use of aggressive police action as a means to direct the creative activities of a people in society, and the consequent and corresponding loss in the belief that free men can direct their own creative activities, are understandable. The reason is this: When the state preempts any activity—that is, makes of it a state monopoly, such as carrying the mails—citizens cease their thinking on how the activity could be carried on as a private venture. Why waste time thinking about the impossible? With this absence of ideas as to how an affair could be conducted privately, there soon follows the belief that the activity cannot be conducted unless the state conducts it.

If, for example, the federal government had decreed at its inception that all boys and girls should be provided with shoes and stockings from birth to adulthood, and the practice of this subsidy had been going on for the last 165 years, one who challenged it today would be asked: “Oh! So you favor forcing boys and girls to go barefooted in the winter?” In this instance, we have experience to show the fallacy of any such practice. Boys and girls in America, where shoes and stockings have been accepted as family responsibility and where freedom from aggressive state action has been greater than in other countries, are better shod than are other boys and girls.

Explanations And Receptivity Required

Again, the ideas and principles as herein set forth, if ever they are to have significant application, will require not only explanations of a high order but an almost unparalleled desire on the part of many to understand them. The questions these revolutionary ideas raise will have to be answered, their humanitarianism demonstrated, their promise of a general well-being set forth in convincing terms, and fears alleviated as pertaining to the removal of state responsibility for citizen welfare. And the great bulk of these explanations will depend on imagination grounded in a faith in what man can accomplish in action free of organized aggression. The explanations will have to be made in the extremely difficult realm of what Professor Ludwig von Mises refers to as “discursive reasoning,” and certainly many persons will not welcome the explanations. Ideas at odds with the status quo are seldom popular. As suggested earlier, empiricism cannot serve us as well as it did our Founding Fathers. Many of us cannot reflect on the evils of tyranny as did the founders of this country looking at the Old World. The tyranny of bloated statism is not across the water and behind us. A majority of us are in it here, are a part of it, and most of us feel we have a vested interest in its maintenance. We can’t see the forest of evil as clearly as they did. We are, with but few exceptions, the evil trees and, for the most part, are unaware of doing anything wrong. Further, we are not, in this growing stage of our national, legalized parasitism, “feeling any pain.” The American society, the host—the world’s greatest example of self-reliance, of released human action, and of energy stored in everything from man-planted forests, to productive facilities, to know-how—is not yet showing any easily discernible signs of being “down and out.”

The following, like the foregoing attempt to suggest an ideal theory of government, is intended only as an outline—a skeleton, so to speak—of answers to the questions which these theories assuredly will raise. Many persons of superior skills and abilities will need to lend their help to this task. Here, however, are a few of the subjects that need explanation.

Is Tax Collection Aggression?

One of the first, important, and assuredly controversial points the foregoing theories will raise has to do with taxation. It has been argued that aggressive force is evil in all instances; that neither man nor government has any moral right to employ other than repellent or defensive force against any person or persons. Does not the forcible collection of a tax qualify as aggressive force? Does it make any difference if the tax be for the limited government herein defended or for a government organized to engage in legal plunder? Isn’t it aggression in one instance as well as the other? Can anyone who believes in strict governmental limitation, as does the author of this essay, logically support other than voluntary contributions as a means of financing the limited government for which he argues?

Few libertarians would entertain any doubts about the adequacy of voluntary contributions as the means of supporting limited government in the U.S.A. The annual requirement would annually be oversubscribed. However, even holding to this belief, there are good reasons for not favoring this method of financing. In 1942 the United States Supreme Court said in one of its decisions: “It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.”[2] This appears to be a sound statement. But, if the shoe were on the other foot, would not the voluntary contributors to government financing soon be regulating that which they subsidize? Indeed, would not the control of society’s agency soon be in the hands of those among the citizenry who had fared well financially? Would this be a proper way to distinguish who should control the government? The argument has been advanced that there should be no distinctions at all between individuals so far as society’s organized arm is concerned; that every individual in every way should be equal before the law; that a person is indistinguishable from any other person in the eyes of a just agency of all the people.

However, the faults with voluntary financing of government are not the really valid reason for favoring taxation, or for contending that taxation does not classify as aggression against the liberty of citizens.

Roots Into The Past

As stated earlier in this thesis, every one of us exists by reason of a division of creative energy and its exchange. If there were no division of labor, none of us would be alive. If there were division of labor and no exchange, none of us would be alive. The number of persons who can live at any given material, intellectual, or spiritual level is determined by the degree of perfection of this energy equation. Also, the state of this energy equation determines the number and richness of opportunities for individual variability—potential emergence. In short, while what we do with our creative potentialities is strictly a matter of personal decision, the fact that we are ourselves alive is due to the degree of perfection of the exchange equation which has preceded us.

There are two sides to this coin. True, we inherit not only the benefits but also life itself which division of labor and exchange confer. But, by the same token, we inherit the obligation its maintenance and perfection demand. In this single respect, we are as much members of the society which has been responsible for this as we are individual human beings. This membership in the societal organization that inhibits the social obstacles to creative energy and its exchange is one’s own.[3] That which is one’s own isn’t anyone else’s. And it is not merely one’s own for harvesting its blessings; it is one’s own to support for precisely the same reason that it is everyone else’s to support. One cannot deny his parentage by the simple expedient of saying: “I don’t want any parentage.” Nor can one deny his societal obligation by the simple expedient of saying: “I now choose not to have inherited any obligation.” The inherited obligation is a fait accompli. To support or not to support a limited organization of society, based on right principle, is logically exterior to the area of free choice, unless, of course, one chooses to absent himself. The libertarian, according to his own principles, must always permit the dissenter to “shop around” for a social organization to suit him. Societies, like clubs and fraternities, could well be in peaceful competition with each other for members.

Shirking Obligations

For one not to support that which he has inherited as an obligation is to put the burden on others. Others have a moral right to protect themselves against anyone who would burden their energy, or energy exchanges, against anyone who would siphon off their livelihood. A person who by failure to attend to his own obligation, thereby loading it onto all others, engages in an inhibitive action against the society of which he is a member. He is not returning an equivalent for benefits and services received—this equivalent being an equitable tax. Thus the agency of society must, in justice, collect from him. This collection does not, therefore, classify as aggressive force, but rather as repellent or defensive force.[4]

Some opponents of any organization by society refer to government as “slavery” and to taxation as “robbery.” These epithets appear not to be correct. When society’s agency goes beyond its authentic function of defending all of society’s members equally and without favor and is employed as an agency of plunder to “help” some members at the expense of other members, then and only then can the actions of the agency be called slavery. Likewise, plundering the honest fruits of one’s labor for the “benefit” of others classifies as robbery—legal, perhaps, but robbery nonetheless.

Adherence to the principles of limited government as herein set forth need not be offensive to any person except, perhaps, to those who have come to believe in the communistic doctrine that the state’s function is to serve as a social leveler. And the obligatory payment of its costs should not be offensive to any person except, perhaps, to those who believe in no government at all. For this is but the assumption of the responsibility for one’s own welfare. Such responsibility is to be as much prized as one’s rights. Obligations have the same relation to benefits as responsibilities have to rights.

The idea that there can be rights and benefits without corresponding responsibilities and obligations is an absurdity. Indeed, rights and benefits are but the fruits of accepted and discharged responsibilities and obligations. Therefore, if rights and benefits are prized, it follows that their sources ought to be even more cherished. This is by way of saying that one should have as great a regard for his inherited obligation to support a properly limited government as for the benefits he derives therefrom.

Persons Their Own Rulers

American history emphasizes the meaning of an acceptance of obligations for self. For instance, there was nothing mysterious or miraculous about our unprecedented American experience. Previously, political talk and debate had been about how government could more effectively rule the people. Many of the old-world philosophers—Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Hegel, Rousseau, and others—thought in these terms.

Here, though, we introduced a revolutionary idea: The purpose of government is not to rule! Government has only the limited function of serving the sovereign people as a defensive agent! The people shall be their own rulers in a creative sense. Government, a division-of-labor project itself—the citizens assigning certain specified tasks of their own to an agency—shall only cope with those who would hinder the citizens in their creative performance. Government, therefore, operating in response to this kind of reasoning, was so limited that it could no more serve as a source of succor than could a beggar. There was no legal agency for plundering, for taking from some and giving to others. Self-reliance—the acceptance of an obligation for one’s own welfare—flowered as a consequence. The acceptance of obligations begets creative activity. The resulting toughness of spirit, the conviction that one is responsible for oneself and for one’s own emergence, together with the energy stored in numberless kinds of productive facilities, stand as our main bulwark against today’s plundering assaults.

Taxation for government founded on the defensive principle is an inherited obligation. It is not an aggressive act for some members of society to keep other members of society from unloading their burdens onto them. It is a defensive act. Further, acceptance of one’s just obligations is not a hindrance to self-emergence but actually is a positive asset.

Conscription

The approval of the idea that the formal agency of society should collect an equitable tax from its members and the contention that the collection is not an aggressive but a defensive act will suggest to many persons that the agency can, with equal propriety, compel or draft its members for military service. On the contrary, no ideal agency of society can conscript any of its members for any kind of employment.

There is no need to discuss the superiority of volunteers over draftees for military service. Nor is it germane to this argument to explain why armed action, even for defense, should never precede a large-scale voluntary willingness to participate in the action. Suffice it to say that there never will be safeguards against war if a people can be committed to a war by a few persons—that is, if a people can be committed to a war short of a general willingness to risk, not someone else’s, but one’s own life and fortune.

Obligations And Rights

The distinction between collecting taxes and compelling military service inheres in the difference between types of obligations and rights. As previously contended, one does have an obligation to society which justifies the payment and the collection, if necessary, of an equitable tax. The societal agency, in collecting the tax, is merely performing its proper role of defending its members against those who would unload their own obligations onto the shoulders of others. Bear in mind that the collection is in livelihood, not life.

However, no person has an obligation, other than to himself, to live. He may, and sometimes does, choose not to live—all suicides being examples. A person is not obligated to society in this respect. To live or not to live is an affair of individual choice. It is a matter between man and his God, not between man and society.

A person does not have an obligation to society to live. He has only the right to live if he so chooses.[5] No societal organization would be justified among a people who had no desire to live. An organized arm of society is founded on and is justified exclusively by the will to live which exists in a people—precisely the same law of nature which attends to potential human energy’s becoming kinetic human energy—that is, which attends to communication and exchange among men.

Source Of Delegated Powers

The will to live is general insofar as this essay’s calculations are concerned. There is no need to equate in society’s current problems the nonliving or those who do not want to live. The general will to live is related to our basic assumption that each person has a right to live, that is, he has a right to his life and his livelihood—“certain unalienable Rights.” The attempt has been made to demonstrate that these rights cannot properly be attended to as individual projects; that propriety and justice demand that they be delegated to a societal agency for attention.

The societal agency can then, if ideally constructed, be in possession of only delegated powers. These do not exceed the rights of the delegants. The staff of the societal agency has the responsibility for common defense, invoking an impersonal justice, and keeping the records incidental thereto. The staff does not have any moral right to employ aggressive force against any person within or without the society for the simple reason that the members of the society have no such rights to delegate. To compel a citizen to give of his life for the common defense is not a defensive but an aggressive act for the reason that no citizen has an obligation to society to live.

We in America observe these principles when we refuse to use conscription in the ordinary staffing of our societal agencies. We do not conscript our mayors, our governors, our presidents, our policemen, our recorders. We rely upon the free market for obtaining this type of service, precisely as we rely upon the free market for obtaining many other goods and services. The free market, be it understood, has many other and often more powerful inducements than material consideration.[6]

Conscription Is Aggression

It is when we get into the extraordinary staffing of the societal agencies that we have trouble with these principles. When the domestic marauders have added to them a sufficient number of foreign marauders, we unwisely forsake free-market or voluntary principles and frantically resort to authoritarian principles.

We seemingly conclude that volunteers for defense are inadequate and that conscription is the only means of adequate staffing—forgetting that whenever citizens fail to volunteer in significant numbers, the military action in question cannot qualify as a defensive action. If an adequate number of military personnel cannot be obtained short of conscription, and if conscription is used to obtain the adequate number, the act of conscription itself is prima-facie evidence that the armed action in question is an aggressive action.[7]

Where there is the will to live, where life is prized and considered worth living, there also will be found the will to defend life. While it may be true that the specialists in armed defense—the hired staff of society—will recognize the need for defense before the citizens recognize the need, the specialists have, initially, only the obligation to advise the citizens and to await the citizens’ decisions and orders. For the specialists to do otherwise—that is, to commit the citizens to armed action and then to impose conscription—is not only to aggress against the “enemy” but is also to aggress against the citizens.[8]

All societies are based on some degree of division of labor and exchange. The more advanced the societies, the more variable are the members thereof—that is, the greater are the differences in persons. As this variability becomes more pronounced, so does the need increase for a means of gauging the market value of all efforts. This can be accomplished only by an honest medium of exchange, or its equivalent as established by a free market.

With this in mind, it becomes evident that society’s organized arm cannot tax esoteric thinking from an esoteric thinker or inventions from an inventor or managerial know-how from an entrepreneur. The tax has to be in the form of a common denominator expression of value, usually money. An organized agency of society can “collect” money only in the sense that it insists on all members of society discharging their societal obligations in order that some will not have to bear the burden of others.

The ideal societal agency, organized only for the defense of creative energy and its exchange, cannot with justice go beyond this. It cannot, while adhering to sound principle, tax or conscript or collect persons, their aptitudes, their potentialities, their lives. These latter qualities, if they are to be contributed to the societal agency, will have to be volunteered. As was pointed out earlier, man can cooperate to use force but cannot be forced to cooperate. Defending one’s life, family, property, and homeland is very often the supreme in cooperative effort.

World Government

Next in importance among the questions these theories raise is: Do not the admissions that man has a social aspect to his life, that each man has in some degree a relationship to all other men over the whole earth, and that it is the function of government to defend all life and livelihood, warrant world government, or, at least, a government of “the free nations”? If government is designed to defend persons, is it not logical to look to a supergovernment to defend nations?

This idea of world government became popular in the United States shortly after the termination of World War II. But the arguments against it, when considering the necessity of including the current enemy—Russia and her satellites—proved too much. For instance, the U.S.A., with more than one-fifth of the world’s earned income and less than one-sixteenth of the world’s population, could easily be voted into what Americans would regard as poverty. Forming a government of “good” nations and “bad” nations had too many obvious flaws. But the devotees of supergovernment, while amending their geographical sights, continue to advocate an international layer of government—Atlantic Union or whatever—a government made up of just the “free” or “good” nations.

The definition of a free or a good nation apparently is predicated on the nation’s opposition to the Russian brand of communism. In the popular view, there isn’t anything wrong with communizing the product of all by compulsion, providing it is accomplished by “free elections,” or indeed by any method not strictly the Moscow type. Tito’s Yugoslavia, avowedly as communistic as Russia, is “good” only because Tito prefers his own brand of communizing to the Politburo’s. Peron, who resembles a Hitler or a Mussolini politically and ideologically, would no doubt be our “ally” if he would but take a “proper” international stance—that is, if he would throw his power the “right” way.

No Free Nations

We might as well face it. All the talk about free or good nations derives solely from the grammar of power politics. There is not today a single free nation in the world—if by free one means the absence of aggressive acts on the part of government; if by free one means that any citizen is free to engage in creative effort and exchange the product thereof with whomever he pleases.

American popularity for some new kind of supergovernment is grounded, without question, in the very best, of motives. If it can be argued with logic—and it can be—that proper government would maximize liberty by restraining marauders among persons, why is it not just as logical to argue that proper supergovernment would maximize peace by restraining the marauders among nations? Peace, of course, is a worthy object. Most devotees of supergovernment are also devotees of free trade—a worthy object if there ever was one. Here in America, with the federation of our states, we developed the greatest free trade area in the world. Would not free trade be correspondingly extended were we to federate the nations?

Let Limited Government Concepts Be Extended

So far, the principal object of this essay has been to demonstrate that there is a sound and potentially practical basis for limiting government—that is, for limiting the activities in which government can properly engage. This can be accomplished, so this argument goes, by learning to distinguish between aggressive force and repellent or defensive force, and by learning to distinguish between creative and destructive energy. Government must limit itself to the employment of repellent or defensive force against destructive energy. Government can never properly use aggressive force, nor can it ever use any kind of force against creative energy or its exchange. Employing these criteria, it is possible to distinguish with a near-precision the actions to which government should be limited.

The projection of the above ideas across ever broader areas of the earth is sound in every respect, just as sound as local or regional government and just as desirable. However, without the penetration of limited government concepts, world government cannot help but multiply the world’s present governmental absurdities. Government today, everywhere, is conceived in varying degrees of authoritarianism, which is political error. Increasing the scale of the error will not erase the evil thereof. We are plagued with governmental overextension. More of the same will only put the task of correction further beyond the reach of possibility.

Working for world government or for Atlantic Union is not the way to achieve sound government on any international scale. To achieve this end, work must be directed toward the widening and acceptance of the limited government concept.

It probably is an exaggeration to assert that as many as 1,000,000 American citizens are supporters of strictly limited government. As a consequence, our own governmental structures are out of hand. Earl Browder, erstwhile head of the Communist party in America, had this to say on behalf of the opponents of limited government: “State capitalism leaped forward to a new high point in America in the decade 1939–49. . . . State capitalism, in substance if not in formal aspects, has progressed farther in America than in Great Britain under the Labor Government, despite its nationalization of certain industries, which is a formal stage not yet reached in America; the actual, substantial concentration of the guiding reins of national economy in governmental hands is probably on a higher level in the U.S.A.”[9]

Without belaboring the point further, many of us in the United States do not today hold the beliefs that make possible the limitation of our own several governments. We have a major project of our own to undertake before we can remedy the rest of the world. And, without question, the most powerful influence for good we could exert on the peoples of other nations would be establishing an exemplary house of our own.

Responsiveness Of Local Government

It is a primary fact of observation that error in government is most easily corrected where the governmental unit is local and small and where the officials are acquainted with the citizens who employ them; that the correction of error becomes progressively more difficult as the unit of government is extended and as the officials are more removed from the citizens who employ them. We need no more verification of this than to observe the relative ease of correcting the maladministration of the local police force as distinguished from the relative difficulties of correcting maladministration at the federal level. And little imagination is required to visualize the almost impossible task that would confront us in correcting maladministration at the international level. We have the recent United Nations war as an object lesson.

If these contentions are correct that limited government on a world-wide scale is desirable, and that its attainment depends solely on the extent to which concepts of limited government penetrate the consciousness of (i.e., are understood and accepted by) an ever-widening number of individuals, then it follows that work on behalf of a free world-wide society should be confined, first, to one’s own improved concepts and, second, to those who are within one’s range of communication.

However, the idea that a federation of nations highly committed to socialistic policies—as all nations are today—can do other than strengthen and spread socialistic policies is patently absurd.

Governments Aren’t Governed

There is one fact that deserves emphasis when considering this problem. It is that a government does not police or control the governments which are minor to it. Different layers of government merely divide the job of governing individuals. One should ask himself, when contemplating any kind of an international government composed of today’s socialistic nations, just what additional government it is that he wants from such a source.

Now then, any person who believes that the purpose of government is to rule, to govern, in an overriding sense; who believes that government’s proper function is to wield aggressive power over the creative activities of its people; who believes that world peace is a condition that can be secured by a balance of power—that person can logically believe in and give support to world or semi-world government right now. But by the same token, those of us who believe only in strictly limited government should be content to leave well enough alone and not to make bigger a power device that is already dangerously menacing us.

Natural Boundaries

Societies, like the individuals who compose them, are highly variable. They tend to have more or less natural boundaries. The boundaries are roughly determined by the mores, and by natural geographical;, ethnic, and economic boundaries being conterminous.

Governments within the respective frameworks of these highly distinctive societies—each its own government—would seem more conducive to moderation and to citizen control than any conceivable international arrangement that is possible today. Let the people of the Bismarck Archipelago worship their divine monster, the Dukduk, and let them be ruled, if they wish, by their elders who dress as Dukduks.[10] This isn’t a bit worse than other peoples of the “free nations” who look to government in the same slavish and worshipful way—and perhaps it isn’t as bad. Nothing is going to change these primitive or modern forms of occultations except an advancement in understanding. Learning begins with oneself. If good enough, it spreads to others.

As to extending free trade among nations, it is precisely as simple as extending trade among persons. Indeed, world free trade is nothing but uninhibited trade among all persons on earth. This condition would exist if the various political apparatuses were inhibiting the interferences to trade rather than inhibiting trade itself.

One only has to ask the question: “How do I contribute to people’s trading with me?” The answer is clear: Put no obstacles in the way of exchange. All the trade that anyone has a right to demand will take place in the absence of obstacles. Persons exchange. A great motivating force, the will to live, attends to this.

Increasing Trade

Governmental action does not cause exchange. When a government is organized solely for the defense of life and livelihood (there is no existing example of this), that government restrains or destroys inhibitions to trade. When a government is organized for more than this—that is, to rule or to govern—it becomes the means to inhibiting trade. All governments presently erect obstacles to trade: tariffs, exchange controls, embargoes, quotas, and so on.

Unless one wants to argue that this nation become a dictator among nations and compel others to do as we think wise, there is nothing this country can do about extending world trade except to remove our own obstacles to others trading with us. The fact that the U.S.A. itself is an offender against free trade argues that even were we to dictate the world’s rules, we wouldn’t dictate terms superior to those we dictate for ourselves.

Perhaps the greatest trade fallacy of all is that our own barriers must be removed on a reciprocal basis—in a word, removed only to the degree that we can induce others to remove theirs. We would be ruined, so the argument goes, were we to let down our own obstacles to willing exchange. Obviously, we couldn’t be ruined if no one wanted to trade with us. Equally as obvious is the fact that we wouldn’t consider ourselves ruined if we wanted to make the exchange. If one will but think of this problem as a person, the whole myth explodes. Imagine that you offered to everyone on earth the right to bargain with you! Some would, and some wouldn’t. However, the more the offer was accepted, the more would you be in a position to prosper.[11]

Let the idea gain currency that the only function of government is to use repellent or defensive force against those who would restrain or destroy creative energies and their exchange, and we will have limited government on a world scale and probably will be unaware that it exists. We will all be too busy acting creatively.

Depressions

What about “booms and busts”? Wouldn’t we be in a boom or a bust most of the time if people could act as they pleased, except for defrauding or otherwise doing violence to others? Aren’t the great depressions of the past positive proof that freedom won’t work?

A conclusion consistent with this thesis can be stated categorically at the outset: Booms and busts have not been caused in any single instance nor to any degree by the release of creative energy and the exchange thereof. On the contrary, they have been caused by perversions of liberty—by aggressive, political interventions in the market place, by government’s failure to perform its proper function, and by government’s insistence on indulging in improper functions.

Liberty Never Wholly Accepted

Liberty, like Christianity, has been tried but never wholly adopted. It isn’t that these ways of life have been found wanting. It is that they have been found difficult and rejected by many. The relations between liberty and government as outlined in this essay have been practiced only partially. To the extent that government takes sides among the citizens—plundering some for the “benefit” of others, granting special privileges—to that extent has government become incapable of performing its legitimate function of protecting the life and livelihood of all citizens equally. It is a self-evident fact that no person or agency can protect the honest fruits of one’s labor while at the same time forcibly taking the fruits of one’s labor. In short, the more government acts aggressively, the less it can act protectively or defensively.

The history of government’s acting aggressively coincides with the history of government. Is there a single instance where government has been limited to the defense of creative energy and its uninhibited exchange? Even in America in 1789—the nearest known approach to strict limitation—slavery and tariffs were acknowledged as appropriate aggressive acts of government. The principle of aggression, once admitted, had either to be denied and destroyed or approved and expanded. While Negro slavery was later denied and destroyed, the principle of government aggression was not stamped out. Some of the aggressive seed remained in embryonic stage; and by 1900, governmental actions were taken which led to the development of the embryo.[12] By 1913 this perverse principle was so thoroughly established that we inscribed on our American banner—proclaimed and adopted as national policy—the Marxian ideal.[13] This Marxian ideal, the Sixteenth Amendment—the progressive income tax—legalized a new slavery in lieu of the Negro slavery earlier disposed of.

“What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What . . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.”[14]

This new slavery advances in direct proportion to the application of aggression by government. It is not intended in this essay to outline or statistically to verify the tremendous growth in governmental encroachment since 1913. There are many excellent readings on this phase of the problem.[15] Aggressive intervention by government has a thorough historical record. Booms and busts cannot logically be blamed to the free market and limited government for the simple reason that no such arrangement has ever been more than approached. It has never been wholly practiced.

Unemployment

The severity of busts or depressions is usually measured by the degree of unemployment or the contraction of business activity. Unemployment is a phenomenon of the partially rigged market. A minimum wage law, for instance, that would make illegal the payment of less than $100 per week for department store workers would throw out of employment all marginal workers—that is, all workers worth less than $100 per week to the employer. Other economic rigidities—there are literally millions of them in America today—such as $3.00 per hour for carpenters aggressively established by a labor union, will disemploy carpenters whenever the demand for carpenters at this rate declines.

Full employment exists and always has existed in two types of situations and is assured in a third:

1. Full employment exists in primitive societies—foraging and exclusively agricultural—where division of labor and exchange are minor and where there is no perfection of a societal agency devoted to the protection of creative energy and its exchange. The American Indians did not, and the Mayans do not, have unemployment problems.

2. Full employment exists in slave labor societies, where the government acts aggressively to a high degree. There is no unemployment problem in Russia.

3. It is inconceivable that there could be other than voluntary unemployment in a free-market society were government limited to restraining all inhibitions to creative energy and its exchange, assuming, of course, that government performed this function effectively.

Involuntary unemployment, except for acts of God and total disability cases, originates with man-made obstacles to creative energy and its exchange. Free the market and remove all marauders, and there will be as much work to do as one wants to do. What one will obtain for the work will be determined by what others will willingly exchange for it.

Purpose Of Statistics

Reporting on business activity in our argued-for free society would have only one purpose, namely, to aid in economic calculation on the part of participants. Whether the aggregate activity were high or low would be of little more than academic concern. It would only reflect the extent to which citizens wanted or did not want to produce and exchange. Business activity, unlike today, would not be a gauge of how ineffectively economic rigging is working. Nor would it, as today, be the source for exultation or fear. Relatively low business activity would not classify as “bust,” any more than an individual’s taking the day off would classify as personal failure.

Money

There is, though, an extremely important aspect of the bust or boom problem that must engage our attention. It has to do with the medium of exchange.

If we will reflect on the kinetic conduit idea—all types of human energy flowing into the conduit and available to anyone and everyone on a value-for-value exchange basis—we will readily recognize that the flowing current is not and cannot be measured in terms of the many energies themselves. So much esoteric thinking as such is not exchanged for so much wheat as such. In a highly developed division-of-labor and exchange society, most human energies are and must be translated into a denominator that is common to all energies—in a word, into a common denominator that will serve as the measure of energies. The alternative to this is to use no common measure—a return to barter—which, understandably, has a limited flow potential. The required common denominator, this measure of energies, is appropriately called the medium of exchange—money.

Imperfections in the medium of exchange can destroy an otherwise perfect division-of-labor and exchange economy. These imperfections can and do cause booms and busts. It is of the utmost importance that the subject of money be mastered.

What, however, is the extent of understanding? I have often said, and not too facetiously, that not more than one person understands money and I am unaware of who he is. The reason for this far-from-professional assertion is that among all of the money “experts” of my acquaintance, I do not know of any two who are in agreement. Therefore, there cannot be more than one among my acquaintances who is right; and not being in a position to know with certainty, I have to ask: “Which one is right?”

An Instrument Of Fraud

Oh, yes, there are many of us who can write reams in justified criticism of the present money hodgepodge, who readily see the fallacies in monetizing debt, in taking gold off the market, in modern but subtle forms of coin-clipping, in demanding that money serve as a medium of exchange while at the same time insisting that it serve as a fixed, inflexible depository of value, in money-making by credit. In short, many of us know how money in ignorant manipulation is used and always has been used—more innocently than designedly—as the greatest instrument of fraud ever known to man.

Why, however, cannot someone write the specifications for an efficient medium of exchange that is impregnable to fraud? Why, when confessing to one of the world’s acknowledged leaders among economists that I had never been able, even in a simple equation, to figure out an ideal medium of exchange, did he reply: “Neither have I”? Of one thing we can be certain: This distressing situation is not caused by a shortage of thinkers sincerely devoted to finding the right answer.

A False Base?

Let us make a supposition: What if these devoted persons have been basing all of their thinking on a false assumption? In this case, no matter how devotedly or ingeniously or indefatigably they thought, they would come up with wrong answers—all of them! And the false assumption would account for the confusions—any enduring agreement among sincere and reasonably intelligent persons is possible only if their premise is right. Any right conclusion must be founded on a right premise.

Throughout all recorded history, with but minor exceptions, the assumption has been that money matters fall within the province of government. The idea has been but little questioned. The writers of the Constitution, although not intending the construction that was later given to their wording, gave credence to this assumption. Article 1, Section 8, of the Constitution of the United States, delineating the powers of Congress, reads: “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” Without question, it is correct to say that nearly all current thought on correcting our money troubles is premised on government as the agency to “coin Money, regulate the Value thereof.”

Government should not have anything more to do with money than it has to do with the accuracy of labels on patent medicines! Government’s task is to restrain fraud and misrepresentation in one as much as in the other, and its function is no more in one than in the other.

A Cue?

It seems fortuitous that the writers of the Constitution should have included in the same sentence “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof” and “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” For by associating these two activities, they impressed us as giving the same validity to one as a function of government as to the other. Based on what they might have meant, they might have been right. But here, perhaps, is a cue to why Americans, having revolutionary ideas about government, by misinterpreting the intended meaning, got off to a wrong start. At first glance, these two functions appear to be identical in principle. Yet, careful reflection reveals a world of difference between the two.

There isn’t any reasonable doubt but that the Founding Fathers regarded government as an agency to defend life and liberty. For, after mentioning “Life, Liberty” in the Declaration of Independence as “unalienable Rights,” they hastened to add, “That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men. . .”

The writers of the Constitution were true to their objective when prescribing that Congress “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.” It would be impossible to accept the responsibility for restraining and penalizing fraud and misrepresentation, and for adjudicating differences appertaining thereto, unless there be “the Standard.” A bushel and a yard had to have definition. Let it be noted, however, that there was no hint here of “coining” the bushels or the yards by government—that is, governmental production of bushels of wheat or yards of cloth. Nor was there any hint that the government should “regulate the Value” of wheat or cloth. All that was done was to set up “the Standard” by which fraud and misrepresentation could be judged, by which justice could be administered.

The Biggest Governmental Error Of All

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof” by government, as practically interpreted, missed the whole point of government as an agency to secure “unalienable Rights.” Indeed, regulations written under the powers to “fix the Standard of Weights and Measures” would have sufficed. There would, for example, be a need for setting up standards to assay the fineness of gold and silver; for judging whether all citizens’ representations as to fineness were accurate; for stamping out all counterfeiting, whether motivated by fraud or by innocent credit mechanisms; and for stopping any and all means by which media of exchange could be employed to enrich anyone at the expense of others.

“To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof,” as interpreted, put government into the one business which, among all of the government-in-business errors, should have been most studiously avoided. This move put our hired guardians into the production of the purchase orders which have a command over all the goods and services our governmental guardians were hired to protect. In short, it did in fact make rulers out of persons who were intended to be, and who were meant to have been, protectors.

Not all of mankind’s deviltry originates with men themselves being devils. Most of the troubles among men are set in motion by ill-advised institutions—that is, by men faultily organizing themselves. If all men were wiser, they would better comprehend the harmony of their interests. Wisdom being but relative and minor, men err in interpreting their true interests and, consequently, suspect a multitude of antagonisms among themselves. They devise institutions for the purpose of cooperating along the lines of their suspicions. Men cooperate to effectuate their unfounded antagonisms, even as they cooperate to effectuate their acknowledged harmonies.

Enemy Or Servant?

Government as an agency of society—if well-conceived, properly limited, and soundly organized—is a cooperative arm of society. It is but another item in the division of labor. Its true interest lies in protecting the society that created it.

Government is composed of persons, as is society. Organize the persons in government in such a manner that they can readily realize that they will fare ill if the society which hires them disintegrates or that they will fare well if the society prospers, and society will have a good and faithful servant. But organize the persons in government in such a manner that they get the idea that society is only a host to be exploited, and society will have a bad and parasitical servant.

One of the requirements for promoting cooperation between two or more persons—or between society and government—is that their interests in the project in question be recognized as in accord; that the self-interests of all parties be understood by the parties themselves to be in harmony. But let the idea prevail that the self-interest of one is served at the expense of the other, and the two will not cooperate; instead, each will work against the true interest of the other.

Blank Checks

It is bad organization to give government—society’s presumed protector of life and property—a blank check on society’s livelihood and property. A “blank check” is precisely the right term for government’s power as presently interpreted “To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof.” This cannot help but reverse the intended relationship and turn protectors into exploiters. This sort of organization emphasizes the idea that society is only the goose for government’s plucking; that government has an interest, not identical to, but at odds with the society it allegedly serves. The history of the last 40 years provides ample evidence to support these views. The many millions on society’s growing governmental payroll are highly organized against society—cooperating to thwart society in its numerous efforts at redress.

Perhaps this point can be made clearer by posing simple analogies of what we ought to have done and what actually we have done. Visualize a community. The spokesman for the citizens says to an agent whom the citizens have selected:

We believe that each of us has a right to his life and to the honest fruits of his labor. We are all specialists and find that we can prosper if we exchange our specialties. To aid our trading, we have our own medium of exchange and we do our own coining. The tokens we use are soundly based, but these tokens are purchase orders and are accepted in exchange by all of us for all of our goods and services and for all of our properties. It is of the greatest importance, in addition to protecting us against the common variety of marauding from within and without the community, that you protect the sanctity of our medium of exchange. Guard this as you would our lives, for our livelihoods do, indeed, depend on its remaining sound and honest. Set up “the Standard” by which you may judge.

And the following is roughly analogous to what we have said:

We believe that each of us has a right to his life and to the honest fruits of his labor. We are all specialists and find that we can prosper if we exchange our specialties. To aid our trading, we shall need a medium of exchange. The tokens should be exchangeable for any of our goods and services and for any or all of our properties. Now, what we want you to do, in addition to serving as a guardian of our lives, our incomes, and our properties, is to take command of this medium of exchange—in fact, to coin it and to regulate its value. We will be paying you and your establishment in the very coin which you are to produce and to regulate. Don’t let any of us cheat each other; but if you find it expedient to enlarge your force, to look after the material welfare of any of us who in your opinion are in need, or to enter into business competition with any of us, you just go ahead and use your own judgment. If you find that your requirements are more than we will vote to you in the form of taxation, it will be quite all right for you to obligate us to indebtedness on your own motion. Indeed, if the political situation seems to require it by reason of our demands being too numerous, it will be all right for you to monetize our debt—that is, you are empowered to coin money, not only on our real wealth but also on our indebtedness. If you spend $100,000,000 on an aircraft carrier, let us not be $100,000,000 shy in our own purchase orders. By monetizing debt we can have $100,000,000 more in purchase orders!

The Servant As Sovereign

The American revolutionary idea—the people to be sovereign, government to be the hired agent—was, without doubt, the most important political idea in all history. But the pioneers of the idea, the founders and their immediate followers, not unlike their progeny of this generation, bent, gave ground, compromised with what they held to be right principle. After all, these nearest political practitioners to American purism had, to some extent, to be “practical.” So they accepted several “practical” and preposterous courses. Negro slavery was the most obvious. Tariffs “for revenue only” were the least offensive. The most preposterous of all, however, was the perversion of what was, no doubt, a sound idea originally. In the idea’s perverted form, it was held that the people could employ a servant to protect life and property and, at the same time, give that servant complete control over all livelihood and property by giving to him a monopoly of the “coining” of all claims to income and property (money) and, concurrently, the power to “regulate the Value thereof.”

History has already recorded the result.[16]

What are the precise specifications for a medium of exchange not “coined” and controlled by government? Few if any of us know the precise answers to this question, for the same reason that we do not know the answers to many other questions. There does appear to be one sound conclusion on the money question: Get government out of it entirely except to police, restrain, inhibit, and penalize all unethical or dishonest practices. As if by magic, men in the market will put the specifications on paper and into practice, including coming, almost overnight. After all, no brains are lost to the money problems by telling the cops that their job is not to own, control, and manage, but rather to police the medium of exchange.

Too Much Government Causes Booms And Busts

There is no point at all to government except to organize a staff of persons to act defensively, protectively, against inhibitory influences to creative activity and its exchange. Individuals can act creatively only when acting personally and cooperatively. They cannot act creatively when applying aggressive force of any kind. Erecting an effective, honest medium of exchange calls for creative effort of a high order—this to be found in the market. Because a medium of exchange lends itself to fraud so easily, defensive actions of a high order are called for—these to be found among specialists in uncovering and restraining fraud, among competent civil servants having a delegated power to use repellent force.

Let there be a realignment of our thinking on money. Let the economists and other specialists in exchange media premise their thinking, not on government, but on the idea of folks in the market “coining the money.” The market will do the regulating of value of the goods and services exchanged. And let the folks in government specialize in detecting, exposing, and repelling any fraudulent practices which may arise in the market. To do this, they need only apply the principles they apply to weights and measures; for instance, fix the number of grains of gold that shall be a dollar.

Booms and busts are caused by government’s acting aggressively and managerially in the market and by government’s not performing its proper function of restraining violence, fraud, misrepresentation, and predatory practices in the market. Stated another way, booms and busts are the result of government’s becoming a predator rather than serving as it should in the restraining of predators.

It is just as absurd to put the blame for busts or depressions on creative energy and its exchange as it is to put the blame for your and someone else’s personal hardships on the exchange of your eggs for his potatoes.

More On Aggressive And Defensive Force

It would appear necessary, before challenging some of the more popular—currently, even sacrosanct—activities of government, that the distinctions between aggressive force and repellent or defensive force be made clear and, also, that a method be suggested for one to determine where defensive force is logically in order.

Let us first consider the problem of defensive force and its use. Nearly anyone who reflects on the problem under discussion readily sees the justification for using defensive force to repel a would-be thief or murderer, or to restrain any action that would inhibit creative energy or its exchange. Thievery, murder, suppression of personal emergence, and the barring of energy exchanges are clearly antisocial. Everyone is, to some degree, adversely affected. Society must take some measures against destructive actions of this type. “But,” ask critics, “doesn’t the ignorance of some bear deleteriously on all? Or a potato blight, to use another example? Should not society use defensive force against these maladies the same as against thievery, for instance?”

Here is one method for distinguishing between the proper and improper uses of defensive force: Take the person with whom one’s acquaintance is the most highly developed, namely oneself. First, think of oneself as having only creative powers—the power to learn, to discover, to invent, to think, to produce, to cooperate with others, to express ideas, to exchange on a two-way willing basis with another, and so on. In short, think of oneself as a person wholly devoid of any faculties whatever for physical defense. This is one’s creative self.

Next, think of some defensive faculties being added, such as fists backed up with muscle, a policeman’s club, a machete, a gun. This is one’s defensive self.

A thief enters your home, or a man tries to kill you, or another threatens violence to your family if you continue to work at your job, or still another takes your and others’ earnings if you exchange the clothing you make for the food they produce. You will, if given a chance, use persuasion before using your powers of physical force to stop or repel them. But persuasion in this case has the reality of your defensive powers behind it and is, therefore, a part of the defensive paraphernalia.

Stop!

It is important at this point to consider the nature of this force. It is a physical force and if confined to defensive purposes has the power to restrain or to annul that which would destroy. We can be accurate if we think of defensive force simply as a man and his machete. True, a machete can be used creatively to cut down a banana plant or to trim a lawn. That is not the man-machete combination in mind. The one in mind is a man using a machete to stop, to fend off. “Fend off” is the precise term to describe defensive force. Defensive powers can be employed only to fend off or to stop. Penalties justly and legally agreed upon as ex post facto impositions are an integral part of the fending-off process.

Now, let us take the case of ignorance, the case of a person adjudged by another to be ignorant. What is there to stop? What can be done about ignorance by using a machete defensively? Nothing! Clearly, one’s only way of coping with one’s own or anyone else’s ignorance is to employ one’s creative faculties. The machete is useless. Similarly, with potato blight. Creative, not defensive powers are called for. One must discover or invent a spray or perhaps search for a strain of potato immune to the blight.[17] Society, being an abstraction, cannot act defensively or creatively. However, all of the persons in a population can organize to form an arm of the population to do certain specific chores for all of the people. But, in justice, all of the people cannot organize to carry out a task that is not of common interest to all. Creative action is highly variable, individualistic and voluntarily cooperative action. In common, is only the fending-off function. In the ideal society, according to this thesis, all of us do, in effect, turn over our fending-off rights—our defensive powers—to an agency of defense. We give this agency a monopolistic control over all fists, all policemen’s clubs, all machetes, all guns.

This is quite an agency. It is composed of persons with ambitions for affluence and power not unlike many others of us. And it has a control of all the machetes, so to speak. The political problem posed by such an agency is to limit the use of these machetes to repellent or defensive purposes. There is no known method of limitation except broad understanding of the distinction between defensive and aggressive powers.

From Defense To Aggression Is Simple

The same machete that can be used to stop an aggressor can be used as an instrument of aggression. The machete is indifferent to its function. How it is used is dependent solely on the judgment of the user. If all persons had delegated all of their machetes to some person for the purpose of defending their lives and livelihood, he would, with this monopoly of physical force, have to exert good judgment not to use the machetes to take life and livelihood. If the person should happen not to have good judgment; and if coupled with this, there were constant and insistent arguments from large sectors of the population that he actually could do good by using the machetes for other than defensive purposes, there is a likelihood that he would do so. The person, perhaps, would use these defensive instruments aggressively. He, the presumed defender against aggression, would himself initiate aggression against others.

How would he do this? Take the case of potato blight. It cannot be cured by the use of defensive force. But the defensive machetes could be put to aggressive uses: the forcible collection of the income of everyone, the proceeds of which would, theoretically, be used to employ persons to act creatively on finding a cure for potato blight. The injustice of such a practice, of course, is manifest. No person possesses any right to impose his judgment on others, even for doing his brand of good. Nor can a person properly delegate to anyone—even to government—rights which he himself does not possess.

Public Housing, An Example Of Aggression

Yet, this is the way government acts today in ever so many areas. As this is written, an account is received of the advocacy of a public housing project by two leading citizens of a Midwestern community. They agree that there is no housing shortage. But “there is a slum condition.” These gentlemen do not like this condition. Regardless of their dislike of it, however, they would not rob another’s safe or granary (use aggressive force) as a means of satisfying their instincts to “do good” to others. Such a thought would be repulsive to them. Nor would members of society forgive them for an act so lacking in respectability.

But something “respectable” is open to them. All they have to do is to agree between themselves (and get some others to join in) that the agency—the policeman having control of all the weapons—will rob my safe or my granary. It is that simple. Nothing in the way of personal accomplishment on the part of the two Midwesterners is required. The most stupid of people are capable of indulging in such action. And the two gentlemen who don’t like the “slum condition” will “do good” by the mere act of deciding that the policeman will take property without the owner’s consent to serve their purpose.[18] The act is legal and is “respectable” for the same reason it is legal—it has popular approval.

This “respectable” act is more evil than outright, disrespectable robbery! The common thief, at least, would take some risks in approaching another’s safe or granary. He, like the highly acclaimed Robin Hood, would give one the sporting chance of stopping him, a chance greatly minimized by the do-gooder’s political procedure.[19]

Let’s analyze these “slum” do-gooders as typical of a cross section of many adult citizens. There are things they want to see done. There is help they want to render unto others. The idea of any such achievements with their own ingenuity or to aid their fellow men with their own goods, appears too slow, too difficult, and often impossible. The institutions of voluntary cooperation and of personal charity are, for them, outmoded. For they are, in fact, “progressive.” They wish to progress faster than their own mentalities or their own means permit. They want to realize their ideal of Utopia during their own lifetimes, and in using government to act aggressively they seemingly have found the means to achieve their ends.

The means are simple enough and, like the first doses of an opiate, are without any pain. They will resort to the aggressive power, the governmental agency, and instruct it to take just a little, “a mere pittance,” of everybody’s property in the nation. Presto! The slum area is rebuilt. They can actually see it. It can be photographed, and contrasting pictures of what was and what is are put in the papers for all to witness. It is their “accomplishment.” And they experience the lovely feeling of having done a solid good.

Parasitism And Viciousness Endorsed

What these do-gooders fail to see, perhaps because the damages of their mischief cannot be cartoonized or photographed, is the effect of 160,000,000 “mere pittances” taken from all the people without the people’s consent. If their legal robbery were to be the only robbery of the year, it could be borne as any robust tree withstands a minor parasite. But, by their action, they endorse the principle of parasitism. They stand sponsor for every plunderbund in the nation, numberless extorted “pittances,” even extortions that fail to qualify as “good” by their own inconsistent standards. The sponsor of government slum clearance cannot logically or consistently oppose rent control, farm subsidies, or RFC loans to a failing business, any more than the sponsor of TVA can logically or consistently oppose the proposed St. Lawrence Seaway. They are all members of the nation’s legal despoilers by the mere act of engaging in only minor spoliation.[20] They are advocates of a way of life based on downright viciousness, for their way of life is impossible without the use of aggressive force.

That Which Is Not Seen

What these aggressive or vicious do-gooders fail to see are the uses 160,000,000 of us would make of the fruits of our labors were these fruits not taken from us. Perhaps we would do a little charity in our own neighborhood, anonymously, without any publicity or praise. Maybe we would create jobs for some persons that would permit them to repair their own “slum” conditions. It isn’t unthinkable that we might use this income, were it not taken from us, to release ourselves from the confinements of subsistent living. As a consequence, we would have a better opportunity to develop our own potentialities and, incidentally, to become better generators of energy, thus increasing what others could obtain in exchange for their own energies. All of us—160,000,000 varieties of us, acting in accord with our 160,000,000 differing judgments, developing our lives as we interpret ourselves—add up to quite a creative force. Conceivably, all of us might do better with the fruits of our respective labors and creative powers than the two Midwestern do-gooders can do with them. We would do better unless it is true that these two have a greater creative energy than the aggregate creative energy of all the rest of us. If their energy is only average, and probably it isn’t more than that, then why should we try to put 159,999,998 “volts” through their circuit which will transmit only two “volts”? Throttle down our energies in this manner, obstruct our creative impulses to act on our own, not only in housing, but also with respect to other creative ideas and goods; and we will be stopped—period!

These do-gooders are the initiators of obstacles to creative energy and its exchange. They keep us from becoming our potential selves. They take away our sustenance which is but the extension of our lives. They, in this action, differ from Robin Hood only in that they are less direct. In principle there is no distinction whatsoever. Both actions add up to the same thing—the aggressive taking of property (livelihood) without consent—viciousness. Whether the action is given the unattractive label of “legal thievery” or the attractive label of “social welfare” is of small comfort to the persons from whom property or livelihood is taken.

These do-gooders, in this action, differ from Malenkov only in that they are less competent. Malenkov uses the aggressive power more efficiently to force others to conform to his will than they use the aggressive power to force others to bend to their wills. Malenkov needs only to utter a command; they have to organize a gang of voters. In principle, these do-gooders aim to substitute their wills for yours and mine.[21] True, they are only penny-ante dictators. But they are so numerous! How fortunate all of us would be if we had only the obvious to cope with—a Robin Hood for instance!

The Fate Of Aggressors

The next aspect of this subject about which some questions ought to be raised has to do with the persons who invoke and the ones who wield the aggressive power; those who insist on the use of aggressive force and the persons in government who administer aggressive acts.

No additional analysis is intended of the bureaucratic function.[22] Nor need we examine the bureaucrat who performs only the defensive function. It is natural for an individual to defend his life, his family, his country, his property. And, it would seem to follow that the individual to whom the defensive function has been delegated would act just as naturally. The neighborhood cop, performing only a defensive role, is as much a part of the neighborhood as the neighbors themselves.

The questions that need to be raised pertain to the effect of aggression on its instigators, its practitioners. Regarding these persons who aggressively pattern our ways to their wills—be such authority usurped or immorally granted—how do they compare with their former selves, before they exercised any such authority? Are they made wiser by reason of the possession of this aggressive authority? Are their moral standards improved? Or, possibly, is there some diminution in their wisdom and character? If so, the rest of us lose rather than gain either by letting them usurp aggressive authority or by improperly granting them these powers.[23]

Nature of Aggressive Force

First, though, a re-emphasis of aggression and its nature: What kind of a force is it? Obviously, it is not creative. One cannot forcibly compel another to think, to imagine, to invent, to develop. Aggression is the forcible imposition of a judgment, not against the offense of others, but against the peace of others. It is molestation. It is man intervening, not against the destructive acts of others, but against the creative lives of others. If an aggressor is strong enough, or has a monopoly of the weapons, he can decrease the use of your energies and inhibit the employment of your faculties by putting you in chains or placing you behind walls. He can abolish your energies and faculties entirely by killing you. Or, in modern American terms, he can keep you from using your livelihood by taking it away from you. He can keep your livelihood low by forbidding you to accept what others are willing to pay in rent for the use of your house. If the aggressor is in political authority, he can reduce your income to zero by giving some of his aggressive powers to goon squads who, in turn, will keep you from opening your plant, although others may want to work for you. He can reduce your income to zero by forbidding you to procure the raw materials that your finished products require. The instances are endless in variety. And, no matter which one is chosen, it will be found to be an act of restricting or destroying creative energy and the exchange thereof.

We need make no inquiry about the effect on those of us on whom aggression is practiced. That it is destructive of our energies, our beings, our emergence as persons is self-evident. Let’s think about what it does to its instigators and purveyors.

The Aggressor At Work

No person can perform a creative act while he is destroying you. This is by way of saying that he cannot grow in his own stature while he is reducing your stature. Indeed, if he takes your property, he must spend his time in concocting schemes and arguments leading you to believe that he has done you a positive good. Otherwise, he will have your enmity on his hands. Perhaps he will take some of other people’s property and give you part of it. That will show at least that he is equalitarian in his injustice. But, then, the enmities he faces will be multiplied. Maybe he will increase the volume of the money so you and the others will have more dollars than you formerly had, a neat trick if he can get away with it. And if you begin to catch on by reason of rising prices, he will pass a law making it illegal for prices to go up. If all of this results in slowing down production, which assuredly it will, then he can pick out certain groups in the population and place the blame for his mess on them. But have no worry, for then he will save you and all the others by taking over the whole productive process!

Look who is in charge of everything! A person who has degenerated from the decent citizen he once was to that point of ignorance where he believes all of us would be improved were we to be cast in his little image. He hasn’t merely a Napoleonic complex; rather, he has come into possession of a Messianic complex. In simple fact, he has “gone off the beam.”

Now, admittedly, this extreme does not take place in all users of aggressive force. This extreme happens only to a few of them. However, the reason it happens to only a few is because only a few are so vain, so lacking in humility, that they think themselves competent to direct everybody and everything. Only a few are totally vicious. Most aggressors are only part-time.[24] Still, any person is destroyed to the extent he becomes an aggressor. One not only cannot rise toward his own potential while he is restricting the potential of others but also he sinks away from his potential. Degeneracy of the aggressor sets in as he acts to put others in a servile position. Any person, to the extent he practices slave-mastery, approaches the status of the slave he masters. The man who holds you onto your back is as permanently fastened on top of you as you are fastened under him. Both of you, in such positions, are useless. It is that simple.[25]

Urges To Aggression

What is the basis of this urge to get on top of others, to have others “knuckle down” to one’s will? Why is this type of “superiority” so widely sought?

Quite likely it derives from egotism and covetousness—forms of ignorance. The many observe the few getting ahead of them. The few who attain any genuine superiority do so by the extension of their own personalities, by the process of self-realization. Over the long period, it is always such persons who are looked up to for the reason that they are the ones primarily responsible for progress; indeed, the general welfare depends on them. Thus, they are held in high esteem. There are many who envy those to whom this deserved tribute is paid. They, too, would like to feel needed; and they envy the importance of those who are needed. Failing to understand the distinction between getting on top by the development of self and getting relatively on top by holding others down, they take the latter course. They reject achievement and adopt aggressive force as a means of getting on top. Nothing is required of them except the organization and application of brute force—viciousness. It is as though a baboon had Goethe flat on his back and were exulting in his own superiority—egotism gone simian!

Those who vote for aggression, who ask that the governmental agency become responsible for our welfare, do more than merely impair their own potentials, their own energies, and the energies of millions of others who are suppliers to the kinetic conduit and on whom our existence and fortunes depend. In addition, they also impair the potentials and the energies of the ones who wield aggressive power. The process lessens the aggregate potential energy and destroys kinetic energy on a wholesale basis.

Learning By Rote No Good

One question that assuredly will be raised at this point will be: What are these instances, specifically, of destructive aggression? Can they not be named, and then memorized, as a means of avoidance?

There are several hundred thousand words in Webster’s unabridged dictionary. If one will reflect on the impossible project of memorizing the nearly-endless variety of combinations into which all of these words can be arranged, one will have the answer as to whether acts of aggression can be identified by memory. These acts cannot be learned by rote. There is no comprehensible limit to their possible variations.

Furthermore, it is nearly useless to engage in negative explanations—showing why a particular act of aggression is wrong. Prove only that it is wrong to steal potatoes, and one is left with the endless task of proving that it is wrong to steal every other item of property. Multiply this by the number of ways that life and property can be taken without consent, and one can appreciate the hopelessness of negation as a technique of comprehending and of doing away with aggression.

The technique of negation could be used to prove, for instance, that the world is not square. Then there would still remain the endless task of proving that it is not any one of thousands of other shapes. But prove that the world is round, and there the argument about the shape of the earth is ended.

Necessity For Point Of Reference

And, so it is with this problem. Proving that the taking of life and property is wrong is not enough. It is more important to prove the rightness of extending life and property. Proving this to another, however, is difficult, if not impossible, unless there is agreement on a basic point of reference, unless there is acceptance of the moral principle on which such a positive philosophy rests. This appears to be basic: The highest purpose of each individual’s existence, regardless of race, creed, or color, is the fullest possible realization of that existence—that is, coming as near as one can in one’s lifetime to attaining those creative potentials ties peculiarily one’s own—emergence or emergent evolution.

With this premise once embraced, one cannot accept or justify any act of aggression, no matter how cleverly contrived or for whatever purpose. A person cannot, for example, agree that you have a right to your life and the fruits of your labor and then take some of you and of yours without your consent—to help him or others—without standing in bold contradiction of his own premise. If he does not accept this premise of life with its potential fullness as valid for others as for himself, he must logically accept the only alternative premise: Might makes right. All aggressors, knowingly or unknowingly, are supporters of the might-makes-right theory. This conclusion requires no more proof than its declaration.

The object of any serious person who would avoid becoming the victim of one conflicting plausibility after another, who frowns on living a life of contradictions, should be to find a morally sound premise to be used constantly as a point of reference. Answers to all proposals, then, whether one’s own or someone else’s, may be quickly obtained by referring to the starting premise. Is the proposal consistent or inconsistent with the premise? If the premise is right, all proposals become right or wrong according to their consistency or inconsistency with the premise.

Means And Ends

Aggression, however, will rarely be totally rejected by persons who retain the belief that, in some instances, it is the sole means to ends they think good. There are many who fail to see how activities they believe to be useful could be carried on in any manner other than by aggressive force. Even though they may believe that the compelling of one to abide by another’s judgment is evil—that viciousness is not a commendable way of life—they prefer the practice of some evil to the abandonment of what they think are worthy objects. They subscribe to and live by the vicious philosophy that the end justifies the means.

But it just isn’t possible that evil means can achieve good ends. Either the means they employ are not, in fact, evil, or the ends they have in view are not, in fact, good! Something has to be wrong with the evil-means, good-ends equation.[26]

“It is right that poor Joe and his family should pay lower rent. True, it is wrong to force Mr. Houseman to take less for his apartment than others are willing to pay. But on balance Joe’s right overpowers Mr. Houseman’s wrong. Thus, rent control [aggression] is right!”

The above is an example of a supposed good end justifying the use of an acknowledged evil means. Important, also, is the fact that the person who reasons in this manner believes himself, on balance, to be right. He believes himself to be just as right as the person who rejects evil means for any and all purposes. The distinction between the two is in the value they place on evil and good. There are those whose aversion to evil is so pronounced—and whose belief in its inefficacy is so confirmed—that no object, however desirable, can move them. These are not the persons under discussion.

End Pre-Exists In Means

The persons under discussion are those who believe that a good object can be attained by an evil means; that the good object would otherwise go unattained. There are two rational approaches to such persons:

1. Demonstrate that evil can never beget good; that whatever evil begets is not good, even by definition; that evil is the impairment of one’s own development and that of others; that aggression—compelling others to bend or knuckle under to one’s own will—is an impairment of oneself and of others; that any product of evil means is an evil product, for the very simple reason that the end pre-exists in the means.[27]

2. Demonstrate that all proper ends can be accomplished without any aggression whatsoever.

The first point would appear to be self-evident to any person who elects to think on the subject. And it ought to suffice as a guide to action without any discussion of the second point. But, in most instances, it does not suffice.

If There Were No Aggression At All

The questions posed by the second point are: What would things be like if the governmental agency in all its forms—federal, state, and local—should confine itself to the securing of the rights to life and property of all citizens equally? Writing the code of Do Nots appertaining thereto, adjudicating and administering them, and keeping the records incidental thereto? Employing no force beyond repellent force? Never using an iota of aggression? One hundred per cent free of aggression? All the rest being left to citizens in voluntary effort and to charity as advanced by Judeo-Christian philosophy? What would happen?

True, there wouldn’t be any new pyramids or their equivalent. There wouldn’t be any more Tennessee Valley Authorities or municipally owned utilities, even municipal sewer systems or water works. There wouldn’t be any more public (government) golf courses or the continuance by taxation of those that now exist. There wouldn’t be any Marshall Plan or Point Four Program. There wouldn’t be any rent control or other wage and price controls. There wouldn’t be any public (government) post office. There wouldn’t be any publicly subsidized businesses. Indeed, there are many thousands of millions of aggressively collected dollars that would not be spent each year through government agencies.

By the same token, however, the citizens would have the same many thousands of millions of dollars to use annually in accord with the dictates of their own creative judgments. What would they do with all these resources were the citizens not aggressively de-financed by government agencies?

Faith In Free Men

Of one thing we can be certain: There would be more progress than there is now. In America, where government has been limited more than in any other country, the progress has been the greatest. Where the obstacles to creative energy and its exchange have been the least, the release of energy has been the most.[28]

Another thing we know: These unobstacled Americans would provide themselves with power and light. There is proof of this. Other countries, all more socialistic—that is, where more aggressive force is used—than in America, failed in approaching our production before we permitted any government agency to get its foot in our electrical energy door. Power and light would, without question, be cheaper under private ownership than it is in the subsidized Tennessee Valley.[29] In addition, all the rest of the citizens of our country would have their own positions improved by not being compelled to finance the deficits of TVA and other socialized electrical projects.

Strange as it may seem to most folks, there would be sewer systems and water works if these necessities were left exclusively to private ownership. Hundreds of communities in the United States, even today, have sewer and water services privately supplied. There is no valid reason why this should not be unanimous.

And golf courses? By what stretch of the socialistic imagination should the wealthy Mr. Hemingway or the Widow Doakes, neither of whom has any interest in golf, be made to pay for a sport out of which a few of us happen to derive a pleasure? There is some evidence—hundreds of cases—that golf can do with voluntary arrangements.

Foreign Aid

Aid to foreign countries? Following the bleak days of our Civil War, it was not the governments of European countries that made loans to our industries and transportation systems. These loans came mostly from British, Dutch, and other investors—private investors. Were our own federal government not pre-empting international lending, American capitalists (savers, large and small) would lend capital to foreign countries; and the loans would be made to prospectively successful enterprises instead of to socialistic governments that use the funds with an eye to maintaining themselves in power.

How would prices be controlled? By the market, the thoroughly honest system, the only just method known to man for determining the value of one’s services or goods. Prices would be where all the people placed them with their purchases or lack of purchases, not where some aggressor expediently would like to have them, not where they serve as a political cover-up for the dilution of the money supply.

The mails too would be distributed—more efficiently and at a lower cost. For example, milk is more perishable than a cashier’s check, a personal letter, or a catalogue. Yet, under private auspices, milk is delivered every day to millions of people—with a high degree of honesty, punctuality, efficiency.

Health? Good health is a problem in the creative area. Here as in other problems, the agency of government has only the defensive function to perform—that is, the restraining and penalizing of practices by some careless or dishonest persons that endanger the health of all. The police force, for example, shouldn’t permit the selling of polluted water, the running of filthy restaurants represented to the public as sanitary, the existence of defective cesspools that would spread disease, or fraudulent representations about medicines.

But What About Aggression In Education?

The above, it is obvious, are relatively simple matters, requiring little thought to realize how we could achieve good ends by men in voluntary action. However, it is as useless as it is impossible to try to cover the field. But no student of this subject can stop here. One important and emotional issue might as well be faced. What about education? No single object rates higher in approval, and no end relies more on aggressive means than government education. Government education is always the final test tossed at anyone who takes a thoroughly anti-aggressor position. Answer this, they say, or the theory of voluntary action does not necessarily apply as the means to achieve a creative end. With the agencies of government restricted to securing rights to life and property and to other defensive functions as herein suggested, would not important progress cease in education?

Aggression is employed in government education in three ways: Government compels attendance; government dictates curricula; government collects expenses for government education by the use of aggressive as distinguished from defensive force. The absence of individual choice as to attendance, studies, and payment is implicit in the government educational system.

Originally, there wasn’t much question raised as to whether aggression in education would have a good or bad effect. The point seems to have been glossed over. Education, somehow, had to be insured or guaranteed. A country having a people’s government could not take the risk of having ignorant voters. If citizens were left to their own resources, they might let their children go uneducated. Surely, this was a department of life where only aggressive force could remove such dangers. So went the argument, and so it still goes. And the argument has become so indelibly imprinted on the minds of Americans that, today, education without aggression is viewed as a figment of fancy—an impossibility.

But here this point-blank question is raised: Can aggressive force produce any education at all? Can a machete or any other form of viciousness abolish ignorance?

If aggressive force is evil—and if the end pre-exists in the means—then it follows that compulsory education is evil. Or if education is good, then it cannot possibly be the product of aggression. These conclusions must be correct, or one or both of the assumptions must be proved to be wrong. It appears that the assumptions and the conclusions are correct, for is not aggressive force evil? And does not the end pre-exist in the means? And all of us believe that education is good.

If Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, Thomas Jefferson, and Horace Mann—leading sponsors of government education because they sincerely believed that representative government could not function without an intelligent electorate—could see where their “educated electorates” have taken this country, might they not want to re-examine their idea for government guaranteed enlightenment? For surely, these men, devotees of limited police force, would be shocked were they to observe the socialism of present-day America.[30]

Aggression Begets Aggression

Hindsight is more illuminating than foresight. Indeed, is not most foresight based on hindsight? But isn’t it now obvious that any system of education which had aggressive force as its essential characteristic might well result in authoritarian thinking? How a child, during the formative years of life, could spend a large portion of his waking hours in a socialistic institution and not emerge with socialistic ideas, defies the imagination. Many persons who believe aggressive force to be evil, if called upon to name the one single behavior pattern more responsible than any other for such socialism as we now have in America, would, no doubt, name the aggressive elements in our education system. All the furor now going on against our schools, if carefully diagnosed, would be found to stem from this one evil. The fact that false reasons are assigned—teachers being blamed, systems of teaching charged as imperfect, taxpayers not paying “sufficient” salaries for instruction, or whatever—is due only to casual analysis. The cause appears to lie with the chief identifiable evil—aggressive force.

This is not to say that a great amount of good education is not going on in government schools in these United States. Nor is this to assert that all teachers who are employed by the government school system—a socialistic institution—are socialists. Many of the most admirable people in America today, as measured in terms of the free market, private property, limited government philosophy, are to be found among our government school teachers. This, however, is the point: The good work being done in government education is in spite of, not because of, aggressive force. Aggressive force is the single point in the educational argument here at issue.

If Aggressive Force Were Removed

Now, let us imagine that all the aggressive aspects of education were removed—the forced attendance, the dictated curricula, the compulsory collection to meet the expenses thereof. Let us imagine that the entire educational endeavor were left exclusively to self-determination—as self-determining as religion in America now is.

What would happen?

No one can know! Some will say that this is a retreat from this argument. On the contrary, it is in support of the argument.

No one can completely predict what will happen to you if you are compelled to do as someone else says. One can predict, however, that you will not function fully in a creative sense if others can succeed in acting authoritatively over you, in placing obstacles in your way. But no one can know at all what you will do creatively if released from obstacles. Indeed, you cannot make such predictions yourself. What new idea will you have tomorrow? What invention? What will you do if a new necessity, an unexpected responsibility, presents itself? No one can know.

Confining the discussion to education, assume that you are no longer compelled to send Johnnie to school. No government committee prescribes what Johnnie must study. No government tax collector takes a penny of your income for schooling.

Is Johnnie in any less need of learning than before? Are other persons—teachers, for instance—any less wise or less available for counsel and employment? Is there less money for educational purposes? Would you spend the amount you are no longer compelled to pay in taxes on cigarettes or whiskey or vacations rather than on Johnnie’s education? If so, you value Johnnie’s education less than you value your own consumption of cigarettes and whiskey or the taking of vacations. In this case you make a choice—a choice that you obviously think to be the better alternative. Else you would not do it because only a moron would claim that he had decided to choose what he values least when he could choose what he values most. Shall we say someone else thinks your judgment is bad if you decide to favor whiskey over education? Do you wish someone else to force you to behave his way? You can’t possibly say that you think your choice is the best and accept, at the same time, someone else’s verdict that it is the worst. That is utter nonsense. Aggressive force, if applied to you, can only contradict your judgments. If applied to others, it can only contradict their judgments. Who possibly can be the appropriate aggressor, they or you? Or a political committee which cannot be better than the lowest common denominator of them and you?[31]

Religion And Education

Why should not education be just as self-determining as religion? Is education more important than religion? Americans condemn Russians, for instance, more for being ungodly than for knowing how to make little else than vodka and caviar that can compete in international trade.[32] If we frown at communists for their ungodliness, how can we support ungodliness by favoring aggressive force in our own country? Authoritarianism is but man trying to play God, trying to cast others in his own infinitesimal image.

Are high moral standards and improving attitudes toward one’s life and toward the lives of others—prime objects of religion—of less value than knowing how to read or to write or to add two and two? Indeed, are not education and religion intimately personal matters, one as much as the other? Is the education of another any more of one’s business than the religion of another? And if one is concerned, should he seek to attend to his own interest by placing obstacles in the way of others—that is, by employing aggressive force to others?

In most countries, and certainly in America, the idea of being compelled by government to attend churches, or having government dictation of the subjects clergymen must speak about, or having the expenses of religious institutions forcibly collected by the tax man, would be repulsive in the extreme. Why do people believe in aggressive force for education and self-determination for religion? Logically, there appears to be no basis for the distinction. Tradition, custom—living with a mistake so long that reason is rarely brought to bear—may be the explanation.[33]

The Fool Is Always Someone Else

Having for long been a disbeliever in aggressive force in any and all forms, I have constantly and over a long period of time asked individuals in various occupational levels if they would let their children go uneducated were all compulsions to be removed. The answer is always in the same vein, no matter to whom the question is addressed. In effect, it is: “Do you think I am a fool? I would no more think of letting my children go without an education than I would think of letting them go without shoes and stockings. But some forms of compulsion are necessary, for there are many persons who do not have the same concern for their children as I have.” And there you have it! Authoritarianism is always needed for the other fellow. But try to find this other fellow! The other fellow’s fault—the possibility of his having no interest in himself or in his offspring—is more imaginary than real. It is, for the most part, a fiction of the aggressive myth. If every parent in this country were to consider authoritarianism in education as applying only to himself and could divorce from his thinking the “incompetency” of others, there would be no aggressive force whatever applied to American education. Let any reader of this monograph, regardless of wealth status, honestly try this exercise and arrive at any other conclusion!

Child-Parent Relationship

A child, from the time he is born until he reaches adulthood, is but the extension of the parent’s responsibility. The child’s education, no more than his religion or his morals or his manners or his sustenance, can properly be turned out to pasture. There can be no more proper shifting to others the primary responsibility for the child’s education than there can be a proper shifting of responsibilities for the parent’s virtues. There are some things that properly remain for one’s own attentions, no matter how enticingly and powerfully specialization and division of labor may beckon one. And, the education of one’s children is a case in point.

This does not mean that the parent should not have help—a lot of specialized help—with the educational responsibility. It does mean that the parent cannot be relieved of the educational responsibility without injury to himself—that is, without injury to his own person and to the child who is but the extension of his personal responsibility.

Education A Life-Long Process

According to the premise on which this thesis is based, man’s highest purpose in life is the unfolding of his own personality, the realization, as nearly as possible, of his potential, his emergence. Such achievement presupposes that the educational process will go on through all of adulthood, as well as through childhood. Indeed, school for the child, if it is to have any meaning, is but the preparation for a dynamic, continuing process of education. The test of whether any primary and secondary educational system is meeting the requirements of education is: Does it set the stage for adult learning?

How does the application of aggressive force bear on this question? It tends to relieve parents of educational responsibilities and, thus, to dismantle any educational stage they may have had in mind for themselves. Aggression says, in effect, to the parent: “Forget about the education of your child. We, the government, will compel the child to go to school regardless of how you think on the matter. Do not fret unduly about what the child shall study. We, the agency of compulsion, have that all attended to. And don’t worry about the financing of education. We, the instrument of authority, will take the fruits of your labor to pay our expenses. You, the parent, are to be relieved of any choice as to that.”

These aggressive devices lead to two grave educational errors. First, the parent is robbed of the educational stimulus that would be his were he to be responsible for the education of his child. Joe Doakes would be educationally more fit if he had to understand what Johnnie is supposed to learn. He would have to “keep his hand in.”

Second, these authoritarian devices falsely earmark the educational period. They say, ever so compellingly, that the period of education is the period to which aggressive force applies. The ceremonies of “graduation”—diplomas and licenses—if not derivatives of these devices, are consistent with them. This system is resulting in young folks’ coming out of school thinking of themselves as educated and thinking of the beginning of earning as the end of learning. If any devotee of aggressive force will concede that learning ought to be through all of life, he should, to be consistent, insist on compulsory educational devices for adults as well as for children—for the octogenarian as well as for the teen-ager. For what profit is there in a system which, were it to meet its claims of giving a start to education, puts an end to learning just at the time when the spirit of inquiry should begin its most meaningful growth?[34]

More And Better Education

It was stated above that no one could have knowledge as to what would happen were there to be no more aggressive force at all in education. That is correct concerning specifics and details, but there are certain general things which are known and can be predicted in advance. For instance, one knows that creative energies would be released; that latent potential energies would turn to kinetic activities. Creative thought on education would manifest itself in millions of existences. Such genius as we potentially and compositely possess would assert itself and take the place of present deadening restraints. A person with a genuine faith in free men knows, without any qualification whatsoever, that there would be more education and better education. And he is confident that the costs measured in learning accomplishment would be far less. There wouldn’t be any authoritarian items for which to pay. Nor would there be the financial irresponsibility that characterizes those who spend other people’s money.

Not only is this faith in uninhibited, creative human energy rationally justified, but also there is evidence aplenty to confirm it. In other words, this faith is supported both theoretically and pragmatically. Except for the pathological cases of those who are temperamentally slaves—those who seek a shepherd and a sheep dog, those who are revolted by the thought of self-reliance, those who are ideologically attuned to authoritarianism—there does not exist a single activity now being conducted by man in voluntary action that could, in most people’s opinions, be improved were it to be owned or controlled by agencies employing aggressive force. But put any one of these activities, now voluntarily conducted, under government control, leave it there for a few years, and general opinion would then conclude that it could not be conducted voluntarily.

Twenty-five years from now, after the electric power industry has been nationalized for a decade—a likely event if past trends maintain—there will be only a few people in America who will favor a return to private ownership and operation. The vast majority will not understand how that activity could exist without aggressive force and still serve the people.

It is this same remoteness that accounts for much of the shortcoming in faith as to educational productiveness were the educational system relieved of restraints and compulsions. The restraints, be it remembered, are in the form of taxes—the taking away of the wherewithal to finance one’s own educational plan. The compulsions are in the form of forced attendance and dictated curricula.

Aids To A Restoration Of Faith

Several aids to the restoration of faith in freedom for education are:

1. Observe activities not yet socialized—that is, not yet conducted by aggressive force. They are doing all right by man in voluntary action. The less the socialization of activities in any country, the better off are the people in that country.

2. What is there which we know how to do, and for which there is an effective demand, which remains undone in America? Not a thing except what aggressive force restricts! There are many thousands of individuals, expert in educational techniques, that have the know-how.

Effective demand? Can anyone argue with reason that there can be education of those who do not want it? The answer to that question is simply the answer to the question, “What can anyone force another to learn?” If we want education—and we cannot have it if we do not want it—we will have education. Authoritarianism—applying aggressive force—is antagonistic to the extremely sensitive spirit of inquiry, the will to learn. Remove all aggression, and we remove education’s chief initiated obstacle.

3. While one cannot know of the brilliant steps that would be taken by millions of education-conscious parents were they and not the state to have the educational responsibility, one can imagine the great variety of cooperative and private enterprises that would emerge. There would be thousands of private schools, large and small, not unlike some of the ones we now have. There would be tutoring arrangements of a variety and ingenuity impossible to foresee. No doubt there would be corporate and charitably financed institutions of chain store dimensions, dispensing reading, writing, and arithmetic at bargain prices. There would be competition, which is cooperation’s most useful tool.[35] There would be a parent alertness as to what the market would have to offer. There would be parental responsibility for their children’s and their own educational growth. Socialism would not be advocated in the classroom except, possibly, to the children of the well-to-do who could afford such waste and extravagance. The market, by its nature, would rule out most of the frills. Competition would dictate that.

4. Recall the year 1900. Suppose someone had been able to conjure up a picture of a 1954 automobile and all of its wonderful performances. And suppose you had been asked how it could have been produced at that time. You could not even have grasped such a miracle, let alone have described how it could have been made. Yet, it has been produced, and without aggressive force. Indeed, what would the 1954 car be like if the government had compelled attendance at research laboratories, dictated the subjects to be studied, and forcibly collected the revenues for same? Would there be any car at all? And, if so, would anyone have the money left to buy one? Millions of unobstacled man-hours of ever-increasing skills and thinking, in a constant and complex exchange process, have made the 1954 car possible. And so it would be with education in a free society. We cannot foretell what would happen were the mind of man applied to this activity, were as much creative, uninhibited thought put to education as has been put to motor cars. As it is, a vast majority of the people have given little more than cursory thought as to how to educate without the agency of compulsion. No wonder! We have the tendency not to think about problems not our own, about activities pre-empted by government. Remove all initiated obstacles and the kinetic activity of man approaches his potential energy. Aggressive force as an effective means to the educational end is but a superstition. It has no foundation in fact.

5. The children of the poor? They obtained food and clothing before we practiced governmental alms—more than ever known of before. But education isn’t as important as food? Education is only as important as life itself. Furthermore, remove the bill we are paying for aggressive activities, and poor parents will not be as poor. And literally millions of Americans would like nothing better than to practice charity—than to give an education to the children of those who might be in unfortunate circumstances. The acceptance of charity is degrading? That is an unforgivable socialistic cliché. It is precisely the same thing as saying that the voluntary giving of one’s goods to another is degrading. For how can the giving be a brotherly act and the receiving be degrading? Perhaps charity isn’t as agreeable to the recipient as living off the fruits of his own labors. But it ought to be more agreeable than living off the livelihood of others taken by aggressive force. This dispute is Judeo-Christian charity versus legal thievery and viciousness. The libertarian prefers charity.[36]

The educational question has been belabored primarily to demonstrate that there is no valid case for aggressive force in the one instance in which it has its greatest number of devotees. If aggression has no rational basis in education, it has no basis for use in any creative activity. The fact that we cannot imagine how we could do without aggressive force in education or in any other activity is to be laid to the weakening of our imaginations and the curbing of our thoughts, not to the inefficacy of man in creative action.

Opposing Aggressive Force In Education

Now, as sure as the sun will rise, some “patriot” will say that one who holds to these views is opposed to the education of children because he is opposed to compulsion in education—to governmental control over the minds of children. Such a deduction could come from confused thinking only. Is one to be accused of being opposed to religion because he is opposed to government control over our ministers and churches? Is one to be accused of being opposed to eating food because he is opposed to governmentally owned and operated grocery stores and restaurants? In all three instances, it seems that the only fair accusation against the person being criticized is that he has a faith in freedom—that is, a faith in the release of the human spirit. And for that, who needs to apologize to anyone?

According to these views—regardless of how devoutly we may desire a pyramid, an auditorium, prosperity for a person or a group, or any other object requiring creative activity—what we cannot accomplish without aggressive force should be left undone. That we would have more than we now have is certain. That our material, intellectual, and spiritual possessions would be different is certain. That released, creative human energy is more productive than restrained human energy is also certain.

Erroneous Reputations

It may seem strange to many persons that the free-market, voluntary-society, limited-government philosophy has the reputation of being harsh and severe, of the “dog-eat-dog,” “back-to-the-jungle” type while the socialistic, social-leveling-by-aggressive-force philosophy has the reputation of being kind, considerate, charitable, liberal, humanitarian. And, indeed, this is strange, for the reputations should, in all truth, be reversed.

There are numerous reasons for these erroneous reputations, and it is important that the reasons be known. If there is not a better understanding of these philosophies and the reasons for the antagonisms they evoke than now exists, most people will continue to exert themselves in opposition to the interests of themselves and others.

The first reason that comes to mind has to do with motivations. While fresh air and good drinking water are essential to health, one will not find active protagonists for either of these among a country people where fresh air and good water are in abundant supply. These essentials are taken for granted. Their unquestioned availability no more activates articulate supporters than do the life necessities of breathing and sleeping. They fall in that vast category of phenomena that just “come naturally.”

The Free Market And Protagonists

Creative energy and its exchange belong to natural phenomena. They are necessities in the sense that a necessity is something one has to have or else he dies. And, as with fresh air, water, breathing, sleeping, they do not tend to create protagonists. We don’t observe speakers and writers taking time out to support Old Sol. Yet without the sun, all of us would perish. Similarly, Mrs. Jones does not wax eloquent over the swapping of the shawl she has made for the goose that Mrs. Smith has raised. The Jones-Smith free market is as natural as life itself. The Jones-Smith free market is, indeed, the living of life. But the living of life does not tend to inspire vocal advocates. It is a taken-for-granted affair. The taken-for-granted assumption is that life has a higher Grantor than the likes of us.

Socialism And Protagonists

Now consider the motivations on the other side of this controversy. If one were going to offer people substitutes for fresh air, water, the sun, he would have to become adept at conjury and devise some pretty sharp talk to put over his schemes.

Reflect on all of the persons who are covetous, on all who derive a satisfaction in pulling others down to their own level, on all who are gullible, on all who would attain affluence regardless of method, on all who would have others behave like themselves, on all whose compassion for others is beyond self-satisfaction and who would, if they could, reapportion the possessions of individuals to fit their own concepts of justice. These folks, added together, make quite a multitude. There is but one means to their “worthy” ends: Gain power over others, not repellent or defensive power for themselves, but the power to initiate aggressive force over those whose lives they would redesign and shape, the power to designate the number of hours Mrs. Jones shall work making shawls, the power to direct Mrs. Smith to “plow under” a specified percentage of her geese, the power to control exchange—in short, the power to command the living of others’ lives. It takes clever talk to sell these schemes. Such talk has been going on throughout recorded history, and much of it has succeeded: coin-clipping, the divine right of kings, monetizing debt, rent control, compulsory social security, and thousands of other instances of inhibited energy and thwarted exchange.[37]

The socialistic, government-as-ruler philosophy has over the years developed a line of distinguished arguers, facile talkers, adept protagonists. If another’s aim were to gain power over you, he would first try to convince you of the advantages that would accrue to you. Success would be possible if he could persuade you that his overlordship would do you good; that to take from others and give to you, or to take from you and give to others—there is no difference—would qualify as kind, considerate, liberal, charitable, humanitarian. Success would be assured if he could wean you away from your natural ways of acting creatively and exchanging. He would associate these natural ways of yours with greed, selfishness, tooth-and-claw behavior, jungle tactics; in short, he would drown these natural ways in a sea of derogatory epithets.

On the socialistic side of the controversy are the motivations for “selling.” And, the “selling” task is made easier by the simplicity of authoritarian “welfare.” It is, divested of legal trappings and sleight-of-hand frills as employed in monetizing debt, as simple as the Robin Hood technique. Indeed, it is the same thing.

There Is No Free-Market Blueprint

On the free-market or creative-energy-and-its-exchange side of the controversy is the lack of motivations that develop protagonists. In addition, there is the difficulty—the impossibility—of explaining phenomena that defy complete diagnosis. The free market is not a system in the sense that it can be blueprinted. It is energy and energy exchanges.

The workings of human energy are so complex and diverse that man, at his intellectual best, stands in awe of its wonders. He can do little more than to make observations of certain aspects of its workings, draw deductions therefrom, and live in harmony with the truth as he discovers it. This side of the controversy tends to motivate research and discovery, not salesmanship, not articulate protagonism. The only selling that can be done is the revealing of that which has been discovered. This is vastly different from peddling a scheme—something that can be simply blueprinted or put in a package, so to speak. Indeed, the free market can be “sold” only in the sense that some persons can induce other persons to go in search of truth for themselves.

Let us, however, not accept socialism as humanitarian and the free market as harsh on the say-so of those who have social packages to sell. Admittedly, energy and energy exchanges cannot be completely described. But one can catch glimpses of their workings, at least enough to develop a healthy skepticism toward the human plans for planning human beings.

The Free Market Is Humanitarian

Recently, on being conducted through a paper mill, I was shown a new and huge machine that cost $2,500,000. Countless types of human energy and energy exchanges, extending into the infinite past, went into its making, as did the types of energy required to accumulate that much capital.

At the beginning of the machine was a series of large pipes. These delivered, with considerable force, a whitish liquid that contacted a rapidly moving copper screen. The screen wended its way through and around dryers, ironers, and other devices, and deposited at the other end in a continuous flow a wide sheet of cleansing tissue.

“What is that liquid?” asked I.

“That’s nothing but highly gyrated water containing wood pulp. As it makes contact with the copper screen, the water goes through; but the pulp is evenly distributed, continuing on for ironing, drying, and other processing, and emerges as the finished product.”

“What kind of wood do you use for the pulp?”

“Spruce.”

“One of these days you folks will run out of spruce. Then what will you use?”

“We are planting spruce faster than we are harvesting it.”

“How long does it take a seedling, after planting, before it is ready for harvesting?”

“Eighty years here in the north country.”

“Where do you get the seedlings?”

“We have several large nurseries. It takes about three years from the time the seed is planted until the seedling is ready for transplanting.”

At this point I visualized a man who had the skills for, and had a primary interest in, this type of husbandry. In this, his chosen field, he would, in a lifetime, start millions of spruce trees. And then these thoughts: This man’s energy going into the planting and the nurturing; that energy stored for 80 years in a forest while nature expanded it; its flowing through the pulp stage; and, finally, its going through the machine and coming out as cleansing tissue. The human energy of this nurseryman, among literally millions of others over the whole period of conscious man, manifesting itself as cleansing tissue!

Contemplating further: What does this man’s energy in the form of paper tissue accomplish? Among other things, it is an aid to sanitation. Then an historical fact came to mind: In the British Isles, 300 years ago, many a mother brought 20 children into the world, only for two of them to reach adulthood.[38] The decrease in infant mortality has been due to improvements in sanitary methods to a large extent, products of creative energy and its exchange (the so-called Industrial Revolution). Anything, then, that contributes to sanitation, and thus to the extension of human beings, is humanitarian if the term has any meaning at all. This product also relieves human beings from menial laundering, releasing them for higher callings. That’s humanitarian too! The nurseryman’s creative energy flowing, growing, and taking new forms in the forest, flowing through factories and over highways and railroads and in the air, freely attracting to it countless other forms of human energy, flowing on as an aid to millions of people! A man attending to his own interests, developing those potentialities peculiarly his own! And, at the same time, contributing to the welfare of his fellow men!

Socialism Is Jungle Law

Very interesting, indeed! Why not, though, test this energy concept in a socialistic equation and see what happens? How about France as having a prohibitive tariff against this American-made cleansing tissue? Embargoes, import quotas, and tariffs are schemes of man—aggressive force devices—to help some while restraining exchange on the part of others, as socialistic as TVA or socialized medicine. What would be the effect of a French tariff against this tissue? The answer is clear: The nurseryman’s energy would be prohibited from flowing to the benefit of millions of French men and women. Obvious conclusion: Socialism is the truly severe, harsh, back-to-the-jungle philosophy.

Energy And Energy Exchanges Illustrated

At this point it is appropriate to expand an idea previously expressed—namely, that the free market is not a system that can be blueprinted; that it is energy and energy exchanges; that it is complex; and that discerning persons cannot help but stand in awe of its wonders. This can be done by drawing on and paraphrasing Frederic Bastiat.[39]

Let us take, by way of illustration, a man in the humble walks of life—our nurseryman, for instance—and observe the various services he renders to society and receives from society. We shall be greatly impressed with the enormous disproportion which is apparent.

This man employs his day’s labor in preparing soil, planting seeds, fertilizing the tender plants, and so on. If he is at all like the vast majority of people, he complains of his condition; yet, in truth, what does he receive from others in exchange for his work?

First of all, on getting up in the morning, he dresses himself, and he himself has personally made none of the numerous articles of which his clothing consists. Now, in order to put at his disposal this clothing, simple as it is, an enormous amount of labor, industry, and locomotion, and many ingenious inventions, must have been employed. People from other states must have produced cotton, some others indigo, and still others wool, flax, and hides; and all these materials must have been transported to various towns where they have been worked up, spun, woven, dyed, finished, and prepared for merchandising.

Then he breakfasts. In order to procure him the bread which he eats every morning, land must have been cleared, enclosed, labored, manured, sown; the fruits of the soil must have been preserved with care from pillage, and an innumerable multitude of people must have been secured against marauders; the wheat must have been cut down, ground into flour, kneaded, and prepared; iron, steel, wood, and stone must have been converted by industry into instruments of labor; some men must have employed animal force, others water power or electrical energy—all matters of which each, taken singly, presupposes a mass of labor, whether we have regard for space or time, of incalculable amount.

Things Received From Others

In the course of the day, this man will have occasion to use sugar, oil, and various other materials and utensils.

He steps to the telephone and calls his Wisconsin headquarters. The creative energy of Alexander Graham Bell and of tens of thousands of others, past and present—metallurgists, electrical and mechanical engineers, scientists, entrepreneurs, linemen, operators—in an instant flow through time and space to his service.

He sends his son to school, there to receive an education which, although limited, nevertheless implies anterior study, research, and an extent of knowledge which startles the imagination.

A neighbor goes to law with him. He finds advocates to plead his case, judges to maintain his rights, officers of justice to put the sentence in execution—all of which implies acquired knowledge and, consequently, intelligence and means of subsistence.

He goes to church. It is a stupendous monument, and the book which he carries thither is a monument, perhaps still more stupendous, of human intelligence. He is taught morals; he has his mind enlightened, his soul elevated; and in order to do this, we must suppose that another man has previously frequented schools and libraries, consulted all the sources of human learning, and while so employed has been able to live without occupying himself directly with the wants of the body.

The World Of Miracles

If our nurseryman undertakes a journey, he finds that, in order to save him time and exertion, other men have removed and leveled the soil, filled up valleys, hewed down mountains, united the banks of rivers, diminished friction, placed wheeled carriages on rails of iron, and brought the power of oil, coal, steam, and electricity into subjection to human wants.

As modest as are his means, he steps from his cottage into a vehicle that will, if necessary, transport him 100 miles per hour, truly a magic wagon for no person on the face of this earth knows how to make one.[40]

It is impossible not to be struck with the measureless disproportion which exists between the enjoyments which this man derives from others and those he could obtain by his own unassisted exertions, I venture to say that in a single day he consumes more than he himself could produce in ten centuries! What renders the phenomenon still more strange is that all other men are in the same situation. Every individual member of our society absorbs untold amounts of energies he himself could not produce.

Yes, the example of our nurseryman could be extended indefinitely. Yet, there is not a living person who could precisely explain these energy phenomena. They defy definition and complete understanding, as does electricity or one’s own autonomic nervous system. We can but observe these phenomena with care and make deductions therefrom.

Victims Of Hallucinations

There is, however, one unmistakable fact that can be gleaned from observation: Authoritarianism (aggressive force) is a fake! There is not a man nor any set of men who should ever have authoritarian power over creative energy and its exchange. Man’s forceful intervention can only thwart, restrain, detain, repress, destroy. Let man intervene in the affairs of others only to restrain destructive energies; otherwise, insofar as others are concerned, leave human energy alone! Contemplate the utter absurdity of any person’s directing the energies relating to one day in the life of our nurseryman! What man, then, is ever to be trusted who thinks he could direct the energy and energy exchanges of a whole nation of people? Does it not seem obvious that authoritarians are the victims of hallucinations, for do they not believe that God’s role is in no sense beyond their competency?

It is the riddance of authoritarianism in all its forms about which we need to concern ourselves socially. Authoritarianism is destructive, vicious energy.[41]

Man’s intervention to restrain destructive action demands a society-wide organization—government. It is this defensive intervention that justifies as well as sets the limit for government. The defensive function is extremely difficult and calls for experts in the science of defense. The fact that incompetents get elected or appointed to public office, and substitute aggressive meddling in others’ affairs for the defensive work which they find they cannot or will not perform, in no way lessens the need for government limited to defense.

Clichés

Of late, however, we have become the victims of skillful selling by meddlers. Many of us are coming to believe in the meddlers and their meddling or, if not, to give way to their blandishments—to their guns if in Russia, to their epithets if in America. “Back to the jungle,” “What would you do, let them starve?” “Property rights are above human rights,” “Harsh,” “Severe,” and other derogatives seduce those who are gullible and frighten the weak-hearted. These frightened folks join the ranks of the modern Robin Hoods who are “kind,” “considerate,” “charitable,” “liberal,” “humanitarian.” These terms are put in quotes for these are the virtues they falsely ascribe to themselves.

The Purpose Of Liberty

In concluding this essay, it is well to emphasize the idea that every living human being, if he would correctly interpret his own welfare, has a vested interest in the creative emergence of every other human being; that each person has a vested interest in the free, uninhibited flowing and exchange of the energies thus released; that the true interests of all, therefore, are in harmony; and that, finally, every individual has a vested interest in common with all other men in restraining all inhibitory influences to creative energy and creative energy exchanges. It is this latter common interest that constitutes the social aspect of man and warrants his organization of government within societies for defense. All else is individual, voluntary, and cooperative as individuals may choose; for all else is creative. This is the vast, indeed, the infinite, area of emergence.

Emergence—man’s highest purpose—has two primary requirements. The first is an awareness of an Infinite Consciousness that man’s emergence may have conscious purpose and direction. The second is liberty in order that emergence may be uninhibited and possible. Liberty can be defined, psychologically, as man freeing himself from his own negations and, sociologically, as man not playing God, either individually or collectively, through government or otherwise.

[1] The task today is selling the idea of less government. The task of Hamilton, Jay, and Madison was to sell the idea that there would not be too much government. The Bill of Rights was required to make the sale to the people.

[2] Wickard v. Filburn, 317 U.S. 111, p. 131, October, 1942.

[3] While government in America has changed its nature—going from a defensive agency to an agency of aggressive force—there is no denying that it has acted defensively in vast areas and has, until lately, observed limitation better than have governments elsewhere. I feel I am obligated only to the agency as it should exist and to some extent as it has existed, not to the agency in its overextended departments. My part in the latter is clearly an unwarranted compulsion and is so regarded.

[4] What is an equitable tax to support an agency devoted only to the defense of creative energy and energy exchanges? As I have tried to show later on, life or life energies cannot be taxed equitably. Perhaps it is only by the taxing of livelihood, through a medium of exchange, that equity can be achieved. This would suggest a tax proportional to livelihood and is to be distinguished from progressive taxation, which is, in fact, a form of aggressive confiscation. For an interesting analysis of the problem, see Liberty and Taxes by Bradford B. Smith (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1947).

[5] This is an extremely difficult point for me to “think through.” A person has the right to live but has no obligation to society to do so. Yet, I have contended that a person has an obligation to support his and others’ defense of life. As I see it, the obligation to pay for an agency of common defense is imposed on those who choose to take advantage of their right to life. There is no such obligation, obviously, on those who choose not to live.

[6] In peacetime it is such things as money, the preference for certain types of work, the belief that government provides secure employment, the competition in winning elections or appointments, the satisfactions that some have in being an official, and the urge to do one’s part which serve as incentives or inducements adequately to staff the societal agency. In wartime, if free-market principles are to continue, other incentives become more pronounced, for instance, the urge to defend one’s family and homeland regardless of the risk to life.

[7] See Conscription by Daniel Webster and Wars and Conscription by Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953).

[8] It does not necessarily follow that all voluntary armed action is defensive action. History is filled with instances of voluntary aggression and brigandage.

[9] Earl Browder. Keynes, Foster and Marx: State Capitalism & Progress. Yonkers, N.Y.: Earl Browder, 1950. pp. 29–30.

[10] See chapter IV, “The Magical Origins of Power,” in Bertrand de Jouvenel’s book entitled On Power: Its Nature and the History of Its Growth (New York, N.Y.: The Viking Press, 1949).

[11] For an extension of the free trade thesis, see The Tariff Idea by W. M. Curtiss (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953).

[12] A remarkable account of governmental encroachment, how it started, and the manner of its growth was written by John W. Burgess, founder and for many years head of the Department of Political Science at Columbia University. The book, Recent Changes in American Constitutional Theory (New York, N.Y.: Columbia University Press, 1923) is out of print but is available in many libraries.

[13] “In a higher phase of Communist society . . . society [can] inscribe upon its banner: ‘From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs!’” Karl Marx, Capital and Other Writings. New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, Inc., 1932. p. 7. The progressive income tax is the application of this ideal by aggression. It legalizes the political practice of communizing the product of all by force. It sanctions social leveling by government.

[14] This is extracted from the chapter, “The Coming Slavery,” in Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946).

[15] The Federal Budget in any one of the last 20 years (Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office).

Thomas Barber. Where We Are At. New York, N.Y.: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1950.

Ben Moreell. To Communism via Majority Vote. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1952.

F. A. Harper. Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949. Chapters 12–13.

[16] If one wishes to gain an idea of how extensively our own government has intervened, money-wise, in the market place, read Economics and the Public Welfare by Benjamin McAlester Anderson (New York, N.Y.: D. Van Nostrand Company, Inc., 1949).

[17] If my potatoes had a certain contagious blight and thus threatened other people’s potatoes, society would be justified in removing the hazard. But justice would require that society duly compensate me for my loss. This is assuming the blight to be “an act of God” as distinguished from a negligent or a willful act on my part.

[18] The taking of one’s property without consent is a good rule for determining when aggression is applied. There are two observations to keep in mind, however. The first applies to the collection of taxes to finance society’s agency limited to defensive functions, and for the reasons earlier outlined. The second has to do with eminent domain. The acquisition of property as a means of removing obstacles to creative energy and its exchange would appear to be consistent with a tax to pay for defense. Just compensation is, of course, assumed.

[19] Robin Hood, a figment of fiction, has always been and remains popular. His popularity derives from his robbing the rich to aid the poor. If the rich he robbed came by their fortunes fairly, Robin was a brigand of the first order. If, on the other hand, the rich were robbers themselves, then Robin was nothing but a show-off. If he had been intelligent and seriously interested in those he purported to help, he would have contributed his skills to stopping the robbers in the first place.

[20] Aside from members of the Moscow apparatus who are bent on the utter destruction of capitalism, it is next to impossible to find an avowed socialist who is in favor of all the socialistic items being practiced in America today. Our grand total of socialism results from different groups wanting only their own item of socialism. The man who argues for “free enterprise” except a protective tariff on his own commodity is a case in point. Socialism in America is the aggregate of a lot of minor socialistic advocacies.

[21] My analysis of do-goodism by aggression has assumed no other motivation on the part of do-gooders than to do good. This system, however, presupposes a harm to some, equal to the “good” for others. Considering the number of persons who get a positive pleasure from harming others, isn’t it likely that some of the do-goodism is born of an impulse to do harm? The whole “soak-the-rich” category of epithets answers the question affirmatively.

[22] Ludwig von Mises. Bureaucracy. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1946.

[23] For a more complete analysis of what happens to the authoritarian, see my Victims of Social Leveling (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953).

[24] It seems apparent that the viciousness in the world has its origin mostly with well-intentioned folks. There simply are not enough criminals among us to otherwise account for it. For a fine historical example of a well-intentioned person employing vicious means to attain the most worthy of ends, read Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley (New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, 1941).

[25] For an excellent spelling-out of this idea, see My Freedom Depends on Yours by Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953).

[26] “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” Ralph Waldo Emerson. The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson. New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, 1940. p. 176.

[27] An elaboration of the idea that there is no such thing as short-range evils adding up to a long-range good, and vice versa, is to be found in an article of mine entitled “Let’s Be Practical” which appears in Reflections on Faith and Freedom (Los Angeles, Calif.: Spiritual Mobilization, 1952).

[28] For a brilliant exposition of this point, see If Men Were Free To Try by John Sparks (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1954).

[29] It is difficult to imagine how low all prices would be relative to wages and salaries if the activities of government included no aggression. Not only would there be the deductions of the costs of aggressive actions, but there would be the release of all energy which aggression now restrains. Prices of goods, relative to wages and salaries, would trend downward with the advance of technology and efficiency. And, if government effectively defended against fraud in money, there would be the absence of inflation-caused price rises.

[30] Thomas Jefferson can be quoted as opposed to government education: “Opposition to the fund was most forcefully expressed by Thomas Jefferson. Although he approved its purposes, he was opposed to state subsidies for local government functions. His chief objection was, however, to the central board set up under the act of February 12, 1811, Rather than have a system of schools managed for, rather than by, the people, Jefferson would have withdrawn his support of the proposed system entirely. As well, he thought, commit the management of farms, mills, and stores to the governor and council.” From A History of Education in West Virginia by Charles H. Ambler (Huntington, W. Virginia: Standard Printing and Publishing Company, 1951. pp. 19–20).

[31] For a discussion of committees, men acting in council, see my On That Day Began Lies (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949).

[32] Their MIG 15’s, for example, which we hear are relatively efficient killers, are not in international trade. They have so little to offer that they are not significant at all in such competition.

[33] Another explanation may be the belief that parents simply would not adequately finance the education of their children. In one city (Pittsburgh, Pa.) where some research has been done, it is estimated that voluntary contributions to all churches exceed 315,000,000 annually. This is three-fourths of the annual, compulsory collection for all their government schools! Right or wrong, most people think that education in temporal matters is more important than instruction in spiritual matters. There is little question about adequate voluntary support of education were there no compulsion.

[34] “The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and, depending upon physical factors, education, environment and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe . . . [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline. . . . There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline.” Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, op. cit., p. 310.

[35] Without competition among bakers, for instance, I have no basis for deciding on the baker with whom I will exchange, cooperate.

[36] The one who believes in government limited to defensive functions rejects, of course, all thought of police grants-in-aid as a means of satisfying his compassion for others. His reliance is on Judeo-Christian charity, a voluntary response that needs a far better understanding than it now has. See Charity: Biblical and Political by Russell J. Clinchy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1951).

[37] See my Two Kinds of Exchange (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953).

[38] “It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive.” From The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith (New York, N.Y.: The Modern Library, 1937. p. 79).

[39] The next 11 paragraphs are paraphrased from a chapter entitled “Natural and Artificial Organization” in Frederic Bastiat’s Harmonies of Political Economy (Santa Ana, Calif.: The Register Publishing Co., Ltd., 1944).

[40] A realization of this fact as applied not merely to automobiles but to thousands of other productions will aid one in appreciating how dependent we are on a wide admixture of energies. Reflection will readily reveal that these energy confluxes are by far more the result of natural than man-directed organization, that is, these energies gravitate naturally and affinitively toward satisfying human demands as distinguished from being put together by any single-minded direction. Successful head men, or leaders, of corporations and other organizations are themselves the suppliers of a relatively scarce and essential energy; for instance, they are adept at selecting persons who have creative energies to release and who won’t inhibit the like energies of others in the enterprise. The good head man is the one who gives others “their head” and, by example and suasion, sees to it that his associates do the same. The good head man does not blueprint, arrange, and command creative energies; for he realizes his own limitations. He is a specialist in getting creative energies released along valuable lines.

[41] The use of repellent or defensive force does not qualify as destructive energy. If a person attempts to destroy me and he is destroyed by my defense, it is he who is accountable for his own destruction. He initiates the act that brings about his downfall. In effect, he commits suicide.

I, Pencil

Leonard E. Read

1958

Introduction

Eloquent. Extraordinary. Timeless. Paradigm-shifting. Classic. Half a century after it first appeared, Leonard Read’s “I, Pencil” still evokes such adjectives of praise. Rightfully so, for this little essay opens eyes and minds among people of all ages. Many first-time readers never see the world quite the same again.

Ideas are most powerful when they’re wrapped in a compelling story. Leonard’s main point—economies can hardly be “planned” when not one soul possesses all the know-how and skills to produce a simple pencil—unfolds in the enchanting words of a pencil itself. Leonard could have written “I, Car” or “I, Airplane,” but choosing those more complex items would have muted the message. No one person—repeat, no one, no matter how smart or how many degrees follow his name—could create from scratch a small, everyday pencil, let alone a car or an airplane.

This is a message that humbles the high and mighty. It pricks the inflated egos of those who think they know how to mind everybody else’s business. It explains in plain language why central planning is an exercise in arrogance and futility, or what Nobel laureate and Austrian economist F. A. Hayek aptly termed “the pretence of knowledge.”

Indeed, a major influence on Read’s thinking in this regard was Hayek’s famous 1945 article, “The Use of Knowledge in Society.” In demolishing the spurious claims of the socialists of the day, Hayek wrote, “This is not a dispute about whether planning is to be done or not. It is a dispute as to whether planning is to be done centrally, by one authority for the whole economic system, or is to be divided among many individuals.”

Maximilien Robespierre is said to have blessed the horrific French Revolution with this chilling declaration: “On ne saurait pas faire une omelette sans casser des oeufs.” Translation: “One can’t expect to make an omelet without breaking eggs.” A consummate statist who worked tirelessly to plan the lives of others, he would become the architect of the Revolution’s bloodiest phase—the Reign of Terror of 1793–94.

Robespierre and his guillotine broke eggs by the thousands in a vain effort to impose a utopian society with government planners at the top and everybody else at the bottom. That French experience is but one example in a disturbingly familiar pattern. Call them what you will—socialists, interventionists, collectivists, statists—history is littered with their presumptuous plans for rearranging society to fit their vision of the common good, plans that always fail as they kill or impoverish other people in the process. If socialism ever earns a final epitaph, it will be this: Here lies a contrivance engineered by know-it-alls who broke eggs with abandon but never, ever created an omelet.

None of the Robespierres of the world knew how to make a pencil, yet they wanted to remake entire societies. How utterly preposterous, and mournfully tragic! But we will miss a large implication of Leonard Read’s message if we assume it aims only at the tyrants whose names we all know. The lesson of “I, Pencil” is not that error begins when the planners plan big. It begins the moment one tosses humility aside, assumes he knows the unknowable, and employs the force of the State against peaceful individuals. That’s not just a national disease. It can be very local indeed.

In our midst are people who think that if only they had government power on their side, they could pick tomorrow’s winners and losers in the marketplace, set prices or rents where they ought to be, decide which forms of energy should power our homes and cars, and choose which industries should survive and which should die. They should stop for a few moments and learn a little humility from a lowly writing implement.

While “I, Pencil” shoots down the baseless expectations for central planning, it provides a supremely uplifting perspective of the individual. Guided by Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” of prices, property, profits, and incentives, free people accomplish economic miracles of which socialist theoreticians can only dream. As the interests of countless individuals from around the world converge to produce pencils without a single “master mind,” so do they also come together in free markets to feed, clothe, house, educate, and entertain hundreds of millions of people at ever higher levels. With great pride, FEE publishes this new edition of “I, Pencil” to mark the essay’s 50th anniversary. Someday there will be a centennial edition, maybe even a millennial one. This essay is truly one for the ages.

—Lawrence W. Reed, President

Foundation for Economic Education

I, Pencil

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write a genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is interesting. And, next, I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But, sadly, I am taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a species of the grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, the wise G. K. Chesterton observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”

I, Pencil, simple though I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or an airplane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me. This sounds fantastic, doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are about one and one-half billion of my kind produced in the U.S.A. each year.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, graphite lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Innumerable Antecedents

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and the numberless skills that went into their fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness. These are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power!

Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation.

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine, after which another machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.

My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon [Sri Lanka]. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi in which ammonium hydroxide is used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears as endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder—cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are. Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rapeseed oil from the Dutch East Indies [Indonesia] with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom even knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far-off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn’t a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

No Master Mind

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

It has been said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree with this? Isn’t it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecules that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human masterminding! Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically, arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive masterminding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free people. Freedom is impossible without this faith.

Once government has had a monopoly of a creative activity such, for instance, as the delivery of the mails, most individuals will believe that the mails could not be efficiently delivered by men acting freely. And here is the reason: Each one acknowledges that he himself doesn’t know how to do all the things incident to mail delivery. He also recognizes that no other individual could do it. These assumptions are correct. No individual possesses enough know-how to perform a nation’s mail delivery any more than any individual possesses enough know-how to make a pencil. Now, in the absence of faith in free people—in the unawareness that millions of tiny know-hows would naturally and miraculously form and cooperate to satisfy this necessity—the individual cannot help but reach the erroneous conclusion that mail can be delivered only by governmental “masterminding.”

Testimony Galore

If I, Pencil, were the only item that could offer testimony on what men and women can accomplish when free to try, then those with little faith would have a fair case. However, there is testimony galore; it’s all about us and on every hand. Mail delivery is exceedingly simple when compared, for instance, to the making of an automobile or a calculating machine or a grain combine or a milling machine or to tens of thousands of other things. Delivery? Why, in this area where men have been left free to try, they deliver the human voice around the world in less than one second; they deliver an event visually and in motion to any person’s home when it is happening; they deliver 150 passengers from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours; they deliver gas from Texas to one’s range or furnace in New York at unbelievably low rates and without subsidy; they deliver each four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our Eastern Seaboard—halfway around the world—for less money than the government charges for delivering a one-ounce letter across the street!

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that this is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

Afterword

By Milton Friedman, Nobel Laureate, 1976

Leonard Read’s delightful story, “I, Pencil,” has become a classic, and deservedly so. I know of no other piece of literature that so succinctly, persuasively, and effectively illustrates the meaning of both Adam Smith’s invisible hand—the possibility of cooperation without coercion—and Friedrich Hayek’s emphasis on the importance of dispersed knowledge and the role of the price system in communicating information that “will make the individuals do the desirable things without anyone having to tell them what to do.”

We used Leonard’s story in our television show, “Free to Choose,” and in the accompanying book of the same title to illustrate “the power of the market” (the title of both the first segment of the TV show and of chapter one of the book). We summarized the story and then went on to say:

“None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them never saw a pencil and would not know what it is for. Each saw his work as a way to get the goods and services he wanted—goods and services we produced in order to get the pencil we wanted. Every time we go to the store and buy a pencil, we are exchanging a little bit of our services for the infinitesimal amount of services that each of the thousands contributed toward producing the pencil.

“It is even more astounding that the pencil was ever produced. No one sitting in a central office gave orders to these thousands of people. No military police enforced the orders that were not given. These people live in many lands, speak different languages, practice different religions, may even hate one another—yet none of these differences prevented them from cooperating to produce a pencil. How did it happen? Adam Smith gave us the answer two hundred years ago.”

“I, Pencil” is a typical Leonard Read product: imaginative, simple yet subtle, breathing the love of freedom that imbued everything Leonard wrote or did. As in the rest of his work, he was not trying to tell people what to do or how to conduct themselves. He was simply trying to enhance individuals’ understanding of themselves and of the system they live in.

That was his basic credo and one that he stuck to consistently during his long period of service to the public—not public service in the sense of government service. Whatever the pressure, he stuck to his guns, refusing to compromise his principles. That was why he was so effective in keeping alive, in the early days, and then spreading the basic idea that human freedom required private property, free competition, and severely limited government.

Why Not Try Freedom?

Leonard E. Read

1958

FOREWORD

Put yourself in one of Nature’s garden spots, but one suffering a dozen years from raw police force such as the people of Argentina endured under the dictator, Perón; where the morale and morals of the people have been seriously impaired; where the money has lost 73 per cent of its purchasing power during the past nine years; where wool or beef sold in foreign trade nets only one-third to one-half of the market price; where it takes 600 to 1,000 steers to purchase an ordinary car; where a two-year-old Buick sells for $10,000; where political opposition to foreign capital leaves unlimited reserves of oil in the ground while $317,000,000 was paid for imports of oil last year; where, for political reasons only, there isn’t enough electric power to properly light the streets of Buenos Aires or to adequately supply industry; where labor unions exert more oppressive influence than in the United States; where recently the bank clerks, as well as oil workers, were conscripted into the army to keep them on the job; in short, where interventionism is rife and where the politically proposed cure, as in the U.S.A., involves more of the same. Under these circumstances, what would you suggest?

This is the question I faced in these lectures, delivered in Buenos Aires during April 1958 under the sponsorship of Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre. Centro was organized in 1956, patterned in many respects after the Foundation for Economic Education. The mutual objective of the two organizations is the improved understanding and practice of freedom.

I accepted the invitation from Centro with agreement that all lectures would be before the same small audience, numbering from 35 to 70 persons, with ample opportunity for discussion. The invitees were to be in sympathy with the philosophy of liberty; there would be no effort to reform anyone.

To everyone’s amazement, the 160 seats in the lecture room were filled the first evening and 25 people were standing. The same was true for the entire series—testifying to an intense interest in liberty.

My introduction to the seminar group was made by Raul Lamuraglia, President of Centro, business leader and distinguished patriot of Argentina. Juan Domingo Perón, in the book he wrote after his fall from power, lists Señor Lamuraglia first among those responsible for his banishment.

Señor Lamuraglia summarized some of the material, cultural, and spiritual differences and similarities between Anglo-Saxon Americans and Latin Americans. These excerpts from his introduction may help the reader appreciate the setting in which the lectures were delivered:

Liberty is an outward creation of man which he has adopted for himself and whose use and enjoyment he reserves for mankind as a whole, for which he struggles and to which he dedicates consciously or unconsciously his highest efforts. But at the same time we must admit, without any exceptions, that “liberty” cannot be broken down into smaller or greater parts according to our own ideas or interests, nor can the word “libertarian” be applied to any of these parts while the remainder are denied or rejected.

Liberty must be taken as a whole, composed of different values that are inseparable because they all affect or refer to the individual and are reflected in the societies composed of individuals. We shall not be libertarians while upholding merely freedom of trade and at the same time being social or political planners. Neither shall we be libertarians if we attend to the needs of democracy and plan everything else.

The Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre covers a wider field than its name implies. If it has chosen to defend freedom in the economic field, this does not mean that it denies the principle that freedom must be enjoyed by man as a whole, or at least that he should aspire to such enjoyment, to which all his efforts are directed. We, the members of this spirited group, know that the task is long and difficult, but we do not resort to mere opposition to the wrongheaded planning mentality to be seen everywhere or nearly everywhere, but rather to broadcasting the ideas of liberty that seem today to be rather a luxury for man than the inevitable necessity of the extraordinary development of his civilization.

The Spanish edition of this book is available through Centro de Difusion de la Economia Libre, Avenida Leandro Além 36, Buenos Aires.

Leonard E. Read

May 1958

Government—An Ideal Concept

Successful communication is based on mutual understanding of the terms of discourse. At the outset, therefore, it would appear necessary that we establish—if possible—a common ground. We need a frame of reference, a datum line, to use as a guide in these lectures. For, unless we understand our point of departure as well as our destination, we can hardly hope to steer a consistent course. We must, if we are to progress in understanding, start from sound premises and then make proper deductions as we attempt to apply them step by step.

Perhaps the most fundamental question any of us can ask has to do with the goal of man’s earthly striving. Is it man’s purpose here merely to lengthen his life span? Is it to accumulate wealth and extend possessions? Should man’s aim be to achieve supremacy over his fellow men? Ought he to expend his life’s energies in trying to remake others into his own likeness?

No, most of us would say, man is made for other things than these. No doubt it is impossible to arrive at any general agreement on the deepest questions of life, precisely because the answers must be so intensely personal. Nor is this simply a difficult exercise in metaphysical speculation—each man must actually live his own answer to the challenges posed by his existence.

It is reasonable to assume, however, that most sensitive and thoughtful persons would agree that man’s earthly purpose is more than extending his life span, accumulating material things, or gaining power over his fellow men. Such is my assumption, at any rate. The main body of this and subsequent lectures will deal with human relationships, with economics and the conditions of material progress, and with the organizational problems peculiar to government. But I want to make my own position clear—an exclusive preoccupation with these problems is not the way to resolve them. The problems of man, society, and government are approached most constructively from a standpoint which transcends them—when they are viewed within a moral and spiritual frame of reference.

Man did not create himself. This is self-evident, for man knows almost nothing about himself. Man is the creature of God, or, if you prefer, of Infinite Principle or Consciousness or Intelligence. Man’s life on this earth in the flesh is but a preparatory phase of his emergence. Man’s purpose is to emerge, to evolve in consciousness; it is to come as close as he can to the realization of those creative potentialities peculiar to his own person. Man’s purpose is to search for eternal truth, to strive for righteousness, and to mold his own image in as near a likeness to his Creator as his energies, abilities, and perceptions permit. At least, this is my view.

These convictions are my guide in determining right and wrong, whether I am judging my personal affairs or my relationships with others. Any behavior, personal or collective, which tends to retard man in his pursuit of the ideal life is, in my judgment, ipso facto bad, evil or immoral. Any behavior, personal or collective, which tends to promote or complement this objective is, in my judgment, ipso facto good, virtuous or moral. You may or may not accept the objectives for man on which my beliefs are based. But you will, at least, be able to judge whether my discourse is consistent with this objective.

It is not intended that I should dwell on the psychological aspect of freedom, this having to do with the efforts of man to free himself from his own personal imperfections. Rather, I have been asked to discuss the sociological aspects of freedom, this having to do with the problems and strife arising out of man imposing himself on other men.

Consider human energy and the diverse ways in which it is manifested. There are creative expressions of energy and there are destructive expressions. For instance, if I were to use my hand to paint a picture, write a book, build a home, or strew seed, my energy would be manifesting itself productively or creatively. But, were I to make a clenched fist of this same hand and strike you in the face, my energy would be manifesting itself destructively.

Any person has a moral right to inhibit the destructive action of another or others. However, no person has a moral right to forcibly direct or to control what another shall invent, create, or discover; no right to dictate where he shall labor, how long he shall work, what his wage shall be, what and with whom he shall exchange, or what thoughts he shall entertain. No single person has any such moral right. No combination of persons has any such moral right. No agency, political or otherwise, has any such moral right.

The above is but another way of asserting that there are no moral sanctions for government to intervene in any manner whatsoever with productive or creative actions. The moral sanction for establishing government springs from the right of the individual to inhibit or prohibit or restrain the destructive actions of others.

Government, under moral sanction, is conceived to be an instrument of society for the accomplishing of certain limited and clearly defined functions. Most men have believed in some form of government, but few have ever understood how to keep it within bounds. All history testifies to the difficulty of keeping government within its proper competence; political power everywhere has been perverted. One reason for the historical failures has been a lack of understanding of what government is for. In my view, it is necessary to know why government should exist—what it is for—in order to gain an awareness of what it is not for. We must know government and its purpose in order to know how to limit it to its purpose.

An ideal theory of government and liberty is important. The lack of such a theory is disastrous. In the case of the United States, it is proving ruinous. As long as there were alive those who had learned from their old-world experiences about tyrannical government, we in the United States were successful in keeping government limited. Succeeding generations were more and more remote to that experience. There came a time, perhaps around the turn of this century, when all connection with the experience was lost. Lacking an ideal theory, we had nothing anchoring us to limitation. Experience was lost. No theory of limitation was generally understood. Today there is no more limitation on government than political expediency dictates. The advocates of nonlimited government are at work.

We in the United States or in the Argentine have only two possible defenses against their advances. One is to let them succeed and for us, the people, to become experienced again. In time any intelligent people will revolt against tyranny. But generations, perhaps centuries, are involved. The other defense is to frame an ideal philosophy of limitation. There is no short cut except the spelling-out and acceptance of a theory of government which is consistent with liberty. If it is right that society should evolve a formal organization to protect its members, and if it is right that the scope of this organization should be limited, there is, if we will but find it, a theory by which proper limitation can be imposed and maintained.

It is difficult to see how anything can reverse the present trend toward all-out statism except a properly prepared and presented theory of government and liberty. That this lecture presents the ideal theory adequately is not claimed. But perhaps these views as to the requirements of such a theory will stimulate others to try their hands; and, if so, this argument will have served its purpose. Like it or not, we are now at the mercy of our own reasoning.

Examining the Basis for Government

Government would not exist, nor would there be any reason for its existence, if men did not have problems with one another. Therefore, to determine why we should have government and to find out how much of it we should have, we must first form judgments on (a) what aspects of man are social, (b) what aspects are individual, and then (c) by analyzing the nature of organized force (the distinctive feature of government) decide on the extent to which force should be employed in man’s relationship with man.

There can be no denying the assertion that man is a social as well as an individualistic being. Both the social and the individual aspects of our own lives are emphasized to us daily. These emphases are presented so numerously and in so many forms—indeed, so confusingly—that it is with difficulty we can tell one from the other. Some folks are so impressed with the social emphases that they see nothing individualistic about man, and others are so impressed with the individualistic emphases that they see nothing social about man. The former are likely to conclude as socialists; the latter, as anarchists—these being but different types of authoritarianism.

Man cannot live alone. This is meant, not as a figurative, but as a literal expression. Remove from any one of us all the rest of mankind, past and present, and no one of us could exist. We are an interdependent breed of creation. Your lecturer, for instance, does not know how to raise the food he eats, to build the home in which he lives, to make the car he drives, to create the opportunities that are constantly presented to him, to write most of the books he reads, to get from the earth the gas that keeps him warm. Relative to the advantages that are his, he knows next to nothing. Alone, he is impotent to the point of nonexistence. The same thing can reasonably be said about others.

The individual does not exist as an isolated person or, at the very least, as the person he is, except by virtue of his cultural and social heritage. Deprived of the cumulative knowledge and experience of the race, man would be but another variety of curious animal—if indeed he would have being! This accumulation of knowledge, habit, custom, convention, tradition is man’s inherited energy, his natural environment—it is there for the individual to avail himself of it.

Yet society is an abstraction. It is but a handy generalization. Only individuals count. Each individual is vastly different from all others.[1] No two think alike, have the same aptitudes and skills, see alike, hear alike, have the same tastes or the same energies.

It is these variations among us and the exchange of our variable talents—be they manifested in goods, services, ideas, insight, knowledge—which account for our being alive. If, for example, everyone else were identical to any single person, all mankind would perish. No one could live, any more than that person could live alone. No one could have any more than he knows how to create. On that, neither he nor the rest of us could live.

Some will argue that if others were not performing the services and making the goods this person requires to live, he would be doing these things for himself. True, each of us has some elasticity in this respect, and in some of us it is quite great; but, by and large, the 170,000,000 people in my country exist in their present relatively advanced state by reason of their variable talents and the unprecedented exchange thereof.

The above claim—highly relevant to this thesis—needs some explanation. Observe, for example, the Mayan Indians at Todos Santos or at Chichicastanango, or aborigines elsewhere, and note the few, if any, who evolve toward those aptitudes peculiar to each.[2] By reason of inhibitory influences, they remain for a lifetime in primitive, similar activity. Rarely does one of them break from this tradition and become a musician, a painter, an engineer, a surgeon, an architect, a builder. Or, reflect on the North American Indians who had another low form of cooperant society—a foraging economy. The whole area that is now the United States never supported more than a million of them.[3] As has been since proved, the limit of the population and its standard of living were in no way due to any lack of natural resources. Nor were these conditions caused by the absence of fertile soils and friendly climates, or by the Indians’ inability to breed. Limits to population and the standard of living were due to inhibitory influences which prevented the potential variability in each Indian from manifesting itself. And without any marked variation, there was no marked exchange. Without variation and exchange, there could be no substantial quantitative growth; nor could there be qualitative growth—material, spiritual, intellectual. Stability in the sense of fixedness follows the absence of variation and exchange.

Our Dependence on Interdependence

Inhibitory influences, broadly speaking, are of two types. There are the sociological influences, the kind man imposes on other men. There are the psychological influences, the kind man imposes on himself or, more accurately, from which he fails to free himself. These latter are traditional pulls—man not shaking off his more primitive background—superstitions, fears, rationalization of laziness, taboos, imperfections, ignorance, and so on. For instance, the religion of many aborigines teaches that good or bad crops, ill or good health, hang on the caprice of so-called gods such as high mountain tops; that getting along in life is not a responsibility of self but rather depends on making supplications to the numerous idols.

Consider what has happened in my homeland. If we were to collapse time into manageable proportions, reducing the life of this planet from its three to five billion years to one year, we would observe in the last two seconds 170,000,000 people living in relative luxury where less than 1,000,000 had lived before—if indeed we would, today, refer to it as living.

To summarize this phase of the argument: There are at least 169,000,000 in my country who exist by reason of a phenomenon that has taken place in these last two seconds! The chances are at least 169 to 1 that any one of us is in existence, is experiencing life, by reason of this phenomenon; that only 1 out of every 170 could endure the near self-containment of a foraging economy. This is another way of saying that more than 99 per cent of us are the offspring of a division-of-labor and exchange society, are dependent upon it, and have a vested interest as profound as life itself in its continuance and perfection. It is also another way of saying that most of us are a highly interdependent type of being and are dependent on the smooth working of the interdependence processes.

This condition of interdependence is something of which to be proud, rather than something to be deplored. It is a mark of progress. It is a forward step in the infinite evolutionary process, for man’s purpose on earth is to come as near as possible in his lifetime to the attainment of those creative aptitudes peculiarly his own. Going in this direction, the principle which guides variability will cause each man to become progressively different from other men. More and more will each refine his own unique capacities.[4] And more and more will each of us need to rely on the products of the energies of other unique individuals. Progress in specialization requires one important warning. It is that we specialists not lose our perspective; that we not lose sight of the forest for the trees; that we not become so immersed in our specialities that we become blind to the process on which our specialization depends.

Education in the humanities must go hand in hand with our specialized education.

Energy and the Exchange Problem

The problem posed by an advanced division-of-labor society is one of energy exchanges. Human energy is one of the numberless forms of radiant energy, seemingly electrical in origin. The late Robert A. Millikan, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his measurement of the electrical charge of the electron, had this to say:

All light or other short-wave-length radiations are caused by changes in positions of electrons within atoms. All atoms are built up out of definite numbers of positive and negative electrons. All chemical forces are due to the attractions of positive for negative electrons. All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons. In a word, matter itself is electrical in origin.[5]

The late Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, biochemist, most helpfully puts scientific theories about radiant energy into lay language (italics supplied):

Constant change is a characteristic of the living organism and all physiological phenomena are energy exchanges.[6]

Every substance is a system of molecules in motion and every molecule is a system of oscillating atoms and every atom is a system of positive and negative electricity.[7]

Molecules are possessed of kinetic energy, that is, the energy of motion.[8]

The atoms, the ultimate constituents of matter, are systems of positive and negative electricity. Electricity is a form of radiant energy and atoms may be described in terms of energy.[9]

Of all living creatures, man alone has learned to free energy by conscious efforts. Machines, explosives, the utilization of water and wind to create power, all these are examples of man’s conscious utilization of potential energy. The food man ingests is derived from the stores of energy built by plant and animal. He utilizes this energy in the maintenance of his body, in work and in play and in the processes of intelligence and creative activity. It is by these latter processes that he may transform energy to a higher level, so to speak, and thereby may partake in creative evolution.[10]

. . . the individual organism is but a device for the building up of radiant energy into its higher forms as manifested in thought and consciousness. It is a product of the universal energy and yet a means for its further evolution.[11]

Human Energy Is Diverse

Human energy, obviously, has its earthly configuration only in individuals. Human energy manifests itself qualitatively and quantitatively, psychologically and physiologically, and in numberless forms: thought, consciousness, memory, cognition, ability, physical strength, moral courage, spiritual insight—or, in the workaday world, in the kind of energy it takes to run a typewriter, to bake bread, to drive a truck, to grow wheat, to be a catalytic agent in cooperative effort, ad infinitum.[12]

The reader may get the idea that the above is a deviation from this thesis on government. Quite the contrary! It is but the preface to the idea that an ideal theory of government and liberty is to be derived from the necessity for the free, uninhibited flow of all creative human energy.

Required, however, is more reflection on the nature of energy. There is potential energy and kinetic energy. A dammed-up pool of water is an example of potential energy. If the obstacle or inhibitory influence, the dam, is removed, the water will flow—the flowing water being an example of kinetic energy. Kinetic energy is energy in motion. It is potential energy gone to work. In the case of hydraulics, there is a natural law, the law of gravitation, which attends to potential energy’s becoming kinetic energy once obstacles are removed.

Each individual has numerous types of potential energy—for instance, it may be the type it takes to fashion sand into wearing apparel or the type it takes to hybridize corn. Assume only two Eskimos and only two goods, clothing and food. One can fabricate only clothing; the other can raise only food. If there are no inhibitory influences standing in the way, the potential energy of each which manifested itself as kinetic energy in the making of clothes and in the raising of food will continue as kinetic, productive, creative energy. They will exchange. The natural law attending to this is the will to live. If they do not permit their energies to flow, to remain fluid, to continue as kinetic energy, both will die. One will starve. The other will freeze.

Energy in Motion

It is of the utmost importance to realize that production in its broader and really significant sense—productive activity—is energy in motion, that is, it is energy in constant movement and complex exchange. Thinking of productive activity as taking place only up to the point of an automobile coming off the assembly line is as erroneous as thinking of exchange as taking place only when the automobile is sold for cash. The incontestable assertion that no man on earth knows how to make an automobile is proof in itself that the manufacturing phase is a series of human energy exchanges. Indeed, these exchanges during manufacture are so complex and numerous that they cannot be comprehended by the mind of man. To stop these energy exchanges at any point, before or after manufacture, is to stop productive activity. Imagine, if possible, the absolute cessation of all trading in the American market. All prior exchanges, such as those involved in manufacturing, would also cease. Unless the moral, political, and business leaders among a people grasp the significance of energy exchanges flowing through space and time, it cannot be correctly claimed that the problem of production is either understood or solved.

We are living in a world of 2,500,000,000 people. The potential energy of this population is of unimaginable proportions. Aptitudes and skills of people differ—some slightly at variance as in the case of aborigines, others vastly at variance as in the case of more advanced societies.

The life and the progress of life—whether of the 170,000,000 in the United States or of the 2,500,000,000 in the world—depend on these static or potential energies becoming kinetic, useful, moving, flowing, dynamic energies. The total potential energies will tend toward becoming kinetic energies with the removal of inhibitory influences. Little else but the removal of inhibitory influences is required. The almost unanimous will to live, and certainly the more profound forces which we do not at all understand, will attend to potential energies becoming kinetic. We need only to be observant to appreciate the wonders these natural forces produce and to see that their results are as incredible as the phenomena of our own bodies, governed not by conscious directions but by forces which transcend present consciousness—our miraculous autonomic nervous systems, for instance. We need to learn, mostly, how not to injure or inhibit our endowed or natural or God-given creativity. Let this point be re-emphasized: These energy phenomena, whether of the body (heart pulsations, breathing, 1,000,000,000 new red blood cells per minute, and so on) or of society (interpersonal exchanges of goods, services, ideas, insights), cannot be bettered by any human dictatorial system. Experience seems to teach that man’s effort in this respect should be confined to increasing personal thought and consciousness and to guarding against everything which would hamper energy exchanges; otherwise, leave these phenomenal, miraculous processes alone! Their creative detail cannot, at this state of man’s evolution, be understood by man; and by no means can this detail be constructively managed by man. Personally we can behave—and societally we can organize—in ways harmonious to these natural currents of creative human energy. Man cannot, without loss, take over or control them.

How Human Energy Behaves

Unless one is aware of our dependence—yes, our existence—on flowing energy, this theory about ideal government and its relationship to liberty may not be grasped. Therefore, let’s try to dramatize the point by several generalized examples in which human energy is assumed to, and unquestionably does, behave in ways not unlike electrical energy.[13]

First, imagine 170,000,000 dead persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy. No energy would be put into the conduit by the dead persons. None could, therefore, be withdrawn.[14]

Second, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with every one of them having a type of energy precisely like your own. Nothing but your type of energy could go into the conduit. Nothing but your type of energy could be withdrawn. There would be no variation. All would perish, as you would perish were you alone in the world.[15]

Third, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, but with the variation of their energies being no greater and no more perfected than the energies of the North American Indians. Only the low energies incidental to a foraging economy would go into the conduit. Only the energies that went in could be withdrawn. All but one million of the total population would perish, for the same reason that the North American Indians numbered no more than 1,000,000.

Fourth, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, similarly arranged, having precisely the great variance of energies that the people of my country have today. Imagine all of their many energies freely flowing into the conduit and any citizen being able to withdraw any of the input energies according to his own choosing, based on an equitable and voluntary exchange of his own energy. In such an arrangement, for example, the highly specialized type of energy required to compute mathematical formulas for releasing the power of the atom could be exchanged for the types of energy required to build houses, provide food, write books, make autos, furnish heat, and so on. In short, were all energies permitted to flow freely, any individual in this vast population would have readily available for exchange any one or more of millions of types of energy.

Fifth, imagine 170,000,000 live persons, as above, but with an effective control to keep everyone’s energy from going into the conduit. All would perish as if each were alone for, indeed, each would be alone, absolutely alone! There could be no exchange, nothing but one’s own energy.

Sixth, imagine 170,000,000 live persons arranged in a huge circle, their hands clasped to a conduit capable of transmitting every conceivable type of physical and human energy, but with 40,000,000 of them organized for parasitical purposes, using aggressive force or threats of aggressive force to draw off energy in the amount of their demands as distinguished from value-for-value exchanges.[16] To the extent that they succeeded in drawing off more energy than could be obtained by willing exchange, to that extent would the other 130,000,000 be compelled to accept less in exchange for their energies; that is, these others would have less livelihood by reason of the organized leeching.

As a final example, let us imagine 170,000,000 persons arranged in a huge circle. There is no master conduit equally available to everyone. Instead, there is one person standing in the center with all the individual conduits from the whole multitude attached to this single person. All energies must be directed to this person. Only he can dispense that which he has received. Here we have the dictator arrangement, applied totally. There would be, so to speak, 169,999,999 volts that could find passage only through a conduit of one-volt capacity. All of the 170,000,000, including the person in the center, would perish. Parenthetically, there are no political instances of 100 per cent dictatorship. Even in Argentina under Perón or in Russia the principle of authoritarianism is but little applied. There were here, and there are in Russia, vast leakages of free, human energy. Were there no free, human energy, all of you would have perished.[17]

Life Demands Differences

It can be deduced from the foregoing that no person, logically, should wish others to be like himself. Each individual has a vested interest in all others being different; in their variability; and in the excellence, the advancement, and the success of their creative specializations. Each person, like all others, is so specialized himself that his life depends on this variability, specialization, and exchange.

In energy types and in exchange requirements, we are all dissimilar. However, we have one common similarity, and one common necessity if we are to live and progress. It is that prohibitions against, or restrictions upon, the release and exchange of our creative energies be at the lowest minimum possible; that man not keep men from developing their variabilities and from exchanging the product thereof. Again, this removal of inhibitory influences—the kind imposed by man on men—serves to benefit all of us in common.[18]

Personal Inhibitions

Inhibitory influences of the psychological kind—one’s ignorance, fears, superstitions—are personal and not social, are one’s own and not society’s, are between oneself and one’s God and not between oneself and other men. This is true even of those situations where one man yields to the persuasions of another and consents to be the other’s pliant tool. The man who submits, if he does so willingly, has created a problem located only where he can get at it—in his own will.

Other men may regret another’s plight, may rue another’s lack of attainment and culture. But each person is faced with the problem of his own creative emergence, progress, development. This is the individualistic side of the problem. The individual is the only one who can attend to the degree and the perfection of his own variability. Others cannot in a creative sense, do anything to him. If they would help, they must limit themselves to what they can do for him. For him, they can do little beyond attending to their own emergence—materially, intellectually, spiritually.[19] They can, by precept and example, set a standard to which he can repair. They can have goods and services to exchange, or knowledge and insight to offer. But whether or not he takes advantage of their offerings is a matter for his own election. No one else can decide. The creative side of man has to do with the individualistic aspect of man and must be so treated if damage by man to man is to be avoided.

Man, however, does not in every instance confine himself to his creative emergence, to getting ahead by his own competence and superiority. Failing in self-improvement and not satisfied with what he can obtain in willing exchange, he will, on numerous occasions, resort to unwilling exchange. He will draw energy from the kinetic conduit without exchanging an equivalent of his own energy. He will tap the power line, so to speak. All unwilling exchanges are examples of this: the thief who “exchanges” your horse for his own low-grade satisfaction, or the voters who legally take other people’s income to augment their own.

Variability and its perfection—that is, the creation of the infinite kinds of human energy—is exclusively individual. While each individual in his own upgrading draws on other persons, present and past, as well as on his own gift of insight, this process of individual upgrading classifies as voluntary and cooperative. It builds only upon free will and volition. It is the inspired experience of the inner self. While each of us has a personal stake in everybody else’s upgrading, the upgrading is not, by virtue of this unanimity of concern, a social problem. It is not a social problem for two reasons. First, it cannot be dealt with through social instruments. Second, the emergence of creative energy is a personal matter, inhering in individuals as they act personally and as they choose to act with other individuals.

Society’s Problem

An attempt has been made in the above paragraph to establish the point that the potential energy of each variable individual is a personal and not a social problem. Earlier it was suggested that these infinite variations of potential human energy will translate into kinetic energy if uninhibited—that is, willing exchange will naturally take place if unobstructed, the will to live attending to this. It is now appropriate to discuss the obstructions or inhibitory influences, the actions of man which impair the source of creative energy and stifle its exchange, and also the actions which are parasitic on the flowing energy.

These last-mentioned actions present the social problem, the only social problem there is. All else is in the realm of the creative, the individualistic. Coping with the obstructions to the creation and flow of human energy and the siphoning off of the flowing energy without value for value is a social problem because:

1. These inhibitory actions inflict penalties on all human beings, presenting an in-common defense problem.

2. They cannot properly be dealt with personally.

3. They can be dealt with, in justice, only by social control.

All Are Related

The first point requires little in the way of appreciation except an awareness that variable human energy, to be useful to mankind, has to be dynamic, kinetic, flowing—as indeed does any other kind of energy—and an understanding that in a free market there is no person too remote to oneself to be unrelated. Recently, I observed a disheveled old lady hanging around a Central American wharf. “How possibly could she be related to me?” thought I. Imagination supplied an answer: Perhaps she gathers the kelp that wraps the fish that feeds the hombre who loads the bananas which provide the dessert for the woman who cares for the man who runs the nursery that supplies the spruce from which the pulp is made for the manufacture of the cleansing tissue that takes the place of less sanitary and more costly handkerchiefs we have been using. Who else wants to harvest kelp to wrap that banana-loading hombre’s fish? In the free market, every creative act, regardless of how lowly, is related to the kinetic conduit—is capable of giving energy to it and of taking other types of energy from it. An obstruction of any creative energy exchange, regardless of how minute it may be, inflicts a penalty against the potential wealth—material, intellectual, or spiritual—of all other persons. It is a penalty inflicted in common.

The second point is that these inhibitory influences against energy exchanges cannot properly be dealt with by each individual for himself. Generally speaking, these inhibitory influences are fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predatory practices. All are immoral, be they done legally or illegally. The problem here is to remove inhibitory actions. This can be accomplished by restraining aggressive force or by penalizing those persons who indulge in it. This is not an appropriate undertaking for each individual to do for himself, and for the following reasons:

1. It would be wholly impractical. No individual could possibly police the numberless instances of aggressive force—among tens of millions of people—harmful to him and to others, actions he would have no way of knowing about and practiced by persons most of whom would be beyond his acquaintance.

2. If every person were to be a law unto himself, we would have no less than 170,000,000 governments in the United States—the “law” of each varying daily with individual caprice.

3. No individual has the moral right to use aggressive force against any other individual. He has the moral right to use only defensive or repellent force. This is a distinction too subtle for noncodification.[20]

4. The offenders or marauders in society would soon be in command. They would be the government.

5. If the contention is correct that the removal of inhibitory influences is an in-common defense problem, then it follows that anything less than in-common or societal control of the problem is a form of authoritarianism.

Justice in Organization

The third point is that these inhibitory influences can be dealt with, in justice, only by social organization.

The right-to-life concept and its acceptance must serve as the premise for this point. If a person has a right to life, it follows that he has a right to protect and to sustain that life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s labor—one’s honestly acquired property. The right to life without the right to protect and to sustain life is meaningless. As suggested earlier, it is impossible in a division-of-labor economy to sustain life on one’s own specialty. Energy exchanges are as vital as one’s own produce. Therefore, the rights to the fruits of one’s own labor involves the restraint or the removal of obstacles to exchange—not merely the obstacles to one’s own exchange, but also the obstacles to other people’s exchange within any given society.

Justice compels one other admission. If one has a right to life and livelihood, every other person has a similar right.[21] One must assume that life and livelihood are just as dear to every other person as to oneself—regardless of race, creed, color, occupational level, or wealth status. The universality of the will to live and the requirement that life and livelihood be protected are conterminous with society. The responsibility for society-wide protection cannot, in sound organizational practice, be vested in anything less than society. And where the responsibility rests, there also should rest the authority to discharge the responsibility.[22]

It is quite likely that this argument will appear valid only to those who grasp the interrelationship of energy exchanges; who become aware of the extent to which we are interdependent, or more precisely, dependent on these exchanges; who see the meaning of kinetic, flowing, dynamic human energy; and who acknowledge that, in this respect, we are all in one vast energy circuit, a “grid system,” which encompasses everybody.

What is everybody’s problem is nobody’s problem—a good adage in this instance. The argument here is that keeping the energy circuits open is not the responsibility of any one person nor of any division of any given society, but is everybody’s or society’s problem.

To Recapitulate

Before going further, let’s condense the central ideas of this thesis:

1. The source of all creative and variable human energy, in an earthly sense, rests in individuals. The emergence of the creative and variable capacities of each is itself a creative process that can only be attended to by the creative unit, the individual, in such voluntary and cooperative actions as he may freely choose to take. This is the province of the individual and not of society. This is the vast, unlimited area of liberty, of self-reliance, and of self-discipline.

2. Creative, variable energies will tend naturally to exchange to the benefit and life-extension of all in the absence of man-concocted obstacles. Obstacles to creative energy and its exchange—be they in the form of fraud, misrepresentation, violence, or predatory practices—adversely affect and subtract from life and from the potential life (emergence) of everyone and are, therefore, the problem of every human being equally within any given society. While the removal of social obstacles is the problem of everyone, it is not the responsibility of any one person. It is the responsibility of all—that is, it is a social responsibility. As man is the product and has life by reason of division of labor and exchange, so does he inherit with birth this interdependent, social aspect of self. This is as much his inheritance as is the responsibility for his own emergence. The restraint and the penalizing of the obstacles to creative energy and energy exchange—not merely between oneself and another, but between all men—must be dealt with by social prohibitions, by the law! This is the relatively small, limited province of what we have come to call “government.” It is the appropriate area of disciplines exterior to personal disciplines.

If the purpose of man on earth is self-realization—coming as near as possible to the attainment of those creative aptitudes and potentialities peculiarly his—it follows that the law, the book of rules and prohibitions for social administration, can logically serve only the purpose of deterring man’s destructive actions for the sake of giving full flower to his creative actions. The law (social rules) can have no just object beyond removing social obstacles to the release of the human spirit. An organized arm of society, within its proper bounds, can be but the handmaiden of liberty; government, within its proper bounds, can be but the protective servant of all individuals equally against antisocial marauders.

According to the theories here set forth, individuals should delegate to society’s agency the responsibility for protecting all members of society against such destructive actions as some of its members may bring against others of its membership.

Society, per se, cannot assume responsibility, for society is an abstraction. Society can be given entity only as it is organized, only as its members are organized.

Purpose of Organization

Organization is for the purpose of cooperation. There can be cooperation for creative purposes and cooperation for repellent or defensive purposes.[23]

Cooperation for creative purposes must be left to voluntary action. Men can cooperate to use force, but they cannot be forced to cooperate. Voluntary cooperative actions occur daily in numberless ways, most of them having almost imperceptible organization but some of them having highly formalized organization—corporations, partnerships, educational institutions, and so on.

However, cooperation for creative purposes requires, as an auxiliary, cooperation to annul destructive purposes. Cooperation for creative purposes requires that inhibitory influences against creative action be neutralized. In good theory, it is as members of society—not as members of a family or of a corporation or of a labor union or of a chamber of commerce or of any group having special interests—that individuals organize themselves into a police force to cooperate in maximizing their liberty by restraining those who would impede creative effort and exchange.

We must recognize the nature of society’s political apparatus. It has, ideally, the single, distinguishing virtue of being able to inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. All personnel of the apparatus can do everything else better outside the apparatus than in it. What should be inhibited, restrained, penalized? Those actions of man which are characterized by aggressive force, namely, those actions which themselves inhibit, restrain, destroy, or penalize creative effort. Defensive force may be used to neutralize aggressive force, and such a use of forces serves a social end. This use of defensive force should be the guiding principle of the political agency.

It is society that should organize the political apparatus—the state, the government, the agency of common defense. It is not proper that anything less than society should organize to impose restrictions which relate to all members of society equally. By the same token, it is not proper to organize the whole society for creative effort, for creative aptitudes have their locus only in individuals. For example, it is absurd to organize society into an agency of aggressive force, as has been done in Russia, to make automobiles, to produce penicillin, or to run a chick hatchery. Interests and aptitudes for these creative specializations—governed by the principle of variability implicit in any and all progressive, evolving societies—are rarities and not generalizations. The rarities for creative effort find cooperation possible only by people voluntarily organizing themselves.[24] The benefits flowing from these voluntary organizations are available society-wide. But these benefits are available to all only because the organizations are voluntary. Energy flows in the absence of obstacles sufficient to stop it. That energies are often wasted and misdirected by persons in voluntary action is only to admit that man errs.

Russia Is No Exception

It is often argued that the Russians can, for example, produce airplanes by their use of aggressive force and that the production of an airplane is a creative project. It is! Admittedly, this thesis contends that force can be used only to inhibit, repel, restrain, penalize. Is there not a contradiction here? No! The Russian airplanes—creations—are actually the product of voluntary, cooperative effort. And it is not the force that creates the airplanes. Force in Russia, as elsewhere, inhibits, repels, restrains, penalizes. Russians, in addition to defensive force, use vast amounts of aggressive force which destroys. In Russia the force is used to destroy a worker’s opportunities to pursue the vocation of his own choice. The worker in the airplane factory is denied the opportunity of being an artist, a cook, a musician, or whatever. Left to him, shall we say, are only two alternatives—building airplanes or dying. If he prefers the former to the latter and acts in accord with his preference, he has made a choice to produce airplanes. The fact that his alternatives are thus limited by the employment of force does not alter his act of voluntary choosing between the two. Nor does it alter the fact that all of his acts in producing airplanes, whether in inventing or doing, are voluntary acts. A person cannot be compelled to act creatively.[25] But the areas where he would choose to act creatively can be ruled out of existence by the use of force.

When force is used, as in Russia, to limit opportunities, thus leaving open one or a few areas for creative effort, we observe many persons building airplanes when their best aptitudes are for painting, for cooking, for music, or something else. In a free market society, where force would have to be limited to restraining social obstacles to creative energy and its exchange, we would find mostly those with aptitudes for airplanes building airplanes.

Obviously, an individual is more creative in an activity agreeable to his aptitudes than in an activity disagreeable to his aptitudes. A person knows his own aptitudes better than does a stranger—the dictator or any possible henchman. This is a primary fact of observation. It follows, then, that total energy will be higher among a people individually choosing their own work than among a people whose work is dictated for them by another individual.

The same principle applies to exchange. We will fare better—materially, intellectually, spiritually—if each of us chooses what he will communicate and exchange with others than if some other individual dictates what each shall communicate and exchange. It is these differences in the handling of creative energy and its exchange that account for the differences between my countrymen and Russians in production, invention, personal emergence, and so forth. The Russians apply aggressive force to creative activities and claim it to be good. We in the United States are now, unfortunately, doing the same thing on a smaller but growing scale.

Unanimity Requires Common Interest

Cooperation is required among members of society to perform the negative function of prohibiting obstacles to production, communication, and exchange. The cooperation ought to be as nearly unanimous as possible. Cooperation can approach unanimity only if the activities of the defensive agency be limited to those actions which have a common benefit to creative effort. Ideally, the only dissenters would be those who want to live by predation. If the agency of defense finds itself being used as an agency of plunder (aggressive force)—as in the case of both of our governments today—cooperation will not tend toward unanimity. For in this instance, some of the members of society cooperate to benefit themselves at the expense of the other members, employing the governmental agency to achieve their ends. The plundered members find it difficult to cooperate with the plundering members.

Mere participation in the activities of society’s agency, such as unwilling military service or the unwilling payment of income to support the agency in overextended activities, does not qualify as cooperation. Cooperation in its highest form is a willing response, not the choice of the lesser of two evils. Willing response, approaching unanimity, is much to be desired. But it is impossible except as society’s agency is itself an accurate response to man’s single in-common social requirement: defense against those actions of man which inhibit creative energy and its exchange. Man is a member of society in common with all other men in this respect only. His social agency, to be useful and not harmful, must limit itself to this one small but extremely important function which all men have socially in common. Then reason and justice, at least, will supply the basis for unanimous cooperation.

Limitation of Government Prescribed by Its Justification

Let the above ideas be emphasized in these terms: Any logical and just organization by society derives its existence from only one source: the common need for every man to protect himself against those who would limit his creative opportunities. Every human being is born with as much right to live his life creatively as any other man. Man, however, is incapable of protecting his life as a personal, individual project, and at the same time of realizing his human potential. That part of his inheritance which designates him as a product of society precludes this. By reason of this social circumstance, he is committed, in principle, to cooperating with his fellow men in the protective project of “one for all and all for one”; in a project that should make no distinction whatever as to persons; in a project where all ought to be regarded as equal; in a project where special privilege should be unknown.[26]

The principle which justifies society’s organization of a defensive arm—man’s inheritance as an interdependent being—also prescribes the limitations on what the organization should do. In short, the law’s limitation inheres in its justification.

Force is a dangerous thing. Therefore, society’s organized arm is a dangerous instrument. It is not, as some assert, a necessary evil. When limited to its proper defensive scope, it is a positive good. When exceeding its proper limitations and becoming aggression, it is not a “necessary” but a positive evil.

Two Types of Force

Force of the kind here discussed is of two types. There is repellent or defensive force. There is aggressive force. The latter is always evil. There are no exceptions. No man has any moral right to use aggressive force against any other man. Nor have any number of men, in or out of societal organizations, any moral right to use it. One of the most distressing fallacies having to do with government and liberty is the assumption that the State, an agency presumably of the people, has rights beyond those possessed by the people. For example, the State uses aggressive force against an individual, compelling him to exchange some of his income for the alleged prosperity of people elsewhere. No reasonable person would sanction such an aggressive action on the part of any single citizen. Therefore, no reasonable person can logically believe that any such control belongs to a multitude of citizens. From what source does this extracurricular “right” of the State to use aggressive force derive? It has no derivation. It is an arrogation. This arrogation is as untenable as the divine right of kings theory; indeed, it amounts to the same thing.

Any person has the natural and moral right to use repellent or defensive force against any other person who would aggress against him. No person on this earth has any moral right of control over any other person superior to the defense of his own life and livelihood. Two persons banding together do not acquire moral rights of control over others superior to the rights held by each before their association. No increase in the number of individuals involved morally alters this in any way—even when the number reaches the 170,000,000 of my country. Rights not possessed by individuals cannot properly be delegated to an agency, political or otherwise. Society’s agency, then, will find the proper limits of its scope in exercising for everyone, without favor to any, the natural and moral rights inherent in its members.[27]

Tool of Liberty

The above concludes what is little more than a bare outline—a skeleton, so to speak—of the ideas that need to be considered in arriving at the principles and the theories of government and liberty. Government—which no doubt is what we will continue to call our organized agency of society, even though it be limited to defensive functions—is, if properly employed, an essential tool of liberty.

Government organized strictly in accord with right principle is an object more to be ardently hoped for than seriously expected. Yet, right principle must be deduced and have some measure of understanding if political expediency, controlled as it is by demagoguery and special interests, is not to rule and eventually overcome us. Political expediency feeds on the destructiveness it breeds. Every evil it evokes sets in motion other “compensating” evils. Political expediency, by its very nature, inevitably leads to a dead end.

Right principle is man’s only compass. He often deviates from the course it suggests, but at least he can be aware of where he is by reference to it. Right principle is a beacon by which man can reverse himself after he has ventured into the evil ways which constantly beckon him.[28]

Right principle as relating to the limitation of government is deducible. Protecting the release of creative human energy and its exchange is suggested as the basis for sound deductions.

The Purpose of Liberty

Every living human being, if he would correctly interpret his own welfare, has a vested interest in the creative emergence of every other human being; each person has a vested interest in the free, uninhibited flowing and exchange of the energies thus released; the true interests of all, therefore, are in harmony; and, finally, every individual has a vested interest in common with all other men in restraining all inhibitory influences to creative energy and creative energy exchanges. It is this latter common interest that constitutes the social aspect of man and warrants his organization of government within societies for defense. All else is individual, voluntary, and cooperative as individuals may choose; for all else is creative. This is the vast, indeed, the infinite, area of emergence.

Emergence—man’s highest purpose—has two primary requirements. The first is an awareness of an Infinite Consciousness that man’s emergence may have conscious purpose and direction. The second is liberty in order that emergence may be uninhibited and possible. Liberty can be defined, psychologically, as man freeing himself from his own negations and, sociologically, as man not playing God, either individually or collectively, through government or otherwise.

[1] For a remarkable and scientific dramatization of human variability, see Free and Unequal: The Biological Basis of Individual Liberty by Roger John Williams (Austin, Texas: University of Texas Press, 1953).

[2] For a factual account of Mayan Indian religious beliefs, without interpretations as to their inhibitive nature, see Two Crosses of Todos Santos by Maud Oakes (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1951).

[3] We have only “guesstimates” on the Indian population. Most authorities would consider a million far too high. Perhaps 200,000 would be as good a guess.

[4] Specialization has been referred to as “analysis run riot.” This dim view of an expanding division of labor would be warranted were there no possible synthesis of the human variabilities. But there is a synthesis, potentially a perfect one. It is simply free communication and exchange. Its numberless, daily ramifications can never be envisioned, let alone comprehended, by any man or set of men. This synthesis, however, has the virtue of requiring no more understanding than sufficient awareness to leave it alone except, of course, to protect it against crookedness, violence, and “management.”

[5] Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1943. Vol. VIII, p. 340.

[6] Eulenburg-Wiener, Renee. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938. p. 114.

[7] Ibid., p. 118.

[8] Ibid., p. 47.

[9] Ibid., p. 117.

[10] Ibid., p. 133.

[11] Ibid., p. 447.

[12] To think of energy only as the kind that can be manufactured from coal or other inorganic matter will miss the point in my use of the term. A rereading of the quotes from the scientists Millikan and Eulenburg-Wiener will convey the meaning I give to “energy” throughout this essay. If this wide scope given to “energy” is beyond the reader’s comprehension—something to stand in awe of, something beyond human knowledge and beyond the power of human authority and dictation—then I have established the kind of a definition I wish to make.

[13] The following attempt at explanation has proved clarifying to some but not at all to others. At any rate, these are not written as far-fetched examples. In principle, they are analogous to real life.

[14] I continue to use the population figures of the United States. These can readily be transposed to figures for the Argentine or any other politically organized sector of the world.

[15] By “alone in the world” I mean absolutely alone—that is, completely without what has been bestowed on others, present or past. Human energy, if unobstructed, flows in time, all time. Most of what any of us, and all of what most of us, possess—materially, intellectually, spiritually—is founded on cognition extending into the infinite past. Or, should we call it all “the eternal now”? See Living Time by Maurice Nicoll (London, England: Vincent Stuart Publishers, Ltd., 1952).

[16] See my Two Ways To Stop Strikes (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1953. pp. 9–10).

[17] It is important to realize that authoritarianism—aggressive force, destructive energy—has an evil effect vastly out of proportion to its quantity. Imagine a church social of 100 people. Imagine the total energy expended by these folks in preparing the meal, walking, talking, gesticulating, and so on. Now imagine an infinitesimal part of this total energy, say 1/10,000th of it, turned into aggressive force—for instance, a deacon poking the minister in the nose! Contemplate the havoc wrought, and the point is clear.

[18] The voluntary exchange of the varying products of men’s energies is appropriately called the market. If man were not inclined to better his circumstances—that is, to satisfy his needs and pursue his ends with what he regards as minimum effort—he would not be led into specialization. As specialization cannot occur without the market, it is a basic human institution. It is the foundation stone of society. If the presence of the market did not better, but worsened, man’s circumstances, no feeling of comradeship (for which the socialists claim so much) would attend to exchange. There would be no market, no society, no man. Man has a natural and a worthy urge to economize his efforts in producing the satisfactions of his desires. It is this urge that leads to specialization and exchange, to the division of labor and the market. However, this is the same urge that, on occasion, causes some men to sabotage the market, to indulge in predatory practices. Stealing, in a sense, is the first and, certainly, the worst labor-saving device. Hence, a fundamental need—if specialization and the market are to exist—is protection against market marauders.

[19] This, of course, does not rule out charity of a type which aids another person to help himself rather than to destroy his potentialities by making him dependent. But, before even charity can be extended, the giver must have provided himself with resources to give over and beyond his own needs and commitments.

[20] By noncodification is meant the absence of socially or publicly formulated rules, the absence of law.

[21] Recommended is The Source of Rights by Frank Chodorov (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954).

[22] When individuals, admittedly having the right to defend their own lives, delegate their defensive responsibilities to society’s agency, the agency is in full and exclusive charge of that function. In practice, the agency should redelegate the right to defend life as an individual act in certain instances. However, it is the agency that is in control of this function, specifying when and under what conditions individual defense is permissible. Society, however, at all times, should retain the power to reorganize its governmental agency.

[23] Just as kinetic energy can be destructive as well as productive or creative, just so can cooperation be for destructive purposes. For example, a gang of thieves can cooperate to rob a bank or a gang of voters can cooperate to take the property of some to “aid” others. This kind of voter cooperation is based on perverting government, inducing government to use aggressive force instead of confining itself to defensive force. In this stage of my lectures, I prefer to discuss government ideally.

[24] Voluntary organizations (creative energies in cooperation) form in accord with complex human affinities that defy diagnosis, accurate prediction, and single-minded arrangement.

[25] One critic of this reasoning suggests that slaves were compelled to and did act creatively. Slaves merely adapted themselves to their environment, their confinement, their limitation of choices. Within this framework, their creative acts were all voluntary acts. Many human beings have submitted to floggings or have gone to their deaths because they chose these punishments in preference to the limitation of choices imposed upon them. This insistence of mine is not hair-splitting. That every creative act is a voluntary act is a basic point in understanding the limitations of force. Perhaps this will help my critic: Put the two of us in a room barren of all else but a lively fly. I command my critic to catch the fly. But to give the theory here advanced an honest test, he is to make not a single move except as I direct it. The fly will not be caught. The fly can be caught only if my critic acts in response to his own free will and volition. This acting in response to volition applies to the picking of cotton or to the building of airplanes as well as to catching a fly.

[26] It cannot be too much emphasized that human beings are not equal. Yet, we should all be equal before the law in the sense that we think of ourselves as equal before God.

[27] An excellent development of this idea is to be found in The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1950).

[28] What is right will, of course, always remain debatable as between persons. The nearest anyone can come to practicing right is accurately to follow that which his conscience dictates as right. “Right principle,” therefore, as I use it is obviously and necessarily right principle as I see it.

Historical Approaches to Ideal Government

The word “freedom,” in the sense of freedom from taxes, was first written, so far as I know, by the Sumerians some 43 centuries ago. It was etched on a clay cone with a reed stylus and was done in cuneiform script. The clay cone is now in the Louvre.

This precious concept, now so frequently on our lips—but recklessly used and rarely understood—makes its appearance again during the brief reign of a Sumerian king, one Urukágina of Lagash, a city-state just north of the Persian Gulf. Urukágina is described in the ancient script as a social reformer, the first in recorded history. He removed many bureaucrats from their offices and took other steps to wipe out governmental costs which were sapping the substance of the people.

One might say that King Urukágina was a benevolent dictator, for his sympathies were with his people and their welfare. Be it noted, however, that he regarded them as his people, and so did most everybody else. Every government at this period and for the next 35 centuries regarded the people as subjects and itself as sovereign. The rights and privileges Urukágina could bestow were rights and privileges he could, by the same token, deny. The power to give is also the power to withhold. This relationship of Sovereign State and subject people, so far as I can discover, maintained itself as a political concept at all times and in all places on earth until modern times. It made no difference whether the Head of State was called King, Caesar, Duce, Führer, Czar, Mikado, or whatever. For centuries power has been centered in the State; the life, liberty, and property of men have been extended or diminished according to the caprice of those who were at the State’s helm; the rights of men have been held in the palm of political masters—masters degraded beyond their ordinary selves by the corruption which power over others inflicts; masters abased by the delusion that sovereignty rests in their little, fallible persons.

The idea of sovereignty resting in the person or persons of a political elite has been a preponderant view in all countries for centuries. While Webster’s dictionary defines sovereignty as “supremacy in rule or power,” it goes on to confirm the dominant opinion by locating this supremacy in “the dominion, or rule of a lord, king, emperor, or the like” or also in “the body of enfranchised citizens.” I shall try to demonstrate that this popular notion is at the root of our societal difficulties.

The Concept of the Sovereign State

In all political theory there is no more important evaluation we are called upon to make than correctly to gauge the significance of the concept that the State is sovereign. Such an evaluation in any degree of accuracy must be difficult, for so few, even today in the United States, seem able to make it. These lectures will be more or less meaningless to any person who fails to grasp what it means to regard the State as sovereign. Therefore, forgive me if I appear to labor this important point.

Suppose I hold an invisible rope that can be extended to any length, one end of which is tied around your neck. With it I can restrain you as much as I choose. Or, if I am benevolent in my manners, I can let you roam and act, seemingly at will. But, always, I hold the rope. As long as the rope can be controlled by me, as long as your actions are at my discretion, can you regard yourself as a free agent? I think not. You cannot avoid being my slave regardless of the freedom I allow you. If I grant you freedom you can, under these circumstances, be described as “a slave at liberty,” that is, in the sense of a prisoner on parole.

To make the analogy a bit more accurate, suppose I have you in a hypnotic state. You are subject to my will until I choose to break the hypnosis. I can exercise my power causing you to do anything I wish or, should I prefer, I can let you go your own way. But remember, I can cause you to respond in ways dictated by my caprice at any time. Can you, in any of these instances, be considered a free agent? Never—not while it is admitted that I am sovereign; not while it is conceded that I am the disposer of your creative energies, your rights. You will remain my slave regardless of how much or how little I exercise my power as your master.

Down through the ages men have held the State to be sovereign. Now and then the State has relaxed its restraints or been forced by its subjects to relax them. Man’s status down through the ages has therefore wavered between two categories: the rank of slaves and the rank of “slaves at liberty.” It is utterly impossible for men to have any other status so long as they hold man-made organizations to be sovereign. For, what is a slave? Let us hear Herbert Spencer:

That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What. . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.[1]

Down through the ages men have believed that sovereign authority rested in the State. Their troubles, therefore, were thought to originate with the kind or form of man-made authority that ruled them. So, century after century, time and time again, men killed their rulers and slaughtered one another in untold millions, in an effort to find an authority that would improve their conditions. These rebellions on occasion brought temporary benefits. They interrupted or relaxed the mechanism of compulsory control and permitted creative human energy to work a little—for a while.

Until recently, however, these revolutions were not ideal revolutions. They were revolutions only in the sense of a wheel rotating around a motionless center. Under the concept of the State as sovereign, the standard pattern has always been to overthrow one form of man-authority merely to replace it with another form of man-authority—from priest to king, from king to oligarchy, from oligarchy to despot, from despot to majority, from majority to bureaucracy, from bureaucracy to dictator, from dictator to king, from king . . . and so on, and so on. According to our histories this sort of thing has been going on for several thousand years, and for several thousand years people have gone hungry and killed each other. The simple reason is that creative human energy cannot be effectively released when the State is sovereign. The truly significant revolution was yet to come—the nearest approach to the ideal that has ever been known.[2]

The Concept of God as Sovereign

Before explaining this ideal revolution, let us refer to a concept of unknown genesis and authorship. Perhaps it came originally as a flash of insight, as a momentary, intuitive thought, to the mind of an ancient forebear who had few words to convey what had been but dimly revealed to him, namely, that God is Sovereign. The earliest and most familiar account of this concept is found in the Holy Bible and has continued to thread its way narrowly through thought and literature since the birth of the Christian Era.

Regardless of the distinguished moral leadership for this concept over the centuries, it remains as new today as ever before. Being a concept, it has meaningful existence only for those individuals whose perceptiveness is sensitively attuned to it. To read or hear it over and over, even to memorize its explanatory words, is not to possess it. Possession originates only in a state of personal understanding, an inward awareness that man is not of his own design, a highly humble realization that man—indeed, Nature in all her manifestations—is but the work of a Supreme Creator. In other words, God is our ultimate Sovereign! Man’s creativity has its origin in his Creator. Man’s rights are endowed by God, the sole Sovereign. Individuals possess this concept to the extent they stand in awe of Creation: the ever-expanding Universe; infinite life, thought, consciousness; the miracle of love, spirit, radiant energy, a blade of grass, even. The Supreme Fact is eternally present; it is our ears that do not hear, our eyes that do not see, our intuition that does not intuit.

Down through the ages hundreds of millions of people have given lip service to this concept of a Supreme Creator. Yet, that the concept has not been generally understood nor deeply believed in is manifested by the fact that, down through the ages, no political institution has ever been founded logically upon it, or consistently derived from it. Western man continued to tolerate the State as his sovereign, and still does.

Oh yes, the sovereign State has on occasion, as I have said, relaxed its control of creative actions. Wherever and whenever production and exchange flourished, relaxation of state sovereignty has always preceded the happy prosperity. Certainly, the State for a long period of time exercised very little restraint on the Saracens, or the Venetians during the period highlighted by Marco Polo, or the Dutch during the commercial heyday of Amsterdam. Countless instances of where the State “got off the backs” of the people are available to the historical researcher. But, in all these instances, the relaxations that were granted could be withdrawn by the self-same sovereign State—and eventually, in all instances, they were. As a consequence, there resulted only mass dissatisfactions and uprisings, repeated attempts to repeal tyrannies without understanding the cause of tyranny—as inevitable consequence of the idea of the State as sovereign. The rebellious nationals of different countries succeeded only in achieving ambiguous ends: the overthrowing of one man-made authority to make room for another man-made authority. There was no ideal revolution. There was no logical application of the God cosmology to societal organization.

A few people of the Old World, let it be said in their favor, came to realize one important political fact: the more inclusive the scope of government, the more tyrannical that government. No doubt an early American saying, “That government is best which governs least,” had its origin in this realization.[3] In any event, some of the more venturesome risked the hazards of the New World rather than submit to the persistent authoritarianism that had become their lot.

The Plymouth Colony

Among the first to arrive in North America from Europe was a group who are referred to as the Pilgrim Fathers. They crossed the Atlantic on the Mayflower in the year 1620. Like most Europeans of their time they regarded themselves as highly religious, God-fearing, Christian people. Before setting up their little colony, indeed ere they left the ship, all adults signed what became known as the Mayflower Compact. Take note of some of the language:

In the presence of God and one another. . . . for the preservation and furtherance of the Glory of God and the advancement of the Christian religion.

On the face of it, here was a people of the God cosmology. But, pious as they were in all outward appearances, devoted to prayer and religious observance, they did not accept God as Sovereign in their community life any more than had their European relatives. For, at the very outset, they established an authoritarian or communistic community. It made no difference how much or how little any member of the colony produced; that production went into a common warehouse under order of the communal authority, and the proceeds of the warehouse were doled out in accordance with the authority’s idea of the need. In short, they began the practice of a principle which, two centuries later, Karl Marx was to formalize as the ideal of the communistic society: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

In any event, the religion of these people and their forebears was not profound enough for the God cosmology to manifest itself in their political institutions. Perhaps too many of the people were going through the formalities of religion without being really religious—something like, in my country, high school children pledging allegiance to the flag or service club members singing the national anthem, the experience being only physical or vocal, not intellectual or spiritual.

How It Was Saved

As could have been foretold by anyone having a fair understanding of political economy, the communistic colony of our Pilgrim Fathers was a failure. Many members starved and died. With men organized in a communistic manner the communal warehouse was constantly running out of provender. During the second winter Governor Bradford met with the remaining members of the colony. In effect, he said to them, “This springtime we shall adopt a new practice. We will discard the principle, ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.’ We will try the principle, ‘To each according to his merit.’ Come the spring and each of you shall have what you yourself produce.”

I am not aware that these people reached this conclusion as a result of reasoning logically from their own premise of a Supreme Creator. So far as I know, these folks were only seeking for a formula whereby they could live and, if possible, prosper. Anyway, whether inadvertently or not, they began the practice of a principle that is absolutely consistent with a God cosmology, if this be reasoned to its logical conclusion. When they agreed that each person has a right to the fruits of his own labor—the private property principle—they were declaring that no man or set of men or any man-made authority was their sovereign. They were saying that they should be free to act creatively and productively as their conscience instructed them. Unanimously they concluded that there be freedom of choice as to how each employed himself and as to what each would do with the fruits thereof. If they did not acclaim God as the sole source of man’s rights, they at least acknowledged no other gods before him.

Came the springtime. Not only were the fathers toiling in the fields but the mothers and the children were there, also. And why not? No man-made authorities were absorbing their substance. Instead, there was incentive to exercise their creative energies to the full!

Here was a people stumbling on fringes of the ideal revolution without fully grasping, so far as I can discover, the implications of what they were doing. The people multiplied and prospered. They progressed in the face of unprecedented hardships. For decades they argued politics. How was it possible to form a national government without returning to their Old World status? Was it possible to have a national government that would preserve the freedom they had won with such difficulty?

An Ideal Revolution

One hundred and fifty-six years after the Mayflower Compact came the American Revolution, an ideal revolution, at least in concept. Contrary to what most of us have been taught in school, the American Revolution was not essentially an armed conflict with England. The American Revolution was a revolutionary idea, a revolt from the Old World form of the State as sovereign to the concept of God as Sovereign. This, I believe, is the only ideal revolution. The American experiment was the nearest approach to the ideal that humanity has as yet experienced.

No doubt most Americans in 1776 were as barren of ideas about political theory and moral and social philosophy as were the Pilgrim Fathers or the bulk of their European ancestry. Every major as well as minor movement in history, be the movement good or bad, has been managed by a few men of ideas. To use Richard Weaver’s phrase, “ideas have consequences.”[4] Throughout all history there has been an idea, a slender thread of thought, weaving its way through the minds of a few in each generation. This is the idea that the Creator and not the State is sovereign. An early sample of this idea is to be found in Isaiah 33:22—“The Lord is our judge; the Lord is our lawgiver; the Lord is our king.” The position of the Creator and not the State being Sovereign is confirmed by the fact that “in the entire Biblical legal literature not a single law emanating from kings or other secular authorities was recorded or preserved as permanently valid.”[5] The laws of Israel were believed to stem from God.

Now and then there came upon the Western scene philosophers and writers of political theory such as John Locke (1632–1704) who held a somewhat similar view. These seed-thoughts found fertile soil in the minds of some inquisitive Americans who were desperately seeking a formula for a national government that would not have the power to exercise control over creative or productive activities, a power that has been wielded by all governments throughout all history. Something new and radically different in political theory had to be discovered and put into effect, something consistent with the freedom of choice they were experiencing. The theory which they wrote into our Declaration of Independence is the distilled essence of what we in the United States call “Americanism,” the only ideal revolution in political history:

We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.[6] That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. . . . (Italics supplied)

Here we have what is at once a spiritual, a political, and an economic concept. It is spiritual in that it proclaims that the Creator is the Source of man’s rights; political in that it implicitly denies that the State is the source of rights; and economic in this sense: If a man has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of his own labor. Here was a concept absolutely consistent with what Governor Bradford had said to the Pilgrim Fathers, “From now on each of you shall have what you yourself produce.” It was consistent with the private property principle.

It is one thing to make such a declaration. It is quite another matter to implement it, to put it into practice. To meet this practical need the American Constitution and, later, its Bill of Rights were written and adopted. These political instruments consisted primarily of a set of prohibitions, not against the citizens but against the one thing that they feared—the State.

The American Constitution and Bill of Rights limited government more severely than any government had ever before been limited. In principle, at least, government was confined to inhibiting and penalizing destructive actions. The people—except, unfortunately, the Negro slaves—were free to act creatively and productively as they pleased. Government, for some decades, was not sovereign.

Observe the results that flowed from this severe limitation of government. Not a person turned to the State for succor, and for the same reason that no one ever turns to a beggar for succor. The government had nothing on hand to dispense because it did not then have the power to take from some and give to others. What happens to a people when they cannot turn to the State for help? The answer is obvious: They assume self-responsibility. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witnessed the development of a greater self-reliance among a people than in any previous period.

With government limited to inhibiting and penalizing destructive actions, and people free to act creatively and productively as they pleased, large quantities of creative energy were released.

Only personal ineptitudes stood in the way. The societal agency, the State, was off the people’s back, so to speak.

The combination of a self-reliant people plus the freeing of their creative energies accounted for the American miracle, all of which was made possible by holding the Creator, not the State, as Sovereign. Little wonder that it was observed:

The whole atmosphere of the United States seemed charged with a kind of electricity that sparked the human spirit in a manner that was beyond all earthly precedent.[7]

Here, for the first time, was an agency of society organized in a near harmony with the Supreme Reality. A sad and quite a different story has to do with the fact that the American people have for some time been running away from their own revolution. Because too few grasp the truth of the Creator as Sovereign and as the Source of Rights, they are now headed back toward the Old World arrangement from which they originally escaped. This story, however, should not be explained under the title, “Historical Approaches to Ideal Government” but rather, under the title of the next lecture, “Current Deviations from Ideal Government.” The fact remains that here was the best formalized model humanity had yet produced of the spiritual, the intellectual, the political, and the economic revolution that must be repeated and duplicated if man-made authority over the creative lives of human beings is to be abolished.

[1] This is extracted from the chapter, “The Coming Slavery,” in Spencer’s The Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946).

[2] This and the previous paragraph are paraphrasings from The Mainspring of Human Progress by Henry Grady Weaver (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1947).

[3] My use of the word “American” to designate the people of the United States is in accord with our own custom. While we are no more Americans than Canadians or Mexicans or Argentineans, we have—perhaps wrongly—appropriated this term to ourselves. It derives from our full name, The United States of America. We chose “American” in preference to “United Stateian.” Actually, there is no English equivalent for your expressive “Estadounidense.”

[4] Weaver, Richard. Ideas Have Consequences. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948.

[5] University of Notre Dame Natural Law Institute Proceedings. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1953. p. 16.

[6] There is some good evidence that “pursuit of happiness” was originally “property”; that the change was a compromise for the purpose of gaining the signatures of some who did not understand the meaning of property.

[7] Manion, Clarence. The Key to Peace. Chicago: The Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1951.

Current Deviations from Ideal Government

Within the framework or context of these lectures the ideal society can be envisioned as one in which every person is free to act creatively or productively as he pleases. This is to say that each person, ideally, should be free to choose his labor and decide what disposition should be made of the fruits thereof. Let him be a piccolo player or actor, an artist or teacher, an engineer or architect, a clerk or cleric, a farmer or factory worker, or whatever, according to his private inclination. Let him, if he likes, be generous or charitable with his wealth, giving others anything he possesses or can obtain in willing exchange for his efforts; let him invest his income in his own or someone else’s enterprise; let him loan it for whatever return the free market allows; let him be a foolish miser; let him exchange with whomever and for whatever—and wherever—he wishes. In the ideal society no person would be restrained—except as his actions inhibit the creative actions of others. The ideal is simply stated: men producing, creating, emerging in thought and consciousness, evolving intellectually and spiritually—moving in a God-ward direction at the rate their ambitions and capabilities permit. No other man or set of men or any agency they may contrive would then impede their progress in this direction.

Within the framework of these lectures—which have to do only with the sociological aspect of freedom—deviations from the ideal can be described as coercive force impeding creative action, as man employing force to impose his will on others or, to use the vernacular, as man getting onto the back of his fellow man. Now, it is true that such coercive force can and often does occur in the form of private banditry. But it is coercive force of this and related types—violence, fraud, misrepresentation, predatory practices—that governments, ideally, are supposed to minimize. According to the point of view here presented, governments are properly limited to this negative function. Our concern in these lectures is not with banditry and plunder as it is practiced privately.[1] Instead, our concern is with the way people employ government—society’s organized police force—to practice banditry and plunder for them. Bastiat stated quite succinctly the deviation from the ideal we propose to examine:

The law perverted! And the police powers of the State perverted along with it! The law, I say, not only turned from its proper purpose but made to follow an entirely contrary purpose! The law becomes the weapon of every kind of greed! Instead of checking crime, the law itself guilty of the evils it is supposed to punish![2]

At the outset, let me state categorically that the perversion Bastiat deplored is becoming more and more pronounced in nearly every country. What has already happened to the Argentine—one of God’s garden spots—is happening elsewhere. Political intervention in each country bears different labels and the speed of its penetration varies greatly, but it introduces the same type of disintegration regardless of name.

Can Interventionism Be Reversed?

One question we ought to ask ourselves: Can the people of a nation, once they have committed themselves to an interventionist course, be rid of the intervention? In short, is reversal a political possibility? History offers very few encouraging examples. Most history reads like The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.

The only significant reversal I have found occurred in England following the Napoleonic Wars. England, at the time, had a small population and her economy was relatively simple as compared with the advanced division-of-labor economies of our day and age. Yet, England’s debt was greater, in relation to her resources, than most countries now bear; her taxation was confiscatory; and the restrictions on the exchange of goods and services were so great that had it not been for the smugglers many of the people might have starved. Altogether, England’s case appeared hopeless. Something happened. What was it?

In the answer to the above question, we have the all-important guide for ourselves—in the Argentine, in the United States, or wherever. What happened was primarily the result of work done by men such as you libertarian thinkers in Centro and those identified with FEE. Two of the distinguished leaders in the English movement were Richard Cobden and John Bright. These men understood and could explain the virtues of freedom and free exchange. They went about England writing and speaking. Members of Parliament listened, and there began the greatest reform movement in British history—the repeal of restrictive law. They repealed the Corn Laws, the Poor Laws, and the like. Fortunately for Western civilization, England’s monarch at the time, Victoria, appeared to have no passion for ruling Englishmen—in the overriding sense of rule. She relaxed the power that was inherent in her office. Englishmen roamed all over the world and developed production, trade, and prosperity, a development that went on until a little before the beginning of World War I when the same interventionist policies, that had nearly destroyed her earlier, set in again to wreak their havoc on the world.

Many Names—One Idea

Let us examine this interventionist policy in more detail. As I stated previously, it has many names. State interventionism, socialism, and communism have already been mentioned. Other popular labels are Fabianism, nazism, fascism, the Welfare State, the planned economy and, in my country, the Fair Deal, the New Deal, the New Republicanism, and so on. Reflection will reveal that each of these so-called progressive ideologies has a characteristic in common with all the rest. This common characteristic is the essence of the disease that is plaguing us all: a rapidly growing belief in the employment of organized police force—government—to forcibly direct and control the creative and productive activities of the citizens. This is contrary to what libertarians believe to be the proper function of government. Libertarians believe that organized police force should be used to inhibit any destructive activities that interfere with the peacefully creative and productive efforts of its own citizenry.

Government housing simply illustrates the workings of interventionism. I can remember when and if we wanted a house or housing, we relied on private enterprise. First, we relied on the person who wanted a house; second, on the builder who wanted to compete for its construction; third, on the banker who thought he saw some advantage to himself in loaning the money for the tools, the material, and the labor. Following this design in the United States, we built more square feet of housing per person than ever existed in any country on earth and at any time in all history. Yet, in spite of this remarkable record, more and more of my countrymen believe today that the only way to have adequate housing is to let government take the fruits of the labor of the many and give these fruits, in the form of housing, to the few whom government deems needy. In short, government housing is the practice of the Marxian ideal—“from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” engineered by the force of the State.

In the Argentine, as in the United States, this interventionist policy is not limited to housing. All segments of our economies are subject to this force. Interventionism reflects itself in the economic bloodstream—the medium of exchange—as I shall demonstrate.

Having no familiarity with the statistics of Argentina, I shall use United States data to demonstrate how interventionist policies destroy the medium of exchange as did England’s coin clipping in the seventeenth century. These policies are destructive wherever practiced, in your country or mine. There is no difference in principle between clipping a peso and clipping a dollar.

Freedom of Choice

Ideally, we seek freedom of choice as to how we employ ourselves and as to what we do with the fruits of our labor. Deviations from the libertarian ideal, therefore, are marked by the degree to which freedom of choice is denied. No one, not even the most devout socialist, can logically deny that state interventionism subtracts from individual freedom of choice. Any consistent socialist or state interventionist must concede this point. Their actions indicate that freedom of choice is an inappropriate ambition for the ordinary individual but, instead, is a privilege reserved for those who have gained power and established themselves as the political elite. This is the essential point of contention between authoritarians and libertarians.

A way, then, to measure the growth of communism or socialism or Perónism, or whatever the intervention is called, is to measure the loss of the individual’s freedom of choice as to what he does with the fruits of his own labor, that is with his income dollar or income peso.

In the United States, a little more than a century ago, the average citizen had a 95–98 per cent freedom of choice as to what he did with his income dollar. In other words, the forcible absorption or “take” of earned income by government was between 2 and 5 per cent. But as government progressively intervened, controlled, and operated business enterprises—with the resulting deficits—and as government more and more assumed the responsibility for the welfare of citizens, the percentage of the “take” of all earned income increased until today it is about 32 per cent.

Many people insist that this is not too bad because, they argue, that on the average we still enjoy a 68 per cent freedom of choice with our income dollar.

Permit me to interpolate for a moment about this “on the average” argument. Using a 40-hour week—going to work at 8:00 a.m., an hour off for luncheon, continuing until 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday—the average American has to spend all day Monday and until 2:00 p.m. on Tuesday working for government before he can start working for himself. But an American who has been extremely successful must work all day Monday, all day Tuesday, all day Wednesday, all day Thursday, and until noon on Friday working for government before he can start working for himself. The term “on the average” is more or less meaningless because no person is “average.”

There is little solace in the fact that, on the average, we in the United States today have a 68 per cent freedom of choice with our income dollar. Those who believe that a 32 per cent government “take” of earned income portends no evil consequences have failed to study their history carefully. Research into the fiscal behavior of nations, covering the past few centuries, reveals that whenever the “take” of earned income by government gets to a certain level—somewhere below the level in the United States today—that large segments of the population will support increases in the volume of money (inflation) as the means of easing the direct payment of taxes. Many in the population—workers, industrialists, financiers, and all who receive subsidies and special privileges—conceive that they have a vested interest in inflation as a means of financing their special type of plunder or banditry, often referred to by them as “social gains.”

“Coin Clipping”

Obviously, increases in money supply result in decreases in its unit value. Decreases in money value result in higher dollar prices of goods and services precisely as if counterfeiters were at work. One rarely hears of an instance where interventionism takes more than 25 per cent of the earned income of the people without being financed by increases in the money supply—the thing which I define as inflation. It is “coin clipping” in modern version. Politically and inevitably, inflation has to be the ultimate fiscal policy of interventionism.

It is almost impossible to weigh the damage of inflation. Statistics can little more than hint at the destruction. For instance, examine the French experience. France began the policy of interventionism, during our times, in 1914. More and more the State took control and ownership of the productive enterprises. More and more the State assumed responsibility for the welfare of the citizens. If the claims made above are correct, the French franc should have lost some of its purchasing value during these past 44 years. How much? More than 99 1/2 per cent!

I recall, when a soldier in World War I, buying a dinner in Paris. The price was five francs, equivalent to a 1918 dollar. I didn’t get to Paris again until 1947. I took a friend to luncheon, admittedly to a much finer place than the one visited 29 years earlier. The price for the two of us was 3,400 francs. In Paris again two years later with my wife—same place, same luncheon—the price was 4,100 francs. Last fall while passing through Paris, I found that the price for two at that restaurant was about 6,000 francs.

Envision a young Frenchman in 1914. At 21 years of age, he might well have given some thought to 1958 when he would reach retirement. Assume that he bought himself at that time a paid-up annuity, one that would return him 1,000 francs per month beginning January 1958. Back in 1914 that amount would have permitted him to live very well, indeed. But, my doctor friends assure me that no human could survive on only one meal in thirty days which is about all the monthly retirement would buy today.

Test the validity of this reasoning, historically. Only 29 years ago the take of earned income by government in Russia was 29 per cent; in Germany at that time it was 22 per cent; in France and in England at that time it was 21 per cent—all below the present take of earned income in the United States. Observe what has happened during these 29 years to the economies of Russia, Germany, France, and England; and it then becomes clear what intervention leaves in its wake.

Currency Shrinkage

One way to obtain a fair idea of the effects of interventionism is to take note of the rate of decrease in the purchasing power of a country’s money. The dollar, for instance, has lost 15 per cent of its purchasing value in the last nine years. Some other examples of currency shrinkage for the same period:

Ecuador

13%

Norway

33%

Belgium

15%

Spain

34%

Venezuela

19%

El Salvador

40%

Guatemala

23%

Mexico

45%

Canada

25%

Colombia

46%

Italy

25%

Uruguay

48%

Honduras

26%

France

52%

Costa Rica

27%

Peru

55%

Sweden

29%

Brazil

70%

In Argentina the currency shrinkage for the last nine years is, according to my latest figures, about 73 per cent. That other South American countries—Chile, 93 per cent; Paraguay, 96 per cent; Bolivia, 99 per cent—are experiencing even a greater shrinkage is small cause for satisfaction. Interventionism is on the rampage all over the world!

Bear in mind that interventionism to any great extent is politically difficult to finance except by increases in money volume—taxation by inflation; that increases in money volume must result in decreases in money value; that decreases in money value must be reflected in higher prices for goods and services. In short, there is no cure for constantly higher and higher prices and for currency shrinkage except the removal of interventionism.

Let’s evaluate the significance of currency shrinkage. The fact that all persons who live on fixed incomes—widows, retired people, and the like—are robbed of their financial competence for the alleged benefit of special privilege groups ought to be reason enough to be done with state interventionism once and for all. The practice of using the State for this sort of thing has no more moral sanction than has an act of personal theft.

Economic well-being—call it wealth or income—fills a moral purpose. To illustrate, contemplate the Chinese coolie. He has to labor in the rice paddies from early morning until late at night merely to eke out an animal existence. What chance have these coolies to emerge along intellectual and spiritual lines, to develop those creative potentialities peculiar to their own persons? Little chance at all! Small wonder that many regard such people as subhuman. Over the centuries their buds of genius have suffered atrophy and their potential flowering has been stifled. These people are the victims of an economic slavery, of a poverty servitude. Regardless of the cause—psychological or sociological—they remain in the same low state of suppressed individuality generation after generation.

Now, contemplate a person who is the beneficiary of division of labor, in a society where capital accumulates easily, where incentives are numerous, where the fruits of one’s own labor are protected from violence, fraud, predation, where competition determines who will cooperate with whom, where everyone is equal before the law, where willing exchange is uninhibited, where the Golden Rule is the general order of the day—in other words, where men are truly free. While no such society exists, there are, at least, approaches to it. In these near approaches people are free to engage in the creative activity of their choice, free to develop along the lines harmonious with their own nature, free to help others help themselves.

For example, other people raise my food, make my dishes, provide me with heat and light, build my home, indeed they supply me with literally thousands of other goods and services in exchange for the single specialization of my choice. Wealth freed my ancestors and me from the servitude of abject poverty.

The Moral Purpose Wealth

Wealth, considered in the matrix of freedom, is a freeing agent. It is not an end in itself, but is rather a means to higher purposes, and should be so regarded. When wealth is taken as the end or object of life instead of as a means to the fulfillment of life, wealth becomes a devastating master and not a helpful servant. Wealth, in my view, is not for the purpose of retiring from life; it is but an agent for getting ever deeper into that aspect of life peculiar to one’s own distinctive calling. Wealth is not for freeing one from serious work; it is, on the contrary, the single means for releasing one from less productive labor in order that one may work more seriously and efficiently at one’s productive, creative occupational category, whatever that may be.

Having in mind the moral purpose of wealth, let us see how the interventionism of the State destroys moral purpose. Obviously, wealth is increased as specialization develops and free, uninhibited exchange prevails. Envision, then, such a wealth-producing society of interdependent individuals. Each depends on the successful specialization of others and upon the free exchange of the products thereof. However, in a highly specialized society, exchange is not in the form of barter. No one has ever offered me livestock on the hoof for one of my lectures! Exchange in a specialized society depends on a circulatory system, a medium of exchange, to carry the results of specializations from one to another.

This economic circulatory system may be compared, in some respects, to the circulatory system of the body, the bloodstream. This carries oxygen and ingested food to the billions of the body’s cells and takes off waste matter. However, if I were to inject water into your veins and gradually thin your bloodstream, there would come a point when it would no longer perform its circulatory functions. Likewise, the economic circulatory system—the medium of exchange—can be thinned and diluted by inflation until it will no longer serve to carry the specializations of each of us to others.

History furnishes many examples of the destruction of the economic circulatory system.[3] I am reminded of the two German boys who, during 1918, received an inheritance of 500,000 marks each from their late father. One was a frugal lad. He didn’t spend a single mark. The other spent the whole inheritance on champagne parties. Such was the inflation in Germany that within three years 30,000,000 marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread. The frugal lad had nothing. The spendthrift was able to exchange his empty champagne bottles for a dinner. The economy had returned to barter!

Please bear in mind that each of the hyperinflations, such as occurred in Germany following World War I, in France during the 1790’s, and in other countries, was invariably preceded by the more gradual types which nearly every nation is now experiencing. Practically all countries are deviating from the ideal and have adopted the principles which lead, unless reversed, to hyperinflation. I repeat, there is no possibility of reversal except as we lessen state interventionism.

To use another analogy, the medium of exchange is the transmission line, the kinetic circuit. Sever such a line or reduce its carrying capacity and the whole dynamic wealth mechanism is destroyed. Every item of interventionism is a step toward this disaster.

Admittedly, the establishment of an honest, efficient medium of exchange is most difficult. But, regardless of any weaknesses it may have, there can be nothing but more trouble if government intervenes in business or assumes the responsibility for the welfare of citizens. There is no end to our social troubles except as we put government in its proper place.

[1] Actually, most of the deviltry in the world is carried on by the well-intentioned. There simply aren’t enough criminals or wholly malevolent persons among us to account for all the mischief.

[2] Bastiat, Frederic. The Law. Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. 1950. p. 117.

[3] Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White should be read by all persons who have a concern for the future of their country. A copy may be obtained from the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.

Causes of Authoritarianism

At the outset, let me acknowledge that I do not know all the causes of authoritarianism. This is by way of saying that I do not know all of the reasons for governmental interventionism or why so many people are intent upon forcibly imposing their wills on others or why they attempt to cast others in their own little images. Further, I am acquainted with no thoughtful person who claims to know all the forces which make us behave as meanly toward each other as we do.

Yet, without some estimate of these causes it would be a waste of time, effort, and money to attempt a replacement of interventionism with freedom. Without a basic diagnosis of authoritarianism there would be no more chance of success in this venture than in trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack, blindfolded. We cannot repair flaws without knowing where they are nor can we expect to correct error if we do not know that we err—and we will be aided in our corrective efforts if we know why we err. Therefore, any program aiming at free and willing exchange, at the practice of private property principles, and at limiting government to its proper scope, will require not only an awareness of existing deterrents to freedom, but also a reasonably sound hypothesis as to why they exist.

My object in this lecture will be to submit to you an inventory of some of the errors, fallacies, failures, and blind spots which appear to give rise to authoritarianism. I will not attempt to discuss these in the order of their importance, for I do not know how they should be ranked—except that there is one blind spot that lies deeper than all the rest. At least, it is as deep in causation as I am able to probe.

Blind Spot: That Man Is the Creator

Persons unaware of a Creative Force, an Infinite Principle, Intelligence, or Consciousness, far over and beyond the human self are susceptible to a belief in their own omniscience. And, those who believe in their own omniscience, logically, cannot envision a perfect society unless it be one in which others are cast in their fallible images. It is difficult for me to conceive of anything more responsible for authoritarianism than this type of unawareness.

A related blind spot was discussed in an earlier lecture under the title, “Historical Approaches to Ideal Government.” If a people do not accept the Creator as Sovereign, as their Supreme Ruler, as their Source of Rights, they must, perforce, locate sovereignty in some mortal man or in some man-made institution. Logically, it has to be one or the other. If they locate sovereignty in government—a man-made institution—they have created an authoritarianism they must live with until they revoke it.

Failure: Inadequate Development of Self

Every individual is faced with the problem of whom to improve, himself or others. The aim, it seems to me, should be to effect one’s own unfolding, the upgrading of one’s own consciousness—in short, self-perfection. Those who don’t even try or, when trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target. Those who succeed in directing their energy inward—particularly if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance—become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their energy inwardly and let it manifest itself externally—particularly if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance—become immoral leaders.[1] Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually have no interest in ruling others.

Error: The Yearning for a Judas Goat

Herbert Spencer called our attention to another type of human frailty from which authoritarianism springs:

Alike to the citizen and to the legislator, home-experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely succeed for long; the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in ways he foresees, and fulfil ends he wishes. Is there not a marvellous incongruity between premises and conclusion?[2] (Italics supplied)

Why is it that a person who obviously cannot manage himself, let alone those who are beholden to him, concludes that he is competent to direct a nation of people or even the whole world when even the wisest of men would feel utterly incompetent for any such project. There appear to be at least two reasons. First, the inability to succeed in such “small things” as the management of self and of one’s intimates leads to a frustration that can find no release except in affectations of grandeur. And, second, there are in any country countless thousands—often millions—of psychopathic cases who are ready and eager to follow such quackery. There are numberless people who are always looking for a shepherd, and only an incompetent and frustrated person could ever aspire to such a role. In short, there is a vast market for Judas goats.[3]

Blind Spot: Inability To See Unheralded Accomplishments

The authoritarian who rises to the top, even though a frustrated person as implied above, is always a person of unusual energy, as suggested earlier. Being both energetic and having the power to impose his will on others, he gives the erroneous appearance of “getting things done.” He gives “bread and circuses” or “security” to the masses, always at their expense, or displays a sputnik as a great achievement even though the energy drained into such a project would otherwise have issued in millions of daily, unheralded achievements by the people. This false appearance of “getting things done” is accomplished by depriving the people of freedom of choice as to their activities and the fruits thereof and vesting control and all freedom of choice in the dictator. Nonetheless, to those who can see only highly publicized surface demonstrations and who are blind to the countless accomplishments of free men, the dictator is attractive. Those who wish to be told what to do and where to work and who prefer to be hand-fed in exchange for their labors, become the dictators supporters.

Fallacy: Thoughts on Liberty Can Safely Be Left to Others

Our modern world is a highly specialized world. Indeed, we have gone so far into specialization that we tend to let others supply virtually all our needs. This is unobjectionable if limited to goods and services. However, we carry the practice too far. There are some things we should not turn over to others. There are matters which require strictly personal attention. For instance, we should not turn our religion over to others, nor our integrity, nor our conscience. Nor should we be so foolish as to believe we can relieve ourselves of thinking seriously about liberty. This obligation should not be delegated to any person, group, or organization. When all of us come to believe that the preservation of liberty is a responsibility that can be delegated, then liberty will have not a single defender. Authoritarians thrive in the absence of libertarian thinking like weeds in the absence of cultivation.

Error: If You Can’t Lick ’Em, Join ’Em!

An increasing number of business leaders, certainly in my country and perhaps in yours, are concentrating on how they can accommodate themselves and their operations to the current governmental interventionism, not on how they can lessen the interventionism. Authoritarianism becomes very easy in any country where the business leaders cease their opposition to interventionism—as in Hitler’s Germany or in Mussolini’s Italy.

Failure: To Know Liberty in the Absence of Pain

There would be no tigers in zoos if they remained as ferocious as when first captured. However, they soon become docile, for tigers forget the freedom they once had and, forgetting, they have nothing against which to contrast their existing condition. Their confinement becomes their normalcy.

There never would have been any Negro slavery in the United States had the Negroes remained as intractable as when first taken from their African habitat. But, like the tigers, most of them soon lost consciousness of a freedom greater than the enslavement into which they were plunged. They became accustomed to their lot and, for the most part, accepted it.

The tiger and the Negro are in no way singular in this respect. We note on every hand this same easy and willing accommodation to the status quo, regardless of how onerous it may be. Americans who only a few years ago screamed like wounded apes at some intervention by government today may give that very same intervention their approval. Indeed, you can hear them exclaim, “How could we possibly do without it!” I suspect that the same observations could be made about many Argentineans.

It has been said that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Yet, there are few persons who can continue their vigilance unless they are currently experiencing the restraint of a liberty they once took for granted. But, let the restraint persist for a short period and their aroused opposition will turn into compliance and finally into endorsement. Such persons merely add their weight to the interventionist movement. They aid authoritarianism.

Man, in the state of Grace or evolution or unfolding or emergence that characterizes most of us, is incapable of bettering himself except as he sees contrasts and faces and overcomes obstacles. All of nature seems to confirm this. For instance, we could not conceive of “up” if there were not a gravitational force pulling us “down.” Nor would there be any such word in our vocabulary as “light” if there were no darkness. The taking of a simple step presupposes something stepped on. Man, except as he achieves a higher state of consciousness than most of us can understand, cannot upgrade himself in an unobstructed universe. He requires what sometimes is referred to as “tension of the opposites” or “the law of polarity.” The art of becoming rests on the practice of overcoming.

The late Paul Valery wisely observed:

The idea of liberty is not primary within us; it is never evoked without being provoked; that is to say, it is always a response. We never think we are free when nothing shows us we are not free. . . . The idea of liberty is a response to some sensation or hypothesis of impediment, hindrance, or resistance, which opposes itself either to some impulse in our being or to some desire of the senses or to a need or else to the exercise of our considered will.

I am only free when I feel free, but I only feel free when I think I am being constrained, when I start imagining some state which contrasts with my present state. Liberty is therefore not felt, nor conceived, nor desired, save by the effect of a contrast.

This is the conclusion I must draw: Since the need for liberty and the idea of liberty are not produced in those who are not subject to hindrances and constraints, the less we are aware of restrictions, the less the term and reflex liberty will exist. A person who is scarcely aware . . . of the constraints which are imposed on him by public powers . . . will react hardly at all against these constraints. He will have no impulse of rebellion, no reflex, no revolt against the authority which imposes such restrictions upon him. On the contrary, as often as not he will find himself relieved of a vague responsibility.[4]

A political intervention when first imposed causes change and, therefore, pain. But soon the changed way becomes the customary way, and no longer painful. “We never had it so good,” chant millions of my countrymen as they become adjusted to an interventionism that already takes one-third of their earned income.

Fallacy: Value Is Determined by the Labor Put into a Good or Service

The classical economists—Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and others—had no explanation of the market value of a good or service except the amount of labor that was used in producing it. It must be assumed that this explanation was not wholly satisfactory to such accomplished thinkers, for it is so obviously wrong. Pursuing this theory, a mud pie would have the same value as a mince pie providing the same amount of labor went into the production of each. The classical economists, let it be said on their behalf, did not follow this labor theory of value to its logical conclusion for, had they done so, they would have come to the conclusion reached by Karl Marx: socialism. Following this theory, the makers of mud pies would have no way of being reimbursed for their efforts except as the government would take the fruits of the labor of others by force and subsidize the mud pie makers.

Carl Menger of the University of Vienna, in the early 1870’s, was, so far as I know, the first to deny and displace the labor theory of value. It was Menger and his followers who developed the market theory of value.[5] This theory holds that the market value of a good or service is whatever someone will freely exchange for it. The free enterprise thesis is founded on this theory, just as the socialistic thesis is founded on the labor theory of value.

While, logically and intellectually, the labor theory of value is as outmoded as the-earth-is-flat idea, it nonetheless persists to this day as a major cause of state interventionism. Why, for instance, should we in the United States subsidize farmers and not subsidize bankrupt retailers except for the belief that farmers labor so much harder for their income than do others? Thoughtful analysis will reveal that it is the labor-theory-of-value type of thinking that lies at the root of labor union monopoly and coercion. “The wage earner receives so little in return for his toil,” goes the sympathetic thinking. The amount of effort expended, not what others will freely exchange for the result of the effort, becomes the basis for wage-earner compensation. No more with wage earners than with mud pies can an above market price be obtained except by coercive force.

Authoritarianism on behalf of farmers and wage earners are but two of ever so many instances of interventionism where the labor theory of value is the underlying cause. Any intelligent person can grasp its fallacy when explained in mud-pie, mince-pie terms. Few, however, appear able to retain in practice that which they conclude in reason.

Fallacy: A Wrong Can Be Righted with a Wrong

Examine the position of every person you know who classifies himself as a free enterpriser. In nearly every case the “free enterpriser” will endorse at least one item of interventionism.

A friend of mine in Belgium takes a free enterprise position when he opposes the U.S.A. tariff imposed on the blankets he makes. However, he is an exception maker, for he favors tariffs on the products coming into Belgium from the Belgian Congo on the grounds that the highly paid workers in Belgium cannot compete successfully with the lowly paid workers of the Belgian Congo. In short, the evil of low wages in the Belgian Congo must be compensated for by introducing a restriction to free exchange, a wrong to right a wrong.

Many American farmers justify support prices and subsidies on the ground that businessmen have their tariff. They, instead of trying to remove the original wrong, practice what might be termed “compensatory evil.”

Cities and states apply political pressure for federal aid to local projects. “Others are doing it,” they claim. “Sauce for the goose.” The whole economy is rife with efforts, not to remove economic plunder but to extend plunder.

Here we have the recipe for a concoction more poisonous than any witch ever brewed: Take the single exception allowed by each “free enterpriser.” Put these countless exceptions into a pot. Stir vigorously, rapidly adding emotion and self-interest unintelligently interpreted. Bring to a rolling boil with a political apparatus. In the name of accuracy and honesty list this dish on the menu as “communism.” Serve to every man, woman, and child in the nation. Carry this message at the bottom of the menu: “This dish has been prepared at your expense by the free enterprisers of your country. You may not like it but we find it is necessary for us to be realistic and practical.”

Blind Spot: Free Men Cannot Get Things Done

As the belief grows that coercion is the only practical way to get things done—housing and medical care, for instance—belief in the competence of man acting privately, freely, voluntarily, competitively, cooperatively declines. As the former increases, the latter decreases.

In the U.S.A., for example, government has a monopoly of mail delivery. Ask citizens if government should do this and most of them will reply in the affirmative. Why? Simply because government has pre-empted this activity for so many decades that all enterprisers have ceased to think how mail could be delivered were it a private enterprise opportunity. Indeed, most of them have come to believe that private enterprise would be wholly incapable of effective mail service. Yet, I note that each day we deliver more pounds of milk than mail. Further, milk is more perishable than a love letter, a catalogue, or an appeal for funds. We also note that the delivery of milk is more prompt and less costly to us than is the delivery of mail.

I ask myself, then, why shouldn’t private enterprise deliver mail? Private enterprise delivers freight. That’s heavier.

But, no; my countrymen have lost faith in man’s ability, acting freely, to deliver letters. These people who get gas out of the earth in Texas and pipe it to my range hundreds of miles away; these men who bring each four pounds of oil halfway around the world for less cost than government charges to deliver a one-ounce letter to the other side of the street in my home town; these men who build planes that will fly 150 people across the North American continent in less than four hours; these men who do such fantastic things have lost faith in themselves to do the simple chore of letter delivery.

Take a hypothetical example. Suppose at the beginning of my country’s political establishment, some 180 years ago, it had been decreed that all children, from the time of birth to adulthood, were to receive “free” shoes and stockings from the federal government. Now, suppose this practice had been going on for all these years and I were to suggest that supplying shoes and stockings was not properly a government responsibility; that it was a family responsibility. What kind of a response would my suggestion evoke? Because free men lose faith in themselves when government takes over an activity, they would respond, “But you would let the poor boys and girls go unshod”—which our own experience shows to be an absurdity. A decline in faith in free men and what they can accomplish results in a rising faith in disastrous authoritarianism.

Blind Spot: An Inability To Explain the Free Society

I have never heard of a consistent socialist. That is, I am not aware of any person who believes that authoritarianism should be universally applied, that the State should forcibly direct and control all creative and productive activities. There are areas that the most ardent Marxist would leave to free will and volition. In short, there is hardly a person who does not balk at authoritarianism in some of its forms.

In the U.S.A. there are many millions of people who rant against communism, who inveigh against socialistic measures, and who raise their voices to high heaven at state interventionism, particularly if the intervention is directed at them. This negative force, however, does not constitute effective opposition to authoritarianism. Bad ideas are not removed by damning them.

Bad ideas, if they are to be rendered ineffective, must be replaced with good ideas. Herein lies a great weakness of the freedom supporters. Millions can damn authoritarianism but how few there are who can skillfully, persuasively, and attractively explain authoritarianism’s opposite: the free market, private property, limited government philosophy! In the absence of this ability, state interventionism thrives.

Fallacy: Authoritarianism Should Be Removed Gradually

Following World War II and prior to the relaxation of wartime wage and price controls, I made a speech entitled, “I’d Push the Button.” This title was taken from the first sentence, “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would instantaneously release all wage and price controls, I’d put my finger on it and push.”

This was regarded as a radical notion, radical in the sense of being so thoroughgoing that few persons shared it. However, if an act is morally wrong or economically unsound, the quicker it is abolished the better.

Many people seem to hold the view that the beneficiary of special privilege acquires a vested interest in his unique position and should not be deprived of it abruptly. They give little thought to the many persons from whom the plunder has been taken. It makes no difference what example of wage or price control one takes—rent control is as good as any. Under this control people have been permitted to occupy someone else’s property at less than the free market would allow. By reason of this fact renters have been privileged to buy more tobacco or vacations, or some other good or service than would otherwise be the case. The landlord has been deprived of the fruits of his own labor. Yet, when it comes to the matter of restoring justice, most people will think of the disadvantages suddenly falling upon the renters rather than the accrued damage done to the owner.

Imagine an habitual and successful thief. For years he has been robbing everybody in the community without their knowledge. He has a fine home, cars, servants, and is a pillar of society. Upon discovering his fraud, should his robbery be diminished gradually or should justice be restored to the community at once? The answer appears too obvious to deserve further comment.

People, when contemplating the removal of authoritarianism, seem to fear that a sudden restoration of justice would too severely disrupt the economy. The fear is groundless. During the early days of our New Deal we were the victims of the NIRA, the National Industrial Recovery Act, a system of wage floors, price ceilings, and production quotas. Originally, it was accepted with enthusiasm by most of the business community. Slowly, the fallacy of this nefarious program was realized. Thoughtful business leaders agreed it had to be repealed. But, many of them argued that the repeal would have to be gradual. To remove it at once would throw the economy into a tailspin. Then, one afternoon the Supreme Court ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. As of that moment all of its regulations and controls ceased to exist. Did this shake our economy? There wasn’t a noticeable quiver except that all indices of prosperity showed improvement.

The fallacy of the theory of gradualism can be illustrated thus: A big, burly ruffian has me on my back, holding me down. My friends, observing my sad plight, agree that the ruffian must be removed. But, believing in the theory of gradualism, they contend that the ruffian must be removed gradually. They fail to see that the only result of the ruffian’s removal would be my going to work suddenly!

There is nothing to fear by any nation of people in the removal of restrictions to creative and productive effort except the release of creative and productive effort. And why should they fear that which they so ardently desire?

However, I am failing to stick to the causes of authoritarianism and am getting into the subject reserved for my final lecture, “Libertarian Means and Methods.”

If, in reciting a few of the more or less obvious causes of authoritarianism, I have left the impression that the remedy is beyond anything that can be expected from ordinary citizens in ordinary effort, then I have made my point.

[1] For an enlightening discussion of moral and immoral leadership, see The Psychology of Leadership by Dr. Franz E. Winkler (Garden City, N.Y.: The Myrin Institute, Inc. for Adult Education, 1957).

[2] Spencer, Herbert. The Man Versus the State. Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Inc. 1944. p. 117.

[3] No doubt you have another term for these goats used in packing plants to lead sheep to their slaughter. They are trained to betray their kind.

[4] See Paul Valery, Reflections on the World Today. Translated by Francis Scarfe. New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1948.

[5] This market method of price determination is often referred to as the subjective or marginal utility theory of value.

Libertarian Means and Methods

The political authoritarianism that is currently being embraced by people in every so-called civilized nation—the United States of America and Argentina included—is too widely accepted, too entrenched, too out-of-hand, too powerful to be remedied by ordinary people in ordinary effort. Ordinary effort cannot even stem the tide, much less roll it back.

Lest this statement reflect a discouragement I do not personally feel, let me hasten to add that many persons are potentially able to rise above the ordinary, not only in their perceptions of freedom but in their labors on behalf of freedom. What I wish to emphasize is the futility of casual, commonplace, incidental, matter-of-fact effort. Nothing less than one’s best, nothing short of deep, devoted, consecrated effort is adequate. Indeed, the tides of authoritarianism are running so high that no action can be significant that does not in some way arise out of an intellectual and, I might suggest, a spiritual revolution.

Method is of supreme importance if this revolution is to be accomplished. If everyone’s method were in accord with the concept here advanced, there would be no ideological problem at all. This is by way of saying that if everyone were attending to the improvement of his creative self, there couldn’t possibly be a meddler among us; and with no meddlers there could be no authoritarianism, no socialism, no intervention by government into the creative and productive activities of the citizens.

The choice in method is between improving self and reforming others. It is comforting to diagnose the world’s ills as due to other people, and consequently most folks are bent on reforming others. This is so nearly an instinctive trait that we overcome it only with difficulty. Few persons appear to have any faith that this will become a better world if they do nothing about it beyond improving their own understanding and exposition. Apparently they fail to realize the impossibility of creatively doing to others that which they have been unwilling or unable to do to themselves. No man can teach that which he does not know. Personally, I join with the unknown versifier who wrote:

And so I hold it is not treason

To advance a simple reason

For the sorry lack of progress we decry.

It is this: Instead of working

On himself, each man is shirking

And trying to reform some other guy.

The reforming-others fallacy especially characterizes most organizational programs to combat interventionism. Expenditures of time and money in this direction are worse than useless; they do a positive damage to the cause of freedom.

What Organization Can Do

Certain things can be effectively accomplished by organizing. Assuming that there are a respectable number of us who believe in free exchange, private property, and limited government principles, we organize:

1. To escape working in individual isolation;

2. To lend to the educational endeavor the prestige that numbers provide;

3. To create a legal entity for the receipt and disbursement of funds and for the acquisition of such aids as working quarters, libraries, equipment for the dissemination of information, a staff, a secretariat, and so on;

4. To give to members, supporters, and searchers for libertarian knowledge the advantages of each other’s understanding.

The above, however, is about as far as proper institutional possibilities go. The institution should never make the common error of expressing a view for a membership not unanimous in that view. The institution should be maintained simply as machinery, as the physical aid, for the improved understanding, speaking, and writing of its individual constituents and those others in whom the libertarian spirit of inquiry can be aroused. The institution which speaks as a collective and embarks on a program of making over others is a type useful to our collectivist adversaries, to those who would destroy a free society; it is, in my view, an instrument of harm to the creative task of advancing understanding.[1]

Individual Action

It is the individual, then, and what he can do to advance understanding of freedom principles that require our examination. Perhaps a recounting of some of my earlier experiences will help point up the importance of individual action as well as some of the means and methods which appear to contain the ingredients of success.

Some twenty years ago, in the state of California, the people were about to elect as Governor a man devoted to authoritarian and interventionist views. The conservative citizens of both major political parties, realizing that they could not defeat this man at election time, concentrated on electing a conservative Senate and Assembly. They succeeded so well that this collectivist became one of the best governors California ever had, for the conservative legislators kept the Governor from succeeding in any of his collectivist acts—all but one.

Shortly after assuming office, and with the use of the state’s relief funds, state owned and operated retail stores began to spring up in California. The privately owned retail establishments complained bitterly and quite properly about this kind of competition. The conservative legislators, however, acknowledged that they did not know how to oppose the Governor in this program, that they did not know the kinds of arguments that they could make to the public against this scheme which the Governor called “production for use.”

As General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, it was my responsibility to analyze the error in such movements and to make the findings available to others. This is substantially what I said to the Chamber’s economist:

Doctor, I wish you would prepare an essay on “production for use.” First, demonstrate the fallacy of state ownership and control of the means of production. Second, show the efficacy of production for gain, for exchange, or for use. Third, let your essay be as brief as possible but employ whatever length is necessary to make a complete explanation. Fourth, write as simply as you can but under no circumstances “write down.” Write at the intellectual level that will assure thorough exposition. Fifth, make no disparaging references about any person. Sixth, do not tell the reader what to think or how to act. Confine yourself to setting forth the facts, the ideas, the arguments, the evidence. This is the stuff from which convictions grow. Do these things, please, and let me see your manuscript.

The manuscript was excellently done by our economist. We published it in a 32-page pamphlet. Less than 10,000 copies were mailed. They went to the Governor, to heads of departments in the state government, to professors in the universities, to leaders of parent-teacher associations, labor unions, trade associations, chambers of commerce, and business establishments.

One copy of this essay fell into the hands of a nationally known professor, famous for his strong socialistic convictions. He read it and is reported to have said, “I cannot answer a single argument advanced by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce.” From that day on the so-called production-for-use movement has not been seriously sponsored in the state of California.

What happened? Unknown to me or to my libertarian friends, this professor was the “genius” behind the so-called production-for-use movement. Did we change his mind? I rather guess we did not, for he is as interventionist in his thinking today as ever. What happened, I suppose, was this: the professor envisioned himself up against thousands of persons understanding a set of arguments and principles with which he could not cope. He simply quit the whole thing. Without him the movement ceased, for the Governor didn’t know the difference between so-called production for use and production for anything else. Thus ended one of the interventionist threats in California.

There is a lesson to be drawn from this experience. Had the Los Angeles Chamber followed the popular procedures, we would have prepared and published small, oversimplified tracts designed to influence the so-called masses, the kind of tracts that qualify as “baby talk” literature. Our eye would have been on reforming others rather than on the perfection of our own understanding and thinking. Such a procedure would have been utterly futile, for the important person in this case, the professor, would not have deigned even to look at such unintellectual material.

The Power of Minorities

We must realize that all movements, good or bad, are led, always, by very small minorities. Knowledge is not general on any subject, even on how to wash dishes, let alone on something as complex as social, economic, moral, and political philosophy. Every movement has an intellectual leader. There is always someone at the head of the class who knows more about it than the rest. Reviewing movements which have changed the course of events, it is apparent that their leaders—in the early stages, at least—are unknown to their contemporaries. It is also clear that leaders have unsuspected origins, that their leadership could not have been predicted in advance. I recall that the leader of a substantial movement nearly two thousand years ago was born in a manger. The leader of a bad movement, a few years ago, was an Austrian paper hanger. Who are the potential or budding libertarian leaders in the Argentine or in the United States of America right now? You do not know. I do not know. Quite likely the person himself, or herself, does not know. All of us, it seems, are possessed of aptitudes unknown even to ourselves.

We must appreciate our own blindness relative to others. To each one of us, all others possess unknown qualities. Our task, then, is to perfect our own understanding and to make available to all within our own circles the understanding we have come to possess. To employ an analogy, it is as if I had sold you a plot of land under the surface of which are a few rare and invaluable bulbs. I explain to you that I do not know where these bulbs are and that they will only grow and bloom if you apply a certain fertilizer. How would you proceed? Would there be any sound procedure other than to spread the productive fertilizer over the whole area? Actually, this is the procedure set forth in the Parable of the Sower. Christ knew full well that most of the seeds of truth he strewed would fall on rock, bramble, and barren soil. But he also knew that now and then a seed would fall on fertile soil. The extravagance of this process has to be disregarded, for there is no other effective way. Bear in mind, however, Christ’s perfection. Do not lose sight of the fact that the term “sower” presupposes a person with seeds to strew.

Other valuable lessons were learned while attempting to combat the interventionist movements in California. We had progressed to the point of using educational as distinguished from political methods. But we were specializing in negation, proving this or that nostrum to be wrong. While we succeeded in defeating every one of these movements, we discovered that new ones were rising to take their place. Debunking each one in turn was something like proving only that the world is not flat. Get that done and you still have to prove that it isn’t a cube, a prism, or any one of a thousand forms that shape can take. Negation, I discovered, was no answer. Someone proved the earth to be a sphere and, by so doing, removed all the fallacies about its shape. Thus, in our field, it is not enough to prove merely that this or that interventionist act is wrong. Something else is needed. We need to demonstrate clearly and repeatedly the efficacy of man in free, individual, cooperative, competitive, voluntary effort—with government limited to defense against fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predation.

Proving the efficacy of man in free action is impossible for one who does not understand such action or who lacks faith in its outcome. A person of little understanding and small faith cannot build understanding and faith in others. As suggested in the previous lecture, our basic problem is really to learn our own philosophy. The learning process, however, presupposes two conditions:

1. A person with the desire to learn a particular subject;

2. A source from which the learning may be drawn.

Conceded, we need thousands of individuals who wish to learn the free market, private property, limited government philosophy. If they have no desire to learn these concepts, they never will learn them regardless of all the talk and all the writing all of us may do. What is it, then, that can create this much-needed desire to learn? It is the second part of the above equation: a source from which the learning may be drawn.

Let me illustrate. There wasn’t any widespread desire to learn about nuclear fission or fusion twenty years ago. But the moment some one person learned how to release the energy of the atom, the moment this knowledge existed and was communicated, from that moment thousands of persons wanted to learn about this complex subject—persons with an aptitude for it. It was the innovator who served as the source and the perfection of the understanding who created the widespread desire to learn.

Increasing Understanding

At this point I wish again to emphasize the vast difference between reforming others and perfecting self, between selling the masses on the one hand, and developing sources of understanding on the other hand. Suppose, for example, that my object is to improve cooking in the U.S.A., that I don’t even know how to scramble eggs, that I use the selling-the-masses technique and run all about the country admonishing and exhorting everyone to become better cooks—I, the novice, doing this. Such behavior on my part would, assuredly, be repellent. Soon, everyone would avoid me. Now imagine the employment of the opposite approach. Assume that I go to work on the one person on earth over whom I have some control in the creative sense, namely, Leonard Read, and that I try desperately to become as great a cook as the renowned Escoffier. Next, make the assumption that I succeed. This program of self-improvement would lend attractiveness to my teaching efforts. Not only would I increase interest in cookery but interested persons would sit at my feet or drink at my fountain, as the sayings go.

I cannot emphasize too much that influencing others destructively is fairly easy. This, however, is not the kind of influence that concerns us. We are concerned with advancing an understanding of the libertarian philosophy—influence of the creative type. Creatively, we are limited to the power of attraction. We have this power or none at all.

How else can we make this all-important point about method? Perhaps I could put it this way: Go where you are called. That is, talk to the person who seeks your counsel; address the audiences that wish to hear you; write for those who are anxious to read your explanations. It is obviously useless to go where one is not wanted; it is impossible to inflict one’s views on others.

Disqualifications

Following this line of reasoning, it is plain that one’s creative influence can be extended only as one succeeds in increasing the call. If we will examine what it is in others that leads us to call on them, to seek their counsel, to draw from them, that attracts us to them—be it cookery, golf, music, libertarianism, or whatever—we will discover some of the qualities that must exist in ourselves to cause others to call on us. My deepest conviction about the qualities responsible for libertarian attraction is that they lend themselves to infinite perfectibility. The freedom adventure is an endless undertaking. While no person can even list all of these qualities for self, let alone for others (the qualities that cause attractiveness vary as to persons), I would like to suggest a few of the disqualifications which appear to have general application:

Anger. No one calls on an angry person when in search of sober judgment. Anger is a repelling, not an attracting, force. While it isn’t easy for one with libertarian convictions to contain his wrath at the deeds of authoritarians, anger is, nonetheless, a fault to be completely overcome. Indeed, upgrading in personal understanding requires that one’s soul remain wholly unrankled by the acts of ideological adversaries. Name-calling and disparaging references are not admissible behaviors for one who would become an accomplished libertarian.

Vexation. Being vexed at opinions which deviate from one’s own is a distinguished disqualifier. We should keep in mind that it is impossible for any two persons to have precisely identical value judgments. Actually, an individual who is progressing in his own thinking differs today from his self of yesterday. Many persons who are libertarian in their political and economic conclusions remain as intellectual authoritarians, that is, they condemn as inferior those who do not entirely agree with them. Persons thus vexed set up a wall that keeps others from seeking their counsel. It isn’t a calamity that another holds a different view from yours. It is important if another improves his view himself by some contribution you are able to make.

Timidity. Fear to express accurately that which one believes to be right certainly does not inspire confidence but rather repels it. This type of fear can be overcome by realizing that it is not dangerous to be honest. “Anyone making a habit of being truthful with himself opens the portal leading to a deeper insight.”[2]

Vanity. Libertarian thinking has been so generally disregarded, is in such a state of disrepair, that little more than minor effort can elevate one head and shoulders above friends and associates. Vanity at any point in success spells an end to personal improvement. It is axiomatic that the know-it-all cannot take on additional understanding. Seekers after truth do not call on, do not knock at the vain person’s door. Vanity, a repellent attitude, is opposed to teachableness, an attractive attitude.

Ambition. I do not refer to ambition for improvement of self but to ambition for attention, fame, adulation, notoriety. Ambition of the latter type is the stuff authoritarians are made of. Others seek only favors and special privileges from ambitious persons; they do not call on them for a higher knowledge. Libertarians are made of a finer and a sterner stuff—humility and a desire for harmony with Infinite Purpose as distinguished from the plaudits of earthlings.

Discouragement. There are tens of thousands, perhaps millions, of potentially skilled libertarians who are inactive for no other reason than the seeming hopelessness of arresting and reversing the tides of authoritarianism. There isn’t any remedy for this discouragement where individuals persist in trying to reform others. They cannot help realizing, sooner or later, the utter futility of this procedure. They must eventually conclude, “Oh, what’s the use!”

However, there isn’t any real reason at all for discouragement on the part of those who try to perfect their own understanding. They can ask themselves a simple question: “Am I working as intelligently and diligently as possible?” If the answer is affirmative, they can then make a sensible conclusion: “The balance of the problem is in the hands of the Lord. I have not been given the world to manage.”

There are those who get discouraged by reading or hearing each day of interventionist gains. These events are water over the dam. Nothing can be done about fait accompli. They have no meaning for the libertarian beyond instruction for the future. Otherwise, they are to be cast out of mind as if they happened in the far distant past.

There are those who get discouraged about the failure of their ideas to penetrate the consciousness of others. This failure may be due to the inability of others to perceive—in which case one can do nothing. Or, the failure may be due to their own inadequate powers of attraction and exposition—in which case the only point of concern is with their own improvement.

There are those who get discouraged about the slowness of ideas to manifest themselves in economic, social, and political action. This ground for discouragement disappears as soon as we realize the delayed-action nature of ideas. An idea must penetrate the consciousness of individuals, ripen there and mature, undergo a certain social diffusion and attain some unpredictable pressure before it can become manifest. Ideas, like most of the forces which operate in the universe, are invisible to the naked eye. An idea cannot be seen at work in the mind of a stranger, nor in the mind of a friend, nor even in one’s own mind. This, however, is no basis for a lack of confidence that an idea, once turned loose, will do its work.

Hold an opaque cup at eye level. Add drops of water one at a time. No effect can be observed from the first drop or the 100th or the 1,000th or the 4,000th or the 4,800th. But drop number 4,801 will cause the cup to overflow. Now, most of us would be confident that adding drops of water to a cup would eventually cause the cup to overflow. We need only apply this same principle of simple addition to ideas. “The most trifling action, every little thing accomplished, has something of importance in the great cosmic household, and it is merely a question of being aware of this importance.”

Positive Steps

It isn’t difficult to be negative, to give advice on what not to do, to point out the behaviors that are repellent, to suggest the things which deter others from drawing upon one’s proffered service. It is quite another matter to enumerate the qualities that lead to intellectual and spiritual attractiveness, to moral leadership. Perfectibility has to do with the Infinite and therefore with the Unknown in its limitless vastness. How can I counsel others on the positive steps to their emergence, to their unfolding, to their perfectibility when self-analysis reveals how incompetent I am to control myself in these respects? Always, when probing for a deeper understanding, I find myself confronted by the Unknown. What am I to say to others, then, not one of whom is similar to me?

At this point I should like to relate how I came upon the phrase, “Go where you are called.” I was most agreeable to these lectures, the time they would consume, and this rather extended trip, while the invitation was in the speculative stage. But last September I was confronted with a definite “yes” or “no” decision. There were many pressing matters at home, including financial problems at FEE, requiring strict attention, which argued against this trip. Yet, I had made a promise. Quite often, when confronted with a significant dilemma, I acknowledge my lack of wisdom and just ASK. The answer came clearly and quickly, “Go where you are called.”

It may very well be that this is the note on which these lectures should be concluded. For, while I cannot give instruction as to the positive steps any other person should take, I am convinced that preparing oneself, day in and day out, year after year, is a good way to further life’s purpose. Certainly, the continual quest for righteousness and the search for truth is consistent with libertarianism as I define it. With this thought as a procedural guide, one can constantly add to his own stock, thus having stores that can be called upon.

Improving One’s Own Understanding

Incidentally, the recipe for increasing one’s own stock is to make available, to give off, that which one has in store. One will receive more when giving; that is a fact because of the nature of kinetic, dynamic, flowing energy. One will receive more as he gives more. This is another way of saying that the best way to learn is to teach.

I can conceive of no art higher than teaching. In its highest form teaching presupposes not only a continued upgrading on the part of the teacher, which in turn posits the true teacher as the perpetual student, but it also presupposes two other important virtues—patience and eloquence. Patience has the effect of attraction. Eloquence as here used refers to skills in writing and speaking. It has been said, no doubt correctly, that liberty depends on eloquence.

The counsel, “Go where you are called,” seems to make sense in every way. It would suggest that no attention be paid to occupational category, to wealth status, to sex, to color, to creed, or to geography. The cause of liberty in the U.S.A. can be as well served with the initiating of libertarian ideas in the Argentine as at home. Ideas have no boundary lines except those mentalities in which the spirit of inquiry is dead or those minds to which ideas have no access. Ideas have a far more mysterious way of traveling than the radio waves we pick up on our receiving sets.

In concluding these thoughts about libertarian means and methods I may, by reason of my emphasis on self-improvement, appear to be commending the life of a hermit or a cloistered monk. This is not intended.

As stated earlier, the learning process presupposes (1) a person with the desire to learn a particular subject and (2) a source from which the learning may be drawn.

Stimulating Interest

Certainly, free market, private property, limited government principles can fare no better than now if there is not a stronger and wider desire to understand them than presently exists. I believe it can be assumed that each of us in this Seminar has the desire to understand this philosophy better. It is also reasonable to assume that we would have others understand it better than they do at present. However, if others do not have the desire for improved understanding, they will not improve their understanding. What, in these circumstances, can we do?

Our own improved understanding—the magnet that attracts desire to understand on the part of others—is a personal, introspective achievement. This is where the emphasis has to be placed, for this is the first and absolutely necessary step to any wider and better understanding over which we as individuals can have any influence. One can accomplish no improvement short of this.[3] It is the inclination on the part of so many people to attempt a widening of our philosophy before beginning to master it themselves that accounts for my insistence on behalf of self-improvement.

Once we accept our own upgrading as the prerequisite to any part we can have in libertarian progress, then the marketing phase of our philosophy is in order. Even this, however, has to do with the perfection of our own writing, speech, manners, attitudes toward others, ability to render service, mutual assistance skills, typographical creativeness, and so on. Effective marketing is simply making what we know as attractively available to others as possible. It avoids any attempts at reform, at imposing our ideas on others.

To me, we appear to be living in a troubled world, and as Dr. Franz E. Winkler puts it, “The last thing we want in a crisis is persuasive advice . . . it is a torch we crave when we ask for guidance.”

So let me repeat what I said at the outset of this lecture: “The political authoritarianism that is currently being embraced by people . . . is too powerful to be remedied by ordinary people in ordinary action.” Fortunately, there are latent qualities of perception, understanding, and exposition in thousands of persons, latent only because of neglect. Each person holds the only key there is to unlock these qualities in himself. I would aspire to be prepared, if and when called, that I might have the guidance other searchers may be seeking. If each of us were to make this our prime aspiration, we would then have adopted the most effective means there is to libertarian achievement and realization. For, to be increasingly called upon one must constantly be knocking at the doors of higher knowledge himself. Such is the stern requirement of intellectual and spiritual attractiveness.

[1] See my On That Day Began Lies, a critique of the resolution-passing organization. (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, 1949.) See also, W. J. Brown’s “Imprisoned Ideas” in The Freeman, March 1958.

[2] Rudolph Steiner.

[3] “Only those who are their absolute true selves in the world can fulfill their own nature; only those who fulfill their own nature can fulfill the nature of others; only those who fulfill the nature of others can fulfill the nature of things.”—Tsezse, grandson of Confucius.

Elements of Libertarian Leadership

Notes on the Theory, Methods, and Practice of Freedom

Leonard E. Read

1962

FOREWORD

It is difficult even to set forth the libertarian ideal, but expounding it is simple compared to living by it. Nonetheless, life lived according to right principles can never be more than sporadic except as the ideal is sought for, held up, and used as a guide.

I have no reason for attempting a manual of libertarian leadership except the conviction—born of three decades of trial and error—that our waning individual liberty is more difficult to restore than most people judge. It would be shameful for any person, thinking he knows how deep the ore lies, to keep silent while millions of people wastefully prospect on the surface.

First, a word about terms. I use freedom and liberty as synonyms, that is, interchangeably. A case has been made for ascribing different values to these terms but the distinction, if any, is never generally understood and, thus, is more or less useless for communicative purposes.

The term libertarian is used because nothing better has been found to replace liberal, a term that has been most successfully appropriated by contemporary authoritarians. As long as liberal meant liberation from the authoritarian state, it was a handy and useful generalization. It has come to mean little more than state liberality with other people’s money.

Next, the solution to the problem of rescuing an individual liberty on the skids requires, broadly speaking, the mastery of two disciplines: the philosophy of freedom and the methodology of freedom. The former has to do with an understanding of what freedom actually is, and the latter with the techniques, means, and methods by which an improved state of freedom may be effected.

The emphasis in this volume is on methodology. Assuming an individual has mastered the philosophical aspects of freedom, what can he do about it? With whom does he work? What are his limitations? His potentialities?

Methodology must not be sold short. Indeed, if everyone—freedom devotees and their opposites—had his method right, there would be no real philosophical problem. Right method, according to this thesis, consists of self-improvement. If everyone were devoted to the perfection of self, there could be no meddlers amongst us, and without meddlers there could be no socialism.

Of course, philosophy and methodology cannot be compartmented, entirely. To be a master of liberty’s rationale one must, to be consistent, behave in a libertarian manner. One cannot, for instance, stand truly for liberty and regard as villains or fools those who disagree, without qualifying as an intellectual authoritarian!

So, throughout this volume there will be traces of philosophy for, without some of it, the methods would be attached to no purpose. Perhaps to establish an author-reader understanding at the outset, an important philosophical definition is in order:

Liberty, like laissez faire, is often thought of as synonymous with unrestrained action. The thought is incorrect as related to both terms. Liberty, for instance, does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations. Patently absurd! Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not libertarian.

Finally, this volume contains little that is new, except the arrangement. Most of the material has appeared over the past five years in books and pamphlets, some of it in The Freeman and Notes from FEE, publications of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. This is an attempt to organize the numerous materials into a single, usable manual for those who would give liberty a hand.

L. E. R.

• CHAPTER 1 •

FAITH AND FREEDOM

Almost everyone says he favors freedom; just try to find a single individual who says he does not. The search would almost certainly prove fruitless. Indeed, so many declare themselves for freedom and against communism that hundreds of organizations now exist to satisfy the common devotion to this attractive term. But, in spite of this lip service to freedom, our actual liberties continue to dwindle. The centralized state makes more and more of our decisions for us.

Why is it that the millions of us who vocally proclaim for freedom do not constitute a solid front against the omnipotent state? Perhaps it is because some who proclaim their devotion to freedom do not understand the requirements of freedom, its “operational imperatives.” Thomas à Kempis, the fourteenth century author of The Imitation of Christ, saw the problem of peace in similar terms. “Many favor peace,” he wrote, “but not many favor the things that make for peace.” When it comes to an understanding of the proper means and methods for achieving the goal of freedom, there are some real divisions among those who say they believe in freedom. Why is this so?

When speaking of believers in freedom, I do not refer—for the purpose of this inquiry—to those Americans who have a distaste for the godless apparatus headquartering in Moscow. That would be nearly all of us. Nor do I have in mind all who avow a dislike for state socialism. Or, the millions who give lip service to “the American way of life.”

When I speak of the differences of opinion in the freedom camp, I am referring to the relatively few of us—tens of thousands, not millions—who claim an affinity for libertarian ideals. When the inquiry is thus brought into focus, the question reads, “Why do we—the hard core of the free market, private property, limited government philosophy—disagree with each other?” Why do we not present a solid front? For it must be acknowledged that even we have pronounced differences of opinions and that we are in constant argument with each other. Why? That’s the question.

A Dying Movement?

Several years ago I put this puzzle to a distinguished American conservative who, at the time, was being taken to task by scholarly individuals who shared, in a general way, his own ideological persuasions. His answer—no doubt somewhat influenced by pique—was, “This fighting among ourselves is the sign of a dying movement.” Let us hope that he was wrong for, if not, the cause of freedom would be hopeless, so vigorous are the arguments among the few of us we call, “We.”

I shall try to make the case for a contrary interpretation: These sharp differences of opinion among those of us who in a general way share libertarian ideals are the sign of a movement not yet come fully alive, of a movement suffering birth pains.

However, before going further, it is necessary that we understand what these arguments among ourselves are really about. Can they be reduced to a single issue? In the first place, they are not about the desirability of freedom, for we are all agreed on that. Nor, except in a few isolated instances, do they revolve around the question of anarchy, or no government at all, versus limited government. All but a few freedom devotees believe in limited government, that is, a formal, legal agency of society which invokes a common justice, and secures the rights of all men by restricting such destructive actions as fraud, violence, and predation.

What Price Freedom?

What, then, is the nature of the contentions so rife among us? The arguments, stripped of all their semantic inaccuracies, boil down to: How cheaply can freedom be bought?—although it is rarely so stated. Is freedom something that can be had for the wishing? For casual effort? Is it a prize to be won by delegating the chore to some hired hands? Or, is the price of freedom an intellectual and spiritual renaissance with all the hard thinking and difficult introspection required to energize such a revolution in thinking?

Some believe that freedom can be had simply by uncovering card-carrying communists and then calling them names. To these people, our ills originate in Moscow. Be done with Soviet agents and, presto, freedom!

Others believe that the loss of freedom stems from what they call “the ignorant masses.” Merely finance educational programs aimed at “selling the man in the street.” Teach this ignoramus that there is no such thing as a free lunch or some other such simplicity that can be grasped as he passes a bulletin board or drowsily reads baby talk literature in a barber’s chair. Gain freedom by writing a check!

A considerable number offer political action as their highest bid for freedom. Organize “right down to the precinct level” and elect “the right people” to public office. As if freedom could be had by activating the present absence of understanding, so as to shift existing ignorance into high gear!

Another group believes that the price need be no higher than the cost of beaming radio reports behind the Iron Curtain—relating to those slave peoples how luxuriously we Americans revel in our gadgetry. Freedom as a consequence of exciting international envy!

Then there are those who would insure “a free world” by having the federal government coercively take the fruits of our own labor to subsidize foreign governments. As if friendship could be purchased for an exchange of cash; as if subsidized relationships were the essence of freedom; as if this kind of communism at home would discourage world communism!

The highest priced bid, in dollar terms, is the resort to the sword. Outdo the godless states in the hardware of mass slaughter and American freedom will remain intact!

Preservation—or Restoration?

But it is useless to name all the various panaceas proffered as our bids for freedom—bids aimed at the mere preservation of individual freedom. For we cannot preserve that which has already been so largely lost. We have a restoration job on our hands. Freedom must experience a rebirth in America; that is, we must re-establish it from fundamental principles. Most of the bids aimed at a renewed freedom are far too low. If this were not a fact, freedom would have been restored by now. Indeed, it would never have been lost. The price of freedom is not increased political activity or even economic understanding, nor can the cost of freedom be stated in dollar terms.

Political collectivism, the antithesis of individual freedom, can be likened to a cancer. It is not like a skin cancer that can be treated with relative ease; it resembles the type known as “metastasis”—the wildly spreading kind. The disease has spread through the whole body politic, a fact not likely to be observed except by those who work full time on behalf of freedom. Nothing short of the best therapy ever known to man can cope with this problem.[1]

Freedom To Become What?

Libertarian leadership depends on finding an answer to the question: What is man’s earthly purpose? Acknowledged, no two of us can reach precisely similar answers. Nonetheless, the quest and the finding of an answer satisfactory to each of us—this intellectual and spiritual effort—is a part of the price we must pay for freedom. Without a purpose in life, a fundamental datum line, a basic point of reference, no effort aimed at restoring freedom makes much sense. Man needs to be free in order that he may fulfill the demands of his nature. Freedom to become what? is the only relevant question.

My own answer to this question will be given and explained in the next chapter, but here let me refer to the two categories of freedom, inner and outer, psychological and sociological—each area subject to freedom impairments. Sociological restraints have to do with man imposing his will by force on other men—authoritarian-ism of one kind or another.

The psychological restraints on freedom, on the other hand, are such things as ignorance, insensitivity, pride, stupidity, personality defects, and the like. They are, no doubt, more stubborn impediments to emergence than are the sociological restraints. They might be termed spiritual faults which demand a spiritual remedy. This aspect of the problem is beyond my competence and outside the scope of this manual. It is enough for me to touch on only a narrow but extremely important phase of the sociological aspect; man’s inhumanity to man as manifested by the misuse of governmental power.

Spiritual, Political, and Economic

This brings us to the second part of the over-all price that must be paid for freedom: the intellectual and spiritual effort required to grasp the full implications of the idea expressed in these words of the Declaration of Independence: [Men] . . . “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. . . .” This, quite obviously, is a political concept with tremendous spiritual overtones. Indeed, this concept is at once spiritual, political, and economic. It is spiritual in proclaiming the Creator as the endower of men’s rights and, thus, as sovereign. It is political in the sense that such an acknowledgment implicitly denies the state as the endower of men’s rights and, thus, the state is not sovereign. And this is an economic concept because it follows from a man’s inherent right to life that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s own labor.

As freedom is a necessary part of godliness, so is spiritual faith—godliness—a necessary part of freedom. Or, so runs my argument. Freedom is to be restored only as we place faith in our Creator, and such faith is possible only as the human spirit is freed of stifling restraints. Spiritual faith and freedom are thus two reciprocating parts of a Divine Principle. In a strict sense, they are inseparable and, thus, they tend to rise and fall together. I use the word “tend” simply because they are not inseparable as are two sides of a coin, but inseparable as are two mountain climbers securely tied to each other by a long rope. There is a “play” between them, and it is this “play” which permits one to help the other advance and which may keep the other from falling. In any final analysis, they do rise and fall together. Alexis de Tocqueville had a full appreciation of this point:

For my own part, I doubt that man can ever support at the same time complete religious independence [atheism or agnosticism] and entire political freedom. And I am inclined to think that if faith be wanting in him, he must be subject; and if he be free, he must believe.[2]

Unless we believe that man’s rights are endowments of our Creator and, therefore, inalienable, we must conclude that the rights to life and liberty derive from some human collective and that they are alienable, being at the disposal of the collective will. There is no third alternative; we believe in the one or we submit to the other. If the latter, there is no freedom in the social sense; there is despotism.

If we lack this spiritual faith, our rights to life and liberty are placed on the altar of collective caprice and they must suffer whatever fate the political apparatus dictates. The record clearly shows what this fate is. Russia is the most degraded example, but practically every other nation, including our own, drifts in Russia’s direction. Among the Russians we note that freedom of choice has been forcibly lifted from the individual and shifted to the political collective. The dictator and his henchmen prescribe the manner in which the fruits of the citizen’s labor shall be expended and how his life shall be lived.

Two Parts of a Divine Principle

There is one other feature of the Moscow apparatus about which we should become acutely conscious: its godlessness. This is no accident. The political collective would undermine its own power if it condoned the peoples’ belief in the Creator as the endower of man’s rights. If Russians believed in and understood the full implications of the Creator concept, the political collective would fall. As suggested above, freedom and spiritual faith are two parts of a Divine Principle and tend to rise and fall together.

We do not have to confine our observations to Russia, however, to see faithlessness and the loss of freedom going hand in hand. This same phenomenon can readily be seen here at home. While we cannot measure the loss of spiritual faith with anywhere near the precision that we can calculate the loss of freedom, there is a great deal of evidence to support the conclusion that they are falling or, shall we say, failing together. For instance, we can measure with a near precision the average citizen’s loss in freedom of choice as it relates to the fruits of his own labor. During the past twelve decades, by reason of governmental expansion, his freedom of choice has declined steadily from 95–98 per cent to about 65 per cent—and the trend grows apace. In other words, taxation which once took only 2–5 per cent of earned income now deprives us of about 35 per cent.

A Diminishing Faith

Let us now reflect on the loss of faith in the Creator as the endower of man’s rights. This spiritual concept is rarely mentioned in our day. For all practical purposes, it is a forgotten element of faith. I am unaware of any contemporary textbook which develops the implications of this concept. Permit me to make an even more serious charge: The Creator sovereignty concept issues from all too few American pulpits! Bear in mind that the American ideal of individual liberty and limited government is the political implementation of a religious concept of man. Early American clergymen deserve much of the credit for this magnificent accomplishment. But their successors, by and large, and especially the men who have gained access to the ecclesiastical sounding boards, have forsaken this path and are now following in other footsteps. As a consequence, most of the people of our country have already crossed the border and have left this spiritual concept to history. They have accepted new ideas which put their God-given rights at the mercy of the state, which is, by its nature, an amoral and, thus, a godless apparatus.[3] Here at home we sadly note another proof that faithlessness and the loss of freedom fail and fall together.

The Ultimate Goal

I do not mean to suggest that we should turn from the godless state to the Creator concept for reasons of mere material advantage. That would be to pervert religion, to get the sequence upside down, to confuse cause and effect. Faith in Infinite Consciousness—our Creator—is a spiritual achievement, a goal for which one strives for its own sake. The goal is the emergence of the individual human spirit that it may achieve its fullest measure of immortality. Desirable earthly consequences are a by-product of this pursuit. The highest aim is to bring individual consciousness into as near a harmony as possible with Infinite Consciousness.

However, once we have the sequence right, which is to say, when we first focus our thoughts and energies on life’s highest purpose, there follow the most efficacious earthly consequences. It is only when we tap The Source of all blessings that blessings become the lot of mankind. “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto you.”

The Foundations of Limited Government

As the removal of restraints—the practice of freedom—releases the perceptive powers of the individual and permits spirituality to grow, so does faith in the Creator bestow an increasing freedom. As suggested earlier, no governmental apparatus can lord it over a people who conceive of their rights as deriving from their Creator. This conception makes impossible, among those who hold it, any ascendancy of government beyond its principled position. It restricts the powers of government to the exercise of such force as any individual is morally warranted in employing. The individual, as a being responsible to his Creator, has a moral right to defend his own life and liberty and property against fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predation. Lacking this right, he could not discharge his responsibility for the proper stewardship of his own life. Government, logically, can have no powers beyond those which individuals may properly exercise—if the Creator concept be accepted. Man is free to act creatively or productively as he pleases. Here we have the absence of any and all political restraints on creative action, in short, total freedom from governmental interference in this area.

I have used the term “total freedom.” It must be understood that freedom does not and cannot include actions which impair another’s freedom. Freedom, except in its psychological sense, is a social term. Socially speaking, freedom has a place in our vocabulary only as it describes a felicitous relationship of man to man. Therefore, freedom is not and cannot be synonymous with unrestrained action. To do as one pleases, if it infringes upon the freedom of another, is not freedom at all—it’s tyranny. It is impossible for freedom to be composed of freedom negations. Total freedom, then, as relating to society and government, is the ideal to be sought. This is a goal to be kept uppermost in mind, and any deviations from it are to be disapproved.

The Power of Right Thinking

At this juncture, there is one other point that needs emphasis: Merely to agree with the spiritual concept that men are endowed by their Creator with the rights to life and liberty is not at all adequate for bringing about the renaissance our serious national situation requires. Many people give lip service to this concept without relating the concept to its practical, political application. All of its implications must be brought into sharp focus in the minds of each of us. If this be accomplished—and it takes a bit of doing—then government, in our ideal theory, is automatically excluded from any action beyond securing the rights with which we are endowed by our Creator. Governmental tampering with or management of any creative activity becomes unthinkable. Creative activity is a manifestation of the Creator as it shows forth in men and, in good conscience, is not to be hampered or restrained or destroyed by man or any of his organizations. To interfere with this Divine Energy in any manner whatsoever is to thwart and defy our Creator. It is man putting himself above God.

Once enough of us to compose a leadership—it need not be large—accept and understand the full implications of “endowed by their Creator”; once we have our fundamental principles straight; once we have brought ourselves into harmony with Divine Providence; once we conquer completely any impulses to dethrone the Creator; then, our social problems untangle and the way to individual growth, evolution, emergence becomes clear. Life and liberty unobstructed by man, yes! But there is more, for in seeking to realize life’s highest purpose lies the pursuit of happiness. We are truly happy only when we are in a perpetual state of hatching, our own consciousness opening to Infinite Consciousness.[4]

The Flow of Creative Energy

Let us now reflect on the way of life that naturally follows an application of the endowed-by-their-Creator concept. We need only take note of several seemingly self-evident facts.

The most striking fact is that the creative potentiality in any individual is unknown. We only know that the aggregate potentialities among all who live is enormous; that creation manifests itself in strange ways and through persons we have no manner of guessing. For instance, about a century ago, there was a twelve-year-old lad of humble origin, a railroad newsboy, whom a trainman picked up by the ears and pulled into the baggage car. Who could have guessed that this boy would become the world’s greatest inventor? Little did that trainman know that he was dealing with Thomas Alva Edison through whom Creative Energy was to flow with practical consequences rarely if ever equaled.

All energy seeks its destination, the fulfillment of its purpose. Holes in the dikes are but the result of potential energy trying to become flowing, kinetic energy. Likewise, Infinite Consciousness, at least as I conceive it, tries to flow into and through persons, manifesting itself as individual human consciousness. When not too much obstructed, it shows forth in man as insight, cognition, inspiration, inventiveness, in short, creativeness. Some creativeness we classify as material, other as intellectual, but all creativeness is spiritual.

Through whom will this Creative Energy flow? We can never know in advance any more than we can know what form it will take.

We do know that it manifests itself more or less to some extent in nearly everyone. For, who has never had an idea? We also know that the consciousness of a few is greatly expanded when compared to the mill run of us, as in an Edison, a Goethe, a Milton, a Beethoven, a Leonardo da Vinci, or a Henri Poincare, to mention but a few. Further, we know that it never manifests itself in any two individuals identically. Indeed, it is infinitely varied in its manifestations. Picture it as waves of energy, as an electrical current, sometimes imperceptible, now and then—and perhaps only momentarily—strong and vibrant. It shows forth unequally, differently, infinitely throughout humankind.

The Law of Attraction

These infinitely varied waves of Creative Energy have their source in Infinite Consciousness and, accordingly, are governed by the laws thereof. These laws we try to discern and, to the extent that we do, we grow in consciousness, that is, partake of Infinite Consciousness. One law or principle, as stated by an eminent scientist, is highly relevant to this thesis:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies, too, are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[5]

Why is the above quotation so relevant to this thesis? Simply because all the highly varied creative energies, as they manifest themselves in millions of individuals the world over, fall under this very law, this mysterious attractive force. These creative energies have an affinity for each other and, if not impeded, that is, if free, will automatically, spontaneously, miraculously configurate or draw together in the most unpredictable patterns to form the goods and services men live by. Think of yourself. Reflect on how helpless you would be were your life dependent on the tiny consciousness which is yours. You would perish. So would anyone else, similarly handicapped. Yet, we all live in relative luxury. What accounts for this? It cannot be explained except in terms of creative energy and creative energy exchanges, except by this mysterious attractive force in operation.

Why is it that each one of us will admit that “only God can make a tree”? Is it not because we acknowledge that we do not know how to make a tree? Molecules, in response to some mysterious law of attraction, form in never-ending patterns to give us trees, rocks, grass, an infinite variety of blessings we refer to as “nature.” Admitting only God can make a tree, are we not warranted in concluding that only God can make an automobile, a symphony, a pencil, a house, an infinite variety of things men live by? No single person on earth knows how to make an automobile, for instance.[6] Yet, there are 75 million of them in our country. How come? These things we enjoy and live by are not ours by reason of any single-minded human management. They are simply varied creative energies configurating, drawn together without any human’s know-how, configurated by this mysterious law of attraction. Adam Smith observed this phenomenon and wrote that man, seeking only his own gain, is “led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

The Source of Man’s Strength

Such metaphors as the Invisible Hand, this mysterious Attractive Force, Infinite Consciousness, and Divine Providence, are shorthand terms, so to speak, describing facets of man’s experience with the workings of his Creator, God. Here we have Source, and it is man’s highest purpose to seek it and to achieve as near a likeness to it as he can. This means to become as creative as possible, to grow in consciousness. Further, it means that man should never, under any circumstances, individually or collectively, through government or any other agency, inhibit the flow of creative energies or creative energy exchanges. To hamper Creative Energy, in any manner, as it attempts to manifest itself in mankind, is to thwart Creation. Standing against Creation is no role for little, fallible man!

The above convictions must come under the heading of spiritual faith. It is only in this faith—only in this belief that man gets his rights, his strength, his consciousness from his Creator—that freedom among men is possible. For, individuals with this faith will never brook men or men-made authorities as the source of life, liberty, happiness, strength, consciousness. Faith in the Creator, if its implications be thoroughly understood, dispenses with all such nonsense. Society-wise, man frees himself with this spiritual faith. The intellectual and spiritual effort to achieve such a faith and such an understanding is the very lowest cost at which freedom comes. Any bids below this will never be heard, much less attended with success.

This chapter is from an address, “Endowed by Their Creator,” delivered as The Mayflower Lecture on May 7, 1961, at the Mayflower Community Congregational Church, Oklahoma City.

[1] “It is not a hazarded assertion, it is a great truth, that once things are gone out of their ordinary course, it is by acts out of the ordinary course they can alone be re-established.”—Edmund Burke in a letter to William Elliott, Esq., 1795.

[2] From Democracy in America (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945). p. 22.

[3] For an explanation of the amorality of the state, see my “Conscience of the Majority,” The Freeman, March 1961 (The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.). Copy on request.

[4] “There was a Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, who lived five centuries before Christ. Change is the law of life, he wrote, everything is in flux—including man. We are creatures in transit. We can’t drift along as we are, just being our jolly little selves; we must grow, and if we don’t, we decay. Heraclitus put this in a colorful way when he said: ‘We are here as in an egg,’ Now an egg cannot go on and on just being a good egg; it must either hatch or go bad. This is the nature of an egg, and in this respect the demand of our own nature is not essentially different.”—From The Freeman, July 1960, p. 53.

[5] See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

[6] Should anyone question the point that no person knows how to make an automobile, see my I, Pencil (The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.). Copy on request.

• CHAPTER 2 •

CONSISTENCY REQUIRES A PREMISE

In the previous chapter I argued that a faith in the Creator as the endower of men’s rights is an appropriate foundation for libertarian leadership. I repeat, one admits this concept or he is faced with the alternative of submitting to the idea that men’s rights are endowments of the state. There is no third alternative.[1]

Faith, however, is only the down payment, the cornerstone of the foundation for libertarian leadership. Subsequent installments concern the acquisition of a fundamental premise for oneself. This takes some difficult thinking—quite a price to pay! But freedom is not cheaply bought!

One of the great debates of our time concerns the role of government in human affairs—government limited to defense of life and property versus government regulation and control of every aspect of our lives. Not that this is a new problem, for the proper role of government in society has engaged the attention of the ablest minds since the time of Plato. At present, however, the debate bogs down. The more the matter is discussed nowadays, the more confused become people’s beliefs and the further they seem to move from any common understanding of the problem or agreement on the answer.

Our High State of Confusion

Never in all history has the discussion been on such a scale as now, never such airing of views—with practically everyone seemingly bent on setting all others straight. But the more that some people contend with each other over the issues, the more is discord promoted, the less is harmony achieved. Force, rather than personal freedom of choice and action, mounts the driver’s seat. Why this unhappy state of affairs?

The reason may be nearer to home than most of us suspect. Few libertarian proponents of strictly limited government are sharply conscious of why they believe as they do. Nor have most authoritarians bothered to examine the why of their positions. Much less does either pretend to know or really care what is in the other’s mind, or why. Obviously, persons with no fundamental premises of their own are unlikely to have anything fundamental in common with each other. So, let us first examine the why of our own beliefs.

The reason we do not know why we believe and act as we do is because we are not aware of our basic premise or prime value or fundamental point of reference. With our lives anchored to nothing, we tend to believe and act aimlessly; that is, we obey emotional compulsions instead of adhering strictly to the disciplines imposed by some transcendental premise or value or principle personally thought out and accepted. People swayed by a variety of emotional compulsions—acting outside the realm of reason and with no knowledge of what moves them or others—can find no common ground, regardless of how much they talk or fight. They lack a common premise; individually, they lack a conscious premise.

From Nowhere to Everywhere

Covetousness is an example of an emotional trait, as is fear of disapproval or desire for approbation. Suppose one person covets only political power and another only material wealth. With such diverse motivations, how could discussion lead them to agreement or even common understanding on, let us say, the TVA idea? The former would sense an advantage; the latter would think his ambitions thwarted. And the more logically they argue from such nonreasoned premises—from their emotional compulsions—the more widely would they diverge.

Marcus Aurelius remarked, “If you would discuss with me, first define your terms.” Good! But much more important and useful would be to say, “First, let us at least understand each other’s premise, even though we may not agree.” For it is fruitless to discuss economic, political, social, and moral subjects without first understanding our own premises as well as the premises of others. Otherwise, no party to the discussion can possibly know how to evaluate another’s statements.

“What is your object in life? What is it you hope to achieve by your earthly existence? What, in your view, is your purpose here?” These would be appropriate questions to ask anyone who sees fit to argue about man’s relationship to man.

Many people have never raised these questions with themselves, much less reflected on the answers. In this unthoughtful state, they do not qualify as instructors on questions of what’s right and what’s wrong in social, political, and economic affairs.

Man’s Purpose

To arrive at a basic premise, one must ask and answer a fundamental human question: What is the goal of man’s earthly striving; that is, what is life’s highest value?

Is man’s purpose here longevity, to extend creatural existence, stretch his life span?

Is it to accumulate wealth, pile up material possessions, get rich?

Should man aim to achieve supremacy over his fellow men, gain personal power, make others behave as he sees fit?

Ought man to expend his life’s energies in trying to remake others in his own likeness; that is, become the ultimate arbiter of humanity?

Meaningless Motivations

With the questions put in this stark form, most people, even without prior reflection, would acknowledge that man is made for other things than these; he should have higher values. Yet, things such as these, in infinite variation, have served as motivations for countless actions, including those of “statecraft.” Lust for power, glory, fame, title, notice, adulation, pomp, riches—all for a momentary show-off before earthlings—is about as much of a life goal as many people have. Try to discuss sensibly with people thus motivated a subject such as the scope of government!

Consider, briefly, the current rash of public discussions, debates, and “interviews”—radio, TV, and grand ballroom variety—and reflect on the why of their inanity. Of course, in the first place, they are designed mostly for entertainment. As the educational director (this was his title) of a national network said to seven of us prior to going on the air, “While we prefer that you not use profanity, don’t let anything stand in the way of making this a hot scrap.” Second, and by the very nature of these verbal brawls, the incentive is not to shed light but rather to out-clever one’s adversary. And third—by far the most important reason for the puerile nature of these insincere shows—is that no participant has the slightest notion what the other fellow’s premises are, and may not know his own!

To demonstrate further the futility and the aimlessness of discussions where premises are in the dark, merely reflect on personal experiences with friends and associates. Note how often attempts to “talk it out” lead to nothing but sharpened awareness of disparity in viewpoints. Failure to understand each other’s basic point of reference or prime value is more apt to yield bad feelings than harmonious conclusions.

What Is the Standard?

Consider again those two persons, one whose chief aim is political power and another whose major purpose in life is the accumulation of material wealth. They decide to discuss or debate the efficacy of the TVA idea. In all probability, neither is fully aware of his own motivation, and it is almost certain that neither is conscious of the other’s basic point of reference. Should each argue logically from his own major object in life, the former would have to judge the TVA idea—government control and ownership of the means of production—to be consistent with his life’s pattern; and the latter, seeking opportunity for private investment, would judge the idea to be inconsistent with his life’s pattern. The longer they argue logically from their motivations—the further they move from agreement concerning TVA. It cannot be otherwise.

How much better if each were to start by examining his own premise and explaining it to the other! The first would confess, “I have no object or life value above that of political power.” The second, “I have no object beyond that of great wealth.” At this point they could conclude in unison, “It is useless for us to discuss the efficacy of the TVA idea. We should, instead, confine ourselves to a discussion of our varying premises. For, unless we can find a common or near-common premise, our reasoning and argument will only lead us astray and apart.”

The variation in our respective life values is enormous. Some men want power; some riches; a few seek justice.

Men have sought all sorts of other things—they have sought God, they have sought beauty, they have sought truth or they have sought glory, militarily or otherwise. They have sought adventure; they have even—so anthropologists tell us—sometimes believed that a large collection of dried human heads was the thing in all the world most worth having.[2]

Idle Nonsense

These comments are important and relevant. First, reflect on the senselessness of two individuals discussing social, political, economic, and moral matters, the life object of one being only dried human heads and the sole object of the other being riches. Arguing logically from such shallow premises, one would condone murder and the other would see nothing wrong in buying thousands of acres of land and having the government take money from other people to pay him for not growing wheat on it. There is no need to belabor the futility of such argument. It is quite evident that all philosophical argument which does not proceed from a conscious premise is, perforce, a nonconscious argument—idle non-sense.

Second, while there is no prospect of any substantial number of people thinking through and adopting a common premise, we can recognize a fairly general but vague search for such motivational background. Merely observe the attempt of people to “pigeonhole” others. Are they Republicans? Democrats? Socialists? Leftists? Rightists? Pinks? Reds? Physiocrats? Benthamites? Liberals? Reactionaries? New Dealers? Conservatives? Libertarians? These are fuzzy questions to which nothing better than fuzzy answers can be expected; nonetheless, they do demonstrate that many of us like to know what is at the root of people’s actions and positions. If an individual’s standard doesn’t measure up to our own, we cross him off our list as unworthy of instructing us. Who would want advice from one bent only on collecting human heads? Or political plunder? Or coercive power over others?

Third, basic premises or life values are on a scale of their own. They range from bad to good, from hellish to heavenly, from evil to virtuous, from senseless to sound, from immoral to amoral to moral. In short, it does matter what one’s major premise is—indeed, it may matter more than anything else in this earthly experience.

A “Good Will” Guide

A most admirable premise was developed and set forth by Immanuel Kant. His premise was that good will is the highest good, but he did not use the phrase as the equivalent of mere good intentions or general friendliness. The exercise of good will, according to Kant, is an affirmation of man’s moral freedom by which he participates in the world of things as they really are, and acts in terms of his own nature. He wrote:

Everything in nature works according to laws. Only a rational being has the capacity of acting according to the conception of laws, i.e., according to principles. This capacity is will. Since reason is required for the derivation of actions from laws, will is nothing else than practical reason.[3]

Kant’s good was measured by whether he could answer yes to the question, “Can I will that my maxim become a universal law?” No rational being could will that lying or stealing or killing should be universally practiced; therefore, lying, stealing, and killing must perforce be rejected as maxims for personal conduct. They are bad!

Kant argued that any discussion which makes no reference to fundamental principles (basic premise) produces a disgusting jumble of patched-up observations and half-reasoned principles. “Shallow-pates enjoy this, for it is very useful in everyday chit-chat.”[4]

On the positive side Kant contended that a basic premise was indispensable “because morals themselves remain subject to all kinds of corruption so long as the guide and supreme norm for their correct estimation is lacking.”[5] Each individual must, of course, determine his own basic premise or supreme norm, deriving as much instruction as possible from others who have seen fit to devise and accept basic premises for themselves.[6]

Certain Articles of Faith

While having only admiration for Kant’s system of reasoning, my own adopted premise, though not inconsistent with his, is stated quite differently—certainly less profoundly—and is set forth for such reflection as anyone may wish to give it. My supreme norm or premise or fundamental point of reference has its origin in my answer to the question, “What is the purpose of man’s earthly existence?”

Admittedly, the answer to this question has to be highly personal. It will vary according to one’s fundamental assumptions. To me, it is self-evident that man did not create himself, for man knows almost nothing about himself. Man is the creature of God, or, if you prefer, of Infinite Principle or Consciousness or Intelligence. And there’s more to life than the five senses reveal. Thus, these assumptions can be summarized as follows:

a. A belief in the primacy or supremacy of an infinite Consciousness:

b. A conviction that the individual human consciousness is expansible; and

c. A faith in the immortality of the human consciousness.

The Emerging Individual

For anyone with assumptions such as these, the answer to the question, “What is the purpose of man’s earthly existence?” comes dear: It is for each individual to come as near as he can to the realization of those creative powers which are peculiarly and distinctively included in his own potentialities. Man’s purpose here is to grow, to emerge, to hatch, to evolve in consciousness, partaking as much as he can of Infinite Consciousness.

If the above is accepted as the highest purpose of earthly life, it follows that any force—psychological or sociological—which binds or retards or in any way restrains the individual human spirit in its emergence must be thought of as an immoral and evil force. Conversely, the absence of such retarding and restraining forces—the personal practice of freedom—is moral, good, virtuous.

With this as a supreme norm or fundamental point of reference, it is easy enough to stand any and all proposals and propositions up against it and to form fairly accurate judgments as to whether they inhibit or promote a movement toward this ideal. Not only does this establish a basis for consistent action but it also permits others to judge whether one’s moral, social, economic, and political positions are logical deductions from the acknowledged premise. Others may disagree with the premise, which is their privilege.[7] In this case the only discourse that makes sense must have to do with the varying premises. But, if the premise be adjudged satisfactory, then all issues can be intelligently discussed with enlightenment to the parties concerned.

Each an End in Himself

Be it noted that in the above premise, as well as in Kant’s, each individual is assumed to be an end in himself. Anyone who acknowledges an Infinite Consciousness cannot help respecting fellow human beings as the apertures through whom Infinite Consciousness flows and manifests itself. Can man—any of us—predict which individuals will be most graced in this respect? Indeed not! Throughout recorded history the breakthroughs have occurred in the most unlikely individuals. Thus, it is the height of egotistical arrogance to doubt that each person—regardless of status, station, education, or what-ever—is an end in himself. It would seem that no premise could qualify as good or moral or libertarian which fails to meet this qualification. Reason clearly dictates that “we treat humanity, whether in our own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.”[8]

Reach for the Unattainable

In deciding on a supreme norm or fundamental premise for oneself it is advisable to select one that is unattainable; such, for instance, as the expansion of one’s own consciousness—the more one advances, the more there is to be conscious of. It is a road of individual progress that has no end.

Consider this: A person has his eye set on scaling the world’s highest mountain. This is his life’s ambition, his only goal. Repeatedly he fails, but the challenge will not down. Finally, he succeeds and triumphantly stands in the rarefied air of his accomplishment—his mission achieved! No other object lies before him.

Reflect on the planning, the physical training—the growing in strength—that accrued to him so long as the object was before him. Now, contemplate what happens in the way of fading, weakness, atrophy, when life’s deed is done, when there is no further object.

People arrive in a new land confronted with a wilderness. Clearing the forests and overcoming all the obstacles nature offers is their lot. Observe their development. Now, let them succeed, become affluent—their object realized, no other goal before them. Their moral fiber becomes soft, flabby; they become sloppy thinkers.

“Nothing fails like success,” Dean Inge used to say; that is, no one can set himself an attainable object and, after its achievement, continue to grow. Thus, one’s object ought to be of the unattainable variety, one that calls for perpetual striving, leading the individual on an endlessly emerging road.

Slavery Precluded

Reduced to the workaday world of practical affairs, a philosophy which concedes that each individual is an end in himself is a philosophy that precludes the practice of the few using the many as means. This philosophy is diametrically opposed to the socialistic scheme under which most of us unwillingly serve as means to the nefarious ends of those exercising unprincipled political power.

A high-principled premise for each rational human being is seen to be of the utmost importance. Lacking it, there can be no sensible discussion of moral questions, and without such discussion there can be no foundation for a free society. The adoption and strict observation of high-principled premises will, on the other hand, result in as straight thinking and as consistently sound action as rational individuals are capable of. How well men and women do this determines the extent of freedom in society.

Yes, freedom depends on you. The individual is both its means and its end—the only foundation of freedom, and also its crowning object.

[1] Admittedly, there are numerous distinguished economists—they call themselves utilitarians—who, by cause-and-effect reasoning, arrive at free market, private property, limited government conclusions. But the case for liberty should, in my opinion, be argued more along the lines of men’s rights—justice—than along strictly materialistic lines. For more on this, see my How To Reduce Taxes (The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.). Copy on request.

[2] See “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Welfare” by Joseph Wood Krutch in the Adventures of the Mind series, Saturday Evening Post, July 15, 1961.

[3] See Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant (New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1959), p. 29.

[4] Ibid., p. 26.

[5] Ibid., p. 6.

[6] C. E. M. Joad’s Decadence, particularly the first eight chapters, is a brilliant explanation of what follows the “dropping of the object,” that is, the disastrous results of not having high principles as premises. This book, published by Faber and Faber, Ltd., London (430 pp.), can be obtained from Humanities Press, Inc., 303 Fourth Avenue, New York 10, N, Y. $2.75.

[7] “If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away,” Henry David Thoreau, Walden, Ch. XVIII.

[8] Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 47.

• CHAPTER 3 •

BOOBY TRAPS

Few if any present-day workers for freedom have achieved effectiveness by relying solely on logical processes. This is to say that they did not begin by first developing a spiritual faith and then acquiring for themselves a fundamental premise or supreme norm. Such preparation has rarely been the means by which they got where they now are. Instead, they have become exasperated with the trends toward omnipotent statism and have plunged thoughtlessly into the fray, stumbling into one booby trap after another, and only if one of the lucky few, learning from their mistakes. It is not necessary, however, to take this costly course provided each aspirant will avoid the blind alleys experienced by those who have pioneered the trail.

When an otherwise preoccupied individual suddenly awakens to the authoritarian mess that increasingly engulfs us, his first impulse is to scream, “Let’s have some action!” Then he begins to wonder what he means by action. Of course, he does not mean physical action, substituting his own physical force for the physical force he already detests. That would amount to no more than swapping one brand of authoritarianism for another. No, he doesn’t mean that.

Educating the Masses

His impulse for action more often than not leads the newcomer into frustrations. One wasteful booby trap is the resolve to “sell the man in the street on free enterprise.” Often it takes some such expression as, “We gotta educate the masses.”

Over and over again the argument is dinned into our ears, “Let’s stop talking to each other and reach out instead for the unconverted. Sell the masses on freedom; they have the votes.” This advice is superficially cogent, with the result that hundreds of millions of dollars and untold man-hours have been expended in an effort to “bring light” to the masses.

But an impartial survey of these efforts fails to turn up even one which lived up to its promises; all have proved dismal failures. Nonetheless, the search for national salvation through “selling the masses” is as persistent today as it ever was.[1]

If there is such a thing as “the masses,” there must be such a thing as a mass man. But who in heaven’s name is he, and where’s his hangout? Perhaps he is among those who urge mass reform, for they are so numerous that the remaining population can hardly qualify as “the masses”!

Those who would “sell the masses” don’t give us much of a clue as to the characteristics of the mass man except that he is low grade intellectually. He is always pointed to as one who needs vast improvement, so obviously he is something of an ignoramus.

Within these popular terms of reference, “the masses” who “don’t understand” would seem to include the finger-pointers themselves. For, pray tell, who among us has a monopoly of understanding? Can it be those who insist that someone else be brought to a state of wisdom, especially when nearly everyone is pointing to someone else? Or, could it be that those who point their fingers are unwittingly pointing at their own reflections? Thinking they see someone else, they spend their money and time on the reformation of reflections and shadows, forgetting, as Thackeray put it, that “the world is a looking glass and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.” Small wonder that programs for educating the masses have so consistently met with dismal failure!

The “Mass Man” Defined

There is, though, a real mass man—millions of him! And he is not necessarily an ignorant fellow. By all the standards we use to measure intelligence, the best intellects among us may be of the mass. The real mass man is likely to be found in a position of leadership—in the church, in business, in the classroom, on the farm, and even more conspicuously in government and all committee-type organizations. This real mass man, I submit, has been escaping our attention because our natural inclination in the face of social problems is to seek the culprit among those whose behavior differs from our own. Using our own behaviors as the norm of righteousness—“our” being the most of us—we find it difficult to discover the mass man in ourselves. It is almost unbelievable that we could be the masses.

How are we to recognize the real mass man—in others, or in ourselves? The mass man is anyone who lives by a double standard of morality, who acts in the mass—the collective, the committee, the organization—in a manner inferior to the way he acts on his own responsibility.

Joe Doakes Qualifies

Take Joe Doakes for example: he wouldn’t kill a fly, let alone take the life of a human being. Yet, Mr. Doakes will join a mob, hang another by the neck till he’s dead, and feel no remorse whatsoever. To his mind, the mob, not he, is responsible. Joe is definitely and definitively a mass man. For, Joe’s moral standard when acting in mass is inferior to his moral standard when acting individually.

Most persons would agree that Joe Doakes fits the definition—but they themselves have never behaved like that! No, there aren’t many lynching parties in this day and age. But, if the definition is accepted, the shoe will come nearer to fitting—and pinching—as we move on to more common examples of mass action.

For instance, suppose the federal government were to decree that all farmers are entitled to $30.00 for every acre of land taken out of production and that each farmer, with the help of an armed officer assigned to him for the purpose, is to call personally on people, rich and poor alike, and forcibly collect the booty. Disregarding the inefficiency of this cumbersome method, how many fanners would take advantage of such a law? Few indeed, for this personal, face-to-face procedure would be as revolting to the farmers as it would be to those from whom the pelf is taken.

Farmers in the Mass

However, let us give the immoral conduct sanctioned by this law the appearance of being depersonalized, rewriting it in conformity with the way it now stands on our statute books. Let the mass agency—government—do the forcible collection for the farmers. Nearly all feeling of guilt disappears. Indeed, in most instances, what would have been a feeling of moral revulsion gives way to an opposite sensation: a right to the property of others. This actually has happened to most of the million and more farmers now receiving such collections for not growing something. The action of farmers in the mass is inferior to the way each one of them would act personally.

Of course, it is not right to single out farmers as typical mass men. They qualify no more than do those of other occupations, such as the producer of steel products who wouldn’t personally raise his hand to stop an exchange between two of his neighbors but who will solicit the help of the mass agency—government—to hinder and penalize certain exchanges in order to improve his own chance of getting that business. He has a moral standard for mass action inferior to his moral standard for personal action.

Depersonalizing the Act

Who in the church or the chamber of commerce would personally take the property of others by force to satisfy his charitable or welfare instincts? Except in rare headlines, such persons simply do not exist. Their personal standards of morality are above such action. Yet, the mere pretense of depersonalizing the act—doing it in mass, in the collective, in the organization—reduces their souls to the level of robbery. From the pulpit and in countless resolutions from every type of organization we hear and read solicitations to the federal pap-wagon, pleas for police grants-in-aids. These individuals—everyone who acts in this manner—are mass men, “the masses,” whether their solicitations be for hospitals or airports or TVA’s or subsidies for nonproduction or for anything else in the socialistic bag of tricks.

Apparently, it is the appearance of depersonalization that accounts for this destructive, inferior standard of morality. Joe Doakes thinks of the mob as doing the lynching, and so does each of the others. Everyone considers himself absolved of any evil, as if an abstraction—a mere term, “the mob”—could hang a man! But does action by a collective absolve the individuals who compose it of the responsibility for the collective action? An affirmative answer is absurd. The following story illustrates the point:

Saint Peter’s List

A person reputed for his libertarian views was a visiting guest at a chamber of commerce meeting. Favorable action was taken on three committee reports, all of which were pleas for the federal government to use its compulsion to obtain the property of others that the local community might be “benefited.” At the conclusion of the meeting the visitor was invited to “say a word.” This is all he said:

Remus Papwagon passed away and his spirit floated to the Pearly Gates. The spirit knocked. Saint Peter responded and inquired as to the purpose of the visit.

“I crave admittance,” said the spirit.

Saint Peter looked over his list and sadly announced, “Sorry, Mr. Papwagon, I don’t have your name.”

“Don’t have my name? How come?”

“You took money from others, from widows and orphans as well as the rich, in order to satisfy your personal notions of doing good.”

“Saint Peter, you are in error. I had the reputation of an honest man.”

“You may have had that reputation among those who acted in a manner similar to yourself, but it was an undeserved reputation. Specifically, you were a financial supporter and a member of the board of directors of the Opportunity Chamber of Commerce, and that organization sponsored a government golf course, to mention but one of the many irresponsible actions that required the coercive extortion of the earnings of widows and orphans to benefit would-be golfers,”

“Ah, but that was the Opportunity Chamber of Commerce that took those actions, not your humble servant, Remus Papwagon.”

Saint Peter looked over his list again and then said, “Mr. Papwagon, we don’t have any chambers of commerce or labor unions or councils of churches on this list. There is nothing but individual souls.”

Saint Peter closed the Pearly Gates.

Whereupon, the meeting adjourned, but some in attendance that day are still speculating on the whereabouts of the soul of Remus Papwagon and on the prospects for others who similarly deny self-responsibility.

Each of Us is Guilty

A painful fact to keep in mind is that every living person in the U.S.A. to some extent qualifies as a mass man. Let each take note that any finger of shame points in part at his own reflection. Absolute purity in conduct in response to the dictates of individual conscience is not attainable; it is only approachable.

If one would continue life—an aim this author commends—there is no way to divorce oneself completely from the way of life imposed by men who act in mass, by men who act in some manner inferior to their highest personal standard of morality. Few, if any of us, know how to live except in the market and in society as it is. The very bread we eat is from subsidized wheat. The mail that takes this book to the reader is rank with special privilege, as socialistic as anything in the U.S.S.R. Much of the power and light we use is on the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul basis. Our economic blood stream—the money we use to exchange our millions of specializations—is shot through with the adulterations which result from the Papwagon way of life. The only alternative to life in this smoggy atmosphere is death itself.

Absolute purity is unattainable. But we can paddle in the direction of purity. So far as the mass agency—government—is concerned, we can refrain from ever standing sponsor for any socialistic activity, and we are free to employ all the persuasion we can muster to explain the fallacies of state ownership and control of any productive and creative activity.

Let Us Stand Personally Responsible

So far as voluntary mass agencies—committees and organizations—are concerned, we can, if we are a part of them, act always in accurate response to our highest individual standard of morality, realizing that there is never any escape from a personal responsibility for any collective action in which the individual participates. And, one more thing: We can refuse to be a member or financial supporter of any voluntary organization that takes action for which we are unwilling to stand personally responsible.

Here is an example of how voluntary collectives all too often misrepresent us: A spokesman for a business organization appeared before a committee of Congress. By reason of what a small committee had resolved, he claimed to speak for several million businessmen. His report made concessions to rent control, concessions that many of the members would disapprove. In short, a lie was told. Many businessmen of libertarian views were represented as advocates of rent control, a socialistic item. Identity with such organizations is no way for a man to reflect accurately that which he believes to be right.

Nonetheless and more or less, we are all of the masses. And what we see as imperfections in others is little else but a reflection of how far we are from our own potential perfections. So, there may be something to “selling the masses” after all—that is, if each of us correctly identifies the individual seen in the looking glass as part of the mass and thus an imperfect man. Here is a fact so dimly appreciated it can be classified as secret: Further enlightenment of the man reflected in one’s own mirror is the sole means he has of bringing more light to others.

“Put the Right Men in Office”

Then there is the booby trap of political action. It is not that there is anything wrong with politics per se, nor is this a suggestion that one should not take part in political activity. Far from it! The booby trap is the notion that vanishing liberty can be restored merely by an increased or stepped-up political activity. Ever so many people, when they finally wake up to what’s going on, insist that there is only one kind of action: put the right men in public office.

The above summarizes a substantial, and perhaps even a growing sentiment. It stems from impatience. The interventionists, it is observed, have “leaders” galore in the political arena. Why, inquire many anti-interventionists, should we tarry any longer? Why not find ourselves some political leaders who will represent our points of view? Plans are then proposed for the organization of citizens down to the precinct level, and likely personalities are sought among renowned generals, businessmen, academicians, and others who have, in their own specialized fields, arrived at acknowledged leadership. It is assumed that the nation will be saved should they be elected to public office.

No Such Easy Solution

If this were the road out of the socialistic wilderness and if these miracle persons were to be found, all of us might consider joining the political actionist parade. To take this route, however, is of no more avail than looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The reason that the interventionists have so many “leaders” is only because there is throughout our land a very substantial body of influential, interventionist opinion. The ones out front and who are popularly appraised as leaders are, in fact, not the real leaders. They are but echoes of the underlying opinion, and an echo implies an antecedent sound. They did not create the situation in which they find themselves; they are but the products or manifestations of the status quo. They, like actors in a play, merely move out front by reason of the fact that they can better articulate and dramatize the prevailing interventionist thought than can others. The real leaders of interventionism or any other movement, like playwrights, lie more under the surface, are a quieter breed, and not nearly as observable popularly.

First, the Foundation

Anti-interventionists lack “leaders” because there does not exist an influential libertarian opinion substantial enough to create the desired political response. What I wish to suggest here is the futility of attempting to build on a foundation that does not exist. One might as well look for an abundance of flowers where there has been a scarcity of seeds or listen for many echoes where there have been but few prior sounds. The out-front folks in political parties are but thermometers—indicators of the political temperature. Change the temperature and there will be a change in what’s out front—naturally and spontaneously. The only purpose in keeping an eye on the thermometer is to know what the temperature is. If the underlying influential opinion—the temperature—is interventionist, we’ll have interventionists in public office regardless of the party labels they may choose for their adornment and public appeal.

Influential Ideas on Liberty

If the underlying influential opinion—the temperature—is libertarian, we’ll have spokesmen for libertarianism in public office. Nor will all the king’s horses and all the king’s men be able to alter the reading of the political thermometer one whit.

It’s the influential opinion that counts, and nothing else. This is to be distinguished from “public opinion,” there being no such thing. Every significant movement in history—good or bad—has resulted from influential ideas held by comparatively few persons.

Here, then, is the key question: What constitutes an influential opinion? In the context of moral, social, economic, and political philosophy, influential opinion stems from or rests upon (1) depth of understanding, (2) strength of conviction, and (3) the power of attractive exposition. These are the ingredients of self-perfection as relating to a set of ideas. Persons who thus improve their understanding, dedication, and exposition are the leaders of men; the rest of us are followers, including the out-front political personalities.

To illustrate: How many persons today, or even in his own time of the early seventeenth century, ever heard of Hugo Grotius? Few, indeed, then or now! Yet, here is what the eminent historian, Andrew Dickson White, in the year 1910, wrote of this exceptionally important unknown:

Into the very midst of all this welter of evil, at a point in time to all appearance hopeless, at a point in space apparently defenseless, in a nation of which every man, woman, and child was under sentence of death from its sovereign, was born a man who wrought as no other has ever done for a redemption of civilization from the main cause of all that misery; who thought out for Europe the precepts of right reason in international law; who made them heard; who gave a noble change to the course of human affairs; whose thoughts, reasonings, suggestions, and appeals produced an environment in which came an evolution of humanity that still continues.

One man altered the ways of the world. He achieved a degree of perfection that caused others to follow his insights and understanding. He spawned ideas that politicians emphasized and glamorized, and for which they more than Grotius became widely known as “leaders.”

The Educational Way

In this day of our need how are we to find ourselves a Grotius, a Sarpi, a Turgot, or a thousand and one others who have quietly but brilliantly modified the world into better ways? Those of us who would have any part in working out this answer have no recourse except to strive for an increasing perfection of ourselves, that is, conscious personal efforts to become such helpful individuals. It isn’t that you or I, specifically, will make the grade. It is that out of a fairly wide creative effort in which we participate some few will assuredly achieve the competence our time so sorely requires. This is the educational, not the political, way to mankind’s improvement. True, it is slow in terms of one’s life span, but it has the distinct advantage of being the single practical way there is. Let us try this way and witness its fruits!

“Time Is Running Out”

If we continue to exclaim—“I want action. Time is running out”—and persist in the error of trying to reverse cause and effect, the political echo will continue to confirm, “Time is running out.”

Political leadership can only reflect influential opinion. There is no way to improve the quality of political leadership except as we lift the level of influential opinion—and this is an educational task. “Tell me today what the philosopher thinks, the university professor expounds, the schoolmaster teaches, the scholar publishes in his treatises and textbooks, and I shall prophesy the conduct of individuals, the ethics of businessmen, the schemes of political leaders, the plans of economists, the pleadings of lawyers, the decisions of judges, the legislation of lawmakers, the treaties of diplomats, and the decisions of state a generation hence.” The author of this wisdom is unknown, but history bears him out.

Superficial Anticommunism

A third blind alley is a narrowly conceived anticommunism. Contending against communism is to be applauded, but to regard the Moscow apparatus as the sole source of communism is to be led into a first-rate booby trap. Communism is a world-wide phenomenon and originates as much in the minds of Americans as in the minds of any other people. Were we to understand its fallacies and to reject its tenets, we would be impervious to the Kremlin’s propaganda.

This booby trap was never laid better than by one high in our bureaucracy when he said, “The welfare state is the best security against communism.”

This proposed defense against communism is not new, though we now hear it afresh. It has circulated in various shadings since “the cold war” began. A similar excuse was used to finance socialistic governments abroad with American earned income under the give-away programs that by now aggregate more than $78 billion: “Socialism is a good cushion against communism.”

Such terms as communism, socialism, Fabianism, the welfare state, Nazism, fascism, state interventionism, egalitarianism, the planned economy, the New Deal, the Fair Deal, the New Republicanism, the New Frontier are simply different labels for much the same thing. To think that there is any vital distinction between these so-called ideologies is to miss the really important characteristic which all of these labels have in common.

An ideology is a doctrinal concept, a way of thinking, a set of beliefs. Examine the above-mentioned labels and it will be found that each is identified with a belief common to all the others: Organized police force—government—should control the creative and productive actions of the people. Every one of these labels—no exceptions—stands for a philosophy that is opposed to the free market, private property, limited government way of life. The latter holds that the law and its police force should be limited to restraint of violence from within and without the nation, to restraint and punishment of fraud, misrepresentation, predation—in short, to invoke a common justice. According to this way of life—the libertarian ideal—men are free to act creatively as they please.

They All Rest on Force

Under both the welfare state and communism, the responsibility for the welfare, security, and prosperity of the people is presumed to rest with the central government. Coercion is as much the tool of the welfare state as it is of communism. The programs and edicts of both are backed by the police force. All of us know this to be true under communism, but it is equally true under our own brand of welfare statism. Just try to avoid paying your “share” of a TVA deficit or of the farm subsidy program or of federal urban renewal or of social security or of the government’s full employment program.

To appreciate the family likeness of the welfare state and communism, observe what happens to individual freedom of choice. Under either label (the ideology is the same) freedom of choice to individuals as to what they do with the fruits of their labor, how they employ themselves, what wages they receive, what and with whom they exchange their goods or services—such freedoms are forcibly stripped from individuals. The central government, it is claimed, will take over. Full responsibility for ourselves is denied in order to make us dependent on whatever political regime happens to be in control of the government apparatus. Do these labels mean fundamentally the same thing? As an exercise, try to find any meaningful distinction.

Words Without Meaning

Our planners are saying, “The welfare state is the best security against communism.” The Russians could say, with as much sense, “Communism is the best security against the welfare state.”

We call the Russian brand of governmental coercion “communism.” They, however, refer to their collective as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.” The Russians call our brand of governmental coercion “capitalism.” In the interest of accuracy and clarity, we, also, should call ours “socialist.”

Socialism in Russia (communism, to our planners) and socialism in the U.S.A. (the welfare state, to our planners) have identical aims: the state ownership and control of the means of production. Further, one as much as the other rests on the use of police force. In Russia the force is more impetuously applied than here. There, they pull the trigger and think later, if at all. Here, the government relies more on the threat of force and acquiescence of the citizen.

Alexis de Tocqueville predicted over a century ago the characteristics of the despotism [the welfare state] which might arise in America: “The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.”

There are countless other booby traps, some not so minor, like being drawn into TV, radio, and platform debates with the authoritarians, referred to in a previous chapter. These traps, however, will become apparent to anyone once he sets himself on the right course.

[1] Success in mass production and sale of commodities—autos, watches, soap, corn flakes, cosmetics—has influenced many to erroneously conclude that ideas can be mass sold. There is, however, an important distinction between marketing products—things that satisfy desires of the flesh—and spreading ideas, the latter being accomplishments of the intellect. Commodities, once produced, are ready for consumption, whereas “selling” an idea requires that each “buyer” reproduce it in his own mind.

• CHAPTER 4 •

WHY DO WE LOSE LIBERTY?

At the outset, let me acknowledge that I do not know all the causes of authoritarianism. This is by way of saying that I do not know all of the reasons for governmental interventionism or why so many people are intent upon forcibly imposing their wills on others or why they attempt to cast others in their own little images. Further, I know of no thoughtful person who claims to know all the forces which make us behave as meanly toward each other as we do.

Yet, without some estimate of these causes it would be a waste of time, effort, and money to attempt a replacement of interventionism with freedom. Without a basic diagnosis of authoritarianism there would be no more chance of success in this venture than in trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack, blindfolded. We cannot repair flaws without knowing where they are nor can we expect to correct error if we do not know that we err—and we will be aided in our corrective efforts if we know why we err. Therefore, any program aiming at free and willing exchange, at the practice of private property principles, and at limiting government to its proper scope, will require not only an awareness of existing deterrents to freedom, but also a reasonably sound hypothesis as to why they exist.

My object in this chapter will be to draw up an inventory of some of the errors, fallacies, failures, and blind spots which appear to give rise to authoritarianism. I will not attempt to discuss these in the order of their importance, for I do not know how they should be ranked—except for one blind spot that lies deeper than all the rest. At least, it is as deep in causation as I am able to probe.

Blind Spot: That Man is the Creator

Persons unaware of a Creation, a Creative Force or Principle, an Infinite Intelligence or Consciousness, far over and beyond the human self are susceptible to a belief in their own omniscience. And those who believe in their own omniscience, logically, cannot envision a perfect society unless it be one in which others are cast in their fallible images. It is difficult for me to conceive of anything more responsible for authoritarianism than this type of unawareness.

If a people do not accept the Creator as Sovereign, as their Supreme Ruler, as their Source of Rights, they must, perforce, locate sovereignty in some mortal man or in some man-made institution. Logically, they must believe in and accept the one or submit to the other. If they locate sovereignty in government—a man-made institution—they have created an authoritarianism they must live with until they revoke it.

Failure: Inadequate Development of Self

All individuals are faced with the problem of whom to improve, themselves or others. Their aim, it seems to me, should be to affect their own unfolding, the upgrading of their own consciousness, in short, self-perfection. Those who don’t even try or, when trying, find self-perfection too difficult, usually seek to expend their energy on others. Their energy has to find some target. Those who succeed in directing their energy inward—particularly if they be blessed with great energy, like Goethe, for instance—become moral leaders. Those who fail to direct their energy inward and let it manifest itself externally—particularly if they be of great energy, like Napoleon, for instance—become immoral leaders.[1] Those who refuse to rule themselves are usually bent on ruling others. Those who can rule themselves usually have no interest in ruling others.

Error: The Yearning for a Judas Goat[2]

Herbert Spencer called our attention to another type of human frailty from which authoritarianism springs:

Alike to the citizen and to the legislator, home-experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealings with his servants, whether by reasoning or by scolding, rarely succeed for long; the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant changes. Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom he knows, not one-hundredth of whom he ever saw, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in ways he foresees, and fulfil ends he wishes. Is there not a marvellous incongruity between premises and conclusions?”[3] (Italics supplied)

Why is it that a person who obviously cannot manage himself, let alone those who are beholden to him, concludes that he is competent to direct a nation of people or the whole world when even the wisest of men would feel utterly incompetent for any such project. There appear to be at least two reasons. First, the inability to succeed in such “small things” as the management of self and of one’s intimates leads to a frustration that can find no release except in affectations of grandeur. And, second, there are in any country countless thousands—often millions—of psychopathic cases who are ready and eager to follow such quackery. There are numberless people who are always looking for a shepherd, and only an incompetent and frustrated person could ever aspire to such a role. In short, there is a vast market for Judas goats.

Blind Spot; Inability To See Unheralded Accomplishments

The authoritarian who rises to the top, even though a frustrated person as implied above, is always a person of unusual energy, as suggested earlier. Being both energetic and having the power to impose his will on others, he gives the erroneous appearance of “getting things done.” He gives “bread and circuses” or “security” to the masses, always at their expense, or displays a sputnik as a great achievement even though it prevents millions of daily, unheralded achievements by the people. This false appearance of “getting things done” is accomplished by depriving the people of freedom of choice as to their activities and the fruits thereof and vesting control and all freedom of choice in the dictator. Nonetheless, to those who can see only highly publicized surface demonstrations and who are blind to the countless accomplishments of free men, the dictator is attractive. Those who wish to be told what to do and where to work and who prefer to be hand-fed in exchange for their labors, become the dictator’s supporters, and the more they demand of the dictator and depend on him, the less their chance to know and enjoy the fruits of freedom.

Fallacy: Thoughts on Liberty Can Safely Be Left to Others

Our modern world is a highly specialized world. Indeed, we have gone so far into specialization that we tend to let others supply us with all of our needs except for our own specializations. This is unobjectionable if limited to goods and services. However, we carry the practice too far. There are some things we should not turn over to others. There are matters which require strictly personal attention. For instance, we should not turn our religion over to others, nor our integrity, nor our conscience. Nor should we be so foolish as to believe we can relieve ourselves of thinking seriously about liberty. Such thinking should not be delegated to any person, group, or organization. When all of us come to believe that the preservation of liberty is a responsibility that can be delegated, then liberty will have not a single defender. Authoritarians thrive in the absence of libertarian thinking like weeds in the absence of cultivation.

Error: If You Can’t Lick ’Em, Join ’Em!

An increasing number of business leaders are concentrating on how they can accommodate themselves and their operations to the current governmental interventionism, not on how they can lessen the interventionism. Authoritarianism becomes very easy in any country where the business leaders cease their opposition to interventionism—as in Hitler’s Germany or in Mussolini’s Italy.

There is another aspect of this same distressing error: accepting membership on Boards of private organizations with collectivistic leanings, or positions in government bureaus having built-in socialistic designs, the intention being to “straighten them out” or, bluntly to interpret the motive, “to have them feel the impact of my good influences.”

Getting in bed with the devil to reform him more often than not results in the reformer becoming devilish himself. This tactic has a sorry record; one needs but be observant to agree. The gospel of freedom cannot be effectively preached from within institutions headed in the socialistic direction. Outside their precincts, one is free to act on the dictates of his own conscience; but become a part of their machinery, and it follows that one must not only accommodate himself to, but put his stamp of approval on, the deviations and compromises implicit in such arrangements.

Failure: To Know Liberty in the Absence of Pain

There would be no tigers in zoos if they remained as ferocious as when first captured. However, they soon become docile, for tigers forget the freedom they once had and, forgetting, they have nothing against which to contrast their existing condition. Their confinement becomes their normalcy.

There never would have been any Negro slavery in the United States had the Negroes remained as intractable as when first taken from their African habitat. But, like the tigers, most of them soon lost consciousness of a freedom greater than the enslavement into which they were plunged. They became accustomed to their lot and, for the most part, accepted it.

The tiger and the Negro are in no way singular in this respect. We note on every hand this same easy and willing accommodation to the status quo, regardless of how onerous it may be. Americans who only a few years ago screamed like wounded apes at some intervention by government today may give that very same intervention their approval. Indeed, you can hear them exclaim, “How could we possibly do without it!”

It has been said that “the price of liberty is eternal vigilance.” Yet, there are few persons who can be vigilant unless they are currently experiencing a restraint of a liberty they once took for granted. But, let the restraint persist for a short period and their aroused opposition will turn into compliance and finally into endorsement. Such persons merely add their weight to the interventionist movement. They aid authoritarianism.

Man, in the state of Grace or evolution or unfolding or emergence that characterizes most of us, is incapable of bettering himself except as he sees contrasts and faces and overcomes obstacles. All of nature seems to confirm this. For instance, we could not conceive of “up” if there were not a gravitational force pulling us down. Nor would there be any such word in our vocabulary as “light” if there were no darkness. The taking of a simple step presupposes something stepped on. Man, except as he achieves a higher state of consciousness than most of us can understand, cannot upgrade himself in an unobstructed universe. He requires what sometimes is referred to as “tension of the opposites” or “the law of polarity.” The art of becoming rests on the practice of overcoming.

The late Paul Valery wisely observed, “The idea of liberty is not primary within us; it is never evoked without being provoked; that is to say, it is always a response. We never think we are free when nothing shows us we are not free. . . . The idea of liberty is a response to some sensation or hypothesis of impediment, hindrance, or resistance, which opposes itself either to some impulse in our being, or to some desire of the senses, or to a need, or else to the exercise of our considered will.

“I am only free when I feel free, but I only feel free when I think I am being constrained, when I start imagining some state which contrasts with my present state. Liberty is therefore not felt, nor conceived, nor desired, save by the effect of a contrast.

“This is the conclusion I must draw: Since the need for liberty and the idea of liberty are not produced in those who are not subject to hindrances and constraints, the less we are aware of restrictions, the less the term and reflex liberty will exist. A person who is scarcely aware . . .  of the constraints which are imposed on him by public powers . . . will react hardly at all against these constraints. He will have no impulse of rebellion, no reflex, no revolt against the authority which imposes such restrictions upon him. On the contrary, as often as not he will find himself relieved of a vague responsibility.”[4]

An intervention when first imposed causes change and, therefore, pain. But soon the changed way becomes the customary way, and no longer painful. “We never had it so good,” chant millions of Americans as they become adjusted to an interventionism that already takes more than one-third of their earned income.[5]

Fallacy: Value is Determined by the Labor Put into a Good or Service

The classical economists—Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill, and others—had no explanation of the market value of a good or service except the amount of labor that was used in producing it. It must be assumed that this explanation was not wholly satisfactory to such accomplished thinkers for it is so obviously wrong. Pursuing this theory, a mud pie would have the same value as a mince pie providing the same amount of labor went into the production of each. The classical economists, let it be said on their behalf, did not follow this labor theory of value to its logical conclusion for, had they done so, they would have come to the conclusion reached by Karl Marx: socialism. Following this theory, the makers of mud pies would have no way of being reimbursed for their efforts except as the government would take the fruits of the labor of others by force and subsidize the mud-pie makers.

Carl Menger of the University of Vienna, in the early 1870’s, was, so far as I know, among the first to deny and displace the labor theory of value.[6] It was Menger and his followers who developed the free market theory of value.[7] This theory holds that the market value of a good or service is whatever someone will freely exchange for it. The free enterprise thesis is founded on this theory, just as the socialistic thesis is founded on the labor theory of value.

While, logically and intellectually, the labor theory of value is as outmoded as the-earth-is-flat idea, it nonetheless persists to this day as a major cause of state interventionism. Why, for instance, should we in the United States subsidize farmers and not subsidize bankrupt retailers except for the belief that farmers labor so much harder for their income than do others? Thoughtful analysis will reveal that it is the labor-theory-of-value type of thinking that lies at the root of labor union monopoly and coercion. The wage earner receives so little in return for his toil, goes the sympathetic thinking. The amount of effort expended, not what others will freely exchange for the result of the effort, becomes the basis for wage-earner compensation. No more with wage earners than with mud pies can an above-market price be obtained except by coercive force.

Authoritarianism on behalf of farmers and wage earners are but two of the ever so many instances of interventionism where the labor theory of value is the underlying cause. Any intelligent person can grasp its fallacy when explained in mud-pie, mince-pie terms. Few, however, appear able to retain in practice that which they conclude in reason.

Fallacy: A Wrong Can Be Righted with a Wrong

Examine the position of every person you know who classifies himself as a free enterpriser. In nearly every case the “free enterpriser” will endorse at least one item of interventionism.

A friend of mine in Belgium takes a free enterprise position when he opposes the U.S.A. tariff imposed on the blankets he makes. However, he is an exception maker, for he favors tariffs on the products coming into Belgium from the Belgian Congo on the grounds that the highly paid workers in Belgium cannot compete successfully with the lowly paid workers of the Belgian Congo. In short, the evil of low wages in the Belgian Congo must be compensated for by introducing a restriction to free exchange, a wrong to right a wrong.

Many American farmers justify support prices and subsidies on the ground that businessmen have their tariff. They, instead of trying to remove the original wrong, practice what might be termed “compensatory evil.”

Cities and states apply political pressure for federal aid to local projects. “Others are doing it,” they claim.[8] An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth! The whole economy is rife with efforts, not to remove economic plunder, but to extend plunder.

Here we have the recipe for a concoction more poisonous than any witch ever brewed: Take the single exception allowed by each “free enterpriser.” Put these countless exceptions into a pot. Stir vigorously, rapidly adding emotion and self-interest unintelligently interpreted. Bring to a rolling boil with a political apparatus. In the name of accuracy and honesty list this dish on the menu as “communism.” Serve to every man, woman, and child in the nation. Carry this message at the bottom of the menu: “This dish has been prepared at your expense by the free enterprisers of your country. You may not like it but we find it is necessary for us to be realistic and practical.”

Blind Spot: Free Men Cannot Get Things Done

As the belief grows that coercion is the only practical way to get things done—housing and medical care, for instance—the belief in man acting privately, freely, voluntarily, competitively, cooperatively, declines. As the former increases, the latter decreases.

In the U.S.A., for example, government has a monopoly of mail delivery. Ask citizens if government should do this, and most of them will reply in the affirmative. Why? Simply because government has pre-empted this activity for so many decades that all enterprisers have ceased to think how mail could be delivered were it a private enterprise opportunity. Indeed, most of them have come to believe that private enterprise would be wholly incapable of effective mail service. Yet, I note that each day we deliver more pounds of milk than mail. Further, milk is more perishable than a love letter, a catalogue, or an appeal for funds. We also note that the delivery of milk is more prompt and less costly to us than is the delivery of mail. I ask myself, then, why shouldn’t private enterprise deliver mail? Private enterprise delivers freight. That’s heavier.

But, no; my countrymen have lost faith in man’s ability, acting freely, to deliver letters. Let us examine these people who have lost faith in free enterprise as relating to mail delivery.

Less than a hundred years ago the human voice could be delivered the distance that two champion hog callers could effectively communicate—about 44 yards. Free men have found out how to deliver the human voice around this earth—one million times as far—and in one-third the time.

Free men have found out how to deliver 115 persons from Los Angeles to Baltimore—2,600 miles—in 3 hours and 19 minutes.

Men, when left free to try, have found out how to deliver gas from a hole in Texas to my home in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York—1,300 miles—at low prices and without government subsidy.

Men, when left free to try, have discovered how to deliver an event, like a presidential inauguration, into every home, in motion and color, at the time it is going on.

Men, when left free to try, have learned how to deliver every 64 ounces of oil from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard—more than half way around the earth—for less money than government will deliver a one-ounce letter across the street in my home town.

These men—miracle performers when free—have lost faith in free enterprise to deliver letters, and no longer question this activity as a proper governmental function. They consent to leaving mail delivery to government which employs the same methods in vogue a century ago and which presents the taxpayers with a $2 million daily deficit for the service!

Take a hypothetical example. Suppose at the beginning of our country’s political establishment, some 185 years ago, it had been decreed that all children, from the time of birth to adulthood, were to receive “free” shoes and stockings from the federal government. Now, suppose this practice had been going on for all these years and I were to suggest that supplying shoes and stockings was not properly a government responsibility; that it was a family responsibility. What kind of a response would my suggestion evoke? Because free men lose faith in themselves when government takes over an activity, they would respond, “But you would let the poor boys and girls go unshod”—which our own experience shows to be an absurdity. I note that the poor children are better shod in countries where shoes and stockings are a family responsibility than where a government responsibility; that the poor children are better shod in countries where the people are more free than in countries where they are less free. A decline in faith in free men and what they can accomplish results in a rising faith in disastrous authoritarianism.

Blind Spot: An Inability To Explain the Free Society

I have never heard of a consistent socialist. That is, I am not aware of any person who believes that authoritarianism should be universally applied, that the state should forcibly direct and control all creative and productive activities. There are areas that the most ardent Marxist would leave to free will and volition. In short, there is hardly a person who does not balk at authoritarianism in some of its forms.

In the U.S.A. there are many millions of people who rant against communism, who inveigh against socialistic measures, and who raise their voices to high heaven at state interventionism, particularly if the intervention is directed at them. This negative force, however, does not constitute effective opposition to authoritarianism. Bad ideas are not removed by damning them.

Bad ideas, if they are to be rendered ineffective, must be replaced with good ideas. Herein lies a great weakness of the freedom supporters. Millions can damn authoritarianism but how few there are who can skillfully, persuasively, and attractively explain authoritarianism’s opposite: the free market, private property, limited government philosophy! In the absence of this ability state interventionism thrives.

Fallacy: Authoritarianism Should Be Removed Gradually

Following World War II and prior to the relaxation of wartime wage and price controls, I made a speech entitled “I’d Push the Button.” This title was taken from the first sentence, “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would instantaneously release all wage and price controls, I’d put my finger on it and push.”

This was regarded as a radical notion, radical in the sense of being so thoroughgoing that few persons shared it. However, if an act is morally wrong or economically unsound, the quicker it is abolished the better.

Many people seem to hold the view that the beneficiary of special privilege acquires a vested interest in his unique position and should not be deprived of it of a sudden. They give little thought to the many persons from whom the plunder has been taken. It makes no difference what example of wage or price control one takes—rent control is as good as any. Under this control people have been permitted to occupy someone else’s property at less than the free market would allow. By reason of this fact renters have been privileged to buy more tobacco or vacations, or some other good or service than would otherwise be the case. The landlord has been deprived of the fruits of his own labor. Yet, when it comes to the matter of restoring justice, most people will think of the disadvantages suddenly falling upon the renters rather than the accrued damage done to the owner.

Imagine an habitual and successful thief. For years he has been robbing everybody in the community without their knowledge. He has a fine home, cars, servants, and is a pillar of society. Upon discovering his fraud, should his robbery be diminished gradually or should justice be restored to the community at once? The answer appears too obvious to deserve further comment.

People, when contemplating the removal of authoritarianism, seem to fear that a sudden restoration of justice would too severely disrupt the economy. The fear is groundless. During the early days of our New Deal we were the victims of the NIRA, the National Industrial Recovery Act, a system of wage floors, price ceilings, and production quotas. Originally, it was accepted with enthusiasm by most of the business community. Slowly, the fallacy of this nefarious program was realized. Thoughtful business leaders agreed it had to be repealed. But, many of them argued that the repeal would have to be gradual. To remove it at once would throw the economy into a tailspin. Then, one afternoon the Supreme Court ruled that NIRA was unconstitutional. As of that moment all of its regulations and controls ceased to exist. Did this shake our economy? There wasn’t a noticeable quiver except that all indices of prosperity showed improvement.

The fallacy of the theory of gradualism can be illustrated thus: A big, burly ruffian has me on my back, holding me down. My friends, observing my sad plight, agree that the ruffian must be removed. But, believing in the theory of gradualism, they contend that the ruffian must be removed gradually. They fail to see that the only result of the ruffian’s removal would be my going to work suddenly!

There is nothing to fear by any nation of people in the removal of restrictions to creative and productive effort except the release of creative and productive effort. And why should they fear that which they so ardently desire?

If, in reciting a few of the more or less obvious causes of authoritarianism, I have left the impression that the remedy is beyond anything that can be expected from ordinary citizens in ordinary effort, then I have made my point.

[1] For an enlightening discussion of moral and immoral leadership, see The Psychology of Leadership by Dr. Franz E. Winkler (Garden City, N. Y.: The Myrin Institute, Inc., for Adult Education, 1957).

[2] Goats used in packing plants to lead sheep to their slaughter. They are trained to betray their kind.

[3] Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1944), p. 117.

[4] See Paul Valery, Reflections on the World Today, translated by Francis Scarfe (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1948).

[5] See my “We Never Had It So Good,” The Freeman, November 1960, p. 13 (The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.).

[6] Economists William Stanley Jevons (English) and Léon Walras (French) were independently developing the marginal utility theory of value at the same time as Menger (Austrian).

[7] This market method of price determination is often referred to as the subjective or marginal utility theory of value.

[8] See my “We’re paying for it, so we might as well get our share” (The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.). Single copy on request.

• CHAPTER 5 •

EMERGENCE OF A LEADERSHIP

Every man, however obscure, however removed from the general recognition, is one of a group of men impressible for good, and impressible for evil, and it is in the nature of things that he cannot really improve himself without in some degree improving other men.

CHARLES DICKENS

A study of significant political movements or vast social shifts will reveal that every one of them—good or bad—has been led by an infinitesimal minority. Never has one of these changes been accompanied by mass understanding, nor should such ever be expected. All movements have had their leaders. Always there has been someone “at the head of the class,” always someone who knows more about it than others.

Using hindsight, we discover that the individuals who have been leaders came from strange and odd beginnings. No one of them could have been predicted ahead of time. The leader of one movement, nearly two thousand years ago, was born in a manger. Recently, the leader of a bad movement was an obscure Austrian paper hanger.

From where will come the leader or leaders of our own required renaissance? I do not know; you do not know; the individual himself or herself does not know, for all of us are possessed of aptitudes and potentialities about which we are unaware. One point is dear: The leaders will be born of the renaissance itself. They will come from strange and odd places; from the poor as well as the rich, from the distaff side as well as the male, from those who have had little in the way of formal education as well as from Ph.D.’s, from laborers as well as captains of industry, from laymen as well as clergy, from only God knows where! We merely know that there will be a new crop of leaders.

Look Not to Politicians

In the kind of an open society here envisioned, we must not look for the type of leadership I have in mind from seekers after political office, that is, from those who vie for power. For, as Lord Acton warned, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

Only now and then in history can we find a person who had power and who did not become drunk with it. Lorenzo the Magnificent inherited the headship of Florence. But he was not a ruler in the authoritarian sense. Like the chief executive officer of a well-managed company, he accorded everyone a wide latitude of choice; he gave them their heads, so to speak. It appears that he limited himself to the inhibition of destructive actions. Not being corrupted by the power of his office, there was an outburst of creative energy and the Florentines led the Renaissance.

Another example can be noted in the person of Queen Victoria. She, also, inherited power, but used it sparingly. She gave Englishmen freedom in the sense that a prisoner on parole has freedom. She had the power to control them but this she relaxed and they roamed all over the earth building empire and, until then, an unheard of prosperity.

Leadership Must Come from the People

These examples, however, are historical accidents. They are exceptions to the rule. Certainly, in a society where public officials are democratically chosen, we find few instances of those elected deploring excessive powers, of any sincere attempts to limit themselves. The record shows the reverse to be true.

The ideal society, therefore, must severely limit its political officialdom, denying it any degree of rulership in the overriding sense. With this done, the leadership must spring from among the people. Unless there emerges in a society an aristocracy of high principle, that society can never be free.

With the above as a background, let us now examine libertarian leadership as it relates to the present political situation in the U.S.A.

From Left to Right

To grasp the freedom problem as we see it, visualize what a statistician would call a Normal Curve—fat at the middle and thin at the ends. Now, represent the population of the U.S.A. by vertical bands of this curve. Let the short band at the extreme left symbolize the few articulate, effective antagonists of freedom. Let the equally short band at the extreme right symbolize the few articulate, effective protagonists of individual liberty and its related legal, ethical, and spiritual institutions. Between these two bands exist the many millions, more or less indifferent, as uninterested in understanding the nature of society and its political institutions as are most people in understanding the composition of a symphony; who, at best, can only become “listeners” or followers of one camp or the other, A disproportionately large number of these are following the leftist camp today because those in the rightist camp are failing to do their homework. The ones symbolized by the band at the right are not manifesting the qualities of attraction and leadership of which they are capable. Thus, we conclude that the solution of problems relating to a free society depends upon the emergence of an informed leadership devoted to freedom.

In short, this is a leadership problem, not a mass reformation problem. If we had no way of remedying our situation except as the millions come to master the complexities of economic, social, political, and moral philosophy, we would not be warranted in spending a moment of our lives in this undertaking—it would be like expecting a majority of adult Americans to compose symphonies.

Libertarian Leaders Are Rare

If the problem is as we visualize it, then it is important to search for potential leaders with a devotion to those moral principles upon which the philosophy of freedom and, therefore, a free economy must rest. It is our conviction that, although these potential leaders are to be found in every walk of life, they may be as rare as composers of symphonies.

Assuredly, there was no large percentage of the American colonists capable of writing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, or the Federalist Papers. Only a remarkable leadership from varying walks of life, small in number, understood the fundamental principles of a free society. And even a smaller number were able to write and speak about these principles. Fortunately, for the cause of freedom, there were such men as Jefferson, Madison, Jay, Samuel and John Adams, James Otis (“A law against Natural Law is void”), Tom Paine, and such business and professional stalwarts as Franklin (printer), Robert Morris (banker), John Marshall (lawyer), Benjamin Rush (physician), Charles Carroll (lawyer and businessman), George Mason (lawyer and farmer), James Bowdoin and John Hancock (merchants). Then, too, there were such “ordinary” citizens as Isaac Sears, John Lamb, Gershom Mott, William Wiley, Thomas Robinson. And reflect upon the leadership devoted to freedom among the clergy:

John Wise—The first colonist to justify village participation in local affairs by an appeal to political philosophy.

Charles Turner—“The Scriptures cannot be rightfully expounded without explaining in a manner friendly to freedom.”

“Religious liberty is so blended with civil, that if one falls, it is not to be expected that the other will continue.”

Daniel Shute—“Life, liberty, and property are gifts of the Creator.”

Richard Salter—“God never gives men up to be slaves until they lose their natural virtue and abandon themselves to slavery.”

Jonathan Mayhew—“Their felicity is to be governed by such men and laws as themselves approve.”

Ezra Stiles—“Liberty, civil and religious, has sweet and attractive charms.”

What our country requires is a reincarnation of the distinguished thinking and leadership that went into the making of America, able to frame the age-old dream of liberty in contemporary idiom. Nothing less will suffice.

Now, we must ask this question: How is this leadership to be developed? The answer is as simple to state as it is difficult to achieve. Let each one of us try to attain such heights in understanding and clarity of exposition that others—the few whoever they may be—will be attracted to do likewise by reason of the inspiration, however modest, we may be able to provide.

The solution of our problem rests on the emergence of several thousand (Who can know the number?) creative thinkers, writers, speakers—exemplars of a devotion to freedom. A realistic criterion for self-appraisal? Find an answer to the question, “Am I improving?”

The improving person will offer his findings—facts, evidence, ideas, arguments—to any and all segments of the population. If we show improvement, all those with an affinity for freedom who are within our range will be attracted to the improved offerings. This Law of Attraction is the only power anyone needs who would aid in showing others the way to higher levels of understanding. Upgrading of others is a response to the magnetism of superiority, the hallmark of an improving person.

• CHAPTER 6 •

HUMILITY AND LEADERSHIP

Three things prize above all: gentleness, frugality, and humility. For the gentle can be bold, the frugal can be liberal, and the humble can become leaders of men.

LAO TZU

An individual does not adopt authoritarian ways because he knows so little. More likely than not, he behaves in this manner because he is unaware of how little he knows—unaware of the significance that his personal stock of knowledge has in the context of the whole.

But, first, what is meant by an authoritarian? Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Perón qualify all right. The list, however, goes far beyond the few who have gained renown as political tyrants. And it includes others in addition to Robin Hood, Jesse James, Al Capone, racketeering labor and business leaders, and the like who become governments on their own terms. Further, the list includes more than the supporters of political plunder—those who use the police force to take from some and give to others; those who employ violence to support the claim that their ways of disposing of the fruits of your labor are better than your ways. The list must also include the intellectual authoritarians, those believing that all who do not see eye-to-eye with them are to that extent “off beam”—or fools. The authoritarians are a numerous lot!

Now, it is perfectly obvious that many authoritarians are richer in an encyclopedic type of knowledge than are many libertarians. But, does this necessarily mean that they are wiser? Socrates, reputedly wise, said, “This man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either.”

An Elusive Quality

It would seem that a person who has gained an awareness of how little he knows could hardly behave as an authoritarian. Such an awareness, however, must be exceedingly elusive; few seem to achieve it. Most of us assume that reality does not go beyond those things and events which fall within the purview of our five senses. We assume that other people are only what they seem to us; that the light we see is the light that is; that the sounds we hear and the odors we smell are the only sounds and odors; that we are the captains of our own souls and the lords of all we survey.

Persons unaware of a creation, a force, an intelligence, a consciousness, far over and beyond selves are susceptible to a belief in their own omniscience. And those who believe in their own omniscience logically cannot envision a perfect society except as others are cast in their little images. It is difficult to imagine anything more responsible for authoritarianism than this type of unawareness.

One young man, a naval chaplain, who is aware of how little he knows explained how this awareness took root in him. As a student at the University of Michigan, visiting the great library for the first time, he became overwhelmed with the fact that there were over two million volumes on its shelves! At that moment he knew that he didn’t know much.

Expanding One’s Horizons

One way to gain an appreciation of how little we know is by conscious effort to expose ourselves to ideas, things, experiences lying outside our own small orbits. For, if we aren’t daily standing more and more in awe of everything within and without our beings, we can count on it, we simply aren’t growing in wisdom. To illustrate how exposure to the wholly new can create an awareness of how little we know, visualize a sheet of black, infinite in its dimensions. Now, assume that in childhood one had carved out an amount of light—understanding—as symbolized by the small circle on the next page. But, in the years since, he has enlarged his understanding as symbolized by the larger circle. In the latter case, note the much greater amount of darkness to which he has exposed himself. The more one knows, the more awareness he should have of the unknown.

Inside the Atom

There are all sorts of helpful exercises—such as an occasional rehearsal of the startling facts of life—that can induce an awareness of how little one knows. For example, while reading the above three paragraphs, there will have been created within the reader nearly one billion new red blood corpuscles. Astounding as this is, each of these billion corpuscles is a mystery in itself. For, “every substance is a system of molecules in motion and every molecule is a system of oscillating atoms and every atom is. . . .” Well, what is an atom?

One noted chemist in trying to make simple an answer to this question began by asserting that there were more atoms in his hand than there were grains of sand on all the beaches of the earth. To dramatize the nature of an atom he asked his listeners to take an Alice-in-Wonder-land growing pill, one that would shoot them through the roof, past the clouds, through the stratosphere, past the moon, past the sun and some of the planets, until each person was enlarged by a factor of a trillion. Thus magnified, an atom of calcium from the bone of one’s thumb would be in manageable proportions for inspection.

Electrons Circling a Nucleus

Enlarged by this factor of a trillion, the atom of calcium becomes a ball about one hundred yards in diameter. Inside there will be twenty luminous spheres about the size of basketballs moving in great circles like planets around the sun. These, says the scientist, are the electrons, the particles of negative electricity which make up the outer part of the atom. Some of them occasionally swing out and circle around neighboring atoms like folks doing a square dance, and this motion provides the forces which tie the atoms together in a chemical structure.

If, continues the scientist, you try to find what the “sun” is, about which these planetary electrons are circling, you have to look at the center of this calcium atom; and there you see a tiny whirling point of light, smaller than the head of a pin (after being multiplied 1,000,000,000,000 times). This is the atomic nucleus which contains practically all the mass of the atom, as well as its atomic energy.

If you ask the scientist what else is in the atom, his reply is, “Nothing.” Since we are made of atoms, we, too, are nothing much but empty space. Apply an imaginary press to a human being and squeeze out all of the space, and there would remain a speck, smaller than a particle of dust that could be seen on a sheet of white paper!

A Greater Unknown

What is the lesson to be learned from such phenomena? Increase knowledge and understanding as much as one will, and the unknown, instead of being domesticated by man’s mind, looms ever vaster and more improbable. We are not justified in believing that what we see with our eyes and what we hear with our ears constitute the whole of reality. Greater understanding is but a means to an awareness of the Infinite. No one of us gets more than a casual glance of all creation, and each of us experiences a different view.

Go a step further with our scientist. Consider the hydrogen nuclei in your own person. Now, assume that you know the secret of converting the energy of these nuclei into controlled electrical energy. You alone could supply power enough to operate all the factories and all the lights for the entire United States for many weeks. Or, suppose that you know how to fuse the hydrogen in your body. You could explode with a force one hundred times greater than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima!

just these smatterings of information leave me with a feeling of utter awe, humility. I can now repeat with meaning, “For I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Marvelous are Thy works.” It is the next sentence, however, that carries the greatest knowledge of all: “And that my soul knoweth right well.” Here is the soul cleansed of know-it-allness, the precondition to fulfillment.

Thwarting the Creator

When the soul knows this about the self, it must, to be logical, know this about others. It must know that in each person there is an enormous potentiality, an unimaginable creativity, working to manifest itself, evolving, emerging. What human being, with any such awareness, could possibly suggest that his relatively ignorant little will should be imposed on others, substituted for this Creative Force? What person, thus humble, would attempt forcibly to direct or control what another shall invent, discover, create, where and at what he shall work, what the hours of his labor shall be, what wage he shall receive, what and with whom he shall exchange, or what thoughts he shall entertain?

Assuming this awareness of how little one knows, how could one behave as an authoritarian, play the role of God? On the contrary, isn’t it such an awareness that can aid one in overcoming man’s original sin, in thwarting his continuous temptation, namely, the substitution of his will for that of his Creator?

Authoritarian attitudes and behaviors, however, are not to be done away with merely to relieve the pain of their affliction on others. Their destructive influence on the self which exercises them must be weighed.

Plato suggested that the real authoritarian is the real slave; that he is obliged to practice adulation, servility, and flattery. His desires are impossible of satisfaction and thus he is truly poor. He grows worse from having power; for power necessarily promotes jealousy, faithlessness, injustice, unfriendliness, and impiety. Not only is he miserable himself, but he also makes others equally as miserable. The authoritarian attempts to be the master of others when, obviously, he is not even master of himself. Plato likens the authoritarian to the man who passes his life, not in the building of his inner self, but in fighting and combating other men. Need we do more than look about us to confirm the rightness of Plato’s observations?

Grow—or Die

Change is a law of all living things. That which is not growing is atrophying; that which is not progressing is retrogressing; that which is not emerging is regressing. The authoritarian act, or even thought, is time off from growth, progress, emergence. One cannot be attentive to the inner self while exerting coercion on others. The person who has me on my back holding me down is as permanently fastened on top of me as I am under him. To me, at least, this explains why Lord Acton was right when he said, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

For any person to become aware of how little he knows—not a very difficult attainment—is a sure way to reduce the number of authoritarians by one. Who knows? The awareness might even catch on. And, if it did? Millions of us would forsake society’s most corrosive pastime—meddling in the affairs of others—meddling not only through the political apparatus, but personally. Millions of us could then concentrate on the wholly rewarding venture of freeing ourselves from our own fears, our own superstitions, our own imperfections, our own ignorance. The individual human spirit, neglected while we play the futile and authoritarian game of imposing our wills on others, cries out for its freedom.

• CHAPTER 7 •

INTEGRITY AND LEADERSHIP

Some years ago the public relations officer of a large corporation summarized for me his guiding principle: “Find out what the people want and do more of it; find out what they don’t want and do less of it.”

While seldom so succinctly stated, such an external, “other directed” guide to behavior is finding ever wider acceptance in American life. Implicit in its acceptance is a flight from personal integrity; and here may be found an important explanation for some of the mischief presently besetting our society.

Doubtless, this is good enough as a formula for getting rich. However, if an individual looks upon wealth as a means to such higher ends as his own intellectual and spiritual emergence or realizing those creative potentialities inherent in his nature, then the formula has its shortcomings: in certain areas, it is downright destructive.

This is a serious charge. Let’s explore it. In order to get this matter into perspective, contemplate the countless specialized subjects known to mankind. Take any one of them—landscape painting, for instance—and arrange the population of the U.S.A. in a pyramid according to proficiency or quality. There would be some one person at the very peak. Under him would be a few competent landscape painters; there would follow perhaps one million having a discriminating appreciation of such art; after which there would be the great mass—millions upon millions, unconscious, unaware, utterly ignorant of the art or the standards by which its perfection could be attained or judged.

Rearrange the population in proficiency pyramids for all of the countless subjects which engage human interest and each of us would find himself near the base of most of the pyramids. Few are leaders or among the highly competent—except rarely and momentarily, if at all. Each of us has a potential for growth and development—especially if advantage is taken of the help available from those on higher levels.

With the above in mind, let us explore the implications of integrity to the situation we are contemplating. It involves the accurate reflection in word and deed of that which one’s highest insight and conscience dictate as true and right. Now, a person’s concept of what is true may not in fact be truth, but it is as close to truth as he can get. It is the individual’s nearest approximation to truth, his most faithful projection of that approximation, the most accurate reflection of his best lights.

Adverse Selectivity

With the pyramid picture and this conception of integrity in mind, let us now observe what happens when the skilled in any subject—the competent who are near the peak—adopt the practice of finding out what the people want in order to “do more of it” and finding out what they do not want in order to “do less of it.” In such circumstances, from whence comes the instruction for what each of the skilled is to do? From the best that is in each skilled person or available to him? From the highest conscience of each? Indeed not! The instruction and leadership in such circumstances is tailored to the level of the “know-nothings” of the given subject, to the values at the base of our imagined pyramid where over 90 per cent of the people are. Integrity is forsaken. Potential leadership is diverted from higher aspiration and, instead, panders to the tastes and foibles of the ignorant ones.

The fields of art and music, where new “lows” are now so much in evidence, illustrate the flight from integrity. Consider the following confession, ascribed to the famous painter, Picasso:

“In art, the mass of the people no longer seek consolation and exaltation, but those who are refined, rich, unoccupied, who are distillers of quintessences, seek what is new, strange, original, extravagant, scandalous. I myself, since cubism and even before, have satisfied these masters and critics, with all the changing oddities which passed through my head, and the less they understood me, the more they admired me. By amusing myself with all these games, with all these absurdities, with all these puzzles, rebuses, and arabesques, I became famous, and that very quickly. And fame for a painter means sales, gains, fortune, riches. And today, as you know, I am celebrated, I am rich. But when I am alone with myself, I have not the courage to think of myself as an artist in the great and ancient sense of the term. Giotto, Titian, Rembrandt, and Goya were great painters; I am only a public entertainer who has understood his times and has exhausted as best he could the imbecility, the vanity, the cupidity of his contemporaries. Mine is a bitter confession, more painful than it may appear, but it has the merit of being sincere.”[1]

A Star Is Degraded

I have a TV program in mind. The star is an accomplished actress with an attractive voice. Does she sing the lovely songs of which she is capable?

Only now and then. For the most part, she and those in charge of her TV appearances insist on the stuff which nickels in juke boxes indicate as mass-popular. Instead of the millions at the lower part of the pyramid being lifted in their musical tastes by this singer at her creative best, we observe her descending and catering to the lowest or base tastes—an imitation of ignorance, so to speak. Thus is the music of our day degraded.

However unhappily we may view the wreckage which these responses to ignorance have brought to the fields of music, art, literature, entertainment, journalism, and the like, we must concede that the individual who cares anything about himself has the choice, in these fields, of turning off the TV and not reading or viewing the rubbish that is so overwhelmingly served up to him. He can, if he chooses, go his isolated, unmolested way.

In the Realm of Politics

But no such freedom of choice is allowed the individual when flight from integrity occurs in the realm of politics. The individual, irrespective of his scruples, his morals, his ideals, his tastes, is helplessly swept with millions of others into the miserable mess which the dull weight of ignorance gradually but inevitably inflicts on everyone.

A candidate for the Presidency, supposedly brighter and better educated than average, nevertheless polled the mass of voters to find what they wanted from government. As could have been foretold, they wanted the very things that crumbled the Roman Empire—“bread and circuses.” The farmers wanted subsidies, not for outstanding performance, but for not farming. The labor unions wanted grants of coercive power that they might extort more pay for less work. Many businessmen wanted various protections against competition. Vast hordes wanted the guaranteed life: pensions, ease, retirement; in short, to be relieved of responsibility for self. These are the things our candidate professed to stand for and promised to deliver, if elected. Instead of standing consistently for the highest principles of political economy known to him, he imitated the lowest common denominator opinion of the population. His campaign manager confided that he had to do this to get elected; that once in office he would then do what he regarded as right. This opportunity never came; the candidate was defeated. And, defeat was his just due. One who runs a campaign without integrity proves openly that he would, at any time, forsake integrity if it appeared expedient for him to do so.

This explains why the two major political parties in the United States today stand for the same things. Both have chosen to receive their instructions from precisely the same source, the lowest common denominator of popular opinion. The result is a one-party system under two meaningless labels. This deplorable situation can never be remedied until there is a return to integrity, with candidates whose outer selves and actions will reflect their own best thoughts, regardless of the effect this may have on their political fortunes.

Edmund Burke, addressing those who had just elected him to Parliament, put the case for integrity in unequivocal and unmistakable terms:

But his [the successful candidate’s] unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure—no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays, instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

George Washington had the same practical and lofty sentiments in mind when he reportedly said to the Constitutional Convention:

If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

Socialism Leaves Little Choice

No individual, whoever he may be, can escape the immediate consequences of ignorance in politics, as he can in art, music, journalism. There is no way to avoid the pains which bad political action inflicts. For ignorant political action encompasses all—one’s life and the sustenance of life which is the fruit of one’s own labor; one’s freedom to choose how one shall live his own life. Political collectivism—the pattern consonant with political ignorance—means what it says: Everyone swept indiscriminately into a human mass, the collective.[2]

When an individual, in his thinking and actions, unhitches himself from integrity, he “lets himself go,” so to speak. He is anchored to nothing more stable than whimsy, momentary impulses, mere whiffs of fickle opinion. He is adrift and without compass. This shows through in much current art, music, poetry, and unquestionably accounts, in a very large measure, for the rapidly growing socialism, collectivism, decadence—call it what you will. There remains, however, the task of discovering why integrity is so easily, casually, even eagerly abandoned. Why this wholesale divorce from personal conscience, this shameless acceptance of mass ignorance as our Director of Doing?

Error Compounded

Doubtless, there are numerous reasons, some of which may be too obscure for ready discovery and examination. One possible explanation has to do with a false economic assumption. We, having paid so much heed to material progress and well-being, to ever higher standards of living, let our economic concepts pattern other aspects of our lives. Erring in our economic assumptions, we compound the error in our social, political, moral, and spiritual judgments.

Here is the error in economic diagnosis: We assume that “Find out what the people want and do more of it” has been the formula for our success, for our prolific production of goods and services. Thus, in the economic area, so we think, our guidance has come from the mass market rather than from conscience or higher realms of mind. The current cliché, “The consumer is king,” tends to support this view.

The Spiritual Nature of Progress

Actually, instruction from the mass market has to do only with duplication. The market determines whether or not an economic good is to be duplicated and, if so, to what extent.

Duplication, sometimes called “mass production,” admittedly controlled by the market, is not, however, the secret of productivity. The secret lies back of that. It has its genesis in the creation, the invention. Ralph Waldo Trine helps with this explanation:

Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of its cause.[3]

The noted economist, Professor Ludwig von Mises, reputedly the greatest free market theorist of our time, adds his judgment to this view:

Production is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material, but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of the spiritual changes.[4]

Where, for example, did Thomas Alva Edison get his ideas for the electric lamp? Not from the mass market! How could a people give specifications for something about which they were totally unaware?

In reality, the productive process works outward from that which is first presented uniquely to an individual mind as awareness or consciousness or insight (the reception of ideas—ideation) and is then accurately (with integrity) worked out or reflected in the material good or service. There is a distinctively spiritual accomplishment before the good or service is held up to view before the mass market.

Let Each Do His Best

American economic progress has been truly phenomenal. But this progress has been founded on inspiration from the highest insights of individuals, not on advice from the lower levels of ignorance. In this manner the masses progressively are freed from poverty and slavery, free men’s material needs gratified as never before, and opportunities opened to everyone to pursue and develop those creative potentialities inherent in his own personality.[5] If we would succeed with our political institutions, we have in the productive process a model to emulate. However, we must understand how this process really works: it finds its power in highest conscience and the accurate reflection thereof, in short, in integrity.

One’s highest conscience, regardless of the step it occupies on the Infinite Stairway of Righteousness and Wisdom, is sensitive to the way one treats it. Lie about it, distort it, reflect it inaccurately, take contrary instruction from inferior sources or yield to the temptation of fame or fortune or popularity or other weaknesses of the flesh at its expense and it will become flabby and flaccid and will be incapable of rising to higher levels.

“To Thine Own Self Be True”

Now and then we observe individuals who can be depended upon to state accurately that which they believe to be right, persons unmoved by fickle opinions, by the lure of applause, or by the sting of censure. We may disagree with such persons, but be it noted that we trust them. For their creed appears to be:

This above all, to thine own self be true;

And it must follow, as the night the day

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Such persons are possessed of integrity, an essential ingredient of libertarian leadership.

[1] Alan Houghton Broderick, Mirage of Africa (London: Hutchinson & Co., Ltd., 1953), p. 203.

[2] This dim view of political collectivism is not to be mistaken as a backhanded endorsement of the “philosopher king” idea of Plato and its modern counterpart: that society should be wholly governed by committees of the creative elite. There is no political process of knowing or selecting in advance the persons who will he most creative. The only process that will bring the creative minority to the top, that will encourage their effectiveness, is complete freedom.

[3] From In Tune with the Infinite (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1897).

[4] From Human Action (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 141.

[5] Touched upon here is the moral function of wealth. Whether or not people use wealth to free themselves for higher effort is beyond the scope of this essay. Many do not.

• CHAPTER 8 •

THE METHODS OF LEADERSHIP[*]

What method fits the objective of expanding freedom? This is the question to be considered.

At the outset, let it be conceded that the scope of freedom is without limit. There are, to begin with, the limitless psychological implications of freedom: man freeing himself from his own fears, superstitions, imperfections, ignorance. Then there is the sociological aspect: man freeing himself from bondage to other men—that is to say, from organizational and institutional ineptness such as governments gone berserk. Other aspects of this boundless subject: how to maximize individual freedom of choice, how to be free of violence, fraud, and predation in one’s own nature and from others, and how to grasp the miraculous configurations of unique creative energies, once they are freed of restraint.

Freedom has to do with the “becoming” of the individual human being. All that retards the development of the human potential is anti-freedom. All that advances the individual’s wholeness or completeness as a spiritual, moral, and wise human being is freedom in action.

Now, then, how is the cause of freedom to be advanced? How can one person influence another to understand freedom? What means can be used to achieve such an end? There are good and sufficient reasons for this inquiry: Energies misspent and millions wasted on methods and techniques that do not fit the objective, account in no small measure for our rapid drift toward state absolutism.

Infinite end Variable Objectives

Man’s objectives—good and bad—are endless in number and variety. Their attainment, in many instances, rests on how successfully he influences other people. But the method which is effective in attaining an objective at one level may be, and often is, entirely ineffective and inappropriate when applied to objectives of other levels. (A llama cannot carry a heavy load, but in the Andes he is the most efficient means of transportation.)

Said Emerson, “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.” This self-evident observation suggests that the accomplishment of any given objective waits upon a method precisely fitted to the objective. Here, then, is a hypothesis that merits serious examination: The more destructive the end in view, the more fitting are compulsive means, disintegrative methods; the more creative the end in view, the more antagonistic to a solution are compulsive methods and the more must reliance be placed on attractive, integrative forces.

Methods Also Vary

Methods, like the objectives in view, range all the way from the low grade destructive types to the highest grade creative type. For example, almost anyone—the more ignorant the better—can effectively exert compulsive influence to achieve destructive ends: murder, theft, arson, defamation, and the like. The forcible collection of funds by government to pay writers to influence a whole nation to hate another nation requires less intensive compulsion than does homicide. Similar methods can seduce a vast population away from their voluntary, integrative, individualistic ways of life into collective or herd ways consonant with state absolutism.

Higher on the scale, there is an in-between area where the ends to be achieved may be either destructive or creative and in which compulsive and attractive methods intermingle: influencing others into a state of desire, often abnormal and obsessive, for drugs, alcohol, tobacco, cosmetics, soap, autos, houses, something-for-nothing, and so on.

At the upper end of the scale is education, or advancing other people’s understanding. Such an aim falls into the creative area. Compulsive methods, while often resorted to, are wholly inappropriate and ineffective here. Only techniques of attraction fit this objective. But even here, we find that degrees and gradations exist. Creative objectives, also, are on a series of levels, each level having a technique peculiar to it: the higher the level, that is, the more creative, the more must reliance be placed on the power of attraction. For instance, advancing the understanding of another as to how to scramble eggs or master the multiplication table or repair a motor or any other skill where learning is acquired by mere repetition requires lower grade attractive power than does influencing others to paint beautiful pictures or write good poetry.

The only reason for these brief observations is to rid ourselves of that troublesome notion which leads many people to conclude that the techniques used by communists, for instance, to destroy a free society can be effectively employed to advance an understanding of freedom. Or, further up the scale, that the techniques of advertisers can be used effectively for this purpose.

A High Objective

Advancing an understanding of freedom is in a class by itself. It is far higher in the scale of objectives than those with which we daily deal, and the techniques required for its attainment are therefore of an unfamiliar order. This order, it would seem, must be discovered and applied if the status of freedom is to improve. Three decades of costly and dismal failures to advance an understanding of freedom have demonstrated that freedom will not be increased by methods beneath its majesty!

Who among us understands human freedom? Indeed, has anyone ever thoroughly understood its miraculous workings? I doubt it; I, at least, know of no individual, in the past or present, whose works are “the last word on freedom.” The general, taken-for-granted understanding of freedom is little more than a false sense of know-it-allness that comes from knowing nothing at all, Understanding freedom, like gaining wisdom, may well belong to the realm of the sublime and the infinite.

Freedom is as high in the hierarchy of values as is the emergence of the individual human spirit and must be so evaluated by those who would advance an understanding of it.

One of the many reasons for the decline of freedom is that most of us erroneously accept it as an objective lower in the scale than it actually is and thus susceptible to the influence of techniques appropriate only to lower-scale objectives.

A Delicate Task

Once it is conceded that advancing an understanding of freedom belongs to as high a level as suggested above, we see that the problem is nothing less than influencing others to expand their consciousness, to increase their perceptions, to enlarge their cognitive powers. In brief, it becomes a question of the method one must use if he would influence another into a state of creative thinking. This problem transcends our common experience; it bears no relationship whatsoever to marketing or selling. Flashes of insight can no more be thrust into the consciousness of another or “sold” to him than he can be stabbed with a moonbeam! The simile may be apt.

A moonbeam kindles the imagination only as it is seen. It stimulates the mind only when perceived. Similarly with wisdom or the understanding of freedom. Wisdom is available for the perceiving. It appears to be in infinite supply, which is to say, regardless of how wise one may be, there is always more wisdom in store, more for the perceiving. Whether one is increasing wisdom or the understanding of freedom, the increase must rest on the expanding or stretching of consciousness—an achievement of the utmost delicacy and at the highest level!

In order to see how we may influence others in this respect, it is useful to examine how we ourselves are influenced. My own findings may be quite dissimilar to anyone else’s but, as will be explained later, there is a sound reason for making one’s own findings available to others.

Infinite Consciousness

To begin with, I have no way of accounting for such consciousness as man now possesses except to acknowledge the existence of an Infinite Consciousness. This force—I confess to no precise knowledge of it beyond a personal awareness of its existence—appears to me to be an attractive force which persistently and everlastingly exerts a pull, a magnetic drawing of man into its infinite orbit. This is the force which explains man’s emergence, his evolution. While there is never any relaxation of its drawing power, it encounters in each of us those human elements not susceptible to magnetism: arrogance, willfulness, know-it-allness. Emergence in the direction of Infinite Consciousness is thus in spite of, not because of, man’s vaunted knowledge. This infinite force has many names in many tongues, among them God and Nature. Goethe, using the term, Nature, made a point relevant to this thesis:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

Freedom of Choice

Man, alone among animals, has arrived at that point in evolution where freedom of choice is a possibility. He is free, therefore, to respond harmoniously or disharmoniously to the attracting force of Infinite Consciousness. Since he is fallible his choices are often in error. Yet, viewed over the millenniums, the consciousness of many individual human beings is seen to have advanced qualitatively. Man has been spiritually attracted, figuratively pulled, upward and onward.[1]

Some individuals appear to be born less encrusted than the mill-run of us with obstacles to the magnetic pull of Infinite Consciousness. More susceptible to this force, they experience with relative ease such of its rewards as insights and inspiration. These persons are referred to as “intuitive” or “creative.” With little effort they far surpass the rest of us. These few, over the centuries, have written our best poetry, painted our most beautiful pictures, composed our greatest music, done our significant inventing, discovered the important physical, chemical, mathematical principles, and so on. Time and again they have been asked, “Whence come these ideas of yours?” and they reply, in effect, “I don’t know. It is as if they come out of the air.”

Overcoming Inertia

For the vast majority of us the expanding of consciousness, the increasing of perception, the developing of intuitive powers, take a lot of doing. So much of our nature is immune to the attraction of Infinite Consciousness that we experience few of its rewards. We are as sawdust to a magnet! There are, however, exercises and disciplines that can aid Nature in her normal work, the first requirement being a deep and profound desire on the part of the individual for an expanding consciousness.

But, be it noted, this is an undertaking of the self-propulsive type. It is and can be set in motion only on one’s own initiative. No one on earth, by any technique whatsoever, can force another into this type of high-level activity.

Infinite Consciousness is available for the perceiving, either directly or indirectly. The former includes those ideas, insights, inspiration which come to one “from out of the blue.” The term used to describe this experience as it relates to Scripture is “revelation.” This, so far as I can discern, is not a common experience, but a person can, with the right kind of conscientious effort, increase enormously his own capacity to receive.

The Endless Pursuit of Truth

Now as to the indirect approaches: It seems self-evident that all the knowledge and wisdom available to men on this earth today is a composite or aggregate of insights so far revealed directly and accumulated over the generations.[2] Certainly we cannot credit the present emergent state of man to what we got from the Neanderthalers. Over the ages the sum total of revealed truth is beyond comprehension.

Infinite Consciousness is perceived by the individual uniquely. No two persons among all who have lived have intuited identically. No man has ever grasped more than a portion of Infinity. At best each person has come into possession of fragments, never the “Whole Truth.” The infinite aspect of Infinite Consciousness makes the pursuit of truth or wisdom an endless undertaking.

So Many Sources

Thus it is that all the truth so far revealed to man lies strewn over the earth in countless fragments—many of them in books, perhaps in old books more than in the new, often in languages few can read. Fragments of truth are to be found among the living, a little in each, not much in anyone. It is dispersed like a well-scrambled, poly-billioned jigsaw puzzle. Find the pieces and put as many together as possible. Look everywhere, overlook nothing and no one. “Out of the mouths of babes. . . .” The more success one has, the greater will be his awareness of the infinity of Consciousness; the greater the knowing, the more will be the certainty of not knowing.

At this level there is no completion, no ultimate. Nor need there be. The reward, the joy, is in the stretching—the stretching of the individual consciousness!

I have gone to some length to conjure up a mental picture of man when his objective is the search for truth, the gaining of wisdom. Understanding freedom is of the same order and at the same high level! First, there is The Source which the individual in the loneliness of his own soul can decide to heed and, to the extent of his ability, harmonize with. True, he can call on other individuals for guidance but it will be he and he alone who will make the decisions as to who those others shall be.

Others May Be Helpful

Second, there are all the mediating human beings, past and present, their utterances and their recorded works, not one containing more than fragments of the truth, all unique. Here we have the secondary source of guidance, and, as in the case of The Source, the seeker of truth decides himself which of the fragments he will add to his own stock.

Once we picture a person who is seeking enlightenment from The Source and from such fragments of truth as already exist in the minds and works of men, we can appreciate the futility of trying to “sell” freedom. The selling or marketing method simply does not fit the freedom objective. Conceding an Infinite Consciousness persistently exerting its attractive force on the obstinacy, arrogance, and apathy of man, and observing how slowly this greatest of all energies finds manifestation in human beings, what pomposity must we ascribe to those among us who have no more than infinitesimal fragments of this force, and yet would impose their “wisdom” on others! They would surpass God! We are instinctively repulsed by these reformers, and properly.[3]

The Reception Is Personal

No, the gaining of wisdom or the understanding of freedom is not imposed by man upon men, nor can it be. It is not marketed or sold. It is bought; but it is bought only in the sense that an individual seeking truth will look at whatever fragments he can bring within his purview and declare, as he alone sees fit, “I buy that!” This is the process of personally perceiving that which is in the realm of the available.

When an individual is drawn into the orbit of Infinite Consciousness and perceives a portion of truth, that truth can be said to exist in his consciousness; that is, he possesses a fragment of Infinite Consciousness. What he has made his own is distinguished by its attracting quality precisely as is its source; the latter differs from the former only in the force of its attraction. The former is infinite, the latter infinitesimal. This is to say that truth is inherently attractive, regardless of where it exists.”[4]

The Power of Attraction

The power of attraction is not outgoing but ingathering, It draws to itself whatever is susceptible to its force. This is at once its merit and its limitation. This is the given fact. In the context of the thesis of this book the power of attraction any individual exerts will bear a relationship to whatever of Infinite Consciousness he has been able to perceive, to whatever he has in store.

This idea is supported by daily observation. No person will knowingly seek light from one who has no light. Select any activity and ask: To whom are we drawn when seeking enlightenment? In golf, to a dub or to an Arnold Palmer? In cooking, to someone who never heard of a roux or to an Escoffier? In engineering, to one who knows nothing of stress or to an Admiral Moreell? In moral philosophy, to a bandit or to an Augustine?

St. Augustine is a case in point. Deeply contemplative and introspective, he experienced insights and understanding far surpassing those of most people. Bent on his own improvement, the expansion of his own consciousness, he became a master of exposition; that is, he learned to explain the truth which came into his possession. In numerous writings, among them his Confessions, he made available to others that which he had first made his own. Today, more than fifteen centuries later, this is among the most widely purchased of all autobiographies! Here we observe the power of attraction extending itself remarkably in time.

Perfection of Self

Nor is the case of St. Augustine an exception to the rule. His case is the rule! It is this perfection of self which explains why we were attracted to Admiral Moreell—to use a contemporary example—to head the greatest engineering and construction project ever undertaken by man. Suppose that Moreell or St. Augustine, in the years of their relative immaturity, had called it quits, that is, had given up any pursuit of perfection, and had then gone about setting the world straight. St. Augustine wrote critically of his youth:

But I wretched, most wretched, in the very beginning of my youth, had begged chastity of Thee; and said, “Give me chastity and continence, only not yet.”

It is obvious that neither of these men would have developed any attractive powers whatsoever. Indeed, they would not have acquired those qualities which are susceptible to the attraction of Infinite Consciousness. They would have remained as human sawdust—unattractable and unattracting!

There is, however, one pitfall to be avoided. Most of us, when we move slightly ahead of our contemporaries, are prone to think of ourselves as “having arrived,” as having graduated from immaturity. Thus we forego the further pursuit of truth in favor of badgering others with such fragments of truth as we have. There is no such thing as earthly completion; the term “maturity” is not in the grammar of The Infinite.

No Power of Compulsion

Man, be he St. Augustine or whosoever, can never know for certain whether his own insights—his little fragments—are in fact truth. We should be grateful, therefore, that truth can only attract but not compel. Imagine how destructive it would be to man’s emergence, to the whole process of human evolution, if the tiny fragments any of us possesses could be thrust, forced, or impregnated into the minds of others! In brief, is it not encouraging, rather than distressing, that we cannot “sell” or “market” our own idea of truth as we can peddle material things? How reluctant we would be to allow anyone the power of forcing his ideas into our own consciousness! This would transform men into robots. Logically, we cannot accept as right for ourselves that which we construe to be wrong for everyone else, without ascribing a God-like character to ourselves. Heaven forbid!

In summary: Not only is it impossible to penetrate the consciousness of another with truth; it is undesirable. Truth, wisdom, an understanding of freedom, an expanding consciousness are the highest of human aims and the methods of attaining them must be of an equally high order.

If freedom is to make any gains as a way of life, more individuals will need a better understanding of freedom than any of us now displays. This appears to be self-evident. Those who favor advancing an understanding of freedom are the only ones who can assist in such a venture. This, also, appears to be self-evident. But, how can they help? That’s the question.

Life’s Most Difficult Task

The method, not its application, is as simple as a-b-c. The solution lies in an expanding consciousness of freedom and its miraculous workings, and skillful exposition thereof by those who attain it. Consciousness—thinking, perceiving, understanding, attaining wisdom—is personal and individual. The only consciousness any individual can improve or expand is his own. Therefore, achieving the freedom objective involves nothing less than the widening of one’s own consciousness! Nothing less than life’s most difficult task.

Why is this simple solution so little recognized, as if it were a secret; or so hesitatingly accepted, as if it were something unpleasant? Why do so many regard as hopeless the broadening of the single consciousness over which the individual has some control while not even questioning their ability to stretch the consciousness of others over which they have no control at all?

Most of the answers to these questions are as complex as the psychoanalysis of a dictator or the explanation of why so many people dote on playing God. Leaving these aside, because I do not know the answers, there stands out one stubborn but untenable reason: the widespread but desolating belief that the world or the nation or society could never be “saved” by the mere salvaging of private selves. People say, “There isn’t time for such a slow process,” and then, to speed things up, they promptly hurry in the wrong direction! They concentrate on the improvement of others, which is a hopeless task, and neglect the improvement of themselves, which is possible. Thus, the world or the nation or society remains unimproved.

Said Victor Hugo, “More powerful than armies is an idea whose time has come.” While incontestably true, this ray of hope presupposes the existence of ideas. We might as well admit it, there is a dearth of freedom ideas.

An Infinite Frontier

I find it helpful to think of Infinite Consciousness—wisdom, truth, the understanding of freedom—as an infinitely precious ore, buried deep in the human soul, the individual soul. This concept seems to square with experience, for no living person can mine any other ore than his own. But there is evidence aplenty that that spiritual ore is always available.

The object to be achieved is of the highest order: understanding freedom. The method must fit the problem. It can consist of nothing less than an increasing consciousness of freedom and the ideas appertaining thereto. Only an individual can mine this truth, this ore of awareness. This ore—Infinite Consciousness as it exists potentially in the human soul—is attractive but it cannot draw to itself disinterest, apathy, know-it-allness, these being no more than intellectual and spiritual sawdust. The first step to a “break through,” as earlier suggested, is a profound desire on the part of the individual that such should come to pass. Only by seeking, striving, can the individual find and achieve; and the higher the aim the greater must be his effort. Nothing short of a will to a greater awareness can be susceptible to this power of attraction.

A Self-Mining Operation

In a sense the method that fits the freedom objective can be thought of as an intellectual and spiritual mining operation, each individual his own miner.

No individual, however, can extract more than a fragment of this ore of awareness. No one ever has and, assuming the finiteness of earthly man, no one ever will. The most productive miner—the most advanced creative thinker—who ever lived could not exist on the fragment mined by himself alone. He and his fellow men have existed—can exist—only by the pooling of their respective fragments, their intellectual and spiritual resources. We all exist by reason of the advantage we take of the unique resources of each. This appears to be another self-evident fact.

The method to fit the objective of achieving freedom takes shape, becomes apparent. It is, in short, for each of us to mine his own ore of Infinite Consciousness, refine it, and then make available, to all who seek, the distillate—the wisdom—unique in each fragment.

Enough To Do at Home

For this process to work it is necessary that one’s eye be kept on his own mining, never on repairing the shortcomings of others, never on inflicting one’s own unique fragment on others. Indeed, it is important not only to refrain from any overt acts of this kind, but even from all covert thoughts as well. Intentions of reforming others, regardless of how skillfully disguised, are antagonistic to one’s own explorations. Further, they cause others, instinctively, to “run around the corner when they see you coming.” But it is easy enough to cleanse the soul and mind of these intentions when once the attracting power of truth is appreciated. The seeker after truth should rely on it and should trust it to attract all that is susceptible to it, for Truth seems to shy away from those who lack faith in its power.

Explanations of what is discovered should be made in speech and writing not as a means of repairing others but as the most effective way to increase personal exploratory powers, and—possibly—inspire others. Newly discovered ideas are but ore until refined with words, the tools of thought. Expositions devoid of any intention of making over others are attractive in proportion to the truth they contain. Properly, we give out ideas that we may further receive ideas. We teach: that is, we make available our discoveries, that we may learn more. Giving is a precondition to receiving.

So-called educational programs designed to repair the ignorant, when applied to the high-level freedom area, are less than useless. They only activate the existing ignorance, better left dormant.

Improvement Requires Humility

The method that fits an improved understanding of freedom begins with humility. The personal reasoning compatible with right method would seem to go something like this: To be honest about it, I know next to nothing about freedom myself. True, I favor freedom in a general sort of way but I cannot skillfully make the case for it nor do I know how to refute the clichés of state absolutism. I am woefully inarticulate. Attractive? Why, not even my wife or my children or my neighbors or my business friends or my employees seek my counsel. And, why should they? What have I to give? What is in me that they can draw on? Self-improvement assuredly is in order. Perhaps there are others in my circles of activities who would join with me in upgrading our individual selves. We could be of help to each other. My ideas, should I come upon any, might be useful to them; their ideas helpful to me. The more each of us improves, the more attractive will each of us become to the others. For one thing, I shall no longer attempt to insinuate my notions into the minds of others. Instead, I shall try to gain an understanding that they will desire to share.

Humility of the above brand never becomes inappropriate, regardless of how far one progresses. For progress in personal consciousness in the direction of Infinite Consciousness can never be more than a relative progress, that is, relative to where we ourselves were or where our contemporaries are. To realize one’s potentials, it is only necessary to keep the eye cast toward an ever-increasing awareness or consciousness, taking no cognizance whatever of the minor superiorities over others one may achieve. People, quite naturally, are fascinated with, interested in, attracted to those who concentrate on seeking truth.

Reasoning suggests, and observations of the past seem to confirm, the attractiveness of truth. Its power is miraculous. There was one promise that should be borne in mind and unreservedly trusted: “And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

BIBLIOGRAPHY FOR CHAPTER 8

Bennett, J. G. The Crisis in Human Affairs. New York: Hermitage House, 1951. (o.p.)

Eddington, Arthur Stanley. Science and the Unseen World. New York: MacMillan Company, 1929.

Eulenburg-Wiener, Renee von. Fearfully and Wonderfully Made. New York: MacMillan Company, 1938. (o.p.)

Ghiselin, Brewster (ed.). The Creative Process. New York: The New American Library, 1952.

Harding, Rosamond, E. M. The Anatomy of Inspiration. Cambridge: W. Heffer & Son, Ltd., 1948. (o.p.)

Heard, Gerald. Training for the Life of the Spirit. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942.

Hutchinson, Eliot Dale. How To Think Creatively. New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, 1951.

Joad, C. E. M. Decadence. London: Faber and Faber, Ltd., 1948.

Johnson, Raynor. The Imprisoned Splendour. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1953.

Jung, C. G. The Undiscovered Self. New York: Little, Brown & Co., 1957.

Nouy, Lecomte du. Human Destiny. New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1947.

White, Stewart Edward. The Unobstructed Universe. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1940.

Winkler, Franz E. Man: The Bridge Between Two Worlds. New York: Harper &: Brothers, 1960.

[*] This was published by The Myrin Institute, Inc., at Adelphi College, bearing the title, Let the Method Fit the Objective.

[1] This power of attraction gives me the impression of occurring in waves—pulsating, as it were—and on countless frequencies. It is as if we were alternately drawn to or into its orbit and then left on our own. One frequency shows forth as a dark age, and the next as a renaissance. In daily life the individual experiences the rhythm of this force in shorter frequencies: as elation and depression, ambition and laziness, mental alertness and sluggishness, spiritual sensitiveness and insensitiveness, as if being led and as if alone, the perceptive apparatus turned on and then off, flashes of reason and return to habit—all in all, over the ages, man emerging from a Neanderthal state to produce occasionally a Socrates, Augustine, Goethe, Leonardo da Vinci, or Edison.

[2] No question about it, much has been lost from this stockpile, for man regresses as well as progresses.

[3] “For as He, who has all power, denies Himself any power over us save that of love, to win us to love and obedience, so He would have us use the same power whereby He has won us to Himself. This is not sentimentality. On the contrary it is a hard saying. For, because God out of love will never coerce man, will never use any power but love to turn back to Himself; man is free to torture and torment himself until he sees that his methods are not those of his Maker.” Gerald Heard, editor, Prayers and Meditations (New York: Harper & Brothers), p. 39.

[4] This is not to argue that truth as held by man is necessarily an attractive force. Nor is truth the only attractive force. The power of attraction, as related to man, seems to bear some relationship to extraordinary skills. Great hull fighters or, vernacularly, great bull throwers draw people to them. Men who devoutly pursue truth, with a measure of success, and who achieve extraordinary skills in its exposition, give man-held truth its magnetism.

• CHAPTER 9 •

THE MANNERS OF LEADERSHIP

Nearly all devotees of the freedom philosophy can recall acquaintanceships, initially agreeable, that went sour.

“What a nice person!” we say when someone impresses us favorably. Be that person a housemaid or a bank president, it is clear that neither education nor occupation nor wealth have had any bearing on these favorable associations. Graciousness, courtesy, amiability, thoughtfulness, good will are among the virtues exhibited by persons we have met from all walks of life.

All too often, however, the budding friendships come a cropper. For, sooner or later, ideological inquiries are made: How does the other stand on the role of government, human rights and property rights, profits, wages, privileges, security, welfare, the right to a decent standard of living, the right to a job, or whatever? Then sparks may fly and, unless caution and wisdom prevail, an ugly trait, animosity, sets in.

Why does animosity set in? Isn’t it because each party, in the face of, sharp disagreement, tends to impute bad motives to the other? Selfish, power hungry, special pleader, fellow traveler, or reactionary are among the disparaging thoughts concerning the other; in short, the other is often regarded as either malevolent or a dupe.

The Mother of Animosity

Ascribing malevolence to another is the mother of animosity. It is the error at the root of social hatreds. And error it is! Among the persons known to me, I have never encountered anyone who appeared to be consciously malevolent. Not even a common thief is guided by malevolence. While he may not think of his occupation as the highest, everything considered, he believes it to be justifiable in terms of his scale of values. Indeed, it seems most probable that every action, by anyone, is thought of as right at the moment of action. Reflection afterward may bring regret but, on balance, most actions at the time of execution are assessed as right by the actors. Conscious malevolence rarely, if ever, controls actions.

If no person is consciously malevolent, then it follows that imputing bad motives to others is a mistake. And, if this be an alienating influence, then it behooves us who would make friends for freedom to discover what really causes the friction. Animosity need not accompany ideological differences if we know why the differences and if we correctly act on the knowledge.

The truth, sometimes, is difficult to acknowledge. If the following contention is in fact truth, it is a bitter pill to swallow: The sparks fly because two varying degrees of ignorance clash head on!

Now, ignorance is evident enough in the coercionists who would deny freedom. For example, no one of them—not even a dictator nor a ruthless labor leader—would put every item of human action under his control. Some degree of freedom would be allowed. But, no two coercionists agree as to just how much of human action should be coercively governed, If no two of them are alike, then it follows that not more than one of all their millions can possibly be right. Therefore, all except one unknown are plagued with some degree of ignorance.

Admitting One’s Own Ignorance

The intellectual obstacle that has to be overcome is conceding a degree of ignorance in oneself. Though almost an unthinkable admission, in all good conscience, it must be made. While unable to prove it, I suspect it is my good fortune to be personally acquainted with more freedom devotees than any other person. Precise agreement among us? Indeed, not! No two see eye to eye. Not that this observed variance is to be condemned, but does it not suggest degrees of ignorance? Of course, it does.

Very well. Concede that it is the clash of two varying degrees of ignorance that causes these intense personal frictions, what then? Certainly, the most important step has been taken in making such a concession. Once this is done, the succeeding steps become more or less obvious:

A. Never get angry at the other person’s ignorance. He has no monopoly on that. No doubt the other sincerely believes his position is right. The extent to which he cannot explain his belief is one measure of his ignorance.

B. Refrain from trying to force one’s own ignorance on another. Self-ignorance can be measured as above—the extent to which a belief cannot be explained.

It is self-evident that the only way to overcome one’s own ignorance is through learning. And, it is equally evident that teaching is the only way one can help to overcome another’s ignorance. But a teacher is never self-designated; the teacher is selected by the person who chooses to be taught. Therefore, learning—teachableness—is the only way to qualify for teaching.

To Be Teachable

Let’s further diagnose teachableness, for it is the failure to grasp this approach that is making enemies not only at the dinner table but at the “bargaining table.” For instance, a child insists that two and two make five. There is no reason to be angry at this, nor will anything be accomplished by merely asserting one’s own belief that two and two make four. If, however, one can lead the child to understand that two and two do in fact make four, the child will favorably regard his teacher for such enlightenment. If, on the other hand, one cannot explain and shields his own ignorance, even if unconsciously, by calling the child “dumb,” “lazy,” or “indolent,” the child will feel only hate for the inexpert attention. All experience seems to testify that when ignorance clashes with ignorance the sparks will fly and breed ill will, animosity. But when understanding and dear exposition are administered to ignorance, affection and esteem tend to flower.

So Few Can Explain

There are millions in America today who are taking firm ideological positions, some on the side of governmental and labor union control and dictation, others on the side of freedom to produce, to exchange, to live creatively as each chooses. But observe the small number on either side who can do more than assert their position. Only a few can explain with reason and clarity why they believe as they do. This may be consistent behavior for the coercionists, but there is no reason why those of us who believe in freedom should follow their pattern. We do not need to impugn the motives of those who have not as yet grasped the significance of freedom nor do we need vociferously to argue for points we cannot explain. Quite to the contrary, we can turn conscientiously to our own homework; we can aim at becoming competent expositors.

There is an Arab proverb to the effect that he who strikes the second blow starts the fight. Ignorance stands ever ready, and ail about us, to strike the first blow. However, we need not strike back by projecting our own ignorance—by insisting on points we cannot soundly explain. Short of an ability to explain our beliefs in an attractive, enlightening, and truth-serving manner, there is always the friendly alternative of silence.

• CHAPTER 10 •

AIDS TO LEADERSHIP

Ever so many who write approvingly of FEE’s educational work conclude with the criticism, “But, you never tell us what to do.”

Frankly, our editorial policy insists that we never tell a reader what to think or how to act. For, in our judgment, that is a certain way to alienate the very spirit of inquiry we hope to evoke. We have learned that ideas cannot be “crammed down the throat” of another. Experience makes it plain that such attempts arouse only hostility. No one, however, resents taking a look at the ideas of another, regardless of the disagreement, providing the ideas accurately reflect the author’s genuine convictions, This is why professors of socialistic persuasions sometimes write, “I don’t agree at all with your position, but I admire the way you present your point of view and I read every word of it.”

It is experience and reasoning of this kind which account for our presenting facts, evidence, ideas, and arguments as we see them. In our view, these are the ingredients out of which convictions are formed. One’s actions stem from one’s convictions, but the form the action will take is peculiar to each person. One person will respond to a conviction in one way, another in a wholly different way. No two responses are exactly alike nor can anyone else make them alike nor is likeness necessarily desirable.

When people complain to us that we do not tell them what to do, they are really saying that we do not tell them how to act. Actually, this “failure” should be applauded, not lamented. Reflect on the nature of persuasive action, for that is the type of action in question. It is of two types: it is either physical or intellectual. Now, physical persuasion—coercion—as a means to broadening an understanding of freedom is patently absurd. Hence, nothing remains but intellectual action. Obviously, no one can compel a certain intellectual action in another. No one can do more than to suggest ways for inducing another’s intellectual action—helping him find answers to a question that is intimately personal: “How can I go about improving the quality of my own intellectual action?”

Ten Thousand Leaders

Sticking to the context of advancing an understanding of freedom, the answer to that question might be found in the answers to another question, “What is it that the freedom philosophy most needs?” Clearly, the freedom philosophy needs most of all several thousand creative thinkers, writers, talkers—like Frederic Bastiat was to the freedom philosophy, or Poincare to mathematics, or Beethoven to music, or Milton to poetry, merely to give examples of the required quality. Needed are persons—shall we say 10,000?—from all walks of life who will serve as wellsprings of the philosophy. I, for one, do not see how any significant emergence of freedom is possible unless numerous high-grade sources of understanding and exposition come into existence.

Ten thousand Bastiats? Well, hardly. But it does seem possible for us to achieve that many reasonable approximations.[1] A big order, nonetheless. It calls for one such approximation from among each 8,500 of adult Americans. Who or where are the individuals with these highly creative potentialities? I repeat from an earlier chapter: I do not know. You do not know. The individual himself or herself does not know for the simple reason that all of us are possessed of creative potentialities about which we are unaware. Again, who are these unknowns? There is no answer except as each of us explores our own potentialities to see if “there’s gold in them thar hills.”

So Few Are Searching

There is gold aplenty, I am confident. The trouble is, to use a term in oil exploration, there just is not enough “wildcatting” going on. Too many of us are too lazy or too distracted by the trivia of life or “too busy.” Others cannot see any point in trying out for a role where only one in thousands will make the grade. And even those who would try have given little if any thought to the techniques of exploring their own creative potentialities, to using what might be termed the “break-through” methods.

While there is a voluminous literature on unearthing creative qualities, it is not of the type that readily qualifies as “recommended readings.” Instead, it is literature of the kind that strangely presents itself to a person’s consciousness only if and when the individual is ready for it. And we can say that it does not really exist until then—in the sense that we can claim there is no sound of a falling tree unless there be an ear to hear it. It is like a verse in the Bible that one has known “by heart” since childhood and then, all of a sudden, had its profound meaning flash into consciousness. The words in the verse did not change; it was merely that one’s perception changed, grew up, matured. Thus, with the literature on this subject. It does not exist for us until we grow to a point where comprehension is possible. Regardless of how much we grow, there appears to be no end to the supply that can edify. But, as I have suggested, this literature has to be self-discovered—as do one’s own creative potentialities.

Furthermore, the literature helpful to one person will be different from that which proves helpful to another. Our vast variation accounts for this. In the common problems of life—how to repair a motor or master simple arithmetic or cook a beef stew—we can instruct each other, but as we move into the rarefied atmosphere of creativity, we get into strange and mystifying territory. Most highly creative or intuitive persons have found difficulty in explaining their own experiences and, therefore, have been at a loss to cite the reasons. Seemingly, their “flashes” have been wholly fortuitous. Poincare, one of the most brilliant mathematicians of our time, writing of the many ideas that came to his mind, said of one of his discoveries, “The idea came to me, without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way for it. . . . ”[2]

And There It Was!

During the preparation of the first draft of this chapter, and at this very point, an associate of mine, with no awareness that I was writing on this subject, placed on my desk a magazine with the following paragraph marked for my attention:

Everyone has his own frontier—in the mind. On one side of it, everything is known, tried. On the other side is the part of yourself that hasn’t yet been explored. All life’s great adventures are on that other side.[3]

Well, it is “that other side” which earmarks the creative area. The fact that we can do little to instruct each other in its exploration accounts, in no small measure, for the very few who ever make the attempt. Most of us prefer the beaten path; we do not aspire to stepping into territory never trod before, all alone.

There are, however, a few suggestions one can make that may aid in getting another started, tips on the shove-off—providing another wishes to take the plunge into his own unknown. Only a beginner, one taking his first steps, would have the temerity to offer counsel about an adventure so enormous. So, here goes!

The Mind Receives Ideas

The first step is the acceptance of a concept: The conscious mind does not create the idea. This mind is as a radio receiving set that can, if sensitively tuned, receive ideas. The recognition that there is a Creative Source outside of or over and beyond the conscious self cleanses the mind of know-it-allness and provides an openness, a humility, conducive to reception.

Next, as an essential precondition to the reception of ideas, to creative thinking, is a deep-seated, even prayerful desire that they be received. Ideas or insights appear not readily to come into consciousness except where they are ardently sought.

Fundamental, as in any activity, is practice or exercise. Biologists and physiologists know that the human brain has a seemingly endless supply of neuroblasts, the unfinished nerve cells, and that, potentially, these can, during the span of life, be developed into neurons, the finished nerve cells:

The potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and, depending upon physical factors, education, environment and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. . . . There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline.[4]

Inducing ourselves to exercise mentally is more difficult than inducing ourselves to exercise physically. Knowing the need of physical exercise, I have never been able to persist in a program of setting-up exercises. So I play the pleasant trick on myself of indulging in golf and curling.

Accept Each Challenge

Comparable opportunities exist for inducing mental activity. Most individuals who have any competence in the libertarian philosophy are invited to write or speak. Do not be like the demure young thing who refuses when asked to play the piano. Accept! Initially, this will require courage and many aches will ensue. It is like birth pains, for unused faculties are brought into play. But it is amazing how much thinking and study one will do—once an invitation is accepted—not merely to avoid making a fool of oneself but to appear to others as intelligent as he, in his secret heart, regards himself! The incentives in such circumstances are powerful, indeed!

Look for, rather than run away from, difficult questions posed by others. The search for answers seems to open spigots of the mind. Ideas hitherto undreamed of will begin to flow. The art of becoming is greatly improved by the act of overcoming.

A Chance To Learn

Let me now report the second instance, during the preparation of this chapter, which illustrates how oddly and coincidentally ideas come to one. Just as I was about to write this thought concerning mental exercise and ways of inducing it, a businessman of libertarian persuasions phoned. Said he, “Because of Jim Rogers’ prodding, I have now accepted and delivered four speeches. And, am I learning a lot!” Here is the perfect example to illustrate my point. He is discovering talents that neither he nor his friends knew he had. Every speech of his will now become easier and better as will his reception of ideas. And, please reflect on the increased attractiveness and effectiveness of his informal conversations. He is becoming a source or wellspring.

Be patient. You cannot force yourself to have an idea any more than you can force an idea upon another. Feed yourself the problem to which you want answers, and then relax and wait. You must have faith that they will come. I cannot explain why this so frequently proves fruitful, but it does. It is quite obvious that the state of inspiration is not directly under the control of the will. No one can gain anything by saying, “Now I will be inspired.” In fact, the only effort allowed by “the rules” is patient, regular work with the view of tuning the mind to a state of receptivity.[5]

Be alert. Ideas—call them inspiration, cognition, intuition, answers to questions, creative thoughts or whatever—have no conventional manner of presenting themselves. They come in countless ways, perhaps in a dream or as a thought-flash in the mind. Watch for the idea’s appearance in the conversation of others; or, you may be reading a book and there it is! Quite often an idea will come in fragments, like a jigsaw puzzle, and the pieces may make their appearances weeks or even months apart. All of this may sound very mysterious, but it is no more so than a lily of the valley. We lose sight of the mystery in the commonplace while unfamiliarity accentuates the mystery in the uncommon.

Do not pin your expectations on some big idea and by so doing miss the importance of its seemingly insignificant parts—the tiny idea. The grandiose idea, like the brain itself, is but the flowering of its little components. In short, count as success the discovery of a word or the shaping of a phrase that will improve understanding and communication.

An Open Mind

Formulate your ideas. Whenever coming into possession of an idea, work it out, think it through, develop its fullness, at once. Never permit an unformulated idea to clutter the mind. It must be hatched or, to change the metaphor, brought to bloom. Here is where conscious effort plays such an important role. For, unless an idea is gotten off the receiver and into memory, or otherwise recorded, the receiving set will not function with high fidelity. Indeed, one may get only “static.” Two or three unhatched ideas make for mental confusion, the mind clogs or jams, and additional ideas, if they come, will be lost. The best way to do one’s homework is to commit an idea to writing immediately on its reception.

Writing is the best way to formulate ideas, even to have ideas. One cannot formulate ideas in writing without thinking. Writing is a hard taskmaster, a severe discipline. It is easy to conclude that an idea is mastered—until the attempt is made to put it in writing. Instantly, many of its imperfections become apparent. An idea which cannot be written is an idea not mastered or possessed.

An idea once put to writing supplies improved words for speech, that is, writing adds to the fluency of speech.

There is an additional reason why writing should be adopted as a personal discipline. It has to do with another curious fact, the evanescence or flightiness or fading of ideas. All of us have had vivid dreams, yet the memory of them may be for only a few hours, sometimes for only a fraction of a second. Ideas behave in this same manner. So far as the memory is concerned, writing aids indelibility. However, it is the capturing of the idea for subsequent use or reference that counts. All of us have had thousands of ideas about which we are now totally unaware or, to quote Russell Dicks, “The infant mortality of newborn ideas is enormous.”

Don’t Let the Thought Perish

Parenthetically, there is another valuable point to keep in mind. It has to do with the premonitory or pre-cognitive character of ideas as they flash into consciousness.

An insight or an idea as it impinges upon the consciousness—however ephemeral or evanescent the idea—is a forewarning to the individual that he will be in need of it later on. Unattended to, the insight will fade and one will not even be aware of having experienced it. Later, when the call comes for its use—in response to a question or when writing—there will be no more on hand than a vacuity. Attended to—immediately thought through and developed—the insight will exist as a personal, more or less matured reality, ready for use when its time comes.

Writers and conversationalists, respected for their range, depth, alertness, brilliance, are those who have taken advantage of that which has been offered them. They are the ones who have not postponed their homework but who have relegated to the past tense, as quickly as possible, the working out of all insights and ideas as received.

When the premonitory character of insights is more widely understood and believed than now, the infant mortality rate of newborn ideas will sharply decline.

A Daily Journal

May I commend the keeping of a daily journal in which ideas are formulated. Anyway, write the record of every day; for writing induces concentration and concentration is the most likely state in which ideas are received, in which they flow into consciousness. Let me quote Dr. Harding:

The degree of concentration will clear the field of irrelevancies and enable [one] to tap ideas which under ordinary circumstances would be blotted out. If my theory is correct, the frequency of ideas per minute, so to speak, will be greatly increased under a powerful mood with its intense concentration. Under these conditions the mind . . . becomes, as it were, an intense magnetic field gathering up ideas from realms of mind not possible under ordinary circumstances.[6]

To receive, it is necessary to give. Visualize a dam, back of which is a large body of water. From the dry side of the dam, insert a long pipe through the concrete so that it taps the water. Put a cap on the pipe. No water will flow from it; no water will flow into it. Now, remove the cap. Immediately, the potential energy of the lake becomes kinetic energy. Water will flow from the pipe; water will flow into it. This is energy in motion, energy at work.

A Flow of Ideas

Ideas are also a form of energy like the water. If you would receive ideas, then give off the ideas. Make them available to others. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” is a way of suggesting that giving is a precondition to receiving. Perhaps this is another way of saying that the best way to learn is to teach or, relating to our freedom problem, the best way to receive ideas is to speak and write about freedom principles. Liberty does, in fact, depend upon eloquence.

We should not overlook the time dimension. Most of us, when it comes to time, are not the captains of our own souls but instead are the victims of pressures, petty demands, trivia, weaknesses. One cannot concentrate and contemplate while viewing most TV programs, for instance. Nor can one receive ideas while letting the mind dwell on extraneous matters, or when one is angry, frustrated, depressed, or when one is scheming to remodel someone else.

Each person must discover for himself the mystery of time. Instead of being a circumscribing, confining, limiting element, time is in abundant supply. We make our own time, and thus time can be made elastic—responding, stretching, bending, expanding to accommodate our higher necessities. The reason why most persons complain that they “don’t have time” is because they have no serious need for it. Be it noted that those who are creative and accomplish the most, strangely enough, are those who are, seemingly, the least pressed for time. Actually, there is more time for the really important matters than any of us ever knows how to use.

“Creative Quietism”

Now, here is an idea I have not succeeded in formulating to my own satisfaction. I am—how shall I say it?—intuitively certain of its importance but I have not yet discovered how to present it convincingly to many others. The idea has to do with a mode of behavior or method of working which Lao Tzu called “creative quietism.” Reduced to practice, this means that we would not seek to make public figures of ourselves, but resolve instead to work with others in private seminars or in private study groups or in personal exchanges of ideas or in publishing material for private distribution. Aim to work privately as extensively as possible but shy away from becoming a public spectacle. Instead of seeking publicity, creative quietism suggests concentration on the perfecting of thought to which others will be drawn. Have no fear that one’s light will be hidden; be confident, rather, that any light, if strong enough, will penetrate the darkness. Parenthetically, creative quietism is also the ideal way to proceed politically. If this method is used, those with libertarian beliefs will eventually occupy public office before the socialists know what has happened. For, nothing is so difficult to combat as that which is not known to exist. What I am arguing for might be dubbed “an underground on the top floor”—not secret but not showy; not impossible but not easy. Anyway, it is obvious that creative quietism is the way of working most conducive to creative thinking.[7]

No doubt the creativity manifests itself to some extent and on some occasions through everyone. Breathes there a man who never had an idea? Yet, the individuals through whom this Creative Force abundantly and miraculously flows are rare, indeed. Only now and then does history show us such examples as Leonardo da Vinci, the man who was Shakespeare, Goethe, Edison. True, there have been thousands, but only thousands among the billions who have lived on this earth.

The general consensus has been that these geniuses were not only peculiarly endowed but that the rest of us are committed to a life of mediocrity. There are those, however, who take exception to this consensus about the rest of us, one of whom was an Austrian “mystic” by the name of Rudolph Steiner. He held that the creative potentiality was a normal human endowment, that this potentiality could to some degree be realized by many of us, providing we make the right kind of efforts.

Helpful Exercises

Steiner prescribed several exercises, but I shall present only the ones I have personally tried. These exercises cover a six-month period. If a day is missed in any month, begin the month all over again. These are designed to be habit forming, disciplines that have to do with one’s thinking, feeling, willing; therefore, laxity cancels out any possible benefits.

First Month

Concentrate for not less than five minutes each day on some object of your own choosing—a blade of grass, a leaf, a rock, a pencil, or whatever. Think of everything you possibly can about this object—for instance, its source, even its molecular configuration, its purpose, and so on. But it should be your exploratory thinking, no one else’s. One purpose of this exercise is to fix or identify you with reality, for any person who succeeds in a “breakthrough” is in danger of getting his “head in the clouds,” whereas he should “keep his feet on the ground.” The exercise stretches the consciousness remarkably. But, most important, is its development of dear thinking, controlled by self. It helps to free one from exterior influences like traditions, social positions, professions, nationalities, and so on—in short, to release one from being a mere reflex of one’s environment. It teaches one to think about subjects of his own choosing without getting lost.

Second Month

This one, before it is tried, may sound silly. Its purpose is the development of personal will power. Most of us mistake our desire for approbation, our fear of opprobrium, and other motivations, for will power. We are prone to believe that we freely choose what we do more than the facts warrant. This exercise requires that you compel yourself to do something which has no utility whatever: Do something as useless as walking around a room once the first day, twice the second, and so on. The thirtieth day you will make thirty loops! Better do this one in the privacy of your own boudoir!

Third Month

Each day reflect on something which happens to you, be the happening good or bad. Bearing in mind that everything that happens to you has an instruction peculiarly its own, try to deduce what that instruction is. This exercise not only impressed on me how numerous the good happenings are relative to the bad ones but it sharpened my perception of important daily lessons that had been going unheeded. The teachings of the Creator, it seems, are not always in words, much less in English. Further, the exercise keeps one from being carried away with joy or depressed by sorrow or suffering. It helps to combat anger, irritation, fear, and to assure a personal equilibrium, a sense of inner quietness. Do not underrate the significance of inner quietness as a daily experience.

Fourth Month

For thirty consecutive days try to find the positive in the negative; that is, try to find something good in the bad. The good is always there. Example: Christ was warned not to cross a road because on the other side was something bad: the rotting carcass of a dog. Christ crossed the road and observed the good: “The dog has beautiful teeth.”[8]

Fifth Month

Every day make it a point to reserve judgment. Refuse to draw a conclusion from gossip or hearsay. (Most newspapers and magazines will give you plenty of material.) Draw a conclusion only after you have personally come into possession of the facts.

Sixth Month

Repeat the five exercises, in their order, for six days each.

I must add that no one should even consider these exercises who is not temperamentally and spiritually ready and determined to become an improved person, at whatever cost. Such a venture should be entered upon happily but never lightly. To “toy” with these untapped and potentially powerful forces within one’s own person is actually dangerous. Embark on this exploration conscientiously, or not at all. Further, this exploration, to be practically useful, must not be dissociated from one’s workaday life. It is worth-while only if integrated with daily affairs, with such earthy matters as making a living.

It Is Easy To Bo Destructive

In conclusion, I would have you reflect on how easy it is to make others angry or antagonistic or to take the fruits of their labor or even to kill them. These are popular forms of destructive influence. But, when it comes to creative influence—advancing the wisdom of another—we can do nothing, absolutely nothing, except as we generate in ourselves the power of attraction. This power, in turn, derives exclusively from depth of understanding and clarity of exposition or, shall we say, the measure of one’s own wisdom.

In my judgment, a precondition to any realization of one’s creative powers is the recognition of one’s impotency. We must know how utterly powerless we are to cast others in our own images before there can be any emergence of our latent powers. For, be it remembered, we have not been given mankind to improve and reform, but only man—one’s manhood, if that can be found! Does this appear like a project too minor? It is, in my view, life’s one, great challenge presented at birth to each individual. No one can manage it except the individual and each will be graded on how competently he meets his own challenge.

I repeat, America’s greatest need is for thousands of creative thinkers, writers, talkers—individuals who can, within their own circle of acquaintance and activity, serve as sources or wellsprings of the libertarian philosophy. No one can instruct another as to what he should do. No person can do more than attend to his own improvement and thus rise to the position where others will draw on him, call on him, invite him into counsel. This do-it-yourself project is one’s only practical means of becoming valuable to others. And, have no fear about your own actions. You will act in response to whatever you become!

Unquestionably, it is possible for an individual, by the force of concentration and other disciplines, to tune in frequencies not usually perceived and thus gather ideas from many sources—from The Source and the emerging human sources where ideas are in supply. In so doing one will in turn become a source in his own right, extending his radiation as he progresses in his own fulfillment. This is the type of progress that might well be the prime aspiration of all who take the freedom philosophy seriously.

[1] Today, in the U.S.A., there are numerous persons who no doubt are superior to Bastiat as thinkers or writers or talkers, and their number is encouragingly on the increase.

[2] Henri Poincare, The Creative Process (New York: The New American Library of World Literature, Inc.), p. 37.

[3] John Kord Lagemann, “Meet the Champion,” Reader’s Digest, April 1959.

[4] Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 114.

[5] The last two sentences are paraphrased from The Anatomy of Inspiration by Dr. Rosamond E. M. Harding (Cambridge, England: W. Hefter & Son, Ltd.), p. 104.

[6] Ibid., p. 135. “Magnetic field” may not be accurate. Perhaps it would be better to say that the mind, under intense concentration, becomes a powerful amplifier and thus can tune in “stations” otherwise inaudible. Also, it is apparent that intense concentration makes possible the tuning in of frequencies not possible under ordinary circumstances.

[7] “A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for new truth. . . .” Albert Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization.

[8] This is from one of the Apocryphal Gospels.

• CHAPTER 11 •

THREE LEVELS OF LEADERSHIP

In the preceding chapters, I have claimed that any widening of libertarian understanding rests on the emergence from numerous walks of life of a corps of creative thinkers, writers, talkers of the free market, private property, limited government philosophy with its moral and spiritual antecedents.

At the very least, this pronouncement has proved discouraging to many of those who accept its validity. Most people who are concerned about and opposed to the present interventionist drift have held out little hope that they, personally, could ever become creative thinkers, writers, talkers of this complex subject. Thus, many have abandoned any concerted effort: The goal seems too high for them to make a try.

While there is nothing to warrant any lowering of the goal, experience and observation now convince me that there are other ways in which one can be effective on behalf of freedom. It seems to me now that there is not just one but, rather, there are three distinct levels of leadership potential. At least one of these is open to any individual for whom conscious effort is not an overpowering obstacle.

THE FIRST LEVEL—Achieve that degree of understanding which makes it impossible to join in or support, in any manner whatsoever, any socialistic proposal; in short, refrain from ideological wrongdoing.

To attain this initial level requires no “original” thinking, writing, or talking, but it is much more than an incidental step. It takes a lot of doing! For instance, to avoid supporting any socialism requires an intimate understanding of what socialism is, the misleading labels under which it appears, and the subtle ways it insinuates itself into social action and behavior. Few people are able to recognize the nature of a socialistic practice once it has been Americanized. They think of a policy as socialistic only as and if it is practiced by such avowed socialists as the Russians. To uphold freedom effectively, one must be able to identify and understand local socialism. Every American practice has to be brought under rigorous inspection and scrutiny and examined in the light of socialism’s definition: Government ownership and control of the means of production.

I am not suggesting that it is possible or practical to divorce oneself completely from socialistic influences. Complete separation would demand no use of the mails, no eating of bread, no riding of planes or ships, doing without an economical supply of power and light in more than 1,800 of our cities, no selling of goods and services to socialistic institutions, and so on, ad infinitum. To live, one must accept the facts of this world, at least to a large extent.[1] But it is possible to so live as never to sponsor a single socialistic invasion into the social and economic structure.[2]

One further thought: Do not underestimate the enormous influences set in motion by a person who refuses to sanction or promote any wrong action. Pronounced exemplary qualities have unbelievable radiating powers. The individual who gives no offense to libertarian ideals—even if he be utterly silent—attracts emulators, sets high standards for others to follow.

THE SECOND LEVEL—Achieve that degree of understanding and exposition required to point out socialistic fallacies and certain principles of freedom to those who come within one’s own personal orbit.

Obviously, it requires more doing to reach this second level than to reach the first. This goes beyond the realm of abstinence and moves into the area of positive action. It demands that a person learn to articulate the understanding he acquires. Included are skills in talking and writing, the proper stance, and so on.

There appears to be no limit to how far one can go in improving oral and written presentations. These disciplines are always subject to betterment, regardless of how far one has advanced. To really know a subject is to be able to speak or write it as easily as replying “49” to the query, “What’s 7×7?”[3]

It is at this second level of leadership that stance—one’s attitude toward others—becomes of great importance. There is the inevitable temptation, once a person comes into possession of ideas new to him, to inflict the new “wisdom” on others, to reform them, to make them over in his own image. So far as the advancement of libertarian ideals is concerned, the effects of this tactic are the opposite of those intended. It will send scurrying not only foes but friends as well. Little more will be accomplished than to earn a reputation as “a pest.”

If one will wait patiently for others to recognize his newly acquired competence—relax until others are ready to listen and share his views—closed minds will open and become receptive. Indeed, no person can gain access to the mind of another until the other lets him in. It is the other who has control of the doorways to his own perception. Prior to his decision to let us in, we are helpless. The “eager beaver” shows bad stance, and is rarely if ever admitted.

Advancement of libertarian ideals requires that each of us understands that the higher grade the objective, the higher grade must the method be. For instance, if one’s objective were to destroy another, low-grade methods would suffice. But if the objective be the expansion of another’s consciousness or the increasing of his wisdom, then only high-grade methods can be effective. Advancing an understanding of libertarian ideals belongs to the same hierarchy of values as does the expansion of consciousness and the increasing of wisdom.[4] In this respect, we can do nothing to others; we can only do something for them, and then only if we have something in store to give. We must recognize our limitations before we can begin to realize our potentialities.

THE THIRD LEVEL—Achieve that degree of excellence in understanding and exposition which will inspire others to seek one out as a tutor of the libertarian philosophy.

This is the level attained by the creative thinker, writer, talker, the level at which the power of attraction comes into play.

All of us are aware of creative persons in various fields: religion, music, poetry, art, mathematics, the physical sciences, engineering, indeed, in all of the disciplines. These persons, as a rule, have reached their high status through practice, and concentration on self-perfection. A person becomes so rich in understanding and so inventive in explaining what he has learned or perceived that others, having ambitions for higher understanding, are drawn to him, that is, they seek him out as a tutor.

An individual may be sought as a tutor by only one or by millions; for a short period or for centuries. St. Augustine’s Confessions, today, is among the most widely purchased of all autobiographies. That man, fifteen centuries after his passing, is still sought as a tutor by untold numbers, a measure of immortality, so to speak.

Reflect on the eminent naturalist, Luther Burbank. His work in his chosen field may have been as creative as man ever achieves. By turning his sights inward, that is, toward his own perfection, he experienced ideas, insights, inspiration, inventiveness. The garden spots of the world are richer and more beautiful by reason of this man’s creative conduct. Suppose he had decided to concentrate, instead, on the shortcomings of others by calling attention to their unkempt gardens! He would have been remembered only as a muckraker and the earth would have been left less, not more, beautiful by reason of his existence. No one would have sought him as a tutor.

The creative thinker, writer, talker of libertarian ideals concentrates on the perfecting of his own understanding and on discovering effective ways to communicate such light as he possesses. Effort, of the deeply conscious variety, may result in a new parable, an enlightening analogy or homology, minor literary inventions that cause another to remark: “Now I see what you mean.”

For instance, it has long been our contention that: “The fiscal concomitant of state welfarism or intervention is inflation. Politically, it is impossible to finance socialism by any other means. Therefore, for those of us who do not like inflation, only one recourse is open —divest government of its power to practice socialism.”[5] Such a statement is formal and difficult to grasp, thus, it needs some sort of an analogy to dramatize the point, such as:

A good economy, in one respect, resembles a sponge. A sponge can sop up a lot of mess but when it becomes saturated the sponge itself is a mess. For the sponge to be useful again, the mess has to be wrung out of it.

Examples of creative thinkers who are sought as tutors? Adam Smith performed in this respect so well that he, more than any other, was responsible for the Industrial Revolution. Carl Menger discovered the marginal utility theory of value on which the free market rests; Eugen Böhm-Bawerk invented ways to explain the theory. His student, Ludwig von Mises, among his many findings, discovered that there is no valid basis for making market judgments in a state of socialism. And think of the Hayeks, Hazlitts, Fertigs, and countless others who have sought the tutorship of Mises. Many of these students, in turn, have been sought as tutors. Among our contemporaries, I can now name several hundred who qualify as creative thinkers, writers, talkers of the libertarian philosophy whom others seek out as tutors. But to name them would do offense to the hundreds about whom I have never heard.

Yes, there are at least these three possible levels of libertarian leadership. Plainly, no one can start at the third level, or at the second. The first level must be attained first, and the second level next. There is, however, one splendid fact which all aspirants should recognize: Mastery of the first level will lead, inevitably, to a competency in the second and, from the second, many, in humility and unawareness, will emerge into the third with some degree of creative proficiency and, thus, will be sought as tutors.

The way is not easy, but the reward for these achievements is individual liberty and, we submit, there is no other way.

[1] This is a delicate point and needs much reflection. For instance, how much government pap, in a “welfare” economy, should a person accept? This question is somewhat like how much sedation should a patient take? The answer to both questions is: as little as possible. Both pap and sedation are killers of persons as well as of immediate pain.

[2] The manager of a prominent business voiced the sentiments of many “leaders”: “Yes, possible for you in your FEE Ivory Tower. But were I to take this straight and narrow path I would be so at odds with the socialistic demands of my community that I couldn’t keep my job.” This is mere speculation on the manager’s part. He has taken his orders from his own guesstimates of the popular taste for so long that he fears to risk an instruction from his own conscience. Further, a job which can be kept only through wrongdoing is no more respectable than is harlotry.

[3] For an elaboration of this point see “Who Knows?” in Notes from FEE, May 1961.

[4] See Chapter 8.

[5] For an explanation from which this conclusion is drawn, see Liberty: A Path to Its Recovery by F. A. Harper, pp. 106–113 (The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y. Cloth $2.00; paper $1.50).

• CHAPTER 12 •

CAN BUSY PEOPLE BECOME LIBERTARIAN LEADERS?

A young businessman with whom I have a firsthand acquaintance has just begun a new and technical enterprise—from scratch and on a shoestring—straining all his energies and thoughts with only one end in view: getting his entrepreneurial duckling airborne. All other activities have been relegated to second place.

One other observation is relevant: This young man is a well-trained libertarian thinker, as accomplished as any businessman I know. With these facts in mind, it is understandable why he rebelled at a remark of mine: “Every American is doing all he knows how to do on behalf of liberty,” Concluding that he was doing nothing on behalf of liberty, while solely preoccupied with his new enterprise, he took my remark to infer that he didn’t know how to do anything. Mulling over his reaction, I came upon what to me is an important discovery and one which leads to the belief that this individual really is working on behalf of liberty in an effective manner. How? By employing what I choose to call “primary knowledge.” Not only does this man have primary knowledge to a marked degree but he practices it in every act of his specialized occupation.

Anyway, it was this sequence of talk and retrospection which led to a simple idea as to how our busiest people can assist in rescuing liberty from her present plight. They can do this without any more sacrifice of their chosen work than it takes to learn the essential features of primary knowledge and to get up the nerve to practice it—that is, to make it an integral part of their daily occupations, whatever they happen to be. Let me explain.

Primary Knowledge

While not customarily so divided, knowledge can be said to fall into two broad categories, primary and secondary. The nub of the idea under discussion is that liberty depends exclusively on primary knowledge and its practice, and not at all on secondary knowledge. If this be a correct thought, then the path to liberty’s rescue lies in simple outline, even though it may be a rugged path and call forth some difficult virtues to negotiate.

Primary knowledge, as the term suggests, is cognition of the fundamental type or, more precisely, knowledge of first importance. As hard to come by as some of it is, it requires little in the way of expensive schools or knowledge factories. It is, in a sense, a universal or natural knowledge which, when not realized, at least lies latent in man and can be freed, more or less, by conscious effort, the energizing of which is a strictly personal matter. The Law of Compensation is an instance: knowing that something dropped should be picked up; that a door opened should be closed; that a promise made should be kept; that money borrowed should be repaid; that with every right there is a responsibility. Other examples of primary knowledge:

Knowing how little one knows, an essential quality of the nonauthoritarian: Humility.

Knowing of the rights of others, sometimes expressed as not doing unto others that which one would not have done unto self: Justice.

Knowing enough to count one’s blessings—a riddance to envy, covetousness, political plunder: Gratitude.

Knowing the importance of accurately reflecting that which one believes to be right: Integrity.

Knowing of a Consciousness over and beyond that of man (the rights to life and liberty are endowed by the Creator, not by the state): Spirituality.

Knowing that one’s own consciousness is expansible and knowing the high purpose of this unfolding or emerging or hatching process: Awareness.

Other Forms of Awareness

There are other forms of awareness that fall within the scope of primary knowledge. Awareness of clanger is one. For example, were a person being held under water by another, he would struggle to free himself. Even animals have this instinctual type of knowledge.

But awareness or consciousness is on an inclining scale of its own. The loss of liberty, for instance, represents a danger much more difficult to discern than is the loss of oxygen which occasions drowning. The highly discerning person is aware that there can be no life where there are no liberties. Thus, fighting to retain liberty—a response to consciousness of danger—is tantamount to fighting for life itself, an action of first importance, an item far up the scale in the portfolio of primary knowledge.

Secondary Knowledge

Before commenting further on the relationship of primary knowledge to liberty, let’s briefly consider the nature of secondary knowledge. This embraces all forms of specialized learning. Without this type of knowledge there would have been no advances in agriculture or industry or construction. There would be no engineers or architects or other specialists. We would have no clothing as we know it, no sanitary paraphernalia, no cars, planes, harvesters, tools, engines, electric power and light, and so on. Indeed, no more of us would be living in these United States than a foraging economy could support.[1]

But secondary knowledge, important as it is to life and to life extension, is actually a danger whenever we become so preoccupied with it that we leave primary knowledge unattended. This is to say that whenever we become enamored of wealth and so busy piling up its numerous manifestations that we have neither the time nor the will for primary knowledge, nor the nerve to practice it, the whole wealth apparatus must crumble—as the Empire State Building would topple had it no foundation.

Dangers of Compulsory Methods

The dangers of secondary knowledge, in the absence of primary knowledge and its practice, are quite obvious, and examples of the danger are all about us. For instance, people who wish cheaper power and light and who do not possess such aspects of primary knowledge as humility and justice will employ the coercive powers of government to take the fruits of the labor of others to gratify their desire. There are other people, similarly deficient in primary knowledge, who will forcibly take the income of others as reimbursement for not growing tobacco (farm subsidy programs) or to renew their downtown business section (federal urban renewal) or to place three men on the moon (outer space program) or to satisfy their own charitable inclinations (government welfare programs) or—name something they won’t do!

When we discuss how busy people can rescue liberty, we should stress the fact that it’s only those who are capable of busying themselves who can give liberty a hand. The unbusy, the ones who merely seek entertainment, amusement, escape from life’s problems, and self-indulgence can rarely be more than followers of whatever attracts them—not without changing their characters, an enormous undertaking.

This line of reasoning concludes that liberty is at the mercy of the practitioners of secondary knowledge, our busy specialists who, at the same time, possess primary knowledge. Liberty can’t be saved by those who retire into their ivory towers or take to the hills, so to speak, to bemoan its plight.[2] It is the individual who is active who pushes liberty over the brink—or rescues her—depending on the nature of his actions. Inactive people are as uninfluential on this question as is any inert mass.

Liberty Comes with Living

Is it not apparent that liberty depends exclusively on primary knowledge and its practice, and not at all on secondary knowledge? Liberty is not helped or harmed by knowledge of a mathematical formula or how to raise beef or bake bread or repair a motor. But dispense with justice, integrity, and other primary virtues, and liberty cannot exist. This is self-evident. So, there is no suggestion here that any person retire from or even diminish his activity in any honorable, specialized occupation. This is not a question of either specializing or rescuing liberty. Actually, it is a matter of doing both at the same time.

We have here the most important problem of integration there is—integrating primary knowledge with specialized practice, and on the part of busy people. Little more is required than a strict observance of the disciplines which primary knowledge supplies. Extend division of labor to the heart’s content as long as the specialized activities are within the framework of such virtues as integrity, willing exchange, and the rights of others. This will, leave no loopholes to support or sponsor any of the legalized immoralities so rampant in our time.

No shoemaker would stick to his last were his shop burning down. He would try to put out the fire in order that he might again stick to his last. Aware persons know that their specialized busy-ness has no future except as liberty prevails. If each busy individual, in all his countless actions, would take no action except as it strictly accords with the axioms implicit in primary knowledge, that individual would be serving liberty persuasively and influentially. Radiating rightness is what this amounts to!

Every American is doing all he knows how to do on behalf of liberty. Does he know enough? If this thesis be correct, the answer ought to come quickly and clearly to any person who will ask himself the question.

[1] Estimating our present population at 182,000,000, at least 181,000,000 of us would not exist. The foraging American Indians, even with some agriculture, never numbered over 1,000,000, probably no more than 250,000.

[2] This is only to frown on a withdrawal from life’s problems, not to belittle reflection and contemplation.

• CHAPTER 13 •

LIBERATED!

“How long have you been interested in this philosophy?” I asked the graduate student in education, who wanted to learn more about the subject of freedom.

Her response struck me as sensational in the clarity of what it revealed: “I have now been liberated for six months.” This conjures up a picture of a person imprisoned by a host of myths, superstitions, fallacies. Then, in a flash, by some unforeseen encounter, she was freed of them all and launched on a new road to enlightenment. Liberation, as she used the term, suggested a sudden illumination, a break-through to a higher level of consciousness: “Whereas I was blind, now I see.”

It is interesting to reflect on the preliberation notions. In many cases we find lying at their root the primitive doctrine that man derives his rights to life and liberty from some man-concocted collective—the tribe or the state. This doctrine was frankly expressed in the old divine-right-of-kings thesis, an egotism few present-day statists have the nerve to admit.

The logical sequence to such a premise is the conviction that the state is responsible for a people’s welfare, security, prosperity. And if the state can grant a man’s rights, it can also retract them; that is, it is in control of rights. Freedom of choice as to how one employs himself or what he does with the fruits of his own labor is expanded or contracted according to the caprice of those who have gained command of the political apparatus. Wage and price controls, government education, public housing, federal urban renewal, government power and light, socialized medicine, government mail delivery, social security, federal subsidies to any and all groups who think themselves in distress, protection against competition, progressive taxation, and a host of other socializations or nationalizations are simply extensions of the premise that man’s rights derive from the state.

The Break-Through

Out of this confusion emerges an intensely personal experience—the moment of liberation, the break-through! An idea or fact or observation, germinating in the mind for an indeterminate period, suddenly comes to life, opens a crack, and the light floods in. It’s something like a seed embedded in a crevice of solid granite, the forces of its growth slumbering but, when released, stronger than its rock-bound prison. Its destiny undeniable, the seed splits the stone and is freed to friendly and life-giving elements.[1]

Once this opening has taken place, old ideas take on a different perspective and new ideas come into one’s comprehension. Relegated to the junk heap of myths is the absurd premise that man derives his rights from a political apparatus. To the question, “How could man, who knows next to nothing about himself, create himself or preside over creation?” comes a resounding “Impossible!” Rid of this bedeviling notion, a new premise insinuates itself into consciousness: Men are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, among them the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Or, as Bastiat later put it:

We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life.

But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties. And He has put us in the midst of a variety of natural resources. By the application of our faculties to these natural resources we convert them into products, and use them. This process is necessary in order that life may run its appointed course.

Life, faculties, production—in other words, individuality, liberty, property—this is man. And in spite of the cunning of artful political leaders, these three gifts from God precede all human legislation, and are superior to it.

Life, liberty, and property do not exist because men have made laws. On the contrary, it was the fact that life, liberty, and property existed beforehand that caused men to make laws in the first place.[2]

The Creator-Man Relationship

One logical deduction from the premise that man’s rights are endowments of the Creator is that each individual is an end in himself, that is, each person owes allegiance, above all else, to his Creator. No other person or set of persons, however organized, has any moral sanction to interfere with this Creator-man relationship; no person is warranted in compelling any human being to serve merely as a means to his own ends. When anyone violates this relationship, he is saying, in effect, “I am your god.”

It follows from the above premise that man-made laws can be no more than codified social taboos or a set of prohibitions, for the purpose of preserving inviolate the Creator-man order. All true law finds its origin and its limitation in such rights of protection as inhere in each of us. How can we tell what these rights are? Merely ascertain if universality can be applied to them. Do I, for example, have a right to defend my life, livelihood, liberty against those who would take these from me? Only if the same right may rationally be conceded to everyone else. Can it be? Obviously, yes! Now, then, do I have a right to take the life, livelihood, liberty of another? Only if the right of murder, theft, slavery may rationally be conceded to everyone else. Can it be? Obviously, no!

It follows logically from this premise that government may properly do no more than perform the defensive function. All productive and creative actions are then freed of any man-restraint, flowing solely from the Creator-man order.

When an individual is liberated, he becomes aware of the miracles which come to pass once creative human energy has no organized, man-concocted force standing against it. An unwavering faith in free men expels any lingering, misplaced confidence in little men playing god.

The omnipotent state—authoritarianism—will not be liquidated except by liberated individuals. It is only they who go in search of freedom’s answers. Until the time of liberation, they are no more teachable than a parakeet; they can repeat what they read or hear but they cannot know. If only liberated individuals can be of any help in reversing the trend away from freedom, it is important to take note of what brings about liberation.

No Master Key

Experience reveals no master key. Each mind has a unique lock. The keys presently in our possession may or may not fit. Said the student, “I have now been liberated for six months.” I made inquiry of her mentor, “What did you say to cause the break-through?” In this instance it had to do with self-responsibility, pointing out that the state can no more assume the responsibility for one’s welfare, security, prosperity than can a committee of baboons. Indeed, the responsibility for self is no more transferable than is breathing. Yet, people can be lulled into this false notion and, as a consequence, forego attention to self-responsibility, becoming purposeless and useless. But, unfortunately, this key will not fit the lock to most unopened minds.

One brilliant libertarian thinker confessed that he had been a socialist in high school, that a friend tirelessly labored with him until, finally, he saw the light. “What key did he use to unlock your mind?” I asked.

“George came to my home for dinner. I was showing him our new refrigerator. He asked me how I would allocate refrigerators, were it not for the price system. It was this recognition of the free market’s allocation of scarce resources that triggered the change in me.”

An outstanding worker for liberty acknowledged that he had finished college as a socialist. What proved to be the key to his mind? It was “Why the Worst Get on Top,” a chapter in Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom.[3]

A Wichita business leader was liberated by an idea in Weaver’s Mainspring.[4] How varied the keys!

Those who have been liberated can and do help one another—the educable aiding the educable! That we need more liberated individuals is self-evident; for among the non-liberated are, unquestionably, some of the greatest potential writers, thinkers, talkers of the freedom philosophy. But what can any of us do about it? How can we liberate them?

At the outset, it might be well to consider some of our limitations. The individual not yet liberated is no more educable as to the free market, private property, limited government philosophy than you or I are educable on subjects in which we have no interest. Thus, it is patently absurd to scold or rant at them, to be impatient, to regard them as not bright, to try poking our ideas down their necks. Such tactics will only send them scurrying.

Patience Pays Dividends

The best counsel is to take it easy. First, we must recognize that most of the individuals among our personal contacts—be they ditch diggers or Ph.D.’s—have no aptitudes whatever for this subject. Might as well practice our wiles at the zoo!

Work naturally; make freely available such insights as you possess, but do not entertain any notions about setting someone else straight. Go only where called, but qualify to be called. The few within your orbit who are susceptible to the freedom philosophy will find you out. We need never worry about that, only about our own qualifications. In this manner we will liberate as many minds as will open to our own keys.

One example of exploration: Many of my hours are spent in air travel. Is my seat companion a socialist or what? Striking up a conversation is easy enough. And just as easy is to converse in such a manner that he or she cannot help asking, within a few minutes, “What, pray tell, do you do?” His or her reaction to my brief answer will instantly reveal to me whether or not he or she has any interest in freedom. If negative, I return to my reading or writing; if affirmative, I’ll have a new worker in the vineyard when the plane touches down at Idlewild or wherever.

This unobtrusive type of exploration lends itself to any number of adaptations. It is productive as well as good exercise. Further, it is fun. Have a try at it. You may liberate someone. If you do, count on it, you’ll have made one of the best friends, ever. And you will have struck another blow for freedom!

[1] For instance, Betula Nigra, sometimes known as “The Rock Splitting Birch.”

[2] Frederic Bastiat, The Law, translated by Dean Russell (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950), pp. 5–6.

[3] F. A, Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1944).

[4] Henry Grady Weaver, The Mainspring of Human Progress (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1953).

Anything That’s Peaceful

The Case for the Free Market

Leonard E. Read

1964

Many Favor peace but not many favor the things that make for peace.

—Thomas à Kempis

Introduction

“My thesis,” Leonard Read informs us in this remarkable book, “in simplest terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful; the role of government, then, is to keep the peace.” Just so. Anything That’s Peaceful is a classic, compelling statement of the political philosophy of libertarianism. The Foundation for Economic Education is to be commended for republishing the book in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the book’s author and FEE’s founder.

I first met Leonard Read in 1975 when I visited FEE’s headquarters at Irvington-on-Hudson following the Libertarian Party’s national convention in New York City. Roger MacBride, the “adopted grandson” of Read’s friend Rose Wilder Lane, had just been named the party’s presidential nominee, and we were filled with optimism that the libertarian message was going to have significant electoral success. “I have great respect for Roger,” Leonard told me, “but I doubt that politics is the answer.”

Actually, Leonard didn’t doubt for a moment, but he always thought true wisdom required humility so he left open the possibility that I wasn’t hopelessly naïve. In fact, Read’s disdain for politics and politicians comes through loud and clear in Anything That’s Peaceful. To begin with, without looking at the date, a reader would never know that the book was published during the heat of a presidential campaign between Lyndon Johnson and Barry Goldwater because neither of them is mentioned. Of course, no other twentieth-century politician is mentioned either. The Goldwater resurgence of conservatism? Please. We’re here to discuss political philosophy and the nature of a free society, not “trimmers.”

Trimmers are discussed in Chapter 9, a powerful essay debunking the propaganda surrounding elections, self-important politicians, and the pomp and circumstances of the political process in general. Leonard Read was nothing if not a clear-eyed observer of our society who never allowed himself to be swayed by the popular passions of the day. To him the partisan battle to control Congress was no more partisan than a World Wrestling Federation match.

I always thought I was pretty hardcore in my support of congressional term limits (something, by the way, that is so hated inside the Beltway it has to be a great idea). Read calls for a lottery of all eligible voters in each congressional district, the “winner” of which would then serve one term. Sort of like jury duty. But this is no joke. He makes a serious point: “The recognition that a citizen chosen by lot could be no more than an ordinary citizen would be all to the good. This would automatically strip officialdom of that aura of almightiness which so commonly attends it; government would be unseated from its master’s role and restored to its servant’s role, a highly desirable shift in emphasis.” Indeed.

One of the most compelling sections of the book deals with the nature of education. To begin with, of course, Read thought that civil society should be populated with individuals who had sufficient humility to be “teachable.”

To be teachable was to acknowledge that we know very little in the great scheme of things. Thus, a teachable person would not presume to control another person’s life, recognizing that he had his hands full just trying to improve his own understanding and knowledge. It’s the person who thinks he “knows it all”—often, it seems, attracted to politics—who wants to order societal affairs in his own image.

Read never confused the government school system with education. Writing at a time when the public schools had record SAT scores and little crime, in typical fashion he stood back from the pack and recognized that America’s educational system was both bureaucratized and politicized. He also gave prescient warning that the teachers’ unions would become a dangerous force: “If teachers adequately organize, they can easily control the government school system and supplant the voters as the responsibility-authority fountainhead.” Of course, the “voters” shouldn’t be involved in the first place.

To Leonard Read education was first and foremost a parental responsibility. That teachers should somehow come between what parents desired for their children in the name of “academic freedom” made no more sense than a hired architect building what he, rather than his client preferred, in the name of “artistic freedom.”

Rereading Anything That’s Peaceful, after some three decades, was a treat for those and so many other enlightening observations. From how we’d do very well, thank you very much, without government delivering the mail to the very nature of man, Read offers a treasure trove of remarkably penetrating insights. The book concludes with a call for Jefferson’s “natural aristocracy,” which to Read was simply those who honestly strive to increase our understanding and who have a “love of excellence,” both in themselves and in others.

Excellence was something that Leonard clearly brought to the debate over the nature of our society. At a time when the libertarian heritage of America was flickering, when virtually all institutions—from educational to political to civic—assumed government was the answer to almost every problem with which we found ourselves confronted (remember economic “fine-tuning”?), Leonard Read founded the Foundation for Economic Education. A beacon of light for hundreds, then thousands, then tens of thousands, FEE has been an inspiration to all of us dedicated to restoring a truly free society. As Ralph Raico put it on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary, FEE has been “liberty’s Gibraltar.”

Now, with Don Boudreaux at the helm, Sheldon Richman editing The Freeman, and a committed Board of libertarians, FEE is assured a continuing leadership role in providing the eternal vigilance needed to advance the cause of human liberty as we enter the twenty-first century. I can think of no better guide for that cause than this wonderful book by Leonard Read.

—Edward H. Crane

President

Cato Institute

Washington, D.C.

July 1998

Chapter 1

A Break with Prevailing Faith

Galileo was called on the carpet, tried by the Inquisition, and put in prison because he affirmed the theory of Copernicus that the solar system does not revolve around our earth. The truth as he perceived it was a break with the prevailing faith; he committed the unpardonable sin of affronting the mores. This was his guilt.

Americans—enlightened as we suppose ourselves to be—are inclined to view with scorn that illiberal attitude of some three centuries ago which sought to keep the light of new evidence away from the fallacies of that time. Fie on such childish intolerance; we are not afraid of truth; let the light shine in!

Perhaps we should pause for a moment and carefully scrutinize what our own mirror reveals. A letter in the morning mail highlights my point: this woman had visited the librarian of the high school to which she had made a gift of The Freeman, a monthly journal that presents, dispassionately but consistently, the rationale of the free market, private property, limited government philosophy, along with its moral and spiritual antecedents. She discovered that the journal was not among the periodicals displayed for student perusal, that it had been discreetly relegated to the teachers’ reading room. What was the reason for this under-the-rug procedure? The librarian explained, “The Freeman is too conservative.” My correspondent, distraught by this illiberal attitude—by this attempt to keep students from knowing about the freedom philosophy—asked of me, “What can we do about this?”

The answer to this question is to be found in an old English proverb: “Truth will out!” As it did with Galileo’s theory, so it will do with the ideology of freedom! However, if we would conserve our energies and act in the best interests of the freedom philosophy, we will do well to reflect on the most effective way to lend a hand to the philosophy. Suppose, for instance, Galileo had exerted pressure on the Inquisitors to purvey that fragment of truth he had come upon. The folly of such a tactic is clear: His truth in the hands of his enemies; heaven forbid! Likewise, it is folly for us to exert influence on those of the collectivistic faith—be they librarians, teachers, book reviewers or bookstore owners, politicians, or whoever—to carry the message of individuality and its essential concomitant, freedom in exchange. If one wishes to win, never choose teammates who are intent on losing the contest. Indeed, such folks should be scrupulously avoided as partners.

The way to give truth a hand is to pursue a do-it-yourself policy. Each must do his own seeking and revealing. Such success as one experiences will uncover and attract all the useful, helpful, sympathetic teammates one’s pursuit deserves. This appears to be truth’s obstacle course—no short cuts allowed.

A Dark Age is followed by an Enlightenment; devolution and evolution follow on each other’s heels; myth and truth have each their day, now as ever. These opposites—action and reaction—occur with the near regularity of a pendulum, here as elsewhere, the vaunted “common sense of the American people” notwithstanding.

The Faith in Collectivism

Our time, as did Galileo’s, witnesses an enormous intolerance toward ideas which challenge the prevailing faith, that faith today being collectivism—world-wide. Americans during the past three or four decades have swung overwhelmingly toward the myths implicit in statism; but, more than this, they have become actually antagonistic to, and afraid of identification with, free market, private property, limited government principles. Indeed, such is the impact of the collectivistic myth, they shy away from any idea or person or institution which the political welfarists and planners choose to label as “rightists.” I have labored full time in this controversy for more than thirty years and, having a good memory, these shifts are as clear to me as if they had occurred in the last few moments, or I’d just viewed a time-lapse movie of these events. Were I unaware that such actions and reactions are inevitable in the scheme of things—particularly when observing such behavior by businessmen as well as by teachers, clergymen, and labor officials—I would be unable to believe my eyes.

Yet, truth will out! While myth and truth contend in their never-ending fray, truth inches ahead over the millennia as might be expected from the evolutionary process. My faith says that this is ordained, if we be worthy, for what meaning can truth have except our individual perception of it? This is to say that among the numerous imperatives of truth is that many individuals do their utmost in searching for it and reporting whatever their search reveals.

Worthiness also requires of those who would don her mantle a quality of character which I shall call incorruptibility. The more individuals in whom this quality finds refinement the better, and the sooner more truth will out. This quality is too important to suffer neglect for brevity’s sake; so let me spell it out.

If my claim for incorruptibility is to hold water, the notion of corruption will have to be refined beyond its generally accepted identification with bribery, stealing, boldfaced lying, and the like. Deplorable as are these specimens, they wreak but minor havoc compared to the more subtle corruptions of the intellect and the soul which, unfortunately, are rarely thought of—or even felt—as corruption.

The level of corruption I wish to examine was suggested to me by a friend’s honest confession, “I am as much corrupted by my loves as by my hates.” Few of us have succeeded in rising above this weakness; indeed, it is difficult to find one who has. Where is the individual who has so freed himself from his affections for or prejudices against persons, parties, creeds that he can utterly disregard these passions and weigh each and every act or proposal or idea strictly on its own merits—as if he were unaware of its source? Where is the man who can say “yes” or “no” to friend or foe with equal detachment? So rare are such individuals that we run the risk of concluding that no such person exists.

However, we must not despair. Recently, I was presented with an idea by an unknown author—in these words: “There is no such thing as a broken commitment.” Observing on many occasions that people do actually go back on their bonds, I thought this to be at odds with the facts of life. Later, its meaning was explained to me: An unbroken commitment in this context means something more than paying debts, keeping promises, observing contracts. A man has a commitment to his own conscience, that is, to truth as his highest conscience discerns truth, and every word and deed must be an accurate reflection thereof. No pressure of fame or fortune or love or hate can even tempt such a person to compromise his integrity. At this level of life there can be no broken commitment.

Incorruptibility in its intellectual and spiritual sense refers to a higher order of men than is generally known to exist. It relates to men whose moral nature is such that infidelity to conscience is as unthinkable to them as stealing pennies from a child’s bank is to us. Folks who would deviate from their own highest concept of righteousness simply are not of this order nor are they likely to be aware that there is such an order of men.

An interesting sidelight on the individual whose prime engagement is with his own conscience and who is not swerved by popular acclaim or the lack of it, is that he seldom knows who his incorruptible brothers are. They are, by their nature—all of them—a quiet lot; indeed, most of us are lucky if we ever spot one.

Signs of Corruption

At this moment in history, this order of men must be distressingly small. The reason for this opinion is the “respectability” which presently attends all but the basest forms of corruption. Almost no shame descends upon seekers after office who peddle pure hokum in exchange for votes; they sell their souls for political power and become the darlings of the very people on whom their wiles are practiced. Business and professional men and women, farmers and workers, through their association and lobbies, clergymen from their pulpits, and teachers before their students shamelessly advocate special privileges: the feathering of the nests of some at the expense of others—and by coercion! For so doing they receive far more pious acclaim than censure. Such are the signs of widespread corruption.

As further evidence of intellectual corruption, reflect on the growing extent to which excuses are advanced as if they were reasons. In the politico-economic realm, for example, we put an embargo on goods from China because they are, in fact, competitive. But professing to favor free, competitive enterprise, and hesitating to confess that we are against competition, we corrupt ourselves and offer the excuse that these goods are “red.”

Caviar from Russia—noncompetitive—is imported by the ton but is just as “red” as a linen tablecloth from China. This type of corruption occurs on an enormous scale, but is shrugged off as “good business.” Things would be otherwise if incorruptibility were more common.

If I am not mistaken, several rare, incorruptible oversouls have passed my way during these last three decades. For one thing, they were different. But it cannot be said that they stood out from the rest of us for, to borrow a phrase from a Chinese sage, they all operated in “creative quietness.” While not standing out, they were outstanding—that is, their positions were always dictated by what they believed to be right. This was their integrity. They consistently, everlastingly sought for the right. This was their intelligence. Furthermore, their integrity and intelligence imparted to them a wisdom few ever attain: a sense of being men, not gods, and, as a consequence, an awareness of their inability to run the lives of others. This was their humility. Lastly, they never did to others that which they would not have others do to them. This was their justice.

Truth will out, with enough of these incorruptible souls!

The Truth About Freedom

Now, having staked out the ideal, it behooves me to approximate it as best I can, which is to say, to present the truth as I see it, in this instance, as it bears on the free market and related institutions.

By my title, “Anything That’s Peaceful,” I mean let anyone do anything he pleases that’s peaceful or creative; let there be no organized restraint against anything but fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation; let anyone deliver mail or educate or preach his religion or whatever, so long as it’s peaceful; limit society’s agency of organized force—government—to juridical and policing functions, tabulating the do-nots and prescribing the penalties against unpeaceful actions; let the government do this and leave all else to the free, unfettered market!

All of this, I concede, is an affront to the mores. So be it!

One more point: Discussion of ideological questions is more or less idle unless there be an awareness of what the major premise is. At what is the writer aiming? Is he doing his reasoning with some purpose in mind? If so, what is it?

I do not wish to leave anyone in the dark concerning my basic point of reference. Realizing years ago that I couldn’t possibly be consistent in my positions unless I reasoned from a basic premise—fundamental point of reference—I set about it by asking one of the most difficult of questions: What is man’s earthly purpose?

I could find no answer to that question without bumping, head on, into three of my basic assumptions. The first derives from the observation that man did not create himself, for there is evidence aplenty that man knows very little about himself, thus:

1. The primacy and supremacy of an Infinite Consciousness;

2. The expansibility of individual consciousness, this being demonstrably possible; and

3. The immortality of the individual spirit or consciousness, our earthly moments being not all there is to it—this being something I know but know not how to demonstrate.

With these assumptions, the answer to the question, “What is man’s earthly purpose?” comes clear: It is to expand one’s own consciousness into as near a harmony with Infinite Consciousness as is within the power of each, or, in more lay terms, to see how nearly one can come to a realization of those creative potentialities peculiar to one’s own person, each of us being different in this respect.

This is my major premise with which the reader may or may not agree but he can, at least, decide for himself whether or not the following chapters are reasoned logically from this basic point of reference.

The ideas offered here have been brewing for several years. Many of them, though slightly rephrased, have appeared elsewhere as separate essays. My aim now is to gather those fragments into an integrated, free market theme.

Chapter 2

The American Setting: Past and Present

Someone once said: It isn’t that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it has been tried and found difficult—and abandoned. Perhaps the same running away from righteousness is responsible for freedom’s plight for, plainly, the American people are becoming more and more afraid of and are running away from—abandoning—their very own freedom revolution.

Freedom, it seems to me, is of two broad types, psychological and sociological. The psychological—perhaps the more important of the two, but not the major concern of this book—has to do with man freeing himself from his own superstitions, myths, fears, imperfections, ignorance. This, of course, is a never-ending task to which we should give a high priority.

The sociological aspect of freedom, on the other hand, has to do with man imposing his will by force on other men. It is unfortunate that we need to spend any time on this part of the problem, for it calls for combating a situation that should not be. For instance, it is absurd for me forcibly to impose my will upon you: dictate what you are to discover, invent, create, where you shall work, the hours of your labor, the wage you shall receive, what and with whom you shall exchange. And it is just as absurd for any two or even millions or any agency that the millions may contrive—government or otherwise—to try to forcibly direct and control your creative or productive or peaceful actions.

Light can be shed on this thought by reflecting on the manner in which human energy manifests itself. Broadly speaking, it shows forth as either peaceful or unpeaceful, which is to say, as creative or destructive. If my hand is used to paint a picture, write this book, build a home, strew seed, my energy is manifestly peaceful, creative, productive. But if I make a clenched fist of the same hand and strike you with it, my energy is manifestly unpeaceful, destructive.

My theme is that any one of us has a moral right to inhibit the destructive actions of another or others, and, by the same token, we have a right to organize (government) to accomplish this universal right to life, livelihood, liberty. But no living person or any combination of persons, regardless of how organized, has a moral right forcibly to direct and control the peaceful, creative, productive actions of another or others. To repeat, we should not find it necessary to devote time and thought to this sociological aspect of the freedom problem, but a brief sketch of the American setting, past and present, will demonstrate that an awakening is now “a must” of the first order.

Let us pick up the thread of the historical setting beginning with the year 1620 when our Pilgrim Fathers landed at Plymouth Rock. That little colony began by practicing communism; all that was produced by each member, regardless of how much or how little, was forced (unpeaceful) into a common warehouse and the proceeds of the warehouse were doled out in accord with the governing body’s idea of the need. In short, our Pilgrim Fathers began the practice of a principle that was advanced by Karl Marx—more than two centuries later—as the ideal of the Communist Party: “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

There was a persuasive reason why the Pilgrims threw overboard this communalistic or communistic practice: the members were starving and dying because, when people are organized in this manner, the warehouse always runs out of provender. The stark reality of the situation suggested to them that their theory was wrong and, bless them, they paused for reflection. In the third winter when they met with Governor Bradford, he said to them, in effect: Come spring, we’ll try a new idea. We’ll cast aside this communistic notion of to each according to need and try the idea of to each according to merit. Come spring, and each of you shall have what each produces.

As the record has it, springtime witnessed not only father in the field but mother and the children as well. Governor Bradford reported much later, “Any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.”[1]

It was by reason of the practice of this private property principle that there began in this land of ours an era of growth and development which sooner or later had to lead to revolutionary political ideas. And it did lead to what I refer to as the real American revolution, the revolution from which more and more Americans are now running away, as if in fear.

A Revolutionary Concept

The real American revolution, however, was not the armed conflict we had with King George III. That was a reasonably minor fracas as such fracases go! The real revolution was a novel concept or idea which was a break with all political history. It was something politically new on earth!

Until 1776 men had been contesting with each other—killing each other by the millions—over the age-old question of which of the numerous forms of authoritarianism—that is, man-made authorities—should preside as sovereign over man. The argument was not which was better, freedom or authoritarianism, but which of the several forms of authoritarianism was the least bad. And then, in 1776, in the fraction of one sentence written into the Declaration of Independence, was stated the real American revolution, the new idea, and it was this: “that all men . . .  are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights; that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” There you have it! This is the essence of the original American setting and the rock on which the “American miracle” was founded.

The revolutionary idea was at once a spiritual, a political, and an economic concept. It was spiritual in that the writers of the Declaration recognized and publicly proclaimed that the Creator was the endower of man’s rights; and, thus, it follows, that the Creator is sovereign.

It was political in that it implicitly denied that the state is the endower of man’s rights, thus holding to the tenet that the state is not sovereign.

Our revolutionary concept was economic in this sense: that if an individual has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain his life—the sustenance of life being nothing more nor less than the fruits of one’s labor.

It is one thing intellectually to embrace such a revolutionary concept as this; it is quite another matter to implement it—to put it into practice. The implementation came in the form of two political instruments—the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These were essentially a series of prohibitions—prohibitions not against the people but against the political arrangement the people, from their Old World experience, had learned to fear, namely, overextended government.[2]

The Constitution and the Bill of Rights more severely limited government than government had ever before been limited. There were benefits that flowed from this limitation of the state.

The first benefit, once this new concept became effective, was that individuals did not turn to government for security, welfare, or prosperity because government was so limited that it had little on hand to dispense; nor did its limited power permit taking from some citizens and giving to others. To what or to whom do people turn for security, welfare, and prosperity when government is not available to them? They turn to where they should turn—to themselves.

As a result of this discipline founded on the revolutionary concept that the Creator, not the state, is the endower of man’s rights, along with these instruments of limitation, there was developed, on an unprecedented scale, a quality of character that Emerson referred to as “self-reliance.” The American people gained a world-wide reputation for being self-reliant.

A second benefit that flowed from this severe limitation of government: When government is limited to inhibiting the destructive actions of men, when it sticks to its sole competency of keeping the peace and invoking a common justice, which is to say, when it minimizes such unpeaceful actions as fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation—when it is thus limited—then there is no organized force standing against the peaceful, productive, creative actions of citizens. As a consequence of this limitation, there was a freeing, a releasing of creative energy, on a scale unheard of before.

I repeat, it was this combination which was chiefly responsible for the veritable outburst of creative human energy and that accounted for the “American miracle.” We must everlastingly keep in mind that its roots were in the revolutionary concept that the Creator, not the state, is the endower of man’s rights.

This keeping-the-peace design manifested itself in individual freedom of choice as related to all peaceful, productive, creative efforts. Citizens had freedom of choice as to how they employed themselves; they had freedom of choice as to how they priced their own labor or steel or whatever; they had freedom of choice as to what they did with their own income.

This is the American setting—as it was.

The Situation in America Today

But let us examine the American setting as it is, a reversal in form, one might say. It seems that the persons we placed in government as our agents of peace discovered a weakness in our unique structure. Having acquisitive instincts for power over others—as indeed so many of us do—they found that the police power they had been given to keep the peace could be used to invade the peaceful, productive, creative areas the citizens had reserved for themselves—one of which was the business sector. And they also discovered that if they incurred any deficits by their interventions, the same police force could be used to collect the wherewithal to pay the bills. The very same force that can be used to protect against predation can also be used predatorily!

It is this misuse of police force, so little understood, which explains why we Americans who inveigh vociferously against socialism are unwittingly adopting socialism ourselves. For it is clear that the extent to which government has departed from the original design of inhibiting the unpeaceful and destructive actions; the extent to which government has invaded the peaceful, productive, creative areas; the extent to which our government has assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of the citizenry is a measure of the extent to which socialism—communism, if you choose—has developed in this land of ours.

Can we measure this political devolution? Yes, with near precision. Reflect on one of the manifestations of the original structure: each individual having freedom of choice as to how he disposes of his own income. Measure the loss in this freedom of choice and you measure the gain of socialism. Merely bear in mind that freedom of choice exists except as restraint is interposed. Thus, the loss in freedom of choice shows the gain in authoritarian socialism.

The Growth of Government

Let us, then, proceed with the measurement. About 125 years ago the average citizen had somewhere between 95 and 98 percent freedom of choice with each income dollar; which is to say, the tax take of government—federal, state, and local—was between 2 and 5 percent of the people’s earned income. But, as the emphasis shifted from the original design, as government invaded the peaceful, productive, and creative areas, and as government assumed more and more the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of the people, the percentage of the take of total earned income increased. The 2 to 5 percent take of a relatively small income has steadily grown to a take of approximately 36 percent of a very large earned income—and grows apace!

Many complacent persons, undaunted by this ominous trend, remarked: “Why fret about this; we still have remaining to us, on the average, 64 percent freedom of choice with respect to each income dollar.”

Parenthetically, may I suggest that we use with care the term “on the average.” Assume a 40-hour week, 8 hours a day, Monday through Friday. The average person, today, must work all of Monday and until mid-afternoon on Tuesday for government before he can begin to work for himself. But, if the individual has been extraordinarily successful, he has to work all of Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and until noon on Friday for the government before he can start working for himself. He has only Friday afternoon to labor for his freedom-of-choice dollars. This, it seems, is a part of the “new” incentive system!

While we still enjoy 64 percent freedom of choice over our earned income, this should afford little consolation. For we’ve long passed in this country the historical 20 to 25 percent tax level beyond which governments seldom have gone without resorting to inflation. We are well into the inflationary stage, which means that constitutional or institutional limits on the taxing power have been abandoned; the government has found a way to take all our earned income if and when it chooses to do so.

Are we inflating? Indeed, yes! Let me explain that by “inflation” I do not mean rising prices, a consequence of inflation; rather, I mean government’s expansion of the volume of money. To the economist or mathematician, inflation is the same as counterfeiting; to the lawyer, inflation is distinguished from counterfeiting by being legal. But, definitions aside, governments always have popular support for their inflationary policies; politicians act in response to popular support; they cannot remain in office without it. Why the popular support? It is because a majority of voters are naive enough to believe that they can eat their cake and still have their cake left to them, which is to say, they can continue to receive handouts and “benefits” from government without having to pay for them. Because they see no direct tax levy and because they do not understand that inflation is a cruel, unjust form of taxation, they applaud the something which they feel is coming to them for nothing.

Inflationary Devices

It is interesting to observe the tricks of inflation—political sleight-of-hand, coin clipping, for instance. The sovereign of old—by police force, that is, unpeacefully—“called in” the coin of the realm, clipped the edges, retained the clippings, and returned the balance to the owners. This skulduggery continued until the coins became too small to return.

The French Revolution put that government in dire financial straits, so it issued, in ever-larger amounts, an irredeemable paper money, known as assignats, secured not by gold but by confiscated church properties. Every American should read and know by heart the catastrophic aftermath.[3]

In Argentina—following Perón and until recently—the expense of the national government was, shall we say, 100 billion pesos annually. But only half that amount could be collected by direct tax levies. How handled? Simple! They merely printed 50 billion pesos annually. One need not be much of an economist to realize that when the money volume is expanded, everything else being equal, the value of the monetary unit declines; prices rise. Imagine yourself “secure” at the time of Perón’s ascendancy to power: bank accounts, insurance, social security, a pension for your old age. These, along with all forms of fixed income, were politically rendered more or less worthless.

Our inflationary scheme in the U.S.A. is brilliant legerdemain: it is so complex that hardly anyone can understand it! We monetize debt; that is, the more the government spends, the more is the money supply expanded. Since the start of deficit financing and monetized debt, our quantity of dollars has enormously increased. Anyone with an eye to trends can observe that the dollar has declined in value and that prices are on the upswing.

The Russians, in my judgment, have the most honest system of dishonesty: the Kremlin—with guns, if necessary—“calls upon” the people to purchase government bonds. After the people have bought the bonds, the government cancels the bonds. Certainly, one does not have to be an economist to observe the chicanery in this method of inflation.

Frankly, I wish we were employing the Russian system of dishonesty rather than our present complex system. Were we inflating in this crude Russian manner, many Americans would be aware of what is being done to them. People who can’t see through shell games are likely to be taken in.

This is what we must realize: Inflation is the fiscal concomitant of socialism or the welfare state or state interventionism—call these unpeaceful, political structures what you will. Politically, it isn’t possible to finance government expenditures by direct tax levies beyond the point at which direct tax levies are politically expedient—20–25 percent, as a rule. The overextended state is always beyond this point. Thus, anyone who does not like inflation can do nothing about it except as he assists in divesting our economy of socialism.

A good economy, in one respect, is analogous to a sponge; it can sop up a lot of mess. But once the sponge is saturated, the sponge itself is a mess. The only way to make it useful again is to wring the mess out of it.

Inflation may be better understood if we analyze it in some country other than our own; it is difficult to see our own faults, easy to note the mistakes of others. France serves our purpose, for that country, economically, has many likenesses to the U.S.A.

In 1914—only 50 years ago—modern France began what is now underway here; that is, her government invaded the peaceful, productive, creative areas and more and more assumed the responsibility for the security, welfare, and prosperity of the French people: socialism.

If my previous contentions be correct, the franc should have lost some of its purchasing value during these 50 years. To repeat, I have contended that socialism can be financed only by inflation which is an expansion of money volume—with a consequent price rise as money value declines. If my reasoning is valid, the franc should have declined in purchasing value. Has it? Yes, more than 99 1/2 percent.

In Paris, during World War I, I bought a good dinner for 5 francs, the equivalent of a 1918 dollar. On my next visit to Paris—1947—I took a friend to luncheon, admittedly a better restaurant than I visited as a soldier boy. How much for the two luncheons? 3,400 francs! Two years later I took my wife to the same restaurant and had the same luncheons, because it is instructive to check prices. How much? 4,100 francs! On a recent visit, same restaurant, same luncheons—6,000 francs!

Visualize a French lad in his early teens, forethoughtful, looking to 1964 when he would reach retirement. He bought a paid-up annuity, one that would return him 1,000 francs per month beginning in 1964. In 1914, the year of purchase, he could have lived quite handsomely on this amount. Yet, in 1964, the thousand francs will buy no more than a skimpy, low-grade meal, pretty poor fare for a whole month! This fictional catastrophe, in no way exaggerated, was brought about by an inevitable inflation in the name of social security.

The validity of this line of reasoning is confirmed historically: Only 35 years ago the take of earned income by government in Russia was 29 percent; in Germany, 22 percent; in England, 21 percent. Keep in mind that we are now at 36 percent and that our government has the policy of increasing expenditures as it reduces taxes, assuring more inflation which, of course, increases the take.

The “Galloping” Stage

Inflation, in popular terms, is of two types: “creeping” and “galloping.” Ours is often described as “creeping,” a term that appears rather weak to describe a dollar that has lost between 52 and 63 percent of its purchasing value since 1939—according to which index one uses.

“Galloping” inflation is the type that Germany experienced following World War I and France during her issuance of the assignats. China’s money went “galloping” not too long ago, and the same can be said for the Latin American currencies right now.

I own one piece of Bolivia’s currency—10,000 Bolivianos. In 1935 it had the purchasing power of 4,600 of our 1964 dollars. What now? Eighty cents! There is galloping inflation for you and brought about—they had no wars—by socialism. In every instance “galloping” inflation has been preceded by “creeping” inflation. Not too strangely, inflation creeps before it gallops; and anyone having a dread of inflation should be on the alert whenever it begins to creep.

Any rational person should dread inflation, more so in the U.S.A. than elsewhere, and for self-evident reasons: Americans have a more advanced division-of-labor society than has heretofore existed; we are more specialized and further removed from self-subsistence than peoples of other times and places. I, for instance, do not know how to build my home, raise my food, make my clothes; with respect to most of what I consume, I know next to nothing. Like all other Americans—even farmers, for they are mechanized—I have become dependent on the free, uninhibited exchange of our countless specializations. Try to visualize existing on that which you alone produce!

A necessity is anything on which we have become dependent. Free, peaceful, unfettered exchange is as necessary to present-day Americans as is air or water.

There is, however, a key fact to keep in mind: In a highly specialized economy it is not possible to effect these necessary exchanges by barter. The woman who inspects transistors makes no attempt to barter the service she renders for a pair of shoes; nor do you observe a car owner trying to barter a goose for a gallon of gas.

No, an advanced division-of-labor economy cannot be made to function by direct swaps of this for that. Such an economy has only one means to effect the necessary exchanges of its numerous specializations: an economic circulatory system, that is, a medium of exchange—money.

Thinning the Blood

This economic circulatory system can be likened, in one respect, to the circulatory system of the body, the blood stream. Among other functions, the blood stream effects numerous exchanges: it picks up oxygen and ingested food, carrying these life givers to some 30 trillion cells of the body, and, at these trillions of points, it picks up carbon dioxide and waste matters, returning these items for disposal But let someone insert a hypodermic needle into a vein, thin the blood stream—destroy its integrity—and the victim can be referred to in the past tense.

Likewise, one can thin the economic circulatory system by inflating—assured by socialism—and bring on the same catastrophic results; exchange will be impossible with each of us wedded to our specialization but unable to exchange our own for the specialization of others. The integrity of the medium of exchange has to be presupposed to assume that a division-of-labor economy can function for any sustained period of time.

To illustrate: Following the 1918 Armistice, my squadron was sent to Coblenz in the Army of Occupation. The German inflation was under way. I knew no more about inflation then than do most of our citizens now. And like many people, I enjoyed what I experienced: more marks each pay day, but not because of any increase in salary. The government was taking care of my food, shelter, clothing—I had “security.” My marks were used mostly to play games of chance—the more marks the more fun. Why shouldn’t I enjoy inflation?

The German inflation continued with mounting intensity; by 1923 it reached a point where 30 million marks would not buy a loaf of bread.

About the time I arrived in Coblenz (this is fiction, but sound) an elderly German passed on, leaving his fortune to his two sons—500,000 marks each. One was a frugal lad; he never spent a pfennig of it. The other was a playboy; he spent the whole inheritance on champagne parties. When the day came in 1923 that 30 million marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread, the lad who had saved everything, had nothing. But the other was able to exchange his empty champagne bottles for a dinner! The economy had been reduced to barter. To fully grasp the present American setting, we must be able to see that this very process is gaining momentum in our own economy. And primarily because we are substituting socialism for the peaceful ways of the free market.

At this point it is appropriate to be hardheaded and ask a practical question: Has there ever been an instance, historically, when a country has been on our kind of a socialistic toboggan and succeeded in reversing herself? There was a 10-year turnabout in the city-state of Lagash circa 2500 B.C., a 2-year reversal in the France of Turgot in the eighteenth century and, perhaps, there have been other minor cases of such political heroism. But, for the most part, the record reads like “the decline and fall of the Roman Empire.”

The only significant turnabout known to me took place in England following the Napoleonic Wars. The nation’s debt, in relation to her resources, must have been greater than ours now is; the taxation was confiscatory; and the restrictions on the peaceful production and exchange of goods and services—along with price controls—were so numerous and inhibitory that had it not been for the smugglers, black marketeers, and breakers of the law, many would have starved.[4] Altogether, a bleak economic picture, indeed! Here, assuredly, was a setting worse than ours yet is.

Something happened, unique in history; and it is well that we take cognizance of it. One thing for certain, the change was wrought by a handful of men. We have a good account of the work of Richard Cobden and John Bright in England and of their two French collaborators, a politician named Chevalier, and the political economist and essayist, Frederic Bastiat. Cobden and Bright, having a far better understanding of freedom-in-exchange principles than their contemporaries, went about England speaking and writing on the freedom philosophy. The economy was out of kilter; Members of Parliament listened and, as a consequence, there began the greatest reform movement in English history.

The reform consisted of the repeal of restrictive law; the peaceful ways of the market were made possible by the removal of unpeaceful governmental interventionism. The Corn Laws (tariffs) were repealed outright; the Poor Laws (relief) were greatly curtailed; there were numerous other repeals. And, fortunately for the people, their newly limited government, nominally headed by Queen Victoria, relaxed the authority which the people themselves believed to be implicit in their Sovereign; the government gave the people freedom in the sense that a prisoner on parole is free: he can be yanked back! But the government exercised no such control; Englishmen by the hundreds of thousands roamed over the face of the earth achieving unparalleled prosperity and building a relatively enlightened empire.

This development continued until just before World War I when the same old political disease set in again. What precisely is this disease that must result in inflation and other unpeaceful manifestations? It has many popular names, some already mentioned, such as socialism, communism, the welfare state, government interventionism, authoritarianism. It has other names such as Fascism, Nazism, Fabianism, the planned economy. It has local names like New Deal, Fair Deal, New Republicanism, New Frontier; and new ones will be contrived to suggest that the identical political arrangement has something novel about it.

Faith in Government Intervention

However, popular names are but generalizations and oversimplifications. What, then, is really the essence of the above-mentioned “progressive ideologies”? Careful scrutiny of their avowed aims will reveal that each has a characteristic common to the others, this characteristic being the cell in the body politic that has the capacity for inordinate growth and from which stems our countless unpeaceful troubles. It is in the form of a belief—a rapidly growing belief—in the use of organized police force (government) not with the emphasis on keeping the peace but on a political manipulation of the peaceful, productive, creative activities of the citizenry. An increased intervention in all markets—commodities, exchange, finance, education, housing, or whatever—is what the proponents of this multi-named system set forth as their promise. I am only repeating the claim they present with pride; check it out for yourself.

To illustrate: I can remember the time when, if a house were wanted, the customer would look to the free market to supply it. The first step involved someone wanting a house in preference to other alternatives; the initiative rested with the desiring consumer. Next, the reliance was on those who wished to compete in the building. Last, we relied on people who thought they saw some advantage to themselves in loaning the money for the tools, labor, and material. With our reliance on the peaceful procedures of the market, we built more square feet of housing per person than was ever built in any other country at any other time.

Yet, despite this remarkable accomplishment, more and more people are coming to believe that the free market should be shelved and that, in its stead, government should use its police force to take the income of some and give it, in the form of housing, to the government’s idea of the needy. In other words, we are now practicing the principle used by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1620–23, and proclaimed as an ideal by Karl Marx in 1848: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs,” and by the use of organized police force! (Keep in mind that I have used housing only as an example; the same policy is being extended to all segments of the economy.)

Here is a crucial, important, and self-evident fact: With increasing belief in police force as a means to productive ends, the belief in men acting freely, competitively, cooperatively, privately, voluntarily must correspondingly diminish. As a reliance on political authoritarianism advances, a faith in free men suffers erosion and, finally, obliteration.

It would seem to follow that there is no remedy for our current devolution except as a faith in free men be restored. The evolution of such a faith, I suspect, will rest as much on an unbelief in authoritarianism as on a belief of what can be wrought by voluntarism. I propose to share and explain my unqualified skepticism of political rigging as well as my faith in the creativity and miraculous performances of free men in an unfettered, peaceful market.

So much for the American setting—past and present.

[1] Taken from Bradford’s History “of Plimoth Plantation” from the original manuscript. Printed under the direction of the Secretary of the Commonwealth by order of the General Court (Boston, MA: Wright & Potter Printing Company, State Printers, 1898), p. 162.

[2] The Constitution and the Bill of Rights specify 46 negations of governmental actions.

[3] See Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959).

[4] When the law runs amuck, lawlessness often ensues.

Chapter 3

Strife as a Way of Life

Broadly speaking, there are two opposing philosophies of human relationships. One commends that these relationships be in terms of peace and harmony. The other, while never overtly commended, operates by way of strife and violence. One is peaceful; the other unpeaceful.

When peace and harmony are adhered to, only willing exchange exists in the marketplace—the economics of reciprocity and practice of the Golden Rule. No special privilege is countenanced. All men are equal before the law, as before God. The life and the livelihood of a minority of one enjoys the same respect as the lives and livelihoods of majorities, for such rights are, as set forth in the Declaration of Independence, conceived to be an endowment of the Creator. Everyone is completely free to act creatively as his abilities and ambitions permit; no restraint in this respect—none whatsoever.

Abandon the ideal of peace and harmony and the only alternative is to embrace strife and violence, expressed ultimately as robbery and murder. Plunder, spoliation, special privilege, feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others, doing one’s own brand of good with the fruits of the labor of others—coercive, destructive, and unpeaceful schemes of all sorts—fall within the order of strife and violence.

Are we abandoning the ideal of peace and harmony and drifting into the practice of strife and violence as a way of life? That’s the question to be examined in this chapter—and answered in the affirmative.

At the outset, it is well to ask why so few people are seriously concerned about this trend. William James may have suggested the reason: “Now, there is a striking law over which few people seem to have pondered. It is this: That among all the differences which exist, the only ones that interest us strongly are those we do not take for granted.”[1]

Socialistic practices are now so ingrained in our thinking, so customary, so much a part of our mores, that we take them for granted. No longer do we ponder them; no longer do we even suspect that they are founded on strife and violence. Once a socialistic practice has been Americanized it becomes a member of the family so to speak and, as a consequence, is rarely suspected of any violent or evil taint. With so much socialism now taken for granted, we are inclined to think that only other countries condone and practice strife and violence—not us.

Who, for instance, ever thinks of TVA as founded on strife and violence? Or social security, federal urban renewal, public housing, foreign aid, farm and all other subsidies, the Post Office, rent control, other wage and price controls, all space projects other than for strictly defensive purposes, compulsory unionism, production controls, tariffs, and all other governmental protections against competition? Who ponders the fact that every one of these aspects of state socialism is an exemplification of strife and violence and that such practices are multiplying rapidly?

The word “violence,” as here used, refers to a particular kind of force. Customarily, the word is applied indiscriminately to two distinct kinds of force, each as different from the other as an olive branch differs from a gun. One is defensive or repellent force. The other is initiated or aggressive force. If someone were to initiate such an action as flying at you with a dagger, that would be an example of aggressive force. It is this kind of force I call strife or violence. The force you would employ to repel the violence I would call defensive force.

Try to think of a single instance where aggressive force—strife or violence—is morally warranted. There is none. Violence is morally insupportable!

Defensive force is never an initial action. It comes into play only secondarily, that is, as the antidote to aggressive force or violence. Any individual has a moral right to defend his life, the fruits of his labor (that which sustains his life), and his liberty—by demeanor, by persuasion, or with a club if necessary. Defensive force is morally warranted.

Moral rights are exclusively the attributes of individuals. They inhere in no collective, governmental or otherwise. Thus, political officialdom, in sound theory, can have no rights of action which do not pre-exist as rights in the individuals who organize government. To argue contrarily is to construct a theory no more tenable than the Divine Right of Kings. For, if the right to government action does not originate with the organizers of said government, from whence does it come?

As the individual has the moral right to defend his life and property—a right common to all individuals, a universal right—he is within his rights to delegate this right of defense to a societal organization. We have here the logical prescription for government’s limitation. It performs morally when it carries out the individual moral right of defense.

As the individual has no moral right to use aggressive force against another or others—a moral limitation common to all individuals—it follows that he cannot delegate that which he does not possess. Thus, his societal organization—government—has no moral right to aggress against another or others. To do so would be to employ strife or violence.

To repeat a point in the previous chapter, it is necessary to recognize that man’s energies manifest themselves either destructively or creatively, peacefully or violently. It is the function of government to inhibit and to penalize the destructive or violent manifestations of human energy. It is a malfunction to inhibit, to penalize, to interfere in any way whatsoever with the peaceful or creative or productive manifestations of human energy. To do so is clearly to aggress, that is, to take violent action.

TVA Analyzed

In the light of these definitions, let us then consider the nature and impact of TVA or any of the other socialistic projects earlier mentioned. We may assume that you are living peaceably off the fruits of your own labor, including anything which you have acquired from others in willing exchange. You are aggressing against no one; therefore, there is no occasion for anyone’s use of defensive force against you, defense being a secondary action against an initiated aggressive action. And, certainly, there is no moral sanction for anyone or any organization to take aggressive action against you.

Now, let us suppose that some people decide they want their power and light at a price lower than the market rate. To accomplish their purpose, they forcibly (with weapons, if necessary) collect the fruits of your peaceable labor in the form of capital to construct the power plant. Then they annually use force to take your income to defray the deficits of their operation—deficits incurred by reason of the sub-market rates they charge themselves for the power and light they use. The questions I wish to pose are these: Is any set of persons, regardless of how economically strapped they may be, morally warranted in any such action? Would not their project be founded on strife or violence? The answers to these questions are inescapably clear: such persons are thieves and criminals.

Very well. Move on to TVA. What distinguishes TVA from the above? Not a thing, except that in the case of TVA the immoral, aggressive, violent action has been legalized. This merely means that the law has been perverted so as to exonerate the “beneficiaries” from the customary penalties for criminal action. But the fact remains that TVA, and all other instances of state socialism, are founded on strife and violence!

Most people are inclined to scoff at this idea simply because they have never witnessed any instance of actual violence associated with TVA. They are blinded to what really takes place by the common acquiescence to socialistic measures, once these forms of Robin Hoodism are legalized. Everybody goes along. But wait!

Should not any conscionable citizen pause for reflection when he awakens to the fact that the people of his country are abandoning the ideal of peace and harmony and drifting into the practice of strife and violence as a way of life? The fact that this catastrophic change is taking place without many persons being aware of it is all the more reason to sound the alarm.

Founded on Violence

It is easy to demonstrate that all state socialism, of which TVA is but an instance, is founded on violence. Take the government’s program of paying farmers not to grow tobacco, for example. Let us say that your share of the burden of this socialistic hocus-pocus is $50. Should you absolutely refuse to pay it, assuming you had $50 in assets, you would be killed—legally, of course—here in the U.S.A. in the year of Our Lord, 1964! If that isn’t resting the subsidy program on violence, then, pray tell, what is violence?

Here’s how to get yourself killed: When you get your bill from the Internal Revenue Service, remit the amount minus $50 with these words of explanation:

“I do not believe that citizens should be compelled to pay farmers for not growing tobacco. I do not believe in the farm subsidy program. My share of the cost of the whole program is $50, which I have deducted. Do not try to collect for I ABSOLUTELY refuse to pay the same.”

The IRS will quickly inform you that this is a matter in which freedom of choice does not exist and will demand that you remit the $50.

You respond by merely referring the IRS to your original letter, calling attention to your use of the word “absolutely.”

When the IRS becomes convinced that you mean business, your case will be referred to another branch of the government, the judicial apparatus. It being the function of the judiciary only to interpret the law, the law making it plain that a government claim has first lien on one’s assets, a decision will be rendered against you and in favor of the IRS. If you have no assets but your home, the Court will order it put on the auction block and will instruct you to vacate.

At this point you will apprise the Court of your letter to the IRS and your use of the word “absolutely.”

When the court becomes convinced that you mean business, your case will be referred to still another branch of the government, the constabulary. In due course, a couple of officers carrying arms will attempt to carry out the Court’s instructions. They will confront you in person.

But to accede to their “invitation” to vacate would be to pay. With your “absolutely” in mind, you refuse. At this point the officers in their attempt to carry out the Court’s orders will try to carry off your property, as peaceably as possible, of course. But to let them carry you off would be to acquiesce and to pay. You might as well have acquiesced in the first place. At this stage of the proceedings, in order not to pay, you have no recourse but to resist physical force with physical force. It is reasonable to assume that from this point on you will be mentioned only in the past tense or as “the late Mr. You.” The records will show that your demise was “for resisting an officer,” but the real reason was that you absolutely refused to pay farmers for not growing tobacco or whatever.

Rarely will any citizen go this far. Most of us, regardless of our beliefs, acquiesce immediately on receipt of the bill from the IRS. But the reason we do so is our recognition of the fact that this is an area in which freedom of choice no longer exists. I, for instance, would never give a cent of my income to farmers not to grow tobacco were I allowed freedom of choice in the matter. But, realizing that the farm subsidy program rests on violence, it takes no more than the threat of violence to make me turn part of my income over to farmers for not growing tobacco.

The Case of Mr. Byler

This idea that the whole wearisome list of socialistic practices rests on strife and violence and that the ultimate penalty for noncompliance is death, was written and published in 1950.[2] Many have read the booklet and an explanation of the same idea has been given before many discussion groups throughout the country, but the reasoning has never been challenged. Yet, I am unaware of any instance where an individual has gone all the way, that is, has absolutely refused to pay and gone to his death for his beliefs. One farmer went so far as to leave the country, and quite a number of citizens have delayed their acquiescence considerably, that is, they have carried their revolt beyond immediate payment—usually mixed with grousing. One of the most interesting and instructive examples is reported by the IRS in a news release dated May 15, 1961:

Considerable public and press misunderstanding exists over the seizure of three horses from a Pittsburgh area Amish farmer who refused to pay Social Security taxes because of religious convictions.

This memo is designed merely to acquaint you with all the facts in the case.

Public Law 761, 83rd Congress, effective January 1, 1955, extended Social Security coverage so as to include farm operators. A tax on the self-employment income of these people is imposed and they are required to report this tax on their annual federal income tax return.

The Old Order Amish are the most conservative of the Amish groups and have taken the position that although they will comply with taxes, as such, Social Security payments, in their opinion, are insurance premiums and not taxes. They, therefore, will not pay the “premium” nor accept any of the benefits.

In the fall of 1956, the IRS district director at Cleveland held meetings with Amish farmers and their church officials in an effort to solicit cooperation and voluntary compliance with the laws we have to administer. At these meetings, it was explained that the self-employment levy is a tax and that it would be the responsibility of IRS to enforce this tax.

As a result of these meetings and of letters sent to the individuals involved, the majority of Amish farmers in that general area voluntarily remitted the tax. With respect to those who refused, it became apparent that some did not wish to contravene the dictates of their church, but they also did not want “trouble” with the IRS.

Thus, a portion of these farmers did not pay the tax, but did make the execution of liens possible by maintaining bank accounts which covered the tax.

The current problem stems from the “hard core” group of Old Order Amish farmers who closed out their bank accounts and made such levy action impossible. As a result, the IRS was forced to collect 130 delinquent taxpayer accounts from Amish farmers in the past two years.

Valentine Y. Byler of New Wilmington, Pennsylvania became the latest collection problem among the Old Order Amish. He owed the following self-employment tax:

1956

$82.60

1957

76.57

1958

32.98

1959

65.63

The foregoing taxes amounted to $257.78. The total interest for the same period was $51.18, making a grand total of $308.96 owed by the taxpayer.

Attempts had been made since 1956 to induce Mr. Byler to pay his tax willingly, but with no success. Since Mr. Byler had no bank account against which to levy for the tax due, it was decided as a last desperate measurement to resort to seizure and sale of personal property.

It then was determined that Mr. Byler had a total of six horses, so it was decided to seize three in order to satisfy the tax indebtedness. The three horses were sold May 1, 1961, at public auction for $460. Of this amount $308.96 represented the tax due, and $113.15 represented expenses of the auction sale including feed for the horses, leaving a surplus of $37.80 which was returned to the taxpayer.

The Byler case like all others in the same category presents an unpleasant and difficult task for the Internal Revenue Service. However, there is no authority under which Amish farmers may be relieved of liability for this tax.

With respect to those who remain adamant in their refusal to pay, as in the case of any person who refuses to pay any federal tax that is lawfully due, it is incumbent on the Internal Revenue Service to proceed with collection enforcement action as provided by law.

We have no other choice under the law.

Had our Amish friend, Valentine Y. Byler, not acquiesced at the point he did but had gone all the way in his determination, he would have employed physical force against the officers who seized his three horses. In this event he would now be known as “the late Valentine Y. Byler.” He would have established beyond a shadow of doubt that the Social Security program, as well as all other socialistic practices, is founded on strife and violence. These cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, come under the category of “peaceful actions.”

Government Did Its Duty

It is important to acknowledge at this point that the IRS did precisely what it should have done. This agency of government is not in the business of deciding the rightness or wrongness of a tax. Its job is to collect regardless of what the tax is for.

The judiciary, having previously ruled on the powers of the IRS to make such collections, accurately interpreted the law and, thus, did what it should have done.

The constabulary, in seizing the three horses, was properly performing its function. This agency, unless derelict in its duty, has to look as indifferently on seizing the horses and harnesses of a gentle, God-fearing farmer as bringing a John Dillinger to bay. They are properly called law enforcement officers. And, had Mr. Byler resisted with physical force, the constabulary would have been performing its duty had it been found necessary to put Mr. Byler out of the way—as it did Dillinger. Theirs is to carry out the law, not to reason why!

The fault here is with the law, the three above-mentioned agencies being but effectuating arms of the law. And the fault with the law rests with those who make the law and with those of us who elect lawmakers and who, presumably, have some powers to reason what the law should be.

The IRS, the judiciary, the constabulary, behave exactly the same when seizing the Amish farmer’s three horses as when collecting a fine for embezzlement. Yet, the former is an exercise of aggressive force—violence—while the latter is an exercise of defensive force. The former has no moral sanction; the latter is morally warranted. How can two police actions which ultimately manifest themselves in an identical manner actually be opposites? This is like asking how two shots from a pistol can be identical when one is used to protect life and property and the other is used to take life and property. The shots are wholly indifferent as to how they are used. The pistol shots, like the IRS, the judiciary, the constabulary, only do the bidding of someone’s mind and will. It is the bidding which determines whether they are part of a defensive or an aggressive action. The law, and the people who are responsible for it, determine whether a police action is defensive or violent, whether it keeps the peace or acts unpeaceably.

There is, however, a simple way to decide whether a governmental action is an exercise of defensive force or an exercise of aggressive or violent force: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.”[3]

Using the above as a basis for determination, it is obvious that every act of state socialism is founded on violence. There are no exceptions.

“But We Didn’t Mean This”

The fact that the IRS found it expedient to make a public explanation in the face of severe criticism throughout the country, merely lends credence to the fact that most people—even those who support socialistic legislation—do not know what they are doing nor did they mean to do what they did. Simply because most of us meekly acquiesce, that is, uncomplainingly go along with the machinery of socialism, we tend to lose sight of the fact that it is founded on strife and violence. The seizing of the Amish farmer’s horses generated widespread feelings of remorse and resentment. Had he absolutely refused to pay and been killed in the process, the American people would have protested, “But we didn’t mean this!”

Of course they didn’t mean it. Nonetheless, these projections of property-seizure and even death are nothing more nor less than the inevitable consequences of admitting the socialistic premise into American policy. We need, now and then, to check our premises.

Alexander Barmine and Victor Kravchenko, both of whom rose to high posts in the Kremlin hierarchy, escaped from Russia and came to this country because they could not stomach the purgings and shootings that logically followed the policies which they themselves had a hand in promoting.[4] Let the principle of violence continue in this country—even fail to rid ourselves of what we already have—and gangsters only will come to occupy high political office. Few of the present crop of bureaucrats are heartless enough to administer socialism in its advanced stages.[5] Violence is not their dish. The IRS folks demonstrate this.

That policies founded on strife and violence are growing is evident enough to anyone who will take the pains to look. Reflect on the examples of practices founded on violence cited earlier in this chapter. All but the Post Office are of relatively recent vintage, with increasing clamor for more of the same.

I can still remember when the income of farmers came from willing exchange; when people lived in houses built with the fruits of their own labor; when wage earners, for the most part, were no more compelled to join unions than businessmen are now forced into chamber of commerce membership or parents into the P.T.A. In those days, “peaceful” far better described the way of life than did strife and violence.

Man either accepts the idea that the Creator is the endower of rights, or he submits to the idea that the state is the endower of rights. I can think of no other alternative.

Those who accept the Creator concept can never subscribe to the practice of violence in any form. They have been drawn to this concept, not coerced into it. If we would emulate, as nearly as we can, that which we have learned from this relationship, we would confine ourselves to this same drawing power. As Gerald Heard so clearly puts it, “Man is free to torture himself until he sees that his methods are not those of his Maker.”[6]

[1] See The Will to Believe and Other Essays on Popular Philosophy (New York, NY: Dover Publications, Inc., 1956), p. 257.

[2] See my Students of Liberty (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950), pp. 7–8. Ed. note, no longer in print.

[3] See The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950).

[4] See One Who Survived by Alexander Barmine (New York, NY: G. A. Putnam’s Sons), and I Chose Freedom by Victor Kravchenko (New York, NY: Scribners, 1946).

[5] To understand why gangsters rather than humane human beings must occupy political office in a socialistic state, read “Why the Worst Get on Top” in F. A. Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1944). Obtainable from The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY.

[6] Gerald Heard, editor, Prayers and Meditations (New York, NY: Harper & Brothers, 1949), p. 39.

Chapter 4

Socialism Is Noncreative

Socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself can never create. Socialism is operative only in wealth situations brought about my modes of production other than its own. Socialism takes and redistributes wealth, but it is utterly incapable of creating wealth.[1]

Few Americans today would object were this devastating indictment leveled against communism. But to accuse the U.S.A. brand of democratic socialism of barrenness or sterility is to put the shoe on another foot. Are you actually implying, many will ask, that a vast majority of Americans are rapidly committing themselves to a will-o’-the-wisp? Eating the seed corn? Sponsoring parasitism? Yes, this is the charge, and I shall do my best to demonstrate its truth.

Socializing the means of production and socializing the results of production are but two sides of the same coin, inseparable in practice. The state that controls the production is going to control the distribution of what is produced; and the state that distributes the product must, eventually, control production.

That inescapable fact is just as true in the United States, with its democratic socialism, as it is in Russia with its dictatorial socialism. In our own country, when we refer to the “planned economy,” we mean that wages, hours, prices, production, and exchange shall be largely determined by state directives—and not by free response to market decisions. Though our “welfare state” policies are currently more humane than their counterparts in Russia, socialism in both nations, whether having to do with the means or the results of production, rests on organized police force.

Socialism is more than a some-other-country folly. It demands a hard look at what our own American mirror reveals. My purpose is self-analysis, not a discourse on the political antics of power-drunk Russians.

Now to return to my opening assumption: Socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself can never create.

This indictment has two parts: (1) there has to be wealth before wealth can be socialized; and (2) socialism cannot create the wealth in the first place.

With everyone’s wealth at zero, there is no one from whom anything can be taken. Many of our Pilgrim Fathers starved during the first three years of community communism because there was so little in the warehouse to dole out. Communism—or one of our numerous names for the same thing, the welfare state—presupposes the existence of wealth which can be forcibly extorted. Is this not self-evident?

There remains, then, only to show that socialism—the planned economy side of the coin—cannot give rise to the means of production; that is, state ownership and control of the means of production cannot create the wealth on which state welfarism rests.

The Pilgrims’ warehouse was empty because the communistic mode of production couldn’t fill it. The standard of living of the Russian people is so much lower today than our own because their avowed but not wholly practiced system is productively sterile.[2] Such goods as the Pilgrims did produce during their first three years, or as the Russians now produce, can be explained only as the result of deviations from socialism: leakages of free, creative human energies! Had the Pilgrims practiced socialism 100 percent, all the Pilgrims would have perished. Were the Russians practicing socialism 100 percent, there would not be a living Russian. Life goes on in these and all other socialistically inclined societies because their inhabitants do not practice the socialistic theory totally! If I can demonstrate this point, my original indictment becomes unassailable.

Plato’s Definition of Socialism

What actually is meant by total socialism? As a hint, here is a statement by Plato:

The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war and in the midst of peace—to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals . . .  only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.[3]

The above quotation, however, does not describe socialism. It only outlines the extent to which an individual might become a selfless nonentity, willingly subserving a leader, dog fashion. If socialism were total, this recommended subservience would be brought about not by voluntary adoption but involuntarily, and by a master’s coercion. In short, total socialism means the total elimination of all volitional actions; it means people in the role of robots. Freedom of choice on any matter would be nonexistent. Coercion is of its essence.

Now, consider the nature of coercive force. What can it do and what are its limitations? This is to ask what can be done by and what are the limitations of a gun, a billy club, a clenched fist. Clearly, they can inhibit, restrain, penalize, destroy. These are the identical possibilities and limitations of law or decree backed by force. Nothing more! Law and decree cannot serve as a creative force, any more than can a gun.

Coercively directed action can create nothing. Consider the driving of an automobile. No person would be a safe driver if he had to think his way through each act of steering, accelerating, or braking. Add the time it takes for numerous decisions to travel from the brain to the hands and feet, and it becomes plain that if drivers operated this way, one wreck would follow another. Any person who knows how to drive has succeeded in relegating driving’s countless motions to the control of something akin to the autonomic nervous system. To know requires that one’s responses become as automatic as breathing or writing, that is, become conditioned reflexes.

Now, consider a situation in which the relationship between decision and action is greatly complicated: a gunman in the back seat employing his thinking to command even the minutest actions of the driver. There could be no driving at all!

No driving at all? None whatsoever! Try an experiment: A coat hangs over the back of a chair. Find a person intelligent enough to dismiss absolutely all his knowledge of a coat, and capable of refraining from any and all volitional action, one who can force himself to be utterly incapable of independent, volitional response. In this situation, instruct him how to don the coat. He’ll never get it on.

The above explanations and assertions, however, have to do only with the first essential of creative action, that is, volitional action. That coercion cannot induce even this is a fact that appears to be self-evident.

Production in Spite of Controls

Socialism, we must admit, gives the illusion of being productive. The productivity, however, exists in spite of socialism, not because of it. The productivity originates in the free, creative energy which ignores or escapes socialism’s repression; that is, which oozes through or around socialism’s smothering blanket. In England, following the Napoleonic Wars, and in the U.S.A. under the NRA and OPA, legal restrictions blanketed large areas of production and exchange. But note this: neither country’s socialistic decrees were entirely obeyed. In each instance, there were gross violations of socialism, with the result that the people managed to live. Such material well-being as there was appeared to come from socialism. It actually came, however, from free, creative energy which, for obvious reasons, was more or less unpublicized.

Numerous other distractions help to hide socialism’s essential sterility. For instance, we observe that many government schoolteachers act no less creatively than do teachers of private schools. Scientists in the employ of government have inventive experiences, as do independent scientists and those in corporate employ. TVA, a socialistic enterprise, produces electrical energy of the same quality as that from an investor-owned plant. Agents of the state and private citizens more or less look alike, dress alike, behave alike. We choose our friends as often from one set as from the other. Meeting a stranger, one could not tell from appearance only to which category he belongs.

If we would properly evaluate the effect of coercion, with its total absence of creativeness, we should have to disregard these distractions. We need to recognize that it is not the government schoolteacher who exercises the three types of coercion implicit in socialistic education: (1) compulsory attendance, (2) government dictated curricula, and (3) the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the bills. Furthermore, we rarely feel any coercions simply because we meekly obey the laws backed by force; that is, we do send our children to school, we do not prescribe our own curricula, we do pay the tax bill. But refuse to acquiesce in any one of these three phases of compulsion and see what happens!

The scientist employed by the state, trying to figure out how to put three men on the moon, exercises no coercion. The coercion is applied to the collection of the funds which pay him to work as a free agent. He will work just as freely, as creatively, regardless of how his salary is collected. A billion dollars, whether garnered at the point of a gun or voluntarily donated, is in either case a billion dollars. A dollar extorted or a dollar freely given is still a dollar, with a dollar’s purchasing power.

In the absence of socialism’s coercion, each dollar would be used in accord with its owner’s choice, to buy food or clothing, to educate the children, to take a vacation, to buy a sailboat. Coercion only diverts the dollars from owner use and puts them to state use. If, as predicted, putting three men on the moon will cost $20 billion to $40 billion, then that much freedom of choice will be destroyed. This enormous portion of our productivity will be socialized. The people are coercively relieved of their individual choices in order to permit a single choice, exercised by whoever heads the socialistic regime. Authoritarianism is forcibly substituted for individual liberty. What we witness here is a diversionary process accomplished by police action.

We will go astray in our analysis of this complex process unless we examine coercion at one of its points of impact—for instance, the impact on the citizens who are forced to foot the bills. So, ask yourself this question: Is the extortion of your income (in order that another may have the say-so as to what it will be spent for) a creative act? Does it make any difference to what use the other will put it? Charity, relief, moon shots, or whatever? Does it make any real difference whether or not the other is a person or a collective? There is no rational, affirmative answer to these questions. Extortion—coercion—is destructive. It destroys your freedom of choice! Coercion, by its nature, is destructive.

Let’s draw an illustrative distinction between the coercive act and the creative act. A slap in the face (or the threat thereof) is a mild example of coercion. It is milder than the penalty for absolutely refusing to pay one’s tax for a federal urban renewal project in somebody else’s town.

Now, to illustrate a creative experience: The medical student examined the slide in his microscope, but the culture he had been instructed to develop had failed to grow. Thousands of medical students had experienced that identical failure. But this student, observing that mold surrounded the hoped-for culture, had a flash thought: Is the mold, perhaps, antagonistic to the development of the culture? It was, and this experience led to the discovery of penicillin.

Contrast the results of a slap in the face and the flash thought, and the distinction between coercive and creative action is clear.

A Spiritual Phenomenon

That socialism, founded on coercion, cannot bring about the production which socialized distribution presupposes, is plainly evident once we understand the genesis of all production. Ralph Waldo Trine put it plainly:

Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of its cause.[4]

Professor Ludwig von Mises, noted free market economist, supports this view:

Production is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material, but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of the spiritual changes.[5]

Just imagine how antagonistic is a slap in the face, or the threat of death or imprisonment to those spiritual experiences which precede manufacture: insight, intuition, inventiveness, cognition.

The fact that creative action can and does take place even when financed by funds coercively collected does not in any way modify my assertion that coercive action is destructive, not creative. The Kremlin’s master destroys freedom of choice on a big scale. Russians may not choose how the fruits of their labor are to be expended. Mr. Big does the choosing in their stead. He chooses to use much of the income thus extorted—socialized—for sputniks and other military hardware.

We now come to the most important point in this thesis: True, Mr. Big or the head of any other socialistic state, with the money he has obtained by diverting funds from producers’ use, can induce creative action along the lines of his choice. But observe where this authoritarian process channels creative energies: it puts genius at work on questionable if not downright evil ends! Let us remember that not all genius is employed on the side of the angels. Is it not plain that creative energies can be turned to destructive ends? Do we need any more proof of this than the amazing ingenuity that has brought about the most destructive force ever devised by man? But putting aside the H-bomb, and such miraculous and fascinating follies as orbiting monkeys and men around our earth, reflect on the countless economy-destroying projects that result from man lording it over his fellow men. Man cannot feign the role of God without finally playing the devil’s part. This is to say, as Emerson so eloquently phrased it:

Cause and effect, means and end, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.[6]

Stated in other terms, man cannot use coercion for other than destructive purposes; for even a legitimate police action for defense is still an inhibiting or destructive action, however necessary a police force may be. Raise billions by destroying freedom of choice—the socialist format—and the creative energies the funds finance will rarely serve the higher ends of life. Three men on the moon, farmers paid not to farm, flood control that floods land forever, mail delivery that bears a $3 million daily deficit, the rebuilding of urban areas that the market has deserted, the financing of socialistic governments the world over, are cases in point. None of these is a creative or productive endeavor in the full sense of those terms.

I began this chapter with the resolve to demonstrate that socialism depends upon and presupposes material achievements which socialism itself cannot create, that socialism is productively sterile. But after thinking it through, I must confess that my affirmation can be proven only to those persons who see the long-range effects of present actions; and to those who know that man playing God is a prime evil, an evil seed that must grow to a destructive bloom, however pretty it may appear in its earlier stages.

[1] This chapter refers only to the creative sterility of socialism, its unproductivity. But even if socialism were the most productive of all economic systems, it would not meet with my approval. Socialism deemphasizes self-responsibility and, thus, is contrary to my major premise which is founded on the emergence of the individual.

[2] While state planning of the economy, and the coercive implementation of the state’s plans are more widely practiced in Russia than perhaps any other country except China, we must remember that the Kremlin is more and more disregarding its own tenets and edging gradually toward the practice of a market economy. Incentives to induce production are on the increase, and a significant acreage has been restored to a free market type of farming. What a picture: Russians damning capitalism as they drift into capitalistic practices, and Americans damning communism as they drift into communistic ways of life! Russians are so impoverished that they must turn to capitalistic realities; Americans are so affluent that they indulge themselves, at their peril, in communistic nonsense.

[3] Karl R. Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1950), p. 9.

[4] From In Tune with the Infinite (Indianapolis, IN: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1897).

[5] See Human Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1949), p. 141.

[6] See The Complete Essays and Other Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson (New York, NY: The Modern Library, 1940), p. 176.

Chapter 5

How Socialism Harms the Individual

The progressive income tax, federal urban renewal, federal aid to education, and a host of other welfare and unemployment measures are precisely what Karl Marx had in mind with his ideal for the Communist Party, “. . . from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”

However, we must not discard the practices of this social leveling principle simply because it had a sponsor we do not esteem or because it is the very essence of communism, a system we claim to despise. We must never reason from a premise as shallow as prejudice.

Let us reason from the premise set forth in the first chapter, the emergence of the individual. Keeping this in mind as our objective—the point of reference from which our conclusions are reasoned—what effect has the practice of this social leveling principle? Is the individual harmed or helped? That is the question!

A high school teacher of history and economics made an interesting attempt to explain how this principle would work should he apply it to his class.[1] It went something like this:

John, you received a grade of 95. Dick, you received a grade of 55. I shall take 20 from you, John, and give the 20 to you, Dick. By doing this, each of you will have a grade of 75, adequate for passing.

Now, how will this Marxist principle work in practice? You, John, will cease to work because I have removed your incentive. And, you, Dick, will give up work altogether because work is no longer the condition for a passing grade.

Thus, you see, we have a workless class. In the grown-up world people cannot live without work any more than you can learn without work. How, then, is work to be induced? The answer is simple: get ourselves an authoritarian, one who forces us to do what he thinks we ought to be doing.

Mentioned in the teacher’s explanation to his class are the three distinct classifications of persons involved in the social leveling process, the archetypes of which are: (1) the person with “ability,” that is, the one from whom is taken, (2) the person with “need,” that is, the one to whom someone else’s property is given, and (3) the person who does the taking and giving, the political Robin Hood, the authoritarian.

The Person with Ability

If my contention is correct that all persons, in all three categories, are harmed by social leveling, then it must follow that the whole caboodle of what are called “social gains” not only fail to benefit anyone but, rather, have a deteriorating effect on everyone. Let’s examine these archetypes in their taken-from, given-to, dictator order.

At the outset, we must not assume common agreement that harm is visited only on the person from whom is taken. There are many well-to-do individuals, sensitive to the plight or suffering of others, who gladly turn over to government the responsibility of caring for all afflicted people and, along with this shifting of responsibility from themselves to the state, a willingness for the government to draw on (tax) their ability to pay. They, not I, should be the judge of the harm such shifting of responsibility does to them. I can only question their judgment.

Division of labor—me to my speciality, you to yours—is essential to an expanding wealth. But there are several aspects of life we cannot turn over to others without harm to our individual expansion. Religion cannot be shifted to others, and we are well advised not leave our liberty in someone else’s hands. Further, I would suggest that charity is a distinctly personal, not a collective, matter.

President Cleveland vetoed a $10,000 appropriation to purchase seed wheat for Texans who had suffered a drought. Included in his message was the point I wish to emphasize:

Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

Can any person relieve himself of charitable concerns without losing a priceless ingredient of individual emergence? Does not a growth of the spirit and soul of man require that a concern for others be retained for strictly personal attention? President Cleveland gave an affirmative answer to these questions, as do I.

There are, however, millions with “ability” who wish to make their own decisions as to how the fruits of their own labor should be expended. They have judgments concerning people in their own orbits, based on intimate experiences and relationships, a knowledge which no agency—governmental or private—can possibly possess. Are these persons to be deprived of their own funds and the practice of personal charity denied to them because some others wish the government to pre-empt the welfare activity?

You, for instance, wish to practice an act of charity. But this voluntary act—one of the highest expressions of a common brotherhood—is thwarted when your honestly acquired income is taken by government. What was yours has been arbitrarily declared not yours; a “social” claim on your labor has been decreed. Indeed, government now operates on the theory that it has a first lien on your income and capital; your freedom of choice is severely restricted. As a consequence, you are restrained from practicing your own religion should your religion call for a personal charity toward others. The state will practice charity for you. A common brotherhood, by some quirk of reasoning, is to become a collective act of compulsion!

Then again, you may want to save that part of your income over and above your requirements for current living. Perhaps you may wish to “stash it under the mattress”! Who has any moral right to forbid it? Do strangers who didn’t earn it have any right, in logic and justice, to what you have earned?

More than likely, however, you will not act like King Midas but, rather, will invest your savings with the hope of some returns. This, beyond doubt, is one of the best ways to become a benefactor of mankind; for this is how capital formation is brought about. The capital is turned into tools and factories and power machinery—aids which help workers to produce more with their labor.[2] This increased production can, in turn, be put to savings and family security.

It isn’t possible to see other than harm done to the person with “ability” by the compulsory taking of his income.

The Person in Need

Now, to the second archetype: Does any able adult person “in need” really benefit by living on the confiscated income of others? Does this ever improve his character or his mental and physical faculties? His growth? Does anyone ever benefit by the removal of self-responsibility?

The something-for-nothing idea appears to flourish wherever there is a failure to grasp the purpose behind the struggle for existence. The fullest possible employment of one’s faculties is what makes for strength of body, of character, of spirit, of intellect. Non-use of faculties leads to atrophy. The story of the wild duck that joined the domestic ducks, was fed, but later couldn’t fly above the barnyard fence; of the gulls that fattened up at a shrimp plant but starved when it shut down; of the cattle that became accustomed to pen feeding and died rather than forage any more; of the hand-fed squirrels that laid up no nuts for the winter but bit the hands that fed them when the hands no longer held food—these and other stories of nature attest to principles of biology which are as applicable to persons who cannot use reason as to animals which lack the faculty of reason.

Life’s problems—obstacles—are not without purpose. They aid the processes of self-development, as well as of selection and evolution. They demand of the individual that he gather new strength to hurdle each new obstacle. The art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming.

It is no accident that the vast majority of top-ranking Americans, whatever their walk of life, are men whose careers have been associated with hardship and struggle. Rewards not associated with one’s own effort tend to weaken the sinews which make for growth. Such rewards—handouts—remove the necessity for production and invite potential producers to remain nonproducers. In short, there is an ever-present danger that they may encourage a person to become a parasite, living off what others produce. Parasitism is not associated with man’s upgrading.

Only casual reflection on the principles of organization will make clear that responsibility and authority should always be commensurate; they are meant to go hand-in-hand. When the responsibility for one’s own welfare is surrendered to government, it follows that the authority to conduct one’s life goes where the responsibility is reposed. This is a matter over which we have no choice; it is a law of organization.

The idea set forth in the Declaration of Independence that each person has an inherent and inalienable right to life becomes meaningless when a person loses the authority for his own decisions and must act according to someone else’s dictates. Unless an individual is self-controlling, his life is not truly his own. Before a life can be valued for its own sake—not simply a means to someone else’s goal—that life must retain its own power to choose, along with its own quality, its own dignity. Without self-power, there is no basis for love, respect, and friendship, in short, a common brotherhood; the powerless person becomes either a puppet or an unwanted burden. Even a mother’s love for an invalid child cannot exist unless it is voluntarily bestowed. Aged persons and others who depend on the income of others, confiscated by government, become mere numbers in the confused statistics of political bureaus. Neither bureaus nor statistics have the capacity for charity or a common brotherhood.

Keeping in mind Emerson’s accurate observation that the end pre-exists in the means, it should be plain that the evil means of confiscating income must lead to an evil end to those who live on it.

Actually, we are dealing here with a problem arising from a double standard of morality. Comparatively few persons will take private property without the owner’s consent. We think of that as stealing and frown on the practice. Yet we will form a collective—politically group ourselves—and take billions in income without consent; we thoughtlessly call it “doing good.”

Doing politically what we reject doing individually in no manner alters the immorality of the act; it merely legalizes the wrong and, thus, gains social absolution for the criminal; giving it the political twist keeps one from being tossed into jail! But to anyone who rejects the authoritarianism of a majority as much as that of a Stalin—to anyone who believes in the right to life and to one’s honestly acquired property—no moral absolution is gained by legislation.

Those who think only materialistically may argue that the stealing of a loaf of bread is a loss to the person from whom it is taken but a gain to the thief, if the thief “gets away with it.” This is an incorrect view. The person from whom the loaf is taken loses only the loaf. But the one who takes the loaf without the owner’s consent loses not only the respect of all who know him but loses also his integrity! Man can never realize his creative potentialities without integrity. This virtue lies at the root of emergence. To live on loot appears to be no further removed from evil than to take the loot.

Unless one believes in authoritarianism—that men should lord it over men, that some fallible humans should cast the rest of us in their little images—it is not possible to see anything but harm done to the person in “need” who is “aided” by taking the income of others without their consent.

The Authoritarian

And last, the third archetype: Of the three classifications of persons involved in social leveling by compulsion, the authoritarian—the one who administers the taking and the giving—has been too little diagnosed. It is not difficult to understand the discouragement and the destruction that come to the person from whom honest income is confiscated. Nor is it difficult to perceive the eroding of the moral fiber of those who become the “beneficiaries” of confiscated property. But what about “the humanitarian with the guillotine”—the well-meaning social reformer at the top of the political heap who uses the police force as his means of persuasion? Is harm done to him? Yes, though what happens to him may be difficult to portray.

The person who attempts by force to direct or rearrange the creative activities of others is in a very real sense a slave-master. And here is the crux of it: A slave-master becomes a slave himself when he enslaves others. If another has me on my back, holding me down, he is as permanently fastened on top of me as I am under him. Both of us are enslaved. True, he can, by force, keep me from being creative; but in so doing, his own energies must be diverted from creative to destructive actions. He cannot upgrade himself while he is employing his energies to downgrade. One who only destroys is himself destroyed. This is the same as saying that he who practices only evil is himself evil. Man’s usefulness to himself, to other men, to Creation’s purpose is to be achieved only by personal upgrading. If I reason logically from my premise, it follows that I cannot be helpful to others except as others find in me something of a creative nature that is available to them—in a voluntary relationship.

Materialistically, the valuable person is the one who has money or tools to use or to lend, or goods or skills to exchange. Intellectually, the valuable person is the one who has knowledge and understanding which are available to others in search of knowledge and understanding. Spiritually, the valuable person is the one who, by reason of a love of righteousness, discovers some of the divine principles of the universe and becomes able to impart to others that which he has perceived—by deed as well as by word.

All aspects of upgrading are creative in character. Necessarily they first demand an attention to self—that is, to self-cultivation. Nothing creative is induced by compulsion. With the possible exception of a low form of imitation, compulsion has only the power to restrain, repress, suppress, penalize, destroy. By the use of sufficient force, I can keep you from acting creatively; but no amount of force can compel you to think, to invent, to discover, to attune yourself to the Infinite, the source of all knowledge and understanding. Compulsion is antagonistic to creativeness.

The point under discussion is this: I cannot indulge in my own upgrading at the same time I am inhibiting someone else’s creative action. Therefore, to the extent that one’s life is spent in using force to coerce others, to that extent is one’s life destroyed, its higher purpose frustrated.

In a reference to political authority, Lord Acton observed, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This warning is not to be taken lightly, for the evidence is all about us and the reason plain to see.

Observe the profound change that comes over men when they are given power over others. When acting as responsible, self-controlled human beings—when attending to their own affairs—they were admirable both in their thinking and in their behavior. Now let power over others be vested in them. In due course—usually soon—they begin to think like authoritarians; they talk like authoritarians; they act like authoritarians; for, indeed, they are authoritarians. It is as if a chemical change had taken place in their persons.

Power or authority over the creative activities of others—that is, a responsibility for the creative behavior of others—is an assignment with an inevitably destructive consequence. Thus overburdened, a wielder of power eventually becomes intolerant, quick-tempered, irrational, disrespectful, and unrespected. How could he be expected to function as a strictly self-responsible individual under burdens which are not within his nature to shoulder?

Further, when in possession of political power over the creative actions of others, a fallible human being is almost certain to mistake this power for infallibility. The obeisance paid to a person in such authority, the drooling of the weak-willed who like to be led, the lies told by those who seek the favors he has the power to dispense—all these tend to aid and abet the process of his disintegration. It is not easy to reject flattery, regardless of its source. Indeed, the authoritarian loses his capacity to discriminate among sources. The mentality for directing others cannot simultaneously attend to the art of discrimination, the latter being a purely personal, introspective accomplishment of the intellect. This is why it is often said of authoritarians: “They surround themselves with ‘yes men.’” They cannot abide dissenters; in running the lives of others, they must have helpers who agree. This process spells inferiority for the life that erroneously claims superiority.

Daily experience affords a clue as to what happens to the person who accepts dictatorship in any of its many forms. For example, observe two persons, with somewhat different views, rationally discussing some subject of common interest. Each offers the other his most intelligent ideas, thus encouraging friendship and mutual confidence. This setting, plus the privacy of the occasion, combine to elicit from each the best that he has to offer. The exchange of intellectual energies is mutually beneficial, and the awareness of this fact encourages thinking and understanding.

Now, place these same two individuals on a stage before a multitude, or place a microphone between them and announce that 50 million people are listening in. Instantly, their mental processes will change. Thoughtfulness and the desire to understand each other will all but cease. No longer will they function as receiving sets, drawing on the expansible capacities of their own and each other’s intellects. They will become only sending stations; outgoing will take the place of intaking. And what they say will be influenced by how they think they sound to their audience and by their competition for applause. In short, they will become different persons because their psychological directives have changed. Those who forgo self-improvement for the sake of directing the lives of others experience changes in their drives no less profound than the above illustration. The authoritarian act is always directed outward at other persons.

The directing of, or the meddling in, the creative activities of others—the dictator role—is so compellingly corrupting that no person, interested in his own upgrading, should ever accept the role. If he has made the error of acceptance, abdication for his own mental and spiritual health would seem advisable. The likelihood of corruption is so great that any person is warranted in confessing, “Even I cannot assume this role without being corrupted.”

Each Man Plays Many Parts

The three classifications discussed above are merely archetypes. In our country, today, it is almost impossible to find a person who is strictly representative of but one of the three archetypes. By reason of the scope of social leveling by compulsion, and because of our general participation in power politics, most of us are more or less combinations of all three archetypes. No one of us is entirely one or the other; no one of us is entirely free of the ill effects.

In summary, all of us are, to some extent, in this socialistic arrangement together. And all of us are degraded to the extent that social leveling by compulsion is practiced, whether we are primarily the ones with “ability,” the ones with “need,” or the ones who act as the coercive do-gooders or levelers.

The only way, then, that we can avoid personal degradation is to avoid social leveling by compulsion. Not a single person is benefited; all are harmed by socialism.

A positive suggestion! Let government confine itself to defending the life, liberty, and property of each of us equally; in short, let government keep the peace! Leave all creative action to men acting freely, all creative energy flowing unrestrained and uninhibited. Only the release of creative energy can produce abundance, be it material, intellectual, or spiritual. Given these kinds of abundance, along with the unrestrained freedom to act creatively, and there will be as much good done by each for others as there is good within us to give.

[1] Thomas J. Shelly, when he taught at Yonkers High School.

[2] The textile industry, by itself, uses 15 billion kilowatt-hours annually, electric power being only one of several forms. Bear in mind that the energy of one man working a whole year, on an eight-hour shift, is equivalent to 67 kilowatt-hours. This single industry, with this single form of power, adds the equivalent of 224,000,000 men—about triple the entire work force of the whole U.S.A.! It is this power in the hands of workers, in its numerous forms and extended into countless industries, brought about by savings, that has made American workers so prosperous. Thus, the saver, by pursuing his own interest, is led, regardless of intent, to equipping others for self-help. This is quite different from the Judeo-Christian concept of charity but, when it comes to helping others, savings have no equal.

Chapter 6

How Socialism Harms the Economy

Our country has stumbled into socialism during the past half century; by now—1964—we have adopted nearly all the things socialists have long urged upon us. A reading of the ten points in the Communist Manifesto confirms this. We who are aware of socialism’s built-in destructiveness have watched this trend with apprehension. Foreseeing the end result, we are forever predicting, or warning against, the impending catastrophe which we think hangs over our economy.

Our dire predictions, however, fail to ring bells with many people. As a rule they are met by the rejoinder, “We never had it so good.” And, so far as statistical measurements of material well-being are concerned, that claim appears to hold water. Prosperity, according to the National Bureau of Economic Research, is reported to have increased as follows:

Today’s national income of $2,300 per capita is double what it was (in constant dollars) forty years ago, and it is higher in the face of a 70 percent increase in population and a 20 percent reduction in the hours of paid work per capita.

Output per man hour has grown over the same period at the average annual rate of 2.6 percent.

Today’s higher income is more evenly distributed than the lower income of earlier years.

The economic difficulties of most everyone have been lessened through the establishment and broadening of various social welfare programs.

The four recessions we have encountered since World War II are among the milder in our history, which means an unusually long period free of serious depressions.[1]

Now, consider what has happened politically during this period. Statism, measured in terms of governmental expenditures per capita, has advanced from about $80 in the years just after World War I to more than $700 now.[2]

Small wonder, then, that most people, observing statism and prosperity advancing coincidentally over so long a period, conclude that the growth of statism is the cause of the increased prosperity! But if there is a positive correlation here, why not expand prosperity indefinitely by the mere expedient of increasing governmental expenditures? This absurdity needs no comment.

Nonetheless, it is true that the comeback, “We never had it so good,” cannot easily be proved wrong statistically. A man leaping from an airplane at high altitude will, for a time in his fall, have the feeling of lying on a cloud. For a moment he would be warranted in exclaiming, “I’ve never had it so good!” And only one familiar with physical principles such as the law of gravitation could prove to him that disaster lay ahead. Yet, some of us would believe, by reason of certain knowledge, that the man was not long for this world.

Some of us believe that the chant, “We’ve never had it so good,” is founded on a mistaken correlation. But more significantly, it overlooks moral realities which cannot be measured statistically. It is our conviction:

1. That the practice of dishonesty is evil and that retribution follows the doing of evil. Every evil act commits us to its retribution. The time lag between the committing of an evil act and our awareness that retribution is being visited upon us has nothing to do with the certainty of retribution; it has to do only with our own limited perception.

2. That there is no greater dishonesty than man effecting his own private gains at the expense of others. This is ego gone berserk; it is the coercive assertion of one’s supremacy as he defies and betrays his kind.

3. That statism is but socialized dishonesty; it is feathering the nests of some with feathers coercively plucked from others—on the grand scale. There is no moral—only a legal—distinction between petty thievery and political Robin Hoodism, which is to say, there is no moral difference between the act of a pickpocket and the progressive income tax or any other piece of socialization.

Thus, many of us profoundly believe that we cannot maintain the present degree of statism, let alone drift further toward the omnipotent state, without our great economy flying to pieces. Nevertheless, we find it difficult to do more than express our misgivings and alarm. Why, precisely why, does the present course presage disaster? What will be the nature of that disaster? Perhaps the following explanation may be worth pondering.

A Societal Problem

At the outset, imagine an impossible situation: a population composed of self-sufficient individuals, no exchange of any kind between them—not even conversation. Moral qualities, such as honesty among men and the practice of the Golden Rule, would never be brought into play. Each might be congenitally dishonest and unjust; but with no practice of the evils, what visible difference would it make?

Now, assume the development of specialization and exchange. The greater and more rapid the development, the more dependent would be each individual on all the others. Carried far enough, each person would be completely removed from self-sufficiency and utterly dependent on the free, uninhibited exchanges of the numerous specializations. In this situation, a total failure in exchange would result in everyone’s perishing.

Whenever we become economically dependent on each other—an inescapable consequence of a highly specialized production and exchange economy—we become equally dependent on the moral qualities of the participating individuals. No peaceful or free or willing exchange economy can exist among chronic liars and thieves; no such economy can long endure without a high degree of honesty. This is self-evident.

The degree of specialization in the U.S.A. today is without precedent in all history and, as a consequence, our dependence on each other is beyond the bounds of experience in this or any other country—ever! The question is, are we overly specialized and, thus, dangerously interdependent? I believe we are.

We are dangerously interdependent because so much of our specialization is unsound; it is not economic and natural but, instead, is governmentally forced and artificial. An economy founded on artificialities is in peril.

Economic specialization is the sturdy variety that blooms in the context of the peaceful, free, and unfettered market; it is the natural, technological outcropping of consumer requirements as reflected in voluntary, willing exchanges. Given these postulates, production, regardless of how specialized it is, generates its own purchasing power; balance is one of its built-in features.

Natural Specialization Welcomed

All advances in natural specialization improve the standard of living. It is true that interdependence increases with its growth, but without peril, for economic interdependence is founded on consent; the countless relationships are as firmly rooted in general harmony and acceptance as is the free exchange of 30 cents for a can of beans. In a free market transaction each party chalks up a gain, for each values what he receives more than what he gives; each party is in a thank-you mood. Check this assertion with your own shopping experiences.

Specialization of the free market variety develops an integrated interdependence because each person is his own man—the whole man; all the faculties are called upon in his interrelationships. The premium is on self-responsibility and honesty, these being the cohesive ingredients which make specialization and exchange a workable arrangement. To prove the validity of these affirmations, simply reflect on one’s daily free market experiences with the purveyors of countless specializations: groceries by the hundreds, milk, school supplies, footwear, clothing, gas, electricity, on and on. The natural, peaceful, unfettered free market rewards—and gets—the honesty on which it relies.

Unnatural specialization, on the other hand, decreases rather than increases the standard of living. It does not have its origin in consent but in force. It is not the result of millions upon millions of judgments voluntarily rendered. It is, instead, founded on the whims, caprices—call these judgments, if you choose—of political persons and committees, the few who have gained power over the rest of us. When these political “ins” take over a sector of society, they remove it from the area where free choice may be exercised by the millions of “outs.” Our faculties are less and less called upon; self-responsibility shifts to government or authoritarian responsibility—that of the political “ins.” The premium on honesty disappears as prizes are given more and more for bending to expediency, trading influence and special privileges, log-rolling, and the like. From this turnabout, the individual tends to become someone else’s man; that is, not the whole man but the fragmented man. Having forsworn independence or being deprived of it, men lose the incentive to be honest and self-responsible, and thus become incapable of true interdependence.

As I see it, socialization harms the economy (1) by spawning unnatural specializations and (2) by demoralizing the citizenry. Such moral qualities as self-responsibility and honesty are not exercised under socialism, and thus tend to wither away. And without these qualities, interdependence is unworkable. Moral qualities are gone with the wind when uprooted; it is self-evident that they do not exist except as they are practiced.

Natural specializations emerge from the willing exchange (free) market at work. The unnatural and unhappy alternative is for the government to forcibly collect income from citizens to employ individuals to specialize in occupations the willing exchange market would not support.

Exploring the Moon

Instead of trying to pick the danger point in this situation from the hopeless governmental complex in which it is embedded, let us first examine a single facet.

Take, for example, the moon project. What its ultimate, useful purpose is I cannot imagine. But putting aside personal prejudices against this multibillion dollar project, it is obvious that it would not, at this time, emerge from the free market. Now, consider the countless specializations that this single governmental project calls into existence. Take only one of them: finding out how to cushion the landing of a TV set on the moon. The specialists who devote themselves to this problem, and all who are dependent on them, have no way of living except as they are able to exchange the income given to them by government for food, clothing, housing, and so on. But this income of theirs is not voluntarily supplied in the marketplace; government has forcibly taken it from the rest of us. Who would willingly exchange the food he raises for this service to the moon project? This project qualifies as an unnatural specialization; it is not bound into the economy by mutual consent as reflected by willing exchanges in a free market; it is bound into the economy by the exertion of governmental force or coercion.

That some unnatural specializations are economically tolerable is conceded, but this is an exceedingly limited tolerance. Merely imagine everyone specializing in activities for which no one would willingly exchange his income!

All governmental intervention has as its object a forcible altering of what people would do were they unrestrained. To the extent that government intervenes in free action to that extent is unnatural specialization brought into play. While most of us will concede that government should forcibly restrain fraud, violence, and the like, it does not take a skilled sociologist to understand what would happen to the economy were all citizens to specialize in policing. While the proper function of government is to keep the peace, citizens must be on the alert lest the bureaucracy pervert even this laudable objective. Too many soldiers and policemen are possible, as history attests. Not every corner requires a stop light. It is easy to be talked into a battleship or a supersonic bomber binge. If the bureaucracy is not checked, it will tend to build, in the name of peace, a defense against every conceivable contingency—so much “security” that “the secured” are without resources—helpless and hopeless.

However, my aim in this chapter is not to discuss the merit of this or that type of forcible intervention; it is, rather, to suggest that there comes a point in unnatural specializations beyond which extension is impossible without the economy flying to pieces. Suppose that everyone were engaged in one of the nonexchangeable services such as designing and constructing devices to cushion the landing of TV sets on the moon!

Unmarketable Specialties

Regardless of the need some may see for government golf courses or price supports or compulsory education of children or federally financed hospitals or numberless other socializations, the fact is that tens of millions of American citizens in consequence are now engaged in and wholly dependent on unmarketable specializations—and the number grows apace. Increasingly, more and more millions are becoming dependent on such forced exchange of their unwanted specializations for those goods and services without which they cannot live. Even if the personal virtues of honesty and self-responsibility were at their highest state of development, instead of their present eroded state, such a system could not be made to work. Nothing but the total state—the police force in charge of everything—can cause us to exchange with each other goods and services none of us wants. And, the total state, as I have already tried to demonstrate, is noncreative. The possibility of a good economy disappears with the total state.

Bear in mind, when it comes to assessing prosperity and the state of the economy statistically, that dollars exchanged for unnatural specializations are counted as earned income precisely as if exchanged for natural specializations. This is a misleading fiction. For instance, there would be no decline in gross national product (GNP), as presently computed by government, if all of us indulged in unmarketable specializations provided, of course, that the state priced the specializations high enough and forced us to exchange them even while we are slowly starved!

Statistical measurements of economic well-being cannot gauge the honesty and self-responsibility of the citizens, nor can any statistics warn us when unnatural specializations are becoming top heavy; such is beyond the scope of statistical measurement.

If one wishes to know how socialism harms the economy, I suggest that much less attention be given to statistics than to the question: How much immoral action is being introduced into the economy? If socializing the means and the results of production is immoral, as I contend, then socialism harms the economy by introducing immorality into it. In short, watch moral trends, rather than numerical fictions, for danger signals.

[1] See The Fortieth Annual Report (National Bureau of Economic Research, New York, NY, 1960).

[2] How closely does this approach what we call the “authoritarian state”? One way to make an estimate is to measure governmental take of earned income. In 1917 it was less than 10 percent. Today it is 36 percent. We must keep in mind, however, that a state of dictatorship can exist prior to a 100 percent take—perhaps at the halfway mark.

Chapter 7

How Pressure Groups Promote Inflation

When socialism is allowed to spread in an economy like that of the U.S.A., inflation—as pointed out in the second chapter—will be resorted to as a means of financing it. Briefly, whenever the expenditures for socialistic projects rise to that high point where it is no longer politically expedient to collect the costs thereof by direct tax levies, socialization programs must either cease or the government must finance them by an indirect tax: inflation. Not only does this claim seem reasonable, but the historical record confirms it.

This is but half the story. Any influence which promotes inflation—without which any substantial socialism is impossible—ipso facto promotes socialism. Inflation makes the extension of socialism possible by providing the financial chaos in which it flourishes. The fact is that socialism and inflation are simultaneously cause and effect; they feed on each other!

What is this financial chaos of inflation? It is an increase by dilution of the money supply. The process or act of diluting the medium of exchange is inflation. Brutally, but nonetheless accurately, inflation is legalized counterfeiting. Inflating the medium of exchange—other factors being equal—results in higher prices. But the rising price trend is not inflation; it is only one of the possible consequences of a dilution of the medium of exchange which lowers the purchasing value of the monetary unit.

Finding all the causes of any given effect is perhaps impossible. My ears are injured. The injury is an effect. What caused the injury? A deafening sound. What caused the sound? Vibrations. What caused the vibrations? Dynamite. What caused the dynamite to detonate? And so on. We find that cause underlies cause, ad infinitum.

Inflation, like the ear injury, is the effect of a sequence of causes which we have to examine in depth—and the deeper we go, the more obscure the causes. However, the first cause that underlies inflation—an effect—is plainly observable. Inasmuch as government has sole responsibility for our monetary system, we can easily see that government causes inflation.

But, looking to the second level, what causes government to dilute (inflate) the money supply? Again, the answer comes clear: Government meets its costs of operation by taxation. How else? Now, if the costs of government go beyond the point where direct tax levies will no longer produce an equivalent revenue, government will resort to an indirect tax: an inflation of the money supply. It has always been thus; politically, it cannot be otherwise. The new money created and spent by government reduces the value of each unit of money and credit outstanding.

Very well. What is the third underlying cause, that is, what causes the expenses of government to be so high that they cannot be met by direct tax levies? At this level, the cause is more obscure. It is quite clear that expensive socialistic schemes do not have their origin in popular demand but, instead, are initiated by bureaucrats; imagined plights of minorities are dramatically portrayed and a demand for redress “whipped up.”[1] But, more to our point, there are small yet powerful groupings of the electorate—pressure groups—who effectively petition government (1) to get them out of their own messes or (2) to obtain benefits at someone else’s expense. At this depth there are causes galore.

Pressure Tactics of Labor Unions

There are two reasons for considering labor unions as an example of the way pressure groups cause inflation and, thus, promote socialism (or, I might add, cause socialism and, thus, promote inflation!) First, by using the labor union example, we can demonstrate how businessmen, clergymen, and others bring on these twin destroyers.

Second, we can show that the “wage-spiral,” coercively induced by unions, is not itself a cause of inflation. Understanding how such accusations are incorrectly leveled at labor unions will afford a better look at the inflation-socialism complex. Looking into labor union behavior is like looking into the mirror for millions of us. What we see is shocking!

It can be truthfully said that people bring on both socialism and inflation, but people do many other things besides. Thus, if we would stop inflation and thereby curb a major part of socialism, we should know which actions of people bring on inflation and which ones do not. In short, we need to know which one of the various labor union practices induces inflation. Otherwise, unions may be criticized on the wrong count while the critics innocently follow practices which bring on the very inflation they so stoutly deplore. We cannot hope to stop inflation until we gain some familiarity with its causes—and the real cause will elude us as long as we chase fictitious ones.

The labor union critics who blame inflation on the incessant, persistent, coercive drives of labor unions for higher and higher wages are on the wrong track. Such coercion is not to be condoned, but it is not a cause of inflation. To explain: Suppose your gardener issues an ultimatum: either you pay him $ 100 a day from now on, or else he will quit—in which case he would use force if necessary to keep any other gardener from taking the job which he threatens to vacate (the labor union tactic, in principle). You are right if you condemn this action, but you are wrong if you call it a cause of inflation. Why? Because no dilution of the money supply (inflation) is induced by either your acceptance or refusal of this demand. True, you may go broke if you accept, or he may become unemployed if you refuse, but that’s all the economics there is to it—nothing happens to the money supply. Nor is the economics of it altered one whit if a labor union induces a million gardeners to take similar action in unison. Inflation is not one of the results. Such action as this merely creates an economic mess which the labor unions hasten to cover up. They promote “full employment” programs (socialism) which, to the casual observer, seem to absolve the unions from having committed any uneconomic practices. It is these costly covering-up programs that bring on the inflation!

Why Wages Rise

Like so many organizations, labor unions get blamed for sins they never committed, receive absolution for follies of their own making, have aims they cannot attain, and make claims for deeds they never achieved. For example, unions claim credit for raising wages. The truth is that unions have had no more to do with the general level of wages than with the level of the seven seas.[2] Admittedly, they have succeeded in obtaining increases for some of their members. And this has been not entirely at the expense of nonmembers; their tactics have disemployed many of their own members as well. In any event, their coercive wage hikes have not caused inflation. It is the covering-up, subsequent action that brings on inflation and makes the growth of socialism a financial plausibility.

The actions of union members are based largely on the thinking of their top officials. Much of their philosophy is summarized in this sentence from an AFL-CIO pamphlet (Publication No. 41):

Through their legislative activities, unions have continuously championed measures to improve governmental benefits for various groups of citizens, without regard to whether the beneficiaries are union members or not.

There may be less generosity in this doff of the hat to nonmembers than first meets the eye. One finds the unions, for instance, supporting more government aid to foreign countries, federal aid to education, more compulsory social security, government ownership of power and light facilities, federal aid to so-called distressed areas, and so on—all of these being part and parcel of government’s guaranteed full employment program—the cover-up for uneconomic practices by labor unions.

Through Political Intervention

Labor unions are politically influential. In large measure, they obtain increased federal activity for projects they sponsor. Their coerced and uneconomic wage hikes cause unemployment; in short, their policies price workers out of the market. Then the unions throw their enormous political influence behind federal urban renewal and other “full employment” projects which, in turn, cost billions of dollars, making for governmental costs that cannot possibly be financed by direct tax levies. And this is how labor unions cause inflation and socialism!

In principle, if not in degree, the social action program of the National Council of Churches resembles the labor unions’ program—the assumption by government of more and more responsibility for the welfare of the people. The National Council of Churches is influential. The government activities it sponsors carry enormous costs. This is how the N.C.C. causes inflation and socialism!

And, chambers of commerce? Only a few in the whole nation have refrained from seeking federal aid for local roads, hospitals, airports, and so forth. Chambers of commerce have political influence. The “benefits” they advocate and achieve cost money. This is how chambers of commerce cause inflation and socialism!

Millions of citizens from all walks of life cause inflation in the very same manner. And all of them, along with labor unions, the N.C.C., chambers of commerce, and thousands of other organizations loudly decry inflation and demand that the fire be put out as they more or less innocently add fuel to it!

Were we to explore any deeper, we should have to inquire into the cause of the lax dispersal of the unlimited billions of dollars that government so easily grants to any and all pressure-group beggars. Why this Aladdin’s Lamp, the slightest rubbing of which yields handouts without limit? Why, in Congress, is the question seldom asked any more, “Where’s the money coming from?” The cause of this fiscal irresponsibility is complex indeed, but it has to do with that dearth of economic understanding which allows people to believe they can pay bills by “watering” the medium of exchange, with a crack-up in our educational system, an inability to see and think long-range, a breakdown in integrity, and a striking perversion of the ideal of statesmanship.

[1] See “The Public Demand . . .?” by Dr. Emerson P. Schmidt, The Freeman, August 1964.

[2] See Why Wages Rise by F. A. Harper (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education. Inc., 1957).

Chapter 8

Appoint a Committee!

The practice of committees, boards, or councils presuming to represent the views of vast constituencies occurs in educational and religious associations, in trade and commercial organizations, indeed in any segment of society where there is the propensity to organize.

While there are daily examples by the thousands of this “thinking by proxy,” one that stood out, and about which many are aware, had to do with a debate between the National Council of Churches and its erstwhile National Lay Committee. Their debate brought into focus a fault that may well lie at the root of unpeaceful socialism. It had to do with the propriety of the N.C.C.’s seeming to speak for 35,800,000 Protestants on social, political, and economic questions. The N.C.C, argued affirmatively, the Lay Committee negatively.[1]

Leo Tolstoy made the point I wish to examine:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.[2]

Tolstoy’s is a striking statement. Is it possible that there is something of a wholly destructive nature which has its source in council, or in group, or in committee-type action? Can this sort of thing generate lies that actually cause the loss of “millions of human beings”? And, as I believe, aid and abet socialism in this bad bargain?

Any reasonable clue to the unhappy state of our affairs merits investigation. Two world wars that settled nothing, but added to the difficulties of avoiding even worse ones; men of doubtful character rising to positions of power over millions of other men; freedom to produce, to trade, to travel disappearing from the earth; everywhere the fretful talk of security as insecurity daily becomes more evident; suggested solutions to problems made of the stuff that gave rise to the problems in the first place; the tragic spectacle, even here in America, of any one of many union labor leaders being able, at will, to control a strategic part of the complex exchange machinery on which the livelihood of all depends; these and other perplexities of import combine to raise a tumultuous “why,” and to hasten the search for answers.

Strange how wide and varied the search, as though we intuitively knew the cause to lie in some elusive, hidden, unnoticed error; thousands of not too well tutored folks trying to find light in difficult and erudite tomes, other thousands groping in quiet reflection for answers.

Yes, the search is on for the errors and their answers—for the affair is serious; the stake is life itself. And the error or errors, it is agreed at least among the serious-minded, may well be found deep in the thoughts and behaviors of men, even of well-intentioned men. Anyway, everything and everyone is suspect. And, why not? When there is known to be a culprit and the culprit is not identified, what other scientifically sound procedure is there?

“. . . on that day began lies . . .” That is a thought which deserves reflection. Obviously, if everything said or written were lies, then truth or right principles would be unknown. Subtract all knowledge of right principles, and there would not be chaos among men; there would be no men at all.

If half of everything said or written were lies . . .? What then?

Principled Behavior

Human life is dependent not only on the knowledge of right principles but relies, also, on actions in accord with right principles. However, the nearest that any person can get to right principles—truth—is that which his highest personal judgment dictates as right. Beyond that, one cannot go or achieve. Truth, then, as nearly as any individual can express it, is in strict conformity with this inner, personal dictate of rightness.

The accurate representation of this inner, personal dictate is intellectual integrity. It is the expressing, living, acting of such truth as any given person possesses. Inaccurate representation of what one believes to be right is untruth. It is a lie in the high level sense of the word, the type of lie Tolstoy vetoed and deplored.

Attaining knowledge of right principles is an infinite process. It is a never-ending performance, a perpetual hatching, a goal to be pursued but never attained. Intellectual integrity—the accurate reflection of highest personal judgment—on the other hand, is undeniably within the reach of all. Thus, the very best we can ever hope to do with ourselves is to project ourselves at our best. To do otherwise is to tell a lie. To tell lies is to deny such truth as is known, and to deny truth is to destroy ourselves and others.

It would seem to follow, then, that if we would find the origin of lies, we might put the spotlight on the genesis of our troublous times. This is why it seems appropriate to accept Tolstoy’s statement as a working hypothesis and to examine the idea that lies begin when men accept “decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience.” For, certainly, today, many of the decisions which guide national and world policy spring from “men united in councils.”

In what manner, then, do the “decisions of men united in councils” tend to initiate lies? A long experience with these arrangements suggests to me that there are several ways.

Mob Action Analyzed

The first way has to do with a strange and what must be an unconscious behavior of men in association. Consider the lowest form of association, the mob. It is a loose and wholly emotional type of gathering. The mob will tar and feather, burn at the stake, string up by the neck; in short, murder! But dissect this association, pull it apart for a careful view, investigate its members. Each person, very often, is a God-fearing, home-loving, wouldn’t-kill-a-fly type of individual.

What happens then? What causes persons in a mob to behave as they do? What accounts for the distinction between these persons acting as self-responsible individuals and these very same persons acting in mob-type committee?

Perhaps it is this: These persons, when in mob association, and perhaps at the instigation of a demented leader, lose the self-disciplines which guide them in individual or self-controlled action; thus, the evil which is in each person is released, for there is some evil in each of us. In this situation, no one of the mobsters consciously assumes the personal guilt for what is thought to be a collective act but, instead, puts the onus of it on an irresponsible abstraction—the mob.

I may appear to be unfair in relating mob association to association in general. In all but one respect, yes. But in this single exception there is a striking similarity.

Individuals support proposals in association that they would never propose on their own responsibility. Persons of normal veracity, by any of the common standards of honesty, will join as a board or a committee to sponsor legal thievery, for instance—they will urge the use of the political means to exact the fruits of the labor of others to benefit themselves, their groups, their community or, to put it bluntly, their mob.

Joe Doakes Seeks Entry

Imagine this: Joe Doakes passed away, his spirit floating to the Pearly Gates. In response to a knock, Saint Peter appeared and inquired:

“Who are you, may I ask?”

“My name is Joe Doakes, sir.”

“Where are you from?”

“I am from Robinhoodsville, U.S.A.”

“Why are you here?”

“I plead admittance.”

Saint Peter scanned his scroll and said:

“Yes, Joe, your name appears on my list but I cannot admit you.”

“Why not, pray tell?”

“You stole money from millions of others, including widows and orphans.”

“You must have me confused with someone else; I had the reputation of being the most honest man in my community.”

“You may have had that reputation among men, but they did not see through the nature of your actions. You see, Joe, you were a member, a financial supporter, and once on the Board of Directors of the Robinhoodsville Chamber of Commerce, the most influential committee in your town. You folks, gathered in council, advocated and obtained a municipal golf course. That project took from the livelihood of others, including widows and orphans, in order that a hundred or so golfers might enjoy the sport with little cost to themselves.”

“But Saint Peter, the Robinhoodsville Chamber of Commerce took that action, not your humble applicant, Joe Doakes.”

Saint Peter scanned his scroll again, slowly raised his head and said somewhat sadly:

“Joe, the Robinhoodsville Chamber of Commerce is not on my list, nor any foundation, nor any church, nor any trade association, nor any labor union, nor any P.T.A., nor any committee. All I have on my scroll are individuals, just individuals.”

It ought to be obvious that we as individuals do stand responsible for our actions regardless of any wishes to the contrary and irrespective of the devices we try to arrange to avoid personal responsibility. Actions of the group—council or committee—insofar as they are not accurate reflections of the participating individuals, must be classified as lies.

The Art of Compromise

Another way that lies are initiated by the “decisions of men united in councils” inheres in commonly accepted committee practices. Here is a committee which has been assigned the task of preparing a report on what should be done about rent control. The first member is devoted to the welfare-state idea and believes that rents should forever be controlled by governmental fiat. The second member is a devotee of the voluntary society with its free market economy, and a government of strictly limited powers. He, therefore, believes all remaining rent control should be abolished immediately. The third member believes that rent control is wrong but that decontrol should be effected gradually, over a period of years.

This not uncommon situation is composed of men honestly holding three different and irreconcilable beliefs. Yet, a report is expected and, under the customary committee theory and practice, is usually forthcoming. What shall they do? Is there some compromise not too disagreeable to any one of the three committeemen? For instance, why not recommend that landlords be permitted by government to increase rents by no more than 15 percent? Agreed!

In this hypothetical case—in no way at odds with common practice—the recommendation is a fabrication. Truth, as understood by any one of the three, has no spokesman; it has been miserably distorted. By any reasonable definition, a lie has been told.

This example (numberless variations could be cited) suggests only the nature of the lie in embryo. It is interesting to see what becomes of it.

Behind the Committee

Not all bodies called committees are true committees, a phase of the discussion that will be dealt with later. However, the true committee—an arrangement which calls for resolutions in accord with what a majority of the members are willing to say in concert—is but the instigator of fabrications yet more pronounced. The committee, for the most part, presupposes another larger body to which its recommendations are made.

These larger bodies have a vast, a very nearly all-inclusive, range in present-day American life: the neighborhood development associations; the small town and big city chambers of commerce; the regional and national trade associations; the P.T.A.’s; labor unions organized vertically to encompass crafts and horizontally to embrace industries; farmers’ granges and co-ops; medical and other professional societies; ward, precinct, county, state, and national organizations of political parties; government councils, from the local police department to the Congress of the United States; the United Nations; thousands and tens of thousands of them, every citizen embraced by several of them and millions of citizens embraced by scores of them; most of them resolving to act as groups, as “men united in councils.”

These associational arrangements divide quite naturally into two broad classes: (1) those that are of the voluntary type, the kind to which we pay dues if we want to, and (2) those that are a part of government, the kind to which we pay taxes whether we want to or not. For the purpose of this critique, emphasis will be placed on the voluntary type.

Now, it is not true, nor is it here pretended, that every associational resolution originates in distortions of personal conceptions of what is right. But any one of the millions of citizens who participate in these associations has, by experience, learned how extensive these fabrications are. As a matter of fact, there has developed a rather large acceptance of the notion that wisdom can be derived from the averaging of opinions, provided there are enough of them. The quantitative theory of wisdom, so to speak!

The Deception Extended

If one will concede that the aforementioned committee characteristics and council behaviors are perversions of truth, it becomes interesting to observe the manner of their extension—to observe how the lie is compounded.

Analyzed, it runs something like this: An association takes a position on some issue and claims or implies that it speaks for its 1,000,000 members. It is possible, of course, that each of the million members agrees with the stand taken by the association. But in all probability, this is an untruthful claim for the following reasons:

1. If every member were actually polled on the issue, and the majority vote were accepted as the association’s position, there is no certainty that more than 500,001 persons agreed with the position claimed to be that of the 1,000,000.

2. If not all members were polled, or not all were at the meeting where the voting took place, there is only the certainty that a majority of those voting favored the position of the association—still claimed to be the position of 1,000,000 members. If a quorum should be 100, there is no certainty that more than 51 persons agreed with the position.

3. It is still more likely that the opinion of the members was not tested at all. The officers, or some committee, or some one person may have determined the stand of the association. Then there is no certainty that more than one person (or a majority of the committee) favored the association’s position.

4. And, finally, if that person should be dishonest—that is, untrue to that which he personally believes to be right, either by reason of ulterior motives, or by reason of anticipating what the others might approve—then, it is pretty certain that the resolution did not even originate in a single honest opinion.

A personal experience will highlight the point I am trying to make. The economist of a national association and I were breakfasting, just after V-J Day Wage and price controls were still in effect. The economist opened our dialogue:

“I have just written a report on wage and price controls which I think you will like.”

“Why do you say you think I will like it? Why don’t you say you know I will like it?”

“Well, I—er—hedged a little on rent controls.”

“You don’t believe in rent controls. Why did you hedge?”

“Because the report is as strong as I think our Board of Directors will adopt.”

“As the economist, isn’t it your duty and responsibility to state that which you believe to be right? If the Board Members want to take a wrong action, let them do so and bear the responsibility for it.”

Actually, what did happen? The Board adopted that report as written by the economist. It was represented to a committee of the Congress as the considered opinion of the constituency of that association. Many of the members believed in the immediate abolishment of rent control. Yet, they were reported as believing otherwise—and paying dues to be thus represented. By supporting this procedure with their membership and their money, they were as responsible as though they had gone before the Congress and told the lie themselves.

In order to avoid the twofold dishonesty in this situation, the spokesman of that association would have had to tell the whole truth to the congressional committee. It would have been like this:

“This report was adopted by our Board of Directors, 35 of the 100 being present. The vote was 18 in favor, 12 against; 5 did not vote. The report itself was written by the association’s economist, but he does not believe it is right.”

Such honesty or exactness is more the exception than the rule, as everyone who has had experience in associational work can attest. What really happens is a misrepresentation of concurrence, a misorganized way of lying about how many of any group stand for what. Truth, such as is known, is seldom spoken. It is warped into a misleading distortion. It is obliterated by this process of the majority speaking for the minority, more often by the minority speaking for the majority, sometimes by one dishonest opportunist speaking for thousands. Truth, such as is known—the best judgments of individuals—for the most part, goes unrepresented, unspoken.

This, then, is the thread out of which much of local, national, and world policy is being woven. Is it any wonder that many citizens are confused?

Three questions are in order:

1. What is the reason for all these troubles with truth?

2. What should we do about these associational difficulties?

3. Is there a proper place for associational activity as relating to important issues?

The Reasons Examined

As emphasized in the previous chapter, pointing out causes is a hazardous venture; as one ancient sage put it, “Even from the beginnings of the world descends a chain of causes.” Thus, for the purpose of this critique, it would be folly to attempt more than casual reference to some of our own recent experiences.

First, there appears to be no widespread, lively recognition of the fact that conscience, reason, knowledge, integrity, fidelity, and other virtues are the distinctive and exclusive properties of individual persons.

Somehow, there follows from this lack of recognition the mischievous notion that wisdom can be derived by pooling the conclusions of a sufficient number of persons, even though no one of them has applied his faculties to the problem in question. From this premise, the imagination begins to ascribe personal characteristics to a collective—the committee, council, association—as though the collective could think, judge, know, or assume responsibility. With this as a notion, there is the inclination to substitute the “decisions of men united in councils” for the reason and conscience of persons. The individual feels relieved of personal responsibility and thus gives no real thought to the matter in question.

Second, there is an almost blind faith in the efficacy and rightness of majority decision, as though the mere preponderance of opinion were the device for determining what is right. This thinking is consistent with and a part of the “might makes right” doctrine.

Third, we have carried the division-of-labor practice to such a high point in this country, and with such good effect in standard-of-living benefits, that we seem to have forgotten that the practice has any limitations. Many of us, in our voluntary associational activities, have tried to delegate moral and personal responsibilities to these associational abstractions.

As a consequence, our policies and public positions are void of reason and conscience. These massive quantities of unreasoned collective declarations and resolutions have the power to inflict damage but are generally useless in conferring understanding. So much for causes.

Do Not Participate!

Next, what can be done about these associational difficulties? I can give only my own answer. I do not know what our attitude should be, but only what mine is! It is to have no part in any association whatsoever which takes actions implicating me, for which I am not ready and willing to accept personal responsibility.[3]

Put it this way: If I am opposed, for instance, to spoliation—legal plunder—I am not going to risk being reported in its favor. This is a matter having to do with morals, and moral responsibility is strictly a personal affair. In this and like areas, I prefer to speak for myself. I do not wish to carry the division-of-labor idea, the delegation of authority, to this untenable extreme.

One friend who shares these general criticisms objects to the course I have taken. He argues that he must remain in associations which persist in misrepresenting him in order to influence them for the better. If one accepts this view, how can he avoid “holing up” with every evil to be found, anywhere? How can one lend support to an agency which lies about his convictions and avoid living a lie in the process? If to stop such evil in others one has to indulge in evil, it seems evident that evil will soon become universal. The alternative? Stop lending a hand to the doing of evil! This at least has the virtue of lessening the evildoers by one. Furthermore, were there a record of the men who have wrought the greatest changes for good in the world, I am certain that the ones who acted on their own responsibility would top the ones who acted in committees.

How Associations May Help

Now the third question, “Is there a proper place for associational activity as relating to important public issues?” There is.

The bulk of activities conducted by many associations is as businesslike, as economical, as appropriate to the division-of-labor process, as is the organization of specialists to bake bread or to make automobiles. It is not this vast number of useful service activities that is in question.

The phase of committee activities which I see as the cause of so much mischief has to do with a technique, a plausible but insidious method by which reason and conscience—the repositories of such truths as we possess—are not only robbed of incentive for improvement but are actually used for fabrications, which are then represented as the convictions of persons who hold no such convictions. No better device for the promotion of socialism was ever invented!

It was noted above that not all bodies called committees are true committees, a true committee being an arrangement by which a number of persons bring forth a report consistent with what the majority is willing to state in concert. The true committee is part and parcel of the “majority is right” line of thought—or lack of thought.

The alternative arrangement, on occasion referred to as a committee, may include the same set of men. The distinction is that the responsibility and the authority for a study is vested not in the collective, the set of men, but in one person, preferably the one most skilled in the subject at issue. The others serve not as decision makers but as consultants. The one person exercises his own judgment as to the suggestions to be incorporated or omitted. The report is his and is presented as his, with such acknowledgments of assistance and concurrence as the facts warrant. In short, the responsibility for the study and the authority to conduct it are reposed where responsibility and authority are capable of being exercised—in an individual. This arrangement takes full advantage of the skills and specialties of all parties concerned. The tendency here is toward an intellectual leveling-up, whereas with the true committee the tendency is toward irresponsibility. The first principle of any successful organizational arrangement is: always keep responsibility and authority commensurate and in balance.

On occasion, associations are formed for a particular purpose and supported by those who are like-minded as to that purpose. As long as the associational activities are limited to the stated purpose and as long as the members remain like-minded, the danger of misrepresentation is removed.

It is the multipurpose association, the one that potentially may take a “position” on a variety of subjects, particularly subjects relating to the rights or the property of others—moral questions—where misrepresentation is not only possible but almost certain. Merely keep in mind the nature of a committee.

The remedy here, if a remedy can be put into effect, is for the association to quit taking “positions” except on such rare occasions as unanimous concurrence is manifest, or except as the exact and precise degree and extent of concurrence is represented. Were the whole truth told about the genesis of and the concurrence in most committee reports, their destiny would be the wastebasket.

The Strength of the Individual

The alternative to associational “positions” is individual membership positions, that is, using the associational facilities to service the members: provide headquarters and meeting rooms where members may assemble in free association, exchange ideas, take advantage of the knowledge of others, learn of each other’s experiences and thoughts. In addition, let the association be staffed with research experts and a competent secretariat, having on hand a working library and other aids to learning. Then, let the members speak or write or act as individual persons! Indeed, this is the real, high purpose of voluntary associations.

The practical as well as the ethical advantages of this suggested procedure may not at first be apparent. Imagine Patrick Henry having said:

“I move that this convention go on record as insisting that we prefer death to slavery”

Now, suppose that the convention had adopted that motion. What would have been its force? Certainly almost nothing as compared to Patrick Henry’s ringing words:

“I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” (italics mine)

This was not a case of Patrick Henry’s trying to decide for anyone else. His listeners were invited to consider only what he had decided for himself, and thus could weigh, more favorably, the merits of emulation. No convention, no association, no “decisions of men united in councils” could have said such a thing in the first place; and second, anything the members might have said in concert could not have matched the force of this personal declaration. Third, had the convention been represented in any such sentiments, it is likely that misrepresentations would have been involved.

A moment’s reflection on the words of wisdom that have come down to us throughout all history, the words and works that have had the power to live, the words and works around which we have molded much of our lives, must reveal that they are the words and works of persons—not of collectives or sets of men, not what men have uttered in concert, not the “decisions of men united in councils.”

In short, if advancement of what’s right is the objective, then the decision-of-men-united-in-council practice could well be abandoned on the basis of its impracticality—if for no higher reason. Conceded, it can do mischief; it is also an utter waste of time in the creative areas, that is, for the advancement of truth.

The reasons for the impracticality of this device in the creative areas seem clear. Each of us when seeking perfection, whether of the spirit, of the intellect, or of the body, looks not to his inferiors but to his betters, not to those who self-appoint themselves as his betters, but to those who, in his own humble judgment, are his betters. Experience has shown that such perfection as there is exists in individuals, not in the lowest common-denominator expressions of a collection of individuals. Perfection emerges with the clear expression of personal faiths—the truth as it is known, not with the confusing announcement of verbal amalgams—lies.

“. . .  on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.” The evidence, if fully assembled and correctly presented, would, no doubt, convincingly affirm Tolstoy’s observation. We have, in this process, the promoter of socialism and the enemy of peace.

How to stop this type of lie? It is simply a matter of personal determination and a resolve to act and speak in strict accord with one’s own inner, personal dictate of what is right—and for each of us to see to it that no other man or set of men is given our permission to represent us otherwise.

[1] U.S. News and World Report, February 3, 1956.

[2] See The Law of Love and the Law of Violence by Leo Tolstoy (New York, NY: Rudolph Field, 1948), p. 26.

[3] This determination of mine does not refer to membership in or support of either of the two major political parties. What I consider to be an appropriate role concerning partisan politics is reserved for the next chapter.

Chapter 9

Regardless of Choice, Vote!

In the previous chapter I vowed never to support any organization which would take positions representing me, which positions I would not willingly (peacefully) stand personally responsible for. In short, I object to organizations that claim a consensus that does not exist—a false reporting of agreement growing out of committee action.

It is logical for anyone to inquire, “Well, what about support of and membership in one of the two major political parties? Would you go so far as to take part in neither of these? You would vote for the candidate of one or the other party, regardless of positions, wouldn’t you?” These are good questions and deserve a careful answer, though I am not suggesting that anyone else adopt my view.

According to The Columbia Encyclopedia, “the existence of only two major parties, as in most English-speaking countries, presupposes general public agreement on constitutional questions and on the aims of government.” This idea is fundamental to my thesis. Under such agreeable circumstances, each party keeps a check on the other, thus giving assurance that neither party will step out of the bounds that have been agreed upon.

Let it be re-emphasized that the two-party system (1) presupposes a general agreement on constitutional questions and the aims of government and (2) aims at, if it does not presuppose, honest candidates contending for office within the framework of that constitution. In this kind of political order, each office seeker is supposed to present fairly his own capabilities as related to the agreed-upon framework, voting being for the purpose of deciding which candidate is more competent for that limited role.

Clearly, the theory as originally conceived did not intend that the positions of candidates should be a response to voter opinion polls concerning the content or meaning of the constitution and the aims of government. If voters could thus reshape or reform the boundaries of government at will, there would be no need of candidates. Far less costly and more efficient would be the purchase of an electronic computer into which voter opinions and caprices would be continually fed; it could spew out altered constitutions and governmental purposes every second!

If there were “a general public agreement on constitutional questions and on the aims of government,” and if candidates were vying with each other for office solely on their competency to perform within this framework, I would have no comment. But there is little contemporary agreement as to constitutional questions and the aims of government! Name a point that can now be presupposed. Both the questions and the aims are at sixes and sevens.

And as to candidates—with a few notable exceptions—they no longer contend with each other as to their competence to serve within a generally accepted framework but, instead:

1. They compete to see which one can come up with the most popular alteration of the framework, and

2. They compete to see which one can get himself in front of the most popular voter grab bag in order to stand four-square for some people’s supposed right to other people’s income.

The upshot of this political chaos is that voters are seldom given the chance to decide on the basis of competency but have only the choice of deciding between opportunists or, a better term, trimmers. This changed situation does, indeed, call for comments about political party membership and voting.

Despite the respectability of the two-party theory, its practice has “come a cropper.” Today, trimming is so much in vogue that often a voter cannot cast a ballot except for one of two trimmers. Heard over and over again is the apology, “Well, the only choice I had was to vote for the lesser of two evils. I had to vote for one of them, didn’t I?” A moral tragedy is implicit in this confession, as well as a political fallacy; in combination they must eventually lead to economic disaster.

I. The Moral Tragedy

It is morally tragic whenever a citizen’s only choice is between two wrongdoers—that is, between two trimmers.

A trimmer, according to the dictionary, is one who changes his opinions and policies to suit the occasion. In contemporary political life, he is any candidate whose position on issues depends solely on what he thinks will have most voter appeal. He ignores the dictates of his higher conscience, trims his personal idea of what is morally right, tailors his stand to the popular fancy. Integrity, the accurate reflection in word and deed of that which is thought to be morally right, is sacrificed to expediency.

These are severe charges, and I do not wish to be misunderstood. One of countless personal experiences will help clarify what is meant: A candidate for Congress sat across the desk listening to my views about limited government. At the conclusion of an hour’s discussion he remarked, “I am in thorough accord with your views; you are absolutely right. But I couldn’t get elected on any such platform, so I shall represent myself as holding views other than these.” He might as well have added, “I propose to bear false witness.”

No doubt the candidate thought, on balance, that he was justified, that The Larger Good would be better served were he elected—regardless of how untruthfully he represented his position—than were he to stand for his version of the truth and go down to defeat.

This candidate is “a mixed-up kid.” His values are topsy-turvy, as the saying goes. In an egotism that has no parallel, he puts his election to office above honesty. Why, asks the responsible voter, should I endorse dishonesty by voting for such a candidate? He has, on his own say-so, forsworn virtue by insisting on bearing false witness. Does he think his ambition for office is right because he needs a job? Then let him seek employment where want of principle is less harmful to others. Or, is his notion of rightness based on how much the rest of us would benefit by having him as our representative? What? A person without moral scruple representing us in Congress! The role of the legislator is to secure our rights to life, liberty, and property—that is, to protect us against fraud, violence, predation, and misrepresentation (false witness). Would our candidate have us believe that “it takes a crook to catch a crook”?

Such righteousness or virtue as exists in the mind of man does not and cannot manifest itself in the absence of integrity—the honest, accurate reflection in deeds of one’s beliefs. Without this virtue the other virtues must lie dormant and unused. What else remains? It is doubtful if anything contributes more to the diseased condition of society than the diminishing practice of integrity.

Those of us who attach this much importance to integrity must perforce construe trimming as evil. Therefore, when both candidates for public office are judged to be trimmers, the one who trims less than the other is often regarded as “the lesser of two evils.” But, is he really? It must be conceded that there are gradations of wrongdoing: killing is worse than stealing, and perhaps stealing is worse than covetousness. At any rate, if wrongdoing is not comparative, then it is self-evident that the best of us are just as evil as the worst of us; for man is fallible, all men!

Degrees of Evil

While categories of wrongdoing are comparative, it does not follow that wrong deeds within any given category of evil are comparative. For instance, it is murder whether one man is slain, or two. It is stealing whether the amount is ten cents or a thousand dollars. And, a lie is a lie whether told to one person or to a million. “Thou shalt not kill”; “Thou shalt not steal”; “Thou shalt not bear false witness” are derived from principles. Principles do not permit of compromise; they are either adhered to or surrendered.

Is trimming comparative? Can one trimmer be less at fault than another trimmer? Does the quantity of trimming have anything whatsoever to do with the matter? Or, rather, is this not a question of quality or character? To trim is to ignore the dictates of higher conscience; it is to take flight from integrity. Is not the candidate who will trim once for one vote likely to trim twice for more votes? Does he not demonstrate by any single act of trimming, regardless of how minor, that he stands ready to abandon the dictates of conscience for the place he seeks in the political sun? Does not the extent or quantity of trimming merely reflect a judgment as to how much trimming is expedient?

If the only question at issue is whether a candidate will trim at all, then trimming is not comparative; thus, it would be incorrect to report, “I cast my ballot for the lesser of two evils.” Accuracy would require, “I felt there was no choice except to cast a ballot for one of two men, both of whom have sacrificed integrity for the hope of votes.”

We must not, however, heap all our condemnation on candidates who trim. There would be no such candidates were it not for voters who trim. Actually, when we find only trimmers to vote for, most of us are getting what we deserve. The trimmers who succeed in offering themselves as candidates are, by and large, mere reflections of irresponsible citizenship—that is, of neglected thinking, study, education, vigilance. Candidates who trim and voters who trim are each cause and each effect; they feed on each other. When the worst get on top it is because there are enough of the worst among us to put them there.

To repeat, when one must choose between men who forsake integrity, the situation is tragic, and there is little relief at the polling level except as candidates of integrity may be encouraged by voters of integrity Impractical idealism? Of course not! Read Edmund Burke, one of the great statesmen of all time, addressing his constituency:

But his [the candidate’s] unbiased opinion, his mature judgment, his enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you, to any man, or to any set of men living. These he does not derive from your pleasure—no, nor from the law and the Constitution. They are a trust from Providence, for the abuse of which he is deeply answerable. Your representative owes you, not his industry only, but his judgment; and he betrays instead of serving you, if he sacrifices it to your opinion.

II. The Political Fallacy

Is it fallacious to believe that responsible citizenship requires casting a ballot for one or the other of two candidates, regardless of how far the candidates have departed from moral rectitude?

Before trying to arrive at an answer, let us reflect on the reason why the so-called duty of casting a ballot, regardless of circumstance, is so rarely questioned. Quite obviously, the duty to vote is one of those sanctified institutions, such as motherhood, which is beyond criticism. The obligation to vote at any and all elections, whatever the issues or personalities, is equated with responsible citizenship. Voting is deeply embedded in the democratic mores as a duty, and one does not affront the mores without the risk of scorn. To do so is to “raise the dead”: it is to resurrect questions that have been settled once and for all; it is to throw doubt on custom, tradition, orthodoxy, the folkways!

Yet any person who is conscious of our rapid drift toward the omnipotent state can hardly escape the suspicion that there may be a fault in our habitual way of looking at things. If the suspicion be correct, then it would be fatal never to examine custom. So, let us bring the sanctity of voting into the open and take a hard look at it, in a spirit of inquiry rather than advocacy.

Now for the hard look: Where is the American who will argue that responsible citizenship would require casting a ballot if a Hitler and a Stalin were the opposing candidates? “Ah,” some will complain, “you carry the example to an absurdity.” Very well, let us move closer to home and our own experience.

Government in the U.S.A. has been pushed far beyond its proper sphere. The Marxian tenet, “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” backed by the armed force of the state, has become established policy. This is partly rationalized by something called “the new economics.” Within this kind of political framework, it is to be expected that one candidate will stand for the coercive expropriation of the earned income of all citizens, giving the funds thus gathered to those in groups A, B, and C. Nor need we be surprised that his opponent differs from him only in advocating that the loot be given to those in groups X, Y, and Z. Does responsible citizenship require casting a ballot for either of these political plunderers? The citizen has no significant moral choice but only an immoral choice in the event he has joined the unholy alliance himself and thinks that one of the candidates will deliver some of the largess to him or to a group he favors. In the latter case, the problem is not one of responsible citizenship but of irresponsible looting.

The Duty to Vote

Does responsible citizenship require voting for irresponsible candidates? To ballot in favor of irresponsible candidates as though it were one’s duty is to misconstrue the meaning of duty. To cast a ballot for a trimmer, because no man of integrity is offering himself, does as much as one can with a ballot to encourage other trimmers to run for office. Can anyone conceive of any element of protest in such balloting? To vote for a trimmer goes further: it would seem to urge, as strongly as one can at the polls, that men of integrity not offer themselves as candidates.

What would happen if we adopted as a criterion: Never vote for a trimmer! Conceding a generous liberality in defining trimmers, millions of us would not cast ballots. Would the end result of this substantial, nonviolent protest, this large-scale demonstration of “voting by turning our backs,” compound our problem? It is difficult to imagine how it could. For a while we would continue to get what we now have: a high percentage of trimmers and plunderers in public office, men who promise privileges in exchange for ballots—and freedom. In time, however, this silent but eloquent refusal to participate might conceivably improve the situation. Men of integrity and high moral quality—statesmen—might show forth and, if so, we could add their numbers to the few now in evidence.

Would a return to integrity by itself solve our problem? No, for many men of integrity do not understand freedom; or, if they do, are not devoted to it. But it is only among men of integrity that any solution can begin to take shape. Such men, at least, will do the right as they see the right; they tend to be teachable. Trimmers and plunderers, on the other hand, are the enemies of morality and freedom by definition; their motivations are below the level of principles; they cannot see beyond the emoluments of office.[1]

Here is a thought to weigh: If respect for a candidate’s integrity were widely adopted as a criterion for casting a ballot, millions of us, as matters now stand, would not cast ballots. Yet, in a very practical sense, would not those of us who protest in this manner be voting? Certainly, we would be counted among that growing number who, by our conscious and deliberate inaction, proclaim that we have no party. What other choice have we at the polling level? Would not this encourage men of statesmanlike qualities to offer themselves in candidacy?

The Sanctity of the Ballot

Why is so much emphasis placed upon voting as a responsibility of citizenship?[2] Why the sanctity attached to voting? Foremost, no doubt, is a carry-over from an all-but-lost ideal in which voting is associated with making choices between honest beliefs, between candidates of integrity. We tend to stick with the form regardless of what has happened to the substance. Further, this attitude toward voting may derive in part from the general tendency to play the role of Robin Hood, coupled with a reluctance to acknowledge this practice for what it is. Americans, at least, have some abhorrence of forcibly taking from the few and giving to the many without any sanction whatsoever, That would be raw dictatorship. But few people with this propensity feel any pangs of conscience if it can be demonstrated that “the people voted for it.” Thus, those who achieve political power are prone to seek popular sanction for their acts of legal plunder. And, as government increases its plundering activities, more and more citizens “want in” on the popular say-so. Thus, it is that pressures increase for the extension of the franchise. Time was when only property holders could vote or, perhaps, even cared to vote. Only in 1920 were women fully enfranchised. Now the drive is on to lower the age from 21 to 18, and this has already been achieved in some places.

Frederic Bastiat gave us some good thoughts on this subject:

If law were restricted to protecting all persons, all liberties, and all properties; if law were nothing more than the organized combination of the individual’s right to self-defense; if law were the obstacle, the check, the punisher of all oppressions and plunder—is it likely that we citizens would then argue much about the extent of the franchise?

Under these circumstances, is it likely that the extent of the right to vote would endanger that supreme good, the public peace? Is it likely that the excluded classes would refuse to peaceably await the coming of their right to vote? Is it likely that those who had the right to vote would jealously defend their privilege?

If the law were confined to its proper functions, everyone’s interest in the law would be the same. Is it not clear that, under these circumstances, those who voted could not inconvenience those who did not vote?[3]

Selection by Lot

We can, it seems to me, glean from the foregoing that there is no moral or political or social obligation to vote merely because we are confronted with ballots having names and/or issues printed thereon. Is this so-called obligation of a citizen to vote, regardless of the ballot presentations, any more than a camouflage for political madness on the rampage? And, further, doesn’t this “obligation” deny to the citizen the only alternative left to him—not to endorse persons or measures he regards as repugnant? When presented with two trimmers, how else, at this level, is he to protest? Abstinence from ballot-casting would appear to be his only way to avoid being untrue to himself.

If we seek more evidence than we now have as to the sacrosanctity of ballot casting as a citizenship duty, we need only observe the crusading spirit of get-out-the-vote campaigns. One is made to feel like a slacker if he does not respond.

To rob this get-out-the-vote myth of its glamour, no more is required than to compare ballot-casting as a means of selecting representatives with a method devoid of all voter judgment: selection by lot. Politically unthinkable as it is, reflect, just for fun, on your own congressional district. Disqualify those under 21, the insane, all illiterates, and all convicts.[4] Write the names of the balance on separate cards to put into a mixing machine, and let some blindfolded person withdraw one card. Presto! Here is your next representative in Congress, for one term only. After all, how can a person qualify to vote if he is not qualified to hold the office himself? And, further, it is assumed, he will feel duty-bound to serve, as when called for jury duty.

The first reaction to such a proposal is one of horror: “Why, we might get only an ordinary citizen.” Compare such a prospect with one of two wrongdoers which all too frequently is our only choice under a two-party, ballot-casting system that no longer presupposes any agreement on constitutional questions and the aims of government. Further, I submit that there is no governmental official today who can qualify as anything better than an “ordinary citizen.” How can he possibly claim any superiority over those upon whose votes his election depends? And, it is of the utmost importance that we never ascribe anything more than “ordinary” to any of them. Not one among the millions in officialdom is in any degree omniscient, all-seeing, or competent in the slightest to rule over the creative aspects of any other citizen. The recognition that a citizen chosen by lot could be no more than an ordinary citizen would be all to the good. This would automatically strip officialdom of that aura of almightiness which so commonly attends it; government would be unseated from its master’s role and restored to its servant’s role, a highly desirable shift in emphasis.

Reflect on some of the other probable consequences:

a. With nearly everyone conscious that only “ordinary citizens” were occupying political positions, the question of who should rule would lose its significance. Immediately, we would become acutely aware of the far more important question: What shall be the extent of the rule? That we would press for a severe limitation of the state seems almost self-evident.

b. No more talk of a “third party” as a panacea. Political parties—now more or less meaningless—would cease to exist.

c. No more campaign speeches with their promises of how much better we would fare were the candidates to spend our income for us.

d. An end to campaign fund-raising.

e. No more self-chosen “saviors” catering to base desires in order to win elections.

f. An end to that type of voting in Congress which has an eye more to re-election than to what’s right.

g. The mere prospect of having to go to Congress during a lifetime, even though there would be but one chance in some 10,000, would completely reorient citizens’ attention to the principles which bear on government’s relationship to society. Everyone would have an incentive to “bone up,” as the saying goes, if for no other reason than not to make a fool of himself, just in case! There would be an enormous increase in self-directed education in an area on which the future of society depends. In other words, the strong tendency would be to bring out the best, not the worst, in every citizen.

It would, of course, be absurd to work out the details, to refine, to suggest the scope of a selection-by-lot design, for it hardly falls within the realm of either probability or possibility—at least, not for a long, long time. Further, the real problem is at a depth not to be reached by merely meddling with the present machinery.

Why, if one believes selection by lot to be superior to the present degraded system, should one not urge immediate reform? Let me slightly rephrase an explanation by Gustave Le Bon:

The reason is that it is not within our power to force sudden transformations in complex social organisms. Nature has recourse, at times to radical measures, but never after our fashion, which explains how it is that nothing is more fatal to a people than the mania for great reforms, however excellent these reforms may appear theoretically. They would only be useful were it possible suddenly to change a whole nation of people. Institutions (social organisms) and laws are but the outward manifestation or outcome of the underlying ideas, sentiments, customs, in short, character. To urge a different outcome would in no way alter men’s character—or the outcome.[5]

Why, then, should selection by lot be so much as mentioned? Merely to let the mind dwell on this intriguing alternative to current political inanities gives all the ammunition one needs to refrain from casting a ballot for one of two candidates, neither of whom is guided by integrity Unless we can divorce ourselves from this unprincipled myth, we are condemned to a political competition that has only one end: the omnipotent state. This would conclude all economic freedom and with it freedom of speech, of the press, of worship. And even freedom to vote will be quite worthless—as it is under any dictatorship.

The problems of our times lie much deeper than the mechanics of selecting political representation; responsible citizenship demands, at the minimum, a personal attention to and a constant re-examination of one’s own ideas, sentiments, customs. Such scrutiny may reveal that voting for candidates who bear false witness is not required of the good citizen. At the very least, the idea merits thoughtful exploration.

[1] If it be conceded that the role of government is to secure “certain unalienable rights, that among them are the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” by what stretch of the imagination can this be achieved when we vote for those who are openly committed to unsecuring these rights?

[2] Responsibilities of citizenship involve a host of personal attributes, first and foremost a duty to one’s Maker, duty to self, to family, to neighbors, and so on. Is it not evident, therefore, that voting is a mere formality after the fact? It’s much too late to be a responsible citizen if the responsibility hasn’t been exercised before election day. Everybody voted for Khrushchev in the last Russian election! Clearly, that was no evidence of responsible citizenship.

[3] See The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950), pp. 16–17.

[4] One might like to disqualify everybody who receives government aid but, then, who would remain? The very bread we eat is subsidized. Those who ride on planes or use the mails, and so on, would be disqualified.

[5] See The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon (New York, NY: The Viking Press, 1960), p. 4.

Chapter 10

On Keeping the Peace

My thesis, in simplest terms, is: Let anyone do anything he pleases, so long as it is peaceful; the role of government, then, is to keep the peace.

In suggesting that the function of government is only to keep the peace, I raise the whole issue between statists or socialists, on the one hand, and the devotees of the free market, private property, limited government philosophy on the other.

Keeping the peace means no more than prohibiting persons from unpeaceful actions. This, with its elaborate machinery for defining what shall be prohibited (codifying the law), along with the interpretation, administration, and enforcement of the law, is all the prohibition I want from government—for me or for anyone else. When government goes beyond this, that is, when government prohibits peaceful actions, such prohibitions themselves are, prima facie, unpeaceful. How much of a statist a person is can be judged by how far he would go in prohibiting peaceful actions.

The difference between the socialist and the student of liberty is a difference of opinion as to what others should be prohibited from doing. At least, we may use this as a working hypothesis, think it through, and test its validity. If the claim proves valid, then we have come upon a fairly simple method for distinguishing between warlike and peaceful persons—between authoritarians and libertarians.[1] But first, let us consider prohibitions in general.

How many animal species have come and gone no one knows. Many thousands survive and the fact of their existence, whether guided by instincts or drives or conscious choices, rests, in no small measure, on the avoidance of self-destructive actions. Thus, all surviving species have, at the very minimum, abided by a set of prohibitions—things not to do; otherwise, they would have been extinct ere this.

Certain types of scorpions, for example, stick to dry land; puddles and pools are among their instinctual taboos. There is some prohibitory force that keeps fish off dry land, lambs from chasing lions, and so on and on. How insects and animals acquire their built-in prohibitions is not well understood. We label their reactions instinctual, meaning that it is not reasoned or conscious behavior.

Man, on the other hand, does not now possess a like set of instinctual do-nots, prohibitions. Instead, he must enjoy or suffer the consequences of his own free will, his own power to choose between right and wrong actions; in a word, man is more or less at the mercy of his own imperfect understanding and conscious decisions. The upshot of this is that human beings must choose the prohibitions they will observe, and the selection of a wrong one may be as disastrous to our species as omitting a right one. Survival of the human species rests as much on observing the correct prohibitions as is the case with any other species.

But in our case, the observance of the correct must-nots has survival value only if preceded by a correct, conscious selection of the must-nots. When the survival of the human race is at stake and when that survival rests on the selection of prohibitions by variable, imperfect members of that race, the wonder is that the ideological controversy is not greater than now.

When Homo sapiens first appeared he had little language, no literature, no maxims, no tradition or history to which he could make reference; in short, he possessed no precise and accurate list of things not to do. We cannot explain the survival of these early specimens of our kind unless we assume that some of the instinctual prohibitions of their earlier cousins remained with them during the transition period from instinct to some measure of self-knowledge; for, with respect to many millennia of that earlier period, we know nothing of man-formalized prohibitions. Then appeared the crude taboos observed by what we now call “primitive peoples.” These had survival value under certain conditions, even though the reasons given for their practice might not hold water.

Three Forms of Persuasion

If prohibitions are as important as here represented, it is well that we reflect on the man-contrived thou-shalt-nots, particularly as to the several types of persuasiveness—for there can be no prohibition worth the mention unless it is backed by some form of persuasion. So far as this exploration is concerned, there are three forms of persuasion which make prohibitions effective or meaningful. I shall comment on the three forms in the order of their historical appearance.

The Code of Hammurabi, 2000 B.C., is probably the earliest of systematized prohibitions. This is considered one of the greatest of the ancient codes; it was particularly strong in its prohibitions against defrauding the helpless, that is, against unpeaceful actions directed at the helpless. To secure observance, the “persuasiveness” took the form of organized police force. The Columbia Encyclopedia refers to the retributive nature of the punishment meted out as a “savage feature . . . an eye for an eye literally.” Not only is this the oldest of the three forms of persuasion employed to effectuate prohibitions and to keep the peace, but it remains to this day an important means of persuasion.

The next and higher form of persuasion appeared about a millennium later—the series of thou-shalt-nots known as The Decalogue. Here the backing was not organized police force but, instead, the promise of retribution: initially, the hope of tribal survival if the commands were obeyed, and the fear of tribal extinction were they disobeyed, and, later, the hope of heavenly bliss or the fear of hell and damnation. It may be said that The Decalogue exemplifies moral rather than political law and, also, that its form of persuasion advanced from physical force to a type of spiritual influence. We witness in this evolutionary step the emergence of man’s moral nature.

The latest and highest form of persuasion is that which gives effectiveness to the most advanced prohibition, The Golden Rule. As originally scribed, around 500 B.C., it read: “Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.” What persuasiveness lies behind it? Not physical force. And not even such spiritual influences as hope and fear. Force and influence give way to a desire for righteousness: a sense of justice, regarded as the inmost law of one’s being. That this is a recently acquired faculty is attested to by its rarity. Ever so many people will concede the soundness of the prohibition, but only now and then do we find an individual whose moral nature is elevated to the point where he can observe this moral imperative in daily living. The individual with an elevated moral nature has moved beyond the concept of external rewards and punishments to the conviction that virtue and excellence are their own reward.

An Elevated Moral Nature

It is relevant to that which follows to reflect on what is meant by an elevated moral nature. To illustrate the lack of such a nature: We had a kitchen employee who pilfered, that is, she would quietly lift provisions from our larder and tote them home to her own. This practice did no offense to such moral scruples as she possessed; she was only concerned lest anyone see her indulge it; nothing was wrong except getting caught! My point is that this individual had not yet acquired what is here meant by an elevated moral nature.

What is to distinguish the individual who has an elevated moral nature? For one thing, he cares not one whit about what others see him do. Why? He has a private eye of his own, far more exacting and severe than any force or influence others can impose: a highly developed conscience. Not only does such a person possess a sense of justice but he also possesses its counterpart, a disciplinary conscience. Justice and conscience are two parts of the same emerging moral faculty. It is doubtful that one part can exist without the other.

It seems that individual man, having lost many of the built-in, instinctual do-nots of his earlier cousins, acquires, as he evolves far enough, a built-in, rational, prohibitory ethic which he is compelled to observe by reason of his sense of justice and the dictates of his conscience. We repeat, proper prohibitions are just as important to the survival of the human species as to the survival of any other species.

Do not do to others that which you would not have them do unto you. There is more to this prohibition than first glance reveals. Nearly everyone, for instance, will concede that there is no universal right to kill, to steal, or to enslave—that such behavior could never be tolerated as a general practice. But only the person who comprehends this ethic in its wholeness, who has an elevated sense of justice and conscience, will see clearly why this denies to him the right to take the life of another, to relieve any person of his livelihood, or to deprive any human being of his liberty. And, one more distinction: While there are many who will agree that they, personally, should not kill, steal, enslave, it is only the individual with an elevated moral nature who will have no hand in encouraging any agency—even government—to do these things on behalf of himself or others. He clearly sees that the popular expedient of collective action affords no escape from individual responsibility.

What Shall Be Prohibited?

Let us now return to the question this essay poses: “What shall be prohibited?” For it is the difference of opinion as to what should be denied others that highlights the essential difference between the collectivists—socialists, statists, interventionists, mercantilists, disturbers of the peace—and those of the peaceful, libertarian faith. Take stock of what you would prohibit others from doing and you will accurately find your own position in the ideological line-up. This method can be used to determine anyone’s position.

The following statement came to my attention as I was writing this chapter:

Government has a positive responsibility in any just society to see to it that each and every one of its citizens acquires all the skills and all the opportunities necessary to practice and appreciate the arts to the limit of his natural ability. Enjoyment of the arts and participation in them are among man’s natural rights and essential to his full development as a civilized person. One of the reasons governments are instituted among men is to make this right a reality.[2]

It is significant that the author uses the term “its citizens,” the antecedent being government. Such a conception is basic to the collectivistic philosophy: We—you and I—belong to the state. Of course, if one accepts this statist premise—this wholesale invasion of peaceful actions—the above quote is sensible enough: it has to do with a detail in the state’s paternalistic concern for us as its wards.

But we are on another tack, namely, examining what a person would prohibit others from doing. The author just quoted suggests no prohibitions, at least, not to anyone who fails to read below the surface. He dwells only on what he would have the state do for the people. Where, then, are the prohibitions? The “civilized” program he favors would cost X million dollars annually. From where come these millions? The state has nothing except that which it takes from the people. Therefore, this man favors that we, the people, be prohibited from peacefully using the fruits of our own labor as we choose in order that these fruits be expended as the state chooses. And take note that this and all other socialist-designed prohibitions of peaceful pursuits have police force as the method of persuasion.

To repeat what was stated in a previous chapter, socialism has a double-barreled definition, one of which is the state ownership and/or control of the results of production. Our incomes are the results of production. That portion of our incomes is socialized which the state turns to its use rather than our own. It follows, then, that a person would impose prohibitions on the rest of us to the extent that he supports governmental projects such as forcibly taking the fruits of our labor to assure others an “enjoyment of the arts.”

Only a few, as yet, favor the socialization of the arts and the consequent socialization of our incomes, but there are ever so many who favor prohibiting our freedom peacefully to use the fruits of our own labor in order to:

—perform our charities for us;

—protect us from floods, droughts, hurricanes, earthquakes, fires, freezes, insects, and other hazards;

—insure us against illness, accident, old age;

—subsidize below-cost pricing in air, water, and land transportation, education, insurance, loans of countless kinds;

—put three men on the moon (estimated at $40,000,000,000);

—give federal aid of this or that variety, endlessly

This is the welfare state side of socialism.

The above, however, does not exhaust the prohibitions that the socialists would impose on our peaceful actions. For socialism, also, is the state ownership and/or control of the means of production. We are now prohibited from:

—freely planting our own acreage to wheat, cotton, peanuts, corn, tobacco, rice, even if used only to feed our own stock;

—quitting our own business at will;

—taking a job at will;

—pricing our own services (wages);

—delivering first-class mail for pay;

—selling our own product at our own price, for instance, milk, steel, and so on.

—free entry into business activities, like producing power and light in the Tennessee Valley.

This is the planned economy side of socialism.

Again, the listing of prohibitions is endless. Harold Fleming, author of Ten Thousand Commandments (1951), having to do with prohibitions of just one federal agency—The Federal Trade Commission—claims that the book, if brought up-to-date, would be titled, Twenty Thousand Commandments.

Those who favor the socialization of the means of production would, of course, prohibit profit and even deny the validity of the profit motive.

Preserving the Peace

Of all the prohibitions listed above plus others that are implicit in socialism, which do you or others favor? This is the appropriate question for rating oneself or others ideologically.

Persons devoted to liberty would, it is true, impose certain prohibitions on others. They merely note that not all individuals have acquired sufficient moral stature strictly to observe such moral laws as “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal.” There are in the population those who will take the lives and the livelihood of others, those who will pilfer and those who will get the government to do their pilfering for them. Most libertarians would supplement the moral laws aimed at prohibiting violence to another’s person (life) or another’s livelihood (extension of life).[3] Thus they would prohibit or at least penalize murder, theft, fraud, misrepresentation. In short, they would inhibit or prohibit the destructive or unpeaceful actions of any and all! Says the student of liberty, “Freely choose how you act creatively, productively, peacefully. I have no desire to prohibit you or others in this respect. I have no prohibitory designs on you of any kind except as you would unpeacefully keep me and others from acting creatively, productively, peacefully, as we freely choose.”

Be it noted that the libertarian in his hoped-for prohibition of unpeaceful actions does not have in mind any violence to anyone else’s liberty, none whatsoever. For this reason: The word liberty would never be used by an individual completely isolated from others; it is a social term. We must not, therefore, think of liberty as being restrained when fraud, violence, and the like are prohibited, for such actions violate the liberty of others, and liberty cannot be composed of liberty negations. This is self-evident. Thus, any accomplished student of liberty would never prohibit the liberty or the peaceful actions of another.

There we have it: the socialists with the countless prohibitions of liberty they would impose on others; the students of liberty whose suggested prohibitions are not opposed to but are in support of liberty and are as few and as simple as the two Commandments against the taking of life and livelihood. Interestingly enough, it is the socialists, the all-out prohibitionists, who call nonintervening, peaceful libertarians “extremists.” Their nomenclature leaves as much to be desired as does their theory of political economy!

But the students of liberty and the socialists have one position in common: the human situation is not in apple pie order; imperfection is rampant. The student of liberty, however, observing that human imperfection is universal, balks at halting the evolutionary process, such halting being the ultimate prohibition implicit in all authoritarian schemes. Be the political dandy a Napoleon or a Tito or one of the home grown variety of prohibitionists, how can the human situation improve if the rest of us are not permitted to grow beyond the level of the political dandy’s imperfections? Is nothing better in store for humanity than this?

The libertarian’s answer is affirmative: There is something better! But the improvement must take the form of man’s growth, emergence, hatching—the acquisition of higher faculties such as an improved sense of justice, a reined, exacting, self-disciplinary conscience, in brief, an elevated moral nature. Man-concocted prohibitions against this growth stifle or kill it. Human faculties can flower, man can move toward his creative destiny, only if he be free to do so, in a word, where peace and liberty prevail.

What should be prohibited? Actions which impair liberty and peace!

[1] Some will make the point that the authoritarian employs compulsions as well as prohibitions. My thesis is that all compulsions can be reduced to prohibitions, thus making it easier to assess authoritarianism. For instance, we say that a Russian is compelled to work in the sputnik factory. But it is more accurate to say that he is prohibited from any other employment; he builds sputniks or starves, and freely decides between the restricted choices left to him. So-called compulsions by government are, in fact, prohibitions of freedom to choose. Ed. note, “sputnik” is a Russian term for satellite.

[2] See The Commonweal. August 23, 1963, p. 494.

[3] How prohibited? Unfortunately, by physical force or the threat thereof, the only form of persuasion comprehensible to those lacking a developed sense of morality and justice. Be it noted, however, that this is exclusively a defensive force, called into play only as a secondary action, that is, it is inactive except in the instances of initiated, aggressive force.

Chapter 11

Only God Can Make a Tree—or a Pencil

As I sat contemplating the miraculous make-up of an ordinary lead pencil, the thought flashed in mind: I’ll bet there isn’t a person on earth who knows how to make even so simple a thing as a pencil. If this could be demonstrated, it would dramatically portray the miracle of the market and would help to make clear that all manufactured things are but manifestations of creative energy exchanges; that these are, in fact, spiritual phenomena. The lessons in political economy this could teach!

There followed that not-to-be forgotten day at the pencil factory, beginning at the receiving dock; covering every phase of countless transformations, and concluding in an interview with the chemist.

Had you seen what I saw, you, also, might have struck up a warm friendship with that amazing character. I, PENCIL.[1] Being a writer in his own right, let I, PENCIL speak for himself:

I am a lead pencil—the ordinary wooden pencil familiar to all boys and girls and adults who can read and write.

Writing is both my vocation and my avocation; that’s all I do.

You may wonder why I should write this genealogy. Well, to begin with, my story is fascinating. I am a mystery—more so than a tree or a sunset or even a flash of lightning. But sad to say, I am, like all abundant things, taken for granted by those who use me, as if I were a mere incident and without background. This supercilious attitude relegates me to the level of the commonplace. This is a grievous error in which mankind cannot too long persist without peril. For, as a wise man observed, “We are perishing for want of wonder, not for want of wonders.”[2]

I, Pencil, simple thought I appear to be, merit your wonder and awe, a claim I shall attempt to prove. In fact, if you can understand me—no, that’s too much to ask of anyone—if you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing. I have a profound lesson to teach. And I can teach this lesson better than can an automobile or a jet plane or a mechanical dishwasher because—well, because I am seemingly so simple.

Simple? Yet, not a single person on the face of this earth knows how to make me! This sounds fantastic doesn’t it? Especially when it is realized that there are more than one and one-half billion of my kind manufactured in the U.S.A. annually.

Pick me up and look me over. What do you see? Not much meets the eye—there’s some wood, lacquer, the printed labeling, the lead, a bit of metal, and an eraser.

Just as you cannot trace your family tree back very far, so is it impossible for me to name and explain all my antecedents. But I would like to suggest enough of them to impress upon you the richness and complexity of my background.

The Raw Materials

My family tree begins with what in fact is a tree, a cedar of straight grain that grows in Northern California and Oregon. Now contemplate all the saws and trucks and rope and the countless other gear used in harvesting and carting the cedar logs to the railroad siding. Think of all the persons and their numberless skills that went into the fabrication: the mining of ore, the making of steel and its refinement into saws, axes, motors; the growing of hemp and bringing it through all the stages to heavy and strong rope; the logging camps with their beds and mess halls, the cookery and the raising of all the foods. Why, untold thousands of persons had a hand in every cup of coffee the loggers drink!

The logs are shipped to a mill in San Leandro, California. Can you imagine the individuals who make flat cars and rails and railroad engines and who construct and install the communication systems incidental thereto? These legions are among my antecedents.

Consider the millwork in San Leandro. The cedar logs are cut into small, pencil-length slats less than one-fourth of an inch in thickness these are kiln dried and then tinted for the same reason women put rouge on their faces. People prefer that I look pretty, not a pallid white. The slats are waxed and kiln dried again. How many skills went into the making of the tint and the kilns, into supplying the heat, the light and power, the belts, motors, and all the other things a mill requires? Sweepers in the mill among my ancestors? Yes, and included are the men who poured the concrete for the dam of a Pacific Gas & Electric Company hydroplant which supplies the mill’s power.

Don’t overlook the ancestors present and distant who have a hand in transporting sixty carloads of slats across the nation from California to Wilkes-Barre!

Once in the pencil factory—$4,000,000 in machinery and building, all capital accumulated by thrifty and saving parents of mine—each slat is given eight grooves by a complex machine. Then a second machine lays leads in every other slat, applies glue, and places another slat atop—a lead sandwich, so to speak. Seven brothers and I are mechanically carved from this “wood-clinched” sandwich.

My “lead” itself—it contains no lead at all—is complex. The graphite is mined in Ceylon. Consider these miners and those who make their many tools and the makers of the paper sacks in which the graphite is shipped and those who make the string that ties the sacks and those who put them aboard ships and those who make the ships. Even the lighthouse keepers along the way assisted in my birth—and the harbor pilots.

The graphite is mixed with clay from Mississippi, with ammonium hydroxide used in the refining process. Then wetting agents are added such as sulfonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulfuric acid. After passing through numerous machines, the mixture finally appears in endless extrusions—as from a sausage grinder—cut to size, dried, and baked for several hours at 1,850 degrees Fahrenheit. To increase their strength and smoothness the leads are then treated with a hot mixture which includes candelilla wax from Mexico, paraffin wax, and hydrogenated natural fats.

My cedar receives six coats of lacquer. Do you know all of the ingredients of lacquer? Who would think that the growers of castor beans and the refiners of castor oil are a part of it? They are! Why, even the processes by which the lacquer is made a beautiful yellow involve the skills of more persons than one can enumerate!

Observe the labeling. That’s a film formed by applying heat to carbon black mixed with resins. How do you make resins and what, pray, is carbon black?

My bit of metal—the ferrule—is brass. Think of all the persons who mine zinc and copper and those who have the skills to make shiny sheet brass from these products of nature. Those black rings on my ferrule are black nickel. What is black nickel and how is it applied? The complete story of why the center of my ferrule has no black nickel on it would take pages to explain.

Then there’s my crowning glory, inelegantly referred to in the trade as “the plug,” the part man uses to erase the errors he makes with me. An ingredient called “factice” is what does the erasing. It is a rubber-like product made by reacting rape seed oil from Sweden with sulfur chloride. Rubber, contrary to the common notion, is only for binding purposes. Then, too, there are numerous vulcanizing and accelerating agents. The pumice comes from Italy; and the pigment which gives “the plug” its color is cadmium sulfide.

No One Knows It All

Does anyone wish to challenge my earlier assertion that no single person on the face of the earth knows how to make me?

Actually, millions of human beings have had a hand in my creation, no one of whom knows more than a very few of the others. Now, you may say that I go too far in relating the picker of a coffee berry in far off Brazil and food growers elsewhere to my creation; that this is an extreme position. I shall stand by my claim. There isn’t a single person in all these millions, including the president of the pencil company, who contributes more than a tiny, infinitesimal bit of know-how. From the standpoint of know-how, the only difference between the miner of graphite in Ceylon and the logger in Oregon is in the type of know-how. Neither the miner nor the logger can be dispensed with, any more than can the chemist at the factory or the worker in the oil field—paraffin being a by-product of petroleum.

Here is an astounding fact: Neither the worker in the oil field nor the chemist nor the digger of graphite or clay nor any who mans or makes the ships or trains or trucks nor the one who runs the machine that does the knurling on my bit of metal nor the president of the company performs his singular task because he wants me. Each one wants me less, perhaps, than does a child in the first grade. Indeed, there are some among this vast multitude who never saw a pencil nor would they know how to use one. Their motivation is other than me. Perhaps it is something like this: Each of these millions sees that he can thus exchange his tiny know-how for the goods and services he needs or wants. I may or may not be among these items.

There is a fact still more astounding: the absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work. This is the mystery to which I earlier referred.

“Only God Can Make a Tree”

A poet has said that “only God can make a tree.” Why do we agree with this? Isn’t it because we realize that we ourselves could not make one? Indeed, can we even describe a tree? We cannot, except in superficial terms. We can say, for instance, that a certain molecular configuration manifests itself as a tree. But what mind is there among men that could even record, let alone direct, the constant changes in molecular arrangements that transpire in the life span of a tree? Such a feat is utterly unthinkable!

I, Pencil, am a complex combination of miracles: a tree, zinc, copper, graphite, and so on. But to these miracles which manifest themselves in Nature an even more extraordinary miracle has been added: the configuration of creative human energies—millions of tiny know-hows configurating naturally and spontaneously in response to human necessity and desire and in the absence of any human master-minding. Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God could make me. Man can no more direct these millions of know-hows to bring me into being than he can put molecules together to create a tree.

The above is what I meant when writing, “If you can become aware of the miraculousness which I symbolize, you can help save the freedom mankind is so unhappily losing.” For, if one is aware that these know-hows will naturally, yes, automatically arrange themselves into creative and productive patterns in response to human necessity and demand—that is, in the absence of governmental or any other coercive master-minding—then one will possess an absolutely essential ingredient for freedom: a faith in free men. Freedom is impossible without this faith. Why? Without this faith there is nothing to believe in except controlled men. It’s either a faith in free men and peace—or the lack of it and violence. There is no third alternative.

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited, and thus make it possible for people to organize themselves in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles as best it can, that is, let it keep the peace. Merely permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith in what free men will accomplish. Not only will this faith be confirmed but it has been and is confirmed to us daily, in evidence so abundant that we seldom take notice of it. I, Pencil, seemingly simple though I am, offer the miracle of my creation as testimony that faith in free men is a practical faith, as practical as the sun, the rain, a cedar tree, the good earth.

[1] His official name is “Mongol 482.” His many ingredients are assembled, fabricated, and finished by Eberhard Faber Pencil Company, Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. Ed. note, Eberhard Faber Pencil Company is now Sanford in Bellwood, Illinois.

[2] G. K. Chesterton.

Chapter 12

The Most Important Discovery in Economics

The socialistic or governmentally planned system presupposes bureaucrats competent to control the actions of others. The market economy, by contrast, rests on the free exchange of goods and services among ordinary citizens; it doesn’t depend on supermen, not even one!

The Bible informs us that “the meek shall inherit the earth.” Quite obviously, “the meek” had no reference to the Mr. Milquetoasts in society but, rather, to the teachable. The teachable—those who aspire to an ever greater understanding—are those with an awareness of how little they know. Lest teachableness and inferiority be associated, consider a more likely correlation: teachableness and wisdom. Said Socrates, “This man thinks he knows something when he does not, whereas I, as I do not know anything, do not think I do either.” For such acknowledgments of fallibility, Socrates was acclaimed a wise man. He and many others—for instance, Lecomte du Noüy and Robert Milliken, scientists of our time—discovered, as they expanded their own consciousness, that they progressively exposed themselves to more and more of the unknown. Edison’s fact-packed, inquiring, ever-curious mind concluded, “we don’t know a millionth of one per cent about anything. We are just emerging from the chimpanzee state.” These teachable persons came to realize how little they knew; and that, perhaps, is a measure of wisdom.

For the student of liberty and of economics, this poses an interesting question: Is it possible to have a workable, productive economy premised on a society of teachable individuals—those who know very little and know they know very little?

We can assume that such an economy would differ markedly from a society planned by those who have no question about their omniscience, those at the other end of the intellectual spectrum who see no difficulty at all in their design for arranging the lives of everyone else. Like the group of seven economists who voiced this authoritarian and unpeaceful view: “The Federal government is our only instrument for guiding the economic destiny of the country.”[1]

The federal government, in such a role, must be staffed largely with those who are unaware of how little they know, who have no qualms about their ability to plan and regulate the national economic growth, set wages, prescribe hours of work, write the price tags for everything, decide how much of what shall be produced, expand or contract the money supply arbitrarily, set interest rates and rents, subsidize with other people’s earnings whatever activity strikes their fancy, lend billions not voluntarily entrusted to them, allocate the fruits of the labor of all to foreign governments of their choice—in short, decide what shall be taken from each Peter and how much of the “take” shall be paid to each Paul.

Government control and ownership of the means and/or the results of production is authoritarianism, be it called state interventionism, socialism, or communism. It rests on the premise that certain persons possess the intelligence to understand and guide all human action. It is advocated by those who sense no lack of omniscience in themselves, by the naive followers of such egotists, by the seekers of power over others, by those who foresee an advantage to themselves in these political manipulations, and by those “do-gooders” who fail to distinguish between police grants-in-aid and the Judeo-Christian principles of charity. All in all, they are a considerable number, but still a minority in terms of the tens of millions whose lives they would regulate.

The most important point to bear in mind is that socialism presupposes that government or officialdom is the endower, dispenser, and the source of men’s rights, as well as the guide, controller, and director of their energies. This is the Supremacy of Egotism: The State is God; we are the State!

The Egotist Examined

Let us then examine a typical egotist. It matters not whom you choose—a professor, a professional politician, a Napoleon, a Hitler, a Stalin—but the more pretentious the better. (As H. G. Wells put it, “A high-brow is a low-brow plus pretentiousness.”) Simply admit some supreme egotist into your mind’s eye and take stock of him. Study his private life. You will usually discover that his wife, his children, his neighbors, those in his hire, fail to respond to his dictates in ways he thinks proper.[2] This is to say, the egotist is frequently a failure in the very situations nearest and best known to him. Incongruously, he then concludes that he is called to manage whole societies—or even the world! Fie on anything small enough to occupy an ordinary man!

Let’s further test the knowledge of the egotist. He wants to plan production; what does he know about it? Here, for example, is a company in the U.S.A. which manufactures well over 200,000 separate items. Not one person in the company knows what these items are, and there is no individual on the face of the earth, as I have demonstrated,[3] who has the skills, by himself, to make a single one of them. It’s a safe bet that the egotist under scrutiny has never been closer to this company than a textbook description of corporations in general by fellow egotists. Yet, he would put this intricate mechanism under the rigid control of government and would have no hesitancy at all in accepting the post of Chief Administrator. He would then arbitrarily allocate and price all raw materials and manpower and, after long and complicated statistics of the past, arbitrarily allocate and price the more than 200,000 finished products, most of which he never knew existed. Involved in the operations of this company alone—a mere fraction of the American economy—are incalculable human energy exchanges, but the egotist would manage these with a few “big man” gestures! Such cursory attention he would find necessary for, bear in mind, he also would have under his control the lives, livelihoods, and activities of nearly two hundred million individuals not directly associated with this company.

Next, what does the egotist know about exchange? In a specialized or division-of-labor economy like ours, exchange cannot be carried on by primitive barter. It is accomplished by countless interchanges interacting on one another with the aid of a generally accepted medium of exchange. The socialistic philosophy of the egotists presupposes that there are persons competent to regulate and control the volume and value of money and credit. Yet, surely no one person or committee is any more competent to manipulate the supply of money and credit to attain a definite end than he or a committee is able to make an automobile or a lead pencil!

An economy founded on nonexistent know-it-allness is patently absurd!

But, can there be a sensible rational economy founded on the premise of know-next-to-nothingness? An economy that would run rings around socialism? In short, is there a highly productive way of life which presupposes no human prescience, no infallibility, nothing beyond an awareness that it is simply not man’s to pattern others in his own image? There is such a way!

For the Teachable

Contrary to socialism, this way of life is for teachable people who concede their fallibility—and it denies that government, staffed by fallible people, is the source of men’s rights. It holds, as developed earlier, that rights to life, livelihood, and liberty are endowments of the Creator and that the purpose of government is to secure these rights. When Creativity is assumed to exist over and beyond the conscious mind of man, a whole new concept of man’s relationship to man emerges. Man, once he conceives of himself in this setting, knows that he is not really knowledgeable but is, at best, only teachable. The greatest conscious fact of his life is his awareness of the Unknown.

To illustrate, let us observe how such a person “builds” his own house. He does not think of himself as actually having built it. No man living could do that. He thinks of himself as having done only an assembly job. He is aware of numerous preconditions, two of which are:

1. The provisioning of his materials done exclusively by others, the unbelievable complexity of which I tried to explain in the previous chapter.

2. A reasonable absence of destructive or unpeaceful actions. No thieves stole his supplies. His suppliers had not defrauded him nor had they misrepresented their wares. Violence, like coercively keeping others from working where they freely chose (strikes) or like coercively keeping others from freely exchanging the products of their labor (protectionism) had not succeeded in denying these services to him. In short, interferences with creative, peaceful efforts and exchanges had not reached the point where a house was impossible.

The teachable man, the one who knows how little he knows, is aware that creative energies, and creative energy exchanges, work miracles if unhampered. The evidence is all about him. There are his automobile, the coffee he drinks, the meat he eats, the clothes he wears, the symphony he hears, the books he reads, the paintings he enjoys, the velvet he touches and, above all, the insights or inspiration or ideas that come to him—from where he does not know.

The teachable person looks with awe upon all creation.[4] He agrees that “only God can make a tree.” And he also understands that, in the final analysis, only God can build a house. Nature, Creation, God—use your own term—if not interfered with, will combine atoms into molecules which, in a certain configuration, will form a tree, in another a blade of grass, in still another a rose—mysteries upon mysteries! And, there are demonstrations readily apparent to the teachable person that the creative energies of men, when not interfered with, configurate through space and time—and in response to human necessity and aspiration—to form houses, symphonies, food, clothes, airplanes . . . manufactured things in endless profusion.

The teachable person is likely to be aware of some wonderful cosmic force at work—a drawing, attracting, magnetic power—attending to perpetual creation. He may well conceive of himself as an agent through whom this power has the potentiality of flowing and, to the extent this occurs, to that degree does he have an opportunity to share in the processes of creation. As agent, his psychological problem is to rid himself of his own inhibitory influences—fear, superstition, anger, and the like—in order that this power may freely flow. He knows that he cannot dictate to it, direct it, or even get results by commanding, “Now I shall create a symphony” or “Now I shall discover a cure for the common cold” or “Now I shall invent a way of impressing upon others how little they know.” He is quite certain that he must not thwart this power as it pertains to his own personal being.

Let Energy Flow Freely

Society-wise, the teachable human being, the one who conceives of himself as agent through whom this mysterious, creative power has the potentiality of flowing, concedes that what applies to him must, perforce, apply to other human beings; that this same power has the potentiality of flowing through them; that his own existence, livelihood, and opportunity to serve as an agency of that power depends on how well these others fare creatively. He realizes that he can no more dictate its flow in others than in himself. He knows only that he must not thwart it in others and that it is to his interest and theirs, and to the interest of all society, that there be no thwarting of this force in anyone. Leave this power alone and let it work its miracles!

Creative action cannot be induced by any form of authoritarianism, be the commands directed at oneself or at others. However, any idiot can thwart these actions in himself or in others precisely as he can thwart the forces of creation from manifesting themselves as a tree. He can prevent a tree from being, but he cannot make it be. Coercive force can only inhibit, restrain, penalize, destroy. It cannot create!

The teachable individual, being peaceful, imposes no inhibitions, restraints, or penalties on creative actions. He leaves them free to wend their miraculous courses.

The man who knows how little he knows would like to see the removal of all destructive obstacles to the flow of creative energy and energy exchanges. But, even this, he doesn’t quite know how to accomplish. He would rely mostly on an improved understanding of the Golden Rule, the Ten Commandments, and other consistent ethical and moral principles. He hopes that more and more persons eventually will see that even their own self-interest is never served by impairing the creative actions of others, or living off them as parasites.

In summary, then, the teachable person is content to leave creative energies and their exchanges untouched; and he would rely primarily on ethical precepts and practices to keep these energy circuits free of destructive invasion. The governmental apparatus would merely assist these precepts and practices by defending the lives and property of all citizens equally; by protecting all willing exchanges and restraining all unwilling exchanges; by suppressing and penalizing all fraud, all misrepresentation, all violence, all predatory practices; by invoking a common justice under written law; in short, by keeping the peace!

Very well. So far, in theory, creative energies or actions and their exchanges are left unhampered. Destructive actions are self-disciplined or, if not, are restrained by the societal agency of law and defensive force. Is that all? Does not the person who is aware of how little he knows have to know a lot of economics?

How Much Must Be Known?

The man mentioned previously, who “built” his own house, has about as much economic understanding as is necessary. He reflects on all the countless antecedent services which he assembled into a finished home. Originally, all of these items came from Nature. They were there when the Indians foraged this same territory. There was no price on them in their raw state—they were for free, so to speak. Yet, he paid—let us say—$10,000 for them.

What was the payment for? Well, when we slice through all the economic terms, he paid for the human action that necessarily had to be applied to things of the good earth. He paid for actions and energies which he himself did not possess, or, possessing, did not choose to exert. Were he limited to his own energies to bring about the services antecedent to his assembly of them, he could not have built such a home in a thousand lifetimes.

These human actions for which he paid took several forms. Generalizing, his $10,000 covered salaries and wages that had been paid for judgment, foresight, skill, initiative, enterprise, research, management, invention, physical exertion, chance discovery, know-how; interest that had been paid for self-denial or waiting; dividends that had been paid for risking; rent that had been paid for locational advantage—in short, all of the $10,000 covered payments for one or another form of human action. Literally millions of individuals had a hand in the process.

The major economic problem—the root of economic hassles—reduced to its simplest terms, revolves around the question of who is going to get how much of that $10,000. How is economic justice to be determined? What part shall go to the grower of soybeans, to the investor in a saw mill, to the man who tends the machine that pours nails into wooden kegs, to the inventor of the machine, to the owner of the paint plant? Who or what shall determine the answers? This is the economic question of questions.

The Market Knows Best

How much economics does one have to know to settle, in one’s own mind, how and by whom economic justice shall be rendered? He has to know and fully comprehend only this: Let the payment for each individual’s contribution be determined by what others will offer in willing exchange. That’s enough of economics for those who know they know not.[5]

This simple theory of value, the greatest discovery in economic science—never formalized until the year 1870—is known as the marginal utility theory of value. It also goes by two other names: “the subjective theory of value” and “the free market theory of value.” Testimony to its simplicity was given by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, perhaps its greatest theoretician:

And so the intellectual labor that people have to perform in estimating subjective value is not so astounding as may appear . . . incidentally, even if it were a considerably greater task than it actually is, one could still confidently entrust it to “John Doe and Richard Roe.” . . . For centuries, long before science set up the doctrine of marginal utility, the common man was accustomed to seek things and abandon things . . . he practiced the doctrine of marginal utility before economic theory discovered it.[6]

The labor theory of value held scholarly sway prior to this free market theory. It contended that value was determined by the amount of effort expended or fatigue incurred. For example, some persons make mud pies, others mince pies. The same effort, let us assume, is expended in the preparation of each. Under the labor theory of value the mud pie makers should receive the same return for their efforts as the mince pie makers. The only way to accomplish this—consumers being unwilling to exchange the fruits of their labor for mud pies—is for the government to subsidize the mud pie makers by taking from the mince pie makers. Karl Marx elaborated upon and helped systematize this theory—governments taking from the productive and subsidizing the less productive.

The labor theory of value, proved over and over again to be the enemy of both justice and sound economics, nonetheless continues to gain in popular acceptance. Emotional reactions to effort expended and fatigue incurred do not readily give way to reason. Sentimental thoughts such as “the poor, hard-working farmers” set the political stage for agricultural subsidies. Similarly, sympathies which emanate from such outmoded and erroneous reflections as “the down-trodden laboring man” condition most people to accept the coercive powers allowed labor unions.

Practice of the labor theory of value is rationalized by spenders, inflationists, Keynesians, egotists, on the ground that it puts purchasing power in the hands of those who will spend it. As set forth earlier, this man-concocted system of forcibly controlling creative human action—interventionism, socialism, communism—presupposes all-knowing bureaucrats; but, to date, not a single one has been found—not even a reasonable facsimile thereof.

The free market, on the other hand, is for the teachable, who know their own limitations, who feel no compulsions to play God, and who put their faith in voluntary, willing exchange a manner of human relationships that miraculously works economic wonders for all without requiring infallibility of anyone.

[1] Quoted in First National City Bank Letter, August 1959, p. 90.

[2] Napoleon’s domestic affairs were a mess and his numerous family drove him to distraction; Hitler was an indifferent paper hanger; Stalin tried first theology and then train robbery before he elected bureaucracy and dictatorship; many bureaucrats charged with great affairs have no record of personal success.

[3] Refer to Chapter 11.

[4] “If I may coin a new English word to translate a much nicer old Greek word, ‘wanting-to-know-it-ness’ was their characteristic; wonder . . . was the mother of their philosophy.” The Challenge of the Greek, by T. R. Glover (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1942), pp. 6–7.

[5] There are some who will contend that one must understand money, the medium of exchange. This, also, is an impossible requirement. For extended comments on this point of view, see my Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954), pp. 80–91.

[6] See Vol. II, Capital and Interest by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (South Holland, IL: The Libertarian Press, 1959), pp. 203–04. This volume may be the best treatise on the marginal utility theory of value extant.

Chapter 13

The Greatest Computer on Earth

When a person does not know how little he knows, he may try to change a room’s temperature by monkeying with the thermometer; or, equally absurd, he may tamper with prices to control the market.

Wherever there are people, there will be a market of some sort. The market can no more be eliminated than can its primary components—production and exchange.

Further, the market, be it rigged or free, is an enormously complex computer. It receives the data fed into it and gives off signals in the form of prices. Keep in mind, however, that a computer cannot exercise judgment; its answers merely reflect the data it receives; feed it wrong data and its pricing signals will be misleading or, as they say in the computer profession, “GIGO!”: Garbage In, Garbage Out.[1]

Consider, first, the free market computer, as if it really existed. Billions of data flow into it continuously. The data are composed of every wish, desire, fancy, whim, like, and dislike of every person on earth. Included in the data are all efficiencies, inefficiencies, inventions, discoveries, as well as the reports of all rising and falling supplies and demands. All degrees and variations of competitive forces and all bidding and asking prices of all goods and services are grist for the mill. Even people’s anticipation of how a flood or a drought or a freeze might modify supply are automatically admitted, as are expectations of managerial competence or failure or the effects of a President’s ideas or the state of his health or whatever.

The Ideal Free Market

The free market computer gives accurate answers in prices, signaling to all would-be entrepreneurs to get into production or get out, to step up or diminish particular economic activities. Supply and demand thus tend, automatically, toward equilibrium. The free market computer is truly free: its accurately instructive answers are founded on free exchange data; its services are free, with no more cost than the sun’s energy; it frees each and all of us from the impossible task of assembling the billions upon billions of data behind our daily decisions.

The free market computer has never been permitted to function on a world-wide basis. It has had only partial, regional, short-run trials. Certainly, one of the most comprehensive tests occurred in the U.S.A. during the century beginning about 1830. Perhaps the small Crown Colony of Hong Kong affords the best test at this moment in history. We do know from a study of the evidence, as well as from a priori reasoning, that the less the free market computer is interfered with or “rigged” the better do people prosper, the more nearly universal is economic well-being.

The term GIGO is never applicable to the free market computer; the complex data are truthful, unrigged expressions of the universal economic situation in its continuous ebb and flow, and the price signals, ever changing, are accurate responses thereto.

The U.S.A. Market

Consider, second, something quite different, the U.S.A. market computer as it presently exists. Many of the data are not derived from free exchange and free choice; they are politically rigged. Numerous prices for goods and services are arbitrarily set by government or by politically powerful pressure groups: minimum wages, maximum rent, ceilings on earnings, interest, transportation charges, and so on. What and how much one may plant on his own land is more and more determined not by free choice but by political decrees backed by police force. The fruits of one’s own labor are increasingly siphoned off for urban renewal, paying farmers not to farm, putting men on the moon, subsidies, below-cost pricing of items such as TVA electricity rates, and countless other pet projects. Unpeaceful interventions in the market!

But the signals given off by the present U.S.A. computer reflect the data we force-feed it—in the same manner as any computer. No more judgment is exercised by one than by the other. Many of the data of the U.S.A. market computer are erroneous; the price signals, as stop and go signs, are and must be to some extent misleading; there is a generous portion of GIGO!

When entrepreneurs act on misleading signals, they drain or glut the market; that is, they create shortages or surpluses phenomena of the rigged, not the free, market. To illustrate: Suppose you were in charge of the boiler room supplying a 70 degree climate to a factory and that you adjusted the heat supply by a thermometer’s signals. Now, imagine that someone changes the calibrations so that an actual 70 degree temperature now registers 80 degrees on the distorted scale. There would soon be a shortage of heat in the factory. Or if the actual 70 degrees were made to register 60 degrees, you would send the factory a surplus of heat. Monkeying with the thermometer—rigging, it is called—creates shortages or surpluses.

Observe what happens to the market when the computer’s signals (prices) are rigged. Mink coats, for example, are not now in short supply. They are on display in stores throughout the nation. But let the government decree that the ceiling price on mink coats shall not exceed $25 and immediately there will be a shortage of perhaps 50,000,000 mink coats. Why? Because no one wants to sell them for such a price and because there are that many women who have $25 and desire a mink coat! For evidence, merely recall OPA[*] days.

Next, observe how rigging can and does bring about surpluses: Let the government decree “support prices,” that is, guaranteed prices over and beyond what a free market computer would signal, and entrepreneurs will produce more than the market will take. This explains why we now cram into ships, warehouses, granaries, and whatever kind of storage government can lay its hands on, some 1,330,000,000 bushels of wheat, more than 205,000,000 pounds of butter, 289,000 pounds of tung oil, 335,000,000 bales of cotton, 1,700,000 gallons of turpentine, 34,140,400,000 pounds of grain sorghum, 1,412,193,000 bushels of corn—the list grows wearisome![2]

The Russian Market

Consider, third, something very much different, the Russian market computer as it now exists. It is out of kilter and noninstructive simply because practically all data are rigged, riggers being in complete control over there. Free choice is at a minimum. What can be produced and what consumed is politically dictated by the riggers. Prices, too, are rigged; for in a command economy it is not possible for prices to be set in any other manner. Thus, the Russian market computer is fed “garbage in” on so grand a scale that price signals are quite useless as production guides.

The Russians, so far as we can learn, have admitted the free market computer to operate in one tiny segment of their economy. A small fraction of the tillable land is (in effect) privately owned, and freedom of choice is granted as to what’s produced and how it is priced. The results, while fantastic, come as no surprise to anyone with an awareness of how freedom principles work when put in practice: Private plots make up only 3 to 5 percent of Russia’s farm land, yet they yield a product astonishingly out of proportion to that small fraction. In 1959, some 47 percent of the USSR’s meat came from this fraction of land, 49 percent of the milk, 82 percent of the eggs, 65 percent of the potatoes, and 53 percent of the vegetables.[3]

Within this limited area of choice for the Russians, economic calculation is made easy. They do not know (nor need they know) a thing about the complex data that is fed into their little, isolated market computer. By merely observing a few of its signals—prices—as do those of us privileged to live in freer societies, they know, to some extent, what and what not to produce; that is, they are automatically informed as to the best allocation of their own scarce resources. Aside from this islet of agricultural freedom, economic calculation in Russia is out of the question.[4] As a consequence, nothing better than political calculation—bungling guesstimates—is possible.

The Russian political riggers, in making their guesstimates, do take peeks at the other market computers in the world, most of these others being more or less instructive, depending on the extent to which they are founded on free exchange.[5] For instance, if to remove our own wheat glut, brought on by our own political rigging, we offer our surplus at a price below which the Russian Commissars guess it will cost them to raise wheat by slave labor, the Commissars will effect some sort of a deal with us. By so doing they can then force their own wheat-growing slave labor into other endeavors, perhaps into producing military hardware. But the signals from these other market computers are not received automatically into the Russian market computer, for it is jammed; if you like, it is surrounded by an Iron Curtain. The Commissars, alone, can hear the signals; but, not being producers, what can they do with them? Any market computer, to function perfectly, must automatically receive all complex data, and this is impossible unless there be freedom in exchange. This prime requirement is not met in the Russian situation since the free flow of goods and services across the borders is no more than a trickle.

Freedom in Exchange

To repeat, the free market computer renders its services for free, and it frees us from the impossible task of collecting billions of flowing data but—and this is the all-important point—freedom in exchanges is an absolute, unmodifiable condition. Freedom in exchanges is the key, the secret; a secret, I must add, which is all too well kept!

The secret reveals itself easily enough if we will conceive of human action for what it really is: human energy in motion—a flowing performance. Potential human energy is enormous, and all creative human energy is incalculably varied; there are as many variations as there are persons; no two of these creative energies are alike. However, potential, creative, human energy, to be useful, must become kinetic, flowing, performing energy. But it cannot flow except as it is freely exchangeable.[6] Imagine anyone trying to exist exclusively by his own energy. Were each of us dependent entirely on this type of creative energy, all of us would perish.

To repeat, the reason that the Russian market computer does not and cannot receive accurate data is because the Soviets do not allow freedom in exchange, that is, they do not let world prices freely interact on and influence Russian prices. Their authoritarianism cuts off the current, so to speak. Only a free market price carries an accurate and instructive message for future production and exchange.

The point is clear enough if we keep in mind that only free exchange data accurately reflect value, the value of any good or service being what others will give for it in willing exchange. Data founded on unwilling or unfree (rigged) exchange carry no value messages; it is “garbage in” and, thus, valueless.

A Russian or Polish Commissar, for instance, can be informed of U.S.A. prices—signals from the U.S.A. market computer—in a fraction of a second. Yet, if these prices of ours are founded on rigged data and fed into our own market computer—such as our wheat prices—the rapid communication is nothing but the speedy communication of GIGO. Only if U.S.A. prices are based on free exchange do they have useful instruction to us, to the Russians, or to any other people. To confirm this important point, reflect on how completely we dismiss Russian prices. They have no instruction for us whatsoever, indeed, not even for the Russians themselves—except in the case of their little, free market plots. The distinction between Russian and U.S.A. price signals is that theirs are founded entirely on GIGO, ours only partially so. Were giant Russia a free port, like little Hong Kong, all the world would look to Russian prices for instruction. When we wish to know the real value of gold, for instance, we ask its price where it is freely traded, where there is freedom in exchange. Were all the world’s gold freely exchangeable, the market computer would give us a precise, accurate, and instructive answer as to its value. (This is not to say that governmental intervention has no effect on prices; it most certainly has. But the effect is in the form of misleading, not instructive, prices and value.)

Before presenting some work-a-day examples of the market-as-computer concept, it is relevant to ask how many market computers presently exist. Were there no rigging at all in our or any other country—that is, were freedom in exchange universal—there would be but a single, universal market computer. All the data flowing into it would be accurate as would the signals in the form of prices. However, economic understanding is and always has been faulty; thus, no such market computer has ever existed nor is it likely to. The ideal has never been permitted; so, in its stead, we have literally thousands of market computers, the GIGO factor ranging from fractional to complete. If economic understanding advances, the number of market computers will lessen and their performance will improve. We can hope for nothing more than moving toward the ideal.

The Provisioning of Paris

Now for an example by Frederic Bastiat, a remarkably astute economic observer. Certainly, the French market computer of 1846 was considerably rigged; yet, relative to others at that time and since, it was in good working order. Wrote Bastiat:

On entering Paris, which I had come to visit, I said to myself—Here are a million of human beings who would all die in a short time if provisions of every kind ceased to flow towards this great metropolis. Imagination is baffled when it tries to appreciate the vast multiplicity of commodities which must enter tomorrow through the barriers in order to preserve the inhabitants from falling prey to the convulsions of famine, rebellion, and pillage. And yet all sleep at this moment, and their peaceful slumbers are not disturbed for a single instant by the prospect of such a frightful catastrophe. On the other hand, eighty provinces have been labouring to-day, without concert, without any mutual understanding, for the provisioning of Paris. How does each succeeding day bring what is wanted, nothing more, nothing less, to so gigantic a market? What, then, is the ingenious and secret power which governs the astonishing regularity of movements so complicated, a regularity in which everybody has implicit faith, although happiness and life itself are at stake? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of freedom in transactions. . . . In what situation, I would ask, would the inhabitants of Paris be if a minister should take it into his head to substitute for this power the combinations of his own genius, however superior we might suppose them to be—if he thought to subject to his supreme direction this prodigious mechanism [market computer], to hold the springs of it in his hands, to decide by whom, or in what manner, or on what conditions, everything needed should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Truly, there may be much suffering within the walls of Paris—poverty, despair, perhaps starvation, causing more tears to flow than ardent charity is able to dry up; but I affirm that it is probable, nay, that it is certain, that the arbitrary intervention of government [rigging] would multiply infinitely those sufferings, and spread over all our fellow-citizens those evils which at present affect only a small number of them.[7]

Few of us, when viewing Paris or New York City or our home town, ever discern the miracle wrought by freedom in exchange as clearly as did Bastiat. Nor do we readily see that such a fantastic performance as the automatic provisioning of Paris could never be turned over to a government official and his minions without disaster. These people from the eighty French provinces were unaware of what the other millions of producers and distributors were doing; they had no firsthand knowledge of the shifting in tastes and fancies of Parisian consumers. Of the countless data, these anonymous producers knew nothing. All they did was to let their own self-interest respond to the market computer’s relatively few signals: prices. Their instructions were received from prices. To the extent that the prices were reflections of free exchange data, to that extent were the instructions faithful guides. To the extent that the data were rigged, to that extent were the instructions misleading. That the data were more right than wrong is self-evident: the million people in Paris were provisioned with no more thought on the part of each than you or I give to the supplying of a restaurant in Hong Kong where we plan to dine next month.

Nor need we confine our reflections to such miracles as the provisioning of cities. What about producing a jet plane or an automobile or a ball-point pen? No single person on earth knows how to make any one of these or tens of thousands of other fabricated items by which we live. The participants in the making of a cup of coffee—growers, makers of bags, and so on by the thousands—are not, by and large, even aware of each other’s existence. They do not work as a coffee committee or in conscious concert. With no attention to or thought of each other, these countless producers and distributors merely watch prices: stop and go signals from the market computers. Presto! We who want coffee have it on our tables with no more part in it than the brewing, and voluntarily parting with a fraction of our income: willing or free exchange.

No Rigging in the Free Market

The market is a computer; the rigged market is GIGO to the extent that it is rigged and, thus, to that extent, imperfect. The free market is the perfect computer. This is not the claim of a partisan but hard fact. It merely means that values—as determined by willing exchange—are computed freely, that is, without intervention, distortion, rigging. To assert that the free market is the perfect computer is as axiomatic as asserting that a flow is perfectly free if wholly unobstructed.

Computers, with the speed of light, give impersonal answers or signals from the data fed to them. Men, like mice gnawing among the labyrinth of wires in a telephone exchange, can and do rig and, thus, distort, disfigure, and destroy many of the data. The motives for so doing include protection against competition, a belief that value is determined by the amount of effort exerted, a falsely presumed ability to run the lives of others, a conviction that the communistic maxim “from each according to ability, to each according to need” can be administered by force without injustice, the insistence on feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others, and countless additional motivations. But, regardless of the reasons, the rigger imposes his errant ways on all the rest of us; he plays authoritarian!

The free market computer is the Golden Rule in economic practice. Value has nothing whatsoever to do with effort exerted; value is what others will willingly exchange for one’s goods or services. The market respects the wishes and performances of everyone impersonally. There are no favorites. It is the only means there is for the automatic and speedy allocation of scarce resources; that is, it is the method for bringing a scarce and high-priced good or service within the reach of those whose incomes are lowest. It is the miracle worker, demonstrated daily, over and over again, before our eyes.

A free market, of course, is out of the question except among a people who prize liberty and know the imperatives of liberty. Liberty, I must repeat, is not a one-man term but, like the free market, finds its complete realization in universal practice: every man on earth is born with as much right to his life, his livelihood, his liberty as I. No one can rationally prize liberty for himself without wishing liberty for others.

To realize liberty, to tear ourselves loose from political rigging, to unshackle creative energy, to achieve freedom in transactions, does not, as many contend, require that the individual wait until all others take these steps in unison with him. Implicit in such a council of delay is the taking of no steps by anyone, and this is fatal to liberty. An individual can stand for liberty all by himself; a nation can practice liberty to its own glory and strength though all other states be slave. The blessings of liberty are conferred on all who live by her credo; and basic to liberty is the unrigged market computer.

[1] The pros pronounce it guy-go.

[2] See Agricultural Statistics (U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, 1962), p. 632.

[*] Ed. note, OPA was the Office of Price Administration (1941–1946) which fixed price ceilings on commodities and controlled rents in defense areas.

[3] The Wall Street Journal, May 17, 1961. Also see “Private Farming Big Aid to Soviet,” The New York Times, November 28, 1960.

[4] Professor Ludwig von Mises deserves the greatest praise for logically demonstrating that the socialist community is incapable of economic calculation. See his Socialism (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1953), pp. 113–122. Refer also to “Soviet Economists Part Company with Marx” by Dr. Trygve J. B. Hoff, The Freeman. September 1960.

[5] Aleksy Wakar and Janusz Zielinski, leading professors of the Central Planning School of Poland, astonishingly for socialists, say, “The best methods of producing a given output cannot be chosen [by socialist methods of calculation] but are taken from outside the [socialist] system . . . i.e., methods of production used in the past, or so-called ‘advanced’ methods of production usually taken from the practice of more advanced countries and used as data for plan-building by the [socialist] country under consideration.” (Italics mine.) See The Journal of the American Economic Association, March 1963.

Anyone’s concept of correct economic theory will be improved by grasping the significance of economic calculation. For a clear, simple, and excellent explanation see “Play Store Economics” by Dean Russell, The Freeman, January 1964.

[6] Free exchange can never be wholly squelched, regardless of how powerful the dictatorship. People, to live, will smuggle and form black markets. For instance, it is generally supposed that the useful goods and services in Russia, such as they are, originate with socialism—the Kremlin’s rigging. Nothing of the sort! The Russian people are bursting with creative energy. What actually is witnessed in the production of useful goods and services is but the result of pent-up creative energy forcing its way through the political rigging. The Kremlin, being composed of political riggers and not economists, erroneously concludes that the escaping, free energy is its accomplishment! Indeed, if it were not for the fact that most Russians, in most of their dealings, “cheat” against the theoretical communist system, they would all starve to death.

[7] This extract is from Social Fallacies (Economic Sophisms) by Frederic Bastiat (Santa Ana, CA: Register Publishing Company, 1944).

Chapter 14

Mail by Miracle

My fellow panelist, a college dean who espoused government security programs of all sorts, had never before encountered anyone who insisted that government should be limited, without exception, to keeping the peace. Finally, in exasperation, he delivered this intended coup de grace: “Well, if my panelist friend thinks that government should be so severely limited, I would like to have him tell this audience how private enterprise could deliver the mail.”

He was voicing a common sentiment: Private enterprise deliver the mail? Preposterous! Also, this dean of Labor and Industry was revealing a shocking and common lack of understanding as to how the market works. It is this widespread failure to grasp the miracle of the market which accounts, in no small measure, for the mass turn toward socialism. If there is no faith in getting jobs done by men acting freely, privately, cooperatively, competitively, willingly, voluntarily, peacefully, to that extent will people believe in political authority to guide human action. It’s either peace or force; there is no in-between!

Let your imagination take you back just one century, to the year 1864. Suppose, at that time, you had been asked to select the easiest of the following assignments:

1. Deliver the mail;

2. Deliver the human voice a thousand miles;

3. Deliver a dozen individuals from San Francisco to Miami in one day;

4. Deliver an event visually a mile from where it takes place, at the time of its occurrence.

Which of the four would have seemed easiest to accomplish in 1864? Number 1, for certain! Numbers 2, 3, and 4 would then have appeared utterly impossible, too fantastic to be taken seriously. The easiest one of the four—delivery of the mail—has been left in the hands of government. Numbers 2, 3, and 4 have been dealt with so competently and expansively in the free market that we have taken them for granted; we never give them a second thought. So, let us ask, how well has government handled the mail?

For all practical purposes, the government uses the same methods of gathering, sorting, and delivering the mail that it did 100 years ago.

The mail is slower today than it was before World War II.

A letter often takes 48 hours to travel 100 miles.

The Post Office is floundering in a sea of mail that gets deeper every year.

Rates on first-class mail have been hiked 150 percent since 1932, yet the deficit for the mail operation is now running close to $1,000,000,000 a year, about $3,000,000 for each working day, or ten times what it was in 1932.

Almost all proposals for solving this generally acknowledged bureaucratic failure are predicated on government’s remaining in the mail business, as though this were as proper a function of government as is keeping the peace. Proposed solutions range all the way from getting a more competent Postmaster General to appropriating millions of dollars for research, all aimed at the hopeless objective of making a government enterprise efficient.

The Constitution Says So

There are numerous reasons why most people assume that government ought to be responsible for mail delivery. One is this: At our nation’s outset, the most respected of American political instruments, The Constitution of the U.S.A., proclaimed, “The Congress shall have power . . . to establish post offices. . . .” The Congress exercised this power. There are now nearly 40,000 post offices.

But Congress went further than the permissibility granted by the Constitution. Congress outlawed competition; it declared mail delivery a government monopoly. No one, today, may carry first-class mail for pay except on a subcontract arrangement with Uncle Sam. The mail business is the government’s—period!

When any activity has been monopolized by government for years, persons with entrepreneurial aptitudes rarely think of it as an opportunity for private enterprise. The enterpriser seldom spends any time trying to think how to do something that he will never have a chance to try. An activity monopolized by government soon becomes both “untouchable” and “unthinkable.” Thus, everyone—almost—assumes the mail business to be a proper function of government.

Almost! Now and then, however, there are individuals who question the generally accepted premise. Their reasoning goes something like this: More pounds of fresh milk are delivered every day than pounds of mail. Fresh milk is more perishable than a love letter or a catalogue or an appeal for funds or a picture magazine or an entertainment journal. Fresh milk delivery is more efficient, more prompt, lower priced than mail delivery. Why shouldn’t men in the marketplace—acting privately, competitively, voluntarily, cooperatively, peacefully—deliver mail? They deliver freight, which is heavier.

Not only the “man in the street,” but a high proportion of enterprisers themselves believe that government should deliver mail. Unwittingly, they have lost faith in themselves as free men to deliver mail. Why?

Free Enterprise Does the Job

First, ask this question: How far could the human voice be delivered 100 years ago? The answer is, the distance two champion hog callers could effectively communicate—about 44 yards. But, left free to try, enterprisers have discovered how to deliver the human voice around this earth, for instance, which is 1,000,000 times as far, and in one seventh of a second. That’s roughly the same time it takes the voice of one hog caller to reach the ear of the other. Quite an accomplishment in delivery, isn’t it?

When we have left enterprisers free to try, they have discovered how to deliver a Rose Bowl game, a Shakespearean play, or whatever into everyone’s living room in motion and in color at the time it is going on.

When we have left these enterprisers free to try, they have discovered how to deliver 115 individuals from Seattle to Baltimore in less than four hours.

When free to try, they have discovered how to deliver gas from Texas to homes in New York at low cost.

When free to try, they have discovered how to deliver every four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard for less money than government charges to deliver a one-ounce letter from Irvington-on-Hudson to adjacent Tarrytown.

And these are the people—the ones who have had a hand in these miracles—who have lost faith in themselves as free men to deliver letters.

While the last comparison is somewhat loaded, this example of free market oil delivery, on a weight-distance-time basis, wins against the example of mail delivery by more than 10,000 to 1!

Let’s try another comparison. The fastest mail service is an airmail letter. With the best of luck a letter posted in Irvington-on-Hudson at 5 p.m. could be in the hands of an addressee in Los Angeles 40 hours later, and for 8 cents. Now, consider the incomparably more complex problem of a personal conversation with the same Angelino. He can be reached and a three-minute talk-fest completed in three and one-fourth minutes, and for $2.25 (plus tax). True, this is 30 times more costly but 750 times faster!

Interestingly enough, the A. T. & T., by far the largest of the human voice communicators, has, during the period when the Post Office was losing $10,000,000,000, showed a profit of $22,000,000,000.

In the light of overwhelming evidence on every hand, why does anyone cling to the notion that a letter can be delivered only by a governmental agency? Instead, we should marvel that people in government are able to deliver the mail at all; not because they are less talented than the A. T. & T. folks, but simply because of the manner in which they are organized to do the job.

Suppose you were asked to head a business—one of the largest in the world—one in which you were wholly in experienced and to which you had given no thought, as is the case with the mill run of Postmasters General. Next assume that a substantial part of your key personnel had to be selected on the basis of political preferment. And, finally imagine that the income of the business depended not on willing exchanges in a free market but on appropriations made to your business by two directorates, of 100 and 435 members respectively (the Senate and House), all having more in mind their own political fortunes than the business for which you have been given responsibility. With responsibility and authority so unrelated, and with the other obstacles mentioned, what kind of a performance do you think you could turn in?

Imagine this: A century ago the Post Office—headed, manned, and organized as above—was given a monopoly of all transportation and all communications. What, today, would be the shape of trains, trucks, planes, telephones, wireless, radar had these activities been monopolized as has the mail? Is there any reason to believe that there would have been progress in these technologies? Wouldn’t these, like the Post Office, be about as they were 100 years ago?

The Market Not Appreciated

The fact that the Constitution empowered Congress to put government in the postal business does not make it right. The same Constitution condoned slavery.

Nor is government postal service justified by the dangerous and popular notion that government should do for the people that which they cannot or will not do for themselves. If this were a sound rule, then anything the government ever attempted would become a proper government function simply because most people tend to give up—realizing the futility of trying to compete with the tax collector.

Nor can government postal service be justified on the Rural Free Delivery argument. If a person elects to live atop Pike’s Peak, let him get his mail as he does his cornflakes or milk or whatever. Why should the rest of us subsidize his desire to have his isolation, and his mail, too?

That mail delivery should be left to the free, competitive market is so buttressed with overwhelming evidence that it is difficult to understand why we persist in our mistake. I have already given some minor reasons; the major reason is failure to understand the miracle of the market.

Omit those inexperienced in business and ask only of outstanding enterprisers, “Should mail delivery be left to the market?” Except in rare instances, their answers will be an emphatic “No!” Their thought processes go something like this: “H’m! Let me see. How would I go about delivering mail to nearly two hundred million people? By George, I don’t know. If I, a successful enterpriser, don’t know, who does? Of course mail delivery should not be left to the market. It’s a government job.”

No One Needs to Know

The fact is that our enterprising friend could spend the rest of his life reflecting on how he would deliver mail to all the people in the U.S.A. and never would he think how to do it. What he doesn’t understand is that neither he nor any other person can ever know—or needs to know—how to do the job. Do just two things and witness a miracle:

1. Let the Congress repeal the monopoly now granted to the government, thus permitting anyone to deliver mail for pay who wishes to do so, as unrestricted as grocery delivery; and

2. Let the Congress appropriate no more money to the Treasury for Post Office Department use, and insist that the accounting be on a basis comparable to private enterprise accounting, to include rentals, taxes, and so on, thus requiring the Post Office Department to charge rates that will incur no deficits.

Within a year or two or three government would be Out of the mail business, completely out; private enterprise would take over the whole thing, lock, stock, and barrel. Furthermore, mail delivery would become as efficient as is the communication of sound or the delivery of groceries, taken for granted as is the supply of automobiles, without extra burden to taxpayers, and with profit to enterprisers in proportion to their capacity to cut costs and improve service.

Many will ask, how can this possibly happen when no person now knows how to deliver mail? Very well, how do we manufacture 1,600,000,000 wooden lead pencils annually without anyone knowing how to make a pencil? There, in the pencil story, is the answer: tiny, varied, multitudinous know-hows miraculously, spontaneously, automatically configurating—so long as they are free to do so—arising from where and in whom no one can remotely guess. There are thousands upon thousands of testimonies to this free market phenomenon all about us, but the miracle is so unobtrusive that, like the air we breathe, we seldom take any note of it. This wonderful mystery, which so few persons grasp, is rooted in nothing more complicated than a faith in free men. Indeed, the reason that a bureaucracy cannot efficiently deliver mail is that the individual know-hows are not free to flow; the governmental system presupposes something that does not exist: a person who knows how to deliver mail.

Some may claim that I am out to abolish the governmental postal service. But I do not consider that a first order of business. I use the postal service to illustrate that any and all men should be permitted to do anything they please, so long as it is peaceful—even deliver mail for pay; that government has no competency beyond keeping the peace. The postal service merely turns out to be the easiest way to make the point—everything about it is so obvious.

Chapter 15

Whose Academic Freedom?

Many thoughtful persons, when supplied with the evidence, will agree that a creative activity should be left to free men, with government relegated to keeping the peace; that is, they will agree when the issue is as clear cut as in the case of the postal service. And many also will concede that this same division of functions should apply to countless creative activities: leave productive and creative affairs to free men; leave the inhibiting and penalizing of destructive actions to government.

Of all activities, none is more obviously in the creative category than is education. Based on the above division-of-functions concept, education would be left exclusively to the free market. Yet, there is a firmly rooted popular conviction or belief in government education. Here, in education, we have the contradiction of means and ends in its most pronounced and perhaps its most dangerous form; certainly in the form most difficult to clarify.

However, the person who argues that anyone should be able to do anything he pleases so long as it is peaceful and that the role of government is only to keep the peace, had better make his case in this difficult area, or retire from the field. And I know of no better place to begin than with the argument which rages around the subject of academic freedom. Whenever an issue is split down the middle and intelligent men of good will are arrayed on either side of the controversy, one conclusion can be reasonably drawn: some basic principle in the argument has been neglected.

Academic freedom has been debated as if it were primarily an ideological or a philosophical problem, whereas, in my view, it is an organizational problem. Whether a teacher be a communist, a socialist, a Fabian, a New Dealer, or their direct opposite, is a matter of secondary concern, unrelated to the real issue of academic freedom. If we were to shift the subject from academic freedom to freedom in the market place and then argue that it mattered whether or not one were a carpenter, a plumber, a farmer, or whatever, we would be on comparably untenable ground.

The Parent-Child Relationship

The confusions about academic freedom may be cleared if we first examine teaching in its simplest form and move from there to more complex forms.

The simplest teaching relationship would exist between parent and child. The parent is responsible for the child, and consequently has authority over the child. The basic principle in all successful organization is that responsibility and authority be commensurate. Any deviation leads to trouble, whether in the simplest relationship between parent and child or in such complex relationships as are found in large corporate organizations. The successful parent-child relationship will find the parent relinquishing authority as the child grows in stature and assumes the responsibilities for his own life. When responsibilities are fully assumed, no parental authority whatsoever should remain. The solution of the academic freedom problem rests squarely on the responsibility-authority principle.

The mother teaching her child, assuming no interference, has perfect academic freedom. She will teach the child precisely what she wants it to learn. Whether the mother is a communist, an anarchist, or of the libertarian persuasion has no bearing on the question of academic freedom.

Now let us take the first step toward complexity: the mother employing an aide, shall we say, a tutor. The responsibility for the education of the child still rests with the mother. And if trouble is not to ensue, the authority also must remain with her. The tutor may or may not share the mother’s views about life, education, and social affairs. But regardless of their agreements or differences, the mother should still be in the driver’s seat. If she can delegate a portion of her responsibility-authority powers to the tutor, she also should be free to revoke such powers. The power to hire, logically, carries with it the power to fire. If one could only delegate and not revoke, could only hire and not fire, he would be in the absurd situation of having to live all of his lifetime with an ever-growing accumulation of mistakes. If this were the case, who would dare risk employing anyone?

In this mother-tutor-child arrangement, let us assume that the mother is a devotee of socialism and that the tutor turns out, much to the mother’s surprise and disgust, to be of the freedom faith—one who believes in no coercion at all to direct the creative activities of citizens within a society. What then? Is the socialist mother obligated to retain the libertarian tutor on the grounds of academic freedom? Whose academic freedom? The mother’s or the tutor’s? Is the mother, who once had academic freedom in relation to her child, now to be deprived of it because she hired the tutor? Is the tutor’s freedom to teach what he pleases to supersede the mother’s freedom to have her child taught what she wishes? This anomalous arrangement would have the mother responsible for the education of the child and for paying the tutor, and leave the tutor with authority as to what the child should be taught—the responsibility-authority principle totally violated. Nothing but friction would result, certainly no educational progress.

Tenure vs. Academic Freedom

Libertarian views generally are founded on the belief that each person has an inalienable right to his own life; that he has the responsibility to protect and to sustain his life; and with this goes the corresponding authority to make free choices—no exception! Our tutor, holding such libertarian views, must concede that the socialist mother’s academic freedom supersedes his own as it relates to what should be taught the child. That is her business and not his. For him to argue that he can teach her child what he pleases, that she does not have the authority and the right to discharge him lest his academic freedom be violated, is to place the argument on the wrong ground. Such a claim would be for tenure, not for academic freedom!

The tutor’s academic freedom is in no way violated if the socialist mother chooses to discharge him. He is free to teach his libertarian views to his own children or to the children of parents who may subscribe to the service he is prepared to render. Academic freedom would be violated if one were coerced into teaching what he believed to be wrong—if the libertarian tutor were compelled to teach socialism, or if the socialist mother were compelled to have her child taught libertarian ideas.

The Private School

Numbers can be added to the parent-tutor relationship without altering the responsibility-authority lines. A good example is a school I knew, the Ferris Institute of 1917, long before it became a government school. Mr. Ferris owned the school. There was no Board of Trustees. It was a venture as private as his own home. He employed teachers in accord with his judgment of their competence. He admitted students in accord with his judgment of their worthiness. If he thought he had erred in the selection of a teacher, the teacher was discharged. And many students were sent home because they would not meet the standard of hard work he required.

Mr. Ferris had the sole responsibility for the success of the Ferris Institute; and, correctly, he assumed the authority for its conduct. Academic freedom was in no way offended. Teachers who shared his educational principles were free to submit their credentials and, if employed, to put these principles into practice. Parents who liked the hard-work standards of the Ferris Institute were free to seek admission for their children.

Most private educational organizations are more complex than was the Ferris Institute of that time. Some are corporations organized for profit, in which case the ultimate responsibility and authority rest with the stockholders in proportion to their ownership. As a rule, the responsibility and authority are delegated to a Board of Trustees; and the Board, in turn, delegates the responsibility and authority to a chief executive officer, usually a president. The president organizes the institution and delegates the responsibility and authority vested in him to numerous subadministrators and teachers. The stockholders, having the final responsibility for the institution, quite properly have the authority to change Board membership if they find themselves in disagreement with Board policy. The Trustees, in turn, having been given the responsibility by the stockholders, have the authority to discharge the chief executive officer if they believe he is not properly executing its policy. The chief executive officer, vested with responsibility by the Board, has the authority to change his aides if he believes they are not carrying out his ideas. Discretion in exercising authority, regardless of where vested, is assumed.

Complexity in no way alters the responsibility-authority principle, but only increases the difficulty of tracing the responsibility and authority lines.

All organization—educational or otherwise—is an attempt at cooperation. Cooperation is not possible unless responsibility and authority go hand-in-hand. Example: You want a new home, but rather than build your own you select a contractor to whom you delegate the responsibility to build it in conformity with specified plans. Now, suppose that you delegate no authority to the contractor and that other members of your family, and any of the carpenters, can alter the plans at will. The house, if one ever materializes, will be a mess.

Suppose, on the other hand, that you have given the contractor an authority commensurate with his responsibility, and he then tells the carpenters that the construction is to be precisely according to your plans. But the carpenters protest: “This is doing violence to our freedom. You are not letting us practice our views on carpentry.” The absurdity of this is apparent. Yet, it is the same as the teacher’s protest, “You are doing violence to my academic freedom,” when he is asked to respect the authority of the one who has the responsibility for the teaching organization. Actually, he is insisting that he be permitted to do as he pleases in matters for which someone else has the responsibility. He claims freedom to do as he pleases while he denies a like freedom to the responsible person who pays him.

Often, it is not academic freedom that is at issue; it is simply a claim for tenure. American parents, not wanting communism and socialism taught to their children, seek the discharge of teachers of such faiths. But the teachers cry “academic freedom” and the parents, Board members, and school officials are loath to violate this sacrosanct part of their own philosophy So, the academic freedom argument is a good tenure argument. It is precisely the same as the “right to a job” argument advanced so persuasively by professionals of the labor movement. It “works,” and therefore is used.

This argument succeeds because the responsibility-authority principle has been neglected. The neglect comes, in the case of public or, more accurately, government education, because it is most difficult to know who is responsible or what performance is expected. Where does responsibility ultimately rest? With the taxpayers in proportion to their assessments for schools? Generally, this would be denied. With the parents who have children in government schools? These, seemingly, have no more responsibility than those with children in private schools, or than those who have no children at all.

With the voters? Probably this is as close as one can come to identifying ultimate responsibility in the case of government education. If the responsibility rests here, then that is where the final authority rests. It rests here in theory and to some extent in practice. Voters—whether or not they are interested in education and whether or not they have children—elect Boards of Education. These, in turn, select superintendents, who then employ deputies and teachers. Without too much difficulty, one can trace the chain of responsibility in government education from the voters who ultimately hold it and who delegate it by plebiscite to Boards of Education, to superintendents, to teachers. But the teachers, in theory, have no authority to teach what they please. They are, in theory, subject to the authority of the superintendents, the superintendents subject to the Boards, and the Board members to the voters. Simple enough thus far![1]

The question is: What do the voters want taught? What viewpoint has this heterogeneous mass the authority to impose? Every conceivable point of view and educational technique known to man may be found among these millions of voters. They range from one ideological extreme to the other. Among them are communists, socialists of every gradation, anarchists, libertarian idealists, Jews, Catholics, Protestants, and what have you!

What do these people want? They want all things. And the best one can expect from such a plebiscite is the common denominator opinion of the millions, an opinion subject to all sorts of emotional influences, expressed in a voice that is rarely clear.

Lines of Responsibility Tangled

My purpose in this chapter is not so much to show the flaws in government education as to demonstrate how confusion about academic freedom arises when the source of responsibility is unable to speak clearly or exercise the authority it possesses “on paper,” that is, in theory.

There need be no such confusion in the case of free market education. Pronounced variation would result were educational endeavors preponderantly private. Each enterprise would present its own brand of education, and customers would take their choice.

Government endeavor, on the other hand, results in vague generalizations. All the wants and aspirations, the interests and conflicts, are combined into an educational potpourri, the ingredients of the compromise being proportional to the popularity of various ideas at the moment.

Adding to the confusion is the fact that all parties in the chain of government responsibility-authority—Boards of Education, superintendents, deputies, and teachers—are themselves voters making decisions not only as a part of the plebiscite but acting on their own authority, not necessarily the authority issuing from the plebiscite.

The government educational effort is a political apparatus and behaves accordingly. The indifference of voters invites special interests to assume command.[2] For instance, if teachers adequately organize, they can easily control the government school system and supplant the voters as the responsibility-authority fountainhead. The deputies, the superintendents, the Boards of Education, and the voters become the teachers’ aides, so to speak helping primarily as taxpayers.

When affairs take such a turn—a common occurrence—it is easy to see how teachers resent any voter interference with the freedom to teach whatever they please. The teachers have appropriated the responsibility for the government schools. And with the responsibility goes the authority to manage the schools, even the authority to make the voters—displaced bosses—pay the bills. In this topsy-turvy arrangement, it is natural that teachers should feel free to teach what they please. Interference, from whatever source, is indeed a violation of their politically purchased “academic freedom.”

As long as education is politically organized, the squabble over academic freedom will continue. The voters, by reason of their natural indifference and diverse opinions, are unlikely to regain the responsibility and authority which the theory of government education presumes to be theirs. If they would end the squabble, they will have to get education out of the political arena.

This confusion about academic freedom, which originates in government education, carries over into private schools in many instances.

Academic freedom is no more sacred than is freedom of speech, freedom of the press, religious freedom, freedom to produce what one pleases, and freedom to trade with whomever one pleases. There is no freedom peculiar to the classroom, diplomas, degrees, or mortarboards. Let anyone teach what he pleases, but let him do it on his own responsibility. Let him not cry “academic freedom” as he robs someone else of freedom.

When government is in the educational driver’s seat, academic freedom will always be argued as if it were a political and ideological problem, which really it is not. When the market is free for the production and exchange of all goods and all services the issue of freedom—academic, economic, or whatever—is never in question.

[1] It is not quite as simple as this suggests. Federal and state and city Departments of Education are assuming increasing powers and tend further to confuse the responsibility-authority lines.

[2] Voter indifference today in America is no sociological accident. It is an inevitable consequence of overextended government.

Chapter 16

Education for the Sake of Others

This chapter is intended as a critique of government education.

The inevitable consequence of governmental intervention in the market—in the areas of food, mink coats, or whatever—is imbalance. That is, when government deviates from its proper role of keeping the peace and invoking a common justice, shortages and surpluses result. As explained in Chapter 13, we are now experiencing a wheat glut by reason of prices rigged by government, known as “support prices.” France has a housing shortage because of prices rigged by the French government, known as “ceiling prices.” Surpluses and shortages are phenomena of the rigged market, never of the free market. The free market always moves toward equilibrium where supply and demand equate; like water, when free to flow, it moves toward a common level. Balance is the free market’s built-in tendency.

There is governmental intervention in the educational market. We should, therefore, be able to detect surpluses and shortages, that is, imbalance in types of knowledge. There can never be a surplus of knowledge, but there can be—and is—a superfluity of technical know-how relative to general wisdom or understanding. My thesis is that government’s intervention in education is, to a marked extent, the cause of a dangerous and grotesque imbalance between these two distinct types of knowledge. In any event, this is the issue here explored.

While few will share my reasons for this imbalance, the fact of imbalance is well known; some writers have stated it impressively:

We have many men of science; too few men of God.

We have grasped the mystery of the atom and rejected the Sermon on the Mount.

The world has achieved brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience.

Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants. We know more about war than we know about peace, more about killing than we know about living.[1]

The distortions of civilization now seem to foreshadow the possibility of extinction of our kind.[2]

Man’s problems have arisen because his material progress has outstripped his spiritual advancement.[3]

Man must be made to understand that the mechanical transformations he has introduced . . . will mean either progress or ruin according to whether or not they are accompanied by . . . improvement in his moral attitude.[4]

. . . civilization at the moment being in danger of destruction in consequence of an unprecedented development in man’s mechanical skill and ability to exploit the forces of nature, with which his ethical sentiments and social wisdom have entirely failed to keep pace.[5]

Reasons for the Imbalance

All of the above are astute and, I believe, important observations.[6] This imbalance in types of knowledge flowing from our vaunted educational system is at once startling and ominous. For never before in history have a people spent as much time in classrooms as do the present generation of Americans. Never as much money spent for education! Never a greater hue and cry for the expenditure of additional billions to finance more of the same! But, significantly, never so much grumbling about the educational results. Quite obviously, there is a common awareness that something is out of kilter, even though there is very little certainty as to what’s at the root of it. Is it not clear that our educational emphasis is more on accumulating know-how than on gaining wisdom or understanding? Our know-how in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, and other sciences has made possible the hydrogen bomb, as well as the putting of monkeys and men into orbit, and sending TV sets to the moon. Observe the nature of quiz shows and the kudos we heap on masters of current events and the obeisance we pay to those who can recite the encyclopedia. We know how to make clothes out of sand, airplane wings from sea water, utensils from oil. If we don’t make silk purses out of sows ears, it is only because—well, who wants a silk purse? We have know-how galore, giving us enough power to destroy every living thing. Know-how is power, and we tend to worship power.

Lack of Understanding

But where is the understanding to balance the know-how? A breakthrough in know-how appears to have edged wisdom off the driver’s seat. For, are we not, as a nation, on the same reckless course that has brought about the fall of one civilization after another? Self-responsibility—amidst an abundance of know-how and a paucity of wisdom, understanding, conscience, ethics, insight—has given way to government responsibility for our security, welfare, and prosperity, reminiscent of the Roman Empire’s later days. Unwisely, we increase the curbs on individual initiative. The theme that we can spend ourselves rich has, among “nuclear giants,” switched from heresy to orthodoxy; inflation is dreaded and cursed by the very people who, in an utter lack of understanding, promote it. Feathering the nests of some at the expense of others has, in our know-how society, become the chief political preoccupation. Among the “well educated,” the number who think of rights to life, livelihood, liberty as deriving from the state, not the Creator, is growing, and integrity gives way to popular acclaim. The directive of one’s behavior is less and less what conscience dictates as right and more and more what the gods of fame and fortune decree. A little knowledge may be dangerous, as the saying goes, but a rapidly expanding know-how, unless balanced by a commensurately expanding wisdom, assuredly spells disaster.

Perhaps we can better assess a present position by taking stock of our beginnings. To illustrate: The Bible, filled with much understanding and wisdom—in a very real sense an educational launching pad for Western civilization—was compiled some eighteen to twenty-eight centuries ago.[7] The writers had little of the know-how we possess. Perhaps they never dreamed of, let alone knew, the multiplication table. Of higher mathematics, they were unaware. Zero wasn’t invented until centuries after their time. There wasn’t a B.A. or Ph.D. among them; indeed, could any Biblical writer have passed one of our eighth grade examinations? Know-how—as we use the term—as not their primary objective, but understanding principles was. They were men of insight and integrity.

The first stage of wisdom requires that we understand the virtues and how to live them. Integrity, that is, fidelity to one’s highest conscience, is foremost and basic. Next is humility—in the sense of freeing oneself from be-like-meness. These prime virtues, if understood and practiced, in part a rare wisdom: a sensitive and acute realization that a human being is a man and not a demigod. Without this wisdom, man tends to behave as demigod. And therein, I believe, lies the key to educational imbalance.

No one has ever seen a demigod, except perhaps in the mirror. Thus, a demigod is an error of the psyche, nothing more. But this error must not be discounted; it is widespread and unbelievably powerful. To assess its pervasiveness, merely note the millions of individuals who actually believe that the rest of us would fare better were we a reflection of themselves. Each of these millions would have us live in the kind of housing he has in mind, work the hours he prescribes, receive the wages he thinks appropriate, exchange with whom he decrees and on terms he proposes, but, more particularly, he wants us to be educated as he thinks proper! Bear in mind, however, that not a single one of these millions is a demigod in the judgment of any other person than himself. Perhaps he may never think of himself in such egotistical terms; he merely performs as if he were a demigod: He would mold us in his own image![8] I repeat, this is an error of the psyche, nothing more.

Just the Two of Us

My hypothesis: Our educational system, to a marked extent, stems from this error of the psyche. If this be demonstrable, then we can account for some of the faults we are finding with the system, the hassles over integration and segregation, prayers in schools, and so on. We will then perceive why we are putting such an emphasis on the acquisition of know-how to the neglect of understanding or wisdom; we will become aware of the corrective steps that must be taken if know-how is to be balanced with wisdom; and we will have the background for not thrusting ourselves further down a dead-end road.

Let us begin an examination of this hypothesis by reducing the problem to manageable proportions: a consideration of only two individuals, you and me. While it is easily demonstrable that I know very little about me and you about yourself, I know more about myself than anyone else does, and I acknowledge that you know yourself better than I know you.

The most important admission to be made at the outset is that you and I are not alike. Our inheritances differ, as do our environments. My aptitudes, faculties, potentialities, likes and dislikes, yearnings, inhibitions, ambitions, capabilities and inabilities to learn about this or that are not at all like yours. As to our common ground, each of us has a moral obligation not to impair the life, livelihood, liberty of others. Beyond this, we must resort to the broadest and more or less irrelevant generalities: we are Americans, we belong to the human species, and so on. We aren’t as “two peas in a pod;” we are at variance in every particularity.[9] We not only differ from each other but we don’t remain constant ourselves; each of us is in perpetual flux, changing in every respect daily, aging in some ways, growing in others.

In short, we must keep in mind that you and I are unique specimens of humanity; we are peculiarly distinctive; that is, each of us is an original, the first and only creation of its likeness in cosmic experience; that nothing identical to either you or me is possible; that neither of us has ever been, is now, or ever will be, duplicated. You, as much as I, are a physical, mental, moral, perceptive, political, and spiritual entity—a singular entity—and any carbon copy is out of the question.

Before moving on to the next phase of this analysis, I must ask that you make an extravagant assumption in this you-and-me situation, namely, that I am as knowledgeable and as wise as the most powerful political leader in the nation.[10] Otherwise, I run the risk of my hypothesis being disregarded by reason of my own acknowledged short comings.

You Draw on Me

Let us now examine my possible educational relationships to you. At issue are two opposed roles that I might assume. The first and, to me, the proper role is to let you draw on such know-how and understanding as I may possess and as you may determine. Education is a seeking, probing, taking-from process, and the initiative must rest with the seeker. As great as is my stake in your better education, I must concede that your progress depends on your desire to learn, that this inquisitiveness into the nature of things is a truly spiritual experience—the spirit of inquiry—that this is wholly volitional and that you are the sole possessor of your volitional stimuli. These, as related to you or your children, are exclusively yours; they do not, they cannot, rest with me or any other person. Mine is, at best, only an exemplar’s role: it is to improve myself to the utmost and thus to persuade solely by precept and example. If it turns out that I have something in store which in your view—not mine—may lift you or your children up another notch, then my self-interest is served by obliging you. Arranged in this pattern, the student selects his teachers.[11]

If you—regardless of who you are—will confine your evaluations to the you-and-me situation, that is, if you will exclude any thought of anyone but the two of us, you will readily agree that my role, as above portrayed, is a proper one; it isn’t possible for any rational person to conclude otherwise! In short, you would not have it any other way. And, further, I am quite certain that when you are at liberty to glean from me or any others as you may choose, you will obtain for yourself as balanced an educational diet as is possible for you. As with food for the flesh, so with sustenance for the intellect and the spirit: you will be led naturally to select those bits of know-how and wisdom from first this and then that person—a balancing of these two types of knowledge which will gratify those needs peculiar only to you among all mankind. You will gravitate in due course toward that balance of know-how and wisdom needed for the fulfillment distinctive to your own person.[12] In other words, you will learn more of what you want to learn if you are free to choose what you want to learn than if you are not free to choose what you want to learn. This is self-evident; it needs no proof.

I Force You to Learn

My second possible role is that of demigod—the one currently in vogue and the role here in question. Not that I am a demigod—no one is—but let us assume that I pose and behave as one: I shall compel your classroom attendance; write your curriculum in accord with my notions of your needs and force it upon you; and, lastly, I shall coercively extort the financial wherewithal from all and sundry to defray the costs of imposing my own peculiar brand of knowledge upon you. In short, I shall attempt, as would a demigod, to cast you in my image! Your education for my sake!

Bearing in mind our countless differences, what would you think of my program for making you or your children a carbon copy of me? Even conceding that I am as well balanced in know-how and wisdom as our country’s most powerful political leader?

In any event, is it not evident that the approach of the demigod—an error of the psyche—is antagonistic to the advancement of wisdom even though some chunks of know-how might be rammed into your reluctant head? Your and my creative peculiarities are so diverse that they cannot mesh; mine cannot be forcibly impressed upon yours without misshaping both yours and mine. It is somewhat analogous to taking a male die and a female die, each made of pliable, delicate material—but not matching—and pressing them together by an external pressure. The uniqueness of each would be destroyed.

Wisdom has its genesis in creative phenomena. Coercion, clearly, is not a creative force; it is, by definition, repressive and destructive. Physical force can no more be used to stimulate the spirit of inquiry or advance wisdom or expand consciousness or increase perception than it can be employed to improve prayer—and for precisely the same reason. Acquiring understanding or wisdom springs from the volitional faculty as does wishing or exercising judgment or contemplating or praying.

Let me repeat, there is not a single demigod on the face of the earth but, unfortunately, millions of human beings behave as if they were God; the you-should-believe-and-behave-as-I-do variety is all about us; indeed, there may be but few persons who have completely shed themselves of this holier-than-thou trait. However, unless these persons go beyond the believing, behaving, talking, writing stage, their image-molding affliction does no more damage than an offensive TV ad: we can tune them out! Their misconception wreaks no more havoc than does other error as long as their passive image-molding is not activated by coercion.

The Larger Situation

The you-and-me situation, as above portrayed, will evoke but little disagreement. But get set for a shock! For unless you are one of a very few—a fraction of one percent—who has thought this problem through to a conclusion, what follows will tend to offend. While I shall do no more than to multiply myself in the role of image-molding-by-force several million times, the mere multiplication—nothing more—will give us a situation that coincides with long established and generally approved American custom. To question “the establishment,” in any instance, is to affront the mores, a risky business. However, we should never fear taking a hard look at any rut we may be in.

So here it is: If it is evident that the forcible casting of you or your children in my image is wrong, let me suggest that government schooling, practiced here for well over a century, is precisely the same thing, except on the grand scale. Instead of your being cast in the mold of one who has the know-how and wisdom of our most powerful political leader, tens of millions are and have been cast in molds shaped from nondescript plebiscites, each mold being patterned after nothing better than the compromises produced by political committees; all molds shaped by collectives, no member of which has any more sense of responsibility toward any particular individual than does the collective itself. Self-responsibility is not the trait of a committee or collective.

Lest you get the idea that I have made some sort of a shift from the you-and-me arrangement to government schooling, let me hasten to add that the two are identical with respect to the compulsions involved:

a. compulsory attendance;

b. government-prescribed curricula; and

c. forcible collection of the wherewithal to defray costs.

I readily concede that a great deal of first-rate education goes on in our government school systems; but I must insist that the first-rate production is in spite of, not because of, the coercive or governmental aspects. Untold millions of teachers and students, in many of their day-today relationships, are on a voluntary, not a coercive basis; to a large extent the students are selecting their teachers. But wherever coercion insinuates itself into schooling—that is, the upbringing process—be it government or private, an imbalance of know-how and wisdom will become evident. Wisdom will decrease, not increase, when the reliance is on duplication by force; wisdom cannot be grafted onto a carbon copy.

While it is easy enough to see how wisdom suffers under schooling systems that feature coercion, it is not as easy to understand why know-how thrives so well. Perhaps part of the explanation has to do with that which can be seen and that which cannot be seen. The multiplication table, for example, can be and is “learned by heart” by those who are compelled to attend classes. Insight, however, the mother of wisdom, is of a different order and cannot be so induced. But—here’s the rub—neither can invention (from which stems our enormous know-how) be so induced.

Subsidized Inventors

How, then, can coercion stimulate the know-how type of inventiveness? No one can be coerced to invent, for inventiveness belongs to the creative order. Nor is compulsory invention attempted. The mystery is not too difficult to unravel: billions of dollars are coercively collected from all of us—limiting our individual pursuits—and used to pay for government’s know-how pursuits such as science, war hardware, moon machinery, and so on. No government regime is capable of inducing wisdom and would not know what to do with it in any event. An expansion of know-how and the power it gives is what’s politically attractive. Further, inventors are as creative if paid by coercively collected funds as if paid by voluntarily contributed funds: He who pays the fiddler calls the tune. Government calls for know-how and gets it. Compulsion—government intervention in the educational market—accounts, in no small measure, for the imbalance of know-how and wisdom.

Some, at this point, will counter with the argument that we have many private institutions and that the students from these are no more distinguished for wisdom than those graduated from government institutions. The point is conceded. But so-called private institutions in a statist society are not, in fact, strictly free-market in character. Not only must they liken themselves markedly to “big brother” and devote much time teaching about the economics and philosophy of statist institutions, but they are licensed and regulated and increasingly financed by their statist “competition.” So-called private institutions differ from government institutions in that they are not financed exclusively by tax funds, and the government influence on them is exerted by privately as distinguished from governmentally appointed citizens. In most important respects the “private” and government institutions are strikingly alike today—a drab conformity. In a society where education is preponderantly statist and where so much of the nation’s resources are converted to know-how pursuits, the situation could not be otherwise.

The Wrong Turn

Finally, it would seem appropriate to inquire how we in the U.S.A. got off on the wrong foot; how did we, in the first place, ever acquire an educational system that turns out graduates who acknowledge its many faults and who instead of looking for something out of kilter merely insist on remedy by expansion?

History reveals the original “reasoning” to have been somewhat as follows: America is to be a haven for free men. To accomplish this, we must have a people’s, not a tyrant’s government. However, such a democratic plan will never work unless the people are educated. But free citizens, left to their own resources, will not accomplish their intellectual upbringing. Therefore, “we” must educate “them:” compulsory attendance in school, government dictated curricula, forcible collection to defray the costs. In short, education for the sake of others.

Of course, the early proponents of government education never put the case in these concise terms. Had they done so, they would have discovered, at the outset, how illogical they were. Imagine: We will insure freedom to “the people” by denying freedom to them in education, for if their education is entrusted to freedom they will remain uneducated and, thus, will not be able to enjoy the blessings of freedom! Illogical? How can we ever expect a people brought up on coercion to be free of demigod mentalities? Does a coercive educational system have the intellectual soil and climate where freedom and wisdom may flourish? The answers lie all about us.

Some of our forefathers did behave—indeed, even as you and I—like demigods, but “for the good of all,” mind you! And in the name of doing good—occasionally erring as do we all—they hooked up coercion to the spirit of inquiry and got for themselves and their posterity a grotesque imbalance of know-how and wisdom. Assuredly, any light that coercion produces is not in the form of wisdom.

Once on this coercive trek toward “nuclear giants and ethical infants”—toward know-how in everything and understanding in nothing—how do we back out of it? The steps are simple enough to designate, if not to take; but reaching our goal may take a bit of time. How long? Nothing less than the hours or days or years you and I and others need to recover from our demigod pose—nothing less than the time it takes to reject compulsion and to accept liberty in education. How, any rational person must ask, can a people be free or wise unless they are brought up in, steeped in, believe in, and understand that growth in wisdom presupposes freedom of the individual to pursue what is wise? As the present imbalance between know-how and wisdom has its genesis not with government but with individuals who make government what it is, so a balancing of these two types of knowledge rests with individuals—with those who can see as imperative the practice of freedom in education.

[1] General of the Army, Omar Bradley. Address, Armistice Day, 1949.

[2] Professor Harlow Shapley, The View from a Distant Star (New York, NY: Basic Books, Inc., 1963), p. 92.

[3] Mattie Storms Miller, Infinite Wisdom, p. 134.

[4] Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny (New York, NY: Longmans, Green & Co., 1947), p. 139.

[5] C. E. M. Joad, Return to Philosophy (London: Faber and Faber, 1936), p. 177.

[6] I concede that this alleged imbalance between know-how and know-why rests solely on value judgments and, thus, this analysis can have meaning only to those who, in a general way, share my values. What follows cannot rise above nonsense to those who attach importance only to more and more technological know-how—scientism—and little, if any, importance to understanding and wisdom.

[7] To appreciate the extent of the U.S.A.’s religious heritage and its impact on our Founding Fathers, see The Christian History of the Constitution of the United States, compiled by Verna M. Hall, edited by Joseph Montgomery (San Francisco, CA: The American Constitution Press, 1961).

[8] This behavior is, of course, egotism in its most destructive form. Instead of seeking self-fulfillment in the development of the individual’s moral nature, sense of justice, creativity, such behavior expresses itself in the imposition of the individual’s will on others. Only in self-realization can there be growth among the human species: inflicting self on others—the demigod behavior—can result only in stultification.

[9] See Biochemical Individuality by Roger Williams (New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1956), pp. 2–3.

[10] I use “most powerful political leader” because, as will be demonstrated, our educational system is, in most essential respects, geared to a political organism.

[11] If the student is a child, the selection is made by the parent; for the child, until reaching the point of self-responsibility, is but an extension of the parent’s responsibility. I expanded on this idea in Chapter 15.

[12] That wisdom of the ancients—the Biblical writers—which remains as the core of our idealism to this day was, so it appears, come upon in this free-seeking, self-responsible manner. There was nothing that qualified as an educational “system.” The political establishment in those centuries was anything but an “aid” to education. The wisdom seems to have come from avid seekers after truth, working on their own initiative, more self-than other-directed.

Chapter 17

Education for One’s Own Sake

This chapter is intended to suggest free market education as the appropriate alternative to government education.

In previous chapters I have tried to demonstrate that government is organized police force and that its function is to keep the peace; that education is a peaceful, creative, productive pursuit of the type disastrously affected by government intervention. Now, were government to step aside in education as it has stepped aside in religion—that is, if compulsory attendance, state dictated curricula, and forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the school bill were omitted—education would be left to the free market.

Were this break with tradition to take place, what would happen?

Strange as it may first appear, no one can know! Some will say that this admission is a retreat from my argument that education would be improved if left to the free, competitive market. On the contrary, it is in support of the free market as the sole, effective means of improving education.

If you are compelled to do as someone else dictates, if unnatural obstacles are placed in your way, if you are relieved of responsibilities, I can at least predict that you will not function to your fullest in a creative sense. But no one can even roughly predict what wondrous things you will create if released from restraints and dictation, that is, if freed from obstacles. Indeed, you cannot make such predictions about yourself. What new idea will you have tomorrow? What invention? What will you do if a new necessity, an unexpected responsibility, presents itself? We know that creativity will be increased, nothing more.

Confining the discussion to education, assume that you are no longer compelled to send Johnnie to school; no government committee will prescribe what Johnnie must study; no government tax collector will take a penny of your or anyone else’s income for schooling. This, it must be emphasized, is the free market assumption.

Is Johnnie in any less need of learning than before? Are other persons—teachers, for instance—any less wise or less available for counsel and employment? Is there less money for educational purposes? If no longer compelled to pay the money in taxes, would you spend it on parties or cigarettes or alcohol or vacations rather than voluntarily spending it for Johnnie’s education? If so, you value Johnnie’s education less than you value indulging yourself. In any event you make a choice—a choice that you obviously think to be the better alternative; scarcely anyone would claim that he had decided to choose what he values least when he could choose what he values most.

Shall we say someone else thinks your judgment is bad if you decide in favor of vacations, for instance, as against Johnnie’s education? Do you wish the person who thinks your choice is wrong forcibly to impose his notion of right on you? If so, just where are you going to draw the line as to what choices others are to make for you? To authorize others to make your choices is to put yourself in the role of an automaton. You can’t believe that your choice is best and accept, at the same time, someone else’s verdict that it is the worst. This is utter nonsense. To apply police force to you is to contradict your judgments. If applied to others, it can only contradict their judgments. Who is the appropriate ruler of your educational program? You? Or others? Or a political committee which cannot be better than the lowest common denominator of others?[1] The free market way relies not on one judgment for the millions but on millions of individual judgments.

Religious Freedom

Why should not education be just as self-determined as religion? Is education more important than religion? Americans condemn Russians, for instance, more for being ungodly than for knowing how to make little else than vodka and caviar that can compete in international trade. But do we not emulate the communists by favoring the employment of force in education? Applying police force to education is man playing at god, that is, trying to cast others in his own fallible image.

In the United States, we have rejected the use of the police force for the purpose of determining one’s religion. Are high moral standards and improving attitudes toward one’s life and the life of others—prime objects of religion—of less value than knowing how to read or to write or to add two and two? Indeed, are not both education and religion intimately personal matters, one as much as the other? Is the education of another any more of my or your business than the religion of another?

In many countries—certainly in the U.S.A.—the idea of (1) being compelled by government to attend churches, or (2) having the government dictate clergymen’s subject matter, or (3) having the expenses of religious institutions forcibly collected by the tax man, would be an affront to the citizens’ intelligence. Why do people believe in applying police force to education and letting religion rest on self-determination? Logically, there appears to be no basis for the distinction. Tradition, custom—living with a mistake so long that reason is rarely brought to bear—may be the explanation.

Being a disbeliever in the management by the police force of any creative activity, I have on countless occasions asked individuals in various occupational levels if they would let their children go uneducated were all governmental compulsions removed. The answers given me have always been in the same vein. If you will try this yourself, you will be impressed with how alike the answers are: “Do you think I am a fool? I would no more let my children go without an education than I would let them go without shoes and stockings. BUT some forms of compulsion are necessary, for there are many persons who do not have the same concern for their children as I have.”

And there you have it! Police force is never needed to manage my education, only necessary for the other fellow! The other fellow’s weakness—the possibility of his having no interest in himself or in his offspring—is far more imaginary than real. It is, for the most part, a fiction of the compulsory, collectivistic myth. Should you doubt this, try to find that rare exception, “the other fellow.” If every parent in this country were to consider authoritarianism in education as applying only to himself and could divorce from his thinking the “incompetency of others,” there would be no police force applied to American education. Let any reader of this thesis, regardless of wealth status, honestly try this exercise and arrive at any other conclusion!

A Parental Responsibility

A child, from the time of birth until adulthood, is but the extension of the parent’s responsibility. The child can no more be “turned out to pasture” for his education than for his morals or his manners or his sustenance. The primary parental responsibility for the child’s education cannot properly be shifted to anyone else; responsible parenthood requires that some things remain for one’s own attentions, no matter how enticingly and powerfully specialization and division of labor may beckon one. And. the education of one’s children is a cardinal case in point.

This does not mean parents should not have help—a lot of specialized assistance—with their educational responsibility. It does mean that the parent cannot be relieved of the educational responsibility without injury to himself—that is, without injury to his own person and thus to the child who is but the extension of his personal responsibility.

According to the premise on which all of my own positions are based, man’s highest purpose in life is the unfolding of his own personality, the realization, as nearly as possible, of his creative potential, that is, his emergence, his hatching, his becoming. Such achievement presupposes that the educational process will go on through all of adulthood, as well as during childhood. Indeed, school for the child, if it is to have meaning, is but the preparation for a dynamic, continuing process of education. The test of whether or not any primary and secondary educational system is meeting the requirements of true education is: Does it set the stage for adult learning?

Police Force Interjected

How does the application of police force to education bear on this question? It tends to relieve parents of educational responsibilities, including the study that might have involved themselves. Compulsion—police force as boss-says, in effect, to the parent: “Forget about the education of your child. We, acting as government, will compel the child to go to school regardless of how you think on the matter. Do not fret unduly about what the child will study. We, the agents of compulsion, have that all arranged. And don’t worry about the financing of education. We, the personnel of authority, will take the fruits of the labor of parents and childless alike to pay the expenses. You, the parent, are to be relieved of any choice as to these matters; just leave it to the police force.”

Second, these police force devices falsely earmark the educational period. They say, ever so compellingly, that the period of education is the period to which the compulsion applies. The ceremonies of “graduation”—diplomas and licenses—if not derivatives of this system, are consistent with it. Government education is resulting in young folks coming out of school thinking of themselves as educated and concluding that the beginning of earning is the end of learning. If any devotee of government education will concede that learning ought to continue throughout all of life, he should, to be consistent, insist on compulsion for adults as well as for children—for the octogenarian as well as for the teenager. The system that is supposed to give all an equal start in life tends to put an end to learning just at the time when the spirit of inquiry should begin its most meaningful growth.[2]

A Faith in Freedom

It was stated above that no one could know what would happen were there to be no more police-force-as-boss in education. That assertion is correct concerning specifics and details, but there are generalizations which can be confidently predicted. For instance, one knows that creative energies would be released; that latent potential energies would turn to flowing, moving, power-giving, kinetic energies and activities. Creative thought on education would manifest itself in millions of individuals. Such genius as we potentially and compositely possess would assert itself and take the place of deadening restraints. Any person who understands the free market knows, without any qualification whatsoever, that there would be more education and better education. And a person with a faith in free men is confident that the cost per unit of learning accomplished would be far less. For one thing, there wouldn’t be any police boss to pay for. Nor would there be the financial irresponsibility that characterizes those who spend other people’s money. The free market is truly free.[3]

Not only is this faith in uninhibited, creative human energy rationally justified, but also there is evidence aplenty to confirm it. In other words, this faith is supported both theoretically and pragmatically. Except in the minds of those who are temperamentally slaves—those who seek a shepherd and a sheep dog, those who are ideologically attuned to authoritarianism—there does not exist a single creative activity now being conducted by man in voluntary action that could be improved by subjecting it to the police-force-as-boss. But put any one of these activities, now voluntarily conducted, under government control, leave it there for a short period, and general opinion would soon hold that the activity could not be conducted voluntarily.

A couple of decades from now, after the electric power industry has been nationalized for a few years—a likely event if present trends continue—there will be only a few people in America who will favor a return to private ownership and operation. The vast majority will not understand how that activity could exist without police-force-as-boss and still serve the people. For confirmation of this point, reflect again on the many people today who believe that the relatively simple matter of mail delivery could not be left to the free market without resulting in chaos.

It is a separation from reality, a blindness to the enormous evidence in support of freedom—like being unaware of our autonomic nervous system and its importance—that accounts for much of our loss of faith in the productivity of an educational system relieved of restraints and compulsions. The restraints, be it remembered, are in the form of taxes—the taking away of the wherewithal to finance one’s own educational plan. The compulsions are in the form of forced attendance and dictated curricula.

Several aids to the restoration of a faith in free market education are:

1. Observe activities not yet socialized—that is, not conducted by police-force-as-boss—and how satisfied we are with free market operation. And also note that people fare better in countries that are more free than in countries that are less free—without exception!

2. What is there which we know how to do, and for which there is an effective demand, which remains undone in America? Not a thing except that which police force restricts. There are many thousands of individuals expert in educational techniques.

Effective demand? Can anyone argue plausibly that there can be education of those who do not want it? The answer is the same as to the question, “What can anyone force another to learn?” You can push a pupil into a classroom, but you can’t make him think. Those who want education—and they can never get it if they do not want it—will have education. Authoritarianism is antagonistic to the extremely sensitive spirit of inquiry, the will to learn. Remove all police-force-as-boss, and we remove education’s chief obstacle.

3. While one cannot know of the brilliant steps that would be taken by millions of education-conscious parents were they and not the government to have the educational responsibility, one can imagine the great variety of cooperative and private enterprises that would emerge. There would be thousands of private schools, large and small, not necessarily unlike some of the ones we now have. There would be tutoring arrangements of a variety and ingenuity impossible to foresee. No doubt there would be both profit-making and charitably financed institutions of chain store dimensions, dispensing reading, writing, and arithmetic at bargain prices. There would be competition, which is cooperation’s most useful tool.[4] There would be alertness of parents as to what the market would have to offer. There would be a keen, active, parental responsibility for their children’s and their own growth. Socialism would be explained but seldom advocated in the classroom. The free market, by its nature, would rule out such waste and extravagance. Competition for the educational dollar would attend to that.

4. Let your imagination take you back to 1900. Suppose someone had been able to conjure up a picture of a 1964 automobile with all of its wonderful performances. And suppose you had been asked how it could have been made. You could not even have grasped such a miracle, let alone have described how to make it. Yet, it has been produced, and without police-force-as-boss. Indeed, what would the 1964 car be like if the government had compelled attendance at research laboratories, dictated the subjects to be explored and the wonders to be invented, and forcibly collected the funds for the undertaking?[5]

Bear in mind that millions of unobstructed man-hours of ever-improving skills and thought, in a constant and complex free exchange process and with a strict attention to millions of individual judgments, have made the 1964 car so useful to so many people. And so it would be with free market education. We cannot foretell what would happen if free men were responsible for this activity; that is, if as much creative, uninhibited thought—in response to consumer wants—were put into education as has been put into motor cars.

As it is, a vast majority of the people have given little more than cursory thought as to how to educate without employing police-force-as-boss. No wonder! We have the tendency not to think about problems not our own, about activities pre-empted by government. Remove the obstacles of coercion and the potential energy of man will approach realization. Police-force-as-boss as an effective means to the educational end is but a superstition. It has no foundation in fact.

5. The children of the poor? They obtained food and clothing prior to our practice of government alms—more than ever available before. But education isn’t as important as shoes and stockings? Education is only as important as life itself. Johnnie couldn’t get a job as truck driver unless able to read street signs or bills of lading. Furthermore, remove the taxes we are now paying for present governmental interventions—including education—and poor parents will not be as poor. And literally millions of Americans would like nothing better than voluntarily to finance the education of children of those who might be in unfortunate circumstances.

Some, of course, will counter with the notion that receiving such charity is degrading, an unforgivable socialistic cliché.[6] No one argues that voluntary giving is degrading; all consider giving as a brotherly act. Does not giving presuppose a recipient? Can giving be brotherly and receiving degrading? True, perhaps charity isn’t as agreeable to a recipient as self-financing, but is it not more agreeable than police grants-in-aid?

If government were out of education as its boss—100 percent—and if we had only free market education, no child in America would be denied an education any more than any child is presently denied religious instruction or shoes and stockings.

The Tendency Toward Anarchy

While the above case for free market education is good enough for me, I confess to a practical dilemma. Regardless of the attempts throughout history to limit police force to its role of keeping the peace—a societal guard, so to speak—it has always gotten out of hand. Sooner or later, in every instance, the role has been shifted from guard to boss of the citizenry, that is, from people service to people control; protector turned predator, one might say! So sad is the record of limitation that some persons throw up their hands in despair, incorrectly concluding that if limitation has never been maintained, it, therefore, is forever impossible. They begin to disbelieve even in government as peace keeper, insisting on no government at all; they become what might be called philosophical anarchists.

The reason for unsuccessful limitation is that too few individuals have ever understood the price that must be paid for limitation. The price is far more than writing a Constitution and a Bill of Rights with their proscriptions against governmental excesses, and designing a government of checks and balances. The price is the resurrection of what has become a bromide into a living, dynamic performance: eternal vigilance.

This performance is in the form of an achievement in understanding (1) the nature of government, (2) its uniqueness as police force, and (3) the limited competence of, as well as the absolute necessity for, police force and understanding to be learned, mastered, and remembered by at least enough persons to form an effective leadership in each new generation. This performance is a personal, day-in and day-out requirement, meaning that it cannot be delegated to others, much less to our forefathers; it can never be relegated to the past tense; it is a continuing imperative of each new moment, without end.

The dilemma is this: The understanding of police-force-as-guard will, obviously, never be advanced but only retarded when the police-force-as-boss is put in the educational driver’s seat. Thus, unless a breakthrough is achieved by an individual here and there, capable of independent analysis and unafraid of parting company with the mores, the most important aspect of education for responsible citizenship will go unattended.

The myth of government education, in our country today, is an article of general faith. To question the myth is to tamper with the faith, a business that few will read about or listen to or calmly tolerate. In short, for those who would make the case for educational freedom as they would for freedom in religion, let them be warned that this is a first-rate obstacle course. But heart can be taken in the fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. And becoming is life’s prime purpose; becoming is, in fact, enlightenment—self-education, its own reward.

[1] Refer to Chapter 8.

[2] “The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and, depending upon physical factors, education, environment, and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe . . . [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline. . . . There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline.” See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York, NY: The Macmillan Company, 1939), p. 310.

[3] Refer to Chapter 13.

[4] Without competition among bakers, for instance, I have no basis for deciding on the baker with whom I will exchange, that is, cooperate.

[5] I suspect it would be about as remote from consumer requirements as the vehicle now being built to put men on the moon.

[6] Scholarships—how do they differ?—are sought and granted on an enormous scale by the very persons who repeat this cliché.

Chapter 18

In Pursuit of Excellence

The ideal of freedom is to let anyone do anything he pleases, as long as his behavior is peaceful, with government empowered to keep the peace—and nothing more. An ideal objective, true, but one that must be pursued if we would halt the continuing descent of our society from bad to worse. Nothing short of this will suffice. And unless we fully understand the ideal—and what makes for its attainment—we’ll tend to settle for powerless, futile little pushes and shoves that yield no more than a false sense of something done.

To grasp the difficulty of the problem as I see it, refer to what the statisticians call a Normal Curve—fat at the middle and thin at either end. Now, represent the adult population of the U.S.A. by vertical bands on this curve. Let the thin band at the extreme left (A) symbolize the few articulate, effective protagonists of authoritarianism in its numerous forms. Let the thin band at the extreme right (C) symbolize the few articulate protagonists of individual liberty, the free market economy and its related legal, ethical, and spiritual institutions. Between these two opposed types of intellectuals are the many millions (B), more or less indifferent to this particular problem, as uninterested in understanding the nature of society and its economic and political institutions as are most people in understanding the composition of a symphony. These millions, at best, are only listeners or followers of one intellectual camp or the other. Dr. Ludwig von Mises poses the problem precisely as I see it:

The masses, the hosts of common men [B], do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind [A or C]. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines [A], nothing can prevent disaster.[1]

But, first, who are “the hosts of common men?” Rarely does an individual think of himself as included—only others belong to the masses! There is a great deal of such inaccurate self-appraisal. As related to the problem here in question, any person—be he wealthy or poor, a Ph.D. or unschooled, a political big-wig or voter, a captain of industry or an unskilled worker—qualifies as a member of the masses if he does “not conceive ideas, sound or unsound.” Conversely, wealth or educational or occupational status is not a controlling factor in determining “the intellectual leaders of mankind.” These leaders are the ones who conceive ideas, sound or unsound, and they come from all stations in life. These facts are important to what follows.

Today, the masses (B) are listening to and following the intellectual leaders at the left (A). The reason is that the intellectuals at the right (C) have not done and are not now doing their homework; indeed, most of them have little inkling of either the need for or the nature of such homework.

The Spiritual Quality

Many of us who think, write, and speak for freedom—myself included—have thought that our mission could best be served by teaching free market economics along with consistent governmental theory; that is, the disciplines which have to do with how man acts in response to given situations in society. But this, we are discovering, is not the whole story. For example, a man lacking in high moral and spiritual standards can have the libertarian philosophy “down pat” in the realm of political economy; he can grade 100 percent in any test but may, nevertheless, throw his influence behind collectivism! In such an instance we have nothing whatsoever to show for our educational pains—nothing but little pushes and shoves that yield no more than a false sense of something done.

I know of a top labor official who, like some others, has learned and can explain the free enterprise philosophy as skillfully as anyone can. But this man, weak in moral disciplines, disregards his knowledge as he grasps for personal power. The rest of us would be as well off were he an economic illiterate.

The above observation is not to deprecate teachings in the social sciences; far from it! These teachings are a requisite to understanding. Yet, to pin our hopes for a good society on these teachings alone is but to delude ourselves. What is the moral and spiritual quality of the man who is learning? This, we are discovering, is the real question; indeed, it is the primary question we must answer, and answer satisfactorily.

I feel that the foregoing is a necessary preface to further probing in an area seldom explored by individuals devoted to economic education. Education in economics and government is important, but this alone will not solve our problem. There is a further need, yes, a necessity, for what Jefferson called “a natural aristocracy among men, founded on virtue and talents.” Without this—so will run my argument—economic expertness or sound organizational theories of society will avail us nothing. This is a hard confession for one who has long thought that our country’s disastrous trend could be reversed by little more than a return to economic sanity.

Hard to Focus on the Problem

The need for a natural aristocracy is not generally recognized. Why? It may be that most of us are unaware of the relatively undeveloped state in which we as humans now exist. Our unawareness, such as it is, may stem from a failure to put ourselves in proper long-range perspective. In no small measure, this would seem to account for a great deal of unwarranted self-esteem, for thinking of ourselves as the ultimate in perfection, for our egocentricity. Our natural tendency is to regard the universe as some thing which revolves around each little “me.”

No person in such a state of self-satisfaction is in any shape to recognize his incompleteness, let alone to improve, to emerge, to continue the hatching process, to soar into what Jefferson meant by a natural aristocracy. A person who regards himself as a complete specimen of humanity can hardly acquire more virtue and talents. If a natural aristocracy is a requirement, then it follows that most of us need a keener appreciation of our past and present status relative to what we might become.

A slight beginning toward an improved perspective might be gained by comparing the time span of what we call humanity with the time span of that infinitesimal speck in the universe we call earth.[2] For instance, let a 10,000-foot jet runway represent the time span of this planet—perhaps 2,500,000,000 years. So far as the records reveal, Cro-Magnon man put in his appearance 40,000 years ago, less than the last two inches of the 10,000-foot runway! Man—from Cro-Magnon to us—is no more than a Johnny-come-lately!

In what condition did these relatively recent ancestors of ours find themselves? Of knowledge, as we use the term, it is doubtful if they had any. Science? Philosophy? Art? Religion? We wonder if they knew where they were or who they were. How could they have known the past without any history or tradition? Could they have had any capital, that is, any material or spiritual wealth? Or any inheritance, that is, from the toil of past generations? They must have been without tools, without precedents, without guiding maxims, without speech as we know it, with little if any light of human experience. Their ignorance, as we understand the term, must have been nearly absolute.[3]

The above would seem to be a fair picture of where we were only a few moments ago in long-range time. But where are we now in relation to our destiny? Using human destiny as a yardstick, we have barely moved. According to the scientists, most species require a million years to develop. Should this rule of nature apply to humans, then we have 95 percent of the way to go in civilizing ourselves—an occasion for humility as well as hope.

Numerous Oversouls

Of course, it is absurd to believe that human beings will upgrade more evenly in the coming eons than in the past 40,000 years. Every species, including the human species, has its throwbacks and its great masses of mediocrity. But, encouragingly, the record is punctuated with numerous oversouls, “the spirit which inspires and motivates all living things.” While many among us show little if any advancement over the original specimens, there have been and are a few who, in some respects, serve as lodestars, as guiding ideals, as models of excellence, as exemplars of the human potential, and thus qualify for what is meant by a natural aristocracy. Further, if the human species makes the grade, instead of falling by the wayside, the unevenness we have noted—the mass of mediocrities and the few oversouls—probably will continue throughout the millennia of man’s hoped-for emergence in consciousness, awareness, perception, reason; in man’s power to choose and to accomplish what he wills.

The careful observer can hardly help noting certain “breakthroughs” which demonstrate the potential in mankind. Reflect on Jesus of Nazareth. Bear in mind such high specimens of humanness as Hammurabi, Ikhnaton, Ashoka, Guatama Buddha, Lao-tse, Confucius, Moses, Socrates, and, a moment closer to our own time, Beethoven, Milton, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Rembrandt, and so on. Edison, Pasteur, Poincaré, Einstein have, in their ways, soared above most of us and given us light. The performances of these uncommon and remarkable persons are but prophecies of what potentially is within the reach of our species.

Whether or not our species will move on toward its destiny or, more to the immediate point, whether or not we, the living, and our children will be able to play our role in and benefit from a human emergence, would seem to depend on what elements in the population predominate. Will those who are failures in the emerging process rise to political power, forming an inhibiting kakistocracy—a government by the worst men—and thus retard or destroy the process?[4] Or will our course be determined by a natural aristocracy founded on virtue and talents? We, in our times, may well be living in one of the great moments of decision.

One thing seems crystal clear: The worst elements in each one of us will predominate in any moment of time when the aristocratic spirit in each one of us is not “in the pink of condition;” the slightest letdown in its moral, intellectual, and spiritual virility must inevitably witness disaster. This is true in nature: the weeds, pests, fungi, viruses, parasites take over whenever their natural enemies experience a letdown. Virtue and talents, the natural enemies of ignorance, knavery, foolishness, malevolence, must be perpetually flowering to hold these evils in check. This is to suggest that our species will not make the grade in the absence of those emerged spirits which inspire and motivate the human race toward its destiny. Man alone, of all creatures, has been granted the freedom to participate in his own creation.

Conceding the need for a natural aristocracy is one thing, perhaps a first step in right thinking. But more is required than the mere repetition of the virtue and talents of those who have gone before us. If nothing more than carbon copies were required, it then follows that we of our generation would exhibit no improvement over Cro-Magnon man. We would have no language, no knowledge; the ignorance that was his would be adequate. No, the human situation is not meant to be static; it has no stopping place, no “this is it!” Instead, it is a dynamic process, the essential requirement of which is perpetual hatching in virtue and talents, an eternal improvement in consciousness, awareness, perceptivity.

Developing Consciousness

No doubt the scientists are correct in claiming that most species take a million years to develop. Humanness, however, is geared not to the finite but to the Infinite and thus, I believe, what applies to other species does not necessarily apply to man. True, man cannot conceive of infinity, even in the case of time and space. But he can become aware of infinity by the simple acknowledgment that he cannot comprehend finite time or space—a point in time or space beyond which there is no more time or space. By the same token, man cannot conceive of infinite consciousness, consciousness being the singular, distinguishing characteristic of humanness, but he can become aware of it by admitting that he cannot conceive a level of consciousness beyond which there could be no further refinement of consciousness.

The human situation, it seems, by reason of this peculiar quality of consciousness, is linked to eternity; its design includes no point of retirement; it admits of no Shangri-La implications whatsoever; perpetual struggle and the overcoming of endless confrontations is of its essence. How else can man emerge in consciousness except, as he succeeds in overcoming obstacles? Difficulties, problems, hardships do, indeed, have their deep purpose.

This, however, is not to deny that individuals are free to retire, to resign from the climb, to get out of life, to surrender self-responsibility, to think short-range, to “live it up” here and now; they can and do exercise their freedom in this respect, and on the grand scale! And these who acquire so little of that which is distinctly human are assuredly among the many who can and will take over in the absence of a first-rate aristocracy.

It may very well be that a purpose is served by these dropouts from the struggle, among whom are numbered many of the famous, the wealthy, the “educated,” and “leaders” in business, church, and state, along with hosts of the nondescript. It is the threat of their take-over, the danger of their dominance of the human situation, that triggers the aristocratic spirit into existence; their actions bring on reactions; their devolution is the genesis of evolution; these agents of disaster are meant to create an anti-agency of survival. Without them, the emerging process would cease; for man cannot become except as he overcomes. A strong position rests on strong opposition.[5] At work here is the tension of the opposites or the law of polarity. In short, the unfortunate quitters serve as springboards to those who pioneer progress.

Responsibility to Create

If every action has its reaction, as observation affirms, some people will conclude that we then have nothing to fret about; in other words, let nature take its course while we spin our own little webs. What is overlooked in such a conclusion is that the human situation is peculiarly distinguished by consciousness, a quality not found in other life forms. And as consciousness emerges, there comes with it a responsibility to share in the creative process. An expansion of the individual’s consciousness toward a harmony with Infinite Consciousness demands of the individual that he take on, commensurately, other characteristics of his Creator. It is absurd to believe that there can be any growth in that direction without a corresponding emergence of creativity in man.

True, every action has a reaction but, unless there is a conscious effort—unnatural effort or, better yet, above the natural—to exercise the new creativity born of added consciousness, the reaction to the dominance of ignorance, knavery, and foolishness will take only the form of displeasure, hate, vengeance, cynicism, satire, political bickering, snobbery, name-calling. Clearly, there is no emergent power in this type of reaction, none whatsoever. No natural aristocracy can be born of this. Such reactions are at the same low level as the ignorant, knavish, foolish actions. And, with nothing more than this, ignorance, knavery, foolishness will continue to dominate society.

To summarize the foregoing: It is my belief that those qualities of character which have sufficed to bring progress in the past will prove inadequate from here on; indeed, the mere duplication of past virtue and talents will not stand us in good stead right now. We need, at this juncture in man’s emergence, a natural aristocracy of higher quality than has heretofore existed. Looking at the human situation with an emerging perspective permits no other conclusion! The natural aristocracy must be a more distinguished body than ever before, because today’s crisis is that much greater. Extraordinary effort must be put forth as a necessary condition to human emergence, or even for survival!

Our Prime Objective

If the above observations are valid, it follows that the establishment of a natural aristocracy should be our prime objective; the teaching of economics or other disciplines of the social sciences can be meaningful only if individuals of virtue and talents are presupposed. What, then, are the qualifications for membership?

Unless careful, we are likely to think of membership in the natural aristocracy as consisting of a set of persons, for such, indeed, has been the case in various so-called aristocracies, composed, as they have been, of privileged minorities possessed of great wealth or social position. Aristocracy, in common usage, has been correctly interpreted as consisting of persons of a certain lineage or legal standing.

But the natural aristocracy, such as we have in mind, is even more exclusive; its membership is distinguished by manifested virtue and talents. It is not based on law or a given parentage; it must be regarded as more than an order of persons because there is no individual who is absolutely virtuous and talented, nor anyone wholly lacking some virtue and talents.

Now and then there is a person who manifests extraordinary virtue and talents, relative, at any rate, to the rest of us. Observing this, we are led into the error of following a fallible individual rather than emulating the virtue and talents he possesses, these being the bench marks of a natural aristocracy. The error is serious. To become a Confucius or a Goethe is impossible, but the virtue of the one and the talents of the other are to some degree attainable and, perhaps by a few, surpassable.

How, then, is the individual to seek identification with the natural aristocracy among men? Strict instruction, I am certain, would deny to anyone the privilege of saying, “I am now a member of the natural aristocracy.” Glory and fame for the man would not be permissible, only glory and fame for the virtues and talents—the characteristics rather than the characters!

The individual himself, insofar as he might have any association with this type of aristocracy, would be now in and now out, as virtue and talents showed forth through his actions or were obscured by them. Perhaps we could say that no individual would have any identification with the aristocracy whatsoever except during those moments when he might be in an improving state. In this state—such would be the concentration—he would not himself be aware of his own status. Indeed, any feeling of what-a-good-boy-am-I would be a sure sign of exclusion from the aristocracy.

A natural aristocracy, then, does not consist of “aristocrats” as commonly interpreted but, instead, is an aristocratic spirit which might show forth or manifest itself in any serious and determined person. What persons? Hanford Henderson answered the question in this manner:

He may be a day laborer, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a professional man, a writer, a statesman. It is not a matter of birth, or occupation, or education. It is an attitude of mind carried into daily action, that is to say, a religion. It [the aristocratic spirit] is the disinterested, passionate love of excellence . . . everywhere and in everything; the aristocrat, to deserve the name, must love it in himself, in his own alert mind, in his own illuminated spirit, and he must love it in others; must love it in all human relations and occupations and activities; in all things in earth or sea or sky.[6]

Henderson’s statement pretty well stakes out the dimensions of the aristocratic spirit, in essence, the love of excellence which, of course, includes the love of righteousness. And by “disinterested” Henderson meant that this attitude of mind should be for its own sake, without thought of reward in the here or the hereafter.

The love of excellence for its own sake! This is the attitude of mind which, when acquired, witnesses man’s sharing in Creation. He becomes, in a sense, his own man.

Indeed, the man who acquires the aristocratic spirit will, quite naturally, have the same viewpoint of economics as does Henry Hazlitt:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at the immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups [i.e., universality].

The man with the aristocratic spirit will, along with Immanuel Kant, consider a maxim as good only if this same principle of universality can rationally be applied to it;[7] he will no more be guided by the fear of opprobrium on the part of his fallible fellows than he will by the desire for their approbation. He acts, thinks, and lives in long-range terms, for he has linked himself with eternity by his love of and devotion to excellence.

Imagine, if we can, the enormous difference between the thoughts and actions of laborers, artisans, shopkeepers, professional men, writers, statesmen, as we commonly observe them, and the thoughts and actions of these selfsame people were they imbued with the aristocratic spirit!

Suggested Procedures

Let us return now to the Normal Curve, displayed at the beginning of this chapter, and contemplate the task of the few at the right (C). Only through unprecedented excellence on their part can disaster be averted. In our search for an excellence that might attract the millions (B) away from authoritarian leadership (A), I would offer two simple suggestions.

The first concerns humility: Neither we nor anyone else can design or draft or organize a good society. No one person nor any committee can make even a pencil; a good society is more complex than that! A pencil or a good society or whatever is but a benefit or dividend which flows as a consequence of antecedent attention to one’s own emergence toward excellence. This thought, a realization of one’s limitations, eliminates useless endeavors; it steers one toward the aristocratic spirit; it is the way to qualify.

The second is but a detail that may help in making qualification less difficult: Regardless of the benefit we would have bestowed, always strive for a related goal over and beyond the benefit. The method or principle I have in mind is not new; it was known by the ancients: “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added, unto you.” This principle of seeking something higher than the benefit was meant as well for general, day-to-day, earthly application. It is a right principle and, therefore, must work at all levels of endeavor.

For instance, if one desires admiration, do not seek admiration but strive for a behavior that can be admired. If we would be rid of poverty, then offer not handouts but liberty to all. In short, if one’s ideal is no higher than the benefit, the pursuit of that ideal, paradoxically, will have no reward in store. A by-product never has its origin in itself, but always in something superior to itself. Capital is the antecedent to a dividend.

If we would have a good society then look not to it, but to excellence in all things—and above all to virtue and integrity in our every deed and thought. The dividend will be as good a society as we deserve.

The ups and downs in society are guided by the rise and fall of the aristocratic spirit, by the unremitting pursuit of excellence. It is utter folly to look for social felicity when this spirit is in the doldrums, and no maneuver less than the passionate pursuit of excellence will matter one whit. The good society, with its open opportunity for individual development—let me repeat—is a dividend we receive when virtue and talents are flowering, when the love of excellence in all things is riding high—even in economics.

I can try to qualify. So can you. This is the way every trend gets its start. Who knows? We might start a trend!

[1] Human Action (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 1949), p. 860.

[2] For a dramatic demonstration of the earth’s infinitesimal place in the cosmos, see the drawings of Helmut Wimmer in the April 1959 issue of Natural History. See also Cosmic View by Kees Boeke (John Day Company, 1957).

[3] A paraphrasing of a statement by the late Cassius Jackson Keyser, mathematician-philosopher of Columbia University and quoted by A. Korzybski in his Manhood of Humanity, 2nd ed. (Institute of General Semantics, 1950), p. 295.

[4] “Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?” James Russell Lowell.

[5] “Compensation” is the word Emerson used. See Compensation and Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson (Westwood, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1962).

[6] Excerpted from an article by Hanford Henderson entitled “The Aristocratic Spirit” which appeared as a reprint in The North American Review, March 1920.

[7] If one can rationally concede that every person on earth [universality] has the right to his life, his livelihood, his liberty, then, according to Kant, the maxim is good.

Updated List of Works Cited

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest (3 vols. South Holland, IL: Libertarian Press, 1959).

Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation in France (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959).

Leonard E. Read, Government—An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1997)

Ludwig von Mises, Socialism—An Economic and Sociological Analysis (Indianapolis, IN: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1981)

Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (San Francisco, CA: Fox & Wilkes, 1996)

Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington-on-Hudson, NY: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1998)

F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 1994)

F. A. Harper, Why Wages Rise (Menlo Park, CA: Institute for Humane Studies, Inc., 1978)

The Free Market and Its Enemy

Leonard E. Read

1965

To Frances

who, at the age of ninety-one,

continues to count her blessings.

I think that I shall never see

A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is prest

Against the sweet earth’s flowing breast . . .

Poems are made by fools like me,

But only God can make a tree.

JOYCE KILMER

• 1 •

The Drummer I Hear

My premise is that the destiny of man is to emerge or evolve toward an advancing potential and that individual liberty is essential to such progress.

Unless a reader shares my premise, he will not respond to my reasoning; nor will it be possible for him to arrive at my conclusions. He may have his eye set on a star I do not see or, if seeing, care nothing whatsoever about. I side with Thoreau on this, “. . . perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.” If the music another hears be fame, or fortune, or power, or ease and retirement, or longevity, or anything less than individual emergence, I leave the reconciliation to those with an itch for reform; it isn’t, as they say, my cup of tea.

The reflections which follow are not aimed at swerving anyone from whatever life purpose he may have set for himself. That’s his affair, not mine. Instead, these brevities are offered to those whose ideological and spiritual premise approximates my own: that man’s earthly purpose is to expand one’s own consciousness, as nearly as humanly possible, into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness or, in lay terms, to realize, as best one can, those creative potentialities uniquely his own. The lyrics to the music I hear have a clear refrain: the supreme purpose of life is “to hatch,” to emerge, to evolve.

It seems hardly necessary to labor the point that liberty is an essential prerequisite to individual emergence. That ground is already well covered. Nor is it necessary, among serious students of liberty, to explain why economic freedom is a basic requirement. We are acutely aware that freedom of speech, of the press, of assembly, of religion—all of these—rise or fall as the market is freed or restricted. Our wishes cannot affect this truth; it has to be this way.

For anyone who accepts the above assumptions—all categorically expressed but easily demonstrable—it follows that his own evolving life depends on the fate of the free market. The market is not just a materialistic device, as many seem to believe. Spiritual expression is implicit in the free market, and the spiritual development of man is contorted by an interference with the market.

In view of its importance in man’s evolution, the fact that freedom is declining in the market warrants our concern. Market freedom is declining partly because of our own meager understanding and poor explanation of it and, partly, because we incorrectly identify the free market’s enemy.

These shortcomings in understanding and exposition stem (1) from letting a subtle and extremely important phase of the free market rationale escape our attention and (2) from identifying the enemy as government when, in fact, it is a widespread psychosis. My little treatise has no purpose other than to bring these overlooked points into focus.

But clear focusing requires a bit of background on the discoveries and explanations that have led to such development as the free market has had to date. I do not mean to underrate the many who have since refined their discoveries, but three distinguished thinkers stand out above the others:

Adam Smith for his development of the specialization thesis (1776);

Frederic Bastiat for the description of what he termed “an absolute principle”: freedom in transactions (1840); and

Carl Menger for his discovery that the value of a good or service is determined not objectively by cost of production, but subjectively by what others will give in willing exchange (1870).[1]

One might conclude that anyone who understands specialization, freedom in transactions, and value—the underlying ideas which have spawned approximations of the free market—has everything in the way of economic understanding that a layman needs to know. But for the past century—and especially in our own daily news—there has been evidence aplenty that this knowledge, by itself, is inadequate. I shall argue that a key point in our rationale has been much neglected, if not missed entirely.

Concerning the Enemy

As to the enemy, it has never, to my knowledge, been brought clearly into focus but has been suspect for many decades. For instance, Herbert Spencer, writing in 1886, referred to it in The Man Versus The State, and Albert J. Nock wrote in somewhat the same vein, a half century later, in his volume, Our Enemy, The State.

My theme, The Free Market and Its Enemy, while generally consistent with what these writers had in mind, has little, if any, similarity in detail. Spencer’s “Man” and Nock’s “Our” are too generalized for anyone to grasp what it is I wish to explore: the miraculous workings of tiny creativities, the ultimate constituents of the free market, that institution on which depend all liberties, and thus man’s emergence. And their “State” must have its perversions diagnosed if we are clearly to understand how it functions as the inhibitor and enemy of the free market. But I shall leave the enemy for a later chapter.

As to the free market: to reach correct conclusions it is necessary to employ appropriate categories in thinking. Man, as a category, is too complex to reveal how the free market works its miracles; indeed, the term man is as inappropriate for this analysis as are any of those broad, sweeping terms such as society or civilization. We must pick man apart, so to speak, and discover which of his numerous attributes relate to free market phenomena. Our task: to find that human attribute which appears to lie at the root of the matter, pose it as a hypothesis, and then test its validity in light of the evidence.

The human attribute which seems to me to have been overlooked or neglected in developing the rationale of the free market pertains to man’s “creativities”—or the simpler term I prefer, his “think-of-thats.”

Think-of-thats, by the way, is not of my invention; it is a term in common use by all of us whenever we hear of a novel thought or idea or activity. “Why didn’t I think of that!” This is our natural reaction to creativity. And, appropriately, our response is always more of an exclamation than a question.

[1] I have listed Smith, Bastiat, and Menger in the order of their appearance, not necessarily in the order of their importance.

• 2 •

The Miraculous Market[*]

Awakening during the night, I flicked a bedside switch and soon the room was flooded with a Piano Concerto composed by Johannes Brahms. Perhaps the music itself induced a reflective mood: How explain this wonder of wonders for my enjoyment and with a near imperceptible effort on my part? What is at the root of this valued performance which comes to me “from out of the blue”?

Think of it! The finest orchestrations ever known to man, the most beautiful music any individual on earth has heard—all mine, and done for me privately when I want it, and where I want it, and for no more than the flick of a switch.[1] Staggering! Yet I, like most Americans, take it for granted. We absorb the enjoyment and let it go at that; we drink of the cup without gratitude, as if the gift were automatically our due.

Mostly, we only revel in our blessings—if we do not overlook them entirely; rarely do we count them and seldom do we try to account for them. As to the musical miracle—one among millions—not only do we fail to reflect on how it comes about but, worse, we aren’t even aware of having experienced a miracle. The sad fact is that if we do not recognize our countless gifts as blessings, particularly those which an attribute of man has had a part in shaping, such blessings are not long for this world.

What is it we have been glossing over in this instance of the music? For one thing, I—no magician—collapsed time and space. Imagine, an ordinary person being able to collapse time and space! Yet, a musical masterpiece, composed in the last century and some 3,000 miles from my home, was mine at my singular point in time and space! What, pray tell, would Aristotle, Peter, Paul, Caesar, Bacon, Lorenzo, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Menger, Brahms himself, or the late Andrew Dickson White have thought of that! No doubt about it, their answers could be lumped in a word, “Unbelievable!”

What’s going on here? That’s the question. To bring time into a comprehensible dimension, let us reduce the 50,000 years since Cro-Magnon man to one year. We observe that the first crude printing press came into existence a little more than four days ago. Machine-made paper, without which the printing press is insignificant for the mass of people, was a device of yesterday. Only in the last few hours has there been “sheet music.” Thus, the storing or canning of music for the common man followed yesterday’s sunrise. The same can be said for “tune language” or musical notations. Prior to these developments Joe Doakes and Richard Roe had nothing better than memory as a means of storing music.

No one knew how to make piano wire 3 1/2 days ago. Tonal variations in wind instruments were achieved with the lips; valves are brand new. The first audible reproduction of recorded sound was an event that happened early this morning, and what we now call “fidelity” has been achieved during the last few minutes. And reflect on the “wireless” transmissions of recorded sound and its progressive development beginning this day and continuing to the present moment.

I have, in the above, mentioned only suggestive milestones—a few among thousands—that, taken together, have made a magician of me in an area where I know next to nothing: by the mere flick of a switch I collapsed time and space, permitting a private audience with the finest music known to man.

Bear in mind that this magic is but an isolated instance among countless others. For example, I am writing this copy on an electric typewriter. The antecedents of this phenomenon defy one’s imagination, going back, as they do, to the Paleozoic period and the decomposition of vegetable matter, and the formation of coal: works of nature. Then the works of man: mining the coal for fuel and steam, the making of engines and dynamos and transmission lines. Take this mechanical marvel itself: Nature and man working together, converting decayed vegetation of millions of years ago into a writing machine for my use! What fantastic creativity at work! What a remarkable conversion of potential energy into flowing, useful, kinetic energy!

For the most part we make no effort to account for these miracles by which we live or, if we do, we settle for some oversimplified answers which must, perforce, fall far short of accuracy.[2] We conclude, for instance, that Johann Gutenberg invented the printing press, James Watt the steam engine, Robert Fulton the steamboat, Guglielmo Marconi the wireless, Alexander Graham Bell the telephone, Thomas Alva Edison the phonograph, and so on. We have a slipshod tendency to personalize phenomena as did the ancients who ascribed the quality of gods to forces that baffled them and gave names to the gods they contrived. Like them, we look for heroes and name them inventors. But this explains little or nothing. And, no doubt, these individuals thought of themselves as the creators of the artifacts linked with their names. Most of us find little difficulty in taking more credit for originality than the facts warrant.

Who Invented the Jet?

I must not, in this attempt to develop my central point, rob Edison and these other very remarkable men of their glory. But it is of vital importance that we know precisely their real claim to fame.

Consider, by way of analysis, the largest manufacturer of commercial jets. That company employs several thousand engineers. It is safe to say that not a waking hour passes, in any day of any year, without some of these engineers experiencing several little creativities, tiny think-of-thats, discoveries, ideas for the improvement of an already amazing artifact, a veritable magic carpet. True, an engineer, now and then, will have a whole series of think-of-thats, amounting to a breakthrough; many others have such experiences less frequently, and probably not a one of them draws a complete blank. The variation factor may be as great as 1:1000—or even greater.

Search out the engineer who today experiences more creative ideas for improvement of the jet airliner than any of the others. Can it be said that he invented the jet? The notion that such a person invented the jet is just as absurd as crediting any of his predecessors with the achievement. This individual has only added his own think-of-thats to literally trillions of antecedent creativities, and no more can be claimed for any who came before him: Charles Goodyear who, in 1839, added some discoveries that led to the hot vulcanization of rubber; Orville and Wilbur Wright had some relevant creativities. And what about the thousands who had ideas leading to wind tunnels? Or the countless persons who thought how to alloy metals for strength, lightness, and heat resistance? Or the aerodynamicists whose creativities resulted in the swept-wing? And what about those individuals who discovered that treating paper with a mixture of ferricyanide and ammonium ferric citrate would give us blueprint paper?[3] And the teachers who taught the engineers? Or what could have been accomplished had an alphabet not been contrived, or zero conceived?[4] Employing this line of reasoning, the modern jet is but a singular culmination of creativities that can be traced back to the think-of-thats which harnessed fire, and which accounted for the first wheel and a crude stone ax.

The remarkable thing about Edison and his perceptive kind is the profusion of creativities which flows through their fertile minds. But they—every one of them—only add their own think-of-thats to millions of antecedent think-of-thats. What they do, as contrasted with most of us, is to supplement the antecedent buildup with precisely the right creativities which, when added, bring the new total to a patentable, usable, practical, marketable status. Theirs are crowning achievements—this is their genius.

Did Edison, by adding think-of-thats which finished off or completed the phonograph, for instance, make a greater contribution to that artifact than his predecessors? It seems to us that he did. Yet, we aren’t really competent to allocate credit. What are we to say about the ones who first thought of how to harness fire, and the others, without whom Edison’s accomplishment would have been impossible? How few would be the think-of-thats among us today, if antecedent creativities had developed nothing more than the harnessing of fire! We would experience little more in the way of creativities than dumb beasts. But into this barren situation let us imagine that a jinni has tossed us some sheets of tin and a pair of tin snippers, both the tin and the snippers being culminations of millions of creativities. How such an act would stimulate think-of-thats! In short, the greater the number of antecedent creativities at one’s disposal, the easier is his creativity. It is, therefore, quite possible that the greatest credit should go to those who accomplished breakthroughs when the antecedent creativities were fewer than at any given present, and creativity, thus, more difficult.

The above reflections on crowning achievements are meant only to dispel our tendency to oversimplification and to center attention where it belongs: on trillions upon trillions of tiny but complex and interacting creativities, the free flowing of which is, in fact, the free market! Think of our gifts, these artifacts by which we live, not only as the discoveries of identifiable geniuses but as the outcroppings of a flowing, growing, evolving energy that goes back to the beginning of human consciousness. The miraculousness of the free market can be appreciated only when this concept is grasped, only when it is conceived of as flowing energy in depth.

These creativities, flowing through the minds of countless human beings over the ages, are the ultimate constituents of the artifacts by which we live, bearing a striking likeness, in their behavior, to the ultimate constituents in nature: molecules and atoms.[5] Just as atom-composed molecules, by some inexplicable process, miraculously configurate to form a blade of grass or a tree or whatever, so do creativities, as they manifest themselves through the minds of men, strangely configurate to form the goods and services which, before we discover their utility, only amaze and intrigue us.[6]

Strangely configurate! Indeed, how can we account for creativities flowing through millions of persons, very few of whom ever know of each other, combining to form these things we find useful? Unless we realize that we with our own individual contributions only partially account for these phenomena, we shall never fully grasp the miracle of the free market. On earlier occasions I have erroneously written that these creativities merge or configurate into useful artifacts as a response to human demand and necessity. But, clearly, there was no demand—on the surface of life, at any rate—for Brahms’ masterpieces before they existed. Only after they came into being did the demand develop. Who demanded electric power and light before anyone ever heard of such energy? Fire was not demanded prior to the think-of-thats and discoveries that harnessed it; until then, fire was an awesome, fearful force. How, then, are we to explain these flashes of brilliance which the recognized needs of man do not induce? These creativities proceed from a Source exterior to man!

Further, it becomes clear that these creativities pace our demands and define our necessities. The demand develops after these artifacts are formed by the creativities, and if the demand be great enough, the artifacts may well become necessities, a necessity being anything on which we become dependent. To illustrate: A hundred years ago there was no demand for electric power and light. Today the demand is enormous. And what’s more, we have become dependent on this form of energy; were it suddenly eliminated, millions of us would perish; it is, indeed, a necessity.

Our Lives Depend on Trade

Assuming the above observations to be reasonably accurate, the free market takes on a new and even startling significance. To an extent rarely appreciated, creativities and their uninhibited exchanges—the free market—decide our demands and necessities; they “lead us by the nose,” as the saying goes. But, is this so strange, and is it at odds with proper human aspirations? Not if it be conceded that the creativities flowing through the minds of men proceed from the same Creation that is responsible for the Cosmos and Nature. I can see not an iota of evidence to the contrary.

Nature, be it observed, “leads us by the nose.” That is, oceans, lakes, forests, climates, deposits, soils, the sun’s energy have powerful influences on where and how long we live, what our occupations are, what and with whom we exchange. Do not the flora and fauna have much to do with our individual destinies? Creation, as we observe it in Nature, is the fact given; it is the preordained arena of the human situation; it is the framework within which we better or worsen ourselves; choices about the over-all framework are not ours to exercise.

I am affirming that creativities, as we observe them flowing through the minds of men, have the same Source as the creations we observe in Nature. Creative phenomena, once they take place, are as much the fact given as neutrons, protons, atoms, molecules, Old Sol. Man’s creativities, discoveries, think-of-thats also control human destiny, the road we shall travel, where and how long we shall live, what and with whom we shall exchange, and so on.

If these creativities and their free flowing—the free market—do in fact have an overpowering influence in charting human destiny, is the fact to be deplored or rejoiced in? The answer must depend on at least two considerations.

The first has to do with the individual’s major premise. If one’s earthly goal is a freezing of the status quo, or getting out of life as distinguished from getting into a more intense quality of life, or avoiding the pain of change, growth, stretching the faculties, then, for certain, logic dictates that the fact be deplored.

But one can exult in the fact if his earthly goal be an expansion of consciousness, as nearly as possible, into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness (Creation or God). Taking the ever-changing, always-unexplored road which new creativities lay out before us is compatible with evolution and consistent with the realization of one’s own creative potentialities.

The second consideration has to do with the nature of the creativities themselves. Man has the choice of going wrong as well as right—and not all think-of-thats are on the side of the angels. Destructive or contorted ones take us on a road that leads to disaster, and these are to be deplored; only the constructive ones are to be looked upon favorably. I believe it is possible to identify the forces which promote the constructive ones as well as the forces which stimulate the destructive ones. But this must wait until we come to the discussion of the free market’s enemy.

The Spiritual Nature of the Market

In concluding this chapter, I re-emphasize that my only object is to gain a better insight into the miracle of the free market. Unfortunately, many persons who are capable of improved insights regard the free market as crass and materialistic and, thus, unworthy of their thoughtful attention.

On the contrary, I contend that there is no higher cultural pursuit—be it music, art, poetry, drama, or whatever—than acquiring an appreciation of the mysteries of the free market. This phenomenon, I believe, is a reflection of spiritual forces at work. At least this radical contention deserves a hard look.

The artifacts by which we live—from the wheel to an electronic computer—are generally thought of as having only materialistic properties. But what are they, really? This much we know: they are brought into existence by applying human creativities to the resources of Nature. We need only ask ourselves, what are creativities? And what are resources?

Creativities, ideas, think-of-thats, discoveries are as spiritual as the spirit of inquiry. Try, for instance, to find any materialistic substance in a thought. Ideas are spiritual or intellectual energy, as free of materialistic properties as is a dream.

What of the natural resources: coal, water, ore, trees? Of what are these constituted? Like human beings, they are structured of atoms, 30 trillions of which could be placed on the little period at the end of this sentence, without overlapping. And what is an atom? It is energy, as void of substance as a whisper from space, or light, or a radio wave, or a thought.[7]

In the final analysis, everything we conceive or perceive is radiant energy proceeding from Creation. It more than resembles, for it is, in fact, a spiritual force. Radiant energy configurates in ways beyond calculation. There isn’t a quality we attribute to anything—dull, bright, red, blue, solid, liquid, dead, alive, noisy, conscious, intelligent—but what is radiant energy in some of its infinite manifestations.

The musician, artist, poet, dramatist combine energy in the form of creativities with energy in the form of artifacts, and the combination of energies shows forth in new energy configurations such as Brahms’ Piano Concerto in D Minor, Goethe’s Faust, Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper, Shakespeare’s King Lear.

Achieving an understanding of free market phenomena is but gaining an awareness—a radiant energy manifestation itself—as to what makes possible such things as music, poems, paintings, plays, jet planes, or whatever. It is the study of free-flowing spiritual forces and the effect on them of man-made obstructions and contortions. It is learning about man’s part in Creation. It is a cultural process in itself and fundamental to all else that is cultural.

Reflect, again, on what takes place when the beautiful music of a bygone master is yours for the mere flick of a switch. What is the nature of the miracle you so easily perform? It is this: trillions upon trillions of human creativities, extending back to the think-of-thats which harnessed fire, and all of the relevant discoveries since that prehistoric event, are automatically ushered to your service. No writer of magic ever thought to give his jinni such a power as the free market bestows on you and me!

But we must not be led astray by dwelling unduly on the musical miracle. We also should be aware that the very same phenomena are at work when the grocer exchanges a can of beans for thirty cents, or when we drink a cup of coffee, or when we press a button and let the free market wash dishes while we read a book.

It isn’t easy to understand how the free market washes dishes and performs countless other services in view of the fact that man has contended against creativities and their exchanges over the centuries—as if these were his foe. The market has never been, nor is it now, freed from stupidities and man-made hindrances. In the face of such frustrations, how can we explain the countless creative achievements?

Had all the little think-of-thats and their exchanges been completely thwarted, mankind would never have advanced beyond Cro-Magnon status. That the human situation has shown some improvement stems from the fact that stupidities and hindrances have rarely been able wholly to contain and suppress these creative energies; authoritarian arrangements have seldom succeeded in insulating them. These creative energies are everlastingly leaking through the porosity of destructive customs, taboos, edicts, laws. Manifestation is their destiny, and their power to escape constriction resembles lightning as it picks its way along lines of least resistance. Block it here and it goes there. “Thy will be done!”

The power of creative energies to manifest themselves in the face of man-made obstacles accounts for the progress we observe even when the worst elements in society get on top.[8] But these worst people and their numerous inanities, by themselves, are incapable of putting a crimp in evolution. The danger is that millions of people, observing progress and human intervention proceeding simultaneously, are tempted to correlate the two and, thus, regard the foolish actions as the cause of the progress. They may fail to see that the progress is in spite of the obstruction. In such situations the destructive forces become so overpowering that whole civilizations decline and fall. Historically speaking, the setbacks are temporary, but who wants to be an accomplice to evolutionary setbacks?

To avoid such disaster, we must know the nature of the evil forces.

[*] The substance of this chapter under the title, “The Miracles by Which We Live,” was delivered as the Commencement Address, Interlochen Arts Academy, Interlochen, Michigan, on June 11, 1965.

[1] Admittedly, the connoisseur will not ascribe this quality to what he calls “tinned music.”

[2] Considerable criticism is directed at my insistence on the use of the term “miracle.” The critics, while agreeing that there is much which presently transcends human knowledge, will not allow that there is anything in the whole Cosmic Scheme but what can, sooner or later, be understood, scientifically verified, and explained. I shall let them have their way. As for me, I have discovered that the more I know, the more do I become exposed to the unknown and what I believe to be the unknowable. I see elements of the miraculous in everything.

[3] Blueprints important? It took 52 sets of 22,000 separate, original drawings for a recent new model jet!

[4] Zero, conceived during the early Middle Ages, “was the crowning achievement in the development of a number system in which calculation with large numbers was feasible. Without it modern astronomy, physics, and chemistry would be impossible.” Without the conception of zero, the modern jet would be inconceivable. See Columbia Encyclopedia.

[5] I use the term “ultimate” with tongue in cheek. Who am I to say that the atom is the ultimate constituent in nature? Atomic scholars, after telling all they know, ask: “Does each proton and neutron in the nucleus [of the atom] have a dense core with a hazy, cloudlike thinning around it? Can it be that they have structure? Do protons and neutrons contain even more fundamental particles?” See The Atom by George L. Bush and Anthony A. Silvidi (New York: Barnes and Noble, Inc., 1961), p. 139.

[6] It is after we adopt an artifact and begin to think of it as a necessity that we no longer marvel at the wonder of it. Familiarity makes it commonplace; we lapse into a supercilious indifference, and tend to stand in awe of nothing but novelty.

[7] The term “materialistic,” when ascribed to artifacts, derives from a lack of depth perception. It has application to a table, for instance, only when no more can be perceived than a table with “substantial” properties. “Materialistic” loses its meaning, that is, it becomes nonapplicable when a table is perceived as energy in motion. See “Introduction,” The Nature of the Physical World by Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1928).

[8] Lord Macaulay, beginning his The History of England in 1839, while not assigning reasons identical to mine, observed progress and destructive forces going on at the same time: “In every experimental science there is a tendency towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often sufficed, even when counteracted by great public calamities and by bad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward. . . . It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.” See his Chapter III.

• 3 •

The Enemy: A Psychosis

When we flick a switch and flood the room with music, or drink a cup of coffee, or read a book, or press a button to wash the dishes, or ride a jet, we are witnessing not things but performances that have their beginnings as far back as the advent of human consciousness.[1] The appropriate question in each instance is not “What is this?” but, rather, “What’s going on here?”

What’s going on here? That’s the question. Of course, from the very beginning, a few of man’s actions have been in his own interest. Had this not been true the human species would long since have been extinct. But progress has always been stubborn. Over the millennia, man seldom has seen clearly which of his economic actions made for progress and which for regress. It has been hit or miss, as we say.

For instance, there is evidence that robbery was the first labor-saving device, and history is replete with looting and the devastation of neighboring peoples as a means of gaining wealth. Such people simply were not good economists. And billions of individuals, if they had any moral scruples at all, embraced them only formally; they were unable to give economic adaptation to their moral inclinations. Even to this day, men give lip service to the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule as they pray to God for victories in their numerous slaughters, thefts, and injustices.

Now and then societies have emerged from barbarism but, perhaps, more fortuitously than rationally—societal accidents! A civilization appears, its members revel in its glory, and the civilization declines and falls. And the end of these fluctuations is not yet.[2]

Again, we ask, “What goes on here?” We should keep in mind that the slow economic progress prior to the beginning of the nineteenth century was for lack of ability to distinguish between sound and unsound economic actions. As stated above, some actions must have been sound or man would not have survived. But what were those sound actions?

Eventually, light began to dawn—light in the form of discerning observations. Adam Smith observed that when men specialized, as distinguished from each doing everything for himself, productivity greatly increased. Smith, however, did not invent specialization. He merely took note of what had been overlooked; he saw that certain human practices were efficacious and he went on to develop the explanation that made the fact understandable.

Of course, specialization, by itself, is fatal. If one specializes only in clothing and another only in food—without exchange—the former will starve while the latter freezes. Specialization, to assure economic progress, depends upon exchange. But exchange at whose discretion? A political authority’s? It was Bastiat and others, several decades after Smith’s great work, who observed and explained freedom in transactions. Two steps in the rationale of the free market had been made by 1850.

The Determination of Value

There remained, however, a missing link in the rationale: the determination of value. How can economic justice be served if there is no valid basis for deciding the value of a good or service? Is value to be set by the amount of effort exerted? No, replied Carl Menger and others (1870) to this labor theory of value; the value of a good or service is what others will give for it in willing exchange. Again, these men did not invent the marginal utility theory of value; they discovered it by observing man’s actions. Wrote its greatest theoretician, Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk:

For centuries, long before science set up the doctrine of marginal utility, the common man was accustomed to seek things and abandon things . . . he practiced the doctrine . . . before economic theory discovered it.[3]

The rationale of the free market has become known only to those of the most recent generations, and with the rationale has come a considerable practice. The result? A veritable outburst of productivity! We now can make clothing from sand, metal from sea water. We can run factories and light our homes and wash our dishes by releasing the power of the atom. We can deliver the human voice around this earth in one-seventh of a second, human beings from Los Angeles to New York in four hours, a symphonic production into everyone’s home in motion and color at the time of performance. We can put TV sets on the moon. We can make observations two billion light years into space. There isn’t a desirable artifact but what we can produce in profusion.

But note carefully that it is “we” who can do all of these things. “I” cannot do a single one of them. No individual can make a jet, or an automobile, or a dishwasher, or a book, or even a wooden lead pencil. “I,” in the absence of “we,” am hopelessly helpless, not being able to raise the food “I” eat, build the home in which “I” live, make the clothes “I” wear, produce the music “I” enjoy. “I” am abysmally ignorant of what “we” have brought into existence, being only partially knowledgeable in a tiny area of specialization.

While specialization, freedom in transactions, and the correct concept of value have paved the way for an undreamed of affluence, this achievement has brought with it a new and destructive confusion, one that threatens to undo all the good work: the belief that “I” am the creator of the gifts which “we,” over the centuries, in collaboration with Creation, have bestowed. “I,” in ever so many instances, have become a know-it-all! As proof of this, merely observe the numerous members of our society who can gratify every wish in goods and services—many of whom do nothing at all—people, who less than a few generations ago would have been living in poverty, and note how unaware they are of what brought on their affluence. All too often their attitude is, “See what ‘I’ have done!”

A Warning about “We”

May I hasten to add a word of caution. “We” is a noncommunicative and misleading word in this instance, for it suggests collective as distinguished from individualistic action. Nothing could be further from the truth. What “we” can now do is only what is made possible by countless creativities, ideas, discoveries, think-of-thats freely exchanging and interacting over the millennia. Because these ideas do come from or flow through the minds of men, there is a tendency to personify the performance and, thus, the use of “we.” “We,” in this context, is simply the free market, nothing else.

Nonetheless, the achievements of this free market are arrogated to an “I” in dangerous proportions. This is a false and an unwarranted egotism. It is an estimation of self so remote from reality that it must be described as a psychosis. There would be no occasion for concern if only a few persons were to think of themselves as Napoleon; but, when millions of people are the victims of this complex, take heed!

The real enemy of the free market is this very know-it-all-ness![4]

Contrary to what many antisocialists claim, the enemy of the free market is not the state, that is, if “state” be used interchangeably with government. This formal agency of society, when organized to keep the peace, to invoke a common justice under law, and to inhibit and penalize fraud, violence, misrepresentation, and predation is a necessary and soundly principled ally of the free market.[5] When we mistakenly identify an institutional ally as a foe and cast our barbs at it, we act against ourselves, and downgrade our philosophy. By so doing, we become our own enemy.

To settle and exclusively dwell on overextended government as the enemy is to let the real culprit go unnoticed or, to employ a metaphor, it is to concentrate on smoke abatement while the house is burning down. But let’s start from the beginning and see if we can shed some light on how we mistake effect for cause or, more precisely, why we blame distorted government while giving no attention to the psychosis which is responsible for the distortion.

So Much Is Missed

Nothing is more common to mankind than ignorance. Lecomte du Noüy, the noted French scientist, points out that man’s image of his universe rests on reactions determined in him by less than one-trillionth of the vibrations which surround him—that less than one vibration in a trillion leaves any trace in his consciousness.[6] This is a sobering observation and lends credence to the idea that just plain ignorance is our lot. By nature, man is fallible. Never being able to know much, regardless of how much knowledge is acquired, is a built-in condition of the human species. Escaping from ignorance, that is, progressing everlastingly into a state of consciousness, is an eternal process, and there is no end to eternity. To grow in harmony with Infinite Consciousness is a goal toward which man can ever strive but never attain. Any individual, aware of this natural ignorance, will readily realize that the more he knows, the more he will expose himself to the unknown. As he knows more, the more conscious will he be of how little he knows. But by knowing something, however little, man does ascend and improve his situation; in fact, he comes, in an infinitesimal way, to share in Creation. Viewed broadly enough, this appears to be human destiny. In any event, moving from the depths of ignorance to lesser ignorance is a process favorable, not antagonistic, to the unobstructed flow of creativities: the free market.

I repeat, ignorance, of itself, is not the enemy of the free market. Ignorance is universal among men! Were sheer ignorance the culprit, there never would have been any freedom in the market, none whatsoever. The real foe is the ignorance of being ignorant; it is the ignorance of the fact that man in his earthly station is limited at best to a growth in knowledge. Any person not in this state of awareness is, perforce, a know-it-all. Keep the eye peeled for know-it-alls, because they are authoritarian in spirit. The explanation? Any person unaware of a Creation over and beyond his own mind obviously cannot but believe in his own omniscience. This is self-evident. Does it not follow, then, that such an individual has no means of envisioning an improved human situation except as other persons are made to reflect his own imperfect self?

Fortunately, most know-it-alls are not influential because they are not energetic; they are comparative do-nothings. Ever so many on either side of the ideological fence fall into this category; at most, they are only followers. Like the fly on the chariot wheel—believing it was he who was kicking up all the dust—these folks naively believe the affluence in which they find themselves to be of their own doing. Having everything “figured out,” they do no serious reading, writing, thinking, exploration and, thus, are ideologically sterile. Their initiative and energy together are exhausted from seeking opponents to inveigh against, or friendly Georges to worship, vote for, or let do. Personally irritating as they may be, these people no more alter the situation in which humanity finds itself than does the idle, vacuous chit-chat heard at cocktail parties.

The Energetic Ones

When trying to find persons who shape the course of events—for better or worse—look for the energetic ones. Not the physical jumping jacks but, rather, those individuals with active minds and restless, determined spirits. So far as man has any control of his destiny, it is only these energetic persons who account for the swerves in the road we travel; they are always in the vanguard leading toward evolution or devolution; they are humanity’s constructive or destructive agents.

These energetic individuals fall into two broad categories. First, on the constructive side, there are those who succeed in turning their energy inwardly to their own development, emergence, growth. When this happens, the best in each is brought out; and from this number come the historical oversouls and enlightenment. Reflect on Jesus of Nazareth. Other givers of light come to mind: Hammurabi, Ikhnaton, Ashoka, Guatama Buddha, Lao-tse, Confucius, Moses, Socrates and, closer to our own time, Beethoven, Milton, Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Rembrandt, Edison, Pasteur, Henri Poincare—and, unquestionably, there are many presently in our midst.

Second, on the destructive side, are the energetic know-it-alls. Know-it-all-ness allows no room for improvement; thus, these psychotics make no effort to turn their unusual drive inwardly; they produce no light. Ignorant of their ignorance, it is their ignorance which they must inflict on the rest of us if they can find the means to do so. But there is no way for them to realize their ambition without employing compulsion. The know-it-alls, by themselves, do not possess enough compulsive force to inflict their ignorance on the rest of us. What to do? They seek and often obtain positions in society’s agency of organized force: government. In short, they get themselves a constabulary. We obey their edicts, or we take the consequences. In these circumstances, mankind is damned by a Genghis Khan, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and the like. One has no difficulty in finding examples of energetic know-it-alls—small fry and giants—in either the past or present. They are all about us.

Individuals Make Government Grow

Government, per se, is not the enemy of the free market; it is not the root of the authoritarianism that is plaguing us. Rather, it is the psychotics—the little Napoleons—who have taken roost in government. We do not condemn education as an institutional ideal because of an influx of faulty teachers. No one suggests abandoning religion when inferior persons infiltrate the clergy. Nor should we downgrade society’s agency for keeping the peace because unpeaceful know-it-alls have taken over. Government, per se, is not our problem. Instead, we have a widespread, pervasive psychosis on our hands; only rarely is there an individual who is completely free of it.

The discipline that deals with a psychosis is psychiatry. Does this mean that the free market devotee must attain skills as a psychiatrist as well as a political economist? Isn’t it adequate first to master and then to extend and refine the works of Adam Smith, Bastiat, Menger, Mises, and their brilliant kind? Must the devotee of liberty also develop an understanding of the human psyche? Travel the road of Carl Jung?[7] For all I know, this may be among the new requirements in human evolution; there is evidence that it is. But, at the very least, we must be able to identify and have some understanding of the psychosis here in question—in ourselves as well as in others—lest it spell our undoing.

This psychosis is a detachment from reality. It is a self-assessment that has no basis in fact. I refer to the victims as “little Napoleons” because Napoleon was the perfect archetype. For example, his domestic affairs were a mess, and his numerous family drove him to distraction. While he couldn’t run the affairs of his home life, he entertained no doubt about his ability to manage the world. Herbert Spencer described this kind of mentality in this way:

. . . home experiences daily supply proofs that the conduct of human beings baulks calculation. He has given up the thought of managing his wife and lets her manage him. Children on whom he has tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways he thinks mischievous. So, too, his dealing with his servants. . . .Yet, difficult as he finds it to deal with humanity in detail, he is confident of his ability to deal with embodied humanity. Citizens . . . the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which he has but dim notions, he feels sure will act in certain ways he foresees, and fulfill ends he wishes.[8]

Bear in mind that Hitler was only an indifferent paper hanger; he was competent at nothing except leading millions to believe that the world would be better off were he in charge. Stalin, another victim of the same psychosis, tried first theology and then train robbery before he elected to manage mankind.

Signs of the Illness

But if we laymen are to take the first step in psychiatric diagnostics, we will recognize that a person does not have to make the enormous leap from personal failure to delusions of world-wide grandeur to suffer this psychosis. These delusions come in fragments of varying dimensions. Whenever any individual loses account of how little he knows and believes that his guidance might supplant that of the free market to universal advantage, even though the sector in which he would intervene be minor, he has contracted this mental illness. Nor does an ignorance of his limitations or of the phenomena he would molest alter his case. A psychosomatic illness is an illness whether or not its causes are known.

To laugh at persons who think they are Napoleon is, in most instances, to laugh in one’s own face. And to enumerate the specific instances in which the American people, today, play the role of little Napoleons, not only innocently but with a sense of righteousness, is to laugh in almost everyone’s face, so far down the Napoleonic road have we gone. To be specific is to flaunt the mores—all over the place! Hardly a person but who would be offended were the whole tiresome list of interventions examined—from minimum wage laws to paying farmers not to farm, you name it![9]

Consumers May Be Trusted

I asserted in a previous chapter that not all creativities are on the side of the angels, that they can be destructive as well as constructive, and that the determining forces can be identified.

Creativities will tend to be constructive if they be free to flow and manifest themselves, that is, if the market be free. Consumers, when given freedom of choice, will not by their purchases, over the long pull, vote against themselves. They will, sooner or later, abandon destructive creativities (harmful goods and services, things in bad taste, and so on) and embrace the creativities leading to a richer life.[10] Of one other point we can be absolutely certain: In an ideal free market, with government limited to keeping the peace, supply and demand must, of necessity, be in balance; in short, the economy will be sound. No shortages, no surpluses, for each party to every transaction has participated in willing exchange. Each gains. Production, in these circumstances, creates its own purchasing power. The free market and constructive creativities or think-of-thats are economic correlatives.

Now, constrict the market. Let persons who are ignorant of their own ignorance capture positions which put compulsive power at their disposal. Their, not “Thy,” will be done! These people will—and do on an enormous scale—coercively take the fruits of the labor of all citizens for the purpose of reconstructing the economy along lines which they (in their ignorance) think best. An economy founded on common consent—the free market—is abandoned in favor of an economy founded on unilateral consent—theirs!

In a free market, we would put men on the moon only if the project were voluntarily underwritten. In an economy presided over by persons who don’t know how little they know, the project is coercively underwritten. You and I have no choice in the matter.

There is no denying the fact that the creativities, think-of-thats, discoveries going into space hardware are fantastic beyond belief. Having billions of dollars—forcibly extorted—at their disposal, our unwise masters swerve creativities into moon machinery, foreign aid, social security, defunct down-towns, distressed areas, slums, and the like, a switch that is not difficult. Scientists, with the capacity to conceive ideas, are easily attracted to this course of action. These people will as readily sell their ingenuity for a coercively collected dollar as for a voluntarily subscribed dollar. A dollar obtained by violence or the threat thereof has the same purchasing power as a dollar obtained in willing exchange.

Of course, some will ask, is the moon project, as well as other governmental activities that go beyond keeping the peace, really destructive? The dire economic consequences do not even need to be understood to know that the answer is affirmative.[11] First, no good end is possible which is achieved by a bad means, for the end pre-exists in the means. This is a principle which we can accept; we do not have to be able to work out the incidence of all means and ends. I take it to be self-evident that any means is bad that rests on coercion of peaceful persons. And, second, if we grasp the point that these coercive projects stem from ignorance, we ought to suspect that they might be destructive.

What can be the remedy for this dangerous psychosis?[12] Assuredly, it is a compound awareness: the miraculousness of the free market, on the one hand, and what “I” don’t know, on the other. At first glance, this suggests going in opposite directions at the same time, but the second glance reveals this to be an illusion. Any growth in awareness, consciousness, perception of whatever field of inquiry is a step in one direction only: toward Truth!

[1] An enlightening explanation of the performance concept is “You Cannot Pick a Dandelion” by Arthur P. Moor, The Freeman, April, 1964.

[2] These fluctuations appear to be a part of the evolutionary process. Man gains some wisdom and prospers and, as a result, thinks he has “made it.” But there is more wisdom to be gained—always more—if he is to emerge. Unless man reaches the point where he can rationally will his own growth, the historical tumbles serve only to wake him up again. Evolution and devolution follow on each other’s heels with rhythmic regularity, with evolution gaining over the millennia.

[3] See Capital and Interest, Vol. II, by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1959), pp. 203–204.

[4] “. . . our limitation is something that can only be experienced and laid hold of by actually living. And the knowledge of our limitation is not a certain knowledge that can be preserved in a proposition, but rather is a thoroughly uncertain knowledge against which we constantly rebel, which we constantly ignore, and dismiss from our minds.” From Existence and Faith by Rudolph Bultmann (Meridian, N. Y., 1960), p. 63.

[5] I have tried to spell out and explain the principled role of government in Government—An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1954).

[6] See Human Destiny by Lecomte du Noüy (Mentor, 1963).

[7] See The Undiscovered Self by Carl Jung (Mentor, 1959).

[8] See The Man Versus The State by Herbert Spencer (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1940).

[9] Anyone having any question as to how pervasive these interventions are can easily gain an idea by reading Clichés of Socialism or my Anything That’s Peaceful, publications available from the Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

[10] Noting on every hand consumers making choices so many of us think unwise, some people may regard this claim as invalid. Yet, I submit, no one has ever seen an individual such as I have in mind, which is to say, a person free from the pressures and seductions of state intervention. My claim is a conviction founded on a belief in the evolution of man and evolution’s concomitant, freedom. But I must be content with conviction, for there never has been a situation from which proof can be adduced.

[11] For explanations of the economic consequences, see Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., chs. I–V.

[12] Any overassessment of self, for whatever reason, is corrupting and, thus, dangerous—at least to self, if not to others. The axiom, “power corrupts,” doubtless can be explained by that overvaluation of self which the possession of power induces. Even that power to influence others which derives from a relative excellence—with its attendant adulation, flattery, applause—makes difficult a balanced judgment of self: the overesteem, unless consciously downgraded, is irresistible; it is so easily believable! But to possess and to exert coercive power over the creative actions of others makes overassessment of self inevitable. The very acceptance of this form of power cancels any ability to apprehend its evil. Acceptance rules out rejection. Thus, not only is the offender corrupted but, as well, all of those beholden to his inflicted ignorance.

• 4 •

I Don’t Know

Any individual who has become aware of the free market and its miraculous performances must realize that its opposite—socialism—is growing by leaps and bounds. This growth, at the moment, is not so much in formal take-over (nationalization of the modes of production) as in political control and the intellectual acceptance of control; socialism, ideologically, is now American doctrine. This is to say that socialism is not yet as thoroughly embedded in practice as it is in theory—but the acceptance of the theory is the preface to inevitable practice. Performance in the world of practical affairs follows on the heels of prevailing ideas.

In any event, socialistic ideas are becoming so popular that countless “free enterprisers” are either “getting on the band wagon” or “running for cover.” But, whichever way—one as pitiful as the other—they are forsaking their role as spokesmen for freedom.

One of the major reasons for this apostasy is clear enough: all too few understand and can make the case for the free market—without which freedom of speech, of the press, of religion are utterly impossible.[1] In the absence of skilled spokesmen, freedom disappears in the U.S.A. as elsewhere.

Making the case for the free market requires a great deal of dedicated homework and learning, among other things, how not to give the case away. And unless “I” can everlastingly maintain an awareness of how little “I” know, the chances of becoming an effective expositor of the free market are nil. Here are two tricky and rarely suspected booby traps that victimize many an “I”:

1. Attempting to explain how socialism, once installed, can be made to work better than at present.

2. Attempting to explain what would happen to a socialized activity were it de-socialized, leaving the activity to the free market.

I shall try to demonstrate not only that each of these is impossible of realization but that the attempts themselves do the libertarian rationale a distinct disservice.

A FEE Seminar team was invited to Venezuela. We gathered with the participants at a plush hotel sixty miles from Caracas—one of a chain of eleven hostelries built, owned, and operated by the national government. The chain has always been deep in the red. A successful businessman (one of our hosts) had once been asked by the government to head this socialized operation. Thinking that socialism might be made to work, were he in charge, he accepted the challenge. When he discovered that these hotels required 150 per cent occupancy just to break even, he resigned. Had he known that socialism, by its very nature, can never be made to work, he would have been spared that waste of his energies.

Socialism Defined

Socialism may be defined as the state ownership and control of the means of production and exchange and/or the results of production and exchange; but what, really, is it in simple essence? It is a forcible intervention into exchange processes, a power wedge between the willingness of buyers and the willingness of sellers, a coercive interference with what some persons want that other persons are willing to grant. Socialism, in the final analysis, amounts to the frustration of willing exchange by people who are unaware of how little they know.

For example: An American desires to exchange his $20 for an Englishman’s sweater—nothing involved but a willing swap, no one else’s status one whit different after the exchange than before it was made. The know-it-alls, however, with their police force, insist that a social interest is involved, that the exchange cannot be made without a penalty of $5. To the extent that this transaction is socialized—in this case the penalty payment of $5—to that degree is the will of two peaceful parties frustrated.

How can frustration be made to work? How can frustration be manipulated into harmony and increased production? Can any interference with peaceful, willing exchange, regardless of who does the interfering, do other than wreak havoc?

Many antisocialists, unhappy with the outcome of socialized activities, feel that these could be improved were they, rather than other know-it-alls, in charge. So they seek election or appointment to the government boards of such activities, under the impression that this is one way to strike a blow for freedom. This much I concede: They can, when in charge, do more of what they want done with other people’s money than would be the case were other know-it-alls in charge. But this is no libertarian accomplishment; it’s only a substitution of one group’s know-it-all-ness for another’s.

Further, when those of a libertarian bent set out to make socialism work better, whether by managing the activity or by their endorsement of legislation which would modify the socialistic details, they tacitly approve the socialistic premise and thereby abandon their own case for the free market. They forswear all fundamental argument against the socialistic premise because by their actions they acknowledge that it could be improved were they themselves framing or administering it. “Socialism, were I its manager, wouldn’t be so bad.” That, I submit, is an emanation from the mind of a know-it-all in words loud and clear.

What am I saying? That a libertarian cannot consistently accept the Postmaster Generalship? Or membership on the municipal power and light board, or whatever? Unless he claims to know how to make socialism work, that is precisely what I am saying.[2] What more effective opposition is there than a polite “No, thank you!” And when asked, “Conceding that TVA is with us, how can it be made to work better than it now does?” what more truthful answer than “I don’t know; I never will know; no one will ever know.” There is no right way to implement a wrong premise!

The student of liberty, if he is not to get off the track, must hope and work for the restoration of the free market and a government restored to its principled role of keeping the peace.[3] Then let him peacefully keep in character by leaving socialistic activities to those who aren’t yet aware of how little they know. Left to their own resources, the bungling of their schemes may become apparent even to themselves and, most certainly, to libertarians who have not fallen into this trap. Why should libertarians absolve the socialists by becoming a party to their unworkable measures?

So much for the first booby trap. But what about its twin, the attempt to explain what would happen were the market freed of state interventionism, that is, were the activities de-socialized?

What Might Have Been?

Skeptics of the free market are forever asking, “Well, how would the free market attend to mail delivery? Education? Or, whatever?” Satisfactorily answer these questions, they imply, or the free market case loses by default. And just as often, aspiring libertarians will stumble into the booby trap; they’ll conjure up some sort of an answer.

Now these attempts to answer, regardless of how skilled and ingenious the authors, will have no less than three faults, the least of which is know-it-all-ness. Take the case of mail delivery. A person can no more explain how the free market would attend to mail delivery than his great-grandfather could have explained how television could ever emerge from free market forces!

A more serious fault is that the listening skeptic will conclude that the know-it-all answer is the free market answer and, if that’s the best it has to offer, the free market has no valid case. These futile attempts to answer can accomplish no more than to confirm the skeptics in their socialism.

The greatest fault, of course, is that these students of liberty themselves have not yet learned to answer honestly: “I don’t know; I never will know; no one will ever know.” They have not wholly cured themselves of the offending psychosis.

This I-don’t-know answer has the virtue of being intelligent, truthful, properly humble, and novel enough to intrigue any skeptic with a searching mind. Conceded, the answer—by itself—sheds no light. But if the skeptic wishes to learn (it is idle to talk to him if he doesn’t) and if the aspiring libertarians have observed and can report on how miraculously the free market performs when not politically aborted, skepticism concerning the free market will lessen, faith in what man will accomplish when free to try will increase. In short, light will be shed, education will begin.

How would the free market attend to mail delivery were the postal service de-socialized? I don’t know! Nor could anyone have known 100 years ago how the free market would develop the means to deliver the human voice from city to city. But take note of these facts: we have maintained mail delivery as a socialized operation; its service is getting worse, not better; its costs and prices are increasing, not decreasing; since 1932 it has accumulated an acknowledged deficit of $10 billion, and the deficits increase annually.[4]

Voice delivery, on the other hand, has been improving. Just a century ago the human voice could be delivered at the speed of sound, but only the distance two people could understand each other’s shouting. Today, the human voice is delivered at the speed of light; and as to distance, it’s any place on earth—you name it! The service has improved enormously; and the cost has decreased steadily.

In human voice delivery, free market forces have been more or less operative. No one could have predicted in 1865 what form these forces would take during the next hundred years. Even more remarkable, no one can describe how the miracles were performed after the fact. Once we realize that we cannot explain what has happened, it becomes obvious that we can never explain what will happen.

Nature and Man

The miracles of the market are of a higher and more complex order than the miracles of Nature: What emerges from the free market embraces the miracles of Nature, plus the miracles of human creativity as well. May I repeat, all the artifacts by which we live are but the application of human creativity to the creativities manifest in Nature.

Reflect on the simpler of these phenomena, the order of Nature. Had you lived on earth before there were any trees, for instance, and been asked, “How can Nature ever make a tree?” you would have answered, “I don’t know.” Today, were you asked, “How has Nature made a tree?” you would be forced to reply, “I don’t know.” Yet, you can, with considerable certainty, predict that Nature will continue to produce these lovely miracles, provided conditions favorable to their growth are not aborted. You can derive from experience, not a how-to-do-it knowledge, but a soundly based faith in the dependability of the biological order.

Such confident expectation is as close as any man can come to knowing how the free market would attend to an activity, were it de-socialized. All about him, in unimaginable profusion, are miracles of the free market, so commonplace that they are taken more for granted than noted and appreciated—like the air we breathe. These, properly apprehended, comprise his experience. But such experience does not give him a how-to-do-it knowledge; it serves only as the basis for a warranted and unshakable faith, a faith in what free men can accomplish—provided conditions favorable to free exchange are not aborted.

The poet who wrote, “Only God can make a tree,” was merely acknowledging a common faith. Know-it-alls are never heard trying to refute this; everyone takes it for granted. Yet, if it be asserted that “only God can make a violin”—portions of Nature with human creativity as an added ingredient—the person unaware of how little he knows will have no more hesitancy in subjecting violin production to his masterminding than he has in socializing the airlines, or power and light, or the postal service, or whatever.

Why will people concede that they are unable to mastermind atoms and molecules into the living manifestations of Nature, while at the same time acknowledging no shortcomings at all in themselves when it comes to masterminding something we know far less about: human creativity. I don’t know!

Gaining a Faith in Freedom

The aspiring libertarian, if he has made the first important step in progress, understands that he does not know how to mastermind the life of a single human being. He concedes that there is an order of Creation over and beyond his own mind, that this order works in diverse and wondrous ways through billions of minds and that he should not in any way abort these miracles. This, however, does not make him a know-nothing. Even though, from his experience, he does not know what will happen, he gains a faith that miracles will happen if creative energies be free to flow.

The accomplished student of liberty acquires a faith that men, when free to try, will perform miracles, a faith extrapolated from experience. But when it comes to predicting the shape of miracles that will show forth from creativity, he takes his place with men, not with clairvoyant demigods. As an aware human being, he must answer, “I don’t know!”

[1] See “Freedom Follows the Free Market” by Dean Russell, The Freeman, January, 1963.

[2] Even accepting such assignments with a clear mandate to plan their undoing would, I believe, be futile. See “Unscrambling Socialism,” Essays on Liberty, Volume XII (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: Foundation for Economic Education, 1965), p. 433.

[3] Inhibiting and penalizing destructive actions such as fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation—invoking a common justice, keeping the peace—call for a compulsive agency of society: government. The management of destructive activities cannot properly be left to the free market, the nature of which is voluntary and the scope of which is the productive and creative. See my Government—An Ideal Concept, op. cit.

[4] See “$48,000” by Paul Poirot, The Freeman, February, 1965.

• 5 •

Incomprehensible Order

The purpose of this concluding chapter is to throw some light on an important but obscure argument concerning the orderly nature of the free market economy.

Most of us claim an affinity for freedom; but if given a choice between a freedom suspected of chaos and a regimentation assured of order, we would choose the regimentation. We instinctively fear and detest the opposite of order which is chaos, and for a good and compelling reason: man cannot exist unless nearly everything in his life situation is orderly, that is, unless a vast majority of expectations can be taken for granted and counted on to materialize. Man’s existence requires a fairly dependable level of order.

For example, man could not exist if he could not count on oxygen in the next volume of air he inhales or if he could not confidently expect Old Sol to rise on the morrow. Were there any doubt about the continual rhythm of these events, the doubt alone would do him in. Or let only minor mishaps intrude themselves into the autonomic nervous system, which beyond conscious effort, controls heartbeats, breathing, peristalsis, glandular and countless other bodily activities, and man’s earthly days are over. Man is a nervous animal, and one of the conditions of survival is a dependable, orderly sequence of things to come.

Nor need we limit our observations to the necessity for orderliness in nature or in man’s person; also required is an orderly social environment so that man can know what to expect, within limits, from his fellow men. Suppose, for instance, that no one could be counted on to keep his word, that promises were meaningless, that capriciousness in everything were the rule: buy a can of beans only to find it filled with mud; hire workers who refuse to work; contract at one price and get charged a higher price; earn a livelihood that is subject to confiscation at anyone else’s pleasure; act peacefully but with no security of body and limb; and so on and on. Man can endure but little of this; he can’t cope with life at sixes and sevens, with many things in the realm of uncertainty. And because of this he will pay almost any price—even his freedom—for certainty, for order. Indeed, when confronted with but a modicum of chaos, he will accept with alacrity numerous variations of the goose step, those constraints which appear to minimize uncertainties and thus give him the semblance of order.

Most of these “goose steps” which appear as a relief from chaos such as controls of prices, wages, rents, hours of labor, or “planned” production and exchange—economic freezes, one might say—are, in fact, contrary to order. These rigidities are necessarily interferences with men’s choices and result in chaos.

Millions of Private Decisions

The truth is that order and chaos in the economic realm are the reverse of what is generally supposed to be the case. It is doubtful if anyone could more strikingly phrase this common confusion than was done by one of our country’s most powerful labor officials. He wrote:

Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.[1]

It’s one thing to confess to not knowing much; it is quite another matter to be referred to as a moron for believing that the free market can gratify our goals, that is, “bring us out where we want to be.”

If “where we want to be” is under the dictatorial thumb of know-it-alls, this statement might make sense. Otherwise, it evidences an utter confusion as to the nature of man, of personal evolution, and of the free market.

Analogous to the labor official’s “millions of private economic decisions” are the creative decisions within each human being, such as: an octillion atoms in an incomprehensible array of configurations; some 30 trillion cells; bone marrow producing one billion red blood cells every 60 seconds; each kidney having some 5 million complex glomeruli; a diencephalon, a portion of the brain stem that acts independently of consciousness; a cranium filled with nerve tissues having a seemingly unlimited supply of neuroblasts—unfinished nerve cells—which can, with conscious effort and other disciplines, be transformed into functioning neurons. Such enormous, utterly staggering phenomena of man’s composition—“fearfully and wonderfully made,” as he is—cannot be grasped as other than chaos by a finite mind. These trillions upon trillions of data, in each human being, about which we have but the dimmest notions, can easily tempt one to conclude: “Only a moron would believe that these will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.”

Were these data chaotic, as they appear to be, we would then have to admit that order is actually born of disorder, for they do harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be: a human being, the most amazing example of order within our awareness. Why not simply confess that these data are an order of Creation which we do not comprehend? That we are unable to bring their order within our narrow purview?

The complex of creativities flowing through the minds of men over the millennia, the “chaos” which caused the labor official to refer to them as “millions of economic decisions made independently of each other,” proceed from the same Source as the complex data observed in each human being. If not aborted they, like the complexities in man, result in order. True, we do not seriously question the point as it relates to man; we are so dumbfounded by the mystery of life that we readily concede that only God can make a tree—or a man. But there is all too little of this faith and humility as it concerns the free market. In the latter, as we witness millions of economic decisions made independently of each other, we will, if not perceptive, refer to them as chaotic; whereas, in fact, we are viewing an order the complexity of which cannot be brought within our limited grasp of things. What we lightly pass over as chaos is but a reflection of our failure to comprehend.

Take only a casual look at our economic world. Visit Russia, Red China, Cuba, East Germany. Like our labor official and many of our educators and business “leaders,” these unfortunate people do not understand how millions of economic decisions made independently of each other could possibly harmonize in the end and bring about efficacious results; that is, their minds, deficient in awareness, sensing only chaos in the complex data of the free and unfettered market, proceed to bring “order” out of it. How? A Mr. Big takes over and substitutes his one-source decisions for the millions of decisions that would otherwise be made independently of each other. But observe that one man’s orders, aimed at bringing about his singular idea of order, result in everyone else’s chaos, as deadening in the end as if he himself were to take over the forces that make him a human being. He can no more mastermind market data than he can the data of his own being. The consequences would be as disastrous in the one case as in the other.

Getting Used to the Chains

Unfortunately, the chaos brought on by one-source decisions—the practice of political know-it-all-ness—is seldom thought of as chaos once the subjects have endured the oppression of their own spirits for a short time. Like wild animals placed in zoos, or human beings in slavery, or criminals in prison—as soon as the shock of contrast is over they come to think of their fetters as more a part of ordered than chaotic life.

But let an American housewife, for instance, accustomed as she is to an economy in which millions of decisions are made more or less independently of each other—where the free market is somewhat approximated—awaken on the morrow to a Russian one-source decision situation: the larder bare, no telephone, no car, no taxi available, standing in line hours on end only to find a scrap of this or that for her family; freedom of expression, of writing, of religion denied; a suppression of desires, aspirations, ambitions. What a shock such a sudden contrast would evoke! Mrs. America would, indeed, be conscious of an unbelievable chaos; she would correctly conclude that a great deal of order had been removed from her life situation.

The more a country’s economy is politically ordered or “planned,” the more chaotic is production and exchange. Conversely, the freer the market—the greater the extent that economic decisions are made independently of each other—the more order there is in production and exchange.

Try making purchases in Havana and then try in Chicago or Keokuk. You will have little doubt as to where the order is. Or, if it be argued that Cuba hasn’t had time to “make socialism work,” then compare experiences in Moscow with Hong Kong. Russia has been at it for nearly half a century! Also bear in mind that the chaos which is manifest in the Moscow market place has its origin in a one-source-decision apparatus; that the order which is manifest in the Hong Kong market place has its origin in millions of economic decisions made independently of each other.

Order is not necessarily characterized by systems in a static, motionless relationship, as is so often thought. Take, for instance, heavenly bodies: motion in relation to one another is of their nature; they manifest order only when orbiting. Were they to behave contrary to their nature, that is, were their swift flight through the void to halt, cosmic chaos would result.

Now, reflect on neat rows of cemetery headstones. As distinguished from heavenly bodies, a static, motionless relationship of each to the others is of their nature. Were these headstones to go into motion or orbit, a behavior contrary to their nature, we would observe the contrary of order: chaos!

These observations are meant to suggest that it is the frustration of the nature of a system that spells chaos—order consisting of what is in harmony with a system’s nature. What is order in one instance might be chaos in another. The nature of the system prescribes the characteristics of the order and the chaos peculiar to it.

Man’s Nature Is to Emerge

Consider the nature of man. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, amusingly oversimplified it when he suggested that man is on earth as in an egg; that he cannot go on forever being a good egg; that he has to hatch or rot. Man’s nature, as distinguished from that of other animals, is to evolve, to emerge; it is to grow in consciousness, awareness, perception; it is to make strides as a rational animal and, eventually, to make choices with intelligent discrimination and, to some extent, to will his own actions. Man—potentially, at least—must be included in creative phenomena and any thwarting or frustration of this, his sensitive and spiritual nature, must induce chaos. The man-imposed goose step in its social, political, and economic versions—the headstone kind of static, motionless order—is the antithesis of any order that has to do with expanding consciousness.

Man, in the light of his destiny, is not a static organism. This is unthinkable. Furthermore, the free and unfettered market is but the unfrustrated economic manifestation of man’s creative, emerging, spiritual dynamism. Man enjoys freedom only if he be free to make decisions and act on the basis of his choices. This is self-evident; it needs no proof. Thus, it follows that man can be free only if his peaceful, creative actions are not aborted. This is to say that man can be free to emerge in the direction of his destiny only if his market—economic expressions of men—be free. The free market, founded on economic decisions made independently of each other, resting, as it does, on common consent, is consonant and in harmony with freely acting man. Dynamism, in this context—moving, flowing, creative, kinetic energy—is as much a characteristic of the free market as it is of the individual human being, man and his market being but two parts of a whole; this dynamism is of the nature of each. Order in either case—man or his market—exists only as this dynamism, showing forth peacefully and creatively, finds unfrustrated expression. Any man-imposed goose step must breed chaos just as surely as if some political know-it-all were to stop the heavenly bodies in their orbits.

I have tried to suggest that we must look to the nature of a system to determine what is order and what is chaos. Whenever we impose the headstone variety of static, motionless order to man and his market, that is, whenever we substitute one-source decisions for millions of decisions made independently of each other, we get chaos for our unintelligent pains. And it is axiomatic that freedom must disappear as we practice the error!

To illustrate the mysterious order of the free market, think of any one of a million goods or services: corn flakes, atomizers, hats, automobiles, radios, TV sets, telephones, machine tools, computers, illumination, and so on, things that are left more or less to countless decisions made independently of each other. Millions upon millions of tiny think-of-thats, little creativities, individual acceptances and rejections, whims, likes and dislikes—forces too numerous ever to recount and which appear as chaos but are, instead, incomprehensible order—miraculously combine to form the fantastic order of these artifacts by which we live. Observe that the order of these is so perfect, their production and exchange and their demand and supply so nicely balanced, that we take them as much for granted as we do our next heart beat. Rarely a second thought! No argument! Further, the very fact that an automobile, for instance, is an orderly mechanism is testimony in itself that it originated out of incomprehensible order, not out of chaos.

Now reflect on those goods and services no longer entrusted to the millions of economic decisions made independently of each other in a free market, but delegated instead to one-source governmental decisions as a way of bringing “order out of chaos.” To cite a few: an ever-enlarging part of employment, many wages, prices, exchanges; a good deal of housing; wheat, tobacco, corn, cotton; more and more power and light; education, money value, and others. Observe the imbalances and note that these are the only goods and services we ever argue about. By this method, we do not bring order out of chaos but, rather, chaos out of incomprehensible order! The very fact that these goods and services are now in a chaotic state is testimony in itself that incomprehensible order has been converted to chaos.

Barriers to Trade, and Growth

One consequence of confusing order and chaos is a static market and its aftermath, a frustration of man’s nature, the free market being but the extension or manifestation of free men. Damage cannot be done to the free market without an equal damage to man’s nature. When men are compelled to look to a one-source decision instead of to the individual decisions of men, man is robbed of his wholeness. Self-responsibility, the corollary of self-decision, and the wellspring of man’s growth, gives way to cheap politics, mass plunder, pressure grouping, protectionism. Any time a society is organized in such a manner that a premium is put on the obeisance paid to political know-it-alls and when little, if any, reward attends integrity and self-reliance, the members of that society will tend more to rot than to hatch!

If human beings were meant to be ordered in the manner of cemetery headstones, is it conceivable that any one man or organized group of men would be capable of planning and directing the lives and activities of all the others? If all men possessed only the similarities and potentialities of headstones, which of the headstones are capable of directing the others?

It is precisely because we differ from one another, because—as even the communists admit—each has his needs, that human beings require freedom to express those needs and to satisfy them, individual by individual. The free market is an agency for the expression and sorting of these countless differences: in the bidding and asking prices, the voluntary buying and selling of scarce resources, whereby each may pursue his own proper interests without infringing upon or denying the nature and the interests of any other peaceful person. When alternatives have been sought and applied to the open market, the result always has been some variation of the master-slave arrangement, with one man’s order bringing chaos into the lives of others.

We are led to speculate on why this confusion about order and chaos. While there are few who put the case for the headstone variety of order as boldly and as honestly as the labor official, all who argue for and introduce rigidities into the market are up to the same mischief. Sadly, not a category of the population is exempt: teachers share heavily in the error as do preachers, business and civic leaders; indeed, were it said, “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone,” few rocks would fly.

Torn in Two Directions

When the error is as general as this one, the cause must lie very deep. Inspect this suspicion of mine and see if it makes sense: Man—with notable exceptions—suffers a fearful contradiction. There is on the one hand his God-given nature (1) to be born on this earth, (2) to grow and to emerge in consciousness, and (3) to age and, eventually, to depart this earth. This cosmic, evolutionary tug is a powerful force but not as a rule, a force about which man is sharply conscious.

On the other hand, there is man’s slight, budding ability to reason and choose—an ability still linked to an abysmal ignorance. Being but dimly aware of his natural destiny and of how little he knows, man tends to ascribe to his reason an omniscience out of all proportion to what the facts warrant. Thus, human beings are confronted with two powerful commandments that are in conflict, one might say, two tugs in opposite directions.

Man’s nature calls for a flexing, an improving use and a continuing growth of the faculties, regardless of how uncomfortable or painful this perpetual stretching may be. In opposition, is his defective ability to reason which commands him to remove himself from the struggle, to get out of rather than into life, in a word, to seek ease.

That man’s embryonic ability to reason is often a more powerful tug than is his natural destiny is evidenced by his fear of earthly departure. Viewed rationally, it would seem that departing this earth is as congenial to man’s nature as being born.[2] Both arrival and departure are but two parts of life’s equation; whatever has a beginning has a conclusion. Yet, note how general the fear is.

Afraid to Die—or Live

But now to my point: Not only is man—most men—fearful of that aspect of his nature which is his earthly demise, but he is equally fearful of that aspect of his nature which is life’s living! Observe the tendency to run away from problems, obstacles; the passion for wealth as a means of relief from employment; the yearning for security; the ambition to retire; and, specifically to my point, the dread of competition. As a consequence of this defective reasoning, man generally seeks a static, motionless kind of order—the headstone variety—while his nature calls for an order of the dynamic variety which, unless he is highly perceptive, he looks upon as chaos.

Competition—our attitude toward it—gets to the heart of the problem. It is a powerful antistatic force, the enemy of status; competition is the activating agent, the gyrator, so to speak, in man’s life and in his market; it keeps things whipped up, moving, changing, improving, always uncomfortable, sometimes painful, but, nonetheless, dynamic. A noncompetitive society is a monopolistic society. Competition is the ally of man’s natural destiny and, thus, it is the preservative of his freedom; without competition man’s market and man himself would fall into a state of lethargy; the static kind of order would prevail, in which freedom is impossible.

Be it noted that human beings, as if in response to their natural and evolutionary destiny, favor competition for everyone—except one person: self! As for self, excuses take command and seek protection against the uneasiness competition imposes.

When everyone favors competition for me—except me—it would seem that competition has it, that protection for me would be impossible. But when we let know-it-alls with a constabulary intervene in the market place, that is, in creative human actions, thus giving to government a power sway not sanctioned by sound principle, we render competition ineffective and, thus, poke a dangerous hole in the armor of freedom. It is called logrolling: “I’ll vote for your protection if you’ll vote for mine.” Of course, as protectionism spreads, competition correspondingly decreases, monopoly increases, and freedom diminishes. We achieve the headstone kind of order which, for man, is chaos.

We may never be able to mend the aforementioned flaw until we acquire a more rational view of competition—human dynamics—than we now have; not a more rational view of competition for others—this we possess—but for self. If I concede that competition is desirable for all others, how, rationally and logically, can I make an exception of myself? It doesn’t make sense.

Keeping in mind man’s natural, evolutionary destiny, competition is as good for me as for anyone else. Admittedly, experience helps in being rational: about forty years ago my competitors ran me out of the wholesale produce business. I had to sell my home, furniture, car, everything to pay the creditors. Broke! A painful experience, indeed! But had it not been for competition, I would, no doubt, be in that business today. Not that there is anything wrong with being a wholesale produce merchant; it is that I did not belong in that role. Others were better fitted for it. And, important to me, I was led—not happily at first—to discover that there were other employments that better suited my aptitudes. Competition made it possible for me to discover how best to allocate those few resources peculiar to my own person. Competition is at once the economizer and activator; it helps to keep us on the creative move and to find the niche appropriate to the distinctive abilities of each.

Let Freedom Reign!

If the foregoing reflections are valid, it is certain that freedom in the market, without which other freedoms are impossible, can exist only as creativities of the peaceful variety remain unrestrained. True, this calls for an order so complex that it gives the appearance of chaos; yet, it is order, however incomprehensible. This is the order observed in a living tree, in emerging man, in Creation going on before our eyes.

When we mistake incomprehensible order for chaos we leave ourselves open to the more or less innocent deceptions of the know-it-alls. These people, when they succeed in acquiring coercive power, impose restraints on the free flowing of creative energy. Yet, the free market works many of its wonders in spite of their meddling. Unaware of how little they know, they are led to believe that it is their restraints which account for the wonders; and because of this erroneous correlation, they claim credit for the accomplishments which take place despite their subversions. This is bad enough in itself, but it is fatal if we believe their claims. For, if we do, we shall substitute their know-it-all-ness for the miraculous market; we shall look to them for our blessings and not to Creation—a fearful penalty for a needless naivete. Little else than a sharpened awareness is required to avoid the deceptions by those who know not that they know so little.

May our awareness never dim to the point that we shall rewrite our verse to read:

Poems are made by gods like me,

Thus only man can make a tree.

[1] See The New York Times, June 30, 1962.

[2] “. . . from an evolutive point of view the greatest invention of Nature is death.” See Human Destiny, op. cit., ch. V.

Deeper Than You Think

Leonard E. Read

1967

To Aggie

So far as ideas are concerned, meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him. . . .

—ORTEGA

Prologue

Despite the fact that men never have found a paradise on earth, many continue to hope for a Shangri-La here and now; and they seek a shepherd to guide them to it. They long for a god or goddess to dispense the “last word” on social, economic, political, moral, and spiritual matters—a source of certitude—a Leader.

Nor is there ever a shortage of egotists who covet such a role and desire above all else an army of followers. The result of this combination is a cult; the slightest deviation from the master’s mind is taboo.

The individual who would be his own man could never follow blindly after another, any more than he could tolerate or assume the responsibility for a band of blind followers.

To be in the vanguard of any line of thought is to leave a trail of sorts, and any responsible person will occasionally check his bearings. If he finds nothing but followers in his wake, he probably should write off his efforts as love’s labor lost.

However capable in his own right, the leader who inspires nothing but followers works for a lost cause—one that is unlikely to survive himself. No matter how unswerving their allegiance, human carbon copies never register full fidelity and must inevitably corrupt their master’s doctrine. And the master who encourages a blind following cannot logically escape a responsibility for the transgressions of his idolators.

To measure a teacher’s success, to evaluate his work, one must ask: Does the teaching induce in others what Aristotle termed “activity of soul”? Are his students learning to think for themselves and to will their own actions? Are they creatively thinking, writing, talking—each becoming his own man?

Unconcerned for a following, a true teacher continues to pursue his own studies, leaving his students to develop in the only way they possibly can: on their own initiative.

We should ever bear in mind that the unknown is infinite. No person, regardless of his pretensions, glimpses more than an infinitesimal fragment of the Truth. To merely focus the gaze of one’s followers down that narrow aperture of understanding glimpsed by “the leader” is no service to anyone. The successful teacher inspires others to join in the search for Truth, on their own volition and power; and growth in knowledge and understanding takes place only to the extent that some of his students surpass him. No leader or teacher ought to be satisfied with anything less than this.

CHAPTER

I

Causes Run Deeper Than We Suppose

And now remains

That we find out the cause of this effect;

Or, rather say, the cause of this defect,

For this effect defective comes by cause.

Shakespeare, Hamlet

An ancient hindu myth has it that the earth is held up by a gigantic elephant. But what holds up the elephant? A still more gigantic turtle! And what holds up the turtle? Oh, it’s turtles all the way down!

Or, refer to the Maya of Yucatan of some thirteen centuries ago. They “caused” the much-needed rain by weird offerings to their Rain God: tossing virgin maidens into deep wells.[1]

But let’s not laugh too heartily at the ancients for their childish conclusions as to causes. What causes high prices? Less than two centuries ago:

The washerwomen of Paris, finding soap so dear that they could hardly purchase it, insisted that all the merchants should be punished with death; . . . Marat [Member, National Assembly] declared loudly that the people, by hanging shopkeepers and plundering stores, could easily remove the trouble.[2]

And only recently, newspapers across America displayed pictures of women toting placards, parading in front of stores as pickets are wont to do, demanding lower prices. As if the retailers were responsible for their budgetary problems!

Parenthetically, suppose the chain stores were to yield to the pressure of such publicity and reduce their prices by 2 per cent (their average profit on sales is about 1 1/2 per cent), they would be forced out of business. The paraders’ victory would consist of round steak ground, for instance, at $1.22 1/2 instead of $1.25 per pound, but only for the brief period that a losing business could keep its doors open.

Wrong Methods Widely Used

But here again we must not be too harsh on les femmes of Paris or our own placard bearers. Politicians in high places, as well as Ph.D.’s, labor officials, clergymen, and even businessmen are guilty of the same offense; they refuse to probe below the surface; they ascribe as causes no more than “effects defective” and, by so doing, aggravate the very ills they would remedy. Price, wage, rent, interest, exchange, and production controls are all of the same pattern, as are the so-called “guide lines.” Economically, such measures are as inept and harmful as our women on parade with their placards, or as the demagogue’s plan of hanging the shopkeepers.

The shopkeepers are far less responsible for high prices than are their customers; they are not the cause. The retailers are the ones who first confront the consumers with the bad news; they bear the sad tidings, the ill consequences, of uneconomic policies framed and carried out previously by others who, more than likely, received praise and votes for their unwise actions. Observe the politicians asking acclaim for bestowing this and that on everybody and then the merchants getting blamed for the inevitable aftermaths of the giveaways! Very well. If not the shopkeepers, who or what does, in fact, cause rising prices? How deep lies this cause?

The high prices of the 1790’s in France, in Germany following World War I, in most Latin American countries during the last three decades, and the rising prices in the U.S.A. today are the result of a dilution of the medium of exchange, in a word, inflation.

Spending and Inflation

But merely knowing that our rising prices are caused by inflation isn’t all we need to know. We must probe deeper and ask, what causes inflation? The answer is simple enough: excessive governmental expenditures.

The next underlying cause must be uncovered: why do excessive governmental expenditures cause inflation? The answer is no secret: whenever the costs of government—federal, state, and local—rise to that high mark where it is no longer politically expedient to defray the costs by direct tax levies, governments have throughout history resorted to inflation as a means of financing.[3]

To probe still deeper, the next logical question is, what causes governmental expenditures to reach that high point where explosive inflation ensues? The answer appears to be that those favoring excessive government spending exercise more political influence than do those people who oppose such spending.

What, then, causes so many people of influence to favor excessive government spending?

Any honest investigator must confess that he’s in trouble here. His plan of putting his finger on causes that underlie “effects defective” comes to a sudden halt. No longer can he precisely identify the next underlying cause. The problem, at this point, is to find out why human beings behave as they do. Here, instead of a single track to follow, the analyst is faced with literally millions and billions of more or less blind alleys. Why, for instance, will people who decry personal theft approve feathering their own nests at the expense of others, provided the government will do the looting for them? Is it a deficient sense of justice and, if so, why the deficiency? Or is it a stultified moral nature, faulty education, economic ignorance, an inability to see beyond the moment, materialistic mania, a declining self-reliance, spiritual arrestment, an inferior concept of human destiny, no sense of process,[4] energies expended destructively because creative release is hampered, or what?

Growth Comes Through Effort

The case of rising prices and their causes has been used for illustrative purposes. Take any social ill—communism, crime, wars, or whatever—and pursue the causal sequence. Finally, in every instance, the investigator will come to an analytical wilderness. To go further in depth is speculative at best. For the whole cosmic enigma confronts him. The message he gets is almost one of defiance.

To me, the message reads something like this: Go ahead with your attempts to unravel Creation’s Scheme. You will never find the answer; it isn’t within the ken of man nor will it ever be. But try, everlastingly try, for it is the trying that stimulates individual growth in awareness, perception, consciousness, conscience. While you will never discern precisely all the causes of things you think wrong, you will come upon ever so many behaviors and practices that are identifiable as things not to do.

Things not to do! Some twenty-five years ago a dozen of us had gathered for an evening of discussion with Ludwig von Mises, our first meeting with the distinguished economist. As midnight neared, a guest posed the final question: “I’ll agree, Professor Mises, that we are headed for troublous times. Now, if you were the dictator of these United States and could impose whatever corrective measures you think wise, what would you do?” Quick as a flash came the evening’s final answer, “I would abdicate.”

Dictating how another should live his life—authoritarianism—is a thing not to do.

Self-Control Can Change the World

Recently, a scholar of note recommended a technique quite at odds with FEE’s self-improvement methodology, but which he thought would assure putting our ideas into practice. Assume his claim to be valid. Should FEE make the change? No, this is a thing not to do. Were my ideas to govern the nation or the world, the situation would be tragic. No such wisdom exists in any person, and it seems unlikely that it ever will.

Wisdom, such as mankind acquires, can be likened to an over-all luminosity that derives from a host of tiny, individual enlightenments in complex interchange over space and time. The brighter the glow, the more and better can each of us see his way. Neither I nor anyone else can manage the over-all luminosity, but I can attend to my own wee candle.

Cervantes’ “The road is better than the inn,” should serve to remind aspiring men that there isn’t any inn for them, but only the road, now and forever. It is the effort along the trail that matters.

The following chapters, all but eight of which have previously appeared in The Freeman and Notes from FEE, are small gleanings from one person’s search for understanding as he journeys on the road. And the next chapter explains why understanding has not been sought in that dark area of authoritarian or coercive arrangements. It is my conviction that what cannot be found in human freedom cannot be Truth. . . .

[1] Indians of the Americas (Washington, D.C.: National Geographic Society, 1955), p. 197.

[2] Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation in France (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1959), pp. 71–72.

[3] Governments begin inflating, as a rule, when the costs of government approximate 20 to 25 per cent of the people’s earned income. This is the high point beyond which it is politically inexpedient to collect any more by direct tax levies. Inflation is an indirect levy on capital assets. In 1946, governmental expenditures in the United States were about 31 per cent of the people’s earned income. The figure has steadily risen to the present rate of about 41 per cent.

[4] See Rebecca West, “Gerda’s Empire,” The Freeman, April, 1965.

CHAPTER

II

Look to the Stars

A man goes down from a blow to the solar plexus, and we say he’s had the breath knocked out of him.

Every act of coercion in society—coercion being the forcible imposition of one’s will on others—is like a damaging blow that knocks the breath out of humanity.

Nor does it make any difference whether the coercive act is accidental or deliberate, for a noble or an ignoble purpose. It is not the intention behind the act, but the nature of the act itself, that does the injury. Whether one be injured “for his own good” or “for the good of humanity” does not modify the extent of the injury. Erecting a Taj Mahal in the name of love with forcibly extorted funds or enslaved labor, or compulsorily expropriating people’s income to build hospitals or art centers, are no less coercive than compelling Negro slaves to hoe one’s cotton, or forcing workers into unions, or robbing others at the point of a gun.

This is strong language when acts of coercion are proudly and widely advocated from platform, classroom, pulpit, and the editorial page; but can such a reading of the issue be logically challenged?

Coercion imposed on others, whether to gain something for self or for those we love or pity, or to keep others from gaining for themselves by their own honest effort, is the crowning evil of our times. Coercion is anything but peaceful. Its practice on the grand scale is a crippling blow to our human potential.

Nor does it make any difference whether the coercion is inflicted directly or indirectly through one’s agent, such as a personal accomplice, a labor union, a government, or whatever. I am personally responsible for any evil I support, encourage, or condone, regardless of who carries my banner. It isn’t the mob that strings up Joe Doakes; only individuals commit crimes; the hanging is done by each member of the mob. Nor is it the association that takes money from everyone in the nation to finance the local plaza; it is a coercive act on the part of the association’s members—each one of them! Individual absolution is not to be achieved by collectivization.

Regardless of pretensions to the contrary, only now and then can a person be found who does not advocate some coercion, for some laudable end. Indeed, so pervasive is the coercive doctrine that most Americans are unaware of any acceptable alternative.

After I had lectured recently in New Delhi, a reporter said to me, “Economic freedom is all right for you affluent Americans but not for an underdeveloped country such as India.” And at home I hear, “Economic freedom was all right for the simple, agrarian [underdeveloped] economy we had two centuries ago but not for a highly specialized, complex [affluent] economy such as we now have.” In a word—underdeveloped or affluent—there is no place for economic freedom but only for state socialism, that is, coercion. So decree today’s intellectuals.

The coercive doctrine is highly publicized and accounts for much of the ideological noise we hear. “Let the government do it,” goes the deafening chant. But hark! At this very moment someone is exchanging the fruits of his labor for a tank of gasoline. Each party gains! Willing exchanges such as this occur by the billions day in and day out. Taken together in their enormity, these wealth-creating, poverty-destroying actions give us all our net economic gain, every last measure of material progress. Unlike the doctrine of coercion, these willing exchanges—economic freedom in practice—are commonplace, unheralded, unnewsworthy. Thus, they go unheard, unseen, unappreciated. So impressive is the noisy babble for destructive coercion and so quiet is the performance of creative freedom that coercion is thought to be the cause of the progress we enjoy. Such mistaken correlations can be the downfall of any individual or group, of any nation, economy, civilization.

The Flow of Human Energy

Facing the matter from another point of view, we see that man is an entity of radiant energies. Each individual is a composition of realized and potential energies—diverse, unique, ever-changing. Were all to go in accord with what appears to be the Cosmic Design, these individual specimens of the Universal Energy would exert themselves in an improving, creative direction. For certainly the Design must call for human emergence in awareness, perception, consciousness.

But man, with his power to choose, can, and often does, turn his energies in a destructive direction. His energy cannot “stay put”; it has to expend itself. We observe some persons, having enormous energy, turning it inward to their own evolvement: Goethe, Shakespeare, and their kind. But others of unusual energy utterly fail in their own evolvement; their energy spins outward over the environment, in the form of coercive, dominating control of others: Napoleon, Hitler, and their kind. Of course, each of these two archetypes has its minor performers.

But the lack of self-control is not all; there is another influence at work. Whenever coercive policies dominate the societal situation, inhibiting and prohibiting energies from manifesting themselves creatively, these energies, under the necessity of expending themselves, tend to turn destructive: moral laxness, riots, strikes, vandalism, wars, and so on. Coercion—even when backed by good intentions—must knock the breath out of humanity, totally, sooner or later. Coercive practices breed more coercion, and there is no remedy short of replacing these practices with freedom and willing exchange.

In the name of doing good! To illustrate my point, let us consider an educated electorate as an objective. But how is universal education to be achieved? Surely, not by relying on freedom, as we do with religion! Freedom can’t be trusted for something as important as education! Here, runs the argument, coercion is necessary: compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of the goods and services to pay the educational bill. To challenge this near-unanimous, deeply-embedded notion is to risk being classified as a “nut.”

Yet, the application of coercion to education is turning out what a vast majority of us do not want: millions of “educated” coercionists, annually—exactly what any capable diagnostician would have predicted. It is unrealistic to believe that institutions founded on coercion can, in the long run, advance an understanding of freedom. The record is already speaking for itself.[1]

Universal education may be a worthy objective. But when coercion is applied, compelling universal attendance, it becomes necessary to “scrape the bottom of the barrel” to find teachers. The qualified teachers are “watered down” by the unqualified, turning the trend away from excellence and toward mediocrity. The itch to teach, to project one’s views, takes precedence over eagerness to learn, and this is a perversion of the educational process.

Granted that education ought to rank high in any rational hierarchy of values, it must also be conceded that there is no more difficult aim to achieve in the whole creative realm. It is precisely for these reasons that education should be divorced from coercion and left completely to freedom. While the free market or willing exchange way of life is necessary for the preservation of an affluent society, it is an absolute “must” for any growth or development. Especially when confronted with difficult or “impossible” problems, turn to freedom.

Wisdom Will Not Be Forced

It is a simple, obvious, self-evident fact that ideas, understanding, wisdom cannot be coercively injected into the consciousness of another. Yet, such is the presumption of persons who employ the coercive techniques.

If human creativity is the goal, the reliance should be on freedom. And it matters not whether the anticipated area of growth or development be education, steel making, dress designing, or whatever. Creativity at the human level behaves according to the law of attraction. Attracted to what? To someone or to something better. Available to each of us are literally tens of thousands of “betters.” From among the millions of seemingly common men, stars appear—some tiny, some a little larger, and the relatively big ones: Socrates, Edison, Beethoven, Christian Dior, Pasteur, Madam Curie, Booker T. Washington, Menger, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Marshall Field, Mises, and perhaps your good self should be included. These luminaries—when freedom in transactions prevails—set the pace, lead us, if we so elect, into new and higher realms; they cut all the patterns for progress.

Our human stars come from every walk of life—when not retarded by illusion or slumber or fear or coercion. They emerge from the oddest environments and circumstances, as if every new-born babe were a potential star. These talented ones shine for a moment, help to light the way, and then are gone forever except as they remain in book or memory. Together, and over the millennia, they serve to increase the over-all glow, this being the Universal Energy in its human manifestation.

This human luminosity is as mysterious as life itself for, indeed, it is life in its richest form. For any one of us in our proximity to absolute ignorance to attempt its controlled management, that is, the coerced coalescence of this infinitely intricate profusion of minute energies, is to reactivate a notion as nonsensical as “the divine right of kings”; it is to say, in effect, “Only I can make a tree”; it is to ask for enthronement atop the Cosmos! The coercionist in us is this pretentiousness; as it asserts itself the glow dims—a dark age; when it lessens, the glow brightens—a renaissance. Infinitesimal human energies, as minute molecules, configurate naturally, miraculously, creatively when free to flow, when obstacles are out of the way.

If we would improve ourselves, we will cast off our coercionist inclinations; we will look to the stars, which is to say, we will look to excellence in ourselves and others. This is what we do when we abandon our coercive ways and put our reliance on freedom.

So, let us proceed with several speculations of what’s right and righteous in order better to discern what not to do. . . .

[1] For my detailed criticism of coercion in education and the case for the free market in education, refer to chapters XV, XVI, and XVII in Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

CHAPTER

III

What Seek Ye First?

Over the years I have believed and often said, that the essence of Americanism is the revolutionary concept set forth in the Declaration of Independence: “that all men . . . are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.” This belief in divinely endowed personal rights is, in my view, the launching pad of our idea of limited government and the only creditable explanation of the genesis of the American miracle.

The importance I attach to this idea is not generally shared; it has been understood by a few, and not much contested by the many. The Creator-sovereignty idea was the highest spiritual note struck at the time of our country’s founding; it gave tone to our country’s early days. In no other instance, to my knowledge, have the founders of any political agency heeded so scrupulously the Biblical injunction, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” and history reveals no case where the promise, “and these things shall be added unto you,” has been so overwhelmingly verified.

Today, the spiritual genesis of the real American revolution is all but forgotten; indeed, attempted refutations of the Creator concept assume the proportions of an epidemic. Many are now proudly affirming, as if it were a sign of enlightenment, “I am an atheist,” while a growing number of believers acknowledge their faith as if it were irrelevant to earthly concerns. Even from professors of religion we hear the refrain, “God is dead.” In response to the question, “What seek ye first?” the number is dwindling who will reply, “the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.” Nor need the dissenters reply in explicit terms, for their actions speak louder than words. The answer their actions proclaim is, “We seek first these things,” that is, wealth, affluence, fame, power, and the like. In a word, most people have become addicts of the additives! When the eye is on “these things” and not on the genesis, the priorities are inverted and “these things” might not be long for this world.

The Question Each Must Answer

Man has no more important question to answer than, “What seek ye first?”

Numerous persons have said to me, “I don’t have to believe in God to believe in freedom, do I?” My answer is, “No, you do not have to believe in an Omnipotent Principle, or Infinite Consciousness, or God, to believe in freedom. Yes, you can be an atheist and, at the same time, believe in freedom. But a society of active, militant atheists will not be a free society.” This affirmation, I discover, seems incredible even to believers. Therefore, if it be valid, the reasons should be set forth. Is there a correlation between militant atheism and authoritarianism, on the one hand, and between the Creator concept and freedom, on the other? I think there is.

Holbach (1723–89), one of the Encyclopedists and an opponent of Christianity, had written a book advocating atheism. The book fell into the hands of Frederick the Great, who asked Voltaire for his views. The book has eloquence but no proof, Voltaire declared, and contains matter pernicious to Prince and people alike. His letter closed with these words: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. But all Nature cries aloud that He does exist, that there is a Supreme Intelligence, an Immense Power, an Admirable Order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.”

Voltaire’s statement falls into two distinct parts: (1) If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him, and (2) He does exist. I shall comment on the latter first, and only casually, because it is the former—the necessity of God—that I wish to examine in order to give my answer to “What seek ye first?”

As to the existence of a Supreme Intelligence, there are atheists on the one side of the question, and theists on the other—with deists, agnostics, and other shades in between. Apparently, The Existence is as unthinkable to the atheist as his tenets of ultimate meaningless are baffling to me.

I can only suggest that possibly his life thus far may be barren of certain perceptions or spiritual experiences that fall into the noncommunicable category—the kind that no one else’s word can be taken for. The mind barely outruns experience. Or else the would-be atheist is rebelling against a notion of the deity he should have outgrown in boyhood.[1]

How Little Each of Us Knows

Let’s pause for a look at ourselves as related to the Infinite Mystery. How difficult it is to appreciate the littleness of our private wisdom, awareness, perception, consciousness! The tendency is to compare one’s self with one’s fellows which, more often than not, leads to the conclusion, “What a bright boy am I!”

Infinite time, space, consciousness, or whatever, cannot be fractionalized. However, to help with my point, assume The Infinite to be The Whole—all-there-is. Based on the incontrovertible fact that the more one knows the more is one exposed to the unknown, it would be an exaggeration for me to claim awareness of one trillionth of all-there-is. Now, for the sake of speculation, assume that you are fifty times as richly endowed as I. You would still possess only fifty trillionths of all-there-is!

I am merely suggesting that no person is any more than an intellectual mite, a spiritual speck in the Cosmic Scheme. The political officeholder who recently intimated that he and his bureaucratic staff now had the will and the power to maintain an ever-expanding economy may be less a speck than you or I, for he doesn’t even know how little he knows. The oft-heard statement, “We have doubled our knowledge in the past decade,” means no more to me than a leap from one trillionth to two trillionths! Why, it is easily demonstrable that no living person knows anything, really, about himself; a few superficial observations are all that any person can rightfully claim.

Parenthetically, being an intellectual and spiritual speck does not spell insignificance. The atom is significant!

Three other facts about human beings that are relevant to this analysis: First, while each person is no more than a tiny speck, each is unique; there are no carbon copies; the variation is all-pervasive; no two souls are alike in any respect.[2]

Second, we are extremely active specks, each being, to some extent, a self-steering entity. In a word, we have some control over what phases of our personalities will be active and, also, what directions the activities will take.

And, third, each of us has the potentiality for growth in awareness, perception, consciousness.

To summarize the above sketchy view of the situation, there are on this earth some three billion comparative know-nothings, not an exception! Each has the potentiality to grow in awareness; each sees but a fragment, but what is seen by any one is not seen precisely the same by any other; each possesses energy, but no two exert or direct it identically.

Contemplate this host of energetic entities, differing in every respect, and then assume that not one of them is aware of a Creation over and beyond his infinitesimally small mentality. In short, reflect on a world of active, militant atheists; each one completely egocentric, which is to say, believing in his own omniscience—egoism in the saddle! Only I am right; all who do not agree precisely with me are off course; in a word, three billion abysmally ignorant individuals, each preoccupied with his own righteousness.

We must bear in mind that these three billion energetic entities constitute an enormous force. But, a force to what purpose? Unless a Supreme Intelligence, an Infinite Consciousness, a First Principle be conceded, there is no integrative attracting center.[3] These varied entities are propelled by their energies every which way, a societal situation at sixes and sevens; in a word, chaos!

Man has no affinity for social chaos; as a matter of fact, he will pay about any price for social order, and order there will be.[4] But how? All history attests to the answer: The cleverest and most energetic know-nothing will take over, not on a mutual-consent basis, because there is no mutuality of minds; the take-over will be achieved by the use of coercion. Some one know-nothing will forcibly impose his own concept of rightness on all the others. There can be no more freedom in this arrangement than in godless Russia, and for the same reason.

Man with his built-in variations and lively energies cannot achieve his earthly destiny—his potentiality to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness—where all human energy exerts itself in helter-skelter fashion. Conceded, deviant forces are tolerable—there can be both passive and active atheists—but it is an absolute requirement that there be an integrative force—belief in God—more powerful than the deviant forces. Voltaire could have had no reason, other than this, for repeating the old saying: “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him”! Put another way, it is necessary that there be men, sufficient to establish a prevailing tendency, who are drawn to an Infinite Ideal. Lecomte du Noüy phrased it this way, “To really participate in the divine task, man must place his ideal as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.”[5] God—Infinite Consciousness—is assuredly out of reach.

A Goal Worth Pursuing

In what manner does the recognition of an Infinite Consciousness serve as an integrative force? First, it puts us, the creatures, in proper perspective. It is easily demonstrable that the individual consciousness is potentially expansible. But, regardless of progress, there is no end to achievement, for this Ideal, being infinite, is always and forever out of reach. Thus, humility is induced, the sense of know-it-all-ness demolished. It is axiomatic that the know-it-all cannot grow in knowing; only when one is emptied of such egotism can the individual grow in the direction of his potential uniqueness. The acceptance of God draws the individual toward the highest conceivable Ideal, this attraction being toward a harmony with Being or Natural Law.

To assess the second way in which a recognition of the Creator concept serves as a harmonizing force, we need only acknowledge the central presupposition of the Infinite Consciousness idea: the immortality of the individual spirit or consciousness. Reduced to its essence, this earthly moment is only the beginning; consciousness, the reality, is eternal, retaining its growth potential. Once this is accepted and lived by, the individual seeks approval of the Eternal Ideal; his prime objective cannot be fame before men. Daily actions have a higher guide than momentary expediency; whatever one does is premised on his highest concept of rightness and righteousness. The accurate reflection, in word and deed, of one’s highest concept of Truth, is integrity in its highest form, this being the cohesive agent without which man in his variation and specialization cannot exist.[6] Integrity’s integrative quality is a harmonizing force.

The third manner in which this spiritual faith serves as a harmonizing force is its cultivation of tolerance.[7] Once an individual grasps the idea that he, as all others, is a child of Creation, that each is varied, and is meant to be, all inclination to mastermind others dissolves; the notion becomes absurd. Those with varying systems of thought are no longer condemned but, instead, inspected for what light they may shed. If no light, let them pass; if some light, use it to grow by. To rule or to try to reform others is not to play God; it is to work against God. The Creator does not forcibly impose the Kingdom on anyone. Why, then, should I take unto myself a role that the Creator has spurned? Intolerance is a divisive, driving-away force; tolerance is a harmonizing, ingathering force. Daily experiences confirm this.

One Nation Under God

Man, among animals, being both social and individualistic, cannot be too much torn asunder from others. At stake in his relations with others is nothing less than survival, for man’s differences, specializations, variations must be more complementary than antagonistic—an economic fact of life. I repeat, the harmonizing forces must, to avoid disaster, be stronger than the combined divisive forces. This brings me to the fourth, and by far the most important, way that the Creator concept serves as such a force. Reflect on what might be called the intellectual love of God. Love, in this deepest sense, is a process which, in completion, spells enlightenment. The Supreme Intelligence is the source of all creation, of all Truth or enlightenment, even of all the little truths we come upon and call our own. Those of this spiritual faith have their eyes turned ever toward The Light that they may better find their way to enlightenment; it is this that is the love of God, the strongest harmonizing force there is. To the extent that one succeeds in the Divine Venture, to that extent does one share in Creation.

The question, “I don’t have to believe in God to believe in freedom, do I?” is like asking, “I don’t have to believe in an end to believe in its means, do I?” For freedom is the primary means to the highest end; at best, it is a secondary end. The primary aim of earthly life, in the view of believers, is not “these things,” but “the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.” It is to expand individual consciousness into as near a harmony as possible with Infinite Consciousness. Freedom is the first and absolutely necessary means to this end. Anyone who in any way frustrates the freedom of another to act creatively acts against the Supreme Intelligence, this being the gravest of evils.[8]

It is impossible for man to act consistently except as he reasons from a fundamental point of reference, a major premise. This is to be found in the answer to “What seek ye first?” If the answer be wrong, he will act consistently but in error. To act consistently and rationally, his answer must be correct. To act consistently, rationally, and correctly, it is my conviction that his answer must be, “the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.” For I share, unreservedly, what Voltaire observed, “All Nature cries aloud that there is a Supreme Intelligence, an Immense Power, an Admirable Order, and everything teaches us our own dependence on It.”

Human Destiny

Conceding the Kingdom to be the major premise, the one from which all lesser premises are deduced, it follows, then, that our dependence on the Kingdom is complete, and that our abiding by It is The Way, the only way. Get off course, as we say, and devolution—another dark age—will assuredly be our lot, this being the Cosmic signal to again get on course. Get back on, and there’ll be another upsurge in evolution—man growing, emerging, evolving in awareness, perception, consciousness. Human destiny!

Perhaps the separation of Church and State—a necessary break-up of power—has been, in some measure, responsible for the popular fallacy that spiritual faith and earthly concerns belong in two distinctly separate compartments. Many people seem to think that it is enough to doff our hat to God on the Sabbath and ignore him during the work-a-day week; they feel that matters of the spirit are for the churches and matters of the flesh for secular educational efforts, that the Kingdom of God and “these things” are in unrelated realms, that a concern for one’s immortal soul is for the confessional, but not for the market place, that spiritual faith and political economy don’t mix.

Man may separate or decentralize his organizations, often to advantage. But man’s soul is of a piece and cannot be “worn on the sleeve” without fracturing. One’s soul, the distinctive feature of being human, is exclusively spiritual in content. What else than spiritual are such qualities as integrity, belief, understanding, tolerance, kindness, charity, humility, conscience, perception, thinking, willing, intuiting? As a pool of water cannot be polluted at any point without pollution of the pool, so the soul cannot be corrupted here or there, now or then, without damage to the whole!

A Spiritual Performance

All human actions, as well as every artifact by which we live and grow and prosper, are spiritual in their roots.[9] “These things” are the fruits; they are dividends, whose nature and abundance will be determined by how the souls of men are structured—not so much on Sundays, or only in the churches, or entirely in the hideaways of privacy but, even more, in the whole scope of every day, and every place, and every thing. Each precious moment gives a living answer to what the soul seeks first, be the firsts fickle, or inconsistent, or expedient—or, happily, the First of all firsts.

What seek ye first? Actions speak louder than words; therefore, as for me, my daily living must testify before nonbelievers as in my prayers, as much during the week as on the Sabbath, in the market place as in a House of Worship: the Kingdom of God and his righteousness.

This view, instead of being shied away from or mumbled apologetically, is announced openly and proudly once we glimpse, if ever so dimly, our place in Creation’s Design, what late-comers we are on the Cosmic Scene, how little we know, and what some of our startling problems are. An awareness of our unawareness helps mightily in recognizing that we are not gods but, instead, Creation’s children, that such consciousness as we possess is but an infinitesimal perception of Infinite Consciousness. So, let me try to view the human situation through that tiny aperture which is mine. . . .

[1] “Any effort to visualize God reveals a surprising childishness. We can no more conceive Him than we can conceive an electron. Yet many people do not believe in God simply because they cannot visualize Him.” Lecomte du Noüy, Human Destiny, A Mentor Book, 1947, p. 133.

[2] This is no exaggeration; nor is it paradoxical to assert that we are unalike in our similarities. For example, most of us hear, see, feel, smell—similarities!—but no two of us hear, see, feel, smell identically.

[3] In my acquaintance with many militant atheists, I have observed that the more intelligent they are, relative to the rest of us, the more rigidly are they addicted to their own systems of thought, and the more intolerant they are of even their own kind. If you want to see “the fur fly,” keep an eye on militant atheists in discussions with each other. Indeed, it was this observation, confirmed over the years, that inspired the deductions set forth in this chapter.

[4] See “Incomprehensible Order,” in my The Free Market and Its Enemy (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965), pp. 50–67.

[5] Human Destiny, op. cit., p. 111.

[6] When men become highly specialized, as we are in the U.S.A. today, it is self-evident that each becomes dependent upon the free and uninhibited exchanges of the numerous specializations. This dependency spells disaster in any society where one’s word is not as good as his bond, where honesty is not in the driver’s seat, where integrity is not the hallmark of the times.

[7] Many, reflecting on the massive intolerance of so-called religious movements, will think this affirmation invalid. Church-going, partaking in The Crusades, or even ordination are not necessarily testimonials to the faith I have in mind. Superstition and political ambition have often borne the false label of spiritual faith.

[8] “Nobody has the right to substitute his own conscience for that of another, for progress depends on personal effort, and to suppress this effort constitutes a crime.” Human Destiny, op. cit., p. 87.

[9] “Production is not something physical, material, and external; it is a spiritual and intellectual phenomenon.” Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966), p. 141.

CHAPTER

IV

The Human Situation

The current preoccupation with man-made spaceships, orbital flights, putting men on the moon—with all the attendant costs, inflationary and otherwise—may be no more than a childish escapade. Science fiction taken seriously as a means of running away from some very practical problems arising on a remarkable spaceship, Mother Earth! For, after all, our home planet is on the rim of a galactic wheel traveling through space at the rate of 10,000,000 miles a day!

The danger is that we look away too long from the task at hand, which is to keep our equilibrium in time and space aboard the planet that bears us. After all, we need a clearer view of what is going on, for we are moving at a giddy pace and know not what lies ahead. . . . This is the Earth we have to come to terms with, which has produced us, and where our future lies.[1]

Conceivably, Mother Earth is spaceship enough for us. For truly, we “know not what lies ahead.”

Indeed, we know very little of what has gone on in the past, and perhaps even less of what is going on now. And when it comes to “what lies ahead,” that is pure speculation. The English philosopher, C. E. M. Joad, helps us to a proper perspective:

There is no reason, at least I know of none, why the universe should necessarily be intelligible to the mind of a twentieth-century human being, and I take leave to remind him how late a comer he is upon the cosmic scene and how recently he has begun to think.[2]

Yet, neophytes that we are, we must do our best to “come to terms [with the Earth] which has produced us, and where our future lies.” To ignore these terms is to risk another of those catastrophic declines and falls of nations and societies which have with wearisome regularity punctuated the historic record. There is a human destiny, if we can discern it, which brooks no monkey business; sternly it decrees: Stay on course or start over again! In a word, the more accurately we can fathom Creation’s Design for mankind, the more easily can we keep on course and know the difference between right and wrong. To be practical in a down-to-earth sense, we have no choice, ever, but to make the effort.

A Theory to Be Tested

If what lies ahead—our human destiny—is pure speculation, what, then, is speculative man to do? It seems that he has four choices: (1) take somebody else’s word for it, (2) indulge in wild guessing himself, (3) respond to superstition or (4) pose what appears to be a sound hypothesis and then test its validity by whatever reasoning and evidence he can muster. Obviously, it is the last method that I prefer.

A hypothesis to be sound must not affront reason. Mine, concerning the Cosmic Design for mankind, began with a reflection on immortality. No, not of the Hereafter kind; that has not been revealed to me. I refer to the here-and-now brand, earthly immortality. For we do in fact immortalize certain individuals who, relative to the rest of us, outstandingly distinguish themselves by the light they give: the Socrateses, the Shakespeares, the Beethovens, for instance. The point is, we can come no closer to discerning the Cosmic Design than to observe those exceptional human qualities which we choose to study, revere, esteem—in a word, immortalize.

As to earthly immortality, few human beings make the grade; only a tiny fraction of the world’s billions ever find mention in the fine print obituary columns. Then there are the much smaller numbers who are granted headlines in the news, most of whom are out of memory by the time tomorrow’s daily is printed. The billions of humanity, with but rare exceptions, return to the good earth no more immortalized than autumn’s fallen leaves.

But now and then a star appears among us, one who lights the way not merely for his contemporaries but for countless millions in unnumbered centuries to follow. The seeking of their tutorship, the turning to their light, is our way of immortalizing them. It is neither shallow fame nor notoriety that induces us to seek and heed; it is their light—the creative qualities which others might hope to develop and expand as their own.[3]

Thus, I infer—hypothesize—that the Design calls for each individual to rise to his potentialities, ardently pursuing those creative qualities which are peculiar to his own person, emerging, evolving, growing, developing, “hatching,” ascending along that distinctive line marked by his uniqueness. The fact that no two of us are remotely similar makes it plain that any enforcement of conformity, sameness, herd-likeness, and the status quo is contrary to the Design. If the emergence of ever and ever higher-type individuals be the Cosmic Design, and if we could see some substantial realization of it, we would get the picture not of a static humanity but of a rapidly expanding variation in talents and virtues. Differentiation!

So much for the hypothesis. All those who seek light from the human stars of today and yesteryear do, in fact, immortalize them and, by so doing, lend credence to this speculation; or so it seems to me.

A Calendar of Life on Earth

But the most convincing support for this concept of human destiny is derived from constructing a calendar of life on this earth, collapsing eons of time into a single year, reducing the life scene to a magnitude most of us can comprehend and mentally manage.

JANUARY THROUGH AUGUST

Traces of life

Local deposits of coal

Bacteria

Traces of worms

Crustaceans

Trilobites

SEPTEMBER

First Ganoid Fish

Marine plants

Mollusks

OCTOBER

First ferns

Insects appear

NOVEMBER

Reptiles

Dinosaurs

Crocodiles

First mammals

DECEMBER, TO 7:00 P.M. OF THE 31st

First snakes

Flowering plants

Mastodons

Elephants

Rhinos

Deer

BEGINNING AT 7:00 P.M. OF DECEMBER 31st

First man

Glacial period

11:50

Cro-Magnon man

11:58

Beginning of recorded history

11:58:30

First civilization (Sumer)

11:59:15

Athens in her glory

11:59:24

Christ is born

11:59:28

Fall of Roman Empire

11:59:51.5

Florence in her glory
Columbus discovers America

11:59:56.6

Declaration of Independence
The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith appears
The Industrial Revolution begins

11:59:56.85

Constitution and Bill of Rights

11:59:56.86

Eli Whitney invents cotton gin

11:59:57.86

Bastiat clarifies freedom in transactions

11:59:58.27

Menger and others discover one of the most important points in economic theory: the marginal utility theory of value

11:59:58.72

Radio

11:59:59.26

Commercial aviation

11:59:59.63

Television reaches the market
The atom bomb

11:59:59.86

Jet air travel begins in the U.S.A.

11:59:59.87

If anything, the giddy pace accelerates during these last 13/100ths of a second.[4]

This calendar, aimed at improving our perspective of the human situation, devotes more space to the last minute than to the previous 525,599 minutes, a diverting factor. But one needs only to think of the twelve months drawing to a close; it’s New Year’s Eve, our TV sets are tuned into the merriment at Times Square; there are only 60 seconds to go!

It’s in these last 60 seconds of a long year that man has begun to think in abstract terms and that the qualities we regard as distinctively human have shown forth to any significant extent. All of the human qualities we would immortalize have manifested themselves during these moments. The last minute has witnessed the dark ages and the renaissance periods, flare-ups of freedom and human slavery, as well as the decline and fall of empires and civilizations. Viewed in this perspective, these last 60 seconds appear as a veritable explosion. Indeed, “how late a comer on the cosmic scene” is man! Little wonder that his “giddy pace” is presenting problems faster than he can comprehend, let alone solve. Can we not now sense the force in Berrill’s calm observation, “This is the Earth we have to come to terms with, which has produced us, and where our future lies”?

Man Must Keep Growing

Countless conclusions can be drawn from a projection such as the above. Two seem particularly relevant to those of us interested in the human situation and political economy.

First, if the evolutionary thrust is toward an ever-expanding variation, an individual emergence in consciousness, awareness, perception, then it follows that “staying put,” retirement, ease, basking in one’s accomplishments is contrary to the Cosmic Intent. Indeed, such relaxed behavior is at odds with the immortality we earthlings confer. The thrust of life, so conceived, is not comfortable; keep on the move, grow, grow, grow, even if painful, is its dictum.

Except for those who can find happiness in growth—how else can happiness be found?—the evolutionary thrust is anathema. In a word, the security-seeking man rebels against his own evolution. This accounts, in some measure, for the general tendency to collectivize, to seek the guaranteed life through socialization. It is quite possible that the roots of communism, socialism, authoritarianism are to be found not in the Kremlin or in a political party but in a stunted or arrested concept of human destiny. If this supposition be valid, it suggests that probing deep enough reveals causes to be other than what they seem on the surface.

For the second conclusion, look again at the collapsed calendar, especially beginning at 11:59:15 P.M., just 45 seconds before midnight. Listed are samples of events that appear to have set the stage for the current giddy pace. The greatest truths of all time were pronounced during these last moments. These truths, together with a remarkable emergence of the intuitive mind, resulted in periods of enlightenment punctuated now and then by the decline and fall of a nation—costly penalties for not heeding the highest moral insights of our seers. Live by the best that is known or start all over again! That seems to be the message.

But the feature of these moments I wish to highlight has to do with the politico-economic situation. Most of us, had we lived right up until 3 1/2 seconds ago, would have been serfs and vassals. Lords of the manor—special privilege posts—were few and far between simply because there was so little pelf to dispense. Individual liberty was the exception; life at the subsistence level was the rule. While we would have been dependent on others, it would have been far more a political than an economic dependency, for economic survival rested mostly on self-dependence. Specialization and exchange were truly primitive by present standards and, thus, a high percentage of children never reached adulthood; those who survived were condemned to poverty. Economically speaking, humanity, as we know it, hadn’t even moved off the drawing board.[5]

To continue the dramatization: from 11:59:15 P.M. to 11:59:56.6 P.M. was but preparation for the politico-economic take-off. During this interval nothing happened in the way of economic betterment because there existed no fuel with sufficient power to put us into economic orbit. Then, 3 1/2 seconds ago, discoveries in fuel improvement began. Specialization was hit upon and, simultaneously, political and economic liberty. The former without the latter would have been wholly lacking in power. But combine specialization with a release of enormous quantities of creative energy—freed by merely removing the political obstacles that had always stood against its release—in a word, liberty, and an unimaginable thrust results. There followed refinements that multiplied the thrust a hundredfold or more: liberté des transactions, as Bastiat phrased it, and, of equal importance, the discovery that the value of any good or service is what others will give for it in willing exchange (liberty). What a fuel! And what a thrust!

Observe what has happened in the last 3 1/2 seconds as this fuel increased in thrust-power. Beginning with the Industrial Revolution, and at an accelerating pace ever since, has been specialization and technology so great that description is next to impossible. Yet, it is absolutely necessary to appreciate how dependent we now are on the new specializations and on the free, uninhibited exchanges thereof. It is a lack of this understanding that makes the term “giddy pace” relevant to the human situation.

One among countless examples: man-made electrical energy. Had every last watt of it been stricken from the earth less than two seconds ago, the event would have been no more disastrous than the removal today of electric can openers. We were not then dependent on that bit of technology. But cut it off now—all of it—and every American would perish except the very few who could exist by foraging. Think of it: no telephones, radios, telegraphs, ships, trucks, tractors, planes, automobiles. The horses and wagons have gone; people are urbanized; businesses by the thousands are computerized. There could be no distribution of gas or coal or food or medicine. Factories, farms, stores, schools, hospitals would shut down, and worse, there would be no one around to reopen them. What a blackout!

Or, take another example of a relatively new specialization: airplanes. Had all aircraft been grounded one second ago, most people would have exclaimed, “good riddance!” But note our growing dependence on this form of transportation and the havoc wrought by the coercive grounding (destruction of liberty) of five airlines. Millions of people were adversely affected.

We Depend on One Another

The above examples are sufficient to suggest that specialization and technology are on an enormous scale. While self-reliance has not diminished in importance, a new dependency has been ushered in and added: every individual’s dependency on others. Were I condemned to live on only that which I produce, I would perish! In short, let others go awry and I am lost. Free exchange of our numerous specializations is an absolute must if we are to survive.[6]

It is plain enough that technology—specialization—as it grows, puts an ever-increasing load on the transmission line: the free exchange mechanism. And as the load becomes greater, more and more of us are increasingly at the mercy of those who, for whatever reason, interfere with the flow. I, for one, would have no concern whatsoever about the extent of specialization could I be certain of free exchange, of economic and political liberty, that is, if willing exchange were allowed full play.

In a society where self-subsistence predominates, freedom in transactions plays an insignificant role. Plundering—feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others—is as unprofitable as it is mean, for there is nothing to rob beyond the trivia owned by the poor, and the taking has to be from one poor family at a time. The temptation to indulge in this base trade is so minor that few people yield to it, and those who do are confronted by the owners; it’s a person-to-person plunder. If the thief doesn’t pay with his life, he certainly will with his reputation: he’ll be branded a horse thief and a crook!

The Necessity for Freedom

But when a society becomes highly specialized, the picture changes so radically that economic liberty is a requisite to survival: self-subsistence disappears, dependence on others dramatically appears, and freedom in transactions (liberty) becomes not only important but absolutely necessary. Why necessary? The choice is simple: exchange or perish. This is self-evident.

But in this specialized or division-of-labor situation, dependent as it is on exchange, the exchange mechanism can no longer be barter, that is, the direct exchange of goods and services for goods and services. Instead, all goods and services are and must be translated into and committed to an economic circulatory system: money and credit, in a word and in our case, dollars. These dollars, the current in the transmission line, are purchase orders on everyone’s goods and services.

The wealth that each of us possesses—our services, goods, savings—are inextricably in the current. To repeat, the ingredients of this economic flow—dollars—are real wealth in the sense that they are purchase orders on real wealth. And our possessions, whatever they are, can be extracted from us by anyone who can tap or otherwise impair the current at almost any point in the whole world-wide transmission line. To take our savings, for instance, no longer requires of the taker that he enter our premises and take our horse or pig or whatever. He can now be an unknown a thousand miles from home and take much that we own by merely tapping or impairing the current.[7]

In a division-of-labor society, there is one other ingredient, along with our items of wealth, which we automatically toss into and commit to the current: our liberty. For freedom of speech, of assembly, of the press, of religion is impossible when economic freedom is lacking.[8] Thus, any person or combination of persons, in or out of government, who can tap the current or impair its flow, can gain access to our goods and services no less than a successful thief, and also take command of our liberty as effectively as any dictator.

So here we are in economic flight, well into orbit and at a giddy pace, with all of our wealth and all of our freedom translated into and committed to the economic circulatory system, that is, to the medium of exchange: money! The total wealth and freedom committed to this flowing current is far too great for any mind to comprehend; yet, we must understand how its very magnitude and its easy availability to predators—innocent or malicious—sets up a temptation that few can resist. Let us assess this changed situation.

Fame! Fortune! Power! “These things,” when achieved ideally, are but aftermaths of excellence. Men with no thought of fortune have enormous wealth freely and willingly conferred upon them for rendering superior services. And others achieve power or positions of influence because their wisdom is sought and their counsel heeded. Fame, fortune, power are, under these circumstances, conferments by others rather than coercive acquisitions by self.

But note how those with no especial goodness, or who render no distinguished service, or who have no extraordinary wisdom to impart, covet “these things”! To millions of ungifted people fame, fortune, power become ends in themselves as if they were the aims of life rather than the dividends.

To repeat, in a self-subsistence, barter-type economy, the covetous can do little more than nurse their envy; there is no way of gratifying it. To mix the metaphors, feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others is unrewarding and, if resorted to, ends in disrepute and disrespect. The temptation is, by and large, uninviting and only the weakest characters yield to it.

Organized Covetousness

But now, in a highly specialized economy, with all of everyone’s wealth and most of everyone’s liberty in the flowing current, feathering one’s nest at the expense of others dramatically changes in several respects:

1. That which can be plucked is not merely a hen, pig, or bag of corn but may be an amount of purchase orders good for millions of hens, pigs, bags of corn. And the wealth that’s there for the plucking isn’t all. There’s also power. When the people’s wealth is siphoned off, so is their liberty to use the wealth. The liberties belonging to everyone, when taken, are converted into the power of the plucker. Successful tapping of the current means wealth and power, and with these go fame. The temptation is so powerful that the “best” people yield to it.

2. This near irresistible temptation has its allies. This process of tapping the current depersonalizes the act of living off the goods and services of others. They who in this manner take our wealth and liberty are unknown to us; they never confront us; they are far away and anonymous and, for this reason, incur no shame as does a small-scale house thief. Further, they have no awareness of having done anything harmful to any one of us personally. We, as they, are hidden in anonymity. Thus, they can carry on their sullen trade with impunity.

But more than with impunity. So little understood is this tapping of the current that approval attends the hocus-pocus; they become known not only as humanitarians but as the benefactors of mankind.

It is easy to see how humanity, once in economic orbit, makes undeserved fortunes, fame, power available to manipulators, be they innocent or malicious, and with enhancement rather than loss of reputation. Never has chicanery been so attractive or so universally practiced. Two examples, among thousands, will serve to identify tapping and impairing of the current.

The head of a corporation and chairman of a private hospital remarked, “But I must appeal for Federal aid; we’re short of beds.” This is how the current is tapped. When asked, “Would you personally use force to collect funds from others?” he replied, “Of course not; I’m no crook.” Here is innocence, for this man thinks of himself as a humanitarian and benefactor.

Long, drawn-out strikes illustrate both impairment and tapping. The unions, having been granted coercive powers by government, forbid free exchange of purchase orders for services. Their dictum, in effect: “Take only us—no one else—at our price, or shut down.” That’s impairment of the current, pure and simple. And while on strike they often receive unemployment insurance—purchase orders on the goods and services of the rest of us, the ones injured by this impairment. That’s tapping not only our wealth but our liberty as well.

It should be plain to any thoughtful person that when all of us have committed our lives and livelihood to the flowing current—an exchange device absolutely essential to a specialized economy—everyone’s best interest is served by the protection of the current against all siphoning, plucking, tapping, impairment of flow. This protection is the role of society’s formal, legal agency—government—this and nothing else. This is what is meant by invoking a common justice, inhibiting and penalizing all fraud and violence, keeping the peace. This can be phrased in other terms: let government try, as best it can, to prevent all unwilling exchange. If successful, all then that remains is willing exchange. In a word, do away with all infringements of liberty, and what is released is human liberty.

Needed, A New Line of Defense

That’s all there is to the device of liberty. It’s simple; it doesn’t have to be invented; it merely awaits our use of it. We are in economic orbit; specialization proliferates at an unimaginable, giddy pace. Nationally, society-wise, where is this taking us? We can only speculate. But of two things I feel certain:

1. If we are to avoid becoming “space trash,” man must be at liberty to live and grow, and to engage in uninhibited, willing exchange—as long as it’s peaceful.

2. As the taking of private property is now far more by anonymous predators than by personal thieves, so must the defenses be altered against predation. A shot gun and a dog, or a good police force, served to scare off horse thieves. But these physical defenses are useless against the new predation. Nothing less than an advanced understanding and practice of difficult human virtues can possibly serve us now. Our exploding specialization and exchange with its increasing interdependence can be protected by nothing less than a pronounced display of sound economic and moral principles. If we are to remain on course, and avoid starting all over again, perfections of the intellect must replace the outmoded physical ramparts. This is the imperative, the price, and the flower of any meaningful growth.

The reader will note that I repeatedly employ the term willing exchange, though it is not in common use today. Let me now explain, and you also may wish to adopt it as a means of clarifying what you want to say. . . .

[1] N. J. Berrill, Worlds Without End (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1964), p. 229.

[2] C. E. M. Joad, Philosophy (A Premier paperback, 1965 edition), p. 9.

[3] This observation inspires a sobering thought: while only one in countless thousands or millions is ever immortalized, only those few who are in pursuit of their light have any hand in immortalizing them. Thus, most of us are neither immortals nor makers of immortals.

[4] I have used the conservative figure of 1,750,000,000 years. Some scientists believe that life had its earthly start as long ago as 3 billion years. Were the latter figure used, the giddy pace would be even more pronounced.

[5] I refer, of course, only to that part of humanity blessed or damned, as the case may be, with industrialization and technology.

[6] It may occur to the reader that people in India, China, Russia survive by the hundreds of millions without economic and political liberty. They do, indeed! Only bear in mind that they have never left the launching pad and, thus, have not become dependent on specialization to any significant degree. Most of these poverty-stricken millions have never been in a plane, a train, or an automobile; electrical energy is unknown to them. An electric can opener? They have no cans to open!

[7] The least understood but the most subtle and effective device for tapping the current is a dilution of the money supply: inflation. Suggested readings: Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White, and What Has Government Done to Our Money? by Murray Rothbard. (Both obtainable from The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.)

[8] For an explanation of this point, see “Freedom Follows the Free Market” by Dean Russell. The Freeman, January, 1963.

CHAPTER

V

Saying What You Really Mean

This bears repeating: there is no respect in which any two persons are identical—physiologically, psychologically, philosophically, ideologically. Nature decrees variation in everything—no exceptions. In the animal world it seems that the more advanced the species, the greater the differences. As to man, this rule also holds true: the more advanced the individuals, the more distinctive are their dissimilarities.

Yet, regardless of this fact, we do generalize about our fellow humans; we attempt to categorize each other, to lump men and women under neat little labels: brilliant, muddled, idealistic, cussed, black, white, religious, inventive, and so on. All generalizations are oversimplifications; nonetheless, we couldn’t get along without them. Communicating one with the other would be out of the question were minute particularization a requirement. Categories are tools of thought and are essential to communicable writing, talking, even to thinking for ourselves.

We cannot dispense with classifications without doing away with communication; we couldn’t even think without them. But we can aid and abet our own thinking as well as our powers to communicate by dropping loose, sloppy classifications in favor of more refined ones. In short, we can try to say more precisely what it is we really mean.

For instance, in the politico-economic area, we carry oversimplification to an absurd extreme by putting all of humanity into two categories: (1) those we roughly think of as on “our side,” and (2) those we regard as ideological adversaries. Such, of course, is the ultimate in erroneous classification. And to continue the error is to promote suspicion, misunderstanding, dissension, hate—yes, even wars. We should, insofar as possible, be done with this nonsense!

The sloppy labels employed depend on which of the two imaginary sides is doing the classifying. Those on one side will call the others collectivists, leftists, statists, communists, interventionists, state planners, welfare staters, Fabians, traitors, nazis—each term used derisively. There is another label—the favorable one these “collectivists” call themselves: “liberals.”

But those who call themselves “liberals” will, with no less self-righteousness, refer to their so-called adversaries as extremists, reactionaries, rightists, profiteers, enemies of the poor, and even fascists. One also hears muttered epithets such as dog-eat-dog, law of the jungle, and the like. These are some of the ways the “lefties” label the “rightists.”

Observe, now, how the “rightists” label themselves: conservatives, patriots, libertarians, individualists, constitutionalists; some will say they stand for capitalism, many for private enterprise. There are other favored labels—terms to indicate where they stand: the rule of law, free enterprise, free competitive enterprise, the market economy, the exchange economy, voluntarism, the profit and loss system, the incentive system, limited government.

What a babel of nondefinitive classifications from both imaginary camps! And who among us is exempt from this looseness? Most—not all—of these labels are meaningless and utterly confusing unless one is aware of the author’s thinking, motivations, prejudices, predilections; they’re no aid to clarity.

Reflect, for instance, on “capitalism” as used by Karl Marx, a term of opprobrium, and then by Ludwig von Mises, a term of approbation. We do, of course, derive some idea of what is meant when “capitalism” is employed by such well-known authors, but most people who use the term are total strangers and, thus, we haven’t the slightest idea as to what is implied. “Capitalism,” on its own, is nondefinitive. We are at the mercy of the definers, few of whom agree.

Or, to further illustrate, take “private enterprise.” To some minds this conjures up privately owned businesses honestly competing for consumer favor, an economic ideal. To others, everything from embezzlement to piracy is suggested, both of these enterprises being quite private.

All politico-economic classifications in current usage have their faults. Nor is it possible to construct a term that is precisely definitive. However, there is one that seems to be an improvement over the others: willing exchange. I have used this term for some years as a means of identifying my own position, and, while little if any adoption by others has been noted, it is significant that no one has taken issue with me for using it. Perhaps if the implications of “willing exchange” were high-lighted, it might be more widely employed. If clarity can be served, it’s worth trying to make the case for its inclusion in our vocabulary.

The first step is to recognize how deeply exchange extends into human affairs. It goes to the very roots of and is fundamental to earthly existence. This is more or less apparent, as related to goods and services, in a division-of-labor society. As stated earlier, specialists exchange—or perish! But more: man, individualistic as he is, remains a social being. Even were an individual in comparative isolation, he can exist only by reason of his heritage—an exchange process in knowledge and ideas extending back to the harnessing of fire, even to the dawn of human consciousness.

So far, so good—no argument. In a word, we can declare ourselves in favor of exchange and arouse no more controversy than announcing a favoritism for life. And for good reason: exchange, without any modifiers, isn’t meaningfully definitive.

Willingly—or Not

It’s at the next step—when modifiers are introduced—that controversy has its genesis. Shall it be willing or unwilling exchange?

I wish to suggest that standing for willing exchange, on the one hand, or for unwilling exchange, on the other, more nearly accents our ideological differences than does the employment of the terms in common usage. It is when using these terms to distinguish ourselves that we can openly, honestly, logically part company, and with considerable clarity. Willing or unwilling exchange makes subterfuge not impossible but difficult; to side with one or the other is to declare one’s meaningful position more or less unequivocally and unmasked; there is a minimum of verbal façade to hide behind.

Willing exchange, uncommon and thus not in the trite or cliché category, immediately provokes reflection, a big mark in its favor. The term has not yet been saddled with emotional connotations, such as those built around free trade, for instance. Further, its antithesis, unwilling exchange, comes to mind, and no one, not even a protagonist, proudly acknowledges he favors that; it does offense to his idealism. Unwilling exchange, at the very least, is a semantic jolter; it suggests to any sensitive sponsor that he take another look at his position.[1]

The Many Facets of the Market

While I use willing exchange and the free market synonymously, the word market, to most people, conjures up no more than a swapping place for produce or the little understood and much maligned stock market; they see in market only crass materialism, no spiritual or cultural qualities, none whatsoever.[2] Frederic Bastiat used the term, liberté des transactions, a good-image phrase but, to my way of thinking, not quite as thought-provoking as willing exchange.

The full antithesis of willing exchange encompasses more than forced or coercive exchange which unwilling so clearly implies. No exchange at all—the absolute prohibition of exchanges—must also be included as the antithesis of willing exchange. One of many examples: the prohibition of exchanging dollars for gold.

If we cut through all the verbiage used to report and analyze political and economic controversy over the centuries, we find that much of it boils down to a denial of willing and the insistence upon unwilling exchange. What were the Crusades but an attempt forcibly to substitute the “true faith” for the beliefs of the “infidels”! Napoleon attempted to substitute his authoritarianism for someone else’s rule, armies and guns being his method of persuasion. The looting of neighboring nations was only a coercive exchange of some people’s property for the invaders’ satisfactions. Robbery, an exchange device, was the first labor-saving scheme. Feudalism was a coercive exchange of the serfs’ labor for the serfs’ and lord of the manor’s protection. Mercantilism forcibly controlled and/or prohibited exchange.

However, it is not necessary to draw on ancient history for examples of unwilling exchange. Today, the fruits of one’s labor are forcibly exchanged to put men on the moon, to pay farmers not to grow numerous crops, to rebuild deserted downtowns. The list of coercive activities that go beyond the principled scope of government runs into the thousands.[3] Nor does one have to be much of a political economist to see that minimum wage laws, labor union compulsions, social security, medicare, free lunches, foreign aid, and a host of other governmental activities are the antithesis of willing exchange.

Unwilling exchange has its genesis in an objective theory of value, that is, in the forcible imposition on the individual of a value standard not of his choice but of someone else’s making. It’s Napoleon’s, or a labor union’s, or a bureaucracy’s value judgment—not the individual’s value judgment—that determines how the individual shall employ himself, what his hours and wages shall be, what and with whom he shall exchange, and what shall be the disposition of his income. Throughout the ages, right up to the present moment, unwilling exchange has been conspicuous, and for a simple reason: most people haven’t known any better!

It was less than 2 seconds ago on our collapsed calendar, not long enough to be widely apprehended, that Austria’s Menger, England’s Jevons, and Switzerland’s Walras, almost simultaneously, made the greatest discovery in economic science: the subjective theory of value, sometimes called the “marginal utility theory of value.” Until this time, no one had ever formulated a valid theory of value. Then these economists, by merely observing how ordinary people exchange when unrestrained, discovered that the value of anything was what others would give for it in willing exchange. The value of a painting, for instance, is whatever others will forego in order to obtain it. That’s marginal utility, pure and simple, which can be only subjectively determined. In short, no one else but you can determine the relative or marginal utility of anything to you.

Here, for the first time in history, the concept of willing exchange unseats Napoleonic behavior—all forms of authoritarianism—and enthrones the individual. The consumer becomes king. Individual freedom of choice rules economic affairs. Whether I plow the fields or pilot a plane, or whether I exchange the fruits of my labor for some corporation’s stock or for a bungalow by the seashore is for me, and a willing seller, to decide; it is no one else’s business! In good theory this is true; in practice it faces opposition.

Liberty Is for Others, Too

Most individuals favor subjective evaluations as applied to self but will, at the same time, insist on objective evaluations as applied to the millions who “don’t know what’s good for them.” In a word, very few will accord that liberty to others which they personally cherish so much. These inconsistent people are the victims of an historical momentum—the darkened millennia of mankind’s past—and thus have not apprehended the newest politico-economic fact on the face of the earth: individual liberty. This slowness to apprehend may, in turn, derive from our poor choice of descriptive terms.

Admittedly, making the case for the use of willing exchange as a means of identifying one’s position, is going to raise the question, “Well, if I am not to single out as descriptive of myself such terms as conservative, patriot, capitalistic, libertarian, free enterpriser, or some other loosely definitive label, what then? Are you suggesting that I call myself a willing exchanger?” Indeed not!

The best answer to “What are you?” is your own name. If one be a Marx or a Mises, whose reputations precede them, the name alone suffices. If one be neither infamous nor famous, and another is interested in the details, let him inquire and listen. A personal experience will help with my point:

I was invited to lecture at a clergymen’s seminar in Texas. Just before the affair got under way, a gentleman proffered his hand, announcing, “I am Charles Hemphill from Cisco.”

My response, “I am Leonard Read.”

“Where are you from, Mr. Read?”

“The Foundation for Economic Education at Irvington-on-Hudson.”

“Oh! You’re Leonard Read!”

My ideological position was unknown until identified with FEE. Immediately, Mr. Hemphill knew of my beliefs, and in considerable detail.

Now, suppose my answer to the question, “Where are you from?” had been, “Right here in Mineral Wells.” That would have given him no tip-off as to my position. This new friend, an inquiring spirit, would have wanted to know how to classify me. My capsule answer, today, would go something like this:

No man can contrive or blueprint a good society any more than any individual can make such a simple thing as a wooden lead pencil.[4] The pencil, or any other artifact, for that matter, is a manifestation of infinitesimal and varied creativities flowing through the minds of men in complex interchange since well before the harnessing of fire. Once the pencil comes into existence, we can, to some extent, observe and write about what took place, the most significant deduction being the unobstructed flow of creativities, that is, creativities in free and willing exchange.

Similarly, the good society is a manifestation, not of a predesigned blueprint—not of a mass blindly following some person’s scheme of organization—but, rather, the natural out-cropping of the efforts of a goodly number of people in pursuit of Truth. In a word, a good society, like a pencil, is a configuration of the tiny wisdoms men come upon when seeking, above all else, what is right and righteous.

Whenever a good society shows forth, we can, to some extent, observe and write about what took place, the most significant deduction being the unobstructed flow of millions of individually acquired wisdoms, that is, flashes of enlightenment in free and willing exchange.

No man set about inventing willing exchange. Instead, some men were in pursuit of Truth. Their numerous findings and insights combined to make of them the kind of men who understood the advantages of willing or free exchange. But whenever the pursuit of Truth has not been uppermost among the aims of a considerable number of people, the understanding recedes to the point where unwilling exchange is believed in and practiced.

No man preconceived and set about designing and writing the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights as a means of erecting a good society. These political documents were really a configuration of beliefs that achieved dominance through a pursuit of Truth quite extraordinary in its intensity. The seeking of Truth was the seed; a good society, perhaps the best that has existed, was the bloom; these documents were but a recording of the beliefs. To confirm this, merely note that when the beliefs changed, the documents became commensurately meaningless.

When we entertain the idea that political documents and laws cause a good society, we are wont, in adversity, to repair and revise the documents and laws. This is not only useless but seriously diverting. For nothing counts but Truth, and Truth comes to us only when we are seeking what is right and righteous. This, to my way of thinking, is the most important and practical of all political facts.

Special Privileges for None

Reflecting on what the pursuit of Truth has divulged, I believe that no person, or any combination of persons, regardless of numbers, or any agency they may contrive—be it a labor union, trade association, or government—has any right of control over any other person that does not exist or inhere as a moral right in each individual. The only moral right of control by one individual over another or others is a defensive right, that is, the right to fend off aggressive or destructive actions. Governments, therefore, should go no further in controlling people than the individuals who organize it have a moral right to go. For, if government does not obtain its power of control from those who establish it, from where then does its power derive? In short, limit governmental power to codifying the do-nots consonant with the defense of life and livelihood, to the protection of all citizens equally. No special privilege for anyone!

This is to say that, ideally, government should be limited to inhibiting and penalizing all violence, fraud, predation, misrepresentation—that is, to keeping the peace. Insist that it tolerate no unwilling exchange and that it never indulge in what it is organized to prohibit. Let government do only this; leave all else, including welfare and prosperity, to willing exchange.

I believe we are fully agreed as to the quality of liberty we cherish for ourselves. The question is, are we agreed to allow this same quality of liberty to all others? If so, the spirit of liberty may be on the move again.

Practicing unwilling exchange is clearly a thing not to do. Understanding what not to do, in this instance, makes clear what to do: willingly exchange.

Since the division of labor, or specialization by human beings, is so intimately involved as both cause and consequence of the exchange process, let us look deeper into the nature and meaning of automation. . . .

[1] The forcible collection of income (taxes) to defray the costs of governmental activities must, when the activities are beyond the principled scope of government, classify as unwilling exchange. But taxes to defray the costs of activities that fall within the principled scope of government are in neither the willing nor unwilling category; they are the payment of an obligation as, for instance, a just debt. See my Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954).

[2] I insist that the free market is a spiritual phenomenon and that its apprehension is a greater cultural achievement than are poetry, music, or whatever. See the chapter, “The Miraculous Market,” in The Free Market and Its Enemy, op. cit., pp. 6–21.

[3] See Encyclopedia of U.S. Government Benefits (New York, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1965), 1,000 pp.

[4] See the chapter, “Only God Can Make a Tree—Or a Pencil” in Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., pp. 136–143.

CHAPTER

VI

The Robot Explosion

Again, using our collapsed calendar, the population in this country, during the last three seconds, has increased from an estimated 5 million to an approximate 197 million. The significant increase had its beginning with the Industrial Revolution. There are now about 40 times as many human beings in the U.S.A. as then.

Far more startling is what has happened to the robot population. During this same period robots have increased at least 135 times! That the robot explosion has had something to do with the lesser population explosion is incontestable. But let us begin by putting the robots in their customary frame of reference: the employment-unemployment problem.

Means are often confused with ends. Thus, when we focus on the employment-unemployment picture, as I do in this chapter, the tendency is to overlook the fact that job-holding by itself is, as a rule, but a means to the satisfaction of wants. The growth of any individual’s physical and mental faculties does, of course, demand exercise, but having a “job” isn’t always necessary for that; these faculties can be and often are more exercised by the jobless—coupon clippers, for instance—than by job holders.

So, we’re not seeking employment merely for the exercise. Human labor for its own sake is seldom our aim; we labor in order to enjoy its fruits in the form of food, clothing, and shelter, or to satisfy other physical and spiritual hungers. And one of the most essential qualities of being human is the urge to be relieved of burdensome effort and freed to pursue more desirable objectives. It is this urge, when men are free, that causes the invention of mechanical slaves—our tools and machines; they free us for something hopefully better. This is also why we specialize and trade.

In a world which has an infinite amount of work to be done, involuntary unemployment is inconceivable—provided the market is free. Unemployment is always the result of price (wage) and other coercive controls. Automation, as I shall attempt to demonstrate, has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Our mechanical slaves—labor-saving devices of all kinds—stem from the recognition and pursuit of higher wants than mere survival; they are the means toward such ends. Let us therefore try to clear away some of the confusion that attends the employment-unemployment problem as related to automation.

Shall Our Robots Rule Us?

Whenever we come into possession of a source of mechanical energy equivalent to one man’s energy, we have added to the work force a mechanical slave, an automaton, a robot.

No question about it, the robots, at first blush, appear to cause unemployment. Take the automobile, for instance. It disemployed buggy and wagon workers, whip and harness makers, stable hands, and a host of others. True, some went to work for the auto makers but, nonetheless, the automobile—automated travel, the product of automation—made for unemployment. So goes the chant.

Regardless of that first impression, we know that robots do not, in fact, cause unemployment. For instance, we have experienced an enormous outburst of automation, yet a high percentage of the population—about 80,000,000—is on the work force; today’s many areas of acute labor shortage refute the notion that automation causes unemployment.

Quite possibly we could settle the whole question in our own minds by merely reflecting on primitive automation: the wheel and a domesticated animal. The ox-drawn cart, instead of putting the owner out of work, gave him higher level work and multiplied what he could produce and thus consume.

Or, consider the story of two men who were watching a huge steam shovel removing earth in preparation for the building of Hoover Dam. Said one, “Think of all the men that shovel is putting out of work!” Replied the better economist of the two, “There wouldn’t be a single person working on this project if all that earth had to be removed by men with their hands.”

Yes, the automobile disemployed buggy workers, but in the same sense that the ox-drawn cart relieved primitive man from doing everything by hand. Failure to see this point leads many people to believe that automation causes unemployment.

If robots are the cause of unemployment, then the telephone—automated communication—must have wrought havoc. The fact? The operating companies employ over 700,000 people, and several hundred thousand are employed by the suppliers. But surely, some will contend, automatic dialing disemployed a great number of switchboard operators. The fact? There are nearly 50 per cent more operators today than in 1940. Why? Because automatic dialing made possible so much more use of the telephone than before. If the present volume of conversations had to be connected manually, at least 1,000,000 switchboard operators would be required. Of course, this is a fictitious “if.” The manual operation would be so inefficient relative to automatic dialing that the volume would require no such number.

If automation caused unemployment, then it would follow that an addition to the work force of any mechanical energy equivalent to one man’s energy—one robot—would disemploy one man. However, this is contrary to observed fact. Today in the U.S.A. each worker has perhaps 135 mechanical slaves—helpers or robots—working for him, each contributing energy equivalent to the energy of one human worker.[1] If each robot displaced one worker, the unemployment figure would be 135 times the present work force—10,800,000,000—an utter absurdity.

If these robots do not displace workers, then where does all this extra energy go? Should we discover the right answer, we will know whether they are the workers’ friends or foes and whether we should try to encourage or discourage their proliferation. Let’s try to find the answer.

My grandfather, recalling the 1850’s, used to repeat, “Many times have I walked thirty miles in a day.” His boast recently came to mind as I flew from New York City to Kansas City (1,100 miles) in two hours. It would have taken grandfather about 280 hours of walking to negotiate that distance. He would have been on his way to Kansas City for thirty-seven days. Only 365 round trips would have taken every day of his long life.

Grandfather, in his early days, had only his own energy at his disposal—just one manpower. Now assume that he had walked to Kansas City, taking 280 hours. I made it in two hours by jet. Isn’t it clear that something has to account for that 278 hours miraculously, one might say, put at my disposal? What made this possible? It was, among other factors, the billions upon billions of robot days that assisted in the construction and the operation of that jet![2]

But these robots did more than give me 278 hours unavailable to Grandfather. There were 100 passengers on that flight, a freeing for other use of 27,800 hours. Further, that very same jet may be good for 25,000 such flights or a total freeing of 695,000,000 hours. And that jet is only one of hundreds of commercial jets. Add all the commercial prop jobs and all the private planes, and the liberated hours become astronomical. Anyway, that’s where some of the robots’ energy went, without putting anyone out of work.

The Uses of Leisure

We must, of course, keep in mind that the energy of robots going into airplanes is but some very small fraction of all automated energy. But the statistics do not matter; what is important is that we understand what these robots do for us and, also, to us. For one thing, they multiply our opportunities for unique, enriching experiences. When taking the family for a drive at 60 miles per hour, speculate on why the trip is possible and what is propelling you at this speed! Think of the situation were only shank’s mare available. Or why you can read a book instead of washing the dishes, or write a poem instead of foraging for food. You will, perhaps, stand in awe of and give some credit to the robots for relieving you of the necessity of sloshing around in the rice paddies or scrounging for rabbits so you won’t starve or, yes, from making buggy whips.

Or even more: perhaps these robots have something to do with your very existence. Less than 400 years ago this land we call the U.S.A. had only an Indian population of perhaps 250,000, certainly not many more. Why so small? It was not because of the Indians’ inability to breed, nor because of unfriendly climate or infertile soils, nor for any lack of natural resources. It was because a foraging economy would not support more than then existed. Assuming no improvement over that type of economy—no robots except some horses—the chances are at least 800 to 1 that you would never have known adult life.

But back to Grandfather: he never saw Kansas City; indeed, through his teen years, he never went beyond his walking orbit. I, on the other hand, have visited Hong Kong, as far from home as I can get; my air mileage alone is now equal to eighty loops around the world. Grandfather didn’t have time enough to do very many things. I have the time to do a thousand times as many things, and by reason of your and my mechanical helpers, the robots. This, of course, explains why timesavers multiply busy-ness—there are so many more things we can do. For good or ill, we are far busier than our ancestors ever were.

Grandfather never talked over a telephone in his life. I reach my son—2,600 miles away—in 10 seconds; I have talked across the Pacific, to Buenos Aires, Gander, London, Mexico, and to every nook and cranny of the U.S.A. If the robots have disemployed me, it is from the limited opportunities Grandfather experienced. There is a better way to put it: the robots have liberated, not disemployed, humans.

Automation Follows Labor Shortages

Robots put people out of work? On the contrary, robots become economically feasible and appear in our lives only as the result of a scarcity of human labor to accomplish all the tasks we want done. It doesn’t pay to do by machine what can be done more cheaply by hand. Businessmen tend to mechanize or automate after, rather than before, laborers have moved away from a particular job.

For example, our operation at FEE calls for three large mailings every two months, requiring 20 workers for two days on each occasion. When we began two decades ago, we trained local housewives for this part-time work and paid the hourly minimum wage of 80 cents. Afterward, the minimum was raised to $1.00 and later to $1.25. Now assume that FEE was on the brink of bankruptcy, that is, at that critical point where a few hundred dollars would tip the scales toward institutional survival or closing, and that the latest minimum wage raised our costs to that point. What to do? We bought some robots in the form of a machine: press a button and it automatically collates, stuffs, seals, and stamps, doing the work of the women, quicker and at lower cost. True, the part-time women lost their “pin money” jobs but the rest of us were saved from losing ours.

Most people will say that the robots disemployed the women, a grave error. The culprit was none other than the minimum wage law—governmental interference with the free market. It was bad law that sent our women back to housework. As these costs of governmental intervention rise year after year, more and more employers are faced with failure. The robots have performed a remarkable and incalculable rescue mission.

There isn’t anything wrong with automation per se. The serious problems cropping up are not because of the robots but because of the people who are blessed with them. These problems, as near as I can fathom them, have their origin in an imbalance between technological know-how and economic, political, and moral wisdom. The former is remindful of an explosion; the decline of the latter amounts to apostasy. This is dangerous, for an increase in the robots we command calls for a commensurate increase in understanding and virtue. It isn’t at all promising to put a chimp at the wheel of a truck, a truck driver at the controls of a jet, or a people in command of a powerful system of robots the interworkings of which they but dimly understand. If we aren’t to be done in by our own creations, what then is it we must understand?

The Fruits of Freedom

The kind of automation that proliferates opportunities as to varieties of employment and, at the same time, multiplies the kinds of goods and services that may be obtained in exchange for the fruits of one’s labor, is exclusively a free market phenomenon.[3] Such automation, as is so often demonstrated, cannot be transplanted into or copied by authoritarian societies. Robots that serve the masses are first the outcroppings of freedom and then of capital formation, and cannot exist where these two absolute essentials are absent. For instance, steel mills have been built in Russia, India, and other socialist countries, the effect on the masses of people being further impoverishment. Automobiles are not being produced for the masses in Russia; only the Commissars can have them. And so it goes. The point of all this is that if we substitute the governmentally planned economy for the free market, the mass-serving robots will tend to disappear until they become as scarce and useless here as they are in the USSR! This is only a part of the understanding that must accompany our increase in technological know-how. There is much more.

As only casual observation reveals, automation spells specialization—in our own case, to a fantastic degree. This, in turn, increases interdependence. Is it not self-evident that all of us—no exceptions—have become dependent on the robots but also on the free, uninhibited exchanges of our numerous specializations? In a word, we are at a level in interdependence that can only be sustained by a highly intelligent, perceptive, and moral people. It should be plain that when we extravagantly automate and do not at the same time know more about, and practice with increasing scrupulosity, the economic and moral facts of life, disaster lies ahead.

One can hardly imagine a societal situation more chaotic than one with specialization on the increase as freedom in transactions is on the wane. As robots increase and augment our specialization, so must there be an increase in free and willing exchange, freedom of choice, the free market. As robots appear, coercion—governmental control and rigging of the market, for instance—must correspondingly disappear. Simple reasoning as well as all the evidence attest to this fact. Yet an alarming number of people in all walks of life, even businessmen, are blind to it.

Unused Minds Deteriorate

For reasons not easy to explain, understanding appears to be decreasing as robots are increasing. Is there, perhaps, a correlation between struggle and sound thinking and, conversely, between easy affluence and intellectual decadence? Of one thing we are certain: our robots confer more and more material satisfactions with less and less effort on our part.

The present trend is toward increasing material affluence in return for decreasing effort. Literally millions of individuals are approaching a something-for-nothing way of life. Obviously, it is difficult to keep mentally rigorous when the robots are doing one’s work. Indeed, mental rigor may be impossible unless the individual experiences a cultural growth commensurate with growth in affluence. This is to say that the individual may vegetate unless he realizes that the purpose of wealth is to release him from drudgery so that he may more vigorously pursue those potentialities and aptitudes uniquely his own. If the robots are to induce our getting away from or out of life—vegetating, rather than getting ever deeper into life—growing, then the late Dean Inge’s observation is indeed prophetic, “Nothing fails like success.”

The struggle to overcome is the genesis of becoming. It is the law of polarity, the tension of the opposites, that spells growth, development, progress; at least this appears to be Nature’s dictum. Men need new frontiers to explore and occupy and transcend, not in the form of politically contrived obstacles—heaven forbid!—but in the form of challenges worthy of the mind of the individual human being striving toward his potential. When the struggle for existence is eased, higher level struggles must be substituted: expanding awareness, perception, consciousness, in a word, difficult, hard-to-achieve, intellectual, moral, and spiritual goals. This is by way of saying that disaster cannot be avoided unless a growth in wisdom be up to and on a parity with a growth in technological know-how.

Obstacles as Stepping-Stones

But here is the rub: material hardship, once overcome, does not and cannot serve as the obstacle, the tension, the springboard for this required growth in wisdom, this flexing and expansion of the intellectual and spiritual faculties. Material hardship is an obstacle supplied by Nature, or, if you prefer, by the environment. But once it is overcome, man is on his own; he has to make his own obstacles in the form of rationally constructed goals. And is not this creating of our own obstacles, perhaps, the profound lesson we should learn from the robot explosion?

The robots presuppose our knowing how to live with them. They, as an auto, TNT, sulphuric acid, a jet plane, are dangerous in the hands of those who do not know their properties, of those who are unaware of automation’s deeply significant meaning. The robot army, in its present dimensions, requires, at a minimum, an understanding of private property, free market, limited government principles—economic and political enlightenment—far superior to any such understanding ever achieved up to this period in history.

Next, we might consider the point of reference we should use to determine whether this explosion has us on or off course. How are we to tell? Growth we are having, but is it healthy or unhealthy? Should we measure our progress by so-called national growth or by individual growth? . . .

[1] The figure of 135 mechanical slaves per worker is believed to be conservative, though there are too many variables to afford proof positive. The electrical industry estimates that 67 KWH’s is equivalent to the energy of a man working an 8-hour shift for a year. More than a trillion KWH’s were generated in 1965, which would mean nearly 200 electrical robots for each person in the work force, assuming that there were no energy losses in transmission and use. Some machines convert energy more efficiently than others; some humans are more energetic than others; so the figure is a guess, at best.

[2] I must not leave the impression that added mechanical energy alone accounts for all material progress. There is gain, for instance, in every voluntary exchange. An idea, a flash of insight, an improved concept of freedom, the abandonment of a coercive practice, an incentive, a spirit of entrepreneurship, the practice of integrity, in short, spiritual activities, add incalculably to material as well as to other forms of progress.

[3] I am omitting any discussion of the robotry that does not originate with free market processes, the kind that can be and is made possible by the coercive collection of funds, the type used to make sputniks and to put men on the moon. Robots originating with socialist processes impoverish rather than enrich the masses of people. For an explanation, see the chapter, “How Socialism Harms the Economy” in Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., pp. 72–81.

CHAPTER

VII

The Measure of Growth

A correspondent from Pakistan asked: “How can one tell whether a nation is experiencing economic growth?” Really, a nation experiences nothing; only individuals have experiences. So, if we would measure growth or progress, it must be with respect to the individual human being, not a nation.

I here lay myself open to an argument no less contentious than Galileo’s when he affirmed that the solar system does not revolve around the earth. He was up against the established faith; I find myself up against Hegel, Comte, and others who have held that only society is real and that the individual is the abstraction. Today these philosophers have followers by the millions—collectivists who have no inkling of the origin of their ideas—those who favor an intervening political apparatus, the planned economy, the welfare state.

Thus, the argument is between those who pose society, the nation, the over-all economy as the prime unit and the small minority who insist that all meaningful comparisons in progress must be made in terms of the individual.

First, let us ask, how would a bureaucracy, with its numerous interventions in the market place, go about measuring economic progress? The task is greatly hampered by the fact that economic calculation, which is founded on market data automatically supplied in a system of free competitive pricing, is denied in socialism; it is impossible.[1] Leading communist “economists” concede the point.[2] Yet, the interventionists are faced with decision-making. And in the absence of economic calculation, they have but one recourse: statistics! “Statistics are, in a crucial sense, critical to all interventionist and socialistic activities of government. . . . Only by statistics can the Federal government make even a fitful attempt to plan, regulate, control, or reform various industries—or impose central planning and socialization on the entire economic system.”[3]

When an economy is controlled by government, prices are not established by competitive forces but by bureaucratic edict. Edicts are written, modified, repealed in accord with bureaucratic judgments. Thus it is that they are compelled to form judgments from their readings of the statistical data they compile. While the ups and downs in employment, standard of living, and many other data are contrived for their use, the usual statistic for measuring economic growth or progress is gross national product (GNP).

The GNP idea is subject to several obvious flaws:

1. If I divorce my wife and hire her as a cook at $50 a week, the GNP will increase by $2,600 annually. How, pray tell, is there any economic growth or progress in that maneuver?

2. If the Defense Department spends $50 billion instead of $1 billion on war and its hardware, the GNP will rise by $49 billion. The larger expenditure may or may not increase our security but, assuredly, it represents no economic progress for you or me. We have a lower, not a higher, freedom of choice by reason of such outlays. To what economic use can a citizen put a battleship, or a nuclear warhead, or a dead “enemy”?[4]

3. Were we to spend $40 billion to tear down New York City, the GNP would rise by that amount, the same as if we were to spend $40 billion to build a new city.[5]

4. The dollars we pay farmers not to grow wheat, or peanuts or whatever, boost the GNP just as do the dollars paid farmers for things produced.

5. GNP—expressed in the monetary unit—enlarges whenever the medium of exchange is diluted, that is, it gets bigger in an inflationary period.[6] Contemplate what Germany’s GNP would have been in 1923 when 30 million marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread.

The Case Against the GNP

What an inaccurate device is GNP, the so-called measuring rod of economic progress employed by intervening governments and so heartily endorsed by many economists!

Why, then, is GNP used at all? Probably, there is no better statistical guide available to an intervening bureaucracy; that is, none more consistent with their gross-economy—as distinguished from individualistic—assumptions. Further, they have come to believe that spending, rather than productive effort, is the key to growth or progress. Were this true, then Germany achieved its peak of growth immediately prior to complete economic collapse. Were this true, we could experience enormous progress by the simple expedient of repealing all laws against counterfeiting! The fact is, exploding expenditures no more measure economic growth than does exploding population!

I repeat, GNP is purely an invention and a device of an intervening government and/or its intellectual supporters. In an ideal free market society, with government limited to invoking a common justice and keeping the peace, GNP is inconceivable. Try to find a GNP figure in Hong Kong, the nearest approach to a free economy in today’s world. There simply is no use for a GNP figure by the voluntary participants in a free market. Market data is related to one’s goods or services, yes; but definitely not a generality like GNP related neither to specific markets nor to individual progress.

GNP is, of course, subject to manipulation, as explained above. Merely spend more, regardless of what for, and up it goes. Thus, the prevailing bureaucracy is enabled to “prove” that it is doing better each year, or better than the Establishment it succeeded.

Now, here is where the mischief enters: If the majority of the citizenry can be sold on the merit of government spending and made to believe that GNP is a reliable measuring rod, then we can easily be led by the nose into the total state—the free market wiped out completely.

Again, why is GNP used at all? Bureaucracies that intervene in the market will never use a valid definition of economic growth or progress for the simple reason that the real thing cannot be measured in mathematical or statistical terms and, thus, is utterly useless for bureaucratic procedure.

Measuring Personal Progress

The real thing—individual economic progress—cannot be measured by objective standards. This is to say that the individual’s economic progress cannot be reckoned by the number of chickens in the pot, by cars in the garage, by cash in. the bank or statements of net worth, or by any or all other standard-of-living measurements.[7]

This is not to say that the individual can have no idea of his own economic growth; it is only to argue that growth cannot be judged by any set of objective standards.

For instance, I am aware of personal economic growth, which is to say, I can now obtain more of what I want in exchange for what I want to do than was the case thirty years ago. Further, the Pilgrim, or an eighteenth-century Englishman, or my father, had nowhere near the choices of employment I have, or what could be received in exchange for the fruits thereof. My choices are abundant compared to theirs.

But please note that what I want to do is forever changing, and that what I want in exchange is in perpetual flux. Like a bird on the wing, I don’t “stay put,” as we say. Even more to the point, I have no carbon copy on this earth; we are all in flux relative to each other.

Perhaps one man’s highest aspiration is to write and lecture on behalf of freedom. He prefers this to other employments, even though the other jobs available to him pay twice or ten times as much. And in exchange he desires above all else a working acquaintance with the best libertarian minds in the world, along with the economic means—food, transportation, and the like—for realization. To him this is the ultimate in economic progress. Who, pray tell, has any right to set a standard for him other than these unusual but, nonetheless, self-chosen goals?

But here’s another fellow who, above all else, prefers to strum a guitar. And in exchange his heart’s desire is “a Loaf of Bread . . . a Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou.” To him this is the ultimate in economic progress. Where is the superman who has any logical, moral, or ethical basis for decreeing otherwise?

The above gets at the crux of the matter: gain or economic progress is individual and subjective; gain cannot be objectively measured, that is, neither I nor anyone else can devise a standard that can accurately assess what is or isn’t a gain to you.[8] It’s difficult enough to know one’s own choice in such matters.

What economic progress is to one individual may very well be regress to another. Examples: There are persons who would prefer an audience with the President of the United States to $10,000, and vice versa; a hoola hoop to $5, and vice versa; a can of imported snails to $2, and vice versa; a Ph.D. or a mink coat to $5,000, and vice versa; a Sammy Davis performance to one by Roberta Peters, and vice versa; a Jeep to a Cadillac, and vice versa; and so on ad infinitum. Objective standards simply cannot be used to measure subjective judgments.

Measuring and determining the total value of these trillions of complex, ever-changing whims, fancies, desires—subjectively recorded only in the minds of individuals mostly unknown to one another—is not humanly possible.[9]

The individual can, if he so elects, generally assess his own economic progress, but he can no more express this growth statistically or mathematically than he can his intellectual, moral, or spiritual gain. Indeed, in these latter categories, no one makes any attempt at such measurement. Unlike the single dimensions of height, weight, girth, bushels of wheat, and population, these other forms of growth, including economic, are multidimensional and—to top it off—in never-ending flux. And suppose one had an accurate measure of his own economic growth; what could he possibly do with the statistic that he could not do as well without it?

Opportunities to Choose

Far more important than fruitlessly trying to measure individual economic growth is understanding what it is that increases the possibilities for progress. Were we searching for a single phrase to express what has to be understood, we could well settle for a freeing of choices. This, however, is as big as “all outdoors.” Reflect on the enormity of what’s involved:

First, freeing the choices—increasing the alternatives and opportunities—for profitably (subjective) employing one’s abilities and properties.

Second, freeing the choices—increasing the alternatives—of the desirable (subjective) goods and services that can be obtained in willing exchange for the fruits of said employment.

Third, freeing the capacities of self in order to partake of the increasing alternatives. To what advantage is a proliferation of opportunities to an oyster, or to a human who can’t get off dead center?

All three of the above developments are founded on exchange—production as much as distribution. And this is true even of self-development, for man grows by exchanging ideas with his contemporaries or drawing on his heritage; he is incapable of going it alone. Thus, exchange is the key economic term.

As set forth in Chapter V, there are two kinds of exchange, broadly speaking: forced exchange as in state interventionism (socialism) and willing exchange as in a free market economy. No society ever has had exclusively one or the other; every society has more or less one or the other.

To repeat what is already implied, economic progress may be judged only by the extent to which an individual becomes capable of taking advantage of an increase in opportunities for productive activity and an increase in what he can obtain for his goods or services in willing exchange.

Such progress, let it be emphasized, originates only in willing as distinguished from forced or coerced exchange. For example, when a robber takes $100 from you, there is no net gain; his gain is canceled out by your loss; this exchange is no more than a coercive swap. Precisely the same holds true when the government forcibly takes the fruits of your labors as a contribution toward any project which does not fall within the principled scope of government.[10] Parenthetically, an intervening government, to be consistent, should tabulate robberies and include the total figure in GNP!

It is clear that there is no gain or progress in forced or coerced exchange. But, as I attempt to explain in Chapter X, all parties gain in willing exchange—in the only way that gain makes sense.

The Discovery and Use of Talent

Let us now ask, why is individual economic progress so important? What, really, is its deep significance? For, surely, it transcends sensual pleasures and satisfactions.

Assume I am a Russian whose employment alternatives may be limited to working in the sputnik factory or on a collective farm and where the things that can be obtained in exchange approximate the contents of Mother Hubbard’s cupboard. Or a Chinese who, employment-wise, has no choice beyond sloshing around a rice paddy, in exchange for which he gets rice and little else.

Next, grant this: I—the Russian or the Chinese, it matters not—possess a potential talent, hidden, latent, untapped. Mine is distinctively unique, unlike that of any other living being. I don’t know what it is myself. I only know that it isn’t making sputniks or transplanting rice. If I understand life’s purpose, one aim must be to see how close I can come during my earthly days to realizing those creative potentialities uniquely mine. Under the conditions outlined above, I should go to my grave—in this respect unborn!

Now, let the alternatives for employment greatly proliferate. They pop into existence every day, one might say. Undeniably, the greater the proliferation the greater is the probability that some one alternative will coincide with that latent, undiscovered talent uniquely mine. In short, self-realization!

It is now appropriate to consider what type of political economy is most conducive to a maximum of alternatives for the employment of abilities and properties and of opportunities for profitable exchange. In what socio-economic climate is there the greatest freeing of choices?

To Defend Life and Property

At the risk of repetition, I believe the first requirement to be a societal agency—government—devoted to keeping the peace, that is, to inhibiting and minimizing all violence, fraud, misrepresentation, predation. Though fully aware of the tendency of governments to get out of hand—the policeman turned plunderer—I’m nonetheless convinced that society requires an organized agency of defensive force to keep the market free of coercion, to secure to each citizen his life and the fruits of his labor. Private property is the outcome of such security, this institution being a basic foundation for any growth in economic alternatives.

Only when life and property are respected is capital formation possible, labor and capital being the tools of production.

When the societal agency is limited to keeping the peace—assuming it does so—there remains no organized force standing against the freeing of creative human energy, a potential always seeking release to some extent in everyone.

When the societal agency keeps the peace, that is, when no one is permitted to lord it over others, there is free entry, free and willing exchange; in short, the free market.

It is under these conditions—never under authoritarian arrangements—that alternatives proliferate, both as to opportunities for the employment of one’s abilities and properties and as to what one can obtain in willing exchange.[11] The flower of freedom!

The flower of freedom, I say. But how, many will ask, can this proliferation of alternatives be taking place coincidentally with a rapidly advancing state intervention into the market? Isn’t there a contradiction here?

While no societal agency has ever been strictly limited in practice to keeping the peace, invoking a common justice, and securing the rights of life and livelihood, and no market has ever been ideally free, the U.S.A. has afforded the nearest approximation to these ideals. This practice of freedom brought an unprecedented outburst of creative activity, and through the persons of self-reliant individuals. What’s going on today can partly be accounted for as a momentum, a mighty thrust from decades when sound principles were generally practiced. The traditions, the ways of dealing with each other, the will to improve, the incentives, and numerous other virtues born in that era combined into a fabric too tough for easy destruction.

But more than momentum: our impressions of what is happening are greatly colored and distorted because, to a marked extent, they derive from what we read in the press or hear over TV and radio. Public media—our eyes for seeing much of the world around us—highlight the news. And what’s news? Not the commonplace—never! But, rather, the exceptional events. A new intervention or control (restriction of the market) is always an exception; it is a break with tradition, with our ways of doing things and dealing with each other. So, it is the substitution of force for willing exchange that is taken to be news nowadays.

Commonplace Constructive Forces

Let’s reflect on the commonplace which mostly we overlook. For instance, the exchange of 30 cents for a can of beans. We take no more note of this than we do the important air we breathe. Yet these commonplace, unnoted actions occur daily in billions of unpublicized voluntary exchanges, with a constructive effect that tends to overcome many destructive, intervening forces.

I repeat, we are keenly conscious of the exceptional destructive forces and only dimly aware of the commonplace constructive forces. This, of course, is very dangerous, for we tend to accept these glaring interventions as causes of the proliferation of economic alternatives for the individual. This type of mistaken correlation leads labor union officials to believe that their coercive tactics raise the wage level,[12] or bureaucrats to believe that their price controls curb inflation. The fact is that coercion is an inhibitive force, never creative. It precludes creative activity by the person doing the coercing as well as by the one being coerced.

Free and willing exchange, on the other hand, can be likened to a world-wide electric grid into which flow the infinitesimal and varied creativities of several billion individuals, resulting in a magnificent total available to all.

Freedom Finds a Way

As a bolt of lightning zigs and zags along the line of least resistance, so has free action found its way through the porosity of governmental restraints. It is the free action, not the restraints, that accounts for all that’s good in the economic situation. In short, free action is stronger than you think, and the interveners are weaker than they think.

True, the tides of unreason and political intervention are on the march; their forces are appalling, and we shudder at the news of them. But we should take stock of the commonplace. Why, 99 per cent of all actions are as honest, as fair, as complimentary to all parties concerned as are the actions between you and your best friend. In a word, the constructive forces are enormous. Were this not true the destructive forces would have done us in ere this, a happier picture than most people conjure up.

Yet, there is a sobering thought: a small amount of coercion wreaks a havoc out of all proportion to its quantity. Imagine, for example, a church social of a hundred people, and all the friendly, constructive, cooperative energy used in its preparation. Now visualize say 1/10,000th of the total energy turned to coercion, a deacon slapping the pastor in the face. Contemplate the ensuing chaos and the effects of coercion are clear. A single drop of some deadly poisons will kill!

Even those of us who think of ourselves as free of coercive tendencies have our moments of falling from grace. We are prone to see such failures only in others. Let us now do a bit of self-assessment. . . .

[1] Professor Ludwig von Mises is generally conceded to be the one who intellectually—though not politically—demolished socialism. He did this by proving that economic calculation is utterly impossible under socialism. Were this not an elusive fact and extremely difficult to grasp, others would have discovered it before him. See Ludwig von Mises, Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 131–42.

[2] Aleksy Wakar and Janusz Zielinski, leading professors of the Central Planning School of Poland, astonishingly for socialists, say, “The best methods of producing a given output cannot be chosen [by socialist methods of calculation] but are taken from outside the [socialist] system . . . i.e., methods of production used in the past, or so-called ‘advanced’ methods of production, usually taken from the practice of more advanced countries and used as data for plan-building by the [socialist] country under consideration.” (Italics mine.) See The Journal of the American Economic Association, March, 1963.

For a clear, brief, simple, and excellent explanation of economic calculation, see Dean Russell, “Play Store Economics,” The Freeman, January, 1964.

[3] See Murray N. Rothbard, “Statistics: Achilles’ Heel of Government,” The Freeman, June, 1961.

[4] This is not to deny that expenditures by government to keep the peace are useful. Defense against destructive actions is to avoid losses; it is but a means to make progress possible; it is not in itself growth or progress or gain.

[5] In Federal urban renewal, for instance, expenditures for razing the old structures are as much included in GNP as are expenditures for constructing the new.

[6] True, the Department of Commerce does publish a figure with a “deflator” (adjustment to a constant dollar) in its monthly Survey of Current Business. But this figure, far from flawless, is noted almost exclusively by professional economists and statisticians. It is the inflated figure that is “fed to the public.”

[7] “True economic growth is theoretically unmeasurable. . . . Concern about economic growth could . . . properly be shifted from pondering meaningless percentages to preserving and perfecting the mechanisms and incentives through which growth is achieved.” United States Steel Corporation Annual Report, 1960.

[8] This is clear to anyone who understands the marginal utility theory of value. For study purposes, see Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Value and Price (South Holland, Illinois: Libertarian Press, 1960).

[9] This is not to say that the complete satisfaction of personal desires is necessarily to one’s advantage. It is only to argue that it is not my role to decide what someone else’s advantage is. Is it to another’s advantage that he be cast in my image, have my likes and dislikes imposed on him? Nonsense!

[10] Bastiat suggested the principled scope in simple terms: “See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.” See Frederic Bastiat, The Law (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.).

[11] The alternatives (specializations) brought into existence by government, founded on forced rather than on free exchange—space hardware, and the like—must be excluded from the list that makes for individual economic progress. When we become dependent on the exchange of our numerous specializations—as is now the case—exchanges must be by common consent if we are to avoid the Russian type of authoritarian state. For more explanation of this point, see Chapter VI in Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., pp. 58–71.

[12] See Dr. F. A. Harper, Why Wages Rise (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1957).

CHAPTER

VIII

The Macro Malady[*]

Had Napoleon been asked to sit atop the Cosmos and manage everything in interstellar space, probably he would have demurred on the grounds that such an assignment was beyond his competence. Yet, he unhesitatingly strove for a role no less pretentious: managing millions of human beings, each of whom is as phenomenal as the Cosmos itself. A master at his specialization—coercion—he was grossly ignorant of the limits of his wisdom. Knowing so much in so narrow an area, and being unaware of his limitations, led him to assume a role for which no man—not even a Napoleon—has any competence whatsoever.

Napoleon was a “macro.” Historically, he and his ilk have been the exceptions. Most people have been “micros.” While victimized by authoritarianism, they have nevertheless been content to wrestle with social problems of the micro sort. That’s the way the past reads to me.

Solving Other People’s Problems

But the picture changes! Millions upon millions of people are now presuming to settle problems that are over their heads—macro problems. This accounts, in no small measure, for our headlong return to coercive collectivism. At least, this is my thesis.

A typical case in point: A noted geneticist, extrapolating population trends, predicts that there will be one billion billion of us on earth no further in the future than the Norman Conquest is in the past—“some 120 persons per square yard of the earth’s surface. . . .”[1] This, of course, is a horrendous statistic! But the nub of the matter is that this scientist has taken on a problem that’s over his head. Such would be the case even were he limiting himself to the problems of our nation at the present moment. This scientist, however, takes on the social problem of the whole world, and some centuries hence! Now, how does this biting off more of a problem than one can chew lead to coercive collectivism? Listen to one of the several suggested remedies:

A program in which everyone is temporarily sterilized (perhaps with a substance added to water supplies or staple foods) will be necessary. This would make positive action, in applying for and taking an antidote, necessary before reproduction.

Mass sterilization! The only way to have a baby is to apply for an antidote, a drug that will restore fertility. Who is to possess this permit-granting authority? Not the scientist; he won’t be here. The answer is that a government official will decide who is or is not to be born. Would an Abe Lincoln be given dispensation of life by this political god? Booker T. Washington? Sam Goldwyn? You? I? The geneticist himself? Shades of 1984![2]

The above, while somewhat startling and sensational, is no more far-fetched than millions of Joe Doakeses who now take on social problems bigger than they are and then turn the problems over to government for solution. Joe Doakes, who votes in favor of a resolution for the government to finance the local hospital, is in exactly the same category as the geneticist—each trying to focus on a problem that is beyond his competence.

We Inhabit a Shrinking World

What has brought on this rash of macro addicts? Nearly everyone trying to solve problems bigger than the would-be problem solvers? Perhaps we can put our finger on the cause of this.

Reflect on my farmer grandfather. The social problems he dealt with—welfare, security, prosperity—were of a size befitting his mentality; he thought in micro terms—that is, he did his thinking in terms of the few individuals with whom he was acquainted and whose needs could be personally judged. Grandfather operated, for the most part, within an orbit of 7–10 miles radius; a trip to “the city,” some 50 miles away, was as much of an occasion as one of my trips to London. Frankly, Grandfather didn’t know of any “need” except what he personally scanned. His communication with and vision of the nation or the world never went beyond a stint in the Civil War, a macro event. Unless a neighbor’s barn were on fire, in which case everyone within seeing distance lent a hand, “need” wasn’t much in evidence except for the now-and-then peripatetic beggar or hobo. In his micro-vision orbit just about every family looked out for itself; self-reliance Was in the driver’s seat. These people knew each other too intimately to fool one another. Pretense seldom reared its head.

What we should keep in mind is the fact that America’s era of micro vision broke all the world’s records for security, welfare, prosperity. Governor Bradford of the Plymouth Colony, when commenting on the results of dropping coercive collectivism, in effect the macro madness of the Old World, wrote:

. . . any generall wante or famine hath not been amongst them since to this day.

Following that momentous decision in 1623, there has been no famine or involuntary starvation in our land for over three centuries. However, we must not, in this analysis, give too much credit to our grandfathers. By and large, our ancestors had no more capacity to think for themselves or to see beyond the surface of things than do their progeny who now people this country. Those who cannot think for themselves—ancestors, or us—must, perforce, respond to their environment.

How the environment has changed! Replacing Grandfather’s little world of micro vision is a brand new world of television, radio, telephone, astro vision, world-wide news coverage in daily papers, magazines, books; we hop into an auto and see America; we board a jet and view the world—in a word, macro vision.

Of a sudden—one might say, without warning—Grandfather’s progeny are constantly having dinned into their heads all the “needs” of all the people on earth. Appalachia is no less an intimate and pressing need today than was a bucket brigade to put out Grandfather’s fire. Distressed areas, backward countries the world over, foreign ideologies and isms, Negro unrest at home and in faraway Africa, all the poor farmers and all the suffering wage earners, prices for steel, aluminum, copper (the list grows), the cotton surplus, downtowns deserted for shopping centers, the threatening efficiency of the Japanese, the vanishing gold supply, the weakness of the pound sterling, getting to the moon “because it’s there,” Russian sputniks—you name it—are problems which most Americans now feel they must find solutions for.

Grandfather had to figure out how to milk his sick friend’s cows as well as his own; I have to contrive ways to get all of mankind out of the mess it’s in; I do unless I can see beyond the surface of things and thus protect my micro mentality from being drawn into tackling macro problems.

Those persons who cannot see beyond the surface of things—their number is legion—take on problems bigger than they are and, as a consequence, push us into the coercive collectivism of the all-powerful state. But we may never understand why this is true, why they act as they do, unless we can effect a self-induced blindness equal to their myopia, until we bring ourselves to seeing no more than they now see.[3] In short, we can explain them only as we put our own vision into reverse and back up to where they are—put ourselves in their shoes.

With this mental gymnastic accomplished, what is it we no longer see? We now cannot see any efficacious results that could possibly flow from thinking in micro terms. A leading labor official put it clearly and succinctly:

Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.[4]

The implication here is clear. The labor official, not being able to see any possibilities in micro economics (the free market), can see no solution to social problems except through the political implementation of macro economics. That he in his blindness refers to free market see-ers as morons is only because the term is stronger than extremists, crackpots, nuts. There is nothing new or strange in this. Most of us have a tendency to regard as slightly touched the connoisseur of any specialty about which we know nothing.

I use the labor official as a prototype only because he expresses his blindness more brilliantly than do the vast majority of citizens who are in his unseeing state. The labor official simply does not see what a few at least dimly perceive.[5] However, the fault may be as much with us as with him. Free market see-ers aren’t able to throw enough light on the matter. Indeed, some of “us” entertain a doubt now and then about the free market being adequate to the occasion—mail delivery, for instance. Or monopoly, or disaster, or education. Who among “us” has no blind spots?

That Which Is Not Seen

There is no man, present or past, who achieves more than a micro mentality. As the distinguished French scientist, Lecomte du Noüy, put it, “Man’s image of his universe is founded on less than one-trillionth of the vibrations which surround him.” In any event, our inability to recall a single see-all, know-all, individual should make this affirmation self-evident. No one of us ever sees more than a wee fragment of the whole universe, of another person, or even of the whole self.

Now suppose a person—such as the labor official—is unable to see how ordinary mentalities focused on micro problems, if left free to act independently of each other, could possibly attend to social and economic problems. Remember, we have put ourselves in his position. Blindfolded thus, we can see no opening to the free market (micro) avenue—none whatsoever!

What to do? Surely, there are macro problems galore. One avenue, and one only, appears open to us; a macro-solving formula. Having only micro mentalities ourselves, we don’t quite know how to solve a macro problem. So, how are micro mentalities to be made into macro-problem solvers? What’s the formula? This is the question we must, in our self-induced blindness, ask ourselves.

Our answer? Thoughtlessly, and for the most part, we turn the macro problems over to government. But, by this process, what is it we really do? We do no more than give the macro problems to micro mentalities with but one ingredient added: a police force! Reduced to its essence, we give micro thinkers the gun power of a constabulary on the naïve assumption that this renders a competency to cope with macro problems. We add only force—not one iota of wisdom—and feel relieved by how intelligently, neatly, efficiently we discharge our responsibilities! This is the view we get when we cannot see beyond the surface of things.

The blindfold having served its purpose, let’s remove it. The fallacy of the above course of action, and the unjustified sense of accomplishment, are immediately apparent when we distill what we have done to micro dimensions: you and me.

Let us say that you are insufficiently secure and prosperous. What can I do to ameliorate your plight? I can give or loan you something that is mine or, perhaps, give you some helpful counsel. Isn’t it obvious that my assistance cannot be increased by forcibly imposing my will upon you? What can I do with a gun that I can’t do better without one? Nothing whatsoever! For, surely, you won’t sanction my employing this coercive means to take from others and give to you. Not in a you-and-me micro situation, you won’t. But if you start thinking in macro terms you will—as do millions.

The Victims of Coercion

No plague has ever destroyed or impoverished or kept from self-realization more human beings than has the macro malady. The pilgrims who starved and died during the three years after landing at Plymouth Rock were its victims. Several million Russians perished during 1931–32 at the hands of macro thinkers—not by men playing God but by men playing against God.[6] Every soldier who loses his life on the battlefield dies of the macro malady—micro men undertaking macro roles.

Any observer can see that wars, the preparation for them, and their aftermath, lead toward the total state, that is, toward more governmental take-over and an increasing number of macro problems. But only those who can see below the surface of things can see that when a people collectivize in a power organization—socialism, authoritarianism, the welfare state, the planned economy—in short, when they “macronize,” wars become possible, indeed, more than likely. Men in a free market, a people who limit themselves to micro problems—acting individually and in response to free choice—do not make war; they create and trade! Just as do the people in the abutting states of Illinois and Wisconsin, so will any people who, when free of busybodies, tend to mind their own business.

We cannot help concluding that the macro malady is but the social and economic manifestation of a vicious circle: macro organization brings on wars, and wars make macro problems which, in turn, compel us into macro organization.

Inflation helps to make the point. This dilution of the medium of exchange is the fiscal outcome of excessive government, that is, of macro organization. And what are the solutions? One control atop another: price, wage, rent, interest, production, exchange, all of which are macro dimensions.[7]

The recent water famine on the Hudson was a macro problem that arose from macro (socialistic) organization.[8] I see no point in extending the list; it is clear, if we focus the eye aright, that micro mentalities, when trapped into macro-problem solving, contaminate society with mankind’s most destructive disease: the macro malady.

A Reason to Be Humble

What, then, is the remedy for the macro malady; how do we get ourselves out of this vicious circle? The answer, it seems to me, is simple enough but, in our world of macro vision, difficult to put into personal practice.

Perhaps the wise Socrates gave us the cue when he said, in effect, “That man thinks he knows everything whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing, but I know that I know nothing.” The first step, it seems, is to recognize that “I”—no matter who—am a micro mentality and, thus, incapable of coping with or solving macro problems. In short, when asked how to solve macro problems, I must learn to tell the truth: “I don’t know.”

The next step is to realize that no other person, regardless of pretensions or the amount of force at his disposal, possesses anything beyond micro mentality himself and is no more capable of solving macro problems than I am. Required is a penetrating skepticism: trust no man beyond his infinitesimal area of competence; hold him to the very little he knows.

When enough of this kind of realistic skepticism exists, we will have no more truck with “pretenders to the throne.” Only then may we begin to see slightly beyond the surface of things, at least beyond what the afore-mentioned labor official can see: the therapeutic power of freedom. True, “millions of private economic decisions made independently of each other,” may not bring us out where he wants us to be; but this micro, free market, individual, freedom-of-choice process will bring millions of people as close to where each of them wants to be as is possible. There is a distinction.

As stated above, the nearest approximation of the micro approach ever practiced broke all the world’s records for security, welfare, prosperity, and the release of creative human energy. The argument that this worked all right in a simple economy but is inapplicable in a complex economy does not hold water. The more complex the economy the more must the micro way of life be relied upon. For, as the complexity of the economy increases, man’s ability to manage it correspondingly diminishes. No self-respecting individual will concede to any other person the competency to manage his own creative life for him. Think, then, how absurd it is to expect a competency to direct the complex arrangement involving millions of lives!

The micro approach—each person operating within the limits of his knowledge and competence—should require no theorizers; its record is so remarkable and profuse. Those of us who are privileged to apprehend its performance know full well that its practice will put an end to macro problems. There’ll be no more water famine on the Hudson, for instance, than there is a famine in chickens, or cornflakes, or mink coats. Only micro problems will remain: each person trying to figure out how best to improve his own little world in free and voluntary cooperation with others. Problems will fit the problem solvers and, thus, find such resolution as each is capable of. When individuals attempt to solve problems over their heads, they are in a wild and dangerous guessing game, like children trying to explain what makes the world go round, and with the power to impose on the rest of us the vagaries of their imagination. But when individuals are at work on problems of their own size, they will be at their best as problem solvers; they will, as we say, come to themselves.

In this attempt to identify the causes that underlie cause, we can well ask, what causes the macro malady? No doubt there are many, but the transmutation of wishes into rights deserves most careful consideration. . . .

[*] Macro: meaning large; comprising the universe; as distinguished from the individual components. Macro economics, for instance, refers to the economy as a whole without relation to the individual components. The term recently has come into popular use for what might otherwise be called the economics of collectivism, the centrally planned economy, the welfare state, with emphasis on national income, social progress, full employment, and the like, instead of private property, freedom of choice, self-responsibility, and other aspects of individualistic “micro economics.”

In earlier times, macro economics had its equivalent in tribal custom, feudalism, mercantilism, and other variants of collectivism.

[1] “The Biological Revolution,” Stanford Review, September–October, 1965.

Predicting the future by extrapolation can easily lead to fantastic conclusions, points out Dr. Henry Margenau, Yale physicist. By projecting the rate of increase in the number of scientists against general population trends we would have more scientists in 2000 A.D. than people!

[2] I refer to George Orwell’s book, 1984, his nightmare vision of England’s future.

[3] For further exploratory reading on this point, see the chapter, “What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen” in Selected Essays on Political Economy by Frederic Bastiat (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1964), pp. 1–50.

Or, on the same subject, read the chapter, “The Broken Window” in Economics in One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt (New York: Macfadden, 1962), pp. 15–16.

[4] The New York Times, June 30, 1962.

For an extended explanation of why the labor official’s view is false, see the chapter, “Incomprehensible Order,” in The Free Market and Its Enemy, op. cit., pp. 50–67.

[5] For an explanation of what one micro thinker sees, refer to my chapter, “The Miraculous Market,” ibid., pp. 6–21.

[6] William Henry Chamberlin was in Russia at the time of this enormous disaster. See his article, “State Economic Planning: Tragedy or Futility,” The Freeman, January, 1966, p. 27.

[7] See “The American Setting: Present and Past,” Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., pp. 10–30.

[8] See “Water Famine on the Hudson,” The Freeman, September, 1965.

CHAPTER

IX

When Wishes Become Rights

Reflect on the “backward” countries in the world; the “distressed areas” in the U.S.A.; the many individuals who are poverty stricken, lame, blind. Then add all the unfulfilled desires and yearnings of nearly 200 million Americans, ranging from better food, housing, clothing, medicine, hospitals, mink coats, and automobiles to putting three men on the moon. What a field for the would-be philanthropist if all these wants were within his power to fulfill!

Let us imagine that you have been offered a magic power to satisfy everyone’s material wishes with no effort on your part. Suppose, for instance, that you had Aladdin’s lamp and could call up a jinni that would confer any good or service on anyone you might choose to help. If you could thus satisfy desires for material things with neither cost nor effort on the part of anyone, would you be willing to assume the role of Aladdin and bestow benefactions like manna from heaven?

Perhaps you are among the very few whose answer would be an emphatic “No!” There are those few who would immediately sense the consequences of such reckless “humanitarianism”: no more farming; the closing of all factories and stores; trains and planes coming to a stop; students no longer studying; a heaven on earth—a veritable Shangri-La! No more problems; labor passe; self-responsibility “old hat”; effort relegated to the decadent past; all obstacles overcome for mankind! These few know that when there is no exercise and flexing of the faculties, atrophy follows as a matter of course and our species disappears—all because everyone is granted riches for nothing more than the wishing!

If this sort of magic were only half practiced, would the result still be bad? “Yes!” answered Benjamin Franklin. “If man could have Half his Wishes, he would double his Troubles.” We may infer from this that if a man’s objectives could be achieved for nothing more than wishes, no good would be served, deterioration would ensue. Struggle, earning one’s spurs, conscious effort, calling on one’s potentialities and bringing them into use are essential to survival—to say nothing of progress. This is crystal clear to a few. But not to the many!

A majority of Americans, today, would accept the magic lamp. For it is obvious that most persons who would gratify a wish at the expense of others would more readily do so at no expense to others. Such wishers are among us by the millions, all in pursuit of something for nothing—effortless wish gratification.

These many Americans have found their magic lamp in the Federal political apparatus, and what a jinni! Aladdin’s lamp evoked a jinni of supernatural powers; but this modern jinni is a composite of quite ordinary human beings and, as a consequence, it relies on the earthly ways of humans. Even so, we must never sell it short; it is unbelievably clever.

Aladdin’s jinni performed only on call; it responded to wishes when requested. This modern American version, on the other hand, displays zealous initiative in that it:

1. invents wishes for people;

2. persuades people that these wishes are their own and, then, actively solicits their gratification;

3. convinces people that these wishes are among their natural rights, and

4. casts itself in the role of “helper.”

The Myth of Federal Aid

Mythology in its heyday never came up with a jinni to equal this.

Golden goals for people to adopt? It was this jinni, not the people of the Tennessee Valley, that initiated TVA with its below-cost pricing. It was this jinni that conceived “social security,” the Peace Corps, and so on.[1]

Further, the jinni insinuates its golden goals into the minds of people as wishes capable of fulfillment. The jinni appears in nearly every community of the nation and in many countries of the world selling its wishing wares. Federal urban renewal projects are promoted far more by the bureaucracy in Washington than by local citizens. Federal largess is urged upon the citizenry. Of course, the reason is clear enough: urban renewal is an integral part of the numerous Federal “full employment” projects required as cover-ups of the unemployment caused by other Federal policies.[2]

But it would hardly do for this jinni to gratify wishes were the performance attended by any sense of guilt on the people’s part. So, how does the jinni dispose of this hazard? Simple! It transmutes wishes into “rights,” and remains above suspicion in this legerdemain. Do you wish a restoration of your decaying downtown? Very well; that wish is a right. Do you wish lower rates for power and light? Presto! The wish is a right. Do you wish a better price for your tobacco, a better job, a better education than can be had by your own efforts in willing exchange? These wishes are now your rights. As one spokesman for the Federal jinni so eloquently phrased it:

Enjoyment of the arts and participation in them are among man’s natural rights and essential to his full development as a civilized person. One of the reasons governments are instituted among men is to make this right a reality.[3]

Except in this political never-never land, it would be absurd to labor the point that a mere wish for material betterment does not create a right to its fulfillment; that is, a wish does not, in any moral or ethical sense, establish a claim on someone else’s property. Yet, transparent as is such double-think, this is precisely what is accepted by a majority of our countrymen. When the intellectual, quoted above, insists that “enjoyment of the arts and participation in them are among man’s natural rights,” he is not referring to a right to attend the opera provided the citizen can buy his own ticket; he means that the citizen has a claim on the property of others to build opera houses and to stage performances for his enjoyment.[4] Labor unions with their right-to-a-job concept and businessmen with their right-to-a-market idea (outlawing competition) are dealing in the same category of false rights. Indeed, this can be said for all of socialism—without exception!

Rights, in the context under examination, are claims. When we say we have a right to life and liberty, we are staking out our claim to them. We find our sanction for this in the self-evident fact that life and liberty are an endowment of the Creator, not of society or the collective or government.

Claims Against Others

But, when people say they have a right to a job or to enjoy the arts or to lower power and light rates or to an education or to a decent standard of living, they are staking out a claim to the fruits of the labor of others. Where rests the sanction for this claim? It simply comes from the notion that a wish is a right.

The absurdity of this wish-is-a-right sanction comes clear if we reduce the problem to manageable proportions: a you-and-me situation. Do I have a just or rational or moral or ethical claim to use your income to build an opera house for me? Or to buy opera tickets for me? Or to construct a golf course for me? Or to provide a “living wage” for me? Do I have a valid claim to use your income to erect my school and staff it with teachers, or finance my church and supply clergymen?

Most people victimized by the magic transmutation of wishes into rights will, in this you-and-me situation, answer the above questions in the negative. What escapes them is that the problem is not altered one whit by adding one person or a hundred or a million of them. And, if it be contended that numbers do matter, then, pray tell, what is the magic number? A majority? Must we not infer from this majoritarian cliché the indefensible proposition that might makes right? Once we accept the fallacy that a wish is a right which, in turn, has to be founded on the error that might makes right, we are led, logically, to the syllogistic conclusion that a wish is might. And what could be less rational than that?

The modern jinni, however, must go on to even greater magic. For it is not adequate merely to dream up wishes for people, to sell them on accepting the wishes, and to solicit the gratification thereof. And more is required than to transmute the wishes into rights. One other bit of abracadabra is a must if the jinni’s image is to remain unassailable: the jinni must cast itself and be popularly accepted in the role of helper. To be thought of as a modern Robin Hood or as a robber of Peter to pay Paul would destroy the whole illusion.

In any community in the land may be found people pointing with pride to some “necessity” the local citizens could not or would not finance, explaining that it was made possible “with the help of the Federal government.” Or, read at random on any subject falling within the enlarging Federal embrace and you will come upon statements like this:

The cost of such machines is so prohibitive that no one institution or company can undertake to build one. In our country, it was only with the help of the Federal government . . . that the cosmotron and its successors were built.[5] (Italics added)

The modern American jinni, lacking supernatural powers, cannot bring down manna from heaven. Being earthly, its manna is earthly in origin. Having nothing whatsoever of its own, its “gifts” must, perforce, stem from what is taken by coercion from others. It cannot be otherwise.

Who Gains from Looting?

The questions posed are: Do these “gifts” qualify as help? Is this jinni, in fact, a helper? Are the “beneficiaries” really helped? If we can answer these questions in the negative, we come out from under the jinni’s spell.

Help is a social term.[6] At least two persons—the helper and the helped—are implicit in its meaning. There cannot be one without the other. The extent to which one is helped is measured precisely by the nature and amount of the helper’s contribution. What is received by the one is what comes from the other. Nothing is altered by the transfer. If the helper’s help is a loaf of bread, the recipient is helped to the extent of a loaf of bread. If the contribution is a rotten egg, the other gets a rotten egg—nothing more or less! Emerson summarized these facts succinctly and dramatically:

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

Property taken without consent is correctly branded as ill-gotten. If passed on to another, the other receives ill-gotten property. Nothing is altered by the transfer. According to moral law, as well as the law of the land, one who takes property without the owner’s consent commits a crime. When such property is passed on to and accepted by another, the other is adjudged an accomplice to the crime.

Property taken without consent cannot be given, for to give is conditioned on and presupposes ownership by the giver. I cannot give that which is not mine. Thus, the jinni’s largess cannot qualify as gifts but only as loot. Citizens who have been pointing with pride at their rebuilt downtown sections or at the new hospital “financed” by Washington or at their subsidized this-or-that should modify their exclamations: “See what we have done with the loot of the Federal government!”

Loot is not help, one who loots is not a helper, and one who accepts the loot is not really helped.

Power to tamper with the volitional faculties of others is, in fact, a dangerous possession. Nor does it matter whether this power be used to restrain these faculties, as in private or political dictatorship, or exerted to relieve the need for the exercise of these faculties, as in private or political welfarism. However strong the compulsion in most of us to modify or improve the lot of other people, if we would avoid causing more harm than good, we must confine ourselves to those aids that stimulate the renewed exercise of the volitional faculties in others. This suggests a rejection of all power to impose, leaving instead a reliance upon in-gathering or drawing power—that magnetic, attracting, emulating force, the power that derives from such self-perfection as one may achieve.[7]

I must not, in picking to pieces the notion that wishes are rights, leave the impression that wishes, of and by themselves, are proper objects of scorn. On the contrary, wishes, hopes, aspirations are among the most important forces motivating human progress, evolution, emergence. At issue here is only the means of their gratification.

We who reject illusory schemes are not denying the good life to others but merely pointing out that these political nostrums can lead only to desolatory dead ends. No good end can be reached by choosing a wrong way.

As we uncover more and more wrong ways, the right way begins to take form. It is the greatest gratifier of human wishes ever come upon—when allowed to operate. It is as morally sound as the Golden Rule. It is the way of willing exchange, of common consent, of self-responsibility, of open opportunity. It respects the right of each to the product of his own labor. It limits the police force to keeping the peace. It is the way of the free market, private property, limited government. On its banner is emblazoned Individual Liberty.

But what looms as the right way has, in the minds of many people, emblazoned on its banner only the sign of the dollar ($) and, thus, is largely rejected because of its supposed materialism. A hard look at this fallacy is in order. . . .

[1] This point is excellently covered by Dr. Emerson P. Schmidt in “The Public Demands . . .?” The Freeman, August, 1964.

[2] For a development of this point, see “How Pressure Groups Cause Inflation,” Anything That’s Peaceful, op. cit., p. 82.

[3] The Commonweal, August 23, 1963, p. 494.

[4] See “Can Opera Be Grand If Socialized?,” The Freeman, September, 1962.

[5] George L. Bush and Anthony Silvidi, The Atom (New York: Barnes & Noble, Inc.), p. 109.

[6] Self-help is irrelevant in this context.

[7] This is not to be construed as an argument against the practice of charity in its best sense: coming to the rescue of those who are at the end of their rope—a subtle, sensitive, secret, highly spiritual experience rarely dwelt upon today, in or out of church circles.

CHAPTER

X

What Shall It Profit a Man?

The advocate of freedom may not command others to share his enthusiasm. But he should do everything in his power to correct the widespread illusion that the willing exchange of the free market is limited to materialistic considerations and neglects the “higher things of life.”

There was no science of economics nineteen hundred years ago—and it would take eighteen of the intervening centuries for someone to discover and describe the marginal utility or subjective theory of value. Yet, we know that at least one individual at that time had a sense of values seldom matched today:

For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Mark 8:36

The reference here is to two distinct kinds of value. To “gain the whole world” relates to economic gain or profit (entrepreneurial, monetary, material); to “lose his own soul” has to do with a spiritual or psychic loss.

So, there are in life two categories of satisfactions: material and mental. It is reasonable to want a comfortable house, health-giving food, adequate clothing, an automobile, and what are called the amenities. And most of us today are in no danger of ignoring this part of life. It is our mental and spiritual growth that we tend to neglect as we busy ourselves making a living and keeping up with the Joneses. Preoccupation with economic profit often deflects our attention from what might be termed psychic profit.

To illustrate these two distinct types of gain, let me relate a personal experience. An Emcee, in his introduction, alluded to “the sacrifice our speaker is making on behalf of freedom.” My response:

Mine is no sacrifice. I prefer having a hand in replacing coercive socialism with creative freedom to having a higher-paying job or even a million or a billion dollars.

Incredible as it may seem to some people, not all values are economic. In this particular instance a psychic gain outweighs an economic gain. But suppose my whole experience were devoid of any economic gain, that I am starving. Then, more than likely, the all-out pursuit of economic gain would take precedence. The choices a man makes for his own life are personal; they are based on his scale of values—his attempt to put first things first. Such a value judgment, of course, is subjective; only I—no one else—can determine what is or isn’t a gain for me. As explained in Chapter VII, there is no objective standard by which individual value of choices can be mathematically or statistically reckoned.

It should be obvious that human action may be motivated by the urge for either economic or psychic satisfactions, or by both. And even though an acting individual may not always be able to fully explain his psychic motivations to the satisfaction of others, he may nonetheless be more powerfully motivated by them than by the cold logic of economic gain. And the final entry in the calculus of the market registers simply how he acts—not why. The why is a matter of his own choice.

When the head of a family buys term or ordinary insurance to provide only for his wife and children in the event of his demise, he experiences only a psychic gain. That action can reward him only psychically, never economically. In this case he exchanges his economic gains for a psychic gain simply because he values the latter more than the former. Were this not true, he would not make the exchange. But, be it noted, this particular psychic gain, as do so many, depends on current or prior economic gains.

Each Gains from Willing Exchange

It has been said that you can’t give anything away. This appears to be incontestable, for in every willing exchange each party gains, and it matters not whether the gain is economic or psychic. No clear thinker questions the point in the economic realm: when the lady exchanges 30¢ for a can of beans, she no more “gives away” the 30¢ than the grocer “gives away” the beans. The lady in her own mind gains (a subjective judgment) as does the grocer. In the absence of such a dual judgment no willing exchange would ever be made.

Nor is the element of gain or profit altered when moving into the psychic realm. When the lady voluntarily contributes $100 to the object of her interest—be it a church, an educational institution, a family in poverty, or whatever—she experiences a psychic gain, a reward, a satisfaction that outweighs the retention of economic gains: the $100. Were this not true, she would not willingly or voluntarily make the contribution. She no more “gives away” the $100 than the 30¢. In each instance she receives in exchange something she values more than the money. Willing exchanges, at the moment they are made, are mutually gratifying and, thus, we err when we think we give something away.

The reason why so many of us, when making a contribution, pat ourselves on the back—overrate our “goodness”—is that we pay no heed to our psychic profit, as if it didn’t exist; we’re blind to it. For instance, when we contribute $10 to the Boy Scouts, we assess ourselves as all give and no take; their gain is our loss or, so we seem to think. We are, perhaps, too exclusively economically oriented. Assuredly, it was to this point that the Gospel question was directed: “For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world?”

But the other side of the profit coin is attended by as much confusion, if not more. While there are many who are only economically oriented, who think only in materialistic terms, there are those who are too exclusively psychically oriented; they seek only psychic gain and with no attention whatsoever to whose economic gain is at stake. Their sense of pity blinds them to economic reality, and, just as certainly, to justice. In a word, there are countless American citizens today who experience psychic gain with someone else’s economic gains. Politicians are forever publicly patting themselves on the back (psychic reward) for the “good” they have done to millions of Pauls, often oblivious to the fact it is done by forcibly extorting the economic means from some Peters. Such one-sided individuals are to be found among all occupational categories—clergymen, teachers, business leaders, labor officials, and many others. This is a tragic error. The good Samaritan, I suspect, would not approve robbing Peter to gratify another’s pity for Paul. He used his own goods to aid the object of his compassion, not the goods of someone else.

But despite current confusions, a moment’s reflection reveals how barren life would be were there only economic gain, that is, were there no aspirations higher than gaining “the whole world.” And suppose the profit motive consisted solely of economic gain, bereft of psychic gain. Of course, this is an impossible concept, as meaningless as one side of a coin without the other. The motivating force, essential to man’s evolvement, springs from a wedding of the two. But we must have an awareness of the ideal partnership if we are not to run amuck!

There are, of course, many opportunities for psychic satisfactions quite apart from the economic, for instance, the kindly concern, a friendly word, the generous sentiment, the thoughtful act. Discussion of this type of psychic gain, about which there is little argument, will be omitted in order better to center attention on the type that is strictly related to the economic, the kind attended by so much confusion.

At the outset, let us not delude ourselves that the contribution of funds for the alleviation of poverty, or the furtherance of education or religion, or whatever, is without the hope of gain. There is no less hope for a gain in such an act than there is when an individual buys equities on the stock market. The hope in one case is for a psychic gain, in the other an economic gain. And we observe many instances where the yen for a profit, psychic as well as economic, becomes avaricious, blinding, irrational, nonsensible.

Giving Presupposes Owning

Confining ourselves to the kind of psychic satisfaction under discussion, it is axiomatic that such gain presupposes and rests upon economic means. Thus, any attempt to experience a psychic gain that in any way frustrates economic production and reward is self-defeating. So-called welfare programs that destroy the economic profit motive must, eventually, eliminate the possibility of psychic gains. Prior to psychic gains there must be an accumulation of economic gains. The saying, “You can’t get blood out of a turnip,” applies here: contributions are never forthcoming from pockets of poverty; noble intentions must remain no more than forlorn aspirations.

Poverty spreads in India, for instance, not because humane sentiments are lacking or welfare programs neglected, but because the way to economic gain is scarcely known. Economically, India is about as profitless as any place on earth. Psychically, it is just as unrewarding. But let us not be too harsh on India; we make our own mistakes. Our philosophers and intellectuals are no more drawing on the lessons our achievements have to teach than are their contemporaries in India.

To illustrate these confusions, let’s take two persons and a welfare problem, designed, shall we say, to cope with a brain malady that fells 1,000 persons annually. The persons, Dr. Doakes and Mr. Roe, are equals in their compassion for the afflicted ones. But here the similarity ends.

Dr. Doakes, a surgeon, has, by reason of experience, research, and skill, become the sole individual who can perform a successful operation. And, further, he has an understanding of how the free market, willing exchange economy functions in the work-a-day world.

The complications of the operation are such that Dr. Doakes can accept but one patient per month. In a word, he can save only 12 lives; 988 must perish. How is this skill of his, an extremely scarce resource, to be allocated? Who of the 1,000 shall he save? Dr. Doakes resorts to the free market method; he sets his price at that figure which will bring supply and demand into balance, let us say, $25,000![1]

Mr. Roe has only his compassion to go on, or what C. S. Lewis termed “the passion of pity”; he has no surgical skills, no accumulated economic gains, and not the slightest idea of how pricing in a free market allocates scarce resources and automatically forces supply and demand toward equilibrium, alleviating poverty and distress. He accuses Dr. Doakes of being interested in saving only the John D’s in order to have an economic gain for himself. Roe’s passion for a psychic gain—the saving of the 988—is such that he will use almost any means which he, in his utter incompetency, thinks will achieve his ends, even to the imposition of a “medicare” program. This will, of course, put the 1,000 in a queue, a further burden on the single surgeon, one that will render him less able to save lives. We have here the basis of a confrontation, the kind that can get pretty mean.

Dr. Doakes tries to explain to Mr. Roe that his high price will attract hundreds of surgeons who shortly will be able to perform the operation even better and quicker than he, and, as a consequence, the price will fall to the point where eventually it will be within the reach of all. To illustrate the free market thesis, he used one of thousands of examples, the case of the ball point pen. When it first appeared on the market the price was $13.95, all the traffic would bear, as we say. This attracted all sorts of competition. Today, ball point pens, far superior to the original, are used by countless businesses all over the country as give-aways.

Confrontations of this sort would fade away were there a wider realization (1) that economic gains must precede psychic gain and (2) that economic gains are possible only in willing exchanges, the free market.

In summary, the entrepreneur who would profitably employ his talents and property is obliged to give consumers what they want as efficiently as possible. But should he choose to elevate the tastes of consumers by giving them more of what he thinks they ought to have, rather than what they think, his greater psychic gain likely would be offset by less economic gain. Which of the two types of gain does he value more? That’s the only question, assuming no coercion. His choice would seem to be strictly a matter of his own intelligence.

Now to cases: More economic profit has been made on the Holy Bible than on any other book. In our own field, the sales of Mainspring by Weaver, The Law by Bastiat, and Economics in One Lesson by Hazlitt each approach the half-million mark, and they continue to return an economic profit. But suppose that, like many excellent works, these teachings were so contrary to the common or popular point of view that their publication meant economic loss. Would this fact, by itself, warrant relegation of these books to the literary graveyard? Is the only test of appropriate human action economic gain? Were this the sole guide to correct action, then the mere utterance of an unpopular view would be taboo. Were psychic gain not also an appropriate motivation, then how could one teach a Sunday school class, or serve on the Little League Board, or loan books to inquiring students, or finance research work that may help others as much or more than one’s self, or do a thousand and one other things that are more of the heart than the pocketbook?

Peacefully and Profitably

From all of the foregoing I derive three conclusions:

First, do whatever you think is right with what is your own, so long as it’s peaceful.

Second, the profit motive—which fuels human action in the free market and functions peacefully in no other setting—operates psychically as well as economically. A psychically motivated transaction is as much “of the market” as one entered strictly for economic gains; and any “market” that accommodates but one of these motivations, and not the other, is less than a free market.

Third, while recognizing that “to gain the whole world” is not the object of life, we also may see that charity does in fact begin at home. Helping others presupposes economic self-reliance of our own. Psychic gains—in the context as previously explained—and economic gains both rest upon the use of economic resources. Human action is both psychically and economically motivated, the ultimate satisfaction from either one being affected by and at least in part dependent on the other.

The quality of being human is of the spirit as well as of the flesh! For man not to “lose his own soul” in satisfying his economic needs, requires a balanced assessment of economic and noneconomic needs—of others as well as of self. A political economy that stresses one to the exclusion of the other has both idealistic and practical shortcomings. . . .

[1] Actually, only now and then does a member of the medical profession go all the way in free market pricing; a considerable amount of their work is done without charge or below cost. Were they to resort to free market pricing the “doctor shortage” would disappear.

CHAPTER

XI

Concerning Self and Others

Poles apart are the philosophies of egoism and altruism. A specious case may be made for each, and both points of view have gained followers among those who believe that there is no alternative but to favor one or the other.

Egoism: “Away, then, with every concern that is not my concern. . . . My concern is neither the divine nor the human, or the true, good, just, free . . . but solely what is mine. . . . Nothing is more to me than myself!” Here we have the credo of the exclusive “I.”[1]

Altruism: This is at the opposite end of the ideological spectrum. There is no “I” in its vocabulary, nor any concern, whatsoever, for self. The right to exist for self is denied; one lives, thinks, acts for humanity, that is, on behalf of others. Here we have the credo of the all-inclusive “they.”[2]

Borrowing a phrase from the Bard of Avon: “A plague o’ both your houses.” For I wish to argue that egoism is no more or less valid than altruism, that neither one squares with enlightened self-interest.

Concern only for others or no concern for others are alike heedless of the fact that man is both a social and an individualistic being. Man can no more exist wholly social—as a hive of bees—than he can live in isolation. Henri Bergson observed: “Vainly do we try to imagine an individual cut off from all social life.” He insists, quite rightly, that there is a little of society in each individual.

Others Influence Our Lives

If we are right in assuming that there is a little of society in each of us, implying that there is a great deal of distinctly individualistic quality in each person, one’s concern for others and one’s concern for self would, logically, have to be apportioned according to one’s dependence on society and to one’s dependence on self. Obviously, a complete and accurate division of these two dependencies would be voluminous, if not impossible. Yet, we can, by simple economic illustration, support the claim that each person should, to act intelligently, look to others as well as to self. We can demonstrate that the individual is faced with twin dependencies which means that concern for others, as well as for self, is appropriate. In short, it can be shown that survival depends on others and self, warranting a dual concern.

To illustrate: Creation, insofar as man has any hand in it, begins with tiny ideas and perceptions—intellectual and spiritual energies—flowing through the minds of individual men; that’s their exclusive routing! Here is a prime dependence that warrants a deep concern for the perfection of self, the individual being the source, the originating point, of all human creation.

However, these creativities, as they emanate from any single mind, are no more than infinitesimal fragments and, by themselves, are meaningless, utterly inadequate to compose any usable wholeness. They’re no more than “trillionths,” and might be likened to thumbnail-size pieces of a jigsaw puzzle which, in its entirety, would be the U.S.A. Wholeness, as manifested in the artifacts by which we live and advance, is in each instance a social phenomenon, the product of the individual coupled with an enormous “otherness.” An individual’s creativities are meaningless except as they unite or configurate or coalesce with trillions upon trillions of creativities flowing through the minds of other individuals since the advent of human consciousness. For instance, a jet plane or a pencil or whatever is inconceivable without the discovery that harnessed fire and without the countless ideas, perceptions, and discoveries that have taken place since that event. Here, also, is a prime dependence—others!

Creativities flow from single minds; without these we perish, so let’s have a deep concern for the single mind—mine!

The extent to which the realities we live by are the products of others can be put in perspective by the owner reflecting on the imperceptible part he has had in the car he drives, or the bread he eats, or the plane he rides. Without others we perish, so let’s have a deep concern for their being at their best.

It becomes clear that having a concern for others is as much in one’s self-interest as is concern for self. Indeed, I am coming more and more to believe that a concern for others, be it founded on the real as contrasted with the specious need of others, leads to the development of self.

We shall, however, let concern for self stand as self-evident; the balance of this chapter has only to do with a concern for others.

A Misplaced Concern for Others

As I view the current scene, concern for others is on the rampage but it is a concern for a need that requires more self-than-other fulfillment, that is, the massive concern we witness is a misplaced concern. For, never in the history of mankind have such fabulous sums been dispensed to all and sundry, at home and abroad, and in the name of need. I am referring, primarily, to the dispensations made by government: tens upon tens of billions collected by force or the threat thereof and handed out willy-nilly and, to a great extent, even urged upon persons, communities, “distressed areas,” and foreign governments. I insist that this hodgepodge—it isn’t a system—is unrelated to an intelligent concern for others. For one thing, a political collective can no more fathom the subtleties of need than can a brainless computer. Such a collective is, by its nature, an impersonal structure and, thus, incapable of being personal. These others to whom we refer are individuals, even as you and I, and a concern for them, to make any sense, has to be intimately personal. It is arrant nonsense to dispose of a concern for the need of others by lumping them into mass: humanity, society, areas, governments, the needy, workers, businessmen, farmers, the aged, and so on. These terms are but recapitulations, the language of the altruists.

While collectivized salvation, as evidenced by governmental extortion and largess, is way out front in its enormity, we note the same trend toward impersonalization on the part of private and voluntary collectives. Merely observe how we tend to dispose of our sense of obligation to others by turning it over to an organization—with some cash, of course. In short, we toss overboard the sensitive, spiritual, rewarding, and upgrading experience of personalization by the executive gesture of writing a check!

Understanding What Is Needed

Why this drift toward impersonalization? Why do we apply division of labor tactics to a concern for others, clearly no more applicable than to a concern for one’s relationships with his Creator? Why not be done with the latter by giving some committee a check with instructions to look after the matter? It would be just as sensible as delegating to government or to a private agency the task of looking after one’s concern for the need of others. Why this deviation from the personal practice of concern?

Perhaps this malpractice originates with a misunderstanding of what constitutes need. By and large, we have become so materialistically oriented that we think that the only need others have is a dollar need. This is, in fact, among the least of all needs. My guess is that our 90,000 millionaires have about as many needs as do any like number in Appalachia! To misconstrue the need of others must lead to a misplaced concern for others. What, then, is the crying need of our times? This becomes plain if we will take note of the kind of people we are becoming.

If you want to know the “kind of people” a person is, so goes the counsel, take him camping or fishing or, better yet, get him slightly inebriated. Under any of these conditions the true self breaks through the thin, “civilized” veneer. But these things are not necessary for a revealing insight. Simply observe how we act in traffic during any rush hour! No other animal will behave so unconcernedly, not to say viciously, among its own species.[3] Here we have real selves showing through. While the veneer of superficial manners hides these egotistical traits in most other relationships, the real selves remain the same, nonetheless.

The Golden Rule

Let’s stay with our traffic behavior to highlight what the crying need is in so many present-day relationships. Once we see what the need of others is in this situation, we can adjust our concern to fit the need, and project the practice it dictates into all human relationships and occupations and activities.

Item: I observed a worker, heavily laden with tools, waiting to cross a one-way road. His plight went unheeded by driver after driver, even though accommodation would not disadvantage following drivers. Then one appeared who slowed to a near stop and waved the worker across the road. Never have I seen a person’s face light up more; he fairly glowed with appreciation and, assuredly, his appraisal of the human lot went from pretty low to very high. It is a fair guess that his own thoughtfulness of others was given a renewed vitality.

But, even more important, reflect on what happened to the driver by reason of that exercise of a concern for the need of another. This use and flexing of the faculty to be kind is as necessary to the making of a soul as is self-responsibility. For thoughtfulness can, indeed, be regarded as a faculty, requiring exercise, as does any faculty; exercise strengthens as neglect brings on atrophy. This little incident, the likes of which we observe all too infrequently, improved the lives of two persons which, in turn, bettered the human situation. But observe how personal it was! It is also important to note that the worker and the driver were, still are, and probably always will be unknown to each other, as well as to me, the one who just happened to look up, catching a glimpse of man playing not to an audience of men for applause and glory but acting in response to a matured conscience. This is as high a guide as man can have on the earthly side of his Creator, a harmony with right principle and righteousness.

Impoverishment of the Soul

Our concern for others, if intelligent, must be a response to an accurate assessment of their needs, that is, their impoverishment. Clearly, impoverishment in worldly goods is much less serious than is soul impoverishment: a poverty in extensions of kindness, thoughtfulness, consideration, recognition as a significant human being—little acts over and beyond the call of legality or tradition or customary duty or fairness or even the Golden Rule. I refer to dividends of the heart that come from unknown sources and, thus, with no expectation of reward or gratitude or even a simple “thank you.” Call these what you will, they are noiseless radiations that snuff out or destroy envy, covetousness, greed, hate, lust, dishonesty, and other soul-seering attitudes. With these out of the way, the soul can grow toward its potential richness, becoming distinctly human.

As suggested above, the greater beneficiary of this process is the benefactor. Indeed, he brings to his own thinking and willing the energizing forces of Creation. In a word, self-development, growth, emergence—life’s purpose—is aided and abetted by discerning the true needs of others, having a concern for these needs, and giving evidence of that concern by those noble actions which shy from applause, return favors, or even recognition.

In the absence of this process—every person with his guard up, distrustful, suspicious, and so on—all education, economic or whatever, is utterly futile. Mad people are uneducable. But once under way, this process causes the beneficiaries to become benefactors themselves.

Anyone seeking or attempting to maintain political power can best prosper at his trade if he affects a concern for others and then convinces the voters that he, given the office, will effectively minister to their needs. If we the people are not to be “taken in” by these affectations, we must know the origins of coercive power and why it is corruptive. . . .

[1] Max Stirner, The Ego and His Own (New York: The Libertarian Book Club, 1963), p. 5.

[2] Altruism has had no more influential champion than the French philosopher, Auguste Comte, who coined the word. Professor F. A. Hayek, in his book, The Counter Revolution of Science (Free Press of Glencoe, 1952), has this to say about Comte: “. . . he even surpasses Hegel in claiming that only society is real and that the individual is only an abstraction.” p. 198.

[3] See final chapter.

CHAPTER

XII

The Origins of Power

The political authoritarian exerts over our lives a coercive power which distinguishes him as ruler and us as subjects! Of what is it composed? From whence does it come? Why, as so often claimed, does this kind of power corrupt the wielder? The wise shun rather than seek it. Why?

First, let us identify the authoritarian. His archetype plainly emerges from the double-barreled definition of socialism: the state ownership and control of the means of production (the planned economy) and/or the state ownership and control of the results of production (the welfare state).

In the planned economy the authoritarian organizes and controls important sectors of our lives by forcibly imposing restrictions on individual free choice. These restrictions bear such names as wage, price, rent, interest, credit, production, and exchange controls.

In the welfare state phase of the socialistic formula we find three archetypes: the looted, and those who share the spoils, plus the authoritarian who does the taking and the conferring.

Controls are simply forcible interferences with individual decision-making, the negation of free choice. We refer to “governmental price fixing of cotton,” for instance. This terminology evades the real issue. It isn’t the bale of cotton that suffers the interference; it is the grower, the ginner, the trader, the weaver, the consumer. Interference with personal choice!

We can clearly identify the authoritarian as one who coercively interferes with the creative side of people’s lives. Of what, then, is such authoritarian power composed?

Individual liberty itself is a power; it is the power to choose, the power of personal decision. But since no man gains liberty by denying it to another, it follows that individual liberty is a voluntary, noninterfering power.[1]

One Chance in Millions

The authoritarian’s power is a substitution of coercive decisions for voluntary decisions. For instance, his power to spend our income is evenly matched by our powerlessness to spend it. When he can set our wage, or fix our hours, or whatever, we are not at liberty to arrive at wages and hours by voluntary procedures. Were we at liberty to offer our own goods and services as we please, the authoritarian would be powerless in these respects. We can deduce from these observations that the authoritarian’s power, while not a one-man exercise of voluntary powers, is a one-man exercise of a coercive power made possible by the loss, for whatever reason, of voluntary powers. It is, in fact, a transmutation of varied voluntary powers of the many into a unitary coercive power. In this sense, coercive power feeds at the expense of voluntary decision-making, freedom to choose, or, shall we say, individual liberties.

This proposition can be expressed as a theorem: the coercive power of the authoritarian increases as individual liberties decrease, and vice versa. The reason for the precision of this power teeter-totter is the infallibility of the transmutation: whatever power of decision the authoritarian has over the people is precisely matched by the people’s voluntary powers that have been ceded or expropriated or, in any event, transmuted.

Whether individual liberties are more ceded than expropriated is anyone’s guess. Most persons are no more conscious of liberty than of the air they breathe; thus, liberty is rarely prized and seldom defended, except in instances of sudden constraints. Let the authoritarian suddenly outlaw the eating of bread, and the people will rise in wrath, claiming an affront to their liberty. But if the authoritarian installs programs which will eventually diminish what we eat by an oblique and a gradual approach—inflation, controls, paying farmers not to farm, and workers not to work, et cetera—few voices will be raised; hardly a person will sense any loss of liberty, any more than one senses each day that he is older than the day before!

Our failure to prize and guard what we take for granted doubtless accounts for the easy transmutation of individual liberties into the coercive power of authoritarians. The avidity for coercive power on the one hand and a careless, inattentive husbandry of individual liberties on the other—a passionate desire meeting little resistance—gives this unfortunate transmutation more the appearance of an osmotic action than of voluntary surrender or expropriation. The desire for coercive power can hardly be called expropriation. Nor can our inattentiveness to freedom of choice and individual decision-making be described as a voluntary ceding of these powers. We might as well call it a transmutation of voluntary powers into a coercive power and let it go at that.

Variation Has a Purpose

If we will keep in mind that the authoritarian’s coercive power is a transmutation of individual liberties and, in this sense, has its roots in voluntary powers, we will see why it is appropriate to refer to “origins” rather than to “the origin” of coercive power. For individual liberties are infinitely varied! Each of us is unique as to creative potentialities and, thus, each of us uses his liberties in unique ways. No two uses of liberty are identical; your choices and decisions are never precisely the same as mine; there are as many variations of individual choice as there are human beings and, thus, as many origins of coercive power.

This fact of variation gives a clue as to why coercive power corrupts the wielder: he substitutes for that liberty uniquely required for his own growth and development a coercive power which he erroneously fancies is for our good. This corrupts him in two ways. First, this inattention to his own evolution must lead, sooner or later, to his devolution; and, second, he makes a fool of himself. By the wildest stretch of the imagination, he cannot in any single instance make a choice for you or me that will mesh with our unique requirements.

Should I Live Your Life?

This latter point reveals yet a third and even greater corruptive influence. Forget the millions the authoritarian attempts to stamp in his own image and, for easier analysis, turn to a you-and-me situation.

Just suppose that I coercively impose upon you carbon copies of choices and decisions unique to my requirements. This would, unquestionably, spell your undoing. Now, if we can demonstrate how this would spell my undoing, we shall discover how the exercise of coercive power leads to “third degree” corruption.

When I make choices and decisions unique to my own requirements, I get a play-back on any mistakes. This is highly instructive, for when I must bear the effects of my follies I often learn not to repeat them. But when I make choices and decisions to cope with your requirements, each decision likely to be wrong, you are the one who gets the play-back. And, as long as my power remains coercive, you are helpless to correct me regardless of how much instruction you receive from the play-back. It is obvious that I will go uninstructed as long as the play-back comes to you and not to me; there is no influence to swerve me from my errant ways; my coercive power shields me from the effects of my follies. What greater corruption than to remain forever wrong! Herbert Spencer put it this way:

The ultimate effect of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools.

The wise do not seek but always shun coercive power. Christ refused political power; George Washington rejected the offer of kingship. Many knowing individuals have done likewise. The wiser the individual, the less will he corrupt himself!

The Prospects Examined

The question arises as to the prospects for liberty on the Coercion-Liberty teeter-totter. Will voluntary powers rise, causing a matched decline in coercive powers, or what?

In the first place, it is unrealistic to expect a marked diminution in the desire for coercive power; indeed, this desire gives every appearance of being on the increase. Robert Ardrey, in what I believe to be an accurate assessment, calls ours “the Age of the Alibi . . . which seeks fault anywhere but in oneself, and damns it as immoral to do otherwise.”[2] A person who thinks of all others as faulty cannot suspect the same of himself; he is led to believe in his own omniscience; all would be well were his way to rule. The number who aspire to this role, who crave the power it confers, are legion. Those disposed to liberty can derive little, if any, comfort from the coercive side of the action.

But what of the other end of the teeter-totter—the resistance-to-coercion side of the action? Short of a happy accident or an unimaginable breakthrough in human mentality, it would seem that liberty’s ascendancy is at the mercy of those few who can, by sheer rationality, portray the practicality and idealism of this abstraction—with the same vigor that most of us will defend against all comers our plot of ground or the bread we bake.

We must ever keep in mind that liberty is not like our plot of earth, or a morsel to be consumed. Liberty is as nebulous as respect and as intangible as intuition or thoughtfulness or spirit, and, withal, as indispensable as any quality of the soul, for it ranks as a reality along with life itself, life-growth depending upon it. Liberty can no more be sustained by physical might, which we customarily associate with defense, than can an insight, a thought, a silent prayer. Liberty’s sole defender is the highly advanced mentality, this state being within the potential reach of an adequate number. The answer to the question, will they arise to it? will probably be found in the answer each of us gives to the question, will I try to arise to it?

Men may, in their thoughtlessness, believe they can do without liberty; they simply are unaware that liberty is indestructible; and that the only question is, how much of it will each recognize, appreciate and, as a consequence, possess?

It seems reasonable that liberty’s chances are enhanced as more of us recognize that the corruptive, coercive power which plagues society is first a take-over and then an inversion of individual liberties—yours and mine; that this evil we loathe has its origin in the ramshackle shape of our own intellectual and spiritual ramparts. With this recognition, it becomes plain that the required defense—resistance to the take-over—rests not only on prizing our liberties but on understanding and clearly explaining why, by all that’s good and just, we should embrace them with the same fervor we do our lives.

When an individual settles on a way of life that appeals to him—be it shallow or profound—he becomes interested in its adoption by others. Deep-seated convictions usually are accompanied by an urge to “do something.” More often than not, the first impulse is to engage more actively in politics and “elect the right people to public office.” . . .

[1] Liberty is a social-relationship term. It comes into use only when there are two or more people—a society. Any action of one which impairs the liberty of another is not the exercise of liberty. It is patently absurd to think that liberty can be composed of the negations of liberty.

[2] See The Territorial Imperative by Robert Ardrey (New York: Atheneum, 1966), p. 37.

CHAPTER

XIII

The Political Way

Action at the political level is not to be disparaged, much less condemned, at least by those of us who believe in a formal agency of society as a means of keeping the peace. Keeping the peace involves a legal codification and enforcement of the taboos, the thou-shalt-nots. Inhibiting and penalizing such destructive actions as fraud, violence, predation, and misrepresentation is one way we have of invoking a common justice. In theory, if not in practice, we rid ourselves of destructive activities that our creative activities may find full expression.

Intelligent statecraft—the fine art of politics—is prerequisite to maximizing creative activities. Good citizenship in an open society requires at the very minimum an understanding of government, its limitations and potentials. Its limitations, and its potentialities, are prescribed by its nature: organized police force. Clearly, such organized force is in no sense creative but only prohibitive. A good citizen must understand what should be prohibited to insure to all citizens equally an open field and fair play, that is, to maintain a situation in which there is no special privilege for anyone.

Those who believe that a human being has a right to his life must, if they be logical, also acknowledge the corollary right to sustain life, the sustenance of life being the fruits of one’s own honest labor. This is the concept of private property. The fine art of politics is knowing how best to preserve private property against marauders, innocent and malicious, foreign and domestic.

Having acknowledged the importance of intelligent political action, I suggest that it is more the intelligence than the political action, per se, that matters. In other words, I do not share the popular notion that political action leads to an intelligent societal situation; it probably is the other way around. By thus inverting cause and effect, millions of Americans insist that political action is fast, sure-fire, and practical, and argue that self-improvement is a slow, tedious, passive, impractical alternative. “We want action,” they cry, as they throw themselves into the political arena to the exclusion of personal upgrading.

Political Paths to Nowhere

This confusion in the ranks of those who oppose socialism and favor freedom has dire consequences. For when they succeed in electing one of their number to political office, they happily bask in their accomplishment and exclaim, in effect, “Well, now that job is done; bring on the next problem.” The chances are that nothing whatsoever has been accomplished; indeed, the societal situation may very well be worsened by what has happened.

If running true to modern form, the successful candidate doubtless avoided any mention of ridding society of such socialistic measures as medicare, Federal urban renewal, payments to farmers for not growing peanuts, the post office, and so on. His tactical credo is to let sleeping dogs lie and, above all, keep away from anything controversial; keep the eye on one thing only: how to get elected! And in these circumstances, the new officeholder, regardless of how sound his personal views may be, is absolutely helpless. The thinking on which all societal change is predicated hasn’t been altered one whit; nothing has changed but the name of the officeholder. Better that socialism continue to parade under socialism’s banner than under the aegis of our own political priests. But more damaging still is the disappointment of those who have given their all to the empty victory. Once they realize their failure, they give up the ghost and join the growing ranks of the pessimists and do-nothings. All because they haven’t been able to discern what is really practical. Those who put the emphasis on political action are impractical to the core, assuming that results are the measure of practicality.

Following the Crowd

There is one simple fact to keep in mind: that which shows forth on the political horizon is nothing more than a reflection or echoing of whatever the preponderant leadership thinking happens to be at any particular time. If the winning politicians are advocating and standing for socialistic programs, count on it, the preponderant leadership thinking is socialistic. And when the time comes that those in high office are standing against all invasions of private property—standing for the open society, and willing exchange—one can be certain that the preponderant leadership thinking is libertarian.

What’s topside politically can be likened to a thermometer. The former registers the preponderant leadership thinking; the latter registers the temperature. If you don’t like what the thermometer registers, you increase or decrease the temperature; you don’t monkey with the mercury. And if you don’t like the politicians and what they stand for, you alter the thinking; you don’t toy with the personalities, that is, not if you wish to be practical.

It isn’t difficult to see why politicians merely register the preponderant leadership thinking. With rare exceptions, those who offer themselves as candidates for public office have getting elected as their objective. I see no reason why they should aim to be defeated. Now, regardless of their personal views, what can they stand for and get elected? They cannot go beyond what the preponderant leadership thinking will support.

To illustrate: I honestly believe that TVA and mail delivery, for instance, should be turned over to private ownership and operation, that labor unions should be divested of the right to use coercion in any form, that medicare, compulsory social security, and a host of other socialistic programs should be abolished forthwith. Were I, at this time, to run for office on a frank and candid representation of these convictions—and I wouldn’t run otherwise—my defeat would be assured. But suppose the preponderant lead-ship thinking were to do a turnabout and to parallel my thinking; then my election would become possible, if not probable. Clearly, the thinking is what counts.

The above explains why we should not give much weight as to how candidates present themselves to us privately. To know what we are going to get from them, once in office, we need only observe the public image they portray prior to election day. And if, to get in office, they will represent themselves to voters as something other than what they are, we can be certain that they will even more corrupt themselves to stay in office. Officeholders are rarely able to conduct themselves in a manner superior to the public representations that put them in their seats. Yes, they can and often do become inferior, but the thinking they championed while campaigning chains them down to it.

Bring Better Ideas into Play

A good society depends on good individuals, rather than bad ones. That seems self-evident, and equally evident is that individuals act in response to what they believe—the ideas they hold. Thus, it would seem to follow that the state of society is but a reflection of the underlying ideas. If we do not like the current socialistic turn of American society, the only practical first step toward correction is to bring better ideas into play. This ought to be our top-priority project.

There would be no point in highlighting the above truisms were it not for this fact: Most of us who complain about the trend in the U.S.A. toward all-out statism insist, quite impractically, on looking for improvement through political action. For example, such activities as “organizing right down to the precinct level,” getting out the vote, and other forms of political contention and competition are at the action level. This action, we must bear in mind, is but the reflection of underlying ideas; and a reflection is utterly incapable of improving itself. To expect real and lasting improvement to originate with political action is like hoping for a lie from one’s mirror. It is obvious that actions—which are, after all, reflections—cannot be bettered except by improvements which precede the actions.

I act in response to what I am. The I-am is the idea side of me; the response part is the action side of me. Thus, each of us is at once an ideologist and an actionist. If we give no attention to improving the I-am part, we are likely to be low-grade ideologists indulging in low-grade actions.

It is extremely difficult for any of us to become aware of, let alone acknowledge, our own shortcomings. We quite easily, often unknowingly, slump into an egocentric rut: We ourselves have rectitude and knowledge aplenty; the faults lie in the world around us! Getting out of these ruts requires changing ourselves; it demands the flexing of imaginative and intellectual faculties which, if long unused, are stiff and hardened. Achieving cerebral activity, once “calcification” has set in, is painful and dreaded exercise, at least at the outset. Having completed their “education,” few have any stomach for the self-improvement venture; not many have what it takes to get off the dead center they are on. This is why countless persons look for solutions to social problems at the hopelessly futile political action level, and why they repeatedly offer the excuse of “not time enough” to labor at the meaningful, practical, ideological level!

When an individual arrives at the point where he realizes that “the proper study of mankind is man,” and that the best man to work on is himself, then he has staked out the area, if nothing more, in which he can fruitfully labor. Man as thinker will take precedence over himself as actionist—which is to say, he will get the horse where it belongs, ahead of the cart!

Improvement of ideas requires a growth in one’s spirit of inquiry. The tools are study, contemplation, humility in the sense of freedom from know-it-allness, reaching out for that which is not yet understood, the kind of reading that’s “above my head,” a mind freed from dead center and unafraid to peer into the unknown and, above all, an indomitable, conscious, prayerful effort to emerge intellectually and spiritually. Ideological improvement is hitched to the eternal search for truth and is on a plane much higher than action and distinctly separate from it. One is substance, the other, shadow.

When we can get it into our own heads that we can play no part in bettering society except as we begin the process of self-improvement, thus attracting others to draw on what we have in store, we’ll be off dead center—and not before.

Logically, we should next reflect on the most natural way to spread ideas on liberty. . . .

CHAPTER

XIV

The Natural Way

The text for a radical idea that deserves deep reflection was written by the late Albert Schweitzer:

A new public opinion must be created privately and unobtrusively. The existing one is maintained by the press, by propaganda, by organization, and by financial and other influences which are at its disposal. The unnatural way of spreading ideas must be opposed by the natural one, which goes from man to man and relies solely on the truth of the thoughts and the hearer’s receptiveness for new truth. . . .[1]

Dr. Schweitzer affronts the foibles of the day; for our contemporaries spend millions on propaganda, promotion, publicity, and advertising—“unnatural” means for creating sound public opinion, according to Schweitzer. In order to investigate the means he considers “natural,” we must contrive a word picture of our predicament. In the broadest generality, it looks like this to me: There is arrayed on the “unnatural” side untold millions of persons. The world has never known an army with as many officers and footmen. The “natural” side, however, can barely muster a corporal’s guard.

But these two sides are not geographically squared off against each other with a few persons here and many there. So intermingled are they that, except as we may hear their talk or see their writing, we cannot tell one side from the other. There is nothing in physical mien or uniform or insignia or political label to distinguish them. They ride on the same trains, fly on the same planes, work in the same offices, live in the same homes, listen to the same preacher, play on the same teams, defend the same flag, vote for the same office seekers. Indeed, the very same person will be on one side now and on the other a moment later. How, then, are we ever to discern which is which from such a melange as this?

The two sides are to be distinguished by tiny, invisible entities that take root in the minds of men: ideas and beliefs. These determine how men act, make them what they are, fix the side they are on. Some of these invisibles are deeply and stubbornly embedded; others come and go willy-nilly but, actually, their absence or presence is decided by the mind’s affinity for or antagonism to them. Being extremely sensitive to the mind’s hospitality, no idea or belief ever takes root unless the welcome sign is out.

The method an individual uses to spread ideas is determined by his attitude toward ideas and people. Unnatural methods of dissemination proceed from unnatural ideas; natural methods grow out of natural ideas. In short, persons will try to spread ideas—good or bad—in ways that are consistent with the good or bad ideas they hold. The tumbleweed has no choice as to how it spreads its kind; neither has an oak tree; neither has an idea. Each has to obey its nature. Man, however, is free to choose the ideas he will accept or reject.

The above, of course, demands an immediate distinction between natural and unnatural ideas. How is the one side to be known from the other? The answer seems obvious: natural ideas are those that are consonant with Nature or Truth; unnatural ideas are antagonistic to what is real and true.

Truth Comes from Seeking

But, the skeptic will inquire, who has the effrontery to claim such wisdom? A sound question indeed, for no one can be said to behold Truth in its pristine purity. This, however, no more means that Truth should be discarded as an intellectual lodestar than that any out-of-reach ideal should be dismissed as a guide to reason. Let us put it this way: whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right may not in fact be Truth, but it is as near an approximation to Truth as one can achieve. This is the human being’s Truth—the best he has to work with. To reject the individual’s Truth as a means to thinking, simply because it may not be the whole Truth, is to allow no credence to conscience—the soul adrift.

Thus, the best I can do in defining natural and unnatural ideas is accurately to report what I perceive them to be. I discover, however, that natural ideas are infinite in number and variation and, therefore, beyond my powers of definition. Natural ideas, it turns out, can be known to me only as that infinity of ideas which do not fall within the unnatural category. What, then, is the unnatural?

It is contrary to the Cosmic Scheme—to Nature, to Truth—for any human being to be cast in the image of any other human being. Any person who believes it is his role to make over others into a likeness of himself is harboring what appears to be the basic unnatural idea. For this idea is the genesis of and is fundamental to countless day-to-day practices that show forth in political and private actions—man lording it over man not only temperamentally but, more often than not, forcibly. I shall not comment on the ways this idea extends itself, the above being sufficient to clarify Dr. Schweitzer’s thesis.

It is often inferred that man plays God when he tries to cast others in his own image. What we must realize is that not even God “plays God.” As Hans Denk (1495–1527) phrased it, “God forces no one, for love cannot compel, therefore is a thing of perfect freedom.” But man is so radically free that he can deny and contradict his Creator. He is free to behave unnaturally. This is precisely what he does when he aims at controlling the creative activities of others or when he attempts to make the ideas and beliefs of others carbon copies of his own ideas and beliefs.

Love cannot compel! The observation is relevant to this discussion and comes clear if, instead of regarding love and affection as synonymous, we think of love as enlightenment. This is the inference I draw from the companion beliefs, God is love and God is light. For me, this reasoning at least reduces metaphysical language to earthly comprehension, to communicable terms, to dimensions from which a conclusion is crystal clear: enlightenment is obviously an attracting, never a repelling or a coercive, force. A natural idea, therefore, cannot be coercive, repelling, compelling. Only an unnatural idea can so qualify!

Now the rub, the rude awakening to all who apprehend and heed Schweitzer’s counsel. We come face to face with the shocking fact that every time we employ unnatural ways as a means of downing authoritarian ideas we add fuel to the authoritarian fire we would extinguish! For this unnatural way of spreading ideas originates with and proceeds from the very same unnatural idea that gives rise to the authoritarianism we decry. For instance, when we argue with and try to convert the socialists—try to cast them in our image—we can be likened to the pot that calls the kettle black. When we lament that “we are only talking to ourselves,” we are in an authoritarian frame of mind: assuming enlightenment on our part and ignorance on the part of others. The inference is that we’d better set straight these poor, benighted souls. When we fret about an inability to insinuate our ideas into the consciousness of others, that fret stems from the unnatural idea which bedevils the world.

The above explains, to my satisfaction at least, why authoritarianism has been gaining by leaps and bounds even though millions of man-hours and millions of dollars have been spent to combat it. The anti-authoritarians have, unwittingly, been employing authoritarian methods and, thus, siding with the authoritarians. Of course, no one employs only the unnatural way of spreading ideas any more than anyone resorts exclusively to the natural way. No one is ever wholly consistent. This is why the same individual is now on this side, now on that. But, assuredly, the unnatural idea and its corollary, the unnatural way of spreading ideas, is the vogue of our time.

Wait to Be Called

The natural way, counsels Schweitzer, is private and unobtrusive, goes from man to man, and relies solely on (1) the truth of the thoughts and (2) on the hearer’s receptiveness to new truth.

The unnatural way, as we see it all around us, is mass and not private; it is obtrusive to the core—in effect: “Believe as I do, Stupid!” The seeking of Truth—learning—is rejected in favor of displaying an arrested growth, that is, peddling what one has learned. The hearer’s receptiveness is not simply ignored; it is defied!

The two ways are as different as the brainwashing of a propagandist and the introspection of a Shakespeare or Goethe; the difference between demanding and offering; between “ramming it down their necks” and making available; in short, the difference between repulsion and attraction.

The natural way should be more readily accepted and practiced than the other: it calls only for the improvement of one’s own understanding and clarity of exposition—a possibility within the reach of many. The other calls for making over others—an utter impossibility.

But the natural way is unpopular because it fails to satisfy our common itch “to do something.” Fie on improving me, run our notions; why, I’m only one person—too minor a project and, besides, what’s the need of it? Give me, instead, mankind to repair; that’s the kind of an intellectual giant I am. All of which reminds us of Napoleon whose own family drove him to distraction, though this in no way shook his confidence that he could manage humanity.

The natural way of spreading ideas calls for more than ridding ourselves of name calling, propagandizing, telling others what to think and how to act, and other obtrusive activity. It suggests that the soul be cleansed of any such notion, for it is clear that we can no more improve another person than we can alter the heavens above. That other person, even as you and I, controls his own improvement which, of course, is encouraged and made less difficult if our own standards are such as to induce emulation. This power of attraction is the sole power we possess for the betterment of others. We should be eternally grateful that this is a fact of life; were it not, all the insanities and inanities of earth could be insinuated into our own minds!

Turn the eye inward, counsels Dr. Schweitzer. Quit trying to make carbon copies of others; give them, rather, something to copy. Seek Truth above all else. Then, instead of obtrusively, destructively, unnaturally shoving, each may concentrate his efforts on pulling—attractively, fruitfully, naturally!

Let us try, now, for some further refinement in our search for Truth. . . .

[1] Albert Schweitzer, The Decay and the Restoration of Civilization (New York: The Macmillan Company, Vol. 1–2, 1923).

CHAPTER

XV

Intelligent Curiosity

The desire for a better environment will always be an aspiration of persons who are maturing as human beings. Maturing persons are those growing in awareness, perception, consciousness. In a word, they are in a life-long search for Truth; they are, as we say, “possessed” of what Aristotle termed intelligent curiosity. This exclusively individual trait, if sufficiently cultivated, is, in my view, the only kind of cultural environment from which an improved society can ever flower.

One of the best descriptions of intelligent curiosity I have seen or heard or read is a painting, the “School of Athens,” done by Raphael before 1509 A.D. It is in the Vatican. But in better condition today than the original is a remarkable replica painted by Waller.[1] Depicting about sixty characters—Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Ptolemy, Euclid, to name a few—the artist has captured that passionate spirit of inquiry which distinguished these people. When seen, studied, and apprehended, the impression remains to haunt and elevate the mind of the beholder.

It is my belief that this intelligent curiosity, on a scale found in the historic record only now and then, makes credible Edith Hamilton’s observation:

This full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of “effortless barbarism” was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before.[2]

People are forever groping, as if in the dark, for some panacea that will insure a good society. Yet Raphael, looking backward 2,000 years, put his finger on an important key: intelligent curiosity! He perceived what so many of us miss, perhaps because he himself was an important figure of the Italian Renaissance, another “little centre of white-hot spiritual energy.” Conceivably, it takes an oversoul to recognize his kind, a Raphael to know a Socrates, an individual steeped in intelligent curiosity to discover that single and elusive path to a good society: intelligent curiosity.

“Ask and Ye Shall Receive”

A society of remarkable quality—for all its defects—got under way in this land of ours. The explanation? The phenomenon of our politico-economic ascendancy, the cause of which has had our best minds guessing for the past century—such achievements as dignity of the individual; man’s right to life, liberty, and to the fruits of his own labor; the freest market the world has ever known; a government substantially limited to securing these rights, invoking a common justice, and keeping the peace; an unprecedented burst of creative energy—these blessings suddenly tumble together, make sense, become intelligible in terms of this one spiritual assumption, the pursuit of truth—that is, intelligent curiosity!

For a confirmation of this point, merely reflect on your own reading of early American lives. Madison, Jay, and Hamilton were but three of the well-knowns among hundreds upon hundreds who, above all else, were passionately in search of what is right. If they weren’t literally heeding the Biblical injunction, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness,” they were at least paraphrasing it: “Seek ye first Truth, and rightly report and stand for what is perceived.” What about the promise “and these things shall be added unto you”? Never more than in America has mankind had such an affirmation of the rightness of this spiritual assumption.

Variation Leads to Progress

Is there anything mysterious about the assumption that the pursuit of truth is the genesis of a good society? Yes, of course. If the pencil your child uses had the intelligence to write its own story, it would repeat, “Only God can make a tree.” It would then add, “Since only God can make a tree, I insist that only God can make me.” Then, could the pencil carry these assertions to their logical conclusion, it would pronounce, “Only God can make a good society.”

If one can accept the mysteries of life as the facts given, then a good society as the flower of intelligent curiosity falls within human comprehension: the little wisdoms, the tiny enlightenments that result from the individualistic pursuit of truth spontaneously and mysteriously configurate as do molecules to form protoplasm, or a tree, or whatever. They coalesce as do infinitesimal human creativities to make a pencil, or a jet plane, or any other product—provided they are free to flow!

Through Trial and Error

Do you mean, some will ask, that you would risk such a precious possession as human freedom, without which a good society is impossible, to men pursuing truth in their own random ways? Why, some men might mistakenly conclude that state socialism is consonant with truth. My own answer is that I shall trust freedom and expect a good society from no other arrangement or form of human activity. We should ever bear in mind two facts: (1) Individual freedom comes into consciousness as a prime human value only in the presence of light; the “dark ages” aptly characterizes its absence. And (2) light or enlightenment is generated only when the spirit of inquiry is turned on. Anyone who expects the emergence of the blessings of freedom without exposures to intense inquiry and light has, to say the least, misread history.

Intelligent curiosity must not be misconstrued. It is never to be associated with the kind of idle curiosity that kills cats and, most particularly, not with the kind financed by funds forcibly taken from others. This latter accounts for sputniks, moon shots, mis-education—freedom gives way to authoritarianism, light dims into darkness, the environment changes for the worse.

Intelligent curiosity is as individualistic as thought. It is as sensitive as intuition and requires meticulous husbandry; any prolonged inattention and it is gone forever, never to be recovered by the individual. Like any faculty, it atrophies if unused. Its hallmark is the incessantly probing mind, examining into what’s right and just. Its companion is integrity, for intelligent curiosity cannot and does not live with inaccurate reporting of what one’s conscience dictates as right. Freedom and a good society appear to be the fruits of intelligent curiosity and one wonders if they can ever be had without it.

Good methodology! How important it is! Indeed, I am convinced that if all of us were employing the right methods we would do away with most of our ideological controversy. For were everyone concentrating on self-improvement, there would be no meddlers among us. And without meddlers there could be no socialism. So let us try to clinch the argument for personal upgrading. . . .

[1] Waller’s masterpiece is in the Panhellenic Room of the Levere Memorial Temple, on the Northwestern University Campus, Evanston, Illinois. This Temple (Sigma Alpha Epsilon) is open to the public.

[2] Edith Hamilton, The Greek Way to Western Civilization (New York: New American Library. A Mentor Book), p. 7.

CHAPTER

XVI

Darkness Recedes as Light Increases

As we here approach the conclusion of the case for self-improvement. I am reminded of the last half hour of a FEE Seminar; I imagine my readers to be in about the same state of doubt or skepticism as the sixty intelligent, searching, seminar participants. Few if any questions remain about the free market, private property, limited government philosophy; in fact, there is much enthusiasm for this way of life—it is the practice of freedom as well as the Golden Rule in its day-to-day economic manifestations. And that’s good enough for these inquiring spirits.

However, as you conclude the 20-hour session with some thoughts on methodology, you detect an uneasiness. In spite of your best efforts, the old, old question still persists: “But, what do we do now?” Your unfamiliar thesis that advancing this way of life is not a selling or a marketing but, rather, a learning problem, is greeted with something less than all-out approval; you sense in each hesitant, half-hearted assent a skepticism that won’t down. “Do you really mean to imply, dear teacher, that my part in repairing the world’s woes is limited to improving my own understanding and expositions? That there is nothing more important for me to do than to upgrade me? No friends, no associates, or neighbors to set straight?”

In any event, your ministrations and the quizzical reactions leave the uncomfortable feeling that you are near the end of your explanatory rope. As you ponder what to do—in the dark, so to speak—it occurs to you that the use of symbolism may help to clarify your theory as to right method. Turn off the lights, reducing the lecture room to darkness. Then light a candle. Call attention to the obvious fact that every eye is on that tiny glow in the darkness. Now, challenge anyone to increase the total light by peddling or selling or marketing or distributing it. There’ll be no takers! With your point thus defined, suggest that the single light may help some other to locate and light a candle of his own. If only one other succeeds, the light in the room will be increased 100 per cent; if all find and light their own candles, each can then read a book, perhaps even write one! Now, repeat an inscription found on an old tombstone in Scotland: “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.”

Assuming the use of a 60-watt incandescent candle, fitted with an electronic dimmer, increase the light from a barely perceptible level to its full brilliance, calling attention to the fact that darkness cannot be pushed or beaten back but recedes easily and naturally as the candle power increases. Of one thing you can be certain: each participant, for the rest of his conscious days, will remember the wee light becoming a brilliant light in that darkened room. And, should some of them have initial doubts about candle-power light being analogous to enlightenment, this dramatization will start them reflecting on the matter; and the more reflection, the more similarly structured will light and enlightenment seem.

The thoughtful person will discover that both are radiations which exert an energizing force, as does a magnet. Eyes that can see and minds that can perceive are energized by light whether it be of the candle-power variety or of the wisdom kind. The reason for this seems obvious: It is light that brings forth the eye. Living forms in the ocean’s depth, or subterranean animals—those committed to utter darkness—have no eyes. Powers of perception increase in the presence of light! When development of these faculties depends on light, it is in the nature of the evolutive process that the eye is attracted to that which creates it.

I may be able to see a beacon light but it cannot see me. You may perceive the wisdom of a Shakespeare, but that wisdom is unaware of and indifferent to you. The radiating force of a magnet is unseeing. And so is the radiating force of any light you or I may possess. Our lights can no more find their way into the consciousness of another than a candle’s light can be found in two places at the same time. Light cannot see; it can only be seen! Thus, another may light his own candle by the light of yours, but that is all! Isn’t it clear that unless your candle is aglow, no others can be lit from it?

Let’s assume, now, that your light does in fact shine forth. Are you fretful as to who will see it? One does well to forget this tantalizing and diverting thought. For, if a person begins to focus on and find out the effect he is having, you can count on it, his answers will be wrong. Furthermore, to the extent that he becomes merely results-minded, he will send scurrying the real seekers of truth; they’ll note that his eye isn’t cast aright and will cross him off as “not worth the candle.” The ones who count will only mutter to themselves something about “a phoney” and go on their quiet quest of those rare souls who are trying only to brighten their own lights. And how well advised they are![1]

The rare souls, be it noted, those who concentrate on increasing their own candle power, and look not for praise among men, experience an inner satisfaction and let it go at that. Having acquired this power of creativity is gratification enough. Indeed, is there any greater richness than this?

Enlightenment or Regression

The idea of employing the term light to mean enlightenment and darkness to symbolize ignorance is not new; such usage may well go back to the dawn of human consciousness. Light, in this sense, is used time and again in the Bible:

Thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God will enlighten my darkness.

The Lord shall be unto thee an everlasting light.

In thy light shall we see light.

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness.

God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

I am come a light into the world.

Governor Bradford of Plymouth Colony expressed himself in similar vein:

As one small candle may light a thought, so the light here kindled hath shone unto many. . . .[2]

We must now inquire as to why this increasing-of-candle-power theory is so hard to come by, so seldom grasped. I believe the difficulty stems from a confusion of categories. Most people are thinking in terms of securing conformity, when the real goal is to achieve creativity.

Communists can and do teach the party line; millions can be taught to read and write words, or to repeat the multiplication table, or to sing songs, fix motors, stew prunes. Monkeys can be taught tricks. Duplicated things like autos, cornflakes, facial veneers, or whatever, can be sold. This sort of thing bulks large in the category of our experience, but it has nothing whatsoever to do with the theory at issue. Even more: Whatever is in the category of things that can only be sold or taught won’t advance the practice of freedom one whit! Creativity is not in the same realm as imitation, repetition, conformity, selling.

Skilled musicians can play a Brahms’ Concerto, but who has the light to compose such a work? Many can act the parts in Macbeth, but where are the Shakespeares? A third grader knows the answer to 12 times 12, but where are the geniuses among us who could have conceived of zero? A child can be taught to recite “All men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” or eloquently to repeat the Preamble to the Constitution, but who among our contemporaries has the candle power to do this level of creative thinking?

A Continuing Requirement

Freedom is declining, despite the fact that previously conceived principles and practices can be and are being taught. The point is that freedom can never be sustained by imitation or repetition or preservation of the status quo, or by the recovery of a past accomplishment. Light is Creation’s first and most important means, and its corollary is the freedom to be enlightened, progress being measured by the growth in candle power of the individual—continuous enlightenment. Individuals and thus the species decline whenever light fails to pierce the darkness. Freedom dies on the vine whenever darkness is not giving way to light. Think of freedom not as a static condition but as a flowering process, the life-giving source of which is not mere light but a perpetually increasing enlightenment. It is difficult to conceive of any ideal value which, to confer its blessings, demands so much of its beneficiaries.

Now then, does this mean that we do not qualify as effective workers in the vineyard unless we attain the creative stature—the candle power—of a Milton, Bacon, Da Vinci, Beethoven, Goethe, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Menger? Perish the thought! I firmly believe that were every citizen to attain the level of these few, but with their creativity at a standstill, freedom would decline as it is presently declining. It is not the level that matters; what counts is a constantly rising level—the light getting brighter! The meaning of this for the individual who would help? Primarily that he light his own candle and do his best—go in pursuit of excellence in all things.

This self-improvement method is no Trappist Monk theory. Indeed, it requires of the individual that he not “hide his light under a bushel.” It is a well-known fact that the more one shares his ideas with others (as distinguished from shoving his ideas at others) the more and better are his own ideas, that is, the greater becomes his own candle power. Using your light to help those attracted by it to find and light their own candles is the effective way to advance freedom and, thus, to serve the interest of others as well as self.

Candle-lighting in this area consists of an increasing perception of authoritarian fallacies and of freedom truths. It means, also, a strengthening of the will to stand, four square, for what one in his innermost soul believes to be right. Do these things—they are the candle power!

The realist, the one who sees clearly the extent to which our liberties are suffering political erosion, will, unless he takes command of his attitudes and emotions, become despondent and ineffective. Is there a way rationally to overcome such a plight? . . .

[1] This thought is portrayed with great clarity in “Isaiah’s Job” by Albert Jay Nock. (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1962). Complimentary copy on request.

[2] William Bradford; Samuel E. Morrison, Ed. Of Plymouth Plantation, 1620–1647, (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1959), p. 236.

CHAPTER

XVII

A Formula for Happiness

A West Coast physician had spent a day at FEE. On returning home, he wrote, “Probably no one is more conscious of what’s happening to our country than you folks. Yet I found all of you calm and in good spirits. I, on the other hand, get literally ill whenever I read the newspapers. How come?”

The Greeks observed sagely that “those whom God wishes to destroy, he first deprives of their senses.” It is impossible to be in full possession of one’s faculties when angry, distraught, depressed, unhappy, hopelessly pessimistic. No man, in such a state, can work effectively for sound principles; it is appropriate, therefore, to reflect on how not to get this way. Or, better yet, how to mature into a rationally structured optimist.

I suspect the desired improvement rests partly with orientation, that is, how a person permits himself to look at things. For instance, the pessimist dejectedly remarks, “The cup is half empty,” while the optimist elatedly observes, “The cup is half full”!

The pessimist views the current vandalism, racial strife, political chicanery, moral looseness, disrespect for the rights of others as he would cigarette burns on a tablecloth—irreparable blemishes; the optimist thinks of these depredations as only stains that fade in the presence of light. The pessimist and the optimist may agree that a blight exists, but they differ in their reactions to it: the former concedes defeat; the latter sees a challenge.

The pessimist insists that “time is running out; it is too late!” The optimist thinks of each new moment as a blessing and an opportunity of which he should take an ever greater advantage; now is the time.

What accounts for the rash of current pessimism? A possible explanation: Persons who blame their country’s ills on the masses, the man in the street, the teachers, preachers, politicians, communists—in short, on the ignorance and misinformation of others—blind themselves to any remedy beyond setting straight these deficient souls; in a word, reforming others. Unaware of any alternate remedy, these reformers initiate personal and institutional mass-education programs, one after another. But their intended correctives have no more effect on the masses than yapping dogs have on a passing parade—there being no mass mind. Eventually, the recurring failures leave our reforming friends in the doldrums, angry, distraught, discouraged, distressed—bereft of their highest senses—hopelessly pessimistic, and useless insofar as enlightenment is concerned. And all because of an incorrect orientation of self—tilted toward repairing the human situation!

How, then, can one become a rationally structured optimist? The formula may go something like this: I have not been given mankind to manage; I am not the Cosmic Author. What then? Let’s see what I can do about becoming my own man, flexing and strengthening those faculties uniquely mine. Consciously, even prayerfully, strive to stretch and expand awareness, perception, consciousness—explore how much I can see, determine how nearly I can bring myself into a harmony with Creation. Can there be any higher reason for existence than this?

If one orients himself in this manner, he must inevitably experience growth. Success, in some measure, is certain to attend such efforts. And will he not learn that the more he pursues this course, the more he will grow? Knowing this, how can he be other than optimistic? Is not his eye then centered on what he most desires and on what is demonstrably attainable? And all because of a correct orientation: the improvement of self! Growth! “Every living creature is happy when he fulfills his destiny, that is, when he realizes himself, when he is being that which in truth he is.”[1]

The Essence of Growth

Optimism and happiness are of a piece, and they are the by-products of growth. Let us, then, reflect on growth, for, in this context, it is the key reality.

Growth is implicit in the evolutive process, and how it might and should project itself in one’s life span can be deduced from simple observations. The first observable event in the earthly life of a human being is the union of microscopic seeds. During gestation, with Creation or Nature in charge, growth—size, weight, cells—undergoes a multiplication measured in billions. Following birth, this physical growth slows down to the point where its multiplication is measured in tens; it comes to a halt at adulthood.

At birth, however, a supraphysical faculty, having growth potential, puts in an appearance: consciousness. With Nature in command at the outset, it shows first as simple consciousness, growing, rather quickly, into self-consciousness. But observe that Nature gradually withdraws her authority in favor of parental direction which, in turn, retires during adolescence, leaving the individual to his own resources and on his own responsibility. The adolescent does or does not take it from there; he does or does not heed the instructions which Creation has already given so clearly: the evolutive process is to take the form of a growth in consciousness, a growth of the individual mind—but self-managed growth! Indeed, evolution would seem senseless were its aim less than self-improved souls: men coming to think for themselves and to will their own actions, and so to share in Creation.

Evolution, as related to species, appears to have had no truck with failures. Many have ceased to exist. Nor is there any reason to believe that its stern ways are modified as pertaining to individual consciousness, evolution in its most advanced stage. Grow or face dismissal, seems to be its dictum. And why not? Evolution, logically, cannot consist of anything less than perpetual development. In short, growth in individual consciousness appears to be harmonious with the Cosmic Design. And were we in need of any more persuasion than these simple observations, we have only to review some exemplary figures, men who have clearly pointed the way, individuals who managed their own growth after Nature and parental authority relaxed their powers, persons who caused themselves to grow in thinking and willing, to the very end of long lives.

Aristotle put it well: “Happiness is activity of soul.” This is to say that happiness is activity in thinking and willing, such activity itself being growth. Growth and happiness are less cause and effect than concomitants, forming together a rationally structured optimism.

The Power of Attraction

Why is the developing, happy, optimistic individual importantly related to sound principles? Only these individuals exert that power of attraction which causes others to seek such enlightenment as they may possess. The discouraged, distraught, angry, pessimistic person is in a disharmonious, nondeveloping state and repels seekers after Truth, as daily experiences attest. Nor does the IQ or level of knowledge have any bearing on the matter—what counts is growth. Any person, even a baby, when growing in awareness, exercises attractive influences—excites the desire to embrace. While an angry or power-drunk man of intellectual attainments may gain converts, the followers are not seekers of light. Sound principles are revealed only in light.

As mentioned in Chapter XV, one of the greatest civilizations sprung up in Athens twenty-four centuries ago, so remarkable that it is said that we ourselves are part Greek. Suffice it to say, Socrates and his remarkable lot did not have the eye on “a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy” or on “a new civilization.” These things were not even seen by them; they were only recapitulations as seen by historians, evaluations in retrospect. Had these things been their conscious, overriding aim, these things would not have come to pass. Each eye, rather, was on the pursuit of Truth, on individual growth. Cast the eye aright, so goes the promise, and “these things shall be added unto you.” These things are but delayed, impersonal, inevitable responses to right individual activities.

I cannot reverse the decline of our civilization or retrieve a waning freedom. Nor can you, whoever you are. But each can, if each so decides, improve in thinking and willing, that is, increase “activity of soul.” Herein lies happiness in its highest form, a rationally structured optimism. Give us enough optimists of this stripe and we may rest assured that freedom with its concomitant, a higher civilization, will follow, sooner or later, as a matter of course. That’s the promise.

Self-Improvement Is Possible

And that’s the lesson which history teaches so clearly: Waste no time or energy on repairing mere recapitulations—humanity, society, civilization, the masses—over which the individual is utterly powerless. Dismiss the impossible! Instead, fasten the eye on that enormously potential entity which falls within one’s own control, namely, self. Concentrate on the possible!

And time? Instead of running out, it is now in more abundant supply than ever—but only for those who know how to take advantage of this precious resource.

In far too many instances, our thousands upon thousands of time-saving devices have only induced an unprecedented busy-ness. Most moderns fritter away time; they find less of it than their ancestors did for affairs of the mind, for growth in consciousness. In short, they are hypnotized and thus enslaved by the gadgets.

But these same creations serve to free, release, make available more and more time for thoughtful pursuits to those who can think for themselves and will their own actions. These individuals are, by definition, the rationally structured optimists, the happy libertarians—progenitors of the good society, this being but a recapitulation of growing individuals.

A final question: How can we measure or test ourselves as libertarian thinkers, writers, talkers? Perhaps the best test, and the one that has the harshest answer in store, is to observe how much one’s tutorship on the freedom philosophy is sought by others. Is it one person on one point on one occasion, or are the ones slightly or greatly multiplied? And perhaps the most sobering of all: How are we doing in our efforts to teach freedom principles and behaviors to children? For, in part, upon us depends their future. . . .

[1] José Ortega y Gasset, What Is Philosophy? (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1961), p. 16.

CHAPTER

XVIII

Economics for Boys and Girls

Train up a child in the way he should go: and when he is old, he will not depart from it.

Proverbs 22:6

Time and again we have been asked to devise economic instruction for the youngsters, the thought being that it’s the oncoming generation that counts. And, just as often, we have shaken our heads, pleading ignorance of how to go about it.

Trying to devise economic lessons for grownups has seemed difficult enough, for only now and then is there an adult who shows any interest in or aptitude for the subject. But we have tried, and over the years of trial and error, it has seemed that our best approach to adults is to leave them alone until they seek such instruction or light as we may come to possess. In other words, our job, as we now see it, is to concentrate on improving our own understanding and practice of freedom, with faith that others will be attracted precisely to the extent that we are able to show self-improvement.

Thus, we are constantly striving to better understand and explain and apply the economics of specialization and the division of labor, freedom in transactions, the marginal utility theory of value, and reliance on the orderliness of the free market as a guide to creativities and exchange.

Is there a way to present such complex ideas to children so that they might be attracted toward the free market way of social behavior? Perhaps. But first, let us consider our raw material, the youngsters we would teach.

Developing the Potential

There are those who contend that every baby starts life as a little savage; that he is equipped, among other things, with organs and muscles over which he has no control, with an urge for self-preservation, with aggressive drives and emotions like anger, fear, and love over which he likewise has practically no control, and that in the process of growing up, it is normal for every child to be dirty, to fight, to talk back, to disobey, to evade. “Every child has to grow out of delinquent behavior.” So runs this argument. For my part, however, I take small comfort in this Freudian view of the genesis of the human race. I would much prefer to think of the child as a budding plant with all the potential for beauty and happiness which such a growing organism portends. In each case, of course, there may be from the adult point of view, apparent disorganization, lack of coordination, and disharmony. Yet, the potential for harmony and beauty is there.

Whether the child be considered a brutal barbarian or a budding beauty, the challenge is to help him emerge from a state of ignorance as to his relationship with others and into harmony with the universal laws which govern the human situation. The child is an extension of the parent’s responsibility, and that responsibility includes pointing the child in the direction of sound economic understanding. I shall hint at, but by no means exhaust, the possibilities:

If you drop something, pick it up.

This is easily taught, especially by parents who observe this dictum themselves. It is elementary training in assuming a responsibility for one’s own actions, that is, of not burdening others with one’s behaviors. A child who takes this simple first step in self-control—should the steps continue and become habitual—will likely, when attaining adulthood, look to himself rather than to the rest of us to bail him out of economic difficulties brought on by his own mistakes. He will, more than likely, not be a burden on society.

A genuine mastery of self-control tends to develop a rare and valuable faculty: the ability to will one’s own actions. Such a person will not be tempted to shift his position by reason of pressures, fickle opinions, popular notions, and the like. He will become his own man.

Picking up what you drop has its reward in orderliness of mind. When it becomes second nature, it is a joyous habit and on occasion leads to picking up after others. Projected into adult life, this shows up as a charitable attitude—in the Judeo-Christian sense—one’s personal duty toward the less fortunate.

If you open a door, close it.

This is a sequel to the above; it is merely another practice that confirms the wisdom of completing each of life’s transactions.

An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.[1]

For child training, I would add: drop, pick up; open, close; and others.

If you make a promise, keep it.

Social chaos has no better ally than broken promises. Children not brought up to keep their word will be the authors of treaties written not to be observed; they’ll run for office on bogus platforms, cancel gold contracts, use the political means to expropriate property; they’ll sell their souls to gain fame or fortune or power. Not only will they fail to be honest with their fellow men; they will not even heed the dictates of their own conscience. On the other hand, children brought up to keep their promises will not go back on their bond, come hell or high water. Integrity will be their mark of distinction!

Whatever you borrow, pay back.

This is an extension of promise keeping. An adherence to these admonitions develops a respect for private property, a major premise in sound economic doctrine. No person, thus brought up, would think of feathering his own nest at the expense of others. Welfare statists and social planners are not born of this training, that is, if the training really sinks in. True, a socialist will honor debts incurred in his own name but will disregard any indebtedness he sponsors in the name of “the public.” He has not been brought up to understand that the principle of compensation applies “across the board.”

Play the thank-you game.

It will take a brilliant parent and a mighty perceptive child to get anywhere with this one. I can set forth the idea but not how to teach it. The idea, once grasped, is simple enough, yet so evasive that, in spite of the 33,000 years since Cro-Magnon man, it was only discovered a bare century ago: The value of a good or service is determined not objectively by cost of production, but subjectively by what others will give in willing exchange. Economic science has no more important concept than this; the free market has no other economic genesis than this subjective or marginal utility theory of value. Indeed, it is most accurately identified as the free market theory of value.

To repeat an illustration used earlier: When mother exchanges 30¢ for a can of beans, she values the beans more than the 30¢ and the grocer values the 30¢ more than the beans. If mother valued the 30¢ more than the beans, she wouldn’t trade. If the grocer valued his beans more than the 30¢, he wouldn’t trade. The value of both the 30¢ and the beans (excluding other considerations) is determined by the two subjective judgments. The amount of effort exerted (cost) to obtain the 30¢ or to acquire the beans has nothing to do with the value of either the beans or the 30¢.

I repeat, the value of any good or service is determined by what it will bring in willing, not forcible or unwilling, exchange.[2] When the 30¢ is exchanged for the beans, the grocer concludes the transaction with “Thank you,” for, in his judgment, he has gained. There is precisely the same justification for the mother to say, “Thank you,” for, in her judgment, she has gained. It wouldn’t be at all amiss to describe this as “the thank-you way of economic life.”

This concept of value, be it remembered, was practiced off and on by the common man ages before economic theorists identified it as the efficacious way of mutually advancing economic well-being. And, by the same token, the child can be taught to practice it before he can possibly grasp the theory. In exchanging toys or marbles or jacks or whatever with another, can he not play the thank-you game? Can he not be taught to express the same “thank you” himself as he expects from his playmate? That something is wrong with the trade if this is not the case? That both have gained when each says, “Thank you”? Accomplish this with a boy or girl and you have laid the groundwork for sound economic thinking.

Do nothing to a playmate you wouldn’t enjoy having him do to you.

Moral philosophy is the investigation into and the study of what’s right and wrong. Economics is a division of this discipline: the study of right and wrong in economic affairs.

The free market is the Golden Rule in its economic application, thus free market economics is dependent on the practice of the Golden Rule.

That the Golden Rule can be phrased and taught so as to be completely perceived prior to adolescence is doubtful. Its apprehension requires a moral nature, a faculty rarely acquired earlier than teen-age—in many instances, never!

But the effort to teach the Golden Rule to boys and girls will, at a minimum, result in a better observation of it on the parent’s part. Children—highly impressionable—are far more guided by parental conduct than by parental admonishments. Thus, the attempt to teach this fundamental principle of morality and justice, resulting in highly exemplary behavior, may lead the child first to imitation and then to habitual observance and practice.

Writing the above, which only hints at how boys and girls may get off to a good start in economic thinking, has supplied the missing explanation to something I have known for several years: women are more hopeful prospects than men in the contest between free market and authoritarian ideas! In our seminar activities, we have found the distaffers better students than the mill run of males, as well as more idealistic and less compromising. Beyond this, it is the mothers, rather than the fathers, in whose care the citizens of tomorrow are largely committed. It is primarily the mothers who will refine the methods for getting boys and girls on the track of sound thinking.

But mothers or fathers, it is the parents who are responsible for the generations to come and who also are responsible for the kinds of people who assist in teaching their children.

The problems are numerous and deeper than you think. Finding better answers is what parents are for, now and always!

[1] Excerpted from Compensation by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

[2] TVA, Post Office, and a thousand and one other deficits, are paid for by forcible exchange. Moon specialists are paid by forcible, not willing, exchange. This goes, also, for all governmental subsidies.

Epilogue

Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18

Do pride and a haughty spirit dispose man to act against himself? Are these weaknesses responsible for the strife amongst ourselves, our repeated invasions of others’ rights, political coercion, the policy of armed conflict as a corrective for social ills, the subsidizing with extorted funds of weaknesses and failures, the mass slaughter of our kind? The decline and fall of nations?

Examine the whole animal kingdom and try to find any species whose members are as mean—or as kind—to each other as man is to man.[1] While Dr. Konrad Lorenz acknowledges that “the worker in comparative ethology does well to be very careful in applying moral criteria to animal behavior,” he adds:

But here I must myself own to harbouring sentimental feelings: I think it a truly magnificent thing that one wolf finds himself unable to bite the proffered neck of the other, but still more so that the other relies upon him for this amazing restraint. Mankind can learn a lesson from this. . . .[2]

In a word, even wolves do not kill wolves! An explanation of the meanness-kindness complex, peculiar to human beings, has been sought for ages—without much success. Never should the quest be forsaken! It being my contention that kindness exists in the absence of meanness—pride by another name—I shall confine myself to some reflections on the origins of meanness.

Let us begin this quest by referring again to the collapsed calendar set forth in Chapter IV. Previous to the last few hours of a long year, no organism had anything more to go on than what we call instinct. Then, of a sudden, homo sapiens appeared on the scene bearing a brand new, exclusive feature, a trait never before known to life on earth: the distinguishing characteristic of being human is the ability to think, to choose, in a word, the power to will one’s own actions. Robert Ardrey puts it this way: “Man’s uniqueness among species rests on his capacity to perfect the arrangements for his own Judgment Day, instead of waiting for nature to do it for him.”[3] True, even in the twentieth century, this is only a budding trait but, relative to the rest of the animal kingdom, it is a fantastic leap forward.

In the subhuman state, instinct controls both actions and reactions. Survival of wolves, for instance, requires of instinct that it attend not only to reproduction but to the nondestruction of wolf by wolf. Wolves, no matter how provoked, do not react to the provocation by tearing each other apart. Intraspecie destruction is an instinctual taboo among most subhuman species.

Man, as distinguished from other life, has some but far from all of the instincts that guide animals. As man evolves he has to rely more and more on reason and the power of self-will. Thus man is on his own—to a marked extent.

The above is a sufficient sketch or backdrop from which to speculate on a distinctive type of pride seldom touched upon. But before introducing that specific type, let me illustrate the general nature and prevalence of pride.

Common to subhumans and humans is the territorial instinct. Sticklebacks, howling monkeys, cardinals, and ever so many other species stake out their territory—property—and protect it. They just will not abide others of their own species moving in on them. Interestingly, they achieve this protection without resort to lethal means.

Now man goes to great lengths—with his formal, legal institutions and other measures—in response to this identical instinct. Man’s territory, however, is more than so many acres of land; man’s territory includes personal as well as real property. The point to emphasize: “. . . man is a territorial animal. . . . The territorial nature of man is genetic and ineradicable.”[4]

The territories of man are more than geographical, and the ways of invading his territories are thus compounded.

As one sage expressed it, “I am as much corrupted by my loves as by my hates.” Invasions of man’s territory by man masquerade under the labels of love, kindness, compassion, even charity. Greed plays a comparatively minor role as a motivating force. Merely observe that millions of highly respected citizens resort to the police force of government to take the territory—property—of everyone to provide “security” for all and sundry “from the cradle to the grave.” And much of this in the name of virtue!

The individual who sponsors this sort of thing stands in contempt of his fellow men, not only in contempt of those who are legally looted but also of those on whom the “benefactions” are conferred.[5] The individual who resorts to coercion to do good is contemptuous of the ability of the “beneficiaries” to look out for themselves, of their knowledge, of their own self-interest, of their self-reliance.[6] And as to those looted, he is contemptuous of their territorial rights, their rights to the fruits of their own labors. Anyone who sponsors coercion as a means of helping others suffers from excessive self-esteem; his lordly position is by self-appointment. He is the victim of that type of pride which weakens and destroys the “beneficiaries,” and against which territorial man rebels, eventually, in lethal strife. Neither man nor most subhuman species will stand passively by in the face of contempt and invasion of territory. This is a type of pride that brings about the decline and fall of nations and their inhabitants.

Controlling One’s Reactions

Let us now examine another and perhaps an even more destructive type of pride. As previously noted, evolving man develops an increasing ability to will his own actions. This unique ability, if pride and destruction are to be averted, must be accompanied by a commensurate ability properly to will one’s own reactions to provocation. Is there any reasoning to support this hypothesis? For unquestionably, this is a problem that must be tackled at the rational level.

Now reflect on a phase of human behavior having to do with the form of provocation in question, the results of which are disgust and anger, weaknesses that lead to overt conflict—man’s inhumanity to man.

Picture in the mind’s eye an individual who has progressed no further in intelligence than to believe in and stand sponsor for tossing virgin maidens into deep wells as a means of causing rain.[7] Here is an example of a willed action. Now, assume that this individual advances in intelligence to the point where he looks as unfavorably on this heathenish practice as you or I. What will be his reaction toward those who still believe in and stand sponsor for such actions? What would be yours and mine? Unless such a man has advanced to the stage where he can will his own reactions, he will be filled with disgust and contempt, these being akin to anger which, along with pride, is one of the “deadly sins.” Provocation! And how will he react to the provocation? We do not need to go back to the Crusades to find the answer. The evidence is all about us: he, as many of us, will rid the world of heathenism by exterminating the heathens. Do not ever so many of us try to be done with communism by shooting the communists, and so on? All because man has the power to will his own actions without having developed, at the same time, a commensurate ability to will his own reactions. Instinct takes care of the balance in other species; only self-will can attend to it in the case of man.

Observe what goes on here: an increase in intelligence leading to disgust, contempt, anger; enlightenment in one direction resulting in madness in another! It takes but the barest reflection to see that this is pride and haughtiness pure and simple; it is one’s self-assessed superiority that breeds a contempt destructive of self and others alike. Daily personal experiences and observations, as well as the decline and fall of nations, testify to the fact that pride goeth before a fall.

The wolf and other subhuman species are instinctively governed. Instinct rules both sides of their survival problem: procreation as well as nondestruction of the species. Man must perforce rely on reason, but according to this hypothesis, he is the victim of a one-sided development in his rationality. He rationally procreates and produces goods and services to satisfy his wants, these being self-willed actions. But he irrationally destroys himself because he has not as yet developed the ability to will his own reactions. He has solved only a part of his survival problem.

A Suggested Procedure

How can a person—when intellectually growing, when the self-willing of actions are on the increase, when he is becoming more and more his own man—keep from being disgusted with or contemptuous of or angry at other persons who stand for ideas he has, in his progress, come to regard as false? How can one who sees the flaws in medicare or the guaranteed annual wage, for instance, view the sponsors dispassionately and with an unobtrusive equanimity? This is by way of asking, how can one rationally reach the same level in willing his reactions as he has attained in willing his own actions.

The first step is to recognize that the proper willing of reactions is one of the keys to solving the problem of man’s inhumanity to man. We can unlock the door only if we have the right key.

Next, reflect on the explosive last few moments so impressively demonstrated when all of earthly life is collapsed into a single year. Clearly, expanding powers of reason and intelligence are implicit in the Design. Therefore, when one observes what appears to be instances of inferiority, this should signify no more than Nature at work in her infinite chore; inferiorities and superiorities at sixes and sevens are all a part of the Scheme; it is meant to be this way. When any man experiences a breakthrough into a higher level of awareness, this should be the occasion for gratitude toward the creative process, not contempt for those who do not yet share one’s new enlightenment. For it is grossly irrational to permit contempt and disgust—emotional manifestations—to accompany enlightenment—a rational achievement. Emotion, it seems, takes residence in the soul whenever reason is not at home.

Another helpful exercise is to recognize that some of the “inferiority” we observe all about us can be accounted for by our differences, our varied talents. If we are adept at what we do and others are less so, we feel superior. The cleaning woman must regard the college professor inferior because she can perform her specialty so much better than he can. Now reflect on what the professor thinks of the cleaning woman relative to his skills. And many of us, mind you, evidence disgust on occasion at some professors! Of us all, who is inferior? And who superior, the victim of pride? It depends, quite irrationally, through whose pair of eyes one is staring.

Another way to impress upon ourselves how irrational this pride is—how important it is to replace emotionality with rationality—is to reflect on the Creator. Suppose God were to become disgusted with his creation, contemptuous of and angry at all that is inferior, regarding as stupid every human thought and behavior not up to a par with Infinite Wisdom; then God would be the Supreme Raving Maniac! But God, instead, is Love, Truth, Enlightenment, Light. Is it not the height of rationality to emulate the Ideal?

Finally, if we react irrationally against “inferiority,” and are interested in remedying our pride, we can make headway only as we learn how properly to will our reactions. This ability becomes conclusively desirable once we realize that to react with disgust, contempt, anger, and armed might is but to harden in their sins the ones who “know less.” We defeat our own ends, make worse what we disapprove of by such irrational reactions.

The ignorance we decry is perpetuated by emotional and irrational reactions. Our interests are never served by having any part in the type of tension on which ignorance thrives. Give ignorance nothing to scratch against!

Respond to everyone who seeks our tutorship, by all means. But, otherwise, relax that tension which is the accomplice of man’s inhumanity to man.

Konrad Lorenz, in his King Solomon’s Ring, acknowledges that he learned from observing animals what we should easily learn from observing ourselves:

I at least have extracted from it [wolf behavior] a new and deeper understanding of a wonderful and often misunderstood saying from the Gospel which hitherto had only awakened in me feelings of strong opposition: “And unto him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other.” A wolf has enlightened me: not so that your enemy may strike you again do you turn the other cheek toward him, but to make him unable to do it.[8]

Here we have an instinctual reaction that prevents a provoked wolf from killing his kind!

Is it not possible for a rational, self-willed human reaction to accomplish as much? The Gospel instruction, followed in faith, proves to be correct more often than not.

But how, in day-to-day living, do we put this ideal into practice? Two simple steps seem to suggest themselves: first, give no heed to the angry barbs cast at us by our “superiors” and, second, avoid becoming self-appointed “superiors” ourselves, that is, find no satisfaction—pride—in looking down on the flounderings of our fellow men.

By turning our backs on these irrationalities, we face the Light and are enlightened thereby; we are transformed from adversaries into benefactors. Harnessing our pride leaves us less inclined to be mean to each other and removes a major obstacle to personal emergence.

[1] This problem is splendidly posed in “On Being Mean” by Marston Bates, Professor of Zoology, University of Michigan. American Scholar, Winter, 1966–67.

[2] See “Morals and Weapons,” the final chapter in King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz, who, according to Julian Huxley, is “one of the outstanding naturalists of our times.” In paperback (New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1961).

[3] See Territorial Imperative, op. cit., p. 268.

[4] Ibid., p. 116.

[5] Uncontemptuous, of course, are those wholly lacking a sense of process, utterly unaware of what they do to others. Such people, for all they know, have hit upon a jinni.

[6] A mother drove up to a mail box so that her 3-year-old son might put a letter down the chute. A stranger, thinking to relieve the child of so difficult a task, offered to do it for him. A frown crossed the little fellow’s face. He looked appealingly to his mother and she, thanking the stranger, said, “I think Billy can manage.” And manage he did! The stranger went on his way somewhat embarrassed. Then he realized that had he carried out his intention, he would have taken something from both Billy and his mother: he would have deprived Billy of accomplishment, and the mother of an opportunity to teach her little son a valuable lesson in self-reliance.—Condensed from “Don’t Give Till It Hurts—Someone Else,” by Samuel A. Siciliano. The Freeman, April, 1962.

[7] See p. 1.

[8] Op. cit., p. 197.

Where Lies This Fault?

A Speculation on the Recovery of Freedom

Leonard E. Read

1967

TO THE REMNANT

who have not given up the ghost

who think for themselves

who act as men, not as gods

Accommodating Caesar

It’s a lopsided contest these days between freedom and authoritarianism, libertarianism and socialism, individualism and collectivism, willing and unwilling exchange, the free market and the planned economy, capitalism and statism, voluntarism and coercion—call these opposites what you will.

Any person who still stands foursquare for freedom cannot help but sense the overwhelming odds against his position.[1]

Americans by the millions are forsaking freedom principles and accommodating themselves to the new order: statism or, if you will, the cult of Caesar.

A corporate official, about to make a point, began “Since adopting our accommodations program. . . .” What an excellent way to phrase his company’s change of policy! It so nicely and inoffensively describes the switch from an out-and-out opposition to Caesar to a demeaning camaraderie. “Our accommodations program” announces a shifting of attention from the market place where business has to be competed for, to the forum where the loot is proffered. Strikingly reminiscent of the “cooperation” accorded a recent German Caesar during his rise to absolute power!

This newly-invented term appears appropriate for tens of thousands of business firms and for countless local, state, and national organizations, that is, for those firms and organizations which readily accommodate themselves to whatever socialism is written into the statute books. Once adopt Medicare, for instance, and it is accepted as Americanism—as much so as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

So goes the trend! Yet, sound theory and every iota of the evidence attest to the fact that freedom has the case. But this fact is overpowered by another: Caesar has the votes!

How possibly can a way of life so right be unseated by one so demonstrably wrong?

Could this be my fault, or yours and mine, the fault of freedom’s devotees?

Maybe yes and maybe no. Something somewhere is amiss. But there must be a way open to us if we can find it. Obviously, it has not as yet been found. Nor is the discovery likely short of exploring unknown and unsuspected territory or, as they say in the oil business, “wildcatting.” Remember the man who sold his property in order to explore for diamonds in far-off lands? He died in poverty only because he had failed to explore what had been right under his feet; he had sold the world’s richest diamond mine! What follows is definitely “wildcatting,” and anyone who takes stock in the venture does so at his own risk.

But before taking off, let us raise and try to answer a question that is relevant to our venture: Why do we give up our freedom so easily?

Easy Come, Easy Go

The saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted,” can be paraphrased, “Thoughtless people quickly lose their liberty.” It is not difficult to see why.

Most Americans are at a level of affluence unprecedented in all history, for reasons we but dimly perceive, and brought on without any one of us having made more than an infinitesimal contribution to the economic well-being each enjoys. The point is confirmed when one reflects on the part he has had, if any in the car or jet he rides, the clothes he wears, the house he calls home, the food he eats, the electric lights by which he sees, and so on. Literally millions enjoy luxury in return for little more than being born. Easy come indeed!

Compare our situation with that of the Founding Fathers. It was not easy come for them, nor was it easy go. They held fast to their few gains, including their liberty. It was worth your life to tamper with the little they had.

Poverty enslaves. Doing away with poverty is a releasing experience. I am able to do a thousand times as many things as Grandfather. For instance, he could talk to the few he personally met; I may converse with people all over this earth and in a matter of seconds. Opportunities to employ myself abound compared to his; and what I can exchange for the fruits of my labor are beyond his wildest dreams.

The few things Grandfather was free to do had been acquired the hard way. These he guarded zealously. A politician who threatened to take a single liberty risked defeat at the polls.

Most of us, on the other hand, have more alternatives among which we are free to choose than we can ever use. We are surfeited with alternatives, and with little more hand in bringing about these bountiful conferments than were they manna from heaven.

What matters it if I am forced to give up this or that? I will never miss the taking of so little from so much. With thoughtless people it is, indeed, easy come, easy go.

Thoughtful people, on the other hand, though they have a million alternatives from which to choose, and even if all of them have been acquired with no effort on their part, will husband each and every one of them as vigilantly as if each were the sole freedom they possessed. For they know that once the right to ownership is transgressed, that when freedom is “up for grabs,” the flood gates are thereby opened and become increasingly difficult to close.

Affluent persons who are thoughtful will hang on to their freedom as tenaciously as America’s Founding Fathers. Easy come, perhaps; easy go, never!

Let us now take stock of who it is that bears the responsibility for remedying this plight. For it ought to be obvious that the solution of this problem—a reversal of the swing—rests on the few who have not as yet lost their potentialities to make the case for freedom. The reason for there being only a few is that countless millions are already disqualified. Viewing the scene from my seat in the bleachers, our adult population falls into four categories, three of which are disqualified and one of which is not, that is, not yet.

These Have Given Up The Ghost

There are tens of thousands who have reluctantly awarded the palm to socialism, among whom are the most competent—potentially! But they have made themselves impotent and useless by succumbing to alarm, anger, and a sense of hopelessness or futility. It’s all over for the free society! These are permanently disqualified unless they can succeed in the difficult task of actually changing themselves.

These Are The No-thinks

The vast majority of Americans are unable or unwilling to think for themselves as related to political economy. They may be intellectual giants in other areas but not in this. This assertion requires some explanation.

Thinking for one’s self—thought—is the quality that distinguishes being human from being animal. Ortega calls our attention to a little known fact, “. . . thought is not a gift to man but a laborious, precarious and volatile acquisition.” And to help with the distinction between animal and man, he adds, “While the tiger cannot cease being a tiger—cannot be detigered—man lives in the perpetual risk of being dehumanized.” In brief, thought is more easily lost than acquired. Affluence, security from struggle, ease, and countless other dangers lurk on every hand to wreak their havoc on the thought processes, on our dehumanization.[2]

How is a person to tell whether or not he is in this no-think category? If he is unable to think for himself in matters of political economy, he may never know. Those who cannot think for themselves are unlikely to find out that they cannot think for themselves; they will drift with the tide.

How, then, are the nonthinkers in political economy to be identified? With an exception to be noted later, observe those who in you-and-me situations act uprightly, responsibly, honestly but who, when acting in a committee or organization, will unhesitatingly feather their own nests at the expense of others.[3] No person can be said to act rationally who switches from the ways of virtue to the ways of vice the moment numbers are introduced. A person who would never take his neighbor’s property in a personal action, if able to think for himself, will never condone or vote for the taking of that property in a collective action. We must therefore conclude that the rectitude of these people when acting personally, is no more rational than when acting collectively. Their rectitude in you-and-me situations, as their turpitude in collective situations, is not rationally induced; both are imitative. The actions of these millions in matters of political economy are imitative; at best these millions are followers. Anyone not subscribing to this observation is well advised to read no further, for my thesis is founded on this as a fact.

These Are The Over-thinks

This category is composed of a relative few, but of enormous influence. They not only think for themselves but, if I may coin a term, they over-think. These individuals, compared to the rest of us, are intellectual giants—and they know it. As a consequence, many of them suffer delusions of grandeur; they step beyond the role intended for human beings and, with unfaltering confidence, invade God’s realm. They would cast us in their relatively large but really infinitesimally small images.

These are the social planners, the self-appointed designers of humanity. The late C. S. Lewis, writing of these self-anointed gods, did not think of them as bad men but, rather, as not men at all, that is, in the old sense. “They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean.” In any event, these “giants,” once they assume the creator role, come forth with utterances, decrees, designs that are pure nonsense.[4]

These Are The Remnant

The few who remain, after the disqualified have been subtracted, can, in political economy, think for themselves to some extent; they have not invaded God’s realm; and they have not given up the ghost. The recovery of freedom has no other allies than these; thus there is no alternative but for them to bear the whole responsibility.

Recruit Possibilities

That the numbers of these few can be added to, that recruits from the presently disqualified categories can be found, is enough of a possibility to deserve examination. For the more who are trying, the greater is the probability of unearthing a higher competency for freedom. Indeed, it is not at all unlikely that the greatest genius of all may be among the presently disqualified categories.

There are reasons to believe that the most likely prospects are among those who have given up the ghost, who have, by reason of being able to see deeply into what’s happening, slumped into a futility coma. Many of these individuals can think brilliantly for themselves and thus, I suspect, they could, if they tried, reason themselves out of their depression. The formula for so doing appears to be simple:

1. There have been darker ages than this. Ortega, forty-five years ago, wrote, “. . . the fact is that the present and the future have often looked quite as difficult and forbidding as they do today, if not more so.” And, for the philosophically inclined, there is comfort in the fact that human progress resembles the wave sequence we observe throughout nature: evolution-devolution, evolution-devolution, with evolution inching ahead over the millennia.

2. Our moment in history may not be as dark as it seems. Amidst all the destructive forces there are even more powerful, commonplace, unnoticed, constructive forces at work. Were this not true, we would have been done in ere this.

3. Assess our moment qualitatively, not quantitatively. Remember that this is an idea contest, not a numbers problem. The socialists have spent themselves ideologically, although not politically. Their basic ideas have been intellectually demolished;[5] the case for freedom, on the other hand, viewed long range, is in its infancy.

4. Man’s destiny is that of becoming, achieved by overcoming. Look upon the destructive forces as obstacles to be overcome and, thus, as opportunities for personal growth, that is, as springboards to one’s becoming.

5. The individual is not responsible for human evolution but only for his own growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. Look well to this and the human situation is correspondingly improved.

Arousing one’s self from the futility coma can only be rationally achieved. Those who can accomplish this have what it takes to assist with freedom’s recovery; they qualify.

But what about the individuals in the second category, the many millions who do not think for themselves in political economy, the imitators? It is obvious that they are not necessarily committed to a life of imitation. Many of them have never explored their aptitudes and, thus, know nothing of their potentialities. In this instance, the rescuing force is probably nothing short of a highly exemplary and thus attracting behavior on the part of others, so strong that it induces a spirit of inquiry, the search for truth. This force can lead some of these individuals to self-discovery.

As to those in the third category, the over-thinks or superintellects, they are on their own. Lesser intellects cannot rescue them. Plato, as he grew older, made the grade; he worked against his earlier philosopher-king idea. Other instances of self-rescue have been noted. We may at least hope for others. They are so very important when they do show up.

In addition to speculating on the possibilities of recruits from among those in the three presently disqualified categories, we should take note of how, on the surface, the no-thinks resemble the over-thinks. The former, as noted before, are imitative. Mises says of them, “. . . [they] do not conceive any ideas, sound or unsound. They only choose between the ideologies developed by the intellectual leaders of mankind. But their choice is final and determines the course of events. If they prefer bad doctrines, nothing can prevent disaster.”[6] Merely bear in mind that the actions of these people, as relating to political economy, are not rational but imitative.

This leads us to the crucial point: Today a substantial majority of these millions are imitating the over-thinks, not those in the Remnant category. Obviously, it is not always easy to tell the imitators from the imitated; they cannot be distinguished by looks or by what they say or how they vote. Nor does it matter much. What really should concern us is why the imitators are imitating those of authoritarian persuasions rather than the devotees of freedom.

The Fault Is Mine!

Yes, this fault is mine! But, perhaps, this is for you to confess as well as me.

Let us repeat the hard question: Why is the predominant imitation what it is? Why so far from what libertarians would like it to be? It is simply because we, you and I, do not know how to make the case for freedom in an adequately enlightened manner to induce imitation. Success, if ever achieved, will be easy to recognize: The imitators and the imitated will again speak alike and vote alike but the imitated will be the devotees of freedom.

Some self-diagnosis is in order.

My claim that the present socialistic predominance is no more than a consequence of our own inadequacies is too incredible for ready acceptance, particularly by the philosophers of freedom, those who have spent a lifetime in pursuit of freedom’s imperatives, promises, truth. But I submit that the very best—the ones out front—have no more than scratched the surface in either understanding or exposition. This radical conclusion derives from the fact of freedom’s nonmagnetism as we present the case. But freedom is not wanting; we are; or, more precisely, I am.

Very well. If we are inadequate in understanding and exposition, what accounts for the deficiency?

The enormous discrepancy between our self-assessed competence and what in fact is a glaring incompetence on our part has its origin in a faulty comparison. The tendency of anyone slightly out front in his understanding of the freedom philosophy is to grade himself by observed inferiority. If I am ahead of those in my little acquaintance orbit, how natural it is to conclude, “What a bright boy am I!” This faulty method of self-assessment makes one look pretty good; it confers on one a sense of excellence. But clearly, this type of evaluation is precisely the enemy of excellence. It brings improvement to a halt the moment one steps ahead of those who haven’t done any homework. Once one stands at the head of a class of imitators he seems to think he has it made. Potentialities are never realized in this manner. Contemplate how little was demanded of a person to be out front in a dark age. Or to be out front as an exponent of freedom when freedom is on the wane!

The above summarizes our Remnant as I see it. Understanding freedom slightly better than others understand it makes us think we are proficient. But if they do not understand freedom at all, our being better is hardly a mark of excellence. The good image we have of ourselves is grossly exaggerated and false.

The first step in remedying our fault is to be done with this method of self-rating; it is fraudulent, stultifying, and antagonistic to growth. Does it not follow from this type of self-evaluation that no one could ever rise beyond what he is except as others improve? And were others to use this system not one of them could possibly improve. A human standstill!

The next step is to do a “180,” as the captain says; we look to the opposite direction; instead of these personal comparisons we must compare ourselves with that which remains to be known Looking from the known to the unknown is a real jolter. As the noted French scientist, Lecomte du Noüy points out, man’s image of his universe rests on reactions determined in him by less than one-trillionth of the vibrations which surround him—that less than one vibration in a trillion leaves any trace on his consciousness.[7]

Freedom Cannot Be Rationally Defined

Look to the unknown! This brings us to what we do not know about freedom, and it is strikingly analogous to what we do not know about life. We cannot rationally define freedom any more than we can explain electricity, for instance. Yes, we can understand and expound on some of electricity’s effects, but the force itself is a mystery. If we could rationally define it, electricity would no longer be a mystery.

While I have never thought of our dilemma in this light before, freedom is a mystery because it is of the spirit. And we can say it is of the spirit because it rests on faith. To recognize the truth of this, merely reflect on why it is that you are free to pursue so many of your own aims, why it is you can devote yourself so exclusively to the realization of those talents uniquely your own. Admittedly, you are remarkably free in this manner. Why? Why is a painter, for instance, free to think only of his art? Why is he not completely consumed—and thus not free to paint—by thinking about the wheat that has to be planted now in order that he may have bread next year, and about the thousand and one other activities essential to his living? On what does his freedom rest? It rests on the faith that you and I and others will, in our countless diverse ways, simultaneously attend to all of these matters for him.[8] We do not, when a society is not constrained, give the details of our provisioning a second thought. If the painter did not have faith that these others would, in pursuing their own interest, serve his needs, he would paint no more. It is clear we live by faith, faith being a spiritual quality, and our freedom springs from this. Thus, we must conclude that freedom is as much a mystery as is electricity or life itself.

I am now, in this meandering monograph, getting to the nub of our problem: Over and over again we attempt the impossible; we try rationally to define freedom and, by so doing, weaken rather than strengthen the case for freedom. We cannot explain the miraculous, the inexplicable.

Suppose that the desirability of life were at issue—some for, others against. Now imagine that those of us on the pro side were to devote ourselves to explaining creation and life. Would not our explanations be rather shallow? Could not the opposition find endless faults, hole after hole in the argument if creation and life had no better defense than any explanation we would make? In such a circumstance, others could reasonably conclude that life and creation have no case at all!

Freedom, as creation, life, and electricity, is in this same inexplicable category. We who pose our explanations as the case for freedom—who posit what we do not know as knowing—give the impression that freedom does not have a valid case.

Take just one seemingly little, simple, mundane yet miraculous example. Peering at the horizon through the window of a jet, I reflected on what it was I was peering through. Easy enough to settle for Plexiglas and let it go at that.[9] But what an oversimplification! Why, not a man on the face of the earth knows how to make this window, and no man can be found who has had more than an infinitesimal part in its making. No one can explain this item—a veritable miracle—any more than anyone can rationally define creation, life, electricity, a tree.

What, really, was I peering through? A miracle is one answer. Another would be inexplicable freedom in one of its manifestations! Or I could say I was peering through trillions upon trillions of discoveries, ideas, inventions in complex, inexplicable interchange since the dawn of thought. Had these creativities not been free to flow or had there been no faith in the efficacious manner men will perform when free, the Plexiglas is unthinkable. That through which I peered was the universal energy—creation—freely flowing through the minds of men over untold centuries. This particular miracle—this coalescence of tiny insights and enlightenments into a phenomenal wisdom—strangely manifests itself not only as something transparent but, as steel, so unbelievably tough that it withstands a highly pressurized cabin.

Reflect on life again; we observe life all about us. But we see life mostly in its myriad embodiments: a blade of grass, a tree, a dog, and, in its highest form, a man. However, we do not see or understand even the chlorophyll in the blade of grass, let alone the 5,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms and all the radiant energies that go to compose the single human being. These unaccountable make-ups of life are, except superficially, lost track of; they are in solution, so to speak, and are thus beyond more than casual analysis.

Mostly, we do not try to explain life or electricity, nor do we find explanation necessary in order to be in favor of them. Instead, we accept these as the miracles given, and intelligent study is confined to how not to offend or injure these forces.[10] We forego explanation and seek understanding as to how more fully to accommodate ourselves to the blessings they hold in prospect for us. For we concede, more or less instinctively, that we are not the creators of life or electricity but, properly, the protectors and custodians of these creations.

Freedom presents us with a comparable phenomenon, a desideratum that defies precise definition. Indeed, it is a phase of creation, for freedom is the first and absolutely essential means of creation at the human level. Here, as in life, it is mostly the embodiments we observe: a car, a sheet of Plexiglas, a book, a play, a painting, a poem, and inheritances in countless forms. But the components—the ideas, the faith of millions, the creativities, and so on—are in solution, and precisely what they are and how they interact one on the others is beyond our ken; they are outside our power to identify, analyze, and define, except superficially.

I repeat, we are no more able to explicitly and rationally define freedom than life or electricity. But unless we are short on insight, we should be as much in favor of freedom as we are of life. And such insight would be aided were we to stand as much in awe of freedom as we do of life.

When, instead of studying how not to offend or do injury to freedom, we attempt to explain this miraculous quality, we give a false impression of freedom. Others, viewing our “explanations” of the inexplicable, are often led to believe that freedom is of the flesh, whereas freedom is of the spirit. We need no better proof of our general ineptitude than the marked variances of our “explanations.”

The Role of Awe[11]

As stated above, the devotees of freedom—the Remnant-regardless of how advanced, have no more than scratched the surface in making the case for freedom. My reason for this claim is that I am unaware of anyone who has explored how to make the case for freedom minus an explanation of what freedom is, freedom being a phase of creation that defies rational definition.

How is the case for the inexplicable to be made? I do not know nor do I know of anybody who does know. I am only making the tentative suggestion that this is an appropriate area for exploration. We should know by this time that we have not been on the right track and that, as suggested earlier, some “wildcatting” is in order. And I acknowledge that that’s what this is.

I am personally convinced that we were given the cue long, long ago, a cue that has been but little heeded and rarely understood. However, a serious explorer, one bent on “wildcatting,” will accept any lead as a working hypothesis. Here is the cue that anyone who is an explorer at heart might well examine: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom.” As I view it, “fear” is not meant to convey being afraid of, but rather standing in awe of. Translated into our frame of reference, it reads, “Standing in awe of creation is the beginning of wisdom.” This has a logical and consistent extension: Standing in awe of freedom, the means of creation at the human level, is the beginning of wisdom.

Awe is a rare knowledge; it is an awareness of not knowing. It is only when one is aware that he does not know that knowing can begin. The self-evident fact that know-it-all-ness is the end of wisdom suggests that a state of awe—an acknowledgment of not knowing—is the condition for wisdom’s beginning.

Socrates sheds light on what appears to be a truth: “That man thinks he knows everything, whereas he knows nothing; I, on the other hand, know nothing but I know that I know nothing.” Because of his awareness of not knowing we call Socrates a wise man.

To further dramatize and thus simplify the point that the more we know the more we know we do not know, merely visualize a blackboard with infinite dimensions—the unknown.[12] With white chalk construct a small circle to symbolize your light—knowing—of say ten years ago. Next, make a very large circle to symbolize your present light or knowing. And last, observe how much more darkness you are presently exposed to than formerly. A recognition of not knowing—awe—appears to go hand in hand with increased knowing, or wisdom.

I am suggesting that when we, the Remnant, stand in awe of freedom, as we should of anything that classifies as the miraculous, that we have evolved to the only level from which the required learning is possible. And what is the required learning? How to make the case for freedom, the inexplicable!

If it be supposed that you or I or some brighter person must discover how to make the case for freedom—the miraculous, the nonunderstandable, the inexplicable—then the supposition is in error. No discrete individual shall any more perform this feat than any single person discovered how to transmit the human voice around the earth at the speed of light. The knowledge, when and if it exists, will be a synthesized knowledge,[13] the kind that accounts for the Plexiglas. It will be a coalescence of countless thoughts, ideas, creativities. The best we can ever hope for is that each of us will now and then make tiny contributions which will finalize in an over-all luminosity, the wisdom that originates in ever so many far-from-all-wise minds, such as yours and mine.

When and if the case for freedom is made, the making itself will be but another of freedom’s infinite manifestations—the making as much a coalescence of ideas as the harnessing of electricity, our restaurants in the sky, or Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.

My fault—and this may be an appropriate confession for others, also—has been a blindness to my own lack of understanding and exposition. This failure to put myself in proper perspective has been induced by comparing my understanding of freedom to those who have little if any understanding of freedom.

But when I do a “180,” that is, when I compare myself with what I do not know, I discover that I know no more about freedom than I do about life, about radiant energy, or about the atom. What I do not know, I cannot explain or define.

To know a fault is the first step to its remedy. To stand in awe of freedom, as of life, is the second step, and the beginning of wisdom or, in this context, the beginning of finding out how to make the case for that which cannot be explained. Should enough of us set foot on the right path, we establish the possibility of making the greatest discovery of these times.

And then, the free market, private ownership, willing exchange way of life—Caesar falling, freedom ascending! That’s as much of an imitation as any worthy member of the Remnant should ever hope for.

[1] I conceive of freedom falling into two broad categories, the psychological and the sociological. The former, perhaps the more important of the two, has to do with man freeing himself from his own superstitions, fears, imperfections, ignorance. The latter has to do with the tensions and inequities resulting from man imposing his will by force on others. It is only the sociological aspect of freedom that I consider in this speculative essay.

[2] See the chapter, “The Self and the Other,” in The Dehumanization of Art by Ortega y Gasset. (In paperback, Doubleday & Co., Carden City, N. Y.).

[3] I am omitting in this analysis any reference to house thieves and others who will personally swindle. Their numbers are small and the damage they inflict is insignificant when compared to that of these “good people.”

[4] See “Plato, Your Philosopher King Has Been Found,” The Freeman, September, 1967.

[5] Time and again it has been demonstrated that their central thesis, “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” is unworkable. Socialistic organization can give away but it cannot produce the give-aways. Mises has shown that economic calculation is impossible in the socialized society. Minimum wage laws, price fixing and other controls against willing exchange, compensatory spending, indeed, all ideas in their arsenal of coercive practices have been exploded.

[6] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., revised edition, 1966), p. 864.

[7] See Human Destiny by Lecomte du Noüy (Mentor, 1963).

[8] For an excellent commentary on this point, see The Will to Believe by William James (Dover, 1956), p. 24.

[9] Actually, there are three sheets. The inner is Plexiglas, and the outer sheets are “stretched acrylic plastic,” the really tough stuff.

[10] Study and reflection make us conscious of the atomistic know-hows and understandings that flow from millions of individual minds and, in coalescing, form into a fantastic over-all wisdom. It is this that warrants and receives our faith, the faith that frees each of us to exploit our unique potentialities. But study and reflection also reveal the tragic consequences of permitting any one little mind to substitute its minuscule knowledge for the over-all wisdom. This would be matched in absurdity were a blade of grass to substitute itself for the beauty of the whole lawn!

[11] I use awe to connote solemn wonder, a veneration of the miraculous: creation, life, the atom, electricity, freedom.

[12] See page 31.

[13] By “synthesized knowledge” I refer exclusively to the freely combining kind as distinguished from the philosopher-king brand. The former falls in the same pattern of phenomena as molecules freely combining to form a tree; the latter is as absurd as some know-it-all trying to make a tree. The miraculous aspect of freedom can be pinpointed in this free synthesis of knowledge; we can take note of it, harness it, take advantage of it; its workings are beyond human comprehension.

Wisdom is Awareness

The more one knows, the greater is the awareness of not knowing. To illustrate:

A—One’s light—knowing—ten years ago

B—Today: the knowing has expanded

Observe how much more darkness—the unknown—is now visible to the growing person than formerly, and the point is clear.

There was little awareness of the unknown ten years ago; today the awareness is greatly magnified.

The more awareness—consciousness, perception—the wiser, wisdom being awareness!

Accent on the Right

Leonard E. Read

1968

To Frederic Bastiat

Dedication

Dedication of a book is a writer’s way of paying respect to someone, or of acknowledging a devoted helper, or of honoring a loved one—and, as a rule, the tribute is to a contemporary.

Why, then, my dedication to Frederic Bastiat (1801–1850)?

First, Bastiat is one of my heroes. I am unaware of anyone who saw more clearly through the political fog than he and who more brilliantly and copiously revealed his insights.[1]

And what integrity! For instance, his re-election to the Chamber of Deputies was in grave doubt: his constituents had observed that he voted now with the Left and then with the Right, giving the appearance of inconsistency. This was his defense, “I have not made an alliance with anyone; I have not joined either side. On each question I have voted according to my own conscience.” He was re-elected.

Second, and unconventionally, I think of Bastiat as a contemporary, for he does in fact live on. The fruits of his fertile mind are better known in the U.S.A. today than at any time since he began to write nearly a century and a half ago—perhaps more widely understood and shared here than ever in his own country. This is an important kind of immortality.

However, I pay tribute to Bastiat primarily to portray a truth we so sorely need to recognize. Most antisocialists, frustrated by what goes on, and impatiently looking for immediate remedies, repeatedly resort to useless short cuts. They want action now! And get nothing for their pains, absolutely nothing except, perhaps, discouragement! The hard fact is that the trend lines in social thinking do not alter their direction-much less reverse themselves—at your insistence or mine, however voluble. These trends, particularly when headed toward social decline, move with a near inexorable force and are changed, if at all, by starter stuff—leaven—or, if I may coin a term, intellectual incubation.

The only persons of constructive influence, the ones who really count in social shifts for the better, are those who labor at the incubation level. And they must be those rare individuals who receive satisfaction from following the dictates of conscience; there is no other reward; they seldom, if ever, live to witness the fruits of their labor.

Bastiat’s was a one-man performance, advancing concepts that found little hospitality in his native France, during his lifetime or since. A lesser soul would have been beaten down by discouragement and have thrown in the sponge. How many Americans die on the vine because their compatriots number in the thousands only, instead of in the millions! It takes a man to stand alone!

Free Trade in England

But who can ever know where ideas, once properly incubated, will take root! Here is a striking illustration: one of the most significant turnabouts in Western Civilization—a shift from mercantilism to free trade, from state interventionism to the free market—took place in England some time following the Napoleonic Wars. While Richard Cobden and John Bright have been largely credited with this unprecedented achievement, research reveals that Bastiat was the ideological incubator.[2] But he was entombed in Rome—Saint-Louis des Francais—ere his labors bore this English fruit.

An eminent economist[3] expressed this view to me: “The two most influential books bearing on Western Civilization have been The Holy Bible and The Wealth of Nations” A debatable opinion, perhaps, but there is no doubt about the enormous influence of Adam Smith’s book. Yet Smith, as Bastiat, searching for what’s right, working at the incubation level, serving as leaven, passed on before his labor bore its remarkable fruit. And more than likely, these men, as others who search for truth and report their findings, never suspected what the results would be. Indeed, they probably never hoped for results; to have focused on outcome doubtless would have corrupted the purity of their investigations. Such men seek truth and not outcome—and get results. Others seek outcome rather than truth—and get neither truth nor results.[4]

The spirit of seekers after truth, the attitude of those who do in fact serve as agents of civilization, is illustrated by Karl Jaspers. He was dismissed by the Nazis from his professorship at the University of Heidelberg and forbidden to teach or publish. Yet Jaspers used the years of his retirement for reflection and writing. He himself tells the story:

When in 1938 a young friend said to me: “Why are you writing, it can never be published anyway, and one day all of your manuscripts will be burned,” I replied playfully: “One never knows; I enjoy writing; what I am thinking becomes clearer in the process; and finally, in case the overthrow should occur someday, I do not wish to stand there with empty hands.”[5]

Frederic Bastiat was not present at the overthrow of mercantilism in England but, had he been standing there, his would not have been empty hands. May you and I be entitled to as salutary a verdict!

[1] His collected works in the original French—in FEE’s Library—run to some 1,200,000 words!

[2] See Frederic Bastiat: Ideas and Influence by Dean Russell. (175 pp., a multilithed, bound volume) (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965.)

[3] Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, for 32 years Professor of Political Economy at Harvard University.

[4] C. S. Lewis put it: “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.” (Mere Christianity. London: Geoffrey Bles, Ltd., 1953, p. 106.)

[5] Taken from “A New Humanism” by Karl Jaspers, appearing in Adrienne Koch (ed.), Philosophy for a Time of Crisis (New York: E. P. Dutton Co., 1959), pp. 320–21.

1

The Source of Progress

All aspects of life are in flux; nothing stays put. There is progress in some sectors, accompanied by regress in others. For instance, there is economic progress, only to be followed by a decline of material well-being. And there is moral, social, political, scientific, technological, intellectual, as well as spiritual progress—and regress.

Most everyone prefers progress in the above areas to regress. Progress is the direction man goes when fulfilling his destiny; regress, his direction when “reverting to type.” Progressing, emerging, hatching, evolving are in the same harmonic scale.

Attaching such value as we do to progress requires, also, that we give a prime value to leadership, for it is an observed fact that progress is a phenomenon flowing from leadership. Thus, when leadership is not understood or when it is sought where it does not exist, progress is not only in jeopardy, it becomes impossible for it has lost touch with its source. It is important, therefore, that we try to discover for ourselves what true leadership really is. The following is an attempt to pinpoint that type of leadership from which progress springs.

A Judas goat, one trained to lead innocent sheep to slaughter, is a leader of sorts. But, obviously, this is not the kind of leadership which serves as the source of progress: the goat is no more conscious of betrayal than are the sheep of their fate. This is simply a case of the blind leading the blind, the leader having no role other than that of being followed.

Similar behavior among men is not difficult to observe: our history books are filled with accounts of leaders, so called, who have been in the vanguard of movements ending not only in economic disaster but often in slaughter. These “leaders” have been distinguished more by their lack of understanding than by any conscious malevolence. They knew not where they were going; they found themselves out front only because millions of people, suffering from prevailing fallacies and emotional enthusiasms, saw in the “leader” an energetic personification of their own illusions. Enormous energy and personality quirks—and little else—have marked these “leaders.” The sad part is that we need not turn to history for examples; we are now experiencing a rash of these “leadership” situations, not only abroad, but at home as well.

Let us not, however, confine our reflections to those in the vanguard of destructive movements. That would be to miss the point of this analysis. For example, those of us with a libertarian bent will, unless we are extremely careful, think of Frederic Bastiat as a leader. But that excellent spokesman for liberty would have been the first to reject any such accolade. He denied the leader-in-person notion when explaining to some of his supporters why he sometimes voted in the French National Assembly with the socialists and communists: “One must base his vote on for what instead of with whom.” Here we find a clue as to the meaning of true leadership. First, however, a few thoughts on the dangers of thinking of any person as a leader.

When we think of a person—Bastiat, or anyone else, for that matter—as a leader, two kinds of disaster are likely to follow. The first is more than likely; it is certain: we who commit this error in our thinking resolve ourselves into blind followers; we limit what we perceive to nothing more than the personality traits of an individual. Whatever he does is right for no more reason than it is he who does it.[1]

The second disaster, if it happens, is an outgrowth of the first: any individual widely hailed as “our leader” is in grave danger of actually believing what he hears; he may conclude that multiple errors add up to truth—that he is, in fact, a Leader. Acceptance of this distorted view of self dangerously weakens one’s resistance to the messiah complex.

The messiah complex is a common failing, readily detected: those who suffer this psychosis think of themselves as the fountainhead of truth; they see nothing in the cosmos above their own finite minds and, thus, quite naturally become intellectual and/or political authoritarians: “Believe precisely as I do or act as I command lest you stand condemned in my eyes.” They will forsake their role as students or workers in the vineyard, and will pontificate as oracles, on any subject; indeed, they may even aspire to usurp the role of God! Thus, disaster comes to both the followed and the followers: “If the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

Success May Destroy You

Dean Inge once observed, “Nothing fails like success.” Why is the good Deans observation so often confirmed? Success is heady stuff; few can experience it and remain sober. When a student of liberty, for instance, gets ahead of others in his own little orbit, he has a measure of success. But let the others embrace him as their leader (a common failing) and let him, as a consequence of this unwarranted flattery, look upon them as his disciples (an infatuating weakness), and his initial “success” must turn to failure. The studying, which accounted for his success, is at an end. As the saying goes, “He’s a big-shot.”

To bring this analysis into sharper focus, contemplate two relatively intelligent individuals exchanging ideas in a two-way inquiry of serious import. While both leadership and followership would then be in evidence, we could not accurately ascribe the attraction and response to either one of the individuals themselves, but to some object beyond both individuals, which one understands better than the other. The leadership and followership we observe in this situation has only an ideational explanation: one of the persons embodies an idea, an insight, a perception, a new spark of consciousness which he shares; the other, who perceives the point, remarks, in effect, “I follow you.” This means that he, also, perceives the idea. Leadership, in this significant sense, is enlightenment, not the making of carbon copies. Nietzsche once observed that it is no credit to a teacher if a student resembles him overly much.

Followership, in this sense, means to partake of the enlightenment. “To improve oneself,” wrote Ortega y Gasset, “one must first admire perfection in others.” If it is ideational perfection that is admired in another, then it is ideational perfection of self, not imitation, that one will strive for.

Individuals, when discoursing in a spirit of inquiry, will experience light and interchanges of light—that is, the teacher and student positions will alternate, each feeding on the other, the baton of leadership passing back and forth. It is worthy of note that writing, reading, and printing have done away with many of the limitations once imposed on this process by time and space; we find ourselves enlightened by ideas recorded in the distant past.

The Measure of a Man

Refer again to Frederic Bastiat. We of recent generations have not had him as a personal acquaintance; thus, the leadership we are prone to ascribe to his person is patently false. The for what—the work—of this French philosopher and statesman constitutes the sole leadership we follow. His writings are clear expositions of ideas he perceived or consciousness he attained or principles he deduced; they are the fruits of his studies, gleanings from his devoted and intensive search for truth. His awareness that leadership is an ideational phenomenon rather than a personality trait caused him to conclude, “One must base his vote on for what instead of with whom.”

When Abraham Lincoln in his Peoria speech said, “Stand with anybody that stands right. . . . Part with him when he goes wrong,” he was advocating a disregard of who the person was and a skeptical look at what the person stood for. In short, when looking for leadership, look right through the individual in order to see the nature and quality of the idea or principle he espouses; look through the person, be he labeled friend or foe, Republican or Democrat, clergyman or layman, the great, the near-great, or the commoner. If what is found be adjudged valid and also helpful and enlightening—that is, above or beyond one’s own lights—then there is leadership, the only kind that generates progress.

Leading Thoughts

To test yourself for qualities of this “thought leadership,” stand before a mirror. Then switch off the lights, or close your eyes, or imagine that your visible image completely disappears—that nothing remains but your invisible essence, your consciousness or range of perception, your thoughts and ideas. This is all the genuine leadership you possess; and the amount of it is to be measured by the extent to which others, looking through you, find enlightenment in your ideas.

Searching for and finding leadership as it shows forth in others is nearly as difficult as developing it in self. For no one can comprehend a superior consciousness except as his own consciousness, in some measure, approximates the higher one.[2] Thus, the search for leadership demands a continuing growth in healthy skepticism, discrimination, awareness, wisdom. That the search becomes more difficult as one advances is conceded, the difficulty accounting for much of the misconstruction put on leadership; discrimination in ideas is denied to those who find the required labor and self-discipline too difficult. Yet, sensing the need to follow something—all of us are followers in most respects—many people turn to “leaders”; they follow the reputations of fallible men—ready-made and shallow answers to this native necessity—and thus never discover the kind of leadership on which all progress, all human emergence, is founded.

Where there is no leadership—that is, good ideas being sought, grasped, explained, understood—there is no economic freedom, no liberty. Thus, we need to know what true leadership is, lest we be misled in our quest. Such truths as are perceived, not the persons advancing them, constitute the sole source of progress; only these truths qualify for that type of leadership worth developing or following.

[1] A noted clergyman of the last generation, S. Parkes Cadman, lamented, “Do you know what is wrong with my church? My people like me, but they don’t love God.” In short, they were following a person; they were not embarked on the Eternal Search for Truth.

[2] “A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.” An entry of December 17, 1854, in Journal Intimé of Henri Frederic Amiel.

2

On Thinking for Self

During the discussion following one of my recent lectures, it occurred to me that the questions fell into a pattern, and that this pattern was the same—whether in Manila, or Boise, or wherever. Each question was based on something the inquirer had heard or read; no questions appeared to stem from a genuine impasse in the persons own effort to solve a problem. These people were merely repeating questions someone else had raised for them; they weren’t seeking directions by reason of having lost their way for, in fact, they had done no exploration on their own!

What a fearful thought—if this situation is general: a nation of people the vast majority of whom do no thinking for themselves in the area of political economy! Positions on matters of the deepest social import formed from nothing more profound than radio, TV, and newspaper commentaries, or casual, off-the-cuff opinions, or the outpourings of popularity seekers! “The quality and influence of an idea, Ortega saw, was not so much in the idea as in a man’s relation to it. Has he made the idea his own, or merely inherited it? . . . The man born into a culture confident of its knowledge is in danger of becoming a barbarian.”[1]

Granting the correctness of this gloomy thought, what are the political consequences? And what counsel can you and I offer individuals who are doing no thinking for themselves? So, let’s explore the two significant questions this deplorable situation seems to pose.

To assess the political consequences, view the American populace as a market. Suppose, for instance, that the consumer tastes in literature have deteriorated until there is demand for pornography only. Pornographic authors and publishers will spring up by the thousands; authors and publishers of ethical, moral, and spiritual works will fade away for lack of a market. Reverse the market situation and assume only highly elevated tastes in literature. Authors and publishers of pornography will then be displaced by authors and publishers of high-grade literature.

One needs no poll to determine the literary tastes of a people. Merely observe the kind of literature that is gaining in favor and profit. We can infer from this that it is useless to blame commentators, authors, and publishers for purveying trash. They are merely irresponsible responses to the general taste—the market—whatever it is.[2] The market determines who are to be the successful purveyors.

The Political Climate

Market demand also determines the kinds of persons who vie with each other for political office.

Assume a people who do no thinking for themselves. Theirs is a stunted skepticism. Such people only react and are easy prey of the cliché, the plausibility, the shallow promise, the lie. Emotional appeals and pretty words are their only guidelines. The market is made up of no-thinks. Statesmen—men of integrity and intellectual stature—are hopelessly out of demand. When this is the situation, such statesmen will not be found among the politically active.

And who may we expect to respond to a market where thinking for self is absent? Charlatans! Word mongers! Power seekers! Deception artists! They come out of their obscurity as termites out of a rotten stump; the worst rise to the political top. And when our only choice is “the lesser of two evils,” voting is a sham.

Now assume a society of persons who do their own thinking and, as a consequence, possess a healthy and intelligent skepticism, persons who cannot be “taken in,” hardheaded students of political economy graced with moral rectitude. The market for charlatans is dead; we are scarcely aware of such people. Instead, we find statesmen of character and integrity vying for political office.

There is no need for a poll to determine whether original or introspective thinking is declining or rising. Merely keep in mind that whatever shows forth on the political horizon is the response to the market, an echoing or mirroring of the preponderant mode in thinking. When thinking for self is declining, more charlatans and fewer statesmen will vie for office. Look at the political horizon to learn what the thinking is, just as you look at a thermometer to learn what the temperature is. So, blame not the political opportunists for the state of the nation. Our failure to think for ourselves put them there—indeed, brought them into being. For we are the market; they are but the reflections!

An interesting fact intrudes itself into this analysis: approximately 50 per cent of those who do not think for themselves are furious with what they see on the political horizon—which is but their own reflections! And to assuage their discontent they exert vigorous effort to change the reflection from Republican to Democrat, or vice versa. As should be expected, they get no more for their pains than new faces masking mentalities remarkably similar to those unseated. It cannot be otherwise.[3]

No improving trend on the political horizon is possible except as there is an improvement—quantity and quality—in thinking for self. Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we seriously attend to our thinking. What helpful points can we make?

The Proper Role of Government

Given the present situation, where government is recklessly out of bounds and has its hand in practically every aspect of life, the well-informed citizen is expected to know all about everything: how to deliver mail, poverty the world over, give-aways to foreign countries, you name it, are up for public discussion. Most of these so-called national or world problems are of similar origin and nature—each one trying to manage everyone’s business but his own. This hopelessly impossible challenge doubtless accounts in no small measure for so many having “thrown in the sponge” when it comes to thinking for self. No person on the face of the earth knows how to make socialism work. And don’t try! Instead, concentrate the thinking on what the principled and proper scope of government really is. This is easily within the realm of any reasonably intelligent person, and is first of all the kind of thinking for self in political economy one should cover.[4] All else—welfare, security, prosperity—is in the realm of the free market: you to your affairs, me to mine.

The Individual’s Role

Most individuals who have abandoned thinking for self in matters of political economy are unaware that they thus dry up the source of Creative Wisdom. Such wisdom as society requires does not and cannot exist in any one person, though each of us should be responsible for his own part. Each of us views the world through a tiny aperture. No two apertures, no two views, are identical. Your and my disparate wisdoms, such as they are, these minuscule dividends of exercising the introspective faculty, can be likened to two wee candles, each different from the other and each, by itself, barely perceptible. But when all persons with any capabilities in this respect are realizing their potentialities, there is a remarkable wisdom, a Creative Wisdom that can be likened to an over-all luminosity, a great light.[5] To understand the nature and origin of Creative Wisdom is sufficient to inspire many persons to introspective action.[6] The responsible citizen insists on knowing what is his part and then doing it.

There are obstacles, of course, on this path to wisdom. One is a lack of faith in an over-all wisdom representing a coalescence of tiny bits of individual understanding. There are numerous reasons why it isn’t trusted. Obviously, it cannot be seen with the eye; it can be apprehended only by abstract thinking. Nor have enough people been thinking for self to make an impressive demonstration. Yet, this is the nature of knowledge in society and it behooves each of us to make the best of it.

Another obstacle is busy-ness, a consuming preoccupation with housework, children, the job, a business, making a living, or whatever. But these amenities of life are impossible in the absence of a good society and a good society cannot be developed except through the process of thinking for self. Until such introspection becomes as natural as eating and breathing, there is little prospect for the good life.

The essential critical faculty cannot be developed when we copy-cat the questions and conclusions of others. Each to his own thinking! The rule, therefore, is not to take somebody else’s word for it. And to be consistent, what must my counsel be? Don’t take my word for it! Scarcely any self-anointed seer or prophet wants to go that far; but, unless he will, write him off as an intellectual authoritarian, a be-like-me god.

Does this counsel, “Don’t take my word for it,” mean that others should close their minds to my word? Not necessarily. Indeed, one who would think for himself should look not only among his contemporaries but also among his predecessors, even among the ancients, for any bits of wisdom that can be garnered. Take full advantage of one’s environment, experience, and heritage, but let each thoughtfully do his own selecting, evaluating, and reasoning.

To trust this Creative Wisdom reflects an abiding faith in self and in all free men—really, a faith in the creative process. But don’t take my word for it; think that one through for yourself.

[1] Manas, October 25, 1967.

[2] Exception: Men of virtue and talents—the natural aristocracy, to use Jefferson’s term—would never irresponsibly respond to the lure of either fame or fortune should the response contradict their concept of righteousness. Man cannot stoop below his goodness.

[3] In the above I have assumed the two extremes: nobody and everybody thinking for self. In society this is never the case; it’s always a tendency toward one extreme or the other. The societal tendency, of course, is not swayed or determined by the many who fail to think for themselves but by the few who strive to do their own thinking. The thinkers ultimately govern.

[4] Commended for reference reading is The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1962).

[5] See “The Use of Knowledge in Society” by F. A. Hayek. The Freeman, May, 1961.

[6] More of an explanation of “Creative Wisdom” appears in Chapter 9.

3

Accent on the Right

A student turned in his paper, “What’s Wrong with America.” After pronouncing it “excellent,” his teacher advised, “Now write another essay and show what’s right with America.”

Could it be that we of the libertarian persuasion have, like that student, spent too much time with the negative and the critical? Might it not be better to concentrate our thinking, talking, writing on what’s right with our country? This thought, at least, deserves a hard look.

Reflect on what, for the most part, we have been doing. We have clearly seen and duly deplored the striking shift toward Federal responsibility for security and welfare and prosperity, political determination and dictation of human affairs, “public” ownership and control of property, price and wage and interest and rent controls, and centralized government growing out of bounds.[1] We have been so engrossed in denouncing these things that are wrong that we have lost sight of much that is right. To verify this, try committing to paper everything you can think of that’s right and observe how short the list is!

Righteousness Loses by Default

I do not mean to suggest that what’s wrong is negligible; our society appears headed toward collapse. Nor do I mean to condemn the reporting and analysis of wrongdoing. The scholarly diagnosis of fallacies, as distinguished from diatribes and polemics, is an absolute necessity. But the direction in which we are headed may be a significant signal that the libertarian tactic itself, viewed over-all, has been wrong. Look at the result, in which we have been unwitting accomplices: It is self-evident that what’s right has no supporters among the wrongdoers; nor has right action any vocal protagonists among those of us who keep our eye on and criticize only the wrongdoing. The upshot is that right action has no voice, no announcers, no press; even worse, the wrongdoing faces no well-known alternatives. That which is right is buried in silence; it loses by default. How, then, can right action be expected to assert itself and, thus, prevail?

Perpetual declaiming has another fault: it quickly becomes boring and tiresome; it tends to seal all ears. Would-be teachers and preachers of the libertarian philosophy reach a low point of simply crying on one another’s shoulders, often misleadingly phrased as “talking to ourselves.” This hopeless situation, as much as anything else, causes them to throw in the sponge, give up the ghost.

Were we to pursue the proper tactic, we would first acquaint ourselves with all the right actions we can inventory. We would next bring these to light, enshrine and ennoble and sanctify them as we do motherhood, for instance—make them politically untouchable. This is the kind of intellectual nurture that righteousness requires in order to expand and grow. Further, when we accent what is right, we put ourselves in the realm of the positive; our message becomes attractive, for it is one of hope rather than despair. This approach also strips the wrongdoing of its plausibilities and without any declamation on our part—leaves it bare, naked, and exposed.

While I am conscious of the libertarian plight brought on by our tactical errors and am aware of the dividends that would accrue were we able to accent the right, the positive, and the hopeful, I confess to a frustrating lack of ability to practice expertly that which I now commend. In the practice of what I am preaching here, I stand, as do many others, an utter neophyte. For this demands of me that I break with habits of long standing and embark on a wholly new and unpracticed approach. Bluntly, I have been so overwhelmed by the wrongdoing that I am hardly conscious of those actions that are right, nor am I capable of itemizing them without resorting to a difficult concentration. Any libertarian who questions the sincerity of this confession should give himself the test.

The Exceptions Make News

Yet, there is one obvious fact from which we may draw comfort and help: What’s right with America exceeds what is wrong! Were this not true, the wrongdoing would have taken over completely by now. And it has not!

Why, then, is the wrongdoing so glaringly evident and right action so hidden from view? The answer to this is simple: The wrongdoing is exceptional and makes news; hardly anything else do we read about in the press and listen to over radio and TV. Doing right, on the other hand, is so commonplace that it never “makes the papers.” Actually, we couldn’t manufacture enough newsprint to report all the kindly acts, the honest transactions, the intelligent thoughts and observations. Right actions are taken for granted and no more impinge upon our consciousness than does the air we regularly breathe or the rhythmic beat of our hearts.

The wrong is seen; the right is not. So, let us try to become aware of the commonplace, that we may focus on what is right until we are better able to emphasize and enshrine it.

Consider, for instance, what it would be like to sponsor a FEE Seminar in Russia, or in any of the Iron Curtain countries, or in China, or even in Spain. You would be confronted by men with weapons.

In America, regardless of ominous signs, we are still free to speak and write our thoughts and to assemble, even though our views may be diametrically opposed to those of the presiding political establishment. Liberty can never be counted out where and when freedom of speech, of press, of assembly prevail. Why not take note of these blessings, praise them to the skies, and make them sacrosanct? While they stand, authoritarianism cannot overcome us![2]

Despite the infringements upon religious freedom cast by programs such as social security and mass medication, freedom of worship is largely intact in the United States.[3] This falls in the category of that which is right and stands in important opposition to the total state. Glorify religious freedom!

A Powerful Constructive Force

Every time you make a phone call, this is a willing exchange and reflects a gain on the part of both you and the telephone company. Consider the grocer, the dairyman, the candlestick maker, and the countless others with whom you daily deal. Billions of these exchanges, free of coercion, take place every day. In their incredible sum total, they constitute a constructive force out of all proportion to the destructive, coercive forces. Adequately demonstrate the virtues of these right actions and you automatically curb the wrong ones.

Suppose, for example, that we had been extolling the economic, educational, political, and recreational advantages of travel to countries around the globe to the point of general appreciation and acceptance. The Washington hierarchy would no more dare suggest a restriction on foreign travel than it would dare to deny travel between the fifty states. We may be late in our enshrinement of this item among the things that are right; but if we are late, this further illustrates the value of accenting the positive.[4]

Aside from the restrictions imposed by minimum wage laws, licensing, trade union compulsions, and the like, there remain literally millions of willing exchanges between the sellers and buyers of personal services, transactions in which the market is unfettered. Let us take cognizance of these and show the benefits they confer on all parties concerned. By so doing, the legally rigged, coercively restricted transactions will be exposed for what they really are: impediments to the long-range interests of everyone.

It is true that we are people-controlled to a marked extent in the name of rent and price controls, farm price supports, and other political interventions.[5] But, for the most part, producers and consumers are still free to engage in open competition, guided by the unerring signals of ever-changing market prices. It takes an enormous amount of observation and learning to uphold open competition interestingly and attractively. But it is an important part of the tactic of accenting right action.

Angels and Whipping Boys

Perhaps these few examples may suffice to suggest that right action exceeds the wrongdoing in America. No mention has been made of the little personal charities, thoughtful deeds, kindly sentiments, helping hands, fair dealings, integrity, initiative, acceptance of responsibility, piety, love, wisdom—angels, Emerson called them—that manifest themselves in nearly every American to some extent. So, let us not only take note of these exemplary attributes but put them on parade, extol and pay tribute to them, that is, exalt them.

Do we run a risk in shifting from the declamation of wrongdoing to the enshrinement of rightdoing? Will we, perhaps, leave the wrongdoers without opposition? Would they not then be free to run rampant, even more so than now?

First, we should know that there is a better tactic than declaiming, grumbling, growling, name-calling.

Second, upholding right actions is a form of presentation that leaves wrongdoers nothing to scratch against; its practitioners remove themselves as “whipping boys” who serve to distract attention from the wrongdoers and their deeds.[6] When we accent rightdoing, we move into a realm beyond the range of wrongdoers. Darkness cannot penetrate light; it is the other way around. Increasing the candlepower is what counts!

Finally, there is the prospect that as one learns to put his emphasis on right actions, he simultaneously withdraws any support he may have been giving, however unwittingly, to the wrongdoing.

I insist that the individual himself is upgraded to the extent he succeeds in understanding, accenting, and living by what is right. And if this isn’t worth the candle, pray tell, what is!

[1] See my “Reflections on Coming of Age.” A copy of this monograph on request.

For a much more detailed outline of what’s wrong, see “The Task Confronting Libertarians” by Henry Hazlitt. The Freeman, March, 1968. Copy on request.

[2] A critic of this conclusion is correct in claiming that freedom cannot exist in the absence of private ownership, but he may not be right when he insists that private ownership can be abolished in the presence of free speech, press, assembly. Yes, it can be greatly impaired, as we are now witnessing; but, ultimately, the institution of private ownership must stand among a free people unless, of course, they degenerate to the point where they no longer prize the right to the fruits of their own labor. In this unhappy event, there isn’t anything remaining to argue about. The idea of liberty must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.

[3] For instance, a religious feature of the Latter Day Saints, of the Amish, and others is looking after their own. Compulsory social security is a denial of this. Fluoridation of the water supply is mass medication which contradicts the tenets of Christian Science. Freedom to worship as one chooses has been chipped away to some extent.

[4] My associate, Dr. Paul Poirot, on reading this manuscript, volunteered to “accent the positive” as related to travel. See “Progress Through Travel,” The Freeman, April, 1968. My attempt appears as Chapter 10. But, more important, try your own hand at this.

[5] See “Price Control Is People Control” by Dean Russell. The Freeman, October, 1961.

[6] Supply your own names; the “whipping boys” are legion, the ones who indulge in extravagant, unverifiable claims, name-calling, and so on; in short, the opponents of socialism who say things the socialists can legitimately point to as absurd. The public eye is thus fixed on these absurdities and thereby distracted from the absurdities of the socialists. But the brash opponents serve the socialists in yet another way: all opponents, because they are associated as opponents, are made to look absurd.

4

Find the Wrong, and There’s the Right

As in most disagreements, the current politico-economic controversy revolves around what’s right. And contrary to what a socialist or a libertarian usually thinks of his opponents, each is as convinced of his righteousness as the other. A consciously malevolent person is seldom found.

That this contest as to what’s right in social relationships will ever be resolved is doubtful; for what’s right is to be found only in what’s true, and who among us is qualified to settle on that? As do most others, I have numerous views which I believe to be right and not even debatable. But to list or classify them? Far easier, I think, to define right actions as those which are not demonstrably wrong. For it is possible to bring within our purview and make some reasonable assessment of the wrong; what’s right is so vast that it hardly lends itself to any such analysis.

Those actions which are wrong in social relationships are the ones we should aim to prohibit by personal endeavor, by education and, as a last resort, by society’s formal agency of organized force: government. Thus, to analyze what should be prohibited is a means of opening to our vision the infinite realm of righteousness.

As an introductory thought, reflect on how misled we so often are when judging people by first appearances! To dramatize the fact that what first meets the eye is often deceiving, imagine identical twins. They do indeed look alike, but how they can differ in other respects! One brother can be an out-and-out collectivist, statist, mercantilist, interventionist; the other an ardent believer in individual rights, free market practices, and private ownership of property. For reasons difficult to explain, one has a socialistic orientation while the other has a libertarian devotion.

But even these opposed designations—socialist and libertarian—do not accurately or revealingly stake out the significant differences between these two men. Such labels may have considerable emotional impact, but they do not precisely distinguish the conflicting philosophies. What really, in the ideological sense, marks the one from the other? Is there some one characteristic that can be identified and evaluated? Yes, I believe there is, and this brings me to my point: The difference between the socialist and the libertarian thinker is a difference of opinion as to what others should be prohibited from doing.

Let’s use this claim as a working hypothesis, think it through, and test its validity. If the claim proves irrefutable, then we have come upon a fairly simple method of evaluating our own or anyone else’s authoritarianism or, conversely, libertarianism.[1] Further we shall, by identifying what should be prohibited, discover what’s wrong and, thus, expand our awareness of what’s right. But first, some reflections on prohibitions in general.

Rules for Survival

How many animal species have come and gone no one knows. Many thousands survive and the fact of their survival, whether guided by instincts or drives or conscious choices, rests, in no small measure, on the avoidance of specie-destructive actions. Thus, all surviving species have, at the very minimum, abided by a set of prohibitions—things not to do; otherwise, they would have been extinct ere this.

Certain types of scorpions, for example, stick to dry land; puddles and pools are among their instinctual taboos. There is some prohibitory force that keeps fish off dry land, lambs from chasing lions, and so on and on. How insects and animals acquire their built-in prohibitions is not well understood. We label their reactions instinctual, meaning that it is not reasoned or conscious behavior.

Man, on the other hand, does not now possess a like set of instinctual do-nots: built-in prohibitions. Instead, he must enjoy or suffer the consequences of his own free will, his own power to choose between what’s right and what’s wrong; in a word, man is more or less at the mercy of his own imperfect understanding and conscious decisions. The upshot of this is that human beings must choose the prohibitions they will observe, and the selection of a wrong one may be as disastrous to our species as omitting a right one. Survival of the human species rests as much on observing the correct prohibitions as is the case with any other species.

But in our case, the observance of the correct must-nots has survival value only if preceded by a correct, conscious selection of the must-nots. When the survival of the human race is at stake and when that survival rests on the selection of prohibitions by variable, imperfect members of that race, the wonder is that the ideological controversy is not greater than now.

When Homo sapiens first appeared he had little language, no literature, no maxims, no tradition or history to which he could make reference; in short, he possessed no precise and accurate list of things not to do. We cannot explain the survival of these early specimens of our kind unless we assume that some of the instinctual prohibitions of their animal cousins remained with them during the transition period from instinct to some measure of self-knowledge for, throughout many millennia, we know nothing of man-formalized prohibitions. Then appeared the crude taboos observed by what we now call “primitive peoples.” These have survival value in certain conditions, even though the reasons given for the practice might not hold water.

Enforcing the Rules

If prohibitions are as important as here represented, it is well that we reflect not only on the man-contrived thou-shalt-nots but particularly on the several types of persuasion to make them effective. For it is self-evident that there can be no thou-shalt-not worth the mention unless it is backed by some form of persuasion. So far as this exploration is concerned, there are three forms of persuasion which make prohibitions effective or meaningful. I shall touch on the three in the order of their historical appearance.

The Code of Hammurabi, 2000 B.C., is probably the earliest of systematized prohibitions. This is considered one of the greatest of the ancient codes; it was particularly strong in its prohibitions against defrauding the helpless. To secure observance, the persuasiveness took the form of organized police force. The Columbia Encyclopedia refers to the retributive nature of the punishment meted out as a “savage feature . . . an eye for an eye literally.” Not only is this the oldest of the three forms of persuasion as a means of effectuating prohibitions, but it is today very popular and much employed all over the “civilized” world, in the U.S.A. as elsewhere.

The next and higher form of persuasion appeared about a millennium later—the form employed to effectuate the thou-shalt-nots known as The Decalogue. Here the persuasiveness was not organized police force but, instead, the promise of retribution: initially, the hope of tribal survival if the commands were obeyed and the fear of tribal extinction were they disobeyed and, later, the hope of heavenly bliss or the fear of hell and damnation. It may be said that The Decalogue was backed by moral rather than political law, that is, the persuasion advanced from a physical to a spiritual force. We witness in this evolutionary step the early emergence of man’s moral nature.

The latest and highest form of persuasion is that which gives effectiveness to the most advanced prohibition, the Golden Rule. As originally scribed, around 500 B.C., it reads: “Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.” What persuasiveness lies behind this prohibition? Not physical force! And not even such spiritual force as hope and fear! This latest force is a sense of justice, perhaps the inmost law of one’s being. That this is a recently acquired human faculty is supported by its rarity. Ever so many people will concede the soundness of the Golden Rule, but only now and then is an individual to be found whose moral nature is elevated to the point where he can observe this do-not in daily living. The person who achieves mastery of this discipline moves beyond a satisfaction with external rewards and punishments to the profound conviction that virtue and excellence are their own reward. Doing what’s right counts above all else.

The Emerging Moral Faculty

It is relevant to that which follows to reflect on what is meant by an elevated moral nature. To illustrate the lack of such a nature: We had a kitchen employee who pilfered, that is, she would quietly lift provisions from our larder and tote them to her own larder. This practice did no offense to such moral scruples as she possessed; she was only concerned lest anyone see her indulge in toting; nothing was wrong except getting caught! My point is that this individual had not yet acquired what is here meant by an elevated moral nature.

What distinguishes the individual who has an elevated moral nature? For one thing, he cares not one whit about what others see him do. Why? He has a private eye of his own, far more exacting and severe than any force or fear others can impose: a highly developed conscience. Not only does such a person possess a sense of justice but he also possesses its counterpart, a disciplinary conscience. Justice and conscience are two parts of the same emerging moral faculty. It is doubtful that one can exist without the other.

It seems that individual man, having lost many of the built-in instinctual do-nots of his animal cousins, acquires, as he evolves far enough, a built-in rational, prohibitory ethic which he is compelled to observe by reason of his sense of justice and the dictates of conscience. I repeat, proper prohibitions are just as important to the survival of the human species as to the survival of any other species.

Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. There is more to this prohibition than first glance reveals. Nearly everyone, for instance, will concede that there is no universal right to kill, to steal, or to enslave—because these practices cannot be universalized, if for no higher reason. But only the person who comprehends this ethic—the Golden Rule—in its wholeness, who has an elevated sense of justice and conscience, will conclude that such a concession denies to him the right to take the life of another, to relieve any person of his livelihood, or to deprive any human being of his liberty. Without an elevated moral nature, he’ll miss the point. And, one more distinction: While there are many who will agree that they, personally, should not kill, steal, enslave, it is only the individual with a first-rate moral nature who will have no hand in encouraging any agency—even government—in doing these things for him or others. Anyone who gets the whole point of the Golden Rule sees that there is no escape from individual responsibility by resort to the popular expedient of collective action.

Where Will Each Stand?

Let us now return to the question this chapter poses: “What shall be construed as wrong and, thus, prohibited?” For, I repeat, it is the difference of opinion as to what should be denied others that highlights the essential difference between the collectivists—socialists, statists, interventionists, mercantilists—and those of the libertarian faith. Take stock of what you would prohibit others from doing and you will accurately find your own position in the ideological line-up. Or, this method can be used to determine anyone else’s position. Consider the following statement:

Government has a positive responsibility in any just society to see to it that each and every one of its citizens acquires all the skills and the opportunities necessary to practice and appreciate the arts to the limit of his natural ability. Enjoyment of the arts and participation in them are among man’s natural rights and essential to his full development as a civilized person. One of the reasons governments are instituted among men is to make this right a reality.[2]

It is significant that the author uses the term “its citizens,” the antecedent of “its” being government. Such a conception is basic to the collectivist philosophy: We—you and I—belong to the state. We are “its” wards! Of course, if one accepts this statist premise, the above position is sensible enough: it has to do with a detail in the state’s paternalistic concern for its charges.

Inhibited Choices

But we are, in this chapter, on another tack, namely, examining what a person would prohibit others from doing. The writer of the above statement does not imply, at least to anyone who cannot read below the surface, any prohibitions. He dwells only on what he would have the state do for the people. Where, then, are the prohibitions? The program he favors would cost X hundred million dollars annually. From where come these millions? The state has nothing except that which it takes from the people. Therefore, this man favors that we be prohibited from using the fruits of our own labor as we choose in order that these fruits be expended as the state chooses. And take note of the fact that this and all other socialist-designed prohibitions have police force as the method of persuasion.[3]

One phase of socialism is the state ownership and/or control of the results of production. Our incomes are the results of production. That portion of our incomes is socialized which the state turns to its use by its prohibition of our use. It follows, then, that a person would impose prohibitions on the rest of us to the extent that he supports governmental projects which would socialize our income.

Areas of Control

Only a few, as yet, favor the socialization of the arts and the consequent socialization of our incomes for that “far-out” purpose, but there are ever so many who favor prohibiting our freedom of choice in order to:

Pay farmers for not growing peanuts, tobacco, and other crops;

Support socialist governments all over the world;

Put men on the moon;

Subsidize below-cost pricing in air, water, and land transportation, education, insurance, loans of countless kinds;

Socialize security;

“Renew” downtowns that consumers have deserted, build hospitals and other local facilities;

Give Federal aid of this or that variety, endlessly.

We have not, however, exhausted the prohibitions that the socialists are imposing on us. For another phase of socialism is the state ownership and/or control of the means of production. Included among the existing prohibitions of this type are:

The planting of all of a farmer’s own acreage to wheat, cotton, peanuts, corn, tobacco, rice—even to feed his own stock;

The quitting of a business at will;

The taking of a job at will;

The selling of a citizens own product at his own price, for instance, milk, steel, and others;

The free pricing of services (wages);

The delivery of first-class mail for pay;

Again, the listing of prohibitions is endless. Harold Fleming, author of Ten Thousand Commandments (1951), having to do with prohibitions of just one Federal agency, The Federal Trade Commission, is presently bringing his book up-to-date, entitling it, Twenty Thousand Commandments.

Those who favor the socialization of the means of production would, of course, frown on the profit motive and prohibit profit.

Which of all the prohibitions listed above and implicit in socialism do you or others favor? This is the appropriate question for rating oneself or others ideologically.

Those among us with a libertarian devotion would, it is true, impose certain prohibitions on others. They quite accurately note that not all individuals have acquired a moral nature sufficient strictly to observe such fundamentally sound taboos as “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not steal.” There are those who will take the lives of others, and those who will take the livelihood of others, such as those who will pilfer and those who will get the government to do their pilfering for them. Most libertarian believers would supplement the moral laws with social laws aimed at prohibiting any citizen from doing violence to another’s person (life) or another’s livelihood (extension of life).[4] Thus, they would prohibit or at least penalize murder, theft, fraud, misrepresentation. In short, they would inhibit or prohibit the destructive actions of any and all, and that is all! Asserts the libertarian, “Freely choose how you act creatively, productively, for this is in the realm of what’s right. I have no desire to prohibit you or others in this respect. I have no prohibitory designs on you of any kind except as you or others would keep me and others from acting creatively, productively ourselves, that is, as we freely choose. I do not classify any creative action as a wrong action.”

Observe that the libertarian in his hoped-for prohibition of destructive actions does no violence to anyone else’s liberty, none whatsoever. The word liberty is a social term; it would never be used by an individual completely isolated from others. We must not, therefore, think of liberty as being restrained when fraud, violence, and the like are prohibited, for these destructive actions violate the liberty of others and, therefore, they are not in the composition of liberty. Destructive actions are the negations of liberty; it is self-evident that liberty cannot be made up of its negations. An accomplished libertarian would never prohibit the liberty of another.

There we have it: the all-out collectivists at one end of the ideological spectrum who would completely prohibit individual liberty and, at the other end of the spectrum, the libertarians whose prohibitions are not opposed to but are in support of individual liberty. And their prohibitions are few and as simple as the two Commandments against assaults on life and livelihood.

There Is Something Better

Finally, libertarians, as the socialists, do not believe the human situation to be in apple-pie order; imperfection is rampant. The libertarian, however, observing that human frailties are universal, balks at halting the evolutionary process which is the ultimate prohibition implicit in authoritarian schemes. Be the political dandy a Napoleon or Tito or one of the home-grown variety of prohibitionist, how can the human situation improve if the rest of us are prohibited from growing beyond the level of the prohibitionist’s imperfections? Is nothing better in store for us than this?

The libertarian’s answer is affirmative: There is something better! But the improvement must take the form of man’s growth, emergence, hatching—the acquisition of higher faculties such as an improved sense of justice, a refined, exacting, self-disciplinary conscience; in brief, an elevated moral nature. Man-concocted prohibitions against this growth stifle or kill it. Human faculties can flower, man can move toward his creative destiny, only if he be free to do so; in a word, where liberty prevails.

What should be prohibited? Actions which impair liberty! Let us find these and be rid of them, for they are wrong. As this is done, the infinite realm of righteousness will hove into view.

[1] Some will make the point that the authoritarian employs compulsions as well as prohibitions. My thesis is that all compulsions can be reduced to prohibitions, thus making it easier to assess authoritarianism. For instance, we say that a Russian is compelled to work in the sputnik factory. But it is more accurate to say that he is prohibited from any other employment; he builds sputniks or starves, and freely decides between the restricted choices left to him. So-called compulsions by government are, in fact, prohibitions of freedom to choose.

[2] See The Commonweal, August 23, 1963, p. 494.

[3] If anyone doubts that the U.S. brand of police force is not an eye for an eye, see the chapter, “Violence As a Way of Life” in Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

[4] How prohibited? Unfortunately, by organized police force or the threat thereof, the only form of persuasion comprehensible to those lacking a developed sense of morality and justice. Be it noted, however, that this is exclusively a defensive force, called into play only as a secondary action, that is, it is inactive except in the instances of initiated, aggressive force.

5

Right and Wrong, Side by Side

The right and the wrong, progress and regress, occurring simultaneously!

A modern Dickens might well describe ours as “the best of times . . . the worst of times.” Our standard of living soars as opportunities for employment multiply in pace with the quantity and quality of goods and services available. Yet, at the same time, we experience on an unprecedented scale the reckless waste of work stoppages, political controls, and other restraints upon freedom.

This is the great anomaly, so pronounced on both counts and so hand-in-hand that many persons believe the wrong actions are really causing the creative outburst! This is perfectly illustrated when, on hearing a criticism of the growing governmental interventionism, many Americans reply, “We’ve never had it so good.” Such mistaken correlation will persist unless we understand and explain why wrong actions cannot bring about economic well-being.

The paradox of increasing prosperity with more extensive interventions is not new. In The History of England (1839) Lord Macaulay observed, “It has often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.”[1]

Brazilian entrepreneurs have another way of explaining their simultaneous progress and regress: “We get things done while the politicians sleep.”

If the notion that wrong measures cause the right results, that regress brings about progress, becomes a firm and general conviction, then, assuredly, the regressive forces will overtake, consume, and eventually destroy the progressive forces. For example, should we become convinced that a minimum wage law is a means of raising wages and then base all facets of the economy on similar illusions, the American miracle will have ended. So, it is of the utmost importance that we dissect this anomaly and divest it of its mystery.

The explanation is quite simple: exchange has been multiplying more rapidly than restraints on exchange. Consistent with this answer is the fact that authoritarianism, so far, has lagged behind the release of creative energy; bureaucratic dictation has failed to keep pace with entrepreneurial ingenuity; capital has been formed faster than destroyed; citizens in pursuing their own interests have accomplished much while the political gods have been sleeping.

Changing Forms of Wealth

A systematic understanding of the importance of specialization and trade (exchange) is of recent origin.

Prior to the time of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations less than 200 years ago, wealth was concentrated in few hands and was reckoned mostly in inventories: precious metals, jewels, slaves, acres of land, size of manor or castle, and so on.

Then, with the advent of specialization which Adam Smith understood and explained so admirably, a new concept of wealth came into being. Instead of idle inventories possessed by feudal dukes and lords of the manor, wealth in the form of useful goods and services spread to the masses whose skills were needed to activate and operate the tools of industry. So marked has been this change that today’s American laborer is wealthier in the variety of things he enjoys than the legendary Midas, Croesus, or any medieval king.

However, a shift from a near self-subsistence economy—foraging and the like—to a specialized economy presupposes not only the accumulation of savings and capital but also freedom to exchange.

Were a people to specialize and not exchange, there would be no wealth; indeed, all would perish. As the absence of exchange results in poverty, so does the proliferation of willing exchanges result in increased wealth.

That wealth increases through the process of willing exchange is understandable once we apprehend the subjective nature of gain.[2] To illustrate: I produce shoes; you produce sweaters. If I cannot sell my shoes, and if you cannot sell your sweaters, is it likely that either of us would keep on producing these things? So, without exchange, there would be no further increase in wealth. But, should we willingly exchange, each gains. I value the sweater more than the shoes, and you value the shoes more than the sweater—two increases in value—as each of us judges value. Were this not the case, there would be no willing exchange between us, no increase in wealth, no further production. Clearly, willing exchange—right action—is the key to increased wealth and increased production.

Willing exchanges are incalculably more numerous now than in the days of Adam Smith, even than in the days of my grandparents. This is apparent to any observant person. But what most of us overlook is the enormous proliferation of exchanges during the past three or four decades; the increase takes on the nature of an explosion. Try to reckon the number of exchanges you engage in daily; they are so numerous that you are scarcely conscious of them. This is our economic progress.

During this period of exploding exchanges, we have also witnessed governmental intervention in the market, restrictions on willing exchange—wrong action—literally by the thousands. This is our regress.

But the regress has not—to date, anyway—kept pace with the progress. In this fact lies the explanation of the great anomaly.

For Reasons Unknown

It is doubtful if anyone can more than casually account for the explosion in exchanges. Quickened transportation and communication—some of it at the speed of lightning—assuredly plays an important role. Inventiveness, resulting in fantastic technological breakthroughs, must be included. Perhaps questionable motivations have had a hand in the phenomenon; for instance, a raging passion for material affluence, as if this were the highest object of life. While too complex to pursue, some of the restraints—obstacles—have doubtless generated the ingenuity to hurdle them and, thus, have accounted partially for the progress. Necessity is, on occasion, the mother of invention. However, my purpose here is only to set forth a fact; I haven’t the effrontery to attempt a complete explanation for the exchange explosion.

Nor am I bold enough to posit all that lies at the root of our regress. Why does authoritarianism grow? Why do so many wish to lord it over the rest of us, that is, why do they behave as gods, not as men? We may never know; we can only reflect as has Lionel Trilling: “We must beware of the dangers that lie in our most generous wishes. Some paradox of our nature leads us, when once we have made our fellow men the objects of our enlightened interest, to go on to make them the objects of our pity, then of our wisdom, ultimately of our coercion.”[3]

But of one thing I feel reasonably certain: We should bring sharply into question the absurd notion that the wrong actions are the cause of our progress. Failure to do this may soon result in the end of progress. There are signs of this! At the very least, let us be aware that such progress as we have achieved is in spite of and not because of the regress.

The chief obligation is to identify the wrong that the right may be known, practiced, and accented.

[1] See Chapter III in Macaulay’s The History of England (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1934), p. 217.

[2] For a more detailed explanation of the subjective theory of value see “Freedom’s Theory of Value.” The Freeman, October, 1967.

[3] Quoted in The American Scholar, Autumn, 1965.

6

Count Your Blessings

To count one’s blessings is to accent what’s right. But this might rarely be recognized as an item in the infinite realm of righteousness were we unaware of “Thou shalt not covet” as a wrong. This helps to illustrate the subject of a previous chapter, “Find the wrong and there’s the right.”

While many people deplore covetousness, few will compare it to murder, theft, adultery as an evil. Nor will they think of it as having any bearing on our current politico-economic problems. This wrong assessment may be due to the fact that “Thou shalt not covet” brings up the rear of the Mosaic thou-shalt-nots.

I suspect that the ordering of the Commandments had nothing to do with a sin-grading scheme. Only one of the ten had obvious priority and it became the First Commandment. The other nine were listed, perhaps, as they came to mind. And covetousness, more subtle and an afterthought, concludes the list. But on reflection, covetousness is as deadly as any of the other sins—indeed, it tends to induce the others.

Covetousness or envy generates a destructive radiation with ill effect on all it touches.

Psychosomatic illnesses can be traced as much to envy as to hate, anger, worry, despondency.

But consider the social implications, the effects of envy on others. At first blush, the rich man appears not to be harmed because another covets his wealth. Envy, however, is not a benign, dormant element of the psyche; it has the same intensive force as rage, and a great deal of wisdom is required to put it down. Where understanding and self-control are wholly lacking, the weakling will resort to thievery, embezzlement, piracy, even murder, to gratify his envy and “get his share.”

Hiding Behind a Majority

Though weakness of character afflicts all of us to some extent, only a few are so lacking in restraining forces as to personally employ naked force, such as thievery, to realize the objects of envy. Fear of apprehension and reprisal tends to hold such open-faced evil in check.

However, if the evil act can be screened, if the sense of personal guilt and responsibility can be sufficiently submerged, that is, if self-delusion can be effected, gratification of covetousness will be pursued by the “best people.”

The way is an open secret: achieve anonymity in a mob, committee, organization, society, or hide behind legality or majority vote.

With the fear of exposure removed, millions of Americans feather their own nests at the expense of others, and on a scale never imagined by thieves, pirates, or embezzlers. Our “best people,” including the highly “educated,” gratify their envy with no qualms whatsoever. But their salved conscience in no way lessens the evil of covetousness; quite the contrary, it emphasizes to us how powerfully this evil operates at the politico-economic level. This subtle evil is indeed the genesis of more obvious sins.

We should also note the extent to which this “guiltless” taking of property by coercion is rationalized. Accomplices, bearing such titles as philosophers and economists, rise to the occasion; they explain how the popular depredations are good for everyone, even for those looted. Thus, we find that covetousness, unchecked in the individual, lies at the root of the decline and fall of nations and civilizations.

In considering the effect on the one who covets, we must be careful not to confuse the taking of another’s property with the taking unto oneself of a higher level of intelligence and morality exemplified by another. The former is depredation, harmful to both self and the other; the latter is emulation, helpful to all concerned.

As contrasted with the emulation of virtues, which takes nothing from but adds to the welfare of others, envy is nothing more than an avaricious greed to possess what exclusively belongs to others. Envy is a lust of the flesh as opposed to an elevation of the spirit. The Hindus saw it clearly for what it really is: “Sin is not the violation of a law or a convention but. . . ignorance . . . which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others. . . .”[1] William Penn grasped the point: “Covetousness is the greatest of Monsters, as well as the root of all Evil.”

A Diverting Process

As a person cannot be in two places at the same time, so is it impossible for the eye to be cast covetously at the material possessions of others and cast aspiringly at one’s own creativity. Thus, envy leaves unattended the human being’s upgrading; it is a positive distraction from the “hatching” process—Creations Purpose. It’s either hatch or rot, as with an egg; envy leaves the soul, the spirit, the intellect, the psyche to rot, and there can be no greater evil than this.

When it is clear that covetousness thwarts Creation’s purpose and, thus, man’s destiny—that among the cardinal sins none is greater—it surely behooves each of us to find a way to rid himself of this evil.

I believe the way is simple to proclaim: Count your blessings!

Any person who is not aware of countless blessings, regardless of how low or high his estate, will be no more aware of his blessings should his envy be gratified. Awareness of blessings is a state of consciousness and is not necessarily related to abundance and affluence. He who is rich in worldly goods but unaware of his blessings is poor, and probably covetous; he who is poor in worldly goods but aware of his blessings is rich, and assuredly without envy.

How easy the advice: Count your blessings! But what about the person unaware of his blessings? As well advise him to acquire wisdom, for wisdom is awareness. Some individuals are aware of no blessings, others of a few, still others of numerous blessings. Yet, no one is more than slightly aware, just as no one is more than slightly wise.

Exactly how unaware we are of our blessings can be seen by committing them to paper—actually counting. While they are in infinite supply, observe how few are recognized. Now, throw the list away; for these must be alive each and every day in the consciousness, not stored on paper, not mechanically canned.

Try again, later: this is an exercise that one should never abandon. The list is longer? Note, also, how much greater the wisdom is. Conscious effort, really trying, constantly pressing against the unknown for more light is the nature of this discipline.

As progress is made in an awareness of our blessings, we are struck by how greatly they outnumber our woes and troubles. In a state of unawareness, the woes loom enormous, and we tend to covetousness; in awareness the woes are but trifles, and the covetousness fades away.

What a remarkable cure for covetousness! While the cure rids us of our woes, it also puts us on the road to social felicity; and a further dividend is wisdom.

[1] From The Bhagavadgita (Translation by S. Radhakrishnan, New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948), p. 224.

7

To Each His Own

Thou shalt not steal! To know that stealing is wrong again implies knowledge of an alternative that is right: in this case, to each his own, usually referred to as private ownership. The ancient taboo against stealing presupposes that an individual has a right to the fruits of his own labor.

Recognizing as evil the taking of that which belongs to another certainly antedated The Decalogue by many centuries. Indeed, to each his own preceded human reason for it is revealed as an instinctual trait; numerous animals defend the territories they have staked out for themselves.[1]

So far as I know, the first recorded taboo against defrauding—stealing—appeared in the Code of Hammurabi. But, for certain, thievery was frowned upon and steps taken to discourage theft long before man was able to write codes. Why the certainty? There is every reason to believe that the observance of this taboo, this respect for the principle of private ownership, marked the dawn of civilization. Whether this thou-shalt-not is honored or breached primarily determines the rise or fall of civilization. This requires some explanation.

True, “thou shalt not covet” is even more basic than “thou shalt not steal”; if no one coveted the possessions of another, there would be no thievery. But the cure of covetousness—counting one’s blessings—requires a state of awareness rarely achieved unto this day; it is not to be found in primitive man; when such awareness exists, man is not primitive! So we cannot attribute the emergence of civilizations to man’s overcoming his covetousness; this is an achievement of man after he is civilized, that is, after he has attained a sense of justice, a moral nature.

Private Ownership a Must

To refrain from stealing is the genesis of civilizations! Only two points need to be understood and accepted for this assertion to ring true. First, civilizations rise and fall with the rise and fall of individual freedom. Second, individual freedom rises and falls to the degree that private ownership—the absence of stealing—is respected and adhered to. Individual freedom is out of the question wherever and whenever private ownership does not prevail!

As to the first point, such evidence as we possess supports the conclusion that creative outbursts—the mark of civilization—bear a direct correlation with increase in individual freedom. The Golden Ages of Sumer, Egypt, Carthage, Athens, Rome, Kiev, Venice, Amsterdam, Britain, and the U.S.A. invariably have been associated with enterprising producers, traders, travelers—activities that are nonexistent in the absence of individual freedom; I am unaware of any creative outbursts where individual freedom has been wholly suppressed. However, this point need not be argued; the record speaks for itself; let those who think contrarily present their evidence; the burden of proof is on them.

Now to the second point. The Soviets, distraught by their failure to make socialism work after a half century’s effort, are cautiously resorting to a few features of capitalism: incentives, ersatz profit motives, and the like. However, as Henry Hazlitt points out, they are hopelessly lost, regardless of how many features of capitalism they imitate, unless and until the institution of private ownership is adopted.[2] This, of course, would mean the abandonment of their socialism.

This private ownership thesis rests, fundamentally, on a defensible assumption, namely, that one person has as much right to his life as any other. If an individual has a right to his life, it logically follows that he has an equal right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being the fruit of one’s own labor or what can be obtained for it in peaceful exchange. Conceding the foregoing, we must conclude that livelihood is but the extension of life.

Thus, to steal is to take life. Not to steal is to respect life; it is to endorse and to hold sacrosanct the institution of private ownership.

A Backward Practice

It does not necessarily follow that a civilization will be born where “thou shalt not steal” is observed, for other generative forces are required. But it is self-evident that no civilization could be born without the observance of this taboo. The institution of private ownership—to each his own—has spawned all civilizations!

My mind was on this subject as I waited to be checked out at a supermarket. The woman ahead of me had a dozen items. Quick as a flash, “when no one was looking,” she slipped half of her “purchases” into the shopping bag she carried. How short would be the life of that supermarket were such thievery not the exception! Were such behavior the general practice, we would quickly descend into another dark age. A resort to law would be useless; the gendarmerie also would be thieves! Are we failing to accent the close correlation between life itself and private ownership?

The Nonsense of Nonownership

Public ownership, so-called, bears no resemblance to private ownership. Indeed, public ownership is a misnomer, for ownership refers to one’s own—to own, really to control. To test your ownership of or control over TVA, for instance, try to dispose of your “stake” in it. TVA is neither mine nor thine.

The only ones who can remotely qualify as owners of TVA or the Post Office are those who control. Who are they? There is no precise answer. This explains why these business ventures, held in public title, are economic failures. It simply isn’t possible for one to have the same sense of responsibility toward an enterprise that belongs to whom nobody knows as toward one that is his, all his. Nor need we rest the case on theory. If TVA and the Post Office are not adequate demonstrations, then there is Russia. Or, back home again, we have the accounts of the Plymouth Colony, Oneida, New Harmony—some 200 communalistic utopias—all short-lived failures, and good riddance.

While the institution of private ownership has been given lip service over the centuries, by the people and governments alike, actual observance has been more of form than of substance.[3] Give a people the title to the fruit of their labor and they will relinquish control of it to government with but little resistance. Few among us understand that private ownership can be universally endorsed in principle and completely obliterated in practice. Nor is it widely understood that the forcible taking of income, beyond that required for the principled functions of government, has the same eroding effects on private ownership as stealing.[4] Legalizing the compulsory transfer of control still amounts to the destruction of private ownership.

It takes no mental giant to realize that individual freedom and, thus, the flowering of civilization are possible only where private ownership prevails. Merely imagine owning absolutely nothing required for your own livelihood. Your life would be in the hands of others.

To each his own is a fundamental maxim for civilized men!

[1] See The Territorial Imperative by Robert Ardrey (New York: Atheneum Publishers, 1966).

[2] See “Private Ownership: A Must!” by Henry Hazlitt. The Freeman, June, 1967.

[3] For an excellent treatise on the history of private property, see In Defense of Property by Gottfried Dietze (Chicago: Regnery & Company, 1963).

[4] For a review of my ideas on the principled functions of government, see Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954).

8

Coping with Poverty

A lawyer from another country enrolled as a student in our FEE School of Political Economy. But, once the classroom lectures were under way, he announced that the philosophy we taught—free market, private ownership, limited government—was not for him. He frankly admitted his preference for socialism.

Since ours is not a reform school, we would normally, under these circumstances, return the tuition and bid the socialist a fond adieu—as was done with two of his fellow students. We made an exception in his case because (1) he expressed a desire to remain throughout the course; (2) he did not intrude his socialistic views into the discussions; and (3) he was of a most pleasant and gracious personality, attractive in his manners and behavior. So, he remained as an auditor.

Several weeks later, following a routine explanation of the free market in action by a FEE professor, our foreign friend interrupted his own silent curiosity by exclaiming, “Why, you folks are for the poor people, too!” FEE’s professor replied, “Of course we are; that has seemed so obvious to me that I hadn’t thought the fact worth mentioning; I have taken for granted that you understood it.”

What a mental block this well-intentioned socialist suffered! Like millions of Americans, he labored under the misapprehension that the philosophy of individual liberty is little more than an intellectual apology for entrenched wealth, a rationale for persons who have no concern for those below their own dollar stations. Like a few others, however, he was curious enough at least to listen and to see how much of “this free enterprise stuff” he could stomach. After all, the capitalists seem to succeed where socialists fail; there must be something to it. But become an ardent devotee? Never!

I must hasten to add that the moment our socialist friend “saw the light” he executed a complete ideological flip-flop; he became one of the best students of the freedom philosophy we have had at the FEE School. He returned to his country as a confirmed believer and an excellent exponent of free market principles. Furthermore, he has become a key figure in his native land.

Most of us who stand for liberty are as guilty, as was FEE’s professor, of a tactical error. So firmly embedded in our own minds is the fact that liberty is the poor man’s best ally that we mistakenly assume a like awareness on the part of everyone else. Failing to identify the free market and related institutions with kindly sentiments and noble objectives—such as a better life for the poor—we fumble the ball, so to speak, allowing the opposition to run with it—and play to the grandstand!

Progress a By-Product of Liberty

The era of free and willing exchange extends, roughly, over the past 175 years. In no other period of history have so many raised themselves out of poverty. Why, then, are those of us who champion free and willing exchange—the only antipoverty device in man’s possession—so seldom credited with relieving the poor man of his burden? Quite frankly, it is because such relief is not the major end we have in view. Freedom and wide open opportunity for all is the prime objective. But—and this is the point—the fastest possible elimination of poverty is one of the inescapable by-products of this liberty; it is one of the admirable effects that flow from the successful pursuit of a higher cause. And this effect cannot be achieved in any other way.

Unfortunately, when we keep an eye on freedom as our prime objective, we tend to omit any mention of relief from poverty as its by-product. Our failure to correlate the by-product with the prime objective may be a serious oversight on our part. The authoritarians grapple on to it and assume the role of the poor man’s champion, all because we have failed to identify the politically attractive by-product of freedom with freedom itself. Fortunately, the finger of blame can be pointed at our own carelessness. Why fortunately? Because any calamity we can trace to our own shortcomings will respond to our own remedies.

Sharing Poverty Is No Cure

Little attention need be given here to the empty promises of political authoritarians. It is as much of a delusion to expect that government can end poverty as to expect that the local policeman can make us rich. Government has nothing at all on hand to dispense except what it has garnisheed from taxpayers—what it forcibly subtracts from private ownership. This, obviously, is a dead-end road: savings are drained from those who have, and consumed by those who have not—the opposite of capital formation on which productivity rests and on which relief from poverty depends. It is all political give-away—redistribution—with absolutely nothing formative, productive, or creative about it.

Admittedly, there are those of the authoritarian school—many government officials, teachers, labor officials, even businessmen—who sincerely, if faultily, believe that inflation (increasing money volume by such schemes as monetizing debt) is a sure-fire way to relieve poverty and increase prosperity. They “reason”: Give these fictitious dollars to consumers of low purchasing power and transform them into consumers of high purchasing power, making for more business and, of course, more jobs. These jobs will then create more purchasing power, assuring still more business, and so on, round and round. Perpetual motion for the economy! The flaw in this economic alchemy is that inflation is itself a tax on all existing capital and fixed assets; it has only the power to deplete; it has no accrual force, whatsoever. Inflation is a cruel, unfair, and deceptive tax. One need not be an economic theorist to get at the truth; he need only look at inflation’s enormous record of destruction. Never in history has it wreaked other than widespread impoverishment, the poor being less able than others to endure it.

But regardless of how faulty their theories, the political authoritarians proclaim themselves the champions of the poor. They have fastened onto the poverty banner, and placed themselves in the vanguard of “the down-trodden.” They have gained a considerable following because (1) many people wish to believe in these easy promises and (2) the champions of freedom, failing to make their own case, have unwittingly tossed the baton to the authoritarians.

For an example of a country in which the principles of the free market and private ownership have been most widely practiced, with government limited to keeping the peace, most persons today would look to the United States. And they would be likely to concur with the popular view that free market practices generally favor those of affluence and generally neglect the interests of the poor. But this notion—as widely held by the affluent as by the poor—is wholly superficial, and false.

When champions of the free market recognize and correct this erroneous concept, they will have found the key to explain how freedom best serves the interests of all—especially the poor. Not until that is done may the poor be expected to look to liberty for their material well-being.

Affluence Springs from Liberty

Here is the overlooked fact: The unprecedented practice of freedom in our country has, one might say, catapulted many millions of “the masses”—including you and me—into a state of affluence previously unknown to history. Hundreds of today’s American millionaires and millions of our upper middle class, had they lived in “the old country” at or before the time of Adam Smith—less than 200 years ago—would have had the status of serfs. Of course, such an economy as existed at that time was unable to support a large population; thus, most of us would not have survived—not even our current millionaires. A large percentage of those born at that time perished in infancy of hunger and disease.

The reason that the free market, private ownership, limited government philosophy is popularly regarded as an apology for affluence rather than as a boon for the poor is that its practice has made possible such affluence. If we note only the accomplishment, as if it were automatically due us, we lose all sight of its genesis: liberty!

What Seek Ye First?

The alleviation of poverty is a by-product—a life-saving benefit—along man’s way toward the higher ideal of liberty. The benefit springs from no other source than liberty. If one’s ideal is no higher than the benefit, that ideal, paradoxically, will bring no benefit. A by-product does not have its origin in itself, but in something superior to it. Observe this principle at work in human relations: Another’s admiration is not obtained by seeking it; instead, admiration is a cherished by-product that grows out of one’s qualities, the giving of light, for instance.

While much of the wisdom to be found in the Bible has lost its “cutting edge,” the aforementioned principle, having countless day-to-day applications, is stated succinctly and precisely, “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.” A very earthly, economic subdivision of the principle would read, “Restore and preserve the practice of free market, private ownership, limited government principles; and one of the by-products will be as much removal of poverty as possible.”

Doubtless, we have been negligent about accenting this important dividend of liberty: it is a boon to the poor. However, if we set the alleviation of poverty as our highest goal we shall, by thus lowering our sights, not only spread poverty but lose our freedom—the penalty for ignoring the principle.

If FEE is distinguished for anything, it is a forthright stand for free market and related principles. Interestingly enough, several thousand of our financial supporters qualify as poor in worldly goods—each contribution a personal sacrifice. And, encouragingly, their long look is at liberty, not their poverty. From where I sit, these poor are the hard core of the coming renaissance. By accenting liberty they’ll regain it for us and, as a by-product, alleviate poverty.

9

In Harmony with Creation

There is Creation: capital C! And then there is Creation’s manifestation at the human level: creative activity-lower case.

Creative individual and social actions are those which harmonize with Creation’s purposes. Enlightenment consists in discovering what is harmonious and guiding ourselves accordingly.

It is my thesis that the free market is a manifestation of this harmony in the workaday world; that it is an interesting, instructive, and excellent example.

But first may I hasten to forestall any false impressions the term “free market” may evoke. Like all generalizations, the term is also an oversimplification; it has fallen into a catchword status and thus conjures up such minor images as stock market, vegetable market, and other trade marts. While these are not excluded, I use “free market” in its broadest construction: the uninterrupted flow and willing exchange—free movement—not only of goods and services but of ideas, ideals, knowledge, wisdom, information, doctrinal concepts, faiths; indeed, all discoveries, inventions, intuitions, and the countless manifestations thereof. Liberté de transactions, as Frederic Bastiat phrased it, is boundless in its scope.

At this point, a possible misinterpretation should be guarded against. Later, two items of material affluence—an automobile and a jet plane—will be used as illustrations of creativity. In the minds of some this may assign to wealth a meaning I do not intend, namely, that wealth is an end in itself. Instead, wealth is a means to creative activity. It is a freeing agent, that is, it releases the individual from the enslavement poverty imposes. For instance, a person who is compelled to exert all of his energy in eking out an animal existence is not free to discover, let alone pursue, those potentialities which are unique to his own person. Wealth, in a moral and creative sense, is not for the purpose of escaping from life—retiring, vegetating—but rather for getting ever deeper into life along the lines of one’s distinctive aptitudes. Wealth is neither an end in itself nor a means to avoid work but a means to greater creative endeavor.

Now to our thesis. When I posit that man can work more or less in harmony with Creation, a distinction is drawn between man and everything else to be found in the world of life: free will, the power to choose. Man, gifted by Creation with a measure of freedom, may steer himself out of or into a harmony with his Creator. Thus, even freedom, the feature exclusive to man which we so correctly extol, can lead to man’s destruction as well as to his emergence, to disharmony as well as to harmony with Creation. Freedom can be either an enemy or an ally, depending on how ignorantly or wisely man employs his freedom to choose.

The Importance of Believing

We who favor the free market, as distinguished from authoritarian arrangements, have no way of realizing our ideal unless there be a flourishing belief in this way of life. The free market grows or shrinks as a belief in its desirability rises and falls. Its practice and the belief in its efficacy are inextricably wedded; they are forever embraced as one. Neither the Resolutions of Parliaments nor the Constitutions and Declarations of Conventions can alter the sovereignty of belief one whit.

Belief is sometimes no more than blind acceptance; this is credulity, a position that is inherited or that rests on someone else’s say-so. Ever so much of the little belief that still remains in the free market is, unfortunately, of this shallow origin. Understandably, it is never to be relied on; it is fickle and wilts in the glare of contrary opinions that have gained popular acclaim.

The only meaningful, enduring, impregnable brand of belief is that which derives from some measure of understanding. Such an inner conviction is aided and abetted when we see how the free market is in league with Creation, that is, how its dynamics are consonant with creativity.

The Source of Wisdom

In harmony with Creation! This presupposes or, better yet, asserts a Source. That there is an Infinite Intelligence is my fundamental assumption. My conviction that there is Consciousness over and beyond the minds of men rests not so much on the fact that countless individuals, over the millennia, have had a similar faith, but on the fact that all of us come face to face with the evidence at every turn—even though the evidence may pass unnoticed. In a word, this faith need not rely on metaphysics; daily observation supplies abundant proof:

First: Observe how unique is each human being on this earth. Not one is a carbon copy of another; not one views the world around him as does any other.[1]

Second: Assess the aggregate knowledge, wisdom, invention, intuition, discovery required to make an automobile, for instance—or any one of a million other items.

Third: Note the infinitesimal knowledge and/or wisdom of any one person, even the wisest, the most knowledgeable.

Fourth: Conclude, as one must, from the above that the know-how going into the automobile is unimaginably greater than any individual possesses; that it is a remarkable coalescence of tiny, varied, disparate ideas, inventions, and intuitions flowing from the minds of discrete individuals since man found out how to harness fire. It is an enormous wisdom, an in-gathering of trillions of varying minuscule knowhows! Atomistic fragments, one might say, that take an aggregated form and shape in which we can comfortably and speedily transport ourselves!

Fifth: It is plain that there is an Intelligence over and beyond the minds of men for the simple reason that what goes on here is, in large measure, over and beyond human design. “Nations stumble upon establishments which are indeed the result of human action but not the execution of human design.”[2] We observe this Intelligence in nature where human design has no part whatsoever: for instance, in the mysterious, inexplicable coalescence of molecules resulting in a blade of grass, a tulip, a sturdy oak. “Only God can make a tree,” if not unanimously conceded, is rarely denied. Are we not warranted, then, in conceding that this Intelligence is responsible, to a marked extent, for the coalescence into patterns of the tiny, varied ideas flowing through the minds of men?

It is this enormous, aggregate knowledge, as strikingly distinguished from the minuscule knowledge to be found in any discrete person which, in the past, I have mistakenly referred to as “social wisdom.” It now dawns on me, by reason of the fact that this coalescing power largely transcends society, that the correct term is Creative Wisdom. We live by the resulting coalescence; we can no more live without it than one man, without other men, present and past, can live alone.

Opposing Points of View

There are at least three views that stand in opposition to this concept of Creative Wisdom.

The first is an unwillingness to concede an Infinite Intelligence: Primary Source. Many persons who call themselves “humanists” refuse to accept anything taking place at the human level which cannot be attributed to human beings.

Schopenhauer wasn’t far from correct in setting forth the second stumbling block: “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” I couldn’t fault him had he written, “Almost every man. . . .” For there are a few, along with Socrates, who have come to know how little they really know; they have discovered that each individual’s vision of the world is through a tiny aperture and that no two “peek-holes” are identical. Any person who naively believes his vision to be the whole vision can never grasp the concept of Creative Wisdom. Nor will he possess the force of intellect which effectively inhibits the authoritarian mentality: If I see all why can I not manage all? At the very least, no one in this state of blindness can have an unshakable belief in the free market, that is, a belief rooted in some measure of understanding.

The third is a fact which, at first blush, gives the appearance that individual know-how and Creative Wisdom stand in contradiction. For it is difficult to accept the idea that an over-all wisdom operating at the human level does not exist in any human being. Yet, we are faced with the unassailable evidence that the two-know-how fragments and over-all wisdom—exist side by side and simultaneously. Our tendency is to deny this, not for lack of evidence—it is all about us—but for an inability to explain it.

Contemplate an Infinite Intelligence, the all-inclusive Source: Creation. You, for one, catch a slight glimmer of its Light, that is, you pick up a fragment of Intelligence. Others do likewise, but no other’s fragment is identical to yours. This is an experience common to all human beings. Now, were there no coalescence of these fragments into an over-all wisdom, we could enjoy nothing above animal existence.

Creation at the Human Level

The coalescing process, this putting together of the fragments into an over-all wisdom, is first of all an act of Creation, that is, it is suprahuman; it is Creation working at the human level. And we can no more say how it works at this high level than explain how molecules can be put together to form a living tree.

In the instance of the tree, and of all else in nature, we readily acknowledge the Hand of Creation. By what queer quirk of reasoning are we led to assume that the Hand of Creation has been withdrawn from the human situation? Are we, who concede that only God can make a tree or create a dog, to assume that Creative Wisdom no longer operates at the personal level simply because we have been endowed with a modicum of free will? What a brightness men must assume to draw any such conclusion! Why, it is easily demonstrable that I know not one-trillionth about myself, far less about you, and still less about Creation. This concession can be made into a generality; it is as true of others as of me.

But a happy fact intrudes itself at this point: We are under no compulsion to define and explain Creation. No more is required than to concede the Creative Hand at work and to discover how, in our own actions, not to inhibit and do it injury. Indeed, we can have no higher aim in earthly life than to learn how to aid and abet Creation and, thus, to become instrumental in the creative process ourselves.

The Principle of Competition

That the free market, as I define it, is harmonious with Creation can be demonstrated in several ways, two of which come readily to mind.

We observe in Creation the law of polarity at work. Sometimes this is referred to as “the tension of the opposites,” also as “action and reaction.” Emerson’s phrase for this principle was “the law of compensation.” The renowned physicist, the late Robert A. Millikan, went deep for this observation:

All light or other short wave-length radiations are caused by changes in positions of electrons within atoms. . . . All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons.

This principle at work is experienced daily by all of us: we improve ourselves by rising above obstacles, confrontations. The art of becoming is composed of overcoming! In a word, this principle is COMPETITION.

Prerequisites to Progress

When the rules of the market prevail, open competition exists. This is a prerequisite to all progress, be it material, intellectual, spiritual. And here, at this point, we can grasp that phase of the coalescing process in which man has a hand, a phase he did not design but has stumbled upon.

When there is open competition, there is free, unfettered pricing. Each individual with his fragment of know-how, be it in the form of goods or services, naturally and easily gravitates where price beckons. Price allocates scarce resources to their most advantageous use. Free pricing in-gathers skills and other resources in the most economical way possible.

That free pricing is not of human design but rather has been stumbled upon is borne out by the fact that so very few grasp the meaning of what they daily practice on an unprecedented scale in the U.S.A. Obviously, no man designed that which he does not understand after it exists! As in the case of many wonderful discoveries and inventions, free pricing qualifies as an inadvertency. But it gives every appearance of being in harmony with Creation.

Nature reveals another important characteristic of the Creative Hand at work, a feature we should not contradict in human relationships: free movement.

A World in Motion

Note how we marvel at the swallows in their aerial acrobatics! Fascinating movement! Yet, the ground on which we stand and observe, even be it rock, is moving; there’ll come a time when it won’t be here. This variation in movement between the swallows and the rock is one of frequency. And this goes for everything else in the Cosmos, including our lives and our living. Take this globe we call the earth: it is on a galactic rim moving through space at 10,000,000 miles a day, and the galaxies themselves are moving away from each other at many thousands of miles per second.[3]

All is movement; all is on the wing; nothing created appears to be permanent; movement in an infinite variety of frequencies is an observable phase of Creation; it is in the nature of things.

Man’s idea of stability which, by and large, he passionately craves, derives from some frequencies being relatively lower than others. The rock on which he stands, for instance, he regards as stable but only because its frequency in movement is so low he cannot sense or perceive it.

But stability, really, is to be found only in movement, not in an at-rest state. If one wishes stability on a bicycle, he propels it forward; to sit on it motionless is to invite a fall. To sit on a tricycle motionless and permanently is to invite stagnation.

Contrary to the nature of things, we humans tend to seek stability in fixedness, rigidity, arrestment, permanence. Failing to conceive of ourselves as on the wing, that is, in Creation’s flow, we embrace the status quo—whatever it happens to be at the time. We hanker for permanent youth rather than welcoming the oncoming years; we seek the guaranteed life along with “stable” prices: rents, interest rates, wages; in a word, a state of arrestment we call “security.” All of which is at odds with nature, out of tune with Creation.

Reliance on Freedom

Free movement is at least one significant and helpful instruction we can derive from observing the Creative Hand at work in nature. Molecules must be permitted a free flow in order to coalesce and manifest as a tree. Man cannot arrange them into a living organism; only the Creative Hand can do this. Man can, however, interfere; he can keep a tree from ever being.

In human affairs, as in nature, man can never arrange all the tiny ideas, intuitions, discoveries to form a jet plane; the Creative Hand, with some harmonious human action, can do this. But man can interfere; he can keep a jet from ever being.

The free market, as I use the term, is this free movement of all goods, services, ideas. Not only is it in harmony with Creation, but it appears to be the condition in which the Creative Hand works its wonders and in which we as human beings find it possible to partake in the creative process.

[1] For a striking explanation of how unique each of us is, see You Are Extraordinary by Dr. Roger J. Williams (New York: Random House, 1967).

[2] F. A. Hayek in his Constitution of Liberty (p. 57) in support of his own position, quotes this thought by Adam Ferguson.

[3] See Frontiers of Astronomy by Fred Hoyle (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1955).

10

Man’s Mobility

In Chapter 3 I maintained that had we been accenting the values of travel, it would not now be politically expedient to restrict free movement. The following suggests some of the values worthy of accent.

Were you a citizen of Moscow and wished to visit Stalingrad for more than 72 hours, a permit from the Commissar would be necessary. The same would hold true were you from Dzerzhnish and had in mind more than three days in nearby Vladmir.[1] And if you wanted to leave for another country, unless on a Kremlin political assignment, request doubtless would be denied.

To sense the tragedy of this, simply imagine these restrictions imposed on you and all other citizens of the U.S.A. Reflect on the “thinking” which has led to this arrestment, this immobility!

Of course, in Russia, there is no competition, and, thus, no need for traveling salesmen. As to workers, jobs are dictated by Moscow so it is useless to seek a new one in some other place. As to students, education is of the Kremlin brand, the same in one town as another; therefore, shopping around for a school which better suits your fancy is pointless. In short, where freedom to choose vacations, vocations, and avocations is outlawed, mobility is logically reserved to the immobilizers. Besides, who else has a car!

Interestingly enough, the Russian government uses force to keep its citizens at home; in the U.S.A. force is used to slow or deny immigration. The difference reflects how people feel about the two societies, wanting to flee the one and gravitate toward the other. It shows man’s preference for free movement.

As emphasized in the previous chapter, everything is on the wing; all is movement. Nature, herself, is specialization and exchange; and man fares well or ill as he implements or obstructs the free exchange or movement of his numerous specializations.

A fact much overlooked is that a man and his ideas and his labors and his products are all of a piece. Life and livelihood are inseparable. To arrest the movement of persons is no less destructive than to bring the movement of goods and services to a standstill. A man entombed—whether in a grave, a town, a country—is a man with his wings—ideas, goods, services—clipped. That your ideas, for example, can be restricted without enslaving you, or vice versa, is unthinkable.

Let us, therefore, assess the meaning to life and livelihood of the free movement or mobility—travel—of individuals.

Recreation and Education

Consider the recreational value of mobility. This is, of course, a subjective value judgment; of all the forms of recreation, it tops the list for some and is pure boredom for others. But should not each person be free to decide how he refreshes himself and, if he chooses travel, whither he goes? Is it Yellowstone, the North Platte, the Mojave Desert, the Swiss Alps, Venice, Loch Lomond, or a peek at how the Russians live? That which gives delight is conducive to mental and physical health. Pleasure is self-determined and where it is to be found ranges everywhere from one’s reading chair to around the world. Choosing where is the prerogative of free men.

Second, reflect on the educational value of mobility. As with recreation, that which “broadens” one person is of no interest whatsoever to another. A few are edified when they examine original Gothic architecture; others are enlightened by touring the Louvre, or viewing firsthand the ruins of the Colosseum, or standing where Socrates taught, or studying mining operations in South Africa, or whatever.

Of one thing we are certain: To be there, on the spot, tends mightily to whet interest and introspection, these being steps to enlightenment. A spirit of inquiry concerning the Renaissance and its significance to modern civilization has hatched in many a mind by a visit to Florence; Pericles, Aristotle, and other ancient “greats” come to life by the mere sight of the Acropolis under a full moon; set foot in Hong Kong and free exchange takes on new depth and meaning. Travel educates the educable!

To Keep the Peace

Third, assess mobility as related to keeping the peace among men, this being the only principled purpose of political establishments.

Admittedly, freedom to move is no more a cure-all against conflict than it is a panacea for overcoming ignorance. And giving credence to its beneficent effects at a period when travel and wars and domestic strife are all on the increase is, to say the least, a bit difficult. Yet, we must not let the numerous destructive forces, unrelated to travel, blind us to the harmonizing influence of freedom to move. After all, men do not necessarily better themselves because they are free; the point is, they cannot better themselves unless they are free!

Compare the U.S.A. and Europe. The area of each is approximately the same. And Europe has nearly as many nations as the U.S.A. has states. The boundary lines circumscribing Europe’s nations look the same on a map as the boundary lines that define our states. But Europe’s boundary lines are borders, staffed with officials who permit entry and exit only on the presentation of a license. Movement is not free; it is at the discretion of officials backed by force. Reflect on Europe’s wars and squabbles over the past two centuries!

So far as travel is concerned, our boundaries are no more than lines on a map. Crossing a boundary line between two of our states is as simple and easy as crossing the street. This open intercourse, this mobility unmatched on all the earth, banishes geographic distinctions, prejudices, hates. Our evaluations of one another do not depend upon the state from which each comes.

Other factors do, indeed, generate domestic strife. But our absence of forbidding borders makes possible cooperation with any citizen, whether he be a Californian or a New Yorker; the resident of Georgia may exchange as readily with one in Montana as with his next-door neighbor.

Observe the absence of strife between our several states; the people in Indiana no more think of making war against the people of Ohio than against their own children.

We should deduce from this evidence that mobility is important to peaceful relationships, whether between the people of different nations or between those of different states. As between nations, there perhaps is no border with fewer restrictions than between the United States and Canada. Nor is there a better example of peaceful international relationships.

It would seem appropriate that government, whose aim is peace, never inhibit man’s mobility, this being one of the great civilizers.[2]

Trade and Migration

Fourth, weigh the economic blessings of mobility. As stated above, man and his goods and services and ideas are of a piece. Thus, mobility of goods and services is an elaboration or extension of man’s own mobility. It cannot be said that man has mobility except as the manifestations of his labors are free to move.

Nowhere else on earth, at any time, has there existed an area as large, as populous, and as uninhibited for purposes of exchange as is the U.S.A. Implicit in Bastiat’s observation that “when goods do not cross borderlines, soldiers will” is the reasonably sound expectation that when goods freely cross borderlines, soldiers will not. The American record not only affirms this, but more: when men and their goods are mobile, economic well-being improves!

Anyone who has any capacity for economic thinking realizes that free exchange must attend specialization.

But the idea of goods and services freely flowing, regardless of its near-unanimous acceptance in theory, is often rejected when competition threatens established positions. This rejection is witnessed in its incipiency when our towns and villages indulge in buy-at-home movements. There are numerous legal barriers to local trade, all in contradiction of sound economic policy. While these barriers are of minor nature, they illustrate the rejection of competition whenever it proves disturbing to the status quo.

That the general welfare is served by the free mobility of man’s goods and services domestically is generally conceded. Then, why is mobility not equally desirable on the international scale? It is, of course.[3] However, competition—the life of trade—fares badly in international dealings, primarily because arguments against competition can be made to appear more plausible when “foreigners” are involved. For example, we are forbidden to buy linen from China on the grounds that it is “red.” Not because it is competitive! I note that we buy Russian caviar which is just as “red.” But caviar is not competitive!

Where to Begin

When we think in nationalistic—collectivistic—terms as distinguished from the mobility of individual man and his works, we are led to the absurd notion that barriers to free exchange must be removed by other nations before we dare to remove our own. A citizen in Buenos Aires once asked me, “What would happen to Argentina were we to remove all embargoes, quotas, tariffs?” He was implying that they would be flooded with cheap, foreign goods, which would bring about the destruction of their businesses with the attendant unemployment. In reply, I asked him to go one step further and imagine that, in addition, all other nations had imposed absolute embargoes against all goods from Argentina. Now, what would happen? Nothing, whatsoever! Goods and services would flow neither into nor out of Argentina.

Competition is the life of trade! Granted, competition does remove the relatively inefficient producer in favor of the more efficient. This, however, is in the general interest, whether domestically or internationally. Nonetheless, it is argued, the little fellow can never get a start in the face of efficient, low-cost, foreign competition.

To refute this notion requires only to ask and answer these three questions:

First, where in all the world have business starts been the most numerous? In the U.S.A.!

Second, where in all the world have the most little businesses grown to bigness? In the U.S.A.!

Third, where in all the world has this little-to-bigness development faced the strongest competition? Right here in the U.S.A., the most highly industrialized nation in history!

The lesson is clear: business thrives, grows entrepreneurial muscle, in the face of competition. Industrial flaccidity marks the absence of competition.

True, many American businesses are less and less able to compete with foreign enterprises, but this is due to costs imposed by overextended government and by the coercive practices of trade unions. It ought to be obvious that the remedy is not in a further restriction of exchange but in removing the practices which are now hampering exchange.[4]

Man’s mobility—his own uninhibited travel and the free movement of his goods and services—is the road to health, education, peace, wealth, that is, to human evolution.

Let us exalt, not stifle, man’s mobility!

[1] See Workers’ Paradise Lost by Eugene Lyons (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1967), p. 226.

[2] I use “never inhibit” deliberately to avoid any suggestion that a government should encourage travel. The promotion of travel is no more a function of government than is the promotion of conversation. Organized force—government—has inhibitive possibilities, but not the positive powers of promotion or attraction.

[3] For an easy-to-read presentation of the rationale of free exchange and a critique of protectionism, see The Tariff Idea by W. M. Curtiss. (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1953).

[4] For a further explanation of this thesis, see “Why Run Ourselves Out of Business?” The Freeman, August, 1967.

11

Accent on Awareness

In ideology we can often find our way to what’s right by first discovering what’s wrong. The same holds true for methodology—our manner of working.

There are two opposed formulas for repairing the human situation. The first, and by far the most popular, is propagandizing, reforming others, declaiming our adversaries.

The second is self-improvement, that is, the perfection of one’s own thinking. This method emphasizes a search for truth as distinguished from a clamor for outcome; the accent is on an expanding personal awareness.

Casting about for a problem that bedevils all of us and that might, at the same time, serve to highlight the distinction between the two methods, I have selected the idea that the growth of communism in America is the result of a conspiracy. I hope, by examining this idea, to demonstrate the superiority of the latter method over the former. But, first, what is conspiracy?

A conspiracy is defined as a secret plot to achieve an unlawful end. More often than not, in day-to-day usage, conspiracy is thought of as merely a concerted effort to achieve an undesirable end. But ends undesirable to one man may be regarded as desirable by many others. Conspiracy, then, is something the other side engages in.

Back in the early thirties when I was working with western business associations, I met a prominent leader, experienced in politics, who claimed that the 1929 depression was the result of a Wall Street conspiracy. Lacking their own explanations of this debacle, many accepted the charge as valid.

Later, I came to know personally numerous “tycoons of Wall Street” and found them strikingly similar to their western accusers. They were bumping along in the money markets as innocently as were the Westerners in their daily commercial dealings. Indeed, had the Wall Streeters foreseen a “killing” for themselves in a nationwide depression—I never heard of a person who did—none of them had the force of intellect to bring it off. They were as impotent to engineer The Great Depression as are you and I to scheme a restoration of fiscal sanity.

But what of the “Communist Conspiracy”? The conviction that this lies at the root of our politico-economic troubles has a wide following among opponents of socialism. How much real concern, earnest effort, and overt opposition does this deserve? If a great deal, let’s be at it; if none, let’s conserve our energies for activities having greater promise.

There are, unquestionably, thousands of card-carrying communists with but a single aim: the communization of the U.S.A. And they range all the way from influence peddlers in our educational, religious, and other key institutions, to spies in our industry, to high-placed agents in our several governments, to head men in the Kremlin. Far greater in number and doubtless in influence are the “fellow travelers.” But these two classifications together are as nothing compared to the millions of American citizens who quite innocently harbor, cherish, and promote almost every tenet in the communist credo. Indeed, it is difficult to find a person today who is entirely free of communist ideas. As we would say of another disease: Metastasis!

Unlawful and Secret Plotting

The three key words in the definition of conspiracy are unlawful, secret, and plot. Let’s take these in order.

Unlawful. This is rather difficult to pin down.

Obviously, the “conspiracy” does not break Kremlin law. And precisely where does the spreading of communistic ideas break with our law? Reread the ten points of the Communist Manifesto, number two being, “A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” That’s as legal here as in Russia. The same can be said for number ten, “Free education for all children in public schools.” The eight other points have ardent supporters among our “best citizens,” and their advocacy is perfectly legal.

The confusion as to what’s lawful is remindful of espionage. Russian espionage is legal Russian and illegal American. We call the same thing on our part “counter-espionage” which is legal American and illegal Russian.

I fail to see how we can combat the “communist conspiracy” on grounds of unlawfulness.

Secret. This scarcely deserves comment.

Most of us really believe in secrecy. Indeed, our Founding Fathers wrote the right of privacy into the Bill of Rights: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects. . . .”

Cooks have secret recipes, companies secret formulas, magicians secret tricks, and we respect their rights to these.

The common resentment against “bugging” or wiretapping is a plea for secrecy.

Consider the letters we write, headed, “Personal and Confidential,” or how often we say, “This is in strict confidence and for your ears only.”

But, when all is said and done, secrecy has a tendency to leak. Not even the communists can keep their secrets. As one wag put it, “It isn’t that I can’t keep a secret; it’s those loose-tongued folks I tell it to.”

I fail to see how we can combat the “communist conspiracy” because of its secrecy without doing injury to a right we highly prize.

Plot. It thickens!

So the communists plot against the ideas that oppose their doctrines! There is no end to their scheming to rid the U.S.A. of such institutions as the free market, private ownership, willing exchange, open competition, voluntary cooperation, limited government. They try to engineer the downfall of these institutions consonant with individual liberty and to replace them with the collectivization of all aspects of life. The state is their god, and their program rests on compulsion.

Lest We Trap Ourselves

But, just a minute! How shall we describe what most of us do? Education? Yes, of course. However, when that term is stripped of its dignity and we get right down to rock bottom, it is plain that opponents of communism, also, “scheme and plot” to replace authoritarian notions with libertarian ideas. That we are a small minority and that our tactic at FEE, for instance, calls for a better understanding of freedom does not diminish the fact that we, too, consult among ourselves to discover what is sound and right.

Thus, I fail to see how we can combat the “communist conspiracy” on the grounds that it is a plot without tossing education out the window along with the communists!

The above, however, merely suggests the futility of spending time and effort ridding ourselves of the “communist conspiracy.”

The general assumption is that communist scheming accounts for the growth of communism in our country. Why the assumption? We see two things taking place simultaneously: (1) an enormous communist propaganda, and (2) the growth of communism; thus, the former must be the cause of the latter.

No One Is That Smart

I contend that we are victims of an illusion. The “conspiracy” is no more than a coincidental event; it is not the cause of the growth even though the communists think it is and many of us think likewise. Opinions to the contrary, notwithstanding, this isn’t the way big social changes come about.

The reason I know that The Great Depression was not the result of a “Wall Street conspiracy” is that these people were utterly impotent to do such a thing. Were conspiracy a way to spread communism, then it would be a way to advance libertarianism. But give FEE a billion dollars and let us employ the greatest conspiratorial organizer and genius in the nation and we wouldn’t get to first base. Would that it were that simple!

Broadcasting and Receiving

I must resort to analogy to suggest what is meant. There are, according to recent research, some 5,000 “fringe groups” in the U.S.A.[1] Each one, including FEE, is committed to a philosophy of sorts; no two are identical. Think of these as broadcasting stations, each having a different wave length, no two identical. Next, look upon our millions of citizens as receiving sets, each with variable “tuning in” capacities. Broadcast to your heart’s content and, if no one tunes you in, lacking the capacity or inclination or both, the message has no more effect on society than on the aurora borealis; it is lost in space.

True, messages presuppose broadcasters, but these are never in short supply. Given this presupposition, the impacts on society, the social changes, are governed exclusively by what’s tuned in and “bought”!

Into Receivership

We can now understand the illusion. The receiving sets are tuned in to one of the stations better than to the others; it happens to be the station carrying the message of coercive collectivism, that is, communism. And the reason is not because the message is good or that it has a superior group of broadcasters; it is because of the condition of the receiving sets! Awareness is askew.

The communist broadcasters, observing communism on the upswing, pat each other on the back and ascribe a force of intellect to themselves which does not exist. Their “success” is purely coincidental; lightning hit them, is one way of putting it. Had the sets been tuned into FEE’s wave length, libertarian rather than communist ideas would now be spreading. And, unless supremely levelheaded before applause, and the smell of victory, we probably would, like the communists, foolishly accept the kudos, mistakenly acknowledge the curtain calls. Such self-flattery is remindful of the fly on the hub of a chariot wheel, “My, look at all the dust I’m kicking up!”

It should be plain that it’s the condition of the receiving sets that counts. The broadcasters being legion and of all wave lengths, what can the sets tune in? This boils down to a simple matter: What can I tune in—and out? What is the state of my awareness?

If I will attend to my own awareness and make some noteworthy progress, there may be some emulation by those in my orbit. Like it or not, this is just about as far as any one of us can go in improving society. And I, for one, am pleased that this is an incontestable fact. For, were it not true that each man controls his own receiving set, communist ideas could easily find their way into my mind.

The first reaction to the thesis that an expanding personal awareness is as far as one can go in bettering society is one of discouragement. Can I do no more than improve only me? What’s so earth-shaking about that! A minor project if I ever heard of one!

Yet, really, this realization should be encouraging. First, the improvement of one’s self is the world’s biggest project any individual can undertake. And, second, reforming others is an utter impossibility, while gaining awareness is always within the realm of the possible. Indeed, it is probable for anyone whose method is right—who puts the accent on awareness.

[1] Being classified as “fringe” assumes that the classifier holds to a line of thought to which the fringe thought is “way out.” So, whether or not a line of thought is “fringe” depends on the doctrine of the classifier. Today, for the most part, any line of thought is “way out” that does not fit neatly into socialistic dogma or the platform of one of the two major political parties.

12

Don’t Look Back

When a thing is done, it’s done. Don’t look back. Look forward to your next objective.[1]

I repeat, everything is on the wing. Our Milky Way moves away from other galaxies at an astonishing rate; our earth speeds through space at 10,000,000 miles a day. Compared to the life of a planet man’s earthly moment isn’t “the blink of an eye.” In less time than it takes to write this sentence, I am the possessor of one billion brand new red blood cells. And each cell is of atomic composition, each atom so small that 30 trillion could be placed on this period (.) with no overlapping. Examine the atom; it’s the cosmos all over again—in miniature! Everything in the Universe is different from what it was a second ago; it is also in a new and ever-changing relationship to everything else.

Nothing can be put back together again the way it was yesterday or yesteryear—no more than there could be the repetition of one’s birth.

Such reflections focus attention on another common failing of freedom’s devotees: looking back on “the good old days” and wastefully attempting their restoration. This backward longing not only is useless but also diverts one’s eye and one’s energy from the job at hand.

Parenthetically, this caution against looking back is not to advise a neglect of history, far from it. We should, indeed, glean as much as possible from past experience in order to avoid the errors and to observe the truth. I am only emphasizing that life moves inexorably on—as a plane in swift flight—and that the destination lies ahead, not back.

Try to practice the admonishment, “Don’t look back,” if for no other reason than to discover how ingrained is the tendency to dwell in the past. All pleasant and rewarding experiences—personal minutiae and social events of historical import—seem to beg for repetition, an almost overpowering nostalgia. But, in no instance is repetition possible, for the components of a past experience are on the wing as everything else. Today’s experiences are determined in the face of today’s combinations and our reactions thereto.

Let us now apply this reasoning to political economy.

Of all political documents of which I have knowledge, none more excite my admiration than do our Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the U.S.A., and the Bill of Rights.

Today, the Declaration is hardly mentioned inside or outside our academies; the intent of the Constitution, for all practical purposes, has been amended away; and the Bill of Rights, a series of prohibitions against governments rather than citizens, is little more than a museum piece.

My hat is off to the architects of these remarkable documents. But consider the problems they faced as contrasted with the difficulties which beset us. Our Founding Fathers were dealing with an old-world despotism; we are confronted with countless democratic despotisms. They had to cope with an enemy from without; we must deal with ideological errors from within, that is, ours is the task of out-thinking and rising above a thousand and one ideas alien to freedom that have crept into millions of American minds.

Their problems and ours are not comparable. The materials from which they fashioned the American Design do not resemble the ingredients at our disposal. Theirs was one kind of challenge, ours is quite another. And, heretical as it may appear to many of the libertarian faith, there is no “going back to the Constitution,” for instance, or back to anything else. We are in flight!

A Continuing Challenge

So, we come to what I believe to be the heart of the problem. We may conclude that our Founding Fathers were political architects of unprecedented caliber. An enduring society, however, does not rest on there having been great architects; to endure requires more than to ride the coattails of former seers; it demands a perpetual parade of distinguished architects. Indeed, if I read correctly the lesson history teaches, every new generation must be graced with individuals superior—intellectually, morally, spiritually—to the generation it succeeds. If evolution in awareness, perception, consciousness is human destiny—and nothing else makes sense to me—then this ever-increasing severity of demands on each new generation is to be expected. Mans emergence does not allow “resting on the oars,” simply enjoying what our revered ancestors created; it demands more from us than it did from them! The penalty, if we fail, is the decline and fall of nations and civilizations.

Our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us a lesson in the pursuit of excellence; they did not hand to posterity a design for social felicity with no strings attached, a utopia affording gifts without requiring the practice of difficult virtues. Nor did they believe they were doing so. “You have a republic,” said Benjamin Franklin. “You have a republic IF YOU CAN KEEP IT.”

Our question is this: Are we lacking architects equal to the current crisis? The answer wavers between “yes” and “no.”

Assuredly, there are among us today numerous men equal in moral and intellectual stature to Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and the several dozen others we revere as our Founding Fathers, the architects of the America that was. In this sense, the answer is a definite “yes.”

But the answer is negative if we carefully examine what is required for the emergence of a successful social architect.

Something Solid to Stand On

No one of the Founding Fathers alone, nor all of them together as we might list them, turned the trick. These men were riding a crest, were out front; they were in the vanguard of what in a previous chapter I have described as “Creative Wisdom.” They were representative of and articulate spokesmen for the preponderant leadership thinking of their time. Had these men not been widely backed and supported by high-grade thinking consonant with what they did, they would not be known to us as our Founding Fathers.

For the sake of my point, let us concede that we have among us literally hundreds of men, say of Madison’s quality. Why is it that we do not recognize this stature in these contemporaries of ours? It is precisely for the same reason that Madison would have been unknown for his high qualities had the preponderant leadership thinking of his day been substantially less than it was. Had the preponderant leadership thinking then been what prevails today, Madison would have passed on as an historical nobody.

Unless they find support beneath the surface, the greats among us cannot be seen; they are sunk in the sea of thinking unfavorable to freedom. Each resembles, in one respect, a small sheet of steel plate. Tossed upon the water, it sinks; buoyancy—rising to the top—is out of the question. But if enough steel plates are properly welded, the great ship can ride any sea. It is seen; we know of it and its components.

The Greatest of These

Analogies are treacherous; separate steel plates never automatically coalesce and form a ship. But in the case of individual excellence, if there be enough, the disparate wisdoms of discrete individuals cooperate naturally, taking the form of an over-all Creative Wisdom. A few will be in the vanguard, and will gain recognition before men; but most of the greats, the ones without whom the spokesmen are impotent, remain forever in anonymity, content to follow the dictates of conscience. Praise before God suffices.

The point is, we can never know how nearly, at any time, we may approximate the situation where our spokesmen may rise from obscurity and be heard. For all I know, it may require but one more individual attaining a higher state of excellence.

Who or where is he? Of one thing we can be certain, such persons cannot be found by looking back. We must look about us—perhaps in the mirror.

When our problem is thus identified, a look at tomorrow is not the occasion for despair. It is a challenge to be welcomed! Meeting it is what is expected of us; indeed, this is what we should expect of ourselves!

[1] General George Marshall

Let Freedom Reign

Leonard E. Read

1969

To Ludwig von Mises

If given power over others, he would abdicate.

When experience is not retained . . . infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

—Santayana

PROLOGUE

The story is told of the minister and his spirited young filly which a wealthy fancier wanted for his stables. They proceeded to the track to check the filly’s capabilities. When the prospective purchaser mounted and gave the usual “Giddap,” there was no response.

“What makes her go?” he asked.

The minister explained his habit of praying as he rode, and gave the filly the command: “Praise the Lord!” She promptly circled the track at a fast clip, but then failed to stop when the rider said, “Whoa.”

“And what makes her stop?” he shouted.

“Amen,” said the minister, and the filly halted.

The prospective buyer then asked the minister if he might try the filly in the open country. After mounting, he said, “Praise the Lord.” Off they went at top speed. Suddenly, horse and rider approached a 300-foot cliff. The man in his fright forgot how to stop, so he prayed aloud, “Lord save me. Amen!” The filly stopped just a few feet from the cliff, whereupon the man in great relief exclaimed, “Praise the Lord!”

Even the finest of words and the best intentions can lead to disaster.

As I view our current situation, good intentions have brought us to the brink of disaster. Pollution. Inflation. Statism. Disorder. And without knowing the right words to halt our headlong plunge!

That I know precisely the right words is not claimed; indeed, my thesis is that neither I nor anyone else has all the answers.

Yet, it behooves us to bring as much light to the surface as lies within our power. Where are the answers to be found? Not in governmental management of creative activities! They are not to be found in the planned economy and the welfare state, but in the absence of these arrangements, which is to say, in the practice of freedom. For it is only in an essentially free society that unknown answers to problems of this nature emerge from the minds of men and become known. Freedom, with all the answers there are, is allowed to perform when coercion, which has no answers, is removed. This is my thesis.

The wisdom by which we exist is an enlightenment emerging from free men. Were this not the case, we would have to assume that all progress to date has sprung from supermen, not one of whom has ever existed.

Despite the overwhelming case for freedom, it is assailed from every side—reasons and excuses without end. “I’m for freedom, but . . .” is a loud, pervasive, dissonant chorus, bedeviling anyone who would champion the freedom philosophy.

The following chapters will attempt to remove some of the doubts and contribute to a faith that freedom should be the rule.

My own faith cannot be shaken, even though I fail adequately to make the case for this philosophy. Freedom, like righteousness or wisdom, must never be faulted because of my shortcomings. Or anyone else’s. If I cannot articulate the merits of freedom, the fault is in my understanding and explanation, not in freedom as a way of life.

• 1 •

THE POLLUTION PROBLEM

Pollution is but a sampling of the problems into which we have collectivized ourselves. But it is serious enough to be of grave concern.

Why are people so disturbed about pollution of air and water? It is not simply because they have become more refined and aesthetic, but because they begin to realize that we have reached a critical point in human habitation of the earth.

There was no split of opinion . . . last year when more than two hundred experts from fifty countries met in conference. Within twenty years, they decided, life on our planet will be showing the first signs of succumbing to pollution: the atmosphere will become unbreathable for men and animals; life will cease in rivers and lakes; plants will wither from poisoning.[1] (Italics mine.)

Even if the pollution problem is only half as bad as these experts believe, it must be conceded that the condition of the planet’s air and water is deteriorating. More and more people are concerned about pollution, and their apprehensiveness is justifiable. The paradox is—as I shall bring out later—that many of these same people ignore or even favor other forms of pollution which may be more destructive! But pollution, favored or not, is difficult to remedy—something like unscrambling eggs. It’s a matter of undoing that which has been done.

If we examine only one source of air pollution—motor vehicles—we may be able to uncover what’s involved in other sources of pollution; indeed, a principle or two may come to light.

The first gasoline buggy polluted the atmosphere. However, the owner felt no guilt; and no one else sensed any injury. The winds, rains, sunshine—agents of nature—were so overwhelmingly corrective that no detectable traces of poisonous gases remained in the air people breathed.

But during the intervening decades motor vehicles in the U.S.A. have multiplied 100 million times while the corrective forces of nature are the same now as always. As a consequence, it’s the pollution that now overwhelms nature! While we as offenders feel little if any more guilt than the single owner of long ago, we as inhalers of polluted air have a genuine sense of injury. Most of us are at once offenders and the offended; we keep right on polluting the air ourselves as we increasingly direct our criticisms at others. Driver after driver bemoans the polluted air with little if any awareness that he himself is polluting it. “The pot calling the kettle black!”

Viewing the problem in this manner, it is plain that we glossed over a very important point between the first gas buggy owner and today’s millions of owners. The first owner did no offense; many of us are now offending. What turns precisely the same act—car driving—from offenseless to offending?

Here’s the point most of us glossed over: It begins with a fact that we’ll all concede, namely, that I have no more right to poison the air you breathe than I have to poison the food you eat. But the air I pollute does not become poisonous to you until nature is overwhelmed, that is, until she can no longer dissipate the poisons.

Little wonder that we miss the point. As a car owner, I do nothing differently today than I did sixty years ago when driving my first auto. I poisoned no one then; now I do. Neither you nor I have altered our behaviors; therefore, external forces must have converted us from offenseless persons to offenders. External to you and me are (1) the millions of others who now pollute the air and (2) the limitations of nature to cope with the excessive pollution. Another way to explain our confusion: I do not poison others when driving in fresh-air country but begin to do so as I approach a metropolis. Offenseless and offending while on the same trip with the same tank of gas!

Plainly, we have no awareness of a change from harmless to harmful as we drive from open country to congested city. Nor did we sense any change when and where forces external to our individual selves turned the air from fresh to poisonous. It is thus understandable how we let pollution get out of hand. While our unawareness is excusable, the problem is not thereby dismissed; pollution is an enormous and rapidly increasing threat and will continue as such unless and until we come to grips with it.

The air pollution dilemma is not a problem exclusive to you and me. It has become a social problem no less than other destructive activities: killing, thieving, misrepresenting, poisoning, and so on. Thus it is that pollution cannot be remedied short of a resort to social devices, namely, legal prohibitions. This is where the agency of society—government—comes in. For the role of government is to codify the thou-shalt-nots and to enforce their observation. In good theory we employ the defensive force of government to inhibit and restrain that which is destructive.

Self-Imposed Disciplines

What then does this suggest? It means we approach this problem in the same manner as we do the poisoning of food. Impose penalties for infractions! In short, make it illegal to drive a polluting vehicle or otherwise contribute to tropospheric pollution in any area in which the forces of nature can no longer keep the troposphere free of poisonous gases.[2]

When nature can no longer cope with man-made contamination, then man must discover ways to avoid self-destruction. We can’t go on willy-nilly, eating our cake and having it, too. Our cherished comforts and affluence must be attended by at least a few disciplines. This is to say that we cannot go on forever enjoying our horseless carriages without, on occasion, “bringing them to rein.” Otherwise, they’ll run over the cliff with us!

Of course, this remedy, at first blush, appears to be worse than the malady. Why, the whole Los Angeles area would be carless, and Angelenos are dependent on motor transportation. The same will be said about most large metropolitan areas.

But make the legal prohibitions effective several years hence—time enough for a transition from polluting to non-polluting vehicles—and watch ingenuity come to the fore in response to consumer demand. With 100 million motor vehicles requiring a nonpolluting gadget, it is naive to believe that inventors and entrepreneurs wouldn’t rise to the lure. Technologically, this is nowhere near the challenge that color TV was but a few years ago. Indeed, it is already pretty well known how this feat can be accomplished. Nothing more is needed to bring a perfected answer from obscurity than the economic incentive and prospect of a profit. We should neither overlook nor deprecate the power of a hoped-for profit; it is one of the best mothers invention ever had.

The same procedures can be applied to the other sources of air pollution: home and factory furnaces, municipal and private incinerators, DDT, nuclear fallout, and the like. No one has a moral right to poison the air of another any more than the food or the water of another. And no one should have a legal right to do so. From where I sit in the bleachers, it seems that we must apply the legal prohibitions or prepare our children to live in gas masks, an unattractive alternative.[3]

Assuming we are on the right track in legally restraining pollution, that theoretically this is the correct remedial procedure, we have considered only the second step without thought of the first step. For, sadly, we have only a theory as to what should be done but nothing to do it with. Lacking is an agency of society capable of putting the theory into practice. Governments, as they exist today in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, are not the kind of societal agencies that can perform this service. These governments are not “purifying” agencies: quite the contrary!

Pollution of Money Supply

Governments, the world over, are themselves the greatest polluters of all, departing as they do from their principled role of defending the lives and the private property and freedom of choice of peaceful persons, becoming instead the instruments of plunder and tyranny. Nowhere is this “pollution” more evident than in the behavior of national governments with respect to the medium of exchange.[4]

Money, the economic circulatory device, is essential to exchanging our specialized goods and services; our lives and livelihoods depend on exchange. The usefulness of the medium of exchange decreases as its integrity is destroyed. This is an unassailable fact demonstrated over and over again throughout history; inflation is as unworkable as counterfeiting and for precisely the same reason. Yet, today, the pollution of money is a popular panacea for the ills of mankind; the idea is on the rampage as much without as within the government. My point, however, is that we cannot expect the polluter of money to rid us of the pollution of air, water, or any other useful thing.

And here is why: Whenever any government pollutes the medium of exchange, that act in itself reveals a type of societal agency that cannot effectively perform the defensive function. For implicit in money pollution is the acceptance of government in the role of ruler or general manager of our lives and livelihoods.

To grasp the switch in roles I am trying to portray, merely imagine the local chief of police with a printing press, turning out at will the money we use and thus setting its value. This police officer would be our czar. His concentration would be on the economic management of us: his people! Reflect on how little he would or even could concentrate on defending us against thievery and other forms of violence. Invoking a common justice would be out of his field. These and other defensive employments, including pollution riddance, would be no more than annoying trivia to him.

The national government today is in this inverted role. It is now the Grand Factotum over which there is no restraint—none whatsoever—except the thinking of citizens which, currently, is more molded by it than it by them. And as Grand Factotum, the government exhibits all and even more faults than we observe in numerous private enterprises that operate as laws unto themselves—you name them!

So, what is the first step to be taken before we can rid ourselves of pollution of the air, water, money, and other necessities of life? It is nothing less than restoring government to its principled function, to that position which is its sole justification for existence in the first place: the protection of life and livelihood. Government can be turned from offender to defender only as it is confined to codifying the taboos and enforcing them, to invoking a common justice, in a word, to keeping the peace—the role of servant. Its present role as general manager of 200 million people and their economy, its assumed and irrational role as dispenser of welfare, security, and prosperity, has to be abolished.

That this is ideological revolution (reversal of the mores), an affront to those currently in the seats of power, and seemingly impossible of accomplishment is conceded. But it’s this, or pollution; it’s this, or national downfall.

However, the job isn’t as impossible as it seems. Could you personally run the nation or the world? Of course not! Then draw a perfectly obvious conclusion: Neither can anyone else. The turnabout requires little more than a general recognition of this simple fact and an understanding of how freedom works its wonders.

[1] The Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter, February, 1969.

[2] Even prohibiting pollution in highly polluted areas may be no solution. Pollution is becoming a problem of the whole troposphere, that is, the troposphere assuredly has containment limitations. If this view be accepted, then pollution released atop Mt. Everest could eventually wreak its havoc on Americans.

[3] But to what avail are gas masks for human beings if plant and animal life succumb to pollution?

[4] This is not to overlook or minimize the polluting effect of a thousand and one other well-known governmental interventions.

• 2 •

A ROLE FOR RATIONALITY[1]

The characteristic that most significantly distinguishes man from other organisms is his ability rationally to will his own actions. Admittedly, this is only a budding ability, a rarer achievement than generally believed. But, nonetheless, the rational will is a potentiality, and its progressive realization would seem to be the mark of man fulfilling his destiny, namely, coming more and more to share in Creation.

The observation that those who do not learn from history are condemned to repeat it generally refers to the rise and fall of nations and civilizations. My contention is that history does have certain lessons to teach:

1. The rise of civilized societies is the result of freedom, and freedom is a state of affairs stumbled upon and, in no instance, a premeditated, rational design.

2. The explanations for societies in ascendancy have generally been false—the ascent has been attributed to organizational gadgetry rather than to freedom.

3. The decline and fall of civilized societies has usually been attributed to some organizational error rather than to overorganization. Rarely has a lack of freedom been assigned as the cause.

4. To avert a decline and fall requires rational analysis and an understanding of what it is about freedom that accounts not only for ascendancy but for the maintenance of the ascendant position. Be rational in this respect or look for the cycles of history to repeat themselves!

Professor F. A. Hayek, who has a scholarly sense of what is historically significant in human behavior, observes:

Modern man prides himself that he has built his civilization as if in doing so he had carried out a plan which he had before formed in his mind. The fact is, of course, that if at any point of the past man had mapped out his future on the basis of the then-existing knowledge and then followed this plan, we would not be where we are. We would not only be much poorer, we would not only be less wise, but we would also be less gentle, less moral; in fact we would still have brutally to fight each other for our very lives. We owe the fact that not only our knowledge has grown, but also our morals have improved . . . not to anybody planning for such a development, but to the fact that in an essentially free society certain trends have prevailed because they made for a peaceful, orderly, and progressive society. (Italics added.)

It is my belief that each praiseworthy society—Sumer, Athens, Carthage, Rome, Venice, Florence, Kiev, England, America—has not flowered from a rationally designed scheme for social felicity but, rather, has bloomed from a state of freedom come upon unwittingly, inadvertently, accidentally. Merely observe that there has been little understanding of the reason for the remarkable release of creative energy—even after freedom has existed. If there is no understanding of the wonders wrought by freedom after the fact, how, possibly, could there have been any anticipation of its wonders before the fact?

The American Miracle

History’s greatest creative outburst took place in the United States of America where freedom—private ownership, freedom in transactions, willing exchange, government limited to keeping the peace—was more nearly approximated than elsewhere or at any time. The correlation between freedom and creativity appears to be unassailable.

Was the American miracle premeditated, a rationally designed structure of society? Far from it! The people who came to this land were fleeing from old-world tyranny. They had little else in mind than to get away from their shackles. Europeans who migrated to America observed that the more a government ruled the actions of men the worse off they became. Their conclusion: That government is best which governs least. Hardly a refined theory!

What did these settlers do? They limited government more severely than governments had theretofore been limited. An examination of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights reveals 46 instances of “no” and “not” directed against governmental action; in short, hands off! And there they stood, freer than man had ever been before.

This American action did not occur as a rational prognosis of better things to come, for these forebears of ours hadn’t the slightest idea of what lay in store for them except that each could be his own man. They chose freedom for freedom’s sake alone; hang the economic or other consequences.

If we could gather all the facts, I believe that every instance of freedom has come about as a last resort. Authoritarians had tried everything in the way of controlling the creative actions of men; everything had failed and their bag of tricks was exhausted. What to do when such a dead end is reached? Indeed, what could be done in ruling creative actions? Nothing! And there stood the citizens free to act creatively as they pleased.

Freedom in every historical instance has been brought on by desperation; there simply wasn’t anything else to try. And then followed the miracle which was attributed far more to organization than to freedom.

Facts concerning the U.S.A. are more abundant than in previous instances. Beginning roughly 150 years ago, people the world over observed in America something most unusual. For the first time in history, every individual, regardless of station or status, was his own man.[2] Each could employ himself as he saw fit, each retain the fruits of his own labor, each decide his form of worship; in a word, freedom of choice in all aspects of life was as open to one as to another. Foreigners heard of an explosive creativity and an unprecedented prosperity—a new world in which the lowliest laborer might rise to an affluence greater than that of lords and dukes![3]

The upshot? There began the greatest migration to a single country ever known. And something more: curious individuals, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, as well as governmental commissions from many nations, came here to discover the magic that had been loosed. If they could find it, they themselves could experience the miracle. Or, so they thought.

Imitations Unsuccessful

What was the message most of them took back to their countries? What was the magic word? It was organization. They focused their eyes on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights featuring limitations of governmental authority, separation of powers as between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, and so on. Simple enough; merely duplicate these forms of political organization and then any society can experience the social and economic progress evident in America!

And many nations did just that, patterning their new Constitutions after our own. Indeed, it may be that Argentina’s Constitution was an improvement over ours. But take a look at any Latin American nation today, especially Argentina during the past three decades. Perón! Military juntas! Outrageous inflation! Meatless days in what was the greatest meat-producing country on earth! Ten to twelve million pesos for one of our good autos, well-equipped. Export and import at a virtual standstill! Another veritable Garden of Eden in a state of social and economic chaos! And bear in mind that the Argentinean Constitution is still there—a scrap of paper, no more!

For further proof that “organization” is not the magic word, we need only consider our own situation, the current state of affairs in the nation that provided the organizational model. I think it is not necessary to document here the nature or extent of our social collapse. That we have not fallen as low as Argentina is only because we began our decline from a higher perch. We need only bear in mind that good organization, by itself, did not insure the ascendant position.

The American Constitution was no more than a written record of what the preponderant leadership at that time believed. It was a recording of the thoughts, sentiments, and principles that made up their code and that they were capable of practicing. This document merely put their ideals in writing. The Constitution did not produce their high qualities; it was the other way round: their qualities produced the Constitution. And that’s all a Constitution can ever be; it’s an effect, not a cause. Instead of paying obeisance to our Constitution, we ought to be probing and admiring the thoughts of those who wrote it.

Seen in this light, it becomes clear why other nations gained nothing by copying our Constitution. Copying is useless unless the thinking be up to such a standard. And when our thinking falls below that of our Founding Fathers, our Constitution, like copies of it in other lands, becomes but a scrap of paper. To expect anything more is like expecting a rogue to change his ways by pinning on him a “good conduct” medal.

The Creative Plus

I am arguing that something much more than organizational gadgetry accounts for the good society. Social remedies are not to be found in writing a new Constitution, by amending the present one, or by adding laws upon laws. We must keep in mind that a good society and good organization are not two different sets of data to be correlated; they are simply two different aspects of the same set of facts.

Of all the foreign investigators who sought an explanation of the American miracle, Alexis de Tocqueville came closer to the right answer than anyone else known to me. At least, he knew that the miracle could not be attributed to organizational gadgetry:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.[4]

Aflame with righteousness! Of one thing I am certain: there can never be a good society except it be comprised of persons distinguished by righteousness. But I doubt that this alone is the magic word.

I return to Professor Hayek for the key ingredient: “. . . in an essentially free society certain trends have prevailed because they made for a peaceful, orderly, and progressive society.” For it is only in an essentially free society that certain trends have the possibility of prevailing: self-responsibility, improved morals, a passionate striving for intellectual excellence, a will to overcome obstacles, an energetic enthusiasm turned inward to self-improvement, an abounding entrepreneurial spirit, competition, and free pricing.

One point ought to be crystal clear: No manner of organizational gadgetry can make a great society out of unworthy people. Further, a nation of great people can suffer considerable imperfection in organization and still experience an outburst of creativity.

Observe the Florentines at the height of their creativity. We look askance at their organization, the opposite of our ideal: an all-powerful Duke of Florence, a person of dictatorial power in the driver’s seat. But the limitation of power was more or less self-imposed by several Dukes, attaining its apogee in Lorenzo the Magnificent. In effect, he limited his great political power to keeping the peace; Florentines acted creatively as they pleased; an essentially free society prevailed which accounted for one of the greatest outbursts of creativity up to that time. The decline began with the reign of Lorenzo’s son, Piero, whom the unlimited power corrupted.[5]

Creativity and Freedom

I wish only to stress that creative outbursts have a direct correlation with freedom; that freedom exists in the absence of coercive control of creative activity and that the limitation of power, whenever it has occurred, must be attributed to happenstance rather than to organizational design. And, finally, there never has been nor can there now be any avoidance of a decline in our Western societies short of a rational analysis of why societal ascendancy depends on freedom. These points, I believe, are what history has to teach; and the failure to apprehend them is not only an invitation for history to repeat itself but an assurance that it will.

The reason that creativity and social felicity can flourish only in an essentially free society is an enormous wisdom or knowledge that cannot otherwise be tapped. My own term for this is Creative Wisdom. This, I am insisting, is not only the most important but, also, the most overlooked point in political economy.[6]

As a starter, reflect on freedom’s opposite, an essentially authoritarian society where the dictator or a committee of commissars—bureaucrats—plan and dictate what shall be done: what produced in what quantities and qualities, what exchanged and by whom, where citizens shall work and at what hours and wages, how educated, what thoughts may be openly expressed, and so on. On what knowledge does such a society operate? According to the authoritarian design, only on that of a discrete individual, the dictator, and his conforming henchmen—infinitesimal knowledge! Were the authoritarian design carried out to the letter—no more knowledge in operation than he and his bureaucracy possess—all would perish. And just as surely would any population perish were there no knowledge but yours or mine!

Actually, what happens in all statist arrangements is a leakage of free human energy. Independent knowledge persists in showing itself, because no bureaucracy has ever been able to bring under control all creative actions. Even in Russia, every citizen makes some choices. As in the case of lightning, the knowledge implicit in choosing zigs and zags its way along the lines of least resistance, leaks through the porosity of the authoritarian embrace. It is this leakage of knowledge which alone accounts for any and all accomplishments generally credited to statist arrangements. For it is self-evident that it is only a free, volitional action that can possibly be creative. But bear in mind that the knowledge which does show forth in these statist organizations of society is an inhibited, stifled, restrained knowledge, bureaucratically unwanted, politically illegal, and, thus, a frustrated and minimal knowledge. All knowledge in society stems from freedom trying to operate, and only when this fact is overlooked do people come to believe that an authoritarian society has possibilities worth exploring. It is the knowledge that leaks out despite the Plan that accounts for all the accomplishment, but people see only the Plan and mistakenly attribute the accomplishment to it.

Now, reflect on the knowledge that emanates from an essentially free society. It is a luminosity so brilliant that, by and large, we are blinded not only to its genesis but even to its part in our lives. The blessings it confers are taken for granted as is the gift of sunshine—automatically our daily due.

The Role for Rationality

Here we have a role for rationality. We will either discover how to give this luminosity—Creative Wisdom—a rational analysis; or we will lose it—that is, history will repeat itself.

The enormous knowledge that emanates from an essentially free society develops by reason of the fact that in such a society no person imposes his will by force upon any other person. Were such imposition possible, that society would not be free. When no one can restrain anyone else in his creative actions, then knowledge, ideas, insights are free to emerge from many millions of potential sources. Creativity, in this event, has no external inhibition!

Potential sources! This is one of the key points in any rational analysis. No one can even remotely guess where bits of knowledge will originate. Example: Some decades ago, in the state of Michigan, an angry brakeman picked up a young railroad newsboy by the ears and threw him into the baggage car. For all anybody knew, he was an ordinary waif named Tom. Who could then have guessed the potentiality in the lad who later became known to the world as Thomas Alva Edison!

Every normal person on this earth has a bit of unpredictable Edison in him. From whom an idea will burst forth can no more be foreseen than one can know today what tomorrow may bring. Freedom taps this richest of all the world’s resources and assures us that society will have the use of all the knowledge there is or ever will be!

The knowledge freedom makes available to all of us is unimaginably greater than the knowledge that can issue from those who would rule others, for they suffer the greatest ignorance of all: an unawareness of how little they know.

Who in our field, for instance, is more knowledgeable than Professor Ludwig von Mises? He once was asked, “Were you the dictator of these United States, what steps would you take to remedy our current ills?” Mises replied, “I would abdicate.” His response evokes a hearty chuckle, because it’s so startlingly at odds with the popular mode. Most people, unaware of how little they know, would respond with suggestions for ruling. Mises—wiser—knows he lacks the wisdom to rule, an understanding as rare as it is profound.

Those of us without such deep understanding are unaware of any impressive alternative to your or my rule. To ever so many people, it’s only a question of who shall rule: you, someone else, or I? Generally, I am more impressed with my knowledge than yours, and vice versa. Overlooked is the fact that your knowledge or mine is infinitesimal, that not enough knowledge exists in any discrete individual to rule a single person, let alone a society. Also overlooked—and this is my point—is the almost unknown alternative, strikingly impressive, once it is apprehended. That alternative is the aggregate of all the knowledge issuing in literally trillions of tiny bits from all who live, which I refer to as Creative Wisdom.

Two Steps

Two steps are required to grasp the alternative to the minuscule knowledge that can issue from authoritarian arrangements. The first is to recognize that there is actually such a phenomenal force as Creative Wisdom. The second is not so much to understand precisely how tiny bits of knowledge form into a magnificent whole—a brilliant luminosity—but to know for certain that these bits will automatically form in an essentially free society. Rationally, how may these steps be taken?

The first is easy. Take any manufactured thing—an automobile will suffice. What is this thing? It’s a product resulting from the application of human knowledge—inventions, discoveries, ideas—to the resources of Creation.

Reflect on the knowledge that accounts for the automobile. The automobile is inconceivable apart from the fact that someone, eons ago, harnessed fire, and later invented zero, and learned how to refine ore. It is no exaggeration to claim that bits of knowledge by the trillions prefaced today’s motor vehicle. Note that this knowledge spans the period of human consciousness and that much of it was experienced before there was even the idea of an auto.

To complete this exercise, merely reflect on how little of this knowledge you contributed. A tiny bit, if any, regardless of whether you are a coal miner or the President of General Motors! No single person has the knowledge to make a thing as simple as a pencil, let alone an automobile.[7] Yet, pencils are made by the billions and autos by the millions, annually. The explanation lies in that phenomenal, over-all knowledge, that brilliant luminosity: Creative Wisdom.

Nor should we ever limit these observations to things. You and I are less competent to structure another human being than to build an automobile. And still less competent to structure society. All progress stems from Creative Wisdom, none from human masterminding.

The second step—seeing how Creative Wisdom is formed—may be beyond our comprehension. Trillions of knowledge-bits, from moments to eons apart and originating in persons rarely known to each other, form into a phenomenal, effectively working whole. How can their coalescence be explained?

It seems to me that society is blessed with a performance observed in nature: molecules coalescing to form in one instance a tree, in other instances a blade of grass, a rock, a lily of the valley, on and on in an infinite display. Merely note that the coalescence is automatic as long as the molecules are free to form. I cannot make a tree, but I can interfere with its development.

It is inconceivable that any human mind, regardless of how brilliant and wise, could coalesce these trillions of disparate bits of knowledge. What is it, then, that brings them together for their remarkable and countless performances? There has to be an ingathering or beckoning force and we should have some idea as to what it is or how it functions.

This beckoning force, I believe, operates through self-interest—the profit motive, material and psychic,[8] plus competition and free pricing—these being found only in an essentially free society.

Price is the monetary message of self-interest, the voice of subjective judgments. Its call penetrates not only our own society, but societies the world over. For instance, if one wants more tomatoes for his canning business, he only has to announce an attractive price; it’s that simple. Further, no more market wisdom is required on the part of potential suppliers than the ability to read a price; anyone can do it. In a word, tomatoes go where price beckons. But this is my point: Price coordinates or brings together the countless fractions of expertise involved in tomato production and distribution: soil culture, planting and harvesting machinery, trucking and railroading, indeed, bits of know-how too numerous to calculate.

Let me repeat: While I have used things for the purpose of illustration. Creative Wisdom applies no less to social, moral, and related problems. I can no more ingather the knowledge to run society or other people’s lives than I can make an automobile or a jet.

In any event, rationality does not require that I comprehend everything about life in order to affirm my certainty that life exists. And by the same token, rationality does not require that I comprehend precisely how trillions of tiny bits of knowledge form into Creative Wisdom in order to affirm my certainty that this is a phenomenon essential to life.

Finally, Creative Wisdom functions only in freedom. To avoid another disastrous decline and fall, we must not only know that freedom is essential but must try to know why it is essential. This is the lesson that history teaches.

Here, indeed, is a role for rationality.

[1] This chapter was first presented as a paper to The Mont Pelerin Society, Caracas, Venezuela, September 8, 1969.

[2] One exception, of course, was Negro slavery, a horrible infraction of the freedom philosophy. The American Indian fared no better.

[3] This and the following seven paragraphs appear in my The Coming Aristocracy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969), pp. 76–78.

[4] This quotation is found on pages 12–13 of the popular school text by F. A. Magruder, American Government: A Textbook on the Problems of Democracy. Except for the last two sentences, this is Magruder’s paraphrase of Tocqueville’s words.

[5] Whose interpretation of historical events is one to trust? Which historian deduces from the facts available the real causes of what shows on the surface? My impressions of Florence, at odds with what the encyclopedias report, are from The Medici by G. F. Young (New York: Modern Library).

[6] Professor Hayek apprehends this exceptionally elusive fact better than anyone else known to me; indeed, I am unaware of who the others are. See his “The Uses of Knowledge in Society,” The Freeman, May, 1961.

[7] See the chapter, “Only God Can Make a Tree—Or a Pencil” in Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

[8] For my comments on material and psychic profit, see the chapter “What Shall It Profit A Man?” in Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y., The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967).

• 3 •

LET’S BE PHILOSOPHERS

We can gain in self-controlled, rational activity only as we become what I call philosophers. Viewing ourselves in this role brings forth a few more thoughts about why the overall luminosity—Creative Wisdom—brightens among free men.

Tradition has it that philosophy is a discipline reserved for rare souls with brilliant minds and an esoteric bent. I propose a break with this tradition: let’s all be philosophers! We can begin by understanding what philosophy embraces in its most meaningful sense.

Ortega describes philosophy as going down deep for underlying causes and forces and surfacing with them, that is, bringing them up in clarity for the sake of understanding. Thus, the philosopher is the clarifier, the simplifier of complex reality, the one who can see through and explain in terms that others may also see. If he does this well, we call him a “seer.”

Parenthetically, it is doubtful if anyone ever clearly sees that which he cannot bring to the surface in clarity, which is to say that no idea is clear in the mind of a person if he cannot lucidly express it in words. An idea, committed to words, is but the reflection of what’s in the mind; if the reflection is fuzzy, so is the original. An intelligible idea can be plainly articulated.

Bringing difficult matters to the surface—clarification to the point where others may behold and use them—gives us a helpful picture. But it occurs to me that “going deep” conjures up a wrong impression as to where truth and ideas, awaiting apprehension, are to be found. Using this analogy, we may visualize a globe with ourselves on the surface. So far, so good! “Going deep,” however, suggests that the probing—searching for truth—is toward the globe’s center. Were this the case, then the deeper philosophers probe, the nearer would they come to agreement; they would be working toward a common position. Eventually, there at center would stand the philosophers, all in unison, proclaiming Truth in its pristine purity.

This going-down-deep analogy simply does not square with reality. For proof, take a look at the findings and explanations of some four hundred of the most famous philosophers who have lived[1]—and note how rarely have any two seen the same things. Here some light, there a flicker, with each philosopher seeing and explaining some tiny point different from all other sightings. I can find no evidence that these intellectual giants have been moving toward a common point or center. To the contrary, each appears to find a fragment which he brings to the surface as a bit of light. There isn’t necessarily a contradiction in the findings, but there is an impressive lack of unanimity.

How, then, can we better visualize what actually occurs?

Simply imagine a globe with all of us on the surface, as before, with the lines of search stretching up and away rather than down and deep. The lines, instead of converging toward a center, are diverging as they reach out toward an ever-expanding and limitless periphery—the infinite.

Our customary way of thinking has philosophers going deep and bringing their findings back to the surface as in A. Instead, they go up and outward and bring their findings back to the surface as in B:

The A diagram pictures the searchers for and explainers of truth coming closer to agreement the “deeper” they probe. This is false. B, on the other hand, has them probing outward and bringing back to the surface bits of truth that are always new and different. The further they probe, the greater the divergence. This squares with what we observe—the gist of the matter.

Now, here’s where we come in. According to the above description, philosophers are not merely the few who have distinguished themselves historically—become famous—but every last one of the countless millions—known and unknown—who reach out, discover, and bring back to the surface rays of light: creativities, inventions, insights as we call them, ideas. Admitted as philosophers in this description are the unknowns who discovered how to harness fire, invented zero, and so on. Indeed, our tribe, when described this way, goes back to the dawn of self-consciousness and includes all persons past or present who have probed, found, and brought to the surface any bit of light. There have been trillions of flickers and flashes, from the dimmest to the brightest.

At first blush, this thesis gives the appearance of beating a very tiny drum. But there’s more to it than first meets the eye.

Consider the millions of us on the surface and how bewildered we are by the absence of unanimity among those who sincerely search for truth and seriously try to explain and clarify their findings. Instead of their findings moving toward a hoped-for agreement, these impress us as more and more antagonistic; they seem to be at sixes and sevens. This isn’t, we are prone to believe, the way it ought to be. But we need to take another look: these seeming antagonisms are not necessarily antagonisms but, rather, varying fragments on which evolution and all progress are dependent.[2] For peace of mind, we need to see these variances for what they really are: assets, not liabilities.

That which philosophers seek and sometimes find and bring back to the surface is, hopefully, and often is, a bit of truth. And, interestingly enough, the more the prober knows of truth, the more he knows he doesn’t know. The more he finds, the more he should know there is to find. This is finite man in a never-ending invasion of infinity—man’s wonderful destiny.

Put it another way: Out and away from the surface, challenging man now and forever, is unseen truth, a limitless darkness. Truth can only be found in an infinity of fragments—call them ideas—awaiting apprehension. And the moment any idea is apprehended it becomes a light. Philosophers bring to the surface these tiny rays of light which, in their aggregate over the millennia, result in an enormous luminosity.

The Elusiveness of Truth

Without denying that there are verities, we observe that new-found truths are forever correcting or even displacing earlier “truths.” A new bulb for one that has dimmed or burned out! One of countless examples: Galileo affirmed the theory of Copernicus that the solar system does not revolve around our earth. Galileo brought a new ray of light to the surface by a new apprehension; he added to the illumination by which we live and evolve. So long as we do not go static, that is, so long as we are philosophers, truth will remain an ever-elusive, advancing object, a wisdom to be pursued but never captured entirely.

We should bear in mind that man progresses or regresses, which is to say, humanity evolves or devolves as the surface luminosity dims or brightens. It seems to follow that everything in life that matters hinges on our competency as philosophers.

This luminosity, gathered within the history of mankind—rays of light by the trillions—is sometimes referred to as “knowledge in society” rather than my own favorite term: “Creative Wisdom.”

Once the enormity of Creative Wisdom—the luminosity—is grasped we see that:

- The wisdom by which we live is unimaginably greater than can possibly exist in any discrete individual;

- All forms of authoritarianism are pompous nonsense;

- These trillions of tiny know-hows—ideas—to be useful, must flow and exchange freely, which explains our vital need for individual liberty;

- The miracle of the free market is the miraculous coalescence of these tiny rays of light into the over-all luminosity;

- It is possible to have jets, cars, pencils, and a million other things without any one person knowing how to make them;

- We can trust mail delivery or any other creative activity to the free market;

- We are the beneficiaries of countless economic, political, moral, ethical, and spiritual principles we have not ourselves deduced;

- We owe our lives to this inheritance and, as specialists, we are interdependent;

- My freedom depends upon yours.

Philosophy—the pursuit of truth and bringing the findings to the surface in clarity—is not reserved to those with brilliant minds and an esoteric bent. Philosophy is for you and me and for every human being who cares one whit about his own growth and the welfare of others.

I say, let’s all try to be philosophers!

[1] See Treasury of Philosophy, ed. by Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Philosophical Library, Inc., 1955, 1280 pp.)

[2] When I say “necessarily antagonistic,” I am trying to embrace only those findings which lead in the direction of truth. Admittedly, many sincere searchers bring horrible error to the surface.

• 4 •

YOU CAN’T TRANSPLANT A FACULTY

The preceding chapter makes the claim that “all forms of authoritarianism are pompous nonsense.” This seems self-evident to anyone who grasps the unimaginable content of the over-all luminosity and the infinitesimal part any discrete individual has or can have in its composition. There is, however, another way to demonstrate the utter fallacy of authoritarianism in the absence of which freedom reigns.

While technicians may, sooner or later, successfully transplant hearts, eyes, and other human organs, no one will ever succeed in transplanting such innate faculties as conditioned reflexes, intuitions, insights, volitional actions, and the like. These native aptitudes are exclusively private, personal, individualistic, and can no more be transplanted than can a dream or a vision.

This claim will arouse no dissent when expressed in theoretical terms; but many people have a yen for back-seat driving, and I think it can be shown that a back-seat driver foolishly or unwittingly attempts to transplant a faculty. Millions of people are afflicted with the back-seat driver syndrome, and this is freedom’s widespread and persistent enemy.

Thus, if freedom be our destination, then the prevalent itch to do back-seat driving ought to be restrained. But this bad habit isn’t curable until we recognize that a driver, regardless of competence, can drive better when left to his own resources than when confused by instructions from behind.

In automobiles, back-seat drivers range all the way from a kindly advisor to a thug with a gun in your back.

In society, back-seat drivers range all the way from “friendly,” unsolicited instructors, to associational resolutions, to edicts by both private and public bodies backed by force, some legal and some not.

Of Automobiles and Society

We are inclined to view with disfavor the person who tries to direct a driver from the back seat, or the parent who tells his offspring whom to marry, or the neighbor who is always telling us what to wear, eat, drink, think. These intimate busybodies or back-seat drivers are more often shunned than sought. Yet, we who frown on these intimate, personal intruders are likely to find upon careful self-inspection that we ourselves are remote, impersonal intruders, distinguished only by being further removed from those we would instruct than are the more intimate busybodies. What I wish to explain is that back-seat driving in society is strikingly analogous to back-seat driving in automobiles.

Two recent questions impressed upon me how widespread is the impulse for back-seat driving in matters of social import. The first: “Can you suggest a man big enough to head a citizens’ committee that could cope with campus strife and other breakdowns in law and order?” My answer: “He doesn’t exist.” The second: “Should we not insist that economics be taught in all high schools?” My answer: “No.”

How gentle these questions, and how seemingly far removed from the authoritarian mentality! Yet, this way of looking at problems other than our own reveals a lack of understanding of the driver-training process, whether it be driving a car or working out one’s own destiny. This way of looking at social problems, however innocently, is the genesis of authoritarianism. It reveals an unawareness of how freedom works.

As for driving a car, suppose you had to mentally formulate and word the message before each move of the wheel, each touch of the brake or the accelerator. Messages from the eye to the brain to the hands and feet are far too slow; you couldn’t drive. If you are a competent driver, all of these movements have been relegated to the conditioned reflexes. Your thinking is reserved for the unexpected on the road, how to avoid hitting or getting hit by other drivers, and where it is you want to go.

Now, suppose that instructions from a back-seat driver are substituted for both your thinking and your conditioned reflexes, that you are downgraded to an automaton. The thinking, more than likely, will be inferior to your own. But even more serious, conditioned reflexes would not be in operation at all. In view of the fact that conditioned reflexes cannot be transplanted, split-second actions and reactions are out of the question; car driving becomes an utter impossibility.[1] However, up to this point, I am only pointing out the obvious.

Not so obvious is what happens in the case of social back-seat drivers. We who would play that role are unable to imagine a good and flourishing society except as others are guided by our lights. We insist on minding the business of others which, were they to heed us, would make them less competent than they are now, whatever that level. We fail to grasp this point only because we do not understand how freedom works.

Parenthetically, I concede that it is correct in principle, as well as necessary, to formalize and enforce the taboos against destructive activities: fraud, violence, and so on. Invoking a common justice and keeping the peace is what government is for. And this is as far as any of us should ever go in interfering with the actions of others. This is another way of saying that, when it comes to creative activities, let us be done with contriving what others should do and how they shall act. Leave them alone except, of course, when our counsel or tutorship is sought. And have faith that their behavior will be superior to their performance under our intrusive prescriptions.

Upon what is such a faith founded? It rests upon the fact that numerous complex faculties are singularly and exclusively manifested in each person who lives on this earth. These include not only the power to think and the conditioned reflexes employed as when driving a car, but also inventiveness, intuition, the ability to will, choose, decide; in a word, volition. Every iota of human creativity stems from these discrete, unique sources, these individual wellsprings—dynamos, so to speak, varying in power from very low to very high. Nor has the make-up or combination of faculties in any one of these power sources ever been duplicated in any other. Each person is unique.

Each of us is the possessor and protagonist of his own nontransferable life.[2] I may never do very much with my own possessions but I will do more with what I have if left to my own resources and on my own responsibility than if others interfere with the free employment of my faculties. To the extent that others do not interfere with my creative potentialities, I am free. Only when I am free can the best that is in me show forth. If you interfere, even as a “friendly” busybody, then you confuse, frustrate, and stifle such generative capacity as lies within my power: you turn me off! Remember that I am as unique and as complex as are you. And it is easily demonstrable that you know very little about yourself, far less about me.

All of this comes clear when we analyze the back-seat car driver—a personal, intimate situation—substituting his guidance for a relatively simple operation in which only a few faculties are employed. Consider, then, the far greater hazard of inflicting your views on people unknown to you, in an operation as big as the destiny of man, attempting to alter the conglomeration of faculties in each of millions of persons, faculties which you cannot even identify by name, much less understand. The social back-seat driver by his remote, impersonal intrusions is incalculably more absurd than is the back-seat driver in a car with his intimate, personal intrusions!

Creative Faculties Are Exclusive

Why does freedom work? Why is it that you, for instance, when left alone and free from intrusions, do better than when another attempts to make you into a carbon copy of himself? The answer, of course, relates to the free functioning of your creative faculties! Your faculties may be of low or high generative capacity, but they are exclusively yours. Your faculties are yours alone and nontransferable; and the same applies to every other individual. A faculty transplant is impossible and that is what social back-seat drivers do not apprehend. Try to transplant apprehension!

The social back-seat driver has at least two effects: (1) to the extent that one person imposes his will on another, he thwarts and stifles that other’s generative capacity, and (2) by casting his eye fruitlessly on others, the back-seat driver neglects his own much-needed upgrading. The fact that he is a back-seat driver is testimony enough that the need is his.

Freedom works its wonders simply because the generative capacity of countless millions has no external force standing against its release!

The aggregate of this creative human energy is so far beyond our power to imagine that, by and large, we have no faith in it and the wonders it works. How can I believe in something my mind cannot encompass! Yet, to have faith in freedom requires that I believe in this incomprehensible creative power. Summarizing, this is how my own belief is founded:

1. I observe how frustrating back-seat drivers are to me and how my best shows forth in their absence. Then I multiply this minus-to-plus shift by countless millions of others, arriving at an incomprehensible human creativity.

2. History reveals to me that civilizations form and rise when freedom is the mode and decline with back-seat driving authoritarianism.

3. It is clear that all progress stems from the nontransplantable faculties of unique individuals, generating at their best when free and unrestrained.

Macro Problems

Let us now return to those opening questions: “Can you suggest a man big enough to head a citizens’ committee that could cope with campus strife and other breakdowns in law and order?” and “Should we not insist that economics be taught in all high schools?”

These questions, typical of countless others heard daily, are so gentle that they seem unrelated to that political authoritarianism decried by the questioners. But observe what analysis reveals.

Implicit in the first question is the acknowledgment that campus strife and other breakdowns in law and order are too big for the questioner. So he’s looking for a man as big as the problem: a macro man to cope with a macro problem.[3] And a Macro Man is what enough of this kind of searching will uncover: Der Fuehrer! For precisely the same reason that the questioner isn’t big enough to cope with the problem, a point he admits, neither is anyone else. No one else can transplant faculties either. In this respect, all are impotent.

Why such delegation in desperation? It is a common response to an insistence for order with no realization that this road must end in utter chaos.[4] What’s going on in our homeland is strikingly similar to what went on in Germany prior to Hitler’s rise to power. They wanted a man “big enough” and they got him. But he was big only in ignorance and the capacity to slaughter.

If we go deeper for an explanation of this desperation thinking, I believe it lies in the tendency to mind other people’s business, nicely illustrated by “Should we not insist on the teaching of economics in all high schools?” This question has the same flavor as “What we ought to have in every high school and college in this country is a compulsory course in freedom.”

Economics in all high schools! Where are the teachers and the textbooks? Most of what’s being written and taught is of the macro brand. Better that there be none of it! And who among the millions of students have any desire to learn economics, or could learn if they tried? Maybe one in a thousand! Might as well insist on the teaching of paleo-ecology!

My point, however, has to do with this kind of back-seat driving—people forever concocting designs for the rest of us. If a few people insist that economics be taught in all high schools, economics will be a “required” discipline; government will be brought into the act. So many of these intrusive and nonsensical designs have been foisted upon us that today our society is overburdened with rubble, countless monkey wrenches in the machinery. Small wonder that we have a macro problem and that people are looking around for a man big enough to cope with it.

When Freedom Reigns

What is the remedy? It is to recognize the fallacy of back-seat driving, to quit these attempts at faculty transplants, to let people alone in their creative activities. Forswear designing what they should study, think, produce, exchange, where they should work, what their hours and wages should be, and so on. Relieve ourselves of this fruitless meddling and watch the rubble disappear. See how quickly individuals improve themselves!

Would a society free from this meddling conform to my present idea of the ideal? Indeed, it would not! It would be better than anything I can imagine, just as America excelled anything its founders had in mind.

We can have faith in freedom by simply acknowledging that we already know how the driver-training process really works: Instead of my telling you what to do, you seek tutorship if and when you want it. The process is that simple and that sensible.

That no one of us can ever figure out how this humpty-dumpty can be put back together again is conceded. But we don’t have to know. If we will merely quit our back-seat driving, stop trying to graft our own faculties onto others, it will put itself back together. God gave me only myself to control, not the world. The message I get is to let Creation work its wonders! This is possible only when freedom reigns.

[1] Some scientists may insist that transplanting conditioned reflexes is within the realm of possibility. For they have succeeded, by the use of DNA, in doing this first to flat worms and now to rats. But not to taxi drivers. If they ever do, I’m walking!

[2] José Ortega y Gasset.

[3] Macro: meaning large; comprising the universe; as distinguished from the individual components. Macro economics, for instance, refers to the economy as a whole without relation to the individual components. The term recently has come into popular use for what might otherwise be called the economics of collectivism, the centrally planned economy, the welfare state, with emphasis on national income, social progress, full employment, and the like, instead of private property, freedom of choice, self-responsibility, and other aspects of individualistic “micro economics.”

In earlier times, macro economics had its equivalent in tribal custom, feudalism, mercantilism, and other variants of collectivism. Today, its top practitioners are to be found in Russia, Red China, Uruguay, Cuba.

[4] See the chapter, “Incomprehensible Order,” in my The Free Market and Its Enemy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965), pp. 50–67.

• 5 •

THE MIRACLE OF A MEAL

I like to emphasize again and again the common and careless inclination to take our blessings for granted, and why we should not do so. Miracles of the free market abound in our daily experiences but, short of an appreciation of what accounts for our affluent existence, we’ll do nothing to preserve the miraculous process; we’ll let it go by default!

Day-in and day-out experiences? To illustrate, here’s a homey case in point, commonplace as our daily bread; indeed, it’s about an ordinary dinner and, for good measure, with the recipe thrown in.

’Twas a Sunday morning. The two of us had given no thought to any eating for the day except the conventional orange juice and coffee and the unconventional sautéed chicken livers and bean soup for breakfast. Let the rest of the day take care of itself! Then the not-too-unconventional thing happened: three unexpected guests for dinner!

What to do? Westchester County has numerous restaurants of moderate quality. Why shouldn’t the five of us dine out? That’s the expedient even if the expensive solution—the escapist way. But to the gent who likes to cook, this is also to run from a challenge; it is to accept conventional check-writing while rejecting exciting culinary creation.

An inventory of the refrigerator revealed some staples but nothing in the way of main-course fare except a cup of canned tuna and a cup and a half of left-over roast chicken—not much of a start for a table of five. Yet, it was this paucity of supplies that presented the challenge. The Chinese approach came to mind—a little meat and fish for flavor and many vegetables for good diet and bulk.

Two utensils were brought forth from the gadgetry closet and placed on the stove. One was an enameled cast iron casserole, an art of the Belgians, Dutch, and French—lost for years—in production again as the finest cooking ware there is. The other was a large, shallow, steel bowl used in Chinese kitchens for numerous kinds of cookery and called a “woc.”

A tablespoon each of butter and flour went into the casserole for a roux. After whisking and cooking over a low heat, two cups of an excellent chicken stock, made by a lady in Connecticut, were added and blended. Added and blended into this was the following, already combined: 1/4 cup of water, a heaping tablespoon brown sugar, juice of one lemon, 2 tablespoons soy sauce, a smidgen of Accent, 1/2 teaspoon Pernod, and a tablespoon of corn starch which gives the sauce that glistening effect achieved by the Chinese. At this point, the heat was turned off under the casserole. Then was added a large clove of garlic, put through a garlic press, 1 can bean sprouts, drained and rinsed, and the tuna.

Now to the woc. Five slices of bacon were chopped and sautéed to a near crispness, the pieces, drained of the grease, added to the casserole. The grease was removed from the woc and then returned sparingly for the following high heat and quick sautéeing, each put in the casserole when no more than half cooked: cup of chopped celery, can of water chestnuts, drained and sliced, a cup of chopped scallions, and a cup of sliced mushrooms. Last, the chicken was browned and added to the casserole.[1]

Well, there’s the concoction; call it a chop suey, a salmagundi, or what you will. I merely mixed the sauce and ingredients with a fork, put the cover on the casserole, brought it to a simmer, and served the stuff over rice in soup plates. I announced to my hoped-for admirers, “We’re in business!”

The Miracle Workers

Anyway, this dish came off first-rate and it was pronounced “Delectable!” Wanting at least to affect modesty, and seeing an opportunity unobtrusively to strike another blow for the free market, I demurred by saying: “I had very little to do with this Chinese hash. Many tens of thousands of persons had a hand in its making.” This remark evoked more in the way of astonishment than did the savoriness in the way of “ums” and “ahs.”

I explained: “Consider the persons who made my utensils, the ones who discovered how to enamel cast iron, and all of those who had to do with the facilities of manufacture. Who grew and milled and packaged the rice? From whence came the vegetables, and who brought them to market, and who had a part in the transportation and communication apparatus? The gal in Connecticut who processed the chicken stock had a part in this dish, as did the fishermen who caught the albacore and the folks who made their boats and tackle—and the canners and the makers of cans. Reflect, also, on the countless persons who saved, thus providing the capital for all of the enterprises. Think of the army of people who brought the gas to my stove. Above all, bear in mind that not one ingredient used in this preparation was grown, mined, fabricated, or transported by me. Numberless thousands, perhaps millions, through space and time, lent their services for this which you now declare delectable.”

“But,” retorted one of our guests, “it has always been thus. What you speak of as if it were a miracle is really commonplace. Aren’t you making much ado about nothing?”

“Indeed, I am not. To get a full appreciation of my point, I shall give you a copy of Weaver’s Mainspring.[2] Read this and you will get the history of freedom and its meaning to you as a person. You will see that most of the people who have inhabited this earth have been faced with famine and starvation; that in most countries only a certain few have been able to command the services of others. The historical rarity is where persons, in moderate circumstances like ourselves, can obtain the services of millions in exchange for some minor specializations of our own. The abundance we are experiencing at this table is no longer necessarily confined to kings and commissars and monopolists, the special privileged, to successful pirates and thieves. A way is known, at least to a few, that can make a meal like this the fare of anyone who is willing to work. It is this little known way that constitutes by far the most important ingredient of any good meal.”

“What is this way in a few well-edited words?”

“This way is to get out of the way of all creative activities, an absence of authoritarianism. As a consequence of getting out of the way, there is a releasing, a flowering of creative energy. We refer to this as the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life.”

“You have carried brevity too far. Can’t you expand on this a bit?”

“Not adequately during a dinner hour. In essence, however, it is simply to leave everybody totally free to act creatively as he pleases, to let anyone and everyone exchange their goods and services with whomever they choose on whatever terms can be mutually agreed upon, to let the fruits of one’s labor be one’s own, and to limit government—society’s agency of force—to the protection of everyone equally in these freedoms.”

“Do you mean that government should never assume the role of Robin Hood?”

“That is precisely what I mean. Political Robin Hoodism is like taking 20 points from the student who graded 95 and giving the 20 points to the student who graded 55: this would give each a grade of 75, adequate for passing. The first will work less because his incentive has been removed, and the second will see no point in working at all because he has become the object of something for nothing. Fancy names for this way of life are Egalitarianism, Dirigisme, Etatism. Labels more familiar to us are Communalism, Communism, Socialism, or just plain Welfare State.”

“You go too far in limiting government. Imagine the chaos there would be in a complex society like ours if government were not managing the economy at all.”

“When you say I go too far, you are really saying you favor some predation, providing it is legal, and that I am wrong for being opposed to all of it. And as to government management of the economy, could you manage it or organize its management? Let me make this easier for you. Could you have directed the creative activity that went into the making of the woc that sautéed our food?[3] Or that went into the other ingredients employed by us today? Could you direct just one person in invention, discovery, ingenuity? Why, directing your own self in this respect is a bigger chore than you can fulfill. And what makes you think that voting you into or appointing you to some political office betters your capacities? By doing this, we would make you less capable. If we give you power to direct us, that will corrupt you. Examine yourself and your limitations, add a dose of corruption, and you will see the true nature of an authoritarian, the one who presumes to direct the creative lives of people within a society. And, remember, everyone else, no matter how skilled in other ways or how well educated, is just as incompetent as you are when it comes to controlling the productive lives of others.”

“But, under your system how are the poor fed?”

“You are now witnessing the answer. The principles I have but casually touched upon have been practiced in the U.S.A. more than elsewhere, and the poor are better fed here than in those countries where these principles are less practiced. All five of us started with no inheritance beyond what God gave us. We are the beneficiaries of freedom. We not only have good food by reason of it; we have life and the opportunity to enrich our lives intellectually and spiritually by reason of it.”

“Why, though, do you dwell so passionately on the subject? Your talk would imply that freedom is precariously held; that it’s something we are in imminent danger of losing.”

“We are in danger of losing our freedom. You and millions of others are taking freedom for granted, so much so that you embrace authoritarian ideas as long as they are legally clothed and democratically implemented. Only now and then can a skilled expositor of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life be found. Socialism (authoritarianism)—freedom’s opposite—is on the increase, and dangerously so.”

“I did not know this.”

“Without an understanding of freedom and how it works, you couldn’t possibly know this.”

“Anyway, I enjoyed your dish.”

“Well, thanks. And, please don’t think I have been talking irrelevantly. I only want you to know the whole recipe and to realize that numberless thousands of others, past and present, were ‘cheffing’ for you this day. Here’s a toast to their health and happiness, all of them, and, with a wine from California—to the vintners, and to all the folks through the ages who brought it to perfection and to our table.”

The right words didn’t occur to me until after my guests had departed. I should have concluded that meal with, “Here’s a toast to free men, the miracle workers!”

[1] Had I not been improvising, I would have preferred to the chicken and tuna 3 pork chops, cut in small pieces, and sautéed.

[2] As do many others, I keep a supply of this remarkable book on hand for passing on to anyone whose interest in the freedom philosophy appears to be sprouting. Obtainable from FEE in paperback.

[3] There isn’t a single person in the United States Steel Corporation who could do this!

• 6 •

CONFESSIONS OF A RICH MAN

True, we are threatened by disaster. But an appreciation of the wonders freedom has made possible cannot help but impress on all of us the importance of doing everything within our power to avert another decline and fall.

What can inspire us to discover and then to exert our utmost powers in this respect? In our work and in our games competition is among the forces that move us toward excellence. Competition, however, appears to have little or no influence in making us better students and expositors of freedom.

The following self-analysis is an attempt to discover what moves me to better understand, explain, defend, and expand freedom. Note that the force at work is not competition—would that it were!—but appreciation.

There are many thousands of persons in America today whose assets exceed a million dollars. I am personally acquainted with numerous millionaires who acknowledge their status and with many more who do not. Some of these men, indeed, give every appearance of trying desperately to keep their heads above water; they put me to shame when it comes to economizing! I may even know a billionaire or two.

No trillionaires are yet known to me, although there are some prospects. Trillionaires, it seems, are not self-made but government-made. In Germany, for instance, following World War I, when the inflation reached the point that 30 million marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread, trillionaires were a dime a dozen.

These observations lead me to the conclusion that adding up dollar assets is not necessarily the best way to decide who is rich and who is not. Actually, this is the old-fashioned way of assessing affluence: acres of land, size of castle, number and quality of jewels, how many serfs, slaves, servants, or ducats in the vault. On this basis the legendary Midas, Croesus, kings of England, and German trillionaires would be accounted richer than I am. And I say they are not!

Applying concepts conceived during the past six or seven generations, I may be among the very rich. And bear in mind that I do not have many dollars stashed away; that FEE is not nor has it ever been a part of the social security system; and that I have refused to accept Medicare which, in turn, made me ineligible to continue my Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurance. By the old standards of measurement, I am far from a well-to-do individual. Why, then, do I think of myself as so rich?

First, consider the little I do—not a single thing which, by itself, sustains life. I only read and write and speak abstract stuff—a theoretician of sorts.

Next, observe the goods and services I obtain in exchange for the infinitesimal mite I offer on the market:

Others raise every bit of my food and it comes not only from our fifty states but there’s lamb from New Zealand, cheese from Italy, Switzerland, England, endive from Belgium, fish from the North Sea, snails from France, caviar from Budapest, bananas from Honduras, on and on.

They built my home and the hundred-and-one furnishings which make it livable and attractive.

They extract gas from beneath the surface in Texas and deliver it to me in New York, and they supply me with electricity which I use to cook and to run several dozen household gadgets which they made, and not one of which was more than a dream when I was born.

They educated my children and provide the literature used for my own edification.

They make the cars I drive and the clothes I wear.

They air-condition my home and workroom.

They build airplanes and pay my fare on them all over this nation and to many other countries, permitting me to meet and know the finest thinkers of our times.

After building a fine golf course and adding a curling rink, they allow me membership and pay my dues and expenses.

They mow my lawn and pipe water into its sprinkler system which they concocted—and they provide water for me to drink.

They make my pencils, pens, typewriters, and paper to write on.

They provide a communications system which permits me to talk with countless individuals in our fifty states in a matter of seconds; indeed, to people in many other nations.

They provide me with numerous associates of high libertarian rank and skills and a splendid physical facility complete with library, machinery, and other tools that we may labor on behalf of the freedom philosophy.

Frankly, so numerous are the goods and services and blessings available to me that I am incapable of recounting them. Croesus never came close to having the riches which are mine. And, doubtless, this goes for you, too.[1]

Who Is Rich?

Richness, in the sense I use the term, is a subjective judgment. It rests on the value one attaches to what he has. Reflect on the many so-called affluent people who take their countless blessings for granted, as if everything were their due. Their appreciation is next to zero. Based on the subjective theory of value—the correct theory—these people, regardless of how high their dollar status, are poor. And they never can become rich except as their appreciation sensitivity increases.

“My cup runneth over.” How can this be explained? It’s not because of my capabilities; they’re minuscule; indeed, I make hardly a thing by which I live. It’s because of a sensitive appreciation of the miraculous: receiving so much in return for so little! When I flick a switch and the music of Beethoven fills the room, a sense of awe is experienced. The tiniest things convey this sense. The use of a pencil or a bite into a piece of toast is accompanied by appreciation. If I value those things which grace my life more than others, then I am richer than others. We are acquainted with “the poor little rich boy”: many dollars, no appreciation, unhappy. Happiness comes to those who highly value what they have; these are the truly rich.

But I must not let this thesis be misinterpreted. Mine is not Thoreau’s argument that “I am rich in the number of things I can do without.” Rather, I am suggesting that richness is determined more by how highly one values what he has than by a mere statistic of possessions. To assess an individual’s richness—one’s own or another’s—requires an appraisal of his subjective evaluation of what he has: if low, poor; if high, rich.

Analyzing richness in this manner leads to an important discovery, at least to a point that has never occurred to me before: Unless an individual is acutely sensitive to all-he-obtains-for-so-little as miracles of the free market—as blessings—he will have no special concern for the free market’s preservation and improvement. One who is unaware that freedom is responsible for his largesse is easy prey for all the socialistic clichés authoritarians can invent. This common insensitivity also solves an annoying puzzle, that is, it explains to me for the first time why countless so-called wealthy people have no interest whatsoever in the freedom philosophy.

In fact, as one reflects on the matter, there isn’t a strong incentive for the person who “has it made” to pursue a way of life that spells opportunity. Getting ahead isn’t any longer a problem; he is ahead—he thinks! The natural incentive working on such a person, unless downed by reason, is to “hole up” with what he has, to preserve the status quo. I must conclude, therefore, that all reputedly affluent individuals who devote thought and energy to preserving and bettering free market processes are uncommonly aware, rational, and more devoted to principle than expediency.

Count Your Blessings

But regardless of one’s largesse, richness is subjectively determined. Determination—evaluation—is governed by an appreciation of conferments as blessings. And only those who are sensitive to this richness can be expected to befriend the free market. Thus, we who believe in this philosophy will lose or win our case as the appreciation of conferments wanes or gains. This is another way of saying that if we knew how to accentuate an appreciation of blessings, we’d have the key to the free market way of life. What do we know of this?

Of one thing I feel reasonably certain: An individual will have a greater appreciation of what he obtains in exchange for what he does if what he does is the very best that’s within him. I will more appreciate that which I get in exchange for what I love to do than for that which I hate to do. Johannes Brahms more appreciated what he received in exchange for a piano concerto than had the same amount been won in a state lottery. A local hospital is more appreciated by members of the community when freely financed by them than when received from the Federal grab bag.

It seems that an individual’s richness grows as he increasingly realizes the best of which he is capable. The extent of this realization among American citizens would also seem to pace the free market’s future.

What can we do about it? This amounts to asking, What can I do about a subjective judgment other than my own? Nothing, for certain. But my own, if exemplary, may rub off on or be caught by others. This is the importance of being rich in the sense I use the term.

[1] Asked one counter waitress of another, “Where are you going for your vacation?” Nonchalantly, “This summer, to Europe!”

• 7 •

GOVERNMENTAL DISCIPLINE

Man is, in part, a social animal. As such, it is necessary that he find ways to keep himself in line; that he discover how to live in some measure of harmony with others. Man has devised several social disciplines, three of which deserve comment in this thesis.

The first is a deep and abiding belief that there is a fundamental Point of Reference over and beyond his own mind and his own institutions: an Infinite Truth or Consciousness or Principle or Ideal. This belief, when attended to, disciplines man in his daily actions, that is, he seeks approval more before God than man. Believing thus, he acts long-range, which is to say, he weighs what he does less by ephemeral considerations than by eternal life. It is my conviction that this, potentially, is by far the most important of all disciplines; indeed, without it, human evolution is a hopeless prospect. Furthermore, this disciplinary course is currently suffering an alarming abandonment.[1]

The second is governmental discipline, the one that has the least potentiality, the one that is being falsely and increasingly turned to with enormous out-of-bounds results—the subject of this chapter.

The third is the free market, the disciplinary potentialities of which are seldom explored—the subject of the next chapter.

The citizenry, in the hope of social discipline, establishes and empowers government to codify the taboos and enforce their observation: certain actions are put out of bounds, and government is given the job of punishing transgressors. In good American theory, any action by any citizen is out of bounds if it be destructive: murder, theft, misrepresentation, and the like. Stay within bounds or suffer the consequences. This is the disciplinary role of government.

Things Get Out of Hand

Everything human is subject to corruption; situations get out of hand.

It’s easy enough for the citizenry to delegate the policing or disciplinary task to the formal agency of society, but it’s quite another matter for the citizenry to keep the agency itself within bounds. For, short of anything yet accomplished in history, the agency will, sooner or later, declare out of bounds not only destructive actions but various creative and productive actions as well. Two among countless examples: It is out of bounds to raise as much wheat as you please on your own land and, in New York City, at least, to mutually agree with your tenant what rental he shall pay.

In a word, government, having a monopoly of the police force, will tend to act indiscriminately in its out-of-bounds edicts. And, it has always been thus:

. . . the greatest political problem facing the world today is . . . how to curb the oppressive power of government, how to keep it within reasonable bounds. This is a problem that has engaged some of the greatest minds of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—Adam Smith, von Humboldt, de Tocqueville, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer. They addressed themselves to this particular issue: What are the proper limits of government? And how can we hold government within those limits?[2]

The dilemma seems to be that government is something we can’t get along without and something we can’t get along with.

Considering the great men who have attempted to resolve this dilemma, it seems unlikely that any one of us will hit upon a final solution. But we can and should entertain the hope of shedding a bit more light on the matter. My effort is no more pretentious than this.

The Limits of Government

During the last century, several of the best American academicians and statesmen—in an effort to prescribe a theory of governmental limitation—have agreed:

The government should do only those things which private citizens cannot do for themselves, or which they cannot do so well for themselves.

That this is meant to be a precise theory of limitation is conveyed by the words, “do only those things.”

This proposal is repeated over and over again and we may therefore presume that it has a considerable acceptance and is influential in shaping public opinion as to what is and is not out of bounds in governmental activity. If that be the case, in the light of what’s going on, we are well advised to re-examine this proposition. For it is true that all actions are rooted in ideas.

Parenthetically, one may wonder why I choose to pick on a small flaw in what, after all, is little more than an aphorism. It is my contention that this idea of limitation “leaks,” like a leak in the dike, and if not plugged the whole countryside will be inundated. A trifle, yes, but as great oaks from little acorns grow, so do great catastrophes from little errors flow:

For the want of a nail the shoe was lost,

For the want of a shoe a horse was lost,

For the want of a horse a rider was lost,

For the want of a rider the battle was lost,

For the want of a battle the kingdom was lost—

And all for the want of a horseshoe nail.

The aforementioned notion gains acceptance because it is so plausible. The government should, indeed, do some of the things which private citizens cannot do for themselves. All citizens, except philosophical anarchists—those who reject a formal agency of society—are certain, in the interest of social order and common justice, that each citizen cannot write his own laws. Man is now and forever imperfect and men must now and forever differ as to what is right and just. Codifying and enforcing an observation of the taboos gives the citizenry a common body of rules which permits the game to go on; this is what a formal agency of society can do for the citizens that they cannot, one by one, do for themselves. Doubtless, this is what the libertarian subscribers to this idea have in mind. And no more! They couldn’t concede more and be libertarians!

This proposal is right as far as it goes; but it does not go far enough. It has a loophole, a “leak,” through which an authoritarian can wriggle.

One can easily conclude, from the wording, that government is warranted in doing for the citizens only those things which the citizens will not and, presumably, cannot do for themselves. What they will not do and, therefore, “cannot” do for themselves is to implement all the utopian schemes that enter the minds of men, things that such schemers think the citizens ought to do but which the citizens do not want to do. Reform ideas are legion; and these are the things that government is obliged to do for the people, according to this proposal, as it is loosely written. That’s how permissive it is; it leaves the door wide open; it’s “only” is utterly meaningless!

Reflect on the veritable flood of taboos—against other than destructive actions—now imposed on the citizenry by Federal, state, and local governments. And all in the name of doing for the people what they “cannot” do for themselves. In reality, this means doing for them what they do not wish to do for themselves. Here are but a few of many examples of things now out of bounds for American citizens:

- It is against the law to grow as much wheat or cotton or peanuts or tobacco as you choose on your own land.

- It is against the law, regardless of where you live, to refuse to finance thousands upon thousands of local fancies such as the Gateway Arch in St. Louis or the Fresno Mall.

- It is against the law to refuse to finance the rebuilding of urban centers deserted in favor of new and more preferable centers.

- It is against the law to refuse to finance putting men on the moon.

- It is against the law to refuse to finance socialistic governments the world over.

- It is against the law to be self-responsible exclusively, that is, to refuse to be responsible for the welfare, security, and prosperity of anybody and everybody, no matter who or what they are.

Restoring Government’s Proper Role

How might we state this idea, then, in a way that will be understood and which, if followed, would restore government to its principled, limited role—keep it within bounds? Consider this:

The government should do only those things, in defense of life and property, which things private citizens cannot properly do each man for himself.

The only things private citizens cannot properly do for themselves is to codify all destructive actions and prohibit them, be the destructive actions of domestic or foreign origin. Neither the individual citizen nor any number of them in private combination—vigilance committees—can properly write and enforce the law. This is a job for government; and it means that the sole function of government is to maintain law and order, that is, to keep the peace. This in itself is an enormous undertaking, requiring rare and difficult skills, but it is a task much neglected when government steps out of bounds. When society’s formal agency of coercion moves in and out of bounds, it becomes impotent to keep the peace among its own citizenry or among nations.

All else—an infinity of unimaginable activities—is properly within the realm of personal choice: individuals acting cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily, privately, as they freely choose. In a nutshell, this amended proposal charges government with the responsibility to inhibit destructive actions—its sole competency—with private citizens acting creatively in any way they please.

The objections to this latter proposal are legion; indeed, they are almost as prevalent in the U.S.A. today as in Uruguay, England, Argentina, Russia, or any other country one could mention. How, possibly, could we educate our children? Or run the railroads? Or deliver mail? Or put men on the moon? Or secure medical attention or welfare in old age? Or have a Gateway Arch? On and on! Yet, every one of these objections can be and has been answered!

Men on the Moon

The government is engaged in countless out-of-bounds activities, according to our rewritten proposal. None of these is more favorably capturing the American imagination than putting men on the moon.[3] Even many individuals otherwise sharply libertarian in their thinking are joining in the applause for this fantastic performance. And no one can reckon the enormous cost; it is running into untold billions. So, let’s examine this most popular instance of government out of bounds.

It is self-evident that citizens acting privately would not, at this time, engage in this enterprise. This is an example of what private citizens will not do rather than something they cannot do.

Why is it so widely assumed that going to the moon is something private citizens cannot do for themselves?

Is it because they do not have the countless billions required for the project? No, the government gets its resources exclusively from the private citizens; none from any other source whatsoever!

Is it because the skills do not exist among private citizens? No, every last person engaged in this project was a private citizen, many of whom are now on the government payroll.

Is it because a free-market enterprise is less efficient than a governmental operation? No, in every type of productive effort in which both are engaged, making comparisons possible, the free market is overwhelmingly superior.

We can only conclude that going to the moon is a project private citizens could undertake but will not, voluntarily.

Why? Simply because they do not want to. Nor is the explanation difficult. I have a thousand and one opportunities for the use of my income more attractive to me than sending men to the moon. This is far down on my priority list, not only as to desirability, but as to the amount I would voluntarily contribute—about the amount I would pay to see a good show. And I believe that a vast majority of private citizens—viewing the matter on this basis—substantially share my appraisal. The upshot, if left to private citizens? No trips to the moon! Not now, anyway.

How can we render a judgment as to what private citizens really favor? Surely not by yeas or nays; most of us are too distraction-prone for mere lip service to be trusted. So, let us judge a man’s values by the way he acts: A person favors a war if he will voluntarily risk his life in waging it; and he favors an enterprise if he will voluntarily risk his capital in financing it. Popular acclaim for a war or a moon venture or whatever, which rests on risking the lives or the capital of others, is unimpressive; it’s only loose talk, detached from realism, and unworthy of serious attention. Viewed in this light, there are few, indeed, who favor putting men on the moon, their protestations to the contrary notwithstanding!

False Promises

Why, then, are we in this venture? There are numerous reasons.

For one thing, people are distracted and drawn by the glamor of it. Not even the fiction of Jules Verne or Buck Rogers ever remotely approached this performance. The TV shots of men in space divert attention from the means used to produce this spectacular.

Of the millions who do not favor putting men on the moon at the risk of their own capital, many enthusiastically endorse the project when the risk seems to fall elsewhere. Why do they not see that this is, in reality, their own capital?

Again, because of distractions. Citizens are distracted from reality by the false promise that they can spend themselves rich. They will believe such sophistry simply because they want to believe it. Doesn’t the Gross National Product (GNP) go up $1 billion with each billion spent on the moon venture![4]

Then there is the sleight-of-hand expropriation of capital. That portion of one’s capital taken for the moon venture by direct tax levies is so buried in the enormous Federal tax that identity is lost. The remaining portion is equally hidden: inflation. Inflation is a tax on savings of many types.[5] The expropriation shows up not on a tax bill from the Internal Revenue Service but in the form of higher prices for bread, butter, and everything else. Who, when spending $10 for groceries, instead of the $5 he used to spend, relates the higher prices to putting men on the moon? This fiscal hocus-pocus is distracting and diverts men from reality. “We do not know what is happening to us and that is precisely the thing that is happening to us.”[6]

But our proneness to distraction, which accounts for popular acceptance of this project, is far from a complete explanation as to why we are in it. The primary reason is that we allow government coercively to commandeer resources that private citizens will not voluntarily commit to such purposes. In other words, private citizens are forced to do things they do not wish to do.

My purpose in this cursory analysis of the moon affair is not to single it out for criticism but, rather, to raise the all-important question that relates not only to this but to thousands of out-of-bounds ventures by government: Why are private citizens forced to do what they do not wish to do? After all, the formal coercive agency of society—government—is their agency!

We have one test, and one only, for what private citizens really wish to do: those things they will do voluntarily! It is plain that they wish telephones, printing presses, automobiles, air service, refrigeration, houses, corn flakes, gas and electric service; indeed, a million things could be listed. And they get them—voluntarily!

But here’s the rub: There are those who believe we do not know of all the things we want or, at least, are unaware of what is good for us. These “needs,” invented for us—going to the moon, old-age “security,” the Gateway Arch, or whatever—have no manner of implementation except by coercion. In a word, these people who would be our gods can achieve the ends they have in mind for us only as they gain control of our agency of force: government.

And the primary reason why they can force upon us those things we do not want is our lack of attention to what are the proper bounds of government.

So it is that great catastrophes from little errors flow!

[1] For the best explanation I can make of this point, see Chapter III, “What Seek Ye First?” in my Deeper Than You Think, op. cit., pp. 15–27.

[2] Excerpted from remarks by Henry Hazlitt. See What’s Past Is Prologue (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), p. 14.

[3] If the defense of our country required putting men on the moon, it would then qualify as a proper function of government. I am assuming that manning the moon is not of military value. At least, I am unaware of any persuasive argument that it is.

[4] For the fallacy of GNP, see Chapter VII, “The Measure of Growth,” in my Deeper Than You Think, op. cit., pp. 70–84.

[5] For example: cash, bank deposits, life insurance, pensions, bonds, mortgages, loans or holdings repayable in a more or less fixed number of dollars.

[6] See Man and Crisis by Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1962).

• 8 •

FREE MARKET DISCIPLINES

Contrary to socialistic tenets, the free market is the only mechanism that can sensibly, logically, intelligently discipline production and consumption. For it is only when the market is free that economic calculation is possible.[1] Free pricing is the key. When prices are high, production is encouraged and consumption is discouraged; when prices fall, the reverse holds true. Thus, production and consumption are always moving toward equilibrium. Shortages and surpluses are not in the lexicon of free market economics.

Conceded, the above is no news to those who apprehend free market economics; they well know of its disciplinary influence as regards production and consumption. This alone warrants our support of the free market. However, the free market has two other quite remarkable disciplinary possibilities which have seldom been explored.

Before making that exploration, it is necessary to recognize the limitations of the free market. The market is a mechanism, and thus it is wholly lacking in moral and spiritual suasion; further, it embodies no coercive force whatsoever. In these respects, the market is without disciplinary possibilities.

“Like all mechanisms, the market, with its function for the economizing of time and effort, is servant alike to the good, the compassionate, and the perceptive as well as to the evil, the inconsiderate, and the oblivious.”[2] Scrupulosity is not among its characteristics.

The free market is a name we give to the economic activities—a short-hand term, we might say—of a people acting freely, voluntarily, privately, cooperatively, competitively. It is distinguished by universal freedom of choice and the absence of coercive force. Ideally, only defensive force—government—is employed to put down fraud, violence, predation, and other aggressions.

Given a society of freely choosing individuals, the market is that which exists as a consequence—it is a mechanism that is otherwise nondefinitive. It is the procession of economic events that occur when authoritarianism—political or otherwise—is absent.

While private enterprise is often practiced in a manner consonant with free market principles, the two terms are not synonymous. Piracy is an enterprise and also private. Many businesses when in league with unions, for instance—willingly or not—feature elements of coercion and thus are not examples of the free market at work.

The free market has only been approximated, never fully attained, and, doubtless, never will be realized. It is an out-of-reach ideal; we can only move toward or away from it. Yet, in the U.S.A., even in these days of a rapidly growing interventionism, the free market flourishes to a remarkable extent. To appreciate this, merely envision the countless willing exchanges—hundreds of millions daily—such as Mrs. Jones swapping a shawl she has made for a goose Mrs. Smith has raised, or the money you pay for a phone call or a quart of milk. In these instances, each party gains, for each desires what he gets more than what he surrenders. In a word, the free market is individual desire speaking in exchange terms. When the desire for Bibles is accommodated in noncoerced exchange, we can conclude, quite accurately, that we are witnessing a market for Bibles. Or, when the desire for pornography is being thus accommodated, we can conclude that there is a market for trash. I repeat, scrupulosity is not a feature of the market.

When the desires of people are depraved, a free market will accommodate the depravity. And it will accommodate excellence with equal alacrity. It is “servant alike to good . . . and evil.”

An Amoral Servant

It is because the free market serves evil as well as good that many people think they can rid society of evil by slaying this faithful, amoral servant. This is comparable to destroying the sun because we don’t like the shadows we cast or breaking the mirror so that we won’t have to see the reflection of what we really are.

When I sit in front of a TV and view trash, I tend to rant and rave at what I’m seeing. Wake up: What I hear and see is a reflection of what’s in me! Thus, my only corrective is to read a good book or otherwise cease to patronize such low-grade performances.

The market is but a response to—a mirror of—our desires. Once this harsh reality is grasped, the market becomes a disciplinary force. To elaborate: Say that a person desires, buys, and reads a filthy book. Were he to realize that what he’s reading is a picture of what’s in his own make-up, such a realization, by itself, would tend to change him for the better. The market would then reflect the improvement. But note that the market has no such effect on those who are oblivious to this fact. It’s the knowledge of this character-revealing fact that makes of the market a disciplinary force. I am only trying to point out the market’s potentiality in this respect.

Instead of cursing evil, stay out of the market for it; the evil will cease to the extent we cease patronizing it. Trying to rid ourselves of trash by running to government for morality laws is like trying to minimize the effects of inflation by wage, price, and other controls. Both destroy the market, that is, the reflection of ourselves. Such tactics are at the intellectual level of mirror-smashing, attempts not to see ourselves as we are. The market’s potentiality as a disciplinary force is thereby removed. To slay this faithful, amoral servant is to blindfold, deceive, and hoodwink ourselves. Next to forswearing a faith in an Infinite Intelligence over and beyond our own minds, denying the market is to erase the best point of reference man can have. So much for the first somewhat unexplored possibility of the market as a disciplinary force.

Imperfect Man

Now to the second. This cannot be explained unless we are aware of our numerous shortcomings, of how narrow our virtues and talents really are—everyone’s, no exceptions.

Let’s take, for example, the greatest mathematical genius who ever lived. He’s a giant in his field. Yet, without any question, he’s a know-nothing in countless other ways. This goes for outstanding generals, chemists, physicists, scientists of whatever brand. No one ever gets more than an infinitesimal peek at the Cosmic Scheme, at the over-all luminosity, even at himself. We must see that the biggest among us is tiny. And one who denies this about himself is displaying the greatest ignorance of all: he doesn’t even know how little he knows! “If we wish to know anything, we must resign ourselves to being ignorant of much.”[3]

Reflect on this human reality, on imperfect man, particularly on the more imaginative and brilliant individuals among us. While they possess an outstanding and remarkable aptitude or two, they, too, are daydreamers. “If only I had a million dollars,” is a dream that flashes across countless minds. Many of these specialists want above all else to pursue their own peculiar bent whether it be going to the moon, genetic alteration of other human beings, releasing the atom’s energy, or whatever.

Knowing so much about one thing and so little about everything else, they are unable to know what effect their ambitions, if achieved, might have on the human situation. Just as a baby with a stick of dynamite and a match is unaware of what the consequences might be!

The lamentable fact is that scientists, pseudo scientists, and other technologists have been given a wishing well: the Federal grab bag. They, thus, are encouraged to carry out any experiment their hearts desire, without let or hindrance. Leaving aside the destruction of our economy by inflation—featured in the grab bag’s financing—they are alarmingly endangering all the people on this earth, even the earth itself. And primarily because they suffer no restraining and disciplinary forces; their passions and ambitions are on the loose!

The Discipline of the Market

The remedy? Let these ambitions be submitted to the discipline of the market precisely as are most other commodities and services. Go to the moon? Of course; that is, when the market permits the venture, if enough people voluntarily subscribe the cash. Release the atom’s energy? By all means; that is, when the market is ready for it.

Am I saying that the market has a wisdom superior to the President of the United States, or the Congress, or a bureaucracy? I am not. The market is a mechanism and is neither wise nor moral. I am only claiming that it has disciplinary qualities. To understand why requires no more than a knowledge of what the components of this mechanism are: millions upon millions of individual preferences, choices, desires. The market is an obstacle course; before I can pursue my bent or aptitude or obsession, I must gain an adequate, voluntary approval or assent! No wishing well, this! My own aspirations, regardless of how determined, or lofty, or depraved, do not control the verdict. What these others—impersonal as a computer—will put up in willing exchange for my offering spells my success or failure, allows me to pursue my bent or not.

There are exceptions to this rule, of course. For instance, some of us who may be unable to win in the market will, like Van Gogh, face starvation in order to pursue our passions. The threat of starvation, however, is quite a discipline in itself; at least, not much is likely to be uncovered in these circumstances that will destroy life on earth. It takes big financing to do unearthly things.

The market very often returns fortunes for comparative junk and, on occasion, returns nothing at all for great and beneficial achievements—temporarily, that is. Eventually, in a free society, the junk goes to the junk heap and achievements are rewarded.

I believe that anyone should follow his star; but let him do so with his own resources or with such resources as others will voluntarily supply. This is to say that I believe in the market, a tough, disciplinary mechanism. I do not believe in cars without brakes, impulses without repulses, ambitions without check points, wishes run riot. Societal schemes that are all sail and no ballast head society for disaster!

The rebuttal to this line of reasoning is heard over and over again: “But we voted for it,” meaning that the Federal grab bag—open sesame with other people’s income—has been democratically approved. Granted! But this is nonsense: the fruits of the labor of one man are not up for grabs by others, that is, not rationally.[4] This is not a votable matter, except if one’s premise be a socialistic society. What’s right and what’s wrong are not to be determined at the shallow level of nose-counting or opinion polls. To argue otherwise is to place the same value on the views of morons as you do on your own.

As a disciplinary force over wild aspirations, the President of the United States, a member of Congress, a bureaucrat is not only less effective than the market but less effective than any single buyer or seller in the market. An individual, when a government official, considers only how much of other people’s money should be spent. The motivation in this instance favors spending over economizing. The same individual, in the free market, considers how much of his own property he is willing to put on the line. The motivation in this instance is self-interest. And this is tough! Ambitions as silly as tracking the meanderings of polar bears by a nimbus satellite stand a chance for satisfaction when a grab bag made up of other people’s money is readily at hand;[5] whereas, the free market gives short shrift to projects that are at or near the bottom of individual preferences.

True, were personal ambitions subjected to the disciplines of the market, trips to the moon would have to be postponed. Atomic energy might be a phenomenon of the future. Many other scientific explorations—some secret—taking place today in our universities and Federally financed would, under the discipline of the market, still be safely stored in imaginative minds.

This is no argument against technological breakthroughs. It is merely to suggest that these illuminations be financially encouraged only as the free market permits. The resulting steadiness in progress might then be harmonious with an expanded understanding of what it is we really want and can live with.

I repeat, societal schemes that are all sail and no ballast head society for disaster. The free market is ballast—a stabilizer—we might well put to use if we would avoid wreckage in the stormy seas of political chaos.

[1] Professor Ludwig von Mises establishes this point, irrefutably, in his book, Socialism (London: Jonathan Cape Ltd., 1969).

[2] See “Value—The Soul of Economics,” by W. H. Pitt. The Freeman, September, 1969.

[3] John Henry Newman.

[4] For what I consider to be a rationally constructed explanation of this point, see “The Limits of Majority Rule” by Edmund A. Opitz. Copy on request.

[5] See “The Migration of Polar Bears,” Scientific American, February, 1968.

• 9 •

THE BLOOM PRE-EXISTS IN THE SEED

Be the flower an orchid, rose, thistle, or skunk cabbage, the bloom, whatever it is, pre-existed in the planting. So, if one’s object or goal be a rose garden, let him plant only roses.

Everyone will concede that to plant thistle seeds and then expect roses is rank folly. Yet, many of these same people expect to achieve lofty goals without any thought of the means they use to attain them. They simply have not learned the planting lesson.

It’s while on the subject of disciplines that a hard look at means and ends is appropriate. The mastering of this is disciplined thinking as related to aspirations and a big step forward in rational self-discipline.

Ends, goals, aims are but the hope for things to come, in a word, aspirations. They are not a part of the reality—not yet, at least—from which may safely be taken the standards for right conduct. They are no more to be trusted as bench marks than are day dreams or flights of fancy. Many of the most monstrous deeds in human history have been perpetrated in the name of doing good—in pursuit of some “noble” goal.[1] They illustrate the fallacy that the end justifies the means.

Means, on the other hand, partake of reality; they are of the here and now; they are tangible, concrete forms of action or conduct that can be weighed on the scale of cause and consequence. Examine carefully the means employed, judging them in terms of right and wrong, and the end will take care of itself. A rose blooms from a rose planting.

Emerson observed that “the end pre-exists in the means.” Let’s try to check it out in one of the fields of our major interest—political economy.

Ends and Means

A collectivist, if a purist, looks upon humanity as we look upon the beehive; his focus is on society as on the swarm; the individual, like one of the bees, counts only because he is a part of the over-all conglomerate. The welfare of the collectivity is the goal. This is the so-called macro view of life.

An individualist, if a purist, looks upon society as the upshot, outcome, effect, recapitulation incidental to what is valued above all else, namely, each distinctive individual human being. The goal is Creation’s finest image: man, singular! This is the so-called micro view of life.

These two goals represent extremes on the ideological spectrum or, as we say, they are poles apart. But putting these opposed goals in this dimensional arrangement is risky; it invites the shallow conclusion that the proper goal is somewhere between the two. However, there is no “golden mean” between these two, any more than between certain other extremes: wrong and right, hate and love, hell and heaven. What’s right is not to be found with a tape measure along that line; there are some alternatives that have no happy middle ground between them—polygamy and monogamy, for example. Nor is there a middle-of-the-road between collectivism and individualism.

True, there may be no purist in either camp. The stoutest collectivist will show individualistic tendencies on occasion, and vice versa. But no person can be both a collectivist and an individualist at one and the same time; he may waver from one to the other—that is all.

Regardless of my acknowledged bias for individualism, I must concede at the outset that all honest advocates of both collectivism and individualism are sincere; each hopes for a societal situation in which harmony and advancement are most likely of fulfillment. Professor Hayek said, when speaking of our doctrinal adversaries, “Their conceptions derive from serious thinkers whose ultimate ideals are not so very different from our own and with whom we differ not so much on ultimate values, but on the effective means of achieving them.” Thus, if we would find the distinction between collectivism and individualism, we had best ignore the goals temporarily and, instead, examine the actions—means—that are implicit in achieving the goals. Admittedly, this is not the usual approach to the problem.

Overlooking the Consequences

For the most part, proponents of both philosophies tend to play down or fail to apprehend the consequences and actions which must follow from the opposed means implicit in the pursuit of collectivism or of individualism. By their failure to be explicit about the consequences of the means each must employ, they see neither the shortcomings nor the merits of their respective doctrines. So, for us to understand these two opposed and antithetical ways to the good life, we must discover what is implicit in the collectivistic as well as in the individualistic approach.

Implicit in the collectivistic approach—looking at humanity as a beehive—is the masterminding of the people who make up society; it is the forming and reforming of individuals into patterns—collectives—of which there are countless variations ranging from rent control in New York City to the collective farms in Russia. The control of the individual’s life is from without—external—and includes production, distribution, exchange, education, even worship. Any creative activity, to the extent that it comes under governmental control, falls into the collectivized category.

Plymouth Colony—1620–23—on which we have an excellent history, was second only to Jamestown as an early illustration of the American beehive way of life, and of the way it was soon modified when it became evident that the colonists worked harder and produced more when they were working for themselves and their own families, than when they were working for the collective.[2] Presently, that is, during the past four decades, collectivistic practices have been on the increase in countries where free market, private ownership principles had been most nearly observed, notably in Britain and the U.S.A., picking up the collectivistic pace set by Russia, Red China, Cuba, and Uruguay.

Whose Need?

The collectivistic view holds that society is the prime concern. The need is society’s! The individual does not fit himself into place but, instead, is fitted into place, that is, he is assigned that niche or role which the political priests believe will best serve whatever societal pattern they have formulated. And right down to such details as interest rates, prices, wages, hours of labor! These coercive actions are no less than consequences, that is, they are implicit in and must logically follow from the beehive way of looking at humanity. Consistent with this “look” are the “national goals” theme and the “gross national product” (GNP) form of economic assessment.

Implicit in this beehive view is that men exist who are competent to form the ways and shape the lives of human beings by the millions. The belief is—and has to be—that there are those who not only can rightly decide what is best for all of us but who can prescribe the details as to how the best that is in us can be realized.

Order and progress, in the collectivistic approach, can occur only as conceived and then dictatorially implemented by a human “elite”—an age-old concept. I put “elite” in quotes only because this is their appraisal of themselves, not mine. This self-same “elite” will readily concede that “only God can make a tree” but will insist that they can create and arrange the destiny of a human being or, what is far more complicated, a good society. Yet, unless power over others be their primary end in life, we must allow to them the same sincerity as we pridefully ascribe to ourselves.

Sincerity I’ll grant, but little more. Any conscientious collectivist, if he could see beyond his utopian goals and thus properly evaluate the authoritarian means his system of thought demands, would likely defect. At this point, it may be helpful to paraphrase Emerson’s unassailable observation, “the end pre-exists in the means”: Goals or ends must always be the summation of the means employed to achieve them. However lofty the goals, if the means be depraved, the result must reflect that depravity. Therefore, the eventual outcome (bloom) of the collectivistic way of life may be accurately predicted by anyone who understands the means (planting) which must be employed.

Can we pronounce a moral judgment on the means implicit in the collectivistic system; that is, can we ascribe right or wrong to coercively taking from some and giving to others in the name of the perfect beehive? I can! My own judgment is aptly expressed in a bible of the Hindus:

Sin is . . . [that] ignorance . . . which seeks its own gain at the expense of others. . . .”[3]

But let us not be too harsh on the collectivists. People who call themselves individualists rarely reflect on the means implicit in their philosophy. Individualists thus overlook the merits of their means to the good life just as the collectivists overlook the shortcomings of their way. When only ends are envisioned and means ignored, there can be no reliable estimate as to whether the consequences will be good or bad.

When the Individual Is the Goal

When the individual replaces the beehive as the ultimate goal, that is, when the need is construed to be the individual’s rather than society’s, the means implicit in achieving such a goal must be radically different. I shall comment only briefly on two of the means implicit in advancing Creation’s finest image: man, singular. The two are perfection of self[4] and private ownership.

The alternative to perfection of self is perfection of others: Either I will concentrate on me and my welfare or on others and their welfare; in other words, mind my own business or mind other people’s business.

Looking out for my own best long-range interests turns out to be a bigger project than I can handle. No person has ever come close to realizing his potentialities. In view of the obstacles to the relatively simple task of self-realization, reflect on the utter absurdity of my undertaking to manage your life or, as the collectivists would do, undertaking to manage the lives of millions.

Attention to self is not a disregard for others. On the contrary, each individual best promotes his own self-interest by peaceful, social cooperation as in the free market. Indeed, the more I make of myself the more are others served by my existence. Who can give what he does not have! The way to assume “social responsibility” is for the individual to rise above zero as far as possible. Anyone affronted by the idea of focusing attention on self need only imagine the opposite: a society of selfless persons—a world of nothingness.

The alternative to private ownership is “public ownership”—everything in the name of the beehive. Ownership, however, is meaningless in the absence of control. You do not own a home if you have no control over its disposition. When the swarm holds the title to property, the control (ownership) of it is in limbo. A property will get better care if it is all yours than if it is everybody’s in general and nobody’s in particular.

Private ownership means more than each individual’s having a moral right to the fruits of his own labor; it also means that the right is accorded common respect.

Civilizations remained on the launching pad so long as men, like the bees, deposited their nectar in a common hive or, like our Pilgrim Fathers, their produce in a common warehouse. The incentive of private ownership is far more powerful than the sentimental thrust of laboring for-the-good-of-all.

If we concede, as I do, that man has a right to his life, it follows that he has a right to sustain life, the sustenance being the fruits of one’s own labor. Private ownership is as sacred as life itself.

Private ownership lies at the very root of individual liberty. Without it there can be no freedom; with it freedom is secure. For private ownership presupposes free choice in disposition, that is, freedom to exchange. It is senseless to talk about freedom if the right of private ownership be denied.

Can we pronounce a moral judgment on these means implicit in the individualistic goal, that is, can we ascribe right or wrong to the pursuit of self-perfection and the right of owning what one produces? I can! These means serve as a powerful thrust toward the individual’s material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual emergence—and that is right! Others—those who comprise society—are the secondary beneficiaries of individual growth. If we would help others, let us first help ourselves by those means which qualify as righteous.

[1] The Thirty Years’ War witnessed the slaughter of millions of people in Central Europe to the Glory of God! See Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941).

[2] See Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford; Harvey Wish, ed. (New York: Capricorn Books, 1962).

[3] From The Bhagavadgita, translation by S. Radhakrishnan (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), p. 224.

[4] “Each of us is interested in himself whether he wishes it or not, whether he thinks himself important or not, and for the simple reason that each of us is both the subject and the protagonist of his own nontransferable life.” Man and Crisis by José Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., p. 9.

• 10 •

AGREE WITH ME!

Man is, in part, a social being, but each person is a unique individual as well. The higher a species in the evolutionary scale, the less alike are its members and the more marked are personality traits. Such differences show up in the higher animals: dolphins, dogs, horses, cats, even in birds. Variation, however, reaches its apogee in man; and the more developed he is, the more he differs from his fellows. So varied are members of the human race that similarities can often be expressed only in broad generalities: the potentiality to think, for instance.[1] But there the similarity ends, for we do not think alike; indeed, each person varies in his own thinking from moment to moment. These observations merely set the stage for the thesis of this chapter, namely, that agreement among us is not in our nature and, as an objective, is both unrealistic and mischievous.

Of all the stumbling blocks to the enlightenment, awareness, perception, consciousness required of those who would try freedom, few are more difficult to hurdle than the attitude: agree with me or be damned! True, we seldom put the sentiment in these words, but this is precisely the meaning of that rancor or ill-feeling which follows on the heels of a disagreement. Amiability in the face of disagreement is a rare human trait.

Show me the communist whose blood doesn’t boil when confronted with the free market, private ownership, limited government philosophy. Nor do we have to go to such extremes of the ideological spectrum for examples. They are to be found among our neoliberal acquaintances; indeed, anyone who has become in any way addicted to this or that phase of American socialism flares up at the mention of libertarian ideas.

What’s worse, however, is that similar attitudes are found among devotees of freedom: many libertarians are quite as intolerant of contrary or differing views and beliefs as are persons of authoritarian disposition. Devotees of freedom thus prejudice their own case by intolerance. Believe as I do is, at the very least, intellectual authoritarianism.

Implicit in this intolerance for contrary opinions is the assumption: Were everyone to agree with me, ipso facto, the millennium! How false this is! Were all people in precise agreement with me, all people would perish, including me. What makes anyone think he could survive if he were this earth’s sole occupant?

Refer again to the circle with the diverging lines in Chapter 3. If this be correct symbolism, sameness in what is seen and understood is out of the question. Indeed, it is not necessary to compare with others to prove that agreement is an utter impossibility. If I am growing, I don’t even agree with my yesterday’s self.

Such faculties as insight, inspiration, inventiveness—the creative mind—on which emergence depends, seem never to spring from anger, rancor, ill-feeling. Therefore, if we would lend ourselves to the pursuit of truth and a better world, it behooves us to control our tempers. This may sound somewhat Pollyannish, but only joyous activity will bear good fruit.

Disagreement is everywhere evident in the ideological and philosophical realm, and it generates an enormous amount of ill-feeling. We must, therefore, find some way to be joyous in the face of “I absolutely disagree.”

When we rebel at disagreement, this is an instinctive reaction, an animalistic response. Animals are governed by their instincts; they do not stop to reflect before choosing their course. But note that they are stymied in the evolutionary process; they do not go beyond simple consciousness.[2] An individual bent on an emerging consciousness cannot rely solely on his instincts but, instead, must turn to man’s distinctive potentiality: the power to reason. A modicum of rationality helps to school his impulses and may effectively challenge his instinctive attitude toward disagreement.

Actions and Reactions

I shall first state my conclusion and then try to explain it. There is no more reason to be distraught by disagreement than by gravitation. Or, put it another way: if one favors self-improvement, he should see that this is impossible without differences of opinion.

The rational case for this contention rests on an observed fact: there can be no reaction without action. Go as far back in the nature of things as the atom, 30 trillion of which could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping. Within the atom are electrons. Were an atom enlarged to the size of Houston’s Astrodome, an electron would be the size of a basketball. The late Robert A. Millikan, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his measurement of the electrical charge of the electron, has this to say: “All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons.” This same principle of action and reaction appears to operate in all phases of matter and life.

Scratching is out of the question without something to scratch against.

The concept of light would be inconceivable without darkness. Precisely the same observation can be made about enlightenment and ignorance.

Truth grows by correcting error. I am trying to establish the point that error does have a function; it is the stepping stone to truth; it is the action that makes reaction—the pursuit of truth—possible.

Emerson referred to this all-pervasive principle as “compensation.” There are other terms such as “tension of the opposites” and “the law of polarity.” Whatever the label, it is in the nature of things.

This is not to urge that we condone error but only to suggest the absurdity of getting emotional about what seem to be errors by others. Indeed, there is no more reason to resent a difference of opinion than to fly into a rage at a sunset. Each is a fact of life, something to grow by.

My first book was written 34 years ago under trying and difficult conditions: in upper berths of trains, late at night in hotels following speeches—during a period when the views I held were under increasing attack by spokesmen for the new socialism. The book was well received by persons whose judgments I respected. There followed a pipe dream: What a book I could write if only I could get away from all that travail and nonsense! So, for a month I secluded myself by the seashore with typewriter and paper—peace, quiet, serenity, cut off from the world of error. Nary an idea, nor a word written!

This is twelve books later. I think I have experienced some growth since that first one. And every step of progress has been the result of trying to shed light on what has appeared to me as error. Life’s purpose is growth, and error has had an important role to play in mine. “I absolutely disagree with you” is no occasion for bad temper but, rather, an invitation to check one’s own premises and positions, seeking correction or improvement—at least, refinement in exposition.

Believing that man is now and forever imperfect, myself included, what do I hold to be truths by which error may be judged? Among them is an unswerving belief that all human beings should be free to act creatively as they please. In the light of that premise, what then must be ascribed as error? It is the notion that some man or group of men or their organizations have a right to control the creative actions of others.

Note, however, that this which I believe to be a truth is little more than a generality. I can claim no more than being on the right road. When it comes to making the case for freedom and exposing the fallacies of authoritarianism, I haven’t scratched the surface. Nor am I aware of anyone who has, pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Is this to say that I have completely overcome the instinctive rebellion at disagreement? Hardly! Instinctively, I still react more favorably to flattery than to criticism. But when a modicum of rationality is applied, I discover that flattery induces a false sense of wisdom, whereas disagreement shows me that I am not far from the starting line; further, it serves as something to brace against, permitting propulsion forward.

It is not agreement among ourselves that we should seek but, rather, an amiability in our countless differences—without which we could not exist. Whether this stance or attitude can be achieved depends on an ability to discipline our animal instincts and to look at the matter rationally, as human beings.

Whenever a person angrily projects his philosophy, he either does not understand it well, or else it is not worthy of projection.

[1] For an enlightening treatise on how enormously varied we are, see You Are Extraordinary by Dr. Roger J. Williams (New York: Random House, 1967).

[2] The higher animals have simple consciousness; they know much but don’t know they know. Self-consciousness is an attribute that does not show forth in other than the human being; and there is a tremendous range among individuals in the extent to which self-consciousness is manifested.

• 11 •

IF FREEDOM HAD ONLY ENEMIES

The following, when first appearing in Notes from FEE, evoked both moderate approval and severe criticism, that is, numerous instances of “I absolutely disagree.” This is my reason for using it as a sequel to the previous chapter and for doing a commentary on the criticism in the next two chapters.

During the question period following a lecture, the lady asked, “Why is it that the behaviors we believe to be good and true and virtuous are today shrugged off as ‘old hat’?” If we had all the answers to that question, we’d also know why so many economic and political verities are now dismissed as “reactionary,” relics of the “horse and buggy days,” ill-suited to “the wave of the future.”

Knowing that the alternative to “old hat” is irresponsibility and that “the wave of the future” is out-and-out socialism may inflate our sense of righteousness, but this is of little comfort and no answer to the lady’s sticky question, nor does it give us any clue as to our own shortcomings.

One possible answer is that bad teaching is finally catching up with us.

First, recount some of the virtues: kindness; cheerfulness; honesty, truthfulness, integrity; courage, candor, frankness; awe, reverence; humility; perseverance; courtesy, good manners; thrift; modesty.

Next, reflect on the manner in which, to a marked extent, these virtues have been and are being “taught.” Mostly as forbidding admonishments! The common overtone is: “Be good or be damned.” As a consequence, these truly admirable human qualities seem to be peddled primarily by prophets of gloom; the virtues are thus associated with such dreary and offensive intrusions as being preached at, nagged, scolded. If honesty, for instance, has only unhappy, holier-than-thou protagonists, perhaps honesty isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Little wonder that deviations are tempting, that the virtues are relegated to the “old hat” category.

It seems clear to me that the glad tidings of what’s right can never be borne on the wings of admonishments, preachments, scoldings. This intrusive method evokes both resentment and resistance and pushes away from us the person we would influence and win, be that person a child or an adult.

Truth is its own witness, which is to say, the virtues speak for themselves in a language all their own—loud and clear; their language is exemplary action. In reality, virtues are spread by contagion; they are caught, not taught. True, others may drink at my fountain if they wish, provided there is anything there to drink. But that’s “catching,” not teaching in the popular sense.

Granted, keeping a tight rein on our own impulses to set others straight is no easy matter; we have been exposed for too long to compulsory education and all that such an intrusive process implies. Perhaps we can correct this in ourselves by drawing a lesson from one of the finest maxims ever written: “Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.”

The lesson is this: Use no methods aimed at enhancing the virtues of others that you would not have them use on you. And you would not have them use on you any methods you would not use on yourself.

Concerning Methods

What are the constructive methods? Assuredly, they do not include censure, denunciation, or abuse. To the extent that we strive after virtue, it is always a quest for something better—the seeking of light, the finding of which is attended by the kind of joy that accompanies discovery, invention, insight. The virtues so discovered are associated with happiness as they should be. Instead of being “old hat,” they afford an exhilarating glimpse of the Cosmic Scheme. We need only to grasp the simple point that enlightenment—education—can only be educed, never forced.[1]

The efficacy of personal virtues, such as “honesty is the best policy,” is no recent discovery; this knowledge is to be found among the ancients, deep-rooted in tradition. Lapses are self-corrective provided we step aside with our offensive methods and let the virtues speak for themselves in their own language: exemplary actions.

When we assess economic and political verities, however, we find that these are not rooted in tradition; indeed, they’re brand new. Free market, private ownership, limited government concepts and the knowledge pertaining to specialization, freedom in transactions, the subjective theory of value, and competition and free pricing as a means of allocating scarce resources have come into a minimal apprehension only during the last six or seven generations. For these concepts and ideas to simply survive, let alone grow and thrive, in the face of traditional authoritarianism requires thoughtful and patient nursing.

It takes a great deal of very offensive “teaching” to displace the idea that “honesty is the best policy.” But similar tactics can easily snuff out the tiny flame of freedom. The former is a tough old bird;[2] the latter is a fledgling!

The difficulty of keeping freedom concepts and ideas alive is enormously compounded by a mischievous and wholly false assumption, namely, that the protagonists of freedom know precisely what they are talking about. The truth is that no one knows much more about the wondrous ways of freedom than about the miracle of Creation. Indeed, we should not dismiss the thought that freedom is an important aspect of Creation.

In the case of personal virtues relegated to the “old hat” category, we have only offensive tactics to blame. But when it comes to the economic and political verities that have so far been uncovered, we have two destructive influences to ward off: know-it-allness, plus the offensive tactics.

To qualify as a spokesman for freedom—judging by the thousands who speak “authoritatively” on the subject—apparently requires little more than to be out of favor with some aspect of socialistic practice. As a consequence, many of the utterances we hear “on behalf of freedom” range all the way from nonsense to a potpourri of inconsistencies. So awful is much of it that, were I a beginner in political economy sitting on the fence while deciding which way to jump, most of the voices from “the right” would turn my head to “the left.” And I would have justification enough to hurl such disparagements as “old hat,” “reactionary,” and the like.

The Know-It-Alls

We cannot fault a person for knowing less than everything about freedom, for no one knows very much. It’s the people professing to know everything who should give us concern, the ones whose views are “the last word,” those who condemn everyone not in precise agreement. Such offensive arrogance breeds disrespect not only for these persons but also for the causes they espouse.

The above point is important because a vast majority of uncommitted citizens do not accept or reject freedom on the basis of logic, analysis, fact; theirs are rarely rational decisions. Rather, they choose sides by deciding which spokesman they like best. If the protagonists of freedom are unlikable, freedom is lost. People are repelled by the know-it-allness and arbitrariness of many who march under the freedom banner. If freedom could talk, she would doubtless exclaim: “May God defend me from my protagonists; I can defend myself from my enemies!”

We hear a great deal about “fighting for freedom” as if success depended upon warlike skills. On the contrary, the very first step toward freedom and its advancement is to cease one’s own belligerent tactics. Initially, such a step would have the effect of silencing most freedom protagonists. Were this miracle accomplished, freedom would then have only her enemies to guard against. If the protagonists of freedom would only stop making spectacles of themselves, the millions of uncommitted citizens could give undivided attention to the antics of authoritarians. Authoritarianism could never endure even such casual scrutiny; its follies must be apparent when the eye is not distracted!

From freedom’s side, a total silencing of all pushy, fighting, intrusive, scolding noise! Done with now and forever! What then? Disaster? To the contrary, we have positioned ourselves for a new and promising beginning. For “Silence is the mother of Truth.”[3] Meaning what?

The Spirit of Inquiry

With offensive, noisy, diverting tactics abandoned, our only alternative is to turn from the coercive to the educational method. That is, we pursue truth, probe ever further into the miraculous wonders of freedom. This is the spirit of inquiry, as silent as intuition or insight—noiseless as a thought.

The rule of personal conduct for this educational method can be expressed in this manner: Go only where called but do everything within your power to qualify to be called. Become so proficient that tutorship or counsel is sought; resort to the law of attraction.

Reflect on our situation thus altered. Devotees of freedom would simply have nothing to say except as they would quietly share with those who seek to achieve a similar level of understanding. Golden silence! One cannot imagine teachers more attractive than these, more likely of emulation.

What is the philosophy of these attractive people? Freedom! And the uncommitted will conclude that if these thoughtful people believe in freedom, then let freedom reign!

[1] See “Education, the Libertarian Way,” in my The Coming Aristocracy, op. cit., pp. 116–127.

[2] “Tradition in its broadest sense refers to knowledge and doctrines as well as patterns of behavior transmitted from generation to generation. More specifically, tradition means a particular observance so long continued that it has almost the force of law. . . .” Modern Guide to Synonyms by S. I. Hayakawa (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), p. 634.

[3] Benjamin Disraeli.

• 12 •

THE ART OF DOING SOMETHING

What a challenge it is to establish effective communication! The person who says, “I know precisely what you mean,” could be wrong for several reasons, one of which might be that you failed to say precisely what you meant. As I once heard a speaker put it:

I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Perfect communication, except in simple matters, is doubtless unattainable, such perfection presupposing a perfect sayer and a perfect hearer. These are hard to come by. Our best hope is for improvement on the part of sayer and hearer, bearing in mind that each of us plays both roles.

A simple proposition like “two plus two equals four,” and similar concepts that can be reduced to numbers and simple formulas, are more or less communicable. But when it comes to abstract ideas, particularly if they possess any novelty or fail to harmonize with familiar sentiments, most thoughts of most sayers come through as mumbo jumbo to most hearers. As if a Japanese who doesn’t understand French were trying to explain the theory of relativity to a Frenchman who doesn’t understand Japanese! We expect too much if we hope for precise communication of abstract ideas. Nevertheless, we must keep trying.

Take the previous chapter. When originally released in Notes from FEE, it evoked both approval and criticism. Here’s a sample of the latter:

I am concerned over the advice given. The gist of it appears to be that those who are opposed to communism and socialism should simply sit back and do nothing and say nothing.

Should we who know better . . . do nothing when a minister quotes approvingly from Peace, Power and Protest? Or when he doesn’t object to a publication designed to be read in Sunday School which states, “Nothing happened to correct all these abuses until the Communists came along and gave them love, help, and understanding”?

Should we do nothing, that is, make no effort to inject some light and understanding into this mass of ignorance? (Italics mine.)

This is an example of imperfect communication. Nor can I ascribe more fault to the hearer than to the sayer. Obviously, I did not say all I meant nor did he hear all I said.

“If Freedom Had Only Enemies” was warmly approved by many readers. These letters left me flushed with a feeling of success—a finished job, well done, was my instinctive reaction. Viewed rationally, however, I could not possibly have shed all the light there is on this line of thought. It’s the criticisms that force me to acknowledge that I’ve barely scratched the surface; I’ll have to clarify the distinction between “doing nothing” and the kind of action appropriate in the circumstances. To scratch, there must be something to scratch against, and the criticisms provide that surface. So, here’s another try at expressing what I mean.

On Being Constructive

Should anyone attempt to inject common sense into a rock, however vigorously, I would classify the effort as a do-nothing project. Doing something suggests constructive action. A rock cannot respond to instruction. The analogy is appropriate. One’s wisdom can no more be forced into another’s consciousness than a rock can be educated.

Assume that I am the ignorant one, the victim of communistic error, and that you rue my miserable plight. Merely have one fact in mind: At the human level, I alone am in control of such doors of perception as I possess. Your wisdom is admitted to my mind, if at all, on my say-so, not yours. The chances are that the more aggressively you try to displace my ignorance with your wisdom, the more airtight will my doors of perception be sealed against your “injections.” Reverse the roles and see if you do not arrive at the same conclusion.

The problem here is error which, according to our judgment, we refer to as ignorance. Exactly where is error corrected? Who is in charge? The correction, if any, is in the psyche and this is never dual or collective but as individualistic as “I.” In the sense that I am the ultimate arbiter of what is received and rejected by me, whether it be a belief in God, or the wisdom another possesses, or nothing at all, I alone am the dealer in my own errors. No matter how brilliantly or ignorantly I discharge my role as a human being, or whether I strive for reason, or surrender to environmental forces, I am, so far as other men are concerned, the captain of my soul. You are not and cannot be my captain except on my election.

Suppose that this were not true, that you could, on your election, inject your wisdom into my ignorance. If you could do this, so could anyone else! Indeed, if each person were not in charge of his own doors of perception, then his mind must necessarily be open to every possible wisdom—or inanity—others might propose. I could have you believing that the earth is flat or that murder is a virtue! Fortunately, such control over you is not possible; and any attempt to do the impossible might be described as a do-nothing project.

I do not mean to imply that I alone correct all my errors. Far from it! Actually, such corrections as I make must be credited largely to others. But I hold the key position: deciding who these others shall be. What turns my head to this or that person for enlightenment? It is my assessment of the enlightenment this or that person has to offer. In a word, my head turns to whoever attracts me.

The so-called battle for men’s minds is commonly thought to be an injection process. Unless ideas can be forcibly transplanted, this is false and, thus, is a do-nothing procedure.

Should we be serious about battling for men’s minds? Or is this concept in error? Devotees of freedom who take this tack are, in my judgment, on a wrong course. If I read God’s message aright, it goes something like this:

You have not been given the world to run or men’s minds to repair. Instead, you have been given you to rule and yourself to improve. Your assignment is the biggest project on earth and, try as you will, completion will never be in sight. Yours is the role of sharing in Creation, if you will, but you are not God. Attend to yourself, and leave the heavens and the earth and others who inhabit it to your Creator.

It is attending and practicing of this belief that is so often referred to as saying nothing and doing nothing. But, as I see it, the art of self-improvement is in fact the art of doing something. Conceded, this is difficult. It rests on expanding one’s own understanding, awareness; indeed, it is a process of stretching one’s own mind. This, however, is within the realm of possibility, whereas stretching the mind of another is not. What one does with his own mind is entirely up to him.

Not that we lack concern for the quality of other people’s thinking. One’s existence is powerfully governed by the thoughts and the conduct of others. But if we would effectively influence such thoughts and conduct, we must look to the means.

What can I do about the thinking of others? I can turn my concentration away from their observed ignorance or depravity and try, rather, to overcome my own shortcomings. I cannot concentrate on others and on self at one and the same time. Keeping my eye on them is to accomplish nothing; keeping my eye on self is to do all that’s possible.

“Seek Ye First . . .”

This brings us to the theory of the dividend, never in clearer words than, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.” In the context of my thesis: “Seek truth and righteousness first of all and then these things (better thoughts on the part of others) will be the dividend.”

Of course, the rejoinder to this is, “Prove it!” Personally, I need no more proof than to observe what happens day by day. To the skeptic, I suggest a broad, sweeping look at our society: millions of individuals, each embracing numerous errors and truths but with each in control of what he receives and rejects, taking unto himself only that which attracts him. With this picture in mind, we can see the fallacy of each trying to reform the others. This is not the way improvement is brought about. It’s the other way around: you improve yourself and, if successful enough, I and others will be drawn to you as to a magnet.

Viewed in this manner, our problem boils down to a competition in magnetism. Bear in mind that communist and many other types of errors can be and more often than not are attractive, that is, they exert an ingathering, magnetic force.

What then is my problem? Or yours? It is to make our ideas, and our methods, more attractive than are offered by the competition. This can be illustrated by a simple homology.

There were two golfers; one remained a dub, the other became the world’s best. The dub, concerned about the errors he observed among golfers, spent his time injecting his “wisdom” into their ignorance. Golfers avoided him as they would the plague. The other sought out the best tutors and concentrated on the improvement of his own game. Finally, he was able to defeat every golfer he met in competition. Golfers the world over turned to the champ that they might remedy their errors. It was the magnetism generated by his excellence that paid the dividend of a general reduction in error. The counsel of Frank Lloyd Wright comes to mind:

The moment you buttonhole somebody and begin to convert him it is all over. But when you let him buttonhole you and ask you questions that have been arousing his mind by the superiority of what you have done, or what you do, or what you can do, then you can talk to him . . . beyond that you cannot go.[1]

Only those who concentrate on their own improvement can ever acquire the art of doing something.

[1] Mrs. Frank Lloyd Wright, The Roots of Life (New York, Horizon Press, 1963), p. 41.

• 13 •

THE MAGIC NUMBER IS ONE

Teachers, in the meaningful sense, are those to whom others are drawn—the magnetic ones.

My problem and yours, if we would advance the freedom philosophy, is first to become teachers ourselves and, hopefully, to attract another or others into this role. This recommended ingathering method is to be distinguished from the commonly practiced outgoing procedure.

Time and again, over the years, friends of the freedom philosophy have urged FEE to go on radio, TV, and into other public media. Or, “Get that excellent article in the Reader’s Digest; it reaches millions.”[1] Implicit in such advice is the notion that ours is a selling rather than a learning problem, that the job is to insinuate our ideas into the minds of others rather than having something in our own minds that others will wish to share. Theirs is an inversion of the educational process.

Let me state my own position at the outset: Were some philanthropist to say, “Put FEE on TV and I’ll foot the bill,” my answer would be, “No, thank you.” And that would be to turn down millions of dollars. Why would I reject such an offer? Not because of any objections to the use of our material in public media; far from it! I simply frown on wasting other people’s money and I have an aversion to kidding myself.

Any experienced lecturer or personal counselor who ignores applause and accurately assesses results, knows full well that the best audience is one, though he may not know the reason why!

The biggest live audience I ever addressed was 2,200. But the applause must have been for “a good show” rather than for any ideas that might have been garnered, for I have yet to find the slightest trace of any ideological impact or of any lasting interest aroused by that lecture.

Often, when I have been scheduled to address a convention or an annual meeting, a friend in that community has at the same time arranged for a small, invitational gathering. The big affair pays my expenses in dollars, and little more. But the small one invariably yields handsomely in terms of FEE’s objectives.

How Audiences Differ

My experiences over several decades attest to the fact, and I believe many teachers would confirm, that the smaller and more personal the audience the better are the educational results. From the inexperienced, however, comes the general insistence on “reaching the masses.” Nor should we expect any change in this fallacious attitude unless we are able to explain why the best audience is one.

In the case of a national convention, for instance, the program chairman may share my ideas on liberty and invite me for this reason and this alone. His aim is to “educate” the members or, at the very least, to get them interested in the freedom philosophy. Overlooked is the fact that he may be the only one attending the convention who is really interested in these ideas. The others, by and large, couldn’t care less; they are not looking for my ideas and, as a consequence, do no “drinking in” at all. I might as well have spoken to so many cemetery headstones.

However, if the message is presented in a highly entertaining manner, audiences will loudly applaud and, on occasion, give the speaker a standing ovation. And the speaker, unless severely realistic, may think they are approving his message rather than the entertainment he furnished. More often than not, the program chairman is primarily interested in “a warm body” who can amuse. If all of his speakers are rousingly applauded, his associational fellows will adjudge him the best chairman they ever had—and that’s the reward he seeks. But from the speaker’s standpoint, the honorarium comes pretty close to all that counts.

The smaller invitational gathering is another matter. Only those accept the invitation who are interested in the ideas for which the speaker is reputed. As a result, such sessions often continue for hours with a give and take of ideas edifying not only to the guests but to the speaker as well. Parenthetically, of the small gatherings, a FEE Seminar with many hours of concentration on and discussion of the freedom philosophy is the best of all when viewed in the light of our aims. But in all of these smaller sessions the “drinking in” is incalculably greater than in the large, wholly impersonal conventions.

However, even these small get-togethers, rewarding as they have been over the years, do not measure up educationally to the man-to-man confrontation between two individuals, each in a high spirit of inquiry.[2] One times one beats 2,200 times zero!

A lecturer, if at all experienced, “feels” an audience. He knows whether or not they’re listening. There comes to mind an audience of 500 really first-rate people. I knew they were not tuned in, that I wasn’t even entertaining them. Later that night, the reason dawned: the lighting or, rather, the lack of it; I had been speaking in near darkness, as ineffective as if through the loudspeaker of a radio.

A few weeks later, when asked to give the same lecture before an equally first-rate audience, I arranged to be spotlighted. Never have I had a more responsive audience. There’s a good reason why stages have footlights. I do not wish to leave the impression, however, that the responsive audience “got the message”; only that they were listening and were, at least, entertained.

Such are the highlights of my experience which lead me to the conclusion that the best audience is one. Bearing in mind that “getting the message” of the freedom philosophy is the sole problem here at issue, let us now examine how the educational process works as related to our aims.

Starting with Self

In the first place, no person can ever grasp these ideas who has not done some thinking about them on his own. A truism: “A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.” In a word, regardless of how powerful a magnet may be, it can never attract straw or sawdust. This fact drastically limits the number of those who are educable in economic, moral, and political philosophy. It makes nonsense of the notion that educating the masses is even a remote possibility.

Next, of the few who have done some thinking on these matters for themselves, only that fraction of them are further educable who eagerly seek additional enlightenment. A person who is satisfied with what he knows will never add to his knowledge, and one might as well talk to a book as to him.

There is a further crucial point, well expressed by Cardinal Newman:

The general principles of any study you may learn by books at home, but the detail, the color, the tone, the air, the life in it, you must catch all these from those in whom it already lives.[3]

“You must catch all these from those in whom it already lives”! You can “catch” the idea that the best audience is one far easier when it is made available for reading than you can by listening to the same idea over radio or TV or as a member of a large audience. When reading, you can reread but you do not relisten to the difficult ideas in speeches, that is, not when the speaker is before large audiences. But if you are one of a dozen in a discussion session, where you are in personal contact with the one “in whom it already lives,” there is a back-and-forth exchange which brings you and the other to a common level of understanding, that is, if you “have the floor” to the exclusion of the other eleven.

When the audience is you and you alone, you do, in fact, “have the floor.” Assuming that the teacher is intelligent and that you are at once eager to know and perceptive, you will become a better teacher yourself as a result of the experience. There is no other get-together in which the transmittal of ideas is so assured of success as in this one-to-one arrangement. The best audience is always one!

The experiences and reasons I have cited are enough to convince me that the best audience is one, but there is a deeper reason which, if I understood and could explain, would be even more convincing. It’s in the area of radiation. There is an enormous dissipation of radiating energy in large audiences. The “sending” is weakened by spreading it out, and the attention—“receiving”—markedly diminishes. I know this to be true from experience and not from analysis, just as I know that the law of attraction—magnetism—works its wonders, though I do not know why.

The rebuttal to these observations is heard over and over: The process is too slow.

Overlooked are two unassailable facts. The first is that no ground is gained except as new teachers of the freedom philosophy come into existence. And good teachers are not made from large audiences. Any effort, such as FEE’s, which does not result in more teachers is meaningless. And the hope must be that they will far excel our own capabilities.

The second is that ours is definitely not a numbers problem in the sense of tens of thousands or millions; like every constructive movement of ideas throughout history, ours is exclusively a quality problem. Studying the history of movements, it is clear that you alone could turn the world toward freedom were you competent enough. Until you reach that state of competence, it will behoove others of us in our varied endeavors to try to fill in where there may be deficiencies.

True, the educational process is slow, but it alone merits our attention and effort. While the propagandizing, proselytizing, selling-the-masses techniques get quicker results, the results are no good; they lack any upgrading quality. Indeed, they tend to turn uncommitted citizens away from the freedom philosophy. It is folly to hurry in the wrong direction! As Charles Mackay expressed it in the preface to the 1852 edition of Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they recover their senses slowly, one by one.”

Above all, we must bear in mind that good results depend on the power of attraction which, in turn, rests on excellence. Any individual can assess his own competence in this respect by merely observing the extent to which others are seeking his tutorship on free market, private ownership, limited government, and related concepts.

If, hopefully, the seekers be numerous, may they appear one by one, for that is the magic number of the perfect audience.

[1] No one “gets” an article in the Reader’s Digest any more than in The Freeman. Editors and publishers do their own getting precisely as you get your own ideas.

[2] “My definition of a University is Mark Hopkins at one end of a log and a student at the other.” Attributed to James A. Garfield in a letter accepting nomination for Presidency, July 12, 1880.

[3] From “What Is a University?” reprinted in The Essential Newman, U. F. Blehl, ed. (New York: New American Library, Inc., Mentor, 1963), p. 162.

• 14 •

THE NEED IS MINE

The lecture had been well received. I had argued for freedom and urged everyone to become a student of liberty so that he might better understand the philosophy and explain it with greater clarity. It was an enthusiastic harangue on my part, but what had been accomplished for my audience?

The more I reflected, the less satisfied I was. For the lecture had been just that—a harangue, similar to the “persuasiveness” most libertarians employ, the kind that gets us nowhere. Have I been going about things wrong?

In effect, I’ve been telling my listeners that the country needs freedom and that freedom needs them. Get in there and fight for freedom and country; you are needed! Now, what is wrong with that?

There are at least two flaws in this approach. First, there is very little motivation in some generalized and nebulous need—be it the need of country, society, ideology, or whatever. Everybody’s need is everybody’s responsibility, but everybody in theory usually turns out to be nobody in actuality.

Yes, in the case of emergencies such as war or other catastrophe, where each person fears what will happen to him if he doesn’t act, response to the call of duty can be and often is general. But when the call is in the name of freedom—particularly if the listeners are affluent—one may expect applause if the lecture is well presented, but not much more. The speaker will be admired for his labors and lauded as a rare idealist, while freedom continues to lose support. This calls to mind the matinee idol in a play that’s a flop.

The second and more important flaw is this: Freedom doesn’t need you or me any more than wisdom needs us. It’s the other way around! The need for freedom, no less than wisdom, is mine; and this goes for you, too, whoever you are. Once this fact is grasped, motivation sets in. The need for freedom is seen as a vital urgency: self-emergence. Utopian sentiments to the contrary, self-interest ranks first as the motivating force in human action.[1] When and if I see that the need for freedom is an immediate, personal need of my own, you can count on me to act when freedom is threatened. And on others, too!

Freedom is not a living, thinking being and not like a plant or domesticated animal to be watered and nurtured and protected and propagated. Freedom no more has needs than it has eyes to see. Rather, it is an abstraction; indeed, it is not a thing in itself but, instead, an absence of some things: deadening restraints on creative actions.

One may harangue businessmen about their “obligations” to uphold and maintain a climate of freedom, shame teachers for neglect of their “responsibilities,” condemn the apathy of voters. But freedom does not need these persons or groups—or you or me. The concept stands, whether or not anyone supports it, believes in it, acts in accord with it. The question is: Does the individual need freedom? And my answer is, “Yes, indeed!”

Sensing the Problem

If there is such a thing as a freedom problem, it is the problem of becoming aware of one’s need for freedom. Let’s see if this need can be portrayed.

To sense one’s need for freedom is never easy, and the detection is made more difficult by the gradual erosion of freedom, that is, by the steady addition of restraints. As a rule, it takes sharp and sudden contrasts—people have to be shocked into awareness.

How sensitive one would be to the need for fresh air were its supply suddenly threatened! Imagine yourself—say in 1900—at the site where any large metropolis now stands. How fresh the air! Next, imagine a sudden dumping from the heavens of today’s atmospheric pollution that often brings tears from the eyes and smarting of the lungs. One would easily recognize the need for fresh air. But when the pollution increases gradually, over decades, most people accept it without much grumble; their sensitivity is numbed. Man’s need for fresh air hasn’t changed; but his recognition of the need has dimmed.

So it is with freedom. One’s need for freedom is no less in Russia or Cuba than in the U.S.A. or Hong Kong; no less now than when restraints on creative actions were fewer. It is the recognition of the need that flags as freedom gradually dwindles. Adaptation to the mores, whatever they are, is the natural tendency. Most Russians, for instance, do not recognize the extent of their enslavement.

Nor is there any way to overcome this natural tendency unless one is always aware of the what-ought-to-be and constantly makes comparisons with the what-is. When one is conscious of the what-ought-to-be—the ideal—the what-is automatically becomes apparent. The need for freedom then looms large. Sudden contrasts are no longer necessary for awareness.

The Need for Freedom

Why do I need freedom? The following brevities—three among ever so many—leave no doubt as to my need.

1. Man, singular, is Creation’s finest image. His destiny is the improvement, now and forever, of this image in order that he may increasingly share in Creation. Man’s purpose is a realization of his unique, creative potentialities. Man requires, above all else, not to be smothered—that is, he requires an absence of restraints against creative release. He needs “room to breathe,” as we say.

2. Man needs freedom in order to be self-responsible. No one can be self-reliant when the government coercively assumes responsibility for his welfare, security, prosperity. It is only when the individual responsibly chooses between alternatives—becomes a decision-maker—that there can be growth of the faculties essential for self-realization. It is only in the absence of coercive restraints—freedom—that man becomes his own man.[2]

3. Man needs freedom because it is the only state of affairs in which Creative Wisdom can flourish, without which man cannot exist. As explained in previous chapters, Creative Wisdom is that coalescence of tiny bits of knowledge—inventions, insights, discoveries, and the like—into an enormous luminosity; it is a body of knowledge that never even remotely exists in any discrete individual. It is Creative Wisdom that accounts for all the man-made gadgetry by which we live and materially prosper—everything from a pencil to a jet plane. Coalescence—the ingathering of the tiny bits—presupposes their freedom to flow. This Creative Wisdom or “knowledge in society” is equally a requirement for all social, political, moral, ethical, and spiritual achievements of high order.

Dean Inge’s, “Nothing fails like success,” comes to mind. Two or three generations of affluence—temporary in historical terms—have the superficial earmarks of success. Most of those who live so affluently in these periods become insensitive to needs, particularly to a need for any more freedom than exists in their experience. Freedom fails to prevail at the hands of these “successes.”

It takes intellectual calisthenics for one of these “successes” to recognize his need for freedom. He must go beyond his own experience to see what his needs really are, that is, he has to see that his own needs extend to the children for whom he is responsible, and to their progeny. To do what is sound and right at any point in time requires that present thoughts and actions be assessed as to their effect on some future point in time.

Freedom has no needs. But anyone who can think long-range will likely conclude, sooner or later, that “the need is mine.”

[1] Self-interest, as I use the term, can no more be associated with greed than with charity. Each of us is motivated by his own assessment of values—profound or shallow, right or wrong. What distinguishes us is not attention or inattention to self but, rather, how intelligently we interpret our self-interest. The thief is so ignorant that he thinks self is best served by taking great risks for the sake of small material gains. Another may believe that self is best served by a search for truth and learning to explain with clarity whatever he discovers.

[2] For a further explanation of this idea, see the chapter, “Expanding Selfhood” in my The Coming Aristocracy, op. cit., pp. 15–22.

• 15 •

STUDENTS, WHEREVER YOU ARE

Let me share a problem posed in a recent letter from a businessman:

We have two sons, both honor student graduates of _________ University. Both are radical, political activists, as are their student friends whom we meet through them! And the “brighter” they are the more they criticize our free enterprise system.

They despise communism and dictatorships and are against public ownership of the means of production. What they embrace is something loosely called democratic socialism. How can this be answered?

It is obvious from the rest of the letter that these young people are in pursuit of an ideal, and there are many like them on our campuses.[1] Such students are searching for something better than what they see going on all around them. In this respect, I’m on their side.

But to look for the ideal in any form of socialism—democratic or whatever—calls to mind the old story of the blind man in a dark room looking for a black cat that isn’t there!

Why? Because these students have had their vision cut off, through no fault of their own, and they grope unsuccessfully. They know of no alternative to the present mess other than “democratic socialism,” rarely having been exposed to the ideal of a free market, private ownership, limited government society.

Very few fathers and mothers—whatever their calling—have the slightest idea what the free society really is or how it works. Thus, the young folks grow to college age uninstructed. And their college teachers—again with a few notable exceptions—know no more of the ideal than do the parents. Many of these teachers, being of the socialist persuasion, so thoroughly discredit everything that is private, individualistic, competitive, voluntary that the students dismiss what really is the ideal as not worthy of consideration. They are blind to the ideal!

The Search for the Ideal

Where, then, must their search be conducted? If freedom is rejected, what remains? Nothing, except in the socialistic realm. True, they reject communism, dictatorship, public ownership of the means of production—those socialistic schemes bearing familiar labels and demonstrably unworkable. So they search for the ideal in another socialistic arrangement bearing some such label as “democratic socialism.” They look for a cat that isn’t there.

We must now define our terms. At the outset, let me clarify one point: cooperative activities unrelated to government do not fall within my definition of socialism; it is the collectivization by government force that qualifies as socialism. Socialism is always a statist or interventionist way of life; it has a double-barreled definition: government ownership and control of the means of production and/or the results of production. Put another way, it is the planned economy and/or the welfare state. The two, as a rule, go hand in hand; indeed, it is next to impossible to practice either without the other.

While governments have varying methods of organization for owning and controlling the means and results of production, such control is of the essence of socialism; the rest is window dressing. The details of how government runs my life fail to interest me; I am concerned with one fact: does it or does it not run my life?

If we keep our definition in mind, we are compelled to refer to communism and all dictatorships as socialism. Other labels for socialism are Collectivism, Castroism, Leninism, Maoism, Marxism, Trotskyism, Fabianism, Fascism, Nazism. Aside from the Welfare State and the Planned Economy, we have some other labels distinctly American in origin: New Deal, Fair Deal, New Republicanism, the Great Society, the New Frontier, Creative Federalism. Observe that each of these so-called progressive ideologies has a characteristic common to all the others: the belief that it is the role of government to look after “its” people. The ideal of limited government—codifying and enforcing the taboos, that is, inhibiting destructive actions and defending the life and livelihood of all—gets less and less attention as government assumes the management of creative activities. Limited government gives way to unlimited government.

Actually, the various labels for socialism are far from definitive. Most of them have been conjured up to catch the eye or imagination of the people just as advertisers concoct fancy names for soap. But by whatever name, it’s still soap; and by whatever name, all governmental ownership and control of creative activities is still socialism!

A Comparison

Let us now reflect on the euphemism, “democratic socialism.” Perhaps we can dispose of the matter simply and quickly by observing how it differs from dictatorship. In the latter, the dictator and his henchmen decree the extent and manner of socialization. In the former, the “democratic” means that the decree is by majority vote.

Theoretically, both are dictatorial. The democratic majority-vote merely means that might—the overwhelming number—makes right. The coercive majority deserves no more approval than does the dictator who uses his might to make right.

Practically, it’s a choice between tweedledum and tweedledee. The dictator knows no more about how to control your life than I do. And as to the wisdom of a majority, it may be even less, if that is possible. Keep in mind that the larger a committee the fuzzier are its resolutions, and the majority of a nation’s citizens is a very big committee, indeed! This may explain why majorities are often more tyrannical than dictators.[2] Furthermore, it is possible, on occasion, to be rid of a dictator. But minorities find it quite difficult to rid themselves of the majority. “Democratic socialism” is just as far from the ideal as is communism!

So far as the ideal is concerned—the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life—it is a quest without end; it correlates with understanding and wisdom. Bear in mind that, historically speaking, it is brand new. Its features such as specialization, freedom in transactions, the marginal utility and subjective theory of value, competition and free pricing as a means of allocating scarce resources, free entry, the right to the fruits of one’s own labor, a common justice—that is, each person equal before the law as before God, and other related concepts have had but slight apprehension on the part of an infinitesimal minority—and only during the last six or seven generations! This ideal way of life has been glimpsed by a few; it has never been mastered by anyone. And, because man is now and forever imperfect, it will never be mastered, only approached.

The Lack of Understanding

The ideal way of life has had its nearest approximation in the U.S.A., that is, some aspects of it have been heeded and practiced. But relatively few persons have even begun to understand the freedom philosophy; most people are quite unable to distinguish between what is freedom and what isn’t.[3] As a consequence, many of the blessings that have flowed from freedom have been mistakenly ascribed to other causes. Freedom is rarely given credit for its accomplishments, and, more often than not, has been blamed for socialistic destructiveness.

In the absence of an understanding of freedom and socialism, there can be no accurate relating of either causes or effects. The post hoc fallacy is an ancient error and explains why so many think the cause of something good or bad is an irrelevant, preceding event or something else occurring simultaneously. An absurd example is the Indian tribe which holds an annual rattlesnake dance just before the rainy season and concludes that the dance brings the rain. But equally absurd is the cliché we have heard for four decades: “If free enterprise is so wonderful, how come the great depression?” Irrational as the snake dancers, most people assume that freedom brought on the depression. That’s because they don’t know the difference between freedom and socialism.[4]

These few paragraphs are only to suggest the direction in which young folks might turn in their search for the ideal. Even years of effort will never reveal the answer in full, but a modicum of serious study will assure the seeker that he is on the right road. Two cautions: never be dissuaded from this course by those who don’t know the difference between freedom and socialism. And beware of clichés! Freedom will then reveal its nature.

Nor need this thesis be limited to young people in high school and college. Graduation and the beginning of earning should never be a signal to quit learning. Anyone whose counsel is worth seeking is a student through his adult years and into maturity.

[1] The reference here is not to those persons on our campuses who are enrolled as students and whose devotion is not to learning but to disaster.

[2] While rejecting majority vote as a dictatorial device, I subscribe to it as the best method for choosing who the officials of a limited government shall be. See “The American System and Majority Rule” by E. A. Opitz. The Freeman, November, 1962.

[3] For an explanation of the differences between the ideal—the free market—and private enterprise, see the chapter, “Finding Words for Common Sense,” in my The Coming Aristocracy, op. cit., pp. 23–34.

[4] See Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, a minibook by Murray N. Rothbard. Copy on request.

• 16 •

DOCTOR, WHOEVER YOU ARE[1]

Doctor, whoever you are, come heal this sickness!

While the following is an invitation to those who have their doctorate in medicine, it can be extended with equal validity not only to all who have doctorates in law, philosophy, divinity, or whatever, but to citizens, academy-graded or not, who have any competence for healing the sickness in question. The invitation is general because those who can heal this sickness may come from no one knows where. In this context, the lowly fishermen of Galilee come to mind as doctors.

I take for my text these words from the Hippocratic oath:

. . . You will lead your lives and practice your art in uprightness and honor; that whatsoever house you shall enter, it shall be for the good of the sick to the utmost of your power, you holding yourselves far aloof from wrong, from corruption, from the tempting of others to vice. . . .

At the outset, I would make it clear that I hold no brief for mere pledges—even pledges as noble as this one. I observe that personal resolutions are more often broken than honored; few of us have the strength of character to resist minor temptations. Loyalty oaths are no more observed than wedding vows. Pledges of allegiance to the flag are mostly meaningless mumbles, pretty words relegated to the habit category. Oaths to uphold the Constitution, with a hand on the Bible, are recited as blandly by those who would wreck it as by others who seek its preservation. And when assessing the wide range of performance observed in M.D.’s, who are traditionally bound by the Hippocratic oath if not personally pledged to it, I remain just as unimpressed with “canned” oaths. Rectitude isn’t to be acquired, persons of quality are not fashioned, by any device which begins with, “Repeat after me.” The words must become flesh, so to speak, and this requires more than an occasional recitation.

Secondly, I do not think of you doctors as requiring more virtue than others by reason of the career you have chosen. Honorable relationships are as much required between aircraft makers and their customers as between you and your patients. Righteousness is as appropriate for me or a plumber as for the Pope or an M.D. I make this point only to emphasize that occupational category has nothing whatsoever to do with honor and quality. Morality is individual, not collective. For M.D.’s, as I observe them, are no less the victims of passions and nonsense or more the exemplars of honor and quality than are clergymen, teachers, businessmen, or whoever. You run the same moral and intellectual gamut as do the rest of us!

Meaningful Words

Let us now take a few words from the Hippocratic oath and note how narrowly they are interpreted by some men in your profession and how broadly an M.D. of excellence and quality might render their meaning to himself.

What, for instance, is meant by “whatsoever house you shall enter”? Narrowly, it means no more than some patient’s abode. But could this not be thought of as whatsoever life your activities—medical, political, or otherwise—enter into or impinge upon? A person of quality will comport himself with rectitude, with or without the tools of his trade, regardless of whose “house” he’s in.

And how are we to interpret “the sick”? Narrowly, this means only those with some physical or psychic ailment listed in a medical dictionary. But an M.D. with a broader view knows that there is a sickness more pervasive than any he normally treats. This sickness is more profound and more dangerous than a virus infection, or a loss of blood, or a shortage of glandular secretions, or whatever. Analogous to a virus is a fearful belief, namely, the notion that it is proper to feather one’s own nest at the expense of others. The virus equates to this belief, that is, it is an agent that infects and multiplies and causes widespread effects. And, along with this goes the loss of integrity and the shortage of self-responsibility. This is a spiritual sickness, a degenerative disease of the soul, one that the Higher Law beckons the person of quality to come and heal.

Next, reflect upon “far aloof from wrong, from corruption.” I lay particular emphasis on these words not only because they present such a wide range of possible interpretation but because they bring me to the very heart of my thesis.

By reason of the intimacy and confidence generally accorded those in your profession, it is easy to see why every precaution should be taken against wrong and corruption. Doctor-patient relationships should be free from wrongdoing, right down to presenting an honest bill for services rendered. But these, while important, are minor aspects of rectitude, and fall within a narrow interpretation of the Hippocratic oath. What about the broad and really significant interpretation of “wrong” and “corruption”?

Men and women in your profession have, over the decades, attended to the ills of millions unable to pay for services rendered; the M.D.’s only charge in such cases has been: “Be my guest.” Traditionally, in addition to the practice of medicine, you have, more than any other occupational category known to me, practiced charity. You have been noted as good Samaritans which accounts, in no small measure, for the high esteem in which you have been held by rich and poor alike. Let me explain why my references are in the past tense.

Imagine, if you will, that a certain doctor of medicine has tired of this tradition and now insists that he be paid in cash for each service rendered. Unable to obtain payment from some of the more destitute of his patients, he goes among the citizenry with a gun, as a robber is wont to do, and extorts from nonpatients and total strangers the unpaid fees. Must we not rate this as wrong? As corruption of the first order? As a violation of the Hippocratic oath? If such an act isn’t wrong and corrupt, then these words are without meaning.

Actually, today, even in “this mad, mod world” of ours, were any M.D. to behave in this manner he would lose his membership in every medical society and be forever barred from practice. Yet, collectivize and then legalize this very same behavior and, in popular parlance, it will become “good and ennobling” instead of “wrong and corrupt.” Not only the populace, but M.D.’s by the tens of thousands, have joined in socialized medicine—this “wave of the future” known as Medicare, Medicaid, and other euphemisms. As if association gives absolution! As if mass participation rights a wrong! As if legality alters morality! This is an intellectual sickness that needs analysis.

The Root of the Sickness

A physician, if competent, doesn’t apply his treatments merely to surface manifestations of illness. He tries to approach the matter systemically, that is, he attempts to get at the root of it. We should approach this sickness of the body politic in such a manner, difficult as the diagnosis is.

I suspect this sickness has its genesis in wishes, these being but entertainments of the mind. Few, indeed, are the individuals who do not wish for improved circumstances. They wish for more and better food, housing, education—on and on—including more medical care than they can afford in many cases. Nor can we fault these aspirations. Indeed, when not perverted, human hankering motivates human progress. Wishes, unless in consort with improper methods of fulfillment, are as benign as many other attributes of body and mind.

But now in vogue is a fearful combination of wishes and methods, as fanciful as Aladdin’s lamp, and spreading like wildfire: the transmutation of wishes into rights! Do you wish for better housing? Then better housing is a right. Do you wish for a Gateway Arch in St. Louis, a Mall in Fresno, higher returns for goods and services, shorter hours of labor, protection from competition? Then these are rights. Do you wish for free medical care? Then free medical care is a right!

And what is the nature of the jinni called upon to transmute wishes into rights? It is organized police force: government. It extorts from all, allocating the legalized loot to those who effectively make their wishes heard.[2] There is no greater indictment of education in America than the fact that so many are victims of this hallucinatory sickness.

The extortion of income from everyone, funneling enormous amounts into the coffers of hospitals and M.D.’s has, as might be expected whenever the market is abandoned, brought on a shortage of both hospitals and M.D.’s, and we are witnessing only the beginning. That the quality of medical services will decline under this system and that corruption will increase is predictable whether we resort to analysis and reasoning or to the dismal record of all such attempts, be they in England, Canada, Sweden, the United States, or wherever. Most M.D.’s know this, so I shall not dwell on it further. But in a stampede of cases, this more or less common knowledge on the part of M.D.’s is relegated to second place by a force that is more powerful: personal financial enrichment! In any occupational category—your profession included—there is always a rush to where the “almighty dollar” is, a lure that often swerves man from his principles, from the straight and narrow. Only M.D.’s of unusual quality will yield not to this temptation!

Let Freedom Be the Cure

How do we go about healing this sickness? We must acquire an understanding that wishes, regardless of how numerous, do not constitute a right. I have no more right to your professional attention than you have a claim on me to wash your dishes. We are dealing with an absurdity which, once established as such, will vanish as did the earth-is-flat absurdity. That a wish does not make a right is so nearly self-evident by mere assertion that only cursory comment is warranted.

Absolute self-subsistence is impossible. We live and prosper by specialization and exchange. None of us can exist solely by his own efforts, so each of us specializes according to his bent or talents, and whether we prosper or not is substantially determined by what and how much others will give in exchange for what we have to offer. In a free society, that is! In a word, others tend to encourage me to specialize at what is of value to them, and I tend to encourage them to specialize at what is of value to me. This is how people in a free society exert their wishes. But note that these wishes do not carry with them any right on my part to command what others shall produce or any right to force on them the terms of exchange.

When the notion that a wish is a right is put into effect by police force—the only way it can be done—then specialization is no longer guided by consumer wishes nor are the terms of exchange. What happens under Medicare, for instance, is this: M.D.’s give of their labors and the senior citizen gives substantially nothing in return. Other citizens are then forced to perform labor for which they receive absolutely nothing in return. Exchange is by coercion rather than by free choice.

If we make the simple concession that no one should be forced to labor for no return, then the absurdity of socialized medicine is clear. Were M.D.’s forced to perform their services for nothing, as nonpatients presently are forced to pay for services not received, no person would choose medicine as a career.

I repeat, the fact that many of us wish more medical attention than we can afford does not give us a right to your services or a right to force others to make up the difference, wishes to the contrary notwithstanding! Your services are a scarce economic resource, and precisely because of that scarcity should be priced and otherwise regulated by the laws of supply and demand and open competition, as should every other valuable and scarce commodity or service.[3] Otherwise, your good efforts will be wasted in the hopeless cause of socialism and the welfare state.

I have asserted that the Higher Law beckons persons of quality to heal this sickness, the cure for which is to rid the body politic of the notion that wishes constitute a right.

A Natural Aristocracy Among Men

My diagnosis, however, presupposes that the body politic be graced with persons of quality, that is, with an aristocracy in the pink of condition. By an aristocracy I mean what Jefferson meant when he said, “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents.”

Let me explain: The fact that most of you are presently free of the common cold is not because of an absence of the virus. When you are in the pink of condition the virus is harmless. But become overtired or run-down and the virus proliferates.

The same holds true for the body politic as for the human body. The bad ideas (virus) in the minds of men are omnipresent. But they are held in abeyance when the aristocracy is in the pink of condition. However, when men in positions of political, professional, religious, educational, and business leadership give more heed to desires of the flesh and to expediencies of the moment than to moral and spiritual principles, the bad ideas proliferate; they come out of the heads of men as termites from a rotten stump.

Recently, I commented to the proprietor of a well-managed barber shop: “I have never seen any of the hippy long-hairs in your place.” He replied, “Oh, no, they would be embarrassed to be seen in here.” Men are similarly embarrassed to expose their silly ideas in social situations distinguished by a leadership of first-class citizens.

Noblesse Oblige

Finally, how do you Doctors go about “holding yourselves far aloof . . . from tempting others to vice”?

Bear in mind that high priests are the ones who hold the greatest powers of attraction—are the ones in whom confidence is most likely to be placed. And a high priest fallen from grace, having forsaken his role as exemplar, could easily tempt others to vice. Let a known thief commit a robbery and the only harm is the loss an owner suffers; others are more repulsed than tempted to imitate. But let a person held in high esteem thus defile the moral code and he will tempt others to vice. “If it’s all right for him, why not for me?”

Inasmuch as citizens entrust their lives to M.D.’s more than to other specialists, they are inclined to trust you in many matters. They’ll even seek and respect your economic and political counsel along with your medical advice.

Now, the more one is respected by others, the more must he bind himself to righteousness; that is, the more rigorously must he adhere to the highest principles he can envision. This is the obligation—the noblesse oblige—of anyone who holds the respect of others. For one to reflect less than the best that is within him is to tempt others to vice and, thus, to violate the Hippocratic oath. The Higher Law dictates that the more one is respected, the more must one be respectable.

An encouraging thought: You who would heal this sickness can rest assured that good ideas are easy to advance—proliferate—whenever the aristocratic spirit is the mode, which is to say, when enough persons aspire to that high standard which establishes the climate for moral healing.

[1] Delivered before the 26th Annual Meeting, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, Denver, Colorado, October 9, 1969.

[2] This idea is developed in “When Wishes Become Rights,” in my Deeper Than You Think, op. cit., pp. 98–107.

[3] The advocacy of pricing may give the false impression that all transactions must be in monetary terms. But bear in mind that there is psychic as well as monetary profit. An M.D. enjoys a psychic profit when he says to the destitute patient, “Be my guest.” For further explanation, see “What Shall It Profit a Man?” in my Deeper Than You Think, op. cit., pp. 108–117.

• 17 •

LET FREEDOM REIGN!

The lad who later became my friend ran away from home and school at the age of fourteen, never to return to either one. Uncommonly brilliant, energetic, egotistical, ambitious, audacious, his rise in the world of letters and business was meteoric. Within a few years after reaching the top, he failed, returning to the rank of the unknowns from whence he had come.

It seemed to me, as I came to know him, and watched him climb the ladder toward success, that we were ideologically in tune. Then, one day he casually but confidently remarked to me, “Put the economy of America under my control, and it would be greatly improved!”

My friend believed that he was smarter than the literary, business, and political giants he came to know. Perhaps he was! But he never became aware of how little he knew, a blind spot that is the most dangerous ignorance of all. This is the genesis of the authoritarian mentality, the blindness of dictators: Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and all the rest. My friend’s level of mentality, I believe, was higher than any of these.

And I would also rate him higher than any of the would-be rulers I have met during the past fifty years, higher than any of the less ambitious ones who likewise are unaware of how little they know. Compared to any of these, he was a genius.

As I look back, my erstwhile friend did a rather miserable job of running his own life. And the thought of his running mine is sickening; I’d rather be dead! I knew him too intimately to be fooled by appearances. Though smarter or sharper-minded than the rest of us, he was simply another imperfect individual. He was so keenly aware of his talents that he couldn’t see they were limited. Consequently, like many highly educated individuals, he entertained no doubt whatsoever about his ability to run the economy and, thus, the lives of all Americans.

Think for a moment of the smartest person you have ever intimately known and see if you render a different judgment than mine about his ability to run your life. I know your answer. Therefore, no comment is required about those of lesser mentalities, the miniature Caesars, the ones who have no power but only a driving desire to straighten out friend and foe. “If others were only more like me, what a fine world this would be!”

I merely wish to point out that this impulse to rule the lives of others, whether spouse or progeny or neighbors or countrymen, originates in and is a form of blindness. These people believe, quite sincerely, that were they to reign everyone would be better off. They are would-be authoritarians because they don’t know any better.

The phrase, “Let freedom reign,” does not mean that freedom should rule in the dictatorial sense; that would be a contradiction in terms. It means, instead, let freedom be the rule, as the alternative to persons who would rule or reign. Freedom can no more rule or reign over mankind than can fresh air.

Perfect Freedom

In this context, perfect freedom is that state of affairs in which there is no exercise of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. Freedom can be said to wax or wane as such restraints diminish or increase. While others might phrase it differently, few will disagree with this as an abstract proposition describing a desirable state of affairs.

But agreement in the abstract is about as far as the agreement goes. Few, indeed, seem able or willing to apply the proposition in their workaday world. They may give lip service to freedom as an ideal concept but will rarely adopt it as a mode of living. Many of those who agree that freedom should be the rule will endorse social security, Medicare, trips to the moon, subsidies, on and on. These people unwittingly contradict themselves: they fail to see that in thus deciding how to spend other people’s money they are restraining others from doing as each chooses with the fruits of his own labor. That other people’s money is not his to give is a concept the would-be welfarist won’t understand—any more than he understands that his way of doing things is authoritarian, the ultimate in antisocial behavior!

Because those with authoritarian mentalities do not acknowledge or recognize their incompetence to run the economy and the lives of others, they are blind to the proposition that freedom should be the rule. Some of these doubtless have looked, and will not see. But there must be many thousands of others who simply have never looked to freedom. If they would but look, freedom could become the rule.

We go through life without seeing most of the world around us. Ours are but infinitesimal peeks. If fortunate, our horizons are broadened whenever someone says, in effect, “See that!” And we behold that for the first time. This expanding perception is the expanding Universe and the ones who point out to us that which we have not seen before are our teachers. This pointing-out process is education.

The first step in pointing out that freedom should be the rule is not only to grasp the point ourselves but to live by it as nearly as possible. Conceded, this is difficult. It is questionable that anyone has more than slightly apprehended the whole of this truth: it correlates with understanding and wisdom—a pursuit without end.

Nonetheless, this is our wonderful opportunity. The more clearly we apprehend why freedom should be the rule, the more clearly can we point it out. That numerous others will have a look and see this truth for the first time is the lesser of two dividends. The greater dividend is personal growth in wisdom and understanding; nothing matters more than this—for this is our God-given assignment!

EPILOGUE

Perfect freedom is here defined as an absence of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. This is to say that freedom is a consequence of human actions. Slavery, on the other hand, is also a consequence of human actions, actions which restrain creative energy release!

These consequences of individual behavior—slavery or freedom—have no personality traits of their own; they are not sensory, acting things but, rather, impersonal conditions. These conditions, even as ignorance and darkness or wisdom and light, may be seen and observed but they can neither see nor observe. These conditions or results, as distinguished from the persons who bring them about, are senseless and no more have needs than they have eyesight. The point of this emphasis on the obvious is to help us understand what motivates us to act on behalf of freedom!

As suggested in a previous chapter, when I believe that it is freedom which needs me, I am no more moved to action than I’m moved by the notion that the orbital universe needs me. Freedom no more needs me than does the wisdom of Christ or the inventiveness of Edison. It’s the other way around: I need freedom. Once this is apprehended, there’s motivation; but not until then!

But there’s more to it than just my need; we need freedom! And it is important that there should be a reasonably wide recognition of our need for freedom; I believe this plural need has a deep social significance.

Where Historians Fail

Historians, seeking to understand the rise and fall of civilizations and cultures, seem to attach great importance to the existence of a more or less commonly-accepted ideology which serves to unify a given society. Assuming such an ideology for which there is a general support, the resulting unification is supposed to lend survival vitality to a given civilization. When a general faith in a particular ideology declines, so will the civilization.

This reading of history doubtless explains the rise of a civilization to pre-eminence and then its fall: the rise and fall of Athens, of the Roman Empire, of England, and others. But if this be the final verdict, if the historical process must forever follow the patterns of the past, our own situation appears to be hopeless. For we have today no ideology to which there is a common dedication.

Perhaps there is a good reason for these declines and falls. Suppose that the ideology of a society is inconsistent with human development. Why should that society not decline and fall? Do not these failures contain lessons that ought to be read in order that fresh starts, more enlightened, may be undertaken?

For instance, history is punctuated by reports of groups, tribes, societies whose ideology has been the plundering of neighboring societies. The dedication has been general enough but such depraved cultures have not survived. And who will argue that they should?

We have heard many times that wars have the good effect of unifying a whole people behind a common cause. The ideology in these cases is war. Regardless of the dedication to the cause, warring nations eventually join the long list of those that have not survived. The economics of war is such that the eventual outcome has to be detrimental to all participants. Again, why not?

Communism is the goal in Russia, a from-each-according-to-ability-to-each-according-to-need ideology, a rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul arrangement. And there’s no shortage of dedication; the unification in support of the ideology is enormous. But because this motivation is out of harmony with the emergence or evolution of individual man, a society so motivated must sooner or later decline and fall. In time, the communistic culture will also be referred to in the past tense. I favor this.

The American Dream

A look at our own situation leads to what I regard as our urgent requirement. While our traditional ideology was rarely stated or understood in explicit terms, nonetheless, it existed as a lively generality to which there was a remarkable dedication. As noted earlier, our forefathers chose freedom not as a prognosis of better things to come but as a means by which each individual could be his own man. The theme or cause or goal or ideology that predominated was that here in America one could, regardless of the station into which he was born, rise in accord with his own abilities. This was a wholesome ideology which, combined with the dedication to it, gave our special brand of civilization survival prospects. It was a culture worthy of survival!

But take note of what has happened. Instead of a common ideology, there are today ideologies without end—all at sixes and sevens! If there is one that dominates, it is political collectivism; and even this is in shattered pieces, with but limited dedication to this variant or that. Unification there is not!

If the foregoing analysis of history is right, and there appear to have been no exceptions, then we must be headed for the societal slag pile, for we lack a common ideology which might elicit a common dedication. It seems—short of a rational rebirth—that we are losing our survival vitality. Again, is our present hodge-podge of ideologies worthy of survival?

Short of a rational rebirth! This means, first of all, an ideology worthy of survival, one which harmonizes with the emergence and evolution of man, one in step with human destiny; no hit-or-miss or emotional cause or chance goal will do. Nothing less than an ideology logically and rationally conceived can meet our requirement. And, second, there must be some reasonable dedication to it. For me, the first is easy; the second is unbelievably difficult.

The first step is the practice of freedom, the subject of this book. It meets all the specifications of the ideal. For it is only when one exerts no restraints against the creative release of others and has no such restraints imposed on him that he can best grow in self-responsibility and develop his faculties most fully. It is when he is thus free and not a carbon copy that the best within him emerges—not just progress in a material sense, but his moral, spiritual, intellectual, and charitable potentialities find their highest expression. It is in freedom that man can more and more share in Creation, this being consonant with his destiny.

There can be no argument against freedom as the appropriate ideology unless it can be demonstrated that you and I will better emerge as our creativity is subjected to this or that restraint. Such evidence is utterly lacking.

Dedication Required

The ideology worthy of survival is the primary thing, but it cannot even exist, let alone survive, without our dedication—and that is quite another matter. Think of what’s involved. Among the millions of us, all but a very few are smitten by authoritarianism, that is, they believe that the creative lives of others should be restrained in some respect. Count the people you know who are anxious to forego whatever special privilege they presently enjoy in order to remove restraints from their fellow men. Many of our citizens are so surfeited with special privileges—life at the expense of others—that they no longer recognize these special handouts and couldn’t count them if they tried. Among those in the mail order business, for instance, how many would include their subsidized parcel post as a restraint against the creativity of others? Examples can be cited by the thousands!

Think of the millions who fear the chaos that would be unloosed were all men freed of restraints and actually permitted to act creatively as they please!

To further assess the difficulty, reflect on the few who are capable of thinking logically and rationally on this problem. Then drastically reduce these few to the ones who will undertake the mental effort. Dedication—unification in support of this ideal of freedom—appears a hopeless prospect. A few thousand, perhaps—but not millions of enthusiasts! The inclination is to throw in the sponge: “Forget it!”

I return to the historians and a remarkable fact they have brought to the surface with crystal clarity. Every constructive movement of which there is any record has resulted from the excellence of a few, often a single man. History reveals that what we should seek is quality, not quantity. A leader, when excellent enough, turns our eyes toward the light.

The stakes, of course, are high: the rebirth and refinement of a culture with survival possibilities. And while we are on our way to understanding and explaining the proper ideology, we’ll be getting enlightenment for ourselves, the highest reward life has to offer—a worthwhile venture if there ever was one!

The Coming Aristocracy

Leonard E. Read

1969

To Horatio Bunce

It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.

—Sydney Smith

1

The Coming Aristocracy

It was nearly a century ago that Herbert Spencer wrote prophetically of “The Coming Slavery.” His use of the term included the familiar thing called chattel slavery, but primarily he had something far more profound in mind. The genuine essence of slavery eludes most people even today, so let us turn to Spencer:

What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What . . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.[1]

Negro slavery, as practiced here, was but one form of enslavement. Any citizen—black or white, rich or poor, illiterate or Ph.D.—might be a slave, more or less, by Spencer’s definition. Any man whose income is confiscated by taxation, the proceeds used to subsidize other men, is a slave! And how accurate his prophecy, not only in his native Britain that is today’s prime example of the welfare state, but also in America, once a colony of that Empire.

“The Coming Aristocracy,” as I speak of it here, also breaks with traditional usage. Furthest from mind is that hereditary aristocracy whereby high rank depends not upon achievements in life but upon accidents of birth. As with the term slavery, so with the word aristocracy; it is too useful a word to be lost in some semantic limbo.

Based on Virtue and Talent

Jefferson gave the word my meaning: “There is a natural aristocracy among men. The grounds of this are virtue and talents. . . .” Ortega referred to these natural aristocrats as noblemen. And Hanford Henderson revealed who are eligible and what the qualifications are:

He may be a day laborer, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a professional man, a writer, a statesman. It is not a matter of birth, or occupation, or education. It is an attitude of mind carried into daily action, that is to say, a religion. It [the aristocratic spirit] is the disinterested, passionate love of excellence . . . everywhere and in everything; the aristocrat, to deserve the name, must love it in himself, in his own alert mind, in his own illuminated spirit, and he must love it in others; must love it in all human relations and occupations and activities; in all things in earth or sea or sky.[2]

The aristocratic spirit as related to my field of deepest interest—political economy and moral philosophy—is nowhere better exemplified than by a farmer named Horatio Bunce. Congressman David Crockett said of Bunce:

It was one of the luckiest hits of my life that I met him. He mingled but little with the public, but was widely known for his remarkable intelligence and incorruptible integrity, and for a heart brimful and running over with kindness and benevolence, which showed themselves not only in words but in acts. He was the oracle of the whole country around him, and his fame had extended far beyond the circle of his immediate acquaintance.[3]

What was there in Spencer’s time that enabled him to see “The Coming Slavery”? Certainly, what lay ahead of him 85 years ago could have looked no more ominous than coming events look to most thinking people today. But, his prophecy has come to pass! Why, then, have I the temerity to expect an outburst of exactly the opposite, namely, the aristocratic spirit?

After being in the thick of this fray for well over three decades, and observing the changes for the better that have come about in a relatively small minority, I am convinced that there exists among us persons with the intellect, moral toughness, integrity, strength of character, and idealism to compose an adequate aristocracy. I am unaware of any movement, good or bad, that has had a leadership comparable to what is now in the making.

Signs of Progress

Several fundamental gleanings are becoming so clear to these individuals that they cannot resist taking the road to excellence.

The first is a compelling impression that our foundering civilization is slated for a decline and fall unless—unless we have the most pronounced moral awakening and pursuit of righteousness known to mankind. For it is in the nature of human destiny—man emerging—that each civilizing step must meet with obstacles more difficult to overcome than preceding steps. Evolution decrees that the art of becoming hinges upon acts of overcoming. And the higher the stage of progress, the harder the climb!

The second is an acute awareness that the oncoming aristocracy is out of the question—an utter impossibility—short of an indomitable belief that it will come to pass. Those who can see only slavery ahead cannot imagine or take part in anything else. Faith comes first; results are the fruit.

The third begins with the startling recognition that the spirit of aristocracy is no more in need of any one individual than is righteousness or wisdom; the dependency is the other way around! This leads to the greatest enlightenment of all: You and I are dependent on excellence, righteousness, wisdom. The aware individual correctly concludes: The need is all on my side!

Had our projected aristocracy nothing more to undergird it than a call to duty, or an obligation to society, or a sense that the virtues are dead unless you or I uphold them, the aristocracy would never come to pass. Such drives are tenuous, weak, and never to be relied upon; they simply are not the true mainsprings of human motivation.

An Inner Drive

The motivation that drives man toward excellence comes from within. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, gives us the clue: “Man is on earth as in an egg. Now, you can’t go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.” The oncoming aristocrats know that they must grow, stretch out, expand their awareness, perception, consciousness. Otherwise, they might as well be dead. Once a person has gained this deep conviction, he has a motivation strong enough to carry him through any crisis.

Anyone wishing to identify an aristocrat in the making must, as Henderson implies, ignore occupational categories, social status, wealth, fame, education, race, creed, or color. Look for a person, whether he be a janitor, waiter, gardener, mechanic, teacher, or in any other walk of life, who takes a “fierce pride” in his work: there is the aristocratic spirit in emergence! This spirit does not need him; he needs this spirit, and he knows it!

I have found, over the years, that the more I share my ideas with others, the better are the ideas that come to me, a fact not difficult to explain: when sharing with others, one refines ideas as best he can. And each refinement enriches the idea in one’s mind.

Thus, the following chapters are offered primarily as a means of self-improvement. Should just one thought prove helpful to a single person, what a cherished dividend that would be!

[1] Herbert Spencer, The Man Versus the State [1884] (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1940), pp. 41–42.

[2] Hanford Henderson, “The Aristocratic Spirit,” The North American Review, March, 1920.

[3] The Life of Colonel David Crockett, compiled by Edward S. Ellis (Philadelphia: Porter & Coates, 1884). An excerpt, “Not Yours to Give” is available on request from The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.

2

In Quest of Maturity

This is my favorite book, not because it is better than the other books, but because it is later. Every one of its nineteen chapters has been written in an eight-month period surrounding my seventieth birthday and with no let-up in travel, lectures, or other chores. These chapters represent attempts at attaining some measure of maturity against the stubborn opposition which the senior years tend to impose. It is my contention that longevity is for the sake of maturity, not longevity.

Does life really begin at forty, as popular expression has it? Or, does it begin, instead, with each moment one grows in awareness, perception, consciousness? Is not the budding process a continuous beginning? The moons that have come and gone do not necessarily measure growth or its ending; now and then life flags in the teens; on occasion it accelerates in the nineties. If seventy seems less likely than forty for a new beginning, the reason is that so many have died on the vine in that interval.

Glory to the man who can truthfully attest, “Life begins at ninety!”

Twenty years ago—at the age of fifty—I discovered that: “The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and, depending upon physical factors, education, environment, and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe . . . [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline. . . . There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline.”[1]

And now, on rereading Ortega, I find that “as one advances in life, one realizes more and more that the majority of men—and of women—are incapable of any other effort than that strictly imposed on them as a reaction to external compulsion. And for that reason, the few individuals we have come across who are capable of a spontaneous and joyous effort stand out isolated, monumentalized, so to speak, in our experience. These are the select men, the nobles, the only ones who are active and not merely reactive, for whom life is a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training.”[2]

Ever Onward!

There is more to the observations of these two scholars—a biochemist and a philosopher—than first meets the eye. A worthy ambition, they quite correctly imply, is “to die with your boots on” or “go down with your colors flying.” For what other reason are we here than to get ever deeper into life? And if there be any certain key to personal happiness, it involves the use and development of the faculties—the expanding mind being the most important and, by and large, all that remains for the elder citizen.

But there is another reason for looking so favorably on those who insist on “a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training”: Each of us has a vested interest in these “select men, the nobles.”

We can live our own lives to the fullest only insofar as they dwell among us. The society in which we live—the environment—is conditioned by the absence or presence of those who persistently pursue excellence. The rise and fall of society depends upon this kind of nobility. These “select men” are essential to us, and striving to be numbered among them is a worthy effort and aspiration.

Yet, many persons lack such aspiration. Analogous is the tree with every appearance of health, its blossoms beautiful to behold, fruit developing normally toward full size. But, alas, before it ripens, the fruit falls to the ground—big and well-shaped, but useless!

We witness so many promising individuals falling by the wayside, stepping away from life, forsaking the effort essential to life’s full cycle, just when the process of maturing is to begin! In a word, the fruit of life abandoned!

To associate old age with mature judgment is indeed a mistake, simply because, as Ortega suggests, too many elders react only to external compulsion. The inner development that is prerequisite to maturity tends to terminate too soon. Old age, more often than not, can be associated with senility. Yet, the greater the age the richer the maturity, assuming, of course, that the budding process is alive and functioning. In these rare cases, old age and mature judgment go hand in hand; the older the wiser!

If I am not mistaken, freedom is to be expected only in societies distinguished by a significant number of mature and wise men. And maturity and wisdom of the quality required is reserved to those who can retain the budding phenomenon—cortical plasticity—into those years normally associated with physical decline, that is, into the period when maturing of the intellect becomes at least a possibility.[3] In any event, I am certain that the type of maturity here in question will never issue among those who, for whatever reason, permit themselves to “die on the vine.” Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we reflect on the obstacles to maturity. If they can be identified, we can, hopefully, reduce them.

The Retirement Syndrome

The most formidable obstacle on the way to maturity is covered by the idea of retirement. Two forces move us toward retirement, namely, temptation and compulsion.

Many are congenitally lazy, if not physically, at least mentally. Their mental activities have stagnated, leaving them uninteresting even to themselves, let alone to others; they cannot stand their own company or abide being alone with their thoughts. They seek merriment and diversion supplied by others, like a man walking down the street with a radio glued to his ear. Any excuse, however flimsy, to avoid thinking for self! Such persons have no fruit to ripen, no mental activity to mature.

There are others who have had no thought since early adulthood but to “get it made.” By the time that goal is achieved, abstract thought has been too long neglected for reactivation or renewal; half-hearted attempts prove unrewarding, so the temptation is to forswear any conscious effort. Mature thoughts are out of the question.

Ever so many persons of high potential look to a vocation for fame or fortune and forget to choose one in harmony with their unique capabilities. As a consequence, the job is likely to be boring; holidays and vacations—little retirements—are highlights of the seasons; and as the years pass, full retirement seems more and more attractive. There is no incentive to extend mental activity to its maturity.

The thought of retirement is anathema to me. I have not experienced any of the temptations and, thus, can list only a few of the more obvious examples. But it seems clear that there would be little drive for compulsory retirement if retirement were not a common goal. It seems to add up to this: Let’s formalize and legalize that which the vast majority so ardently favor! The following examples of compulsive forces stem from these common temptations.

Retirement, of course, is a relative term. The shortened work week, enforced by edict, is a case in point. One must retire, not work beyond the legal forty hours, or the employer will be forced to pay a higher hourly rate, in effect, a fine.

Legal holidays seem never to be abandoned even after the cause they were meant to celebrate has been forgotten. Instead, there are countless excuses for increasing their number. Minor retirements en masse!

Social security payments are withheld from senior citizens who elect to work and earn. Activity is penalized; inactivity is rewarded.

Governmental unemployment payments often exceed what some persons could earn by working, thus inducing retirement.

Most corporations, educational and religious institutions, chambers of commerce, trade associations, and other organizations compel retirement at 65; many make it attractive to retire at 60; and we hear more and more of retiring at 55. The sole criterion is the number of moons that have come and gone; whether the budding process is dead, or at its very peak, is not even considered. As a consequence of this indiscriminate, rule-of-thumb procedure, many of the nation’s best men are “put out to pasture.”

These illustrations suffice to emphasize the retirement syndrome. It is, today, the common fetish and the end is not in sight. Under these circumstances, it is remarkable that even a few individuals are capable of spontaneous and joyous effort, that is, able to experience the maturing period. No wonder that the perceptive Ortega observed such individuals to “stand out isolated, monumentalized”!

In one sense, it is lamentable that those who have advanced in wisdom and maturity should “stand out isolated, monumentalized.” Far better if there were more such persons—the few less conspicuous than they are. Not everyone will make it, of course, but maturity surely is within the reach of thousands at the modest price of conscious, persistent, dedicated, prayerful effort. The reward for realizing one’s potentialities, whatever they are, may be the highest earthly life has to confer.

That my life still begins with each moment can be assigned in part to a stroke of good fortune—vocation and avocation are identical; work and pleasure are one and the same.

Beyond this, I have a first-rate retirement policy: short of effective compulsions to the contrary, I propose to ride my bicycle till I fall off!

[1] Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

[2] Ortega y Gasset, Revolt of the Masses (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1932), p. 71.

[3] Conceded, many a young person reaches a higher state of maturity than does the octogenarian. This is because some are born more highly endowed than others. However, my point is not aimed at such comparisons but, rather, at the need of maturity regardless of how high or low the endowments. Mankind loses most when those of high endowment fail to mature.

3

Expanding Selfhood

What a thought-provoking title, “The Undiscovered Self”![1] For it implies a dark continent in the mind awaiting exploration, and suggests that the discovery and development of the inner life is the only way to lengthen the perimeter of all that man can call reality. The expanding universe, in this sense, is but the measure of man’s expanding mind. Only a moment ago, in evolutionary time, this orb of ours was thought to be flat. The expanding self—increasing awareness—not only is responsible for that correction but accounts for the appearance of the electron, countless galaxies, and numberless other wonders that recently have come within the range of man’s concept of all that is real. And the end will never be in sight!

Nor need we confine our observations on the significance of the expanding self to the physical universe. As the inner life is more successfully explored, spiritual qualities are increasingly perceived, embraced, and experienced: creativity, inventiveness, piety, love, justice, charity, integrity, a moral nature.

We conclude, therefore, that man’s destiny, earthly goals, purposes, aspirations—properly focused—are linked inextricably to a deeper understanding and meaning of expanding selfhood.

And, by the same token, we can infer that any abandonment of selfhood is dehumanizing; it is devolutionary as distinguished from evolutionary; it is collapse!

The collapse has numerous manifestations: strikes; riots; mass hysteria; political chicanery; licentiousness in the name of art, music, poetry; in a word, public bawdiness; in classrooms and pulpits alike the pursuit of excellence is more pardoned than praised. The signs, to say the least, are ominous.

It is, thus, of the utmost importance that we try to pinpoint the cause of this dwindling self-respect for, as I see it, this is the taproot of the deplorable effects we observe.

Abandoned Responsibility

The mere phrasing of the collapse or decline as “the loss of self-respect” comes close to suggesting what the cause really is: a marked removal of responsibility for self. And while the individual who is forced to relinquish responsibility may take comfort in the fact that he did not divest himself voluntarily, the end result—coercively taken or willingly given—is no responsibility for self. Next to life itself, self-responsibility is the most precious possession one can lose, and it matters not how he loses it.

Before discussing the careless and lackadaisical attitude toward self-responsibility, let’s review its importance. For, unless an individual is aware of its deep meaning, he will regard it lightly and will not cling to it as one of the most priceless of all possessions.

Frederic Bastiat sets the stage for my thesis: “We hold from God the gift which includes all others. This gift is life—physical, intellectual, and moral life. But life cannot maintain itself alone. The Creator of life has entrusted us with the responsibility of preserving, developing, and perfecting it. In order that we may accomplish this, He has provided us with a collection of marvelous faculties.”[2]

Marvelous potential faculties would be more to my liking. A faculty is marvelous only when there is some attempt to realize its potentiality. There is nothing marvelous about the faculty of sight if one will not see, or of insight if one lets it lie forever dormant. The “marvelous” quality rises and falls with the development or atrophy of faculties. Put our faculties to use and they develop; neglect to use them and they decline.

Tie the arm to one’s side and it withers; cease exercising the mind for a prolonged period and thinking can no more be recovered than spoiled fruit can regain its freshness. It is use, practice, exercise that gives muscle to the faculties, all faculties—intellectual and spiritual as well as physical.

Observe a person in extreme difficulty—over his head in water or financial problems or whatever. Except in rare instances, hell frantically hope for someone to rescue him. But what happens when no helper is to be found? He finds only himself; he’s on his own responsibility; it’s sink or swim, as we say. And nine times out of ten he’ll work his way out of the mess he’s in. Faculties, if not too far gone, rusty though they may be, will rise to the occasion; creakily they’ll begin to function.

Responsibility for self not only rescues the faculties from nonuse and atrophy but serves to renew, invigorate, and expand them; these faculties are the very essence of self, that is, of one’s life. Further, self-responsibility has no substitute; it is the mainspring of the generative process.

Any individual who intelligently interprets and identifies his highest self-interest—the growth or hatching of faculties—and then clearly perceives the role self-responsibility plays in achieving this objective, must cherish, prize, and cling to its retention. Toward this right of being responsible for self he has a defiant possessiveness; it is among the last of all rights he will permit others to take from him—next to life itself. And the idea of voluntarily transferring one’s self-responsibility to someone else is unthinkable. How could anyone call such a thought his own?

As If Shedding a Burden

But what, actually, is the situation? Millions of citizens are doing all within their power to rid themselves of responsibility for self as if it were a dreaded burden. They implore government to be responsible for their prosperity, their welfare, their security, even their children.[3] They voluntarily drift—nay, militantly march—toward total irresponsibility.

And on the other side of the coin are the governmental power seekers—all too ready to accommodate. Members of the hierarchy who devoutly wish to assume responsibility for the people’s lives and livelihoods—with the people’s money!—are greeted less with resistance than with eager acceptance. Laws are then written to enforce compliance; that is, government forcibly takes the responsibility for problems, as much from those who oppose as from those who applaud the transfer of responsibility.

Together—those who eagerly shed responsibility and those who as avidly assume it for others—they present not only a collapse of self but a landslide to tyranny.

Strikes, riots, and other provocative demonstrations are but the actions of a people bereft of self-respect. These millions are no longer anchored to responsible behavior; they have cast themselves adrift, their trade union or the government or some other “benefactor” assuming the responsibility for their lives. The disciplined behavior required for social felicity, which responsibility for self imposes, is so lacking that they suffer no obvious penalties for their follies. To absolve human beings of this corrective force is to populate the world with people recklessly on the loose; every base emotion released, vent given to the worst in men.

Individuals responsible for self are rarely found in mobs. They concern themselves, rather, with spouses, children, perhaps aged or helpless relatives and friends—others who are less fortunate than themselves. Above all else, they pay attention to an emerging, expanding selfhood. In a word, there’s work to do—no time or even inclination to indulge in actions unrelated thereto.

Look to the Thinking

So, when lamenting the current trends, point the finger of blame where it belongs, at The Establishment, namely, at the preponderant thinking of our day: the mischievous notion that it is the role of government to look after “its people.”[4] Point the finger, also, at the dwindling respect for our most priceless right: the right to look out for ourselves.

Observe that the finger of blame points at the mischievous notion of paternalism and the loss of self-respect—not at discrete individuals. Without question, we make a grave error when we try to shame persons because they espouse ideas which we believe to be false. One can take no credit for this tactic; it is as shallow as, indeed, it is identical to, name-calling. Such personal affronts generate only resentment; under this kind of fire, these human targets of our criticisms rise to their own defense and are thereby hardened in their ways. Utter silence is preferable to this.

We should, instead, work at the impersonal level, which means coming to grips with the ideas at issue. All of us share in common a feeling of gratitude toward those who keep us from making fools of ourselves. That it’s the function of government to look out for “its people” is no more valid than the ancient belief that the earth is flat. Were we adequately to work at the intellectual level, the former notion would no more be upheld than the latter, and for the same reason: its invalidity!

It is clear that expanding selfhood is possible only in a state of freedom. And it is equally clear that freedom is out of the question among an irresponsible people, seemingly a vicious circle. Yet, this circle can be broken, the collapse ended, and a reversal begun by little more than a recognition that self-responsibility is the master key. Man then may see that his earthly purpose is not to be a ward of the government but his own man, under God—self-respecting and self-responsible.

[1] Carl Gustav Jung, The Undiscovered Self (New York: New American Library, a Mentor Book, 1958).

[2] Frederic Bastiat, The Law [1850] (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1950), p. 5.

[3] The child is but the extension of parental responsibility. So far as responsibility is concerned, parent and child begin as one and the same. Ideally, parental responsibility is relinquished as the offspring acquires responsibility for self; self-responsibility thus suffers no loss. But, to an alarming extent, this proper transition is ignored. Instead, the responsibility for children—education, for instance—is more and more turned over to government, an apparatus incapable of transferring the responsibility it has assumed to the child. It is this parental irresponsibility which accounts, in no small measure, for the juvenile delinquency we observe all about us.

[4] Many of the persons who deplore riots are those who support one or another Federal handout—free lunches, Medicare, subsidies, the Gateway Arch, you name it—little realizing that their type of action set the riots in motion.

4

Finding Words for Common Sense

Fortunate, indeed, is the person who has learned to “say what he means and to mean what he says.” While meaning what you say is within the reach of anyone who can master integrity, saying what you mean is never fully realized. The reason is simple: saying implies communicating and that puts as much burden on what is perceived by the listener as on what is said by the speaker. And the breach is widened between writers and readers if they be strangers, particularly when the message is in the realm of abstract thought.

Small wonder that it takes a great deal of word-searching to communicate effectively on such an abstract subject as political economy; the freedom thesis is like a foreign language to most persons!

Summer Seminars at FEE emphasize not only the problem you and I face but also suggest how “wordy” the solution is. Numerous teachers, for instance, though fully acquainted with the written words in our publications, remain highly skeptical of the ideas. But they enroll, nonetheless; that is, they dare to expose themselves to FEE’s “far out” rationale. And then, after listening to a few of the lectures—the spoken word—and gaining a better idea of what we really mean, the skepticism vanishes; a deep interest takes place; they become devotees of liberty.

Words! Words! Words! “Far out” is illustrative. Why is FEE so often categorized in this manner? What an unfaithful caricature that is! The illusion has its origin in what we teach: the free market, private ownership, willing exchange, limited government way of life, with its moral and spiritual antecedents. This philosophy seems “far out” only because it is at odds with prevailing popular sentiments which, preponderantly, are socialistic. Should there be a reversal of prevailing sentiments, then socialism would be called “far out”—that is, were words to remain at this noncommunicative and confusing level.

Yes, indeed, the teachers and students of liberty—each of us should be both—are faced with a word problem: the language of liberty is strange to ears long attuned to the notions, clichés, plausibilities of statism, interventionism, socialism. To most people, it’s almost akin to speaking in a foreign land without knowing the tongue; to listeners or readers, “it’s all Greek.”

Assuming—as we do—that the ways of freedom make sense, ours then is the task of finding words for common sense. And I am unaware of any term that better illustrates our dilemma than “the free market.” We have one concept in mind, but frequently a different idea comes through to the reader or hearer. The image that “free market” conjures up is rarely a faithful reproduction of the intention.

Only Free in Part

The free market—as we use the term—has only been approximated, never realized. Thus, to understand our meaning, those aspects of the economy which have never been free must be imagined as free. And here is where we run into communication troubles: not many people can make the leap to imaginary situations; they can draw only on experience. This explains, in part, why so many take our term, free market, to mean no more than private enterprise, as if the two were one and the same. The failure to make the distinction leads to ideological confusion and educational mischief.

This also explains why we hear such diverse clichés as: “If private enterprise really works, why the great depression?” and “The free market ignores the poor.”[1]

Daily events supply examples of how confusion is created, of how words and terms convey meanings not intended. For instance, as this is written, UPS (United Parcel Service) in the New York Metropolitan Area has been shut down by strike for many weeks. Our argument that mail delivery should be divorced from government and left to free market delivery—free entry, willing exchange, competitive pricing—brings to most readers’ minds such alternative services as UPS. Because UPS is a private enterprise carrier, its type of operation is thought of as the sole alternative to our present socialistic service and, thus, the best that we of the freedom persuasion have to offer as a free market example. Imagine the chaotic situation if there were no mail delivery for weeks on end in the world’s largest commercial and financial center! Turn mail delivery over to the free market? No, thank you! So goes the response to our free market argument, and all because of a confusion over words.

UPS—like most of the private enterprises in the nation—is not precisely what we mean by the free market. Were that enterprise truly free, it would be operating today. A truly free operation shuts down only because there is too little demand for its services to yield a profit, or because some competitor supplies the services better and/or cheaper. UPS shut down only because some anti-free market forces crept into its operation; in that respect, the UPS is an imperfect free market example.

The free market is that which prevails when all exchanges are free of coercion; it is willing exchange only, that is, freedom in transactions.

The Evil Is Aggression

But what, precisely, is coercion? Here, again, is a word that often confuses rather than clarifies. Rarely does it convey to a reader what the writer has in mind. So, to find words to explain what we mean by the free market first requires the words to explain what we mean by coercion, the free market’s antithesis.

The dictionary definition and the common understanding of the word “coercion” does not fully convey what we mean. Generally, coercion is thought of as force, with no distinction as to the kind of force. What we have in mind as the antithesis of the free market is aggressive force which can best be understood by contrasting it with defensive force. Let me be explicit: the forcible taking of life and/or livelihood is aggressive force; fending off the takers of life and/or livelihood is defensive force. Aggression is always an initiated action; defense is exclusively a secondary action, never coming into play except as a life-saving, rights-preserving, peace-keeping action. Aggression is a malignancy, antithetical to free market existence; defensive force, on the other hand—dormant until antagonized—is an ally and the armor of freedom.

When one can imagine a situation in which no aggressive force exists or, if it does, where it is promptly suppressed by defensive force, then one envisions creativity flowing freely and uninhibited from all citizens—the free market! With this ideal in mind, it is easy to observe the countless current practices that exemplify what the free market is not.

Before explaining why UPS and thousands of other enterprises are not precise examples of the free market, a brief clarifying commentary on private enterprise is in order.[2]

Piracy is an enterprise and is definitely private. But observe that piracy’s distinguishing feature is aggressive force. Now, as aggression lessens in any private operation the enterprise moves from the piratical state toward the ideal: the free market. All I wish to emphasize here is that being private is not the feature that controls the position of an enterprise on the piracy-free market spectrum. Aggressive force is the distinctive feature. Any enterprise, be it destructive or constructive, can be and often is private. Thus, the mere fact that an enterprise is privately initiated lends it no special virtue, economic or otherwise.

With the above in mind, it is now relevant to ask by what means was the United Parcel Service brought to an absolute standstill? If this enterprise had been the area’s exclusive mail carrier, how could it have paralyzed the world’s greatest business center?[3] The answer to both questions is clear: aggressive force!

Unions and Coercion

The aggressive force in the UPS situation issues from trade unions. Dissatisfied with the wages or working conditions or whatever, some workers quit—they refuse to perform their alloted tasks—and they forcibly prevent willing workers from continuing! Note that there is no aggressive force in the simple act of quitting, nor should we condemn the practice. The right of anyone to quit his engagement—short of contract violation—is a precious right, a distinguishing feature of free men. Nor can we logically condemn quitting in unison. The deplorable practice of aggression by trade unions occurs at the time and place when force or the threat of force is used to keep others from accepting the positions union members have vacated.[4] This is the aggressive force that shut down UPS.

A trade union is an enterprise of sorts and it is just as private as a corporation. Each is an authorization by government; each is a legal entity. The primary distinction between these two types of private enterprise is that government improperly authorizes and encourages trade unions to use aggressive force and, quite properly, denies its use by corporations.

One should bear in mind, of course, that the existence of trade unions depends on the pre-existence of entrepreneurs; there would be no industrial unions were it not for those who organize capital, management, and production, who seek and find markets, and who discover ways to cut costs. Yet, in spite of the fact that trade unions take root only in entrepreneurial arrangements—draw their life from them—it is the union as such that initiates the aggression and forces others to comply. They can, and often do, force their way into and become an integral part of the entrepreneurial structure. They can, and often do, demand corporate obedience as related to wages and working conditions. The penalty they are allowed to impose for disobedience is closure of the business—even permanently. Their message is: Do as we say, or else!

Theoretically and legally, a business and its trade unions are separate entities. But the over-all effect, once an alliance between the two is formed—willingly or unwillingly—is an organizational oneness. The managerial function merges; on occasion it is even difficult to tell who is working for whom. And because trade unions introduce aggressive force into the alliance, the business entity, be it UPS, GE, GM, AT&T, or any one of thousands, cannot be classified as strictly free market. Private enterprise, yes; but free market, rarely!

My point is that these corporate instances of private enterprise may or may not accurately exemplify the free market. Indeed, where the aggressive forces are dominant, private enterprises may be as far from free market in their operation as is the TVA or the Post Office!

Perverting the Law

The free market can properly function only as aggressive force is diminished. Government, theoretically at least, is society’s agency of defense, its role being to rid society of aggressive force in its numerous manifestations: fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation. Yet, today, government itself is by far the outstanding practitioner of aggressive force: for instance, the forcible extortion of your income and mine to put men on the moon, to pay workers for not working, farmers for not farming, on and on.

A compelling reason for this reversed role of government—aggression rather than defense—is that countless minorities and localities insist upon special privileges, that is, the gratification of their wishes at the expense of others.[5] This type of gratification is attainable only by aggressive force. While nearly everyone can see the fallacy of this as a way of life when indulged in by others, very few can imagine getting along without their own special privilege. Aggressive force, they concede, is wrong—except in our case; we couldn’t get along without it!

We couldn’t get along without it! Proof that this is a common point of view is evident on every hand, from growers of peanuts to educators of youth. For an example relevant to the free market and its antithesis, aggressive force, reflect again on the trade unions. Most of their 17 million members believe they would be in poverty were aggressive force not allowed in their case. The right to strike denied? No more force or threat of force to keep others from taking jobs they have vacated? Unthinkable! We, of all people, must be allowed this special privilege. So runs the “reasoning.”

Were strikes—not mere quitting—effectively prohibited, aggressive force would disappear in labor relations and in the over-all corporate structure. Services, as well as commodities, would then be on a willing exchange basis—the free market in labor relations!

Some Fallacies About Unions

Again, we must find words that mean what we say—that make common sense—for the idea of a free market in services, as in commodities, has been effectively squelched. If we are to bring the idea back to life, we must first explain and expose the false notions that lend support to trade union power or aggression. Two notions are prominent.

The first common fallacy is that labor and commodities are economically different and, thus, must not be treated identically. Yes, let a bushel of potatoes find its price on a free and unfettered market; that’s all right. But labor find its wage in such a market? Never! Yet, there is no difference in principle between the pricing of goods and the pricing of services. The potato grower’s labor goes to market in the potatoes he raises. The worker’s labor goes to market directly. The market is pricing labor in either case. If potatoes should go to market, so should my labor—or yours, whoever you are.

The second fallacy is that wages are at their present high level by reason of trade unions having forced them where they are. The force implicit in strikes—all anti-free market activity—has had nothing whatsoever to do with raising the general wage level. Quite the contrary: to the extent that such activity deters production, to that extent is the effective wage level lower than would otherwise be the case.[6]

A move toward an approximation of the free market is possible only as aggressive force is lessened—in trade unions, government, or wherever. The conditions necessary for a trend in the free market direction are (1) an appreciation that the free market is the ideal toward which our efforts should be pointed, (2) a recognition that aggressive force is always regressive, (3) an ability to identify aggressive force in all of its subtle forms, and (4) the strength of character never to contravene these findings and insights.

No question about it, meeting these conditions is within the realm of possibility, if not probability. Meeting them is as possible and as probable for any individual as are his chances of mastering arithmetic and learning always to tell the truth. And what’s so insurmountable about these challenges!

[1] For answers to these and 74 other clichés, see Clichés of Socialism, (The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.).

[2] As should be clear, this is not a criticism of UPS. My acquaintance with the company is only with its remarkable service which millions of us have enjoyed. Any one of countless private enterprises could as easily be used to illustrate my point.

[3] The dangers inherent in an exclusive (monopolistic) mail carrier can be avoided by adopting the simplest policy conceivable, namely, free entry. In short, let anyone—UPS or whoever—deliver mail. Should any carrier be shut down for whatever reason, have no fear, plenty of others would be seeking the opportunity to fill the vacancy. The present socialistic postal system is a complete monopoly and highly unionized. In addition to socialistic inefficiency, we are forever at the mercy of trade union sufferance. We are always in danger of a nation-wide shut-down!

[4] Compulsory membership in trade unions, a growing practice, is another aggressive action.

[5] See “When Wishes Become Rights,” The Freeman, November, 1964.

[6] This point is a study in itself, that is, it’s the problem of finding ever so many more words for common sense. For a scholarly analysis, see Why Wages Rise by Dr. F. A. Harper (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959).

5

The Cartel Way

Local option closed the saloon in my little village before I was old enough to steal a peek through the swinging doors. But I wasn’t too young to be impressed with a feature common to saloons of that day: the free lunch. Rumor had it that the food was good, and all you could eat. Intriguing to a ravenous youngster!

Of course, the free lunch was purely a business getter. If the customer went home to eat, he might not return for another drink. The profit in drinks exceeded the cost of the food; and that was the economics of the situation.

I was reminded of the free lunch by a recent edict of the Civil Aeronautics Board: no more free drinks on commercial airlines! Another business getter outlawed by government, and a popular ruling at that; a high proportion of airline passengers—and perhaps every last one of the nonpassengers—will exclaim, “Good riddance!” Nor will I argue for free drinks; anyone who can afford to ride first class is able to pay for his own spirits. The real issue, however, is not this minor item but rather the trend it portends. What concern is this of government? Carry such interventionism a few steps further, and I won’t be allowed to buy you a cup of coffee!

The no-drink edict is symptomatic of a trend that frets me, and for good reason. I have been riding airplanes for 50 years—more than two million miles—and have grown up alongside the remarkable development of this industry. Today, it is in a state of perfection beyond my fondest dreams. But, I recall paying a similar tribute to railway passenger service and the “crack trains” of a short while ago. Observing what has happened to the railways by reason of governmental and trade union interventionism and the consequent denial of competitive pricing, I wonder if the same forces are not at work in air transportation![1]

Do you see what I see? Why, for instance, do our privately-owned airlines find themselves competing for business by resorting to such fringe attractions as a free martini? Why has their appeal for passengers been reduced to such advertising sophistry? We hear of “Fan” jets and “Whisper” jets as if these were better than competitors’ engines. One airline features “Yellowbirds” and another spends a fortune on a dozen color variations. We are offered meals aloft by “Club 21” and by “Voisin.” Motion pictures! And stereophonic recordings ranging from “rock” to Beethoven! Airlines compete in how nattily the stewardesses dress and how “mini” their skirts! One airline flies “the friendly skies,” implying that the heavens may be less gracious to the others. A stranger to flying might easily gain the impression that the airlines are competing with each other as night clubs in the sky. What accounts for this shadow competition?

Protection with a Vengeance

The answer is simple: Government does not permit realistic competition; the CAB, not the airlines, governs the pricing of airline services. Unhampered pricing is taboo; without it, competition is essentially meaningless, leaving only trivia as marks of distinction. When freedom to price their own services does not exist, how else can they compete for business except by appeals to inconsequential embellishments? To rephrase one of their punch lines, “Is this any way to run an airline? You bet it isn’t!”

Americans, by and large, have frowned on cartels, these being arrangements where members of an industry get together and fix prices. The intent of the popular but ill-advised Antitrust Laws was anticartel.[2] Only recently, some executives of leading electrical manufacturers were sent to prison for price fixing. In other words, they were condemned for not pricing competitively. Yet, the airline industry, like railroads, is a cartel, pure and simple: free entry is taboo; prices are fixed. Had the airline or railroad owners effected this rigged arrangement themselves, they would be prosecuted as criminals by the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department. But they are absolved of any guilt because, in these two instances, the cartels are of governmental construction.

Parenthetically, I make no claim that the airline owners are opposed to their cartel or that they are anxious for competitive pricing. For all I know, they may like the arrangement; it has a dual attraction: no price competition and no public or governmental disapproval. While most Americans will concede that competition is sound in principle—when applied to others—not many will actually seek it for themselves. Unless one enjoys a contest for fitness’ sake, competition is avoided.

My concern, however, is not so much for the airline owner who finds his industry controlled by the CAB. I am concerned as a passenger, and my concern extends to those who may never fly at all.

What about those persons who choose not to fly? The subsidies granted to all airlines since, say, 1925, add up to some staggering, unestimable figure.[3] Who pays this bill? The taxpayers, as much by those who never fly as by those of us who regularly take to the air. Why should the nonflying Widow Doakes, for instance, subsidize my trips? This is rank injustice, but unavoidable under a government-backed cartel.

As for those of us who prefer to fly, why should we not be offered the full competitive range of services and prices free-market airlines would provide as a means of attracting our business? Introduce free entry along with competitive pricing, and watch their ingenuity out-do even today’s remarkable performance. And assure continuous improvement by removing the coercive forces that have crippled the railroads! Such outstanding performance by free market practices has been demonstrated time after time in all areas where they are not prohibited!

Why not? The reason is plain: once an activity has been under government control, no one can imagine how the problems could be met were it decontrolled. This is the reason why the President’s Commission for postal service improvement does not recommend that mail delivery be turned over to the market, that is, to free entry and competitive pricing. And it explains why there is little likelihood that the airlines will be decartelized.

Unimaginable!

It is true beyond question that no one, however ingenious, can envision how free-market airlines would operate. No one has ever had such foresight—or ever will! But hindsight shows that when an activity is left to the market the miracles happen; examples abound by the tens of thousands. Just look at the record!

For instance, no one, at the turn of the century, foresaw how free entry and competitive pricing would work in the auto industry. What does hindsight reveal? A remarkable selection-of-the-fittest took place; some 1,000 companies tried their hand and fell by the wayside. Those who failed in the competition didn’t like it; but I am looking at our problem from the standpoint of a consumer. How have we consumers fared? Every one of the past three-score years has witnessed a service to us superior to that of the previous year. Today, there are just a few survivors; but from these few we can purchase an enormous variety of autos, any one of which would have confounded the imagination sixty years ago. And, so far as autos are concerned, we feel confident of improvement next year, and the year after. But how confident would we be were that competitive industrial complex merged into a government cartel?

U.S. based airlines are privately owned; most of the world’s major airlines are government owned. Observe how much lower are the operating costs of the private lines.[4] Private ownership, even in the absence of competitive pricing, generates a considerable ingenuity and accounts for the excellence of our airlines.

Except as Men Have Faith

However, we must bear in mind that there is no meaningful ownership except as there is owner control, and that as control by the CAB increases, private ownership of the airlines correspondingly disappears. The CAB’s control is increasing!

This is why the edict, “No more free drinks,” is ominous; it is symbolic of what’s happening: competition, even in trivia, is destined to become less and less. Management of the airlines is slated to pass from the title holders to a government agency, as has the management of the railroads.

Once we grant that the industry is not suited to free entry and competitive pricing, that it is a natural monopoly of the government cartel type, we can expect nothing different for the airlines than has already happened to the railroads. Granting this error, our airlines will, sooner or later, be staffed alike, the workers dressed and paid alike, the meals and movies and drinks served alike, and the planes decorated alike. We need only remember that competition, even in trivia, is not in the lexicon of collectivism; and we might expect that our airlines, like the government owned Air France or Air India, will eventually bear some such name as Air America. Conformity and uniformity, not distinctiveness, is the collective way.

This is assuredly the destiny of our airlines unless, of course, we turn to the one and only alternative: free entry and competitive pricing—even a drink on the house or a free lunch if the competitor so chooses. And this can happen only as more of us than now know for certain that the results will be more remarkable than we can ever imagine.

[1] It is careless talk to assert that the airlines ran the railways out of the passenger business. I can beat any prize fighter if his hands are tied behind his back. Had the railways been free to compete, no telling what miracles they might have wrought. They were given no chance!

[2] As to how ill-advised, see “Do Antitrust Laws Preserve Competition?” by Sylvester Petro, The Freeman, October, 1957.

[3] Subsidies take many forms: government operated airways, weather stations, control towers, mail contracts, to mention a few. Then, there are the airports, the cost of which runs into the billions.

[4] For a comparison, see “Flying Socialism” by Sam H. Husbands, Jr. The Freeman, February, 1965.

6

Faith in the Unimaginable

The case for the free market in transportation, of course, means more private responsibility for the airlines’ operation than presently exists under CAB regulation. It would require private rather than government control, free entry and open competition, including competitive pricing. But, I acknowledge the improbability of any such happy outcome unless “more of us than now know for certain that the results will be more remarkable than we can ever imagine.”

And there you have the libertarian stumbling block, the main reason why we fail to make the case for the miraculous market. In a word, we haven’t yet learned how to spread the good news. One simply cannot “sell” people on something they can’t even imagine. Indeed, selling anything that cannot be conceived is inconceivable!

The inconceivability of the future under the principles of the free market can perhaps be illustrated by a look at the present from some point in the past. Imagine George Washington’s spirit seated beside me as I now write these thoughts. Within arm’s reach are several devices that increase the possibilities of individual achievement—potential aids to human energy. There is an electrically-powered typewriter; a machine that registers dictation on the same belt over and over again, magnetically erasing what was on it before; a microphone wired to an apparatus that records conversations; an instrument that will transmit the human voice around this world of ours at lightning speed.

We have allowed George Washington to peek at what was future to him and is present to us. Astonishing! Incredible! These things were unimaginable in his lifetime. And, granting the free market, the future has to be equally unimaginable to us. Yet, there are only a few who have a calm assurance that the results will be miraculous, that is, more remarkable than anyone can imagine. Without question, the free market rises and falls as this faith, this kind of certainty, comes and goes. Right now, there is too little faith; unless it is increased, even the present remnants of the free market are doomed to extinction. Our problem, then, is how to find or motivate such certainty, such faith in freedom.

Please understand, I am not arguing here that more of these technical miracles is life’s supreme objective. Far from it! These miraculous gadgetries, in the absence of an increasing wisdom and an ever-improving sense of righteousness, may prove to be hindrances to human progress—could even, blow us off the face of the earth! Nuclear giants who are ethical infants will get us nothing but trouble.[1]

The Miraculous Market

Now to the important question: From whence stems the required certainty in free market miracles? It begins with the knowledge that all of these miracles are the outcroppings of individual liberty. Creativity, being of the spiritual realm, is frustrated by coercion. Were it otherwise, I could approach you with a gun and obtain not only your pocketbook but an on-the-spot invention. Preposterous!

Human progress is not guaranteed, and this is true whether we are thinking in terms of spiritual, intellectual, moral, or material progress. We can, however, assure decline. Institutionalize coercion and progress is strangled; freedom in society makes unimaginable progress at least possible.

Translated into market terms, this means free entry or open competition, private ownership and control as distinguished from government control, willing rather than unwilling exchange, and competitive pricing—with government limited to invoking a common justice and keeping the peace. For confirmation, merely observe that the societal situation as here described has never been more nearly approximated than in the U.S.A. from Washington’s day until quite recently. This situation, as distinguished from authoritarian or interventionist arrangements, has accounted for the miracles George Washington might have seen by peeking into his future—our present.

We can imagine bringing George Washington from past to present, but he could never have imagined what there would be for him to witness. Nor can you or I dip into the future. And, obviously, we cannot sell or convey or even hint at that which cannot be imagined. This is why a belief, amounting to certainty, in the miraculous potentialities of the free market cannot be spread by advocacy, by selling, or by importuning.

The free market way of life is not something one person can sell to another! Its rise or fall is not determined by such external influences.

The free market way of life depends entirely upon an internal force: faith—intimately personal and individual. Faith is not spread or even taught; at best, it is caught, by insight and observation. It is, as St. Paul tells us, “the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)

Faith is a quality of variable intensity; it ranges from zero to fickle to deep and abiding. In terms of our problem, I have a faith, deep and certain, in the miracles that will flow from free men and a zero faith in what slaves or coerced mankind can bring to pass!

This abiding faith in freedom explains why I must reject all forms of socialism at a time when socialism is on the increase and gaining in popularity.

It is this faith that accounts for my free market position concerning air transportation.

It is this faith that causes me to say, “Let anyone deliver mail as anyone may deliver drugs or groceries or whatever.” And this is my position precisely at the time when the President’s Commission on Post Office improvement is exploring ways to make socialism work, never daring to entrust mail delivery to the free market. Our different positions are to be explained by our differences in faith.

A Proper Humility

Because faith is so intimate and personal, I can account only for my own—not for theirs, or for yours. So, whence comes my free market faith? It comes from the only kind of knowledge it is not egotistical to claim.

I know I do not know very much! The fact that I can’t even imagine—let alone know—how mail would be delivered or airlines operated if these enterprises were left to free market practices does not shake my faith. My faith rests on the understanding that I cannot know this! On the other hand, persons who lack this understanding are inclined to reject what they cannot conceive; thus, they are without faith in the free market.

I know that if the free market were able to tap only my knowledge and ingenuity—or yours—its potential would be no higher than that of socialism.

I know, however, that the free market taps and brings to our advantage ideas and creativities—flowing and growing—since the dawn of consciousness.[2]

I know how limited is the role of any one of us in any of these miracles: the head of AT&T, for instance, in the transmission of the human voice at lightning speed.

I know I cannot imagine the outcome.

I know my faith in this over-all wisdom is warranted; I can affirm it by simply comparing the present with the past—a truth-revealing and rewarding exercise.

Finally, the prospects are brightened rather than dimmed by the fact that this faith cannot be sold or taught—can only at best be caught. If the faith is well-grounded, deep and abiding, strong enough in any individual, it radiates; it communicates by its force of attraction, that is, others gain an apprehension of it by being drawn to it. We do not know nor need we concern ourselves over who will “catch” this faith. Our sole responsibility is to be good and faithful carriers; the contagion will take the message from there!

[1] The sputnik is one of many technical miracles. Unless one is extremely skeptical and discerning, it may lead to a false idea as to what the organized force of government can do for human advancement. Such things as sputniks are the consequence of a coercive force applied to free, volitional, intuitive, inventive forces, swerving them away from freely chosen goals and toward authoritarian ends. Applying coercion to creativity must result in such grotesqueries as the sputnik. Why is this true? As Emerson put it, “Cause and effect cannot be severed.” Coercion (evil) cannot result in good, for the end pre-exists in the means. For instance, had the release of atomic energy awaited human needs, the result would have been a boon to mankind instead of a bomb.

[2] For a considerable development of this thesis, see the chapter, “The Miraculous Market,” in my The Free Market and Its Enemy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965).

7

Consider the Alternative

Why not try freedom? The alternative question is, Why not give in to dictatorship? Society-wise, the trend is always toward one of these alternatives, and the direction of this societal drift is determined by the choices, the preferences, of individuals. True, one decision may carry more weight than another; one person’s action may matter more than another’s; but the choice, the act of deciding, is an individual act—no exception!

Consideration of alternatives may help to highlight the blessing of freedom and expose the fraud of authoritarianism. There are countless ways to make the explanation, of course, but experience reveals that none of those we’ve tried so far is sufficient. A particular explanation may be heard by a few; and so it is with every set of reasons, however brief or expanded: a few may listen and understand. I mention this only because the problem is as much yours as mine. To expect a single, sure-fire explanation of the case for freedom is to ask the impossible, and it leads to discouragement. So, this “alternative” approach is simply another attempt to communicate on the wonderful theme of freedom, to find words for common sense.

Selecting among alternatives is sometimes referred to as decision-making. But, by whatever name, reflect on how it accounts for where we are and what we are. Why, for instance, one’s present abode? Why not some other place? Why isn’t one’s position other than it is? Or one’s spouse some other person? Or one’s friends an entirely different set?

Regardless of the question posed, the answer—if one lives in an open society—is largely the result of a choice he has made, wisely or unwisely. Where or who or what I am largely depends on the alternatives I have chosen.

The lifetime of any normal, adult individual encompasses literally millions of such choices; they range all the way from decisions as spontaneous as the conditioned reflexes—unconscious, perhaps instinctive—to long and carefully deliberated choices. I took this street instead of that and met a man who changed my life. I accepted one job instead of another and was introduced to a girl who became my wife. Rather than striking back, I turned the other cheek and won a friend. I chose the ditch as the alternative to a head-on. And here I am for whatever I am, all by reason of choosing this, rather than that alternative.

The initial point to be emphasized is that the choosing of alternatives is intimately and exclusively personal. Even when I say, “I leave it to you,” that choice is mine. Nor does the length of time I may consult and deliberate before acting render a decision any the less mine than if I had acted instantaneously. Ditching to avoid a head-on crash is strictly the driver’s choice; there is no intervention unless, of course, another grabs the wheel—in which case the other becomes the driver. The very idea of choice implies the right or privilege of choosing freely—on one’s own responsibility—whether done quickly or slowly.

The extent of one’s freedom to choose vitally influences the person he is to become. Decision-making is undeniably man-making! Precious, indeed, is the freedom to choose.

Some Things Beyond Our Control

There are various determining factors that are not a matter of personal choice; and a man’s life is not self-made to the extent that such factors prevail.

For instance, the child does not choose his parents, the hereditary factor. And heredity, in some measure, accounts for the uniqueness of the individual. But isn’t it amazing how much some persons are able to do with the little they inherit and how little others appear to accomplish with all that graces their birth? That difference hinges on the alternatives each chooses, when he is free to choose.

Nor do we choose the society into which we are born, the environmental factor. Think of the millions in China or India whose choices are curbed by the limitations poverty imposes; the opportunities from which they may select are severely restricted, in contrast to our own. As a consequence, individual development is stunted in these stricken lands.

Or consider the politically foreshortened alternatives open to the millions in Russia who are the victims of authoritarianism. Freedom to choose is largely denied. A Russian does not choose this or that school, or job, or wage, or the length of work week. How can he choose the style and make of an automobile when the few available are identical? He has only minor choices as to the crops or stock he raises, nor can he travel here or there at will. The alternatives open to his choice have been grievously closed to him.

The life of the individual in Russia is far from his own; most of the alternatives open to you and me do not exist for him; decision-making is pretty much reserved to the political dictatorship. The Russian may do as he is told, or face the wrath of the dictator. But what kind of a choice is that! The emphasis there is not on self-made men but on carbon copies, as if the pattern already had been perfected!

Our concern is for freedom. In the light of the foregoing observations, we may conclude that freedom grows in terms of the number of alternatives open to personal choice. And we may judge that a new proposal advances freedom if it opens additional alternatives for choice. Such choosing is the essence of freedom. All social programs and activities may be thus tested, however sponsored or initiated. A minimum wage law, for example, reduces an employer’s alternatives to hire, and eliminates entirely the alternative of paid labor for many individuals; the only choice remaining to them is whether or not to go on relief. The billions spent to put men on the moon, or to erect the Gateway Arch, or whatever, subtract from the fruits of our own labor and, thus, diminish the alternatives otherwise open to us. Consider how freedom of choice is affected by compulsory membership in labor unions and by strikes! It is easy to classify any move or measure as antifreedom whenever it removes alternatives.[1]

A Precious Opportunity

I am reminded here of a line from Cyrano de Bergerac:

I tell you

There comes one moment, once—and God help those

Who pass that moment by!

There is a moment for each choice, be it a split-second decision or the more deliberate one involved in choosing one’s occupation. There is always the right moment. But consider to whom that moment belongs, with whom it has exclusive identification, and who, alone among all who live, can act upon it or pass it by. That moment is as private and self-possessed as a thought. The outcome of that moment is determined in the deep recesses of the individual mind as it fails or succeeds in assessing, receiving, reacting, thinking, intuiting, reasoning. Each individual chooses, and how he chooses determines the unique individual that he is—unique in the sense that there are not nor can there be any duplications on the face of the earth. Every human being, in freedom, can proclaim with equal validity, whether he acts on a dozen or a million decisions, “This choice is mine, all mine!”

What counts, above all else, are the alternatives at one’s disposal; and the freedom of choice that prevails in this regard is the alternative to authoritarianism. The distinction between the blessing of freedom and the fraud of dictatorship, from this perspective, boils down to an enlargement versus a constriction of the alternatives from which the individual may choose.

[1] There are alternatives, of course, that should not be open to anyone: to steal, kill, do injury to others, and the like. The principled function of government is to codify these destructive, antifreedom alternatives and to curb offenders.

8

Social Reformers as Keepers of the Peace

Three city blocks were systematically burned to the ground as hundreds of the local police stood by and viewed the violence. They were obeying orders not to harm the arsonists. The National Guard was called, adding more armed watchers. A passive gendarmerie consorting with open rebellion has rarely been seen in American history, until recently.

Except for variation in detail and numbers, this sort of thing is happening today on college campuses, in the streets, on the farms, in places of business, in the nation’s capital.

And if we turn to France, we see the same breakdown:

After almost four weeks of often bloody turmoil in the streets, the factories and even the placid rolling fields of rural France, this was the picture:

Ten million striking workers. Hundreds of thousands of striking students occupying their universities. Thousands of farmers on the march in the rural provinces. Public transport at a virtual standstill.

Young doctors taking over the seat of the National Medical Association for 48 hours. Young architects and young lawyers rebelling against the officers of their professional organizations. Actors occupying the theaters. Policemen warning the Government not to pit them against the workers.[1] (Italics mine)

Pinpointing the Problem

These increasing depredations, here as well as abroad, pose the question: Have we of the “free world” lost the art of keeping the peace and, if so, why? What really lies at the root of this rampaging violence? Obviously, it is not the colored problem, for all shades and hues are among the rioters. Nor is it a religious affair; the varying creeds are as widely represented in the mobs as are atheists. No nationality problem is identifiable. Can it be economic? Hardly! The offspring of wealthy families go berserk along with those incapable of earning the legal minimum wage.

What then? Where lies this fault? A good part of the blame rests upon the electorate which has put social reformers into Federal, state, and local government office.

Keeping the peace is the highly specialized task of government, and social reformers are peculiarly unqualified to perform this function; they are agitators, not peacemakers. When it comes to keeping the peace, social reformers are misfits—deplorable failures!

With some notable exceptions, we are electing reformers to city councils, state legislatures, the Congress, and to top administrative posts. This being the case, is it any wonder that the rioters go unrestrained? The mobsters are among the clients of these agitators for change. This explains why, every now and then, policemen are observed helping mobsters carry off their loot; they are acting sometimes under direct orders and all too often in a manner consistent with the avowed policies of the social reformers.

Consider the Promises

Now, how can we tell whether a candidate for public office is a social reformer? By simply listening to his platform, the things he intends to do if elected.

If a candidate so much as mentions what he is going to do for some group or class or minority or locality with other people’s money, that is, if he proposes to feather the nests of some at the expense of others, he must be classified as a social reformer, and an unprincipled one, at that. These reformers promise to do good things, not voluntarily with the fruits of their own labor, but through the use of coercion; they rely on the force of government to achieve their ends; they coercively expropriate the fruits of your labor and mine to do their “good.”

Let me be explicit: I am not pointing the finger of blame at these politically-oriented reformers who would apply coercion. They are exceedingly honest with the voters; they eloquently boast of what they intend to do. They compete, after a fashion, to decide which of them can do the most for us with our money! They surely deserve applause for their honesty. Naive voters, taken in by this nonsense, are the ones at fault, They are fascinated by the prospects of “social gains”—and greatly disappointed when those who promise such gains fail to keep the peace!

Prevailing sentiment to the contrary notwithstanding, I insist that America politically is off course! There remains only a vestige of the idea that the role of government is to keep the peace; in its stead is the notion that the force implicit in government is to implement social reform. Thus, the political debates are less concerned with keeping the peace than disturbing it; the argument is over the best way to use coercion to redistribute earnings and savings acquired peacefully through production and exchange. So long as this redistributionist sentiment prevails, social reformers will vie with each other to accommodate the sentiment. We are not likely, under these conditions, to find individuals vying with each other to keep the peace; until there is a popular call for peacemakers they will remain in obscurity.

Any change for the better must originate in the minds of voters as a more realistic appreciation of the essence of government. To know the nature of government is the first step in knowing what not to ask of it.

Backed by Force

The essential characteristic of government is organized force![2] Use yourself to test the truth of this assertion: The distinction between you as an agent of government and you as a private citizen is that, as an agent of government, you are backed by a constabulary. When you issue an edict, backed by force, I tend to obey.

Subtract this instrument of force, the constabulary, and you resume private citizenship. You issue an edict and it has no more effect on me than a chamber of commerce resolution; I do as I please.

Reflect on what organized force can do. It can inhibit, prohibit, penalize, restrain, suppress.

Organized force cannot be an agency for creativity. Creativity is spiritual: discovery, invention, intuition, inquisitiveness, insight.

With these points in mind, we can logically deduce the proper role of government by merely asking: What in good conscience should be prohibited, penalized, suppressed? The answer has been given in the moral codes: the destructive actions of men such as violence, fraud, predation, misrepresentation—thou shalt not steal, thou shalt not kill, and the like. Limit government to this policing function, for here is its principled role. The balance of the message comes just as clearly: never use force to achieve a creative end, be it housing, power and light, education, medicine, welfare, security, prosperity, charity. Leave these desirable achievements to the creativity which can flourish among men only when they are free!

Were government limited to its principled role, as opposed to the statist or social-reformer concept, officials at all levels would concern themselves with the codification of the thou-shalt-nots and their enforcement. Common justice—everyone equal before the law as before God—would be their hallmark. We, the voters, would judge candidates on their sense of justice, on their ability to maintain a fair field and no favor, on their competence at writing prohibitive law, and on their skills in keeping peace and order.

What would these campaigners have to say? I am certain of only one thing: the speeches would bear little resemblance to what candidates are promising today. As to what precisely they would say, I do not know.

For keeping the peace is a highly technical matter requiring a wisdom and kinds of skills I do not possess.[3] And having heard a very few such speeches, I have no specific techniques to pass on.

Improving the Audience

Men with the potential statesmanship so sorely required are unquestionably among us. They will be drawn from obscurity—rise to the top as spokesmen—when an audience exists, and not before. And this audience can be defined as numerous persons who understand the difference between a government of social reformers and a government to keep peace and order—with a strong preference for the latter. The change must come first in the audience—in you and me. We shall hear answers to our hopes and prayers when we know what to ask for.

Finally, let us beware of the vigilance committee form of government. As law and order break down, private groups may try to keep the peace. For instance, there were the students who chased the rioters off their campus! These cases of determination and courage—on the increase—tend to excite our admiration. Yet, anarchy is born when citizens “take the law into their own hands.” The end of this road is the big, strong man.

There is no place for social reformers in governmental posts, for these positions endow them with coercive power which they mistakenly use to achieve their “reforms.” Reform, to be meaningful, is a volitional turn for the better to which coercion is obviously antagonistic.

We need to bring from obscurity the potential statesmen who can keep the peace. To effect such change requires little more of us—the people—than a reasonable sense of justice and a knowledge of what government should and should not do.

[1] See Henry Tanner, “Turmoil in France,” New York Times, May 26, 1968.

[2] “Government, in its last analysis, is organized force.” Woodrow Wilson, The State (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1900), p. 572.

[3] Just as an example, where is the man with the wisdom and skill—the know-how—to assure an honest medium of exchange? Maintaining justice as related to money is so complex that most candidates ignore the matter. Indeed, few of them would recognize an expert should one appear. The current emphasis is away from this required expertise.

9

Rising Above Mediocrity

We will all agree that there have been periods in history darker than our own.

But few devotees of liberty will agree that there was as much wrong in the world, say three or four generations ago, as today. It doesn’t seem that there could have been! This raises the first question. Why?

My grandfather knew what went on under his nose—and little else. The wrongs and woes he observed were only those in his little orbit and these were few and minor. If some poor soul were hungry, the problems were dealt with personally by feeding him. Grandfather saw but few instances of theft or other threats to life and livelihood, nor did he and his neighbors make much fuss in dealing with such offenses. Their world—the one they viewed—was microcosmic and, as such, was not beyond their powers to manage. The wrongs and woes, and blessings as well, were more or less comprehended by their limited mentalities.

Our mental abilities are not to be distinguished from theirs, but the wrongs and woes coming within our vision are without limit. Radio, TV, and other public media report to us daily about all of the ills on earth, many of which are grossly exaggerated; squabbles among primitives thousands of miles away, riots and poverty situations in any of the states, are as intimately familiar to us as was the report of the chicken thief who wronged grandfathers next-door neighbor. The technological explosion in communication and transportation has opened our window not just into our own back yard but to cover the world. We see everybody’s problems. As a consequence, most of us, instead of alleviating, are aggravating the wrongs and woes we’d like to remedy. This poses the second question. Why?

Always Anxious to Help

No less in our case than in grandfather’s, we react to wrongs and woes—nearby or far off—with, “I must do something!” For our compassion, be it noted, remains on a level with that of our recent ancestors, as does our limited capabilities to right the wrongs and relieve the woes. As to sensitivities and mentalities, no historian will ever be able to tell the difference.

Grandfather, however, reacting to the little he perceived, could and did rely upon his own efforts governed by his moral scruples. No problem! But we? No such solution is open to us for these far-out problems; we don’t have access to them and, thus, their handling is beyond our personal capacity. What, for instance, can I personally do about quarrels in Indonesia, riots in Watts, poverty in ghettos, foreigners running our steelmakers out of business, collapse of the British pound, the hopes for higher prices on the part of some and lower prices on the part of others, wages too low and too high, and so on? My compassion bumps head-on into my limited ability. What, pray tell, can I do?

A prepackaged answer is waiting for me. Swarms of social reformers in government not only express a willingness to cope with these countless wrongs and woes, they actually plead with me to let them shoulder the burdens of my distressed brothers. And unless I am aware of the dreadful consequences, I will salve my conscience by giving them the go-ahead. What are the consequences? This is the third question. My answer falls into three parts.

We Can’t Afford It

First, the price we are compelled to pay, once we resort to the reformers legerdemain, will be more than we can bear. They rely on inflation as a means of financing their shallow schemes which, in turn, must destroy our economy. My explanation of this point, demonstrated over and over again throughout history, is in another book.[1]

Second, mediocrity will be institutionalized. What we should recognize about the social reformers is that their mentalities and capabilities are not above our own. Indeed, the fact that they aren’t even aware of their limitations suggests that they be graded below the rest of us. Nevertheless, there they are with these far-out problems on their hands, no one of them knowing any more about how to solve them than do you or I.

So, what is the social reformers typical move? Almost without exception, he appoints a committee! And this gives him the same satisfaction of having accomplished something as we felt originally in turning the wrongs and woes of mankind over to him. We salved our consciences by nothing more than a gesture, and the social reformers, by another gesture, salve theirs. And all is joy in the sense that ignorance is bliss. Yet, we and they together have only built monuments to our ignorance, that is, institutionalized our collective mediocrity. The error is compounded by our apparent satisfaction at thus having solved everything so easily.

Solved everything? Merely observe that we, after turning the wrongs and woes over to social reformers, retire from the field. So far as we are concerned, that’s that! And then observe that the social reformers, after appointing a committee, also retire from the field. So far as they are concerned, that’s that!

A committee? What is it like? It’s nothing but another set of persons as limited in capabilities as you or I or the social reformers. And what is committee procedure? The members construct a montage of their views, a blending of the same nonknowledge possessed by the rest of us. Indeed, typically, a committee report is even worse: it’s only that portion of the nonknowledge which a majority of the members will agree to proclaim in concert; it’s nonknowledge “watered down.” And when the members of a committee have issued their proclamation they, also, retire from the field. So far as they are concerned, that’s that![2]

Third, salving our consciences in this easy and wholly irresponsible manner blinds us to reality; we have no eye for such solutions as lie within our power. When we pursue the impossible, we lose all sight of the possible.

In summary, destructive inflation, institutionalized mediocrity, and blindness to sound alternatives are the dreadful consequences of attempting to cope with far-out problems. How, then, are the wrongs and woes of mankind to be solved? This is my final question.

Minding One’s Own Business

The first step is to recognize that not all of the wrongs and woes of mankind are my problems. Nor yours! For anyone—social reformer or whoever—to assume otherwise is to claim a self-divinity: the welfare of humanity is my responsibility! Let’s be realistic about this: a riot on the Berkeley Campus is no more my problem than is a spat between you and your spouse, or an intergalactic explosion! My problems are those potentially within my reach, the ones I can solve by personal practice—and no others![3]

While I cannot help bemoaning the far-out wrongs and woes of mankind with which I am daily confronted, I must, to be sensible, mind my own business, tend to my own knitting, labor in my own vineyard, not someone else’s. Grandfather wasn’t aware of all these problems; I am. But such awareness hasn’t upgraded my competence to cope with such problems; it has only tempted me to do so, a temptation to which I must never yield. Attending well to my problem, you to yours, and others to theirs, prescribes the formula for solving the world’s wrongs and woes.

Should this mind-your-own business formula seem too hopeless, merely bear in mind the amazing extent to which most of the wrongs and woes will right themselves if not disturbed by outside intervention. Righteousness has a built-in buoyancy—a tendency to prevail—whereas evil, when left to itself, tends to disintegrate; it is self-destructive. When I try to set others straight, correcting what I believe to be their errant ways, they rise to their own defense, rationalize what they have been doing and, thus, come to believe their wrongs are right. My intervention provides the tension that upholds their ways and, finally, hardens them in their sins.

When we confine ourselves to our own upgrading and try to solve problems that are within our scope and orbit, we present an exemplary image—become givers of light. And by this light may wrongdoers see their errors. To confront and accuse another of wrongdoing is to overshadow him, cut off any light he might otherwise have received. This only delays or precludes the corrective action that the wrongdoer himself must undertake when he comes to see the self-destructive nature of his evil ways.

When each of us focuses on far-out problems—those we cannot handle—the wrongs and woes of society multiply; instead of solving problems, we institutionalize mediocrity. But when each of us tackles the problems that are within his capabilities, problem solving occurs efficiently in our respective areas of responsibility. In this manner we rise above our mediocrity and pave the way not only to our own but to society’s excellence.

[1] See the chapter, “The American Setting: Past and Present,” in my Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

[2] For a more thorough critique of committee procedure, see “On That Day Began Lies,” The Freeman, April, 1956.

[3] In saying “no others,” I am referring to positive as distinguished from negative actions. All of us, of course, must play our part in codifying what shall be prohibited: fraud, violence, and the like—the role of society’s agency of defense.

10

Faulty Correlations

When a child puts his finger on a hot stove, he suffers pain. He discovers the relationship or correlation between heat and pain, and thus learns not to repeat the performance; he is instructed in what not to do. Later in life, perhaps, he may discover that kindness elicits a like response from others; thus, he is instructed in what to do.

Correct correlations accurately relate cause and effect, and their importance cannot be overestimated; indeed, they are too numerous for us to count the ways they govern our lives. Understanding the correlations between two sets of data is necessary for survival, and also for individual growth and emergence; further, this is the method of science and the means to much of our technological progress.

Faulty correlations, on the other hand, are the source of untold mischief, and they are especially numerous in the fields of economics, political economy, sociology. The reason, I suspect, is that these disciplines are but slightly more amenable to the scientific method than are morality and religion.[1] Societal shifts are, at best, nebulous; and nebulosity is not in the lexicon of science.

Societal shifts, trends, movements are rarely as sudden as changes in women’s styles, for instance. An upswing in enlightenment or a downswing toward decadence, a movement toward liberty or toward its opposite in the form of the all-out state, civilizations flowering or dying on the vine, moral scruples gaining or losing, a trend toward statesmanship or toward demagoguery, prosperity building or waning, goods and services in free exchange or under restriction, and a thousand and one other shifts take years, often decades, sometimes centuries. In a word, these great social trends are all in slow motion, so slow sometimes that little motion can be detected over the entire life span of an individual. And it may happen that two or more of these vast movements occur more or less simultaneously—seemingly side by side—in which case it may be tempting to conclude that one is the cause of the other. Such a conclusion may be the source of a faulty and mischievous correlation.

To illustrate: For several decades, our government has been on an ever-increasing spending spree. And during the same period the typical American has been accurately proclaiming, “I’ve never had it so good.” There is a seeming correspondence between these two sets of data, leading a majority of our citizens to conclude that the spending is the cause of their prosperity.

As Seen in Perspective

The falsity of such a correlation might be apparent were we able to take these two trends from the year 1930 to, say, the year 2000 and, as in time-lapse photography, speed them up for a quick appraisal. If I am correct in assuming that a destruction of the medium of exchange, which excessive Federal spending induces, makes a highly specialized economy unworkable, we would observe the spending in a forward movement and prosperity for the general population in reverse. This is what we would see right before our eyes, granting, of course, no correction of the ever-increasing spending spree. In that view, we would be less likely to attribute our prosperity to excessive spending. If we could time-lapse societal trends, false correlations would not be so numerous.[2]

But I have in mind for this chapter an analysis of another faulty correlation, one that tricks some of our better minds into believing that the good society has a correspondence with mere organization, that the latter is the cause of the former. This error causes many of our potentially best thinkers to concentrate fruitlessly on organizational gadgetry as a means to social felicity. It isn’t that good organization is unimportant; but unless its possibilities and its limitations are known, we will be looking in a wrong direction for measures to correct social problems.

Beginning roughly 150 years ago, people the world over observed in America something most unusual. For the first time in history, every individual, regardless of station or status, was his own man.[3] Each could employ himself as he saw fit, each retain the fruits of his own labor, each decide his form of worship; in a word, freedom of choice in all aspects of life was as open to one as to another. Foreigners heard of an explosive creativity and an unprecedented prosperity—a new world in which the lowliest laborer might rise to an affluence greater than that of lords and dukes!

The upshot? There began the greatest migration to a single country ever known. And something more: curious individuals, such as Alexis de Tocqueville, as well as governmental commissions from many nations, came here to discover the magic that had been loosed. If they could find it, they themselves could experience the miracle.

Focus on Organization

What was the message most of them took back to their countries? What was the magic word? It was organization. They focused their eye on the Constitution and the Bill of Rights featuring limitations of governmental authority, separation of powers as between the legislative, judicial, and executive branches, and so on. Simple enough; we shall merely duplicate these political instruments and then we, also, can share in America’s social and economic felicity!

And many nations did just that, patterning their new Constitutions after our own. Indeed, it may be that Argentina’s Constitution was an improvement over ours. But take a look at any Latin American nation today, especially Argentina during the past three decades. Perón! Military juntas! Outrageous inflation! Meatless days in what was the greatest meat-producing country on earth! Ten to twelve million pesos for one of our good autos, well-equipped! Export and import at a virtual standstill! Another veritable Garden of Eden in a state of social and economic chaos! And bear in mind that their Constitution is still there—a scrap of paper, no more!

For further proof that “organization” is not the magic word, we need only consider our own situation, the current state of affairs in the nation that provided the organizational model. I think it is not necessary to document here the nature or extent of our social collapse. That we have not fallen as low as Argentina is only because we began our fall from a higher perch. We need only bear in mind that good organization alone did not bring on our good society, nor did it insure a continuance of it.

The American Constitution was no more than a written record of what the preponderant leadership at the time believed. It was a recording of the thoughts, sentiments, and principles that existed in their minds and that they were capable of practicing. This document merely put their high thoughts into writing. The Constitution did not produce their qualities; it was the other way round: their qualities produced the Constitution. And that’s all a Constitution can ever be; it’s an effect, not a cause. Instead of paying obeisance to our Constitution, we ought to be probing and admiring the thoughts of those who wrote it.

Seen in this light, it becomes clear why other nations gained nothing by copying our Constitution. Copying is useless unless the thinking be up to such a standard. And when our thinking falls below that of our Founding Fathers, our Constitution, like the copies of it in other lands, becomes but a scrap of paper. To expect anything more is like expecting a rogue to change his ways by pinning on him a “good conduct” medal.

Beware of Gadgetry

I am arguing that we should beware of organizational gadgetry. Social remedies are not to be found in writing a new Constitution, by amending the present one, or by adding laws upon laws. We must keep in mind that a good society and good organization are not two different sets of data to be correlated; they are simply two different aspects of the same set of facts.

Of all the foreign investigators who sought an explanation of the American miracle, Alexis de Tocqueville came closer to the right answer than anyone else known to me. At least, he knew that the miracle could not be accounted for by organizational gadgetry:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.[4]

Aflame with righteousness! Of one thing I am certain: there can never be a good society except it be of persons distinguished by righteousness. That this alone is the magic word, I seriously doubt. A passionate striving for intellectual excellence, a will to overcome obstacles, an energetic enthusiasm turned inward to self-improvement, an abounding entrepreneurial spirit would, also, appear to be among the essential attributes. Given all of these, such a people would automatically possess the deep sense of justice and the love and understanding of freedom characteristic of those comprising a good society.[5]

One point ought to be crystal clear: No manner of organizational gadgetry can make a great society out of unworthy people. Further, a nation of great people can suffer considerable imperfection in organization and still have a fair society. The ideal, of course, is a great people in flawless organization.

Limitations and Possibilities

This brings me to the final objective of this chapter: Identify the basic principle of organizational structure and process in a way that makes sense, one that will divest the term of its confusion and, thus, reveal its limitations and possibilities.

Associations, corporations, labor unions, churches, community groupings, or whatever are called organizations. These range all the way from formalized herds to excellent agencies for cooperation in creative effort. Thus, the term organization, in common parlance, is next to meaningless; it has become a useless generalization.

Yet, organizing has become a fetish. When a perplexing problem arises or when driving objectives enter the minds of men, be they worthy or not, the inevitable first response seems to be, “Let’s organize, for in unity there is strength.”[6] But organization, as a panacea, stems from a careless correlation: success is observed to attend certain organized efforts; thus, the mere act of banding together is often thought to be the cause of the success!

Overlooked is the key principle at work, a principle sometimes practiced but rarely formulated clearly enough to be copied. When the principle is not stated, how can others know what accounts for the occasional successes? Not knowing, they credit a mere banding together as the cause and insist, “Let’s organize.”

Practice Precedes Theory

Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk said of man before 1870, “. . . he practiced the doctrine of marginal utility before economic theory discovered it.”[7] Likewise, can it be said today: some persons practice the principle basic to good organization in the absence of a theory to explain it. I believe that the principle can be reduced to a theorem:

Responsibility and authority always in balance—assumed proportionately and/or dispensed commensurately—induce cooperation for creative release.[8]

For a simple explanation: Marriage is an institution—an organization of two persons—but it can never happily endure unless the foregoing principle is observed either instinctively or consciously. For instance, when my wife is chef, I serve as second cook. She is responsible for the dinner and has the authority that goes with it. If she asks me to make the salad, I am delegated the authority that should accompany the responsibility. No matter which of us does the honors, we make it a point never to get the responsibility-authority lines confused. Were we to do so, a short circuit would result with the sparks flying.

My associate, Dr. Paul Poirot, is Managing Editor of our journal, The Freeman. He has been given the responsibility for publishing an enlightening 64 pages each month. He has also been given the authority as to its contents. I expect him to reject or accept an offering of mine as readily as he would a contribution submitted by a stranger.

What could be more appropriate as a societal objective than cooperation for creative release! And if that be the goal, the responsibility-authority principle stands as effectively for complex societal relationships as for the less complicated business affairs of this Foundation or of the two persons involved in a marriage. The principle holds regardless of any increase in numbers; it is as valid for 200 million persons as for forty or for two.

In a large corporation, for instance, the executive is invaluable who can establish a balanced distribution of responsibility and authority throughout his organization. He may be no more aware of the theorem than are his employees; but if this kind of management comes naturally to him, he will induce all the cooperation for creative effort that exists among the corporate personnel. And most onlookers, observing the achievement, will miss the key point; they will make a faulty correlation, assigning credit not to the observation of this principle but to some irrelevant coincidence.

It now seems clear to me why so many onlookers—at home as well as abroad—credited the American miracle to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. They perceived only the frame and not the picture, the form and not the substance, the “Constitution” and not the principle.

I have no evidence that our Founding Fathers were working from any such theorem as set forth here. Yet, they did the job as though sharply aware of it. Reread the Constitution and the Bill of Rights with this thought in mind, and note that these documents employ the words “no” or “not” 46 times in restraint of governmental authority. In the main, they insisted that the authority go with the responsibility, namely, in the hands of the individual.

How are we to account for such practice of a principle that had not yet been formulated? Perhaps this is the explanation: “We live our way into our thinking vastly more than we think our way into our living.”[9]

So long as their way of living prevailed, there was cooperation toward the greatest creative outburst ever known, all of it subject to individual choice. This, of course, is to be distinguished from the current inventive outburst which gratifies authoritarian choices: moon shots, erecting of the Gateway Arch, tabulation of polar bear meanderings, and the like. Indeed, when responsibility and authority are assumed proportionately and/or dispersed commensurately, we note that competition, a natural human trait, results in the highest form of cooperation.[10]

But we must not overlook the fact that when the way of living changed—that is, when responsibility and authority were severed, when authority without responsibility fell more and more into the hands of Caesar—the documents on which the way of living was inscribed possessed no remedial powers. Impotent as yesterday’s newspaper!

Were we to write a new Constitution today, it would resemble the original in only one respect. It would be but a recording of the current way of living and thinking. And were we afterward to upgrade our way of living and thinking, the new Constitution would have no power whatsoever to restore our present waywardness.

So, let us cease trying to remedy the ills of society by a resort to organizational gadgetry: amending the Constitution or inventing new laws to echo prevailing sentiments. Rather, let us look to our sentiments, to our way of living, to our thinking—including a hard look at the responsibility-authority principle. Conceivably, we’ll find a close correlation between the goodness of our thinking and the goodness of our society!

[1] Most of those rated as economists will disagree with me on this point. True, some irrefutable theorems have been formulated but, for the most part, the “top” economists of the world find themselves in as much disagreement as do moralists or clergymen. I happen to believe that the goal of economic and political understanding can be more fruitfully pursued by a resort to what the philosophers call “discursive reasoning” than by a reliance on the scientific method. The relative correspondence between two sets of data is misleading if the data be inaccurate—which is usually the case in societal phenomena.

[2] Reading the signs of major social trends and drawing correct correlations and conclusions often is an exercise in no-man’s land. Keynes had a reply for critics concerned about the long-run consequences of his inflationary policies: “In the long run, we are all dead.” But men die one at a time, in the short run, and in different ways. And at every stage of an inflationary process that eventually will wreck an economy, various individuals are losing their savings, their incentives, their livelihoods, their self-respect, their very lives—by reason of that inflation. It is easy enough to see the cause-and-effect relationship when an elderly couple or a widow dependent on a few dollars of pension or other fixed income is reduced to half a living as dollars lose their purchasing power. Cause-and-effect likewise can readily be traced in the failure of this or that established business as government spending and tax policies politically divert resources to moon shots and other flights of fancy. It is the cumulative effect of these short-run casualties that finally make inflation so disastrous in the long run.

[3] The exception, of course, was Negro slavery, a horrible infraction of the American principle.

[4] This remarkable statement has been attributed to Tocqueville by numerous authors, though I have not been able to find the document in which it appears. If he did not write it, the thought is a logical deduction from his monumental works.

[5] For additional thoughts on this complex and, perhaps, unanswerable question, see the chapter, “What Seek Ye First?” in my Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967), pp. 15–27.

[6] In unity there is also weakness. For example, when thoughtless, irresponsible people band together with a madman in authority, such unity spells their destruction.

[7] Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk, Capital and Interest (South Holland, Ill.: The Libertarian Press, 1959), II, 203–4.

[8] This principle does not apply when the objective is banding together for destructive purposes: mob violence, wars, and the like. Organizational gadgetry—a chain of command—is necessary for everything that is compulsory.

[9] In a letter from Whiting Williams.

[10] For more on competition, see the chapter, “In Harmony with Creation,” in my Accent on the Right (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), pp. 72–84.

See, also, “Is Economic Freedom Possible?” by Dr. Benjamin A. Rogge, The Freeman, April, 1963, and “Competition, Monopoly and the Role of Government,” by Dr. Sylvester Petro, The Freeman, December, 1959.

11

The Myth of the See-It-All

He who is not aware of his ignorance will he only misled by his knowledge.

—Richard Whatley

Referring to numerous problems that beset us, I remarked to the audience, “We need seers but no one has to be a see-it-all.” This brought a chuckle from them and a question to my mind: Had I perhaps stumbled upon a breakthrough term? Repeatedly, in attempts to restore faith in the free market, I have failed to communicate what the obstacle to this faith is; I might as well have spoken in Aramaic.

We are desperately in need of terms which accurately convey our meaning and, hopefully, “see-it-all” might be one.

No human being ever has been or will be, even remotely, a see-it-all. Yet, our thinking is beclouded, frustrated, and often blocked entirely by the unconscious assumption that we are—or ought to be—see-it-alls. We get into our heads that the microscopic bit each of us sees is all there is to see. There may be no greater deterrent to evolving humanity, certainly to the ascendancy of freedom, than this mischievous see-it-all assessment of self. How priceless an explanation that would beat down this notion!

But it is next to impossible for anyone to appreciate fully just how little he apprehends of the world around him. The five senses reveal so very much, it seems, how possibly could there be more?

But reflect on the persons who see a thousand times as much as the ordinary man—those blest with extrasensory perception, those who, like Galileo, can see the truth that the solar system does not revolve around the earth. How possibly could there be more to see than they see?

Yet, a Galileo, Newton, Edison, or an Aristotle, Milton, Shakespeare has only an infinitesimal peek at the world around him. These “giants” might be expected more readily to realize how little they see than the ones who see less. But, too often, they compare themselves with those they judge to be inferior, rather than with the infinity that is barely opening up to them. We must conclude that an expanded perception is not necessarily a remedy for this malady.

I believe that a cure is available, as open to those of us who see less as to those few who see so much more. It depends upon how we look at things, upon exercise and practice in judging how little we see:

Browse around a million-volume library. What is seen are a million book covers, but scarcely an inkling of the enormous knowledge and wisdom therein.

Peer through a powerful microscope at a single blood cell, one of trillions in your body. Its shape and color are seen, but nothing of the essential chores it performs. Nor does the microscope reveal to the eye the trillions of atoms in the cell or their fantastic energy.

Peer through a telescope at a galaxy millions of light years away. Again, you see shape and color but nothing of the mysterious radiations emitted.

Flick on your reading lamp. Now, define electricity!

Make an assessment of your best friend. What goes on within? You can arrive at only superficial conclusions, most of which will be inaccurate.

Make an assessment of your own mind, psyche, soul. Even here, in the one person you could and should know best, you see little more than you see into the phenomenon of life itself!

I have used only five suggested exercises. This way of looking at the world within and without has countless applications. Indeed, I am aware of nothing within my purview—or yours—to which it cannot and should not be applied.

Again, let me emphasize the need to realize how little we see: it is to insure against the easy and more or less natural inclination to think we see it all. For the see-it-all is one who cannot imagine any future happenings except those he can foresee. How can there be any progress except it be set in motion by those stimuli, forces, and events that fall within his purview? Yet, without his knowing it, his purview is infinitesimal. Here, in the see-it-all, we have a powerful obstacle to both faith and progress; implicit in the see-it-all’s attitude is the message that the Hand of Creation is paralyzed. All of history, if read aright, attests to the contrary; history attests that every step ahead has been as if fortuitous. No one foresaw the first great civilization in Sumer, or the glory that came to Athens, or to America. Most things that have taken place in the past, no person foresaw. Most things that will take place in the future are things none of us can foresee.

As Far as He Could See

Let’s apply this theory to our workaday world. Recently, I heard a learned economist brilliantly analyze our country’s politico-economic distortions. Indeed, he dug so deeply into our troubles that neither he nor his listeners could possibly see a way out: “We are sunk; there is no hope!”

His conclusion was as persuasive as it was pessimistic. Why? For one reason and one only: If this skilled, well-trained, and thoughtful economist cannot see a way out, there is no way out! He assumes, without quite realizing it, that he sees all. Otherwise, he would, at the very least, have conceded the possibility that certain events might transpire which his foresight could not possibly reveal to him.

Looking at ourselves realistically, aren’t most of us in the same boat? Ask anyone you meet—businessman or whoever—if mail delivery should be left to the free market. Unless he is one of the few who has gained an awareness of the free market’s miraculous workings, his answer will be negative. Here is how the typical mind works on activities that have been excluded from the free market—where no market demonstration is available:

Now, just exactly how would I go about delivering mail day-in and day-out to a hundred million addresses? H’m! I don’t know. After all, I am not an incompetent person. If I can’t see how to do this, how can any other? No, this complex problem cannot be mastered by the likes of me acting independently, competitively, cooperatively, privately, freely. This is a chore that belongs to government, the agency that can implement its planning by force.

The above “reasoning” will lead to the same conclusion regarding any other activity which has been substantially pre-empted by government: education, water supply, garbage disposal, or whatever.

In Britain, for instance, where telephones, railroads, power and light, steel mills, coal mining, and mail delivery have been nationalized, hardly anyone can see how any of these might thrive by free market operation. Only disaster can be envisioned!

In Russia, where all creative activities—even farming and the theater—have been brought under compulsive procedures, free market possibilities are rarely considered.

I am suggesting the destructiveness of the see-it-all attitude. It leads people down a one-way road to the total state. Bringing more and more activities under state operation progressively blinds people to what freedom has to offer. As the state pursues its monopolization, the free market as a possibility correspondingly diminishes in men’s minds. Finally, utter darkness!

If this were not true, mail delivery in the U.S.A. would be entrusted to the free market.

If this were not true, there would be a denationalization of British industry.

If this were not true, competitive private enterprise would emerge in Russia.

Stretching the Horizon

As for these activities taken over by government, the curtains have already been drawn. The question is, How can the curtains be raised so that free market possibilities can be seen?

The first rational step is a realization on your part and mine that we see no more than an infinitesimal part of the world around us and that our hand in what goes on creatively is on this same minor scale. As a means of awakening, we need only ask ourselves: What has been your or my part in the auto or jet we ride? Or the part an employee of a pencil factory has in a pencil? Neither he nor any man on earth knows how to make one.[1] It is no exaggeration to claim that what goes on around each of us is a trillion times greater than any one of us sees. No one is remotely a see-it-all.

Until we face this humbling fact, we will be blind to a phenomenon of the free market so difficult to grasp that it’s nearly a secret: Creative Wisdom. And, as a consequence of this blindness we have no more faith in the efficacy of free market mail delivery, for instance, than Russians have in the possibility of free market farming or industry or trade of any kind. In other words, in a world of see-it-alls, what possibility could there be for change and progress?

Let me do this point over: Compared to the all, I see next to nothing; likewise everyone else. Now, were everyone a see-it-all, it follows that faith in what can happen is limited to next to nothing. When neither I nor anyone else can see how the free market would deliver mail—no one can—free market mail delivery will never be given a chance, not in a society of see-it-alls. An awareness of Creative Wisdom is an absolute requisite.

Consider the history of Creative Wisdom.

We observe bits of freedom cropping up during the past seven thousand years: Sumer, Athens, Carthage, Rome, Venice, Kiev, Amsterdam, England, America. Considering how little we ascribe to freedom in our own “enlightened” time, it is fair to assume that these flare-ups of freedom came about more as reactions to desperate situations in which people found themselves than as rational designs.[2]

Vainly do we look for any forecast by our forefathers as to what freedom would accomplish—any theory about how or why it would work its wonders! The motivation was other than foresight. Our ancestors were sick of Old World authoritarianism; theirs was a revolt against see-it-alls in power.

Freedom in America had its roots in an overriding conviction founded on an observation of the Old World. The observation: the more the government controls human action, the more tyrannical it is. The conviction: that government is best which governs least. The action: our forefathers delegated to government fewer powers than had ever been done before. The result: freedom!

Our ancestors wanted freedom for freedoms sake. That was enough for them. Each could be his own man. Hang the economic consequences! They were no more aware of the creative outburst that would follow freedom than are most people today—even after the fact!

It appears likely that each flare-up of freedom throughout history—as in America—has been a reaction against governmental tyranny and not the result of any rational design. As each authoritarian arrangement has come to its inevitable dead end—with no bureaucrat knowing what next to do—the victimized people have acted more or less in desperation: “We might as well try freedom.” Freedom has been “a court of last resort,” not a rational prognosis of better things to come.

We should take note of three facts:

First, where freedom has been tried, that is, where free markets, private ownership, willing exchange, and limited government have been practiced, civilizations have flowered: Sumer, Athens, America, and others.

Second, all but our own have eventually leveled off, stalled, and fallen—the British Empire, for instance—before our very eyes.

Third, the declines and falls have been associated with a return of governmental intervention with its contraction of freedom.

While neither I nor anyone else can foresee events that will transpire, it seems to me that America also is in danger of a decline and fall. I only raise the question: Is there anything to save us from the same fate that has befallen others? I think there may be something—something missing in each of the other trials.

Missing then—perhaps still missing—is an awareness of Creative Wisdom as the distinguishing feature or hallmark of freedom. Since we are not see-it-alls, we can hardly hope to understand the phenomenon of freedom and its evolutionary by-product, Creative Wisdom; but awareness is within our reach and may be necessary to our survival.

The American miracle flowered from a degree of freedom unknown at any previous time. Looking backward, the same can be said for the British and Roman Empires, of Athens, Sumer, and the others. Bear in mind that the flowering was an offspring of freedom; then note that as freedom was replaced by government control of life these civilizations underwent a decline and fall. Thus, if I read history aright, we must conclude that freedom is the exclusive condition in which creative human energy forms and flourishes; otherwise, it lies stifled and inactive. Creative Wisdom is the term I give to the phenomenon that flowers only when and where freedom prevails.

Creative Wisdom is an essential to social, moral, and spiritual progress as to material advancement. But the latter may be easier to demonstrate.

Take, for example, this morning’s toast. Reflect on what happened ere it reached the breakfast table: the mining of the ore and making of the tools that prepared the soil, sowed the seed, harvested and threshed the crop, ground it into flour! The bags? How are they made? Then the transporting vehicles; the bakery and its equipment; the toaster and the electricity.

Not only do I not know how to make electricity—I don’t even know what it is—but there is hardly a step in the whole complex process that falls within my ken. My understanding of the production of such a simple thing as a piece of toast is next to nothing, and so is yours, whoever you are. Yet, millions enjoyed toast for breakfast this morning. How come?

Each human being has within him a mite of potential creativity, that is, you or I may, now and then, have an idea, experience insight or intuition, invent or discover something. How little this is, even when we live up to our potential, can be appreciated by reflecting upon our minor role in producing the piece of toast. The part played by any one person is infinitesimal! But this much can be said: each tiny know-how, when and if developed, is different from all others. Variation!

Creative Wisdom

Creative Wisdom is that enormous, over-all wisdom that accounts for the piece of toast, the auto or jet, or whatever—a wisdom that does not exist, even remotely, in any discrete individual. Creative Wisdom begins as an attracting force that draws out and develops such widely varying creative potentialities as are possessed by each of us. Motivation! And then the phenomenal miracle: the coalescence of these trillions of tiny varying know-hows into a workable whole that accounts for the piece of toast or whatever.

We are at a loss to explain precisely how this works, just as we are at a loss to explain the configuration or coalescence of tiny molecules into a tree in one instance or a blade of grass or a flower. We can only note that Creative Wisdom is a product of freedom and not authoritarianism.

But we can gain some insight into this phenomenon by noting that the free market—freedom—has three distinctive features:

1. Private ownership. There is freedom only when one has a right to the fruits of his own labor.

2. Free pricing, that is, exchange on mutually agreeable terms.

3. Nonintervention in the affairs of men other than to defend life and livelihood—to keep the peace.

In my view, private ownership—the right to one’s own—serves as the motivation for bringing out the creative best in the individual.[3]

And the force that ingathers or coalesces these varying “creative bests” into a workable whole is free pricing, that is, free exchange or, as Bastiat phrased it, freedom in transactions. Price beckons the activity of each toward specific endeavors, those goods and services which, in people’s judgment, satisfy their desires and necessities. It is price that beckons creative effort into those activities which lead eventually to what you want for breakfast: a piece of toast.

Were it not for private ownership and the guide of price, that is, were authoritarianism in the driver’s seat, you would get not what you choose for breakfast but what the authoritarian allots to you.

No Superman Needed

Doubtless, one explanation as to why Creative Wisdom flourishes in a free society is that no see-it-all is required. One need not itemize and investigate all the wants of the world’s population—an impossible undertaking—in order to be productively useful to himself and others. Being able to read a price is instruction enough. The free market thus accommodates itself to our limited view of the world around us; it is in tune with reality.

A century ago government had a monopoly of first-class mail delivery and still does. At that time the human voice could be delivered whatever distance two shouters could effectively communicate. Today, government delivers the mail substantially as it did then. The human voice? It is now delivered around this earth in less time than a postman takes to move one step toward a mailbox.

Suppose you had been asked in 1869, “Which venture would you consider easier, delivering mail or the human voice?” To this seemingly idiotic question, you would have responded, “Mail!”

The explanation? Creative Wisdom has been largely excluded from the socialistic activity, whereas it has miraculously flourished in privately owned activities, that is, where the free market has more or less prevailed.

Of course I don’t know how the free market would deliver mail day-in and day-out to a hundred million addresses! Or attend to education! Nor does any other living person! But I don’t have to see how it would be done to know for certain that it would be done better and at lower cost. Conceded, I cannot explain how Creative Wisdom works. But I can be nonetheless certain of its workability, so staggering is the evidence on every hand.

When one frees himself from the see-it-all myth, he will then have faith that many wonderful things can and will transpire, things he cannot foresee. Just so long as they are founded on right principle: freedom to act creatively as one chooses!

[1] See the chapter, “Only God Can Make a Tree—or a Pencil,” in Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

[2] “Modern man prides himself that he has built [his] civilization as if in doing so he had carried out a plan which he had before formed in his mind. The fact is, of course, that if at any point of the past man had mapped out his future on the basis of the then-existing knowledge we would . . . still have brutally to fight each other for our very lives.” Remarks by F. A. Hayek in “What’s Past Is Prologue” (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968).

[3] There is, of course, other than material motivation—psychic profit, for instance. See Chapter X, “What Shall It Profit a Man?” in Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967).

12

The Law Without

Edmund Burke provides the setting for this chapter and the one following:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.[1]

Their passions forge their fetters! The fetters, of course, come in the form of the law without—external government. If their passions be not too great; if they love justice; if they be distinguished by their soundness and sobriety of understanding; if they listen to the counsels of the wise and good; if men possess such qualities of character, then the external government—the law without—will be but helpful, simple, and necessary thou-shalt-nots. But if rapacity rages and appetites are uncontrolled; if vanity be their mark; if they heed the flattery of knaves; if these passions be rampant, the external government will indeed forge their fetters. And the compulsions from without will range from out-and-out anarchy to more or less formal, legalized oppression under a dictatorship. It is important, therefore, that we carefully consider what can and cannot be accomplished by external government, the law without.

Increasingly concerned over riots, brutal assassinations, and other depredations—anarchy in its incipiency—the American public anxiously seeks a remedy for these conspicuous evils. Order in society we must and will have; and history reveals that men will pay a high price—fetters notwithstanding—to ward off uncertainty and chaos.

No doubt about it, there is a popular clamor for law and order. And whenever there is a popular clamor, politicians rush forth with their standard solution: Pass a law! Gun control affords a current case in point. As if the remedy for murder rests on the registration of firearms or a law against their possession! It seems doubtful that any of these proposed laws could be effectively administered. But even if firearms were abolished altogether, to what extent would killings be lessened? Not one whit! A killer has a thousand and one other means at his disposal. Deprive him of one and he will resort to another.

There is already a law against murder, whether by firearms, knives, poisons, strangulation, clubs, or whatever. Severe penalties are prescribed and well known, despite which people still commit murder. This should remind us that the law without has but a limited competence when it comes to controlling—let alone improving—behavior.

The Lesson of Prohibition

There is still a lesson to be learned in this regard from the ill-fated Eighteenth Amendment, that “noble experiment” to right what many people conceived to be another wrong: the drinking of alcohol. So, let us recall what the consequences were. First, drinking increased. Second, the stuff imbibed ranged all the way from lemon, vanilla, and Jamaica extracts, to bay rum, rubbing alcohol, and bathtub gin. I once saw an addict of these lethal liquids gulp down two 3-ounce bottles of spirits of camphor—84 per cent alcohol.

And among the catastrophic results was the shifting of the liquor business from law-abiding, honest producers to law breakers and criminals. Racketeers took over, and the law against murder did not deter them from dealing with aspiring competitors; they shot them down! It was worth one’s life to peddle beer in competition with Al Capone.

But by far the worst consequence of this attempt to legislate morality was the attendant disrespect for all external law. Citizens by the millions—the respectable and law-abiding element until then—ignored this governmental thou-shalt-not. Indeed, countless law-enforcement officers became parties to the law breaking—and were well paid for their pains.[2]

If the law without is to be respected, it must be circumspect—its purpose generally understood and accepted. Whenever statutory law becomes capricious or whenever it goes beyond a people’s sense of reasonableness and justice, it will be ignored. Remember the widespread disregard of price control and rationing under OPA? These unreasonable, unjust, and unenforceable edicts impaired the free market; many “black markets” arose to serve consumers. These unwise edicts made law-breakers out of good citizens.

When people get in the habit of breaking statutory law because the laws are unwise and unjust, that habit carries over into breaking laws that are wise and just. When the high priest is disrespected for some of his ways, he will not be respected for any of his ways; he is suspect in everything. Have a second look at this thought; it may explain, more than is generally supposed, the breakdown of law and order.

It is, thus, of utmost importance that we reflect upon both the potentialities and the limitations of law—the legal framework. To avoid a complete breakdown of law and order—with dictatorship as the inevitable after-math—we must learn to know what the law cannot do as well as what it can do.

We should recognize one impossibility at the outset: the force implicit in government cannot mend moral deficiencies. A society of thieves cannot be made honest by passing an Integrity Act! Consider the futility of a law against covetousness, or against suicide, or sex, or drinking, or dissimulation. But, possibly, we can better understand what the law without cannot do by reflection upon what does lie within its range.

The First Assumption

If any society is a going concern, it is because the vast majority of people wish to do what’s right, reasonable, and just. Otherwise, there is no occasion to discuss these questions, no reason to think about the constitution of liberty, no logic in accepting other than dictatorship. A reasonably righteous people has to be the first assumption.

However, reality cannot be side-stepped: there is in the best of societies a tiny minority whose word is no good, who will lie, cheat, trespass, steal, kill. In short, these few will completely disregard the rights of others; they will try to feather their own nests by whatever low and degraded method comes to mind. Such people lack a moral nature; they have no sense of justice.[3]

Consider the vast majority who at least wish to do what’s right, reasonable, and just. Keep in mind that each is unique; no two think or evaluate alike and, thus, no two have precisely the same concepts of righteousness, reasonableness, and justice. Their ideas differ as to what’s mine and what’s thine. Nor are they agreed on how fast one should drive on this or that street, or on countless other matters important to harmonious living.

People who wish to treat others right need to know what rules to follow and are anxious to have them formulated for all to see and observe. If the rules—the laws—be fair, they will respect them; it is in their interest to do so, for this is their way to escape anarchy with its disorder and chaos.

Limitations of the Law

What, really, is the scope of external law? What are its limitations and potentialities?

The law can codify the thou-shalt-nots and prescribe the penalties for infractions. But the law of itself is incapable of being a guarantee against infractions. Observance of the law rests on how people react to it. The law is effective in the case of those individuals who desire to respect it and of those who fear not to. This is its potentiality. And it is ineffective when the desire dies out and the fear of penalties becomes weaker than the temptation to engage in illegal activities. This is its limitation.

These forces or drives—desire as well as fear—are, in turn, importantly governed by the law’s respectability, that is, by people’s evaluation of its reasonableness and justice. But respectability is a subjective judgment; it cannot be objectively defined; its definition varies as greatly as do individuals in their moral scruples and intellectual discernment. I am only trying to emphasize the point that law and order in a society rest, in the final analysis, on what kind of people we are; there is no organizational gadgetry that can overcome this fact; it is a reality from which there is no escape.[4] And here, in broad generality, lie the limitations and potentialities of law.

If the rules be reasonable and just! Consider a simple analogy—a scale model of the way we act—to deduce what is and is not fair: competitive football, for instance. Note that the rules are exclusively taboos, thou-shalt-nots, things not to do. Penalties for infractions are prescribed, well known to all participants, and imposed by the officials. Even over these, there are minor differences, but none that isn’t easily and agreeably resolved. Respect for the rules is near unanimous. Here we have the law in its negative and proper role.

Confining the rules to things not to do opens the infinite realm of things to do. It is only in this sense that law—the rules—is positive: by restricting the bad, the good is made possible.

The Realm of the Creative

Admittedly, the realm of what to do requires instruction. But this depends upon the coaches (entrepreneurial leaders) as well as the initiative, split-second thinking, and the creativity and ingenuity of the participants. The realm of what to do belongs to the creative, not the restrictive—to the free and voluntary, not to the inhibitive and dictatorial. What a fiasco football would be were the rule book to prescribe the plays!

Football players will never unanimously agree that all the thou-shalt-nots in the rule book are perfect. They can no more agree on perfection than all of us can agree on what is respectable—reasonable and just—in societal law. But the pigskin competitors would be up in arms, as we say, if the rules prescribed the plays. Instantly and instinctively, they would lose respect for any such rules.

In principle, at least, respectable law for society does not differ from respectable rules in football, nor does that which is disrespectable! Yet, in society, most people countenance the unjust along with the just, the unreasonable with the reasonable. They let politicians with their pass-a-law remedies prescribe the plays of life: how long they may work, what wages they shall receive, what and with whom they shall exchange, what shall be done with the fruits of their labor, on and on—a long and tiresome list. And at what cost? A growing disrespect for all law!

We should never expect the tiny minority of the population who are thieves, killers, cheaters, rioters to be held at bay as long as the vast majority who at least wish to do right are parties to disrespectable law. The majority will then no longer observe such law and by their nonobservance set the stage for the outlaws. When a model of rectitude does not exist, evil proliferates and takes over. It cannot be otherwise.

Therefore, let those of us who are bent on law and order look first to our own scruples; next, to what the law without can do for us; and, last and most importantly, what it can never do for us!

[1] A letter from Mr. Burke to a Member of the National Assembly in Answer to Some Objections to His Book on French Affairs, 1791.

[2] Oklahoma remained a “dry” state long after the repeal of Prohibition. I recall attending a convention there. Liquor for the occasion was imported from a neighboring state—and under police escort!

[3] This division of the good majority and the bad minority is used somewhat symbolically; it is never this clean cut. There is, admittedly, some badness in the best of us, and, we must concede, some possible goodness among the most depraved. As Simone Weil wrote: “From earliest childhood to the grave there is something in the depths of every human heart, which in spite of all the experience, of crimes that have been committed, endured, observed—invincibly expects people to do good and not evil. More than any other thing, this is the sacred element in every human being.”

[4] Indeed, the law, if reasonable and just, will not, in any significant way, impose prohibitions that a reasonably righteous people would not self-impose.

13

The Law Within

It should be plain that progress toward an ideal society depends primarily on the kind of people we are: the greatest chef in the world can’t make a good omelet from bad eggs.

It goes without saying that an ideal society is beyond anyone’s comprehension. But for our purpose here, let us define an ideal society as one where creative expression suffers no external inhibitions or prohibitions or restraints; where there is no interference with anyone’s life, except against destructive actions; where no person is granted a legal privilege that cannot in wisdom and justice be granted to all—no special privileges whatever. In an ideal society every person is free to go as far as his talents, abilities, virtues, and energy can take him.

Creative expression can flower and life find its fulfillment only when destructive actions are not overpowering. Bringing destructive actions under some measure of control is, therefore, always the first order of business for improving the social environment. Is it not self-evident that all would perish if all were killers—or thieves, or parasites, or liars, or dictators?

There are but two forms of human restraint against the destructive: (1) external government—the law without; and (2) self-control—the law within. Restraints are either imposed on me by others or imposed on me by myself.

This raises several questions. How shall we account for the fact that so much attention is centered on the law without and so little on the law within? Why all the emphasis on statutory law with its limited potential for the betterment of mankind and so little emphasis on the boundless possibilities of moral upgrading? Why so many eloquent spokesmen for political reform while moral philosophers are but voices crying in the wilderness? Do we find external law that much more attractive than self-restraint? Does the one method attract better and brighter men than the other? Or is it just that we’d rather plan to rectify the visible faults of others than try to see and remedy our own errors? So it is that something-for-nothing schemes—promises of a good society which require no new talents and virtues on one’s own part—have a generally seductive appeal; their propaganda gains enormous attention and support.

There is, however, a deeper reason why the law within is neglected in favor of the law without.

A Study in Depth

The external law is precisely what the term implies, that is, it is visibly on the surface, lending itself to outline, description, wording, phrasing. There is a concreteness about external disciplinary forces; they are something you can “get your teeth into.” They are communicable!

The law within, on the other hand, is always below the surface; it is, and must remain, a study in depth; it partakes of the Infinite. The ordinary channels of communication are not well suited, for this is the kind of thing more caught than taught.

If you are able to plumb deeper levels of your psyche—your nature and your being—than I, communicating your perceptions to me may be out of the question. “A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.”[1] Rather than concreteness, there is a nebulosity about internal disciplinary forces.

Reflect, again, on the law without. If confined to its principled scope, it has only a few negative possibilities. It can codify and attempt enforcement only of those thou-shalt-nots which bear disastrously on the lives of others: murder, theft, fraudulent representations, and the like.

But in the case of any civilized person, the law within forbids all actions destructive of others and, even more importantly, all actions destructive of self. The law without is simply the brute force to control others while the law within calls for the intelligence, understanding, integrity, and strength of character for self-control.

The law within, if rational, forbids not only ordinary thievery but it also forbids feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others—even when the looting is done for one by government.

It is against the inner law

- to take the life of another;

- to be inattentive to mental and physical health;

- to perish in an act of aggression;

- to bear false witness;

- to covet the possessions of another;

- to control the lives of others, or even to wish one could;

- to resign the responsibility for self to a governor, an employer, or any other person, or to fail to resist if others try to assume one’s personal responsibility;

- to affirm any position contrary to the dictate of conscience;

- to fail to nourish, refine, think through, and bring to the fullest possible development every idea or insight gained;

- to neglect to complete a transaction: if a door is opened, close it; if something is dropped, pick it up; if a promise is made, keep it; if money is borrowed, pay it back; if a contract is made, honor it;

- to withhold from those who seek it such light as one may possess;

- to accept any compulsive or authoritarian arrangement as the final solution to any human endeavor; that is, the inner law requires that one forever explore the ways of freedom.

The above are only samplings of the law within, but isn’t it obvious, as Burke points out, that “the less of it there is within, the more there must be without”?

No two individuals, of course, have identical laws. Some of these inner laws barely scratch the surface while many are assuredly so deep others cannot perceive them. For the most part, the inner laws, particularly the deeper ones, are self-discoveries. But the deeper the better, which is to say, the greater the disciplines of self, the less likelihood of infringing the rights of others.

Enter Into Life

The law within, be it noted, often goes far beyond taboos, the negative thou-shalt-nots. There are also inner laws that are positive—actions to take, things to do. For instance, one shall respect others as he would like to be respected. There are inner laws which demand that one’s work, whatever the calling, or whatever the pay, be of the excellence that arouses personal pride. Look upon obstacles as opportunities to overcome, as a means to becoming. Put all chores, duties, refinement of ideas, and so on into the past tense as soon as possible to clear the way for new achievements. Get into life! There is no end of these.

It is well to note that the law without, aside from voluntary obedience, is enforced by guns, prisons, fines, or the threat of these. The law within, on the other hand, rests solely on strength of character which, in turn, derives from the will rationally to determine one’s own actions. The law without is only man protection, a defensive device, while the law within is man creation; it is a positive force in man’s emergence, evolution, growth, hatching.

Self-discipline—obedience to moral law—lessens the need for exterior disciplines. A person without inner direction is asking to be controlled; and a people wholly lacking in rules of self-control must slump into dictatorship.

The moral law is valid and independent of shifting opinions; it may even contradict my whims; and yet, as Sorley observes, “it is something which satisfies my purposes and completes my nature.” Persons in whom the moral law lives are self-controlling, and freedom is their way of life—the Kingdom in its earthly version.

[1] An entry of December 17, 1854, in Journal Intime of Henri Frederic Amiel.

14

Education, the Libertarian Way

There was a time when this chapter might have been entitled, “Education, the Liberal Way.” But that was when liberal still pertained to liberation of the individual from the tyranny of government or any other human master—before the term was usurped by those who stand for a liberality with other people’s property and rights. The meaning of the word, liberal, has been reversed; it once was an honest label for believers in individual liberty; it now is being worn by believers in coercive collectivism. Thus, the term is useless for my purpose.

Nor does the newer term, libertarian—adopted by some of us in place of the lost word—provide sure-fire communication of meaning. Already, many persons of authoritarian persuasion are claiming it, and for precisely the same reason that they expropriated liberal: it is a good term; it gives a favorable mask to the bearer.

This is why we must forever define our terms or risk misunderstanding. However, this burden is not all to the bad; it has its blessings: repeated definition is an absolute “must” to convey to others what one means. Further, constant definition is necessary to make clear to me what I mean.

“Education, the Libertarian Way,” can make no sense until libertarianism is defined.

A Nonprescriptive Way of Life

Libertarianism is a philosophy, a way of life. But it differs from most philosophies in that it does not prescribe how any individual should live his life. It allows freedom for each to do as he pleases—live in accord with his own uniqueness as he sees it—so long as the rights of others are not infringed. In short, this philosophy commends no controls external to the individual beyond those which a government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice might impose.[1] Each individual acts on his own authority and responsibility. Those incapable of self-support, instead of becoming wards of the state, may rely upon the charitable instincts and practices of a free people—a quality that thrives only when a people are free. This is all there is to my definition; it is brief because it is not prescriptive. It has nothing in it at all that calls on me or the government to run your life. This is why the neoliberals refer to it derisively as “simplistic.”

Viewed long range, this nonprescriptive way of life is brand new, too recent to have gained a substantial following or even much of an apprehension of its miraculous workings.[2] Libertarianism—then bearing the name of liberalism—had its first significant flowering in England during the century between the Napoleonic Wars and World War I. But, its most widespread acceptance and practice has been in these United States. This country, with less organized force standing against the individual than ever before in history, witnessed the greatest release of creative energy known to mankind. Genius developed in the most unsuspected persons; millions of people began to realize their potentialities.

Libertarianism has been more nearly approached here than elsewhere in the production and exchange of goods and services, private ownership, personal rights, religious liberty, and government limited to peace and justice; but the educational emphasis—paradoxically—has been in the opposite direction from the very start. The reasoning, beginning in Thomas Jefferson’s day, has been something like this: Ours is to be a people’s government. For such a venture to succeed there must be an educated electorate. People simply cannot be trusted to attend to this basic requirement on their own initiative. Solution: compulsory school attendance!

This denial of parental responsibility and freedom of choice as to school attendance placed the responsibility for an educated electorate squarely on the shoulders of government. This, in turn, necessitated another compulsion: the forcible collection of the wherewithal to defray the school bill. The adage that he who pays the fiddler calls the tune, applied in this case and led to the third compulsion: government-dictated curricula.

Three compulsions, all rejecting self-discipline, and each a thorough contradiction of libertarian principles, were invoked. We have, as a consequence of introducing and practicing these compulsions, inverted the educational process; and the more we pursue this course, the more pronounced will be the educational chaos. At least, this is my thesis.

Two points are conceded: (1) a good society can never prevail among the unintelligent and unfit, and (2) education is the essential corrective, provided we know what the educational process is and what it is not.

The word education, associated as it is with compulsory methods, may tend to confuse this analysis. So, let’s find another word. What is the quality we really seek among the electorate? Is it not enlightenment? If it is enlightenment we seek as our goal, we must also find the means appropriate for its attainment.

Different Approaches

At issue are two opposed methodologies. The currently popular one, associated with the three compulsions, is founded on the notion that education can be imposed, as some animals are force-fed; that intellectual upgrading comes from an outside thrust—a push.

The libertarian method, on the other hand, has its roots in the concept that intellectual upgrading is a taking from or ingathering process, and that the taker or ingatherer is a unique individual.

The two methods differ as much as “forcing in” and “seeking out”; they raise the question, Are we seeking imitations or originals? In any event, by using the word, enlightenment, rather than education, we can see the futility of forcing in and the validity of seeking out.

Enlightenment does not have one means of achievement for children and another for adults; it has no changing scheme for each advancing year. The process is the same for teen-agers as for octogenarians. So, a good way to grasp how enlightenment comes to the younger generation is to see how it comes to grown-ups. To further sharpen the focus, let us begin with you and me—two adults—and this matter of enlightenment. More on the youngsters later.

Take, for example, the ideas in this article. Who is in control as to whether or not they enlighten you? The answer is not disputable: You are! Your acceptance or rejection is not under my control. All I can do about your enlightenment is to turn on my own light, such as it is. You may not even look at these ideas. Or, if you do look, you may find them unacceptable. So far as you are concerned, my ideas and I are at your mercy; you alone sit in judgment as to what enters your mind, be it nonsense or wisdom. Your doors of perception are controlled by only one person: you! This can be generalized: it applies not only to you and me but to most persons on this earth.

Experience clearly reveals that an idea cannot be forced into anyone’s consciousness. Yet, in a near overpowering urge to upgrade others according to our lights, many of us resort to propagandizing or reform; we waste our energies on futile forcing-in tactics. The very fervency of our desire to recast others in our image leads to methods that preclude success; we blind ourselves to the reality of enlightenment and how it works.

Enlightenment is not induced but, rather, is educed! Consider light. Obviously, it cannot see; it can only be seen. A pilot can see a beacon light if he looks; the light does not search him out. Millions of people have seen the countless wisdoms in the Bible, for instance, but these wisdoms are no more aware of their beholders’ existence than is the paper on which they are written.

You can, if you wish, see the ideas in this chapter—but only if you wish. You alone determine access to your unique mind and how it works; ideas, as such, possess no key to your consciousness. These ideas can no more be thrust into your intellect than into the marble brow of a statue.

Educe, draw forth, extract! Potentially, anyone can follow this one-way road to enlightenment. The process, however, presupposes that there be something to draw forth as well as something to attract. The latter—an attractive light—is our only means of helping in the enlightenment of another: have an idea worthy of that other’s attention.

When we concern ourselves with the plight of humanity, particularly with the shortcomings of others that bear unfavorably on our own opportunities to live and advance, it behooves us to find out what we can and cannot do about enlightening them. It is agreed, I hope, that we are powerless to reform them, to make them over in our images. Once we recognize this limitation, we can, if we so will it, begin to realize our potentialities.

And what, pray tell, is the single tactic within our power? We can increase our own light which, if bright enough, will, on occasion, attract another to it. For it is light that brings forth the eye, that whets the spirit of inquiry, that stimulates the desire to know, that draws forth, arouses latent capacity. This is as much as we can do to enlighten another; but the result is still of his choice rather than ours, and fortunately so. For were this not the case, think of all the reformers at whose mercy you and I would be!

Enlightenment and education—not the making of imitations—are achieved in precisely the same manner; these are two words for the eductive process. And to grasp how enlightenment is achieved is to see how education would be approached the libertarian way. Not a single compulsion! Trust others to turn toward the light!

The objections are a thousand and one, but have a common core: this libertarian way affronts the mores; it is out of step with prevailing sentiments. It has not been tried; we can’t imagine how it could possibly work.[3] This reason can be stated another way: Hardly anyone believes that people can be trusted to turn toward the light on their own initiative; instead, they must be turned!

How are we to explain this lack of trust? Frankly, it originates with the current compulsions. Nothing interferes more with our freely turning toward the light we choose than to be coercively turned toward someone else’s choice of lights. Suppose, for instance, that you were compelled to read this. You would never again freely turn toward my ideas. The compulsion directing American “education” today accounts for the dearth of voluntary turning and leaves the false impression that freely turning toward the light has no vitality and, thus, could not be relied upon. But, is it not true that you, whoever you are, trust yourself in this respect? Then, why not trust others?

Assuming no compulsions, every person above the moronic level would freely seek those lights befitting his unique requirements. One couldn’t live unless he did so; and the will to survive is strong within all of us.[4]

Originals, Not Imitations

Given the libertarian way in education, anyone who would not seek light for his own advantage is not educable. The problem in these rare cases is not one of education but of charity.

An educated electorate—the American ambition, indeed, necessity—calls for originals, not imitations. Were all citizens a faithful imitation of me, or you, all would perish as would a single person were he on this earth alone. You and I depend for our lives upon countless human originals, each unique.

As to the creation of originals, I’m assuming my experiences may be somewhat comparable to your own.

Recently, I was reading an article on geology. The author explained that his understanding of continental drifts had been enhanced by nine disciplines other than his own. I must confess that I had never heard of a single one of them before—paleoecology and orogeny, for instance. I expect there may be literally millions of lights that have never come within my view. Possibly, however, the light shed by that geologist, at which I freely chose to glance, may whet my appetite for more geological light.

Yes, I may look further in that direction, but only in a cursory fashion. My driving desire is for more light in political economy, moral and ethical principles, justice, and human freedom. The point is this: I do not want my eye coercively focused upon lights of another’s selection, be that other a modern Napoleon, an educational committee, a geologist, an orologist, or any other genius. An imitation is the very best that can result from such compulsory tactics. But when I fix my eye on lights that attract me—my choices will assuredly be different from yours—an original is in the making. And it is in my interest that you and others also be originals, not imitations.

It is axiomatic that an imitation cannot excel what it imitates. It is thus a foregone conclusion that an electorate cannot gain in enlightenment by the imitative process. Merely bear in mind that it is beyond the power of compulsion—in education or whatever—to produce better than imitations. I insist that the originals emerging from American education are in spite, not because, of the compulsions.

Now, to the youngsters. Of all the traits that distinguish the newborn child from most adults, none stands out more conspicuously than wonderment. Each new perception is greeted with wide-eyed and joyous amazement. This seeking-out impulse is the genesis of enlightenment. Without wonderment there can be no educing; this is self-evident. Enlightenment can no more be forced upon youngsters than upon you or me.

The wonderment with which each individual is initially endowed turns into harder and harder questions and can and sometimes does survive to the end of a long life. This trait can survive provided it is not snuffed out by (1) the absence of any light in the environment, (2) the coercive turning of the individual away from his unique requirements, (3) the indifference, intolerance, discouragement, crossness, exhibited by arbitrary and indolent parents and teachers, particularly in the child’s tender years, and (4) an arrogant, know-it-all attitude characteristic of advanced age and narrow or closed minds.

Without wonderment, then, enlightenment or education is out of the question. But given the normal child’s inquiring mind, the role of parents, teachers, and the rest of us is exemplary conduct and having light that can be drawn on.

The most important point to keep in mind is that enlightened individuals are not to be turned out like nuts and bolts. Nor would we be trying to mass produce in that fashion were it not for the three compulsions. Mass production is only feasible when the objective is replicas, imitations, carbon copies, duplicates. There is no way to mass produce originals. If we would improve the human strain, it behooves us to encourage originality, to adopt the libertarian way of education.

A final question is posed: What chance has education the libertarian way of ever becoming the vogue? It has precisely the same chance as has an understanding that compulsions are antagonistic to the eductive process and that free choice is in harmony with enlightenment. Doesn’t look so far-fetched after all, does it!

[1] Defraying the costs of a principled agency of society, limited to keeping the peace and to invoking a common justice, is not an infringement of individual rights but, instead, a citizen obligation. See my Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954).

[2] Such misunderstandings are largely rooted in incorrect correlations. Societal shifts and trends vary greatly in their slow movements—decades to centuries. Today, for instance, we witness economic gain and socialistic growth going on simultaneously. Unless careful, we are likely to credit socialism with the prosperity, whereas the credit belongs to a near-libertarian way of life, the main thrust of which passed by before most of us were born!

[3] See Chapter VI.

[4] Essential to enlightenment are “the three R’s”—reading, writing, arithmetic. At least these basic tools of education, argue most people, must come under compulsion. But Johnny will voluntarily turn to these elementary disciplines as readily as to talking. The motivation in each of these cases is not only survival but an aspiration to rise above a nobody.

15

Influence, the Libertarian Way

As suggested in the previous chapter, libertarianism is a nonprescriptive philosophy—it is the ideology of freedom.

If freedom—individual liberty, the free market, and related institutions—is a way of life that works, the first demonstration of its workability should be in its own propagation. For, if libertarian methods cannot successfully extend an understanding and belief in freedom, then it is not a viable philosophy.

My thesis is that no one can take an effective stand for liberty and its propagation whose stance is not libertarian. In a word, any methods other than libertarian will work against liberty, not for it. The method must fit the objective for, as Emerson points out, the end pre-exists in the means.

Many of those who avow their devotion to liberty follow practices that would deny my position on methodology. While they will not resort to the pure authoritarian method of “believe our way, or else,” they indulge in argument and persuasion; name-calling is often used; they attempt the intrusive method of high-pressure selling. Believe-as-I-do, while not backed by force, is, nonetheless, a nonlibertarian attitude. This method is prescriptive and a prescriptive means cannot bring about the libertarian objective—freedom to act creatively as each may choose.

At the outset, let us acknowledge that few people even so much as take a look at freedom ideas and, of those who do, most are impervious to them.

Our Narrow Range of Interests

Impervious to freedom ideas! But what’s so strange about that? There are scientists, for example, who have an obsessive interest in algae and oceanic scum, in bumblebees, in continental drifts, in human uniqueness, in polar bear meanderings, in organic farming, and so on. They are deeply devoted to these subjects; I am not. But, some may counter, these are rare specializations, having little bearing on people’s lives; whereas, freedom, whether one appreciates the fact or not, is important to everyone. Well, the threat of cancer should be of interest to everyone, yet note how few are devoted to its cure.

Why are so few devoted to the cure of cancer? Not because of its insignificance! I have just read an article reporting that certain leukemic cells die in the absence of an amino acid known as L-Asparagine.[1] This is a first-rate discovery. However, such ventures in biochemistry are well over my head. Interested? Yes, in an off-hand sort of way. But deeply devoted? Not even close! These investigations seem not to lure me; I am impervious to them.

And so it is with my specialization, the philosophy of freedom. Only now and then is there an individual who becomes a real student of the subject, that is, who acquires a deep and abiding interest in freedom’s significance to himself and others. Further, until a person becomes such a student, he is just as impervious to freedom—has no more insights into it—than I have into leukemia and amino acids or a thousand and one other specializations.

Based on what appears to be a national and worldwide trend toward all-out statism, we must suspect that the few of us who are devotees of freedom aren’t equal to the challenge; the currents of contrary thought are too powerful for us. Thus, we must hope that some others will join us, not because ours is a numbers problem—it is not!—but because among the newcomers there may be some who will far excel the present devotees in depth of understanding and clarity of exposition.

In view of the need for better men than we, the first question that comes to mind is, How do we go about influencing them? Particularly, what should be our approach to persons who are our intellectual superiors! Selling our ideas to such individuals, or to anyone, for that matter, is no more possible than minnows capturing whales. Are we, then, left helpless? Is there nothing we can do? To the contrary, there is a way if we can master it.

A Psychiatrist Opens the Door

The distinguished Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Gustav Jung, gives us the key:

What does lie within our reach . . . is the change in individuals who have, or create, an opportunity to influence others of like mind in their circle of acquaintance. I do not mean by persuading or preaching—I am thinking, rather, of the well-known fact that anyone who has insight into his own action, and has thus found access to the unconscious, involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment. The deepening and broadening of his consciousness produce the kind of effect which the primitives call “mana.” It is an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others, a sort of unconscious prestige, and its effect lasts only so long as it is not disturbed by conscious intention.[2]

Dr. Jung gives us the key but it is not as simple as a metal key. His is a mental key, and will unlock nothing for us unless we understand his words and what he intends to convey by them. So, let us reflect upon the ideas behind the words:

What does lie within our reach—There is a power that lies within your reach and mine, one he is about to reveal.

. . . the change in individuals who have, or create—We may already possess this power; but, if not, it is possible to create it and, thus, bring about a change in ourselves. He refers to my changing me, not you.

. . . an opportunity to influence others—Obviously, he has some secondary effect in mind, as a consequence of the change in self.

. . . of like mind—The secondary effect will be most fruitful on those who have a passing and favorable interest in the enlightenment in question, in our instance: freedom.

. . . circle of acquaintance—Each of us has his own orbit—no two alike—beyond which this power cannot extend.

I do not mean by persuading and preaching—Away with argument, exhortation, polemics, ideological pushing, attempts at intrusion, forcing in. These devices are the opposite of what Jung has in mind.

. . . the well-known fact—Doubtless, the fact that follows was well known to Jung and some other pros, certainly to a few of the ancients and, as he suggests, it is sensed now and then by primitives. Today, however, it is nearly a secret.

. . . insight into his own actions—Know thyself!

. . . access to the unconscious—Insight into one’s own actions, when deep enough, plumbs what Jung calls the unconscious, the undiscovered self. Here lies the source of ideas, intuition, creativity—the aforementioned power that lies within our reach.

. . . involuntarily exercises an influence on his environment—This power radiates from the excellent individual without any awareness on his part that he is radiating. We—the ones who constitute the environment—occasionally experience being drawn to such persons; we ascribe a magnetic quality to them.

The deepening and broadening of . . . consciousness—The power to which Jung alludes stems from our own thoughtful concentration and understanding, awareness, perception.

. . . produce the kind of effect the primitives call “mana”—“Mana” is a Polynesian term and was regarded as a spiritual power manifesting itself in certain individuals. Is not insight into one’s own actions a spiritual power?

It is an unintentional influence on the unconscious of others—Yes, it is an unconscious prestige. The moment one becomes conscious of this power, it ceases; it is turned off. Observe those who are probing ever deeper. The more they discover the phenomena of self, the more are they aware of how little they know; thus, they are not conscious of possessing any superior knowledge. But let them cease their probing, spend their effort instead proclaiming their superiority, and we are no longer drawn to them. A surge of self-esteem short-circuits this system of power.

. . . its effect lasts only so long as it is not disturbed by conscious intention—To appreciate the truth of this, we need only take note of who it is we turn to for light. Instinctively, we turn away from those who are bent on reforming us or making us over in their images. Whether we look to our contemporaries or to those who have gone before, we seek out those who pursue truth for truth’s sake and who, obviously, have no thought of its effect on you or me or any other particular individual. Their intentions are honorable and the effect is enlightenment, until and unless they are disturbed by consciously trying to intrude their ideas into the consciousness of others; in that event, off goes the power!

The Individual Sells Himself

We may deduce from Dr. Jung’s analysis that you or I cannot sell anyone on freedom. The individual sells himself! His doing so, however, presupposes that an unconscious magnetism exists, that an unintentional lure is within his reach.

Both fact and theory seem to suggest that Dr. Jung is correct in his analysis. As to fact, civilizations on the rise have always been studded with stars. This would stand out in crystal clarity were we able to “replay” the original Constitutional Convention for comparison with a current political convention.

As to theory, it stands to reason that the generative process in society can be nothing more than the generative process going on in individuals. Improvement is impossible except at these discrete points.

Intentionally working on others takes the effort away from self. It has no effect on others, unless adversely; and the unevolving self is always the devolving self. The net result is social decadence—and has to be.

The corrective for this popular pastime is to rid ourselves of the notion that Joe Doakes must stand helpless unless he be made the object of our attention. Joe will do all right—and the same can be said for you and me if well just mind our own business, the biggest and most important project any human being can ever undertake!

[1] See “L-Asparagine and Leukemia,” Scientific American, August, 1968.

[2] See The Undiscovered Self by Dr. Carl G. Jung (New York: New American Library, a Mentor Book, 1958), p. 121.

16

The Biggest Project on Earth

What is the biggest project any individual can undertake? My answer is: Mind your own business!

Our object here is to find words for common sense. And this admonition fails to communicate what I mean because it has acquired a negative connotation. It suggests what not to do, without spelling out what to do. It is taken more as a rebuke than a recommended course of action. And for good reason!

When we say to another, “Mind your own business,” we often mean no more than “Keep your nose out of my business.” We have no thought of what the offending person should do instead, nor do we care. “Get lost!” or “Leave me alone!” would suffice as well. That “Mind your own business” is taken as a rebuke can be explained by the fact that millions insist upon minding the business of others.

Yet, mind your own business, if viewed in a positive sense, can be counsel of the highest order. It points the way to life’s most fruitful exploration, puts one in pursuit of the Infinite. The following story may help to illustrate:

The other morning, as my six-year-old daughter was watching me shave, she suddenly asked, “Daddy, where does God really live?”

“In a well,” I answered absent-mindedly.

“Oh, daddy!” Debbie voiced her disgust at such a silly answer.

At breakfast my wife asked, “What’s this you’ve been telling Debbie about God living in a well?”

“In a well?” I frowned. Now, why had I told her that! Then, all at once, a scene came to my mind that had been hidden in my memory for thirty years. It had taken place in the small town of Kielce, in Southeastern Poland, where I was born.

A band of passing gypsies had stopped at the well in our courtyard. I must have been about five years old at the time. One gypsy in particular, a giant of a man, fascinated me. He had pulled a bucketful of water from the well and was standing there, feet apart, drinking . . . his muscular hands held the large wooden pail to his lips as if it weighed no more than a tea cup. When he had finished . . . he leaned over and looked deep into the well. Curious, I tried to pull myself up the well’s stone rim to see what he was peering at. He smiled and scooped me up in his arms. “Do you know who lives down there?” he asked.

I shook my head.

“God lives down there,” he said. “Look!” And he held me over the edge of the well. There, in the still, mirror-like water, I saw my own reflection.

“But that’s me!”

“Ah,” he said, gently setting me down, “now you know where God lives.”[1]

A Limitless Quest

Whether or not one agrees with the gypsy’s theological method, it seems certain that God can never mean more to a person than he perceives God to be. In a word, there is a precise correlation between perceptivity and God. And it follows from this that the exploration of self—the expanding of perception or consciousness—is as limitless as are explorations into the meaning of God or Creation. Indeed, are not the two the same quest? If one answers affirmatively, as I do, then I suggest that this inner probing is man’s highest business and that minding it is the biggest project on earth.

Once it is acknowledged that the exploration of self is of infinite dimensions—an unending performance—it must be clear that there can be no prescription or map for the journey. To explore is to probe the unknown, and who can say what this is! “The unknown is infinite as the infinite is unknown.” The point to be emphasized here is that I haven’t the vaguest idea what my inner probings will reveal to me; assuredly, I cannot know what yours will reveal to you.

Reflect on these observations:

1. Regardless of who the person is or how deeply he has probed into his own being, he knows little more about his complex self than he does about Creation.

2. No two individuals are alike; each is unique. The complexity of one person bears but slight resemblance to the complexity of any other person.[2]

3. When it comes to probing the depths of my being, I alone possess the key. This can be generalized: it applies to you and to all other individuals as much as it does to me.

With an eye on the above points, minding one’s own business makes sense; minding other people’s business makes nonsense. And grasping the folly of the latter lends credence to the wisdom of the former.

If I Were in Charge . . .

To help with this argument, grant that I am as wise as an occupant of the White House. Under these circumstances, assess my competency to control your creative actions: what you shall invent, discover; what you shall read, think about and study; where you shall work and how many hours per week; what wage you shall receive for your labor or price for your product; what and with whom you shall exchange, and so on. The absurdity of this, when viewed in a you-and-me situation is obvious. Now, for me to mind the business of two is twice as absurd. And what if I attempt to control the people of a nation or of the whole world? The absurdity is millions of times compounded!

It is now relevant to ask, Why do so many think themselves competent to control millions of people when it is evident that no one of us has yet mastered the art of self-control? Why do “educated” people by the thousands run for public office on untenable platforms which deal with people as objects to be manipulated?

There seems to be a simple answer to this hallucination. Whenever one tries to impose his will on a single person there is an instant playback. In Napoleon’s case—a typical example—he found it impossible to control his wife and his own sizable family. Action and reaction at that proximity are sharp and definite; the reaction is as forceful as the dictatorial action itself. The offender—Napoleon or whoever—is as much instructed by the error of minding his wife’s business as if he had erred in minding his own business. When we are directly smitten for our iniquities, we tend not to repeat them. Paying the penalty for error is a necessary instruction, for it points the way to what’s right.

But when one attempts to control the lives of many people, identification is diffused. So far as the offender is concerned, his victims are more or less unknown to him; instead of a you-and-me relationship, the victims are impersonal to the point of nonentities. Nor are the victims quite sure of the identity of the offender. The dictator continues to act dictatorially because there is no correcting reaction; it ceases. Were I personally to preclude your working for less than $1.60 per hour, your reaction would be immediate, intimate, and probably violent. But when the government does the same thing the reaction is imperceptible; there isn’t anything specific to scratch against.

The hallucination thus prevails among public “servants”; they who mind other people’s business large scale are not smitten for their iniquities. If I could forcibly impose a minimum wage on millions of people, it would be the people, not I, who would pay the penalty for my error. I would seem to get off “Scot free” and, thus, be unaware of my mistakes, my ignorance unchecked; I would see no wrong in minding other people’s business—in remaining dictatorial.

The alternative to master-minding other people’s business is to conscientiously mind one’s own. Minding other people’s business tends to destroy the master as well as the slave. The greatest service we can render to others is to leave them alone while attending our own business—a project worthy of our very best efforts.

[1] Taken from Theosophy in New Zealand, January–April, 1966.

[2] Roger J. Williams, You Are Extraordinary (New York: Random House, 1967).

17

The Consistent Life

Believe one way and act another! See clearly what’s right and then do what’s wrong! This is the dilemma that confronts any morally sensitive person who probes deeply enough into the libertarian philosophy to fully embrace it. Is living a life of contradictions necessary? Isn’t the consistent life possible? These are the hard questions raised in many honest minds.

A typical case in point: A friend bought a small farm with his meager savings but found, to his dismay, that he had either to accept some of the governmental aids to agriculture or lose his property. “These handouts fly in the face of my principles,” he wrote. “They are wrong. I wish to keep my little farm; that is right. What, pray tell, should I do?”

A careless answer to this difficult question is far worse than no answer at all. For me to advise my friend not to take the handouts because they also offend my principles would be the rankest kind of inconsistency. For do I not use the socialized mail? And ride subsidized airlines? And look at Telstar TV? I can’t even count the ways my daily living does offense to what I believe to be right. Like the distraught farmer, I wish to be consistent. What are the chances?

At the outset, let us concede that no individual has ever attained absolute consistency. The pursuit of Truth is an infinite quest; man in his imperfection can, at best, do no more than move in the direction of consistency. To err is human; it is in our nature, regardless of how nearly perfection is approximated. But, if a person would move toward consistency in his behavior, it behooves him to at least recognize an inconsistency when he faces it, or is forced to accept or live with it. This is the purpose of our search here.

A fairly obvious fact sets the stage for this analysis: We are committed to living in the world as it is, or not living at all. Were you or I to divorce ourselves from—having nothing whatsoever to do with—every last activity tainted with socialism, we could not exist. We have the choice of living and trading in the market as it is or resorting to hara-kiri!

How High the Price?

The questions these alternatives pose are: Should we elect to live amidst so many wrong practices, or should we give up the ghost? Can it be that consistency comes at this high price?

The answer to this particular libertarian dilemma comes clear to anyone who arranges his values properly: Live life! To take life, even one’s own, is contrary to the Higher Law. So, living life in a world of wrongdoing—there isn’t any other kind of world—while doing offense to consistency, is preferable to its alternative. The world around us—good, bad, or indifferent—is, to use the philosopher’s phrase, “the ultimate given.” To have the world as we would prefer it, instead of the world as it is, is scarcely within the range of our choices; so we are doomed to a measure of inconsistency simply by electing to live in this world of ours.

There is a second area in which consistency is no more than remotely possible. If man is to participate in the Divine Task, he must place his ideals as high as possible. Such ideals are always out of reach for the simple reason that man is imperfect. No one of us can ever sensibly proclaim, “Behold in me the ideal!” Falling short of our own ideals is not only a mark of imperfection but also of inconsistency.

There is another problem area: faulty judgments. These account for many inconsistencies. Example: a millionaire senior citizen of the libertarian persuasion accepts Medicare. This is an inconsistency, even on his own terms, for he opposed the legislation and devoutly believes this socialistic measure to be wrong. Compare this inconsistency with using the socialized mail, riding the subsidized airlines, or taking a handout as a means of survival. Inconsistencies, we may infer, are in graduated forms; I find Medicare, for instance, less tolerable than using the socialized mails and, thus, can forswear its acceptance with less difficulty.

Weighing the Alternatives

But, of course, each of us must make his own judgments. These are made by weighing alternatives. However, alternatives cannot be accurately weighed unless they are clearly perceived. The millionaire who accepts Medicare sees only the plus side: a very small premium payment that could cover a very large hospital bill.

The millionaire probably overlooks the minus side; it is harder to see; nonetheless, it should be taken into account: The extent to which any individual turns the responsibility for his life—prosperity, welfare, security—over to another, or the extent to which government takes it away from him, to that extent is the very essence of his being removed. Self-responsibility is one of life’s most precious qualities; it is the motivating force essential to personal development. The transfer of self-responsibility, whether surrendered voluntarily or under coercion, is, next to loss of life itself, the greatest loss one can suffer.

The senior citizen—rich or poor—who puts a correct value on self-responsibility, sees clearly that he runs great risks when he accepts Medicare or other handouts. For government pap, like sedation, is a killer. Physical or psychic health is always threatened, never improved, by either sedation or pap; these palliatives are no more than pain killers—and at a very high price!

Taking a Stand

I now come to that area of activity which holds out the best promise for moving toward a more consistent life. Granting our inconsistencies and contradictions, some of which we know not how to escape, what is that realm in which our own improvement can be most fruitfully sought? Where does one begin?

Proclaimed positions! The numerous stands one takes! This is where we should initially come to grips with consistency and contradictions. Here is the important question: Do I stand consistently, or do my several positions contradict each other? For instance, one breaks with consistency in its genetic stage—where infractions are most easily avoided—when he proclaims for “free enterprise,” on the one hand, and takes a stand for TVA on the other; or asserts a belief in open competition and free entry and, when the shoe pinches, calls for protectionism. The inconsistency of any individual has its beginnings when he “talks out of both sides of his mouth,” as the saying goes.

But narrowing the question of consistency to the easiest realm of all—proclaimed positions, what one openly stands for—is no small matter. It opens onto a wide, wide world of difficult intellectual endeavor. And no one, even in this narrowed realm, will ever make the grade—perfectly!

Importance of the Premise

We must not, however, underrate the importance of proclaimed positions; these are the ultimate determinants of the social structure. Let us suppose, for example, that you and I and others—enough of a leadership to gain a substantial following—were to drop all oral and written support for Medicare, that is, assume that perceptible support dwindles. Medicare would die on the vine! Libertarians, therefore, should, above all else, strive for consistency in their proclaimed positions. Several thoughts on such an undertaking may be in order.

In the first place, there is little chance of consistency—except by pure accident—unless one reasons logically and deductively from a basic premise, that is, from a fundamental point of reference. Short of this, a person’s positions will be at sixes and sevens, governed by pressures, by the winds of fickle opinion, by conflicting interests.

Parenthetically, there isn’t any virtue in consistency, per se. If one’s basic premise be shallow or wrong, such as fame or fortune or power over others, one can, by accurate reasoning therefrom, be consistently shallow or consistently wrong. To be consistently right—the virtuous aim—requires a right premise.[1]

Precautions to Be Observed

One oriented in the libertarian direction, in searching for a right premise, could conceivably ask himself: What is man’s highest earthly purpose? Should he conclude that it is individual growth, development, emergence in awareness, perception, consciousness, then there is his premise, his basic point of reference. Once settled upon, he takes all positions consistent therewith. If a particular behavior—individual or societal—does offense to his premise, he stands openly against it. If, on the other hand, the behavior complements or lends strength to his concept of life’s highest purpose, he takes an open stand in its favor.

Each person must, of course, select his own premise. Two cautions appear to be in order. If it does not require individual liberty, it assuredly is not a right one. And if it cannot be openly and proudly proclaimed before God and man alike, it is in need of improvement.

Should a person reason accurately and regularly from a right premise, he would, perforce, be consistently right in his proclaimed positions. In any event, to the extent he succeeds, to that extent will he find himself never lending encouragement to any wrongdoing and, thus, withdrawing the only kind of support on which wrongdoing thrives.

Once the individual has become as consistent in proclaimed positions and principles as his abilities permit, his faulty judgments will tend to be displaced by well-rounded and sound judgments. But, most important of all, he will discover how to live in the world as it is with fewer and fewer contradictions. The senior citizen will get along without Medicare and the farmer without handouts. Their values, altered and upgraded by more consistent positions, attend to this.

The genesis of the consistent life is in the realm of individual beliefs and testimony. The uplifting or degrading of society and the rise or fall of civilization is all determined by how well we stake out and adhere to our positions.

[1] For a profound analysis of the premise and its relation to reason, see Immanuel Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1959).

See also my “Importance of the Premise,” The Freeman, January, 1962.

18

In Quest of Perfection

Reflect on the following proposition: Man, who is now and forever imperfect, will find perfection among his imperfect fellows. At first blush, this gives the appearance of being a contradiction in terms, but I have recently discovered—and shall try to demonstrate—that it is not!

The now-and-forever imperfection of man seems obvious enough as we take stock of the humanity around us. Indeed, unless we are on guard, the imperfection of others may be the most impressive fact that ever enters our consciousness! Surely, we are seldom aware of similar shortcomings when we stand in front of the mirror! We ourselves, it seems, are the exceptions. And perhaps a very few other persons. For, now and then, there have been men whose images, as they come down to us, are all plus and no minus, all virtue and no vice—rare examples of untarnished perfection. An understanding of these exceptions is essential to a grasp of my point.

I shall contend that these exceptional cases are but myths which originate in man’s quest for perfection. Until two recent experiences, I was unaware of either the myth or its possible explanation—which leads to an exciting truth about human relationships.

The first experience was a formal eulogy of mine to a departed friend. Interestingly enough, I didn’t realize what was happening to me in this performance until I later observed what was happening to eight individuals when addressing glowing encomiums—informal eulogies—to me.[1]

Building a Myth

As I thought about those encomiums heaped upon me, I discovered how myths are built around certain men: Let enough good be said about any person—with no acknowledgment of any imperfections—and, after he departs this life, others will speak of him in hushed and reverent terms. His faults will have dimmed to nothing and there he will stand on a pedestal, a model after which others may strive to cast their lives.

The danger in eulogies, if the recipient is still around to listen to them, is that he will believe what he hears. If he does, woe unto him. Even so, his loss may seem a small price to pay for what others will have gained, and this is what I wish to demonstrate.

Observe what happens when one eulogizes another. The eulogizer dwells upon what he considers virtuous or meritorious in the other, thereby portraying his own ideals. Note that he avoids mention of any fault whatsoever. Also note that he praises only those few features he believes praiseworthy. This is precisely what I did when eulogizing my departed friend, though I didn’t recognize it until I observed these men delivering their encomiums to me. The eulogizer, I repeat, uses tiny virtues he sees in the object of his praise to depict his own ideals.

Hopefully, the one eulogized will still see himself as he really is; but whether he does or not, there is something strikingly wholesome in this process and we should know what it is.

From the Best in Everyman

The seedbed of idealism, the force that produces excellence, is the portrayal of observed virtues. It is in the fleshing out of abstract ideals that the highest art consists. This is why Ortega considered it so important that we admire perfection in others.

While admiration isn’t possible without instances of perfection, we see in the admiration and its portrayal the Hand of Creation at work. As to perfection, none of us can be Christ; but we can adore him. This leads to my belief that the exemplary role of Christ is to stimulate adoration, which is to say, that the great value of one’s mastery of various truths and virtues lies in the emulative artistry they induce.

Leonardo’s “Mona Lisa” assuredly has made a far greater contribution to an appreciation of the good and the beautiful than has the lady he looked upon. His portrayal, not the merit she possessed, dominates this relationship. As with Leonardo, so with a eulogizer: the portrayal has him “looking at the stars.” Yet, the one eulogized is, at best, an imperfect individual with a noticeable merit or two; like all of us, he or she has trouble overcoming vices and errors with virtues and truth.

This is not to discount the tiny truths any one of us unearths; if free to flow, they can move the world. But, by reason of the few I can uncover for myself, I will do best by looking for perfections in others, thinking about them, formulating them, trying to live by them. Here is how Goethe phrased the idea:

The greatest genius will never be worth much if he pretends to draw exclusively from his own resources. What is genius but the faculty of seizing and turning to account [formulating, living by] everything that strikes us [everything that we admire]. . . .

Let’s summarize this thesis: Perfection is never found in you or me or in any other person except in stingy bits. Man is now and forever imperfect. Thus, as Goethe suggests, we should never attempt to draw exclusively on our own resources. We need only remember that all the perfection there is in the world exists in billions of tiny bits apportioned ever so sparingly among millions upon millions of imperfect individuals. Yes, of course we should look for perfection in ourselves but never to the exclusion of searching where it exists in abundance, namely, in a multitude of others. And, whenever we come upon a perfection, we are well advised to portray and eulogize that feature of the person who holds it, for it is the portrayal that is creative and that provides our own thrust toward excellence.

These reflections may have more to commend them than first meets the eye. Open admiration—praise, encomium, or eulogy—of what is good in others, regardless of the faults they may exhibit, brings out the best that’s in them:

I have believed the best of every man,

And find that to believe it is enough

To make a bad man show him at his best,

Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.[2]

Further, it elicits from them a friendship and affection universally desired but seldom achieved. What a boon this attitude is in human relationships! And how important is this truly liberal or tolerant stance to those of us bent on advancing liberty among men! For experience teaches that counsel is rarely sought from those who see no perfection except in themselves, and it matters not how brilliant they may be. They simply aren’t liked! As a rule, when one doesn’t like another, that other is not admitted to one’s inner sanctuary, the mind.

I repeat, all the good there is in the world exists in billions of tiny bits. It’s all there. Lacking are its seekers, its portrayers, and, in a very real sense, its creative artists.

This correction, however, is easy enough to make once we realize that the eulogizer is more significant in the growth of excellence than the one eulogized. The latter has his faults but the former in his portrayal of observed perfections advances unadulterated excellence, free of the flaws.

For the most part, the virtues we master are those we see in others; and the vital process is the everlasting search for them.

[1] What’s Past Is Prologue (a symposium) (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968). Copy on request.

[2] William Butler Yeats.

19

I See a Light

How bright the world must look to those of authoritarian persuasion! Power structures everywhere: communism, socialism, the welfare state, the planned economy. Call these authoritarian movements what you will, they lead to all-out statism, the goal of millions. And, interestingly enough, other power structures spawned by the growing statism promise to hasten this modern imperialism: strikes, for instance, that can crush the economy at any point, angry mobs that destroy private property and individual rights at will. Bright, indeed, must seem the prospects for those who would play the role of “the man on horseback.”

The devotees of individual liberty, on the other hand, unless aware of what clues to look for, see hardly any light at all through the darkness that prevails.

There is—it seems to me—a ray of light which, if followed, offers a possible course. However, the path is one we have rarely, if ever, consciously trod. True, this way has been used, else there never would have been human progress. But it was not rationally chosen; we more or less stumbled upon it. Let us now try to map and follow that path toward freedom.

The problem is how to rid ourselves of these various power structures. Let us begin by submitting one of them to close analysis. Find the right method for ridding society of just one brand of unprincipled power and we may have the method to overcome them all—communism or whatever. We might begin with the strike, an annoying example with which we are all familiar.

The strike is a flagrant exercise of unprincipled power. I say unprincipled because there is no moral right to strike.[1] Workers, be they captains of industry or wage earners, have no more right to use coercive force to get their way than have chambers of commerce or ladies’ aid societies!

Force or Threat of Force

Look at this power. Fresh in mind as this is written is the idling for two and one-half months of 50,000 New York City teachers and 1,000,000 students. That government education, founded as it is on coercion—compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the school bill—had something to do with the confusion is beside the point. The issue here is the strike—a dictatorial device—as a means of forcibly imposing the will of some on others.

Following the teachers’ strike, Consolidated Edison, the nation’s largest public utility, was struck. Had the principle of the strike been fully executed, that is, had no one been permitted to fill the vacated jobs, the population here would have been brought to a state of starvation, so dependent have we become on electricity, gas, and central heating. Fortunately, the Company’s supervisory personnel tried, as best they could, to “man the pumps.”

What’s happening to New York City is illustrative of what’s being inflicted on citizens across the nation. How, for instance, can we ever forget the grounding of five major airlines by a stewardesses’ strike, supported by the pilots. This crippling action, however, was minor compared to ever so many other exercises of raw force or the threat thereof. One is prompted to ask, has there ever been an instance in any nation, at any time in history, in which so much governing power has been held in private hands, that is, outside of the formal governmental establishment?

Legislation Not the Answer

We must recognize at the outset that this exercise of coercive power cannot be corrected by legislation. Why? Because those who have been licensed to use such power have a lot of leverage over legislation. We can hardly expect them to urge the cancellation of their special privilege. True, when this situation is corrected—and it will be!—legislation will be written and the legislators will take the credit; but such statutes will simply record a new, predominant understanding.

Let’s put this problem of correction another way: no form of confrontation—name-calling, resentment, denunciatory writing or speaking, or whatever—will do any good; indeed, confrontations will only increase the opposition, harden the practitioners of coercive power in their acts of injustice. As confrontations increase, so will the opposition—the tension of the opposites according to the law of polarity.

The correction that lies ahead must and will take the form of defections from within these coercive movements. When? That’s the question. We can help speed the process by better understanding the composition of these movements and our own role as outsiders.

Let’s take the 50,000 teachers who were out on strike. This affair, as any of the other coercive movements, consists of three distinct parts.

The core of the action is made up of those who have lost their way—detached from moral values and the victims of intellectual error. A majority of the 50,000 teachers would probably fall into this category. We must refer to the ideas they follow as erroneous unless it be conceded that some persons have a moral right to impose their will, their wishes, their designs on others by force. This is an utterly untenable and indefensible position.

The spearhead of the action is a spokesman. It is incorrect to think of him as a leader. Rather, he puts himself in the vanguard of the host that has lost its way. He is always energetic, articulate, daring. He himself is also a follower—out front!

The balance in the striking action—perhaps as many as 10,000—are those who are “swept along by the tide.” They do not believe in coercive action; they have not lost their sense of direction. But this is a case of “going along” or losing the only employment for which they have been trained. Obey the spokesman, or not eat! These are the ones who will defect if given half a chance. They need help, and so would you or I were we in their shoes. Help from outsiders who are not being buffeted about by the striking action; help from those who can calmly view the issues in a detached and objective manner! In the frenzy of a life or death struggle, how many of us are prepared to think about the economic and moral issues involved?

Set a Right Example

How are we as outsiders to help those now trapped by these coercive schemes; the ones who would defect if they had the moral and intellectual ammunition; the ones who would, if they could, break up these power structures from within? Make your place in the coming aristocracy! That’s my answer.

Let me begin with Whitey.[2] He was not among those who would defect if they could. Instead, Whitey was a strike organizer; he belonged to the spokesman category, a follower up front. To put it mildly, Whitey was angrily committed to his course of coercive action. He wasn’t looking for help—far from it—and was far less likely to defect than those who wish to do so. However, he not only defected but became a wonderful, effective worker for freedom. The reasons, I believe, were as follows:

1. We employed a method the very opposite of confrontation, namely, turning the other cheek. Remorse rather than resentment was evoked.[3]

2. Whitey had an inquiring as well as an open mind, once the opening was found. Further, he had the capacity to apprehend moral values.

3. FEE had on hand explanatory literature relevant to his intellectual errors; we were able to supply him with the case for freedom. Many years of work, study, writing had gone into its preparation.

The first question that comes to mind: If FEE can cause one in Whitey’s position to see the light, why cannot FEE cause other millions of coercionists to see the light? If one, why not everyone?

The story of Whitey is only to illustrate what is within the realm of possibility for the thousands who will be numbered in the coming aristocracy; it is not to suggest but, rather, to deny that FEE can repeat this performance at will. Whitey distinguished himself from nearly everyone else in the coercive movements: he had been, unknown to me, on FEE’s mailing list for several years. He was in FEE’s orbit; only a very few of the other millions are. Let me now explain what I mean by orbit.

Others Draw the Line

An orbit is composed of those individuals, known or unknown, now or hereafter, who seek or pay some attention to one’s counsel, thoughts, ideas in a specific field. Each of us has several orbits. For instance, most of those in my golfing or curling or cooking orbits—indeed, most of my acquaintances—are not in my libertarian orbit. I have no musical or medical orbits at all, the beginning of an endless list of nonorbits.

The extent of one’s orbit is not self- but other-determined. Others, not I, decide whether they are in my libertarian orbit. I have nothing whatsoever to do about the matter except to strive for and attain some measure of excellence. And even this is no sure-fire recipe for orbit expansion. Conceivably, you could be the greatest brain surgeon who ever lived, but suppose no one else thought you were. No orbit! Many great ideas and inventions have been conceived in the minds of men before their time has come. Orbits are formed exclusively by subjective judgments.

The above explains the vital necessity of the coming aristocracy, comprising individuals in all walks of life, each developing a libertarian orbit of his own. We at FEE can serve only those within our orbit; others may serve in their own orbits. This is why our society must be heavily dotted with libertarian lights, that is, with effective wellsprings. Merely reflect on those of your acquaintance who might seek your counsel but who neither know nor want to know of FEE.

Examples of Growth

I shall conclude this thesis by citing two recent examples of a developing aristocracy and the results thereof—encouragements which, added to many past experiences, account for the title of this chapter, “I see a light.”

During a Seminar discussion in Kansas, a teacher friend of long standing, proudly reported how excitedly interested her students were in free market, private ownership, limited government ideas and ideals. This report being at odds with my observation of today’s college students, I thoughtlessly glossed over the claim, evoking from her a look of disappointment. That crestfallen look annoyed my conscience for several hours. Then the light! And, later, an apology: “I now understand what is happening. It is your excellence as a teacher of these libertarian ideas that accounts for your students’ unusual interest in them.” An aristocrat at work! Note the results!

As if my new-found enlightenment needed further affirmation, there came to my desk two days later a letter from Tennessee. It was from a man whose articles have appeared in The Freeman on several occasions. He is among the best libertarian thinkers and writers of my acquaintance. In September, 1968, he began his teaching career in a small Christian college. The significant paragraph:

“It has been a thrilling experience to observe the reaction of students to a straightforward presentation of the freedom philosophy. Some have stayed after class to talk and to say that this is the first time in their life that anyone has helped them relate the concept of freedom to their Christian ideals and to real-life problems. In short, they are hungry for the ideas you folks so earnestly believe in.”

The picture is clear. All about us are millions of citizens in a state of utter confusion: strikers, rioters, racists, distraught students arguing and fighting over which of this or that form of authoritarianism shall prevail. Why? Because they are unaware of any alternative to coercion of some type. Why this pitiful lack of awareness? All because of a shortage of aristocrats.

But take heart; the aristocrats are coming, teachers who know the freedom philosophy so well that freedom as a way of life is an exciting prospect. As men are drawn to freedom, coercive schemes are left unattended, unsupported, ignored. This is not a matter of fighting the darkness but, rather, of generating light.

Merely bear in mind that to be a teacher does not require identity with formal, educational institutions. History seems to reveal that the greatest sources of light have been free-lance teachers—institutions unto themselves—exemplars of excellence, portrayers of the aristocratic spirit.

The love of excellence “in self, in others, in all things in earth or sea or sky” can be the mark of “a day laborer, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a professional man, a writer, a statesman.” And it will be the mark for countless individuals who arrive at the simple realization that this is the way to the joyous life, indeed, to life itself. Here we have the composition of the coming aristocracy. That’s the light I see!

[1] See Appendix: “There Is No Moral Right To Strike.”

[2] See Appendix: “The Story of Whitey.”

[3] For a commentary on turning the other cheek, see “Epilogue” in my Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967).

Appendix

There Is No Moral Right to Strike

Rarely challenged is the right to strike. While nearly everyone in the population, including the strikers themselves, will acknowledge the inconvenience and dangers of strikes, few will question the right-to-strike concept. They will, instead, place the blame on the abuses of this assumed right—for instance, on the bungling or ignorance or evil of the men who exercise control of strikes.

The present laws of the United States recognize the right to strike; it is legal to strike. However, as in the case of many other legal actions, it is impossible to find moral sanction for strikes in any creditable ethical or moral code.

This is not to question the moral right of a worker to quit a job or the right of any number of workers to quit in unison. Quitting is not striking, unless force or the threat of force is used to keep others from filling the jobs vacated. The essence of the strike, then, is the resort to coercion to force unwilling exchange or to inhibit willing exchange. No person, nor any combination of persons, has a moral right to force themselves—at their price—on any employer, or to forcibly preclude his hiring others.

Reference need not be confined to moral and ethical codes to support the conclusion that there is no moral right to strike. Nearly anyone’s sense of justice will render the same verdict if an employer-employee relationship, devoid of emotional background, be examined:

An individual with an ailment employs a physician to heal him. The physician has a job on agreeable terms. Our sense of justice suggests that either the patient or the physician is morally warranted in quitting this employer-employee relationship at will, provided that there be no violation of contract. Now, assume that the physician (the employee) goes on strike. His ultimatum: “You pay me twice the fee I am now getting or I quit! Moreover, I shall use force to prevent any other physician from attending to your ailment. Meet my demands or do without medical care from now on.”

Who will claim that the physician is within his moral rights when taking an action such as this? The above, be it noted, is not a mere analogy but a homology, an accurate matching in structure of the common or garden variety of legalized, popularly approved strike.

To say that one believes in the right to strike is comparable to saying that one endorses monopoly power to exclude business competitors; it is saying, in effect, that government-like control is preferable to voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers, each of whom is free to accept or reject the other’s best offer. In other words, to sanction a right to strike is to declare that might makes right—which is to reject the only foundation upon which civilization can stand.

Lying deep at the root of the strike is the persistent notion that an employee has a right to continue an engagement once he has begun it, as if the engagement were his own piece of property. The notion is readily exposed as false when examined in the patient-physician relationship. A job is but an exchange affair, having existence only during the life of the exchange. It ceases to exist the moment either party quits or the contract ends. The right to a job that has been quit is no more valid than the right to a job that has never been held.

The inconvenience to individuals and the dangers to the economy, inherent in strikes, should not be blamed on the bungling or ignorance or evil of the men who manipulate them. Rather, the censure should be directed at the false idea that there is a moral right to strike.

The Story of Whitey[1]

Now, by another true story, let me demonstrate how these ideas work in day-to-day practice. This experience had its beginning about eight years ago. I had written an article showing that there isn’t any moral right to strike. Later, I received a letter on the stationery of the Sailors Union of the Pacific, Portland, Oregon. The writer was identified on the letterhead as William Benz, Organizer. His message was three pages of pure vitriol. “You dirty so-and so,” except he couldn’t spell so-and-so. There’s an “a” in it! But I’ll say one thing about that letter: it had a lot of spirit.

Instead of throwing the letter in the wastebasket, I invited my associate, the Reverend Edmund Opitz, to read it and added, “Ed, I shall be away for three days. If you don’t mind, please write this character a response for my signature, and give him our treatment.”

Let me reveal what our treatment is. It’s that of turning the other cheek; it is to take no cognizance whatsoever of the man’s meanness, his vitriol. It is, rather, to write him as high-grade a letter as you would write the Lord. Ed Opitz is pretty good at that! On returning, I signed his masterpiece and sent it on. Shortly thereafter, I received a reply from Mr. Benz, the most abject apology I have ever read. This man was crushed to think he had written his kind of a letter to the kind of a person Opitz had made me out to be.

I wrote a thank-you note and added: “I’m sending you a couple of books under separate cover.” One was my little book of Argentine lectures, Why Not Try Freedom? The other was Doc Harper’s perfectly remarkable book, Why Wages Rise, which was relevant to the man’s original yap. When he had read these, he wrote, “Mr. Read, this is the finest stuff I have ever read in my life; please send me more.” This was getting to be fun, so I sent him five more volumes. One of my associates said that if you want to get some free books, write Read a nasty letter. After reading these five volumes, my new friend wrote, “Mr. Read, I hereby appoint you my director of reading. You are authorized to purchase any book that in your judgment will help me in my thinking and send me the bill.” Why, even you folks won’t do that! This man turned his education over to me. Incidentally, by this time, he had quit the labor union.

As this kind of correspondence continued, a remarkable friendship developed. Many months later, when I had occasion to visit Portland, I suggested to Mr. Benz that I would like to meet him personally and that he should breakfast with me Monday morning. He was at the appointed place bright and early, a fellow about 47 years of age, a man of enormous energy, obviously.

At breakfast he confessed to me that all of his life had been lived in hate and also that he hadn’t quite finished the second grade. This man was so fascinating to me that I stayed at the breakfast table with him until noon. I had a luncheon speech to make; he went along bringing another labor official. When it was over, he asked, “Mr. Read, may I drive you to the airport?” Never having destroyed a generous impulse, my answer was affirmative.

On the way to the airport I thought I would have some fun. “Whitey, [his nickname] do you remember that first letter you wrote me?” I’ll bet that was the first time in his life he ever blushed.

He replied, “Yes, I remember.”

“Whitey, suppose I had replied in kind? Would you and I be riding together now?”

With that his old anger returned: “111 say we wouldn’t.” So I said, “Whitey, I’m going to tell you what I did to you that you may do the same to others.” With that, I held my plane ticket against the windshield and asked, “What holds it there, Whitey?”

And he said, “It’s the tension of your finger.”

“You’re right! In science that’s called the law of polarity, or the tension of the opposites. Whitey, I want you to observe what happens when I remove the tension.” Of course, the ticket fell to the floor. I then said, “All I did in your case was to remove the tension. I left you nothing whatsoever to scratch against.” And I cited the old Arab proverb, “He who strikes the second blow starts the fight.” I pointed out that he had struck the first blow, that I had not struck the second, that we were friends. Whitey got the message.

This friendship went on for quite some time. Then, suddenly, no more letters from Whitey. Finally, a letter which said, “I never thought it would happen to me, Leonard. I bought a new car and, on the highway, had a head-on. I’ve been in this hospital for three months; the doctors are trying to splice me together again. But, Leonard, you should see what I’ve been doing to these doctors on behalf of our philosophy.”

[1] A transcription from extemporaneous remarks I made at a Commemorative Dinner to FEE, October 4, 1968.

Talking to Myself

Leonard E. Read

1970

To my long-time staff associates

Dr. Paul L. Poirot

&

The Rev. Edmund A. Opitz

whose helpful scholarship and editing I gratefully acknowledge

I suggest that you preach truth and do righteousness as you have been taught, whereinsoever that teaching may commend itself to your consciences and your judgments. For your consciences and your judgments we have not sought to bind; and see you to it that no other institution, no political party, no social circle, no religious organization, no pet ambitions put such chains on you as would tempt you to sacrifice one iota of the moral freedom of your consciences or the intellectual freedom of your judgments.

—Isaac Sharpless

to the graduating class of
Haverford College, 1888

1

Go where the action is

Strange as it may seem, FEE receives more criticism from “conservatives” than from out-and-out “socialists.”[1] You’d expect it to be the other way round. Why isn’t it?

Certainly, it’s not because those we call socialists find anything to agree with in the freedom philosophy as we define it; far from that. They have it made, or so they think; why give any heed to such a minority point of view!

Nor is it because our “conservative” critics necessarily find flaws in our philosophical position. Rather, they disagree with the method we commend to advance the practice of freedom, namely, a concentration on improving the understanding and exposition of each freedom-loving individual. These “conservatives” phrase their scoldings in countless ways, the most pointed being, “Why don’t you go where the action is!”

It so happens that we agree with their admonition; we should, indeed, go where the action is. But where is the action? Our critics think it’s out yonder—external, where others are—whereas we believe it’s internal, inside each one of us. They insist on reforming the ignoramuses; we say let’s look to the flaws in ourselves and see what can be done about that. When the objective is at the high level of individual freedom, the real action is within the individual—not out yonder, not at all.

If they be wrong and we right, there is an explanation for their error. It is quite simple: they fail to draw the distinction between methods useful for destructive purposes and those having creative potentialities. Warfare, for instance, is destructive. If you want to go where the action is, where do you go? To where the confrontation is: the battlefield. Strike them down! Enlightenment, on the other hand, is in the creative realm. If you want to go where the action is, where do you go? Again, to where the confrontation is: between the self as is and the higher self that might be. Build me up! The tactics effective in attaining destructive ends remain destructive regardless of the objective. Guns are not useful for catching ideas!

But we need not turn to warfare to illustrate destructive activity. All actions and all ideas inimical to a free society are destructive.

Certain methods have an impressive record of achievement when the purpose has been to destroy freedom. All of them are outgoing, exertions at others, pushful suasion; they range all the way from selling-the-masses propaganda, to pressure group activity, to name-calling, to political promises, to deceit, to intimidation and terror.

“Conservatives” who do not grasp the nature of this problem observe how effectively these tactics “work” in attaining socialistic or interventionist ends and see no reason why the same tactics won’t achieve their ends. The fact that the end they have in view is diametrically opposed to the socialistic end does not seem to warn them that “the end pre-exists in the means”; that the tactics in each case must be consistent with the ends.

Consider our end or objective: an essentially free society. Upon what does its possibility rest? Our aspiration is out of the question unless there be numerous citizens of an intellectual, moral, and spiritual quality to set a sufficiently high standard, to serve as pattern-setters or exemplars. There must be men and women who not only understand why self-responsibility and individual freedom work their wonders, but also men and women who put these virtues into daily practice.

When the trend is away from, not toward, a free society, it is axiomatic that the drift is marked by a decline in human virtue. The trend in the general societal situation, for better or for worse, is merely a register of the drift, one way or the other, in personal quality. What is called the social problem boils down to the matter of individual emergence.

Individual emergence is not and never will be accomplished by imposition. Not one of the tactics effective in destructive programs is useful here; indeed, these out-going, reforming efforts do more harm than good. It is difficult enough for oneself to emerge as a better person; impossible to force such change in another. Emergence is exclusively a self-help project; the change is internal, not external.

Granny’s Method

A remark by our great grandmother comes to mind. At the age of 102 she had been gently reminded, “Granny, you’re talking to yourself again.” She replied, “At least, I’m talking to a sensible person.”

And, what’s wrong with that? She was working on the right person, and shared her reflections with anyone who chose to listen.

The present situation may require more and better probing, introspection, talking to ourselves, more skillful sharing than experienced by Granny or, perhaps, by others before us. But it is doubtful that the method can be improved.

The following chapters are reactions to, assessments of, and reflections upon a few of the ideas and notions, bearing on the practice of freedom, which have, during the past year,[2] struck me favorably or unfavorably. As the reader will note, they are rather varied and may appear as unrelated to a connected theme. In the sense that they are but fragments of the greatest theme there is, yes. Nonetheless, it’s these ideas and notions which have recently agitated me—got me talking to myself. Should they inspire some others to do a bit of the same, then this book will have accomplished all I have in mind.

[1] Quotes are placed around these labels because they are names people call themselves or others; they are but fictions, explained in a later chapter.

[2] Exceptions: “One Big Strong Organization” and “Lump Thinking” were written in 1959.

2

Know them by their cheers

Everything that happens, whether seemingly good or bad, has a lesson to teach us—if we can discern it. So, if our aim is to learn, we must look everywhere and to everyone for enlightenment. When everything that happens is our textbook, happenings are to be observed and rightly read.

These verses, for instance, came “out of the blue” and their author is unknown to me:

Fueled by a million man-made wings of fire,

The rocket tore through the sky . . .

And everybody cheered.

Fueled only by a thought from God,

The seedling urged its way through the thickness of black.

And as it pierced the heavy ceiling of the soil

And launched itself up into outer space . . .

No one even clapped.

Not everyone cheered the moon venture, of course, or failed to note the miracle of the emerging seedling; such poetic license may be forgiven. But these verses do carry a message—reveal a simple method for checking our bearings.

A captain of a plane in flight or ship at sea is constantly checking his bearings; his is the responsibility for staying on course. To get off course is to court disaster.

Is our society on course?[1] Are we headed toward or away from man’s destiny? It has been rather difficult to make any generalized assessments of this kind for, unlike a plane or ship, society has no magnetic compass or electronic gadgetry to check bearings. How is one to tell whether or not society is following a proper course?

What the unknown poet says to me is that we can take our bearings and determine our heading by merely noting what sort of things we cheer and which ones we fail to applaud. This should be compass enough for any captain.

Granted, my idea of a proper heading stems from a set of convictions concerning human destiny. These are conclusions based on reasoning as rigorous as I can make it, and they imply that there is a direction from which mankind cannot veer without courting disaster. I posit a Divine Intention for man. However, if there be no such higher goal for man—if earthly life is but a willy-nilly affair “without rhyme or reason”—then there can be no heading or direction. In that event, we would have no need for a compass by which to check our bearings.

I would draw precisely the same conclusion if the destiny of man were presumed to be any one of the destinations countless aspiring leaders would impose upon us. Such masterminded schemes lead, willy-nilly, to nowhere.

The long-range destiny of humanity is growth, emergence, evolution, and, to the extent this takes place, to share progressively in Creation. Phrase it as you will, this is the way I see the Cosmic Scheme.

This growth, such as it is, manifests itself in discrete individuals; some experience it and others do not. True, we help each other along the way; indeed, without such help we could get nowhere. But the relationship is first and foremost between man, singular, and this out-of-reach Ideal. This, according to my belief, should be the heading, and any veering from it is off course.

Recognizing Error

It’s one thing to be aware of the proper heading. It’s quite another matter to recognize the kinds of actions that take us off course.

Tens of millions cheered the moon venture; only a few withheld applause. What does this reveal as to our heading? We are off course! Science is our glory and our god! Man is impressed with his technical breakthroughs, many made possible by coercive means—the substitution of dictatorial power for free choice. The man-in-charge decides how your resources and mine are to be employed. Each his own man? Hardly! Someone else is rapidly taking control of my affairs—and yours.

Only a few applaud or stand in awe of Creation, while tens of millions take no heed. A seedling shafting into space or a microscopic sperm and ovum finalizing in the mind of a Socrates or an infinitude of similar miracles are taken for granted and forgotten. Mankind on the throne, impressed only with itself. What does this reveal as to our heading? It confirms the other reading: we are off course!

I would say that we head in the wrong direction whenever we condone any collective action to feather some nests at the expense of others—whether by government, labor unions, chambers of commerce, or whatever. Any restraints against the release of creative human energy take us off course, and this includes the forcible confiscation of the individual’s resources to gratify such man-concocted schemes as medicare, social security, public housing, subsidies, moon shots, wage and price supports, barriers to free entry and competition, and so on. We’re off course any time any peaceful individual is denied the full use of his own faculties and resources.

If we want to stay on course, we need a compass—a signal system that permits easy reading. What are the signals?

The signals are cheers. We’re heading toward whatever is cheered. By the “cheering” I mean to include what is approved, what is bought, what is listened to, what is read, what is worshiped, what commands our pride.

Are we cheering the rockets? Then we’re going to the moon and Mars.

Do we pay no heed to the miracles of Creation? Then we’ve lost the way.

There is a reason why I talk this way to myself: it helps me to stay on course.

[1] In reality, society doesn’t head anywhere; only individuals head this way or that. But individuals who fail to reason for themselves “think” in herds, and their headings, if wrong, destroy the social structure. It is instructive to know where the great majority—“society”—is heading.

3

Talking to myself about excellence

Little if anything is to be gained by advising anyone else about the pursuit of excellence. The manifold drives that spur people in this direction are so mysterious, varied, and intimately personal that about all one can do is to reflect upon, ponder, and, hopefully, strengthen his own drives. I note, however, that those who experience a modicum of success sometimes set a style—that is, they serve as pacesetters or exemplars. This quality of excellence can only be caught; it cannot be taught, for it is strictly a self-help problem requiring introspection.

If trends in society appear to be askew, a man’s best recourse may be to talk to himself—attempting to discover ways and means to overcome countless personal imperfections. I must examine myself, for the unexamined life is not worth living—as Socrates reminded us. Too small a project? No! I am the part of society that I have been commissioned to save. And this is the biggest project on earth!

What is it that’s askew, the remedy for which is the pursuit of personal excellence? The problem is that multitudes of us have as our primary goals, not excellence, but the gratification of ordinary appetites on a day-to-day basis: food, drink, sex, merriment and diversion, fame, fortune, and other forms of ostentation. Lives thus limited rarely find satisfaction beyond the gratifications experienced by the higher animals. The distinctive attributes of being human appear to have been neglected.

The evolution of man correlates with the acquisition of human attributes—growth in awareness, perception, consciousness, the power to reason, to will one’s own actions, and to think long-range. In this sense, human evolution and an expanding personal excellence are one and the same.

True, no man has made the grade entirely, nor is it likely that anyone will. Excellence is an aspiration; it is never an achievement except in a comparative sense: excellent relative to other imperfections. Thus, no mortal man is ever warranted in declaring, “If it’s light you seek, be as I am.” The only sensible pronouncement is this: “If it’s light I seek, then I must look to the light myself, that is, I must pursue excellence.”

While any advance toward excellence is personally rewarding, it also is socially rewarding. I prefer to live in an improving society, but this is impossible unless there be improving individuals. Thus, if regress seems to predominate over progress, my best hope to change the situation is through self-improvement.

Regress? The current trend poses a problem of the first magnitude in political economy. Those among us who let their animal appetites serve as life’s prime ambitions appear to be a majority, each having a vote. Politicians who promise them what they want are easily elected to positions of power over the resources of everyone. When this situation governs, justice is out of the question, an essentially free society impossible. If this fails to satisfy me, what can I do about it? I can strive for excellence. How to go about it is the eternal question.

With respect to gadgetry, free market practices, such as free entry and competition, serve to bring out technical excellence. Compare a 1970 auto with the horseless buggy of 1900, or a jumbo jet with the Wright Brothers’ motorized kite; note the improvement in can openers or pencils or dishwashers or whatever.

The Role of Competition

But when it comes to intellectual, moral, and spiritual excellence one of the drives that applies to material things is lacking: competition. As to free entry, all the bars are down, far more free than in today’s business world. Anyone is free to embark on the pursuit of righteousness.

Competition, as presently observed in many social affairs, seems confined to political activity. Educational, religious, labor, business, and organized interests of all kinds fiercely compete for taxpayers’ resources—a competition in plunder![1]

Perhaps we should not look for competition to spur us toward excellence as related to the higher human attributes. Rarely do we observe people trying to outperform one another in righteousness, for instance. Nor are we likely to see it. Competition is largely confined to the realm of man-to-man actions and reactions. The excellence I have in mind seems to be in the spiritual realm. Without discounting the light we receive from each other, past and present, excellence is aided and abetted by man striving for an out-of-reach Ideal. Competition is not what motivates this striving; another force is in play: magnetism and each individuals response thereto!

As I look back upon the course of evolution over several billion years, I see this earth beginning as a hot glob of gas; its gradual cooling; the appearance of plant life and animal life, emerging from low to higher and higher forms. Until quite recently, in geologic time, man had no part in this emergence: he wasn’t present! I have no better words to give this Phenomenon than Creation, Infinite Consciousness: God. Nor can I conceive of any explanation for this Mystery except a fantastic magnetic force: attracting, attracting, forever attracting. A Creation, infinitely beyond the mind of man, has been at work—and continues, eternally!

While no advanced scholarship is required to discern Creation eternally exerting its attractive force, a confirmation by a noted scientist and scholar makes me feel more certain of my ground:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movement of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies, too, are seen to be subject to the same mathematical definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[2]

That I might listen to the acknowledgment once again, I asked a top electrical engineer to define electricity. His reply: “Are you kidding?” And he would make the same response if asked to define magnetism or Creation. This leads me to the conclusion that we are limited to observing these mysterious forces and the wonders they work, to harmonizing our own actions with them, and thereby bettering our lives. We understand them in terms of what they do, not in terms of what they are.

As to magnetism, I reflect on an ordinary magnet. I know what it does, but no one can define what it is that so mysteriously performs. The magnet exerts an attracting force whether or not there is anything within its range of a quality that can respond to its attraction. Grains of sawdust, for instance, do not respond; iron filings do. The quality of the object makes the difference and determines responsiveness.

Similarly, Creation perpetually exerts its attracting force and accounts for all the evolution that has occurred.

Creative Response

Let me now reflect on man and his evolution in awareness, perception, consciousness, righteousness, his powers to reason and to will his own actions—the emergence of his distinctively human attributes. Some persons, as the sawdust, are seemingly unresponsive to this attraction. Others are slightly responsive, still others more so. The few to whom we refer as creative thinkers are more sensitive to this force; they are reactive to it and, consequently, are superior respondents.

Assuming as I do the existence of Creation’s mysterious attractive force—this power that draws us forward and upward—the problem I face is to become more responsive to it. If I find myself as nonresponsive as a grain of sawdust, how can I change myself, alter my quality, so as to be drawn toward it?

I am convinced that man’s move to excellence—his realization of those attributes distinctively human—is determined by the responsive qualities he possesses. Obviously, it is not within my power to increase, diminish, or in any way alter Creation’s attractive force. That is the ultimate given! But subject to my will, at least to some extent, is the power to enhance my responsiveness to this force.

An important aspect of the power to thus alter oneself is an awareness of this relationship of self to Creation. At first blush, this does not appear to be right for we observe numerous individuals who are highly responsive to this force, though they show no awareness of it and would label the very idea of any such relationship as nonsense. In a word, their awareness is no greater than that of the iron filing drawn to the magnet; yet, as the filing, they are drawn. So, they were born that way—inheritances. Each of us is born with certain distinctive qualities; some highly endowed, some not.

However, my concern is not with inherited qualities. These are beyond our control; we have nothing to do with them. Rather, my interest relates to what I can do with what I possess. And I believe this might well be the concern of highly endowed individuals. While many of them do not know it, they, too, have room for improvement. True, these few tower over most of us as the Eiffel Tower over neighboring buildings. But just as the sun is virtually equidistant from the Eiffel Tower and the lowly buildings which surround it, so the difference between the best and worst of us is negligible by comparison with the width of the gap which yawns between any of us and the highest conceivable standard of excellence. Each of us, the most brilliant included, is barely off the ground.

Awareness of this relationship between self and Creation is the first step toward growth in excellence, regardless of how low or high the starting point. Why? Unless the first step establishes an ideal forever beyond one’s reach, a person will constantly be precluded from taking the second step: thinking long-range. Henry Hazlitt correctly observes:

The art of economics consists in looking not merely at immediate but at the longer effects of any act or policy; it consists in tracing the consequences of that policy not merely for one group but for all groups.

Looking long-range applies equally to all phases of intellectual, moral, and spiritual achievement, not merely to proficiency in economics.

The individual who can and does think long-range weighs, as best he can, every personal act and policy as if he were to live forever. He refuses to commit any act or take any position at any point in time which would not, in his view, stand the test of time—all time. Long-range thinking brings another virtue to the person: he is guided by the principle of universality—that is, he will partake only of those actions he is willing to concede as proper when performed by any other human being.

These two initial steps point the way to excellence. From here on it is a matter of developing the disciplines and the energy for the all-too-rarely explored and difficult climb.

No progress can be made in the climb short of a devoted, dedicated, prayerful desire that it be successful. This venture toward excellence will brook no indifference; it can never be made a second-place undertaking; it comes first or not at all!

Essential to keeping one’s eye on the climb is getting all of life’s daily chores into the past tense as quickly as possible. No one can engage in the concentration required for this venture if his desk or mind is cluttered with a plethora of unfinished business, that is, if one has to wade through or around junk piles. The view ahead must be as unobscured as one can make it.

If the daily chores are done and the dedication strong enough, then the first of the attributes distinctively human will more than likely emerge: an ability rationally to will one’s own actions.[3] This is known when one ceases to be merely reactive to environmental influences and compulsions; taking its place is self-determined action. Instead of permitting others to do one’s thinking, each person thinks for himself. In a word, he becomes his own man!

It is only as one becomes his own man that the higher ideas and ideals flow into the mind for refinement. From whence? I do not know any more than I know the secrets of Creation. I only know that the human attribute we refer to as creativity is not found in those whose thinking is done for them.

Ideas and ideals as they first impinge upon the consciousness are as raw ore: useless until refined. Refinement consists of thinking them through, embellishing them with explanatory word structures. Each idea and ideal as thus treated is a step in the climb to excellence. And as each step is taken, new insights appear for succeeding steps. The more aware one becomes, the more there is to be seen—an ever-expanding vista.

Ideas and ideals as they come to mind are, for the most part, flighty things—evanescent as dreams. “The infant mortality of newborn ideas is enormous.”[4] Thus, the rule must be instant recording; never let one escape. And there is another rule: immediate refinement. As with daily chores, think through a new idea right now in order to avoid mental clogging. Numerous raw ideas swarming around in the mind lead to confusion rather than to constructive thought.

Refinement is best done by writing, a severe taskmaster. Through the eye, let the mind see what’s there by putting the idea into words. Let no one say: “The idea is as clear as crystal in my mind, but I can’t express it.” Whatever is clear in the mind can be expressed clearly. Fuzzy writing merely reflects fuzzy thinking; clear writing confirms clarity of thought.

Finally, it is wrong to think of this venture toward excellence as a departure into a lonely, esoteric, unworldly area. To the contrary, it is of no account except as integrated and made a part of every phase of day-to-day living and relationships. It is an improved way of living life—that’s all. Who knows? A modicum of success may set a style! But that should not be the objective. First, seek excellence in truth and righteousness; then these things, such as setting a new style, come as the dividend—an old, old Truth.

[1] While competition doesn’t seem to spur moral excellence, it is an undisputed fact that a morally excellent people can and do win in competition against those lacking such excellence. See the chapter, “Notes on the Evolution of Systems of Rules of Conduct” in Studies in Philosophy, Politics and Economics by F. A. Hayek (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967).

[2] See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

[3] For several suggested exercises that occasionally prove helpful in willing one’s own actions and in expanding one’s awareness, see my Elements of Libertarian Leadership (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1962), pp. 156–159.

[4] Russell Dicks.

4

Eduction versus propaganda

Any time I get it into my head that my role is to set others straight or any time we as a people believe we should run the world, then count on it, we’ll brush up on how to become effective propagandists rather than concentrate on how to become proficient eductors. This latter term is seldom used, possibly because we rarely reflect upon its implications. Yet, eduction versus propaganda poses a fundamental issue of our time, perhaps of all time.

If this is indeed the great issue, then we may infer that, by and large, we are authoritarians at heart. For, wherever one turns, the emphasis is on propaganda, as much by clergymen, teachers, and other platform lecturers as by radio, TV, press, and government spokesmen. Countless would-be leaders concentrate on how best to “reach the masses,” in order to make us over in their images.

Reflect on the distinction between propaganda and eduction.

Propaganda is, “any organization or movement working for the propagation of particular ideas, doctrines, practices, etc.” In a word, it is an outgoing exertion, an ideological or philosophical injection type of endeavor; it’s the influencing-of-others ambition in practice; it reveals the little-god syndrome.

The term education cannot be used as the antonym of propaganda; it is more a synonym, especially these days!

Eduction, not education, is the true antonym of propaganda. It has its root in the Latin educere which means, “to draw out; elicit; evolve . . . to deduce; infer from data.” Eduction is an extracting process, a talent-developing exertion; it is a self-realizing type of endeavor.

Propaganda can be likened to a spraying operation, each propagandist attempting to invest numerous others with his assumed knowledge and wisdom. Eduction, on the other hand, is a stimulative or catalytic effort, each eductor attempting to maximize enlightenment from its sources, wherever and whatever they may be.

Perhaps the folly of propaganda and the virtue of eduction can be highlighted by reflecting upon the ways of Nature.

Next to Creation itself, the sun is our source of energy. Observe how trees and other forms of earthly life reach out for the sun that they may better extract its life-giving forces. And water is vital to existence. Note how plants, rooted in the soil, drink the moisture, an ingathering maneuver.

Were Nature to perform as do propagandists, we might expect that trees, instead of reaching for the sun, would attend to the photogenic needs of other trees—and die in the process. Each blade of grass would concern itself with the moisture content of other blades of grass—the end of grass. Nature, instead, seems to expect the individual to educe and evolve and survive through fitness, to the upgrading of the species.

Look to the Light

I suggest that this recourse to Nature is not farfetched; there are lessons here for us. Man, no less than other forms of life, if he is to grow, emerge, evolve, must reach out for the sun; his eye has to be searching for sources of enlightenment—each man his own eductor! Nothing is more absurd than man the propagandist: each man trying to make other men carbon copies of himself. No wonder so many of us are smudged!

Select any one propagandist; then of a sudden, let everyone be cast in his mold, no variation whatsoever. In a word, let this man be 100 per cent successful in achieving his aims. What would happen? First, everyone would be an identical propagandist, mechanically repeating his infinitesimal knowledge and wisdom. Second, there would not be one iota of human growth. And, third, the entire population of earth would perish in a matter of weeks, just as you would if you tried to live on this earth all by yourself.

In this illustration of the propaganda approach to the better life, let’s assume the most knowledgeable and wisest among all propagandists. What we must recognize, even though he does not, is that he, as everyone else, is virtually a know-nothing—just another blade of grass, to use the Nature analogy. To the extent he succeeds in his impositions, to that extent does he invoke disaster. Granted, this know-nothing status may be one of the most difficult concessions for anyone to make, particularly if one happens to be a mite brighter than the mill run of us. The propagandists evaluate themselves relative to the ignorance they observe around them, not relative to what they have yet to learn.

The reason for the propagandists’ sorry plight seems clear. They see what has already come within their ken; they cannot see what is outside their present purview which, of course, is infinite in its dimensions. Bright, perhaps, but they are blind to what is still unknown to them, and this unknown dramatically dwarfs the known.

True, an eductor cannot see what has not hove into his view any more than can the propagandist, but the eductor is aware of the unknown or he wouldn’t continue to reach for the sun.

In previously referring to the term education, particularly as used today, as more a synonym than an antonym of propaganda, I have in mind the collectivistic, statist, authoritarian doctrines that are advocated by professional “educators.” That such doctrines should be explained is conceded. But out-and-out advocacy, or even shades of it, is nothing less than propaganda; it is not education in its best sense; certainly, it is not eduction.

Parenthetically, these comments purposely omit any reference to the kind of instruction appropriate to children, although the propagandists are disastrously at work on them also. I am concerned here with propaganda, education, and eduction as related to adolescents and adults—those who have reached an age when some sense of self-responsibility should begin to blossom. Conceivably, if we get our thinking straight on this phase of the problem, it will begin to straighten out as related to children. After all, it’s the older ones who have the say-so as to what’s served up to the youngsters.

Learning by Choice

Limiting our concern to those who are presumed self-responsible, I say away with propaganda—all of it. Let the reliance be solely on eduction, that is, leave it to each person to turn his eye to any or whatever lights he chooses. Permit him to be his own eductor; to educe, drink in, infer from available data, as he pleases. For there is Truth; and man, for all his false starts, has some inclination to seek it.

The rebuttal to this idea of letting self-responsibility do its work can come only from propagandists: “The average citizen can’t be trusted to turn his eye aright.” This is the voice of the little-god syndrome, the message of the carbon copiers.

Make the complimentary concession that I have managed my own life better than some others who might be found. It does not follow that I can manage their lives better than they can! Any assumption to the contrary is founded on pure arrogance, not reason. To test the validity of this contention, merely put yourself in that someone else’s shoes. No need to await your answer; it is already known to me.

The whole collectivistic, statist, authoritarian position has its roots in arrogance, not reason. And anyone addicted to the propaganda approach, regardless of what ideological or political label he pins on himself, is on the authoritarian side, whether he realizes it or not.

The eductor, on the other hand, is on the side of freedom. His way and freedom are absolutely in harmony—compatible, as we say. There are countless reasons why this fact is so unappreciated and why this way of life is so little traveled. For one thing, it’s a break with tradition; it flies in the face of all the authoritarianism that has marked human experience. Freedom is a high aspiration requiring hard and conscientious thought, an effort that bumps into countless daily distractions. Man more often than not is a creature of impulse, yielding easily to this or that fad or foible—environmental intoxications.

Only reason, an ever-elusive faculty that requires continuous cultivation and use, can save the propagandist from himself—turn him into an eductor and put him on the side of freedom.

Witnesses

It is doubtful if anyone is capable of accepting, let alone adopting, the self-improvement thesis who does not first recognize how nearly a know-nothing each of us is. I find that confessing this about myself during Seminar lectures often evokes immoderate refutation. “This simply is not true of you,” they stoutly insist.

For some time it puzzled me that these people were so deeply concerned about my personal confession. Then I began to hear what they meant: “If he thinks this of himself he must, perforce, be thinking the same of us.” Let them be their own judges!

There is nothing original in acknowledging how little one knows and how such an awareness drives one to know more. It’s an age-old theme put forth by those who seem to me to have some light to shed.

PROVERBS 16:18–19 (circa 900 B.C.)

Pride goeth before destruction and an haughty spirit before a fall. Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.

CONFUCIUS (557–479 B.C.):

Not to enlighten one who can be enlightened is to waste a man; to endeavor to enlighten one who cannot be enlightened is to waste words. The intelligent man wastes neither his man nor his words.

SOCRATES (470–399 B.C.):

That man thinks he knows everything, whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing but I know I know nothing.

MOSES MAIMONIDES (1135–1204):

Teach thy tongue to say I know not, and then thou wilt progress.

MONTAIGNE (1533–1592):

God save us from the man who wants to save us. Reform only yourself; for in doing that you can do everything.

SAN PEDRO OF ALCANTARA (circa 1550):

May your Lordship not torment yourself: there is a remedy for this deluge of crimes. Let us be, you and me, that which we should be. There will be two less souls to convert. Let each person behave thus: it is the most efficacious of reforms. The trouble is, that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others: thus everything stays as is.

ABRAHAM LINCOLN (1809–1865):

. . . assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action, or to mark him as one to be shunned and despised, and he will retreat within himself, close all the avenues to his head and his heart; and tho’ your cause be naked truth itself, transformed to the heaviest lance, harder than steel, and sharper than steel can be made, and tho’ you throw it with more than Herculean force and precision, you shall no more be able to pierce him, than to penetrate the hard shell of a tortoise with a rye straw.

Such is man, and so must he be understood by those who would lead him, even to his own best interest.

Doubtless, it is the fantastic burst in technical know-how—science—with its unprecedented material satisfactions which accounts, in some measure, for today’s wholly fallacious notion that we are wiser and better than the wisest and best of our ancestors. “We live in a changing world about which our knowledge is incomplete, and we are finding that the key to civilization is not technology but wisdom.”[1]

The wiser we are the greater is our exposure to the infinite unknown; noting this, we become more and more aware of how far from wise we are. Perhaps this awareness is the form in which wisdom comes to us.

[1] The Royal Bank of Canada Monthly Letter, January, 1970.

5

Getting results—here and now

Devotees of the free society who lend assistance to and cooperate with FEE’s do-it-yourself educational effort have, for the most part, done so on the grounds of its long-range possibilities—a thought for our children’s children, the far-off future. And those who have turned to so-called activist programs have done so not necessarily out of ideological disagreement with the ideas on liberty espoused by FEE but, as they put it, “We want results now!”

Always skeptical of activist efforts, I have, until this moment, agreed that our own work has only long-range prospects—preserving the remnant, as it were. Now, I see it the other way round: the chance of getting results here and now lies exclusively in the study and exposition of ideas on liberty; so-called activist programs afford only long-range prospects, at best. That’s quite a switch and requires an explanation.

Reflect on these words by Professor F. A. Hayek:

We at least believe that we have attained an understanding of the forces which have shaped civilization which our opponents lack. Yet if we have not convinced them, the reason must be that we have not yet made explicit some of the foundations on which our conclusions rest. Our chief task therefore must still be to improve the argument on which our case for a free society rests.[1]

Such an acknowledgment of imperfection would hardly be impressive coming from most of us. But here we have it from one whose scholarship, insights, creative thinking, and learned works are unexcelled and whose lifelong efforts have been dedicated to the free society. A luminary, if not the star among us, he points the finger at his own lack of attainment, along with yours and mine. In a word, we simply do not know adequately how to make the case for that way of life to which we aspire. My “Amen,” for what it’s worth!

The Quarrelsome Level

I might claim one dubious advantage over Hayek: I suspect I’m personally acquainted with more devotees of the free society than either he or anyone else. And what I observe is disturbing: the supposition that ardent opposition to all authoritarian systems qualifies one as an expert on freedom! Persons who thus assess themselves simply have not probed far enough to discover the vastness of the unknown; hence, they are cocksure of their competence. Confining themselves as they do to the negative side of the issue, they can only declaim against the faults of socialism; they are unable to explain the merits of a free society and the wonders wrought by it. They are mired at the quarrelsome level. Indeed, general proficiency in the freedom philosophy is so low that any person with but slight understanding and powers of exposition stands out head and shoulders above the others. In this situation, one doesn’t have to be very good to be outstanding!

Not a man among us, however, is entitled to look down his nose at any other; scarcely anyone has more than scratched the surface, this being Hayek’s point. And there are reasons aplenty: the complexities of this subject are akin to the mysteries of Creation. The free society, as best I can define it, is that state of affairs where there are no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. Using this definition, freedom is a nonprescriptive way of life; there isn’t any design or plan to which we may refer; we might call it a nonsystem.

How, then, can one describe the way a nonsystem will work? An observation attributed to a little boy comes to mind: “Thinking is when you shut your mouth and your head begins talking to itself.” Who can figure out what the outcome of that will be! None of us can, any more than any of us can foresee the workings of Creation—or predict the wonders of freedom. But we can observe, to some extent, what Creation has done, and we can take note of what happens when a society has been essentially free. Such observations can serve as the basis of a faith in freedom and, thus, as a stimulus for the restoration of freedom. It must be somewhere in this area that imaginative and creative work has fruitful possibilities. In any event, if the plunge into coercive collectivism is to be reversed during our lifetime, it would seem to depend on the proficiency of these few who can do creative thinking, writing, talking. Each of us should make every effort to be numbered among them for, as I shall try to demonstrate, only more proficient persons can bring about results—here and now.

Surges of Progress

Here’s a sketchy reading of the way history reports the coming and going of freedom. Whether or not we live to see it, we need never despair about the restoration of an essentially free society—somewhere, sometime. Freedom is consonant with human destiny, and must prevail if man does. Even in the absence of noble and inspiring intellects, the commonplace rivalries, dissensions, bickerings among men insure, more or less naturally, humanity’s exposure to freedom every now and then, in rhythmic fashion. The Grand Design seems to call for intermittent doses of freedom in progressive refinements—Sumer, Athens, and so on, to America—in expectation that at least a few unusually perceptive individuals will, sooner or later, apprehend the wonderful message of “this last, best hope of earth.”

Let me put it this way: Averting our own decline and fall, such as happened to Rome, England, and others, seems impossible short of numerous stars of a high intellectual magnitude. However, I doubt that the eventual emergence of a free society rests exclusively on the few who understand and can present the positive attributes of freedom. There are, in addition, ordinary human forces—nonrational—which have accounted for the several emergences of freedom up to and including its appearance in America.[2] It is important that we reflect upon the underlying idea.

Here’s the idea as related to one significant phase of the free society:

Religious liberty is the residual legatee of religious quarrels.[3]

The truth of this observation, upon reflection, seems apparent. The quarrels over this or that form of a coercively imposed religion brought all of the absurdities into the open. Only when absurdities are in the open may they be apprehended as absurdities—and dropped! Expose the absurdities, and the residual legatee is religious liberty.

Here we have an example of what can be accomplished by so-called activists. But note that this nonrational activity took centuries for its achievement. It is definitely long range.

A Wave Sequence

Nonrational forces, forever at work, exert themselves as action and reaction and, viewed historically, give the appearance of an evolutionary-devolutionary movement—a wave sequence. The absurdities galore of a dark age are brought into the open, fought over, eventually seen through, and dropped. And there stand men free and unencumbered, at least for a brief period, historically speaking. The hope is—at the human level I can think of no other—that each brief flash of freedom will be apprehended, that is, understood and explained and preserved. The persons who can do this are the only ones who can possibly get results—here and now. In their absence, expect a decline and fall, and await another happening by the nonrational forces. These are our choices.

When the historical picture is seen in this light, and once we realize that only the self-improvement procedure has any here-and-now possibilities and that activist programs are very long range at best, numerous helpful ideas for personal conduct come to mind.

For instance, the tendency of many free society devotees is to shush the communists, socialists, and others of the opposition. If shushing isn’t overtly attempted by denying them a soapbox—press, platform, or whatever—their silence is, at the very least, a pious hope. Contrary to first impression, this may be a misguided aspiration.

Open Debate

If coercive imposition—whether it concerns religion, education, business, or labor—is a hodgepodge of absurdities, then let these absurdities be brought into the open. Instead of trying to stifle the advocates of coercion, which only hardens them in their sins, let them quarrel! While I have no heart for this nonrational level of performance and am far too impatient to await its assuredly far-off outcome, such catholicity has these points in its favor:

1. It affords the only level at which quarrelsome folks on either side can exert themselves and, by so doing, bring absurdities into the open.

2. Free speech and free press cannot be denied to anyone without contradicting the freedom philosophy.

3. Authors of absurdities may, on occasion, see them as such when recorded in speech and print; contrarily, if obliged to suffer their absurdities in silence, they may become devoted to them.

4. When devotees of freedom argue for the silencing of authoritarians, they argue as a minority against the vast majority; thus, they are in no position to protest should the majority choose to reverse the process. Let’s not make the case against ourselves.

Ours, If We Deserve It

If we cannot win the case for freedom with the channels of communication left open, then the essentially free society is destined to be the hallmark of some other civilization in the distant future. It can be ours only if we’re up to it; which is to say, it’s ours if we deserve it.

We can hardly expect a society without blemishes—not among imperfect men. Men’s actions and reactions will forever result in inclines and declines; the evolutionary-devolutionary sequence continuing. But the way it should appear over the long pull, if I read the message correctly, is on an ascending plane, a display of unique individuality, something like this:

In a word, a low point in a later age should be above a high point in an earlier age. And whether or not this transpires will depend exclusively on the appearance of persons with an ever-improving perception and an ever-increasing ability clearly to explain what they apprehend. These are the ones and the only ones who have the remotest possibility of getting results—here and now!

[1] See What’s Past Is Prologue (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.). Copy on request.

[2] See “A Role for Rationality” in my Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969), pp. 9–24.

[3] John Neville Figgis, British historian, pointing out that men chose toleration when fed up with fighting the inconclusive wars of religion of the sixteenth century.

6

Sinking in a sea of buts

There were five of us at a predinner get-together, one an Austrian. These friends were each as near purists in the freedom philosophy as one ever comes upon—which is the only reason for mentioning one man’s dissent. His dissent seemed insignificant, but it’s the minor deviations and inconsistencies of the philosophical elite—not the imitators among us—that weigh so importantly against exemplary action.

That’s the setting; here’s the talk: A free market affirmation of mine brought an immediate response from the Austrian, “I infer that you wouldn’t even approve of the Vienna Opera.” (State owned.)

“Indeed, I would not.”

“Why, Leonard!”

Following my explanation, he remarked, “I agree with you in principle, but. . . .”

I cut him short by saying, “If you agree with me in principle, then we have nothing more to talk about.” However, in that remark I was wrong. This is precisely where the talk should begin—with the origin of his and countless other buts.

To complete the background, my friend confessed the next morning, “I lay awake most of the night fretting about our discussion. While I still agree with you in principle, I find myself so emotionally committed to the Vienna Opera that in this instance I must make an exception.”

It is not my intention here to pick on socialized opera or to show how socialization of the arts is authoritarian or even how a free market for the arts gives consumers what they wish in exchange for their money. This should be apparent to anyone who has an understanding of how freedom affords justice, whereas socialism does not and cannot.[1] Rather, I wish to suggest the fallacy and the damage arising from allowing exceptions or “buts” to what one regards as right principle.

Emotionally Committed

I rather like the phrasing of my friend’s excuse for his deviation: “emotionally committed.” By using this term, he acknowledges that his is not a rational commitment; for one of his understanding, it couldn’t possibly be. No use explaining to him how the market works—he already knows. So do countless others who approach exemplary status! His phrasing is valuable because it brings to light a facet of the freedom problem that has been eluding us: emotional rather than rational commitments against which rational rebuttals are fruitless.

Among those who understand the freedom philosophy and how it works in practice will be found very few, indeed, who aren’t emotionally committed to this or that practice of socialism. Nearly every one of these near-exemplars has his socialistic “thing.” If it isn’t the Vienna Opera, it is the Gateway Arch, this or that bit of protectionism, a subsidy that befits his convenience, or whatever. “I agree with you in principle, but. . . .”

In the first place, I cannot allow my own pet exception to freedom without allowing others their pet buts. Every socialistic “thing” is someone’s pet. Logically, if I break faith, then I am, by my conduct, endorsing faithlessness on the part of everyone. For me to stand for one socialistic item, regardless of how emotionally committed, is for me to give away the case for freedom; it is to open the sluice gates for all-out socialism. I cannot allow myself an exception and deny a similar allowance to others.

Freedom, as I define it, is “no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.” This, in my view, is right in principle. Granted, a principle stands whether or not anyone stands for it. But whether or not I am a man of principle depends on whether I adhere to or abandon the principle. I cannot slightly defect and remain principled any more than I can slightly lie and remain truthful, or any more than I can slightly steal and remain an honest man.

Bearing in mind that we are here discussing the minor flaws of near or would-be exemplars of freedom—the actions of the philosophical elite—the word “slightly” suggests another error common among them. It is that we must rid ourselves of socialism but it must be disposed of gradually, that is, slightly, or by a step at a time. Were it abolished suddenly, so it is argued, the shock would be unbearable, adjustments to a free society impossible.

Society Moves Slowly

This argument rests upon the unwarranted assumption that, were you or I to stand for the immediate repeal of all socialism, then immediate repeal would follow. Actually, if millions of us turned against socialism and demanded its immediate repeal, it would take years for the realization. The wheels of society turn slowly. Gradualists fail to distinguish between principle and practice.

Whenever anyone urges the gradual repeal of laws he believes to be wrong, he has lost the thought and force behind the case for repeal. Instead, postponement is actually advocated; and postponement, as eternity, has no calendar days, no deadline—it is a never-never proposition.

Gradualism has yet another flaw. It implies that what is declared to be wrong isn’t all wrong; otherwise, why abide it for a moment? It’s like saying that we should bring the thief slowly to justice else the baker and the haberdasher will lose the malefactor’s trade too suddenly.

When events in society are going wrong—and they appear to be—nothing less than exemplary action can set them aright, a difficult role. Any exemplar must be prepared for disfavor and unpopularity, simply because his principled positions are and of necessity must be an affront to the mores, a break with the prevailing wrongs.

Freedom appears to be submerged in a sea of buts. It is entirely realistic to expect these buts from persons who do no thinking for themselves. The exemplar, however, never degrades a principle with a but. To do so is commonplace, not exemplary.

[1] See my article, “Can Opera Be Grand If Socialized?” in The Freeman, September, 1962.

7

The urgency argument

One way to discover truth is to uncover error. Finding what is wrong may reveal what is right!

The tendency is to look for error only among our adversaries, rarely among those whose thinking we most admire, and seldom, if at all, in ourselves. Doubtless, truth would reveal itself more readily were we to reverse the priorities!

How do we best put ourselves under scrutiny? I find that error in my own thinking is best dispelled by taking advantage of those whose thinking is superior to my own. If any error can be found there, then refinement in my own thought is the reward.

But we need to be on guard even with this approach, for all men are imperfect. One does not improve his own thinking when one becomes a devout follower or disciple or idolater of another, setting him up as “the last word,” as a god never to be questioned. Imperfection finds no remedy in idolatry, now or ever!

I am constantly coming upon contemporaries and others, all the way back to the ancient past, whose reflections and analytical thinking far surpass my own. In the area of my special interest, political economy, one of my most rewarding discoveries, some thirty-five years ago, was that incomparable Frenchman, Frederic Bastiat. I have yet to find anyone who penetrated the political sham and popular delusions more clearly than he or who more brilliantly and wittily explained his insights. And above all else was his integrity, his adherence to principle. In his enormous output—1,200,000 words—it is difficult to find “leaks,” that is, a shading of ideas or sentences or phrases to accommodate expediency. Bastiat has an admirer in me.

However, I have found among his works a sentence which appears to me to contradict his principles and what he stood for:

If the socialists mean that under extraordinary circumstances, for urgent cases, the state should set aside some resources to assist certain unfortunate people, to help them adjust to changing conditions, we will, of course, agree.[1]

Presumably, Bastiat’s “we” alluded to himself and his thinking and was not meant to include other persons. Indeed, it would have been as difficult then as now to find individuals—except anarchists—who would go as far as he in limiting government. In any event, had I been around, Bastiat could not have included me in his “we.” I wouldn’t allow government to get its nose in this tent, however urgent the clamor!

I would not dwell on this detail except that this “leak” is common not only to the “socialists” but to many of today’s best libertarian thinkers and writers. Unless it is repaired, there is no chance to arrest our plunge into socialism. My comments are not to criticize Bastiat whom I so much respect but, rather, to appeal to my contemporaries. I hold this small and seemingly harmless concession to police power to be the hole in the dike. We must mend this flaw in our thinking or suffer the consequences.

Steadfastness Under Stress

Here is my contention: The state has no principled role in remedying social distress, none whatsoever! To use urgency or need or extraordinary circumstances as the basis for governmental entry into this area is to give away the case for limiting police power. To concede only this much is to throw away the best criterion we have for limitation; it is to open the flood gates.

It ought to be clear that urgency or need is a wishy-washy point of reference; it can no more serve to guide us than can a cork in the ocean or a leaf in a hurricane. It is as flimsy and fickle as the wishes from which such urgency stems.

What, for instance, is urgent or needed? Most of us will concede that a starving or drowning man is urgently in need of help. But do we stop there? Hardly! It is now proclaimed that all persons whose annual incomes are below $3,300 are urgently in need of Federal assistance; they’re below “the poverty line,” a line that is forever bouncing upward. Let a prosperous city suffer some damage from flood or wind or whatever and it is declared “a disaster area”; their situation is urgent. Grand Opera is becoming an urgent need of all cities, just as are better hospitals, a Gateway Arch, or a thousand and one other wishes. Urgency or need has no more stability than day dreams and should never be used as an excuse for the employment of police force.

“. . . to protect persons, liberties, and properties; to maintain the right of each, and to cause justice to reign over us all.”[2] That’s the role Bastiat assigned to government. But “to protect persons” can easily be interpreted to mean protection against such exigencies of life as personal distress, that is, the providing of whatever it is one’s varying subjective judgment tells him he needs.

Except for the aforementioned “leak,” Bastiat left no doubt as to what he meant by “to protect”:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.[3]

Reflect now, not on the “needs” for Grand Opera and the like, but on the starving man. Can I forcibly take the fruits of your labor to rescue him without committing a crime? I cannot. The degree of urgency has nothing to do with the matter and would not absolve me of my crime. According to Bastiat’s own criterion, just cited, relief work is not within the proper duties of the state. Urgency or personal need no more warrants coercive force on the part of government than on my part. This would appear to be self-evident once the essential feature of government is seen.

Essentially, government is organized force; this is its distinctive characteristic. To demonstrate this fact: The distinction between you as an agent of government and you as a private citizen is that in the former you are backed by police force; issue an edict and I obey or take the consequences. Remove this backing and you are restored to private citizenship; issue an edict and I do as I please. The logical question follows: What can police force do? Clearly, it can inhibit, prohibit, restrain, penalize. Next, what actions of men should be inhibited and so on? Only fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation; that is, all destructive actions of some against others.

A Spiritual Force

The point to keep in mind is that police force is in no respect a creative force. The creative force is always spiritual: the spirit of inquiry, discovery, invention, insight, intuition, a sense of charity. These qualities flourish when the soul is at peace; they are inhibited, their roots destroyed, when inhibitive force—coercion—is administered. Merely take note of how our own sense of charity withers whenever and wherever government takes over the role of “benefactor.” We lose our personal sense of obligation.

The idea of forcibly taking from some and freely bestowing on others is precisely the Marxian line: “from each according to ability . . . to each according to need.” Bastiat aptly described this political legerdemain as legal plunder. If Emerson was correct in claiming that “the end pre-exists in the means,” then it follows that nothing but ill can flow from plundering others and redistributing the loot, superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. We need only observe the deplorable effects on the recipients of these something-for-nothing schemes: a loss of self-responsibility and atrophy of the faculties.

But there is something even more illogical about the notion that police action is warranted in urgent instances. This rests on the fear that citizens left to their own resources and acting voluntarily wouldn’t respond quickly enough or adequately in emergency cases; something must be done, even the abandonment of sound principle, to compensate for this presumed deficiency in voluntary action. Not only is this fear unfounded; the proposed remedy would fail.

To see why, simply compare private and governmental activities in those areas in which comparisons are possible. For instance, the government delivery of mail and the private delivery of the human voice! Or, compare the costs of our own private airlines with the government-owned airlines of any other country.[4] Or, observe how you respond to a neighbor’s distress and compare that with a government response to a similar distress. Or, note how private citizens, observing an opportunity, organize to get the job done overnight, as we say. Where these opportunities are left to government, as in Russia, months or years are required for any response at all; and even when a program is organized, there is only a slow, cumbersome bureaucracy, condemned by its nature to perpetual inefficiency.

Psychic Profit

I know the rebuttal to this: Yes, private citizens will respond quickly and efficiently to an opportunity for a profit but not with similar alacrity to the numerous signals of personal distress in society.

Overlooked here are the two kinds of profit: monetary and psychic, the latter providing as much or more incentive than the former. When one lends another a helping hand, he experiences a psychic profit; that is, he prefers extending help to not extending it, else he would not have extended it. In his own judgment, he profits. Indeed, the helper often realizes greater satisfaction than does the one he helps.[5]

The urge for psychic profit runs deep in the human spirit and will manifest itself, even extravagantly, if not preempted by police action. The only reason for the feeble present condition of our faith in this voluntary behavior is that voluntarism has been largely deadened by governmental take-over. We observe less and less personal charity in action and, thus, draw a wrong conclusion.

Be not mistaken—citizens will organize as quickly and efficiently to achieve psychic profit as they do to take advantage of monetary opportunities. Given a chance, they’ll always outperform police action for such a purpose. To argue contrarily is to claim that alacrity and efficiency are enhanced by bestowing upon benefactors the power of coercion. That, of course, is absurd.

Finally, reflect on the vast majority who turn to police power to remedy distress. While they may do this as a means of escaping the personal practice of charity, every one of them will say they act purely because of their concern, their compassion, for those on the lower rung of life’s ladder. Let’s take them at their word. Can they not trust their own compassion to express itself? Apparently not! For it seems, when they turn to government, they are insisting that they must be forced to do that which they claim they want to do. Again, an absurdity!

Charity, no less than insight or inventiveness or inspiration, is in the creative realm. And it can never, even in the most urgent or extraordinary circumstances, be aided and abetted by police force. Let government codify and enforce the taboos against destructive actions; leave everything creative to men acting freely, competitively, cooperatively, voluntarily, privately. And the more urgent the matter, the more rigidly should this rule be observed.

[1] See the chapter, “Justice and Fraternity,” in Selected Essays on Political Economy by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), p. 120.

[2] See The Law by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), p. 7.

[3] Ibid., p. 21.

[4] See “Flying Socialism” by Sam H. Husbands, Jr. in The Freeman, February, 1965.

[5] See “What Shall It Profit a Man?” in my Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967), pp. 108–17.

8

Why freedom is not trusted

Professor Ben Rogge humorously observed to his neighbor: “The martins are going to take over our backyard this season; they outnumber the starlings two to one.” “You are wrong,” countered his friend, “there are twice as many starlings as martins.” To settle the argument, they decided to count. But the difficulty of counting birds in flight brought a confession from Rogge: “Really, I can’t distinguish between a martin and a starling.” “I’m glad you said that first,” responded the other honest person, “neither can I.”

One important reason why freedom is not trusted is that many people cannot—or at least do not—distinguish between freedom and slavery; they can’t tell a martin from a starling.

Ask people, “Would you prefer to live in freedom or under all-out statism?” and everyone—even Russians—would side with freedom. But this unanimity is to be explained not so much by any well-recognized distinction between these two ways of life as by the connotations—good and bad—of the words. To test this contention, merely ask, “Where would you rather live, in the U.S.A. or the U.S.S.R.?” Americans will answer, “U.S.A.” and Russians, “U.S.S.R.” And the answer would remain the same by most Americans were the U.S.A. to become as dictator-ridden as the U.S.S.R. Why? Because they can’t tell the difference between freedom and its opposite.

America properly acquired a freedom label, for free institutions were more nearly approximated here than anywhere else, before or since. We, no less than our forefathers, have been taught from childhood to pay obeisance to freedom. The rhetoric of freedom has more or less dominated our politics, our verse, our song. “Home of the brave and land of the free” remains on our tongues to this day, as much taken for granted as a sunrise.

On our tongues but not in our minds! The label endures while the contents deteriorate. America is said to be free because we retain the image of a former aspiration. True, we give every appearance of being free men and we use a great deal of freedom’s phrasing. Yet—as in Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray—when the curtain is pulled back and we view ourselves as we really are, America is no more free than Dorian Gray was righteous! The distinction between the image and the reality is overwhelming.

Here is a clear case of false labeling. The politico-economic hodgepodge which engulfs us is widely presumed to be what our forebears meant by freedom. This hybrid is not trusted, and for good reason. Therefore, let’s not put any faith in freedom.

Typical of what we hear incessantly are these words from a scholarly and an affluent person:

As you know, I have long been a thorough-going supporter of the freedom philosophy, but in the last few years I have been increasingly disturbed by the fact that the search for the almighty dollar, so freely permitted under the freedom banner, too often neglects its broad responsibilities to our environment. As a result, damage from free enterprise frequently exceeds benefits. . . . Since there is absolutely no hope that responsibility can be developed in time to check the appalling consequences of population growth, I find myself forced to recognize that the freedom philosophy cannot possibly answer the problem. This in turn dictates a most unpleasant change in my thinking.

What is he changing to? To the only possible alternative: more intervention such as government controlled child birth—vasectomies, “the pill,” and so on.

Is it not clear that this man’s switch from a devotion to freedom to an advocacy of statism is founded on the fallacy that free men are responsible for the present hodgepodge? If he thinks this fouled-up situation is caused by freedom, he has some serious homework to do. His error is precisely at the thoughtless and nonanalytical level of those who have been exclaiming for the past thirty-seven years, “If free enterprise is so wonderful, how come the great depression!” As if freedom were responsible for that debacle![1] These people do not know what is meant by freedom—at least, not what I mean.

I wish to go even further: They haven’t the slightest idea where their recommended course of action leads. If they think that things are now askew, let them ponder the inevitable consequences of what they naively propose. Dr. Ludwig von Mises, who suffered this authoritarian nonsense, can counsel them:

What these people fail to realize is that the various measures they suggest are not capable of bringing about the beneficial results aimed at. On the contrary, they produce a state of affairs which from the point of view of their advocates is worse than the previous state which they were designed to alter. If the government, faced with the failure of its first intervention, is not prepared to undo its interference with the market and to return to a free economy, it must add to its first measure more and more regulations and restrictions. Proceeding step by step on this way it finally reaches a point in which all economic freedom of individuals has disappeared. Then socialism of the German pattern, the Zwangswirtschaft of the Nazis, emerges.[2]

The Consequences of Intervention

In deference to the person who proposes this or that coercive intervention, I will concede that no one can ever trace its devious impact on the behavior of human beings; there is no foretelling what will happen. Frighten or otherwise upset a person and he may jump out the window or at your throat or whatever. Man does the best of which he is capable when free and self-responsible, but a single intervention—price control, for instance—will change his behavior for the worse; he’ll try to “worm his way” around it; he’ll cheat or lie or in some other way lower his moral stand. Let interventions become extensive enough, and otherwise splendid citizens will be up to every conceivable chicanery; they’ll riot, strike, sit-in, advocate inflation and more intervention, and so on; they’ll suffer a moral breakdown. They will no longer act responsibly simply because they are no longer self-responsible.

A report of the breakdown in France during the French Revolutionary period points up the situation into which we appear to be heading:

Just as dependent on the law of cause and effect was the moral development. Out of the inflation of prices grew a speculating class; and, in the complete uncertainty as to the future, all business became a game of chance, and all businessmen, gamblers. In city centers came a quick growth of stockjobbers and speculators; and these set a debasing fashion in business which spread to the remotest parts of the country. Instead of satisfaction with legitimate profits, came a passion for inordinate gains. Then, too, as values became more and more uncertain, there was no longer any motive for care or economy, but every motive for immediate expenditure and present enjoyment. So came upon the nation the obliteration of thrift. In this mania for yielding to present enjoyment rather than providing for future comfort were the seeds of new growths of wretchedness: luxury, senseless and extravagant, set in. This, too, spread as a fashion. To feed it, there came cheatery in the nation at large and corruption among officials and persons holding trusts. While men set such fashions in private and official business, women set fashions of extravagance in dress and living that added to the incentives to corruption. Faith in moral considerations, or even in good impulses, yielded to general distrust. National honor was thought a fiction cherished only by hypocrites. Patriotism was eaten out by cynicism.[3]

In a word, an inevitable manifestation of inflation and other interventions is a corrupt citizenry. The person who is unaware of the reason for this sorry picture will look upon the humanity around him as all there is to work with—an impossible lot from whom may be expected nothing but more trouble and chaos. He sees their faults but fails to see that much of their ill behavior is the result of the very coercive action he proposes. Further, he will mistakenly conclude that what he sees are a people as they behave when free. For isn’t America a free country? Because these people are debased by their “search for the almighty dollar,” they cannot be trusted. Away with freedom; make them toe the mark, impose on them the regimen of the goose step—the Zwangswirtschaft! The error here is two-fold. First, it must be remembered that the ones who ascend to dictatorial power are at least as corrupt as the ones they would control. For are they not from the self-same citizenry? This statist arrangement employs corruption as a remedy for corruption—an utter absurdity. The person who will order the vasectomy won’t be one whit better than the person operated on!

As Good as Can Be

The second error is to assume that people in the prevailing state of corruption would behave the same way in an essentially free society. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Let me pose a simple question for these countless individuals who are defecting. Suppose that the whole kit and caboodle of governmental interventions were removed; that government confined itself to codifying the taboos and enforcing them, leaving you free to act creatively as you choose. Imagine that there were no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy, leaving you free and self-responsible. Never mind for the moment about reforming the world. Would you, personally, act in a responsible manner? I know your answer, whoever you are: Affirmative! Anyone who would behave otherwise would be a traitor to his own interests—a fool.

Free and self-responsible men are as good as imperfect men can be. For confirmation, give yourself the test. Such self-examination makes it clear that we should trust free men, but be on guard against those who are coerced—they’ll behave irresponsibly.

The stumbling block in the way of freedom as a remedial step is an incontrovertible fact: no person, however brilliant, can ever see how this humpty-dumpty can be put back together again. If I cannot figure it out, who can! And, true, there is no one. How, then, can the remedy ever come about?

There have been periods in history darker than ours and these have, on occasion, been followed by eras of enlightenment. In no instance did an individual design the better society that came along. Mostly, the authoritarians had exhausted their bag of tricks, their power structures fell, and there stood the citizenry in freedom. Then, the miracles: Athens, America, and others.

There is no accounting for these efficacious events at the human level except a wisdom—an over-all luminosity—that emerges when men are free. This is a wisdom that does not remotely exist in any discrete individual, but it is the wisdom by which we live and grow.[4]

What relief an awareness of this over-all luminosity provides! I do not have to be what has never existed: a know-it-all; that is, Creation does not require of me that I be its architect. I need only attend to my own growth and to play my part in the preservation of freedom, the sole state in which your and my growth is possible. For this luminosity gets its brightness—all of it—from the tiny flashes, sparks, enlightenments of men when and only when in free and self-responsible activity—never in coerced action.

Trust freedom? In the society of men there is nothing else to trust!

[1] See “The Great Depression” by Professor Hans F. Sennholz in The Freeman, October, 1969.

[2] See Planned Chaos by Dr. Ludwig von Mises (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965), p. 23.

[3] See Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959), pp. 108–109.

[4] I’ve done my best to identify this miracle in pages 9–49 of Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969).

9

When freedom becomes second nature

Only when it becomes second nature for man to behave in a manner consonant with freedom will freedom be secure. And even second nature, while a good servant, can be deceptive if not constantly and rationally supervised.

That which is known is no longer a problem. That is, a point is grasped when it no longer requires analytical thinking. No conscious thought is required to find the answer to six times seven; the answer is known. Anyone who still has to think his way around “a” and other letters of the alphabet does not know how to write. Anyone who has to think about this or that movement of the steering wheel or brake or accelerator does not know how to drive. Those who know how to write and how to drive have relegated such physical movements to the conditioned reflexes; the movements have become second nature. A problem disappears when the solution is known.

It is important to emphasize that those features of our culture which we presume to be right and superior to earlier cultures are no longer considered by us to be problems; appropriate behaviors are taken for granted; the proper stance has become second nature. For instance, we do not regard the linkage of church and state as a problem; the rightness of the separation of these two institutions is assumed; it is known; our behaviors in that regard are second nature. In many cultures, however, this has been a social problem of the first magnitude, and still is. Why? Only because the correct behaviors haven’t passed the thinking stage and have not yet become second nature.

There are a thousand and one efficacious aspects of our culture that could be cited, all founded on behaviors rooted in tradition, no thought given to them, none whatsoever. They are taken for granted.

However, we need to be reminded occasionally of the genesis of what has become traditional or taken for granted. These customary behaviors on the plus side haven’t just happened. They began with a great deal of difficult, analytical thinking and courageous pronouncement; many thinkers have been burned at the stake for affronting the mores. In the case of church and state: “Uncompromising as ever, Father Paul (Sarpi) continued to write letters and publish treatises which clenched more and more firmly into the mind of Venice and of Europe the political doctrine of which he was the apostle,—the doctrine that the State is rightfully independent of the Church,—and throughout the Christian world he was recognized as victor.”[1] Courage? Sarpi, on one occasion, was accosted by assassins and left in a ditch for dead, and all because of his views which were upsetting to the established order.

So Seldom Prepared

The point I would stress is that many of the behaviors consonant with freedom are not sufficiently well known by us to have become second nature. In these matters, we remain in the having-to-think stage, and freedom is not secure. Let me illustrate.

Define freedom as the absence of restraints against any and all creative actions. How many of us habitually behave in a manner consonant with freedom as thus defined? Very few, indeed! True, it is second nature with most of us to respect another’s property; that is, we will not restrain another by personally taking the fruits of his labor. We know better. And this, in the long history of mankind, represents a mighty cultural step! But many Americans today will accept the fruits of the labor of others if the act of taking is depersonalized—done in the name of groups and politically approved. This aspect of taking and restraining has not been adequately pondered, thought through, analyzed; it remains a problem. The appropriate behavior is not generally known; it is rarely second nature. Out of willful ignorance, freedom is thus violated on countless fronts.

True, freedom of speech is more or less taken for granted, and appropriate behavior in that respect is second nature with most of us.

True, the same can be said for freedom of the press.

While it is also true that behaviors related to freedom of assembly are second nature, the habit seems to have gotten out of hand. Countless groups are construing this as freedom to assemble on someone else’s property. Such restraint on the creative actions of others is not freedom at all but license. This illustrates how deceptive second nature can be and why it has to be constantly watched and supervised. Merely reflect on the deep thinking that has to be done in this single area concerning assembly before it becomes second nature for our behaviors to be fully consonant with freedom!

However, we have barely scratched the surface—despite some steps in the right direction. So much of our behavior is not by second nature and is not consonant with freedom—and for good reason. Many freedom concepts are brand new and represent a break with tradition; relatively few persons have apprehended them, and only within the past several generations.

For instance, the subjective theory of value was discovered 100 years ago. It’s so simple: the value of any good or service is whatever anyone will give for it in willing (free) exchange. But most people, even in “enlightened” America, when faced with the slightest political crisis, will condone if not endorse the opposite: controls over wages, prices, rents, interest, exchange, production, and consumption (rationing). They fail to see that freedom is the best cure for a crisis and blindly insist on destroying the free market reflection of their own requirements and capabilities. Unknowingly, they smash the mirror and thus render all of us helpless to see our economic selves as we really are. All too rarely do we respond to the market reflection of these value judgments as if it were second nature to do so; instead, we demand protection or security or equality or something other than the market offers.

Nor have we constructively thought our way through numerous other aspects of freedom: private ownership, open access to the market, competition, free pricing as a means of allocating scarce resources, equality before the law as before God, and other related concepts. As a consequence, little of our behavior is freedom-oriented by second nature; we have to think how to behave in so many situations, with ever so many of us unwilling to indulge in such thinking. Freedom is far from secure!

The Freedom Idea Is New

It is utter folly for devotees of freedom to deceive themselves as to the security of their cause. The freedom we possess is precariously held, and it cannot be saved, much less improved, unless we know how precarious the situation is. There is no chance to solve a problem unless we understand how profound the problem is.

There’s a reason for our plight. “The more elevated is an activity in an organism, the less vigorous it is, less stable and less efficient. . . . the functions most recently acquired by a species, being higher and more complex, are those most easily lost. In other words, that which is most valued is always in greatest peril.”[2]

The freedom idea is in fact a recent, idealistic, elevated acquisition of the human mind. Not being rooted in tradition and having little in the way of second-nature behaviors working for its security, it lacks stability; it is easily lost; freedom concepts are fragile, wonderful ideas, few of which we’ve yet embraced by second nature within our relatively unconditioned consciousness.

To grasp the difficulty of our problem, simply estimate the quality of thinking required before behaviors consonant with freedom become habitual—second nature. The quality required? When many of us can expose the fallacies of socialism and explain the principles of freedom with the ease and facility of adding two and two, that’s when freedom will be an assured way of life!

Are there any assurances of this way of life in the foreseeable future? Only if perfect knowledge can be assumed! Thus, freedom will always be insecure; it will forever be touch-and-go. Even eternal vigilance and devoted effort can do no more than to set the trend aright, as high an aim as we should embrace. And this expectation is warranted only if we view our problem realistically, see it as profound and difficult as it really is. To assess it superficially, to think of it as requiring anything less than practices consonant with freedom becoming second nature, is to waste our time and energy, to spin our wheels, as the saying goes.

Is this too dismal a prospect? Not to those among us who enjoy a challenge; it’s magnificent!

[1] See Seven Great Statesmen by Andrew Dickson White (New York: The Century Company, 1910), p. 26.

[2] See What Is Philosophy? by José Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., Inc., 1961), p. 117.

10

Getting to know beans

If we knew beans—and I mean this literally—we would know that labor is a commodity. My dictionary states that a commodity is “any useful thing; anything bought and sold; any article of commerce.” This definition would seem to be acceptable to any economist.

Listen to a distinguished businessman who puts himself on the side of the overwhelming majority:

The concept of labor as a “commodity” is so outmoded that we don’t even talk about it today.[1]

Granted, this concept is outmoded. Further, it is against the law: “The labor of a human being is not a commodity or article of commerce.”[2] But it’s not the first time men have thought the truth had been outmoded. When a truth is out of style, or at odds with legislation, that’s precisely when we should be thinking, writing, talking about it—especially when the confusion is as costly as in this case.[3]

The widespread impression that labor is not a commodity results in enormous economic mischief. If labor is not a commodity, then the argument seems to be its price (wage) ought not to be determined by competitive forces of supply and demand in an open market. In other words, those who argue that labor is not a commodity would in effect deny the laborer access to the market—would compel him to find some other way to get what he wants from others.

Historically, that other way was for many laborers to serve as somebody’s slave—after having lost a war and being taken captive. The serfdom of the Middle Ages marked little if any improvement in the human condition. Not until the industrial revolution made it profitable for employers to compete to hire people to use tools was there much chance to live better lives. Capital and competition freed slaves to sell their services to the highest bidder in the open market.

Market vs. Coercion

The modern argument that labor is not a commodity generally implies that we who work for a living would fare better under compulsory unionism than in the voluntarism of the market. But this is only another form of warfare and slavery, and not a path to progress. This way—price and exchange control—is at the intellectual level of mirror smashing. It keeps others from seeing what we have to offer and us from seeing what they have to offer in exchange. So, let’s be done with the notion that labor is not a commodity.

What lies at the root of such widespread confusion? Quite simple. Most people use one dictionary definition of labor only: “Laborers, operatives, and artisans as a body or class”—in a word, human beings. This figure of speech is useful for political purposes.

The definition an economist must use is quite different: “The product or result of labor or work”—in a word, the productive effort of human beings. Interestingly enough, this definition has after it archaic.

A laborer, be he the janitor or the president of the company, is a human being and not a commodity. No argument! But the labor or work of any human being, regardless of occupational status, is a commodity. About this there should be no argument among those who respect the dignity of every man, and would have him free to buy and sell in the open market.

We quite properly regard a bag of beans as a commodity. But what is a bag of beans, really? It is exclusively a manifestation of numerous forms of labor applied to the good earth, that is, it is a product of varying types of human energy. Except for Creation’s endowments—natural resources—in which man has had no hand, the bag of beans is labor and nothing else.

From an economist’s viewpoint, the dictionary misleads in still another way; it describes labor as “physical or mental toil; bodily or intellectual exertion, esp. when fatiguing, painful, or irksome, or unavoidable”—in a word, menial or servile effort. Were this correct, we would be forced to measure the value of labor by the amount of perspiration or degree of tiredness—an absurdity! We are all tool users. In today’s world, there is a mop or hoe or plow or truck or jumbo jet to augment labor. These are all tools—capital. The captain of a jet no less labors than does a carpenter or a plumber. It is economic nonsense to categorize as labor some lower form of human exertion, to draw a line between “the working man” and an inventor, for instance. Both are working men and ofttimes the latter labors and creates more than the former. It would be just as wrong to define labor as exclusively a higher form of exertion—the insights of Leonardo da Vinci, for instance. Quality or quantity of exertion has nothing whatsoever to do with what is or is not labor: labor is human effort, whether the exertion be muscular, mental, or spiritual.

In the case of a bag of beans, there’s the labor of men who till the soil, the labor of those who skinned the hides that went into harnesses, of those who grew and ginned the cotton that made the bags, of those who mined and refined the ore that made the plow and other implements—an endless profusion of kinds of labor ranging from ideas laboriously refined, to the labor of saving capital, to the labor-saving but labor-produced machinery—trillions of labor bits in that bag of beans!

The accumulation of capital helps to emphasize the varying kinds of labor or effort. What is the nature of this effort? It is abstention from spending all of one’s income right now. For some, this is more difficult than pulling weeds; for others, it is the easiest thing they do. If the price we pay for capital—interest rates—were to be governed by how difficult it is for people to save, we would have to invent some electronic gadget, perhaps an “effortometer,” comparable to measuring the value of labor by the amount of perspiration. Capital, in this sense, is a commodity and, as the bag of beans, has its origin in a form of labor or effort.

Magic Combinations

Nor does the story of labor end in a bag of beans. There’s a can of beans! Contemplate the labor in transport, of mining tin, and of all the labor that went into the canning factory—another profusion of labor bits, even to the kind of labor that goes into advertising and into the paper on which it is printed.

And the end is not yet. There are countless forms in which the canned beans are prepared and presented for human consumption—the labor of cooks and of recipe creators and all the labor bits that go into the accompanying ingredients.

The dish set before the king is labor—and so is the dishwasher, whether manual or mechanical.

Everyone will agree that a bag of beans qualifies as a commodity: “a useful thing; anything bought and sold; any article of commerce.” But the bag of beans is only one of the myriad forms in which labor is manifested. Labor, thus, is a commodity precisely as is the bag of beans.

All except socialist planners will agree that a bag of beans should go to market and find its price at whatever level free and willing exchange dictates. But very few in today’s world—even those who give lip service to free enterprise—will agree that a laborer’s labor should find its price in this manner. And all because most people entertain the notion that labor is not a commodity. They personify labor as a cartoonist’s figure in overalls, just as they personify capital as a top-hatted figure with dollar signs on his vest.

My labor, let us say, goes into raising beans. In this case, my labor goes to market as a bag of beans, so let my labor find its price in the market. But suppose I choose, instead, to hire out to a grower of beans. Then my labor—of the same type and intensity as before should not find its price in the same way as the bag of beans? By what quirk of reasoning can such a deduction be drawn? This is not a reasonable deduction but only a conclusion falsely arrived at. No amount of labor can make sense of it.

Beans vary in quality. People will pay more for good beans than for poor beans. Beans also vary in quantity, that is, in supply. People will pay more or turn to other foods when beans are scarce and high priced and will buy more when they are plentiful and low priced. This is to say that people will use their judgment as to how much they will pay for labor going into beans. Can they be faulted for this? Of course not! Should you tire of beans, then you will pay absolutely nothing for such labor; and if every consumer were to feel the same, then labor manifesting itself in beans would receive nothing whatsoever. What’s wrong with this? Nothing! For isn’t the value of anything—labor as beans or labor as service—the amount that will be paid by buyers in willing exchange? To argue contrarily is to assert that what is of value to me—labor however it presents itself—is not a matter of self-determination. Shades of Marx!

Ability Rather Than Need

The rebuttal, of course, is founded on the confusion of definitions, namely, that labor has needs whereas beans do not. True, regardless of the form our labor takes, we laborers have needs. But our labor, as one of the scarce factors of production in the economic sense, no more has needs than do the beans, for they are one and the same. The only relevant question is this: Is our labor needed? If we are to gratify our needs as laborers, it’s up to us to see that our labor is needed, whether manifested in beans or writing or waiting on table. The sole sense in which labor can be said to have needs is the need for constantly improving performance, that is, a need for a greater marketability and exchange value. As I increase the attractiveness of my performance, my personal needs as a laborer can be increasingly gratified. Further, only I, not you, can affect the improvement of my labor. So far as my labor is concerned, you alone may determine what you will offer in exchange for it—and that’s the way it should be. I may accept your offer—or a better one—or none.

These confusions as to the nature of labor lead to mischief when we institutionalize the confusions. Witness the countless political enactments that subsidize labor in employments free choice no longer demands—Federal Urban Renewal, for example—or the tactics of the National Labor Relations Board or the coercive practices of labor unions. Lamented one industrialist, “We are now buying a man’s time, not his labor.” The whole political pressure is away from the market—free choice—and in the direction of more money for less work and fewer hours. Instead of a concentration on the improvement of labor and its market attractiveness, the movement is toward monopoly, a forming of cartels. The cartel’s message is: Accept us for as little as we choose to give and at our price; you have no alternative; the most important decision in economic affairs is to be made by us and not by management or even by consumers. Take us as we choose to be or close shop.

It is not necessary, however, to read my explanations to see the fallacies in the current “labor” movement. There isn’t a single “prolabor” member of Congress, a staff member of the NLRB, a labor union official, or one of their millions of members who really believes that a laborer should be paid more for his labor than a free and unfettered market has to offer. Not if we test their beliefs by their actions rather than by their pronouncements!

Merely observe that every one of these individuals—as does each of the rest of us—shops around for bargains. He’ll buy a can of beans from the store that offers it for 20 cents rather than from a store that offers the identical can for 30 cents. What do his actions prove? He is attempting to buy labor as cheaply as he possibly can, for that can of beans is but the manifestation of countless labor bits applied to the bounties of the good earth.

Were the actions of these people consistent with their pronouncements backed by coercion, they would buy the 30-cent can of beans; that is, they would insist on paying more for labor than the free market offers. Not until they engage in this foolish action will I believe they mean what they say by their antimarket pronouncements.

It’s human nature and common sense for every bidder to buy services as cheaply as he can. But this does not force wages down. Nor is it a reason why laborers should mistrust the market. The over-all scarcity of labor as an economic resource, and the competitive bidding for that scarce and valuable resource, is the only way in the world for the laborer to obtain the full value for his services and fully enjoy the manifold blessings of freedom. But we must be done with the nonsense that labor isn’t a commodity.

Getting to know beans is one way of restoring some economic sanity, of bringing to light a concept that has been too long outmoded.

[1] Ira Mosher, President, National Association of Manufacturers, 1949.

[2] The Clayton Anti-Trust Act, 1914.

[3] I am fully aware that in contemporary economic literature many economists do not treat commodities and services alike as economic goods. In order to dramatize the applicability of economic law to human labor, this essay makes use of the outmoded concept.

11

Games we play with labor

Karl Marx, whose already enormous following appears to be increasing, insisted that labor accounts for all production and, hence, value. But he identified labor as the proletariat which, according to the dictionary is, “the working class; especially, the industrial working class: the current sense, as in Marxism.” Using collective or class jargon to define a term makes impossible any clear explanation of economic phenomena.

It is true that labor, in the broad sense in which I use the term, does account for all production—that is, labor sensibly defined is human action, motivated by the purpose of the actor, and it matters not whether the exertion be physical, intellectual, or spiritual. The effort to apprehend an idea is as much labor as is the effort of laying bricks. Intuiting or inventing involves labor, as does shoveling coal or hoeing corn.

All human exertion of whatever variety stems exclusively from discrete individuals and the purpose each has in mind, which is to say that labor is private and personal. If anything can be earmarked as one’s own—mine, not thine—labor according to the laborer’s choice is it; nothing is more surely private property.

According to Purpose

Every earthly achievement by man has its origin in purposeful labor, including the idea behind each achievement. Some human accomplishments are in the form of spiritual insight, moral principles, intellectual attainments. Others take material form when labor is applied to natural resources. This latter phase accounts for everything from the bread we eat to the pencils we write with to the planes we fly in. So, aside from the gifts of Creation, all production results from labor by choice—the human resource.

One’s home, for example, is entirely the product of labor applied to natural resources. In it are labor bits by the trillions: discoveries, inventions, and manual exertions over the millennia. But note this: the labor embodied in your home is wanted by you, it is useful to you; it has value to you—or you wouldn’t be living there. Labor, in this instance, serves a human need in the judgment of a human being.

Labor, defined in this unconventional manner, is the human asset from which all other assets flow—and to which they are secondary. Thus, labor according to the laborer’s choice is asset number one and should, perforce, rank number one in honor, respect, protection. But does it? Indeed, not! Labor, being the prize asset, is the asset most fought over and contended for; it is the butt and pawn of present-day politics; plunderers, often well-intentioned, play games with our labor and wantonly waste it in the process. Let’s set how these games are played.

What is it we put on the moon? Perhaps a million times as much labor as goes into a home! Remember, aside from natural resources, that moon venture is 100 per cent labor. What remains useful to human beings? The memory of a good show and a few scoops of moon dust! So far as I can see, we put untold labor into rockets in amounts never before assembled for a single project in world history, then fired this labor into outer space—and oblivion. The current value of all this labor? It is precisely that amount which you or some others would give for it in willing exchange. You paid for it; reflect on what you can realize from your “investment.”

I have put investment in quotes simply because yours was not really an investment in the moon venture but, rather, a divestment. To grasp this distinction is to “catch on” to how this particular game is played with labor.

To invest, as one invests in a home or equities, is a voluntary act. You choose the disposition of the fruits of your labor.

By Whose Choice?

To divest, on the other hand, means to deprive or dispossess. Somebody else, not you, performs this act and, thus, somebody else determines the disposition of the fruits of your labor. Divestment is involuntary, and is the name of this game.

Divestment! The U.S.A. today has by far the biggest divestment program, if measured in money terms, in all history. But money measurements seem not only to confuse us but to excuse those who do the dispossessing. To me, the picture is clearer when I think of the colossal labor being shot into outer space and wasted than when I look at the cost in dollars. Using labor, I see a part of me being skyrocketed into oblivion, but when I think in money terms the temptation is to buy what is dinned into our ears: the government is doing this for our own good; look how GNP goes up; note the jobs it makes; on and on.

When I “catch on” to the games being played with labor, I see the Gateway Arch in a new light: me and millions of others in part dispossessed! Value? That is, what would I willingly offer in exchange? Unless I lived in St. Louis, not a cent! It is a wanton waste of labor.

Medicare, Federal urban renewal, all subsidies, protectionism, and thousands of other governmental activities are a part of America’s divestment program. Instead of The Great Society, ours should be described as The Age of the Great Divestment!

It is easy to see that each of these divestment activities recognizes no right to private property. That your labor is yours is flagrantly denied. To dispossess is to disregard private ownership, the most important of all economic tenets. The consequence is socialism as purely as Marx ever conceived it.

Take just the two of us—you and me. Concede that I am as wise as Marx or a political committee and that you are precisely as you are. Now reflect on which is the better of these two ways: (1) you invest your labor as you see fit, or (2) I divest you of your labor and dispose of it for some good I think ought to be done. The answer clearly is the first of these alternatives.

Whoever you are, you advance your own interest and the interest of others better when investing your labor according to your lights than would be the case were Marx to divest you of your labor and dispose of it according to his lights. Your labor, as much as your thoughts, is an extension of your life, not an extension of Marx’s life. Further, Marx or any Marxian will do more harm than good with his disposition of dispossessed labor, regardless of how noble his goals. Pap feeding may be all right to raise animals for slaughter, but it’s not the way a self-responsible citizenry grows or emerges. It’s the way to societal atrophy.

How Laborers Are Manipulated

Divestment does not end with Federal government activities. This game is played on an enormous scale in yet another way, as in the case of organized labor. As with all cartels, the labor union today is really a branch of the Federal government, for its many special privileges are governmental grants, that is, they are power grants, the privilege to act coercively.

A man’s labor for his purpose, as mentioned before, is his prize asset. Command over it provides enormous leverage, and if it be unguarded there will be a rush to control it—control being ownership.

Parenthetically, the principled role of government is to secure each person’s right to life—labor being an extension of life. This is to say, in good theory, government’s function is to protect private property; its task is to secure labor against expropriation by any person or organization.

Plainly, the Federal government has, during recent decades, reversed its position. Instead of insuring the opportunity for investment, it has embarked on a huge program of divestment; in the place of securing labor, it has put labor “up for grabs.”

By substituting an unprincipled for a principled role, the Federal government unleashes an evil trait: the quest for power. Let me explain. The power-seeking proclivity appears to be a more or less common frailty. Only rarely do we observe individuals of a quality to refuse power if it be within their grasp. When there is no power waiting to be seized, this trait remains benign; it lies dormant and doesn’t show itself. But make positions of power available and watch the scramble for it, even to the point of brutal combat. Thus, when labor—the prize asset—is declared “open season,” the power instinct sprouts, inflates, and alarmingly proliferates. This is not theory; it is reporting!

I’m merely assessing the situation as it is. This is our problem and it must be faced, for there is no remodeling of the past. Nor can future prospects be brightened short of a far better understanding than now prevails as to how games are played with labor.

Let us now consider how labor unions play the divestment game.

We must first keep in mind that all production has its origin in labor and choice of one kind or another, and forcible interference with labor necessarily curbs productivity; divestment is the correct descriptive term.

Labor unions have a standard formula. First, the government grants special privileges and immunities. Then workers in various trades are organized—some 18 to 20 million—and each union hierarchy, after winning an election, speaks authoritatively for all members—even for the minority ranging up to 49 per cent who had the choice of becoming members or losing their jobs. This is euphemistically referred to as “collective bargaining.” The unions “bargain” for—demand—above-market wages, more and more fringe benefits (which are really wages), and fewer hours of work. When the union side of the “bargain” is not acceded to, the collective threatens to quit or actually does so. And then force or the threat of force is employed to keep others from taking the jobs the strikers have vacated. This coercive tactic—the strike—rather than economic reasoning, is the language they use to persuade.

A Losing Arrangement

In this game who is dispossessed? Bear in mind that these millions of union members exert less, not more, labor—and for more money. If they get more money, someone else must get less—be divested of a part of his income or property. So it is that nonunion workers are, in one way or another, divested of a portion of their earnings to make up the union members’ “gains.” The simplest of all economic facts is that wages have to come from production; the aggregate production is all the pie there is. When some forcibly take a disproportionate share of the pie for themselves, there are only smaller pieces for the others.[1]

Second, above-market wages result in unemployment. Those disemployed go on relief. In a word, the government picks up the unemployment tab, meaning higher taxes and/or a decrease in the dollar’s purchasing power. All of us—even the union members—are thus divested of our property.

If there is to be any turnabout in this divestment program, more citizens than now will have to see through it—that is, there must be a wide comprehension that this is a power-seeking, not an economic, course we are on. The evidence in support of this contention is bountiful.

Merely observe that union organizers more or less limit their bids for power to those situations in which closing up shop is a fate to be avoided by owners even at exorbitant cost. If above-market wages and below-market hours were good economy, why then wouldn’t unions attempt, with equal fervor, to organize productive activities in which the stakes are minor or to which consumers are more or less indifferent? The answer is simple: they have leverage in the first instance, none in the second. Unions can gain their ends only by inflicting themselves upon ownership situations that will put up the ransom rather than shut up shop.

A big corporation, for example, will give in to the most flagrant demands rather than go out of business. And so will a small outfit if it has a good thing going. The perfect prey for union exploitation are those occupations on which we, the people, have become dependent or to which we have become addicted: electricians, carpenters, plumbers, garbage collectors in cities, trainmen, teachers, truck drivers, telephone operators, airline pilots, gravediggers; the list is very long.

But note that little if any effort is made to organize laborers whose occupations are not highly institutionalized and spark no great emotional surge among consumers: libertarian writers and speakers, portrait painters, poets and essayists, housewives; the number of laborers in this list is at least three times as long as the number in the unionized list.

If the labor union tactic were good economics, and were the unions interested in the general welfare, would they not compel all of us to work less than we do and for more pay than we get? The absurdity is clear. They do what they do because it’s the route to power; it is no more the way to a good economy than is any other divestment program.

Finally, union organizers are no more to be faulted for union tactics than are the government officials who write and administer the permissive legislation, or the union members who avidly take advantage of it. No distinctions can be made. Nor can we say that these people behave the way they do for the lack of formal schooling. It appears that years in school have no inhibiting effect upon the quest for special privilege and power.

Be it noted that college graduates and even Ph.D.’s, airline captains, engineers, and all sorts of well-schooled laborers grasp for privilege and power—once it is there for the taking—as readily as do those who stopped short of the eighth grade. True, there are exceptions—that is, individuals whose self-discipline and sense of self-responsibility cause them to reject privilege and power. But, in my experience, these fine exceptions to the rule are as numerous among the unschooled as among professors.

What then is the answer? Be done with this destructive permissiveness! Perhaps such an achievement is possible. Primarily, it requires an understanding that we must never trust power over others—no more to a friend than to our worst enemy. When we quit playing these games with labor, we will turn away from divestment and toward investment—to the interest of everyone!

[1] See Why Wages Rise by Dr. F. A. Harper (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1957).

12

The dilemma of value

Many of the economic troubles previously discussed stem from a faulty concept of value or, more accurately perhaps, they stem from the absence of any concept. The subject was touched upon in a preceding chapter, but I made no attempt to deal with the confusion or misunderstanding of value. So let us now tackle that dilemma.

What, for instance, is the value of a can of beans? A pen or typewriter? A day’s work? Any good or service?

Lacking an understanding of the right way to determine value, we will use wrong determinations that result in incalculable mischief.

A moment’s reflection must persuade us that the relative affluence of the more than 200 million residents of the United States is a result of a highly specialized, industrialized exchange economy. There are literally billions of exchanges daily of various goods and services—my money for your labor, your money for shoes, or bread, or whatever. How do we value these items of trade? Surely, we’re doing something right or we couldn’t exist in our present affluence and numbers. But not knowing precisely what it is that’s right, we unconsciously adopt policies that cannot yield the desired results. We are going astray and at a rapid pace.

Here’s the problem: human wants exceed the resources available to satisfy them. Results? Scarcity! How is a man to cope with this predicament? Shall he fight—use coercion—for what he thinks is his share or shall he try to find ways to work out the problem peacefully with others?

If he decides to fight, he’d better hold onto the overwhelming power of coercion. But if he prefers to work it out peacefully with others, he needs a measure of wants and a measure of scarcity, an agreeable method or scale of values by which to calculate. Nor can he revert to fighting to decide whose evaluation is to prevail, not if he chooses to work peacefully with others—that is, to respect the dignity and right of every human being to his own scale of values.

Centuries of Search

It seems simple enough, in an advanced stage of economic thought, to conclude that “value is subjective,” that each person rates his own wants, and ranges them in the order of their intensity. But for hundreds and even thousands of years men sought in vain for some objective standard of value, a “fair” price, or wage, or rate of interest—an unvarying measure of the intrinsic worth of any specific thing or a particular action. And the most common answer was that the value of anything is the amount of labor put into it; in other words, its cost of production. For instance, if Jones worked an hour to make a pie, Smith or Brown or anyone else should be willing to give up an hour’s work for that pie. But if no one else has any use for Jones’ pies, how is Jones to decide how much more of his time to devote to making and baking them? This quantitative or “objective value” idea always leads to economic nonsense—and it is doing so today.

Eventually, some smart Jones deduced that the exchange value of his pie is whatever anyone else will give him for it in willing exchange. In terms of his own inner scale, each evaluates what he gives up and compares it to what he receives in a trade. And the ratio at which these items exchange then becomes a price that others may use in their own calculations relative to producing and consuming scarce goods and services.

The smart Jones in this instance was Carl Menger—only a century ago. His was less a deduction or invention than a discovery. Menger (and others) discovered how common people act when free. Böhm-Bawerk, reporting on this, observes that:

. . . the common people have furnished excellent proof of their sensitivity in economic matters by recognizing the essential nature of value long before the scientists did. Science was misled by confusing utility with value, and so it declared goods like air and water to be things of the greatest use value. The man in the street . . . treated air and water as they deserved to be treated, namely, as things without value. And for centuries, long before science set up the doctrine of marginal utility, the common man was accustomed to seek things and abandon things, not in accordance with the highest utility that they are by nature capable of delivering, but in accordance with the increase or decrease in concrete utility that depends on each given good. In other words, he practiced the doctrine of marginal utility before economic theory discovered it.[1]

Articulated for the first time was the true means of determining the economic value of anything and everything. In order that prices might not lie, the exchange had to be not only peaceful but just, and so it was—when practiced.

Observe that such market pricing requires no omnicompetent bureaucratic statistician, no power-wielding union organizer, no dictatorial know-it-all. Even the simplest person, whoever he is, knows his own unique scale of values better than does anyone else; and the free market price accurately reflects each person’s choice.

The Terms Confuse

Now to my point. There is no fact of life simpler than exchange value in its true sense. Yet, its apprehension appears to be no more general than Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. Why?

I suspect it’s because of the formidable labels economists have pinned on this idea: the subjective theory of value and its companion, the marginal utility theory of value. This jargon, while correct and necessary for technical discourse among professionals, is too forbidding to be grasped by scarcely anyone except a card-carrying economist. By the time a professional economist gets through explaining the meaning of “subjective” and “marginal utility” his nonprofessional listeners or readers are so bogged down with word apprehension that the simple facts of value and utility escape them. For the most part, they come out of an explanation no better than they went in: smothered in words and utterly confused.

Perhaps the word “theory” begins the confusion. While having numerous meanings and connotations, “theory” conjures up a speculation or hypothesis, something yet to be verified, that is, not necessarily a truth. This puts value-theory in the class of flat-earth theory, which is to say, into the doubtful category. Value, instead, is in the certainty category, akin to our assurance that the earth is a spheroid. Merely witness that people, when free, exchange and trade in terms of each participant’s evaluation of his wants and needs.

Reflect on the word, “subjective.” Any number of people can read the dictionary definitions of this word and learn to repeat them. But when it comes to precise and exact apprehension, it’s a real sticker for most of us. Aside from discourse among professionals, why not merely say that the value in trade of any good or service is what others will give for it in willing exchange, and let it go at that! True, the determinants of value are subjective judgments: I, not you, decide the value to me of what you have to offer in exchange. This is the item’s economic value, and its value may have little to do with the item’s utility. But why not make the simple explanation rather than to use “subjective”? The term—to many—is portentous and mysterious, rather than enlightening.

Next, reflect on the phrase, “marginal utility.” Again, very simple but rarely apprehended. For example, an automobile, in many cases, is a necessity in today’s world and ranks high in the owner’s scale of values. The second auto is of less value to him; the tenth would more than likely be a nuisance and of negative value. If hungry, you may pay $5.00 for a steak; but when you’re full, your need is marginal and you wouldn’t give a nickel for another. Value tends to diminish as satiety is approached. But why becloud the truth by a term that—for the mill run of us—tends more toward confusion than clarity?

Coercive Methods Prevail

Here is the dilemma: The “objective” labor theory of value—unsound and intellectually demolished, thoroughly—rides high, wide, and handsome, as we say. We see it resorted to on every hand. All pricing by coercion—as attempted through strikes and the threats thereof—all governmentally rigged prices—ceilings or floors—and all subsidies are part and parcel of this primitive, obsolete system. Examples exist by the thousands.

For example, look into the way mail order houses price their deliveries. Lobbyists are hired to exert pressure on politicians for larger parcel post packages and at lower rates per pound. Thus, these businessmen obtain below-cost delivery prices and the taxpayers are forced to make up the difference. Lobbying for subsidies is not sound business practice, else mail order houses would offer their merchandise at below-cost prices—nonbuyers subsidizing the buyers. What is more obviously absurd!

Such malpractices, I repeat, are increasingly the vogue. And let not any of its practitioners condemn labor union methods of determining value—the pot calling the kettle black. Every such method is coercive. But more to the point, if these practices are not dropped and discarded, they must bring an end to our highly specialized, industrialized society. The issue here is survival.

We need only bear in mind that our economy became more highly specialized and industrialized because we more generally practiced the free market manner of determining value than any other people at any other time, which is to say, we partially rose above the “objective” labor theory of value. A return to this uneconomic, mercantilistic uncivilized way can lead only to utter chaos. Better not to have advanced into these intricate relationships and interdependencies in the first place than to advance and then have the whole complex structure come tumbling down into a shambles that cannot be untangled. Those who urge these obsolete, coercive ways know not what they do.

What we must realize is that there can be no dropping or discarding of these regressive and destructive practices except as they are displaced by the peaceful and just practices founded on free choices based on personal value scales. A reliance on the market method of consumer choice is possible only through a greater appreciation of its efficiency and fairness. To achieve that degree of understanding is an obstacle of the first magnitude. For rarely are there individuals who can grasp these ideas as explained by free market economists. Thus, the dilemma! What are we to do about it?

Perhaps there is a truth that can be grasped: The true value of all goods and services is automatically revealed to all exchange participants whenever freedom is practiced, defining freedom as that situation in which there are no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. It isn’t necessary for everyone to know all the reasons why freedom works its wonders in order to garner its blessings. Like electricity, we can use and enjoy its powers without knowing precisely what it is.

If there be doubting Thomases, let them go to the professional, free market economists, those who have penetrated into the intricacies of subjective and marginal utility concepts. There they will find verifications aplenty, that is, if doubting Thomases can apprehend them!

[1] See Capital and Interest, Vol. II, by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk (South Holland, Ill.: Libertarian Press, 1959), p. 204.

13

Don’t throw out the baby

The course we now follow in a careless, thoughtless, and irrational manner could destroy a recent and by far the most progressive economic concept ever come upon by mankind! In a blindness brought on by such forces as irritation, covetousness, a false sense of justice, adherence to an outmoded value theory, and a propensity to run other people’s business, we are about to throw a precious human asset—the baby—out with the bath.

The baby? It is the open as distinguished from the closed road to wealth. Were we to collapse recorded history to the average life span of Americans, the baby would be less than two years old. As Ortega points out, it is always the latest and highest acquisitions of the mind that are the least stable and the first to be abandoned whenever crisis threatens. But before describing the baby, let us reflect upon the bath that is forming and about to be thrown out—the baby with it.

What is the bath? We are presently showered with the outbursts of anticapitalistic mentalities from every quarter: the press, radio, TV, pulpit, classroom, political chambers. So numerous and overpowering are these shallow fusillades that capitalists themselves are in retreat. They apologize for profits, take refuge behind such nonsensical notions as being in business for “the social good,” and they support all kinds of socialistic, anticapitalistic legislation. Wealth, which most people seek for themselves, is being inundated in scorn and obloquy as if it were something evil.

None of us knows all the reasons for this anticapitalistic mentality but one of them, certainly, is the unfavorable effect affluence or wealth has on many citizens.

Never in man’s history have so many individuals experienced affluence as in the U.S.A. today. Literally millions of persons can have all of the material embellishments their hearts desire, and millionaires all over the place! There are notable exceptions, of course, but not many of us can stand such affluence. Wealth, so easily come by, often tends to turn individuals away from serious, responsible citizenship into do-nothings and “big shots.” Individuals so afflicted bear little resemblance in character to their struggling ancestors.

Further, our plunge toward all-out statism with its attendant woes and troubles seems to coincide with the rapid ascendancy in affluence as if the latter brought on the former. This is not a cause-effect sequence, but it appears to be. So, we are urged, stop this race for the almighty dollar. Cease doing the things which lead to wealth, or which depend upon it. To follow this course, as I shall try to show, is to throw out the baby with the bath.

As with eating and drinking, discriminately employed wealth serves a life-saving and life-giving purpose. But wealth has built-in temptations, as do food and drink, which can and often do lead to overindulgence. I suspect that the real reason why affluence has such an unsavory reputation is that wealth is used more for self-glorifying than for self-improving ends—a form of gluttony! Ill-used wealth does more to down-grade than to up-grade the people it graces. The noble purposes wealth may serve are rarely understood.

Consider the opposite of wealth: abject poverty, as experienced by Chinese coolies, for instance. They labor in rice paddies from morn till night to eke out a bare animal existence. These human beings have unique potentialities no less than did our poverty-stricken ancestors. But note that there is little if any realization of these potentialities among coolies. The good earth is populated with many outstanding musicians, artists, poets, philosophers, engineers, architects, scientists, and a thousand and one other specialists. Chinese coolies, be it observed, are seldom numbered among them. Why? Abject poverty!

Poverty Hinders Growth

I devoutly believe that life’s purpose is to grow, emerge, develop, and that poverty, so long as it persists, subverts this end. Assuming that the evolution of man is our objective, then wealth is the means to rid us of the enslavement poverty imposes. Wealth, when employed as a freeing agent, is essential to man’s march toward his destiny. Wealth may be abused and misused, yet it has a role to play in intellectual, moral, and spiritual progress; it is a vital means to these high ends.

The moral or evolutionary purpose of wealth is not to free man from life’s struggle—far from that! Its purpose is not that man may retire or allow his faculties to vegetate. And definitely it is not to substitute ease and comfort and ostentation for hard work. Rather, its purpose is to allow us to get ever deeper into life—to work even harder—along the lines of our creative uniqueness. This is how we evolve.

As abject poverty subverts the evolution of man, so does wealth when it is worshiped and used as an end in itself rather than as a means to the higher ends. But to disparage and finally to rid ourselves of this vital tool simply because we have failed to grasp its moral purpose and application is destructive nonsense.

What I refer to as the closed road to wealth dominated the world economic scene up to the Industrial Revolution. There are exceptions but, for the most part, wealth was reserved for the very few: the Maharaja, the Lord of the Manor, the master of slaves, merchant princes—the “upper crust.” Theirs were political conferments, instances of special privilege. Wealth was measured in size of estate and castle, jewels, servants, and the like—more an enslaving than a freeing agent, energy consumed to fend off predators rather than released for individual emergence. It was political, not private, ownership; no respect for each man’s right to the fruits of his own labor! Coercive to the core, the resultant social arrangement assumed various forms: despotism, feudalism, autocracy, the guild system, mercantilism, wage and price controls, protectionism, and so on. Closed, indeed!

In such a closed society, the millions were essentially serfs; if born a shoemaker, you remained one regardless of your talent or potential for any higher calling. You, poor slave, stay put! It is easy to understand why, in that dark age of economics, Saint Thomas Aquinas argued that these poor people had a right to a minimal standard of living from their lords and masters. Such was the sentiment which Marx later popularized: “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” Given a closed—authoritarian—economy, there is no other way to disperse the wealth required to sustain life.

As darkness has no resistance to light, so has ignorance no resistance to enlightenment. Ignorance is always upon us in the absence of enlightenment; it retreats naturally as enlightenment increases but stands ever ready to descend again upon the blind.

The Open Road to Wealth

About 200 years ago, a remarkable political and economic enlightenment substantially removed the barriers—temporarily at least—that had closed the road to wealth. The baby was born: the open road to wealth! And it has been named the Industrial Revolution.[1] Goods and services henceforth would be produced for the masses and not solely for the political elite.

While the order of the successive steps in this enlightenment might be debated, it is my view that the first step was and had to be a recognition of human dignity. This is to say that each individual is as much a human being as any other; the son of a cobbler is entitled to opportunity no less than is the Prince; everyone equal before the law as before God—each his own man with a fair field and no favor. Any person, regardless of ancestry, free to rise to any height his energies and talents might take him. The road open!

Implicit in this enlightened recognition is that each and every person has full and exclusive right to the fruits of his own labor. In a word, the acceptance of a moral principle—justice—led logically and positively to the economic tenet on which the open road to wealth is founded: private ownership. Not that private ownership displaced political ownership and special privilege entirely—far from it! But the barricades were broken; there was not only the prospect but, far more than ever before, the reality of the open road.

Specialization, as might be expected, became the next step. Individuals, as they were freed from the bondage which abject poverty imposes, began to engage in an infinite variety of activities, each according to his unique talents and abilities.

Then came the next flash of enlightenment: freedom in transactions. If a particular good or service is really mine and some other good or service is really yours, there follows logically from this private ownership the right to exchange with whomever one pleases.[2] It simply is nobody else’s business. Freedom in transactions tended to become the rule rather than the exception.

Assuredly, the next most important enlightenment came about 1870 when some economists discovered how ordinary people behave when free from controls. In other words, they discovered or came to understand the subjective theory of value. Until this time, the value of a good or service had been reckoned by cost of production, that is, by the amount of exertion expended. This false measure of value had been a real hindrance to private ownership, specialization, and freedom in transactions. Following the discovery of the subjective theory, the value of any good or service, instead of being determined by cost of production or dictated by some cartel, was whatever could be obtained in willing exchange. It is that simple. The market value of my pen? Whatever you or some other customer will give for it. If there are no willing buyers, its value is zero; if the top bidder offers two dollars, that’s its value.

There’s the baby—this recent flash of light or understanding. Its significance is seen by contrasting what has happened in the U.S.A., where this wisdom reached its apex, with what otherwise might have been the situation. Without this economic enlightenment, most of us either would not have been born or would have died in early childhood. Adam Smith (1776) observed that the average mother in the Scottish Highlands had to bear twenty children for a reasonable prospect that two might reach adulthood, so great was the infant mortality rate. There simply wasn’t production enough to sustain more than a relatively small population.

Next, had that closed road to wealth persisted, nearly all of us, including our millionaires, would still be in the class of servants, serfs, armed guards, and the like. Even the simple requirements for life—food, clothing, shelter—would be no more than the political hierarchy might see fit to allot to us. Slaves!

And last, born a cobbler, remain a cobbler! The unique potentialities of the individual dead on the vine! The destiny of man—growth, emergence—forever stifled!

Now, look around us: would-have-been slaves—millions upon millions of us—in that advanced state of affairs in which each may pursue his unique talent and can receive in willing exchange those goods and services required for wellbeing. Take, for example, one who specializes in the study and explanation of the freedom philosophy and produces nothing else, nothing whatsoever. If he receives enough for his efforts to defray the costs of shelter, food, heat, light, and countless other desiderata, he is wealthier than any Lord of the Manor of bygone days. And solely because of a practice of freedom—a baby in the realm of enlightenments—this open road to wealth!

I repeat, affluence has had a disgusting effect on a great number of individuals. Wealth has become so much a god that it knows no satiety.[3] Imagine some of the wealthiest people who ever lived shouldering a debt without historical parallel—the combined indebtedness of U.S. citizens in excess of a trillion dollars! And more: an enormous siphoning off of accumulated capital assets by diluting the medium of exchange—inflation!

However, we must remember that this affluence exceeds anything mankind has heretofore experienced; we are not conditioned to such wealth; it is not in man’s tradition. Thus, we resemble children turned loose in a candy bin; if they make themselves ill, it is not the fault of the sweets or a reason to outlaw candy. It is, instead, the occasion for some dietary sense and self-discipline.

And ours is the occasion for some sense in political economy and morals as related to the evolution of man. It is pitiful to observe millions of people enthusiastically working against their own interests—that is, working their way back to the closed road. And it is easy to tell which way we are heading. Substitutions of political for private ownership, wage and price controls, labor or business cartels, subsidies, inflation, or other schemes that feather the nest of some at the expense of others rebuild the barricades. Such hazards preclude the several necessary steps to the open road and turn us against our self-interest!

While I deplore the way many affluent people behave, I trust their wealth to them far more than to politicians or others who had nothing whatsoever to do with its acquisition.

Finally, regardless of how unfavorably we may view the way wealth is used by its owners, let us not, under any circumstances, throw out the baby with the bath. This infant enlightenment is one of the most priceless blessings of mankind.

[1] For a revisionist view of the Industrial Revolution, see Capitalism and the Historians by various authors, edited by F. A. Hayek (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, a Phoenix Book, 1963).

[2] To deny freedom to exchange is to deny private ownership. One owns only that which he controls.

[3] This is no merely modern defection; Plato describes the decay of an oligarchy in Book VIII of The Republic: “And so, as time goes on, and they advance in the pursuit of wealth, the more they hold that in honor the less they honor virtue. . . . From being lovers of victory and lovers of honor they become lovers of gain getting and money.”

14

The right to do as I please

Individuals of an extremely independent mien will insist that they are warranted in doing as they “damned well please,” to use their phrasing. At the other end of the spectrum are those such as Auguste Comte who disavow all independence by insisting that society alone is real and that the individual is only an abstraction—that is, the individual is not warranted in doing a single thing he pleases.

Envision this spectrum, a few at each extreme, with the millions of us somewhere in between, confusedly and everlastingly shifting this way or that—giving ground to pressures or being drawn by suasion. Unstable as jumping jacks!

To establish where we stand in this hodgepodge and to predict how others will act and react, what is the common custom? A resort to labeling! Rarely is the proper question posed and its difficult answer sought.

My point is that we attach labels to ourselves and others in an attempt to describe politico-economic positions and oppositions: left and right, new left and new right, liberal and conservative, radical and reactionary, socialist and libertarian, collectivist and individualist, communist and anarchist, altruist and egoist, and so on. All, of course, are generalizations and, thus, oversimplifications. Not one of these ever describes any individual accurately—tells him how to act, or tells others how he may be expected to react. Nor is precise description possible, for everyone is to some degree in ideological flux, ranging from slight shifts in point of view to a complete flip-flop. Everyone is subject to change.

Labeling is only a way of avoiding analytical thinking by pigeonholing people. But distinctive individuals can never be made to fit into such neat little niches. Even were it possible correctly to categorize people, the knowledge would be useless; nothing would be revealed about the true nature of our countless politico-economic variations and disagreements. Labeling simply does not get at the crux of the matter. And for good reason: We cannot say of any person that he is an ideology or an idea or a philosophy. The best we can do is to define an ideology, idea, philosophy and then observe to what extent an individual subscribes to or departs from it.

If not labeling, what then? Perhaps there is an ideological question we can pose which, if properly answered by each of us, might reveal where we stand at any moment in time and would, roughly, measure our differences with others. The question is this: To what extent am I warranted in doing whatever I please?

How can I decide how far I should or shouldn’t go in doing as I please? Man is not wholly social as is a swarm of bees, nor is he as individualistic as a lone eagle. Man is at once a social and an individualistic being. The question is, cast as I am in this dual role, under what circumstances am I warranted or not in doing as I please?

If everyone knew the right answer to this question and were to abide by it, the social phase of man’s duality would be more or less resolved. This, however, is more a pious hope than a reasonable expectation, so the best I can do is talk to myself.

A Debtor’s Duty

Let me state my conclusion at the outset and then try to explain it: I may do whatever suits my personal fancy so long as no offense is done to what I owe others.

Begin with the simplest kind of debt. Regardless of cause—carelessness or misfortune—let us say I owe a great deal of money, money loaned to me in good faith, and am in default in repaying the loan as contracted. Am I warranted in doing as I please with my own income? May I in any way be profligate with my income? Not until I have met all payments due, my debt to others redeemed. For me to spend one cent beyond what is absolutely necessary for productive performance is to further jeopardize my creditors’ capital. For me to indulge in the slightest extravagance is at their expense. I may not spend as I please if the spending is in lieu of paying what I owe, that is, if it’s with other people’s money. To do as I please in this circumstance is not an assertion of independence; it is, instead, a resort to dependence, which is to say, a dependence on the unwarranted trust of others.

Are there other limitations? Assume I owe not one penny to anyone else. May I now do as I please? Is there nothing else I owe to others? There’s plenty more!

I owe to others, for instance, an observance of the thou-shalt-nots in The Decalogue. I must respect their lives and property, must not lie, and so on. Nor is this the full list of limitations on doing as I please.

Here is an I-owe-others rule that appeals to me: to abstain from that type of conduct which, were it practiced by everyone, would bring everyone to ruin.

For example, suppose it pleases me to forego self-responsibility, that is, to feather my nest at the expense of others. Having agreed to the commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” have I a right to do as I please by turning to government to do this for me? Not if I observe the rule. For were everyone to rely on government to insure welfare, prosperity, security, all would perish—all parasites, no host! This is socialism, the idea that only society is real; it omits the individualistic side of man. It is planned chaos.

Or go to the other extreme. Suppose it pleases me to be a law unto myself. Using my rule, I cannot assert my independence to this extent. For were everyone to become a law unto himself—each deciding what is and isn’t justice, all societal codification of the taboos and their enforcement rejected, no higher court of appeal than individual whim and caprice, and with each his own gun-toting constable—our species would come to an end. This is anarchy, the idea that man is exclusively individualistic and in no way a social being. It is unplanned chaos.

The list of those things I may please to do but cannot do under my rule is far too long ever to enumerate. Instead, each action which, on first impulse, seems to please, must be examined by the rule and rejected if it does not qualify.

One example of the countless actions which require testing by the rule: It pleases me to protect myself against competition. So I advocate an embargo against the exchange of competitors’ goods and services. Have I this right to do as I please? No! Were everyone to do this, resulting in no exchange, all would come to ruin. I cannot even advocate that which, were it to become general, would prove disastrous to everyone.

Another: I cannot do as I please by using either private or governmental coercion to set wages and prices above or below whatever the free market decrees. Such policies, in universal application, assure ruin to everyone.

More Blessed to Give

The above suggests that the right to do as I please is considerably, if not severely, limited by what we owe to our fellow men. Conceding these limitations, as they are broadly outlined, it is my view that I am otherwise free to do as I please—that is, I may attend to the individualistic side of me.

There are many, however, who will argue that I do not go far enough in setting forth what I owe to others, contending that I owe others an education, a decent standard of living, and so on. In a word, I owe them philanthropy, alms. With this point of view I completely disagree.

Whenever I assume that the welfare of others is my problem I am, perforce, saying that their welfare is not their problem. I am denying to them self-responsibility, the most precious of human possessions. I shall stand for the meting out of justice—equal opportunity—to any individual, whoever he is. And this I can best do by advancing and supporting the practice of free market, private ownership, and limited government concepts. The practice of freedom!

But philanthropy? I owe this to no living person! By what twisted reasoning has another a claim on my purse! Have I, for instance, a claim on the fruits of your labor because I am a ne’er-do-well or incompetent or even unfortunate? This is a nonsensical, collectivistic notion and, if generalized, would bring everyone to a low level of mediocrity.

Philanthropy, like its mental counterpart, charity, has its point of reference within myself; it is not to be directed by others. Concerning these, I, as a creature of free will, must do as I please. Nor am I underrating the value to me of the proper practice of charity and philanthropy.

Learning how to extend philanthropy with true charity—that is, without doing more harm than good—is among man’s highest attainments and, attained, may more richly endow the soul than any other experience. I only say, don’t take this right away from me. It is my do-as-I-please, not yours, nor government’s, nor anyone else’s.

The right to do as I please is restricted enough by observing ethical and moral principles—by taking account of the social side of man. But, beyond these limitations, whether in philanthropy or charity or production and exchange or anything else creative, leave me free to do as I please lest my individuality be shorn away and destroyed rather than improved and expanded.

15

Reflections on the guilt complex

Anyone who has the slightest idea of how freedom works its wonders—thus having a faith in free men—cannot help but be appalled by the increasing number of affluent individuals who support welfare-state concepts and programs.

The cause often ascribed for this apostasy—this turning away from the free society by those it has raised to positions of affluence—is that the wealthy are victims of a guilt complex. They are ashamed to be more successful than their fellow men! Personally, I believe this to be a fallacy; further, it is a mischievous explanation, and we do injury to the freedom philosophy by excusing these apostates in this manner.

A wealthy friend suggests a state minimum wage law so high that tourist accommodations in his area will no longer be financially feasible; he wants his beautiful countryside uncrowded and uncluttered. A statist position in order to have his little world to himself! This, for certain, is not a guilt complex.

Or, here’s a suspicion of mine: Turning to welfare statism is purely a pose assumed by many affluent persons—often unwittingly—to shield themselves from a growing number of socialistic critics. They pose as welfare statists or profess to be in business for “the social good” rather than for profit; saying, in effect, to those who covet their affluence, “See, I’m on your side and doing all in my power to bring you to my level.” This is far from a guilt complex.

Now and then there may be a business mogul or an inheritor of wealth who actually believes that “from each according to ability . . . to each according to need” leads to social felicity. But we cannot call the advocacy of this Marxian tenet a guilt complex.

The Plea: Not Guilty

There is little point in tracing causation further. The causes are far more numerous than the number of apostates, for each of them is led down the primrose path to socialism by more reasons than anyone else can fathom or than he himself is aware of. All of these countless defections are either immaturity or a lapse of judgment—thoughtless drifts—that are as common to those who “have it made” as to those who haven’t. However, in no instance do we uncover a guilt complex.

Suppose that affluence were a mark of distinction—that getting ahead of others, becoming rich through voluntary exchanges, or making big profits brought not criticism but applause, acclaim, esteem from everyone. Were this the case, would the affluent among us be apologetic for their success—that is, would they have a guilty feeling? Indeed, they would not! Instead, they would be basking in their glory.

Or, look at it this way: If some person’s guilty feelings bred an uncontrollable compassion for others—as the Bible puts it, “this man’s possessions were weighing him down”—any individual so afflicted could sell his possessions and give to the poor. Until we see such voluntary philanthropic behavior on the part of an affluent person, let us hear no more about a guilt complex as an explanation for his apostasy!

Sell his possessions and give to the poor! What, really, are the wealthy doing when they side with welfare state concepts and programs? The very opposite! They are advocating that your and my possessions be expropriated and given willy-nilly, more often than not with injury to the poor. This posture may, on occasion, gain approval or silence criticism but only because so few see the sham in it. If the naked truth were apparent to all, would an affluent person so unfavorably expose himself? Of course he would not! Only professional comedians try to make a laughing stock of themselves.

Lack of Understanding

Why put so much emphasis on the apostasy of the affluent? Why not equally on the apostasy of those in the middle or lower brackets?

In all frankness, this apostasy—by the rich or by the poor—may be fairly and accurately diagnosed as an utter lack of understanding, a failure to grasp the most simple and basic economic relationships of cause and effect, of human action and its consequences.

This is not to suggest that persons of affluence are either more or less prone to these lapses into medieval or primitive ways than those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Understanding is not advanced or retarded by the rise or fall of bank balances; there is no correlation between the two.

But an affluent person—usually well known—packs more weight than a poor person. The views of a captain of industry or finance or whatever are much publicized, whereas the views of a person who hasn’t “made it” yet may go unheard or unheeded, even by his family. The “higher-ups” make news, and to the extent that they defect from freedom principles they infect more than their fair share of fellow Americans. This is why the apostasy of the affluent merits special attention—and disapproval, not acclaim.

Fortunately, each of us has it within his own power to immunize himself against economic sophisms and fallacies. We need not be misled in economic theories and practices by a spreader of nonsense, whether he be affluent or poor.

No genius is required to see clearly that an unhampered market economy best fulfills the peaceful wants and ambitions of everyone involved. Each best serves himself by serving others, producing his own specialty, trading for theirs. To be ashamed of success under such a creative arrangement, is to be sick of mind. The market does, in fact, handsomely reward those who best serve others, and the others ought to know and welcome the result, be glad and proud of it, for their very lives depend on this.

The alternative to which men turn in their failure to understand is a coercive tyranny that condemns mankind to slow starvation. This is not really a concern for the poor, it is not a guilt complex!

16

Forget the common man

The scene was one of our seminars where I had been explaining that we live and evolve as human beings by drawing upon an enormous luminosity composed of trillions of findings—discoveries, inventions, insights—brought to the surface in clarity by countless men from all walks of life over the millennia. This is knowledge of a kind and quantity that doesn’t remotely exist in any discrete individual—now or ever.[1]

One of the participants drew a conclusion from my remarks: “Obviously, you have a deep and abiding faith in the common man.” I was stumped. Just what are common men? The man in the street, so-called? Day laborers? The nonfamous and the undistinguished? The mill run of humanity? Teachers or preachers or doctors or students or business managers or capitalists or politicians or what?

The word, common, meaning the usual or the ordinary, cannot be applied to men, each one of whom is extraordinary.[2] How, then, can one have faith in what does not exist! “The common man” is a useless, meaningless term that tends to frustrate thinking and communication. To assert a faith in the common man is equivalent to that form of nihilism which professes a faith in nothing; it is nonsense—another careless catch phrase. So I say, forget the common man!

This, however, is not to disclaim a faith in mankind. Faith, when warranted, is not founded on who a man is or on the title he wears or on the occupational category or social hierarchy in which he finds himself but, rather, on what he is, that is, on the qualities he exhibits. Thus, qualities must be assessed in order to know where faith should be reposed.

The Self-Responsible Man

The fundamental human condition from which other qualities and virtues stem is self-responsibility. I can claim, then, to have a deep and abiding faith not in the common man but in the self-responsible man.

The self-responsible man is, by definition, a free man. He could not be free were others responsible for him. Be it remembered that authority goes where the responsibility is.

Virtues—respect for life, honesty, integrity, charity, intelligence, justice, love, humility—tend to take the place of vices to the extent that men are responsible and, thus, free. The reason is clear: self-interest. We are not exclusively Robinson Crusoes but are partially social beings—for we survive by producing and exchanging. Men who are deceitful, who do not keep their word, who cannot be trusted fare poorly among free men. Exchange is stifled by coercion and other wrongdoing. In a society of self-responsible and free men, self-interest draws the virtues into practice.

Responsibility for self is an aspiration among enlightened men. They know that its removal, whether voluntarily relinquished or coercively expropriated by others, is the loss of the very essence of being. To the extent that others are responsible for me, to that extent are my faculties not called upon, left idle and unused; and unused faculties cease to grow and develop—indeed, they atrophy. There I stand in human form but without substance—a non-man! Confidence in non-men? Regardless of rank or title or degree, I should say not. None, whatsoever!

Presently, we appear to be in one of the devolutionary periods of history in which there is a marked running away from rather than toward self-responsibility. The combination of forces is frightening to behold: the “happy” abandonment of responsibility on the part of millions of citizens and an avid, one might almost say a ferocious, take-over of the abandoned pieces by power seekers. Reckless abandonment and unenlightened acquisition! A switch of responsibility from the individual where it can work its wonders to the collective where it becomes a political hurricane, a societal madness.

So marked is this depressive trend that even those among us who understand the meaning of this precious quality, and thus cherish it above all else, are unable to retain it fully. Countless instances come to mind—social security, for example. Most of us no longer have a choice as to who is responsible for one’s security: it is government and not self!

Exceptions to this authoritarian take-over are the employees of educational, charitable, and religious institutions. These relatively few are invited but not compelled to join this extraordinary popular delusion.[3] A vast majority of these people who had the choice have accepted the invitation. But not those of us at FEE! We can and do say, “No, thank you!” And for the very simple reason that we understand the meaning of self-responsibility.

Our Attention Wavers

Self-responsibility will be observed as a variable, come-and-go quality, differing from person to person and also within each person. Each of us discharges responsibility in varying degrees of intensity from time to time—now attention and then neglect, sometimes wanted and sometimes shunned.

This is merely another way of asserting that the employment of our faculties varies, for their exercise and use is directly linked to the acceptance and discharge of responsibility for self. Faculties and responsibility ebb and flow in unison; they are of a piece. In a word, the potential genius of each person is realized or not as responsibility is or is not accepted and discharged. Let this fountainhead of my being go unattended and I become a non-man; attending to it is vital to the process of humanization.

The knowledge by which we live and evolve as human beings—the enormous luminosity that does not remotely exist in any discrete individual—has its source in self-responsibility. Every flicker of light, each invention or discovery or insight—all creativities—are the flashes from self-responsibility in discharge. It is this quality that sparks our human progress.

The flashes come from men in every walk of life, from the illiterate to Ph.D.’s, from the poor as well as the rich, and with less regard than might be expected to race or creed or color.

The luminosity by which we live and evolve has come not from common men, a misnomer, but from men in their moments or hours of self-responsibility—when taking a fierce pride in their work—and on no other occasions. Should we not make every effort to move toward, not away from, this supremely important quality?

[1] See Chapters 2, 3, and 4 in my Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969).

[2] See You Are Extraordinary by Dr. Roger J. Williams (New York: Random House, 1967). Also available from FEE, $5.95.

[3] See “Social Security Re-examined” by Dr. Paul L. Poirot in The Freeman, November, 1965. Copy on request.

17

One big strong organization

There is a troublesome notion among the defenders of freedom: “I’m tired of all these organizations that seek my support. Let’s merge them into one, big, effective institution and rid ourselves of the duplications.” This should be examined against its historical backdrop.

The real American Revolution, contrary to popular understanding, was not the armed conflict with King George III. It was, instead, a revolutionary idea and ideal. It was set forth in the Declaration of Independence, holding that man is endowed by his Creator with certain unalienable rights, among them the right to life and liberty.

This revolutionary concept—the very essence of Americanism—was at once spiritual, political, and economic. It was spiritual in that it proclaimed the Creator as sovereign and thus the endower of men’s rights; it was political in that it implicitly denied the state as sovereign and held that it was designed only to secure men’s rights; and it was economic in this sense: if an individual has a right to life, it logically follows that he has a right to sustain his life—the sustenance of life consisting of the fruits of his own labor and the right to control them.

Omitting the sequence of beneficial events that flowed from such a wise and righteous concept, we can say in summary that it relegated the state to the role of securing life, liberty, and property. Legally inhibiting men’s destructive actions and invoking a common justice were to be its functions. With the state thus limited, each citizen was left free to act creatively and productively as he chose, within the limits of his ability, ambition, and conscience. His liberties had not been granted by the state, and therefore the state had no right to revoke them at its pleasure. So went the thinking that shaped the earlier American design.

While the adoption and acceptance of this Creator-as-sovereign concept resulted in the greatest outburst of creative human energy ever known, it must be conceded that the concept flew squarely in the face of every state-as-sovereign (authoritarian) dogma to which mankind had hitherto submitted. These antagonistic, state-as-sovereign dogmas—hardened by tradition and made plausible to those countless millions who recognize no creativity over and beyond themselves—persisted in many of the minds of the freest people who ever made up a society. The idea of the Creator and not the state as sovereign was not only new and refreshing but also tender and perishable, having no power to endure beyond men’s belief in its truth. It was as a baby dove in a cote with fast-growing vultures.

Many of these state-as-sovereign vultures took to wing during the first three decades of the twentieth century: the Sixteenth Amendment, the Federal Farm Board, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation, and so on. Preparation for the demise of the dove—much of it unwitting—was well in progress.

Attempts at Solution

However, not until 1933 was there any widespread alarm about the plight of liberty. One vulture glamorized as “The Blue Eagle” set the date for a variety of minority organizations to cope with the vulture menace and save the dove. The short-lived Liberty League was among the first of these. As we embark upon the 70’s, these groups have reached an amazing total and they’re still forming. One executive tells me that his corporation receives appeals for financial support from no less than 2,000 organizations.

Most of these organizations grow out of a deep concern over what is happening to “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” Generally, they are sincerely conceived. But no two are alike, except perhaps in broad objectives. So far as method is concerned, they’re going every which way, suggesting a swarm of bees blown about by a hurricane. And who among us can say with assurance which one is headed in precisely the right direction?

Well, there’s the rub. Any wise person must acknowledge that he cannot be positive about the right method. The more one studies our country’s plight, the more difficult the solution appears. All dedicated individuals who presume to “lead us out of the wilderness” are right, according to their own lights. These lights, however, are greatly at odds and, to compound the issue, each light undergoes constant change. Unanimity as to procedure among the concerned is the faintest characteristic that can be ascribed to them—all are “at sixes and sevens.”

Is this to be deplored? I think not. For it is only from the interplay of minds and facts and probings that the right course will ever clearly emerge from our present confusion. Let competition reign! Or, as the referee shouted in starting a jousting match, “Laissez Faire!” which meant a fair field and no favor. We ought to be grateful that so many efforts are astir. Reflect on how dismal our national picture would be were everything quiet on the essence-of-Americanism front!

Neither Possible Nor Desirable

Now, as to the plea that there be “one, big, strong organization in order to do away with the duplication,” my conclusions are:

1. It is utterly impossible of accomplishment. These varying, deep-seated convictions as to what constitutes right method cannot be homogenized without squelching the all too little zeal and spirit that yet remain.

2. It isn’t desirable. Rid ourselves of duplication? As well be rid of duplication in religion or education or manufacturing or merchandizing.

3. No qualified person could ever be found to direct such an organizational monstrosity. Anyone who would accept the sole responsibility of restoring freedom in America would have to believe in his own infallibility. No such intellectual authoritarian could possibly be an effective worker in freedom’s vineyard.

Why this urge for “one, big, strong organization”? Could it be the current and much deplored collectivism insinuating itself into the minds of the deplorers? Or does it stem from a desire to be less pestered by all the little groupings? Or from an unwillingness to take the time or to make the effort to become a discriminating student of the freedom philosophy? Or a bit of all three? As a corporate executive once frankly confessed, “You all claim to be on the right track. I can’t tell the difference and therefore have decided to support none of you.” Suppose that this manufacturer were to take such an undiscriminating attitude toward the raw materials he purchases. His company would fail. And so will freedom in America unless discrimination is employed by each of us in selecting and supporting those efforts on behalf of freedom which we believe to be based on sound principles, following the right track.

Anyone who is seeking an escape from the freedom problem or who is looking for a patent medicine—for someone or something that will relieve him of the problem—would be well advised to forget the whole thing.

Some problems in life cannot be delegated. One’s religion cannot. One’s integrity cannot. One’s conscience cannot. And, one’s freedom cannot. These are personal matters.

Waiting for the “one, big, strong organization” to appear is but to postpone attention to one’s own depth of understanding, strength of libertarian conviction, and competence in exposition. It is to avoid, not to accept, freedom as a personal matter.

One is well advised to forget the claims of any and all of these organizational efforts. Rather, have a hard look at the performance of the individuals who labor for them. Are they productive or merely promotive? Are they consistent in their exposition of the freedom philosophy or do they resort to what’s expedient? Do they enlighten or anger? And, finally, are their efforts demonstrably helpful to you or others in better understanding freedom ideas and ideals?

Find the right answer to these questions and there you will have the organization as big and strong as there is or can be.

18

Lump thinking

Most of us indulge in what might be termed “lump thinking.” We do this to conserve energy or to escape the rigor of thought.

Real life is complex, and to avoid the chore of discriminating we try, as I have suggested in a previous chapter, to lump people and ideologies into easily manageable categories: Reds, Pinks, Liberals, Libertarians, Leftists, Rightists, Reactionaries, Labor, Management, Wage Earners, Capitalists, Sound, Unsound, and so on. This lumping or oversimplification fits nicely into the collectivist inclinations of our times.

Individuals with libertarian aspirations tend to develop antagonisms for persons such as Marx, Engels, Rousseau, Keynes, and their ideological offspring, and for excusable reasons. Then, having placed them in left field, they proceed to put anything and everything these people ever wrote into a lump, and regard it as worthless. These folks did state some truths; but, because of who they are, the tendency is to relegate any truths they stated to the muck heap. Thus, we find ourselves on occasion standing against truth.

Lump thinking spreads its insidious poison in the other direction, also. Anyone with libertarian aspirations tends to hold in high esteem persons such as Bastiat, Adam Smith, Herbert Spencer, John Stuart Mill, Burke, and their like, and for valid reasons. Then, having placed them on our side of the fence, we proceed to put anything and everything they ever wrote into a lump and call it truth. Nonetheless, these writers, being fallible, stated some untruths which, because of our high regard for the authors, we immediately take to heart as gospel. Thus, again, do we find ourselves standing against truth by approving falsehoods.

Truth Caught by Individuals

Truth appears to have no exclusive spokesmen, but is found in countless languages and symbols, issuing from the most unexpected places. Truth seems to reveal itself only to its earnest seekers, to those unafraid of examining any nook and cranny, disdainful of artificial lumps or categories, free of blind prejudices, and sensitively discriminating. This explains, in part, why truth yields itself so stubbornly to lump thinkers.

However, the intention here is not to cast stones at someone else. Many of us—I am at fault as much as anyone—have been guilty of lump thinking. It has to do especially with calling ourselves “libertarians.”

The staff members of FEE, perhaps more than any others, have been responsible for bringing “libertarianism” from dictionary obscurity, dusting it off, embellishing and popularizing it as a label for the free market, private property, limited government philosophy and the moral and ethical tenets which underlie these institutions. We did this because the traditional and honored word, “liberalism,” had been appropriated by those who were liberal only with other peoples’ rights and properties; and because we could find no better generalization.

Having embraced the term, “libertarianism,” we then held it up as a goal to be sought, ascribing to it every virtue in our list of economic, social, political, and moral ideals. I still believe we were sound in what we did—up to this point.

Should We Label Ourselves?

Then, quite unwittingly and naively, we permitted some of the current collectivism to rub off onto us—we slumped into lump thinking. We tended to collectivize by giving our vastly varied selves a one-word description: “libertarians”!

Belatedly, the error of this lump thinking is exposed in several ways. First, the adverse psychological effect of claiming libertarianism to be synonymous with virtue and then, in the next breath, boasting of being a libertarian! One might as well proclaim, “Behold! In me you witness the embodiment of all that is ideal and virtuous!” What unattractive egotism!

Second, those who might interest themselves in the libertarian philosophy take a second look at some of us who call ourselves “libertarians” and quickly lose their inspiration They prefer themselves as they are to the product they see advertised. The eye is turned from libertarianism to “libertarians”—from the ideal to its would-be practitioners—too often with disastrous results.

Third, when all of us who aspire to libertarian understanding and practice give ourselves an identical label, we become easy prey for our antagonists. Having lumped ourselves, on our own initiative, the whole lump stands to be discredited by a coup de grace to one “libertarian.” (Note the fading esteem and respect for all who label themselves “labor” when only one of their number is proved a crook and sent to prison.)

Libertarianism, as we define it, is indeed a moral, economic, social, and political ideal. But it is an objective to be pursued rather than an end that has been or can be achieved perfectly. All of us with libertarian aspirations are in varying stages of progress. Our only similarity is in the general trend of our thought. As libertarian aspirants, we are individuals, not a collective. If we would enshrine the dignity of the individual, then we must shy away from any collective label, especially a self-affixed one.

When one who would enshrine the dignity of the individual is asked, “What are you?” he can try to give a candid and articulate statement of the faith that is in him. Such a person cannot, however, take refuge behind a mere label. My failure, no less than that of many others, to grasp this evasive point accounts, in no small measure, for the slowness of the private ownership, free market principle to assert itself over state interventionism. Never again will I call myself or any other a “libertarian.” I will aspire to libertarian achievement and let it go at that.

19

The decadence theory of reform

Many of those who are distraught by the mess they see in our society, attempt to comfort themselves by suggesting: “The situation must get worse before it can get better.” This seems to say that we must sink deeper into the mire before we can get ourselves out, that we have to hit bottom before we can start to climb up. If this be correct, then those of us who desire improvements in society should try to worsen everything as fast as we can; we should be devil’s advocates in order to hasten reform. Does this make sense?

Perhaps this sentiment has something in common with such popular aphorisms as, “There’s a silver lining to every cloud” and “It’s always darkest before the dawn.” Conceded, there may be a grain of truth in the sentiment—if it can be found.

By and large, however, this decadence theory falls into the lump thinking department, the collectivistic or macro way of jumping to conclusions. It stems from the same kind of casual and careless observation that attributes an idea to “the American public,” or identifies a “national goal,” or proclaims an “American image.” These are phantoms; that is, they are nonexistent. Nonetheless, they cloud our thinking for they are part and parcel of the language we use. These phantasies are so deeply embedded in tradition that it’s next to impossible to erase them from our minds. Traces, I confess, are to be found in this book; I hardly know how to talk to myself without falling victim to them!

In reality, what one calls “the situation” exists only as a figment of the individual. Situations external to each person exist, to be sure. But insofar as each individual is concerned, their reality and significance is measured by what he beholds. To me, the outside world consists of what I perceive it to be; and everyone else has his own view.

For instance, one person sees countless events and happenings he deems destructive and evil and, more than likely, he experiences depression and hopelessness. In such a mood, he may invoke a generality—“the situation”—pronouncing it awful and beyond repair. Another beholds conditions which he deems good and ennobling and makes a corresponding pronouncement about the world external to him—again, “the situation.”

I am trying to make the point that “the situation” is not the external world in itself but, rather, an individual’s assessment of it. “The situation” isn’t out there; it is in here! With the external world as it is, whatever that may be, how else can we account for your and my differing perceptions of it? Do you alone behold reality; or is its perception exclusively mine? The answer is self-evident: Reality is bigger than all of us. And we are obliged to conclude that there are precisely as many “situations” as there are individuals who form judgments.

I, for instance, see a thousand and one events and happenings which I assess as destructive and evil. This, however, is exclusively my “situation.” No other person on earth perceives an identical “situation.” In that case, the theory that “the situation must get worse before it can get better” begins to fall apart.

I have numerous imperfections and sundry blind spots, and I suspect that others do, too. Must you and I become worse before we can get better? More blind and imperfect than we are? Heaven forbid! The further degraded we are, the more difficult the upgrading. Indeed, if an individual lapses to the status of a complete ignoramus, he has no chance of bettering his “situation.” He’s mired for life.

Instead of saying, “The situation must get worse before it can get better,” we might more accurately proclaim, “Individual situations must get better in order to keep from getting worse.” The fact is that individual “situations” suffer deterioration in the absence of improvement.

The Inner Change

While the widely accepted decadence theory lacks validity, an obscure truth is revealed if we think of “the situation” as unique to each individual. Consider the typical person who is presently complacent, who views indifferently the events and happenings that disturb some of us. Now, let him see for the first time what many of us have seen all the time, namely, the outrages of strikes, riots, student destructiveness, drug addiction, government power on the rampage, or whatever.

To uncover the obscure truth in question, it is not necessary to assume that anything has changed in events and happenings; the sole change, if any, is what this person sees for the first time, that is, a new and improved apprehension of the depredation and decadence. Merely a personal awakening on his part! Nothing in the external world has gotten worse, but in his mind events and happenings seem worse. It is only in this sense that “the situation” must get worse before it can get better. Let’s see what can and sometimes does happen.

Among the countless persons who are presently indifferent or complacent, and who of a sudden become appalled by what they see, there will be a few who will put their minds to work; they’ll start talking to themselves and, if they talk sense, others will listen.

I suspect that some of the finest talents for analysis, understanding, and exposition are today lying latent, and that from among these slow starters will emerge the best finishers. I believe that history would support this.

Refer again to Sarpi, the sixteenth century Venetian priest, whose analysis, reasoning, and expositions crumpled the mighty power combination of church and state, more entrenched perhaps than our own labor-state combine. Andrew Dickson White, a famous historian, writes of Sarpi:

. . . he fought the most bitter fight for humanity ever known in any Latin nation, and won a victory by which the whole world has profited ever since.[1]

There doubtless must have been, before Sarpi’s accomplishment, an enormous dissatisfaction with the church-state power structure, attended by no end of wailing, carping, fault-finding. But nothing came of this bickering until the flowering of Sarpi’s genius. Aroused, awakened, his potential powers were unleashed. An amazing “situation” developed on the scene.

There is no end of examples. For instance, the evils of mercantilism appeared so great in the eyes of Adam Smith that all the genius in this great moral philosopher came to the fore—alive, vibrant! According to the late Professor Thomas Nixon Carver, Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations was second only to the Bible as the most influential of all books in shaping Western civilization.[2] What a “situation”!

All I am saying is that there are potential Sarpis and Smiths—latent geniuses—among us today who, when they come to themselves, will produce an improved “situation,” accomplishing what none of us so far has been able to do.

Who or where are they? Each person possesses aptitudes and potentialities about which he himself is unaware. Thus, this question cannot be answered by him, let alone by any other. However, if each of us explores the individual self diligently enough, a spark of genius may be discovered. In any event, self is the only place to explore for genius. Who knows what lies latent there!

[1] See Seven Great Statesmen, op. cit., p. 3.

[2] Henry Thomas Buckle in his Introduction to the History of Civilization in England, written in 1857–61, goes even further: “In the year 1776, Adam Smith published his Wealth of Nations; which, looking at its ultimate results, is probably the most important book that has ever been written, and is certainly the most valuable contribution ever made by a single man towards establishing the principles on which government should be based. . . .” (London: George Routledge & Sons, Limited), p. 122.

20

High time to awake

Will the American people ever wake up to the causes and consequences of inflation? Ten years ago a lad of twelve sent FEE the earnings from his newspaper route—$2.39—and added, “Enclosed also is a package of firecrackers to wake them up.” That bit of symbolism remains on my desk to this day as a reminder to keep myself awake. Saint Paul wasn’t referring to inflation, its causes and consequences, but his injunction comes to mind: “Now it is high time to awake out of sleep.” And, indeed, it is!

A friend’s chauffeur, while driving me to the airport, told of his pending retirement, of how carefully he had saved his earnings and how secure he felt for his senior years. It seemed little short of cruel to shatter his dreams, to point out to him the inflationary road we are on, to waken him from his sleep—an economic coma he shares with many.

Most people have been taught to think of inflation as a rise in prices. This use of terms is misleading for it takes the focus off the real problem. A rise in prices is not inflation but, rather, a consequence of inflation. Inflation itself is a dilution of the medium of exchange. Actually, it differs from counterfeiting in two respects: (1) Inflation is legal and (2) the dilution is by the Federal government rather than by individuals.

For all practical purposes, inflation has its roots in the excessive expenditures of government. Whenever expenditures reach the point where it is no longer politically expedient to defray governmental costs by direct tax levies, governments will turn to inflation as a means of financing the resulting deficits. And it makes no difference what the expenditures are for—principled or unprincipled—be they for war, post office or other deficit operations, medicare or other so-called welfare schemes, full-employment programs, invoking a common justice, or whatever. It is that aggregate expenditure, whenever it exceeds the amount directly taxable, which induces politicians to indulge in money dilution.[1]

Bear in mind that inflation is a tax, cruel and unjust, but a tax, nonetheless. It is an indirect tax that is not presented annually on a formal tax bill from the IRS but shows up later in a depreciation of savings and capital. Inflation takes the form of an erosion of capital assets, siphoning the capital into the Federal Treasury. A housewife, if awake to this legerdemain, knows what’s going on when the same bag of groceries that once was $5.00 is now $10.00. We at FEE know what’s going on when some additions to our workshop cost $60,000 that not long ago would have been one-third that price.

Various Deceptions

There have been numerous schemes devised by governments to defray expenses not met by direct tax levies. Coin-clipping was an early device. This is no longer feasible because we have abolished coins having intrinsic value. What could the government gain by clipping our “salami” quarters!

Forcing the citizens to buy government bonds, later canceling the bonds, is a form of chicanery that “works” under dictatorships. Mostly, however, governments have resorted to larger and larger issues of irredeemable paper—merely turn on the printing presses!

The U.S.A. procedure does not differ in principle, but only in detail, from the printing-press method; however, it is so complex that hardly anyone can trace its workings. We monetize debt, that is, the more Federal government expenditures exceed income from direct tax levies, the more money we have. The more money we have by this process, the less is the value of each monetary unit; and when dollars are worth less, it takes more of them—meaning, of course, higher prices. Since 1939, for instance, our money supply has been blown up from $36 billion to about $200 billion! One doesn’t have to be an astute observer to note that the dollar has lost and is continuing to lose purchasing value and that prices have risen and continue to rise.

Nor does one need to be a monetary theoretician to see where this road leads; no more than a cursory reading of history is required.

France suffered financial chaos under the “leadership” of John Law.[2] A lesson learned? Hardly! The sons of those who were ruined brought about an even worse debauchery of the money by repeated and ever larger issues of assignats.[3]

In my collection is a piece of paper—100,000,000 marks. In 1914, this many marks was enough to purchase more than 200 million loaves of bread. Only nine years later, when this bill was issued, 100,000,000 marks would not pay for a single loaf of bread!

On my first visit to Argentina I received two pesos for a dollar. In the meantime, the dollar has lost 60 per cent of its value. How many pesos can I now obtain for the cheapened dollar? 350![4] Suppose that several years ago you, like my friend, the chauffeur, had secured yourself: bonds, money in the bank, insurance, pensions, and the like. How would you feel now when such assets are practically worthless? Remember, Argentina has had no wars, only excessive expenditures for countless deficit operations, welfare programs, most of them “in the interests of the common man.”

I carry a 50 cruzeiro note with me for show-off purposes when lecturing on inflation. It now has 1/1,000th of the purchasing value it had when I first visited Brazil. But why go on! Inflation’s record is one of catastrophe, no exception.

No Hope in Gimmicks

History reveals another instructive fact. In inflation’s early stages—when “creeping” and before “galloping”—hopes for fiscal soundness have always predominated over the fear of monetary calamity. Just as in the U.S.A. today! In France, for instance, at the time of the assignats, hope was founded on a constitutional democracy, a people’s government—as distinguished from that awful monarchy under which John Law did his dirty work! The recordings of that period, as in all other instances, sound precisely like the political voices we are now hearing: “We know how.” Debauchery is debauchery regardless of who “we” are, and that goes for the consequences, also.

If inflationary history is not to repeat itself in the U.S.A., what phenomenon must we look for in order to warrant a confidence in our economic future? The answer is clear: Only when there is an effective consensus favoring a reversal in governmental spending. That spending will have to be low enough so that it is again politically expedient to collect all the costs of government by direct tax levies. This, in turn, requires an understanding that the responsibility of government is not to insure welfare, security, prosperity; its role is to invoke a common justice, codify the taboos against destructive actions, and enforce them; in a word, to keep the peace.

No confidence is warranted when the President of the United States asks for a 10 per cent increase in social security benefits because the cost of living is rising while, at the same time, the same government is proposing everything from more “welfare” to landing on Mars.

No confidence is warranted when most citizens are Janus-faced: deploring rising prices while imploring more “benefits.” This is precisely the economic nonsense that has a perfect record of catastrophe!

Why, with all of our vaunted knowledge, is this happening to us? True, we have a great deal of knowledge not possessed by our ancestors, but when it comes to basic wisdom we appear to have made few gains, if any. In a word, we are the victims of the same passions and are as easily taken in by pomp and ceremony as were the Romans or the French or any other people at other times.

Always, in previous inflations, men with big names and fancy titles have assured the people that all’s well. Is it any different now? Apparently not! Take a professor of economics with a Ph.D., for instance. He’s supposed to know what he’s talking about. Have him identified with a famous institution such as Cambridge University and then have his government bestow on him the impressive title of “Lord.” Now, let this man tell the President of the United States that we can spend ourselves rich, and away we go! Somewhat lesser celebrities by the thousands join in this chorus—take up the same theme—and it becomes believable.

Believable? Why? Because this siren song of something for nothing is what most people wish to believe. They let others form their beliefs for them and join the parade that promises the most for the least exertion. “The great bulk of people infinitely prefer the continuance of a problem which they cannot explain to an explanation which they cannot understand.”

How wonderful were it possible for either you or me to make the explanation of inflation understandable! Perhaps if enough of us keep trying, one may sometime succeed. Success can never be claimed until there is an awakening.

There is this hope: Regardless of the shortcomings of our educational system, graduating many who may have the capacity but not the will to read and who cannot write or spell or even do simple arithmetic, there must be a million or two who could, if they put their minds to it, envision the disaster were everyone allowed to print legal tender at will. This is almost enough to grasp the inflation picture. And it’s my guess that these necessary few will put their minds to this problem when they see that it’s in their own interest to do so—and not before!

Cannot one of us make it clear that it is, indeed, “high time to awake out of sleep”?

[1] Inflation is often ascribed to the “cost-push” of labor unions. This overlooks the key link in the chain. Should my gardener lay down the ultimatum that from now on it’s $100 a day or he’ll not work for me and will use force to keep others from doing so, only one of two things happens, neither one of which is inflationary. I accept, in which case I am poorer; I decline, in which case he is unemployed. Here is the key: It’s when labor unions get the government to pick up the tab—that is, to “hire” the people disemployed by their uneconomic practices that adds to inflationary prospects. The costs of the government’s full employment program, promoted by labor unions, are enormous and increase the expenditure which is not politically expedient to defray by direct tax levies. A chamber of commerce that succeeds in obtaining Federal handouts is “pushing” inflation in the same way unions do.

[2] See Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (New York: Noonday Press, 1969).

[3] See Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White (Irvington-on-Hudson, N. Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959).

[4] This chapter was written a month before the money manipulators moved the decimal two points to the left, that is, they dropped off two zeros. As if the purchasing value of the peso were thereby improved. Aside from its appeal to general credulity, such trickery merely alters the bookkeeping.

21

Read’s law

It is becoming more and more fashionable for probers into political economy to concoct a “law” and tack their name onto it. Doubtless this fad stems from such famous instances as Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good money.” Or, Say’s Law of Markets: “Production generates its own purchasing power.”

This tendency among our contemporaries is a humorous way of presenting a serious idea, believed by each to be sound and original. Nor can I fault anyone for trying to have a bit of fun with what otherwise might be dismal and foreboding.

Perhaps the best known of the new ones is Parkinson’s Law: “Expenses rise to meet income.”

A book entitled The Peter Principle currently heads the best-seller list: “In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence.”

Brozen’s Law reads: “Most obviously true economic policy propositions are false.”[1]

Rogge’s Rule tickles my fancy: “Whenever the government passes a law for your protection, take to the hills—because you are about to be had.”[2]

The subject here, however, is Read’s Law: “No politician can fly higher in office than he flew while getting there.”

The Goal Is Freedom

This “law” has no meaning, of course, until we identify the point of reference for “higher.” And the height to which I aspire is freedom; that is, no restraint against any creative action. In other words, freedom is my idea of high; socialism, statism—call it what you will—is my idea of low.

Without resort to the above point of reference, my “law” would have to be stated something like this: “No politician, after getting into office, can remove any more restraints against freedom than he promised to remove in his campaign speeches.”

Let me relate how handy this “law” is. Over the years, I have known numerous aspirants for high office who, in private, endorse the freedom philosophy all the way—no exceptions! I am led to believe, “There’s my boy!” Later, as I hear or read his campaign speeches, I find nary a word about the socialism he intends to repeal if elected. Indeed, only his political label seems to distinguish him from his socialist opponent. If such a candidate is sufficiently artful at vacillation, he’s elected. Then, friends of mine hopefully ask: “What achievements for freedom are you looking forward to from so-and-so?” I respond by repeating Read’s Law: “No politician can fly higher in office than he flew while getting there.” My questioners chuckle, reflect on the campaign speeches, and draw their own conclusions. I have answered them accurately without a single disparaging or offensive reference to so-and-so. No personal attack—just an incontrovertible fact revealed!

Bear in mind that my claim has to do only with an inability to fly higher, not lower. An officeholder’s “ceiling” is set by his campaign speeches; he can descend to any level. I recall the campaign pretensions of an aspirant to our highest office. He flew higher than anyone since Grover Cleveland. But once in office, he fell into a sideslip and never pulled out of it.

The End Exists in the Means

Let me explain how I discovered Read’s Law. The campaign manager of a candidate was my close personal friend. Because his man’s speeches were socialistic, I was critical. “Why, he believes the same as you and I do,” came the reply. “He has to say what he’s saying to get elected. Once in office, he will practice what we believe.” The contention was that his candidate would fly higher in office than he flew while getting there. But no one was able to prove that untenable thesis; when the last vote was in, the candidate had lost.

This experience led me to three important conclusions. The first is that no officeholder can ever overthrow any socialistic practice unless there is an enormous consensus that it be done away with; otherwise, the practice is too tightly woven into the social fabric to be cast out by some political trick. Ridding our society of TVA or social security, for instance, is utterly impossible unless there be a general agreement for repeal. The candidates who never mention repeal in their campaign speeches make no contribution whatsoever to a new consensus. So, they have mustered no support for it, whatever their private views may be. They can never fly any higher than they flew while getting there! They are impotent. On the other hand, if they had been elected because of their advocacy of repeals, they would then have a popular mandate to so perform.

Second, the candidates who pretend privately to believe in freedom principles and who run for office on other than a clear-cut freedom platform, do not understand these principles; they do not know them! Conceded, they know about them and can recite the ideas quite impressively—as can actors. The reason that so many of us are deceived in our private talks with these men is that we cannot see into their minds as to whether or not they really apprehend the ideas behind their words. We can only know for sure what they believe when we see them in action—in their campaigns. Candidates who thoroughly apprehend freedom principles would not, indeed, could not do other than uphold them. When one knows a principle, its observation and practice is second nature.

Finally, let politicians who privately say they are for freedom, but who publicly espouse socialism in order to get elected, be faithful to their public pronouncements. Freedom will fare better this way. Exposing the fallacies of socialism and explaining the principles of freedom cannot possibly be achieved except through fidelity. Truth can never be found by those or among those who practice dissimulation.

Devotees of freedom have everything to gain and nothing to lose when campaign promises, regardless of how socialistic, are faithfully kept. We need only remind ourselves that no politician can ever fly higher in office than he flew while getting there. Furthermore, the advancement of freedom is not a matter of who wields political power over creative actions; rather, it depends upon the disassembling of such power.

[1] Yale Brozen, Professor of Business Economics, Graduate School of Business, University of Chicago. See The Freeman, June, 1968, p. 328.

[2] Benjamin A. Rogge, Professor of Political Economy, Wabash College.

22

The “freedom” that leads to slavery

My title is inspired by a line from the film, “Caesar and Cleopatra.” A slave, on seeing Caesar, rushed to kneel at his feet, exclaiming, “O, Caesar, I never knew freedom until I became your slave.”

Here is a type of “freedom”—perverse, to be sure—toward which more and more people are ardently and avidly striving. We can readily recognize the slave mentality in its several, more or less unconscious, present-day manifestations once we discover what it is from which so many people are asking to be freed.

Many Americans harbor the common misconception that slavery is always an imposed servility: a Simon Legree or some other bully forcing helpless folks under his lash, an authoritarian taking advantage of persons incapable of defending themselves, the strong lording it over the weak. Doubtless, the blight of Negro slavery in this “land of the free” blinds us to situations when the initiative stems, not from the Legrees, but from those who shun self-responsibility. In other words, they choose slavery over freedom.

I see today many people from every walk of life demanding slave status. The authoritarians or slave masters who will promptly respond to this display of servility are never in short supply. This is to say that the demand for authoritarians brings them forth; without such demand, those with authoritarian mentalities would be in ordinary—less pretentious—employments. It is the slave mentality that enthrones the authoritarian mentality! Rule, as distinguished from conquest, always rests on the consent of those ruled. Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, and many others would never have risen to power had they not been wanted; these men had broad popular support.

Freedom from Responsibility

From what is it, then, that so many people are demanding to be freed? From responsibility for self! Instead of being each his own man, they wish to be kept men.

Every plea to government for this or that kind of succor illustrates the point. Shall I be responsible for my declining years? No, leave that to Big Brother. Sickness? Big Brother! Beautification of my city? Wages? Prices? Interest rates? Competition? Housing? Education? Libraries? Airports? Opera? Mail delivery? These and countless other responsibilities are delegated to Big Brother.

The kept man is by any sensible definition an enslaved man. Authority and responsibility are companions and go hand-in-hand; they can never be severed for long. Wherever responsibility is reposed, there sits authority in the driver’s seat. When Big Brother is responsible for my life, then to Big Brother must I turn for instructions as to how to live my life; I will be ordered how to live it. Nor can it be otherwise.

It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.[1]

Insofar as a person is regulated in his creative activities, to that extent is he enslaved. This can be phrased another way: To the extent that a person surrenders responsibility for self, to that extent is he enslaved.

Edmund Opitz makes a startling and a most discomforting point: “The horror of Orwell’s 1984 society was not the meticulous tyranny of Big Brother nor the occasional tortures; the real horror lay in the fact that Big Brother’s victims came through their ordeals loving Big Brother! There is a monstrous kind of fascination in power; powerful men and movements exert an obscene attraction on those who scramble to be where the wave of the future is cresting. Communism, from the date of its political ascendancy in Russia in 1918 to its domination over much of the world today, represents a success story of sorts. And success is hard to argue with. A successful movement or philosophy exerts a gravitational pull on those who want to be where the action is. . . . ”[2]

On reflection, hasn’t it always been thus? Millions of Frenchmen loved Napoleon; the devotion to Hitler was obvious. Even more discomforting is the fact that Americans by the millions love the Establishment—our Big Brother—no less. However, what is to be expected from those who yearn to escape from the intellectual, moral, and spiritual rigors of self-responsibility—of being distinctively human?

Also, be it observed that these millions and Big Brother become allies—they depend on each other!

In contrast, consider those similarly restricted but against their will. These individuals, regardless of how tightly bound, retain their humanity by resisting. Their sense of self-responsibility does not diminish, nor does their thinking. Big Brother has no charm—none, whatsoever! And they so thoroughly dislike being “freed” from themselves, that is, from their faculties, that they can never be enslaved. Such persons remain essentially free men even under a dictatorship. And upon such inner strength rests our hope for a reversal of trends and a future in freedom.

[1] United States Supreme Court, Wickard v. Filburn. 317 U.S. 111, p. 131, October, 1942.

[2] See Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies by Edmund A. Opitz (New Rochelle, N. Y.: Arlington House, 1970), p. 22.

23

The fiction known as “we”

“We” know how to make supersonic planes, to release the atom’s energy, to cure pneumonia, to construct a good society, “we” know this; “we” know that; on and on.

Admittedly, the accumulated knowledge of the ages is so fantastic that no living person has the slightest idea of its depth and magnitude. This knowledge is the luminosity—Creative Wisdom—previously referred to. Its composition—except for what’s been lost—are all the discoveries, inventions, insights, ideas, thoughts since the dawn of humanity, and these run into incalculable trillions!

The authors? The “we”? Countless thousands—all the individuals over the millennia—who have made contributions to the grand aggregate! Bearing in mind that the outburst in numerous kinds of knowledge began perhaps 7,000 years ago, experienced a remarkable acceleration 2,500 years ago, with a breakthrough technologically beginning 200 years ago, and exploding during the past few decades, the “we” who made contributions of all kinds are still fewer among the living than among those who have passed on. Thus, when you or I say “we” know how to do or to make this or that, the “we” includes a multitude of people, present and past. It’s something like a single molecule exclaiming, “We molecules know how to make trees!”

This luminosity by which we live may be thought of as a deposit of all the knowledge that has ever been brought to the surface through the minds of men for human use and disposition. For the sake of simplicity, let’s think of its composition as ideas—be they political, moral, or economic principles, inventions, discoveries, or whatever—and then reflect on the manner in which an idea finds its way into this magnificent, incomprehensible luminosity.

Numerous inventive geniuses—Thomas Edison, for instance—when asked from where ideas come, replied, in effect, “I do not know. They seem to come as if from out of the blue.” The distinguished French mathematician, Henri Poincare, said of a discovery, “The idea came to me without anything in my former thoughts seeming to have paved the way.” But even stranger is the fact that most ideas, whatever their source, are rarely arrested by the mind. “The infant mortality of newborn ideas is enormous.” This is to say that ideas have the quality of evanescence; they’re transitory, ephemeral. All of us have had ideas about which we have no more recollection than most of the dreams we have had. Indeed, some ideas impinge on the consciousness so lightly that they’re gone before you can reach for a pencil!

Can I ever call an idea my own? Only in a vague sort of way! Most of the “new” ideas I have had turn up in works by others who have gone before, even several thousand years ago. While most of the ideas that have passed through my mind leave some trace, it is disconcerting to note the many ideas that do not stay by me. For instance, when I reread one of my own books, I wonder, time after time, how I dealt with a point. So often am I a stranger even to me!

The above is only to suggest how mysteriously constituted is the over-all luminosity. To advance the claim that “we” know is relatively as erroneous as to insist that you or I know, demonstrably not the case. Indeed, when it is conceded that more ideas have been brought to the surface by those who have passed on than by we the living, I suspect that “we,” as regards this phenomenon, are in about the same relationship to the luminosity as “they”: I hardly know what has passed through my own mind and, definitely, I do not know what passed through theirs. Perhaps it can be said that all of us are media through whom ideas have been brought to the surface and added to the accumulation; at least, I am unaware of any better explanation. And whether “we” are present or past has far less to do with the matter than seems likely. The knowledge by which we live is preponderantly in the luminosity.

The Tradition of Freedom

What, then, is the nature of this luminous deposit? If not in the combined minds of “we,” by what manner is it in storage and at our disposition?

These questions may not be answerable; yet, certain acknowledgments can be made. There are books, notations, blueprints, and recordings of ever so many kinds. There is memory which no one understands. Imitation plays its role. And then there is tradition, custom, ethos, mores, folkways, inheritances.[1] Consider this: “Tradition in its broadest sense refers to knowledge and doctrines as well as patterns of behavior transmitted from generation to generation. More specifically, tradition means a particular observance so long continued that it has almost the force of law. . . .”[2] I infer from these observations that this over-all luminosity—Creative Wisdom—is stored far more in our “second nature” than as pigeonholed, retained data in the minds of individuals. If there were no more to live by than the aggregate knowledge, specifically and precisely indexed and stashed away in our personal, mental filing systems, humanity would not be a going concern! I know that all I actually know is infinitesimal. And I am also certain that everything all of us in the aggregate know is still infinitesimal. “We” do not know over much. But most of us think “we” do, the reason being that we regard the luminosity as the sum total of what you, I, and our contemporaries are aware of. The luminosity is incalculably more than that sum total. In any event, this overassessment of “we” is a glaring error and the source of mischief. It is the genesis of an authoritarianism which, to the extent it exists, dims the luminosity.

Authoritative Thinking

It seems hardly necessary to dwell on the point that know-it-allness is the stuff from which authoritarians are made. Any person aware of his limitations has nothing he wishes to impose on others. But anyone who thinks he knows all is irresistibly drawn toward filling us in with his “superiority.” Indeed, know-it-allness can be quite accurately assessed by merely observing how authoritarian an individual is.

Thus, when members of society get it into their heads that they know what in fact they do not know, we have the makings of an authoritarianism, more dangerous than is ordinarily the case because there is so little recognition of the type of know-it-allness here in question.

A single instance will suffice to illustrate how a belief in knowing what we do not know leads to authoritarianism: “We” know how to construct a good society.

I don’t know how to lay down the design for a good society any more than I know how to make a supersonic plane. Nor does anybody else, or any combination of anybodies. Such knowledge is in the over-all luminosity, not in “we.” But when we think we know what “we” do not know, countless politicians and others among us will advance their schemes with coercive or authoritarian backing. Do we need samples of these people designing a good society? There are a thousand and one all about us: Dilute the medium of exchange, that is, inflate the money; feather the nests of some at the expense of others; manipulate wages and hours and working conditions by coercive strikes; rebuild deserted downtowns to absorb the resulting unemployment; spend and spend and spend, on and on and on!

When people do not know how little they know, they’ll effectuate their nonsense by force!

The good society, instead of being some planner’s dream or blueprint, is the upshot, outcome, effect, recapitulation of intelligent and righteous citizens. To attempt an alteration of the “upshot” is to ignore causes and to tamper with effects. As futile as trying to reshape the mushroom cloud that results from an atomic explosion!

Yes, societal architecting is futile—and harmless, too, so long as the designers only dream. But when coercion is used to implement the dreams, a trait of those who don’t know how little they know, the luminosity dims; society is fractured. Nor is it difficult to see why.

The Freedom to Think

Return to ideas. Slaves are not noted as media through whom ideas are brought to the surface. And people who are dictatorially directed as to how they employ themselves, what and with whom they may exchange, what they can freely say and write, and so on, rarely indulge in concentration; they are otherwise too much occupied for ventures of the mind, for abstract thought.

Given a world of people thus regimented and the luminosity loses its sources; it can no longer become brighter, only dimmer!

But there is more. As a people are increasingly brought under coercion and come to rely on what is meted out to them, that is, as they substitute the will of authoritarians for self-will, their faculties atrophy, including the faculty of perception. The luminosity is there for those who can see it but it does not exist for those who cannot. In a word, the luminosity dims as the eye goes blind. Think of the primitives in the world today who are unaware of this luminosity. For them it is as nonexistent as a star not yet discovered. The same can be said for people who are made to bear the yoke of authoritarianism.

Lucky for us that the luminosity is more in our “second nature”—traditions—than exclusively as retained data in the mind of each. Were it the sum total of the latter, authoritarianism would put an end to this glorious light, and quickly! But traditional ways of thinking, of doing things, of cooperating and competing with and respecting each other, combine into a lot of muscle; tradition is tough; it’s difficult and slow to demolish. It is tradition as the carrier of the luminosity that gives us time to regain our bearings, to come to ourselves, and to realize that Creative Wisdom is a phenomenon that flourishes only among free and self-responsible men.

[1] It is impossible to appreciate fully how extensive these inheritances are or to recognize our dependency on them. Henry Hazlitt, referring to language, only one among the inestimable conferments of the over-all luminosity, writes, “I am more and more impressed as I grow older, with how little the individual could accomplish in any direction whatever if he had to depend entirely on his own unaided efforts. . . . He could not think at all (or maybe at the level of a chimpanzee) if he did not inherit from the society and civilization in which he was born the priceless gift of an already-created language. Without this he would not only be unable to reason logically, he would have nothing worthy to be called a ‘concept.’ He could not frame a sentence; he could not even name things. We think in words, even in conversations. Our language, concepts and logic are part of the social inheritance of all of us.” See Thinking as a Science by Henry Hazlitt (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing Corporation, 1969), p. 137.

[2] See Modern Guide to Synonyms by S. I. Hayakawa (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1968), p. 634.

24

Civil obedience

What a refreshing experience! The seventh annual Undergraduate Seminar at FEE had just ended—38 well-chosen young men from 19 states and 30 colleges. It would be difficult to imagine a class or group more sincere or eager to learn the ways of freedom than these, our student guests.

There were questions! Most of these questions weren’t new, but this one seemed to pop up in the discussion sessions more than ever before: “Am I not warranted in breaking an immoral law?” It wasn’t how to answer that bothered me but rather the persistency and frequency of the question. Why? What accounts for this growing rebellion?

After much reflection, I conclude that this is but a phase of action and reaction. An extreme action has a natural tendency to evoke an extreme reaction: the further a pendulum is moved to the left and released, the further will it swing to the right—action and reaction. In this case the extreme action is an ever-increasing socialism, the politico-economic pendulum pushed more and more to the left. The instinctive or natural reaction to this is equally extreme: anarchy! This is to say that lawbreaking—each person a law unto himself—tends to increase in proportion to the multiplication of laws and state intervention.

Three thoughts come immediately to mind. First, how is an immoral law to be defined? To me, any law that feathers the nest of some at the expense of others is an immoral law. However, I find mine to be quite a minority view these days. Does the propriety of breaking a law hinge on whether or not a person believes it to be immoral? But contemporary ethical standards vary so that no law will pass everyone’s test of morality. Therefore, I am obliged to question this “morality” criterion as a green light to go ahead and break the laws of the land.

Second, this anarchistic reaction to socialism is an emotional, instinctive response—no more rational than is the swing of a pendulum.

And, third, we must never dismiss this matter of law-breaking lightly; it is extremely serious. At least from my chair at the discussion table, I see an enormous anarchistic reaction to the growing socialism of which campus strife is but an annoying symptom. And back of it all—giving the movement a false dignity—are an increasing number of persuasive writers and speakers flaunting the labels of scholarship. Identify them yourself: those who deny any place for government—a formal agency of society—or who teach law-breaking. Anarchy—unplanned chaos—is approaching epidemic proportions and is no more desirable than socialism—planned chaos.

It should be recognized, of course, that every citizen breaks laws, if for no other reason than the staggering number of laws. Many of these laws are unknown to most people; no person knows them all. For instance, I just observed a newcomer to air flight taking a nip from his own bottle and probably unaware that there’s a Federal law against this. Or, to skip from a little law to a big one, there is no one in or out of government who can reliably assure a business firm that it is not breaking the antitrust laws.

But these infractions do not fall in the same category as out-and-out, conscious, deliberate breaking of the law as a principle of appropriate conduct. There is a marked distinction between a rational respect for law and order and an intentional flouting of all laws a citizen believes to be inconsistent with his own concept of good and moral.

When to Revolt

Very well! How does one answer the student who asks, “Am I not warranted in breaking an immoral law?” The following satisfies me, though it may be no one else’s answer.

I shall respect the law, be it moral or immoral, liked or disliked—that is, I shall not condone breaking the law as a principled action—until I am ready to turn revolutionary and advocate the overthrow of government. This is a quantum leap, and one must seriously ask: When is this switch warranted? In other words, what is my criterion for turning revolutionary or anarchistic?

If one turns to the Declaration of Independence he finds:

. . . that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter it or abolish it, and to institute new Government. . . .

While the framers of this political document had in mind the oppressive laws imposed on the colonists by King George III, the grievances listed are hardly distinguishable from the oppressive laws imposed on us by our own government. According to the Declaration, I should have turned revolutionary several decades ago. However, I reject that criterion.

Parenthetically, I am more and more amazed at the exceptional consequence of the American Declaration of Independence: our Federal Republic. The more I study the history of revolutions, the more evident is an opposite result: the replacement worse than the government overthrown![1] This is to say that turning revolutionary is not the way to societal improvement.

Here’s another popular criterion: Numerous constitutional lawyers have argued that we are warranted in coming out for the overthrow of government whenever it becomes capricious. Were we to act on this, we would now be long-time revolutionaries. But this is not acceptable to me, either. What, then, is my guide?

I shall respect the law—obey it as best I can—so long as the channels of communication remain open, which is to say, so long as I am free to speak my piece and write about it. I shall never go underground—break law as a matter of principle—until remaining above ground becomes impossible. That’s my criterion!

I believe this criterion to be sound in principle, and practical as well. Indeed, whatever is sound in principle is always practical; it works, as we say.

In the first place, we can eventually win the case for the essentially free society if we are not effectively silenced. How not to be silenced is of prime importance.

Look at our problem this way: When we live with the laws we’re stuck with, our presentations of the freedom philosophy cannot be discounted or rejected on grounds that we are outlaws; indeed, our respect for law and order may well engender a corresponding respect for our commitments to freedom.

Those of an anarchistic persuasion, on the other hand, the ones who flout law and order as a matter of principle, cannot logically or convincingly present the case for freedom in society. And for the simple reason that they stand openly in defiance of civilization, at least, as I define it.

There is no one—even among the revolutionaries—whose distaste for the plethora of oppressive laws presently on the statute books is greater than mine. The remedy, however, is to repeal these laws, not break them.

It takes no intelligence whatsoever to break the law; anyone can do that. But the repeal of oppressive laws calls for all the wit, skill, and genius man can muster, the kind so brilliantly exemplified by Sarpi and Adam Smith. (See pages 126–27.)

Lawbreaking merely adds to the existing confusion. Repeal of oppressive laws, on the other hand, calls for a new and enlightened consensus. If an idea or action does not lead to enlightenment, it is worthless, if not destructive.

This is my answer—and challenge—to inquiring students. And I sign it, not “Your obedient servant” or “Long live the King,” but “Respectfully yours.”

[1] Perhaps Edmund Burke had the explanation: “a revolution not made but prevented.”

25

Patience! It’s brighter than you think

Few of us can forget the thrill of our first flight in a plane. Viewed from a height of ten thousand feet it’s a different planet. Quite a contrast to the earth as seen from eye level! Now, most of us, when we scan our politico-economic world, are earth-bound; we observe that things are all askew and we become despondent. Despondency is failure’s faithful ally, and we’re tempted to give up the ghost. To keep our chins up, to give the practice of freedom a 50–50 chance, change perspective! We need the faith to climb one step higher and observe what’s in the making in the midst of all the turmoil. Then we can report: “It’s brighter than you think.”

In a previous chapter, I tried to emphasize that there isn’t the remotest possibility of getting results here and now except as more and better creative thinkers, writers, talkers of the freedom philosophy come into existence. That such an intellectual windfall will happen all of a sudden—drop down on us as manna from heaven—is hardly a reasonable expectation. Even though intellectual achievement be the best and quickest of all possible ways to human improvement, it possesses no overnight magic. Such millstones as these grind slowly.

However, once we realize that these millstones inexorably grind on, turning out good grist if the grain fed into them be of the best, the future is bright. For the grain now being fed in is reasonably good and also rather plentiful: there are among us today some inestimable number of individuals—perhaps 10,000—whose understanding of the freedom philosophy is rapidly on the upgrade, excelling in number and quality anything that has previously existed. Such an assessment—and I believe it to be a sound one—provides assurance that the way of life founded on individual liberty is on the increase and, in the long run, will surely prevail. The occasion warrants a cautious optimism.

Impatience is not only the mother of the current pessimism and despondency but it also accounts for the many drop-outs. This impatience, however, is seen to be irrational once we grasp the nature of the remedial process. To continue the analogy, it’s like being impatient because the grist doesn’t emerge before the millstones have completed a full revolution.

The Germination Process

The kernels of grain in our problem are ideas. Let’s reflect on the process they have to go through before becoming grist for the freedom way of life. In a word, look at the process as it is.

The Greek, Heraclitus (536–470 B.C.), observed: “Man is on earth as in an egg.” Which evoked a response from C. S. Lewis: “Now, you cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.” Heretofore, I have thought of this as merely amusing; now I see how profound a thought this is—this concept of hatching, referring, of course, to intellectual, moral, and spiritual emergence; in essence, the hatching of ideas.

Ideas, when first encountered, particularly the more abstract and unfamiliar ideas, are not apprehended instantaneously. The reader or hearer who merely repeats an idea new to him has not grasped it. Apprehension does not take place until an idea penetrates into one’s bones, so to speak. Here is how the process seems to work: an idea insinuates itself into an individual’s subconscious or whatever it is—some womb of the mind—and is usually forgotten. Thus tucked away, it goes through a period of gestation, for moments or days or months or years. Then, if it does not die in embryo, it will emerge as an original, that is, as one’s very own.

This concept of how the process works was an “original” of mine only yesterday. After writing it, there came dimly to mind the word “fester” as once used by Albert Jay Nock. Checking on this, I found the following paragraph:

If, for example, you are a writer or a speaker or a preacher, you put forth an idea which lodges in the Unbewusstsein [in effect, the subconscious] of a casual member of the Remnant and sticks fast there. For some time it is inert; then it begins to fret and fester until presently it invades the man’s conscious mind and, as one might say, corrupts it. Meanwhile, he has quite forgotten how he came by the idea in the first instance, and even perhaps thinks he has invented it; and in those circumstances, the most interesting thing of all is that you never know what the pressure of that idea will make him do.[1]

I first read Nock’s paragraph well over 30 years ago. Observe that, except for Nock’s elegant phrasing, he is saying precisely what I am trying to say. Also note the period of gestation before this idea became my own. Lucky for me that I can acknowledge the source; otherwise, I might be accused of plagiarism.

Here’s another: Some years ago, a trusted and scholarly friend gave me a book, The Crisis in Human Affairs by J. G. Bennett, and commended it highly.[2] I was revolted by Bennett’s thesis, put the book on the shelf, and promptly forgot it. Six months later, on the phone with my friend, I announced, “I have a new idea, Bill.” Curious, he asked, “What is it?” Following my explanation, he remarked, “Why, Len, that’s the idea in Bennett’s book.” I had, quite unaware, done a complete flip-flop following a rather brief gestation period.

Still another: In the late forties when there was much talk about “putting teeth” in the United Nations and other proposals for world government I dissented. My rebuttal was founded on the observation that a world government would no more govern nations than our Federal government governs the State of New York, or New York governs Westchester County, or Westchester governs the Village of Irvington. These several layers of government do no more than govern individuals. I have too much governance over me already without inviting any more.

My FEE associates and others proclaimed this an original idea—convincing! Several months afterward, Dean Russell came to my desk with The Federalist Papers. “Do you remember that original idea of yours? Read this!” It was a paragraph by Alexander Hamilton and was nearly word for word of what I had written.

I had read The Federalist Papers only once, not at all studiously, at least three decades earlier, and at a time when, for the most part, I but dimly understood what Jay, Madison, and Hamilton were writing about. This idea lay inert for three decades, “festered,” and finally hatched as my very own.

Not a Thing New

These experiences merely testify to the Biblical pronouncement, “. . . there is not a new thing under the sun.” Tomorrow a galaxy may come into telescopic view for the first time, but not because it’s new; the galaxy has been there for billions of years.

Similarly with ideas. The only thing new about an idea is its newness to any one of us. And it is never new prior to the point of apprehension—that is, until it has hatched and, thus, has become one’s very own.

Once it is recognized that an idea cannot become mine or anyone’s until it goes through some indefinite period of gestation, impatience with the “catching-on” process is no longer tenable. To acknowledge that the necessary ripening takes time merely aligns us with reality—this is the way it is! Thus aligned, we can productively and happily strive for quality and purity of thought, fully confident that the truth will out in the fullness of time.

How, then, should we view the time dimension as we go about “getting results”? Getting results on behalf of the freedom philosophy here and now, in this context, is any shift toward enlightenment that takes place in a lifetime. Patience!

[1] See Isaiah’s Job by Albert Jay Nock. Copy on request from The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York 10533.

[2] Published by Hermitage House, New York, 1951.

Then Truth Will Out

Leonard E. Read

1971

To the Founders of FEE

MARCH, 1946:

Donaldson Brown (1889–1966)

Vice-Chairman, General Motors Corporation

New York City

Fred Rogers Fairchild (1877–1966)

Knox Professor of Economics

Yale University

David M. Goodrich (1876–1950)

Chairman, B. F. Goodrich Company

New York City

Henry Hazlitt (1894– )

Editorial Staff, New York Times

New York City

Claude Robinson (1900–1961)

President, Opinion Research Corporation

Princeton

Leo Wolman (1890–1961)

Professor of Economics

Columbia University

One free man says frankly what he thinks and feels in the midst of thousands who by their actions and words maintain just the opposite. It might be supposed that the man who has frankly expressed his thought would remain isolated, yet in most cases it happens that all, or the majority, of the others have long thought and felt the same as he, only they have not expressed it. And what yesterday was the novel opinion of one man becomes to-day the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion is established, at once by imperceptible degrees but irresistibly, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

—LEO TOLSTOY

1.

A Confession of Faith

To paraphrase John Ruskin: I have heard it said, by men practiced in public address, that hearers are never so much fatigued as by the endeavor to follow a speaker who gives them no clue to his purpose—I will take the slight mask off at once, and tell you plainly where I stand and what you may expect of me.

Perhaps the clearest way to identify one’s politico-economic position—at least in broad outline—is to reveal his idea of the ideal, that is, what he means by civilization or by a civilized people.

Civilization is a term ascribed to such widely varying societal situations that it has lost nearly all reference to quality. Thus, a use of the term requires of the user that he define his meaning.

To me, civilization can mean nothing less than a society of civilized people. So how is a civilized person to be identified?

A civilized person, according to my ideal, must recognize that man is at once a social and an individualistic being. Thus, he must not only be self-responsible but, at the same time, understand that he owes to others no infringements on their rights.

In a word, the truly civilized person is a devotee of freedom; he opposes all man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.

The civilized person realizes how incorrect it is to think of freedom as synonymous with unrestrained action. Freedom does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the freedom of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that freedom can be composed of freedom negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the freedom of others is the exercise of license, not freedom. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of freedom.

In order to achieve this ideal, it is necessary that there be an agency of society—representative of the social side of man—which codifies the thou-shalt-nots, the taboos, the destructive actions and enforces their observation.

The fact that society’s agency—government—has a historical record of getting out of hand, of becoming destructive itself, only testifies to how far from civilized we are. It does not warrant discarding the idea of the ideal; it does not justify anarchy.

Ideally, that is, in a civilized society, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal—and a people who permit this are not quite civilized.

2.

The Kingdom on Earth

March 1971—the 25th Anniversary of The Foundation for Economic Education!

“Well, what on earth have you accomplished in a quarter century?”

That is a valid question which, alas, cannot be answered with a Victory salute. Indeed, surface appearances point to nothing but losses, the broad social practice of freedom having steadily waned through the years since FEE began. In the light of such evidence, why keep trying?

There is reason aplenty for persistent effort, not only on our part but on yours, whoever you are.

The private ownership, free exchange, limited government way of life, more stumbled upon than brought about by any precise design, has no long-range survival value except as a supporting rationality comes to the rescue.[1] This remarkable politico-economic arrangement cannot last without intellectual, moral, and spiritual underpinnings, many of which have yet to be discovered, understood, explained. In the absence of understanding, coercive collectivism—statism—spills in to occupy the vacuum. Witness what is happening!

In a sense, then, these 25 years have been a period of probing beneath our waywardness to solid foundations upon which to erect and refine a rationale that will make a free society possible.

Do our troubles stem from economic illiteracy? We thought so in the beginning. Without discounting the need for economic understanding, we no longer view it as the bedrock on which to build. For were everyone lacking in moral scruples, the mastery of economics would not make a whit of difference. Fundamentally, ours is a moral problem.

All history attests to the rise and decline of nations, societies, civilizations. And any thoughtful person, when his own society appears to be on the wane, will try to get at the root of the matter. What is the unique strength of an emerging society or the peculiar weakness that leads toward social decline? What accentuates these ups and downs? Why this monotonous evolutionary-devolutionary sequence?

Personal Integrity

If there were a simple and obvious explanation, it long since would have been brought into the open for all to see and, hopefully, bent to our purpose.

I believe that this obscure force, or the lack of it, must be identified with the human psyche; it is a quality that develops or deteriorates in the minds of men. The cause of these ups and downs occurs within each individual. Contagious, yes, for like begets like; but this would be the only sense in which the force might be construed as social. Unquestionably, this is a personal problem.

What, then, can it be? I suggest that it has to do with the rise and decline of integrity: the accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as Truth. Such dictates of conscience may not in fact be Truth but they are the nearest approximation possible for any human being—the closest he can ever come to The Kingdom.

What is to be inferred from “The Kingdom”? If one posits, as I do, an Infinite Consciousness, an out-of-reach Ideal—Creation—then Infinite Truth is The Kingdom. And the eternal challenge to imperfect man is that he bring himself into as much possession of Truth as he can.

The key is familiar, though rarely understood as related to the ups and downs of societies: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness, and these things will be added unto you.” This admonition is being ignored and thus lies in near obscurity.

In other words, if one will first and foremost seek Truth (The Kingdom) and Righteousness (integrity), then these things—a societal rise being one of “these things”—will be the dividend. But, seek first the dividend, thereby relegating Truth and Righteousness to an inferior position, then the result surely will be a society in decline. In the words of C. S. Lewis, “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”[2]

Now to my point: Truth and Righteousness cannot be torn asunder without obliterating Truth; these are two sides of the same moral coin, that is, they are the inseparable components of The Kingdom on earth! To illustrate: It is a sin to feather my own nest at the expense of others. My highest conscience pronounces this as a Truth. For me to speak or write or act in a contrary manner is to indulge in dissimulation, to flout Righteousness, to live a lie, to deny the Truth that is within me.

Some Fallacies at Best

With reference to the rise and decline of integrity, it is necessary, at the outset, to re-emphasize that whatever any individual’s conscience dictates as Truth may not in fact be Truth but here, and here alone, resides such Truths as mankind possesses. One’s highest conscience not only can but often does hold fallacies and errors to be Truths. No human being is or ever has been free from this flaw. Thus, even our most accurate reflections—integrity—pronounce fallacies and errors, perhaps more often than not.

Reflect on the millions of people who make perfectly honest pronouncements on subjects about which they know little, if anything at all. For instance, according to the tenets I hold to be Truths, Karl Marx expounded numerous errors. Yet, he was—at some points—a man of integrity and in 1848 proudly claimed this virtue for himself and his kind: “The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims.” I like the young Marx for that!

And I admire integrity in everyone despite the fact that accurate reflection in word and deed projects an enormous amount of nonsense.

Consider those who speak or write or act contrary to what they believe to be Truth, those who practice dissimulation. Is nonsense thereby curbed? Indeed, it is not; it is multiplied. Were everyone to behave in this manner, Truth would have no way of coming to light—mankind confronted entirely with falsehood!

There are Truths and many are known, else we would not be here. But we must look upon man-perceived Truths as extreme rarities when compared to Infinite Truth. These rare and precious gems of Truth, like diamonds, are mined—brought to the surface—for man’s use in company with inordinate amounts of useless residue.

When integrity is the rule, fallacies and errors are brought honestly into the open, where they can be seen and discarded. Precisely as in mining, the waste is relegated to the slag pile!

“We are all dwarfs mounted upon the shoulders of giants.”[3] Who are the giants, the ones on whose shoulders all of us are mounted? Exclusively the ones who have, over the ages, combined Righteousness with such Truths as they apprehended—men of integrity! Civilization, indeed the very existence of mankind, rests on integrity! Civilizations can rise only as that virtue is practiced and held sacred; they must decline when dissimulation is the mood and the mode.

False Goals

What of those who seek first the dividends rather than the Kingdom? What are “these things”? One need not look into the behavior of others in order to find this reversal of emphasis. I can look into the mirror and there are plenty of examples. True, some of these desires for “things” have been overcome, disciplined out of practice, but the scars remain and the memories persist as temptations. However, they must be recognized for what they are—“these things” or dividends—if I am not to yield to them.

For instance, I wish to be favorably received by a certain scholarly, affluent individual who believes in the essentially free society—except tariffs. Shall I conceal from him my belief in free exchange, thus trying to win his approbation, or shall I reveal what my conscience dictates as Truth, inviting his enmity? This is a considerable temptation. But if I were to yield, and everyone else did the same, freedom in transactions would be an unknown concept. To yield is dissimulation; not to yield is integrity.

Or, take the thesis I’m propounding here. Suppose “The Kingdom” were positively scorned by everyone else rather than simply ignored as it is today by those who proclaim that God is dead. Shall I reveal, or conceal, what my conscience dictates as Truth? One is tempted to “go along” with the crowd, rather than risk abuse and disgrace.

“I must be practical” is among the most forbidding obstacles to Righteousness. When socialism is rampant, as now, there is the temptation to weasel, to compromise or, at best, to counsel a cautious and gradual retreat, thus condoning by implication the socialistic thesis. I once asked a distinguished economist why he inserted one socialistic chapter in an otherwise excellent book. He thought it would save him from excessive condemnation by the academic fraternity. There is the temptation not to stand alone with conscience; one fears being regarded as “a nut.”

Fame, fortune, acclaim, popularity, and the like are “these things.” And to seek them first is to risk a substitution of dissimulation for integrity. Seek Truth, then “these things” come along as the dividend.

Honesty the Best Policy

Admittedly, this basic admonition calls for faith in something beyond the obvious. Why my faith?

Twenty-six years ago, I came to New York City as the Executive Vice-President of the National Industrial Conference Board. Shortly after arrival, I was invited to meet with a dozen top corporate executives, an ad hoc affair unrelated to the NICB. Following dinner, the purpose of the meeting, was revealed: “We are here not to discuss the merits or demerits of the Full Employment Act; we are all opposed to it. The question is, what shall we do about it?” Immediately, I resolved to be a listener only. For how these men might appraise the newcomer would have much to do with my career.

For two hours I listened: “We must not reveal our position; instead, we shall hire college professors to appear before the Congressional Committee and speak our piece.” And so on!

Finally, one of them asked my views. The thoughts that raced through my mind! If I tell these men what I really think, I’m a goner. Not to tell them is to live a lie, to seek approval before men rather than God. I told them! There was dead silence, my fate seemingly sealed. Then one of them exclaimed, “Read is right!”

As it turned out, their views were presented openly to the Congress by one of them. As for me, this was among the most rewarding and instructive experiences of my life. Every one of that group welcomed me as a friend, often seeking my counsel. Why? Each felt certain that I would tell him the truth as I saw it.

Experience tells me it is not dangerous to be honest, to practice integrity. Indeed, accurate reflection of what one believes to be Truth engenders respect, trust, friendliness—assuming, of course, that one is not argumentative, abusive, cantankerous. And why should one be? I have no call to compel anyone to accept my views; my moral obligation is to express my thoughts honestly for whatever others may wish to make of them.

While it is true that integrity breeds respect, trust, friendliness, and other desiderata, it is well to keep in mind that these are only dividends. Therefore, it is not for these that one is righteous but for Truth’s sake, and that alone. It is simply a matter of getting the priorities in proper order.

Finally, the individual who practices integrity is teachable for, by definition, he is a Truth seeker. The dissimulator on the other hand is, at best, no more than a dividend seeker. He has torn Truth and Righteousness apart and, thus, has alienated himself from such Truth as is within him. Until he reverses the priorities, he is not educable.

As one reflects on this subject, it becomes obvious that when dissimulation is widespread, as it seems to be now, nations, societies, civilizations suffer decline. To reverse the direction requires only that integrity become the way, the mode, the style. Then Truth will out!

Then Truth will out—not all at once, never fully to any man or any generation, or even during any century, but bit by bit to those who persist in the eternal search.

[1] For a development of this point, see “A Role for Rationality” in my Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1969), pp. 9–24.

[2] See Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis (London: Goeffrey Bles, Ltd., 1953), p. 106.

[3] Fulbert of Chartres (Eleventh Century).

3.

Who Are Your Friends?

It was a thoughtful letter, and this paragraph especially intrigued me:

I asked once before, who are your friends? You did not answer. I repeat, who are your friends?

Now, why should anyone wish to know that? What does it have to do with exploring the truth about freedom? More than first meets the eye! Here is my answer for what it is worth—how I stumbled onto it and its relevance to all of us who labor in this vineyard.

My own answer began to take shape many years ago, at a weekend seminar FEE had been invited to conduct in the Midwest. At the opening dinner on Friday, I was seated next to one of our hosts. “Since making your acquaintance,” he remarked, “I have a new set of friends.” Somewhat puzzled, I asked for an explanation. “Well,” said he, “until you interested me in the freedom philosophy, I spent my spare time in merriment and diversion—with the fast set, one might say. Now, I see them no more; my new friends are of a serious, thoughtful, inquiring nature, such as those who are at this Seminar.” This was most impressive, for I had never thought of myself as changing anyone’s life to that extent. After dinner, I opened the meeting as follows:

We have specified no topics for tonight, tomorrow, or Sunday forenoon. Instead, we shall discuss whatever seems relevant. But at the start, might it not be a good idea to search for an appropriate premise, some basic point of reference, from which to do our thinking. Consistency in philosophical and ideological positions is otherwise unlikely; and we should aim at consistency. So, let me share my premise with you.

My search for a premise began by asking and answering the most difficult question I could imagine, namely, what is man’s earthly purpose? The answer hinges on three fundamental assumptions.

The first is founded on an observation: man did not create himself, for it is easily demonstrable that man knows practically nothing whatsoever about himself. Thus, my first assumption is the primacy and supremacy of an Infinite Consciousness.

My second assumption is also demonstrable: the expansibility of the individual consciousness. While difficult, it is possible to expand one’s awareness, perception, consciousness.

My third assumption is not demonstrable; I simply believe in the immortality of the individual spirit or consciousness—this earthly moment being not all there is to it.

Now, if you will concede my assumptions, the answer to man’s earthly purpose is clear; it is to see how close he can come to expanding his own consciousness into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness. In other words, see how close he can come to a realization of those creative potentialities uniquely his own, each of us differing vastly from any other in this respect.

What, then, is my premise? It is individual growth, evolution, emergence, development, “hatching.”

How is this to be used in maintaining a consistent position? Simply weigh your own or another person’s ideas in terms of the premise. If these ideas are antagonistic or tend to thwart the premise, you are warranted in disapproving them. If, on the other hand, the ideas seem to be harmonious and to promote the premise, then you are justified in favoring them. Consistency can be approached in this manner.

These introductory remarks cast the evening’s discussion in a moral and spiritual vein. The “law of love”—from a book by Tolstoy[1]—was a term used numerous times by the participants in that opening session.

Two impressive thoughts were in mind as I dozed off that night: “I have a new set of friends,” and “the law of love.” Were these, perhaps, related?

Love Is Light

The question to which I awakened next morning was this: Whom do you regard as your best friends? An honest inventory revealed them to be those individuals who give me enlightenment or, conversely, those few who perhaps are getting glimmers of light from me, that is, the persons, whoever they may be, who are related to me in the learning process. High level friendships!

With these thoughts, the word “love” at once took on a meaning unlike the Greek agape, eros, or philia, or the dozen definitions to be found in Webster’s. The Biblical observations, “God is love” and “God is light,” caused me to infer that love, in its finest meaning, is light—enlightenment. As wonderful a revelation as I have experienced.

Now, my dear correspondent, you know who my friends are—present and past—not necessarily by name but you know the nature of them. Frederic Bastiat, for instance, is as much my friend as if he were living today and dining regularly at my table. The same is true of numerous individuals who have lived during the past thirty centuries. Indeed, every author who gives me enlightenment, regardless of when he wrote or spoke, is included on my list of friends. And he is my friend who catches a glimmer of light from me—now or in the future.

To find friendships of this kind would appear to qualify as the highest aspiration of earthly existence. But what about the relevance of such friendships to freedom, a way of life so little understood? What does this call for on your part and mine? The answer is clear: refinement, now and always. For our own lights are brightened only as our thinking is refined. Let me relate this point to the politico-economic world in which we now live.

There are more than enough of us who say we favor freedom. Our numbers, based on say-so, are in the millions. “Free enterprisers” outnumber avowed socialists a hundred to one, and then some!

Precepts vs. Performance

The trouble is that most “free enterprisers” are not what they purport to be. There is an enormous discrepancy between the tenets they proclaim and the deeds they practice. Self-styled capitalists, free enterprisers, and conservatives—when they betray their creed—are far more responsible for our blundering into socialism than those who admit to being socialists. To employ an analogy: when those ordained as high priests sanction evil, disintegration is spawned more by them than by all the thieves and crooks in Christendom.

Our plight is aggravated by the fact that many self-styled freedomites think their sole obligation is to announce that they favor economic freedom and oppose Federal intervention in the market place. This is as shallow as saluting a flag because of its colors, without knowledge of the principles and traditions it symbolizes. What this amounts to is choosing sides because of a preference for a good label—freedom—rather than for a bad label—socialism. The enormous lip service paid to freedom in America today is, for the most part, nothing more than ideological affectation and, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, is both deceptive and dangerous.

Consider a now-and-then letter received at FEE: “You don’t need to repeat your freedom story for me; I’ve got the point.”

Implicit in such self-assessment is the writer’s “graduation.” No question about it, he feels that the difference between what he now knows and what is left to know is deserving of no more effort on his part. He has made the grade! The point I wish to make is that such people have missed the point entirely!

The facts: Probably some of these self-graded “free enterprisers” know as much, or possibly more, than any of us—except for one thing: they do not yet know how little they know.

True, many of us have grasped the kindergarten point that socialism, communism, the planned economy, the welfare state, or other variants of collectivism are not consonant with the way of life we have in mind. Creative accomplishment by government edict is suspect; leave creative activities to the free market. All well and good, but such minor awareness must be likened to a child’s first step; it takes a lot of doing—growth, development, repetition, refinement—before the mile can be run in four minutes flat!

The Need for Refinement

We at FEE took our stand on the side of the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life long ago, and have spent the past twenty-five years attempting, as best we know how, to write and speak its rationale. That we have some grasp of the a-b-c’s is borne out by the fact that rarely are we obliged to return to earlier assertions and “eat crow,” as the saying goes. The broad, general outline, if soundly formulated, may be used over and over again, year in and year out; but it is the framework only. When it comes to apprehending the tenets and principles within the framework and learning how to explain them in crystal clarity, I know of no one, past or present, who has more than scratched the surface. We are all neophytes; no one is more than a novice! Any individual whose experience denies this conclusion has done very little significant homework.

Conceding that no individual is more than a novice, what is the problem we face? What confronts the person who would first apprehend and then speak and write freedom’s rationale?

In each presentation he must repeat the framework, despite the risk of appearing “old hat.” For it is folly ever to leave a reader or listener in the dark as to the premise from which reasoning proceeds. Repetitious or not, this is not show biz, as the entertainers put it, but as deadly serious as survival itself. Be it remembered that “repetition is the mother of learning.”

The real problem and the prime necessity is to probe ever further into the unknown, for it is self-evident that the quality of understanding is not up to what the current situation requires. When the quality is high enough—that is, when we can intellectually meet the challenge which is peculiar to our own period in history—then, and only then, will the societal situation veer in the right direction. Nor do we have any way of knowing what that required quality is until—and unless—an improved consensus becomes evident. Prior to that happy day we have no alternative but to acknowledge that our understanding is deficient.

And, interestingly enough, the further one probes, the more stubbornly does Truth resign herself and reveal her secrets. In short, the prober into how human beings act and react to ever-changing stimuli must not be discouraged with barely inching ahead. His understanding, if he has the will to stay with his probing, is made up of the same freedom thesis, over and over again, with an added refinement first here and then there. It is, I repeat, refinement and more refinement, now and always!

Clarify the Thought

Probing is akin to prospecting. You get an idea or lead, pose it as a hypothesis, and follow it with the hope of striking ore. But the ore, if discovered, is not worth much until it is refined. Refinement of rough ideas means “thinking through,” that is, apprehending to the point where clear explanation is possible. This is the minimum required for achievement.

A few questions to which answers can be found only by more probing into the efficacy of economic freedom and individual liberty:

What causes people by the millions to turn more and more away from personal responsibility and the competitive processes of the open market—and toward government—for problem solving? Why so different from a few decades ago? If we cannot face these questions and come upon improved answers, a history book someday will be entitled, The Decline and Fall of the United States of America.

Has there been a change in the environment which leads people to believe that all the problems of all the world are now their personal problems? Though the problems are much too big for our little minds, do we, perhaps, experience a sense of accomplishment by turning the problems over to other little minds with nothing added but the police power to enforce little-mind decisions? How can the individual avoid being drawn into this political trap?

Are the principles of voluntary competitive enterprise rejected by a person simply because he cannot think how he would—for instance—deliver the mail? In a word, are we erroneously correlating the potentiality of freedom with our own ignorance, thus concluding that the free market has shortcomings similar to yours and mine? Are we rejecting freedom altogether, just because we ourselves do not see how to solve every problem? If we assume that everyone else’s ignorance matches our own, is this any reason to hope for a miracle from the one who will become “the man on horseback”?

Even more serious, are we postulating what human beings can accomplish, when self-responsible and free, on the observed actions of men neither responsible nor free? Are we to project how free men will act by studying the behavior of slaves? Can we ever imagine how the free market would work by observing how men in a governmentally rigged market react? Do not the planned economy and the welfare state alter the behavior of men? Is there not a distinction between those who are kept and those who keep themselves?

Are we on a spiritual downgrade? Is there not a relationship between the unprecedented American miracle of material affluence and such spiritual underpinnings as “men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . .”? If men’s rights are not endowed by an order over and beyond the human estate, they must, perforce, be endowed by a human collective which, in this context, is the political state. If not one or the other, from where else do men’s rights derive? Suppose the Cosmic Order calls for the evolution of individual awareness, perception, consciousness, as I believe. Then, should not the decline and fall of one more society be the Cosmic Signal that its participants are off course? If that be the case, can we not presume that any expedient short of getting back on course is a waste of time and energy? Is it possible that a good economy is but a dividend declared for those who are on course, morally and spiritually? Would not the principles of economics, even if they were understood by a society of immoral men, be utterly useless?

Or, are we failures as teachers—those of us who glimpse the efficacy of economic freedom and individual liberty? If so, why? A lead: the more we see into the miraculousness of the free market, the more clearly do we recognize the errors of political intervention in the peaceful affairs of men. And the more errors we see, the more intolerant is our tendency—intolerance being an intervention of sorts. If we allow improved insight to breed intolerance, then we are on the way to madness, capable of neither teaching others nor learning from them. This gives us another lead: he who sees more than others should treat them sympathetically rather than antagonistically. Should not observed errors and mistakes by others inspire us to increase our own candle power? Flaws can be seen only when and where there is light. Darkness recedes as light is increased.

Finally, the useful prober roams all over the place, examining the human situation in every nook and cranny. He knows that the answers are elusive; assuredly, they are hidden far off, maybe only a few of them ever to be found. Conceivably, this is the way it should be—a lead the prober might also examine. For, as Cervantes put it, “The road is always better than the inn.” If we truly seek freedom, then there is no inn, no graduating class, so long as life endures. It is always the road: refinement and more refinement, now and forever. And, fear not repetition, for “nothing is too often repeated that is not sufficiently learned.”

It is an observed fact that the prober, the refiner, the seeker after Truth can make little if any progress going it alone. How richly he will be rewarded depends, in large measure, on the quality of his friends. Thus, there is no more relevant question than this: Who are your friends?

[1] The Law of Love and The Law of Violence translated by Mary K. Tolstoy (Rudolph Field, N.Y., 1948)

4.

The Wisdom in Knowing I Know Not

My canine friend, Rusty, has simple consciousness, as do all higher animals. He knows quite a few things, without knowing that he knows; he is wholly unaware that there are things he does not know.

Human beings possess a distinctive attribute: self-consciousness. We know that we know. But self-consciousness seldom tells one how little he knows. That information is difficult to acquire and valuable to possess; it is the beginning of wisdom.

There are said to be a rare few who have acquired or been endowed with cosmic consciousness—graced with self-transcendence. In other words, they have achieved a breakthrough and have glimpsed Creation; they peer beyond themselves, even beyond their environment. They see enough of the miraculous—not seen by most of us—to inspire them with a sense of awe. Knowing far more than the mill run of us, they measure their knowledge against what might be known, and confess to knowing nearly nothing. These rare individuals weigh their finite knowledge on the scale of infinite truth. And this awareness of their limitations teaches them not to meddle or become bothersome “authorities” on everything. Such enlightened humility surely is an earmark of wisdom.

But what about the mill run of us who have not reached that highest stage of consciousness? If know-it-all-ness is indeed a major source of our social ills, let’s get rid of this weakness! To gain an awareness that we do not know is to take the initial step toward wisdom.

A Sense of Awe

A sense of awe may well be the key to the requisite humility. But if we are incapable of self-transcendence, how are we to see the miraculous in everything, to stand in awe of all there is? Perhaps this is an impossible intellectual chore, but the high stakes demand that we try.

For an example of a recent development that leaves us all in awe, consider the laser that “burns billions of times brighter than the light at the sun’s surface.”[1] Incredible and beyond belief!

Only one person of my acquaintance knows anything more about the laser than that it exists.[2] While my friend knows something of this fantastic gadget with its enormous potentialities for both good and evil, he realizes that no one has more than scratched the surface. The few score scientists who know a bit about the laser stand as much in awe as do those of us who know nothing. “Authorities” or know-it-alls are nonexistent.

Why this universal awe? How come the general acknowledgment, “I do not know!” Why does the laser leave us awe-struck while other miracles do not? The answer to these questions may reveal the cause of know-it-all-ness—that ignorance which makes “authorities” out of the mill run of us.

I believe the laser dumfounds us only because it is a brand new miracle; it is not yet commonplace; we have not come to take it for granted. When and if the laser becomes “old hat,” we will stand no more in awe of it than we now do of a pencil, clothing made of sand, delivery of the human voice at the speed of light, or a jet plane. When the laser becomes common, “authorities” will begin to surface.

In 1958, when jet planes were first put to commercial use, a Captain said to me just prior to take-off, “I simply cannot understand how this 250,000-pound thing gets off the ground.” Today, not even a passenger on his first flight bothers to wonder about it. Awe, it seems, is displaced by familiarity. And it may be observed that know-it-all-ness increases along with familiarity.

Familiarity not only breeds contempt but also has a strong tendency to deaden wonder and to dull any sense of the miraculous.

The Inquiring Mind

By what mental feat, then, are we to sustain our awe and curb our dreaded know-it-all-ness? The answer is simple to express, though difficult to achieve: Keep alive our sense of wonder! True, the strength to sustain a sense of wonder against the drag of habit does not come naturally; it has to be a willed or conscious action, and we must persist. This takes energy, but how can we expect such an important forward step at a smaller price!

A bit of verse helps to summarize and to dramatize the contrast—a brand new miracle and an old familiar miracle:

Fueled by a million man-made wings of fire,

The rocket tore through the sky . . .

And everybody cheered.

Fueled by only a thought from God,

The seedling urged its way through the thickness of black.

And as it pierced the heavy ceiling of the soil

And launched itself up into outer space . . .

No one even clapped.

Nearly everyone stands in awe of brand new miracles: rocketing to the moon or hitting it from earth with a laser beam. No familiarity, and a general wonderment fascinating to behold!

Hardly anyone stands in awe of a seedling shafting itself into outer space or of countless other old and incomparably greater miracles. Familiarity displaces awe. Wonder gone, know-it-all-ness in its stead!

Of all miracles, what is first and foremost? The most wondrous of them all? About which man knows the least? No question about it: Creation! Religion, which presumes to deal with the mysteries of Creation, is as old as humanity. On what subject is there greater and longer familiarity? Yet, note the “authorities”—countless sects and creeds, ever so many of them claiming “the last word”—as though God were dead. Dead is their humility, their awe of God’s wonders!

Or reflect on the absence of awe as related to Creation’s most familiar and profound earthly miracle: man. Merely observe the endless and conflicting cures for human ills, physical and psychic. People stand awe-struck before the unfamiliar laser, but there is a striking and appalling lack of “I do not know” when it comes to the familiar but incomparably greater miracle: the body and mind of man.

Of course, there is no other area of thought so brilliantly placarded for all to see as “political economy,” the area of my concern. This discipline deals not merely with the miraculous individual but with millions of them and their interrelationships, the miracle compounded: society. Aged, indeed, and as familiar as the eternal quandary social organization poses! Wonderment? Awe? Humility? They are difficult to find in this area.

Contemplate the historical parade of politicians with their ever varying and antagonistic panaceas, each claiming infallibility: “I know!” Or those “economists” who try to make an exact science of society, reducing everything to numbers and theorems, attempting to measure human actions and reactions, translating innumerable miracles to graphs and arbitrary symbols—and then passing off their findings as answers! And other tens of thousands all over the world, mounted on this soap box or that, pronouncing final judgments!

My own “knowing” that know-it-all-ness is unfavorable to personal growth and to social harmony and well-being reminds me of the witticism, “People who think they know everything are particularly disturbing to those of us who do.” But however presumptuous of me, the case for awe or wonderment should be attempted.

The devotee of freedom—opposing all man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy—rejects the idea of rulership in its overriding sense; he believes that others know, better than he, how to run their own lives. If others suspect he has valuable guidance, it is theirs for the asking—never an imposition.

A Cumulative Wisdom

The individual who is consistent in his freedom position, while renouncing rulership over creative actions by himself or by any other person, does not flout social rules; he is aware that society exists and functions only under rules of some sort. And he is realistic enough to know that these rules are not made up by individuals on the spur of the moment; they develop by permission of the consensus—the ruling force.

The consensus, in brief, is the residual legatee of mankind’s history; it consists of what is handed down to us plus what we, who live on its growing edge, put into it—good, bad, or indifferent.

Know-it-all pronouncements—countless millions of them, year in and year out—inevitably become a part of the consensus. I suggest that these, in varying degrees and without exception, have a downgrading or deteriorating effect. Why? Because no man is qualified or entitled to play the role of the Creator. Such pronouncements, by definition, are authoritarian-rooted attempts to control the lives of others: wage, price, production, and exchange controls, guaranteed income, subsidies, and so on. When know-it-all-ness determines the consensus, its rule will be authoritarian—in the form of oppressive laws or of rampant lawlessness. The inescapable consequence of know-it-all-ness is human devolution.

The consensus which rules the societal situation must grow more out of wisdom than of know-it-all-ness if the rule is to improve. And that wisdom can originate only in humility, awe, wonderment. For it is awareness of the miraculous that aligns the individual with reality. Everything in life is mysterious, particularly man and society.

Wisdom is Awareness

The more one knows, the greater is the awareness of not knowing. To illustrate:

A—One’s light—knowing—ten years ago

B—Today: the knowing has expanded

Observe how much more darkness—the unknown—is now visible to the growing person than formerly, and the point is clear.

There was little awareness of the unknown ten years ago; today the awareness is greatly magnified.

The more awareness—consciousness, perception—the wiser, wisdom being awareness!

In the humble awareness of how little we know, we may seek, probe, try to understand more. This searching brings to light the best we are capable of seeing. The reflection in word and deed of this, the source of such wisdom as is within us, helps to improve the reigning consensus.

As I see it, we should never let familiarity breed contempt or disrespect or lack of humility. The unknown is infinite, the mystery eternal.

By what arrogance dare one assume he sees it all? Does not the wise man stand in awe of everything—even the most familiar? For surely the miraculous is not explained by familiarity. Nor does familiarity mean understanding.

This much I know, and it tells me my modest place in the total scheme of things. I wonder if this may not be a recipe for good citizenship!

[1] Laser is an acronym: Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation.

[2] Tom Meloy, author of “Laser’s Bright Magic.” National Geographic, December, 1966.

5.

The Unruly Consensus

As an introduction to “the unruly consensus,” let us reflect on a proposal gaining acceptance in libertarian circles. It has to do with the financing of education.

A confirmed believer in the free market would no more endorse government education than state religion. Yet, numerous individuals who profess faith in the market are advocating the so-called “voucher system” for education.

To explain this proposal: Presently, a parent who sends a student to a private school pays twice; he is taxed to support public schooling and pays tuition for private education. Under the “voucher system,” parents who elect to send their children to a private school would receive taxpayers’ money equal to the cost of keeping a child in the public school. In brief, this would amount to government financing of students for private school education.

Is such a scheme any escape from socialism? While it appears to offer the student his choice among government and private schools, the fact is that the taxpayers, with or without children, are still forced to pay the bill and are afforded no choice; they are still the victims of socialism.

An advocate of this scheme—a noted economist—when asked why he made this concession to socialism, replied, “We must lead them our way—get to our goal of free market education—a step at a time.” This so-called gradualism, as a technique to promote freedom, is both so popular and, to my way of thinking, so untenable that it deserves examination.

First, there is no way to know whether one socialistic scheme is better than another. Professed socialists do not know how to make socialism work; certainly, we do not. The explanation is simple: No creative end can possibly be born of a coercive, that is, of a destructive means, for the end pre-exists in the means; a truth is never composed of fallacies. However, leave aside the impracticality of socialistic schemes and consider the main point: endorsement of any socialistic notion puts the endorser on the side of socialism. Logically, this inconsistency destroys his case for the free market.

Second, he who pays the fiddler calls the tune. When government stakes students to private school education, it is only a matter of time before private schools and their curricula come under governmental control and dictation. The word “private” will lose its meaning; the schools presently private will become government schools. Thus, the “voucher system” endorsers are working at odds with their own aspirations.

Third, reflect on, “We must lead them our way.” This presupposes that “we” are in some sort of a driver’s seat, more or less personally in charge of what goes on in society, an assumption of omniscience that does not, even remotely, square with reality.

What actually controls the societal situation? Assuredly, I do not, nor do I wish to. Neither is any other person in control, nor should he wish to be. We cannot live with uniformity, for if all were precisely as you or I, all would perish; this is easily demonstrable. What then? At the human level, the controlling force in society is the consensus. Free market education, for instance, will never replace government education until there is a consensus favoring the change. The same condition must be met if TVA is to be returned to private ownership, or labor unions divested of coercive power, or social security abolished! We who desire a change for the better must look to a higher grade consensus—nothing less.

That Immemorial Heritage

What is this controlling force, the consensus? It cannot, in my view, be defined with any precision. The best I can do is to refer to it as the current condition or state or quality of the over-all luminosity, sometimes called knowledge in society. This is a body of underlying assumptions, of ideas taken for granted and held more or less in common. It is part of a peoples’ immemorial heritage, creative wisdom, culture, custom—the knowledge or wisdom, or the lack of it, by which we prosper or perish.[1] It is a nebulous, ever-changing, unpredictable, and a somewhat indiscernible force. A corrupted consensus is associated with societal decline; an enlightened consensus accounts for societal ascendancy. In any event, this is the force that presides.

Let us say I have been born into a particular civilization—Occidental, Oriental, Polynesian, African, or whatever. Whichever one it is, I am a lone individual among many millions. Next, assume that I have my heart set on improving the civilization into which I have been cast. What are my chances? Roughly, somewhat better than my chances of improving the societal situation in the United States! For the consensus is of a greater magnitude than any particular civilization; it is the cultural, spiritual, moral, intellectual, political, and economic upshot of them all. This is not to imply any similarity among the numerous civilizations of which the present consensus is an “upshot.” To picture the consensus of our time, think of the mighty Amazon, and the civilizations as the countless tributaries which feed it—some tiny, others large, and each of varying composition.

Today’s consensus is the residual legatee of mankind’s history; it is the latest stage in human evolution—or decline, as some might have it—but, rising or falling, it’s all of one piece, and we of our time stand at the growing edge of it. Realizing the enormity of the consensus that presides over social affairs, I hesitate to think of myself as being able to move it this way or that; and, thus, I would never agree that “we must lead them our way, a step at a time.”

Role of the Individual

Why this attempt to discover the individual’s relationship to the consensus? In my view, it is necessary that each recognize his own limitations before he can even begin to realize his potentialities. To assume that I have a greater say-so than is actually the case is to place myself at an impotent level. When I think I can do that which I cannot, then my actions will be in the realm of the impossible, governed by sheer fancy, and the effort thus in vain. To focus on controlling the consensus is as unrealistic as to focus on controlling continental drifts. Am I saying that the individual has no role to play? Indeed, not! All depends upon where the eye is cast.

Reflect on the unruly consensus. Living on its growing edge we can, even in the short span of a lifetime, observe its shifting. During the past few decades it appears to be deteriorating, as it has on earlier occasions. However, history reveals that the consensus occasionally has shown improvement, this being the aspiration of concerned citizens. And every shift—up or down, now or whenever—has been or is a consequence of actions by those who live on its growing edge. This is to say that the consensus is a by-product of human action, and any shift in the current consensus is a by-product of our own actions.

Let us not waste words on how the consensus deteriorates except to note that it is the easiest process conceivable, simple as falling off a log: the absence of thinking, of disciplines, of high moral standards—the pursuit of excellence abandoned; in brief, people deterioration!

An improving consensus, on the other hand, results solely from the practice of difficult human virtues; it is the over-all luminosity of a people on the upgrade. No single person among us rules that luminosity, and it is utterly useless to try to do so. Instead, the eye has to be exclusively on the source of that luminosity, that is, on the illumination of one’s self. The consensus at any point in time is composed of what is handed down to a people plus what they put into it.

What they put into it! If this analysis be correct, then those of our time who are devoted to the freedom philosophy should never endorse any socialism—coercive collectivism—none whatsoever. For, by so doing, socialistic ideas are put into the consensus, and by us! This we do whenever we advocate a form of socialism, supposedly less bad, in order to “lead them our way, a step at a time.” Away with gradualism! It is an ill-advised methodology.

And let not anyone underestimate the effect on the consensus when the eye is focused on self-illumination rather than on the consensus. Literature of the past—history—tells of brilliant stars by the thousands, men actively in pursuit of truth who, by exemplary behavior, shifted the consensus in an improving direction. Then, too, there have been millions of unpublicized contributors over the centuries whose names have never come down to us!

Can the personal quality that generates light—the dynamo, so to speak, of an enlightened consensus—be identified or pin-pointed? Unquestionably, it is growth in perception, awareness, consciousness. To play one’s role in the enlightenment requires only that he attend to his own growth, and express it honestly. And here is the interesting fact: it makes no difference from what level an individual begins his growth. Socrates contributed mightily to an improved consensus only because he was always growing. Precisely the same can be said of a “lowly fisherman of Galilee.” Growth, from whatever level, is the generative force.

The unruly consensus rules, but its rule, if improving, is determined exclusively by the human beings who are upgrading themselves in consciousness, in word, and in day-to-day deeds. The formula is simple, and its execution is the way to extract from life its greatest offering.

[1] “Custom, therefore, is not the accidental, trivial, and meaningless thing which we sometimes think it to be. It is the imperishable record of the wisdom of the illimitable past reaching back to the infancy of the race, revised, corrected, enlarged, open to all alike, and read and understood by all.” See Law, Its Origin, Growth and Function by James Coolidge Carter (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1907), p. 127.

6.

The King Can Do No Right!

The notion that “the king can do no wrong” derives from the divine right doctrine, namely, that sovereigns are appointed by God as rulers and, thus, not responsible to the people. This doctrine “ceased to be important in England following the revolution of 1688, but on the Continent it lingered until the early twentieth century.”[1] For an example of its lingering, hear Bismarck before the Prussian Parliament in 1847:

The Prussian Sovereigns are in possession of a crown not by the grace of the people, but by God’s grace.

Two points call for reflection: (1) this very same doctrine, with “divine” dropped from the phrasing, not only persists to this day but is on the ascendancy in the U.S.A., as well as all over the world, and (2) the king can do no right—none whatsoever.[2] I believe these claims are demonstrably true.

In using the “king” concept, I am referring to rulership in its overriding or dictatorial sense, as James I and Bismarck conceived such roles. Sovereign, indeed—“above or superior to all others.” If this concept be generally accepted, it follows as the day the night that your rights and mine derive from these kingly characters, not from the Creator, as our Founding Fathers had it. Only the king’s rights are by the grace of God. Phrased in this manner—their phrasing—the concept evokes disdainful chuckles from us. But, just a moment, until we assess our own behavior.

The Passion for Power

The lust for riches is a poor second to the craving for power over others. Nor need we confine our examples to such celebrities as Cheops, Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Genghis Kahn, Napoleon, Hitler, Perón, Stalin for confirmation of this deplorable fact. Examples are to be found by the millions; indeed, there are few among us in whom there are no traces of this malady. Who does not, to some extent, lord it over others: children, wife, husband, neighbor, countrymen! The notion that the king can do no wrong and is thus qualified to cast you and me in his image is an egotistical and untenable extension of the idea that father knows best. We—all of us—are the king’s children.

When power over others becomes a passion—is it ever exerted otherwise?—the seeker after power inevitably finds ways to justify what at best is a psychosis: “I am doing it for their own good,” or “they are too dumb to recognize their own interests,” or “I know what our national goals should be.” There is simply no limit to these trumped up excuses. Actually, “I have been appointed by God to rule over men,” is no more farfetched than, “I have appointed myself to rule over the creative activities of citizens.” Both are nonsensical. The teacher, clergyman, businessman, labor union official, or politician who advocates or practices coercive interferences with the peaceful exchanges of creative human energy has a position no more tenable than that proclaimed by James I or Prussian sovereigns. It is the king syndrome in either case.

If these kings on the home front are not appointed by God to rule over us, from whence come their appointments? Majority vote, perhaps? If so, then the appointments were sparked by the power-seekers’ claims of omniscience—in a word, self-designation—for no individual confessing an inability to rule the life of another receives bids to kingship. And people who invite a king or an assemblage of kings to rule over their lives—an invitation to slavery—are too short of understanding to qualify as competent appointors.

Most incongruous of all, however, are the kings themselves: they claim authority to rule over us as a grant by a majority of us for whose judgments they have no respect. Else why not let us be our creative selves! If the power to rule be by the grace of God, is the ruler then to be God’s lord and master? Obviously not! Why, then, if by the grace of a majority, is the ruler to be the majority’s lord and master? This is double talk!

But a king is a king regardless of what excuses are conjured up to dignify his coercive rule.

This brings into focus the old saw, “The king can do no wrong,” as well as the myth daily beamed at us by our own little kings on the home front, “We are doing this for your own good.” What is the difference? If what they do is good for us, it cannot, therefore, be wrong. Based on their claims, our little kings can do no wrong. We must conclude that every person who coercively intervenes into creative actions of others, from whatever walk of life—politician, labor union official, businessman, or whoever—is on precisely the same wave length as James I.

Holding views similar to James I does not in itself warrant censure. Thus, we must ask: Is it true that the king can do no wrong? Or, is it false? My answer: The king can never do right; he is destined always to be wrong, as wrong today as in the seventeenth century. This is easily demonstrable.

In the first place, no one can ever rule another; the most that a James I or our little kings can ever do is to keep others from being themselves.

Parenthetically, there is a role for a societal agency to play in keeping others from being themselves if it be their nature to commit theft, murder, deception, violence, and the like. I am not alluding, however, to the retarding of wrongdoing but, rather, to a person’s freedom to be himself creatively. Kings—those with the sovereign mentality—concern themselves only secondarily, if at all, with inhibiting destructive actions. They are primarily concerned with the control and direction of creative actions. But this is precisely what no king can ever do; he can only suppress, deaden, destroy such actions. Creative actions can never be ruled, but only ruled out! If this be accepted, then it follows that a king, whenever he exercises his kingly or dictatorial role, can never do right; he must always do wrong—and without exception!

Our Unique Endowment

These observations rest on two propositions: (1) the right of a person to be his creative self and, (2) a creative action is not a transplant possibility.

If it be accepted that only the king is sovereign, that he alone rules over us by the grace of God—or by the grace of a majority—then we have no right to be our creative selves, for our rights derive from him; we are his children and his pawns. This psychotic premise denies that an individual has a right to be his creative self.

But accept the premise “that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness,” and your endowment as well as mine is by the grace of the Creator. Each of us is thus endowed, the king no more so than everyone else—his pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Both justice and reason abundantly support this premise. Yet, an appeal to a transcendent source of rights seems hardly necessary; merely look at the record. Compare the creativity of James I or Napoleon or Perón or any Prussian sovereign with that of an unknown waif by the name of Tom—known later to the world as Thomas Alva Edison. Or the creativity of the kings of any dictatorial agency—OPA, NRA, labor union, or whatever—with the creativity of Einstein, Jules Henri Poincaré, Beethoven, Bastiat, Adam Smith or other tens of thousands. The evidence is all about us, overwhelmingly in support of what justice and reason proclaim.

I care not who or where he is or about his creed, color, race, nationality; he has as much right to be his creative self as any person who lives. Thomas Wolfe expressed this right-of-man concept in attractive prose:

. . . to every man his chance—to every man, regardless of his birth, his shining, golden opportunity—to every man his right to live, to work, to be himself, and to become whatever thing his manhood and his vision can combine to make him—this . . . is the promise of America.

A king’s only rebuttal to this concept is arrogantly to proclaim himself a god and men his pawns!

Every creation at the human level springs exclusively from discrete persons. A discovery, insight, invention, intuitive flash, idea, is an outcropping of the generative faculties of the individual. We have but vague explanations as to the causal forces. Both Edison and Poincaré could do no better than confess, “Ideas came to me as if from out of the blue.”

But we do know that—

1. Most of these sparks of insight radiate from unexpected sources—utterly unpredictable, just as you are unable to predict an idea you may have tomorrow;

2. Freedom to be one’s own man is more conducive to creativity than to be someone else’s man or slave;

3. The less interference with the creative powers of individuals, the greater will the total creativity be.

The Limitations of Force

The proposition that a creative action is not a transplant possibility need not be labored. Neither I nor anyone else can force you to have an idea, even with a gun at your head. Fright is no spawning ground for creativity. True, you might accept or embrace an idea of mine but it would not be your idea. An idea of yours stems exclusively from your own complex and unfathomable faculties. We are speaking of insight—seeing from within—an original that cannot be transplanted.

What can a king do? With the backing of coercive forces—a constabulary—he can keep you from working at what you choose, from accepting a wage agreeable to you, from exchanging what and with whom you please, from retaining the fruits of your own labor, on and on. In brief, he can diminish your freedom of choice and thereby narrow the extent to which you can be your creative self. This is all he can do!

And it is in this manner that the king achieves his goal to the exclusion of our individual goals. His is nothing more than a herding action. If his goal be sputniks, going to the moon, the Gateway Arch, “full employment,” or whatever, he restrains us from straying off as far as we might wish in the direction of our own goals. Down this lane—his lane! He effects his aims by verboten techniques such as disallowing exchanges with whom and on what terms we choose—embargoes, quotas, minimum wage laws, and the like—and, also, by taking the fruits of our employments and putting them to his employment—taxes, inflation, and the like.[3] While his goal is always couched in fancy and seductive language—“I am doing this for your own good”—herding is what it amounts to when all is said and done.

Every interference with human creativity is patently wrong. When we come sufficiently to understand this, then it will be impossible for any government official to do wrong. Such understanding will simply relieve him of the power and the temptation. Each of us can then be his own man—creatively!

[1] See Columbia Encyclopedia, Second Edition, p. 546.

[2] I am referring only to the king as king, not as husband, father, and so on.

[3] Details of the king’s mechanisms will be found in succeeding chapters.

7.

Leave It to the Free Market!

When things go askew in the economy planners in and out of government “rush to the rescue” with countless panaceas. Those of us who question their schemes are confronted with the challenge, “Well, what would you do?” And our reply, “Leave it to the free market,” is shouted down as being impersonal, heartless, inconsiderate, cold, and not quite humane.

The question is, can I correct this grossly mistaken and all-too-common evaluation of the market? Is this in my power? If it is not, then why think and write about it? Why not dismiss the matter? Here is a fascinating passage that sets the stage for my answer:

Roman Stoicism had been developed in times of despotism as a philosophy of lonely and courageous souls who had recognized the redeeming power of philosophical reason in all the moral and social purposes of life. Philosophy as a way of life makes men free. It is the last ditch stand of liberty in a world of servitude.[1]

The important offshoot or outgrowth of Stoic philosophy, if not its essence, is the idea of distinguishing what is in our power from what is not in our power; concentrate on the latter and let the former roll off as water from a duck’s back. We might describe the modern “stoic” as one who refuses to fret about matters that are not in his power to correct. And this, I submit, includes all the world’s woes—all except the shortcomings of self.

While I can find no passage in this phrasing, I am beginning to wonder if Stoicism, especially as set forth by Epictetus, may not be the genesis of the mind-your-own-business way of life. If so, we owe a great deal to Epictetus.

So, what is in my power? It is in my power not to be taken in by catchwords and shibboleths invented by designing partisans; it is in my power to arrive at a just understanding by observation and reason; it is in my power to share my findings with anyone who cares to listen. All else not in my power I refuse to fret about. For, as Shakespeare expressed it, “Doleful dumps the mind oppress.”

I believe that the market, if free, is intimately personal;[2] it renders justice in the only sensible definition of that term; it continuously and automatically moves ever-changing satisfactions and ever-changing aspirations—supply and demand of particular goods and services—toward a harmony one with the other; it is humane to the extent of the human kindness that is within us.

The alternative to the free market is the rigged, planned, dictatorial, coercive, interventionist, authoritarian market, variously known as the planned economy, the welfare state, omnipotent government—the kind of an arrangement into which we in the U.S.A. are rapidly drifting. As contrasted with the free market, this is definitely disruptive and antisocial; it is, by its nature, incapable of rendering justice; it is forever and of necessity forcing ever-changing satisfactions and ever-changing aspirations toward a state of disharmony one with the other—shortages of this, surpluses of that, and so on; it stifles and eventually kills human kindness.

My understanding of the free market flies in the face of popular sentiment, so let me examine its validity.

Each His Own Decision-Maker

The free market is intimately personal. If there be 100 million individuals in the unfettered market there will be precisely this number of persons deciding each for himself what to produce, where to work, what to buy and sell, and what are to be acceptable terms of exchange. I, who know more about me than anyone else, in charge of me! How possibly can a way of life be more intimately personal than each individual his own decision-maker!

In the alternative situation, a bureaucrat presides over these decisions. As related to those of us for whom he decides, he is as inconsiderate as a computer, and the data he uses are derived entirely from his imagination. He cannot know, can only guess, what may be your countless and ever-changing preferences or what constitutes your idea of your welfare. Indeed, he does not know, really, what goes on in the deep recesses of his wife’s or his children’s minds, let alone what goes on in the minds of millions he has neither seen nor heard from. Someone who knows nothing of you and me in charge of you and me. Dictatorial to the core!

The free market renders justice. Justice is a social term; it relates to relationships one with another and is achieved when our relations with each other are fair. How is a just exchange to be determined? It is simply a matter of respecting subjective judgments. If you prefer what I have to offer more than what you stand ready to give in exchange, that is all there is to it: economic justice. This is willing exchange—both parties willing—a prime tenet of the free market way of life.

It is a contradiction in terms to claim that a bureaucrat can render a subjective judgment for other than self. His judgment is his alone and can never be yours or mine. Thus, to the extent he intervenes in our relationships, to that extent are exchanges unwilling, that is, not in accord with your own preferences. If it be conceded that you and I have as much right to life, livelihood, liberty as anyone else, then all exchanges forced upon us are, by definition, unjust. Only by positing “big brother” as a god—an absurdity—can his running of our lives make sense.

Balancing Supply and Demand

The natural tendency of the free market is to point supply and demand toward a balance. Implicit in the free market is free pricing. A rise in the price of a good or service discourages demand and encourages supply; the opposite effect is produced when price falls. If tomatoes rise to $10 per bushel, consumption declines and production increases. If they drop to 50 cents a bushel, consumption increases and production decreases—hence, supply and demand are always tending toward a balance.[3] Observe that this most efficacious way of economic life requires no more knowledge on the part of any participant than the ability to read a price—attunement with reality!

The alternative is political rigging: wage, price, rent, interest, exchange, and production controls and the essential concomitant—rationing. A catchword for this legerdemain, borrowed from the British, is now being introduced to us: “incomes policy.”

Wherever free pricing is more or less the rule—as in the case of women’s hats, corn flakes, pencils, and even mink coats—supply and demand equate; it is only political interference with the market that makes us think in terms of “shortage” and “surplus.” To illustrate: The lady who today has no mink coat does not blame her plight on a shortage for she sees them plentifully displayed; she only thinks that the price is more than she can afford. Now, let the government put a ceiling price of $50 on mink coats. Immediately, there will be a “shortage” of say 10 million mink coats, for there are that many women who have $50 and would like a mink coat. “Shortage,” prior to a coercive control of the market, is a nonconcept; it grows out of political price fixing. The same applies to “surplus.”

Education has been politicized for years in our country. There is now an enormous “surplus” of teachers.[4] Or, turn to the commodity market. Among the hundreds of commodities daily traded, only a few are deemed to be in shortage or surplus; and these few, without exception, are those politically priced in one way or another—wheat and cotton, for instance. We need only look about us for other examples; interference, thy name is legion!

Finally, observe that this least efficacious way of economic life presupposes a knowledge on the part of bureaucrats that does not exist, even remotely. No one of them knows any more of the infinite data implicit in the market complex than you or I. The very fact that they think of themselves as possessing such knowledge ought, in itself, to disqualify them.

The Humane Society

People in a free market are humane to the extent of the human kindness that is within them. The most successful war on poverty ever fought has taken place during the past two centuries when the free market has been most nearly approximated. This has revealed an incontestable fact: the most helpful service we can render our fellowmen is assiduously to attend to our own knitting—not theirs! Yet, withal, there remain some persons in distress inviting that the Judeo-Christian principle of charity be practiced. This spirit of charity exists more or less in each of us. Whatever this spiritual content—bountiful or niggardly—it is the fact given; there is no more or less; and it will achieve its total outpouring among men when free, which is to say, among men when self-responsible—free and self-responsible being one and the same. There is no way for you or me to manifest more compassion than is within us. We manifest all there is when unhampered.

The alternative is a resort to coercive devices—the welfare state. Every conceivable cause, considered worthy by this or that looking-out-for-others group, is tossed into the political hopper. If there be compassion in their hearts, how do they propose to exercise it? With the fruits of their own labor, as the practice of Judeo-Christian charity suggests? Indeed, not! They insist that you and I, the taxpayers, do their good for them—currently to the tune of perhaps $150 billion annually.[5]

Observe how human kindness is stifled and eventually killed by this process. In the first place, the proponents of these programs are letting it die in themselves. It is not an act of kindness for me to forcibly take from you and then give to the object of my concern. Robbing Peter to pay Paul is unkind to Peter and, certainly, there is nothing kindly in the act of bestowing such loot on Paul.

Second, this process destroys kindness in the whole population. When government assumes the responsibility for the welfare of your neighbor, your sense of responsibility toward him vanishes. Grover Cleveland clearly saw through the sham of this:

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.[6]

Not only is the “kindly sentiment” destroyed but the “conduct” is rendered impossible. When government takes from you and me, for whatever purpose, it takes the funds we might otherwise have used to relieve the distress that comes within our purview. We cannot give that which we do not possess.

Doubtless, the greatest mischief of all is the false impression of humanity this process induces. Kindliness stifled and killed—less and less of it practiced or seen. And unthinking people, viewing each other in this stultified condition, conclude that this is their natural state: charitable good-for-nothings! How far from the truth! Judging the behavior of slaves to be the way men would act in freedom is no more intelligent than expecting the dead to act alive.

The Lure of Something for Nothing

What else, beyond the reason just cited, accounts for this astonishing blindness to the free market way of life? Why is it that so few appreciate its efficacy, why so many seeking refuge in the only alternative, namely, the planned economy, welfare state, omnipotent government way of life? How is it that so remarkable an achievement remains invisible to the multitudes? If we could only ferret out the answers!

One explanation may be the recentness of the break with age-old custom, tradition, heritage. Allowing everyone to act creatively as he pleases, to go as far as his aspirations and abilities permit—regardless of birth, race, creed, color—and with no special privilege for anyone, is the newest of all politico-economic concepts. Until about seven generations ago the idea of kingly sovereignty and authority more or less prevailed. Relegating government to a peace-keeping role flies in the face of mankind’s experience. For a people suddenly to break the shackles of history requires an exceptional rationality.

The appeal of something for nothing is overwhelming to most people. The welfare state technique permits concerned individuals to satisfy their compassion by compelling others to foot the bills. Further, they do not find it necessary to do the compelling; the government does it. Truly, nothing seems required of them, and they enjoy an angelic sense of charitable accomplishment! On the other end of the process are those who receive the largess in exchange for nothing. The “welfarers” and the “welfared” combine to form an enormous sentiment favoring “welfarism” without so much as a thought or glance at the free market way of life. “We never had it so good!”

Resort to Coercion

The welfare state mechanism is part and parcel of the current labor union movement. It is the only means by which the unemployment caused by the union’s excessive wage demands—coercively implemented—can be screened from public view. The so-called full employment program by government—Federal urban renewal, moon ventures, and countless other noneconomic projects—absorb workers barred from the market by coercive pricing. Thus, the unions manage to conceal their actions which cause unemployment. We can hardly expect the free market to find favor among the millions following their own short-range and unenlightened interests.

Unquestionably, the millions are unable to see the free market’s accomplishments and potentialities. So remarkable have been its wonders, even when freedom has only been approximated, that most people in their credulity have credited the wonders to everything except the free market: natural resources, fertile soils, friendly climates, expansive frontiers, even the foolish attempt to spend ourselves rich. The free market stands mutely responsible for all the progress we have enjoyed, but with only a few aware of the fact, and still fewer able to explain it.

This will not be regarded as a fanciful or extravagant claim by anyone who defines and understands the free market as that institutional or societal arrangement in which there are no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. It is the maximum release of creative energy that assures maximum moral, spiritual, intellectual, economic progress; to me, the point is incontestable.

Even when the above is conceded, there still remains an annoying force and drive to the planned-economy phase of omnipotent government. It is a pervasive fear that resort to the free market would result in a society at sixes and sevens, purposeless, minus goals, everyone going every which way—a helter-skelter situation. Thus, it is assumed, someone must be in the driver’s seat, planning, overseeing, giving direction and integration to the social process. The assumption is nonsense because the fear is groundless.

I share Bastiat’s faith: “All men’s impulses, when motivated by legitimate self-interest, fall into a harmonious social pattern.” It is only in a free market relationship that harmony and balance can exist; it is the introduction of coercion—the overseeing force—into our relationships that sets up antagonisms, that pits us against each other, that creates imbalance, that brings on the social conflicts.

Reduce the social equation to you and me and one other that it may be clearly viewed. I do whatever I choose so long as it is peaceful; the same for you. We exchange when it is mutually advantageous to do so. The third party’s delegated role is to do absolutely nothing unless one of us infracts a right of the other. Or, if there be a dispute, he invokes the rules of the game. This is the free market in miniature. A greater harmony is unimaginable.

Now let the third party force his goals upon you and me or take from you and give to me. All three of us will become antagonists. Social chaos! And the same applies if we multiply the three of us by millions.

I shall always try to expose the flaws of all panaceas by the social planners, and my response to their “Well, what would you do?” will continue to be, “Leave it to the free market!” This much, at least, is in my power.

[1] Albert Soloman in his Introduction to The Enchiridion by Epictetus (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1955).

[2] The term “free” as I use it presupposes no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy, whether by governments, trade unions, businesses, private piracies, or whatever; that is, no special privilege for anyone. These hindrances to free and willing exchange are codified for all to see and, then, inhibited by government—its proper role!

[3] Should the taste for tomatoes go out of vogue entirely, supply and demand would still equate—at zero!

[4] See “Subsidizing a Crisis: The Teacher Glut, 1971,” The Freeman, March, 1971.

[5] The $150 billion figure is roughly half of total governmental expenditure at all levels and covers not only the more commonly recognized welfare programs but such others as unemployment compensation, aid to agriculture, government schooling, housing, transportation, and so on. It represents a compulsory transfer payment of considerable amount each year from each of the more productive to each of the less productive persons in the United States, over and beyond what parents and friends voluntarily bestow upon children and other dependents.

[6] From a veto message by President Grover Cleveland, February 16, 1887.

8.

How to Be a Benefactor

The world’s woes may have been greater and more numerous in 1850 than now. But, if they were, my grandfather as a young man was unaware of them. There were no radios, TV’s, or telephones. Isolated in backwoods country, he had no newspaper, not even a magazine. All the troubles of mankind, so far as he knew, were those which fell within a distance he could walk or ride horseback; and they were minor problems, few and far between. In brief, grandfather had no social problems except grandfather-size ones.

But today! There is hardly a disaster or a social mess on the face of the earth that isn’t immediately dinned into our ears or emblazoned in glaring headlines. News! And unless one is instinctively or rationally immune to this calamity barrage, he will incline toward the untenable belief that every ill of mankind is his problem. Thus misled, he is an easy victim of the fallacious notion that the solution of all of these is his “social responsibility.”

True, each of us is at once a social and an individualistic being and, therefore, each does in fact have a social responsibility. However, we should know what that responsibility is, and what it is not, else we will work against rather than in harmony with our fellow men.

The grandfather-size problem, as it turns out, is about the maximum size any of us is able to cope with. When we get it into our heads that other people’s problems are our responsibility to solve, we “rise” to a level of utter incompetence. However good our intention, our meddling makes matters worse rather than better.

To illustrate: I am a writer of sorts. It must be obvious to you, whoever you are, that I cannot solve your problems. Elect me to Congress and I remain as I am, my competence not improved one whit by reason of this change in occupation. Nor will it upgrade my competence to place me in the highest political office in the land, or to make me the head of A.T.&T.!

Wild Goose Chases

Before considering how we can become true benefactors, that is, how we can soundly discharge our social responsibilities, let’s reflect on the mischief done in the belief that social responsibility requires everybody to solve everybody else’s problems.

For example, take business firms, especially those with the most customers, workers, and investors. They are today’s “whipping boys.” Such firms are picked on by politicians, muckrakers, and those millions who can be sold any nonsense—if it is repeated often enough. Pied Pipers with enormous followings are everlastingly insisting that these corporations assume their “social responsibility,” such as training and hiring the so-called hard-core unemployed.

So beset are many executives with these widespread collectivistic notions that they tend to neglect their proper functions of hiring the most competent personnel, turning out better products at lower prices, and making larger profits; they concentrate instead on preserving the corporate image. These outpourings draw businessmen into a popularity contest for which they have no competence, and cause them to de-emphasize their skills in production and exchange, the skills that brought them to the top. Instead of serving as spokesmen for free entry and competition and how the market economy best serves everyone, they drop into a defensive role. They shift from portraying what is true to denouncing what is not true. Or they may succumb altogether to these unrealistic notions, in which event, they apologize for profits and become parties to the growing collectivism.

This is a mischievous trend. If continued, it will prove disastrous not only to investors and workers but to the very customers many of whom are doing the condemning. When the emphasis is on the image rather than the performance, not only will the performance deteriorate but so will the image. And everyone involved must bear a share of the inevitable failure.

To Serve Consumers

Public policy, it seems to me, should be geared to consumer interest—that’s all of us. And as a consumer, I cringe when business executives behave as if theirs is first and foremost—or, even secondarily—the job of looking out for pockets of poverty or the level of employment or the general welfare or any other so-called social goal. These men will serve us best in every way—including alleviation of our poverty and so on—when they stick to their own knitting!

Born a shoemaker, stay a shoemaker was, by and large, the lot of the masses until the idea of opening the market to competition was recently discovered—about seven generations ago. What a revolution that brought about! Open opportunity for masses of people and the most successful war on poverty in the history of mankind!

John Stuart Mill, gifted with insight, was among the numerous men to grasp the pursuit of self-interest as an efficacious way of life:

The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

Earlier Adam Smith had observed that:

. . . by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, [the individual] intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation. . . .

If “to trade for the public good” is at best an affectation, one must then conclude that he should trade for his own good, which is to say that each of us should observe the rules and pursue his own self-interest. Thus will he best serve others and fulfill his social responsibility. What a switch from current thinking! But events of the past 200 years, if I read them aright, confirm this view—absolutely.

There is in this thesis, however, a presupposition that an individual knows what is to his best interest. There’s the rub; few have this knowledge; no one has it perfectly. This presupposition may explain why the brilliant and cautious Adam Smith inserted that word “frequently” into his famous paragraph. Every now and then—frequently—there are individuals who more or less intelligently perceive their self-interest; and in these cases the ardent pursuit of that interest promotes the interests of society—contributes to the public good.

A Word for Self-Interest

The pursuit of self-interest as one’s objective is not widely applauded. Generally, such action is associated with greed, avarice, selfishness. Low-brows! This only demonstrates the extent of the confusion.

Self-interest is the motivator of human action. Regardless of pretensions to the contrary, a communist is as much motivated by self-interest as am I. In this sense, everyone is self-centered; self-interest is the ultimate given. And to be purely selfless is to be dead.

There are two main variables in this matter. The first relates to the motivating power of self-interest. In some people it is a feeble force, often too low to be recognized. Such people sometimes think of themselves as selfless, and they nearly are. In others, self-interest is a powerful motivator of action.

The second variable is the one at issue; it has to do with how intelligently self-interest is interpreted. For instance, the thief thinks of his interest as best served by stealing from others. This is an interpretation so narrow and antisocial that the more it is pursued, the more is the public good subverted. There are, on the other hand, those who so intelligently interpret their self-interest that they would never think of trying to pursue their own good by depriving others of the same right, or in any way impeding the efforts of others to obtain their own good.

What this amounts to in the final analysis is serving or observing the self-interest of others in order to best serve one’s self. This is an interpretation so intelligent that the more it is pursued, the more is the public good served. To repeat, it is the frequent appearance of these enlightened individuals that led Adam Smith to an obscure truth: “he [man in pursuit of his own interest] frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.”

The ardent pursuit of self-interest is the way to social felicity or the public good, presuming that individuals are not allowed (by government) or do not allow themselves to act at cross purposes with the freedom of others, thereby damaging their own interests. To my way of thinking, this is the way; and the more powerfully the individual is motivated to pursue his enlightened interests, the better. If this is the right way, then we should not lightly abandon it simply because we find only a few among us who are intelligent interpreters of self-interest. Stick to the right way and concentrate on increasing an enlightened self-interest. This is the only procedure that makes sense.

On Minding Each Other’s Business

Consider the alternative. Suppose each individual were to abandon his own interests whenever he observes others misinterpreting theirs.

What are some of these misinterpretations of self-interest? All will agree that theft is wrong. But of the millions who wouldn’t personally steal from any other, what about those who will, without the slightest qualm, get the government to feather their own nests at the expense of others? What, really, is the difference? Were all to do this, all would perish. If this isn’t a mistake, pray tell, what is! The list, of course, is long and must include every individual who does unto others that which he would not have them do unto him.

And to be included, also, are the muckraking critics of producers who are trying their best to outdo competitors, to profit by best serving consumers. To make “whipping boys” out of those who serve us most efficiently is to display an ignorance of our own interests.

What, then, is the alternative to the pursuit of self-interest? It is that these people who do not even know their own interests should pursue your and my good—the public weal! This is to compound ignorance in society. For, surely, an individual who does not know his own interest cannot remotely know mine, let alone the countless interests of millions.

On Minding One’s Own Business

Now to the final question: How best can I become a benefactor to mankind? By assuming my social responsibility. Of what does this consist? There are three steps.

Number one is to do all in my power not to interfere with the business of others.

The danger of minding other people’s business is twofold. First, there is the danger that a man may leave his business unattended to; and, second, there is the danger of an impertinent interference with another’s affairs. The “friends of humanity” almost always run into both dangers.

Number two is to mind my own business.

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.[1]

Number three is implicit in minding my own business: practicing as best I can the difficult and sensitive Judeo-Christian philosophy of charity.[2]

Minding one’s own business is the doctrine of liberty. Admittedly, this has no glamour for the “friends of humanity,” the social architects, the ones who would mind other people’s business. To rule out their masterminding of others is to deny their peculiar pursuit of happiness.

Minding one’s own business, on the other hand, serves self by serving others and is a task of a size to fit the individual-big or little. This can be life’s most fascinating venture—self-interest in its most intelligent conception, benefaction at its very best.

[1] This and the previous quote are from the chapter, “On Minding One’s Own Business,” in What Social Classes Owe to Each Other by William Graham Sumner.

[2] See “What Shall It Profit a Man?” in my Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1967), pp. 108–117.

For an instructive and inspirational book on this subject, see Magnificent Obsession, a novel by Lloyd Douglas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938).

9.

A Laborer Looks at Freedom

A laborer is a worker in life’s vineyard. That includes most people, and I, for one, refuse to relinquish my identification as a laborer in deference to those special interest groups who wish to monopolize that honorable term for themselves. Nor do I go along with those writers in the social sciences who find it convenient to accept such pigeonholing to better serve their theorizing. I like laborers—that is, workers as distinguished from nonworkers—and insist on being classified as one of them. Let’s see if I qualify.

Happily, I grew up prior to the child labor laws. My work week from age eleven to eighteen was 102 hours. Up every morning at four o’clock, cleaning stables, milking cows, six hours at school, the evening chores, and clerking in the village store until nine o’clock week days, and until midnight on Saturdays. Cows are milked and stables cleaned on Sundays, too! As a child, then, I was a laborer.

At eighteen, I joined the American Expeditionary Forces as an airplane mechanic. Hours were governed by the work that had to be done, not by limitation to a 40-hour week. Planes had to be readied—regardless! Working around the clock was required on occasion. Still a laborer!

After World War I, I started my own wholesale produce business in Ann Arbor. Up at two o’clock in the morning—Monday through Friday—driving a truck to Detroit, returning in time for breakfast, and working till suppertime—with 10 hours on Saturday to complete a 90-hour week. Did owning my own business disqualify me as a laborer? Hardly!

And what about my various jobs during the past 45 years—in the course of which I have logged two million miles and ground out a million words. True, the work has been more mental than physical, but what has that to do with it? Lecturing and writing are far more difficult for me than cleaning stables—and the hours are longer, too! Indeed, if deeply interested, one labors in his sleep: he dreams about his work. So, I remain a laborer to this day, notwithstanding those who would rule me out of that category.

I am not boasting here, but simply acknowledging my good fortune. Being permitted to labor unfettered—working as much as one wishes—is like being able to breathe freely. Laboring in its best sense is the fullest employment possible of the creative faculties and is as essential as breathing to life’s fulfillment.

Why have I been so lucky? Doubtless, there are reasons of which I am unaware. But an outstanding fact is that I generally have managed to mind my own business. This is to say that I have been substantially free from the interventions of those who use coercion in an attempt to make others over in their little images.

As mentioned above, I happened to have been born before child labor was outlawed. There were then no effective man-concocted restraints against my productive energies. Freedom was my luck in childhood.

And I have been fortunate in adulthood, also. Always, since returning from the AEF, I have been in employments free from union organization. Note that only “necessary” occupations are unionized, for neither power nor wealth can be gained in unionizing occupations that have no grip or stranglehold over some parts of the economy. For instance, were chamber of commerce managers (one of my employments) to unionize and demand a wage of $57,000 annually or “we quit and will use force if necessary to keep others from taking our positions,” my guess is that “we” would quit—and forever. Chamber of commerce managers are dispensable. But let the 747 jet captains deliver the same ultimatum to the airlines—where the choice is giving in or going bankrupt—and the airlines will accede to the coercive demand. Those who produce necessities—things on which we have become dependent—can, as a rule, be unionized: garbage collection in big cities, the electrical trades, the automobile industry, hospitals, and the like.

Luckily, I have rarely labored at any job where, were all of like employment to quit, the economy would be strangled.

But why does a laborer have to be lucky in the job he chooses if he is to realize the fullest expression of his faculties? What is the difference between laboring as a chamber of commerce manager, the head of a company, a jet pilot, a housewife, a garbage collector, a teacher, or a mechanic in an auto factory? All are laborers. Why should one more than another be coercively managed by “labor” laws or “labor” unions? Why should any restraints against the release of creative energy be imposed on anyone? Why not freedom for all? Why rely on luck in employment? Why not turn to rationality?

The reasons are manifold, more numerous than this laborer will ever be able to fathom or enumerate. Topping the list is an all-too-common naivete: people who do little if any thinking for themselves in political economy can be sold any “bill of goods.” They are the easy victims of plausibilities, bromides, clichés. So proficient are the cliché peddlers, in and out of government, that millions of laborers can be persuaded to work against their own interests. Apparently, the wage level or years of schooling have little to do with this lack of comprehension.

Take Say’s Law, for example: “Production generates its own purchasing power.” All production—goods or services—is labor applied to natural resources; thus, labor can be said to generate its own purchasing power. Were ours a barter economy, Say’s Law would be clear to everyone. A pint of milk has exchange value, that is, purchasing power. But first, the milk has to be produced. Production and purchasing power are correlatives. Simple enough. Now, introduce money—the medium of exchange in the economy—and the door is open for legerdemain. We can spend ourselves rich or into prosperity, claim the monetary magicians. What, really, are they saying?

They are advancing the fiction that consumption generates purchasing power! Anyone should be able to see that a pint of milk cannot be exchanged for anything—has no purchasing power—after it is consumed. Yet, a vast majority of our citizens are taken in by this “new economics,” so eloquently advanced by John Maynard Keynes and his thousands of academic and political followers. People who are led into this trap honestly think of themselves as performing a public service when obtaining an above-market wage by force. “See how much more of your product we can buy,” goes this foolishness.

Another: The exploitation theory on which Karl Marx based his socialism sounds plausible enough to those who fail to think things through for themselves. Instead of regarding all who work as laborers—manual, intellectual, spiritual—Marx and his kind type us, that is, they resort to occupational pigeonholing: workers and capitalists, for instance.[1] With this sleight-of-hand performed, they then advance the claim that “workers,” if not armed with coercive powers, would be exploited by the “capitalists.” It is the widespread belief in this fiction that accounts, in large measure, for the special privileges and immunities granted to “labor” unions. As this way of life takes over, freedom to produce and exchange—freedom to labor as one pleases—diminishes, as does private ownership. No one can be said to own that which he does not control.

Based on my experience as a laborer, I choose freedom. I do not want “labor” union protection. The officials of these power structures are absolutely unaware of what my best interests are; indeed, more than likely they do not know their own. Had their ways prevailed over my life, I could not have been a laborer until age sixteen. Those flying machines of my WW I experience—Sopwith Camels—would have been more on the ground than in the air. That small produce business would have been out of the question. And had my subsequent employments been unionized, it is doubtful that I could have “broken in” to any one of them—probably would not have wanted to! What might have been my fate under such circumstances? Neither I nor anyone else can even guess, beyond the certainty that it would have been dismal, at best.

Each laborer is possessed of unique potentialities, unknown to others, even to himself. These have no outlet or release except as the individual is free to probe, to weave and wend and find his own way to them. Every step forward becomes a further discovery of one’s own uniqueness. Remove the obstacles, that’s all!

And with the obstacles removed, exploitation of one laborer by another laborer is impossible or, to use the pigeonhole terms, a “capitalist” could not exploit a “worker.” What are these obstacles?

The obstacles to finding and working out one’s own destiny are fraud, theft, misrepresentation, and violence. It is the chore of society’s agency—government—to list these obstacles in their numerous manifestations, to prescribe the penalties for infraction, in short, to enforce the observation of such law. This done, no person or organization—unions or governments—could stand in the way of any individual’s creative actions. Each free to labor as he pleases!

Reflect on freedom as thus defined. Without a resort to force, that is, in the absence of violence, no laborer or any combination of laborers, regardless of roles, could monopolize any activity. Monopoly is possible only when force is employed to inhibit free entry. Where and when there is free entry, there is competition—a fair field for everyone, no favors for anyone. Exploitation of some by others, possible only by a resort to violence, becomes nonexistent.

This laborer chooses freedom, and has some background experience for so doing!

[1] See the chapter, “Getting to Know Beans,” in my Talking to Myself (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1970), pp. 62–70.

10.

A Consumer Looks at Freedom

I am a consumer. But, then, who is not! We are all consumers—every last one of us. And, as such, we have an interest so much in common that consumer interest and public interest are interchangeable terms. In the politico-economic realm of life, all policies—private as well as governmental—that offend consumer interest injure the public interest; policies that promote consumer interest harmonize and advance the common weal. Consumer interest is the premise from which all economic reasoning should proceed![1]

Because of this similarity of interest among us, it follows that if I can accurately define my own true interest as a consumer, I will, at the same time, identify yours and that of all consumers. What is this, in a nutshell?

Bearing in mind that we live in a highly specialized economy and, thus, are thoroughly interdependent, my consumer interest is progressively served by an increase of goods and services obtainable in willing exchange for my offerings. That’s all there is to it. So, there remain only three tasks: (1) identify those policies and practices which subvert our common interest, (2) discover the ones which promote it, and (3) drop support for the former and lend encouragement to the latter.

Coercion vs. Freedom

There are only two basic approaches to consumer interest: the planned economy, welfare state way, on the one hand, and the free market, private ownership, limited government way, on the other. In the final analysis, the issue is between coercion and freedom. The fact that the coercive way is so popular in today’s world is all the more reason why we should see through that error and discover the advantages to everyone of the freedom way.

Every increment of economic progress any people enjoy has its origin in the release of creative energy—a product of freedom. In the light of our own unprecedented progress in numerous areas, with “education” in the vanguard, one might expect a growth in understanding of how freedom works its wonders. Yet, we observe just the opposite: over the decades, the common understanding of freedom has declined rather than increased. Why this breakdown in perception?

During America’s early days, when our simple and largely agrarian economy featured some measure of self-subsistence, consumer interest was easily discerned by nearly everyone; people saw the fraud, the futility, of coercively taking the fruits of one’s husbandry—pigs, horses, plows—and handing them over to others. The injustice of such tactics was readily apparent; the coercionist had no ideological leg to stand on; his arguments, however clever, were seen to be against consumer interest.

But let the economy become increasingly specialized and complex—a concomitant of the free market way of life—and no one can grasp its intricacies, that is, no person can begin to visualize the trillions of actions, reactions, interactions, the daily data of the market. People thus acting freely in the market evolve patterns of interactions so complex that they defy comprehension. Each a mystery to behold!

This quite natural, pervasive blindness is precisely the situation best suited to the modern soothsayers, witch doctors, seekers after power, coercionists, who prey on any and all observed dissatisfactions in society; or, if none are observed, they invent and whip up the clamor on which they thrive. A problem? You name it! They have an answer. And millions of people, having no answers of their own, are taken in. Consider the countless “professors of economics” in our “best” universities who insist that supply and demand is passé and that scarcity is an outmoded concept—to mention but two of their heresies.

Complexity of relationships in no way alters the propriety of moral, spiritual, social, or economic principles. The principles stand, though we may fall. A law is a law. Newton’s First Law of Motion applies whether a wheel is at rest or spinning at 40,000 r.p.m. The dictum that thievery is evil holds as true for the theft of a dime as for the theft of a thousand dollars. The moral principle that I owe respect to your life, livelihood, liberty applies no less to all others than to you alone.

The authoritarians, however, have a case and we should know what it is. When their premise is accepted, namely, that it is appropriate for them to lord it over us—implying that our rights derive from them—then they have no choice but to discard the natural law and to concoct “laws” of their own. And these “laws” must be of a kind that they think befits their premise. Their premise being faulty, it follows that their “laws” cannot rise above mere aberrations. For instance, they must deny Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good.” They conjure up and substitute numerous catch phrases—specious, but plausible to some—such as: “We can spend ourselves rich,” or “A three per cent inflation annually is essential for the attainment of national goals.” One can never know what to expect from those who reason from untenable premises.

Relevant to this thesis is a celebrated cliché which originated in the early thirties: “The more complex the society, the more government control we need.” What this says, in effect, is that the more diversified our specializations and the more numerous our exchanges—manifestations of free, creative energy at work—the more must we submit to authoritarian regulation. In short, the more freedom works its wonders, the more coercion we need! Talk about conjuring up contradictions! But such is the nature of the soothsayers’ “laws.”

Choose the most brilliant person of your acquaintance and ask yourself how competent is he to run your life, that is, to decide where you shall work, how many hours, at what wage, what and with whom you shall exchange, or what thoughts you may entertain. “Utter nonsense!” is your answer, whoever you are. Now increase the complexity by multiplying you by a dozen, or a million, or 200 million. Obviously, the more complex the society, the greater is our need to be free—the less can we tolerate government control!

How Freedom Is Lost

Let me now evaluate how my consumer interest is affected by the planned economy, welfare state way of life. A few examples should suffice. Take the Gateway Arch in St. Louis. Some of my income and capital assets—and yours as well—went into that decoration. What do we receive in exchange? Absolutely nothing! All loss and no gain!

Or, reflect on the Federal farm program. What about the corporate farmer who last year received more than $4 million for not farming? And the thousands of others who syphoned off lesser amounts from the purchasing power of the rest of us—and for doing nothing! The annual cost of this farm subsidy program represents five or six times the total Federal budget when I was a farmer boy. This is no service to my consumer interest of yours; it is a disservice.

“Government, in its last analysis,” wrote Professor Woodrow Wilson, “is organized force.”[2] And it would seem irrefutable, also, that the prevailing force is government, whether or not it be given that name. If the controlling or prevailing force is government, then labor unions may be termed government. They have legal sanction to employ coercive force and, when it comes to ruling the nation’s economy, they often prove to be more powerful than the agencies known as government; indeed, they more and more frequently rule Federal, state, and local governments.

What, really, is a present-day labor union? It is an organization of otherwise independent sellers of labor to manipulate the price of labor to their own advantage—by coercion or the threat thereof.

While coercive tactics can never lead to anyone’s real advantage—any more than a wrong can beget a right—the question here is, how do above-market wages relate to my consumer interest?

An above-market wage is a higher rate than would be derived through willing exchange. Whatever is attained by others in this manner must be to my disadvantage as a consumer. As the price of a good or service rises above my willing exchange level, I have but two choices: (1) to go without that particular good or service or (2) to suffer a loss of purchasing power for other goods and services. Labor union coercive practices are definitely antagonistic to consumer interest.

One further sampling of coercive devices should suffice to demonstrate that the welfare state way of life is adverse to consumer interest: unemployment compensation, low-income housing, tax-financed education, aid to dependent children, medicare, disability payments, food stamps, in short, the whole so-called welfare program.

The Intervention Grows

As noted in a previous chapter, the current total cost of these programs—Federal, state, and local—may be $150 billion annually, 150 times the total Federal budget 57 years ago—an interval during which the population little more than doubled! By now, it should be clear to anyone that the drain on the economy increases with each passing year. Once the gates of something-for-nothing are opened, more and more people from every walk of life rush to the trough. Many senior citizens among the well-to-do accept medicare—that is, they let others foot their bills!

Even if I were a pauper, my consumer interest could not be served by this Marxian procedure: “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” Why? Presupposed is a bottomless warehouse or supply of never-ending goods and services, a presupposition made plausible to some by the Keynesian scheme of inflating the money supply. Sooner or later, the trough will have nothing in it—all parasites and no hosts; in a word, all paupers!

As in all of these coercive schemes, such income and capital as you and I possess are syphoned off, and with not an iota of goods and services in exchange.

Do away with coercion; limit force to defense against fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation—that is, against all destructive actions. What then? What remains? The free market, private ownership, limited government way of life—the greatest discovery in human history for working one’s way out of poverty!

If we will judge each practice and policy—private as well as public—in terms of how well it serves consumer interest, we will be on the right track. In the way of life thus deduced, everyone will make only those exchanges which he believes to be to his own advantage—all gain and no loss. Quite a switch from the coercive way!

As a consumer, I choose freedom. But even if the coercive way had economic advantages, I would still choose freedom. There is much to be said for being one’s own rather than somebody else’s man.

[1] To my knowledge, no one has explained this point more adequately or with greater simplicity, clarity, and wit than Frederic Bastiat. So valuable is this remarkable Frenchman’s contribution, that I have chosen to reprint his chapter, “Abundance and Scarcity,” as an Addendum. See p. 161.

[2] See The State by Woodrow Wilson (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1900), p. 572.

11.

A Conservationist Looks at Freedom

The term “conservationist” is generally applied to those who concern themselves about our ecological situation and look to government to do the conserving. We who do not look upon government as the Great Conservator are generally regarded as not interested in conservation.

Despite this confusion of terms I, too, am a conservationist!

Advanced students of the freedom philosophy readily recognize that mail delivery should be taken out of governmental operation and turned over to the free market, that is, to men in voluntary, private, competitive, cooperative action. And they will make the case for nonintervention in housing, welfare, and a host of other creative activities—even education and religion.

But there is one troubled situation which few approach with faith in freedom: conservation of natural resources and wild life. Leave the blessings of nature to free men? Perish the thought! Why, men left to their own devices are so profit hungry—avaricious—that in no time at all the forests would be denuded, natural recreational areas and wild life but a memory of bygone days! Most people abandon freedom as a means of conservation, which is to say, they turn the problem over to society’s coercive arm: government.

The case for freedom as related to conservation is difficult because it requires exploratory thinking about experiences that have gone pretty much unnoticed. We must assess the unheard, the unseen, the unknown. No wonder we stand confounded as would have Adam Smith or Frederic Bastiat had they been asked if freedom could be trusted to deliver the human voice at the speed of light! Unthinkable! Extracting meaning from the unthinkable is no easy matter.

But I am convinced that conservation can be far more safely entrusted to men in freedom than to the verboten techniques—figuratively, “keep off the grass”—which seem to feature and set the limits to governmental achievement.[1]

The reasons for my deep-seated conviction derive in part from glimpses of free market achievements and of governmental failures, but even more from my faith in the miraculous results that can be obtained by men when free to try and an utter lack of faith in the possibility of any creative accomplishment by coercive devices. Conservation is clearly in the creative realm!

Preservation vs. Conservation

But first, what really is conservation and how is it distinguished from preservation? “Melville Bell Grosvenor has artfully defined the difference between preservation and conservation. Preservation is retention undisturbed and in a natural condition, much as a museum. Conservation is the wise use of our environmental resources for the best interests of man. Of necessity, it involves a sense of stewardship and responsibility in the use of those resources. We undoubtedly need some preservation. But it cannot be the answer to the control of man’s environment, for we are an ecological part of that environment, and to preserve it makes us a museum-piece as well.”[2] (Italics added).

Had mankind been around throughout the ages and succeeded in preservation—“retention undisturbed”—dinosaurs would still be with us. As it is, we have only reconstructed skeletons of these reptiles in museums. These admittedly have their value: they permit us to gain some knowledge of the Mesozoic Era. Assuredly, however, the existence today of prehistoric animals would not be considered as “the wise use of our environmental resources for the best interests of man,” which is to say that their preservation would not qualify as conservation.

Can we not make a similar observation about all natural resources? Trees, for instance? No question about it, the Giant Sequoias are a feast to the eye. And who among us does not yearn for their preservation? But had the preservation of trees—“retention undisturbed”—been the rule, would that have been “the wise use of our environmental resources for the best interests of man”? Hardly! We’d still live in nothing better than adobe huts!

Apparently the preservationists would have all of us in our present state of affluence being able to tour the forests in their pristine glory. What they fail to realize is that a strict preservationist policy applied to all natural resources would reduce “all of us” to the population of a foraging economy. How many would that be? The number of Indians who lived in this land—less than one-half of one per cent of today’s population! A conservation policy, on the other hand, counsels the use of trees for homes; indeed, timber now has not less than 5,000 uses. “Retention undisturbed” would hold our numbers at a few hundred thousand and condemn us to huts and tepees.

The Market as Conservator

Let me sketch here a few glimpses and thoughts which have turned my mind toward freedom as the effective means to conservation.

Bearing in mind that man, too, is part of the ecology, observe how governmental preservation schemes work on human beings, American Indians on the reservation being a case in point. Preserved they are indeed—and as museum pieces.[3] Now note that the Indians who have escaped this preservation and have entered into society and competition are among our finest citizens—conservation in its best sense.[4] Arbitrary and artificial preservations scarcely suffice for the survival of a species—human or other.

Doubtless the world’s outstanding example of animal preservation is to be found in India—perhaps more than 200,000,000 sacred cows. Are they put to a wise use in the interests of man? These animals largely destroy rather than conserve scarce natural resources.

In contrast, note the program of animal conservation in the United States. Aberdeen Angus, Hereford, and other breeds of cattle—109,000,000 head—have largely displaced the bison that roamed the western plains. Under these circumstances, one might expect the bison to go the way of the dinosaurs, but conservationists have come to the rescue. Whether for novelty or profit or fun or whatever, there are now thousands of bison under private ownership—far from extinct.

Those who look to government as the Great Conservator should reflect on its “achievements”—for example, in forestry. Russia is the ultimate in this respect, for there is no private ownership of land. The whole Soviet area—8.6 million square miles—is owned “lock, stock, and barrel” by government. And what do we find? The Commissar charged by the Kremlin planners with achieving lumber and pulp quotas, and with a minimum labor force assigned to him to do the job, finds it necessary to harvest lumber along the river banks and highways. Talk about denuding the landscape! This is precisely the opposite of what most preservationists have in mind.

Or reflect on the U.S.A.—3.6 million square miles—39 per cent of which is governmentally owned and controlled, and the percentage increases. As the shadow of government has lengthened, the plea for more government ownership and control—“keep off the grass”—has also increased. Back in 1920 the voices of preservationists were barely audible. Today their loud speakers reach us everywhere. The more control we relinquish to government, the more control is demanded of it. Why? Simply because the right way—freedom—is thereby displaced and thus obscured. The merits of freedom grow ever less imaginable to those who are abandoning it in theory and in practice.

Most people, because they won’t even take a look, are blind to what private ownership and control is accomplishing in this field.

Private timberland owners—at least 5,000 of them—are on a sustained yield basis. That is, they are planting and growing more than is being harvested. The first tree farm was established in 1941. At that time 20 per cent more trees were being harvested than grown. Today, 61 per cent more wood is being grown than is harvested and lost to fire, insects, and disease.

But more: most major forest corporations and many small operators are engaged in intensive high-yield forestry. This includes intensive soils site classification, researching for genetically superior seed, optimum spacing, fertilization, thinning, and timber utilization—not a wasted chip! And investments are being made today with an eye on yields a century hence. Could anything like this be expected in Russia, or of any governmental operation, here or elsewhere? Not remotely! Governments can and often do enforce preservation, but only men in freedom can achieve conservation.

But what about parks and playgrounds and other recreational areas? Leave these to free men? Are you crazy![5]

Again, my mind is turned toward freedom, not by searching through infinite details but, rather, by what is glimpsed in passing. I note, for instance, that 63,000,000 acres of privately owned forests are open to the public for recreation, including hunting and fishing.

Among the lands most valuable per acre on earth are two government properties: London’s Hyde Park and New York City’s Central Park. I have driven through the latter and past the former many times and on each occasion I have tried to relate public use to public expense. I have viewed the beautiful trees, the lawns, and clear ponds of each place-empty spaces, often with no human beings in evidence. True, the passing motorist has an aesthetic appreciation of Hyde Park as does the tourist who looks down on Central Park from the Empire State Building. But is it properly a function of government to thus limit these valuable properties?

Yellowstone National Park—larger than Rhode Island and Delaware combined—last year had slightly over 2,000,000 visitors.

In contrast, consider three private operations in California—conservation in manifestation. If we would but look, every state affords somewhat similar examples.

There’s Disneyland—about 160 acres—now accommodating some 10,000,000 individuals annually, a recreational delight.

Knott’s Berry Farm, of no more than 150 acres, with its perfect replica of Independence Hall, has 4,500,000 visitors each year.

The 22 acres bordering San Francisco Bay—Fisherman’s Wharf, The Cannery, and Ghirardelli’s Square—give pleasure to 3,700,000 people annually.

These private operations, occupying but a tiny fraction of one per cent as much space as Yellowstone National Park, give enjoyment to 9 times as many people! Acreage-wise and recreation-wise, these would seem to be overwhelming odds in favor of freedom, that is, on the side of conservation as distinguished from preservation. Such facts persuade me that we should not rely on government as the conservator of our resources.

Yes, goes the rebuttal, but I have other preferences. Disney’s playground, Knott’s Americana theme, and the gastronomy and views at Fisherman’s Wharf hold no lure for me. I relish the great open spaces or the mountains or the seashore or the forests in their natural state. And all I say to this is, “Fine and dandy. But why not encourage the proper means to these ends: freedom!”

Two Kinds of Profit

There are countless myths and fallacies which blind people to the miracles that can be wrought only in the practice of freedom.

I suppose the ranking myth has to do with profit. It is generally assumed that profit seekers, in aiming for their own gain, will not serve others aesthetically or culturally or spiritually. The fact is that he who peacefully seeks his own gain can succeed only as he serves others. This is lesson number one in economics, and applies as rigidly to the clergyman or teacher as it does to the baker of bread or the builder of Disneyland.

We must keep in mind that there are two kinds of profit: monetary and psychic, the latter, in many instances, more strongly motivating human action than the former.[6]

There are several reasons why we fail to see how these two forms of profit work their wonders. Foremost is governmental pre-emption. When government takes over parks and recreational areas, profit-seeking men simply turn elsewhere. Incentive is at zero. It’s precisely the same as when government assumes the responsibility for the welfare of your neighbor—you feel no responsibility for helping him in time of need.

Also, we are inclined to look upon present-day profit seekers as representative of free and self-responsible men. For, so it is imagined, we are a free people! Far from it! We are living in a highly rigged and interventionist society. Instead of the rectitude expected of those whose profit depends on efficient service to willing customers, we find men grasping for special political privilege. Interventionism lowers the moral standard.[7]

Abandon the myth of government as the Great Conservator; confine this power structure to insuring against fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation, and other destructive actions, and watch the profit seekers go to work in the interest of everyone![8] If we may judge by performance where profit seekers have been allowed open opportunities, their accomplishments will far exceed anything we can imagine.

Seekers of monetary profit will supply whatever the demand warrants and do so with the least possible waste of either natural or human resources. Who can justifiably ask for more than this? If an individual insists upon a vast park for his own enjoyment, let him provide it at his own expense.

But here is where the psychic profit seekers will come to the rescue, and extravagantly! They’ll build parks, playgrounds, bird and other sanctuaries, and recreational areas of every conceivable kind and all over the place, just as today they give billions to educational and religious institutions, art galleries, museums, monuments, civic centers, libraries, and what have you. There are thousands of individuals who would gladly turn their fortunes to something of this nature. That’s psychic profit! And no more is required to put this remarkable profit process into action than to stop governmental pre-emption. It’s that simple, and far more promising than anyone can possibly portray.

Conservation is the wise use of our environmental resources for the best interests of man. Who is to determine “wise use” and “best interests”? Free men—that is, men in voluntary action with no restraints against the release of their creative energies. These are the only true conservationists!

[1] This is not to preclude a reliance on the courts and other governmental procedures to stop the upstream polluter or nearby smoking chimney or slaughterhouse that clearly damages or threatens the property or lives of others. See “The Pollution Problem” in my Let Freedom Reign, op. cit., pp. 1–8.

[2] Extracted from “Young Forests Aid Global Oxygen Supply” by Dr. John Rediske. See Weyerhaeuser World, April, 1970. Melville Bell Grosvenor is Editor-in-Chief and Board Chairman of National Geographic Magazine.

[3] See “Wards of the Government” by Dean Russell, and “The Guaranteed Life” by Maxwell Anderson (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.)

[4] For a clear analysis of human resources as related to conservation, see “The Greatest Waste” by Paul L. Poirot. The Freeman, March, 1964.

[5] See “Exploring the National Parks” by John C. Sparks. The Freeman, December, 1964.

[6] See “What Shall It Profit a Man?” in my Deeper Than You Think, op. cit., pp. 108–117.

[7] For a further explanation of this point, see “Why Freedom Is Not Trusted,” Notes from FEE, March, 1970.

[8] The price system is among the greatest and most powerful conservators. As a resource—renewable or irreplacable—becomes scarce, its price rises, cutting down less important uses and encouraging more discoveries and equally good or even better substitutes.

12.

Nothing Fails Like Something-for-Nothing

William Ralph Inge, “the gloomy Dean” of St. Paul’s Cathedral, once observed that “nothing fails like success.” Based on the American success story and the current prospect of its failure on many fronts, the Dean’s aphorism appears plausible—even if not quite demonstrable, as stated. What can be explained is a related observation: nothing fails like something-for-nothing.

Success—attaining one’s ambition, be it material, intellectual, moral, or spiritual—does not necessarily spell downfall and doom. True, getting topside relative to others has its dangers: headiness, self-exaltation, a fool’s paradise. Failure threatens any person thus afflicted. Much depends upon how success comes about. If by inadvertence, accident, or inheritance, success has little, if anything, to sustain it.

On the other hand, success that has been won or earned by a growth and development of the faculties has body to it, and one can say with Alexander Dumas, “Nothing succeeds like success.” The individual who thus earns success is more likely led to wanting-to-know-it-ness than to know-it-all-ness. Achievement, thus founded, opens untrod vistas to be explored, beckoning the achiever to new heights; his faculties are employed and he has the habit of growing. Such deeply rooted success in creativity—thinking, writing, discovering, inventing, and the like—does not induce failure but is a prod to further improvement.

But our prime concern here is with the something-for-nothing variety of “success.” For instance, a deeply religious person needs much more than a set of hand-me-down creeds. Minus personal insights, introspection, spiritual experiences, thoughtful delving into the nature of God and man, ready-made creeds are unstable; indeed, they tend to topple at the slightest suggestion that “God is dead.” Whenever religion is a handout of something-for-nothing, it tends to become nothing!

Nor is that individual educated who is but a carbon copy of others, even if the others be the wisest who ever lived. Ability to repeat by heart everything in the Encyclopedia Britannica is not the mark of an educated man but rather of a memorizing man—one having a high power of recall. Where lies the initiative? That’s the question.

Education in its finest sense can only be the product of self-seeking; the initiative has to be with the individual and the accompanying expansion of the faculties—every step personally taken and, thus, earned. This is the drawing forth or eductive process, each turning his own eye to such lights as he can discover. Actually, the educated man—a finished product—has never existed; there is, at best, only the educable man!

Now observe what happens when the initiative is the other way round: with “the public” rather than the individual, that is, when it’s socialized. Wisdom and knowledge, it is assumed, can be injected into the minds or forced down the necks, as we say, of youngsters whether or not they seek enlightenment. The technique employed is coercive: compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to finance the procedure. This is called “free education.” A more accurate term would be something-for-nothing schooling. The results are all about us, and they are frightening indeed! The disorder we witness from kindergartens through universities stems mainly from this unnatural, carbon copy process—although this is rarely recognized by the revolters themselves. When people insist on aping as a way of learning, they display fewer and fewer human attributes, including the capacity to understand why they behave as they do. In education, as in everything else, nothing fails like something-for-nothing.

Turn now to the material or economic realm. Many of us are old enough to remember an America before political paternalism was the rule and the mode. And some of us can recall times of struggle, of hard work and long hours, when the choice was being industrious or not eating. If such “hardships” were not our personal experiences, at least there is history with its reference to ancestors—early settlers—obliged to “root hog or die,” as they used to say. Material success—affluence—was in the dream stage, an aspiration.

Given the proper societal framework of self-responsibility and to each his own—freedom in its best sense—struggle spells the use and thus the growth of the faculties. Self-interest, in these circumstances, is forever goading one on, impelling growth, driving the individual not only toward material achievement but toward self-disciplines and a strict attention to the virtues. Not only must one work to eat but he must also respect the rights of others and deal honestly with them, or he will be shunned. There is starvation outside the social bond, so men tend to grow morally when struggling to get ahead; it’s grow, or else!

In all the world’s history there has never been a situation that even comes close to the American phenomenon: millions upon millions rising to material success, affluence on an unprecedented scale, individuals in our “lower income brackets” having more conveniences and gadgetry, better food, clothing, housing, transportation than lords of the manor ever had. America is populated with affluent individuals, and here’s the point: affluence in ever so many instances is no longer associated with struggle. So productive are specialization and free exchange that success has come almost as if by magic—not something-for-nothing but a great deal for almost nothing. This is not to suggest that the present affluence is unearned but only to state a fact: much of it has been easily earned. Millions of individuals are behaving as if the struggle were over: do next to nothing and still live in luxury!

Merely observe what happens to those who are no longer required to put forth their most industrious efforts in order to remain topside economically. There are exceptions, of course, but often atrophy takes the place of growth. The faculties, instead of being exercised and flexed, are allowed to stagnate. Getting out of life—retirement—is more a goal than getting ever deeper into life. The disciplines and virtues are no longer prized and heeded by many of these affluent individuals who feel they have it made. We are successes!

Material success in the absence of struggle is a dangerous temptation to inactivity. If one would avoid this danger, his will to grow must overpower the temptation to retire from life. The citizens of an affluent society, in exchange for almost nothing, enjoy an abundance of goods and leisure as well. They must not stop there, but go on to learn the art of investing their time and things so that material blessings shall be a means of enriching other sectors of their lives. The critical task today is maintaining intellectual, moral, and spiritual fitness in the face of luxury. This is a challenge of a sort that mankind has never faced before; it is the sink or swim problem affluence poses.

All play and no work—all gain and no cost—makes Jack a dull boy. In other words, the prospect of something for nothing would destroy the presumed beneficiary, even if there were some way to maintain such a one-way flow of resources.

Today, multitudes live exclusively on the dole in one or another of its numerous forms. The only qualification is that one be a warm body not gainfully employed. But the something-for-nothing plague is not limited to the “hard-core” unemployed; it extends to the well-to-do. For instance, in 1969 no fewer than 1,000 “farmers” were paid more than sixty thousand dollars each (the largest payment was over $4 million) not to farm![1] There are many affluent businessmen who gain monopoly powers in lush markets and give nothing in return: outlawing competition. Indeed, who is entirely exempt from this something-for-nothing destroyer! Even I, who so much deplore this economic nonsense, am a victim: using the socialized mail and flying the subsidized airlines at less than cost, and so on. No one can count our something-for-nothings, nor is it useful to do so. This whole catastrophic breakdown can be summarized: the expenditures of governments in the U.S.A. are now at about 42 per cent of the people’s earned income! Many people get something for nothing which means nothing for something for the rest.

The question finally boils down to this: are we doomed? Is the final chapter of the American success story now being written?

The German historian, Oswald Spengler, contended that civilizations, like organisms, are born, go through babyhood, adolescence, old age, and finally pass on—an inevitable sequence! Agree to this, and we’re done!

The British historian, Arnold Toynbee, on the other hand, theorizes that the death of a civilization is not necessarily predestined, is not inevitable. Whether or not oblivion can be averted depends on the capacity of a people to meet and overcome the challenges peculiar or unique to their own situation in their own time. Agree to this, and we have a chance.

Our challenge—to live with affluence—is indeed unique to human history. No society has ever been faced with this one before.

First, we must understand what the challenge is, for only then can we meet and overcome it. Are there enough Americans having the intellectual, moral, and spiritual stamina and politico-economic sense to do so? More than likely, provided enough of us see that it is in our own interest to find a solution. Each of us has a personal stake in a going society. Only those who see this—which is to say, only those who are aware that man is a social as well as an individualistic being—can be counted on to help. If we are up to it, America’s best days lie ahead.

[1] For the names and amounts, see Congressional Record, March 24, 1970, pp. S4316–S4323.

13.

Progress Depends on Freedom

During a barren stretch—having had no ideas worth writing about for several days—it occurred to me that I was enjoying freedom of a sort: freedom from ideas! After all, any idea of consequence is as raw ore—worthless until refined, thought through, industriously labored over. This requires concentration, to the exclusion of many pleasures which beckon for indulgence. When an idea, as first perceived, cannot be given top priority, it is best forgotten. Refinement brooks no indifference; it comes first or not at all.[1]

Thus ends the barren spell! For now I have an idea that deserves refinement: from what should anyone wish to be free? If it means to be free from ideas, I would forswear my allegiance to freedom.

But first, why try to think this one through? There are two good reasons: (1) no social concept is more important to understand than freedom, and (2) no word, standing by itself, conjures up a greater variety of meanings and connotations than freedom. Used alone, that is, in the absence of definitive phrases, the word explains nothing. When I say only that I stand for freedom, all people, even communists, will agree with me, although what they have in mind may well be the very opposite of what I mean; I have not communicated.

Is Freedom Necessary?

In the midst of these reflections came a letter which illustrates the confused and varied meanings ascribed to freedom:

I do not feel that freedom is man’s goal, nor his most important tool, but rather just one of man’s essential tools. Thus, I view FEE as I would the American Medical Association—as I would any other very important, but narrowly interested, professional group—a collection of people interested in solving similar limited problems. . . . However, I feel you are in error, just as any other professional group errs, when you claim your particular field of activity is the most important. (Italics added)

This letter “turns me on,” not in defense of FEE, which is only incidental, but in defense of freedom, which is fundamental. For the writer misses the whole point as, doubtless, do many others—and it is a total and costly miss! True, freedom is not man’s goal, but without it man can never achieve his goals. Freedom is, I insist, man’s most important “tool,” the essential means to his progress, to his highest destiny on this earth: to grow, emerge, evolve in awareness, perception, consciousness. And let us bear in mind that freedom is not a social relationship to be designed, constructed, or created; freedom exists unless prevented, that is, it exists in the absence of restraints.

Freedom from What?

Perhaps the best way to examine this matter is to continue with the question, from what should anyone wish to be free?

While it is true that there are people who wish to be free from having ideas in order to avoid the labor these flashes of enlightenment entail, the wish is a craven one; it befits only those addicted to the vegetative process and, thus, is sub-human. This is a wish to get away from rather than into life. It is like wishing to be free from one’s brain!

However, there’s more to this semantic confusion than first meets the eye. People not only demand freedom from various disturbing influences but demand it as a right.

Should a person claim a right to be free from having ideas? I will concede but not applaud the claim. So far as I am concerned, one has a right to do anything he pleases—silly or brilliant—if the action in no way infringes upon the creative aspirations of any other person.[2]

Having dismissed freedom from having ideas as an absurdity, let’s dispose of several other absurdities. By this process of elimination, we may be able to arrive at what we should really be free from and, thus, find an appropriate definition for freedom. Then we will know why freedom is not some incidental gimmick but is fundamental to all progress.

Reflect on freedom from want, a highly popularized and broadly accepted concept. Is this valid? Yes, so long as it remains a strictly personal aspiration. It is legitimate to seek freedom from destitution—poverty—and other deterrents to fulfillment.

But have we a right to be free from want? The word “right” in this context can have but a single meaning: a claim on the resources of others. And this is the only meaning it does have in today’s political world. The mere fact of my existence, regardless of my indolence, laziness, incompetence, misfortune, or whatever, entitles me, so it is argued, to a “decent standard of living” at the expense of you and others. And, further, you are negligent, antisocial, and unrighteous if you object—for is not my claim on you a right? What this absurdity really means is that you have no right to refuse my demands!

Or take freedom from fear, another common political phrase. All of us wish to escape fear. But do I have a right to be free from fear? This, again, implies that you and others have a commitment to shelter me against fearsome events to which I may be exposed, possibly through my own action or negligence. Plainly, an absurdity!

The Role of Competition

Freedom from competition appears to be a natural or at least an instinctive aspiration. In the light of competition’s unquestioned stimulus to improvement, how are we to account for the near universality of this desire? It may be this: were a person to progress further than all others in his field, that is, to excel everyone—such excellence being in harmony with man’s growth and development—competition would exist only as a potential threat. This person would have no competitors; he would have an exclusive position in the market. Perhaps most of us have an instinctive aversion to that which measures our shortcomings, to that which is continually announcing to us that we are not champions. In any event, most people favor competition for everyone except themselves. Rare is the individual who welcomes and invites competition in his own specialty. Can competition against me be wrong if it is right for all others to compete?

But has anyone a right to be free from competition? Or, is this of the same order of absurdity as a right to be free from want or fear? Implicit in the noncompetition argument is a denial of entry by others into one’s chosen domain. It is nothing less than a claim to the championship founded not on a contest in creative efficiency and consumer-pleasing ability but, rather, a tantrum-like urge to be champion. Each person who suffers this monopolistic fever is saying in effect, “Stay out of my ring all of you would-be contenders; I cherish my privileged position and insist that it remain exclusively mine.” And note the arguments they’ll conjure up to “prove” that their cases are exceptional!

Self-Responsibility

There appears to be no end to life’s obstacles and contests and the nagging desire to be free from them. If any one of them tops the list, it probably is the itch to be free from the responsibility for self. Obviously, there’s no right to free myself from me, that is, for me to foist myself and my problems upon you. Merely reflect on the sad state of affairs were everyone to do this.

Responsibility for self is a privilege to be embraced, not a terror to be shunned or a burden from which to be freed. Becoming is man’s highest goal—achievement consonant with each individual’s uniqueness, whatever it is—and it is an observed fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. Obstacles, problems of varying sorts, are stepping stones to achievement. When I turn the responsibility for me over to you and others, or let government take it away from me, the essence of my being is removed; I have nothing remaining against which to brace myself for any forward thrust—no footing from which to step or jump or climb; I am a nonhuman in a vacuum.

Should one succeed in freeing himself from responsibility, he would automatically be free from having ideas or competitors; there aren’t any creative thoughts or stimulative contests at the zero level. Be it remembered that all ideas, inventions, discoveries, insights, flashes of intuition take place only in those moments when responsibility for self is being experienced.

Parenthetically, self-responsibility becomes increasingly difficult to appreciate, sense, or retain in a specialized trading economy. Most of what we receive has a source other than self—that is, all of us enjoy countless blessings not of our own making. My contribution toward these conferments is infinitesimal. But I dare not take my eye off this intricate relationship between me and what I receive lest my sense of self-responsibility be lost. It is a precious possession.

Remove the Restraints

With a few of the absurdities out of the way, is there, then, something from which we should be free and have a right to be free? Indeed, there is!

Keeping in mind that man’s highest goal is intellectual, moral, and spiritual progress along the line of each individual’s creative uniqueness and that this is a condition which exists at its best in the absence of restraints, it follows that to be free from restraints is the most important means to man’s ends or purposes.

Restraints at the social level come under the heading of original sin: man lording it over men; man attempting to usurp God’s role by casting others in his little and very imperfect image; man trying to make others carbon copies of himself; know-it-alls with a sword; coercionists; authoritarians. We have a right to be free from the power plays of those possessed by the little god syndrome.

From all of this can easily be deduced an appropriate definition of freedom as related to the social realm: no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. Freedom, as thus defined, is all-important to man’s highest goals, to his progress. Freedom is neither “narrow” nor “limited.” Freedom is fundamental!

[1] See Henry Hazlitt’s brilliant essay, “The Art of Thinking,” The Freeman, August, 1970.

[2] See “The Right to Do as I Please,” a chapter in Talking to Myself, op. cit., pp. 98–103.

14.

Behind the Synthetic Curtain

Were we to abandon our spending for war, fanciful flights to the moon and Mars, and literally thousands of other boondoggles or nonmarket ventures, unemployment would soar and a depression of frightful magnitude would be upon us—or, so it is argued. For it seems that politicians, labor officials, and businessmen alike have lost faith in our ability to recapture a going, thriving, free market economy. Unfortunately, there is more to this contention than first meets the eye and we should know the reasons for this loss of economic resiliency and what is required for its recovery.

There are only three ways to go; we are faced with making a choice; ours is the day of decision.

The first is to go right on with the spending spree. But, as we should know by now, it is politically impossible to finance this entirely by direct tax levies. The only political method for financing those expenditures over and above what can be obtained by direct tax levies is to expropriate capital assets. The procedure is to dilute the medium of exchange; in a word, inflation. Since 1939 our money supply has gone from $36 billion to more than $200 billion!

The harmful impact of inflation as a tax is readily seen once we realize that inflation, in a strict economic sense, is the same as counterfeiting; they differ only in that (1) inflation is legal whereas counterfeiting is not, and (2) inflation is by the Federal government rather than by individuals. Whether the dollar is inflationary or counterfeit, it is a purchase order and, thus, is a means by which government acquires your capital and gives no goods or services in return. This, of course, discourages saving, investment, and production; we run out of working capital and tools.

In a highly specialized economy such as ours where no one is self-subsistent, everyone is dependent on the free, uninhibited exchanges of our thousands upon thousands of specializations. Barter, as a means of exchange in a division-of-labor economy, is out of the question. Required, instead, is a medium of exchange—an economic circulatory system—which works so long as the integrity of the medium is maintained. Inflation, however, destroys the integrity of the medium. As our money depreciates, it becomes less and less useful for exchange purposes.

A policy of inflation to finance excessive governmental expenditures calls for increasing doses or injections with each passing year. Nor does it matter what the excess spending is for: going to the moon or keeping the peace. Those who advocate a diversion of war expenditures to domestic welfare schemes miss the point entirely. Federal urban renewal, medicare, and similar programs are just like war in drawing goods and services out of the market without putting back anything useful or productive—no savings, no investments, no tools, no production; in brief, just waste or consumption of scarce resources. As in the Germany of 1923 when 100 million marks would not buy a single loaf of bread, this road leads eventually to collapse.[1] There are no exceptions recorded; history is filled with examples of confirmation. Who wishes to pursue this course!

Barriers to Employment

The alternative to disaster, then, is to abandon excessive governmental spending. But there is more to the problem than mere retrenchment of spending—much more. The millions of people presently employed in war and space hardware, urban renewal projects, the thousands of other boondoggle or nonmarket ventures, as well as those in the enormous supporting bureaucracy, become unemployed the moment governmental expenditures are withdrawn. Without other job opportunities, unemployment would soar to revolutionary proportions. And this also spells collapse. There remains just one possibility if we would avoid total collapse, and that is to do away with our synthetic curtain!

Precisely what is this synthetic curtain? It hangs as a barrier between the desire to produce, to exchange, to work, and the opportunities to do so. This curtain is not of natural origin; it is synthetic—“artificial, not real or genuine.” It is man-made of a thousand and one politico-economic concoctions and aberrations found on the statute books: wage, price, rent, interest, and production controls—that is, everything that inhibits, prohibits, restrains the peaceful exchange of goods and services.

This synthetic curtain is a tighter barrier than we realize.

Why is it, for instance, that capable people, unemployed by a cut in expenditures for nonmarket ventures, cannot readily find other things to do? Simple enough: they bump directly into the synthetic curtain, and instead of breaking through to jobs, bounce right back to their unemployed status. The very curtain that once sheltered or protected them in their artificial jobs, now screens them from return access to the market.[2] And there is no help for them or any of us until this barrier is exposed and withdrawn. The employed no less than the unemployed, the wealthy as much as the poor, have everything at stake on the outcome.

Minimum Wage Laws

Among the countless threads of the synthetic curtain are the minimum wage laws. Any person who thinks through this political device must conclude that it does not increase a workman’s worth; rather, it increases unemployment. All of us know persons we would not want to employ at as much as $1.60 per hour;[3] for the most part we do not hire workers for more than we believe they are worth to us, so such persons remain unemployed. Even some who once earned a high wage or salary may have lost their competence and are no longer wanted at the minimum wage—$1.00 perhaps, but not $1.60. These, then, are added to the unemployed. The only persons who are willingly paid the minimum wage are those who are worth that much to employers. Were this not the case, then we should raise the minimum wage to five or ten dollars! Obviously, however, at such high wage rates, job opportunities would conspicuously decrease, unemployment increase.

A minimum wage of five or ten dollars per hour is ludicrous. I am unaware of any socialist in his wildest moments who has made such a proposal in these terms. Yet, note this: the minimum wage of the head man on a 747 jet varies from $40 to $60 per hour. Would you offer your services for less than this? You cannot get the job, regardless of your competence.

Or, let’s assume that you are an electrical engineer in a company making electronic gadgetry for the government and that a retrenchment program closes the business. Further, assume that you are a good carpenter or plumber. Any haven in a storm! What are your chances? Practically nil! The minimum wage for carpenters in Westchester County approximates $10.00 per hour; plumbers get more. This minimum wage is so far above the market price that many carpenters have been unemployed by the “private sector”; they are then absorbed into the government’s “full-employment” program based upon Federal urban renewal and the like. But what if the government in its retrenchment efforts were to eliminate all of these boondoggles—a necessary cutback if inflation is to be halted! The unemployment of carpenters would be enormous.

All arbitrary wage rates set by labor unions properly classify as minimum wage laws. Consider the enormity of their impact on employment possibilities. Here we have a very important component of the synthetic curtain.

Special Privileges

A question may be expected at this point: If all of these minimum wage laws destroy job opportunities, as claimed, how do you account for the many millions of people who are presently employed at exorbitant rates?

Above-market wages are obtainable only in stranglehold or no-choice situations. Suppose, for some reason, you are unable personally to water your valuable garden. Rather than let it die, you will pay someone $1.60 per hour to handle the hose. Or, your airline has bought a dozen 747’s at $23 million each. You will pay the captains $57,000 annually rather than leave the planes grounded. Or, you have a big investment in a manufacturing plant or in perishable raw materials. You will pay far above market wages in preference to losing the investment or being shut down indefinitely.

When such a situation dominates the economy, as it does today, employment practices change drastically. Potential employers, ranging from households to large corporations, tend not to employ persons to whom they would be obliged to pay above-market wages. Employment of carpenters at $10.00 per hour, for instance, is an act of last resort—put it off or do it yourself! Further, above-market wage rates are an incentive to automate, that is, to invent machines to replace human beings. This is forced automation, brought on by coercive practices which are unnatural and which unbalance the market economy.

The current “beneficiaries” of above-market wages seldom understand that they are as much disadvantaged as are those currently unemployed. The latter cannot get jobs; the former must sooner or later lose theirs; unless the synthetic curtain is withdrawn, our whole economy will tumble into a shambles. In an economy where all are specialists and, thus, interdependent, no one can injure others without thereby injuring himself. Our situation demands strict observation of the Golden Rule.

I have used governmental and labor union minimum wage laws only to sample the fabric of the synthetic curtain; it is composed of too many diverse threads to enumerate. The limited work week is another. But politicians and labor union officials are not the only ones at fault. The businessman who seeks protection against competition is saying, “I have a right to that transaction,” and this differs in no respect from the union member who insists, “I have a right to that job.” All thwarting of competition and free entry is a part of the fabric as are all subsidies, exclusive franchises, special privileges, and so on.

Rely on the Market

What is the third way, our only sensible option? It is, first, to stop inflation by governmental retrenchment. Trim government to the bone, that is, reduce government to its principled role of codifying and enforcing the thou-shalt-nots or taboos, invoking a common justice, and keeping the peace. Simultaneously, remove the synthetic curtain—all of it! The result? The free market, private ownership or, as I sometimes say, willing exchange, and to each his own.

To the many who have given no thought as to how freedom works its wonders, this is a frightening prospect. If they would open their eyes, there is always more work to do than there are people to do it. In such an open society, anyone can get a job at whatever wage someone else will freely and willingly offer. Granted, the wage you offer may be below what I think I am worth; but who else should decide what you should offer of your substance in exchange for what I can deliver? No one!

Nor, in an open society, need we fret for a moment that a ruthless employer may exploit us. True, there will always be those who will try to hire at less than market wages; but they will try in vain. Competition attends to economic justice; other employers will bid us away from those who would pay less than we are worth. The true value of any good or service—mine or yours—is what others will freely and willingly offer in exchange. Just make certain that others are free to bid—that they are not screened out by a synthetic curtain.

Freedom is the absence of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. Whoever concludes that wages would be depressingly low in a free market simply has not done his economic homework. All wages must come from production. Even the thief, or anyone else who gets something for nothing, should know that the something first has to be produced.

In the give and take—the resiliency of the free market—everyone who wishes to work can do so. There need be no involuntary unemployment other than the time lost in changing jobs. Production will rise to a given population’s potential; and wages, salaries, earnings will rise accordingly.

Why not exercise the one sensible option open to us! No more synthetic curtain; no more authoritarian intervention in economic affairs, no one coercively directing our creative activities! Trust in the market and keep it open—a fair field and no favors.

[1] I equate collapse with a loss of freedom, that is, with all-out statism.

[2] This curtain not only deters the individual by force; in most cases he cannot even see through it—doesn’t realize that it is just a curtain and that beyond it lie dormant resources and unimaginable opportunities.

[3] This basic rate does not include fringe benefits which in most cases would boost the employer’s cost an additional 50 cents an hour or more.

15.

Why Flatter the Communists?

I’m not trying to butter up our Seminar audiences when I tell them that we, the lecturers, will likely learn more in the next few days than the participants. The reason? On nearly every such occasion at least one question is raised for which we have no ready, carefully-reasoned answer. Thus, a problem is posed which challenges us to do some serious thinking and writing. In such thinking is our learning.

Nor does the matter stop here. For every man who formulates and asks a question there are—it is safe to assume—thousands who harbor nebulous notions on the subject which they have never put into words. But when they read an answer—if it is any good—to one man’s question, the thousands are also served.

Here’s the latest question: Is it not true that campus strife and riots can be blamed on communist organizers?

Fortunately, the question got a spontaneous “No!” from me, even though I hadn’t framed an adequate back-up argument. Doubtless, the spontaneity was caused by my instinctive aversion to any and all excuses for social ills which reek of plausibility or smack of oversimplification or the obvious.[1] On the surface, it seems that my answer should have been affirmative for, no question about it, communists are diligently at work organizing student disorder.

Reflect on this a moment. Could communists organize you and me—devotees of the freedom philosophy and the rule of law—into undisciplined, irresponsible, anarchistic, revolutionary action such as we observe in our enormous “educational” establishments? Indeed, they could not, nor do we find them even trying. So, there must be more to campus disorders than organizers at work. The organizer of a demonstration comes onto the scene after much of the groundwork is laid; his contribution is to convert the disorganized minds into an organized terror.

Responding to Demand

It appears to me that organizers are but the spawn of what can be organized. They spring up in response to pre-existent situations. Organizers are always an outgrowth of organizable human material, and they are secondary, not primary, forces; reactors, not initiators; effects, not causes. Put it this way: fungus is an outcropping from a muck heap; it isn’t the fungus that causes the muck heap but the other way round. Similarly, communist organizers are equally natural responses to demands of something for nothing by thoughtless, uncivilized, immature people, be they oldsters or youngsters. Each human situation, whether lofty or base, draws forth the organizers best suited to its level.

Assume a society of out-and-out atheists. Could you organize a Christian church? Of course not! Nor would any such organizers be in evidence. Now, assume a society of Christian believers. Church organizers will spring up all over the place.

In the economic realm, consider the closed society prevailing in England when mercantilism was the mode and the rule. Or today in Russia. Or in any nation where freedom of choice and free exchange are nonexistent. Could you organize a successful free enterprise venture? No! Nor would one find any entrepreneurs—organizers of resources to serve demands. There are never organizers for persons or things that do not stand ready to be organized. Now assume an open society, such as has been most nearly approximated in the U.S.A. Organizers of productive business enterprise appeared by the hundreds of thousands—reactors to the prevailing conditions.

We hear of organized crime. This, however, presupposes the existence of criminals. We also hear of organized religion. This, too, has its presuppositions: individuals with religious commitments.

FEE exists. What made its organization possible? Numerous individuals with intellectual and spiritual commitments to an essentially free society!

It seems plain that we should not ascribe campus disorders to communist organizers; to do so is to flatter them overmuch. Further, when this error is made, the eye is focused not on the root of the matter—the muck heap—but, rather, on what is spawned: the fungus. To thus err is to misdirect all corrective measures at a will-o’-the-wisp, at the bang and not the gun, at an effect and not the cause. Better that we focus our eye on the cause!

On the surface, the situation appears to be deteriorating, but a deeper probe reveals how rapidly corrective forces are in the making. There are countless students, along with adults by the tens of thousands, who are keeping their heads; they are sober, serious, law-abiding, self-disciplined, responsible; they are not only endowed with moral scruples, but eager to learn. These students are deeply concerned, even as you and I. How then are we to account for those who have lost their way? Why so many on an irrational, empty-headed rampage? Here is my answer for what it’s worth.

When Standards Fall

The exemplary standard has been lowered! With all too rare exceptions, persons holding positions of leadership in every walk of life—religion, education, politics, business, you name it!—are guided more by what will get applause or votes or dollars than by what their highest consciences dictate as sound and moral and right. They are led more by public opinion polls or box-office returns than by an inflexible integrity. The pursuit of excellence is in a slump; it has seriously floundered![2]

Professor Jacques Barzun has an enlightening observation:

Intellect deteriorates after every surrender to folly: unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass by us but into us.[3] (Italics added)

While he was explaining the reasons for pedantry and literary decadence, the same holds true in the politico-economic realm. When one rationalizes his “right” to the goodies of the welfare state or thoughtlessly repeats any of the socialistic clichés or fallacies, the nonsense passes into him; he thereby becomes a party to it and downgrades the ruling consensus. Intellect deteriorates!

Imbecilic ideas in the minds of men are no more numerous in 1971 than in America’s heyday, but bad ideas are more in evidence now than on some former occasions because the exemplary standard is down. When the standard is high, in the pink of condition, as we say, when excellence is the mood and the mode, these low-grade notions are held in abeyance; they are checked and kept to self. And for the simple reason that people, by and large, do not crave to make fools of themselves. This they do, assuming that good and wise men are present and looking on.

But lower the exemplary standard by the high priests, in whatever walk of life, and let parents surrender to the state the responsibility for offspring,[4] and the results will be what we now witness: filthy stories told at church parties, vulgarity practiced in public, pornography emblazoned in publications, property destroyed, purses snatched, rights disregarded, anarchy endorsed, mediocrity enshrined, rioting substituted for learning. All because righteousness is on the wane!

We should not blame those who have lost their way; they don’t know any better. Put the blame where it belongs: on the nonexemplary conduct of those who have failed to point the way, that is, on those who have substituted the love of truth for such illicit loves as fame, power, frivolity, sensuality.

Whenever we hear, “I’m going to get mine while the getting is good,” or any other comparable nonsense, by anyone who knows better, we are listening to the stuff that composes the muck heap.[5]

And for heaven’s sake, let us not blame, and thus flatter, the communist organizers; they are spawned by the muck heap; they are but the fungus.

[1] Professor Yale Brozen’s Law comes to mind: “Most obviously true economic policy propositions are false.” (See “The Untruth of the Obvious,” The Freeman, June, 1968, p. 328.)

[2] For a splendid portrayal of what excellence is, see “A Person of Quality,” The Freeman, August, 1967.

[3] The House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), p. 222.

[4] For the case against government education and for free market education, see Chapters 15, 16, and 17 in my Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

[5] For 76 other examples, see Clichés of Socialism (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1970).

16.

Defiance of Law

The great law of culture is, Let each become all that he was created capable of being; expand, if possible, to his full growth. . . .

—CARLYLE

My thesis is that defiance of law is not a way of life but is, instead, away from life!

To begin with, I believe that I am not a mere chance development in a disorderly and unpredictable universe. Rather, there is order and purpose here and I am part of it. I am free to try: to discover the laws of nature, including human nature; to live in harmony with God and man; to grow, emerge, and to develop those talents uniquely my own. These observations are premised, of course, on what I believe to be man’s destiny, namely, the liberation of the human spirit—in a word, freedom.

There is first and foremost the psychological aspect of freedom: the individual freeing himself from his own superstitions, fears, imperfections, ignorance. As this liberation progresses, the individual is freed from those instinctive behaviors common to animals; further, he ceases to be merely reactive to his environment. Thus freed, he is in a position to acquire those attributes distinctively human: an ability to think for himself, to see long range; to will his own actions, and to grow in consciousness. Evolution is my name for this process of personal unfoldment.

Freeing self from these shortcomings requires that one observe and obey numerous intellectual, moral, and spiritual laws, some of which are well known, others quite obscure. To defy these laws, either willfully or in ignorance—the Ten Commandments, for instance—is to short-circuit the evolving process and to debase oneself. The person who covets, cheats, lies, steals, kills is on the way down; growth is out of the question. Defiance of law at this level is clearly devolutionary and not evolutionary. Very little argument!

You’ll note my implication here that the Ten Commandments are a part of the Laws of Nature. And in that same category, I would include many of the more recent man-discovered scientific and economic laws, the defiance of which also seems devolutionary to me.

Take Boyle’s Law: “The volume of a gas varies inversely as the pressure.” Here is a scientific, man-discovered law, rigid and inflexible. Defy it and a bomb can blow up in your face. Devolutionary!

There is Gresham’s Law: “Bad money drives out good.” Any considerable defiance of this law leads to social chaos, a fact to which all history attests. Devolutionary!

Or, Says Law of Markets: “Production generates its own purchasing power.” Trying to out-produce inflation, for example—pure defiance of this law—is precisely as absurd as attempting to outrun one’s own shadow. To defy this law is to assure price, exchange, wage, and other controls; it is to plunge society into dictatorship. Devolutionary!

While rarely if ever called such, there is the Law of Value: “The value of any good or service is that which others will give for it in willing exchange.” Defiance of this law denies that the individual has a right to the fruits of his own labor and spells the death of private ownership; it is the enslavement rather than the liberation of the human spirit. Again, devolutionary!

The above are only samples of numerous laws—uncovered truths—pertaining to society that brook no breaking except at social peril. These are not man-made but rather man-discovered laws; indeed, our forebears, for most of the past 2,000 years, would have included them as a part of the Natural Law.

To summarize at this point: there is little if any argument as to the devolutionary thrust whenever the moral laws are broken by an individual. It is generally conceded that the thief is moving away from, not toward, human fulfillment. Nevertheless, we find among us, by the thousands, those who entertain no doubts about their ability to reconstruct society and who pay no heed whatsoever to the man-discovered laws I have mentioned, or to countless others. These would-be social architects, by defying these laws, resemble the alchemists or perpetual motion theorists; they disdain the Natural Law and are the source of mischief and human devolution.

Too Many Laws

We come now to the plethora of man-made laws that overflow the statute books at every level of government. The greater the number of such laws, the greater is the defiance of them. Yet, here, too, the role of the defier seems to me to be devolutionary. This is where my explanation becomes difficult, partly because it is so much at odds with current opinion. Nonetheless, in view of the devolutionary trend in America, we must look beyond the obvious errors if we are to account for our troubles. Probing, however novel, appears to be a must.

This is not to say that I necessarily condone these man-made laws, the vast majority of which seem to me to be against the interests of everyone. Limiting government, as I would, to the codifying of taboos and their enforcement, to the invoking of a common justice and keeping the peace—I favor repeal of literally thousands of man-made laws. Away with every law or regulation which stands against the release of creative energy! Government has no place in or responsibility for welfare or prosperity or religion or education! These are areas for me in free, voluntary, cooperative, competitive, private endeavor—as in everything creative.

My reason for this unorthodox stand as to the role of government? I do not know how to run the life of a single human being, certainly not a society of 200 million people—nor does anyone else! Such wisdom has never existed, even remotely, in a discrete individual. This is why I choose freedom because it is only in freedom that the wisdom by which we live can possibly develop and function. The wisdom to which I allude has a social source—trillions times trillions of tiny ideas, discoveries, enlightenments emanating from millions of individuals over the millennia. I refer to these intellectual and spiritual flashes—in their totality—as “the overall luminosity”; Professor F. A. Hayek uses the phrase, “knowledge in society”; Edmund Burke meant precisely the same with his “immemorial heritage”; the noted anthropologist, William Howells, calls it “culture—all the inventions and all the conventions ever made by humanity”; and Konrad Lorenz speaks of “the potential immortality of thought, of truth, of knowledge.”

The Social Side of Man

Why, then, should I question anyone’s defiance of these laws I regard so unfavorably?

My case rests on a fact and an assumption. The fact: man is a social as well as an individualistic being. The assumption: an agency, representing the social side of man—government—is, to my way of thinking, an absolute necessity. It is unthinkable that the social phase of human beings can be attended to by each individual acting as his own gun-toting constable, each a law unto himself, nothing over and beyond personal caprice. Justice, in these circumstances, is impossible; anarchy as a social device is an out-and-out contradiction! This is by way of affirming the rule of law which, in turn, presupposes a lawmaking society.

Consider the fact: man is a social as well as an individualistic being. This fact embraces me. I am as surely born a member of my society as I am a unique individual. To declare myself a nonmember is no more rational than to insist upon impersonality. I have been cast into a dual role, an individual within society, be that society good, bad, or indifferent. And its problems are no less mine than anyone else’s. To run away from social responsibility is as devolutionary as to renounce self-responsibility.

So I am stuck with what I do not approve! But is this not the eternal human condition? Does mere disagreement warrant divorcement from society’s agency? Lawbreaking or defiance says, in effect, “Count me out,” and amounts to social abdication, no more rational than resigning from the human race.

I, for one, am as firmly resolved to abide by those man-made laws obnoxious to me as to the man-discovered and moral laws attractive to me—“so long as I am free to speak my piece and write about it.”[1] And hear this: not as a means of prolonging the laws I abhor is this position taken but as my only practical way to be rid of them!

As already implied, I am as related to humanity and to the over-all luminosity as the cave man who discovered how to harness fire, or as the Arab who invented the concept of zero. I am part and parcel of this heritage or culture, as is everyone else. And society is mine in the same sense that America is my country. True, I do not cherish society’s blemishes any more than I do my own imperfections. But there is no point in my denying that these blemishes are partly mine. Reason requires that I acknowledge this, and conscience dictates that I continue to live life as it is!

Consider the one who defies these man-made laws. If, for instance, he drinks alcoholic beverages when such imbibing is against the law, and gets away with it, what cares he about repealing a misguided law! He obtains satisfaction and, thus, has no incentive to remove from political control a problem that does not belong there at all. If, however, he greatly relishes wine as did Galileo—“light held together by moisture”—and heeds the law, he is a force for the law’s repeal.

Let us assume that Joe Doakes is opposed to all the laws which grant special privileges and immunities to labor unions and is among those working for repeal. Assume, also, that he is an anarchist, one who defies all laws disagreeable to him, and behaves as he pleases. Next, assume that labors special privileges are repealed. Were labor unions to pattern after Mr. Doakes, the change in the laws would make no difference. The labor unions would simply defy the laws against coercion and violence or the threat thereof. Labor unions would go right on in the future behaving precisely as they do now under grant of special privilege. And all because defiers of the law have shown them the way; Mr. Doakes and his kind, by their actions, endorse defiance of the law.

Of all the man-made laws on the statute books, an inestimable number are examples of bad law. This was so in the past, and the future will be little different, for man is now and forever imperfect. Nor is it difficult to see how these imperfections are pyramided through the collective action involved in the making of laws. Men acting as individuals always behave more responsibly, sensibly, and in accord with conscience, than men acting in committee.

Nonetheless, governance we shall have with us always. It may range from the vigilante to the dictator; hopefully, it may approximate our ideal of inhibiting only destructive actions. The question is not whether we’ll have governance; it is, instead, a question of which brand we shall have.

Whether or not the ideal is approached is determined by the preponderant leadership thinking. It is a matter of quality—statesmanship! A statesman, in this context, is any citizen of superior judgment and an inflexible integrity, one who will not bow out the moment anything fails to go his way. The statesman is not a law defier; rather, he participates to upgrade his country’s affairs, particularly when they are in a devolutionary slump.

[1] See “Civil Obedience,” Notes from FEE, July, 1970.

17.

Resist Not Evil

Some twenty years ago FEE published a small book by Henry Hazlitt, Will Dollars Save the World?, a critique of the Marshall Plan. Over 90,000 volumes were sold and the response was overwhelmingly favorable. Later, a national magazine of enormous circulation condensed the book. The reaction from their readers was generally unfavorable. Why?

Condensation is the art of skeletonizing, leaving the subject bare of explanation, that is, with categorical statements standing alone. Ideas are communicated simply and understandably by explanation, not by abbreviation. Brevity may be the soul of wit, but only for those who already apprehend the idea; others miss the meaning.

Consider the Decalogue. Here we have Ten Commandments rather than 10 explanations. These Commandments suffice for those who believe them to be the revealed Word of God, but these wonderful and righteous thou-shalts and thou-shalt-nots have little if any enlightenment for nonbelievers; in their case, apprehension requires further explanation.

The above is but background for another Biblical injunction (Matthew 5: 38–39):

“Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”

These words, I believe, contain a remarkable truth, but in the form of a mere admonishment. Unless one explores the reasoning and insight behind it, this truth lives in darkness. Let us see if it can be brought out into the light.

I confess at the outset that my interpretation is possibly at variance with numerous other interpretations. Variation here is to be expected, for who can say for certain what was really meant?[1] Perfect communication presupposes the perfect sayer and the perfect hearer. Conceding Jesus to be the Perfect Sayer, who among us can claim to be the perfect hearer? No one! Not only are all of us imperfect hearers but also we are up against the inaccuracies words have suffered by translation: Aramaic to Greek to Latin to English and so on. Absolute accuracy is out of the question as any competent linguist will attest.

To illustrate: What is meant by “The meek shall inherit the earth”? Assuredly, not the Mr. Milquetoasts which the present usage of “meek” suggests. That doesn’t make sense to me. What does seem sensible is the old English usage of “meek,” meaning the teachable, the humble in spirit, the learners as distinguished from those afflicted with the little god syndrome, the know-it-alls.

Thus, any person’s interpretation of “Resist not evil” logically rests on what makes sense to him, which is to say, on his idea of the ideal, on what his highest conscience dictates as right. This may not in fact be right but is as near to right as he can get. The original context, “Resist not evil,” may simply counsel nonviolence, but I am sure that the saying has wider overtones of meaning. It suggests that we do not try to construct our lives around a negation.

To assess the relevance of “Resist not evil” in today’s world, it is necessary to recognize several civilizing ideas that have come to light—though never wholly understood and practiced—since its pronouncement. Slavery then was morally acceptable, but today it is regarded in the West as an evil institution. The closed society is at least intellectually demolished and the tenets of the open society are no longer esoteric. During the last seven generations the principles of limited government and the rule of law have gained some recognition. Equality of opportunity for each individual, regardless of creed, color, race, or station, is not in question among enlightened people; the dignity of each human being is accepted, indeed, insisted on by many people! In numerous respects there has been some change for the better during the past nineteen centuries.

In the light of this moderate enlightenment, the admonition, “Resist not evil,” relates to a different form of retribution than in New Testament days. It advised then against the practice of forcibly inhibiting evil; now it may be interpreted otherwise, for in an enlightened society it is the malefactor himself who invites being brought to justice. Ideally, at least, the taboos are codified, posted, and the penalties made known: “Do not jump off this cliff except at your own risk!” In the essentially free society the penalty for evil is not “an eye for an eye” as in Hammurabi’s time or Matthew’s time. The retribution is self-inflicted; the one who performs an evil deed initiates the penalty meted out to him. He asked for it!

Assuming mankind to have advanced in moral insight does not mean that good and evil have vanished from the human scene; they contest on higher levels. An act that was not thought of as an evil centuries ago—enslaving a person, for instance—may later be regarded as evil. With this recognition, freeing a slave is for the first time regarded as good. Or, to use another example: in the absence of moral sensitivity, certain overt acts may be evil, but there is nothing evil in only thinking about the acts. As the moral nature of an individual advances, the thought becomes as evil as the deed and freeing self from such thoughts becomes good. In brief, as the moral nature ascends, man becomes conscious of evils never previously thought of as such. The opposites are forever at work, once at a brutish level and later, perhaps, at a saintly level.

I infer from this line of thought that “Resist not evil”—assuming an enlightened society—moves to a new and higher plane. The confrontation not to be resisted is no longer at the eye-for-an-eye level of physical vengeance but at the thought level. Let me quote Aldous Huxley on witchcraft to make my point:

By paying so much attention to the devil and by treating witchcraft as the most heinous of crimes, the theologians and the inquisitors actually spread the beliefs and fostered the practices which they were trying so hard to repress. By the beginning of the eighteenth century witchcraft had ceased to be a serious social problem. It died out, among other reasons, because almost nobody now bothered to repress it. For the less it was persecuted, the less it was propagandized.[2]

During the first two years of FEE, a celebrated columnist of a persuasion quite the opposite of ours, devoted five of his columns to FEE, each a tirade loaded with gross misrepresentations. To us, at least, this was evil. But we turned away from this “evil”—that is, we in no way resisted it—nary a rebuttal or acknowledgment! We provided this scribbler nothing whatsoever to scratch against, without which he could not continue. He gave up, never again mentioning FEE as long as he lived.

As in the case of witchcraft, I am convinced that much of the rioting and anarchy presently in vogue is stimulated and worsened by all of the attention paid to the malefactors, that is, by the resistance to these evils. What unenlightened people won’t do to get themselves on TV or otherwise in the public eye! Publicity and notoriety hold more charm and inducement for such people than does greatness and fortune for others. “Resist not evil” counsels that they as persons be ignored, in the sense of not berating them.

And observe how attention to this axiom works its wonders in daily transactions. While most of our dealings with others are honorable and above board, now and then we experience shysterism: a broken promise, overcharge, under-quality, an attempt to “get the best” of one. Resist not this evil; that is, pay no heed; not a scolding word; simply walk away and fail to return. While resistance will harden the malefactor in his sins as he rises to his own defense, nonresistance leaves him alone with his soul, his shop, and his jobbery, a plight that even he will ponder and understand.

Confrontation is always of two parts: the confrontee and the confrontor. Neither one can exist without the other. This brings to mind the old Arab proverb, “He who strikes the second blow starts the fight.” There can be no fight without a retaliation.

But is one to “turn the other cheek”? That seems to be what “Resist not evil” commends! Only to get socked again? Wrote Konrad Lorenz, the noted animal psychologist:

A wolf has enlightened me: not so that your enemy may strike you again do you turn the other cheek toward him, but to make him unable to do it.[3]

Consider what happens if one does strike the second blow. There follows a fusillade of blows until one or the other is done in, the victor no less a model of rectitude than the vanquished. All loss and no gain! Witness wars!

This analysis, however, is meant to engage our Biblical axiom at the ideological level. As previously suggested, this presupposes a civilization less brutish and more moral than marked earlier times. That the presupposition may be somewhat extravagant is attested to by the difficulty all of us encounter when trying to apprehend, let alone practice, “Resist not evil.” Should this run counter to your instincts, you’re not alone; it does to mine. And only by a resort to reasoning at an untrod level are my combative instincts revealed to be faulty. I have arrived at the point of not overtly “telling ’em off,” but what I still think to myself isn’t under control! Covertly, I still resist, and if that isn’t all bad it is at least half bad.

Rationally judged, “Resist not evil” is counsel of the highest order. It cautions me not to argue with anyone. And let my case go by default? To the contrary, as the best way not to lose it!

. . . assume to dictate to his judgment, or to command his action . . . and he will retreat within himself, close all avenues to his head and his heart. . . .[4]

In a word, away with confrontation!

Strict attention to this axiom has yet a further refinement. It is to refrain from ideological or philosophical discussion with any person unless I be seeking light from him or he from me. And what a waste of words and time this eliminates! Is this to hide our lights under a bushel? To retire to a do-nothing status? Again, to the contrary.

To waste neither words nor time is to make way for productive and constructive effort: learning the principles of freedom and the fallacies of its opposite, and how to explain them. If we learn these things—which presupposes your and my seeking—then others will seek from us. When confrontations are abandoned, the way to enlightenment is open. Instead of two squared off against each other, there stand two peacefully gaining from each other or, at least, one from the other.

To resist evil is to sustain, encourage, and prolong it; to resist it not is to substitute questions and answers for blows and counterblows; it permits the practice and the sharing of such truths as any of us may come upon. And is this not the proper path for human progress?

[1] See The Interpreter’s Bible (New York: Abingdon-Cokesbury Press, Vol. VII, p. 301).

[2] See The Devils of Loudon by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1952), p. 128.

[3] See “Morals and Weapons,” the final chapter in a fascinating book, King Solomon’s Ring, by Konrad Z. Lorenz (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1961 ).

[4] Abraham Lincoln.

18.

On Spreading the Word

Truth is enlightenment. As darkness gives way to light, so error recedes as truth is pursued and grasped. Trial and error, perhaps; but error is not truth, and it is sheer folly to insist they be given “equal time.”

I find it nowhere recorded that Saint Thomas Aquinas invited an atheist to share his pulpit that “both sides might be heard.” Nor does history reveal that Galileo ever willingly allowed the use of his platform for someone to argue that the earth is flat, or that Carl Menger asked Karl Marx to his classroom.

Further, I doubt that any third party, intent on staging a show, could have enticed Saint Thomas to publicly debate with an atheist, or Galileo with a flat-earth exponent, or Menger with Marx. And for good and sufficient reason: implicit in such spectacles is the notion that the truth cannot be known until after opponents cross swords, and that it is validated only by vote of the audience. Seeking entertainment more than enlightenment, members of the audiences largely base their conclusions upon which of the contestants is the more clever. Who in good conscience would rest his concepts of truth on any such fickle, untenable verdict!

This critique of two-side confrontations before audiences is not meant to disparage dialogue. The latter, where we seek understanding from one another, is all to the good—enlightening! But he who seeks truth “must resist the temptation of becoming a ‘popularizer’ if that in any way makes him swerve from, or slow down, his pursuit of truth. . . . He must strive for the truth, not for popular acclaim.”[1] If public office, or popular acclaim, or wide acceptance of one’s product be the aim, majority vote is in order; but this is no way to determine truth.

Yet, what dominates today’s scene? So great is the anxiety for popular acceptance of diverse views and doctrines that countless confrontations are ingeniously schemed; and, I must add, participants are plentiful. Public media of all sorts—newspapers and magazines no less than TV and radio—university classrooms and auditoriums, so-called seminars across the land, all tend to specialize in these wordy, both-side displays. Contestants are flattered to be heard and seen by the audiences, and regard such contests as a fruitful way to win others to their concept of truth.

Fighting for Freedom?

While the two-side, majority-vote approach is a questionable means to truth in any case, my concern is with devotees of the freedom philosophy and the extent to which they are taken in by this methodology—lured to the podiums, microphones, and cameras in jubilant expectation that they are getting in another lick for freedom.

The rejoinder is well known: “What! Let our case go by default! Why, the mass of people will think that freedom has no proponents; that the only question is whether this or that form of socialism shall rule mankind. We simply have to stand up and be counted.” This comeback has two flaws: (1) It presumes that the case for freedom can be as quickly and attractively presented as can any of countless plausibilities; and (2) these hasty, sketchy, oversimplified attempts to present the freedom philosophy leave the impression that freedom has, at best, a shaky case; listeners are more repulsed than drawn toward freedom. This is not the way to win friends for freedom.

Even the most devout believers in freedom have barely scratched the surface in understanding and exposition. Let him who thinks himself an exception raise his right hand! Our rationale is still in the formative stage; all of us are neophytes, our homework far from done. Merely being against socialism rates no “A” in this subject. In short, no one knows how to make the case for freedom, and especially not in capsule form demanded by the two-side confrontations. Perhaps the whole case, if it were known, could be compacted into a bible-length book; but I doubt it.

All of us have witnessed these spectacles with two opponents squared off against each other. But who ever heard a contestant say: “I now see your point and concede that I have been wrong.” If the contest draws neither of the direct participants toward the truth, how can better results be expected among the spectators? Instead of looking for light, the contestant is seeking plaudits from the audience: “What can I say to stump him and put me in a better light?” Entertainment, perhaps, but where’s the enlightenment? There must be a better way, if truth be the objective.

In these two-sided affairs, the forensic artist will win audience cheers every time, regardless of the truths presented by his opponent. Suppose the winner of cheers is of the freedom persuasion. What, precisely, has been won? Understanding? Hardly! These cheers are emotional responses—thoughts in flight—here today and gone tomorrow.

The Doors of Perception

The folly of these popular confrontations as a way to enlightenment can best be seen by reflecting on how truths are really grasped and spread. This is a radically different procedure.

To illustrate: You may be able to see a beacon light; that light cannot see you and, thus, has no way of directing itself into your field of vision. You may comprehend the wisdom of a Shakespeare; that wisdom does not know of your existence and, thus, is utterly incapable of adding itself to your store of wisdom. The meaning of this? Enlightenment cannot be injected or forced into other minds of your choosing. I cannot insinuate my ideas into the consciousness of you or anyone else. You are in charge of your own doors of perception; each of us admits to his mind what he chooses.

Only the individual who chooses to enlighten himself can experience enlightenment. A truth seeker begins with a spirit of inquiry, a state of wanting-to-know-it-ness. We must infer from this that enlightenment is a taking-from, not an injecting-into, process.

From whom? From those, past or present, who have been or are enlightened—in the truth-seeker’s judgment. To no one else will he turn; only to what he judges to be enlightened thoughts will he open his doors of perception. The truth seeker, if on a rewarding course, is forever probing for enlightenment. He pays little if any heed to sayings or writings motivated by other than truth seeking. He is impervious to those verbal bids for cheers, fame, fortune, office, power. And, properly so!

Do I wish to improve the thinking of others? Then see what can be done about self-improvement! And leave all of those poor, wandering souls to their own upbringing? That is precisely what I mean.

Learning from a Slave

The popular assumption is that if we do not attend to the improvement of others, they will remain forever unimproved. The easiest way to poke a hole in that fallacy is to ask a simple question: “Would you personally fail to improve were you not the object of my concern?”

To cite but one impressive example of how the taking-from process works: The Roman slave, Epictetus, knew nothing of you and me. Nor was he in any respect a propagandist among his contemporaries. To the contrary, he concentrated on his own understanding, developing intuitive qualities, experiencing insights—an exemplary truth seeker. What he did—this is all any of us should do—was to share with all who sought such wisdom as he possessed. His light shone brightly and those people in search of light turned toward it.

The Introduction to his The Enchiridion[2] refers to its “disproportionately large role in the rise of modern attitudes and modern philosophy.” And emphasized is the enormous influence he had on other great truth seekers, men who lived more than fifteen centuries after him: Montaigne, Grotius, Descartes, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Kant, and ever so many others.

Until recently, Epictetus was only a name to me; I would have confessed to knowing nothing of his philosophy. Yet, on reflection, I know much of it. For so great has been his influence on those whose writings are familiar to me that I have been, quite unconsciously, the beneficiary of his truth seeking. Here I am, nearly twenty centuries later, looking up to a Roman slave, and scarcely realizing it. Imagine a beam of light penetrating through the ages to this very day! Or, better yet, a light so strong its mirroring never ends. An apt phrasing of this methodology was expressed by its perfect exemplar, just prior to Epictetus: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”[3]

Lifting self “up from the earth”—that is, above the commonplace and into a state of enlightenment—is how truth is discovered and spread. As light attracts the eye, so truth is its own witness; it needs no melodramatic minions, just earnest seekers. Those of us interested in an improved perception, awareness, consciousness of the freedom philosophy on the part of others have only to increase our own candle power. To the extent we succeed, to that extent will eyes intent on truth turn to our light.

Spreading the word is this simple and this difficult, and its great advantage over the advertised shortcuts is that it works.

[1] Gottfried Dietze, Youth, University and Democracy (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1970), p. 50.

[2] Op. cit.

[3] John 12:32.

19.

On Labeling an Ideal

What follows may be regarded as a series of speculations or, better yet, wanderings in the dark about a matter that has confounded me and to which no clear answer is yet forthcoming. I am bothered by our insistence on pinning a name or label to an ideal—which may not in fact be namable. The reason for these ruminations? I fear we are playing with mischief when we try to fit everything into neat pigeonholes.

We give ourselves names just as we tack names onto things; that man is Joe Doakes or that thing is a pencil. Names are appropriate for all beings and things that bear the earmarks of specificity or where discretion can be exercised. We would have no means of intelligently communicating with each other were we not to ascribe names to the namable.

But what about those phases of life that are not discrete or that appear to lack specificity? Shall we give names to these as we do to beings and things? Not knowing, I am only raising the question with the hope of thinking it through to some sort of an answer. For instance, we peer at a clouded sky. Here we use only broad generalizations: cirrus or cumulus or stratus clouds. It seems that our habit of not going further is correct, that is, we are right in not attempting to name each cloud. A cloud is no more discrete than a passing fancy; it is intangible to the point of being nameless.

However, my concern is not with clouds or shadows and such wispy nebulosities but, rather, with politico-economic philosophy and, then, only with one phase of it which possibly could be left unlabeled. I wonder.

The Politico-Economic Spectrum

Politico-economic philosophy spreads over a wide spectrum and is loosely analogous to the light spectrum: red at the left produced by the longer wave lengths—the easiest observed-extending with ever shorter wave lengths through orange, yellow, green, blue, and finally, to violet—the least discernible by the human eye. Color-blind people can often see red but their discernment decreases as the wave lengths shorten; many people with “good” eyesight cannot discern violet.

Reverting to the politico-economic spectrum, let us substitute the long and short arms of government for the long and short wave lengths. At the extreme left we observe the long arms of government reaching into nearly every phase of human existence—authoritarianism, full force! Everybody can see this, and even feel it. Then as we move to the right on this spectrum, the arms of government become shorter, reaching into fewer and fewer facets of life. Finally, and comparable to the ultraviolet lying just beyond the visible spectrum—were such an ideal situation ever to exist—we would find the arms of government so short that they could not reach into and have control over a single creative activity—government no more than a peace-keeping arm of society. This ideal can only be imagined for it never has existed and, probably, never will. It is nebulous as a dream and lacks the quality of specificity. The question is, should we try to label this ideal? Or, more particularly, its seekers or votaries?

It is, of course, appropriate to label the extreme left for it is composed of hard stuff: brute force. We call it communism, socialism, fascism, and so on. It is a masterminding scheme the parts of which can be seen as can a blueprint. It is a discrete politico-economic mechanism and specific to the core. This is definitely namable as is a constitution or any document, or thing, or person.

As we move to the right on this spectrum, the schematic phase gradually lessens; the arms of government are shorter. Yet, we quite properly ascribe names to each of these, labels ranging all the way from liberal to conservative. That the labels fall short in descriptive accuracy—confusion worse confounded—is conceded. While this is to be deplored, it is a point outside the scope of this inquiry.

The concern here is with the ideal that lies beyond the right end of the visible spectrum where schemes to manage the lives of others would be nonexistent—the imaginable only. I am always alluding to this as the freedom philosophy[1]: no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. But, first, why dwell on this at all? Is it not unrelated to the real world and beyond the realm of practicality? Why bother to pose the ideal?

Every advance in civilization, every improvement in society, has been in the direction of, not away from, what’s right, that is, toward the ideal. Further, the ideal itself, if man improves in intellectual and moral stature, is always advancing—now and forever out of reach. True, we are committed to living in the world as it is, with all its flaws and imperfections. But this practical fact does not and should not bind us to the status quo; this is the height of impracticality! As one of countless examples: I use the socialized mail but this does not deter me from standing foursquare for the ideal: free market mail delivery.

The truly practical man is he who searches for the ideal and takes his ideological position accordingly, regardless of how far removed are his environmental circumstances. This is the only way the ruling consensus can be shifted in an improved direction. And, if this is not practical, pray tell, what is!

A Quest for the Ideal

We come now to the problem here posed. Fortunately, there are a growing number among whom I like to include myself—many thousands, for certain—who are striving to refine our understanding and exposition of the freedom philosophy. This is to say that we are forever trying to formulate a rationale that has never been perfected. Ours is a quest for the ideal, a societal arrangement that can only be imagined, never fully realized. Ours, then, unlike the ideologies to the left, has no schematic characteristics; it is without specificity and, thus, does not lend itself to labeling as do the others on this politico-economic spectrum.

What, however, is the tendency? It is to pin a label on the dream, the ideal, as well as on its votaries. Liberalism was once the label for this hoped-for way of life that sought the liberating of individuals from state tyranny. Proponents called themselves liberals. But observe what happened: the labels were expropriated by those of a statist faith. The labels still read the same but the ideological package contains opposite views and convictions.

So, having had our labels taken from us, what have we done? We—I as much as anyone—pinned libertarianism to our ideal and libertarian on ourselves. Have a look at what is happening: extreme statists are now calling themselves libertarians, and so are those who believe in no government at all—anarchists! This label as a means of identifying a belief or philosophy has become utterly meaningless. Further, were we to uncover or invent some other term, conveying favorable overtones, it would suffer precisely the same fate as liberal and libertarian. Why?

The idealistic freedom philosophy—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy—has no scheme to it at all; it is completely devoid of masterminding. Here is the question it poses: what would happen in this ideal situation? Nothing that is predictable, that is, nothing beyond creativity more in evidence. The answer is no more precise than to the question, what insight, or invention, or discovery, or intuitive flash are you likely to experience tomorrow? In a word, the unknowable! How can a meaningful label be found for the unknowable? Is it possible that our ideal falls in the nameless category? When a label is placed on anything that’s nameless, it won’t stick and, thus, is always up for grabs. Witness what happened first to liberal and now to libertarian.

Imperfect Man

It is one thing to seek and stand for the ideal; it is quite another matter to say, “Behold in me the ideal.” This is precisely what we do when we label the ideal as libertarianism and then call ourselves libertarians. Ideological fence-straddlers, wondering which way to jump, take a look at me—my ideal and me wrapped into one—observe my numerous, personal shortcomings, and conclude that they want none of my ideal. Is the fault not mine rather than theirs? Perhaps our ideal would prosper better if it had only enemies; it is the friends of the ideal, by reason of their penchant for labels, who do it in. At least, this is what I am beginning to believe.

What then? Am I to go nameless? No, only ideologically unlabeled! This has advantages. Should I reply “libertarian” to a curious person when inquiring about my politico-economic faith, he will immediately relate me to his preconception of a libertarian: some statist or anarchist or other in-between who has labeled himself a libertarian. His certainty of being right will bring the inquiry to an end; no more exploration on his part. Certainty? Actually, the only certainty is that he will be wrong!

Suppose, instead, that I confess to having only an ideal in mind; that I do not qualify for a single one of the labeled pigeonholes. If he is at all curious—and why bother with anyone else?—he will wish to know what I mean. At this point, a dialogue will begin. Who knows? Perhaps I shall learn more from him than he from me.

Finally, are we to leave our ideal unlabeled? Logically, it seems that we should if we could; but learning how to do so is the problem, so deeply ingrained is the habit of labeling the nameless along with the namable. Indeed, it is beginning to dawn on me that learning how to think, talk, and write without a resort to false or misleading labels may be the all-important first step in a realization of our ideal. Perhaps this is the initial move toward the perfection of our rationale.

If there be a person who calls this procedure idealistic, then he is helping us to make our case.

[1] True, “freedom philosophy” is a name of sorts as is “ideal.” While no answer to the dilemma here posed, it is more a generalization than a specific label, connoting not something definitive and settled upon but a matter still open for exploration.

To logically believe in freedom is necessarily to believe that men’s interests are harmonious. Otherwise, if men’s interests are believed to be naturally and inherently in conflict, one’s faith must rest on coercion.

This is man’s dilemma: harmony and freedom, or conflict and coercion? Note that this is no clearcut contest between good and evil; perfection vs. imperfection. Indeed, the very attempt to identify and describe human perfection or to fully visualize and predict the nature of the harmony that freely acting and self-responsible individuals might achieve is to limit and thus defeat that very ideal.

20.

A Return to Reading

My friend is devoted to freedom, and thoroughly agrees with me as to ends. But we are not in agreement about the means to those ends. He argues that ours is a selling problem—we must, says he, work out techniques for “putting across” the freedom package. And when I contend that ours is a learning problem—self-improvement and a better understanding of freedom—he counters, in a tone of finality, “They won’t read.”

He has a point. Many people never crack a book, and these are unlikely to improve their understanding of politico-economic complexities. As a last resort, the temptation is to reach them through advertising techniques: animated pictures bolstered with talk, as employed in selling soap, and so on. But these techniques are worthless as related to the ends we have in view.[1] In brief, no reading, no freedom!

I do not dispute the observation, “They won’t read.” Reading at the trash level may have reached a new high, but doubtless to the neglect of serious study of thoughts, ideas, philosophy on which hang the chances of a free society. More and more we hear, and presumably from the best educated, “There is too much to read” or “I don’t have the time to read.”

Nor am I disputing the importance of reading for the sheer enjoyment of it, or reading to become a better artisan or doctor or whatever. My concern, and all I wish to examine, is that kind of reading which has to do with a society in which we can best live, prosper, and fulfill our individual destinies. While serious reading of this kind is not everything, it is among the “musts.” Return to it or forget a free society—this is my thesis.

Let’s examine the excuse: “There is too much to read.” True, if one refers to everything now being printed, no person could possibly read it all. My complaint is of another sort: of the total that is coming off the presses, there is too little worth reading! No one attempts to eat each of the foods or swallow all the medicine produced. Why not be equally selective in reading intake, giving attention only to that which is suited to one’s unique intellectual requirements?

Or, take the other excuse heard day in and day out: “I don’t have the time to read.” Such busyness rarely, if ever, exists. Substitute serious reading for just two of the hours each day spent peering at TV, listening to radio, or otherwise frittered away on trivia; that would be time enough for more than 100 average-sized books annually.[2]

It is not time we lack; time is fantastically elastic and accommodates itself precisely to our intellectual alacrity. Some people cannot accomplish in a lifetime what one person might achieve in a minute! If there is a tough job to be done, it is the busy person, never the laggard, who will get it into the past tense quickly. Instead of the excuse, “I don’t have the time to read,” let’s face the truth: “I lack the inclination and the discipline to read.”

To Strengthen the Will

A return to reading, then, requires of the individual a strengthening of the inclination and the will—discipline—to do so. The proposition is quite simple, though putting it into practice may seem difficult.

The inclination to include serious reading as an integral part of daily life is unlikely unless it can be identified with self-interest. Outside motivation is too feeble a force; hardly anyone will take on a chore, seemingly so difficult, for someone else’s good. But even the person who realizes that reading is for his own good cannot embark on such an effort short of the will to do so. People simply do not abandon habitual trivialities for the sake of serious habits without the intervention of will power.

Nor can will power be relied upon except to get a reading program started; it peters out if the serious effort does not soon become joyous. No one can will or force himself for long to give a high priority to distasteful or unrewarding activities. Thus, if serious reading does not prove fruitful and joyful following a reasonable trial, the aspirant is well advised to forget it; this is not his cup of tea; we can never expect him to be numbered among serious students.

So, we have two questions which require answers. First, can a return to the kind of reading here suggested be identified with self-interest? Second, what are the chances of joy from such an activity?

Motivated by Self-Interest

Self-interest, as I attempted to explain in Chapter 8, is not easy to identify. It is the guide to or sparkplug of all human action and is what motivates your actions and mine. It sets the philanthropist on his course and accounts for how the thief behaves. Everyone is self-interest oriented and, in this, we are alike. Regarding self-interest, we differ only in our interpretations of how it is best served. These range from the thief’s short-range ignorance to the seer’s long-range intelligence.

Every one of us is at once a social and an individualistic being. As Henry Bergson phrases it, “There is a little bit of society in each of us.” Therefore, if we are to interpret our respective self-interests intelligently, we can no more neglect the social side than the individualistic.

I am indebted to others not only for the enormous amount of goods and services I can exchange for my minuscule offerings but for my very existence. Life would be impossible at the thievery level. Or, suppose all were liars, then no one’s word could be trusted. Or, no respect for the Golden Rule, or no understanding of freedom whatsoever—moral scruples nonexistent. Life would be miserable at best.

I owe a great deal to others. Indeed, I owe them the same respect I want them to show toward me in order that all of us might live our lives to the fullest. Am I to expect moral and spiritual rectitude and intelligent economic actions from others without giving the same in return? That would be lopsided, narrow, short-range thinking.

However, for me to pursue excellence in a manner that would advantage me were others to do the same, demands more from me than I can ever perceive or ferret out all by myself. It must be remembered that I, as everyone else, peers at the total scheme of things through a tiny peekhole. Were I to go it alone, I could no more discharge my indebtedness to others than were I a Kalahari bushman.

To do my part, to intelligently interpret my self-interest on the social side, requires that I draw on the wisdom of the ages. And this calls for serious reading. Francis Bacon observed that “reading maketh a full man.” Thomas Carlyle said:

All that mankind has done, thought, gained, or been: it is lying in magic preservation in the pages of books.

And Ralph Besse added:

There is no knowledge, practically speaking, that is not recorded some place in writing. The whole realm of knowledge known to man is written out—with very few exceptions.

Why not take advantage of this heritage, for how else can any one of us play the role in the scheme of things that we hopefully expect of all men? It is in one’s self-interest to do so.

Next, what about self-interest as related to the individualistic side? Doubtless, the answer depends on the premise—life’s purpose—the person has set for himself. If that purpose be no more than fame or fortune, then reading is hardly necessary so long as there are enough others to assure a society from which fame or fortune can be easily extracted. Numerous affluent individuals never “crack a book,” the books on their shelves being only for decoration.

However, if one’s premise be individual growth, emergence, “hatching,” as set forth in Chapter 3, reading is an essential means to the end in view. Without reading, enlightenment would be confined to one’s own limited insight and vision. Assuming this premise, self-interest demands that one search for light today and always—from the present and the past.

Finally, what about joyousness? Will a return to reading be a painful or a happy experience? Dull or exciting? Distasteful or rewarding? No one can answer this for another. Nor can he answer for himself until he sticks his toe in the water, so to speak, to test how agreeable it is: whether too cold, or too hot, or perhaps invigorating, depending on his intellectual metabolism. Dipping into wisdom is either discomforting and disagreeable or stimulating and joyous. But it is worth the try just to find out. If the individual is fortunate enough, then every ray of light will bring more joy than “acres of diamonds” or great fame. And, in this event, discipline will no longer be required for serious and studious effort. “All the king’s horses and all the king’s men” could not pull one away from it.

It is reasonable to assume that one is headed in the proper direction when the seeking of light turns out to be joyous. An unimaginable enlightenment is to be found in a return to reading.

One thing for certain: the supply of knowledge far outstrips the demand. Why not correct this imbalance?

[1] Support of this claim has been too much covered in articles and books of mine to warrant repetition here. Particularly, see Chapter 4, “Eduction versus Propaganda,” in Talking to Myself, op. cit., pp. 19–26.

[2] Conceded, the number of books is no more laudatory than the lack of hours is excusable. Comprehension is what matters and may make numerous readings of the same book more important than the reading of numerous books.

21.

Readiness Is All[*]

Here is a concept requiring readiness: Private ownership, specialization, and freedom to contract and to trade make possible a general abundance but, as this way of life advances, a growing interdependence ensues. The latter is the “price” of the former. And the coin of this price is an observation of the Golden Rule.

Not only is the Golden Rule a prime tenet of sound economics but, doubtless, the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character:[1]

Confucianism

What you don’t want done to yourself, don’t do to others.

—Sixth Century B.C.

Buddhism

Hurt not others with that which pains thyself.

—Fifth Century B.C.

Zoroastrianism

Do not do unto others all that which is not well for oneself.

—Fifth Century B.C.

Classical Paganism

May I do to others as I would that they should do unto me.

—Plato, Fourth Century B.C.

Hinduism

Do naught to others which if done to thee could cause thee pain.

—Mahabharata, Third Century B.C.

Judaism

What is hateful to yourself, don’t do to your fellow man.

—Rabbi Hillel, First Century B.C.

Christianity

Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them.

—Jesus of Nazareth, First Century A.D.

Sikhism

Treat others as thou wouldst be treated thyself.

—Sixteenth Century A.D.

Now to my thesis that readiness is all.

A scholarly friend insisted on the importance to me of Immanuel Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.[2] I read this book with but slight comprehension, unable to break through the author’s obscurity. Months later, on a second reading, many of Kant’s ideas tumbled into sense. What, really, went on here?

The text was the same on both readings. The only change was a minor improvement in my perception. Kant, bent on the pursuit of truth, did not have in mind any reader’s lack of readiness. Thus, for me to get his message required that I rise nearer to his level of thought, that I come to a higher state of awareness—in a word, readiness!

Be Prepared

Readiness is all! And those of us committed to the freedom philosophy might as well recognize this fact, which is to say, we are well advised to align ourselves with reality. Let us, therefore, examine readiness and its relevance to our aspirations.

Take Gresham’s Law, for example: “Bad money drives out good.”[3] Sir Thomas Gresham had readied himself for the perception of this truth. Bear in mind that the truth he perceived was no less a truth prior to the time he apprehended it. A truth is a truth, apprehended or not.

Gresham made his pronouncement, doubtless, to Queen Elizabeth. During more than four centuries, his law has been heard or read millions of times. And, to what account? The general perception has been precisely at the level of general readiness of listeners and readers—above zero, yes, but not impressively so. Readiness is the governing factor in any and all individual enlightenments. “A man only understands that of which he already has the beginnings in himself.”[4] Countless truths are all about every one of us and are unknown as if nonexistent, all because we are not ready for them.

Any student of ideas knows from experience how thoughts become clearer on successive readings. A phrase in the Bible, for instance, may never fully penetrate one’s mind until after fifty years of repetition. To “know it by heart” is not necessarily to be mindful of it. The words remain forever the same; when it comes to insight, only the readiness counts.

Any individual, regardless of his experience and training, encounters a thousand and one areas of thought, knowledge or wisdom which are alien territory to him. One of my thousands, for instance, is musical notation. Readiness for musical notation, let alone composition, is no more within my range than is computer design. These are not within the range of the potentialities peculiar to me. And no amount of talk or writing by experts, however skillful, would make one whit of difference. Who among us would not admit similar blind spots concerning countless areas!

Not a Numbers Problem

Consider now the matter of readiness for the freedom philosophy. Is it conceivable that as many as one per cent of our adult population have any aptitudes for the complexities of economic, social, political, and moral philosophy? The overwhelming majority not only lack readiness but couldn’t acquire it if they tried. This simply is not their cup of tea; it is not consonant with their unique potentialities. This may seem to be a harsh fact, but it is a reality to be faced.

One can easily conclude that our situation is rendered hopeless by this overwhelming ineptitude for the freedom philosophy. But such is not a right conclusion, not at all. Awareness of this reality is a blessing for it warns us not to labor at the impossible—“selling the masses”—but to search for other openings to understanding and progress. So, what do we find?

As we look about us, we find a great deal of specialization, advanced further in the U.S.A. than elsewhere at any time. As this way of life progresses, the greater is the opportunity for each individual to find and employ his own unique capabilities. The shoemaker no longer has to stick to his last; he may become an aviator, a poet, a painter, a chef, or even President of the United States. This, it seems to me, is all to the good.

Specialization Means Interdependence

In any event, the diversification today is fantastically greater than in the time of my grandfather. Meaning what? The more we specialize, the more interdependent we become—that is, the more must we rely on the performance of others. Removed as we are from self-subsistence, you tend to your specialization, I to mine, and the millions to their varied specialities. It is no longer presumed that each must know how to do more than his own “thing.” I do not have to know how to mine coal or make generators to enjoy the advantages of electricity. There is no need for you to know how to raise wheat or to manufacture and operate grist machinery to have bread on the table. Required only is that you know well your own specialization. And a moment’s reflection confirms that this is about all we do know. We—everyone of us—are but specializing participants in a phenomenal performance. I repeat, this is all to the good—perhaps a glimpse of man as he is destined to be!

Specialization—each to his own uniqueness—spells progress but with a generally unrecognized proviso attached. For it is inconceivable that these blessings can be expected to last without virtues to match. This, which we have been experiencing, is no more than a sampling of what mankind’s potentialities and possibilities are. It is quite evident that we must find out for ourselves what the price tag is. It is higher than we think!

Merely reflect on the implications of interdependence. Your welfare no longer hinges exclusively on your own performance. Nonperformance on the part of others can cut off your food, transportation, electricity, your very life—a fact demonstrated day in and day out. Furthermore, unsound monetary policies can destroy the circulating medium without which the exchange of our numerous specializations is impossible. Indeed, our interdependence is so pronounced that I can only serve my own interests by serving others; anything I might do to injure you or them also harms me. This now applies to everyone.

A Golden Rule Society

The ideal economy we have been approaching is meant for and can only endure in what might be termed a Golden Rule Society: citizens who would not do to others that which they would not have others do to them. Such citizens can be identified as those who pursue excellence in every walk of life; who never take advantage of others, either personally and directly or through organized governments, unions, or whatever; whose word is as good as their bond; who take pride in their work; and whose pronouncements and deeds are accurate reflections of whatever their innermost consciences dictate as right—in a word, inflexible integrity. These are the virtues required to match what we in America have been given the privilege of sampling. The price for such blessings is not more laws and governmental gadgetry; instead, it is an unprecedented morality. We simply cannot hope to enjoy the untold material possessions that flow from private ownership, specialization, and trade if at the same time we deny self-responsibility for moral growth and try instead to socialize or collectivize that part of our lives.

In view of the fact that our society is now featured by thousands upon thousands of specialized engagements, it is unrealistic to expect more than a very few to possess aptitudes for any particular activity or discipline: the aerodynamics of the swept-back wing or nuclear physics or hybridizing corn, for instance.

And we have had demonstration enough that this division of labor not only works to the benefit of all but, further, it works miracles. Assuming, of course, free and unfettered exchange and each activity and discipline practiced with integrity!

The point is that we should not expect more than an infinitesimal few to possess aptitudes for political economy. And there are not more than a few!

In most activities and disciplines, we stick to our own knitting; we do not invade those fields requiring aptitudes we do not possess. As a consequence, most of the goods and services and thoughts flowing therefrom are models of integrity. We trust them!

Everyone an Expert

But when it comes to political economy—a discipline so difficult that it has challenged the best minds throughout history—nearly everyone tries his hand. Who doesn’t think of himself as an “authority”? The result? Mishmash and nonsense pour from public media as well as from educational, religious, business, and labor platforms. What a hodgepodge! And if there is one quality lacking in most of these attempts, that is the quality of integrity!

To demonstrate this latter point: Consider the technicians and mechanics who make our automobiles and jet aircraft, men who apply themselves to activities and disciplines consonant with their unique capabilities. The resulting products are featured by integrity. Day in and day out, millions of us trust our lives to these means of transport; hardly a second thought is given to their trustworthiness.

Now, observe these very same men deigning to pontificate on politico-economic affairs, an area in which few if any of them have any greater aptitude than I have for musical composition. Are their outpourings—often showing up formally in labor union pronouncements—to be trusted? Not one whit more than a pronouncement by me concerning a discipline about which I know nothing. Integrity is simply out of the question.

Integrity, I repeat, is an accurate reflection of whatever one’s conscience dictates as right. What incentive or chance has one to obey conscience on any matter about which he is not conscious? Conscience in such matters is nonexistent and integrity impossible except as one confesses, “I do not know.”

“I Do Not Know”

That there is or ever will be a political economist who has all the answers is as far from reality as Plato’s philosopher-king aspirations. This, we can forget. The required wisdom is in the “over-all luminosity,” the culture that has its source in minute flashes of insight that are reported with absolute integrity. Thus, trust and integrity are companion virtues, enhanced by readiness.

“I do not know” is the first step to readiness, for it is axiomatic that the know-it-all cannot learn. From then on it is a succession of steps in readiness, now and forever, by those having an aptitude for political economy. And, who may this be? Possibly, a mechanic or, perhaps, a “lowly fisherman of Galilee,” or maybe a professor of political economy. Through whom truths will flow, one can never know.

Readiness is all! Let us then ready ourselves for the accurate reflections of what our consciences dictate as right, making certain that we have some consciousness of our subject. This is within the range of anyone who can will his own actions. And let this be the hallmark particularly of those devoted to the freedom philosophy.

Integrity dispels suspicion and enthrones trust, this being as close to the Golden Rule Society as we can get.

[*] From Shakespeare’s Hamlet.

[1] See Pictorial History of Philosophy by Dagobert D. Runes (New York: Bramhall House, 1959 by Philosophical Library, Inc.), p. vii.

[2] New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1959.

[3] According to Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy, this dictum appears to have been used first in 1560. While it cannot be found in his handwriting, this precept has been generally accepted as “Gresham’s Law” by economists since 1858.

[4] An entry of December 17, 1854 in Journal Intimé of Henri Frederic Amiel.

22.

The Will to Prevail

This concluding chapter has to do with the magic of believing: he who believes he can sink a putt, move a mountain, or make a go of anything will excel those of equal talent but little faith. It is an observed fact that believers prevail where doubters fail! At issue here is the nature or character of one’s being.

A society takes its heading from the people who comprise it. The ideas and actions, the strengths and weaknesses, of individual citizens determine whether or not a society will endure and, if it does, what heights it will attain.

How is it presently with the people of these United States? People must not be lumped or put in pigeonholes; such generalizations are always faulty, no person ever being wholly this or exclusively that—but we can evaluate certain characteristics.

The characteristic that dominates is of the “let George do it” variety and shows forth in people by the tens of millions. While perhaps outstanding in their chosen specializations, persons thus afflicted do no thinking for themselves in political economy. Followers!

The second characteristic is the king syndrome, commented upon in Chapter 6. Persons infected by this notion behave as gods, not as men. These, according to C. S. Lewis, are not bad men but, rather, not men at all in the old sense: “They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean.” Kings!

The third characteristic is to be found among thousands of potentially capable individuals—brilliant thinkers—who have given up the ghost. Quitters!

Finally, there are those who exemplify the opposite characteristics: the virtues of thinking for self, behaving as men instead of gods, and adhering to purpose against all odds. The Remnant!

Help from the Quitters

There is no need to stress the importance I attach to those who qualify to be numbered among the Remnant. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we must question their capacity to cope with the present plunge into all-out statism: socialism! The few among the Remnant need help; and it is to be found, if at all, among the quitters, those who have fallen by the wayside or are about to do so. For these are the ones so intelligent that they clearly see the financial and social trouble we are in. Paradoxically, this same intelligence which constitutes their potential value accounts, also, for their becoming dropouts. The explanation is that they see and are overwhelmed by the complexities of our muddled politico-economic situation. They cannot figure out how to unscramble it, so, what’s the use!

I insist that this is not a sufficient reason for surrender. Getting out of the mess we are in does not require that anyone see in advance the way out of it. Knowing precisely how to put this Humpty Dumpty back together again is neither possible nor necessary. The Remnant needs additional seers, but no one has to be a see-it-all. The human record is studded with accomplishments that outrun any preceding plans, and human cooperation achieves ends that no man could possibly envision.

The following doggerel may help with my point:

There lived two frogs, so I’ve been told,

In a quiet wayside pool;

And one of these frogs was a blamed bright frog,

But the other frog was a fool.

Now a farmer man with a big milk-can

Was wont to pass that way;

And he used to stop and add a drop

Of the aqua pura, they say.

And it chanced one morn in the early dawn

When the farmer’s sight was dim,

He scooped those frogs in the water he dipped,

Which same was a joke on him.

The fool frog sank in the swashing tank,

As the farmer bumped to town.

But the smart frog flew like a tugboat screw,

And he swore he’d not go down.

So he kicked and splashed and he slammed and thrashed,

And he kept on top through all;

And he churned that milk in first class shape

In a great big butter ball.[1]

Never Say Die

What strength of character can we assign to the bright frog? Only this: Never say die! That frog could not guess what would save his life. He knew less about butter-making than I do about unscrambling the mess we are in, if that be possible. He did not know what form his salvation would take, not even that he would be saved. But he did have the proper spirit; that is, he had the will to prevail. He was only that bright; no more!

Like those frogs, we are in trouble; and many of us know it. We also are like the frogs in that no one has the foresight to visualize the form salvation will take; we are no more clairvoyant than they. When we get it into our heads that there can be no turn-about unless we can imagine the form it will take, we are as lost as the fool frog. But when we develop or retain the will to prevail, then our “butter ball”—the unimaginable—becomes at least a possibility.

How dark and dim the prospect has nothing to do with the matter. Many a day has been darker than this. Turn back to the land of Sumer, classically known as Babylonia—today’s Iraq—at the very beginning of recorded history:

Its climate is exceedingly hot and dry, and its soil, left to itself, is arid, wind-swept, and unproductive . . . no minerals whatever and almost no stone . . . no trees for timber . . . a region with “the hand of God against it,” an unpromising land seemingly doomed to poverty and desolation.

How could the prospects be darker? Yet, observe what happened:

But the people that inhabited [this land], the Sumerians, were endowed with an unusually creative intellect and a venturesome resolute spirit . . . they turned Sumer into a veritable Garden of Eden.

The people who lived in the land of Sumer some 7,000 years ago had no idea what wonders lay in store for their progeny. But, they were a resolute people. Further:

The Sumerian was deeply conscious of his personal rights and resented any encroachment on them, whether by his king, his superior, or his equal. No wonder that the Sumerians were the first to compile laws and law codes, to put everything down in “black and white” in order to avoid misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and arbitrariness.[2]

After enduring for several thousand years, this first great civilization fell so flat that from the time of Christ till 100 years ago no one knew that it had existed. History, however, is punctuated with darkness-to-light epochs—from Athens to America. In no instance was anyone able to foresee the enlightenment that lay ahead. But we can be certain of one thing: No enlightened era ever came out of a population of quitters! The rewards have always gone to the resolute, to those who never say die, to those with the will to prevail.

Were Oswald Spengler alive today—as I remarked in Chapter 12—he would say that what is happening to America was in the cards; our fall was a foregone conclusion. Toynbee, however, argued that a nation or civilization can continue to thrive provided its people face and master the challenges peculiar to their time and situation. All challenges are unique; they do not come in carbon copies—ever!

With respect to this point, I am on Toynbee’s side. We need not decline and fall as did the Roman Empire. Such a fate is for the fool frogs. However, if we pin our hopes of societal survival on a form of salvation we can predict and blueprint—that is, if we refuse to play the game of life unless we can foresee how Creation will work its wonders—we are doomed; Spengler, turning over in his grave, might remark, “I told you so.” Let us, then, acknowledge the obvious: we cannot foresee the unimaginable.

A Matter of Insight

Progress has its origin in insight, not foresight. Penicillin, for example, was not foreseen. Thousands of medical students, over the years, failed to develop a certain culture, and were graded zero for their pains. Then came a student who observed under his microscope precisely what all the failing students had seen: a ring of mold surrounding the undeveloped culture. A question flashed to mind, “Might not this mold explain why my culture does not develop?” That mold was penicillin; that question was insight.

Observe how nicely lighted is your room. This kind of illumination was not foreseen before an idea popped into Edison’s mind. That idea was insight. This great inventor admitted that he did not know the source of his ideas and, assuredly, he could never have foreseen the ideas before they dawned upon him. Nor could anyone else.

It is thus that every step in scientific and societal progress gives the appearance of being fortuitous. As with Edison’s idea, each step is as if “from out of the blue.” All are unimaginable, unpredictable, unforeseeable, and mysterious.

William Cowper, two centuries ago, entitled a poem, “Light Shining Out of Darkness,” and put the mystery in this memorable verse:

God moves in a mysterious way

His wonders to perform;

He plants his footsteps in the sea

And rides upon the storm.

Cowper suggests—and confirms my faith—that we humans are not in charge of Creation, that the Universe continues to be guided by more than human design and reason. Not only are future events largely beyond the power of our contrivance, they also are beyond the scope of our imagination. So, let us take heart, rather than deplore the fact that we cannot foresee the unforeseeable. Let us hearken, not to the voices of doom, but to the magic of believing.

Look to the Light

True, many of today’s happenings grievously offend the sentiments and convictions of those of us who believe there should be no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. Due to our limited vision, the darkness deepens, causing ever so many to ask, “How possibly can any light shine through it?”

But it is the very nature of darkness to enhance the brilliance of any light! Why does the doctor condition his eyes to darkness before peering through his fluoroscope? In order to see more clearly the dim shadows cast on the screen. The deeper the darkness the more conspicuous is even a tiny light!

Darkness, we must remember, has no power against light. Darkness recedes, retreats, vanishes without resistance as light increases. Rather than be frightened by darkness, let us take the only rational step there is: look to our lights!

Our friends who are tempted to weep by the wall because they cannot see how Humpty Dumpty can ever be put back together again are asking that light illuminate tomorrow—a feat that light cannot perform. Light has only the power to illuminate the eternal now!

Today’s darkness signifies that yesterday’s torches are burning low and sputtering out. The hope for luminosity today or tomorrow depends upon what we do now to increase our candle power. Increase is possible. Indeed, it is a high probability for a resolute people—for those who have the will to prevail.

[1] Extracted from “Story of a Kicker,” by Holman F. Day.

[2] These three quotes have been extracted from The Sumerians, Their History, Culture, and Character by Samuel Noah Kramer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 3–4.

ADDENDUM

Being a reprint of the first chapter from Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), pp. 7–15.

1

Abundance and Scarcity

Which is preferable for man and for society, abundance or scarcity?

“What!” people may exclaim. “How can there be any question about it? Has anyone ever suggested, or is it possible to maintain, that scarcity is the basis of man’s well-being?”

Yes, this has been suggested; yes, this has been maintained and is maintained every day, and I do not hesitate to say that the theory of scarcity is by far the most popular of all theories. It is the burden of conversations, newspaper articles, books, and political speeches; and, strange as it may seem, it is certain that political economy will not have completed its task and performed its practical function until it has popularized and established as indisputable this very simple proposition: “Wealth consists in an abundance of commodities.”

Do we not hear it said every day: “Foreigners are going to flood us with their products”? Thus, people fear abundance.

Has not M. de Saint-Cricq[1] said: “There is overproduction”? Thus, he was afraid of abundance.

Do not the workers wreck machines? Thus, they are afraid of overproduction, or—in other words—of abundance.

Has not M. Bugeaud[2] uttered these words: “Let bread be dear, and the farmer will be rich”? Now, bread can be dear only because it is scarce. Thus, M. Bugeaud was extolling scarcity.

Has not M. d’Argout[3] based his argument against the sugar industry on its very productivity? Has he not said again and again: “The sugar beet has no future, and its cultivation cannot be extended, because just a few hectares of sugar beets in each department[4] would be enough to supply all the consumers in France”? Thus, as he sees things, good consists in barrenness and scarcity; and evil, in fertility and abundance.

Do not La Presse, Le Commerce, and the majority of the daily newspapers publish one or more articles every morning to prove to the Chambers[5] and to the government that it is sound policy to legislate higher prices for everything through manipulation of the tariff? Do not the Chambers and the government every day comply with this injunction from the press? But tariffs raise the prices of things only because they reduce their supply in the market! Thus, the newspapers, the Chambers, and the government put the theory of scarcity into practice, and I was right to say that this theory is by far the most popular of all theories.

How does it happen that in the eyes of workers, of publicists, and of statesmen, abundance seems dangerous and scarcity advantageous? I propose to trace this illusion to its source.

We observe that a man acquires wealth in proportion as he puts his labor to better account, that is to say, as he sells at a higher price. He sells at a higher price in proportion to the shortage, the scarcity, of the type of commodity produced by his labor. We conclude from this that, at least so far as he is concerned, scarcity enriches him. Applying this mode of reasoning successively to all workers, we deduce from it the theory of scarcity. Thereupon we proceed to put the theory into practice, and, in order to favor all producers, we artificially raise prices and cause a scarcity of all goods by restrictive and protectionist measures, the elimination of machinery, and other analogous means.

The same holds true of abundance. We observe that, when a product is plentiful, it sells at a low price; thus, the producer earns less. If all the producers are in this plight, they are all poverty-stricken; hence, it is abundance that ruins society. And, as every person holding a theory seeks to put it into practice, one sees in many countries the laws of man warring against the abundance of things.

This sophism, phrased as a generalization, would perhaps make little impression; but, when applied to a particular set of facts—to this or that industry or to a given class of producers—it is extremely specious, and this is easily explained. It constitutes a syllogism which, although not false, is incomplete. Now, what is true in a syllogism is always and necessarily present to the mind. But what is incomplete is a negative quantity, a missing element that it is quite possible and even very easy not to take into account.

Man produces in order to consume. He is at once both producer and consumer. The argument that I have just set forth considers him only from the first of these points of view. From the second, the argument would lead to an opposite conclusion. Could we not say, in fact:

The consumer becomes richer in proportion as he buys everything more cheaply; he buys things more cheaply in proportion as they are abundant; hence, abundance enriches him; and this argument, extended to all consumers, would lead to the theory of abundance!

It is an imperfect understanding of the concept of exchange that produces these illusions. If we analyze the nature of our self-interest, we realize clearly that it is double. As sellers, we are interested in high prices, and, consequently, in scarcity; as buyers, we are interested in low prices, or, what amounts to the same thing, in an abundance of goods. We cannot, then, base our argument on one or the other of these two aspects of self-interest without determining beforehand which of the two coincides with and is identifiable with the general and permanent interest of the human race.

If man were a solitary animal, if he worked solely for himself, if he consumed directly the fruits of his labor—in short, if he did not engage in exchange—the theory of scarcity could never have been introduced into the world. It would be all too evident, in that case, that abundance would be advantageous for him, whatever its source, whether he owed it to his industriousness, to the ingenious tools and powerful machines that he had invented, to the fertility of the soil, to the liberality of Nature, or even to a mysterious invasion of goods that the tide had carried from abroad and left on the shore. No solitary man would ever conclude that, in order to make sure that his own labor had something to occupy it, he should break the tools that save him labor, neutralize the fertility of the soil, or return to the sea the goods it may have brought him. He would easily understand that labor is not an end in itself, but a means, and that it would be absurd to reject the end for fear of doing injury to the means. He would understand, too, that if he devotes two hours of the day to providing for his needs, any circumstance (machinery, the fertility of the soil, a gratuitous gift, no matter what) that saves him an hour of this labor, so long as the product is as great, puts that hour at his disposal, and that he can devote it to improving his well-being. He would understand, in short, that a saving in labor is nothing else than progress.

But exchange hampers our view of so simple a truth. In society, with the division of labor that it entails, the production and the consumption of an object are not performed by the same individual. Each person comes to regard his labor no longer as a means, but as an end. Exchange creates, in relation to each object, two interests, that of its producer and that of its consumer; and these two interests are always directly opposed to each other.

It is essential to analyze them and to study their nature.

Take the case of any producer. In what does his immediate self-interest consist? It consists in two things: (1) that the smallest possible number of persons engage in the same kind of labor as he; and (2) that the greatest possible number of persons be in quest of the product of his labor. Political economy expresses this more succinctly in these terms: that the supply be very limited, and the demand very extensive; in still other terms: limited competition, and unlimited market.

In what does the immediate self-interest of the consumer consist? That the supply of the product he wants be extensive, and the demand limited.

Since these two interests are mutually incompatible, one of them must necessarily coincide with the social or general interest, and the other must be hostile to it.

But which one should legislation favor, as being the expression of the public weal—if, indeed, it should favor either one of them?

To know this, it suffices to discover what would happen if the secret desires of men were fulfilled.

In so far as we are producers, it must be admitted, each of us has hopes that are antisocial. Are we vineyardists? We should be little displeased if all the vines in the world save ours were blighted by frost: this is the theory of scarcity. Are we the owners of ironworks? We want no other iron to be on the market but our own, whatever may be the public need for it, precisely because this need, keenly felt and incompletely satisfied, brings us a high price: this too is the theory of scarcity. Are we farmers? We say, with M. Bugeaud: Let bread be costly, that is to say, scarce, and the farmers will prosper: this is still the theory of scarcity.

Are we physicians? We cannot blind ourselves to the fact that certain physical improvements, such as better public sanitation, the development of such moral virtues as moderation and temperance, the progress of knowledge to the point at which everyone can take care of his own health, and the discovery of certain simple, easily applied remedies, would be just so many deadly blows struck at our profession. In so far as we are physicians, our secret wishes are antisocial. I do not mean to say that physicians actually give expression to such wishes. I like to believe that they would welcome with joy the discovery of a universal cure; but it would not be as physicians, but as men and as Christians that they would yield to such an impulse: by a laudable act of self-abnegation, they would take the point of view of the consumer. But in so far as the physician practices a profession, in so far as he owes to that profession his well-being, his prestige, and even the means of supporting his family, it is impossible for his desires—or, if you will, his interests—not to be antisocial.

Do we make cotton textiles? We wish to sell them at the price that is most advantageous for us. We should heartily approve the proscription of all rival manufacturers; and though we do not dare to express this wish publicly or to seek its full realization with any likelihood of success, we nevertheless attain it to a certain extent by roundabout means: for example, by excluding foreign textiles, so as to diminish the supply, and thereby to produce, by the use of force and to our profit, a scarcity of clothing.

In the same way, we could make a survey of all industries, and we should always find that producers, as such, have antisocial attitudes. “The merchant,” says Montaigne,[6] “prospers only by the extravagance of youth; the farmer, by the high cost of grain; the architect, by the decay of houses; officers of justice, by men’s lawsuits and quarrels. Even the ministers of religion owe the honor and practice of their high calling to our death and our vices. No physician takes pleasure in the good health of even his friends; no soldier, in the peace of his country; and so it goes for the rest.”

It follows that, if the secret wishes of each producer were realized, the world would speedily retrogress toward barbarism. The sail would take the place of steam, the oar would replace the sail, and it in turn would have to yield to the wagon, the latter to the mule, and the mule to the packman. Wool would ban cotton, cotton would ban wool, and so on, until the scarcity of all things made man himself disappear from the face of the earth.

Suppose for a moment that legislative power and executive authority were put at the disposal of the Mimerel Committee,[7] and that each of the members of that association had the right to introduce and enact a favorite law. Is it very hard to imagine what sort of industrial code the public would be subjected to?

If we now turn to consider the immediate self-interest of the consumer, we shall find that it is in perfect harmony with the general interest, i.e., with what the well-being of mankind requires. When the buyer goes to the market, he wants to find it abundantly supplied. He wants the seasons to be propitious for all the crops; more and more wonderful inventions to bring a greater number of products and satisfactions within his reach; time and labor to be saved; distances to be wiped out; the spirit of peace and justice to permit lessening the burden of taxes; and tariff walls of every sort to fall. In all these respects, the immediate self-interest of the consumer follows a line parallel to that of the public interest. He may extend his secret wishes to fantastic or absurd lengths; yet they will not cease to be in conformity with the interests of his fellow man. He may wish that food and shelter, roof and hearth, education and morality, security and peace, strength and health, all be his without effort, without toil, and without limit, like the dust of the roads, the water of the stream, the air that surrounds us, and the sunlight that bathes us; and yet the realization of these wishes would in no way conflict with the good of society.

Perhaps people will say that, if these wishes were granted, the producer’s labor would be more and more limited, and finally would cease for want of anything to occupy it. But why? Because, in this extreme hypothetical case, all imaginable wants and desires would be fully satisfied. Man, like the Almighty, would create all things by a simple act of volition. Will someone tell me what reason there would be, on this hypothesis, to deplore the end of industrial production?

I referred just now to an imaginary legislative assembly composed of businessmen, in which each member would have the power to enact a law expressing his secret wish in his capacity as a producer; and I said that the laws emanating from such an assembly would create a system of monopoly and put into practice the theory of scarcity.

In the same way, a Chamber of Deputies in which each member considered solely his immediate self-interest as a consumer would end by creating a system of free trade, repealing all restrictive laws, and removing all man-made commercial barriers—in short, by putting into practice the theory of abundance.

Hence, it follows that to consult solely the immediate self-interest of the producer is to have regard for an antisocial interest; whereas to consider as fundamental solely the immediate self-interest of the consumer is to take the general interest as the foundation of social policy.

Allow me to emphasize this point, at the risk of repeating myself.

There is a fundamental antagonism between the seller and the buyer.

The former wants the goods on the market to be scarce, in short supply, and expensive.

The latter wants them abundant, in plentiful supply, and cheap.

Our laws, which should at least be neutral, take the side of the seller against the buyer, of the producer against the consumer, of high prices against low prices, of scarcity against abundance.

They operate, if not intentionally, at least logically, on the assumption that a nation is rich when it is lacking in everything.

For they say it is the producer who must be favored, by being assured a good market for his product. To achieve this end, it is necessary to raise its price; to raise its price, it is necessary to limit the supply; and to limit the supply is to create scarcity.

Just suppose that, at the present moment, when these laws are in full force, a complete inventory were taken, not in terms of monetary value, but in terms of weight, size, volume, and quantity, of all the objects existing in France that are capable of satisfying the wants and tastes of its people—meat, cloth, fuel, wheat, colonial products, etc.

Suppose further that the following day all barriers to the importation of foreign goods into France were removed.

Finally, suppose that, in order to determine the consequences of this reform, a second inventory is taken three months later.

Is it not true that there will be in France more wheat, livestock, cloth, linen, iron, coal, sugar, etc., at the time of the second inventory than at the time of the first?

This is so true that our protective tariffs have no other goal than to prevent us from importing all these things, to limit their supply, to forestall a decline in their prices, and to prevent their abundance.

Now, are we to believe that the people are better fed under the laws that prevail at present, because there is less bread, meat, and sugar in the country? Are they better clad, because there is less linen and woolen cloth? Are their houses better heated, because there is less coal? Is their labor made easier, because there is less iron and copper, or because there are fewer tools and machines?

But, you say, if foreigners flood us with their products, they will carry off our money!

Well, what difference does that make? Men are not fed on cash, they do not clothe themselves with gold, nor do they heat their houses with silver. What difference does it make whether there is more or less money in the country, if there is more bread in the cupboard, more meat in the larder, more clothing in the wardrobe, and more wood in the woodshed?

Restrictive laws always present us with the same dilemma.

Either we admit that they produce scarcity, or we do not admit it.

If we do admit it, we thereby confess that they inflict upon the people all the harm that they can do. If we do not admit it, then we deny that they limit the supply of goods and raise their prices, and consequently we deny that they favor the producer.

Such laws are either injurious or ineffective. They cannot be useful.

[1] [Pierre Laurent Barthélemy, Comte de Saint-Cricq, member of the Chamber of Deputies, Minister of Commerce from January 4, 1828 to August 8, 1829, and later a Peer of France.—Translator.]

[2] [T. R. Bugeaud de la Piconnerie (1784–1849), known chiefly as a military leader. He was also a member of the Chamber of Deputies, was interested in agriculture, and endorsed protectionist principles.—Translator.]

[3] [Antoine Maurice Appolinaire, Comte d’Argout (1782–1858), administrator and fiscal specialist, Governor of the Bank of France. —Translator.]

[4] [A hectare is 2.471 acres. A department is the largest administrative subdivision of France, averaging about 3,000 square miles. —Translator.]

[5] [The legislature of France, comprising the Chamber of Peers and the Chamber of Deputies. —Translator.]

[6] [Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), Earned humanistic essayist of the Renaissance. —Translator.]

[7] [A businessmen’s association headed by P. A. H. Mimerel de Roubaix (1786–1871), a textile manufacturer. —Translator.]

To Free or Freeze,

That is the Question

Leonard E. Read

1972

To

The World’s Most Important Person

1 • HOW LOOSE THE TALK

Though his beginnings be but poor and low, Thank God, a man can grow!

—Florence Earle Coates

How much is really known about political economy, the principal subject of our concern? Many proclaim their expertise, but I have long contended that no one has more than scratched the surface.

Assume for the moment that my skepticism is warranted. In this case, the first step toward an improved understanding would be an acknowledgment of meager knowledge, for it is axiomatic that know-it-all-ness paralyzes the learning process. What could be worse, more self-defeating, than a massive ignorance of political economy mistaken for a first-rate knowledge!

Is there, perhaps, a yardstick that can be used to gauge in a rough sort of way the understanding that attends a particular subject, discipline, specialization? Reflect on this: In those matters where opinions vary wildly and many persons presume to speak authoritatively—each claiming the last word—proficiency is at a minimum. This is to suggest that we can estimate how limited the knowledge by observing how loose the talk.

Few of us venture authoritative opinions about astronomy, atomic energy, computer design, crude oil refinement, metallurgy, hybridization, aerodynamics, electronics, voice transmission, pasteurization, combustion, and countless other specializations. We may infer that there is indeed expertise in these areas because there is a minimum of loose talk; most of us know we do not know.

Now shift to a subject on which there is much loose talk, many speaking as experts: cures for physical and mental ills. We hold strong, diverse opinions as to what kills and what saves. It is my guess that more than 99 per cent of all therapy is administered by other than professional practitioners—everything from midwifery, to home remedies, to countless patent medicines, to voodoo. The list is endless. While there have been striking advances in the various types of therapy, the professionals in this field have been changing their minds ever since Hippocrates. And the few who have my confidence are those who confess to knowing very little about Creation’s miraculous human being.

Individual human therapy is one problem; social therapy is that problem compounded. Yet, in what other area can one find so many “experts,” so much dogmatism, the loose talk so flagrant? Leave aside every Tom, Dick, and Harry who thinks he has all the answers, and consider the professionals—sociologists, economists, political scientists; they are at sixes and sevens. In no other field is there such a babble of tongues. So, according to my yardstick, the subject of political economy is to be approached only after a confession of minuscule knowledge, a frank acknowledgment that we have little more than scratched the surface.

Inasmuch as an M.D. knows very little about any individual, including himself, it seems improbable that any person knows very much about millions of diverse, varied persons, all unlike and unequal in every significant respect. Thus it is that all attempts at a planned society, be they for two dozen or two hundred million persons, fall in the category of pipe dreams. Man can no more plan the good society than he can intelligently plan the life of another human being. How can anyone logically expect to shape the lives of others beneficially when, in all honesty, the shaping of one’s own life is so far from perfection! In other words, one’s very willingness to manage society should be proof enough that he is unqualified.

Where then does this leave us? What recourse do we have? There is one unequivocal answer and only one: freedom! That is, allow everyone to go his own way, whatever it is, so long as he does not infringe upon the lives of others. This is a nonprescriptive social philosophy, a way of life for all of us and planned for all by not a single one of us: Creation freely manifesting itself through each human being! As Karl Jaspers phrases it, “God works through the free decisions of individuals.”[1]

Very well! Suppose we have agreed to reject all coercive social planning; now what do I mean by claiming that not one of us has much more than scratched the surface? When we know enough to shun collective “solutions,” what further knowledge do we need? My answer: we need a more adequate understanding of the case for freedom and a more competent means of explaining it. Actually, we never will really know freedom! The best we can do—and do not discount this—is to reach further and further in the direction of the unreachable.

. . . we do not possess knowledge or wisdom—which is the end of philosophical inquiry; and moreover . . . not only do we not possess it at the moment. . . but . . . we cannot in fact have it . . . we are dealing with a perpetual “not yet.”[2]

Man’s Purpose Is to Grow

If this sounds discouraging, at least it is consonant with human destiny: we are here to grow, to gain in knowledge and wisdom; it is not expected that any of us is now or ever will be all-knowing, all-wise. Were we able to understand and explain how freedom works its wonders, we would, by the same token, be able to understand and explain Creation.

Would not freeing human energy, rather than freezing it, take us into some unpredictable wonderland? Yes, of course it would. In store for humanity would be a situation as unimaginable to us as the American phenomenon would have been to cave dwellers. Who am I or anyone else to say when or at what point evolution is to be arrested, Creation’s wonders halted!

Here is the common fault: Being against socialism or the planned economy convinces most people that they have arrived; that there is no more to it; growing is no longer a requirement. Nothing better illustrates this shortsightedness than an experience here at FEE more than twenty years ago. In the early days we had only semi-monthly releases of small pamphlets—the In Brief series. It was suggested to me that we should slow up on our mailings because there were only two or three articles in the barrel and no new manuscripts in sight. In other words, we were nearing a productive dead end; what more is there to do! Even then I sensed that we had not scratched the surface in presenting the freedom philosophy, so we mailed what we had on hand as soon as possible. Not only has our barrel never emptied but ideas and manuscripts have flowed into it at a constantly accelerating rate!

Twenty some years ago we had a few books to recommend. We now have more than a hundred titles ranging all the way from Hazlitt’s easy-to-read Economics In One Lesson to such profound tomes as Mises’ Human Action. Even more impressive, we have in these intervening years presented close to 3,000 essays, with the quality improving annually.

True, from the ranks have emerged a few who stand head and shoulders above the rest of us, but I still insist that neither they nor we have more than scratched the surface! Nor will anyone ever—but each of us can grow!

To my personal experience: This is my sixteenth book, the ninth in the past eight years. The chapters which follow were written during 1971, a year, which on the surface, at least, witnessed the most rapid abandonment of the free society in American history. What possible good can come from this adversity? Is there not always something good in everything bad if we can but discern it? I side with the Roman, Horace, who wrote more than two thousand years ago:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

This trend toward socialism should have the effect of waking us, of stimulating the cortical faculties, instead of bringing resignation as it does in so many cases.

Let me share what may be the most important idea in this book. As I finished writing each of these 28 essays, I was barren of an idea for the next one. As far as I could see all was done—I stared into a void. But I have a faith, founded on experience, that if I keep staring—and wondering—then some idea in the seeming void will come to mind. And, so far, I have found no reason to change my faith. If growth be every man’s destiny, then a solid faith in freedom will serve anyone.

* * *

Some of these chapters have appeared in our monthly study journal, The Freeman, or in Notes from FEE, and some have been elsewhere published or reprinted. Each was written as an essay, that is, independently and with no idea of combining them into a book. Yet, there is a central theme: freedom! And the purpose of this book is to share my latest attempts at scratching the surface.

[1] See Way To Wisdom by Karl Jaspers (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968), p. 72.

[2] See Leisure the Basis of Culture by Joseph Pieper. (New York: Pantheon Books, Inc., 1961), p. 142.

2 • WHEN RATIONING COMES[*]

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

All habits gather, by unseen degrees,

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

—Dryden

Perhaps the most effective way to begin a commentary on the rapidly deteriorating plight of the individual in our society is to trace present policies to their logical conclusion. For unless there be general awareness of the utter disaster that lies ahead, assuming no change in direction, we will continue merrily along to a complete loss of freedom. National doom, as some would say, but, more important, I believe, self-destruction of the individual.

The course we are on must lead inevitably to rationing!

Such a prognosis does not frighten many people these days. Americans do not appear upset by the prospect, and even the people most strictly rationed—doubtless the Russians, where the rule is to obey or lose your life—no more resent rationing than they regret the lack of automobiles. Why? These are conditions of life into which they were born and to which they have grown accustomed. Rationing is no more deplored by Russians than are speed limits by Americans.

Why are Americans so little disturbed by the threat of rationing? Partly because we have had so little experience with this type of repressive law, but mostly because rationing laws have rarely been obeyed or enforced here. There was some rationing during WW I and much more during WW II under OPA. Withal, we experienced little pain. Obedience, such as existed, was cushioned by the patriotic fervor that attends some wars. I repeat, rationing has worked slight hardship because it was never made “to work” in the U.S.A. As with all nonsensical law—prohibition, for instance—rationing has resulted in mass “underground” movements. Black markets thrived. And otherwise first-rate citizens by the millions became law breakers, schemers, liars, and looked upon their departures from rectitude with approval and humor—as an outguessing game!

Hidden Costs of Intervention

Painless, yes; costless, no! The long run cost would be far less had we obeyed and suffered the pain of these politico-economic outrages. Had we obeyed, we would now despise and fear rationing and would do all in our power to avoid a recurrence of this ultimate in authoritarianism. We chose the painless but costly course: a lowering of the exemplary standards. Hardly any virtue—not even honesty—remained sacred. And this is disastrous: to abandon everything sacred is to forego the possibilities of a society in which individuals thrive best.

People who have no fear of rationing—the vast majority—can be said to lack a politico-economic turn of mind. Obviously, such persons cannot relate what they do not understand to that which has not happened. Only a sharp and shocking contrast could bring this horror acutely to their appreciation.

Let us imagine an instant transplant of a typical American family from Omaha to Omsk—take them from where they are and from what they are accustomed to and drop them suddenly into that authoritarian situation of which rationing is a logical and inevitable part. The first order of business would be to secure food. Mother would have no phone; but that would not matter, for there are no deliveries. She is without a car to go shopping; cars are rationed to commissars and their aides. No taxies! So she walks to a government store and lines up at the end of a queue. At long last, it’s her turn. What are the choices? She can either accept or refuse the rationed items and in the quantities set by government. What a contrast from yesterday in the U.S.A.! Mother, in that case, would understand what rationing means. Shocking, to say the least.

No need to labor the point. Father would experience the same thing, as would the children. For anyone who can read the language of economic cause and effect, rationing is failure on parade!

Why are most goods and services rationed in Russia? Because the Russian economy is a failure; it is not productive. Why will goods and services be similarly rationed in the U.S.A. if we continue the present course? For precisely the same reason that the last barrel of water is rationed on a ship lost at sea: short supply, that is, not enough to go around. Socialism—the planned economy and welfare state—is woefully lacking in productivity; it results in scarcity. When we in the U.S.A. substitute socialism for free market practices to the extent the Russians have, our failure will match theirs; productivity will be no greater here than there. There won’t be enough to go around.

The attempted rebuttal runs thus: Americans will no more heed rationing regulations in the future than they have in the past. No government can ever do this to us—we think! Such optimistic forecasting is naive. When the real crunch comes there will be no choice.

Americans could flout rationing in the past and get away with it because there was private ownership. Sugar or gasoline or whatever was always obtainable for some black market price. Such markets, however, presuppose something more than a barrel of water for a lot of thirsty people; they presuppose each having something of his own to trade!

When and if real scarcity obtains in our country, as in Russia, rationing will be made “to work.” There will be no alternative except to abandon the entire socialistic rigmarole. Otherwise, any political hierarchy too tenderhearted to use the required violence to enforce rationing will be run out of office by those who are indifferent to human life. The worst, as Hayek says, will get to the top.[1] Given real scarcity, it has to be this way.

Antecedents to Rationing

Why do people accept rationing? Those who envision its debilitating effect on individuals may wish to explore its antecedents in sequential order. For causes cannot be removed until they are known, which is to say that rationing is inevitable unless we know its derivation.

Rationing is the effect of a cause but that cause is the effect of a prior cause, and so on. What then is the cause that immediately precedes rationing? Scarcity, as already suggested!

Now, scarcity is one of the facts of nature, in the sense that life is always a struggle. Largely by trial and error, some men at some times and in some parts of the globe have hit upon specialization and trade, voluntary cooperation in market fashion, to make the best possible use of scarce resources. In other words, they have developed the principles and practices of private ownership and free trade, with government limited to keeping the peace—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy: freedom!

But not all men subjected to the competition of the market are content with the results. And their efforts to bypass the market, or do away with it, result inevitably in what I would call a contrived scarcity. This is what we witness in Russia and will experience here short of a turnabout. This kind of scarcity emerges from coercive interventions in the market: state ownership and control of the means as well as the results of production. Socialism!

Contrived scarcity, the cause of rationing, is itself an effect of still another cause. What is its immediate antecedent, that is, what are the components of coercive intervention? Wage, price, production, and exchange controls!

A few samples will suffice to make my point. Import embargoes and their variants, quotas and tariffs, make for scarcity. Impose embargoes on all exchange, domestic as well as foreign, and everyone, except the few who could survive by foraging, would perish. Contrived scarcity!

Minimum wage laws and arbitrary labor union wage rates make for unemployment and, thus, lower production. More contrived scarcity!

Paying farmers not to farm is an instance of production control—a political contribution to scarcity.

Medicare, where government, not the patients, pay the ever-increasing prices, is already making for a scarcity of hospital beds and, as socialized medicine progresses, there will be a scarcity of doctors.[2]

These and countless other political interventions are a form of price control—contrived scarcity driving prices upward. Sooner or later, as this trend becomes intolerable, government will “come to the rescue” with the opposite and generally accepted concept of price controls—limiting prices, that is, holding them down. Rent control falls in this latter category. Merely observe, whether such controls are invoked in France, Sweden, or New York City, that a housing scarcity follows.[3]

This form of price control can no longer be taken lightly. Congress has given the President powers to invoke these counteracting controls at his discretion. Already, threats of such imposition have been directed at certain “key” industries. As prices continue to soar, we can expect the application of controls to all aspects of the economy. So long as present trends prevail, there is no political alternative.

Controls are invoked to cope with the constantly rising prices of which consumers complain. What, it may be asked, brings on these inordinate prices? Seeking the cause which is pushing all prices upward we come to the next antecedent, inflation.

Inflation is a dilution of the medium of exchange, an artificial expansion of the money supply. Inflation differs from counterfeiting in that it is legal and, also, it is an act of government rather than of individuals. But whether the money results from inflation or from counterfeiting, a dollar is a purchase order, and no one inquires into its source. A transaction involving counterfeit or inflation dollars is not an exchange of goods and services for goods and services but an exchange of paper money for goods and services. As the volume of paper money increases and as the quantity of goods and services decreases, everything else being equal, prices correspondingly rise. The equation is simple: Assume goods and services to be what they are now. Double the amount of money and prices will be twice as high.

However, inflation itself is the effect of a cause. What is its antecedent? The answer: excessive governmental expenditures!

Whenever governmental expenditures rise beyond the point where it is no longer politically expedient to defray them by direct tax levies, governments have only two choices: (1) go into nonrepayable debt or (2) inflate the money supply. The latter, a means of siphoning personal savings into the coffers of government, is the better political expedient because it is less understood and, thus, not so much opposed. Added to the billions collected by direct tax levies are these additional billions of expropriated private property. This is how overextended governments “balance” their budgets. Testimony to the general awareness that inflation depletes private savings is the attempt by millions of citizens “to hedge against inflation.”

Who Drives Government Out of Bounds?

Overextended government is the weightiest of all the causes of scarcity for it lies at the very root of the formidable and dreaded rationing that looms ahead. Government doing the wrong things is the origin of all the aforementioned effects. Does out-of-bounds government, in turn, have a causal antecedent? If so, it cannot be stated with any more precision than a reference to the vagaries of human nature! Why is it that human beings behave as they do?

As this is written, I read of many distinguished men, reputedly free enterprisers to the core, who are pleading for Federal aid to bail out their ailing industry or community, or to compensate them for losses inflicted by droughts, or whatever. It seems that “private enterprisers” in trouble are, with few exceptions, as prone to turn to government as the socialists who revel in utopian dreams!

The tendency of those who say they favor private enterprise and related institutions is to blame socialists, communists, liberals, welfare staters, and the like for our deteriorating situation. Yet, when the chips are down and the going gets tough, the critics can hardly be distinguished from those they criticize. The former run to the Federal trough and turn the U.S.A. toward socialism as much as the latter. Such observations pronounce a harsh but humble verdict: we are well advised to look to ourselves as a major part of the problem. Why do we behave this way? Doubtless, there are more explanations than anyone knows, but here are a few suspected reasons.

• The tendency to satisfy desires along the lines of least resistance, regardless of where such a course leads; in other words, a breakdown or failure of moral discipline.

• An inability to reason from cause to consequence, from means to ends.

• A failure to understand that government is essentially organized force, the uses of which are limited at best; in brief, no discernment as to what is or is not the appropriate role of government.

• The naive assumption that government has funds of its own—a bottomless pot of gold—available for the asking.

• The notion that feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others is not robbery if it is legalized or has political sanction.

• The wishful thinking that others have a moral obligation to cover our mistakes and satisfy our wants; that wishes are rights.

• A faith in socialism because the alternative is unknown, which is to say, an ignorance of the miracles that are wrought by men functioning freely in the market.

• And then there is the tug of tradition, the heritage of political authoritarianism which with rare and brief exceptions, has featured human existence since the dawn of social organization. It is the ageless urge for security sought from a king; it is the reluctance to take the risks of self-responsibility, the refusal to become one’s own man.

Perhaps there is nothing better we can do about the current dilemma than for each to openly acknowledge: “The fault is mine.” For who among us adequately understands and can competently explain the freedom way of life we would uphold. No one!

I have tried here to pose the likelihood of rationing if we continue on the present course, and then to examine the cause of each effect—going backwards, so to speak, from where we now are. Admittedly, cause and effect are not always as precisely ordered as I have made them out to be; they are confusingly intertwined at times. But generally they follow in this sequence: (1) the vagaries of human nature ranging from “I want to be king” to “I want a king,” (2) excessive government, (3) inflation, (4) controls, (5) scarcity, and (6) rationing with its stifling of individual growth and creativity, its smothering of the human spirit.

A recognition of where the present course leads should be enough to bring about a change in course, to do away with these numerous layers of intervention, to put government in its proper place, and to restore a reliance on the free market. Men free to produce and trade as they choose need not rely on rations for subsistence.

[*] This appeared in The Freeman, July, 1971. Subsequent events appear, so far, to confirm what must happen when embarked on a statist course.

[1] See “Why the Worst Get on Top,” in The Road to Serfdom by F. A. Hayek (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967), pp. 134–152.

[2] See “Why I Left England” by Dr. Edward L. McNeil. The Freeman, May, 1971.

[3] For an enlightening study of rent control and its effects in France, see “No Vacancies” by Bertrand de Jouvenel, Essays on Liberty, Vol. 1, p. 146. (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1952), p. 146.

3 • TO EXECUTE A 180[*]

I feel and seek the light I cannot see.

—Coleridge

We were flying north, destination Calgary. Near the Canadian border was an enormous “front.” As our Captain ventured into it, the DC-6 bounced around as would a canoe on a storm-tossed sea. To go further would spell disaster, so the Captain executed a “180,” returning to the airport from which we departed. Saved!

We are now headed into an economic “front.” Wage, price, and other controls are a fact; they surround us. Unless we abandon these, rationing lies ahead and beyond that the total state—which spells disaster. How, in heaven’s name, can we execute a “180”? What is the formula?

At the start, we must recognize that our wrong heading reflects a blind rejection of the free society. There is an abysmal lack of understanding of free market, private ownership, limited government concepts, imperatives, potentialities—not only among politicians but among leaders in business, the professions, and all walks of life. As actors who can recite the lines and the lyrics with ease, many repeat the words of freedom without the slightest inkling of their meaning. Mimics! The unlearned piloting the unwary!

There is but one cure for ignorance: enlightenment! Lesser treatments, such as “selling the masses,” political activism, and the like, are an utter waste of time; as well try to bring daylight by cursing the darkness!

I have been claiming for years that enlightenment has precisely the same effect on ignorance as light has on darkness. Find out how to dispel darkness and we have a clue as to how the world may be rid of ignorance.

Darkness and ignorance have been used interchangeably since the dawn of language. So have light and enlightenment. “I am come a light into the world” meant an enlightenment, not a GE light bulb. What light does to darkness, enlightenment does to ignorance. These are comparable phenomena and we can save ourselves considerable frustration by recognizing this fact.

Let There Be Light

At a recent Seminar, I was demonstrating for the hundredth time that ours is a learning rather than a selling problem. The lecture room is reduced to inky darkness. In my hand is an electric candle controlled by a rheostat. The light is turned down to a mere speck. My explanation:

“Let me first call your attention to the fact that every eye is on this wee candle. (Obviously, for there is nothing else to see.) Here is my challenge: Increase the light in this room by selling, marketing, or distributing this speck of light. You will agree that it cannot be done. What purpose then can this wee light serve? Possibly, it may be sufficient for one nearby to find and light his own candle, in which case the light in this room would be increased 100 per cent. This could go on to the point where every one of you might find and light his own candle. There would then be enough light by which to read a book, even to write one.

“What I now wish to demonstrate is that darkness has no resistance whatsoever to light. Observe how it sneaks out of the room as light is increased. (The candle’s light is gradually increased until at its brightest. Every face in the lecture room can be clearly seen—the darkness gone.) My point is that ignorance gives way to enlightenment precisely as darkness vanishes in the presence of light.”

As I spoke those words—and thought about them—a devilish doubt flashed into mind: Can enlightenment possibly rid the world of the enormous ignorance we witness on every hand? Am I not exaggerating the power of enlightenment? I must confess that my faith faltered, if only for a moment. But that fleeting doubt had a lesson to teach me.

I realize now that the doubt grew out of my own egotism, a fantastic overassessment of self: the absurd notion that I and others like me possess an adequate enlightenment. Because ignorance is not giving way to our “brilliance,” I began to suspect that enlightenment might not be the remedy for ignorance.

What, in fact, is my status? Just how brilliant am I? To what can my wisdom be compared? To that candle when its light is turned down to a mere speck! That’s how brilliant I am—no more!

A Matter of Perspective

Look at this matter realistically. The tallest building on earth towers above its neighbors: the dock sheds on the Hudson. But compare their respective distances from the sun and the difference is negligible. Socrates stood head and shoulders above most men of his day or any other time; however, he took no note of the infinitesimal distinction between himself and the mill run of us. Rather, he compared the little he knew to the infinite unknown and declared, “I know nothing.” The doubt that entered my mind for a moment is one that many others have found hard to shake. But it never bothered Socrates, for the simple reason that he assessed his own enlightenment in proper perspective. He was not distracted by his superiority over anyone else, because he was attracted by all there is to learn. His humble acknowledgment is the foundation of wisdom, and it points the way to such enlightenment as is within our powers.

Enlightenment alone is the remedy for all the ignorance there is. If we would judge how enlightened we are in the freedom philosophy, we need only observe how little is known of it. Perhaps you and I know more than the vast majority; but this is to proclaim that we know just a little more than nothing at all—faint praise, indeed! The fact is that no one of us has more than scratched the surface.

We who would execute “a 180” have in personal enlightenment the only rudder there is. And it depends on each of us whether he will use it to set himself on the right track.

The picture I have sketched is not as dismal as it first appears. Each of us who has done any homework at all can call to mind one person, or two, or perhaps several, who have made an about-face by reason of the minuscule understanding and expository qualities we have shared. We only need to step up our understanding—that’s all!

Furthermore, the vast ignorance about the principles of freedom enhances such enlightenment as there is precisely as darkness makes visible the least glimmer of light. That tiny speck of light from the wee candle can and is seen in a dark room. Every eye is on it. Bear in mind that we seldom take note of the sun in broad daylight. The significance of this? In the vast void, in the current lack of understanding, our tiny enlightenments will stand out more than ever before. As wage and price controls and other authoritarian devices are inflicted upon us—as things go from bad to worse—be prepared for more attention, for others seeking an audience.

Merely make certain that the eye is on growth—increasing enlightenment—not on the audience!

[*] Pronounced one eighty, meaning a turn of 180 degrees, to reverse one’s direction.

4 • THE CRYSTAL BALL FANTASY

God will not suffer man to have a knowledge of things to come; for if he had prescience of his prosperity, he would be careless, and if understanding of his adversity, he would be despairing and senseless.

—Augustine

I had been severely critical of what’s going on in our country. As the TV broadcast drew to a close, the interviewer asked, “Looking into your crystal ball, what do you see for the future?” My response: “I do not have a crystal ball and if I had one I could not read it—nor can anyone else!”

There is more than monetary inflation to plague us; there is also a flood of fortunetellers, soothsayers, tipsters, predictors, forecasters—those who attempt to size up the future by projecting present trends.

A noted physicist demonstrated the fallacy of this process: by extrapolating the increase in the number of scientists and of the total population in the first half of the twentieth century, we would, by the year 2000, have more scientists in the U.S.A. than people![1]

Imagine a predictor at the time of Christ. Observing the rate of increase in the number of pyramids during the previous 29 centuries, he predicted there would be X number in the year 1000. Suppose you had planned your construction industry on that kind of information! True, pyramid building continues even unto this day, but not of the Egyptian type. A pyramid is a monument to man’s pride at the expense of others; the Taj Mahal is a pyramid, as is Brasilia, Venezuela’s steel mill, the Gateway Arch, all Urban Renewal projects, and thousands of other economic monstrosities. But that ancient crystal ball gazer could not have forecast this change in the type of pyramids.

To gain an appreciation of how difficult it is to predict the future, merely observe how incompetent we are to report the past. No two historians agree; each sees the sketchy record through different peekholes. Try, for instance, to recall what you did last week and what went through your mind. Not very clear! But try to assess what went through your spouse’s mind, or your neighbor’s, or through the minds of millions unknown to you. Or their actions!

Even the record of current events is beclouded with misinformation. Public media reports are made by those whose sights may be no clearer than our own and are often bent to suit the reporter’s bias.

To what will the historian turn a thousand years hence to report on our times? The New York Times, perhaps? It is better indexed than other media! Much from this storehouse would be nothing more than reprintings of government handouts, hardly reliable data. And added to the inaccuracies of the source material will be the predilections of the various researchers. A distinguished historian explains why reporting the past is so varied and unreliable:

What is it that leads one historian to make, out of all the possible true affirmations about the given event, certain affirmations and not others? Why, the purpose he has in his mind will determine that. And so the purpose he has in mind will determine the precise meaning which he derives from the event. The event, itself, the facts, do not say anything, do not impose any meaning. It is the historian who speaks, who imposes meaning.

The historian has to judge the significance of the series of events from the one single performance, never to be repeated, and never, since the records are incomplete and imperfect, capable of being fully known or fully affirmed. Thus into the imagined facts and their meaning there enters the personal equation. The history of an event is never precisely the same thing to two different persons; and it is well known that every generation writes the same history in a new way, and puts upon it a new construction.[2]

I dwell on our difficulty in dealing with the past only to emphasize the impossibility of forecasting the “inevitable” future. Prediction that carries any meaning at all has to be modified by a great big “If.” For example:

If our money supply continues to expand as it has for the past 32 years—from $31 billion to $225 billion—it will reach $1.4 trillion by the year 2000!

If governmental take-over of the economy and society continues in the future at the pace it has since adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, the U.S.A. by the year 2000 will differ from Russia only in the words we use and the songs we sing.

Predictions—warnings, really—of this “if” variety could be expanded indefinitely. And this kind has a value: a challenge to correct the present. The past is prologue; the future’s prologue is now!

As we cannot read the past with confidence, or the future at all, no one can tell what’s in the making. We have but dim and shallow notions of what goes on in the minds of our contemporaries. For all anyone knows, the stage may be set for a complete turnabout during the next decade, or year, or month, or day. The law of action and reaction is always at work.

I once heard a golfer remark after sinking a 40-foot putt: “You have just witnessed a reaction to a perfect action.” Moral? Look to our actions now!

[1] For two excellent articles on this point, see “The Year 2000 and All That,” by Robert A. Nisbet, Commentary, June, 1968 and “The Theology of the Exponential Curve,” by Gary North, The Freeman, May, 1970.

[2] Professor Carl Becker, Cornell University, “What Are Historical Facts?” (1955) in Hans Meyerhoff (ed.), The Philosophy of History in Our Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), pp. 131–132.

5 • VOLUNTARY PARAMETERS

With all our most holy illusions knocked higher than Gilderoy’s kite, we have had a jolly good lesson, and it serves us jolly well right!

—Kipling

My object here is to examine and comment upon a statement made by the Secretary of the Treasury:

We are at the end of an era in our economic policy. It will be the disposition of the American people to have as few constraints as possible after the 90-day freeze period, and if we can get voluntary compliance now we can avoid stringent controls later. But it would be unwise to think we can go back to where we were before. American business and labor may have to get used to the idea of living within certain parameters.”[1]

First, what is a parameter within which we may have to live? The simplest definition to be found in the dictionary:

. . . a quantity or constant whose value varies with the circumstances of its application, as the radius line of a group of concentric circles, which varies with the circle under consideration.

There are only a few in the whole nation who even know what parameters are, let alone how to live within them. Why the use of such a strange word? I suspect it is used for precisely the same reason that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, some months earlier, borrowed and broadcast a British term, “incomes policy”: to lessen the shock effect. The same applies to the more recent references to a “Stabilization Board.”

To be open and above board about it, that is, to bluntly announce that we are in for wage and price controls and then rationing and that these mean an end to free market, private ownership practices would not set well with a substantial number of citizens. So, what is the political approach? To ease into the statism being prepared for us by employing terms so vague that hardly anyone knows what the intentions are. “Parameters” and “incomes policy” are perfect examples of this beating around the bush.

What are we to make of “voluntary compliance”? This is an absolute contradiction in terms. Put it this way: If you will not voluntarily jump out of the window, I shall take sterner measures to accomplish the same effect. Voluntary means something given or done by one’s own free choice, the exercise of free will. Compliance means just the opposite: acquiescence or giving in.

In the days to come, this means that you yourself will either freeze wages and prices—regardless of supply and demand and what you would freely choose to do in the circumstances—or you will be compelled to do so. Respond to the threat of force, or down comes the force upon you! Voluntary, instead of meaning an exercise of one’s own free will, turned around to mean that you are to behave according to somebody else’s arbitrary will!

“We are at the end of an era in our economic policy.” Most government officials believe we are, as do many businessmen, some columnists and so-called economists, and millions of others. Perhaps we are! But this verdict should not be glossed over and accepted lightly.

First, note that the antecedents of the rationing to come are the wage and price controls presently imposed. The antecedent of these controls is inflation brought on by excessive governmental expenditures and money issue—and these, in turn, caused by millions of misguided people looking to government for security, welfare, and prosperity.

Second, note that current official pronouncements make no mention of the above sequence of causes or the need for removing them. This merely means that the welfare state and its concomitant, the planned economy, is accepted and assumed as a fait accompli; the new order is here—the total state! Buy this, and we are, indeed, at the end of an era. Russia, China, Cuba, and others have beat us to it, of course, in this century. But the history of price-fixing extends back at least 46 centuries in Egypt, China, Athens, Rome, Britain, India, the colonial experience in America, to mention a few—always with the same sad report: the end of an era.[2]

“. . . it would be unwise to think we can go back to where we were before.” Was it unwise for England, following the Napoleonic Wars, to abandon mercantilism by repealing three-fourths of some 18,000 laws restricting production, exchange, and pricing? There followed the greatest outburst of creative energy and mass well-being ever known up to that time. On the contrary, the restrictive laws under which England is again falling would seem to be what are most unwise.

True, the ideal free economy has never existed anywhere. The nearest approximation has been in the U.S.A. Wisdom suggests that we regain what we have lost, doing everything within our power to head off any move to the contrary.

Economics, the study of how to mitigate the effects of scarcity, concerns the search for answers to what should be produced and in what amounts and whose satisfactions are to be served. The free market, featuring open competition and free entry, has the consumer as king. Each decides what he wants, in what quantities, and at what prices, where he shall work, how many hours, and at what wage. With free, unrestricted pricing as the guidelines, the free market is always working toward a balance of supply and demand. The free market works automatically and “shortages” and “surpluses” are not in its lexicon.

Abandon the free market, and not the consumer but the politician becomes king. In the “new era,” that king, rather than you and I, decides what shall be produced, what we shall have, in what quantities, and at what price. Can that be wise?

[1] See The New York Times, August 29, 1971, p. 1.

[2] See “Food Control During Forty-Six Centuries” by Mary G. Lacy in Essays On Liberty, Vol. 1, op. cit., p. 229.

6 • THE QUICK FREEZE

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

—Montesquieu

Appropriately enough, the term “quick freeze” had its origin with a fishing experience. Nearly six decades ago, Clarence Birdseye, a young scientist, joined a fishing expedition to Labrador. He would pull his catch through a hole cut in the thick arctic ice, and in the subfreezing air the fish were frozen before he could get them off the hook. Thawed and cooked weeks later, he discovered that there had been little loss in flavor or texture. Quick freeze, come upon quite inadvertently, was a new answer to the storage of numerous vegetables, meats, fish.[1]

Quick freeze is a technological step forward in the storage of eatables. But to freeze human endeavor—quickly or slowly, partially or completely—is a step backward from the production of things to be eaten. Storing food poses one set of problems, while coping with the scarcity of food—or clothes or shelter or whatever—poses another. These are not problems having similar solutions, even though some may treat them so.

The living fish is a mobile animal, wonderful to behold. Mobility—freedom of God-given faculties—is a prime feature of the ideal life be it fish or man. Freezing of either one is an act of immobilization. In the world of fish this is achieved by a drop in temperature, a death sentence; in the human world by a drop of the legislative hatchet, in effect, imprisonment. On August 15, 1971 a “freeze” was announced by the President of the United States. This really means, in spite of political jargon, a partial immobilization of the creative faculties—“We have had enough for the time being; stop here!”

The mobility of ideas and other forms of human energy is the very essence of their being. Creativity, on which all production depends, is a flowing, ever-moving force. It obeys its mobile nature or ceases to exist. But before creativity can be stopped altogether, it will turn to cheating, lying, law-breaking, and other forms of social error. Life and mobility are inseparable; to freeze the latter is to lessen the former.

Examples of Immobilization

If we contemplate the history of immobilization or freezing of human endeavor—a common tendency over the ages—the edict of August 15 should come as no surprise. However, current examples will suffice for our point. Let us begin with a freeze that nearly everyone regards as contemptible; next, one that even highly “educated” people think commendable; finally, a few immobilizations that fall between the “awful” and the “good.”

Recently, I made a round trip of 5,200 miles in one day for a business engagement. Mobility in dramatic form! A hundred people or so carrying out their aims peacefully. I did in a day what my grandfather could not have done in several months. Had our government imposed a “freeze” in his day, this mobility of mine would now be regarded as the figment of a flighty mind. But immobilization is upon us in a new form: hijacking! Talk about a quick freeze in the affairs of those thus victimized! What an immobilization of the free flowing of God-given faculties!

That’s the “awful.” Now for the “good”: teacher tenure. This is an upper-class example of partial freezing—an out-and-out thwarting of mobility. Appointment as a teacher followed by a creditable performance for a brief period, and tenure is granted: “permanent possession, as of an office or position.”

A job—teaching or whatever—is a realized opportunity. It is the merging of talents someone wants with talents someone else possesses. The talents wanted and those possessed are forever changing. Ideally, a job is an opportunity seized upon to the mutual advantage of employer and employee and should endure for the period their mutual interest is served, and no longer! Employer and employee are not mutually exclusive categories; indeed, each individual more often than not serves in both capacities at the same time: I work for someone else while there are those who work for me. In any event, the period of association should be determined by the duration of common interests, otherwise mobility is squelched.

The Urge for Security

Tenure amounts to immobilization, a partial freezing. When granted, a sign is hung on what otherwise would be an opportunity: “No vacancy.” It has been granted or taken for life and, thus, is no longer an opportunity for others. Tenure is but another of countless devices aimed at a security which, in reality, is unobtainable. “There is no security on this earth,” wisely observed Douglas MacArthur, “there is only opportunity.”

Look upon teaching or any other job for what it really is: a realized opportunity. Then attempt the mental gymnastic of fastening ownership on an opportunity. Might as well try to establish a personal proprietorship of “all this and heaven too.” Impossible! Yet, this is precisely what labor unions attempt: they claim job ownership when they use violence or the threat thereof to keep others from taking the opportunities they have chosen to vacate. This, of course, is but the educational system’s tenure proposition applied to labor union membership. This opportunity is mine, all mine! “Educators” showing unions the way! Immobilization on the grand scale! The freeze!

True, there should be equal opportunity for all—a fair field and no favor. But for anyone—a teacher or whoever—to claim an ownership of free access is grossly at odds with fact and logic. Ownership is control. And that which is owned by one is not available willy nilly to others. Ownership and free access are in two distinctly different conceptual categories.

When an employer controls an employee’s life and energies, we quite properly refer to such control as slavery or bondage or servitude. It is no less slavery when an employee or an association of employees denies an employer’s freedom to associate with whom he chooses or otherwise restricts his exchanges for whom or for what he wishes. It is just as immoral and uneconomic and anti-freedom for employees to freeze the God-given talents of employers as for employers to freeze the creativity of employees. There is not one whit of difference.

Protectionism Takes Many Forms

The propensity to immobilize creativity is not a weakness exclusive to labor unions and educational institutions. I cannot think of an occupational category that is exempt, be it medicine, architecture, the legal profession, engineering, banking, or whatever. It is as much in evidence in the business world as anywhere else. The tariff and all other forms of protectionism are nothing but ownership claims to exchanges. There is no distinction, none whatsoever, between the exchanges of services—jobs—and the exchanges of goods or things. The latter, as the former, when allowed, are but realized opportunities. As Bastiat wrote, freedom in transactions is an absolute principle. To inhibit this freedom, except in illicit traffic, is to deaden human mobility and thus to lessen life. It is to do to humanity what we do to fish—freeze!

All history fairly reeks with persons, groups, nations, often in violent and deadly combat, immobilizing the God-given faculties of competitors. The planned economy is the modern version of this ancient vice. In the final analysis, these efforts are a manifestation of envy,[2] an attempt at a pseudo-superiority; getting on top by holding others under; placement of oneself in the vanguard by the enforced retardation of other human beings! Competition and free entry are looked upon as evil things when, in fact, they are prime economic boons to mankind.

Denying Our Heritage

The most pronounced break with this bleak historical record occurred in the U.S.A. Here was an enlightenment that released creative human energy on a scale never before realized or since surpassed! But during the past six or seven decades, and at an ever-increasing pace, we Americans have been returning to an old-world mythology, a politico-economic medievalism. It seems that we have all but forgotten our own experiences. Most of us have learned little from history.

The freeze of August 15, and the subsequent “phases,” with unbelievable applause and approval, is an up-to-date, clear-cut motion picture of the condition into which we are lapsing. To stop inflation is the excuse. However sincerely this fallacy is believed, the freezing of prices can only add to the woes inflation inflicts. Otherwise, price freezing is unrelated to inflation.

Doubtless, the fallacy has its origin in thinking of inflation as a rise in prices. Inflation is, instead, a dilution of the money supply, nothing else. A rise in prices is one of the inevitable consequences of dilution. If by legislative fiat all prices were reduced to zero, the money supply would not be reduced one dollar. Price freezing is another of those utterly futile attempts to correct an evil by tampering with its effects. Like trying to remedy robbery by decreeing that the thefts amount to nothing—that no one is victimized!

In a highly specialized economy, exchanges depend on a circulating medium possessing integrity. Dilution of the medium—inflation—destroys the medium’s integrity. When the medium becomes worthless, exchanges on which survival depends can be effected only by barter, a primitive device that can support no more than a primitive way of life. Try to exchange an airplane ride for so many geese or swap lectures for an automobile. Awkward!

While barter—direct exchanges without benefit of a circulating medium—is a primitive means of exchange, it may serve as the simplest way to grasp the full implications of a price freeze. For the sake of clarity, leave money aside; think only in barter prices.

Here is a sampling of barter prices: The price of a quart of milk is 1 1/4 lb. of squash, 2 cans of shrimp, 3 oz. of round steak ground, 1 oz. of shad roe, on and on for perhaps 10,000 items in a single supermarket. Going outside, the price of a quart of milk is one gallon of gas, two-thirds of the Sunday New York Times, 6 minutes of my secretary’s time, one-sixth of a headlight bulb for my auto, a 3-minute phone call from Irvington, N.Y. to Irvington, N.J., on and on to millions of other items and literally trillions of exchanges.[3]

Merely bear in mind that each individual’s desires are in constant flux and the same can be said for what he wishes to or can produce. Freeze prices as of this or any other moment, and to the extent that this effort succeeds, desires would be frozen as well as variations in productive temperament: creative energies slowed down, God-given faculties deadened.

What, in fact, are prices? Prices, whether in barter or dollar terms, are no more than voices announcing what you or I or others will give in exchange for this or that. To freeze prices, therefore, is to silence our voices.

Imagine that the head man of a controlled economy is the most brilliant ever to inhabit this earth, with every citizen of the U.S.A. devoutly committed to his every wish and whim—obedience to the letter. In this “ideal” situation all would perish!

This is not to advocate disobedience; it is, rather, to suggest that the freeze of human aspirations and endeavor—whether by government, unions, teachers, businesses, or anyone else—be abandoned. To immobilize man’s creativity is both immoral and deadly.

[1] See “Food From Thought” by Charles W. Williams (The Freeman, November, 1968).

[2] For an excellent book on this, see Envy by Helmut Schoeck (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Javonovich, 1970).

[3] Lionel Robbins, chief economist of the British Government during WW II, has this to say about this kind of planning: “It would necessitate the drawing up of millions of equations on the basis of millions of statistical tables based on many more millions of computations. By the time the equations were solved, the information would have become obsolete and they would have to be calculated anew.” See The Great Depression by Lionel Robbins (London: Macmillan, 1934), p. 151.

For an interesting study on this whole subject, see Marx’s Religion of Revolution by Gary North (Nutley, N.J.: Craig Press, 1968), Appendix A.

7 • ADRIFT AND WITHOUT COMPASS

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

—John Stuart Mill

I had staked out my subject matter and settled on the above title when a memorable event came to mind. Just 53 years ago today—February 5, 1918—the Tuscania was torpedoed and sunk in the Irish Sea. Lost were 213 men, but there were nearly 2,200 survivors. Why so many? Our troopship stayed afloat for three and one-half hours! Thirty of us were still aboard during her waning moments. Then, someone discovered a lifeboat on the poop deck which we managed to launch in a rough and frigid sea—adrift and without compass.

My thesis is that the U.S.A. is adrift and without compass. My hope is that we shall be spared some time and that we shall take advantage of this breathing space to find our bearings. This is possible if we know how to construct a compass.

But first, there has to be an awareness that we are adrift. This is easy enough to recognize in a lifeboat on a storm-tossed sea in inky darkness. One is quite aware of his plight. Not so in society! Few Americans, so far, appear to be conscious of what is wrong. People, by and large, have no awareness of lost freedoms. Like wild tigers, captured and put in zoos, they soon become docile and regard the what-is as the what-ought-to-be. Most Russians are not conscious of serfdom; rather, they enjoy their lot.

My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are . . .[1]

Government Takes 43 Per Cent

A few can scan the decades, relate the freedoms which remain to the freedoms that no longer are, and infer we are adrift. But what about those who cannot or will not do this? How are they to gain an awareness of our plight? Will they understand and accept the statistical evidence? It is conceded that statistics are strikingly ineffective to awaken the lethargic. But let us consider a few simple facts.

The population of the U.S.A. in 1913 was 95 million; by 1970 the population had increased to 205 million.

Federal expenditures in 1913 were well under $1 billion; by 1970 they had increased to $210 billion!

In 1913 Federal expenditures amounted to less than $8 per person; by 1970 they averaged more than $1,000 per person—man, woman, child.

Stated another way, population in this period has slightly more than doubled; Federal expenditures are nearly 300 times what they were then.

However, it may not be fair to measure the growth of governmental take-over by Federal expenditures alone—for one thing, because of a deteriorating dollar. So, let us assess this trend by relating all governmental expenditures—Federal, state, local—to the people’s earned income.

Bearing in mind that earned income has enormously increased in this period, total governmental expenditures equaled 9 per cent of earned income in 1913; by 1970 these expenditures had grown to 43 per cent of earned income. And the percentage continues to grow.

The rebuttal, by those of a socialist or interventionist persuasion, is founded on a confusion of cause and effect. In essence, it is this: If governmental take-over is destructive, how then are we to account for the enormous increase in earned income going hand-in-hand with the ever-increasing expansion of government spending, control, and ownership? The latter, according to the socialist view, obviously is responsible for the former; any fears of big government must be unfounded.

Two Directions at Once

There never has been an instance of progress without destructive forces going on simultaneously. “It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, conflagrations, inundation, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.”[2] However, would it not be folly to credit the progress to the destructive forces? The fact that they go on simultaneously may tell us something about the durable nature of man; but it doesn’t prove that good ends result from evil or wrong means.

The truth of the matter, at least as I glean it: The free economy was more nearly approximated here than in any country at any time. This resulted in an unprecedented outburst of creative energy. The thrust of this was so great, producing a momentum of such force, economic muscle, and endurance, an economy of such wealth, that it has been able to support and withstand a parasitical growth of a magnitude never before known or possible. Parasites can proliferate only as the host grows in strength and increasingly supplies the sustenance on which they feed. But we should never infer that Marxist welfarism—“from each according to ability, to each according to need”—strengthens the host. Sooner or later, unless a compass is devised and used, there will be all parasites and no host!

If we are not already adrift, then I do not read the signs aright. The expenditures of government have for some years been too great to be met by direct tax levies. Capital assets are being confiscated—via inflation. Prices rise faster each year than income. Note what is happening to the railroads. The airlines are in an identical rut. Businesses by the thousands are in a bind. Individuals who lose their jobs in these cutbacks—private or governmental—have more and more difficulty finding other jobs. If socialism prevails, the next step is known: wage, price, production, and exchange controls, and then rationing—the total state! Freedom will remain in song and verse, but not in reality!

To summarize: We are adrift on a sea of socialism and without compass. Where are we to turn for an improved heading on this singularly rough and frigid sea? The forces that lead individuals, societies, civilizations this way or that are mostly over and beyond human design or intention. Choosing a course is far more complicated than we realize. Yet, there is a role for rationality, a reasonably simple comprehension, that is potentially within our reach. It is adequate, I hope, to steer us away from all-out statism and toward freedom. Nothing more pretentious than this is intended.

Excessive Government Is the Problem

Let us recognize at the outset that the basic problem of all-out statism is that of a government out of bounds, that is, government undertaking many tasks that are outside its principled scope. Such politico-economic retrogression results from an absence of intellectual underpinnings.

I am not suggesting that adequate intellectual underpinnings once existed and are now forgotten—only that we are retrogressing into socialism. Americans got off to a good start more inadvertently than by any rational design. Our forefathers came to this land that each might be his own man. True, they sought to insure freedom and self-responsibility through such political instruments as the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. But they had no idea of the miracle that lay in store for their progeny. Further, they had no precise theory of what government should and should not do. If we can identify and set forth that sound theory of government it should provide the compass we need.[3]

The construction of our compass has to begin with a clear and precise understanding of the nature of government. Professor Woodrow Wilson, writing in 1900, gave us an exact answer: “Government, in its last analysis, is organized force.”[4]

My explanation has been made many times but warrants repeating. The distinction between you as an agent of government and you as a private citizen is, that in the former role, you have the backing of a constabulary; issue an edict and we obey or take the consequences. Remove this backing and you are restored to private citizenship; issue an edict and we do as we please. Clearly, organized physical force is the essential, distinctive characteristic of government.

What can physical force or the threat thereof accomplish? What is within its power? It can only inhibit, restrain, penalize! And this is all government can accomplish.

This poses a logical question: What, in all good conscience, should be inhibited, restrained, penalized? The answer is to be found in the moral codes: fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation, that is, actions that do injury and injustice to others.

Bear in mind that the compass we seek, the course we would chart, is for the use or guidance of the individual in society. And note that the destructive actions to which we have referred—killing, stealing, lying, and the like—have to do with one’s behavior toward others. One does not steal from himself, but from someone else; and so with killing, lying, or other acts of coercion. Acts of coercion occur in a social context, that is, the coercion one applies against another.

Government’s Limited Role

We may infer from this that government—organized force—should be limited to preventing any of us from doing injury or injustice to others, that is, limited to keeping the peace—a fair field and no favors.

But note that this limited role of government does not include or condone the use of force to keep individuals from otherwise being themselves. Our compass is not intended to direct the life of any peaceful person, but only to enable individuals to live at peace and in harmony with one another. The only logical reason for inhibiting injury and injustice among men is to make possible for each of us to be himself and to surpass himself. To become our true selves is the destination, the objective we should have in mind.

Restraining pirates and marauders is but a means to that end. As a factory exists for the purpose of production, so man lives in order to evolve. And each worthy person or purpose deserves protection. But let not the guards take over either the factories or the lives they are to defend.

My belief is that all human progress is attributable to the creativity of individuals acting voluntarily. This is why I stress the importance of the freedom to be oneself, urge that this should be the objective or the destination for any society. And it seems to me that a government which inhibits destructive interferences in our lives is a useful means to that end: personal freedom. All the creativity there is springs from individuals being themselves. Creativity has selfhood as its source.

Creativity a Spiritual Force

If this conclusion requires any defense, here is mine. Physical force or the threat thereof—governmental or private—is definitely not a creative force nor can it ever be employed to induce creativity. Creativity is in all instances a spiritual force: the spirit of inquiry, invention, discovery, insight, intuition.

Ralph Waldo Trine phrased it thus:

Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. The realm of the unseen is the realm of cause. The realm of the seen is the realm of effect. The nature of effect is always determined and conditioned by the nature of the cause.[5]

And the eminent economist, Ludwig von Mises, has this to say:

Production is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of spiritual changes.[6]

Whatever shows forth of a spiritual nature emanates from discrete individuals. Society discovers or invents nothing. Insight is not a group process but a singularly personal phenomenon. And it cannot be induced or hastened by coercive force.

The harm or good an individual does to self is not only beyond the power of physical force to regulate but all would-be regulators are absolutely blind to what goes on within you and me. In the first place, this is none of their business and, second, all attempts at using such force to adjust the human psyche must result in mischief. It is bound to deaden creativity, and in no way—none whatsoever—can it correct or improve moral judgments.

How you mind your own business, whether to downgrade or upgrade yourself, is strictly a private affair. To regard you, in this sense, as a social or governmental responsibility, is to miss the point entirely. This confused view of authority and responsibility largely accounts for our being adrift.

It is one thing to construct a compass for the ship of state, to steer a course of limited government. But such a compass will not and cannot give appropriate readings for the peaceful and creative activities of individuals. To thus confuse the purpose of the societal compass is to steer away from freedom and set ourselves adrift in a sea of socialism.

What one does to himself or with his own life is not the business of society or within the province of organized force. This would be an artificial and incorrectly deduced relationship. The true relationship, in this respect, is between a man and his God and/or his conscience.

The compass that can steer us aright is simple. Merely limit government to the only role it can usefully play, namely, inhibiting injuries and injustices which some persons or groups may try to inflict on others. No special privileges for anyone; no coercive parasitism, thus permitting each to be his creative self.

[1] From “The Prisoner of Chillon” by Lord Byron.

[2] See History of England by Thomas B. Macaulay (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co.), Vol. 1, p. 217.

[3] See “A Role for Rationality” in Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969), pp. 9–24.

[4] See The State by Woodrow Wilson (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1900), p. 572.

[5] From In Tune With the Infinite (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1897).

[6] See Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, Third Revised Edition, 1966), p. 142.

8 • LOOKING IN THE MIRROR

Though the enemy seem a mouse, yet watch him like a lion.

—Proverb

It has been said that there is something wrong with any action or behavior that is not joyous; “. . . life must be felt as a joy,” wrote Albert Jay Nock. At first blush, this appears to be a partial truth at best, for are not some actions devoid of joy? Take criticism, for instance. Criticizing others may give the critic a perverse level of satisfaction, but self-criticism is rarely attended with pleasure. In this circumstance, joyousness as a criterion seems to rule out self-criticism. But once a person realizes that seeing and remedying his own faults is far more rewarding than carping at others—that it is vital to personal growth—then self-analysis and self-criticism can be a joyous undertaking.

Holding my own work up to the mirror of self-criticism reveals a now-and-then unfortunate result which should be examined for some personal omission or fault. Something, it seems, has been missing in my presentations of the freedom philosophy.

Were you a teacher of astronomy and some of your listeners or readers became astrologists, or of chemistry and a few turned to alchemy, you would look to your teaching. My problem, and doubtless that of others, is of this sort.

Over the past several decades countless individuals who had been only vaguely familiar with the freedom philosophy have told me that my lectures and writings have “turned them on.” They concede to having been liberated from apathy into a state of devoted concern and interest. So far, so good; indeed, all to the good.

Now, I would be the first to admit that speculations of the most diverse and contradictory sort have gone into that mix called political economy. It is not to be expected that everyone nudged by me should forever share my views, nor is such the case. Indeed, a few individuals who had their original interest aroused by my efforts have headed down the anarchistic road. Such people would eliminate government so that each person—in the absence of any societal agency—would be a law unto himself. These, however, are not the main object of my concern; rather, I am bothered by those who take the opposite tack, namely, the advocacy of more government to be rid of excessive government, that is, those who employ involuntary means and think thereby to widen voluntarism and individuality. What have I done—or left undone—to cause that!

Following a lecture of mine, the then President of the American Bar Association, nationally known for his conservatism, proclaimed, “The teaching of American history should be made compulsory.” He thought he was lending support to my thesis.

Professor Benjamin Rogge has had experiences similar to mine:

At the end of a FEE seminar, one of the participants in my discussion group stood up and said in absolute seriousness, “What we ought to have in every school and college in this country is a compulsory course in freedom.”

Let us not laugh too long at this well-meaning man until we have searched our own records to see how many times and in how many ways we have denied . . . the philosophy of freedom. . . .

Two persons, “turned on” at least partly by me, are proposing a bill in their state legislature making it compulsory to teach free enterprise economics in all public schools. As in other instances, it is an overwhelming eagerness to advance the observation and the practice of freedom principles that blinds them to the contradiction in their own proposals. Instead of “a step in the right direction,” as they seem to think, their “remedies” would only add another compulsion to the compulsions they wish eliminated. They try to put out the fire by pouring fuel on it. Intentions fine, but the means are wrong!

Let us examine for a moment the idea of compelling school teachers to give courses in free enterprise economics. Imagine that you—a devotee of the freedom philosophy—are a public school teacher and that a bill has been passed compelling you to teach Marxism or other variants of socialism. You would be faced with the choice of either quitting or pretending. If the latter, the sham and insincerity would be evident even to dull students. Marxism could never be advanced with its adversaries as teachers.

Similarly with the free market, private ownership, limited government concepts. No one can teach this way of life who does not understand it or who is revolted by it. The vast majority of public school teachers have but a dim and distorted view of the market economy. Most of them could not teach free market economics if they tried; any attempts to force them to do so would only increase their resentment.

True, a course could be labeled “Free Market Economics.” But who would select the textbooks? An agency of the state! What would be the nature of the text? It would deal in Keynesian terms with the total economy—macro economics—as do most of the economic textbooks now in use. Government officials could not be expected to choose otherwise. They operate outside the market.

And even if by some quirk of fate the state agency should select such books as Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson, Ballve’s Essentials of Economics, or Mises’ Human Action, it would make little difference. The late Dr. Leo Wolman, long-time Professor of Economics at Columbia University, told me, “I spend all of my time in classes pointing out what is wrong with the reading material I am obliged to give my students.” It is the teacher who teaches. He can use either Samuelson or Mises to lead the thinking his way.

Today, there are hundreds—not thousands—of teachers with considerable competence to explain free market economics. Their competence to do this came about not by compulsion but by volition: thinking for themselves and turning to such lights as came within their vision. This is the process and the only one that can hasten the teaching of freedom. A resort to compulsion can only kill the process.

Identifying the Role of Force

So, what accounts for this compulsive urge often evident in those with a newly aroused interest in freedom? Insofar as any of this is my responsibility, what have I been neglecting? Wherein lies my failure? A clue to the answer lies in the nature of the mischief: a resort to organized force as a means of reducing the employment of organized force in society. Obviously, I have failed to emphasize sufficiently that the nature of government is organized force and to show—in the light of its nature—the limited number of actions appropriate for government to take.

Anarchism—no societal agency at all—contends that there are no actions appropriate for government to take, that the advocacy of organized force to protect life and property cannot stop there but will continue to grow and undermine all life and property; admitting the propriety of any government sets the stage for all-out statism. Abandon the idea of government altogether, say the anarchists, or else expect it to become all-pervasive!

Anarchy—no government; each a law unto himself—must result in chaos. The strong will first subordinate the weak and then contend among themselves for territorial mastery. If socialism is planned chaos, then this is unplanned chaos! Neither socialism nor anarchism is tenable; and to settle on one or the other is to run away from the societal problem—an escape from reality!

Of course this problem is sticky. The best minds since the dawn of civilization have disputed over where to draw the line between the proper and the improper role for government. And never have the disagreements been more pronounced and numerous than in our time.

It is not that I have totally failed to draw the line, at least as I see it. Rather, I have done so only casually or as an aside: now and then in articles or on occasion in discussion sessions. It is becoming clear to me now that this matter of drawing the line in the employment of organized force is not something to be treated incidentally but has to be made the very body of the case for freedom. Short of this, we will continue to find our friends, if not ourselves, advocating compulsory courses in freedom and similar contradictions. So, this is one of the faults that looking in the mirror reveals to me.

My own now-and-then explanations have been built around an exposition of what organized force can and cannot do, such as set forth in the previous chapter. While this explanation satisfactorily serves me in my own efforts at drawing the line, it seems less than sufficient for many others. Perhaps they do not attach enough importance to this phase of the freedom rationale to think it through for themselves, in which case my attempted explanation does not really sink in. Or, maybe the distinction I perceive between inhibiting and creating is too vague or esoteric to be helpful to others in meeting their real-life problems. Doubtless, my own casualness tends to breed indifference among listeners and readers.

But more to the point, no one explanation, nor any person’s unique way of phrasing it, will ever suffice. So, it’s time to heed again the maxim, “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”

Organized force—government—is precisely what the term implies. It is physical force or the threat thereof. It is now and forever just that and nothing else. A constabulary is a constabulary, be it “At ease” or in combat. A gun is always a gun, be it in the gun rack or in active use. The same can be said of a clenched fist or of a bouncer. The nature of organized force is a constant; never expect it to function other than according to its nature.

Organized force, however, may be employed in either of two radically different ways: aggressively or defensively. To illustrate: A policeman is a policeman. There he stands with gun in holster. With the force we have entrusted to him, he can enter your home, take your possessions, and dispose of them as he pleases. This is the aggressive employment of force. Or, he can stand guard and, hopefully, keep thieves and marauders from entering your home. This is the defensive employment of force. So, there we have precisely the same force employed in two distinctive and quite opposite ways!

I draw the line between no government and all-out government at that point where organized force departs from defensive employment and enters aggressive employment.[1] It is a line fairly easy to discern and accounts for my opposition to most of the current activities of our Federal, state, and local governments. More than ever before in American history, governments at all levels employ aggressive force.

Therefore, that is where I would draw the line, my prescription for limited government. Note that government, thus limited, never initiates action, never aggresses. It engages exclusively in reactions to destructive actions, that is, the force is brought into play only as some members of society may initiate aggression against others. Otherwise, the force of government is passive or quiescent—in a standby position. Thus conceived, its role is to inhibit injustice, so that freedom and justice may prevail—no physical force or threat of force directed against the release of creative human energy!

The historical record is studded with examples of governments getting out of bounds and turning to all-out statism; and some conclude that the process is inevitable, that it must always be thus. Nonsense! Whether the line is properly drawn and scrupulously observed depends entirely on the importance we attach to this phase of the freedom rationale, on our attentiveness to it, and on our ability to understand and explain it. If such understanding becomes the consensus, limited government will prevail against all odds. “The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance.” It is not in man’s power to exact a better bargain; the price is vigilance, now and forever.

If your mirror reveals shortcomings like those I see in mine, then why not embark on some exploration and phrasing of your own? Who knows! Perhaps yours will catch on.

[1] An equitable assessment to defray the costs of government limited to the defensive role is itself a defensive act and not—as sometimes charged—an aggressive one. For my explanation, see Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954), pp. 56–62.

9 • TO AVARICE NO SANCTION

Avarice is wider than injustice, and all fallen nations lost liberty through avarice which engendered injustice.

—Austin O’Malley

No point in the field of political economy merits more thought and analysis than where to draw the line distinguishing the functions proper to government from the role assumed by all-out government—socialism. A good society is but a dream unless this issue be reasonably resolved. Of all private decisions having to do with social problems, this heads the list.

I have in the two preceding chapters suggested two approaches, each satisfactory to me, as to where the line should be drawn. These ways, while not much refuted, find but scant acceptance by others. Perhaps there is no pat explanation, no magic key.

A comparable dilemma illustrates how near insoluble the problem is: Having observed countless individuals over the years who have switched from a socialist position to one favoring the freedom philosophy, I have, on each occasion, inquired as to the idea or experience that sparked the change. So far, no two have been identical; in a word, no magic key. What then is one to do? Are we helpless in getting others to see the merits of freedom? Is there anything in the way of exemplary living that will open their doors of perception? There appears to be a helpful procedure: See how many keys you can get on your own ring, that is, see how expansive you can make your own repertory. This carries no assurance, but it does increase the probability of success: there is always a greater probability that some one of a thousand keys will open that door than if only one key is picked at random.

Another Key to Limited Government

Similarly, with drawing the line on government; there is no magic key or explanation—apparently. What to do? Keep probing for more explanations; see how many keys one can find. So, here is another key I would offer: Never admit a law to the statute books that makes an appeal to avarice. Will this help to draw the line? Maybe yes and maybe no but, at least, it deserves reflection.

Again, is this fact: The essential nature of government is organized force. Expanded, this means laws backed by force. To know what government should and should not do, according to this key—where to draw the line—requires a judgment as to which laws appeal to avarice, and a decision to avoid such laws!

Next, observe a common characteristic of human beings, a trait relevant to the point in question: “Man tends to satisfy his desires along the lines of least possible resistance.”[1]

This, we must concede, is an overwhelming tendency. Rare, indeed, are the exceptions. Many wealthy citizens, for instance, applied for Medicare following enactment of the law. Nearly all religious, educational, and charitable organizations, although not compelled to partake in the “social security” program, rushed to the trough. Millions of our citizens accept unemployment payments in preference to working. Offer farmers more money for not farming than they can make by farming and they will not farm. Labor unions, given power to impose their will on others, tear the market to shreds. Businessmen generally hasten to forswear competition whenever protection is proffered; indeed, they will make machines to bring moon dirt back to earth if it be profitable to do such. These—appeals to avarice—are but a few among thousands of examples affirming the tendency to satisfy desires along the lines of least resistance.

Subsidies Attract “Clients”

For clarity, put this common tendency in another phrasing: Avarice breaks out, shows itself, grows and expands in proportion to the opportunities for a “free lunch” or a handout. Why? Simply because these feeding stations provide the means by which man can satisfy his desires along the lines of least resistance, offer him a way of overcoming his uneasiness without effort. Conceding some exceptions, men turn to these something-for-nothing sources as readily and as naturally as they turn away from higher and toward lower prices for goods and services. The bees go where the nectar is, avarice or no!

Exceptions to the rule have been noted. There are a few who will not stoop to the line of least resistance—persons whose moral guidelines will not let them live by bread alone. In the final analysis, a good society rests on a proliferation of this breed of men, however far removed we now are from that idealistic future. Meanwhile, it may be possible, by rationally conceiving where the line should be drawn, to effect a change for the better. But this will be difficult enough. The percentage of the population accustomed to the feeding stations is so great and their voting power so attractive to politicians who accommodate this weakness that the combination seems unbeatable. Nevertheless, it is worth a try.

Men stand upright in the absence of things to stoop for. The course of least resistance does not necessarily lead one astray if there is nothing to stoop for. Avarice is only a dormant trait in the absence of something to be avaricious about.

Feeding stations, contrived by laws that appeal to avarice, are composed exclusively of the fruits of people’s labor—every one of them. When these abound, as now, men contend with each other for our property. They take! Why? This is the line of least resistance. Remove these stations. Immediately men will compete with each other for our favor. They trade! Why? Because this is the remaining line of least resistance.

From stooping to upright men! From contenders to competitors! From takers to traders! From plunderers to benefactors! No more goodness or perfection in man than before, but only the removal from his presence of the temptations to avarice!

How are we to judge whether or not a law has an appeal to avarice, so that we may keep it off the statute books? I believe there is a simple rule: Never give approval to a law that “helps” anyone!

No Special Privileges

It is definitely not the function of government to take positive action in aiding or sustaining or lending assistance to any person or group or segment of society. Such “help” can only be given to one person or group at the expense of others. The only principled role of society’s agency is negative; government should restrain anyone from doing injury to others. The law’s job is to codify the taboos or the thou-shalt-nots and enforce them; that is, it should invoke a common justice and keep the peace.

Any time and in every instance in which government departs from this negative or purely defensive role, avarice is released in the citizenry. Government can do all of us a service by warding off intruders; but when government pretends to “help” us, government itself thereby becomes the colossal intruder.

I am quite aware that to most people this way of drawing the line seems cold, heartless, and without pity. But pity, unless spiced with common sense, is what’s heartless. Providing people with governmental feeding stations not only kindles the vice of avarice but it renders them helpless. The process results in an atrophy of the faculties from which recovery is next to impossible. Helping people to become helpless is no act of kindness. Nor is self-pity in order, that is, feeling sorry for ourselves as taxpayers. Such sympathy as is within us should be extended to the recipients of this largess, for they have stooped and may not be able to straighten up again.

No doubt a world in which matter never got out of place and became dirt, in which iron had no flaws and wood no cracks, in which gardens had no weeds, and food grew already cooked, in which clothes never wore out and washing was as easy as the soapmakers’ advertisements describe it, in which rules had no exceptions and things never went wrong, would be a much easier place to live in. But for purposes of training and development it would be worth nothing at all.

It is the resistance that puts us on our mettle: it is the conquest of the reluctant stuff that educates the worker. I wish you enough difficulties to keep you well and make you strong and skillful![2]

This then is my third way to draw the line: To avarice no sanction!

[1] Albert Jay Nock repeatedly referred to this as Epstean’s Law.

[2] Henry Van Dyke.

10 • THE ROLE OF RULES

The first and most necessary topic in philosophy is the practical application of principles.

—Epictetus

It is an accepted notion in some circles that there are no norms or guidelines for human action. We are, it is said, creatures of impulse, responding to whatever notions pop into mind. “Radical relativism,” as it is called, invites re-examination of the way of life founded on rules and principles. There seems to be considerable confusion about the nature and purpose of rules.

An aphorism may help put the point in focus: “Rules are meant for those expected to obey; principles for those expected to think.” This seems to suggest that rules are made by dictators to be obeyed by slaves and that principles are the findings of philosophers to be savored and pondered by thinkers. But such a conclusion is far too shallow.

The principle of a thing is a verbal formulation of its nature and its workings; a rule is a homely guide to action deduced from the principle.

There are good rules and bad rules precisely as there are true and false principles. A good rule: “Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.” A bad rule: “The king can do no wrong.” Now to principles: “The earth revolves on its axis and around the sun” (Copernicus) is a principle upon which man may rely. An earlier theory, “The sun revolves around the earth” (Ptolemy) has now been rejected as a true principle because it has been proved to be inadequate. Rules derived from the principles of Copernicus may be followed with assurance and may not safely be ignored.

Ptolemy’s theory afforded no basis for the law of gravitation. Rules deduced from such a theory would prove disastrous. Example: a medical officer attached to the Air Force in the Far East during WW II told me of a B-29 Captain whose mission was to transport some fifty Chinese coolies to a labor assignment. Half way to his destination and at 18,000 feet, he visited the cabin to check on his charges. Some missing! How come? Later, from a peekhole position, he observed that they had opened a hatchway. Two of them made a saddle of their hands on which one of their buddies would sit, all three laughing as they tossed him out! These people knew nothing of the law of gravitation and, of course, could not observe the results. To them, it was only to fly through the air like a bird!

No one knows precisely how to explain gravitation, yet many of us know that it works and we frame countless rules accordingly: for instance, we do not jump off the Empire State Building. To disregard these rules is to court disaster.

Principles, discovered by philosophers and scientists, abound by the thousands. Yet, most of us are unaware of many of these principles. Even the vast majority of philosophers and scientists have not the slightest idea about each other’s formulations. Who among them, for instance, knows of the subjective and marginal utility theory of value or the principle of freedom in transactions? Perhaps one, now and then—a rarity! Had we no way of abiding by principles except as we understand them, man would perish from the earth.

Specialists Gone Astray

One of the world’s great astronomers comes to mind. In his field he is tops. And because he sees more through his little peekhole than others with similar peekholes, he ventures with self-assurance into politico-economic matters about which he knows next to nothing. Over and over again we witness geniuses in their particular specializations assuming a knowledge of areas in which they have no competence. Follow this astronomer in astronomy and become enlightened; follow him in political economy and become enslaved. Specialization, when coupled with man’s arrogance, leads toward such danger.

What then is our saving grace? Rules! Do not touch a red hot stove or a live wire; do not jump out of a plane without a parachute; do not cheat, lie, steal, kill; do not feather your own nest at the expense of others. I do not have to know that “The volume of a gas varies inversely as the pressure” to avoid a bomb exploding in my face. I only need to know the rule, “Don’t play with bombs.”

Let us now turn to the idea that “Rules are meant for those expected to obey.” True, perhaps, but what is the nature of these rules? There are two divisions—poles apart and each requiring its distinct kind of obedience. Rules in the first category are psychological in nature and obedience consists in practicing self-discipline; those in the second are sociological in nature and obedience consists in submitting to external authority.

Take the Golden Rule, which is a maxim in the first category. This is the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character. If one is intelligent enough to see the wisdom of this rule and if he has the strength of character to heed it, he obeys. Otherwise, not! Each individual makes his own decision to obey or not, and there is no external authority on earth, no government that has the slightest power to exact obedience to such a rule. Intelligence and strength of character are never the products of external compulsion but are exclusively voluntary and of one’s own making. Is this not self-evident?

The Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet,” is but another of countless ethical and moral rules—a rule that is obeyed or not as the individual chooses. A gun at my head could not keep me from coveting another’s achievements or possessions. These are secrets of the soul, intellect, and conscience. Such secrets are not necessarily revealed to others or understood by them. No matter how stupid or wrong my secret longings, they are not subject to correction by external compulsion. In these matters each decides on the rules to be accepted or rejected and he prospers or fails in life’s purpose according to how intelligently he identifies the rules and obeys them.

Once we recognize our shortcomings in understanding and obeying these ethical and moral rules and guidelines—an area in which the individual is in complete command and without interference—we must conclude that man by nature is imperfect. Regardless of how well we know these rules and how obediently we observe them, we will, to some extent, offend the rights of others. Perfect harmony in society is not possible, even among the moral and spiritual elite. And pronounced indeed is the disharmony caused by those who have no scruples—no rules of their own!

Rules Against Antisocial Behavior

This poses the necessity for rules of the second kind, those that are sociological in nature. These are meant to take effect if and when moral laws are ignored or violated; they are designed to cope with the antisocial as distinguished from the peaceful actions of citizens, that is, with those actions which cause injury to others. Injury, as the term is applied in this context, must be carefully defined by rules, which if properly drawn and obeyed, would assure a fair field and no favor. In this category of rules, we are expected to obey not necessarily what our conscience suggests but, rather, what an external authority dictates. As distinguished from moral law, this is civil law; it punishes those who trespass against their fellows, but it presupposes that there are men who behave ethically a good part of the time.

It is utter folly to believe that there can be a good society without the rule of law—civil law, that is. Yet, this category of rules is loaded with the possibility for evil as well as good results. Civil law can, and often does, lead to total statism—enslavement—or it can, but rarely does, lead to securing individual liberty. Nonetheless, the free society is out of the question in the absence of civil law; to have even the remotest chance of the good society requires that we assume the risk that civil law might go askew. To achieve the best, we must face and overcome grave dangers. There is no alternative!

Wherein lies our hope? Is there, indeed, a certain narrow course which, if scrupulously followed, would secure liberty to all alike and which would, at the same time, steer away from lawless anarchy on the one side and all-out statism on the other? If so, what is it?

There is definitely and explicitly such a course and it can be ours if we are not blind to it. The price tag, however, is the ability to see and, having seen, to stay on course.

Endowed by the Creator

This high road has as its foundation what many early Americans believed—and I devoutly believe—to be a wholly reasonable presupposition, namely, that men’s rights to life, livelihood, and liberty are endowed by the Creator. These rights are part of our very being, and our being, although it is compounded of elements deriving from our society and other ingredients that link us with nature, is rooted in a reality which transcends both nature and society. Each man participates in an order which confers upon him certain prerogatives which other men should not impair.

This proposition gains confirmation as we reflect on the absurdity of its only possible alternative, namely, that men’s rights to life, livelihood, and liberty are endowed by a human collective which, in this context, is government. Of what is government composed? Persons no more graced with virtues, talents, and omniscience than you or I! For any human being to believe that our rights to life, livelihood, and liberty are or could be derived from him is nothing less than egomania.

This inherent rights principle, affirmed in the Declaration of Independence, has fallen by the wayside so far as comprehension and acceptance are concerned. Giving the reasons, beyond a growing egomania, is no less difficult than trying to explain the decline in religion, that is, the rejection of an Infinite Power or Intelligence over and beyond our little, finite minds.

There is, however, an easily misunderstood companion idea in the Declaration that may have led many people astray: “. . . that all men are created equal.” This has been seized upon by the Declaration’s detractors to “prove” how nonsensical its writers were in whatever they declared, including the Creator concept. Of course men are not equal in a single personal attribute. This is so obvious that the authors of the Declaration took no pains to say so. They were not writing to fools. What they had in mind was the profound idea that all men are equal before the civil law as they are before God. This relegates civil law to its proper place. Without this concept of equality before the law, justice is out of the question and civil law is out to get you and me. As Professor Benjamin Rogge puts it, “The blindfolded Goddess of Justice is encouraged to peek: ‘Tell me who you are and I shall tell you what your rights are.’”

Finally, these two kinds of rules work one on the other—they are interacting. It is ridiculous to believe that any set of civil laws can be devised to bring about the good society among a people having no moral and ethical scruples. On the other hand, whenever a first-rate citizenry carelessly permits the civil law to go beyond its principled scope of maintaining the peace of the community, it will deprive them of their liberty and self-responsibility. In this event, they will degenerate into law breakers, black marketeers, connivers.

Those who aspire to a good society have no manner of realizing their goal except as they (1) understand and obey the basic principles or rules of morality and ethics, and (2) establish and limit the scope of civil law so as to insure liberty and justice for all.

Thus, the first-rate citizen has a dual role to perform as related to the role of rules.

11 • HARMONIZING TO EACH HIS OWN

Weep not that the world changes—did it keep a stable, changeless state, ’twere cause indeed to weep.

—Bryant

Man could not live, let alone improve his lot, were all static as a rock. Change releases the hidden strength of men. Out of change comes variation and in this diversity are unique potentialities realized. Creative dissimilarities emerge and account for our moral, spiritual, intellectual, and material wealth. Change is of the very essence of life, and freedom to change is both an economic and a biologic necessity.

The enormity and persistence of change and variation is recognized and welcomed by some, though most persons tend to dislike it. “Change, indeed, is painful, yet ever needed,” said Carlyle; inevitable and necessary but, nonetheless, much resented. This feature of human nature poses a major politico-economic problem and substantially accounts for the continuing debate over freedom versus coercive collectivism.

The main reason for resenting change, I suspect, originates in a misunderstanding of how security is best obtained. Individuals, with rare exceptions, are interested first and foremost in securing life and livelihood. Security is indeed an objective but, contrary to general belief, it is never more than a dividend of natural change and variation—each pursuing his own uniqueness. There is no security to be found in bringing change and variation to a halt; nothing is so at odds with security as freezing or solidifying the status quo. Seek first security and there will be neither security nor change. Seek first the dynamic, improving life and such security as is possible is thrown in as a rewarding outcome.[1]

To intelligently approach the politico-economic problem here posed requires, first of all, that we fully grasp just how fantastic our variations really are, else we will not know what the problem is or the meaning of “to each his own.” Gloss over our variations, think of them as less than they are, and we will behave as unwitting, mindless persons.

Let us face a few facts. We resemble each other in outward appearance only: beings with two eyes, one nose, ten fingers, two arms, standing upright on two legs, and somewhat alike in other superficial ways. Even in these ways the variation is fantastic, “identical twins” being far from identical.[2]

Human beings are distinguished from the animal world by the possession of such traits as the ability to reason, to evaluate different causes of action, to make rational choices, to will their own behaviors, and even to transcend themselves. So varied are these potentialities and their mode of realization that resemblances diminish sharply; we go every which way, in as many directions as each person takes in a lifetime multiplied by all the human beings who ever lived. Chaos, seemingly!

Infinite Variation

The human scene holds no such thing as a changeless, single performance with which to compare, to identify, to judge our works. At the human level there are as many kinds and qualities of performances as there are viewpoints. Thus, the variety of performances equals all the people who have ever lived times all the changing viewpoints each person ever experiences. Trillions times trillions!

This assertion itself is a personal viewpoint or evaluation and argues that the eye of the beholder is determinative. “Were the eye not attuned to the Sun, the Sun could never be seen by it,” wrote Goethe. Viewpoints, by and large, are based on major and easily observed distinctions. For instance, I glance at a smiling face and a moment later at the same face when angry. The distinction evokes two evaluations, varying viewpoints easily come by. But widen the aperture to increase sensitivity to infinitesimal changes, and even assuming no change in outward demeanor: the face is known to be older; the lighting is different; I have aged; and my vision has changed. The world of anyone sensitive to a wide range of variations is a far larger world than exists for those who are not so graced, that is, his viewpoints and evaluations are greatly multiplied.

Or reflect on what the world means to a farmer and to an astronomer. A particular farmer may be satisfied with treading the surface of our planet and scratching it with a plow; his world is a road, some furrows, and a field of grain. The astronomer’s world, on the other hand, requires that he determine exactly the place that it occupies at each instant within sidereal space; from the standpoint of exactness he is forced to convert our globe into a mathematical abstraction, into a case of universal gravitation. We might say that the farmer and the astronomer “are worlds apart.”[3]

In order to picture the enormity of variation, consider the varying evaluations or viewpoints of each farmer times all the farmers there are and then of all the astronomers since Copernicus and Galileo times all their changing viewpoints during these past four centuries. And last, contemplate all the performances there have been beyond the farmer and the astronomer and all the performances that lie between these two and all the varying evaluations thereof!

We can now see that it is the point of view that creates the variation panorama: an infinitude of performances in a constant flux. No person can do more than to become aware of this complexity; few even do this. To encompass this multiplicity, to bring it within anyone’s comprehension, is out of the question. Initially, such awareness cannot help but breed confusion. How can harmony ever be brought out of this social maelstrom!

The Individual in Society

Confusion, however, does not end here. It starts anew with countless attempts at harmonizing our variations. The confusion appears to stem from a fact seldom recognized in clarity: man is at once a social and an individualistic being. Confronting each of us are the we and the I or, one might say, association and isolation. Not only is there myself to cope with: to grow, emerge, evolve, to become what I am not yet; equally challenging, I must find out how to live in harmony with my fellowmen. My life and welfare depend not only on what I make of me but also on how I associate myself with others upon whom I am also rigorously dependent, a dependence from which there is no escape. Except in association, I perish! No need to labor this point.

Thus, two extremely intricate problems are posed. The first is psychological in nature: freeing self from superstitions, imperfections, ignorance, fears. We know far less about this than is generally acknowledged. The second is sociological, that is, freeing men from the restraints and impositions which we in our ignorance are inclined to inflict on each other. Unless the latter is reasonably resolved, the former cannot flourish at its best. Yet, a resolution of the latter is impossible without a flourishing of the former. Boxed in by a paradox! Or are we?

There are, broadly, two opposed theories as to how the sociological maelstrom should be resolved. The first—authoritarian—is steeped in tradition, as aged as humanity, and presently gaining ground all over the world. It is the old, old master-slave arrangement that has always stifled human progress and diverted man’s efforts to fighting, either to force his will on others or to combat the tyrant’s army. The second—freedom—is brand new as history goes, all too seldom understood or accepted.

Authoritarian Confusion

Perhaps no statement more openly and honestly reveals the authoritarian confusion than this:

Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.[4]

Where we want to be! Here is the authoritarian position set forth in crystal clarity: an I pretending to be a we. It is safe to assume that no earthly person wants to be what the author wanted to be at the moment of this phrasing. One knows, without looking at the record, that this author experienced a constant shifting in what he wanted to be during every day of his life. The same can be said of Napoleon or any of our numerous political authoritarians, precisely as can be said of you or me. No living person ever stays put; as to our aspirations, all of us are in flight, on the wing, in orbit. We need do no more than look about us to confirm this fact.

The point is that no person who ever lived—not even Socrates—has observed more than an infinitesimal fraction of the total universe. Each gazes through a tiny peekhole into infinity, glimpsing hardly any of it. Did Hitler see the farmer’s furrow or what Galileo saw or what I see as I write or you see as you read these scribblings? Of course not! The authoritarian vision is limited and blurred at best.

What then must be the outcome of the authoritarian’s solution to social problems, assuming that his will is invoked? Simple: all of us compelled to abide by what he sees through his unique and tiny peekhole which, of course, is next to nothing. All of us, if his will prevails, restricted by his oblique view of reality.

Most appraisals of authoritarianism are not as harsh as mine because no one has ever witnessed the horrible principle in more than partial practice. We observe people living, a few rather prosperously, in Russia, China, Uruguay and falsely credit such of the good life as there is to the authoritarianism. To the contrary, it is in spite of! All that is good—no exception—springs from creative human energy obeying its nature, that is, freely flowing when not squelched. Like lightning, it zigs and zags along the line of least resistance, finding its way through or around the commands and strictures of he-who-knows-next-to-nothing. A harsh appraisal of the authoritarian? No; that rating applies to all of us!

How Freedom Works Its Wonders

A supervisor of schools, attending one of our workshops recently, made this observation concerning freedom as a solution to social problems:

I came to your Summer Seminar with a hazy and limited knowledge of the principles of economics and the free market. You have helped me to see the simplicity and self-evidence of these basic concepts of freedom. What most amazes me now is that anyone can fail to understand and put these ideas into practice.

Yes, the simplicity of freedom in action as it copes with infinite human variation and works its wonders! Amazing indeed that so many are unaware of these principles and thus have no faith in them. Parenthetically, any proposed solution to the social and individualistic aspects of humanity that is not simple has nothing to commend it. This is another way of saying that we should stick to what we know best—our own knitting—which, as already suggested, is not very much.

Let me now return to the assertion, “Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.” I read this statement ten years ago and not until now did I realize that the author was substantially correct.

Why? Only a person deficient in reasoning powers—not necessarily a moron—could possibly believe that any scheme can “bring us out where we want to be.” This is an I posing as we—absurd! The flowering society, the only kind that merits our interest, is one that will not stand in the way of bringing you out where you want to be, while permitting the same opportunities for everyone else. And this is definitely a prospect when millions—yes, trillions—of decisions are made independently of each other, that is, a situation in which freedom of choice prevails.

It is an observed fact that variation obtains throughout the natural order; it is a distinguishing feature of the universal scheme of things ranging from atoms and their components to galaxies which are but tiny parts of who knows what. No two things are identical—no two snowflakes or stars or sunsets or tidal waves. Everything at all times and in all places and in all circumstances is in motion. But note that instead of chaos there is order and stability—an incomprehensible harmony—and because of a mysterious principle at work:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.”[5]

These variations we observe in nature, by reason of this “mysterious attractive force,” gravitate into a harmony; that is, there is an inexplicable magnetism constantly, everlastingly exerting itself. And precisely this same force operates in exactly the same manner on the fantastically varied out-croppings of the human cortex: viewpoints, evaluations, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes, think-of-thats.

Harmonious Creative Energy

Who understands creative human energy? Who can define it? No one! It is as mysterious and indefinable as electrical energy. Indeed, the two behave in much the same manner: they naturally flow along the lines of least resistance. The point is, we live without understanding Creation or life; electricity and gravitation serve even though we haven’t the slightest idea as to what they are; the same is true of creative human energy—provided we leave it free to flow.

What at first blush appears as utter chaos—a veritable hurricane of flighty performances—turns out to be precisely the opposite: a harmonic whole in the absence of I’s trying to play we. You to your knitting, me to mine, each pursuing his unique potential, be it farming or astronomy or whatever. For only in this manner am I able to draw on your and everyone else’s unique realizations, others possessing countless ideas, enlightenments, goods, services hardly any one of which is within my own potential. When freedom prevails, we can think of our situation as a vast human grid, supplies responding to demands in a perpetual willing exchange. A harmonizing of to each his own!

We cannot know how freedom, any more than Creation, works its wonders. Nor do we need to know the how of it. We need only know (1) that freedom does work wonders—the evidence is commonplace and all about us—and (2) that freedom exists in the absence of man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. And observe how simple—and realistic—this is: it does not presuppose a single know-it-all!

[1] Change, as I am extolling it, refers only to those forms induced in the exercise of free choice. The enormous technological changes resulting from present coercive practices—moon ventures, for example—are, in my view, disruptive, unbalancing, and uneconomic. They lead creativity toward “national goals” or political designs and away from subjective value judgments; they make for insecurity. The trouble is, we see the mooncraft and generally adjudge it wonderful. What we fail to see are the inevitable and disastrous consequences of—reactions to—the coercion which brought this fantastic gadget into being.

[2] See various works by Roger Williams, especially You Are Extraordinary (New York: Random House, 1967).

[3] The idea and some of the phrasing in this paragraph are from an essay, “Adán en el Paraiso” (Adam in Paradise) 1910 by José Ortega y Gasset.

[4] The late Walter Reuther. See The New York Times, June 30, 1962.

[5] See Science is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

12 • HOW EVERYONE CAN GAIN

I volunteer to exchange mine for thine because I prefer thine to mine. You freely consent to the exchange when you prefer mine to thine. Each of us gains, in his own eyes—the only relevant test in these matters.

Many a person afflicted with nearsightedness has been enabled, by eye exercises, to throw away his spectacles and see as well as ever. In the economic realm, nearsightedness seems to be a common condition. I contend that a respectable vision can be gained by a few mental exercises. To employ Bastiat’s phrasing, let us examine “that which is seen and that which is not seen,” specifically as related to economic gain and loss. For unless our vision is clear in this respect, we will mistake losses for gains and vice versa.

There is a prevailing notion that anybody’s gain must be at someone else’s expense, that the riches of one derive from pauperizing the many, that winners presuppose losers. It is important to see why this notion persists and why it is utterly false.

Were we to collapse the span of mankind into one year, the notion that one’s gain is another’s loss had some validity until about 7 hours ago. Prior to the eighteenth century, most of man’s exchanges were of the winner-take-all type.

Recall that in ancient times robbery was the first labor-saving device. Hordes from one nation raided a neighboring nation, taking home the loot. The raiders thought they saw gain in the process; the raided knew they lost.

Later, feudalism prevailed; that is, there was very little private ownership as we understand it. Estates and most possessions were political conferments: dukedoms, earldoms, lord of the manor type of economic arrangements. These holdings of the few pauperized the many. Born a shoemaker, stay a shoemaker! All gain (?) for the few and all loss for the many.

Then, for a time before the industrial revolution, mercantilism became the style. “There are many points of resemblance between the mercantile system and state socialism . . . the policy of regulating industry and commerce with a view to national interests as distinct from those of the consumer.”[1] Featured by price-fixing and special privilege, it was a closed system, favoring (?) the few at the expense of the many.

The Urge to Gamble

The above is only to emphasize the traditional experiences which work so powerfully against acceptance of recent enlightenments. Can man, in the latest 1/5,000th of his life on earth, free himself from the irrational mold into which he has so long been cast? Can man be expected so instantaneously to come to grips with this gain-loss fallacy?

It is too much to expect that any substantial number of people can succeed in this rational feat. For in addition to overcoming the ingrained notions of mankind’s past, there are current experiences observed by everyone where one’s loss is, in fact, another’s gain. This is true in gambling, for instance: the turn of a card, the cast of a die, the flip of a coin. It is easy enough to make wrong deductions from these observations. We have to bear in mind that such gambling is not exchange in the economic or market sense. Trade is not involved; this is not something for something but, rather, something for nothing. Nonetheless, it is the source of bad instruction and leads many people to the false conclusion that, in every kind of exchange, one person’s gain is necessarily someone else’s loss.

When this notion prevails, as now, people adopt the attitude, “We might as well get ours while the getting is good.” They are heedless of what their getting costs others, for is it not ordained that each gain must be attended by a loss? Thus, get ours, and “let the devil take the hindmost.” All of this is precisely at the intellectual level of looting neighbors, feudalism, mercantilism, gambling. Contrary to what these people believe, no one gains; all are losers.

To illustrate: The Gateway Arch in St. Louis is not “The gateway to the West” itself; no one passes through that arch. Rather, it is but a symbol of the idea. So, let us use this symbol to symbolize the “get ours” syndrome. It is as good as any other of countless thousands.

Most of the local citizens—there are exceptions—think favorably of this multi-million dollar stainless steel structure. There it stands in all its awesome beauty for everyone to see—all gain and no loss they naively believe. The truth? This modern pyramid is all loss to everyone and no gain to anyone!

The Arch is heavily financed by Federal funds; you and I and millions of other out-of-town taxpayers were coerced to put into it a part of our lives. With no interest in this costly decorative symbol, ours is loss pure and simple. This is a fact beyond question.

A Vicious Circle

But what about the local citizens who think that the Gateway Arch is a gain—at least to them? Is theirs actually a loss and not a gain? Yes, false impressions to the contrary notwithstanding. Let me explain.

By requesting and accepting Federal funds they become a party to the “get ours” parade. When they endorse confiscation from millions of out-of-towners to build their local pet project, they thereby endorse similar enslavement of themselves to help build countless other pet projects all over the nation. Intake: one arch; outgo: more than the arch cost! All loss; no gain! What do the people of the United States have to show for all of these coercive actions? Thousands upon thousands of pet projects, each an economic monstrosity which would never have been built within the frame of the market; any project that is economically feasible is accomplished without coercion.

For one more example of nearsightedness, of how coercion results in all loss and no gain, have a look at above-market wage rates as effected by present-day labor union practices. No question about it, employers lose. And so do consumers, all citizens being consumers. It takes no economist to see this.

But what about labor union members, the ones who receive these excessive wages? Do they, also, lose? Yes, false impressions to the contrary! This, too, needs explanation.

When Trade Is Hampered

That we are an interdependent society is self-evident. I cannot live by the little I do or know how to do, nor can anyone else. Our survival now hinges on specialization and the free, uninhibited exchanges of our numerous specializations. We are wired up far more intricately than any computer—in an enormous human circuit, so to speak. A breakdown here or there—cut off electricity, telephones, planes, trains, trucks, garbage disposal, hospital service, mail delivery, or whatever—and the whole economy is fractured. Indeed, we have progressed so far in specialization, become so interdependent, that I cannot do any injury to you without that injury bouncing back and harming me. And this goes for labor union members, also. Their coercive practices tear the whole economy to shreds, the economy on which they are totally dependent, even as you and I. True, their nearsightedness lets them see what looks like a momentary advantage but leaves them blind to their lifetime interests. Any momentary result, regardless of appearance, should it contribute to long-range loss, must be counted as a loss and never a gain.

Each coercive act must, by its very nature, result in a loss not only to those acted upon but to the actors.[2] The thief loses something far more valuable than the loot he takes. The act “has cost him his peace, and the best of his manly virtues.” In activities embraced by coercion—nationalized businesses, for example—certain gains may be observed; these are, more often than not, falsely attributed to the coercion. Such gains are due exclusively to a leakage of free, creative, human energy, an energy that has escaped the coercive embrace.

The process whereby everyone can gain, with no loss to anyone, is such a common occurrence—as breathing—that hardly anyone heeds or understands it, virtually a secret. Yet, simple as seven times seven and, if anything, easier to explain!

No Coercion Whatsoever

No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy, that is, no coercion, none whatsoever! That’s all there is to it. In the absence of coercion, the free market exists. All exchanges are then to the mutual advantage of each trader, and cannot help but be. When I swap my $50 for your watch, I value the watch more than the $50 and you value the $50 more than the watch, else we would not exchange. Value in this equation is now and forever a subjective judgment. There is no other way to determine the value of a good or service than what you or I voluntarily give up to get it.[3]

Bastiat, when explaining the provisioning of Paris, had this to say about the miracle of the market:

How does each succeeding day manage to bring to this gigantic market just what is necessary—neither too much nor too little? What, then, is the resourceful and secret power that governs the amazing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such implicit faith, although his prosperity and his very life depend upon it? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of free exchange.[4]

And I shall now suggest two other absolutes: (1) In coerced exchanges everyone loses; no one gains and (2) in free market exchanges everyone gains; no one loses.

Do not these few observations bring an end to the nearsightedness that turns men toward coercion rather than voluntary exchange? If so, away with the spectacles! Let us practice freedom.

[1] See “Mercantile System,” Palgrave’s Dictionary of Political Economy (London: Macmillan and Co., 1926), Vol. II, p. 726.

[2] Coercion as here used is the aggressive as distinguished from the defensive employment of physical force—or the threat thereof. Coercion is initiated force.

[3] For an explanation of this point, see “The Dilemma of Value” in my Talking to Myself (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1970), pp. 81–88.

[4] See Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), pp. 97–98.

13 • ECONOMICS: A BRANCH OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

. . . science is inseparably attached to value judgments, especially the moral sciences, to which the social sciences . . . belong, and every attempt to eliminate these would end only in absurdity.

—Röpke

The author of The Wealth of Nations (1776) is frequently classed as an eighteenth century economist. But Adam Smith was primarily a Professor of Moral Philosophy, the discipline which I believe is the appropriate one for the study of human action and such subdivisions of it as may be involved in political economy.

Moral philosophy is the study of right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse. These polarities cannot be translated into quantitative and measurable terms and, for that reason, moral philosophy is sometimes discredited as lacking scientific objectivity. And it is not, in fact, a science in the sense that mathematics, chemistry, and physics are sciences. The effort of many economists to make the study of political economy a natural science draws the subject out of its broader discipline of moral philosophy, which leads in turn to social mischief.

Carl Snyder, long-time statistician of the Federal Reserve Board, exemplifies an economic “scientist.” He wrote an impressive book, Capitalism The Creator, now out of print.[1]

I agree with this author that Capitalism is, indeed, a creator, providing untold wealth and material benefits to countless millions of people. But, in spite of all the learned views to the contrary, I believe that Capitalism, in its significant sense, is more than Snyder and many other statisticians and economists make it out to be—far more. If so, then to teach that Capitalism is fully explained in mathematical terms is to settle for something less than it really is. This leaves unexplained and vulnerable the real case for Capitalism.

Snyder equates Capitalism with “Capital Savings.” He explains what he means in his Preface:

The thesis here presented is simple, and unequivocal; in its general outline, not new. What is new, I would fain believe, is the proof; clear, statistical, and factual evidence. That thesis is that there is one way, and only one way, that any people, in all history, have ever risen from barbarism and poverty to affluence and culture; and that is by that concentrated and highly organized system of production and exchange which we call Capitalistic: one way, and one alone. Further, that it is solely by the accumulation (and concentration) of this Capital, and directly proportional to the amount of this accumulation, that the modern industrial nations have arisen; perhaps the sole way throughout the whole of eight or ten thousand years of economic history.

No argument—none whatsoever—as to the accomplishments of Capitalism, or that it has to do with “Capital Savings.” But what is Capital?

The Spiritual Origin of Capital

The first answer that comes to mind is that Capital means the tools of production: brick and mortar in the form of plants, electric and water and other kinds of power, machines of all kinds including computers and other automated things, ships at sea and trains and trucks and planes—you name it! These things are indeed Capital, but is Capital in the sense of material wealth sufficient to tell the whole story of Capitalism and its creative accomplishments or potentialities?

Merely bear in mind that all of this fantastic gadgetry on which rests a high standard of living has its origin in ideas, inventions, discoveries, insights, intuition, think-of-thats, and such other unmeasurable qualities as the will to improve, the entrepreneurial spirit, intelligent self-interest, honesty, respect for the rights of others, and the like. These are spiritual as distinguished from material or physical assets, and always the former precedes and is responsible for the latter. This is Capital in its fundamental, originating sense; this accumulated wisdom of the ages—an overall luminosity—is the basic aspect of “Capital Savings.”

It is possible to become aware of this spiritual Capital, but not to measure, let alone to fully understand it—so enormous is its accumulation over the ages. Awareness? Sit in a jet plane and ask what part you had in its making. Very little, if any, even though you might be on the production line at Boeing. At most, you pressed a button that turned on forces about which you know next to nothing. Why, no man even knows how to make the pencil you used to sign a requisition. These “Capital Savings” put at your disposal an energy perhaps several hundred times your own. This accumulated energy—the workings of human minds over the ages—is Capital!

With this concept of Capital in mind, reflect on how unrealistic are the ambitions of the “scientific” economists. Carl Snyder phrases their intentions well in the concluding paragraph of his Preface:

It was inevitable, perhaps, that anything like a “social science” should be the last to develop. Its bases are so largely statistical that it was only with the development of an enormous body of new knowledge that anything resembling a firmly grounded and truly scientific system could be established. It is coming; already the most fundamental elements of this knowledge are now available, as the pages to follow will endeavor to set forth. (Italics added)

Snyder is, indeed, statistical. He displays 44 charts. Nearly all of these show the ups and downs—mostly ups—of physical assets in dollar terms. This, in his view, is a “truly scientific system.” But how scientific can a measurement be if the units cannot be quantified and the measuring rod is as imprecise in value as is the dollar or any other monetary unit?

Not Subject to Scientific Measurement

And what is truly scientific about showing the growth in coal production, for instance, if there be a shift in demand favoring some other fuel? This would be only a pseudo measurement with no more scientific relevance than a century-old chart showing the dollar growth in buggy whip production.

Professor F. A. Hayek enlightens us:

. . . all the “physical laws of production” which we meet, e.g., in economics, are not physical laws in the sense of the physical sciences but people’s beliefs about what they can do. . . . That the objects of economic activity cannot be defined in objective terms but only with reference to a human purpose goes without saying. Neither a “commodity” or an “economic good,” nor “foods” or “money,” can be defined in physical terms but only in terms of views people hold about things.[2]

Economic growth for a nation cannot be mathematically or statistically measured. Efforts to do so are highly misleading. They lead people to believe that a mere increase in the measured output of goods and services is, in and of itself, economic growth. This fallacy has led to the forced savings programs of centrally administered economic systems—programs which decrease the range of voluntary choice among individuals. This is the heart of the failure of the socialistic policies of the underdeveloped nations of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. As Prof. P. T. Bauer has written so eloquently: “I regard the extension of the range of choice, that is, an increase in the range of effective alternatives open to people, as the principal objective and criterion of economic development; and I judge a measure principally by its probable effects on the range of alternatives open to individuals.”[3]

Values Are Subjective, Personal Views

Indeed, even an individual’s economic growth can no more be measured, exclusively, in terms of historical statistics than can his intellectual, moral, and spiritual growth. These ups and downs “cannot be defined in physical terms but only in terms of views people hold about things.” These views—highly personal—are in constant flux; you may care nothing tomorrow for that which you highly prize today.

Once we grasp the point that the value of any good or service is whatever others will give in willing exchange, and that the judgments of all parties to all exchanges are constantly and forever changing, it should be plain that even physical assets—money, food, or whatever—do not lend themselves to measurements in the scientific sense.

And when we further reflect on the fundamental nature of “Capital Savings,”—that they emerge out of ideas, inventions, insights, and the like—the idea of scientific measurement becomes patently absurd.

In any event, it is this penchant to make a science of political economy, to reduce Capitalistic behavior to charts, statistics, theorems, arbitrary symbols, that leads to such nonsense as the Gross National Product (GNP), “national goals” and “social gains.”[4] The more pronounced this trend, the less will the economics of Capitalism and the free society be understood—“a dismal science,” for certain. Indeed, could the ambitions of the “scientific economists” be realized, dictatorship would be a viable political system. At the dictator’s disposal would be all the formulae, all the answers; disregarding personal views and choices he would simply run his information through computers and thus meet production schedules.

Imperfect Man

When we grasp the point that no man who ever lived has been able to foresee his own future choices, let alone those of others, economic scientism, as it might be called, makes no sense.

How did we ever get off on this untenable course? Perhaps we can only speculate. A flagrant display: At one point in a recent seminar discussion I repeated, “Only God can make a tree.” And then this exclamation by a graduate student, “Up until now!” This, it appears to me, is the reflection of a notion, so prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, that every facet of Creation, even life itself, lies within the powers of man. Merely a matter of time!

To tear human action asunder and then to assign symbols or labels to the pieces, as the scientists properly do with the chemical elements, is no service to economic understanding. This method makes understanding impossible for the simple reason that it presupposes numerous phases of human action that can be mathematically or scientifically distinguished one from the other when such is not the case. Why am I motivated to write this or you to read it? Doubtless, each of us can render a judgment of sorts but it will not be, cannot be, in the language of science.

Political economy is as easy or, perhaps, as difficult to understand and practice as the Golden Rule or the Ten Commandments. Economics is no more than a study of how scarcity is best overcome, and the first thing we need to realize is that this is accomplished by the continued application of human action to natural resources.

Natural resources are what they are, no more, no less—the ultimate given! The variable is human action.

A Study of Human Action

Political economy, then, resolves itself into the study of what is and what is not intelligent human action. It should attempt to answer such questions as:

Is creative energy more efficiently released among free or coerced men?

Is freedom to choose as much a right of one as another?

Who has the right to the fruits of labor—the producer or nonproducer?

How is value determined—by political authority, cost of production, or by what others will give in willing exchange?

What actions of men should be restrained—creative actions or only destructive actions?

How dependent is overcoming scarcity on honesty, respect of each for the rights of others, the entrepreneurial spirit, an intelligent interpretation of self-interest?

Viewed in this manner, political economy is not a natural science like chemistry or physics but, rather, a division of moral philosophy—a study of what is right and what is wrong in overcoming scarcity and maximizing prosperity—the problem to which it addresses itself.

Once we drop the “scientific” jargon and begin to study political economy for what it really is, then its mastery ranks in difficulty with understanding that one should never do to others that which he would not have them do unto him.

[1] Capitalism The Creator by Carl Snyder (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1940), 473 pp.

[2] See The Counter-Revolution of Science by F. A. Hayek (New York: The Free Press of Glencoe, The Crowell-Collier Publishing Co., 1964), p. 31.

[3] P. T. Bauer, Economic Analysis and Policy in Underdeveloped Countries (Duke University Press and Cambridge University Press, 1957), p. 113.

[4] For more on the GNP fallacy and how economic growth cannot be “factually” reported, see “A Measure of Growth” in my Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967), pp. 70–84.

14 • THE CASE FOR DICTATORSHIP

But methought it lessened my esteem for a king, that he should not be able to command the rain.

—Samuel Pepys

It is my contention that the case for dictatorship has never been spelled out clearly, that people generally have fallen under authoritarian rule without knowing what was happening to them, and certainly without careful consideration of the alternative—a free society. I believe the prospects for liberty would be greatly improved if the arguments for dictatorship were better known and considered. These arguments imply a certain reading of human nature and destiny; so first, several fundamental questions must be raised about the nature of man and his purpose.

What are the distinguishing features of the human person, the characteristics which mark off Man as a distinct species? The late Lecomte du Noüy, a devout Christian and also a distinguished scientist, deals with this question in his Human Destiny:

The negation of free will, the negation of moral responsibility; the individual considered merely as a physico-chemical unit, as a particle of living matter, hardly different from the other animals, inevitably brings about the death of moral man, the suppression of all spirituality, of all hope, the frightful and discouraging feeling of total uselessness.

Now, what characterizes man, as Man, is precisely the presence in him of abstract ideas, of moral ideas, of spiritual ideas, and it is only of these that he can be proud.

It must be demonstrated that every man has a part to play and that he is free to play it or not; . . . in brief, human dignity is not a vain word, and that when man is not convinced of this and does not try to attain this dignity, he lowers himself to the level of the beast.[1]

This author affirms a belief held by numerous people, namely, that man is a creation of God and is distinguished from other creatures by free will, a freedom so pronounced that he can stultify himself by denying his Maker. That is to say, when man is not convinced of himself as Man, as in this relationship to a spiritual principle, and as endowed with this dignity, he “lowers himself to the level of the beast.”

If we concede, as du Noüy implies, that the destiny of man is to evolve in awareness, perception, consciousness, we observe that this evolution has been markedly uneven—a few are seers, many are crippled by either inborn or self-induced blindness. Doubtless, there are several ways to account for these fantastic variations. Part of the explanation lies in genealogical phenomena, each of us being the product of weird combinations of ancestors running back to the barbarian. Another, of course, is du Noüy’s contention that the philosophy of materialism effectively prevents man from accepting his role as Man. In any event, human beings—as we observe them today—are in every conceivable stage of imperfection.

Societal Arrangements Devised by Man

Man, as Man, is one thing; he is a created being with the capacity to choose. Society is quite another matter. The societal situation—good, bad, or indifferent—is not the creation of God but of human beings themselves in their stages of imperfection. This situation—our life in society—is governed by what we are, how far evolved we are, and how we conduct ourselves in relation to each other. Each individual is what he is by reason of what he conceives himself to be and how he employs his faculties; and society is what it is by reason of what we are. Considering the mix that comprises society—ranging from barbarians, morons, “beasts” to the few we call geniuses—a good society is, at best, an aspiration, a situation to be striven for—a rational possibility, perhaps, but hardly a reasoned likelihood. However, it is the striving that counts, constant endeavor being basic to the role of man, as Man.

Reviewing history, we observe that societal arrangements fall into two broad categories, neither of which has ever existed—or ever will exist—in pure form. At one pole is the social ideal which stresses the freedom of the individual to choose, that is, to exercise free will. The opposing social scheme arranges that the choosing for each be done by another, that is, by a coercively imposed will. Man as Man or man in a master-slave arrangement! Appropriate labels for these two forms of society are freedom and dictatorship.

History also reveals that freedom often has arisen from dictatorial wreckage. Dictatorships, being at odds with human destiny and the nature of man, sooner or later exhaust their bag of tricks and tumble into a shambles. And when they fail and fall, there stands man as Man, self-responsible, of necessity, for his overseers have faded into nothingness. In these intervals when man is free are to be found the several miracles that brighten the historical scene—from Athens to America! In none of these instances was freedom a planned or premeditated thing—people simply had it when the dictatorship dissolved. Freedom and self-responsibility are one and the same; this trait flowers and blooms in the decay of authoritarianism. Man does not and cannot construct this bloom, this being beyond his capabilities. All that lies within his potential is to recognize the utter fallacy of dictatorship, always and forever preparing himself for the day when he may be free and self-responsible. Herein lies the role for rationality.

Kinds of Dictatorship

Dictatorship! We do a grave disservice to rational analysis when we think of dictatorship as limited to those arrangements presided over by such celebrated characters as Genghis Khan, Charlemagne, Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, and the like. Rarely, if ever, has freedom been more snuffed out than in today’s Uruguay—democratic to the core.[2] Observe that this is no one-man dictatorship but a majority-vote monstrosity. Democracy can be, and often is, far more tyrannical than Spain’s Franco, for instance. To view our problem realistically, we must begin with a precise definition of dictatorship.

Here is mine: Dictatorship is equivalent to the state ownership and control of the means of production (government planning of the economy) and/or the state ownership and control of the results of production (government welfarism). In a word, life control!

When we analyze societal situations with this definition in mind fascism cannot be distinguished from nazism, communism, Fabianism, socialism, the planned economy, or the welfare state—except in terms of window dressing. Actually, no distinction is warranted. The political or societal situation is dictatorial to the extent that the definition applies.

When we “call a spade a spade,” as this definition permits us to do, we discover a considerable dictatorship going on right here at home, the clever phrasing and pretty labeling by the social theorists and politicians to the contrary notwithstanding. If one cannot grow all the wheat he pleases on his own land, what matters it if the taboo be called “communism” as in Russia, or “the farm program” as in the U.S.A.? Creativity is dictatorially suppressed both here and there. Thousands of such shocking comparisons come to light when the right definition is used. Dictatorship all over the place!

The case for freedom has been honestly and studiously attempted by a few persons in every age throughout recorded history—from Urukagina in ancient Lagash to this very moment when untold numbers of persons are putting their minds to it. The fact that no one has more than scratched the surface has an explanation, a point I shall comment on later.

If Only I Were in Charge . . .

But, to my knowledge, a coherent case for dictatorship has never been made. Yes, excuses galore, ranging from “I am doing this for their own good” to such nonsense as “government [as the] quarterback of the economy.”[3] Why has the real case for dictatorship never been made? Either those of an authoritarian mentality are incapable of grasping their own case or, if capable, unable to stomach it. Certainly, unwilling to proclaim it! So, let me state their case as clearly as I can.

More than forty years ago the young editor of a metropolitan newspaper said to me in all seriousness, “Were I in charge of the American economy, all of us would fare better than now!” From that day forward I have made it a point to watch for signs of this type of mentality, often revealed inadvertently in innocent utterances or writings or actions.

Interestingly enough, this trait reveals itself in every walk of life and is so common that it appears to be instinctive, dominating unless downed by reason and self-discipline or by the kind of wisdom that lies in knowing one knows not. It shows up in charwomen no less than in those who have the reigns of government in hand, no less in the untutored than among the prestigiously educated. The only difference in this respect is the coercive power or the stunning prestige to lord it over others, to implement the little-god impulse.

To make the case for dictatorship, let me put myself in a typical dictator’s shoes—domestic or foreign variety—and make his argument as it should be made. Here goes:

Dealing with Humanity at Large

True, I have given up any thought of managing my wife and, instead, let her manage me. My children on whom I have tried now reprimand, now punishment, now suasion, now reward, do not respond satisfactorily to any method; and no expostulation prevents their mother from treating them in ways I think mischievous. So, too, my dealings with some of those in my employ. Rarely do I succeed for long, whether by reasoning or scolding: the falling short of attention, or punctuality, or cleanliness, or sobriety, leads to constant personal changes. Yet, difficult as I find it to deal with humanity in detail, I am confident of my ability to deal with humanity at large. Citizens, not one-thousandth of whom I know, not one-hundredth of whom I have ever seen, and the great mass of whom belong to classes having habits and modes of thought of which I have but dim notions, will act—I feel sure—as I would have them do.[4]

Further, while I have never really succeeded in any business venture and my personal investment program has been a failure, I entertain no doubts whatsoever that were I in charge of the entire American economy, all the people would fare better than now.

When it comes right down to it, I am more competent to manage your life than you are. I know better than you what you should invent, discover, create, where you should labor and on what terms, and what and with whom you should exchange. Why, I even know how you should be educated, what books you should study, which is to say, what thoughts you should entertain.

You are well advised to forget your personal goals and devote your life to the national goals I am competent to prescribe for the good of all.

If you are more successful than others, I know what fruits of your labor should be taken from you and bestowed on others who are less successful. Rely on me for these dispensations and forget the practice of Judeo-Christian charity. True, I do not know your neighbor, but the statistical data which I know how to compile provides me with information superior to your personal judgments.

I know all about money and how to govern its quantity so as to serve the greatest good for the greatest number.

Forget market pricing as a means of adjusting supply and demand. Leave the decisions about what should be produced and in what quantity to me. For I understand how to keep the economy finely tuned by wage and price controls. And I know how to ration what you should consume.

Frankly, I see everything clearly; even the forces of Creation are not beyond my ken. Indeed, I propose in the not too distant future to control the weather! I need nothing added to my wisdom except the physical power—government—to enforce my ways and to rule out freedom of choice by others.

The foregoing description of the authoritarian mentality calls for a word of caution. Above all, we must be charitable toward the authoritarian. To pronounce him unintelligent is to refute our own thesis, namely, that there is no one who knows overmuch. The common mark of an authoritarian is a blind spot, one that few have ever been able to remedy: not knowing how little he knows. Is a person to be condemned for what he does not yet know? If so, then reflect on how little we know about making the case for freedom. No one has gone beyond the primer level!

So, instead of carping at the little-god syndrome, let us concentrate on overcoming our own inadequacies. Bear in mind Victor Hugo’s sage observation: “More powerful than armies is an idea whose time has come.” It appears obvious that the time has not yet come for the freedom idea. When? As stated previously, it may be any century now, or decade, or year, or day. Indeed, it may be any hour. Therefore, let us make certain that the idea is as refined as we can make it: polished, shiny, attractive, and ready for eager acceptance. This is the role of man as Man!

[1] See Human Destiny by Lecomte du Noüy (New York: A Mentor Book, 1947), pp. xiii–xiv.

[2] See “A Lesson from Uruguay” by Dr. Howard E. Kershner, The Freeman, June, 1964, and “Uruguay: Welfare State Gone Wild” by Henry Hazlitt, The Freeman, April, 1969.

[3] See The New York Times Book Review, May 30, 1971, p. 11. See also Chapter 15.

[4] Paraphrased from Herbert Spencer’s Man versus the State (Caldwell Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1944).

15 • UNCLE SAM AS QUARTERBACK

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

—Jefferson

Cliches and plausibilities critical of and antagonistic to the free market, limited government, private ownership way of life and favorable to governmental takeover of the economy have been on the increase in the United States since the turn of the century. What began in a small way with the scribblings of a few “parlor pinks” has built to a crescendo; it dominates the current consensus, pouring forth almost as much from businessmen as from labor officials, politicians, or modern social theorists. Much of today’s talk in the private clubs of the well-to-do differs more in vocabulary than in content from what Leninists were saying sixty years ago.

These countless buzzings of general discontent reflect such an abysmal lack of understanding of the respective roles of the free market and of governmental action that their numerous fallacies are difficult to grapple onto and explain. Knock down one and up pop a dozen others with new phrasings—like trying to parry each icy missile in a hail storm!

Social Theorists to the Rescue

But now the social theorists have come to our aid, bringing the whole kit and caboodle of socialistic notions together into this well-exposed target: they advocate a restructuring of society that

. . . would allow the legitimate government to recapture its proper role as the quarterback of the economy . . .[1]

Now, I cannot find any evidence in American history that it was ever the proper role of government to quarterback the economy. It well may be a socialistic aspiration to capture that role for government; certainly a situation cannot be recaptured if it has never existed.

But, be that as it may, to view government in “its proper role as the quarterback of the economy” puts the whole socialistic thesis in precisely the vulnerable position it deserves. In the first place, this is very loose analogy, at best, as loose as the thesis itself. For a football team presupposes opposition, something to contest against. Obviously, when an economy is socialized, visualized as being quarterbacked, the free economy is nonexistent. The private sector has been liquidated, so there is no opposition—the whole thing no more than phantom play. Nonetheless, this is their analogy, not mine. Let’s have a look at its further absurdities.

In the backfield is Uncle Sam as quarterback, calling all the plays. And who better at fullback—the powerful line plunger—than Labor! Imagine Agriculture and Industry in the halfback positions; and in the line: Education, Finance, Insurance, Trade, Transportation, Medicine, and Religion. Others are on the bench.

Labor as Player Coach

Before analyzing the competence of Uncle Sam to call all plays, let us reflect on the players in this dream team.

Labor, as popularly conceived, is organized union labor. If this definition be used, than Labor is telling Uncle Sam what plays to call—really the coach! Labor, as thus defined, finds this dream team advantageous, a way of getting its way without giving the appearance of lording it over the economy.

Labor, however, in any meaningful sense, includes everyone who works, be the labor menial, manual, intellectual, spiritual, or whatever. This includes all creative endeavors in their infinite variety from the simplest to the most complex. No man who ever lived has the remotest notion of what all of this is; indeed, no one of us has more than a shallow grasp of his own aptitudes and potentialities. How are we to appraise a fullback who believes he can call all of these plays!

Or, suppose that Uncle Sam as quarterback is to call the play with a handoff to Agriculture, one of the halfbacks. What super quarterback could even begin to conceive of the problems and potentialities of Agriculture? What about his weight; are there too many farmers? Shall their number be reduced through a crash diet? Or will Agriculture be given a 2-yard, price-support bonus on each plunge—a subsidy to offset the extra weight? And what about the territory between the 30- and the 40-yard line: how can Agriculture cross that distance if it is locked up in the Soil Bank? Is the turf in the proper condition, or does it need fertilizer, or perhaps new seed varieties? And if Agriculture is held out of the play because of the Soil Bank, who is to guard against the Agricultural equivalent on the foreign team who neither understands nor cares about such rules? Shall the sequence of plays be Corn—Oats—Clover, or Corn—Corn—Corn? What if the defense comes up with a plague of locusts or a blight against the Corn play? May DDT be used to spray the pests? What minor trace elements should be added to the soil to perk up the play? And who is going to control the weather to guarantee the solid footing Agriculture needs? How on earth can Uncle Sam as quarterback ever manage the intricacies of an Agriculture influenced by unforeseeable conditions around the world?

Control of All Industry

Consider the other halfback: Industry. Bear in mind that no single person knows how to make so simple a thing as an ordinary wooden lead pencil. Then reflect on the fact that General Electric, for instance, manufactures more than 200,000 separate items, each far more complex than a pencil. No employee of the company knows how to make any one of them; indeed, no employee knows what all the items are. Now, envision the tens of thousands of industries, many of them making products never heard of by you or me or anyone else. Uncle Sam is going to quarterback all of these plays?

Education is at left end by reason of its experience at that position. Under government quarterbacking longer than any other member of the dream team, its performance is now drawing more boos than cheers. The folly of a system of government schooling is so blatant that it should be self-evident to any but its victims. Pick your quarterback, Uncle Sam or Solomon, and observe how farcical it is for him to call the plays for Education—what you should learn or read or think or create—as if the task of Education were to make carbon copies of human beings! Who could have called the plays for Socrates, Michelangelo, Galileo, Beethoven, Edison, Lincoln? All progress since the dawn of humanity has been due to fortunate escapes from quarterbacking: every discovery, invention, insight, each intuitive experience is the result of the exercise of free will, volition, the spirit of inquiry. In no instance has intellectual, moral, or spiritual progress been masterminded—the plays called—by government as quarterback!

Managed Money

Finance, long under government’s thumb, is at left tackle. I am prepared to argue that not more than one person understands money and no one knows who he is. Why this claim? No two monetary theorists agree, therefore, how can more than one be right?[2] Uncle Sam at quarterback presupposes that he understands money, an absurd presupposition. Nor do we need any theorizing to make this point; merely look at the record—a rapidly deteriorating dollar!

Insurance is at left guard, Uncle Sam increasingly calling the plays: social security, Medicare, insured bank deposits, compulsory liability insurance, unemployment and welfare payments, price supports, and all forms of protectionism such as labor union monopolies, cartels, insured markets, tariffs, embargoes, quotas—in a word, the guaranteed life. Every citizen in the land, regardless of whether he wishes to be insured or not, is subject to one or more of these quarterbacked schemes. Calling such plays for 200 million individuals is out of the question. So, how is it done? By lumping us into arbitrary categories—the “have nots” vs. the “haves”—according to the principles of “macro economics.” And it doesn’t work! Merely observe that as the dollar deteriorates, as is now the case, all insurance—private as well as government—progressively loses security value. Look at the Argentine, for instance. Suppose you had bought a paid-up annuity in Buenos Aires thirty years ago, payments to begin in 1972. Present value? Substantially nothing! Quarterbacking on display for all to see! Failure on parade!

Trade is at center, for everything in the economy revolves around exchange. Reflect on the number of your own daily exchanges: conversations, phone calls, all purchases of food, clothing, gadgets, light, heat, gas for the car, and so on, many of them automatic and hard to recall. Multiply your exchanges by the nation’s population and then add all the exchanges between producers, distributors, foreign suppliers and customers, stock and commodity exchanges, and the daily total runs into the trillions. Who, possibly, has the effrontery to pretend to quarterback this fantastic process of exchange? Uncle Sam, of course, through such devices as wage and price controls, rationing, and the countless other restraints and restrictions against free and willing exchange!

Throttling the Railroads

Transportation is at right guard. Of all major industries, perhaps none has been more closely quarterbacked by Uncle Sam than the railroads.[3] Short of a sharp and early reversal in policy, the railroads face government ownership. The airlines are headed for a similar fate and our maritime position is also being quarterbacked to death. Again, failure on parade!

Medicine plays right tackle on this dream team. Here is a science in which the most advanced practitioners acknowledge how little they know. And for good reason: Many of the therapies and drugs regarded as cures a decade ago have been discarded for better ones, an ongoing progression since Hippocrates. And there is no reason to assume that the future will differ from the past in this respect—provided that government quarterbacking of Medicine is abandoned. Imagine Uncle Sam trying to call the plays in this complex, little understood, and difficult science!

Here’s Religion at right end; how shall the quarterback use it? Well, if history furnishes a clue, government will try to use Religion for political ends. The king cannot rule by force alone; his power needs the enhancement that divine right supplies. This kind of alliance between the temporal and the spiritual is bad on all counts; it invests secular power with a sanction it should not have, and the spiritual life is corrupted as well. With government as quarterback, we remove the wall separating Church and State; we politicalize Religion and we divinize politics. Bad on all counts.

Finally, let us have a look at the quarterback himself, so that we can assess Uncle Sam’s competence to run the team. Uncle Sam is government and government is composed of some of the very same persons who comprise society. The quarterback syndrome probably is no more or less prevalent among government personnel than among the rest of the population. The social theorists who argue for Uncle Sam as quarterback or the persons who run to government for succor express as much faith in the power play as do those in government who believe themselves competent to call and execute the plays.

Our present examination, however, is limited to those who call the plays. What is their competence? How are they to be distinguished from ordinary folk like us? What have they got that you and I as citizens do not possess? How all-wise are they?

Although these persons come from the mill run of us, they are to be distinguished in two respects. We can grasp the first by reference to Socrates. That Athenian, generally conceded to be a wise man, was convinced that he knew nothing. Those who rely on the power play have no such conviction! Indeed, it is this blindness to their limitations that most prominently brands them. They entertain no doubt whatsoever about their ability to run our lives.

Their second distinguishing feature is the coercive force at their disposal—a constabulary to back them up. They have the power to spread their blindness, to inflict it on us. And this very power corrupts their minuscule understanding. Such people, when observing others goose-stepping to their commands, interpret the obedience as their own wisdom at work. So, by reason of these two distinctions, they are even less competent than the mill run of us, in no wise qualified to be quarterbacks.

If we wish to use the football analogy at all, then think of a free market, private ownership society, featured by voluntarism and competition—contestants, if you please—with Uncle Sam as referee, enforcing a fair field and no favors. This is the only role for Uncle Sam that makes sense.

[1] America, Inc. by Morton Mintz and Jerry S. Cohen (New York: The Dial Press). See The New York Times Book Review, May 30, 1971, p. 11.

[2] For an explanation as to why no one person can or ever will understand money, see my Government: An Ideal Concept, op. cit., pp. 80–90.

[3] See Throttling the Railroads by Clarence B. Carson (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1971).

16 • THE WORRYCRATS

He has an oar in every man’s boat, and a finger in every pie.

—Cervantes

Even when government is limited to codifying the taboos, invoking a common justice, and keeping the peace, there is and has to be an operating staff: a bureaucracy, as we call it. Routine procedures of a bureaucracy offer a legal way to administer a police department, as distinguished from arbitrary rule.[1]

Worrycrats, as I call them, are a special breed of totalitarian bureaucrats who spawn rapidly as society is socialized. These people concern themselves with our health, education, welfare, auto safety, drug intake, diet, and what have you. Worrycrats today outnumber any other professionals in history, so rapidly have they proliferated.

We might say that theirs is indeed big business, except that the activities of these worrycrats in no way resemble a free market operation. Freedom in transactions has no part in this political procedure. Citizens are coerced to pay these professional worriers whether they want their services or not. A nongovernmental operation of similar nature would be called a racket.

While the worrycrat has never ranked higher in my esteem than any other practitioner of chicanery, it took two successive observations to “turn me on.” Driving north on the Merritt Parkway, I observed a brilliantly painted roadway sign: ARE YOU DYING FOR A SMOKE? While designed to discourage smoking at the wheel, it brought to mind the recurrent messages beamed to us by worrycrats.

Perhaps I would have dismissed the thought had I not read in the next morning’s paper about the World Health Organization, operating out of Geneva, announcing its plans “. . . to step up its campaign against cigarettes by reducing the world’s production of tobacco.” How? By getting farmers, the world over, to switch to other crops![2]

Mine is not an argument in favor of smoking or against anyone quitting; whether you smoke or not is none of my business. Rather, I question the propriety of our being coerced to pay worrycrats to worry about us. We worry enough on our own without paying to have our worries multiplied. George Robert Sims wrote a truism:

For one that big misfortunes slay,

Ten die of little worries.

Unduly Concerned

An experience comes to mind. In 1947 I visited Houston for the first time. There were fifty VIP’s at the dinner. Seated next to me was an elderly gentleman. The next noon, he remarked, “Leonard, you were nervous before you spoke and you drank far too much coffee. That’s not good for you.”

Admitting to both the nervousness and excessive coffee, I suggested—perhaps incorrectly—that, short of accidents, we are born, more or less, with our time tags; that my excesses might make a year or two difference, but why fret about that!

“I never thought of it that way before,” said he, “but now that you mention it, here’s a piece of evidence in your support. Fifty-some years ago sixteen couples, all in our early twenties, arrived in Houston. We became close friends, and I confess we smoked, drank a lot of coffee, and even some alcohol. We worked hard but we had fun. Then, when we reached forty or thereabouts, all, except myself and one other, began worrying about when they were going to die. Having a fretful eye on reaching a ripe, old age, they quit these things, watched their diet, and otherwise prepared for longevity. You know, all except that other fellow and me have gone to their reward!”

Observe the massive outpourings of the worrycrats—over TV, radio, and in the press—about lung cancer, heart failure, mercury, cranberries, cyclomates, seat belts, groceries, and so on. Unless one sees through all of these unsolicited oral and verbal counsels, he is going to be unnecessarily concerned. It is my contention that tens of millions have had their ordinary fears and worries substantially multiplied by reason of these professional do-gooders. Millions of people who never gave longevity more than a second thought are now worrying about it. Fear and worry are far deadlier menaces than all the things from which the worrycrats pretend to protect us. But before trying to substantiate this point, let us raise a few pertinent questions.

Are these political saviors really concerned about your welfare and mine? Actually, they do not know that you or I exist. Nor will they know when we cease to exist. What, then, is their motivation? The truth is that I know as little about their motivations as they know about what is good or bad for me.

But let us suppose that they are worried about you and me. Who are they and what is their competence? Certainly, lovely ladies serve a purpose, but they are not experts when it comes to your welfare or mine. Nor are publicists, propagandists, the folks of Madison Avenue—all of these people who prepare the worry words we hear and read.

Each Is Unique

Or, let us further suppose that these worrycrats are the world’s most advanced physicians and scientists. Would they know enough of what is injurious or helpful to you or me to justify forcing this information upon us or frightening us about it? You and I are in no way alike; each individual is unique, extraordinary, different. Were this not the case, my doctor could examine me and apply the same findings to you and all others. Examination of one would suffice for everyone.

As a matter of fact, individuals vary widely. For instance, an associate of mine must strenuously exercise to live. The same exertion by most people would do them in. A late friend of mine passed on at 95. He had observed a rule all his life: never move except when necessary. Similar inactivity for most of us would bring about an early demise. There are drugs which can save your life but would kill me. This is why pharmaceutical houses publish long lists of contraindications for each drug they manufacture.

Dr. Roger Williams, a noted biochemist at the University of Texas, blamed a physician for the death of a patient because he treated her as an average person—when there is no average person! This led Dr. Williams into the study of human variation and resulted in three remarkable books published by the University of Texas Press in Austin: Free and Unequal (1953), The Biochemical Basis of Individuality (1956), and You Are Extraordinary (1967). For a striking example among his findings: some persons can imbibe twenty times as much alcohol as can certain others, and be no more inebriated! As noted in a previous chapter, even “identical twins” are far from identical.

Beyond Man’s Competence

I care not who sits behind the worrycrat desk, whether a dullard or an Aristotle. When anyone thus tries to fathom our ills, deficiencies, excesses, he is staring into absolute darkness. Prescribing for and presiding over 200 million distinctive, unique individuals is no more within man’s competence than sitting atop the Cosmos and directing the Universe. Contrary to socialist doctrine, we are discrete beings—not a mass, a collective, a lump of dough to be kneaded, baked, and consumed!

Now, what about fears, anxieties, worries? Are they killers? One scarcely needs modern science to find support for the idea that most ills are psychosomatic in origin. Go back well over two millennia and there it is: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”[3] Here is modern support:

For instance, a patient whose parents have both died of heart disease will be anxious about his own heart. When then a normal diencephalic response to an emotion causes the heart to beat faster or when gastric distension pushes his heart out of its usual position, he will be inclined to interpret what he feels as the beginning of the disease which killed his parents, thinking that he has inherited a weak heart. At once all his fears cluster like a swarm of angry bees on his heart, a vicious cycle is established and thus anxious cortical supervision may eventually lead to organic lesions. He and his family will then be convinced that he did indeed inherit a weak heart, yet this is not at all true.

The above is taken from Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M.D.[4] This is but one of many illustrations of how death is hastened through fears, anxieties, rage, worries; a physiologic and pathologic process set in motion by a psychosomatic origin. In brief, unless one would speed the process, let him not fear death.

I repeat, the outpourings of the worrycrats tend to multiply our stresses, anxieties, worries; instead of rescuing us from our waywardness, they are literally scaring us to death.

Ideally, there is a role for government with respect to health, education, welfare. That role is to inhibit misrepresentation, fraud, violence, predation, whether by doctors, educators, restaurateurs, pharmaceutical manufacturers, labor unions, or others. No false labels! No coercive impositions on anyone! This is to say that all of us should be prohibited from injuring others. Actions that harm others—not what one does to self—define the limits of the social problem and of governmental scope.

You know yourself better than anyone else does. Better that you turn yourself toward what you think is your advantage than be turned by a worrycrat toward what he thinks is your advantage. You at least know something, whereas he knows nothing of you as an individual.

[1] See Bureaucracy by Ludwig von Mises (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969).

[2] See The New York Times, January 31, 1971, First Section, p. 12.

[3] Proverbs 23:7.

[4] First published in 1961 by E. P. Dutton & Co., New York.

See also The Stress of Life by Hans Selye, M.D. (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1956) and The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D. (London: Martin Seeker & Warburg, Ltd., 1962).

17 • PERSONAL AND CONFIDENTIAL

Who shall be true to us when we are so unsecret ourselves?

—Shakespeare

There is as much fallacy as wit in the old wheeze, “It isn’t that I can’t keep a secret; it’s the people I tell it to.” Why fallacy? It is obvious, in the first place, that I cannot keep a secret or I would not have told it to you; and, secondly, you have less reason to keep my secret than I. Secrets are not among those things that can be kept.

Here is a good rule, learned the hard way, which I shall attempt to substantiate: Never write or speak anything unfit for all on earth to witness. Indeed, insofar as possible, let this apply to one’s thoughts as well; for even thoughts have some sort of a communicating wave length. Observed Samuel Smiles:

. . . there is not an act or thought in the life of a human being but carries with it a train of consequences, the end of which we may never trace. Not one but, to a certain extent, gives color to our own life, and insensibly influences the lives of those about us. The good deed or thought will live, even though we may not see it fructify but so will the bad; and no person is so insignificant as to be sure that his example will not do good on the one hand, nor evil on the other.[1] (Italics mine)

Before reflecting on the subtle aspects of secrecy or privacy, such as one’s own thoughts, let us touch on the problem in its more obvious forms for this is an old, old matter of common concern. For instance, the writers of The Declaration of Independence made this charge against King George III:

He has erected a multitude of new Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people. . . .

In a word, nothing was private or confidential.

Fifteen years later in Amendment IV of the Bill of Rights, we find this attempt to secure privacy under our new government:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable seizures, shall not be violated. . . .

How works the U.S.A. protection against unreasonable search and seizure? In 1949 our House of Representatives appointed “the Buchanan Committee,” the avowed aim of which was to enact a law to force all organizations such as FEE, regardless of how far removed from political action, to register as lobbyists. Hearings were held. Prior to my commanded appearance, there were from one to four committee “investigators” here for a whole month, ransacking every file in the place, even copies of “personal and confidential” letters—everything made public property. To refuse them access to every record was to face a Contempt-of-Congress citation and a prison sentence. That’s how well the Fourth Amendment now works!

As it turned out, Congressman Buchanan’s objective did not weather the hearings. Count one! Count two, however, is what mattered most to me: I learned never to put anything in writing that I would be unwilling for anyone or everyone to read. But even this was only half the lesson!

Private Papers Become Public Property

Here is a later threat to secrecy. Two government colleges that I know of—and perhaps many more—have added an “Archives Department.” Prominent or well-known individuals are urgently invited to bequeath their files—“preservation of the notables” is the essence of this appeal. Sounds good on the surface in spite of taxpayer support. Observe how it works: The donor passes on. The spouse or estate, wishing to carry out the donor’s good intentions, to aid education, and giving no attention to “weeding out” highly confidential correspondence, ships the files. Into the “archives” they go—public property!

A case in point: The files of a highly energetic and outspoken individual—well known to me—were thus donated. This gentleman was rarely circumspect in how he praised or berated those who agreed or disagreed with his point of view nor were many of those with whom he corresponded. Suppose you had written him a “private and confidential” letter. While you never even dreamed of such a thing, that letter is now public property. This, however, is only part of the story. A student, seeking his Ph.D., made this man’s private correspondence the subject of his dissertation. And this same government college granted the student a Ph.D. for nothing more than a second-rate muckraking job. Higher education, no less!

The lesson? Be ever circumspect in writing anyone for you never can know where the letter will end up. Some carelessly expressed thought of yours may provide material for a Doctorate—of philosophy! Another lesson: Never bequeath to any outfit someone else’s letters without his expressed consent. To do so is to break faith.

Verbal carelessness is even more risky than the written variety. Here the record is the listener’s faulty memory which is less exact than the written word. Each of us finds it difficult accurately to repeat what we ourselves have said. Another will almost surely distort, however innocently, whatever words we spoke and the result may be far from anything we had in mind.

And now to the root of it all. The words we write and speak have their origin in what we think. This is why thought must be as free from carelessness, error, and bitterness as possible. No person can conceal his thoughts; they decorate every word he utters and all his manners. Those who try to give a better impression of themselves than the facts warrant are immediately pegged as “phonies”; they fool no one except the undiscerning.

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” For whatever a man thinketh in his heart to be kept a secret would require of others a blindness as to how he shows himself. “I can see right through him,” is a claim perhaps as true as it is common.

Secrecy is impossible, a myth. Ask the enemy whose code we broke or inquire of our own War Department. And why should we so much prize secrecy? If one’s thoughts be of a proper quality, why should we not be pleased, rather than fearful, were all on earth to bear witness?

I will govern my life and my thoughts as if all the world were to see the one and read the other; for what does it signify to make anything a secret to my neighbor, when to God all our privacies are open?

—Seneca

[1] See Self Help by Samuel Smiles (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1884), p. 374.

18 • ON PLAGIARISM

There is a difference between imitating a good man and counterfeiting him.

—Franklin

The dictionary defines plagiarism: “to take and pass off as one’s own (the ideas, writings, etc. of another).” At first blush, the plagiarist appears to be a despicable cad—nothing less than a thief. But perhaps this is too hasty a judgment.

What makes plagiarism a vice is knowingly to pass off as one’s own the ideas and writings of another, that is, to make a liar of self. For it is easily demonstrable that practically every idea we espouse and pass off as our own is unknowingly taken from others. Indeed, were this not the case, that is, were we to traffic exclusively in our own original ideas and writings—ideas never thought of by anyone else before—communication would come to a near halt. A few observations on this point:

- Originality is nothing but judicious imitation. The most original writers borrowed one from another. The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbors, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

- One couldn’t carry on life comfortably without a little blindness to the fact that everything has been said better than we can put it ourselves.

- People are always talking about originality; but what do they mean? As soon as we are born the world begins to work upon us; and this goes on to the end. And, after all, what can we call our own except energy, strength, and will? If I could give an account of all that I owe to great predecessors and contemporaries, there would be but a small balance in my favor.

- Originality is simply a pair of fresh eyes.

- If we can advance propositions both true and new, these are our own by right of discovery; and if we can repeat what is old, more briefly and brightly than others, this also becomes our own, by right of conquest.

- It is almost impossible for anyone who reads much, and reflects a good deal, to be able, on every occasion, to determine whether a thought was another’s or his own. I have several times quoted sentences out of my own writings, in aid of my own arguments, in conversation, thinking that I was supporting them by some better authority!

- Those writers who lie on the watch for novelty can have little hope of greatness; for great things cannot have escaped former observation.

- It is not strange that remembered ideas should often take advantage of the crowd of thoughts and smuggle themselves in as original. Honest thinkers are always stealing unconsciously from each other. Our minds are full of waifs and estrays which we think our own. Innocent plagiarism turns up everywhere. Literature is full of coincidences. There are thoughts always abroad in the air which it takes more wit to avoid than to hit upon.

- Plagiarists have, at least, the merit of preservation.

The background of these nine observations has an interesting instruction for us. Upon deciding to explore this topic, I turned to The Dictionary of Thought, selecting the quotations which more or less squared with my own thinking on originality and plagiarism, opinions I believed to have been more or less my own. Not one of these observations am I aware of having read before. Now, had I not discovered what others had written and had I put these same thoughts in my own phrasing, I would have been unknowingly taking from others. Not a thing wrong with that—nothing, whatsoever; it would have had “at least the merit of preservation.” On the other hand, suppose that after discovering these observations I had used the exact phrasing and claimed them as my own! What a liar! Such a tactic would have done no harm to those authors who live only in our memory[1] and no offense to my readers. Just self-injury!

Finding the original of a given idea probably is not possible. For instance, in October 1970 a book of mine was published entitled Talking to Myself. Some months later, the celebrated Pearl Bailey’s Talking to Myself was announced. It is a reasonable certainty that neither of us took the title from the other; it simply occurred to both of us at the same time. Such is the synchronistic nature of ideas—occurring to different minds simultaneously. The record is studded with examples. The Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, wrote a book on this phenomenon: Synchronicity.

Equally phenomenal is the way in which ideas develop. We hear or read an idea new to us. It insinuates itself into the subconscious or some womb of the mind, goes through a period of gestation for days, weeks, or years and, if it does not die in embryo, emerges as one’s very own—an “original.” I have been able to identify such “originals” in my own experience, the gestation periods ranging from six months to thirty years.[2]

There is, in fact, no way to fasten ownership claims to an idea, which is spiritual, as we do with material things—copyright laws and legal jargon to the contrary notwithstanding. Might as well try to draw property lines around a cloud or a wish or a dream or Creation. Ideas are forever in a state of fusion and/or flux and they defy any precise earmarking.

One might conclude that this evaluation is at odds with the free market, private ownership way of life which, of course, lays stress on the profit motive—and, quite properly. This, however, is to gloss over the fact that there are two kinds of profit: psychic and monetary, the former being no less a motivator of creative action than the latter. And no less rewarding!

Robert Louis Stevenson gave us this aphorism: “I take my milk from many cows but I make my own butter.” And I do precisely the same, my “butter” being a nonprescriptive philosophy: no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy.

Do I resent the taking and using of my ideas by others? To the contrary, the more others adopt them the greater is my satisfaction: psychic profit. Suppose my ideas on liberty were so widely accepted by others that freedom might prevail as our way of life. I would prefer this above all the dollars in Christendom. And as for credit, I couldn’t care less. Personal fame is of small consequence in contrast with individual liberty and equal opportunity for all, even from the standpoint of pure self-interest. I fare well precisely because others do.

And speaking of fare, one of my hobbies is cooking. I have taken my milk from many cows—culinary artists—but now and then “ad lib,” adding a spice or herb or a touch of this and that which imparts gastronomic novelty. When an appreciative guest expresses a desire for the recipe, it is given with the greatest of pleasure; never withheld as my monopoly. First, there is a psychic profit in this giving, sufficient unto itself. And, second, should I dine at that other person’s table, his or her best fare will be served to me.

The same principle of exchange and sharing elevates ideas just as it improves the quality of food. The more I share ideas with others, the more and better are my own, and the better are the ones offered to me. This is the process of putting the best foot forward.

Ideas come from we know not where; they are of a spiritual nature. When we receive and understand them they are ours or, perhaps, it would be more accurate to say we are theirs. In any event, good ideas are not to be put in storage but are to be shared—as freely given as received.

[1] These authors in the order of the quotations: Voltaire (1694–1778), George Eliot (1819–1880), Goethe (1749–1832), T. W. Higginson (1823–1911), Caleb Colton (1780–1832), Lawrence Sterne (1713–1768), Samuel Johnson (1709–1784), O. W. Holmes (1809–1894), Disraeli (1804–1881).

[2] See my chapter, “Patience! It’s Brighter Than You Think,” in Talking to Myself, op. cit., pp. 156–161.

19 • SPEAK FOR YOURSELF, JOHN

Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate virtue.

—Cardinal Gibbons

Millions of Americans realize that our politico-economic situation is askew. Yet, few are speaking their minds, that is, consulting the conscience and then saying openly and honestly what they truly think. They leave the task of speaking out to organizations and professionals and, by so doing, gain a false sense of discharging their social responsibility. My purpose here is to examine this error.

The limited role of organizations, when delving into politico-economic affairs, is rarely recognized by their supporters and all too seldom by the persons in charge of operations. Unless these limitations are known, such institutions must head down the wrong road—their efforts rendered useless. Happily, the potentialities for usefulness are tremendous, once the limitations are known.

An experience may help to illustrate my thesis. I had been asked to a southern city to lecture to some fifty invited guests. Among them was a brilliant, hard-headed business executive—more or less unfamiliar with our efforts. As the three-hour lecture and discussion session drew to a close, he asked in all sincerity, “I am sympathetic with your philosophy, but what is it you really want?”

My reply: “You!”

Obviously puzzled, he asked, “You mean you are not looking for money?”

“No. This is not essentially a money problem but one of brains—if I may use such loose phrasing.”[1]

“Well, you can buy brains with money, can’t you?”

“Not the kind I am talking about. The intellectual qualities required to cope with the social problems we have been discussing can no more be coaxed or cajoled into existence by money than can friendship or patriotism.”

This executive, dedicated to his own business and typical of countless thousands of highly positioned individuals, is carrying the practice of specialization a bit too far. He has been assuming that the politico-economic waywardness of the U.S.A. can be corrected without him, that organizations can be structured to do the job, that he can give them some financial support, that there is nothing else to it! His only responsibility is check writing.

When financial backers believe this, and when those who establish and operate organizations entertain notions that they are cast in the role of helmsmen to steer the ship of state, the inevitable result is failure. Better that there be neither supporters nor organizations for this wholly unrealistic view of how improvement can be achieved. This assessment is why I replied “You” to the business executive’s question. For it is you, whoever you are, not organizations, to whom we must look for solutions to politico-economic problems.

On That Day Began Lies

First, let us recognize what organizations cannot do. My critical conclusion stems from intimate experiences spanning 44 years: secretary of two small chambers of commerce, a decade with the National Chamber, general manager of the country’s largest chamber, a brief spell as executive vice-president of the National Industrial Conference Board, and the past 26 years as the operating head of FEE. I have learned about the limitation of organizations the hard way: organizational voices broadcast to the public or at legislatures go pretty much unheeded, claims to the contrary notwithstanding. Might as well howl at the moon.[2]

There is reason aplenty for the indifference and apathy that greets organizational pronouncements. Organizations deigning to deal with the politico-economic realm are typed. They may or may not truly stand for any particular interest or doctrine, but they at least pretend to do so. This has been said of FEE no less than of ADA. Fence straddlers or opponents, the ones these eager and misdirected organizations “try to reach,” heed them not. Why? Because these organizations are suspected of having an axe to grind!

There is, moreover, a compelling reason why pronouncements ground out by committee procedures—a common organizational feature—deserve no hearing. Having, on one occasion, 200 committees in my organization, leads me to share the harsh criticism leveled at the process by Leo Tolstoy:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decision of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began the lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.

Reason and conscience originate in and find expression only in and through you or other discrete individuals. Committee resolutions or organizational positions, on the other hand, are the outcroppings of men united in council. As a rule, they represent whatever compromises are necessary to gain majority acceptance. These compromises are but stabs in the dark aimed at a position not too disagreeable and, in consequence, they form an amalgam or potpourri substantially divorced from reason and conscience.[3]

Once we recognize that our social waywardness stands no chance of improvement, let alone correction, unless reason and conscience come to the rescue, and when we see that these qualities of the intellect have their source only in you, then it logically follows that you must speak for yourself. Not FEE! Not any organization! YOU!

Just before I began this treatise, two illuminating examples of you in action came to my attention. The first was from a college president, a man of unusual insight and understanding. He sent along an article of his that was about to be published. In this article he had broken his silence on our politico-economic dilemma; this was an honest, forthright expression of his insights and reactions. Integrity glowed through every word of it! Here we have reason and conscience applied—worth more than all the committee resolutions ever written. Who knows! Perhaps others will follow his exemplary conduct. If they do, we will witness a turn toward a sound economy.

The second has to do with a cliche that has been thrown in our face for the past 40 years: “If socialism is so bad, as you folks claim, why does it work so effectively in Sweden?” We have known all the time that socialism has never worked in Sweden; indeed, we know that it can never work anywhere. But try to prove it! It took a you to do it, in this instance an individual on the other side of the ideological fence. The celebrated Swedish socialist, Gunnar Myrdal, remarked, “The organized welfare state has gone mad.”[4]

Suppose FEE had been on TV all of these years and had repeatedly broadcast these very words. Effect? Probably the opposite of that desired. But let the renowned Dr. Myrdal make the acknowledgment and we can cite an authority on how Swedish socialism is not working.

Having, at least to my satisfaction, settled upon you with your reason and conscience as the sole source of any effective change for the better, it is plain why we at FEE have, over the years, turned a deaf ear to the countless pleas publicly to speak for you. Over and over again: go on TV, speak over the radio, get your works in the Reader’s Digest, sell the masses, reform the heretics, set the politicians right, and so on! And we say in reply, “Speak for yourself, John!”

Well, where does this kind of an attitude leave FEE? What remains for us to do? Actually, a task bigger than we can ever adequately perform, a field with possibilities and challenges unlimited. What can that be? Rendering a service to YOU!

Division of labor—specialization—does, in fact, apply here but caution must be exercised lest personal responsibility be lost in some subdivision. Responsibility for a society featuring freedom of choice—freedom to create, to produce, to exchange, the right to the fruits of one’s own labor, limited government, along with moral and spiritual antecedents—can no more appropriately be delegated than can responsibility for self. Your society is no less your problem than is your own life and welfare, thus your social responsibility can be discharged only by thinking for self and speaking for self. The requirement, I repeat, is you!

What goes on in society—good, bad, or indifferent—has its origin in you. It follows that you must assume responsibilities for whatever delegating is done. What sort of thing can you appropriately assign to others? Not your thinking—which is nontransferable—nor your speaking—which should reflect your convictions. Such assignment is alienation, a divorcement from one’s own responsibilities. What then? Not you or I or anyone else can ever go it alone in the freedom philosophy, for it is as broad as wisdom and deep as understanding. Thus, every one of us requires helpers. It is therefore appropriate to delegate to others such chores as befits one’s own requirements: the gathering of facts and ideas, searching for the best there is in ideals and moral goals, and related aids. In a word, it is the leg work, as we say, that can appropriately be delegated, as when one selects a tutor or teacher.

The Role of FEE

FEE’s role is of this sort, that is, FEE is not an institutional spokesman nor an organization trying to “reach” anyone. Rather, ours is, one might say, no more than an agency offering such services as you may think of value in your own search and personal growth. This and nothing more!

Once we who labor within such institutional frameworks realize our humble place in the total scheme of things, then countless potentialities burst into view. The opportunities for achievement can now be seen as limitless which is by way of saying that the pursuit of excellence is a road without end. Instead of playing the utterly futile game of trying to “reach” others, we can concentrate on getting enough into our own mentalities and improving our services to the point where others will reach for us. And, by the way, we have a fair means of measuring how well we are doing: the extent to which we can, at any given time, look up to those who once looked up to us. The excellence of a teacher can be judged by the students who finally excel him. You find it useful to reach for us now and, who knows, we may soon be reaching for you!

All of this is more than likely when enough individuals heed the admonition, “Speak for yourself, John.”

[1] Of course, organizations have to be financed. I, however, believe no more in “looking” for money than “reaching” for converts. If the work is needed, and well enough done, adequate financing will be volunteered by those who value the efforts.

[2] Some readers, observing the enormous influence of labor unions, for instance, may think this conclusion in error. Merely bear in mind that my remarks are directed only to the process of advancing enlightenment, not to the techniques of coercion, violence, warfare. In the latter case, the more troops the more likely is “victory.”

[3] For a treatise of this, see the chapter, “Appoint a Committee” in my Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964), pp. 89–107.

[4] See “White Collar Strike Forces Swedes to Question Welfare State’s Future” (The New York Times, February 26, 1971), p. 3.

20 • EDUCATION, THE FREE MARKET WAY

All educators belong in a candle-lighting contest; all students seekers after light.

“We do not know what is happening to us,” observed Ortega, “and that is precisely what is happening to us.” It has always been thus, but why? Let us examine our area of concern: the individual in society.

Broadly speaking, there are two opposed societal arrangements:

1. The authoritarian, collectivistic, all-out government, martial law arrangement, preponderant throughout history and best exemplified today by the U.S.S.R.

2. The cooperative and voluntaristic arrangement that was temporarily approximated in the U.S.A., namely, the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life.

One of the things that is happening to us is a relapse into martial law, and primarily because we do not understand or trust the voluntaristic market process. Today, the free market arrangement and its enormous potentialities are substantially in the realm of the unknown. We must, at the very least, be convinced of freedom’s efficacy before we can even hope to cope with what is happening to us.

Generating convictions about freedom is an educational problem which amounts to nothing less than how to explain the unknown.

This, in turn, brings into question the two opposing methods of education: (1) the ever-popular, though compulsory, political way as against (2) the relatively unknown and untried free market way. The former has become traditional and habitual to the point of being instinctive; thus, the case for the latter can be won only by an appeal to reason. Samuel Johnson said, “The chains of habit are generally too small to be felt until they are too strong to be broken.” If so, it is high time we at least try to break the habit of compulsory education, for there is abundant evidence that it cannot lead toward freedom.

The Consensus Governs

In political economy it is the consensus that governs—public opinion, as Lincoln observed, is the strongest social force. Improvement in society presupposes that numerous persons—enough to compose an enlightened leadership—have free market convictions. Imagine that only one person has an awareness of a particular truth, otherwise unknown. What must that one person do if enlightenment is to spread? How is the unknown to be explained?

The nature of the problem we face requires knowledge over and beyond the type that can be forced upon anyone else or acquired by the imitative process, or learned by rote; it is not like knowing the multiplication table, how to repair motors, hoe corn, and so on. The depth of understanding required for faith in freedom demands consciousness in the highest degree; indeed, it demands original thinking in the ideological realm. This is not a question of inventing a new idea, for the only newness of any truth is its initial apprehension by a person; that is to say, no idea is really original except in the sense of its first encounter and mastery by a given person. What does this make of our problem? It is nothing less than how you or I can induce original thinking on the part of another. How, in heaven’s name, can this be done?

It may be helpful to explain how it cannot be done. Most of the proposed methods are worthless or downright mischievous, all because so few grasp the nature of the problem! Our own attempts to explain numerous unknowns—the free market, for instance, and how it works wonders—are criticized for being too lengthy and not easy enough to read. Brevity and a grammar-school type of writing are admonished, the height of this folly being, “Why don’t you put your stuff in parables as Christ did?” When I asked that correspondent to write a parable, that ended the matter!

Then there are tens of thousands who insist on the political approach—to ram their ideas into the heads of the “dumb masses.” A Russian scientist, Pavlov, discovered how to make dogs salivate at will. Many “on our side” try precisely this political technique, that is, to get others to think their way at will. The error? People are not dogs; and salivation cannot be compared to original thinking—which involves an expansion of the consciousness. If there were such magic power, it should have no appeal to anyone who grasps how the free market works. Leave these ignoble devices to the socialists; such methods sometimes succeed in promoting cliches, plausibilities, untruths, but never is original thinking induced in this manner.

The Trouble with Slogans

Take the brevity and simplicity thesis. Presently, I am reading a book for the fifth time and only because the ideas did not come through to me in previous readings. The inclination is to excuse one’s blindness by blaming the author for the length of his book or for the complex sentence structure. Yet, an honest examination revealed the words and sentences to be quite simple. Then, I discovered that the length of the book was due to the author’s explanation first this way and then that. Why my problem? The ideas were new to me—in the realm of the unknown, beyond my intellectual experiences. I was the problem, trying to become what I am not yet.

But more important, why do I keep returning to this author? What lures me to him? Certainly, he never knew of my existence; that is, he did not have me in mind. He was thinking things through for himself and sharing his thoughts with whoever might be interested. He practiced education via the free market, not the political way.

How, then, does one induce original thinking in another? How introduce him to the unknown? Paradoxical as it may seem, the first step is admitting to a profound truth, namely, not knowing; next, by never “zeroing in” on anyone, which is to say, by having no person as a target of one’s “wisdom.” Ortega said of Socrates that he was the most convinced man who ever trod the earth—convinced that he knew nothing. Bear in mind that seekers after truth have listened to this great Athenian for nearly 24 centuries. Had Socrates resorted to the political brand of education, he would be unknown to us.

A recent confirming experience: Learning that I was to be in New Orleans for a lecture, several studious young men invited me to breakfast with them. Never have I had a more rewarding and interesting 90 minutes—intense, and all in good humor. The next day, shortly after take-off for Chicago, a businessman seated himself on the plane beside me and asked if I were the one who had talked with the young men the morning before. I answered affirmatively and he told of being at the next table and hearing me respond to a question about monetary theory: “There is no more than one who thoroughly understands money and I do not know who he is.” Monetary affairs being his business, the man awaited my explanation and confessed to listening in until we adjourned. Rarely have I come upon anyone as favorably impressed as he.

To make my point: suppose I had called on this gentleman intent on selling him my ideas, that is, imposing my ideas upon him. Some friends of mine had tried that, he said, and to no avail. What is the message to me from this breakfast incident? What secret is being revealed to me? Here it is: I was unaware of this businessman’s existence; he clearly was not the target of any intentions or designs of mine. None of that Pavlov treatment! I was merely thinking out loud with the inquisitive young men. It was when I alluded to not knowing—unique perhaps—that he pricked up his ears and listened in, his doors of perception wide open.

As if I needed a confirming lesson to drive this point home, a similar experience took place the next day—a card-carrying “liberal,” after listening in, in effect, burned his card and did an about-face!

Humble Faith in Freedom

One of the best thinkers among the many businessmen of my acquaintance said: “I have learned a valuable lesson from you. It is that I do not have to know how the free market would deliver mail or how it would conduct other creative activities to be convinced that such jobs would be effectively attended to.” Here, again, is this wisdom of humility and faith in freedom knocking at my door for attention.

Most people, including successful businessmen, when asked if mail delivery should be left to government will, after some reflection, reply affirmatively. Why? Because they cannot think how they would deliver mail to millions of people day in and day out. If they cannot figure out how to do it, obviously it cannot be done in the free market! These persons have not yet realized how little they know and how the free market brings forth and utilizes a wisdom unimaginably greater than exists in any discrete individual.

However, when one realizes how little he knows and looks around him at the success of those activities left to the free market, his faith in the voluntary and competitive market process cannot be shaken. He sees plainly that 110 years ago no person could have imagined how to deliver the human voice at the speed of light; indeed, he is convinced that no person on earth knows how it is done today. I do not have to know how Creation works its miracles to be convinced that it does work.

What procedure do these experiences and observations suggest? That is, how can one best induce original thinking in others? The answer: Concentrate on one’s own thinking, never on theirs—not at all! Why? Because I have not been given the world to save or manage, nor are any of its people wards of mine. My problem is me and this is where the eye should be cast—exclusively! Why this emphasis on self-interest? Because this is to align one’s self with reality:

Each of us is interested in himself whether he wishes it or not, whether he thinks himself important or not, and for the simple reason that each of us is both the subject and the protagonist of his own nontransferable life.[1]

Self-interest is served when one looks to his own growth, development, emergence. However, an intelligent attention to personal growth requires of the individual that he share his thoughts with those who might wish them. For it is an observed fact that the more one shares his own ideas the more and the higher grade will his own ideas be. The explanation is simple: In sharing, one puts his best foot forward; he refines and expresses his thoughts as best he can. Any time one betters his expression, he enriches the idea in his own mind. If this practice is not an attention to self-interest, pray tell, what is! Sharing, be it by the spoken or written word. Sharing, as with the young men at breakfast. No target practice this; none of Pavlov. And absolutely oblivious as to who may be listening!

Truly, this is the way—the almost unknown way—to induce others to reach for one’s thoughts, to open wide their doors of perception. And the reaching will be encouraged if one is aware of the unknown and frankly acknowledges how little he knows. On the other hand, if a pre-planned response by listeners be one’s intent, regardless of how well concealed it may be, there will be no reaching, only resistance. This seems to be one of the best-kept secrets of all time. And no one can ever grasp it except as he thinks it through for himself—original thinking.

Another confirmation of the validity of this approach was a remark by one of the young men at the breakfast session as he bade me adieu: “After being admonished by Mr. So-and-So, I felt compelled to buy the books he insisted I read; after listening to you [thinking out loud, so to speak], I wish to read the books you suggest.” From which source does one experience the greatest intellectual intake, a book he is forced to read or one he truly desires to read?

How perfectly can I practice these seemingly inadvertent lessons which are so contrary to my own and nearly everyone else’s natural instincts? Frankly, I do not know. I only know that I will try to rely exclusively on free-market methods of education—consumers’ choice.

[1] See Man and Crisis by José Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1962), p. 9.

21 • AM I CONSTANTLY CORRECTING?

That man may safely venture on his way, who is so guided he cannot stray.

—Walter Scott

Everything that happens—pleasant or unpleasant—has a lesson to teach, provided instruction is sought in every event. Here is an example of how two words, dropped in more or less idle conversation, conveyed an important lesson to me.

Having discovered that my new-found friend has a plane of his own, I inquired as to his flying experience. He began by telling about his pilot’s license to fly small craft in good weather: VFR (visual flight rules). That, however, was not enough for him; he wished to qualify for the kind of all-weather flying allowed commercial airline pilots. Therefore, as a minimum, he had to obtain an IFR (instrument flight rules) rating.

During the final briefing, prior to the official IFR exam, the instructor explained why he was so intently observing every move: “I am not checking as to whether you are on course or off but only to make absolutely certain that you are scanning those instruments and constantly correcting.”

Constantly correcting! That instructor probably had not thought of himself as a philosopher. Yet, it seems to me, he made a profound philosophic point: the discipline required for flying by instruments also applies to living by numerous, basic guidelines. To live the good life requires constant correcting, achieved by a constant and faithful scanning of the guidelines.

Expanded Horizons

Learning to fly within seeing distance of a runway in clear weather is possible for anyone competent to drive a car. But learning to fly long distances over unfamiliar territory, by day or by night, and in all kinds of weather, is quite a different matter. The further one ventures from what can be easily observed, the greater is the chance of error—of getting off course—and the more necessary is constant and skillful correction. Truly, those of a venturesome spirit expand their horizons, provided they observe the rule: constant correction.

Analogous to simple flying is the life of primitive peoples. Not much in the way of correction is required of Kalahari bushmen, for instance; they only forage. These little people have no trouble staying on course for they have few courses to pursue beyond chasing wild animals or finding their way to nature’s scant offerings of nuts, roots, herbs, water. At their level of life, there is little, if anything, requiring correction.

However, not everyone has been content with primitive life. Millions, with a somewhat venturesome spirit, have chosen to broaden their horizons. In doing so, they have to strike out into new, unfamiliar, and increasingly complex relationships. And the more they break with simple ways and traditions, the less there is to go by—off “into the wild, blue yonder,” as an Air Force song has it. They must learn to fly by instruments. The further they venture, the greater the risk of getting off course; each must keep asking himself, “Am I constantly correcting?”

Complex Society Requires Moral Guides

To sustain a complex society we must observe numerous basic guidelines: political, economic, moral-ethical, spiritual.

For example, the Golden Rule is the oldest ethical guideline of distinctive universal character. Many people are capable of abiding by this nonviolence rule in simple relationships or close at home, as we say. But note how difficult it is to practice this basic precept in societies featured by special interest groups: axe-grinding collectives. More and more the tendency is to try to rule over others rather than to respect and treat them justly.

Only the individual has combined powers of reason and self-control by which to refrain from doing to others that which he would not have another do unto him. Such personal attention to responsibility tends to be lost when individuals are absorbed into special interest groups; these collectives have no perceptual powers, none whatsoever!

How did we stray so disastrously off course and wander into this special interest, collectivistic situation in the first place? Quite simple! Individuals—millions of them—failed constantly to correct their moral and ethical positions as they ventured toward expanding horizons. By taking their eyes off one of the most important guidelines, they surrendered their individuality and lost themselves in the numerous collectives. A collective can no more practice the Golden Rule than it can think, and the same is true of persons who allow themselves to become collectivized.

There are other guidelines on the societal instrument panel which must be scrupulously heeded if we would stay on course. Among them are the Ten Commandments. I shall choose two at random, sufficient to make my point.

Take “Thou shalt not steal” and note how easy it is to stray off course unless one is constantly correcting. How many among us will personally rob another? Perhaps one in ten thousand! The vast majority of us would starve before snatching another’s purse. Personal observance of this Commandment is so much a part of our heritage that honest behavior is little more than doing what comes naturally. And who will contend that it should be otherwise? Such a person can hardly be found; nearly everyone believes that this is a good guideline.

Collectively Irresponsible

But observe what has happened to these “honest” millions, the ones in the United States. The vast majority who would not snatch a purse to gain a few dollars will now advocate schemes taking not less than $150 billion annually. They will take a substantial part of each other’s income and capital and do so without the slightest qualm. Most of them, as they feather their own nests at the expense of others, will think of these actions as righteous rather than sinful. Why so far off course?

First, is the depersonalization of the action; the taking is not done on anyone’s personal responsibility but in the name of some so-called social good or group. Second, this taking has been legalized which, to nonthinkers, makes the action seem all right. And, third, these people apparently have had no instructor who said, “I am not checking as to whether you are on course or off but only to make absolutely certain that you are constantly correcting.” They have taken their eye off the instrument panel—off this guideline—and are now so far into “the wild, blue yonder” that they regard taking each other’s substance as benevolence. Petty thievery they reject; coercive taking from each other on the grand scale they accept. “Thou shalt not steal” has become a mere Biblical tag line instead of a hazard-avoiding guideline.

What about “Thou shalt not kill”? No need to labor the answer, for to do so would be a repetition of the stealing explanation. Few, indeed, would personally commit murder, any more than a wolf will kill his kind.[1] Yet, people in the most “advanced” nations will engage in mass slaughter and, if proficient enough, receive medals for so doing! And for precisely the same reasons that they steal from each other on the grand scale: failure to look to this guideline on the societal instrument panel and constantly correct. That most people from all walks of life really believe in this Commandment as a correct guideline is attested to by their strict observance of it in personal relationships.

Let us now refer to one among numerous economic guidelines: If exchange is voluntary, everybody gains; otherwise, one man’s gain is another’s loss. Behind this remarkable guideline lies the subjective theory of value. This was no invention but a discovery. Carl Menger (1870) merely observed how people behave among themselves when free to act voluntarily. What he discovered is as simple as the Golden Rule: The value of any good or service is whatever another or others will give in willing exchange. If I swap two hours of my labor for your goose, the value of my labor is your goose and the value of your goose is my labor. Observe that each of us, subjectively, that is, in our respective judgments, gains by the exchange. I value the goose more than my labor and you value my labor more than your goose or we would not trade one for the other. Even a child can understand this basic economic guideline if it is explained correctly.

The Function of Market Prices

The free market of voluntary exchanges, based on each person’s judgment or choice of values, affords the pricing information each participant needs to tell him instantly what is relatively scarce or relatively abundant, whether to consume or to save, to buy or to sell, to produce more or less of this or that—market price guidelines for constant correcting.

Today, millions of exchanges are not willingly but coercively made. Samples: The part I have been forced to pay for the Gateway Arch, urban renewal, and “full employment” projects, going to the moon, and so on. Reflect on the unwilling exchanges labor unions coercively exact from their own members as well as employers. The individual’s judgment of value and desire to trade are disregarded. Exchanges are unwillingly effected. This is a substitution of warlike, antagonistic relationships for the peaceful, harmonious ways of the free market. This sort of exchange can no more persist or survive than can a society of thieves. Such a dog-eat-dog arrangement has to spell disaster.

Why this economic nonsense? We have been staring into “the wild, blue yonder” and failing to heed this and other simple guidelines on the societal instrument panel. Ours is a miserable record because we are not constantly correcting.

Into the Unknown

Finally, it makes little difference what aspect of life one examines; the further we venture from the ordinary, the traditional, the habitual, the greater the risk of losing our way.

Take my own case, for instance. I have been delving into the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life, along with its moral and spiritual antecedents for four decades and the more I probe the easier it is to get off course. As one explores the wonderful potentialities of the free society, the further one departs in his thinking from the socialistic world in which we live. It gets pretty misty up here in the ivory tower—the ideal—and unless one is constantly correcting, that is, forever referring to the societal instrument panel with its accurate guidelines, one is hopelessly lost.

If we would edge our way out of the political interventionist hodgepodge in which we presently find ourselves, we need to heed the basic guidelines. The way we live our lives at the personal level is demonstration enough that we believe in the accuracy of these instruments. So, regardless of how far we venture, now on course and then off, constantly correct! This is the way to continuously expand our horizons in safety.

[1] See “Morals and Weapons,” the final chapter in King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz who, according to Julian Huxley, is “one of the outstanding naturalists of our times.” In paperback (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1961).

22 • BONDED TO CONSCIENCE[*]

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

—Emerson

Our society is drifting into all-out statism. Those who would stave off this eventuality must—as a first order of business—develop the quality of personal incorruptibility. And I mean something more by this term than first meets the eye.

Obvious examples of corruption include stealing, boldfaced lying, and the like. Deplorable as these deviations are, they wreak but minor havoc compared to the more subtle corruptions of the intellect and the soul which are seldom publicized or even noted. Or worse yet, they are sometimes noted and applauded!

This deeper or more subtle corruption was suggested to me by a friend’s confession, “I am as much corrupted by my loves as by my hates.” How difficult it is to find a person who has succeeded in rising above this weakness! Where is the individual who has so freed himself from his affections for or prejudices against persons, parties, creeds that he can utterly disregard these passions and weigh each and every act or proposal or idea strictly on its own merits—regardless of its source? Where is the man who can give an honest yes or no to friend or foe with equal detachment? So rare are such individuals that we may be tempted to conclude that none exists.

However, we must not despair. Some years ago a thought flashed into mind: There is no such thing as a broken commitment. Observing that people do go back on their bond, I thought this to be at odds with the facts of life. Later, I began to apprehend its meaning: An unbroken commitment in an ideal context means something more than paying debts, keeping promises, adhering to contracts. A man has a commitment to his own conscience, that is, to Truth as his highest conscience discerns Truth, and every word and deed must be an accurate reflection thereof. No pressure of fame or fortune or love or hate can even tempt such a person to compromise his integrity. At this level of life, there is indeed no broken commitment.

Incorruptibility in its intellectual and moral sense refers to a high order of man and woman—exemplary souls we encounter only occasionally in any walk of life. These rare creatures are people whose moral sensitivity is such that infidelity to conscience is unthinkable—even as stealing money from a child’s bank is unthinkable to the mill run of us. People who feel little if any pressure to maintain this bond to conscience are not of this order, although even they may respond to persons who belong to it.

The Remnant

An interesting sidelight on the individual whose prime engagement is with his own conscience and who is not swerved by popularity polls is that he seldom knows who his incorruptible brothers are. They are by their nature-all of them—a quiet lot, each one plugging along in his own way. Albert Jay Nock in his celebrated essay, “Isaiah’s Job,” speaks of them as The Remnant, and contrasts them to mass man.[1]

At the present moment in history, this order of men must be distressingly small. Note the “respectability” which attends all but the basest forms of corruption. Seekers after office peddle unadulterated hokum in exchange for votes; they sell their souls for political power and become the darlings of the very people on whom their wiles are worked. Business and professional men and women, farmers and workers, through their associations and lobbies, clergymen from their pulpits and teachers before their students shamelessly advocate special privileges: the feathering of the nests of some at the expense of others—and by coercion! And for their efforts, they receive far more pious acclaim than censure. Such are the signs of widespread corruption.

As further evidence of intellectual corruption, reflect on the growing extent to which excuses are advanced as if they were reasons. Here is an example in the area of my concern—political economy: For some years we put an embargo on certain goods from China because they were competitive with domestic products. But professing to favor free, competitive enterprise, and hesitating to confess that we were against competition, we corrupted ourselves and offered the excuse that these goods are “red.” Caviar from Russia—noncompetitive—is imported by the ton but is just as “red” as a linen tablecloth from China. This type of corruption occurs on an enormous scale, and is shrugged off as “good business.” Things would be otherwise if incorruptibility were more common.

Incorruptible Oversouls

If I am not mistaken, several of these rare, incorruptible oversouls have passed my way during these last four decades; one managed a chamber of commerce. Being brought up in that profession, I am quite certain that we, as a tribe, have rung few bells in Heaven. But this individual was different. It cannot be said that he stood out from the rest of us for, to borrow a phrase from a Chinese sage, he operated in “creative quietness.” While not standing out, he was outstanding—that is, his position was always dictated by what he believed to be right. This was his integrity.

He consistently, everlastingly sought for the Truth. This was his intelligence.

Furthermore, his integrity and intelligence imparted to him a wisdom few ever attain: a sense of being a man, not a god, and an awareness of his own inability to run the lives of others. This was his humility.

Lastly, he never did to others that which he would not have them do to him. This was his justice.

The city and state in which this man labored—until the time of his retirement—bowed less to the corruptions of our time, in my opinion, than any other city or state in the nation. Why? I can find no reason more persuasive than the simple justice, the admirable humility, the intelligence prayerfully sought and, above all, the incorruptibility of this man. Persons in influential walks of life sought the guidance of this quiet man, confident that his counsel would always be grounded in integrity.

It is an observed fact that many people of oral and mental alacrity try to stand out, to get themselves out front, to occupy the limelight. This, however, is not the way to be outstanding. Only unthinking persons—like insects—swarm around such artificial luminaries. As Emerson wrote, “A great man is always willing to be little.” Little in the sense of being nothing but one’s own best self! These few who live in “creative quietness” never break commitments with their consciences, and they are the ones to whom seekers after light turn for counsel. May their tribe increase!

[*] This article is a slightly revised version of what I said in Notes from FEE, May, 1964 under the title “Incorruptibility.” It was originally written as a tribute to the late William Book (1898–1965) on the occasion of his retirement after 34 years as the chief executive officer of the Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce.

[1] See “Isaiah’s Job” in Essays on Liberty. Vol. II, op. cit., p. 51.

23 • LITTLE LESSONS FROM BIG THEMES

Seek and ye shall find, knock and it shall be opened unto you.

—Matthew vii, 7.

Learning—evolving in awareness, consciousness—is achieved by grasping for ideas, thoughts, concepts that are, as we say, over our heads. Reaching beyond what we are is the means by which we try to surpass ourselves, to become what we might be.

For instance, I have been reading for the third or fourth time Ortega’s Meditations On Quixote.[1] The first perusal was Greek to me, but there remained the nagging notion that enlightenment graced those pages if only I could rise above myself and see it. Only by stretching above my present level could I perceive the author’s insights.

This was Ortega’s first book (1914). Hardly anyone paid attention to it: “I am surprised,” he wrote, “that not even those closest to me have the remotest notion of what I have thought and written.”[2] Sixteen years later he wrote Revolt of the Masses, “one of the most famous books of this century, a best seller in a score of languages. . . .”[3] The result? There was a publisher’s rush for everything that had ever been written by this obscure Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Madrid. Among the tracts found and printed, or reprinted, was Meditations—perhaps the best of all Ortega’s writings. There is a simple lesson here.

The lesson? Make certain that what we say or write today will do us honor should, perchance, our works of the present be spotlighted later on for all on earth to witness! Ortega forever prospecting, “struck gold” and focused worldwide attention on what he had previously done. This brought Meditations to light, and the book, indeed, passed this test.

While my intention is to dwell on several little lessons learned from Ortega’s heroic theme, it is necessary, in pointing out one of the lessons, to quote from Jacques Barzun, another far-seeing scholar for whose thinking I have to reach:

Intellect deteriorates after every surrender to folly: unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass by us but into us.[4]

How true, and what a splendid instruction! It reveals the secret of avoiding nonsense. But this is only half of what we need. Fulfillment also requires that we know the secret as to how truth is acquired.

While pondering Barzun’s enlightening observation, I came upon this by Ortega: “Things do not interest us because they do not find in us favorable surfaces on which to be reflected, and it is necessary for us to multiply the facets of our mind so that an infinite number of themes may penetrate it.” This imagery was almost meaningless until I linked it with Barzun’s theme. The secret of how truth is acquired is made clear by putting Ortega’s idea into Barzun’s format:

Intellect improves with each interception of truth: unless we consciously try, the truth will not pass into us but will pass us by.

Nonsense is all about us; it is omnipresent in the form of inanities, insanities, shallow notions, often in cleverly phrased plausibilities. Consciously resist its perpetual bombardment or risk becoming the embodiment of nonsense!

Truth is also all about us but instead of having a thrusting or shoving action, as does nonsense, it is elusive, evasive; it has a catch-me-if-you-can quality. Going in quest of truth is the only way one ever can possess it.

This second little lesson is now clear: The acquisition of truth, no less than the avoidance of nonsense, demands conscious action. Neither the striving for truth nor the resistance against nonsense are natural traits of man. They must be rationally willed or they do not exist as human qualities.

The Will to Be Oneself

Another lesson: Ortega, observing a “decrepit Spain,” or what he refers to as “a poverty of thought,” makes the case for heroism and describes the heroes as those who “refuse to repeat the gestures that custom, tradition, or biological instincts force them to make . . . the hero’s will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.”

The will to be oneself means, in this context, “the will to be what one is not yet.” It does not exclude, of course, the wisdom provided by the ages. Ortega affirms this when he writes of Spain, “Our great men are characterized by an Adam psychology” and he illustrates this by severely criticizing one of his country’s celebrated painters: “Goya is an Adam—a first man—a man without age or history . . . Goya represents—as does Spain perhaps—a culture without a yesterday, without progression. . . .” In other words, many of the great men of Spain have cheated themselves by neglecting to study and learn from what has gone before.

The criticism, “a decrepit Spain,” might appropriately be leveled at the U.S.A. today. Whether in art, poetry, politics, education, religion, we observe people by the millions “letting themselves go”—Adam men in one sense, with no yesterday, no inheritance of the best that has gone before. Instead of the “will to be what one is not yet,” there is an insistence on being no more than the momentary self—no yesterday, no tomorrow—not a nonentity but a fraction!

The lesson? Look to the best there is from the past and present. Upon this foundation build the best there is of self, and then “to thine own self be true,” that is, be not swerved by fickle opinions, disagreements, the mores, trends of the time, criticism, applause. To thus venture into the unknown, the untrod, the unreal—fearlessly—is the way to Becoming; this is heroism in its finest sense.

No bed of roses for the hero, however! “We do not demand justification from those who do not try to step off the beaten track, but we demand it peremptorily from the bold man who does.”

A Lonely Path

Those among us who side with the popular drift or plunge into socialism—the beaten track—are more applauded and elected to office than called to account for spineless conformity. The hero or bold man, on the other hand, often is scorned for his adherence to principles. The lesson? Seek approval by the God of Truth and Righteousness and be content with that and that alone!

“Rancor emanates from a sense of inferiority.” What are we to make of that?

All I can make of it is that many people suffer from a sense of inferiority, so rampant are spite and malice. Ortega may have put his finger on the cause: “There are men who might reach complete fulfillment in a secondary position, but whose eagerness to occupy the forefront destroys all their worth.”

We gain “complete fulfillment” only when we recognize our modest place in the total scheme of things and rationally relegate ourselves to that modest place. The mentality which accounts for all authoritarians has its origin in know-it-all-ness, in believing we are graced with a measure of omniscience, resulting in an “eagerness to occupy the forefront.” In such instances, others see in us less than we think we are and, thus, are unresponsive to our eagerness to be out front. Their rating us below the level of our own arrogance induces a “sense of inferiority.” An individual with an intelligent humility rarely suffers an inferiority complex.

The lesson? The authoritarian inclinations of any person can be measured by the amount of rancor he displays. Be on guard! But, more important, watch for rancor in self, both overt and covert; it is the signal to overcome one’s own arrogance.

It is not my intention here to cover the full scope of Ortega’s thinking. I mean only to illustrate how little lessons can be extracted from big themes, that is, how we can gain some fulfillment by reaching beyond ourselves. Here, then, is a concluding observation: “We know so many things that we do not understand.”

Many of us can recite Say’s Law of Markets, or Gresham’s Law, or the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments. In a sense, we can be said to “know” these economic and ethical guidelines. But how few there are who really understand them!

There are, of course, some things we “know” that we cannot understand, for instance, the Law of Gravitation. No one understands this law any more than we understand electricity or Creation. These, of necessity, fall in the taken-for-granted category. Heed them, and let it go at that.

Other guidelines, however—the kind that can be understood—require more than the mere knowing of them. To know, “Thou shalt not covet,” for instance, is next to meaningless unless it be buttressed with understanding. We have to understand why covetousness is evil in order to gain an awareness of its correctives and, thus, cease to covet. Mere knowing will have us coveting unknowingly.[5]

All sorts of people “know” it is evil to steal and would never think of stealing personally and directly—not a cent! Yet, unless they understand why stealing is wrong and how many ways there are to steal, they will coercively take enormous amounts from each other—not in their own names to be sure—but in the name of some collective “good” to which they are party.

“Knowing” is of little value until it is grounded in understanding. Of all the truths ever known, not a one is mine until it is born anew and matured in me. It can be mine only after I have thought it through. Thinking it through is the very least one must pay for understanding.

All the truths ever known! Rare, indeed, is the discovery of a brand new truth by anyone. This is why it is so important to look for light not yet within our vision. This is the sense in which each of us may stand on the shoulders of giants—glean our little lessons from the cumulative wisdom of the ages.

[1] Meditations On Quixote by José Ortega y Gasset. (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1963).

[2] To avoid confusion, only Ortega’s words are italicized throughout this chapter.

[3] Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset (New York; W.W. Norton & Co., 1932).

[4] The House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), p. 222.

[5] For my attempt to understand “Thou shalt not covet,” see “Count Your Blessings” in Accent on the Right (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), pp. 52–57.

24 • FOR WANT OF LIGHT

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

—Emerson

Why is the practice of freedom diminishing? On the surface, at least, it appears to be withering away. Why? Perhaps no one knows all the reasons, but an important one is that believers are lacking in understanding and defective in exposition. If we look to ourselves or our acquaintances, it is evident that none of us—when it comes to expertise in the philosophy of liberty—has enough candlepower to cast much of a beam. This suggests a basic need to tie in with the source of light.

Common opinion, even among those who proclaim a liking for freedom, holds that our only task is to devise techniques for insinuating our present views into the minds of others—as if our opinions were wisdom unblemished, the latest and most enlightened word which could be imparted to others mechanically. Such reform efforts amount to no more than publicizing the paucity of what we know. And the most likely reaction from others is to correlate the freedom philosophy with our emptiness and decide that they want none of it. We should realize that ideas can never be insinuated into the heads of others, for each person is in charge of his own doors of perception. We who believe in freedom should relinquish forever the baneful habit of trying to make others carbon copies of ourselves.

Inner Reflection

The only methodology consistent with the philosophy of freedom puts the emphasis on inner reflection and self-probing; it avoids efforts to project our views into the minds of others. Assuming studious preparation, that is, constantly drawing on all of the current and past wisdom within our capabilities, individual reflection is the sole source of additional wisdom or enlightenment. And to the extent we brighten our own inner light, we dispel some of the darkness around us. Fortunately, there is nothing whatsoever one can do about the darkness which enshrouds others except to increase his own candlepower. Such are our limitations—and our potentialities. So let us look first and always to our own enlightenment. To expect a general enlightenment in society without any more enlightenment in particular persons is an absurdity.

This simple cause-effect relationship apparently runs counter to instinct, so much is it ignored or resisted. Perhaps the best I can do to clarify my point is to share some personal experiences. Or, to quote one of my favorite philosophers:

We are going to look for a little of that light. You must expect nothing more of course. I can only give what I have. Let others who can do more do their more, as I do my little.

Some fifteen years ago, near the close of a seminar, one of the ladies participating said to me, “I have the impression that whenever you start an article you do not know where you are going.” She told me something I had not realized about myself and my way of dealing with problems. Parenthetically, right theories more often than not evolve and are framed after observing practices that give the appearance of being right. In any event, every article I write begins with a problem to which I do not know the answer or an idea I do not know how to explain. Experience teaches that the way to begin is to begin and that concentration—reflection—invariably brushes away some of the cobwebs, resulting in refinement and enlightenment, at least to me if not to others. So, I have developed the habit of making a start without the slightest idea as to where the “thinking through” will take me.

An example among hundreds: A letter from West Pakistan raised the question, “How can one tell whether a nation is experiencing economic growth?” I began a reply but got no further than “Dear Mr. Effendi.” I did not know how to answer, but I know a challenge! With desk cleared and paper in typewriter, I was confident that a bit of concentration would give me a lead. Within a few minutes:

A nation experiences nothing: only individuals have experiences. So, if we would measure growth or progress, it must be with respect to the individual human being, not a nation.

With that simple breakthrough, ideas flowed in rapid succession, each of them little enlightenments to me. Never has the writing of anything been easier or more rewarding. And at the start, I had no notion where the “thinking through” would take me.[1]

Thinking It Through

It is when we fail to realize that “thinking through”—reflection—is the sole source of light that we serve neither self nor others. Ortega leaves no doubt as to how costly he believes this failure to be:

The thinking in the void and on credit, thinking something without actually thinking it through, is our usual way of thinking. The advantage of the words which offer material support to thought has the disadvantage that they tend to supplant that thought; and if some fine day we should set ourselves to plumb the repertory of our most customary and habitual thoughts, we would find ourselves painfully surprised to discover that we do not have actual thoughts but merely words for them, or certain vague images attached to them; so that we have only the checks, and not the actual cash money they pretend to be worth; in short, that intellectually we are like banks in pseudo bankruptcy. Pseudo, because each one lives with his thoughts; and if these are false and empty, he is falsifying his life and swindling himself.[2]

It may now be relevant to ask, why the lady’s astute observation? How did she know that I am forever trying to grope my way out of the dark? Frankly, I am not certain, but here is a surmise.

Imagine my priorities reversed: instead of trying to think something through for myself—seeking illumination to guide my own thoughts—suppose that my concentration had been focused on her enlightenment rather than my own. Ideas simply are not generated that way! The eye of the beholder seeks for light, and hopefully glimpses a ray, but it is not in his power to make you see what he sees. What you see is strictly within your power and on your own initiative; you may glimpse a bit of the light but that light cannot see you, precisely as you may apprehend a bit of wisdom but no wisdom knows of you. However, the responding to light presupposes the existence of light, and to see that more light exists is a proper concern of each individual.

I suspect that there is a noticeable distinction between writings that report personal probing and reflection and writings aimed at “working over” others. Further, a connoisseur can doubtless distinguish between serious thinking and “merely words . . . or vague images.” The lady must be a connoisseur!

The Personal Appeal

Another observation comes to mind, this one from a graduate student: “Every time I read one of your articles I have the feeling that you are writing to me, personally.” Bear in mind that this has no reference to the quality of my writings but only to the feeling that they are personal. Why does self-probing—reflection—leave such an impression when, in fact, my scribblings are impersonal, that is, without a soul on earth in mind, except myself?

This, of course, is not a general impression—far from it. But that there is even one so impressed is revealing; indeed, herein lies a key either unknown or ignored by most of us. I am aware, by reason of some correspondence, that this particular student is a seeker after light. Every individual who is seeking light is in a sense, tuned in to the same wave length. Intellectually—not necessarily in their reception but in their search for light—they are as the Spanish say, simpatico!

Self-probing varies enormously in result not only from person to person but also from time to time in any given individual. Exploration quite often results in nothing—“dusters”—but on occasion we “strike oil.” Nor do we know why the results so widely vary. The source of light—insight, intuition, invention, the material of genius—is as inexplicable as Creation; indeed, these features are probably tiny phases of Creation manifesting themselves now and then, more or less, through the minds of men.[3]

The Source, inexplicable to be sure, has the effect of a bonding agent for those who try to draw on it, that is, a natural kinship forms among seekers of light; they recognize each other, for their goal is one and the same: Light! When I read Socrates, Epictetus, Ortega, Bastiat, or any other self-prober, I have the feeling that the author is writing to me personally, and it matters not when or where he lived. Obviously, this would not be my reaction if the author had had my faults rather than his own enlightenment in mind. It is our attempt to grope our way out of the dark—looking for light—that establishes the kinship.

To repeat, the practice of freedom is perishing for want of light. As Ortega suggests, “We do not have actual thoughts but merely words for them.” Freedom is richly regarded in song and verse but suffers neglect at the level of deep thought. It is all rote and no reflection, like pledging allegiance to the flag or saying prayers “by heart.” For example, “the miracle of the market” has never been understood, let alone explained; no one has really demonstrated how and why we can manufacture countless necessities, conveniences, and luxuries without one person on earth knowing how to do a single one of these things. If the practice of freedom is dying on the vine it is because the philosophy has been neglected, and for this we have only ourselves to blame.

The remedy, if there be one, is in self-probing—reflection—the only way to additional light. This assumes, of course, a studious attention to all available wisdom, past and present.

A final point: If these probings of mine have anything to reveal, it is that any improvement in the practice of freedom depends exclusively on those who are seriously in search of light—dedicated to wanting-to-know-it-ness. Think it through and share with those who are interested—that’s the formula! Have no fear, interested individuals will see one’s light—should there be any. Indeed, they will have the feeling that he is writing to them, personally.

[1] My reply appears as Chapter VII, “The Measure of Growth,” in Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967), pp. 70–84.

[2] See Man and Crisis, op. cit., pp. 30–31.

[3] For an interesting and informative commentary on the wonders of the mind, see Man’s Unconquerable Mind by Gilbert Highet. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1954).

25 • WHERE LIES OUR HOPE?

. . . man’s freedom opens up to him . . . an opportunity to become that which he can authentically be.

—Karl Jaspers

The free market, private ownership, limited government way of life—sometimes referred to as capitalism—is wasting away because so few understand its philosophical underpinnings and the prerequisites for its survival. Those interested in reversing this sorry trend are well advised to align themselves with the realities of the situation, so as not to waste energy in futile endeavors but, rather, to concentrate on the possible. Away with the fruitless that the fruitful may be pursued!

Ask a hundred persons what capitalism is and get a hundred different answers, strikingly diverse, if not contradictory, ranging all the way from entrenched privilege and monopoly to an ideal concept of capitalism featured by freedom in transactions, free entry, competition, cooperation, voluntarism, to each his own—in a word, a fair field and no favor. To proclaim oneself in favor of capitalism in today’s babble of tongues is to evoke approval from a few and disfavor from the vast majority, so slight is the understanding of the issues involved.

An outstanding reason for this is the assumption that businessmen should be the key spokesmen for capitalism because presumably they are true exemplars and beneficiaries. The fact is that businessmen generally possess moral, ethical, intellectual, and ideological traits as varied as those to be found among students, teachers, politicians, football players, or any other occupational category. To fix upon businessmen as exemplars of freedom would be no more accurate than to classify them as socialists, or fiddlers, or gastronomes. They are a mix of every fault and virtue known to man.

If a businessman is a capitalist in the sense that he upholds the ideal of a market economy, it is not because he is a businessman but, rather, that he is a student who sees through the fallacies of socialism and grasps the efficacy of freedom. Indeed, in the absence of a principled stand for capitalism, those of high energy with a strong desire to achieve and get ahead—entrepreneurs—are forever tempted to use their high positions in a political way to exploit the masses, that is, to become anticapitalists. The exceptions, the entrepreneurs who maintain a principled capitalistic position, are men who have “worked against the grain”—an admirable moral and intellectual achievement. These are men who stand for freedom in spite of being businessmen. And bravo for them!

Professor Benjamin Rogge makes this point and thereby gives a clue as to where our hope lies:

. . . contrary to the popular impression, there is no reason to expect the businessman to be more committed to the system of economic freedom than anyone else. Not only is he not the greatest beneficiary of that system—he is not even the principal beneficiary. Again, contrary to popular impression, it is the “little man,” the member of the masses who, far from being the exploited victim under capitalism, is precisely its principal beneficiary.

During the formative years of FEE, I naively thought that businessmen favored economic freedom because they were businessmen, particularly if they ran big businesses. However, two friends from the big business world divulged to me that they were not really interested in the freedom philosophy, being confident that they would emerge topside regardless of systems. This shocked me, but they had a point; men with their drive would be commissars in Russia! They believed they would thrive, relative to others, in any kind of society, whether totalitarian, protectionist, or free. And anyone who believes he would be top dog, whatever the system, lacks any gnawing incentive to foster capitalism.

Success Breeds Protectionism

The development and survival of man-made institutions depend upon someone’s keen and unremitting desire to understand and sustain them. Without that incentive, actual or potential, we can forget about freedom. In whom, then, do we seek for this quality? We look first and foremost to the “little man”—little only in the sense that he is not a “big shot!” He is not one of those who, under authoritarian systems, would have been a feudal lord, mercantilist, lord of the manor, maharajah. Nor, in today’s world, is he a commissar, or dictator, or political coercionist, or farm or labor or business monopolist, or high-placed protectionist, or one who thinks he “has it made.”

We might describe the beneficiary as one to whom opportunity is still precious, who has not yet lived out his life, and is not ready for a closed system. He prefers to live his own life rather than beg from others or have others begging from him. The beneficiary is the growing man, one who wishes to become what he is not yet. An Abraham Lincoln or the bicycle repairmen, Wilbur and Orville Wright, or a Thomas Alva Edison will suffice as examples.

The man who is still striving to improve himself is by all odds the principal beneficiary of capitalism or, if you prefer, the free market economy. This way of life in America—the nearest approximation to the unrestrained release of creative human energy—accounts for untold millions of us able to reach seventy years of age and to pursue whatever course our uniqueness, abilities, and aspirations suggest. These millions of us, had we entered the world of seven or eight generations ago, would have been short-lived serfs! I repeat, we are the principal beneficiaries of capitalism—not of those practices so grossly misrepresented as capitalism, but of capitalism as it should be understood: the free and open market. So, the recovery of freedom must come from its principal beneficiaries, those who still aim to grow. And they, of course, are to be found at all economic and cultural levels.

However, only when we, the principal beneficiaries of the free market economy, are aware of our blessings can we hope to become effective protagonists. For without such awareness, our improved circumstances and opportunities will be attributed to noncauses and we will lack the incentive to reverse the socialistic trend, to learn the principles and restore the practices of freedom and capitalism. Until we see this to be a matter of self-interest, we will lack incentive and there will be no chance for freedom—none, whatsoever!

So, how are we doing? At a minimum, there are several thousand of us—possibly 10,000—with an awareness that we are beneficiaries of freedom and, therefore, with plenty of incentive—a hard core of better quality and quantity than has heretofore attended any major move toward freedom. As the saying goes, we have the makings! Perhaps no more is now required than a refinement of method and particularly a removal of the blindfolds which keep so many of us from seeing the light.

Look to the Individual

The most effective blinder has already been suggested: the bad habit of personifying ideas, linking them to persons or things that can be seen with the eye. Thus we judge capitalism—free market theory, the ideal of voluntarism in transactions—by observing businessmen. Or we form an opinion of capitalism after seeing a disparaging cartoon of a capitalist. John D. Rockefeller, his virtues and vices more or less unknown to any of us, was for years the target of talented muckrakers, and always pictured and caricatured as a capitalist. Thus, capitalism is supposed to be as faulty as the muckrakers made Rockefeller appear to be. The fact is that the person and the concept are no more related than are Joe Doakes and Truth. The former can be seen with the eye, while the latter—as any thought or insight—can only be conceived in the mind. The one is physical, the other spiritual. And it is utter folly to confuse the two!

Fortunately, this blindfold is easily removed, for it is no more than a careless habit that goes away the moment the false correlation is discovered. We may then consider the idea, the concept, of capitalism—free from that distracting error which comes from personifying ideas and stereotyping individuals. The beneficiary then is in a position to see things in a new and revealing light: the free market economy and his self-interest—the aspiration to grow—are consistent and harmonious.

Overlook No One

Not every one of us who qualifies as a beneficiary will clearly see the truth, even when exposed to it. How do we know with whom to share our lights and our findings? We do not know; so the safest procedure is to overlook no one! Even authoritarians have been known to switch. A parable comes to mind.

The man hitched his mule to a cart and announced that he was headed for Jerusalem to see the Savior. Along the way were numerous persons seeking his attention or assistance, and to each he responded: “Sorry, I have no time for you; I am going to Jerusalem to see the Savior.” After reaching his destination, he found that he had overlooked the Savior along the road. The moral of this story, and our guideline: Treat each individual, regardless of status, rank, or ideology, with the same humble attention as we would treat the Lord. That will save us from overlooking perhaps the most important person ever to espouse the ways of freedom.

In summary, then, our hope for the good society lies:

1. Among the beneficiaries of capitalism, those who are still seeking growth and open opportunity,

2. But only among those beneficiaries who can clearly evaluate politico-economic concepts and see that the free market economy is consistent with their self-interest; for they alone have the incentive to work in its behalf.

Your role and mine? Keep striving for our own refinement and sharing with anyone—I mean anyone—who cares to listen.

26 • A TIME FOR ACTION

Awake, arise, or be forever fall’n.

—Milton

The greatest outburst of creative energy in mankind’s history occurred in the United States and is easily explained: for decades there was comparatively little organized force to obstruct the energy flow—in a word, there was freedom! This, in turn, resulted in an unprecedented affluence, a level of material wealth new to human experience and, thus, presenting problems more difficult than ever before encountered.

Some forty years ago the prescient Ortega saw in the making what now stares us squarely in the face:

. . . The world which surrounds the new man from his birth does not compel him to limit himself in any fashion, it sets up no veto in opposition to him, on the contrary, it incites his appetite, which in principle can increase indefinitely. Now it turns out—and this is most important—that this world of the XIXth and early XXth centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase. Even today, in spite of some signs which are making a tiny breach in that faith, even today, there are few men who doubt that motor cars will in five years’ time be more comfortable and cheaper than today. They believe in this as they believe the sun will rise in the morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.[1]

This “new world” is now disappearing and for the very reason Ortega understood so well: the good society is not a thing of nature such as a sunrise; rather, it grows out of the practice of difficult human virtues, the cessation of which must inevitably spell disaster. It is absurd to believe that this excellent new world can continue when the reasons for its existence are falsely ascribed—as generally they are. Might as well believe that man has no reason or will or self-acquired virtues, that we are but the hapless pawns of environmental forces, that societal consequences do not follow from human action.

Perhaps the word that best sums up this dreadful unawareness of cause and effect, this intellectual numbness, is lethargy. It appears to be not merely nationwide but worldwide, an all-pervasive tendency. Yet, there are signs of a tiny awakening to the realities of our situation. Such political maneuvers as wage and price controls and a certainty of the baneful rationing to follow, and ever so many other out-and-out socialistic steps, serve to sound an alarm heard by an encouraging number. And these hearers are now demanding action.

Before commenting on the type of action our situation requires, let us pause to assess this lethargy and to observe the kind of approval that springs from those millions, here and elsewhere, who do no thinking for themselves. What best lends credence to my own conclusions is the general “whitewashing” that is now being accorded to Communist China. Aside from admission to the UN, I have never seen this sentiment better dramatized than in one of America’s most prestigious magazines.[2]

Here is the caption of one photograph:

Life-size figures (right) in a museum within the Forbidden City dwell on the evils of life before the Communist Revolution. Here a grandmother, at left, clutched by the lackey of a greedy landlord, thrusts a hungry baby to another lackey to nurse the landlord’s child. After the Communists took power in 1949, uncounted thousands of landlords were condemned at mass trials and executed.

By way of contrast, we find this passage elsewhere in the article:

Later Dad told us he had been “wild with excitement,” not only at the fireworks display, but also at the sight of the hundreds of thousands of people in T’ien-an Men Square. In them, he said, he could feel the presence of a new power.

This is a power no visitor to modern China can fail to discern. People power. Nearly eight hundred million people all thinking the same thoughts, reading the same books, talking about the same things, wearing similar clothes, living in a similar style.

There is little room for tolerance or dissent. “Armed with Mao’s thought,” they believe that nothing is impossible, that they can move mountains with teaspoons, turn deserts into arable land, change the direction of rivers, and harness the tides. All with people power. (Italics mine)

Let us not single out the Chinese for criticism. Some of the greatest philosophers of all time have been Chinese: Confucius, Lao Tse, and others. And take note of Hong Kong—98 per cent Chinese—the nearest approach to a free market in the world today! What goes on in China is not a racial phenomenon. It is, instead, a common mass mindlessness coupled with an egomania on the part of a few—the sightless leading the mindless. For that man in the vanguard is as deficient in wisdom as those who follow him. He differs from them only in energy and domineering traits; he does not even know that he is not God; he is an egomaniac. Some, who seem to relish this combination, label it people power, a term like democracy with favorable connotations.

Majoritarianism

All history stands witness to the fearfulness of the thing labeled “people power.” One need not go back to Charlemagne or to Genghis Kahn for examples. This is as much a modern as an ancient form of societal breakdown. For instance, it happened in France—1789–1799—years of the guillotine, shopkeepers executed for the high prices caused not by them but by the politicians’ inflation, and ending in dictatorship: Napoleon![3] More recently we observe precisely this same mass mindlessness with its indiscriminate executions in Russia and Hitler’s Germany, countries also distinguished by men of genius.

I am certain that many people in France, Russia, Germany, in their pre-revolutionary days, were exclaiming with assurance, “It can’t happen here.” As Americans do today, they thought themselves superior enough to be above such calamities. And all because they failed to note the lapse in thinking and the rejection in practice of difficult human virtues. The easy satisfaction of success, comfort, affluence displaced serious thought and hard work. Mindless instead of mindful behavior!

A growing number of Americans are beginning to suspect that this same type of debacle can, indeed, happen here. After all, many of us are from the same stock as those who have suffered the terrors of “people power.” Further, they can read the signs: a rapidly growing restraint against the release of creative energy—a shift away from individual liberty to a political manipulation of human endeavor. And when that political power rises to a certain pitch, accompanied by the mindlessness which made it possible, then the worst will get on top because only those who have no respect for human life can “make socialism work.” Thus, we hear, “This is a time for action!”

In order to decide on the type of action appropriate to our crisis, it is well to bear in mind the nature of “people power.” I have never seen it better expressed than in the above-quoted National Geographic article: “Nearly eight hundred million people all thinking the same thoughts, reading the same books [Mao’s], talking about the same things, wearing similar clothes, living in a similar style.” There you have it—human carbon copies.

One By One

Charles Mackay, writing in 1852, pithily summarizes the problem and, at the same time, gives us an accurate clue as to what constitutes appropriate action:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.[4] (Italics mine)

Once we grasp the reality that this is a one-by-one problem, any useful action turns out to be radically different from the kind which generally occurs to suddenly awakened and frightened people. Their first impulse is to center their attention on the mad herd and, consequently, they look around for devices that will, as they say, “educate or sell the masses.” Might as well try to reason with animals in stampede!

The actions so often demanded may be likened to “a call to arms,” to a Paul Revere shouting, “The British are coming.” Such action is emotional and physical; it has no more idea content than the pounding of hooves, the waving of arms, the making of noise. It may attract attention, but is of no avail so far as enlightenment is concerned.

Action that enlightens is intellectual and spiritual—it is of the mind and heart. Enlightenment comes exclusively as an intaking process. When we realize that men come to their senses one by one—never a mass affair—then we need only observe how the process works between you and me to determine how it is with others.

Is it not obviously futile for me to try to tamper with your mind? No matter how cleverly I go about it, I cannot insinuate an idea into your consciousness for you are in complete charge of your doors of perception. The educational or eductive approach is the other way around—intaking: you reach for me and then only if I have something you consider worth reaching for. In view of the fact that “it is light that brings forth the eye,” my only useful action—even on your behalf—is tending to my own enlightenment.

This is the only really effective action, but ever so many reject it on two counts: (1) too difficult and (2) even if we succeed, few will ever find us out.

The first, of course, is nonsense. Why should it be easier for me to enlighten you, over whom I have no control, than to enlighten myself over whom I do have some control!

The second is fogged in a secret. We know not how it works, that is, how those few who are trying to recover their senses—searching for light—do in fact find the light. The transmission of ideas is as mysterious as electricity or gravitation. Fret not; the few who are concerned are listening to anything worthwhile, although the proof may not be evident in our lifetime. As a rule the proof comes along after its purveyors have passed on. This fact should lend enchantment to our work, not discouragement.

Finally, were ours a numbers problem—that is, getting all those who are afflicted with the herding instinct to see the light—the case would be hopeless. We need only keep in mind that not even the simplest matters have ever had mass understanding. Always, a few have led the way.

Yes, it is indeed a time for action—“activity of soul,” as Aristotle called it.

[1] From Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset, op. cit., pp. 62–63.

[2] See “Return to Changing China,” by Audrey Topping (National Geographic, December, 1971).

[3] See Fiat Money Inflation in France by Andrew Dickson White (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959).

[4] See Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (New York: Noonday Press, 1969), p. xx.

27 • EMERGENT ENERGY

I am fearfully and wonderfully made.

—Psalms cxlvi, 14.

Men and women alike, with rare exceptions, exhibit a distaste for poverty in its numerous forms—living below the level of others—and will resort to almost any means to avert it—even to unprincipled means. Some resort to violence—“mugging,” purse snatching, and other forms of thievery. But millions who frown on overt violence will also take the property and livelihood of others when the taking is disguised and depersonalized, that is, when sanctioned by “democratic action” or “majority vote.” They will run to the governmental trough, siphoning tens of billions of dollars out of it annually, and think nothing of it.

Those of us who see no moral and very little economic distinction between illegal and legal plunder spend a great deal of time and thought explaining the fallacies of the latter, with too little success. At best, this is a nonproductive approach: argument after the fact. The fact is that man tends to defend acts he has already committed; reasoning with him, however soundly based, elicits few confessions of error. Seeing no wrong in what has been done is to see no wrong in its continuance!

I do not propose abandoning the exposure of fallacies; this at least improves our own thinking and shields us against error. But I believe we also need to probe more deeply into the root of the problem—attack it positively.

Admittedly, I come as an amateur; I am not a psychologist or anatomist or psychiatrist. I know next to nothing about the miraculous human being—but I am fascinated with human behavior as related to freedom and social harmony.

The speculations which follow rest on my assumption that the destiny of man is emergence; that is, the Cosmic Intention is for man to evolve in awareness, perception, consciousness. Put it another way: man, millennia hence, is intended to be superior to man of our time in these respects precisely as we of our time are, by and large, enjoying a higher state of consciousness than did Neanderthal man![1]

It follows from my first assumption that man has a built-in characteristic, an innate driving force intended to propel him onward and upward. Growth in consciousness as man’s destiny would seem implausible were there no power supplied by Creation to achieve it. It is inconceivable that we are intended to grow without any of the means for growth.

An Instinctive Upward Drive

If my supposition be sound, then I contend that there is hidden within us, among countless autonomic urges and directives, a force which I would call “emergent energy,” an instinctive gift of Creation which in a fundamental and originating sense drives man in an emerging, ascending direction. This emergent energy, assuming its existence, merits reflection as to its nature and purpose, how it may be thwarted to our distress or be harnessed to our advantage.

At the outset, it is necessary to bear in mind that all mammalian vertebrates have, in effect, two brains: the diencephalon and the cortex. It is my thesis, shared by some professionals, that our problem stems from a conflict between the two.[2]

Man’s diencephalon—about the size of a stringbean—is in most respects similar to the one in the higher animals. It controls the fantastic, unknown number of instinctive activities, the ones that are not consciously willed: breathing, heartbeats, cell production, glandular secretions—you name it! Example: startle a wild deer and the diencephalon will instantly direct the adrenal glands to secrete a more than normal amount of adrenaline. Also, the deer will automatically defecate. Everything to give power and agility—for fight or flight! Or, you may blush at the mere utterance of certain words. That blush is not consciously willed; it is, instead, an instinctive energy release directed by the diencephalon.

The diencephalon of man, according to my supposition, has a unique instinctive thrust not to be found in any other animal: emergent energy. All animals except man appear to have reached their evolutionary maturity; and physically this seems to be true of man. But not intellectually, morally, spiritually. For there is the other part of the brain, the human cortex by which man is slowly gaining in awareness, perception, consciousness. The driving force behind man’s growth in consciousness is that singular and distinctive feature of the human diencephalon: instinctive emergent energy. It is just as instinctive as are the autonomic directives that cause the blush, cell production, heartbeats, and so on.

This energy varies with the individual, ranging from near zero to some incalculable potential. There is more of this energy in each of us than anyone is likely to tap; so the critical thing is the manner each person chooses to use what he has.

This emergent energy, originating in the human diencephalon, is constantly exerting itself; it has no choice; it is always on the go, as we say. And, if it meets with no obstacles, it will, to the extent of its power, achieve its purpose: growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. That’s my theory on which rest the following suppositions.

If it meets with no obstacles! There’s the rub! The very brain it is supposed to expand—the cortex—that center of consciously willed action, more often than not can be likened to an impenetrable rock! The emergent energy, unable to enter, careens off into countless grotesque forms, absurdities, nonsense—enemies of freedom and social harmony.[3]

Warning Signals

How am I to know that I am allowing such emergent energy as I possess to perform its mission? How can I tell if it is careening off? This assessment appears to be easy; merely take note of everything I do which is at odds with my own growth. Here are a few samples, warnings that I am off course:

trying to reform others—seeking power over another or others—“running off at the mouth”—feathering my own nest at the expense of others—looking for praise rather than truth—unwillingness to stand alone with what I believe to be right—resorting to expediencies—no sense of responsibility for self—rejection of responsibility for things I approve or condone—worry—anger—antagonisms—name-calling—argumentativeness—absence of awe—know-it-all-ness—seeking followers—gloating—coveting—self-pity—and the like.

I am obliged to examine myself in this respect because nothing is ever gained by telling others not to worry or to overcome a fault. As Dr. Hans Selye writes: “They cannot help it. Here again, the best remedy is deviation, or general stress. By highlighting some other problem, . . . the source of worry becomes less important in proportion. . . . Nothing erases unpleasant thoughts more effectively than conscious concentration on pleasant ones.”[4] What is it I find helpful to highlight? Simply what my own emergent energy is supposed to accomplish: expanding consciousness. The mere recognition of its purpose causes me to concentrate on the positive and to more or less forget the negative side of life. This instinctive energy is supposed to expand my mental faculties, the center of which is the cortex. A noted biochemist gives us an interesting sketch of the problem and the hope:

The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and depending upon physical factors, education, environment, and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline. There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline, and examples bearing out this contention are only too numerous.[5]

Admittedly, all of the foregoing is theory. Is it sound theory? I return to Dr. Selye: “. . . the best theory is that which necessitates the minimum amount of assumptions to unite a maximum number of facts . . .”[6]

Prospects for Harmony

The theory I am expounding has only two assumptions and unites most of the facts that make for social harmony. The first assumption is that man’s earthly purpose is to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness—an evolution of the cortical faculties. This is an ancient idea. Growth is implicit in “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God”—Truth and Righteousness—man coming more and more to share in Creation. Even though sharing in Creation is seldom believed to be man’s destiny and even though there is no proof that it is his destiny, we would be warranted in constructing and accepting such a hypothetical proposition as a means of achieving social harmony. For it is an incontestable fact that were each person bent on his own growth there would be no meddlers among us. And in the absence of meddlers there could be no socialism, dictatorships, wars. Maximum harmony!

My second assumption, which grows out of the first, is the existence in everyone of a built-in instinctive emergent energy. How can an acorn become a great oak without a built-in power to grow!

Why, we may ask, is so little heed given to this concept of emerging man? There must be many reasons, but here are a few that seem apparent:

1. Although the idea of emergence is an ancient one, many people have never heard of it, and thus have given no thought to it.

2. Most people are lured only by “cash-on-the-barrel-head” prospects. But emergence in consciousness is a slow process which only dimly shows itself, if at all, to those who experience it. There are few “on-the-surface” benefits, and thus it has no attraction for those who demand quick returns. It is the kind of thing which a man cannot observe, any more than he can observe the red marrow of his bones producing billions of red blood cells every hour.

3. People, generally, think of mental growth, no less than physical growth, as concluding with adolescence. “Graduation,” “finishing schools,” and the like lend credence to this misleading notion. Where earning begins, learning leaves off—or so they seem to believe. People thus deluded are inclined to associate mental growth and stretching of the mind and hatching with discomfort rather than joyousness. Few grasp the real point as did the late C.S. Lewis: “You cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.”

Finally, how can this emergent energy be harnessed to our advantage? That, I confess, is a challenge. No one can gain anything by telling another not to worry, nor can I gain anything by telling someone else how to harness this instinctive emergent energy. It falls in the realm of faith. At best, I can only share with others—if they care to listen—what I have learned from others.

One lesson I have learned is to begin each day with a thoughtful wish or aspiration or prayer—call it what you will: May I make progress at removing those faults of mine which stand as obstacles to those of Thy ways which might possibly be manifested through me.

If one subscribes to my twin assumptions, then nothing more is required than conscious effort, in the certainty that the adventure will be joyous.

[1] Speculation, indeed! I feel as the psychologist, the late Abraham Maslow, felt about himself: “. . . the explorer . . . has to be a courageous man, not afraid to stick his neck out, not afraid even to make mistakes . . . he is . . . a kind of gambler who comes to tentative conclusions in the absence of facts and then spends some years trying to find if his hunch was correct. If he has any sense at all, he is of course scared of his own ideas, of his temerity, and is well aware that he is affirming what he cannot prove.”

[2] See footnote 4, Chapter 16, p. 120.

[3] “Yet, what is in us must out; otherwise we may explode at the wrong places or become hopelessly hemmed in by frustrations.” See The Stress of Life by Hans Selye (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., Inc., 1956), p. 269.

[4] Ibid., p. 268.

[5] See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

[6] Op. cit., p. 194.

28 • THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT PERSON

. . . this whole world is . . . [the] perception of a perceiver, in a word, idea.

—Schopenhauer

It’s impossible, runs the first reaction, to single out the world’s most important person. But on second thought one has the answer: That person is you, whoever you are, wherever you may be, or whatever your race, creed, color, or occupation. This is not flattery; it is to remark the obvious, for you are the only person in the world—your world, that is!

In the same sense that “beauty is altogether in the eye of the beholder,” so is your world altogether in the eye of you, the beholder. Your world is what you perceive it to be—no more, no less.

If you think of the world as earth, what of earth do you see? Trees, grass, or maybe the soil a plowman scratches? Or mountains, valleys, seas? Or do you perceive the mystery of a sprouting seed shafting itself into outer space? Or roots drinking of nature’s bounty, topped by leaves which, in turn, use solar energy to take food from the atmosphere? There is nothing else to your world beyond the capacity you bring to your acts of perceiving. The world flows into your ken through your particular bottleneck, which you have the power to expand or contract.

If you think of the world as the universe, do you see only twinkling stars, blue skies, and the like? Or do you behold the process of Creation before your very eyes? Radiation? Galaxies racing into an infinite unknown at the speed of light? A mysterious attractive force at work?

If you think of the world as Old World and New World, what do you behold? Only the celebrities who featured various periods or the wars fought? Or do you perceive the liberating ideas that led from special privilege and the freezing of human energy toward the amazing creativity that flows out of equal opportunity for all? And perhaps the current decadence in ideas and moral scruples that is taking us from the New back toward the Old? Whatever you behold, this alone defines the boundaries of your world. “Knowledge is a mode of being,” runs an ancient axiom; what you are defines the limits of what you know.

The idea of my world changed while I was writing the above paragraph as did yours while reading it. Your world and mine are never identical from one moment to the next. I alone inhabit my world, and you yours. The thought, the concept, the idea is the thing, now and forever, and this, like everything else, is in constant motion.

Aged and well supported is the idea that all reality is in the eye of the beholder, that is, reality is circumscribed by each individual’s awareness, perception, consciousness, however correct or faulty it may be. Yet, rarely is this concept employed in what may well be its most effective use: thinking our way into a better relationship with others.

Merely bear in mind that there are as many different worlds as there are human beings and that being human obliges one to live not only with his own world but with many of the other worlds as well. These other worlds are as much a part of the infinitely real as yours; isolation is not a viable prospect. It is conceded that these worlds have a record of conflict, clashing, bumping into each other. But perhaps a slight shift in thinking can lessen this destructive tendency; there may well be a rational basis for more tolerance than is generally practiced.

For instance, would I esteem you less yesterday than today because your world was smaller then than now? To the contrary, your world of yesterday spawned today’s broadened perception. Do I not more esteem the inventor than his invention, more respect the perceiver of a thought than the thought itself? Is this a valid way of looking at our relationships? I think so; at least I bear no intolerance toward the less perceptive person I was fifty years ago. So, how can I logically be intolerant of, or unhappy with, those who do not see exactly what I behold? Not a soul on earth who does!

The greatest danger to your world or mine is error for “all error has poison at its heart” and “so long as truth is absent, error will have free play.”[1] Clearly, such personal and societal solutions as lie within our reach are the truths we perceive. And this is precisely where our respective worlds can meet to our mutual advantage—provided we seek every means to grow, including tolerance enough to look into every nook and cranny for truth.

Of course, look to one’s peers, sages, seers for truth; but stop not there. Not only from “the mouths of babes” does truth proceed, but on occasion truth flows from those we declare insane. However far that other person’s world may seem to be from your own—philosophically, ideologically, religiously, or whatever—be on guard, perhaps, but bend an ear. Truth has a way of seeping through crevices entirely unsuspected. But it is far more likely to enter an open and perceptive mind than one that is closed and intolerant. Indeed, the inquiring mind encourages others to give forth the best that is in them.

By way of example, I have cited in this chapter several quotations from the major work of Arthur Schopenhauer, a philosopher whose world, in numerous respects, is sharply at odds with my own. However, in his works I find many gems—truths to me. To disregard or fail to embrace them because our worlds do not coincide would, indeed, be error; by such intolerance I would shortchange myself, limit my own world.

In any event, you are the world’s most important person, and everyone else on earth, whether or not he may realize it, is in need of you at your perceptive best. The enlargement of our respective worlds is the sole means we have of moving toward a more harmonious existence, of cooperating to free, rather than freeze, our perceptions and relationships.

[1] Schopenhauer.

Instead of Violence

The Case for the Non-coercive Society

Leonard E. Read

1973

Instead Of Violence

“I want less talk and more action.”

That sentiment of a business leader typifies the initial reaction of many persons when they suddenly awaken to the increasing dangers which beset their liberty. They demand action.

To most people, in spite of this “let’s do something” attitude, the problem is all rather nebulous. Things are not quite right, it is readily agreed. There are strikes with their paralyzing effects; idle workers standing in front of work to be done; a growing national debt which, despite political assurances to the contrary, forebodes an evil day, perhaps not too far ahead; numerous individuals who, by the mere exercise of their capricious wills, can throw millions of American families into chaos; prices going higher; government getting bigger, and demands for vast extension of the same as a cure for the ills it creates; a growing number of people in the world believing themselves the proper objects of our charity; class hatreds developing along occupational and other lines; world-wide police actions accompanying cries for a security that the mad mess denies; more wars in the offing. No, things aren’t quite right. And the record, over a period of years, seems to indicate a whole string of costly, dismal failures in our attempt to set them right.

Is there some common fault which serves as the root of all these ills, a fault that can be defined and for which treatment can be prescribed?

Man Is Interdependent

The population in America would soon be zero if every individual elected to live as a hermit. Perhaps as much as 99% of our present population would perish in even a primitive, foraging society. For instance, there were only several hundred thousand Indians here before us; their number was limited not by their inability to breed, but by the inability of a foraging society to feed. There are now well over 200,000,000 Americans with a higher standard of living than any people have ever known. Why? Because our economy is more efficient than that of a hermit or of foraging natives. The further advanced the economy, the more people it will support at a high level of living. This is by way of saying that the size of the population and the standard of living it enjoys is ultimately determined by the perfection of specialization, division of labor, and exchange. For man is interdependent! And his existence on this earth beyond a primitive state requires a recognition of this fact and a knowledge of how to deal with it skillfully.

It is true that this fact of interdependence is widely recognized. But how to deal with it skillfully is where divergence of opinion in social affairs originates. This divergence takes the shape of two diametrically opposed recommendations. One commends life in accordance with the principle of violence. The other commends life in accordance with the principle of love. It is important, at the outset, to call these two opposed principles for social conduct by their correct names.

The Principle of Violence

As will be developed later, the principle of violence finds widespread application all over the world, in America as elsewhere. But to illustrate what is meant by violence, I shall choose a modern instance, one among hundreds of familiar instances, one that most people, not having reflected on the matter, fail to evaluate in terms of violence.

The familiar instance is public housing. A citizen is compelled to give of the fruits of his labor to meet the housing “needs” of others. Freedom of choice as to what he does with his own capital and income (property) is denied him. Freedom of choice gives way to the dictation of an authority, a dictate backed by brute force—violence! Actually, in a strict sense, the only choice a citizen has in this instance is between obedience or death. This may sound extreme, but nonetheless it is true. Suppose, for example, that a person decides to exercise, absolutely, his freedom of choice concerning payment for a government housing project. Suppose that he decides not to pay his share of the cost because he believes that the building of houses is not a proper function of government. Suppose that he deducts this from his tax payments. What would happen?

Policemen with Guns

Since the government’s claim becomes the first lien on everything a citizen owns, a judgment for incomplete payment of taxes would finally be rendered against his property—his home, for instance. If the citizen still refused to pay his share of the government housing project—and if he refused to vacate his property that had been attached by government—policemen with guns would eventually appear to enforce the government order. Suppose that he still refused to acquiesce. Suppose that he met the use of physical force by using physical force in return, which would be his only remaining method of exercising freedom of choice and carrying out his initial intention. He would be shot! The justification for shooting him would be “for resisting an officer,” but the issue would remain the same. The citizen would have done nothing more than hold fast to his resolve not to support socialized housing, using the least violent means, step by step, to hold firmly by his convictions.

The reason that most of us do not think of government coercion as meaning obedience under penalty of death is because we almost always pay our part of the cost of government housing, electricity, and other similar projects before the shooting begins. Usually we acquiesce before the ultimate meaning of compulsion is realized. Thus we are unacquainted with its true implications.

Early American Experiment

The principle of violence found acceptance early in American history. The Pilgrim Fathers, after landing at Plymouth Rock, were in dire economic straits. Not unlike their progeny of our own times they thought they could not, during a period of stress and difficulty, rely on the actions of free men in production, distribution, or charity. Their interdependence, very plain and real to these forebears of ours, must, they reasoned, be attended to by some intervening authority. Men acting freely, the identical men who so clearly recognized their interdependence, could not, they thought, be trusted to act in their own interests! The answer: violence!

True, the Pilgrim Fathers did not call what they did by the ugly name of violence. But, as has been demonstrated, this is what aggressive force is. The Pilgrim Fathers applied aggressive, as distinguished from defensive force. They attempted to effect communalization by force. Every Pilgrim, regardless of how little or how much he produced, was required to deliver the fruits of his labor to a communal or community storehouse. He was permitted to withdraw the stores in accordance with “need,” not the individual Pilgrim’s idea of need but the law’s decree of his need. These Pilgrims put into effect, not by charity or the goodness of their hearts, a principle later stated by St. Simon, and still later held up as an ideal by Karl Marx: “. . . from each according to ability; to each according to need.”[1] They socialized the fruits of their labor. There was a common ownership of the means of production—communalization by force. They were communists in the term’s purest form. They had chosen to live in accordance with the principle of violence.

Communism Rejected

There was a most persuasive reason why the Pilgrims finally gave up communism. They began to starve. Many died. Violence, as a method to effect social conduct, was forsworn. Each according to merit became the rule—that is, to each the fruits of his labor. And they prospered. These practitioners began the pattern for the American way: individual freedom, and personal responsibility for one’s own actions.

This turned out to be superior to other ways. According to the record, this way was so good that Twentieth Century Americans applied violence (unwisely, I believe) to keep others out of our country, while many foreign governments resorted to violence to keep their people at home. This American way had several distinctive tendencies, among them:

1. The doctrine of individual immunity against governmental power over peaceful actions. This immunity extended to the individual in respect to his property, in respect to his physical person, and in respect to his mind, or thought and expression

2. A government of laws and not of men.

3. The doctrine of local self-government.

4. The principle that governmental mandate and office are a public trust, to be exercised in strictest independence of all personal interests, prejudices, or passions, for the maintenance of individual liberty and the preservation of the public order, all to be done as related to the welfare of all individuals.

5. Avoidance of entanglements in the politics of European or other countries, and the corollary of this doctrine which advises resistance to the interference of Europe or Asia in the politics of the American continent.[2]

The Reason for Government

A point worthy of note is that this American way was not entirely devoid of violence; violence was merely less exercised here than previously in other countries. This meant that government was strictly limited; that there was a minimum of organized violence.

But government, as a principle, had seemingly sound theory to support it. The reasoning went something like this: Each individual has an inalienable right to life. An essential concomitant of this right is the right to protect that life. Obviously, maximum liberty could not be assured by letting all citizens carry their own guns. The straightest shooters would soon be in command. What to do? Appoint an agent. Turn all guns, all force to be used for personal protection, over to him. Give him a monopoly of the coercive power. The agent, thus endowed with power, could then protect all citizens in the pursuit of their home life, their productive life, and their religious life. Each person would be free to do as he pleased up to the point of injury to others. And each would be responsible for his own welfare, with Christian charity to take up the slack. That was the theory.

Many Americans understood this agent, government, to be what it is: legal and organized police force. They had an appreciation of violence. They knew that it could be used to suppress, restrain, restrict, destroy. Restriction and destruction by government, to be useful, must be confined to that which is bad: fraud, private violence, conspiracy and theft or other predatory practices. But police force—violence by government or otherwise—is, patently, not a direct, creative force. Thus, in the original plan, all creative functions were to be carried on by such voluntary, cooperative, and competitive elements as the population contained. Government was to be confined to the protection of personal liberty.

Officials Are Still Persons

These Americans who held to this societal arrangement were also keenly aware of the powers vested in their elected agent. After all, this agent was but a person or persons having normal weaknesses, including greed for power over others, plus the dangerous monopoly of the coercive weapons! It was because of a profound realization of this danger that these Americans attempted limitation of their agent.[3] The Constitution and the Bill of Rights, with their separation of the executive, judicial, and legislative powers, were among the devices they employed to avert the dangers of unrestricted power that political theory predicted and history confirmed. They had an unprecedented success—for a time.

It was because this practice of the principle of violence was on a lesser scale than ever before attempted that accounted for the mighty surge that was America’s. Here in this country, was a greater release of free human energy than history reveals in any other instance.

No Aggression

Personally, I am opposed to the initiation of violence in any form, by any body, or by any agency, government or otherwise. I cannot make inspired Violence square with ethical concepts. Aggressive coercion, whether socialized medicine or initiating war with Russia, is at odds with principles which seem right. How this brute force can be used and be considered moral, except to restrain violence otherwise initiated, is beyond my capacities to reason. Even the American theory of government, which has always appealed to me, raises two questions to which, thus far, I have been unable to find answers:

1. Can violence be instituted, regardless of how official or how limited in intention, without begetting violence outside officialdom and beyond the prescribed limitation?

2. Is not limitation of government, except for relatively short periods, impossible? Will not the predatory instincts of some men, which government is designed to suppress, eventually appear in the agents selected to do the suppressing? These instincts, perhaps, are inseparable companions of power. As a private citizen the predatory person is only one among millions. As an agent of government he becomes one over millions. If there be criminals among us, what is to keep them from gaining and using the power of government? Neither theory nor experience have, so far, supplied me with reassuring answers.

Let me repeat: Organized violence, though limited better than ever before, characterized early America. In addition, a horrible infraction of the American theory appeared in the institution of slavery. But, because these instances of the principle of violence were so minor as compared with the total energy, the people prospered better than had other peoples. Perhaps it was too good to be true.

Protection and Dependency

This haven of free and independent men, as decades passed into history, began to develop protected and dependent men. The exigencies of free immigration, free trade, free competition in services as well as in commodities, and responsibility for individual welfare, came to be thought of as credos for a hardier race of men, only for such men as had made our country what it was.

It isn’t easy to identify the growing items of violence which the accepted, limited violence initiated. Who can appraise the significance of immigration laws in a country sprung from immigrants? Who can assess the meaning of the protective tariff imposed by a people who got their start by overthrowing trade tyrannies imposed on them? What will be written in the final judgment book of a nation whose citizens were “educated” by force, whose “prosperity” depended on violence?

The answers to these questions are dependent on each individual’s value judgments. For my part, I have no faith whatever in any “good” that can come from these measures based on violence.

A Vital Measure

Certainly an important, if not vital, break away from the original principles of the Constitution and the limitation of violence against liberty and property occurred in 1913 with the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment, the progressive income tax. Here, again, appeared communism in its purest form, no different in principle from that applied by the Pilgrim Fathers after their arrival. Here was the forced acceptance of “. . . from each according to ability; to each according to need.” Here was the socialization, in part of the fruits of the labor of all, with nothing—absolutely nothing beyond fickle, political expediency—standing as a limitation against complete socialization. We have money which goes by force into the communal storehouse and which is withdrawn according to “need”; with the Pilgrims it was corn.

This communistic wedge, pounded by violence, opened an ever-widening crack in the wall of limitation on government. Here was formal acknowledgment of government as an agent of plunder. The final limit to the extent of the plunder against private property is everybody’s total property. Beyond that the plunderer cannot plunder.[4]

When considering the growth of plunder, dependent as it is on violence, it is well to reflect on a principle and to observe how violence expands and operates in a wealthy country. The principle: Man tends to satisfy his desires along the lines of least possible resistance. There are two ways, economically speaking, to satisfy desires: the economic means, and the political means.

By the economic means is meant the satisfaction of desires with the fruits of one’s own labor.

By the political is meant the satisfaction of desires with the fruits of the labor of others.

The Evil of Tariffs

The tariff was one of the earliest applications of plunder by political means. In principle it admitted of numerous evils of which the progressive income tax is guilty.[5] In this respect—that is, as the breeder of other evils which it implicitly endorsed—the tariff stands as the justification for all the communistic ills that we have heaped upon ourselves. But in scope, in relative direct bearing on the total economy, the tariff has played a small, second fiddle to the Sixteenth Amendment and to many of the other devices of plunder.

Both the tariff and the progressive income tax are resorts to the political means. Each is a plunderbund. The plunderbund is merely another term for communalization by force, or legal thievery. It is simply the political device by which citizens pool their votes to extort the fruits of the labor of others for the purpose of satisfying the desires of themselves, their group, their community, or their industry. Rent control, parity and support prices to farmers, “free” education, compulsory social “security,” TVA, public housing, wages by fiat, socialized health insurance, subsidies of all sorts, are but a few in the growing list of plunderbunds—life by violence.

Violence Has Many Names

Communalization by violence comes presented to the world in many forms, bearing numerous labels: communism, nazism, fascism, statism, state-interventionism, fabianism, planned economy, welfare state, socialism, and new, fair, and other kinds of deals.

Regardless of the label, and irrespective of the means to the end, be the means “democratic” as in socialism or revolutionary as in Russian Communism, the end, in each instance, is always the state ownership and control of the means of production. One other characteristic these isms and deals have in common: They are all parasitical as distinguished from productive devices. One never heard of a society or nation of any account getting its start, for example, in socialism. The reason is that in the first instance there is nothing to loot or to prey upon. Communalization by violence presupposes the existence of a healthy economy precisely as mistletoe presupposes the existence of a live tree.

As a tree can stand a small bunch of mistletoe, so can a healthy economy stand instances of socialism. But as mistletoe could spread and destroy the tree on which it feeds, so can communalization by violence expand and destroy the society from which it derives its parasitical existence.

A Measure of Lost Freedom

Perhaps it is not possible accurately to assess the growth of this political parasitism, but an idea of the trend can be gained by measuring the loss of freedom of choice an American citizen has with his income dollar.

More than a century ago a citizen had between 95% and 98% freedom of choice with each dollar. The total expenditure of government—federal, state, and local—was from 2% to 5% of all earned income.

Expenditures have of late years, been rapidly on the increase. Today they exceed two-fifths of all earned income. Many people argue that is not so bad because, on the average, we citizens still have nearly three-fifths freedom of choice with our dollars. This is a dangerous assumption. Colin Clark, one of the world’s most distinguished statisticians, who made a study of the income behavior of nations over long periods, discovered an alarming fact: Whenever the take of government in any country reaches 20–25% of earned income, large segments of the population will support a depreciation in the value of the money as a way to “escape” the burden thus imposed.

Lenin was right in thinking that the way to destroy the capitalistic society is to debauch the currency. This debauchery, this depreciation in the value of money, is but a subtly planned or unconsciously accepted device by which communalization is brought about by force. It is the road to communism through the back door, unapparent to those millions who will not take the time to reflect. Thus, it is splendid for those who would communize America.

A Sobering Comparison

Since we began the programs of deficit financing and the monetization of debt, we have vastly expanded our money supply. Our behavior in this respect is remarkably like that of numerous other countries of the world which we think of as being in a financial and socialistic mess. I repeat, our federal, state, and local governments are now taking over two-fifths of our earned income. No government has ever taken that much of any country’s earned income without the rapid disappearance of individual liberty and private ownership of property.

An instance in point is France. She began a program of “social welfare”—one form of society by violence—in 1915.[6] These programs, there or here, beyond the temporary expedient of confiscatory taxation, have no manner of “financing” except by inflationary processes—that is, by increasing the quantity of the medium of exchange. This quantity cannot be increased without resulting in a depreciation of the value of the money. In the brief span of a working lifetime the franc has lost well over 99% of its purchasing value! Talk about the “security” of such a program! Think only of a young Frenchman in 1915 preparing himself for retirement, say at 1000 francs per month—a handsome income in the France of 1915. Today the 1000 francs would buy one meal, but not at the best restaurants.

If I were to draw a conclusion from these observations, it would be simply this: We in America have debauched our currency to such an extent, and advanced parasitical socialism to such a degree, that we are no longer privileged merely to “drop an anchor,” to add no more to our evil ways, to remain in safety. We are now over the brink! And, unless we engage in the difficult and almost unprecedented political antic of cancelling out a great number of our so-called “social gains,” private property and freedom to compete in enterprise as institutions are doomed to wither away and to disappear here as they are disappearing in other countries of the world.

Violence Breeds Violence

Another conclusion: The cause of our ills is a reliance on the principle of violence. Violence breeds violence. The more of it we practice, the more of it will we rationalize as justified even “needed.” Just as a poke on the jaw provokes a retaliatory poke on the jaw, so does a subsidy to one industry or to one community evoke the sentiment: “We must have a subsidy in order to get our share of what we are paying in.” Subsidies are among the numerous institutions based on violence. If one would appreciate the extent to which the principle of violence is in effect, let him imagine the subsidies and the “social gains” that would be paid for, and the services of the state that could be rendered, if all of these were put on a shelf, as in a grocery store, and bought only as the citizens of these United States would buy them—voluntarily. With the disappearance of the myth that someone else is footing the bill, which this serve-yourself plan would assure, what a whale of a difference there would be in the scope and cost of government!

The Determination of Value

The above thought will only confirm in the minds of many the necessity for the continued exercise of the principle of violence. This is true because most of these governmental activities can be maintained only under violence. Thus, under freedom of choice, many activities that different individuals think good, necessary, and valuable, would be dropped. But value, it has been conclusively proved, can be determined only by free market processes, not by the enforced will of one, or by any other authoritarian arrangements.

As violence begets violence within nations, so does its existence within nations also beget violence between nations. War—violence on a vast scale—can originate only with people who practice violence themselves. What, for instance, is the difference in principle between plundering a portion of Joe Doake’s egg money and taking the life of a Japanese, a German, or a Russian? One does violence to that which sustains life. The other does violence to life. One is indirect, the other direct. The difference is in degree, not in kind. Persons who will advocate the one have no way, logically, of not advocating or condoning the other. People of violence will make wars and destroy themselves. This need not be written in the future tense. People of violence are making wars and are destroying themselves.

Minor Violence Leads to Major Violence

There is another way to demonstrate the inevitability of seemingly minor violences leading to major violence. Responsibility and authority go hand in hand. If, for example, you accept the financial responsibility for a widowed sister you assume a commensurate authority over her expenditures, or risk bankruptcy. It is no different in society. When we as citizens turn over to the state an item in the responsibility of our welfare, the state assumes a proportionate authority over our lives. Thus, as we turn over to the state item after item of our own welfare responsibilities, we eventually arrive at the all-responsible state. When we reach this point we will have over us, ipso facto, the all-authoritarian state. At the head of this state will be a gangster, a craftsman in violence, by reason of the nature of the job to be done: administering violence. Authoritarian states are, of necessity, headed by tyrants. Tyrants make wars. Logic says that they must. History confirms that they do.

Russia, for instance, has had many noted communists, soft-headed do-gooders, some of them doubtless sincere, who advocated the all-responsible state. They could not or did not dare to foresee the inevitable consequence of their acts. Present-day literature is filled with their wails: “But I didn’t mean this.” Little does this wailing avail them. Their bed of thorns has been devised with their own hands. Today they have no choice but to lie on it. Their day of choice has passed. That day was when alternatives could be weighed, and reason and the right to express it still existed.

Alternative to Violence

The alternative to violence is love. Love, as here used, refers to the application of the kindly virtues in human relations such as tolerance, charity, good sportsmanship, the right of another to his views, integrity, the practice of not doing to others what you would not have them do to you, and other attributes which result in mutual trust, voluntary cooperation, and justice. The distinction between violence and love, each in their extreme or pure form, was made in the Sermon on the Mount:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.

It is not necessary to make the case for the principle of love. Most persons will contend that it is the principle we ought to practice but that it is impractical. But try to find the individual who believes it impractical so far as he is concerned. He doesn’t exist. Each person thinks only that it is others who are incapable of decency. I do not know who you are who is reading this. And I do not care, for it makes no difference to the answer whether you are man or woman, Jew or Gentile, employer or employee, student or teacher, American or Russian. Simply ask of yourself these questions: “Would I initiate offense on those who would not offend me? Am I unjust, naturally, to the point where violence is required to restrain me? Am I unable and unwilling to deal honestly with those who would deal honestly with me?” Your answer, as mine, to all three questions—whoever you are, wherever you are—thinking solely of yourself and disregarding allegiances and commitments to all groups, organizations, and to all political regimes, is: “No!”

Intellectual Caesarism

What I am asserting is that everyone thinks himself essentially good, and capable of the high performances which interdependence requires in accordance with the principles of love. Why, then, don’t we be done with violence? Primarily, the reason is because of an all-too-common inhibiting fallacy, a myth we have conjured up in our minds: “No one else is quite as good and dependable, if left to his own resources, as I am.” This is a form of intellectual Caesarism. In effect, the persons who hold this opinion aver that the world would be a better place in which to live if only others were cast in their image—a rather brazen indictment of God.

Reason will not support the idea of the principle of love as impractical. Experience, although abundantly supporting its practicality, is difficult to discern. We practice the principle of love in most of the aspects of our daily lives without recognizing it as such. If we did not practice this principle in large measure, we would perish.[7] But where violence once takes the place of love, most of us seem to consider the matter settled, and conclude that love has forever been ruled out as possible of application. Many examples of this forgetting process could be cited, but perhaps our new “internationalism” will suffice. Here is an instance where our “aid” to foreign countries is in no sense a voluntary act, but an act based on the principle of violence. Consider what would happen were you not to pay the foreign aid part of your tax bill! That this is violence, however, is not my point. The point is the extent to which aid on a voluntary basis has been all but forgotten as a possibility. Violence has so far superseded love in actual application that people are referring to this act of violence as charity! It is as if they insisted on doing good even though they had to kill someone in the process!

With Eyes to See

I repeat, it is not necessary to weigh the merits of violence and love. Where violence is taking us is apparent to everyone with eyes to see and with minds to understand. The practice of love is suspected to be the alternative, but there is too little in the way of firm convictions to support the fact that it is the alternative. Even many of the clergy preach violence while Christian banners and symbols decorate their pulpits. No one, however, except an avowed authoritarian, will deny the fact that this would be a better world if a trend away from violence could be begun and a trend toward love initiated.

With such an assumption it is proper to ask ourselves how this can be done. What are the conditions essential for this needed reversal in form?

Love prospers only in liberty. It generates and grows among free men, only with difficulty among men ruled by the principles of violence. As violence begets violence so does one personal act of kindness beget another. This point does not require any more proof than mere reflection on one’s experiences with others. It is self-evident.

Liberty, according to these views, is the key to the untying our Gordian knot. The natural aptness of man, acting as a self-controlling, self-responsible person, is good. The restraint of this aptness is evil. It is, then, in liberty that man’s natural aptness evolves toward its potentiality and its goodness.

Now, to return to the beginning of this discussion and to the many persons who demand action when suddenly awakened to the increasing dangers which beset our country. I wish, before setting forth some of my personal thoughts as to how liberty can be advanced, to inquire further into this demand for action, and to use the inquiry as a means of appraising some of the actions which this demand seems to generate. The appraisals are offered in humility and in the spirit of “take a look at them for what they’re worth,” not with the set notion that my ideas will prove to be ultimately right and those of others assuredly wrong. All earnest seekers of liberty will weigh with care the strengths and weaknesses in all methods proposed for its advancement. Let this be known, too: Those who sponsor the ideas I criticize outnumber me a thousand to one. However, the issue at stake is as grave as life itself, and this alone would seem to warrant my temerity.

Two Types of Action

As to action, how many types are there? Are there others than physical action and intellectual action? How could one create an absence of restraint—liberty—by using physical action except to use force against those who already engage in immoral restraint? To adopt this tactic, to employ physical force in any form or degree, except in self-defense, would be merely to substitute a new form of compulsion for the existing forms of compulsion, trading violence for violence—revolution! At best, it is the court of last resort and is not, really, what most persons have in mind when they insist they “want action.” Most of them mean only that they want “something done,” and done quickly! They “want to fight peacefully.” The thought never as much as enters their heads to use fists or guns. They reject physical action, in their intentions, by not even contemplating it. All that remains, then, is intellectual action.

A Mania for Organizing

How does one fight for liberty intellectually? The best thing to do even in an “intellectual fight” for liberty, think many, is to “organize.” Usually they think in terms of “organizing” someone else to do something instead of organizing their own time and energies. This damaging tactic is indulged in as though “organizing” had the power, somehow, to absolve individuals from doing any more than joining some organization. The fact that organization without persons is an impossible abstraction, is overlooked. This mania for “organizing” is usually little more than an effort, doubtless unwitting, to transfer responsibility from oneself to some other person or person who are perhaps even less competent.

Responsibility and authority always go hand in hand. Thus, if this process of organizing succeeds, authority over one’s own actions is lost precisely in the degree that responsibility is shifted to someone else. The citizen who “wants action,” and resorts to this type of tactic, ends up further from his goal than ever. In fact, “organizing,” more often than not, is merely an attempt to “pass the buck.” Yet, oddly enough, the mere act seems to have the strange power of conferring a sense of accomplishment on the ones who “organize.”

Organization Is Little Understood

Organization, though much used, seems to be little understood. In the field of extending individual liberty—the only role of organization here discussed—organization has strictly limited, technical possibilities.[8] But, unless these limitations are scrupulously observed, organization will inflict on liberty more harm than good; thwart, not abet, the spread of its understanding. Sobering is the thought that if there were no organization there could not possibly be any socialism!

In committee-type organizations, it is customary for persons to speak and act as a collective—as resolutioners in unison—instead of as persons. The best that these synthetic arrangements of individuals can produce is the lowest common denominator view of the majority. Such a view is almost certain to be different from, and inferior to, the best thought of the individuals who go to compose the arrangement. And, even the best is none too good when it comes to the difficult problem of how to understand liberty.

Organization Can Be Useful

Organizations can, however, serve a highly useful purpose in developing and spreading an understanding of liberty if organization be confined to its proper sphere. For the purpose of advancing liberty, which depends solely on the advancement of individual understanding, the only usefulness of organization would seem to be to accommodate and to make easier the joint contribution to, participation in, and ownership of the physical assets that will aid in the process. These physical assets may include typewriters, buildings, specialized libraries, printing presses, telephones, and the many other helpful tools to individuals who are attempting to extend their understanding of liberty—physical accommodations enabling searchers for truth to exchange and disseminate ideas and knowledge more effectively. Primarily, these physical assets can be used to secure the advantages which derive from specialization and the division of labor. Organization, limited in this manner, is a useful and efficient means for achieving these desirable ends.

Organization Can Be Harmful

Organization, however, like government, if extended beyond its proper sphere, becomes positively harmful to the original purpose. This fact constitutes the need for much careful thought on organizational limitation. Just as government becomes dangerous when its coercive, restrictive, and destructive powers are extended into the creative areas, so do voluntary organizations pervert and destroy the benefits of intellect when the capacity to merge is extended beyond the amalgamation of things—physical assets—to the point of causing individual judgments to conform to that of another person or persons. Truth, as each person sees it, is the best that the mind of man has to offer. Its distortion, inevitable when achieving a collective chorus, does injury to understanding.

A Pernicious Idea

Next on my list of subjects for appraisal is a pervasive and, I believe, a pernicious idea. It is the notion that it is always someone else, rather than one’s self, who needs understanding. This ubiquitous idea is heard in several variations: “We are only talking to ourselves,” “Educate the workers,” “Sell the masses,” “Reach the man in the street.” The “masses,” “the man in the street,” apparently, are all persons except the one who uses these terms.

Singular, too, is the fact that the persons who harbor and give voice to this notion tend to be those who are not advanced in their understanding of liberty and who are inexpert when confronted with the doctrine of coercive collectivism. An instance recently noted, and alarmingly typical, was a meeting of the Board of Directors of one of America’s largest business associations where the resolutions, every one of them, were socialistic, dependent for their application on the principle of violence:

1. A new transportation system for their community to be financed by federal, state, and local governments;

2. A federal subsidy to American shipping that it might successfully compete with foreign bottoms in delivering foreign aid to the beneficiaries of our largesse;

3. A subsidy to the community’s most promising industry.

And most of these Board members think of themselves as “already converted”!

This notion that it is always someone else rather than one’s self who is in need of improvement is based on several false assumptions. It denies any extension of understanding to the one person on earth on whom one has the greatest influence—himself. It stamps the speaker as thinking of himself as a finished intellectual product, as all-wise. And, finally, it ignores the idea of truth as an object of infinite pursuit.[9] This notion asserts a type of egotism in the presence of which learning cannot take place. It is death to the spirit of inquiry.

On Selecting a Logical Source

The advertising page is the way some demands for action find expression. But does this “action” contribute anything at all to the understanding and preservation of liberty?

It is true that people turn to different sources in their attempts to satisfy different desires. Many of them go to the Bible or to church to seek spiritual enlightenment; none go to the hardware store for this purpose. They go to the school to learn about geometry; rarely do they go to their clergyman for this purpose. Many books and magazines provide them with literary entertainment, but they do not rely on these entertainment sources for intellectual leadership. Nor are they accustomed to thinking of the advertising page as a source of intellectual sustenance! They turn to advertisements, and with good reason, to see what the seller has to sell, what he has to say about his product, and to find out how much it costs.

Before advertising can serve as an effective device for extending understanding of liberty, it will have to have a vastly different preparation, a different motive for preparation, for the most part a different talent in its preparation, and establish a totally new reputation over a period of many years. My misgivings on this point will become more apparent with the presentation, later on, of the extremely limited possibilities I am able to visualize for the advancement of liberty.

This, at least, should be borne in mind: Any attempt on behalf of liberty, unless eventually showing some accomplishment, tends toward the wasting of resources, both material and personal, and results in an unwarranted discouragement, hopelessness, and inaction.[10] It is of the utmost importance that we consider what not to do as well as what to do.

Danger of False Optimism

Of extreme indirect damage to liberty are the constant, unwarranted, optimistic statements about the future of business made by many businessmen. Whether these are made out of sheer lack of understanding of the underlying facts, or because of fear of market collapse if the unvarnished truth were told, makes little difference. Most lay people, today, do not look to business leadership for many answers to their numerous questions. But to one question they do seek the businessman’s answer, and they rely on it. The question is: “How’s business?”

If this answer comes back, “Never brighter” and they believe it—as most of them do—how can they possibly give credence to the warnings against “social gains” and the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul state? Is it any wonder that these warnings are not heeded? People are getting their materialistic “benefits.” Businessmen say the materialistic future is good. Why not, then, believe we can have our cake and eat it too?

False Supporters of Liberty

Then there are those who advocate subsidies for themselves and sponsor “free enterprise” programs for others to follow. Such people do injury to liberty by giving the appearance of being on its side.

Precept and example, be they good or bad, are among the important seeds one plants. Then when words and admonitions are offered in a contrary vein they are obvious lies intended to deceive. But they do not deceive; they merely present the tragicomic spectacle of a man, supposedly endowed with rational processes, looking one way and going the other. “Dissimulation is the coward’s virtue.”

A Positive Harm

There are numerous individuals relatively advanced in their understanding of liberty who insist on meeting in forums and radio debates irresponsible people who advocate the idea of violence. Experience alone ought to demonstrate that this sort of verbal fracas generates more heat than light. It is a form of entertainment, no doubt. But it does a positive harm.

It was Aristotle who said: “There are a million ways to be wrong and only one way to be right.” Any irresponsible person can say: “The moon is made of green cheese.” The scholar cannot prove what the moon is made of in the few minutes allotted to him, and if he resorts to the tricks that will win the plaudits of an entertainment-bent audience, he will destroy the most precious thing he possesses: his reputation for being a thoughtful, scholarly person. Liberty will have lost one of the few who can aid others in its explanation.

This same scholar, before the invention of radio, observing a small crowd gaping at some soapbox orator, would not have set himself up on another soapbox to engage in debate. He would have gone his way. Radio has changed the magnitude of the situation, but not the elements which go to compose it: the exhibitionist, the scholar, the gaping audience.

One recent rebuttal to this argument was: “If we don’t debate these fellows we will give the appearance that our side has no spokesmen.” If we do debate these fellows “our side” will have fewer spokesmen. It is absurd to let the coercionists select our means of conveying our thoughts. Imagine the poet Goethe in a pub, getting himself into a fight with one of the barflies. How would the onlookers judge him? Would they consider his intellectual attainments in such a circumstance? No! They would rate him with the opponent he had elected to engage in contest. They would form their opinions of him only as a brawler. And, further, by such action, the freedom devotee unwittingly but implicitly acknowledges that violence and love, restraint and liberty, are on an equal footing and should be so debated.

Fear Is Not Understood

“The cause of liberty is hopeless,” say some, “unless we reach people’s pocketbooks. Anything short of an appeal to their selfish interests is a waste of time. Show them that their jobs, their homes, their businesses, the education of their children, are at stake. There is no other manner of engaging their efforts for liberty.”

While these warnings, in my opinion, are justified, I rate an appeal to them very low as a means of generating interest and stimulating a spirit of inquiry. Fear in the heart does not initiate understanding in the mind. Fear tends to panic; if strong enough, to paralyze.

While it is true that all of us are ultimately motivated by self-interest, it is not true that self-interest is always appraised in the narrow terms of immediate, seemingly temporary gain. Such interpretation is unenlightened interpretation. The idea that people who cannot “see beyond the end of their noses” can be leaders for liberty is expecting too much. These people have no role in this intellectual contest except as followers. This is not said disparagingly, because most of us are followers in most aspects of life; we are leaders only rarely.

Aptitudes vary. Only a few are educable in art. The same can be said for music, agronomy, cooking, medicine, the several crafts. It can also be said for social science and political philosophy. No one person knows in whom these aptitudes exist. Most individuals are even unaware of their own educability as relating to untried, unexplored fields.

It is educability, an aptitude for understanding liberty, that enables one to explain it and thus to have a value in this contest with violence. This is the trait in ourselves to be stimulated and encouraged. It is useless to expect that our fears will motivate us to a better understanding. In short, the persons who count in this affair are those who are moved by a drive of a higher order, those who take their positions in accordance with a sense of right and wrong, and those who give profound attention to determining right from wrong. Such persons conceive their self-interest to be best served by this higher determination.

Self-Improvement

All right, then. If the aforementioned methods and ideas for the advancement of liberty are held to be ineffective, what ought to be the direction of our efforts?

This is a proper question. My answer—self-improvement—is the essence of simplicity. The reasons which lie behind the answer, however, are complex. But without the complex reasons, the simple answer is useless. The inclinations to escape personal responsibility, and the conjured-up beliefs that somehow intellectual miracles can be wrought by us on someone else, are too persuasive for easy rejection. Unless we fully understand that these inclinations and beliefs are wholly without merit we will continue to indulge them. I wish to make the argument, as best I can, for self-improvement as the only practical course that there is to a greater liberty.

The problem of liberty, its understanding and how understanding is and is not spread, would be of no interest to a person living on a desert island. It is a problem of individuals who live in a society. It is the problem of how to preserve independence in a highly specialized society in which interdependence plays a major role. In short, understanding liberty is knowing how to live in a condition where voluntary efforts will be at the maximum, and the use of force against persons at the minimum.

Liberty Is the Absence of Coercion

Let it be said that this is a subject not easily mastered. Liberty—the absence of coercion or violence—is not readily comprehended. Relatively few among those who have lived on this earth have been able to visualize any order in society, or any progress by those who compose it, except as the will of some has been imposed on the actions of others.[11] History, for the most part, is a record of violence. Present-day talk and writing—history in the making—for the most part is an argument for the rearrangement of the rules of violence. An appreciation that progress is possible only when human energy is freed of restraint, has been gained by but few men. Is there one book or one article written by anyone at any time that can be designated as the final word on liberty? I doubt it. Perhaps the best that can be said is that the finest minds of all time have been in pursuit of its understanding and that now and then a tiny ray of new light has been thrown on what theretofore was darkness and lack of understanding. These few most advanced searchers have been among those who say: “The more exploration I do, the more I find there is to learn.”

An Infinite Pursuit

The reason, for this difficulty in understanding liberty is that liberty, like truth, is an object of infinite pursuit, a quest without end, ever. Liberty does not lend itself to objective definition except to say that liberty is the absence of its opposites—restraint or coercion. These, to some degree, can be observed and talked about descriptively.

But there is difficulty even in defining restraint or coercion. They take many forms and cannot be defined to any person in any of their forms which he does not already recognize. The Negro slave, for instance, if asked to list the restraints exercised over him would have had little to offer. He could not clearly define and describe a status unknown to him. A relatively free American, after having experienced a fair measure of liberty, and then suddenly put in the same bondage as the Negro slave, would have been better able to differentiate between his new slave status and the freedom he had earlier known. But many present-day Americans, when asked the question “What liberties have you lost?” are stumped for an answer. A creeping slavery progressively removes the contrasting experience that would give the basis for a full answer. They cannot, any more than the slave, discriminate between what is and what might have been in the area of the personally unknown. No better testimony of this point is required than the common reaction when anyone raises any question about the long-established public education system. It has become so much a part of the mores, so sanctified by years of acceptance and tradition, that any alternative to “education” under the principles of violence is quite beyond comprehension.

The Death of Creative Thought

Once the reliance on self is removed, once the responsibility for a portion of our being has been assumed by another—be that other a person, a set of persons, or the police force—we cease to think about or apply our ingenuity to the activities thus transferred. When the agency to which the transfer is made is the state, an agency of coercion, is it any wonder that creative thought diminishes to near non-existence? Creative thought is abandoned by man as a free and thus a creative agent, and assumed by man as an agent of coercion. Coercion, by its nature, is incapable of creativeness. Understanding liberty requires that we think in these lost areas, in areas where there is no longer incentive for thinking except for the seemingly unrewarding and abstract objective of replacing violence with voluntary action.

Violence Retards Progress

As an example of this point, a publisher, freedom oriented both in his professions and accomplishments, wrote that he found himself in the embarrassing position of having to support a bond issue for an extension of the municipal sewerage system: “After all, my town has to have sewers.” Sewage disposal, not too dissimilar to that found in the Paris of Victor Hugo, is, by reason of its socialization, the victim of non-thinking. Who wants to get creative about anything as mundane as sewage? Certainly that is a function of government! It has been. And, we have what we have.

But imagine that this dirty job had no manner of handling except by voluntary action. Urbanization would be impossible without some form of disposal. Coping with the problem would be among the necessities of the first order. And cope with it we would. It is inconceivable that men who can find ways to release the power of the atom[12] could not find ways to dispose of sewage. All that is needed is to see that the responsibility for such a task remains with persons as creative, not coercive agents. Without the possibilities of socialization we might, by this time, be vaporizing the stuff, or doing something even more “fantastic.”

New Name for Lost Liberties

The understanding of liberty requires these intellectual ventures into the areas of the unknown or, more likely, into the areas that have become unknown. Have you not noticed the vigor we employ when a present liberty is threatened and then, when it is lost, how soon we refer to it as a “social gain”? How can one who has been thus trapped, or who himself has lapsed into thinking of a new restraint as a “social gain,” possibly identify the liberties we have lost? He has lost his own knowledge and his own understanding to the same extent that he has altered his terms.

The individual who does not thoroughly understand, and is not able competently to explain, the fact of our interdependence and how it can be satisfied solely with voluntary effort, also cannot correctly say that he has mastered the subject of liberty. If this be right, then nearly every person I have ever talked with, read about, or heard of is a neophyte in his understanding of this subject.

A Student of Liberty

In brief, not a single person among us is justified in regarding himself other than as a student of liberty. It is wrong and destructive of our high purpose to assume the teacher attitude by self-appointment.

These self-appointments as teachers—activities seen all about us are based on two false assumptions and are the cause of much mischief. The assumptions are (1) that a man becomes a teacher by self-designation and (2) that everything would be all right, or at least much better, if only everyone else could be brought up to the “teacher’s” intellectual level.

Destruction and Creation

Perhaps the reason that so many of us feel we can, at will, influence others in improving their understanding is due in a large measure to the success of influence programs in unrelated areas. For example, the force of government influences most of us to pay our tax bill. The fear of violence influences many not to walk through a picket line. Half-truths, lies, and insinuations have influence in defamation and character assassination. Barbarous slogans like “Kill all the Jews”—appeal to baser instincts—have influenced millions to follow a demented leader. These are influence programs for the purpose of destruction. Any fool can destroy in a few moments a building which was finally achieved after centuries of creative learning. The techniques to be employed in destructiveness and in creativeness are as different as these two forces themselves. Destructiveness is as simple as standing at the top of an elevator shaft and letting yourself go. Creativeness is as laborious and as difficult as the slow rise of civilization itself; it is, in fact, the same thing.

Who Has Influence?

The way to find the answer to the question “How is understanding extended?” is simply to ask: “To whom do I turn when seeking improvement in any activity—my profession, golfing, swimming, cooking, singing, or whatever? Do I turn to those whom I regard as knowing less than I on the subject? Or do I turn to those whom I regard as more expert than I?” The invariable answer is: “To the more expert.” And other persons do, in this respect, just as you or I.

Let it be said another way: A person does not influence others in expanding their understanding merely because he wishes to influence them. We have only to reflect on the daily experiences with those intimate to us to discover our own limitations in this respect. And what a lesser chance we have of influencing those beyond our immediate circle of activity, those who never heard of us!

Who Is a Teacher?

A person does not become a teacher either by self-designation or by designation of a third party—government or other. A teacher is designated solely and exclusively by the student. Many persons believe themselves to be teachers because they hold certain titles, or because they expostulate before audiences, or because what they write appears in some entertainment or news journal with large circulation. And they are especially certain that they are teaching if they hold attention and receive applause; they may be confusing histrionic qualities with education.

No person can force a change in the beliefs of another, even the belief that another has in his own omniscience. The best that can be done—in fact, all that can be done—is to submit new evidence, new data, new reasoning, and hope that one’s reputation for integrity and intelligence is such that the evidence will be considered. It is the student, the one with the receiving set, who does the “tuning in,” not the broadcaster. Thus, influence on others in the area of extending understanding is extremely limited. I need no more proof of these limited possibilities than to examine the manner in which others influence me.

In Search of Understanding

The road to influence as it relates to the creative task of advancing an understanding of liberty is self-improvement. It rests on one’s role as a student. As one advances in his own understanding and succeeds in out-distancing others, those outdistanced—at least those with a spirit of inquiry, the only ones who really matter, the teachable—will come in search of the understanding they do not yet possess. To the extent that one’s understanding is thus sought, and only to this extent, can one be considered a teacher; only to this extent can one be said to be a person of influence in this area.

The Student Attitude

Parenthetically, in selecting teachers of liberty for ourselves, a good way to examine their qualifications is to determine if their ideas for positive, creative action require violence (the force of the state, for example) to carry them out. If so, write them off. They are of another ilk. Those who advise the use of force in the creative areas are not even aware of liberty. They are, if terms have any meaning at all, authoritarians.

If it be true that one does not become a teacher of liberty until he has advanced himself as a student; if it be true that the principle of love prospers in a condition of liberty; if it be true that the principle of violence thrives in the absence of the principle of love; if it be true that the principle of violence is destructive of ourselves, of civilization, and of mankind; then it would seem to follow that the student attitude should head our agenda of required activities.

The student attitude is more than a matter of mere assertion. It is more than finding out what is known. It requires the rare quality of finding out that which is not known. The reporting of what is found out to those who are anxious to know is important but, still, even this is incidental to the search.

Moral and Intellectual Attitudes

There is one other difficulty. As one does not become eligible as a “graduate” student until certain scholastic conditions are met, so it is that one cannot advance as a student of liberty, or qualify himself as a searcher for truth, until certain moral and intellectual attitudes, antecedent to receptiveness, are adopted. One not truthful and not humble and not teachable can no more grasp the evasive qualities and meanings of liberty than can an idiot comprehend the science of nuclear fission. As Goethe stated it: “. . . only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she (Nature) resign herself, and reveal her secrets.”

The prime antecedent to receptiveness—intellectual integrity—again, requires more than mere assertion. As it is the most important virtue, so is it the most difficult of acquirement. Perhaps no man achieves it fully. And it is almost certain that no one comprehends its meaning or grasps its merit or sees its relationship to the releasing of one’s potential until after a dogged determination to practice it in every phase of life.

Intellectual Integrity

Intellectual integrity, as I see it, means the accurate reflection, in word and in deed, of what a person’s best judgment dictates as right. No one can rise above his best judgment. Only the quality of judgment can be improved. There is no way to determine what is right except as one’s highest judgment dictates. Even if the say-so of some other authority be accepted, it is still a person’s judgment which selects the authority. It is always a case of self-determination. To act honestly, to mean what we say and to say what we mean, is to present ourselves at our best. Beyond this it is impossible to go. The advancement of one as a student of liberty requires this high conduct. One frustrated with dissimulation, occupied with half-truths and lies, more concerned with appearances in the eyes of others than with investigation and contemplation, is in no condition to receive much more than is reported in the daily press. Aptness cannot exist prior to integrity. In short, integrity calls for the rejection of actions inspired by mere fashion, popularity, expediency. It calls for the adoption of actions in strict accordance with one’s own concept of rightness, not on the supposed but unassessable concept of others.

True, we report what we find out, the ideas we gain—but we report them only to those who express the desire for such information. To the extent that others acquire ideas, reasons, facts from what we report, to that extent only are any of us teachers. They make that designation, we do not.

This much is true: Each person who comes to grips with any specific subject, be it the understanding of liberty or any other, becomes both a student and teacher. And a person’s competency as a teacher grows only as the result of his continuing advancement as a student. This advancing proficiency and integrity is what others, as students will more and more seek. And the extent of this seeking by others determines the extent that one is allowed to serve as a teacher. This is determined by the student, not by the would-be teacher or by the “Minister of Education.” For example, these speculations on the problem of understanding liberty are being formulated and written as a student. These thoughts, such as they are, have resulted exclusively from a personal search for understanding. Others may wish to consider them as an aid to their own thinking, but even if I wanted to, I could not force any person to accept any part of what is here set forth. That is as it should be.

Pre-Conditions to Understanding

Numerous persons have strong feelings against the principle of violence and in favor of the principle of love, but rate their own competency as a student of liberty rather low and believe that this student approach, if adopted, would exclude them from any useful activity. This is a conclusion to be guarded against.

Most of the people who have become leaders in any field have been those who have developed their proficiency with great difficulty. Rarely is any unusual accomplishment the result of a natural, unworked-for gift. The advanced students of liberty, who are so greatly needed at this juncture in history, will spring from among those who properly rate their competency low but who are determined to raise it. These strong feelings, coupled with this attitude of humility, are among the most important pre-conditions to understanding. These are priceless virtues.

Lacking these pre-conditions, and in the absence of the understanding they presage, there cannot be that requisite sense of discrimination essential to distinguishing between freedom and restraint, between the principle of love and the principle of violence, between educational methods which will work and those which will fail. Lacking this understanding a person has no way of even knowing where to turn for guidance. He is lost in this field and might better seek refuge in silence and inaction, that not-to-be-envied sanctuary where one’s destiny is in the hands of others.

Search Here

In searching for students of liberty, the search must be within ourselves. In the world of persons it is only within each of us that the unexplored areas exist. The best explorer of one’s self is one’s self. It is not possible to impart to others that which we do not possess. The most we can do is to make known a willingness to share what we have discovered by our own thinking, or what we find edifying from recorded thinking. Whether or not what we offer is, in fact, shared, is beyond our power, and we should realize this.

It is conceded that the student attitude, this search within ourselves, may at times appear unrewarding. But, if the understanding of liberty is to be advanced, the attempt must be persisted in, regardless of its seeming extravagance in time and effort. A statement ascribed to Christ is heartening if one will think of Him in the symbolic terms of infinite truth and goodness, and of our own weaknesses and inabilities as weeds and brambles, and of our own rare virtues and abilities as fertile ground:

Presently the Master appeared at the steps of the Synagogue and began to speak. It was immediately obvious that he had been aware of the rudeness of the crowd—and deplored it. He had been appointed, he said, to offer a way of salvation to the world; and that meant everybody. In a task so great as this, no prudent thought could be taken about the cost of it or the waste of it. His mission, he said, was to sow the seed of good will among men in the hope of an eventual harvest of peace. Much of this seed would be squandered. Some of it would fall among weeds and brambles where it would have no chance at all to grow, but the sower could not pause or look back to lament this extravagance. Some of the seed would fall upon stony ground where there was very little soil to nourish it and the tender plants would soon wither and die; but the sower must not be dismayed. Some of the life-giving grain would grow! Some of it would find friendly lodging in fertile ground![13]

On Saving the World

Another seemingly unrewarding, and to some a disappointing aspect of the student approach is that it reduces the chance of “saving the world” to the saving of only one person—one’s self. But it has its compensation: A person with this philosophy receives satisfaction from any increases in his own perception and, consequently, is not dismayed with the “faults” of others. Actually, there is no other way to “save the world.”

Why, may we ask, is self-improvement resisted by so many? Does the reward seem too little? Is it because self-improvement seems too much like helping one’s self rather than others? If these are the reasons, then each of us needs better to understand individualism, the dignity of his own person, the singularity of his existence, the meaning of rising to one’s potential, the satisfaction that can be derived from faithfulness to one’s conscience, judgment and personality—all as the first steps necessary to helping others.

Why should the integer one be ignored? In the universe of persons that’s all the world is made up of—just ones. The masses? Just ones. Labor? Just ones. Business? Just ones. I am one. You are one.

On which one can a person best exert influence? If he cannot accomplish any advancement in understanding liberty himself, what vagary of the imagination is it that suggests that some other one will look to him for explanation, enlightenment? Again, it should be clearly understood that the student selects the teacher.

The advancement of liberty will arise only from its intellectual refinement on the part of individual persons, and on nothing else. As this gets under way, individuals will emerge who will be so advanced in their understanding of liberty and so able to explain that the present trend toward violence will be reversed. Others possessing a spirit of inquiry—students—will select them as their teachers and, in turn, these students will be selected as teachers by still others.

The Wave Theory

One might call this the “wave theory” or the “intellectual reproduction theory” of education. The process can be likened to the ever-widening, repetitive waves which result from a stone tossed into water. It operates as does the principle of geometric progression. Its effectiveness, however, is premised on and presupposes the existence of intelligent, ardent, and honest students of liberty, and on the observance of sound educational methods. We must also observe caution against demands for speed during an “emergency,” lest processes be adopted that would destroy the power of progressions and set up counter waves—the progressive promotion of concepts the direct opposite of those originally intended.

If one will examine the significant, progressive movements of history, it will be found that they had their origin in a lonely perfectionism—that is, in the student approach. To illustrate: Christ understood the distinction between the law of violence and the law of love. He stated the law of love in its purity. It was He who lived a life worthy of emulation; it was He who employed the best of teaching tools, demonstration. Thus it was He who had the greatest influence: (1) He thoroughly understood the principle of love, and could competently explain it to those who selected Him as their Teacher, and (2) He lived without compromise or hypocrisy according to His principle.

Move on seventeen centuries to another student. Adam Smith understood the division-of-labor and specialization theories so thoroughly that he was able excellently to explain them in a book, The Wealth of Nations, which had, next to the Bible, perhaps the greatest single influence on western civilization.

Recommendations of Reason

Action? Instinct seems to commend that I try to tell others what to do and how to think. Reason supplies a contrary answer. It suggests that pursuit of my own personal understanding is the only practical action for me to take. Neither personal nor institutionalized evils exist among men who comprehend them to be evils. If I advance in my understanding of the true and the false, the understanding that I acquire will be sought. Reason recommends that I get the horse before the cart; that first I must learn; that influencing others will take care of itself. Reason says that influence in the creative areas can have no being prior to learning; that learning has no end.

Some agree with this line of reasoning and the conclusions herein set forth. They will assert them to be self-evident, but will argue that this suggested student approach—this process of self-improvement—is too slow to meet the challenge of these times. I am in no position to deny this. But in my opinion, there can be no short cut. The only way toward Infinite Truth—that is, to more understanding—is through one’s own person. When we gain an appreciation of this principle, we will be on our way to as little violence and to as much liberty as can be in store for us.

[1] This implied criticism is directed against the apolication of this principle by the use of force; not against it as an individual’s rule for self-conduct with his own property.

[2] The points here set forth have been taken from “Recent Changes in American Constitutional Theory”, by John W. Burgess (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923; Arno Press, 1972).

[3] The best treatise I have ever read on the function of organized force and the principles that should guide its limitation, is Frederic Bastiat’s “The Law” (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.T.: Foundation for Economic Education).

[4] Numerous European countries provide a case in point Fabianism in Britain, for example, is at a dead end. The plunder at home, for all practical purposes, is over. But the parasitical idea of “. . . from each according to ability; to each according to need” will not down. This is why the eyes of socialists are turned toward America. It is the last remaining pool from which to siphon.

[5] For instance, both limit freedom of choice as to the disposal of one’s income. Both apply violence in order that someone else’s “good” may be served.

[6] Some will offer the excuse: “France was at war.” But the French people were being coddled by a government which hoped to spare them the burden of war’s waste. It couldn’t be done; it never can.

[7] The statement that we practice the principle of love in large measure, signifying that the principle of violence is practiced only in small measure, and the argument that violence is the source of our ills, may appear as a contradiction. It is not. Imagine 100 people at a church social. Reflect on the total energy expended in walking, talking, gesticulating, conducting the meeting, preparing the meal, and so on. Then, consider the effect of an infinitesimal part, maybe only 1/10,000, of this energy turned to violence, say a punch on the nose of a deacon by the parson. Violence, like a deadly poison, has an effect disproportionate to its quantity.

[8] Without voluntary organization in productive enterprise, for example, there could be no attention to our interdependent requirements. Most of us would starve.

[9] It is an interesting fact that those who propose statist programs start with the same assumption: The answers are all known!

[10] I have observed many men of energy and resourcefulness, having a well-earned reputation for integrity and intelligence, who, after “giving their all” to some activity aimed to save “free enterprise,” an activity predestined to failure, call it quits, “throw in the sponge,” retire to the woods, so to speak. These are losses of no small import. There may be no remedy for what has happened, but there can be prevention of what may happen.

[11] “Law and order.” We have grown up with this idea. We accept “order” as unquestionably good. We accept “law” as the unquestionably good way to achieve this “good.” But some discrimination is required. Law can restrain private creativeness; this is not good. Restraint, the characteristic of law, cannot aid private creativeness except as it restrains private violence.

[12] It is a common belief that government has been responsible for developing the use of atomic energy. But all of the theory was worked out by free, as distinguished from directed men. The principle of violence was applied to secure the funds to put the theories into an immature practice. Violent means achieved violent ends. Had the theories awaited the demand of a free market before being put into practice, atomic energy would eventually have been a boon, not a bomb, to mankind.

[13] Lloyd C. Douglas, The Big Fisherman (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1948).

Who’s Listening

Leonard E. Read

1973

To

One Who Listens

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

Where the race of men go by—

The men who are good and the men who are bad,

As good and bad as I.

I would not sit in the scorner’s seat

Or hurl the cynic’s ban—

Let me live in a house by the side of the road

And be a friend to man.

—Sam Walter Foss

1

WHO’S LISTENING? I AM!

He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

—MARK 4:9

A devotee of the freedom philosophy, who rates highly the works of FEE, concludes a recent letter with a question that reveals discouragement: “But, who’s listening?” Were his mood strictly the exception, I would let the matter pass. But, discouragement is disastrous. It is a foe of creative thinking. To accent the positive, to advance what’s right—our task—requires an opposite mood: exuberance! A harmonious society can be brought about only by joyous people, never by those who are distraught. Anyway, I have an ancient and near-forgotten remedy for dejection; at least it works for me.

In answer to the question, who’s listening to FEE, there are not millions, to be sure, but there are thousands. Audience size, however, is definitely not the proper criterion for measuring anyone’s success. It is not who is listening to you or me but, rather, are you and I listening.

Were the number who listen to you or me the way to gauge achievement, then we should emulate some celebrated political quack rather than the Lord. The demagogue—pick him yourself—has the more listeners, that is, if I am any good at counting noses.

Assume each and every person to be fretting about who is listening to his “words of wisdom.” Now wave a magic wand that would, all of a sudden, make you alone a thousand times wiser. Result? No one would be wise enough to listen to you—a single sayer and no hearers! Clearly, this is not the way to spread wisdom.

Reflect on a better way that is all but forgotten. Let us listen for as much truth and righteousness as we can bring within earshot. Result? More than likely a thousand of us would be a thousand times wiser! In this case we would be listening to each other, each a stepping-stone for others—a human stairway ascending to wisdom.

The popular and erroneous way must lead to discouragement because so few ever listen. The way that seems right to me leads to encouragement simply because exuberance always attends intellectual and spiritual growth.

A fable comes to mind. The Sunday school teacher asked the little boy, “Who made you?” He replied, “Well, look at it this way, I am not finished yet.” Who is finished? Not even the teacher, any more than the little boy! Life’s purpose, if seen aright, is growth—each listening for wisdom—now and forever.

Each of us is in the making, and our making is aided and abetted if we fully grasp how interrelated we are, that is, if we recognize that each is at once an individualistic and a social being. Here is one way of phrasing it:

I am an I to me and You are an I to You. You are a You to me and I a You to You. In a word, all of us are at once I’s and You’s. This is to say that all the people on this earth—all the I’s and all the You’s—are interrelated. We are brethren, for good or ill, regardless of anyone’s wishes in the matter. For better or for worse, every I among us has an impact on each of the You’s—and vice versa. The I’s and You’s can be likened to an interconnected system of power stations—a grid—that distributes electricity over a large area, the performance of each station having a bearing on the whole system. Undeniably, we live in a “shared world.”

In such a world intelligent attention to the I is the single way of being attentive to the well-being of all the You’s. Elevation of the I is the sole means of sharing beneficially. By listening I learned:

Our duties towards ourselves and towards our social environment coincide. Indeed, there is only one duty, namely: to grow mature.[1]

No You is upgraded except as some I grows in wisdom, and it is our good fortune that this is the way things are.

EDUCATION AN IN-TAKING PROCESS

Listening to the truth always has fortunate results. What does my listening reveal? That learning the truth or spreading wisdom—education—is now and forever an in-taking, never an out-bursting procedure. It may be possible for me to see your light; you cannot insinuate your enlightenment into me or anyone else.

Were the improvement of our social environment dependent on your or my “straightening out” those we believe to be short of understanding, the attempts would be utterly fruitless, the projects hopeless. Proof? Reflect on how impossible it is for me to cast you in my image or vice versa. Criticism is rarely packaged in a way that attracts customers.

The improvement of our social environment! That we are in trouble and plunging ever deeper is obvious to any perceptive person. If I were bent on socialism—authoritarianism by whatever name—I would encourage the current method in education, be it of the formal or informal kind, that is, the be-like-me or carbon-copy brand. Why? Because to the extent it is practiced, to that extent will no one, teacher or student, reformer or intended object, improve his thinking or his being. Down the drain unknowingly! Thus, correct methodology must be the first and foremost consideration of anyone interested in a good social environment.

SOMETHING WORTH TAKING

Once we realize that education is a taking-in process, we can then readily see that this presupposes that someone possesses something worth taking in. Nothing can be extracted from zeros. Is it not therefore fortunate that all we can do, indeed, all that we need to do to improve the social environment, is to “grow mature”? How? Listening!

Merely bear in mind that we are dealing with thinking, and thought is fragile. Thoughts are spiritual and not material; they can only be inhaled, so to speak, and can no more be rammed into anyone’s head than can a dream. The single way to “inhale” thoughts is to listen. “He who has ears to hear, let him hear.”

There are two distinctly different sources to which the listener must attend: the Voices Without and also the Voice Within.

Listening to the Voices Without is an art demanding a rare quality of discrimination: the ability to distinguish between nonsense and wisdom.

Nonsense comes thundering into our ears day in and day out and from countless persons and platforms. Shutting it out is the problem, for nonsense has subtle ways of creeping upon us. True, we must know something of such inanities in order to strengthen our immunity to them; but a few minutes of listening a week should enable us to recognize the fallacy of these noisy voices the moment one of them is heard.

The other Voice Without—the voice of wisdom—demands skilled listening, at all times, and with no prejudices as to source. Have in mind that “immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”[2] It behooves each of us to be constantly on the lookout for this hidden power from unexpected sources.

Skilled receptivity requires that we “unscreen” or unmask ourselves.

When you are in a receptive state of mind, things can be easily understood; you are listening when your real attention is given to something. But unfortunately most of us listen through a screen of resistances. We are screened with prejudices, whether religious or spiritual, psychological or scientific; or with daily worries, desires and fears. And with these as a screen we listen. Therefore, we listen really to our own noises, to our own sound, not to what is being said.[3]

“What is being said,” in its most profound sense, includes not only all the truth and righteousness currently in expression but everything that has been said during recorded history. There is more or less of the seer in all who now live or ever have inhabited this earth. Listen!

THE VOICE WITHIN

As distinguished from the process of hearing the Voices Without, listening to the Voice Within is shrouded in mystery. This Voice has been variously described as creativity, insight, intuition, invention, discovery, flashes of enlightenment—ideas coming to mind from who knows where! All the truth and righteousness known to man originates as the Voice Within. It is here, in ourselves as well as in others, that immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious depths, that potentialities await tapping.

As Hamlet says:

There are more things in Heaven and earth,

Horatio, Then are dreamt of in your philosophy.

I doubt that there is any proven or perfect formula for effective listening to the Voice Within. No two persons’ preparations are or ever have been the same, no hearings ever identical. Variations in hearers and in what’s heard! Why? This is a tuning-in problem and each receiving set is different. Your amplifier may be far more powerful than mine, and you may be able to tune in frequencies undreamed of by me. The best instruction is always nebulous, never precise. Example:

My instinct tells me that everything hinges on resiliency, courage and stamina with which we succeed in seeing beyond the darkness [listening over and beyond the silence], penetrating the noxious, transcending dismay, corruption, asserting grace. By grace I mean vision, illumination, absorption in the beneficent totality to which we belong.

While I regard this as a splendid observation by Richard Guggenheimer and beautifully phrased, reflect on how uninstructive it is for one who aspires to listen, but never has attuned himself to the Voice Within. All such observations are nebulous, and indeed must be so for this is an esoteric phenomenon shrouded in mystery.

THE UNDISCOVERED SELF

As to my own experiences, listening to the Voices Without has been self-directed; no “educators” have told me to whom I should listen. I have gone where my inquisitive nose has led me, harkening to those voices which enlighten along the lines of my own unique interests and aspirations. I am by no means a certified scholar.

Where lies the truth that can make us free? In the undiscovered self—listening to the Voice Within! As to this phase of listening, my experiences, relative to some others I know about, are trivial. Yet, I have heard enough to free myself of know-it-all-ness. An infinite unknown has made itself apparent; I stand in awe of everything from atoms to galaxies, from a blade of grass to the human cortex. Further, I am aware of “immense hidden powers” lurking within me and I know that listening to the Voice Within is the only key, the single way, of freeing these powers from their unconscious depths.

What is this art? As already suggested, what works for one may be a futile technique for any other. Yet, as I shall try to demonstrate in another chapter, there is a benefit to those who receive, if not to others, in sharing what they have learned from listening to the Voice Within.

Here is my formula for whatever it is worth: Get all daily chores into the past tense. Free the self from fretting, worries, stresses, anxieties in order to be in a joyous frame of mind. Take a problem to which an answer is desired but not apparent. Concentrate, that is, prepare to think it through. An idea will come to mind, sometimes in minutes.[4] Write it down. Then, if one is on the right wave length, explanatory ideas will flow, often in rapid succession. And there, finally, is the problem clarified as if by magic.[5] How does one explain this flow? If anyone really knows, I do not know who he is. The mood in which my formula is rooted has to be prayerful—desired above all else.

A JOYOUS FRAME OF MIND

Why is it necessary to be in a joyous frame of mind? Perhaps there is no earthly experience that is attended by greater exuberance than hearing the Voice Within, than unmasking one’s unconscious depths. If listening is to have this result it must be undertaken or anticipated in a similar frame of mind. No happy ending ever stemmed from a distraught or angry start. “Everything hinges on resiliency,” and that is what joyousness assures.

One more important point. Unmasking the unconscious depths is not a now-and-then game. If it cannot be made a continuing way of life, forget it. True, whenever listening to the Voice Within results in an enlightenment, one wonders what comes next. And the secret is to keep wondering, listening but never pushing. Over-anxiety is a foe. Relax and have faith; the next step will show itself. Take that step at once; get it into the past tense, making way for yet another. This stairway has no ending.

Who’s Listening? is listed as my seventeenth book. But like most of the others, it is not really a book. The following chapters are but recordings of what I have learned from listening during recent months—and put between two covers. But each chapter does have a bearing on a deep and abiding interest shared by thousands: human freedom. Repetition here and there I acknowledge, but my excuse is that “Repetition is the mother of learning.”

I hereby share these recordings with whoever cares to listen. Who will listen to the responses, be they critical or approving? I will!

[1] Fritz Kunkel, In Search of Maturity, New York, 1943, p. 191.

[2] Ibid., p. 53.

[3] J. Kirshnamurti, The First and Last Personal Freedom.

[4] Not always in minutes; I tried time after time over a span of twenty years to explain why the Biblical injunction, “Resist not evil,” is a wise guideline. Stick-to-it-ness finally resulted in an explanation satisfactory to me. See my Then Truth Will Out, Irvington, N.Y., 1971, pp. 118–124.

[5] Speaking of magic, the several quotes in this chapter appeared to me for the first time after I began its writing, a phenomenon I have experienced for years. Relevant ideas put in an appearance when one is ready for them. What law is at work here? The Law of Readiness, perhaps?

2

THOU FOOL

No wind makes for him who has no destined port.

—MONTAIGNE

Readiness is all! For some years I have thought of this as a truth, but only in the past few months have repeated experiences caused me to refer, in my own mind, to “the Law of Readiness,” so profound does this truth now seem to me. In a word, there is a uniformity at work here, as absolute as the Law of Gravitation.

The most recent experience: Beginning only a few days ago I had a nagging urge to explain how stupid it is to call anyone stupid, or even think that of others! Name calling is a temptation whenever someone does not see what I see or when he acts in ways I do not approve. No ideas flashed into mind as to how this subject should be approached. However, the subject was simmering in my subconscious: I was “ready.” Then the following experiences in rapid succession:

1. This sentence by a famous German psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel:

But we have only one book which gives us the full description of the human situation, and of the way leading through all troubles and frustrations, and finally into utmost light. It is the great textbook of depth-psychology: The New Testament.[1]

2. Next, a letter from Spokane and this quotation by another psychiatrist, Dr. James T. Fisher:

If you were to take the sum total of all the authoritative articles ever written by the most qualified of psychologists and psychiatrists on the subject of mental hygiene—if you were to combine and refine them and cleave out the excess verbiage—if you were to take the whole of the meat and none of the parsley, and if you were to have these unadulterated bits of pure scientific knowledge concisely expressed by the most capable of living poets, you would have an awkward and incomplete summation of the Sermon on the Mount.

3. The Sermon on the Mount! How well did I know this? Much too casually! An evening or two later there appeared on my bedside reading table, as if by magic, The Concise Bible, a condensed rendition of the King James version, a book I had not opened since its publication eleven years ago.[2] I reread the Sermon on the Mount for the first time in many years. And there was my article:

. . . whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire.

Just what is meant by “hell fire”? While not certain, I take it to be a theological expression suggesting destruction of the self—as contrasted with intellectual and spiritual unfoldment: growth in consciousness. At least, such an interpretation is in line with my thesis.

The New Testament in Modern English puts it this way: “and anyone who looks down on his brother as a lost soul is himself heading straight for the fire of destruction.”

The New English Bible: “. . . if he sneers at him [his brother] he will have to answer it in the fires of hell.”

I prefer “Thou fool” to “lost soul” or “sneer” simply because calling another “a fool” comes closer to that contemptuous attitude I find difficult to overcome, namely, “He’s stupid.”

THE LAW OF READINESS

Good background for this thesis is furnished by the Law of Readiness. Many people, when the matter is broached, refuse to acknowledge any such law. Why? Probably because they have had no experiences that suggest such a law and, further, they will claim that this law cannot be verified statistically. Indeed, it cannot! Here, however, is my point: Only an infinitesimal number of the laws that govern the Cosmic Order are known to man; most are forever beyond his perception. Verification, therefore, in the vast majority of instances, is beyond the reach of science so-called. No person perceives more than a glimpse of Infinite Truth and no two perceptions are ever identical. If those who do not see eye to eye with me are fools, then what am I, who do not see eye to eye with them!

For instance, I observe people who simultaneously applaud the moon ventures and complain bitterly about rising prices. I clearly see the correlation; they see no relationship whatsoever between enormous government expenditures and the high cost of living. Am I to call them stupid simply because they are not ready to grasp the connection?

A MISSED CONNECTION

At a meeting of housing contractors, the members were exultant over the two million new starts predicted for the year ahead. But they fail to realize that most of these are military or public housing starts or projects otherwise financed by government. Further, they detect no relationship between government subsidies and the unbelievable specifications now dictated by government to cover the merest detail—such as the required thickness, down to a fraction of an inch, for the floor of a kitchen cabinet. “Who pays the fiddler calls the tune” is a truism they fail to grasp. Am I who sees this to sneer at them, to call them lost souls, to exclaim, “thou fools” because they are not ready for my explanations?

Put me in an audience and let Beethoven himself lecture on musical composition. What would be elementary for him would be incomprehensible to me. Is Beethoven warranted in calling me stupid? If so, I am a thousand and one fools for there is an infinity of subjects about which I am ignorant, and this also is your condition whoever you are. To call another a fool is to proclaim oneself a universal genius. “Perfection does not exist,” said Alfred de Musset, “to expect to possess it is the most dangerous kind of madness.”

True, I have improved my manners to the point where I no longer call anyone a fool to his face. Outwardly, I have overcome this frightful trait; inwardly, not quite! This is to infer that I have hopes of erasing it from my thinking.

Calling Joe Doakes a fool or stupid harms him little if at all. The damage is to me in that I gain his enmity. He will no longer hear me, whatever wisdom I have to offer. This is to sink one’s own ship. But this is not the half of it!

A COURSE OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

The key to my main point is found in the translation which reads, “. . . and anyone who looks down on his brother as a lost soul is himself heading straight for the fire of destruction.” In a word, the contemptuous subordination of another person—the entertainment of such a thought, even when silent—spells self-destruction. Rid ourselves of this inner fault or “face the danger of hell fire.”

Those who offer us this advice assume, of course, that it is addressed to that man who has a “destined port,” as Montaigne phrases it. Unless a person is aiming for growth in consciousness—becoming what he is not yet—then the point has no more relevance to the human being than to any nonentity. Actually, I am trying to think a way out of this fault mostly for myself or for anyone interested “in going places.” Reflect on our kindly attitude toward humbler forms of life, an oyster, say, or a bumblebee. It never enters our heads to think of them as stupid or foolish. Why? They are so low on the scale of consciousness that the categories do not apply. But the higher the consciousness the more are we inclined to use derogatory terms; people occasionally refer to their horses, dogs, and cats as stupid. And when it comes to human beings, this tendency reaches its apogee. The higher the consciousness the higher pitched is the derision! I insist that this is irrational.

If entirely rational, we would no more refer to a fellow being than a bumblebee as stupid. This does not signify approval of everyone else; it has only to do with avoiding self-destruction.

A PLEA FOR TOLERANCE

Speaking of Readiness, at this very point, while drafting this chapter, I received a letter enclosing a prayer containing, among others, these four petitions:

- Release me from the craving habit to straighten out everybody’s affairs.

- Make me thoughtful but not moody; helpful but not bossy.

- Teach me the glorious lesson that I may be mistaken.

- I dare not ask for improved memory, but for a growing humility and less cocksureness. . . .

That man, by the act of framing his own rational petitions, is freeing himself from irrationality. He is not trying to run the world or to occupy the final judgment seat. He is free to grow in consciousness simply because he has consciously rid himself of such obsessive preoccupations as referring to others as stupid or “Thou fool.”

Growth in consciousness is possible only in intellectual and spiritual freedom, that is, when the self is freed from managing or judging the lives of others.

The better world begins with that man who attends to his inner freedom. Would you have your counsel more widely sought? Emulate that man. To find the way, ask yourself this question: With whom would I rather dine tonight, that man or an angry, know-it-all person? That man is my answer and doubtless is yours.

[1] Kunkel, op. cit., p. 28.

[2] Frances Hazlitt, The Concise Bible, Chicago, 1962, p. 126.

3

ECONOMIC READINESS

. . . a light we term self-interest, which is so illuminating, so constant, and so penetrating, when it is left free of hindrance.

—BASTIAT

While writing the introductory chapter of this book, I was thinking my way through this matter of “readiness.” I suspected a Law of Readiness, but not until I had worked on the second chapter did the suspicion become a certainty.

My readiness to believe there is such a thing as a universal Law of Readiness will lead some of my friends to chide me for my impracticality and mysticism, as occasionally they have done. I am now ready to explain why this is one of the most practical ideas I have ever come upon, an idea that has been governing our lives for centuries though we may not have known it. This Law is fundamental to sound economics and we ignore or disobey it to our peril.

How did I arrive at this discovery? Not by myself, but by listening! An associate of mine, after reading the preceding chapter, remarked, “It seems to me that your Law of Readiness relates just as much to the business of our daily affairs as to the flow of philosophical ideas.” He suggested that Frederic Bastiat’s explanation of the provisioning of Paris, written well over a century ago, was a perfect illustration of this point. And it is!

On coming to Paris for a visit, I said to myself: Here are a million human beings who would all die in a few days if supplies of all sorts did not flow into this great metropolis. It staggers the imagination to try to comprehend the vast multiplicity of objects that must pass through its gates tomorrow, if its inhabitants are to be preserved from the horrors of famine, insurrection, and pillage. And yet all are sleeping peacefully at this moment, without being disturbed for a single instant by the idea of so frightful a prospect. On the other hand, eighty departments [provinces] have worked today, without co-operative planning or mutual arrangements, to keep Paris supplied. How does each succeeding day manage to bring to this gigantic market just what is necessary—neither too much nor too little? What, then, is the resourceful and secret power that governs the amazing regularity of such complicated movements, a regularity in which everyone has such implicit faith, although his prosperity and his very life depend upon it? That power is an absolute principle, the principle of free exchange.

MOTIVATED BY SELF-INTEREST

Now, what is it that motivates, activates, “illuminates” this principle? Harken to Bastiat’s next sentence:

We put our faith in that inner light which Providence has placed in the hearts of all men, and to which has been entrusted the preservation and the unlimited improvement of our species, a light we term self-interest, which is so illuminating, so constant, and so penetrating, when it is left free of hindrance.

A FRIGHTFUL ALTERNATIVE

What is this absolute principle’s nemesis, the hindrance to be guarded against if disaster is to be avoided? Bastiat gave us the answer:

Where would you be, inhabitants of Paris, if some cabinet minister decided to substitute for that power contrivances of his own invention, however superior we might suppose them to be; if he proposed to subject this prodigious mechanism to his supreme direction, to take control of all of it into his own hands, to determine by whom, where, how, and under what conditions everything should be produced, transported, exchanged, and consumed? Although there may be much suffering within your walls, although misery, despair, and perhaps starvation, cause more tears to flow than your warm-hearted charity can wipe away, it is probable, I dare say certain, that the arbitrary intervention of the government would infinitely multiply this suffering and spread among all of you the ills that now affect only a small number of your fellow citizens.[1]

Let’s try to understand the part played here by the Law of Readiness as it applies to the generation of both intellectual and material goods. When I aspire to possess ideas not yet known to me, and prepare by freeing myself from inner conflicts—resistance due to fear, anger, anxiety, know-it-all-ness, and the like—in a word, when I am in a state of readiness, the ideas mysteriously enter my mind—admittedly, only a fraction of what would be mine were I better prepared! Similarly, liberty in society and freedom in transactions prepares the situation in which material goods mysteriously appear.

A MATTER OF IMPLICIT FAITH

There is no distinction in principle between ideas flowing into my mind and goods flowing into the hands of Parisians. The inhabitants of Paris needed the goods as you and I need ideas. And they were in a state of readiness for them; there was a market demand. Bastiat refers to “this secret power,” another way of acknowledging the mysteriousness of this Law. Note, also, that the people had an “implicit faith” that the goods would be on hand to accommodate their readiness, precisely as I have an implicit faith that your phone will ring when I dial your number. This faith extends to countless goods and services. Mysterious? There is not a person on this earth who knows what makes that phone ring. Name one who can define electricity!

Suppose no one had ever invented an alphabet. Language would be at the level of grunts and groans. No earthly person would have readied himself for a pencil. As it is, we readied ourselves for pencils. Do they appear? Yes, and mysteriously! Why do I say this? No person knows how to make a pen or pencil, yet billions of these writing tools are made annually.[2]

Or, suppose no one had ever originated the concept of zero. There would be no dishwashers, autos, jet planes. Astronomy would be limited to the range of the naked eye—no telescopes. The accomplishments of modern chemistry and physics would be out of the question with Roman numerals.

Reflect on these things which so mysteriously appear. What are they, really? What is “this secret power,” as Bastiat phrases it? This is clearly a spiritual phenomenon in the sense that insight, intuition, invention, discovery, creativity, the spirit of inquiry are spiritual. Everything by which we live, be it a can opener or a windowpane, requires spiritual development before it manifests itself in the material. In a word, ideas! Ideas, be they entirely philosophical or of the kind that feed and clothe us, respond only to the Law of Readiness.

ENTER THE MEDDLER

Bastiat saw more clearly through the political fog than any other thinker and writer known to me. He accurately pinpointed the nemesis to the principle of free exchange and free market pricing by his reference to a “cabinet officer” who thinks he can substitute his own know-it-all-ness for this mysterious “prodigious mechanism.” The bureaucrat, whoever he is, no more knows what causes the phone to ring or how a pencil or windowpane is made than I do. He is distinguished by not knowing how little he knows. The extent to which we entrust our lives to these arbitrary interventions by government, to that extent will we multiply our suffering and spread among all of us the ills that now affect only a small number of our fellowmen. Once we become aware of the Law of Readiness, the reason becomes crystal clear, for the Law is exemplified whenever economic transactions freely occur.

A point to remember: We can only become aware of this Law; we shall never understand it. Analogously, we do not understand electricity but we are aware of its powers and harness them to our use. We do not understand gravitation, yet we know enough of its nature to count on skiing downhill rather than uphill, parachuting to the earth rather than into space. We can gain, at best, an awareness of hidden or secret powers and how to employ them. But we are not helped to understand such mysteries by becoming a “cabinet officer.” This is one fact we can understand!

Readiness is a phenomenon that requires freedom, and freedom is of two sorts: outer and inner. The nemeses of freedom are resistances. As I have already suggested, the nemeses to inner freedom are fear, anger, stress, know-it-all-ness, and the like. Rid ourselves of these or the Law of Readiness is inoperative. Ideas cannot flow into a consciousness that is thus barricaded.

COERCIVE INTERVENTION

The nemeses to outer freedom are also resistances. They are coercive impositions by other persons. Other people are to run our lives and not we ourselves! A mere sampling of regimented actions: the hours of labor, the wages paid, what and with whom we may exchange and the prices permitted, even the thoughts we shall entertain (government dictated school curricula, for instance). How, in heaven’s name, can I ready myself for the flow of goods and services when I am not allowed to enter the stream of economic activities except as a caricature of what bureaucrats think I should resemble! And with every single one of them having a different view of what that caricature should be! Carry this way of life to its logical conclusion and I am no longer a man but only putty to be molded—and by whom?

WHO IS MORE COMPETENT?

My answer: By persons afflicted with “the most dangerous kind of madness”: those so blind to their own imperfections that they naively believe they can manage your life better than you can. Choose any dictocrat who has ever lived and ask yourself, is he or you the more competent to guide your life? The answer in every instance comes loud and clear. It’s you by a mile! Dictocrats are victims of conceit and, by reason of their conceit, have failed to ready themselves. Therefore, they are utterly incapable of contributing to the readying process for their fellow men. Each of them is the nemesis of readiness. Further, this domineering trait will continue to grow and spread until we come to recognize its fatal nature and abandon it—voluntarily.

As to the Law of Readiness, let me confess here that I understate my indebtedness when I say that I have been readied a trillion times more by others than I have readied myself or contributed to the readiness of any person.

THE ENTREPRENEUR

Finally, in this matter of economic readiness, let us consider the spirit of entrepreneurship. And I mean far more by this than the dictionary definition: “a person who organizes and manages a business undertaking, assuming the risk for the sake of the profit.” Conceded, organizing ability and the hope for profit may be included in the constitution of entrepreneurs. But many people have both organizing ability and a craving for profit, yet they are utter failures. What is the gift that distinguishes the successful entrepreneur? It is a rare readiness, a foresight, that is, an ability to anticipate what people will want.

Are people ready for pencils, computers, or whatever? Not a one of these items would be available in the absence of individuals who could read the readiness of customers in its dormant stage and then organize the varied talents—individuals in unique states of readiness—to serve that potential demand. All the readiness among human beings for this or that would lie dormant and unserved were it not for the spirit of entrepreneurship. Interestingly enough and quite mysteriously, entrepreneurs appear on the scene to accommodate readiness. That is, they appear if they are free to act!

Under what conditions then does the Law of Readiness best work its wonders? Freedom! Inner and outer freedom! Freedom from personal frustrations and freedom from coercive restraints against creative action! Why not try freedom and, by so doing, harness the secrets of the Universe to the evolution of mankind!

[1] Frederic Bastiat, Economic Sophisms, Irvington, N.Y., 1968, pp. 97–98.

[2] See my Anything That’s Peaceful, Irvington, N.Y., 1964, pp. 136–143.

4

YOU RASCAL, YOU!

From whence come wars and fighting among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your number?

—JAMES 4:1

As with all of my “original” ideas, this one turns out to be “old hat.” Upon reading the first draft, an associate remarked, “Why, that is precisely what the Bible says.” Thus, the above quote. There then came to mind an essay we published several years ago entitled “Big Wars from Little Errors Grow.”[1] Old hat or not, the theme needs constant repetition; it is so easily forgotten.

As I view the societal scene from my modest place in it, four current phenomena are outstandingly impressive:

1. Things on the surface, at least, appear to be amiss, not only in the U.S.A. but world-wide: wars with guns, wars with words in religion, education, business, politics, brutishness on the campuses as on the streets. Never in my lifetime have the confrontations been more pronounced.

2. An amazing awakening to the fact that things are amiss: countless admissions by persons on all sides of the politico-economic argument—scholarly intellectuals, columnists, politicians, and others—many of whom have had a hand in bringing on the very calamity they now decry.

3. A frenzied search for explanations, causes, reasons—of the most diverse nature. These range from an incompetent bureaucracy to tax loopholes to inequality of income to excessive or inadequate welfarism to economic growth to lagging GNP—you name it! Never have the assigned reasons been more at odds and, as I see it, more astray.

4. A widespread acknowledgment of trouble but without any noticeable confession of personal shortcomings. Nearly every finger points at someone else; it is impressively you; there is hardly an I in the population.

Imagine! All of this rascality and not a professed rascal among us! Why? It is simply because the real evil, the cause of our waywardness, is rarely suspected. Thus, self-identification is impossible. People do not link themselves to error about which they are unaware.

THE DOMINEERING HABIT

What is this rascality? It is the domineering habit, the insistence that others act in accord with one’s own shadowy lights. Perhaps no one has shaken this habit completely, so common is its practice. This habit has its inception in the closest relationships, as in the family, one parent lording it over the other or both of them assuming an authoritarian as distinguished from an exemplary relationship with their children. It takes such seemingly innocent forms as do-as-I-say—a carbon copy way of life.

This tendency, once rooted, spreads by unseen degrees to neighbors, the classroom, the pulpit, and other associations. Sooner or later, it begins to grow teeth and takes the form of do-as-I-say-or-else, that is, it explodes into out-and-out coercion as in countless thousands of unprincipled governmental compulsions. When not recognized as evil and thus unchecked, it brings on dictatorships and finally reaches its apogee, its most vicious manifestation: mass slaughter.

MAN LORDING OVER MAN

I am unaware of any evil more pronounced than man lording it over man. Not even God does this. Indeed, He has given us a freedom so radical that we may deny our Maker or otherwise make fools of ourselves. As I see it, the domineering habit is the root of all evil[2] and unless there is some realization that it is, we will continue to ascribe non-reasons for our troubles and without anyone faulting himself. We will go on exclaiming, “You rascal, you!”

Enough of my theorizing. Let us reflect on an observed fact: an example cannot be found where domineering in practice—man lording it over man—has resulted in success.[3] The record is failure, without exception. It has to be. A carbon copy is never as good as the imperfect original.

Markedly on the increase are the complaints I hear from fathers and mothers about the waywardness of their children. In some instances, drugs. But most of them go like this: “She is brilliant, a straight A student in college, but she has bought the whole socialistic doctrine. She won’t do as I say. How do I solve this problem?” I have yet to hear one of these do-as-I-say parents confess, “The fault is mine.” In far too many of these relationships an unsuspected domineering attitude has been substituted for parental cooperation and guidance.

TWO CASES OF DOMINEERING: SCHOOLING AND POSTAL SERVICE

Take two cases of domineering that have “teeth”: government education and the government postal service.

Government education has three forms of domineering: compulsory attendance, government dictation of the curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the bills. That education in America is in a mess goes without saying. It is generally conceded, even by many educators. Show me one person who says, “The fault is mine.” Yet, it is the fault of everyone who has had any part in endorsing or supporting or practicing any form of domineering![4]

The government postal service never, even remotely, matched what a free market operation would have accomplished. And it is getting worse day by day. Can you name one person during the past century who confessed the fault is his? No one makes such an admission because he does not recognize the domineering trait as the root of the failure.

The railroads have been subjected to domineering with “teeth” for decades. They are failing. Not a person takes the blame; it is now and always has been, “You rascal, you!” There is no end to the illustrations that could be given.

As already stated, the domineering habit has its inception in the closest relationships. Correct it here and it will cease to be a menace elsewhere. Let us return, for illustration, to those parents whose children refuse to share parental views, conform to parental dictates.

PARTNERS IN LEARNING

True, these parents are unaware that they have been domineering and such recognition is indeed difficult. As parents, we tend to forget the growth we ourselves experienced during childhood and adolescence. By the time we reach parenthood, our own growth may have stopped. We have arrived, that is, we no longer feel that need to learn which we want our children to feel. If they would only do as we say—think as we do—that would be good enough! The insistence that our children do what we ourselves refuse to do is what destroys the proper relationships; there is no longer a learning partnership. Our failure to maintain this kinship in learning is a form of domineering. Looked at from the child’s point of view, he is a know-nothing and the parent the know-it-all. Conflict!

Perhaps the best way to shed light on the proper relationship between you and me, husband and wife, parent and child—all close relationships—is to cite an actual case between a teacher and one of his students. My introduction began with a letter from the student, a stranger to me. Here it is, abbreviated:

Sir, I am a freshman at a college in Florida. Seven short months ago I came here believing in Keynesian economics. That is what I had been taught in high school and I had accepted it without question. Since coming here I have been made aware of these fallacies, and due to my teacher, _______. It is like I have been blind and suddenly recovered my sight.

A few days later, the teacher, also a stranger to me and unaware of the student’s letter, wrote in part:

I am a Social Science professor at a private, small liberal arts college. I am very much interested in the freedom point of view and, for the last few months, have spent time trying to understand the view. (Italics added)

Fascinated with these two letters, I invited the professor to one of our Seminars. In getting to know him, I discovered what turned the student from socialism to a free market point of view. This professor is trying to understand; he and his students are partners in the learning process. They have a common goal: enlightenment! Contrast this with the parent whose goal is to make the child a carbon copy of himself. The parent may not think of this as domineering, but he gives that impression to the youngster. In this circumstance, the parent and child are not in partnership but in conflict. This matter of posture applies in all close relationships.

If we wish to put an end to the more horrible consequences of the domineering habit such as state socialism and eventually mass murder, we can do so by nipping it in the bud. This is to say, rid ourselves of the habit where it is born, namely, in our close relationships, whatever they happen to be.

Riddance requires no more than (1) an awareness that the domineering habit—freedom’s opposite—is the root of all evil, (2) an ability to recognize domineering in ourselves and to be done with it, (3) an appreciation that learning is just as much a requirement for the parent as the child, for the teacher as the student, for me as you, as much needed at eighty as eight and, (4) a strict observance of the Golden Rule.

Once we recognize that the vicious domineering of dictators is but the political extremity of the domineering habit that lurks in the mill run of us, we should exclaim, “You rascal, you!” only to the image we see in the mirror. Breaking ourselves of a bad habit is the way to destroy its most malicious manifestation. Remove the source—that’s all.

[1] E. W. Dykes in The Freeman, January 1964.

[2] This is close to the idea of Original Sin, as many theologians define it: the tendency of the creature to try to usurp the role of the Creator. That interpretation appears to be in accord with the Biblical account which describes the tempter as telling the human creature that if he will eat the forbidden fruit he can become like God. Genesis 3:5. See also William Temple, Nature, Man and God, London, 1934, p. 496 ff.

[3] Success is composed of gains, not losses. Sputniks, moon ventures, the Gateway Arch, and the like—ambitions of a few—are made possible by enormous losses on the part of millions of people. With justice or fairness as the premise, these are failures.

[4] This is not “collective guilt” as some would have it but individual error piled high. And, critics to the contrary, each of us is to some extent shaped by the environment in which we find ourselves. In another kind of world, you and I would be in another kind of endeavor.

5

PILOT ERRORS

Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.

—JEFFERSON

It was year’s end, December 31, 1972. One of my journal entries for the day:

The New York Sunday Times reports as a disaster the crash of a jumbo jet in the Florida Everglades. And on the same page a mere announcement that “the President is willing to name union men to all Federal departments.” In my judgment, the latter is by far the greater disaster in the long run. The jet crash, I suspect, was due to pilot error; naming union men to all Federal departments, I am certain, is also pilot error.

I have no respect for organizations as such—be they labor unions, chambers of commerce, organized religions, educational organizations, governments, or whatever. Respect can be extended only to individual persons who uphold and practice the several virtues. A person’s membership in this organization or that may reveal much or nothing.

An organization is analogous to a book defined as an assemblage of pages bound between two covers. Books, as such, do not merit respect; it is the content that counts. Books range all the way from filth and pornography to intellectual and spiritual enlightenment as found in the Bible or in The Wealth of Nations. The vices and virtues between the covers of organizations are no less diverse. The content of each must be examined.

WHY UNION REPRESENTATION?

Why do we not witness the political pilot’s willingness to name chamber of commerce men to all Federal departments? Or members of the Women’s Liberation movement? Or Catholics, Lutherans, Episcopalians, Holy Rollers? Or corporate executives? Or Farm Bureau members? Or certified accountants? Or physicians? Why single out union members? From the standpoint of good government, there is no more logic in naming the latter than the others. There is, of course, a “reason.”

And the “reason” is not that union members are distinguished beyond all others in the population for their statesmanship; they do not exhibit devotion to a common, across-the-board justice, free market and private ownership understanding and practice, or a disdain of special privilege! The real reason? Labor unions, more than any other labeled segment of the population, dictate what governments—Federal, state and local—shall and shall not do. Naming union men to all Federal departments is but an acknowledgment of their overpowering influence. It is a resignation to a political fact and I believe that this resignation, in itself, is a disaster. Find, if you will, any other reason for this “if you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em” attitude!

Before assaying the disastrous effects of resignation, let us reflect on the policies we are giving in to, admitting helplessness before, accepting as fait accompli.

THE QUEST FOR POLITICAL POWER

Union men, by and large—or their officials, at least—sincerely believe in gaining political power, in “running the show.” They regard this as a proper aspiration and, in this respect, are not to be distinguished from most of their opponents—the losers—the ones who also seek political power but with their men in the driver’s seat rather than unionists. Virtually all contestants in the political arena are striving to get themselves in a position from which they can run the show. There is little attention to the philosophical issue: domineering versus freedom; the contest is which side shall have the dictatorial say-so. Most people who criticize union men should hark to Cicero’s advice: “Everything you reprove in another, you must carefully avoid in yourself.”

Very well! Having agreed that union men differ little from the mill run of humanity over the ages, let us now have a look at the policies they espouse.

A cartel is defined as “an association of industrialists for establishing a monopoly by price fixing, etc.” Labor unions are no less cartels than are some industrial combines. They are price fixers; this is their chief claim to fame. They fix prices not by voluntary agreement but by edict backed by violence. Monopolists? Try to become a 747 Captain for less than $57,000 a year or a plumber in Westchester County for less than $15.80 an hour plus the contractor’s percentage.

All above-market wage rates forcibly exacted by labor unions cause unemployment precisely as $20 for a pound of cheese would cause its unemployment at the table. How is this unemployment catastrophe covered up? Labor unions, using their political power, get the government to pick up the tab: public housing, urban renewal, the Gateway Arch, moon shots, and thousands of other pyramids—“make work” projects to employ resources which have been coercively excluded from the market.[1]

These “make work” projects cost billions upon billions annually. How does government pay these enormous bills? First, by direct taxation—all the voters will tolerate. This, however, is far from adequate. How make up the difference? Increase the money supply: inflation! The result? The dollar becomes worth less and less. It has lost nearly 70 per cent of its purchasing value in the past 33 years. As one perceptive wit phrases it: “Nothing can replace the American dollar—and it practically has.”

THE “NEW ECONOMICS”

Reflect on this problem realistically. If it were generally believed that these tactics of labor unions were leading us to disaster, citizens would have none of them. Indeed, union men themselves would not be a party to what they now applaud.

But the general belief is to the contrary. Tactics such as these comprise “the new economics” and they are given prestige by such celebrated characters as Lord John Maynard Keynes, as well as by thousands of so-called economists spawned by them. These tactics are now believed to lead not to disaster but to prosperity and social welfare. Old fogeys may still frown on wage rates fixed above the market by violence, with government taxation and inflation to pick up the tab for the resulting unemployment; but why fret when assured that the consequence is all to the good! So goes the “reasoning.”

As if “the new economics” were really new! Actually, all of this is an inheritance from our barbaric ancestors. It rests on the primitive notion that these self-appointed rulers are capable of running the lives of others beneficially. The fact? No person who has ever lived has such a capability over any single individual, let alone over millions. All wielders of this kind of power resemble the rest of us in knowing substantially nothing, but they are unaware of how little they know. All of “the new economics” is old hat.

NEW IDEAS ARE UNSTABLE

I am trying to suggest that beliefs are here at issue. And at stake is the overthrow of the newest and most enlightening thoughts in human history, that is, as pertaining to political economy: free, voluntary exchange, private ownership, and limited government concepts. Were we to collapse life on this earth into a calendar year, these ideas have been perceived during the last 3 1/2 seconds before midnight of December 31. However, as Ortega points out, it is always the latest and highest acquisitions of the mind that are the least stable and the first to be abandoned whenever crisis threatens. The new, the wonderful—individual freedom—is now being abandoned in favor of the old, the primitive, the domineering way of life.

Sound economics is about as simple as this: Were the price of cheese to be coercively fixed at, say, $20 per pound, there would be no consumption. And were it coercively fixed at, say, 2¢ per pound, there would be no production. I say to all political rigging, “Cheese it!”

Even if the political pilot gives in to “the new economics” by expressing a willingness that union men be named to all Federal departments, and even if millions of others evidence such resignation, I must hold out for freedom though I may seem to stand alone. My faith tells me, however, that there are thousands of others—The Remnant—who are determined to do the same.

[1] The so-called Full Employment Act of 1946 authorizes governmental spending and relief programs to employ over-priced labor and other resources for purposes for which there are no willing customers. For further discussion see Henry Hazlitt, The Failure of the “New Economics,” Princeton, N.J., 1959, pp. 399–408.

6

SHELTERING IDEOLOGIES

Damn the magistrates who play, “protect me. I’ll protect you.”

—PETRONIUS

Some things never change, apparently: the nature of politicians, as distinguished from statesmen, for example. There is camaraderie in the trade; they take care of each other. “You play ball with me, and I’ll play ball with you.” No wonder the Roman magistrates winked at one another when they met! However, I do not damn the politicians who play the game that Petronius so rightly decried. My attitude is rather one of pity: they do not know any better!

Let us define our terms. What is meant by ideology? It is “the study of ideas, their nature and source . . . the doctrines, opinions, or way of thinking of an individual, class, etc.”

And sheltering? As used here, it means protection from life’s problems—seeking refuge from difficulties—not by building and strengthening one’s own intellectual and physical assets but by using force or coercion to live off the resources of others. In politico-economic parlance these sheltering ideologies range from protectionism and state interventionism to socialism, welfarism, the planned economy, Nazism, fascism, Fabianism, communism.

Though sorry for politicians who play the barbaric game of logrolling, my sorrow extends even more to those citizens who elevate politicians to their domineering positions. Why are these low-caliber men in office? Simply because too many voters themselves are of this caliber—they do as well as they know how to do. The dominators in office merely echo those in the population who believe their interests are best served by living at the expense of others. Barbarism in both cases; like begetting like!

HALF ANIMAL

Why this harsh term, barbarism? The animal world, except for man, is guided by instincts. Man has lost most, not all, of his instincts. And few human beings have acquired man’s distinctive features: the ability to think for self personally to will conduct, to make moral decisions. Those who are neither animal nor man—trapped between the two—exhibit barbaric behavior: less than animals in instinctual guidance and short of man in rationality.

How may be decide whether a person is trapped at the barbaric level or has ascended to the human level? There are many ways, but this simple test in economics should suffice: does an individual believe that one man’s gain is another’s loss?

Why is it that the Golden Rule is not universally accepted and applied as the only solution to the social problem? The answer is simple. Mr. Lippmann put his finger on the heart of the matter in saying that the fear that “one man’s or one country’s gain is another man’s or another country’s loss is undoubtedly the greatest obstacle to human progress. It is the most primitive of all our social feelings and the most persistent and obstinate prejudice which we retain from our barbarian ancestors. It is upon this prejudice that civilization has foundered again and again. It is upon this prejudice that all schemes of conquest and exploitation are engendered. It is this prejudice which causes almost all men to think that the Golden Rule is a counsel of perfection which cannot be followed in the world of affairs.”[1]

Each person’s position on the ladder of civilization is determined by the sheltering ideologies he condones or sponsors. If he subscribes to exploitation in one or more of countless forms, he has not thought his way out of primitive prejudices. If, on the other hand, he has freed his thinking of these superstitions, he is at the human level.

EVERYONE GAINS IN FREE TRADE

Except in the case of gambling and thievery (illegal), or state exploitation (legal, but identical in an economic sense), every gain of mine is someone else’s gain as well. I value your product or service more than the cash paid or I would not have made the exchange. You value the cash more than the product or service or you would have retained your wares. Whenever and wherever there are voluntary exchanges, each party gains in his own judgment—the sole basis of assessing value.[2] No sheltering ideology here! No hint of exploitation! Each doing for others that which he would have them do for him—the free market way.

Conceded, many people have ascended above the primitive level in other than the politico-economic realm which we are discussing here. But in this area, if we are to judge a man by his urge to plunder others, the number of “saved souls” is distressingly small. Further, this sad trait is not confined to any one occupational category. This propensity to live at the expense of others is as much in evidence among businessmen as labor union members, among professors of economics and clergymen as politicians.

Let us further identify those who subscribe to—support, condone, promote—the sheltering ideologies.

First, there are businessmen who seek varying forms of government protection against competition, domestic or foreign. Such people are not to be distinguished from labor union members who seek above-market wage rates for themselves by excluding other workers from certain jobs. Each practice is backed by government and thus exploits taxpayers and consumers. In this same category are those educators who demand tenure and go on strike to enforce their demands—all in the name of academic freedom!

Next are the promoters of such public works as The Gateway Arch, Urban Renewal, or moon shots. They may be likened to the monarchs of ancient Egypt. The pyramids were built with slave labor; today’s public works are built by the coercively extorted income representing a portion of your labor and mine. What’s the difference!

CONTROLS EXPLOIT US

Those who support rent control and all other forms of wage and price controls are afflicted with a sheltering ideology. Controls seem to be a plausible way of dealing with rising costs, which in turn result from an increase in the money supply: inflation. Inflation is a device for syphoning private property into the coffers of government, and will be activated whenever the costs of government rise to the point where they cannot be met by direct tax levies—inflation to make up the difference. These excessive costs result because other sheltering ideologies are practiced; prices rise as they would were everyone to practice counterfeiting. Wage and price controls hide the truth; they deprive buyers and sellers of the facts as to the demand for and the supply of goods and services. Thus, exploitation, which most people favor, can go on its merry way—people blinding themselves to reality!

Those who favor paying farmers not to farm—farm supports—are at precisely the same sheltering level as the American bureaucrats of the thirties who killed baby pigs to raise the price of pork, or the Brazilians who burned part of their coffee to raise the price of the balance. Exploitation of both consumers and taxpayers!

Physicians and dentists who support medicare and a system of licensing in order to suppress free entry and competition will, by and large, claim opposition to cartels and monopolies in the business world; they simply want their own cartel. “Dares thus the devil rebuke our sin! Dare thus the kettle say the pot is black!”[3]

Take account of the millions who favor unemployment insurance—a device so sheltering that many employables prefer their handouts coercively taken from taxpayers to earning their own way.

THE SOCIAL SECURITY MONSTROSITY

Who, we must ask, is free from sheltering ideologies in one or more of their numerous forms? If the above examples fail to embrace most of the population, then note the multitudes who favor Social Security. Nearly all educational, religious, and charitable institutions—not compelled by law to join in this economic monstrosity—have rushed to the trough. Favored, indeed!

Monstrosity? Reflect on the facts. “. . . the Social Security tax is not only rising faster than any other Federal tax but is also increasingly unfair to lower income workers. . . . The maximum Social Security tax rose from $60 in 1949 to $811 in 1971 and will jump to $1,324 in 1974.”[4]

Here, however, is the shocker: not a cent of the billions collected in Social Security taxes is put in a reserve fund to pay beneficiaries—only IOU’s in the form of government bonds. These billions are spent, as any other tax money, to defray the current costs of government. From what, then, are beneficiaries paid? From more taxes imposed at time of payment, a tax on the beneficiaries as well as on other taxpayers. The enormous cost of this sheltering program is one of the major causes of inflation. If the money in circulation continues to escalate as in the past 33 years, it will total $1.5 trillion by the year 2000. What will the Social Security beneficiary then be able to buy with his dollar? Substantially nothing![5]

The proper function of government—organized force—is to codify the taboos against destructive actions and to enforce them. All creative activities, including the practice of charity, are appropriately left to men acting freely, voluntarily, cooperatively, competitively, privately. This is the freedom philosophy. As I see it, anyone who advocates, supports, or condones governmental intervention into any of the creative areas is a victim of one or more of the sheltering ideologies. And that covers all but a very few indeed!

WOULD YOU LET THEM STARVE?

I know the rebuttal; we hear it everywhere, by TV, radio, the press, nearly all associations—business, religious, educational, or whatever. Its substance? How else are we to care for the poor, the unfortunate, the unemployed, the aged? As a result, faith in free men to create a good society has all but disappeared.

The fact is that not a one of these alleged remedies is working. Nothing better illustrates the truth of this observation than one other of the sheltering ideologies: the minimum wage law. This popular panacea harms the very people it is supposed to assist, those on the lower rungs of the economic ladder. Workers whose skills are not valued by others at $1.60 per hour, for instance, are relegated to permanent unemployment. Economists, the world over, regardless of their other persuasions, are nearly unanimous on this point, and a moment’s thought should tell us why.[6]

I insist that every sheltering ideology, be it Social Security, unemployment insurance, medicare, farm supports, wage and price controls, modern pyramids, teacher tenure, cartels, or whatever, has precisely the same debilitating, destructive effect as the minimum wage law. All of these, without exception, harm the very people they are foolishly designed to help. At the root of these panaceas is nothing but an unwillingness to think, a failure to rise out of the primitive and up to the human level.

As to the sheltering ideologies, rare, indeed, is the person who favors none; rare, also, is he who favors but one.

What shall we infer from this? Sheltering has a near-unanimous approval. The individual who stands for even one special privilege endorses the principle of coercive exploitation; by his actions he declares that living off others is morally admissible.

The way to test the validity of this coercive exploitation is to assume its unanimous practice. It becomes obvious then that everyone would perish! Parasites die in the absence of a host.

One further observation: to the extent that the responsibility for self is removed, whether voluntarily surrendered or coercively taken over by governmental action, to that extent is denied the very essence of one’s being, and the individual perishes by unseen degrees.

Man’s laudable purpose is not to vegetate, to retire, to seek an escape from life—to be secure as in a coma; it is, instead, to get ever deeper into life, to grow. And this can be accomplished only by an increasing use of one’s faculties, solving problems, surmounting obstacles. For it is an observed fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming.

Why not be done with sheltering ideologies? As Maxwell Anderson wrote in his preface to Knickerbocker Holiday in 1938: “The guaranteed life turns out to be not only not free—it’s not safe.”

[1] Newton Dillaway, Consent, Lee’s Summit, Missouri, 1967, p. 74.

[2] For an explanation of this point see Value and Price by Böhm-Bawerk, South Holland, Illinois, Libertarian Press, 1960.

[3] Henry Fielding.

[4] New York Times, November 19, 1972, p. 18.

[5] For more explanation, see “Social Security Re-examined” by Paul L. Poirot, The Freeman, November 1965.

[6] See my Then Truth Will Out, op. cit., pp. 61–66.

7

WHAT DO YOU HAVE AGAINST THE POOR?

The best lightning-rod for your own protection is your own spine.

—EMERSON

Whenever he hears someone demand a minimum wage law or any other impediment to freedom in transactions, my friend asks in all seriousness, “What do you have against the poor?” His point is well-taken. Unquestionably, many sponsors of welfare schemes—the long-run effect of which is to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs—are well-intentioned. Their hearts, if not their heads, are in the right place. The idea that they are doing offense to the very persons they wish to help is a shocker—hopefully, an eye-opener.

Perhaps the first shock would stem from the thought that a minimum wage law might do injury to anyone at all. Possibly to the wealthy employer, but surely not to the poor! The fact, however, is that those who have little to offer in the way of marketable skills are marginal producers at best; their services are wanted by others only at very low wages. Indeed, the total disappearance of such marginal producers would scarcely affect the over-all economy. So my friend is quite right. It is primarily, if not entirely, the poor who stand to lose if wage rates are pegged artificially high; those who sponsor minimum wage laws behave as if they hold a grudge against the poor.

The fact that a fair share of these sponsors act from motives of sympathy or pity—that they bear no grudge—in no way changes the consequences of their actions. Nonetheless, they victimize the poor. They hurt most the ones they love—and all because they fail to recognize these simple facts:

1. The eternal problem of economics is to overcome scarcity.

2. Plenitude is achieved by the application of human energies to natural resources and to the exchange of the numerous specializations.

3. The value of anything to anyone is always a subjective judgment—whatever one is willing to give up or trade for something else.

4. Freedom of production and trade—the free market—is the goose that lays the golden eggs and all impediments to this process, to the extent of their force and coverage, are destructive—obstacles to plenitude.

5. Minimum wage laws of say $1.60 leave unemployed all persons whose services are not of that much value to others.

6. To the extent of the productive potential thus unemployed, to that extent is the number of golden eggs reduced. But far worse: to that extent is everyone who cannot produce up to $1.60 an hour decreed waste and relegated to the economic scrapheap.

Nearly all who think of themselves as professional economists, regardless of their differences on some matters, agree that minimum wage laws inflict injury first and foremost on the poor. Even the avowed socialist, Gunnar Myrdal, the celebrated Swedish economist, turns thumbs down on this economic monstrosity.[1] The writings of economists in support of this point are plentiful, indeed.

SEEKERS OF PRIVILEGE

However, not all sponsors of minimum wage laws are “good guys” lacking in economic sense. There are countless thousands, perhaps a majority, whose motivations are mercenary. The first type is to be found in labor union “leadership.” The motivation here is to keep these low-wage, marginal producers off the labor market, that is, to eliminate them from competition. Permit no one to wait on table for, say, $1.00 an hour, even if he wishes to do so, and the union gains a monopoly of waiters’ jobs. Call this crass materialism or what you will, it is not inspired by sympathy or pity.

The second type is to be found in political “leadership.” The motivation here is to climb on the bandwagon of labor union popularity in order to get elected to office. Sympathy? Hardly!

As a novelist says of one of these characters, “He had learned to love the poor, profitably!”

Minimum wage laws generally call to mind only those legislative edicts bearing the label. In 1938 the minimum was 25 cents; in 1945, 40 cents; and since has risen step by step to $1.60. The pressure is on to raise it again. These edicts, however, are only the obvious. Every arbitrary wage coercively imposed by labor unions, over and above whatever the free market wage would be, is really a minimum wage. The minimum wage for a captain of a 747 jet is $57,000 annually. Try to get the job for less! But stop not here. The tariff and all other restrictions to free and unfettered exchanges are, in a strict economic sense, minimum wage laws. Those who condemn minimum wage laws, so-called, and lend support to other infractions of the free market such as wage and price controls are proclaiming their inconsistency. In every case these fixities and rigidities—these closures of the market—Wreak their hardship on consumers; and the poorer the person, the greater the hardship!

What is the alternative? What advice shall we give the person who earnestly desires to help “the poor?”

GIVE HIM RESPECT

First of all, he must recognize and respect as an individual the one he would love—which means to encourage but in no way to interfere with that person’s capacity, will, and effort to help himself. In other words, afford him every opportunity to earn his way. How earn it? By serving others, of course. How else does anyone earn anything! And what is the most likely opportunity for a poor man to earn his way? By selling his services to the highest bidder in open competition. Let buyers compete for his services—which means, in general, that the highest bidder will be the employer who can most profitably use that person’s services. That employer will earn a profit, not because he is exploiting anyone, but because he is most efficiently using scarce resources for purposes that consumers want and can afford. And “the poor” will reap benefits both as employees and consumers as they move upward out of poverty.

The question is this: how can these countless thousands in the labor union and political categories so flagrantly abuse the poor and be applauded rather than condemned for their actions? The answer is that labor union people and politicians who sponsor this nonsense are doing precisely what most citizens believe to be right. The overwhelming majority of citizens, operating on good intentions, fail to recognize that impediments in the market must frustrate their objective. Were the consensus free-market oriented, the political meddlers would not get to first base with their schemes; they would be thrown out of office.

LAISSEZ FAIRE

The next question is, what shall be done to bring more light into this darkness? Perhaps it boils down to this: more individuals than now learning to respect the preferences of others as well as their own. If I prefer to wait on table for $1.00 an hour, why should not this disposition on my part be as much honored as that of another who prefers to be President of the U.S.A.? Maybe you prefer teaching for the sheer joy of it—psychic gain—to running a cannery where you might make a fortune—monetary gain. I say, blessings on you and on all others whatever their preferences, so long as you and they are peaceful. This is no more than simple justice, and anyone who acts to the contrary dons the robes of a dictator, intending to run the lives of others.

This simple justice and the aforementioned simple facts would seem to be within the grasp and the practice of a majority of citizens. It is my contention that these are attainable achievements in the moral and economic realm. By and large, however, they are not attained. Why? What is the impediment that hinders us from actually attaining the ends which in fact are within our power to attain? A priceless answer if it can be discovered! Let me share a thought that is becoming more and more a conviction. The essence of this thought was expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams. (Italics added)

I have quoted this before, certain that it expressed an important truth. However, it took the remarks of a recent acquaintance to help me realize its full meaning. This individual, as we met for the first time, acknowledged how helpful my writings had been, and then added, pointing to the head, “It is all here. You have merely helped me put together and to better understand that which is already within me.” This is an insight that rivals Emerson’s!

Emerson’s point now seems clear to me and it helps to explain what stands between the attainable and its attainment: a failure to realize one’s potential or an unwillingness to discover and to heed the truths within.

As Emerson so eloquently phrases it, we do, indeed, “lie in the lap of an immense intelligence.” As with all radiant energy, this intelligence is in constant movement and it flows through all life. The problem of gaining understanding is one of arresting “its beams,” of intercepting or appropriating that which already is within us or is passing through us.

We can be helpful to one another, not by posing as this intelligence but by using, expressing, sharing such of this mysterious energy as we may be fortunate enough to intercept. Once this way to enlightenment is perceived and practiced—a near reversal of present methods—then we may befriend the poor, not merely in proclaimed intentions but in reality. Our hearts and heads will be working in harmony.

[1] Gunnar Myrdal, The American Dilemma, New York, rev. ed. 1962.

8

DESPOTIC AND HYPOTHETIC AUTHORITY

Fame is no sure test of merit.

—CARLYLE

According to one authority, “Acceptable Authority is a power that cannot be intelligently or reasonably questioned.”[1] Questionable authority, then, would be that which is slavishly feared or blindly worshiped.

Nearly everyone is aware of and rightly fears despotic authority—the arbitrary rule of life coercively imposed by some on others. Fending it off—its riddance—is one of the major problems of our time.

Troublesome as is despotic authority, I am beginning to suspect that hypothetic authority may represent an even greater threat to our well-being. This brand of authority is not imposed on me by others but, instead, is supposed by me to be an attribute of others. Unless my critical faculties are alert, I may regard many others as authorities on all things because of their outstanding skills and knowledge about some things. Because of their seeming credentials—academic degrees, titles, fame or notoriety, prestige, and so on—the inclination is to hypothesize omnicompetence. They are regarded as the last and final word—authority—not only in areas where they are expert but also in areas where they may be totally lacking in competence.

Despotic authority coercively pushes us into endeavors not consonant with our uniqueness and, conversely, it keeps us from endeavors which might effectively utilize our real talents. Potential musical geniuses forced to work in the sputnik factory, for instance! Hypothetic authority, on the other hand, has no push to it at all. Instead, it is of our own making, consisting of conclusions or inferences we ourselves draw. These suppositions when wrong may lead us more astray than do the coercive impositions.

CELEBRITY ENDORSEMENTS

Our unawareness in this respect is assumed to be so general that we witness constant attempts to exploit it: famous band leaders, baseball stars, actors, and other prestigious persons singing the praises of motor cars, breakfast foods, sleeping powders, cigarettes, and what have you. These celebrities come before us not because they have a product knowledge they can hardly wait to share but because of a handsome stipend. The handsome stipend, one may acknowledge, depends in part upon an urge among consumers to know what the stars are driving, eating, sleeping with, smoking and doing generally. The stipend also depends largely upon the producer’s ability to supply a good product for the star’s endorsement. Consumers do not like to be fooled.

However, in this area of goods and services, the consumer can never be “taken in” for long. Pure self-interest in day-to-day living with the simple things of life steers him clear of fakery no matter how cleverly devised. Sooner or later advertisers will awaken to how wide awake consumers are. No problem here!

The danger looms when we move from the things by which we daily sustain ourselves—things close to our hides—to the theories and precepts that make these things possible. It is when we shift from personal economy to the structures of political economy that hypothetic authority so often leads us astray. We may not be impressed unduly by a star reading a prepared script concerning the virtues of a product about which he knows next to nothing, but we are easily “taken in” by a scientist, for instance, writing an article or book about which we know little, if anything.

A RADICAL DEPARTURE

A case in point: I have read several books by a famous zoologist. He impresses me as an outstanding authority in his field. Only once, in those of his books I have read, does he veer from the discipline in which he appears to be so knowledgeable:

Throughout human history until recent times, most human beings died in infancy, and no more than a very small percentage survived to ripe old age, carrying with them the wisdom of their experience or the foolishness of their years. Now all is changing, thanks to antibodies, antibiotics, the surgeons’ knife, and the welfare state. (Italics added)[2]

Now suppose that I had no awareness of the welfare state’s utter fallacy, founded as it is on despotic authority. Favorably impressed by this author’s skills in zoology, how easy it would be for me to hypothesize his authority as a political economist—to be “taken in”! After all, he affirms what most politicians are saying and many Americans are believing. In this instance, however, I was saved from error because he veered into my area of thought.

Albert Einstein, perhaps the most renowned mathematician who ever lived, sided with despotic authority: he embraced socialism. It is impossible to reckon the number of people who hypothesized his authority in an area in which I believe he had no competence.

Dr. Alexis Carrel, a noted physician, wrote a famous book, Man, The Unknown. I read it in 1935, before I had thought much about the freedom philosophy. He so skillfully criticized our societal ills—all criticisms agreeable to me—that I swallowed his remedies without a quibble. He easily sold me “a bill of goods.” Because of my carelessness, my lack of alertness, I assigned to him a hypothetic authority. Not until rereading the book years later did I recognize his conclusion as despotic authority.

Perhaps these examples are sufficient for illustrative purposes. Examples abound on every hand and by the tens of thousands. There are two questions to answer: (1) Why is hypothetic authority more dangerous than despotic authority? and (2) Is there a simple way to avoid this error?

HOW AVOID DECEPTION?

I have observed that we have no reason to concern ourselves about consumers being victimized by “Madison Avenue.” True, we have many professional worrycrats who do so concern themselves but, really, who is “taken in”! You? Never! It is always someone else; yet, try to find that person! At the food, fiber, and gadgetry level the consumer is way ahead of both producers and advertisers. Self-paying customers possess a commendable “show me” attitude.

But fundamental to an abundance of food, fiber, and gadgetry is the societal framework, that is, how human relations are structured. Montesquieu put it in a simple sentence: “A country is well cultivated not because it is fertile but because it is free.” Russia is as fertile as the U.S.A. but not as free. No need to labor this point.

Whether a country is free or not depends upon the consensus. If a majority of a country’s people give lip service to the planned economy and the welfare state—socialism—that is precisely what will prevail. There will not, cannot, be an abundance of food, fiber, gadgetry. I am unaware of any historical instance to refute this.

Hypothetic authority, now on the rampage, substantially contributes to the current consensus favoring despotic authority. Briefly, the former lies at the root of the latter. Consumers who are so alert at the surface manifestations of freedom are, for the most part, cutting away the roots of abundant subsistence; they are innocently contributing to scarcity, thwarting their own interests. Although producers and advertisers cannot fool them overmuch at the goods and services level, consumers are easily “taken in” at the theoretical and conceptual level.

I will readily concede that an individual, unless giving profound attention to social and economic theories and practices, has only a dim chance of avoiding the error here in question. Life is so complex that, seemingly, we must rely on other people’s word for most things, for each of us does, in fact, live off others. And who better to follow than one who is prestigiously positioned! If he be an expert in astronomy, why not rely on him in political economy!

CHOOSE A SOUND PREMISE

There must be some formula by which the error so common to hypothetic authority can be avoided. The simplest way I have found is to adopt for self a basic premise, that is, a fundamental point of reference from which one’s position can be readily established on a host of matters. My own premise is my answer to the question, what is man’s earthly purpose? The answer that comes through loud and clear to me is: Individual growth, development, emergence, evolution along the lines of one’s creative uniqueness.

How does one employ this technique? Merely check all ideas—one’s own or anyone else’s—with the premise. If an idea is perceived as thwarting this aim, cast it aside; never embrace it. If, on the other hand, an idea is in harmony with this high purpose—promotive of it—then embrace it; stand in its favor. If one’s premise be sound and if one reasons logically from it—deductively—then one’s positions will always be sound, the dangers of hypothetic authority avoided.

As to a premise, frame one that can proudly be pronounced before God and man alike. Make certain that it is free from all traces of despotic authority, which is to say, a premise founded on individual liberty. Thus armed, one can search for truth from all sources without fear of being “taken in.” Practiced a bit, this method of thinking will soon become habitual, natural, an intellectual way of life.

[1] Felix Morley, The Power in the People, Princeton, N.J., 1949, p. 131.

[2] N. J. Berrill, Inherit the Earth, New York, 1966, p. 181.

9

GREAT OR CELEBRATED?

If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and ask for truth, and he will find both.

—HORACE MANN

Many years ago a prestigious national weekly carried a section headed, “The Great and the Near Great.” I have often thought it should have been entitled “The Celebrated and the Also Rans.” For, in my judgment, most of the personalities reviewed were only celebrated and not great. There is a marked distinction between these two terms, and the failure to note the difference leads to mischief.

The celebrated person: “famous; renowned; well-publicized.” The great man: “having or showing nobility of mind, purpose, etc.”

True, numerous great men are also famous or celebrated, but the number must be legion of celebrated men who bear no earmarks of greatness. For instance, I would refer to Goethe as both great and celebrated, and to Stalin, Hitler, and a thousand and one others as celebrated but not great.

When renown is mistaken for greatness people are led astray; they are likely to believe that the sole way to be great is to be celebrated. This tends to deflect the eye from what constitutes greatness and persuades men to strive for fame rather than nobility of mind. I firmly believe that many of the greatest men who have ever lived or who live today are unknown to you or me. Except among intimate acquaintances, we are only aware of celebrities, a few of whom may be great but not the greatest.

Let us reflect first on the celebrity syndrome. Aside from the false notion that fame and greatness are synonymous and therefore renown must be a worthy aim, what else spurs men to seek popularity? Mere acclaim by the masses would not seem to be drive enough by itself to take possession of a normal person; there must be a companion failure of the mind. What might it be? Egomania—a passion for center stage—in a word, pride!

When it comes to man fulfilling life’s higher goals—“nobility of mind, purpose, etc.”—an inflated ego is doubtless more dangerous—damaging—than high blood pressure. Thus, this should be guarded against.

What accounts for this type of inflation? Thoughtlessness, of course—no reasoned barrier standing against the ego’s wild growth.

BEWARE OF PRAISE

This hankering for praise and adulation is indeed heady stuff—so believable! True, I find myself praising others and, on occasion, someone praises me. It is not praise that is in error but, rather, one’s inability to pigeonhole it, to realize that the praise is not the accomplishment itself. Here am I, distraught by lack of achievement and along comes a letter telling me how wonderful I am. I have not advanced one whit in accomplishment, but self-esteem takes a mighty leap forward. What a great man am I! You see, I make the mistake of thinking of myself as great when, in fact, only my renown has inched ahead—slightly celebrated.

The cure for this? Be neither exalted by praise nor distraught by criticism. Let praise or adulation pass by as a refreshing breeze. And let criticism be examined for whatever truth can be found in it.

THE GREATEST IS UNKNOWN

I recall lunching with several scholarly individuals, one of those friendly affairs where the talk may take any turn. On this occasion, the greatest American was the issue. Only Washington, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Lincoln were in the contest for first place. Settle on one of these, they seemed to think, and there stands the greatest! True, all four qualify as great, but the talk was confined to them simply because they rank high among this nation’s celebrities. After listening for an hour, I made my first remark: “The greatest American is someone whom no one at this table ever heard of.” I demonstrated this by mentioning several men in politics and business currently most highly publicized, and who a century hence will be among the celebrities of our time. I added; “Each of you thinks of yourself as greater than any of these.” They agreed, and for good and sufficient reason!

To be celebrated requires no more than notoriety—“taken note of.” We take note of weeds as well as roses, and frequently pay more attention to men who are outstandingly depraved than to those who stand out as geniuses. Nobility of mind is the criterion for greatness, but fame may be extended to scoundrels.

What are the grounds for claiming that the greatest men are not known to any one of us? For the simple reason that the noblest minds are beyond our powers of perception. This is to say that there are those whose conscience and consciousness are so elevated that we are unable to take note of them. Beyond our ken! Incredible? No; our own experiences, if reflected upon, attest to this fact.

For instance, a person who grows in awareness comes upon thoughts each day that are brand new to him. He may have read the words before without grasping the meaning. Why should we conclude that what we are able to perceive today is the limit of our perceptive ability? The notion that I now know it all is utterly naive, a denial of an infinite unknown. If today I perceive a person’s thought to which yesterday I was blind, why not be certain that tomorrow holds the same promise? And, further, why not carry this observation to its logical conclusion by frankly admitting that there have been and are individuals whose nobility of mind is beyond one’s comprehension?

OVERSOULS

These oversouls to whom I refer—not Yogis in Himalayan caves—whose thoughts are unknown may be on a first-name basis with us. They could be from any walk of life and are not associated with fame, fortune, rank, age, formal education, race, creed, color. Possibly, your maid or next door neighbor! We do not know because we cannot know.

Doubtless, the greatest individuals are, to some extent, in communion with Intelligences about which we are but dimly aware. These persons are not in communion with others because what they perceive is of an order beyond their powers of communication.

If all of this seems esoteric or “ivory tower,” reflect on a current phenomenon, the little book, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, by Richard Bach. The author disclaims any credit, for he frankly confesses that the idea came to him as a flash of enlightenment and the words flowed from his typewriter as in automatic writing—a force at work which neither he nor anyone else understands. The book is sweeping this and other countries, certainly one of the best sellers of all time.

Here we observe the voice of an Intelligence which Bach, left to his own resources, would never have been able to communicate to others. In this instance, however, communicable words accompanied the insight or intuitive flash, call it what you will.

Richard Bach, an aviator and writer for aviation magazines, could have been described as many of us: neither great nor celebrated. A flash of enlightenment—nobility of mind—beyond his or our comprehension, made him great. Today, he is both celebrated and great.

Let us not overlook the real significance of Jonathan. What is the meaning of its phenomenal acceptance? It proves beyond a shadow of a doubt that millions of people are reaching, searching for the sublime, for what we are not yet. This parable is a loud and clear demonstration of the possible: a moral and spiritual renaissance rooted in greatness. If we heed its message and aim for nobility of mind—not renown—we will be on the only path there is toward greatness.

10

THE LAW OF ACTION AND REACTION

Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you.

—JOHN 12:35

Up and down, back and forth, rise and fall; these movements mark the course of civilizations. A “renaissance” followed by a “dark age”; a period of enlightenment and then a decline from grace. Evolution, devolution, evolution, devolution, on and on—action and reaction—a sequence to be found in the future as the past. Why? It is ordained by Nature’s pattern; it is phased into the Cosmic Order.

If this be a correct assessment, it might seem to follow that all work aimed at a better world is fruitless—tilting at windmills, contesting against the inevitable. A second thought, however, reveals that intelligent effort can cause evolution to inch ahead over time; the ascents longer, the declines less precipitous. While action and reaction will persist, it is undeniably within man’s power to cause this sequence to operate at higher and higher levels. This is to say that it can be made to rise from the low and ignoble to the high and noble, from the dog-eat-dog to the Golden Rule way of life.

Of course, there is no point in examining this hope unless we believe that action and reaction—the law of polarity or tension of the opposites—are forever in play, that societal events are shaped by how each of us acts and reacts. Emerson, the philosopher, put it clearly and beautifully:

Polarity, or action and reaction, we meet in every part of nature; in darkness and light; in heat and cold; in the ebb and flow of waters; in male and female; in the inspiration and expiration of plants and animals; in the systole and diastole of the heart; in the undulations of fluids and of sound; in the centrifugal and centripetal gravity;. . . . If the south attracts, the north repels. . . . An inevitable dualism bisects nature, so that each thing is a half, and suggests another thing to make it whole; as spirit, matter; man, woman; subjective, objective; in, out; upper, under; motion, rest; yea, nay.[1]

For scientific support of this idea, refer to Robert A. Millikan, renowned physicist and Nobel Prize winner for his measurement of the electrical charge of the electron:

All atoms are built up out of definite numbers of positive and negative electrons. All chemical forces are due to the attractions of positive for negative electrons. All elastic forces are due to the attractions and repulsions of electrons.[2]

Salute the American flag. That arm in motion is as perfect an example of elasticity as is a wagging tongue, a smile, or a raising of an eyebrow. What goes on here? These and all elasticities can be traced to the attractions and repulsions—actions and reactions—of electrons within tiny atoms! What lies back of the interactions of the electrons? The cortex or diencephalon, of course. How does the mind cause the electrons to respond? About this we know nothing except that the decision to salute the flag was a reaction to preceding actions, difficult to identify. We believe that “an inevitable dualism bisects nature”—all of it!

THE MORAL CODE

The thesis I am about to offer is an ancient one. Abbreviated and rephrased, the Mosaic law proclaims:

God promises to the people of Israel that if they obey his moral and civil laws—righteous actions—they will be blessed with material abundance. But he warns that this very blessing can serve as a snare. If they forget the source they will exalt themselves thus: “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” God then promises the inevitable reaction against man’s false claims of divinity: “I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.”[3]

About a thousand years later the promised reaction to moral action was phrased, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you.” This is to say that when a people put truth and righteousness first and foremost, the dividends—things—follow as a matter of course. The implication is clear: seek first “these things” and neither truth nor things will be forthcoming.

Today does not differ from ages past. The reaction to moral action is the affluent life; and the usual, unthinking reaction to affluence is a disregard of moral action and the subsequent decline and fall. This is the historical pattern; we are witnessing the common sequence in the U.S.A. today.

Reflect on the millions of Americans living today in affluence beyond the dreams of any other people at any other time. But note how few there are who have the slightest awareness of source. They seem to think that all of this is their due, automatically, for merely being alive. The hard and sobering fact? All of this array of gadgetry—dishwashers, autos, telephones, air transportation, electric lighting and heating—is beyond their ken. There is not one among those countless items that any living person knows how to make. Yet, most Americans are thinking, if not saying, what man long ago was warned against, “My power and the might of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” They have lost sight of the fact that all of “these things” have resulted from the knowledge and practice of difficult human virtues. These things are but dividends—reactions—in response to righteous action.

AFLAME WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Tocqueville, trying to discover the miracle of America—searching for the root cause of this phenomenon—gave the best answer known to me: “I found them aflame with righteousness. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

No person can even begin to list, let alone document, the actions and reactions that led to the righteousness—the morality that featured the America Tocqueville examined. Nor is a knowledge of the countless, diverse details necessary. We need only know (1) that righteousness was the source of our affluence, (2) that, by and large, the source is all but forgotten, (3) that, as forewarned, disaster awaits this unawareness, and (4) that we must re-acknowledge and honor the source, or surely perish.

It is obvious that the reaction to affluence, if not scrupulously guarded against, is the exaltation of self and claims of divinity: “My power and the might of mine hand has gotten me this wealth.” Only now and then do we observe an affluent individual who has the good sense to work and think and grow as do those who have no choice but “to root hog or die.” The normal reaction to affluence is nonuse and atrophy of the faculties, as if man’s purpose were to get out of rather than into life, that is, to fatten, vegetate, retire!

AN IMMUTABLE LAW

Bear in mind that we are dealing with an immutable law, that is, a law that cannot be modified by wishing. So far as our own power is concerned, it can only be applied on the terms by which this law operates. If we do not exert this power, the law will continue to operate as in the past: evolution, devolution, evolution, devolution, on and on.

An example of the law’s normal operation comes to mind: Our Pilgrim Fathers, in the first three years after landing at Plymouth Rock, lived in accord with communistic notions: from each according to ability, to each according to need. Regardless of their religious sincerity, theirs was not a righteous way of life. The result? Starvation! The reaction? Some hard-headed thinking: to each according to his own production! The reaction to this right thinking over the following three centuries? The greatest outburst of creative energy ever known! As the Roman, Horace, observed about 2,000 years ago:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Must we await adversity and the reaction that will follow—perhaps in decades, or even centuries? That is the relevant question. While the past may well repeat itself, that does not necessarily follow. The outcome depends exclusively on the degree of consistency—men’s willingness to conform to principle in practice—that can be brought to bear on the present.

As I see it, the usual reaction to affluence is to fall asleep so far as life’s higher purposes are concerned—“wealth accumulates and men decay.” According to the historical pattern, the only alarm clock has been disaster—adversity. This is an absurd neglect of our powers. Why not awaken ourselves! We need only to sharpen our perceptions to see the adversity in the offing and then to react as if it were already upon us. Behave as we would—work, think, grow—were it really a case of “root hog or die”! Use the affluence we still have to sharpen our perceptions. Let us recognize that wealth is a tool that makes enlightenment easier; it frees us from the obstacles—the slavery—which adversity imposes.

This, in my view, is the only way to cause the law of action and reaction to operate above the dog-eat-dog level and at the Golden Rule level.

[1] Newton Dillaway, The Gospel of Emerson, Lee’s Summit, Missouri, 1949, p. 71.

[2] Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1943, Vol. VIII, p. 340.

[3] Deuteronomy 8:6–20.

11

THE RIGHT I OWE YOU

Man precedes the State, and possesses, prior to the formation of any State, the right of providing for the sustenance of his body.

—POPE LEO XIII

The several billions of us now inhabiting the globe are members respectively of some clan, tribe, or nation. An important question: What right does each of us owe any or every other?

You have the right to do with yourself and your own whatever you please so long as your pursuits—noble or ignoble—do no injury to me and mine. In this respect, you have no responsibility for me nor I for you; let the outcome in either case be what it may. At most, in such personal pursuits, we can be the source of each other’s disappointment or admiration. In this strictly individualistic sense, I owe you nothing more than noninterference; all else in solitude I owe to myself.

Life, however, is not accomplished strictly in solitude, nor can it be. We live both in solitude and in society. So the problem of rights concerns not merely the I but the we as well. My purpose here is to look beyond my right in solitude to my rights in society—civil rights, the kind we define by civil law. In brief, what are your claims on me? In logic and justice, they must be identical to my claims on you. So, what is it that I owe you—and vice versa?[1]

The answer to this question is of prime importance. For we have now in the 20th century strayed so far from reason that mere wishes are regarded as rights. Examples: we wish for a decent standard of living without working; we wish to be paid for not farming; we wish that employers be forced to pay whatever wages we demand; we wish for a Gateway Arch; we wish to be protected against competitors while insisting that our suppliers be competitive; we wish for renewal of our dying community. These and thousands of other wishes are now incorporated into the civil law as rights.[2]

AHEAD LIES DISASTER

Sober reflection reveals where this wild interpretation of rights is taking us: (1) governmental costs soaring billions of dollars annually beyond what can be collected by direct tax levies, (2) monetary inflation as a means of syphoning private property into the coffers of government, (3) rising prices, (4) wage and price controls. Unless this whole political scheme is abolished, rationing must inevitably follow and then the total state—an end to freedom in America.

What, pray tell, accounts for our disastrous behavior? Perhaps we shall never know for certain, because cause underlies cause ad infinitum. The causes we can perceive lie near the surface, and the most obvious one in this case is a habit into which so many people have fallen: collectivistic thinking. Or, a better term might be lump thinking: farmers have “rights”; states and cities have “rights”; blacks have “rights”; the have-nots have “rights”; laborers have “rights”; consumers have “rights”; on and on. The individual person is forgotten as lump thinking turns thoughtless citizens into voting blocs, a process encouraged by the politician because it economizes his manipulative efforts.

Correction of this tendency requires recognition of a simple truth: only the individual has rights. It is exclusively the individual who experiences justice or injustice, who evidences morality or immorality, who gains or loses, speaks, thinks, prays, hates, loves, lies, cheats, reasons, practices integrity, has feelings. The collective, no matter how you lump it, has neither mind nor conscience, nor any other personal attribute—not one!

THE MADNESS OF CROWDS

A crowd does not, cannot, reason. It is self-evident that only the individuals within the crowd have brains and thus possess such powers. “Mob psychology” is simply the irrational mental state of individuals who attempt to transfer personal responsibility to a fictitious entity—the crowd. A mere category, such as labor, is personified, and so are businessmen, and we get Labor and Business. Or Medicine, the Law, and so on.

This, I believe, helps explain the absence of reason, the double talk, the flight from integrity, the utter nonsense characteristic of much political talk. Reasoning with something that cannot reason—Labor and Business, for instance—is out of the question. The politician who falls into the error of thinking of us as blocs addresses himself to “bloc-heads,” not to individuals. Is it any wonder that the process persuades men to regard wishes as rights!

As to the rights of each person, rationality requires that we drop all of the collectivistic jargon; it makes no sense—none whatsoever! With this done, there we stand not as a mass but as millions of discrete individuals, each a little world unto himself, each entitled to precisely the same right as any of the others, all equal in every respect before the civil law. Rationally, discrimination is not admissible.

Now, then, what is it that you as one of these millions owe me and all the others? Exactly what I owe you, whoever you may be: the opportunity, without let or hindrance, to go as far creatively as your aspirations and talents will permit! This is what I owe you—no more no less.

[1] I do not mean to exclude the practice of Judeo-Christian charity. Here my reference is only to civil law having to do with legal claims. Charity has to do with morality and mercy, not legality and justice.

[2] See my, “When Wishes Become Rights,” The Freeman, November 1964.

12

RESTRAINT OR RELEASE?

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

—GOETHE

Two diametrically opposed ways of life are implicit in this question. Put simply, the choice is between slavery or freedom. “To be or not to be,” to become or to be overcome is the issue here at stake.

For some years I have been defining freedom as “no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.” So far, I have received neither approval nor disapproval from any listener or reader. Two inferences can be deduced from this silence: (1) complete agreement or (2) too vague an understanding of what this definition means to evoke a response. More than likely it is the latter, for generalities—even when carefully phrased—seldom stimulate either approbation or opprobrium. The tendency is to let them stand for what they are: pleasant and noncontroversial bits of verbiage—mere words or meaningless images!

An example: “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” This is often quoted, but who really understands or questions its meaning? It is a Biblical pleasantry and scarcely anyone, regardless of ideological or philosophical leanings, bothers to look behind the words. Who does not wish to be free or to know the truth! Similarly, who would not prefer release to restraint!

Simplification, I have discovered, is more likely to be achieved by explanation than by brevity. “No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy” is brief enough but it fails to simplify; it does not explain and, thus, I fear, is not much understood.

To be or not to be—to become what is within one’s potential or to be overcome at some stagnation level—is, as I see it, the prime human problem.

. . . the universal power is ever effecting release, freedom. . . . This key is found in learning the art of ascension, of lifting the consciousness. . . . any person who flows as life flows has solved the problem of human existence. With serious obstructions, we fade and die.[1]

Stated another way, serious restraints are deadly.

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND SOCIOLOGICAL RESTRAINTS

Man-concocted restraints fall into two categories: psychological and sociological. Restraints of the former variety are the kind an individual inherits or imposes upon himself; the latter are what others impose upon him. Far more attention is given to the latter than to the former, simply because restraints by others are more easily detected than those existing in self. It is so much easier to detect the faults of others than one’s own. Social restraints may be vicious, of course, but probably are less damaging than the personal taboos and habits from which we fail to release ourselves.

The heart-warming account of the lioness, filmed as “Born Free,” comes to mind. That remarkable creature flowed with life from an instinctive, not a rational, direction. Man, as Gerald Heard suggests, has lost many of the instincts that guide the animals and, unfortunately, has not, by and large, acquired or developed that human uniqueness—the power to reason and choose—on which his ascension, the lifting of consciousness—depends. It might be said that we are, with few exceptions, neither animal nor true man. Only rarely is there a person who has significantly bridged the gap. Support for this observation is to be found in contrasting wolves with men. A wolf never kills a wolf; men do kill each other.[2] Or note how so many of us have come to hate evil so much that we forget to love good.

“A thinking reed,” Pascal called man. No individual who refuses to think for himself has bridged the gap; he has not yet arrived at that level which distinguishes human uniqueness! A recent experience, typical of our time in history, portrays my point:

I overheard the pretty, blond stewardess indignantly explaining to her helpmate that she had just paid 77 cents for a package of cigarettes. “Of all things!”

When I asked how she would feel if she had to pay $77 or $770 for a package of cigarettes, she gave me a withering glance.

I then took from my billfold two pieces of Brazil’s paper money, a 50 cruziero note of 1940 vintage and one of today’s 10,000 cruziero notes, pointing out that the former was worth seven dollars in 1940 while the latter now is worth $1.60, despite the fact that the dollar has lost 67 per cent of its purchasing value in this period. Had the U.S. dollar depreciated as rapidly as the cruziero, the package of cigarettes she might have purchased for 20 cents in 1940 would cost some 3,500 times as much today!

Anyway, the stewardess exclaimed, “I do not want to think about such things; they are too depressing.” This remark calls to mind the ostrich-like behavior of ever so many “leaders” whether in business, politics, labor, religion, education, or whatever—a refusal to think: telltale evidence of refusal to live up to the human level!

LIFTING THE CONSCIOUSNESS

There is another bit of evidence pointing in the same direction: the widely held “conviction” that no one else can have achieved intellectual and spiritual experiences higher than one’s own. “Lifting the consciousness”—“the art of ascension”—is, I feel certain, limitless in possibilities. There are reports of experiences by men throughout recorded history that I personally have not had and do not expect to encounter. Yet, my limited capacity is no ground for doubting that others have gone far beyond me. Insight and intuition are of enormous variety and expansibility. Newton Dillaway writes:

I had acquired the intuitive knack of taking a book and turning directly to the page that held something I needed to fill out the unfolding Idea.[3]

Richard Bach, as previously related, found the words of Jonathan Livingston Seagull, flowing automatically.[4] Many authors and composers have left accounts of the creative process, as they have experienced it.[5]

Most people to whom these phenomena have never happened will refer to them as “mystic stuff” and unbelievable. Well, I have had numerous minor experiences such as Dillaway and Bach describe and, thus, I do believe that others can have experiences that will never happen to me.

To tie the phenomena of the world down to one’s own experiences is restraint of the first order. It blocks both inspiration and aspiration. Release is the need.

A state of unconsciousness—that is, not thinking for self—and blindness to the fact that others have intellectual and spiritual experiences beyond one’s own are but two among countless restraints of the psyche. Release—freedom from these—is essential before it is possible to become truly human. Reflect on the variety of shortcomings inherited by each one of us. Add to these the unfavorable situations into which so many are born, environmental impressions or depressions—domineering and the like—which plant their seeds in babyhood and on through adolescence. Genetic and environmental influences, with but rare exceptions, make persons what they are; or, negatively, they tend to keep people from becoming what they might be. Hopelessly tied down to inheritance and environment? Not necessarily!

ATTAINING ADULTHOOD

Dr. Thomas A. Harris, psychiatrist, uses the term “Adulthood” to suggest his answer. Adulthood—always with a capital A—in his sense, is unrelated to age. Actually, it has to do with the art of becoming truly human, of raising the consciousness, of ascension. He tries to demonstrate that it is possible for the individual to shake off these loosely built-in setbacks, to become the captain of his own soul, to release himself from the numerous psychological restraints.[6]

Most of the above is my phrasing, not his. And so is this conclusion: Release begins the moment one starts thinking for self. Nor need one go to a psychiatrist to do this; merely consult one’s own mind! That is easily accessible and the price is right!

The final aim, “no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy” has, as I am attempting to suggest, a dual application; it refers (1) to the psyche and (2) to society. Many of us—devotees of the freedom philosophy—have done much thinking and writing about the latter, but we have paid too little attention to the former. We have been portraying the societal ideal while neglecting its composite parts—individuals and their personal growth. This, however, dwells more upon the faults of others than upon our own.

Let me hasten to add that spelling out the ideal for society is not to be sold short. For, unless the ideal is known, we have nothing at which to aim. The societal ideal, as I see it, is simple enough: relegate organized force—government—to codifying and enforcing the taboos, the destructive actions such as violence, fraud, predation, misrepresentation, and the like.

SELF-DISCIPLINE

Unfortunately, there is nothing in the nature of government that enables it to curb its tendency to grow at the expense of the individual. If there is to be any limitation upon government, it must be developed in such a way that it does not call for additional governmental activity; in other words, it must be expressed personally and voluntarily in the form of self-discipline. What this means is self-improvement, self-responsibility, self-respect of such high order that one is not tempted to covet his neighbor’s success, or even to subsidize—and thereby aggravate—his neighbor’s alleged ignorance or poverty or other defect of character.

In a word, mind one’s own business. Leave all creative activities—no exceptions—to men acting freely, voluntarily, privately, competitively, cooperatively. This would release us from restraints by others, a situation in which we would like to find ourselves, to which we aspire.

However—and this is the rub—the societal ideal is not even remotely within reach except as there be a goodly number of individuals capable of reaching “Adulthood.” This is to say that no one may hope to release himself from the restraints imposed by others who has not succeeded to some extent in releasing himself from his own inner restraints. No plum pudding can be made of mudballs.

Men who fail to think may expect to find themselves in a bad society. A good society is possible only among those who have reached the human level of thinking for themselves.

[1] Selections from Consent by Newton Dillaway, op. cit.

[2] See “Morals and Weapons” in King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz, New York, 1961, pp. 181–199; also Never Cry Wolf by Farley Mowat, New York, 1963.

[3] Consent, op. cit., pp. 11.

[4] Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, New York, 1972.

[5] Brewster Ghiselin, ed., The Creative Process, Berkeley, 1954.

[6] Thomas A. Harris, I’m OK—You’re OK, New York, 1969.

13

TWO WAYS OF LIVING OFF OTHERS

Dark Error’s other hidden side is truth.

—VICTOR HUGO

Suppose the earth were uninhabited and a single human being dropped onto it. He would perish in short order, for man is at once an individualistic and a social being. He lives both in solitariness and in society—with himself and with others—and cannot exist under one condition without the other. Assuredly, he cannot survive as a lone human being.

We live off each other; and the more advanced the society, that is, the more specialized, the more pronounced is this interdependence. I, for instance, devote my efforts to writing and lecturing. Obviously, I could not support myself by these efforts alone—I count on the cooperation of others. When it comes to subsistence, I live off others and so does everyone else. I make but an infinitesimal fraction of the things on which my life depends; indeed, I do not know how to produce many of those other things.

There are two ways—and only two—of living off others: free exchange on the one hand or coerced exchange on the other. The distinction is between trading and taking, which is to say between two-party assent and one-party dissent—as in robbery, for instance.

THE PROBLEM OF BEING PRACTICAL

Nearly everyone will agree to the rightness of the first way and to the evil of the second when phrased in these elementary and simple terms. There is only one honorable way to live off others and that is in free and willing exchange—trade, by which each party gains according to his judgment. Further, most people will share the view that there is no greater evil than living off others by coercion. This, of course, is an ancient truism:

Sin is not the violation of a law or convention . . . but ignorance . . . which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others.[1]

So far so good, so long as only simple principles are considered. However, in the cold reality of daily affairs, principles are forgotten more often than not; being “practical” allows tiny “buts” to creep in, little exceptions to the rules:

But surely we must take from some and give to others to assure an educated citizenry.

But in an emergency it is necessary that government come to the rescue by taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots.

But everyone must be guaranteed a decent standard of living, and so on and on.

A BROKEN PRINCIPLE

In brief, living off others by a resort to coercion, once condoned, even in minor and exceptional cases, tears the principle asunder; the camel’s nose is in the tent; there is no solid ground to stand on. Break the principle and no stopping place remains; logic and reason, right and wrong no longer serve as guides. Lost in a sea of “buts”! Henry Hazlitt refers to the situation as “Welfarism Gone Wild!” Merely observe one item alone: Social welfare expenditures by the Federal government (in millions of dollars):[2]

1935

$ 3,207

1940

3,443

1945

4,399

1950

10,541

1955

14,623

1960

24,957

1965

37,720

1968

60,314

1970

77,321

1971

92,411

This is just one part of the game of living off others by coerced exchange. Note the trend of increased expenditures—29 times as high today as 36 years ago![3] Even worse is the current political pressure to accelerate the trend. And all because the principle was abandoned, the bars let down, to accommodate originally some minor “practicality.” We permitted a few “buts” to sneak into our thinking!

SPECIAL PRIVILEGES

Living off others by coercion is not always conducted by the formal agency of government itself. The government sometimes deputizes other organizations with a portion of its coercive power. Every above-market wage rate exacted by labor unions, for example, is precisely of this order. Again, the harm results from admitting a small “but” into our thinking. It went something like this: The common laborer has no chance against wealthy employers; they will exploit the poor fellow. So, to pit economic muscle against economic greed, these poor laborers must unionize and their unions be given coercive power to enforce their demands. In a word, let them live off others by coercion.

Here was a small “but” imposed on our economy to “protect” the little man. Nothing more was originally intended. However, as is easily seen, once we abandon the principle, there is no stopping place. Little man? The process has mushroomed to higher levels. Airline pilots, for instance, coercively exact wages up to $57,000 annually. Throughout commerce, industry, the professions, the arts—you name it—perhaps 20 million people are thus behaving. Merely bear in mind that every dollar exacted over and beyond what a free market wage would be represents living off others by coercion. It is taking, not trading!

Nor have we here exhausted the list of coercive practices. Examples by the thousands are to be found in most walks of life. My point, however, is not to dwell on these manifest evils; it is, instead, to emphasize the importance of adhering strictly to right principle and never admitting any “buts” in the first place.

Admittedly, many high-minded individuals, overcome by compassion for those they see in unfortunate circumstances, suggest a “but” here and there, a small hole in the dike now and then. Compassion, I insist, must be bound down by the chains of reality. To save those unfortunates by breaking a principle, simply because one cannot see how they otherwise would be saved, is to endanger a whole nation; it is to reduce everyone to a status begging compassion.

If a principle be right then its practice has to be right. Living off others by free and willing exchange is right in principle. Who will not agree to this as against its alternative? Therefore, this principle has to be rewarding in practice. If we cannot envision its practice as the better of the two ways, as the more beneficial to all, let us not abandon the principle but look to the limits of our own vision. Freedom works!

[1] The Bhagavadgita, translated by S. Radhakrishnan, New York, 1948, p. 224.

[2] See “Welfarism Gone Wild” by Henry Hazlitt, The Freeman, May 1972.

[3] This figure on a per capita basis and adjusted for the declining dollar (now one-third of its 1939 value) would show a six-fold rather than a 29-fold increase. However, were this trend in expenditures to continue—the inflation pattern—the dollar would, sooner or later, become worthless. Without a trustworthy medium of exchange, the whole economy falls into a shambles.

14

JUSTICE VERSUS SOCIAL JUSTICE

Justice is to give every man his own.

—ARISTOTLE

What is justice? “Justice is the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” This conclusion by James Madison (Federalist No. 51) also suits me. My contention is that justice and so-called social justice are opposites and that to promote the latter is to retard the former.

Justice, as honesty, is an achievement in conduct relating to others. True, we can be unjust or dishonest to self, but that is another matter. The justice of which we speak here is a societal problem involving a relationship between you and me and other individuals. Not groups or classes, but only individuals experience justice or injustice, honesty or dishonesty, harmony or disharmony. We know society is comprised of I’s and You’s but beyond this, “we have not even the remotest idea of what Society is.”[1] Justice cannot be rendered to everyone in general, only to each one in particular.

What we call civil society consists of numerous, diverse, varying individuals, each a world to himself, and living contemporaneously. Each can reach his potential best only as justice prevails in personal relations, that is, in the absence of injustice. Understood in this manner, justice is indeed the end of civil society.

Government in its ideal concept can have no other end than a common justice, for this is the end of civil society of which government is the arm or agent. The Goddess of Justice is blindfolded; if she peeks, she cheats. Her concern is not with what or who the person is, but what he did or is charged with doing. This is the meaning of “A government of laws, not of men.”

RULES OF JUSTICE

A fair field and no favor—no special privilege for anyone—admittedly is an objective to be more ardently hoped for than seriously expected. Yet, no move in that direction is possible short of an understanding of what justice is and how it can be rendered. Certain verities may help to bring our ideal into focus.

- Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you is a venerable guideline as to how each individual should behave toward any other individual. The practice of mutuality and reciprocity is perhaps as close as any of us can come to the attainment of justice.

- Or test what is good and just by applying the principle of universality to one’s maxims. A sample maxim: I have a moral right to my life, livelihood, liberty. Is this just? Yes, if one can concede a similar right to every other individual. I can! Try it in reverse: I have a moral right to take the life, livelihood, liberty of another. Just? Only if I can rationally concede the right of murder, theft, enslavement to everyone else. I cannot concede this right to anyone; thus, it is neither good nor just.[2]

- The institution of freedom, if properly defined, suffices to render justice to each individual. John Stuart Mill said:

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

- My own definition of freedom, if practiced, would assure universal justice: No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy. This is to say that no one would inhibit any individual in any way whatsoever except to curb his destructive actions: fraud, violence, misrepresentation, predation, and the like.

The formulas above are four ways of expressing substantially the same thought: justice—in contrast to a grant of privilege—is the absence of any deterrent to the creative aspirations of any individual. Let each person pursue his own ends so long as he does not impede the peaceful objectives of other individuals. Justice, when rightly defined, is “the cement of society,” as Alexander Hamilton phrased it.

We now come to what is euphemistically referred to as social justice, though it is in theory and practice the very opposite of justice. Social justice reflects the mood of our times. It is of ancient origin, to be sure, though still in use as a device that politicians and social planners find convenient to gain votes and power. Social justice has no case except the lust for position; it has no rational content and simply manifests the little-god syndrome.

IGNORING THE INDIVIDUAL

In the practice of so-called social justice, the individual is ignored, absolutely! Instead, the population and the economy are dealt with in enormous lumps: individuals are vaguely classified into the haves and the have-nots, treated as voting blocs of farmers, wage earners, old folks, oppressed minorities, disaster victims, slum dwellers, and countless other legions in “the war on poverty.”

Social justice is the game of “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul.” This form of political behavior seeks the gain of some at the expense of others, and cannot be distinguished from Marx’s “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The fact that social justice parallels a thought of Marx is not what condemns it; rather, it is the thwarting of justice that begs our censure. Test social justice under the preceding formulas of justice to perceive the difference.

- The Golden Rule: If you would not condone others coercively taking from you to feather their nests you could not, perforce, take from them to feather your own. Social justice is at odds with this rule.

- Universality: If you cannot rationally approve the practice of legal plunder by everyone as a means of prospering, you cannot agree to it as a means of personal emolument. Social justice is wholly antagonistic to this principle.

- Pursuing one’s own good so long as others are not deprived of theirs: Social justice involves precisely the opposite procedure—depriving others to gain one’s ends.

- No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy: Social justice promises to reward the idle by punishing and restraining those who have exercised creative energy.

So-called social justice is man’s greatest injustice to man, antisocial in every respect; not the cement of society, but the lust for power and privilege and the seed of man’s corruption and downfall.

Finally, social justice in no way fits the claim of its advocates: an expression of mercy and pity. These virtues are strictly personal attributes and are expressed only in the voluntary giving of one’s own, never in the seizure and redistribution of someone else’s possessions.

Morally and ethically motivated citizens can condone a philosophy of so-called social justice only if they fail to see its terrible injustice.

[1] Jose Ortega y Gasset, Man and People, New York, 1963, p. 151.

[2] Immanuel Kant, The Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, New York, 1959.

15

THE WINDS THAT BLOW

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.

—CHARLES MACKAY

There are literally millions of people in the United States and in other countries—even in Russia—who are greatly distressed by the rising tides of unreason; old and popular delusions are overpowering some of the noblest truths mankind has ever come upon. Civilizations are in decline. Now, what is the customary way of coping with this devolutionary trend? With but few exceptions the distraught millions attempt to remedy the madness by counterattacks; they try to “straighten out” the rascals; they try to outvote and outtalk them; they call them unkind names; in a word, they go to war with them! Tactically, all of this is utterly futile, harmful rather than helpful, and a waste of time, energy, and money. Or, so I believe!

Put it this way: Winds of nonsensical opinion, of emotion and nonreason, appear to be as much beyond our control as are the atmospheric winds. Further, we are about as fallible in assigning causes to one as to the other. In either case, we appear to be helpless, victims of the winds that blow. No one knows the causes of the socialistic nonsense sweeping over the world and, thus, we are, for the most part, unaware of how to replace socialism with the freedom way of life. After forty years of effort, featured by trial and a great deal of error, I am convinced that it is futile to attempt to reform those who voice and lend credence to these winds of socialism. Does this mean that we are totally helpless, or is there a course of action that holds promise?

Reflect on atmospheric winds. They range all the way from gentle breezes to violent hurricanes, coming first from this direction and then that, blowing hot or mild or freezing. What causes these fantastic variations? The meteorologists, who have my respect, confess that they do not know all the answers. Yes, tiltings of the earth account for changes, as does the distribution of land and water. Mountain slopes play a part and, perhaps, ocean currents do also. But what causes these causes? Even if we knew, man could not alter them. They are, we might say, the ultimate given; and we live with these winds—like it or not.

PRESSURE BELTS

While all analogies are dangerous devices for reasoning, there is one aspect of meteorological knowledge that suggests for us a course of action. It is this: “The prevailing wind systems of the earth blow from the several belts of high pressure toward adjacent low pressure belts.”

Low pressure belts are featured by fog and smog, poor visibility—the kind of weather usually described as disagreeable. Winds come sweeping into these areas as water rushes with great velocity over Niagara Falls. Winds and waters obeying their nature, speed up as there are depressions. Low pressure areas are among the known causes of atmospheric winds.

Analogous to low pressure areas are individuals of little understanding. The nonsense in the minds of men, omnipresent among us if often somewhat dormant, is activated, whipped into a fury, as it rushes into mentalities too empty or depressed to care about the difference between slavery and freedom. Indeed, one can guess how limited the understanding by observing the ferocity of the winds of nonsensical opinion. We can only gauge that in today’s world understanding is woefully deficient!

What does this suggest as the only way to correct the devolutionary trend? The sole answer is to be found in a personal response. You are the answer! And so am I!

Assume a goodly number of individuals so well grounded in the freedom philosophy that socialistic notions, regardless of how cleverly phrased, can make no impact—none whatsoever. The winds of nonsensical opinion would cease to blow. There simply would be no low pressure troughs to set them in motion, no empty heads into which they might flow. Checkmate!

There we have it: the perfection of self-understanding as against reforming others—the former possible, the latter futile. Why futile? Bad ideas cannot be made more sensible by combatting those who voice them. We need but recognize that ideas, good or bad, seize hold of the individual; it is not the other way around. I do not possess an idea; it possesses me. “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

The freedom devotee who attempts to set the rascals straight, by whatever device, poses as a magician or miracle worker. He assumes that he can do to others that which he cannot or will not do to himself. No one can concentrate on the perfection of his own thinking when fretting about the deficiency of others. By pursuing the impossible, he neglects the only remedy—the one that is within reach.

The one that is within reach! Nearly all of us who favor freedom assume mistakenly that we have nothing more to reach for, that merely being against socialism suffices. The fact? There is not one among us who has more than scratched the surface toward his own upgrading. There is a fair way to test this assertion: merely observe how few, if any, seek our light, anxious for an audience with us. Ours is a problem of reaching, now and forever, not for others to reform, but for truths that might attract others.

ONE AT A TIME

Reflection makes it plain that this one-by-one emergence from socialism through self-improvement is the way it should be. Man’s purpose is to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness. It is not my earthly role to make carbon copies of me. Nor is this the role of any other person. Any attempt to cast others in your or my image is, of itself, a denial of the freedom philosophy. Reformers are not on my side and, hopefully, not on yours.

Another view of the wind analogy: In the heat of emotion or battle, individuals tend to create low pressure areas. Other ideas then flow in to displace such hot air, not always or necessarily more truthful concepts, but at least more welcome in a given environment. If one does not like the prevailing winds, the best he can do is to refine and polish and render more understandable and acceptable his own views, thus removing himself as a source of hot air and disturbance.

To tell the truth may be disturbing; but only because it is not told with sufficient skill and patience. The same may be said of a falsehood. But Nature, I believe, is on the side of truth, and will reveal her secrets to anyone who searches diligently and well.

I know the rebuttal: the sole way is the slow way. Granted! Yet, slow as it may be, it is the fastest way there is. Speeding in the wrong direction is to lose, not gain, headway. Anyone who potentially can have a helpful hand in this matter of the winds that blow can easily improve himself if he puts his mind to it.

Imagine a goodly number well versed in the freedom philosophy, impervious to socialistic nonsense. Here we would have a new and greatly needed high pressure area from which would come only gentle breezes—warm and soft-spoken as the answer of one whose counsel has been sought.

16

TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE

I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.

—EMERSON

Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the strongest minds and most energetic phrasers of ideas, acknowledges a weakness: an inability to explain the exalted role of integrity in the life of man. In this respect, I find myself with a conviction identical to his, and a similar inability, no less distressing. At least, I am in good company.

Integrity is rarely mentioned or included among the virtues. The so-called cardinal virtues, as advanced in theology, are prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. Integrity is omitted. I found, upon checking the largest of all quotation books, that integrity does not appear among the more than 1,000 headings.[1] Indeed, so much neglected is this virtue, that one is tempted to side with Bernard Dougall: “Integrity was a word he couldn’t even spell, let alone define.” Such is the unawareness of its meaning and importance!

When it comes to listing the virtues, I know only those that are important to me. Integrity is by all means first and foremost. For the others—charity,[2] intelligence,[3] justice,[4] love,[5] and humility—I have no precise ranking. To me they are tied for second place.

At the outset, it may be helpful to draw the distinction between integrity and wisdom, for my definitions so closely parallel each other.

Integrity is an accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right.

Wisdom is whatever one’s highest consciousness perceives as truth.

Conceded, one’s highest conscience may not in fact be right but it is as close to righteousness as one can get. Also, one’s highest consciousness may not be truth but as nearly approximates wisdom as is within one’s reach. Fallibility applies in either case!

People differ in their evaluation of Emerson’s philosophy, but all concede that his proclaimed positions, written and oral, were accurate reflections of whatever his highest conscience dictated as righteous. Never, to our knowledge, did he bend to expediency, that is, resort to deviations from conscience to gain favor or popularity with others. So rigorous were his spiritual convictions that he was at odds with the numerous religious orthodoxies and took no pains to conceal his innermost sentiments.[6] Attuned to his conscience, he stood ramrod straight. As this rare posture is sometimes phrased, he sought approval from God, not men. Integrity!

Yet, Emerson, conscious of the sacredness of integrity, could find no words energetic enough to convey his sense of its importance. In the light of his genius as a thinker and a phraser of ideas, why his confessed inability to handle this concept? Why could he not explain the meaning of integrity to others?

THE SACREDNESS OF INTEGRITY

As I see it, the answer lies in one of his own words: the sacredness of integrity. This virtue is in a moral and spiritual realm so far above normal experience that we possess no words to portray its meaning. It borders on the Infinite and, thus, is beyond our working vocabulary. This explains why it is so seldom included among the virtues. For these reasons, I am convinced that integrity cannot be taught; at best, it can only be caught. And, then, only by those who devoutly wish to be so graced!

Such integrity as I possess was caught, not taught. Fortunately, I came upon a high-ranking business executive, William C. Mullendore, Southern California Edison Company, who was no less an exemplar of this virtue than Emerson. Never in the many years of our intimate acquaintance have I observed him giving ground to expediency—conscience always in the driver’s seat! The question is, why did his exemplarity impress itself more upon me than upon others who also knew him well? Perhaps this cannot be answered. True, this unusual trait in him excited my admiration. But why me, of all his friends? Who knows!

Here is a possible explanation. Having had but little formal schooling, and always conscious of not knowing much, I resolved, some forty-five years ago, to associate myself with individuals from whom I might learn—superior persons. Parenthetically, these are not difficult to find and almost without exception are pleased to be so regarded. In any event, I was aware of an enormous unknown and, at the same time, eager to learn. In this state of mind one goes in search of that which is generally not known. Does such openness, perhaps, account for my coming upon this remarkable man and his integrity? All that I can specifically identify is a state of mind best described as wanting-to-know-it-ness. Would extensive formal schooling have lessened this? Again, who knows! The fortunate chain of events is shrouded in mysterious forces I do not understand.

THE LAW OF RIGHTEOUSNESS

Mysterious indeed is the way of life of anyone guided by integrity. There comes to mind a recent day at the office. Whether in conversations across the desk, or over the phone, or in replies to letters, the answers were invariably “No!” Why? Every proposal was at odds with what I believed to be right, that is, contrary to the dictates of conscience. Thank heaven, that day was exceptional; happily, many questions can be answered “Yes.” Nonetheless, integrity must rule the word, the deed, the action. This is the law of righteousness.

The temptation—sometimes close to overwhelming—is to gain the approval of some prestigious individual by saying “Yes” when a “No” is right. In resisting this temptation, what is required? We must learn how to say “No” without giving offense, in a word, rise above cantankerousness. This art, if achieved, is highly rewarding, one that upgrades the intellect and the soul. It has its genesis in the practice of integrity.

Unless integrity is weighed and found worthy, the common conviction is that its practice would leave one a loner, an “odd ball” whose actions would drive friends away. The very opposite is the case; integrity has a magnetic effect; it attracts others. Why? The practitioners of this virtue can be trusted, and trust has drawing power, as daily experiences attest.

NOT DANGEROUS TO BE HONEST

Years ago, when the attractiveness of adhering strictly to conscience was more of a new idea to me, I was invited to spend an evening with a dozen of the country’s leading businessmen. The subject for discussion had to do with the so-called Full Employment Act, then before the Congress. Most of the talk favored the tactic of opposing the measure by subterfuge, dealing under the table, so to speak—repulsive to me. When finally asked for my view, I hesitated a moment. To tell them exactly what I thought would do me in, damage my career, or so I imagined. But, I told them! Never have I had a more rewarding experience. From that day forward those twelve were devoted friends, inviting me to counsel time after time. Why? Integrity!

An aside: While it is not dangerous to be honest, this does not mean that one must necessarily divulge all of his innermost thoughts. Many doubtless deserve further incubation. But once a position is taken and expressed, let there be in it no deviation from conscience.

Imagine that a fair percentage of citizens of this nation were practicing what their highest conscience dictates as right. No man could ever be elevated to public office except as he exemplifies integrity. Think what a change this would make in the national scene. Only statesmen; never a charlatan!

WHO IS EDUCABLE?

And who among us is truly educable in the higher realms of thought? Only people of integrity! The person who pays no heed to conscience is forever the victim of expediencies; he is governed by fickle opinions, pressures, mass sentiments, a desire for momentary acclaim. Wisdom—whatever one’s highest consciousness perceives as truth—is out of range simply because integrity—whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right—is not observed.

As if the above were not reason enough to strive for integrity! However, by far the most important reason remains: its sacredness. Though new to me, I now discover that this idea was perceived nearly 2,000 years ago:

The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

—Matthew 6:22

In other words, the light of the body is truth, wisdom, enlightenment. The eye is perception. And what is the meaning of “if thine eye be single”? Refer to Webster for the definition of “single” as here used: “Not deceitful or artful, simple, honest, sincere.” Shakespeare used the word in this same sense: “I speak with a single heart.”

SINGLENESS OF PURPOSE

Single, in this sense, is directly linked with integer, meaning “Whole, entire, not divided.” Contrasted to single is double, which has the same original root as the word “duplicity.” Such phrases as “double-dealing,” and “double-talk” convey this connotation. Integrity is related to integer; and single as used here, refers to integrity.

Phrased in modern idiom, Matthew’s insight would read as follows:

Enlightenment of the intellect and spirit of man depends on his powers of perception. If these powers be free from duplicity, that is, if they be grounded in pure integrity, man will be as much graced with enlightenment—wisdom—as is within his capability.

Whatever the mysterious Universal Power—the radiant energy that flows through all life—it is blocked, cut off, stifled by duplicity in any of its forms. Expediency, lying, double talk, and the like are ferments of the soul through which Universal Power does not and cannot flow. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.”[7] Only in integrity—when the “eye be single”—do the powers of perception grow, evolve, emerge, hatch. Then the “whole body shall be full of light.” Then, and only then, are such virtues as charity, intelligence, justice, love, humility within our reach.

Finally, if we believe that we should not do unto others that which we would not have them do unto us—a concern for others as well as self—we have one more among all the compelling reasons why we should strive first and foremost for integrity. Shakespeare put it well:

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

[1] The Home Book of Proverbs, Maxims and Familiar Phrases, selected and arranged by Burton Stevenson, New York, 1948.

[2] Lloyd Douglas, Magnificent Obsession, New York, 1969.

[3] John Erskine, Moral Obligations to be Intelligent & Other Essays, Freeport, New York, 1921.

[4] See preceding chapter, “Justice versus Social Justice.”

[5] For an explanation that love is light, see my Then Truth Will Out, op. cit., pp. 11–20.

[6] For an excellent selection of Emerson’s thoughts, see The Gospel of Emerson by Newton Dillaway, op. cit.

[7] James 1:8.

17

THE ROLE OF EXUBERANCE

If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it.

—HERACLITUS

The trend is away from liberty; the problem is how to reverse direction. How shall we go about this task? Do we need to rouse the masses? No, ours is not a numbers problem. There are tens of thousands, perhaps millions of persons—more than the job requires—who frown on all forms of authoritarian collectivism and who favor liberty. The failure of this multitude to generate a trend toward liberty lies in inept methods; indeed, most of us, by our lack of proper posture, aggravate rather than alleviate our social woes. Unwittingly, the would-be friends of liberty aid its foes.

If this point be granted, an inference is plain: the correct methods we are neglecting must be composed of generally unsuspected attitudes and techniques or else we would now be employing them. If they were obvious, someone would be practicing them ere this. Thus, if the customary tactics are not working, perhaps we ought to turn our expectations toward the unexpected.

A wise person taught me a valuable lesson years ago: whenever any course of action is not joyous, it has error at its heart. Here is a guideline as to when one is off course; it tells when to say “no” to self, a valuable negative! However, the full potentialities of joyousness have just dawned upon me. For this insight, I am indebted to “Toward An Exuberant Europe,” a chapter in a recent and remarkable book by Robert McClintock.[1]

To examine the role of exuberance, good humor, joyousness, congeniality, or just plain fun in society requires first of all that we have some idea as to what is meant by society.

WHAT IS SOCIETY?

Ortega wrote, “We know society is comprised of I’s and You’s but beyond this we have not the remotest idea of what society is.” As I see it, society is any number of I’s and You’s—a few or many—who socialize or are in some state of intercourse with each other, or, as Georg Simmel put it, “wherever several individuals enter into reciprocal relations . . . the same form and the same kind of socialization can arise in connection with the most varied elements and take place for the most diverse ends. Socialization in general takes place as well in a religious congregation as in a band of conspirators, in a trust as well as in a school of art, in a public gathering as in a family.” Thus, in this sense, a society may be a tribe, clan, mob, alumni reunion, or the American People.

To test the thesis here at issue, let us see how it might work out on a small scale. Imagine a thousand persons so distraught by authoritarianism in their respective countries that they decide not to face and help solve local problems but resolve instead to establish a Shangri-La of their own. So, they acquire a far-off island and incorporate a new Republic. Here, they believe, men may make a fresh start! What are their chances for building the good society? Upon what does a realization of their hopes depend?

The success or failure of an enterprise such as this would rest entirely upon the quality of their dispositions: moral, spiritual, intellectual, tolerative. Even if someone wrote a Constitution for these migrants superior to our original, it would not make one whit of difference. The outcome of this experiment would depend on how well these people get along with each other, the level at which they socialize. This, in turn, is determined by what kinds of persons they are. Make the bleak assumption that most of them are know-it-alls, quick to anger with everyone who does not agree. The prospect of realizing their ambitions for an ideal community are nil in an atmosphere of disrespect, antagonism, dissent. As Erasmus observed, “Where there is hatred in judgment, judgment is blind.” Like begets like! Rules and disciplines originating in active intolerance cannot help but spread discontent. People not of a genial mien would be well advised to stay home!

On the other hand, were these people to master an opposite posture, that is, were they of the kind that could have fun or find joy in striving for their ideals, an improved society would be a viable prospect. Why? As Ortega suggests, creation is born in exuberance. This is to say, creation is never the child of anger. So, let us try to apply this finding, this principle, to our own situation.

THE JOYOUS APPROACH

As a starter, take stock of all the antisocialist, profreedom individuals of your acquaintance. How many can you find who are not angry—who are not name-callers? True, some express their spite in elegant prose; but spite is spite regardless of the verbal dress it wears. Do you not find that the vast majority are out of temper? Embittered warriors? Intolerance, confrontation, disgust with those of opposed views engender not improvement in others but resentment, not progress but regress. This, I insist, is a mood that does more harm than good; dead silence would be preferable. “When men sink into despair, they cannot give birth to a new age; they can only stand mute, watching and waiting.”[2] What is the remedy? Exuberance!

Our hope for an improved society, as with everything creative, requires a happy breed of aspiring idealists—exuberant individuals. Where are these to be found? Among the very devotees of freedom who are presently angry! How is this switch in posture to be brought about? By simply trying it, and proving its efficacy! Rejecting what does not work and embracing that which does! This is merely a matter of knowing what is and is not practical.

Put it another way: Our problem is not getting into the fight but into the play! I have learned over the years, not merely to tolerate but to enjoy the weather—rain when I wish to golf and sunshine when the garden needs water, and so on. Why, then, can I not become more tolerant of the error I behold in others? Unless this be accomplished, I can never get into the play. Exuberance, on which all creative actions depend, is out of the question.

SELF-TRANSCENDENCE

Self-transcendence is the requirement. “Now they can do nothing more with themselves unless they transcend themselves.” What is the meaning of this? It simply means to rise above oneself, that is, to engage in thought and discussion over and beyond the daily grind of, shall we say, making a living. “The free man exercises his freedom by creating duties for himself. . . . Moral perfection, like all perfection, is a sportive quality, something that one adds luxuriously to what is necessary and indispensable.” (Italics added)

The phrase, sportive quality, lends clarity to this theme. Sport, in the minds of many, has come to mean spectacles such as those witnessed at the Roman Colosseum where Christians were thrown to the lions, or in Spain where a matador slays the bull, or in this country where millions flock to prize fights, professional football, baseball, and the like. The sportive quality Ortega commends is not that of a spectator; it refers to the spirit with which we enter into extracurricular activities over and beyond necessity—a personal game, drawing on untapped faculties. Analogous examples: climbers planning how to scale the Matterhorn. Or me and you figuring out how to write and read this idea in clarity. Such games are played in exuberance; they fall in the realm of just plain fun—serious but sportive!

In the area of our concern—an improving society—we need only remind ourselves that the rules by which we live are not, in the final analysis, governed by constitutions and other legal gadgetry. Argentina, for example, copied and then improved the U.S.A. model, but to no avail. Economic, social, and political chaos reigns there now and for the simple reason that the general thinking, the overall moral standards, ethical concepts, and respect for others—reciprocal relations—were inferior to the formal document. Might as well tack a sign, “This is Heaven,” on a den of dictators!

ALL CREATIVE WORKS

“As Ortega saw it, all of man’s great cultural works—law, science, religion, morality, art—were originated in sporting acts.” Once reflected upon, it is clear that all advance—every creative result—has to have this origin. For it is only when men are freely thinking and happily discoursing about ideals that they discover any of the rules for better living. Why? It is because these are the rules for self-improvement, and they arise out of self-improvement. They are believed by us because they grow out of ourselves—and we abide by such rules.

During the final session of a recent FEE Seminar, the participants were laughing and having a high old time, as happy a mood as I have ever experienced. Consider this joviality in the light of the very serious and idealistic subject matter with which they had been wrestling for two days. I interrupted the exuberance of this rare occasion—having fun while thinking—to make a point: Please take note of how joyous we are. This means that we are on the right track.

Were each of us to acquire this posture in his respective orbit, we would soon appreciate the role of exuberance in society, for it is the only mood and spirit that can turn the trend toward liberty. Try it!

[1] Robert McClintock, Man and His Circumstances: Ortega as Educator, New York, 1971.

[2] This and all subsequent quotations are from Ortega or his biographer, McClintock.

18

YE OF LITTLE FAITH

Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot

—TOCQUEVILLE

This is a moment in history when despotism is rampant the world over. Misrule has reached its apogee in nation after nation as men fight for position in the despotic darkness. If the U.S.A. lags somewhat in this fall from societal grace, time affords scant comfort to a body falling out of control.

Despotism has numerous labels which most of us frown upon: communism, socialism, Nazism, fascism, Fabianism. So, on the home front, the politicians and social planners devise new labels with favorable connotations: “New Deal,” “New Republicanism,” and the like. But, regardless of the window dressing, despotism is, quite simply, some persons lording it over other persons. Thus, whatever the political theology be called, if one would assess the degree of despotism, then let him forget the labels and, instead, estimate how much coercive control is being exercised by some over others. This is the measuring rod.

Liberty—despotism’s opposite—can be defined as no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.

Now to the point of this inquiry. Tocqueville suggests that despotism may govern without faith, but liberty cannot. I wish to examine this claim. If false, we can forget the subject of faith so far as political economy is concerned; if true, we have some serious work cut out for ourselves.

DESPOTIC RULE

Can a despot govern others? All history attests to the fact that people by the billions have been so governed; they have been subjected to the will of authoritarians. Persons backed by a constabulary—coercive force—can, with few exceptions, compel others to do their bidding. As to this type of governance, there appears to be no question. This, despotic rule can do!

Is faith required to effect such governance? None whatsoever, unless the meaning of faith be grossly corrupted. Using the term in its correct sense, merely observe that faith guides neither the majority of those so governed nor those who despotically govern.

As to those governed: The despotism here at issue is a consensual power, that is, it can exist only with a consenting majority. Wherever and whenever this arrangement prevails, we can conclude that it is more agreeable than not, that most of the people want a shepherd and sheep dogs. They prefer having their lives run and guided for them. To be one’s own man is not sufficiently attractive and, thus, they acquiesce in the herding. They comply passively—without real conviction or faith.

As to those who govern: Here we need only recognize the innate variability of human beings. Except in one generally overlooked respect, each of us differs from all others. Indeed, aside from this one exception, each of us varies from one moment to the next; not for one second does any one of us ever stay put! In what manner, then, are we identical? In our inability to control the life of another beneficially. In this respect, we are all alike in the sense that zeros are identical. To get it into my head that I can run or control your life better than you is nothing less than egomania. This affliction cannot, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be called a faith; it is a psychosis. Despotism can indeed govern without faith. Score one for Tocqueville!

TOCQUEVILLE ON AMERICA

Now to the claim that liberty cannot govern without faith. Anyone familiar with the thinking and observations set forth by Tocqueville in his monumental work, Democracy In America, realizes that, when referring to liberty, he had no reference to “govern” in its over-riding sense. He meant only that individual liberty could not preside as a way of life among a people without widespread personal faith. And as to faith, he meant a spiritual faith. The sense of his thinking is to be found in the following:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.[1]

To introduce this phase of my inquiry, let me quote a friend’s question: “I do not have to believe in God to believe in freedom, do I?” My reply: “No, you do not, but if all citizens were atheists there would be no freedom.” While this conviction of mine is beyond “proof” in any scientific sense, the evidence for it is abundant.[2]

Conceded, there are many so-called or self-styled atheists—people confessing to no spiritual faith—whose lives are exemplary insofar as societal relationships are concerned and who, at the same time, are not afflicted with egomania. But these persons have a strange and fortunate immunity. Those who are unable to concede the reality of something above and beyond the individual expose themselves to a grave danger: the belief that there is nothing beyond their own finite minds. Such potential despots exist by the millions, from dullards to the relatively brilliant, and are easily identified—always theirs is “the last word.”

Let us also concede that in today’s world there are other millions who proclaim a spiritual faith—including many clergymen—who are as much afflicted with egomania as are any avowed atheists. Such men are deficient in the awe which a proper sense of God’s majesty induces; for, in my view, it is unlikely that anyone with a deep and abiding faith in an Infinite Consciousness can be other than joyously humble—free from the little-god Syndrome.[3] Attempting to run the lives of others is unthinkable, once this spiritual belief nourishes the roots of one’s reflections. But, be this as it may, it is admittedly difficult to draw a sharp line between affectation or superstition on the one hand and genuine spiritual faith on the other. Degrees and depths of faith cannot be measured by our customary yardsticks.

FAITH AND LIBERTY

Along the lines of these observations, it seems that the presence or absence of spiritual faith—as an external observer might measure it—does not in itself assure or deny either despotism or liberty. Millions of people have been slaughtered in the name of “religion.”[4] Also, liberty has been ascribed to God as its Author. What, then, is the relevance of faith to liberty?

Spiritual faith provides the foundation without which liberty is impossible. Bear in mind, however, that monstrosities as well as noble edifices can be erected on sound foundations. This is to say that despotism as well as liberty can arise from spiritual faith. History has many examples of the former; the America that Tocqueville studied was an example of the latter.

Suppose atheism were all-pervading—nothing recognized or conceived of as above the finite minds of imperfect men. In this situation, there would be no fundamental point of reference beyond the little minds, all at sixes and sevens. A centrifugal force would dominate: millions, each with “the last word,” spinning apart—every which way—with their assorted and arbitrary notions. Here is the excuse for despotism to come “to the rescue”—one of the little minds “riding herd,” as we say.

Shift now to a people “aflame with righteousness,” possessing a deep spiritual faith, that is, aware of an Infinite Consciousness or Intelligence or Light to which each is related, at best, as an image or infinitesimal manifestation. Here is Omniscience before which each stands in awe and from which he attempts to draw enlightenment! Thus altered from atheism to faith, there is a centripetal instead of a centrifugal force in play. The tendency is now to cohesion, not toward identity, for there is a directional ingathering toward enlightenment and a tolerance for our fantastic creative variations, whatever turn they might take. Each his own man! Catholicity! The push would be in this direction—toward righteousness.

A SOLID FOUNDATION

This splendid faith, however, provides no more than the sound foundation. Both despotism and liberty have been structured on it. Faith, we must remember, has to do with the individual’s relationship to or conception of his Maker. It does not, of itself, extend beyond this.

Despotism and liberty, on the other hand, have to do with social relationships—the way man relates to other men. Faith does not suffice for the building of society; it provides only the necessary foundation. For an improvement in the societal situation there must be added to faith another quality of which man is capable: reason.

Let us observe how our Founding Fathers combined faith and reason to structure the nearest approximation to human liberty ever attained:

. . . that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

How does this proposition qualify as reason added to the faith that was then so dominant? Simple: With their faith as the foundation, the authors of the Declaration took the rational step of seating the Creator as the single point of reference, thereby making all men precisely as equal before the civil law as all men are equal before the Creator. They pronounced the Creator as sovereign and, by so doing, implicitly denied the sovereignty of any combination of seekers after power—organized as government or otherwise. Liberty and justice for all!

The fact that the foundation (faith) appears to be crumbling and that reason appears to be taking flight, in no way lessens the truth of Tocqueville’s observation that liberty cannot exist without faith. And I would add: or without reason.

Our hope—the heartening possibility—is that these appearances are utterly false, as appearances often are. For all you or I know, both faith and reason of a quality never before known may, at this very moment, be gestating in the souls and minds of men on the grand scale. We believe in liberty. So, why not believe in what is required of men to achieve this way of life? There is magic in believing. Why? Because, as Bulwer-Lytton phrased it, “In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.”

[1] This quotation is found on pages 12–13 of the once popular school text by F. A. Magruder, American Government: A Textbook on the Problems of Democracy. Except for the last two sentences, this is Magruder’s paraphrase of Tocqueville’s words.

[2] For my explanation, see Deeper Than You Think, Irvington, N.Y., 1967, pp. 15–27.

[3] “No man can believe in his own omnipotence who has any sense of God’s power.”—Edmund A. Opitz in The Freeman, April 1971, p. 198.

[4] See Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley, New York, 1941.

19

THE MYSTIQUE OF WISDOM

The wise man endeavors to shine in himself; the fool to outshine others.

—ADDISON

Suppose I were observed trying to impart my “wisdom” to a corpse. The verdict would be, “Read’s off his rocker.” But I am convinced that it is equally unrealistic of me to try to ram my wisdom in to the head of anybody, living or dead. If I tried this on a corpse, I would be making a fool of myself; in the case of the living, most people today, based on their own actions, would think of me as a sensible worker in freedom’s vineyard. Yet, in either case, I would be acting wastefully, foolishly.

Wisdom! What is it and who has it? Socrates remarked, “The Delphic oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because that I alone, of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.” Only in comparison to the rest of us was Socrates wise; compared to the infinite unknown, he knew nothing. He was aware of his own fallibility, and suspected that no one knows anything for certain.

Any discussion of wisdom, to be useful in day-to-day life, must be confined to the infinitesimal bits each possesses. No human being, past or present, regardless of how exalted his opinion of himself, can be rated any higher than Socrates—a know-nothing. All of us, without exception, are in this category.

Having relegated myself, as well as all others, to the smallness that befits our attainments—our place in the Cosmic Order—how are we to define wisdom? How explain its mysteries? How be realistic? An observation by Lactantius in the 4th Century A.D. is pertinent: “The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.”

While it is possible to detect errors and expose inconsistencies in a set of ideas, the falsity of a doctrine is not really grasped until the true position is worked out. No one understands the falseness of socialism until he is familiar with the case for freedom. Using the axiom of Lactantius, we may conclude that one’s wisdom is limited to the truth perceived.

WHAT IS TRUTH?

In short, to evaluate wisdom and its mysteries, it is necessary that we examine truth. What is truth? It is only that which one’s highest consciousness dictates as right. This may not in fact be truth but is as close as any person can possibly come to it. The idea that the earth is flat was at one time accepted as true by millions of people; now millions of people hold that the earth is a sphere. That the sun revolves around the earth was a truth to Ptolemy and his contemporaries.

Copernicus, Galileo and others became conscious of a contrary view. This change in perception has been going on in every field of endeavor—in all disciplines—since the dawn of consciousness. And the end is not likely.

The record suggests that we should be cautious about certainty on any matter. This is but another way of admitting that one’s finite consciousness falls indescribably short of Infinite Consciousness. Yet, to live life at its best, we must heed whatever our highest consciousness dictates as right. Not to do so is to bury ourselves in more error—more falsehood—than is necessary. This is the height of foolishness.

At my level of consciousness, there are numerous bits of seeming wisdom—truths to me. The most profound, the one about which I am most certain, is: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you.” This simply means to seek, first and foremost, truth and righteousness. This is the way and the only way to contact all of the wisdom that is within one’s reach. This is the key to such potentialities as one possesses. Or, so it seems to me.

THE NEED TO SEEK

For the sake of the point I wish to make, concede that this Biblical counsel is a truth: wisdom. There it is on the printed page, first in Aramaic, then in Greek, Latin, English, and other languages. Merely note that the sentence has no initiatory powers whatsoever! It does not, it cannot, propel or insinuate itself into a single consciousness. As light, it can be seen; as light, it cannot see.

Who may see? Exclusively, the seekers! “Seek ye first” has more meaning than first meets the eye. Were this wisdom only in Aramaic, or Greek, or Latin, I would not see it without first mastering the language in which it appears. Even then, while I may read the words, it does not follow that I really apprehend this wisdom. In addition to seeking the words, I must seek the meaning. The initiative is all mine. Thus, I may see and apprehend a bit of wisdom if I am capable of taking it unto myself; that wisdom is utterly powerless to fasten itself onto me. Herein lies one of the mysteries.

Now for the shocker, a view that is contrary to reform movements, past and present. A bit of wisdom in your head or mine is precisely as powerless to advance itself as is that same wisdom in a printed page. It is there to be taken if there be any takers—seekers. Your wisdom or mine, such as it is, may be drawn on by another if he so chooses; it cannot be injected into the consciousness of another for the simple reason that each person is in charge of his own doors of perception. Trying to inject “wisdom” into the mind of a living person is precisely as fruitless as trying to inject wisdom into a corpse. Is this a truth? If not, I am disappointed. If you or I could do this to others, then others could do it to us. Heaven forbid!

The challenge that makes sense is to become a seeker—to aim at self-enlightenment. I should not only refrain from trying to pump my wisdom into others but should rid myself of any such ambition, cast it from my mind entirely. Fretting about how ignorant others are and attempting to set them straight is to parry with shadows. One cannot take the high road of improving self while tilting at windmills.

Another mystery comes to mind: the transmission of wisdom is not hindered by time or space, provided we maintain an open mind to what may be seen!

THE LIGHT OF SOCRATES

Socrates who lived 2,400 years before me and who worked 5,300 miles from where I do has, I am certain, given me more light than he gave his wife, Xanthippe, who shared his abode. Proximity in time and space does not necessarily have anything to do with how much light one gleans from another. All of our experiences, if carefully examined, attest to this.

Indeed, intimacy often throws up a barrier to deter one person drawing on the lights of another. Socrates, while brilliant of mind, was slovenly of person, or so it is reported. Sloppiness around the house could easily be the criterion by which a wife would judge a husband in all respects. Relegate an individual to an unfavorable status for whatever reason and he is likely to remain in that status regardless of any qualities he might possess. The sight of another’s faults tends to blind us to his virtues. Blinded by seeing, of all things!

Assuming that Socrates was slovenly, that trait makes no impression on me for I am not a witness of it—only of his illuminations; they alone have mirrored their way through the centuries to me. But I note a deplorable tendency on my part to seek no light whatsoever from those whose appearance disgusts me or whose ideological or philosophical positions I regard as “cracked.” My inclination is to relegate them to the scrap heap without even looking for some enlightening thought they might possess. This brings up an embarrassing question: are they alone in being off course? Perhaps I am on a wrong tack!

Socrates has had praise enough. Neglected are those citizens of Athens—young and old, rich and poor—who were not blinded by appearances. They were so ardently in search of light that they probed his mind or, perhaps it would be more accurate to say that they invited him to probe theirs. “His pupils adored him despite his ugliness and slovenliness. Many of them belonged to Athens’ aristocracy, while others were humble people. Some of them became outstanding philosophers, like Euclid, Phaedo, Antisthenes, Aristippus, and Plato, the greatest of them all.”[1]

ACQUISITION REQUIRES SHARING

Would we think of Plato as “the greatest of them all” had his insatiable search for truth been blinded by his regard for outward appearances? And what of Aristotle had it not been for the catholicity of Plato. Perhaps he would be unknown to us. And what of you and me were it not for these scalers of the heights? Ortega answers these questions to my satisfaction: “If our thought did not re-think the thought of Descartes, and if Descartes did not re-think the thought of Aristotle, ours would be primitive; we would no longer be the heirs of what has gone before, but would have to go back and begin again. To surpass is to inherit and to add to.” An interesting bit of mystery here!

Finally, there is also a mystery as to increasing one’s own wisdom: continued acquisition requires sharing. In a word, there is no growth or accretion in wisdom unless that which one receives is freely shared with those who seek. “It is more blessed to give than to receive” simply means that giving or sharing is the prerequisite to receiving. This appears to be the nature of all energy, be it hydraulic, intellectual, spiritual. Sharing, giving off, converts potential energy into moving, power-giving, kinetic energy. This radiant energy, which I do not understand but am aware of, is obviously a flowing phenomenon. As Emerson phrased it, we can only “allow a passage of its beams.” It cannot be harbored as a pool within the self. Stagnation!

Numerous individuals have observed that the more they share their ideas with others, the more they receive and the higher grade are their ideas. Why? When one shares, he strives as best he can to perfect his explanations, to put them in the best possible light. Not only do we teach by doing, but best of all, we learn!

In my own case, I have been going over and over these thoughts for years in a struggle for clarity. The ideas are far clearer now than when I began to think about them. Am I any wiser, any closer to truth? Who can be absolutely certain! Yet, sharing with those who care to observe will result in feedbacks and, hopefully, some improvement for me.

[1] See Treasury of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes, New York, 1955, p. 1111.

20

HOW TO BE LIKE SOCRATES

Judge of a man by his questions rather than by his answers.

—VOLTAIRE

Like Socrates? Well, not exactly! Each of us is unique. But the method employed by Socrates to advance understanding is one that all of us might well try to emulate.

The Socratic method of teaching or discussion is to ask a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to a logical conclusion foreseen by the questioner. This is to teach a student the way of philosophizing, as distinguished from urging him to memorize the conclusions of philosophers.

And what a splendid teaching method this is—quite the opposite of the popular “compulsory mis-education” which tends to turn students into carbon copies of so-called teachers. Instead of putting masks on students—blanketing their minds with someone else’s “wisdom”—real teaching is an unmasking process, helping boys and girls, men and women to find their own hidden aptitudes, potentialities, uniqueness. The teacher and the student experience a togetherness; they are in harmony or accord. Enlightenment is the mutual goal.

Why, we must ask, is this superior method so little used? Why do we not substitute it for the common believe-as-I-do procedure? It is simply because we do not know the right questions to ask. Again, why? As Plato suggested, to know the right questions presupposes an awareness of the correct answers. Socrates had a knack for this which many others of us do not. The secret of his achievement? He was wiser than most of us!

As we can readily discern, to be like Socrates involves more than a technique for asking questions—generally accepted as the Socratic method. The true skill of Socrates must be traced further back, to a manner of thinking, a way of looking at life’s role. It is this fountainhead which we must explore and understand if we are to approximate his achievement, that is, if we are to become wiser.

WHY WORRY ABOUT OTHERS?

In our search for the fountainhead of wisdom let us first consider why anyone is interested in helping others to unmask themselves, to discover their own aptitudes, potentialities, uniqueness? There are two reasons, both of which are to be identified with intelligent self-interest.

1. Man is at once an individualistic and a social being. The higher the development of others, intellectually, morally, spiritually, the greater is the opportunity for one’s own growth in awareness, perception, consciousness—the better to live one’s own life. The good life among a den of thieves or in a society of unscrupulous or ignorant people is out of the question.

2. The more one shares his ideas with others the more abundant are his own insights and intuitive flashes, that is, the more numerous and enlightened are his own ideas. This is easily explained: when sharing an idea with another, a man puts his best foot forward—does his utmost—and thus the idea is enriched in his own mind. Enrichment of ideas opens—at least widens—the doors of perception and allows more ideas to flow in. Sharing with others is a means to the perfection of self, one of the steps toward wisdom.

A PHILOSOPHICAL MIDWIFE

A second important aspect of the Socratic fountainhead—another step toward wisdom—is knowing that one knows not. It is axiomatic that a know-it-all cannot learn. Filled to the brim with know-it-all-ness, no room remains for acquisitions; the mind and the soul must remain stagnant. Socrates, reputedly one of the wisest men who ever lived, is famous for his insistence, “I know nothing.” This, at first blush, appears to be mere hyperbole; but definitely it is not! Relative to the Infinite Unknown, he was right. Once the mind is freed of know-it-all-ness, knowing pours in, wisdom flourishes.

A third feature of the Socratic fountainhead is both fascinating and instructive—a posture, a way of looking at self and others that anyone can easily emulate.

Socrates, the son of a stonecutter and a midwife, referred to himself as a philosophical midwife. Instead of bringing babies from the womb to the world, he brought truths from obscurity to the minds of seekers. This is to say that he thought of himself as an intellectual go-between, a receiver and a transmitter. He probed the unknown and passed his findings on to those who sought his counsel. A philosophical midwife, indeed!

Now then, if one would be like Socrates, where does he start? Not at the top—the height of wisdom—but at the bottom—training for enlightenment above and beyond where he now stands. Socrates and his method are at the top of the intellectual ladder. I have tried, in the foregoing, to sketch this method from the top of the ladder to its fountainhead. To ascend, one reaches for the bottom rung, learning to serve as philosophical midwife or go-between. To the extent that this is practiced and mastered, to that extent may one rise step by step toward the top.

ANYONE MAY PLAY

At this point I suggest that any normal person can play the role of philosophical midwife; and anyone interested in the improvement of self—in unfoldment—is well advised to do so. I have yet to meet a person from any walk of life, beyond the level of moron, who has not gained some insight, some bit of enlightenment or wisdom which, at least in this respect, makes him outstanding. This may rub off on others without any conscious effort! Unrecognized, this innate ability often lies dormant. But if recognized and consciously developed, it assures individual growth in awareness, perception, consciousness; and this leads in turn toward the good society. The question is, how do we consciously proceed?

The procedure is as simple as it is joyous and gratifying. Merely realize that philosophy is the art of probing the unknown and bringing the findings home in clarity. This is to say that we seek for truth and share it with those who also seek, no two persons ever coming upon precisely the same findings. We enrich or enlighten each other, the hearer as well as the sayer, the teacher perhaps even more than the student. The late C. S. Lewis has enlightened me as I write this. There are situations, he says, where

The fellow-pupil can help more than the master because he knows less. The difficulty we want him to explain is one he has recently met. The expert met it so long ago that he has forgotten. He sees the whole subject, by now, in such a different light that he cannot conceive what is really troubling the pupil; he sees a dozen other difficulties which ought to be troubling him but aren’t.[1]

TO ASSURE SOCIAL HARMONY

Serving as midwife at the birth of new ideas is easily within the competence of anyone; and if enough of us would practice that role we would rid society of conflict and assure social harmony. Why such a confident assertion? Personal experience confirms the truth of this. Merely take note of your own attitude toward anyone who gives you enlightenment. It is never one of antagonism but, rather, of friendship, affection, love! I have yet to observe an exception.

Now for the next rung of the ladder. As one succeeds in probing for truth, he becomes more and more conscious of an ever-expanding unknown. The more he knows the more he knows he does not know. If really successful, he will side with Socrates, “I know I know nothing.”[2] In this state of humility, of standing in awe, knowing flows in, wisdom grows.

INTELLIGENT INTERPRETATION OF SELF-INTEREST

If one can reach the level of humility, of wanting to know, then the next higher rung of the ladder is within reach: an intelligent interpretation of self-interest. In reality, this amounts to an understanding of the Golden Rule: one’s interest is never served by doing injury to another.

Immanuel Kant was at this level: no one has a moral right to do anything that cannot be rationally conceded as a right to everyone else—the principle of universality. The interest of self and of society are in harmony, not at odds.

William Graham Sumner, also at this level, stated the principle in brilliant terms:

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.[3]

AN EXAMPLE

When it comes to the top rung “in which one asks a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to logical conclusions foreseen by the questioner,” I acknowledge incompetence. Yes, I play the role of go-between or midwife of sorts, am aware of knowing nothing, and understand the Golden Rule. However, I do not know enough answers to ask many of the right questions. Why am I not more like Socrates? Simply because I am not wise enough. Nonetheless, each of us can strive for more wisdom and, now and then, some of us may succeed.

The best I can offer is a sampling of the Socratic method—oversimplified for brevity’s sake.

Q—Joe Doakes was lynched. Who did it?

A—A mob.

Q—Mob is but a label. Of what is it composed?

A—Individuals.

Q—Then did not each individual in the mob lynch Joe Doakes?

A—That would seem to be the case.

Q—Very well. Can any individual gain absolution by committing murder in the name of a label, the mob, a collective?

A—I guess not.

Q—Now that we have established that point, let me pose another question. Do you believe in thievery?

A—Of course not.

Q—Logically, then, you do not believe that you should use force to take my income to feather your own nest. True or false?

A—True.

Q—Is the principle changed if two of you gang up on me?

A—Not at all.

Q—One million? Even a majority?

A—Well, perhaps O.K. if a majority does it.

Q—Do you mean that might makes right?

A—Oh, no.

Q—That is what you have just said. Would you care to retract that?

A—To be logical, I must.

Q—You have now agreed that not even 200 million people or any agency thereof—government, labor unions, educational institutions, business firms, or whatever—have a moral right to feather their nests at the expense of others, that is, to advance their own special interests at taxpayers’ expense. You have also admitted that no one gains absolution by acting in the name of a collective. Therefore, is not every member who supports or even condones a wrong collective action just as guilty as if he personally committed the act?

A—I have never thought of it that way before but I now believe you are right.

Thus, by asking the right questions, one may thread his way through the maze of moral, economic, and political philosophy toward truth. This is the method of helping others to find right answers for themselves, the way to truth through their own minds. Your problem and mine is to become wiser that we may increase the number of the right questions to ask.

This, in my view, is the way to become more and more like Socrates.

[1] C. S. Lewis, Reflections on the Psalms, London, 1964, p. 9.

[2] See Then Truth Will Out, op. cit., pp. 21–28.

[3] William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, Caldwell, Idaho, 1954, pp. 97–106.

21

VOICES IN THE WILDERNESS

A man’s humanity depends on how deeply he gains guidance through listening.

—KARL JASPERS

Isaiah’s phrase of some 27 centuries ago was applied to John the Baptist: “a voice crying in the wilderness.” That phrasing persists as self-description in the minds of those whose devoted efforts go unheeded. For most of the present-day minority who oppose our plunge into socialism are saying, if not to others at least to themselves, “We are only voices crying in the wilderness.”

Is the metaphor an apt one, as currently used? Cries are heard, yes, but they are cries of despair—which may, in no small measure, account for the fateful resignation so much observed around us.

Further, the despair rests upon the dubious supposition that ours are voices of enlightenment within a wilderness, that is, among multitudes who do not or cannot hear our wise messages. “We are only talking to ourselves!” But this may be an occasion that calls for joyousness, not depression, for activity of mind, not resignation. At least the thought merits examination.

Voices? Let each of us examine his own voice for content and clarity and then render an honest, unbiased judgment. Simply put yourself in the position of those not of our turn of mind. How much ear would you or I give to our respective voices? Honest self-assessment results in a judgment that falls short of flattery—for me, at any rate.

It has been truly said, “a man will not be interested if you tell him that he can acquire by long and difficult work something which, in his opinion, he already has.” Talking to myself, I muse: long and difficult work ahead for me after all of these years of effort, and rarely much in doubt about my own understanding? Yes, this is the answer I get upon careful self-examination.

SELF-APPRAISAL

There have been many capable thinkers over the centuries who have stressed the difficulty—the near impossibility—of standing off from oneself and having an unbiased look, seeing the self as others do. Robert Burns gave this problem a pretty phrasing:

Oh wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as others see us!

Whatever be this power, the “giftie” it confers is an awakening from a slumber featured by dreams of self-satisfaction—a rather rude awakening!

With this feat accomplished, what do I find? First, an evaluation of self more realistic than it was, if not quite so satisfying. And, second, a relocated wilderness. Instead of regarding the wilderness as “out there,” think of it as within me! How is it now? The wilderness is not comprised of countless others who supposedly cannot hear; it is a personal bewilderment reflected in a voice not skilled enough to attract many listeners. What a new face this puts on our problem! At the very least, it sets the stage for long and difficult work, the kind of undertaking that has the possibility of some accomplishment; whereas, the other way is doomed to failure. There is joy in headway, only frustration in fruitless effort.

FICKLE PUBLIC OPINION

Before dealing further with my own bewilderment and such correction as is possible, let me clarify for myself one point about the “out there,” the wilderness where persons confront each other. True, it is the majority viewpoint or consensus that determines what goes on in society: the quality of men elected to public office, the kind of legislation passed, the degree of statism or freedom, the extent of coercive practices or violence that private groups can inflict, and so on. However, I am certain to be drawn off course unless I carefully assess what really constitutes a society’s prevailing viewpoint or consensus. The appearance it gives of numerical strength is only the froth and not the brewing agent, the foam and not the starter. The brewing agent—the stuff itself—is thought, idea, be it true or false. To say that the consensus rests on solid opinions by as much as one per cent of the population is probably an exaggeration.

The overwhelming majority of citizens have no well-grounded opinions, no thought-out ideas, on the subject of our concern. They merely lean toward or follow this or that ideological camp. For the most part, their allegiance follows impulsive acquiescence in cliches, attractive personalities, party labels, how the wind blows, and other forces lacking in idea content. Only lights of unprecedented brilliance can cause any of them to turn their eyes toward freedom. And, then, at best, only a few!

THE REMNANT

The few—The Remnant—are all who count. They are, as Albert Jay Nock observed, an odd lot: quiet, shy of show-offs; indeed, they will have nothing to do with them. These few—mostly unknowns—are the ones who tip the scales, and their search is always for those who, to some extent, make progress against their own bewilderment, who gain in understanding and clarity of expression, who evidence integrity and, above all, who try to enlighten themselves. Those of The Remnant “run a mile” from reformers; they resent all attempts at “ramming ideas down their necks.” This attests to their realism for they know the futility of such an effort; it simply cannot be done.[1]

A man’s life is his own—and his Maker’s—inalienable, nontransferable. It may be devoted or given to an ideal, or to an idea, but cannot be transplanted into another living being. This is to say that my ideas or yours cannot be implanted in another—except at that other’s bidding or doing. If there is to be a transmission of ideas, the exchange occurs by the will and action of the receiver. And he draws into himself only that which he sees and values. I can perceive an idea, perhaps; but the idea itself is blind to me, can enter my mind only by my conscious effort and acceptance. The simplicity of this process is recognized by those rare individuals who comprise The Remnant. They are forever in search of light; and they are the ones who matter in the continuous upward struggle of man toward a better society.

EDUCATION VERSUS ENTERTAINMENT

These truisms bring into focus a problem that perplexes many devotees of freedom: the general apathy, the paralysis of thought in our time. Without question, the vast majority of Americans spend many of their leisure hours viewing TV. This tends to put their lives on a nonintellectual level, as does the energy they devote to idle conversation and limited reading of serious material.

Such low forms of communication enormously influence participants to lean toward or to acquiesce in ways of life quite the opposite of freedom and self-responsibility. The winds of opinion blow in the wrong direction. And the reason for the wrong direction is usually ascribed to our failure to put the freedom message over the same channels or through the same media. The argument is that we should compete at this level. But I doubt that this gets at the educational problem we face.

TV and the like are, for the most part, entertainment media, and our objective is not entertainment. True, much nonsense can be blended with entertainment because the audience is not viewing, listening, reading for philosophical and ideological enlightenment. With no higher aim than merriment and diversion, the millions can indeed be blown in nonsensical directions. As Jacques Barzun phrases it, “. . . unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass by us but into us.” And I would add, unless we consciously try, the truth will not pass into us but will pass us by. Whenever conscious effort is lacking, people are easy and natural victims of the current winds that blow; they can be sold nonsense!

OURS NOT A SELLING PROBLEM

Ours, however, is not a selling problem either, which is to say that no one has ever been “blown” into enlightenment. The gaining of understanding, knowledge, wisdom is, instead, a do-it-yourself, gathering-in project.

I am becoming more and more convinced that any reversal of the societal trend calls for a radical approach or strategy. Otherwise, we will continue to resort to means and methods that are useless if not downright mischievous.

Let us now face up to the nature and enormity of our problem. A philosopher whose thoughts I admire asserted: “The known is what’s no longer a problem.” This appears to be true in one sense, yet false in another: the unknown has not yet been recognized as the problem. Our societal disarray, for instance, is no problem to an animal, to a person in slumber, or to the millions who are in a state of unawareness—the addicts of merriment and diversion. What does this mean to the thoughtful individual who is bent on the freedom way of life?

It means that he must advance his own enlightenment to such a brilliance that a few, at least, will turn away from the TV and other entertainment to an enlightenment effort of their own. Never in the history of mankind have the distractions been more high-powered and glamorous than now. Nor, by the same token, has so much been required in the way of personal excellence to turn the trend toward freedom. To succeed, we must excel those who have gone before us! Personally, I would not have it any other way; this is a challenge worthy of any man who sees life’s purpose as growth in consciousness.

WHAT CAN I DO?

Now to my own bewilderment and its correction. What shows forth as the obvious first step? What should my ambition be? To make of myself a prophet, a seer, one who is to enlighten mankind? Indeed, not! Any such aim is self-defeating. I must aspire to be a man, not a god. To concentrate on the latter would erase all chances of achieving the former. Further, no one who really counts in the upgrading struggle ever searches for light from those afflicted with egomania. I desire only what man’s freedom opens up to him. “. . . an opportunity to become that which he can authentically be.”

What can I authentically be? A seeker bent on enlightenment! Where will that take me? Heaven only knows! But this I do know: no one who counts will ever look to me for light unless I have enlightenment to share.

The answer emerges in crystal clarity: try as best I can to qualify for membership in that odd lot, The Remnant—a seeker after light. A voice crying in the wilderness? No, quite the opposite—one listening for enlightened voices: the voice within, and from others, past and present, voices that may lead me, even if haltingly, out of my own bewilderment. Who knows! I may see the dawn and, if I do, a few others will see it with me.

[1] The Remnant is dramatized in Isaiah’s Job by Albert Jay Nock. I read this essay 36 years ago. It gave me my first instruction in the methods appropriate to freedom. As the Bible from which the story is taken, it merits reading again and again. Copy on request from Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, N.Y. 10533.

22

OPEN VERSUS CLOSED MINDS

I had six honest serving men.

They taught me all I knew.

Their names were Where and What and When—

And Why and How and Who.

—KIPLING

Open-mindedness is almost everywhere hailed as a virtue, especially in “educated” circles. A person of closed mind, on the other hand, is generally condemned as narrow, shallow, nit-witted. I had accepted these generalities until recently when a philosopher friend asked, “You are not open-minded about everything, are you?” I knew instantly and answered “No!” But this, of course, poses the question: To what should one’s mind be closed and to what should it be open?

As a starter, I would like my mind open to truths yet to be perceived and closed to all nonsense. Were one’s mind open to everything, he would reject experience; for example, he might explore the principle of gravitation anew by trying to walk on air over a deep ditch. He would forever be uncertain whether honesty were the best policy. Maybe yes and maybe no. A slave to open-mindedness! My mind is absolutely closed on these matters of gravity and honesty; and, on examination, I find it closed to a host of other propositions.

While no one knows overmuch, each of us knows some things or he would perish from the earth. A good rule: Close the mind on what one knows and understands and keep it open to what is not known and understood. In either function, one’s mind serves him as a guide to life’s fulfillment, helping him to avoid the ditches and stay on the road toward his destination.

This way of looking at “mindedness” presents a seeming anomaly. It had never occurred to me before that the more one knows and understands, the more the issues upon which his mind is closed! But although a closed mind may indicate the number of issues upon which a man has reflected and reached settled conclusions, it also might be a sign that one has perceived next to nothing. The degree of closed-mindedness is not necessarily an accurate gauge of how much one knows and understands!

IS THE MIND WORKING?

The lesson? Never try to estimate the knowledge and wisdom of others by how closed or open their minds. Any estimate of this kind should be confined to self and then only after every possible thought has been explored to determine whether or not one is on sound ground. In other words, a person’s mind may be closed with something in it, things which he knows or sincerely believes and upon which he can act; or it may be closed and quite empty, receptive to no ideas at all. By the same token, a mind may be open, but open to every kind of an idea—wise or foolish; or it may be so open on every side that no idea can be registered there for reference or use. So the question is not entirely whether a mind is open or closed but whether it is a working mind and, if so, to what purpose.

The idea that one’s mind should be open to that which is not known or understood and that our aim is to grow in knowledge and wisdom, gives rise to a logical and relevant question. How may we best serve each other as each of us pursues this end? By opening our minds to each other! By so doing, we expose what light we have gained and, thus, maximize the total enlightenment. Open-mindedness in its best sense!

Unquestionably, this sharing process accounts for the greater expanse of knowledge and wisdom today than existed among the Neanderthals or Cro-Magnon man. Far more than is generally realized, we have inherited from the past; we ride on the shoulders of its giants! We are free to pick their brains, so to speak, to whatever extent we are willing to open our minds to their ideas. Likewise, we may pick the brains of one another among our contemporaries to the extent each is willing, always bearing in mind the personal responsibility to choose and judge which ideas to accept or reject, and which of ours are worthy of sharing with others.

EXPLORING THE UNKNOWN

As Ortega phrased it, “The known is what’s no longer a problem.” So numerous and all-pervasive are our problems that the unknown must be regarded as infinite—never-ending. Those issues to which the mind is still open are problems rather than answers and can hardly be shared as knowledge. Thus, the best one can do for others is to enumerate those ideas and propositions on which his own mind is closed—express what he believes to be true. There follows a sampling of what I have in mind. “Here I stand, I can do no other.”

1. The Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments.

2. The good society rests on individuals having high moral scruples and ethical guidelines; no organizational gadgetry, however deftly devised, can overcome moral and ethical deficiencies.

3. Government limited to administering justice and keeping the peace—equality before the law—is an essential adjunct to morality. Anarchy—each a law unto himself—is not a viable social philosophy.

4. Government—organized force—can only inhibit, restrain, penalize. It has no business interfering in the creative realm.

5. Creativity stems exclusively from individuals acting privately, competitively, cooperatively, voluntarily.

6. No man who lives, no association, nor any government is competent to decide for any other where he shall work, what his hours or wage shall be, what and with whom he may exchange, or what thoughts he shall entertain.

7. Freedom in transactions is an absolute principle.

8. The value of any good or service is what another will give in willing exchange.

9. The good or bad politician is not the cause of good or bad government. He reflects the thinking of his constituents. When the thinking is good enough, then good men can and will be elected to office.

10. Obedience to one’s highest conscience is to seek approval from God, not men.

A final thought: There is a reliable test as to whether or not one’s closed-mindedness derives from a growing knowledge or from a lack of understanding. If from lack, there will be a sense of know-it-all-ness; if from growth, the more issues on which one’s mind is closed, the better paved is his access to the unknown. This test merely emphasizes the obvious: the more one knows, the more is he aware of the unknown—the challenge!

23

LEADERSHIP REDEFINED

Allur’d to brighter worlds, and led the way.

—OLIVER GOLDSMITH

Both saints and villains are found in the pages of history. The former are credited with leading us in the ways of virtue, while the latter lead us toward evil. In my opinion, we are caught in an aged word trap whenever we think of leadership in these terms, and this causes untold mischief. Accordingly, I offer the following definition and explanation of leadership. Conceded, it is novel, for it has no dictionary or other authority. Just an idea that makes sense to me.

Imagine a dozen climbers scaling the Matterhorn; the one leading the way would doubtless be the most skilled and knowledgeable of the lot. As to this venture, we would regard him as a leader.

Let us now assume that once atop the mountain disaster strikes; the climbers slip and fall to their doom. We would ascribe no leadership qualities whatsoever to the first man to fall.

By this analogy, I wish to suggest that leadership in our world of social affairs must be associated only with achievement, attainment, progress and never with a fall from grace. The man out front is a leader when showing the ways to higher goals; he is not a leader when in the vanguard of social degradations.

Why dwell on this? Individuals, if long on energy and short on humility, aspire to positions of leadership. To them there is no greater gratification of the ego than to have others think of them as leading the way, shaping the lives of others, directing the course of human events. Getting out in front of “the wave of the future” is all that is required for such an evaluation, and it matters not how degrading the movement.

SIGNS THAT MISLEAD US

Even though most Americans frown on Nazism, they still regard Hitler as having exerted leadership. But if leadership were associated only with righteous and uplifting efforts, his actions exhibited no leadership qualities. False notions of leadership are quashed by recognition that dictatorship is a disreputable business. Who would wish to be a dictator—indeed, who could—were everyone to scorn or look down upon that position? Traces of the domineering habit in the mill run of us, along with other reasons, may cause us to follow and thus lend unwarranted encouragement to these dominators. Straighten out our understanding of leadership, and we will take a big step toward correcting this mischief.

Even had Hitler designed Nazism, he would not qualify as a leader any more than would the designer of nasty words, pornography, a muck heap, or any other degradation. As the first one among climbers falling to their doom, Hitler was the victim of circumstances not of his making. He was a follower of evil forces he did not understand.

Should we not realize that whatever shows forth on the political horizon, in the U.S.A. or elsewhere, is no more than a reflection or echoing of the preponderant thinking at the time? If the consensus be sheer babble, then the best babbler among us will be out front.

Hitler did not design Nazism; to repeat, he was its victim, a follower fully sold on its nonsense. He found himself in the vanguard by reason of being the noisiest, most energetic, egotistic, charismatic of all the victims. He did not lead Germany into that catastrophe; the low-grade thinking was responsible. It was the ignoble thoughts that made Hitler Der Führer!

INTO SOCIAL DISASTER

Be it Nazism, fascism, Fabianism, communism, socialism, welfarism, the planned economy—any arrangement that calls for coercive control over the creative actions of citizens—these are social disasters, retrogression from the nearest approximation to freedom ever attained: the politico-economic situation that once distinguished America.

No moral, intellectual, spiritual, political, economic decline has ever had a leader—nothing but one of the followers out front. Keep in mind that the politicians who are in the vanguard of these movements are but the victims of a deteriorating consensus.

A leader not only is “allur’d to brighter worlds” but to some extent scales the heights. He is the seeker and finder of more enlightenment, one who by concentration, study, insights, integrity, humility, and devotion to truth leads himself and, hopefully, others of us out of the wilderness. For, as Mencius phrased it, “Never a man who has bent himself been able to make others straight.”

By definition, leaders are persons who come upon new and, thus, unaccustomed thoughts. It is for this reason that leaders are rarely known in their own time. The fruit of their labors may not be recognized until years later, sometimes centuries, often never.

Theorists of authoritarianism—Marx, for instance—or its political horn tooters—Hitler, Stalin, and some local examples—are immediately celebrated; they are in the headlines. The real probers of modern times—Adam Smith, Bastiat, Menger, Mises, to name a few—will someday be known as we now know Socrates, Epictetus, and others of the ancient world.

An interesting thought intrudes itself: the leaders of our time are obscure and must be sought by us precisely as they, to be leaders, must search for truth. May we find them as they find truth! In any event, let us never think of anyone as a leader who is not scaling the heights. If we get our definition of leadership correct, the horn tooters will lose their celebrity—will no longer occupy the limelight—and, thus, the leaders and their enlightened thoughts will be that much easier to find.

24

MR. ANONYMOUS

The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who, in a period of moral crisis, maintain their neutrality.

—DANTE

In pondering the matter of anonymity, I came to these conclusions: In matters of charity it is a mark of virtue for a man to resort to anonymity; but as related to a rapidly growing authoritarianism, it is disgraceful for a man to retreat behind namelessness. Our actions here have a great deal to do with societal well-being, a point that is generally overlooked. When and when not to employ anonymity is linked to political economy, which makes this subject anything but esoteric or “cloud 9”; it is a down-to-earth matter.

The explanations to follow are in support of these contentions:

1. State welfarism grows and eventually takes over when the closely related concepts of voluntary exchange and Judeo-Christian charity are neither understood nor practiced.

2. The state planned and operated economy proliferates when citizens refuse to speak their minds in their own name.

Anonymity is an absolute prerequisite to true charity; it is utter folly to think we can preserve a market economy and stem authoritarianism anonymously. We are faced with silently practicing what is right in our concern for the unfortunate and with openly proclaiming what we believe to be right in our economic and political relationships. Regretfully, the tendency is just the opposite: proclaiming our benefactions to all and sundry and silencing our thoughts when not in accord with popular notions. Most of us deserve self-censure on both counts!

My title is that of a biographical book about the late William Volker.[1] Arriving in the U.S.A. as a young man from Germany, he began work at one dollar a week. Young William, deeply religious, was charitable to those in need and did his best to remain anonymous. He lived to a ripe old age and all of his business ventures were outstanding successes; he gave many millions to charity—a third of his vast earnings. The man must have done something right, that is, lived in harmony with a sound principle!

CHARITY IN SECRET

Anonymity as related to charity is a biblical instruction: “Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth.”

One does not have to believe that every word in the Bible is true as written to discern the correctness of this admonition. Why give and forget you gave? Why toss one’s benefactions out of mind? Simple: it is the preventative of a psychic illness: self-adulation. Admittedly, it is not easy to forget a kindness one has bestowed but it is worth trying. Indeed, unless forgotten, credit to self—pride—is the result. “The charity that hastens to proclaim its good deeds,” said William Hutton, “ceases to be charity, and is only pride and ostentation.”

No question about it, one should learn not to dwell upon—better to forget instantly—his own benefactions. But why keep the recipient in the dark? Must anonymity be carried this far? Of course! Otherwise, the thanks and gratitude will come bouncing back so that the left hand cannot help but know what the right hand doeth. Worse yet, the recipient will feel an indebtedness which transforms the intended helping hand into a hand seeking praise. Further, this may leave the beneficiary demanding more.

THE RISE OF WELFARISM

True, the understanding of Judeo-Christian charity requires a high level of wisdom and its practice an extremely sensitive performance. But even so, why is it heeded so rarely? Or, perhaps a better question, why does it seem to me to be a virtue headed for extinction? My answer: the rise of state welfarism! Were Judeo-Christian charity the vogue, or even if it had a respectable observation and practice, coercive welfarism would be clearly recognized as an economic perversion and “laughed out of court.” The decline of true charity is proportional to the rise in state welfarism, presently on the rampage.[2]

Why do I refer to state welfarism as an economic perversion? Simply because the “have-nots” whom it is supposed to help at the expense of the “haves” are the very ones who bear the brunt of it!

DOING ONE ANOTHER’S LAUNDRY

To the extent that the members of society are engrossed in the political process of doing one another’s laundry, there is little prospect that anyone would bother to invent and build a washing machine or open a laundromat. Welfare programs, based inevitably on steeply graduated income taxes, destroy the incentive and the capacity to save and invest in the tools and facilities that create job opportunities and permit mass production—for the masses. Every dollar’s worth of potential capital investment taxed out of the market in the name of “welfarism” closes the gates of the market place to innumerable poor consumers who otherwise might have been able to buy what each most wants instead of what a government official thinks each needs.

The “have-nots” are the ones who substantially foot the bill by reason of their scanty supply of dollars having less and less purchasing power. However, hardly any among the “have-nots” realize that they are victims of state welfarism and even less do they relate this economic perversion to the waning of Judeo-Christian charity. This is the point that we need to stand for and to explain, openly and personally, proclaiming to all the world the blessings of freedom.

The above suggests the case for anonymity in charitable activities, the virtuous practice of which is declining. Now for the case against anonymity where its enormous practice is utterly disgraceful. Edmund Burke’s observation is excellent background for what follows:

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

The Mr. Anonymous of the disgraceful variety is more of an it than a he! Why this assessment? Such individuals are self-neutered, that is, they run away from personal identification—hide behind false fronts. A nasty letter unsigned is this trait in its most loathsome form. But equally anonymous and useless is “the name used by an author in place of his true name”: pen name, nom de plume, pseudonym, alias, and the like. Whatever the thought expressed, it is authored by a nobody; it lacks endorsement, is without authority.

HIDING BEHIND PSEUDONYMS

This same kind of anonymity extends into the politico-economic realm. Millions of citizens refuse to stick their necks out by publicly standing up for their private convictions. Hiding behind pseudonyms, these people run away from the responsibility of identifying themselves with any issue under fire; they let the committee, the organization, or political collectives speak while they—the faint-hearted ones—remain anonymous. There are today, during a moral and economic crisis in human affairs, no more than a very small minority who in their own names are speaking, writing, and standing for what is right about private property and voluntary exchange, and what is wrong about coercive intervention and unlimited government.

Bear in mind that righteousness in any area whatever must remain unknown and without support except as it is pronounced and affirmed by discrete individuals who are openly linking their reputation and the sacredness of their names to the truth as they see it. Righteousness is but a cosmic whisper unless brought to earthly use by some individual ready and willing to stake his reputation on it. In the absence of such open and proud integrity, rightness has no muscle, no one nor any thing to support it; there is only a vacuum into which nonsense flows, there being no resistance.

I repeat, the state-planned and operated economy proliferates when citizens refuse to speak their minds in their own name.

Mr. Anonymous, let us know what brand of anonymity you practice that we may know the quality of your citizenship. Or, better yet, let me examine and understand and make clear what kind of a citizen I am.

[1] Herbert C. Cornuelle, Mr. Anonymous, Caldwell, Idaho, 1951.

[2] As state welfarism increases, anonymity—a requirement of true charity—becomes more and more impossible. We are increasingly compelled to report our gifts to government and such information becomes public, not private, property.

25

THE CONNOISSEUR IN SOCIETY

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

—KANT

According to Jefferson there are those among men who comprise a natural aristocracy based upon virtue and talent—an elite order having extraordinary intellectual, ethical, personal, and spiritual qualities. Persons so graced are not necessarily to be found among those of rank and power, that is, among aristocrats as the term is commonly used. The rare ones who should elicit our admiration are a very special breed of distinguished exemplars.

These natural aristocrats emerge, not because of their efforts to influence others, but because they work to realize their own fulfillment. They stand out naturally among men simply by manifesting their acquired virtues, talents, disciplines, and not because they strive for the limelight. Any other stance would be alien to their nature. Thus, the natural aristocracy!

The presence of such an order of persons makes for a good society, and the societal situation with which we are concerned—of maximum individual liberty—improves or deteriorates as the natural aristocracy flourishes or wanes. A natural aristocracy in the pink of condition sets the standard or tone by which we harmonize and prosper. But when the leaders in business, religion, politics, education fall from rectitude, then society is beset by antagonisms, conflict, discord, nonsense.

Conceded, a natural aristocracy in the pink of condition is the prime requirement for a good society. But we should take note of this: such an aristocracy seems to flourish or wane in the presence or absence of connoisseurs—those with a taste for excellence. In the absence of connoisseurs, exemplars are no more to be expected than is a supply of beautiful paintings for exhibition only to the blind. Without a demand for virtue and talents, there can be no excellence, no exemplars.

How, then, are exemplars and connoisseurs to be distinguished? I am beginning to suspect that they are one and the same! With respect to gastronomy, for instance, it is obvious that there would be no chefs of the cordon bleu excellence were there no connoisseurs of food; nor would there be any of the latter without the former. If my suspicion is well-founded, then we cannot ask which comes first, the chicken or the egg. In pondering this seeming anomaly, a verse by Dryden comes to mind:

We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.

All habits gather by unseen degrees,

As brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

Would there be any seas without the brooks and rivers? Unlikely! Nor would there be any brooks and rivers without the seas. What goes on here? The sun evaporates the seas, gathering as moisture in the heavens. Condensed, it falls to earth draining into brooks and rivers and they, in turn, run to the seas. Now ask the question, what comes first? This has no answer for it is a cyclical phenomenon such as the orbit of a heavenly body. It is a continuum: “a continuous whole . . . things whose parts cannot be separated.”[1]

CAUSE AND EFFECT

These observations and reflections lead me to believe that exemplars and connoisseurs cannot be arranged as first and second; they coexist, mutually serving one another as cause-and-effect. So, do not expect excellence without a taste for it, or vice versa. These twin attributes ascend and decline in unison precisely as do the left and right wings of a bird in flight.

This view, I realize, may be questioned. For all sorts of persons think of themselves as connoisseurs of this or that while having no skills of their own. There are, for instance, self-styled connoisseurs of art who cannot paint a barn, of cooking who cannot scramble an egg, of writing who cannot phrase a sentence, of political economy who cannot distinguish the free from the rigged market. Such lopsidedness between taste on the one hand and exemplarity on the other reflects self-deception. Actions speak louder than words: “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7)

Applying such judgment to myself, what do I find? I am no better a connoisseur of golf than I am a golfer, of cooking than I am a chef, of painting than I am an artist, of poetry than I am a poet. True, I profess to like or dislike certain dishes at the table, certain art, music, poetry, or what have you. But such responses are, for the most part, only feelings, not taste in its refined, exalted sense. In no instance am I more connoisseur than exemplar!

In short, exemplarity and an exalted taste for excellence go hand in hand; however, neither one comes first. So, how and where do we begin?

ONE MUST TAKE A STAND

Before suggesting how and where we should begin, perhaps it might be well further to explain why we should begin. In what respect, really, does the natural aristocrat so remarkably distinguish himself from the mill run of us? The quick answer is that each person among the mill run of us is guided by exterior authority as distinguished from the natural aristocrat who is guided by interior authority. Most of us are directed by expediencies as is a committee which rarely if ever is right, while the natural aristocrat is directed by reason and conscience which assures the closest possible alignment with rightness. Let me elaborate.

First, what is right? It is what one’s highest conscience dictates as right. While this in fact may not be truth, it is as close to truth as anyone can at any given moment attain.

Second, why is a committee rarely if ever right? Simply because its conclusions or resolutions are an amalgam, compromise, potpourri of the members’ varying conceptions of what ought to be done. The final position is whatever a majority finds not too offensive; in few instances is it strictly in accord with what any single conscience dictates as right. A committee can rarely be right unless one endorses the naive notion that might makes right or, its equivalent, that whatever a majority endorses is right.

Third, in what respect do persons among the mill run of us resemble a committee and, thus, fail to stand for what is right? Most of our proclaimed positions are divorced from and are not dictated by highest conscience. Instead, they are determined by the circumstances which surround the person: pressures, popular opinions, cliches, fear of disapproval, desire for fame, wealth, power, and so on. As in the case of committee resolutions, proclaimed positions are, for the most part, no more than an amalgam, compromise, potpourri of environmental circumstances. Truth—what’s right—is not to be found in this!

FORMING A HABIT

Now, how and where to begin that we may become at once a connoisseur and an exemplar? Dryden’s sentence gives us the cue: “We first make our habits, and then our habits make us.” I make my habits and you make yours! In a word, my habits can be made to respond to my own will. The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz enlightens us along these lines:

Man is not God; he does not create himself, nor write the laws of his own being; but men do make themselves. And as they do so, they begin to discover who they are and what they may become. “That wonderful structure, Man,” wrote Edmund Burke, “whose prerogative it is to be in a great degree a creature of his own working, and who, when made as he ought to be made, is destined to hold no trivial place in the creation.”

There we have it! This is to say that if one so wills it, he can make a natural aristocrat of himself. And the habit grows on itself; that is, the twin attributes—exemplarity and the taste for excellence—will become habitual, a natural way of life.

The launching, getting off the ground, that initial phase requiring will power, is simple enough to phrase if not to accomplish. Merely resolve, whatever the circumstances or pressures, that everything approved or condoned accurately reflects whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right. True, we have to live in the world as it is. This fact, however, should in no way adulterate our proclaimed positions. Whoever expresses them in purity is a connoisseur in society, and as his taste for excellence sharpens, so will his exemplary service to the rest of us.

[1] For an artistic treatment of this phenomenon see “You Cannot Pick a Dandelion” by Arthur P. Moor, The Freeman, April 1964.

26

THE INMOST AND THE OUTMOST

. . . the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.

—EMERSON

The employment of these opposites—the inmost and the outmost—to dramatize a fundamental societal problem, is Emerson’s invention, not mine, but they have an important bearing on some personal concerns.

It is my firm conviction that man’s earthly purpose is growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. I believe that man, millennia hence, is intended to excel us in this respect precisely as men of our time are markedly ahead of Neanderthalers. Each of us is here to play his part in this growth; not to stay put; not to rot on the vine. This is the way I read the Cosmic Intention, and I accept this reading as my basic premise. Such a premise undeniably requires individual liberty for its realization.

The attainment of liberty demands a two-part understanding: (1) a grasp of the ideology itself, and (2) an awareness of the appropriate method for achieving it. I believe ours is primarily a learning problem, rather than an exercise in selling; it follows that the methodology is even more important than the ideology. Were all individuals devoted to their own improvement—increasing their awareness, knowledge, upgrading their understanding—there would not be a seeker after power among us. And in the absence of coercionists there could be no authoritarianism, none whatsoever! Individual liberty prevails in a society where no one lords it over others, and the person tending to his own growth feels no need to rule others. Hence, the importance of choosing the correct method for advancing liberty, lest we waste effort and aggravate the very problem we would settle.

INCREASING ONE’S CANDLE POWER

Enlightenment—increasing one’s own candle power—and sharing one’s findings with others, has long been my idea of correct method. Emerson put it thus:

Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost. . . . Familiar as the voice of the mind is to each, the highest merit we ascribe to Moses, Plato and Milton is that they set at naught books and traditions, but spoke what they thought.[1]

Anyone familiar with the works of Emerson is well aware that what he wrote and spoke were his thoughts. I would emulate him—in this respect, at least—for what follows are my thoughts concerning his thoughts.

The method of self-improvement is not popular. For instance, this morning’s mail brings a typical criticism, one which helps to draw my thesis into focus:

You’ve written that a candle’s light can be seen miles away in the dark of space. But when the enemy is exploding skyrockets, that light can’t be seen. You are one of the few with vast training in matters of freedom; yet you insist on being a remote, hermit-like wise man, not showing his wares in the great market place where men buy so readily so many false values, for that’s all they see around them. You do a great work, but against the opposition, it is pale and puny, and it could be colorful and grow tremendously.

No question about it, this man is a devotee of freedom. Ideology, splendid! But what is his method for advancing individual liberty? It is one of confrontation. Argue the rascals down! He believes that the outmost governs the inmost, whereas, I contend the very opposite is true. We hear a clap of thunder, but the genesis of this noise is a gigantic electrical spark which creates a sudden vacuum into which air rushes. The thunder, as the outmost, is a consequence. I say, look to the spark and not the thunder for, as Emerson suggests, “the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.”

In the area of our concern—political economy—what is the outmost? It is, in substance, the policy of the state, as described by the eminent Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung. A few of his pertinent comments:

. . . the policy of the state . . . is thrust upon the individual from outside and consists in the execution of an abstract idea which ultimately tends to attract all life to itself. . . . The individual is increasingly deprived of the moral decision as to how he should live his own life, and instead is ruled, fed, clothed and educated as a social unit, accommodated in the appropriate housing unit, and amused in accordance with the standards that give pleasure and satisfaction to the masses. The rulers, in their turn, are just as much social units as the ruled and are distinguished only by the fact that they are specialized mouthpieces of the State doctrine. . . . They are more likely, however, to be the slaves of their fictions. . . . They merely function as a megaphone for collective opinion. . . . The State in particular is turned into a quasi-animate personality from whom everything is expected. In reality, it is only a camouflage for those individuals who know how to manipulate it.[2]

Admittedly, it is the outmost—the runaway policy of the state, the collective opinion—that grabs our attention and urges upon us its reform. However, unless we discern that the outmost is effect and not cause, we will waste our labors by tinkering with the megaphone, touching up the camouflage, substituting one clap of thunder for another. As fruitless as repairing an echo!

The current consensus, the effect that so deeply concerns all devotees of the freedom philosophy, is but an echo of mass nonsense, voices not “of the mind” but of the lower passions. The voice of the mind—yours or mine—is not a noise but a light. If we abhor the present consensus, then look to our own lights. Bear in mind that neither lights nor their reflections can be shouted down. Witness the lights of Moses, Plato, Milton, Emerson, Jung, Socrates, Epictetus, Montaigne, Adam Smith, Bastiat, Mises, and a host of others. Their lights are brilliant as ever. But they go unseen by eyes diverted from self-enlightenment and turned fruitlessly toward echo repairing.

CHASING ECHOES

Appraised in this manner, it seems plain that the believers in individual liberty who concentrate their energies on combatting echoes unwittingly become parties to the very condition they would remedy. For, by taking this wrong course, they reject the right one, namely, the search after light. No one can go in two directions at once. For this reason, the reflection—the outmost—is just that much dimmer than would otherwise be the case. Indeed, a substantial reason for our present plight is an unawareness of how nonsense is dispelled or, conversely, of how awakening is achieved.

Let us approach this matter from another angle. Why do people by the millions, in and out of politics, lord it over others? Parents over children and vice versa? Husbands over wives and vice versa? Employees over employers and vice versa? Politicians over citizens and vice versa? From whence comes this dictatorial penchant? What accounts for it? Some insist that it is a natural, instinctive trait of the human being; others say it is rooted in fear.

To Hobbes men were brutes so life degenerated into a perpetual condition of “war against every other” in a struggle not just to survive . . . but to dominate his fellows. For man is possessed of “a perpetual and restless desire of power after power that ceaseth only in death.” President Wilson pressed for “self determination” as a right of all people after World War I on the assumption that they wanted to rule themselves. According to Hobbes, they want to rule each other. . . . Adam Smith suggests that this lust for power may be the principal motive for slavery: “The pride of man makes him love to domineer. . . .”[3]

UNAWARENESS, THE PROBLEM

I am convinced that what we call a lust for power does not stem from any of these “causes” but, basically, from unawareness. It is a weakness more than a lust; men resort to force because they do not know any better. With notable exceptions, men are:

a. unaware of how little they know. Without such awareness, they can envision a better world only as others are carbon copies of themselves. The remedy? Cast others in their image, by force, if necessary.

b. unaware that our infinite variation in talents and virtues merits approval and not censure, for variation is implicit in the Cosmic Order. Were all identical, all would perish.

c. unaware of an inability to mold the life of another beneficially. Each individual has but the dimmest notion of his own miraculous being; about others he knows substantially nothing. Man is not the Creator!

d. unaware that consciousness is ultimately the single, primal reality. The world and all it embraces, be it your world or mine, comes into focus only in the eyes of the beholder. Our respective worlds are those of which we are conscious—no more, no less!

e. unaware that consciousness—the inmost—has its origin, as Emerson proclaims, in the voice of the mind. This voice is composed of the voice within—intuition, insights, and the like—plus those enlightened voices of others which we may perceive and embrace. Together, they make up and circumscribe one’s consciousness.

I am only trying to emphasize that we waste our time and energy when contesting at the echo or effects level. Nothing is changed for the better when we tackle things “after the fact!” If we would labor effectively, we must get at the root, where causes are set in motion. A brighter reflection—the outmost—depends on brighter lights—the inmost. And this demands nothing less than a greater awareness, an expanding consciousness. To determine the method appropriate to advancing individual liberty, simply reflect on how consciousness is expanded.

EXPANDING ONE’S CONSCIOUSNESS

Expanding consciousness is no simple matter! Indeed, no one can prescribe the technique for another. Our variation—uniqueness—precludes any fixed formula. Among a few rare individuals it appears to come as easily and naturally as physical growth. But for the most of us this growth requires disciplines and exertions so difficult that acceptance and adoption are thwarted. Three generalities, however, apply to everyone: (1) this is a wholly introspective exercise—concentration on the self; (2) it requires a passionate wanting-to-know-it-ness; and (3) it demands integrity, an accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right.

Have I painted a picture too glum to warrant enthusiasm? To the contrary, it is filled with hope. Why this assertion? The future is hopeful because there are in America today more persons than our cause needs who, once aware of the proper method, can and will supply all the inmost required. To prove my point, look in the mirror and behold one of these individuals.

A LONELY VENTURE

Is this too lonely a venture? No, the most delightful companions are those who seek one’s light or those from whom light is sought.

Leo Tolstoy lends his support to this thesis. Except for a varied phrasing, his and Emerson’s thoughts are the same:

One free man says frankly what he thinks and feels in the midst of thousands who by their actions and words maintain just the opposite. It might be supposed that the man who has frankly expressed his thought would remain isolated, yet in most cases it happens that all, or the majority, of the others have long thought and felt the same as he, only they have not expressed it. And what yesterday was the novel opinion of one man becomes today the general opinion of the majority. And as soon as this opinion is established, at once by imperceptible degrees but irresistibly, the conduct of mankind begins to alter.

Emerson’s promise has no flaws: “Speak your latent conviction, and it shall be the universal sense; for the inmost in due time becomes the outmost.” Thanks for your help, Ralph Waldo Emerson!

[1] Ralph Waldo Emerson, Compensation and Self-Reliance, Westwood, N.J., p. 31.

[2] Carl G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, New York, 1958, pp. 13–18.

[3] See “When Men Appeal From Tyranny to God” by Edward Coleson, The Freeman, June 1972.

27

OFF THE BEATEN TRACK

Ye are the light of the world. A city that is set on the top of a hill cannot be hid.

—MATTHEW 5:14

I have long been intrigued by the seeming paradox that the more one knows the more he knows he does not know. This is another way of saying that every gain in knowledge increasingly exposes one to the infinite unknown.

Another aspect of this intriguing paradox: as a person grows in knowledge he is exposed to a new set of friends—and almost certainly faces a dwindling number of old friends. There are many ways to lose friends, of course, but what I am suggesting is that a dwindling audience is not necessarily a sign of failure; on the contrary, it may signify personal progress. This is the point I would like to explore.

Ortega presents us with the reality of this problem:

So far as ideas are concerned, meditation on any theme, if positive and honest, inevitably separates him who does the meditating from the opinion prevailing around him, from that which . . . can be called “public” or “popular” opinion. Every intellectual effort sets us apart from the commonplace, and leads us by hidden and difficult paths to secluded spots where we find ourselves amid unaccustomed thoughts. These are the results of meditation.[1]

Why dwell on this? A simple reason: if you are on the right track and gaining in knowledge but fail to read these signs aright, you may throw in the sponge simply because listeners are few; you may call it quits just before the dawn. In a word, I hope to present an antidote for discouragement, a way of viewing matters that will help to “keep the chin up.” Not only yours, but my own! In the area of our concern, it is easy to mistake success for failure.

Why? Simply because success is often equated with a growing number of adherents, failure with a declining number, as if the quality of ideas and the quantity of better thinkers go hand in hand. We tend to expect that any improvement in ideas will automatically attract a wider audience; whereas, quite the opposite might happen.

NOT A MATTER OF NUMBERS

My thinking in this matter has been stimulated in part by a slight drop in FEE’s mailing list over recent months, while at the same time we are told by others that our publications and seminars are better than ever before—and that we must do something to “reach more people.”

Were numbers here and now the sole measure of success, then the recipe would be (1) a point of view consistent with “public” or “popular” opinions; and, (2) charismatic personalities. Examples can be found in the political realm: engaging and energetic copycats of the current consensus putting themselves in the vanguard.

Were ours just a numbers game, then we would attractively proclaim “free enterprise” and loudly decry “socialism.” And let it go at that! For there are millions paying lip service to freedom and proclaiming opposition to socialism who are anxious to ally themselves with those of similar leanings—so long as the specific aspects of these opposed ways of life are left unexamined. But never, for heaven’s sake, go beyond the generalities and attempt a detailed study of these ideologies! To do so assures alienation, a marked dwindling of old friends, perhaps a few new ones.

Our meditations at FEE over the past quarter century have been positive and honest. Even our detractors concede that we have so operated, and with consistency. In the beginning our position was more or less a generalization: in favor of freedom and opposed to socialism and other variants of authoritarianism. But the more we meditated, the more did some commonly accepted practices of “free enterprisers” and “anti-socialists” show up as bearing the seeds of socialism behind the labels. Further, we have never held the results of these meditations to ourselves for fear of giving offense, that is, we have not bowed to expediency.

For instance, some 20 years ago we published The Tariff Idea, a critique of protectionism, the case for freedom in transactions. The criticisms we received were severe, and several large corporate supporters dropped FEE then and thereafter. Over the years all of our books and each of nearly 3,000 essays have, in one way or another, affronted the mores, gone counter to the current trends and accepted opinions. This is to say, we have upheld the basic principles of voluntary exchange, private ownership, limited government while, at the same time, challenging those flaws of coercive or governmental intervention parading under the name of free enterprise. Such unaccustomed thoughts are not popular!

TO FIND A BETTER WAY, ONE MUST DEPART THE BEATEN PATH

This is why the serious freedom devotees may not rely on numbers—popular acclaim—as an objective. For the prime requirement of such an objective is to stay on the beaten track, to go along with commonly accepted notions. But must we not abandon the beaten track if we would find a better one? To “go along” is to go without prospect of improvement. To play the numbers game is to accept the fallacies that ought to be exposed and displaced.

The soundness of a philosophy cannot be gauged by numbers of followers. In this respect, the philosophy of freedom is similar to religion. True, we can count the financial supporters of the several religions and the church attendees, but these numbers reveal absolutely nothing as to the depth or profundity of religious convictions. Religious faith, so-called, is founded on diverse forces, ranging all the way from fear and superstition to cosmic consciousness. We must note, however, that all of the significant religions have been inspired by some one whose purity of thought—meditations, if you will—provided that rich spiritual insight which made possible the awakening of others.

Continuing the analogy, be it noted that each religion was, initially, an affront to “public” and “popular” opinion, a complete break with the mores. Each was born in an environment more or less hostile to its precepts. These initiators of high ethical, moral, and spiritual ideas have, in every instance, presented thoughts unfamiliar to most people at the time.

It is only when we make progress in learning what the ideal is, while standing foursquare therewith in our proclaimed positions, that we aid the cause of freedom. True, we will never fully comprehend the ideal, let alone realize it, but we can everlastingly strive for this purity in thought. Be certain of this: the nearer we come to knowing and upholding the ideal, the greater is the probability that the good society may emerge. Why? Because men can establish the good society only upon what is right and true. Upon that alone, and nothing else!

Fungus may be spawned by a muck heap; but the good society is the emergence and flowering of the best there is in thoughtful meditation. The best flows always from one—the one who comes nearest to being the perfect exemplar. Viewed in this manner, the so-called problems of society break down to a level a person might comprehend. One’s duty is not to fall in step with present imperfections but, rather, to strive for his own perfection. Upon whom, then, does the solution depend? Upon the world’s most important person: YOU!

[1] Jose Ortega y Gasset, What Is Philosophy?, New York, 1960, p. 15.

28

IS THERE TIME ENOUGH?

Time is what we want most, but what alas! we use worst

—PENN

Time after time I hear from those distraught by present trends or appearances. “We are headed for catastrophe,” they say, “and fast! There is no time for self-enlightenment which you folks commend. Yours is a slow, laborious approach. We must act now—in this moment of time.” List this high among all the notions that do mischief to the advancement of human freedom.

Bear in mind that the free society—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy—is an intellectual, moral, and spiritual attainment. It is structured from the knowledge and the practice of difficult human virtues. Freedom’s flag is high on the mast only when it is raised there by wisdom. And it is sustained there only by an enduring and continuing wisdom. Let this vital, sustaining source falter or weaken and down comes the flag to half-mast—“a sign of mourning or distress.”

In politico-economic terms, what is analogous to half-mast? It is authoritarian collectivism or socialism or mercantilism or our own interventionism and welfarism, call it what you will—a situation fallen into. Collectivism as a way of life does not represent the triumph of a coherent philosophy; rather it is a manifestation of the abyss into which men sink when not held high by the pursuit of truth and justice. The abandonment of the latter makes inevitable the fire and brimstone of the former. The abyss is not an attainment, as so many misled people proclaim, but a low position brought on by a surrender of ideals or, perhaps we should say, an unwillingness to understand and an inability to explain the miracles wrought by freedom. In a word, the abyss is nothing but a penalty hole for ignorance. Whose ignorance? Everyone who cannot skillfully make the case for freedom! Who can? I am unaware of anyone who has more than scratched the surface.

ACTIVATED IGNORANCE

If we are willing to concede how really ignorant we are when it comes to making the case for freedom, then we may sensibly contemplate what happens when we activate our ignorance, that is, when we put it into high gear. The more we try to sell or peddle—activate—the little we know—“ram it down their necks”—the less will freedom be accepted. Why? Because the fence-straddlers, wondering which way to jump, will think that freedom has no better case than our shallow utterances. They will link freedom to the noisy ignorance and have none of it. Herein lies the fallacy of, “We must act now; time is of the essence.” At the root of this fallacy lies a mistaken view of time as related to human beings—or so it seems to me.

We must act here and now, of course. True, there is no time like the present; time is of the essence, and all that. But the question is, how shall I act in my time? What can I do that is constructive? How can I best avoid wasting this moment in time that is mine?

As a starter, let us acknowledge that raising freedom’s flag above half-mast depends on an improving discernment of truth and justice, in a word, on an expanding consciousness. It is possible for me to expand my own consciousness in my own time and this constitutes my problem. I must not, however, confuse my poor understanding at this moment in time with Infinite Consciousness and infinite time. To do so is to be drawn off course, to depart from reality, to regard my minuscule wisdom as God’s Omniscience and my fleeting moment as eternity.

True, no one can comprehend Infinite Consciousness or infinite truth or infinite time, but there are many ways one can become aware of infinity. Infinite time is beyond the imagination, but we come to an awareness of it merely by acknowledging that finite time cannot be imagined: a point in time beyond which there is no time. The same with infinite truth: a body of truths beyond which there could be no more truth—unimaginable for finite man![1]

These somewhat esoteric observations about infinity are only for the purpose of emphasizing how I can constructively employ my own earthly moment. If not careful, I will forego my duties in the interest of setting humanity straight—the Creator’s role. By so doing, I reject the possible and attempt the impossible.

INDIVIDUAL ACHIEVEMENT

At the human level, no fraction of infinite truth, consciousness, wisdom is possessed except by discrete individuals as they pursue and come into a perception of these qualities. Thus, raising freedom’s flag high on the mast rests exclusively on how industriously and conscientiously you and I employ our time. Wise men have recognized and shared their counsel with us. A sampling:

As every thread of gold is valuable, so is every moment of time.

—J. Mason

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough.

—Franklin

Make use of time if thou lovest eternity; yesterday cannot be recalled; tomorrow cannot be assured; only today is thine, which if thou procrastinate, thou losest.

—Quarles

There is no saying shocks me so much as that which I hear very often, “that a man does not know how to pass his time.”

—Cowley

You’ll find as you grow older that you weren’t born such a very great while ago after all. Time shortens up.

—Howells

Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains. And the time that remains is time enough, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, the useless regretting.

—Brisbane

Time well employed is Satan’s deadliest foe; it leaves no opening for the lurking fiend.

—C. Wilcox

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!

—Thoreau

Lost yesterday, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever!

—Sigourney

I wasted time, and now doth time waste me.

—Shakespeare

Well arranged time is the surest mark of a well arranged mind.

—Pitman

AM I WASTING TIME?

I ask again, is there time enough? This poses the truly relevant question: Am I employing my own time—fleeting and finite though it be—as diligently and intelligently as possible? For those whose answer is negative there is not time enough, not even in two or twenty lifetimes! But, if affirmative, then my allotted time is spacious enough for me to perform my part in hoisting freedom’s flag. The balance of the problem—the rest of the human situation—is the Lord’s; as far as I know, the only part of the world for which He holds me responsible is myself and my use of the time given me.

Self-enlightenment is admittedly difficult; it is generally regarded as too rare an accomplishment to be an effective remedy for social disaster. But how, in heaven’s name, can an unenlightened person enlighten someone else! It is impossible! Choose difficulty, therefore; not impossibility!

Far more common, however, is the cry that self-enlightenment is too slow. The laggard we bemoan can be identified by looking in the mirror. This character, whoever he may be, is forever powerless to hasten enlightenment other than his own. In doubt? Then in what other manner can I hasten yours? True, we are in a hurry but choose self-acceleration, the only kind that has any get up and go to it.

Virtues and talents are required to raise freedom’s flag from half-mast. Let each lend that which is within his power during his time. As George Washington phrased this idea: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”

[1] Another way to gain awareness: Take the integer 1 and write 1-1-1-1-1-1 on and on. Never will there be a point beyond which another 1 cannot be added. Or divide 1 by 2 and keep on dividing. There never will be a fraction so small but what it is still divisible.

29

ACTUALLY, WHAT’S THE HURRY?

Wisely and slow; they stumble that run fast.

—SHAKESPEARE

Even as Emerson, I have never found a language of sufficient energy to convey the importance of integrity and other virtues. Nor have I been able to communicate what I sense to be the distinction between a program for destruction and methods for achieving creative objectives. Attempts to create through destructive actions are doomed to fail. As reason and logic suggest, “the end pre-exists in the means.” Employ means appropriate to destructive aims and the result will be destructive—it has to be. Yet, it seems most difficult to establish and explain this point with respect to our own work.

As a starter, contemplate this sample from “The Revolutionary Catechism,” the credo followed by Lenin, Stalin, and others, the most revoltingly destructive objective I have ever read:

Night and day he [the revolutionary] must have but one thought, one aim—merciless destruction. He must hate everyone and everything in it with an equal hatred.[1]

What kind of action is best suited to achieve this mad and destructive objective? Its essence has to be violent confrontation and the elimination or removal of all who stand in the way. This means shooting, clubbing, incarceration, lying, cheating, defamation, name-calling, utter intolerance. The old moral standards and ideals are discarded. There can be no admission of any higher consciousness than the paranoid fanaticism exhibited in these wild, depraved offshoots of the human race. Nothing so low is to be found in the animal world.

NONE IS PERFECT

The above is but the nadir in destructive aims. Careful assessment reveals that this degeneracy exists to some degree in all of us; there are few, if any, in whom no traces of these faults exist. Who among us is simon-pure? Have I entirely freed myself of this destructive attitude? Determining how much of this depravity is to be found among Americans is easy enough: merely assay our own political front with its rapidly growing and popularly supported authoritarianism—“do as I say, or else.” For the past forty years elections have been races between political parties each sparked by the very domineering traits we profess to abhor in others.

True, we have not stooped to shooting political opponents, but the recent rash of bombings and assassinations is symptomatic. Our own destructive aims are numerous enough that we may deduce the type of action forthcoming for their attainment. We need not turn to revolutionary handbooks for such instruction.

The password for destructive ends is “hurry.” Don’t think! Lie, pin a bad label on dissenters—right now! Power grabbing admits of no scruples. It is a game of rapid-fire confrontation, the speedier the better. Strike first or get struck, as in a prize fight. Merely observe the military tactics and terminology associated with the numerous domestic welfare programs. Appeals to force rather than reason!

CONFRONTATION!

In any event, our own destructive aims are so prevalent—along with the means or tactics appropriate for their attainment—that, thoughtlessly, most people resort to these very same means to achieve creative ends. Discouragingly typical are these words from a thoroughgoing anti-socialist:

I believe it is my duty and your duty to fight these subversive organizations with everything we have. If you do not wish to defend America other than to explain the advantages of private enterprise, then I must with disappointment and sorrow say farewell to FEE.

In a word, confrontation! What is meant by fight? Surely not shooting! Were that the case, Nechayev’s Catechism could be used word for word. Only the title would need to be changed to “A Reactionary’s Catechism.”

How are we to break ourselves of this pernicious habit? That is the question. Doubtless, our friend who sends his farewell would scrupulously avoid the tactic of confrontation if he knew that it would aid and abet a way of life he abhors. However, he does not know; and for two reasons: (1) he does not understand that this is a mind-changing problem, and (2) he does not see that his proposed action would induce a reaction featured not by correction but by a proliferation of the ways he would be rid of. Call a sinner a devil and he will not thereby become saintly but will only be hardened in his sins. If I call you a so-and-so, you will not be attracted to but repulsed by my point of view. The sum of it is that people are not pushed, shoved, forced, bashed into virtue. Confrontation in any of its forms is virtue’s antagonist; it is a tactic appropriate only to destructive aims.

CHOOSING THE MEANS

I wish as much as anyone to be rid of coercive collectivism in all its forms—call it socialism, communism, or whatever. But I must carefully assess the means proposed for doing this lest I aggravate rather than improve the situation. At the very least, I must employ only those means which are appropriate to creative ends, for increasing human liberty is unquestionably in the creative realm.

Coercive collectivism grows so rapidly in this and other countries because there are so few who understand and can explain with clarity its opposite: namely, the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life along with its moral and spiritual antecedents. Count the ones known to you personally who can do more than rant and sputter at the nonsense. How many are skilled expositors of the freedom philosophy?

The absence of an understanding of freedom amounts to an intellectual vacuum into which all sorts of collectivist ideas flow. Nonsense has no choice except to follow the lines of least resistance; it has to obey its nature and, thus, flows willy-nilly into empty heads.

The task, then, is to get an ever-improving understanding into our own heads. If this point be granted, we are faced with an endeavor that is exclusively creative: learning, thinking in areas yet unexplored, philosophizing.

Reflect on what this means. Such an endeavor is featured not only by study and deep thought but by reflection and an “ability to see and understand clearly the inner nature of things”: insight. These qualities of the soul and mind can never be hurried. What could be more absurd than to exclaim: “I am now going to have some brilliant ideas and great insights!” These qualities do not respond to commands or incantations.

INHIBITIONS TO CREATIVITY

No one can accurately formulate the conditions congenial to creativity, even for self, let alone for others. The best one can do is to identify and then abandon those postures and attitudes which inhibit creativity. Here are a few that occur to me.

• Haste: except to get day-to-day chores into the past tense and thus to free oneself for reflection, impatience is a posture unfavorable to new ideas and insights. These cannot be rushed into mind; rather, they flow best into a mind that is at peace with itself. While the world around us with all of its shocking appearances seems to demand action now, that is a demand that cannot be met. Why? It is contrary to the way monumental shifts in understanding are brought about. Therefore, think not in terms of any immediate effects, but of the long range consequences when people come to new perceptions of truth. A great genius’ new light is rarely beheld in the day of its advent. More than likely months, years, decades, or even centuries will pass before many take sight of it. Let not this fact of life disturb one’s reflections.

• Confrontation: growth in awareness, perception, consciousness never occurs while berating others orally or physically. Violence is an affliction, and it is highly contagious.

• Anger: no creative act was ever done in anger. One never reflects or thinks when thus impassioned.

• Hate is dark as love is light. Insight cannot penetrate the darkness of hatred.

• Worry: fret not over that which is beyond your control. This allows unfettered attention to self-improvement, which is the limit of any person’s responsibility.

In summary, our problem is one of achieving an about-face in thinking, a switch from destructive aims and methods to an enlightenment. We need only bear in mind that the desired change depends upon the law of attraction: others will turn to you or me if, in their judgment, we have light they wish to share.

If we would rise above the squabbles and the conflicts with their destructive results, we must see how much candle power of our own we can generate. My counsel to concerned individuals is to stay out of the fight and get into the game; either brighten up or forget the whole thing. There is fun in making the first choice—serious but sportive—and in it lies the only hope for freedom.

[1] See “The Revolutionary Catechism,” written by Nechayev, in The Life and Death of Lenin by Robert Payne, New York, 1964, pp. 24–29.

30

FINDING OUT

If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.

—SIR ISAAC NEWTON

The social problems of our time which so gravely concern freedom devotees can never be resolved by our singling out and scolding those presumed responsible. We may derive satisfaction from “telling ’em off,” but this solves nothing. The correct procedure is quite the opposite: it requires finding out on your part as well as mine. This is to say that the more a person increases his awareness, the more will others try to “find out” from him. The “telling ’em off” approach—trying to ram one’s “wisdom” into their “stupid” heads—only darkens the way to understanding. Mere disparagement tends to convince people that their fallacies must be right; it never enlightens. Why? The method itself is the height of folly, being wholly at odds with the finding-out or listening or discovering process.

In the opening chapter I referred to the Voices Without and the Voice Within—listening to each, finding out from both. I voiced the opinion that “all the truth and righteousness known to man originates as the Voice Within.” Among the required disciplines: Concentration—prepare to think it through! This is the essence of an interesting theory I came upon years ago.

If my theory is correct, the frequency of ideas per minute, so to speak, will be greatly increased under a powerful mood of concentration. Under these conditions the mind of the artist [poet, painter, philosopher, musician, or whoever] becomes, as it were, an intense magnetic field gathering up ideas from realms of mind not possible to contact under ordinary circumstances.[1]

The term, “magnetic field,” is as descriptive of this phenomenon as any I have come upon; the theory is that inspiration responds as if the mind in focus attracts ideas to itself. There is at work at the human level what a distinguished scientist refers to as “this mysterious attractive force.”

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.”[2]

STICK TO COMMON SENSE

Let Galileo make my concluding point as he explains why he wrote his theories in what he called “the colloquial tongue”:

I am induced to do this by seeing how young men are sent through the universities at random to be made physicians, philosophers, and so on; thus many of them are committed to professions for which they are unsuited, while other men who would be fitted for these are taken up by family cares and other occupations remote from literature. The latter are, as Ruzzante would say, furnished with “horse sense,” but because they are unable to read things that are “Greek to them” they become convinced that in those “big books there are great things of logic and philosophy and still more that is way over their heads.” Now I want them to see that just as nature has given to them, as well as to philosophers, eyes with which to see her works, so she has also given them brains capable of penetrating and understanding them.[3] (Italics added)

What instruction emerges? It is that you—whoever you are, whatever your status, however much or little your formal schooling—never, never sell yourself short. Remember Dr. Fritz Kunkel’s astute observation: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.” My experience during the past forty years confirms this, which is to say, that some of the finest thinking I have encountered—creativity—has emerged as much from so-called commoners as from the acclaimed elite.

Finding out what these hidden powers are—unmasking, listening to the Voice Within—should be the aim of anyone and everyone. The reward? Readiness!

[1] Rosamond E. M. Harding, The Anatomy of Inspiration, Cambridge, England, 1967, p. 135.

[2] Anthony Standen, Science As A Sacred Cow, New York, 1950, pp. 63–64.

[3] See Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, Translated by Stillman Drake, Garden City, N.Y., 1957, p. 84.

Having My Way

Leonard E. Read

1974

To

Benjamin A. Rogge

and those others who make their lights as bright as they can be

1

HOW I MAY HAVE MY OWN WAY

Let him that would save the world first move himself.

—SOCRATES

It seems that nearly everyone has an instinctive desire to have his own way. Too often this becomes insistent and shows forth as “Do as I say, or else!” No two desires are alike, and this tendency of each to insist on having his own way may well be a major source of conflict and disharmony in society. Now, if I read man’s purpose aright, we should be heading toward harmonious rather than conflicting relationships, and something unintelligent goes on here if one of man’s instinctive desires is hostile to his life’s purpose. It is for this reason that I wish to think through for myself how I can have my own way and, at the same time, do no injury or injustice to others—indeed, be an asset to them. If I can find a way to live like this, then others can also.

Perhaps the answer will come clear if I can resolve two other questions: Who am I? and Where am I going? Or, better yet, What really is my way? Another phrasing of these questions might be: What is man’s nature? and What is man’s destiny? These speculations are as ancient as man himself. Although they may be beyond the capacity of any person to answer, some light may be shed as one wrestles with them.

Who am I? This question is seldom raised because most answers to it are so vague. Such a question falls into the same unfathomable category as Who or What is God or Creation? Nonetheless, it is interesting to speculate, for one comes upon this anomaly: I am next to nothing and yet a part of everything. Infinitesimal though I be, I am phased into the Infinite!

Who am I? Here’s one part of the answer: I am one octillion atoms—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—a number difficult to grasp unless we use the imagination. Cover the surface of this earth—and the seas—with dried peas to a depth of four feet and that would fall far, far short of an octillion. Go out into the universe and cover 250,000 other earth-sized planets with four feet of peas and that would be the number of atoms in my make up.[1]

The atom? It is so small that 30 trillion atoms could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping. Blow it up to 100 yards in diameter and what do you behold? Radiant energy in the form of electrons, neutrons, and the like, in wave sequences flying about at the speed of light. In the center is the atomic nucleus which, after being thus expanded, is the size of a pinhead. This and this alone is “stuff,” and no one knows what it is, except that it appears “solid.” All else is empty space.

Were it possible to apply an atomic press to me and squeeze out all but the “stuff,”—the nuclei—I would be a particle so small that it would not be discernible on a piece of white paper. In a word, I am but a mere speck—next to nothing!

As for the other side of the coin, there is a sense in which I am more than a mere, mechanistic speck—infinitely more. For instance, my octillion atoms are not the same atoms they were a few years ago. They continuously escape and a new octillion enters about every five years. To where do they escape and from whence come the new ones? To and from everywhere throughout the universe! As the famous chemist, Dr. Andrews, writes:

There is a high probability that you have in your body right now a thousand atoms that were once in the body of Julius Caesar. . . . And speaking very reverently, we can say that each of us has in his body a thousand atoms that were in the body of Christ . . . the individual atoms are scarcely more than the shadows of a far deeper reality that we find in this total atomic harmony within us, the spirit of our Creator within us.

If I wave my hand . . . it not only moves the leaves on the trees outside, creates ripples down on the water of the bay, but also moves the moon; the sun feels this motion, and the stars; even the farthest nebula will tremble because of the motion of my hand. As a famous physicist put it, every heartbeat is felt through the entire universe.

. . . there is in each of us an eternal core, call it dynamic force, call it personality, call it spirit or soul or symphony or what you will; there is in us this core, this director of our symphony of life that somehow has an invariance that transcends the changes of space and time. And in this way, we can understand that in mortal life there is this immortal reality that merges with the eternal.[2]

So, I am next to nothing—and a part of everything—as is every human being. That’s who and what you are and I am!

Like almost everyone else, I want to have my own way. Is this possible? Yes, if my way be right; indeed, having one’s own way is not only possible but certain if the way be right, and just as certainly impossible if the way be wrong. Thus, having one’s own way or not revolves around right and wrong behavior. While few matters stand more in contention than right and wrong, I have a way of drawing the line that suits me.

Wrote Thoreau, “If I knew for a certainty that a man was coming to my house with the conscious design of doing me good, I should run for my life.” When anyone attempts to run the life of another, to mold the other to his own design, to cast anyone else in his own image—regardless of intent, be it degrading or generous—the other should indeed run for his life. Why? It is this domineering trait that arouses conflict and disharmony in society and accounts for the taking of lives by the millions.

If making carbon copies of others be one’s intention, he will never have his own way. It is impossible; it cannot be done. Point to a single success! The one dominated is resentful, and well he might be. Any respect he may have had gives way to disfavor, even hate. And the dominator is no less harmed; he not only views the failures at his own hand but, if he has any sense at all, he notes that in attempting to run the lives of others he has neglected to control and improve his own life. Thus does the harm spread in both directions, whether it stems from a private dictocrat lording it over only one other or, as we are seeing more and more, political dictocrats lording it over millions! Not a one of them will have his own way.

Very well! What is the right way as I see it? I take my cue from Socrates: “Let him that would save the world first move himself.” In a word, I have not been given the world to save; you are not my target, nor is anyone else. Who then? Just me—that person who is at once next to nothing and a part of everything!

To help keep myself on target, I have embraced a few guidelines, for which I claim no originality:

• Interfere with no one’s creative actions.

• Do not to others that which I would not have them do to me.

• Extend respect and kindness to others, even when they appear to be wrong.

• Share my recipes for living, cooking, or whatever with anyone who cares to know.

• Strive for the perfection of my own goods and/or services and exchange with others when mutually advantageous.

• Maintain enthusiasm and curiosity.

• Yield not to stress and hardship.

• Profit from error by open confession.

• Condone no special privilege for self or others.

• Let all proclaimed positions be an accurate reflection of whatever my highest conscience dictates as right—integrity.

• Seek truth, play fair with everyone, learn teamwork.

What then is required to have my own way? Nothing more than to practice the kind of self-control which aligns individual lives with the master pattern. Anyone who cannot so master his own life does not deserve to have his own way.

Finally, consider how a more or less general practice of such ways would lead away from conflict and toward harmony in society, that is, toward man’s destiny. The way of personal improvement in peace and harmony—the way of freedom—is an open road uncluttered by man-made barriers.

* * *

The following chapters were written in answer to various questions—all relevant to the freedom theme—that have been raised in recent months. Old questions, old answers—so why not forget them? Strange as it may seem, they are important to me primarily because of questions that will be raised during coming months!

Time after time I have been stumped by a question that has popped into my head, and then thought it through for myself. Almost invariably, an inquiring soul, shortly thereafter, has raised the identical question. What goes on here? I do not know. In any event, how satisfying it is to reply with a carefully considered answer rather than a hasty and stumbling effort.

It is a pleasure to share these thoughts along the way with anyone who cares to listen.

[1] See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Dr. Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.

[2] Ibid.

2

HUMILITY: THE WAY OF FREEDOM

The spirit of God delights to dwell in the hearts of the humble.

—ERASMUS

No person known to me has more than scratched the surface in making the case for human freedom. It is not for the lack of valiant effort; thousands are trying, and their efforts range from name-calling to masterful expositions of the principles of political economy—yet with little if any success. We have been missing the boat; we simply have not hit upon the way. It is time to search beyond our normal explorations.

I am convinced that the route to human freedom is largely psychological, consisting in an awareness of and an adherence to that which is beyond the physical or material. True, this is an ancient idea, but it may sound strange to many in this day and age:

This influx in the mind [insight, intuition, discovery, invention, and so on] seems to me to be something I receive. I do not seem to generate it myself. If it came from me, I would suspect it; I would doubtless see it as a rationalization of my own hidden desires and aspirations. . . . This is something fresh and apart—not me. This is life flowing. This is life in a rhythm of incessant flowing and ascension. What is it? Who knows? “There is something,” as Emerson said; and that is all I need by way of philosophy. There is something, and it works.[1]

In this passage, Emerson and Dillaway were describing something in the Cosmic Order over and beyond their own minds or anyone else’s. This “something” has been and is variously referred to as God, Jehovah, Brahma, the Creator or Creation, Infinite Intelligence or Mind or Consciousness. No one can catalogue the Infinite; we may know that it is but not what it is. It is beyond mundane categories, which is the point of the second Commandment: “Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image. . . .” In a word, there is indeed a mysterious Universal Power, but no more than an awareness of its presence is possible. Awareness, however, is all that is necessary.

A concept or idea is not to be summarily dismissed simply for being mysterious! Dig below the surface of the commonplace and mystery is there. No one knows what electricity is. Yet, we are aware of this form of radiant energy and harness it to our use. Our understanding of gravitation scratches the surface, and the same goes for memory, the atom, the sun in our galaxy, a lily, or the human cortex.

Let us recognize this fact: of none of these things—any more than of God—do we have more than an inkling of its nature! These everyday samplings of the Universal Power come to seem commonplace in our experience, and so we fail to recognize that our knowledge of them consists of mere inklings: we behave as if we were the Source, as if they were of our own hand. The Source—the Universal Power, whatever it is—is not thought to be of our own hand and, as a consequence, is often derided as sheer mysticism. Actually, this Source is no more esoteric than are any of its trillions of manifestations: all forms of life, a raindrop, the ring of your phone, a pencil, or power steering.

I am beginning to appreciate the importance of Voltaire’s pronouncement to Frederick the Great:

If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent Him. But all Nature cries aloud that He does exist, that there is a supreme intelligence, an immense power, an admirable order and everything teaches us our own dependence on it.

Dependence? Human freedom is out of the question in the absence of this awareness, that is, without a profound belief that there is “something” over and beyond our finite minds. Why? Humility, in this unique sense, is an absolute prerequisite to freedom, and it cannot function in the soul of man when he falls into the error of believing that ideas and material blessings are of his own little hand. The achievement of humility is the key to our problem’s solution. I am suggesting that the way of humility is the way to freedom—the way we have been overlooking.[2]

What is humility in its highest sense? It is knowing that one’s knowledge is imperfect or incomplete. Inklings, yes; all-wise, never! Humility, as here used, is an awareness that the individual is not the originator but only the receiver of intelligence. Recognized is the fact that man, at best, only intercepts or tunes in understanding, truth, wisdom flowing from “something” higher than himself. This awareness is the essence of humility.

Man is not the Almighty and, in all humility, should know it. According to Erasmus, the spirit of God delights to dwell in those so graced. Goethe, using still another term for this “something,” further clarifies the meaning of humility in its highest sense:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

I have referred to humility as a psychological rather than a religious concept. Many of the leaders and followers of organized religions have exhibited far too much arrogance to be held up as models of humility. Witness the crusades! Or the millions who were slaughtered in central Europe to advance the glory of God![3] Or the present-day advocacy of coercive force from thousands of pulpits to achieve “social goals”! I repeat that the way to freedom is through humility, not arrogance.

Try to imagine a society of know-it-alls, everyone believing himself to be the source of wisdom; all dictocrats, each attempting to dominate all the others. Freedom could not grace such a society—all arrogance, no humility! Indeed, it seems unlikely that such a society could exist. Nature could not reveal any of her secrets to such people; they already know everything. “Blind leaders of the blind.”

On the other hand, imagine a population composed mostly of individuals blessed with humility as here defined. Under such circumstances any dictator, or even the least hint of the domineering trait in any person, would be looked upon with disfavor. Demagogues would have no charisma; their siren voices would afford little if any attraction; their schemes to domineer would be ignored. When the domineering trait is curbed, freedom reigns! And the process is to acquire and develop the quality of humility!

Finally, there is a thought without which true humility is unattainable: think not of the tyrant as a fool, only of the domineering trait as foolish. It has been wisely said, “Hate not the sinner, only the sin.”

[1] See Consent by Newton Dillaway (Unity Village, Mo.: Unity Books, 1967), p. 27.

[2] Admittedly, were everyone humble in this unique sense, and utterly lacking in other virtues such as integrity, initiative, and so on, they could be free and still perish. It is my belief, however, that the other virtues tend to sprout and bloom when this kind of humility is mastered.

[3] Father Joseph, a devout Capuchin monk and chief advisor to Cardinal Richelieu, believed that the political ascendency of France was the way to bring God to humanity. For an interesting account of this arrogance—the end justifies the means—see Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941).

3

THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

—THOREAU

I believe the Third Beatitude has a profound message, perhaps more significant in our time than ever before. Indeed, it may well hold the key to the survival of the human race. If this is so, it behooves us to seek its meaning and to become worthy of its promise.

Seek its meaning? Cannot people as literate as most Americans read plain English? The words, yes; the precise meaning of the ideas those words symbolize, no. Perfect communication presupposes the perfect sayer and the perfect hearer. Which of us is able to say exactly what he means? And what individual accurately hears or reads another’s inexactitudes? Approximations at best, even when discoursing in a common language!

Who are “the meek”? Surely not the Casper Milquetoasts—“timid, shrinking, apologetic” persons. It doesn’t make sense to suggest that the earth be turned over to them. Yet, this is the image “the meek” first brings to the mind of an English-speaking American. And what is meant by “inherit the earth”? Obviously, it does not mean to “. . . receive (property) by the laws of inheritance.” That “the meek shall inherit the earth” must mean far more than it seems. What, pray tell, can it be!

Even a linguistic layman, if he admits the difficulty of communicating in his own language, cannot help but grasp the enormously greater problem in deducing the precise meaning from other languages. There are some simple, concrete words such as yes, ja, si, oui, da; but abstract or idea words, more often than not, have no exact equivalent in other languages.

Take the word meek. Originally, it was in Aramaic: inwethān. Translated to Greek, it became praos. According to the late Gerald Heard,

There seems little doubt that praos stands for a word the meaning of which is opposed to “arrogant,” “domineering,” “overbearing,” “aggressive,” “bellicose.”

The French translated the Greek praos to debonair. “That,” writes Heard, “is a startling, gay contrast [to meek]. Instead of the motto being ‘Please don’t kick me,’ we find ‘Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.’”

After a careful analysis of the word usage in the period before and during the time of the King James translation, the scholarly Gerald Heard concludes that the word “meek” implied “a wonderful, inherent, teachability.”[1] In a word, the Third Beatitude should read, “Blessed are the teachable for they shall inherit the earth.” To my way of thinking, this is wisdom of the highest order.

So, who are the teachable? Today, in the most advanced countries, knowledge—technical, scientific, and the like—is immeasurably greater than, say, twelve decades ago. A few examples:

• Back then we could deliver the human voice at the speed of sound and perhaps a distance of 50 yards. Now? At the speed of light and not only around this earth but far into outer space!

• Human beings then could be delivered at the speed a horse could run. Presently? Around the world in a few hours—even to the moon in a few days!

• My grandfather could bathe in rivers or pools or in rainwater caught in a barrel or cistern or water pumped from a household well. Today? Millions of homes have hot and cold running water often piped from miles away.

• Food? It is no longer confined to what could be raised at home. I enjoy spinach in New York picked the day before in California. The grocery store of my boyhood had no more items than I could rattle off in my head. The store at which I shop today has 10,000 items.

One could go on and on with examples of this miraculous burst of knowledge. In no department of life is the miracle more pronounced than in the harnessing of electrical energy. So dependent have we become on power from this source that a return to twelve decades ago would mean utter collapse. Hardly anyone doubts that this remarkable economic asset is of our own hands. Yet, who on earth can define electricity or knows what it is?

What is all of this knowledge doing to modern man? How does it affect his outlook and his attitudes? The fact that we know how to harness the unknown leads far too many people in today’s world to embrace the little god syndrome, convinced that there is no Source above the finite human mind. Infinite though it be, few there are who recognize it. In a recent speech, I repeated the line, “Only God can make a tree.” A graduate student sharply responded, “Until now!”

Such arrogance is the very opposite of inwethān which the Greeks translated to praos. We witness the know-it-alls! Not only are they not teachable but, far worse, they are the authors of authoritarianism and wars. A growing knowledge of how to harness the Unknown, unless scrupulously weighed and put in place, leads to a hopeless separation from the Infinite Unknown—man and Source divorced. This, I suggest, must lead to civil disaster.

So, how are we to describe the teachable, the inwethān, the praos, the debonair, the ones who will “inherit the earth”?

The idea Gerald Heard deduced from debonair—“Please let me know what I can do for you”—is not to be overlooked. This comes close to the Golden Rule, and the economics of voluntary exchanges. When I extend kindness and thoughtfulness to you, that is what you will extend to me; likewise when I render services to you in exchange for goods of yours. While such reciprocal relations appear contrary to natural instincts, such mutuality is possible and can be unbelievably rewarding. To prove it, try it!

The teachable are those who have taken the first step in wisdom: acknowledging mystery, they have emptied themselves of know-it-all-ness; humility is their hallmark, wanting-to-know-it-ness their ambition. Bear in mind that no person is educable on any subject prior to a state of inquisitiveness, that is, until his spirit of inquiry is aroused. The teachable are those who are forever probing, who recognize that our earthly gifts are not exclusively of our own hands; they sense that Infinite Something over and beyond their own minds. As seedlings, their roots go down but their shoots shaft toward the heavens. It is the teachable, and they alone, who will “inherit the earth.”

What is the meaning of “earth” in this context? In my view, it has nothing to do with acres of diamonds, soil, rock. Rather, it relates to man’s earthly potentialities: the evolution or emergence of individual faculties, a growth or development of awareness, perception, consciousness.

Stated another way, those who have so gained a control of themselves as to allow the search for Truth to take charge of their lives, are the ones who have the capacity to live their earthly lives to the full—to whom the real treasures of earth belong.

To me the Third Beatitude means simply: The teachable shall be graced with a realization of their earthly potentialities. Your or my understanding of and adherence to this wisdom may not “save” the human race but it is the key to one’s own salvation—the only commission you and I have been given.

[1] See The Code of Christ by Gerald Heard (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941), pp. 55–77 and 169–177.

4

LIFE STYLES

We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths; . . . He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

—GAMALIEL BAILEY

Some authors are praised more for their style than for the content of their work; others are criticized for the lack of style. According to Longfellow, “With many readers, brilliancy of style passes for affluence of thought; they mistake buttercups in the grass for immeasurable gold mines underground.”

There are styles in music ranging from Bach to rock.

Observe how styles have changed in paintings: from communicative art such as Raphael’s “The School of Athens” to the noncommunicative works of Picasso and others of the “modern school.”

Hairdos and dress? How styles have changed from this to that, to nothing—and back again!

My concern, however, is not so much with changing styles in dress or art as with swings in thinking for self, nobility of mind, acting one’s best—the changes in style of life. Shifts in life styles appear to be as extreme as those cited above—though perhaps not as easily noted or measured. The question is, are the changes in life style the result of the same type of force as are the changes in dress? Are we dragged from freedom into authoritarianism or lifted from authoritarianism to freedom by the same influences that shift us from communicative to noncommunicative art and back again? If so, we should learn what these forces and influences are.

Perhaps the German poet, Schiller, glimpsed the answer: “Man is an imitative creature, and whoever is foremost leads the herd.” Whether the movement is good or bad, upward or downward, there is always someone who is foremost, at the head of the class. The millions, for the most part, are imitators; they follow the leader. As to the style in dresses, for instance, it was not that millions of women simultaneously thought of and adopted mini-skirts. Some designer had a notion and it “caught on.” Similarly, it was not that millions of farmers demanded in unison that they be paid for not growing food. A politician or bureaucrat had a “bright idea” which farmers then took to be their “right.” Styles of whatever kind are set in this manner.

Parenthetically, styles in all fields appear to deteriorate or improve, to go up and down together—as if in an elevator. We note morality, religion, newscasting, poetry, art, economic thinking, or whatever, ascending or descending as if in a package. For instance, we do not observe statesmanship on the upswing while education is on the downswing. All of history seems to confirm this pattern of relatedness in styles; a renaissance follows the “dark ages”; then a decline, succeeded in turn by an era of progress; and so on. Action, reaction; evolution, devolution!

Be it noted, also, that the masses of people feel as certain of their righteousness when their situation is deteriorating as when it is improving. The millions have no more doubt about their rectitude when they are falling into authoritarianism—slavery—than when they are rising and becoming free and self-responsible. It is imitation in either situation! There is, wrote Van Wyck Brooks, “the illusion that to be modern is worth all the other virtues; . . . as if to keep up with the mode were more important than any of the great realities of life. . . .” Keeping up with the mode or the style is the form of influence that sways the countless millions who do no thinking for themselves.

The solution, if there be one, is to change the life style. But how in heaven’s name can this be done? A clue is to be found in this sage observation:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.[1]

The right course can be pursued only when it is recognized that the recovery of senses is a one-by-one process. Never has there been a massive upward swing in intelligence and righteousness. Rather, we find always the one, the style-setter, the foremost—in combination with the masses of imitators.

Setting the style for the downward swings is as easy as falling off a log: simply refuse to think, practice bad habits, repeat nonsense, cater to weakness and greed. The upward swing, on the other hand, is as difficult as the other is easy. Falling is simply “letting yourself go”; rising demands the exercise of every talent and virtue within one’s reach. A higher life style calls for the person “who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.” The foremost!

Who might that individual be? He might be the one you see in the mirror! True, the countless millions tend to be imitators; yet each of us is potentially a style-setter. Every one of us has hidden talents unknown to others—or even to ourselves! The problem is to unmask or release that talent, and this has to be an “inside job.”

There is only one way to look at this problem: that person could be you or me. In the absence of such a possibility, there can be no style-setter of any account, no one of sufficient magnetism or attractiveness to start the upswing. This is to say that no one is warranted in his rising expectations unless he is preparing himself to serve as exemplar. The matter is far too urgent to “let George do it”; each person is accountable for himself.

So, let anyone who is really concerned reflect on his own solution, namely, unmasking, releasing his hidden talents. But where will he find the formula? I recently stumbled onto an answer and referred to it as “the law of readiness.”[2] Original? Hardly! According to an ancient Hindu saying, “When the pupil is ready, the teacher will appear.” To my way of thinking, that is an important truth and, as Emerson wrote, “The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it.” Thinking of ourselves as pupils, which doubtless we should, how do we ready ourselves that the teacher may appear? What are the successive steps to becoming a style-setter?

To unmask, to release one’s hidden talents, seems to require that he become a pupil. Anyone who is unable or unwilling to undertake the effort and joy of learning is well advised to forget the subject here in question, for he seems destined to stay with the herd, the imitators. No teacher ever appears to a know-it-all or to one who cares not.

Who is the teacher that will appear when the pupil is ready? The answer is shrouded in mystery. Might as well ask: from whence comes insight? How explain an intuitive thought? There are forces at work about which we know nothing—except that they are at work! At the moment of readiness, a book will appear, or someone will drop a relevant remark. Indeed, the idea one seeks may come in a dream. The teacher in these instances? Who knows! Edison, Henry Poincare, and ever so many other creative individuals have acknowledged the mystery. They concede that ideas come to them “as if from out of the blue.” The “teacher,” as the term is used here, is an enlightenment regardless of the form in which it shows forth. Does all of this sound unbelievable? Perhaps it is to anyone who has walled himself off from such experiences, but conviction comes when the matter is put to the test. The proof will be disclosed as the effort is made.

Conceded, no two persons achieve readiness in the same way. It appears to be a natural or inherited trait with a few. Observe child prodigies—“to the manner born.” They come onto this earth already unmasked; their talents are not hidden. The mill run of us, however, are not thus graced. Nothing short of a disciplined, conscious effort can break down the walls and permit an escape from mediocrity. Here are some of the steps to readiness which have worked to some extent for me.

• The first requirement, as I see it, is nothing less than a passionate, prayerful desire to realize one’s potentialities, to tap the resources within. To be unresponsive to this urgency is to spend one’s years with the undiscovered self.

• Desire for readiness, by itself, is useless. It’s like craving for “all this and heaven too” without striving. Said Franklin, “He that lives on hopes will die fasting.” Any realization of the desire must be backed up, accompanied by, indefatigable and joyful effort. If it isn’t joyful nothing will happen—the mask won’t lift, the teacher will not appear.

• The goal of readiness must have top priority. One eats, sleeps, exercises, earns a living, saves, reads, listens, even chooses conversationists, not as ends in themselves but as means to this noble goal. Otherwise, the promise that “the teacher will appear” is but pretty phrasing, the words of a dreamer.

• Rid the self of distractions that the eye may be focused on the object; get all chores into the past tense pronto! The teacher puts in no appearance amidst shambles, be they on the desk or in the mind. Clear the decks!

• So the mind is barren! What else is there to think through, you say? Confess this plight and make a simple plea for a clue: “If you please.” Confess to and ask from whom? The ever-seeking self is sufficient. If the preparations be adequate, the teacher will appear and in short order, as if by magic. “Seek and ye shall find.” If in doubt, try it!

• Yes, the teacher will appear announcing the subject to be explored—but just the subject and nothing more. The teacher will go no further—enlightenment will not begin—until the pupil begins. This is to say that the teacher can send no thoughts until the pupil’s receiving set is turned on and tuned in. Of what does this machinery consist? Pure and undisturbed concentration on the subject that has been announced! And persistence! Regardless of how dark the outlook or how hopeless the prospects of success, try, try and try again. Presto, the light! Off comes the mask! Behold, the discovered self!

• The technique of trying? Put the ideas on paper; resort to the written word. This makes it possible for the ever-seeking self to capture all that comes to mind and put it in orderly sequence. As each step is spelled out and recorded, the next step becomes obvious.

The above are my steps to readiness, set forth with the hope that, perchance, they might serve another. As Shakespeare said, “Readiness is all.” Readiness is indeed all if one aspires to be a style-setter—the foremost. And why not? Is there a nobler earthly goal than this? Why should not everyone spend his years with the world’s most important person—the discovered self!

[1] See Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay (New York: Noonday Press, 1969), p. xx. From the Preface to edition of 1852.

[2] See the first three chapters in my book, Who’s Listening? (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1973).

5

SHOEMAKER, STICK TO YOUR LAST

The structuring of a good society is as much your “last” as any other concern.

Before exploring the propriety of this ancient adage, let us enjoy the comedy of its reputed origin. Galileo tells the story:

Apelles was court painter to Alexander the Great. He is reported on one occasion to have stationed himself behind one of his paintings in order to listen to the remarks of the spectators. When a passing shoemaker was heard criticizing the representation of a boot, Apelles stepped out to thank the workman and ask for correction. But the emboldened cobbler then began to extend his adverse remarks to other parts of the picture, and Apelles stopped him with the now proverbial admonition: “Let the shoemaker stick to his last.”[1]

What this admonition amounts to is this: Mind your own business! At first blush, this has all the earmarks of unqualified good counsel. Take my own case: I know substantially nothing about boots, paintings, musical composition, or countless other matters. Far be it from me to tell a cobbler or an Apelles or a Bach what to do. Clearly, there are thousands of ventures, befitting the uniqueness of others, that are beyond my ken and are no business of mine. Apelles was right in admonishing the shoemaker to stick to his last and he would be equally right were he to tell you and me to mind our own business.

But what is our own business? It is conceivable that simple ignorance keeps me unaware of something that properly is my business. My business is to fulfill my responsibilities, and laziness may cause me to shirk my rightful obligations. In short, there is more to minding one’s own business than first meets the eye, more than just keeping our noses out of other people’s business.

There is a matter of transcendent importance that I believe is everybody’s business: the structuring of a good society! Were we to concentrate on this aspect of our own business as much as we are inclined to meddle in what is surely none of our business, a good society would be a viable prospect. Why all of this emphasis on the good society? It is the environmental prerequisite to individual fulfillment. And that is your business—and mine!

The need for a good society is and always has been low on the list of popular human cravings and aspirations. Yet, there is no other subject since the dawn of history about which more has been written. Here is a matter that is everybody’s business, but relatively few recognize their responsibility. The subject is seemingly so difficult that most people pigeonhole it as one of those specialized activities that is none of one’s business—something like the shoemaker telling Apelles how to paint a picture.

Wherein lies the cause of this enigma? Why all of this perplexity? When people in general are unaware of their personal stake in the good society and have no opinions of their own, when they think this is a matter requiring only the attention of specialists, they cannot tell a wise counselor from a charlatan; they are the easy victims of utopian dreamers, seekers after power, organizational gadgetry designers.

Let me venture a guess: the thoughts and ideas that have been written and spoken on the sane and sound side of this subject are as abundant as the plethora of fallacious notions. The former, however, are but little heeded; whereas, millions of people support and applaud the latter. How is this one-sidedness to be explained? People who insist that it is none of their business and who remain intellectually sterile so far as the good society is concerned, are attracted to political gimmicks, to shortcuts, to promises of rewards that put no demands upon them—none whatsoever! All this and heaven too, and no need to attend to personal virtues!

Why do so many people get the false notion that the structuring of a good society is over their heads? It is simply because the schemes to which they are attracted—promises of the guaranteed life—are so varied, complex, and nonsensical that no one can understand them, not even the authors! It is not because people are lacking in a capability to understand but, rather, that their eyes are cast upon that which cannot be comprehended. They are not blind; they are simply staring at darkness!

Where then is the light? The light is within the undiscovered self! And the only problem is to find it. If this procedure is simple, then the structuring of the good society is simple; for society, we must remember, is but a name we give to the aggregate of all the You’s and I’s. You and I give society whatever character it has, and no society can be better than are the individuals who compose it. You cannot make me good, or even better than I am. Nor can all the social planners and schemers in the world. I alone have any control over my goodness or improvement, and you alone over yours. To become aware of this and then to strive for self-improvement is to mind one’s own business—including one’s obligation to promote the good society.

How simple is it to become the good citizen? As simple as to understand and to adhere to the most widely pronounced and the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character: the Golden Rule.

There is a companion guideline to good citizenship, as simple to follow and as infallible as the Golden Rule: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and all these things shall be added unto you.” Another way to phrase this guideline is: put truth and righteousness first and foremost, that is, make righteous action one’s prime objective, forgetting the things of this world. What happens? The things of this world flow miraculously as a consequence. Caution: Never practice righteousness because of these things which flow as dividends; that puts things first. The result? Neither goodness nor things! Righteousness for the sake of righteousness—period!

From my seat in the bleachers, I judge that these simple guidelines to the improved self and the good society have been seldom used of late. Modern man seems to think that these were only for the poor souls of the ancient world and not for the advanced and the wise such as we! Wiseacres looking down upon the wise—or, so it seems to me.

However, an encouraging change is afoot, and here is one example of it:

One year ago I went to work for _________ Mutual Life Company. They told me at the time that I would not be a success in the business as I refused to use the selling gimmicks common to the industry. I felt that life insurance in its proper place did have a purpose and that there was room for at least one underwriter that would put the interests of the consumer ahead of his personal gain, the end result being that if I was doing a good job, I would somehow make a living also. The results were much better than expected—I not only made my living, I was the number one producer of life-disability & health insurance in the company for 1972. So I am still of the opinion that honesty pays!

The honesty referred to is precisely the same manner of conduct commended in the ancient guidelines. Heads of auto agencies, brokers, and others are reporting this same approach to me, with results no less astounding than the above. A friend in Tokyo has just sent me a book, The Matsushita Phenomenon, revealing that the outstanding industrial success in Japan is on this identical ethical wave length.[2] If numerous instances of this kind come to my attention, I assume there are many that do not; at least, I prefer to believe that an ethical and moral upswing is on its way.

Observe that this movement, now in its initial stage, is strictly voluntary, the only way that man can act in a free market society. And the market is automatically free when government is limited to keeping the peace, that is, to restraining destructive actions. Contrast this with the coercive society manifested by people in all walks of life saying, in effect, “I paid for it; I might as well get my share.” Implicit in this latter way of life is dictocratic control of creative activities: “Do as I say, or else!”

When any formula for the good society is not simple, forget it. When any formula cannot be understood by the so-called common man, forget it. Any formula that is not simple is not understood by anyone, even the author.

Keep always in mind the sage counsel of the eminent German psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

With Apelles, we can say “Shoemaker, stick to your last.” But the structuring of the good society is as much your “last” as any other concern of yours, regardless of who you are. And in order to mind one’s own business this matter must be tied with the improvement of self for first place among our priorities.

[1] See Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, translated by Stillman Drake (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books, 1957) p. 82.

[2] See The Matsushita Phenomenon by Rowland Gould (Tokyo: The Diamond Publishing Co., Ltd., 1970).

6

THE BLESSINGS OF ADVERSITY

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

—HORACE

Many devotees of freedom observe the current plunge into socialism—state interventionism, welfarism—and lament the hard times they see ahead. Full of foreboding, they fail to see that this adversity has its value, its blessings.

Prosperity, as Plutarch reminded us, “puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty.” When millions of people get this way, as today, they are no asset to freedom—the “high and mighty” never are. Thus, freedom loses much of its intellectual sustaining power which makes easy the plunge into socialism. Only common sense can come to the rescue, but the adversity can stimulate this needed quality. For it is an observed fact that the art of becoming consists of acts of overcoming. Without obstacles to overcome, rising to higher levels is out of the question. The adversities now facing us may serve as stepping stones; they are blessings in disguise.

We must seek out the vantage point from which to view the present obstacles as necessary stimulants for better thinking—as did Robert Service:

It’s a different song when everything’s wrong,

When you are feeling infernally mortal;

When it’s ten against one, and hope there is none;

Buck up little soldier, and chortle!

Buck up! What does Service mean? He’s not telling us to grimly get into the fight, but joyously into the play! It means accenting what’s right as distinguished from cursing and berating the wrongdoers and their assertions; it means becoming more productive ourselves. On this point, Goethe observed, “What we agree with leaves us inactive, but contradiction [an obstacle] makes us productive.” A personal experience:

My first book was written 36 years ago under the most trying conditions. It was typed in spare moments while traveling extensively over the western states, lecturing to people many of whom were swayed by the statism then on the upswing. For the most part, these were quarrelsome and contentious rather than cooperative audiences.

The book received enthusiastic approval from several persons whose judgment I respected. And then this silly thought: If I could write this well under such adverse conditions, think what I might produce were I not burdened with overwork among unfriendly people! Free me from adversity and I would rise to new heights!

With this thought in mind, I took a month off in a cottage by the seashore. All was beautiful, quiet, serene. No newspapers or radio; not a soul to bother me; no nonsensical notions to arouse any rebuttals. The outcome? One month and nary an idea! I returned to the world of bustle and conflict, with my typewriter and a ream of paper untouched. And since then, I have remained in this rough and tumble world of bumping ideas back and forth. Productive? In addition to numerous other activities, I have had the temerity to publish 16 books in the intervening period. Score one for Goethe!

But I venture to disagree with the great Goethe on one point. By using “we” and “us” he suggests that his rule has universal application. True, Goethe and many others, who have attained a measure of intellectual manhood, have a lively reaction to notions that contradict freedom—making them more productive thinkers. The more the nonsense, the better their performance and the more determined their search for truth and ways of clear exposition.

However, people by the millions—those lacking understanding, those whose convictions are only “skin deep”—succumb to the slightest opposition. Let “the other side” become rich in cliches, bromides, plausibilities and they subside, throw in the sponge. They go hither and yon as flotsam and jetsam on a stormy sea. Contradictions serve only to deaden their initiative and diminish their productivity. They are as ineffective, as useless to the advancement of freedom, as “the high and mighty.”

These people are on dead center, unhappy with themselves and ineffective in the cause of freedom. There is a joy that attends a life which is successfully overcoming obstacles and adversities; and here are some ways that have helped me get on the productive track.

1. If puffed up and among “the high and mighty,” deflate and escape from that category. The slightest reflection on the contrast between one’s accomplishments and the job ahead assures the required humility, the wisdom of knowing how little one knows.

2. If obstacles and contradictory views fail to stimulate productivity—the search for truth and improved expositions—find out why. The mere search for the answer, if sincere, will turn out to be the answer itself, or a large part of it.

3. The next step—a big one—is to probe into the freedom way of life to the point where faith in its efficacy replaces all doubts. Keep going until an awareness dawns of the miraculous market. How tell when this point has been reached? It is reached when one realizes that the free market—each to his own uniqueness and unfettered exchange—possesses a wisdom unimaginably greater than exists in any discrete individual. For instance, grasp the truth that one need not know how mail would be delivered in the absence of force to be absolutely certain that the market would do it ever so much better than anyone can possibly foresee. The evidence is overwhelming but is hidden under cover of things taken for granted. Merely look under the cover.

4. Well begun, half done! The above is the beginning, the construction of the launching pad, the essential preparation for productivity. How far one will orbit cannot be foretold. Productivity in this realm correlates with improved understanding and wisdom and thus offers infinite possibilities. So far as I know, no person, past or present, has more than scratched the surface in making the case for freedom. The need is as great as the potential rewards, and the field is wide open. Enter with joy and enthusiasm.

Any individual, thus prepared, will be stimulated into productivity by socialistic cliches, bromides, plausibilities—contradictions of freedom whether so intended or not. Such an individual will instantly recognize these fallacies and be able to explain the better ideas that ought to displace them. His explanations, then, are productions—blessings of adversity.

Here, for example, are several of the more common fallacies of socialism:

1. “The more complex the society, the more government control we need.”

2. “The government should do for the people what the people are unable to do for themselves.”

3. “The size of the national debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

4. “The free market ignores the poor.”

5. “Man is born for cooperation, not for competition.”

6. “Human rights are more important than property rights.”

7. “Consumers ought to be protected by price controls.”

8. “One man’s gain is another man’s loss.”

9. “Rent control protects tenants.”

10. “Government should control prices, not people.”

This is neither the time nor the place to expose each of these fallacies in detail.[1] I would simply point out that each of these slogans is but a variation of the Marxian motto: “From each according to ability, to each according to need.” Each implicitly denies the dignity of the individual, denies that he is self-responsible and self-respecting, denies the principles of private ownership and voluntary exchange, denies the virtues of open competition and market pricing, and declares that government is better able than we ourselves to manage our respective lives.

There is an unseen aspect to this umbrella of popularly acclaimed governmental protectionism. What such intervention amounts to is a closing of the market, thus depriving each of us—in his dual role of producer and consumer—of the vital information afforded by market prices. Freely fluctuating prices describe the ever-changing conditions of supply and demand. Lacking the knowledge provided by a flexible price structure, no individual and no government official can reasonably judge whether to buy or sell, produce or consume. The free market is a conservation device, and without it a man will waste his own energies as well as all other valuable and scarce resources. Only as these scarce resources, including manpower, are privately owned and controlled through open competition can there be any hope of economic progress and the general alleviation of poverty.

If these are times of great adversity, then surely this is a time for greater faith in freedom. Adversity, rather than doing us in, should strengthen and refine our thinking to the point where we overcome it.

[1] Suggested answers to 76 of these popular fallacies appear in Cliches of Socialism (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education).

7

APPEAL TO THE INTELLECT

Every man should use his intellect . . . as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the sea may see the shining, and learn their way.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER

There are a thousand and one faults responsible for the sorry lack of moral and intellectual progress we decry; even more serious are the evils which cause the devolutionary plunge so apparent to any discerning eye. No one will ever spot all the errors; but let each one that is spotted be held to the light that others may recognize it.

Here is an error that has been bothering me, at once enormous and malicious, a fault so common that it appears, on the surface, to be a virtue. What might this be? It is the tendency to appeal not to the potential intelligence of others but, rather, to play upon, to take advantage of, their weaknesses. The fact that one’s potential—the undeveloped capacity in each of us—is incomparably greater than his intelligence may explain the deplorable tendency here in question. For, unless one acts as wisely and conscientiously as he can, the road of least resistance must lead to decadence.

To illustrate: Sales researchers have discovered that a price of $4.95, for instance, gives the impression to most people that the item is more in the $4 than the $5 range. While nearly everyone believes with Ben Franklin that “a penny saved is a penny earned,” it is not necessarily a mark of frugality to spend 99 nickels to save one. It may be false economy and bad arithmetic. But such weaknesses are exploited. This explains why an item may be priced at $99.99—9,999 cents—rather than $100.

“Why,” I asked a passenger agent in an airport lounge, “do you advertise a trip to Hawaii for $159.95? Why not $160?” At least he was honest with me: “It fools people; that figure makes it look like a bargain.” However, I must not leave the impression that this appeal to ignorance rather than to intelligence is a practice peculiar to business. We find it featured in every field of human activity.

Appeals to weakness are the stock in trade of politicians. What will the people fall for? If it is something-for-nothing, then political platforms will promise delivery.

So-called teachers, economists, clergymen by the tens of thousands stoop as often to such cheap tricks as do labor unions, chambers of commerce, PTA’s, and countless other organizations. Find out what weak and thoughtless people will demand, support, cheer, follow—be it consumerism or socialism—and “away we go.”

Further, those who deplore this appeal to ignorance are well advised to look in the mirror. Any such widespread error tends to “rub off” on everyone. Is there an identifiable form of immunity to this malady? Yes; merely observe if integrity prevails. If one is saying or writing only that which his highest conscience dictates as truth, then definitely, he is appealing to strength or intellect rather than to weakness. Why this claim?

When one acts with integrity, his eye is not cast on cheers, applause, fame, fortune, profits, and other worldly emoluments. Instead, the pursuit of truth and its accurate reporting commands the individual’s attention. Is this to wave aside the things of this world? Hardly! Seek ye first Truth and Righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you.

How, then, are we to reverse course and be rid of this mischievous habit of appealing to weakness? The answer: appeal to intellect. No matter with whom one is communicating—whether a customer, student, voter, employee, spouse, child, or other—assume his intelligence. How? By making certain that every utterance—written or oral—accurately reflects the truth as one sees it. And watch the recipient of the message rise to the challenge. To expect and believe in another’s intelligence has a drawing power, an attractive or magnetic effect.

To test this conclusion, simply ask yourself: When do I best respond? When someone assumes I am stupid and tries to “pull the wool over my eyes,” or when he assumes I am as bright as can be? As the famous psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel observed: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.” Tap these immense hidden powers by an appeal to intellect. Let integrity feature one’s every word and deed.

“What? You expect me to give up the practices that are keeping me in business or in office?”

Frankly, I do. I expect better of those who are now or who have been appealing to weakness. But when a switch is made, if at all, it will be in response to explanations and demonstrations by a few that an appeal to intellect is the way best to serve one’s self-interest. No one can prosper for long—materially, intellectually, morally, spiritually—in a society based on appeals to weakness, be the appeals intentional or not.

Always address our appeals to the other person’s intellect. For all you or I know, his hidden or latent powers may be greater than yours or mine. In any case, we will have tried our best, not our worst and, by so doing, will have helped ourselves.

8

AWAIT DISCOVERY

How poor are they who have no patience.

—SHAKESPEARE

Two kinds of improvement are required if we are to renew our rapidly waning freedom. First, a far better understanding of the philosophy than any of us has now. We need to develop a high level expertise in making the case for freedom. Second, a radical change in tactics; that is, a viable methodology for advancing freedom in harmony with the philosophy itself.

Of the two, the latter is the more important, and for a simple reason: If everyone’s method for advancing an understanding of freedom were correct, there would be no ideological problem. What, then, is right method? It is concentration on the improvement of self as distinguished from efforts to set others straight. Clearly, were all people devoted to self-improvement, confining their efforts to such exemplary behavior, there would not be a meddler in society; and without meddlers there could be no socialism, communism, state interventionism or welfarism, call authoritarianism what you will. So, first, last, and always, look to the method.

Impatience is a tendency of human nature which frustrates our efforts to advance freedom, causing us to act in ways which repel potential colleagues. If others cannot see what is so clear to us, make them see: attack, fight, flaunt our superiority—for time is of the essence! This is the activist approach. How do potential converts react? They run in the other direction; and were I in their shoes, I would too! Why? A person uncommitted to a philosophy cannot appreciate its being shouted at him from the housetops. If that’s an example of freedom, heaven forbid; I want none of it!

Other obstacles to the attainment of our ideas include (1) the unawareness of an easily demonstrable fact, and (2) a blindness to a promise that can and should be fulfilled.

The fact is this: No one, however skilled, can insinuate or ram an idea into the consciousness of another. This is so because each individual is in charge of his own doors of perception; each admits only what he chooses, and no more. If I could plant my ideas in your mind—make you into my image—you and others could do the same to me, however perfect or deformed the model. We should be grateful that each man is in charge of his own inner sanctum. True, there are some copycats or hero worshipers who ape their idols and echo other men’s words. But they do not possess the ideas to the point of acting upon them; they give off only shallow repetition and mimicry. Never count an imitator as a soul won to freedom or to any other way of life. All attempts to bring others to our point of view by pressure tactics, no matter how well intentioned, are destined to fail; they do not good but harm!

Now to the promise that can and should be fulfilled: If you or I or anyone else has one or more ideas or truths or bits of wisdom that are worthy of another’s possession, let that other discover this gold mine for himself. Do I mean that one should not advertise his intellectual prowess; that he should wave no flags calling attention to his expertise, remain silent until asked? Precisely! Do absolutely nothing beyond the improvement of self, that is, the building and stocking of one’s own storehouse!

The promise that can be trusted: If you or I have anything another believes to be worth taking, he will find us out by himself, knock at our doors, and ask our counsel. Incredible? To most people, yes. But look to history for confirmation. Who are the persons over the past three thousand years whose wisdom was sought during their lifetimes and is sought unto this day? They are the ones who perfected their own grasp of truth, not those who merely displayed themselves. Neither Socrates nor any of these wise men attempted to ram their ideas into people’s heads; not only their contemporaries, but many persons in subsequent centuries, discovered them and sought their tutorship. Or, if the historical record fails to convince, then look to yourself. From what person, from what sources, do you seek guidance? An inventory will be both surprising and instructive.

At work here is a universal law—the Law of Attraction. Excellence exerts an invisible magnetic force upon those who seek it. Indeed, anyone graced by excellence cannot help being discovered. There is no way for him to hide his light under a bushel—unless he refuses to share when asked. And no person of excellence could do such a thing; he has, by definition, risen above such meanness.

We know from experience that animals are drawn to those who love them and are repelled by hate or indifference. Science is now revealing that this same principle of attraction and repulsion applies even to plant life. Likewise, human beings are drawn to persons of excellence and are repelled by domineering show-offs. And this is the way it should be.

There remains, however, the most compelling reason why no one of us should parade his “wisdom,” but rather await discovery. It is only when a person has discovered a bit of enlightenment for himself that he really possesses it. Self-discovery and self-possession are inseparably linked. “Seek and ye shall find” has a logical extension: What ye find shall be thine.

The inspiration for this chapter came at a recent FEE Seminar in Utah. A young man had traveled hundreds of miles to attend. Rarely have I come upon a person so quick and eager to learn the freedom philosophy. Why his exceptional interest? When I asked, he explained how he had quite inadvertently discovered FEE and the philosophy which we try earnestly to improve. He had now made these ideas his own because he himself had made the discovery. We had never tried to “reach” him; he reached for us.

On my return from Utah, a letter informed me of another discoverer:

My good friend, Dave, is more pleased with his discovery of FEE than if he had discovered oil in his backyard!

With my attention focused on these two experiences, I became suddenly aware of countless cases no less impressive—plain, convincing instructions to await discovery.

When we hurl or shout our know-it-all-ness at others, the impact sends them away from, not toward, the free society. The “wisdom” bounces back in the direction from whence it came and is never possessed by the persons at whom we aimed it. All loss and no gain! On the other hand, any person who discovers a bit of light on his own initiative is truly enlightened because he made the discovery.

Finally, what is my role? Who, among all the world’s people, is my major concern? Myself! Not you, and not anyone else, simply because others are beyond my powers to correct. Nor must my motivation for self-improvement be as a means toward your improvement or anyone else’s—only my own. To the extent that I succeed, to that extent may some of my enlightenment be discovered. But that is up to others, not me.

Imagine that a considerable number of individuals were to take this approach. Enlightenment—the overall luminosity—would be ever so much greater than now. Why? Because each would then be brightening his own candle—the only one over which he has any control.

Await discovery! Simply make certain that, if and when another seeks your light, it is as bright as it can be.

9

SAY WHAT YOU MEAN

You can reflect what is another’s; You can radiate only what is your own.

—CHINESE PROVERB

Recently I remarked to my long-time and most intimate acquaintance, “You know, it has been dawning on me that nearly everything I have written for the past 25 years is the same old theme song—only the titles are different!” The reply, “I have known that all the time!” It is not merely that I am slow to catch on; it is more a case of trying to follow the counsel of a wise friend of my earlier days, “Say what you mean and mean what you say.”

To mean what you say is properly labeled as integrity: the accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one believes to be right. Anyone who so wills it can do this. No need to belabor this point.

But saying what one really means, even on a single theme, is a goal without end, that is, if the thought is growing, expanding, becoming more meaningful. Further, there are endless ways of saying what one means and in each new way there is some enlightenment—for self if not for others. For instance, have you not tried over and over again to explain an idea to a person, his only response being a blank stare? And then, finally, there is the right phrasing for this person and his face lights up: “I now see what you mean!” As W. E. Hickson phrased it, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try, try again.” My main theme, for lo these many years? The sole way to a better world is the improvement of self as distinguished from the reforming of others. Few, indeed, are those who have responded, “I see what you mean.” But now there comes to my attention the ancient Chinese Proverb which makes precisely the same pronouncement, except in different and doubtless better phrasing than I have ever contrived: one can reflect what is another’s; one can radiate only what is his own. An excuse for my theme under still another title!

To “reflect,” as meant in this Proverb, is only to echo what one reads or hears; it is not of the self and, thus, has no communicative muscle; it is as powerless as one’s own reflection in the mirror. Many, if not most, of the words that are spoken and written today fall in this useless category; they are as meaningless as a prayer by rote, that is, they are without understanding or thought—as unattractive as a broken record!

True, to reflect in the mockingbird sense, saying what others said by rote, is but babble. One must not, however, gloss over that other kind of reflection which is quite the opposite, reflection that accounts for all intellectual, moral, and spiritual acquisition, the sole fountain of radiation. Coleridge puts this idea in focus:

There is one art of which every man should be a master—the art of reflection. If you are not a thinking man, to what purpose are you a man at all?

On this matter of reflection and radiation, we must bear in mind that the individual is at once a receiving and broadcasting station; he can radiate only that which has first been received, that is, made his own. This is to say that his broadcasting range is limited by the extent and depth of his reflections—by how good a thinking man he is.

I am reminded of a time—1910—long before TV and even radio, when I built a wireless receiver and transmitter. While mounted on the same box, the receiving and sending parts were unrelated. This gadget could receive from a distance of 500 miles, but could transmit no more than two miles. As distinguished from a human being, these two parts had nothing to do with each other. We humans, for the most part, resemble that boyhood wireless in a single respect: our reception usually encompasses a greater range than does our broadcasting. At least, I find this to be the case.

To repeat, a person can radiate only that which has first been received, reflected upon, digested, made his own! Thus, no one but a thinking man can radiate.

What does the thinking man think about? Reflect upon? He contemplates radiations—in the form of ideas! From whence come these? They stem from two sources: the Voice Within and the Voices Without, each being a form of radiant energy.

As Emerson said, “We lie in the lap of an immense intelligence.” This, as all radiant energy, is a flowing phenomenon; it flows through all life—constantly!

The Voice Within is that part of this intelligence which one personally succeeds in intercepting: tiny flashes of enlightenment referred to as insight, intuition, discovery, invention, creativity. Whatever is intercepted becomes one’s own. An idea successfully intercepted can, in turn, be radiated; that which has been received may be transmitted, although transmittal is difficult and requires considerable skill.

All intelligence at the human level originated with this Voice Within—yours, mine, or someone else’s.

As to the Voices Without, countless persons have, since the dawn of consciousness, intercepted bits of this “immense intelligence,” making these bits of wisdom their own. Their enlightenments are, more or less, in radiation. The thinking man tries to tune these into his receiving set, making them, as well as the Voice Within, his own.

Finally, is it really true that one can radiate only that which is his own?

My answer is an unequivocal yes! Why then are there so few persons who will accept this axiom as a guiding thought? It is simply this: most of us have intercepted so little of the “immense intelligence”—made it our own—that we have nothing to radiate. When this is the case, it is extremely difficult to acknowledge as valid those phenomena which lie beyond one’s own experiences.

Obviously, no one can radiate mental energy or thought that has not been intercepted, received. Broadcasting or radiating creative thought—phases of the “immense intelligence”—is governed by the tuning-in range of one’s receiving set and the power of his amplifier. If one is radiating nothing, then let him draw the self-evident and unhappy conclusion and set about its correction: the perfection of self—striving to become a better thinking man.

To whom does this corrective process apply? To every living person—without exception!

10

THE CONFESSION OF ERROR

To make no mistake is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

—PLUTARCH

Many people, I suspect, would rather entitle this chapter “the error of confession” than “the confession of error.”

My thesis is that error can and should play a profound role in man’s advancement toward wisdom. There are two doors through which the fallible individual must pass before he can behold the light of truth. The first is the discernment of error; the second is the confession of the error, not only to self but to anyone influenced by his error, whether that influence extend to one or to a few or to millions of persons. Rarely does the individual err in solitude; most of one’s mistakes have a social impact, may indeed bring harm to others as well as to himself. So, one is socially obligated to confess as well as to correct his errors.

A personal experience may help illustrate my point. In 1945 I was given the assignment of choosing two speakers to present opposing views on the U.S. foreign aid program. I chose J. Reuben Clark, Jr., President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, whose point of view coincided with mine. The most prestigious individual I could nominate for the other side of the argument was Lord John Maynard Keynes, then on an official visit to the United States. When I called on him to invite his participation, he replied, “I shall not accept your invitation, and for two reasons. First, I shall not be in this country at the time of your meeting. And if I were here I would not accept. My mission is to obtain the British loan. Were I to stand before your audience and say what I now think, which is what I would do, I would disparage my mission.”

Lord Keynes, it seemed, had changed his mind about government spending. He confessed this to himself and to me but, so far as I know, not a word of his changed position reached the hundreds of millions who came within his orbit of enormous influence. Had he publicly confessed his error (he passed away nine months later) the reckless spending policies of nations all over the world might have been halted. He discerned his error, which is the first step. But he never took the second step; he failed to make public his confession, and the light of truth did not shine forth. Lord Keynes opened but one of the two doors; and the rest of us are now the poorer for his failure to open and pass through that second door to truth.[1]

I would not single out the late Lord Keynes as alone in this fault. His case is simply a magnified, and thus easily observed, example of the thing I am talking about. The same inability or unwillingness to confess error plagues most of us. Keynes’ leverage over events was so great for at least two reasons: (1) he was a prestigious professor of economics at Cambridge University and a titled nobleman, and (2) his error is one that all politicians, here or elsewhere, ardently want to believe: that politicians can spend the people’s money on anything that suits their fancy and, by so doing, assure prosperity to the victims. Had a commoner—one without degrees and a title—made such a silly proposal he would have been “laughed out of court.”

Why the reluctance to confess error openly? Doubtless, there are more reasons than we know. Take a politician—one gaining office by promising, if elected, to do this or that for his constituents, perhaps a higher minimum wage or any of thousands of “benefits” at taxpayer’s expense. Later, the light dawns and he sees the error of his ways. Confess this mistake to his constituents? Not likely! He would never be returned to office, his political power at an end. More often than not such a fateful prospect destroys any desire or incentive to confess error.

But no one can confess an error until he sees it for what it is; and self-blindness is a trait as common among the electorate as among the elected. Once an error is believed and embraced as right, it is absorbed into the tissues, so to speak; it becomes a part of one’s being. An immunity develops and explanations of the fallacy are warded off, not heard. Only confirmations of the error are received and they become supporting evidence. Most of us simply cannot stand the thought of being wrong, at least not to the point of openly confessing an error.

Often the explanation of our error is made by a political opponent or by one having a faith or general philosophy we do not approve, that is, by our “enemies”—persons we abhor or, at least, do not like. The very source is enough to close our eyes and mind; we will have none of it! Indeed, this lack of catholicity on the part of anyone tends to confirm him in the rightness of his mistaken views. Small chance of confessing errors thus buried in rancor!

The fact that society, today, is in one of those devolutionary swings—common to history—and that countless people are proposing remedies of every variety and without success, suggests that the right answer has not yet been found.

I venture to say that the remedy is simple; indeed, if it is not simple, in all probability it is not right. The first step is to remove all obstructions to the discernment of error; and the second is to confess the mistake openly. How wonderfully different would be the societal situation were a considerable number of us to open these two doors. It seems obvious to me that this is the way and the only way to wisdom, truth, light!

A considerable number! Yes, but a number of individuals, one by one. After all, it is not society that acts; it is only discrete human beings.

There is no point in dwelling further on removing the obstructions to the discernment of error. Count him out who cannot rid himself of prejudice, bias, egotism, know-it-all-ness. Include only those who welcome exposure of error, regardless of source.

The door most of us have had no practice in opening is the second: open confession of discerned error, not only to self but to all who have come under the harmful influence of the mistake. By “open confession,” I am not referring to any maudlin wailing. Rather, I am talking about a clear explanation of one’s new insight—the truth that displaces the error he had espoused and inflicted on others as well.

There are two points to keep in mind. First, if the purpose of life is to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness, the refusal to confess error is to strangle growth; it is to nail one’s self down to mediocrity, along with others under influence of one’s errors. Be free!

Second, confession not only is good for the soul; it also turns out to be a joyous experience, as is any freedom from inhibitions. To prove it, try it!

[1] For an enlightening account of Lord Keynes’ sound money theories before he went “Keynesian,” see “Inflation” by John Maynard Keynes, The Freeman, April 1965.

11

PENALTY OF SURRENDER

It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. The country . . . deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.

—CHARLES SUMNER

A certain business leader, perhaps among the most publicized during the last two decades, once severely lectured me on my unswerving and uncompromising behavior. He charged that I saw things only in blacks and whites. He argued that practical life was lived in shades of grays, actually in the shadows of these two extremes. He suggested that I had a nice chance of “going far” in the world, if only I would become more pliable to the thoughts and actions of my fellows. He really wanted me to be more agreeable to his middle-of-the-road political theories.

The compromising attitude is exalted by many and deplored by only a few. Most current discussions are tempered with concepts of compromise and expediency.

Compromise, like many other words, has different meanings for different persons. I want to use the term in the sense of one of the definitions given by Webster: “The result or embodiment of concession or adjustment.” I wish to show that compromise is potentially good when applied in a physical sense and that it has no application whatever in a moral sense.

For example, you and your wife are spending what is hoped will be a happy evening at home. She chooses to watch TV and you elect to explore Mises’ Human Action. The scene appears peaceful as you sit side by side near this piece of furniture. But to you the furniture is making a lot of distracting noise.

Here are all the possibilities for turning a cheerful evening into one of disharmony. But compromise can come to your aid. Your wife can decrease the noise of the TV to the point where she can still hear it, and you can move to some remote corner where you can comprehend Mises just as well as anywhere else. Harmony can thus be preserved by compromise.

Compromise in this sense is an adjustment of physical situations. It is the process by which conflicts are reduced to the point most satisfactory to all parties concerned. When thought of in this way, compromise is the great harmonizer, the attitude that makes living together—social life—a pleasure.

Indeed, the market place of willing exchange where tens of millions of transactions go on daily is one vast area of compromise. Buyers aim at low prices. Sellers aim at high prices. In a free market, unhampered by private thieves and political restrictions, there is an adjustment of these diverse desires. Compromise establishes the price at which the mutual satisfaction of buyer and seller is at its highest level.

It is in the physical realm that most of our daily life is lived. In this realm compromise is good and it is practical. It begets harmony and peace.

How easy it would seem then, finding compromise so useful in such a vast segment of life, to conclude thoughtlessly that it has an equal place, a comparable value, in that phase of life which consciously occupies little of our thoughts: moral life.

But this is precisely the point where I believe many of us are the victims of a confusion of terms. What is compromise in physical affairs—that is, in an adjustment of physical positions—is something entirely different when applied to principles and morality.

For example, let us make the reckless assumption that most of us are committed to the Biblical injunction, “Thou shalt not steal.” This is based on the moral principle that each person has the right to the fruits of his own labor. The point I wish to make—my major point—is that this as a principle defies compromise. You either take someone else’s property without his consent, or you do not. If you steal just a bit—a penny—you do not compromise the principle; you abandon it. You surrender your principle.

By taking only a little of someone’s property without his consent, as distinguished from taking a lot, you do compromise in the physical sense the amount you steal. But the moral principle, whatever the amount of the theft, is surrendered and utterly abandoned.

If all the rest of mankind is in favor of passing a law that would take the property, honestly acquired, of only one person against his will, even though the purpose be allegedly for the so-called social good, I cannot adjust myself both to the moral injunction, “Thou shalt not steal,” and to the demand of the millions. Principle does not lend itself to bending or to compromising. It stands impregnable. I must either abide by it, or in all fairness, I must on this point regard myself as an inconsistent, unprincipled person rather than a rational, reasonable, logical one.

The question immediately arises as to what constitutes principle. Here again is a term with varying meanings to different persons. I must, therefore, define what I mean.

The Ten Commandments are admonitions derived from the religious experience of an ancient people. In terms of their origin, the Commandments are cast in the form of intercepts of the will of God; in terms of their application, they are imperatives admitting of no dilution. They were expressions of principles at least to the ones who received them, and have been adopted as such by countless millions. Their acceptance springs from the studied deductions of the wiser among us, confirmed through centuries of observation and experience.

The correctness of a principle has little to do with the intensity of conviction with which a man holds it. Someone else may hold a contrary principle with like intensity. No man can get nearer to the truth than his own highest apprehension of it. Ultimate insights may differ, and such differences will always be part of the human scene. But there is another type of difference which is more pertinent to the point of this essay: the difference between those who accept unyieldingly a moral principle as their standard, and those who accept a principle watered down by “practical” considerations. Lord Morley warned of this danger when he deplored the tendency to forget the principle itself in our preoccupation with the practical difficulties of applying it.

To me, “Thou shalt not steal,” is a principled injunction, not alone because some sage of antiquity said so, but largely because my own experience has compelled me to adopt this as a principle of right conduct which must be adhered to if I am not to destroy my own integrity, and if I am to live peacefully with my fellow men.

To those of opposite judgments, who believe that they should gratify their personal charitable instincts not with their own goods, but with goods extorted from others by the police force, who fail to see how thieving damages integrity, and who accept the practice of political plunder as right and honorable—to them, “Thou shalt not steal” must appear wrong in principle.

Whether a principle is right or wrong cannot in any ultimate or absolute sense be determined by any single one of us human beings. Principles on the level of human perception are what are judged to be the rules of life or nature; what are judged to be universal, eternal verities; what are judged to be fundamental points of reference. But human judgment is fallible. Therefore, whether a stated principle is held to be right or wrong will depend on the quality of the individual’s judgment. Aristotle claimed that there were a million ways to be wrong; only one way to be right. How easy for fallible beings to decide on a wrong way!

Sound judgment leads toward right principles. No person can rise above his best judgment, and he can rise only as fast as his judgment improves. On what, then, is an improving judgment dependent? My answer is: on revelation—“The disclosing or discovering . . . of what was before unknown. . . .” Other terms for revelation are insight, cognition, inspiration, extrasensory perception. On what does revelation or insight rest? Surely, on conscious effort, education, the kind of persons with whom one associates, the topics selected for discussion, what one chooses to read—all of these relate to one’s perception. More fundamental, however, than anything else is intellectual integrity, without which, I am certain, the cognitive stream cannot flow at its best. Goethe’s views, already cited in Chapter 2, bear repeating:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her, she despises; and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself, and reveal her secrets.

Intellectual integrity simply means to reflect in word and in deed, always and accurately, that which one believes to be right. Integrity cannot be compromised. It is either practiced or not practiced.

Certainly, there is nothing new about the efficacy of accurately reflecting what one believes to be right. This principle of conduct has been known throughout recorded history. Now and then it has been expressed beautifully and simply. Shakespeare enunciated the principle when he had Polonius say:

This above all: To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

Edmond Rostand had the same principle in mind when he wrote for Cyrano:

Never to make a line I have not heard in my own heart.

The Bible announces the penalty of surrender—what it means to abandon the truth as one sees it:

The wages of sin is death.

Whether the wages of sin be mere physical death, as when men shoot each other over ideological differences, or profound spiritual death, as in the extinction of integrity, character, and self-respect, one needs to make but casual inquiry to verify the rightness of this Biblical pronouncement. Abundant testimony is being provided in our time. Nor is the end in sight.

All the world is filled with examples of surrendered principles: men who know practically nothing about themselves trying to play God, attempting to control and forcibly direct the creative actions of others; the glamour of popularity and shallow earthly fame rather than the concepts of rightness directing the policies of nations; expediency substituting for the dictates of conscience; businessmen employing “experts” to help them seem right, often at the expense of rightness itself; labor leaders justifying any action that gratifies their lust for power; political leaders operating on the premise that the end justifies the means; clergymen preaching expropriation of property without consent in the name of the “common good”; teachers not explaining but advocating coercive collectivism; aspirants to public office building platforms from public opinion polls; farmers, miners, and other plunderbundists uniting with the police force to siphon unto themselves the fruits of others’ labor; arrogance replacing humility; in short, surrender of principle appears to be the distinguishing mark of our time.

If we were suddenly to find foreign vandals invading our shores, vandals that would kill our children, rape our women, and pilfer our industry, every last man of us would rise in arms.

Yet, these ideas born of surrendered principles are the most dangerous vandals known to man. Is the Bible right that the wages of sin is death? Observe the growth of domestic violence. Note the extent to which the organized police force—government—promotes and enacts plunder rather than inhibits it. Scan the last sixty years of war, hot and cold; wars to end wars, each serving only as a prelude to larger wars. And, today, we worldlings, in angry and hateful moods, stand tense and poised to strike out at each other, not with shillelaghs, pistols, hand grenades and cannons, but with mass exterminators of the germ and atom types, types that only a people of surrendered principles could concoct.

Perhaps it is timidity that prevents many a man from standing squarely on his own philosophy and uttering nothing less than the highest truth he perceives. He fears the loss of friends or position. Actually, the danger lies in the other direction, in settling for less than one’s best judgment.

Does it take courage to be honest? Does one have to be brave to express the truth as he sees it? Indeed, it is not dangerous to be honest, but rather a mark of intelligence. Being honest and adhering to principle requires intelligence more than courage. Courage without intelligence makes men blusterous and cantankerous with their views; they offend with their honesty. But, the villainy in that case is their cantankerousness, not their integrity.

Finally, some may contend that even if everyone were a model of intellectual integrity, by reason of the great variety of judgments, differences would still remain. This is true. But differences lead in the direction of truth in an atmosphere of honesty. Honest differences are livable differences.

Life in a physical sense is a compromise, a fact that need not concern us. But when vast numbers of people surrender living by what they believe to be right, it follows that they must then live by what they believe to be wrong. No more destructive tendency can be imagined.

Honesty—each person true to his highest conscience—is the condition from which revelation springs; from which knowledge expands; from which intelligence grows; from which judgments improve. It is a never-ending, eternally challenging—a thoroughly joyous—process. Indeed, it is living in its highest sense.

12

WORSHIP, A SINGULAR THING

If we begin by overrating the being we love, we shall end by treating it with wholesale injustice.

—HENRI-FREDERIC AMIEL

During the early days of FEE several of us observed numerous devotees of the freedom philosophy who had but a single standard for gauging truth: would the man they worshiped—admittedly outstanding—agree or not. If their hero said yes, true; if no, false.

This tendency on the part of ever so many people to worship—genuflect before—another human being, regardless of relative genius, inspired the late Dr. F. A. Harper and me to prepare the following motto which for years has had a prominent place in our FEE workshop:

Seekers after Truth should not be bound by who sponsors any idea—Truth being its own witness.

In short, there is no place for idolatry in the freedom philosophy. Previous to learning my lesson the hard way, I received with pleasure anyone’s overrated appraisal of me. “I am your disciple,” or words to that effect. Then the rude awakening: every instance of overesteem sooner or later turned sour, that is, to rejection. Over the years, many have come and gone—“bosom buddies” to disparagers. Here is a two-sided lesson: never worship or overrate any human being past or present; hope that no other person will ever worship or overrate one’s self. No man can really worship many gods; worship is a singular thing!

By definition it is singular, for we can accord supreme homage to one object only. Therefore, the single thing that merits worship is Truth—the love and pursuit of it. Call Truth what you will: Infinite Consciousness, Infinite Intelligence, the Infinite Unknown, God. Thus, when one accords omniscience to human beings, he is looking upon them as “having infinite knowledge, knowing all things.” This, of course, is absurd. No person, regardless of how ingenious he may be relative to the rest of us, rises above the finite; he knows next to nothing of the Universal Laws; indeed, very little about any one of them. In a word, worship cannot logically be extended to any one or to any number of finite minds but only to the one Infinite Mind.

Support for the contention that no human being has ever known very much may be found in reading Treasury of Philosophy, a summary of the views and ideas of the world’s most famous philosophers—some four hundred of them.[1] While their philosophical positions are not necessarily antagonistic, no two philosophers are anywhere near identical. All have probed the unknown and returned with what, at best, are but tiny findings. The only quality these philosophers have in common is variation—one picks up a flicker here, another detects a glimmer there. Not a one has come up with the Whole Truth, and none ever will!

Our own daily experience also supports this claim. No two of us see or hear alike. Indeed, no one of us sees or hears alike from one moment to another. Here, however, is the clincher: anyone who is growing in understanding discovers that the more he knows the more he knows he does not know; the more Truth he discerns, the more humble he becomes. The exploration of the Infinite by finite minds makes this inevitable. Socrates, perhaps the wisest of all, knew he knew nothing; the know-it-all, on the other hand, simply is unaware of how ignorant he is.

When one realizes how near to a know-nothing everyone is, it then becomes clear why overrating another is more than likely to lead, eventually, to “wholesale injustice.”

We must understand that our heroes are fallible, too. Otherwise, when one comes upon an articulate person whose beliefs more or less accord with his own, but who possesses the ability to phrase them brilliantly, the tendency is to put that person on a pedestal. “You have put to words what I have always believed.” The magnification of one’s own tiny light is the cause of this; hero worship is the temporary consequence.

Sooner or later, by reason of the congenital variations existing in the hero and the “worshiper,” the latter beholds flaws and errors in the former. Not only does the hero fall from grace; in the eyes of his beholder, he falls on his face! The god turns to dust because he was mistakenly presumed to be a god in the first place.

“You have put to words what I have always believed.” Thousands of individuals over the ages have done this for me. However, there are few of these philosophers with whom I completely agree. Great as they are—objects of my admiration and esteem—nonetheless, I have fault to find with Plato, Aristotle, Epictetus, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Goethe, Bastiat, to name but a few. And the same goes for any number of my remarkable contemporaries. Yet, the thoughts and works of these notables I count among my blessings; they have given me countless enlightenments I could never have come upon by myself. Further, they do not fall into disrepute by reason of our differences. Why? I know that they also are fallible human beings, finite minds, even as you and I, probing the Infinite. The fact that I have not regarded any one of them as a god in the first place is the reason why I do not disparage them now. They are my benefactors!

Plato, for instance, instead of being the object of my contempt because he advanced the philosopher-king idea, has my admiration for the thousand and one enlightenments he passed on to mankind, among whom I am a beneficiary. If I do not overrate his strength, I need not disparage a weakness; I can level off at friendship.

By the same token, I hope that no person shall ever overrate me for, should he do so, friendship is doomed, mutual helpfulness at an end.

However, your overrating of others or their overrating of you is tied for second place when it comes to this worshiping error. In first place—by far—is the overrating of self. It is this that spawns the big I AM’s and the little Hitlers, the know-it-alls. Tiny specks in the Cosmic Plan posing as Infinite Intelligence! Self-worship to the point where they believe they can direct your life better than you can! Tragic, yes; but comical, nonetheless!

Finally, freedom is impossible in a society overburdened with overraters—either of others or of themselves. When many are know-it-alls, or are overrated as such, freedom of choice is out of the question.

Once the idea is grasped that all persons who have lived upon this earth have experienced no more than tiny glimpses of Truth and that no two perceptions are or ever have been identical, then a great Truth emerges: freedom! Let these ideas freely flow, one from another. Then each person becomes the beneficiary of them all, each graced by the overall luminosity, that is, each blessed with as much wisdom as exists. Viewed in this manner, freedom is the uninterrupted interchange of ideas and goods and services among individuals who worship neither themselves nor one another. Freedom flows in the absence of “big shots”; freedom springs from humility.

Worship, indeed, is a singular thing. Keep it singular and enjoy the blessings of freedom!

[1] See Treasury of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes (New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1955).

13

THE FEAR OF FREEDOM

To love righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort is to love freedom.

Nearly everyone says he favors freedom, but in reality—with few exceptions in today’s world—most people are “scared to death” of it. This ambivalence is not widely recognized, but it is the same thing as the fear of righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort.

However, merely to use the word freedom communicates nothing. No two persons ascribe precisely the same meaning to it; indeed, each individual, as he thinks about freedom, may experience shifting definitions. This word, as are ever so many other terms, is shrouded in fuzziness. So, let me define the freedom to which I refer.

I wish to be free from dictators—all of them—be they of the one-man variety or an agglomeration hiding behind an act of Congress or an administrative ruling that restrains creative actions. Leave me free to do anything I please—stupid or brilliant—so long as it is peaceful and not injurious to others. Let me work at whatever I please for whatever I can obtain by willing exchange, whether the wage be a mere trifle or a king’s ransom. Let my hours of labor range as I please from zero to 168 per week—subject, of course, to contracts. And leave me free to exchange whatever I please with whomever I choose, be it with General Electric, Matsushita, or Joe Doakes. Free me from those people who would attend to my welfare, not with the fruits of their own labor in the voluntary practice of charity, but with the coercively exacted income of others. My welfare is no one else’s business; it is a matter between me and my God, not between those who levy and those who pay taxes. Finally, free me from fraud, violence, misrepresentation, thievery—the destructive actions of men—the curbing of which is the sole role I would assign to government.

These aspirations, strung together, are what I mean by the kind of freedom of which people are “scared to death”!

Why scared? Gilbert Chesterton once remarked: “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it is that it has been tried and found difficult and abandoned.” So it is with those who try freedom; they find that it requires responsibility for self. And in consequence of that discovery, belief and faith in freedom is all but abandoned in America today! I emphasize “belief and faith.” Were the practice of freedom totally abandoned, all would perish. Freedom is still practiced to a marked extent despite all the barriers, but must wane and disappear eventually without a belief and faith to sustain it.

Stephen Vincent Benét has put our problem in realistic perspective:

Just as a physical fever may be beneficial for its cathartic effect in burning away the poisonous pollutants in the system, even while it is resisted for its painfulness, so freedom may be both sought after and opposed, for we may wish to partake of its benefits without accepting the burden of its consequences. (Italics added)

In order rationally to embrace freedom rather than fear it, we must see and understand the two faces of freedom: benefits and burden. If we wish to enjoy the benefits we must accept the burden.

Everyone wishes to partake of the benefits of freedom, its spiritual advantages and its material windfalls. These goods flow exclusively from people acting creatively as they choose. The range in benefits is staggering: on the one hand, a loner in an attic is unmolested as he pens a new system of philosophy or paints a masterpiece; on the other hand, an abundance of goods and services is at the beck and call of ordinary people in exchange for such minor performances as writing, lecturing, or hammering nails into a building. It is almost impossible to imagine the countless conveniences one can obtain in exchange for his own specialized output.

Here, however, is the rub: only a minority have the slightest idea that these benefits spring from the unfettered release of creative energy, and even fewer know how to achieve that release. Such failure may be traced to the fallacy of the False Cause: because the muscle of freedom is so strong that the benefits continue to flow from the economy despite increasing political interventions, it is all too easy to assume that the interventions cause the benefits! Many people fall into this trap; they fail to see that government is not the source of productivity but first must seize from producers any goods that it may eventually give to others.

That benefits spring from interventions is a falsity broadcast from every conceivable station: public media, pulpits, classrooms, the halls of Congress—from labor organizers to Lords of Parliament:

Tired old theories and slogans are trotted out as startling novelties. Bold experiments are proposed in one country that have been repeatedly tested in another. Arguments and counter-arguments are put forth as if their proponents stood in the dawn of history.[1]

Goods and services flow exclusively from individuals acting creatively and cooperatively as they personally choose. This is a fact of life, however difficult to grasp: Freedom affords the only way to release the creativity of the individual. Contrast this with the opposing formula, coercive regimentation, the dictocrat’s method currently on the upswing. Instead of release, it applies restraint! Take any one of countless interventions and examine first its source and next its impact on you.

What is the source? The fountainhead of interventionism is in the process that causes a person to so overestimate his own wisdom and to so belittle yours that he believes he can run your life better than you can. Not even to Solomon would you voluntarily delegate such power, and certainly not to anyone lower on the intelligence scale, that is, to anyone eager to dictate what you produce or exchange or how your tastes should be modified to fit his ever-varying dreams of Shangri-La.

Next, how do these restraints affect you and me? Applied 100 per cent, the restraints would fully paralyze; but to the extent of their application, to that extent are we kept from becoming our creative selves. What part of our property and our earnings belongs to us is their decision, not ours. The hours we shall labor, with whom we shall exchange and at what rates, even our educational efforts are less and less self-determined. Carried a little further and there will be a limit on the thoughts we are allowed openly to express. Let there be widespread surrender to this politico-economic heresy and the individual is no longer a man but a mere statistic.

Let me rephrase my answer to the question: Why is it that so many people believe that our unprecedented and enormous benefits flow from the dictocratic arrangement presently in vogue?

There is indeed a myriad of political controls on the economy, but there is widespread evasion of the controls—a zigzagging around the stoppages of creative action! Creative energy goes coursing through loopholes, no dictocrat nor any combination of them being smart enough to foresee and to block all the ways of possible circumvention. Look about you for abundant evidence, perhaps even in the mirror. In a word, the zest to be a man rather than a statistic, the pull or push of freedom, the will to stay alive, is not easy to down. Just as lightning cuts its own path, so creativity—a form of radiant energy—finds a way.

But reflect on the price for this short-term victory over the political obstacle course: destruction of character! Men, under these circumstances, become schemers. When the dictocratic trend advances far enough—as in England following the Napoleonic Wars—many citizens turn into outlaws, smugglers, black marketeers, breakers of the law. We witnessed many examples of this during World War II under the dictocratic price and production controls. What, then, is the price of interventionism? Banditry, a depraved way of life, is substituted for the way of the Golden Rule that characterizes a truly free people.

Yes, the enormous benefits of trade continue for a while in spite of the interventions. Meanwhile, the best and most responsible individuals—creative men—gradually lose their moral character; society slowly disintegrates at the core. This is the dreadful price we pay!

Enough about the one face of freedom—the benefits. But what about the other face—the burden of self-responsibility that “scares people to death”?

Our forefathers escaped from dictocratic arrangements and set up house in a truly underdeveloped country. They were at once free and self-responsible, neither condition being possible without the other; these qualities are two sides of the same coin. With them it was “root hog or die,” and they rooted. Also, it was trade or perish, and they traded. Trade is possible only among those who are honest—who fulfill their promises—which means that they are self-responsible and free.

People from many lands came to find an explanation for the miracle of America, an outburst of creative energy never before witnessed. Alexis de Tocqueville found the right answer: “America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Our forefathers feared political tyranny. It never entered their heads to fear self-responsibility and its correlate, freedom. People do not fear the righteousness from which they benefit.

Our early American ancestors feared political tyranny because they were physically close to it; it breathed down their necks. Under the circumstances, there was worse to fear than freedom. But, as each succeeding generation receded further from the experience of tyranny—possessing little if any understanding of the effects upon men of restraint and release—people came to be less and less fearful of authoritarianism. By 1974, there are comparatively few among us who fear political management.

As the fear of political tyranny disappears, the fear of freedom and self-responsibility mounts, until many may be found praying thus: “Oh, Great White Father, protect me from whoever would labor for less than I; from whoever would undersell me; from the lack of possessions which I think are my due. Give unto me my cravings.” Responsibility for self has become nearly unthinkable.

There will be a return to freedom, regardless of present fears. Freedom is ordained in the Cosmic Order. Freedom will arise again and from either of two sources: (1) According to the historical pattern, it will arise from the ashes of dictocratic government, that is, after a people have been reduced to a shambles. Freedom is assured then, for it is the only alternative to extinction. But when? How long? This is the nonrational sequence for which there is no answer. (2) Our hope lies in an intellectual and moral awakening. Why should we not have a hand in shaping our destiny! Why must we be helpless pawns of a sequence void of human intelligence! For that intellectual and moral awakening, we need to realize that:

1. All dictocratic control of creative action must, of necessity, be erroneous, for it destroys the innovative talent with which each of us is endowed by God.

2. Such dictocratic control is, by its nature, irresponsible. The dictocrats do not suffer the immediate penalty for their errors; we do!

3. We become irresponsible when we surrender self-responsibility or have it coercively taken from us. It is impossible to be responsible for anything that falls beyond one’s own freedom of choice—and control!

4. Being one’s own man is better than existing as a mere fraction of a collective. Self-responsibility is the joyous key to being human!

In the light of such understanding, Americans will no longer fear to be free. To love righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort is to love freedom!

[1] See “The ‘Arithmetic of Happiness’ Doesn’t Add Up” by Peter L. Berger (Fortune, October 1972) p. 151.

14

INEQUALITY ENSHRINED

It is not true that equality is the law of nature: nature has made nothing equal.

—MARQUIS DE VANVENARGUES

Books, speeches, expressed yearnings—past and present—have much to say in favor of equality, and they promote a demand for it. We are equal in the eyes of God, they say; we are equal before the law; we are born equal, have equal rights, are entitled to equal pay, on and on. While numerous philosophers and statesmen have recognized how all-pervading inequality is, few have enshrined it, that is, portrayed inequality as a highly desirable state of affairs. Inequality exists, unfortunately! I have just had a change of mind: inequality exists, fortunately!

In an earlier book I wrote:

The authors of the Declaration took the rational step of seating the Creator as the single point of reference, thereby making all men precisely as equal before the civil law as all men are equal before the Creator.[1]

We have here a semantic trap in which most of us—myself included—have become ensnared. Once we accept the idea that all men are equal before God, we are more than likely to think of equality as the major purpose of human effort and a condition to be sought, as nearly as possible, in all worldly relationships. This is a dangerous notion, completely at odds with reality.

As I now see it, men are no more equal before God than they are equal in this earthly life. Judas was not the equal of Peter! To contend otherwise is to condemn God as near-sighted. What this affirmation is intended to convey, really, is that all men are subject to the Universal Laws indiscriminately; there are no favorites; there is a common across-the-board justice. With this in mind, merely reflect on the distinction between common justice and equality. They are by no means synonymous.

Inequality prevails among men. One is a teetotaler, another an alcoholic. Joe is a genius at this, Bob at that. This man peers through a telescope to fathom the heavens; another through a microscope to probe the infinitesimal.

As F. A. Hayek concludes in The Constitution of Liberty:

From the fact that people are very different it follows that, if we treat them equally, the result must be inequality in their actual position, and that the only way to place them in an equal position would be to treat them differently. Equality before the law and material equality are therefore not only different but are in conflict with each other; and we can achieve either the one or the other, but not both at the same time.

The ideal civil law, like the laws of God or Natural Law, is unbiased as to who or what we are. But we are not equal in the “eyes” of the civil law any more than we are equal in the “eyes” of the Ten Commandments. These laws are blind; they have no eyes to see us. Civil laws, as the Universal Laws—if intelligently drawn—are indiscriminate; they confer no special privilege on anyone; they are but codes—blind to the thousand and one ways we rank ourselves—their hallmark being a common justice.

If we wish to say that these codes are equally as fair to you as to me, all well and good. This kind of wording, however, merely asserts that we are—one as much as another—beneficiaries of fairness and justice. By employing the right words, we avoid the notion of human equality and the mischievous deductions that grow from such a common, semantic error. I am agreeing with an observation by George Horne:

Among the sources of those innumerable calamities which from age to age have overwhelmed mankind, may be reckoned as one of the principal, the abuse of words.

What about the popular claim that we are born equal? We are no more equal at birth than at death; no more equal in the fetus than in the grave. “Nature has made nothing equal,” including all forms of nonlife or life, human or otherwise.[2]

We have equal rights! Valid? In a way, provided “rights” are properly defined and circumscribed. Any person, regardless of race, creed, color, or whatever, has as much right to life, livelihood, liberty as any other—provided his actions are peaceful, that is, noncoercive. Observe that when thus circumscribed, the equal rights concept makes no claim on any other person; it is, instead, an appeal to reason, morality, justice. It has no more muscle, no more teeth to it, than an aspiration. It is righteous and, for this reason, utterly harmless.

I stress “harmless” simply because most people put no such boundaries on “equal rights.” Blind to the rational limitations of this concept, they are carried away with “equality” and demand equal pay, rights to a job, to “a decent standard of living,” to a “fair” wage or price. They put quotas, embargoes, tariffs on goods, meaning that they think of themselves as having a right to your and my trade. It is impossible to list the instances in which people have slumped so far in their thinking that, today, mere wishes are thought of as rights.[3]

Take note of the fact that all of these demands for equality, beyond the rational boundary, make a claim on others. No longer harmless, they are harmful, destructive. They rob selected Peter to pay collective Paul—feathering the nests of some at the expense of others. Noncoercive? To the contrary, each and every one of these rests on raw coercion—the application of police force. Name an exception!

Sadly, the misunderstanding and misuse of the word “equality” accounts substantially for the leveling programs—egalitarianism—going on in the world today: communism, socialism, state welfarism, interventionism, and the like. Equality? I am for inequality!

The notion of equality is one of the mistaken features of our folklore, but so much lip service is given to it that the thought of inequality as a desirable condition is, at first blush, shocking. How could any sane person favor inequality! Is it because he has no compassion, no thought for his fellow men? To the contrary, I would argue.

Man in his quest for perfection—for a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness—can make headway only to the extent that he perceives and abides by the Universal Laws. Conceded, our awareness of these Laws is infinitesimal; we know but very few of them. There is one, however, about which there can be no question: inequality! “Nature has made nothing equal.”

No two atoms, molecules, snowflakes, planets, stars, galaxies are ever identical. No two persons are equal; indeed, no individual in any given moment of time is equal to himself in the previous moment. Imagine—a million new red blood cells every second! All is radiant energy, in one form or another; all is in motion from imperceptible slowness to the speed of light. Is this as it should be? My answer is “yes,” for this is the way it is—like it or not. I like it!

A further demonstration that this thesis is a “switch” for me: In Who’s Listening? I had a chapter entitled “How To Be Like Socrates.” One friend wrote, “I don’t want to be like Socrates.” I got a chuckle, but not the point—until later.

Suppose—I thought to myself—everyone were like Socrates. We would all be on the street asking each other a series of easily answered questions that inevitably lead the answerer to a logical conclusion foreseen by the questioner. Everybody would be slovenly, ugly, and wise. No one would be raising food, or building homes, or making planes, stoves, pots, pans. Indeed, were all like Socrates, there would not be a person on this earth.

Likeness? Equality? Let us be done with this careless phrasing—this abuse of words—and the destructive thoughts to which it leads!

“Free and equal” is an oft-heard expression, suggesting that freedom and equality are as inseparable as Siamese twins. Actually, they are mutually antagonistic. The equality idea—equal pay and so on—rests on the antithesis of freedom: raw coercion. It is just as impossible to be free when equality is politically manipulated as it is impossible to be equal.

Free and unequal—freedom and inequality—are what go hand in hand. The essence of individuality is uniqueness: inequality in skills, talents, knowledge, aspirations. This is merely an acknowledgment of a Universal Law. Obviously, we must be free to produce, to exchange, to travel or we perish as surely as if all were like you or me or Socrates.

We come, finally, to the economic case for inequality. Not our likenesses, but our differences, give rise to the division of labor and the complex market processes of production and trade. We have already mentioned, and can see all about us, that in a given field of activity one person is more skilled—more productive—than another. So, it is to our advantage to specialize and to trade with other specialists.

This is not to say that each of us must be equally skilled as a specialist in order for him to gain the advantages of trade. The more skilled one becomes at his speciality, the greater his incentive to hire or trade with others to carry out certain tasks for him, even though he can cook meals or scrub floors better than can the person he hires for such tasks. It is to his comparative advantage to concentrate his efforts on the single skill for which consumers offer him the greatest reward. By thus serving others—and becoming ever more skilled and outstanding (unequal) in the process—he best serves his own interest.

A moment’s reflection reveals that this comparative advantage in trading, which rewards the most renowned specialist, also rewards in similar fashion every other party to such trade, down to the very least-skilled participant in the market. This is not to say that their gains would be equal; only that each gains from the trade more goods and services than otherwise would have been his. And what is true here of trade between individuals in a given nation is also true of international trade. However wealthy or poor and skilled or unskilled the respective traders, each finds a comparative advantage in trading—if it is voluntary.

Not only does this blessing of inequality flow from the mental or physical skills of traders; it also pertains to the capital, the tools of the trade, the savings and investments by individuals. The specialist who saves and develops tools becomes ever more specialized and efficient. And it is to the advantage of every participant in the market to encourage the saver and investor by respecting and protecting his property—even though the result is greater inequality of wealth than before. Otherwise, there soon would be no incentive for anyone to save or invest in the tools of production, the facilities of trade.

So, if a people would avoid falling to a low level of sameness and bare subsistence, the procedure is to cultivate and accentuate their differences in skills and in private ownership and use of property—these being the requisites for a flourishing and beneficial trade. And let us bear in mind that exchange (other than primitive barter) depends on an honest, trustworthy, circulating medium; this is an absolute—money of integrity. Freedom in monetary matters means no political manipulation of our medium of exchange.

That, in brief, is the economic case for inequality.[4] Sadly, the misunderstanding and misapplication of the concept of “equality” affords a major explanation for the leveling programs—egalitarianism—going on in the world today: communism, socialism, state welfarism, interventionism, and the like. So, I take my stand for inequality.

Let us then enshrine inequality by acknowledging and embracing this fact of Nature—inequality—and, also, its working handmaiden: human freedom. Allow no interference with creative activities, which is to say, permit anyone to do anything he chooses so long as it is peaceful. A fair field and no favor!

[1] See To Free or Freeze (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1972), p. 124.

[2] See You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams (New York: Random House, 1967).

[3] See “When Wishes Become Rights” in my book, Deeper Than You Think (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1967), pp. 98–107.

[4] A more detailed treatment of these arguments may be found in pages 836–847 of Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.

15

THE REVEALING SELF

Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.

—EDMUND BURKE

It took Spinoza, a philosopher of three centuries ago, to awaken me to the startling fact that all of my writings, lectures, expressions of likes and dislikes, tell far more about me than they do about the subjects to which I address myself. It was a shock to realize that I reveal the kind of person I am more than I convey the ideas I intend! And you, whatever your rank or status, are rarely an exception to this rule.

The awakening line was this: “Paul’s idea of Peter tells us more about Paul than about Peter.” Indeed, plausible! But this was the clincher: “The prophets’ ideas about God tell us more about the prophets than about God.”[1] Emerson echoed this idea when he remarked: “What you are speaks so loud I cannot hear what you say!”

Two commentaries are warranted: (1) a briefing of Spinoza’s philosophy that we may understand what led him to this conclusion and (2) the valuable instruction to be deduced that we may embrace and follow it. Conceded, I am including Spinoza as one of the rare exceptions to the rule being explored.

Goethe, one of the brilliant minds of our time, acknowledged that Spinoza was the only philosopher with whom he had no disagreement.[2] My favorite Goethe quotation, which I have twice cited already, is pure Spinoza:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

Spinoza used the terms God and Nature interchangeably. He rejected the common idea of an anthropomorphic deity, viewing God, rather, as the immutable universal laws which man is powerless to alter. “Nothing finite is self-sufficient, only the infinite can be truly substantial and the separate things of existence and life are but aspects of infinite divinity. . . . In order to fulfill one’s destiny it is necessary to seek understanding of the workings of the universe, to accommodate one’s self as best one can to the infinite plan, and to participate in it. [It is] realizing the self as part of the unlimited.”[3] (Italics added)

True, Spinoza is one of those rare exceptions to the rule in question. Nonetheless, his recorded insights tell far more about him than they tell about the eternal verities he attempted to explain.

Return to the prophets. What, for instance, did they with their finite minds know of infinite divinity—God or Nature? True, they experienced many enlightenments but, relative to the infinite unknown, their glimmerings were no more than wee candles. The point to note is this: they told us a great deal more about themselves and their thinking than about God. Similarly, what does any Paul know of any Peter? Substantially nothing! Indeed, no one—Paul and Peter included—gains more than a smattering of his own makeup and being. Paul, in his assessment of Peter, reveals far more about Paul than about Peter!

In a word, one’s messages are viewed not so much for their subject matter, as is commonly thought, but far more for what they reveal of the writer or speaker. He is being looked at, sized up, assessed. The reader or listener, even though he may not realize it, is trying to discover what kind of a person Paul was, you are, I am.

What am I to make of this discovery? Should it dampen or enliven my spirit and efforts? Frankly, I have seldom come upon a more encouraging guideline. Why this exuberance? My answer: In writing this, for instance, it is I, far more than my explanations, that will be revealed. Is this not an incentive to put the best foot forward, to present openly and honestly one’s highest thoughts? Indeed, an incentive par excellence!

Have a look at this from the usual and negative angle. Reflect on the countless people who are commenting angrily on “the mess we are in,” the name callers, those who are throwing in the sponge, giving up the ghost. Actually, they reveal only themselves; they do nothing to enlighten us about our personal and societal troubles. Carefully examine your own assessments in the light of Spinoza’s observation and note how correct it is.

Anyone who grasps this simple point cannot help but turn himself toward man’s most important role: examplarity, that is, to do all within his power to strive for the best he can possibly attain. Imagine a citizenry so oriented! Were enough of us suddenly to thus aim our thoughts, words, actions we could, possibly, expect to turn the world around in eighty days! It is, as Spinoza asserts, “realizing the self as part of the unlimited.”

Edmund Burke phrased a great truth: “Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.” Exemplarity in its purest form is contagious, for all gains in the higher realms of thought are caught, not taught.

How describe those rare occasions when you or I go beyond sizing up another, taking his measure, so to speak? At what point does exemplarity become contagious? In my own case, it is when someone’s attainment reaches unusually attractive heights still within my sights. It is when another is deemed to be much above my level, whose thoughts I can look up to. This is when I go beyond assessing his person and try instead to partake of his enlightenment. It is a fair wager that this holds true for you also. Thank you, Baruch de Spinoza, for a valuable lesson!

[1] See The Philosophy of Spinoza by Joseph Ratner (New York: The Modern Library, Inc., 1927), pp. xiv–xlvi.

[2] Boldly, I have several disagreements with Spinoza, none more pronounced than this: “Far from it being necessary to tell the masses only the truth Spinoza believed, as did Plato before him, that it may even be necessary in order to rule the masses successfully in the ways of wisdom and virtue to deceive them to a greater or lesser extent. Such deception is, as a political expediency, morally justified, for the rulers would be lying in the interests of virtue and truth.” (Ratner, p. xlvi) This argues that the end justifies the means. Is this excusable on the grounds that the free society was, in Spinoza’s time, an unborn concept? Emphatically not!

[3] See The Columbia Encyclopedia, Second Edition, p. 1863.

16

RAILING AGAINST FOLLY

However, not a word more upon this wretched subject, lest I become unwise in railing against folly.

—GOETHE

Goethe’s observation about railing against folly came during the 83rd and last year of his life. Another translation reads, “. . . lest I fall into unreason while fighting the unreasonable.”[1] Translated either way, this raises some important questions—as germane to our time as to Goethe’s.

Does railing against folly, in fact, cause one to become unwise, to fall into unreason? If one decides never to rail against folly, how then is a concerned person to treat the “wretched” subjects heard on every hand? Must one infer that these should be ignored? Or, having made such a decision, does there remain a way of coping with follies? Were enough of us to know the correct answers to these questions and were we to put the knowledge into practice, I am convinced that the present wayward trend would be reversed. My aim here is to search for the right answers.

Goethe’s fear, I believe, is well founded; we do fall into unreason if we choose to fight it out at the folly levels. If someone claims that the moon is made of green cheese and I elect to debate him at his level, my rebuttals will smack as much of green-cheese nonsense as his silly assertion. When one goes to the gutter to set the world straight he will, sooner or later, become a guttersnipe himself. He nails his thinking down to unreason.

It is impossible to list the thousand and one follies which daily assail us. They range all the way from claims by celebrated “economists” that politicians can run our lives better than we can, to feathering one’s own nest at the expense of others, to wage and price controls.

Let me concede, before going further, that these numerous follies are not, by and large, consciously malicious. Most of them are inspired by good intentions. What then accounts for the originators getting so far off the track? No one knows all the answers. However, there is one reason which deserves reflection—a seeming confusion between private businessmanship and governmental statesmanship, these being two distinctly different realms.

What is one of the sound procedures for an honest soup maker, for instance? It is to contrive a concoction that will satisfy palates—the more the better. His own taste for soup is not the guideline; rather, it is the taste of soup consumers. It is they, not he, whose tastes direct the kinds of soup he produces.

As to the governmental realm, we must concede that the quality of officeholders is but an echoing of voter thinking. If it be low, politicians will occupy the seats of political power; if high, statesmen will preside.

When the thinking of voters is low, they will elect those who will cater to their something-for-nothing whims—political soup makers—men who promise to use their coercive power to gratify tastes, however degenerate they may be. But blame not the politician for aping the soup makers; it is the voters, not he, whose tastes direct the plundering and sharing operations. This, I believe, is one of the reasons why the originators of folly get so far off the track.

If, on the other hand, the thinking of voters were high grade, those elected to office would be statesmen, men who would stand ramrod straight for what they personally believed to be right and just—no special favor—or flavor—to anyone! If there were less demand for folly, there would be fewer producers of it.

I am contending that the politicians who respond to the folly market are more or less blind to their mischief. They use the highly approved soup maker’s formula for success. Why should there be a different tactic for staying in office than for staying in business! In a word, the ways of material affluence have shut their eyes to moral perfection. To close our own eyes, which is what we do when railing against their follies—name calling, confrontations—adds nothing to their enlightenment while it stifles our own. It is said that when the blind try to lead the blind, both fall into the ditch. Did you ever see a person brighten up when called “Stupid”? Never, any more than the name caller brightened up! Railing is blinding to the railed at and to the railer.

Railing against nonsense is no answer; it is self-defeating. What then about these “wretched” subjects? Must we shut our eyes to them? Ignore these follies as if nonexistent? Have we who wish to avoid becoming unwise or unreasonable relegated ourselves to the do-nothing, helpless scrap heap? To the contrary! By closing the door to the wrong way, the one that leads only to darkness, the door to the right way opens to our view, the one that leads to light—our own enlightenment.

Instead of railing against follies, rally in search of truth! What does this type of action suggest? Rather than uselessly berating this and that folly, think through and learn how to explain what should replace it. For instance:

• If more people understood the efficacy of private ownership and freedom in transactions, wage and price controls would get no more hearing than “the earth is flat.”

• If the truth were recognized that no living person can coercively control the creative life of another beneficially, the whole dictocratic structure would tumble into a shambles.

• If it were more generally believed that the way out of poverty is not “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” but, rather, to each according to production, the feathering of the nests of some at the expense of others would be at an end.

• If virtues and talents—morality—were riding high, that is, if each were accurately reflecting what his highest conscience dictates as righteous, statesmen would replace politicians.

One might go on and on with these examples, but the point is clear. We need only bear in mind that folly gives way to truth precisely as darkness recedes when light increases.

Yes, follies do indeed merit our attention. They suggest the areas in need of enlightenment, subjects on which our creative attention should be focused.

It is light that brings forth the eye. Seek enlightenment! Whose eyes will open? One’s own, for certain! And, if the light be bright enough, some others will also see. Perhaps even a politician or two, but that does not matter. If others see, the folly collaborators will be unseated; no longer will they occupy positions of power. It is what is seen, not who sees.

So, forget railing against folly and, instead, accent what’s right. This is the answer which, if practiced, will keep you and me from falling into unreason, from becoming unwise. Further, it will reverse the present waywardness.

[1] Here is the way it reads in the original German: Doch kein Wort mehr über diesen schlechten Gegenstand, damit ich nicht unvernünftig werde, indem ich das Unvernünftige bekämpfe.

17

TIME-LAPSE THINKING

Economics . . . is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.[1]

—HENRY HAZLITT

Most politico-economic policies in our time are in response to the demands of this or that special interest or pressure group, while the general interest is ignored. Further, the long-run effect is overlooked in order that short-run “gains” may be achieved. This is the road to disaster, and no turnabout is possible short of a greater reliance on time-lapse thinking. Let Walt Disney’s demonstration explain what I mean by time-lapse thinking.

Disney planted a rose seedling and made a motion picture of its growth, flicking a single frame every day or so until the plant was mature and the rose had bloomed. When he showed this film on a screen at sixteen frames per second, we then witnessed the whole beautiful phenomenon—the unfolding of a rosebud—in a minute or two. Disney’s time-lapse photography enabled us to experience an improvement in frequency perception; that is, the viewers were able to see the long-run effects of short-run causes. This is why I suggest the urgency of some time-lapse thinking.

While time-lapse photography and time-lapse thinking are similar in that each collapses time, there is an important difference. The former reduces the time between causes and effects that have already taken place; the latter requires that time be collapsed as related to future effects of present causes. True, no person has a crystal ball, nor could he read it if he had one. Yet, I believe there is a way of foreseeing what effects certain actions will have.

Carry this belief a step further. The easiest and perhaps the only way to be certain that a short-run action is a gain or loss is to discover what its long-run effects will be. Why? There is no such thing as a short-run gain that is not also a long-run gain, and vice versa. As Emerson wrote, “The end pre-exists in the means.” It is axiomatic that constructive service of the individual’s purposes or of the general interest can never emerge from destructive means. Thus, collapse time, resort to time-lapse thinking, to evaluate day-to-day actions.

To illustrate: Is thievery a short-run gain for the thief? Most thieves think it is or they would not steal. Having a stunted perception, they fail to realize that the loss in life-values far exceeds the gain in loot. Were the thief capable of time-lapse thinking, he would clearly see that a population of thieves would perish. The long-run effect would be disastrous; therefore, the short-run action—the means—is disastrous and evil.

Direct theft is practiced by comparatively few of the total population. Most people find it unnecessary to do time-lapse thinking to put thievery in its proper place. However, millions of these same people not only condone but participate in legal plunder, that is, they urge government to do the looting for them. They see nothing wrong with this; indeed, they regard the loot as a gain. Perhaps the only way for them to set their thinking straight is a resort to time-lapse thinking.

In a nutshell, let these millions project their practices into the future—everyone doing what the few are now doing, that is, everyone being paid for not working. Clearly, were there no work there would be no loot to take, nothing to plunder. As with thievery, all would perish. By the simple device of collapsing time, the future effect of their present actions would become obvious. Thus, living off others is not even a short-run gain. A few paltry dollars at the price of surrendering responsibility for self—the very essence of being—amounts to an enormous net loss.

Many farmers get paid for not farming and regard the payments as gains. Apply this political nostrum to all productive activity, not only getting paid for not farming but getting paid for not generating electricity, not drilling for and refining oil, not making clothes and autos, and so on. Project such practices into the future and observe the self-evident consequences. Time-lapse thinking will reveal the fallacy; it will serve as an eye-opener, a needed shock treatment. All losses now!

Reflect on the businessmen who seek political protection against competition, domestic as well as foreign. Assume the universality of this craving for short-run “gains” and then assess the future. What would be the economic picture? What would it look like? Ancient feudalism or medieval mercantilism or modern communism!

No need for more illustrations; a thousand and one could be cited. Time-lapse thinking not only is invaluable in deciding on sound economic policy but can be used to arrive at the correctness of present actions in all fields—education, religion, politics, or whatever.

From such thinking stems this helpful conclusion: fret not for the morrow, only for today. Why? Because the morrow is a life-style edifice structured from today’s actions. Wrote Addison: “This is the world of seeds, of causes, and of tendencies; the other is the world of harvests and results and of perfected and eternal consequences.” Thus, if today’s actions are as right as one can make them, then the morrow is as good as it can be.

My gratitude to Henry Hazlitt for his philosophy, and to Walt Disney for his technology. I have merely strung their pearls of wisdom on a single thread.

[1] See Economics in One Lesson (N.Y.: Manor Books), p. 135.

18

BUY AMERICAN

He that hath a trade hath an estate; and he that hath a calling hath a place of profit and honor. A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.

—FRANKLIN

The admonition to “Buy American” has two diametrically opposed meanings. The first is its popular and mischievous meaning—shun goods produced in foreign countries. The second, and loftier meaning embodied in these words, is rarely mentioned or thought of—shun principles and practices alien to the American dream of limited government and personal freedom.

Producers who plead with consumers to “Buy American” are appealing to blind patriotism. Buy my product because it is made here; heed not its price or quality. This is sheer chauvinism. Suppose I were to urge your acceptance of my ideas, rather than those of Marx or Machiavelli, merely because of our differing nationalities. The absurdity of such an appeal is obvious: neither goods nor ideas are properly judged in this fashion; geographical origin has nothing to do with the matter.

While the plea, “Buy American,” is less frequently heard in these words than formerly, the notion persists, however subtle and varied its phrasing. All obstacles to competition, be they foreign or domestic, are but variants of this theme. For instance, barriers exist by the thousands between states and even cities. A few examples will suffice to make my point.

Try to buy Florida oranges and grapefruit in California!

I recall when General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce the trouble we had in defeating a resolution that would impose a restriction on the entry of Kansas beef. After all, there is quite a cattle industry in Southern California!

How many times have we heard the local chamber of commerce plea: “Buy at home; protect our merchants and industries.” Here we have the “Buy American” nonsense brought from the international to the Main Street level.

Don’t get caught bringing cigarettes into New York which you bought in New Jersey, or the booze you purchased in Illinois into Indiana. A tariff? No! But it amounts to the same thing: a “fair trade” law in one and not the other or higher state taxes in one than the other. Goods will tend to move illegally from the lower priced to the higher area—via black marketeers!

Frankly, we should not assess this trend as nation, state, or city control. Call it by its right name: People control! What’s the difference between the plea, “Buy American,” and the demand from union bosses that all union members—and everyone else—buy only goods produced under union label?

All wage and price controls, whether rent control in New York City, freezes by the Federal government, minimum wage laws, or above-market wages and below-market hours coercively exacted by labor unions, are people control. These rigidities are not to be distinguished from the “Buy American” or “Buy at home” notion. When prices, for instance, are fixed below the market, producers are threatened with loss or bankruptcy. The political remedy? Impose tariffs, quotas, embargoes against foreign competition in order to relieve domestic producers. In a word, force consumers to “Buy American!”

Enough of this mischievous notion. Let us try instead to appreciate and “buy” the American ideal of freedom.

In what respect was the American idea unique? Wrote Daniel Webster:

[America] holds out an example a thousand times more encouraging than ever was presented before to those nine-tenths of the human race who are born without hereditary fortune or hereditary rank.

Ralph Waldo Emerson had this to say:

America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine Providence in behalf of the human race.

While numerous individuals might be singled out, Benjamin Franklin qualifies as well as anyone as an exemplar of the unique political structure known as America. “As American as apple pie.”[1] My explanation later.

As to the best in political economy, consider the Constitution of the United States. Regardless of its several flaws, no other nation’s charter has equalled it in an economic sense. In what respect is this distinctively American? Here is the answer:

No state shall without the consent of the Congress, lay any imposts on imports and exports. . . .

In a nutshell, no tariffs, quotas, embargoes between the several states. While the British Empire in its heyday had a larger free trade area when measured in square miles, the world has never known a free trade area as large as the U.S.A. when measured in value of goods and services produced and exchanged. Never perfectly free, but the nearest approximation to freedom!

Take Western Europe with all of its contiguous nations, each country walled off from the others by many trade barriers, custom houses, border guards. Then reflect on the U.S.A. which has more states than Europe has nations. Unless watching the map or the road signs, rarely can one tell when crossing from one state to another. Compare the wealthiest European nation with the least wealthy state in our Union and the latter has it by a mile. Why? The free market here more than there!

One of the flaws in early America was a moderate tariff. There were two excuses: (1) revenue and (2) to protect our “infant industries” against the competition of European giants. Here are three questions and their answers:

1. What nation in all the world and in all history has had the most infant industrial starts? The U.S.A.

2. In what nation has there been the greatest number of infant industries growing into giants? In the U.S.A.

3. In what nation has this little-to-bigness development faced the greatest competition? In the U.S.A. where there have been and are now more industrial giants than have ever existed elsewhere.

In reality, it is competition which protects “infant industries”; it protects them from stagnation and persuades them to grow.

In the absence of competition and freedom of transactions, producers stagnate. It is only when others are doing better that one attempts to overcome, to gain strength. Competition, combined with free exchange, makes strong giants out of weak infants; this is the password to economic opportunity and well-being—an American idea well worth buying.

Regardless of all the noisy arguments to the contrary, everyone known to me favors both competition and free trade. Name one who does not favor competition among those from whom he buys. Logically, then, how can one favor competition among millions of others and be against it for himself! This is irrationality, not disagreement.

Precisely the same can be said for free trade—domestic or foreign. Name one who would not welcome an order for his products from another country or county. Everyone favors exports. Imports? Favoring exports and objecting to imports is the same as favoring selling and objecting to being paid. This is an absurdity, not disagreement.

To conclude this examination of the Americanism worth buying, I return to Franklin whom I consider the first great American economist.

Prior to the more or less simultaneous discoveries by the Austrian, Menger, the Englishman, Jevons, and the Swiss, Walras—around 1870—nearly everyone, economists included, agreed with the Frenchman, Montaigne, that one man’s gain had to be someone else’s loss.

The reason for this economic blindness was a failure to understand value. The false idea was that the value of a good was the cost of its production or, as it is called, the labor theory of value. Menger, Jevons, and Walras, by observing how people behave when free, reputedly discovered the subjective theory of value, perhaps the most important discovery in economic history. It was simply this: the value of any good or service is whatever anyone will offer in willing exchange. Rather than one gaining and another losing, each gains, according to his own subjective judgment. Otherwise, there would be no swap.

And now I learn of Franklin’s prescience. “The First Great American,” a century earlier than Menger, made this observation:

In transactions of trade it is not to be supposed that, as in gaming, what one party gains the other must necessarily lose. The gain to each may be equal. If A. has more corn than he can consume, but wants cattle; and B. has more cattle, but wants corn; exchange is gain to each; thereby the common stock of comforts in life is increased. (Italics added)

How much Franklin’s insight—ahead of his time—had to do with early America cannot be determined; doubtless, it was substantial. For our forefathers freely traded; they were as anxious to buy as to sell. What perturbed them greatly was a tax on tea.

Combining the Constitution’s establishment of free trade among the states and Franklin’s correct theory of value, what then is meant by “Buy American” in its proper sense?

Let willing exchange prevail among all people, locally and worldwide. Let each buyer or seller be guided by his own scale of values. Sell the American way and buy the American way—not as presently practiced, but as once prevailed and ought to be reinstituted. Keep ours the land of opportunity for everyone. “A plowman on his legs is higher than a gentleman on his knees.”

[1] A biography of Franklin by John Tottle was entitled Benjamin Franklin: The First Great American.

19

REVERENCE, THAT ANGEL OF THE WORLD

Always and in everything let there be reverence.

—CONFUCIUS

Moral philosophy is the study of right and wrong. Economics is a branch thereof: the study of right and wrong as the results bear upon the overcoming of scarcity. The tendency among most “economists” and many free market devotees is to concentrate on the branch, economics, while ignoring the tree, morality. Indeed, ever so many deem it quixotic to do otherwise; to bring morality into the problem of scarcity is to climb aboard “cloud 9”; it is to go into reverie or daydreams. Such aspersions are utter folly, for if the tree be rotten the branch is dead!

To make my point, assume every American to be as knowledgeable in economics as the renowned Ludwig von Mises, but utterly devoid of moral scruples. The economic knowledge would be misused. The aim of maximizing comfort while minimizing effort would lead to political means for the enriching of some at the expense of others. This, in turn, would diminish productivity and introduce scarcity. Scarcity and immorality, in fact, go hand in hand precisely as do scarcity and thievery. Try to imagine a society of thieves! In vain; parasites die in the absence of a host. We are forced to conclude that scarcity is best overcome when all are hosts—producers—and none are thieves.

Thievery is on the rampage the world over. While overwhelmingly in the form of legalized plunder, it is as parasitical as the personal holdup variety. Unless checked, it must eventually destroy the hosts.

Stealing, evil as it is, falls short of killing when it comes to man’s inhumanity to man. This, also, is on the rampage and is condoned, if not directly participated in, by millions of citizens in the wars of our age. By far the vast majority of those who approve of the mass slaughter going on in the world today would not personally kill a man, woman, or child. They would prefer their own death to such an offense. Yet, collectivize the action, let it bear the label of government, and all sense of personal guilt vanishes. The feeling is nearly unanimous, “I’m not responsible!” Find even one who thinks of himself as a killer! In consequence of such moral blindness and sloppy thinking tens of thousands have gone to their reward. In any event, let no one, economist or whoever, suggest that ours is not, first and foremost, a moral problem.

It is this line of thought which emphasizes—to me, at least—that sound economic practices are out of the question except as they stem from and are an outgrowth of moral rectitude. The abundant life can no more emerge from immoral behavior than a Statue of Liberty can be built on quicksand. Thus, heed not the counselor who prescribes recipes for more goods and services and omits the essential ingredient: morality! The staff of life—bread—is not made from water alone.

Irreverence seems to be the mood of our time; it is noted all about us. Not only is there a general irreverence for the fruits of another’s labor—legal plunder—but there is an appalling irreverence for human life. Indeed, there is little if any difference between taking the subsistence of life and taking life itself. Who cares whether he is starved or stabbed to death!

The cure for irreverence, and the only one, is reverence—a reverence for life, all life. One wonders how that man, Shakespeare, referred to this virtue as “That angel of the world”—a flash of enlightenment come upon nearly four centuries ago, an insight that is rarely thought of in our time, let alone mentioned![1]

It has been my conviction for several years that those of us who favor the freedom philosophy and the superior way of life it makes possible, have been derelict in our explanations; we have been overlooking numerous obscure underpinnings of the philosophy and, in consequence, have failed miserably to make our own case. Reverence for life is indeed an “angel”; it is a virtue to which we must wed ourselves or pay the exorbitant price of irreverence, that is, pay with our lives, no less!

I am the first to admit that a reverence for life—all life, be it plant or animal—is difficult to come by; the awakening must stem from an experience not common to life as we live it today.

Until 17 years ago I did not differ from the mill run of people so far as a reverence for all life is concerned. To use a Davy Crockett term, it took a “sockdolager” to bring me to myself. I share this not with the expectation that my experience will suffice for anyone else but merely to explain my own awakening. The “sockdolager,” an entry in my journal, is entitled, LE DERNIER TESTAMENT D’UN CANARD. It reads thus:

The following explanation is pasted on the back of this painting in case any of LER’s progeny ever have a curiosity as to what inspired this sad scene. Why is the title in French? The duck’s expression had to be deduced by grandpappy just as grandpappy always had to guess what a Frenchman was saying.

“It was a Sunday, October 28, 1956. Len, Jr., and I were in the blinds at 5:30 A.M. at his duck club near Dos Palos, California. There was neither cloud nor breeze. On Wednesday we had had our two limits in an hour—all sprig. On Saturday it had taken us four hours to obtain twenty birds. This Sunday, however, held little promise, for only now and then would a bird come within gunshot.

“I was not doing well at all. Of a sudden, after nearly three hours of relative inactivity, a flock of teal flew by, a little too far away, but possible. My single shot brought down three birds, one dead and two injured—luck like a hole-in-one. Len had no trouble retrieving the crippled and dead birds as I went in search of the other. Eventually, I found this male teal, snuggled against a tuft of water grass, the saddest sight I have ever seen. One tiny pellet from the gunshot had penetrated his left eye. Three drops of blood stained his pretty feathers. His head was turned toward me as I approached, his whole demeanor being not of anger, but, as it seemed to me, of quiet reproach for taking the life of an innocent little fellow—just for fun!

“This picture remained vividly in my memory. On November 20th I phoned Lloyd Sanford, a wildlife artist of the New York Zoological Society, and described the scene to him. The next day his pencil sketch was on my desk. Sanford had caught my impression perfectly.

“This, then is the last testament of a dying duck, stored in my subconscious for nearly a month, communicated electrically to a sympathetic artist, and committed to an oil painting. The painting may never have an appropriate title, but the theme is clear: The teal doesn’t appear to argue that man shouldn’t kill ducks any more than ducks shouldn’t kill fish. He seems only to convey a profound sorrow that an individual with my moral and spiritual pretensions should take the life of such as he while having the effrontery to call it sportsmanship.”

Once “that angel of the world,” as Shakespeare referred to reverence, insinuates itself into one’s consciousness, it extends even to insect and plant life. The great Albert Schweitzer wouldn’t chop down a tree to make way for a hospital; rather, he would transplant it. He was once observed flat on his belly scooping ants from a pile hole into which an ant hill had fallen. Is this carrying reverence for life too far? If so, then I am also an extremist. I have, for instance, taken hornets and wasps from the house on a piece of paper, freeing them to their outdoor kingdom. Never kill anything for the fun of it is the moral lesson that little teal taught me.[2]

Why dwell on these minutiae? Simply because reverence has its inception—birth—at these lower levels of life. Ingrained at this level, it extends as a moral compulsion into human relationships. He who would not kill a tree or bee for sport will never steal for aggrandizement or otherwise bring avoidable suffering to his fellow man. “Great oaks from little acorns grow”; great men from tiny ova flow; and precisely the same with reverence for life!

While pondering this subject, I came upon an article, “The Vanishing Kangaroo,” an account of a sickening irreverence for life.[3]

To see a kangaroo in bounding flight is to see nature at its best. To see a big Red chopped down by bullets while loping at 35 miles per hour is to see man at his worst.

And then this commentary:

The willingness to save these gentle, amiable, almost defenseless creatures is important not only in keeping the kangaroos alive, but also in keeping human. (Italics added)

“In keeping human!” Should that not be modified to read, “On becoming human”? Were men to behave no more abominably toward each other than do animals and plants within their species, humans would at least be humane. Remember, a wolf never kills a wolf![4] What is the popular way to correct this widespread irreverence for life? Millions of people deplore what is happening to the kangaroos in Australia, to the wolves in Canada, to wild life all over the globe, and they want to do something. The prescription? Run to government! Pass a law! Reverence, the sole remedy for irreverence, can never be achieved in this manner. Reverence, “that angel of the world,” is a spiritual achievement born, if at all, in the souls of discrete individuals. Reverence for life can no more be forced into existence by a constabulary—laws, edicts—than can the love of one for another. It is always a personal acquisition, never an imposition.

Admittedly, this subject is as “touchy” as it is delicate which is one reason why so few individuals with my point of view ever “stick their necks out.” Why “touchy”? Most people have habits, a way of life as related to all life, so settled and ingrained that they never question whether their positions are right or wrong.

My next point may seem like a concession to irreverence but, really, it is not. Schweitzer concedes, and I agree, that all life lives on life. There is no exception. Vegetarians live on plant life. Thus, every form of life—man, animal, or plant—lives by consuming the living. Otherwise, there would be no life on this earth. From this fact, it follows that living off life cannot be classified as irreverence; this would be a contradiction for, if abandoned, there would be no one to show any reverence for anything.

What then is meant by a reverence for life? When may life be taken—plant or animal—other than to live? My answer: when it aggresses, invades, threatens to take over. Chop down weeds when they invade the garden, or do away with vermin or other pests when pestering. In a word, show reverence for animal and plant life except in instances of intrusion. Employ only defensive force!

It is my contention that if one had this degree and measure of reverence for all plant and animal life, he would quite naturally extend a similar reverence to all human life. This is to say that one would use only defensive, never aggressive, force. In this case, one would not take human life nor break the Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill.” Let me explain.

If another aggresses—comes at me with a dagger, for instance—and is killed as I act in my own defense, it is he, not I, who is responsible for his demise. He initiated the action with its unfortunate result; he committed suicide!

That one should revere the Creator is readily conceded—at least by all truly religious people. Not all such people, however, have taken the logical step of extending reverence to all life—His creation.

It took a green wing teal, a form of life midway between plant and man, to improve my reverence for plant, animal, and man. Imagine my gratitude to that angel of reverence—in my case a bird!

[1] An outstanding exception is Albert Schweitzer, a man of many talents. See the chapter, “The Ethic of Reverence for Life,” in Albert Schweitzer: The Man and His Mind by George Seaver (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1947).

[2] Aldous Huxley carries the matter one stage further. In conversation with a colleague of mine he remarked, “One hears it said that you shouldn’t treat people as things. You shouldn’t even treat things as things!”

[3] See “The Vanishing Kangaroo” in The American Way, May 1973, by Derryn Hinch, Editor and Manager, The Sydney Morning Herald, Sydney, Australia.

[4] See “Morals and Weapons,” the final chapter in King Solomon’s Ring by Konrad Z. Lorenz, who, according to Julian Huxley, is “one of the outstanding naturalists of our times.” In paperback (New York, N.Y.: Thomas Y. Crowell Co., 1961).

20

SISYPHUS

Let’s make sisyphism a part of our mythology instead of our national policy.

Sisyphus in Greek mythology was condemned, as a punishment for his wickedness in this life, to roll a stone from the bottom to the top of a hill. Whenever the stone reached the top it rolled down again. Thus, his task was never-ending.

The wickedness of Sisyphus was not a case of politico-economic intrigue. But Frederic Bastiat, the eminent French economist, philosopher, and statesman of well over a century ago, dubbed all people sisyphists who, by restrictive measures, tend to make the tasks of life unending.

Let us peek into the nature and extent of present-day sisyphists if only to create a desire among ourselves to reread some of the works of the great Bastiat and again to profit by his clarity of thought and simplicity of expression.[1] His fascinating parables could hardly have been more appropriate in his time than in ours.

The progress of human beings from a state of general impoverishment toward one of relative abundance is impeded by a series of obstacles. People who really serve society contribute to the overcoming of these obstacles, thereby creating abundance. Is it not precisely this kind of service whereby we may judge whether a business or a labor union or a government policy or official is social or antisocial?

People who perpetuate obstacles in order to maintain conditions of scarcity in their own line of production, thus keeping their efforts profitable at the expense of others, and who make the task of achieving abundance an endless one are, in Bastiat’s estimation, sisyphists.

“There isn’t work enough in our line for all you fellows wanting in. Keep out! By closed shops, closed unions, and closed associations we can create prosperity for ourselves and make our tasks here unending.” Selfish sisyphists! “Slow down on this job, fellows, and take more vacations, so our work will last longer.” Lazy sisyphists! “Competition is ruining our business. Let’s put a stop to it and keep prices up by embargoes and trade barriers. If these don’t work we have political power enough to get legislation that will impose discriminatory taxes on our competitors. And failing this we can always command a government subsidy for ourselves.” Power-crazed sisyphists! “Let’s have Federal aid for projects to which we are unwilling to devote our own resources.” Wasteful sisyphists! “Let us have national unemployment compensation so, even if we do no work, we can get paid anyway.” Money-mad sisyphists!

“Let us have wage, price, production, and exchange controls—eliminate market pricing as a guide to production and consumption—so that all may labor forever at posts assigned by government.” Slavish sisyphists!

Enough of this. Each of us should make it his game to spot these persons who would magnify the effort required for a given result. They are to be found everywhere—on the farms, in pulpits and classrooms, in labor unions, in private offices, in governments and, alas, too often in the mirror. They are the friends of scarcity and the enemies of abundance. Antisocial sisyphists!

Let’s make sisyphism a part of our mythology instead of our national policy!

[1] See especially The Law, Economic Sophisms, Economic Harmonies and Selected Essays on Political Economy by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc.).

21

EVIL BEGUN, RARELY UNDONE

In all things bad or evil, getting is quicker and easier than getting rid of them.

—AUGUST HARE

A former aid to Franklin Roosevelt once told me how a Congressman had presented to the President the “social security” idea. After listening to the proposal, the President responded, “That is the silliest notion I have ever heard.” Ignoring the rebuff, the Congressman continued his plea. According to my friend, the busy President finally closed the interview: “Oh well, let’s try it and see what happens.” Whether or not this is an accurate account, it is quite probable that every step toward the planned economy and state welfarism was, in its beginning, no more pretentious or popularly demanded than this. A single politician initiates the scheme, gets it into Committee, works up a clamor, finds lobbyists to push it until, sooner or later, it becomes the law of the land.[1]

“Social security” is an outstanding example of fiscal evil. Never in all history has there been a greater fraud, measured in money terms, than this. Private perpetrators of such chicanery would be imprisoned, and rightly. But evil once begun is with difficulty undone. The initial push behind this program—reckoned by energy expended—was certainly a tiny fraction of the energy exercised in opposition today. Yet, try now to wipe it from the statute books!

My purpose here is not to list all of these schemes—impossible—but rather to cite a few more examples and then examine why such legislation, easily initiated, is so difficult to abolish.

Reflect on the beginning of the Sixteenth Amendment, adopted in 1913. President Wilson and Cordell Hull spearheaded this enactment of the progressive income tax, one of the ten planks in the Communist Manifesto. The question is, how do we get rid of it?

Take two of President Hoover’s programs: the Federal Farm Board and the Reconstruction Finance Corporation. True, they are no more. However, their removal was not because of any rejection of socialism. To the contrary, these were simply displaced by other programs, under other labels: government farm management and Federal financing on the grand scale. Replacing one intervention with something worse is no victory for freedom.

The Volstead Act—prohibition—passed in 1919, was abolished in 1933. If we knew why and how, we might use similar techniques to get rid of “social security” and thousands of other socialistic laws now in force.

The NIRA—wage, price and other controls—was a scheme dreamed up by a New England utility executive and urged upon President Franklin Roosevelt. The rescinding of this legislation may offer some lessons for us.

Another intervention, later abolished, was initiated by dairymen: oleomargarine manufacturers were prohibited from adding coloring to their product, lest it be made to look like butter. But it took years to be rid of this silly law.

What, then, do these few examples have to teach us?

The dairymen were facing competition from oleomargarine, a butter substitute. Technological advance in the refinement of animal and vegetable fats made it possible for mass-produced oleomargarine to sell below the price of butter. What to do? Simple: keep oleo from looking tasty by disallowing the coloring customarily added to butter! In a word, oleo, competitively good, must be made to look comparatively bad. Substitute disparagement for competition!

The lesson? The prohibition of oleo coloring was abolished because the fallacy of this dictocratic scheme was apparent to even casual thinkers. All of the anti-free market schemes now on the statute books—countless thousands of them—are just as fallacious as this prohibition and would also be abolished were their errors as apparent. Not casual but deeper thinking is the urgent requirement.

Most businessmen, with a few notable exceptions, favor competition for others but not themselves. Thus, the NIRA—National Industrial Recovery Act—was greeted with open arms as a way to be rid of dreaded competition. However, after a year or two of the “Blue Eagle” and its strangling controls, approval from the business community sharply declined. Businessmen went about their opposition cautiously, for it was a commonly held view that these controls had to be removed gradually or the economy would be thrown into a tailspin. Then one day the Supreme Court rendered its famous “Chicken Case” decision. Suddenly, all NIRA controls were abolished. Tailspin? Check the record. With the restoration of the market, all business activity showed an upward trend. Freedom works!

The lesson? The Supreme Court measured the NIRA against the Constitution, and found it out of line. Whatever shows forth on the political horizon, be it the original drafting of the Constitution or the latter-day ruling of the Supreme Court, is but a reflection of the leadership thinking of its period. Jefferson contended that there is a natural aristocracy among men—marked by virtue and talent. For a restoration of freedom—lifting of restrictions—no more is required than a restoration of a natural aristocracy—good thinkers who stand ramrod straight.

The prohibition against drinking was abolished for the same reason as the prohibition against oleo coloring: the fallacy was so obvious. Our experience with the Volstead Act has two vital lessons to teach: (1) that the substitution of governmental intervention for free market processes results in both economic and moral deterioration among producers, distributors, and consumers, and (2) that law has no function—none whatsoever—in the correction of moral deficiencies.

Following passage of this Act, what happened to the production of beer, wine, and liquor? Brought to an end? To the contrary, millions of people made “home brew,” an inferior product, and homemade wine that was even worse; and, to top it off, “bathtub” gin! In addition, outlaws became manufacturers of this and that kind of “juice” which, in many instances, bordered on the poisonous.

What about distribution? Throughout the nation “speakeasies”—off-beat saloons—popped into existence. Bellhops, taxidrivers, and others became undercover merchants. Interestingly, one of today’s best restaurants had its beginning as a “private club” for the elite, a dispenser of illegal beverages. From lawbreakers to free market makers!

What happened to the consumption of this inferior stuff? It is my guess that more alcohol was consumed than ever before. Illicit drinking becomes sportive, that is, people think it fun to play an out-guessing game, to defy and circumvent stupid laws; they appear to have no sense of wrongdoing when they break laws they believe to be doing wrong.

In any event, producers, distributors, and consumers became schemers, breakers of the law. As a consequence, they lost a great deal of respect for all law, even that which is appropriate.

Leave to the free market the production, distribution, and consumption of beverages—alcoholic or not—and all other peaceful trade in goods and services, without exception. This is lesson number one.

As to the second lesson, the law should be confined to codifying the taboos and intervening to prohibit any person’s injury to others. It is none of government’s business how or to what extent an individual injures himself. Injury to others is the societal problem, and this is the business of society’s governmental agency. Injury to self, be it drug addiction or suicide, is strictly a personal problem and its remedy is to be achieved solely by self-correction.

If drunken drivers are killing others, the remedy is not to be found in outlawing alcohol. Penalize any driver for a crime he commits; this should discourage reckless driving, whatever the excuse. The fear of penalty and the widespread habit of obeying the law suggests the limit of the influence government can bring to bear against man’s inhumanity to man. To “outlaw” drunkenness or drug addiction is as fruitless as the legal prohibition of maniacal tendencies or sex craze or the evil thoughts people entertain or any other psychosis.

The obvious impossibility of correcting moral deficiencies by force should be evidence enough to end such attempts. Point to a single success! Those who sponsor and pass such laws believe their job then is done when, indeed, it has not begun; they have only put more laws on the statute books which must, eventually and with enormous difficulty, be abandoned—as was the Volstead Act, for instance.

There have, of course, been more repeals than the three mentioned above. Another that comes to mind was President Franklin Roosevelt’s $25,000 annual salary limitation edict, at the beginning of World War II. The reaction against it had the force of a tidal wave. Why? It was so patently ridiculous!

Nonetheless, there are numerous equally ridiculous, socialistic laws now on the statute books. Why, then, are they not repealed? Why the difficulty?

A major part of the difficulty, it seems, is the fact that a bad scheme, once enacted into the law of the land, spawns and develops a vested interest in its preservation.

The most effective opposition to the repeal of Prohibition came from the bootleggers and their tribe.

Why is not the government’s unemployment insurance program abandoned? By now, millions have a vested interest in its continuance: those who prefer getting paid for not working rather than competing for a job.

Who stood out most tenaciously against NIRA’s demise? As in ever so many other cases, the enormous bureaucracy which had a vested interest in NIRA forever: snappy jobs at good pay!

The vested interest in “social security” and countless other laws is now beyond comprehension.

But in the final analysis, vested interests, however powerful, cannot withstand the light of understanding. When the fallacies of laws are apparent even to casual observers, such laws are abandoned. But the fallacies of most socialistic measures are not easily detected; casual onlookers are taken in by them. When enough of us can see that antitrust laws are denying competition in the name of protecting competition, the antitrust laws will as readily fall by the wayside as did the inept Volstead Act.

My barber was complaining about high prices. I explained inflation and its cause: excessive costs of government brought on by state welfarism and interventionism. I argued that there would be no halt to rising prices until these causes were removed.

“How and when can we stop these?”

“When you start!”

“Start what?”

“Start thinking for yourself!”

Here is the point: That barber has more common sense than the dictocrats who are denying his freedom. Except that he does not realize this! There are countless millions just like him, whose liberation is simply a matter of waking up, coming to themselves—unmasking.

This is the way and, in my view, the only way to change from evil coercive collectivism to the virtuous and voluntary practice of freedom.

[1] Dr. Emerson Schmidt, eminent economist, discovered in his research that in no instance has any one of the socialistic schemes been the result of popular demand. See “The Public Demands . . .?” (The Freeman, August 1964).

22

THE GLORY OF WORK

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.

—CALVIN COOLIDGE

Decoration Day always came on May 30 when I was a boy, whether the date fell on Saturday or Sunday or any weekday. There was a procession led by a flag-bearer, followed by a fife-and-drum corps, uniformed Civil War veterans carrying muskets, and town dignitaries. The graves were decorated, a gun salute over each, a prayer and, always, a patriotic speech. Impressionable youngsters tagged along in admiration.

Times have changed. Hardly anyone today recalls the origin of Decoration Day or thinks of a veteran—North or South—who gave his life for this or that “purpose.”

In our time, Memorial Day, Washington’s birthday, and other national holidays are on Monday. They are mere excuses for lengthened weekends, attempts to get away from it all. They must be linked to the retirement syndrome—an escape from the effort of earning a living. This calls for an examination of our attitudes toward work.

As I see it, the purpose of earthly life is growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. The means to this noble objective is work, which includes a constant striving for achievement along the line of one’s uniqueness—fiddler, fisherman, poet, golfer, sculptor, or whatever.

Why glorify work? By and large, it is looked upon as an unfortunate necessity, something to escape from, to avoid if at all possible. Instead of accepting work and ever more work as the vital means to every aim of life, most people aspire to shorter hours, vacations, retirement, getting out of rather than into life—in a word, vegetation.

An economist of a prestigious businessman’s organization shares this commonly held view:

The most that can be said for work is that it is an unfortunate necessity.

I am reminded of a comparable statement by a noted sociologist: “Government is a necessary evil.” Not so, I contend. Anything that is necessary to the attainment of intellectual, moral, and ethical ends is neither evil nor unfortunate, be it government or work.

Why the common tendency to look upon work as a curse and do as little of it as possible? What is the enormous price of this error? These are the questions I wish to examine.

Conceded, there is one sense in which any given individual might properly try to avoid certain kinds of work. For instance, the work that most attracts me has to do with the freedom way of life—an ever-improving understanding and exposition of it. Thus, I prefer not to be a carpenter, a food raiser or merchant; let others be insurance or real estate salesmen, builders of autos or roads, makers of clothes or desks or pencils. The free economy tends to match jobs to persons who have unique talents for them; “to each his own.” The realization of my hope in my job rests on division of labor and unfettered exchange, that is, on a society in which I can exchange my speciality for other specializations. Freeing me to be me and, by the same token, releasing you to be you! This, in an economic sense, is what the freedom philosophy is all about.

While it is sound practice to avoid certain kinds of work, all will agree that work is a necessity—for the rule in reality is to work or perish. No argument! The point at issue has to do with one’s attitude toward his work. Is it a fortunate opportunity or an unfortunate necessity? Were the matter put to vote, I expect the “unfortunates” would have it by a mile. Few are those who would rather work than play, who prefer being on the job to goofing off.

Today, too many individuals look upon their work not as a joyous employment of their time but, rather, as sheer drudgery—a pain in the neck, a curse instead of a blessing. And note that those who regard their work as an unfortunate necessity are not confined to any given job level. Many highly placed corporate executives are as anxious for retirement as window cleaners are anxious for a 20-hour week. This escapism from presumed drudgery seems to infect all categories of workers.

There is a price exacted for thinking of work as an unfortunate necessity, as a curse. The millions of individuals who have this attitude are vulnerable to exploitation. And there is no shortage of exploiters, of those who are ready and eager to take advantage of this erroneous way of thinking about work. This shortsighted attitude toward work underlies the coercive power over the economy exercised by labor unions. In the absence of this attitude, labor unions would possess no more coercive power than a chamber of commerce, a Ladies Aid Society, or these thoughts of mine.

What is the labor union’s stock in trade? Shorter work weeks, more vacations and holidays, above-market wages; in a word, more and more affluence for less and less effort. Such tactics appeal only to those who look upon work as an unfortunate necessity, never to those who love their work. Are such persons comprised solely of waiters or dishwashers or street cleaners? Indeed, not! According to the evidence, the labor union theme appeals to policemen, teachers, engineers, electricians, plumbers, airline pilots, to a thousand and one occupations—some of them highly paid, indeed.

Above-market wages and below-market hours create unemployment. The government, under union pressure, picks up the tab by make-work projects—urban renewal, moon shots, ad infinitum—adding billions of dollars annually to the costs of government. The costs that cannot be met by direct tax levies are met by increasing the money supply: inflation. Prices rise as the dollar buys less and less. Who suffers most? The relatively poor, the very individuals these tactics are supposed to be helping!

He who deplores the ever-rising cost of living should look to the source: the ever-diminishing love of work.

There is yet another price we pay, perhaps the highest of all. There are those at every level who love their work. However, if theirs happens to be an occupation monopolized by labor unions, they have no choice but to join the antiwork parade or to go jobless and hungry or to go on the dole. Thus, as the repugnance for work increases, it taxes and tends to bury initiative, incentive, ingenuity and ambition under the general decadence. The exemplars of sound thinking diminish. What a price this is!

The remedy for all of this is, of course, self-respect, the pride of achievement, the urge to excel, the love of work. However, this is a problem that each individual must wrestle with personally. Whether one cultivates an attitude of love or of hate toward the things and the persons involved in his life is strictly a subjective matter. Anyone who has a modicum of self-determination can, if he so wills it, displace his hatred and spitefulness with love—including the love or glorification of work. Here is an excellent and helpful observation by William Osier, M.D.:

Though little, the master word looms large in meaning. It is the “open sesame” to every portal, the great equalizer, the philosopher’s stone which transmutes all base metal of humanity into gold. The stupid it will make bright, the bright brilliant, and the brilliant steady. To youth it brings hope, to the middle-aged confidence, to the aged repose. It is directly responsible for all advances in medicine during the past 25 years. Not only has it been the touchstone of progress, but it is the measure of success in everyday life. And the master word is work.

If one grasps Dr. Osier’s point, and particularly if one is interested in the development or emergence of self, then work will be embraced—loved—as the means to these lofty ends. He will discover that there is no better prescription for good health and long life than joyous work.

Another distinguished physician, Dr. Hans Selye, names several famous men who lived to a ripe old age, and adds this comment:

Of course, in their many years of intense activity, these people never “worked”: they lived a life of “leisure” by working at what they liked to do.[1]

“What they liked to do”! With such fortunate ones there is no problem. They have hit upon their distinctive energies and talents, either by accident or by self-discovery. Let me illustrate.

We have a private garbage collector—a one-man, one-truck enterprise. He remarked one day while emptying a can of garbage, “Mr. Read, I just love my work.” He would not love my work nor I his, any more than I would love being President of U. S. Steel or of the U.S.A.

Granted, millions have never discovered their uniqueness and thus labor at tasks they look upon as drudgery. For what they may be worth, I have two suggestions for these people:

1. Reflect on your work until you discover reasons for enjoying it; learn to love whatever your engagement with life might be.

2. If you cannot do this, switch jobs! For pride in your work is the first step toward joy in your life. In a word, find out what your uniqueness is and go to it. Excel!

Wrote Henry Giles: “Man must work. That is certain as the sun. But he may work grudgingly or he may work gratefully; he may work as a man, or he may work as a machine. There is no work so rude, that he may not exalt it; no work so impassive, that he may not breathe a soul into it; no work so dull that he may not enliven it.”

My own work intrigues me more and more each year. I could wish you no greater blessings than such joy in whatever task engages you.

[1] See a splendid article, “But Hard Work Isn’t Bad For You” by Dr. Hans Selye. Reader’s Digest, June 1973.

23

EMPLOYMENT REDEFINED

Just definitions either prevent or put an end to disputes.

—NATHANIEL EMMONS

The preceding chapter includes this observation: “Above-market wages and below-market hours cause unemployment.” One of the best economic thinkers of my acquaintance suggested: “‘Below-market hours’ should be deleted. Hardly anyone will know what you mean, for nearly everybody believes that shorter work weeks make for the employment of more people.” Conceded, this is the common belief and, further, it is a correct view if “employment” be defined as “job occupancy.”[1]

Here are my contentions: (1) If employment be properly defined, then any deviation from the free market—whether above-market wages or below-market hours—causes unemployment; and, (2) employment thought of as no more than mere job occupancy leads inevitably to Marxian socialism. These would seem to be reasons enough to reflect on the use of the word “employment.”

How should employment be defined, that is, if the term is to make any sense? Here is my answer: Employment is job occupancy free of all coercive elements. The opposite is job occupancy free of all voluntary elements. If this distinction is not made no one can tell the difference between full employment and full enslavement.

Were the market 100 per cent free there would be no involuntary unemployment, which is to say that full employment would obtain. Why? Because there is always more work to be done than there are persons to do it. The situation of full employment obtains when any employer may exchange his proffered wage with any employee for his proffered service. The terms are mutually agreeable or there would be no deal. In the event of no deal, the unemployment would be voluntary.

If the society were 100 per cent coercive there would be no voluntary employment. Instead of full employment there would be full enslavement.

Neither of these 100 per cent situations has ever existed; both have been approximated. The free market has been approximated in the U.S.A., England, Hong Kong. The nearest approximations to the coercive society are to be found in Russia, China, Cuba, Chile.

Now to my point. When we think of employment solely as job occupancy then there is no distinction between jobs freely chosen and jobs coercively imposed. If full employment be anyone’s goal, and if employment means no more than job occupancy, then Russia’s coercive system is superior. Why? There is no “unemployment” there! Even women are compelled to work in the fields or at other dictocratic assignments. The man who, if he had his choice, would play the piccolo, is assigned to the sputnik factory, and so on. In Russia, it is “do as we say” or Siberia—or worse!

Merely reflect on how inane it is to label a freely chosen job the same as a coercively imposed one, referring to both forms of labor as “employment”! The only terms that make sense are employment and enslavement respectively.

I have asserted that neither situation has ever completely obtained, that is, neither freedom nor coercion has or ever will be 100 per cent practiced. Even in Russia there is a great deal of free choice. Collective farm hands have their private plots where they can raise what they please and sell for whatever they can get. Talented athletes, dancers, singers are permitted to pursue their uniqueness. In a word, using my definition, there is some employment in Russia; it is not all enslavement.

And even in the U.S.A. there is some coercion; indeed, it is growing rapidly. In this land of ours there is much employment and, let us confess, there is a growing enslavement.

Growing enslavement! The essence of enslavement is coercion and it matters not where or how it interferes with the voluntary market processes. In Russia, for example, most of the people have no more choice than slaves. The coercion is head-on! In the U.S.A., on the other hand, it takes devious rather than direct forms. For instance, I use the socialized mail “service.” Others are forced to make up the difference between the high cost and my subsidized price, thus enslaving them to that extent. Coercion, often indirect, disrupts market choices at millions of points rather than directly and all at once.

These indirect enslavements tend to fool me; they make me feel freer than I really am. Nonetheless, I am enslaved in some measure; I am forced to contribute toward the numerous subsidies granted by government to people and programs not of my choice. To the extent of the coercion, regardless of how devious, to that extent do Americans move away from full employment and toward full enslavement. The coercive control of people’s lives, be it in the form of wage and price controls, political manipulation of money and credit, or whatever, is really nothing less than slavery. It just seems less; which explains, in no small measure, why most of us are so easily “taken in.”

Now to my contention that below-market hours cause unemployment. The vital issue, as I see it, is whether or not a man is in control of himself. Is he in charge of his own life, or does someone own him? What this boils down to is the market method of determining wages and other conditions of employment, versus the compulsory method (socialism, dictatorship, slavery, closed shop, or whatever else it may be called).

It seems to me that “below-market hours” is merely an equivalent term for “above-market wages.” Suppose that the market rate of wages is $2.00 an hour: demanding $2.00 for only 12 minutes work is the same as demanding $10.00 an hour. Unless a man is free to price his services competitively in the market, he is not in control of himself; someone else owns him. If he willingly accepts the terms of the contract, it is employment; if not, it is enslavement.

My second contention: If a significant number of people confuse employment with mere job occupancy, there will be a diminished resistance to the drift toward enslavement.

I have already suggested that coercion is socialism’s hallmark. And it matters not how or when it insinuates itself into the economy—whether open and obvious as in Russia, or screened and obscure as in this country. Note well, therefore, that every year, since the late twenties, the U.S.A. has been moving closer and closer to Marxian socialism—dictocratic control over people’s lives. This is a fact. And there is the accompanying fact that nearly everyone thinks of employment as nothing more than a guaranteed wage—which is to say that popular understanding of the free market is nearly nil. Taken together, these two facts add up to our present predicament.

True, no one, here or elsewhere, occupies a job free of all coercive influence. However, we can bear in mind that one is truly employed only to the extent that he is free—his own man. Otherwise, nothing can save him from the plunge into socialism.

[1] The figures on employment and unemployment reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics refer only to job occupancy.

24

HOW TO STOP INFLATION

To know truly is to know by causes.

—FRANCIS BACON

How to stop inflation? Remove the cause! Stopping inflation is as simple and as difficult as that. Everyone says he’s against inflation; yet, what do we find? Nearly everyone overlooking the sole remedy and, instead, conjuring up schemes to soften inflation’s disastrous effects. Interestingly, all schemes or nostrums which ignore the cause, if and when adopted, sink us ever deeper into the mire. As if inflation weren’t bad enough, most proffered “cures” would worsen the situation!

Many years ago a professor of economics told a group of us about his experiences at the University of Heidelberg during the German inflation. Faculty members were paid once a month. As the inflation began to gallop, they were paid twice a month, then each week, then each day. Finally, they were paid in the morning, rushing the checks home to their Frauen before going to their classrooms. Why? Prices were multiplying many times each day, so shop in the morning! There came a time—August 1923—when 100 billion marks would not buy a loaf of bread.

What was this professor’s recommendation to those in our group who foresaw similar problems in our own country? His advice was to out-produce inflation! Imagine a professor of economics not understanding that all production creates its own purchasing power!

A few thoughts inspired by the professor’s naive thinking: Production involves the efficient combination and use of scarce resources, in the process paying for each resource a price high enough to pull it away from other owners and other uses. To produce more housing, for instance, involves paying higher wages, higher prices for lumber, hardware, masonry, and the like, to attract those scarce resources from other uses. Meanwhile, each supplier of such resources has the additional income to spend, a process sometimes expressed as Say’s Law: “Production creates its own purchasing power.”

The truth is that inflation does not result from the lack of housing or other goods or services. It is nothing more nor less than the printing of what the government has declared to be legal tender, that is, printing ever-increasing quantities of fiat money. Unless house-building or other productive activities stop those printing presses—an absurdity—then trying to out-produce inflation is as futile as trying to out-run one’s own shadow. So the professor’s cure is on a level with most remedies now being dinned into our ears.

It is not that the inventors of these schemes agree with inflation. Quite the contrary! Rather, it is that they see no way to be rid of it; inflation is here to stay—even worsen—thus, why not find a way to prosper and thrive in a monetary holocaust! The fact that this requires nonexistent skills in legerdemain deters them not.

Two such schemes recently have come to my attention. The first proposes that all contracts—loans, for instance—be repaid (legally enforced) in dollars of the same purchasing value as when contracted. If the value of the dollar should decline at the rate of 15 per cent a year, then a 10-year loan of a thousand dollars would be repaid in the amount of more than $5,000, plus interest.

Even in the face of the current inflationary pattern, what borrower would be willing to sign such a contract? Only the person who cannot see “beyond the end of his nose.” There would be little if any futures trading; indeed, contractual relations would all but cease, production would decline at a frightening rate. Further, there is nothing in this scheme to halt the outpouring of fiat money; it would go on its merry way and, because of the fall off in production, the dollar would buy far less than were the scheme never adopted. Approval? Indeed, not!

The other scheme requires that all business ventures be compelled to adopt the “profit-sharing” procedure—employees as well as entrepreneurs sharing in the gains. This is inspired by some remarkable successes such as Lincoln Electric of Cleveland. The assumption is that if Jim Lincoln could, by this arrangement, earn a great deal for himself, pay higher wages than others, and undersell all of his competitors, so could everyone else—hundreds of thousands of businessmen from hamburger stand owners to General Motors. Simply pass a law and make every entrepreneur operate like Mr. Lincoln!

Overlooked is the fact that only one Jim Lincoln ever existed. There are no two entrepreneurs who operate their businesses alike, nor could they do so if they tried. Each is novel to some extent; and consumers—that’s all of us—are thus advantaged.

Any profit-sharing arrangement should, in all fairness, be also a loss-sharing arrangement. But most wage earners would shy away from any employer who required employees to share any losses his business might incur. Why? Tens of thousands of businesses fail annually, as everyone knows.

Were profit sharing made compulsory for everyone, production would dramatically decline, just as in the first scheme. There would be other results, no less disastrous.

Out-producing inflation or fulfilling contracts at a constant purchasing power or forcing every business to engage in profit sharing are no more than “pipe dreams.” Adoption need not be feared. These schemes merely illustrate how people avoid pinpointing the cause of inflation and, thus, propose remedies which compound the problem.

However, what do we find in the day-to-day world of “practical” politics? The worst of all possible schemes: price control and rationing as edicts by the Federal government and wage controls in the hands of labor unions. Below-market prices and above-market wages! Inflation is not questioned; we have instead only futile attempts to escape the effects, which make the effects increasingly disastrous. In what way? Production is both diminished and distorted. Figuring out how to outscheme the political schemers takes the place of discovering how best to satisfy consumer preferences. Schemers with political and coercive power make schemers of every one of us they overpower.

To illustrate: By reason of governmental intervention, the supply of gas and oil is curbed and the demand increased. What to do? Ration the fuel! To the station attendant say, “Fill ’er up.” “Sorry, only $3 worth to a person.” So the car owner takes what he can get and goes to another station repeating, “Fill ’er up.” Gas wasted going from station to station! Eventually, all the gas is gone, but consumers still have “gas money” burning holes in their pockets. The best way to ration gas or any other scarce resource is to let the price rise to a point where the supply is sufficient to meet the demand.

We need only come to our senses to stop inflation; nothing is required beyond discovering its cause and then being rid of it. The cause? Overextended government. To repeat what many of us have written over and over again: when the costs of government rise beyond the point where it is no longer politically expedient to defray the costs by direct tax levies, governments all over the world resort to an expansion of paper money—inflation—as a means of making up the difference. Inflation dilutes and depreciates the medium of exchange as a means of siphoning private property into the coffers of government. Here we have the cause, so simple to see through. But being rid of the cause is not simple. Why the difficulty?

The difficulty is rooted in an unintelligent interpretation of self-interest. Today, all of us without exception are feeding more or less at the Federal trough. True, there are a few who are force-fed, not dipping into the trough willingly. Finding it necessary to live in the world as it is, they participate in the deficit-burdened, socialistic mail system—to name but one of many examples. But most citizens today—a number perilously approaching 100 per cent—mistakenly feel that they have a vested interest in the continuance of one or more, if not all, Federal “programs” that go to make up the deficits that can be met only by inflation: fiat money made possible by legal tender laws.

Perhaps this citizen only wishes to be paid for not farming, another to receive social security or Medicare, still others to be protected against competition, or to have their education subsidized, or a Gateway Arch for their home town, or whatever. It would take a book just to list the titles of all the Federal handouts and discriminatory edicts.[1] Anyway, count the persons you know who completely ignore the “gravy train,” who would concede nothing to government beyond a peace-keeping, justice-dispensing agency of society, who are free from the feeling that they have a vested interest in this or that deficit-creating, political gimmick. They are “as rare as hens’ teeth!”

If an individual could perfectly identify how his self-interest is best served, he would be all-wise. However, I am not alluding to perfect wisdom but to that level of intelligence any adolescent should possess. Most youngsters know that their self-interest is not advanced by stealing—living off the fruits of the labor of others coercively exacted. They would not regard face-to-face thievery as in their own interest. And there are thousands of high school students who are bright enough to see that there is no distinction between pointing the gun oneself and getting the Federal government to do the “stick up.” The loot would be ill-gained in either case. Self-interest is not served by either method. One need not be overly brilliant to see this.

Yet, what do we find? Millions upon millions identifying self-interest with legal plunder! The more political largess they can get—regardless of the force used—the better. It is not that these people, many of whom are college graduates, could not rise above this infantile level of thinking; they could if they would, but they don’t. Further, these millions do not see how their self-interest is subverted rather than served by this socialistic plundering, and they cannot be expected to understand why inflation is not also identified with their self-interest. They see inflation, if they see at all, as the means of filling the thousands of troughs from which they feed without either thought or effort. They love the role of parasites!

Given these millions who thoughtlessly behave this way, plus the political exploiters of nonsense, the situation, on the surface at least, looks hopeless. Stopping inflation appears to be impossible, and certainly this would be the case were it a numbers problem. But, thank heavens, it never has been a numbers problem, is not now, nor will it ever be. It is strictly a matter of inspired and intelligent leadership.

Statesmen—in and out of office—are more and more in evidence, persons who think for themselves and stand forthright for their enlightened convictions. These few—thousands, of course—understand that self-interest is to be identified with individuals in the role of hosts—producers, not parasites. They also know that inflation is deadly—for parasites cannot exist without hosts. As the troughs empty, attrition increases, especially among the parasites.

As this natural aristocracy—comprised of men of virtue and talents—approaches the pink of condition, rises to the top in thinking how self-interest is best served, the nonsense is stopped dead, then subsides! Your role and mine? Try one’s best to be this kind of an exemplary aristocrat. This, I submit, is the sole formula to stop inflation.

[1] See Encyclopedia of U.S. Government Benefits, a tome of more than 1,000 pages with over 10,000 “benefits.” (Union City, N.J.: Wm. H. Wise and Co., Inc., 1965.)

25

HOW NOT TO BE OWNED

The man who is not permitted to own is owned.

—SANTAYANA

There would be no tigers in zoos were they to remain as ferocious as when first captured. But once owned, they soon become docile.

Human slavery is an ancient institution in all parts of the globe. Slavery would not exist, however, if captives remained as intractable as when first shanghaied by slave traders. But once owned, they become complacent.

Airlift a family from Omaha and the next day install them as citizens of Omsk. The sudden contrast would make them furious but, once owned, they would soon become as unaware of their plight as are most Russians today.

Similarly, with our fellow citizens. Reflect on the increased take of the people’s property by government since say 1913.[1] Had this enormous increase been imposed all at once, the political perpetrators would have been unseated just as promptly. But let the increase be imposed gradually, as during the past sixty years, and the deterioration of private ownership is greeted indifferently, if not with approval.

All of recorded history reveals a struggle to achieve selfhood, including its corollary, ownership of property—control of one’s own. Who is to control the fruits of your labor, you or others? Wars have been fought and governments have been shaped to resolve this question. Private ownership is the very heart of the free society but its establishment and practice have been sporadic at best. Throughout the ages, the plunderers have had it by a mile, not only in primitive societies but also in the modern U.S.A. Private ownership comes out in last place.

In my view, the losing concept is right and the winning notion is and always has been wrong. In the light of all that has been written over the centuries in support of private ownership, why is it in last rather than in first place? Why has the rationale of selfhood—to each his own—failed so miserably, as if it were an incomprehensible concept? There has to be an explanation; this is my attempt to find it.

The answer, as I see it, was revealed three thousand years ago when the Ten Commandments were first recorded. The Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” presupposes private ownership. Why? How possibly could anything be stolen were it not first owned!

Here we have a stress on the importance of private ownership, so strong that a violation was deemed a religious offense. There was, however, a blind spot in this belief which led to its violation on the grand scale. The blind spot? Human slavery was an accepted, and even an honored institution among the very people who gave us this Commandment, who thought of it as “pure gospel.” To own slaves, openly accepted! To be owned, blindly approved!

What comes to light in this blatant contradiction? The all but hidden answer to the private ownership dilemma: Millions hold private ownership as a sacred right for themselves but fail to realize that unless this precise right is extended to everyone else, it is no right at all—a mere fiction! When each citizen proclaims ownership of his earnings and fails to grant respect, and insist upon a similar ownership on the part of everyone else, the outcome has to be all citizens against one. For the person who is not permitted to own what he has earned is in fact owned by a master!

Let us not poke too much fun at the ancient Israelites for their queer notions of right and wrong, each respecting his own property but not that of the other person. Each, to them, meant mostly I, rarely you!

How different are present-day Americans? Perhaps 999 out of every thousand, be they politicians, welfare statists, or whoever, actually believe that they have a right to the fruits of their own labor. Try to take their income dollars from them face-to-face and watch this belief assert itself!

But, as with the Israelites, there may not be more than one in a thousand today who will accord the person and the property of others the same respect he accords his own. Thus, in these loose terms, the odds are a thousand to one against private ownership as a working principle. And simply because nearly everyone defends only his own right to private ownership which, of course, leaves the institution defenseless.

Take what is obviously the opposite to private ownership, namely, human slavery as popularly understood. Ask Joe Doakes or whoever, “Do you favor or disapprove?” Most Americans would scoff at a question which so grievously affronts their sanity. The reason? They think of human slavery as only a Simon Legree-Uncle Tom relationship, a white with a lash compelling a black to do his bidding.

Now pose this question: do you approve or disapprove of the compulsion which forces the piccolo player to labor in the sputnik factory? People’s “sanity” will be less affronted. After all, it is the government, not a mean, self-seeking villain doing the compelling! But, really, what is the difference between a political collective backed by a constabulary and a man’s passion to enslave backed by a lash? There is no less compulsion in one case than in the other. Neither Uncle Tom nor the piccolo player owns his life. It is slavery in either case.

Go next to the still less obvious, and ask: do you approve or disapprove the forcible taking of everyone’s income in the nation to finance shall we say the Gateway Arch? Here “sanity” is hardly affronted at all. As tigers in a zoo, most people have adapted themselves to their spoon-fed habitat and have become docile. Yet, this is enslavement no less than that imposed by Simon Legree.

It is as simple as this: If a man has a right to his life—to “own” himself—it logically follows that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being the fruits of one’s own labor. Thus, to the extent that one’s sustenance is taken, to that extent is life taken—to that extent is one owned instead of owning himself.

Where lies the remedy? What has to happen before individuals will concede to others precisely the same right to ownership as they seek for themselves? Observe the Golden Rule? Yes, that is the answer all right, but in the same sense that “Thou shalt not steal” is the answer.

Here is a realization we must come to: The Golden Rule and the Commandment are but labels for ideal and hoped-for relationships. In a dictocratic society they are unattainable pipe dreams. In a free society they automatically exist. These ideal relationships grow toward reality only to the extent that the free society approaches reality. This is to say that freedom and private ownership, as well as an observation of the Golden Rule, rise or fall in unison; they are inseparably linked!

Once this is understood, it becomes clear why “Thou shalt not steal” has so little practical meaning among people who permit some men to own other men. People who view human slavery, in any of its numerous forms, as an acceptable institution have no inkling of the free society. The Commandment against theft is no more than a mystical aspiration in a dictocratic situation, and cannot be otherwise.

Whenever the right to the fruits of one’s own labor is gaining acceptance and respect it will be seen that an understanding of the free society is likewise gaining. Of course, the reverse is true. When state welfarism and government control is on the rampage, as in the U.S.A. today, be it noted that there are leaders by the tens of thousands from all walks of life—business, education, religion, and so on—who wave aside the free society as a viable way of life. They are leading us down the road to serfdom and, interestingly enough, are unaware of their mischief. Their philosophy, though never in these realistic terms, is that you and I shall not be permitted to own; we are to be owned. And so are they—though they know it not.

The above is a long introduction to a brief conclusion: The coercive control of people’s lives—including the fruits of their labor—falls or rises precisely as the practice of freedom increases or wanes, which is to say, as authoritarianism relaxes or tightens its grip.

Freedom is the right of anyone to do anything, so long as it is peaceful. Government is freedom’s peace-keeping agency; its role is limited to codifying and prohibiting all unpeaceful or destructive activities.

Given this freedom arrangement, each citizen is free to produce anything he pleases, to exchange on mutually agreeable terms with whomever he pleases, to do as he chooses with what is his own and without trespass against others.

We have in this ideal situation only willing exchanges, whether of goods or services. Each citizen gains in his own judgment or he would not make the exchanges. Each owns; no one is owned. There is neither thievery nor enslavement; both are impossible. Each is behaving toward others as he would have them behave toward him. In a word, the Golden Rule is observed as freedom is practiced.

How to own rather than be owned? Learn the freedom philosophy and how to live by it!

[1] For example, Federal government expenditures were $1 billion in 1913. Today they approximate $250 billion.

26

IF I WERE KING

No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with unlimited powers.

—CALEB C. COLTON

To imagine I were king is pure fiction, merely suggestive, for my first act would be to abdicate. Kingship is not my cup of tea.

Perhaps a better caricature of omnipotence would be a genie—as the actress in the TV show, “I Dream of Jeannie.” She simply folds her arms, makes a wish, and blinks her eyes. Presto! The wish instantly becomes the reality.

The question I am pondering is this: If I possessed such power, would I use it to rid the world of all I believe to be evil? For instance, what of these few specifics among the thousand and one forms of human behavior I deplore:

1. War, murder, thievery, slavery?

2. Dictatorial know-it-all-ness?

3. Medicare, “social security,” and similar welfare programs?

4. Control of prices by government and of wages by labor unions?

5. Government in such businesses as mail delivery and education?

I have listed these samplings in the reverse order of their popularity or public acceptance. Nearly everyone deplores war, murder, thievery, human slavery. There is a common desire to be rid of these evils. But note how the popular attitude changes as we move down the list: common acceptance instead of rejection by the time we have reached “social security.”

The point is this: I would be applauded were I to use my magic power to do away with murder, but roundly condemned were I to eliminate government “education,” though the latter seems unprincipled and impractical to me.

On what forms of behavior, then, would I fold my arms, make a wish, and blink my eyes? Not one, not even murder!

I aspire exclusively to those forms of power which I readily concede to all other human beings. What may they be? The power to exercise and improve my own faculties, to grow intellectually, morally, spiritually. What power will I not willingly concede to any other person and—by the same token—refuse to use myself? The power to interfere with or to control in any respect the creative activities of anyone, whoever or wherever he may be. The lack of such power simply leaves me in my place, makes a noninterfering citizen of me, forces me to attend to my own business.

Suppose I could eliminate murder and all else which seems evil to me through a simple wish. In that case, according to my principle of universality, I would have to concede that identical power of legerdemain to everyone else. What would be the result?

Everyone would direct his magic against his pet dislikes. So certain are millions of people about their panaceas for a perfect world, and so varying are their nostrums, that every societal institution would be erased from the face of the earth! Not only would murder, wars, thievery, slavery be at an end, but so would everything else—mail delivery, private or public; education, private or public; business, private or public; churches, catholic or protestant. Certainly, man and all his institutions would disappear—perhaps the entire planet!

Return to mankind as he now exists and to the world as it is—with no genies among us. But if that power were possessed, would it be used? Yes, and by millions of people. How can one be so certain of this? By observing what these millions do in the absence of this magic power: they resort to coercion to get their way! Unable to reform others by a blink of the eyes, they try to implant their “wisdom” by physical force—“Do as we say, or else!” They seize the police power of government and use it to serve their devious and contradictory ends—frustrated genies with guns!

If these coercionists could work their will upon others by blinking their eyes, would they do so? Of course, and with the aforementioned disastrous results. To the extent that they get their way by coercion, to that same extent is disaster inflicted upon mankind, as we can readily observe all about us.

Those who condemn the use of coercion must be cautious lest they condemn themselves in the process, so general is the domineering trait. One meets these persons on every hand and in all walks of life. Ever so many would rule our lives if they could; all they lack is the political power. I have learned not to argue with these self-designated miracle workers; I just don’t drink tea with them.

As to those who have gained power and do in fact control our lives, what can one do in opposition beyond setting a better example? You and I can try to understand and explain why we would not wave either the magic wand or the policeman’s club. We can demonstrate why it is both immoral and impractical to even hope for a free lunch or to wish that others might be carbon copies of ourselves. For anyone to hold such power over others, as I see it, is an absolute contradiction of the Cosmic Plan.

If we want “two chickens in every pot,” we must learn to raise more and better chickens with less effort. Similarly, with all the goods, services, and ideas we desire. Learn to overcome by excelling, this being the sole means to individual growth. If another’s way of life is superior to mine, let him demonstrate it to the point where I can grasp the truth he perceives. Let him explain in terms I can understand. By so doing, he grows—and perhaps I will. But to coercively impose his way upon me is to stunt both his growth and mine. This attempt at lording it over others is characteristic of little folks foolishly trying to play God. I share this conclusion from the Journal Intimé of Amiel:

I have never been able to see any necessity for imposing myself upon others.

And so, if I were king, I would renounce the throne. This would free me from the baleful superstition that mine is a “Divine Right” to rule and, at the same time, leave others free to live their own lives.

27

THE RIGHT TO QUIT

Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.

—SHAKESPEARE

Were a child not allowed to graduate out of kindergarten he would never know fifth-grade arithmetic. Were the government to freeze you in your present employment, the world of opportunity would forever be closed to you. Am I conjuring up fantasies? Indeed, not! Occurrences similar to these are common, and they are coercively decreed by “man, proud man,” in ways “as make the angels weep.”

The government of Libya has issued a decree expropriating 51 per cent control of all foreign oil companies. Among the provisions:

All employees of the affected concerns are required to continue to work and none “may resign his position” without government permission regardless of the worker’s nationality. Punishment by fine or imprisonment is provided for anyone acting contrary to the decree.[1]

Several American companies are involved, one having 165 U.S. citizens on their payroll in Libya. Suppose you were one of these and wanted to quit your job in that far-off land and return to your own country. Could you do so? Only with the permission of unsympathetic bureaucrats!

Shocking? Yes, indeed, but it is “par for the course,” in line with the politico-economic trends of our day, here and elsewhere. There may be contractual obligations to fulfill, of course, which mandate a continued association; but beyond that, what is the difference between the forcible denial of the right to quit the job one has and the forcible denial of the right to start a job one wants? It is violence in either case and he who condones the latter cannot logically look unfavorably upon the former. Indeed, the supporters of violence in any area should, if consistent, welcome violence in all areas and places, even the forcible denial of the right to quit a job, whether in Libya, or Russia, or Hometown, USA.

Take an entrepreneur whose business is unionized and who may want your services; you, in turn, wish to work for him. Who has the say-so? Not the businessman, not you, but the union. Or, let us say that you are a member of a union that has gone on strike, whereas you do not wish to quit. Your wish is but a dream!

Let us not, however, confine our criticism to unions and job control. There is no distinction between control of jobs and control of goods. Thus, all who favor wage and price controls are on the side of violence—coercive denial of your right and mine to deal with whomsoever we please in free and willing exchange. Neither they nor coercionists in any other field can make the case against the Libyan decree or against holding children forever in kindergarten. They have disqualified themselves!

The right to quit is fully as important as the right to start. To deny any man either of these rights is to deny him his right to life. It is to freeze him into his position regardless of how ill-chosen it might be and to erect a barrier to opportunities irrespective of the wonderful promises they may hold. It is to immobilize and stop the growth of an erstwhile living human being. Making things out of humans is inhuman!

Who, pray tell, are these makers of things out of human beings? They are those “dressed in a little brief authority,” those who acquire power and then lord it over us. They are the ones who are unaware of how little they know, who know not how to quit their meddlesome intervention.

Use the right phrasing and even these authoritarians would ridicule such behavior. How many of them, for instance, would buy the “Divine Right of Kings” theory that had its heyday during the reign of James I? I have not met one in my time. Yet, in what respect do they differ? They no more question their competency to rule than did that egotistic monarch of an age unenlightened in freedom.

In the preceding chapter, first published as an article, I said: “To imagine I were King is pure fiction, merely suggestive, for my first act would be to abdicate.” This article inspired my friend, Ralph Bradford, to write a satirical verse in which he portrays to my satisfaction the type of mentality that accounts for the authoritarianism now so enormously on the upswing.

If I were king, I’d abdicate,

Or junk the throne, at any rate . . .

Or maybe I would merely doff

The purple mantle, or leave off

The jeweled crown. . . . For as I muse,

It strikes me I can not refuse

This cup. For who, I ask, am I

The call of duty to deny?

Endowed with gifts that others lack,

It seems to me that I must try

To keep them on the proper track—

To teach them how to earn and spend,

And be most useful in the end.

How can I answer Heaven, pray,

Upon that final Judgment Day,

If I have shirked to do my bit

To make the race of man more fit?

So I shall drink this bitter cup;

Yes, I shall take my burden up,

And work to make men fine and free

And good and true and wise—like me!

Is there a remedy for this egomania? In my judgment there is one and one only. It was prescribed in the Declaration of Independence:

that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

We either accept the idea that our rights to quit or start—our rights to life and liberty—are endowed by the Creator or we submit to the proposition that they are man-given—in which case they may be taken back by the giver. There is no other way!

Once any individual grasps this concept, he will quit thinking of himself as almighty and all-wise; he will quit trying to run the lives of others; he will quit his endorsement of all coercive schemes; he will quit acting as other than a normal human being striving to perfect his own life. These are some of the things everyone has a right to quit, a right over which he alone has full control. If we will simply quit meddling with the lives of others, then no longer will “the angels weep.”

[1] The Wall Street Journal, September 10, 1973, p. 32.

28

THE ROLE OF INTERFERENCE

Determine which actions should be forcibly halted, and there are the proper limits of government.

Current explanations of the limited government concept are proving inadequate, if not confusing. The lack of progress we decry should lead not to discouragement but, rather, to new ways of revealing freedom’s superiority to socialism. We obviously have the case, but just as obviously lack the phrasing that stirs up free market, private ownership, limited government convictions. The proof of our failure to explain may be seen in our drift or fall into authoritarianism on the one hand, and into permissiveness and anarchy on the other. It behooves us, therefore, to explore the novel, to look to explanations not yet tried.

Here is one of numerous possibilities that may deserve reflection; and if it seems reasonable, we should refine it as best we can. Settle upon those actions which should, and which should not be, forcibly interfered with and there will stand in crystal clarity what government should, and should not do.

The essential nature of government is organized force. Back of every law or edict is a constabulary: do as decreed, or else! Government is exclusively an interfering arm of society. Its sole business is forcible interference. This is as it should be. Viewing government’s distinctive characteristic in this manner may somewhat simplify our problem: decide what actions of citizens should be subject to forcible interference as distinguished from those actions which should be entirely free from interference. This, at the very least, should make understanding and agreement easier.

To put my thesis in focus I shall, first, suggest a few reasons why so many people forcibly interfere with the lives of others—without even recognizing that they are thus interfering. Secondly, I should like to speculate on how markedly a person’s conduct would change for the better were he to regard his obstructive actions for what they really are: interferences!

Today, people by the millions unwittingly interfere with the lives of others for more reasons than we know. Here is a sampling:

• Covetousness undoubtedly heads the list. Envy is an evil that blinds anyone not only to his own blessings but, also, to the rights of others.

• Most people see nothing immoral in feathering their own nests at the expense of their fellow men. They simply have not done their citizenship homework.

• Politicians, “economists,” labor officials, clergymen, and even many business leaders, inform us that the communist notion—from each according to ability, to each according to need—is proper and righteous.

• There is a ceaseless bombardment from nearly all media that spending taxpayer’s property, for whatever purpose, is the way to prosperity. People, by and large, are not inclined to regard as fallacy that which they wish to believe.

• The lust for power plays an enormous part.

• An unwillingness to think for self when there are those who so graciously offer to do our thinking for us—free of charge!

• The joy of getting on the bandwagon, that is, the desire for popular acclaim.

• The failure to learn from history or to gain understanding from what is going on before our very eyes.

• An alarming lack of faith in a citizenry that is free and self-responsible.

• The silly notion that egalitarianism—bringing the millions to a common level by force—interferences on the grand scale—is our way to the New Jerusalem, the hoped-for Shangri-La.

• Innocent mistakes—community eyesores, pollution, noise nuisances, and the like—which, very often, lead to coercive “cures,” interferences more offensive than the original “crimes.”

The way to straight thinking on this matter is to reduce the dimension from millions of citizens to a number we can understand: two! In what circumstances would you and I resort to forcible interference, and when would we leave each other alone? This is the only question we need to ask to learn where we really stand and to find out what, in our judgment, is the proper role of government. Big numbers only confuse our thinking; magnitude has nothing whatsoever to do with either morals or principles.

As a starter, would you forcibly interfere were I to threaten your life? I would were you to threaten mine. I would interfere with aggressive violence.

Would you interfere were I to steal from you? I would were you to steal from me. I would interfere with thievery or any form of predation!

Would you interfere were I to use your property rather than mine to express my sympathy for the poor, at home or abroad? I would were you thus to use me. I would interfere with all coercive “charity,” whether perpetrated by Robin Hood alone or by his gang.

Would you interfere were I to lie about my service or product? I would were you to do that to me. I would interfere with misrepresentation!

Would you interfere were I to shortchange you? I would were you to defraud me. I would interfere with fraud!

Let us now turn to situations of another nature.

Would you interfere were I to accept a job of waiting on tables for $1.00 an hour? I would not were that your desire. I would not interfere with your choice of a job!

Would you interfere were I to undersell all of my competitors? I would welcome such an achievement by you or anyone else. I would not interfere with free and open competition!

Would you interfere should I prefer to swap my dollars for a foreign product? I would not should that be your choice. I would not interfere with voluntary exchange!

Would you interfere should I grow any crop and in whatever quantity on my own farm? Were that your choice, I would say more power to you. I would not interfere with anyone’s peaceful use of his own property!

Would you interfere should I start an airline and make my own rates, be they high or low? I would wish you good fortune if that were your business. I would not interfere with anyone’s entry into a business or occupation of his choice at whatever prices he chooses to ask!

Would you interfere were I to work 100 hours a week and for whomever I please? I would encourage you to pursue your own uniqueness, to do as you see fit. I would not interfere with anyone’s creative and productive and peaceful efforts!

Enough of these questions. It seems obvious to me that forcible interference is warranted only against the destructive actions of citizens such as violence, predation, misrepresentation, and fraud—injuries imposed on some by others. The limited function of government, therefore, is to codify the taboos—destructive actions, whatever they are—and enforce compliance. Beyond this inhibitory role, there is absolutely nothing that government can do to improve society by bringing its physical force to bear upon individuals.

And it seems just as obvious that all creative activities, without exception, should be left to men acting freely, privately, cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily.

We should always keep in mind that all creative action is spiritual, in the sense that ideas, inventions, discoveries, intuitions, insights are spiritual. Thus it is that everything by which we live and prosper has its inception in the spiritual before ever showing forth in the material. Physical force—forcible interferences—can only deaden, never enliven, the spiritual.

Contrary to the anarchistic position—no government—forcible interference is extremely important and necessary. That it has a historical record of getting out of bounds is only because of a lack of vigilance and has nothing to do with the propriety of limited government. Out of bounds, it is destructive. In bounds, it permits the flowering of creativity—holds down the bad that the good may flourish.

29

HARMONY UNDERSTOOD

All discord, harmony not understood.

—ALEXANDER POPE

All forms of authoritarianism—socialism, state interventionism or welfarism, and the like—are despotic. They are at once dictatorial, domineering, coercively prescriptive; they are dogmatic and arrogant. All despotic philosophies may be simply summarized: “Do as I say, or else!” The practices of this way of life range all the way from one person lording it over another to those who wield their vast political powers over millions of citizens. As the eminent German psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel, evaluated this mode of conduct:

There is not much difference between the medicine-man of ten thousand years ago and the political propagandizer of our time.[1]

In any event, this despotic way of life—the very antithesis of freedom—rages throughout the world as a forest fire out of control, in the U.S.A. as elsewhere.

True, this political inferno will burn itself out eventually; sooner or later there will be nothing flammable left—no more fuel to sustain the fire. But must we wait out this tiresome historic sequence? Or, does mankind possess the intellectual potential to douse the flames and achieve the noncoercive society in our time? Assuredly, we must try.

Finding the way requires an understanding of, a belief in, and a desire for the free society. Without understanding, belief, and desire, forget it! But granted these intellectual achievements—opening and upgrading the mind to a better idea—all the king’s horses and all the king’s men are rendered powerless. Sanity wins!

What do I mean by freedom? My most concise, and probably least understood, answer: “no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.” The word “free” has so many different meanings! The Oxford Dictionary, for instance, uses over 6,000 words to describe its various connotations. No wonder so few grasp what you or I mean by the free society! The conceptions range from being free of responsibility for self to being free to do anything one pleases regardless of the harm imposed on others, that is, from slavery to anarchy—from planned chaos to unplanned chaos. We are faced with the old, old problem: not only political tyranny but, also, the tyranny of words!

In any event, the aforementioned ambitious intellectual achievement can never be realized unless we come to some common and acceptable definition of “free.” Perhaps it might help to return to the word’s original spelling and definition, that is, to medieval English. It was then “freo” and was defined as “to love, to delight, to endear. . . . Not in bondage to another.” The freedom philosophy, when rooted in this meaning of “free” makes a great deal of sense to me. At least it deserves analysis and perhaps adoption.

Most of us are content with “Not in bondage to another.” I wish to suggest, however, that this, by itself, is a very skimpy definition. If there were no more to freedom than being let alone by others—absence of exterior restraints—we could visualize a society of mummies, not one doing anything against others but, far more significant, not one doing anything helpful to others. If there were no more to the freedom philosophy than this, I would be less enthusiastic than I now am. True, not in bondage is essential to freedom in the sense that not being dead is essential to life. But there is more to life than not being dead and there is more to freedom than not being enslaved.

Continuing the mummy analogy: in the truly free society the mummies come alive. What happens? In one respect, nothing! As mummies, in their new state, they do nothing whatsoever to enslave or injure one another; they remain mummified; not a dictocrat in the population. Then what is changed by reason of their coming alive? Each becomes graced with unimaginable creative aptitudes and potentialities. Interestingly, no two are alike; each one is unique. Joe has skills and talents for this, John for that; the more advanced their skills, the greater the variation; without such variation, men would be mummies. This is to say that were everyone identical to me, all of us would perish. And the same would be true if we were all like you, whoever you are.

What has happened, then, as a result of our freedom to be different? First, the slightest reflection reveals that all of us have become interdependent. All live on the fruits of each other’s labor. Second, we have gained an obligation—dictated by intelligent self-interest—to unmask ourselves, that is, to remove as many inner restraints as possible. Why? That our lights may shine; that our hidden aptitudes and potentialities may emerge. What then is the shape of the free society in its ideal form? It is featured by the absence of both outer and inner restraints. Externally, no one lording it over another! Within, no mummifying self-paralysis hindering the potentially creative self!

Will such an ideal society ever exist? That is, will there ever come a time when individuals will simultaneously (1) refrain from injuring or impairing the rights of others to life, livelihood, liberty and (2) strive for their own intellectual, moral, and spiritual unfoldment? To me, such a possibility is as farfetched as expecting a society of angels. Why, then, spend thought and time defining the ideal, the unattainable? Why not get off “Cloud 9” and return to earth? Why not be “practical”?

Imperfect man’s ideal port is, at best, Expectation. Man can sail in the direction of the ideal but this port advances in front of him as he moves toward it. This is not a point of destination but, rather, one of Expectation or Aspiration now and forever. Samuel Johnson phrased it thus:

It is reasonable to have perfection in the eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be reached.

I would say that it is not only reasonable to have perfection in the eye but that it is an absolute necessity. In the absence of such a constant star, we are adrift and without compass, all at sixes and sevens—going every which way! The improvement of society—moving in the direction of the ideal—requires, at the very least, a definition of what the ideal is. This is down-to-earth practicality! Why? Because such a definition is the only lodestar we have. Wrote Joel Hawes:

Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.

The definition of the ideal society has more to it—much more—than I have so far sketched. Reflect again on the word “free” in its original form, the medieval English “freo.” Note that the definition went beyond, “Not in bondage to another” and included “to love, to delight, to endear.” What in their time did people mean by this phrasing? Certainly, there was no reference to the free society as we think of it. Society-wise, these people lived under and were aware only of such political establishments as feudalism, serfdom, mercantilism, and the like. The ideal to which we aspire is of recent vintage, ideas and concepts come upon during the past two centuries. To the users of “freo” such concepts as the subjective and marginal utility theory of value, freedom in transactions, private ownership, government limited to keeping the peace were, at best, in embryonic form—not hatched! What, then, did they mean by “to love, to delight, to endear”?

These were family terms—parents to their children and vice versa—that is, to those not enslaved. They loved, were delighted with, and endeared to the few whose relationships were not dictocratic and, thus, not antagonistic. We can infer from this that freo—free—was linked inseparably with and exclusively to living in harmony. Here, in my view, was a profound truth in its seedling stage—in embryo! The users of “freo” were unaware of the potential in this seed they were sowing; indeed, most people in today’s world are unaware that it has sprouted and grown and flowered; they do not know of the remarkable demonstrations of its efficacy, even though it goes on before their very noses—plus explanations galore. Blind to enlightenments!

This blindness to the fact that freedom and harmony are inseparable twins is easily remedied. Merely do a personal inventory of the persons for whom you have the greatest affection—love, delight, endearment. They will be those, past or present, who enlighten you or, conversely, those who are enlightened by you; in a word, they are those within your circle of light. In the economic realm they will be those who lighten your load and those whose load you lighten.

Wherever and whenever freedom is practiced in the market place, every creative act, whether in goods or services, lightens the load of consumers precisely as it lightens the load of producers. One among countless examples: those who have found out how to raise broilers for prices lower than 50 years ago—and of far higher quality—benefit not only themselves but consumers across the nation. Note how harmonious are these willing exchanges—harmony existing in the absence of antagonisms.

The despotic or interventionist way of life, to the extent it is permitted, generates antagonisms for it rests on the fruitless attempts to do good to some at the expense of others. No injury to any person can ever benefit another. Emerson gave the explanation:

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

The freedom philosophy is nondespotic and, to the extent of its practice, makes for a harmonious society. How rapidly we move in the direction of this ideal depends on how aptly and quickly we can gain an understanding of, a belief in, and a desire for freedom. By this process, men may deal with one another in harmony rather than discord.

Who can rise to this level of thought? Anyone who is interested and who so wills it. Anyone!

[1] See In Search of Maturity by Dr. Fritz Kunkel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1943), p. 65.

THE REMNANT

In every society there are people who have the intelligence to figure out the requirements of liberty and the character to walk in its ways. There is a Remnant! This is a scattered fellowship of individuals bound together by a love of ideas and a hunger to know the plain truth of things. The idea of working with such people is intriguing, but how does one establish contact? The Remnant resists the hard sell, or any other kind of sell; they refuse to be fetched. Any suspicion that they might be the target of someone’s efforts and they vanish. Nevertheless, it is possible to work with The Remnant, and no task is more rewarding. There’s only one way to go about it: Let a man cultivate his own garden, and if he produces anything worthwhile, he may be sure, as Albert Jay Nock says, “that The Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. . . .”

Castles in the Air

Leonard E. Read

1975

To our Founding Fathers who put foundations under history’s greatest castle in the air. May we find meaning in The Bicentennial by restoring those foundations.

How long will the Republic endure? So long as the ideas of its founders remain dominant.

David Starr Jordan, President

Stanford University—1891–1913

1

CASTLES IN THE AIR

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

—HENRY DAVID THOREAU

Scrutinize tradition and assess it, for it bears witness both true and false; to be blindly guided by it is to risk being led astray. So, beware of conventional thinking; break with tradition whenever reason shows its folly! As Ortega warned:

The so-called Renaissance was, for the moment, the attempt to let go of the traditional culture which, formed during the Middle Ages, had begun to stiffen and to quench man’s spontaneity . . . man must periodically shake himself free of his own culture.[1]

Thoreau was a hardheaded searcher for truth; he did his own thinking. His comment on castles in the air is a sample, a break with the conventional definition of daydreaming: “Anything imagined and desired but not likely to be realized.”

Thoreau is right. Contrary to popular notions, castles in the air are the birthplaces of human evolution; all progress, (and all regress) be it material, intellectual, moral, or spiritual, involves a break with the prevailing ideology. Not to break with the current conventions—to go on our dizzy way—means a headlong plunge into all-out socialism!

Castles in the air might indeed become chambers of horror. On the other hand, they encompass man’s unrealized goals and aspirations, the dreams not yet attained but not necessarily unattainable. An example from the past may help show their role for the future: In 1898 it was thought that intensive farming depended on the nitrate mines in Chile, and that their eventual exhaustion would bring world famine. Why did not this disaster come to pass? Three great scientists built castles in the air. They put foundations under them and thereby “solved the problem of nitrogen via ammonia synthesis from air and water.”[2] Result? More intensive farming than ever before! So we are not now dependent on nitrate from communist Chile; we do not face famine.

As to the future, such normal sources of energy as coal and oil are believed to be in critical shortage. “Energy crisis” is the talk of our time. Thank heaven for castles in the air. It has been known for centuries that all heat, light, and energy for the entire solar system comes from the sun. Coal and oil are but by-products thereof, the secondary sources we have used to survive. Very well! Why not anticipate the end of coal and oil and go directly to the sun for mankind’s energy? Harness energy at its source! Put foundations under it! Long steps in that direction have been taken, and it’s now only a matter of time—assuming some other castles in the air—before we will be capable of extracting more energy from the sun than human beings may ever need.[3]

Why the reservation, “assuming some other castles in the air”? It is this: If we persist in coming to be more and more like communist Chile, solar energy for mankind is a daydream without foundation. Tapping this source on a meaningful scale is out of the question except as there be at least one country in the world where men are free. Put this stark fact another way: Solar energy will not grace mankind unless we remove our restraints against the release of creative human energy; solar energy and creative human energy are inseparably linked!

Freedom does not make people strong; rather, it makes strength possible. It gives everyone an opening for intellectual, moral, and spiritual strength. With freedom, many will develop their faculties, some will not. The outcome depends on one’s inner strength. Indeed, this inner strength occasionally shows forth in persons living under extreme authoritarianism.

While such rare stalwarts as a Solzhenitsyn may keep a few sparks aglow, it is only when freedom’s flame is high and bright—when millions are free to act creatively—that such miracles as tapping solar energy are a possibility. The ones who get the credit—the scientists out front—actually ride on the shoulders of others with their thoughts, insights, intuitive flashes—countless thousands of unknown persons. For instance, did Johann Gutenberg invent the printing press? He is given the credit. The fact is that his was but a crowning achievement, a final touch to literally millions of antecedents—including the unknown hero who harnessed fire.

In view of the politico-economic trend in all nations toward all-out statism, any prospect for progress requires a turn-about in at least one nation. And the nation on which each of us must focus is his own. Only at home may one expect to put foundations under his dreams.

More than two centuries ago in this land of ours men built castles in the air. What was their dream? A country free from authoritarian tyranny; each citizen free to act creatively as he pleased, government limited to inhibiting destructive actions, invoking a common justice, keeping the peace! No political arrangement had ever matched this dream, even remotely. Castles in the air, indeed!

The challenge they faced was to put foundations under their dreams! And they did: The Declaration of Independence unseated government as the sovereign power and put the Creator there: “. . . all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty. . . .”

The Declaration, however, was only the first stage in laying the greatest politico-economic foundation in the history of mankind. The next step—cementing the foundation—was the Constitution, further supported by the Bill of Rights. These political instruments held government to a more limited role than ever before. Result? The greatest outburst of creative energy ever known—the American miracle!

What has happened? Our foundations are crumbling. We are reverting to the same type of authoritarianism from which our forefathers fled. We give it new names: the planned economy, the welfare state, socialism, communism. But tyranny is tyranny whether the master be a King James, a feudal lord, a Hitler, or a majority gone mad!

The remedy? Once again, castles in the air! Required is a lodestar—“a guiding ideal”—similar to that of our founding fathers, along with the will and the understanding to put foundations under that ideal.

Built into this foundation structure are gems of thought. The mortar holding the gems in place is composed of the several virtues: steadfastness of purpose; thinking for self rather than imitating others; an insatiable desire to learn, realizing that the more one learns the more there is to learn; an ability to explain the fallacies of all dictatorial behavior; an understanding of and a devotion to the creative process; and, this above all, integrity—the accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as righteous.

Given such a foundation, what sequence of events might be expected to follow? A repeal of all laws that restrain or prohibit creative activity. A precedent for such a wholesome turn of events occurred in England following the Napoleonic wars. Richard Cobden and John Bright and a few enthusiastic supporters who understood the folly of mercantilism and the merit of freedom in transactions began the greatest reform movement in British history: the wholesale repeal of restrictive laws. As a consequence, England stood as a giant among nations until just before World War I when her foundations began to crumble, as ours are now crumbling. However, what happened once to achieve freedom in England can happen again there and also here. It can happen if there is the will to prevail, a faith that we can succeed.

Given a return to freedom, what about the harnessing of solar energy? It will be as commonplace a few years hence as delivering the human voice around the earth at the speed of light is today. Taken for granted! And who knows what other things free men can and will accomplish!

But far more important than these countless material blessings will be a freeing of the human spirit—tens of millions no longer wards of government but growing, emerging, self-responsible citizens, each his own man. Castles in the air? Let us build foundations under those worth keeping.

* * *

The following chapters are all castles in the air. Let me explain.

Our goal is that of free men in a free society—as high as one can aim in the hierarchy of intellectual, moral, and spiritual values. There is no limit to the ideas involved, ranging from exposure of authoritarian fallacies to infinite speculations on what is right and true. It is a tremendous challenge.

The best anyone can do is to think through for himself whatever thoughts flash into his mind. The chapters that follow are recordings and explanations of several thoughts which have occurred to me during the past year.

So, I offer these—my castles in the air—to anyone who may be interested in building foundations.

[1] See Man and Culture by José Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 1962), pp. 72–73.

[2] See “Energy: The Ultimate Raw Material” by James Wei (The Freeman, August, 1972).

[3] “Although less than half the earth’s sunlight entering the earth’s atmosphere reaches its surface, just 40 minutes of that solar input equals all the energy mankind consumes in an entire year.” In a word, 13,140 times as much solar energy as needed to serve present requirements. See “Tapping the Sun’s Energy” by David G. Lee (National Wildlife, August-September, 1974).

2

FREEDOM: A NEW VISION

A system of fixed concepts is contrary to natural law. It prevents life from flowing. It blocks the passage of the universal law.

—NEWTON DILLAWAY

Most of us who stand for the free society become exasperated, even angry, at our opponents. This reaction is almost instinctive, but I am convinced that it is a mistake. Actually, if any exasperation is warranted, it might better be directed at ourselves. Why this claim?

Assuming freedom to be the true and right way, which I do, those folks on the other side of the fence play a part, no less important than ourselves, in its attainment. Again, why? The vision of truth, the evolution of man, all progress—material, intellectual, moral, spiritual—is the result of action and reaction. Emerson called it “the law of compensation . . . no man thoroughly understands a truth until first he has contended against it.” A self-evident fact: It is impossible to move forward unless there be something to thrust against. View our opponents as welcome springboards—be grateful for their existence. “He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill,” wrote Edmund Burke. “Our antagonist is our helper.”

Our philosophical and ideological adversaries are doing their part. Sometimes, indeed, it appears that they may take over. Their action is well nigh overwhelming, so enormous is its scale! It is our reactions that are faulty. For the most part, we react in the form of name-calling, disdain, often bitterness. How should we react? What is the intelligent way? We should use their notions as springboards to make our own case. If our reactions were adequate, they would cause freedom to appear as a brilliant star in the darkness—all eyes attracted to it. What follows is but another attempt on my part to light a candle—my reactions to prevailing conditions.

Reverting to the title: why speak of freedom as a vision? Freedom, as I shall define it, is but another castle in the air, an ideal way of life more ardently to be hoped for than seriously expected in our time. Sometime in the future, of course, but not right now!

And why the adjective “new”? To refute our opponents who continually refer to this way of life as “old hat” or words to that effect! Troubles in society, brought on by authoritarian mischief, they lay to freedom—quite innocently in most cases and for the reason that they have no understanding of what is meant by freedom in its higher sense. But let us be charitable; how many on our side of the fence have been or are clear in their own minds about freedom, and manifest it in their actions?

The truth is that freedom as it has been approximated, first in England and then in the U.S.A., is the newest and most remarkable politico-economic achievement in the world’s history—enjoyed for five or six generations at most. The structures for this free way of life were erected in 1776: the simultaneous appearance of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence. It took a generation or two before these enlightenments brought forth their best fruit.

The issue is between two opposed ways of life. Our opponents’ way is the older, as old as mankind: authoritarianism in its numerous forms, featuring fixed concepts which—as Dillaway points out—are contrary to natural law and prevent life from flowing. The newer is freedom, featuring unfixed, improving, flowing, creative concepts.

Anyone who believes as I do that man’s earthly purpose is growth in awareness, perception, consciousness, has no choice but to side with individual liberty—freedom—and to look with disfavor on all forms of authoritarianism.[1]

Authoritarians at best can turn out carbon copies, no copy ever being as perfect as the imperfect original. Carbon copies cannot be improvements but only second-rate duplicates.

Human improvement or growth stems from an exercise of the faculties. This is no less true of the intellectual and spiritual than of the physical faculties. About your or my faculties and their potentialities no one else knows anything. Exercise is possible only as we are free to work on our individual selves and is diminished to the extent that we are worked over by others.

Growth without liberty, that is, without the freedom to exercise our faculties and to discover our creative potentialities, is out of the question. Given the goal of individual growth, authoritarianism is an utterly absurd way of life.

As perhaps anyone will readily surmise, I am addressing myself to an ideal, the kind of a relationship between the individual and society that has never existed. Why? Perfection can never be the product of imperfect man; at best the ideal can only be approximated.

Why write about an impossible ideal? Unless we have the ideal in our minds, we have no compass, no way of knowing in which direction our efforts should be pointed. Knowing the ideal is the first step in down-to-earth practicality.

I define the ideal—freedom in a refined state—as no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.

At The Foundation for Economic Education, my associates and I refer to this ideal way of life as the freedom philosophy—its practice an aspiration. In the economic realm we call it the free market.

I have written over and over again that no one has more than scratched the surface when it comes to understanding and explaining the miracle of the market. And I can do no more than make another scratch myself. Why? It is rather difficult to explain a situation that has not existed. I must confine myself to hypothesizing.

Not at all surprisingly, most people think of the free market as private enterprise. This, however, is not what we mean. All sorts of wholly objectionable enterprises are private: piracy, for instance, or embezzlement, hi-jacking. Nor are there many business firms in America that are free market examples. Labor union tactics are linked with many of them or, if not this, there are governmental interventions that favor some and injure others.

The free market is so little trusted because so few are aware of what it is. Thinking of ourselves as if we were a free people leads us mistakenly to conclude that our present hodge-podge of intervention is a manifestation of the free market. Consequently, we imagine that a free and self-responsible people would behave no better than do the majority of us today. But what we mean and what most people think we mean are poles apart!

In brief, the freedom philosophy or the free market is a way of life. But it differs from most philosophies in that it does not prescribe how any individual should live his life; there are no fixed concepts. It allows freedom for each to do as he pleases—live in accord with his own uniqueness as he sees it—so long as the rights of others are not infringed, which is to say, so long as no one does anything which were everyone to do would bring all of us to grief or ruin. In short, this way of life commends no controls external to the individual beyond those which a government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice might impose. Each individual acts on his own authority and responsibility. Those incapable of self-support, instead of becoming wards of the state, may rely upon the charitable instincts and practices of a free people—a quality of character that thrives only when a people are free, when the fruits of their labors are theirs to do with as they see fit.

This is all there is to my definition; it is so brief because it is not prescriptive—no fixed concepts. It has nothing in it at all that calls on me or the government to run your life.

At this point I would like to comment on the danger of labeling the ideal. There was a word that I always liked; the classical economists used it: liberal. The word liberal really meant, in the classical sense, the liberalization of the individuals from the tyranny of the State. That word was expropriated by our opponents and it has now come to mean liberality with other people’s money. The word was taken over. And so I, more than anybody else, was responsible for introducing and publicizing and perhaps making world-wide the word libertarian. I am sorry I ever did it. Why? Because the word libertarian has now been just as much expropriated as the word liberal. Some years ago, after popularizing the word, I was at Stanford University where the Dean of the Graduate School of Business, Hugh Jackson, had a luncheon for me with his faculty. They were criticizing me for popularizing the word libertarian. And finally in desperation I said, “Well, what’s wrong with it?” And somebody said it sounds too much like libertine. My rebuttal was, “I suppose you guys wouldn’t eat horehound candy!” I do not use the word libertarian anymore, simply because if somebody said to me, Read, what is your position, and I say libertarian, they’ll identify me with everyone from a socialist to an anarchist. Now, when they ask me where I stand, my answer is: I have an ideal in mind. At this point a dialogue is likely to begin and I might learn more from the other fellow than he from me.

I do not wish to put any label on the ideal.

Reflect on the light spectrum. Political-economic philosophy also spreads over a wide spectrum and is loosely analogous to the light spectrum: red at the left produced by the longer wave lengths—the easiest observed—extending with ever shorter wave lengths through orange, yellow, green, blue, and finally to violet—the least discernible by the human eye. Colorblind people can often see red but their discernment decreases as the wave lengths shorten; many people with “good” eyesight cannot discern violet.

Reverting to the politico-economic spectrum, let us substitute the long and short arms of government for the long and short wave lengths. At the extreme left we observe the long arm of government reaching into nearly every phase of human existence—authoritarianism, full force! Everybody can see this, and even feel it. Then as we move to the right on this spectrum, the arms of government become shorter, reaching into fewer and fewer facets of life. Finally, and comparable to the ultra violet lying just beyond the visible spectrum—were such an ideal situation ever to exist—we would find the arms of government so short that they could not reach into and have control over a single creative activity—government no more than a peace-keeping arm of society. This ideal can only be imagined for it has never existed and probably never will. It is nebulous as a dream and lacks the quality of specificity. The question is, should we try to label this ideal? Or, more particularly, its seekers or votaries?

It is, of course, appropriate to label the extreme left, for it is composed of hard stuff: brute force. We call it communism, socialism, fascism, and so on. It is a masterminding scheme, the parts of which can be seen as can a blueprint. It is a discrete politico-economic mechanism and specific to the core. This is definitely nameable, as is a constitution, or any document, or thing, or person.

As we move to the right on this spectrum, the schematic phase gradually lessens; the arms of government are shorter. Yet, we quite properly ascribe names to each of these, labels ranging all the way from liberal to conservative.

The concern here is with the ideal that lies beyond the right end of the visible spectrum where schemes to manage the lives of others would be nonexistent—the imaginable only. I say, call it the ideal and let it go at that!

Before going further, let’s examine the millions who lord it over others—parents over children and vice versa, husbands over wives and vice versa, employees over employers and vice versa, politicians over citizens and vice versa. How are we to account for those afflicted with the authoritarian syndrome? What lies at the root of this egomania? From whence comes this dictatorial penchant?

Some insist that it is a natural, instinctive trait of the human being; others say it is rooted in fear. To Hobbes, men were brutes so life degenerated into a perpetual condition of “war against every other” in a struggle not just to survive but to dominate his fellows. President Wilson pressed for self-determination as a right of all people, on the assumption that they wanted to rule themselves. According to Hobbes, they want to rule each other. Even the distinguished moral philosopher, Adam Smith, suggests that this lust for power may be the principal motive for slavery: Said he, “The pride of man makes him love to domineer. . . .”

I am convinced that what we call a lust for power does not stem from any of these “causes” but, basically, from unawareness. It is a weakness more than a lust; men resort to force for a very simple and an easily observable reason: they do not know any better! With notable exceptions, men are:

- unaware of how little they know. Without an awareness of minuscule knowledge, they can envision a better world only as others are carbon copies of themselves. Their remedy? Cast others in their image by force, if necessary.

- unaware that were everyone identical all would perish!

- unaware that our infinite variation in talents and virtues merits approval rather than censure, for variation is implicit in the Cosmic Order.

- unaware of an inability to mold the life of another beneficially. Each individual has but the dimmest notion of his own miraculous being; about others he knows substantially nothing. Man is not the Creator!

- unaware that consciousness has its origin in the voice of the mind. This is composed of the voice within—reason, insights, and the like—plus those enlightened voices of others which one may perceive and embrace. Together, they make up and circumscribe one’s consciousness.

As you see, I am insisting that the domineering trait has its origin in unawareness or, to put it bluntly, in sheer ignorance—whether evidenced by you or me or any others. To call it a natural instinct is to insult Nature! Or to argue that God does not know what he is up to!

Socrates was aware. He exclaimed, “I know nothing.”

Montaigne was aware. He inscribed on his coat of arms, “Que sais-je”?—What do I know?

And the late Ludwig von Mises was aware, as he demonstrated during an evening at my Los Angeles home in 1941, shortly after his arrival in the U.S.A. Present were a dozen of the best friends of freedom in Southern California—Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, Dr. Benjamin Anderson, Bill Mullendore, and the like. We listened to the great teacher for several hours. Finally, the President of the Chamber of Commerce said, “All of us will agree with you that we are headed for troubled times but, Dr. Mises, let’s assume that you were the dictator of these United States and could impose any changes you think appropriate. What would you do?” Quick as a flash, Mises replied, “I would abdicate.”

Now comes the difficult part, an attempt to explain how miraculous the free market could be if really trusted and used. There can be no precise blueprint for freedom. The ideal is hypothetical. But we have a great deal of solid evidence.

Here, at the outset, is the central, compelling fact, a truth that is almost unanimously overlooked: the market possesses a wisdom that does not exist, even remotely, in any discrete individual. For instance, because you cannot imagine how mail would be delivered ever so much more efficiently than now if turned over to the market, never, for heaven’s sake, let your faith falter by reason of your infinitesimal know-how. To claim that the free market has a wisdom a million or billion times your own is a gross understatement.

I recall lecturing in Detroit in 1957. Present was K. T. Keller, Chrysler’s President and one of the greatest production men of our country. Alfred Sloan was there, and other executives from General Motors—about a hundred of the most prestigious people in the automobile business. While addressing them, this thought came to me: “You know, we have seventy-five million automobiles in America today, and there is not a man on the face of the earth who knows how to make one.” Well, K. T. Keller was startled and then confirmed that he himself did not know how to make an automobile.

Nearly two years later, in pursuing that point, I began a series of exercises—every day for six months. They are described in my Elements of Libertarian Leadership. The exercises are difficult and should not be attempted without a good measure of will power. They take five minutes a day; but if a day is missed, one must start over again. The exercise changes each month. The first month calls for contemplation of a different item each day—a piece of chalk, tomato, blade of grass, a pair of scissors, a cup, or whatever. The discipline is to concentrate on that item for five minutes and think of its various qualities. Try concentrating on anything for five minutes and watch your mind wander. Not easy! The item for this day was an ordinary wooden lead pencil. My questions: Cedar often is white so why is this wood pinkish? Is that lead? What is this coloring and what is the printing? Is that eraser rubber? On and on. At the conclusion of the exercise, I recalled the Detroit experience, and then this intriguing thought: Perhaps there is not a man on earth who knows how to make a thing as simple as a pencil!

The President of the world’s largest pencil manufacturing company responded favorably to my request to visit his factory. A whole day there, observing the materials on the unloading platform: graphite, brass, wetting agents, lumber, and other items. I observed the extrusion process and all other phases of manufacture, and had an hour with the chemist. What is that? He would tell me. Then, what is that? As he went down each line of explanation, he would finally admit to not knowing. It seemed altogether appropriate to me to let a pencil write its own biography, “I, Pencil.” Here is proof positive that no person knows how to make a simple wooden lead pencil. Yet, that year 1,600,000,000 pencils were made in the U.S.A. The piece has had world-wide distribution. No person questions the point. Anyone may have a copy for the asking.

In a word, why is it that you and I, as well as all others, who know so little are able to obtain so much? From whence comes this enormous knowledge that does not remotely exist in any person?

Professor F. A. Hayek, one of the few known to me who glimpses this phenomenon, refers to it as knowledge in society. Edmund Burke called it an immemorial heritage. My favorite phrase is overall luminosity.

From a reading of Ortega’s What Is Philosophy?, I inferred that philosophy is the art of going deep and bringing the findings to the surface in clarity. But if this were the case, then sooner or later every philosopher would wind up at the center—truth in its pristine purity! The answer to everything! That is not the way it works. It is just the opposite. It is not people going deep but, rather, going out into the infinite unknown. Instead of converging lines, they are diverging lines. One man goes out in search of truth and brings his finding to the surface in clarity. This is what accounts for the overall luminosity. This is the wisdom by which we live. It does not exist in any discrete individual anywhere in the world, not even remotely.

If you wish proof, read Treasury of Philosophy[2]—about 1,000 pages. The book lists and describes the findings of four hundred of the world’s most famous philosophers. It is interesting to note that no two of these men had the same experiences—no two of them alike! One man went out in one direction and found a bit of truth. Others went this way and that, bringing their varied findings back to the surface in clarity. This is the overall luminosity—the wisdom—by which we live. This explains the miracle of the market, a phenomenon that occurs when men are free. The full truth is not in you or me and never will be—nor in Socrates. But he had the distinct advantage of knowing he did not know!

Thinking of a philosopher as one who brings truth to the surface in clarity, nearly all individuals are philosophers to some extent. Millions upon millions over the millennia have brought one idea or more to the surface—have added to the luminosity by which we see, survive, and prosper.

What we must bear in mind is that the sole generative force at the human level stems from individual human faculties: intuition, insight, inventiveness, perception, awareness, consciousness, and the like. These qualities are present in all individuals—more or less.

Bear in mind that these qualities cannot be foreseen in another; indeed, not even in one’s self. How can you foresee the original idea you may experience tomorrow!

An instructive event took place in Michigan during the last century. There was a little boy by the name of Tom, twelve years old—a newsboy on a train. One day the baggage man got so angry that he picked him up by the ears and threw him into the baggage car. The baggage man did not know that the waif he injured was Thomas Alva Edison. He did not know; you would not have known. Tom did not himself know what he would become. No one is aware of his potentialities! But look what happened to the lad Tom—he became the greatest inventive genius of all time.

To the extent that the free market prevails, to that extent is economic life featured by free entry and competition. Reflect on what this means. In addition to the heritage of the ages—the overall luminosity—these features enormously stimulate and bring to the fore the genius potentially existing among our contemporaries. Thus, it is possible for us to be graced not only by the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of the past but, also, by the considerably untapped ingenuity of the present. The best in everyone is brought forth when the best is required to succeed. The free market brings out the Edison in us!

The free market works its wonders simply because the generative capacity of countless millions has no external force standing against its release. Instead of preventing life from flowing, it permits life to flow! It is attuned to the natural, universal law.

Authoritarianism—regardless of the labels assigned to its numerous forms—presupposes nonexistent gods, that is, politicians who naively believe that they know how to steer mankind aright and, thus, can run your, my, and everyone else’s life to humanity’s advantage. These self-proclaimed wizards are in fact the most ignorant of all men. Why this derogatory assessment? They haven’t taken the very first step in wisdom, namely, achieving an awareness of how little they know. While no wizard among them all can even make a pencil, each has little doubt that mankind, if made in his infinitesimal image, would be improved and that all of our millions of requirements would better prosper under his direction. Prosper? Preposterous!

The free market, on the other hand, is attuned to the little we know, it does not presuppose a nonexistent omniscience. Instead of trying vainly to make us into carbon copies of those who know not, the market relies upon man’s immemorial heritage—the overall luminosity. This is where the needed knowledge waits to be drawn upon. Everyone’s life is free to flow and grow—life’s fulfillment a possibility for each human being. Admittedly, freedom in this higher sense is indeed a vision; it is a castle in the air under which we are well advised to put foundations.

My plea to each individual who has a faith in free men is to light a brighter candle than any of us, up till now, has been able to do. Growing, flowing is how we may approximate the vision.

[1] Most of what follows appears under the title, “The Miracle of the Market,” one of six chapters in Champions of Freedom (Hillsdale, Michigan, Hillsdale College Press, 1974).

[2] See Treasury of Philosophy, edited by Dagobert D. Runes (New York: The Philosophical Library, Inc., 1955).

3

THE MYSTERY OF SOCIAL ORDER

. . . she [order] is always to be found when sought for and never appears so lovely as when contrasted with her opponent, disorder.

—SAMUEL JOHNSON

The word “order” has more than two dozen meanings, quite unrelated: order others to do this and that, money order, an order for government bonds, Order of the Double Dragon, and so on.

What I wish to examine here is an extremely critical kind of order—the social order that brings progress—as opposed to the disorder that is all too prevalent in today’s world.

Most people seem to think of order as a fixed state in contrast to a condition of flux—everything neat, trim, definable, predictable—in a word, everything in its place and a place for everything. As related to the arrangement of things, this is commendable—in our homes and offices, for example. Many arrangements are sloppy, with all in confusion; no one can find anything. Others are models of organization, where things can be found with the eyes shut.

Think of a table setting—the knives, forks, spoons, dishes, napkins neatly in place for all persons. Now think of the goose step—the legs stiff and unbent, raised and lowered in unison by all persons.

But people are not things, and it is error of the first order to wish for fixed arrangements of people: everyone in his place and a place for everyone! Can it be that an accurate model of order as related to daily experiences with things provides a false model when it is a question of orderly human relations? Could it be that some such confusion underlies the current disintegration? The order desirable for things, when applied to persons, means the goose step literally and figuratively, and this is order’s opponent, social disorder!

In the case of the goose step, what is the arrangement? Just this: a commander—“Do as I say, or else!”—and a corps of willing or subdued persons manipulated as automatons. Why do crowds so much admire this performance? Is it not the semblance of order that intrigues them? These same onlookers wouldn’t give a second glance at those soldiers were each free to go his own way. I have no objection to the goose step as entertainment, but is that kind of order appropriate for society?

What does the goose-step type of order presuppose above all else? A Hitler or his insane counterpart: how wondrous things would be were all mankind the likes of me! What else is presupposed? Millions of people who are willing to be manipulated as automatons, who like the notion of such a “shepherd,” and even more millions who can be subdued by dictocratic power.

True, there is no large number of autocrats who would go all the way in imposing the goose-step type of order. However, there are untold millions today—politicians and bureaucrats—each with his own whimsical step which adds up to the same thing. Follow my order—on seat belts, wages, prices, interest rates, education, rationing, hours of labor, what and when to sow and reap, what and with whom exchanges may be made, what shall be used as money, on and on endlessly—do as I say! Anyone with the courage to look can see the goose step in these growing interventions—all contrived in the name of social order.

This is not to deny the role of government in maintaining social order—government limited to inhibiting the destructive actions of men: fraud, violence, stealing, predation, killing, misrepresentation; in a word, keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. Anarchy is no more viable than socialism; to practice either is to assure disorder.

Why is social order so mysterious? It is mysterious because no one can describe it in advance. Opposed to the perfect cadence of the goose step is the blessing that flows from everyone peacefully pursuing his own goals, going his way, that is, every which way, in constant flux, milling around, each person responding to his own ever-changing aspirations, abilities, uniqueness. Instead of our being carbon copies of some know-it-all, we are what we were meant to be: originals! Yet, these very differences appear as intolerable and disorderly to most people as things not in their place. They cannot imagine freedom as a means to social order.

Why can’t we describe several billion originals in action? The reason is that no two among all who live on this earth are remotely identical. Each has gifts, aptitudes, and potentialities which distinguish him from everyone else. Not only is it impossible to describe these originals; there is not one among all of us who can come even close to describing his own undiscovered self. What thought, idea, invention, discovery, insight, intuitive flash will I experience this day or tomorrow or next year?

Bastiat wrote, “When goods do not cross borders, soldiers will.” The sole reason that goods do not pass freely among people of all nations is that political goose steppers have interfered; they have impaired freedom in transactions. In this situation, international relations are governed by politicians from the several nations rather than by traders and their goods. The result? Friction, misunderstanding, ill will, soldiers crossing borders, arousing violent passions and disorder.

To grasp the full significance of Bastiat’s observation, think of borders, not merely as the boundaries between nations or states or counties or towns, but as imaginary lines between you and me. To the extent that we are legally prevented from freely producing and exchanging with each other, to that extent will misunderstanding grow. Why? Simply because each of us is forced to behave as a carbon copy of assorted and countless dictocrats; we are images, not our real selves, no longer originals. Result: disorder!

Truly, social order is mysterious, yet it is possible for us to gain an awareness of its constitution. I concluded my comments on disorder by reference to a situation involving just the two of us. So I shall begin these comments on social order with the simplest form of “society”—you and me. Assume that we are now originals—no one else interfering with our production and exchange of goods and services. Freedom in transactions without let or hindrance! Observe how it works.

I have more corn than I can consume but want cattle. You have more cattle than you can feed so you want corn. I exchange some of my corn for a few of your cattle. Each of us gains. I thank you and you thank me. Why? The comforts of life are increased for both of us. You are a blessing to me and I to you. Good will abounds. There is harmony and order.

Finally, what is society but an enormous multiple of you’s and me’s? Discover what kind of behavior brings order for the two of us, and there is the correct formula for all of us.

Instead of only corn and cattle—the specializations of some—there are as many unique products as there are human beings, times all of the unique skills of each. To suggest that there are a trillion is to indulge in understatement. Who, in all the world, can comprehend, let alone manage, these! Such a thought is absurd.

So let all of us freely produce and exchange with our own countrymen or Frenchmen or Japanese or whom we please; and let us travel where we will. What is obviously appropriate for you and me is equally workable for all the human beings who inhabit this earth. All of us, here or there, near or far, exchanging our wares, are the real ambassadors of good will and social order. This would be a society of mutual benefit; or, we might say: The Thank You Society, under the Golden Rule.

4

PRICELESS—BUT NOT FREE

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

—CALEB C. COLTON

What is it that is priceless but not free? Human liberty! And what is liberty? No restraints against the release of creative energy! Liberty permits everyone to pursue his uniqueness, that is, the open opportunity to grow, evolve, emerge, hatch. If that is not a priceless situation—free to work toward human destiny—pray tell, what is!

Next, why is liberty not free? In the case of early Americans, who were free, the responsibility for one’s choice and action—for his very life—was his own. It was root hog or die. And they rooted. But once people experience the comfort and affluence that are among the blessings of liberty, the link between cause and consequence is not clear. There seems to be more of a margin for error, a reserve against starvation, an escape from self-responsibility, less need for liberty. This however, is a dangerous illusion, for the price of liberty is indeed eternal vigilance. In a condition of affluence, the requirement is to know one’s self or perish. And we are perishing. Why? Self-examination is a price far beyond what most people are willing to pay, or to promise, or even to think about.

Perhaps to know one’s self is not as difficult as first meets the eye. Certainly, we owe it to ourselves to try.

First, let us consider a little understood fact about our advanced industrial society. When each individual is free to pursue his uniqueness, no one produces exclusively for his own consumption; actually, in many instances, he consumes none of that which he produces. Rather, each does his “thing” while millions of others do their unique things, and the result is a miraculous abundance shared by all. For instance, I write and lecture about the freedom philosophy. In exchange for my small offerings others raise my food, build and repair my home, make my clothes, provide me with light and heat, cars and airplanes and so on. Reflect upon how I differ from my great-grandfather who, as an independent Jack-of-all-trades, was more or less self-sufficient. Americans today, myself included, have become dependent on each other—interdependent. A return to self-sufficiency is unthinkable.

Among the blessings of this interchange—interdependence—are comfort and affluence. But this very advanced way of life has a price tag. My ancestor was not obliged to get along with neighbors—he had none. His social problems? Almost nil! You and I? Millions are our neighbors. Social problems we have, indeed! No longer do we live as loners—we are now individualistic and social beings. And unless we learn effectively to be both at once, we perish. This is the dilemma we face.

The blessings of liberty Americans have had the privilege of sampling is something brand new in human experience. It cannot be said to antedate the appearance in 1776 of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and of our own Constitution in 1789. As this new way of life progressed—featured as it is by specialization and division of labor—a new societal problem emerged: interdependence, an intimate interrelatedness that had not before challenged man’s thinking. How to cope with it? What should, in this new situation, be the individual’s attitude toward self and others? Think only of self, or solely of others, or what? These are the questions that have been plaguing us. The new and magnificent edifice tumbles into a shambles unless these matters are rightly resolved; unless we pay the price of coming to know ourselves, we perish.

Two opposing ways—both illogical in my view—have held and continue to hold the intellectual spotlight. One is founded on the notion that man is exclusively a social being, the other that he is only an individualistic being. One is known as altruism, the other as egotism. To pursue either way in a society of interdependent persons is to lose our way.

About a century after the free society began its emergence, the Frenchman, Auguste Comte, thought he had found the answer. Humanity was his god; his religion was that each one serves others: altruism. And it spread. A world of selfless persons, everyone thinking only of others and not at all of self! State socialism appears to be rooted in this concept. What other world could be less attractive—except a world of egotists?

Egotism is “self-conceit.” The self, rather than humanity, is god. There is nothing in the universe over and beyond the egotist’s mind, nor even any superior human being, past or present. The big I-Am does not conceive of himself in any respect as a social being—only individualistic. The foundation of anarchy!

Be it observed that each of us, despite pretensions to the contrary—even altruists and egotists—identifies with self-interest. We differ only in how intelligently we interpret what our self-interest is. Intelligence, in this respect, is the knowing of self. If I know myself not at all, thievery or legal plunder may seem to serve me best. However, if one truly knows the self—well, that’s what I wish to explain.

In today’s world, who are my neighbors? Only those who work, not for, but with me as if it were a pleasure? Only those who are on a first-name basis and live nearby? Actually, my neighbors are all over this world—millions of them, those who produce and exchange with me. Mostly, we have never heard of each other. I mention this fact to emphasize the extent to which we have become social beings, neighbors one and all. To know one’s self requires a recognition of this brand new relationship, which is a product of liberty and the means to our survival.

Now to the final installment. At first blush this may seem somewhat esoteric, but think it through for yourself: What I am has far more to do with what you are than is generally suspected. To know one’s self requires that the individual understand the role he is supposed to play. Each influences the rise or fall of society by what he is, how he acts, yes, even what his feelings are toward the millions on whom he is dependent. This is the way of life; otherwise, liberty wanes and we perish.

In this context, how should the key ingredient to knowing one’s self be phrased? Reverence for life, all life, is my answer. While this trait is rare, it is possible for anyone to acquire.

Begin at the beginning with plant life. There is scientific evidence that plants fare far better in homes where they are loved than in homes where they are regarded indifferently. What goes on here? I suspect it is a form of radiation, a feeling that is of the heart, as we say; it is a quality that cannot be feigned. Plants are different by reason of what persons are.

Move on to bird life. A wild blue jay perches on the finger of my friend. Some people have a strange rapport with birds. While not common, numerous persons—more women than men—have achieved this form of radiation. Birds are different by reason of what persons are.

Move up the scale of life another step. Remember the motion picture, “Born Free,” the true story of a lioness. What a different lioness by reason of that lady’s reverence for life!

I have two shelties, remarkable for their affection. Why? Because that is what I accord them. Imagine how different they would be were I indifferent toward them. What I am has a great deal to do with what they are. My reverence for them is real, not feigned. Dogs, like other forms of life, can tell.

When it comes to the human level, reverence takes on another dimension: livelihood, the sustenance of life. In a word, we must revere or respect both life and livelihood. To impair livelihood, to deny ownership, is to take life, and it matters not whether this is done face-to-face or by legal plunder.

To repeat: What I am has far more to do with what you are than is generally suspected. If I plunder others, their plundering tendencies are increased—tit for tat, an eye for an eye! If, on the other hand, I show a genuine reverence for life and livelihood, others will be inclined to accord the same, not only to me, but to one another as well.

As a famous physicist put it, every heartbeat is felt throughout the universe. Similarly, every thought of yours or mine, every act, all feelings—be they good or bad—are a form of radiation and this penetrates into the consciousness and behavior of our neighbors, the millions on whom you and I are dependent.

At the human level, the sole sources of good or evil are the you’s and I’s. If evil prevails, liberty wanes and we perish. But if each of us becomes an exemplar of moral and ethical principles, then liberty prevails and we prosper.

Not such an exorbitant price, after all, is it!

5

STRIVE FOR THE SIMPLE LIFE

I love a life whose plot is simple.

—THOREAU

I, too, love a life whose plot is simple. However, my idea as to what’s simple differs from that of the great naturalist and essayist, Henry David Thoreau. Doubtless, he had in mind the quietude of Walden Pond and its seclusion from society. And this is what nearly everyone regards as the simple life.

My great grandfather, born during the founding of America, was the first settler in Shiawassee County, Michigan. There was no “society” to interfere with his comings and goings—the nearest village being miles away—and except for the prying eyes of foraging Indians he and his family hacked it out alone. According to the popular definition, his life was indeed simple, far more so than Thoreau’s.

What, really, is the simple life? Unless we settle that question, we will be plagued by a troublesome, socialistic cliche: “The more complex the society, the more government control we need.” The result, eventually, will be out-and-out dictatorship as intricacies in society are used as an excuse for total government. Is it not true that most people in today’s world think of my great grandfather’s life as simple and of mine as complex? Actually, it is the other way around. You and I really live the simple life, and this is the point I wish to clarify.

If, as I believe, man’s purpose is to grow, evolve, emerge along the lines of his uniqueness, it follows that he must emerge from that poverty which attends those who are forced to become a Jack-of-all-trades. My great grandfather’s unique talent might have been musical composition, or he might have become a distinguished naturalist and essayist, as did Thoreau—for all I know, or for all he knew! He, so preoccupied in doing nearly everything for himself, never had a chance to discover his uniqueness; he was imprisoned by the lack of opportunities to discover himself.

I reflected on the differences between my great grandfather’s and my way of life on a recent flight from New York to Los Angeles. Think how complex it would have been for him to get from Shiawassee County to such a destination! Enormous preparations, hardships, and several months of dangerous travel! Me? Perfectly simple! All I did was to board a plane, debarking five hours later.

His wife had to weave and sew the clothes they wore—so complex a series of operations that only a very few in America today have any idea of how this is done. My case? My suit I had on was tailored in Hong Kong—12,000 miles away—the shirt in Madrid, the shoes in Rome. Complex? Indeed not; so simple that all I did was to sign three checks.

Came the luncheon at an altitude of 39,000 feet. Among the delectable dishes was fresh salmon from the Pacific Northwest and broiled in the plane’s kitchen. My part in this wonderful fare? As simple as waving a friendly greeting to a passing stranger! As to my ancestor, the complexities would have been too profound and numerous for him even to imagine. Salmon still fresh after 3,000 miles in transit! A jet plane never entered his head, or that broiler, or the coffee brewed from beans from another part of the world. My life is far more simple, much less complex, than his.

How explain this evolution toward civilization—from the complex to the simple life? How does one accomplish it? Instead of continuing as a recluse, leading a solitary, secluded existence, running away from others, man becomes civilized by getting into society, that is, by letting others with their unique talents come to one’s aid. Let them do their countless things, which permits me to do my “thing.” We need only remember that man is at once an individualistic and a social being, the latter no more warranting oversight than the former. Actually, the individualistic side of any person can never be fully realized except as the social side is understood, embraced, and skillfully exercised. Think of the things—literally millions of them—which are beyond your or my competence but by which you and I prosper.

Next, how shall this way of life in its ideal form be defined? I hesitate to use one apt expression, “social cooperation,” for the reason that most statists, be they Russians or Americans, apply it to their coercive devices. Their command to “cooperate by doing as I say” is a contradiction in terms. Cooperate means “to act or work together with another or others for a common purpose.” The decrees and edicts of authoritarians reflect strictly their own, not common, purposes. In any common cause, the working together has to be private, personal, voluntary. In a word, let each do whatever he pleases so long as it is peaceful. What, then, do we have in common? Each pursuing his uniqueness!

That would be my ideal of freedom: No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. More precisely, I refer to the free market, private ownership, limited government philosophy with its moral and spiritual antecedents. To me, this is but an ancient, moral axiom—the Golden Rule—expressed in politico-economic terms. You and I can best help each other by tending to our own knitting, pursuing our own uniqueness, respecting the rights of each to the fruits of his own labor, and freely exchanging when and if mutually advantageous—not an iota of coercion! Does this not clarify what we mean when referring to the freedom philosophy!

We have had in the past few decades a remarkable demonstration of the simple life. Yet, few have taken any note of this miracle of simplification—which brings the wealth of the world to our doorstep; they are blind to the wonders they have been experiencing. This makes all the more extraordinary Lord Tennyson’s prophetic vision of more than a century ago:

For I dipt into the future, far as

human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world and all

the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce,

argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping

down with costly bales.

So let us understand and enjoy the simple life—its exclusively voluntary nature, and the unimaginable wisdom which attends the unfettered release of creative energy. Otherwise, if we remain unaware of its blessings, our blindness threatens its termination and promises instead a descent into the complex life of the primitive. For it is an observed fact that the complexities are alarmingly on the increase.

In every instance, the complexities are composed of coercive intrusions by dictocrats in and out of public office. The excuse, of course, is that the intricacies are now too enormous to operate without dictocratic management; these people actually believe that they possess the capabilities needed to make things function. Really, the intricacies are no more numerous than before; all that has happened is a fantastic and wonderful expansion in specialization—division of labor—that is, each to his own uniqueness. This, in turn, has made all of us interdependent. We have here a flowering of the simple life, the continuation of which requires a moral conduct, namely, an observation and practice of the Golden Rule—the way it should be!

Recall that no one knows how to make an ordinary wooden pencil let alone an automobile or a jet plane. But, then, no one understands a cell, a molecule, an atom. You name it! Yet, the dictocrats do not know that they know not. In their behavior they attempt to go beyond their finite minds, which is to say that they are out of their minds, regardless of how brilliant they may appear. It is this coercive intrusion, this unreasonable force, that threatens man’s survival.

The way to strive for the simple life is to gain an awareness that the wisdom implicit in its observation is trillions of times greater than exists in you or me or any other discrete individual. Every discovery, invention, insight, intuitive thought, think-of-that since the dawn of human consciousness—the overall luminosity—flows to your and my benefit if we can avoid its nemesis: the complexities of coercive intrusions.

Why should we lose that highest form of moral and economic life—each to his own uniqueness—which we have had the privilege of sampling! Truly, it is a life whose plot is simple.

6

THE FEAR OF FAILURE AND SUCCESS

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

—CHRISTIAN NESTELL BOVEE

It is not fear or trepidation that keeps one from jumping out of an airplane without a parachute; it is, instead, an understanding of the law of gravitation. Fear—in the sense of being frightened of death or life—is a deadening emotion. True, fear of danger may help us avoid a senseless risk, but it is not fear that guides us aright; rather, the guide is a knowledge of that which advances or retards any worthy activity. Yet, fear is widespread and it hampers human progress in many areas, including business.

Business is a profit and loss affair, and—as it has been said—

it is just as necessary to the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries be allowed to die as that growing industries be allowed to grow.[1]

There are countless business starts in the U.S.A. annually, and a substantial percentage of these turn out to be failures within two or three years. Suppose these businessmen were not allowed to fail, that government would “bail them out” with money taken coercively from all consumers. Within one’s lifetime our country would be burdened with tens of thousands of “businesses” producing goods and/or services consumers would not willingly purchase; meanwhile, tax-burdened consumers would have been deprived of the means to purchase what they really want. I say, let business failures die, not only in the interest of consumers—all of us—but as a favor to those who have failed.

On this latter point I speak with experience. Back in 1911 the village blacksmith made a popcorn and hamburger wagon for another youngster and me—$12.00. We tried and failed! I am happy now that we did, for that failure put me on the long, long trail of discovering myself. Following World War I, I started a wholesale produce business in Ann Arbor—on a shoestring. After six years of working a 100-hour week, I failed. Back on that long, long trail again. I do not advocate failure as a deliberate business policy. But I am convinced that we may learn from those failures how better to use our faculties and resources.

Serving consumers is a risky business, for they couldn’t care less whether any one business venture succeeds or fails. A business begins with what appears to be an opportunity to serve, a hope that consumers will want the product or service enough to return costs plus a profit. But the result may be a failure. Starting a business is a calculated risk, taken in faith rather than in fear. Fear merely retards the chances taken, including the chances of success.

Chances of success? I repeat, it is not fear that guides us aright; fear retards. And we are now the victims of a widespread, debilitating fear. It is the fear—mounting to a phobia—that the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life cannot be trusted to serve our needs and aspirations. We little understand or appreciate the wonders wrought when men are free to act creatively as they choose, in spite of countless daily demonstrations going on before our very eyes. The consequence of such blindness and fear is that statism—coercive collectivism—reaches into ever more areas of business life.

What! Leave mail delivery or education to the free and unfettered market? Leave the determination of wages, hours of labor, or the pricing of goods and services to the competitive process? Might as well allow free entry in the fields of power and light, airlines, railroads, TV, banking! So runs the thoughtless chorus of those who lack knowledge of the miraculous market; in the absence of a belief in its efficacy, the market is bound to be feared. We are afraid to compete.

Fear retards a dynamic economy in more serious ways as well. Reflect on the numerous exclusive franchises to serve given markets—governmental grants allowing no free entry—such as railroads, airlines, power and light, radio and TV channels, and so on. The government which grants these privileges will, as a matter of course, coercively govern that which it bestows. In a word, the free market is displaced by an enormous bureaucracy: the ICC, FTC, FDA, and countless others. In the place of private initiative is political expediency; competing to serve customers gives way to dictatorial edicts; instead of taking entrepreneurial risks, we place our bets on bureaucratic management and control.

When exclusive franchises are bestowed—the purpose being to deny free entry—consumers become dependent on these government-backed monopolies. The fear that these giants might fail is enormous. No power and light, no railroads, no airlines is a frightening prospect. They must not be allowed to die! How to cope with this danger? Let these privately financed businesses give way to government ownership!

Have a look at the railroad situation. Government control (control is really ownership) has increased year by year. Ability to compete? Why, if a railroad wishes to cut a rate to meet some other form of transport, it takes two or three years of bureaucratic red tape to get approval. Too late! The railroads are failing, and unless there is a reversal of policy, the railroads in America will soon be fully nationalized, as in other countries. And, as in other countries, all citizens, railroad customers or not, will be heavily taxed to defray the fantastic deficits, an inevitable result of government managed businesses.

As this is penned, one of the world’s largest power and light companies is petitioning government to bail it out of financial difficulties by purchasing two of its plants—$500 million worth! Project this trend: eventually all power and light nationalized as in other countries!

A major airline is suffering large losses. What to do? Appeal to the Federal government for a subsidy that will compensate for losses! The end result must be an Air America, government owned and operated as is Aeroflot, Air France, Air India, BEA, and so on.

Is it not easy to see how wrong policy—no free entry and thus no competition—leads ever closer to the total state, as in Russia? Wrong policy, once approved and established, induces a near-overwhelming fear and that fear leads to out-and-out communism: the state ownership and control of the means of production.

No risk in the societal realm is more senseless than to stake one’s life on the authoritarian state. Yet, few seem to shudder at such a prospect. Most citizens show no fear as they gradually plod toward enslavement—no disgust once enslaved. To them, the what-is and the what-ought-to-be are one and the same. Most Russian citizens are as content with their unrecognized plight as most Americans are with ours—and for the same reason: failure to see that there is an alternative.

The alternative? It is this: the free market featured by free entry, open competition, and prices fluctuating in response to supply and demand. In other words, a situation in which any failing business, small or large, is allowed to die, and any successful business, regardless of size, is allowed to grow. Flexibility—the capacity quickly to cope with ever-changing economic circumstances! Not a single dictocratic formula—by governments, labor unions, or whatever—standing against the release of creative human energy. Millions of sources of initiative and creativity replacing know-it-all edicts! Complete freedom in all honest transactions! This is the alternative to all-out statism; there is no other.

Talk about fear! Most people, in and out of government, are scared to death of this alternative. What they fear is the unknown; they are scared of what they imagine things would be like. They see hobgoblins in the form of large, successful businesses that grow ever bigger. In their dread, they imagine one business making all automobiles or all airplanes or producing all power and light. They fantasize such monopolies as being in complete command of the market. What could be worse than this chimera? They fear that one supplier might capture the entire market—and they fear that the government wouldn’t take over such a monopolistic structure.

The facts? So long as there is free entry, any successful business, even if it has a particular market all to itself, must serve consumers efficiently if it is to survive. Any such enterprise must operate as if a superior competitor lies in wait. For that would surely be the case at the least lapse of performance and efficiency.

Monopoly? It need not be feared unless backed by coercion. Name an instance! For example, in the 1920’s it was a common notion that the Ford Motor Company was so powerful that no other could ever challenge its position. Since the turn of the century there have been about one thousand starts in the auto industry. The failures were allowed to die; the successful ones were allowed to grow. Is there a land of people in all the world better served with autos than Americans?

So let us free ourselves of these unreasonable fears. It is only knowledge that guides us aright. In the politico-economic realm, it is a knowledge of how the free market works its wonders to the benefit of all. We need not fear to put our trust in the market.

[1] See Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, p. 72, paperback edition.

7

CONTROLS TELL LIES!

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath, a goodly apple rotten at the core.

—SHAKESPEARE

This is not to question self-control or such governmental control as the codification and restraint of destructive actions; these controls are all to the good. The kind I wish to expose are the dictocratic controls over the creative actions; these tell lies—boldfaced and flagrant lies!

My claim: A controlled payment for a wage exacted by labor unions or government, or a controlled rate for rent, interest, or goods and services of any kind, is not a price; it is a dictatorial fiction—an economic falsehood. Thus, such a term as “price control” is a contradiction in terms; it makes no more sense than “freedom of the press control.”

Support for this claim requires no more than casual probing. What is price? The dictionary defines price in this context as “value, worth,” and I shall abide by this definition. Now, suppose I coerce you into paying me $100 per hour for my services or coercively forbid anyone to pay more than five cents for your hamburgers. Is it not plain that these figures have nothing whatsoever to do with the value or worth of my services or your hamburgers? That they are not prices but fictions? That they are lies when represented as prices? How can $100 per hour be said to be the “price” of one’s services or five cents the “price” of a hamburger when no voluntary exchanges take place at those rates?

Value—price—can be determined in one way and one way only: by the free and unfettered market. In other words, value results from a subjective determination based on individual preferences. Reduced to the simplest terms, a price is what you or others will freely and willingly exchange for my services or the amount that others will freely and willingly exchange for your hamburgers. Whatever that turns out to be is value, worth. This figure represents whatever other people deem our offerings are worth to them. If we willingly swap your hamburger for my quarter, in this instance, the price of the hamburger is a quarter and the price of the quarter is a hamburger. I value the hamburger more than the quarter and you value the quarter more than the hamburger. Both of us gain in our respective judgments or there would have been no exchange, that is, assuming a free and unfettered market.

The monetary figure, whatever the amount, when determined in the above manner, is price—all misuse of words to the contrary notwithstanding.

How can the political fiction of “price control,” now on the rampage, be exposed or seen through? Simple! First, merely recognize that price is value in terms of money and, second, reflect on the limitless, ever-changing, personal estimations of value by you and everyone else. Thus, price must fluctuate in accord with the ever-changing value judgments it represents. Price is wedded to value; the two are inseparable for price monetarily mirrors value.

Let us reflect on the fantastic, day-to-day, up-and-down, every-which-way variations in value judgments and then we can see what can be expected by way of price fluctuations—honest representations of changing values. For instance, what value would the Metropolitan Opera in its heyday have put on my services as a singer? Zero value and zero price! On Robert Merrill’s service? Very high value and very high price!

The value and price of a hamburger? Were I starving on a life raft, a hamburger would be valued as I value my life, and my offering price the whole of my possessions. Not so, had I just overstuffed at a banquet; a hamburger than would be worthless to me.

What you and I value today may well be valueless to us tomorrow. Auto No. 1 has a high value for which we will pay a high price. Auto No. 10 would have a lesser value to most of us and the price we would offer would be correspondingly less.

So-called price control divorces value and price. The dictocratic monetary figure is unrelated to value, worth. It is a falsehood, as absurd as it can be. What should we call this fiction? It has only one correct name: people control!

8

SHORTAGES ARE HUMAN BLUNDERS

Another mistake, not to call it blunder.

—DANIEL DEFOE

This thesis has nothing to do with such natural shortages as rain on the Sahara, arable soil in the Arctic, or salmon in Great Salt Lake; the characteristic features of Nature are here omitted. These comments have to do solely with what I and many others refer to as shortages in the politico-economic realm—the results of human action.

My dictionary defines shortage as “a deficiency in the quantity or amount needed.” (Italics mine) This definition might have been written before the discovery of the subjective theory of value in 1870; but more likely the author is some contemporary who fails to grasp this simple economic truth: The value of any good or service is whatever others will offer in willing exchange.

True, economics is the study of how to overcome scarcity; there is never enough of everything for everybody. Yet, not enough of this or that for all persons is rarely referred to as a shortage; at least, in my opinion, it should not be. I want to explain why this term should be reserved for the consequences of human blunders. But first we must try to understand need as it relates to economic reality.

The goods or services needed relate to where and what and when and why and how and who we are. My father, for instance, felt no more need for a TV than did Socrates. Galileo felt no more need for an airplane than Confucius felt the need for a telescope, first developed by Galileo nineteen centuries later. I feel no more need for a good or service that does not yet exist—beyond my ken—than do you.

Needs are responses to feelings or hankerings which, in turn, are set in motion by experiences and situations which vary from one extreme to the other. A millionaire alcoholic in desperation would doubtless pay a thousand dollars for one bottle of booze. That’s how high he might value his need. Didn’t someone pay $250,000 for one of Hitler’s cars? How much would I pay for it? I wouldn’t take it as a gift! Imagine the value that some individuals with a collector’s bent would put on a Dead Sea scroll—millions of dollars. Why all of this? It is a feeling of need which ranges all the way from casual preferences to passionate cravings. Need and value are economic twins—they correlate in the mind of the individual.

Now observe this fact: We never use the term “shortage” to explain the scarcity of Hitler’s cars or of the Dead Sea scrolls, and rarely of any other good or service beyond our means. Should we desire something beyond our reach, we simply say to ourselves, “That price is too high.”

To the extent that the market is free, to that extent are we guided by our feeling or need relative to price. Is this not as it should be? This leaves each individual free to exercise his preferences, that is, to satisfy his needs or subjective judgments. If someone prefers to live in an attic rather than in a comfortable home in order that he may acquire rare books, I say, let him live that way. Anything that’s peaceful! However, in the practice of this tolerant way of life—the freedom philosophy—be it noted that we rarely apply the term “shortage” to either comfortable homes or rare books. If we do, we shouldn’t!

The free and unfettered market is a computer. Fed into it daily are literally trillions of facts from all over the world: a drought here, a blight or hurricane there, fantastic shifts in tastes, value judgments, likes and dislikes, on and on. What answer does the computer give? A price! If the price be attractively high to producers they will turn their talents in that direction; if low, they will concentrate on something else. Thus, the free market is always moving toward an equilibrium of supply and demand. One cannot name a good or service left to the free market—void of coercive interferences—that is referred to as either shortage or surplus.

Of course the market as it presently exists is far from free. False data—human blunders—are fed into it resulting in false prices and erroneous signals to producers and consumers which, in turn, account for all shortages and surpluses. The computer experts have a term for this blundering: GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out.[1]

Let me now demonstrate how human blunders bring about a shortage. Make a reasonable assumption: there are ten million women who would if they could possess a one-carat diamond ring. The price today is $2,500. The ladies do not think of such rings as being in short supply for they are seen on display in many jewelry stores throughout the country. Would-be consumers only feel they cannot afford such a luxury. Now, assume that I am government’s price control czar. Blunder number one! Next, assume that I set a ceiling price on one-carat diamond rings at $50. Blunder number two! Immediately, following these two blunders, there will be a tremendous shortage of such rings. Why? Because there are millions of women who want such a ring and who have $50. Shortages in the economic realm have their origin in such human blunders!

Surpluses are also the result of similar human blunders. The only difference is a ceiling over prices rather than a floor under them. In the latter—wheat, for example—growers produce more as consumers buy less. What to do? How cover up this blunder? Give it to the Russians!

As in the case of the diamond rings, a ceiling over the price of gasoline results in producers letting up and consumers lining up. Such blunders explain the “energy crisis”!

Finally, how are we to account for these blunders? How come the czars and their attempts at economic legerdemain? The answer: the millions of citizens who blunder by either condoning or supporting coercive intrusions into the market. The blunders from which we suffer originate with a blundering citizenry, the millions who fail to grasp the simplest and most important economic fact: the value of any good or service is whatever others will offer in willing exchange.

They do not even try to see that the control we think to exercise over prices actually regulates human action; it is the forcible closure of the market place to producers or to consumers, or to both, thus denying peaceful persons the opportunity to specialize and to trade.

And reflect on the naivete of believing that there is a person, now or ever, who has the competency to manipulate to our advantage the literally trillions of variations in human needs. Why, there is not a single mortal being who knows how to run his own life perfectly, let alone yours or mine. And a nation’s population? So absurd it staggers even moderate common sense.

The cure? Mind one’s own business. Let everyone else mind his own. Stop seeking or granting special privilege or protection or subsidy or power over other peaceful persons. A fair field, and no favors. Compete openly and freely. Behave responsibly. Give freedom a chance to work its miracles.

[1] See “The Greatest Computer on Earth” in my Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964) pp. 157–170.

9

POLITICAL HOCUS-POCUS

You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.

—LINCOLN

Even those who are not fooled by the political trickery of our time nonetheless find themselves victims of it.

It is not enough to see through this legerdemain; each seer bears a responsibility to help others understand what is wrong, why it is false. Of course, the reason for the current deception-on-the-rampage is that those who are fooled most of the time like it that way. They prefer to believe that “the great white father” will relieve them from thinking and self-responsibility. This nonsense reminds me of the character in the motion picture, Caesar and Cleopatra, who knelt at the feet of Caesar exclaiming, “Oh, Caesar, I never knew freedom until I became your slave.” Nearer the truth would have been this: “Oh, Caesar, I shall never live in a free country until I find a way to expose your hocus-pocus.” Finding that way is my problem.

When authoritarianism in its numerous forms was thought to be appropriate, that is, before the free society was discovered as the enlightened way of life, deception was widely approved as a moral device. The Divine right of kings is an example as is Plato’s philosopher-king idea or Machiavelli’s advice to the Prince on craftiness and duplicity. And Ratner, Spinoza’s biographer, had this to say about one of the great philosophers of all time:

Far from it being necessary to tell the masses only the truth, Spinoza believed, as did Plato before him, that it may even be necessary in order to rule the masses successfully in the ways of wisdom and virtue to deceive them to a greater or lesser extent. Such deception is, as a political expediency, morally justified, for the rulers would be lying in the interests of virtue and truth.

“Lying in the interest of truth”—a spoof if I ever heard one—should have been phrased, “Lying in the interest of a ruler’s egotistical assumption that he knows the truth” and, thus, is qualified to run our lives. If this assumption can be clearly debunked, the political hocus-pocus in the U.S.A. today would be stripped of its pretensions—stark naked for all to behold.

As a starter, assume that I am wiser than any ruler, any dictocrat, ever thought himself to be—a thousand times wiser than I know myself to be. Next, assume that you and I are intimately acquainted—buddies, shall we say. How competent, under such circumstances, would you think I am to rule your life—to dictate what you should think, believe, make, buy, sell, what your aspirations should be; in a word, how you should live this earthly life? Should you accept me as such a god, then you are one who, as Lincoln proclaimed, can be fooled all the time. My condolences!

Assuming that you are aware of my inability to run your life beneficially—regardless of our intimacy and my wisdom—let us have a look at our nation’s political rulers. The number grows apace! Those elected or appointed to governmental offices—federal, state, and local, excluding the military—must, by now, total approximately 16,000,000.[1] Bear in mind, further, that governments today are given more to controlling the citizenry than to protecting life and livelihood.

Why this departure from America’s original design of protecting life and livelihood, invoking a common justice—keeping the peace? No one knows all the reasons. But one is obvious: intimacy has all but disappeared. Why, I do not even know the Mayor of my village, nor does he know me. The same lack of intimacy applies to the countless thousands in New York State, and to the 3,000,000 politicians and bureaucrats in the Federal establishment.

Why so much emphasis on intimacy? Just this: the less those vested with coercive powers know of our existence, the more they coercively manage our lives. Hardly a one of them would exert such hocus-pocus on a man-to-man basis. Face-to-face such folly would be apparent even to Caesar. It is when we become unknowns that they “know” how to run our lives. This thought, seriously considered, begins to reveal the chicanery that plagues us.

Does this chicanery reach its apogee at the Federal level? It would seem so when we reflect on the origin of wage, price, production, and exchange controls; the manipulation of our money; what portion of our own labor is ours; medicare and social security—controls by the thousands! Yet, at the state and local levels we observe government education, zoning and land use, garbage disposal, recreation pools and parks, licensing of businesses and professions, government busing—you name it! In principle, there is no difference between the coercion which stems from my village and that which arises in the national capital.

What all of this boils down to is that these politicians and bureaucrats—Federal, state, and local—have no more competence to run your life or mine than I have to run yours. The power they exercise affords them no better idea of our millions of diverse needs, aspirations, ideas, ideals, talents, abilities than was known by cavemen eons ago. To these rulers—and it cannot be otherwise once this false role is assumed—you are nothing more than a manipulable statistic. And, in their eyes, that’s all you are—just a number!

If you and I are just numbers, then what shall we say of the Mayors, Governors, the President of the United States, or any one of the 16,000,000 in the more than 100,000 governments in our country? Yet, those who brazenly treat other human beings as numbers seldom so berate themselves. Why this aberration? As Lord Acton phrased it, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

The mere thought that I can run your life better than you can is corrupting. By so thinking, I set myself apart, that is, I assume the role of a god and relegate you to the status of a number—the big I-Am, the nonhuman you. Again, a spoof!

Doubtless there are many ways by which to expose this political hocus-pocus. All of us should have a fling at it. The late Sumner H. Slichter, Harvard economist, brought the exposure into focus May 17, 1947:

Our economy has the tremendous advantage of possessing three and a half million business enterprises outside of agriculture and about six million business enterprises in agriculture. This means that the American economy has nearly ten million places where innovations may be authorized. Have you ever thought of that? Ten million places where experiments may be tried, where no further authority is needed to authorize an experiment. Our economy operates under about ten million separate private business budgets. No regimented economy can hope to compete in dynamic drive with an economy which possesses nearly ten million independent centers of initiative.

Slichter’s point, enlightening as it is, only points in the right direction. The real exposure, at least as it occurs to me, is stronger by many, many times.

You Are Extraordinary is the title the eminent biochemist, Dr. Roger Williams, gave one of his books. The “you” to whom he refers is each of us, in or out of public office. Why is each individual extraordinary? No two persons are alike as to talents, abilities, ambitions, needs, aspirations, or in any other way. Dissimilarity—variation—may well be the only characteristic all of us have in common.

Let us begin with the 16,000,000 public officials. Write the name of each on separate pieces of paper; toss them into a stiff wind, and pick out one at random. It turns out to be Joe Doakes. Joe, if carefully scrutinized, will be found to have several unique talents of one sort or another. He may excel at mental arithmetic, as an engineer, a piccolo player, golfer, rhymer of words, grower of posies, cook, cabinet maker, or whatever. No other person on earth possesses talents identical to his. Next, it is safe to guess that each of these public officials is unique in at least ten ways. So, to get an idea of just how many creative and unique talents exist among this part of the population—the “ins”—simply multiply 16,000,000 times 10: 160,000,000!

Be it noted that I am conceding a fantastic creativity to our public officials—and for good reasons. First, this is a truth, though little recognized. Second, hardly a one of them will reject this accolade. Agreement! Third, once this point is accepted by them, they ought to see the logic of making a similar concession to the more than 100,000,000 adults not in public office. Multiply the “outs”—the you’s and me’s—by 10 and the answer is one billion unique, creative talents.

Now to my point: Joe Doakes, be he Mayor, Governor, President, or whoever, limited as he is in his own perceptions—no more omniscient than are the rest of us—is utterly incapable of controlling beneficially 1,000,000,000 creative talents. Why? Because he has relatively few talents of his own. My attempting to dictate what a Thomas Alva Edison should invent would be far less absurd.

Were I to accept such power over an Edison—or over you—that very acceptance would corrupt me to the point of dictatorial behavior. I would lose all sight of my limitations, my lack of competence or judgment on many matters; I would become a party to the hocus-pocus which so disastrously plagues the U.S.A. today.

Little man, the creative potential of the universe flows through you. It is within your power to either clog the conduits or increase your capacity. Growth and enlargement of self is the aim, for we have been given creativity as a goal, a talent to bolster and to bring to bloom, not to thwart. Partake in the political apparatus only to restrain and inhibit interferences with creativity. Encourage this God-given potentiality to flower as far as is humanly possible in each and every one of us.

[1] According to the 1973 Statistical Abstract of the United States, citing 1972 figures, the total was 13,500,000. The growth has been substantial during the past two years.

10

WIZARDRY

The wily wizard must be caught.

—DRYDEN

Who is the “wily wizard” that must be caught? His name is legion, and millions are under his charm. He is, as the dictionary puts it, “clever . . . but understood as wise.” It’s not only the millions who mistake the wizard’s cleverness for wisdom; he believes himself to be wise! Who is he? Unfortunately, there are countless thousands of these wily wizards—charming us into socialism.

First, let us clearly identify this socialism or communism or fascism—call authoritarianism what you will:

Socialism is the state ownership or control of the means of production (the planned economy) and/or the state ownership or control of the results of production (the welfare state).

Bear in mind that ownership and control amount to the same thing. One really owns whatever he controls, and he controls what he owns. The things a person does not control are not his own!

So, who are the wizards? Who dreams up and imposes wage, price, production, and exchange controls, sets the hours and terms of labor, introduces social security, medicare, food stamps, and countless other phases of the planned economy and the welfare state?

At this point let me challenge a widely held notion. Our plunge into socialism is not because of a conspiracy on the part of Russian communists! Those folks on the other side of the Iron Curtain have very little to do with our plight. The real motivators of socialism in America are the wily wizards in our own population. The first question is: How can they be identified? And, next, how can they be caught? These are the questions I shall attempt to answer.

What is the characteristic that earmarks an individual as a wily wizard? It is mankind’s most destructive affliction: the little-god syndrome, the utterly nonsensical notion that some philosopher king could, if given the coercive power to do so, run your life and mine better than we can. Unaware of how low he is on the scale of infinite intelligence, he would dictate even our aspirations. He would direct what we think, drink, eat, where we should work and for how much, what and with whom we must exchange, the purposes for which the fruits of our labor are to be spent, what we may or may not buy; in a word, we are to be carbon copies or duplicates of a self-styled god. He and his tribe are the real authors of socialism in America!

It is easily demonstrable that no single person on earth knows how to make a simple wooden lead pencil. How preposterous for any person to believe he can make another individual in his image, let alone 220 million human beings!

Those who have not reflected on this matter are likely to think that no such wily wizards exist, that my contentions are far-fetched. Well, they are not. The wily wizards range from so-called economists and political scientists to political office-holders. They are to be found among educators, clergy, labor officials, and businessmen. And, unless we have stayed away from the polls, the chances are that all of us have voted for many office seekers who are afflicted with wizardry, more or less.

Example: We do not know what is good for us, but the wizard does. For instance, should we drive our old car rather than buy a new one? How does the wizard propose to decide for us? Place a heavy tax on new cars, thus reducing the demand, the enlarged tax making it possible for the government to do more and more things for us that we are unable to do for ourselves. Freedom of choice would be denied to everyone except the wizard.

Is this a conjured-up example? No, it is real, just one of thousands of schemes to run our lives. While all are of the same coercive pattern, no two are any more identical than are the ideas and preferences of any of the rest of us. This example, however, serves to expose the fallacy of all such coercive schemes.

Let us assume that all of the wily wizards had had their varying dictatorial ways, say since 1865. There would be no telephones or power and light or dishwashers or tissue papers or airplanes or thousands of other conveniences. Indeed, there would be no automobiles for them to regulate or control or tax. Why this claim?

Coercion is not a creative force. No idea, discovery, invention, insight, intuitive flash ever issued from an edict, however well-intended. Creativity is exclusively the outpouring of human energy not in bondage, of men when free to think, to dream, to imagine, to explore the limitless not-yet. Coercion can only inhibit and penalize—nothing more! Testimony? The American experience which witnessed the greatest outburst of creative energy in all history. Why? Human freedom in greater measure than ever before!

What would the wily wizard think were I to turn the tables, that is, accept his “reasoning” and impose it on him?

To repeat, he insists that our priorities are distorted and that, among other things, we should drive old rather than new automobiles, that he knows better than we what our goals and priorities should be. He does not like our penchant for new cars. To achieve his aim, he would tax new cars off the market. Further, the increased revenue would permit government to do for us what we are “unable” to do for ourselves.

Very well! Suppose I do not favor the wily wizard. To get my way, I shall use his method: tax his livelihood to the point of starvation. Life is impossible without livelihood. I would be rid of him as he would be rid of new cars. I’ll wager he wouldn’t buy his own wizardry when turned on him any more than I buy his when turned on me. What would I have government do with the increased revenue? Let it do for him that which he, starved to death, would be unable to do for himself! What could government do to better his plight in his situation? No more than it can do for me in my situation!

I agree with Dryden—the wily wizard must be caught. But how? Would I really try to get rid of him as he would rid us of new cars? Of course not; no freedom devotee would ever resort to any such primitive means of attaining his ends. As Ortega phrases it, “Lucifer is the patron saint of mere negativistic revolt . . . even though we freely admit that most of the things revolted against deserve to be buried away.”

How then should we go about resolving our conflicting and varying value judgments, admittedly at sixes and sevens? No two of us have precisely the same ideas of what ought and ought not to be; indeed, yours and mine are in constant flux; no one except a mummy ever stays put. My answer: dialogue, free and open discussion, you airing your thoughts, I mine. This is the way to emerge in awareness, to gain enlightenment, to discover truth—now and then a glimmer from you, or perhaps from me. It is this freedom in discourse that assures ascendancy!

There are two appropriate ways open to freedom devotees—ways that go hand-in-hand. The first is to think through and explain with all the clarity one can command the fallacy of every totalitarian notion that rears its ugly head, those notions put forth by the wily wizards. I have yet to hear or read one of these notions that cannot be laid bare. Does this mean that you and I must go it alone? No, we can and should help each other in this respect.[1]

The second way presents the real challenge, namely, making the case for the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life, along with its moral and spiritual antecedents, far and away better than anyone has yet done. My confession and contention: No one of us, here or elsewhere, past or present, has more than scratched the surface in making the case for freedom. To set the stage for my concluding point, here are a few thoughts by the eminent French philosopher, Alexis de Tocqueville:

The soil is productive less by reason of its natural fertility than because the people tilling it are free. . . . Some nations have freedom in the blood. . . . Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) defies analysis. For it is something one must feel and logic has no part in it.[2]

Why did Tocqueville confess that freedom is sustained only by a feeling or love, and that logic has no part in it? Simply this: He, as others of us, failed to make a breakthrough. The generally unrecognized fact? Freedom can be supported by logic just as authoritarianism can be dethroned by logic. Nor will freedom ever reign for long in the absence of logical exposition. Mere feelings are fickle products of the emotions, and have no stability. Feelings are subject no less to inanities heard on every hand than to rare wisdom. Feelings come and go with the winds that blow.

The challenge? It is for a few—assured if many try—to achieve a logical explanation of freedom and its wondrous powers for what is good, right, creative—difficult and seemingly impossible as it is. As I see it, such an attainment is a necessary step in the Cosmic Plan; it is our privileged role in the evolution of man, in the emergence of self. The more we emerge or evolve, the greater will be the intellectual demands upon us. This is as it should be. And look upon this challenge not as a troublesome chore but rather as a blessed opportunity, a phase of creation.

To cite Ortega again: “The only true revolt is creation—the revolt against nothingness.” By revolting against nothingness we attain creativity and the wily wizards are caught; their ways become naught!

[1] See Cliches of Socialism, 76 attempts to be of help to others. The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, New York.

[2] See The Old Regime and the French Revolution by Alexis de Tocqueville, (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1955) p. 169.

11

REFLECTIONS ON GULLIBILITY

Quick sensitiveness is inseparable from a ready understanding.

—ADDISON

We live in an age when superstition flourishes and quackery abounds. This is a credulous generation eager to swallow any political nostrum—the more absurd the better. I fully concur with this opinion by Professor W. A. Paton:

As an adjective to describe present-day attitudes, aims, and popular proposals for dealing with current economic problems, real or pseudo, the term “gullible” is a much more appropriate label for our society than “good” or “great.”[1]

Very few, indeed, are those among us who have any awareness of the current gullibility—a blindness pervades the population. Short of a more general realization of this intellectual insensitivity, our society is doomed; it must fall into a shambles. Sensing this formidable situation, as does Professor Paton, is assuredly the first step in gaining any relief. However, two more steps would seem to be necessary: (1) discovering the cause of gullibility and (2) finding its remedy, if there be one.

In my view, insensitiveness is the cause of gullibility. A recent experience: Ahead of me in the check-out line at the supermarket was a women with many items in her basket. She paid with government food stamps, totally insensitive to the fact that I would be interested, as one who was financing her purchases. Utterly numb as to gratitude! And most taxpayers, in my place, would have been equally insensitive to their role in paying for that food.

I do not know what the total bill might have been for the food the woman had in her basket. Nor do I know precisely the value of the food stamps she receives each year. But I did find, upon doing a bit of research, that the total U.S. food stamp program that cost $85.5 million in 1965 is projected to cost $7.2 billion in 1975. Was I gullible, were all of us gullible, in allowing the small beginnings of a program that would expand by 8,400 per cent in ten years!

And how many Americans are expected to be riding that $7.2 billion gravy train in 1975? The number, I am informed, will be 16,000,000. So if the woman in the supermarket is typical, she will be carrying $450 worth of groceries past the check-out counter, for stamps, in 1975.

In double-checking my estimate of taxes to be paid in 1975—and calculating the impact on me for a $7.2 billion expenditure—I find that, in effect, I will be paying for about half of that woman’s food-stamp purchases. And I do not know her! Should I or should I not be giving some strange woman $225 worth of groceries a year? Do I know if her need is greater than that of any other customer? Or am I simply being gullible about food stamps and many other welfare programs, programs to which I am insensitive, since I do not know the real need for such handouts or know the effect of those handouts on either the recipients or the other taxpayers who will help foot the bill?

How account for this two-sided gullibility—exhibited equally by those who feed at the public trough and those who are forced to keep it filled? Doubtless there are unfathomable reasons—faults and shortcomings interacting on each other—too complex for clear-cut analysis. Were there a single cause, we might readily overcome this insensitiveness—alertness then would be a possibility. However, if a few likely causes can be identified, they may help us see our gullibility and bring some helpful responses from me, you, and some others; any switch would have to be an individual attainment.

The Roman, Horace, some twenty centuries ago, offers one reason which can hardly be questioned:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

Prosperous circumstances! Never in the world’s history have any people remotely approached the prosperity we Americans have experienced, and we are generally flabby in consequence. Gullibility is nothing more nor less than talents lying dormant. This appears to be an accurate diagnosis of our condition.

Free market, private ownership, limited government practices have been more nearly approximated in the U.S.A. than elsewhere. As a consequence, there has been the greatest release of creative energy ever known: goods and services have flowed in unprecedented abundance to the masses as if manna from Heaven.

Merely reflect upon the material things—tens of thousands—which are available in exchange for doing relatively little, if anything.[2] Note the countless persons who enjoy a fantastic affluence and do nothing at all. When people get it into their heads that their prosperity is a natural phenomenon as a sunrise, for instance, requiring no talents on their part, talents fail to evolve; in a word, they lie dormant. These people see nothing simply because they are unaware that there is anything to see.

Another likely cause: an astonishing loss of faith in Judeo-Christian charity. Indeed, few in today’s world are aware of what it is, let alone the wonders wrought by its practice. That woman at the check-out line had no more gratitude for her something-for-nothing food than the average taxpayer has gratitude for the privilege of filling the trough. Grover Cleveland, in vetoing a handout to drought-stricken Texans, wrote:

The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. . . . Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.

The Congressmen who approved that appropriation doubtless did so with the best of intentions. They, as distinguished from President Cleveland, were insensitive to charity as a character-building means to deal with misfortune; they could think only of government handouts. This calls to mind a verse packed full of wisdom:

Oh, were evil always ugly;

What a boon to virtue that would be!

But oft it wears a pretty face,

And lets us cheat unknowingly.

It is an observed fact that whenever government pre-empts any activity, that is, when coercion takes over, voluntary ways are not only forgotten but faith in their efficacy ceases. How many, for instance, believe that mail could be delivered ever so much more efficiently if left to the free market? Only a person now and then! Similarly with charity. When government moves in, charitable practices tend to wither away. Your neighbor is hungry. Today? That’s the government’s problem, we say. Suppose the government had not intervened. What would you or I do? We would share our loaf of bread!

Were government handouts looked upon as ugly, charity would thrive. But because they are well-intentioned and thus have a pretty face, we cheat each other unknowingly, insensitively. Result: gullibility!

What possibly can be the cure for this gullibility? What can restore alertness? Assuredly, the answer lies half-hidden or it would be generally known and observed; few would label themselves, or like to be labelled, gullible. An obvious answer to gullibility is thinking for self rather than imitating platitudes, plausibilities, popular cliches. But that is too obvious. The real question is, what can inspire or encourage one to do his own thinking? What is the overlooked formula?

Here’s mine: Count your blessings! Until now I have looked upon this as the remedy for perhaps the greatest of all evils: covetousness or envy. I am now convinced that it is also the cure for gullibility.

For this practice to have any meaning, to affect one’s intellectual demeanor, it would have to be a daily exercise—in a word, habitual and systematic exploration. At first blush, at least to those who have not reflected on their blessings, this is no more of a challenge than a daily repetition of the alphabet, so few blessings are most people aware of.

What I am suggesting is the discovery of one or more heretofore unknown blessings every day of one’s life. There aren’t that many? Their number is infinite, a world without end! They include every bit of wisdom since the human race began; they range from soaps to soups to tissues to dishwashers; from raindrops to bathtubs; from pets to friends past and present; from atoms to red blood cells to galaxies; from electricity to sunbeams; from blades of grass to the shade of trees; from hot and cold running water to still lakes and wavy seas; from paintings to all the beauties of earth and the heavens. They include every freedom to be the creative self one possesses. World without end!

The daily exploration of one’s blessings opens the mind to Infinite Consciousness. This of itself is thinking for self; it is the downing of gullibility. For today, I count among my blessings the ability to share these thoughts with you, whoever you are.

[1] See “The Gullible Society,” The Freeman, March, 1974.

[2] See “Confessions of a Rich Man” in my Let Freedom Reign (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969) pp. 50–56.

12

THE BLESSINGS OF DIVERSITY

Were all alike, instead of free,

T’would mean the end of me and thee.

There is an old wheeze that goes something like this: “The whole world is queer but thee and me, and sometimes I think thee a trifle peculiar.” The line affixes a bit of humor to a lamentable fact: most people are addicted to conformity. The truth? Were all like thee or me, all would perish. So, let’s make the case for diversity.

The first part of the case is easy. Were everyone alike, would we be all men—or all women? There wouldn’t even be an Adam and Eve situation, only an uninhabited Eden! Suppose all of us were identical in food preference to those who eat nothing but fish. The fish supply would diminish to the point that all would starve—or die fishing. A moment’s reflection reveals the nonsense of be-like-me-ness as related to the strictly physical aspects of our lives—even were all identical to thee or me.

It is when we move from functions of the body to those of the mind that the case for diversity most needs to be examined. People, by and large, seem instinctively to resist the idea of diversity in thinking. Why do not others think and believe as you or I do? Had a person of my convictions lived in Athens twenty-three centuries ago, his disagreement with Plato’s concept of a philosopher-king surely would have disturbed the great thinker, even as you and I tend to be disturbed by those who do not see eye to eye with us.

The philosopher-king idea assumes an overlord—absolute rulership—someone who will direct what millions of citizens shall do and how they shall behave. Thinking for self is precluded; the king will do that for us.

Until recent times, kingship—czar, der Fuhrer, the Mikado, a ruler by whatever label—was generally accepted as the only alternative to societal chaos. There had to be a ruler—despite the miserable record—or society would collapse.

Why the failures? Plato’s implication is that power hitherto had not been united to wisdom in one man. Obviously, kingship is not to be trusted to power-crazed shallowpates. Plato’s solution? Let only philosophers be kings! Then all of a nation’s citizens would be blessed, being the beneficiaries of the king’s wisdom.

Now, just who is it that qualifies as a philosopher? How designated? There are two ways. First is self-designation. Though not aspiring to kingship, Plato no doubt thought of himself as a philosopher. Look around at our contemporaries. Observe the countless thousands, none of whom doubts his own wisdom; each in his judgment the perfect philosopher. And fit for kingship!

The second way to be labeled a philosopher is by popular designation. Reflect on those thus acclaimed, ranging from Confucius, Socrates, Plato, Maimonides, Machiavelli, Marx, Berdyaev, to several of our time. Go over the whole list, read of their ideas, and find one competent to rule our lives. Not one remotely qualifies. No such individual ever existed or ever will. And the genuine philosopher, at least of our time, would shun rule, even if it were offered!

Granted, each of these philosophers was in search of truth. Their findings? No two the same! One came upon an idea here, another there; and then a bit of truth, occasionally an out-and-out error, such as Plato’s philosopher-king or Marx’s “from each according to ability, to each according to need.” The worst that could befall mankind would be to give any one philosopher the power to impose his limited vision on everyone else—including other philosophers. Each of us should strive to live by such wisdom as he can glean, while working to expand his vision. But there is no short cut to the attainment of this objective.

When one first reflects on the blessings of diversity in thinking, he might want to make an exception: should not the devotees of liberty look askance at anti-freedom thinking? Of what possible help are Marx and Engels and the countless other opponents? My answer: They are an absolute necessity to the furtherance of our ideal, to the attainment of our aspirations. Bluntly, there is no way to go uphill except as there be hills to climb. In other words, we have no chance of moving toward or perfecting the freedom way of life short of obstacles to overcome—now and forever! It is in the discernment of error that truth comes to light. The art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming.

Let us suppose that no one today knows any more about the freedom philosophy than I knew some forty years ago. Heaven forbid! What jolted me awake? Not someone agreeing with me; it was the system of wage, price and exchange controls—the National Industrial Recovery Act. This was not exactly the philosopher-king, but almost as bad: the politician-bureaucrat. Knowing that to be wrong, I had to explore, look for, try to discover what is right. The wrong gave me a toehold, as we say; it served as a stimulant, a springboard. But for NIRA or some similar wrong, I might well have remained ideologically disinterested. So, was not the NIRA a blessing of diversity?

Nearly everyone can recall similar experiences, his thought processes stimulated by one or two wrongs. But how easy it is to believe that a few leaps upward in learning suffice. A momentary awakening and then falling to sleep again! Worse than falling asleep, however, is to harbor the illusion of journey’s end, the thought that one’s job is done.

During the past four decades, since shocked into awareness by NIRA, I have reacted to every anti-freedom notion that has come to my attention. This has been my “magnificent obsession.” The reward? In all modesty, I am far better informed about such matters than I was some forty years ago. Yet, the road looms ahead, and I have much further to go.

To highlight the danger of stagnation, let it be assumed that I understand far more than I now do—that I have become better than anyone else! Arrival? Indeed not; whatever the stage, it is only the beginning. However far one travels from his beginning in ignorance, it is but a start toward the infinite unknown.

Hold the fantasy for a moment: that I have become better than all others. Then assume that the thoughts of everyone were identical to mine. A better world? No! Such would spell the end of human evolution or emergence—mankind in a state of stagnation.

To seek Truth is to pursue the Infinite. The more one advances, the further into the distance stretches the road ahead. The more one knows, the more he knows there is to know.

Human freedom is an aspiration, never to be perfectly achieved but, at best, only to be more closely approximated. Have no fear of diverse ideas. Welcome them! They are blessings, perhaps in disguise, but steppingstones, nonetheless.

13

THE COMMONERS

As common as all-get-out.

—WILLIAM HAZLITT

My dictionary defines a commoner as “a person not of the nobility: member of the common people.”

This definition derives from medieval ranking. The nobility was composed of those in the titled aristocracy under the King: Dukes, Earls, Lords of the Manor, and the like. Most of the others—the millions not “graced” with special, political privilege—were commoners. In principle, this kind of ranking is not to be distinguished from the caste system. In a word, old hat!

Times have changed, which suggests that it is high time to redefine our terms. Who in today’s America are commoners and who are aristocrats? It is important that you and I find out for ourselves where our membership belongs. A commoner or an aristocrat? That’s the question!

Why should we not think of a commoner as one whose way of life is most common? If persons are assessed in this sensible manner, then the present situation is reversed from what it was in medieval times. Today’s commoners occupy the same status as the aristocrats of yore: people “graced” with special, political privilege.

I shall not include as a commoner all of the individuals who in one way or another feed at the public trough. Every last one of us does, willingly or unwillingly. Excluded are the very few who unwillingly do so, whose proclaimed positions are against any special privilege for self or others. Subtract these few and the rest are commoners, the countless millions who favor and plead for one or more of the thousands of governmental handouts and special privileges. So common today is the plundering trait that only now and then can an individual be found who will have none of it. Everyone who declares, “but I must make an exception in this instance,” is a commoner. To claim that this class may account for 99 per cent of the adult population borders on an understatement!

Nothing is to be gained by classifying most of the population as commoners unless some light can be shed as to why this sad state of affairs. Doubtless there are more reasons than we know or even suspect, but a few are more or less obvious.

While any number of people may demonstrate expertise at this or that—skilled in their chosen fields—most of them, when it comes to politico-economic matters, have no ideas of their own. They are simply borne along by whatever wave of opinion happens to predominate at any given time. Imitators, at best! Who do these masses tend to imitate? Those with great coercive or political power, those with much wealth, and those who are highly celebrated. These are their pied pipers!

If imitation makes commoners of the millions, it would seem to follow that the imitated themselves are commoners. And, with but few exemplary exceptions, they are. Why? Let’s speculate on the reasons for commonality among the politically powerful, the wealthy, and the celebrated. Why in this order? Power to run the lives of others has a greater attraction than either wealth or fame. Wealth is in second place, and fame trails by a slim margin.

It was Lord Acton who wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Our Founding Fathers were well aware of this danger when they drafted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights so they set bounds to political power, more severely limiting its exercise than ever before in history. As a consequence, fewer elected and appointed officials corrupted themselves during these early decades than in any previous period.

Lord Acton’s “tends” is an important modifier. The mere possession of power does not necessarily corrupt the individual; it only tends to do so and in most cases does. All of us have the power to interfere in the creative lives of others, but there is no corruption if we refuse to exercise that power. It is only the use of coercive power that corrupts the individual.

An example of the tendency overcome: Lorenzo the Magnificent! The Duke of Florence—its ruler with unlimited power—was not corrupted. Why? Instead of using his power to interfere with the creative activity of the Florentians, he gave of his talents and great wealth to assist them in this respect. He was “one of the towering figures of the Italian Renaissance.”

An example of the tendency not overcome: Piero, Lorenzo’s son, who became the Duke of Florence following his father’s death. He used his power and was corrupted to the point that the Florentians ran the Medici out of Florence. Good riddance!

What is it about power used to run other people’s lives that corrupts the holders thereof? To exercise power thusly requires a belief that such action is right. The belief, when examined, turns out to be the illusion of self-omnipotence, the assessment of self as a know-it-all. Thinking of one’s self as a god—the illusion—is itself the corruption. It is this disease among the power-drunk elite—commoners themselves—that leads in making commoners out of the tag-along masses.

In a second place among the imitated are the very wealthy. I am acquainted with a few millionaires who look upon their wealth not as an end in itself but as a means to higher goals; it frees them from the drudgery—doing all of life’s chores one’s self—which poverty imposes. Their wealth permits them to pursue their own unique and higher goals, such as the improvement of self, by exchanging their special goods and/or services with others. In a word, wealth, when viewed aright, is the hallmark of a society where the thousand and one chores of life are accomplished by the division of labor, so that each person has the leisure in which to concentrate on his own uniqueness.

Parenthetically, countless millions of us are wealthy, that is, able to exchange our minuscule offerings for life’s necessities. Why are there so many of us? The power of a free as distinguished from a coercive or political market—the voluntary way of life on a scale never before known. Indeed, we are so numerous that we fail to stand out; we are more the rule than the exception. It is the very wealthy, not my kind, who are envied.

We must not forget, however, that the great opportunities wealth provides also mean risks, as we know from the Goldsmith line, “Where wealth accumulates and men decay.” Thus, the ones whom prosperity does not adversely affect are few and far between. Living “high on the hog”—ostentation, display, flaunting “success”—features their behavior. Wealth to them is a means to get out of rather than ever deeper into life: year-around vacations, retirement, leisure in the nonproductive sense.

These commoners among the very wealthy inspire envy—corruption—on the grand scale. “Keeping up with the Joneses” is the mode of our times. How to do it? Run to the government trough! For pittances? Hardly! There are some farm outfits, for instance—commoners—receiving from the government—all of us—several millions of dollars annually for not farming!

Last, but not to be ignored, are the celebrated. Fame is heady stuff, intoxicating, to say the least. Most people are elated by renown, deserved or not, big scale or small. An applauding audience puffs them up; mention on TV or pictures in the press swell their egos. As the Bible has it, “For they loved the praise of man more than the praise of God.” This is to say that they rate flattery higher than the discernment of truth. Commoners like these have imitators by the millions!

The few exceptions are those who, when flattered, compare the overesteem with their own acute awareness of how little they know. The disparity between the two, more likely than not, results in depression rather than elation. How short I am from what they think I am!

Now to the aristocrats of our time. They may be no more numerous, relative to population, than the titled aristocrats in medieval days, but they differ from them as much as present-day commoners differ from the commoners of yore. An about-face in both cases!

These contemporary aristocrats are not easily identifiable. To set our sights aright, let us seek the guidance of two outstanding American Statesmen. Wrote George Washington:

If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

There you have it: raising high the standard and living by it is the fundamental achievement of the aristocratic spirit. Thomas Jefferson gave this exemplarity an appropriate definition:

There is a natural aristocracy among men; it is composed of virtues and talents.

Very well! Look around you and within and find those who are not among the modern commoners, those who can truly be numbered among the aristocrats of our time—the new nobility. What are the earmarks of this new breed? Exemplars are not and cannot be apparent to the casual eye; they have to be searched for and discovered. Here are some characteristics:

- Now and then there is a potentially powerful person who refuses to exercise his power over the creative activities of others.

- Occasionally, one will find a very wealthy person who continues to grow, evolve, emerge, hatch—search for truth. No decay!

- And if one looks hard enough, he may find a few celebrated persons whom fame has not intoxicated.

- By and large, however, the aristocrats are to be found among those not distinguished by power, fortune, or fame—the unsung, the unheard of. He or she may be your neighbor, maid, gardener, or chauffeur; or perhaps a young student who is thinking, an oldster who is coming to himself, or an airline pilot who is as much committed to righteousness as to his airport destination.

Two final thoughts: First, the new aristocrats do not think of themselves as such and, thus, wear no labels. And, second, no one will be able to make a single discovery of these uncommon individuals if he be a commoner himself, for as the philosophers say “knowing is the mode of being,” or what you are limits what you may know. Therefore, one is ill-advised to even look unless he is struggling to be an exemplar of virtues and talents—a standard setter! Be a seeker, confident that the search is not in vain.

14

LAW VERSUS TYRANNY

Morality once shattered destroys the people and the ruler. Outside of prison and this side of hell men are not bound together by the dub but by the consciousness of moral obligations.

—WALTER A. LUNDEN

According to Thomas Fuller, the 18th century Royalist historian and preacher: “Law governs man; reason the law.” This doesn’t seem right to me or, at least, seems contradictory to Professor Lunden’s observation about moral obligations.

Does reason govern law? If so, reason would appear to be a low-grade faculty, for there are as many varying conceptions of “law” as there are persons who use the term. Indeed, most of us use “law” loosely, meaning now this and then that. Were reason to govern, it would seem, at the very least, that we should have a sounder conception of what law is than is now the case.

In this context, what is law? Is it a body of legal edicts backed by force? Or a consciousness of moral obligations? Or, if some combination of the two, which takes precedence? These and many other related questions need some careful reflection if reason is to govern.

Lord Keynes, in 1938, speaking of the time when he was twenty, said of himself and his friends:

We repudiated entirely customary morals, conventions, and traditional wisdom. We were . . . in the strict sense of the term, immoralists . . . we recognized no moral obligation, no inner sanction, to conform or obey. Before heaven we claimed to be our own judge in our own case. So far as I am concerned, it is too late to change; I remain and always will remain, an immoralist. . . .

In a recent comment on that passage, Henry Hazlitt suggests that “it is the spread of precisely this attitude since then to ever-widening circles that helps to explain the moral and political decay in the last few decades.”

In answer to the question, Which takes precedence, a body of legal edicts backed by force—the club—or a consciousness of moral obligations?, I say, contrary to Keynes, the latter. In describing himself as an immoralist, Lord Keynes was saying that no moral laws or ethical imperatives are to stand in the way of desires and actions or to otherwise restrict his thoughts and deeds. And the result is an outpouring of legal edicts inspired by him and his disciples and designed to control the affairs of society.

Now to my faith. I proudly profess to being a moralist or an ethicist. I subscribe to the proposition that there are laws of nature and the universe, of Creation, that should be discovered and respected. I believe that all man-made laws—legal edicts—which go beyond codifying and complementing the moral law serve not to bind men together but to spread them asunder, creating chaos rather than harmony, tyranny rather than peaceful order.[1]

Fundamental to my faith is the rejection of government as the sovereign power. This puts me on the side of the writers of the Declaration of Independence:

. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

By proclaiming the Creator as the endower of men’s rights, they proclaimed the Creator as sovereign, denying government that ancient and medieval role. Moralists!

Being a moralist also links me with Walter Lunden, F. A. Hayek, Henry Hazlitt, and an encouraging number of other moralists and ethicists of increasing influence. However, this does not mean that all of us see precisely eye to eye. That would be as undesirable as it is impossible. Why? It is our differences that serve as steppingstones to truth, an infinite pursuit. We agree on being moralists, not immoralists, moral values being the correct vantage point from which to look for improvement, refinement. Thus, let each share whatever his best thoughts reveal—the upgrading procedure, that is, learning from each other, catholicity the rule.

What are the foundations of morality? Moralists have varying answers to this question. My foundations are the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments. The Golden Rule, in my view, is the prime tenet of sound economics and, doubtless, the oldest ethical proposition of distinctly universal character. Let no one do to others that which he would not have them do to him; that would be just about the ideal, economically, socially, morally, ethically. Admittedly, this is more a goal than a likelihood, but it is goals we are considering.

There are moral values which are appropriately reinforced by man-made law, and other moral values which do not lend themselves to legal implementation. Let us examine the Ten Commandments to find where man-made laws are appropriate, that is, where they are complementary to the moral law, and where not.

Man-made laws—legal edicts backed by force—are inappropriate when directed at what the individual thinks or believes or does to himself. A man’s inner life can only be impaired, never improved, by coercive forces. Government is but an arm of society and its only proper role is to codify and inhibit injuries inflicted on society, that is, on others than self. Self-injury is subject to self-correction—none other!

Take the Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.” Enforce this by a man-made law? The absurdity is obvious. Envy is the root of many evils—stealing, killing, and the like—yet it cannot be done away with by the gun, billy club, fist, or any other physical force. Might as well pass a law against stress or worry or despair or man’s thoughts about the here-after or against suicide, for that matter. The you’s and I’s—society—may lament the ills many people inflict on themselves but we cannot correct them by legal concoctions.

The moralist concedes that there is good and evil in the world—in man—in any man—that there is a moral law by which one may distinguish the good from the evil. But he knows that he is powerless to relieve any individual of the certain consequences of that person’s immoral actions. Would he try to enact legislation to the effect that a person shall not be burned if he touches a hot stove or drown if he stays indefinitely under water without air? Such human enactments would be inconsistent with the moral laws of cause and consequence—would indeed be a form of tyranny, an invitation to lawlessness in the mistaken belief that one might violate the moral law with impunity.

Here are a few samplings of government out of bounds, minding your and my business: driving a car without seat belts, staying away from school, working for less than $2.00 an hour, laboring more than 40 hours a week, keeping stores open on the Sabbath, exchanging the fruits of one’s labor for gold, on and on. All in the name of protecting the you’s and me’s against ourselves. Law? Not the way a moralist would define it! These are tyrannies.

Clearly, the moral law takes precedence over the legal edicts of civil law. The latter serves a useful purpose provided its limited role is understood and heeded. When statutory law invades the domain of the moral law, it is itself ineffective and it paralyzes moral action; it creates a vacuum.

Coercively enforce an observation of the Golden Rule when only self-enforcement is possible? Nonsensical! Can the government stop covetousness by making it illegal? Of course not! The role of civil law should be limited exclusively to inhibiting such injuries as some inflict on others, never directed at injuries we inflict on ourselves.

My moral code is founded on the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments, and I would call upon the civil law to help enforce only these: “Thou shalt not kill,” “Thou shalt not steal,” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness.”

Conceded, killing, stealing, and bearing false witness inflict self-injury: the destruction of one’s soul, the loss of neighborly respect, the reduction of prospects for cooperation. However, each of these evils inflicts injuries on others and thus becomes a societal problem. Such destructive behavior should be inhibited, insofar as possible, by the organized and legal arm of society—government.

All but the mentally deficient stand against the murder of one by another and more or less agree that one means of minimizing the practice is to oblige the murderer to pay the penalty for his crime.

Mass murder, on the other hand—killings by the millions—is not so much frowned upon. Why? These are done in the name of a collective and thus are thoughtlessly regarded as impersonal. I didn’t do it; the nation (or some other abstraction) did it! Witness the Crusades in the name of Christianity or the Thirty Years War in Central Europe, or what goes on more and more in our time.[2] The Commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” is no less broken when done in the name of a collective than when one man kills another. What is the explanation for this calamitous trend? In my view, omnipotent government, that is, government, not the Creator, as sovereign.

Only those who reason clearly from cause to consequence stand foursquare in support of “Thou shalt not steal.” True, not one in a thousand would steal a penny from a child’s bank or a neighbor’s goose or another’s loaf of bread. Full respect for private property at the you-and-me level! Yet, people by the millions will ask the government to do the taking for them—billions upon billions of dollars annually. Plunder at the impersonal level! Why? The same old reason: government out of bounds, that is, government as sovereign. “The king can do no wrong; therefore, what he does for me at the expense of others is right.” Sound reasoning? Hardly!

Those who cherish liberty are well advised to respect and defend the rightful claims of others. As Santayana wrote, “The man who is not permitted to own is owned.” Observe that “Thou shalt not steal” presupposes private ownership, the bedrock or foundation of individual liberty. Why this assertion? How possibly could one steal were nothing owned! To disregard this moral law is to deny being one’s own man; disobedience invites enslavement—being owned. Merely observe how the fruits of individual effort are increasingly expropriated by the collective, how our options of ownership are being diminished. And the way to reverse this dreadful trend is to heed the Commandment against theft. Government’s role here, as in the case of murder, is to inhibit these infractions of the moral law, not to promote them.

“Thou shalt not bear false witness” means not to misrepresent or defraud or falsify. Make a contract, keep it. Let all representations be truthful, whether they pertain to persons or to goods and services. False witness, having to do with injury to others, rationally warrants that the civil law help rescue us from this evil.

To my way of thinking, morality, once shattered, destroys the people and whoever or whatever presumes to rule. It is only the consciousness of moral obligations that binds men together. This is one reason why I am an unabashed moralist and why I hope that our tribe may increase in number and improve in consciousness. Amen!

[1] The belief expressed in this paragraph is not to suggest that I am warranted in breaking laws contrary to this belief. See Chapter 24, “Civil Obedience,” in Talking to Myself (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1970), pp. 151–155.

[2] For further reflection on this complex matter, see my “Conscience on the Battlefield.” The Thirty Years War witnessed the slaughter of millions of people “to the glory of God”! See Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941).

15

ON BEING MY OWN MAN

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

—EMERSON

Emerson’s first sentence is clear: be one’s own honest self, that is, reflect in word and deed whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as righteous. The second, while somewhat obscure, means that if one divorces himself from the integrity of this own mind—responds not to this sacredness—the world will disapprove. In a word, others will see through the sham of one’s pretending to stand for every idea in the world but his own.

Should I be my own man? Of course! Should I be your man? Of course not! For confirmation of the point merely ask yourself, should you be my man? The very idea of such voluntary enslavement should be repulsive to any man. And so should the pretense of being everyone’s man—or even the majority’s man.

What is meant by being everyone’s man? Examples are all about us: speakers who care not what they say so long as it brings applause; writers of books and articles catering solely to popular demand, be it for pornography, ideological nonsense, or how to feed more bountifully at the government trough; politicians who seek tenure by responding to mass pressures—not each his own but, rather, every voter’s man.

I want to examine this political issue further. But first I must point out that there is far more to the good life than just the political side of it. I do not pretend that politics is everything.

With that precaution, my question is this: Is it to the advantage of the citizenry—the voters—to have in political office one who purports to reflect all our diverse views, likes and dislikes, preferences as to what the government should and shouldn’t do, the results of opinion polls? Or would it be better for all of us if the successful candidate stood in office, as hopefully in his campaign, for what he believes to be right. Open to economic, moral, and spiritual counsel, yes; but having heard, then acting strictly according to his own best judgment—within the limits of the law. Which would be the better man in office?

I know the popular trend is toward the former. But I believe we would fare better with the second kind, a statesman, if I may draw that distinction. Mine is a personal opinion rather than the result of a public opinion poll. Frankly, I have a great faith in the few who insist on being their own true selves and have no trust at all in those who want to be everyone’s man.

Let me dramatize the contrast as I see it. The leading politician who claims to be our man is like a brilliant leaf in a whirlwind. His is but a reflection of a political potpourri. The candidate I prefer is the one who stands like a rock for what his highest conscience dictates as righteous. I may not agree with where he stands, but let him stand firmly on his own.

I like the way Tolstoy put the idea:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience, on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.

Let us examine “men united in councils” on a small scale—a committee of three. No two are likely to have precisely the same view of what’s right and wrong; each has his own unique concept of truth: whatever his reason and highest conscience dictates as righteous. This may not in fact be truth but is as close as any human being can come to truth.

The three, however, have been requested to render a report on what should be done about their rent-controlled city. The first member is devoted to the welfare-state idea and believes that rents should forever be controlled by government. The second member is a devotee of the free market, limited government, private ownership way of life and therefore believes that rent control should be abolished at once. The third member believes rent control to be bad but thinks that the decontrol should be effected gradually, over a period of years.

This is not an uncommon situation, a committee of three men honestly holding three irreconcilable beliefs. Yet, a report is expected of them. What to do? Why not settle on something not too disagreeable to a majority—two of them. What would it be? Heaven only knows! It might read somewhat as follows: Resolved that landlords be permitted to increase rents at an annual rate not to exceed 7.7 per cent.

In this hypothetical but typical instance, the recommendation is a fabrication, pure and simple. Truth, as understood by any one of the three, has no spokesman. By any reasonable definition a lie has been told. The cause of this lie? Members of councils placing exterior authority higher than interior—divorcing themselves from reason and conscience. Tolstoy was right, and so was Charles Kettering when he said, “If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.”

On a matter such as rent control, there would be more than just one organization and its committee at work. More than likely there would be a dozen or so ranging from the League of Women Voters to the Apartment Owner’s Association.

Now, assume that the Mayor has the final say on the matter. If he be a politician—our man—he will weigh all the lies and render a decision that will, in his opinion, be the least unpopular—the big lie! If, on the other hand, the Mayor be a statesman—his own man—he will render a decision which his reason and conscience dictates as right. I’ll take the statesman every time and in all situations, local or national. Why? As a voter—any voter—I am more advantaged by the truth than by lies. True, I may not like his decision, but I would rather know where he stands than to know where he thinks the rest of us stand.

Move now from small to big scale, from a committee of three to a “committee of the whole,” as it is called—in this case all the voters who write and speak and urge their views, yours and mine included. How many “committees of the whole” are there in the U.S.A.? There are more than 100,000 governments in our land, ranging through villages, towns, school districts, counties, states, and nation.

The subjects at issue? Rent control is merely a drop in the bucket. Politico-economic matters under consideration run into the thousands, so many that no officeholder or anyone else can possibly name them all! A mere sampling of the issues: social security, medicare, food stamps and welfare schemes galore, farm subsidies, all forms of transportation including streets, interstate highways and subway systems, foreign and military aid, wage and price controls, minimum wage and maximum hours and other labor matters, aid to education, barriers to trade both domestic and foreign—on and on, seemingly without end. The number of opportunities for committees to fabricate lies staggers the imagination.

To grasp the problem we face, imagine yourself as the head of a state or of the union. Instead of the single problem faced by the Mayor on the relatively minor matter of rent control, you are now confronted with problems so numerous and diverse that no person could ever resolve them intelligently. Have you any idea how to go about solving all the problems of mankind? Of course not! But neither has anyone else that wisdom or capacity.

What then are we to do? Reduce government to the point where no creative activity—not one—comes under its control. Let government—federal, state, and local—confine itself to codifying the taboos—destructive activities—and enforcing such laws. In a word, let government invoke a common justice and keep the peace. That’s a whale of a job in itself!

Creative activities? Leave them without exception to men acting freely, competitively, privately, cooperatively, voluntarily; that is, leave these activities to the free and unfettered market, for it is the market that possesses a wisdom unimaginably greater than exists in any discrete individual.

Each of us—every living person—is, for all practical purposes, more or less a know-nothing, pretenses to the contrary notwithstanding. Therefore, never concede to any human being a wisdom he does not possess or powers over others which he is incapable of exercising beneficially. Let me be my own man—a privilege I would extend to every peaceful person.

16

THE INVISIBLE HAND

. . . by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

—ADAM SMITH

For years I have quoted this famous line from The Wealth of Nations, but have often wondered precisely what Adam Smith meant by “invisible hand.” The answer is not to be found in his monumental book. Smith was a moral philosopher, so it is my guess that he referred to the Divine Will, the order-producing factor in the universe. Invisible? Yes! Knowable? To some extent! If what I apprehend of the Divine Will is anywhere near correct, then I am obliged to try once more to explain the correlation between freedom and the remarkable outburst of creative energy experienced by the American people.

If freedom is not seen to be the reason for progress, it may be neglected and abandoned as of no value. When that happens, we are beset by all sorts of authoritarian controls, along with shortages and rationing. Does this not justify my attempt to explain?

The lives of all persons, be they dictocrats or practitioners of the Golden Rule, are identified with self-interest. The differences have to do with how intelligently self-interest is interpreted. The man to whom Adam Smith referred interpreted his self-interest as best served by producing goods or services of the greatest possible value that he might gain the most for himself. In a word, he was minding his own business. He intended nothing more; indeed, like most people then and now, he was utterly unaware of anything more—of consequences beyond his own gain.

However, have a look at the man who minds his own business; for certain, he is not minding anyone else’s business. By reason of this fact, no other person is restrained by him. All others, insofar as his actions are concerned, are free men, even though that thought does not occur to him. Just a man tending to his own knitting, oblivious of the beneficial overall effects of such behavior—“led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

The end? Clear as crystal: the freedom of everyone to express his uniqueness and seek his own gain! No restraints—none whatsoever—against the release of creative human energy. It is this end and this alone which has accounted for the American miracle.

Adam Smith’s man, releasing his own talents and permitting all others to release theirs, acts correctly, ideally. Correct action bears fruits unimaginable in quantity and quality. True, this astounding result is no part of his intention—he intends only his own gain. Further, the freedom which his kind of action assures is beyond the scope of sensory perception; it is not seen with the eyes or heard with the ears. It is in this sense invisible. As in a magnetic field, the forces of attraction are invisible; they cannot be seen or heard; nonetheless, they work. Freedom—its attractive forces likewise invisible—works!

When it is recognized that most people regard as reality only that which comes within the range of their sensory perceptions, it becomes clear why invisible freedom is so rarely correlated with human progress. The progress they observe is credited instead to what they can see or feel or hear: coercive gadgetry such as compulsory unionism, social security, medicare, socialized mail delivery, government education, dilution of the money supply, wage and price controls, rationing and, to top it off, national self-sufficiency, isolationism, call it what you will. Few, indeed, are those who realize that it is the attractive force of invisible freedom that accounts exclusively for whatever progress there is or ever will be.

It would be very well if Adam Smith’s economic man would persist in his ways—“by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain.” He would, in this circumstance, “be led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.” But that man, to whom freedom is invisible, is the very one who, more than likely, is drawn off course, who correlates what is visible to him with the progress he observes. Unwittingly, he joins the interventionist parade, seeking gain not by improving his own industry but by trying to seize the fruits of the industry of others. Blindly, he becomes his own worst enemy. Adam Smith, be it noted, spoke of what-ought-to-be, rather than what-is.

Thank heaven, there are two ways of seeing. True, no one can see freedom with his eyes or hear it with his ears. Freedom, in this sense, is invisible. Were this the only way of seeing, the case for freedom would be hopeless. No one would ever correlate progress with men acting freely. All would be lost!

The other way of seeing? Insight, with which a few are graced and many others could be.

Insight, rather than the outward, superficial glimpse of things and events, is an inward, behind-the-scenes observation—“the ability to understand and see clearly the inner nature of things.” It is achieved, if at all, by reflecting on what one sees when looking under the covers, so to speak, for causal sequences. Perhaps such insights can be attributed to interceptions of the Divine Will. But without resort to mysticism, we do know that seekers after light experience more insights than nonseekers. “Seek and ye shall find,” so it was said of old; and it is true today.

However, one does not need to reflect very deeply to see why all progress stems from individuals acting creatively as they freely choose without violating the right of others to do likewise. Merely assess your own life. Is it not obvious that no other could identify your uniqueness, be he acclaimed the wisest who ever lived. Adam Smith comments on this:

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and which would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Further, so far as you are concerned, whoever you may be, all insights, flashes of intuition, discoveries, inventions are exclusively personal outcroppings; these enlightenments never have been nor can they be the coercive impositions of any other person. Insights are not implants but outgrowths of the inner self.

Freedom, while invisible to the eye that only looks outward, is clearly and easily visible to the eye that can and does see within. Freedom undeniably has the case. What is lacking is the insight.

Of course, ever so many people in today’s world will look down upon Adam Smith’s man who “intends only his own gain.” They will charge that he is devoid of social consciousness, and so he may be; but not of social behavior. William Graham Sumner possessed the insight to reveal this apparent contradiction.

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.[1]

Freedom is indeed the invisible hand, the magnetic force that draws to the use of each the unique talents of everyone. As a part of this mysterious attractive force which governs the whole universe, it is not a surface thing for outward observation. Further, even those who see “the inner nature of things” do not know precisely what it is; they do, however, know that it is—and they know of the magic it works. May their tribe increase, for to the bounties of freedom there is no end.

[1] William Graham Sumner, What Social Classes Owe To Each Other (Caldwell, Idaho: Caxton Printers, 1954) p. 98.

17

FROM INSTINCT TO REASON TO INSIGHT

A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.

—O. W. HOLMES

It is obvious that Dr. Holmes had his own moments of insight—man’s highest and rarest experience—or else he could never have written that profound line.

Is there a way for each of us to glimpse such moments? It is my conviction that there is such a way, and here, at the outset, is a summary of my thesis: All animal behavior is governed by instinct; human behavior is more conformable to instinct than is generally thought to be the case; reason or unreason improves or subverts instinct; insight is a potentiality of the human being and, though extremely rare in actuality, it can replace instinct to man’s emergence and glory. Can this sequence of behavioral qualities be supported by reason? That’s the question! If so, we can better set our sights aright.

The definitions:

- Instinct is “an inborn tendency to behave in a way characteristic of a species.”

- Reason is “the ability to think, form judgments, draw conclusions.”

- Insight is “the ability to see and understand clearly the inner nature of things.”

I agree with the above observation about insight by Dr. Holmes and also Edward Young’s thoughts on instinct and reason:

Reason is progressive; instinct is complete; swift instinct leaps; slow reason feebly climbs.

Yes, we have the dictionary definitions. But what, really, is instinct? While most of us know what instinct does, not one knows what it is. The same goes for reason. And, as to insight, the experience is so rare that only a few even know that it is, let alone what it is.

Why should anyone speculate on procedures for progressing from instinct, which is so prevalent in life, to reason, which is more an aspiration than a reality, and then on to insight which is rarely even an aspiration? Perhaps by speculation we can arrive at an improved understanding of our personal and societal problems and how better to resolve them. We should everlastingly try to discover the true path to our destiny and edge toward it. And this we can do through insight, a rarity akin to the proverbial needle in the haystack. Conceded, we can do no better than to generalize on prevalence and rarity; these traits can never be quantified.

As to life governed by instinct, it ranges all the way from microscopic plankton through vast variations and gradations to insects, fish, birds, chimps, horses, dogs, extending to a marked extent into the human race. In a word, instinct rules all organic life, including an enormous proportion of mankind’s behavior.

In glorifying rare insight, we should not denigrate prevalent instinct. How wondrous this is to behold! For instance: whence comes the ant’s gift of knowing she must bite every grain of corn she buries in her hill so it will not take root and grow? Who taught the salmon to return to its birthplace for spawning? Asked Bacon, “Who taught the bee to fly through such a vast sea of air and to find the way from a flower in a field to her hive?” How do geese find their way from here to there and back again? All a mysterious gift of Creation—instinct!

Based on observing self and others, my opinion is that instinct plays no less a role in human beings than in animals. Conceding this unprovable assumption, what, then, is the distinction between animal and human behavior as related to instinct?

Man is the highest form of life, separate and apart from all the forms below. In what way apart? Man alone has the power to choose, to will his own actions, to think for himself. Only man has the potentiality of reasoning, of hindsight, foresight, insight. Thus man, in contrast to other forms of life, shapes his own destiny. And the historical record makes it plain that he, unlike the birds and bees, does not go unerringly to his destination but errs in countless ways. Man is gifted with a freedom of choice so powerful and radical that he can deny his Creator; thus man, not Creation, is, for the time being, in command of his behaviors. Estimations of man range all the way from “How like an angel!” to “Nature’s wayward son.” That these appraisals apply to all of us, more or less, seems obvious.

Nature’s wayward son: Several philosophers whose judgments I respect suggest that man has lost most of the instincts that govern animal behavior; and he has failed, to a marked extent, to acquire the higher traits that should govern human behavior. I agree with the conclusion but not the analysis. What, then, is my suspicion?

Here it is: Instincts endow the animal with internal guidelines, while in man these directional signals are subject to his manipulation. Man, in other words, has the power to will his own actions, but being distressingly short on reason and insight, he tends to pervert his natural instincts for survival. He turns his instincts against himself. Among the lower orders, it is instinct which deters these creatures from killing their own kind. Honey bees rarely kill honey bees; robins do not kill robins; a wolf never kills a wolf. Scavengers on occasion, yes, but seldom does this order of creation evidence cannibalism. Man? There are a few who will kill and eat each other—cannibals—but there are untold numbers of humans who slaughter our own species by the millions—and “think” nothing of it! That is, they do not reason; rather, these people, by the absence of reason and insight, subvert instinct from a survival attribute to a self-annihilating trait.

There is no need to labor this point. Merely reflect on the countless ways human beings in every nation on this earth fail to identify their actions with intelligent self-interest, and there you have examples of instinct perverted by man’s power to will into actuality his own short-sightedness. Nature’s wayward son, indeed.

How like an angel! This exclamation by Shakespeare assuredly did not refer to the mill run of Englishmen or to any other nationality of his or any other period. No political or economic power monger, no perpetrator of or participant in religious wars, could ever inspire such an accolade as “angel.”

Nor was the reference to man’s ability to teach and learn from each other, remarkable and widespread as is this talent. True, man teaches and absorbs everything from the three R’s to history and philosophy. We can teach animals, from dogs to insects—remember “the flea circus”? Indeed, the higher animals teach their offspring.

For these reasons, I am beginning to believe that the teacher-learner procedure falls in the instinctual category. The dam, for instance, seems not to err in teaching her puppies. Instinct guides her aright. Man, however, in imposing his imperfect reason on this natural instinct, errs in countless ways. It is this linkage of ignorance and instinct that accounts for all the nonsense that is “taught and listened to.” What, then, could the Bard of Avon have had in mind?

Shakespeare could have had nothing less in mind than those rarest of all human attributes: reason and insight—the few flickers of the angelic in mankind. He had these phenomena in mind because his own mind was so obviously graced with reason and insight. Few have ever written with greater wisdom and perspicacity.

“Reason is progressive . . . slow reason feebly climbs.” In contrast to this truth, an individual of uncommon brilliance remarked to me, “I am the completely rational person.” It is to laugh! To repeat from a previous chapter, Socrates knew better: “I know nothing.” Compared to the Infinite Unknown he was right. Montaigne knew better. Inscribed on his coat of arms was Que sais-je—What do I know? The eminent economist, Ludwig von Mises, knew better. Even I, along with a host of others, know better.

Reason is, at best, progressive; it feebly climbs when and if it ever does. There never has been nor will there ever be a completely rational person. Pure reason is infinitely beyond the reach of finite minds. The cure for this little god syndrome? A humility that squares with reality. Short of this, feeble reason warps, distorts, subverts man’s instincts.

Finally, as to rare insights. Is there a guideline, a way that each of us may be so graced, more or less? The search, surely, is worth the effort for, as Dr. Holmes so wisely observed, “A moment’s insight is sometimes worth a life’s experience.” In a word, it is worthwhile to strive for just one of those rare moments. By so doing, several such moments might follow.

Based on what I have observed among those who experience insights, the eye looks never downward but only heavenward, that is, toward the Infinite Unknown. Each truth gleaned—enlightenment—is an insight and gives off a glow, the more insights one possesses the brighter is the beam he radiates. This light cannot see us but those who have eyes to see can see it and be brightened accordingly. Nor is this a momentary glow; it is potentially everlasting. Otherwise, how account for Confucius, Moses, Socrates, Epictetus, Shakespeare, to name but a few mortals whose insights are immortal! We have life by reason of insights, that is, if we know how to distinguish the true among them from the false. Why this observation?

There is evidence aplenty that even these rare persons who peer into the unknown, sometimes glimpse error and believe it to be truth. Thus, those of us who get our insights secondhand must find a way of forming our own judgments. Are these ideas true or false? How, pray tell, can we know?

Let me share my way. If someone’s “insight” suggests that he or any other imperfect person—whoever among erring mankind—shall dominate or rule one or more of his fellow-men, it is patently false.

Insights that reveal truth always relate to the freeing, releasing, unmasking of the human spirit. Glimpses of Creation—intuitive flashes—if seen correctly, are in harmony with liberty and individual creativity; they are, without exception, lessons on how to grow, emerge, evolve, develop in awareness, perception, consciousness.

The key to unlocking this highest of all human resources, that is, if there be one? Based on my reading, observations, reflections, the secret is dedicated conscious effort, nothing less than the passionate pursuit of excellence.

These, I believe, are appropriate guidelines—the way, eventually, to replace man’s distorted instincts with insights, to edge toward human destiny: individuals ascending toward enlightenment.

18

BITING THE HAND THAT FEEDS[*]

We set ourselves to bite the hand that feeds us.

—EDMUND BURKE

The above line by Edmund Burke, written in 1770, had, I feel certain, reference to a common trait: ingratitude—and not to the hand I have in mind. The “hand” he had critically in mind was revealed to him 25 years later:

And having looked to government for bread, on the very first scarcity they will turn and bite the hand that fed them.

Government in Burke’s day was popularly regarded—but not by Burke—as the hand that fed. Adam Smith’s great work, The Wealth of Nations, published in the period between Burke’s two statements, had not as yet penetrated very many minds.

While ingratitude is doubtless a trait as common as ever, it is no more responsible for today’s “biting the hand that feeds” than it was in the days of mercantilism. What then? An abysmal ignorance of what the real hand is! How can people be expected to pay homage and respect to something if they know nothing of its existence? What is to keep them from looking to fictitious “hands” and, by so doing, biting the unseen hand, the only one that feeds? Nothing can put them on the right track but enlightenment, an illumination so bright that they cannot help but see the real hand!

As I read and study the succeeding issues of Private Practice, and note the succession of meat and fuel and paper and other recurrent crises that plague us today, it seems more important than ever that all of us—and especially the professional healers of physical and mental disturbances—come to a better appreciation of the real helping hand in human affairs.

The late eminent scholar, Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, Professor of Political Economy at Harvard for 32 years, remarked to me, “The two most important books in Western Civilization are the Holy Bible and The Wealth of Nations.”

No need for me to defend the Bible, nor should the Industrial Revolution set in motion by Adam Smith’s monumental work require more defense than it has had.[1] Nevertheless, it does! No movement beneficial to the millions has been more effectively maligned or had more derogatory assessments and false interpretations than the Industrial Revolution. Were the truth known, the real hand would be revealed.

I would not suggest that Capitalism and the Historians be required reading in or out of school, any more than “coke” should be required drinking![2] Instead, we might hope that it be desired reading by all seekers of truth whatever their age. This enlightening book gives the details of those early years of the Industrial Revolution for all who care to know; it exposes the untruths that have been written by “historians.” Here, however, I shall give only the highlights.

Reflect on the economic situation in the British Isles prior to the year 1800. Wrote Adam Smith, “It is not uncommon, I have been frequently told, in the Highlands of Scotland for a mother who has borne twenty children not to have two alive.” In a word, the infant mortality rate was so high that only a small percentage of the population reached adulthood.

Wealth? It was mansions, paintings, jewels and servants—serfs—galore.

To whom did producers cater? To Lords of the Manor and the like—the “wealthy.”

Reflect on the current economic situation in the British Isles, the U.S.A., and several other countries—outgrowths of the Industrial Revolution.

The infant, adolescent, and adult mortality rate has markedly declined. The average life expectancy is now around 70 years. A mother can count on virtually all of her children outliving her.

Wealth? It has for decades been goods and/or services in a million and one forms.[3] Literally thousands of Americans who would have been serfs two centuries ago are now millionaires. Today’s wage earners are wealthier than any Lord of the Manor ever was.

To whom do present-day producers cater? To the masses, young and old alike. What customers want, producers supply—ranging from diapers and toys to soaps, paper tissues, sanitary facilities, gas and electric stoves and lighting, dishwashers, TV sets, autos, travel by air, or whatever; the list of what composes real wealth is endless!

Who are these producers? The ones who, only a few decades earlier, would have been serfs.

What was the main outcropping of the Industrial Revolution which brought in its train the greatest and most beneficial economic changes in the world’s history? It was freedom, the freedom of anyone to be his creative self; the freedom to exchange with whomever he pleased; the freedom to seek his own gain so long as he did it peacefully.

The very individuals, who in Adam Smith’s time would have been serfs, were free to go as far as their aspirations and talents would take them. Once these so-called commoners were unshackled, their blindfolds removed—unmasked—their hidden potentialities literally burst forth. From these heretofore lowly folk emerged scientists, inventors, entrepreneurs, philosophers, educators, poets, and literary figures. Such names as Marconi and Einstein; Whitney, Edison, Bell and McCormick; Leland Stanford, Carnegie, Ford, Sloan, and the Wright brothers; Bastiat, Booker T. Washington, Andrew Dixon White, Mises, Alfred North Whitehead, T. S. Eliot—and countless thousands of others, many born in poverty and rising to the top. The freeing of the human spirit! In a word, the free and unfettered market—at least its nearest approximation in all time.

Doubtless it was from observing phenomena of this kind that the eminent psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel, was inspired to write:

Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.

What then is the hand that feeds? While generally unrecognized, it is seemingly obvious: the free and unfettered market. This is what it is and nothing else!

The point is simply this: Any person who is a party to any infringement of the free and unfettered market is biting the hand that feeds. There are no exceptions. A few samples:

- All coercive work stoppages, such as strikes, “job-actions”: To the extent that individuals are removed from productive effort, to that extent are they economic nobodies. The larder of supplies, which alone can fulfill our demands, is not as full as it would otherwise be.

- All coercive exchange stoppages: trade barriers, be they tariffs, embargoes, or exclusive market positions: cartels. This is Lord-of-the-Manor monopoly. Those who would compete, on the basis of their efficiency, are not permitted to do so.

- All coercive pricing, such as wage and price controls: Unless the rewards for goods and services are allowed to be freely set by consumer preferences, producers have no performance guidelines. What ought or ought not to be done cannot be judged from the record. In the absence of such information activity declines. The hand that really feeds is severely bitten.

- All coercive welfarism, be it social security, medicare, unemployment insurance, or the thousands of make-work projects such as the Gateway Arch, moon shots, urban renewal, public housing. Every one of these is rooted in the fallacious notion of Edmund Burke’s time: government is the hand that feeds.

First, the government feeds no one except as it coercively takes the feed from others. And, second, this process withdraws enormous amounts of capital from productive uses, diverting it to nonproduction and mass idleness. It makes commoners out of potentially creative individuals.

I repeat, it is not ingratitude that presently causes most Americans to bite the hand that feeds. It is, instead, a blindness as to what the real hand is. How are we to account for this?

I was brought up in the horse-and-buggy days. We put blinders on our horses so they could see only where we wanted them to go. This is precisely what men are now doing to men—putting blinders on them. All sorts of prestigious persons in politics, business, education, and religion, blind themselves to the hand that feeds, want us to go the only way they see: a dictocratic society—dictocrats at the top, with the rest of us doing their bidding. A return to mercantilism!

The remedy? Remove the blinders and look around on one’s own. A modicum of unfettered observation will bring the free and unfettered market into view so clearly that any intelligent person will wonder why he had not seen before the real hand that feeds. Bite it? Never again!

[*] This chapter originally appeared as an article in the medical magazine, Private Practice, Oklahoma City.

[1] It is almost certain that Adam Smith had no idea, when writing The Wealth of Nations, that the Industrial Revolution would be a by-product thereof. He had some good ideas that took root and flourished.

[2] Capitalism and the Historians, edited by F. A. Hayek. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Phoenix Books, 1963.

[3] General Electric, for instance, one among countless producers, manufactures more than 200,000 different products.

19

THE SANCTIFYING OF PLUNDER

The law . . . has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.

—BASTIAT

The commandment, “Thou shalt not steal,” would be far better kept today had not theft assumed various disguises under which its practice has been generally sanctified. The gilding of an evil gives it a virtuous face—a Mr. Hyde’s ugliness covered by a comely Dr. Jekyll mask. Why such subterfuge? To be thought of as a thief by others or to so regard oneself is utterly revolting to all but stunted mentalities; so, we try to sanctify our plunder!

The sanctification of plunder is as old as the history of man. If thievery was indeed the first labor-saving device, it was developed out of sheer ignorance. Survival is a laudable objective; therefore, if thievery is thought to be the only means to that good end, it must perforce be good. Thus is plunder sanctified by those who know no better.

Many tribal societies have practiced plunder, raiding their neighbors, taking home all the loot they could garner. But we can hardly be critical of them without criticizing ourselves.

Perhaps no other book has more wisdom between its covers than the Holy Bible. Yet, we find written there about twenty-three centuries ago: “Men do not despise a thief, if he steals to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.”[1] This was written centuries later than “Thou shalt not steal.” How can any practice be more sanctified than by biblical endorsement! However, we must understand the times lest we render too harsh a judgment.

Move on another fifteen centuries to St. Thomas Aquinas:

The superfluities of the rich belong by right to the poor. . . . To use the property of another, taking it secretly in case of extreme need, cannot, properly speaking, be characterized as theft.[2]

Seven centuries ago, at the time of Aquinas, who were the rich? They were plunderers, the feudal lords who lived off the serfs—the poor. In all justice, what the lords possessed belonged less to them than to the serfs from whom they had taken it. Considering the politico-economic darkness in medieval times, it is understandable how a religious leader might sanctify plunder by those who had been plundered. The axiom, “Thou shalt not steal,” was but an ancient flash of light with no sustaining source of energy.

There is no need for further illustrations of plunder sanctified. Every age and all civilizations abound with examples of this primitive trait of gilding evil that it may appear virtuous, a weakness which prevails to this day. There were some excuses in times past, prior to a knowledge of free market phenomena. But what of the present? How do we now sanctify plunder?

Today, whichever way the majority votes is generally conceded to be the criterion for what’s right and wrong.[3] Once this nonsensical foundation of morality is accepted—approval by the majority—plunder is legalized and thus sanctified. Legislation, being a collective action, leaves hardly anyone with a sense of guilt. Why? The evil is depersonalized. Comparable is the mob that hangs Joe Doakes. The mob did it! The truth? Each of the lynchers committed the murder precisely as each person who is a party to legal plunder is guilty. Yet, the collective action affords each participant a false sense of absolution.

Legal plunder in the U.S.A. today, in dollar amount, is many thousands of times greater than, say, at the time of Aquinas or even during the lives of our founding fathers. In those days someone stole a pig or chicken or some other small item, not because thieves were more scrupulous then than now but simply because no one owned very much. However, my guess is that the proportion of all private property which is stolen or plundered is substantially the same today as in the past. What has changed, aside from the method of sanctification? The total quantity of property owned is thousands of times greater now than before. There is incomparably more to plunder, that’s all. The propensity to plunder—to live off the fruits of the labor of others—appears to be as persistent a trait as it is evil.

In the light of free market, private ownership, limited government practices with their moral and spiritual antecedents—of which the American people have had a remarkable sampling—how is this possible? I am now beginning to understand. This way of life has been but a flash of enlightenment, as dimly perceived as “Thou shalt not steal.” The freedom philosophy, with but few exceptions, is no better understood than was the commandment against theft of more than thirty centuries ago. No intellectual muscle in either case, no sustaining force.

With few exceptions, the masses of people in this and other “advanced” countries have not correlated the fantastic outburst of creative energy with the practice of freedom. Ortega pinpoints this failure:

The world which surrounds the new man from his birth does not compel him to limit himself in any fashion, it sets up no veto in opposition to him, on the contrary, it incites his appetite, which in principle can increase indefinitely. Now it turns out—and this is most important—that this world of the XlXth and early XXth centuries not only has the perfections and the completeness which it actually possesses, but furthermore suggests to those who dwell in it the radical assurance that tomorrow it will be still richer, ampler, more perfect, as if it enjoyed a spontaneous, inexhaustible power of increase. . . . They believe in this as they believe the sun will rise in the morning. The metaphor is an exact one. For, in fact, the common man, finding himself in a world so excellent, technically and socially, believes it has been produced by nature, and never thinks of the personal efforts of highly endowed individuals which the creation of this new world presupposed. Still less will he admit the notion that all these facilities still require the support of certain difficult human virtues, the least failure of which would cause the rapid disappearance of the whole magnificent edifice.[4] (Italics added)

Is there a remedy? Yes, but the price gives the appearance of being too high. First, there is required of you and me a far better understanding of the freedom philosophy than we now possess and, to top it off, brilliant explanations of its efficacy. In a word, show the correlation between the abundant life and freedom so attractively that others are bound to take heed. Actually, this is not a high price—it is the very least we should do for ourselves, if not for others.

Second, let us begin to call this practice of “robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul” by its right name: legalized plunder. Frederic Bastiat gave us the measuring rod more than a century ago in The Law:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime. (Italics added)

This question of legal plunder must be settled once and for all, and there are only three ways to settle it:

1—The few plunder the many.

2—Everybody plunders everybody.

3—Nobody plunders anybody.

We must make our choice among limited plunder, universal plunder, and no plunder. The law can follow only one of these three.

Finally, there must be a recognition that might—majority rule—does not make right. Counting noses is no way to decide moral, ethical, or economic matters. This accomplished, plunder will lose its legal backing and, thus, its sanctification.

Let the law defend the rightful owner of property rather than the thief. Let freedom prevail!

[1] Proverbs 6:30 (King James version). It might be noted that modern translations render this passage differently.

[2] See Thomas Aquinas, 2a, 2ae, quaestiao 66, art. 7.

[3] For an excellent analysis of this fallacy, see “The American System and Majority Rule,” by The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz. The Freeman, November 1962.

[4] From Revolt of the Masses by José Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1932).

20

TRUST THYSELF—SOME OTHERS DO

Trust men and they will be true to you.

—EMERSON

Based on my experiences over the past forty years, meeting with and lecturing before countless thousands, it is a safe guess that 99 percent of the adult population in America today believe in more governmental control over citizens than I do. These millions would say that I go too far in suggesting the limits that should be placed on political power.

In other words, I believe more in those millions than they believe in themselves! Farfetched? It all depends on how we stake out the limits—role, scope—of government.

One cannot logically decide on what government should and should not do without a precise definition of what government is. I agree with Professor Woodrow Wilson when he wrote in 1900: “And the authority of governors, directly or indirectly, rests in all cases ultimately on force. Government, in its last analysis, is organized force.”[1] That this is a physical force is easy enough to comprehend. Each edict is backed by a constabulary—obey or take the consequences.

If one understands the nature of physical force, he will know what government should and should not do—not necessarily what it will and will not do. Here, we are interested only in what is right.

First, what can physical force do? It can inhibit, prohibit, restrain, penalize. The next logical question is, what should be restrained and penalized? The answer is to be found in the moral codes, many more ancient than Christianity, which condemn such destructive actions of men as fraud, violence, stealing, predation, misrepresentation and the like. This is what physical force can constructively do and all it can do; it can enforce the codified moral taboos. Period!

Second, what is it that physical force cannot do? It cannot be a creative force. The creative force, in every instance, is spiritual in the sense that ideas, insights, intuition, inventions, discoveries are spiritual.

Production is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of spiritual changes.[2]

We can deduce from this that all creative activity stems from individuals, for only individuals have ideas, thoughts, insights. Creative men and women are not and cannot be induced to respond creatively to the gun or sword or the threat of violence. The notion that I can command you to have a constructive, creative idea is absurd.

How, then, do we draw the line? How do we stake out the limits of government? As an arm of society, it has no role to play except as the legal, organized extension of those rights which exist in each citizen, namely, the right to defend life, livelihood, and personal freedom, the protector against all destructive actions. Its role is exclusively negative.

But what about the positive? If government—physical force—is ruled out as the stimulator, director, manager of constructive and creative activities, to whom are such activities left? Our answer: to individuals acting voluntarily, cooperatively, competitively, privately—as they freely choose. Government’s role can be likened to that of an umpire: to see that there is a fair field and no favors, that no special privilege is extended to anyone—not one!

Why my contention that 99 percent of adult Americans think I go too far in staking out the limits of government power? Except for out-and-out communists or socialists—there are countless thousands of these in the U.S.A. today wearing other labels—99 percent of the remaining citizens will more or less agree with my position. However, most everyone insists on an exception; they “leak” here or there, that is, they have a “but” that pleads a special privilege for themselves that only an omnipotent government can bestow. Let government stay within bounds—except to serve them—is what it amounts to![3] Ideological partners—almost!

These “leaks,” however, give the case away. It puts the “leakers” on the other side. One “but” endorses the principle of omnipotent government no less than two “buts” or a thousand. What could be more irrational than the notion that one should feather his own nest at the expense of others but let not others feather their nests with what is mine?

Trust thyself—some others do! Who are these others? We do not know precisely, only that they are among the tens of thousands who have more faith in free men than in fettered men. We trust the 99 percent more than they trust themselves! What is meant by this? They do not go all the way in trusting themselves as free and self-responsible citizens. We trust them, as such, all the way. They harbor a fear that they could not thrive without some governmental largesse—plunder. We would replace that fear with the confidence that these millions, acting freely, cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily, privately would maximize their chances of success. We are far more on the side of their true self-interest than they are!

What is our unconventional behavior that causes these people to claim we go too far in limiting political power? It is an attempt at disciplined, consistent thinking, quite contrary to the current mode: Adhere strictly to an ideal that Immanuel Kant called good will. The meaning Kant attached to this phrase needs explanation. By “will” he meant the individual’s ability rationally to will his own actions. But the word “good” is the key: the adjective “good” can be used—said Kant—only if the principle of universality can be applied to one’s maxims.[4]

A sample maxim may help to clarify Kant’s point, to remove the obscurity: I have the right to my life, livelihood, liberty. Is that a good maxim? According to Kant, only if one can rationally concede that identical right to all other mortal beings—universality. Can I? Yes! Therefore, the maxim is good.

Reverse the maxim: I have the right to take the life, livelihood, liberty of another. Good? Only if I can rationally concede the right of murder, theft, enslavement to all living mortals. Can I? Indeed, not! Therefore, it is not good.

The charge that we “go too far” because we are too consistent is not a valid criticism, in my view. Should not every person at least try to be consistent?

How can one be consistent in an inconsistent world—contradictions galore? Bear in mind that we have only the choice of living in the world as it is or not living at all. If one chooses to live, he must engage in all sorts of activities at odds with his beliefs, that go against the grain; he is committed to live here and now, however absurd the situation may appear to him. He cannot possibly live the consistent life.

Reflect on those of us who “go too far” in limiting dictatorial power, and the thousands of ways in which our ideal is thwarted. For example, take just one of these infractions: socialized mail, anathema of the first order. Yet, we live with it, use it. In a word, we live inconsistently.

Where, then, are we to find the sole opportunity for practicing the consistent life? In our proclaimed positions! We can stand ramrod straight in our written and spoken opposition by demonstrating the efficacy of mail delivery were it left to the free market, that is, to men acting voluntarily, competitively, cooperatively, privately. We can explain that our inefficient mail service is as good as it is despite, not because of, its political authoritarianism; that every item that gets delivered stems from a leakage of free human energy and none—not one item—by reason of the “service’s” dictatorial power.

We can proclaim what we believe to be right even though we must live with what we are certain is wrong. This is how to be consistent and no one can be too consistent.

Anyone who consistently stands for the freedom philosophy trusts the exception-makers more than they trust themselves. Their road leads to all-out statism, which would destroy them as free and self-responsible individuals. The road of the freedom devotees, on the other hand, opens the way to all persons to become their potentially creative selves. Trust thyself, not dictocrats! No one else who ever lived can manage your life as well as you can. No one can achieve life’s purpose by remote control.

[1] See The State by Woodrow Wilson (Boston: D. C. Heath & Co., 1900), p. 572.

[2] Ludwig von Mises, Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, Third Revised Edition, 1966), p. 142.

[3] “To serve them” includes forcing others to gratify their charitable feelings—support of government welfare programs and the like.

[4] See Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals by Immanuel Kant (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1959).

21

AIM TO BE A SEER

In the works of man, as in those of nature, it is really the motives which chiefly merit attention.

—GOETHE

To live the aimless life is to spend this mortal moment with the undiscovered self; it is to exist in an obstructed universe, below the human potential—breathing, but intellectually and spiritually dormant! Woe to individuals thus afflicted; pity upon them—and upon any society over which they rule. The free society is out of the question without a predominance of mental and spiritual activity. So, as Goethe suggests, let us look to our motives. In the absence of those whose aim is to walk in the way of truth, our society is doomed.

Why aim to be a seer? The reason is suggested by one of the all-time greats, Leonardo da Vinci:

. . . people fall into three classes: Those who see [seers], those who see when shown, and those who do not see.

Thomas Alva Edison also found three classes of people:

Five percent of the people think, ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

As background for my thesis, let me cite two other seers:

That man thinks he knows everything, whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing, but I know I know nothing.

—Socrates

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

—Emerson

For my own edification, more than for that of others, I shall apply my own value judgments to these observations in the above order. The far-from-wise assessing the far-wiser!

Leonardo speaks of “those who see when shown.” Who is it that can point the way for them? The seers, that is, the Leonardos past and present, those gifted with superior understanding along this or that line of thought relative to the rest of humanity.

It is important to recognize that even Leonardo possessed a finite mind, as do we all. He saw but an infinitesimal part of Infinite Truth. This giant, however, was far ahead of most others along the numerous lines of his uniqueness—for instance, foreseeing flying machines and drawing designs of them five centuries ago!

If we can see when shown, what quality must we possess to spot the seers out front? It is precisely the same quality that earmarks the seers: “. . . drawn by the unrealized toward realization . . . toward clarification, toward consciousness.”[1] When we are thus sensitized, the pacesetters, the exemplars come within our scope. Seekers respond to the magnetism of the seer, whoever, wherever, or whenever he may be.

Note that Leonardo’s third class is composed of “those who do not see,” rather than those who cannot see. This is a hopeful view; it is possible for anyone to see, even though many never do.

Edison, a profound thinker and possibly the greatest inventive genius of all time, when asked from whence his ideas came, replied, “They come as if from out of the blue.” Many creative individuals have made the identical acknowledgment, implying that their minds were attuned or receptive to some higher intelligence.

The “Wizard of Menlo Park” divided people into three classes, as did Leonardo. But Edison presumed to count noses, that is, he applied percentages to each class. In the light of the wisdom he intercepted, I must conclude that this resort to numbers was mere hyperbole—“exaggeration for effect; not to be taken seriously.” For surely those who think—seers—and those who think they think, and those who would rather die than think, are self-determined rather than subject to census by anyone else—not even by Edison.

From whence come these all-time greats? The answer given by Professor N. J. Berrill, eminent zoologist, holds out hopes for each of us:

These [Leonardo da Vinci and others] are uncommon giants, I fully realize, but they are giants who grew out of the so-called common stock of a multitude of uncommon individuals of lesser stature. They stand as symbols of the creative individuality of human beings. . . .[2]

As to inventive genius in general, reflect on the following: “. . . the father of photography was an army officer; and of the electric motor, a book-binder’s clerk. The inventor of the telegraph was a portrait painter; and of the jacquard loom, a dressmaker. A farmer invented the typewriter; a poet, the sewing machine; a cabinet-maker, the cotton gin; and a coal miner, the locomotive. The telephone was the after-school work of a teacher of the deaf; the disc talking machine, the night work of a clothing salesman; the wax cylinder phonograph, of a lawyer’s clerk; the typesetting machine, a grocery-man. A physician made the first pneumatic tire because his little son was an invalid. The story of nearly every great invention has been the result of some one riding a hobby.”[3] What does the author, John Williams, mean in this context by “riding a hobby”? What is the other phrasing? Pursuing one’s uniqueness! Discovering one’s self! This is the route to becoming a seer, a path blazed by Edison and countless others.

Socrates referred to himself as a philosophical midwife. Why would he assume so modest a role? Whence his reputation for being one of the wisest men who ever lived, although he claimed to know nothing? A seer, yes; but wise enough to claim no credit for it.

This Athenian idealist philosopher and teacher never thought of himself as the source of such wisdom as passed his lips; rather, he regarded himself as the go-between—the receiver of a Higher Intelligence which he passed on to those who sought enlightenment from him.

This calls to mind God’s promise to the people of Israel that if they obey his moral and civil law—righteous actions—they will be blessed with material abundance. But he warns that this very blessing can serve as a snare. If they forget the real source they will exalt themselves thus: “My power and the power of mine hand hath gotten me this wealth.” God then promises the inevitable reaction against man’s false claim of divinity: “I testify against you this day that ye shall surely perish.”[4]

While the Mosaic law in this case refers to material abundance, it is clear that “false claims of divinity” apply no less to the spiritual realm of ideas, insights, intuitive flashes, wisdom, enlightenment. Perish as a result of false claims in this domain? Indeed yes! Have a hard look at the world around us, heading as it is toward disaster. Why? Millions of people are thinking of themselves as the source of wisdom and, in consequence, are lording it over others. Rampant authoritarianism!

With Socrates, it is possible for others of us to enter into the realm of the Infinite Unknown. When we do so, there comes a light: Such seeing is experienced, more or less, by all who live, or ever have or will inhabit the earth—except the willfully blind. “None so blind as those who will not see.” Not those who do not but those who will not!

For analogy, imagine 100,000 people in the huge colosseum on a moonless night. Utter darkness! In the audience are a dozen or so geniuses, scattered here and there—Leonardo, Socrates, Edison, and their rare kind—each of whom lifts a torch. The darkness remains. Now, let each of the 100,000 simultaneously strike a match. Bright as day!

This is how Creation works its wonders when each is free to pursue his uniqueness. Over time, countless millions of discoveries, inventions, truths: a teacher of the deaf and the telephone, a grocer and the typesetting machine, a father of an invalid son and the pneumatic tire, an unknown Hindu and the concept of zero. This is the overall luminosity by which we live and prosper. It accounts for that wisdom in the market which is far, far greater than exists in any discrete individual—even a Socrates. Freedom by a recognition of the Source—not mine but Thine!

The source? Ralph Waldo Emerson identifies the well-spring as “immense intelligence.” We are, he asserts, “receivers of its truth and organs of its activity.” To become seers—beholders of truth and justice—we do no more than allow a passage of its beams. In a word, we allow the “immense intelligence” to flow and intercept as much of it as we can. This is the source, beyond you or me or any other finite being.

When an individual thinks of himself as source—“false claim to divinity”—the source thereby ceases to function and to flow.

This attempt to stop the flow . . . has proved the greatest obstruction in history. It causes war, unending misery and chaos. It is based on the illusion that man in his littleness is all. It assumes that there is no universal power, no God, no Plan. It is man getting in the way, man out of the main stream. There are only two kinds of people, the sick and the well, and the sick are those who block the rhythm of flowing and ascension.[5]

I would conclude with these three thoughts: First, reflect upon the praise, adulation, esteem heaped upon Socrates, Leonardo, Edison, Emerson, and numerous other seers. Inflate their ego? Indeed not! These men were aware of two incontestable facts: (1) that of not being the source; and (2) that taking credit is a “false claim of divinity” which, in turn, switches off the Source, allowing no more passage of its beams, nothing remaining to intercept.

Second, it may be possible for me to see a light; the light cannot see me. I may grasp the enlightenment that was Emerson’s; that enlightenment is unaware of my existence. The initiative—in both cases—must be mine. As to the “immense intelligence,” I do not know what it is, only that it is. If this mysterious Intelligence does know of me, I have no way of knowing for certain that it does. Why, then, should I not reach up for it, that is, apprehend what I can of it? “Insight seems to be the voice of the universal power. . . . And it comes only to that mind which consents to be used.”[6] By reaching, one consents.

Finally, let each of us look for as much of that light as is within his power to perceive. Be among those who see: seers. Let others who can see more—the Leonardos—do their more, as I do my little. This, in my view, is the prescription for a harmonious society. Insofar as we become seers, freedom reigns!

[1] See The Creative Process, edited by Brewster Ghiselin (New York: A Mentor Book, New American Library, 1952), p. 18.

[2] See Inherit the Earth by N. J. Berrill (New York: Dodd, Mead & Company, 1966), p. 209.

[3] The Knack of Using Your Subconscious Mind by John K. Williams (Scarsdale, N.Y.: The Updegraff Press, 1952) p. 87.

[4] See Deuteronomy 8: 6–20.

[5] See Consent by Newton Dillaway (Unity Village, Mo.: Unity Books, 1967), p. 94.

[6] Ibid., p. 28.

22

BELIEVE THE BEST OF EVERY MAN

I have believed the best of every man,

And find that to believe it is enough

To make a bad man show him at his best,

Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

—WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS

Yeats, the 1923 Nobel Prize winner in literature, reveals far more than literary talent; this verse shows a remarkable philosophic and psychologic insight. To believe the best of every man assuredly is among the highest attainments of mortal beings. It is difficult to do because it runs counter to our instincts.

It is easy enough to believe the best of those few we observe and know and automatically classify as “good men.” But our very act of judging one man to be “good” leads just as thoughtlessly to the judgment of others as “bad men,” of whom no good might be expected.

Take my own case. Do I believe the best of every man? Up until now, no! Can I? The attainment is just this side of sprouting wings. Is it worth the try? Yes, anything that’s right justifies the effort. And for devotees of the freedom philosophy, we have here an overlooked formula of enormous importance. Here is an obstacle which might be likened to a block of granite. It is, as some thinkers have suggested, an insurmountable wall in the pathway of the weak but a steppingstone in the pathway of the strong.

We favor the free society, or well we might; we aspire to be strong and not weak. Let us then examine Yeats’ high attainment as a steppingstone.

There are two steps in this “block of granite.” The first is a belief in the best of every man. If we search hard enough, we may recognize that there is a bit of good even in a thief—he may be good to his dog. As Joaquin Miller phrased it:

In men whom men condemn as ill

I find so much of goodness still.

Is such recognition “enough to make a bad man show him at his best”? According to Franklin, “There is no Man so Bad but he secretly respects the Good.” And undeniably, we who search for and call attention to the good in bad men advance the good in ourselves.

Assess this idea the other way around. You and I, though aware of faults galore, are disposed to rank ourselves among the good men. When others call attention to the best in us, does it not cause us to swing our lanterns higher? I’ll wager it works that way on you as it does on me. We can learn how others react by simply discovering how we respond. The message comes through loud and clear.

The second and by far the most difficult step in this “block of granite” is to practice what we believe to be right. It’s one thing to know the right but quite another matter to live it. I am acquainted with countless persons whose announced notions are, in my view, ridiculous. Do I overlook their opinions and try to see the best in them? To the contrary, I focus on the worst in them and link the notions to the persons. Alone in this? Hardly! Mine is a confession that might well be made by the vast majority of freedom devotees, and most everyone else.

To dwell on the mistakes or evils I see in others is a degrading activity on my part though I confess to doing it often. Having made the confession, what is next? A personal decision: I hereby resolve to get this malignancy out of me; I shall no longer even think of others as bad and for two reasons: (1) such thinking is bad for me and (2) it does injury to all others who are the objects of this mischief; it accentuates the badness in them!

Does this mean that pernicious notions should go without censure? Of course not! But condemn the deed, not the doer! The formula is this: Think not of the tyrant as a fool, only of the domineering trait as foolish. It has been wisely said, “Hate not the sinner, only the sin.” Censure the doer for his deed and he’ll defend the deed. But explain the harmful consequences of the deed, that is, divorce the action from the actor and, if he sees why his way is wrong, he will abandon it promptly. No one tries to do poorly.

To illustrate how this approach works, let me cite the story of a friend who found himself unfavorably disposed toward one of his associates. He had been taught not to criticize another for his faults but, rather, to await some action which he could approve and applaud. He waited for six months and then came an action he could sincerely and honestly commend. Friends ever after! This brought out the best in both. Each swung his lantern higher.

Over the years, in the works of numerous famous men, I have found all too many ideas contrary to my way of thinking. But to berate them for this would be utter folly on my part. Instead, I must study their acts and writings for things I can applaud, as in this passage from Arnold Toynbee:

When man mistakes himself for God, he is sounding the death knell of human freedom. For, when man comes to believe that he is God, he falls to worshipping himself. And when man worships himself, his human idol is not the individual human being: it is the collective power of corporate humanity. . . . The idolization of collective human power turns all the idolaters into slaves.

It is not that my praise of this wise observation will cause Toynbee to swing his lantern higher—he never heard of me. But reflect on the added attention that would be given to this enlightened statement among those in my orbit who are his admirers, or the effect on the celebrated historian himself were this approach used by the great and the near great known to him. All would be to the good, bringing out the best in all—swinging their lanterns higher.

Here, in my judgment, is an important—indeed a necessary step—in winning friends for freedom. In any event, it is a step I am determined to take regardless of the difficulty. Thoreau encourages me: “It is very rare that you meet with obstacles in this world which the humblest man has not the facilities to surmount.” In all humility, then, let me attend to my part, the only part in the world for which I am responsible.

23

I LIKE YOU, TOO

It makes all the difference in the world whether we put Truth in the first place or in the second place.

—ARCHBISHOP WHATELEY

Switching from one TV channel to another, I stopped momentarily to audition a debate between a noted socialist and a self-styled conservative. What a confrontation! And to what purpose? It was obvious that neither party moved the other his way. Each came to listen only to himself, and went away more firmly convinced than before. To the viewing audience, this had the value of a prize fight: entertainment. No enlightenment could possibly result from such a hassle, for each contestant rated verbal victory ahead of truth. Each aimed to outwit the other and thus gain applause or perhaps a following.

But let’s not judge such wrangling too harshly; most of us are addicted ourselves, and daily indulge in the same thing small-scale. That is, we lock horns with our ideological opposites, and with no more shedding of light than from the TV performance.

This poses the question: What then? Will not freedom suffer if we drop our combative postures? My answer, having been learned the hard way, has changed from an insistent “Yes!” to an emphatic “No!” What follows is the case for a better way.

Several of us were relaxing at luncheon during a FEE Seminar. A free market affirmation of mine, quite at odds with popular notions, evoked from a lady, “I absolutely disagree with you.” My response, “I like you, too,” brought a good-natured chuckle and ended the discussion on that subject for the time being. At the Seminar’s conclusion, the lady waved a smiling farewell, “I like you, too.”

It isn’t that “I like you, too” is necessarily an appropriate response to a mind that has suddenly closed; but it symbolizes a recommended attitude, that is, if the purpose of discussion is mutual enlightenment. Upgrading understanding has no greater deterrent than two overly-serious, humorless, closed minds squared off against each other in verbal combat. Nothing but ill-feeling can result from such behavior. To open the door, educationally, one of the two must break the combative spell.

Though it affronts my instincts, I am done with argument! Contentiousness and confrontations demote rather than promote the ideal. And that cuts out a lot of talk! Leave verbal combativeness to those who naively expect that repulsion will somehow induce attraction, that intolerance of another will draw him to you, that displaying a closed mind will inspire others to explore it, that know-it-all-ness will invite others to partake of the know-it-all’s “knowledge.” Might as well expect darkness to give light.

Indeed, I have resolved not to enter upon ideological and philosophical matters with anyone unless that other is seeking light from me or I from him toward which we should forever strive. Such remarks as “I absolutely disagree with you,” and other variations of intellectual absolutism, can hardly be construed as quests for light.

A logical corollary of this posture requires of me that I never think ill of another for avoiding my light or even for slamming the door in my face. It’s his door. My only point is that a mind closed to me is the signal for me to stop, or to introduce some disarming humor, or turn the talk to trivia. It is the signal to look elsewhere, to a more fruitful engagement. That bit of discussion is all over—finished!—unless one lets his disappointment overrule his reason and goes on to “spin his wheels,” that is, to waste his time and energy.

“But,” goes the rejoinder, “were I to confine my ideological talk to those seeking light from me or I from them, I probably wouldn’t do any talking at all,” the implication being that freedom would thereby suffer. Wrong! Silence is far better than talk that gives offense; further, quietude is preferable to the kind of talk for which there are no ears.

The rule of silence on ideological matters until asked, if faithfully adhered to, would seem at first blush to dispense with nearly all discussions of political economy. Quite the contrary! It is easily demonstrable that invited, much-desired, and appreciated talk can be substituted for that brand of uninvited talk which either offends or falls on deaf ears.

Over and over again we hear the plaint, “I don’t have time for the kind of study and reflection that would make me a competent student and teacher of the freedom philosophy!” Invariably, these words are from those addicted to argument. By their own admission they lack competence; yet, they fritter away a great deal of time in useless if not offensive talk.

Were these persons to shun argument—confrontations—they would have time galore, enough to stock the mind with better understanding and a more skillful exposition. As self-improvement takes place, others begin seeking one’s counsel; as proficiency is achieved, the demand for talk increases. Countless instances can be cited of a demand too great for accommodation. And with the doors of perception wide open—eager listeners!

The rule would seem to be: Go only where called, but do everything within one’s power to qualify to be called.

Consider the distinction between talking and writing. Few of us talk to ourselves; most talk is in the presence of others. If it is unwanted, there is no genteel means of escape. Offense, in these circumstances, is unavoidable. Writing can be and often is contentious, but everyone is free not to read it. And a nonreader can be unattentive without being rude. The written polemic has an advantage over the spoken, for it carries no built-in obtrusiveness; it allows freedom of choice.

Exploratory, as distinguished from contentious writing, paves the way for invited talk. Enlightening writers are much in demand as speakers.

Further, writing is a stern taskmaster; it permits one to see with a discerning and skeptical eye what really is in the mind. Time and again we hear the erroneous notion, “The idea is as clear as crystal but I can’t put it in writing.” Unless one admits having no vocabulary, what cannot be put clearly in writing is not clear in the mind. Much of the loose ideological talk we hear is only muddled thinking; it is composed of a mental potpourri, an agglomeration of notions that have not been subjected to refinement by writing. It often happens that a “clear-as-crystal” idea, when committed to paper, is revealed as either fuzzy or false. For improvement, one must return again to the mind for clarification. The thinking-it-through process involved in writing is the genesis of the kind of enlightening talk that is avidly sought and that opens the doors of perception.

Any improving person becomes tolerant of those who hold differing or even opposing views; for he finds that today he doesn’t exactly agree with his yesterday’s self. Holding no grudge against his earlier unenlightened self, how can he logically think ill of another for not agreeing with his present views? Indeed, the improving person can quite honestly respond to one who absolutely disagrees: “I like you, too.” And what a boon this attitude would be to the ideal we seek!

24

THE GREATEST GAME IN LIFE

Now, you cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.

—C. S. LEWIS

The humorous remark by C. S. Lewis about hatching or rotting was inspired by Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher of twenty-five centuries ago: “Man is on earth as in an egg.” While analogies are always a risky means of communication, especially if there is an element of comedy in them, there is, nonetheless, a thought here worth exploring.

Conceded, eggs and human beings are far from comparable. Many eggs are not fertile and, thus, have no chance of hatching; they are destined to be eaten or to rot. Human beings, on the other hand—all of them—have the potentiality of hatching. Again I quote this bit of wisdom by the eminent German psychologist, Fritz Kunkel: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

What is the generally overlooked feature of the individual that has the potentiality of hatching or the dreadful alternative of rotting—that either blooms or decays? Kunkel gives us the clue: “Hidden powers lurk in the unconscious.” That is to say, we possess powers of which we are not normally aware. So, our problem is to become conscious of those powers. The alternative is stagnation at the unconscious level which, in itself, is rotting. In a word, it is consciousness that has the potentiality of hatching.

I have arrived at this conclusion by asking some difficult questions and finding answers that seem to square with reality. For instance: What is man’s earthly purpose? Is it fame, fortune, political power, popularity, longevity, retirement to a do-nothing status, as so many seem to believe?

To my way of thinking, there is no rational answer to this question—what is man’s earthly purpose?—except as our answer is reasoned from a basic premise. My premise or fundamental point of reference is founded on three assumptions:

- Man did not create himself, for it is easily demonstrable that man knows very little about himself. Therefore, my first assumption is the primacy and supremacy of an Infinite Consciousness.

- My second assumption is also demonstrable. While difficult, it is possible for the individual to expand his own awareness, perception, consciousness.

- My third assumption is a profound belief that the intellect—one’s mind—is independent; that is to say, it is not subordinate to the organic matter of which one’s body is composed. An inference from this belief is a conviction of the immortality of the human spirit or consciousness, this earthly moment not being all there is to it. It is consciousness that is immortalized, not the body or wealth or fame or any such thing. In a word, consciousness is the reality!

Conceding the correctness of these assumptions, man’s earthly purpose is clear as crystal. It is to see how close one can come during this mortal moment to expanding his consciousness into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness—to see how close one can come to a realization of those aptitudes and potentialities uniquely his own, there being no two of us alike. Summarized, my highest purpose is to develop, grow, emerge, evolve; it is not to stagnate—rot—but rather to hatch!

My rules for hatching may not be the best for you, but I offer these two for what they are worth. First, resolve to begin thinking for self on the more important life issues—individualistic and societal: Start the cerebral machinery; avoid stagnation. Except for mundane matters, an alarming number of people in today’s world let others do their thinking for them; they are only imitators and rarely know who to imitate. Certainly, seek the counsel of those considered wiser; but make up one’s own mind on all matters pertaining to self and society.

Second, answer the question, what am I here for? In brief, acquire a basic premise. After finding one that satisfies, size up all ideas in its light. If an idea is antagonistic to the premise, reject it. If, on the other hand, it is in harmony with and promotive of the premise, accept and abide by it.

The meaning of “abide by it”? Stand by one’s honest convictions “come hell or high water”! This is integrity. But is there not the danger that one might be honestly convinced that he should, for instance, feather his own nest at the expense of others? Not if he is thinking for self, has a sound premise, reasons logically and deductively from it, and abides by his findings. Hatching—expanding the consciousness—exposes more and more of the unknown. The more one knows the more he knows he does not know. Indeed, if one is not daily becoming more and more aware of how little he knows, he is not growing; if humility is not replacing arrogance, he is not hatching.

A bit more on this point. Stagnation is not the curse of mental sluggards only. The cessation of growth or hatching afflicts those with the highest IQ’s perhaps more than the mill run of us. The explanation? If one be smarter, more brilliant, than all others observed by him, why go further? Isn’t such “superiority” adequate? With the eye cast toward the relative inferiority of others, it is not turned toward the yet-to-know. Stagnation at the high IQ level! Know-it-alls! Here is a useful guideline: Any time an individual is observed whose tendency is to lord it over others, either in the home or public office, draw the accurate conclusion that he has stagnated, regardless of his so-called intelligence quotient, be it high or low!

Any individual who is truly growing in consciousness, be his IQ moderate or high, will grasp the simple fact of self-responsibility and its correlate, freedom. He cannot help seeing that no one can be self-responsible unless free and that no one can be free unless self-responsible. No dictocrats among those who are hatching!

Now to the importance of individual hatching as related to society. One cannot imagine a good society composed only of persons at the stagnation stage. On what does a good society depend? On a natural aristocracy! Who are these aristocrats? Only those who are growing in consciousness—hatching!

Said Thomas Jefferson, “There is a natural aristocracy among men; it is composed of virtues and talents.” Inane or silly notions in the heads of men are no more numerous today than a century ago. Why are they more in evidence now than then? When the natural aristocracy is in the pink of condition, such notions are held in abeyance; people do not like to make fools of themselves before exemplars, those for whom there is a high respect. But when this natural aristocracy is in a slump, as today, these notions have little if anything standing against them. If it is all right for leaders in business, labor, politics, religion, education not to heed integrity and the other virtues, why not all right for everyone?

The exemplars, those who set high standards of conduct are, at best, few in number, on occasion nearly extinct. If the U.S.A. is to move again in the right direction, a natural aristocracy has to be reborn. Definitely, this is not a numbers but a quality problem. Where must one seek this quality? From that individual—man or woman—viewed in the mirror; look not elsewhere!

True, hatching must be the objective of the individual for his own sake—the eye focused on the growth of one’s own consciousness, not the reforming of others. My hatching can only be achieved in me and by me. Self-interest, however, inspires the hope that others will also grow in consciousness at a pace even faster than one’s own. Why? Being surrounded by persons in a state of stagnation depresses rather than encourages personal achievement. On the other hand, superior exemplars—aristocrats of the highest order—create a magnetic field toward which one is drawn. Exemplars are one’s benefactors.

What to do? Try one’s best and hope for the best; outdistance everyone you possibly can, and hope that others will outdistance you. Make hatching a game of leapfrog—the greatest game in life!

25

WHO IS A TEACHER?

There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.

—A SCOTTISH EPITAPH

We are pursuing Truth when searching for a Teacher; we stray far from it when promoting ourselves as teachers.

Here, I am trying to deal with two different roles in life. One is often mistaken for the other, so let us mark the distinction between them by using “teacher” and Teacher! The first is what millions of classroom instructors call themselves; the second is a tribute one person pays to another. The former demands, more often than not, that you listen to him; the latter is well aware that the student listens only to those he thinks will enlighten him.

I emphasized the idea of Teacher in a brief eulogy to Ludwig von Mises at the Memorial Service for him on October 16, 1973:

“The proudest tribute mankind pays to one it would most honor is to call him Teacher. The man who releases an idea which helps men understand themselves and the universe puts mankind forever in his debt. In whatever directions progress is possible, the Teacher is one who has moved out ahead of inquiring humanity and by the sheer power of ideas has drawn men toward him. Men would stagnate otherwise. Historians may label an age for some ruler, such as the age of Charlemagne or Louis XIV, but the true Teacher is not for an age; he is for all time.

“Ludwig Mises is truly—and I use this in the present tense—a Teacher. More than two generations have studied under him and countless thousands of others have learned from his books. Books and students are the enduring monuments of a Teacher and these monuments are his. This generation of students will pass away but the ideas set in motion by his writings will be a fountain source for new students for countless generations to come.

“We have learned far more from Ludwig Mises than economics. We have come to know an exemplar of scholarship, a veritable giant of erudition, steadfastness, and dedication. Truly one of the great Teachers of all time! And so, all of us salute you, Ludwig Mises, as you depart this mortal life and join the immortals.”

For well over half a century thousands of students in Europe and America entered classrooms that they might learn from this great Teacher. Yet, never in the 32 years of our intimate acquaintance did I ever hear him refer to himself as a “teacher.” Indeed, he was continuously seeking light, as were those who came to share his wisdom.

“There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.” To overlook this simple fact leads to discouragement and disaster. Therefore, it is important to realize that ignorance gives way to enlightenment precisely as darkness recedes when light is increased. Ignorance? In technology, no; knowledge in this area has increased fantastically. However, in matters of political economy, ignorance appears to be gaining until it seems overwhelming, unbeatable. Reflect on these words of another outstanding Teacher, W. A. Paton, Professor Emeritus of Accounting and of Economics, University of Michigan:

“Although the only form of life on the planet capable of careful scrutiny and pondering with respect to himself and his surroundings, Homo sapiens has often proved to be an easy mark for the witch doctor, the soothsayer, the spellbinder, and other nonsense peddlers. But I doubt if at any earlier period were people generally so susceptible to economic pipe dreams and pie-in-the-sky proposals as we are today. If we don’t go beyond American history the case is clear.

“Our forefathers, at no stage, would have widely accepted the view that the road to prosperity, the abundant life for all, is by way of blocking early entry to the working ranks, an enforced 40-hour—or less—work week, with the trimmings of minimum wage laws, paid vacations, featherbedding and soldiering, and retirement with a handsome pension after 30 years of service, coupled with a program of government handouts on a vast scale to those unemployed for almost any reason or excuse. They were addicted to hard work, recognized that we can’t consume what we don’t produce, and were skeptical of all schemes to pick ourselves up by our bootstraps. And they would be shocked by today’s widespread tide of vandalism, violence, and disorder, which is becoming a serious obstacle to efficient utilization of available resources and increasing—or even maintaining—the level of economic output.

“It should also be noted that the astrologers, fortunetellers, seers, gurus, ESP experts, and assorted cult leaders—as well as the economic con men—are flourishing these days.”

So it is dark! Hopeless? Of course not! But we need to re-examine the methods of freedom, whose devotees, all too often, stumble aimlessly in the authoritarian darkness that pervades the face of the earth. The solution? Set the method straight, that is, switch from “teacher” to Teacher. There are two guidelines which, if scrupulously observed, will lead toward freedom.

Better, not bitter! “It is better to light a candle than to curse the darkness.” Cursing the darkness is harmful, not helpful. Not only does this tactic fail to dispel the prevailing darkness but, worse, it darkens and literally poisons the soul of anyone who so indulges, as most M.D.’s will attest. Be done with bitterness! What then? Accept the fact that neither you nor anyone else has gone very far in understanding the freedom philosophy and explaining it clearly. Frankly, all of us are babes in the woods. The best any of us can do is to concentrate on achieving maturity, on becoming better. Not only is this procedure joyous and psychologically sound but, to the extent it succeeds, to that extent is light increased and darkness dispelled.

Look up, not down. Few, indeed, are those who resist the powerful and nonrational tendency to look down upon others who are thought to be lacking in wisdom. By downgrading others, the individual stares into the darkness and, with his eyes thus cast, becomes a “teacher.” “Listen to me,” he shouts, a message for which there are no ears to hear or eyes to see. A broadcaster, but no receiving sets; a broadcaster who has closed his mind to the enlightenment which could be his if he were to raise his sights, rather than lower them!

Look up to what—or to whom? Look to the Teacher! Probe all mankind, past and present, for those who are wiser than self. Wherever you stand in the scale of wisdom, the Teacher is not difficult to find. Forever look upward and listen; become a receiving set. Truth arises from strange, varied, and unsuspected sources and is revealed exclusively to seekers. “None are so blind as those who will not see.”

Again, that bit of wisdom: “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.” If I succeed in lighting my wee candle from my chosen Teacher—and others do the same—then we multiply the number of Teachers; darkness, having no resistance to light, will gradually and surely recede. Enlightenment comes in no other way, but invariably comes if we follow correct method!

26

THE RARE MOMENT

The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at, but the moment when we are capable of seeing.

—JOSEPH WOOD KRUTCH

When is there “something worth looking at”? Any time! There are good things to see at all times, in all places, and by all individuals. It’s a matter of personal choice; and how varied are these value judgments of individuals! For instance, there are many who are more attracted to the labor-saving device known as thievery than to anything else. They think stealing is a procedure “worth looking at.”

Pause here for a moment. Some of us think of thievery—whether carried out by individuals or practiced collectively “from each according to ability, to each according to need”—as very low on the scale of values. Why? Simply because our judgments differ from, and are presumed to be at a higher level than, those of the thief. But we must be careful in condemning persons whose value judgments are, in our opinion, lower than our own. For implicit in such an attitude is the claim that we are superior. After all, who is any of us but an imperfect mortal! If we demand that others see things as we do, we are opening the door to the possibility that we should be forced to look at only what a governing majority of others believe to be worth looking at. And bear in mind that no two of us have the same judgments; indeed, one’s own values change from one day to the next. So, we need the flexibility to cope with constant changes. I would let each decide for himself what’s worth looking at and suffer the penalties of his errors or the blessings of his righteousness.

Man’s ideas as to what’s worth looking at range from pornography to sunsets; from Picasso to Raphael; from the Pyramids to the Jungfrau; from ancient ruins to the Taj Mahal; from Soviet Life to the Holy Bible; from atoms to galaxies; from Bach to rock. Ideas and ambitions range from state socialism to individual liberty; from a square meal to an elaborate symphony; from quiet repose to strenuous executive activity; from a decent burial to a voyage of exploration over uncharted seas; from the cheapest fiction to the purest science or philosophy; from thinking for self to imitating others—you name it!

Krutch is right. The rare moment is not the moment when there is something worth looking at. What could be more common? Every moment of one’s life affords that opportunity.

The rare moment is when we are capable of seeing—that rare glimpse into the mystery of that which is observed. Most people only look at a flash of lightning; they see nothing of its miraculous nature. While no one knows what it is, there have been a few who see beyond what meets the eye; they have seen enough to generate and harness electricity to our use. This kind of seeing—insight—occurs only in the rarest of moments.

Many of us look at a sunset and are overcome by its beauty. How few of us, even today, perceive that the sun does not set? Many see no more than was seen by the first man on earth. How many, before or since Copernicus, have understood that the setting of the sun is an illusion, rather that the earth is rotating? Rare moments, indeed.

Another example of a rare moment: Ever since man first set foot in Switzerland, that majestic mountain, the Jungfrau, has ranked high among the beauties of nature, truly worth looking at. People by untold thousands have stood at its base looking up in awe. Around the turn of the century an entrepreneur had a vision, a moment of seeing: Why not multiply what’s worth looking at? Make it possible for the thousands to go atop the Jungfrau that they might see the beauty from that vantage point! Some twelve miles of tunnel was bored through the rock, a cog railroad installed, and a wonderful hostelry built within the mountain near the top. Private enterprise! No government subsidy! Just one of those rare moments of seeing which is more in evidence when man is free and self-responsible.

Near the top of the list of things thought to be worth looking at is wealth—material affluence. The aggregate of the moments spent in seeking wealth staggers the imagination. But note how rare the moments when individuals are capable of seeing the preconditions for gaining affluence; a society of free and self-responsible individuals with government limited to codifying and inhibiting destructive actions. If government thus performs, people are free to act creatively as they please. And there is no other way to material well-being.

Not seeing for themselves, the masses listen to false prophets, persons who promise that we can spend ourselves rich, that prosperity derives from dictatorial control over wages, hours of labor, exchanges, prices, and so on. They hear the promises but cannot foresee the consequences of the methods to be used.

Wrote Ralph Barton Perry: “Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are.”

An affluent society cannot prevail unless individuals see that their economic well-being stems from the general practice of the principles of private ownership, the free market, and limited government.

Perhaps the power to run the lives of others tops the list of things a majority believe to be worth looking at. Rare, indeed, are the moments when these individuals are capable of seeing the futility of their way. Were I the wisest philosopher or politician who ever lived, there is not one of these meddlers who believes I could run his life better than he. But he, unwise, has no doubt about his powers to run your life and mine. Why unwise? The very first step in wisdom is an awareness of how little one knows. Nor do such people see that power corrupts them!

Most of us doubtless have the potential to see ever so much more than we customarily perceive. We rarely see more than we wish to see. As unique individuals, we tend to specialize, to focus on the details from a particular point of view. Such focusing gives us more intimate knowledge of the tree, the trunk, the root, the twig, the leaf, the miracle within the single cell. I have my special interest, you yours, things we see more clearly, while neglecting many other possible vistas. The danger of too narrow a specialization is that we can’t see the forest for the trees.

The “forest” worth looking at which most intrigues me is a viable society, one featured by harmonious relationships, one in which the individual may proceed, unobstructed by others toward a realization of his creative aptitudes and potentialities. If a person fails to overcome his own obstacles—frustrations, superstitions, imperfections, ignorance, no will to strive—that’s his problem. But if the obstacles are put there by others—if the individual is compelled to live as others dictate—that is everyone’s problem. Freedom is everyone’s business!

Why is freedom everyone’s business? It is because my freedom depends on yours and vice versa. There is but faint appreciation of the high degree of specialization in contemporary society, of how dependent each of us is on the others. In short, we are now interdependent beyond recall; there is no turning back. This is to say that we, in our age, are at once social and individualistic beings. And if we fail or refuse to recognize this fact, all will fall together.

Of course, the individualistic side of this coin—being one’s best self—is a problem of the first magnitude. Each of us must wrestle with this personally. Many, I suspect, see this. It is the social side of the coin they fail to see. How can ordinary mortals, such as you and I, fulfill this aspect of life? The formula is simple. Never do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. If you wouldn’t have others control your life, then never try to control anyone else. If you wouldn’t have others hinder you from producing, freely exchanging, owning the fruits of your own labor, competing, traveling, then don’t inhibit these practices among your fellowmen. This is all one has to do to fulfill his role as a social being. Merely heed the oldest, wisest, and simplest maxim ever written!

Finally, is there a prescription for removing our blindfolds? Is there a mode of conduct or discipline which would open up new vistas, permitting you and me to see more than we now do? I am just beginning to see that the answer is integrity.

For years, I have been defining integrity as the accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right. This may not in fact be right but it is as close to righteousness as one can get.

My definition stands; but I see now that my preachments—words—have been better arranged than my practice—deeds. It is my practice of integrity that must be improved.

To illustrate this failing on my part: I have written that each of us should await discovery, that if there is anything in our garden worth looking at, it will be detected by others.[1] Do I heed this? Only with the greatest difficulty! Impatience tends to govern me, more or less. I can hardly wait till others find out how good I think I am at this or that. This nagging urge is a common trait and accounts, in no small measure, for the urge to reform that plagues humanity. Out of such a garden grows nothing but weeds. When I cannot believe and abide by my own admonitions, am I to expect better of others! Seeing and doing must become one and the same. To see the right without doing it is to live without integrity.

Why is it that integrity removes the blindfolds, improves seeing? Some of the reasons are apparent.

I repeat, while one’s accurate reflections in word and deed may not in fact be truth, they are as close to truth as one can get. Even though we err, our devotion to integrity leads toward that which is right; this is the only road to truth. Those truth seekers who practice integrity themselves are drawn to integrity in others. This virtue has a magnetic quality. Are not the persons to whom you listen those who manifest integrity?

When others are being drawn toward your honest reflections, your light tends to brighten. Their attention is an encouragement, a stimulant, to put your best foot forward. In a word, integrity works its attractions back and forth among us; and the rare moment becomes a more common experience. Wrote Charles Simmons:

Integrity is the first step to true greatness. Men love to praise [it], but are slow to practice it. To maintain it in high places costs self-denial; in all places it is liable to opposition; but its end is glorious, and the universe will yet do it homage.

[1] See the chapter, “Await Discovery,” in Having My Way (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1974) pp. 40–44.

27

STILL MORE TO DO?

Do every creative thing possible in this life.

These comments have to do with age, which tends to reveal mine. I was 12 years old when Hailey’s Comet last flashed across the sky. Will I see that marvel of the heavens a second time? Possibly, if I can still see! However, that is not the relevant question. Rather, it is this: Whatever years remain of this mortal life, am I warranted in letting up? Is there still more for me to do? Indeed, yes—until the last moment!

No two persons share identical ideas concerning what comes after earthly existence. Guesses range all the way from nothing, to hell and damnation, to countless forms of heavenly bliss. Thus, little if anything is to be gained by intruding my speculations into this hodge-podge of after-life expectations and hopes. As with many others, the future is not known to me.

There is, however, one view to which I hold firm: the immortality of the human spirit or consciousness. For it is clearly evident that every individual, to some extent, leaves traces of his existence, be it noble or ignoble, forever and ever, and that all humanity thenceforth is moved this way or that as a consequence. As “every heartbeat is felt through the entire universe,” so is every action of yours or mine felt by all who live now and ever after. In this sense, if in no other, we are immortal. It is this idea of immortality I wish to explore.

By and large, people fail to appreciate the enduring significance of their own lives. So far as future generations are concerned, they have little if any feeling of relatedness; their concern is limited to themselves or to the few contemporaries they find within their tiny orbits. They do not recognize themselves as integral components of a flowing process—of the future influenced and more or less shaped by what they are and do today. Unaware of their immortality, they fail to live up to the best of their lives.

The definition of immortal to which I refer is “lasting as long as this world; enduring.” What lasts? What is enduring? It is you, regardless of what you reflect, be it truth or untruth, good or bad, virtue or evil, moral or immoral. In a word, it is you and your actions in this life.

Let me cite a couple of examples. First, an extremely powerful authoritarian: Adolf Hitler. That power-drunk character left a scar, a blight that never will be erased from humanity. Mankind will forever feel the effects of the malady he spearheaded. Hitler, no less than anyone else, is immortal. He polluted the human stream and the debris flows on and on.

Second, reflect on a man most everyone would think of as a nobody, a Roman slave of nearly 2,000 years ago. This man was exiled because he expressed ideas contrary to Emperor Domitian’s political establishment. The exiled slave went to Nicopolis, a small village in northwest Greece, setting up his own school. Students came from Athens and Rome. While he did no writing, his thoughts were recorded—so enlightening that they mirrored their way through fifteen, sixteen, and seventeen centuries and had enormous influence on such noted philosophers as Montaigne, Grotius, Descartes, Pascal, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, Kant, and others. Immortality of a high order is accorded the slave, Epictetus.

As is true of all mortals—including the Hitler variety—their impact may dim over the ages, but bear in mind that there is no fraction so small that it is not still divisible. Everyone, regardless of race, creed, color, education, or religion contributes to the shaping of humanity now and forever.

Perhaps a good way to highlight my point is to imagine yourself as the sole style setter for all future generations—just you and no one else. This would put the responsibility for mankind’s future squarely on your shoulders. Would this not change your life, make you strive to achieve immortality of the highest quality? Would not your every act, thought, utterance, behavior be as near to perfection as you could possibly make it? It could not be otherwise!

In reality, however, it is not just you and no one else but, rather, every living human being whose earthly life is immortal! That you are but one among billions, is no logical reason to shift emphasis. Why should not high-grade immortality be as much your goal in the real world of men and nations as if the role of exemplar of mankind were yours alone? The proper role of the individual is not changed by the fact that he is only one among the billions who comprise human society in 1975.

So, why is it that I am not warranted in letting up, calling it quits, regardless of age? Why must I strive right up to the last moment?

My answer: Man is by nature imperfect. Thus, the perfect exemplar is never to be expected, only approximated, and each person contributes his little bit. High quality immortality requires probing, inching ahead, using every moment one is given—including the last one!

28

FAITH WORKS MIRACLES

Miracle is the darling child of faith.

—GOETHE

What is a miracle? It is, says the dictionary, “an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws.” The question I wish to examine: Is Liberty a miracle? My answer is yes, for Liberty is not verifiable by any known scientific laws, indeed, it may well contradict such laws.

Tocqueville wrote, “Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot.” If he be right, and I believe he is, then we devotees of Liberty have no way of achieving our goal except by a growing awareness of faith’s role in our aspiration.

Faith is believing, and believing works wonders. Believing produces miracles for which there are only the vaguest of explanations. It is not that anything and everything will happen simply because of a belief that it will; not at all! But, within the realm of the possible, how do we increase the probability of achieving the results we seek? We tip the balance in our favor if our efforts are supported by a confident belief that we will succeed. Of course, there isn’t a one of us who knows what the possible is; however, we are constantly expanding its boundaries. But there are limits. A belief that one will never depart this mortal life is demonstrably impossible; there is a record to prove the contrary. Mouthing a belief in spite of contrary evidence is credulity, and credulity is not what we are talking about. Gullibility is the corruption of belief. There is, however, an enormous and unknown realm of the possible in which believing works its wonders.

Being one who subscribes to the powers of faith, let me descend to the mundane—the game of golf—for illustrations.

It was on the 16th green. I was the only one in our foursome who had a chance to win the big event. The sandtrap shot came to rest 25 feet from the cup—all uphill. As always, I addressed the ball, believing that I could sink it, and my putt went straight for the cup—but stopped dead six inches short. And then, as if an unseen hand were at work, it began to roll uphill and into the cup it went! An optical illusion? Had no one else seen this miracle, that is what I would have called it. But my three companions and the two caddies exclaimed in unison, “That ball had stopped!”

When I told of this experience to another later on, he retorted in disbelief, “That defies the law of gravitation.” My response, “There are laws and forces at work in this universe that no one knows anything about.” A few know that there are but not what they are.

On another occasion, I did a round of golf with my pro for some instruction. I took note of his almost perfect putting, long putts going to the lip of the cup but never in. On the 13th I said, “Bill, I came here for you to instruct me, but now I have some advice for you. Do you know why those putts don’t drop? You don’t believe they will. Let me demonstrate.” I tossed a ball 30 feet from the cup and stroked it toward the pin. In it went! Two weeks later Bill played the country’s most difficult course and never missed a putt under 15 feet. Further, he came within one stroke of tying the course record.

I have made similar demonstrations to others on countless occasions. Show me two golfers of equal physical skill, one of whom believes he can, the other being a doubter. The believer will always excel.

Explain, if you will, why a golfer of my incompetence has had five holes-in-one. Does this faith in results work every time? Of course not! Nonetheless, the results are far better than they would have been were I a doubter—fearing failure as so many do.

While easier said than done, I try to have faith in all walks of life, be it business, health, or whatever. As to business, the German poet, Schlegel, wrote: “In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first forward step in faith.”

So far as my business—FEE—is concerned, we have never solicited money from anyone any more than from you, whoever you are. On what then is our financial solvency founded? Faith, pure and simple! It is this: If what we are doing is needed; if we do our work with absolute integrity, never shading a word or phrase for expediency; and if our efforts are reasonably intelligent, then funds will be forthcoming—from whom or whence we know not, but they will come! We have a 29-year record to prove the efficacy of such faith.

As to health, a substantial fraction of the medical profession is convinced that most illness is psychosomatic in origin: fear, stress, anger, doubt, despair—in a word, disbelief.[1]

Good health, on the other hand, is largely the manifestation of a well-conditioned psyche. Observe the mental and physical fitness of the several million people whose prescription for good health is faith—belief that they will have it. “For as he thinketh in his heart, so is he.”

I have had countless other experiences that attest to the efficacy of faith. Observers who have had no such experience are prone to ascribe the results to “good luck.” Not so! Every seen effect has a cause, often unseen.

A greater error, however, is for the practitioner of faith to ascribe the results to his own genius. Again, not so! Actually, we know not what goes on here except that something does. It is a phenomenon, as mysterious as it is miraculous. Repeated is a possible clue by Emerson:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

How “allow a passage of its beams”? I suspect the answer is faith. It seems reasonable that no beams of the “immense intelligence” can possibly pass through such blockages as fear, doubt, disbelief. These are nonconductors, obstacles. And belief removes them. By believing, the individual becomes a conductor of this radiant energy. The beams pass through one as naturally as an electric current passes through a copper wire. Without doing anything of ourselves, some of the beams are intercepted—they become a part of our being.

Now, to the object of our concern: Liberty. There are countless thousands in America today who believe in Liberty as reverently as I do. But so pronounced is the plunge into state interventionism and welfarism—the very opposite of Liberty—that few among our substantial number believe we have a chance. Disbelief! No faith! And short of a switch from doubt and fear to a faith that we can achieve our end, there cannot possibly be a turnabout from authoritarianism to Liberty; the case is over, at least for our time.

Reflect on the trillions of people who have inhabited this earth over the ages. Liberty, as we define it, could be likened to the momentary appearance of a bright star in an otherwise dark firmament. Thus, I must think of Liberty as a miracle.

As it is now, our opponents are saying of us, “They have given up; we win.” What would they say were a goodly number of us to become believers? Just this: “Those men and women won’t down.” That in itself would be a miracle. Faith does work miracles—and you’d best believe it.

[1] Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M.D. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1962).

The Love of Liberty

Leonard E. Read

1975

To

Henry Hazlitt

who loves liberty.

God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.

—Daniel Webster

The inescapable price of liberty is an ability to preserve it from destruction.

—General Douglas MacArthur

Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

—Benjamin Franklin

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.

—William Allen White

Reason and virtue alone can bestow liberty.

—Anthony A. C. Shaftesbury

With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men’s labor.

—Abraham Lincoln

1

THE LOVE OF LIBERTY

The love of liberty is no less imperishable than the love of knowledge.

—FAUSTINO BALLVÉ

My purpose here is to examine the following assumptions:

1. Liberty is impossible unless we know what it is.

2. Liberty is impossible without limited government.

3. Liberty is impossible with unlimited government.

4. Everyone loves liberty, so let’s clear the decks—make it possible!

Is there knowledge of what liberty is? On the part of a few, yes; the multitude, no!

Merely take stock of what’s going on now, when we “celebrate” the Bicentennial, as compared to 200 years ago when the Second Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence—signed by fifty-six intrepid statesmen.[1] No other political document in history can approach our Declaration as the fountainhead of liberty. Yet, at the time, the detractors were as common as the initiators were rare—the multitude and the exceptional few!

Today’s situation is no different; percentage-wise, there appears to be little if any change. It’s still a thousand-to-one, as we say. True, now and then there will be a Bicentennial observation portraying and highlighting precisely what our Founding Fathers had in mind. But, for the most part, the popularity of the occasion will be seized upon to bow to the shadow while trampling the very substance of liberty. From many classrooms, pulpits, political platforms, and gatherings of all kinds will flow evidence of the meager knowledge of what liberty is. For instance, it will be shouted (but not in these terms) that liberty is a liberality with the lives and livelihood of others for self-benefit. But first, what about limited and unlimited government?

Why is liberty impossible without limited government?

Man differs from other forms of life in that he is at once an individualistic and a social being. He resembles neither the lone eagle nor a swarm of bees. Man is both independent and interdependent.

All human beings are individualistic—independent—in the sense that each is unique in every conceivable way; no two are alike in skills, talents, aspirations, intelligence, or in any other respect. Because of your and my uniqueness, along with our extreme limitations, neither of us could live on this earth alone. Nor could anyone else! Imagine sustaining life by no more than writing or preaching or driving a truck or by any other specialization!

All human beings are dependent on others, which is to say that we are interdependent. We are all dependent upon the free, uninhibited exchanges of our numerous specializations. Thus, it should be self-evident that human survival depends on trading. We trade or perish!

The social side of man, as distinguished from the individualistic, has its origin in trading, that is, in our varied relationships with each other—economic and moral. The millions who trade—society—must, to avoid disaster, be fair and honest. Chicanery, falsehood, misrepresentation, cheating, all coercive tactics, unintelligent interpretations of self-interest must, if liberty is to prevail, be effectively restrained, inhibited. The taboos must be codified and enforced.

This necessary code is not one to be designed and enforced by any independent, unique individual—everyone doing as I say, no matter how “smart” I may be relative to others. Suppose a constabulary were to force the millions to follow me. Liberty? Unimaginable! As Caleb Colton wrote, “No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with unlimited powers.”[2] And I would add, nor is any combination of men.

If liberty is to prevail, the code—the law—and its enforcement, is strictly a social problem and thus is to be left in the hands of a social agency—government. What then is your and my role as unique, independent members of society? It is to think through and to share our best ideas as to government’s appropriate role.

One cannot intelligently decide what government should and should not do unless one knows what government is and is not. What is government? I take my cue from Woodrow Wilson: “Government, in the last analysis, is organized force.”[3] In essence, it is a series of edicts backed by a constabulary—a physical force. Obey, or take the consequences!

Let’s symbolize this physical force by the clenched fist. Find out what the fist can and cannot do and you will know what government should and should not do, not necessarily what it will and will not do.

What can the fist do? It can inhibit, restrain, prohibit, penalize. What, in all good conscience, should be restrained and penalized? The answer is to be found in the moral codes: fraud, violence, misrepresentations, stealing, predations, killing, that is, all destructive activities.

What can the fist, this physical force, not do? It cannot create. The creative force, in all instances, is a spiritual rather than a physical force, in the sense that discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes are spiritual. Everything by which we live has its origin in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. A glass, for instance, is inconceivable had not some cave dweller eons ago discovered how to harness fire. There would be no autos or planes, or any of the countless other material things that grace our lives, had not some Hindu a thousand years ago invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry, physics, astronomy would be out of the question with only Roman numerals at our disposal. These spiritual forces, since the dawn of consciousness, number in the trillions.

So, how do I draw the line between what government should and should not do? I would have government limited to inhibiting and penalizing the destructive actions; leave all creative activities—without exception, education or whatever—to citizens acting freely, cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily, privately.

Regardless of the miserable historical record of governments overstepping their bounds, limited government is an absolute necessity if liberty is to prevail.

Why is liberty impossible with unlimited governments?

Is it liberty if no one is free to act creatively as he pleases? If politicians and bureaucrats are dictating what everyone may and may not produce and exchange, and at what prices? If there be no private ownership—all property owned by government?

It seems clear that unlimited government is tyranny: “Absolute power arbitrarily administered.” The administrators of tyranny are tyrants. What is a tyrant? S. C. Champion has brilliantly defined the tyrant as “only the slave turned inside out.”

Very well, what is a slave? According to my dictionary, a slave is “a human being who is (1) absolutely subject to another human being” and (2) “a person who is completely dominated by some influence, habit.”

In the first sense, then, a tyrant is one absolutely in control of and responsible for another human being. And in the second sense, what is the dominating influence or habit turned inside out? Let’s not mince words; it is ignorance parading as infinite wisdom. Such persons proclaim that they can run our lives better than we can.

The folly of tyranny is manifest, whether at the local or national level, or composed of one or 20,000,000 tyrants. All sorts of famous, celebrated, prestigious, small-scale dictators come to mind. So, pick your own from among the highly publicized and then ask yourself how competent he is to run your life. He not only knows nothing about you; he probably doesn’t even know you exist. Such tyrants—slaves turned inside out—are notoriously poor at managing their own lives. Why? When one concentrates upon running the lives of others he leaves his own emergence unattended; indeed, one with the slave (tyrant) mentality isn’t even aware of his incapacity.

The first step in wisdom is knowing how little one knows, a step that tyrants have not taken. They are slaves transfixed to the driver’s seat!

Unlimited government thus places all the people under the domination of slaves. Obviously, liberty is impossible in such a situation.

In the above I have tried to suggest that (1) liberty is impossible short of an understanding of what it is, (2) impossible without limited government, and (3) impossible with unlimited government.

Now to my contention that everyone loves liberty. Were we to know what it is, aware of the social structure in which it thrives, and willing to pay the price, it is liberty we would have. So, what is liberty?

Liberty is freedom of choice. Everyone loves freedom of choice for himself, if not for others; therefore, everyone loves liberty.

Others, of course, may have values or priorities that differ from mine. Their choices are not mine—or vice versa. But does this mean that any of us rejects freedom of choice? Perhaps it will help to list a few among many reasons why I love the freedom to choose:

- To choose my employment, be it a loner in an attic or working with others, and be it a one-hour day or a hundred-hour week.

- To choose how the fruits of my own labor shall be expended.

- To choose the price at which I am willing to offer my goods and/or services and with whom I shall exchange this or that.

- To choose the books I read or the teachers who may enlighten me.

- To choose my religion.

- To choose the cars I drive, the clothes I wear, the food I eat, that is, what I shall consume.

- To choose when and where I shall travel, be it by foot, on horse, or by plane.

- To choose what I shall think, speak, write, and with whom I may share my thoughts.

If there be anyone who does not favor freedom of choice as much as I do, that person is unknown to me. Thus, my conclusion has to be that everyone loves liberty.

True, a problem arises if and when anyone is unable or unwilling to pay the price or accept the consequences of the choices he makes. Each choice one makes, each action taken, has consequences which impinge upon and affect others, as well as self.

While everyone loves liberty for self, there are ever so many who are unwilling to accord freedom of choice to others. Merely take note of those who favor and endorse wage and price controls, privileges, supports, subsidies, tariffs, quotas, embargoes, the coercive taking from some and giving to others, restrictions on competition; indeed, all deviations from the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Note these, and one will have a fair estimate of the number of those who love liberty for self but not for others. They love liberty but they live license.[4]

Thus, the love of liberty for self and not for others is but a selfish, greedy, and unattainable dream. Why not be realistic? The formula? The Golden Rule: Do not to others that which you would not have them do unto you. Or, in this context, expect not from others that which you will not happily, graciously, intelligently accord to them! This is how the lovers of liberty may experience what they love. There is no other way. And I, for one, wouldn’t have it any other way!

* * *

A commentary on the chapters that follow:

As Ballvé wrote, “The love of liberty is no less imperishable than the love of knowledge.” Hopefully, I have given some support to what appears to be a truism. And, doubtless, Ballvé would reverse his observation and assert that the love of knowledge is no less imperishable than the love of liberty. If true, as it seems to be, then knowledge is as low on the intellectual totem pole as liberty. All will swear that they love knowledge but how few there are who do more than give it lip service!

In any event, the love of liberty and the love of knowledge go hand-in-hand. As people can be free only when self-responsible and self-responsible only when free, so there can be no liberty without knowledge and no knowledge without liberty. These virtues are but two sides of the same intellectual and moral coin, descending or ascending in unison. Never expect one without the other!

If you or I would lend a hand to knowledge, and thus to liberty, what should our ambition or determination be? Nothing less than outlined by Thomas Arnold:

Real knowledge, like everything of value, is not to be attained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for and, more than all, must be prayed for.

The above chapter and those that follow represent no attempt on my part to write a book. Indeed, the above was the last chapter written. What then does this volume represent? Arnold’s formula being my own, a thought or an idea now and then comes to mind. Concentrate on each, go wherever honest thinking leads, and share with those who may care for the findings. This is the only contribution I can make to knowledge and thus to liberty.

I make no claim to a single, original idea. No more than some of the phrasing and arrangement of the ideas qualify as original. This is the same theme—in many respects quite repetitive—I have been struggling with for forty years. Why do this? We think in words. Thus, I must try to find those which fit into first this and then that context, my only means for an improved understanding. If at all successful, another may remark, “I now see what you mean.”

So, gentle reader, please forgive the seeming repetition in this volume—not really a book but, rather, phrasings of several new arrangements put between two covers. This is my umpteenth attempt to give liberty another boost. I love liberty for self—and others!

[1] Why intrepid? For the answer, see “Would You Have Signed It?” by historian Ralph Bradford (The Freeman, September 1958).

[2] See Having My Way (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education Inc., 1974), pp. 148–151.

[3] The State by Woodrow Wilson (Boston: D.C. Heath & Co., 1900), p. 572.

[4] See “My Freedom Depends On Yours,” by Dean Russell. Essays on Liberty, Volume II (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954), pp. 398–420.

2

LIBERTY: THE GOLDEN MEAN

Socialism is planned chaos; anarchy is unplanned chaos.

Liberty is the golden mean between the two extremes: socialism and anarchy! As to meaning, this bold statement communicates little if anything at first glance, but perhaps there is more than meets the eye. To understand we must dig. Any devotee of liberty likes to be understood, but few of us are. So try and try again!

A mentor of mine had a favorite admonition: “Say what you mean and mean what you say.” The latter I may have mastered, but not the former. Saying what one means—communicating what is intended—is world without end. Or should we admit, words without end!

A scholarly book, The Meaning of Meaning, dealt with the tyranny of words, the perplexing problem of accurately interpreting another’s meaning. On the same theme, Ortega wrote, “Look not in the dictionary for definitions, but to the instant.” What did Ortega mean when he said “look . . . to the instant?” My inference is that one should look to the context for clues as to what a writer means by the way he uses words and phrases. The translation from the printed page—or the spoken sentence—to one’s mind is a complex affair, and accurate deductions are extremely difficult, often impossible, even if the writer or speaker is saying what he means.

My thesis is that liberty is indeed the golden mean between the two extremes of socialism—planned chaos—on the one hand, and anarchy—unplanned chaos—on the other. But how many are there who know what I mean by liberty, or socialism, or anarchy? And “golden mean,” more often than not, is far from golden. To make sense, the term must be explained as it is here meant. Let me try once more to say what I mean when using these words and terms.

According to the dictionary, “golden mean” is defined as “the safe, prudent way between extremes, happy medium; moderation.” This can be, and often is, construed to mean a half-way position between any pair of opposites—a mischievous notion. How far from golden would be the “happy medium” between extreme honesty and extreme dishonesty! This would condone dishonesty half the time. In the politico-economic realm we observe “middle-of-the-roaders”—fence straddlers—one leg on the freedom side and the other on the authoritarian side. Such a half-way pose is ridiculous, and far from golden.

To get at my definition of the “golden mean,” let me define the two extremes as I mean them.

Socialism is ALL government. It is simply government ownership and control of the means of production—the planned economy—and the government ownership and control of the results of production—the welfare state.

Why refer to this as planned chaos? Some people insist that this is a contradiction in terms, that nothing could at once be planned and chaotic. Better watch that one! Suppose that I, who know very little about myself, plan the life of you about whom I know nothing and impose my plans by force, leaving you with no freedom of choice—void of free will. Now imagine this same nonsense forcibly imposed on everyone. If such mass enslavement is not chaos, pray tell, what is! And it is “planned”!

Ludwig von Mises in his great book, Planned Chaos, devotes chapters to Interventionism, Socialism and Communism, Fascism, Nazism.[1] These, however, along with the Planned Economy and the Welfare State, are but varying labels for the same devilish thing—totalitarianism—ALL government. True, each differs in dictatorial gadgetry, but why concern ourselves as to how the firing squad is organized. It is tyrannical by whatever name. To avoid wordiness, call it socialism.

Conceded, regardless of the dictatorial intentions of a Hitler or a Stalin or whoever, the total state has only been approximated, never fully achieved. There is always a leakage of free human energy. Thank God that dictators, foreign and domestic, are not able to carry out their plans all the way. Nonetheless, socialism, by definition and intention, is ALL government.

Anarchy is NO government. There are two definitions of this label: (1) “The complete absence of government and law,” and (2) “Political disorder and violence.” Thus, there are two brands of anarchists: (1) philosophical anarchists who believe only in persuasion and advocate a society with no government and law, and (2) the bomb throwers and activists who personally indulge in violence. My comments on this extreme—the opposite of socialism—are confined to the philosophical anarchists.

One of my favorite thinkers and writers—Leo Tolstoy—was a philosophical anarchist. And I have many friends in today’s world who are also of this same persuasion—believers in and advocates of no government or law.

How account for the philosophical anarchists? What prods them to this extreme? In every case known to me, it is a revolt against the idea and practice of socialism. They observe that never has there been a nation but whose government eventually has gone wild, gotten out of bounds, become dictatorial. Their cure for this politico-economic madness? Be rid of government and law—all of it! A parallel tactic would be to remedy the ills of overeating by getting rid of food—all of it!

Why refer to anarchy as “unplanned chaos?” What is a plan? It is “a scheme for making, doing, or arranging something; project, programs; schedule.” The anarchists will agree with me that there is nothing whatsoever schematic about their proposed way of life. Its very virtue to them is its unplanned nature. Chaos? It is “any great confusion or disorder.” Let me now suggest why anarchy cannot be other than chaotic.

Anarchists, for the most part, do believe in the right of each man to use force in protecting his life, livelihood, property. Their prescription? Let each person buy protection in the market as he buys insurance. Each would, to the extent of his adjudged needs, employ his own bodyguard, gendarme, protector; or perhaps some with kindred interests would band together to buy protection. In short, no social agency—government—and no law applicable to all alike. Instead, there would be individuals, labor unions, corporations, neighborhoods, and countless other entities, each a law unto itself! One can only imagine the resulting chaos, for history reveals no examples of this sort of thing in practice except here and there vigilante committees—utterly chaotic. The practice of anarchy cannot help but be unplanned chaos, the opposite extreme of socialism—planned chaos. To me, chaos is to be avoided, be it planned or unplanned.

To introduce the concept of liberty—the golden mean—let us assume a society whose citizenry is of unprecedented moral, ethical, intellectual scruples and principles. Not a charlatan in the whole population! Man by nature being imperfect, regardless of how far advanced, there would remain in this imaginary population untold honest disagreements: my boundary line is here, not there, as you say; you have misinterpreted our contract; et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Is it not evident that law and order are handmaidens? As I see it, there can be no social order in the absence of an adjudicative agency, government, codifying the taboos—law—enforcing an observation thereof, and providing the court of last resort for settling our differences and disagreements.

The truth, so often overlooked, is that each of us is at once an individualistic and social being. This oversight is the seed of much politico-economic nonsense. Yes, let all of us be our individualistic selves, and, by the same token, let government, rather than any you or I, see to it that each of us, while doing our thing, molests no other citizen.[2]

Socialism has never reigned supreme, nor has anarchy. And liberty has only been approximated, more nearly in our country than elsewhere. Indeed, liberty at this moment in history, is rarely even comprehended. What then is liberty?

Liberty is that situation in which government is limited to inhibiting all destructive actions—foreign and domestic—in a word, keeping the peace; and the law limited to invoking a common justice—to one and all the same! No control over any peaceful, creative activity! Liberty includes that state of affairs where the blindfolded goddess of justice does not peek, as today, and say, “Tell me who you are and I shall tell you what your rights are.”

With the formal societal agency thus limited, every citizen is free to act creatively as he pleases. This is the free and unfettered market with the creative actions of the millions flowing without let or hindrance to each in proportion to his own creative and productive contributions. Law and order, government and the free market in a working and harmonious relationship!

Liberty, as defined in its ideal form, is truly the golden mean between the extremes of socialism and anarchy. Attainable? I suspect not, for man is imperfect. Can it be more nearly approximated than ever before in history? Indeed, it can! Merely keep the golden mean in our minds and exercise eternal vigilance—stand now and forever against any and all deviations from Liberty: Freedom of choice—The Ideal!

[1] Planned Chaos by Ludwig von Mises (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1965).

[2] For an explanation of the necessity for government and its appropriate role, see Government: An Ideal Concept (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1954), pp. 5–49.

3

FINDING WORDS FOR COMMON SENSE

No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress.

—EMERSON

For years I have contended that no one—past or present—has more than scratched the surface when it comes to making the case for the free society. Friends of freedom exhibit two shortcomings: (1) a scanty understanding of why freedom works its miracles, and (2) an inability to explain clearly enough such understanding as we presently possess.

For the sake of this thesis, assume some knowledge of why authoritarianism is doomed to failure and why only freedom makes creativity possible; man needs freedom if he is to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness, that is to say, achieve his earthly purpose. To embrace the free as opposed to the authoritarian way of life is just common sense: “practical judgment or intelligence; ordinary good sense.” The problem? Finding common words to clearly explain what we mean.

Not until writing “The Police: Friend or Foe?” (see chapter 16) had it ever occurred to me that hardly anyone knows what we mean by our commonly used term “limited government.” Why? The term is too abstract; no one has ever seen a government!

So, use “police” instead. Everyone has seen police. That’s a word for common sense. This, however, only opens the eye to the problem, and we need to bring the full range of our powers to bear, for the problem is endless and confronts us in every thought we express. The tyranny of words! But, as Emerson promises, “there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress.” I do not pretend to know many of the right words, but I think I know a few wrong ones—words that do not now make common sense.

Let’s begin with what was once a perfectly excellent and fairly understood term: laissez faire. Laissez means to let and faire means to do. This was the maxim of the French free-trade economists of the 18th century, suggesting that government should not interfere in peaceful industrial affairs and uncoerced trade; in a word, freedom to produce, to exchange, to travel. Ludwig von Mises concludes an enlightening and excellent chapter with these words: “Laissez faire means: let the individual citizen, the much talked-about common man, choose and act and do not force him to yield to a dictator.”[1]

The question is, should we devotees of the free market—who would limit the police to a defensive role and to invoking a common justice—use laissez faire to label our politico-economic position? My answer is No! and for good reason: the opponents of freedom have so effectively defamed and smeared the term that nearly all untutored readers or listeners will think of us as greedy blackguards. John Maynard Keynes in his The End of Laissez Faire (1926) and an Oxford Professor and author of detective stories—G. D. H. Cole—writing in the Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences (1933) lent their name and fame to the verbal muckraking that had been going on for many decades. They have succeeded in rendering a good term useless.

Imagine!—advancing their opposition to freedom not by reason and logic, not by appeals to common sense—but by twisting words and meanings.

So, it is up to us to find words that lend themselves less to verbal chicanery, words that are not so vulnerable, words that make it possible for others to glean what we really mean. In this instance, what might it be? How about using a phrase that implies the same virtues as laissez faire: “A fair field and no favor?” Let them try to advance their socialism by advocating an unfair field and special favors to some at the expense of others! A fair field, with no favor is a phrasing which nicely summarizes our position and has the added merit of putting the antagonists of freedom on the defensive.

Labels, it seems to me, have turned out to be booby traps. Merely observe how our very own labels have been turned against us, even such a great word as Liberalism. To the classical economist and other heirs of the Whig tradition, Liberalism meant a freeing of the individual from the tyranny of an omnipotent police. Observe what liberalism now means: police liberality with the fruits of your and my livelihood! Should we then not resort to labels? Ideas need some sort of designation, so why not find words to better explain our ideas and ideals?

Reflect on another label, Capitalism. Many of the best free market thinkers known to me label our way of life “capitalism.” In my view this loaded word conjures up as many different notions of what we mean as there are persons who hear and read that label. Small wonder, for the term was given currency by Karl Marx as a means of smearing the freedom philosophy! It came into the vocabulary as a dirty word; turning it into a pretty word to aid and abet common sense may well be beyond our skills.

What about Democracy as a label for the free society? I would never use the word to describe our ideal. Why not? Simply because—like the word Capitalism—it utterly fails to communicate meaning accurately. Definitions of Democracy range all the way from Abraham Lincoln’s “the government of the people, by the people, for the people” to James Russell Lowell’s “the bludgeoning of the people, by the people, for the people.” To millions of citizens, Democracy means no more than a system of deciding basic politico-economic principles by counting noses, that is, by majority vote.

What to do? My suggestion: find words to spell out, explain, define what we mean, as did Edmund Opitz in his “The American System and Majority Rule.”[2] “The Police: Friend or Foe?” was an attempt on my part at finding words for common sense. Neither one of us had done more in these pieces than try to discover phrasings and explanations to replace noncommunicative labeling. These are but beginnings on our part at what seem to be correct method—nothing more. Required, if there is to be a better understanding and practice of liberty, is that hundreds or thousands go to work to make common sense of the main idea—find the right words.

I am now convinced that finding words for common sense must be the first step in gaining an understanding of why the free market—with the police limited to invoking a common justice and keeping the peace—works its miracles. Until now, I have had it the other way around! I have been urging that, first, we must understand why the free market has a wisdom unimaginably greater than exists in any discrete individual, and only second, find the words to explain the miracle. I was wrong—finding the right words comes first! Without them there’s no explaining the miracle.

All of us do our thinking in words. Words are the means; and, if they be right, revelation or enlightenment is the end—the product thereof. Today’s calamity—the police power omnipotent—is disheartening. But, “there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress.”

If we find the words to limit the police establishment to its proper role, a light will shine forth: an understanding of why the free market works its miracles.

[1] See Chapter III—“Laissez Faire Or Dictatorship” in Planning for Freedom by Ludwig von Mises (Libertarian Press, South Holland, Illinois).

[2] See “The American System and Majority Rule,” The Freeman, November 1962. Reprint available on request.

4

THE MATERIAL: A SOURCE OF LIFE

Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material.

—RALPH WALDO TRINE

Far be it from me to explain the coming of life onto this earth. So, my theme is not the source, but, rather, a source of life. The material—a sufficiency of goods and services—has a far more important role in our lives than is generally realized. Merely observe how often material abundance is denigrated, as if it were an evil instead of a blessing.

Reflect on the population in the land that is now the U.S.A., say, 400 years ago—primitive America. While there was no official census at that time, it is estimated that the Indian population numbered fewer than 1,000,000. Why such a small number of people in this vast continent? It wasn’t because of a lack of natural resources; there were more then than now. Nor was it because those people were unable to bear offspring. There was one reason and one only: a foraging economy could feed only a small number of people, and even these few lived in what we would call abject poverty.

Today, the population in this once underdeveloped country is around 220,000,000. The reason for our enlarged population? Material progress and development! The obvious deduction? Were it not for the material improvement, the chances are 220 to one that you and I would not have been born; we would not have experienced life. Thus, these things material are indeed a source of life.

All history tells of the rise and then the decline and fall of nations. Look around at today’s world. Will the U.S.A. prove an exception to the rule? My answer: Only if some of us come to a far better understanding than now of the relationship between material progress and human life. ’Tis a learning problem, and we’ll learn or perish! At least we have a choice.

Ralph Waldo Trine suggests some thoughts which, if fully grasped, may help in our learning.

The unseen and the seen. Well over a century ago, Frederic Bastiat wrote a brilliant essay, “What is Seen and What is Not Seen.”[1] One of his illustrations: A lad broke a window-pane. All the onlookers thought this a beneficial act, for what would become of the glaziers if no one ever broke a window! This is what is seen.

However, it is not seen that the six francs paid for a new windowpane would have been spent to replace a worn-out pair of shoes or a new book for the library. The shoe industry (or some other) would have received six francs’ worth of encouragement.

Anyone who can think beyond the seen to the unseen takes a big step toward becoming a good economist.

Inspired by Bastiat’s way of seeing into the nature of economic behavior, I once wrote a short article featuring two photographs, one of a governmentally owned power and light plant, the other of a privately owned power and light plant.[2] In the photos—to the eye, the seen—the two plants appear identical. But the unseen back of each one? As different as black and white!

The unseen is perceived by the mind, if at all, and it is this perception that reveals differences between the two plants:

Government Plant

Private Plant

Capital:

Expropriated

Voluntarily invested

Management:

Politically chosen

Based on performance

Labor:

Civil servants

Openly competitive

Accounting:

Political guesswork

Profit and loss

Result:

Barren socialism

Creative freedom

The ideal and the real. At the time of primitive America, there popped into the head of Leonardo da Vinci an ideal: man flying through the air as do birds. While the contraption he designed on paper wouldn’t fly, several centuries later his ideal became real. Assuredly the idea must precede the finished product.

In World War I airplane pilots had no parachutes. However, there were many who had the ideal in mind: being able to jump from a plane and land in safety. Many a pilot was saved during World War II because the idea had become the reality of a parachute.

Peace between and after these wars witnessed another ideal: flying so safely that there was no need for parachutes. The real? Based on passenger-miles, flying today is far safer than driving.

The above is only to illustrate Trine’s truth: “Everything is worked out . . . in the ideal before it is realized in the real.” The spiritual and the material. Professor Ludwig von Mises saw eye-to-eye with Trine on this point:

Production [the material] is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of spiritual changes.[3]

Though most of us in America today owe our very lives to these material achievements, we take them for granted. And rarely do we appreciate that every material gain stems exclusively from a spiritual origin—intellectual accomplishments of the mind. Thus, we owe our lives to ideas unimaginable to the Indians of 400 years ago.

Think of it! Telephones rather than smoke signals! The human voice around the earth in the same fraction of a second a warwhoop could be heard fifty yards away! Countless millions of goods and services Indians never dreamed of and most of which we in our day have never heard of! For example, of several hundred thousand companies in the U.S.A., one alone makes over 200,000 items and not a man in the company knows precisely what they are. And all because of a remarkable spiritual growth!

What is meant by spiritual in this context? It is the unseen and the ideal which precedes the seen and the real—spiritual in the sense that reason, ideas, insights, intuitive flashes, inventions, discoveries are spiritual. It is the inspired and higher outcroppings of the mind that spawn—give birth to—extensions of the material, to the multiplication of life. Hail to the spiritual!

Crawford Greenewalt perceived clearly what I am trying to explain about the spiritual: “Behind every advance of the human race is a germ of creation growing in the mind of some lone individual—an individual whose dreams awaken him in the night while others lie contentedly asleep.”

Back to the Indians of long ago, they knew how to set wood afire; and it was flaming wood alone that they used for heat, light and cookery. I shall not attempt here to describe the advances in heating and cookery, but let me cite examples in the field of lighting. When I was a small lad a remarkable kerosene lamp had come into existence. Why remarkable? Not a person, even to this day, knows all the intricate steps required to produce kerosene or to make the globe of a lamp—no more than any individual knows how to make a pencil. What then? A “germ of creation”—the spiritual—growing in the minds of countless lone individuals and configurating. A new light—the miracle of the market!

Later, came the Coleman lamp, giving ever so much more light than the original kerosene lamp. And still later, the electric bulb. No one knows what electricity is. However, a combination of reasons, ideas, insights, intuitive flashes, inventions, discoveries—spiritual forces—have harnessed this mysterious radiant force so that we now use it not only for lighting but for heating and cooking. The spiritual shows forth in the material—a source of life!

Will the U.S.A. prove an exception to the rule? Or will we suffer the usual historical pattern of a decline and fall? The answer lies in learning what we should discourage on the one hand and encourage on the other.

What discourage? Authoritarianism however labeled: socialism, communism, the welfare state, the planned economy, political dictocrats running our lives. Whenever authoritarianism prevails, when most of us are but carbon copies of short-sighted rulers, we face a return to primitivism! In brief, we are destined for a decline and fall with the eventual disappearance of the material sources of life! The role of government is to protect rather than to run our lives. Summarized, those who like to dominate are evidencing a primitive trait as are those who prefer to be dominated. This trait, if recognized and understood, should be discouraged.

What to encourage? It is more or less plain that “germs of creation” can spawn only in the minds of men who are free to act creatively as they choose. And this means everyone; for, as the creative record attests, the ones from whom the spiritual emerges are never known beforehand, by themselves, or by anyone else. Whoever foresaw a Marconi or an Edison!

Far less plain is the necessity of freedom for a configuration of the “germs of creation.” In the absence of freedom they cannot configurate or materialize and, thus, die aborning. All material items—a pencil, a light bulb, a jet plane, or whatever—are the results, the finished manifestation, the combining or materializing of literally millions or trillions of infinitesimal thoughts and antecedent “germs” going back to the harnessing of fire. Freedom is the key to all of these material things by which we live and prosper.

Finally, why are so many people led into “thinking” otherwise? I suspect it is because of a wrong correlation. People observe authoritarianism gaining by leaps and bounds, with material abundance far greater than in any other nation. The dictocrats claim the credit, and too many citizens believe them.

The truth? The abundance we still enjoy is exclusively the result of a leakage of free human energy. Our present blessings are in spite, not because, of political domineering. Dictocrats and their ways are the seen; freedom is the unseen. Again, anyone who can think beyond the seen to the unseen takes a long step toward becoming a good economist and toward assuring the material, a source of life. May their tribe increase!

[1] Selected Essays On Political Economy (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968).

[2] The Freeman, October 1957.

[3] Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Third Revised Edition, 1966) p. 142.

5

LEARN HOW TO LIVE WITH WEALTH!

We don’t know what’s happening to us, and that’s precisely what’s happening to us.

—ORTEGA

Most people today feel in their bones that something is askew. They may not know what it is or how to find out. Ortega was right, we don’t know what’s happening to us. If we knew—One thing is certain: Material prosperity is ours, and we must learn how to live with wealth—as the owner of property—or face the alternative of learning how to survive in poverty. For the former, there is a prescription; for the latter, I am unaware of one that satisfies.

Let’s reflect for a moment on some common misconceptions about learning or, rather, the lack of conceptions. For isn’t it true that persons, with rare exceptions, are quite complacent in this respect? Pleased at whatever level they find themselves? Little awareness of knowing next to nothing and, thus, no driving urge to learn and learn and learn, now and always!

Actually, “graduation”—I have arrived—seems to be the common stagnating mood rather than “commencement”—I am beginning—the emerging aspiration. This explains, as much as anything, why we don’t know what’s happening to us.

What’s new? Everything in everyone’s life and at all times! One must learn to live as best he can in whatever situation he finds himself, no two moments being the same: friendly and unfriendly associations, locations in this or that part of the world, booms and busts, charlatans and/or statesmen in office, ups and downs of all kinds—including poverty and wealth.

Wealth? Never in the world’s history have any people been so abundantly graced with goods and services as are present-day Americans. Indeed, the material items available for purchase are so numerous that no one of us has even heard of many of those things. Among us are thousands of millionaires who, only seven generations ago, would have been serfs. Then reflect on the mill run of us—the you’s and me’s—who engage in minor specializations in exchange for which we obtain countless material things my grandfather could not have imagined, let alone possessed. Further, think of the people who “never turn a finger,” yet live in unprecedented luxury. No ancient lord of the manor remotely approached the material status of most Americans of our day.

Please bear in mind that I am using the term, wealth, in its popular sense: dollar value, property, purchasing power. But let me not leave the impression that increasing wealth is life’s supreme purpose. That’s not my thesis. However, even in that sense of the word, the question, “who’s wealthy?” evokes other questions, “compared to whom?” and “in whose judgment?” It all depends upon one’s sense of values as to whether he deems himself rich or poor. Value judgments! A starving man may value an apple more than a millionaire would value another thousand dollars. In any event, all Americans, in a strict material sense, are wealthy “beyond belief” compared to people in Calcutta; indeed, to most of the world’s population.

In light of the above, what then is my thesis? Not only must “poor” people learn to live with others wealthier than they are but, equally important, “rich” people must learn to live with their own wealth! With rare exceptions, this kind of learning is neither attempted nor achieved. Learn to live with wealth, regardless of material status, or expect its disappearance from the face of the earth. That’s my thesis!

As a starter, we must gain an awareness of the cause of America’s unprecedented wealth. During the nineteenth century, governors of other nations, amazed that such a fantastic thing could happen so quickly in what had been a really underdeveloped country, sent commissions to find the answer. After all, their nations were old, they had “experienced leaders,” and their lands too were graced with fertile soils, friendly climates, natural resources. What could the answer be!

So far as the record shows, not a single commission got the point. Tocqueville, who made a deep study of the American phenomenon, discovered or uncovered the fundamental reason:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

True! Without the goodness to which Tocqueville refers, there would have been no miracle. Nor would there have been that “matchless Constitution” and the Bill of Rights. These were secondary but vitally important because they limited organized force—government—more severely than ever before in all history. In a word, there was very little standing against the release of creative energy. A veritable outburst of creativity! Why? If the reason isn’t obvious, it should be.

But first, why must the rich learn to live with their wealth? Unless they do they will, as in most cases, become do-nothings, know-nothings, joining the growing ranks of those who demand protection in their idleness. Learning to live with wealth is elementary as the ABC’s. Wealth is no warrant to get out of life, to vegetate, to become work-less and worthless. On the contrary, its purpose is to get us ever deeper into life, to free the individual from the slavery which abject poverty imposes. It is the means by which one may discover his own uniqueness and work harder than ever at its realization and perfection. Property is the extension of man, a part of the talents with which he is endowed and for the development of which he is responsible.

Wealth, viewed in its proper sense, is a means of increasing one’s own creativity, a phase in the evolution of the human race. Are there such exemplary persons? Yes, I am acquainted with several multi-millionaires who think only of their work and nothing at all of their enormous wealth. They are learned men and their capital is productively invested—to the boon of mankind.

Being born wealthy is much like being born with any other special gift or talent. That talent may be used constructively to serve self and others; or it may be abused to harm others and destroy oneself.

While I will concede no advantage to being born poor, it is wonderful to be born in a country where intelligent hard work will bring its reward—as has been true of the America we have known. Reflect on the reverse: living in a country with no wealth—all poor. Hard work would be meaningless. So, let the poor learn to live with wealth, their opportunity to grow. Short of this, they will crumble further the foundations that accounted for the America we have known. How explain the outburst of creativity which, if not obvious, should be?

Tocqueville clearly and, in my opinion, correctly identified the fundamental reason: a people “aflame with righteousness.” His was but an affirmation of an ancient enlightenment: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God [Truth and Righteousness], and these things [wealth, learning, intelligence] shall be added unto you.” C. S. Lewis phrased it thus, “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

Given righteousness as the foundation, there followed as an outgrowth an unprecedented limitation of governmental action. For the first time in history there was little if anything standing against the freeing, releasing of creative human energy. Thus, the outburst, the American miracle—freedom on a scale never before experienced in the world’s history!

Reflect again on the commissions sent by the governors of other nations to find the reason for the American miracle. Had they succeeded, their report would have read as follows:

1. Our own case is hopeless short of a free and self-responsible people;

2. Further, we must have a citizenry aflame with righteousness, and bent on thinking for self and learning that governments never bestow any wealth on anyone except as it is taken from someone else.

3. If such a phenomenal improvement in thinking can be assumed, our governor must substantially dismantle his dictocratic establishment.

But not one of the commissions got the point!

The commissions did not get the point, nor do most present-day Americans. It is this and this alone: All wealth has its origin in the context of freedom—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. Not an iota of wealth results from governments taking from some and giving to others. If this isn’t obvious, it ought to be!

As things now stand in our country, the idle rich, not knowing why, side with socialistic remedies to bring about the New Jerusalem. And the relatively poor—few are really poor—are blinded to their opportunities by envy and fall into the same authoritarian trap. Thus, the mess we’re in!

The remedy as I see it? Work and learn! If what one does to make a living isn’t joyous, what, then, can be the point of living? And learn to live with wealth, that is, come to an understanding of its origin and an appreciation of its blessings and evolutionary purpose. Talents and wealth used joyfully point the way to a better life—a life improved through service, not only to self, but to mankind.

6

THOSE THINGS CALLED MONEY

What this country needs is a good five-cent nickel.

—ED WYNN

Nearly everyone at this moment of money madness will agree with Wynn’s statement—humorous but sound. H. B. Bohn remarked: “Of money, wit, and virtue, believe one-fourth of what you hear.” As to wit and virtue, Bohn may be right. But I doubt that as much as a fourth of what we hear about money is worth serious consideration, for most of the pronouncements stem from a premise that it is a function of government to issue money and regulate the value thereof. The premise seems wrong to me. I believe that if money is to be useful to traders as a medium of exchange then the decisions as to what shall serve as money must be worked out by traders in the market, voluntarily, rather than by governmental edict.

If you are further interested in what I believe, reflect for a moment on the various commodities and other things that have been used for money: wampum, sea shells, salt, fur, dried fish, ivory, cigarettes, silk stockings, gold and other metals—the list is long. These are some of the things called money, but note that of those listed thus far, all are commodities that, at the time, were in common use in trade—so common that they were useful as a medium of exchange.

But things of a different category, “non-commodities,” also are called money—and thereby hangs our tale. German marks are things; in 1923 five billion of these things wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread. Paper dollars also are things called money—legal tender—government money which the law requires a creditor to accept in payment of a debt. Or to put it another way, government money, if created out of thin air by edict, is in no sense a scarce and valuable resource useful to traders but is rather a means of taxing or taking scarce resources from the market without offering anything useful in exchange. Such “money” may be a clever form of taxation, but it is far worse than useless as a medium of exchange.

Am I arguing that government money never has been “worth a Continental?” Not necessarily. If a government issues paper receipts that are fully backed by some valuable and widely acceptable item of trade—fully redeemable upon demand by the bearer—such receipts may serve very well as a medium of exchange. But, of course, there’s no reason on earth why the issuance of warehouse receipts should be a governmental function. Let anyone do it who has a warehouse, and printing press, and a sufficient stock of gold or silver or whatever else the receipt calls for. And let government intervene only to see that the receipts are not fraudulent—counterfeit.

I am well aware that some governments of some nations at some times have been in charge of monetary policy with quite satisfactory results, when the policy was to mint standardized coins and issue receipts fully redeemable in some well-known and highly marketable commodity. But there is no reason to suppose that the managers of a governmental monopoly will long function in competitive fashion if the monopoly can be exploited to gain additional political power. And it doesn’t take a genius to figure how to exploit a money monopoly: just print bogus warehouse receipts and declare them to be legal tender; then pass laws to penalize suppliers of goods or services who refuse to accept the bogus receipts at face value. Finally, this can be pushed to the point of issuing receipts based not on the fullness of the warehouse but on its emptiness instead—the use of the national debt as the backing for the paper money.

What would be the grossest fraud if an individual tried it has become the common practice of governments—all quite legal because it is a governmental monopoly. And the result is a runaway inflation that disrupts business activities and hinders rather than facilitates trade. This is why governments cannot be trusted with power to determine what traders should use as a medium of exchange. Let the traders choose. Leave the decisions about money to the market. Limit the government to its proper function of policing the market and punishing traders who cheat or rob or willfully injure other peaceful persons.

When I say that decisions about money should be left to the market, I do not presume to know precisely what those decisions might be. Nor do I find much agreement among monetary experts as to what those decisions ought to be. Would traders insist on pure gold as money? Would they use checking accounts or American Express or credit cards? Would they patronize banks and insist on 100 per cent reserves? I don’t know, and I’m not terribly concerned that no one else seems to know precisely. What I am concerned about is that men be free to choose whatever best seems to serve their own respective purposes. And I believe that from such freedom to succeed or fail in open competition in the market will come the most nearly perfect and tamper-proof monetary policy humanly possible.

How much understanding of money is required of us? No more understanding than any one of us has about how to make a jet airplane.

To support this point, let me repeat for the umpteenth time that no single person knows how to make an ordinary wooden lead pencil, explained in a brevity entitled, “I, Pencil.”[1] Yet, the year that piece was written, we made in the U.S.A. 1,600,000,000 wooden pencils. How come? How explain a knowhow that exists in no one of us, even remotely? My answer: It is the overall luminosity, the wisdom in the free market. When millions of people are free to act creatively as they choose, an unimaginable wisdom is the consequence. To assert that it is a billion times greater than exists in any discrete individual would be a gross understatement.

Keep in mind that any single person’s understanding of how money could be made to serve us honestly and efficiently is precisely as impossible as understanding how to make a pencil!

It is appropriate at this point to ask a question to which no one has a correct answer: What would be the medium-of-exchange situation were it left not to dictocratic control but to the fantastic wisdom of the market? To hazard a guess would be to feign a clairvoyance beyond human experience. Guessing would be as farfetched as expecting Socrates to have foreseen and described the makings of present-day air travel, electric lighting, the human voice delivered around the earth in one-seventh of a second, my dictaphone, or a thousand and one other phenomena. I call these “phenomena” because no one understands or can describe the genesis of these countless economic blessings even after their existence! The wisdom that accounts for them is not in you or me; it derives from the overall luminosity. Why then should we not entrust money—the medium of exchange—to this same wisdom rather than to the coercive power of those now in public office?

Yes, what this country needs is a good five-cent nickel. The way is clear: Relegate organized force—government—to the defense of life and property, invoking a common justice, keeping the peace. And leave all creative activities, including the medium of exchange—money—to the wisdom of the market. Do this or our country will end up with a five-cent thousand-dollar bill.

Difficult? Yes! Impossible? Who knows! One thing for certain: Turning money affairs over to the free market is no more an idealistic dream than reducing government to its proper role. And, another thing for certain: Standing for that which seems politically expedient or feasible gains nothing; such techniques are doomed to failure. On the other hand, every boon to mankind has had its birth in the pursuit and upholding of what’s right. Humanity has been graced with many boons, every one of which was first thought to be impossible. Bear in mind that righteousness, as well as faith, works miracles.

[1] See “I, Pencil,” The Freeman, December 1958.

7

THE COSTWORD PUZZLE

It is easy to be generous with other people’s money.

—JOHN RAY

There was a time, many years ago, when I enjoyed crossword puzzles. Today I am more interested in ways to explain what might be called the “costword” puzzle. Understanding basic liberty no longer remains my problem—or so I believe—but discovering how to explain the price, value, and cost phase of the philosophy simply enough that another might understand—this is the challenge! As yet, I haven’t scratched the surface. Simple explanation remains the challenge! Frankly, few if any puzzles in the politico-economic realm have had less unravelling than this one, and it may be that none is more important to master.

Why the confusion, the difficulty? Why so near an insoluble puzzle? The dilemma: it is a truism that prices, values, and costs as related to the free market are understood by only a few; and the same may be said for prices, values, and costs as related to government. When neither one is understood, no distinction is made between them. The fact? They are as different as light and dark, not only in their meaning but in their effect. A costword puzzle, indeed!

First, let us reflect on free market prices. They are determined by supply and demand, that is, by entrepreneurial ingenuity and consumer acceptance. While the buyer has the final say-so, it is the seller—producer—who uses scarce resources in ways that more efficiently serve consumers and is thus responsible for all of us getting more for less.

To illustrate, go back to Henry Ford’s horseless carriage. The buyers were close to nil. So how come there are perhaps 100,000,000 cars on the roads today? Entrepreneurial excellence and buyer’s assent! While the consumer is king, the producer is kingpin!

One more example: Suppose there is no more demand for my services as a lecturer than there was in the beginning for Ford’s horseless carriage, regardless of how low my offer. The price? Zero! What can be done? I can try to improve, as some others have done until they now receive $5,000 per lecture—the price at which the supply of such quality lectures and the demand for them fall into equilibrium. I can try to improve my competence, but the buyer decides what the lecture is worth.

Why is it so important that you and I grasp the scissorlike manner in which free market prices are set? Unless we do, we’ll fall into the popular fallacy supported by most politicians, labor union officials, a vast majority of classroom “economists,” and even by many businessmen. Their one-sided stand? Sellers set the prices; consumers are but their pawns!

Observe this mischievous notion in action. Remember several years ago when newspapers across the nation displayed pictures of women toting placards, parading in front of stores as pickets are wont to do, demanding lower prices.

They thought the owners—sellers—were solely responsible for the high prices.

Less than 200 years ago:

The washerwomen of Paris, finding soap so dear that they could hardly purchase it, insisted that all the merchants should be punished by death. . . . Marat [Member, National Assembly] declared loudly that the people, by hanging shopkeepers and plundering stores, could easily remove the trouble.[1]

Marat’s solution, applying his own formula had he been a sound economist, would have been suicide! Why? He and his economically illiterate tribe were the source of the trouble. But more on that later.

Second, what about free market value determination? What is the value of this or that good or service? The idea is simple enough, though general confusion may well originate with the economists’ terminology: “the subjective theory of value.”

How simplify? Subjective means that I determine the value of things to me—perhaps not a precise number or price for anything but close enough to arrange that thing in my personal scale of values, higher than some alternatives, lower than others. Each individual establishes his own scale of values in the light of conditions as he sees them at any moment in time. Conditions may change, and so does the arrangement of any individual’s subjective scale of values.

If I am hungry, I may place a higher value on a bowl of soup than on an overcoat, might even value a second or third bowl of soup above an overcoat. Under other conditions, I might value an overcoat above an automobile. One need only reflect on his own shifting, varying, ever-changing judgments of value as manifested in the exchanges he makes, the buying or selling he does day in and day out. That’s all there is to the subjective theory of value—the free market way whereby I assess the value of goods and services to me.

Third, what about costs in a free market, private ownership, limited government way of life where competition—domestic and foreign—prevails and there are no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy? The results are so phenomenal that they stagger the imagination!

While the ideal has never existed, it was approximated in the U.S.A. more than elsewhere, at least enough to demonstrate that costs—and prices—have had, until recently, a fantastic record of dropping from an original high to lower and lower levels. Recall the original ball point pen? $14.00! Later, competitors found ways to reduce costs—and prices—to the point that several dozen better pens could be purchased for that amount. This is but one among countless millions of examples.

One more: what would it have cost my great-grandfather to go from New York to San Francisco? Months of labor and hardship, perhaps his life. So remarkable has the free market worked its wonders in innovation and cost reduction that his modern counterpart could go from coast to coast and back again in less time than my great-grandfather labored each day and at the cost of a very few days of labor at present wages.

An entrepreneur, the head of a large oil company, discovered ways to refine oil at lower cost than his competitors. By the time they had caught up with him, his company had made hundreds of millions. And by that time he had found more ways to cut costs. In the free market, profits are realized not by above-market pricing but by cutting costs. Who benefits? True, the most successful producers are enriched. However, others like to make money too and are inspired to try their hand. Though many fail, the record shows that some of those who try leapfrog the ones out front. The real beneficiaries? The masses, the millions of consumers—the you’s and I’s. In the free market, the successful producers, the ones out front, regardless of how much they make, are our servants. Hail to the cost cutters!

Entrepreneurs make headway only as they find ways to reduce costs. However, there is a cost which they do not control: the price tag that goes with an ever-expanding, runaway government. Cut costs in countless ways as they are inspired to do and there comes crashing down upon them the enormous costs of government, federal, state, and local—financed in large measure by inflation.

Inflation is governmental dilution of the money supply as a means to syphon private property into the coffers of government. As a consequence, government’s paper money is worth less and less, putting more and more producers out of business and resulting in less and less purchasing power on the part of consumers. Entrepreneurs, as producers, have no more control over this political legerdemain than they have over the thoughts of a Karl Marx or another’s passion for power. This explains why, as a result of inflation and regardless of entrepreneurial ingenuity, prices nowadays keep going up and up rather than down and down.

Next, reflect on the distinction between free market and governmental value. Instead of the subjective theory of value—I determine the value of things to me—it is the arbitrary theory of value—the dictocrats determine the value of things to me.

But arbitrary and subjective aren’t quite adequate to explain the marked distinctions here at issue. Much of what government does—TVA, the Gateway Arch, government schools, public housing, the postal system, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera—presumably is justified according to the labor theory of value, a Marxian theorem. Value is supposedly derived from the cost of production, that is, the amount and cost of labor required determines value. Absurd? Yes, when simplified: Were the same amount of labor employed to make a mud pie as an apple pie, the two pies would have an equal value! Consumers, however, when free to choose, will exchange more—ever so much more—for apple pies than for mud pies. But when values are determined by government, they have no choice. This explains why so much of our property is taken for the production of governmental mud pies.

And last, what about the distinction between free market and governmental prices? As far apart as up and down! When the market is free, the consumers wear the badge of authority.[2] When government is in the politico-economic driver’s seat, politicians, bureaucrats, and their coercive allies, labor unions, sport that badge. They set our prices. How? By wage and price controls, rationing, embargoes, quotas, tariffs, below market hours and above market wages, what and how much and with whom we may exchange, what we may sow and grow and the quantities thereof. Food prices? Zero for the 16,000,000 recipients of food stamps, and higher and higher prices for the rest of us. Insurance? Zero for those who receive unemployment insurance. Doctors? By reason of government’s interventions into the practice of medicine, the rates are now so high that many doctors are quitting their practice. Delivery? The free market delivers four pounds of oil from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard for less money than government delivers a 2-ounce letter across the street in one’s home town! To list similar distinctions in their entirety would require a very long book.

Why these fantastic distinctions? Free market pricing goes down and down by reason of innovations and cost-cutting. Consumers are the beneficiaries. Government pricing goes down only in those instances where the earnings of some are coercively taken and given to others for nothing or next to nothing. Consumers who are not recipients of this legal plunder are victims rather than beneficiaries. Merely note how the cost of government goes up and up whenever and to the extent that governmental prices are arbitrarily lowered. Talk about political legerdemain! And all because there are so few if any who are able to explain simply enough the utter fallacy of authoritarianism.

Perhaps John Ray put his finger on the political trickery that beleaguers most of us: “It is easy to be generous with other people’s money.” Generosity I favor but with my property, not yours!

The challenge? Let each of us try better to work or decipher this costword puzzle. The reward? A civilized rather than a barbaric society!

[1] Andrew Dickson White, Fiat Money Inflation in France (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1959) pp. 71–72.

[2] “Caveat Emptor: The Consumer’s Badge of Authority,” by Bertel M. Sparks, The Freeman, June 1975.

8

THE ROOTS OF CONCORD AND DISCORD

If a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand.

—MARK III: 25

The house we call America is divided against itself, as is evident to anyone who has eyes to see and ears to hear. Discord is rampant; concord is rare. This is a social matter: citizens at ugly odds with each other—discord—or, on the other hand, citizens in more or less harmonious relationships—concord. If our house is to stand, concord must replace discord and, if this is to be accomplished, we must practice the way of life that leads to harmony.

What road are we now treading? It’s the road to serfdom. Day by day and in nearly every way, we move nearer to omnipotent government, the totalitarian state—dictocrats by the millions telling us how to live our lives. I believe there is an infallible guideline as to whether the wrong or right road is being trod. It is this: When discord is rampant, we’re on the wrong road; when concord prevails, we’re on the right one.

What is the road in the opposite direction? It is the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Not a single dictocrat—those in government confined to invoking a common justice and keeping the peace. In a word, no man-concocted restraints standing against the release of creative human energy.

Now to the big questions. Why does the road featured by dictocrats lead to discord? And why does the road in the opposite direction, featured by a free and self-responsible people, lead to concord? If these questions can be clearly answered, we’ll know how to keep our house from being divided against itself. Our house will not fall but will stand!

The road to serfdom—socialism, the planned economy, the welfare state, call it what you will—is featured by millions of dictocrats, all at sixes and sevens, each trying to make over society in his image. In view of their dissimilarities, it is instructive to reflect on what dictocrats have in common:

- An unawareness of how little they know. Actually, not one of them has any more rightful claim to omniscience than you or I.

- Each thinks you and I would fare better were we carbon copies of him.

- Even though not one of them knows how to make a pencil, a rope, a pane of glass, an auto, or even a meal, each entertains no doubt that were he to direct the whole economy it would be improved.[1]

Examples of this politically applied know-it-all-ness are the socialized money system, the Post Office, socialized medicine, public housing, TVA, garbage disposal; as well as enormous intrusions into farming, airlines, railroads, power and light; plus efforts to control hours, wages, rents, interest, prices—to name but a few among tens of thousands.

Merely note the mess we’re in—the failures more apparent each day. And the discord! With millions of dictocrats advancing as many or more panaceas—all at odds—how could it be otherwise! I do not agree with a one of them nor does one of them agree, really, with any of the others.

We are on the wrong road and the discord cannot be corrected unless we change direction. Given socialism as the objective, we will have to learn that there is no right way to achieve the wrong goal. Why this assertion? All that the dictocrats can possibly do to modify their mistakes—many of which are apparent even to them—is to attempt something less bad. But not so bad is error still! Never can what’s right be achieved in this manner. For confirmation, note the countless attempts to make a go of socialized mail and how the service worsens. Emerson gave us the explanation:

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

The seed is socialism; the fruit has to be discord!

True, the seed is socialism but socialism itself is the effect of a still deeper cause. And this cause is a blindness, a stumbling block, a major root of discord. This root cause is not only difficult for anyone to grasp but a clear explanation of it—communicability—borders on the impossible. The reason? The truth of the matter gives the appearance of a contradiction. Here is another try at clarification.

Such truth as is perceived by man is disclosed to discrete individuals—the you’s and I’s. No argument! However, he who does not see beyond this fact, regards his little private version of truth as on a par with truth itself—all wise! Each individual of the millions afflicted with this egomania—all dictocrats—assesses himself as the focal point of wisdom. I know I know! These millions are in constant tension—every assumed focal point of wisdom being at odds one with the other. Discord! Bastiat had this to say:

Therefore, those schools of thought that start with the assumption that men’s interests are antagonistic to one another have never yet done anything to solve the problem except to eliminate liberty. They are still trying to ascertain which, out of all the infinite forms that coercion can assume, is the right one, or indeed if there is any right one. And, if they ever do reach any agreement as to which form of coercion they prefer, there will still remain the final difficulty of getting all men everywhere to accept it freely.[2]

Very well! What does lie beyond the fact that such truth as man perceives is disclosed to discrete individuals? In what “wild blue yonder,” as the Air Force song has it, is wisdom to be found? If not in you or me, where, for heaven’s sake? The answer: In all of us, near and far, past and present! It is an agglomeration of all inventions, discoveries, insights, intuitive flashes, think-of-that’s since the dawn of consciousness, the chaff sieved from the seed by human experience. In a word, it is the overall luminosity—the wisdom not of any discrete individual but of the free and unfettered market.

I have attempted to explain—perhaps all too briefly—the way of life that leads to discord. What then is the way of life that leads to harmony? It is every man pursuing his legitimate—intelligent—self-interest, that is, acting any way he pleases so long as his way does not impair the rights of others to be their creative selves. I quote Bastiat again because he so clearly saw the. efficacy of this way:

It is practical, for certainly no maxim is easier to put into practice than this: Let men labor, exchange, learn, band together, act and react upon one another, since in this way, according to the laws of Providence, there can result from their free and intelligent activity only order, harmony, progress, and all things that are good, and increasingly good, and still better, and better yet to infinite degree.[3]

Let us now reflect on the remedy, that is, how we may switch from the kind of actions that produce discord to the way of life that leads to concord. First of all, look not to a new Constitution or any other political or organizational gadgetry. Our original Constitution was but a recording of the leadership thinking of that time. The population, by and large, had no more grasp of that document and its significance than most people today; an appreciation of liberty and its meaning was as rare then as it is now. Observe that when the leadership thinking declines in quality, as it has, the Constitution becomes a mere scrap of paper. A new Constitution now, as is often suggested as a corrective for our present plight, would be no more than a recording of today’s leadership “thinking.” Heaven forbid!

The remedy is a coming to ourselves, an awakening, a realization of what goes on all about us—unnoticed and unappredated. Some things come to our attention only when we are deprived of them. For instance, how many of us take note of or appreciate the air we breathe? Few indeed; that blessing, as so many others, is relegated to a taken-for-granted status. Similarly, with liberty. More or less unknowingly, liberty is a blessing to everyone, without which we would as surely perish as if we had no air to breathe.

A thought flashed to mind on a recent plane trip, having to do with one of the many sources of coercion. The captain, copilot, engineer, stewardesses—exceptionally pleasant folks—are labor union members. All of them receive above-market wages—the captain $57,000 annually—and below-market hours. They revel in their position. The thought that occurred to me? These people, with commendable exceptions, find it quite acceptable that their wage and hour “advantages” are due to the coercive power employed by their respective unions: give us what we demand or down go the airlines! There’s no difference between this legally authorized brand of authoritarianism and the governmental kind: Washington says put up the fruits of your labor to pay farmers not to farm, for going to the moon, for the Gateway Arch, for urban renewal, on and on, or down go you—to jail.

Reflect on the millions of politicians and bureaucrats in government who, with many commendable exceptions, favor and exercise coercion and even more millions in labor unions who, again with many exceptions, also favor and exercise coercion. The aggregate coercion is unimaginable, coercion in every instance being the root of discord. Name an exception! Is it any wonder that discord rather than concord is dominant!

The seen and the unseen! These people who exercise coercion see only the “advantages” of their special privilege, of their coercion. They fail utterly to see that were it not for an enormous leakage of creative human energy—liberty—they wouldn’t even exist to practice their legal plunder.

Return to the staff of the 747 jet. Were it not for liberty—creativity at work in spite of the enormous coercion—there would be no jet to fly, no food to serve, indeed, no passengers to accommodate. So far as humanity is concerned, a desolate earth! To repeat, liberty is as essential to survival as is the air we breathe.

The remedy is nothing less than an eye-opening performance, seeing that which is not seen. It is the seeing at once of a delusion and of a truth.

The delusion? It is a belief that the dictocrats’ coercive tactics are responsible for life being as good as it still is. That which is seen!

The truth? That the free flowing of creative energy—liberty—is the source of human welfare. That which is not seen!

Concord can replace discord. It is only a matter of seeing. When seen, our house will no longer be divided against itself.

[1] See “The Miracle of a Meal” in Let Freedom Reign (Irvington, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1969), pp. 42–49.

[2] Economic Harmonies by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington-on-Hudson, New York: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1968), p. xxii.

[3] Ibid., p. xxx.

9

THE MISCHIEF OF MYTHS

Even when the facts are available, most people seem to prefer the legend and refuse to believe the truth when it in any way dislodges the myth.

—JOHN MASON BROWN

Mankind is more deeply swayed by myths than we are ready to concede, and these myths are a major source of conflict. The only remedy for this mischievous circumstance is the pursuit of truth. However difficult and uncommon the search for truth may be, it is the way to dislodge myths and to harmonize human relationships. Unpopular, of course; but a better way has never been discovered through a popularity poll.

An example of conflict stemming from a myth is the current “women’s liberation” movement. This is featured by insistent demands for male-female equality in positions, pay, and other conditions. Indeed, the movement has gained so much momentum that women are employed in certain positions simply because they are women; competency is disregarded along with the employer’s right to hire whomever he pleases. The number of men and women on this or that school faculty, for instance, must be equal, and there must be “equal pay for equal work.” Wherever this notion is put into practice, conflict mounts. Conflict is a by-product of error.

The source of this particular error? There may be many, but probably the earliest myth was the account in Genesis: the first woman was “built up” from a rib of the first man. Women secondary and thus inferior to men! The literature during the past three thousand years is rife with pronouncements of female inferiority. And the current call is for instant equality.

Only the truth can dislodge this myth. The truth, as I see it, has two parts. First, women are no more equal to men than any woman is equal to any other woman or any man equal to any other man. Everything in the Cosmos—human, or snowflake, or whatever—is unique; things are neither identical nor equal; even for a single instant. Everything is one form or another of radiant energy, all in motion. Were all atoms equal the world would come to an end. Likewise, were all humans equal humanity would perish. Equality of men and women is a nonsensical ambition; it is, quite frankly, nothing but egalitarian politics.

Second, while women are outstandingly different, they are precisely as important as men. Wrote Bovee, “Next to God we are indebted to women, first for life itself, and then for making it worth having.” The reverse is just as true. In a word, women are as essential to men as men are to women. Life is a unity-in-diversity composed of both men and women; the absence of either would spell nonexistence.

The answer! Dislodge the myth with those facts which seem so obvious. Let men and women find their place according to the merit of each individual person.

Before considering other illustrations concerning the mischief of myths in the politico-economic realm, let us note that the word myth has several connotations. On the one hand it refers to the fables of Zeus and his fellow Olympians—or the similar tales of other nations. On the other hand, the word myth is used in common speech as synonymous with error and deception. I am using myth here in this latter sense.

Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), whose wise and fascinating writings may have had more influence on English literature than any other person and who I enjoy quoting favorably in most respects, nevertheless helped launch the pernicious myth that, “The profit of one man is the damage of another.” (Essay XXI). This has come down to us as “any person’s gain is someone else’s loss.”

Doubtless, this error had arisen in antiquity by countless unknown persons, those who had made no name for themselves. No effect! Montaigne, however, was famous, celebrated. If he were wise in many ways, why not assume his wisdom in all ways! To his credit, Montaigne inscribed on his coat of arms, “Que sais-je?”—What do I know? Yet, this humility on his part in no way deterred others from considering him wise in ways he was not, and in interpreting Essay XXI in ways Montaigne might not have intended. In any event, a terrible myth was nurtured having devastating international consequences not simply because of an error on the part of the author but more because of the error of popular genuflecting before prestige. It is becoming more obvious to me that it isn’t so much what is said but, rather, who said it that gives birth and currency to myths.

Any person’s gain is someone else’s loss! While a myth, this cliche appears plausible to those who cannot or do not understand simple economics, and this includes numerous “economists.” Assign prestigious authorship, and little if anything more is required for their acceptance of this nonsense! And this myth is, of course, utter nonsense to the few who are capable of sound economic thinking.

Conceded, in gambling one man’s gain is another’s loss. The dollar you win is the dollar I lose. But let us not correlate the production and exchange of goods and/or services with gambling. As farfetched would be to compare personal savings—capital formation—with thievery. Here we are concerned with willing exchange in the market, not a game of chance.

In the free and unfettered market the only way to gain is to perform a service for someone else—both traders gain—quite a switch from the pernicious myth! Actually, it would be difficult to find an individual who has not experienced this truth. When I swap my day’s labor for your dollars, I value the dollars more than my labor and you value the labor more than your dollars or there would be no exchange. These gains—subjective judgments, of course—go on by the trillions, day in and day out. One doesn’t need to be an economist to grasp this; merely keep the eyes open!

Observe how this my-gain-your-loss myth has taken on enormous proportions in today’s world. Marxism is built around this same myth: the gain of employers and/or capitalists is at the expense of “laborers.” This myth—“the labor theory of value”—is far from outmoded, unfortunately, but it has been completely demolished by such analytical thinkers as Menger, Böhm-Bawerk, Mises, and other more or less unknown individuals. What is the invalid theory—the myth—in Marxian terms? It declares that value is determined by the cost of production, and that production is by “wage earners,” not by employers or capitalists.

The labor movement in the U.S.A., England, and several other countries is an extension of the same myth: invoke force to keep employers and capitalists from exploiting the “real” producers—“laborers,” ranging from waiters to airline captains.

Keep in mind two points: (1) Marx and other big-name backers of this myth and (2) the devastating conflict that follows—as though there were really a conflict of interests!

A conflict of interests between those who work with their hands and those who work with their minds? Between brawn and brain, savers and spenders, employers and employees, producers and consumers? Or, as the Marxists have it, between capitalists and “laborers”? Of course not! The interests of these so-called categories—all of them—are in harmony, as much as are the true interests of men and women.

Conflict of interests originates when force—violence—is resorted to in order that some may feather their nests at the expense of others. In a word, Marxists—by whatever label—are the ones who attempt to live by pursuing a tired old myth, one that can be dislodged by grasping a few simple truths.

What are the simple truths? Any person who produces anything which is of value to anyone, whether with his hands or his mind, be he a gardener or an Edison, creates wealth. There are individuals who achieve more with their hands in a few days than others with their minds accomplish in a lifetime—and vice versa! All human beings who do creative work, in whatever manner or position, are at once employers and employees. A truck driver employs the makers of trucks who, in turn, employ truck drivers, architects, metallurgists, salesmen. I, for instance, am an employer and employee, a producer and consumer, a saver and a spender, a capitalist and a laborer, so-called categories to the contrary notwithstanding. There is no conflict when viewed aright, that is, when one is no longer victimized by the ancient myth. Rather, our interests are mutual—all in harmony!

To repeat, it seems obvious that myths, as well as truths, are brought to humanity and given currency by prestigious persons. What, then, about the few who have a grasp of free market truths and, at the same time, are lacking in prestige, fame? Hardly a big name among us! Wherein lies our hope? Have we no chance? My answer: We can make our chances!

Countless examples from the past and present might be cited as to how prestige is attained, that is, how we can make our chances. A single instance may suffice to make my point.

Jose Ortega y Gasset was an obscure Professor of Metaphysics at the University of Madrid. He wrote his first book in 1914: Meditations on Quixote.[1] For the next sixteen years he was a prolific writer of books and articles. Attention? Hardly any! “I am surprised,” he wrote, “that not even those closest to me have the remotest notion of what I have thought and written.” Assuredly, the nonprestigious Ortega!

Came 1932 and his Revolt of the Masses.[2] Immediately, it was a best seller in a score of languages—one of the most famous books of the century. Of a sudden, the prestigious Ortega! What happened as a consequence of this new prestige? There was a publishers’ rush for everything he had ever written—everything!

The lesson to be learned from Ortega’s experience? Do as he did, namely, even when obscure—when no one is reading or listening—perform one’s work with all the integrity and perfection one can command so that, if perchance later on millions of people become attentive, one can be proud to share what he has done. Let every act and thought of every day be performed as if one were to live with them forever.[3]

Finally, only now and then in the history of man does a devotee of freedom have Ortega’s experience—millions attentive! To hope for such a miracle is to pull one’s life out of focus. That’s not where the eye should be cast.

Where, then? On the pursuit of what’s right—the foundation of the only kind of prestige that matters. Whenever this becomes the focus of a man’s life, that’s one more for our side! Such exemplarity may persuade another one or two or more to emulate his actions. But, forget the numbers, for it’s quality, not quantity, that can turn the American people again toward freedom. Possible? If only a relative few share my faith, it is certain!

[1] Meditations on Quixote by Jose Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1963).

[2] Revolt of the Masses by Jose Ortega y Gasset (New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 1932).

[3] For a more detailed explanation of what I have learned from Ortega, see To Free or Freeze (Irvington-on-Hudson, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1972), pp. 162–168.

10

THE APPEAL OF ARROGANCE

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.

—DAVID HUME

Scan the biggest quotation book of all time and there are two quotes on “arrogance.” As to its opposite—“humility”—there are seventy two! By and large, the same goes for other such books.

Why this wide margin? I suspect it’s because famous writers, as ever so many others, have seen and felt the vice in arrogance as well as the virtue in humility. Further, arrogance is common, more or less, to nearly everyone, including yours truly. Thus, let’s not be too harsh on ourselves by defaming arrogance! And, on the other hand, humility is so rare a trait in any of us that we attempt to identify with this virtue. In a word, divorce one’s self from what we hold to be wrong and wed what we hold to be right—at least, make the effort. This may explain the margin.

Wrote Augustine, “The confession of evil works is the first beginning of good works.” Therefore, should not one begin by confessing his own arrogance, an evil that strongly possesses most of mankind? The first step is to become acutely aware of how little one knows, and what a difficult stride that is! Two questions: (1) why difficult? and (2) why must it be taken?

A thorough realization that the awareness, perception, consciousness of any one of us is but an infinitesimal speck as related to Infinite Consciousness is indescribably difficult. Few, indeed, are those who have made the grade—who have arrived at true humility.

Why necessary? What is the moral command? Unless this step is taken and fully mastered, one will unavoidably proclaim and stand for things and/or ideas about which he knows absolutely nothing—a bigger I-AM or know-it-all than the facts warrant. This is haughtiness—arrogance! We shy away from identifying ourselves with this evil—observed far more in others than in ourselves.

In spite of my recognition of the above imperatives, I find it next to impossible to live in strict accordance with my own preachments, that is, not to think I know more than I really do. Suggested Nathaniel Crew, “. . . humility is a prudent care not to overvalue ourselves.” Yes, I strive for this virtue but it seems, always, to be slightly beyond reach. In a word, I confess to traces of arrogance.

Here we are, nearly all of us, afflicted to some extent with arrogance, thinking that we know more than we do. Our kind are to be observed on every hand. And, interestingly, those who have attained a true humility are, so far as the general populace is concerned, more or less unknowns. The margin between arrogance and humility is much greater than in the quote books—except in reverse!

Now to my thesis, namely, the claim that arrogance has an appeal, that most people are attracted to rather than repulsed by this evil.

Example: We observe an individual who knows a great deal about some one thing. He knows he knows and so do we—the world’s greatest portrait painter, for instance. How easy it is for him—likewise ourselves—to assume that he is an authority—is wise—on countless other matters. He is famous, wealthy, a genius. But how ingenious or all-wise is he, really?

Reflect on his limitations. He cannot grow the hemp from which his canvas is made, or construct the tools that harvest it, or make the weaver’s loom or even operate it. His brushes and pigments are beyond his ken. And he hasn’t the slightest idea how to mine the ore from which the saw is made that cuts the lumber that makes the frames for his masterpieces.

Unless this individual is so wise that he knows he knows not—a rarity—he will be overly impressed with himself and speak with “authority” on matters about which he knows nothing. Nothing whatsoever! Arrogance!

But more unfortunate than this individual’s arrogance is the tendency of others to be attracted by his false presumption. It has an enormous appeal and can be avoided only by those who are aware that no person has more than an infinitesimal bit of wisdom or know-how. Why is arrogance so attractive? How come that so many fall easily into the trap of countless wiseacres? Perhaps it is because most of us prefer this “easy way” to its alternative: thinking for ourselves.

Also, we are market oriented. Ready-made goods by the millions—things made by others—are a boon to material welfare. Why not ready-made wisdom? Here there is a failure to distinguish between things that satisfy desires of the flesh and wisdom which is an accomplishment of the intellect. Acquiring wisdom is a do-it-yourself project. Surely, draw on the wisdom of others, but judge with careful scrutiny between bits of wisdom here and there and arrogance on the rampage. Everywhere!

The appeal of arrogance? Examples are prolific. Numerous outstanding generals have become the heads of their nations. Nor need the list be confined to Alexander the Great or Charlemagne or Napoleon. These persons overestimated their prowess and the citizens fell for it. The “reasoning?” Great at war, why not great at peace! Of outstanding strategists on the battlefield against enemies, why not expect outstanding statesmanship at home among friends? This is no less ridiculous than expecting the world’s greatest portrait painter to reflect unquestioned wisdom in mathematics, astronomy, or baking bread!

For examples by the millions turn to the political front. Again, with rare and exemplary exceptions, these persons are aware of the general naivete of the citizenry. Their stock and trade? Demagoguery! Word artists! Actors who know not what they say! But this they do know: the appeal of their nonsense to those who think not for themselves. Their arrogance is unparalleled, as is its appeal—witness the electorate’s favorable response. Listen to or read the daily grist. For the most part, it is but a repetition of the know-nots who pose as know-it-alls. “When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.” The mistakes are common—too common for common sense to prevail, unless—

Unless what? Unless there is an emerging humility, that wonderful and necessary awareness of the minuscule state of knowledge and wisdom relative to the unknown. This, in my view, is the sole remedy for arrogance. And, it is not a problem of numbers. Our salvation rests exclusively on quality, that is, on the achievement of true humility—exemplarity. Fortunately, one or a few suffice to set an example. A tiny flame can kindle a huge blaze.

Interestingly, those who make the grade remain as unknowns except to those individuals here and there who are thinking for themselves, seeking light, wanting to know. And even in these cases, the ones who gain from those who are graced with humility seldom meet face to face. Nor does it matter. There is a radiation that flows between those who have something to share and those who seek. I know not what it is, only that it is. There is a Remnant in every society.

While writing this and seeking for a concluding thought, the following came from some unknown to me:

The world is not going to the dogs. The human race is not doomed. Civilization is not going to crash. . . . Humanity is going through a difficult time, but humanity has gone through difficulties many times before in its long history, and has always come through, strengthened and purified. The Captain is on the bridge. God [Infinite Consciousness] is still in business. All that you have to do is to realize the Presence of God where trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability, and keep an even mind until the storm is over.

Recognizing our finite awareness, perception, consciousness relative to Infinite Consciousness is the way to true humility, the overcoming of arrogance. The wiseacres will doubtless continue to expound and exhort, but we need not respond to their will. Have faith that the Captain is on the Bridge and that freedom will prevail. Beyond that, it behooves each individual to do his nearest duty to the very best of his ability.

11

SOCIALISM: THE OFFSPRING OF APATHY

He cared not for God or man.

—JOHN HEYWOOD

The only way I know to get at the roots of the mess we are in is to keep probing in every way until the last sustaining feeder is cut. And one of those feeders, I believe, is apathy.

The impulse to run the lives of others—the little-god syndrome—flourishes to the extent that the others are apathetic. To curb the dictocratic impulse calls for alertness, thinking for self, vigilance, virtuousness, a genuine care for God and man.

Imagine a debate on the subject: “Resolved that there should be no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy.” The Affirmative debater is apathetic, listless. He has done no reading or thinking on the matter; indeed, he couldn’t care less—all too typical. Does this not yield the case to the opposition? The person taking the Negative position can freely assert all the nonsense that plagues mankind, everything from the Divine Right of Kings to out-and-out Marxism. It’s his day. Apathy is the seedbed of socialism!

Now, suppose the Affirmative is taken by one who truly believes in freedom. My late friend, James Rogers, was an excellent example. One evening he debated America’s most celebrated socialist before an audience of 4,000, the socialist having a long winning record as a debater. But not on this occasion! Jim understood the freedom philosophy better than most of us and he was at once articulate, good natured, “quick on the trigger.” He met each socialistic cliche with an incisive question which the socialist could only answer by contradicting himself. On they went for more than an hour, our friend smiling, the audience amused and enlightened, the socialist more and more frustrated, and eventually silent.

What this incident suggests to me is that the impulse to run the lives of others—the social problem plaguing mankind—can be rendered powerless, not through apathy, but through the energetic exercise of freedom.

Those who believe that we can be graced with abundance—material and/or intellectual—without effort are the pitiful victims of apathy and the ensuing dictatorship. Man’s earthly purpose, I am confident, is to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness, that is, to harmonize as nearly as possible with Infinite Consciousness: God, Righteousness. It follows that apathy is the hell on earth from which all of us should seek escape.

The passion to domineer, the urge to cast others in one’s image, is a common frailty. The lack of wisdom is its cause and socialism is its social consequence. Wisdom? Yes, the wiser one is the more aware he becomes of his own incapacity to rule others.

Medieval theologians are said to have discoursed on how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. Perhaps they were wiser than they knew. Reflect on the amount of information [angels?] in the chromosomes of a single human fertilized egg. It “is equivalent to about a thousand printed volumes of books, each as large as a volume of The Encyclopedia Britannica. This amount of coded instruction packed into the size of a millionth of a pinhead is the remarkable material which transmits information from parent to offspring to tell the next generation how to make a person.”[1]

That passage was a great lesson in humility for me. Cast others in my image? Domineer? Out of the question! As Disraeli phrased the point, “To be conscious that you are ignorant is a great step to knowledge.”

Yes, we do need seers, but not see-it-alls. For only those who see how minuscule is man’s knowledge can see the vital necessity of everyone’s acting creatively as he pleases—freedom from domination by see-it-alls. Man requires freedom to progress in awareness, perception, consciousness—his earthly purpose!

Parenthetically, I have reservations about debate as an effective educational tactic.[2] And with reference to the performance by James Rogers, I expect he had no more potentiality than countless others; he merely did more with what he had! What distinguished him from the mill run of citizens was his awareness of the vast unknown and an insatiable urge for excellence. He was not apathetic about freedom.

Were the U.S.A. to be graced with individuals thus oriented, the domineering trait would not necessarily be erased from the souls of men but much of it would be effectively challenged and silenced. The darkness of socialistic error, regardless of its volume, cannot prevail against the overwhelming light of freedom and truth. So, let us overcome apathy with alertness, thinking for self, vigilance, virtuousness, and a genuine care for God and man.

- Alertness involves an awakening, an awareness of the hidden potentialities to be discovered in each of us and put to full use.

- Thinking for self is the only kind of thinking there is. It is to understand and absorb and put to use in one’s own life all worthy thoughts, from whatever source.

- Vigilance is to guard against the domineering trait in self and in others, that creative human energy may freely flow.

- Virtuousness means respectful adherence to such guidelines as integrity, humility, justice, charity.

- A genuine care for God and man is to seek righteousness in our lives and a reverence toward others, an interdependence effectuated through freedom.

Are these wondrous opposites of apathy too much to expect, too difficult to attain? Certainly they are well within the range of any serious aspirant. Think of the rewards to the victors! They are twofold: the downfall of socialism, meaning the reign of liberty, plus each victor’s approximation of his or her earthly purpose!

[1] From a paper, “Some Biological Considerations of Ethics,” presented at Massachusetts Institute of Technology by Hudson Hoagland.

[2] For an explanation, see Then Truth Will Out (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1971), pp. 125–130.

12

SOCIALISM GROWS LIKE WEEDS

Nature and certainty are very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.

—MARCUS AURELIUS

What can be made of this great Stoic’s observation? By “nature and certainty” he meant nothing less than Truth, and this is indeed hard to come by! It’s like reaching for a star moving in outer space at the speed of light. Or finite minds striving to grasp Infinite Consciousness! Nonetheless, one must try to approach Truth, though it can never be wholly perceived. The more Truth one discovers, the more there is to discover.

Infallibility is appropriately described as “mere vanity and pretense.” There is no such human quality as infallibility. The illusion of infallibility is spawned by the most pronounced of all human errors: an ignorance of how little one knows; it is the little-god syndrome! As Jacques Barzun so eloquently phrased the reason for this all-too-common trait:

Intellect deteriorates after every surrender to folly: unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass by us but into us.[1]

Now to my analogy. Suppose the world were populated by two-legged animals having no knowledge of soil cultivation, only feeding on whatever grows. Productive discernment nil! The consequence? All the fertile land on the face of the earth, except nature’s wonderful forests, would be covered with weeds, a weed being defined as “any undesired, uncultivated plant that grows in profusion so as to crowd out a desired crop.” In other words, in the absence of any intelligent, productive cultivators of the soil, a weed patch!

Analogous to weeds is human error. In what way? In the absence of intelligent self-interest—the virtues that can, should, and are supposed to grace mankind—we would be steeped in error, errors being all undesired fallacies that spread in profusion so as to crowd out what is good and true. When not discerned, error breeds error, endlessly! Unless we individually and consciously resist, the nonsense will not pass us by but into us. Folly will be the lot of mankind—worldwide, as today.

What is the error here at issue, the error that breeds error? It is planned chaos for which there have been and are numerous labels: feudalism, egalitarianism, mercantilism, fascism, communism, Fabianism, the planned economy, the welfare state, and so on. The feature common to every one of these? Authoritarianism—dictocrats running our lives!

Regardless of labels, I call the whole kit and caboodle “socialism” as the Russians do, the U.S.S.R. being but an abbreviation for Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. There follows my definition of socialism as it is practiced not only in the U.S.S.R. but to a larger and larger extent in the U.S.A.:

Socialism is the state ownership and control of the means of production (the planned economy) and the state ownership and control of the results of production (the welfare state).

In what manner does our socialism differ from the Russian brand! There are some differences in organizational detail between a U.S.S.R. commissar and a U.S.A. dictocrat. But each suffers the error of know-it-all-ness, that is, “I know how to run your life better than you do; leave your mortal moment to infallible me.” Except for the phrasing, this is their sales pitch; they sincerely believe this to be their role and are encouraged in so believing by the millions of people who, shying away from self-responsibility, are looking for shepherds and sheep dogs.

Of course, the fact is that no dictocrat knows how to run the life of any human being, let alone the lives of millions. Anyone who grasps the error of the master-slave relationship should see this as self-evident.

Daily we observe the dictocrats themselves acknowledging that such and such a plan has not come up to their expectations. Lacking the capacity to recognize their know-nothing-ness in this respect, and spurred on by a passion to rule, do they repeal the error? No, they leave it on the statute books and add another and another, endlessly!

All I am trying to point out is that error, unless discerned, breeds error, as weeds breed weeds. These errors proliferate in our 100,000 governments—federal, state, and local. Millions of errors backed by force—planned chaos. Such is the nature of the mess we are in.

What should we do? Well, this is no time to throw up our hands in despair and say in effect, “The free society is a goner!” Such surrender to folly suggests that we confine our part to watching the mobs go by—the dictocrats and their followers—and be content with no more correction of the mess we’re in than to glory in “I told you so!” Really, is this any less nonsense than that which is declaimed? The nonsense has not passed by such persons but into them.

It is this lethargy—“asleep at the switch”—that is overcoming us. What goes on for the most part is remindful of arsonists who have set fire to a house. “The house is a goner,” say the many. And it is a goner if there be no exception to such folly. How save the house? Let a few with their equipment consciously resist. Out goes the fire!

How consciously resist? Good equipment which, in the intellectual realm, includes:

- A recognition of socialism in all of its forms and disguises and an ability simply to explain its fallacies.

- An ever-improving understanding and explanation of how the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life works its wonders.

- Exemplarity in word and deed—morally above all, for freedom is a moral achievement.

- Never say die; have faith; believe that out of the current mess can and will emerge the better ideas for a better life.

Yes, error breeds error as weeds breed weeds. But as cultivators of the soil bring desired crops in their stead, so do cultivated minds replace error with what’s good and true. Consciously resist and be graced with freedom which permits each and every citizen to become his own creative self!

[1] The House of Intellect by Jacques Barzun (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), p. 222.

13

THE RISE AND FALL OF SELF-RELIANCE

Trust thyself: every heart vibrates to that iron string. Accept the place the divine providence has found for you.

—EMERSON

The place divine providence has found for each individual attests to the uniqueness of that person. Trust thyself merely means to pursue and perfect one’s own creative talents, whatever they are. This is the iron string of self-interest to which each heart is naturally attuned, however poorly one understands the tune or acts out of harmony with it. Why does man thus deviate? There may be many reasons, but chief among them must be the coercive forces that suppress and atrophy self-reliance.

Self-reliance has graced ever so many individuals here and there during the span of history. However, until less than 200 years ago, these were rare souls relative to the populations in which they lived. Serfdom, feudalism, mercantilism, and other forms of slavery held the masses at bay—deadened rather than enlivened this stalwart quality. For the millions, it was reliance on others rather than self. So-called civilizations of the past, with minor exceptions, lacked any human sparkle.[1]

It was in this land of ours that self-reliance rose to its all-time sparkling heights. It is necessary that we know why in order to understand its decay.

Briefly, the American miracle had its genesis in three political documents: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights.

1. The Declaration set the stage by declaring that men’s rights to life and liberty are endowed by the Creator. A historical first, this unseated government as the endower of those rights.

2. The Constitution and the Bill of Rights more severely limited government than government had ever before been limited. In essence, these documents forbade government to interfere with creative and productive activities—these being the exclusive prerogative of the individual citizens.

There were two remarkable benefits that flowed from this unprecedented limitation of government.

1. When government is limited, as in our original design, to invoking a common justice, to inhibiting the destructive actions of men, to keeping the peace, no one turned to it for security, welfare, or prosperity. Why? Thus limited, it had nothing on hand to dispense nor did it have the power to take from some and give to others. To whom, then, did the citizen turn? To self! There developed among Americans a quality of character that Emerson referred to as “self-reliance.” All over the world Americans gained the reputation of being a self-reliant people.

2. With government thus limited, there was, for the first time in history, no organized force standing against the release of creative energies. What happened? The greatest outburst of creative energy ever known!

The foundation of this self-reliance which featured the American miracle? No question about it to my way of thinking: the spiritual antecedent; namely, that men—all men, the millions—are endowed by the Creator (and not by the government!) with unalienable rights to life and liberty.

In previous “civilizations” where only the few were graced with self-reliance, creativity remained in limbo. When only the monarch, the lord of the manor, the slavemaster—one among thousands—is self-reliant, there is strikingly little generative force, compared to the American miracle. No sparkle, no get-up-and-go! These primitive civilizations recognized no fall from self-reliance simply because they had risen to no heights from which to fall. Thus, when commenting on the decline and fall of this rare and important human quality, I shall confine my observations to the U.S.A. where it had its greatest rise, making the fall easy to identify.

When an individual is self-reliant—relies on self rather than others—he is a whole person; the very essence of his being is encased within him rather than scattered to the four winds. In such an instance, the iron string of self-interest is at work full force, to which each heart is naturally attuned. All the creativity that is within one flows forth.

In the more or less primitive civilizations of yesterday’s and today’s world, where only one among countless thousands is self-reliant, creativity is hardly noticeable—it barely exists. Now, create a climate of freedom as was intended under the U.S. Constitution, emphasizing self-reliance and tapping the creativity of the millions, and we have the simple explanation of the American miracle—the unprecedented outburst of creative energy. In such an environment, creativity was multiplied by thousands times countless thousands!

A mere sampling: A 12 year-old newsboy on a train, a waif by the name of Tom, became one of the greatest inventive geniuses of all time. Thomas Alva Edison an isolated instance of creativity bursting out of the common man? Indeed, not! An army officer fathered photography; a bookbinder’s clerk, the electric motor; a portrait painter, the telegraph; a farmer, the typewriter; a poet, the sewing machine; a cabinetmaker, the cotton gin; a coal miner, the locomotive. No one can more than guess at the millions of similar outcroppings of creativity.

As we reflect on the decline of self-reliance, it seems obvious that whenever an individual passes the responsibility for self over to another, or permits the government to assume the responsibility for his livelihood, that person loses the very essence of his being; self-reliance cannot flower in the absence of self-responsibility. Each is dependent on the other. Creativity is deadened in those thus afflicted, whether they relinquished responsibility voluntarily or were compelled to do so. The iron string is broken and broken strings do not vibrate; creativity no longer flows from such persons.

A distressing thought to bear in mind is that creativity no more flows from the keepers than from the kept. Who are the kept? Those receiving food stamps approximate 16,000,000. Countless other schemes such as unemployment insurance—getting paid not to work—make it impossible accurately to assess the number of those who are now wards of the state: the kept. These persons are no longer self-reliant and thus are noncreative and they comprise a strikingly large percentage of the population. No Edisons among them!

What about the keepers? Who are they? They are that part of the vast army of government employees—federal, state, and local—beyond those few who perform its legitimate function. They are the ones who employ coercive force not only to take from some persons and redistribute to others, but also to prescribe how businessmen and other owners may use and price their own property. How many keepers? Oddly enough, there are about as many of these keepers as there are recipients of food stamps—approximately 16,000,000. These keepers are no more self-reliant than the kept, for both depend upon what is taken from producers.

While the keepers are neither self-reliant nor creative, there is no denying that they are inventive. True, they do not invent goods and services by which citizens live and prosper; they invent clever schemes to acquire possession of goods and services from producers. They are ingenious word artists, so good at framing plausibilities and cliches that most people are “taken in.”

Is it not self-evident that these keepers who devote their “thinking” exclusively to running the lives of others give no heed to the perfection of their lives? In a word, we must never expect creativity from any of those who haven’t taken the first step in wisdom, namely, in knowing that they know not. No Edisons among the keepers, any more than among the kept!

Here, however, is the most distressing fact of all: These unwise keepers are trying to usurp the role of the Creator; they presume to be the endowers of human rights.

How many regulatory agencies do we have staffed by keepers? There are about 100,000 governments in the U.S.A., each of which has countless agencies controlling about every aspect of life one can imagine. No one knows all the controls. Indeed, no one could know were he to spend a lifetime trying to find the answer. In any event, it is these controls that account for the mess we’re in, ranging all the way from upside-down education, to surpluses and shortages, to unemployment, to inflation, to the energy crisis, on and on. All of this is brought about by the keepers, those who presume themselves to be the endowers of human rights.

Two questions need an answer. First, in all this darkness, with all these ridiculous controls, how can our situation be no worse than it is? With self-reliance and creativity deadened in so many of us—the keepers and the kept—from whence come the self-reliance and creativity that keep our economy from total decadence and collapse? There has to be an explanation. Here is mine: Our sustenance comes from a few individuals—a very small percentage of the population—in whom these stalwart qualities will not down. They are the cream of the crop, as we say. They’re of that stout stock from whom came the self-reliance and creativity which featured America’s finest hour.

Looking out for self, developing one’s talents, is a social duty, contrary to popular opinion. As William Graham Sumner phrased this truth, “. . . making the most of one’s self. . . is not a separate thing from filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.” Our politico-economic saviours today are the inheritors of this iron string of enlightened self-interest—mostly unknown, but self-reliant and creative giants, nonetheless.

The second question: What are we to do about this discouraging trend, this flight, from self-reliance and creativity? We collectively cannot do anything except as the challenge is faced individually, in the first person, singular: What can I do about it?

Emerson gives me my guideline: Trust myself by pursuing and perfecting such creative talents as I possess. See that my heart vibrates to that iron string of enlightened self-interest. These stalwart qualities cannot be taught; they can only be caught. This presupposes individuals so advanced in self-reliance and creativity that it becomes contagious. Exemplarity, and that alone, is the answer!

[1] Florence, during the reign of Lorenzo the Magnificent, was one such exception. See The Medici by G. F. Young (New York: Modern Library).

14

THANK GOD FOR THE MESS WE’RE IN

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

—EMERSON

There is a reason for our mess. We are now reaping the bitter harvest of the poisonous seed sowed intermittently during the past. We are experiencing bad effects whose causation can be traced to the employment of wrong means. We suffer the natural consequences of our folly, which proves once again that the universe is rational. To state this in another way, if improper methods did not lead to failures, we would really have a problem. As it is, we need only take our heads out of the sand to see clearly that interventionism not only has failed to provide the promised something-for-nothing but has led to all sorts of undesirable consequences.

Heads in the sand! I refer to those who do no more than lament the mess we are in; all they “think” about is whether they can survive it. Though greatly puzzled, they fail to get the message the mess is meant to convey. Indeed, many are just beginning to realize that we are moving toward disaster, even though we have been on a wrong heading for decades.

Why then do I thank God for the mess we’re in? Simply because the mess is sending up signals—messages loud and clear—that our past is filled with errors which inexorably produced their evil results. The consequences we suffer now were caused by past mistakes, and we need to know what wrong actions are responsible for these bad effects. The fact is, we are being graced with warnings which, when and if read aright, can lead to our salvation. That’s why I thank God!

Bearing in mind that what happens has an instruction peculiarly its own and that there is something good in everything bad, let us try to find the lesson. Our past is filled not only with moral but politico-economic errors, and our present likewise. How are we to identify these wrong actions and find the right ones, that is, how expose the fallacies of state interventionism and reveal the merits of human liberty as related to the interest and benefit of every one of us?

When liberty prevails, every individual in the entire population is free to bring persons and other scarce resources into complementary and workable combinations. Reflect on our varied talents. If we approach the matter properly, we come to note our own lack of most of the talents known to man. I, for instance, could no more bring musicians and instruments together to form an orchestra than I could bring technicians and tools together to release atomic energy or to deliver the human voice at the speed of light. But look around; there are millions who can and do bring individuals and other resources into association that render a fantastic service of all sorts to King Consumer. And, when liberty prevails so does competition, a constructive force that assures that the efficient servants rise to serve all of us better.

When liberty prevails, there are in the U.S.A. not less than 130,000,000 adults free to release their greatly varied and unique creative energies. The aggregate of these energies—the bringing into combination of things and persons—is beyond the power of anyone to even imagine, let alone measure.

Let us now observe what happens to these sources of creative energy when the state regulates and controls them. What are the consequences when organized physical force—government—controls our creativity, our varied and unique potentialities? To accurately observe and appraise these consequences is to discover the errors—moral and economic—which account for the mess we are in. And the task is to free ourselves from these malpractices.

Suppose that we have found an outstanding individual who has all the degrees and honors mankind has ever bestowed on anyone. How easy to conclude that we, the ordinary consumers, would fare far better than we do now by our own choices, if only we would yield instead to his “wisdom.” Assume next that he is given the power to impose his will only on a single person: You. The power to cast you in his image! Instantly, two individuals have become noncreative—you and he!

It is obvious why this dictocratic action would abolish your creativity—you have become but an image of him. But why the “great” one? How does this diminish his creativity? Whatever effort he devotes to lording it over you is effort he cannot exercise creatively. No one can, at one and the same time, be a dictocrat and a practitioner of liberty. These roles are mutually exclusive. So, we have here a small-scale model of the mess.

From this model proceed to the prevailing situation in the U.S.A. We have some 100,000 governments—federal, state, and local—and about 16,000,000 on the payrolls. An enormous percentage of these persons—little folks, even as you and I—are not just telling a single person what to do but commanding millions of us as to what to produce, what and with whom to exchange, what our money is worth; they dictate hours of labor, wages, what our children must study; on and on and on, even to seat belts.

Summarized, these 16,000,000 with some notable exceptions—those who are not dictocrats—have not only removed themselves from the nation’s 130,000,000 potential entrepreneurs but, far worse, they have frustrated, to a marked extent, the morals and the creativity of the citizenry.

As a result of this governmental intervention, the varied talents and the uniqueness of each citizen are more or less imprisoned. Add to this the dictatorial, coercive powers extended to labor unions on an enormous scale and, on a lesser scale, to farmers, businessmen, educators, welfare agencies and others.[1] This is a sketch of the mess we are in.

To repeat, when liberty prevails, all are free to bring things and people into workable combinations to the betterment of all, the policeman included. But when the police and their subsidized minions regulate and control, a do-as-I-say-or-else action replaces, to a great extent, the bringing together actions of free and creative people, and to the detriment of all.

Why the qualifying term, “to a great extent”? Why not a total breakdown? The idea and practice of liberty is not that easily overcome. We are born to be free. Having had many experiences with liberty during the past two centuries, citizens will course their way around and through the dictatorial edicts; they’ll find loopholes—become schemers, evaders. This ingenuity, though debilitating, explains why the mess is not as bad as it might otherwise be; why we continue to live in spite of the mess; why, despite mass killings, millions lived in Nazi Germany and Communist Russia. A fortuitous leakage of creative human energy! As Lord Macaulay observed in 1839:

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.[2]

The signals are loud and clear—far too numerous to recount. The messages are that every one of these evils we now experience are but consequences of past and present errors. As Emerson so wisely pointed out, “Cause and effect cannot be severed.” We must work on the causes rather than the effects if we would repair our ways!

Let me conclude by calling attention to but one signal, a warning that is fretting millions of concerned people all over the world: the rapid decline in the purchasing power of the dollar. The cause? Inflation! Its causes? Excessive governmental expenditures which in turn are caused by people from all walks of life running to government for every conceivable kind of succor—people feathering their own nests at the expense of others. The remedy? Remove the causes.[3]

In any event, I thank God for the mess we’re in and its timely warning that we must change our course to avert disaster.

[1] If governments at all levels are taking over 40 per cent of our earned incomes, then perhaps we should recognize that over 40 per cent of us are acting as policemen rather than as productive, creative, peaceful producers of goods and services.

[2] See Chapter III in Macaulay’s The History of England (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1934), p. 217.

[3] If interested in a more detailed explanation, see my “How to Stop Inflation,” The Freeman, November 1973.

15

WRINGING OUT THE MESS

The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.

—WOODROW WILSON

Our political economy is a mess: inflation, unemployment, bad debts, shortages, surpluses, controls, crime—the list goes on—the chickens of intervention come home to roost. There are millions of Americans today who are awake to this distressing fact. What should be done? A vast majority only bemoan our plight, wring their hands in grief, and let it go at that. The tragedy is less in the mess than in this lethargy! Let me pose what may be a helpful analogy.

A sponge will sop up an awful lot of mess. But when the sponge becomes saturated, the sponge itself is a mess. How to make it useful again? Not by wringing our hands in grief but by wringing the mess out of it!

The mess we face today has a message, a purpose. If we only moan and wring our hands in lethargy, the mess will continue—until more individuals than now eventually get the message. So, what is the purpose? What should we do? Horace, the Roman poet of 20 centuries ago, wrote:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

The purpose of this mess—adversity—is to elicit talents which presently lie dormant. Why dormant? There are at least two reasons. The first is that Americans have experienced the greatest era of prosperity in the world’s history. True, the mess is fulfilling its purpose, that is, bringing forth the required talents in some instances. By and large, however, our situation resembles what George Horne once described:

Prosperity too often has the same effect on its possessor, as a calm at sea has on the Dutch mariner, who frequently, it is said, in these circumstances, ties up the rudder, gets drunk and goes to sleep.

Yes, our unprecedented prosperity has put most Americans to sleep. Why then are they not awakened by inflation and all the other chickens of intervention that have come home to roost? Why does not this adversity elicit the talents and serve the purpose it should? The answer lies in the second reason, in the more or less unseen. To return to my analogy, we are the beneficiaries of a politico-economic sponge so efficient in soaking up messes that most citizens are unaware that there is a mess. Americans, today, are still more prosperous than have been the people of any other place or time. And all because of a better sponge than has heretofore existed!

What is this remarkable politico-economic sponge? It is the nearest approximation to the free and unfettered market any nation has ever experienced. It is featured by freedom to produce and exchange, to travel, to retain the fruits of one’s own labor, private ownership, a fair field and no favor, no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. In other words, it is human action when government is limited to inhibiting destructive behavior, invoking a common justice—keeping the peace.

Our near approach to the freedom ideal explains America’s unprecedented outburst of productivity, thus prosperity. All productivity—no exception—stems from the releasing, freeing of creative energy. Coercive or dictatorial direction—“management”—diverts the course of productive efforts and eventually discourages further production.

This assertion is unbelievable to most people for they observe productivity in Russia, for instance, where dictatorship reigns. At home, they see the socialistic post office delivering mail, or TVA generating and distributing electricity, and so on. So, how can such a contention as mine be right? Overlooked is the fact that all of these are relative failures. For example, the non-whites in North Carolina alone own more automobiles than all the people in Russia; we deliver the human voice fantastically more efficiently than government delivers mail.

However, the fact that so often escapes notice is that all so-called government productivity, in Russia or at home, can be accounted for exclusively by a leakage of creative energy—energy not contained by authority. If dictatorship were totally effective, that is, if government authority were supreme—Do as we say!—all people would perish. Productivity in Russia, such as it is, or mail delivery at home, is in spite, not because, of the coercive intervention.

The traits we inherit stem largely from ancestors unknown, and we become complacent and lethargic about that heritage. Likewise, we accept our remarkable politico-economic sponge, acting in response to it without fully understanding what it is.

Our heritage is freedom and regardless of how rapidly the interventions increase we still act to a remarkable extent as free men. We inherited the trait and, unaware of this fact, we give it no credit! Reflect on the observation by Lord Macaulay cited in the previous chapter.

Dr. Benjamin Rogge, as a visiting professor in Brazil in 1956, asked some business leaders how they could be so successful in the light of the inflation and other government interventions. They replied, “We do our work at night while the politicians sleep.”

In the U.S.A. today, the politicians seldom sleep. For the most part—there are a few remarkable exceptions—they are on an interventionist rampage. So our producers—acting by instinct—manage to course their way through and around the interventions. There is an unbelievable and generally unrecognized momentum at work which is our politico-economic salvation—for the time being! It is this response to our heritage of freedom, acting as free men more or less unknowingly, that accounts for how well we are getting along in spite of inflation and all the nonsensical interventions. It is this vestige of freedom and this alone that sops up the mess we are in!

For the time being! When is the deadline? Who knows! The determining factor is an awakening as to what our inherited trait really is, the trait that is sopping up the mess more or less without our knowing it: individual liberty. Short of this, our sponge will become too saturated for a mere inherited trait to wring the mess out of it. It’s this or else!

Woodrow Wilson pinpointed the truth in this matter: “The history of liberty is a history of limitations of governmental power, not the increase of it.” He, then, saw the light that we must see.

A bit more to the question, how then did our countrymen get off the track? What slippage in—or absence of—thinking accounted for a switch from limited to unlimited government? While not certain, I have a suspicion that seems worth sharing. It goes as follows:

1. A vast majority, even in our heyday of freedom, hadn’t the vaguest idea as to why this outburst of creativity. Like our contemporaries, they were totally unaware of any relationship between the fact that hardly any organized force stood against honest enterprise and the ensuing miracle.

2. With rare exceptions, Americans have seen only surface appearances: organized force and the miracle. Being unaware of true cause and noting only effect, they fall easy victims to claims by political office seekers, namely, that government—organized force—performs miracles of whatever sort. The chant of our time—millions upon millions of voices—what a wondrous and omniscient agency of society government is!

3. The gruesome point: It seems to work! Organized force—government—passes itself off as the worker of miracles in whatever area. Thus, the insistence that all enterprise be directed by government, be it education or mail delivery or any other business activity.

What is your role and mine? See that light ourselves, dim as it is, and become enlightened. This is our only way to wring out the mess. Remember, “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.”

16

POLICE: FRIEND OR FOE?

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

—GEORGE WASHINGTON

Woodrow Wilson, in his book, The State, also identifies government with force: “Government, in its last analysis, is organized force.” Stated very simply, a government issues edicts—laws—which are backed by a constabulary or policemen. Obey, or suffer the consequences! Other agencies or persons must rely on attraction, service rendered, peaceful persuasion.

It is beginning to dawn on me that we who believe in and are spokesmen for what we have called “limited government” have been using that term in vain. Why the suspicion? Again, hear Woodrow Wilson:

No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States. I never saw the Government of the United States.

In a word, we have been sponsoring, arguing for, trying to explain something no one ever saw—trying to make the case for an unperceived abstraction!

In the interest of better communication, why not use a term that is consonant with what organized force really is: the police. All of us, from youngsters to oldsters, have seen policemen. Woodrow Wilson, for instance, never saw government but he saw policemen, one of them in the mirror—a Chief of Police. So let us try that image of limited government—the police—to better present our freedom point of view.

The question is this: Are our policemen—local, state, and national—friends or foes? This, I believe, can be resolved by assessing their countless actions as related to justice and injustice. They are friends when supporting justice and foes when inflicting injustices.

Here is my conclusion at the outset: When the police serve as an agency of justice, we should in all good conscience regard the agency as a friend. But when the police power becomes an instrument of injustice we should look upon it as a foe; for then it is a political device that contributes toward rather than deters social chaos. Above all, let us bear in mind that the police force is but an agency or an instrument of ours, and that ours is the responsibility to keep it a friendly agency of justice rather than a foe of mankind.

Wrote Edmund Burke: “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” I side with Burke: Liberty and justice are inseparably linked! So, what is liberty? It is the “pursuing of our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.” My phrasing: No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.

Let me catalogue a few instances where the police behave as a foe and try to explain how the agency could serve as a friend instead.

Inflation: When the agency dilutes the medium of exchange it is a foe, precisely as if every policeman in the U.S.A. were engaged in counterfeiting. Foe? If the money supply continues to escalate at the rate since 1938—from about $35 billion to $280 billion—the supply by the year 2000 will be one and one-half trillion dollars. Savings, insurance, bonds, and other such assets wouldn’t then be worth a plugged nickel. Here is a separation of liberty and justice.

How can the police agency become a friend? Remove the cause of inflation: excessive police expenditures. For it is an observed fact that whenever the costs of the police power rise beyond that point where it is no longer politically expedient to defray its costs by direct tax levies, such agencies resort to inflation as a means of making up the deficit. Inflation syphons private property into the coffers of the police. Let the police power do only what police are supposed to do: Invoke a common justice and keep the peace! That would be a big step toward liberty and friendship.

Food stamps: a perfect example of the police agency as foe! In 1965 the cost of the food stamp program was $85.5 million. This year it will approximate $7.2 billion—up 8,400 per cent in ten years—with 16,000,000 people riding this gravy train, feeding at the public trough. Where is this and similar plundering schemes of the police force taking us? To a situation of all parasites and no hosts—the rich becoming poor and the poor poorer. Liberty and justice separated!

The light shed by this police injustice? Allow everyone maximum opportunity to become self-responsible. It is as unjust for the police to forcibly take from some and give to others as it would be for me to rob you to aid a person who is the object of my pity. What about instances of distress? Rely on the practice of Judeo-Christian charity. Were the police not pre-empting this role, true personal charity would be more than sufficient. For another step toward liberty and justice, let us relieve the policeman of this highly questionable activity.

Social Security: Why should every person engaged in “covered employment” be compelled to contribute 11.7 per cent of the first $13,200 of his annual earnings to this huge “policemen’s benevolence fund”? For the benefit of those already retired? For a chance to draw from the fund if and when he reaches 65 and retires from “covered employment”? Is it justice to force everyone to contribute to this “fund for the future” regardless of the individual’s present needs and circumstances or of his own ideas about how best to save and invest his property?

What should a friendly policeman do in this regard? Why not ask that he protect and defend the right of each of us to buy as much or as little insurance as he wants from whomever is willing to supply it? And if either party attempts to defraud the other, let the policeman then intervene as an agent of justice.

Price controls: The police are foes when they control the price of commodities, rent, interest, wages or permit control by labor or business or whoever. Prices are expressions of value judgments. No policeman or anyone else can determine the value of this or that for you or me. Value is always a subjective determination. When the policeman tells you what price you must pay or at what price you must sell, he is, in effect, forcing you to buy or sell contrary to your wishes; in other words, he is controlling you. All attempts at price control have failed; the results have been surpluses and shortages and economic chaos. People control is rank injustice.

The friendly policemen let prices be determined in the free and unfettered market, that is, by supply and demand. Liberty and justice!

Paying farmers not to farm: a foe to consumers—who pay more; a foe to taxpayers—who keep less; a foe to the farmers themselves—who degenerate into plunderers.

The friendly way? Be done, “lock, stock, and barrel,” with this silly blockage of the market. Restore liberty and justice!

Police-type education: This is featured by three forms of police coercion: (1) compulsory attendance, (2) police dictated curricula, and (3) the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the enormous bill. The police have no more place in education than in religion. In my view, police “education” has been one of the greatest errors in American history and this fact is becoming more and more evident with each passing year. The collectivistic jargon issuing from classrooms accounts, in no small measure, for collectivistic practices in all walks of life. Foes!

What then would be friendly? Get the police out of education except to identify any and all misrepresentation, and impose appropriate penalties! Leave education—as we leave religion—to citizens acting freely, cooperatively, competitively, privately, voluntarily. Education is a voluntary taking of ideas freely offered by others, not a police process of stuffing information into a captive audience. The police who side with this view are friends and the upholders of liberty and justice as related to education.

Why give more examples of a list virtually endless? These few specimens—a mere sampling—may suffice to demonstrate the difference between justice and injustice at the hands of the police.

Now to the role of the citizen who believes in friendly police and who is devoted to the proposition that liberty and justice are inseparable. Is there a part for each of us to play if we seek the good society? Indeed, there is! Note the phrasing of a previous sentence: “When the police serve as an agency of justice, we should in all good conscience regard the agency as a friend.” We should, but we don’t. And this lack of self-discipline may account, as much as any other reason, for the loss of liberty and justice, for runaway police.

It occurs to me that the required discipline may be more unknown than carelessly glossed over. John Philpot Curran said:

The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime, and the punishment of his guilt.

This oft-repeated axiom is, in my view, the missing discipline. True, the words are well known; it’s the meaning that’s not known or even suspected. The axiom sounds good, but actually, what does one do to be forever vigilant? How exercise this discipline?

Yes, we rail against injustice but we do not know how to hail justice—or so I believe. Merely take note of the fact that when and if a policeman does something that’s just—consistent with liberty—we do no more than regard it as the what-ought-to-be and let it go at that. Not vigilance at all; merely static acquiescence. In favor of justice, yes; vigilant standard-bearers, rarely, if ever.

This raises the final question: How does one become a vigilant standard-bearer? Would that it were as simple as a pat on the back to those police who do what’s right and just! And even this would be simple, for there are ever so many who so conduct themselves but whose actions we never hear about. Mere praise does not suffice. All well and dandy, but there’s nothing vigilant about that.

What then? The police agencies might soon rise to their principled role were their millions of members to stand ramrod straight. But this for certain, they will never so behave short of some exemplars among the citizenry.

Eternal vigilance is nothing less than exemplarity of the highest order on your part and mine—day in and day out, now and forever. A society gets the policemen it deserves; for the police agencies are no more than a reflection of you and me. We aid and abet what’s good and just on the part of the police by being good ourselves—by nothing less than personal standard-setting performances.

17

WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A COMMUNIST

Hideous dreams are exaggerations of the sins of the day.

—EMERSON

Earl Browder was for years head of the Communist Party in the U.S.A. In a 1950 pamphlet, Keynes, Foster and Marx: State Capitalism and Progress, Browder listed 22 specific examples of the development of socialism in the United States:

1. government deficit financing

2. manipulation of bank reserve requirements

3. insurance of bank deposits

4. guarantee of mortgages

5. control of bank credits

6. tinkering with the currency system

7. regulation of installment buying

8. price controls

9. price supports for farm products.

10. agricultural credits

11. R.F.C. loans to business corporations

12. social security systems for workers

13. various benefits for veterans

14. government housing

15. public works to provide employment

16. many projects for the conservation of natural resources

17. juggling of the tax structure

18. new tariff regulations

19. government-organized foreign loans

20. the Employment Act

21. the President’s Economic Committee

22. last, but by no means least, stimulated war armaments production on a large scale.

Concerning these 22 items, Mr. Browder wrote: “They have the single feature in common that . . . they express the growth of state capitalism . . . an essential feature of the confirmation of the Marxist theory. . . . It represents the maturing of the objective (material) prerequisites for socialism, the basic factor which makes socialism inevitable. . . .”

One can hardly deny that the trend summarized above takes us headlong into socialism. And there is a valuable lesson for all of us in Browder’s further assertion: “State capitalism leaped forward to a new high point in America in the decade 1939–1949. . . . State capitalism, in substance if not in formal aspects, had progressed farther in America than in Great Britain under the Labor Government, despite its nationalization of certain industries, which is a formal stage not yet reached in America; the actual, substantial concentration of the guiding reins of national economy in governmental hands is probably on a higher level in the U.S.A.” (Italics mine)

Precisely, what did Browder reveal here? What is the lesson for students of liberty? Unfortunately, most of us never suspect the advance of state capitalism until we see the means of production formally nationalized—such as mail delivery in all nations, the railroads and airlines in most nations, the telephones and banks in many, the steel mills in some, and so on. Browder correctly suggested that formal nationalization is, indeed, but a technicality, that the growth of state capitalism is to be measured by the “concentration of the guiding reins of national economy in governmental hands.” Browder saw that the substance of communism is more important than the form. That’s one lesson we should learn from a skilled devotee of communism.

So far as the nationalization of industry, commerce, finance, and agriculture is concerned, we in the U.S.A. have had but one formalization in the last 120 years: mail delivery.[1] Yet, in the 26 years since 1949, the end of the decade Browder so cogently assessed, the “concentration of the guiding reins of national economy in governmental hands” has increased enormously. Another lesson, unless we insist on rejecting a truth simply because it was uttered by a communist, is crystal clear: we are plunging into state capitalism—the communist ideal—without knowing what we are doing!

Perhaps some of the confusion about communism stems from the formal definition of it as the state ownership of the means or tools of production—property—with little if any real understanding of the significance of property rights and uses. As to rights, does a person have a right to the fruits (property) of his own labor? The student of liberty answers in the affirmative; the communist answers in the negative, asserting that all property shall be held in common, that is, by the state. State capitalism, they call it.

As to use, the tools of production (property) are in scarce supply. How are they to be allocated? Who is to get how much of what? The student of liberty contends that allocation should be left to willing exchange in a free market; the communist insists that allocation of scarce resources shall be by a centralized political control.

Property—access to valuable resources—is simply a tool to help satisfy human desires. As long as the ownership and use of property is determined and guided by the market forces of open competition, everyone has access to these valuable resources in proportion to his own productive effort. Private ownership means personal control over the tools of production and, thus, personal control over one’s life. But when government owns and controls the property and thereby denies the functioning of the market, then government controls lives. Communism is, in fact, people control, as is every intervention into the market by the state.

All one needs to understand is that private ownership disappears as private control is lost. There is no such thing as ownership without control. One may have a deed to his property; but if he has no say-so as to its disposition, the piece of paper is utterly meaningless.[2] Thus, when there is a “concentration of the guiding reins of national economy in governmental hands,” state capitalism displaces private capitalism. Control is ownership!

Why do we so generally and stubbornly refuse to heed the lessons here set forth? Try another question, and the answer may reveal itself: Just what, pray tell, do we think communism is?

There will be little certainty among most of us as to what communism is except some hated, ideological ogre, originating with a clique of foreign conspirators. As to what it is, the answers will, for the most part, be at the definitive level of, “It’s something awful.” And, whatever communism is, we Americans, by and large, have no doubt whatsoever that it is clearly un-American! By a vague definition designed to skirt self-blame, it is, perforce, a way of life we do not indulge in or have any part of. It is from such confusions in definition that communism spreads so rapidly in America.

Not a one of us, who does any thinking at all, will question the fact that collectivized farming, as practiced in Russia, is communistic to the core. Agreed, coercive collectivization and communization are interchangeable terms. Everyone knows that! Obviously, collectivized farming is the perfect example of communism in the economic realm. But here’s the rub: How many of us will discern communism in any of the 22 items listed by Earl Browder? Very few! Yet, communism, as Browder pointed out, is the essence of every last one of them.

Pick one at random—1 to 22—guaranteed mortgages is as good as any to make the point. What! Are we to call guaranteed mortgages communistic? An accepted American practice for fifty-five years! Why, people will think we’re out of our minds. But they will be wrong for, if we will use our minds, we can see through that hocus-pocus just as clearly as did Browder. The revealing and key word is “guaranteed.” Guaranteed by whom—that is, who is the guarantor? The answer comes clear and clean: the government. The government has nothing of its own, so what is the collateral which leads us to believe that the guarantee is valid? Nothing except the government’s taxing power. Thus, the “guarantee” consists of coercively collectivized collateral, differing not at all in principle from collectivized farming as practiced in Russia. Any of the other 21 items listed by Browder can as easily be analyzed and understood as this one.

If we reject communism—which I do—then we must understand and practice its alternative: the common consent, willing exchange way of life, the right to the fruits of one’s own labor being implicit in such a market economy. Complete the arrangement by limiting the activities of the police force to keeping the peace and, thus, be done with communism in America.

Reflect on how happy Earl Browder would be today—his dream coming nearer to reality during each of the 25 years since his contribution to our learning. And how happy we should be! With his accurate removal of the camouflage, we can make his ugly dream so far from realization that he, if alive, would be an unhappy communist. The love of liberty and the abhorrence of communism is a source of happiness to me—and doubtless to you!

[1] There have been a few exceptions: the railroads on several occasions, and some nationalization of the power and light industry.

[2] The sole distinction between the Russian version of socialism (called communism) and the once-upon-a-time Italian version of socialism (called fascism) is that in Russia the government holds title to all tools of production, except a few private plots, and in Italy the meaningless titles were retained by those who once were owners. The U.S.A., by not going through the formalities of nationalization, that is, by letting owners retain titles as control is taken over by the government, is following the Italian pattern. But it is only the difference between tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.

18

FROM WHOM SEEK PRAISE?

It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth, than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand up for it.

—A. A. HODGE

There are ever so many men and women wise enough to discover bits of truth, but few indeed are those intrepid enough—in the face of opposition—to stand up for it. How shall we account for such intellectual timidity? Part of the answer is surely to be sought in a misguided interpretation of the democratic ethos, in the notion that truth is a matter of consensus. For if that be the test of truth, then the person who stands—alone if need be—for his convictions is wrong! When “truth” is redefined as majority opinion, then the seeker after “truth” is actually bent on winning a popularity contest!

Most of us know better; things are what they are, regardless of what a majority says they are. Any stalwart embraces his convictions because he believes them to be true, no matter what the consensus. Our ancestors would have phrased it somewhat differently: “seek not your praise before men, but before God”—let Righteousness be the goal. Persons who understand and keep this distinction in mind will not be deterred by opposition; they will stand by their beliefs, whatever the changing winds of opinion. If we will look at it this way, perhaps we can understand why some few among us are intrepid enough to stand up for the bits of truth that may grace their awareness, perception, consciousness.

Reflect on what happens when praise is sought from man—any man. No two persons have identical intellectual, politico-economic, moral, and spiritual views. And unless one be stagnated—not growing—he does not himself have the same ideas from one day to the next. So, when we seek praise from man, we are trying to imitate or be guided by a very unstable model—a fallible human being whose ideas are forever moving this way and that; this instability is true even of “leaders” who are celebrated or famous, great or adored. If a person stakes his all on any man’s approval, and fails to attain it, chances are he will not be and cannot be intrepid enough to withstand the opposition. Will not his opposition be those he holds up as models and imitates? No one is intrepid enough to stand up to that confusion.

Seeking praise from one man, regardless of who he might be, is error of the first order. The debilitating consequence is timid souls rather than intrepid ones, and the fear of opposition rather than the welcome of open competition. Move now to those who seek praise not from a man but from men, a majority, let us say. This is what guides most politicians.

Stand in opposition to the consensus? Rarely! This largely accounts for our trek down the road to serfdom.

Do we not observe this same procedure in the “teachings” of ever so many college and university professors? They take great care not to depart too far from the notions that compose the academic consensus. When Keynesianism is the mode, as now, they go along with Keynes. The primary aim is approval by one’s contemporaries; truth is secondary. Thus is righteousness spumed by countless thousands of “teachers” who curry favor—seek praise.

Think of the persons in your own orbit who seek praise from men rather than standing foursquare for Righteousness—a moral position grounded on reason and supported by evidence. One observes this catering to majority-opinion in all walks of life and in all professions; in clergymen who no more seek Righteousness (praise before God) than do politicians, or teachers, or labor officials, or businessmen, or any other kind of man.

To speak of “praise” before God, as the Bible has it, may, by reason of the evolution of this word from Aramaic to Greek, Latin, French, and English, evoke a meaning not originally intended. According to the Oxford Dictionary the word “praise” was “not known till after 1400, and not common till after 1500.”

True, we give praise to and receive praise from men, but what was intended by the original usage of the word? According to the English philosopher, Hobbes (1588–1679): “The forms of speech whereby men signifie their opinion of Goodnesse of any thing, is Praise.” The few who do not seek praise from either man or God manifest their high “opinion of Goodnesse” by praising God, Truth, Righteousness. The distinction between the many and the few is clear: the few do not seek praise from anything or anybody; they give praise!

You and I give praise to others—past and present—and some of our contemporaries occasionally give praise to us. All well and good! But take note of how spontaneously we are turned off when others, in effect, beg for our praise. Such seeking of praise for one’s self puts an end to the giving of praise. Why? Asking for praise is a perversion of self-esteem. Who cares to puff up an already bloated ego by praising it?

As to the other side of this behavioral coin, George Washington gave of his wisdom:

If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterward defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

The “standard to which the wise and honest can repair” is Righteousness, and contains not an iota of opposition. To the contrary, Righteousness affords an infinite potential and the sole obstruction is one’s own inadequacy—which he alone may expect to overcome.

By giving praise to Righteousness, day in and day out, we keep constantly in mind the “standard to which the wise and honest can repair,” thus making it less difficult to overcome our own inadequacy. By so doing, fears are replaced by aspirations and hopes. And the seekers of praise are replaced by the givers thereof. Thus, may we reverse our present course which leads to serfdom and turn again toward freedom!

19

RISING TO MORAL HEIGHTS

If I knew the world would come to pieces tomorrow, I would still plant my apple tree.

—UNKNOWN

My dictionary tells me that a Saying “is a simple, direct term for any pithy expression of wisdom or truth.” The above is assuredly a “saying” for it is pithy, it is wise, it is true—or so it seems to me. For I firmly believe that anyone who looks upon his mortal moment in this manner has intelligently comprehended his role in this world: rising to moral heights!

When I speak of moral heights I refer to the highest possible state of righteousness! It is to understand and adhere to the several virtues. It includes a humility so advanced that there isn’t even the desire to run the lives of others; and an integrity so well developed that word and deed are accurate reflections of the truth as one sees it. And certainly the Golden Rule: never doing to others that which would be objectionable if done to you.

Immanuel Kant had a yardstick for measuring moral heights, one that all of us might well adopt: “In every case I must so act that I can at the same time will that the maxim behind my act should become a universal law.” In a word, behave in a manner that would be agreeable to you were everyone else to so behave. Here we have a rational morality. On this point, C. S. Lewis observed:

I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside rational morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.

The American statesman, Charles Sumner, gave wise support to this thought:

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

In any event, the above roughly defines what I mean by “moral heights” and suggests the importance thereof.

If I knew the world would come to pieces tomorrow! No one, of course, knows what is going to happen from minute to minute, let alone from day to day, or on any tomorrow.

Come what may, for better or worse, the world on the upswing or going to pot—the future is beyond the range of any person’s say-so. What then? The individual wise enough to seek moral heights knows that he is but an infinitesimal part of mankind; that the world of humanity is not his to govern or control; that each is a creature, under a Creator, each responsible for his own actions and their consequences.

Potentially, he can exercise a determining influence over his own tomorrow and that’s as much as any individual can do. In brief, this means that regardless of what happens, “I would still plant my apple tree.”

I would still plant my apple tree! How is this beautiful imagery to be interpreted? Note that it’s my planting—not yours or anyone else’s. Why this emphasis on the self? That only I can do my planting is a rarely recognized truth; persons in countless numbers are fruitlessly trying to do your plantings and mine—transplanting, we might call it.

And why an apple tree? Three reasons: (1) it reaches for the heavens, that is, for heights; (2) its roots go deep; and (3) it bears fruit!

Observe that the leaves of an apple tree reach for the Sun, that is, they draw energy from above—the photosynthetic process. Man, likewise, may reach for moral heights, forever exploring unknown truths, those not yet of this world.

The roots? They reach into the fertility of mother earth and draw water and nourishment from the soil and store food. Comparable human action is man reaching for those bits of wisdom that are of this world, many of which may be found if diligently sought.

Both the leaves and the roots draw nutriment, neither of which can be cut off from the other, except in a period of dormancy, without the tree’s decay. The two must perform as one or the tree is done, and will bear no apples. Comparable is man reaching for the unknown and the known—for established wisdom and for new insights. Both explorations are necessary if the individual is to bear fruit and attain moral heights.

Finally, why dwell on this imagery? Simply to remind myself of the way I should order my own life! Regardless of what happens to my little world, I must still plant my apple tree—reach for moral heights. My personal world is the only one I have been commissioned to oversee, popular opinions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Is fulfilling such a minor commission important? Indeed so! There is no assignment in the life of man that requires more devoted attention than this. Why this claim? The freedom way of life—individual liberty which allows each to become his creative and divinely ordained self—is the very essence of rational morality. Apart from this, I am condemned to live in a world totalitarian rather than free, which of course, lessens the healthy prospects for earthly pilgrimage. Thus, self-interest dictates that I reach for moral heights.

But what about the little world of my neighbor who lives here, there, and everywhere? How does the rational morality of any one of us bear on his situation? As much as is within your or my power! In this realm, exemplarity is the only tool any one of us possesses. To repeat, example is more caught than taught. If it be good enough—sufficiently magnetic—one or more will doubtless emulate. So, what can I do for others? I can plant and tend my apple tree.

20

IDEAS ARE REAL

The idea of liberty must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.

According to Richard Weaver, Ideas Have Consequences.[1] Indeed they do! We act out our beliefs. All human action stems from ideas, be they good, bad, or indifferent. Ideas direct the course of life toward its fulfillment or its waste—from an economic point of view, toward plenitude or poverty. Ideas are as real as life itself, and they exist in infinite variety.

Reflect on the familiar phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” There are those who behold no beauty in anything, any time, anywhere; they grub through a gray existence. On the other hand are those rare souls who behold beauty everywhere—on earth and in the heavens—in atoms and galaxies, snowflakes and raindrops, blades of grass and towering hemlocks, the rising and setting sun, clouds and lightning and thunder. Also, they behold beauty in such exemplary works of man as paintings, musical compositions, cookery, or countless other manifestations of excellence. Yet, even these rare souls behold but an infinitesimal fraction of the true and beautiful. The beholder’s eye is finite and, at best, can no more than catch a glimpse of the infinite wonders of Creation.

While beauty is in the eye of the beholder, ideas are in the heart or mind of the perceiver. Otherwise, beholding and perceiving appear to be comparable in many ways. For there are those who go through their mortal moment addicted more to imitation than graced with perceptive abilities. However, a few rare souls perceive ideas on as vast a scale as some others behold beauty. Gifted or acquired? Each person is unique in this respect, as in all others!

True, much of what we perceive is what others have already noted and brought to our attention. But what about the previous perceivers? What was their source? To me, the fountainhead is shrouded in mystery, as is the source of all that is beautiful. I, for instance, perceive from Emerson that which he perceived before me:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence which makes us receivers [perceivers] of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

In a word, no person may be said to originate an idea any more than you or I originate beauty in its infinite variations. The most that can be said of anyone is that he was the original perceiver—identification impossible. The first perceiver of any idea can no more be identified than the first individual to behold the beauty of the aurora borealis!

The idea of liberty must grow weak in the hearts of men. . . . What is that idea? Find the answer to the question: What is truth? And this is no easier than finding the answer to: What is Infinite Consciousness? My definition: Truth is that which one’s highest conscience dictates as right. This may not in fact be Truth but it is the closest you or I or anyone else can come to Truth. Likewise, the idea of liberty has an infinity of origins, as does that of beauty.

At the human level of perception, we have only those bits of Truth come upon by the wise. Here follows a few I have perceived, but only after reading the works of Edmund Burke who perceived them ahead of me—two centuries beforehand! Take note of the varying ideas which, according to Burke, must be perceived and adhered to lest liberty grow weak in the hearts and minds of men.

- Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their own appetites;

- in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity;

- in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption;

- in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.

- Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be of it without.

- It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Is the idea of liberty growing weak in the hearts of men? Merely assess Burke’s excellent guidelines. Were we to weigh mankind in general, the conclusion would be most discouraging; liberty is losing. But we know the idea of liberty is on the upgrade in the hearts of numerous individuals. So, the answer hangs in the balance.

Before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants. Who are the tyrants? Quintus Ennius, a Latin poet of 23 centuries ago, perceived the answer, “Men who know not their own path, yet point the way for others.” Being neither a Roman nor a poet, I would phrase it thus: Men who have stagnated, who are so ignorant that they know not how little they know, yet coercively force others to labor on collective farms as in Russia, or forbid free production and exchange and competition as in the U.S.A. They kill not only liberty but the idea of liberty. These stagnated “beings” are our fetters which those of “intemperate habits” forge.

From all of the above it is easy to despair, as so many do, of spreading the idea of liberty to the point where it is again strong in the hearts and minds of men. But not so! Wrote one of the wisest men, Albert Schweitzer, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.” Ideas, while real, can no more be taught than can beauty. The idea of liberty can only be caught! From whom? Exemplars!

Turning again to Burke’s guidelines, let us consider whether it is possible for you or me to become exemplars.

- Can we put chains upon our appetites? If capable of overcoming our weaknesses, yes!

- What about the love of justice? This is out of the question for those who have stagnated but a natural trait for anyone who is growing in awareness, perception, consciousness.

- Soundness and sobriety of understanding? This intellectual achievement ascends as the love of justice intensifies. The two are wedded!

- Listen to the counsels of the wise and good rather than to the flattery of knaves? There is no easier way to personal upgrading. It is nothing more than to take advantage of those who have perceived beforehand—a free service to enlightened self-interest.

- A controlling power upon will and appetite? We despise tyrants. To keep them from controlling us, nothing more is required than control within—self-control. To be without such self-control is to be a human nobody.

- Intemperate habits? Society-wise, the intemperate habits that make freedom impossible are born of know-it-all-ness, the little-god syndrome, be-like-me-ness—each a would-be dictocrat. “You fool” and countless other epithets—oral, written, and silent—are its earmarks. The cure lies in three easy steps: (1) a recognition of how infinitesimal is one’s wisdom, (2) call not the sinner a fool, only the sin, and (3) heartily approve the freedom of everyone to act creatively as he chooses. Emulate the Lord rather than lording it over others!

Were the idea and practice of liberty a numbers problem, no chance! However, every advance in human history has been led by an infinitesimal minority—a few exemplars. Reflect upon the fact that West Germany, a devastated country following World War II, was turned into freedom and prosperity by three exemplars, the greatest demonstration of how freedom works its wonders in the Twentieth Century.[2]

Three! There are tens of thousands in the U.S.A. today who favor the idea and practice of liberty. The improved practice depends upon the improved perception of the idea, for ideas are indeed real and have consequences. The results come from the examples we set. To the extent that you improve, to that extent will I be helped and vice versa. The formula is that simple and easy. Let us try to out-distance one another in our understanding and improvement. Have fun in this greatest contest in life and the idea of liberty will not—cannot—be killed at the hands of tyrants. We will win!

[1] Ideas Have Consequences by Richard M. Weaver (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948)

[2] See “Right Now!”, Chapter 26.

21

ON GIVING AND RECEIVING

It is more blessed to give than to receive.

—ACTS XX:35

Before expressing my unorthodox views on giving and receiving, let me set the stage for its economic significance by commenting on its person-to-person relationship. But first, why unorthodox? Theologians, by and large, have thought of this biblical maxim only in an alms-giving sense, whereas, in my view, it has an additional meaning. That an additional meaning was intended is indicated by the fact that the same Bible that declares, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” also carries the admonition that “He who does not work shall not eat.” (Thess. III:10.)

In the mind’s eye, protrude a pipe from the dry side of Hoover Dam to Lake Mead. The pipe is capped on the dry side so no water will flow out and, by the same token, none will flow in. Now remove the cap. Water will flow out and an equal amount will flow in; the giving off is the precedent to the inflow.

By the action of giving off, the potential energy of Lake Mead is converted into moving, power-giving, kinetic energy. This is the nature of hydraulic energy. Here the analogy ends for the giving off does not increase the amount of water in Lake Mead.

In the case of intellectual energy, the greater the outflow the more the inflow. Thus, one of the reasons it is “more blessed to give than to receive” is that the giving off of good ideas and thoughts—enlightenments—is the precedent to the reception of new ones, that is, a conversion of potential to realized aptitudes. The more one shares these blessings with others, the more does he receive, the more is he blest.

The experiences of numerous persons attest to the fact that the more they share ideas with others, the more ideas they receive and the higher grade are the ideas. This is easy to explain. When one shares, whether in discoursing, lecturing, or writing, he puts his best foot forward. And what can be more upgrading than everlastingly striving to do one’s best!

When one believes the best of every man and gives, evidence of it, and when one gives good thoughts, kindness, respect, affection, love, one receives the same in return—perhaps “a thousandfold”! It is a more or less unrecognized fact that thieves will generally steal less, if anything, from individuals well disposed, and it should be evident that were there enough persons of this moral mien, thievery and many other evils of mankind would wither away.

However, there are two sides to this unorthodox interpretation of our biblical maxim, a side that has not to do with blessings but, if I may descend to the vernacular, with “pains in the neck.” Truly, the giver of what’s good receives good in return. But, just as truly, the giver of what’s bad receives bad in return. In a word, the giver—you or me or anyone—pretty much makes his own little world by the kind of a person he makes of himself.

He who hates is hated in return, usually receiving more hate than he gives. And the same can be said for disdain, disrespect, ill will. Defamers are in turn defamed. The know-it-all breeds the know-it-alls who increasingly surround him. Those of the dictocratic blight spawn political dictatorship. Anger? Wrote Alexander Pope, “To be angry is to revenge the faults of others on ourselves.” Reflect on the faults in all of us. Anger causes the faults inherent in others to roost in the angry ones. The giving of anger assures a return in kind from those at whom it is directed. Whoever observed affection or esteem as a response to a fit of anger! Virtues are not cultivated but are deadened by this vice—in the giver and receiver alike.

Yes, on a person-to-person basis, one pretty much makes his own little world. He receives what he gives, be it good or bad and, thus, to a marked extent is the master of his personal domain. But when it comes to the world at large—the enormous societal domain—he is no longer master. Each of us is but a human drop in a vast sea of humanity. The politico-economic situation does not come under the governance of you or me or any individual. But be it noted that thieves are found in the best of these units, just as men of great virtues are observed in the worst of them. Yet, I prefer not only for myself but for others a civilized rather than a barbaric environment. Given such a preference, what can you or I do about it? That’s the question.

If a civilized society be our preference, the utmost anyone can do to achieve it is through his personal domain. This, I feel certain, is the way it should be. To whom should we assign a control over the creative lives of citizens greater than the attractive power implicit in his own excellence? Not to anyone nor to any combination of persons, be the one a self-acclaimed god or the combination a “democratic” congress!

Those of us who seek to foster a civilized society are limited to what we can achieve by personal exemplarity. Beyond this we cannot go, nor is there need that we should. The internationally known Viennese psychiatrist, Dr. Viktor E. Frankl, explains why:

As for environment, we know that it does not make man, that everything depends on what man makes of it, on his attitude toward it.[1]

In other words, to the extent that we as individuals are pure in thought and deed, to that extent is the sea of humanity—the environment—in a state of purity. With respect to social improvement, we need only give what is good and refrain from giving what is bad, precisely as in person-to-person relationships. There follow a few samplings of what is meant by this.

Let me begin with another ancient axiom, this one from the Hindu bible, The Bhagavadgita:

Sin is . . . [that] ignorance . . . which seeks its own gain at the expense of others.[2]

Sin and ignorance are here equated, and why not! The message? To gain at the expense of others is not only an ignorant way of life but it is sinful. To practice this sin is to invite reprisal in kind—doubtless multiplied!

Common thievery is looked upon by nearly everyone as an ignorant way of life. It is self-evident that all would perish were all thieves. Also seen clearly is the ignorance of tribes invading their neighbors and taking home the loot. But only a very few see anything ignorant in feathering their own nests at the expense of others if it’s done on the authority of majority vote, as in the U.S.A. today on an enormous scale. State welfarism is no less an ignorant way of life than are the discredited ways of thieves or marauding tribes.

Very well! What can we do about such ignorance or sin? Here is the sequence as I see it:

1. To understand and everlastingly practice their opposites: virtue and intelligence.

2. To recognize that the sole virtuous way to feather any nest is with the fruits of one’s own labor, not with that of others.

3. Let each give of this intelligence as in person-to-person relationships and all will receive more; thievery in its various forms will give way to freedom, self-responsibility, and an improved welfare for all.

Next, how should a good economist appraise the advantages of freedom and self-responsibility? Reflect on these two points, admittedly oversimplified:

1. Learn to recognize and to beware of freedom’s opposite: coercive actions to attain special privileges. In this category are tariffs and all restraints to trade, including many actions of labor unions that rely on government sanction or intervention. The list is nigh endless.

2. Aspire to an awareness of how the free market works its wonders and why.[3] Embrace that absolute principle: freedom in transactions.[4] In a word, understand and be able to explain why free and unfettered exchange between individuals—local, national, and international—is the way to an increasing abundance for all and, further, the way to peace on earth and good will toward men!

A final thought on giving and receiving, this having to do with attitudes. Again, opposites: faith and fear.

To be remembered above all else is that each of us has only his own little world to manage and to perfect. If this is done to the very best of one’s ability, he may trust with confidence in the overall outcome.

Finally, let our efforts be joyful—have fun! The perfection of self—growth in awareness, perception, consciousness—should be life’s most enjoyable experience. Exuberance—along with variety—is part of the spice of life.

[1] See The Doctor & the Soul by Viktor E. Frankl, M.D., Ph.D. (New York: Vintage Books, 1973), p. xxix.

[2] From The Bhagavadgita; translated by S. Radhakrishnan (New York: Harper & Bros., 1948), p. 224.

[3] For my best explanation, see Castles in the Air (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1975), pp. 7–21.

[4] See Economic Sophisms by Frederic Bastiat (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964), pp. 96–97.

22

LOOKING FOR THE MAGIC KEY

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

—JAMES THURBER

“Oh, that the world might be turned around to suit my fancy; what a boon to mankind that would be!” This is rather a common notion, slightly entertained if not openly pronounced, on both sides of the ideological fence. Marx, Keynes, and their kind, past and present, yes. But among the devotees of freedom also are to be found glaring examples, now more than ever—doubtless because events are going so contrary to our views.

Here is a confession: I have been thus afflicted. Every time I noted a flip-flop from a socialistic to a freedom position, I would inquire as to the cause—searching always for the magic key. Once I had found it, so I presumed, then I alone could turn the world around. Here are a few of my observations in that regard.

One of the best workers in freedom’s vineyard in the country today is an individual I first met in 1946. He confessed to me that, when he graduated from college, he was a socialist. So I asked him, “What turned you around?” He replied, “It was that chapter in Hayek’s Road to Serfdom entitled ‘Why The Worst Get On Top.’” Tens of thousands of Hayek’s book have been sold. How many, in reading that interesting and enlightening chapter, were transformed in philosophy? I have never heard of another. No magic key there! Nonetheless, I kept right on looking for it.

A brilliant young man, a graduate student at the University of Chicago and a first-rate devotee of freedom, remarked to me, “When I came out of the Bronx High School of Science, I was a socialist.”

“How come? What caused the change?”

“It was George Reisman.”

“Yes, we know George, but what did he say or do?”

“Well, he was our guest for dinner and I was showing him our new refrigerator. Then George asked, ‘Ron, how would you allocate refrigerators were it not for the market’s pricing system?’ It was the market’s allocation of scarce resources concept that turned me around.”

I have searched in vain for another case where that bit of insight reversed anyone’s ideological position. So I conclude that it isn’t the magic key, either.

One more. A long-time friend of mine, a splendid thinker and writer—Verna Hall—drove from San Francisco to a place near Santa Cruz where we were conducting a FEE Seminar. She had one purpose only, namely, to introduce me to her friend, Rosalie Slater. Said Verna, “Rosalie has been doing graduate work at Stanford University preparing to become an administrator in the government school system; but lately has had a change of heart and wishes to ask you some questions.” Verna returned to San Francisco, Rosalie to luncheon with me.

My first question, “Tell me, Miss Slater, how long have you been interested in this philosophy?” Her answer I had never heard before—or since: “Mr. Read, I have now been liberated for six months.” Remarkable! I didn’t ask Miss Slater what caused her “liberation” but, later, still looking for the magic key, I phoned Verna and inquired as to the cause. Her response: “Rosalie and I have been close friends for years. One evening we were philosophizing—not arguing—and I made the point that when one turns the responsibility for self over to another or lets government take it away, to the extent of the removal, to that extent the removal of the very essence of one’s being. That’s the idea that liberated Rosalie.” Thus runs the story of another splendid worker in freedom’s vineyard.

Did anyone ever hear of any other individual liberated by that bit of profound wisdom? I haven’t! Anyway, these and many other experiences over the years have liberated me from such fruitless looking. There isn’t any magic key.

What then? Is there no formula for assisting in the liberation of others? Of course there is: see how many keys each of us can get on his own ring! According to the law of probability, there is a greater chance that some one key among a thousand will unlock that door—liberate another—than will any single key. In a word, concentrate on the expansion of one’s own repertoire.

James Thurber clearly grasped this important point in methodology:

Don’t look back in anger at what’s gone on. That makes opponents, not friends for freedom. Also, it is a cause of psychosomatic illness.

Don’t fear that which lies ahead. First, no one knows; there isn’t an accurate crystal ball reader in the population! Second, it’s faith—believing—that enhances the chances of winning.

Rather, look to one’s own awareness. Herein lies all the hope for the restoration of the free society! And as I see it, that’s precisely the way it should be—the way it is.

It is easy to see why looking to one’s own awareness is the correct tactic. Merely bear in mind that no one can insinuate an idea into the consciousness of another. Each individual is in charge of his own doors of perception. And anyone bent on learning looks only to those who, in his or her judgment, have light to shed. Excellence is the attracting force, be it golf, cooking, liberty, or whatever.

Assuming a person wishes enlightenment in free market, private ownership, limited government ideas and ideals—liberty—to whom is he attracted? To angry, fearful characters of the broken record variety? Rarely, and not for long! By and large, they are avoided by thoughtful seekers, the only ones who matter. To whom then? To those who have an enlarged repertoire—the more keys on their ring, the greater the magnetism! For confirmation, reflect on personal experiences.

My liberation from fruitless methods has, over the past forty-five years, been achieved the hard way. Select any of the methods, now so much on the rampage—from name-calling to “selling the masses”—I’ve tried them all! But when found wanting—utterly fruitless or downright harmful—I have abandoned them—every one! With the futile schemes tossed overboard, what remains? It is the law of attraction, applying no less to individual relationships than to atoms, solar systems, or galaxies. From a noted astronomer:

All of the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, the mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies, too, are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[1]

In my judgment, one hasn’t a prayer of being an effective worker in freedom’s vineyard except as he grasps and adheres strictly to the law of attraction—that magnetism founded exclusively on the pursuit of excellence. Doubtless, many freedom devotees are influenced to employ wrong methods because of the success of such methods in destroying a free society. But creating a free society is a different matter and so must the methods be different. The methods that work in destroying are destructive when used in creating. Now for a few reflections.

So far as change for the better is concerned, it has its beginning with self-change. Observed William Hazlitt: “Consider how hard it is to change yourself, and you will understand what little chance you have to change others.” An appreciation of this difficulty is step number one for anyone.

Do I inspire a change for the better in another? Answer that correctly and one has his measure of influence for the good as related to humanity.

Let one’s ambition be to reflect, not effect. The reverse is a perversion of cause and effect, of means and ends.

“Nearly everyone seems anxious to serve in an advisory capacity.” The cure for this malady? Await the seeking of counsel! But what if no one seeks? It’s a signal: there’s homework to do!

In the creative or improvement realm, there are no reformers: there are those who attract, as distinguished from would-be reformers who repel.

Has anyone ever remembered falling asleep? I doubt it! This may account for an unawareness of the intellectual and spiritual slumber, a distressing feature of our time. We do, however, remember coming awake—perhaps a cue for some helpful self-assessment.

Now to the positive. Margaret Slattery, a British church-woman, entitled a lecture, THEY THOUGHT, THEY DID—AND SO THEY BECAME. There’s enough wisdom in these few words for all the correction we need.

Gerald Heard spoke of the three stages of growth: conduct, character, and consciousness. “First, we will to conduct ourselves a little better. Our improved conduct becomes habitual and shapes our character, and eventually there is a breakthrough into a higher level of consciousness.” Simple? Yes! Difficult? Of course! But this is what our problem is all about, and there are no short cuts.

Finally, there is a misunderstanding to be corrected. There are people who contend that an unequivocal stand for the free society is an attempt to turn the world around to suit our fancy. Not so! It is, instead, an attempt to free human beings from all dictocrats, those who try to turn the world to their fancy. The freedom philosophy suggests that each individual be permitted to go his merry way—creatively, that is. The free man is allowed to try his own way—not to be turned my way or anyone else’s!

[1] Science Is A Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

23

BE-ATTITUDES

He who is cowardly will do right because it is safer to do so. . .

He who is overly ambitious will do right if it is to his advantage to do so. . .

He who is miserly will do right when he finds it cheaper to do so. . .

He who is average will do right because it is expected of him. . .

But blessed is he who does right because it is right.

Doing right just because it is right is as good a formula as exists for the salvation of one’s soul; but my concern here is on the external importance of right action. Undeniably, the fate of each of us is somewhat determined by what goes on in the world outside. The fate of our nation or society has much more to do with your destiny and mine than is generally supposed. Yet, the world outside of us is governed by what goes on inside—in the heads—of individuals.

Suppose, for instance, that every freedom devotee in our country were a pessimist, certain that the way of life we cherish is doomed. Doom it would be, for it is evident that “fear tends to make fears come true.”

Envision the opposite: Every freedom devotee an optimist, certain of winning. A victory it would be, for there is daily evidence that faith—believing—works miracles. The results of this frame of mind—intellectual ascension—are as certain as the results of fear—intellectual declension. Favoring optimism, as I do, is one thing; explaining it is more difficult, but very important. So let me try.

I would first call attention to the extent to which freedom is supported by those who do what’s right for material motives—because it pays off in a more comfortable life. Without such backing, freedom’s plight would be far worse than now.

Reflect on the millions too cowardly to confess that they are as socialistic or communistic as their thoughts and talk suggest. Instead of retreating behind the Iron Curtain, they stay where it’s safer and partake of the fruits of private ownership and trade in the free market. Much that they do is right, but they do it more out of habit than conviction.

Reflect on those who are overly ambitious, not for purposes of self-improvement, but for glorification, fame, to be celebrated, their name “on the tip of every tongue.” Yet, they will do right when it is to their advantage to do so. And ever so many times it is advantageous to hail “the American way of life” and utter other patriotisms that bring acclaim and fame.

Reflect on those who are miserly and will do right when it is cheaper to do so. Their frugality warrants no special applause, but the miserly generally do right as bargain hunters who reward and assure the success of efficient producers.

Reflect on those who are average and will do right because it is expected of them. Expected by whom? Those who do right because it is right! Thus, those who are “average” do an enormous amount of right, a great boon to freedom even though not guided by high principles and personal integrity.

Now to my point: Blessed is he who does right because it is right. Running away in fear is a common weakness. A quitter is distressed by everything that happens in his personal life regarded as unfavorable, be it criticism, disagreement, illness, a deserting friend, on and on to the end of his mortal moment. In a word: worrycrat!

But fretting about personal problems is only half of such a person’s dilemma. This fainthearted individual is distressed—pessimistic—about everything that goes on in society that doesn’t accord with his views of what-ought-to-be—a faulty attitude! True, much that is happening today is gravely at odds with what any freedom devotee regards as right and proper. However, this is no time to give up in despair. As Josiah Holland put it: “A time like this demands strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands.”[1]

Finally, he who does right because it is right is psychologically, intellectually, morally, and spiritually attuned to reality. He is no more offended by criticism than elated by praise. Nor is he downcast by the errors of others, for he does not think of himself as the ONE who should order their lives. Whatever goes on in his personal life or in the world around him are facts to be taken into consideration by him as he acts and reacts. But fretting will not change such facts. He is, by reason of this high resolve, an optimist, for he is positive that he can do what’s right because it is right.

[1] “The Day’s Demand” by Josiah G. Holland (1819–1881). Essays on Liberty, Vol. VII, p. 9.

24

THE SCHOOL OF MANKIND

Example is the school of mankind; they learn at no other.

—BURKE

That scholarly and brilliant Britisher, Edmund Burke (1727–1797), assuredly used the term “mankind” as defined in his country’s Oxford Dictionary: “Human beings in general.” Thus, the reference was not to those few who think for themselves and explore the Unknown, the ones graced with insights and who experience intuitive flashes, the moral and intellectual giants, the oversouls, those like Confucius, Socrates, Epictetus, Augustine, Maimonides, Adam Smith and thousands of others. Not included in Burke’s dictum were those who rank high in setting examples—the exemplars! Rather, his reference was to the general run of us who learn, if at all, by the example of our superiors.

For the past forty years I have studied the few—those stalwarts past and present—and observed how their exemplarity has helped me to shape my life. They teach by the high example they set, and we learn by our efforts to do likewise. To the extent that we learn the lessons their examples teach, to that extent are our own chances of exemplarity improved.

What has been the most rewarding lesson? It is this: individuals, past or present, whom I have rated as exemplars, have thought of themselves as among “human beings in general.” Their place in the elite category has been bestowed by others—never self-proclaimed. Indeed, any time any person puts a crown on his own head, he is one to shun intellectually, never to follow or emulate. Unfortunately for him, he has failed to grasp how infinitesimal is his own finite consciousness.

Socrates, reputedly one of the wisest, had this to say: “I know nothing, but I know I know nothing.” That great Greek referred to himself as a philosophical midwife; he was a go-between—seeking Truth on the one hand, sharing his findings with fellow seekers on the other. Socrates was aware of a simple and self-evident fact: the more one learns, the larger looms the Unknown.

This point is easy to grasp. Merely visualize in the mind’s eye a sheet of black, infinite in dimensions—the Unknown. Now whiten a small circle to represent your awareness, perception, consciousness of, say, a decade ago. Next whiten a greatly enlarged circle to depict your growth during the past ten years. Observe how much more darkness you as a learner are exposed to now than earlier. A good guideline to assess progress: if daily the Unknown is not looming larger, one is not growing.

Many who have delved deeply into any subject, be it philosophy, science, or whatever, are keenly aware of this point. Warren Weaver, a distinguished mathematician, generalized the conclusion reached by many thoughtful scientists:

As science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it learns several new questions. It is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance within which. . . things are clear. . . . But, as that circle becomes larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer. Science learns more and more. But there is a sense in which it does not gain; for the volume of the appreciated but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our ignorance.[1] (Italics mine)

Here we are presented with what, at first blush, is a seeming anomaly, namely, the more one is aware of his ignorance the more is he graced with wisdom. These two progressions are complementary rather than contradictory. They are twin aspects of man’s most important earthly purpose: growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. As suggested above, when one is growing, he becomes more and more aware of his ignorance and this gain in awareness is, in itself, a gain in wisdom. No better lesson is to be learned in The School of Mankind!

Parenthetically, it should be noted that there are among us always those I would class as “false exemplars”—the political charlatans and others who prescribe life without effort, the know-nothings who promise that they, better than we ourselves, can manage our individual destinies.

These “leaders” are the very opposite of exemplars. They are Pied Pipers who put themselves in the vanguard of this or that mob. According to Emerson, a mob is “a society of bodies voluntarily bereaving themselves of reason.”

My concern is not with mobs and their flabby disposition to escape from freedom and self-responsibility but, rather, with those individuals who aspire to get ever deeper into life. The human future is with those whose ambition is to achieve in their own lives, as nearly as possible, man’s manifest destiny!

Very well! Observe the true exemplars and their ways. These all-too-rare souls have their eyes cast only on their own improvement, not on the reforming of anyone else. As a consequence of their adherence to self-perfection, others who would improve themselves are drawn not only to them but to the light they radiate. To seekers, such enlightenment performs as does a magnet.

However, there are and always have been two grades of people: stagnant and growing. There are individuals who seem to be more enlightened on this or that subject than anyone else. Being further advanced than all others, no more is required of them, or so they mistakenly conclude. Stagnated! In a word, they crown themselves and freeze at the level of their self-professed perfection. They fail to grow.

It is growth in awareness, and this alone, which energizes the power of attraction; stagnation at whatever level has no magnetism! It matters not at what level of awareness the growth proceeds, be it from a beginner in The School of Mankind or a Socrates. Why? The one who is learning is graced with ideas—enlightenments—new to him and very likely new, or at least refreshing, to those fortunate enough to share his company.

This is a fascinating phenomenon. Magnetism flows between the seekers and the givers of light, much as a flash of lightning oscillates between positive and negative poles. The current may be generated from either direction—by the teacher whose light is growing brighter, or by the student drawing ever more earnestly from the constant light of a great teacher, perhaps one no longer living. Or, most hopefully, the greatest enlightenment might come as teacher and student grow together.

Many times you and I have said and heard others say, “I now see what you mean.” Why not before? Countless reasons range from one party’s deafness or disinterest to the other’s muteness or monotony. It has been said that repetition is the mother of learning, but this is not necessarily the case. Saying the same thing over and over—the broken record—is folly. But trying to phrase an idea in better and more interesting style has merit not only for the phraser but also for the one who may be trying to “see what you mean.” Forever strive for clarity; first in one’s mind and then in expressions and actions.

The seeker after the light of truth should search in every nook and cranny, for no person knows beforehand from what source it might beam. When he spots it, he should follow wherever it leads. If we are alert, flashes of truth will be observed emanating from those previously unknown as well as from the acclaimed elite, from sometime opponents as well as from long-time friends of freedom, from babes to grownups. Let us pray with Cardinal Newman: “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. Lead Thou me on!”

When devotees of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life are chosen as teachers, let orientation be the teachers’ aim. Yes, give some samplings of the few lessons well mastered, point out the lodestar—the ideal—and let the seekers take it from there. The School of Mankind has given me two reasons for this conclusion. First, there is no teacher among all who live who knows all the explanations—even remotely. And, second, only the seekers can find their way. No individual can do it for you or me or anyone else. Each, by the very nature of man, is his own trail blazer.

The School of Mankind! It issues no degrees; there is no tenure. Students and teachers leap-frog one another as they advance. No graduation, only daily commencements! And no semesters or set term of years! The School of Mankind is for life—the good life!

[1] See “The Raw Material,” Manas (Vol. XXVIII, No. 9, February 26, 1975).

25

THE POINT OF CURE

In the history of man it has been very generally the case, that when evils have grown insufferable, they have touched the point of cure.

—E. H. CHAPIN

The evils of runaway government, with its inevitable inflationary consequence, approach the insufferable stage. People by the millions are becoming concerned; in a word, they are waking up and are now wondering what to do about it. Good! As W. S. Gilbert wrote in The Mikado, “Don’t let’s be down-hearted. There’s a silver lining to every cloud.” The silver lining in our dark cloud is this rising solicitude.

I admire Chapin’s “touched the point of cure.” For, regardless of any understanding that grows out of it, let us never get the notion that wonder by itself is all there is to it. This large-scale wonderment merely touches the point of cure and unless handled properly can easily prove abortive. The silver lining is indeed in our politico-economic cloud, but will we act intelligently enough ever to see it? That’s the question.

The key to any success we may experience rests on proper treatment. The treatment I have seen thus far seems inappropriate; it is doing more harm than good, and turning sweet wonder into bitter skepticism and opposition. Unless there is an about-face in tactics or method, that silver lining is but an opportunity lost. True, the anxiety has touched the point of cure—no more; the problem is to find the role that each must play if our concern is to reach the level of understanding needed to effect a cure.

Here is the situation as I see it—in graphic form:

This chart symbolizes adult American society. The segment blocked in at the left represents the very few articulate, persuasive protagonists of socialism. The one at the right represents the small number of free market, private ownership, limited government spokesmen. These on the right are the devotees of the freedom way of life, who partially understand its imperatives and exemplify its essence.

Ranged between these two small polar groups are 130,000,000 adult Americans. While members of this segment may display expertise at a thousand and one specializations, they have few if any ideas—good or bad—when it comes to politico-economic affairs; they merely tend to follow one wing or the other—left or right. The wing they follow will get their votes and, thus, these millions render the final decision as to the political system under which the nation will live.

’Tis a puzzling picture! The millions render the final decision. Yet, which way they lean depends on the byplay between the few thousand in each of the opposing camps. The way the millions go—the fate of the nation—is, in the final analysis, decided by how cleverly the small block at the left conspires to destroy a free society and how profoundly and wisely the block at the right strives to create such a societal ideal.

During the past few decades, the millions have leaned toward socialism. The reason as I see it? We of the freedom persuasion have, for the most part, employed unattractive—even repelling—tactics. The hope? That the new wonderment among the millions has touched the point of cure. Can we achieve the cure? Yes, provided we sufficiently improve our understanding and set our tactics straight!

Now for some analysis of ourselves—the block at the right. Opposed to socialism, yes. The remedy? Ever so many among us believe it consists in “selling the masses.” This is just as farfetched or unrealistic as selling the multitudes on becoming galactic explorers. Heightened consciousness—knowledge, wisdom, awareness, perception—cannot be sold. Like any other virtue, awareness is a personal acquisition, a quality sought for. I can no more insinuate an idea into your mind than you can ram a notion into mine. Each individual is in charge of his own doors or perception and he absorbs into his ideas and actions only that which he wishes.

If the selling tactic had no other defect than fruitless effort—spinning one’s wheels—we could bemoan the fact and let it go at that. The “hard sell,” however, sends the prospective customers away from, not toward, the freedom way of life.

Consider the person who insists on sending this book or that article to every member of Congress, or who writes reams of advice to the President of the United States. In effect, straighten them out! Not a responsive word is heard if “the sell” is from a stranger, one whose counsel is not sought.

Such uninvited “wisdom” lands not in the minds of these governmental agents but in their wastebaskets. Further, the freedom way of life is thereby downgraded in the eyes of the besieged. Add to these incorrect methods the drop-out policy of throwing in the sponge, taking a posture exactly the opposite of what it should be. An example in the morning’s mail, the concluding sentence to a despondent letter: “I am discouraged. I am angry. But worse, I am becoming apathetic.” Since he can’t reform others to his taste, he concludes that the case is hopeless; he is not attending to his own practice of freedom.

If someone in high political office—the President or a Congressman—were to seek your counsel, there would be a listening ear, that is, a wanting-to-know-ness coupled with his acknowledgment of you as a fruitful source. If one wishes to be effective, here is a good rule to follow. Wait for the call—the seeking of counsel—but do everything within one’s power to qualify for the call.

We must, however, analyze the kind of personal behavior which accounts for such calls. This above all: seek not agreement any more than praise; seek only righteousness, pursue only excellence. If this be one’s major aim, and if a modicum of progress is made, some of those few among the Remnant—the ones who really count—will find you out. You couldn’t hide your light under a bushel if you tried! Light mysteriously shines through, regardless!

The Remnant: In every society there are persons who have the intelligence to figure out the requirements of liberty and the character to walk in its ways. This is a scattered fellowship of individuals—mostly unknown to you or me—bound together by a love of ideas and a hunger to know the plain truth of things. These persons resist the hard sell, or any other kind of sell; they refuse to be fetched. Any suspicion that they might be the target of someone’s efforts and they vanish. There is only one way to go about it: Let each cultivate his own garden—pursue excellence—and if he produces anything worthwhile, he may be sure, as Albert Jay Nock says, “that the Remnant will find him. He may rely on that with absolute assurance. They will find him without his doing anything about it; in fact, if he tries to do anything about it, he is pretty sure to put them off. . . .”[1]

Why so much emphasis on the pursuit of excellence as the sole formula for the cure we seek? It stems from this observation: The higher grade the objective, the higher grade must the method be. If one’s objective be the destruction of a free society, low-grade methods suffice. If, on the other hand, the objective be the creation of a free society, then this is as high grade in the politico-economic hierarchy of values as one can go; it correlates with understanding and wisdom and, by the same token, the method must be commensurately as high.

What is this method? It is as simple to state as it is difficult to achieve: arrive at that excellence in understanding and exposition that will cause others—those who care to know—to seek one’s tutorship. Proof that this works? Merely reflect on those to whom you turn for tutorship in any field of endeavor. Obviously, only to those who, in your judgment, are more, not less, enlightened. For example, golfers at my Club do not seek my tutorship on how to play the game; they are aware of my incompetence. But wave a magic wand and make a Jack Nicklaus of me, and every member will sit at my feet, drink at my fountain, seek my tutorship. This is true in any field one wishes to examine, and in none is it more evident than in the rebirth of liberty—the goal of our ambition.

Yes, we have touched the point of cure. A brand new wonderment among 130,000,000 adult Americans awaits only an attracting excellence to effect the cure, namely, an about-face from democratic despotism to human liberty. We have ample demonstration that the “hard sell” does not work. So, let’s try the learning and sharing process. As Nock said, “We may rely on that with absolute assurance.”

[1] It was forty years ago that I read Nock’s “Isaiah’s Job” in the Atlantic Monthly. Immediately, I quit being a reformer or a name-caller. Mr. Nock not only understood this ancient wisdom recorded in the Old Testament but he did such a brilliant rewriting of it that it caused me and many others to do an about-face. See Essays on Liberty, Vol. II, pp. 51–61.

26

RIGHT NOW!

By the streets of “by and by” one arrives at the house of “never.”

—CERVANTES

By “right now” I mean today; I mean, stand for and proclaim the right as one sees it, not by and by, not tomorrow, but now! Truth deferred is truth interred—laid to rest. It has been suggested that he who postpones the honesty of today till tomorrow will probably relegate his tomorrow to eternity. Righteousness can never be born in procrastination but only in the here and now—right now!

What has this to do with human liberty, that is, with the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life? Far more than meets the eye! Perhaps we can respond with a cue from Mark Twain, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.” Doing the right thing these days is so uncommon as to shock most people. Yet, the case for liberty rests on the presumption that a person will behave promptly and voluntarily as righteously as he knows how. A large percentage of the individuals who do perceive the desirability of liberty have two fears: (1) the fear of the unpopularity which attends those who shock their contemporaries and (2) the fear that if what’s right were to take place all at once the economy would tumble into a shambles.

A commentary on the first fear: Thirty years ago I was discussing our economic problems with one of the nation’s distinguished editors. He saw things clearly. The journal over which he presided was published by one of our leading business organizations. He said to me, “Someone, sometime, must write the truth about our economic dilemma—must explain the only real way out of it.”

“Why don’t you do it?” asked I.

His reply, “Our organization would be pilloried and ruined.”

This man, like many others, thought it dangerous to be openly honest. Further, he regarded his organization as more important than his own honesty. In reality, it was not important that his organization be popular, or even that it survive. It was only important that he and the organization be forthright in the presentation of honest convictions.

The explanations my editor friend expressed privately to me were splendid. Indeed, his words were what most thinking Americans—lovers of liberty—would like to speak and write. Yet, like this editor, they hold their tongues and still their pens for fear that their words might be astonishing, shocking, unpopular.

This poses some serious questions as to how we should order our lives: Why should you or I seek popularity? Is it actually dangerous to be honest? And supposing it were, for what greater cause than individual liberty could risks be taken?

Reflect on the editor’s stand, or lack of it, rather. Thirty years ago he was afraid to say what he believed to be right. Yet, there has not been any time since then when the case for liberty could have been made with less astonishment, shock, unpopularity! Indeed, the obstacles and difficulty of gaining a hearing for liberty have mounted steadily year after year. On his own premises, the editor, and those like him, would have remained permanently muted; liberty could have had no spokesman—and all for the shameful fear of being honest. I repeat, truth deferred is truth interred; liberty relegated to the house of “never”!

Now for a commentary on the second fear: that were we devotees of liberty to get our way all at once—the right suddenly to replace the wrong—the economy would tumble into a shambles. This fear accounts for “gradualism,” the notion that what’s right must be implemented slowly and step by step. This, I submit, is a demonstrable fallacy and, if pursued, would and must have the same disastrous results as the other fear: the house of “never”!

It was April 1946. Wartime wage and price controls were still in effect. My lecture, “I’d Push the Button,” was delivered in Detroit before the Annual Meeting of the Controllers Institute of America. The title was taken from my opening sentence: “If there were a button on this rostrum, the pressing of which would remove all wage and price controls instantaneously, I would put my finger on it and push.” The very opposite of “gradualism”!

Here is an analogy. A big, burly ruffian has me on my back, his knee in my midriff, his hands around my neck. A dozen friends, in typical fashion, are circling the scene, bemoaning the plight of poor, old Read. I can hear their chatter. “We must remove that ruffian, but we must do it gradually or Read will get up and go to work all of a sudden.” There are proofs galore that my analogy is not fantasy. Three outstanding examples may suffice to make the point.

The National Industrial Recovery Act—NRA or The Blue Eagle—became law during the early days of the New Deal. Top business leaders and their national organizations endorsed this fantastic set of government controls over the economy. Why this anti-free market position? For more reasons than I shall ever know, but one was the hope of being rid of dreaded competition. However, after a year or two of these strangling controls, the business leaders and their organizations reversed their position. Abbreviated, their “reasoning” was this: “We must be rid of this political monster, but the riddance must be gradual. To be rid of it suddenly would wreck the economy.”

Came May 1935 and the Supreme Court’s famous “Chicken Case” decision. As of that moment every phase of NRA was abolished, not an iota of it remained. The wrong abolished suddenly! Did the economy go smash? To the contrary, citizens went suddenly to work. Have a look at the indices—on the up!

Here is the second example. Not being present, I do not know the exact phrasing, but the gist of it was as follows:

An aide to President Truman announced, “Mr. President, the Japanese have surrendered.”

“Cancel the war contracts!”

“Why, Mr. President, they amount to $45,000,000,000. That would ruin the economy.”

Responded the Commander-in-Chief: “Cancel the war contracts!”

Within hours, telegrams were sent from Washington ordering all contractors to stop right where they were. Economic pandemonium? To the contrary, production for the market took over as the manufacture of war material ceased—suddenly! Look at the indices—on the up!

The third example is the most impressive of all. I was present when it was born: April 1947, at the first meeting of The Mont Pelerin Society. The initiator was Professor Ludwig von Mises.

First, take stock of Mises and his ways. I can speak with authority on this point for he was an intimate acquaintance of mine for thirty three years. Never once did I know him to equivocate. Always, he spoke and wrote what he believed to be right—no heed whatsoever to the approval of anyone. Nor did he push his views; he merely stated and explained them.[1]

Anyway, at this meeting in Switzerland he gave an impressive summary of his politico-economic views—the Austrian School philosophy. Mises presented what he believed to be right—right now. Later, I overheard Professor Wilhelm Roepke, one of the most notable among the founders, vigorously express his disapproval of Mises’ views. Two years later, I was invited to dine with Professor and Mrs. Mises, that they “had a guest from Europe.” Who did the guest turn out to be? Roepke! In this brief period, Professor Roepke had come to share the views of Mises—philosophically, the two had becoming substantially one.

Now for the payoff, the fantastic result of one man’s honesty. The Allied Command in Germany imposed all sorts of controls—the Keynesian type of notions. They chose Dr. Ludwig Erhard as their German economic advisor, doubtless because he had degrees in economics and was a noted anti-Nazi. Much to everyone’s surprise, Dr. Erhard went on a nationwide radio broadcast one Sunday evening and announced, “Beginning tomorrow morning all wage, price, and other controls are off!”

Dr. Erhard was summoned before the planners of the Allied Command and informed that he could go to prison for such an unauthorized act. “You have modified our controls.”

Replied Erhard, “I haven’t modified your controls; I have abolished them!”

Dr. Erhard then had to appear before General Clay, the Allied Commander. Said the General, in effect, “Ludwig, I don’t know up from down when it comes to economics, but I like you, and I am going to back you.”

Witness what happened: the miraculous recovery of a devastated country within a few years, the greatest demonstration of how freedom works its wonders in the Twentieth Century!

The above, however, is the story but not the key to it. The key? Dr. Erhard in one of his books acknowledged that his principal mentor and advisor was Wilhelm Roepke! Observe on what a slender thread the recovery of West Germany was strung: Mises, saying what’s right—right now; Roepke coming to share the great man’s understanding; and Erhard courageously putting it all into effect.

That West Germany is on the skids again, as is the U.S.A., and every other country, can be explained by the absence of such exemplary understanding, honesty, courage.

Said Henry Clay: “I would rather be right than be president.” Anyone of that moral mien can have my vote for good citizenship, the head of a household, or company, or country. Without such persons, liberty is out of the question; and without liberty, achieving individual potentialities is out of the question. Thus, give America more of those who will do the right as they see the right—right now!

[1] For a good example of Mises and his ways, see “The Individual in Society.” Copy on request.

Comes the Dawn

Leonard E. Read

1976

To

Those who look into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and persevere, being no hearers that forget, but doers that act.

HAVE FAITH!

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future.

—Collyer

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.

—Whately

Faith is to believe, on the word of God, what we do not see, and its reward is to see and enjoy what we believe.

—Augustine

Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.

—Bulwer

All I have teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

—Emerson

Epochs of faith, are epochs of fruitfulness; but epochs of unbelief, however glittering, are barren of all permanent good.

—Goethe

1

COMES THE DAWN

The hour that the joyous Aurora with rosy fingers drives away the shades of night.[1]

—RABELAIS

What’s ahead for America? Is there a dawn in the offing? Or is the midnight darkness here to stay, which is to ask, is the disastrous trend of the past few decades to continue? Dictatorship—the total state—our destiny? Liberty but a blessing of the past? These and similar questions are on the lips of freedom devotees. With but few exceptions, they answer themselves forlornly, dejectedly, pessimistically, concluding that there is no hope. No rosy fingers to drive away the shades of night! These are common conclusions, and they are fatal to the aspirations of those who would be free.

Freedom can no more be reborn in hopelessness than wisdom can originate in a robot. For freedom to rise again, there has to be a self-starter and that, at the very minimum, is a belief in the possibility of freedom. Faith in the possibility of a resurgence of freedom is the starting point, the foundation on which all the intellectual building blocks are laid and erected. Is this a reasonable faith?

As to faith, many philosophers deny that reason has any part to play. For instance, “The Way to see by Faith is to shut the Eye to Reason.” However, I go along with the English divine, Sydney Smith: “It is always right that a man should be able to render a reason for the faith that is within him.” Are there good reasons for my faith, reasons not seen by many devotees?

I claim no talent as a forecaster. I have no crystal ball and couldn’t read it if I had one—nor can anyone else. No one knows what is going to happen in the next minute, let alone in the years ahead. Indeed, no one knows the really significant events that occurred yesterday, the claims of historians to the contrary notwithstanding. However, any assessments we make of the future are projections of what we observe now. Witness these words of the distinguished English poet, Lord Tennyson:

For I dipt into the future, far as

human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world and all

the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce,

argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping

down with costly bales.

Lord Tennyson described a vision of the future based on what he saw happening 130 years ago. And my vision of the future is what I see now, plus what I have seen for the past 43 years. I feel a moral obligation to report my experiences, for I have seen what few others, if any, have witnessed.

What do most of our friends see? Surface appearances: the planned economy and the welfare state—socialism—gaining by leaps and bounds. Admittedly, this is horrible to behold, enough to frighten anyone who loves liberty.

In contrast, it has been my privilege to observe what is happening—beneath the surface—the wonderful changes in the minds of men and women around the world. For more than four decades, with the freedom philosophy as my major concern, I have lectured and conferred in 22 foreign nations, in several of them numerous times. I have done the same in 48 of our states—several thousand gatherings. In addition, there has been intimate and revealing correspondence over these many years! As a result, I am widely acquainted with devotees of freedom in this and other countries, and the changes in their thinking. The reason that bolsters my faith derives from these enlightening experiences.

Perhaps there is no better way to explain what goes on beneath the surface than to relate what went on within me—in 90 minutes! It was during the heyday of the New Deal, a major authoritarian feature of which was the National Industrial Recovery Act—the Blue Eagle, so-called. This scheme of strangling controls was supported by many top businessmen and their organizations: the NAM as well as the National Chamber of Commerce for which I then worked. On hearing that a distinguished businessman in Los Angeles was making critical remarks about the National Chamber policy, I thought it incumbent on me to straighten him out. I went to his office and tried as best I could—for half an hour. Then he proceeded to straighten me out! He talked about the philosophy of freedom for one hour—and won me over to his side. From that moment, the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life has been my major concern.

The explanation of what went on beneath the surface—within me? Know the answer to this and that’s all the knowing my thesis requires. It was a happy coincidence: the more or less inadvertent coming together of two levels of learning—of one who knew and of one who wanted to know.

As to my friend and mentor, I have never come upon anyone who saw more clearly through the political fog or sham than he. His explanations were both profound and simple, not only of the fallacies but of the corrective: liberty. And this above all: integrity! This man, Bill Mullendore, was never known to equivocate, to say anything for expediency’s sake. Exemplar par excellence! This is the plus side of a happy and coincidental get-together.

Now for my side, the minus side. Not knowing much, and knowing it, I have always wanted to learn. That’s all there is to it. No one can be made to learn. Only those who wish to learn can or ever will do so.

Suppose everyone were a know-nothing or, as the Germans say, a Dummkopf. There would be no incentive to learn. But let there arise among us some enlightened souls; then others among us would be stimulated to learn. For it is an observed fact that those out front exert a magnetic force, generating a wanting-to-know-ness.

But how account for those out front? In the absence of anyone to attract them, what fires their pursuit of truth? From whence the magnetism that accounts for their emergence? Emerson phrased the answer to my satisfaction: “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence and we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of its beams.” Thus, our intellectual, moral, and spiritual leaders are those who have succeeded in allowing “a passage of its beams.” The immense intelligence causes them to learn and they, in turn, cause others of us to learn.

Now for my answers to the question, what’s going on beneath the surface?

- The quality of thinking is rapidly improving. When we began a program of freedom seminars some twenty years ago, the response often consisted of arguments and confrontations. Today? Eager-beaver, as we say, all participants anxious to learn. Requests for FEE Seminars are now more than we can accommodate.

- Those who, only a short time ago, were students of the freedom philosophy are now teachers. Others are seeking light from them.

- While ours is not a numbers problem—all worthy movements are led by an infinitesimal few—it is encouraging that requests for our literature are on the increase, as is the number of our financial contributors, and on their initiative.

- In the early days of FEE most of our free market, private ownership, limited government presentations were staff-written. Today, excellent manuscripts are coming from ever so many previously unheard of individuals, from this and other countries. Testimony day in and day out: “The Freeman gets better each month.”

- Thirty years ago there did not exist a consistent literature of the freedom philosophy written in modern American idiom. Today, the list includes hundreds of volumes ranging all the way from such simple books as Hazlitt’s Economics In One Lesson to such profound tomes as Mises’ Human Action.

- Beneath the surface? Bill Mullendores are popping up in many other nations, as well as in growing numbers in the U.S.A. In summary, these are the reasons for my faith.

I am convinced that the joyous Aurora with rosy fingers has already driven away the shades of night. The darkness of midnight has passed and sooner or later will come the dawn.

Admittedly, the momentum of a growing socialism will, for some time, give discouraging surface appearances. But its sustaining force has been replaced—socialism cannot prevail against liberty.

Just one qualification: away with hopelessness, for it is fatal. The evidence beneath the surface is in our favor—hopeful. See it, believe it, and we will win. This is the report that I owe the friends of freedom.

* * *

Hopefully, the following chapters will lend credence to my optimism or, better yet, to my faith in a rebirth of the good society. And to your faith, if it be lagging a bit.

These chapters contain no original ideas. Rather, each is an attempt more clearly to expose authoritarian fallacies and to better phrase the case for freedom than I have previously accomplished. Briefly, trying to surpass self day in and day out!

One of these days, one of us—perhaps you—will surpass all of us. In any event, let more individuals strive in this manner, and a radiation will result so powerful that others will “tune in”—receive the message. And then? Comes the dawn—for certain!

[1] In Roman mythology, Aurora is the goddess of dawn.

2

LIFE’S GREATEST OCCUPATION

It is necessary to try to surpass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.

—QUEEN CHRISTINA

Christina was born to the purple in 1626, and became Queen of Sweden in 1632. A lover of learning, she was tutored by Descartes and other scholars. Christina passed away in 1689, “after a life not lacking in excitement,” as one commentator put it. Excitement, indeed, if the above sentence be a sampling of her thinking. What an insight, a revelation that goes to the very root of human destiny—the wellspring of what man is intended to become!

True, to surpass self is the root of human destiny, but too often the roots die aborning. The variety of trivia which pre-empts the time and attention of those who live and have lived is beyond calculation. The vast majority call it quits—life’s occupation “achieved”—if they merely keep up with the Joneses. This is an erratic guideline, being no more than self-satisfaction as compared with this person or that! Three samplings:

- Wealth: People need sufficient food, clothing, shelter; but what is such a sufficiency? Reflect on the differences in occupations, depending on where and when one lives or lived, and the tendency to stagnate at the generally accepted level. The American Indians of 400 years ago were satisfied with fish, animal skins for clothing, tents, bonfires. To many Americans of our day, it’s nothing more than leveling with what they see around them. To millions in our population, it’s food stamps or other government handouts. Surpass self? Nary such a thought!

- Fame: Everyone enjoys recognition, but even a modicum of praise, applause, notoriety tends to intoxicate ever so many in all walks of life. A fathead is finished, surpassing self not even a dream.

- Power: Those whose ambition is to run the lives of others leave no room to run their own. “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Corrupt individuals cannot surpass self!

To surpass self, the very root of human destiny! The philosopher, William James, made a sage observation:

. . . I am for those tiny, invisible, molecular forces which work from individual to individual, creeping in through the crannies of the world like so many soft rootlets . . . but which, if you give them time, will rend the hardest monuments of pride.

To surpass self is the way to do away with pride and, may I suggest, the other frailties as well.

I have believed for several decades that the U.S.A. is in a period of decline and fall, not unlike that of the Roman Empire, and that our salvation is barely thinkable short of an intervention by Divine Providence. On what would such an intervention depend? Would it not be in the form of a few individuals surpassing self, not calling it quits, but moving toward the Overall Enlightenment? Call this, if you will, as did William James, “tiny, invisible molecular forces which work from individual to individual.”

It is one thing to assert such a goal but quite another matter to find one’s way to it, to avoid the intellectual roadblocks, and remain sensitive to the moral stimuli. What follows are only speculations—explorations as to how one may surpass self, an occupation for life.

To surpass self, humility must rule the soul; otherwise, one claims an insight—a bit of truth—as his own. This is egotism, the opposite of humility, and egotists stagnate rather than grow. Further, injury is done to truth when one proclaims it as his own. The reason is simple: the proclaimer is not the source; innocently or not, he proclaims the wrong source and, thus, the truth is denigrated.

Truth is perceived; it is not originated by any individual. As Emerson wrote:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of its beams.

We surpass ourselves only as we succeed in intercepting the beams. And the more accessible to others we make our interceptions—if they in fact be truth—the more will we profit. Fortunately, a truth given to or shared with others is not lost to the giver. As others use the truths we intercept, we gain.

The surpassing of self is a personal adventure into the realm of the Unknown. The routes prescribed have ranged all the way from the rantings of gypsies to the wisdom of Augustine’s Confessions. And the adventurers have ranged from the acclaimed elite to the lowly fishermen of Galilee, from small fry to big shots, from the least of laymen to the holiest of Popes.

This is only to suggest that no infallible route has been staked out for you or me, and for good reason: all who live and have lived are unique—no two remotely alike! Does this mean that we have to go it alone? Of course not! The adventure consists of sorting the wheat from the chaff, the wisdom from the nonsense, and this above all: surpassing each day what we were the day before—headed for the high country of consciousness.

I repeat, to surpass self is an individual achievement. Doubtless, my thinking on this originated many years ago when reading Across the Unknown by Stewart Edward White:

[This] development, I had come to realize, is individual. No two men are alike from thumb print to immortal soul. There are no shotgun prescriptions, whether of cult, philosophy or religion. We cannot be helped by rigid regimes. We must have direction, not directions. What is desirable? Which way points our compass? What, in clearer definition, are we after? This is about all we can be told. Recognizable signposts can be planted for us toward the high country, but we alone must find our paths.

So, all I can do is hopefully to serve as a signpost—sharing an experience or two that has been helpful to me—if not in achievement, at least in aspiration.

Here is an example of one route staked out for myself—a means of surpassing—that to most others is unthinkable or undesirable or unworkable or impossible or too time-consuming: the keeping of a daily Journal. I made a resolution to do so more than 24 years ago and have not missed a day. Some of the disciplines employed and rewarding to me:

- Making an entry is the first act of each day (the first day of the rest of my life!) and it is initiated with a prayer. It is against the rule to retire unless the day’s Journal entry is completed.

- Dictation is also taboo; all entries must be written in longhand or typed. The advantage? Writing demands concentration, and this stimulates the flow of ideas.

- The entries include all that happens: ideas or insights that grace the mind; even who drives me to the airport! My flight experiences are recorded, including conversations with seatmates, if of value. I note comments on my seeming failures and successes as relating to the freedom way of life, inclusions of good thoughts found in my readings; evaluations of all lectures and seminars; on and on—nothing significant omitted. Why the minor entries? Writing puts on paper what’s in the mind for the eye to see, thus revealing the need of improvement—of surpassing self day in and day out.

To my way of thinking, Emerson’s “we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of its beams,” has a shortcoming with which doubtless he would agree. There is something we must do: intercept the beams! These beams, as dreams, are ephemeral—vanishing, evanescent—unless captured. Millions of people have had countless ideas—the intellectual elements of surpassing—about which they are totally unaware. The faithful keeping of a daily Journal is a capturing device. Once your mind knows you mean business, it will cooperate by experiencing the day’s events vividly, and retaining them in memory.

When my resolution was made, I had great difficulty, at first, carrying it out. But resolutions are made to be kept, not abandoned willy-nilly. Anyway, in about six months my Journal became a joy. From then on, there has been nothing in the living of each day—life’s greatest occupation—that gives me more pleasure; it is unbelievably rewarding!

Not time enough? Perish this careless thought! There is more time to do the worthwhile things in life than any of us knows how to use!

The “beams” of immense intelligence, to which Emerson refers, cannot find passage through such obstacles as hopelessness, worry, pessimism, anger, egotism, and the like. The challenge? Remove the obstacles! How? He gives the answer to which I subscribe:

Is not a prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite?—No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

The prayers to which I allude are not in the form of supplications but, rather, of aspirations. Bear in mind that immense intelligence (Something-Beyond-Words) has no appropriate gender, so we resort to He and Thy and the like. Here are several samplings that tend to open one’s inner channels:

- May my living manifest charity, intelligence, justice, love, humility, reverence, and integrity. To the extent that any of these virtues are absent, to that extent do blockages—ferments of the soul—exist. To “allow a passage of its beams” requires that one’s soul be a high-grade conductor of this Radiant Energy. These virtues are the very essence of human conduct—and conductivity.

- May my daily behaviors be expressions of gratitude for my many, many blessings and opportunities. An awareness of one’s blessings and opportunities is the cure for, the way of warding off, covetousness. Envy is one of the most deadly of sins. No creative energy can pass through a soul so dominated.

- I pray for Thy blessings upon associates, near and far, past and present, and for the perfection of our ideas and ideals, and our adherence to them. Other freedom devotees are included because I cannot go it alone; no one can. We learn from each other. My conductivity increases with every gain in enlightenment, whether that initial breakthrough be mine or yours. Thus, to best serve self, my striving for perfection should never be egocentric.

- May I make progress in removing those faults of mine which stand as obstacles to those of Thy ways which might possibly manifest themselves through me. I must realize that only an infinitesimal fraction of the immense intelligence will be intercepted by me. I have no way of knowing the limits of my capacity but, at the very least, let me not stand in the way.

There are, of course, obstacles galore. There is one, however, which ranks above the others, and the nature of which was perceived by the ancients. Abbreviate the Mosaic Law and it reads something like this:

God told the people of Israel that if they lived the righteous life they would be graced with abundance, but that there was a snare to this; that is, they might get the idea that the abundance was of their own hands and, if they did, they would suffer hell and damnation.

This applies as rigidly to an abundance of ideas as to a plethora of material goods. For anyone who succeeds in intercepting any rays of the immense intelligence to get the notion that he is the source is to dry it up, and thus put an end to any further realization of his potential. To me, intellectual and spiritual sterility is nothing less than hell and damnation!

Reflect on, “I pray for Thy blessings upon associates, past and present.” Who, pray tell, are they? They are the ones with whom we associate in ideas and ideals. When and where they were engaged in surpassing themselves matters not at all. What matters is that we draw upon their insights. Ideas intercepted and forgotten sever the association.

Now to the value of keeping a daily Journal. After beginning this chapter, I was skimming through entries made 15 years ago and came upon the following by Edmund Burke written in May 1795:

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is) I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.

What a profound observation! It made an impression on me 15 years ago, but then it slipped from my mind. This aspect of my association with that remarkable man ceased to exist. The rereading of my Journal entry renewed the association.

It is not a thoughtless, careless assertion, but a great truth, that once a society has tumbled into an authoritarian mess, as now, there will appear, we know not from where, individuals such as Burke describes. History is replete with examples, ranging from the Perfect Exemplar—Jesus of Nazareth—to Socrates, to Lorenzo the Magnificent, to Adam Smith, to Cobden and Bright, to America’s Founding Fathers. Anyone with eyes to see cannot help but observe numerous individuals of this exemplarity among us right now—a time, therefore, not of despair, but of hope.

The formula for salvation is as Christina suggested: To surpass self—always. This—life’s greatest occupation—is as it should be. Thy blessings on our associates, past and present, near and far!

3

THE HERITAGE WE OWE OUR CHILDREN

But he who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.

—JAMES 1:25 RSV

A few men who did look into “the law of liberty” bequeathed to present-day Americans a unique heritage. They were the authors of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. In what respect were these political documents unique? First, they unseated government as the endower of men’s rights and placed the Creator in that role. Second, they more severely limited government than ever before—for the first time in history, hardly any organized coercion standing against the release of creative energy. Result? The greatest outburst of creative energy ever known, simply because the millions were free to act creatively as they pleased. Political power diminished and dispersed beyond the ready grasp of authoritarians who would run our lives. That was the American miracle!

Each of these founders is thus—according to the Biblical prescription—“blessed in his doing.” There are, however, two sides to this law-of-liberty coin. That which has been bequeathed to us carries an obligation that we, if we be doers who act, bequeath this heritage to our children, to oncoming generations! Indeed, it has been written, “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

It is easily demonstrable that giving is the precedent to receiving. The more we give the more we receive. Thus, if we would retain and strengthen that heritage bequeathed to us, we must bequeath it to our children. The discharge of this obligation is, in fact, nothing more than enlightened self-interest, precisely as is the payment of any debt. When one strives to be a pattern for oncoming generations—our children—he reaches for the best in himself. Help them, help one’s self.

Most Americans who give it serious thought would approve acting according to the law of liberty. Yet, in today’s world, this is more of a challenge than first meets the eye—more, far more, than was the case with our Founding Fathers. Our politico-economic sires were familiar with the tyranny—authoritarianism—from which they found escape. It was close to their skins, as we say. Their children, however, were a generation removed from the actual experience. We, in our times, are seven generations removed, and have little to go by except a dwindling hearsay. We lack the stimulus to draw a sharp distinction between the Command Society and the Free Society.

There is yet another deterrent to becoming “a doer that acts.” By reason of our heritage, a vast majority of this later generation are inclined to take the American miracle as much for granted as the air we breathe—neither of which is much regarded as a blessing.

The “hearer that forgets”—one who lacks awareness of liberty as a blessing—is unlikely to be “blessed in his doing.” Nor can such “hearers only” confer on their children the heritage their ancestors bestowed on them. Because of an abysmal unawareness, they receive without gratitude and, for this reason, their failure to give is attended by no sense of wrongdoing. Indeed, unless they act according to the word, they will continue digging ever deeper into the pocketbooks of their children—a far cry from the law of liberty.

What steps are required, then, for a return to liberty by the millions who have innocently gone along with “leaders” of the Command Society? Assume that our well-meaning individual would do not unto his children that which he would not have had his ancestors do unto him, that he would give to his progeny at least as much as he has received—if not more: where must he begin and where should he go in his thinking? Because it is more blessed to give than to receive, how best can he attend to his own self-interest? These are questions each of us must try to answer, for no one among us is flawless. Improvement in understanding and clarity in exposition is a potentiality of everyone who lives!

It seems obvious that the initial step is to grasp the very essence of Americanism: “. . . that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty. . . .” This acknowledges the Creator as the endower of our rights to life and liberty and, for the first time in the history of nations, casts government out of that role. Until 1776, men had been killing each other by the millions over the age-old question as to which form of authoritarianism should preside as sovereign over human lives and livelihood. The argument, till then, had not been between freedom and authoritarianism, but over what degree of bondage. Our heritage stems from this glorious triumph of human liberty—everyone free to act creatively as he chooses. I devoutly believe, along with our Founding Fathers, that the source of human creativity is the Creator.

The next step is to recognize the real meaning of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. As a student of American history some 65 years ago, I was taught to pay obeisance to these political documents. But even then, it was scarcely more than a gesture, comparable to a salute or a pledge of allegiance to the flag or singing “My Country ’Tis of Thee.” Few teachers knew the real meaning in 1776, fewer still when I was a boy, and today? Possibly one in a thousand!

For the true significance, reread the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and note that there are 45 “no’s” and “not’s” circumscribing governmental power. Reduced to a sentence, they decree: “Government, keep your coercive fingers out of these activities; we reserve these—all of them—to ourselves as free and self-responsible citizens!” The beneficial results were more than I can count but three should be obvious:

1. Fewer political know-it-alls meddling in private affairs than ever before!

2. More free and self-responsible men and women than ever before!

3. A greater outburst of creative energy than ever before!

An agency of society to invoke a common justice and to keep the peace is a social necessity. Its role is to codify the taboos—injustices—and punish any trespass on individual rights. Bear in mind that coercive force is implicit in such an agency. Ideally, it is our protector. But to expect that coercive force so delegated will he or even can be self-limiting is utterly absurd. Yet that is the common view today. This carelessness is fatal to a good society. Why? Our hoped-for protector turned plunderer, as we are witnessing.[1]

There is one remedy, and one only: Eternal vigilance on the part of the citizenry is the price of liberty. How be vigilant? Master the “no’s” and “not’s” set forth in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and insist with all the reason one can muster that the taboos limiting runaway power be strictly observed. If we would bequeath to our children that which our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us, this is the price. Is that price too high? Not if we can discover where our self-interest lies!

Given these foundations for enlightened self-interest, one may appreciate, with Henry Hazlitt, that economics “is the science of tracing the effects of some proposed or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run, but on the general interest in the long run.” Our children’s interest, as well as our own!

A sampling of how one, thus enlightened, will react to some of the modern proposals for political intervention:

- He hears: The way to prosperity is to increase farm prices. He reacts: This makes food dearer to city workers.

- He hears: The way to national wealth is by means of governmental subsidies. He reacts: This is to claim that more goods result from increased taxes.

- He hears: The road to recovery is to increase wage rates. He reacts: This is to say that recovery depends on higher costs of production! On and on, ad infinitum![2]

A good guideline by John Stuart Mill: “Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called.” Our Founding Fathers saw eye to eye on despotism and declared their independence of it. May we follow in their footsteps! And more good counsel: “Don’t hoard good ideas. The more you radiate [share], the more you germinate.” This is another way of asserting that “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

The heritage we owe our children is to look into the perfect law of liberty, be a doer of the word and, thus, blessed in our doing.

[1] There’s a delightful story of how Congressman Davy Crockett stumbled into a keen awareness of the distinction between protection and plunder. Complimentary copy of “Not Yours to Give” available on request from FEE.

[2] These examples paraphrase ideas from Economics In One Lesson by Henry Hazlitt, available from FEE.

4

OUR PROBLEMS: BLESSINGS IN DISGUISE

Don’t think of problems as difficulties, think of them as opportunities for action. Hard as they are, they may turn out to be blessings in disguise.

—C. F. KLEINKNECHT

Is it not true that most people look upon their problems only as difficulties? Even worse, they regard their problems as dreaded invasions of the serene life. Why this perverse view? Problems should be likened to birth pains; the good life has its genesis in them and their “painful” overcoming. Let’s see if we can make the case for joyfully overcoming them.

This thesis, obviously, is premised on the good life, and that needs definition. Simply stated, the good life is the opposite of stagnation or retirement; it is incompatible with the listless life. It is, instead, emergence, evolution, hatching—day by day growing along the lines of one’s creative uniqueness. There is no destination or point of arrival in the good life but, rather, a perpetual becoming.

Wrote Saint Augustine, “Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires, and in our having only the right desires.” If the purpose of life be an expanding awareness, perception, consciousness, what desire could be higher than expanding one’s consciousness into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness? Pascal put it this way: “Happiness is neither within us only, nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with God.” Of all forms of happiness this one must, in my judgment, be assessed as joyous!

The basic problem that confronts the three billion people who inhabit this earth relates to survival—to having any life at all. The first need is for food, the second for fiber. Solve these basic demands or perish!

Parenthetically, it is enlightening to recognize what it is that largely accounts for the shortness of life of a majority of the billions who are graced with birth. In a sense, it is a lack of “business” knowledge—knowledge of what is our business and what is none of our business. In India, to cite but one example, people perish by the millions because dictocrats—the know-it-alls—engage in what is none of their business. If we are more blessed with longevity in the U.S.A., it is because here, more than elsewhere, each tends to what is his own business. Hardly any freedom of choice in India, a great deal of it in the U.S.A.

For many people in some lands, life has no more problems once their needs are met for food and fiber. And equally satisfied are most Americans who live in relative luxury. Problems, regarded as painful nuisances, are in the past tense—glory be! This wrong attitude is widespread.

It is his attitude toward problems that makes or breaks the individual. “Problems make or kill you,” wrote the remarkable Austrian economist, Böhm-Bawerk. According to one of his students, Ludwig von Mises, they killed his teacher. Böhm-Bawerk, who had a profound understanding of what ought to be, saw the world going to pot as a result of Marxism. The problem pained him; the resulting distress shortened his life, as distress usually does.

Analogous to my theme is the story of a Persian farmer named Hafed. He left his farm and searched for a diamond mine, finding none. Years later, long after the weary and penniless Hafed had died tragically in a strange land, another Persian while digging in Hafed’s deserted garden discovered the diamond mines of Golconda, the richest ever uncovered in the ancient world.[1]

The point is that those problems we tend to deplore may very well be diamonds—hidden in one’s own mind, not elsewhere.

Epictetus, the Roman slave who rose to become one of the world’s great philosophers, declared that “It is difficulties [problems] which show what men are.”

It is reported that Thomas Edison made 50,000 experiments before he succeeded in producing the storage battery. He was asked if he didn’t get discouraged working so long without results. “Results!” he exclaimed, “Why I learned 50,000 things I didn’t know before.” His 50,000 problems were that many blessings in disguise.

What, then, is the formula? First, solve the problem of obtaining food and fiber; this makes survival possible. Second, find a way to overcome the Command Society and achieve freedom of choice; this makes plenitude possible for one and all. But keep right on finding problems to solve! This is only the beginning.

Having achieved the aforementioned things of this world—accomplishments of this mortal moment—look next to the immortal: life eternal. What aspect of man has the potential to be everlasting? Is it not his consciousness—the mind’s intellectual development of thought—spirit, if you prefer? In my view, it is this and this alone which is immortalized, that lives forever. It qualifies as the highest of “right desires,” for it has to do with the expanding of one’s own consciousness, as nearly as possible, into a harmony with Infinite Consciousness.

The goal is nothing less than ascension in consciousness, and this is a step by step procedure. As one problem is solved or overcome, look for a higher one. For it is an observed fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. Although each problem will at first appear difficult and doubtless painful, once overcome it will be assessed as joyful—a blessing in disguise.

Bear in mind that problems in this higher realm are not thrust upon us as are earthly obstacles, such as the Command Society. To the contrary, they must be searched for and then overcome. Explore the unknown for problems as a means to an expanding consciousness—for gracing morality with immortality.

Finally, it becomes more and more self-evident that the free society will replace the Command Society to the extent that morality is immortalized. Why this assertion? Ours is a moral problem! It follows then that we should labor in the higher realm to free ourselves in the earthly realm. Then, indeed, will our problems—all of them—be blessings in disguise.

[1] See Prologue to The Key to Peace by Clarence Manion (Bensenville, Illinois: The Heritage Foundation, Inc., 1975).

5

THE ROLE OF DIFFERENCES

We can never be sure that the opinion we are endeavoring to stifle is false opinion; and even if we were sure, stifling would be an evil still.

—JOHN STUART MILL

The following reflections are inspired by two incidents: (1) a statement in today’s paper by a famous “conservative” politician standing foursquare for our socialized postal system, and (2) a letter from an ailing and scholarly gentleman who prides himself on being a freedom devotee: “Thank goodness for medicare.”

Shakespeare wrote: “How use doth breed a habit in a man.” Habit has me cringing at these typical examples of giving away the case for freedom. But reason suggests that my habit is more to be censured than these differences! The counsel of reason?

- Were everyone identical in thinking and doing, all would perish. Our differences—individual variations—lie at the root of human welfare.

- Truth flowers from the discovery of error. Find what’s wrong and the mind opens to what’s right—exploration ensues.

- Criticizing the person who advocates what I believe to be wrong blinds him to what I believe to be right. Rather than being drawn to my view, he is repelled by such a tactic; it sparks his defense mechanism and closes his mind—at least to me. Stifling is an evil!

Let anyone freely speak his views, even if they be those of Karl Marx! Discovering the error in such views opens the mind to the truths of human liberty. Springboards! This is by way of proudly confessing that I am irrevocably committed to the proposition that some opinions are false; for instance, those favoring authoritarianism in its numerous forms. On this, I side with the English poet, William Cowper:

Tis liberty alone that gives the flower

Of fleeting life its lustre and perfume,

And we are weeds without it. All constraint

Except what wisdom lays on evil men

Is evil.

Briefly, all constraint against the freedom of any individual to act creatively as he chooses is evil; it is as false as striving for hell and damnation! I, for one, am settled on this view, now and hereafter.

However, it is not my intention here to dwell on the differences between the dictocrats and freedom devotees.[1] Rather, it is to comment on the differences that crop up on the freedom side of the fence and to reflect on their value. My theme is that these differences play a teaching role in the learning process of each of us.

How many in the U.S.A. today really believe in the freedom way of life? How many oppose the Command Society, which for several decades has been so rapidly on the upswing? Who can tell? Certainly, the 50,000 requesting and receiving our studies is no measure: these few are no more than a mere fraction of those who believe in freedom. The vast majority has never heard of our efforts devoted exclusively to private ownership, free market, limited government ideas and ideals. Doubtless, most of them never will, nor is it necessary that they do!

To be a believer is one thing. What to do about it is quite another matter. It is in the realm of what-to-do—methodology, not ideology—that there are glaring differences among freedom devotees. Why are these differences blessings in disguise? One reason: Who among us can be absolutely certain that his methodology is correct? Not I, for sure—a compelling reason why I must do my best to keep an open mind as to method!

To be consistent, anyone who says, “Hurrah for our differences”—as I do—should not argue that the differences be resolved, that others adopt my method or yours. Not at all! Let the differences run rampant. Seek neither agreement nor praise, only what’s right. For, who knows, someone’s glaring differences may turn out to be the key to correct and effective method. If we keep our minds open, each explaining his own ideas as best he can, we may eventually learn what the right way is. In all humility, I believe there is a right way.

For 43 years the freedom philosophy has been my major concern. I have been exposed, as much as anyone, to countless techniques for its advancement. Many of these I have tried and many I have abandoned as seemingly futile or downright harmful. However, I do not ask that my judgment prevail, for what seems true and the only right way to me may not be the best and last word. What then is my role? It is precisely the same as yours: openly honest and frank in presenting what seems to be right, and open-minded as to what in fact may be right and wrong. Catholicity! Sample a few of my differences with others, taking note of the fact that I am trying to learn from each difference.

Here is a proposal from a freedom devotee: A convention to be held at FEE, the participants to write a new Constitution.

Of all places not to hold such a convention would be in the halls of an institution so at odds philosophically with majority opinion. Our 50,000 friends would hear about and doubtless read the document; but if it were widely publicized, it would be popularly ridiculed. But that’s only the beginning of my difference. What did I learn from this? That never in American history should a new Constitution be more ardently opposed than now. Why? It would be but a reflection or echoing of the preponderant leadership thinking of our time. As a consequence, it would resemble the Communist Manifesto![2]

Concentrate at the political level; set the politicians straight!

What do I learn from this commonly recommended tactic? I beg to differ, because this approach presumes that its practitioners have mastered the freedom philosophy. The fact? Not a one of us has more than scratched the surface. All of us are neophytes! This is an acknowledgment necessary for an improved understanding, be it yours or mine.

I repeat, whatever shows forth on today’s political horizon reflects our preponderant leadership thinking. The Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights were a reflection of the leadership thinking two centuries ago. Not perfect, but history’s best—by far! Note that these documents are no more than scraps of paper today, because our leadership thinking is too corrupt to sustain such wisdom.

Let our thinking improve until those in public office no longer vie with each other as to the good they can do for us with our money. Improve our thinking and methods, and they will contend with each other to advance free market, private ownership, limited government ideas and ideals. Thinking, good or bad, is cause; politics, good or bad, is effect. Doesn’t it make sense to concentrate at the cause level rather than to “spin our wheels” at the effect level?

The mess we observe today is but the effect of hanging onto yesterday’s poor thinking. What’s past is past, the effects no less than the causes. Wrote the Bard of Avon, “Things without remedy, should be without regard; what is done is done.” The lesson? Concentrate on the improvement of one’s thinking and understanding, for out of it may come a return to freedom—the blessings of liberty! That’s what this difference has to teach me.

Sell the masses, the man in the street!

Here again is the presupposition that the would-be seller has mastered his subject. For a good example of the man in the street, let these “salesmen” look in the mirror.

We frown on those politicians who are so egotistical that they believe they can run our lives better than we can. But what of those who claim to know precisely what it is the rest of us must learn?

Learning is an individualistic, taking-from, not an injection-into, process. Learning is our task, not selling. If I have some knowledge of our philosophy, which is my responsibility, and if another wants to know about it, which is his responsibility, my counsel will be sought. It is only when one seeks understanding that he absorbs it into his tissues. Indeed, there is an accurate measuring rod as to how well one has progressed himself: observe how many are seeking one’s tutorship. If none, there is homework to be done.

We hear countless enthusiasts whose proclaimed mission is to “reach” this or that group or class of people, such as teachers, students, clergy, employees, on and on. My difference with this tactic? Instead of trying to reach for anyone, let’s see if we can gain enough competency so that others will reach for us. Seeking and reaching are one and the same—the only path to learning. This is the way it should be. Suppose I could insinuate my ideas into the minds of others. Then they might do the same to me—making me the victim of every inanity and insanity on earth! Thank you, no!

Make the teaching of free enterprise compulsory in the public schools.

Several states have already voted such a law and more are in the offing. What a quack remedy—an utter absurdity! Assume yourself to be a student and, at the same time, a freedom devotee, and that the teaching of socialism were made compulsory. Nothing but resentment! You would, if permitted, drop out of school. “Free enterprise teaching,” when compulsory, is no less revolting. I can think of no method more at odds with our philosophy than the compulsory teaching of freedom! What a contradiction in terms!

Further, how many teachers in the public schools today have the slightest idea of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life? With rare exceptions, they are unaware of the proper textbooks and have never even heard of Ludwig von Mises and others of his kind. I accepted an invitation to discuss our philosophy with 27 teachers who are now compelled to “teach free enterprise.” Of that group, there was only one with an awareness of what I was talking about. The bright spot in that lonesome experience was his understanding.[3]

We must form one, big, strong organization!

This tactic has been suggested over and over again for the past 30 years. Instead of FEE and a thousand and one other “outfits” working along their respective and diverse lines—each embracing what it believes the right method—amalgamate, get together, merge into a powerful ONE! Away with all of these differences!

The various organizations working on behalf of freedom differ from one another in several respects, but the major difference has to do with method or tactics. Those who plead for one big organization are confessing an inability to distinguish one method from another, when deciding which organization to support. In effect, “I can’t give to all of them nor can I tell one from the other so, for my sake, relieve me of having to tell the difference.”

This attempt at amalgamation, if accepted, would bring to an end all honest convictions—differences—as to correct and effective method. Instead? One great big methodological potpourri! I, for one, prefer open competition. I still insist, “hurrah for our differences!” Why? Just as every socialistic cliche serves as a steppingstone toward making a better case for freedom, so does every tactical error committed by freedom devotees inspire a refinement of correct method.

Finally, the refinement of my belief that ours is exclusively a learning and not a selling problem, poses a rare and more significant question: What lies beyond knowing how to explain the fallacies of socialism and to espouse instead the principles of freedom? More—ever so much more!

Liberty—“we are weeds without it”—will not grace a people who are slumping into apathy, who quit thinking for selves, or who let prosperity—a by-product of liberty—go to their heads. Merely scrutinize what’s going on. Liberty and “the permissive society” cannot be companion experiences.

What then must we learn? To perceive and to adhere to the virtues—integrity, statesmanship, moral exemplarity—on a higher plane than has ever been known. Each advancing age must be so featured, for this is implicit in the evolution of humanity. Short of this, the historical sequence of evolution/devolution, evolution/devolution will go its wearisome way, awaiting the day when men will accept more responsibility for their own destiny than now.

Should we do—right now—what the Cosmic Scheme obviously calls for, historians of the future will write of our era, “The Great and Unprecedented Moral Renaissance.” How better can you or I employ our lives and potential talents than to participate in this reawakening to the principles and practices of those virtues that are the very foundations of freedom!

And I come back now to my opening theme that chief among those virtues is tolerance of honest differences as to the methods of achieving and practicing freedom. We are agreed that freedom is our goal, so let us extend to every man the respect due him, and carefully study his methods in order to improve our own.

[1] This I have done in the chapter, “The Blessings of Diversity” in Castles in the Air (FEE, 1975), pp. 73–77.

[2] If this claim appears as farfetched, have a careful look at the ten points of the Communist Manifesto and observe how much of it we have already adopted in the U.S.A.

[3] For a detailed explanation of my differences, see “Looking in the Mirror,” a chapter in To Free or Freeze (FEE, 1972), pp. 48–55.

6

TWO DIRECTIONS AT ONCE

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

—EDMUND BURKE

More than 20 years ago Henry Hazlitt remarked to me that the country is going in two directions at once! His explanation prompted me to write on the subject in the October 1956 Freeman.

It is time to re-examine that thesis. These two decades reveal a profound truth: Success is not a destination but a journey! Briefly, we never arrive at an ideal situation; at best, we make progress toward what is true and righteous. And we need assurance now and then that we are in fact making progress.

So far as the millions are concerned, socialism is more agreeably accepted today than a year ago or two decades ago. It may continue to grow. On the other hand, there is a small but growing minority of persons who are becoming more skilled, articulate, and ardent devotees of socialism’s opposite: the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life with its moral and spiritual antecedents.

Detailed confirmation of this phenomenon is not the object of this essay. Henry Hazlitt is as keen as any observer of ideological and politico-economic trends. Further, we at FEE may draw upon 30 years of specializing in this area, our considerable correspondence, and our discussions with individuals and groups from varied walks of life and around the nation. It is clear to us that while millions are accepting socialism, there are thousands who are becoming skilled in understanding and explaining the freedom philosophy.

My sole object here is to suggest to persons who perceive the meaning of liberty that the mass movement does not warrant despair! The movement toward socialism is the condition which is motivating our own search for what is true and righteous.

First, a bit of background: The Constitution and Bill of Rights confirmed and aimed to perpetuate a novel theory of a servant government of strictly limited powers. In the decades that followed, citizens did not turn to government for succor, for government was so limited that it had nothing on hand to dispense, nor did it then have the power to take from some and give to others. In the absence of any political nursemaid, there developed a remarkable self-reliance among the people. Further, government was limited to defending life and the honest fruits of men’s labors; it was not empowered to inhibit the creative actions of citizens. As a consequence, there was a freeing of creative human energy. In short, here was political liberty, the like of which had never existed elsewhere. Self-reliant men and women, freed from predators and freed from restraints on their creativity, brought into existence what is loosely referred to as “the American heritage.”

Americans, however, began to take the blessings of liberty for granted. Unprecedented well-being came to be regarded as an act of nature; progress seemed as inevitable as the sun’s appearance in the morning. That the practice of difficult human virtues and political wisdom lay at the root of this new-world miracle was forgotten or, more likely, never learned by new generations. Americans, for the most part, were unaware of the rationale on which their magnificent edifice was erected. The intellectual and moral foundation weakened and the limitations on government were relaxed. Disaster—in the form of a return to the old-world pattern of sovereign state and servant people—was only a matter of time.

Societal arrangements, be they good or bad, have a tempo, a rapidity of change, far slower than that of human beings. Thus, most citizens, enjoying the forward thrust that was possible under limited governmental structures, came to believe that the ever-increasing governmental intervention they subsequently voted was responsible for their prosperity and well-being. Today, they fail to see that the genuine bounties in their situation are but the result of an earlier momentum precisely as they fail to recognize the bogus aspects of present “prosperity.” Self-reliance and freed energies have made for such wealth that they can, for a time at least, take government pap without apparent immediate injury. And many believe the pap to be the cause of their vitality.

The above broad conclusions are cited only as preface to this brief thesis. The crack in American constitutional theory certainly was not observed when it first occurred. I must admit that I had no realization as to what had happened—what was happening—until 1932. Only a few persons seemed aware of what was taking place by the late twenties. I recall my amazement in reading, much later, a little book published in 1923 in which the author, John W. Burgess, saw clearly what had already happened at that early date! Yet, it is unlikely that even Dr. Burgess saw very much prior to 1923 or he would have written his book earlier. In his Recent Changes In American Constitutional Theory, he traced the beginning of the breakdown to 1898.[1] Subsequent events led first to one thing and then another, culminating in the adoption of the Sixteenth Amendment in 1913. With the adoption of the progressive income tax, we officially disclaimed the theoretical correctness of limited government, private property, and the free market.

But find those rare few who saw the meaning of these cracks in our structure at the time they happened! The adage that “things have to get worse before they can get better” contains an element of truth. Figuratively, only a lonely soul or two cried out against this sin in 1913. Why? It was then no more than an affront to good theory. This wholly unAmerican device had to grow up, have a pocketbook sting in its operation, gain millions of adherents, before any significant opposition could form. Today, with this theoretical devil the monster it was born to be, there are numerous citizens who would vote for repeal if given a chance. But it has taken the monster stage to generate the significant opposition! The mere infraction of good theory may disturb a few good theoreticians. But those early infractions do not excite or awake the populace.

We accepted a communistic doctrine when we adopted the Sixteenth Amendment—“from each according to ability, to each according to need”—so it was natural that socialism in all its forms would follow in due course. One could hardly expect a people to embrace this plank from the Communist Manifesto and at the same time have any strong misgivings about other socialistic theories and practices.

The record speaks for itself; we have been and are still going down the socialistic route! Our national policy is consistent with the Sixteenth Amendment. But, and this is the important point, this very trend is generating an opposite ideological movement. Further, the socialistic direction appears to be a preliminary state of affairs necessary to hatch its opposition. Let me attempt an explanation of what at first glance appears to be an anomaly.

Since error (socialism or whatever) opposes truth, one might suppose that error has no function. Yet error does have a role to play—as a steppingstone to truth! Man emerges, evolves, goes in the direction of truth, by an overcoming process. Overcoming presupposes something to overcome. To take even a simple step presupposes something stepped on. Ascendancy presupposes lower positions. A movement Godward presupposes ungodliness to shun.

Consider these opposites: evil and virtue, error and truth. Do we not witness mighty opposites similarly at work on every hand? For instance, would we have any notion of “up” were not a gravitational force pulling us down? Would “light” be in our vocabulary if there were no darkness? Would we have the concept of justice were there no injustice? Isn’t hate the evil trait that permits us to see love as a virtue? Where does the passion for security arise except from fear of insecurity? And isn’t all intelligence a degree of understanding and wisdom relative to ignorance?

Inquiring further into nature’s mysteries, and going as far as science has probed into the ultimate constitution of things, we learn that “every substance is a system of molecules in motion and every molecule is a system of oscillating atoms and every atom is a system of positive and negative electricity.” Or, to quote the late physicist, Robert A. Millikan, “All elastic forces are due to the attraction and repulsions of electrons.” Polarity at the very root of things!

It would appear that the mainspring of all creations, of all variation, of all progress, comes by reason of this tension of the opposites, sometimes called the law of polarity. If there were no tension, nothing to overcome, there would be no “becoming,” no movement toward higher orders. Obstacles, I contend, have their role. They—error and evil—are deficiencies to step on, to rise above. Without them, we are incapable of perceiving any above.

There is abundant evidence that this tension of the opposites has been long and well understood by a few. Several selections:

Then welcome each rebuff

That turns earth’s smoothness rough,

Each sting that bids not sit nor stand but go!

Be our joy three-parts pain!

Strive, and hold cheap the strain;

Learn; nor account the pang;

dare, never grudge the throe!

—Robert Browning

Adversity is the first path to truth.

—Byron

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

—Emerson

Are Afflictions aught but Blessings in disguise?

—David Mallet

Let us be patient! These severe afflictions

Not from the ground arise

But oftentimes celestial benedictions

Assume this dark disguise.

—Longfellow

O benefit of ill! now I find true

That better is by evil still made better.

—Shakespeare

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again;

Th’ eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,

And dies among his worshipers.

—Bryant

The road to valor is builded by adversity.

—Ovid

Error is the discipline through which we advance.

—William Ellery Channing

Dark error’s other hidden side is truth.

—Victor Hugo

Shall error in the round of time

Still father Truth?

—Tennyson

The foregoing are thoughts which suggest that a growing socialism performs a positive function.

A few additional thoughts as to what the socialistic system is: It is the opposite of the free market or willing exchange economy. It is forced, unwilling, coerced exchange. It rests on the suppression of creative human energy. It is the substitution of authoritarianism for market phenomena.

To commandeer, that’s it! Webster defines “commandeer:” “to take arbitrary possession of; to commandeer men or goods.” Illustrations: The honest fruits of our labors are commandeered to make up the deficits of government intervention into the light and power field, as in TVA; into the construction industry, as in government housing; into health, as in medicare. No one can possibly name all the commandeering by our thousands of governments. However, this we can deduce: One’s earnings or capital would be employed otherwise if free choice rather than commandeering prevailed. Keep in mind that the very essence of ownership is control; that which I do not control, I do not own! The political order that features commandeering can be appropriately termed, “The Command Society.”

Freedom loses ground because of our taking-for-granted attitudes, our lethargy, our unawareness. But liberty, the ability to act creatively as we please, is a prerequisite to evolution, emergence. Eventually, we must be free; it is ordained in the Cosmic Order. And we will be free! True, our freedom is conditioned on our understanding of its nature and purpose. Merely observe what’s taking place.

The growing socialism is creating its own anti-agents. Abhorrence of it is stimulating many Americans of all ages to study and reflect on the nature of freedom. Contemplating freedom, they are discerning its deeper values and, as a result, are regaining their faith in free men. They are coming to understand and, in understanding, are learning to explain. They are seeing that the purpose of wealth, a by-product of freedom, is not for a recess from life’s activities but, instead, is to release them to work harder than ever at those creative ventures peculiar to their own uniqueness. They are seeing that freedom is the gateway to new levels of the intellect and of the spirit.

Socialism is freedom’s opposite, the error, the primitive order to be stepped on and overcome; it is the tension that can spring man into a more wholesome concept of life’s high purpose. And this is the role of socialistic error in man’s becoming!

Be not distraught that we are no more than an infinitesimal minority. For, as Burke observed, our antagonist is indeed our helper. Be jubilant and have faith!

[1] Dr. John W. Burgess was the founder and for many years the head of the Department of Political Science and Constitutional Law, Columbia University.

7

PRE-EMPTORS: AGENTS OF DESTRUCTION

You can only make men free when they are inwardly bound by their own sense of responsibility.

—WILLIAM ERNEST HOCKING

I am indebted to Verna Hall for a profound bit of wisdom:

To the extent that an individual turns the responsibility for self over to another or allows government to take it away, to that extent is the very essence of one’s being removed.

With this insight, let us reflect on the radically contrasted types of society in which men have found themselves. The most common type, by far, is the Command Society, bearing many names: Serfdom, Feudalism, Mercantilism, Socialism, Nazism, Fascism, Communism, the Planned Economy, the Welfare State. This type is featured by commanders ranging from kings and commissars to present-day politicians and bureaucrats—all engaged in running people’s lives. The Command Society has never been totally imposed, but only approximated; if fully implemented, everyone would perish! Even in Russia and China there has been and still is an enormous leakage of creative human energy.

The alternative is the Free Society, with each individual in charge of his own life. This is an ideal, in a sense—never fully achieved—most nearly approximated for a time in England and even more so in the U.S.A.

So-called “citizens” of the Command Society are responsible to political overlords. Self-realization is the exception and not the rule. The highest expectations for the vast majority are crumbs from the ruler’s table. Can this be all there is to man’s earthly purpose?

The essential feature of a Free Society is responsibility for self. I am responsible, not for you or anyone else, but solely for my own growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. My responsibility is thus to truth, righteousness, Infinite Consciousness. Responsibility for self is the very essence of individuality. It is the intellectual, moral, and spiritual rock that serves as the foundation for human emergence. As Hocking wrote, men are only “free when they are inwardly bound by their own sense of responsibility.”

This thesis requires answers to at least three questions:

1. Why are pre-emptors agents of destruction?

2. Who, aside from political dictocrats, are pre-emptors?

3. What might the remedies be?

Take note of this fact: Any time any activity is pre-empted, all thought as to how it would be conducted by free and self-responsible people is deadened. For instance, when governments take command of welfare problems—pre-empts them—citizens tend to lose personal concern for those in distress. “That’s the government’s problem!” This is how political and bureaucratic authors of state welfarism become agents of destruction. What have they destroyed? Nearly all thought as to how citizens would behave in the absence of such political intervention. How might you and I otherwise tend to act? We would share our last loaf of bread with a neighbor in distress. The practice of Judeo-Christian charity would be extravagant beyond all present expectations. Why, then, is private charity so little in evidence today? Because governments have pre-empted that function.

For another example that more clearly makes the point, consider mail delivery.

Our postal system is a socialistic institution—a mechanism of the Command Society. Its record? As all users know, a dramatic increase in rates, enormous deficits mounting annually, and service deteriorating rather than improving.

Observe the effect of this pre-emption: no intelligent thought of what this type of communication would be like among a free and self-responsible people. And for more reasons, far more, than first meets the eye. Conceded, there are many among us who urge the total abandonment of this Command Society mechanism but without the slightest idea of what the freedom alternative would be. Why this blindness as to the results of freedom? The answer is: the actions of free men are quite impossible to foresee!

It is one thing to believe that competition affords more efficient service than does a monopoly. Indeed, this very belief is implicit in the arguments of government officials who refuse to permit private delivery of mail: the U.S. Postal Service couldn’t stand the competition; someone else would do it more efficiently and at less cost to the customer. But as long as the monopoly is coercively maintained, there is no legal way to prove that the cost of performing an identical service would be lower under competition—or how much lower. Nor can it be proved beyond doubt that competitive private enterprise would indeed perform precisely the same services now available through the Postal monopoly.

But this is the whole point of anyone who believes in the blessings of competition as the most efficient way to provide the goods and services customers are willing and able to pay for. Such faith must concede that no one knows or can know in advance just the form in which the postal service would emerge and develop were everyone free to devote his own ingenuity and time and scarce resources toward serving the ever-changing demands of willing customers in a free market.

If all those changing conditions could be foreseen by any one individual, there is no logical reason why he could not make socialism work. But that is the whole case against socialism and for competitive private enterprise: the unknown is not foreseeable or predictable with certainty; conditions change, and freedom affords us the best possible chance to cope with those changes. If one believes the Postal monopoly should be abolished, it is in part because he has witnessed miraculous market developments in the delivery of items other than mail.

Take voice delivery. How far could the human voice be delivered prior to the beginning of the Bell system a century ago? Perhaps 50 yards! In the meantime—the miracle of the market—around the earth, not at the speed of sound but at the speed of light, that is, in the same fraction of a second you could hear my voice half the span of a football field. Those who find this not particularly amazing are nonetheless reluctant to entrust the delivery of mail to the unhampered and unpredictable ingenuity of a free and self-responsible people!

Suppose Leonardo da Vinci, who believed that men might some day fly like birds, had been clairvoyant enough to see five centuries into the future. We can imagine his amazement at today’s planes and their performance. Yet we lack the imagination to visualize the future of mail delivery, and so we lack the courage and faith to trust the job to the miraculous market.

Why this fear to try—this lack of faith in the potential wonders that might be ours? There are at least two reasons: (1) we cannot foresee the unknown and, thus, we are not attracted to the unimaginable, and (2) the moment a miracle is wrought, we take it as much for granted as the air we breathe. Who stands today in wonder and respect at getting a friend on the phone in Hong Kong as quickly as one can call a next-door neighbor? The miracle is old hat! We no longer give it a second thought—unless the phone goes dead.

To me, the Command Society is a carry-over of barbarism, whereas the Free Society is the flowering of civilization. Why, then, so much more widespread approval of the former than the latter? The reason, as I now see it, is this: The way the free market works its wonders is a phenomenon so far advanced in human evolution that it borders on the celestial! Some of us understand that it does work these wonders but do not understand how to clearly explain this process which ranks so high in the spiritual realm.

Years ago, I observed that no person knows how to make such a “simple” thing as an ordinary wooden lead pencil.[1] Yet, that year, we made 1,600,000,000 pencils in the U.S.A. Were we to grasp this single miracle of the free market, we would know that there is not a person who knows how to operate a postal service or how to deliver the human voice at the speed of light. No one knows for sure what electricity is! Make a jet plane? It is to laugh! The only reason why a Command Society can deliver mail at all is because there is a leakage of creative human energy.

Why the claim that this phenomenon is so high in the spiritual realm? Ludwig von Mises gives us the answer:

Production [a pencil, mail delivery, a jet plane] is a spiritual, intellectual, and ideological phenomenon. . . . What distinguishes our conditions [the Free Society] from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago [the Command Society] is not something material but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of spiritual changes.[2]

Everything by which we live and thrive—the material—has its origin in the spiritual, in the sense that an idea is spiritual, or an invention, discovery, insight, intuitive flash.

Why, then, does the Free Society work its wonders? Why, when no one knows how to make a pencil, do we have such a proliferation of goods and services? The spiritual forces—tiny ideas by everyone—are free to flow! Result of this free flow? Ideas configurate and show forth in everything from billions of pencils to jet planes. This explains why the wisdom of the free market is infinitely greater than that which exists in a Socrates or Edison or any one person.

Now the question: Why are the dictocrats—the pre-emptors—agents of destruction? What do they destroy? The spiritual—the very essence of one’s being! There may be a few exceptions but most people fail to generate ideas on activities that have been pre-empted.

Aside from members of our present Command Society, who are these pre-emptors? All persons who turn to the dictocrats seeking their own gain at the expense of others. And it matters not whether the “gains” sought are food stamps, or tariffs, or higher than market wages, or a Gateway Arch, or whatever. By such actions, they ally themselves with the Command Society.

It should be noted with regard to all governmental welfare programs that function by the formula, “from each according to ability, to each according to need,” that these “needy” allies of the Command Society have no limit. They feed and multiply upon the subsidies until they become wholly useless to themselves or to anyone else—except as voters bribed to keep their political benefactors in power. This is the tremendous political appeal of socialism—parasitism pursued to the death of the last host, and last hope.

Finally, what might the remedies be? How are the pre-emptors to be unseated? Should we expect Command Society personnel to take the initiative in ridding themselves of coercive powers? Indeed not, for they have substituted self-exaltation for self-realization and, thus, are addicted to their dictatorial role. Lording it over us for our benefit, or so they naively believe.

And expect no initiative from their pre-empting allies. The “guaranteed life” is for them an attractive way of life or they would not have sought it in the first place.

Where look for the remedy? To the few who have gained an awareness of how the free market works its wonders. Purists? Maybe, at least in their singleness of purpose and the wholeness of their understanding. But hardly so in their manner of living, for they too must live in the world as it is. And that world often compels them to engage in ways of life that strain their concepts of righteousness. To name but a single item, I use the postal service of the Command Society. Where lies the opportunity for consistency? In our proclaimed positions! Continue to stand against, rather than embrace and espouse, these errors with which we presently are compelled to live.[3]

Let only a few achieve enough understanding of how the free market works its wonders, along with the ability to explain the reasons, and the pre-emptors will fade into oblivion. Darkness always gives way to light. Similarly, the error of the Command Society has no resistance to the light and truth of the Free Society.

[1] “I, Pencil,” copy of reprint on request from FEE.

[2] See Human Action (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company. Third Revised Edition, 1966), p. 142.

[3] “The Consistent Life.” Copy on request from FEE.

8

THE VAGARIES OF VALUE JUDGMENTS

One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils.

—WOODROW WILSON

Rereading my 1964 Journal recently, I came upon an all-but-forgotten letter. It was written to me by a man who is both rich and famous. Never have I been so overrated, and this puffery is perhaps one explanation as to why he fell by the wayside—no signs of a continuing interest. In any event, there was in this and similar cases a dramatic turnabout in value judgment—not at all uncommon—the reasons for which are worthy of examination. Here is the letter, slightly abbreviated:

This is first of all a “fan” letter, secondly, a thank you letter and lastly, it is a letter of transmittal. But one at a time.

Your recent work, Anything That’s Peaceful, is great, outstanding, stupendous, elegant, everlasting, wonderful, magnificent, articulate and noble! Your 238 pages consolidate into an orderly philosophy all the many thoughts that a reader may previously have accumulated. Furthermore, those same pages present many new ideas, some shocking at first, but lovingly embraced when they turn out to be the missing links between segments of a partly assembled puzzle. You are truly a prophet. Today you may be heard only by the remnant, but your work embodies more truths than that of Adam Smith. It most surely will become a standard text for the generations who survive the fall of statism.

Thank you for sending me an autographed copy of Anything That’s Peaceful. I read it slowly (over a ten day period), reread many passages, and when half way through, ordered five additional copies from FEE. I am grateful for your little gift of a single copy. But my real gratitude is for your wondrous works which have brought a new satisfaction, the satisfaction which comes from achieving a new level of understanding.

Enclosed are two checks for $10 and $28. . . . Please find another of my checks for $10,000, for whatever purpose The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. may deem appropriate.

“Overrating” is a feeble term to describe the above. ’Tis a momentary idolatry, doubtless inspired by novel phrasings of his own ideas which excite him. Later, he comes to himself with the inevitable adverse reaction—a swing equally as far in the opposite direction. I have yet to observe an overrating that was not followed by a comparable underrating—a pendulum kind of action. Any time someone refers to himself as your disciple, prepare for a swing to the opposite appraisal. You, as “the god,” turn to dust because of the mistaken presumption that you were a god in the first place! Henri-Frederic Amiel correctly observed:

If we begin by overrating the being we love, we shall end by treating it with wholesale injustice.

Interestingly, value judgments that begin with underrating another, seem never to result in overrating. What is the explanation? I can only hazard a guess based on what’s happened to me. Countless times over the years I have discovered in others a wisdom that previously escaped my notice. Their quietude? My ineptitude? In any event, my gratitude! What happens is no change in them, only in me—my enlightenment. There is no place for overrating in this equation. It would be absurd to overrate my tiny enlightenment—or its sources!

A famous author comes to mind—an out-and-out atheist. As we say in air flight, he did a 180, becoming a devout Christian. No overrating is possible in his case or of The Source. Old and darkened vistas fade as Divine and glowing vistas come into view. Here is an example of a value judgment that graces the achiever.

What a brilliant observation by Woodrow Wilson: “One cool judgment is worth a thousand hasty councils.” By “councils,” he assuredly meant the same as Leo Tolstoy:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience, on that day began the lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.[1]

I feel equally certain that Wilson’s phrase, “One cool judgment,” was meant to convey the same thought as Tolstoy’s “reason and conscience.” At this point it is important to reflect on the distinction between councils and counsels.

Councils are committees reaching for the lowest common denominator. The truth as each individual discerns it—cool judgment—is forfeited for whatever most nearly approximates majority opinion. This is mere nose counting, which is nothing more than a mindless or senseless potpourri! As C. F. Kettering wisely observed, “If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.” We hear a lot about “environmental pollution” these days; we should be more concerned with the pollution spewing forth from councils.

Cool judgment goes hand in hand with an individual’s concept of righteousness. This leads him to seek counsel from those who, in his opinion, may enlighten. After which he stands on his own two feet, as we say, making sure that his proclaimed positions are absolutely consistent with the truth as he sees it. Such a stance is a goal which any one of us might achieve.

Another reflection on the vagaries of value judgments. Cool judgments—reason and conscience—have an enormous force working against them, which is responsible for a gruesome distortion of the process of decision making. Instead of seeking counsel from those who enlighten, most people are guided by pomp and ceremony, by those in the limelight, that is, by persons in conspicuous positions before the public. It’s the king-can-do-no-wrong syndrome.

Let a President of the U.S.A. advocate wage and price controls, or any one of countless other absurdities, and millions of people are afflicted with warped judgments. When the Queen of England confers the title of Lord on a Cambridge professor, who then tells the world that we can spend ourselves rich, the masses—including a large percentage of teachers—genuflect before the man-made Lord and his nonsense.

Let those who are skilled and famous in a single trade or science or art utter nonsense in areas beyond their competence, and millions bow the knee. Those who do no thinking for themselves will accept the word of the world’s most renowned mathematician, for instance, on matters about which he knows nothing but is unaware of the fact. Thus, those who have not developed discriminatory talents stuff their heads with folly.

A concluding value judgment: The force which gives socialism the appearance of working is the freedom which socialism has not as yet been able to destroy. Give America a few cool judgments and we will know why freedom works its wonders!

[1] Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and The Law of Violence (New York: Rudolph Field, 1948), p. 26.

For further comments on councils, see “Appoint a Committee” in my Anything That’s Peaceful (FEE, 1964), pp. 99–107. Also, “On Being My Own Man” in my Castles in the Air, pp. 93–98.

9

IDLE WORDS

Every idle word that men shall speak, they shall give account thereof in the day of judgment.

—MATTHEW XII:36

Following a lecture of mine, a dozen or so people gathered around asking questions or seeking further explanation of this or that point. One man had something else on his mind. This gent, in disagreement with my freedom point of view, pretty much monopolized the time with heated argument—at once amusing and pitiful! I put this kind of an exchange in the category of idle words—for two reasons. First, I was not seeking light from him and, second, he kept the others from sharing such information as I might possess. To argue is nothing less than frivolity—futile verbiage! The following comment by Aldous Huxley sets the stage for this thesis:

Unrestrained and indiscriminate talk is morally evil and spiritually dangerous. . . . This may seem a very hard saying. And yet if we pass in review the words we have given vent to in the course of the average day, we shall find that the greater of them may be classified under three main heads: (1) words inspired by malice and uncharitableness toward our neighbors; (2) words inspired by greed, sensuality and self-love; (3) words inspired by pure imbecility and uttered without rhyme or reason, but merely for the sake of making a distracting noise.

These are idle words; and we shall find, if we look into the matter, that they tend to outnumber the words that are dictated by reason, charity or necessity. And if the unspoken words of our mind’s endless, idiot monologue are counted, the majority for idleness becomes, for most of us, overwhelmingly large.[1]

Let’s make it clear at the outset that disagreement is in no way to be disparaged. As explained in a previous chapter, differences are blessings; they are the way to truth. My only point is that to lock horns in argument is not a seeking process but a stifling one; it is not a stimulus to learning. Argument hardens those who differ in their respective differences.

Aldous Huxley, I feel certain, would not exempt even himself from those who use idle words. Perhaps no person has silenced himself perfectly in this respect. “And if the unspoken words . . . are counted”—words we think to ourselves but do not speak or write—what idle worders all of us are! In order to reduce our own idle wording and to be less victimized by the idle words of others, why not a few examples of this corrupting verbiage—something to serve as a guideline?

In which behavioral department of life do we find idle words in greatest quantity? No two answers can be identical. It depends on the scope of one’s views—narrow or otherwise—on the kinds of talk or writing that attracts or beguiles, on the quality of personal value judgments—shallow or improving. Thus, what follows is only my very uncertain ranking of sources in terms of their verbal density.

In today’s world, as I see it, political babble tops the list. While there are a few notable and laudable exceptions in public office—statesmen—the vast majority of those who seek election pay not the slightest heed to what they believe to be righteous. They are guided by one criterion: what idle words will gamer the most votes? Instead of standard-setters they are standard-upsetters—the curse of our times.

The tragedy is that most voters cannot distinguish a statesman from a politician and, thus, the latter, with their promises of something-for-nothing, have an edge in any political contest. Then, to implement their degraded schemes—political nightmares—those politicians cultivate an enormous bureaucracy of a like-minded ilk. We have in this utter immorality—idle words—an explanation for the present drive down the road to serfdom!

Let us reflect on another fact. Those persons who cannot recognize as fallacious the idle words they hear or read are in precisely the same category as the users thereof. Idle words uttered are no less deplorable than idle words believed. Indeed, were there no believers, there would be no users!

What behavioral department ranks next in its capacity to spew forth idle words? Second to the political sector I’d place the public media—again, with a few notable exceptions. I am speaking of radio, TV, newspapers and magazines. By and large, these media have no criterion but the sensational, that which attracts countless millions of sensation seekers. Their aim is not to rake in the votes; it is to rake in the dollars and with truth as much disregarded as by conscienceless seekers of political office. Parenthetically, this is not to condemn the acquisition of either votes or dollars, but only the misleading and dishonest means often employed to gamer votes or dollars.

Misleading? What goes on is fantastically distorted. If a plane crashes, that’s “news.” Nary a word about the millions of miles flown each day of the year in safety and comfort. Who wants to hear about the commonplace—the truth! If some big-name individual gets in trouble, it’s headlined day in and day out. This has an appeal to the sensation seekers. Not a word about the literally trillions of honest, above-board, commendable transactions that occur daily in the U.S.A. Briefly, misfortunes are dramatically featured; our blessings, millions of times more numerous, are rarely mentioned. Idle words galore!

So we come upon another fact. Those persons who are sensation seekers are no less the perpetrators of idle words than are the sensational fabricators! Were there none of the former, the latter wouldn’t exist—no dollars to rake in!

There are, of course, ever so many behavioral departments of life overburdened with idle words. The above two are but samplings of the most obvious. Now, for a commentary on an all but forgotten one and, thus, in today’s world, the least obvious: prayer by rote. For evidence that this was once known, refer to Matthew VI:7: “But when ye pray, use not vain repetitions, as the heathens do.”

What do the heathens vainly repeat? Wrote Reginald Heber in 1812: “The heathen in his blindness, bows down to wood and stone.” This is by way of assessing what we observe more and more: obeisance repeatedly paid only to dollars, things, and the like—the material at the expense of the mental and the spiritual!

Those among us who are not heathens, the individuals who do in fact engage in daily prayers, are well advised to avoid prayer by rote—vain repetitions. Why vain? Prayer, or meditation, is intense mental action, and, to be meaningful, must have an appreciation of every word and thought. Otherwise, only idle words!

Is there a remedy for this idle-word syndrome? Indeed, there is: Golden Silence! This demands that we quiet all words—not just those that are spoken or written, but even those that are thought—forgo all words that are:

1. inspired by malice and uncharitableness toward our neighbors;

2. inspired by greed, sensuality and self-love;

3. inspired by pure imbecility and uttered without rhyme or reason, but merely for the sake of making distracting noise.

What then can be admitted into this silence to qualify it as Golden? As Huxley suggested, “words dictated by reason, charity or necessity.” We think in words. Thus confine our thoughts to those which advance not only our own emergence in awareness, perception, consciousness, but a refining charitableness to our fellowmen. Golden Silence calls for an observation of the Golden Rule.

Finally, is Golden Silence attainable? Hardly, for such achievement would presuppose the perfect person. However, if we know what the road signs are, we can head in the right direction—idle words diminishing as we progress.

[1] The Perennial Philosophy (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1945), pp. 216–217.

10

ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND?

So many people who think they have a tender heart have only a soft mind.

—JACQUES MARITAIN

Are you out of your mind? This is a question each of us well might ask that individual he sees in the mirror. Who me? Yes, everyone! Why this confrontation? For a very good reason: It is impossible for anyone to be quite sure how much or how little knowledge there is in his finite mind. Self-blindness leads to overassessments, and all overassessments—notions that we know more than we do—are out of mind, not in. This common affliction ranges from slightly out of mind to nearly all out of mind.

Reflect on those who are only slightly out of mind, the ones who do acknowledge mystery in all things. Mysterious is the single atom; more so are the 30 trillion atoms which could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping; and so much more mysterious are the octillion atoms—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—which compose one’s body. Nearly everything is mystery, from a blade of grass to galaxies receding into outer space at the speed of light. But even those persons who bow so low and humbly before Infinite Intelligence are unable to escape some overassessment of what’s in the mind. After all, man is imperfect—no exception.

At issue here, however, are those who so greatly overassess the contents of their mentality that they are really out of their minds and, not at all surprisingly, are unaware of the fact. Each of these is remindful of the shaman, or medicine man: “a man supposed to have supernatural powers of curing disease and controlling spirits.” But such purveyors of spells are to be found everywhere, and not only in primitive tribes!

I recall medicine men at the county fairs when I was a lad in the early years of this century, their horse-drawn vans loaded with this or that bottled “life saver” claimed to cure every disease and ailment. What spellbinders—word charmers—they were! And awe-struck audiences, all that could crowd within range of their bewitching voices! Furthermore, those medicine men as firmly believed their incantations as do witch doctors. Out of their minds!

Who are today’s medicine men? With rare exceptions, they are individuals so far out of their minds that they use or advocate coercive force as a means of casting the creative lives of the millions in the image of their infinitesimal selves. Such medicine men are to be found among those elected and appointed to public office, among those who preside over classrooms and religious congregations. Labor union officials are prone to such abuse of power, and so are business and professional men and women. Indeed, there is not an occupational category that is free of these perfectly absurd dictocrats.

Observe how similar are today’s medicine men to those of the past. They actually believe that they have supernatural powers, enabling them to direct the creative activities of other people better than those folk can direct themselves! Most of them are artists of the spoken word. The awe-struck audiences flock around, not by the dozens, but by the millions! Today’s medicine men believe their incantations to be truth no less than did the witch doctors of yore.

However, medicine men today differ from witch doctors and those of my boyhood in one striking respect. The salesman of the “magic elixir” from the rear of his horse-drawn van had a single trick to cast his spell over small audiences: to charm them with words! Contemporary medicine men? True, they include verbal hocus-pocus but they are not satisfied with the few who might be seduced by that alone. So, what do they add? Coercion! No freedom to choose whether to buy their medicine or not? It’s do as they say or else!

Before going further, let me emphasize the point of this thesis: the extent to which anyone, in or out of political office, uses or advocates coercion to get his way, to that extent is he a modern medicine man—out of his mind![1] Wrote Herbert Spencer:

That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires.

That brilliant author of The Man Versus the State, and many other books—hard-headed and plain spoken—used coercion, a term rarely written or spoken in his or our country today. I had to refer to his nation’s The Oxford Dictionary to find the explanation:

As the word has, in later times, a bad flavour, suggesting the application of force as a remedy . . . it is now usually avoided by those who approve of the action in question.

The action in question? Any one of countless proposals to obtain special privilege by law: legal edicts backed by physical force—the constabulary. Every aspect of the planned economy and the welfare state falls in this category. These range from compulsory seat belts to food stamps; from minimum wages to maximum hours; from tariffs, embargoes, quotas to all restrictions of competition and freedom in transactions; from government education to getting paid for not farming or not working; from social security to medicare to—you name it! That is, if you can live long enough!

Bear in mind that the advocacy of force—whether from classroom or pulpit or wherever, whether against neighbor or neighborhood or country—is no less a part of “the action in question” than the actual practice of force. Advocacy is cause, practice is effect. Merely estimate the number of us who “labour under coercion to satisfy another’s desires” and there will be the extent of slavery in the U.S.A. today. It defies calculation!

Very well! Why “the bad flavour” of coercion? There is hardly a person among the millions who advocate or practice “the action in question” who cares to think of himself as that kind of a culprit. Personally, of course not! However, let the action be not in one’s own name but camouflaged by a collective label—society, government, democracy, or whatever—and a false absolution comforts all who are out of their minds, who “think” how hunky-dory all would be were all the likes of me!

Is it any wonder that the term coercion is avoided like the plague! “Bad flavour,” indeed! And that’s precisely the “flavour” it should have. Why not call coercionists by the right name? And that should include ourselves, if the term befits us!

“So many people who think they have a tender heart have only a soft mind.” What a wise observation not only of our times but of every devolutionary period throughout history! This is to say, be kind to those in distress, not with one’s own loaf of bread, but with bread coercively taken from others. In these cases, the hearts are tender enough but the minds are soft. Out of their minds and out of other people’s pockets—by coercion! When one’s heart is tender and the mind not soft, what is the behavior? He shares his own, not someone else’s loaf with those in distress. Judeo-Christian charity is actually extravagant when the concern for others is not pre-empted by coercive practices!

Were legalized coercion to receive its support only from its true believers, that is, from such open and proud exponents as Karl Marx, Earl Browder, Norman Thomas, and the like, that absurd way of life wouldn’t have a “ghost of a chance,” as the saying goes. Who then supplies the drive? The exception makers! I am for the free society but in education we must have compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the bills! But we must have wage and price controls! But people would starve without food stamps and social security! Buts on and on and on!

To cite an example, the best freedom devotee in all of Austria once said to me, “I find myself so emotionally committed to the Vienna Opera (state owned) that in this instance I must make an exception.” In a word, Austrians—even those who care not one whit for opera—must be coerced into paying for those who adore opera. This example by my good friend inspired me to write an article, “Sinking In a Sea of Buts.”[2]

Based on a wide acquaintance all over our country for many years, it is my guess that not less than 99 per cent of adult Americans have one or more buts. Here lies the source of the mess we’re in—millions out of their minds, more or less. My counsel: Watch your buts, buddy!

A word of encouragement: but—this is my but—the situation is less hopeless than it appears to be. Why? Thank heaven, this out-of-your-mind malady is not a numbers problem. Were it a matter of a majority coming to themselves, attaining a realization of how little really is in the mind—no chance!

The requirement? Let only a few, a tiny minority, see the utter nonsense of coercion as a means of satisfying one’s own or another’s desires—making slaves of all—and the medicine men will become impotent. No more than a small beam of light will put coercionists to shame, a bright glare they will fear to face. To whom should you and I look for this restoration of common sense? To that only person for whom you and I are responsible: the one viewed in the mirror!

[1] Coercion is aggressive as distinguished from defensive force. For a detailed explanation, see Accent on the Right (FEE, 1968), pp. 43–44.

[2] See The Freeman, April 1970.

11

HERDED, OR HEADED ONE’S OWN WAY?

The ideal society would enable every man and woman to develop along their individual lines, and not attempt to force all into one mould, however admirable.

—JOHN HALDANE

An ideal society should, indeed, be so framed that you are free to head your way along the lines of your uniqueness, and I am free to head my way. This is to say, neither you nor I should be herded—forced into a common mould. Excellent thinking, John Haldane, but I wonder what you meant by “however admirable”!

Anyone who understands the ideal society, as did this Englishman, could not possibly admire any one of countless common moulds into which dictocrats are attempting to force unique human beings. He had too much respect for you and me to call such political hocus-pocus “admirable.” To what, then, was he referring?

In all likelihood, Haldane was speaking ironically of Communism, Socialism, or similar schemes for secular salvation. These utopian visions are pipe-dreams—vain hopes, fantastic ideas, impossible plans. There are millions of pipe-dreamers in the U.S.A. today, and no two dream alike. Each believes his dream to be “admirable,” and is as certain of his self-proclaimed utopia as was Karl Marx, one of the most notorious and discredited—but nevertheless influential—pipe-dreamers of all time.

Such dreamers are victims of a mental depravity—a messianic complex. I’m reminded of the chap in the cartoon, paying his psychiatrist and remarking, “You call this a cure? When I came to you, I was Napoleon, and now I’m nobody.”

Perhaps “Napoleonitis” best identifies this disease. These dreamers sincerely regard as admirable their schemes to herd us into a common mould—their moulds, each different. Interestingly, a vast majority of them are highly “educated.” They interpret their years of “schooling” and graduation as certifying a high level of wisdom and, thus, are infatuated with their prowess. The truth is that life—every mortal moment—is, at best, commencement. Like the rest of us, they know next to nothing. But they are unaware of their limitations, and this may explain their insistence on domineering over you and me, of herding us into their “admirable” moulds.

Why are these pipe-dreams—most of them—“vain hopes,” authoritarian schemes impossible of fulfillment? In the first place, there are so many—literally millions—that no government official or private citizen has ever heard of more than a fraction of them. We’ve all heard of seat belts, for the manufacturers have been compelled to install them, but reflect on the large percentage of drivers and passengers who choose not to tie themselves to their seats.

We had to install a new toilet at FEE. The plumber said it was illegal to use an oval seat, that a U-shaped seat had to be used in all public toilets. Is this a local, state, or national law? Who knows! It’s a safe guess that no pipe-dreamer can answer the question. And were one to research the matter—who cares!—I’ll wager that the violations would be impressive. And it’s anyone’s guess as to how many millions of other pipe-dreams have been made the law of the land.[1]

Of course, there’s another reason why pipe-dreams are vain hopes, even when known: people ignore them. A minor example: The enormous disregard of laws prohibiting the bringing of cigarettes and liquor from some states where they’re less taxed to one’s own state where taxes are higher. Many citizens, from all walks of life, become law breakers, black market operators, smugglers. They’ll course around countless pipe-dreams and the consequence is a massive moral degeneration.

Some concluding reflections on the know-nothing-ness of pipe-dreamers:

- Knowing not how to prohibit various iniquities, they tend to legalize them.

- Knowing not how to prevent thievery, they do the taking themselves.

- Knowing not how to identify or prevent inflation, they inflate the money supply.

- Knowing not how to suppress labor violence, they give it their coercive support.

- Knowing not how to inhibit aggression among citizens, they become aggressors themselves.

- Knowing not how to invoke a common justice, they perpetrate injustices.

- Knowing not how to run their own lives, they dream up schemes to run ours.

The pipe-dreamers have this much going for them: they are in great demand. Millions of people prefer being herded to finding their own way. Do their own politico-economic thinking? Perish such a perplexing thought! They prefer that others do such thinking for them, especially when this carries promises of easy welfare. Unable to identify false promises, they become the victims of their own shallow envy and greed. That is, unless rescued by those few who have found their own heading.

In reflecting on the few who are headed their own way, I recalled this impressive quatrain from the Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

And that inverted Bowl they call the Sky,

Whereunder crawling coop’d we live and die,

Lift not your hand to It for help—for It

As impotently moves as you and I.

Ralph Bradford, whose many talents include setting ideas to verse, has paraphrased it for me:

And are you then so weak and self-forsaken

You turn for succor to the vast but shaken

And barren branches of the State? Beware!

It cannot give a thing it has not taken!

Those who think for themselves, who are headed their own way, know full well that government cannot feather the nests of some except at the expense of others—all the political babble to the contrary notwithstanding! Knowing this is a first step in heading one’s own way.

The second step is suggested by Margaret Cameron in her book, The Seven Purposes:

Give unto each his opportunity to grow and to build for progress. Freedom to strive is the one right inherent in existence, the strong and the weak each following his own creative purpose, with all his force, to the one great end. And he who binds and limits his brother’s creative purpose binds himself now and hereafter. But he who extends his brother’s opportunity, builds for eternity.

How does one extend his brother’s opportunity? By pursuing one’s own uniqueness, tending to one’s own knitting, growing in one’s creativity and never, under any circumstance, standing in the creative path of his brother. And never lending one’s sanction when governments do so—be they Federal, state, or local.

Away with herding into common moulds! Let every man and woman develop along their individual lines—each heading his or her own creative way. Such would be freedom: the ideal society!

[1] For an interesting article on other pipe-dreams less gross than toilet seats, see “The Age of the Technicality” by Clarence Carson. The Freeman, March 1976.

12

HOW MEASURE GROWTH?

The student of history must avoid that error which the proverb calls measuring other people’s corn by one’s own bushel.

—E. B. TYLOR

A correspondent from Pakistan asked: “How can one tell whether a nation is experiencing economic growth?” A bit of reflection brought this thought: Really, a nation experiences no more than a corn crib; only individuals have experiences. So, if we would measure progress—or regress—it must be with respect to individual human beings, never a nation.

One of the Bicentennials being celebrated in 1976 is Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations. This great moral philosopher should not be blamed for allowing the line of collectivists, tracing through Marx and Keynes, to prolong the myth of national wealth and material income most commonly designated today as the Gross National Product (GNP). But the Bicentennial could well serve as occasion to examine those ideas.

Any individual’s economic wealth is generally expressed as his net worth, and changes in net worth show how much he is gaining or losing in wealth.

As to nations, some are more economically advanced than others, and a major reason for the difference is the degree of freedom exercised by individuals to the point that capital is accumulated and put to productive use. Real wages tend to be higher in countries with the most savings invested per worker. But this is most likely to happen where private ownership and control of property is respected and upheld through limited government—where there is freedom to trade in open competition—where prices are free to fluctuate in response to supply and demand in the unhampered market—where the money to facilitate trade is left to the market rather than printed by government to serve political purposes—where charity is personal and private as distinguished from welfare state plundering of the productive to subsidize the wastrels—where entrepreneurial response to change and opportunity is encouraged rather than frustrated and forbidden.

It is true that in a free market economy there is no need for any such measurement as GNP or national wealth or full employment or percent of income taken in taxes. All that is needed is the information freely available to every potential buyer and seller in the form of market prices. Individuals and businesses can act intelligently on the basis of that information. They have no need for and should be free to ignore whatever GNP or other statistics governments want to assemble.

I can’t get very excited about the fact that such statistics are gathered and published. But if they are being used in such a way as to interfere with personal choices and actions—which they are—that is serious and should be explained.

In taking this position, I find myself in contention with Hegel, Marx, Comte, and many of our own time, who embrace the notion that only the nation or society is real and that the individual is the abstraction. Today, these socialist sophists have followers by the millions, collectivists who are but copycats of ancient and medieval forms of coercion—those who favor a Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, or in today’s terms, the planned economy and the welfare state.

Summarized, the argument is between those who pose society or the nation as the prime unit and those of us who believe that all meaningful comparisons in progress or regress must be made in terms of individual or business units.

Conceded, the problem of measuring growth is partly an accounting problem, but the measurement, to make sense, has to do with the unit in question, be the unit an individual or company. Each unit has different goals, values, aspirations, ambitions. Thus, there can be no single measuring rod for social or national or collective growth.

In the free market each unit does its own calculating. This is known as economic calculation—business accounting—determination of profit or loss. It is this that leaves each unit free to choose what to produce, what and with whom to exchange, and what to buy or consume.

Dr. Ludwig von Mises was the first to demonstrate the impossibility of economic calculation under socialism.[1] Economic calculation is automatically supplied in a system of free competitive pricing. Leading communist “economists” concede his point. Their words, my italics:

The best methods of producing a given output cannot be chosen [by socialist methods] but are taken from outside the [socialist] system . . . i.e. methods of production used in the past, or so-called “advanced” methods of production, usually taken from the practice of more advanced countries and used as data for plan-building by the [socialist] country under consideration.[2]

As more and more countries, including the United States, succumb to socialism, upon what information are the communist “economists”—or anyone, for that matter—to base their plans? Upon the GNP? Wrote Henry Hazlitt of this political fantasy:

It is impossible . . . to arrive at a precise, scientific, objective, or absolute measurement of the national income in terms of dollars. But the assumption that we can do so has led to dangerous policies, and threatens to lead to even more dangerous policies.[3]

It is the catastrophic situation into which an acceptance of GNP leads that warrants—indeed, demands—our examination.

The countless little Caesars who man our present socialistic structure have decisions to make. Economic calculation is impossible under socialism. Their single recourse? Statistics! Wrote Murray Rothbard:

Statistics are, in a crucial sense, critical to all interventionist and socialistic activities of government. . . . Only by statistics can the Federal government make even a fitful attempt to plan, regulate, control, or reform various industries—or impose central planning and socialization on the entire economic system.[4]

To the extent that an economy is controlled by government, it is no longer a reflection of freedom of choice and competitive forces but rather of bureaucratic edicts. These edicts decree this or that according to the statistical data which they compile. While numerous data are contrived for their use, the usual statistic for measuring economic growth is gross national product: GNP. Absurd?

- If a man divorces his wife and hires her as a cook at $50 a week, the GNP will increase by $2,600 annually.

- The dollars paid farmers not to grow crops boost the GNP as do the dollars paid farmers for things produced.

It is useless to give other examples, for the input statistical “guidelines” are forever changing, not only with the passing whims of each dictocrat but also with the whims of the others as they come and go. This explains why there is so little agreement on what GNP really is. I don’t know; they don’t know!

Only this we know for certain: GNP—always expressed in the monetary unit—enlarges whenever the medium of exchange is diluted; that is, GNP expands in an inflationary period. Contemplate what Germany’s GNP was in 1923 when billions of marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread! GNP reached its peak just before total collapse!

In view of its absurdity, why is GNP employed as a measuring rod? When economic calculation—automatic in competitive pricing—is rejected, errors follow as a consequence. At least, GNP is consistent with the absurd premise of the interventionists: the notion that they can run our lives better than we can. How can they be expected to know there isn’t any measuring rod!

Further, interventionists naively believe in the Keynesian notion that increased government expenditures lead to prosperity. Were this true, we should repeal the laws against counterfeiting. The fact? Exploding government expenditures foretell catastrophe, nothing else.

Here is a rarely understood fact: Free market performances do not lend themselves to mathematical analysis any more than do intellectual, moral and spiritual values. This is to say that the economic status of individuals cannot be measured by any objective standard—none whatsoever! Statistics are nonsensical—Achilles’ heel, indeed.

National objective standards—devices of the dictocrats—are, of course, erroneous. What then for a free society? Subjective judgments! This is not to say that the individual can have no awareness of his own economic improvement; it is only to assert that such growth cannot be reckoned by any objective standard.

For instance, what I want to do is forever changing and what I want in exchange is like a bird on the wing—I don’t stay put. More to the point, no two human beings are alike; all of us are in flux, not only as individuals but relative to each other.

It so happens that my highest aspiration is to write and lecture on behalf of the freedom way of life. I prefer this to other employments, even though the other jobs available may pay ever so much more. And in exchange I desire above all else a working acquaintance with the best of freedom thinkers in the world, along with the economic means—food, transportation, and the like—for realization. To me, this is the ultimate in progress. Who has any right to set a standard for me other than these unusual but nonetheless self-chosen goals? Not a person on this earth!

But here’s another fellow who, above all else, prefers to strum a guitar. And in exchange his heart’s desire is “a Loaf of Bread . . . a Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou.” To him this is the ultimate in progress. Where is the superman who has any logical, moral, or ethical basis for decreeing otherwise? No such person exists or ever will!

The above gets at the crux of the matter: evaluation of progress is individual and subjective; gain or loss cannot be objectively measured; that is, neither I nor anyone else can devise a standard that can accurately assess what is or isn’t a gain to any other.

What is progress to one individual may very well be regress to another. Examples: There are persons who would prefer an audience with the President of the U.S.A. to $10,000, and vice versa; a hoola hoop to $5, and vice versa; a Ph.D. to $5,000, and vice versa—and so on ad infinitum. Objective standards simply cannot be used to measure subjective judgments! GNP is a fraud, in most instances an innocent one! No freedom devotee should ever refer to it except disapprovingly.

When we discover that each of us is unique and is the best judge and master of his own growth, we will try to so structure our society that freedom of choice is maximized—liberty for one and all.

[1] Socialism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1951), pp. 131–42.

[2] The Journal of the American Economic Association, March, 1963.

[3] The Failure of the “New Economics” (Princeton: D. Van Nostrand Co., Inc., 1960), p. 415.

[4] “Statistics: Achilles’ Heel of Government,” The Freeman, June 1961.

13

IDOLIZING ERROR

Nothing is more harmful to a new truth than an old error.

—GOETHE

The question is this: Should we devotees of liberty present both sides, that is, the side of liberty on the one hand and the side of slavery on the other? This is a common notion, supported and advocated by teachers, preachers, politicians, ever so many businessmen, and others.

I contend that, historically speaking, liberty is a brand new truth and slavery is an old error. Nearly everyone in our country today thinks of slavery as something practiced prior to the Civil War—a Simon Legree-Negro relationship. True, that suggests “a relentless taskmaster,” but serious reflection reveals that the definition also applies to numerous human relationships in our day.

Let me illustrate with reference to an act by the Roman Emperor, Domitian (A.D. 51–96). Like all despots, then and now, Domitian suffered an abysmal ignorance parading as infinite wisdom. In his “wisdom” he exiled a slave—one Epictetus. Yet, so brilliant was this slave’s light that it mirrored its way for more than fifteen centuries through such philosophers as Grotius, Kant, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and many more.

History affords no better example of despotic action to stifle creative genius by one who knows not what he does. Bear in mind that all human creativity begins as a hidden potentiality in some person unknown. Indeed, that individual himself cannot foresee his creative spark. Epictetus, the slave, did not. The newsboy, Tom Edison, had no idea that he was to become a great inventive genius. Examples, if known, should include the cave dweller who discovered how to harness fire, the Hindu who invented the concept of zero, on and on and on.

The fact is that the despots—Domitian, or his counterparts today—cannot direct creativity; they can only stifle it. They are not wise enough to handle a power of coercion over others. Nor will anyone ever be!

Now, it seems obvious that we must have an agency of society that inhibits the destructive actions of men, one that codifies the taboos and enforces them, leaving all of us free to act creatively as we please. This is what is meant by limited government. The opposite and evil use of force is when politicians and bureaucrats aggress, that is, when they use the force of government in an effort to cast us in their images. This is what I mean by coercion, for I believe that aggression against other human beings and the coercing of them is one and the same evil action—enslavement.

Compulsory seat belts exemplify this evil action—freedom of choice denied. On occasion, a person falls out of bed or off his chair. Why not compulsory bed belts or chair belts? Too absurd? No more so than the thousand and one other commonly accepted coercive actions which inhibit the freedom of anyone to act creatively as he pleases. The distinction between a bed belt and a tariff or any other form of coercive protectionism is that the absurdity is more easily discerned in the former. Each is a blow to liberty—freedom of choice. The same can be said for all infractions of the free market and private ownership way of life.

“Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else,” is the way Henry Hazlitt puts it in his article, “Instead of What?” in the March 1976 Freeman.

. . . practically all these subsidy measures, all these schemes to redistribute income or to force Peter to support Paul, are one-eyed as well as shortsighted. They get their immediate appeal by focusing attention on the alleged needs of some particular group of intended beneficiaries. But the inevitable victims—those who are going to be asked to pay for the new handout in increased taxes (which directly or indirectly means almost everybody else)—are left out of account.

Only one-half of the problem has been seen. The cost of the proposed solution has been overlooked.

An aside: there is no known phase of human action that the coercionists have not attempted to bring under their control. Why then, by this time, are we not wholly enslaved? It is the unknown, the hidden creativity in countless thousands of individuals, often stimulated more by adversity than by prosperity. Thank God that no political dictocrat is efficient enough to plug all loopholes.

Today’s coercionist—the political dictocrat—is as much to be deplored as Domitian or Simon Legree. One is just as much “a relentless taskmaster” as the other.

I repeat Herbert Spencer’s truth, “That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires.” Does it matter whether he labors in Simon Legree’s cotton field in exchange for next to nothing or labors for high earnings only to have them taxed away to satisfy the demands of countless millions who produce nothing at all? This pack of parasites includes the coercionists who stimulate and develop these unwarranted demands.

Bastiat referred to this mode of social conduct as legal plunder:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

The present-day coercionist, no less than Domitian, is a despot who enslaves others.

Why this emphasis on the evil of slavery? I am unaware of any error more at odds with human destiny—emergence, evolution, growth in consciousness. In the practice of slavery, we have finite minds parading as Infinite Wisdom. To me, slavery—man’s denial of freedom—tops the list of all human errors and leads to many of the others.

Why, then, do we idolize this error and persist in the practice of slavery? It is the tug of tradition, the continuation of primitive ways—unless reason comes to the rescue. As John Locke observed: “Habits work more constantly and with greater force than reason, which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.” Thus, we seem to have always with us the relentless taskmasters, past and present. Reason has not yet come to their rescue—or ours.

In contrast to the old habit of slavery, liberty is a brand new truth. This new idea—freedom of choice; no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy—began to emerge 200 years ago with the simultaneous appearance of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and the American Declaration of Independence. To most people, anything born two centuries ago is old hat. What possibly could be brand new about a truth that aged?

Admittedly, we cannot see into the future—foresight—and few of us have the faculty accurately to assess the past—hindsight. We live in years, not centuries, and the present looms large in our thinking. We do not see ourselves and our times in proper perspective. And what is really brand new may appear to be quite ancient—or vice versa.

To help remedy such shortsightedness, construct a calendar of life on earth, collapsing eons of time into a single year, a comprehensible time span.

In January through August there were traces of life. The first insects appeared in October; in November arrived the first reptiles, dinosaurs, crocodiles, mammals; in December, the first snakes, flowering plants, elephants, deer.

It was shortly after 7:00 P.M. on December 31 that man appeared—in the glacial period. As midnight approached—only 10 minutes to go—Cro-Magnon man put in an appearance.

11:58

the beginning of recorded history

11:58:30

the first civilization (Sumer)

11:59:15

Athens in her glory

11:59:29

The birth of Christ

11:59:51.5

Columbus discovered America

But note this: Just 3 1/2 seconds before midnight appeared The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence.

Liberty is, indeed, a brand new truth!

Having tried to make plain what slavery is and why so many people persist in this dreadful error, I return to the opening question: Should we, the devotees of liberty, present both sides: Must we, in order “to be fair,” give equal time to slavery and liberty? Should we give the case for slavery, which we know to be false, the same platform dignity that we give to liberty?

I side with Hughston McBain: “If the evidence clearly indicates that an idea or policy is untrue or evil, no fair and objective person will voluntarily arrange to have it presented as valid.”

My formula: Expose the error of slavery with all the talent one can bring to bear. And as to liberty, there is no need to defend this truth; it can stand by itself. I would simply praise it to high Heaven!

14

FREEDOM TO CHOOSE—BUT WHAT?

Between two evils, choose neither; between two goods, choose both.

—TYRON EDWARDS

I, along with many others, have defined liberty over and over again as freedom of choice. By this we have meant that each individual should be free to choose his employment, to price his offerings of goods and services, to decide how the fruits of his labor shall be expended, to exchange what and with whom he pleases, and so on. However, it is just beginning to dawn on me that choice—choosing—has numerous interpretations other than mine. So, here is my attempt at refinement.

As a start, I would modify Tyron Edwards’ sage advice to read: “Reject all that is evil; respect all that is good.”

What are the few great evils? They are set forth in the Ten Commandments and include: Thou shalt not kill; Thou shalt not bear false witness; Thou shalt not covet; Thou shalt not steal. To examine one of these evils—stealing—should suffice to explain why it is best to reject what is evil and to choose what is good.

A Robinson Crusoe, of course, has no one to steal from. But let others appear in the territory and there is a network of relationships. This is a society, the persons in it being at once individualistic and social beings. The problem of what is mine and what is thine immediately arises. Stealing becomes possible. The moment anyone claims any scarce and valuable item there arises the question as to whether others will respect such claims or try to steal the property. Respect for private property leads to specialization and trade, the basis for a peaceful and prosperous society.

But what shall we say about stealing, beyond saying it’s wrong? In the first place, a thief experiences no net gain—regardless of how great the loot he gamers, and even if not caught. Admittedly, this is contrary to his warped judgment, even to popular opinion. If he is caught, a jail sentence would be the least of the penalties visited upon him. He suffers the loss of respect by his fellow men—ostracism—for who will engage in free exchange with a thief? But reflect on the penalty if not caught: the destruction of his soul—life’s purpose enormously dulled. He who steals is his own worst enemy!

Can the term “free exchange” be applied to the relationship between a thief and his victim? Obviously not! A person is free to choose an evil act as well as a good one, but to choose theft is to violate freedom and to practice plunder! To grasp this point, one needs only to recognize that each of us is in society and, thus, each is, in this respect, a social being. Freedom is, therefore, a dual relationship; my freedom depends on yours and vice versa.

It should be self-evident that every act of theft—coercion of any sort—is a denial of freedom. Were the thief intelligent—a fanciful assumption—he would say of his acts: “I elect to feather my own nest at the expense of others by coercion and cheating. I have no respect for property rights; I repudiate the freedom of others to choose or reject free exchange. Others are not my equal, with rights to be respected; they are but sources for me to plunder.”

It is a fair guess that nearly all Americans frown on the common thief—he who feathers his nest at the expense of others. But an equally fair guess is that these same “righteous” citizens are feathering their nests—wholly or partially—at the expense of others. One more guess: All the loot garnered in the private practice of theft is but a tiny fraction of that taken in our annual political sweepstakes for the purpose of redistributing wealth.

That the thief resorts to coercion—hidden or open—is self-evident. Yet, so do the millions of “innocents”—those who are unaware that their government “grants” are derived by the same malicious method. The special privilege any of us receives from government is forcefully taxed away from some rightful owner. Examples in the United States today are so numerous that no one can count them. They range from paying farmers not to grow crops to subsidizing other people’s hospital bills to paying higher prices for goods and services by reason of labor union coercive tactics, protective tariffs, and similar interventions on behalf of persons or groups.

If the common thief is regarded as a rogue, then why don’t the millions who feed at the government trough think of themselves as such? Rarely does anyone bother to question what “everybody is doing.” But the more widespread the practice, the more important to ask: “Why do they do it?” For more reasons than I shall ever know, but here are several:

- The tug of tradition; Serfdom, Feudalism, Mercantilism, and the like. Our “planned economy” and “welfare state” are only new labels for old and accepted ways of politico-economic plundering.

- When celebrated individuals—those with big titles like Lord John Maynard Keynes, for instance—insist that we can spend ourselves rich, a something-for-nothing way of life, those who do no thinking for themselves accept this nonsense. They steal far more than common thieves, while entertaining the notion that they are helping their victims!

- “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”[1]

- Enforced mediocrity! Politicians who look only to the next election, as contrasted to statesmen who look to oncoming generations, force their know-nothingness on the millions, most of whom welcome this relief from self-responsibility. Instead of rising to the challenge of competition, men are drawn down by the false lure of something for nothing.

In the above I have defined the evil in order to reject it. Now I shall pay my respects to what is good, so that I may choose the good. Why “I” and not “we”? I believe that everyone—no exception—should be free to act creatively as he or she chooses, and that I am endowed with no command over anyone else, nor would I accept it if offered. The single person over whom I choose to have power is yours truly—the power to expand my own creativity!

On what is this belief in individual responsibility founded? Each human being is unique, no two remotely alike.[2] Indeed, no one of us stays put; creatively we either deteriorate or expand from moment to moment. Further, there has never been an instance of creativity expanded by force or command. Rather, creativity flowers exclusively from free will which, according to my dictionary, is “the human will regarded as free from restraints, compulsions; freedom of decision or choice.”[3]

Above all, what in the realm of this thesis is good? It is enlightened self-interest: attending to one’s own creative expansion. If at all successful, this evolving is, according to the brilliant Frederic Bastiat, “. . . so illuminating, so constant, and so penetrating, when it is left free of hindrance.” Thus, brighten one’s own light and, if bright enough, those who seek light will see it; they will choose the good. Of course, freely share with those who care!

To see the good that I may choose the good requires a recognition not only of my skimpy wisdom but, also, of everyone else’s finitude. To compare my finite consciousness to Infinite Consciousness as an atom to a galaxy would be a gross exaggeration! Each separate ego is infinitesimal, and all are different. Were everyone identical to any “I”—Socrates, you, me, or anyone who lives—all would perish. A moment’s reflection and this is self-evident.

Very well! the required awareness is within the range of anyone capable of thinking for self. Each of us is unique; everyone has a tiny bit of expertise at this or that, and there are as many variations as there are human beings.

How then do I best live, grow, prosper, move in the direction of my unrealized potentialities? Choose the good—freedom! This allows me to do anything I choose that is peaceful and allows all others the same. The benefit to be derived? I will serve others with whatever expertise I possess, and their uniqueness will serve me. As set forth in the beginning, this is what I mean by freedom of choice.

In this manner, may we be servants of all and servile to none!

[1] See Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds by Charles Mackay, LL.D. (New York: The Noonday Press, 1969).

[2] See You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams (New York: Random House, 1967).

[3] Opponents of freedom will claim that there is creativity in Russia. There is! But it is a leakage of creative energy. Can I command you to invent something? Absurd!

15

PROMISES MEN DO AND DO NOT LIVE BY

Every civilization rests on a set of promises. . . . If the promises are broken too often the civilization dies. . . .

—HERBERT AGAR

It would take nothing less than a book to explain the promises men live by. Indeed, Harry Scherman wrote such a book—481 pages—using that very title.[1] The set of promises on which civilization rests is rooted in integrity: borrow money, pay it back; make a contract, keep it; offer a good or service, let the representation of it be honest; make an engagement, respect it; title an article or book or sermon in accord with its content—on and on, no falsification whatsoever. These are the promises men live by.

My purpose here, however, is not to reflect on promises which are kept, but on those which are broken. Broken promises are enormously on the increase in the U.S.A. and this bodes ill for our civilization. As a starter, here’s an interesting thought from the Babylonian Talmud:

The righteous promise little and perform much; the wicked promise much and perform not even a little.

There are, of course, numerous yardsticks for measuring those who are righteous and those who are wicked, the yardstick in this instance relating only to promises and performances. This Hebrew observation, written 15 centuries ago, measures men by what they do, not by what they say. Those who promise little and perform much are praised, while those who promise much and perform not even a little are condemned. Such a yardstick, applied to our day and age, makes a lot of sense. Indeed, it made sense to William Graham Sumner who, 14 centuries later—1883—wrote a masterpiece, What Social Classes Owe to Each Other.[2]

Sumner, a Professor of Political and Social Science at Yale University, clearly perceived an evil way of life taking root, one which has proliferated by leaps and bounds during the last forty years. “The forgotten man” was his label for the righteous. The wicked? Those reformers and social doctors—in and out of office—who advocate and employ the coercive force of government to subsidize nonworkers with the fruits of the forgotten man’s labor.

False promises and the social doctors or reformers labeled as wicked! Performances and the forgotten man identified as righteous! Here is a ray of politico-economic light that has mirrored its way through the ages, seen by a few—our Founding Fathers and other intellectual stalwarts such as Sumner—and encouragingly on the increase. Civilizations rise and fall as the few perceive or fail to perceive this truth.

The masses, those who do no thinking for themselves and who range from paupers to millionaires, have forever been the victims of empty promises—the more extravagant, the greater the allure. Promise “All this and Heaven too!” if one’s ambition be popularity, a mass following, millions genuflecting before the overesteemed self.

It is this mass deception which accounts for the false promisers: witch doctors, dictocrats, do-as-I-say reformers, be-like-me egotists. Nonthinkers—blind followers—constitute the target of these Pied Pipers. Thus the genesis of those who “promise much and perform not even a little.” It is easy to see why they promise much. But why do they perform “not even a little”? It is because the promises they make are absolutely impossible of fulfillment! They promise, for instance, to assure welfare to one and all, not with their substance but with yours and mine. The welfare rolls grow as the sources of funds diminish, until finally—all parasites and no hosts! The poor get poorer, the community goes bankrupt. Promises galore, performance nil!

The Pied Pipers promise more than welfare; they promise to plan the economy. Why, in this planned redistributive nonsense, do they perform “not even a little”? F. A. Hayek suggests the answer:

The chief reason why we cannot hope by central direction [government planning] to achieve anything like the efficiency in the use of resources which the market makes possible is that the economic order of any large society rests on the utilization of the knowledge of particular circumstances widely dispersed among thousands or millions of individuals.[3]

Even the millions who haven’t the slightest idea of what makes an economy fruitful or unfruitful do, nonetheless, come up with literally trillions of goods and services—all novel and beneficial to millions of us whom they have no intention of benefiting. These unintentional benefactors are nudged into productivity not by politico-economic understanding. Far from it! What then? Adam Smith wrote the answer 200 years ago:

By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

Here, again, the promises of the Pied Pipers—government planners—are absolutely impossible of fulfillment. Their coercive input is composed exclusively of errors. If this point were more generally understood, that understanding would put an end to the Command Society. For such understanding, recognize two facts:

1. The productive input for any given year has its origin in literally trillions of ideas, inventions—think-of-thats—by millions of individuals.

2. In not a single instance does any individual know what the next moment will bring forth in the way of a creative idea. New ideas are not foreseen by the innovators themselves—thus, could not possibly be foreseen by self-ordained rulers. How can a Pied Piper see in you that which you have not seen in yourself!

For example, take a “simple” pencil. One of the countless ingredients is a wetting agent: sulphonated tallow—animal fats chemically reacted with sulphuric acid. Imagine the number of individuals, the span of time, the experimental failures and steps forward in bringing sulphuric acid into existence! And who or how many had a hand in chemically reacting this “oil of vitriol” with animal fats to make possible a “simple” pencil? Simple? The creative process, even in the simplest items, baffles the imagination of anyone who will seriously peer below the surface and, by so doing, realize that here indeed are countless miracles at the human level.

Those who promise much and perform absolutely nothing are wicked in the sense that they are motivated by vanity rather than morality. Samuel Butler’s explanation:

Authority intoxicates

And makes sots of magistrates.

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men selfish, proud and vain.

False promises intended to advance power over others are clearly immoral. And the same can be said of false promises that are unintentional, those born of ignorance. Falsifying is wicked, regardless of the reason for lying.

Enough of the wicked. What about their opposite, the righteous, the ones who promise little and perform much? Who are they? They are the millions who, year in and year out, have trillions of ideas, seeking their own gain, and who serve all of us with their productive efforts. They are classed by Sumner as forgotten men.

Why forgotten? The knowledge of how freedom works its wonders is so infinitesimal that these unintentional benefactors are not generally recognized as such, which makes it plausible for the Pied Pipers to claim the credit for our welfare.

Forgotten men? They are rarely known to be the source of our well-being in the first place; and further, they do not even think of themselves as such. This explains why they go on playing host to the rapidly growing number of parasites.

A final thought. Take any one of these millions you care to choose, for instance, one of the many who had a hand in a pencil’s wetting agent. Did he promise what he was going to invent or discover prior to the moment an idea flashed into mind? Impossible! His performance alone is the extent of his promise.

We have in these productive millions—so far as promises and performances are concerned—the righteous. They are our unintentional benefactors—miracle workers. They are so little recognized that we might call them the secret agents of the free market. One of these days one or more of us will find a way to replace this secrecy with understanding and clarity—a greatly needed performance. Then? Everyone will win!

[1] See The Promises Men Live By by Harry Scherman (New York: Random House, 1939).

[2] What Social Classes Owe to Each Other by William Graham Sumner (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1961).

[3] See “The New Confusion About ‘Planning’” by F. A. Hayek (The Morgan Guaranty Survey, January, 1976).

16

THE CASE FOR SEEKING

No one knows more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.

—THOMAS ALVA EDISON

Edison’s phrase, “a millionth of one per cent,” is a figure of speech. Had he said a trillionth or an octillionth he would have made his point. Why? Whatever the fraction, Edison’s meaning has to do with our finite understanding relative to Infinite Knowledge, Intelligence, Consciousness. Comparing a particle of dust to a galaxy would suggest only an infinitesimal beginning of this infinite difference—limitless!

Thomas Edison excelled any human being known to me—past or present—in the sheer quantity of what he knew; bits of knowledge by the tens of thousands. But he was really knowledgeable only in contrast with other humans who do not know “more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.”

There is, however, a crowning accolade we can confer upon this inventive genius: he knew so much that he knew he knew nothing! As Socrates remarked: “I know nothing, but I know I know nothing.” This is the brand of knowledge—really the only kind—that can grace humanity.

At the outset, a confession. My aim in life resembles Edison’s in one respect—inventiveness. He aimed at inventing electrical and comparable aids to mankind—the incandescent bulb, for instance. And succeeded beyond the dreams of those who had gone before! My aim for years has encompassed the freedom philosophy and inventing ways to communicate the appropriate methods for a restoration of freedom. Up until now I have failed so miserably that I know I don’t know anything—which is one blessing! But I haven’t given up, and never intend to do so. By seeking, I have come upon a clue that could lead to success, a truism by the wizard of Menlo Park: “No one knows more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.” Thanks to you, wonderful wizard!

One of the most brilliant individuals of my wide acquaintance, when asked, “How are you, Hutch?” would respond, “Compared to what?” When compared to the rest of us, he was near the top of the intellectual and philosophical totem pole. But—and this is my point—when compared to Infinite Knowledge, he ranked with Edison, Socrates, Leonardo da Vinci, all the kings, politicians, and bureaucrats who have inhabited this earth—a mere neophyte! Hutch, in this latter ranking, knew nothing; but, bless his soul, he knew it!

Reflect on the manner in which most people grade themselves. The question, “compared to what?” never enters their heads. They rarely judge themselves in terms of the highest principles they know; rather, it is “compared to whom?”—other people. And what fallacies they tumble into by using this unmindful form of self-assessment! They ferret out other people’s shortcomings, and then compare some strength of theirs with the weakness of another. They elevate themselves into a feeling of general superiority if they happen to be merely a better speaker, actor, musician, novelist, manufacturer, politician, power monger, or any other of countless thousands of occupations. They fail to realize that all human beings above the moronic level are superior to them in one or more ways. Without question, all of us are neophytes, more particularly those who don’t know they know not—the big I-AMS!

It is necessary to compare our finite minds with the Infinite Mind in order to recognize what neophytes we are. Indeed, there is no human being—past or present—who has the slightest idea of his own composition. Composed, as I am, of 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms, I don’t even know what an atom is. Nor does anyone else!

Considering that I know not one octillionth of one per cent of anything—a lowly neophyte, indeed—reflect on the utter absurdity of my coercively running your life. Even God doesn’t lord it over us, but millions of neophytes do. Egomania on the rampage!

Exposing the dictocratic absurdity, however, is not the object of this brevity. Rather, I wish to comment critically on what seems to be a common folly on the part of ever so many who recognize the dictocratic absurdity, are alarmed at what’s going on, and are determined to correct the mess we’re in. ’Tis their method that is here at issue; they’re bent on reforming teachers, students, employees, clergymen, businessmen, labor union officials, neighbors—everyone who doesn’t stand against the rapidly growing socialism.

What’s the pitch of one so cocksure of himself? “Beam my ideas at them” or “I must reach this or that category of the population,” is the gist of this rapidly growing tactic. It’s nothing less than “If those nincompoops were only up to me in their thinking, all would be hunky-dory.” Were all like me, think what a wonderful world this would be!

But such a thought is instantly absurd once I realize what a lowly neophyte I am. Multiply a zero times ten, a million, or an octillion, and the answer is still zero.

How do we move away from this zero position, this nothingness? The formula which I have repeated time and again is simple: Instead of trying to reach others, see if we can achieve that point in understanding—attractiveness—when others will reach for us. Away with trying to cast others in our images. First, it can’t be done; second, nothing would be gained were it possible.

The answer is in seeking, not human duplicates, but truth. Seemingly, most of those in today’s world have all but forgotten what a few of the ancients so clearly perceived:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Matthew VII:7–8

For those of us interested in human freedom—each individual free to act creatively as he or she pleases—let the method fit the problem: seeking. Believing this, I sought and came upon that enlightening truism by Thomas Alva Edison quoted at the head of this chapter. Edison’s humility before Truth is a revelation by one who knew that he didn’t know one millionth of one per cent of anything. I’ll wager that he did a lot of knocking, for observe all that opened unto him. May all freedom devotees learn from this man, remarkable compared to whom? To the most of us—by far!

17

AM I A PART OF THE PROBLEM?

If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.

—UNKNOWN

Are you a part of the social problem, contributing to the present mess we’re in? The answer is yes—unless you are a part of the solution! However, and in spite of inclinations to the contrary, it is not my role to answer that question for you or anyone else but, rather, to assess my own status in the scheme. If, perchance, this analysis of self helps another shift from being a part of the problem to becoming a part of the solution, then that’s reward enough for me.

Why, in this wise observation by an author unknown to me, is “a part” so much emphasized? Is it not because no individual is more than an infinitesimal element in either the solution or the problem? Each of us is but a drop in the sea of humanity, not just of our time but of all time, and not just in our community or nation but in the whole world. Should I fail to recognize this fact—my limitations—I will attempt to cast others in my image, in which case I remain a part of the problem.

The sea of humanity is composed of human drops—you and me and everyone else—no less than the Red Sea or any other body of water is a multiple of water drops. But note this: It is the purity or impurity of the drops, be they human or water, that determine the purity or impurity of the seas. My role is obvious. It is to set my sights and actions aright. If I do, then I will become a part of the solution!

In order to set my sights and actions aright, I must first settle on a standard of right and a measure of wrong, that is, on society’s ideal and society’s nemesis. What are these opposites? Freedom and slavery! The latter has numerous contemporary labels: communism, Fabianism, fascism, naziism, and so on. This is to say that to the extent politicians and bureaucrats control our creative activities, and to the degree that our labors are coercively directed to satisfy the desires of others rather than selves, to that extent are we slaves. Bundle these several forms of political slavery under one label: socialism. Here’s my definition:

Socialism is the state ownership and control of the means of production (the planned economy) and the state ownership and control of the results of production (the welfare state).

Very well! What is the first step I must take in order to shift from being a part of the problem to becoming a part of the solution? Do no wrong, say no wrong, even think no wrong! I must learn never to give any encouragement or lend any support to a single ideological error. Simple? Not exactly!

First, I must not only be able to recite the definition of wrong—socialism—but must also apprehend its full significance in my mind. The truly difficult part is to assess each and every political activity and draw an accurate conclusion as to whether it is right or wrong. If any political action even prepares the ground for socialism, it is wrong and therefore should never be encouraged.

Most people identify socialistic activities as the programs and propaganda currently emanating from the Kremlin—the “communist conspiracy.” However, wrap the American flag around any one of these for a short period and it’s labeled “Americanism.” Once, while making this point in a lecture, I remarked, “Most people do not think of our postal system as a socialistic institution.” A listener interrupted with, “Of course it isn’t; we’ve had it so long.” Typical!

The first step does not require of me that I be a creative thinker, writer, talker of the freedom philosophy but only that I partake in no wrong. Nothing else! But never overlook the importance of those who do no wrong. No longer are they a part of the problem; rather, they are a part of the solution. Rarely recognized is the fact that those who never do wrong have an enormous radiating influence.

“Do no wrong” is the first part of this beginner’s level (first-step) exemplarity. The second? It is difficult, if not impossible, to know what’s wrong unless one has a reasonably fair awareness of what’s right. Is this companion part difficult? Though too seldom taken, not at all! An estimation of what’s right is as simple as the ABC’s—if I be in my right mind. What is the right mind? One’s own! For me it is my mind, not somebody else’s. And for you, by the same token, it is your mind, and not mine. Of course, I absorb what I can from those who are in their right minds but it is my mind that decides who are and are not in their right minds.

A startling bit of truth comes to light in this observation, a way of assessing what I am or am not. If what’s right or wrong—freedom or slavery—isn’t readily identifiable, I am not in my right mind; rather, I am a mere shadow of countless others who are not in their right minds.

I look around my own orbit and observe the many who do no thinking for themselves; they reflect only what they hear and read. Unfortunately, many who have the public ear and eye are no more in their right minds than the ones swayed by their jargon. These influence peddlers, by and large, are but articulate broadcasters of socialism: slavery!

To repeat, becoming a part of the solution rather than a part of the problem requires as a first step only that I do no wrong. Elbert Hubbard, who clearly perceived the distinction between freedom and slavery—a man in his right mind—bequeathed to posterity—you and me—a mode of behavior that anyone in his right mind can easily grasp and practice:

I wish to be simple, honest, natural, frank, clean in mind and clean in body, unaffected—ready to say “I do not know,” if so be it—. . . to face any obstacles and meet every difficulty unafraid and unabashed. I wish to live without hate, whim, jealousy, envy or fear. I wish others to live their lives, too—up to their highest, fullest and best. To that end I pray that I may never meddle, dictate, interfere, give advice that is not wanted, nor assist when my services are not needed. If I can help people, I will do it by giving them a chance to help themselves; and if I can uplift or inspire, let it be by example, inference and suggestion, rather than by injunction and dictation. I desire to Radiate Life. (Italics mine)

Radiate Life! Those who do no wrong have an enormous radiating influence.

True, there are higher steps: (1) becoming creative thinkers and expositors of the freedom philosophy and (2) rising to such a high state of excellence that others will seek our tutorship. These advanced steps are never to be expected until the first step is taken. The first step opens the portals to one’s potentialities. Doing no wrong casts a light on the undiscovered self; it is the preface to the expansion of consciousness. But even if these higher blessings never come to pass, doing no wrong assures an escape from being a part of the problem and rising to a part of the solution. It is the way to Radiate Life!

18

WHERE LOOK FOR OUR EMANCIPATORS?

In every epoch of the world, the great event. . . . is it not the arrival of a thinker?

—THOMAS CARLYLE

The greatest epoch in all history, in my estimation, was 2,000 years ago. The next greatest epoch—a flowering of the first—graced this land of ours 200 years ago. However, there is a third in the offing, barely visible but in sight, which may be of even greater importance to Americans than the second.

The second, heralded by the Declaration of Independence, was an example of action and reaction. The action? Old-world tyranny! The reaction? Freedom in a new world on a scale never before experienced!

So what is the action that features the third? A plunge into all-out socialism—not over there but right here! The required reaction? A rebirth of freedom in this once land of the free!

At the outset, I differ with one point in Carlyle’s observation. True, “the great event” in earlier history was brought about by “the arrival of a thinker.” But the Declaration of Independence was brought about not by one but by several thinkers. And several thinkers, not a thinker will, in my humble opinion, bring about the third epoch—the one in the offing. Is this not the way it should be? Is it not the fulfillment of the Second Coming? To me, at least, this does not mean the Coming of another Christ—the Perfect Exemplar—but, rather, the coming, as nearly as possible, of such exemplarity in each individual.

My thesis is that we are to look for our emancipators among the active thinkers. How many are required, and in what walks of life will they be found? Suppose this question had been raised a few years prior to the signing of the Declaration. No one could have answered. Of this we can be certain: only an infinitesimal fraction of the population—signers and others—had at once the wisdom and the courage to bring such a document as the Declaration into existence.

From what walks of life did the signers come? Who could have guessed? Two were physicians, another the son of a clergyman. Included were a lawyer, a merchant, an importer, a musician, a printer, a carpenter, a cobbler, a cooper, and even a millionaire.

I am convinced that the number—“the several thinkers”—who will be responsible for switching our nation from socialism to freedom will, percentage-wise, be no greater than it was 200 years ago—again an infinitesimal fraction. Does not the U.S.A. have more than a tiny fraction of such thinkers today? No, not of the required quality! The best freedom devotees among us have only scratched the surface when it comes to making the case for the free society. Neither I—nor anyone else—can achieve the required understanding short of acknowledging that we all have more—much more—to learn. Why should not each of us accept this seemingly harsh judgment by Simon Ben Azzai? “In seeking wisdom thou art wise; in imagining that thou hast attained it, thou art a fool.”

There are politicians and bureaucrats by the millions who imagine that they have attained wisdom—a foolish notion—or they would not believe that they are more capable of running your life and mine better than we can. This is the darkness which engulfs present-day America. However, it is easily demonstrable that darkness has not the slightest resistance to light and, by the same token, ignorance—foolishness—has no resistance to the seeking of wisdom: enlightenment! Thus, the solution rests with seekers of wisdom, thinkers of extraordinary caliber.

From what walks of life will such thinkers come? Again, who knows! The other day I received a letter from a ten-year-old lad who showed a better grasp of the free market philosophy than is presently evidenced by most Ph.D’s!

To understand the nature of our problem, consider the severe and relentless attacks upon business from every conceivable source, including some businessmen themselves. On the other hand, many businessmen around the nation are frantically attempting to defend business enterprise against these ruthless blows. Are we to expect thinkers of the required quality to emerge from among these distraught persons? Yes, one now and then; but expect no more real thinkers from the ranks of businessmen than from other walks of life—physicians, clergymen, importers, printers, carpenters, cobblers, or whatever profession. No more now than was the case 200 years ago.

A fact rarely suspected, let alone understood, is that businessmen are by no means the chief beneficiaries of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. Many business ventures fail entirely. Who then are the beneficiaries? The masses!

Politicians, bureaucrats, editors, news commentators, “economists,” “teachers,” and other word artists who denounce private enterprise and praise socialism are their own worst enemies. By attacking and maligning those who try to out-compete others in order to make as much of a fortune as possible, these attackers are unwittingly destroying the sources of their own livelihood. They kill the geese that lay the golden eggs—and don’t know it!

Nor do businessmen, except in rare instances, have the welfare of the masses at heart. They labor to make money but in doing so they unwittingly serve others!

Here we have one of the explanations for the mess we’re in. When those served know not who their benefactors are, and when those who serve are unaware of the ones whom they serve, we have a know-nothing society—dying on the vine, as we say.

How to be done with this know-nothingness, this unwitting nonsense? From whom the required enlightenment? From a thinker, one who can replace the nonsense with sense! Where look for such a person? The one seen in the mirror but who, if like me, must look around for help. My help came from a Yale professor, the late William Graham Sumner. Let only a few absorb the full meaning of these simple sentences and ours will be a growing, not a dying-on-the-vine society:

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.[1] (Italics mine)

Being one of the masses—not a businessman—and sharing Sumner’s enlightenment, what practices of businessmen do I disapprove or approve? I disapprove of the growing number who “think” that they have a “social responsibility”—looking out for the likes of me. This notion is no less repulsive than that of the political know-it-alls, the ones who foolishly imagine that they can run your life and mine better than we can. Those in either group—one as much as the other—imagine that they have attained wisdom. An interesting aside: the bureaucrats finance their egomania with taxpayer’s money, and these equally foolish businessmen finance their egomania with stockholder’s money! So I ask, with Montaigne: “What more wretched than the man who is the slave of his own imaginings?”

The businessmen I approve? Astonishingly, the ones who are doing their level best to make money! Bless their economic souls! They are my material benefactors, even though they may not have the slightest idea that they are performing such a role. They are taking care of their own selves, and so long as their dealings are open and above board—honest—that’s their main social duty, and their sole duty to me and others of the masses.

Of the ones I approve, who are the highest in my esteem? Those who are the most successful, who get way out ahead of all competitors, the further ahead the better; those who make their fortunes in the market place.

Why this unorthodox way of looking at our economic world? The answer is simple: others like to get out ahead, as in a horse race; they like to make money too. As a consequence, countless others will try to outperform the leading performers. Many will fail, of course. But examine any endeavor in the business world and we find that someone always comes up with a better idea and leapfrogs the one out front. And what does the better idea turn out to be? Some good or service that we of the masses prefer above other available resources. The free market, private ownership, limited government way of life is a game of leapfrog; and all of us, even the avowed socialists, prosper from this little-understood game of serving consumers. And many of those successful businessmen don’t even know what wonderful service they render!

From the foregoing comments, one may wonder why my insistence that our emancipators must be composed of more advanced thinkers than have heretofore graced our society? Suppose there were to emerge among us thinkers on a par with our Founding Fathers. Would not that quality suffice? No, for their problem was in no way comparable to our present dilemma.

Our Founding Fathers, fed up with Old-World tyranny, sought freedom. The essence of their ambition? I wish to be my own man rather than some tyrant’s man! And their thinking was of that high quality which brought fulfillment. However, these ancestors of ours did not—could not—foresee the miracles that would be wrought when, for the first time in history, there was little if any organized force standing against the release of creative human energy. They had no precedent to go by, nor were they oracular. “Oracles, like dreams, can only be judged after the event.”

After the event? After the greatest outburst of creativity ever known to mankind. In all respect for their wisdom, our Founding Fathers did not know that this would be one of freedom’s dividends. And even after the event, few indeed are those who begin to see clearly what happened and why. Merely take note of the followers of this or that ideology who take credit for the American miracle. Today’s tyrants—those who think they can run your life and mine better than we can—resemble the tyrants of old in proclaiming themselves the authors of the American miracle. And they declare freedom to be the enemy of human progress. The opposite of truth is on the rampage.

The problem? I repeat, not a person known to me has more than scratched the surface when it comes to making the case for the free market. The ideological cards are stacked against us. The solution? Let each one of us try his best; and among the thousands who try, several will gain that enlightenment against which tyranny cannot endure. These several, and these alone, will be our emancipators. May you, whoever you are, become an emancipator. Let’s play our own free market game of leapfrogging one another in our understanding and practice of freedom.

[1] What Social Classes Owe to Each Other, p. 98.

19

LET’S LOOK TO OUR PRINCIPLES

If it’s right in principle, it has to work!

—BENJAMIN A. ROGGE

The reference here is not only to material progress for self and others, but also to intellectual and moral progress—emergence—of individuals. These aspects of progress are interrelated and inseparable. We want things to work, for nearly everyone prefers progress to decadence. Our desire is that we rise to a superior way of life, rather than fall into one that is inferior. The question is, how can one tell whether or not he is on the right course? Rogge gives the answer: “If it’s right in principle, it has to work!”

This answer, while unquestionably correct, is far easier to state than its guideline is to interpret. “Right in principle” can be compared to truth in its pristine purity. No one in his right mind claims to possess this. Our fallible minds can purge a theory of some errors; but all? What then do we have to go by? Pragmatic considerations mainly; does it or does it not work! If affirmative, we have hit upon a right principle; if negative, a wrong principle. But the question does it work? has about as many diverse answers as there are persons who raise the question. A few samples:

- The thief “thinks” robbery is a right principle—taking great risks for the sake of small and momentary gains. In his ignorant estimation, it works.

- The politicians and bureaucrats who utter only those words which will get votes or popular approval believe expediency is a right principle because “it works,” that is, it puts or keeps them in office.

- Labor union officials who use force to obtain above-market wages and below-market hours for their members believe coercion to be a right principle. To them, it seems to work.

- Businessmen who persuade government to impose tariffs and other restrictions to free and uninhibited trade, believe monopoly to be a right principle. Being nearsighted, they “think” it works.

- Teachers who advance spend-ourselves-rich notions, “think” Keynesism to be a right principle. With their limited vision, they do not understand why it does not work.

- Clergymen who preach that brand of welfarism which consists of robbing Peter to pay Paul believe, no less than thieves, that robbery is a right principle. To these shortsighted “religionists,” it gives the appearance of working.

It takes but a slight amount of insight and foresight to recognize that not one of the above “works.” Each of them brings destruction, as becomes obvious upon reflection.

Suppose all were thieves—all parasites and no hosts. Everyone would perish. Robbery violates the right to the fruits of one’s own labor and, thus, is wrong in principle.

Suppose all were word mongers—everyone telling lies. Why would all perish? Lying violates truth; expediency is wrong in principle.

Suppose every citizen were a coercionist—freedom to act creatively completely squelched. None would survive. Coercion restrains creativity and is wrong in principle.

Suppose all were monopolists—every good and service having but a single human source, not an iota of competition or exchange of ideas, inventions, discoveries. No survivors! Monopoly restrains the freedom to produce and exchange, and is wrong in principle.

Suppose all were Keynesians. Society would revert to primitive barter, and nearly all would perish. Keynesism causes inflation and destroys an honest, workable medium of exchange; it is wrong in principle.

Obviously, all of the above are restraints; not a one will work, for they are founded on a wrong principle. To repeat, “If it’s right in principle, it has to work.” What then is right in principle? My answer: Discover what should be released and what restrained. It is right in principle, then, to restrain every action which hinders the release of creative energy. And, by the same token, it is right in principle to release every action which facilitates creative energy.

How does creative human energy manifest itself? Overly simplified, in an overall luminosity, that unimaginable wisdom which emerges—blossoms—as a social phenomenon when the creativity of all individuals is released and free to flow. The term I have used—“wisdom of the market”—is too mundane for communicating what I mean. Frankly, this social phenomenon is nothing less than Creation manifesting itself at the human level. What name shall we give this wisdom which exists in no one person but exclusively in a free flowing of infinitesimal bits of insights, intuitive flashes, and the like? Why not call this indescribable phenomenon Creativity, and let it go at that!

It is Creativity that works and it’s the only force that does! It has to work because it is right in principle. Restrain not an iota of it; release Creativity 100 per cent—not an exception! Admittedly, this is one of the least understood of all politico-economic truths. Try as one will, over and over again, and it is rarely grasped. It is in the realm of the spiritual and can only be caught, not taught. But this we know: it is in the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life that Creativity flowers to bless mankind.

The best one can do to prove this point is to ask of anyone that he cite a single creative action that should be restrained. Name an exception; that’s our unabashed challenge!

Immanuel Kant laid down the rule for the kind of behavior on which the right principle is founded:

Act only on that maxim [principle] which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

This is to say that no one should ever act in a manner contrary to his ideal of how all persons should act toward one another. The instruction is clear: If any action of mine would result in social chaos if practiced by everyone, then I must never so act. Let everyone measure his own conduct by the yardstick he applies to others. In essence, the Golden Rule—exemplarity!

Henry Ward Beecher contributed an enlightening thought to this theme: “Expedients are for the hour, principles for the ages.”

In the economic realm, Henry Hazlitt adds his Creativity:

Economics . . . is the science of tracing the effects of some proposal or existing policy not only on some special interest in the short run but on the general interest in the long run.

If right principle is to guide our thoughts and actions, only those proposals or existing policies merit approval which could be lived with forever. There is no such thing as a short-range gain that is not also a blessing in the long run—forever! To assess any action as a gain for the hour that is not a gain for the ages is nothing but faulty assessment, an inability to see beyond one’s nose, as the saying goes. It is to miss the whole point of Creativity at the human level.

If it’s right in principle, it has to work; therefore, let’s look to our principles.

20

THE CHARITABLE ECONOMIST

With malice toward none; with charity for all.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Of formal schooling, it can be accurately said of poverty-stricken Abe that he had almost none. However, so avid was he for learning that he schooled himself. Lincoln is one of a number of noted persons who lacked schooling, but educated himself; and, self-education is, in a very real sense, the only education there is. Not compulsory “learning,” not the craving for degrees or fame or position but, rather, the avidity for learning is, quite obviously, the key to growth in understanding. How many high-titled “economists” in today’s world could originate such a profound thought as “With malice toward none; with charity for all”? Not many! But to be charitable, I must never accuse them of not knowing what such wisdom is all about!

Is charity a lost virtue? Surface appearances—all we can see—suggest its rarity. Depersonalized philanthropy may be commendable, but it is not charity. During recent decades, and on an enormous scale, millions of people simply write checks to institutions, and these agencies serve as committees to decide who the beneficiaries are to be. By this type of escapism, the relationship between giver and receiver becomes nonexistent, and “The gift without the giver” is no more charity than throwing checks to the four winds. Call it an idle response to “Let organizations assume our godliness,” but never put this in the category of charity.

True charity is exclusively in the realm of the hidden. I cannot see it in you but, even more significant, you cannot see it in yourself. The true kind? Here is my authority:[1]

Thus, when you do some act of charity, do not announce it with a flourish of trumpets, as the hypocrites do in synagogue and in the streets to win admiration from men. I tell you this: they have their reward already. No; when you do some act of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right is doing; your good deed must be a secret.

There are those who know that when one casts his bread—kindly deeds, charities—upon the waters—fellowmen—that the returns are many fold. Yet, should returns be the motivation, the loaves will not multiply but vanish. True charity is a spiritual attainment, a harmonizing with Infinite Consciousness. The left hand does not, must not, know what the right is doing. This comes close, I believe, to what was in Lincoln’s mind when he wrote, “with charity for all.”

Now then, what did this President of the U.S.A. mean in his Second Inaugural Address (March 4, 1865) by the phrase “With malice toward none?” He repudiated “active ill will; desire to harm others, or do mischief; spite.” At this point, it is appropriate to ask, how did I ever come upon such an unusual accolade as “The charitable economist?” By reading Honest Abe, one who schooled himself. Reflect on these two examples of his wisdom:

My faith in the proposition that each man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men, as well as to individuals. I extend it, because it is politically wise, as well as naturally just: politically wise, in saving us from broils about matters which do not concern us.[2]

Property is the fruit of labor. Property is desirable, is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may become rich and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him work diligently to build one for himself, thus by example assuring that his own shall be safe from violence. . . . I take it that it is best for all to leave each man free to acquire property as fast as he can. Some will get wealthy. I don’t believe in a law to prevent a man from getting rich; it would do more harm than good.[3]

What a splendid figure of speech: let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another! Were I to pull down your house by reason of being houseless myself, as a means of leveling your plight and mine, that assuredly would be “active ill will, a desire to harm others.” How, pray tell, describe this other than as malice?

However, coercive leveling is a form of malice no matter how achieved. When one personally and openly pulls down another’s house—destroys property—the crime is readily apparent; anyone graced with common sense regards the act as a rank injustice, as malice. But depersonalize the act by getting government—organized coercive force—to commit the identical crime, and shame disappears. Recognized malice is converted into a naive innocence. A sense of absolution replaces all feeling of wrongdoing. Tragic, but true!

Reflect on the millions of people in today’s America who feather their own nests at the expense of others and, pitifully, think nothing of it! The leveling schemes in our hundred thousand governments have never been counted—they are too numerous. The 16,000,000 on food stamps? They are but a drop in the leveling bucket!

On the present scale, these schemes can be financed only by inflation—a dilution of the medium of exchange. Whoever you are, merely observe how your house is being pulled down, your money diminishing in value, the trend accelerating. Who can estimate the number of citizens who have worked and saved and put aside an adequate nest egg for old age or retirement—only to see it eroded by inflation. And, by reasons of this, they too are running to the government trough. All because of naive malice!

Honest Abe, a charitable economist, did not believe in laws that prevent citizens from getting rich; such laws do more harm than good. The U.S.A.’s progressive income tax (plank #2 in the Communist Manifesto) is but one of countless laws that are undeniably doing more harm than good, particularly to the poor. And all of them—no exception—are economic weeds seeded by naive malice!

Malice, an example of human error, cannot be downed until it is found and understood. And when discovered and uncovered, there lies truth: Charity for all.

Becoming a charitable economist is an attainment possible for any alert individual. Give America a fair number and there will be a renewed and Holy ring to:

Our father’s God, to Thee

Author of Liberty.

[1] Matthew V:6.

[2] From The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler, (New Brunswick, N.J., Rutgers University Press, 1953), Vol. II, p. 250.

[3] Ibid., Vol. VII, pp. 259–60.

21

THE GOOD LIFE: A FLOWING ACTION

The truest view of life has always seemed to me to be that which shows that we are here not to enjoy, but to learn.

—F. W. ROBERTSON

As I see it, the truest view of life is that we are here to learn and to enjoy. While learning, if it be truly such, is enjoyable in all walks of life, my reference in what follows will be to learning about freedom—the good life.

By “enjoy” I do not have in mind the frivolous kind such as entertainment and the like or, as the dictionary has it: “not properly serious or sensible; silly and light-minded; giddy.” Learning and enjoying, properly understood, belong together. My belief: Learning, if it be “truly such,” is unquestionably life’s most enjoyable experience. I agree with Aristotle: “To learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general.” This is a conviction greatly in need of explanation if freedom is to prevail, for self if not for others.

But first, a few thoughts as to the kind of learning that is “truly such,” the kind that should, in my view, be one’s ambition. Believing that all actions, even the most serious, should be joyous—fun—here’s support for the idea in the humor of Will Rogers: “So live life that you wouldn’t be ashamed to sell the family parrot to the town gossip.” The instruction? The seeking of righteousness is first and foremost in the kind of learning that is “truly such”—approval from God, not by the gossipy ilk. Merely to stuff one’s mind with the currently fashionable information and slogans of most public media is not learning; it gives us no useful ideas on which to base constructive and creative human action.

One way to draw the distinction between the two kinds of learning is to recognize that it is easy to learn something about many things, but absolutely impossible to learn everything about anything. The more we learn about any one thing—be it an atom, a snowflake or galaxy—the more we know we don’t know—the greater the mystery. Increasing mystery identifies the kind of learning that is “truly such,” the kind that is life’s most enjoyable experience. The other, the popular kind that bedevils our society, was lampooned in Poor Richard’s Almanac: “A learned blockhead is a greater blockhead than an ignorant one.”

One needs, however, more explanations of the type of learning we are here for, the learning that relates to freedom—the good life. That it is a flowing action should be self-evident, flowing since the dawn of language. As Henry Hazlitt suggests, we could accomplish nothing if we had to depend on our own unaided efforts. We could not think above the level of a chimpanzee if we did not inherit the priceless gift of an already-created language. We think in words, an inheritance that is obviously a flowing action.

Learning, the kind worthy of praise, is also a growing action. A brilliant observation: “One does not grow old; one becomes old by not growing.” Growing in what dimension? In awareness, perception, consciousness; in a word, Becoming! That’s what we are here for: emergence—no arrest at any level of learning—by self or by political or any other kind of know-it-alls. When on the right course—emerging which freedom permits—flowing and growing are related actions and occur simultaneously. This, unquestionably, is life’s most enjoyable experience.

True learning is the seeking of truth now and always. Karl Jaspers phrased it thus:

The Greek word for philosopher (philosophos) . . . signifies the lover of wisdom (knowledge) as distinguished from him who considers himself wise in the possession of knowledge. The meaning of the word still endures: the essence of philosophy is not the possession of truth but the search for truth, regardless of how many philosophers may belie it with their dogmatism, that is, with a body of didactic principles purporting to be definitive and complete. Philosophy means to be on the way. Its questions are more essential than its answers, and every answer becomes a new question.

And Stewart Edward White reports a revelation as to how we should respect truth as each of us understands it:

One acquires a truth as one believes in it, and admits it, and tries to stick to it. Until that truth has become to you an unfailing motive power; until you cannot help acting any way but in it; until you are one of its supporting elements, as it were, you do not gain the full benefit of its possession.

There are those among us who regard the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life—freedom of the individual to act creatively as he pleases—as a truth so nearly approximating Divine Intention that we admit it and try to stick to it. We seek to be one of its supporting elements.

We are, however, faced with not less than three obstacles which must be understood or they will overrun and the truth as we see it will not prevail:

1. Despair: Manifested by millions of dictocrats who would run our lives, plus the millions who blindly follow them.

2. Apathy: Our belief cannot be a possession of society or even of ourselves until we can demonstrate its workability.

3. Uniqueness: The flowing, growing action—the very essence of the good life—is accompanied by many dropouts or changeovers which, if the reasons be not known, can lead to a discouragement so pronounced that some workers in freedom’s vineyard will become dropouts themselves.

The first obstacle is an erroneous assessment, namely that freedom has no chance short of mass—majority—understanding and approval. Straighten out the millions! Any individual who entertains this false notion must conclude that our case is hopeless. He throws in the sponge—one less worker in freedom’s vineyard—a dropout!

Have a look at history to remedy this mood of despair. All turnabouts from the bad to the good life have been led by an infinitesimal minority. The most important movement in Western Civilization was achieved by a Leader and a dozen Disciples. Jefferson and two or three others wrote freedom’s greatest political document: The Declaration of Independence. Two men—Richard Cobden and John Bright—turned England around following the Napoleonic wars. Three men—Ludwig von Mises, Wilhelm Roepke and Ludwig Erhard—performed a similar miracle in devastated West Germany shortly after World War II. Saviors are always few in number.[1]

The second obstacle, namely, the notion that freedom cannot grace society or even ourselves unless we can explain its workability, is a profound challenge. It can be met only by a growing action by free men. Many of us know that freedom does work wonders but not one, to my knowledge, has explained with sufficient clarity why its workability. Our explanations are in need of continuing refinement. What to do? Love the challenge—the formula for perpetual improvement!

Now to the third obstacle. To avoid discouragement, we must speculate on why the dropouts and changeovers are so numerous. Over the past 43 years I have watched them come and go by the thousands: from neophytes to devotees to goners—from seekers to jumping-up-and-down enthusiasts to memories. Should this not depress you and me? Not at all if the reasons be known. Here are three of them:

1. In more than four decades many have gone to their reward.

2. Others have grown above your and my offerings—graced by intellectual and moral ascension. Unless we have ascended far enough ourselves, we know not of their existence. Reflect on those in today’s world who have never heard of Mises, for instance.

3. The good life is a flowing action and, as a consequence, many have discovered a uniqueness they prefer to the study and exposition of how freedom works its wonders. They become contributors to the material welfare of all. Why look upon this as a gain rather than a loss? All would perish were mankind dependent on the production of goods and services by the very few leaders responsible for the turnabouts toward freedom—the good life!

A final question: If one recognizes the value and importance of freedom, how can he best make use of such freedom and contribute to its maintenance and support?

Above all else, recognize that we are here to learn and to enjoy. Learning is most enjoyable when the individual discovers his uniqueness and ardently develops it.

As one sage observed, “Your outgo must equal your intake.” In other words, your further reception of good ideas depends upon your sharing the ideas that come to you with those who care to listen. The more one shares his good ideas, the more he learns. Experience attests to this. Advancement of the good life—freedom of the individual to act creatively as he pleases—is founded on sharing—a flowing action.

Why do I share these ideas? In order to enjoy and to help expand my freedom and yours.

[1] For an explanation of the last two assertions, see the chapters, “The Point of Cure” and “Right Now!” in my The Love of Liberty, FEE, 1975.

22

THE WONDER OF WONDERS

The world will never starve for the want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.

—G. K. CHESTERTON

What did this brilliant Englishman mean by “starve?” The answer, I believe, is to be found in the words of an earlier countryman of his, Robert Browning:

Which lacks food the more,

Body or soul in me?

I starve in soul.

And “soul?” Again Browning: “God is soul, souls I and thou!” Translated into modern American idiom it reads, according to my dictionary, “. . . though having no physical reality, [soul] is credited with the functions of thinking and willing, and hence determines all behavior.” This is to say that you and I will think and will our way through life according to the vitality of our respective souls; our behavior will reflect the health—or sickness—of the life within. What I wish to examine is the part that wonder plays in the evolution of the soul, and its vigor.

The way to bring this matter home is to reflect on how we behave when government pre-empts any activity, be it mail delivery, the aid to those in distress, or whatever. We cease to wonder how mail would be delivered were it not socialized, that is, left to the free and unfettered market. Likewise, with the alleviation of distress. Government has pre-empted that; we pay no heed and no longer wonder how Judeo-Christian charity works its wonders. We fall asleep in these and countless other governmental take-overs. Pre-emption of any activity is, except in the case of a few rare souls, the death of wonder!

When government pre-empts any activity or problem area, it thereby closes off that sector against further inquiry or entrepreneurial action—closes the market that otherwise would sift and sort and put to best use the infinite bits and pieces of knowledge in society.

Pre-emption by coercive take-overs accounts for no more than an infinitesimal fraction of the want of wonder. True, we cheer glamorous spectacles as observed in the first of the following verses but the lack of wonder is dramatically illustrated in the second verse:

Fueled by a million man-made wings of fire,

The rocket tore through the sky . . .

And everybody cheered.

Fueled only by a thought from God,

The seedling urged its way through the thickness of black.

And as it pierced the heavy ceiling of the soil

And launched itself up into outer space . . .

No one even clapped.

That seedling is but one of octillions times octillions—indeed, an infinity—of wonders in the Universe. Why, that seedling itself has wonders not remotely comprehended by man. The lack of wonder about Creation—Nature’s mysteries—is appalling.

And no less appalling is the lack of wonder about what goes on among those of us who inhabit this earth. Let an electric light bulb come into existence and shortly it is commonplace, taken for granted. No longer any wonder about this fantastic phenomenon or the uniqueness of Edison. Wonder tends to die with familiarity!

Awakened during the night by a jet plane flying over my home, I wondered what would have been my reaction had I lived in Athens at the time of Socrates. Probably, “Good Lord, are the Heavens falling in!” A correct reaction, for that’s precisely what’s happening. Harken unto this: that jet plane has thousands upon thousands of parts and not a person who lives knows how to make a single one of them—any more than anyone knows how to make a pencil! And a jet plane resembles that seedling in that it is but an infinitesimal fraction of the goods and services by which we presently live and prosper. There is no lack of wonders, only a dearth of wonder.

Let there be no want of wonder about all things in Creation. Wonder in itself is an acknowledgment of one’s finite status, the pleasant remedy for disastrous know-it-all-ness and stagnation. Wonder inspires the will to grow and, thus, adds vigor to the soul. Wonder and the spirit of inquiry go hand-in-hand. It is the fountainhead of entrepreneurial action—creativity at the human level. The power of wonder is sublime!

23

THE AUTHENTIC HERO

The hero’s will is not that of his ancestors nor of his society, but his own. This will to be oneself is heroism.

—ORTEGA

History presents us with countless warrior heroes: Alexander the Great, the several Caesars, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, Mussolini, on and on to the present day. Such “heroism” is rooted in brute force. And there are even more “heroes” by reason of fame, fortune, notoriety.

Interestingly, the exalted stature of such persons depends upon a boundless hero-worship by the masses. This is to say that the worshipers of these false gods are no less faulty than the self-styled gods who, when worshiped, worship themselves! What a perverse form of worship this is! As one sage observed, “Men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand.”

Ortega insisted that the hero’s will is not that of society—which the above assuredly is. What then is authentic heroism? The will to be oneself! Nor is our Spanish philosopher alone in this view:

- Emerson: Self-trust is the essence of heroism.

- Beecher: More heroism has been displayed in the household and the closet, than on the most memorable battlefields of history.

- Amiel: Heroism is the brilliant triumph of the soul over the flesh.

- Spencer: Hero worship is strongest where there is the least regard for human freedom.

Emerson’s “self-trust” is evidenced by those who abide by their highest conscience. Seek truth from any and all sources and then never deviate from what is believed to be righteous. This is the will to be one’s own man, not everybody else’s—the will to be one’s self! What is heroic about such a demeanor? It takes an enormous amount of intellectual, moral, and spiritual fortitude—the opposite of brute force—to stand ramrod straight, as we say.

Beecher’s observation comes through to me as an ingenious aphorism. By “household and closet” he meant one’s inner sanctum—the mind. This is the place where real heroism is displayed, in contrast with the unreal heroism of the battlefield variety.

Amiel’s “triumph of the soul over the flesh” refers to the priority of righteousness over any pursuit of wealth or power. This is merely another way of phrasing that wonderful Biblical injunction: “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God and His Righteousness, and these things shall be added unto you.” Briefly, wealth flows as a dividend of authentic heroism. Reverse the admonition by first seeking wealth and there will be neither truth nor wealth. Morality is the wellspring of material things. It cannot be otherwise.

And, finally, the most important of all is Herbert Spencer’s truism: “Hero worship is strongest where there is the least regard for human liberty.” This is to say that the will to be oneself is weakest where and when liberty does not prevail.

Reflect on the U.S.S.R. or Red China where there is very little regard for human freedom. Hero worship is rampant, the masses kowtowing to the dictocrats. The will to be oneself? That takes courage. Fortunately, history reveals that there is an individual now and then who, regardless of how flagrant the dictatorship, has the will to be himself—Solzhenitsyn, for instance. Were it not for these rare souls who appear unpredictably, there would be no civilized society on this planet—only hero worshipers and the “heroes” worshiping themselves. In the absence of human freedom, there are few emerging, evolving human beings—humanity stagnated!

When government is limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice, human freedom prevails. Each individual is on his own; he is free to choose not only what he does but what he thinks or says or writes and, consequently, is self-responsible. A self-responsible person tends to be self-reliant for the simple reason that it is in his self-interest so to be.

It is seldom recognized that freedom is a magnetic force, exerting an attracting power on whatever potentialities there are, to bring them to realization. Freedom draws countless individuals to heights where men have never been before. Freedom spawns authentic heroes who, at the human level, are responsible for such material, intellectual, moral, and spiritual evolution as mankind experiences—the earthly origin of all progress!

All of us should do our level best to grasp several points that relate to progress:

- The enormous stake we have in human freedom.

- The rapid replacement of freedom by authoritarianism, that is, by the planned economy and the welfare state: socialism.

- The right diagnosis, so we may know where lies the fault and apply the corrective.

It is my conviction that Goethe correctly pointed to the fault:

None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.

A vast majority of our countrymen today, if asked, “Are you a free man?” would respond, “Of course!” The extent of their enslavement doesn’t even dawn upon them.

We hear it said that Americans by the millions are deserting human freedom. This presupposes that they once understood and abided by its principles. People cannot desert that which they never possessed. And the millions, by and large, never had nor do they now have the slightest idea of what human freedom is all about. The citizenry were informed when our country was founded that they were free men and they relied on what they were told. Today? The dictocrats are telling them precisely the same thing and they believe the present-day jargon no less than most of our ancestors accepted the original truth. The masses of our day falsely believe that they are free men. So long as this naivete prevails, they are, as Goethe points out, “hopelessly enslaved.”

The fault manifested all about us, by people in all walks of life—day laborers, businessmen, teachers, clergymen, professional men and women, or whoever—is falsely believing they are free in our present socialistic melee.

What can the correction be? It is personal as one’s own conscience and consciousness: the will to be oneself, the birth among us of a few authentic heroes. Thank the Lord that ours is not a numbers problem but, rather, my problem. And, hopefully, you will think of it as yours.

Away with this enslavement, that there may be a return to freedom, the source of progress. Heroism is the answer. Thanks for the enlightenment, Jose Ortega y Gasset!

24

HUMILITY: THE RIGHT ESTIMATE OF SELF

Whoever humbles himself like this child, is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven.

—MATTHEW XVIII:4

The largest of all quotation books has nearly 3,000 headings, ranging all the way from Ability to Zeal. Among the topics is Humility—dozens of entries—by this philosopher and that. Other virtues merit numerous entries but Integrity does not appear as a heading! This, to me, is an astonishing omission.

Why astonishing? Until now I have always thought of Integrity and Humility as twin virtues, neither possible without the other. But who am I to dispute the great and the wise! They may be right and I wrong. But if so, Integrity must be dismissed as a virtue; it is, perforce, something else. What? But first, here’s my understanding of Integrity, a definition I have repeated over and over again:

Integrity is the accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right. This may not in fact be truth but is as close to truth or righteousness as one can get.

If Integrity or Righteousness is not a virtue as is Humility, what then is it? I now believe it is more than a virtue, for without it, all of the virtues—including the first of them, Humility—are out of the question. Expect Humility, Intelligence, Justice, Love, Reverence for Life to flow from those who cannot even be true to themselves let alone to others? From prevaricators, fabricators, dissimulators, liars? Nonsense! Humility can no more be practiced by those not graced with Integrity than by those not graced with a brain. Said the righteous Harry Emerson Fosdick, “Righteousness is first.” This is by way of saying that Integrity is the only intellectual and spiritual soil from which Humility can possibly spawn and grow!

Before going further, it is well to emphasize that Integrity does not assure Humility or any of the other virtues. Each must be pondered, reflected upon and, above all, ardently desired or, better yet, prayed for—each a life ambition. Integrity no more than opens the Heavenly gates which, to enter, requires ascension—“the wings of an angel.”

The following comments on Humility are not original but, rather my phrasings of observations made by philosophers—seers I hold in high esteem. Included, also, are explanations of what I understand them to mean.

Humility, the right estimate of self, is doubtless the most difficult of all individual achievements. More so than Integrity? Indeed, yes! Integrity is even easier than lying. He who practices Integrity has a single point of reference: that which he believes to be right. He who lies must make accurate references to all the lies he has told. Memory serves no one that well!

Why is Humility so difficult? It takes an enormous amount of honest, realistic self-scrutiny to grasp just how infinitesimal is one’s perception of Infinite Intelligence. Yet, short of this understanding, arrogance captivates the soul, casting the eye downward and not upward, seeing only inferiors and not superiors—beholding fools and not seers. This degrades self and harms others; whereas, Humility, if achieved, uplifts self and helps others.

To dramatize the point, envision in the mind’s eye a ladder extending infinitely into space, each of the steps occupied by people possessing varying degrees of perception, from a low level to the highest. All persons on the second step will be superior to those on the first step in at least one respect but, because of individual uniqueness, not in all. How easy for them to become enamored with this next-to-nothing “superiority” and embrace the notion that those on the first step are inferior in every way! Looking down on them! Thus enamored, the eye is not turned to the third step, that is, toward those who have enlightenment to offer for nothing more than the seeking. No growth! Stagnation! Humility, the right estimate of self—knowing that I know not, but wanting to know—is the blessed prescription for an about-face, the sole remedy for a devastating intellectual and moral malady!

“Humble himself like this child.” Here we have Humility in its pristine purity. The child sits on no pedestal; looks down on no one; has no exalted opinion of self. The child is fresh from God! What is the most laudable feature of the child? It is his inquisitiveness—wanting to know, looking Heavenward! Nearly seven decades ago, I was a pesky kid, badgering my elders for information. I recall my Uncle John pleading with me, “Leonard, please quit asking so many questions!” Too bad we can’t retain more of this childlikeness as we grow older!

To live in true Humility, to make the most of self, one should never quit this childish trait: looking up, never down—during every moment of mortal life.

Mankind will never perish for wonders; but only for want of wonder. Why? There is an infinitude of wonders. Harmony with the Cosmic Scheme—the evolution of the human spirit, the emergence of perception—requires nothing less than wonder, now and forever. May we, for the good of self and others, emulate the child in pure Humility!

There are ever so many more thoughts in support of Humility, easily found when looking up—seeking from seers. A few brevities:

- One’s greatest merit is to know that one’s merit is not sufficient.

- How easy to look down on others; no more is required then the ability to stare. But how difficult to look down on one’s self! Required? The ability accurately to assess how little one knows!

- It is pride that changes potential seers into those who bedevil themselves; it is only Humility that brings out the best in them.

- Wisdom requires that one not inflate his self-esteem from which a deflationary fall is inevitable. It is wisdom to recognize how lowly is the self, that one may rise.

- It is no problem at all to be humble when brought to a low estate, but to be humble when praised is at once difficult and rare. Remedy? Let praise pass by as a refreshing breeze and be forgotten. Assay criticism for the truth it may contain.

- For Humility to prevail, forgive one’s self little if any, but forgive others a great deal.

Wrote Confucius 2,500 years ago: “Humility is the foundation of all the virtues.” As I see it now, Integrity forms the foundation, with Humility the greatest potentiality thereof. “To thine own self be true” and pray—forever strive—for the fruit, not only for self but for all others.

25

LET’S COUNT OUR BLESSINGS

My God! how little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON

Our habits, good and bad, often have strange origins. Rarely can one explain the forces that set up a behavior pattern, nor can I do more than trace the history of a good habit of mine—born in 1964.

We were conducting three successive FEE Seminars at the Mission Inn, Riverside, California. This Saturday was my 66th birthday. Overflowing with gratitude at the way things were going, not only with the Seminars but with me personally, I scribbled on my writing pad 66 blessings—in a few minutes. After finishing, I destroyed the sheet. There was a purpose behind this gesture: Learn to reflect on each day’s blessings as sufficient for that day without reference to previous recordings. By following this practice each birthday since 1964, counting my blessings has become a daily habit—and a rewarding one!

There’s a second incident, reinforcing the first. A year later, while conducting a Seminar in Missouri, a deeply religious individual asked, “What is the significance of the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet’?” Never having pondered that one before, I gave him what is a correct answer to many questions, “I do not know.” However, the query kept nagging at me—a challenge that wouldn’t down.

After considerable reflection, I realized that this Commandment—the tenth—is more important than all but the first. Covetousness—envy—lies at the root of stealing, killing, bearing false witness, and other evils. My conclusion: To the extent that the souls of Americans are cleansed of envy and covetousness, to that extent will we be graced with stalwart, righteous citizens. What’s the formula for ridding ourselves of these traits? Count our blessings!

As related to this thesis, there is an attitude that dominates thinking and another that could become dominant. Voltaire expressed my views: “The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.”

Just as obvious: “The longer we dwell on our blessings, the greater is their power to improve us.”

As to the first attitude, one should, by all means, be keenly aware of the misfortunes which beset society. Properly assessed, they are steppingstones to truth—blessings in disguise. Learn the wrong, to find the right!

Voltaire, however, had in mind the common attitude he observed in his time—two centuries ago—which is precisely what we observe in the U.S.A. today: citizens by the millions dwelling only on the countless misfortunes. The result of this myopic, unperceptive, shortsighted view? Ruled by pessimism, hopelessness, despair, such persons become crepehangers, doubting Thomases, worrywarts. Harm to themselves? The famous Dr. Charles Mayo wrote:

Worry affects the circulation—the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.

These people not only do irreparable harm to their own lives but a disservice to the rest of us and, may I add, to the cause of human liberty. No truth was ever advanced by dwelling only on man-made misfortunes founded, as they are, on ignorance or untruths or outright lies!

Turn now from the negative to the positive, from dwelling on our misfortunes to dwelling on our blessings, from looking hellward to peering heavenward, from that which harms to that which improves. If enough of us do this our countrymen “will know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy.” Too high an aspiration? A bit of reflection will easily replace misery with joy, forlornness with hopefulness.

Conceded, no person will ever count all of his or her blessings. The human being does not exist who can count that far—our blessings border on the Infinite. Every heartbeat is a blessing, as is every breath, all discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes that have advanced truth and human welfare since the dawn of consciousness. So numerous, they stagger the imagination—delightfully!

Thomas Jefferson’s reference was to the countless blessings Americans enjoy relative to people of other nationalities who lived at his time and before. Imagine, the greatest outburst of creative energy in all history, each individual, regardless of his or her station, free to act creatively; serfdom squelched, dictocrats unseated—the American miracle! My explanation of this phenomenon, with its unrecognized blessings galore, is in the third chapter of this volume. Jefferson had reason aplenty to lament the dearth of appreciation—this blindness to blessings—in his time. Were he among us today, what would his phrasing be? My guess: “Thank God! I can at least count my own blessings.”

Well, in this respect, give America some more Jeffersons! Why is it that the more we dwell on our blessings, the greater is their power to improve us? There are more reasons than I shall ever know, but here are three:

- When the eye is cast on one’s blessings, covetousness is overwhelmed; there remains no envy to darken the soul.

- Dwelling on our blessings aligns us with reality. Blessings, as heartbeats, are so commonplace that, short of conscious effort, they are not recognized. Counting them, day in and day out, impresses upon our minds how greatly they grace our lives and how relatively insignificant are our misfortunes.

- Individuals who are reaching for this truth are learning. By their own enlightened prescription, they are teachable. And as the Third Beatitude has it, “The teachable shall inherit the earth.”[1]

What is meant by “earth” as here used? To repeat what I have written before, it has nothing to do with acres of diamonds, soil, rock. Rather, it relates to man’s earthly potentialities: the evolution or emergence of individual faculties, a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness.

Stated another way, those who have so gained a control of themselves as to allow the search for Truth to take charge of their lives are the ones who have the capacity to live their earthly lives to the full: to them the real treasures of this mortal life belong.

To me, the Third Beatitude means: The teachable shall be graced with a realization of their potentialities. How do we become teachable? The simplest of all formulas: Count our blessings! Not only our numberless personal blessings but, as well, the blessings bestowed on us by Thomas Jefferson and others among America’s Founding Fathers!

[1] For an explanation of the Third Beatitude and its meaning, see the chapter, “The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth,” in my Having My Way, FEE, 1974, pp. 12–16.

Awake for Freedom’s Sake

Leonard E. Read

1977

TO:

. . . all those, in every land, who are awake to the opportunities freedom affords.

1

AWAKE FOR FREEDOM’S SAKE

Awake and sing, ye that dwell in dust.

—ISAIAH 26:19

All of us “dwell in dust,” more or less, and the dust is thickest where there is an unawareness that we so dwell. To awake means nothing less than a coming to ourselves; it implies a realization of our dustiness. And to sing—according to my interpretation of this Old Testament admonition—is personally to harmonize with intellectual, moral, and spiritual progression.

No person has the slightest idea of how many ways people occupy their time, ranging from hobbies to workaday endeavors—all sorts of occupations. Some persons have two or three, others a dozen or more. There may be 300 million for all I know, and no two precisely alike. To spot my place in the sun, to grasp what a tiny bit of human dust I am, requires no more than a realization of how infinitesimal is my know-how relative to the total know-hows, 1/300,000,000th, shall we say. The same can be said of others.

To highlight this seldom recognized fact of life, I need only recall the numerous preoccupations of my earlier years that today are in limbo, beyond my ken. Among them: entomology, mechanical drawing, dry-picking chickens, culinary innovations, chemical productions, building wireless receivers and senders, rigging airplanes, and so on. I no longer possess the numerous know-hows that once were mine; but imagine the countless millions of know-hows experienced by others that are not even remotely mine. Indeed, I dwell in dust!

Were others similarly to assess themselves, what a boon to progress that would be! But assessments, by and large, are just the opposite. Most individuals, once they become proficient in this or that bit of expertise, lose all awareness of their “dustiness”; notions of having arrived possess the mentality. This blinds them to how infinitesimal are their several know-hows.

Progression or advancement never graces anyone who succumbs to the notion that he has arrived—“has it made,” as we say. This mortal moment, if seen aright, is featured by growth in awareness, perception, consciousness, day in and day out. To act otherwise is to write one’s own death sentence—life’s high purpose abandoned. It is well to remember that “tall oaks from little acorns grow,” and that emerging, evolving man spawns from “ye that dwell in dust.” Let each of us confess that this is our dwelling. To “awake and sing” is the appropriate ambition!

The dictionary defines success as most people think of it: “. . . the gaining of wealth, fame, rank, etc.” Briefly, this is the big-shot syndrome. One of the wealthiest men known to me jumped from an airplane into the Baltic Sea. Another, atop his own tall building, did a leap and went kersplosh onto the pavement. Lord John Maynard Keynes, advocate of spending ourselves rich, gained international fame. And whoever gained more rank than Hitler or Stalin! To regard wealth, fame, rank as success is a failure in thinking.

Let me share and comment upon several enlightening observations on success by thoughtful individuals of the past.

The eminently successful man should beware of the tendency of wealth to chill and isolate.

This was written by a very wealthy banker but one not so smitten by his riches as to have lost his power of thinking. Far from being chilled and isolated, he knew that wealth is never an end in itself, but only a possible means to desirable goals. The freedom way of life was respected rather than rejected by this millionaire, for material success did not go to his head. Why? His head was too full of good thoughts!

The simple virtues of willingness, readiness, alertness and courtesy will carry a young man farther than mere smartness.

Smartness, as here used, refers to those who are “. . . conceited and self-assertive; cocky.” No awareness of their dustiness, none whatsoever! They “have it made,” and thus lack awareness of higher goals to achieve, higher methods of getting there.

A willingness or a yearning to learn—a passionate wanting-to-know-it-ness—is both a simple and a priceless virtue. It is the key to going uphill with ease and joy—singing all the way. Readiness and alertness are companion virtues.

Courtesy is contagious. Practice courtesy and others will graciously share their ideas. Based on my experience, wisdom beyond one’s own will show forth from the unexpected, even “Out of the mouths of babes,” as the Psalmist phrased it. Hail to the simple virtues!

Character is the real foundation of all worthwhile success.

A person with character is a moral being. His or her life is distinguished by a striving for charity, intelligence, justice, love, reverence, humility and integrity. We should bear in mind that freedom is basically a moral problem—moral philosophy being the study of what’s right and wrong. Economics is a branch thereof, being the study of what’s right and wrong in overcoming scarcity. Morality is the foundation, plenitude the possibility. Among a people lacking morality, material shortages are inevitable. Strive for character!

Somebody said it couldn’t be done, but he with a chuckle replied that “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

Here we have a verbal portrait of every true entrepreneur. The individual who sees beyond the what-is into the what-might-be is the one who converts dreams into realities. These are the ones who account for our high standard of living in spite of all the destructive forces presently on the rampage.

Wrote Thomas Macaulay in his History of England:

It has often been found that profuse expenditures, heavy taxation, absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of private citizens have been able to create it.

Reflect upon the millions of goods and services which we now enjoy that we couldn’t imagine as possibilities a few decades ago, things now so commonplace that we take them for granted. Why? Thanks to those who simply have gone ahead and tried what “couldn’t be done”—the entrepreneurs!

If a man write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

This is an ingenious way of phrasing the law of attraction. At any given moment there are always those out front with better mouse-traps, tastier cooking, winning golf, lovelier music, or whatever. And we do indeed beat a path to their doors.

How do those of us who are working for a better understanding of the freedom way of life induce others to beat a path to our doors? For unless they are coming to us for ideas, we are of no value in this respect. My experience suggests that we keep these points in mind:

1. The higher grade the objective, the higher grade must the method be.

2. Human liberty correlates with wisdom and understanding—a high-grade objective.

3. The method must be commensurately as high: achieve that excellence in understanding and exposition which will cause others to seek our tutorship.

If skilled enough, even though our houses be in the woods, others will come knocking at our doors.[1]

How shall we pass swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To maintain this ecstasy is success in life.

This was written by a nineteenth-century English stylist, essayist and critic. What an insight! This Englishman was doubtless thinking of all aspects of life—the road to truth in whatever field.

“Vital forces”? Those life energies manifested as bits of expertise and pieces of know-how existing in enormous variety among millions of individuals.

How will they unite in their “purest energy”? Leave them free to flow and these forces join and come into focus in all the goods, services, thoughts by which we “awake and sing,” live and prosper. Briefly, leave all creative activities to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is. This is the formula for success in life—ecstasy!

Step by step, little by little, bit by bit—that is the way to wisdom. Dollars are the sons not of dollars, but of pennies.

This but confirms Isaiah’s prescription for clearing the dust. Finite man never attains “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” Man’s goal, with the help of others, past and present, is to shake loose his “dustiness” as best he can. This is the noble goal!

In the realm of goods and services, the successful man is he who best serves, rather than exploits, his fellowmen. And what he receives in exchange is incomparably more than he gives.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of social organization: (1) the Command Society and (2) the Free Society. While there is no perfect example of either one, Russia most nearly approximates the former. But even with wall-to-wall socialism there is an enormous leakage of creative human energy. Were there no such leakage, all Russians would perish.

The U.S.A. most nearly approximates the Free Society. However, even here there is exploitation, and it is on the increase. Our problem is to find ways to be done with exploitation—all of it—and replace it with service.

Here is a truism: “The science of business is the science of service and he profits most who serves best.” Read the next chapter for an explanation of how one receives benefits too numerous to count, in exchange for next to nothing. Incomparably more, indeed!

Our problem? It is to understand and find ways to explain a false correlation which, if not corrected, will take the U.S.A. all the way into the Command Society. Here it is: Most people in their “dustiness” observe a prosperity greater than any other people have ever experienced, occurring simultaneously with increasing governmental intervention. They conclude that the intervention is the cause of their well-being. What a fallacy!

The fact? The present prosperity is nothing more than a thrust from the past. The ways of freedom are in our bloodstream and persist even when not understood—for a time. High time to awake!

Never one thing and seldom one person can make for a success. It takes a number of them merging into a perfect whole.

Be alert to enlightenment from anyone regardless of occupation or fame. The above comments on success reflect an understanding of freedom on the part of a diverse group: two bankers, a mining engineer, an essayist, a poet, a stylist, an author, a mathematician and, last but not least, a motion picture actress of several decades ago. Quite a choir! So, let’s all join in the chorus: Awake and sing for freedom’s sake!

* * *

The following chapters in this, my 22nd book, reflect a continuing aspiration over a period of 40 years to join the chorus for freedom’s sake.

Goethe observed that “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” I disclaim originality, so why all this writing? It’s a response to an urge I love, namely, to uncover the truly wise ideas of great souls past and present and to share my findings with those who do—or potentially may—love freedom.

The next question is, why the repetition in my writings, not only in this but in previous books? It’s because freedom is founded on ever so many of these truly wise ideas. As an example, “Men are endowed by their Creator . . .” is quoted over and over again. Its omission from this or that approach to an understanding of freedom would rob the theme of its very essence. Further, repetition of truly wise ideas—all more or less difficult—tends to hammer them into one’s head, as the saying goes. The more of such thoughts in the head, the more freedom for me and thee.

There is yet another advantage to writing and forever rewriting the freedom thesis. Each new effort evokes new phrasings, word arrangements somewhat varied, now and then an improvement—the long, long road to clarity. Should you choose to do so, come along with me and join the chorus!

[1] For an excellent explanation of how the law of attraction works its wonders, see “Isaiah’s Job” by Albert Jay Nock. Copy on request to FEE.

2

OPPORTUNITIES UNLIMITED

I have no desire to meditate or philosophize upon the past. I have only one wish; and that is to direct our eyes toward the infinite future.

—C. F. KETTERING

A doff of the hat to “Boss Ket,” one of the all-time geniuses. He was surely one of those few, with eyes toward the “infinite future,” who themselves evolve and thus contribute to human evolution.

On the other hand, those who direct their eyes only toward the past give no thrust to a forward movement; for the most part they miss life’s golden opportunities that are in infinite supply. There is but one reason to look back; it is to observe errors, that they may be avoided, and to become aware of truths that help to enhance one’s creativity. So, an eye primarily to the future is the path to such genius as is potentially yours or mine or anyone else’s.

Here is Kettering’s positive approach to life: “Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.” This is the perfect formula for the restoration of liberty, the newest, most rewarding politico-economic blessing in history.

Among the qualities of this creative genius was an ardent curiosity about the mysteries and wonders of Nature—of a Nature that “never went to college,” as Kettering observed. For instance, why is grass green? Find the answer to how photosynthesis works its wonders and a whole new world of wonders opens to mankind. So, that was one of the unlimited opportunities Kettering was still investigating when he died in 1958.

Can the case be made that golden opportunities are in infinite supply? Yes, if the eye be cast aright. Last evening I was studying Professor Bertel Sparks’ remarkable article in a recent Freeman, “How Many Servants Can You Afford?” It occurred to me that opportunities and servants are much the same thing, and I reflected on some of the many servants common today but unthinkable in the time of my grandfather:

- I note these thoughts with a ball point pen. Countless thousands had a hand in creating this instrument—my servants all.

- A telephone at my side makes it possible to talk with individuals in this and other countries in a matter of seconds.

- In the bathroom, a plastic comb, an almost magic razor from England, shaving cream, at the press of a button, a tiled shower with hot and cold running water properly mixed at shower head, after-shave lotion, tissue papers of this and that variety, on and on.

- Corn flakes at breakfast, bacon cured and sliced, delectable tomato juice in a glass jar, lemons from across the nation, roasted coffee from Colombia, an oven and refrigerator run by electricity, the house warmed by gas from Texas.

- At the wheel of my car, a self-starter (Kettering among my servants), automatic steering, air conditioning, and the miracle of self-propulsion.

- At the office, electric typewriters, a machine that turns out sheets of copy clear as the original at the rate of 30 per minute, another machine that collates several items and inserts and stamps and seals the envelopes at 6,000 per hour.

- Off at noon from New York to San Francisco—five hours. And what a meal at seven miles above sea level! Imagine fresh salmon—broiled—flown in from the Pacific Northwest. Those fishermen and the ones who had a hand in making the broiler as well as the jet plane—all my servants!

Here we have creativity at the human level by literally millions of people. As no one knows how to make a simple pencil, so no one knows how to make a ball point pen or any one of the many thousands of parts in a jet plane. The person who draws a blueprint or mines ore or operates a machine tool—each with his or her bit of unique expertise—is a part of this flowing process.

An inventor such as Edison or Kettering is a rare genius. He sees the stars, as we say, how the bits of creativity can be brought together to result in power steering, a storage battery, a package of corn flakes, or any one of opportunities unlimited. The inventor is a synthesist. However, his synthesizing presupposes tiny bits of expertise which he does not possess. This glorious tribute we can credit to the inventor: not only is he your and my servant but he makes the countless millions our servants—unknowingly!

As to servants, Kettering had this to say in a Commencement speech at his Alma Mater on the 25th anniversary of his graduation:

. . . to be a good servant implies two things, willingness to work and willingness to learn, because no one of us knows very much. And if, when you pack your bag for this eventful journey, you will pack egotism and selfishness at the bottom of the bag, and if you will lay your servant’s uniform on top, the passports will not have to be opened, and they will pass you through the line.

“No one of us knows very much.” I’ll wager that Kettering never thought of himself as my servant, any more than do the millions who wait upon you and me. Boss Ket’s goals were those of perpetual ascendancy—“toward the infinite future.” And the goals of the millions are as varied as their number—no two alike. This is the way it should be, each with eyes on his or her own aspirations, not on your or my satisfactions. When each makes the most of self-enlightened self-interest—then each becomes your and my servant—unknowingly.

What a fascinating idea, one that greatly clarifies the case for human liberty. Opportunities can be servants, and in infinite supply. Grasp this point and we have the explanation as to why I have far more servants than any King or Queen or millionaire ever had prior to my grandfather’s time.

What is the real advantage of this unprecedented wealth? I am relieved of the mundane chores that so preoccupied my grandfather. I am free to concentrate on what I most wish to do in life: write and lecture on the freedom philosophy. And this tiny bit—my opportunity—is all I give in exchange for my countless servants—a more pittance. The miracle of freedom!

Among my opportunities are thoughts shared by others on the subject:

Opportunities multiply as they are seized; they die when neglected.

—John Wicker

To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

—Samuel Johnson

Opportunity knocks as often as a man has an ear trained to hear her, an eye trained to see her, a hand trained to grasp her, and a head trained to utilize her.

—B. C. Forbes

The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.

—Thomas Alva Edison

The office of government is not to confer happiness but to give men equal opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.

—William Ellery Channing

In this observation by Channing is a clue to the vital distinction between the market economy and the welfare state—rights in the sense of open opportunities rather than handouts.

It should be obvious that the opportunities-servants correlation is a flowing action. Our goal? To see how nearly we can come to freeing the trillions of tiny creativities from all inhibitions, restrictions, blockages. The freer, the better! The enemy blocking our goal is out-of-bounds government. True, many individuals who are more or less creative demand that governments bestow special privileges upon them. But their shameful demands would little perturb us were our governments properly limited. Proper limitation means curbing all dictocratic, authoritarian action. This is a goal we approach only as more of us understand and insist that government mind its own business: invoking a common justice, keeping the peace, maintaining a fair field and no favoritism. Our goal of highest statesmanship has its origin in a highly moral citizenship, which is the personal responsibility of each of us.

Why is grass green? Leave us free and someone with eyes toward the infinite future will find the answer, just as in the past man discovered how to harness a mysterious energy: electricity. However, let us not say, “Give us freedom and the heavens will open unto us.” Freedom is not a gift but a blessing that is earned by learning and doing. In such freedom, we serve one another—often unknowingly!

3

AN AMERICAN MIRAGE

It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.

—CHRISTIAN N. BOVEE

Everyone’s life is marred by numerous mistakes; to err in judgment is a trait common to all of us. Who among us has not failed in some enterprise or other? But if our shortcomings are acknowledged we can learn from them! Reflect on these two bits of wisdom:

We learn wisdom from failure much more than from success; we often discover what will do, by finding out what will not do; and probably he who never made a mistake never made a discovery.

—Samuel Smiles

Exemption from mistake is not the privilege of mortals: but when our mistakes are involuntary, we owe each other every candid consideration; and the man who, on discovering his errors, acknowledges and corrects them, is scarcely less entitled to our esteem than if he had not erred.

—J. Pye Smith

My countless mistakes have led to a discovery far more important than first meets the eye. Not wishing to adhere to the mistakes—an “infirmity of character”—and believing with Smith that “we owe each other every candid consideration” are good reasons for sharing the discovery. It has to do with a mirage.

A mirage, as the term is commonly used, is an optical illusion: a thirsty man “sees” an oasis in the desert where there is only sand. However, the dictionary tells us that the word “is often used figuratively of something that falsely appears to be real”—the sense in which it is here used.

What, then, is the mirage to which I allude? Here it is: that which gives socialism the appearance of working is the freedom socialism has not yet destroyed. It is a kind of optical illusion which imputes workability to socialism; we are “seeing” something that isn’t there!

History is replete with instances of mankind seeing things that aren’t there. Progress springs from seeing, as nearly as possible, things as they really are. Generations of men and women saw the sun appear in the morning and disappear at night. This led to the notion that the sun revolves around the earth—which is why we still speak of the “sunrise” and the “sunset.” An astronomical mirage! Then came Copernicus and Galileo. The discovery? ’Tis the earth that rotates as it orbits the sun!

There was a time when the earth was believed to be flat. An earthly mirage! The discovery? The earth is a spheroid!

With respect to human relationships, many unenlightened tribes “thought” that the way to prosperity was to raid each other and take home the loot, this being the “economic” genesis of socialism: from each according to his ability to raid and to each according to his need. What a mirage! The discovery? Let each produce, compete, and exchange: private ownership and the free market!

Those in the early stages of economic sophistication tend to believe that the production of goods and services is composed solely of adventures in the material realm. No more to it than the production of widgets and gadgets. Another mirage! The discovery? Everything by which we live—from simple pencils to jet planes—has its origin in the spiritual before showing forth in the material, that is, spiritual in the sense that ideas, discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes are all of a spiritual nature.

That dinner plate of yours is inconceivable had not some cave dweller eons ago discovered how to harness fire. The car you drive or the plane on which you fly would be out of the question had not someone a millennium ago invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry, physics, and the like would be impossible were we to rely on Roman numerals. These spiritual forces—think-of-thats—since the dawn of human consciousness, number in the trillions times trillions! Recognizing the spiritual is an absolute necessity if we are to understand the present-day American mirage.

Admittedly, the above is sketchy but may be enough to suggest a truth, namely, that all mirages are due to mistaken correlations. An example that highlights such errors: Marat, member of the French Chamber of Deputies, observing a rapid rise in prices during the French Revolutionary period, recommended to his fellow Deputies, “Shoot the shopkeepers!” He mistakenly correlated rising prices with business avarice, not with overextended government of which he was a leader. What would have been the proper action had he not been a victim of this error, as common today as then? Apologize for his wrong correlation, resign from his dictatorial post, and find a job, maybe as a clerk in a shop serving customers! In this case, he would have seen the error of shooting shopkeepers.

To repeat: That which gives socialism the appearance of working is the freedom socialism has not yet destroyed. The source of this error? The masses observe two opposite politico-economic practices developing simultaneously: Socialism advancing as never before in American history, and a plethora of goods and services no other people on earth have ever experienced. Therefore, goes the “reasoning,” socialism must be the cause of the existing prosperity! Politicians, most of whom unknowingly espouse socialistic doctrine, claim the credit; and the masses, who are just as thoughtless in these matters, believe them. What a mistaken correlation—a mirage if there ever was one!

Those who ascribe workability to socialism are “seeing” something that isn’t there. It has no workability—none whatsoever! Socialism—state interventionism—is founded on coercion; it is “do as we say, or else!” Who are these we’s? They are those elected or appointed to political office who naively believe that all of us would be more creative were we to imitate their feeble minds. But try to name one among millions of officeholders who can force you or me to have even one improved idea, or command us to invent a life-saving drug, or discover any new thing. These poor souls deserve our sympathy for not knowing that they know not.

Only freedom is workable. It accounts for all the prosperity there is. This claim, however, is difficult to communicate and, thus, will be accepted only by those few who begin to comprehend how trillions of vastly varying bits of expertise, when free to flow, configurate into the goods and services by which we live and prosper.

An interesting aside: We rarely, if ever, observe anyone deserting the freedom philosophy. Why? One cannot desert something never possessed! Those fortunate enough to have really understood the free market, private property, limited government philosophy, with its moral and spiritual antecedents, could not, short of a psychiatric flip, desert such a blessing any more than desert life itself—life and freedom being two parts of the same equation.

Why then, in the absence of a general understanding of freedom, does freedom persist in performing miracles? The urge for freedom is a built-in habit of Americans more than of any other people; Professor W. A. Paton sheds light on why this continues to work its wonders:

Competition, it must be insisted, is not a cruel or baneful influence; it is rigorous, but neither unfair nor destructive. Competition should not be equated with misrepresentation, fraud, or any form of predatory conduct. The essence of competition is pressure on the producer to reduce costs and improve products to attract and keep customers. . . . Here is the feature of the market which provides protection for the interests of the customers. Competition represents the pressure needed to keep all producers disciplined and on their toes.

Away with the mirage. How? Limit public officials to keeping the peace, to restraining all actions destructive of human creativity, and to invoking a common justice. Then and only then will freedom abound to the benefit of one and all alike.

“It is only an error in judgment to make a mistake, but it shows infirmity of character to adhere to it when discovered.”

4

ERUPTIONS OF TRUTH

No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.

—EDMUND BURKE

Burke’s judgment—wise in my view—is assuredly at odds with most of the governments that have prevailed throughout history. What I wish to demonstrate is that those governments which “ought not to exist” spawn sub-governments which also should not exist. They are a bane to justice and human welfare!

To set the stage for this thesis, let’s note from history certain exceptional eruptions of truth—moves toward freedom. While none might be described as a state of perfection, each was attended by a prosperity previously unknown.

The first—about 5,000 years ago—was achieved by the Sumerians in the land that is now Iraq. Wrote Samuel Noah Kramer:

Its climate is extremely dry, and its soil, left to itself, is arid, wind-swept and unproductive . . . it had no trees for timber. Here, then, was a region with “the hand of God against it,” an unpromising land seemingly doomed to poverty and desolation. But the people who inhabited it . . . were endowed with an unusually creative intellect and a venturesome spirit. . . they turned Sumer into a veritable Garden of Eden and developed what was probably the first civilization in the history of man.[1]

Sumerian civilization passed from memory and was unknown until modern times. About a century ago some archeologists began excavating in the Middle East seeking more knowledge of Assyria and Babylonia. They had no inkling of an earlier civilization, Sumer. Excavating deeper than originally intended, they came upon fantastic surprises: beautiful buildings, artistic sculptures, and other works of art and, above all, clay tablets, prisms, cylinders, cones by the thousands, all done in cuneiform signs, setting forth their freedom philosophy, religion, and so on.

The chapter headings of another of Kramer’s books affords a list of the blessings of freedom that bloomed in this first civilization in Sumer:[2]

The First Schools

The First Bicameral Congress

The First Historian

The First Case of Tax Reduction

The First “Moses”

The First Legal Precedent

The First Pharmacopoeia

The First “Farmer’s Almanac”

The First Moral Ideals

The First Proverbs and Sayings

The First Biblical Parallels

The First “Noah”

The First Tale of Resurrection

The First Love Story

The First Literary Catalogue

Man’s First Golden Age

Why dwell on this ancient civilization at such length? Because it was freedom-oriented. Kramer was a leader in transcribing these cuneiforms into English; and it was his conclusion that:

The Sumerian was deeply conscious of his personal rights and resented any encroachment on them, whether by his king, his superior, or his equal. No wonder that the Sumerians were the first to compile law codes, to put everything down in “black and white” in order to avoid misunderstanding, misrepresentation, and arbitrariness [limited government].

Today, some of the world’s best museums have rooms filled with these cones, cylinders and the like—particularly the Louvre in Paris. While inspecting these years ago, I came upon “The Cones of Urukagina”—two of them—and among the inscriptions were these cuneiforms:

Meaning? “Freedom from Taxes.” Four centuries after this first civilization got under way, the city-state of Lagash had become a total bureaucracy—all parasites and no hosts. Urukagina succeeded in becoming King and he restored freedom, but in ten years he was overthrown—Lagash back into the same old mess! However, for a spell, we have one of the historical exceptions.

A second exception occurred in Athens, described by Edith Hamilton:

. . . the shadow of “effortless barbarism” was dark upon the face of the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before.

Admittedly, it was not like ancient Sumer, but Athens was featured by an unparalleled freedom for that day and age. And Athens flourished for a time.

Move on to medieval times: Venice in the heyday of Marco Polo (1250–1325). Here was freedom to produce and to exchange with others thousands of miles away. Visit Venice today and have a look at St. Mark’s Church, aglitter with the wealth accumulated during Marco Polo’s time. Exceptional? Observe Venice and all of Italy today. In the same old mess again!

Take note of the French Physiocrats. These people were free traders; their motto was laissez-fare, that is, a fair field and no favoritism. In 1774 the new king, Louis XVI, appointed one of the leaders from this group—Turgot—as controller-general and minister of finance. What a scholar and opponent of runaway government! Most of the ideas and reforms he courageously advocated were consistent with the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life. A ramrod-straight Frenchman!

True, prosperity did not attend the efforts of the Physiocrats and for the simple reason that their freedom ideas were not put into effect. Why the failure? The opposition became so bitter and strong that the king, a political weakling, dismissed Turgot after two years in office.

Why, then, bring the Physiocrats into focus? One of the most remarkable events in all history flowered from their ideas and political exemplarity. Adam Smith had spent much time with these freedom thinkers, who thus contributed to the inspiration underlying The Wealth of Nations. This, in turn, led to the overthrow of mercantilism and brought in its stead the wonderful industrial revolution: the repeal of restrictive laws, the redirection of production to serve the masses of consumers, and an observance of that absolute principle: freedom in transactions. England, the freest nation on earth, enjoyed a prosperity never before experienced. Again, an exceptional instance of freedom in practice. Have a look at England today: the welfare state and the planned economy on the rampage—the people driven back into poverty!

And, finally, for the greatest exception of all time: the U.S.A.—for a time! And do not overlook the role of the Physiocrats and Smith as related to the American miracle. It was the simultaneous appearance of The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence, along with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights that put government in its proper place and left Americans free to act creatively as they pleased. The result: by far the greatest flourishing of creative energy ever known, and a prosperity beyond the dreams of all who had gone before.

The U.S.A. another exception? Yes, for we are witnessing the same kind of fall that England has experienced, except our fall is from a higher level. Another reason why we are still so prosperous is an enormous momentum from the past. The ways of freedom are still in our blood; they continue to serve even when not understood. Thank heaven, we still have time to bring about a reversal.

“Government” has been used since time immemorial and is plastered to the vocabularies of this and other countries. Talk about the tyranny of words! We’re stuck with this notion of government in this sense: “to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage.”

What is the thoughtful procedure for such a reversal? It is merely to think of our governmental agencies—tens of thousands—as they ought to be thought of: not “for the purpose of checking prosperity,” but rather to invoke a common justice and to keep the peace. Let them protect all creative actions against infringements by anyone. No life should be arbitrarily directed, controlled, ruled, managed; for no one—nor any combination of persons—has a moral right to exercise authority over any honest and peaceful action. Briefly, use the government to protect and defend, rather than plunder, peaceful persons.

Finally, to sub-governments. When governments exist as now—when we allow them to dictate our way of life—sub-governments are a natural and destructive consequence. A primitive political darkness besets mankind whenever and wherever the light of liberty is not seen.

Labor unions in today’s U.S.A. definitely qualify as sub-governments. Their power to control the positions of most officeholders—Federal, state and local—is obvious. Further, they have an enormous say as to whether this or that legislation shall be approved or rejected, and who shall or shall not hold political office.

Observe, also, the extent to which these sub-governments go beyond the political realm. They have a monopoly of millions of jobs in various industries. For instance, they coercively control wages—minimum and maximum—the hours their millions of members may work. So great is their power that many owners of businesses agree to their demands rather than face failure. Sub-governments, indeed!

True, the owners of countless business firms are the victims of a sub-government. Yet, many of them and their organizations are no less sub-governments than labor unions. Recall how the National Association of Manufacturers and the Chamber of Commerce of the United States, in the early days of the New Deal, sponsored the so-called National Industrial Recovery Act, a system of strangling controls. I was on the staff of the National Chamber at that time, and I remember it well.

Take note of the many chambers of commerce and trade associations that have the power to exact special privileges for their members. Those who indulge in this kind of action—“gains” at the expense of others—are sub-governments. Logically, they cannot censure labor unions. Nor can those who engage in collusion—with much success—to obtain tariffs, embargoes, quotas and numerous other restraints to free pricing and open competition.

The group that obtains a Gateway Arch for its city, or the thousands upon thousands of other groups which acquire “pyramids” for themselves at the expense of others, are sub-governments.

Again, here’s a man of such influence that he can, by a mere phone call to Washington, the state capital, the county seat, or the town hall, twist some political action to suit his whim and fancy. His number is legion—more than anyone will ever know. Each is a sub-government.

Perhaps the above is sufficient to suggest the fact that sub-governments multiply rapidly, with only an infinitesimal minority of the victims sensing anything wrong in this utterly destructive type of action.

The reasons are at least two-fold:

1. The victims have taken no note—are completely unaware—of the exceptional instances during the past 5,000 years of how freedom works its wonders—its blessings bestowed on everyone.

2. They’re stuck with “government” in its tyrannical meaning, believing that its function is “to govern, direct, manage.” Not the slightest idea of what is meant by limited government.

My respects, then, to our teachers: the Sumerians, the citizens of Athens in bygone days, the Venetians of Marco Polo’s time, the Physiocrats, Adam Smith and, above all, our Founding Fathers. Why not share their wonderful lessons with those who care to listen!

[1] See The Sumerians: Their History, Culture, and Character by Samuel Noah Kramer (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1963).

[2] See From the Tablets of Sumer by Samuel Noah Kramer (Indian Hills, Colorado: The Falcon’s Wing Press, 1956).

5

WAR AND PEACE

Peace is the happy, natural state of man; war, his corruption, his disgrace.

—EDWARD THOMSON

January 24 marks an important anniversary in my life. It was on that date in 1918 that the S. S. Tuscania shoved away from the docks in Hoboken, N.J. never to return. This Cunard liner, with 2,500 American troops aboard—including me—was torpedoed and sunk in the Irish Sea 13 days later.

I thank Heaven for my survival and for the countless blessings that have followed in these passing years. Not the least of them is a growing understanding of war and its causes and an awakening to how peace can prevail between nations and among men. Another blessing in these days of a growing authoritarianism is the privilege of still being able to share these findings with anyone who cares to listen—freedom of speech and press. I’ve also taken the liberty here of borrowing Tolstoy’s title, but believe he would approve.

The background: John and I were roommates in Big Rapids, Michigan, students at Ferris Institute. The fife and drum corps, with flags waving, stimulated our “patriotism.” Two months before high school graduation—April 7, 1917—the U.S.A. declared war, to “Save the world for democracy.” This mission obviously needed our help. So, we promptly hopped a freight train for the nearest Naval Recruiting Station in Grand Rapids. Both of us were rejected, and went back to finish school; but our desire to “Save the world for democracy” was undiminished.

We found jobs in Lansing that summer and fall. One day, while walking by the local Recruiting Office, we noted a sign to attract enlistments: “Join the Aviation Section of the Signal Corps and go to France at once.” Of course, we applied. I was accepted, John rejected—and dejected. In a little over two months I was aboard the Tuscania.

Some of the Tuscania’s survivors were taken on Torpedo Destroyers to Liverpool but 500 of us were debarked at Larne, Ireland. Telegraphic services were out of order, so word of our rescue was delayed. We were listed in hometown newspapers as nonsurvivors. John, on reading of the loss of his friend, went immediately to Canada, joined the Canadian Infantry and was in the frontline trenches in two weeks. Six months later I had a letter from him saying he was in a hospital. Over the top for the first time, he received 12 shrapnel wounds, half of them still open. That was the last I heard from John! Bless his wonderful soul and to hell with war!

It is one thing to despise the hell of war and quite another to understand and explain the blessings of peace. But I will try.

When Edward Thomson declared that “Peace is the happy, natural state of man,” he assuredly meant the what-ought-to-be—man’s Manifest Destiny. “War his corruption, his disgrace” has characterized far too much of human history, and still does.

The Reads have quite a war record. My great-great-great-grandfather and my great-great-grandfather were in the Revolutionary War, my grandfather in the Civil War, I in World War I, my two sons in World War II. It has taken this background and all these years for me to see the light.

What I see is that the cause of war is authoritarianism; the blessings of peace, on the other hand, flow exclusively from the freedom of everyone to act creatively as he or she pleases. There is a single word around which the issues of war and peace revolve: Creation! War thwarts it; peace makes way for it.

Who are those who thwart Creation at the human level? They are the millions wielding political power who do not understand the destructive nature of that power. As a consequence, they function primarily as wreckers of civilization. These runners-of-our lives subscribe to the crude and primitive definition of government: “to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage”—bureaucratic despotism!

But are those now in office the sole authoritarians? Why are they there? Is it not because countless millions seek special privileges which the powermongers promise and provide? Those with a lust for power dream of schemes that appeal to blocs of voters with a lust for confiscated wealth. Who then are the generators of war? The political despots obviously, but also their partners in evil. To the extent that anyone seeks, encourages, supports special privilege, to that extent is he a party to a mass assault on human life.

Admittedly, this conclusion would shock these millions of partners. Unquestionably, most of them participate innocently in their wholesale depredations. For instance, do the businessmen who demand restrictions of competition think of themselves as partners in evil? Or labor union leaders? Or proponents of government monuments? Or farmers who demand subsidy? Or other “welfare” recipients? Not one in a thousand! Theirs is a naivete founded on politico-economic errors of the primitive past, an unawareness of new truths revealed.

What has been revealed is the formula for “Peace on earth, good will toward men.” Those who really understand this formula, and so order their lives, are not here to run our lives but rather to lay the foundation for life. Founded on what? A revolutionary concept, the very essence of Americanism:

. . . That all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Until 1776, men had been killing each other by the millions over the age-old question as to which form of authoritarianism should preside as sovereign over man. The argument had not been between freedom on the one hand and authoritarianism on the other. This revolutionary concept was at once spiritual, political and economic. It was spiritual in that the writers of the Declaration proclaimed the Creator as sovereign; political in that it unseated government as sovereign; and economic in this sense: If one has a right to his life, it logically follows that he has a right to sustain his life, the sustenance of life being the fruits of one’s own labor.

The Declaration, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights more severely limited government than ever before in history and that limitation accounts for the American miracle. We have experienced the greatest outburst of creative energy ever known—Creation at the human level!

When government is limited to invoking a common justice—permitting anyone to do anything and everything that’s peaceful—men are free to try. This makes possible Creation at the human level. Its essence: freedom to pursue one’s own uniqueness, be it inventing or learning or whatever; freedom to bargain for wage or price; freedom to produce and to trade voluntarily with others in this or any other country.

Those who accept the sovereignty of the Creator—Infinite Wisdom—are never know-it-all’s. As Edison phrased it, “No one knows more than one-millionth of one percent of anything.” Where then lies the wisdom that accounts for the American miracle? Definitely not among the despots who would run our lives! Coercion, a physical force, can only stifle, restrain, inhibit, prohibit, penalize. Never has it been, nor can it be, creative. This is why government should be strictly limited to defending life and livelihood.

The wisdom that accounts for our unprecedented welfare may be found in the free and unfettered market. It is a configuration of tiny bits of expertise, a coming-together so fantastic that it must be taken more in faith than clear understanding. It is to be found in a totality of free-flowing coordination. Paraphrasing Edison, it comes from millions of individuals, each with his one-millionth of one per cent of something. Trillions of little think-of-thats coming together when free to flow![1] Why has this been such a secret? It’s like trying to explain Creation!

Reflect on the trillions of cells that compose this most remarkable form of life—the human being. The cell has no awareness of the phenomenon of which it is an indispensable part. Yet, no cells, no man. This is somewhat analogous to the problem at issue here.

Consciousness is the reality. Begin with the oyster—none whatsoever! Move up the scale through higher levels of consciousness to the chimpanzee and then to the ultimate earthly level: Man. But man possesses only finite consciousness, no more than a drop in the bucket compared to Infinite Consciousness—Creation. Further, man’s perception is but an infinitesimal fraction of Infinite Wisdom; and your wisdom and mine are but infinitesimal fractions of earthly wisdom. Here is the truth we need to grasp: The wisdom that can potentially grace mankind is the result of untold minuscule enlightenments freely flowing into an overall enlightenment. In other words, freedom and creation at the human level!

As noted, until 1776 men had been killing each other by the millions. But to our disgrace, we have been doing much the same since—the Reads included. In view of the U.S.A.’s glorious achievements, why this corruption? Where lies the error? My answer: Authoritarianism where freedom should reign, resulting in war instead of peace!

While our Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights were superior politico-economic documents, they were not perfect. Perfection is not within the grasp of man.

The most flagrant error was a failure to do away with slavery. Slavery is as anti-freedom as any evil of man. Why did our Founding Fathers allow this error? It was their overriding desire to bring into the Union the states that allowed slavery. Political expediency, the result of which was The Civil War!

The Constitution contains several anti-freedom propositions, each founded on the false assumption that elected officials have the wisdom to run our lives. This reflects, in turn, an unawareness of the wisdom in the free and unfettered market.

- To regulate Commerce. This explains the early tariffs, quotas, embargoes—denials of freedom to trade, presumably to protect our infant industries against the European giants! But observe how this error has been magnified during the past four or five decades. Today there are so many regulations that no one knows what they are. And many a business is in bankruptcy because of these regulators.

- To coin Money, regulate the value thereof. The chickens of this error are coming home to roost. The money supply in the late thirties was about $35 billion. Today? Over $300 billion! If it continues to escalate at the same rate, the dollar will soon be useless as a medium of exchange. The sole remedy? Divest government of this power, and leave money to the free market where the wisdom is.[2]

- To establish Post Offices and Post Roads. Government mail delivery deteriorates day by day; yet postal rates mount, as does the Department’s annual deficit. Until the recent oil crisis, brought on by the political interventionists, every four pounds of oil was delivered from the Persian Gulf to our eastern seaboard—half way around the world—for less money than government will deliver a one-ounce letter across the street in your home town! The remedy? No more approval by Congress to “finance” Post Office deficits, and repeal the law prohibiting first-class delivery by free market enterprisers. Result? Government will be out of the mail business overnight.[3] As to post Roads, they, too, should be left to the market.[4]

- To promote the Progress of Science and the Useful Arts. Alexander the Great’s artist, on the completion of a painting, would put it on public display, stand behind and listen to comments by passers-by. On one occasion, a shoemaker criticized the shoes. The artist complimented him. Whereupon the shoemaker began a criticism of the whole portrait. Shouted the artist, “Shoemaker, stick to your last.”

Let us say to government officials, “Stick to your business of keeping the peace.” They are no more capable of promoting the progress of science, art, education or whatever than I am of promoting the skills of portrait painters or the talents of a Bach or Beethoven, an Einstein or Edison!

Nothing better demonstrates this error than government “education.” Coercive? Indeed: compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of taxes to pay the bills. “Education” today is a national disaster. Coercion should no more be applied to education than to religion. What to do? Leave education to the market where the wisdom is![5]

Finally, why all the wars? It is because political appointees are our international emissaries. With few exceptions since the U.S.A.’s founding, these bureaucrats haven’t had the slightest idea of how the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life, with its moral and spiritual antecedents, works its wonders. Not only do they believe they are wise but they are unaware of the remarkable wisdom that blooms from the free and unfettered market. And this know-it-allness is, of course, but the product of earlier errors, some of them noted above. Wars are caused by assigning international tasks to wielders of power.

What is the formula that will assure peace on earth, good will toward men? Freedom to produce and exchange with anyone, anywhere. Free traders are the only ambassadors of good will! With the exception of the Civil War—that pitiful error founded on a horrible evil—note how peaceful are the relationships between the residents of our fifty states. Why? Our Republic is the largest free trade area on this earth. Indeed, unless one observes road signs, there are no observable border lines except on maps. No ports of entry, no gendarmes, no passports, no visas. And instead of wars between our states there is peace, and for one reason: Freedom!

I, a New Yorker, trade as freely with an Oregonian as with a local shopkeeper. When I exchange 30 cents for a can of beans, it is because the grocer values the 30 cents more than the beans. He says, “Thank you!” I value the beans more than the 30 cents and I say, “Thank you!” Why this peace and good will? Enhanced value on the part of each! ’Tis the free and unfettered market at work.

To extend this peace and good will on an international scale requires only that all who freely choose to do so, as freely exchange with Frenchmen, Japanese, Argentineans or whoever as I do with the local shopkeeper or with Oregonians. The obstacle? All of them have trade barriers excluding such free exchange.

What to do? Remove our own barriers—all of them. What will be the result if we set such an example? In no time at all foreign producers will enter the U.S.A. with their goods and services. Observing the efficacy of free entry and free exchange, they’ll soon follow suit by removing their own barriers. Ambassadors of good will crossing borders of nations as freely, peacefully and unconsciously as we cross our state borders. Someone has to initiate what’s right. Why not Americans—right now!

Away with wars and their ignoble causes! “Peace is the happy, natural state of man.” And the key to peace is freedom.

[1] See “I, Pencil.” Copy on request to FEE.

[2] For further explanations, see the following: “Not Worth a Continental” by Peletiah Webster: What Has Government Done To Our Money? by Murray Rothbard; a chapter in my book, The Love of Liberty entitled “These Things Called Money.” All available from FEE.

[3] See “Mr. Kappel’s Dilemma,” The Freeman, June 1967.

[4] For a splendid and convincing explanation of this point, see “When Men Are Free to Try” by John C. Sparks, The Freeman, February, 1977.

[5] For an explanation of these ideas on education, see chapters 15, 16, 17 in my book, Anything That’s Peaceful, pp. 180–221.

6

KAKISTOCRACY

A government. . . for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools.

—JAMES RUSSELL LOWELL

Kakistocracy is a word so seldom used that one might assume the designated condition never existed. Its definition is included in only a few of the larger dictionaries: “A government by the worst men.” One of them adds: “. . . opposed to aristocracy.” And that calls to mind Jefferson’s view: “There is a natural aristocracy among men; the grounds of this are virtues and talents.”

I like Lowell’s definition of kakistocracy. What it boils down to is a government by the worst of men, for the benefit of rogues, paid for by simpletons! Is our once-upon-a-time Republic falling into this nonsense? My purpose is to highlight our kakistocratic tendencies and to offer a few thoughts as to how they can be halted and reversed.

A communist society, to my way of thinking, qualifies as a kakistocracy. Its coercive theme, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” strikingly parallels a form of government in which knavery exploits ignorance. This observation requires a bit of explanation.

Regardless of the descriptive term—communism, socialism, the welfare state, or the planned economy—the redistributionist philosophy in practice presupposes the existence of three classifications of individuals, the typical specimens being: (1) the person with ability, that is, the one from whom honestly earned property is taken, (2) the person with “need,” that is, the one to whom someone else’s property is given, and (3) the person in command of the instruments of coercion, that is, the authoritarian.

The first typical specimen: Those whose property is coercively taken evince neither knavery nor foolishness unless they are “taken in” and thus become a party to coercive statism. Those who are “taken in” appear to be on the increase; behold the well-to-do and business “leaders” who petition government for countless special privileges. In these instances, we witness our “best educated” citizens exhibiting both knavery and foolishness.

An important aside as related to the above and the two following categories: Let us never refer to any individual as a knave or fool. This is inferiority showing through in ourselves. Everyone errs, more or less. Hang labels only on notions which appear to be knavish or foolish.

The second typical specimen: Perhaps it is foolishness more than knavery that prompts the innocents to accept something for nothing. As they permit government to assume the responsibility for their security and welfare, they relieve themselves of self-responsibility, the removal of which depersonalizes the individual and thus destroys him. Coercion is destructive, never creative!

The third typical specimen: The coercionist who forcibly takes from some and gives to others. Such a dictocrat exemplifies both knavery and foolishness. That he sees some benefit to himself in this action is self-evident for, if he saw no benefit, he would not act in this manner. Nor need the benefit he foolishly sees be entirely material; he can be and often is motivated by the thirst for power or popular acclaim or a mixed-up sense of social justice. To feather one’s own nest, that is, to gain self-satisfaction at the expense of others, regardless of the motivation, is knavery, pure and simple.

Foolishness shows forth in the coercionist in that he unintelligently interprets his own interest. He fails to see that he cannot develop, emerge, improve himself while he is riding herd over others. The coercionist who has you on your back, holding you down, is just as permanently fastened on top of you as you are under him. In that sense, the slave owner is enslaved, as is the slave.

It is not necessary to outline in detail how far down the Marxist road we Americans have descended. A reading of the ten points of the Communist Manifesto should convince anyone that we are headed into a kakistocracy.[1]

To my way of thinking, nothing better symbolizes—highlights—this degeneracy than state lottery tickets. When governments go so far beyond their legitimate role that gambling is resorted to as a means of financing, demagoguery approaches its worst stage—kakistocracy, no less!

New Hampshire was the first to authorize a state lottery some 15 years ago. Since then, a dozen other states have done likewise and it is reported that another dozen are more than likely to follow suit. Equally disconcerting is the number of churches that resort to gambling to finance “good causes.” They call it “Bingo.”

One of the most pernicious notions men hold is that, “The end justifies the means.” For example, Father Joseph, a devout Capuchin monk and chief adviser to Cardinal Richelieu, believed that the political ascendancy of France was the way to bring God to humanity. His belief was put into practice. Result? Millions of people in Central Europe were slaughtered.[2]

Now to some reflections on gambling. If individuals wish to risk their savings or bread-and-butter money betting with each other as in crap shooting, poker, or any other games of chance, that’s their own business—so long as it’s peaceful, involving no one else without his consent. Each winner or loser is fully entitled to the consequences of his choice. Bear in mind that this is back-and-forth gambling: one’s loss is another’s gain. No other—church or government—is siphoning off any fraction of the amount gambled.

Here at issue is the siphoning-off type of gambling, be it church Bingo, race tracks, professional gambling houses, or state lottery tickets. In all of these, there is a percentage taken by the operators, the take having various labels: “kitty” or “house take” or “pinch.” If one engages in this sort of gambling long enough, assuming no more income from any source, the operator will siphon off all of one’s dollars. The “kitty” eventually gets all! This is a fact rarely grasped by those who play this game. Now and then they observe a whopper win that eggs them on.

For clarity’s sake, visualize a pool, the water being siphoned off, none poured in. Sooner or later, a dry pool! How avoid? Pour in new water! Analogous is to pour new income dollars—the old are gone—into the gambling pools.

What is the percentage siphoned off by the various types of “kitty” gambling? In roulette, assuming no cheating by the operator, it’s 6 per cent. I have observed the take as high as 80 per cent in adjustable slot machines, often called “one-armed bandits.” However, no one can give accurate percentages of the take in this kind of gambling; they’re in constant flux.

When churches promote Bingo to aid “good causes,” that’s their business, not mine. Why not oppose? There’s no coercion! Bingo to your heart’s content, if you so choose.

While we are not compelled to buy state lottery tickets, the funds siphoned off by this popular scheme are used to finance overextended governments, all overextensions being coercive—no exception. Offer me a barrel stuffed with lottery tickets for free and my response would be, “Thank you, no! I am opposed to, not in favor of, kakistocracy!”

Observe the lottery hawkers on the streets of Paris or Rio or Montevideo or cities in other countries where the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life is giving way to socialism. Who are the buyers? The wealthy? The middle class? Indeed not! Anyone sensible enough to have accumulated substantial savings isn’t likely to be taken in, to any serious extent, by the “kitty” or “house-take” type of gambling.

The buyers of lottery tickets are the poorest people—frantically trying to escape from their poverty by “hitting the jackpot.” And, why not? Many of their spiritual “priests” have advocated the practice, and their secular “priest”—government—has done likewise.

Poverty, of course, is a relative condition. Many people in the U.S.A. think of themselves as poor only because they compare themselves to those who are better off—the millions of affluent Americans. The fact is that our “poor” are extremely wealthy compared to most of the people who inhabit this earth. Anyway, they gamble. Again, why not? Our welfare state offers something for nothing, assuring them food, shelter, and clothing should they plead distress, and the cause of their distress matters not; it could be gambling or whatever!

Is there a cure for this devastating trend? You bet there is! Observe that I am willing to gamble on this. But the remedy is not to be found by merely spuming lottery tickets. The knaves have countless other ways of “financing” kakistocracy, inflation being one.

What then? The rebirth of a natural aristocracy—virtues and talents—is the answer. To repeat what I have written many times, the foolish and knavish notions in the minds of the millions are no more numerous today than in America’s heyday; they are only more obvious.

When a society is graced with a first-rate aristocracy—men of virtues and talents serving as exemplary models—foolish and knavish notions are held in abeyance. Why? People fear appearing as fools or knaves before those held in high esteem. Not many would steal if aware that Christ were viewing the act!

But note what’s going on. There are only a few with aristocratic potentialities. Today, most of them, be they business or labor “leaders,” clergymen, “educators,” or whoever, have slumped. True, they remain standard setters but their standards are shameful, founded on expediency, acclaim, special privilege, and the like, rather than on high principles and righteousness. Result? Foolish and knavish notions are no longer held in abeyance, for nothing is standing against them. They show forth in profusion as does fungus on a heap of muck!

Is the rebirth of an aristocracy likely? In my opinion, it is certain, for such is ordained in the Cosmic Plan. The only question: When? No one can answer, for no person knows what is going to happen in the next minute, fortunetellers, soothsayers, prognosticators to the contrary notwithstanding.

The one question that makes sense: When and to what extent will you or I strive for this required exemplarity—becoming an aristocrat? This, and this alone, is all any person can do toward ridding the world of kakistocracy.

And why not strive for this role? Seeking for righteousness, learning to understand and explain why freedom works its wonders is a joyous adventure. Besides, it’s what we’re here for. So why not enjoy ourselves by trying to outdo each other in lending a hand to the Cosmic Plan! Freedom of all people to act creatively as they please is the formula for Heaven on Earth. We are betting our lives on this!

[1] For a listing of the ten points, see “The Communist Idea.” Copy on request to FEE.

[2] For a detailed account of this disaster, see Grey Eminence by Aldous Huxley (New York: Harper & Bros., 1941).

7

ON SUBSIDIES AND REGULATIONS

It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes.

—UNITED STATES SUPREME COURT
“WICKARD VS. FILBURN”

Here is a truism, an old folk saying: “He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.” This certainly applies to the relationship between government and the citizens. When government subsidizes—pays—it regulates; it calls the tune which determines the extent of our enslavement. For it is an observed fact that the road to the Command Society is paved with dictatorial regulations: enslavement edicts.

Is “enslavement” too harsh a term? That great British thinker, Herbert Spencer, wrote in 1884 an unusual but a thoughtful and realistic definition of slavery:

What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What. . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.[1]

Based on the authority of the Supreme Court of the United States, and deductive reasoning as well, it should be obvious that all who ask for subsidies are inviting regulations that lessen self-benefits. Such persons are asking for slavery—no less!

The same can be said of those who ask government for a monopolistic position in the market—seeking to gain by the coercive elimination of would-be competitors. When successful in such depredations, they gain by denying others the opportunity to gain. Their gain is someone else’s loss, and if that isn’t a form of subsidy-slavery, pray tell, what is!

Reflect upon the countless subsidies being sought, not merely by the socialists but by those who call themselves “free enterprisers.” Each subsidy, when granted, gives birth to not one but to numerous regulations. The number of governments in the U.S.A. approximates 100,000. Consider the many regulations spawning from each of these, and the total is staggering. All regulations that limit creative action—most of them do—explain our country’s rapid decline into the Command Society—enslavement. Along with the enslavement occurs the deadening of private ownership, a fundamental feature of the free society.

The government type of enslavement is the satanic offspring of at least three hallucinations:

1. I am wise! With few exceptions, those wielding power over others are corrupted. Authority of this nature tends to intoxicate them; they see others as fallible, but never themselves.

2. I am it! Government controls what it subsidizes. Elected and appointed holders of government office develop the mentality of L’ Etat c’est moi, I am the state. They come to believe that the funds they use to subsidize are the government’s own money, and they are the government, and thus they are it!

3. I am omniscient! This is the little-god syndrome: “Be like me, do as I say, obey my edicts, and thou shalt be graced with the good life.” The truth? Not a one of them is any more competent to direct our mortal moments than to direct our spirits in the Hereafter! This is to say that they can no more effectively direct creativity at the earthly level than they can direct Creation. Managing the creative lives of others is beyond any man’s competence. But these wiseacres don’t even know this—a hallucination, indeed!

I repeat, private ownership is a fundamental feature of the free society. The alternative is government ownership of nearly everything, as in Russia or Red China. And that’s a far cry from the free society!

Merely holding title to a piece of property does not mean ownership if control is absent. One does not own that which he does not control. In Mussolini’s Italy titles to enterprises were retained, but that fascist regime controlled wages, prices, hours worked, what goods and services could be produced, to whom sold, and so on. Titles without control are utterly meaningless.

This is a point never to forget: The millions of regulations in today’s U.S.A. are controls! Thus, to the extent that regulations exist, to that extent has government ownership replaced private ownership.

No one can or ever will list and explain all the controls now in force. Even finding out what they are would take several lifetimes. Thus, a sampling must suffice. First, a few comments on education. Government control of schooling—a grave error held over from our country’s early days—unquestionably accounts for the plethora of regulations in every other walk of life. Youngsters brought up in the atmosphere of government schooling are in danger of remaining addicted to that regulated life. With an exception now and then, Amiel’s observation is realistic:

Scratch the green rind of a sapling, or wantonly twist it in the soil, and a scarred or crooked oak will tell of the act for centuries to come. So it is with the teachings of youth, which make impressions on the mind and heart that are to last forever.

It is not necessary to examine government “education,” past and present. Merely have a look at government control of private education at the present time. At this point, I asked the prime mover of the most private of all private schools known to me about government regulations imposed on his school.[2] He listed a few of the numerous controls he has to cope with.

Is he really an owner? As an illustration of control hear this: The Chairman, Department of Accreditation, State of Kansas wrote, “You exceed all of our standards, but you do not meet them.” Thus, my friend’s school is not accredited even though its standards exceed requirements. Why? Simply because they do not square with the lower standards set by the government! This is not the pursuit of excellence or of learning, but of coerced mediocrity.

Graduates of my friend’s school cannot enter a government university in Kansas without an examination. But any graduate of a government high school is automatically admitted to any government university in that state.

Here is another example of the degraded level of government “education.” The New York State Board of Regents prepares standard examinations in the social sciences (and various other disciplines) to be administered to all students taking the course in public schools throughout the State. A former colleague of mine once took one of these exams in two different ways. First, he tried truthfully to answer all questions as he thought they should be answered. An official grader for the Regents Examinations awarded him the score of 52 on the test. Then my associate took the same examination the second time, giving the answers he thought the State wanted. The same official grader awarded him the grade of 92!

I am convinced that government “education,” founded on coercive regulations, is more the cause of controls over all creative activity than anything else. Controls proliferate in nearly every enterprise and occupation, and there isn’t a better illustration of this than medical practice. When doctors obey all laws—Federal, state, and local—they must spend more time filling out forms than treating patients! Many of them are quitting.

Of course, numerous doctors—as well as people in other fields—ignore the controls and, by so doing, become, lawbreakers. Such disrespect for laws which interfere with trade and promote class warfare carries over into disrespect for all laws—including those essential to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. Further, these same people spend more time scheming how to course around regulations than they spend discovering how to produce better goods and services at lower prices. Many of them are failing.

So, what shall we do about government “education,” the take-off point for our descent into the Command Society? My answer: Let’s have a vigorous and spirited competition in demonstrating the wonderful superiority of private education. One of these days one of us will find an explanation so clear and dramatic that the right will arise to displace the wrong. Let me share two thoughts which I find inspiring:

I am convinced that the freedom-of-choice principle is so woven into human existence that any effort to curtail it is an attempt to curtail life itself. To lose our freedom to choose is to lose our humanity.

—Professor Bertel Sparks

I am an American because I believe that the destiny of America is to be the abiding place of liberty and free institutions, and that its own practice and enjoyment of these blessings shall be to the world a beacon light which shall radiate its influence by peaceful means to the uttermost part of the world, to the uplifting of all humanity.

—J. Reuben Clark, Jr.

The procedure is simple enough: Uplift ourselves in understanding and explaining the blessings of freedom to choose and, by so doing, we will uplift humanity!

[1] This is extracted from the chapter, “The Coming Slavery,” in Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus The State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946), pp. 41–42.

[2] For an explanation of his school, see How to Start Your Own School by Robert Love. First published, 1973; now in paperback from Green Hill Publishers, Box 738, Ottawa, Illinois 61350.

8

ATTUNED TO FREEDOM

Were the eye not attuned to the Sun, the Sun could not be seen by it.

—GOETHE

An eye to the Sun, had Goethe. What an instructive and stimulating simile by this wise man! How it encourages reflection and stimulates thinking! Goethe uses the Sun to symbolize both the seen and the unseen; only our expanded awareness makes the difference. To the individual who has no eye to see the Sun, that star does not exist. Similarly, nothing is real for you or me or anyone if the eye be not attuned to it—even freedom is nonexistent!

The Sun is an excellent symbol, for without it there would be no life of any kind. It is the single star in the solar system around which our earth and other heavenly bodies rotate. It is the source of all physical energy, the enormity of which is incomprehensible. For instance, enough solar energy reaches our planet in 40 minutes to supply all the energy mankind consumes in a whole year. While Goethe was unaware of this recently discovered fact, he had an eye for the future. Small wonder that he used the Sun to symbolize the heavenly!

But what of the eye not attuned to the heavenly virtues such as integrity, humility, charity, justice, love, reverence for life, individual liberty, and the like? All eyes not so attuned see neither the Sun nor the heavenly virtues. Overcoming this blindness—really seeing—is our earthly and, may I add, our heavenly purpose.

Now to an observation by another wise man, the renowned biochemist and biologist, Roger J. Williams:

If people were different from each other only in trifling ways—fingerprints, length of noses, the texture of their hair, the exact shape of their eye lenses—they might insist on wearing their own spectacles and on a few other minor rights. But the rights that Patrick Henry and others were ready to die for were of a very different kind and would never have been thought of if the individuals concerned had not possessed the enormously significant biological individuality which we now know about. This inborn individuality was and is the mainspring of our love of liberty.[1]

No doubt about it, biological individuality—variation—is the mainspring of our love of liberty. However, the spring isn’t as strong as it might be. And I suspect the weakness may stem from lack of awareness. The eyes of many persons are insensitive to freedom and, thus, this wondrous achievement has no reality for them; it doesn’t even exist! So, let us try to open those eyes.

Further, let us not deal harshly with their blindness, for that would reveal a myopic weakness in those of us whose eyes are attuned to freedom. And I confess such nearsightedness at times. It isn’t easy to be patient with those who fail to see what we see. Overcoming this psychic blindness in ourselves may be the first step in attuning another’s eye to freedom. So, let us strive for patience, bearing in mind the infinity of things and ideas for which no living person has ever had eyes.

A striking example of these variations comes to mind. I had quoted most favorably a brilliant zoologist, and assumed that he might be pleased to have a copy of my new book. His acknowledgement was in a sentence or two, no more than a shrug of the shoulders, as we say—obviously, not pleased.

Nevertheless, when his next book was released, I entered it with enthusiasm and was rewarded by enlightenments such as these:

- . . . man is an integral, small, but significant part of a universe that is creative at all levels.

- Minds are self-creative. They are not born, they are made.

- . . . when we express ourselves creatively, in whatever field, we best fulfill our nature.

- And potentialities mean not just skills, but the full range of the capacities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding, loving, and aspiring. In this light, the ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education.

- The only equality lies in the right, if any, for equal opportunity to develop freely his own worth.

- . . . recognition that no one else is like oneself gives at once a unique value to the individual and at the same time demands that every individual recognize the uniqueness of others.

- . . . the greater the minds the greater the difference.

- These (Leonardo da Vinci and others) are uncommon giants. . . who grew out of the so-called common stock of a multitude of uncommon individuals of lesser stature.

Never have I felt myself more on the same wave length than with this great zoologist. And then, later in the same book, this one:

- Now all is changing, thanks to antibodies, antibiotics, the surgeon’s knife and the welfare state.

Little wonder that he shrugged me off when I sent him my book—I being attuned to freedom, he to socialism. However, we should look for truths from whatever source, so why not be grateful for those found in the writings of one who gives thanks for the welfare state! He at least acknowledges that “no one else is like oneself,” and asks “that every individual recognize the uniqueness of others.” This is to say that the eyes of no two persons are attuned the same. Each is unique, indeed.

No two of us are identical, not even “identical twins.” Interestingly, no individual is the same as he was a moment ago. For instance, in a span of five years one’s octillion atoms flow away as a new octillion replaces them. Imagine: In every second of one’s life, over 6,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms (6 quintillion) come and go! Thus, I am a different person than I was at the beginning of this sentence. My eye is attuned differently—hopefully attuned to more—than a moment ago. This goes for everyone, and should help us to “recognize the uniqueness of others.”

All things in the Cosmic Scheme are in flux—be they atoms, or galaxies, or man’s earthly life. The action flows. This is why, as Roger Williams says, our “inborn individuality was and is the mainspring of our love of liberty.” Inborn? Yes, in people like Williams and, relatively speaking, in a few others. But mass perception of this truth is not a requirement. Were everyone like you or me or anyone else in their attunements, all would perish. The requirement is that those of us who love liberty make that mainspring stronger—discover how better to explain our love.

Who among us knows precisely how to make this explanation? To my knowledge, no one! Conceded, there are thousands of us who see the light and love what we see. But how describe it? ’Tis comparable to explaining sunlight or Creation! However, thank Heaven, we can cast our eyes aright, keep attuned to freedom, and perhaps improve our explanations of creation at the human level. A few thoughts that come to mind:

- Individuality is an undeniable fact of life, that is, everyone is different. But we can enjoy the fruits of these trillions of differences only as they are free to flow. This fact, and this alone, is all the light I need to love liberty.

- Never lend support or give encouragement to any—not one—man-concocted restraint against the release of creative energy.

- Keep an eye on highly energetic individuals. If they employ their energy to run their own lives, to brighten their own light—learning—they will be our benefactors. Failing this, they will use their energy to run our lives, make us carbon copies of themselves—malefactors.

- Let your light shine before men, that they may see your good works—Matthew 5:16

- Lead Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. Lead Thou me on!—Cardinal Newman

May our eyes be more and more attuned to freedom: the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life—the flowing and the good life!

[1] For an easy-to-read yet scholarly explanation of our fantastic variations, see You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams. Obtainable from FEE in cloth or paperback.

9

WEEDING ONE’S GARDEN

Doth not the common experience make this common unto us that the fattest ground bringeth forth nothing but weeds, if it not be well tilled?

—JOHN LYLY

The soils of the earth produce ever so many weeds, ranging from beggarweeds to smartweeds. And the souls of men—the minds that think and will—are no less plagued with errors galore, mental weeds that range us from the beggar to the smart aleck. Common? We all err—no living exception!

Unquestionably, “the fattest ground bringeth forth nothing but weeds, if it not be well tilled.” And the fattest prosperity brings nothing but fallacies, if the minds of men are not well-disciplined. As Horace, the Roman of 2,000 years ago, observed, “adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

The growing adversity in the world today, here and elsewhere, is eliciting talents by which we learn to better cultivate the fertile soil of freedom. My thesis is that such cultivation of truth begins with the discovery and elimination of our countless errors—weeding one’s garden—a strictly personal adventure. Everett Dean Martin offers excellent counsel:

The man who strives to educate himself—and no one else can educate him—must win a certain victory over his own nature. He must learn to smile at his dear idols, analyze his every prejudice, scrap if necessary his fondest and most consoling belief, question his presuppositions, and take his chances with the truth.

I well recall a day when my garden was choked with weeds. Shortly after FEE was founded in 1946, I was asked to lecture at a luncheon club in Los Angeles. Having been General Manager of the L. A. Chamber of Commerce, I had many friends in the area and was pleased to have several of them invited as guests for the occasion. At the end of my lecture, I was shocked by a battery of questions from members of the club obviously more sympathetic toward socialism than toward my views. These questions were new to me at the time, and I was stumped for answers—much embarrassed before my friends.

Then and there, I resolved to learn to recognize these tricky questions—these weeds in my garden—and how to eradicate them. Thus began a series of suggested answers, by myself and by others, to the most common Cliches of Socialism, culminating in a little book of 76 short chapters that has been helpful to many a workman in his garden of freedom.[1]

Here are a few examples of those tricky, mischievous notions—cliches—that ought to be weeded from one’s garden of freedom:

- “The more complex the society, the more government control we need.”

- “If we had no social security, many people would go hungry.”

- “The right to strike is conceded but. . . .”

- “The size of the national debt doesn’t matter because we owe it to ourselves.”

- “The free market ignores the poor.”

- “Human rights are more important than property rights.”

- “We’re paying for it, so we might as well get our share.”

- “Customers ought to be protected by price controls.”

- “The welfare state is the best protection against communism.”

- “Big business and big labor require big government.”

- “I prefer security to freedom.”

- “Private business should welcome government competition.”

- “If government doesn’t relieve distress, who will?”

- “Labor is not a commodity.”

- “Rent control protects tenants.”

- “Under public ownership, we, the people, own it.”

Why does our book list only 76 weeds? Because we do not see all the weeds there are. The ways to be wrong are infinite. There’ll never be such a thing as a perfectly clean garden.

As Cervantes wrote, “The road is always better than the inn.” The inn is a stopping place, life’s purpose abandoned. Why is the road better? We thereby move toward our goals, weeding along the way, tilling our souls as best we can, now and forever. There have never been any clean gardens nor will there ever be. It is a matter of progression or ascendancy. Everett Dean Martin’s formula is good enough for me.

The man who strives to educate himself—and no one else can educate him—I am the only person who can educate me, education being a taking-from, never an injection-into process. My formal education ended with high school. Not knowing much and knowing it, I have for the past 60 years selected my own tutors, Dr. Everett Dean Martin being one of many, past and present. Saint Matthew set forth the only valid educational process many centuries ago:

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

. . . must win a certain victory over his own nature—What is man’s natural state, his nature? Is it not his vanity, his unawareness of how little he knows? How seek a victory over this vaingloriousness? Acknowledge, as did Socrates, “I know nothing but I know I know nothing.” That’s the first step. The second comes naturally: seeking to know more! Therein lies indeed “a certain victory.”

He must learn to smile at his dear idols—An idol is “the object of ardent or excessive devotion or admiration.” Perhaps we all succumb to some extent, idolizing certain persons ranging from little political gods to those endowed with fame, wealth, power, charisma. Such idolatry, as distinguished from an esteem of virtues, is degrading both to the idolater and the idol. We should, indeed, smile at our “dear idols,” particularly if one of them happens to be the person seen in the mirror.

. . . analyze his every prejudice—Prejudice is a judgment or opinion formed before the facts are known—usually unfavorable. Such narrow-mindedness or short-sightedness accounts for the millions admiring the weeds of socialism and blind to the flowers in the garden of freedom. Analysis—an unprejudiced study of the records—lights the way to truth.

. . . scrap if necessary his fondest and most consoling belief— What we believe depends pretty much on what we are, that is, on what we can understand. Comprehension in the wisest amongst us, relative to Infinite Consciousness—Creation—is infinitesimal. This accounts for ever so many fond and consoling beliefs that are obstacles to human evolution: life’s purpose. The challenge, then, is to scrap every belief which stands in the way of our creative growth, emergence, ascendance. In other words, we grow in wisdom as we find sound ideas to displace fallacies.

. . . question his presuppositions—To presuppose is to take something for granted; to view a subject or problem in a narrow, biased, dogmatic, intolerant fashion; to jump to a conclusion. The very words should alert us against this common human frailty, this noxious weed that chokes many a garden before its fruits can be harvested.

. . . and take his chances with the truth—Chance is an opportunity: as you’ll have a chance to go. Where? Toward whatever truth one can grasp and bring into his possession. But many a weed stands between a gardener and a bountiful harvest of truth. The flowering of truth depends upon freedom if it is to grow and mature. And the game is to overcome the obstacles, the weeds of intervention and control.

Weed your garden and you encourage me to weed mine!

[1] Available from FEE.

10

DEAR ME:

The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance.

—SIR WILLIAM HAMILTON

In all of my 79 years, this is the first time I have ever written a letter to me! There are two reasons for the delay:

1. Not until now have I fully appreciated the harm done by most of the letter-writing indulged in by freedom devotees. Reference is to the plethora of condemnatory letters they write to the millions of persons who take socialistic positions, ranging from editors to politicians; from small fry way on up to Presidents of the U.S.A. It is the straighten-them-out approach which begins by classifying the recipient as Dummkopf!

2. Previously, I have never fully realized that the sole contribution anyone can make to the evolution and welfare—perfection—of others is such perfection as he or she may personally achieve. In light of all contrary notions, this appears as a new thought. New? On hearing of my “discovery,” an associate called attention to Saint Matthew’s wisdom, taken from Christ’s Sermon on the Mount, spoken quite some time ago.

For the sake of personal enlightenment, the following is an analysis and commentary on that Saint’s wisdom. He learned from one; hopefully, I can learn from him.

Pass no judgments and you will not be judged. For as you judge so will you yourselves be judged, and whatever measure you deal out to others will be dealt back to you.

Judge only actions, thoughts, ideas but not the authors thereof. If they take positions contrary to your own, call them not fools, nor indeed think of them as such. To do so is to invite similar appraisals of you. ’Tis the law of action and reaction at work. The practice of name-calling is foolish, for it leads only to a population of fools.

Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother’s eye, with never a thought for the great plank in your own?

What an instructive hyperbole: sawdust in your brother’s eye, the great plank in your own! What is that speck we see in our brother’s eye? It is that infinitesimal bit of know-how we may possess that our brother does not. And the great plank in our own? Trillions of know-hows we do not possess but don’t know we don’t!

Wrote a sage: “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.”

Do not throw your pearls to the pigs; they will trample on them, and turn and tear you to pieces.

Again, a hyperbole or striking metaphor, seemingly harsh, but is it really?

The Perfect Exemplar was crucified for openly presenting his Pearls of Wisdom. However, it is not necessary to go back 20 centuries for a demonstration of this truth. Try presenting the Pearls of Freedom in today’s Russia or Red China. They’ll trample on your ideas and tear you to pieces!

Can this seemingly harsh metaphor be rephrased to serve as good counsel in today’s U.S.A.? In my judgment, it would read: Do not try to reform the opponents of freedom. They will trample on your ideas and do all in their power to belittle you. For confirmation, hear these few who have reflected on reforming others:

Every reform, however necessary, will by weak minds be carried to an excess which will itself need reforming.

—Coleridge

An indefinable something is to be done, in a way nobody knows how, at a time nobody knows when; they will accomplish nobody knows what.

—Thomas B. Reed

It is a general error to suppose the loudest complainers for the public to be the most anxious for its welfare.

—Burke

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

—Thomas à Kempis

Reform only yourself; for in doing that you do everything.

—Montaigne

Always treat others as you would like them to treat you.

I do not wish others to reform me, so I shall not try to reform them.

I do not want others to belittle me, so I shall not belittle them.

I wish to act creatively as I please, so I shall concede that privilege to everyone.

I welcome the open competition of the market, through which the goods and services of others are available in exchange for mine.

I hope that others will achieve an understanding that will cause me to seek their tutorship, therefore, I shall try to upgrade myself to the point where some will seek mine.

Righteousness—integrity—is the quality I most admire to others, so righteousness must come first among my goals.

I appreciate others sharing their thoughts with me, so I shall share with them.

Briefly, I must never do unto others that which I would not have them do unto me—life’s Golden Rule!

Enter by the narrow gate. The road that leads to perdition is wide with plenty of room, but the road that leads to life is small and narrow.

Wrote Aristotle: “One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one.” The ways to go wrong are a millionfold—as numerous as are all the errors of mankind. Plenty of room, indeed! But the way to go right is, we might say, singlefold, a “small and narrow” road, a truth now and then come upon by one devotedly seeking what’s right—like finding a needle in a haystack.

Terence, born a slave two hundred years before the Sermon on the Mount, brought up and educated by a Roman Senator, became a writer of comedy. A priceless line, “Nowadays the reward is for those who make right appear wrong.” His “nowadays” strikingly resemble our own. For instance, camouflaged thievery—the coercive taking of the fruits of your and my labor to feather the nests of others—is made to appear right and, thus, honesty must be wrong. Countless examples nowadays might be cited.

Terence lived in a devolutionary period as we do. But courage! Evolutionary periods follow, especially when enough of us get on that small and narrow road that leads to life.

The man who heeds these words and acts upon them . . . has the sense to build his house on rock. The rain came down, the floods rose, the wind blew, and beat upon that house; but it did not fall, because its foundations were on rock. But what of the man who hears but does not heed these words? He built his house on sand. The rain came down, the floods rose, the wind blew, and beat upon the house; down it fell with a great crash.

Millions of us hear these words, can repeat them verbatim, but we heed them not. Why this delinquency? We haven’t done our homework, that is, taken the time to analyze and grasp this wisdom. Short of understanding in depth, we are all words and no deeds. “Religious babblers” may not be too severe a term—our houses built more on sand than rock! This Letter to Me is an attempt to be graced by Divine Wisdom so that I might distinguish rock from sand!

True, if only you and I build our houses on rock, while the others build on sand, the wind, flood and rain that destroys the others might also bring down ours in the general crash. History is filled with these disasters—freedom squelched—all because these truths have not been heeded and acted upon. As another disciple—Saint John—stated later: “The truth will make you free!”

In a world where too many houses are built on sand, what then are we to do? Where lies our salvation? First, it is to recognize, “come hell or high water,” that there’s more to our lives than this earthly moment, namely, the immortality of the one great reality: consciousness. It lives on forever. Build our houses on that rock now with the eye on eternity!

Second, be not too distraught by what goes on around us. We can help our brothers here and now. Wrote Gerald Heard, “Growth when denied is more dangerous than apathy.” Forget those who are “not interested, indifferent, listless.” While their unconcern is to be lamented, they are at the zero level and matter little if at all.

There are those, on the other hand, who possess the possibilities for growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. To deny this, not to strive for growth, is to desert our brothers; it is to rob humanity of a potential benefactor—a worker in freedom’s vineyard.

I must keep these thoughts in mind:

- No one will learn from me unless he or she is seeking my tutorship.

- No one who really counts will seek my tutorship unless I am growing.

- Growth in consciousness is what energizes the magnetism that attracts seekers.

May I, then, grow in truth for my sake, for the sake of others, for freedom’s sake!

11

REFORMERS: VICTIMS OF VANITY?

Reform only yourself, for in doing that you have done everything.

—MONTAIGNE

For the past 28 years we have conducted several hundred Seminars here at FEE and around this and other nations. In each of these, I always do the concluding lecture on methodology. Assuming the participants favor the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life, what are the appropriate steps for such an achievement?

Recently, a participant came to me afterward, making a confession, admittedly unusual: “That’s the best lecture I have ever heard. It hurts, but it’s true!” What was it that hurt? It was my unorthodox contention that ours is a learning rather than a selling or a reforming-of-others problem. My proposed remedy was contrary to what he had been doing. He had, until then, been devoting his energies to the reforming of others rather than to the reform of self—as have countless thousands who despise socialism, that is, the planned economy and the welfare state. He believed, for the first time, that he had been wasting his energies, doubtless doing more harm than good. Is it too harsh a judgment to claim that he had been a victim of vanity?

Vanity? As related to the freedom philosophy, it is an over-assessment of one’s own understanding. It is the fiction that all would be quite satisfactory were others as well versed as the would-be reformer. Wrote Adam Smith, “Vanity is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices—the vices of affectation and common lying.” True, most are innocent affectations, but innocent or intentional does not alter their damage. The sad fact is that none of us has more than scratched the surface in understanding and explaining how freedom works its wonders.

In order that a blessed humility may replace a devilish vanity, let’s have a brief look at the source of our actions: the brain.

“The human brain, like the rest of the nervous system, contains its full quota of nerve cells at birth—trillions of them! Many of these are present in the embryonic, neuroblastic form. The primitive neuroblast (undeveloped cell) is not functionally alive. It must develop into a neuron and this development proceeds well into middle life and still further in the more gifted and mentally active individuals.

“The normal human brain always contains a greater source of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and, depending upon physical factors, education, environment and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons.

“The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life.

“Goethe, Voltaire, Kant [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline.

“There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline, and examples bearing out this contention are only too numerous.”[1]

If the above be a realistic analysis, and I believe it is, then the genesis of all human action relates to the stagnation or development of the human cortex. To have but the dimmest idea of how the neuroblasts are or are not converted into functioning neurons will give us brilliant instructions as to what we should and should not do. At the very least, we will be able to grasp the vice of vanity and the virtue of humility and what’s required to abandon the former and move toward the latter. Also, we will be moved to relegate reform exclusively to the reform of self. Leave others to their own reform!

Victims of vanity! For an instructive example, reflect on the “teachers” in the U.S.A. The vast majority of them are devoted to reforming pupils, rarely doubting their own wisdom. How would they perform were they to become aware of their own shortcomings? A few ideas that support the learning thesis:

The highest function of the teacher consists not so much in imparting knowledge as in stimulating the pupil in its love and pursuit. To know how to suggest is the art of teaching.

—Amiel

The teacher who is attempting to teach without inspiring the pupil with a desire to learn is hammering on cold iron.

—Horace Mann

The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.

—Bulwer-Lytton

To waken interest and kindle enthusiasm is the sure way to teach easily and successfully.

—Tryon Edwards

A tutor should not be continually thundering instruction into the ears of his pupil, as if he were pouring it through a funnel, but induce him to think, to distinguish, and to find out things for himself; sometimes opening the way, at other times leaving it for him to open; and so accommodate the precepts to the capacity of his pupil.

—Montaigne

It would be a great advantage to some school-masters if they would steal two hours a day from their pupils, and give their own minds the benefit of the robbery.

—Boyse

These reflections on “teachers” apply equally to those persons in other occupations—business, religion, or whatever—who dogmatize or, better yet, try to “bring others up to their level” of understanding. This tactic has at least two flaws: (1) trying to insinuate one’s notions into the consciousness of others revolts them, and (2) the level projected is far below what’s desirable. We cannot reform others!

Who then can you or I reform? Only the first person singular, the one seen in the mirror, the sole individual on earth over whom one has any creative control! Converting one’s own neuroblasts into functioning neurons is a challenging and an interesting possibility. But that I can do this to another’s brain is obviously impossible!

I should never have as an aim or ambition the bringing of another to my level of understanding. That would put the initiative for the other’s improvement—the development of his neurons—in my hands rather than in his.

The neurons of a person’s brain are developed, if at all, by conscious effort on the part of that person. When someone, in his vanity, proposes to develop your neurons, we may properly refer to the process as “brainwashing.”

Brainwashing presupposes brainwashers and the brainwashed—the pied pipers and their following. The former exist by the millions and only because many more millions wish it that way. The latter want their thinking done for them, and this the pied pipers eloquently promise to do.

Neither those who promise to lead nor those who promise to follow exert conscious effort to realize their cortical potentialities; they’re not even aware of the mental activity that could be theirs. As a consequence, the “habitual disuse of these highest centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline.” These, then, are the victims of vanity—the “leaders” and the led!

“Continual mental activity,” we are told, “is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life.” Of the very few—an infinitesimal minority—who experience this development, does it follow that they understand and believe in the freedom philosophy? Rarely! Mrs. Eulenburg-Wiener, as quoted above, mentioned Goethe, Voltaire, and Kant, believers in liberty. However, she included several Fabian socialists. Had she grasped the freedom thesis herself? Anyway, hers was a brilliant explanation of what accounts for the more gifted individuals among us.

Should we be distressed by the fact that only a very few among gifted individuals grasp the blessings of freedom? Of course not! Merely acknowledge the countless specializations for which you and I have not the slightest competency or even desire. To understand freedom, even partially, is as rare a talent as graces the minds of human beings. This, as with any other specialization, is to be expected—in tune with reality.

What then is the appropriate role of the few among us who are believers? It is to give intensive, conscious effort to our own improvement, to converting our neuroblasts into functioning neurons. Concentrate on cortical growth, and this alone, which energizes the magnetism that draws others to seek one’s tutorship. Keep in mind that only seekers are learners. Our role is to have a freedom enlightenment sufficient to induce seeking.

Finally, share with others. Forget about “reforming” them! The more we share, the more we learn. This is in the interest of self and freedom!

[1] The above five paragraphs (italics mine) were written by a famous lady who specialized in physiology and medical research. See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renée von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York: Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

12

AYES VERSUS I’S

Initiative is doing the right thing without being told.

—ELBERT HUBBARD

Committee reports—whether in the halls of Congress, state Assemblies, village Boards, chambers of commerce, or whatever—are decided by majority vote. If there be more agreement than disagreement, the chairman announces, “The ayes have it!” That counting noses is an inappropriate means of deciding right from wrong should be obvious to every person who does his own thinking.

Leo Tolstoy, a thinker of monumental integrity, sets the stage for my thesis:

From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils [committees] as more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began the lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.[1]

So, when trying to decide what’s right and wrong, away with Ayes—lies. What then are the I’s, for which we should strive? They are two remarkable blessings that bloom from the “more sacred”: reason and conscience; or Integrity and Initiative! It is the attainment of these two rare qualities by a very small minority that explains why we continue to prosper in spite of a rapidly growing socialism. Do not these qualities make for an indomitable vigor that all the dictocrats in the world cannot down? Of course, if a weakling, I can forsake these I’s but, if not, they’re mine, as much as my mind. That Integrity and Initiative account for our remaining in a right-side-up position in the face of enormous counterforces is, to me, an important discovery—a secret revealed!

Why was Tolstoy so critical of those who put “exterior authority higher than interior; that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more sacred than reason and conscience”? He was calling our attention to the plague of Ayes and the sacredness of Integrity, the quality that blooms from “reason and conscience.”

Integrity—an accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience reveals as righteous—a rare achievement? Indeed, it is so rare that the term does not appear in the more than 1,000 headings in the largest of all quotation books. Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the strongest minds and best phrasers of ideas acknowledges: “I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private Integrity.”[2]

Sacred qualities cannot be taught. At best, they are caught, and then only from the few exemplars who must be sought! It has been my good fortune to have found quite a few exemplars from the past and present, and what a joy to behold! Their highest conscience, and that alone, dictates their behavior, be it the freedom way of life or whatever. They never budge an iota from their righteous guidelines regardless of contrary views, opinions, clamors; standing alone frets them not at all. Ramrod straight, as we say.

Shakespeare wrote, “I speak with a single heart.” Single, in this sense, is directly linked with integer, meaning, “Whole, entire, not divided.” Contrasted to single is double which has the same original root as the word “duplicity.” Such phrases as “double dealing” and “double talk” convey this connotation. Individuals blest with integrity “speak with a single heart.” Void of duplicity, they can be trusted by one and all. Those who can be trusted are moral giants, oversouls, and constitute the very backbone of human evolution and of any good society. Hail to the few of this rare quality!

Now to initiative: This quality—when achieved by those already graced with Integrity—accounts for such well-being as we enjoy in spite of duplicity on the rampage. These I’s persist in working their wonders, all the “hell and high water” notwithstanding. To me, this borders on the miraculous.

But hear this: There’s Initiative and Initiative, as different as night and day. Countless people exercise initiative ranging all the way from highjacking to embezzlement to obtaining governmental handouts, to coercive control of wages and hours, to tariffs, to getting paid for not farming, to—you name it!

Initiative, on the other hand, is, as Elbert Hubbard suggests, “doing the right thing without being told.” My dictionary gives it this definition:

. . . the characteristic of originating new ideas or methods, ability to think and act without being urged; enterprise.

Over the years I have known numerous persons possessing Integrity of the highest order but lacking Initiative—none at all. Before they could do anything they had to be told. But if another outlined or suggested a task or tasks, their performances left nothing to be desired. Imagine our sorry plight were there no Initiators. All would perish!

Enterprise must be emphasized to grasp the miracle I am trying to understand—the entrepreneurial spirit, if you please. This kind of innovator endows all of us with countless blessings. Why? He perceives opportunities to employ scarce resources to serve consumers more efficiently and effectively than otherwise would be the case. Initiative is exercised through the market process of willing exchange and involves no coercion or violence against others, none whatsoever. This is the night-and-day difference between market-type Initiative and the kind carried out at gunpoint: from outright robbery to governmental edicts by know-it-alls attempting to run our lives by the rule of Ayes.

It is the few, rarely aware of their Integrity and Initiative, whose righteousness—moral and economic—keeps us right-side-up as the Command Society returns to bedevil mankind. These “I’s” have an unbelievable vim and vigor, a strength that even the total state cannot completely destroy.

Have a look at today’s Russia. In all history there’s no better example of totalitarianism. Although millions are slaughtered or starved, many millions live on. Explanation? Up until now I have attributed this to “a leakage of creative human energy.” No Commissars or dictocrats have ever been able to wipe out those attributes, qualities, virtues which compose man’s Manifest Destiny. Creation is a force stronger than the babble and guns of know-it-alls—that is, of know-nothings.

The “leakage of creative human energy” that keeps a society going may be better explained by Integrity and Initiative. These precious qualities, flowering now and then, first in this and then in that rare individual—these qualities in unison tap the wellsprings of creativity. It’s not “The Ayes have it” but, rather, “The I’s have it.” Let Integrity and Initiative bless you and me, and all creative individuals and their beneficiaries!

[1] Leo Tolstoy, The Law of Love and the Law of Violence (New York: Rudolph Field, 1948), p. 26.

[2] For a more detailed explanation of this quality, see the chapter, “To Thine Own Self Be True,” in my book, Who’s Listening?

13

HEADS UP

The idea of freedom must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.

—THOMAS H. HOGSHEAD

Remember the last time you turned a somersault, or saw someone else do it? In case you don’t remember, it is an acrobatic stunt performed by turning the body one full revolution forward or backward, heels over head. The word is often used figuratively, as here, to mean a complete reversal of opinion. It appears that many of us are now about half way through the performance and are stuck there—heads down, heels in the air! So why not complete the somersault and bring our heads up where they should be! Otherwise—if you’ll forgive a pun—we make heels of ourselves.

Pursue this analogy: we have for several decades been headed toward the Command Society and away from the Free and Competitive Society—heads down, heels up. To be stuck in that position in ridiculous.

The question is, what should devotees of human liberty do about this ridiculous situation? How are we to get our heads up and feet on the ground? There are at least three requirements:

1. A vast improvement in analytical thinking so that we may uncover the causes of our predicament.

2. A recognition that the Command Society is led by millions of dictocrats, not one of whom regards himself as a despot or tyrant but, to the contrary, as a savior.

3. A realization that the masses, those who do no politico-economic thinking for themselves, also assess the dictocrats as saviors, not tyrants.

Wrote Lecomte du Noüy, “To participate in the Divine Task, man must place his ideals as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.” Human liberty assuredly is a phase of the Divine Task. To place ideals at their appropriate level would seem to require that we first see through the notions that are ridiculous in order that the ideals may come clearly within our vision.

What is the most ridiculous notion of all that lies at the root of the Command Society—the genesis of Serfdom, Feudalism, Mercantilism, Communism, Socialism, the Welfare State, the Planned Economy? The fallacy is ancient—old as a mankind. ’Tis a primitive or barbaric assessment of self, a lamentable unawareness of how infinitesimal is the wisdom of anyone. Here are several observations on this vanity by thoughtful individuals:

Vanity is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices—the vices of affectation and common lying.

—Adam Smith

Over-stuffed egos, waddling about in self-appointed importance.

—E. K. Goldthwaite

Vanity is the quicksand of reason.

—George Sand

. . . vanity keeps us perpetually in motion. What a dust do I raise! says the fly on the coach-wheel! And what a rate do I drive! says the fly upon the horse’s back.

—Jonathan Swift

Vanity makes men ridiculous, pride odious, and ambition terrible.

—Bulwer-Lytton

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done; he is dead; dead in the trespasses and sins of blear-eyed vanity.

—Henry Ward Beecher

If vanity does not entirely overthrow the virtues, at least it makes them all totter.

—La Rochefoucauld

Now and then throughout history, even before Socrates, there emerge individuals who recognize this fact, who have an awareness of one of life’s most rewarding truths: the more one knows, the greater looms the unknown! The more wisdom, the more is one’s ignorance recognized. A simple demonstration of this truth, one I like to repeat, was made by the noted mathematician, Warren Weaver:

As science learns one answer, it is characteristically true that it learns several new questions. It is as though science were working in a great forest of ignorance within which . . . things are clear. . . . But, as that circle becomes larger and larger, the circumference of contact with ignorance also gets longer and longer. Science learns more and more. But there is a sense in which it does not gain; for the volume of the apprehended but not understood keeps getting larger. We keep, in science, getting a more and more sophisticated view of our ignorance.[1]

Suppose the millions of politicians and others who are trying to run our lives were to get a more sophisticated view of their ignorance. What a boon to mankind that would be! Is such a change likely? I think not. Why? Falling into vanity is like falling into a deep ditch—once in, rarely out. A sophisticated view of one’s ignorance leads to humility. But such humility, as protection against falling into the vanity ditch, may be attainable before the fall, seldom afterward.

Why seldom afterward? Those drugged by vanity, being know-it-alls, have no yearning for learning. And no one learns who is not an avid seeker of truth. Thus, all the reasoning, arguments, pleas, counsel, or damnations directed at the vain are in vain. Might as well try to put out a fire with gasoline, or enlighten that fly on the horse’s back. Confrontations have the effect of confirming them in their vainglory!

Conceded, there are many among these self-proclaimed lords whose wisdom in a sense is equal or superior to that of the rest of us. For instance, I have had acquaintances with several once devout Communists who abandoned the Command Society and embraced the Free and Competitive Society—heads up, feet on the ground. These, however, are rare exceptions. The millions of dictocrats, having coercive power at their disposal, are unaware of the ignorance which is common to all mankind. So, they go their merry way—“saviors” at our expense!

Have we no way then to put their dictatorial behaviors to naught? Of course! Two achievements are required on our part.

First, never, under any circumstances, call them “fools.” Such a tactic makes fools of ourselves. What then is the first achievement? It is a learning problem on our part, namely, to discover how simply and clearly to explain that all attempts forcibly to control the creative activities of others are foolish. People, by and large, even those who are vanity-stricken, do not like to be thought of as authors of foolish actions. If we do our part well enough, they’ll put themselves in their proper place.

Second, follow Lecomte du Noüy’s counsel: “To participate in the Divine Task, man must place his ideals as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.”

It is impossible to place one’s ideals at the level du Noüy had in mind without participating in the Divine Task. Ideal thoughts are accompanied by ideal actions; if the actions aren’t ideal, the thoughts are somehow warped. As said earlier, a phase of the Divine Task is human liberty, which I define as: No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy. The Free and Competitive Society is precisely the opposite of the Command Society. It includes government under the direction of statesman—invoking a common justice, inhibiting destructive actions, keeping the peace. Period!

The result if we achieve heads up and feet on the ground? The dictocrats will hang their heads, not necessarily in shame but in fear of being shamed. Tyrants cannot kill the idea of freedom if it be strong in the hearts of men. Let’s pray and strive for this strength!

[1] See “The Raw Material,” Manas, February 26, 1975.

14

TOO RARE FOR THE WINGS OF WORDS?

. . . the genius of man is a continuation of the power that made him and that has not done making him.

—EMERSON

Ralph Waldo Emerson—religious, spiritual, humble, and wise relative to the great and near great—added his own comment to the above observation:

I dare not deal with this element in its pure essence. It is too rare for the wings of words.

Genius is a superior power of seeing and Emerson was, assuredly, a continuation of the power that made him. He referred to this power—Creation—as “Immense Intelligence.” Rare? Man with his finite mind never has found nor will he ever find words to describe this Immense Intelligence or Infinite Consciousness. There are no wings of words to portray “this element in its pure essence”!

This poses a question relating to human freedom. Freedom is, indeed, a rare social experience, being approximated only a few times in the history of man. Several questions: Is freedom in its pure essence limited to intuitions and insights? Is it too ethereal, in the sense of being “spiritlike; characterized by extreme delicacy,” for this workaday world? Is it too personal to be communicated from the few who partially perceive and believe to the many who do neither? Perhaps these questions have no precise answers but the pros and cons deserve our best thought in order to avoid frustration and head us toward useful effort.

The discouraging aspects of our problems are easily discernible and frightening. To find encouragement, we must look beneath the surface. So, let’s dispose of the negative elements in order that we may better reflect on the positive.

The difficulty, doubtless, begins with a tendency to attempt explanations of the unfathomable in familiar symbols, although there are in fact no wings of words for anything we do not clearly fathom. For instance, after more than four decades of concentrated thinking and study, I cannot make the case for freedom in terms that really communicate to more than a few people. Nor do I know of anyone who can. But even more distressing is our inability to forestall the contradictions, misunderstandings, antagonisms evoked when we stand foursquare for freedom—freedom with no “buts,” no “leaks,” no exceptions whatsoever. Seemingly, the continuity is lost in our own limited understanding of cause and effect.

It’s a safe guess that less than one per cent of the citizenry are aware of the idea of limited government as set forth by our Founding Fathers, the idea whose practice has accounted for the American miracle. Simple as it is—keeping the peace, restraining destructive actions, invoking a common justice, leaving peaceful persons free to act creatively as they please—this politico-economic doctrine merely amuses, often infuriates, the millions. Arguing that government should be thus limited gets a nearly unanimous adverse reaction. It would be easier to erase the myth of Santa Claus!

Of all the subtle ideas which confront us, which is the most unfathomable? For which concept have we—so far—no wings of words? There is one key idea beyond the imagination of nearly everyone; and of the few who grasp it, the idea is beyond our power of explanation. It is a truth I here repeat for the umpteenth time: To claim that the wisdom in the market is a million or trillion times greater than exists in any individual now or ever is a gross understatement. This is an earthly phase of a heavenly truth: Infinite Consciousness—Immense Intelligence—is infinitely greater than any finite consciousness. These parallel truths are obvious only to the few who are in search of wisdom. Neither truth is in the realm of the salable. If in doubt, try peddling either one!

Why cannot more people grasp the fact that there’s no one person—nor even a committee—whose wisdom remotely approaches the wisdom to be found in the free and unfettered market? What is the obstacle to an understanding of this truth, the mental roadblock that the best explanations fail to penetrate? Thomas Alva Edison, an all-time great, revealed what is close to a secret: “No one knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything.” Wiser than most, he knew this of himself, of you, me, and all others. To know this is the first step in such individual wisdom as graces mankind. But not more than one in thousands has taken this infantile step.

Whoever is unaware of how infinitesimal his wisdom may assess himself as wise, but he is utterly blind to a significant social truth: all of us—no exceptions—are intellectual fledglings! Can we identify those unaware of how little they know? Easily! They’re the ones who “think” they can rule our lives better than we can. “Be like me!” they exclaim; “Do as I say!” And they’ll seek political office in order to acquire coercive power to sway others their way. It is this blindness that explains our country’s plunge into socialism. Worse than “Blind leaders of the blind”? Yes, it’s little “Alexander the Greats” herding everyone! And there are many millions of them. The catastrophic consequences? John W. Burgess, for years the brilliant Professor of Political Science and Constitutional Law at Columbia University, bequeathed to us this sage observation:

The claim [of the Planners] rests upon the very serious error that world intercourse and world interchange of the elements of civilization require political interference and intermeddling. This is not only false, but it is so false as to be highly mischievous and harmful. Outside of this lies the whole free realm of trade, commerce, science, literature, art and social relations, things which bring all parts of the world together in friendly and helpful interchange, while political intermeddling almost always provokes hatred, enmity and war.

Enough of the negative; so let’s have a look at the positive—the bright side. Again, here’s the key point to these issues: The wisdom in the free and unfettered market is trillions of times greater than that of any individual, be he a Socrates, Edison, or whoever. Is this truth too ethereal, too far into the realm of the unknown for comprehension, too rare for the wings of words? To the masses, yes; to the very few, no. Encouragingly, it’s only the few, from one to a dozen or so who have led every good movement in the world’s history. And it will ever be thus!

Neither the heavenly truth of Infinite Wisdom nor the earthly truth concerning the wisdom of the market is readily demonstrable, or subject to immediate and certain proof. Each is assimilated primarily as an act of faith. But there are ways of acting in economic affairs which are in harmony with our faith. What behavior should we feature to assure an improved understanding of the enormous wisdom that graces the market?

For the answer, reflect on that feature which largely accounts for the wisdom in the free and unfettered market: Competition! Here we have everyone—those who so wish—each with his tiny bit of expertise, trying to out-compete the others. ’Tis a perpetual game of leapfrog, competitors trying to advance their own interests. The result? Regardless of who’s ahead in the millions of competitions, it’s the consumers whose welfare is advanced day in and day out. William Graham Sumner found wings of words for this miracle of the market:

Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.

Now to the final question. How are we to discover ever-improving wings of words to advance an understanding of our earthly truth? The answer seems more or less obvious: Employ the identical behavior that lies at the root of this truth: Competition! The few of us ardently competing in thinking and exposition!

As in the realm of goods and services, there will always be one out front, another later on. As James Russell Lowell observed, “That cause is strong which has, not a multitude, but one strong mind, behind it.” The strongest mind, rarely known, is in first place right now but will shortly lose the number one position to another. ’Tis the game of leapfrog—as in the market!

As to leapfrogging, a good percentage of the few who truly believe in the freedom way of life under-assess themselves. “What possibly can I contribute?” is the baneful thought that besets them. Overlooked is the fact that the wings of words are composed of tiny contributions—words and phrasings—one word here another there. Why, better words by you, even one, could change the course of history.

Come, if you please, and join the competition. It’s not only fun but the dividends are unbelievably large!

15

LIFE’S ACHIEVEMENT: INNER OR OUTER DIRECTED?

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

—LORD CHESTERFIELD

Man did not create himself for it is easily demonstrable that man knows next to nothing about himself. But man, can if he so chooses, make himself. He has the choice of stagnating at the bone and flesh level or gaining day in and day out in awareness, perception, consciousness. The latter—realizing one’s unique aptitudes and potentialities—can be properly classified as life’s achievement. Ascending to such intellectual, moral, and spiritual heights as may grace our individual beings is what we’re here for!

It seems self-evident that man’s earthly purpose is to grow, emerge, evolve, hatch. Referring to the remark of Heraclitus that we are here as in an egg, C. S. Lewis observed, “You cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.” Hatching, as the achievement in mind, poses the question: Is the process outer or inner directed?

Only a rough estimate is possible here, but it’s my guess that more than 99 per cent of mankind’s thinking about the higher values—intellectual, moral, spiritual—has been and is outer directed. It has been molded by various outside forces: something-for-nothing schemes, popular political double talk, dictator jargon, mobocracy, nose counting as a means of deciding what is true and righteous, on and on—fickle, ever-changing fops of fashion, thus described by William Ellery Channing:

Without depth of thought, or earnestness of feeling, or strength of purpose, living an unreal life, sacrificing substance to show, substituting the fictitious for the natural, mistaking a crowd for society, finding its chief pleasure in ridicule, and exhausting its ingenuity in expedients for killing time, fashion is among the last influences under which a human being who respects himself, or who comprehends the great end of life, would desire to be placed.

In addition to these fashionable ones are millions of others just as inattentive to “the great end of life.” Instead of following fads, they are coercively pushed this way and that by innumerable governments and sub-governments. Mere samples of the regulations foisted on people: what to grow where and when; what wages and prices are permissible; the hours of work; what and with whom one may exchange; the thoughts to be entertained (government dictated curricula); what portion of the fruits of a man’s labor he “owes” to others. There are literally millions of such edicts ranging from how high the fence, to the shape of toilet seats, to how many dogs one may own! Here we have “the blind leaders of the blind,” the pushers and the pushed.

Now to the achievers, those who aim at perfection and persevere. True, they too are pushed—but they know it. Taking the only corrective course there is, they use the “push” as a sailor uses the wind—to serve his ends—and thus they are inner rather than outer directed. Instead of being followers or tag alongs, they’re just the opposite—seekers! And they search every nook and cranny for bits of truth. But reflect on this enlightening point by the renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel: “. . . truth cannot be taught in words. It must actually be experienced within our own hearts.”[1] Seeking for truth is an inside exploration; it is caught, rather than taught.

How is truth caught? What criterion can the achievers use to distinguish truth from falsehood? The best answer known to me: If it’s right in principle, it is truth, and if wrong in principle ’tis false. But how does one tell whether a principle is right or wrong? See if it works, not only in the short run but in the long run! If it’s right in principle, it has to work. Reflect on the following:

- Suppose all were thieves—all parasites and no hosts. Everyone would perish. Robbery violates the right to the fruits of one’s own labor and, thus, is wrong in principle—and doesn’t work!

- Suppose all were liars. Why would all perish? Lying violates truth; expediency is wrong in principle—and doesn’t work!

- Suppose every citizen were a coercionist, freedom to act creatively completely squelched. None would survive. Coercion is wrong in principle—and doesn’t work!

- Suppose all were monopolists, every good and service having but a single source, not an iota of competition or exchange of ideas, inventions, discoveries. No survivors! Monopoly is wrong in principle—and doesn’t work.

- Suppose all were Keynesians. Society would revert to primitive barter, and nearly all would perish. Keynesism causes inflation and destroys an honest, workable medium of exchange. It is wrong in principle—and doesn’t work!

What then is right in principle? Discover what should be released and what restrained. Obviously, it is right in principle to restrain every action which hinders the release of creative energy. And, by the same token, it is right in principle to release every action which facilitates creative energy.[2]

Another renowned psychiatrist, Dr. Carl Jung, sheds light on the distinction between the mill run of humanity and the achievers:

The public in general is possessed of the fundamental error that there are certain answers, “solutions,” or attitudes of mind which need only be uttered in order to spread the necessary light. But the best of truths is of no use—as history has shown a thousand times—unless it has become the individual’s most personal inner experience. . . . Our need is not to know the truth but to experience it. . . . Nothing is more fruitless than to speak of how things must and should be and nothing is more important than to find the way which leads to these far-off goals.

The goals of the achievers are indeed far off—into the Infinite! As related to the Infinite, the Bible has, as I believe, the greatest instruction ever conferred upon mankind, “Seek ye first the Kingdom of God [Truth and Righteousness] and these things [wealth, learning, intelligence] shall be added unto you.” C. S. Lewis phrased the Truth: “Aim at Heaven and you get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

How interesting that two renowned psychiatrists, Kunkel and Jung, emphasize the point that truth, to be one’s own, must be experienced. Truth may be heard countless times but unless absorbed into the tissues, so to speak—digested—it is no more than hearsay, that is, without enlightenment. Anyone who has experienced this fact, and whose ambition is to advance the freedom way of life, would never “spin his wheels” with any selling-the-masses approach! Why? “The wisdom of experience is incommunicable.” Isn’t it obvious that experience is not transmissible in the commonly accepted sense?

As Jung observed, “. . . nothing is more important than to find the way to these far-off goals.” What is the most far-off goal at the human level? It is freedom—each individual, without exception, being able to act creatively as he or she pleases, that is, sharing in Creation along the lines of one’s own uniqueness.

Finally, as to those who are inner directed, achievers as related to the free market, private ownership limited government way of life with its moral and spiritual antecedents. What is the foundation of their achievement? Nothing less than experience!

While experiences cannot be transmitted in words, each of us thinks of his experiences in words; my experiences are formulated in words that I may not forget and let them pass by profitless. Words are our “capturing devices.” What does an achiever capture by his experiences? He observes countless errors, his own as well as those of others, errors that stifle creativity. And then, being sensitive, he sees instances in which freedom works its miracles. Errors and truth in a magnificent contrast.

From what has been said above it might appear that the achievers are loners—seekers and learners all by themselves—their influence nil. Not so! These individuals are growing and, without question, growth energizes the magnetism that attracts others to similar experiences. “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.” No one who is growing can hide his light under a bushel, as the saying goes. Others—those who wish to grow—will find him out. Persons of achievement set the pace for noble experiences in others who will then reflect their own experiences in their own words. All of this is mysterious, at least to me. I know not how it works—only that it does!

There is another encouraging force at work—heavenly, if you will; at least it is beyond the initiation of man. It is one of those infinite phenomena of the Creative Force or evolutionary ascendancy. Dr. Jung wrote a book entitled Synchronicity,[3] an analysis of these human creativities that occur to different people simultaneously. One among countless examples: penicillin was discovered by an American medical student and by another in a foreign country at the same time. This phenomenon is often referred to as “coincidental thinking.” A more accurate term would be “coincidental reception.”

There is evidence galore that an Infinite Consciousness or Intelligence (Something-Beyond-Words) is forever working on the intellectual, moral, and spiritual advancement of we mere mortals. But here’s the problem: whether or not enlightenment occurs depends on one’s receptivity. Thus, the highest art of living is to serve as a relay station of this Radiant Energy—receive and share, now and always! Why is this encouraging? To the extent that one succeeds, to that extent will he know that many others are simultaneously succeeding, that is, also receiving.

As I see it, receiving and sharing is an obligation we owe our Creator. Further, isn’t it comforting to realize that an ascending humanity is guided by an Immense Intelligence—to use Emerson’s term?

Freedom has been achieved only rarely in history, and for relatively short periods. Careful reflection on the “far off goal” of freedom makes it clear that only the inner directed achieve it. It is in the mind and soul of individuals—achievers—an affinity with Divine Providence. So powerful is this achievement, when in ascendancy, that all the babble, political double talk, dictatorial jargon, and the like, are rendered impotent. As the energy of the Sun penetrates the stratosphere and ionosphere, regardless of clouds or storms, giving life to all on earth, so is this Radiant Energy invincible—when improving. It is the sole genesis of human evolution—the good life.

“Let there be light and there was light” and, if we live our lives aright, there will be. That’s the Divine promise!

[1] See In Search of Maturity by Dr. Fritz Kunkel (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1934), p. 9.

[2] For more explanation of the relation between short-run and long-run actions and other aspects of this thesis see “Let’s Look to our Principles” in my book, Comes the Dawn.

[3] Synchronicity by Dr. Carl Jung (Princeton University Press, 1973).

16

TO MAKE GOOD IDEAS MORE WELCOME

Not obtrusive, in order not to be slighted. Better too niggardly than too free with yourself. Arrive desired in order to arrive welcomed.

—BALTASAR GRACIÁN

Plymouth Colony operated initially along communalistic lines; the fields were held by the colony, tasks were assigned, and the rewards were parceled out without much regard for the quality and quantity of work performed. The Pilgrims were not ideologues, but their practice did exemplify the Marxian dictum, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” When the disastrous consequences of this policy became evident to all, Governor Bradford announced a new tactic, “that they should set corn every man to his own particular . . . and so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number. . . .”

Governor Bradford’s colony made a wonderful about-face: from now on, it would be “to each according to his merit or productivity,” that is, each would have a right to the fruits of his own labor. Private ownership—the foundation of a free society—on a scale previously unknown, that led later not only to prosperity but to a revolutionary concept: that men are endowed by their Creator—not by government—with certain unalienable rights. Results? The American miracle!

Governor Bradford laid the groundwork for a sound politico-economic ideology—which today, to our peril, is all but forgotten.

The 17th-century Spanish philosopher, quoted above, emphasized the groundwork for a sound methodology which we should heed no less scrupulously than Bradford’s ideology. Right method is an absolute requirement if good ideas are to be welcomed and practiced. This philosopher’s counsel, if heeded and practiced, can pull America out of the mire into which we have fallen.

There are good ideas in countless departments of life. My comments, however, will be confined to good ideas as related to freedom. When good ideas are setting the pace, freedom prevails. The two go hand-in-hand; they are inseparable. So, if we are to resurrect freedom from her present decline, we—some of us—are challenged by the need to undertake a great deal of learning. A set of ideas—of the quality here at issue—must “arrive desired in order to arrive welcomed.”

Let us assume that you are entertaining invited guests. A stranger barges in. Would he be welcome? Probably not, especially if his presence might interfere with the purpose of the gathering.

When freedom ideas—strangers to a vast majority—are not invited, wanted, desired, they are unwelcome. They are looked upon unfavorably, even scornfully, by the millions.

The havoc wrought by the invading stranger is self-evident to nearly everyone, but the damage done when good ideas “crash the party” is not so obvious. My concern, however, is not with the millions who aren’t freedom oriented; rather, it is with those who “shudder with horror” at our present slump into socialism, who believe in freedom, but insist on massive reformation by proclaiming good ideas where they are not desired.

So, let us further distinguish between what I believe to be the wrong and the right approaches to freedom.

WRONG: A notion entertained by millions that any idea is good which results in freeing them from the responsibility of looking out for themselves. Rightly feeling that they have a right to life and livelihood, they wrongly refuse to extend the same right to others equally.

They sense no wrong in preying on others. It is this upside-down appraisal of good ideas that accounts for the Command Society, be it called serfdom, feudalism, mercantilism, communism, the planned economy, or the welfare state.

RIGHT: A truth perceived by a comparative few, namely, that any idea is good if it results in freeing them to act creatively as they please. No restraint—none whatsoever—against the release of creative human energy! The truly good idea has freedom and self-responsibility as two parts of the same personal and social equation. Neither one is possible without the other. A bit of reflection makes this self-evident.

There are countless thousands in the U.S.A. today who are graced with good ideas—the right ones. Their ideology passes muster. But their methodology is upside-down, as wrong as it can be. They observe the countless millions whose ideology is upside-down and engage in a methodology to turn them right side up. This is an impossible intellectual gymnastic, however appealing it may seem at first.

Gracián’s perceptiveness sheds a helpful light: Good ideas must “arrive desired in order to arrive welcomed.”

Assume that some reformer wishes me to become a computer designer, electrician, airline pilot, music composer, or any one of other occupations, no matter how laudable, but that I have no desire to become any one of them. Would his insistence, regardless of how clever, be welcomed? It would not! On the contrary, I would avoid not only him—because of an action that is none of his business—but his notions as well. Drawn to him and his views? Hardly!

Forty-five years of trial and error in the freedom cause convinces me that Gracián’s counsel is right. Conceded, it is unorthodox to the point of bewildering most freedom devotees. Unless deeply reflected upon, it appears to recommend a do-nothing way of aiding the cause of freedom; it seems to advise: “Hide your light under a bushel.” Not so! It is precisely the opposite—life’s difficult and rare occupation: emerging or coming to one’s self, as Woodrow Wilson once put it.

The idea here at issue was not original with Gracián—far from it! The ancients, at least 2,400 years earlier, received the same warning. Read the book Isaiah in the Old Testament for proof of this insight that graced them. Or read a simple and enlightening paraphrasing of it by Albert Jay Nock entitled “Isaiah’s Job.” The message? The very, very few who really matter in the advancement of good ideas—the Remnant—are put off, will pay no heed to, those who attempt to set them straight. What, then? Let him who would move humanity to a higher level concentrate on the perfection of self. To the extent that he succeeds, The Remnant who desire enlightenment will find him out and welcome his good ideas.

As Albert Schweitzer wrote, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others; it is the only thing.”

Freedom devotees—those who would become exemplars—are well advised never to be obtrusive. Shoving, pushing, trying to force ideas into the minds of others is a tactic that contradicts the very ideology we espouse. All aggressive or selling-the-masses methods belong to the aggressive opposition; such methods are consistent with that ideology, not with ours.

Obtrusiveness repels rather than attracts. It does not enliven desire but stifles or deadens it and, thus, determines what ideas will and will not be welcomed. Freedom requires that we leave the interventionists free to use the hard sell. If we refuse to behave likewise, they’ll fall by the ideological wayside. Our role is the exact opposite:

- Quietly to go about improving our understanding of the freedom philosophy, and phrasing more clearly such knowledge as we may gain.

- Quietly to share with those who have found us out and desire an understanding of freedom—the only alternative to the present decline.

- Quietly to acknowledge that learning, contrary to the hard sell, is an intellectual and moral progression. It is rooted in humility, not arrogance. In essence, “I wish to learn,” instead of “I know it all.”

Those who do not desire to know will not learn. Those who desire to know will seek and find sources; and the sources are always seekers! For freedom’s sake let us be seekers! It is the only way to make good ideas more welcome.

17

EVANGELISM: TO BE SOLD OR SHARED?

We know; and, better yet, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and comfort.

—EDMUND BURKE

A good friend believes in the freedom way of life as much as anyone. But he’s not sure he agrees with our methods. He used these words from Mark XVI:15 to make his point:

And he [Jesus] said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.

And our friend adds: “The accent is on go!” In a word, sell!

Why be concerned over this difference between selling and sharing as related to Christianity and evangelism? Simply because the selling idea is so prevalent among the many Christians who espouse the freedom philosophy. They are turned off by the view that evangelism is a sharing process. As a consequence, many of them turn away from FEE and become exponents of the hard sell—convert the masses, the man in the street, as the saying goes. And in their missionary zeal, they tend to neglect the study as to why freedom works its wonders.

Just about the hardest sell in all history, so far as I know, was undertaken by Medieval “Christians,” namely, the Crusades that went on for the better part of two centuries. These were largely attempts to reform heathens, forcing them to “see the light.” The result: countless thousands on both sides losing both their souls and their lives! Trying to ram freedom ideas into the heads of nonbelievers also is a crusade doomed to fail. High ideas and ideals are not spread or sold. Rather, they are sought or bought—caught not taught.

Jesus of Nazareth was presented to mankind as the perfect Exemplar. The law of attraction accounts for all true Christians—His attraction!

There is nothing in the biblical record to indicate that Jesus ever thrust His views on anyone. He acknowledged the need for receptivity on the part of the unconverted. He sent out the Apostles two by two on a preaching mission and among His instructions we find in Mark VI:11: “And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear you, when ye depart thence, shake off the dust under your feet for a testimony against them.” Now, as then, if they don’t hear—are not drawn unto you—fret not about it. If you have done your best in the way of understanding and exposition, that’s as far as you or anyone else can go. Discouraging? No, that’s the way it should be.

Human destiny, I fervently believe, presupposes that individuals evolve. Are not the human beings of our day and age of a higher type, or further advanced in awareness, perception, consciousness than Cro-Magnon man of some 35 millennia ago? To argue that evolution has now reached its apogee is to claim that we are perfect exemplars, a far cry from the teachings of Jesus. Am I perfect? Heaven forbid such an egotistical thought! Nor can you or I name one who remotely approaches perfection. My problem is to grow, and growth is achieved only by seeking and sharing such light as may be discerned. How can I do that if I devote my efforts to selling others on being like me? First, it can’t be done and, second, if it could, there would be more loss than gain.

As Burke wrote, “. . . religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and comfort.” And America was founded upon that religious base, the conviction:

. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The result of this religious conviction? The Creator replaced government—for the first time in history—as the endower of men’s rights. Truly, this was the basis of the most wonderful society that ever existed; “good and comfort” blest all men as if by magic, with the greatest outburst of creative energy ever known, flowing freely to the citizenry.

Our Founding Fathers, for the most part, believed in sharing rather than selling their views. Their method was quite the same as the Apostles—preaching missions, explaining the freedom thesis as best they could to those who cared to listen. They orated, preached, fielded questions and pamphleteered. Perhaps the outstanding example of their method was The Federalist by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay. A re-reading will assure anyone that these noble persons were sharing evangelists.

Suppose those several leaders in the founding of the United States had been political activists instead of sharing evangelists, angry at the many whose understanding was not up to theirs, trying vainly to inject their ideas into the heads of the several millions who had no interest! They would not be known today as Founding Fathers; indeed, if remembered at all, it would be as “floundering” something-or-other. The words, “Our Fathers’ God to Thee, Author of Liberty,” would never have been written.

As I read these authors of liberty, they reveal a graceful humility. True, compared to a vast majority in their and our time, they had a remarkable knowledge and clarity of expression but no signs of be-like-me-ness. They would, without question, have agreed with Ralph Sockman, “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.”

The method must fit the mission! If the mission be an improved understanding of freedom and why its wondrous performances, the means employed must be as free from coercive preaching as the free market is free from coercive pricing, production, exchange. The fruit will be determined by the kinds of seeds we plant. Tell ’em off and we’ll be told off. Share and we’ll share alike. Emerson shared a truth we should heed: “The end pre-exists in the means.” Therefore, look to the means!

To repeat, high level ideas and ideals cannot be imposed on anyone, any transmission that occurs is a taking-from procedure: the law of attraction which, in turn, is governed by one’s personal growth in understanding and exposition.

It is growth, and that alone, which energizes the magnetism that draws others to the knowledge an individual possesses. There is an excellent guideline as to how much one is growing: observe who and how many are seeking ideas on the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. If none, one stands alone. The remedy? An improvement of the potentially magnetic self!

18

IF YOU CAN’T LICK ’EM, JINE ’EM

Every man has his devilish moments.

—LAVATER

There are those principles and practices which promote freedom and there are ideas and actions which impair it. A letter in my morning mail well illustrates the latter:

I can tell you that unless I can see a real change in the direction of our government, I will probably abandon these endeavors I have supported and join in the race toward collectivism and regulation. For many years I have fought for individual freedom and responsibility. I am tired of struggling against the tide of welfarism. I have supported FEE . . . because I agree with it. Now, though, I have come to suspect that most people don’t care about anything other than “How do I get mine without working?” I am considering joining this group, rather than worrying about the correctness of that philosophy. I see no point in being “the last old Roman.”

“If you can’t lick ’em, jine ’em” was described by Quentin Reynolds in 1941 as “an old political adage.” And it’s truer today than ever. Take note of the politicians who readily switch from their own convictions to the line of the opposition if the latter appears to be more seductive to voters. Chickenhearted! They stand for nothing but the power of office.

Time after time over the years I have noted leading businessmen as board members of chambers of commerce and other organizations adhering not to conscience but to the line of least resistance, for instance, voting “Aye” on committee reports regardless of principle. The same intellectual sloppiness is observed in ever so many religious, educational, and other organizations. Standing ramrod straight for what one believes to be true and righteous is the admirable exception rather than the rule.

Many years ago I was a guest at a Chamber of Commerce board meeting. They voted “Aye” on three committee reports advocating socialistic measures. When invited to comment at the close of the meeting, I offered this allegory:

Joe Doakes passed away and his spirit floated to the Pearly Gates. Joe knocked and Saint Peter appeared, asking, “What do you want?”

“I would like admittance, Sir.”

Saint Peter looked at his list and replied, “Your name isn’t here.”

“Why not?”

“You stole money from widows and orphans.”

“Why, Mr. Saint Peter, I had the reputation of being an honest man. What do you mean I stole money from widows and orphans.”

“You were on the Board of that Chamber of Commerce which voted for a government golf course, and that would take money from widows and orphans to subsidize you golfers.”

“Mr. Saint Peter, that wasn’t your humble servant who took that action; it was the Chamber of Commerce.”

Saint Peter took another look at his list and said, “We don’t have chambers of commerce here, only individuals.” Whereupon, Saint Peter pressed a button, a trap door opened, and Joe Doakes went to hell!

This brought a hearty chuckle from the 40 directors, and I believe they got the point, at least momentarily.

The man who wrote the letter quoted above has decided to “jine ’em” since he can’t “lick ’em.” This, in my view, is a wrong assessment of self-interest.

Playing host to parasites is indeed a thankless and discouraging role. It requires thought and effort to be a productive, self-reliant individual; and a part of the cost is to understand and explain and otherwise help to maintain a climate of freedom—an open market economy—in which to operate.

The parasites, in a sense, are a burden—possibly, an enemy—to be overcome. But does one look to the parasites for a solution to this problem? Or is it among the remaining productive members of society that the solution is to be sought?

To enter the ranks of the parasites is to renounce one’s self-respect, to abandon all hope, to cast one’s fate before the mercy of those who remain to serve in an ever-diminishing market. There is little future in such a shift.

Neither you nor I nor anyone else has been commissioned to save the world, the nation, the community, or neighborhood. What, then? Work on that one individual over whom each of us has some command: one’s self. As Socrates said, “Let him who would save the world, first move himself.” Attend to the improvement of self, and that’s as much of a contribution as anyone can make to the salvation of the human race or any part thereof.

Here are a few thoughts for those who are distraught and inclined to “jine ’em”:

And I hold it is not treason

To advance a simple reason

For the sorry lack of progress we decry.

It is this: Instead of working

On himself, each man is shirking

And trying to reform some other guy.

—Unknown

May your Lordship not torment yourself: there is a remedy for this deluge of crimes. Let us be, you and me, that which we should be. There will be two less souls to convert. Let each person behave thus: it is the most efficacious of reforms. The trouble is, that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others: thus everything stays as is.

—San Pedro of Alcantara

God save us from the man who wants to save us. Reform only yourself; for in doing that you can do everything.

—Montaigne

So, I am not here to “lick ’em” but rather to “lick” my own shortcomings. And, regardless of “the sorry lack of progress we decry,” I shall not “jine ’em.” Instead, I shall join only such truth and righteousness as I can perceive in self and others, remembering always that the right is rare. Hail to the rare! Finding it is life’s highest goal.

19

THOUGHTS: FOUNTAIN OF OUR DESTINY

Thoughts lead on to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits decide character; and character fixes our destiny.

—TRYON EDWARDS

Goethe wrote, “All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times.” This certainly applies to the sequence of forces listed by Edwards and, of course, to all of my comments which follow. But, first, a wise and interesting observation relating to each cause and its consequences as above set forth.

Thought:—Thought is the seed of action; but action is as much its second form as thought is its first. It rises in thought, to the end that it may be uttered and acted. Always in proportion to the depth of its sense does it knock importunately at the gates of the soul, to be spoken, to be done.

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Purpose:—Thy purpose firm is equal to the deed.—Who does the best his circumstance allows, does well, acts nobly; angels could no more.

—Edward Young

Action:—Action is preceded by thinking. Thinking is to deliberate beforehand over future action and to reflect afterwards upon past action. Thinking and action are inseparable.

—Ludwig von Mises

Habit:—

We first make our habits, and then

our habits make us.

Ill habits gather, by unseen

degrees, as brooks make

rivers, rivers run to seas.

—John Dryden

Character:—To be worth anything, character must be capable of standing firm upon its feet in the world of daily work, temptation, and trial; and able to bear the wear and tear of actual life. Cloistered virtues do not count for much.

—Samuel Smiles

Destiny:—He [man] becomes capable of perfecting himself, and he is even the only one capable of doing this. But in order to improve himself he must be free, since his contribution to evolution will depend on the use he makes of his liberty . . . and only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others.

—Lecomte du Noüy

What a fascinating sequence, beginning with the thoughts and concluding with destiny: “. . . the inevitable or necessary succession of events.” The similarity of reasoning among these authors is as if they had been conferring with each other. Doubtless, the scholarly Ludwig von Mises, the latest of the six, had read the others, but where did Dryden, the earliest (1631–1700), get his thoughts? “These thoughts had been thought already a thousand times.” Yes, indeed, all but Lecomte du Noüy’s refinement of “destiny,” set forth in his remarkable book, Human Destiny.

Du Noüy’s thesis leads me to several conclusions. If one is to improve he must be free, and any contribution he might make to evolution—humanity’s High Purpose—depends on the use he makes of his liberty. It follows that liberty disappears or prevails according to the prevalence of bad or good thoughts, for these are the genesis of either hell on earth or High Purpose.

History is featured mostly by periods when individuals have not been free to write or speak what they think; but even a serf or slave is at liberty to think whatever he chooses, that is, to himself. Thus, whether we are to have a hell or heaven during our earthly existence, depends on whether our thoughts be hellish or heavenly. Therefore, some thinking on thoughts—evil and virtuous, dumb or intelligent—is in order. The following are thoughts that already have been thought a thousand times.

Many people believe they are thinking when, actually, they are only rearranging their prejudices. No High Purpose is served by these individuals.

Wrote Thomas Alva Edison: “Five per cent of the people think.” Were the percentage that large there would be no need to fret about the rest of his statement: “Ten per cent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five per cent would rather die than think.” I might add that potential intellectual alacrity—good thoughts—is deadened by the prevailing lethargy.

Those who think only about the disaster that lies ahead for themselves, and for our country, more than likely will experience personal calamity and dampen the prospects of a return to liberty for the rest of us.

All thoughts which any of us inwardly harbor show forth in outward acts. If they be ignoble, one’s actions will be a reflection thereof; if they be noble, liberty will have another worker in the vineyard.

Good thoughts are the mainspring of human progress. They bring the unseen—the unimaginable—into the realities that bless our lives.

We would do well to jot down all good thoughts the moment they occur. The thoughts we do not seek, that is, the ones that flash mysteriously into mind, are often the wisest. Such insights must be captured at once, for they rarely return to grace the soul.

Liberty is at once the cause and the consequence of good thoughts freely flowing between people in this and other countries; and between those of the past and we of the present.

Good thoughts have never been nor can they be popular. They are always at odds with the notions of the millions who do no thinking for themselves—followers of know-it-alls.

Look not to the thoughts of those who seek only fame, popular acclaim, fortune, votes, power to run our lives. They are the authors of the mess we’re in. Instead, look for good thoughts from those who seek righteousness. And they, as gold mines, are rare and hard to find. But how rewarding when discovered!

Those graced with thoughts of sufficient excellence do not argue. Instead, they cope with bad thoughts by stating the truth as they see it. This rare behavior arouses neither anger nor resentment. This leaves the bad thinkers with nothing to scratch against—leaves them in their own mire.

Extend sympathy, not censure, to those who are unhappy when alone with their own thoughts—and especially to those alone without thoughts of their own.

Learning without thought is a waste of time, but even worse is thought without learning.

Daniel Webster, when asked what was the greatest thought that ever entered his mind, replied, “My accountability to Almighty God.” Seek approval from God, not men.

The joyful life depends upon the quality of one’s thoughts. Liberty is advanced only by those who are happy; never by angry people.

Wrote one friend, “You caused me to think—I think!”

We can be likened to Human Radios. The thoughts we receive depend upon how weak or powerful our individual amplifiers and tuners.

War plagues a people infected with bad thoughts. Peace is the reward of good thoughts in ascendancy.

As we lock our doors against possible intruders, so should we lock our minds against bad thoughts. This leaves the mind free to welcome and develop the good thoughts upon which our destiny depends.

When liberty gives way to political tyranny inflation ensues and the cost of goods and services increases. However, kind words and good thoughts are valuable as ever. Indeed, they and they alone can bring about a rebirth of liberty.

No one, not even the most powerful of dictocrats, has ever been able to put a tax or tariff on good thoughts.

How mysteriously works the mind. Write out a thought and another will follow, on and on. The mind is a well of thoughts; it has no bottom. Forever draw on this well—and be well!

The miracle of the market had its inception 200 years ago. No person is capable of calculating even remotely, how far the standard of living has advanced. The problem now? Raising our standard of thinking higher than ever known before!

The art of thinking: the more one thinks the more is thinking a habit. It is not education if it does not create this habit.

Finally, good thoughts will prevail. How do I know? I have faith that they will. As Goethe wrote, “Miracle is the darling child of faith,” meaning that faith tops the list of good thoughts. Liberty—freedom of everyone to act creatively as he pleases—is assuredly our Destiny!

20

EVOLVE FOR YOUR OWN SAKE

. . . and only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others.

—LECOMTE DU NOÜY

To forever evolve in awareness, perception, consciousness—every day of our mortal life: that is what we’re here for. However, most of us lack the self-discipline to recognize and make the most of our opportunities to grow. As Albert Wiggam observed, “Evolution is a stern taskmaster that knows no compromise and grants no reprieve.” It’s a case of perpetually striving for what’s right, lest one die on the vine—life’s high purpose abandoned.

Why “evolve for your own sake”? For the reason that such striving is the apogee of enlightened self-interest! Why? Only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others. Unless we defend the liberty of others, they won’t have it; and if others are unfree there will be no liberty for you or me. And without liberty we cannot evolve toward life’s high purpose.

As a starter, we must recognize, and try to avoid or overcome, obstacles in the way of our evolving. So I turn for counsel to one of the best—Edmund Burke. Men, he insists, are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition:

- to put chains upon their appetites,

- as their love of justice is above their rapacity,

- as their soundness and sobriety is above their vanity and presumption,

- as they are disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.

He concludes:

- Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less there is within, the more there must be of it without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Ponder, “the less there is within, the more there is without.” Unless there be a fair number of people in a society who are evolving exemplars—mastering personal passions—men of the dictatorial breed take control. When Burke wrote, “Society cannot exist . . .unless a controlling power is placed somewhere,” he was reporting what all history reveals. As the control within diminishes, the control without increases.

How are we doing? Merely have a look at the trend in the U.S.A. The acceleration of governmental controls indicates the extent of our loss of self-discipline—control within. As this fateful trend proceeds liberty fades from our vision and grasp. Unless some among us are evolving, liberty is out of the question.

Based on Burke’s realistic method of grading, how many are qualified for civil liberty? One in a thousand, as we say. And even these few, while qualified, risk losing their liberty along with the many who put no chains on their appetites.

The remedy? Let those of us who prize liberty look not only to the best within ourselves but in others—past and present—for hope and counsel. For instance, note how similar are the thoughts of Burke (1727–1797) and Socrates (470–399 B.C.), the following a line in the latter’s prayer:

Grant that I may become beautiful in the inner man, and whatever I possess without be in harmony with that which is within.

Fortunately for us, the salvation of liberty is not a numbers problem. Socrates gave us the only answer for him, for you, for me: “Grant that I may become beautiful in the inner man.” This, I am certain, is the sole formula for “a highly evolved man,” the man capable of defending the liberty of others because he understands his own need for liberty.

Burke expressed precisely the same thought, except in more detail:

How often has public calamity [our present situation] been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt as I am sure it is) I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.

The aim in life, as I see it, is to become “one such man.” We are thus confronted with the art of becoming, a goal to be achieved only by overcoming our ineptitudes, flaws, ignorance, errors; that is, by learning, evolving. As Wiggam asserted, “Evolution is a stern taskmaster that knows no compromise and grants no reprieve.” Interestingly, as I am discovering after years of effort, the formula is the same for achieving each of life’s high goals.

Unyielding integrity in word and deed is the first requirement. When anyone compromises what he may believe to be right for something that appears to be an immediate gain, he is selling his birthright for a mess of pottage. Reprieve from such error? Impossible! The already done, be it an outright lie or any deviation from what one believes to be truth, is never undone. It is glued to one’s past. A principle—what’s right—cannot be compromised but only surrendered.[1] How take advantage of this error? How reap a good from it? Plutarch gives us an excellent answer:

To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

Pursuit of so-called “short-run gains” is and has been the bane of mankind. Such practices range from ancient tribes invading their neighbors and taking home the loot to modern “tribes” getting government to do the looting for them—camouflaged thievery, no less! The millions of practitioners are not evolving but, rather, devolving individuals. The evolving individual—Burke’s “one such man”—is aware that there is no such thing as a “short-run gain” unless it be a gain in the long run. His guideline is identical to Immanuel Kant’s: Act only on that maxim [principle] which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. Or, in reverse, never do anything which, were everyone to do, would bring chaos. If it’s right in principle it has to work; if not, it never can! The evolving person looks to his principles.[2]

Finally, there’s one more upward step if we are to evolve to the point where we can defend the liberty of others, a step consistent with enlightened self-interest. Here it is: Understand our own role and the rule of our opposition.

William Ralph Inge, Dean of St. Paul’s London (1911–1934) deplored a failing exhibited by members of his own profession:

The masses at Rome were not elevated by an unlimited provision of bread and circuses. And therefore I do not like to see the clergy, who were monarchists under a strong monarchy, and oligarchs under the oligarchy, tumbling over each other in their eagerness to become court chaplains to King Demos [the mob]. The black-coated advocates of spoliation are not a nice lot. “I take what I want,” said Frederick the Great; “I can always find pedants to prove my rights.”

Dean Inge was referring to a tendency among clergymen to align themselves with whatever form of spoliation happened to be dominant at the time. Mobocracy of whatever brand rules their passions. With a few notable and laudable exceptions, present-day clergymen of this or that religion are just as eager “to become court chaplains to King Demos.”[3] Dictocrats can always find pedants—conformists—to “prove” they are right. And by the millions—clergymen included!

Let us not, however, attribute this “madness of the mob” to any one profession; there is not a single occupational category in which it does not predominate—education, medicine, labor, business, or whatever.

Years ago the day’s mail brought me letters from two men, heads of huge corporations. I knew both men well, but they did not know each other. Their messages were identical. In essence: “I am not interested in helping you with the freedom philosophy. If the U.S.A. becomes like Russia, I’ll still be one of the head men.” Perhaps so. Doubtless they would become Commissars for each of them had the kind of “talent” useful to a totalitarian state.

Has that situation changed as related to business? While writing this, an article by the head of a multi-billion dollar corporation was called to my attention. A revealing line:

I think of national planning as a process for assessing our economic condition and prospects, setting national goals and priorities and then letting market forces work.

Assume my wisdom to be equal to that of the President of the U.S.A. or his most brilliant appointee or the smartest member of Congress. How competent would I be to plan the businesses of America? To grasp the utter absurdity of such a proposal, reflect on my competence to run a single life: yours! Doubtless the business executive just quoted would have made his way in Mussolini’s Italy, for his proposal is economic fascism. While few businessmen go as far, millions of them go part way. Here, and in all the other occupational categories, we have the rule that originates with the opposition. Note the millions who lend support to these social planners—wielders of political power.

Now to the role of Burke’s “one such man.” If one man is graced sufficiently with “fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, [he] would first draw to him some few like himself, and then the multitudes, hardly known to exist, would appear and troop about him.” From whence the multitudes? From the crowds that are now trooping about the dictocrats—quite unconsciously.

So what are the rules for our role? Devoted study, thinking, writing—learning to understand and explain the freedom way of life. Become a master thereof! And there’s one master guideline: righteousness—integrity!

True, we must live in the world as it is or drop dead. Preferring life, one has no choice but to participate in all sorts of socialized institutions: government postal “service,” for instance. How, then, be consistently righteous? In one’s proclaimed positions!

Further, be not herded into deviations by heeding others simply because they are celebrated, famous. Seekers after Truth should not be bound by who sponsors any idea—Truth being its own witness.

Evolve, forever evolve, for thus one becomes not only willing but also free and able to defend the liberty of others.

[1] See “The Penalty of Surrender,” The Freeman, April 1957.

[2] For a more detailed explanation of this point, see the chapter, “Let’s Look To Our Principles,” in my Comes the Dawn.

[3] For an excellent discussion of this point, see Religion and Capitalism: Allies, Not Enemies by The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz (New Rochelle, N.Y.: Arlington House, 1970).

21

FREEDOM: A YOUTHFUL ADVENTURE

Perpetual self-dissatisfaction is the secret of permanent youthfulness.

—ELIOT D. HUTCHINSON

Speak of Youth and everyone thinks of youngsters or adolescents; the word connotes early years rather than a certain quality of mind. Perpetual dissatisfaction—the daily realization as long as one lives, that all our yesterdays are but minor steps away from ignorance—is, indeed, not only the secret of permanent youthfulness but the adventurous road to freedom. As one sage observed, “One does not grow old; he becomes old by not growing.”

- Youth is not a time of life—it is a state of mind. It is not a matter of ripe cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a temper of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is a freshness of the deep springs of life.

- Youth means a temperamental predominance of courage over timidity, of the appetite for adventure over love of ease. This often exists in a man of eighty more than in a boy of twenty.

- Nobody grows old by merely living a number of years; people grow old only by deserting their ideals. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these are the long, long years that bow the head and turn the growing spirit back to dust.

- Whether ninety or sixteen, there should be in every being’s heart the love of wonder; the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things and thoughts; the undaunted challenge of events; the unfailing childlike appetite for what next; and the joy and the game of life.

- You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

- In the central place of your heart is an evergreen tree. Its name is love. So long as it flourishes you are young. When it dies you are old. In the central place of your heart is a wireless station. So long as it receives and radiates messages of beauty, hope, cheer, grandeur, courage, and power from God and from your fellowmen, so long are you young.

- When the wires are all down and all the central place of your heart is covered with the snows of pessimism and the ice of cynicism, then are you grown old indeed and may God have mercy on your soul.[1]

As to this thesis, there are two areas that demand exploration: the generally accepted tradition as it relates (1) to politico-economic affairs and (2) as it relates to moral imperatives. To allow one’s self to be wholly governed by the former is deadening; to heed and learn from the latter is life-giving, inspiring, and assures permanent youthfulness.

As noted in “Eruptions of Truth,” freedom for all individuals to act creatively as they please has never been fully achieved; it has been approximated only several times since the dawn of human consciousness, and then for relatively brief periods, historically speaking. The kind of thinking responsible for these eruptions is unknown except to a very few. Regrettably, the notions that command the “minds” of the millions, in the U.S.A. and elsewhere, are the doctrines of the Command Society. Most citizens do no more than echo the mouthings of countless dictocrats who have dominated the inhabitants of our planet. They are not yet sufficiently enlightened to feel dissatisfaction with this unholy record, let alone embrace the alternative.

Make a thoughtful assessment of the countless dictocrats, past and present; a Diocletian, a Napoleon or Mussolini or Stalin—even those in our country today. Contrary to popular notions, they are not leaders but followers. Of what? Of the tradition of servility, that is, they are imitators of do-as-I-say fallacies from the ancient past to the present day. To the extent that individual creativity is squelched, to that extent are the victims reduced to slavery. Slavery presupposes slave masters, and to whatever degree anyone succeeds in coercively inflicting his ways on another or others, to that shameful extent is he a slave master.

These coercionists give the erroneous appearance of being leaders. But they are only followers of traditional errors, followers who succeed in getting themselves up front. They are remindful of the legendary Pied Piper of Hamelin, up front only because the millions of other followers are equally bound to politico-economic error. Not one whit of youthfulness! Dissatisfactions? These followers—those up front and those behind—are utterly unaware of their “blind and naked ignorance,” as Tennyson phrased this common blight.

The remedy for this “blind and naked ignorance”? The best we can hope for, in my view, is to reach now and always for the truths revealed in the moral imperatives of our tradition. It is a perpetual dissatisfaction with what we do not know or understand of these imperatives that is the secret of permanent youthfulness.

The oldest moral imperative known to me is the Golden Rule as originally phrased perhaps 4,000 years ago. Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. Not wishing others to dictate my life—telling me what my schooling should be, where I should work and for how long and how much, what I should produce and with whom exchange—I will, if the Golden Rule be my guide, never impose my ways on any person. Such behavior is freedom. Learning how to refine our practice of this ethic, each day better than the former, is indeed an adventure in youthfulness.

The Mosaic Law, sometime later, blest us with a moral code, The Ten Commandments—a set of prohibitions or Thou-shalt-nots. Were these gems of scripture comprehended and strictly adhered to—all evil blotted out—human creativity would be at its maximum, freedom a way of life.

With reference to these moral imperatives, each of us has the problem of so learning to know and understand them that we learn to obey them. Many do not even know of their existence, while others have given no thought to the profound meaning underlying each Commandment. Take for example, the tenth: “Thou shalt not covet.” This, in my view, is the root cause of most of the evils besetting mankind. There’s only one cure for covetousness and that is the daily counting of one’s numerous blessings. Let us keep in mind that the art of becoming—our earthly purpose—is attained by overcoming, that is, knowing today what we did not know yesterday. Again, an adventure in youthfulness!

Another moral imperative is in the New Testament: “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God [Truth] and his Righteousness; and all these things [material well-being, enlightenment] shall be added unto you.” (Matthew 6:33).

Seeking, in itself, is an acknowledgment and a confirmation that there is always more to learn—regardless of how far advanced one may be. Each step upward brings into view steps previously unknown, their existence not even suspected. And then the revelation: the more one knows the more he knows how much is yet to be known. It is an endless progression in the direction of the Kingdom of God—Infinite Wisdom. A youthful adventure, indeed, each day a birthday so long as one continues to seek and to learn.

There may be no better way to conclude these musings on the idea that freedom is a youthful adventure than to cite the “Sage of Concord,” Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore, and explore and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. . . . Truth . . . has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.

This is to say, “. . . and these things shall be added unto you.”

Observe the similarity in these moral imperatives and how blest we are with this persuasive-attractive tradition. The few who heed these guidelines are not only learners but leaders. On the other hand are the ones bogged down in the tradition of politico-economic behavior. These millions are but imitators and followers, be they in front or behind.

The free market, private property, limited government way of life is founded on moral and spiritual antecedents. And it flourishes as you, I, and others—forever dissatisfied—“explore, and explore and explore.”

Never the satisfied but only explorers advance the good life! Freedom, is indeed, a youthful adventure.

[1] For the above seven paragraphs, I am indebted to Samuel Ullman. The italics are mine.

22

THE COURAGE TO STAND ALONE

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

—PAUL WHITEHEAD

The rare kind of courage to be examined—willingness to stand alone—can be clarified by explaining courage in its more or less popular acceptance. Generally, courage is thought of as synonymous with physical valor, fearless when in great danger, such as a soldier “going over the top” in the face of enemy fire—undaunted!

Why undaunted? It’s because we possess two brains: (1) the human cortex and (2) a small brain, the diencephalon, common to man and animal alike. The same brain, in the event of grave danger, works automatically on us as it does on animals. “When the diencephalon sends out an emergency signal through the autonomic nervous system, the adrenal medulla is made to discharge a gush of adrenalin into the blood stream.”[1] It is this gush of adrenalin that instantly turns a scared-to-death individual into a fearless “hero”—over the top, undaunted!

I have experienced this instinctive phenomenon on two occasions. To label my “brave behavior” as courage would be a gross misnomer. My thinking apparatus—the cortex—had absolutely nothing to do with my behavior. It was automatic, as in animals, that is, beyond my conscious control. So, let’s not call this courage; it is by no means the same thing as “the courage to stand alone.” This rare and true courage is a task for the other brain—a venture in thinking.

Interestingly, the courage to stand alone is, in most cases, attended by more fear than going over the top in the face of enemy fire. It is the fear of ostracism, unpopularity, being looked down upon; and this fear must be overcome by reason. No diencephalon can rescue one from this type of fear. That is a job for the big brain—the cortex—the full measure of one’s intellectual capacity.

A classic example of nearly 2,000 years ago: Jesus of Nazareth, leader of an unpopular movement, had been arrested and his followers scattered. One of them, Simon Peter, was a victim of this fear. Read about him disowning his master:

. . . Peter was sitting outside in the courtyard, and a maidservant came up to him and said, “Weren’t you with Jesus, the man from Galilee?” But he denied it before them all, saying, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Then when he had gone out into the porch, another maid caught sight of him and said to those who were there, “This man was with Jesus of Nazareth.” And again he denied it with an oath—“I don’t know the man!” A few minutes later those who were standing about came up to Peter and said to him, “You certainly are one of them, you know; it’s obvious from your accent.” At that time he began to curse and swear—“I tell you I don’t know the man!” Immediately the cock crew, and the words of Jesus came back into Peter’s mind—“Before the cock crows you will disown me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

—Matthew 26:69

Woodrow Wilson wrote a booklet, When a Man Comes to Himself. That’s precisely what happened to Peter—he came to himself! And, by so doing, Simon Peter became Saint Peter. While common mortals can hardly expect to become Saints, the direction is clear: coming to ourselves, that is, gaining the courage to go it alone with whatever our highest reason suggests.

The eminent psychoanalyst, Erich Fromm, enlightens us:

Many people have, potentially, a passion for reason and for truth. What makes it so difficult to realize this potential is that it requires courage and this courage is rare. The courage which is involved here is of a special kind. It is not primarily the courage to risk one’s life, freedom or property. . . . The courage to trust reason requires isolation or aloneness, and this threat is to many even harder to bear than the threat of life. Yet the pursuit of truth by necessity exposes the searcher to this very danger of isolation. Truth and reason are opposed to . . . public opinion. The majority cling to convenient rationalizations and to the views that can be glimpsed from the surface of things. The function of reason is to penetrate this surface, and to arrive at the essence hidden behind that surface; to visualize objectively, what the forces are that moves matter and men. In this attempt one needs the courage to stand the isolation from, if not the scorn and ridicule of, those who are disturbed by the truth and hate the disturber.

Very well! Is there a formula for acquiring the courage to stand alone? All alone, if necessary, and without any fear? The answer, I believe, rests on the choice of voices: the voices without versus the voice within. By the voices without I mean popular babble in its countless variations, fickle public opinion, mob psychology. Anyone who tries to conform his conduct to these shifting standards will be hopelessly inconsistent in his life and ideas. He can never be right. What could be more fearsome?

The courage to stand alone can be generated only by reason—a job for the big brain—the cortex. Its criterion? Virtue! Whatever one’s highest conscience—the voice within—dictates as righteous! Briefly, the courage to stand alone stems from the wisdom of choosing virtue, not popularity; alignment with righteousness, not applause; approval of God, not men. Fear? None whatsoever!

What distinguishes the voice within from the voices without? Silence! Why? Because the inner voice is composed of insights, intuitive flashes, tiny revelations—growth—in the direction of Infinite Consciousness. Here we have the intellectual, moral, and spiritual attributes of man coming to himself—inching ahead toward human destiny. But how does one listen to silence? One might call it prayer, or contemplation. The procedure is to tune out worldly distractions and noises, to passionately prepare the mind to receive the inner voice.

Ortega wrote an excellent prescription: “Truth descends only on him who tries for it, who yearns for it, who carries within himself a pre-formed, mental space where the truth may eventually lodge.”

Finally, for an important and interesting sequence. As I have written elsewhere, free societies are few and far between. Historically speaking, they have been but momentary bright spots and can be accounted for only by eruptions of truth. The source of these glorious outbursts are men who have freed themselves. No man is free who is not master of himself, and only those who are masters of themselves have the courage to stand alone.

Obedience to one’s highest conscience—the voice within—is the root of all true courage which, in turn, is the root of all true freedom. The few individuals thus graced are entitled to acknowledge, along with the Psalmist, “For I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Hail to our Maker!

[1] See Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M.D. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1960) p. 149.

23

EMPHASIZE THE POSITIVE

Action that is wholly against must lead to inaction as soon as it is successful.

—JACQUES BARZUN

It was 33 years ago, long before I had met and read the works of the brilliant Jacques Barzun, that I discovered how wholly ineffective it is just to be against politico-economic nonsense. In view of the fact that ever so many antisocialists are presently using this negative tactic, a sharing of my experiences seems appropriate.

My first book, The Romance of Reality, was published in 1937 when I was Manager, Western Division, U. S. Chamber of Commerce. Its thesis was that the growing socialism—locally and nationwide—should be dealt with by educational methods rather than by political action. The book was surprisingly well received by those disposed toward the freedom way of life.

It was my emphasis in that book on the educational approach that resulted in an invitation to become General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest. My assignment was not so much to manage customary chamber of commerce projects as to take the leadership in California against numerous socialistic programs rapidly gaining in popularity.

Among these schemes was a renowned socialist’s EPIC plan—End Poverty in California. Another was the Governor’s “Production for Use”—so-called. A third, known as “Ham and Eggs,” had been devised and promoted by two brothers recently out of prison. And so serious was the situation that it failed of passage in the state by a bare 5 per cent of the vote.

It is often hard to identify the chicken that lays such a socialistic egg. As a case in point, we had prepared a pamphlet entitled “Production for Use,” proving it was wrong. It was sent to 10,000 people in the State: legislators, leaders in business, labor, education, and so on. One recipient was a professor of economics at a leading university. After reading the pamphlet he remarked to a friend, “I cannot successfully refute any one of the points made by the Los Angeles Chamber.” That’s the last we ever heard of “Production for Use.” This professor had been the power behind the movement; the Governor a mere front man, not caring about either production or use!

There were other campaigns, and I’d like to emphasize that we succeeded in defeating each scheme we tackled. A 100 per cent batting average! The method? Merely proving that each was wrong! We were successful with our negative tactic, or so it seemed. Thus, these successes should, as Barzun suggests, lead to inaction—the tactic sufficient, the job done.

After six years of these “successes,” it became evident that if the intellectual soil from which these fallacies sprung were rancid, new ones would spring up in their places. Only the labels would be different. What I had been doing was comparable to proving only that the earth isn’t flat. Succeed in that and there remains the task of proving it isn’t a cube, a cone, a cylinder, or any of countless shapes. And then the light: Someone discovered that the earth is a spheroid. The positive knowledge of what’s right rid us of the whole caboodle of fallacies about the earth’s shape.

While it is necessary to understand and explain fallacies, that’s less than half the problem. Finding the right is the key to salvation, for the wrong can be displaced only by the right. “It is,” as Burke wrote, “not only our duty to make the right known, but to make it prevalent.”

So, early in 1945 I began a search for the sources from which the right, as related to the freedom philosophy, might be emanating. Here were my findings just 32 years ago:

- There was an enormous outpouring of what’s wrong in magazines, newspapers and books, such as The New Deal in Old Rome—an approach similar to the one I had been using.

- At that time there were a few but not many lectures or pieces of literature emphasizing the positive, that is, few explanations of the freedom philosophy and why its miraculous results.

- There were such remarkable works in preparation as Human Action, but it was not published until 1949. Another example I recall was an English translation of Bastiat’s The Law but it was not available in modern American idiom.

Doubtless, there were numerous reasons for this lack of emphasizing the positive. Both the depression and the war lessened the demand for ideas on liberty and, thus, the supply was minimal.

These discoveries had a profound effect on my methods in advancing an understanding of the freedom way of life. Instead of dwelling only on the negative—proving this and that to be wrong—my associates and I, since the beginning of FEE in 1946, have emphasized the positive, bringing what’s right to light to the best of our abilities.

Indeed, there was a genuine need for FEE. The best indication that our task has been rather well performed is the fact that we have helped and encouraged ever so many others to start similar endeavors and to compete with us. Some of these others are real good, and at least in several aspects of the philosophy—publishing and teaching—are now further advanced than we at FEE. This is the way it should be: the more competition, the better! But freedom waxes and wanes, so the job is never done. It is one of continuing search and self-education.

As to how FEE is doing in this competition we so highly favor, there is our monthly journal, The Freeman. Many readers insist that it improves with each issue. FEE’s catalogue, “A Literature of Freedom,” lists some 120 volumes ranging all the way from such easy-to-read books as The Mainspring of Human Progress, Economics in One Lesson, The Law, to such profound tomes as Human Action. New books are being added annually. In any event, it is a freedom library well worthy of study and respect.

Not all ideas on liberty are new. But of first importance is to relate some of the earlier formulations to the conditions of our time. I first heard about and read Bastiat’s The Law in the mid-forties—nearly a century after he’d presented the ideas to his fellow Frenchmen. Excited with its brilliance and simplicity, I had it printed and sent copies to some 1,500 friends around the nation expecting orders galore. But there was no such response! Why? That edition was translated by an Englishman, a contemporary of Bastiat, into nineteenth-century British English. Several years later, Dean Russell, then a FEE associate, translated it into modern American idiom. Result? We have now sold at least 600,000 volumes. The lesson? We must learn to improve now and forever in communicable language.

To repeat my beliefs, ours is not a numbers problem—thank heaven! All good movements in history have been led by an infinitesimal minority. And, further, ours is not a selling but, rather, a learning problem—aiming toward excellence in understanding and clear exposition. Let our ambition be this: the persistent and diligent search for lessons along life’s pathway.

From whom seek? From those who are known and unknown, and from individuals who are wrong as well as right. Often truth is revealed as error is discovered. Bear in mind that many sources of both right and wrong are hidden from view. As we seldom know the individuals who lay the socialistic eggs—the university professor, for instance—so are we unaware of many thinkers who add gems of thought to the freedom philosophy and your and my enlightenment. Keep an open ear and eye—now and always!

Let each among us emphasize the positive, that is, be an exemplar of what’s right. We can then be positive that freedom will again prevail.

24

THROUGH DARKNESS TO LIGHT

He who is so unjust as to do his brother injury can scarce be so just as to condemn himself for it.

—JOHN LOCKE

Locke’s brilliant observation brings a supporting thought to mind: “He sees enough who doth his darkness see.” It is obvious that any person who deals unfairly with others will never condemn himself for his own shortsightedness; so shrouded is he in darkness that his eyes do not see the light.

Never forget Aristotle’s truism: “One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one.” Why freedom works its wonders but fails to prevail is a problem with no single answer. The reasons are as numerous as are the intellectual, moral, and spiritual frailties of human beings. This is why there is not now and never will be a final answer to our problem. Also, this explains why, in our efforts to refine, we go over much the same ground again and again. If repetition be the mother of learning, then retracing old ground brightens our own lights.

It is only when we are aware of our own darkness and seeking light that we’ll catch a tiny glimmer now and then. For encouragement reflect on this Scottish epitaph: “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.” It is self-evident that darkness has no resistance to light. So, let us push back the darkness by lighting one or a dozen or even thousands of wee candles. This symbolizes the mission of all freedom devotees.

Never underestimate the difficulty of bringing liberty and its blessings to mankind. Should we think of this problem as simple and easy, we’ll waste our time, spin our wheels and probably do more harm than good.

As a starter, reflect on John 3:19; “Men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” Based on my experience with people from various walks of life and over many years, I am convinced that the evildoer—“so unjust as to do his brother injury”—with few exceptions, is totally unaware of any evil. It’s no more than an unfortunate witlessness accounted for by the person’s abysmal blindness. No eyes to see their own wrongdoing in the darkness—let alone a candle of light and righteousness. They deserve not censure but sympathy.

This analysis should include a few reflections on those actions by you or me or whoever which are so unjust as to do our brothers harm. What are such behaviors? My answer: Lending support or giving encouragement to any action which restrains the creativity of our brothers is harmful. Using this as a yardstick, there isn’t one in thousands who in today’s U.S.A. is not unjust to his brothers—more or less. Can this yardstick be refuted? Not unless the would-be critic can name creative actions that ought to be outlawed. I have never heard of a single one that should be squelched!

Everything in the cosmos stems from Creation. We know that Creation is, but not what it is. Man’s highest purpose is to edge as best he can toward this Infinite Wisdom. Any steps in that direction are measured by growing creativity, possible only as men are free to so proceed. The first step is freeing one’s self from personal inhibitions, superstitions, imperfections, ignorance, darkness. And the second step is possible only as others leave him free to act creatively as he pleases—absolutely free, no exceptions!

To thwart the creativity of our brothers is to thwart the purpose of Creation; it is to put a damper on human evolution—Manifest Destiny. Those who so interfere are victims of the little-god syndrome, actually believing that they can direct the lives of their brothers better than can those individuals themselves. There is no greater evil, but such people are utterly blind to any wrongdoing.

In the realm of goods and services, one can act creatively only if he is free to produce whatever he wishes; trade for whatever he can peacefully receive in exchange; work for as few or as many hours as he wishes; enter any field that suits his fancy, be it managing a hamburger stand or manufacturing jet planes. It follows that anyone who supports or encourages any restrictions to free trade and open competition is not only unjust to his brothers but thwarts creation and Creation—both levels. And be the thwarting minor or major, note the absence of self-condemnation! Several examples:

While many get paid for not farming, others are not free to grow whatever they please on their own farms. Reflect on the enormous number of coercive planners who outlaw free planting. Equally unjust are those who approve or encourage the stifling of any other creative endeavor. Do any of these persons sense being unjust to their brothers? No, their blindness prevents such seeing!

Freedom to trade and compete? There are millions of businessmen who succeed in their advocacy of tariffs, quotas, embargoes and other restrictions against their brothers across the borders and the seas. Not only are these tactics unjust to those in other lands but also to more than 200 million American consumers. Try to import mutton from Australia or ever so many kinds of goods and services from other countries. “Buy my wares or go without!”

Perhaps freedom of choice to act creatively suffers no greater impairment than in the wage-and-hour domain. It would be wrong to refer to labor union behavior as “the labor market.” A market is featured by free exchange; unionism, on the other hand, is featured by coercion. Minimum wage and maximum hours are fixed and coercively enforced. Tens of millions are trapped in this uneconomic strait jacket, ranging from unaccomplished youngsters to airline captains.

The just alternative to this unjust procedure? As to wages, let anyone labor for nothing, if he so chooses, or for all he can obtain in peaceful exchange. As to hours, let anyone work not at all, or day and night, if he so chooses. Neither you nor I nor labor unions nor governments are ordained to cast our brothers in our images—all of us imperfect!

There would be no monopolies or cartels short of governmental enactments. Think of the countless thousands who exclude their brothers from ever so many ventures and opportunities by getting government to erect the barriers. Try, for instance, to start an airline or a TV broadcasting station or a power and light company, or try delivering first-class mail. These opponents of free entry are at least free from the embarrassment of condemning themselves. Poor souls!

Another illustration will suffice to make my point: the tens of millions who run to government for food stamps, social security, “free education,” golf courses, medicare, parks, and countless other handouts. This is the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul attempt at something for nothing. It rarely if ever enters the heads of these people that they are robbing their brothers and, thus, they are free, by reason of their blindness, of self-censure.

There is no remedy for all of this blindness except a better understanding of liberty: the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life, along with its moral and spiritual antecedents.

How can we identify those individuals who are fortunate enough to have some understanding of why liberty works its wonders? By their deeds, for no one understands liberty who is not working on its behalf! How explain? Any individual who has the slightest idea of what liberty is all about—the wisdom in the free and unfettered market—cannot help but work in behalf of this miracle worker. Such is the power, the drive of even meager understanding.

Only the few who are conscious of their own darkness will strive to light their wee candles. The rise and fall of liberty is governed by the appearance and disappearance of candle lighters. So, let us join in the prayer of Cardinal Newman: “Lead Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom. Lead Thou me on!”

25

THE MYSTERY OF ATTRACTION

The first point of wisdom is to discern that which is false; the second, to know that which is true.

—LACTANTIUS

Everything is the Cosmic Order, from an atom, to a blade of grass, to the Milky Way appears mysterious. This is precisely what we should expect when finite minds confront the mystery of Infinite Consciousness. Thus, the best any of us can do is to acknowledge the infinite mysteries and forever explore, gaining a bit of light—which we will if our approach be right. To set the stage for what seems right to me, here is a quote by a noted astronomer:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies, too, are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[1]

It is my contention that the same law applies to human bodies as to the astronomer’s “earthly bodies.” He may have meant this; in any event, I believe he would agree.

What follows is an attempt to explain that growth in wisdom—awareness of truth—is governed by the advancement of the individual’s intellectual, moral, and spiritual qualities. This mysterious attractive force—magnetic affinity—draws to it only that additional perceptiveness which is far enough advanced to respond. And the higher one’s quality, the more wisdom or truth will be perceived. Mysterious? No less so than electricity! We do not know what it is, only that it is and what it does. As we harnessed electricity to our benefit, let us harness this mysterious force to the glory of mankind—freedom to grow, emerge, evolve in awareness, perception, consciousness.

To advance the freedom way of life, it is necessary to correct a popular and destructive fallacy. Time and again, this notion: “The socialists are winning; we are losing. Adopt their tactics.” Those who commend this approach have not as yet realized that the higher grade the objective is, the higher grade must the method be. The tactics for destroying a free society are strikingly different from those needed to create a free society. A bit of reflection, and this is self-evident.

Assume a low-grade objective: another’s demise. A low-grade method suffices: a dagger or gun.

Move up the hierarchy of values and assume that my objective is to make a poet of you. This is slightly absurd. First, I am not a poet and, second, you may have no potential for becoming a poet. But if this were my objective, you would not listen unless I displayed poetic talents. Otherwise, no magnetism, none whatsoever.

Now, move up the hierarchy of values as far as one can go: human liberty—every individual free to act creatively as he pleases. This correlates with understanding and wisdom, and the method must be commensurately as high. What is the method? It is nothing less than achieving that degree of excellence which will cause some others to seek one’s tutorship. The greater the excellence, the more responsive to the magnetism!

To dramatize the point I am trying to explain, pick up a horseshoe magnet. Put some sawdust on a table and hold the magnet above it. The magnetism is there but the sawdust lacks a responsive quality. Do the same with bits of iron or steel. Instantly, they respond to the magnetism. The difference is in the quality of what’s on the table, not the ever-present magnetism. Pursuing the analogy, are we human beings sawdust or steel? We can make ourselves one or the other. The extent that we move from next to nothing to something, determines the extent that the heavenly and earthly magnetisms will draw us to them! A few comments on heavenly and earthly magnetisms.

Heavenly. With this in mind, an appropriate daily prayer would be, “May I develop qualities that will be attracted by Thy Infinite Wisdom.” If the prayers be not of the rote variety but, instead, a fervent, sincere, yearning-for-learning kind, then Infinite Wisdom will begin to unfold—consciousness of finite minds moving heavenward.

Earthly. Take stock of finite minds. Every person who has ever lived, regardless of how wise, has been surrounded by people who were his superiors in this or that bit of expertise. Even the relative “giants”—ancient as well as contemporary—are dependent on these innate differences. Were all identical to Socrates, acclaimed as the wisest, all would perish. Precisely the same can be said of Leonardo da Vinci, Goethe, Bastiat, Emerson, Mises and, certainly, of me—and you, whoever you are!

Here is a demonstrable truth: The more we know the more we know we do not know. Thus, if one is not becoming more and more aware of how little he knows, he is not growing in that quality which is attracted to the ever-present magnetism. Grasp this rarely understood truth, as did Socrates, and we will think not only of ourselves but of all others—Presidents, Ph.D.’s, or whoever—as in a kindergarten class. Interestingly, the very few who progress into this stage of humility acquire a strong, vibrant, yearning-for-learning.

Reflect on this kindergarten maxim:

Good, better, best;

Never let it rest

Until good becomes better

And better becomes best.

I would add only this thought: Best is but a momentary stage in a never-ending progression; it’s better, better, better forever! “Truth and nothing but the truth” is not within man’s possibilities. What then is the noblest game in life? The search for truth!

Very well! What is the formula for learning from our earthly brethren, past and present? How gratify one’s yearning? But, first, two thoughts to keep in mind in order not to be confused by the “attractive forces” here reflected upon:

1. In a distinctly different category is what might be termed the “repeat-after-me” type of learning. The multiplication table is an example. To know instantly and without thought that 7×6 equals 42 is invaluable but is no contribution to mathematical science. Repeating the alphabet is another example of this kind of learning, but this common skill is a far cry from creating a language. Similarly, with millions of other skills on which our lives depend—bits of learning that range from repairing motors to flicking switches. These are indispensable repetitions but not creations, that is, they are not responses to the “attractive forces.”

2. Do not be misled by the millions who are not in search of truth. How can they be identified? They are those who know not how little they know and, thus, believe they can run our lives better than we can run our own. These unfortunate people—dictocrats and their followers—are in the pied piper clan and are, unknowingly, the enemies of creativity and freedom, and are easily spotted.

Here is our formula: Those who have progressed in their own search for truth possess a magnetism, and the more the growth the more the magnetism. If our quality be advanced enough, we will automatically be drawn to their enlightenment.

Finally, the sources will be as mysterious as the magnetism. So, forever listen! Wisdom may come, as the Bible suggests, “from out the mouths of babes.” To repeat the analogy, convert ourselves from sawdust to iron and steel and then observe how the magnetism performs its wonders—day in and day out. It is glorious to behold!

[1] See Science Is A Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton and Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 53–64.

26

IT’S HOW WE USE OUR LIBERTY

We are a free people. However. . . it is not from our privileges and liberties . . . but from the use we make of them, that our felicity is to be expected.

—JONATHAN MAYHEW

Several decades after the U.S.A.’s founding people from numerous nations expressed astonishment over the miracle of America’s success. Other countries were graced with soils as fertile, climates as friendly, resources as plentiful. Yet, relative to America, they remained in the same, old humdrum poverty. How come? Why the U.S.A.’s fantastic prosperity?

Governments of several countries sent commissions to the United States to unearth the secret. Their findings? It was our Constitution that made America successful. Home they went and copied our document. But no miracle followed! Why? Our political documents—the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights—unparalleled though they are—were not cause but, rather, the flowering of moral and spiritual roots. Alexis de Tocqueville is credited with having found the answer:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

Members of the foreign commissions saw only the flower: our Constitution. The discerning Tocqueville, on the other hand, discovered the root below the blossom: the churches aflame with righteousness!

The nature and source of this righteousness is all but forgotten. We, therefore, owe a debt of gratitude to the scholarly Franklin P. Cole for his book, They Preached Liberty.[1] Who are “they”? The preacher-patriots, those clergymen who 20 to 25 years prior to the Declaration of Independence, laid the groundwork, established the roots, for the very essence of Americanism:

. . . that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

In all exemplary movements there is a leader, some one out front. Who was America’s pacemaker? “To Jonathan Mayhew (1720–1776) belongs the distinction of being the first of the Revolutionary preacher-patriots.” Indeed, this Doctor of Divinity wrote and/or preached the outstanding ideas that appeared in the Declaration of Independence 25 years prior to its signing. “. . . great minds run in the same channel, but Jonathan Mayhew said it first.” Therefore, it seems appropriate that we reflect upon and take advantage of this man who “said it first”—his seminal ideas.

Parenthetically, our forefathers had a drive working for them which seems to have lost its power. Relative to today’s material abundance, they were poverty stricken. With them it was a case of root hog or die, and they rooted. They had to exchange goods and services or go hungry, and so they traded. Unless they were honest no one would trade with them, and so they were truthful. Briefly, they were faced with obstacles to overcome, and overcoming is the road to individual becoming. This explains to a marked extent the morality and exemplarity of our forebears.

Horace, a Roman of 2,000 years ago, observed:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

The adversity of our forebears elicited talents that accounted, in no small measure, for their exemplary behavior. Intellectual and moral talents in our prosperous circumstances tend to lie dormant and that dormancy accounts, in no small measure, for a reprehensible behavior on the rampage—a flagrant misuse of our liberty!

Upon our use of our liberty, thought Mayhew, depends our happiness and our fortune—our felicity. Another great thinker, Lecomte du Noüy, expressed the identical thought in 1947:

In order to improve himself [man] must be free, since his contribution to evolution will depend on the use he makes of his liberty . . . and only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others.

It is a fair guess that neither of these Frenchmen, Tocqueville or du Noüy, ever heard of Jonathan Mayhew. But it is another confirmation that “great minds run in the same channel.”

History reveals another “great mind,” a preacher-patriot whose preachings and writings appeared one century after Mayhew’s works—Henry Ward Beecher. Reflect on the following wise observations.

There is no liberty to men whose passions are stronger than their religious feelings.

When passions—runaway feelings—override or take the place of religious feelings, there can be no liberty. Passions, thus defined, forge our fetters. Had passions been stronger than righteousness—religious feelings—there would have been no Declaration of Independence, no individual liberty, no American miracle. Hail to our preacher-patriots!

There is no liberty to men in whom ignorance predominates over knowledge.

Ignorance in the driver’s seat explains why liberty has so rarely appeared in the history of mankind, and why we Americans will lose our precious liberty if knowledge doesn’t come to the rescue. Today, there are those in the political driver’s seat who haven’t the slightest awareness of how little they know. They “think” they can run your life and mine better than we can—each driver behaving as if he were the Creator.

For wisdom to predominate requires no more than a few clean and clear thinkers such as Mayhew, du Noüy, Beecher to arrive on the scene, individuals who know how to use their liberty. Exemplars!

There is no liberty to men who know not how to govern themselves.

Imagine no self-governing individuals, no self-control exercised by anyone, everybody running around hog wild, as we say. With no self-imposed restraints, the situation could be likened to a population of madmen or of imbeciles. Liberty? None whatsoever!

The very first step in knowing how to use our liberty is self-government. What is the key to this discipline, the mastery of pride? It is humility, the right estimate of self. Saint Augustine gave an excellent guideline: “The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.” Rudyard Kipling adds his wisdom: “Still stands Thine ancient sacrifice, an humble and a contrite heart.” Liberty is possible only when men know how to and do, in fact, govern themselves!

In conclusion, ponder the profundity of du Noüy’s thoughts:

1. To improve himself, man must be free.

2. His contribution to evolution depends on the use he makes of his liberty.

3. Only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others.

Man’s earthly purpose is to evolve, to emerge, to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness—possible only when he is free. And how will the highly evolved individual use his liberty? He will strive as best he can to defend the liberty of others, regardless of race, creed or nationality. It is the very essence of enlightened self-interest for each of us to strive for the liberty of all.

Why do I find encouragement in our present situation? In an informal group designated The Remnant, coordinated by my associate, The Reverend Edmund A. Opitz, we know at least 650 present-day preacher-patriots. And there must be hundreds of others unknown to us, not only in this country but throughout the world. Thus, the writings and preachings of Jonathan Mayhew, the preacher-patriot who said it first, are bearing fruit.

[1] They Preached Liberty, Franklin P. Cole (Indianapolis: Liberty Press).

27

A WORD FROM THE WISE

Seek ye first truth and righteousness and all these things shall be added unto you.

—LUKE 12:31

The freedom way of life is threatened today more than at any time since the U.S.A.’s founding. It is frowned upon, denigrated, caricatured, opposed. The anti-freedom movement is devolutionary, and it is so powerful and cleverly phrased—popularized—that many good citizens give ground, concede this or that point, unwittingly lending support to a way of life they openly decry. As a consequence, they become infected with a plethora of “buts” and thus bend and give the case away. No longer ramrod straight!

Our problem is serious, but it is one with which man long has struggled. And for help in our time, we well may look to the wisdom and goodness of the ages. I refer to those individuals, past and present, near and far, whose wisdom is ours for the seeking—partners in principles and insights.

For, as Archbishop Whately wrote, “It makes all the difference in the world whether we put Truth in the first place or in the second place!” What light can these wise men bring to bear on some of our urgent questions?

Our concern is for life and liberty. And one of the first questions has to do with the source of our rights to these things. If we will listen to the sages, we may hear Jefferson and his colleagues of 1776 declare:

. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

So, man was created to be free, and Montesquieu tells us:

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile but as they are free.

Yes, we are created free and need to be free, but to what purpose? Why are we here?

Man is on earth as in an egg.

—Heraclitus

Now, you cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.

—C. S. Lewis

Let him who would save the world first move himself.

—Socrates

So our purpose then is to grow, to advance through self-improvement. But can we act well if we have not thought wisely?

Everyman should use his intellect. . . as the lighthouse uses its lamps, that those afar off on the sea may see the shining and learn their way.

—Beecher

To make no mistake is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.

—Plutarch

If it be right in principle, it has to work.

—Benjamin A. Rogge

Perfect liberty is an ideal, a castle in the air. What are we to do with this vision?

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.

—Thoreau

Should we spend much time trying to find the right words to expose fallacies and throw light on the truth of liberty?

No man has a prosperity so high or firm, but that two or three words can dishearten it; and there is no calamity which right words will not begin to redress.

—Emerson

How may one become the good thinker which the revival of liberty requires?

A man with a scant vocabulary will almost certainly be a weak thinker. He who would learn to think should learn to write. Good ideas are elusive and must be captured in flight; . . . jot down a good thought the moment after it lights up the mind.

—Henry Hazlitt

What, then, is the first step toward wisdom?

That man thinks he knows everything, whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing, but I know I know nothing.

—Socrates

The spirit of God delights to dwell in the hearts of the humble.

—Erasmus

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

—Thoreau

We live in deeds, not years, in thoughts, not breaths; . . . He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.

—Gamaliel Bailey

Yes, humility is a prelude to learning. What are some of the other virtues that may help us to find and to practice freedom?

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind. Absolve you to yourself, and you shall have the suffrage of the world.

—Emerson

This above all: To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.

—Shakespeare

It is easier to find a score of men wise enough to discover the truth, than to find one intrepid enough, in the face of opposition, to stand for it.

—A. A. Hodge

We need to practice humility and integrity. And what more?

If you do not expect the unexpected you will not find it.

—Heraclitus

In belief lies the secret of all valuable exertion.

—Bulwer

Let us be of good cheer, remembering that the misfortunes hardest to bear are those which never come.

—Lowell

All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.

—Calvin Coolidge

We seek to improve ourselves, true, but how is the best in others brought more fully into play?

I have believed the best of every man,

And find that to believe it is enough

To make a bad man show him at his best,

Or even a good man swing his lantern higher.

—Yeats

Does not despotism in the nation emerge only after it has begun in the minds of people?

Reform must come from within, not from without. You cannot legislate virtue.

—Cardinal Gibbons

The idea of liberty must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.

—Thomas H. Hogshead

Is not a man’s right to his property the cornerstone of liberty?

The man who is not permitted to own is owned.

—Santayana

What are some of the deterrents to the recovery of freedom?

Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.

—Bovee

Nothing is so rash as fear; its counsels very rarely put off, whilst they are always sure to aggravate the evils from which it would fly.

—Burke

All infractions of love and equity in our social relations are speedily punished. They are punished by fear.

—Emerson

What happens when fear causes us to abandon a principle?

It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. The country . . . deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.

—Charles Sumner

Wouldn’t it be nice were evil and error always obvious?

Oh, were evil always ugly,

What a boon to virtue that would be!

But oft it wears a pretty face,

And lets us cheat unknowingly.

—Anonymous

O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath, a goodly apple rotten at the heart.

—Shakespeare

And if man partakes of that apple, what are the results?

Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.

—Shakespeare

What’s wrong with the idea of everyone being forced to conform to type?

A system of fixed concepts is contrary to natural law. It prevents life from flowing. It blocks the passage of the universal law.

—Newton Dillaway

Were all alike, instead of free,

T’would mean the end of me and thee.

—Anonymous

When men turn to coercive measures, what are the dangers of abuse of such governmental powers?

The essential nature of government is organized force. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.

—Woodrow Wilson

Government is not reason, it is not eloquence—it is force. Like fire it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master; never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action.

—George Washington

What are some of the basic reasons why government spending is on the rampage?

It is easy to be generous with other people’s money.

—John Day

When men are most sure and arrogant they are commonly most mistaken.

—David Hume

And of all mistakes, what are the two destructive extremes in political economy?

Socialism is planned chaos. Anarchy is unplanned chaos.

—Ludwig von Mises

Is anything worse than a good thing turned from its true purpose?

The law . . . has converted plunder into a right, in order to protect plunder.

—Bastiat

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

—Jefferson

In the light of all the error, the darkness, is there no hope?

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.

—Horace

When will the socialistic trend reverse?

In the history of man it has been very generally the case, that when evils have grown insufferable, they have touched the point of cure.

—E. H. Chapin

Does social harmony stem from coercion or does it reflect moral values?

Morality once shattered destroys the people and the ruler. Outside of prison and this side of hell men are not bound together by the club but by the consciousness of moral obligations.

—Walter A. Lunden

The above are no more than samplings of how sages—past and present, near and far—have answered life’s most important questions. Bear in mind, however, that there are answers galore—tens of thousands—unknown to you and me, some of which may be ours for the seeking. And what’s higher in the realm of endeavor than seeking enlightenment!

Conceded, not every answer is “the whole truth and nothing but the truth.” All men are fallible; thus, those of us who seek must make our own evaluations, conscious of the fact that we also err in our judgments.

But of one judgment I feel fairly certain: The best guideline is “Seek ye first truth and righteousness.” And what then are “these things that shall be added unto you” and me? Liberty and the fantastic wisdom of the free and unfettered market, the fountainhead of miracles by the millions.

Liberty: Legacy of Truth

Leonard E. Read

1978

To those young in spirit who are ever seeking an improved understanding of liberty and its countless blessings.

1

LIBERTY: LEGACY OF TRUTH

There are three parts to truth: first the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.

—FRANCIS BACON

As Plutarch wrote, “To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from these errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”

Francis Bacon (1561–1626), active in political affairs during the reigns of Queen Elizabeth and James I, had his share of errors and mistakes. However, he learned from his mistakes and achieved renown as a philosopher and statesman. Obviously, not to err is beyond finite man’s power, but the capability of moving toward truth is within man’s range. Bacon, after becoming a philosopher and statesman—wise and good—bequeathed to us a remarkable three-part formula.

I. The wooing of truth—One’s ambition in every laudable endeavor should be nothing less than an ever-improving excellence. Perpetual inquiry is the only way to this objective—the wooing of truth. As Cicero wrote, “It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellent.”

The wooing of truth presupposes a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. It is founded on individual emergence or evolution. Dr. Robert A. Millikan, that great physicist and for years Chairman of the California Institute of Technology, was graced with an inquiring mind. He wrote:

Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: the idea of the Golden Rule, the idea of natural law, and the idea of age-long growth, or evolution.

The Golden Rule, doubtless the wisest of all moral maxims, was first recorded by Confucius four centuries prior to Christianity: “Do not unto others what you would not they should do unto you.” Since then, it has been adopted with slightly different phrasings by nine of the world’s leading religions.

The Golden Rule embodies the principle of universality, and thus is a guide to sorting good from evil. Example: Does anyone have the right to take the life, the livelihood, the liberty of another? No, because this is not a “right” that can be conceded to all others. It is evil! Reflect on the opposite principle: I have the right to my life, my livelihood, my liberty. Can I concede this right to all earthly beings? I can! Therefore, it is good!

What is meant by the Natural Law, sometimes called the Higher Law—an ideal of justice superior to the decrees of those in power? This ideal, discoverable but not invented by reason, is the ground for declaring that something may be legal, but also unjust. This is to say that Power, whether wielded by dictocrats or “the people,” never is the last word. The last word rests with an ideal of righteousness written into the ultimate nature of things, binding our governors and governed alike.

Evolution is attuned to Natural Law. Individuals who are responsive to this Heavenly radiation, instead of growing weary of inquiry, look upon successive moments of their mortal lives as opening up new and exciting opportunities. Their aim is to grow toward the ideal—Truth. But achieve the Ultimate? Never! Evolution is not an end, but a process of growth. Human destiny is emergence—now and forever!

II. The Knowledge of Truth—Many people in today’s world have no better awareness of truth than to confuse it with a mere nose count: “The majority is always right.” What an affront to knowledge! As one sage remarked, “It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.” And it is far easier to find countless persons who know some truth than to find one among them knowledgeable enough, in the face of opposition, to stand for it. With these thoughts in mind, here are several wise observations on the foundation of truth—knowledge:

The first step to knowledge is to know we are ignorant.

—Richard Cecil

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

—Will Durant

He that would make real progress in knowledge, must dedicate his age as well as youth . . . at the altar of truth.

—George Berkeley

Man is not born to solve the problem of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

—Goethe

Real knowledge, like everything of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for and, more than all, must be prayed for.

—Thomas A. Arnold

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.

—Juvenal

I had six honest serving men

They taught me all I knew;

Their names were Where and What and When

And Why and How and Who.

—Kipling

III. The enjoyment of truth—“Those who would enjoyment gain must find in it the purpose they pursue.” Those who succeed in their pursuit of truth find a glorious enjoyment in its revelation: freedom to act creatively as they please! As written in John 8:32, “The truth shall make you free.” And it does!

Let us assess another revealing wisdom bequeathed to mankind many centuries ago:

But whosoever looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

—James 1:25

The nearest approach to the perfect law of liberty began in 1776—born of a truth never before expressed in a political document: Man’s rights to life and livelihood are endowed by the Creator. Government removed from the role of endower!

Those of us “who would enjoyment gain” were given the guidelines by Saint James:

- Look into the perfect law of liberty and continue to do so-now and always.

- Never forget what is learned as so many do, but be “a doer of the work.”

- This man—the doer—“shall be blessed in his deed” and live a life of enjoyment.

May more and more of us understand Bacon’s three parts to truth and live by them. The legacy is liberty!

* * *

Wondering how I might introduce the following chapters, I came upon some observations by Samuel Ullman in his book, From the Summit of Years Four Score. His reflections and mine on the 80th year of our lives are surprisingly similar:

Youth is not a time of life; it is a state of mind; it is not a matter of rosy cheeks, red lips and supple knees; it is a matter of the will, a quality of the imagination, a vigor of the emotions; it is the freshness of the deep springs of life.

Youth means the predominance of courage over timidity, of adventure over the love of ease. This often exists in a man of sixty more than in a boy of twenty. Nobody grows old merely by a number of years. We grow old by deserting our ideals.

Years may wrinkle the skin, but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul. Worry, doubt, self-distrust, fear and despair—these bow the heart and turn the spirit back to dust.

Whether sixty or sixteen, there is in every human being’s heart the love of wonder, the sweet amazement at the stars and the starlike things, the undaunted challenge of events, the unfailing child-like appetite for what-next, and the joy of the game of living.

You are as young as your faith, as old as your doubt; as young as your self-confidence, as old as your fear; as young as your hope, as old as your despair.

Hail to the young!

2

FAITH: THE LEAVEN OF LIBERTY

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future.

—ROBERT COLLYER

Wrote Alexis de Tocqueville, “Despotism may govern without faith, but Liberty cannot.” The millions of despots, now in the driver’s seat, are swayed not by faith but by that type of ignorance displayed by witch doctors or medicine men and their patients. They, who do not know how to run their own lives, do not know that they know not how to run the lives of others.

There are countless forms of ignorance which no individual—past or present—has overcome. But there is no form more disharmonious or destructive than despotism. Can despots govern without faith? Affirmative! For confirmation, have a look at history and today’s world—here and elsewhere.

Is faith, really, the leaven of liberty? Goethe shares two wise observations:

- Epochs of faith are epochs of fruitfulness; but epochs of unbelief, however glittering, are barren of all permanent good.

- Miracle is the darling child of faith.

Liberty—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy—can be likened to a bright star in a dark firmament. Only now and then in all history has that star brightened the lives of the trillions who have inhabited this earth. In view of the fact that he who believes is strong and he who doubts is weak, it behooves us to strengthen our belief in the role of faith and to explain our findings. Success in this respect is, indeed, the leaven of liberty. No faith, no liberty!

Discords are as numerous as our forms of ignorance. Nearly all of mine are as unknown to me as yours to you. Why can this be said of everyone? Man, possessing but finite consciousness, has no more than infinitesimal glimpses of Infinite Consciousness—Creation. Therefore, the best anyone can do is to take note of the discords that fall within his limited awareness. Discords are countless, and I select two for comment, the first seemingly obvious, the second but a faint light in the darkness.

Ranking high in discord—out of harmony with freedom—are those who might be labeled discontented socialists. Not that they think of themselves as such—far from it! Indeed, these persons proclaim their horror of socialism, and they are as discontented with our present socialistic mess—inflation and despotism—as are our best freedom devotees.

Why label them socialists? Because their actions belie their words. It is one thing to preach freedom principles; it is quite another matter to practice them. These people by the millions talk against socialism, while at the same time they seek special privileges from federal, state or local governments—78,000 political pork barrels. Listing these errors is impossible. A generality must suffice: any request for governmental action that goes beyond keeping the peace and invoking a common justice falls in the socialistic category.

Now for the faint light in the darkness—a commentary on common discords seldom recognized. Admittedly, this speculation is way off in the far blue yonder.

Is it not an observed fact that the human species—over eons of time—has evolved, emerged, grown in awareness, perception, consciousness? Are not most people in our time ever so much more advanced in this respect than were cave dwellers, or the Cro-Magnons of 35 millennia ago? What accounts for this intellectual, moral and spiritual advance? We cannot penetrate this mystery, but we do see its effects. We can speculate, and while unable to prove my speculations, I fervently believe in them. They are founded on many personal experiences which, in my view, shed a bit of light on reality.

The reality as I see it? Infinite Consciousness—Creation—is a magnetic force attracting mankind toward the Infinite Order. Further, it appears to be a pulsating force like the tides, drawing and ceasing to draw in a sequence and on a vast range of frequencies.

Over and over again, and for many years, I have felt as if drawn by a magnet toward a spirit of inquiry—of wanting to know more. And in each instance, after a brief period, that attracting force, whatever it is, ceased, came to a dead halt—left me on my own, seemingly a test as to whether or not I had learned what the Divine Teacher had offered. If affirmative, inquiry progresses and the Teacher moves the student to a higher grade. More magnetism! If negative, inquiry is deadened!

Magnetic attraction fails to operate unless it finds a responsive substance. Sawdust, for instance, is not drawn to a magnet. Iron and steel filings are. Only things of a certain quality respond to magnetism.

Likewise, only those individuals who wish to learn respond to Creation’s magnetism. Those who achieve this quality of openness continue to gain in consciousness. Countless individuals succeed more or less. Some keep going throughout their lives. Others soon quit when left on their own—their search at an end. Each failure is a discord; it is out of harmony with the Cosmic Plan and human destiny.

The author of that remarkable book, Human Destiny, wrote: “To really participate in the divine task, man must place his ideal as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.”[1]

Faith in high ideals is, indeed, the leaven of liberty. To aim at liberty as an ideal is as high as one can go. Why? Liberty is the means, the key, to human evolution! Unless a person be free to act creatively as he pleases, he cannot participate in the Divine Task; he will be unable to achieve those other ideals—virtues—on which evolutionary upgrading depends.

Why, I wonder, have so many people lost faith in the efficacy of faith? Is it because they have a misplaced faith in ignoble measures—despotism and the like—which are doomed to fail? The corrective? Attend to our aims in life; let the objectives be as high as possible, out of reach if necessary. Faith is an essential means to their attainment.

Finally, why did Robert Collyer claim that “Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future”? Answer the question, Why am I writing this piece? It is for precisely the same reason that many others are trying to think their way out of present evil into future good. The discords and errors that plague us stimulate the search for truths—harmonies of the future. What seem to be stumbling blocks in the countless forms of despotism are challenges; once they are faced and overcome they serve as steppingstones to liberty.

Wrote Archbishop Whately: “As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.” Have faith and we will win!

[1] Lecomte du Noüy (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1947), p. 154.

3

HOPE

The mighty hopes that make us men.

—TENNYSON

During recorded history many wise men have expressed their views of hope, and arrived at the most diverse conclusions. Victor Hugo, for instance, wrote, “Hope is a delusion; no hand can grasp a wave or a shadow.” Ever so many others have given hope derogatory assessments. Why? Hope may be based on unsound expectations, and thus the mind of finite man, unless well-disciplined, has foolish hopes galore.

On the other hand, there are many who glorify hope. According to I Corinthians hope is one of the three heavenly graces, the others being faith and charity. Hope, if foolish, may be hellish, but if hope be wise, it is heavenly. A bit of reflection on hope in its glorifying sense seems appropriate. For what should we hope?

Hope, when viewed in the heavenly manner, is virtually a prayer. Hoping that one may discover what is righteous is a prayer not only for virtue but for an avoidance of error or wrongdoing. Tennyson spoke of “The mighty hopes that make us men.” If our hopes be mighty in the heavenly sense, we shall be exemplary individuals.

Hope for an awareness of blessings—of all the foolish hopes, covetousness heads the list. It has been recognized as the origin of evil for centuries. The Tenth Commandment: “Thou shalt not covet.” Covetousness leads to actions that range all the way from theft to our present welfare state—the something-for-nothing syndrome.

While it’s possible for governmental laws to penalize living off others, such laws cannot do away with the desire. Bear in mind that covetousness has as many variations as there are individuals who covet.

The overcoming of this foolish hope is a personal problem. The remedy? An awareness of one’s blessings. Each of us has more than he can count. Every misery one misses is a blessing, as is every breath of fresh air, every friend, every enlightening thought. Covetousness cannot abide in the soul of anyone who is aware of his countless blessings.

Hope for youth—“One does not grow old. One becomes old by not growing.”

Most people associate youth with childhood and adolescence. But youth is a certain spirit and temper and not necessarily just the early time of one’s life. Once adulthood is reached, youth is assumed to be in the past tense. Such an outlook dismisses growth as a potentiality of human beings. Acorns grow into tall oaks and we can grow every year of our lives.

An enlightening book of the 1930’s was Life Begins at Forty, by Walter Pitkin. The author could as well have said fifty or even eighty! Indeed, life should make new beginnings during every moment of our mortal existence. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, wrote, “Man is on earth as in an egg.” This inspired C. S. Lewis to remark, “Now, you cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.”

The explanation as to why so many rot on the vine, as we say—life’s mission at an end—is that they fail to recognize an undeniable truth expressed by the eminent psychologist, Fritz Kunkel: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

Hoping for youth—growing day-in-and-day-out—eliminates the need of hoping for the joyful life or intelligence or the diminution of faults. These blessings are the dividends of perpetual youth—of never growing old!

Hope for a sense of justice—Justice is “the quality of being righteous; impartiality; fairness.” It is truth—as nearly as one can discern it—in daily practice.

Those of us interested in a return to the freedom way of life should keep Burke’s wisdom in mind, “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.” Our hope—prayer—for a personal sense of justice will bring no endowments unless we know and observe at least two simple behavioral rules:

- Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.

- Apply the principle of universality to one’s maxims or beliefs. Briefly, never do anything which would bring on chaos if everyone did the same. By the same token, act creatively as you please and concede to all others that identical privilege.

Here, in a nutshell, is John Stuart Mill’s formula for the daily practice of justice:

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

When government is limited to its proper function, law is justice!

Hope for humility—There are numerous virtues and vices that account for the rise and fall of societies. Near the top of the list are the two opposites, humility and pride. Let’s take a look at the latter, beginning with a piece of ancient wisdom from Proverbs 14:18: “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.”

Pride sprouts and grows from ignorance and self-blindness. Those with a haughty spirit foolishly believe they know the most, whereas they know the least. While they don’t know how to make a pencil or why grass is green or who we are, they “know” how to run our lives. In their blind pride, the least taste of political power drives them to become power addicts. Until such persons seek help, there is little we can do to curb their addiction. What we can and must do is to develop in ourselves the strength of character to resist the temptations of power.

The strength of character each of us should develop is true humility—the state of being teachable in mind and spirit. Humility is an awareness of how much there is to learn; it is a virtue that displaces the sin of pride. No person can be a know-it-all at the same time that he seriously seeks knowledge.

Humility is to make a right estimate of self and this Socrates did, saying, “I know that I know nothing but I know I know nothing.” Reflection reveals the fact that the more one knows the more he knows he does not know. As Saint Augustine phrased it, “The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.”

“Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.” Grasping the sinfulness of pride reveals the heavenly virtue of humility—the only remedy for ridding society of power addicts.

Hail to the humble!

Hope for integrity—Wrote Emerson, “I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of integrity.” For a man of Emerson’s genius in thinking and phrasing, this is quite a confession. Indeed, so much neglected is this virtue that Bernard Dougall’s assessment applies to most individuals, “Integrity was a word he couldn’t even spell, let alone define.”

The definition as I phrase it: Integrity is the accurate reflection in word and deed of what one believes to be righteous—no deviations, none whatsoever. Absolute consistency! Lacking a leadership to set such a standard, the freedom way of life is impossible.

An example of the required leadership is found in Matthew 4:22:

The light of the body is the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.

How is this to be phrased in understandable terms? Obviously, the “light of the body” refers to enlightenment. The “eye,” of course, is perception—seeing.

“If the eye be single!” what possibly can this mean? Refer to Webster for a definition of “single” as here used: “Not deceitful or artful, simple, honest, sincere.” Wrote Shakespeare, “I speak with a single heart.”

Single in this sense is directly linked with integer, meaning “whole, entire, not divided.” Thus, single refers to that blessed virtue, integrity.

Contrasted to single is double which has the same original root as “duplicity.” Such phrasings as “double dealing” and “double talk” convey this connotation—that damnable vice.

Phrased in modern American idiom, Matthew’s insight would read:

Enlightenment of the intellect and spirit of man depends on his powers of perception, and if these powers be free from duplicity, that is, if they be grounded in pure integrity, man will he as much graced with enlightenment—wisdom—as is within his capability.

For freedom’s sake let us aspire to be so graced!

4

CHARITY

A man should fear only the good he does publicly.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER

St. Paul wrote the following words in his letter to the church in Corinth:

And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.

My fervent wish to understand Paul’s assertion inspires the following speculations.

Some things are obvious if one gives serious thought to this subject. For instance, there may be no greater menace to society, here or elsewhere, than government handouts—misconceived as charity. Implicit in the operations of socialism—the welfare state—is helping people to become helpless. The state does this by giving out food stamps, paying farmers not to farm, workers not to work, and so on. This policy deadens self-responsibility, the very essence of one’s being.

Why this misfortune? Why do millions of socialistically oriented people fall into this politico-economic trap? They fail to recognize that their give-aways consist of goods and services forcibly withdrawn from the free market which produced them—that much maligned and handicapped free market which their schemes have not yet destroyed. And they “think” of this as charity! It is the very opposite! This kind of “good”—all done publicly and for publicity’s sake—should, indeed be feared.

In writing of “Charity: Biblical and Political,” The Reverend Russell J. Clinchy has stressed the point:

If we need laws to make people treat men of other faiths and races as friends; if we need the police power of the secular state to take money from men for human need; if it is believed that the only hope of a city of God is to seek the alternative of a collectivized mass leveled to the lowest common denominator of mentality and ability—if all this be the limit of our hope for mankind, then even such activity is sheer futility, for even if such an effort could be achieved it would have no meaning at all for mankind. This rejection of personal responsibility would prove only that it is possible to make men live like whipped dogs, and the proving of it would be hell.

It is largely forgotten, unfortunately, that true charity is a highly spiritual attainment. Here it is as written in Matthew 6:

When you do some act of charity, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing: your good deed must be in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.

According to this scriptural passage, not only must the recipient of one’s kindness be unaware of the identity of the giver but charity in this spiritual sense requires also that the giver immediately erase from his mind any record of what he gave with joy and love. The deed is done, forget it.

In a sense, to hear of someone’s urgent need for help is like listening to his private prayer. To respond charitably to that person’s prayer is never undertaken as an obligation to him but as a cleansing of one’s own conscience. If one responds, he does so for his own sake and the pure joy of doing it. And that closes the book, balances that particular account. The sooner the giver can forget it, the more receptive he may be to other opportunities to develop and use his God-given faculties. “Every good wish is a prayer and every good deed is an answer to a prayer.”

Whenever one rises to this spiritual height, secrecy to self as well as to others becomes a built-in trait, as natural and no more reflected upon than breathing or heart beats. This is true charity—and the rewards are out of this world.[1]

[1] A remarkable book on this subject is Magnificent Obsession by Lloyd C. Douglas (New York, 1969).

5

LET THE OBJECTIVE BE HIGH

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.

—TRYON EDWARDS

Millions of our countrymen—young and elderly, male and female—have intellectual, moral and spiritual potentialities that are never realized. Minds which could be great do not rise above their aims and objectives. If the string be short, no kite will fly high. And if life’s objectives be low, no high character will be formed.

There is no such thing as a mass objective or a mass error. There are only individual aims and actions which tend toward a dull sameness. Before highlighting a great objective that brings out great minds, here is a sampling of our behaviors that stifle human progress.

- A citizen built a nice home on a 2-acre lot which had no trees. He took several saplings from a public park across the road rather than pay for them at a private nursery. Theft!

In precisely the same category are the actions of those millions of Americans who employ the coercive force of government to feather their own nests at the expense of others. This is to legalize thievery, and there is no difference in principle between legal and illegal theft. No high characters are ever formed when dragged down by such low aims.

- Examine a wide spectrum of human behaviors and, in more cases than not, personal advantage is sought through expediency, and lying is its accomplice. Lies are the means to ignoble objectives, about as low as one can aim. Wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes: “Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle which fits them all.” The fear of telling the truth as one sees the truth is the genesis of most fibbing.

Such dubious notions as the following cause a great deal of low-grade behavior:

- To tell the truth as I see it would make me look like a fool.

- I can gain the favor of others by saying what I think they would like to hear from me.

- I shall never lie except to shield myself.

- Really, there is no harm in telling a white lie.

The result? “This is the punishment of a liar. He is not believed even when he tells the truth.” “Liars begin by imposing upon others, but end by deceiving themselves.” To thus abuse one’s talent and waste one’s potential dooms life to mediocrity! Great minds are not brought out by this sin.

- Ever so many people have no higher objective than notoriety, applause, fame; in which case the eye is cast, not at the stars, but at popularity. Such people are depressed when failing and fatheaded when succeeding. No great minds from those so motivated!

- Reflect upon the many who think of riches as the only end in life. It follows that they are blind to all higher goals. They are bogged down at the King Midas level.

- Civilizations rise as slavery fades away and fall as slavery increases. Slavery? It is measured by the extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the “benefit” of others instead of self-benefit, as happens when government takes from some in order to subsidize others.

The countless authors of slavery—those who resort to coercion—are in all walks of life. Among our Simon Legrees are those who falsify by claiming agreement with majority opinion in order to gain political power. So are those who sponsor legislation to prohibit free entry and competition, be they labor or business “leaders.” Advocacy of the planned society, be it from pulpits or classrooms, gives birth to slavery.

Let me now highlight a great objective, one that brings out great minds—the greatest politico-economic phenomenon ever conceived by the mind of man. It is the private property, free market, limited government way of life. In this, as distinguished from its opposite—socialism—there is no dulling sameness. The devotees of freedom are few and far between, a fact which, if understood, is not at all discouraging.

As Emerson wrote, “The end pre-exists in the means.” Evil behavior must always lead to an evil way of life precisely as righteous ways lead to the good life. Here is a thought we can add to Emerson’s: High ends pre-exist in high methods. Aiming high results in ends that gratify! Note the distinctions between the low and the high ways.

The positive counterpart of stealing is to so use your own property that others will respect your ownership; and to defend to the best of your own abilities and resources every other person’s rightful claim to property.

- These rare individuals would never steal a loaf of bread even if they or their families were in a state of hunger. Nor would they ever, under any circumstances, approve of government doing the robbing for them. To the contrary, they would cast their voices and votes against such political chicanery, not by denunciation but by explaining the virtues of honesty. “Thou shalt not steal.”

The positive counterpart of lying is to know the truth and so live it that it shines through to effectively light the way for others.

- Lying? They would tell the truth as they see it even if everyone were to disagree. They seek their approval before God [righteousness], not men. “The truth shall make you free.”

The positive counterpart of the urge for popular acclaim—vanity—is the humble and inquiring mind.

- Popularity? They couldn’t care less! As with lying, they seek only righteousness, the aim that brings out great minds.

The positive counterpart of the love of riches is the constructive use of one’s talents.

- Wealth has but a single purpose: freeing individuals from the mundane chores in order that they may discover and develop their unique capabilities.

The positive counterpart of slavery is personal freedom of choice in the development and use of one’s abilities in the human form of private ownership and free trade.

- These few devotees of freedom would permit everyone to act creatively as he or she pleases, produce whatever goods or services they choose and freely exchange with anyone in this or other countries. As to the social agency—government—they would limit it to the protection of ownership—anti-slavery—and to invoking a common justice by inhibiting all destructive actions.

In summary, the star of freedom is surely one of life’s highest objectives. And the steps along the way should be in harmony with that high goal. Lesser means can only lead to baser ends—never toward freedom. Thus, let the objectives be high, that we may realize our potentialities.

6

REFLECTIONS ON HOPE AND FEAR

Hope is like the sun, which, as we journey toward it, casts the shadow of our burden behind us.

—SAMUEL SMILES

Hopes and fears, from the sublime to the ridiculous, beset all of us all of our lives. Such aspirations and dejections might envision periods of time ranging from the momentary to the eternal. But our concern here is with the hopes and fears of freedom devotees in our times. And let us begin with the hopeful.

Hope is one of the mainsprings of human progress. It can, indeed, be likened to the sun. As our hopes for liberty are strengthened—as we journey toward their realization—our burden, the authoritarian shadow, is cast behind us. Hope for the ideal leads to intellectual enlightenment, and darkness has no resistance to this light!

Hope has several essential elements, three of which are here examined:

• Expectation—This is born of wanting to know more and to have more—materially and/or intellectually. There is no stage in human progress—ancient or modern—when expectation should subside. Indeed, the more we progress the more should this yearning for learning stimulate our actions.

The president of a leading auto firm remarked to me in 1954, “The problem of production has been solved.” No expectation of the autos to come! Actually, the problem of production was no more solved in 1954 than today—or prior to the invention of the wheel! To conclude otherwise is to declare expectation at an end—hope deadened.

Expectation includes items not possessed but hoped for. Example: there would not be even one pencil had not the value of pencils been envisioned. Hope for the what-is-not is the genesis of the what-is and of the what-will-be!

• Confidence—Progress is attained by those who have confidence in winning. From the English poet, Alexander Pope, we learn that:

By mutual confidence and mutual aid

Great deeds are done, and great discoveries made.

Mutual confidence and mutual aid are basic features of the freedom to own, to produce, and to exchange: the source of great discoveries.

• Faith—What more need be said of the importance of faith than is told us in these lines:

All the strength and force of man comes from the faith in things unseen. He who believes is strong; he who doubts is weak. Strong convictions precede great actions.

Have faith!

As asserted in Proverbs 29:18, “Where there is no vision, the people perish.” And, assuredly, the people would perish were there no hope among those of us who love liberty. In the absence of hope the free society could not exist. Why? Those who know not how to run their own lives would program ours, reducing the people to programmed robots. If such a low status be not a living death—as related to life’s high purpose—pray tell, what is!

Now to some reflections on fear. Wrote the author and editor, C. N. Bovee:

There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless and the other half discreditable.

As with hope, fear has several essential elements, three of which are here examined:

• Timidity—“Woe unto timid hearts and faint hands.”

When men are timid, they no longer stand upright or dare each to speak what is in his own mind. Progress is not spawned by such beings. The U.S.A. is presently facing a crisis, one reason being that millions in all walks of life fear censure or loss of face or votes or business. Wrote Plautus, “A man that’s timid in a crisis isn’t worth a penny.”

• Suspicion—Suspicious individuals—those who always suspect others’ motives—breed suspicion in return. This casts the eye away from what’s right, and searching for the right is the only remedy for imbecility.

Suspicion is no less an enemy to virtue than to happiness. He that is already corrupt is naturally suspicious, and he that becomes suspicious will quickly become corrupt.

—Samuel Johnson

Suspicion is far more apt to be wrong than right; oftener unjust than just. It is no friend to virtue, and always an enemy to happiness.

—Hosea Ballou

• Cowardice—To know what is right and take a conflicting position is cowardice at its worst. This evil is rooted in the fallacy that it is dangerous to be honest. The fact? It is destructive of self and others not to live a life of integrity. Fear is a hellish trait!

Socrates spoke of himself as a philosophical midwife. I would humbly aspire to a similar function, receiving from ever so many sources, and then sharing the findings with anyone interested.

Ralph Bradford, in his autobiography, One Man’s Life, tells how he received a brilliant idea about the meaning of direction from Dorothy Pillsbury. He relates that in her charming book, No High Abode, she tells of mentioning the four cardinal compass points to her Mexican neighbor, Mrs. Apodaca, and the latter replied: “Did you know, Señora, that Los Indios have two more directions? Not only do they have North, East, South and West, but they have Up and Down. And I,” she added, “have still another one. It is El Centro—the Center. It is good to know in what direction you go . . . but it is muy importante—very important—to know where you stand right now. That is the Center.”

And then Bradford elaborates the theme in three paragraphs that I would like to share with you as follows: “East and West; North and South; Up and Down; In and Out; Center—the place where we are. In these phrases I have reached for symbols that might help us orient ourselves in the vast dimension of time. And I come back, finally, to Up, which is both actually and metaphorically the most significant direction of all.

“When we express man’s growth and progress we think always of rising from lower to higher levels—Up—beyond turbo-jets and rockets; Up—to the inconceivable vastness of space, where the great stars blaze and die and are born again in the endless process of creation.

“Up, finally, to a spiritual height that transcends all else, to a vista compounded of hope and faith and desperate soul hunger. In this bewildering age of the atom, when our quest for knowledge brings us to the verge of self-destruction, and there is a chilling fear deep in every life; when we are bewildered by the cynical overturning of ancient altars and old moralities—in such a time it is comforting to reach beyond the torments and confusions that come of our knowledge, and lean with a sense of security upon the arm of faith.”

Down with fear! Up with Faith and Hope that life’s high purpose may be increasingly approached!

7

SEEKING SAVES SOULS

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For every one that asketh receives; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

—MATTHEW 7:7–8

We don’t talk much about the soul these days, and if you are more comfortable with words like mind, or psyche, or consciousness that’s all right with me. I refer to “an entity which is regarded as being the immortal or the spiritual part of the person.” Briefly, the soul is separate and apart from the physical and relates only to consciousness, that phase of the individual which is immortalized—eternal and forever. It is only by persistent seeking that we may discover and save this elusive part of our total make-up.

The extent to which we grow in consciousness measures the extent to which we rise above the animal, or go beyond the physical. Thus, achievement in this respect is life’s highest purpose—ascending as far as possible from the mere mortal to the immortal. Those seeking how to so live—looking for the magic key—might well abide by an ancient wisdom: “he that seeketh findeth!”

The above verse from Matthew does not mean that all shall be readily opened unto us—that Infinite Consciousness will be our reward, within our reach. Instead, it means that seeking opens the way to an increasing consciousness, and the more elevated and proficient the seeking, the more will be opened unto us.

Wrote William Hazlitt, “When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy it ceases to be a subject of interest.” This thesis of mine ought to be of interest for it exhibits a high potential disagreement! There are, on the one hand, countless atheists and, on the other, such oversouls—spiritual transcendentalists—as Ralph Waldo Emerson, the Sage of Concord.

An atheist is one who believes that there is nothing in Creation beyond his and other finite minds. Immortality is nonsense, there being nothing beyond one’s mortal or earthly moments. Thus, so far as this subject is concerned, an atheist is god—there is no God! Numerous atheists of my acquaintance are famous or wealthy or both—life’s mission achieved! Should I condemn these atheistically oriented folks? No, for I believe in freedom of choice or, as that oversoul, Elbert Hubbard, expressed it, “Do unto others as if you were the others.”

The very opposite of atheism is transcendentalism:

. . . any of various philosophies that propose to discover the nature of reality by investigating the process of thought rather than the objects of sense experience . . . based on a search for reality through spiritual intuition.

There have been and are many individuals graced with spiritual intuition—cognitive flashes ranging from a few to thousands. The root of this blessing? Seeking!

The question before all other questions concerns priorities. What seek ye first? It is an admonishment appearing in Matthew 6:33:

But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness [Truth] and all these things [material well-being] shall be added unto you.

Paraphrasing C. S. Lewis:

Aim at Heaven [Truth] and we will get earth [wealth] thrown in. Aim at earth and we will get neither.

True, there are those who aim only at fame and fortune [earth] and succeed. But it is only because there are those—past and present—who aim at Heaven [Truth]. Were all to aim at earth, there would be no enlightenment and, thus, no wealth. Fame? So what! Hitler achieved that!

Enlightenment should be our ambition during every mortal moment. “To kill time is to damage eternity.” Seeking—day in and day out—is the key to ascendancy. And the road to seeking is paved with prayer. But not prayer by rote—“by memory alone, without understanding or thought.” Meaningless! Emerson enlightens us:

Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? . . . No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

Heartily? It means with zest, enthusiasm or, better yet, from the heart! Meaningful!

Several thoughts on meaningful prayer, the kind that enlightens the self and, thus, becomes a partial answer in itself:

- May my daily behaviors manifest charity, intelligence, justice, humility, love, integrity, and reverence for life.

- May I learn to recognize more and more of my blessings, for they are countless!

- I pray for Thy blessings upon our associates—oversouls—near and far, past and present, the perfection of our ideas and ideals, our adherence to them, our efforts, our judgments, our faith in Thee.

- May I make progress in overcoming those countless faults of mine which stand as obstacles to those of Thy ways which might possibly be manifested through me.

- I pray for an increasingly sensitive ability to harmonize my actions and thoughts with Thy Divine and Infinite wisdom and love that I may more nearly do Thy Will.

- May I develop those qualities that will be attracted to Thy Infinite Wisdom.

While certain that seeking is a soul-saving procedure, I do not know and perhaps no individual has ever known all the self-disciplines for perfect seeking. To grasp how devoted seeking works its wonders is comparable in difficulty to understanding and explaining with clarity how freedom works its wonders. Both border on the celestial. Each is a star in the far, blue yonder.

Aim at the sun and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.

—Joel Hawkes

Aiming at the sun—Truth and Righteousness—requires another discipline, second only to prayer. It is to record in writing all ideas and insights the moment they flash into mind. Why? Ideas are as effervescent as dreams. Unless recorded at once they are gone forever. Try never to lose a single one of these precious blessings—building blocks to potential, personal knowledge.

Will Durant gives this thesis an appropriate conclusion:

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul!

8

CHARACTER

Institutions and laws are but the outward manifestations or outcome of the underlying ideas, sentiments, customs, in short, character. To urge a different outcome would in no way alter men’s character—or the outcome.

—GUSTAV LE BON

Why do I rate the above by this French psychologist and sociologist (1841–1931) as a penetrating insight? A confession: I completely agree with it! Those who disagree—and most would—may call it foolishness; but our differing opinions are subjective judgments.

As to agreement: I have repeated over the years, long before reading this author, that whatever shows forth on the political horizon is no more than an echoing or reflection of whatever the preponderant thinking happens to be at any given time. Complete agreement—different phrasing, that’s all.

Were I to descend from outer space, with these convictions in mind, and had a look at the kind of governments we now have, I would conclude that the preponderant thinking is anti-freedom—authoritarian. And, further, that there is no chance for betterment except as the underlying ideas, sentiments and customs are modified to favor freedom.

It follows that an ascending or descending society is nothing more nor less than a response to good or bad thinking. An ancient wisdom: “As he thinketh in his heart so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7) The best society that ever existed was the result of superb thinking on the part of our Founding Fathers. The decline into socialism which we are now experiencing is due to bad thinking by ever so many of our contemporaries.

It is thinking, and thinking only, that divides right from wrong; it is thinking and thinking only that elevates or degrades societies. What we “think in the heart” governs the future: elevation or degradation. That remarkable genius in music, theology, poetry, medicine and philosophy, Albert Schweitzer, wrote:

Living truth is that alone which has its origin in thinking. Just as a tree bears year after year the same fruit and yet fruit which is each year new, so must all permanently valuable ideas be continually born again in thought.

While Schweitzer may not have had the U.S.A.’s present dilemma in mind, this is assuredly sage counsel for all of us. In what respect? Those sanctified ideas and ideals of our Founding Fathers must be born again!

Let us analyze the old proverb, “As he thinketh in his heart so is he,” and ask what is meant by heart? Assuredly, the reference is not to the muscular organ of that name. Rather, what we have here is a metaphor—a figure of speech for one’s true nature—“inmost thoughts and feelings; consciousness or conscience.” This is virtually synonymous with character: “a distinctive trait or attribute; essential quality; nature . . . moral constitution.”

A seemingly correct conclusion is that a man’s thinking is rooted in his character. Individual character determines not only what one thinks, but also what he makes of his life. Our ambition for a recovery of freedom in America depends on more persons with character coming to the fore by power of example. For enlightenment, I seek and herewith share some thoughts on character by men of character.

Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.

—Goethe

A man’s character is the reality of himself. His reputation is the opinion others have formed of him. Character is in him; reputation is from other people. Character is the substance, reputation is the shadow.

—Henry Ward Beecher

Our character is but the stamp on our souls of the free choices of good and evil we have made through life.

—Cunningham Geikie

We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—clear disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought.

—Woodrow Wilson

Not education, but character, is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.

—Herbert Spencer

It is not money, nor is it mere intellect that governs the world; it is moral character, and intellect associated with moral excellence.

—T. D. Woolsey

Character, that sublime health which values one moment as another.

—Emerson

’Tis character persuades, not empty words.

—Plutarch

Man’s character is his fate.

—Heraclitus

A good character carries with it the highest power of causing a thing to be believed.

—Aristotle

It is not the brains that matter most, but that which guides them—the character, the heart, generous qualities, progressive ideas.

—Fydor Dostoyevski

The noblest contribution which any man can make for the benefit of posterity, is that of a good character. The richest bequest which any man can leave to the youth of his native land, is that of a shining, spotless example.

—R. C. Winthrop

Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main rule the world.

—Samuel Smiles

If the U.S.A. is again to become an orderly, freedom-oriented nation, only men of character—as were our Founding Fathers—can perform the miracle. The mere urging of character or outcome is utterly futile, as Le Bon observed; it is to spin our wheels, as the saying goes.

What, then, should be your and my ambition? Become a person of character—a shining, spotless example!

9

COURAGE

To see what is right and not do it, is want of courage.

—CONFUCIUS

My shoe manufacturing friend seems to side with Confucius: “I am the only one in this business who refused to sign a petition that would outlaw foreign imports of shoes.” No want of courage there!

Numerous wise men—past and present—have emphasized this point. Wrote Cicero, “Courage is that virtue which champions the cause of right.” And Mark Twain adds, “Always do right. This will gratify some people and startle the rest.”

In view of the fact that no two persons think exactly alike, how shall we interpret Twain’s advice, “Always do right”? No individual knows all the truth and nothing but the truth. Thus, no two persons will have identical answers to this question. Here is my understanding of what is right: The accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest consciousness dictates as righteous. There is only one great adventure, and that is directed inward—self-improvement.

Those whose lives are featured by the great adventure are not only gratified but blest by the very few others who are thus ascending. And those among the countless millions who pay no heed to courage, as here defined, are startled! Why this bewilderment? They regard it as dangerous to be honest—to do right as one sees the right!

History presents several examples of the “dangers” that follow doing right as one sees the right. The outstanding example comes to mind of Jesus on the cross. Yet, when viewed aright, His life and tragic end conferred upon mankind a blessing of the highest order. The lesson? The fear of danger may block the way to Eternal Truth. That honesty is the best policy is affirmed by Alexander Pope: “An honest man’s the noblest work of God.”

The courage to do the right as one sees the right came to me as a personal enlightenment over 30 years ago. I was invited to an evening session with a dozen of America’s leading businessmen, met to devise ways of resisting government encroachments. I was shocked at their evasiveness; they wanted to hire someone to fight their battles. “We’ll handsomely pay some professor to present our views to the Senate Committee.” When they finally asked for my view, I feared the danger in voicing my strong dissent—they’ll hate me. Then the behavior of my great mentor, W. C. Mullendore, flashed into mind. What would Bill say? “Tell them the truth as you see it.” So I explained that this was not an errand to be farmed out but a personal responsibility of first magnitude, demanding their personal involvement and commitment. Yes, all but two were shocked. However, from then on, all of these men respected and sought my views. Why? Because I had overcome my fear of being honest!

Here is a current experience. One of our country’s most patriotic and spiritual journals has, for the past several years, reprinted numerous essays of mine. And what a favorable response from some of its distinguished readers—excited about the freedom philosophy.

The brilliant publisher of this journal was shocked by a recent essay of mine—“Why Not Separate School and State?” He favored government education. Result? That journal is now featuring socialistic education. Bad? No, it is all to the good!

Why is the action of my publisher friend all to the good? He has the courage to do the right as he sees the right. True, what he sees as right—government education—is at odds with what I see as right—free market education. We differ in what we see but we both appreciate the merit of courage. Had more of us than now the courage to do the right—regardless of differences—economic, intellectual, moral and spiritual ascendancy would grace our way of life. In the absence of courage, falsehood dominates society. Shakespeare gave us an everlasting guideline:

To thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

If one’s ambition be to advance the freedom way of life, his first step is to decide what society’s agency of organized force—government—should and should not do. How draw the line? My answer: Limit government to invoking a common justice, keeping the peace and inhibiting all destructive actions such as fraud, violence and the like. Leave all constructive activities—no exceptions—to men acting creatively as they please!

If there be any activity that falls in the creative realm, education most certainly belongs there. Coercion is antagonistic to learning. Point 10 in the Communist Manifesto reads, “Free education for all children in public schools.” Public, that is, government, education in the U.S.A. is not only not “free,” it has three forms of coercion: (1) compulsory attendance, (2) government dictated curricula and (3) the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the bills. Leave education to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is!

Why do so many feel a reverence for government education? Because it’s part of our mores! Wrap the American flag around any socialistic activity and shortly a vast majority will regard it as Americanism—the postal “system” is an example. Whenever government pre-empts any activity, all thinking about alternate free-market procedure is deadened—settled into the ruts of custom. Government education falls in this category, mistakenly adopted nearly two centuries ago: Americanism!

Finally, reflect on the potential talents that are lost to human welfare for the want of courage to do the right as one sees the right. Assuming courage on both sides, the failure of another to see what I see or vice versa is no longer the issue. Instead, a rewarding tactic comes within our view—sharing with each other what we see, the formula for improving conscience and enlightenment. “To see what is right and not do it is a want of courage.”

Let us do it!

10

ORDER

Order is light, peace, inward liberty, free command over oneself; it is power. . . . It is aesthetic and moral beauty; it is well-being; it is man’s greatest need.

—AMIEL

Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81), that remarkable Swiss philosopher who devoted a lifetime to his private journal—“written for my own consolation and warning.” Several generations of readers have been inspired by the thoughts of this intensive thinker, and it was back in 1951 that I was first introduced to these pages. One of the first of Amiel’s thoughts to hit home was this: “A man only understands that of which he has already the beginnings in himself.”[1] Briefly, if one is to grasp the wisdom of the ages—past and present—he must strive for beginnings in his own mind, on and on, endlessly!

So let us begin with order, that “free command over oneself” looked upon by Amiel as “man’s greatest need.” Assuredly, if one does not order his own life, he will be ordered about by others.

Order is not a simple concept; as Amiel understands it, order has many facets. It might be instructive to discuss the several features, as he lists them.

Order is light. In John 12:46 we find the words, “I am come a light into the world.” The metaphor here clearly suggests Enlightenment!

Pursue this analogy further: It is easily demonstrable that darkness offers no resistance and readily gives way to light. It should also be clear that ignorance is powerless against enlightenment, though the process of learning seems slow and uncertain at best and many despair that it can occur at all within a given society. Why such skepticism? Is it not because the enlightenment of even the best of us is so dim relative to Infinite Enlightenment that we observe little advancement of others by reason of what we have to share?

To grasp this point, look not into the dark—our effect on the improvement of others. Rather, observe how each of us has taken little steps away from ignorance toward enlightenment by reason of numerous individuals—Amiel, for instance.

Yes, order is light. And Amiel’s point is that orderliness in the mind of the individual is the key to his own enlightenment and to the light which he in turn may offer to others.

Order is peace. As Bastiat wrote, “When goods do not cross borders soldiers will.” Free traders are the ambassadors of peace and good will—the ambassadors of righteousness. It is right that everyone should be free to act creatively as he pleases, and this includes exchanging goods and services with anyone who is willing and able, either at home or abroad. The Biblical pronouncement sets neither geographic nor political boundaries. “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.” (Luke 2:14) As testimony, observe the peaceful relationships between those in our 50 states—the world’s largest free-trade area.

The dictionary defines order as “a state of peace and serenity . . . orderly conduct.” That’s the harmonious state of mankind when freedom prevails.

Order is inward liberty. Liberty is, indeed, an inward accomplishment. You can no more bestow liberty on me or I on you than either of us can bestow intelligence, integrity, humility or any virtue on each other. Liberty does not descend on us but, rather, it is a blessing to which each ascends. Liberty must be earned to be enjoyed. We bring order and joy to our lives by this inward ascension!

Order is a free command over oneself. For an example of “a free command over oneself,” observe those few people who adhere strictly to the old maxim, “A place for everything and everything in its place”—be it in the kitchen, living room, garden or wherever. They have an aversion to sloppiness—disorder—and want nothing to do with things or actions in disarray.

These individuals adhere to their orderly formula in numerous ways. For instance, punctuality is a habit—on time for all engagements—and they keep their promises. Sloppiness—a place for nothing and nothing in its place—is taboo. Give us a few more people like this and the ordering of our lives by politicians and bureaucrats would also be taboo!

Order is power. Those who live their lives aright never exert power over another’s life or even think of doing so. Rather, all the power they possess is directed toward an improvement of their own thoughts, ideas and ideals. This is a moral power! An American clergyman, Horace Bushnell (1802–76), added his wisdom on this important phase of life:

By moral power we mean the power of a life and a character, the power of good and great purposes, the power which comes at length to reside in a man distinguished in some course of estimable or great conduct. . . . No other power of man compares with this, and there is no individual who may not be measurably invested with it.

Order is aesthetic and moral beauty. Most people think of order only as an orderly desk or workshop or restaurant or attire—a commendable neatness in all personal matters. Order to them means stable, unchanging situations in every aspect of life, be it social or personal. As a consequence, they are led into a fallacy; stabilize the social situation!

The first step, if we would remedy this fallacy, is to realize that no two among our some 200 million citizens are remotely alike in talents or expertise or potentialities. Further, no individual today is identical to the self he was yesterday. Everything in the Cosmos, be it atoms or galaxies or man, is in constant change. Any attempt to stabilize the what-is, as related to social affairs, is an affront to evolution—Creation at whatever level!

What, then, is order as related to the politico-economic—social—situation? It is the freedom to take advantage of this constant flux. Let all the trillions times trillions of tiny creativities freely flow and configurate, so that creation at the human level may be more and more realized. These flowing, ever-changing activities—not stabilization—compose the order for which we should strive. This is moral beauty! Wrote the historian, George Bancroft (1801–81):

Beauty is but the sensible image of the Infinite. . . . Like truth and justice it lives within us; like virtue and the moral law it is a companion of the soul.

Order is well-being. Says the dictionary, “Virtue is essential to the well-being of man.” Thus, according to Amiel, order—well-being—has its wellspring or fountainhead in virtues. Goethe observed that “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” An excellent example of this truth is the following by an English clergyman, Caleb C. Colton (1780–1832), written several decades before Amiel:

There is but one pursuit in life which is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every conquest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her; and zealously to labor after her ways is to receive them.

Order is man’s greatest need. Admittedly, Amiel’s observations as stated at the beginning are highly esoteric and, as written, can rarely be understood. Doubtless, some of the wisest thoughts of man over the ages have never been grasped.

Why dwell on or try to unravel Amiel’s thoughts as related to order? He was a wise man! By quoting other sages—bringing them to our aid—I have, if only for myself, tried to gain some enlightenment.

If there be some accuracy in these deductions, then order is, indeed, among man’s greatest needs. Accept order as revealed by this great thinker and we have a solid foundation for human liberty.

[1] An entry of December 17, 1854 in Journal Intime of Henri Amiel.

11

THE CAPTAIN IS ON THE BRIDGE

Great peace have they which love thy law; and nothing shall offend them.

—PSALMS 119:165

For the past fifteen years I have had on my desk a favorite three-paragraph brevity bearing the above title and using the quote from Psalms. My apologies to the author, the name forgotten. His, however, is a wisdom worthy of sharing and commenting upon. The paragraphs:

The world is not going to the dogs. The human race is not doomed. Civilization is not going to crash. The captain is on the bridge. Humanity is going through a difficult time, but humanity has gone through difficulties many times before in its history, and has always come through, strengthened and purified.

Do not worry yourself about the universe collapsing. It is not going to collapse, and anyway that question is none of your business. The captain is on the bridge. If the survival of humanity depended upon you or me, it would be a poor lookout for the Great Enterprise, would it not?

The captain is on the bridge. God [Infinite Consciousness] is still in business. All that you have to do is to realize the Presence of God where trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability; and to keep an even mind until the storm is over.

As to the verse from Psalms, The New English Bible clarifies the meaning for us: “Peace is the reward of those who love thy law; no pitfalls beset their path.” Were people in this and other countries to “love Thy Law”—Truth and Righteousness—there would be peace on earth and good will toward men. To the extent this is achieved, the fewer will be the pitfalls that beset our paths. The author of Thy Law as here dramatized? The Captain on the bridge!

A few individuals—yours truly included—profoundly believe that the world is not going to the dogs, but ever so many are certain that civilization is doomed, that there is no hope. They throw in the sponge, give up the ghost, become drop outs—fold up their tents, as the saying goes.

This unfortunate defeatism is partly spawned by countless fortune tellers: “persons who profess to foretell events. . . .” Many of these prognosticators call themselves economists. A few claim to “love Thy Law,” but they have lost sight of the Captain on the bridge. Theirs is nothing less than crystal gazing: “the practice of gazing into a crystal ball and pretending to see certain images, especially of future events.” The truth? They have no crystal ball and couldn’t read it if they had one!

No living person has the slightest idea of what is going to happen in the next minute let alone in future decades. The only forecasting that has any validity is of the “iffy” kind. Example: If the money supply in the U.S.A. continues to escalate at the same rate as it has from 1935 to 1978, by the year 2000 it will be $1,500,000,000 and the dollar won’t be worth a plugged nickel.

The only value of the if-variety of forecasting is alerting citizens to the dangers of over-extended government. Thus alert, they will see to it that government is restored to its proper role of keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. How near or far off is this hoped-for turnabout? I do not know nor does anyone else. But it’s the only way to align self with the Captain on the bridge!

True, we are now going through a critical period, but crises are nothing new, as all history attests. However, the instances in which humanity has been “strengthened and purified” are numerous. Reflect on major turnabouts: the Sumerians of 5,000 years ago; Venice during Marco Polo’s time; England following the works of Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, John Bright and Frederic Bastiat. The greatest of all followed the brilliant works of our Founding Fathers.[1]

What about right now? Much is going on in the hearts and souls and minds of men—an improved and encouraging awareness—that is invisible to those who only casually glance at surface events. For one of several current examples, have a look at Argentina.[2] The Captain is, indeed, on the bridge!

Why worry about the universe collapsing? As our friend writes—“that question is none of your business.” Or mine! Nor is it necessary to go into outer space to make this point; the earth will suffice. Untold millions in today’s world are making it their business to keep civilizations from going to the dogs. By self-improvement? Precisely the opposite: by coercively imposing their plans on Americans, Russians, Chinese and other populations!

To grasp the absurdity of these misguided efforts, imagine that these little dictocrats, rather than the Captain, had been in charge of the evolutionary process since the dawn of earthly life. To aid the imagination, reduce the life scene on planet earth to a single year:

January through August—Traces of worms.

November—Reptiles, dinosaurs, crocodiles, first mammals.

December to 7:00 P.M. on the 31st—First snakes, elephants, deer.

Beginning at 7:00 P.M. of December 31st—First man.

11:50 P.M.—Cro-Magnon man.

11:58:30—First civilization (Sumer).

11:59:24—Christ is born.

During the last three and two-thirds seconds humanity witnessed the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Briefly, freedom in its glory, the furthest advance in the whole life scene! Indeed, it is so new that most people haven’t developed the eyes to see this remarkable achievement.

The point is that there would have been no insects or deer had our present-day dictocrats been in charge—not even a worm! Nor would there be any such word as evolution. Yet, human beings in today’s world have evolved far above Cro-Magnon man. Why? Because each human being is free to emerge and grow. Not any one of us, but the Captain, is in charge!

The Great Enterprise is evolution which would be at an end were it dependent upon you or me or any other mortal being. Wrote W. H. Carruth:

A fire-mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where the cavemen dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod—

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God.

It matters not what name we give to Infinite Consciousness—Creation—for we know not what it is, only that it is! Let us, then, “realize the Presence of God” and strive as best we can to grow, emerge, evolve in the direction of God’s Truth and Righteousness!

Let us displace the do-as-I-say way of life with hard work at self-improvement if we would know and enjoy the blessings of freedom.

Thank God, for the Captain on the bridge!

[1] See “Eruptions of Truth,” in my Awake for Freedom’s Sake, p. 22.

[2] See my chapter, “Lessons from Afar” in Vision, pp. 7–13.

12

TO TOLERATE OR NOT?

There are those who believe something, and therefore will tolerate nothing; and on the other hand, those who tolerate everything because they believe nothing.

—ROBERT BROWNING

Nearly everyone feels strongly about something. Reflect on the millions who believe in socialism—something—and have no tolerance whatsoever for freedom. And there are those who believe in freedom—an opposite something—who are intolerant of any individual who does not agree with them.

On the other hand, there are numerous wishy-washy types who are barren of any ideological ideas, who will tolerate this or that something, be it socialism or freedom. Thus, we have examples of both intolerance and tolerance—and both wrong! This matter deserves some homework if we freedom devotees are to discover what we should and should not tolerate.

Here is an insight and a foresight recorded by a Danish physician—A. Bartholini (1597–1643)—which offers a bit of enlightenment on the proper and improper uses of tolerance:

. . . the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members . . . free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies.

I characterize the above as foresight because Bartholini grasped the truth that a few of us have barely learned from historical examples. This Dane, writing 3 1/2 centuries ago, had never heard of the Sumerian civilization. That first freedom-oriented society—5,000 years ago—wasn’t recognized from its dim and buried past until a century ago. Nor did he know about the Venice of Marco Polo’s time. He hadn’t heard of the Physiocrats, or of the turnabout in England following the work of Adam Smith, Cobden and Bright. He was unaware of the revolutionary concept that the Creator, not government, is the endower of men’s rights to life and liberty—the genesis of the American miracle.

Having lectured in Copenhagen and having numerous friends in that country, I learned that Denmark, in spite of many wars and monarchical governments, was in many respects freedom oriented. There was considerable competition and free exchange for several centuries. This explains why Bartholini was aware of the distinction between “free societies” and “closed societies”—between monarchical rule and some freedom being practiced at the same time.

Admittedly, our problem is difficult. Today, in all countries, the vast majority of citizens deplore and despise the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life. To these millions, the free society is abominable, the closed society admirable. This dislike is common to all occupational categories. It finds expression from classrooms—including “economists”—pulpits, business and labor “leaders” and so on. Cause, indeed, to explore!

That free societies are better fitted to survive than closed societies is obvious. However, we must distinguish between what does and does not survive. Is it societies—the people—or governments of the dictatorial brand?

The historical record gives the unhappy answer loud and clear: all-out governments! Despotism is the rule—pun intended! Under dictatorship, how do the people fare? The answer is—poorly. They starve by the millions as in India and other countries. In other nations they are slaughtered or sent to Siberia, or undergo similar calamities. Life span? Short! Adam Smith reported that in the Highlands of Scotland, only 200 years ago, it was not uncommon that a mother had to give birth to twenty children to assure two reaching adulthood. Such was the poverty and infant mortality rate!

Now reflect on the few instances where a people’s government has been limited to invoking a common justice and keeping the peace. These free societies have survived for relatively short periods. But what about the people in these rare circumstances? Limited governments leave them self-responsible and, as a result, they prosper economically, intellectually, morally, spiritually. Life span? The average infant in the U.S.A. has a life expectancy of about seventy years.

According to Bartholini, “. . . the test of a free society is its tolerance of what is deplored or despised by a majority of its members. . . .” Why does this present us with a serious dilemma? A majority of our citizens deplore—even despise—the freedom way of life. These are people who haven’t the slightest idea of the miracles that flow from the self-responsibility that limited government assures. Indeed, they are quite content to live off others and barely tolerate the idea that each should attend to his own life and livelihood.

Now reflect on the other side of our ideological coin—on those of us devoted to freedom. Without question, we deplore unlimited government—authoritarianism. But note this: a vast majority on our side of the coin are just as intolerant of those who sponsor the destructive schemes as the opponents of freedom are of us! Intolerance reigns which, if not overcome, makes a free society impossible. How can such a confrontation be resolved?

Obviously, we cannot rid our society of intolerance by setting our opponents straight. The more intolerant we are of them, the more intolerant they will be of us. Who then should we set straight? Ourselves, of course! And what a task this is—ridding the self of traits that are more or less instinctive or inborn. Only reason can come to the rescue.

Phillips Brooks brilliantly stated what your and my ambition should be:

We anticipate a time when the love of truth shall have come up to our love of liberty, and men shall be cordially tolerant and earnest believers both at once.

To love truth, to love liberty, and to be cordially tolerant: these are inseparable parts of a glorious intellectual triumvirate. Reason suggests that not one of these can be omitted without a collapse of the whole. No argument about the love of truth and the love of liberty; being cordially tolerant is the debatable issue and the one we should examine.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the English poet and critic, writing in 1809, gives us wise counsel: “The only true spirit of tolerance consists in our conscientious toleration of each other’s intolerance.” This is to say that tolerance is never a slipshod or bungling achievement. It has to be conscientious, that is, based on reason of the highest order.

If we wish others to be tolerant, neither you nor I can do much about it except to set a right example. As Burke wrote, “Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.”

Assuredly the first step is to realize how far even the best of us is from Infinite Wisdom. Visualize a ladder extending infinitely into space—no ending. If I have advanced, say to the third step, the tendency is to be intolerant of those on the first and second steps—the know-nothings! Were such intolerance warranted, then those on higher steps are equally warranted in being just as intolerant of me; and those on still higher steps intolerant of them. A world full of intolerance and barren of example!

Unless this fault be corrected, beginning with a few examplars, the free society is not possible, for no society can be both free and intolerant. The remedy? An acknowledgment of an incontrovertible fact: Mortal man possesses only infinitesimal grains of wisdom—regardless of how far up the ladder. We humans are mere fledglings!

For anyone to be intolerant of others is to assess himself as the infallible I, the authority in rendering final judgments. Such authoritarianism is the very opposite of the freedom one avowedly stands for.

Here are four suggested behavioral attitudes:

- No name calling of opponents or of their doctrines—none whatsoever!

- If a nonbeliever in freedom can’t be tolerated, don’t drink tea with him, as the saying goes. Confine your association to those who can enlighten you.

- Let those of us who deplore socialism strive for an improved understanding and exposition of freedom. A preoccupation with what’s wrong is a waste of the time needed for discovering what’s right.

- No individual originates truth. Each is, at best, a receiver of Infinite Wisdom. Thus, life’s ambition should be to tune in to as much wisdom as possible. Intolerance tends to turn off one’s tuner.

Finally, do not be unhappy or intolerant. Remember, we are ordained to live in the world as it is. Have fun by taking a step or two up that ladder of enlightenment. And as we gain tolerance for our differences, the greater is the chance that freedom may grace our mortal lives!

13

THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

Philosophy should be an energy; it should find its aim and its effect in the amelioration [improvement] of mankind.

—VICTOR HUGO

As ever so many are aware, the U.S.A. is experiencing an energy crisis. The reason? Our more or less well-known sources—coal, oil, gas, nuclear—are being energetically controlled by political ordainers—those who order our lives. They know no more about energy than I do! And they are tampering with life’s sustenance.

Every form of life manifests energy. No life, be it a blade of grass or a human being, would ever have existed had it not been for this or that variety of energy. This sustainer of life ranges all the way from atomic to solar energy, from waterfalls, to coal, gas and, for all we know, to radiations from outer space. In the absence of energy there would be no life of any kind. Thus, it is supremely important that we learn not only the means by which energy can be conserved, but how to increase it.

Herbert Spencer suggested that the answer must begin with the individual:

It is for each to utter that which he sincerely believes to be true; and, adding his unit of influence to all other units, leave the results to work themselves out.

By unit, Spencer refers to such infinitesimal bits of truth as each individual may perceive. No two persons experience identical glimpses of truths. Indeed, no individual’s perceptions are precisely the same today as they were yesterday. These tiny bits we experience are in constant flux day in and day out.

When your and my units are added to all the other units, we “leave the results to work themselves out.” Of course, they will best work themselves out to the extent that individuals are free from the dictates of those who are unaware of how little they know.

If individuals and their ideas are free of such inhibitions, how will the results work themselves out? Trillions times trillions of tiny bits of expertise will merge into a truth that is trillions of times greater than that held by any single person. Trillions of tiny sparks combine into a great and glorious light. This is the most difficult point in politico-economic theory, but once this point is grasped the free and unfettered market comes to light.

Should the free market be permitted to prevail, we would have no more problem with energy than with its sources. The results would be as magic as the causes. Thus, what a wonderful opportunity is opened to the very few who have an awareness of this magic!

The question is, how are the few to cash in on this opportunity? What are the right methods? For, if the tactics be wrong, they will only add to the disaster so heartily deplored.

Victor Hugo passes on to us what amounts to a secret guideline. Solve the energy problem, as other problems, by bringing another form of energy to the rescue: philosophy! The following is my way of aiming at the improvement of mankind by calling attention to the wrong ways that the right ways may come to light.

- Forget the “selling freedom” notion! Right method calls for concentration on the improvement of the most approachable person on earth—one’s self. This is practical because accomplishment is possible. This tactic disposes of the numbers problem—the impossible, selling the masses.

- Do not seek followers! It is an inordinate waste of time to seek followers. What seek ye then? The achievement of understanding and clarity of explanation, that is, qualities worth seeking so that those who wish to learn may come upon enlightenment. If you are successful, those with inquiring minds will find you out. All such achievement is a response to the law of attraction.

- Avoid popular jargon! The language in everyday use is wholly inadequate—more confusing than enlightening—when trying to explain how creativity at the human level works its wonders. Finding words for common sense is an endless chore but it is the task for achievers.

- Avoid anger! Anger has a distractive rather than an attractive influence. All that one can learn from angry actions is never to use that approach. What then? Have fun! Working for freedom is joyous.

- Be not downcast! As Goethe wrote: “Miracle is the darling child of faith.” Pessimists, those who insist that a return to the freedom way of life is hopeless, reduce rather than increase the chances. Success is spawned by the few who sincerely believe that the right will someday prevail. History bears witness to this fact.

- Never resort to name calling! Calling ideological adversaries “fools” or to even think of them as such is to assign that derogatory status to self. True, they do not know very much, nor do the name callers. By calling you a fool, I label myself one. Let criticism be directed at fallacious notions, never at persons!

- Beware of short-run gains! Short-run gains, if not consistent with the long-run objective, take one down the wrong path. A tricky phrase may cause another to say, “I agree.” That’s a house built on sand; it will quickly fall. Freedom of one and all to work creatively as they please is an eternal verity and should be so understood and explained. Let the long run—eternity—be the guide to human action.

- Do no wrong to anyone! As Confucius declared about 2,400 years ago, “Do not unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.” If you are opposed to being plundered and having others dictate how you should live your life, then plunder no one and never attempt to rule over others. This is the oldest and wisest of all maxims—the Golden Rule. When observed, each individual is free to act creatively as he or she pleases—no man-concocted restraints against personal emergence. For freedom’s sake, let each of us be an exemplar of the Golden Rule!

- Admittedly, the above suggestions run counter to the views of many freedom devotees. The reason? They observe the advance of socialism through the use of coercive measures. But what they fail to see is that the tactics for destroying a free society are the very opposite of those required to create a free society. Never employ a destructive method to achieve a creative objective!

Finally, our gratitude to Victor Hugo who in his great novel, Les Misérables (1862), gave us an invaluable truth: philosophy should be an energy which finds its aim and effect in the improvement of mankind. Here we have an intellectual energy that assures, not only the conservation of those energy forms by which we live and prosper, but their increase. Summarized, this is the freedom way of life!

14

VIOLENCE: THE STRIKER’S TOOL

Where there is no violence, that is, no coercion or intimidation—actual or potential—not a single strike is possible.

—GORDON CONKLIN

A striker is usually depicted as a labor union member willing and able to resort to violence to gain his ends. However, violence as a means of achieving ends is a common occurrence. Strikes are resorted to, more or less, in all walks of life: education, business, even religion—the Crusades, for instance. Persons who try to achieve their objectives by the use of violence or the threat thereof—strikes—are quite illogical in criticizing those who strike back at them. This would be comparable to Hitler’s opposing Mussolini on grounds that the latter was a dictator.

Violence is defined as an “unjust use of force of power, as in the deprivation of rights.” Violence is an abuse of human rights. In no instance does it properly manifest enlightened self-interest.

Why begin by reflecting on labor union strikes? Because everyone—those who do and do not participate—are intimately familiar with their use of coercion and/or intimidation. If one can grasp how union violence—an unjust use of force—is a deprivation of human rights, he will understand how violence wreaks its damage when employed by politicians or businessmen or whoever.

A labor strike is a refusal to work unless certain conditions of employment are met; but this is by no means the same thing as quitting a job. The right to quit this or that employment is one of man’s most precious rights. During the past 70 years—ever since boyhood—I have had not less than three dozen employments ranging from door-to-door selling of milk at 3¢ a pint to my present position at FEE. Two of the jobs turned out to be disagreeable—not liked at all! Thank heaven I could quit—and did!

Suppose there were no right to quit, stuck for life to a job assigned by a dictocrat as in Russia—sweeping streets, for instance. This is to reduce a man to the level of a robot! What an abuse of human rights!

Nor should we ever question the moral right of workers to quit in unison, unless this violates a contract. Let all workers of any employer express their disagreements or dissatisfactions by simultaneously quitting. Such freedom of choice should be upheld. Mass quitting does not qualify as a strike.

What, then, is a strike? It’s when violence is brought into action; it’s when coercion is used to keep others from taking the jobs that have been vacated! Here we have freedom of choice denied to three sets of people: (a) the workers who would like to stay on the job; (b) the employers who would like for them to do so; and (c) those consumers who are deprived of a vital service and denied access to alternative sources of supply. Where there is no violence or intimidation—threats—there is nothing that fits the definition or conditions of a strike.

However, every year there are thousands of strikes not only by workers against business firms but by teachers, engineers, airline captains, stewardesses, longshoremen, on and on. Why this organized depravity? Who knows all the reasons for such ignorance? An inability rationally to interpret self-interest is assuredly one explanation. And doubtless these people are the victims of fashion—strikes being fashionable in our time. As Charles Mackay wrote: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one.”

One of these—a labor union member, for instance—might be able to recover his senses by reflecting on the following example of a strike. Let him go to an M.D. with an ailment. After the examination, the Doctor advises, “You will need to see me for 30 minutes each week over a period of six months.” Wondering if he could afford it, the patient asks, “How much?” The Doctor replies, “$10 per visit!” Our worker finds himself in a novel situation: As a patient he is now the employer; the Doctor an employee.

On a visit some weeks later, the Doctor announces, “From now on my fee will be $100 per visit. Agree to my demands or I will no longer administer my treatments. Further, our medical union will not permit any other doctor to do so.” In other words, no one will be allowed to take the job this doctor has vacated.

The above situation is accurately analogous to the strikes that daily bedevil our society. Yet, it would be difficult to find a single labor union member who would agree to having done to him that which he advocates and does to others. What an affront to the Golden Rule!

As Emerson wrote, “The end pre-exists in the means.” Violence is the means of conducting a strike—an evil means. Equally evil are the results of violence. Furthermore, evil begets evil far more than is commonly realized. Strikes cause others by the countless thousands to strike back; those who are harmed resort to violence as a thoughtless and unjust means of rectifying the damage done to them.

A single example may suffice to illustrate the point. Strikes against a business, whether of short or long duration, cause stoppages in production. The result? No profits for a spell, perhaps even bankruptcy! How do some businessmen redress such a calamity? They solicit government to thwart competition, domestic and/or foreign, by tariffs or embargoes—barriers to free exchange. How enforced? By the governmental police power’s use of the same kind of violence exercised by labor unions. The point is that those who strike back in this fashion are in no position to criticize labor union tactics!

What, then, is the appropriate strategy against violence? Condemning the wrongdoers does little good. Instead, explain the folly of violence—regardless of who the practitioners are. That’s the first step. The next step is far more important: be a rightdoer one’s self. How? Practice and learn to demonstrate with an ever-improving clarity the freedom way of life—the Golden Rule in the politico-economic realm!

To say that one has the right to strike or to strike back is comparable to saying that one endorses monopoly power to exclude competition; it is saying, in effect, that government-like control is preferable to voluntary exchange between buyers and sellers, each of whom is free to accept or reject the other’s best offer. In other words, to sanction a right to strike or strike back is to declare that might makes right—which is to reject the only foundation upon which civilization can stand.

Lying deep at the root of the strike syndrome is the notion that an employee has a permanent property right in any given job, once he has begun working at it. The notion is readily exposed as false when examined in the above patient-physician relationship. A job is a voluntary exchange of labor for wages, under contract, at terms mutually agreeable to employer and employee. Either party may quit or terminate the job if mutually agreeable terms cease to prevail; but there is no further right to a job that has been vacated.

Those of us inconvenienced and endangered by strikes and counterstrikes are ill-advised to vent our wrath on the participating warriors. Rather, our censure should be directed at the false idea that there is a moral right to strike or to meet violence with violence.

To repeat, violence or the threat thereof is contrary to the enlightened self-interest of everyone and is an abuse of human rights. Instead of organizing strikes and counterstrikes, in an exchange of evil for evil, let us dwell on the virtues of freedom and its unlimited opportunities for one and all!

15

SOCIALISM: LEGALIZED EVIL

The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.

—EDMUND BURKE

Numerous persons—from Confucius to Henry Hazlitt—have insisted that the only way to capture an idea is to write it out at once; otherwise, like a dream, it is gone forever. I try to follow this counsel, and so I have kept a daily journal for years. Last evening I came across this recording of some 17 years ago, “Socialism is legalized evil,” a truth I had forgotten. It was revealed to me by the late Bradford Smith, a brilliant economist and one of the greats among freedom devotees. I am in his debt.

I am also in debt to Edmund Burke for his wisdom. Why is it that millions of good men do nothing about the triumph of this particular evil—socialism? In the first place, they do not know what socialism is and, secondly, even if they did know, they would not regard it as evil, so highly is socialism praised in our day and age. They are good men in the limited realm of what they know to be good. All of us have our limited realm.

Good men, in order to do something rather than nothing, must know what socialism is. Here is its double barreled definition:

Government ownership and control of the means of production: THE PLANNED ECONOMY. Government ownership and control of the results of production: THE WELFARE STATE.

Were the title, “Communism: Legalized Evil,” many of the good men would readily agree. But they fail to realize that communism and socialism are basically one and the same! The Russians concede this by calling their nation the USSR—Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Furthermore, the term Nazi was a derisive abbreviation of National Socialism. Communism, Nazism, Fascism, the planned economy and the welfare state are modern forms of authoritarianism, differing only in inconsequential details. Socialism is an apt designation for the whole kit and caboodle!

With the above definition in mind, there is no need to question the legality of socialism. Socialism is legal because everything that government does is legal, that is, authorized by law. But not everything government does is right! One definition of “govern” is “to restrain; hold in check.” When government is limited to restricting the destructive actions of men—fraud, violence, misrepresentation and the like—and invokes a common justice, it is good rather than evil. The U.S.A. once stood as history’s best example of limited government—the model.

Another definition of “govern” is “to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage.” This is precisely the kind of governing exercised by socialism. It is nothing more than a modern adaptation of primitive “thinking.” And it is as evil as can be!

Good men, when they understand the nature of the Planned Economy and the Welfare State, will see that socialism is evil. And by evil I mean “morally bad or wrong; injurious; bringing misfortune; anything that causes disaster,” as my dictionary puts it.

The means of production in any economy are creative human energies—such as discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes, capital formation in the form of savings, physical as well as mental exertions. Is it not true that all creativities have their origin in the individual—no exception? And is it not self-evident, also, that no two individuals are remotely alike in creative abilities? Each human being is unique! Because each of us is unique, it is morally wrong to treat people as replaceable parts in the social machinery, mere means for achieving some national plan or other.

The Planned Economy is morally wrong in conception, and it breeds additional wrongs. To illustrate: Some years ago, I described the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life to a candidate for Congress. His rejoinder: “I completely agree with your philosophy but I shall not take that position in my campaign. Were I to do so, I would not be elected.” This man chose to bear false witness as do millions of politicians and bureaucrats. Bearing false witness is immoral!

Next, why is the Planned Economy disastrous? Instead of individuals seeking their own creative ventures—each task unique—substitutes take over. Who are they? With some notable exceptions, they are, as mentioned above, the millions of politicians and bureaucrats who choose to bear false witness—immoral “planners” of our lives.

Reduce this political plague to understandable dimensions—you and your son. Now assume that you are as brilliant as any one of the U.S.A.’s top officeholders. How competent would you be to plan your son’s way of life, what his creative talents shall be, what he shall invent or discover, the Divine Wisdom he shall intercept? Is it not obvious that you cannot plan even your own future in these respects, let alone your son’s? You haven’t any more idea of what new thought will grace your soul tomorrow than I have. All of us are faced with the unknown, now and forever.

Reflect on the parents of Confucius or Socrates or Leonardo da Vinci or Mozart or Thomas Edison. These parents knew absolutely nothing of their offspring’s oncoming genius. Indeed, these geniuses-to-be did not know what was in store for them!

The Planned Economy is featured by power mongers—bearers of false witness—who haven’t the slightest idea of how little they know. They do not even know of your and my existence! Yet, they never question their ability to govern all of us in that primitive, barbaric sense: “to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage.” They substitute their know-nothing-ness for the miraculous wisdom of the free and unfettered market—each free to act creatively as he pleases. Limited government? That idea never would occur to one who presumes to know everything, and for precisely the same reason: blindness!

In today’s U.S.A. no one can count the ways these dictocrats rule our lives. Their controls range from the shape of toilet seats, to where we shall work and for how much, to what and with whom we may exchange, to what part of our own income we can retain, to countless other utter absurdities.

Any coercive control that squelches anyone’s creativity is disastrous. The Planned Economy takes first place and, thus, it is evil! Unfortunately, it is also legal.

The second type of socialism is the Welfare State: government ownership and control of the results of production. Is this evil? Yes, for it is wrong in conception and it breeds additional wrongs.

All good men will concede that blackmail—“to coerce (into doing something) as by threats”—is evil. Is not the oft parroted Marxist line, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need” precisely the same evil, that is, when coercively implemented? It is a sin—the breaking of moral law. One of the wisest observations relating to this thesis was written in antiquity—no one knows precisely when. It is from that sacred Hindu text, The Bhagavad-Gita:

Sin is not the violation of a law or convention . . . but ignorance . . . which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others.

It is not only thieves who seek their private gain at the expense of others; millions of good men do likewise—and quite innocently. Reflect on the vast number of people the government pays for not working, or not farming; think of the countless thousands of other private gains at the expense of producers. Even producers fall into this trap, baited with subsidies, restrictions of competition, and so on. Uncomprehending naivete—but evil, nonetheless!

Government produces nothing on its own. If it is to own and control the results of production, it must either seize such goods and services from producers or raise the funds with which to purchase them. If direct taxation does not yield sufficient funds, then government will tax indirectly by diluting the medium of exchange—Inflation! Additional inflation—legal monetizing of debt—has occurred every year for the past several decades.

All subsidies or giveaways depend upon prior production. If there were no production, there could be no giveaways. That government should have become the instrument of such coercive redistribution is a far cry from the limited role it once served in the U.S.A.

Why do so few good men give so little heed to the present slump into socialism? Because they are enjoying the prosperity that still exists! What they fail to grasp is that our well-being rests solely on the individual creativity that socialism has not yet destroyed!

Assuming that this analysis is reasonably correct, should we be discouraged? Of course not! As Rudolph Steiner counseled, “Try to find the good in the bad. It is always there.” For a sample of my findings, see “Out of Evil: Good!”[1] One will then see why I applaud this mess as a necessary steppingstone to the turnabout now in the offing! Confront the true character of socialism squarely and its evil nature is starkly revealed. And then we pray: DELIVER US FROM THIS EVIL!

[1] See Chapter 24 in my book, Vision, pp. 132–138.

16

WHO SHALL RULE THE RULERS?

Men are marked out from the moment of birth to rule or be ruled.

—ARISTOTLE

This remarkable thinker, a pupil of Plato, made the above observation about 23 centuries ago. While it does not make much sense to Americans of our time, it was a candid observation of life in his time. Why? The Greeks of Aristotle’s day were born into a rigid caste system from which there was little escape. To be born a slave committed a person to that low grade for life. On the other hand, to be born the son of a ruler made a Greek eligible for rulership. Politico-economic darkness!

The very opposite of that low grade way of life had its inception in 1776 with the Declaration of Independence and the supplementary documents—the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Government was limited more than ever before in history, having nothing on hand to dispense nor the power to take from some and give to others.

Slavery? Except for that one horrible error imposed on Negroes for a time, it made not one whit of difference as to one’s station—rich or poor. A memorable example is a lad born (1809) in abject poverty. “Of formal schooling he had almost none; the scattered weeks of school attendance in Kentucky and Indiana amounted in all to less than a year. Yet so avid was he for learning that he schooled himself.”[1] This lad, Abraham Lincoln, became the 16th President of the U.S.A.!

America—the land of the free—with opportunities unlimited! From the time of Lincoln’s birth to the present day untold millions have realized their life’s ambitions contributing, often unknowingly, to our country’s wondrous ascendancy. And a large percentage of these individuals were born in poverty. During my many years of exploring the miracles of freedom, I have been acquainted with ever so many who rose from poverty to become top-ranking leaders in their chosen fields. Whence these unprecedented blessings? Freedom of choice for everyone regardless of birth!

Regrettably, for the past several decades, we Americans have been slumping—sinking into the identical politico-economic bog from which our forebears escaped. From enlightenment to darkness! From a government of strictly limited power to a condition of rulers unlimited. If we are to again get on the right track, we shall have to find the correct answer to who shall rule the rulers! More precisely, how shall we curb this ruling passion?

The root of the problem was seen by Tacitus, a Roman historian of about 19 centuries ago; “The desire to rule is more vehement than all the passions.” The passion for personal riches or fame or notoriety is rarely as vehement as the passion for power to run the lives of others—to rule.

As Burke wrote, “Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.” Briefly, the lust for such power stems not from the strength but a weakness of character. Thus the millions of power mongers: weaklings who know not how to run their own lives, although they “know” how to run yours and mine!

Now to our role—what can we do to replace the oncoming darkness with the light of freedom? The answer is as simple to state as it is difficult to achieve: promote an understanding and practice among more and more Americans of an all-too-rare wisdom.

The rare wisdom in question was pronounced by Herodotus, another Greek living two centuries before Aristotle and known as “the father of history.” Here it is: “I desire neither to rule or be ruled.” And these are not twin desires, but one. For every would-be ruler is hopelessly ruled by his desire to rule. To be free, he must free himself of any such desire.

Conceded, the millions incapable of overcoming their passions to rule—dictate how our lives should be lived—are hopelessly lost to our cause. And the same may be said of the millions who prefer a robot status to individuality—being one’s own man! On the basis of numbers, the score is at least 100 to 1 on the power monger side. Discouraging? Of course not! Every good movement in the world’s history has been led by an infinitesimal minority. May you and I aspire to be among these few!

The Greeks of antiquity continue to enlighten us, not only by posing social problems but also in making excellent suggestions for their solution. Wrote Epicurus about 22 centuries ago:

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots gain their reputation from storms and tempests.

This wise man’s philosophy prescribed a life of pleasure “regulated by morality, temperance, serenity, and cultural development.” What could be a greater pleasure than living in strict accord with this moral premise!

That the power mongers are analogous to storms and tempests is self-evident. Surmounting them is, indeed, difficult. But what greater glory could we experience than getting a few others to share with us the wisdom of wishing neither to rule or be ruled!

Finally, those of us who aspire to the free society can realize our goal only as we (1) understand and obey the basic principles—rules—of morality and ethics, and (2) succeed in limiting civil law to assuring liberty and justice for one and all alike. This is the formula for ruling the rulers out of existence!

[1] See the Columbia Encyclopedia, p. 1187.

17

THE DANGER OF SUCCESS

Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it is as a last year’s nest from which the bird has flown.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER

Just as I was preparing as moderator to adjourn a weekend seminar in Wisconsin, a college president interrupted. He asked, “Isn’t it true that the more complex the society, the more government control we need?” Here is the ensuing dialogue:

“Joe, let’s assume that I am as brilliant as the President of the U.S.A. How competent would I be to run your life, to dictate what you should learn, what goods or services you should produce, how many hours you should work, what and with whom you should exchange?”

“You would not be competent to do that.”

“That is the correct answer. Now, let’s assume that I am to run the lives of the 80 participants at this seminar. What do you think of that?”

“Utterly absurd!”

“Again a correct answer. Lastly, let’s assume that I propose to run the lives of the 200 million citizens of our nation. What’s your answer to that?”

“Let’s adjourn the meeting.”

“Meeting adjourned.”

This President, a leading “educator,” was afflicted with a fallacy typical of the fuzzy notions that afflict a people once successes have come too easily and, thus, are not understood. Would that all such fallacies were as easily disposed of as his! But they are not! Once success is achieved without the reasons being grasped, it is, indeed, like last year’s nest from which the bird [understanding] has flown!

Success is not dangerous when we grasp the causes; it is loaded with danger when we are blind to them. Our early ancestors, by and large, knew the causes of success. It was hard work from morning till night—everything from sawing wood to growing and harvesting corn to making candles. The correlation between productive labor and having the wherewithal needed for survival was simple; reward was clearly proportioned to effort. The bird was in the nest!

The bird is no longer in the nest. Why? The early and clearly recognized correlation between labor and productivity—physical and intellectual—served as a springboard for successes today, and so fantastic, that hardly anyone traces the effect back to causes. Only a handful of people are aware of the dangers of such ignorance.

A good example might begin with an observation by an author unknown to me: “The known is no longer a problem.” That is to say, once we know how to harness electricity, for instance, its power is available to serve a variety of purposes. But what about the unknown? Reflect on what has happened in this single field of electricity since the days of Benjamin Franklin: there have been so many discoveries that no human being is aware of more than an infinitesimal fraction of them. Typical, is a new telephone system just installed at FEE. The heart of it is an electronic switching panel having hundreds of thousands of transistorized circuits. How many know the causes of this fantastic wonder? Few indeed.

There are millionaires by the thousands who haven’t the slightest idea as to why they are wealthy. Day laborers? I have just read of a beer company where ordinary workers receive salaries of $21,000 annually. What a contrast to a job of mine over 60 years ago! The pay? Five cents an hour! How easy for me to learn the connection between hard work and productivity! The above-mentioned beer workers typify millions of workers in all walks of life who are utterly unaware of this relationship. Confusion reigns! We must know why and the form these dangers take. If this can be done, perhaps the remedy will be clear.

The above must not be taken as approving the labor theory of value—the worst of all fallacies having to do with economic theories. Omitted for brevity’s sake are the first causes of economic success: capital formation and free exchange. Generally understood? By about as many as know how to produce Grand Operas! Free exchange is giving ground to forced exchange, and the results are dangerous, indeed! Some reflection on the form these dangers take would seem to be in order.

Here are three observations that should be self-evident:

- We are the most advanced division-of-labor society that has ever existed.

- We are more specialized than any people have ever been.

- Thus, no people have ever been further removed from self-sufficiency than present-day Americans!

For example, I do not know how to raise the many varieties of food I consume, to build the house I live in, to make the clothes I wear or the car I drive, to generate electricity or get gas from Texas used for heating and cooking in New York—on and on!

To confirm this situation, merely imagine how well you would fare were you to live only on that which you now do or even know how to do. You would perish! And so would all Americans!

The absolute impossibility of self-sufficiency—no one can any longer go it alone—sheds light on an incontrovertible fact: We—all of us—are interdependent! Individual survival depends upon the free, uninhibited exchanges of our specializations! There are several hundred million specializations, for each individual has a bit of unique expertise, and ever so many have two or more specialties.

Another self-evident fact: Primitive barter cannot be relied upon as a means of effecting exchanges in a highly specialized society. Merely reflect on the absurdity of trying to exchange The Freeman for a set of golf clubs, or chickens for an airplane seat, or a painting for a gallon of gasoline, or any one of countless specializations for all the other these and thats. Impossible! What then?

Instead of primitive barter, our highly specialized society requires a medium of exchange: money. When honest, money works infallibly, no one giving its workability a second thought; productivity increases and exchanges multiply. However, when the causes of our miraculous economic ascendancy are not understood, inflation—a dilution of the medium of exchange—sets in. Printing money is easier than producing goods, and today inflation is on the rampage!

Why this monetary nonsense? Millions of unaware citizens regard the enormous aggregate of marketable goods and services as a huge grab bag to be plundered. How is this plundering “financed”? By the issuance of so-called legal tender, that is, by fiat or irredeemable paper money: inflation.

The millions who coercively take the fruits of your and my labor unto themselves are not only unaware of the causes of economic affluence but they are equally unaware of the sin they commit. Theirs is the sin of ignorance. Can this be enlightened? Finding explanatory words is our problem—words that will “strike home.”

In a previous essay I coined the acronym: LOOT—Living Off Others Thoughtlessly.[1] Who wouldn’t shy away from being known as a looter? The few who understand the detail here at issue gave this essay their approval, ordering many copies. The sinners? To my knowledge, no effect!

So let’s try hold ups as a descriptive term for what’s going on. Strikes are not only legal, but they are unbelievably popular. Yet a strike is no less a hold up than the action of a robber with a gun: “Give us higher wages with your money or your company is out of business.” That dictate, backed by force, is equivalent to the use of a gun. But not many union members would like to think of themselves as robbers.

Name a field of activity in which hold ups are not a feature. Embargoes or tariffs are no less hold ups than strikes; they are resorts to force as a means of killing competition. Rent control, the Gateway Arch and literally thousands of other examples of getting one’s way at the expense of others are hold ups.

Perhaps the most striking and incongruous example is to be found among the clergy—individuals who claim the Holy Bible as their guide. Merely reflect on the countless thousands of them who, from their pulpits, advocate all sorts of political interventions—from social security, to public housing, to progressive income tax. Ordained preachers who advocate this and that form of socialism display no understanding of Exodus 20:15, “Thou shalt not steal.” This Commandment undeniably presupposes private ownership. The idea of stealing that which is not owned is absurd; and stealing that which is owned is a hold up.

Henry Ward Beecher was certainly right when he observed that success is full of promises—till men get it! And our fantastic successes will continue to be a politico-economic threat unless we succeed in putting the bird back in the nest—that is, regain an understanding of the causes of ownership and free exchange.

Your and my responsibility is to put that bird back in the nest. To the extent that we succeed will our country regain the title: land of the free and home of the brave—brave enough to stand for freedom!

[1] See my book, Vision, pp. 14–19.

18

PROBLEMS MIRACLES POSE

A miracle is a work exceeding the power of any created agent, consequently being an effect of divine omnipotence.

—ROBERT SOUTH

A miracle, according to the dictionary, is “thought to be due to supernatural causes,” or, as the English clergyman, South, has it, “divine omnipotence.” All miracles do, indeed, exceed the power of any created agent, that is, any man past or present. And unless a divine source or cause of miracles is recognized, the resultant confusion can lead to chaos—a point that requires some explaining!

My son and I were peering out of an airport window at a 747 jet and I wondered aloud what George Washington would have said had he seen this miracle. Responded my son, “I’ll never touch another drop!”

The Father of our country never saw an airplane and perhaps never dreamed of one. Yet he, along with a few other patriots, embraced a fundamental and profound truth which they set forth in the Declaration of Independence. I believe this spiritual truth is responsible for the 747 jet and millions of other miracles.

These spiritual and intellectual exemplars did not have material miracles in mind but only moral and ethical principles that would permit Americans to be self-responsible—each his own man! They sought an escape from the kind of authoritarian rule that had, with few exceptions, plagued societies since the dawn of history. The truth they discovered correlates with the supernatural or God or Infinite Consciousness or the Creator—call the Divine Omnipotence what you will. And here it is, the very essence of Americanism:

—that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain Unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Here we have the greatest wisdom ever written into a political document. It unseated government as the endower of men’s rights and placed the Creator there!

It is one thing to write such a revolutionary concept but quite another matter to implement it—put it into practice. There followed a few years later the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These limited government more severely than ever before in history—hardly any organized force standing against the release of creative human energy.[1] Government was so limited that it had nothing on hand to dispense nor the power to take from some and give to others!

When citizens cannot turn to government for security, welfare or prosperity, to whom or what do they turn? To themselves! Result? Self-reliance and the greatest outburst of creative energy ever known—miracles by the millions. It is important to keep in mind that the genesis of these miracles was not the deliberate intent to effect a miracle; they were the fruits of a heavenly principle: that man’s rights are the endowment not of government but of the Creator—the exclusive source of all creativity!

Comments on a single miracle—the airplane—will make my point. George Washington would have stood in awe of the Wright brothers’ first plane, which did no more than leave the ground and flutter in the air for a few moments. Move ahead a few generations and imagine his astonishment had he witnessed the fantastic performance of one of the planes I rigged in World War I—the Sopwith Camel.

Suppose he could have foreseen the 747 jet, that miracle with about 5,000,000 parts; and no one knowing how to make a single one of them! Who can imagine his reaction to this glory of the heavens! Transportation at 500–600 miles per hour as compared with his fastest—on horseback. This miracle of ours can fly around the world in about the time it took him to ride from Mount Vernon to Jefferson’s home—a mere hundred miles. Interestingly, Washington and his compatriots, unknowingly, set the stage for that jet and millions of other miracles!

No one can foresee the blessings that will flow from human actions if the premise be right. Our Founding Fathers received from a heavenly source and bestowed on their countrymen the best politico-economic premise ever written. Assume that we return to an understanding and strict observance of that righteous premise—presently all but forgotten. Should we do so, I can no more imagine the miracles 200 years in the future than Washington could have foreseen the 747 jet. Nor can you or anyone else!

As no one knows how to make a simple pencil or a single part on an airplane, so no one now knows or ever has known how to write the righteous premise. In either case, it is an interception of what Emerson called “immense intelligence”—Creation. Thus, if intellectual and material progress is to grace us, we must accept and abide by the incontrovertible fact that the source of all benefactions is Divine Omnipotence, not elected and appointed officials—government. Even as brilliant a President as George Washington could no more write and act out an eternal truth than he could make an airplane. Would he agree? Here is his answer: “Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”

Our miracles bump into several obstacles or obstructions—which we must understand and overcome. First and foremost are the false opinions which millions of political dictocrats have of themselves. They see themselves as the very opposite of what they are. These naive and vain persons at all levels of government who are unaware of the moral principles that made America great—the source of all creativity—think of themselves as the source of miracles.

Again, let the airplane serve to illustrate their dangerous error. They dictate who can own and operate airlines. No one is free to try; he is only permitted—if the bureaucrats approve. Schedules are coercively determined and so is the question of what airports are open to entry. The same goes for passenger and freight rates. Airports are owned and controlled by governments—on and on.

Regardless of these obstacles, the performance of airlines is miraculous. And the dictocrats in their blindness take the credit! Actually, their intervention and control only limits—forestalls—millions of additional miracles that would otherwise be wrought were the free and unfettered market allowed to function. Unless these regulators are divested of their present power, miracles will, sooner or later, be no more than phenomena of the past!

What of those outside the political hierarchy—those who experience discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes? Persons so graced are to be found in every walk of life, regardless of occupation, race or nationality.

Most of these individuals interpret their contributions to the miraculous as originating in their own minds, unaware that their insights are but interceptions of Divine Omnipotence. As a consequence, they regard their little think-of-thats as personal property, no less than their homes, autos, pay checks or whatever.

By and large, they defend such error as vigorously as they would defend their home against thieves. The discovery or invention is their property, or so they “think”! The forms of defense are countless. A mere sampling: Businessmen fight for tariffs, embargoes and the like; others seek licenses or patents or copyrights or exclusive franchises or some other form of protectionism!

What kind of thinking can bring about a corrective procedure? It must begin with an acknowledgment that every one of these think-of-thats—no exception—is but an interception of the flow of Infinite Consciousness; therefore, any individual who intercepts this or that is no more than a fortunate intermediary!

Patents, for instance: It is a safe guess that more than 99% of all think-of-thats contributing to the miraculous have not been patented. And copyrights? “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” True, we copyright our monthly journal, The Freeman. Why? Only to secure a Library of Congress catalogue number. Note, however, that we permit reprints without request. Briefly, knowing that our works are but interceptions, we wish them to freely flow—share and share alike!

Imagine what would happen if each of us were to share the ideas he intercepts, regarding ourselves as transmitters—not possessors—of the heavenly flow. There would be at least two immediate blessings:

- It is an observed fact that the more we share the more and higher grade are the ideas we receive.

- The resulting miracles would be far more numerous than we can imagine. There would be intellectual enrichment and prosperity would grace the citizenry!

Why an intellectual enrichment? When people have no awareness of The Source, wealth goes to their heads, makes “softies” of them. They give no thought to the problem wealth presents. Instead of solving this and related problems themselves, they refer them to Washington or to some other political body, unaware that political bodies have no competence in this respect—none whatsoever!

However, when Divine Omnipotence is recognized as the source of miracles, the individual finds his place in the Cosmic Design. He is aware that his role is to solve problems—not transmit them into the political arena. This attunement with Creation is the greatest of all intellectual enrichments!

These intellectually enriched individuals never regard wealth as an end in itself. They see wealth as only a means to freeing oneself from the mundane chores of life so that all his hours and days and years may be devoted to interceptions, perceptions—Creativity!

[1] For an excellent detailing of the “no’s” and “not’s” see “Constitutional Restraints on Power” by Edmund A. Opitz (The Freeman, April, 1978).

19

HOLLOW OR HALLOW DAYS?

The holiest of all holidays are those

Kept by ourselves in silence and apart,

The Secret anniversaries of the heart,

When the full river of feeling overflows;—

—LONGFELLOW

It was Friday evening preceding this year’s Memorial weekend. To the airline hostess who was writing tickets to Toronto for FEE’s seminar team, I remarked, “There should be no legal holidays.” Her response, “You are grouchy.” Doubtless others will think likewise about my criticism of this very old, popular and destructive governmental intervention. The question: Can the case be made that legal holidays are no more than hollow days?

The two main themes I intend to stress are:

(1) The declaration of a legal holiday is basically a coercive transfer payment—full pay without work—a tax upon the employer to provide a benefit payment to the employee. It is a cost of hiring labor, a cost of doing business, forcibly imposed by government.

(2) The second theme is more a question: Is a coercively imposed legal holiday the appropriate way to celebrate the great person or great idea or great event that is important to us in this land of the free?

Believing in freedom of choice, I have no quarrel with others taking time off for a day, week, month, year or forever. That’s their business and, thus, no concern of mine. But the nigh unanimous approval or legal holidays deserves a careful assessment. So let’s go around the calendar—January through December.

New Year’s Day is a legal holiday. This year another long weekend! As with several other holidays, the Federal government, with labor union insistence, dictates long weekends. Why? To shorten the work week! What happens? Millions of people get into their cars and jam the highways, going and coming at the same time. Hundreds are killed! That cuts their work week to zero, now and forever. A legal New Year’s Day is, indeed, a hollow day—destructive and hollow of thought.

The thoughtful person will think of January 1st as any other day and go or come back as one would on the 5th or 10th or whatever. Regard it as no more than the first day of the rest of life, and make it the best of all the days so far lived!

February 12—Lincoln’s birthday—is a legal holiday but no stoppage of work on Mondays. The schools do not close and the traffic is normal. This man—one of the greatest—if his thinking be understood aright—would be pleased that his fame has not brought on infamous actions.

George Washington—February 22—has had his birthday legalized at whatever date most nearly approximates a weekend that gives the most time off from work. People are killed by the hundreds every year in his honor!

Next, reflect on how little thought—if any—is given by the holidaying millions to Washington’s part in founding the greatest nation in all history. He was as much the founder of freedom way of life as anyone who has lived! Legalizing a holiday to the Statue of Liberty would accomplish as much in intellectual, moral and spiritual advancement—nothing!

Move on to another legal Hollow Day—Memorial Day—originally celebrated in the North on May 30th and in the South on April 26th, May 10th or June 3rd. It was inaugurated in 1868 for the purpose of decorating the graves of Civil War veterans, that war a national disgrace! The loss of lives in 1978 during this prolonged weekend? Five hundred and forty-two fatalities on the highway and one hundred and thirty drownings! What a way to decorate graves!

If we were really interested in doing honor to those who have lost their lives in wars between nations, we should regard every day as a Hallow (holy) Day. How? Do all possible to replace bureaucrats in international affairs with free traders, the latter being the only ambassadors of good will and peaceful relationships between nations.[1]

Independence Day—the Fourth of July—is a perfect example of how futile and even harmful is any effort to advance high ideas and ideals by merely legalizing a day.

Why Independence Day in the first place? To celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, the greatest politico-economic document ever written! The aim was laudable; the method—a legal holiday—is deplorable! High ideals are never achieved by statist intervention, a denial of freedom to choose.

The high ideal—the very essence of Americanism:

—that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This year, the Fourth of July is on a Tuesday. Millions of citizens will be on the highways by Friday evening, returning to work Wednesday morning. Why is this “weekend” four hollow days? It is no more than a funfest—vacationing.

True, this may be some people’s idea of the pursuit of happiness—no work and all play. However, not one in thousands will give the slightest thought to the significance of accepting the Creator rather than government as the endower of our rights!

A vast majority in today’s U.S.A. are unaware of a single line in the Declaration. Were Independence Day not legalized—everyone having freedom of choice—it is a fair guess that many would honor this occasion by either teaching or learning about the very essence of Americanism—the source of the American miracle!

Labor Day tops the list of my unfavorite hollow days. Why is it always on Monday? The reason should be clear: fewer hours of labor for some 20 million labor union members—and getting paid for their time off!

John Ruskin passed on to us an enlightened assessment of labor:

It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy, and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

But when labor and thought are coercively separated, the price is unbelievably high. Every person who works—whatever the occupation—is a laborer. There are some 70 millions of us who work but are not members of labor unions!

Can we at FEE work on Labor Day? Not as we usually do! The government post office is closed—no mail. Those around the nation we might wish to contact by phone are off for the Labor Day weekend—their offices closed. So far as our labors are concerned, Labor Day is a deadened day!

For me, there is no greater joy in life than my labor. May I and others celebrate the bringing together of labor and thought—day in and day out—as we freely choose!

Thanksgiving Day had its beginning in 1621. Those Pilgrims still alive, following a winter of starvation and privation, gave thanks to the Lord for their blessings.

But as a legal hollow day, Thanksgiving is now featured by feasting and away for a gay old time—Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday. How many in today’s America bow their heads in prayer acknowledging blessings the Pilgrims couldn’t even imagine? Few, indeed!

The rightful alternative to this legal hollow day? Count one’s blessings every day in the year—a daily thanksgiving, each a hallow (holy) day!

Finally, what about Christmas, the day we celebrate the birth of our Perfect Exemplar? Legalized, what do we observe? Far more shopping than worship, the stores more crowded than churches, traffic more in evidence than people striving to approximate His Exemplarity!

Being told by those in political office—a good number being atheists—when to strive for religious perfection is more stultifying than encouraging. So why not do away with this intervention and let Christians and those of other religions pay their homage today, tomorrow—ever and ever!

Acknowledged, we should pay our deepest personal respects to the thinking and contributions to our country by the statesmen, Abraham Lincoln and George Washington. Great men! But reflect on other geniuses, for instance, Emerson, Edison and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.

What would have been Longfellow’s reaction had his birthday been made a legal holiday? Unorthodox as mine! Life’s ascendancy is a private matter—a personal striving for Truth and Righteousness, “the secret anniversaries of the heart.”

If we are to restore the freedom way of life to our beloved America, let all individuals be free to make each day a Hallow—holy—Day. Such would be “The holiest of all holidays.”

[1] For a commentary on the Civil War and how to strive for peace, see the chapter, “War and Peace” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake.

20

ELEMENTARY EDUCATION

Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.

—ANDREW CARNEGIE

The above observation was made by one of our country’s greatest entrepreneurs. In contrast, here is a decree uttered by Napoleon, one of the world’s noted dictators: “Public instruction should be the first object of government.” Would I rather be born the poor boy with work as a necessity or a Napoleon with unlimited power and the wealth of a nation at my command? A sweeping boy, by far! And for understandable reasons.

As an introduction to this thesis, let me recall a story told about Alexander the Great. Leading his armed forces through the countryside, Alexander was informed by his aide that the world’s greatest philosopher was meditating on the hillside. Alexander went to the philosopher and began boasting about how great he was, how powerful, and offered to grant any wish the philosopher might have. After listening to the “great” know-it-all, the philosopher remarked, “Please move aside; you are standing between me and the Sun!”

The curt request, “Move aside; you are standing between me and the Sun,” might also come appropriately from a child in the first grade. All philosophical achievers have had their beginnings in elementary education of this or that variety. Reflect on the obstructions to human progress—creativity in its countless forms—were education limited to Napoleonic tactics with some know-it-all in the educational driver’s seat! There would be no philosophers, no righteousness, no geniuses; only a world populated with programmed robots. Of all the persons never to emulate is the person so naive as to believe we should be like him or her.

All education is, in fact, elementary—assessments to the contrary notwithstanding. Most individuals think of themselves as educated if they have graduated from high school or college. The fact? Even those with honorary degrees or Ph.D.’s are still at the primary level—first graders—as related to the Infinite Unknown.

Look to the Sun—truth and righteousness—not only as a child, but during every moment of earthly existence. Those on the right course will discover and abide by that Socratic wisdom: The more one knows, the more he or she knows there is to know—the more aware that all is elementary!

Public, that is, government education in the U.S.A. may very well have had some of its roots in Napoleon’s dictatorial views such as: “Public instruction should be the first object of government.” And this:

Napoleon now merged the various institutions of higher learning in a new University of France under officials nominated and supervised by the executive power. . . . “No one,” it was decreed, “may open a school or teach publicly unless he is a member of the imperial university. . . .”[1]

If that be the root, then this may be the sequence of its transplanting here. Our brilliant Thomas Jefferson invited his close friend, the brilliant Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, to study and recommend an appropriate form of education for the U.S.A. Du Pont wrote a 161-page book[2] and Jefferson proceeded to implement its conclusions. Public education!

Why du Pont, a physiocrat and at odds with Napoleon on every other matter, should arrive at such a recommendation is difficult to understand, except that he lived a good part of his life in that “educational” atmosphere. Neither Jefferson nor his friend could see the scraggy bush that would grow from these roots.

The scraggy bush did not show up until well into the twentieth century. But now it is growing by leaps and bounds—and so are costs. In a district not far from FEE the taxpayers are forced to pay about $4,000 per student for nine months of “schooling.”

This is not to suggest that all teachers in government schools are indoctrinating students with socialistic nonsense. There are thousands among the millions of teachers who believe in and explain the blessings of freedom. The Dean of one of our country’s largest government universities, for example. During his last year, this man taught a class of seniors, all about to become teachers. He purchased 100 volumes of my book, The Coming Aristocracy, gave each senior a copy as required reading and asked for a 2-page, typed evaluation within three weeks. After the papers had served his purpose, he let me see them. Several of the papers were well prepared; but I was astounded at the number of budding teachers who couldn’t spell words or construct sentences.

I entered the first grade in a small-town public school long before the scraggy bushes had grown—1905. Our teacher for the first four grades was Patience McGinn, an appropriate name—rhyming with “begin,” my beginning. She was brilliant, even teaching mental arithmetic which, today, most college professors of mathematics rarely try. And I well remember the few other teachers for the next seven years who, without exception, were remarkably capable. The coercive aspects of government education had not yet set in to bedevil public education. In those days it seemed right, not at all at odds with Jefferson’s and du Pont’s expectations.

There is, however, more to elementary education than going to school. Prior to my father’s passing in 1909, I walked about two miles to school, delivering milk to numerous customers on the way. By so doing, I learned the relationship between hard work and a quart of milk. That’s one reason why I am grateful for being born a poor lad rather than a Napoleon. Ever so many of us in those days were schooled by the discipline of work, which is so much more advantageous than being born a dictator.

Thank heaven, child labor laws were not enforced in my day. Otherwise, following my father’s demise, I would not have been able to work 102 hours a week, doing farm chores, tending the village store, sweeping it every morning and waiting on customers till 9 P.M. Monday through Friday, to midnight on Saturday, and Sunday forenoon.

Another blessing for which I shall be forever grateful: there were no minimum wage laws. One summer I worked 60 hours every week, my pay being $3.00 for all those hours. Today, that’s about the minimum wage for one hour’s work! Poor lads, back then, loved every minute of such elementary education.

Today, by reason of the scraggy bushes full grown, criticism of “education” in the U.S.A. is rampant, as much by socialists who do not know the causes, as by freedom devotees who do. The socialists are not against government—socialistic—education. It is their ideal and, thus, they concentrate their “thinking” on how to make socialism work. That’s akin to seeking the products and services of work without working!

It would be difficult to find any better explanation for the rapid decline into politico-economic socialism than our socialistic “education”—the scraggy bushes full grown. And, perhaps the remedy cannot begin otherwise than by replacing Napoleonic with elementary education. Were Jefferson and du Pont alive today, I believe they would agree.

Your responsibility and mine is of three parts:

To grasp where lies the responsibility for the education of our children.

To see the utter futility of coercion in education such as compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula and the compulsory collection of the wherewithal to pay the school bills.

To understand how the free market works its wonders in education as it does in goods and services. That’s where the wisdom is.[3]

It so happens that I agree with Andrew Carnegie: “Look out for the boy [or girl] who has to plunge into work.” Each is “the dark horse you had better watch.” Blessings on them! They are the root of what’s good, a root that will grow not into a scraggy bush but will bloom into a beautiful tree.

[1] See History of Western Education by William Boyd (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1950), p. 360.

[2] National Education in the United States of America (Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1923).

[3] For my detailed explanation of these three points, see Chapters 15, 16, 17 in Anything That’s Peaceful.

21

IN SEARCH OF MYSTERIES

The philosopher aspires to explain away all mysteries, dissolve them into light. Mystery, on the other hand, is demanded and pursued by the religious instinct; mystery constitutes the essence of worship.

—HENRY FREDERIC AMIEL

At the outset, an acknowledgment: I am not a philosopher, at least as that remarkable Swiss critic, Amiel, uses the term. I no more aspire to explain away mysteries than to paint a portrait of God or describe what Creation is. What, then, is an appropriate aspiration for personal life? Growth in consciousness—the one reality, the only aspect of man that is immortalized!

What is the clearest signal that the individual is growing in consciousness? Evidence that he or she is standing more and more in awe of everything—when mysteries are on the increase!

Those who demand and pursue mysteries are graced with the religious instinct, as Amiel asserts. These few, quite naturally, are growing in awareness or consciousness; working with that portion of the self which does not perish. They experience eternal life!

Note that in our mortal moments we are gifted with obstacles to overcome. Most people think of day-to-day obstacles as nuisances rather than blessings. These difficulties, however, are steppingstones to becoming. Briefly, we live our mortal moments in the obstructed universe; afterward in the Unobstructed Universe.[1] We enter the latter to the level of consciousness we achieve in the former. Jerome Ellison, in his latest book, shares his findings:

The purpose of the total creation, and of the human life that flourishes within it, is the evolution of consciousness. The whole evolutionary progression, from gas, to stone, to crystal, to one-celled organism, to plant, to animal, to man and beyond, reveals its single-pointed striving toward ever higher, broader, and deeper capacities for being aware, that is, for consciousness.

Mankind today has given itself over to crisis-living, making a great to-do in its press and media about this “crisis” or that—the petroleum crisis, the atomic bomb crisis, the population crisis, the food crisis, and so on. Actually, humanity has only one crisis, a crisis of consciousness. To the most highly evolved minds of our species, ready solutions are already known to all the “crises” just named. The only thing that prevents their adoption is the fact that the mass human mind is still operating at too low a level of awareness to accept them.

The human evolutionary thrust, Julian Huxley has reminded us, has long since passed beyond new experiment in bodily form. Physically, we have been about as we are for many millennia, and will probably remain so. The evolutionary spearhead has transferred its thrust to psychosocial evolution, the evolution of consciousness. Therefore, if you want to realize the ultimate meaning of your life, awaken your sleeping faculties to a new effort of exploration of new ideas, new thoughts, new dimensions, new possibilities. Expand your consciousness, that is, evolve.

As soon as you begin to take even the first few tentative steps in this direction, a new self-confidence flows into your being. Self-confidence is not having everything hunky-dory, or “having it made.” It is not an easy chair where you sit or a house you live in. Self-confidence is a road you travel. It is knowing you are on the right track, regardless of what way stations labeled “success” or “failure” you may pass along the way. When you are evolving your consciousness you are in tune with the all encompassing purpose of the cosmos; you are in harmony with the universe. You are on the right track. Knowing this, you live with a new self-confidence, élan, and poise.

We have already noted that a clue is something a detective uses to solve a case. But clues need to be followed up or the case remains unsolved. These, then, are the four clues to radiant living:

1. Know Yourself.

2. Be Yourself.

3. Trust the Infinite.

4. Evolve.[2]

Growth in consciousness can best be described as a growing awareness of mysteries: the more we know the more we know we do not know. Why is it that so few of us are aware of how little we know? Is it not because our awareness is so infinitesimal that we can barely recognize the tiny stage we occupy!

Reflect on the time when our planet was no more than a hot glob of gas. Its origin? No one has the slightest idea—mystery! A one-celled organism is composed of atoms, but what’s an atom? Total mystery! A plant? No one even knows why grass is green—mystery! Move up the scale of Life: oysters to chimpanzees to men. The higher is less tied down to its environment, and the more does freedom of choice prevail.

Ortega wrote, “A tiger cannot become untigerish.” But humans can become as inhuman as they choose; or, if perceptive enough, can become truly human. If sufficiently advanced in consciousness, humans will concede that everything in the Universe—no exception—is mystery! At this elevated stage, man “is in tune with the all-encompassing purpose of the Cosmos”—harmony!

Does mystery constitute the essence of worship? Yes; striving for and praying for attunement with Creation, grasping the fact that all is mystery, constitutes the very essence of worship. Thanks for that thought, Amiel.

Finally, let us thank Jerome Ellison for his observation: “To the most highly evolved minds of our species, ready solutions are already known to all the ‘crises’ just named” (the petroleum crisis, the atomic bomb crisis, the population crisis, the food crisis, and so on).

What are the “ready solutions” to which he refers? Strict adherence to the various components of the free and unfettered market:

- Government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice, that is, inhibiting all destructive actions.

- Private rather than government ownership.

- Freedom for all citizens to produce whatever goods and/or services they please and to exchange with whomever they choose.

- No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy in any field, be it the religious, educational, the economic, or whatever.

How many people adhere to, understand and can explain with clarity why freedom performs its miracles? To my knowledge, not one! For instance, it is easily demonstrable that no one knows how to make a simple wooden lead pencil. Why do we have them in abundance? We leave their production to the market where the wisdom is.

We do not know what Creation is, only that it is. When every person is free to act creatively as he chooses this is creation at the earthly level, and the results are miraculous. Evolved minds recognize that the remarkable manifestations of individual liberty are no less mysterious than Creation itself.

That’s why freedom is a mystery!

[1] See The Unobstructed Universe by Stewart Edward White (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1940).

[2] The above five paragraphs are from an enlightening book, Life’s Second Half by Jerome Ellison (Old Greenwich, Conn., The Devin-Adair Co., 1978), pp. 167–168.

22

THE PLEASURES OF AGING

While one finds company in himself and his pursuits, he cannot feel old, no matter what his years may be.

—AMOS BRONSON ALCOTT

Some forty years ago Walter B. Pitkin, Professor of Philosophy, Columbia University, wrote a book, Life Begins at Forty. Very impressive!

Ten years ago I reached the traditional three score years and ten. Science of Mind magazine published an article of mine, “Life Begins At Seventy.” Professor Pitkin’s widow read the article and wrote that her husband would have completely agreed.

The copyright date of this, my 24th book, is September 1978, coinciding with my 80th birthday. Why do I pay a personal tribute to this date? It is because each year since 1933–45 years ago—has had a happier beginning than the previous year. I have indeed experienced the pleasures of aging, so why not a few comments on the thought that life begins at 80? If that date be realized, I shall write into my Journal, “How wonderful to be going on 81” and immediately afterward write 80 of my countless blessings—a procedure I have followed for years.

Before beginning this brevity I did some research as to what wise men over the centuries have had to say about aging. To my surprise, most of them were gloomy, distraught—the prospect of old age deadening! My own view is just the opposite: to be 80 years young is far better than to be 19 years old!

Alcott, quoted above, was an agreeable exception. The older one is, the more joy there is in exploring the not-yet-known. As for me, no pursuit gives greater pleasure than delving ever deeper into the freedom way of life.

As age progresses, hobbies of earlier years—golf, curling and cooking—have become mere pastimes. Trying to understand the economic, intellectual, moral and spiritual underpinnings of human freedom is now the one inspiring ambition. Thus, regardless of years, I do not feel old, for no one is ever too old to be instructed. As Cervantes wrote, “One must live long in order to see much.”

Why is this my favorite book? Not because it is any better than previous books, but because it is the latest! Each of these twenty-two chapters has been written as I approach my 80th birthday. My previous book, Vision, also was written and published during the past twelve months! Further, no let-up in travel, seminars, and the many chores at FEE. Continued participation in such pleasurable labors frees one from all fret about the discouraging prospects that the senior years have a tendency to impose. Longevity’s purpose, if seen aright, is learning, not lengthening. Wrote someone, “One does not grow old. One becomes old by not growing.”

We should not, it seems to me, associate life’s beginning with any particular year; life begins at each and every moment when growth in awareness, perception, consciousness is experienced. Assessed in this manner, many lives come to an end in the teens, while others accelerate into the nineties. If eighty seems less likely than forty for a new beginning, the reason is that a tombstone has been erected over the aspiration to grow.

Why do I find so many pleasures in aging? By reason of thoughts originating with me? Indeed, not! From whom? From those I have been fortunate enough to choose as tutors—the thoughts I have gleaned from their books. So let me share some of these thoughts.

The researches of Roger Williams, professor of biochemistry at the University of Texas, makes it plain that no two of us are alike—far from it! Were everyone identical to you or me, all would perish. It follows that there is no single formula for finding pleasure in aging; my prescription might not work for you. Each of us must seek his own formula, one that is consistent with his singular uniqueness. However, the thought of others can light the way to one’s own enlightenment.[1]

Whoever would age successfully must not overlook the importance of good health. Years ago I read The Stress of Life by Dr. Hans Selye, Université de Montreal—the world’s most famous M.D. The lesson? Rid the self of anger, fretting, worry, fear, terror, anxiety about the world going to pot and the like. Dr. Selye presents scientific proof that such emotional experiences generate bodily and life-shortening poisons. Be rid of these traumas; look to the good, the encouraging, the light.[2]

To find support for the idea that most ills are psychosomatic in origin go back well over two millennia and there it is: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” (Proverbs 23:7) Here is modern support from a doctor specializing in psychosomatic illnesses.

For instance, a patient whose parents have both died of heart disease will be anxious about his own heart. When then a normal diencephalic response to an emotion causes the heart to beat faster or when gastric distension pushes his heart out of its usual position, he will be inclined to interpret what he feels as the beginning of the disease which killed his parents, thinking that he has inherited a weak heart. At once all his fears cluster like a swarm of angry bees on his heart, a vicious cycle is established and thus anxious cortical supervision may eventually lead to organic lesions. He and his family will then be convinced that he did indeed inherit a weak heart, yet this is not at all true.[3]

The above is but one of many illustrations of how death is hastened by fears and other warped emotions. In brief, Unless one would speed the deadening process, let him not fear death.

Nothing erases unpleasant thoughts more effectively than conscious concentration on pleasant ones. That is to say, direct the will to focus on the goal that one’s emergent energy is designed to accomplish: expanding consciousness. The mere recognition of this inherent tendency of our nature causes one to concentrate on the positive and to more or less forget the negative side of life. This tends to expand one’s mental faculties, which center around the cortex. A noted biologist gives us an interesting sketch of the problem and the hope:

The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and depending upon physical factors, education, environment, and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with mental decline. There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline, and examples bearing out this contention are only too numerous.[4]

The above authors provide excellent guidelines if one is to experience the pleasures of aging.

Let us now reflect on two questions which appear to be relevant to this thesis:

First, who are the greatest contributors to the pleasures of aging?

Second, what tends to bring on atrophy and mental decline?

In the realm of mortal beings, the true nobles—those who light the way—are our gifted tutors, past and present. Few individuals have excelled Goethe in this respect. And I share once more my favorite example of his wisdom:

Nature [Infinite Consciousness or God] understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

Also, we can pay homage to ever so many others, including such mentors as Amos Bronson Alcott, Professor Roger J. Williams, Dr. A. T. W. Simeons and Renée von Eulenberg-Wiener.

There is more to the observation of such tutors than first meets the eye. A worthy ambition, they quite correctly imply, is “to die with your boots on” or “go down with your colors flying.” For what other reason are we here than to get deeper into life? And if there be any certain key to personal pleasures, it involves the use and development of the faculties—the expanding mind being the most important and, by and large, all that remains for those who are aging. But there is another reason for looking so favorably on those who insist on a perpetual striving, an incessant course of training: Each of us has a vested interest in these intellectual noblemen.

We can live our own lives to the fullest only insofar as they dwell among us. The society in which we live—the environment—is conditioned by the absence or presence of those who persistently pursue excellence. The rise and fall of society depends upon this kind of nobility! These tutors are essential to us, and striving to be numbered among them is a worthy effort and aspiration.

Yet, many persons lack any such aspiration. We witness ever so many promising individuals falling by the wayside, stepping away from life, forsaking the effort essential to life’s full cycle, just when the process of maturing should begin. Briefly, the fruit of life abandoned!

To associate old age with mature judgment is often a mistake, simply because, as Ortega suggested, too many elders react only to external compulsion. The inner development that is prerequisite to maturity tends to terminate too soon, which is why old age, more often than not, is plagued by senility. Yet, the greater the age the richer the maturity, assuming, of course, that the budding process is alive and functioning. In these rare cases, old age and mature judgment go hand in hand, the older the wiser!

If I am not mistaken, freedom is to be expected only in societies distinguished by a significant number of mature and wise men and women. Maturity and wisdom, of the quality required, is reserved to those who retain the budding phenomenon—cortical plasticity—into those years normally associated with physical decline, that is, into the period when maturing of the intellect becomes at least a possibility.

In any event, I am convinced that the type of maturity here in question will never issue among those who, for whatever reason, permit themselves to “die on the vine.” Thus, it is of the utmost importance that we reflect on the obstacles to maturity. If they can be identified, we can, hopefully, avoid or overcome them.

This brings us to the second question: What tends to bring on atrophy and mental decline? Obviously, no one knows all the answers. But here is a factor that may be number one: the retirement syndrome.

Two forces move millions of people toward retirement as a goal: temptation and compulsion. Many people are congenitally lazy, if not physically, at least mentally. Their mental activities have stagnated, leaving them uninteresting even to themselves, let alone to others; they cannot abide their own company or being alone with their thoughts. They seek merriment and diversion supplied by others. Any excuse, however flimsy, to avoid thinking for self! Such persons have no fruit to ripen, no mental activity to mature.

There are others who have had no thought since early adulthood but to “get it made.” By the time that goal is achieved, abstract thought has been too long neglected for reactivation or renewal; half-hearted attempts prove unrewarding, so the temptation is to forswear any conscious effort. Mature thoughts? None!

Ever so many persons of high potential look to a vocation for fame or fortune, and neglect to choose one in harmony with their unique capabilities. As a consequence, the job is likely to be boring; holidays and vacations—little retirements—are highlights of the seasons. As the years pass, full retirement seems more and more attractive; there is no incentive to extend mental activity to its maturity.

The thought of retirement is anathema to me. I have not experienced any of the usual temptations to quit working and, thus, can list only a few of the more obvious examples. But it seems clear that there would be little pressure for compulsory retirement if retirement itself were not a common goal. It seems to add up to this: Let’s formalize and legalize that which the vast majority so ardently favor! The following examples of compulsive forces stem from these common temptations.

Retirement, of course, is a relative term. The shortened work week, enforced by edict, is a case in point. One must “retire” week after week—not work beyond the legal forty hours—or the employer will be forced to a higher hourly rate, in effect, a fine.

Legal holidays seem never to be abandoned even after the cause they were meant to celebrate has been forgotten. Instead, there are countless excuses for increasing their number. Minor retirements en masse!

Social security payments are withheld from senior citizens who elect to work and earn. Activity is penalized, inactivity is rewarded.

Governmental unemployment payments often exceed what some persons could earn by working, thus inducing retirement.

Most corporations, educational and religious institutions, chambers of commerce, trade associations, and other organizations compel retirement at 65; many make it attractive to retire at 60; and we hear more and more of retiring at even earlier years. The sole criterion is the number of moons that have come and gone; whether the budding process is dead, or at its peak, is not even considered. As a consequence of this indiscriminate, rule-of-thumb procedure, many of the nation’s best men are “put out to pasture.”

These illustrations suffice to emphasize the retirement syndrome. It is, today, the common fetish and the end is not in sight. Under these circumstances, it is remarkable that even a few individuals are capable of spontaneous and joyous effort, that is, able to experience the maturing period. No wonder that the perceptive Ortega observed such individuals to “stand out isolated, monumentalized”!

In one sense, it is lamentable that those who have advanced in wisdom and maturity should “stand out isolated, monumentalized.” Far better if there were more such persons, making the few less conspicuous than they are. Not everyone will make it, of course, but maturity surely is within the reach of countless thousands at the modest price of conscious, persistent, dedicated, prayerful effort. Realizing one’s potentialities, whatever they are, may be the highest reward earthly life has to offer.

That my life still begins with each moment can be assigned in part to a stroke of good fortune—vocation and avocation are identical; work and pleasure are one and the same.

In a piece, similar to this one, written at the age of 70, I settled on my retirement policy: Short of effective compulsions to the contrary, I propose to ride my bicycle till I fall off!

Working on behalf of freedom, the pleasures of aging are boundless for me. It is joyous, not tiring, thus, never any retiring!

[1] See You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams (New York: Pyramid Books, 1976).

[2] (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., 1956).

[3] Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M.D. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1961).

[4] See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renée von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

Vision

Leonard E. Read

1978

TO

The Father of our Country. . . . and to all who love liberty and are raising a standard to which the wise and honest can repair

There are two consequences in history: one immediate and instantaneously recognized; the other distant and unperceived at first. These consequences often contradict each other; the former come from our short-run wisdom, the latter from long-run wisdom. The providential event appears after the human event. Behind men rises God. Deny as much as you wish the Supreme Wisdom, do not believe in its action, dispute over words, call what the common man calls Providence “the force of circumstances” or “reason”; but look at the end of an accomplished fact, and you will see that it has always produced the opposite of what was expected when it has not been founded from the first on morality and justice.

—Chateaubriand

Memoirs from beyond the Tomb

1

VISION

Where there is no vision, the people perish.

—PROVERBS 29:18

Vision is the blessing of foresight, but it has no chance of realization without its companion blessing, insight. In the absence of these twin attainments—each within our reach—the people perish, that is, they vegetate rather than germinate, stagnate instead of growing in awareness, perception, consciousness. Vision, therefore—the power of penetrating to reality by mental acuteness—must be developed if our role in human destiny is to be fulfilled.

This commentary is founded, first, on the most remarkable instance of foresight known to me and, second, on an equally remarkable instance of insight. Here is the foresight—by Lord Tennyson (1809–1892), that prescient English poet, and poet laureate during the last 42 years of his life:

For I dipt into the future, far as

human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world and all

the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce,

argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping

down with costly bales.

Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails—Tennyson’s imagination caught a glimpse of our modern aircraft, the magic sails being metal wings. Locksley Hall—from which the above lines are quoted—appeared in 1842 when flying machines were but a dream. Leonardo da Vinci was another of the rare dreamers; he drew sketches of an airplane four centuries before Tennyson’s time.

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales—Air flight, even at night, dropping down with bales—ranging all the way from bags of fresh spinach, air mail, billions of tons of heavy freight to millions of individuals—day-in-and-day-out!

Saw the Vision of the world and all the wonders that would be—Assuredly, Tennyson did not see all the wonders that would be but what he foresaw startles the imagination. Can his remarkable foresight be explained? It seems unlikely, unless by another blest with a comparable vision. Who among us in today’s world can see that far into the future with such accuracy and clarity? Who can see the miracles that will grace Americans in the year 2042? A confession: I cannot see what’s in store for us next year!

There is at least one reason why Tennyson’s foresight was keener than yours, mine or anyone else’s. There have been so many millions of miracles since his day—each the genesis of countless others—that scarcely anyone, however gifted, can see today the wonders in the offing.

To foresee a carriage developing from the wheelbarrow with which one is familiar is one thing. It is more difficult to foresee in the wheelbarrow the miracle of that first plane designed and flown by the Wright brothers. More difficult still—even having seen that first plane—is to envision in it the miracle of the 747 jet. Every bit of knowledge gained opens countless new paths into the infinite unknown—each step forward and upward introducing numerous variables and complexities as well as opportunities.

Analogous to the above, consider the politico-economic situation prior to Tennyson’s time. Mercantilism—no less authoritarian than serfdom or feudalism—had hobbled the people. Under that baneful restraint there were relatively few miracles, and minor ones compared with those that followed. The potential creativity of countless Englishmen was inhibited. Creativity lay more or less dormant—deadened!

However, about 150 years ago the thoughts and ideas of that great thinker, Adam Smith, were beginning to bear fruit through such spokesmen as John Bright and Richard Cobden. These men understood and clearly explained not only the fallacies of mercantilism but the truth of that absolute principle: freedom in transactions. Tennyson was observing the birth of an enlightenment and foresaw some of its fantastic results.

Doubtless, he reflected on the territory that is now the U.S.A. when the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. To describe it as underdeveloped would be an understatement. There was no development! Yet, seven generations later, numerous governments sent commissions here to find the secret of our unprecedented prosperity. Their soils were as fertile, climates as friendly and resources as plentiful. Why were most of their citizens in poverty, many starving? What could the answer be?

Tennyson, being deeply observant and having witnessed the wonderful results when the Industrial Revolution replaced mercantilism, must have seen the answer:

- Government limited to keeping the peace and to invoking a common justice;

- The Creator rather than government as the endower of the rights to life and livelihood;

- Fewer man-concocted restraints against the release of creative energy than ever before in all history;

- Inventions, discoveries, insights, intuitive flashes—think-of-thats—by the trillions, and multiplying.

Tennyson’s foresight was grounded in politico-economic knowledge.

While making no claim to any such keen foresight, I can foresee not the wonders but the disaster that lies ahead if our present decline into the planned economy and welfare state—socialism—continues. Also, I can foresee a return to the ideal society if that indispensable companion blessing of foresight—insight—becomes more generally known and obeyed.

Edmund Burke gave to posterity an appropriate introduction to the remarkable insight I wish to present: “I hope to see the surest of all reforms, perhaps the only sure reform—the ceasing to do ill.” How do we cease to do ill, to be rid of the current socialism? By coming to know—and strictly adhering to—that which is righteous. The Father of our Country, George Washington, bestowed on Americans the insight—the very root of righteousness:

If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.[1]

There is a correct way to evaluate this wisdom: not using the common tactic of looking upon the errors of others, but rather searching ourselves, the face in the mirror: ME!

Do I speak or write to gain favors, wealth, popularity or, if running for office, votes? Or to avoid disagreement or criticism? Is my thinking loaded with “yes, buts”—leaks—ways that I know not to be righteous? If so, could I afterwards defend my work? I could not!

How, then do I cease to do ill? By following as nearly as possible Washington’s advice: Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair, in a word, Exemplarity! As Burke wrote: “Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.”

In this, my task, my indebtedness is acknowledged—not only to Lord Tennyson and his foresight and to Washington and his insight, but also to Burke who was graced with both foresight and insight. Theirs was an attainment to which I aspire.

“Where there is no vision, the people perish.” Where there is vision, the people prosper materially, intellectually, morally and spiritually. My aim: To acquire Vision!

* * *

In this, my 23rd book, there is nothing original except the phrasing, which differs with each of us day by day. As Goethe wrote, “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.”

The chapters that follow represent one man’s striving for vision—foresight and insight; they set forth such findings as I have been able to garner from the wise—past and present. Another source—explained later—is the omnipresent radiation; an “immense intelligence,” as Emerson put it. The ability to intercept the beams of this Infinite Wisdom by finite man appears to gain bit by bit as the result of concentration and a prayerful desire for enlightenment. But no one among us, past or present, can claim originality; the origin of wise ideas is far over and beyond the mind of man.

Finally, why do I share these phrasings with others? There are two reasons. First, I wish others to share their thoughts with me. And, second, the more one shares his ideas with others, the more and higher grade are the ideas he receives. Giving or sharing is the precedent to reception. This is an ancient truth to be found in Acts XX:35: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.”

In the following chapters, I share with you. Now, it is your turn!

[1] Attributed to George Washington during the Constitutional Convention.

2

LESSONS FROM AFAR

Thy blessings upon our freedom associates—near and far, past and present—the perfection of our ideas and ideals, and our strict adherence to them.

The U.S.A. has been sinking into a socialistic society during the past few decades—with rampant inflation and its consequences. Is it possible for us to learn a lesson from freedom associates in a distant land? I am happy to report that there is a lesson to be learned.

Dr. Benjamin A. Rogge, Professor of Political Economy, Wabash College, and I spent a week in Buenos Aires (June 1977)—the most gratifying seven days I’ve experienced in my extensive domestic and foreign travels of the past 45 years.

I had first visited Buenos Aires in 1940. Argentina was then one of the world’s most productive nations. Its producers adhered more or less to free market principles and, as a consequence, its people experienced an unusual prosperity. The peso was worth about 33 of our pennies. Keep this in mind: at that time, just 37 years ago, a 1940 dollar and 3 pesos were of equal value.

Doubtless, the remarkable prosperity had quite a bit to do with subsequent events. As Horace, the Roman of 2,000 years ago observed: “Times of adversity have the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

In any event, free-market thinking lapsed in the Argentine. Result? A Command Society! As an example, government owned the railroads and the resulting deficits were enormous. But ownership and “operation” of railroads was only one among hundreds of government take-overs. How pay for these inevitable failures? The government merely printed paper money to “make up the difference”—a fantastic dilution of the medium of exchange and an unprecedented inflation.

Argentina was one of the world’s major producers and exporters of beef. Could the beef producers sell to the highest bidders? Indeed not! Government compelled each to sell to the government at a far-below-market price and then the government sold to the highest bidders in other nations. These are but samplings of the government’s ownership and control, calling to mind our postal system or TVA.

Into this muddle of governmental intervention stepped Peron and the terrorists! Eventually, the nation was freed of this wild dictocrat who escaped to Spain taking millions in gold coin. But the terrorists remained! What to do? A military government took over with the aim of restoring sufficient order that peaceful elections might again prevail.

My second visit to Buenos Aires was in April 1958 for a series of lectures under the sponsorship of Centro de Estudios sobre la Libertad of which the remarkable free market thinker, Alberto Benegas Lynch, became President. When I arrived, the military was still in command: General Aramburu, President, and Admiral Rojas, Vice President. I interviewed these men and found them favorably disposed to the freedom philosophy. Shortly after my departure, the Military withdrew, feeling all was calm enough to leave the future to a popular election. Frondizi became the new President.

The General and the Admiral gave up their rank and retired to private life. However, the terrorists kidnaped the General, took him to their hideout and later executed this fine man. God bless his soul! The Admiral was more fortunate and escaped the maniacs.

However, Frondizi’s government was unable to maintain law and order. Finally, the “Peronistas” came back to power through elections in 1973—first with Campora and afterward with Peron when the former resigned. For a couple of years things went from bad to worse. Inflation was rising at the rate of 900 per cent annually (more than 75 per cent per month). Argentina was in a chaotic situation. Terrorism was getting stronger and stronger. The only possible remedy? Another Military Government—March 21, 1976—tough and determined to restore order.

Dr. Rogge and I arrived 19 years after I had last been there. What we observed startled our imaginations. The 1977 dollar is worth about one-fourth of the 1940 dollar. Recall that 3 pesos were equal in value to one dollar then. Today, one receives 370 pesos for a 1977 dollar. Meanwhile, in 1969 Argentina had dropped two zeros, converting old pesos to new at 100 to 1. That makes the present peso worth not l/3rd but roughly 1/50,000th of the 1940 dollar!

In spite of this inflation something fantastic is going on. Samples:

1. Never have we observed better dressed people.

2. The stores are aglitter with splendid merchandise and excellent service.

3. Rogge and I never tasted better food in this or any other country and at reasonable rates.

4. I bought a pair of the world’s best shoes for $43.00—for less than the best shoes in the U.S.A.

True, inflation had gone down from 900 per cent to 120 per cent. Is this to suggest that all is well in Argentina? Far from it! Many who were wealthy are in poverty. And millions must be suffering from this government-induced inflation. Yet, obviously, there is some kind of miracle at work. If we can find out what it is, we’ll have a guideline for our own salvation—a lesson from afar.

The answer has to do with the reason why Dr. Rogge and I were in Buenos Aires. We had not sought this engagement but, rather, the sponsoring organizations invited us: Centro de Estudios sobre la Libertad and Fundación Boisa de Comercio. Ever so many in Argentina are searching for help in the restoration and practice of liberty!

Neither of us has ever spent a more intensive week—busy morning, noon and night with lectures, interviews, luncheons, dinners, the latter often lasting until 11:00 P.M.

The five lectures, beginning at 6:30 P.M. in the Stock Exchange, had on each occasion from 700 to 800 in attendance. Never had either of us experienced a more enthusiastic response to the freedom philosophy. A question period followed each lecture and the questions were excellent, all in the spirit of inquiry—no confrontations. By 9:00 P.M. we began refreshments and dinner, the number present ranging from 30 to 100, with intensive discussion.

Each day there was a luncheon sponsored by interested groups and organizations. Eating was incidental; we were there primarily to answer questions for a couple of hours.

On Thursday morning of that week, I was asked to address 200 of the Army’s officers. I am confident that in general they are in full agreement with the freedom philosophy.

The next morning, Dr. Rogge was invited to address 30 officers of the Navy. Afterward, more than an hour of splendid, brilliant questions.

I delivered the final lecture of our series on Friday evening. Following the question period, there was a standing applause of greater duration than I had ever known—not for me but for the philosophy Dr. Rogge and I had been explaining.

The reason, as I see it, that Argentina’s fantastic inflation has not yet destroyed the economy and why productivity is improving, was presented to us some years ago by Thomas Hogshead:

The idea of freedom must grow weak in the hearts of men before it can be killed at the hands of tyrants.

Weak in the hearts of men? Not in Argentina! Never, in all of my experience, have I observed the idea of freedom so strong in the hearts of men as in our recent visit to that country. It is vibrant! Not all the tyrants who ever lived—Peron, Hitler, or the rest—could any more kill this exalted belief than they—in their positions of power—could do away with ignorance. Confronted with an undaunted belief in the freedom way of life, all tyrants become impotent. This belief, and nothing less, will rid humanity of such tyranny—whether of the Argentine or the U.S.A. variety. Up with freedom and away with tyrants!

Success in the form of wealth, fame or whatever—getting ahead of others in any field—is heady stuff. When “What a great man am I!” dominates the mentality, improving talents are not elicited but lie dormant. Argentina’s earlier prosperity spawned adversity. This, in turn, elicited the remarkable talents I have just reported.

The same sequence of dormancy and awakening is evident in the United States today. Many individuals in various walks of life are determined to “save free enterprise.” This determination is step number one.

It’s the second step—unorthodox and thus largely unheeded—that must now be taken. Ours is not a selling but a learning problem! Never try to reach for others. Instead, strive for that perfection in understanding and exposition which will cause others to reach for your achievement. Freedom ideas and ideals can never be injected into the consciousness of another; rather, these ideas and ideals must be sought to be absorbed. Rely exclusively on the law of attraction.

I am unaware of anyone, in this or any other country, who better understands and can more clearly explain the freedom philosophy than Dr. Rogge. I said “better,” not “best.” There are others of comparable talent and their number is growing.

Bear in mind that we did not seek the Argentina engagement; they sought us. Is there proof that this unorthodox tactic is correct and effective? Rogge and others of his stature receive more invitations for lectures and interviews than they can possibly accommodate. Emulate these who are striving for personal excellence; then others—if interested in freedom—will seek your tutorship! The free market, private ownership, limited government way of life bears a far higher price than mere yearning. The price tag reads, LEARNING!

Finally, a doff of the hat to our Argentine friends: We in los Estados Unidos are grateful for your encouragement and enlightenment—lessons from afar!

3

LOOT

He sins as much who holds the sack as he who fills it.

—GABRIEL MEURIER

Richard Weaver wrote a book entitled, Ideas Have Consequences. Ideas do indeed shape our way of life and mold our very being. However, we think in words; and what we mean by the words we use, and what others think we mean by them, may range from the bright lights of creativity to the dark shadows of destruction. The scholarly authors of The Meaning of Meaning (Charles Ogden and Ivor Richards) referred to “the tyranny of words,” meaning, of course, their misuse and the consequent misunderstanding and confusion. As someone phrased it years ago:

I know you believe you understand what you think I said. But I am not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.

Not only do we need to know the ideas and practice the ways, we also need the words to explain how freedom works its wonders. And what words will best describe and explain freedom’s opposite? How does one make it clear that accepting coercively confiscated “benefits” is just as sinful as the confiscation itself? It would seem self-evident that if no one would accept social security payments there would be no governmental plundering to finance the program. And the same is true of thousands of other ignoble schemes.

“He sins as much who holds the sack as he who fills it.” The acceptance of plunder is as sinful as the plundering itself. But where are the words to portray the sinful nature of plunder?

Many of us, over the years, have used the words “special privilege” to describe freedom’s opposite—the plundering way of life. But these words no longer serve to describe the undesirable; they have lost their derogatory impact. So widespread is the practice of plunder that what were at one time devised as special grants of political power—and were more or less clearly recognized as such—are now claimed as the inalienable rights of the special class spawned by such privileges. Among pigs at the trough, there is no stigma attached to the specialist; he may indeed be considered more saint than sinner.

So, why not use another word that has a chance of clarifying our meaning? Let’s try an acronym—the first letters of several truly definitive words: Living Off Others Thoughtlessly—LOOT!

Looting is an accurate synonym for plundering and still carries a sharp verbal sting which most of us would rather avoid. Nevertheless, many among us today are thoughtlessly living off the labor of others.

Throughout history there have been looters of this or that variety. But we seem now to be confronted with a progression of such harmful behavior. As more and more people have abandoned moral scruples—feathering their nests at the expense of others—looting in its countless forms has more and more become a way of life.

Emerson wrote, “Thought is the seed of action.” Honest, moral and sound economic thought results in commendable and creative action; each person serves himself through serving others. But if dishonest, immoral and uneconomic thinking prevails, the results must be harmful, not only to others but to self as well. Such thoughtlessness, then—rather than careful thought—is the seed of actions which presently bedevil us. And the seeds, more often than not, are words with garbled meanings, such as the twisted meaning of “special privilege”—warped from bad to good. The tyranny of words!

It is increasingly evident that countless millions in all walks of life thoughtlessly “live” off others; they loot and they don’t know it. They are the unwitting victims of their own naivete, stumbling along the devolutionary road.

Does a professional thief think of himself as a looter? No, he probably thinks of himself as a professional. He has only a primitive or stunted mentality, like the tribesmen of yore who raided distant tribes and made off with what they thoughtlessly regarded as theirs. Economically illiterate—but innocent!

So, we have in the professional crook an unconscious looter suffering no mental pains but glorying in his “gains.” Exceptional? No, tens of millions fall into this identical category, and with pride instead of guilt.

Frederic Bastiat helps us to see through this shameful practice:

See if the law [government] takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.[1]

It is obvious that government would not take from some and give to others were the others to reject the loot. It follows then, that the recipients of ill-gotten gains are as sinful as the government which effects the transfer by force.

Only the hardened professional criminals—a fraction of the population—would personally so indulge themselves. The vast majority would refrain from immoral action were it a you-and-me relationship. Honesty would prevail.

However, when government does the coercive taking and handing out, most citizens—those who do no thinking for themselves—are relieved of any sense of indulging in crimes. Instead they experience a false sense of absolution. Their lack of vision obscures reality!

In compiling a list of looters, let us take care not to confine it just to the “beneficiaries” of food stamps, medicare, rent control, federal housing projects, workers paid not to work or farmers not to farm, and countless thousands of others engaged in more or less obvious forms of looting. In fairness, we must label all looting as such, and much of it is far from obvious. We must include all instances where coercion, be it private or public, is employed to “benefit” some at the expense of others. The list is too long to count, let alone explain, so a few samplings must suffice.

- In St. Louis it was a Gateway Arch that taxpayers from every state were compelled to help finance. Elsewhere, a school, library, park, dam, housing project or whatever. Is there a community in the U.S.A. without one or more such monuments to looting?

- Minimum wage laws coercively invoked, with strong support from labor unions, cause large-scale unemployment, the burdens of which all taxpayers are compelled to share. This, too, is a form of looting.

- Strikers by the thousands quit their jobs, and the law makes it impossible for others to accept the jobs the strikers have vacated. More unemployment, less productivity, higher prices and taxes—consumers and taxpayers looted!

- Businessmen and their associations obtain legal prohibitions of free exchange, such as tariffs, embargoes, and quotas. They are no less looters than are the striking workmen. How is this looting done? All others are deprived of the opportunity to produce in those fields—the looting or limitation of their livelihood and their lives.

At this point, let us be mindful of that old adage, “the pot calling the kettle black.” For we critics of looting may be looters ourselves. Plundering is so rampant that everyone is involved more or less—unconsciously participating or trapped beyond escape. Doubtless, you are trapped in the social security “lootery.” I am trapped in the socialistic mail “system.” Examples abound. This predicament poses the final question: What should we critics of looting do? What might the right tactic be?

Perhaps another acronym may help to clarify the creative force: Living In Good High Thought: LIGHT!

To see the LIGHT we need what I would call intellectual binoculars. We should see, not with just one, but with both eyes.

The vast majority see with one eye only and, as a consequence, observe merely surface or false appearances. Being half-blind results in discouragement and frustration; it lacks any creative stimulus—life’s mission abandoned.

Fortunately, there are those who see with one eye the falseness of LOOT, and with the other observe the true LIGHT. To thus see beneath the surface brings enlightenment—encouragement. Such persons are aware of the growing numbers who are beginning to see the destructiveness of plunder and how freedom works its unbelievable wonders.

The half-blind see only the shadows. Those with “intellectual binoculars” can share the insight of Goethe:

Where the light is brightest,

the shadows are darkest.

[1] From The Law by Frederic Bastiat.

4

THE SERVICE MOTIVE

Think success, and you will automatically create the circumstances and the movements leading to success.

—MICHAEL LOMBARDI

As Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “an institution is but the lengthening shadow of one man.” The one man, an outstanding exemplar and practitioner of this thesis, was a Japanese—Konosuke Matsushita.[1] Born with a silver spoon in his mouth? Quite the opposite:

Yet all he had to start with in life were ‘three disadvantages’: he was in dire poverty; he was forced to quit school to work as an errand boy at the age of nine; and he was so frail in health that several times he resigned himself to imminent death.

Did he overcome his disadvantages? He developed the largest and most profitable business in Japan’s history!

Instead of being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, he was born with a golden idea in his head. Here it is:

He began by thinking about abundance and decided that the mission of a manufacturer should be to take scarce resources, convert them into products, making them available at decreasing prices that a better life might be had by all!

Reflect on such an unusual—indeed, exceptional—mission by a manufacturer. While Matsushita insisted on profitability as the true measure of management efficiency, he explicitly forbade the pursuit of profit as the motivation of his business. The motivation must be better and better products and at lower and lower prices. He cast his eye on service—serving the consumer[2]—rather than profitability. By so doing, his customers had more for less and a remarkable profitability was the result: the true measure of management efficiency.

Materially, this man began in abject poverty; physically, he was frail; intellectually, he was graced with a wholesome motivation and the good thoughts that made it workable. For him, good thoughts were the wellspring of material success and a life of creative activity. Let us hope that good thoughts may direct our lives as well!

Am I suggesting that the great thought—the service motive—was original with Matsushita? No, but he may have thought it was. Countless persons have had this thought; it popped into their heads, as we say. Wrote Goethe: “All truly wise thoughts have been thought already thousands of times.”

This truly wise thought was phrased in resplendent clarity by Arthur F. Sheldon previous to its adoption and practice by Matsushita:

The science of business is the science of service and he profits most who serves best.

Sheldon’s statement was adopted as the motto of Rotary International—members by the hundreds of thousands in this and other countries.

There is no way of telling how many Rotarians are inspired by and heed their adopted motto, or merely give it lip service. Perhaps, as with ever so many others in today’s U.S.A., the service motto is practiced with no reference to or awareness of wise admonitions. When men are free to try, countless thousands are motivated by an ever-improving service to consumers. To those with good minds, casting the eye aright comes naturally!

The success of service! I have friends who are in business all by themselves whose sole motivation is service. They think success, practice the key to success, and automatically create the circumstances and movements leading to success.

Further, I am acquainted with managements of small and large corporations who not only have service as their motivation but instill this same high objective in their associates. The result is the same as in Matsushita’s case: employees work not for but with these managements. A teamwork glorious to behold! When and if service is the root, the flower is profit. He profits most who serves best!

All of us should remember and repeat this great truth by Edmund Burke: “Example is the school of mankind; they learn at no other.” Many thousands of businessmen—small and large operations—are lamenting the very low esteem in which business is held by the public. And, mostly, they are resorting to all sorts of schemes to restore respect and confidence in business. Many of these schemes are doing more harm than good. The only remedy? Exemplary conduct! The millions in the school of mankind will learn only by example.

Let service be the motive, that Golden Idea in the head of entrepreneurs. Such exemplarity will curb the tendency to defame the producers of goods and services. There’ll be a turnabout: the beneficiaries will pay homage to those who serve them best.

If those of us in business will adhere to the service motive, then the right—freedom to act creatively as anyone chooses—will prevail.

[1] See The Matsushita Phenomenon by Rowland Gould (Tokyo: The Diamond Publishing Co., Ltd., 1970).

[2] For an excellent article relating to Matsushita’s motivation see “Caveat Emptor: The Consumer’s Badge of Authority,” by Professor Bertel Sparks (The Freeman, June, 1975).

5

CIVILIZED: RAMROD STRAIGHT FOR FREEDOM!

To realize the relative validity of one’s convictions and yet stand for them unflinchingly is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian.[1]

—JOSEPH A. SCHUMPETER

Having spent several hours with this remarkable economist at his home in 1946 following his retirement from Harvard, I know what he meant by “one’s convictions.” He embraced freedom in precisely the same sense as we at FEE mean it—freedom to act creatively as anyone pleases. This is what Schumpeter stood for, and in my view he ranks among the top economists of all time. What a thinker and scholar!

On one point, however, I disagree with him. He contended that our ideal way of life had gone so far down the drain that there was no hope of recovery. His assessment of the future was pessimistic. Mine is the opposite. I have faith that we are going to win! True, winning will be a miracle but I believe with Goethe that “Miracle is the darling child of Faith.”

The barbarian is defined as “a man in a rude uncivilized state.” Barbarism is composed of specific acts. Only rarely in our time is there anyone whose every action is barbaric—in the common use of that term. The lowest form of barbarism is practiced by those who feast on their fellows—cannibals. For all we know, there may be a few among such tribes who refuse to so indulge—a step away from such inhumanity.

However, let not the citizens of today’s U.S.A. bask unduly in their civility. Reflect on the many millions who feast, not on human flesh, but on life-sustaining goods and services—private property—taken coercively from others. Feasting on others has, to our disgrace, become a way of life. Is this any less barbaric than cannibalism? Only less apparent, that’s all. Feasting on others without their consent, here or wherever, is not civilized!

What does it mean to be civilized? It means “to give order, law and culture to; humanize, reclaim from savagery; to transfer from military to civil jurisdiction.”

To give order, law and culture to—Culture, as defined by Matthew Arnold—“acquainting ourselves with the best that has been known and said in the world”—can grace only the exceptional few, unless there be law and order. Those of us devoted to the good society—the freedom way of life—cherish everyone’s freedom to grow, emerge, evolve. The extent to which others are growing in awareness, perception, consciousness dramatically enlarges your and my cultural opportunities.

It should be obvious that there can be no order without law. In a “civilization” featured by cave dwellers, cannibals, vigilantes or anarchists, all is helter-skelter—confusion reigns! The good society requires legal restrictions against destructive actions, which leaves all citizens free to act creatively as they please. The law, in an ideal society, is strictly limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. The free and unfettered market reigns, with its remarkable wisdom, and culture blooms!

Humanize, reclaim from savagery—The definition of humanize is “to make human; give a human nature or character to. To make humane; make kind, merciful, considerate; civilize, refine.” Thus does mankind emerge from savagery.

When the primitive, barbaric notion of government—“to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage”—prevails as it now does, our “civilization” is in a state of savagery. Political cannibals—little know-it-alls—control our lives!

The ascent from savagery reached its apogee in the U.S.A. when the Constitution and the Bill of Rights limited government more than ever before. Result? Law and order![2]

In that glorious step toward the ideal society responsibility for self replaced political barbarism. Not only did self-responsibility engender self-reliance but it inspired humans to become humane. Such virtues as kindness, mercy, charity and consideration for others became a way of life. Civilized!

It is an observed fact that when government pre-empts any activity, be it welfare or whatever, nearly everyone gives up all thought as to how he or she would behave were self-responsibility the mode. If a neighbor is starving, they shrug their shoulders—“That’s the government’s chore.” What if there were no political barbarism? These very persons would share their last loaf of bread! However, in the absence of savagery—when freedom reigns—there would be no starving neighbors!

To transfer from military to civil jurisdiction—Until 1776 men had been killing each other by the millions over the age-old question as to which form of authoritarianism—military jurisdiction—should preside as sovereign. The argument had not been military versus civil jurisdiction, but only between this or that military form. And then, in 1776, the greatest wisdom ever written into a political document:

—that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.

By unseating government as sovereign—resting sovereignty in the individual as endowed by the Creator—the new nation experienced a transfer from military to civil jurisdiction. This act, and this alone, explains the American miracle—the greatest outburst of creative energy ever known—truly a civilized act!

But if that action was an upward step toward a civilized U.S.A., what shall be said of recent developments? Military jurisdiction again, that is, countless edicts—Federal, state and local—backed by armed force: barbarism! How are we to reverse this latest trend? Let us reflect on Schumpeter’s way of drawing the distinction between a civilized man and a barbarian, for the remedy is exclusively in the hands of civilized men.

“To realize the relative validity of one’s convictions,” in Schumpeter’s case, meant a personal commitment to the validity of private ownership, the free and unfettered market and government strictly limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. He was ramrod straight!

It is the absence of such convictions, as exhibited by people in every walk of life, that presently plagues “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” By and large, the freedom way of life has few champions and a small following. Finding a Schumpeter among economists is as difficult as finding a statesman among officeholders!

Who are the beneficiaries of successful enterprises—those businesses, large and small, that supply goods and services? We, the consumers, all of us! Were enlightened self-interest to prevail, the benefactors—the suppliers—no less than the beneficiaries would stand ramrod straight for freedom. The distressing fact? Most individuals in either capacity are befuddled—confusion reigns! What, pray tell, can the remedy be?

In what occupational category might we expect the largest percentage of individuals standing foursquare for such ideas as private ownership, the freedom to exchange, the right to cooperate or compete, plus all the other virtues related to entrepreneurship? Would it not be among entrepreneurs themselves—businessmen? Yet, it is almost in vain that one searches there for a champion or exemplar.

Why? Perhaps no one knows all the answers. It may be that the competitive struggle so distracts them that they give little serious thought to the principles underlying the market economy. This is regrettable, for we know that good practice stems exclusively from good ideas, that is, freedom ideas.

There is only one remedy: the ascendancy of good ideas. As Arthur Shenfield wrote:

If the businessman does not learn to understand the importance of ideas, he will find himself the slave of the ideas of his enemies. But on the other hand he is fatally ready to accommodate himself to his enemies’ ideas, and even to finance their propagation, if they are presented with an attractive varnish. . . . And see how readily he swallows the fraudulent concept of the “social responsibility of business,” which is one of his enemies’ best weapons for breaking down his defenses. See also how he will make munificent gifts to universities and foundations whose faculties or staffs are busily engaged in undermining the free enterprise system.[3]

The remedy—good ideas—however, applies not only to businessmen but to all of us. So let us hear and heed Schumpeter’s way for distinguishing a civilized from a barbaric person.

Those who earnestly espouse the freedom way of life are a tiny fraction of our present population, and even among these many do more to harm our cause than to help it! In what manner? Lacking the understanding and courage to proclaim and stand for their convictions they “leak,” that is, they bend to popular opinion which currently rejects freedom.

As Ovid wrote, “We are tardy in believing when belief brings hurt.” What hurts these weaklings? It is disapproval, neighborhood or social ostracism, being frowned upon, unpopularity, avoidance and the like. “Silence is golden, sometimes yellow.” How golden it would be if such persons remained silent, for in their half-hearted efforts they do more harm to freedom than those who openly support the command society.

Schumpeter’s standing unflinchingly—ramrod straight for freedom—is what distinguishes a civilized man from a barbarian. Is “the welfare state” way of feasting off others any less barbarous than direct cannibalism!

To stand unflinchingly for what one believes is integrity: the accurate reflection in word and deed of what one believes to be righteous. Indeed, cannibalism would quickly disappear were the opponents of freedom to reflect in word and deed the nonsense they presently espouse. Even they would find the process revolting.

Intellectual honesty is the formula for a return to freedom in society, precisely because it is the formula for individual growth and achievement. It is far more joyous to seek praise from God—righteousness—than from men. So, let us side not only with Joseph Schumpeter but with the Father of our Country, George Washington:

I hope I shall always possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.

[1] Capitalism, Socialism, Democracy (New York: Harper Bros., 1950).

[2] See “Eruptions of Truth” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake.

[3] See “Lessons from the British Experience” by Arthur Shenfield (Imprimis, Vol. 6 No. 4) Hillsdale College, Hillsdale, Michigan.

6

SOLVING THE ENERGY CRISIS IS SIMPLE

The Delphic oracle said I was the wisest of all the Greeks. It is because that I alone of all the Greeks, know that I know nothing.

—SOCRATES

The U.S.A. is faced with an energy crisis—no doubt about it. Countless thousands of bureaucrats, involved businessmen, “economists,” and others are advancing so-called solutions they “think” are right—no doubt about that! Except that nearly everyone overlooks the simple and only solution; otherwise, they all differ—no two alike.

Why are we in an energy crisis? It’s because the “solutions” are founded on a false assumption, namely, “I know the answer.” For the truth, hear Thomas Alva Edison: “No one knows more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.” It’s these egotistical assumptions that brought on the crisis and it’s these very same assumptions that will worsen rather than better the mess we’re in unless the simple remedy gains understanding.

The simple remedy? Both Socrates and Edison gave us the answer which, if followed, would read like this: “It is because I, among millions of Americans, am one who knows nothing and knows it.” It is necessary, however, that neither you nor I should be alone in this wise confession. Let there be a reasonable number of us and then, lo and behold, the miracle—the rescue—by that fantastic wisdom which exists alone in the free and unfettered market.

With the above as an introduction, let’s have a glance at the enormity of energy. No more than a glance is possible for no one ever has or ever will assess it in totality. For instance, the energy we earthlings enjoy is generally assumed to have its origin in our star. According to my dictionary the sun is:

. . . the incandescent body of gases about which the earth and other planets revolve and which furnishes light, heat, and energy for the solar system.

Here is another assumption which, until now, I had not questioned:

Although less than half of the earth’s sunlight entering the earth’s atmosphere reaches its surface, just 40 minutes of that solar input equals all the energy mankind consumes in an entire year.[1]

Three questions pop into mind:

1. Isn’t it possible that there is something in Creation that precedes the sun as source? We don’t know one millionth of one per cent of anything, let alone this.

2. Are there not untold forms of energy beyond the range of solar energy?

3. Why has there not been a greater use of solar energy in the light of present energy shortages?

As a sampling of the thousand and one kinds of energy, reflect on electrical energy. There is not a person who is even aware of its many uses. They range from tiny services like electric toothbrushes and electric razors to such enormous outpourings of kilowatt-hours as in metal melting—steel, aluminum and the like.

Until 1864 the human voice could be transmitted the distance a shouter could be heard—about the length of a football field—at the speed that sound can travel. Now? Around the world in that same fraction of a second—at the speed of light. The phenomenon of electrical energy!

To repeat, electrical energy has a thousand and one uses and not a living person understands a single one of them. Why this bald assertion? No one knows what electricity is! Thus, where is the person who can solve our increasing electrical shortages? Wiseacres galore, but not one remotely wise enough! This should be self-evident.

The above is no more than a glance at the energy problem. Suppose someone were to write a book on all the forms he could bring to mind: Energy stored in such known fuels as gas, oil, coal, wood; magnetic energy, solar energy, gravitational forces, wind, waterpower; heat, light, sound, electrical and chemical energy; nuclear energy, tension, motion, friction; animal power, human energy. Still, no more than a glance!

Countless kinds of energy supplement human energy. And note how variable the latter—from all sorts of physical exertions to such mental efforts as thinking and writing. No two persons are identical in this respect; indeed, each of us varies from day to day.

The only point I am attempting to emphasize is that no one has the slightest idea how, by himself, to solve the energy crisis, egotistical pretensions to the contrary notwithstanding! Am I contending that the problem has no solution? No, the solution is so simple that nearly everyone ignores it.

Here are several thoughts that pave the way to the simple answer. Even though no one knows what electricity is, countless individuals with their tiny bits of expertise—when freely flowing—have discovered how to harness it. Likewise, no one really knows what solar energy is but the means of harnessing it have been discovered and employed in a few minor instances. Why not on a larger scale? Because the government has intervened to the point that private effort is discouraged, leaving the wisdom of the market dormant.

To illustrate: Some years ago we had a water shortage along the Hudson River. Car washing, lawn sprinkling and the like were forbidden. Restaurants, short of special requests, were not allowed to serve a glass of water. Why that economic crisis? Government pre-empted—socialism—instead of the free market where the wisdom is.

Even more striking was an experience some months ago on the Monterey Peninsula. In every bathroom were printed instructions: flush toilets only when absolutely necessary, confine showers to one minute, and so on. There we were on the shore of the world’s largest body of water: the Pacific Ocean. A water shortage! And for precisely the same reason as our water shortage on the Hudson.

The art of desalinization has been known for several decades. However, the process lies largely dormant due to a preponderance of those who say, “I know the answer.” They have convinced themselves and the masses that no other solutions than their own would be worth trying—blind leaders of the blind.

I am confident that if the market were trusted to operate, water would be abundantly available, not only along the Pacific Coast but miles inland as well, at a surprising low price. The wisdom of the market is far greater and more productive than can be mustered through planned coercion.

How explain the simple solution to the energy crisis? It’s as simple as two times two is four.

In 1958 I wrote an article entitled “I, Pencil.” This explained that no person knows how to make such a simple thing as an ordinary wooden lead pencil. The article has since been distributed and read throughout the United States and other countries, without a single contradiction in all these years. In 1958 there were produced in our country 1,600,000,000 wooden lead pencils, despite the fact that not a person on earth had the combination of knowledge and skill to make one!

It may be true that no one knows more than one millionth of one per cent of anything. But a pencil consists of many millions of somethings—tiny bits of expertise—flowing and configurating. The free and unfettered market has indeed a wisdom trillions of times greater than the wisdom of one who claims, “I know the answer.”

The making of a pencil is a simple operation compared to the desalinization of water or to any of the major phases of our so-called energy problems. So, leave the solutions to the market where the wisdom is.

Socrates’ secret was the knowledge that he didn’t know everything. Therefore, let us recognize with him the vital possibility that everyone knows a fraction of this or that. However tiny one’s portion may be, let it be freely productive, for in freedom do we best serve ourselves and others.

[1] See “Tapping the Sun’s Energy” by David G. Lee (National Wildlife, August-September 1974).

7

CHANGES AND EXCHANGES

Weep not that the world changes—did it keep a stable, changeless state ’twere cause indeed to weep.

—WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT

Though a lawyer and long-time editor, William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878), was most famous as a poet of nature. The paper which he edited and partly owned—the New York Evening Post—was renowned for its literary correctness and was a leading free-trade, antislavery journal.

Here we have a top-ranking freedom devotee who had an unusual grasp of nature—Creation—and could put the truths he grasped into enlightening verse, as the above testifies.

Not only is the universe in constant change but so is each of us. Most of us, however, strive for “a stable, changeless state”—an affront to natural law.

Changes in the universe are of a variety and velocity beyond our comprehension. Our galaxy is but one of a seemingly infinite number of galaxies in an expanding universe; it has some 30 billion stars, each of which is in constant, enormous change. That cloud in the sky never had another like it in the world’s history, nor is it the same as it was a second ago. No two atoms or snowflakes or blades of grass have ever been the same. The entire universe is a moving, changing phenomenon.

There’s a tiny planet in that universe, and one of the inhabitants of the tiny planet—man—is a moving, changing phenomenon, as is all else in nature. We humans, as do the clouds or suns or galaxies, differ from moment to moment. Difficult to imagine is the fact that a quintillion (1,000,000,000,000,000,000) atoms exchange in each individual every second! From whence and to where in the universe no one knows or ever will. We should grasp the profound meaning of this if we are to prosper materially, intellectually, morally and spiritually. Several sages share Bryant’s understanding:

Look abroad thro’ Nature’s range,

Nature’s mighty law is change.

—Burns

All things are changed, and with them we, too, Change.

Now this way and now that turns fortune’s Wheel.

—Lotharius I

All things must change

To something new, to something strange.

—Longfellow

There’s nothing constant in the universe,

All ebb and flow, and every shape that’s born

Bears in its womb the seeds of change.

—Ovid

There is nothing permanent except change.

—Heraclitus

In the course of time, we grow to love things we once hated and hate things we loved.

—Stevenson

Over the years I have known numerous individuals who once loved communism and changed to the point of hating that ignoble creed. Later? Some of them loved liberty! Also, over the past 60 years, I have observed countless citizens—from all walks of life—who once claimed to love liberty whose love changed to hate. Now? They love the planned economy and the welfare state. In what respect does this welfarism differ “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”—communism? Not one whit!

As related to slavery and freedom, Robert Louis Stevenson’s statement is valid; love and hate are appropriate. And in ever so many relationships his sentence could be rephrased to read: In the course of time, we grow to like things we once disliked and to dislike things formerly liked. Reflect on the things liked and now disliked. Or, on the persons who have switched allegiance. “Nature’s mighty law is change,” indeed!

In their blindness to reality, many present-day Americans strive for “a stable, changeless state”—an affront to nature’s law. And this accounts in no small measure for the U.S.A.’s plunge into socialism—“cause indeed to weep.” So, let us try to explain that changes and exchanges are two inseparable parts of nature’s law at the human level. It is the change that gives rise to the need for exchange; and the former without the latter has to spell disaster.

Our countrymen by the millions, particularly our elected and appointed political representatives—Federal, state and local—unaware of our ever-changing nature, are determined to stabilize existing conditions, maintain a status quo!

What a coincidence! While on a flight to St. Louis, and just after writing the above paragraph, I overheard a spirited conversation across the aisle and caught this remark: “Ram it down their necks!” Who are some of these “rammers”? They are the stabilizers, those who would coercively cast us in their images. Briefly, they would freeze us at their own level. They are the unwitting enemies of human evolution.

Implicit in evolving is transformation to ever higher levels. The evolution of mankind does not stem from individuals stagnated at this or that level—from a stable, changeless state—but from a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. Were it not for growth—changing—mankind would still be at the Cro-Magnon level. But the know-it-alls are blind to this fact of human nature.

Wrote Sir William Hamilton: “The highest reach of human science is the scientific recognition of human ignorance.”

Reach, indeed! No one can move away from ignorance and toward intelligence who is not forever reaching, striving for enlightenment. One does not grow old or ignorant. One becomes old and ignorant by not growing!

Recognition? What is it we must grasp? Not only how infinitesimal is our know-how and the enormity of our ignorance, but how vastly each of us differs from all others! And, this above all: The ever-changing self!

When any individual gains an awareness of nature’s law, he will never approve of “a stable, changeless state.” Such would be comparable to making human tombstones of ourselves—a deadened humanity.

What does the good life require? Free and unfettered exchanges, bearing in mind the tiny, varying bits of expertise which must constantly flow if we are to prosper materially and intellectually. Is it not self-evident that I cannot live on my ever-changing “bits,” nor you on yours?

The issue is, shall we freeze or free? Having no faith in human tombstones, and believing in freedom of choice and free exchanges of all creative actions, I choose freedom. Let us fervently pray that a few others may so choose:

LET FREEDOM REIGN!

8

WHY FREEDOM WORKS ITS WONDERS

You read of but one wise man, and all that he knew was—that he knew nothing.

—WILLIAM CONGREVE

Here is my explanation of why men, when free to try and to act creatively as they please, produce miracles by the millions. Is mine the right and final answer? No such claim is warranted by me on this subject or by anyone on any subject. Nevertheless, I am bound to seek for and to share with others that which seems to be right.

The wise man referred to by the English dramatist, Congreve (1670–1729), was Socrates. It wasn’t that this great Greek knew nothing. Everyone above the moronic level knows a wee bit of something. The wisdom of Socrates might be thus paraphrased:

The more I know the more I know there is to know.

The more I see the more I know there is to be seen.

Not many of us see ourselves in this light. Only rarely do we encounter anyone who is keenly aware that the more he knows the more he knows he doesn’t know. Yet, in this Socratic wisdom lies the explanation as to why freedom works its wonders.

Interestingly, freedom serves us well despite our unawareness. Why, then, dwell on the matter? The danger is that those who haven’t the slightest idea of how little they know will become our masters. Indeed, we have, for some time, been on that deplorable road. The know-it-alls have been gaining and exercising political power. So, it’s high time that power be withdrawn. How? Socratic wisdom is the key.

How explain that the more I know the more I know there is to know or the more I see the more I know there is to be seen? The answer relates to the distinction between Infinite Consciousness—the limitless unknown—and finite consciousness—our infinitesimal bits of know-how.

To assist in making the point here at issue, visualize a blackboard having no boundaries—none whatsoever—the unknown. Next, with white chalk draw a circle the size of a silver dollar to symbolize consciousness achieved, say, ten years ago. Now, draw a circle five feet in diameter to symbolize today’s consciousness—an admirable growth. But take note of this fact: the circumference, the exposure to darkness—the unknown—is nearly 100 times that of a decade ago! The more a growth in consciousness is experienced, the nearer one comes to a realization that he knows nothing. Socrates was wise, indeed!

Unfortunately, those who experience no growth in awareness, perception, consciousness won’t understand my illustration either. Unless one is daily becoming more and more aware of how little he knows or sees, he is not growing! Rather, he is dying on the vine, as the saying goes—stalemated! Thank heaven there are individuals who experience growth and who can see why freedom works its wonders—admittedly, an elusive truth.

We need only keep these points in mind:

1. A realization that every individual, regardless of pompous claims to the contrary, knows next to nothing.

2. Among the more than 200 million persons who inhabit the U.S.A., no two are remotely alike. Each possesses, at best, a wee bit of expertise unlike that of any other individual.

3. The only wisdom that graces us with an abundance of goods and services stems exclusively from these millions of infinitesimal know-hows freely flowing and configurating. Every one of these blessings is an aggregation of tiny think-of-thats—no exceptions!

To me, it is self-evident that we should leave all creative activities—education or whatever—to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is. What can be more absurd than leaving our welfare to those who have no awareness that they know not, that is, to such low-grade ignorance.

No one knows how to make such a simple thing as an ordinary wooden lead pencil. So, what about complex things such as a 747 Jet airplane? That transportation marvel has about 4,500,000 parts, and not a man on earth knows how to make any one of these parts. When aloft in one of these miracles of the market, I often reflect on a remarkable blessing: the Socratic wisdom.

As I have written before, “What gives socialism the appearance of working is the freedom socialism has not yet destroyed.”[1] Or phrase it this way: What gives those who are unaware of their know-nothing-ness the appearance of being responsible for our prosperity is the wisdom of the market they have not yet eliminated.

Appearances! How false and misleading most of them are, particularly in the politico-economic realm. Here are several thoughts on appearances by a few graced with Socratic wisdom, including Socrates himself:

Judge not according to the appearance.

—John 7:24

Always scorn appearance, and you always may.

—Emerson

We should look to the mind, and not to the outward appearance.

—Aesop

We are deceived by the appearance of right.

—Horace

There is no trusting in appearance.

—Sheridan

Don’t rely too much on labels

For often they are fables.

—Spurgeon

You look wise. Pray correct that error.

—Lamb

The final good and the supreme duty of the wise man is to resist appearance.

—Cicero

Beware, so long as you live, of judging men by their outward appearance.

—La Fontaine

The shortest and surest way to live with honor in the world, is to be in reality what we would appear to be.

—Socrates

As to how we should proceed not only to preserve but to increase the wonders wrought by freedom, the answer is as easy to state as it is difficult to accomplish.

Pay no heed to appearances! Look clearly through the political fog!

In appraising a person, whether he be in or out of office, examine his avowed principles. Should the individual claim a devotion to freedom, then determine if his practices are consistent therewith—no “buts,” no “leaks”! If his practices belie his preaching, place no faith in him. But if he consistently practices the freedom he espouses, he will be a worthy partner in explaining where the wisdom is and why its miraculous accomplishments.

For encouragement, reflect on the growing number who are coming to light as partners in this intellectual enterprise. We discover more and more of them from the near and ancient past. And I am personally acquainted with several thousand who have achieved this goal in recent years. But even more encouraging are the countless thousands seeking and discovering this truth, not a fraction of one per cent of whom ever heard of you or me or we of them. The point is that any friend of freedom is a friend of yours and mine. None of us stands alone.

To claim that the wisdom in the free and unfettered market is a trillion times greater than possessed by any single person would be a gross understatement. Of one point we can be certain: there are enough individuals sufficiently wise to see through all the sham and to capture and exemplify this truth.

THE TRUTH SHALL MAKE YOU FREE!

[1] See “An American Mirage” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake.

9

THE GUARANTEED LIFE IS A HOAX

The guaranteed life turns out to be not only not free—it’s not safe.

—MAXWELL ANDERSON

A way of life neither free nor safe is to be shunned; a way of life, as free and safe as reality permits, is to be sought!

Few there are who will disagree with these obvious truisms as to what should be shunned and what sought. Agreement with the obvious is within nearly everyone’s range, yet, only one in thousands is aware of the fakery implicit in the promises of a guaranteed life—a political hoax rapidly on the increase. And the citizens who are making helpful contributions to a reversal—or even thinking about it—are still fewer in number. Indeed, most people in all walks of life are quite unconsciously working not only against their own but against everyone’s self-interest. So, Maxwell Anderson’s theme of several decades ago would seem to warrant some renewed observations.

Perhaps the “guaranteed life” here at issue can best be introduced by a brief commentary on the promises men do and do not—can and cannot—live by.

Whether or not a promise is constructive or destructive depends on what is promised. Those who promise to pay their debts, keep their contracts, and exchange their goods and services as represented—assuming fulfillment—are constructive. In the absence of such honesty, life would be diminished and reduced to misery—if indeed it could continue at all.

What I call destructive promises are those that cannot and should not be kept. They make certain, if continued on a large scale, that life will be diminished and miserable. Who are those who make such promises? They are the millions, in and out of office, who propose ideas impossible of fulfillment. These lie at the root of the guaranteed life, a way of life that is not only not free—it is not safe!

There is no way to explain the extent to which the guaranteed life has grown. A 1000-page book—Encyclopedia of U.S. Government Benefits[1]—at least hints at this political rampage, and favorably. There are over 500 headings ranging from Aerial Photographs to Zoological Park, from Social Security to Venereal Disease and so on. Further, there are many subheadings, particularly under Business Aids, Education, Farming—depressingly lengthy in all!

The above, however, relates only to the Federal handouts or “benefits.” Bear in mind that there are 78,000 state and local governments, nearly all of them offering variations of the guaranteed life.

What are the destructive promises, the ones that cannot and should not be kept; promises that are a sham, a hoax and a sin? The Bhagavadgita states what I believe to be a truthful answer:

Sin is not the violation of a law . . . or convention . . . but ignorance . . . which seeks its own gain at the expense of others.

This truth poses two questions that require answers: (1) What is the nature of this “sinful” ignorance? and (2) What is the gain and at whose expense?

All of us are ignorant in more ways than we can count, but the unawareness of this very fact is the ignorance here at issue. Those who suffer this blight—not knowing that they know not—innocently believe that they can run our lives better than we can—an all-too-common naivete! Nor can the victims of this sinful ignorance be persuaded that they are wrong. Might as well try to enlighten robots!

In any event, these millions comprise the guaranteed life tribe. Their promises, while a hoax, a sham and a sin, are believed by them to be the guidelines to heaven on earth. What if their promises could be kept? All of us, in that event, including these victims of false expectations, would be no more than shadows of a sinful ignorance. Indeed, in all probability we would not be here.

What is the gain these poor souls expect for themselves? They find their greatest glory not in wealth—monetary gain—but in casting others in their images: the do-as-I-say syndrome. Thousands times thousands of them have “solutions” to every conceivable problem:

the energy problem

the pollution problem

the over-population problem

the unemployment problem

the poverty problem

the health problem

the banking problem

the farm problem

the housing problem

the balance of payment problem

the safety problem

the old-age problem

the transportation problem

the urban problem

the rural problem

the problem of the South

the problem of the North

the education problem

the immigration problem

problems ad infinitum!

All “solutions” vary except in one respect: these know-it-alls get laws passed coercively to enforce this and that brain storm. So much for the “gain.”

The above-mentioned “gain” is in the form of power—having one’s way over others. As to expense, however, that is monetary in the sense that the goods and services by which we live and prosper are measured monetarily, that is, in dollars. As the guaranteed life increases, the costs of government rise beyond what can be collected by direct tax levies. What is the “solution” by those who sponsor this way of life? Inflation, that is, a dilution of the medium of exchange. As the government creates additional dollars to bid goods and services out of the market place, each dollar buys less and less.

Back in California in 1927, my wife spent one dollar each day on food for ourselves and two sons. Lettuce, for instance, 5 cents. Today? Fifty cents! Let the guaranteed way of life go its ridiculous way and eventually we’ll wind up as did Germany in 1923 when 5 billion marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread!

There is yet another expense—the most costly of all—for which there is no yardstick. This cost is in terms of life’s greatest value: the freedom to act creatively in whatever way one chooses. Freedom of choice is thus diminished and lost. It should be obvious that these expenses are destructive not only of the good life but of life itself, the perpetrators being as much the victims of this depravity as are others.

Finally, those of us who condemn this greatest of all social evils and who believe in freedom, should make certain that our actions do not contradict our beliefs. If they do, we are contributors to the mess we deplore.

For one of countless examples, observe in the Encyclopedia mentioned earlier, the many subheadings under “Aids to Business.” Most of these are special privileges sought by avowed believers in the free market way of life. These businessmen, no less than educators or farmers or others who seek special privileges are a part of the problem—seekers of the guaranteed life!

When one understands the fallacy, the evil and the consequences of the guaranteed life and its many underpinnings, such as power and special privileges, complete rejection will follow. So, the challenge before us is to gain and share this understanding.

The guaranteed life not only is not free—it is as far from being safe as man can get!

[1] Wm. H. Wise & Co., Inc., Union City, New Jersey. Under title in frontispiece: “A Complete, practical and convenient guide to United States Government Benefits available to the people of America. Written by a group of Government Experts. Edited by Roy A. Grisham, Jr. and Paul D. McConaughy.”

10

THE FOLLY OF COMPULSION

Compulsion is contrary to nature.

—QUOTED BY ARISTOTLE

If it were obvious to Aristotle that compulsion is contrary to nature, why is it not obvious to more of us? For if it were obvious, then the number of us who act contrary to nature might decline. That’s reason enough to reflect on this most serious of all social matters.

In psychopathology, compulsion is defined as “an irresistible impulse to perform some irrational act.” In the pathology of our everyday life there are numerous examples of compulsory programs such as food stamps, social security, price control, wage and hour fixing, tariffs, the Gateway Arch, on and on.

How many irrational acts are invading our society today? Count—if you can!—the persons who are advocating compulsion for this or that type of special privilege and then multiply them by the number of compulsions they sponsor—from one to hundreds—and there’s the answer. Compulsions by the millions, a massive affront to nature.

Aristotle was unquestionably correct when he said that compulsion is contrary to nature. And no one, to my knowledge, ever commented on nature more brilliantly than Goethe:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.[1]

Goethe used the term “nature” as virtually synonymous with God (righteousness), as had Spinoza before him. Compulsion, therefore, is contrary to the highest we know—against the will of God!

It is self-evident that irrational acts are spawned by irresistible impulses. If the perpetrators could resist such impulses, no doubt they would do so! The reason they cannot resist is that they lack the insight and foresight to see where their own interests lie. These unknowing ones see as gains whatever they compulsorily take from others, abysmally ignorant of the fact that this procedure must eventually lead to impoverishment of themselves and everyone else.

All “gains” by the compulsive political process—like an act of looting—result first in losses to the victims—those from whom taken. But matters do not stop there. When governments start the processes of redistribution, certain consequences follow. Up go the costs of government beyond what can be collected by direct tax levies; inflation ensues; the dollar buys less and less. Merely witness what’s going on right now in this and other countries. For a striking example of inflation and its consequences, there is the example of Germany after World War I. By August 1923, five billion marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread!

Were these irrational persons attuned to nature and guided by enlightened self-interest, they would realize that those individuals gain most who serve best. Receiving and giving—reciprocity—are two sides of the same economic and moral coin. Were they gifted with this understanding, they would not be impelled to perform irrational acts. And how much better off the whole citizenry would be!

Compulsion, the worst of all social follies stems of course from foolish acts of individuals—actions contrary to nature. Goethe’s observations about nature, if understood, will enlighten any of us who wish to learn. Here follows my attempt to grasp his insights.

Nature understands no jesting—A jest is “a mocking or bantering remark.” And a jester is “a professional fool employed by a ruler in the Middle Ages to amuse him with antics, tricks, jokes.”

Must we go back to the Middle Ages for examples of jesting? Antics, tricks, jokes are as rife today as then! Observe our own political rulers and the professionals they employ to amuse the masses with double talk and folderol. And the rulers, no less than the masses, are amused, and for the identical reason: they don’t know any better! To them it is a way of life.

Today’s mass media are jammed with mocking or bantering remarks—jest, in the worst sense.

If one falls in step with these jesters, then there is no attunement with nature, with righteousness, with Creation. Nature—the will of God—tolerates no jesting.

She is always true, always serious, always severe—All truth has its source in nature—Creation. We do not know all that Creation is, but we do know that it is. The best we are capable of, with our finite awareness, is to acknowledge Infinite Wisdom as the whole Truth and nothing but the Truth.

Taking one’s self too seriously is fraught with danger. But not to take nature seriously is to deny Creation; it is to deaden that quality which responds to, and draws one toward, Infinite Wisdom.

Always severe? Indeed! As already noted, compulsions—acts contrary to nature—result in inflation and, thus, mass poverty. There is no escape. There are countless examples, more than we’ll ever know, of how severe are the penalties of defying nature’s immutable laws. For instance, defy the law of gravitation by jumping off a tall building! Kersplosh! And if that isn’t severe, pray tell, what is!

She [Nature] is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man—It is easily demonstrable that the more one knows the more he knows he does not know. Why? Nature—Infinity—has no boundary, thus, is beyond human comprehension. The more one knows, the greater is his exposure to the unknown or incomprehensible.

But an awareness of infinity is possible. How? By becoming aware that we cannot even comprehend finite space, a point in space beyond which there is no space. Or a point in time beyond which there is no time!

Approach the problem mathematically. Take the integer one. There is no point beyond which another one cannot be added. The same applies to the infinitesimal. Divide the integer one: 1/2, 1/4, on and on. There will never be a fraction so small that is not divisible.

Is it any wonder that nature—Infinite Wisdom—is always right and that the faults and errors are always those of finite man!

The man incapable of appreciating her she despises—The word “despises” bothers me. Nature which is always right—Righteousness—does not despise. I suspect that the translator of Eckermann’s Conversations from German to English used a word that has different implications than Goethe had in mind. Perhaps “disregards” was meant, for that makes sense.

Who, then, are incapable of appreciating nature? The victims of the greatest of all faults and errors: the notion, seemingly on the increase, that there is nothing beyond their finite minds. The infallible I! Call it egotism or atheism or what you will. Were a speck of dust to compare itself to a galaxy, the comparison would be just as absurd.

Nature disregards—passes by—such absurdities!

Only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets—The apt, the pure, and the true—what a glorious combination of virtues!

The apt: “quick to learn or understand.”

The pure: “free from sin or guilt.”

The true: “the rightful, faithful.”

I shall conclude by quoting Adam Smith, that remarkable individual to whom nature did resign herself and reveal her secrets to an extent seldom recorded:

The statesman who should attempt to direct private people in what manner they ought to employ their capitals would not only load himself with a most unnecessary attention, but assume an authority which could safely be trusted, not only to no single person, but to no council or senate whatever, and would nowhere be so dangerous as in the hands of a man who had folly and presumption enough to fancy himself fit to exercise it.

Compulsion is contrary to nature; it is hostile to human liberty. My prayer is that the understanding of liberty and faith in free men may so develop that government will be limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. Then, and not before, will the unimaginable wisdom of the free and unfettered market prevail to bless each and every one of us.

Then and not before will nature, on a grand scale, resign herself and reveal her secrets.

[1] From Johann Peter Eckermann’s Conversations with Goethe.

11

WHY NOT SEPARATE SCHOOL AND STATE?

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—LORD ACTON

The question I wish to pose, and seek to answer, is this: Does government—organized force—have any more rightful role to play in education than in religion? The sage observation by Lord Acton (1834–1902) is really the key to my thesis, a point to be explained below. Should the answer turn out to be negative, which I believe it will, then we are faced with another question: What are the appropriate methods for changing the well-nigh overwhelming sentiment to the contrary? To challenge public (government) education in this day and age is akin to denouncing motherhood, the former as popularly sacrosanct as the latter.

Most thinking people will admit that the separation of Church and State was a forward step in Western Civilization. Yet, few there are who have the slightest idea of the name of the scholar mainly responsible for the initial separation; nor do they know the time of its occurrence, the ideological antagonisms of this medieval period, or the tactics used by the State Church to preserve its political dictatorship.

My own meager knowledge of these matters derives from a book first published in 1910, authored by Andrew Dickson White: Seven Great Statesmen.[1] White was a professor of history at the University of Michigan, later co-founder and president of Cornell University, and known to freedom devotees of our time for his great book, Fiat Money Inflation in France.[2]

White accords first place among his seven statesmen to Paolo Sarpi, a Venetian priest. White declares that Sarpi

. . . fought the most bitter fight for humanity ever known in any Latin nation, and won a victory by which the whole world has profited ever since.

This “bitter fight” took place in the late 16th and early 17th centuries, and repercussions were felt all over Europe.

The ideological antagonism was between Venice and the Roman Court: The Papal Establishment. Venice was far more than the city we know today; it was the trading center of the world—freedom in trade more nearly approached than ever before in history. As to the opposition, White points out, it was founded on:

. . . a theocratic theory, giving the papacy a power supreme in temporal as well as in spiritual matters throughout the world.

In view of the fact that Catholicism was as much respected by the Venetians as by the Romans, the issue was not religious. Rather, it was political: independence—to trade or whatever—versus a dictatorship encompassing matters social as well as spiritual.

Vicious? Of earlier papal dictators, as distinguished from many remarkable Popes once Church and State were separated, White reports:

The Venetian Ambassadors [to Rome] were the foremost in Europe. . . . They saw Innocent III buy the papacy for money. They had been at the Vatican when Alexander VI had won renown as a secret murderer. They saw, close at hand, the merciless cruelty of Julius II. They had carefully noted the crimes of Sixtus IV, which culminated in the assassination of Julian d’ Medici beneath the dome of Florence. . . . They had sat near Leo X while he enjoyed the obscenities of the Calandria and Mandragers,—plays which, in the most corrupt of modern cities, would, in our day [1910], be stopped by the police. No wonder that, in one of their dispatches, they speak of Rome as “the sewer of Europe.”

Move on to the year 1607. The Papal political Establishment, keenly aware that a lone individual—Sarpi—was its nemesis, the threat to a continuing dictatorship, decided to get rid of him. White, after carefully researching this lowest form of having one’s way, reports:

On a pleasant evening in October, 1607, a carefully laid trap was sprung. Returning from his day’s work at The Ducal Palace, Father Paul—Sarpi—just as he had crossed the little bridge of Santa Fosca . . . was met by five assassins . . . these ruffians sprang upon him in the dusk, . . . gave him fifteen dagger thrusts . . . and then, convinced that they had killed him, fled to their boats. . . .

Surprisingly, Sarpi survived and, fortunately for Western Civilization, he was able to put the final touches on that brilliant reasoning of his which led eventually to a separation of Church and State!

Reflect now on Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This profound observation is quoted now and then, but rare indeed is the individual who grasps its significance. Were I asked to name the number one human frailty most responsible for the woes of mankind and the archenemy of individual liberty, power would be it. Friedrich von Hayek, in his book, The Road to Serfdom, expanded on this thought in a chapter entitled “Why The Worst Get On Top.”[3]

Who are “the worst” in society, as Hayek sees it? Power mongers; precisely the same breed as Lord Acton—a devout Catholic—warned against: those who seek power in order to cast others in their blighted images. Anyone who tends or even wishes to exercise power over others is tainted, and those who gain absolute power are wholly debased! Briefly, they are those who lack the common sense to mind their own business; they strive—with varying degrees of success—for dictatorial power over your life and mine.

There would be little need to dwell on this matter if the power mongers corrupted only themselves. Were they alone to fail in expanding their own awareness, perception, consciousness—life’s purpose—we could bemoan their plight and let it go at that. But observe how their corruption wreaks havoc on the rest of us!

Simply stated, man is a social as well as an individualistic being. As individuals we are all unique, no two remotely alike. We live by working with and for each other. Each individual produces and exchanges the fruits of his uniqueness, in the form of goods, services and ideas. This is the social side. Now to my point: To the extent that the power mongers get their way, to that extent are we made dummies—our uniqueness squelched! Reflect on the mess they make by this maneuver: The schemes of those who don’t even know they know nothing are substituted for the potential creativity of the countless millions.

Properly defined, absolute power takes the form of aggressive, coercive, physical force. A few have perceived what Lord Acton observed. Socrates possessed that rare wisdom which removed any tendency for power:

I know nothing but I know that I know nothing.

Shakespeare observed the results of power:

Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.

So did John Foster Dulles:

Dictatorships usually present a formidable exterior. They seem, on the outside, to be hard, glittering, and irresistible. Within, they are full of rottenness.

Power to rule the lives of others is doubtless a far more common ambition than the desire for riches. All history seems to attest to this. Nor does it make one whit of difference what posts are occupied by power mongers: religious, political, or educational. Allow absolute power to the Papal Establishment and the power mongers will crowd out the spiritually minded.

Parenthetically, those individuals who qualify as the cream of mankind are never observed in positions of coercive power over others. Why? It isn’t that the masses would reject them, but rather that such persons would never accept dictatorship over a single individual—let alone over a village or state or nation or the world. Each realizes that he himself is the only person among all who live that he has been commissioned to reform and improve—that this is the biggest project Infinite Wisdom has assigned to anyone!

Apply similar considerations to schooling and I cannot help but draw this conclusion: Allow absolute power to the Educational Establishment and power mongers will become our “teachers.”

Have a look at what we call “public education” or “free education.” Free? The taxpayers foot the bill, a very high amount per student per year.

Government “education” includes three forms of coercion: (1) compulsory attendance, (2) government dictated curricula, and (3) the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the enormous bill.

True, our “educational” power mongers are more sophisticated, or should we say less obviously brutal, in getting their way than were medieval “Popes.” But, Mr. Taxpayer, refuse to pay the bill and see what happens! Try it if you wish to find out; I won’t!

The results of force are bad enough as related to the pocketbook, but they are far worse as they affect the educational process. Force is precisely as inefficacious in education as when applied to religion and for the same reason. Merely look about and observe the countless thousands of “teachers” who cannot read or write in the realm of ideas; indeed, many of them cannot even get a good grade in spelling! Reflect on this lamentable situation:

- Coercion is a ramming-into procedure. Education is a taking-from process.

- “Graduation” in many schools requires no more than attendance; learning is no longer a criterion.

- To really appreciate the extent of coercion, try to run a private school and observe how your freedom of choice and action is restricted. The power mongers insist that you run your school their way—no other. This coercion—backed by physical force, the constabulary—is rapidly on the increase.

So I ask, why not separate School and State as Church and State are now separated? Leave education to the free market where the wisdom is. Let organized force—government—have no role, none whatsoever, other than to inhibit fraud and misrepresentation.[4]

Finally, we face the challenge as to how such a formidable, seemingly impossible, wholly unpopular task can be achieved. A fact in our favor is that this is not a numbers problem. Father Paul—Sarpi—proved that. Further, such an objective is not to be attained by combative methods. Father Paul confined himself to pure reason, having many freedom devotees in Venice who were capable of seeing the light he shed and who stood steadfastly in his support. The victory!

For a remarkable illustration of how the separation of Church and State worked its wonders, observe how diametrically different was Leo XIII (Pope, 1878–1903) than were the power mongers 300 years earlier, prior to Sarpi’s victory. Wrote this wise Pope:

It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially and generically from the brute.

Here we have wisdom of the highest order, for it is reason that distinguishes human beings from the brutes—the power mongers. Let even a few among us resort to reason, and brutishness—murder, war, coercive “education,” and the like—will be no more than historical nightmares. And then? We will witness mankind in freedom pursuing human destiny: Ascendancy!

[1] New York: The Century Co., 1919.

[2] Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1959.

[3] Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1967, pp. 134–152.

[4] I have given my analysis as to where lies the responsibility for the child’s education, plus a critique of government education as well as the case for free market education—Chapters 15, 16, 17—in Anything That’s Peaceful, pp. 180–221.

12

ASLEEP AT THE SWITCH

When they are asleep you cannot tell a good man from a bad one.

—ARISTOTLE

The metaphor, “asleep at the switch,” means “not alert to a duty or opportunity,” the sense in which it is here used.

No one remembers falling asleep! The moment of dropping off is lost to us; we only remember coming awake—if indeed we ever do awake! As to duties and opportunities—unlimited—no person has awakened to more than an infinitesimal few of them. Those of us now asleep at the switch either have never awakened or, if temporarily aroused by this or that, have since lost interest and fallen back into a lifelong slumber. This appears to explain why so many of us are dead to the world of wonders, to the exciting duties and opportunities of our earthly existence.

When it comes to liberty, all but a few are asleep at the switch, dead to this remarkable wonder that opens the door to opportunities unlimited. Why this plight? What should we do about it? These questions need serious examination.

John W. Burgess maintained that mankind did not begin with liberty but, rather, that mankind acquires liberty through civilization. Liberty is but the flowering of human ascendancy in virtues and principles. The first known civilization emerged in Sumer about 5,000 years ago. Liberty, as we think of it, was no more in the minds of earlier mankind than the free market or private property or limited government or air conditioning or harnessed electric energy or millions of recent phenomena. Prior to Sumer, mankind had not become civilized enough to acquire liberty.

A civilized person, according to my ideal, must recognize that man is at once a social and an individualistic being. Thus, he must not only be self-responsible but, at the same time, understand that he owes to others no infringements on their rights.

In a word, the truly civilized person is a devotee of freedom; he opposes all man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy.

The civilized person realizes how incorrect it is to think of freedom as synonymous with unrestrained action. Freedom does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the freedom of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that freedom can be composed of freedom negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the freedom of others is the exercise of license not freedom. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of freedom.

Ideally, that is, in a civilized society, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal—and a people who permit this are not quite civilized.

To illustrate uncivilized actions: Those in “the Third World,” that is, the people in the impoverished or underdeveloped countries, with a few notable exceptions, are asleep at the switch. As a consequence they starve by the millions. Asleep to what? Not only to how the free and unfettered market works its wonders but also to the reasons why government should be limited. They are miserable. That’s one side of the uncivilized coin.

The other side is just as uncivilized. American politicians observe the plight of these people. Their conclusion: “We must save them!” By demonstrating how to overcome their poverty? By teaching them how to save and accumulate capital and to freely trade and compete? No, for these dictocrats haven’t the slightest idea themselves as to this, the only remedy. They are unaware of the differences between liberty and slavery. So, what is their solution? Confiscation! They coercively acquire dollars by the hundreds of billions, every dollar taken from the fruits of our labors and gratuitously passed on to these victims of underdevelopment. By any reasonable definition, such action is uncivilized. Merely bear in mind that mankind acquires liberty through civilized actions, and it is obvious that such give-away programs destroy the very foundations of liberty.

Examples abound of smaller but comparable “programs” emanating from federal, state and local governments. Observe this sequence:

1. Governments, having no money of their own, must first coercively take away in order gratuitously to give away.

2. That which is coercively taken away is the source of our livelihood.

3. There cannot be life without livelihood.

4. To the extent that livelihood is taken, to that extent are citizens deprived of life.

5. These deprivations diminish individual liberty—liberty being the flowering of civilized individuals.

6. Give-away “programs” quite obviously put the cart before the horse—cause and effect in reverse.

7. Those thus engaged are not awake to the duties and opportunities liberty opens to human beings. They are, indeed, asleep at the switch!

Of the two questions to be answered the first is, why this devastating plight? Why are so many dead to the wonders of liberty? These persons cannot remember falling asleep. Perhaps they never were awake and, thus, are sound asleep to mankind’s high purpose—individual evolution and the liberty to act creatively as one pleases. They are in the same plight as were the ancients prior to Sumer, the first known civilization. Nor should we be surprised at this seeming delinquency, and for at least two reasons:

1. Evolution is a very slow process, gracing only a relative few since Cro-Magnon man of some 35,000 years ago.

2. Were we to collapse the eons of time since life first appeared into a single year—a comprehensible span of time—human liberty had its inception only 3 1/2 seconds ago. It is the newest of all politico-economic concepts, opening the way to duties and opportunities: creation at the human level. Little wonder that only a few have the slightest idea as to what liberty is all about. The millions—and understandably—asleep at the switch!

There are, of course, numerous levels or depths of sleepiness. They range from sound asleep to drowsiness to catnaps to half awake. By the same token, awareness of liberty ranges from zero to brief glimmers to rather profound understanding.

What do people do when asleep? A few are sleepwalkers but, mostly, they do no more than dream. And a dream, as related to this thesis, is a pipe dream: “a fantastic idea, vain hope, or impossible plan. . . .” I must conclude, therefore, that all the “plans” or any fraction thereof which are inconsistent with civilized actions—the fountain of liberty—are no more than thrusts from primitive antiquity. They are imagined utopias or paradises—various forms of Shangri-La!

Wrote Goethe: “None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.” The millions who are asleep at the switch and who dream and unknowingly pave the road to their own slavery actually think they are as free as the few who are partially awake and have some understanding of liberty. The millions who falsely believe they are free are enslaved by a dreadful ignorance: not knowing their plight but not knowing that they know not! Attempts to sell liberty to these millions are as fruitless as trying to sell a course in physical fitness to a corpse.

The second question would seem to be, what are we to do about this plight? However, this is neither a we nor a wee problem. Instead, it is an I and an Infinite problem.

What, then, am I to do? Spend my time and energy trying to awaken those who are asleep at the switch as most freedom devotees are doing? Or, shall I take that seldom-traveled uphill road that leads to my own awakening? These are my choices; it’s one or the other! My decision to take the latter course is founded on several observations.

1. Who among all the people inhabiting this earth have I been commissioned to save? Only yours truly, an answer with which no one will disagree. Try to find an individual in this or any other country who believes my role is that of his savior. Not one, and that’s the way it should be!

2. What if I were to take the other course—awaken a person asleep at the switch? What is his reaction to being yelled at, to setting him straight? “Get off my back!” “Shut up!” “Leave me alone!” “Mind your own business!” “Who do you think you are?” These reforming tactics spawn adversaries and antagonists, never friends or seekers of one’s light. Again, this is the way it should be. Erroneous methods only multiply existing errors.

3. What is the right method? Rather than wasting one’s energy vainly trying to improve others, it is to better one’s self! Why is this a civilizing procedure that spawns liberty? Because coming awake to liberty is exclusively a personal achievement. Human betterment in this aspect of life has as many points of origin as there are human beings. I cannot originate improvement in you or you in me.

4. Wrote Edmund Burke: “Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.” This wise observation applied no less to Burke or Socrates or Emerson than it relates to you and me.

Merely note how many of us still seek the tutorship of these seers, and of numerous other individuals who have been and are way out front in their intellectual, moral and spiritual enlightenment. Those who seek truth are attracted to exemplars. All history attests to this law of attraction—the drawing power of excellence. The school of mankind to which Burke refers issues no degrees and has no graduates. It is, instead, perpetual progression—self-dedication for life!

The few who really count in advancing civilization and liberty are those who are alert not only to their duties but to opportunities unlimited. They are those rare persons not asleep at the switch. May their tribe increase, for your sake and mine!

13

QUOTH THE RAVEN. “EVERMORE”

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

—TENNYSON

Suppose you were one of those who seek public acclaim as an “intellectual.” How would you proceed? Would you not contrive brief, catchy phrases, slogans and the like which appeal to the millions who do no thinking for themselves, jingles which invite repetition? The aim would be to “sell the masses” on a notion or a program. In the politico-economic realm we hear such cliches as “Tax the rich to help the poor” or “One man’s gain is another’s loss” or “You can’t eat freedom,” sad sayings over and over again—packaged to sell.

Let us now shift to the poetic realm. Why? Because I wish to try a reverse twist or a different application of Edgar Allan Poe’s famous fable in verse, The Raven. Poe wrote an 11-page analysis of how he went about the construction of the poem. He had one aim and one only: “universally appreciable.” In a word, something saleable! To achieve this he had his narrator featured by sadness. In response to each forlorn hope, the Raven would repeatedly croak, “Nevermore”—sadness packaged to sell! Here is the penultimate—the 17th—stanza:

“Be that word our sign of parting, bird or fiend!” I shrieked, upstarting,

“Get thee back into the tempest and the Night’s Plutonian Shore!

Leave no black plume as a token of that lie thy soul hath spoken!

Leave my loneliness unbroken!—quit the bust above my door!

Take thy beak from out my heart, and take thy form from off my door!”

Quoth the Raven, “Nevermore.”

Poe’s narrator was praying for surcease. Unlike our present-day seekers after truth, he sought only relief from the torturing memory of his lost Lenore. In his tormented musings, he fancies the bird is still perched above his chamber door, looking down at him with eyes that have “all the seeming of a demon’s that is dreaming.” And he begs the bird: “Leave my loneliness unbroken, quit the bust above my door.” To which the Raven (i.e., the narrator’s searing memory and grief) croaks a hopeless “Nevermore.” Poe touched here on a profound and universal circumstance; for the seeker after truth often experiences pain at its final discovery. Long-held dogmas are called in question. Old shibboleths are violated. Among the wraiths of dying error, there is always a “lost Lenore.” The birth of an idea, no less than that of a human infant, is a painful process. Nevertheless, the pain must be endured if life is to continue, and if truth is to live. Far better, then, that he for whom new light is dawning should modify (and, if necessary, mangle) Poe’s lines to read:

“Flaunt a white plume as a token of the truth that has been spoken;

I am bowed but never broken when the old things fall away.

Keep me ever seeking, turning to the light of newer learning—

Thrust thy beak within my heart, and make me search for truth today . . .

And EVERMORE!”

The narrator’s dilemma was sadness and hopelessness, nothing aglow for the future, life’s mission in the past tense. That’s why Poe had the raven repeat, “Nevermore.”

My mission and vision is precisely the opposite: one of happiness and hopefulness. This is why my Raven crows a hopeful, “Evermore.”

One participant at a recent Seminar remarked, “That’s the best lecture I have ever heard; it hurts but it’s true.” A long-held dogma, an old socialistic shibboleth, down the drain! Of course it hurt. One cannot part with a notion held supreme without mental pain. But a seeker of enlightenment, as is this man, is happy with a newly discovered truth. Of such persons it can be said, “Hope springs eternal in the human breast.” Fortunately, my outlook is precisely the same as that of Tennyson’s brook:

For men may come and men may go,

But I go on for ever.

Why? Mine is a commanding ambition: To achieve an ever-improving understanding and exposition of human freedom. Such a goal is far above the mundane affairs of men and borders on the celestial. To make even a minor contribution requires that I go on forever. But the journey is a happy one. Like the brook, I pass scenes of beauty and of challenge:

By thirty hills I hurry down

Or slip between the ridges;

By twenty thorps, a little town,

And half a hundred bridges.

Freedom, as I define the term—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy—has been approximated only a few times in the history of man. And, then, for relatively short periods. Otherwise, what has been the human situation? Long-held dogmas, old shibboleths, authoritarianism—one “lost Lenore” after another.

Finally, not the slightest progress can be made toward such a goal unless the quest is featured by happiness. Have fun or forget it! Keep in mind Goethe’s truth: “Miracle is the darling child of faith.” Have faith—hopefulness—or forget it!

The above way of life is why I say to my Raven:

“Thrust thy beak within my heart, and make me search for truth today—and Evermore!”

My gratitude to Ralph Bradford. While this soliloquy was my idea, numerous thoughts and phrasings and the modified Raven are his. I am not a poet and know it!

14

THIS TIDE OF UNREASON

Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.

—GOETHE

For striking evidence that reason is less popular than are passions and emotions, read a book by Andrew Dickson White, a professor of history at the University of Michigan and later co-founder and first President of Cornell University. One of his specialities was the French Revolutionary period and its monetary nonsense.

White, as President of Cornell, delivered a speech entitled, “Fiat Money Inflation in France,” before the Senate and the House of the U. S. Congress. The next day, April 13, 1876, he repeated it at the Union League Club, New York City. This scholar and diplomat continued to study and elaborate on that speech and in 1912 it appeared as a small book by that same title and “for private use only.” A new edition was issued by the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in the early forties when I was General Manager, and numerous printings have been undertaken by FEE.[1]

What follows is a commentary on a single paragraph from White’s book which, if carefully reflected upon, has a lesson for the few who reason:

Singular, that the man who stood so fearlessly against this tide of unreason has left to the world simply a reputation as the most brilliant cook that ever existed!

The man referred to was Brillat-Savarin (1755–1826). This Frenchman lived in Bresse, a rich and fertile region in eastern France. He was, as any well-read gastronome will concede, the founder of modern cooking. Of his numerous talents, this art was his lifetime love. Not only was he the ingenious innovator of countless, delectable dishes but he spent his adult life putting his recipes into instructive, witty words and phrasings. His book, La Physiolologie de goût, was released in 1824, a year before he passed away.

Mrs. M. F. K. Fisher, a distinguished writer and cook herself, wrote a 469-page book, featuring the innovations of this Frenchman, her title being a translation of his: The Physiology of Taste.[2] Not only have I read the book but I have dined in Bresse where I savored Poularde de Bresse en Creme—one of Brillat-Savarin’s recipes and what a chicken dish!

Brillat-Savarin was an innovative, inventive genius of the culinary art—a bright star in his field, comparable to Edison and Kettering in theirs. And, like these two inventors, he was a true devotee of the freedom way of life. Further, this star of my theme was also a lawyer, an economist, and a member of the National Assembly during the French Revolutionary period.

It was during this period that Mirabeau, a great orator and hero of the masses, urged yet another enormous issue of assignats—paper money “secured” by confiscated Catholic church properties, which comprised more than one-fourth of all the land in France. Of course, the assignats were irredeemable legal tender, as is our paper currency.

Brillat-Savarin, responding to Mirabeau’s proposal, “called attention to the depreciation of assignats already felt. He tried to make the Assembly see that natural laws work as inexorably in France as elsewhere; he predicted that if this new issue were made, there would come a depreciation of thirty per cent.” White then refers to Brillat-Savarin as “the man who so fearlessly stood against this tide of unreason.”

Right now we in the U.S.A. are faced with a tide of unreason on the rampage. Natural law works as inexorably here as in France or elsewhere; our legal tender, like the assignats of yore, is suffering the same fate and for the same reason: passions, emotions, expediency. As did Mirabeau, many know better but yield to temptation—popular or political. Spineless!

Thank heaven, there are the few, in and out of office, who, as Brillat-Savarin, stand against our tide of unreason. Goethe was so right: “. . . reason remains ever the property of the few.”

The question is, will our few exemplars stand as models for future generations? Will their righteousness grace not only this generation but also our progeny? The answer is assuredly affirmative, for every action—good or evil—casts its light or darkness into the days and months and years ahead, dwindling or intensifying as time goes on.

Brillat-Savarin’s righteousness—“the man who stood so fearlessly against this tide of unreason”—was no more sacrosanct than the righteousness of a few others in the National Assembly. Yet, the glorious stature of those others is all but forgotten—dwindled away—while his example is still aglow, a light in today’s darkness. Why his and not the others? Answer this question and the few righteous ones of our time will possess a guideline to brighten the lives of future generations.

I feel certain that Andrew Dickson White would no more have singled out—highlighted, dramatized—Brillat-Savarin than one or two others in the National Assembly had it not been for that Frenchman’s excellence as an innovator of cooking and his consequent reputation as a gastronomical genius. A reputation for excellence in any one of countless fields carries with it a drawing power; it attracts listeners not only in one’s own time but into the future.

Observe the tendency of the masses to accept any opinion voiced by those who have the reputation of being the greatest in any one endeavor, be it football, baseball or whatever. For instance, there are virtuosic orators such as Cicero, or William Jennings Bryan, or some other. Millions listened to them in their time and ever so many know of their messages today. And it makes not one whit of difference whether or not the ideological views be buncombe or wisdom. A reputation for excellence has an unbelievable thrust to it, regardless of wisdom or nonsense.

Finally, what does this mean for our few who stand ramrod straight for the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life? If their ideas are to bear fruit in the future and have more attraction than the famous who father babble and ignoble notions, they must gain a reputation for excellence. Let it be in oratory or writing or fearlessness or cooking or whatever most nearly approximates their uniqueness.

As Goethe wrote, “. . . reason can never be popular.” Nor can being right! May our few who achieve excellence side with Henry Clay: “I would rather be right than be president.” President Lincoln gave us a good guideline to achieve excellence:

Let us have a faith that right makes might, and in that faith, let us to the end, dare to do our duty, as we understand it.

[1] Available in paperback from FEE.

[2] Copyright by The George Macy Companies, Inc., 1949.

15

IGNORANCE: AGENT OF DESTRUCTION

There is nothing more terrible than ignorance in action.

—GOETHE

As Victor Hugo observed, “Armies can be resisted.” Indeed, they can! But what about bad ideas, that is, ignorance? The most difficult problem facing the people of the United States today is to resist ignorance in action.

Were I a loyal Russian devoted to the U.S.S.R.—Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—and determined to overcome, subvert, and absorb the U.S.A., what would my tactic be? Drop hydrogen bombs? Probably not! That tactic would be resisted as would an invading army. What then? Would I not try to outmaneuver resistance by attractively phrasing and propagandizing the ideas of socialism? I’d play upon such themes as “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” How would I measure my success? By the extent to which the people of the United States adopted my creed, the ten points of the Communist Manifesto.

As a devotee of freedom, thus opposed to compulsory collectivism, I view with distress the extent to which Americans have embraced the ten points. Here are substantially accurate assessments:

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes—Our 78,000 governmental units—federal, state and local—own outright not less than 39 per cent of all acreage. And the remaining land in private title is only partially owned, for government may exert eminent domain over it, and no one owns that which he does not control. To public purposes? Who knows, except it is enormous![1]

2. A heavy or progressive income tax—Complete acceptance!

3. Abolition of all right of inheritance—With graduated estate tax rates running as high as 70 per cent and state inheritance taxes being added on to that, the right of inheritance appears to be in the twilight zone.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels—The government’s shameful treatment of Japanese-Americans during World War II, on the mere suspicion that they might do something to hamper the war effort, was a breach of American standards of justice. Excused as a wartime emergency measure, the precedent nevertheless remains to haunt the nation in times of peace—the rights of people may be suspended any time on the pretext of an “emergency.”

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly—The Federal Reserve System, together with the legal tender laws, have substantially accomplished this objective.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State—The extent to which control of communication and transportation is in the F.C.C. and the I.C.C. tends to reduce the question of formal ownership to the point of insignificance. There is no ownership without control.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan—The postal system and the T.V.A. are examples of moves in this direction. Government ownership of land noted in point number 1 and recent controls of all kinds applied in the name of consumer protection are others. The entire list is too extensive for coverage in the space available in this article.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture—With the federal government controlling the right to hire and fire, as well as the wages being paid, this objective has been substantially accomplished.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country—Zoning laws are already controlling land use in most of our urban areas and many rural areas as well. Population shifts are being controlled by denying sellers the right to choose their own customers.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form—We have free education in public schools and our child labor laws do, in fact, prohibit children from working in factories. Complete agreement! However, public education is far from free, in Russia or here. It is unbelievably expensive.

What an infestation of communistic ideas! In the politico-economic realm, the U.S.S.R. type of State has nothing above it, thus, the State is God. What constitutes such a State? Individuals politically exercising all-out coercive power. This is quite the opposite of the wisdom on which America’s government was founded, namely, that all men are endowed by their Creator—not by the State—with the rights to life and liberty.

There is, however, a common notion among freedom devotees that should be questioned, the notion that this urge for compulsory collectivism has its origin in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Their society is but a modern variation on primitive ways of life: serfdom, feudalism, mercantilism and the like. Their propaganda is cleverly drawn to have us believe theirs is the wave of the future.

The communist theoreticians believe their tactics are causing our slump into socialism, as do many Americans, but the belief is erroneous. Our slump, no less than theirs, is but a thrust from the primitive past—in different grammar, that’s all!

As to why communistic notions portray ignorance, our Pilgrim Fathers made the discovery during their first three years—1620–1623. During those years they practiced “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” about 2 1/2 centuries before Marx put the nonsense into words.

Why did these forefathers of ours abandon this practice? They were starving! No intelligence is required to give away food and fabric but to do so presupposes something in the warehouse. Their warehouses were too near empty to sustain life.[2]

What was the cure for this ignorance in action? Governor Bradford and the remaining Pilgrims turned to the wisdom of the market—private ownership, that is, to each according to his productivity. Success attended this wise move, thereby setting the stage for the American miracle!

Unfortunately, an increasing number of Americans—millions of them—have all but forgotten their remarkable heritage, a root of which was the Pilgrim awakening. It is an observed fact that these millions are becoming more and more afraid of and are running away from the American revolutionary concept. What, then, are they running toward? The Communist Manifesto, the nonsense from which the Pilgrims escaped long before Marx advocated it: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” The eventual economic by-product? Unless the trend is reversed, it must be empty warehouses!

The trend cannot be reversed unless we discover the causes that are to be avoided and the cure that is to be taken. Such discovery depends upon improved analysis and thinking.

The first cause will come as a shock to most people: “If you are not a part of the solution, you are a part of the problem.” It is self-evident that those who pay no heed to the present trend—afflicted with complacency—are a part of the problem. They drift with the ideological tide—unknowingly. As a consequence, they vote in accord with the current tide, that is, for the planned economy and the welfare state: socialism, ignorance in action.

The second cause is a lack of awareness of the American heritage or its genesis. People observe socialism advancing and at the same time they experience increased prosperity. Jumping to a false conclusion they attribute their material well-being to the socialism—a seriously mistaken correlation. We are as prosperous as we are only because our productivity is strong enough to carry on in spite of the socialistic nonsense.[3] Briefly stated, the genesis of the prosperity we still enjoy is this: The Constitution and the Bill of Rights more severely restrained government action than ever before in history, limiting government to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. There was a minimum of organized force standing against the release of creative human energy. The result was an unprecedented outburst of creativity—the miracle!

Finally, how does one become a part of the solution? By trying to become an aristocrat as defined by Jefferson: “There is a natural aristocracy among men; it is composed of virtues and talents.”

The reason that we are witnessing such an abundance of nonsense in action is a devastating slump in virtues and talents among individuals in all walks of life—religion, education, business, labor or whatever. Nonsense runs rampant whenever the aristocratic spirit is weak and faltering; it is checked, held in abeyance, whenever virtues and talents are rising to set a glorious standard.

Your role and mine? We have no short cut except to exemplify as best we can the aristocratic spirit. Only then does each of us become a part of the solution!

[1] For a further and enlightening development of this point, see “Changing Concepts of Private Property” by Bertel M. Sparks (The Freeman, October 1971).

[2] See Of Plymouth Plantation by William Bradford, edited by Harvey Wish (New York: Capricorn Books, 1962).

[3] See “An American Mirage” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake.

16

THE SHOW-OFF IS WAY OFF

Talent for talent’s sake is a bauble and a show. Talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.

—EMERSON

Wrote Baltasar Gracián, the Spanish philosopher and satirist two centuries before Emerson:

The larger the number of gifts [talents] the less the need to affect any, for such would be vulgar insult to all of them.

What follows is an attempt to analyze Emerson’s and Gracián’s thoughts by seeking answers to these questions:

1. Why is the seeking of talent for talent’s sake a bauble—“a showy but worthless thing”—or, as Gracián phrased it, “vulgar”?

2. Why does talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth make the practitioner thereof a benefactor?

3. And another point by Gracián: “. . . the man of discrimination will never exhibit his virtues, for it is through their very concealment that they awaken the interest of others.” Is it valid?

Talent for talent’s sake is no more than a showy and wordy thing; gross if the purpose be vulgar; evil if it be not high. To get away with piracy, thievery, hijacking, embezzlement and the like takes talent of sorts.

The same can be said about talents aimed at fame, notoriety, or fortune for fortune’s sake. And observe the kind of talent so prevalent in the news media—emphasizing the bad to the neglect of the good. Showy stuff!

And above all, note the political talent of getting votes: Say anything to gain or hold office and wield power over the citizenry.

On the other hand is the talent of working with joy in the cause of universal truth—Creation. Those who lead in acquiring and practicing this rare talent are, unquestionably, the highest-ranking benefactors of mankind. These few are capable, to some extent, of intercepting the Divine Intelligence and leading the rest of us in Creation’s evolutionary direction. In the absence of such benefactors, mankind would still be at the level of the cave dwellers.

Universal truth, of course, is omnipresent. What unique talent is it that graces our benefactors, enabling them to intercept Truth? It is their preparation, their seeking, their desire to tune in and receive a bit of the Divine Intelligence. This is what lifts a talented one to the new power of a benefactor. Thus graced, each benefactor serves as a go-between, or as Socrates labeled this talent, “a philosophical midwife.” They receive from Heavenly sources and share with the few who can tune in and receive their enlightenments.

Emerson speaks of working with joy in the cause of universal truth. This spiritual man, certainly among our benefactors, goes on to explain:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

This we should try to grasp: to allow a passage of its beams—to intercept the “immense intelligence”—is a skill that manifests itself only if the pursuit of universal truth be joyful. One cannot imagine a complacent or angry person rising to these intellectual, moral and spiritual heights. As was wisely observed long ago: “Everything that is leavened rises, and joy is the rational elevation or rising of the soul.” The bakers of bread know about leavening. But only now and then do we come upon an individual—past or present—who realizes that the joyous seeking of universal truth is the yeast that determines how much bread—goods and services—shall grace mankind.

Bear in mind that there are two kinds of power—coercive and creative. The practitioners of coercive power are corrupted and degraded. But “talent working with joy in the cause of universal truth lifts the possessor to new power as a benefactor.” More power to our benefactors!

Finally, to Gracián’s point that the man of discrimination will never exhibit his virtues, “for it is through their very concealment that they awaken the interest of others.” Is it valid? If it is, then most of us devoted to the freedom way of life have a lot of homework to do.

What a show-off I have been in several fields, a virtual exhibitionist! There is an egotistical drive here: flaunting my five holes-in-one, displaying a book and numerous articles by experts proclaiming me a culinary artist, showing off LER’s Journal, emphasizing not a missed day in over 26 years, and so on. All of this is, as Emerson asserted, “a bauble and a show.” George Elder wrote, “When one talks incessantly about things accomplished, little time is left to do anything.”

Suppose I were really a man of discrimination in these areas. What would my method be? Concealment! Shut up! Those who care will awaken and find out anything worth having.

Let a person be a superb golfer. He need not then be a braggart. Everyone interested in that sport will awaken to his skills and his record, holes-in-one or whatever. Further, countless thousands will seek his tutorship.

The same is true in the culinary field. Cook a better meal than others have experienced and they’ll ask for your recipes. Concentrate on your cooking, however high your self-esteem. Being a show-off will give your guests a headache, if not a stomach-ache!

Golf, cooking and numerous other hobbies of my earlier years have been relegated to second place. Further, because of Gracián’s counsel, they’ll arouse no more exhibitionism—never again!

What, now, comes first with me? Trying better to understand and explain the freedom philosophy. In this exalted ambition, I am not a show-off. I know next to nothing about it—and know it! And if that be talent, it is well concealed. Yet, as I joyously labor in this vineyard, receiving a thought now and then, improving a word or phrase, drawing on benefactors past and present, thinking of myself as a midwife—not as source—numerous other individuals are awakened and take off on their own.

Gracián’s point is, indeed, valid! For evidence, observe so many of the individuals from several walks of life whose avowed aim is to “save free enterprise,” and note how they assess themselves: theirs is the last word; they have all the answers—they think! Not the slightest humility or concealment—the omnipotent I! Show-offs and way off!

The main point of this thesis was pronounced 25 centuries ago in the Old Testament book of Isaiah. The late Albert Jay Nock wrote a brilliant paraphrase of this wisdom.[1] Those few who really count are unknown—The Remnant. They will have nothing to do with anyone bent on reforming others. Instead, they are awakened and attracted only to those who are seeking light, that is, devoted to their own enlightenment.

Let us then work with joy in the cause of universal truth and acquire that new power which makes us benefactors. By so doing, we will serve Creation at the Heavenly and earthly levels. And that’s as high as man can go!

[1] See Notes from FEE, July 1962 entitled “Isaiah’s Job.” Copy on request.

17

ON GOING TO EXTREMES

The reverse of error is not truth, but error still.

—RICHARD CECIL

In the physical world there are extremes of heat and cold, of aridity and moisture, north and south, and so on. Then there are perpendicular extremes—up and down; high up into the stratosphere and deep down into the molten rock at the earth’s core, extremely deep below the surface.

My aim here is to examine “extremism” in the world of ideas as related to politico-economic behaviors. To use popular terms, ideas range from “left” to “right,” that is, from communism, socialism and the like, to the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life. And, as in the physical world, ideas have their highs and lows—up all the way to heavenly and down all the way to hellish. We live in a world of intellectual as well as physical extremes. An assessment of behavioral extremes is important.

The English divine, Richard Cecil (1748–1777), quoted above, says that “the reverse of error is not truth, but error still.” This is to say that one might go either forward or backward in error—and two wrongs do not make a right. As related to the politico-economic realm, Cecil’s observation is assuredly valid.

At the “left” is socialism which today and throughout history has numerous labels: serfdom, feudalism, mercantilism, Nazism, communism, fascism, the planned economy, the welfare state, the command society—all-out government. To appreciate Cecil’s point, note the numerous opponents of socialism whose tactic is the advocacy of socialism’s opposite—no government at all. Anarchy!

As Ludwig von Mises observed: “Socialism is planned chaos; anarchy is unplanned chaos.” Obviously, socialism is erroneous and so is its reverse. Anarchy is not truth, but error still!

If both socialism and anarchy be error, then the notions that spawn them are detrimental to a harmonious society.

First, is socialism a planned, political contrivance? Indeed, yes! The citizens are not permitted to live their lives creatively as they please. Instead, their lives are planned by dictocrats, and the planning is coercively enforced.

Second, does this contrivance result in chaos? Yes! Here are several ways of phrasing the origins of social chaos:

The coercers and the coerced.

The rulers and the ruled.

The human stamping machines and the duplicates.

The be-like-me’s and the crude approximations thereof.

The know-nothings with a passion for commanding and those commandeered.

Each infringement upon any one person frustrates the creative self and is chaotic. By definition this is disorder—a disordering of society, naturally harmonious when free.

Was Mises correct in asserting that anarchy is unplanned chaos?

First, is it unplanned? Yes, no political government whatsoever—no social agency—and thus no plan to invoke a common justice or to keep the peace.

True, the anarchists acknowledge their belief in the protection of life and property. However, their “system” is to buy such protection as we buy insurance. It follows that they would have individuals and groups hire their own armed guards. Each residence or business would have its own policeman or corps of cops.

But “protection” is a concept of many colors and much that is done in the cause of “protectionism” involves a governmental or government-like use of coercion to achieve some gain or special privilege for oneself or one’s own group. And does anyone believe that merely eliminating government would get rid of powerful labor unions resorting to force to extract wages or conditions of work other than the free market might afford? Or trade associations demanding tariff protection? Or teachers or farmers or candlestick makers or all sorts of business and professional groups demanding their “due”? Or groups of welfare recipients protecting their “rights”? Who is to define or set the limits of unplanned “protection”?

Demonstrations of how anarchy “works” aren’t necessary. A bit of diagnostic thinking should suffice. What would be the code of justice? There would be in the U.S.A. 200 million “codes,” ranging from that of thieves to the countless millions who seek special privileges, each individual and group using armed force to gain their contradictory ends. Our land would be a battleground, chaos reigning, harmony out of the question. So anarchy is indeed “unplanned chaos.”

Socialism is error. Anarchy, its reverse, is error still. It is impossible for these two wrongs to make a right because each is the archenemy of liberty and of man’s emergence, evolution, growth.

The term “golden mean” is everywhere defined as the prudent or safe way between two extremes. The ideal—private ownership, free market, limited government procedure with its moral and spiritual antecedents—is definitely not half way between socialism and anarchy. It steps into a different dimension altogether. So, let’s call this ideal the golden mean, implying the golden way of life which releases individual potential.

The first step in grasping the ideal way of life is to realize that each of us is at once a social and an individualistic being. Discover what aspect is social and all the rest is individualistic.

In what respect are all of us—no exceptions—social beings? We are interdependent! Even our forebears who raised most of their own food, built their own shanties, cut their own trees for fuel, did their own weaving and so on were dependent on others for hammers, saws, stoves, kettles, tea and numerous other items. My great-great-great-grandfather, who came here prior to the American Revolution, would have perished had self-subsistence been his lot. He, and others of his time, were social beings, each dependent on others—interrelated!

The more specialized we become, the more is our interdependence apparent. For instance, we are now so specialized that I know not how to build my home or raise my food or make my car or my clothes or countless other economic blessings. Talk about a social being! I am so far removed from self-sufficiency that I am absolutely dependent upon the free, uninhibited exchange of the little I do—write and lecture—for all the goods and services produced by other millions of social beings. This dependency on one another applies to everyone. If in doubt, reflect upon how well you would prosper were you to live only on that which you now do or know how to do.

Were we to regard this phase of life as individualistic rather than social, that is, attempt the self-sufficient rather than the interdependent way, all of us would be starving to death on the periphery of specialization.

It should be self-evident that social beings cannot live life to the fullest unless they are free to exchange their millions of specializations. Primitive barter is obviously unworkable as a means of exchange. For example, we never observe people exchanging a goose for a gallon of gas or office desks for seats on airplanes. Ridiculous!

What then? An economic circulatory system, that is, the medium of exchange—money! And it works automatically with little heed paid to its wondrous performance—so long as it is honest! However, as socialism grows and incurs costs far beyond what can be collected by direct tax levies, government resorts to inflation. This dilutes the monetary unit and the dollar—our medium of exchange—is worth less and less, heading toward worthlessness.

Broadly speaking, the above are components that circumscribe the citizenry as social beings. All else is individualistic. In the latter we speak and act for ourselves. But no individual should ever be permitted to speak and act for society; that would be socialism.

In an ideal society, its agency would act on behalf of one and all alike. Ideally, this would be limited government, nearly the opposite of what we now have. The agency would be strictly limited as it was following the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The type of social agency that once did and can again grace the lives of Americans is limited to:

Invoking a common justice—no special privilege for anyone.

Keeping the peace, foreign and domestic—let anyone do anything that’s peaceful.

Defending against all fraud, violence, predation, misrepresentation—the coercive taking from some and giving to others forbidden.

Freedom to choose, be it occupation, hours of work, goods and services produced, at what prices and to whom sold or exchanged—laissez-faire, that is, a fair field and no favoritism.

In the ideal society, government cannot extend welfare or prosperity to this or that group of special-privilege seekers. Why? It is so limited that it has nothing on hand to dispense nor the power to take from some and give to others.

The result? A self-reliant, self-responsible, self-governing citizenry. It was this and this alone which accounted for the unprecedented outburst of creative human energy, the greatest in the world’s history, before or since—the American Miracle!

The belief that unseated government as sovereign and placed the Creator there? It was the highest wisdom ever written into a political document:

. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Let us be done with the extreme of socialism—all-out government—and that too often suggested remedy, the opposite extreme—anarchy. Socialism is error, and anarchy is error still.

Replace these extremes with the Golden Mean, meaning the golden way of life! How go about this?

Merely bear in mind that America’s fate does not rest on your or my shoulders—only our heads are there. Our founding fathers used their heads, resulting in a superb nation. May we make it better by carrying our heads proudly high, eyes cast upward, extremely high!

18

THE ROLE OF SELF-DISCIPLINE

Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.

—SHAKESPEARE

Self-discipline, as distinguished from being disciplined by others—governments, labor unions, neighbors or whoever—is a necessary attainment if liberty is to prevail. Self-discipline is a requirement in every department of life—if life is to be lived at its highest—but I shall limit the following commentary to this achievement as related to responsibility and authority.

Discipline is defined as “training that develops self-control, character, or orderliness and efficiency.” These are the elements of self-discipline, as I shall use the term!

Here’s the story of how I came upon the idea that there is a necessary and proper relationship between responsibility and authority. In the early forties the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce, with myself as General Manager, experienced a far greater success than like organizations in many large cities. Why did we have thousands of enthusiastic members and financial supporters while many business organizations were scrambling for existence? What were we doing that others were not? After a great deal of pondering, the answer came to mind.

The L.A. Chamber had 18 departments, each with a manager and staff; 150 people in all. In every instance, when assigning projects to the managers, I gave them not only the responsibility for the undertaking but also the authority to accomplish it. It worked like magic!

Why this procedure? Having had little formal schooling, I was obliged to seek tutors. And from the remarkable Socrates I learned that none of us knows very much. How possibly could the business of Los Angeles County be bettered, I asked myself, if it were but a reflection of my know-nothing-ness! By assigning responsibility and the authority to go with it, the initiative of my 150 associates was tapped; their innovative potentialities bloomed; and the total know-how and energy was tremendous! All of us worked with each other, not one in total command, but a happy combination of competition and cooperation.

My predecessor—like most managers of other Chambers—told everybody on his staff what to do and how to do it—period! His do-as-I-say tactic failed to bring out the potential talents of anyone. Thus it was that I chose the working formula: Delegate responsibility and authority commensurately. This turns out to be the secret of organizational success, be it in Chambers of Commerce, trade associations, business corporations, or even preparing a dinner with your wife. If I say, “Please prepare the salad,” I give her the authority to make it her way. As in all other organizational arrangements, she may seek my counsel but the final decision is hers. It works!

Interestingly, it was some 10 years later that I heard this exact phrasing from another. He was the Vice Chairman of perhaps the world’s largest corporation, one having many divisions and locations, each with its own president and staff. Responsibility for doing a good job was delegated to each of those presidents along with the authority to accomplish the task. Did it work? One of the greatest corporate successes I have ever known!

As observed earlier, self-discipline, as distinguished from being disciplined by others, is a necessary attainment if liberty is to prevail. And self-discipline significantly relates to both responsibility and authority.

As I have written many times, self-responsibility and liberty are two parts of the same ideological coin. Neither is possible without the other. Nor is self-responsibility possible without a strict self-discipline. Refusal to turn the responsibility for self over to another or others, which is to relieve self of life’s problems, requires a discipline of the highest order. It takes intellectual toughness not to yield to this seductive temptation.

Equally destructive is allowing governments to assume the responsibility for our welfare, deciding for us what we shall learn or produce or with whom exchange or the hours we may work or prices and wages. To thus abandon self-control is a suicidal act. As Verna Hall wrote: “To the extent that an individual turns the responsibility of self over to another or allows government to take it away, to that extent is the very essence of one’s being removed.”

Next, what about self-discipline as related to authority? Is it necessary? It relates to authority no less than to responsibility. Omission of self-discipline from either one makes it ineffective in the other. It is a double-barreled necessity and unless practiced in both will result in countless disciplines over our lives by governments and other dictocrats.

When one is graced with the responsibility-authority combination—those rare stimulative twins—the chances of success are greatly increased. A person thus graced is head and shoulders above those in comparable endeavors. However, it takes an unusual self-discipline to keep success from going to one’s head. The remedy? Acquiring and keeping in mind, day-in-and-day-out, that Socratic truth: knowing next to nothing!

At this point, reflect on Shakespeare’s wonderfully phrased wisdom: “Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.”

Countless individuals gain the reputation of being top authorities at this or that bit of expertise—a business or labor tycoon, an economist, a novelist, a writer of communistic doctrine or whatever. They believe as many others do that no one rivals or excels them in their specializations, and perhaps no one does. What is the malady that so often follows these self-assessments? The belief that there is nothing in the Cosmos above their minds! As a consequence, many of them, as Karl Marx, become atheists—their finite minds the Almighty I! Infinite Consciousness—Creation—to them is just so much religious buncombe! Man, proud man! He does, indeed, make the angels weep!

The self-discipline that will remedy such inflated self-esteem? No one knows, for it is as indescribable as intuitive flashes or insights having a Source which they in their presumed omniscience have denied. From that condition, how does one regain an open mind?

An open mind to what? To the Infinite Unknown! Rarely will those self-designated authorities grasp this concept, for their egotism squelches their reason. Any attempt to deflate their egotism will result (1) in a confirmation of their headiness and (2) in a dislike of all would-be reformers. So what can we do? We can let them go their own way!

Most important, we, too, each of us, can go his own way: strive for humility; acknowledge the mystery of how Creation works its wonders, the wonderful miracle of the free and unfettered market. And we may be grateful to Shakespeare, who warned us against pride, and to Socrates who made it plain to us that the more we know the more we know we do not know.

The role of self-discipline as related to responsibility and authority is to shield us from dictocratic disciplinarians and to assure the liberty that brings peace on earth, good will toward men.

19

WHY SEEK THE LIGHT?

Light! Nature’s resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom.

—EDWARD THOMSON

The following doggerel may serve to dramatize the point here at issue:

There lived two frogs, so I’ve been told,

In a quiet wayside pool;

And one of these frogs was a blamed bright frog,

But the other frog was a fool.

Now a farmer man with a big milk-can

Was wont to pass that way;

And he used to stop and add a drop

Of the aqua pura, they say.

And it chanced one morn in the early dawn

When the farmer’s sight was dim,

He scooped those frogs in the water he dipped,

Which was a joke on him.

The fool frog sank in the swashing tank,

As the farmer bumped to town.

But the smart frog flew like a tugboat screw,

And he swore he would not go down.

So he kicked and splashed and he slammed and thrashed,

And he kept on top through all;

And he churned that milk in first-class shape

In a great big butter ball.[1]

This humorous verse strikingly depicts the human situation in today’s U.S.A.

1. There’s the farmer who cheats. He obtains the water for free and sells it for milk. Competition? Quite the opposite: the something-for-nothing syndrome! This nicely symbolizes getting paid for not working and the thousand and one other deviations from the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life. In politico-economic affairs, it is an affront to the Golden Rule. Were all to do likewise, all would perish!

2. Then there’s the “blamed bright frog.” What strength of character can we assign to humans who are similarly oriented? Never say die! That frog could, not guess what would save his life. He knew less about butter-making than I know about Creation, if that be possible. Even as we mortals, he was unaware what form his salvation would take, or even that he would be saved. But he exemplified a spirit that should feature our lives: the will to prevail!

3. And last, the fool frog who, when confronted with an obstacle, behaved as do ever so many humans when faced with cheaters galore: they give up the ghost, throw in the sponge, abandon life’s high purpose.

Wrote John Wilmot: “’Tis a meaner part of sense to find a fault than to taste an excellence.” This insight requires reflection if its message is to be heeded.

Obviously, it is the better part of wisdom and good sense to seek excellence, and not be constantly distracted by the countless faults of mankind. To “taste an excellence”—to seek the right and the good—is an objective that should, in my view, feature our mortal moments. To do otherwise, is to miss life’s golden opportunities. It’s a matter of which way the eye be cast—toward the mess we’re in or toward the what-ought-to-be; we can choose the darkness or the Light!

The countless faults of mankind are incessantly thrown up at us. Freedom devotees by the tens of thousands allow themselves to be so distracted by the bad that they are blinded to the good—which is thousands of times greater! Merely bear in mind that the eye cannot be cast in opposite directions at the same time.

Why is the bad so blatantly broadcast, causing mass distractions, while the good, ever so much greater, is silent for the most part and has to be sought out? This requires an answer to the question, “What makes news?” The mass media give the answer.

What qualifies as news? Mostly disasters—the bad—only now and then the good—the successes. A jet plane crash is news. Newspapers, TV, radio publicize it the world over. But try to find any reporting on the hundreds of millions of miles flown safely every week. The successful is an un-event: no mention. Hijacking? That’s news! Why? It’s a disaster—bad and exceptional; but passengers by untold millions have never been hijacked. Is my more than 2,000,000 miles of safe flying news? Indeed not!

A thief robs a bank. News! Millions of citizens day-in-and-day-out, year-in-and-year-out are honest. They promptly pay their bills and keep their promises. No news!

This commentary has to do only with the few who are devoted to the freedom philosophy. What destructive tendency has the media on us and what might the remedy be? A strict observation of the correct answer would be a boon to everyone, including freedom’s opponents. The following is how I presently see the media’s effect and its remedy, though, admittedly, it is a matter of forever probing.

As related to politico-economic affairs, the media, with a few notable exceptions, profusely present the fallacies of socialism as if they were sound. If you listen to radio or TV reporters and commentators or read the daily news or spend time with most weekly and monthly magazines, you listen to and read messages that spell sheer calamity to anyone who understands and believes in human liberty.

Now it may well be that you are one of the exceptional few who can allow such a message of socialism to go in one ear and out the other, shrug it off for the nonsense it is and let it go at that. In that case, lucky you!

But suppose you aren’t one of these lucky few. What happens? Wholesale distractions which result in despair, discouragement, pessimism—all is going to pot and ruin! The bad is so overemphasized that the good cannot be seen. You suffer, and freedom suffers, because there is one fewer among us who has faith that the good will prevail. And without an abundance of such faith, freedom is a lost cause.

Edward Thomson, quoted at the beginning, was doubtless referring to the light of day. However, his dramatically phrased thought is precisely as relevant to the “Light” of an enlightened mind. Phrase it this way:

Light! Mankind’s resplendent robe; without its flowing inspiration, man is wrapt in gloom.

Seek the Light! Be not distracted from so doing; let nothing stand in the way, not even all the faults of socialists. Henry Ward Beecher offered good counsel: “Every man should keep a fair-sized cemetery in which to bury the faults of his friends.” And, I would add, the faults of his opponents. If their nonsense causes our gloom, they’ve won—and without knowing why.

What is my formula for escaping the gloom? I try not to hear or read any of the nonsense—just ignore it. So how do I know what’s happening? As to the bad, it’s in the atmosphere and can be felt in one’s bones, as the saying goes. No careful attention is necessary.

Actually, if I can avoid being distracted by the bad, I can know far more of what’s going on than can those who spend their time wandering in this murky swamp; I can spend all of my time on seeking the good—which is enormous. This allows me to draw comparisons between the bad and the good, whereas those who see only the bad can make no comparisons; they are in a blind alley. They are unhappy, while I am enjoying every moment.

Why seek the light? This is precisely the same as asking, “Why do what’s right?” It is only as the right is found and practiced that errors are discovered and dismissed. In our workaday world, it is only as the miraculous wisdom of the free and unfettered market is apprehended that socialism will fall by the wayside.

Wrote Henry Clay, “I would rather be right than be President.” So, let us stand with him for the right—for human liberty, peace on earth, good will toward men.

[1] Extracted from “Story of a Kicker,” by Holman F. Day.

20

EXPLORE AND EXPLORE AND EXPLORE!

Be not chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize nor accept another’s dogmatism.

—EMERSON

The pursuit of truth demands constant explorations into the unknown. The firm statement by the Sage of Concord appears to provide a solid foundation for my title. The aim in this essay is to diagnose and spell out these thoughts in order better to partake of advice that appears to be unusually wise.

We are surrounded by mystery, and to dramatize the unknown here is a true story. During the late fifties I was a contestant in the season’s most important golf match at my club, St. Andrews. I was in the sandtrap on the 16th and, unless down in two, no chance to win. The trap shot was on the green some 20 feet from the pin—and all uphill. My putt came to a dead stop 5 inches from the cup. And then, as if an unseen hand were on my side, it rolled uphill and into the cup! An optical illusion? That would have been my conclusion had not the two caddies and my three competitors exclaimed in unison, “That ball had stopped!”

Later on I told a friend of this miracle, and he exclaimed, in disbelief, “That defies the law of gravitation.” I replied, “There are laws at work in this universe that neither you nor anyone else ever heard about.”

I have had several experiences just as miraculous as this one, and I know of a few other people who have been startled by events equally mysterious. One may assume that millions of individuals, since the dawn of human consciousness, have also experienced the unbelievable. Further, it is more than likely that no two of these phenomena have been identical. And in the folklore of all races credit has been given to medicine men, witch doctors, angels and all sorts of miracle workers. The leprechauns are a case in point. The ancients of Ireland believed that these elves conferred all the fabulous treasures and miracles that have graced many individuals during the history of man.

To me, the above emphasizes another of Emerson’s thoughts: “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence”—the Infinite Unknown. We are rocked in the cradles of Creation. Bluntly, relative to the Infinite Unknown, we are no more than “babes in the woods”—no exceptions!

As Cervantes wrote: “The road is always better than the inn.” Unfortunately, most people settle on fame or fortune or power as the “inn,” and having arrived at these inglorious ends call it quits. They miss the whole point of earthly existence. Realistically, there is no inn, no ultimate point of arrival. It is the road, now and forever—each of us a babe in Creation’s cradle probing Infinity, finding one’s way. All that matters are the lessons learned along the way.

If the above thoughts be valid, then it is obvious that the spirit of inquiry is the road we mortals should travel, this road stretching endlessly onward and upward. Revelation will be the reward: all the truth one may come by and such virtues as charity, intelligence, justice, reverence, humility, love and integrity will brighten the ascent.

Why do so many put up at the inn utterly unaware of the road? It is obvious that no one knows all the answers, which is why Emerson’s “be not chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry” is such excellent counsel. To chide and to flatter are contrasting ways of treating others, and they both have a deadening effect.

Chide: “To speak reprovingly to; to find fault with; blame; rebuke; scold.”

A person who is constantly chided or nagged—unless he has the power to disregard it—is given a life sentence. He is reduced to the status of a Dummkopf or a nincompoop. He loses sight of the road stretching endlessly onward and upward. For him it’s the inn—period! Poor soul!

Flatter: “To praise too much, untruly or insincerely; gratify the vanity of.”

Unless one has the wit to disregard such false assessments, flattery, no less than chiding, is another life sentence—growth in awareness, perception, consciousness at an end. Babes in the woods regarding themselves as great men! They are bedded down in that dismal inn which has no windows overlooking the road which leads endlessly onward and upward.

Living by Emerson’s “Neither dogmatize nor accept another’s dogmatism” is assuredly the way to avoid the afflictions of both chiding and flattery. Dogmatism is defined as a “statement of a belief as if it were an established fact; positiveness when unwarranted or arrogant.”

Dogmatizing is one of mankind’s major curses. Those who so behave fall into the category of know-it-alls—arrogant, indeed! There is no spirit of inquiry among these millions—in or out of office—who “know” that whatever they believe is “established fact.” What they see is all there is! Mysteries? There are none!

Having experienced several mysteries myself, and aware that there are millions times millions unknown to me, the dogmatic pose is an absurdity. The result?

1. No dogmatism directed at others.

2. All dogmatizing by others disregarded.

3. The belief that everyone should be privileged to act creatively as he or she pleases.

4. The spirit of inquiry a leading mission in life.

Finally, how best may one be inspired to pursue the spirit of inquiry? The “second coming” idea is what most appeals to me. Jesus of Nazareth has been presented to mankind as the Perfect Exemplar. And it is predicted that his return will someday grace humanity—the second coming!

Admittedly, my view of this is unorthodox, held by only a few. Here it is: The “second coming” is to be manifested among us mortals. Briefly, we are to strive as best we can and approach as nearly as possible—infinitesimal though it be—His Heavenly Exemplarity. Even supposing this to be an incorrect conclusion, is it not a mortal goal of the first order? Could any ambition better inspire the spirit of inquiry?

Let us, also, bring the second-coming aspiration to the human level. How? By seeking out those few individuals, past and present, who are steps ahead of ordinary mortals—oversouls, if you please—and strive to emulate their excellence. Perpetual inquiry, to repeat Emerson’s goal, will be the reward. As examples, two others add their wisdom to his:

It is error only, and not truth, that shrinks from inquiry.

—Thomas Paine

It is a shameful thing to be weary of inquiry when what we search for is excellence.

—Cicero

Thanks to all you oversouls who light our way to the road stretching onward and upward! Explore and explore and explore!

21

REFLECTIONS ON PRAISE AND CRITICISM

In Heav’n’s disposing pow’r events unite,

Nor aught can happen wrong to him who acts aright.

—HENRY BROOKE

The appropriate method for advancing the freedom way of life is, unquestionably, to live and explain the right way—emphasize the positive—rather than to denounce the countless ways of being wrong. However, there is an important subordinate aspect to explanation and denunciation. It has to do with praise and criticism, a matter worthy of some reflection.

Those who praise everything, whether the matter be good or bad, as well as those who criticize everybody and everything, act without discrimination. They would not qualify for Brooke’s blessing: “Nor aught can happen wrong to him who acts aright.”

Praise and criticism may be constructive or destructive, not only to the perpetrator but also to those toward whom the words are directed. Harm may be done to one or both parties, or—on the other hand—genuine good. The following is an attempt to sort the chaff from the wheat, the ignoble from the noble.

Individuals addicted to praising indiscriminately may realize an ignoble ambition. They may gain some favors from politicians and others they praise. At the very least they may be praised in return—an intoxicant that inflates their egos—flattery! The fumes of it invade the brain and make them selfish, proud and vain!

And what about those who are the objects of undeserved praise? Unless fortified with a rare discrimination, they will believe the folderol. They will overrate themselves. What a great man am I! Or, as has been said, “It takes a great deal of grace to be able to bear praise.” The gracious way to accept praise is to welcome it as a refreshing breeze passing by—gone with the wind! Admittedly difficult, but it is to act aright!

Does this mean that we should avoid all praise? Of course not! Praise has an important role to play. It should pertain, not to persons, but rather to economic, intellectual, moral and spiritual achievements. Examples:

- Praise the freedom way of life and all contributions to its better understanding.

- Praise all good thoughts, spoken or written.

- Praise is a debt we owe to virtue.

- Pay tribute to our great mentors of the past by praising their noble works.

“Nor aught can happen wrong to him who acts aright,” relates no less to criticism than to praise—perhaps more so. Criticism, for the most part, is of the “thou fool” variety. It is vicious and inflicts its depravity on the perpetrators as much as on those at whom it is aimed.

From the Sermon on the Mount, we read, “. . . whosoever shall say, thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire,” which I take to mean destruction of the self as contrasted with intellectual and spiritual unfoldment or growth in consciousness.

It is absurd to regard others as fools who do not think as I do, believe what I believe, act in my way. For if such were the case—all like me—all would perish. Who is harmed most by this mannerism, others—the “fools”—or I—the fooled? The ignoble I!

I have intimate acquaintances—quite a few of them—who receive more invitations to lecture on the freedom philosophy than they can possibly accommodate. Ever so many in this and other lands seek their counsel. And they know that only those who are seeking can learn. Yet, many of these freedom mentors desert the correct method. Why? They become so exasperated with what’s going on that they forsake their reason and yield to their emotions. They call their opponents fools or demagogues or some other derogatory name—criticism at its worst.

Criticism of the “thou fool” variety does far more than offend those at whom it is directed. It causes them to dislike or hate not only the name-callers but the freedom philosophy as well. It hardens them in their socialistic ways and toughens rather than weakens their stand—overcoming made far more difficult.

Now reflect on the name-callers and what this kind of criticism does to them. Not only must we not call them “fools” but, equally as important, we should not even think of them as such. This comes close to being an unattainable discipline but it is one for which we should strive. What happens to us when we think of others in this manner? It results in an overassessment of self: We have all the answers, they have none.

While I believe that collectivist answers are utterly false and that ours are in the direction of truth, I am unaware of anyone who has more than scratched the surface when it comes to understanding and making the case in clarity for the freedom way of life. This being the case, a profound humility should feature our lives—an acknowledgment that we know next to nothing!

It is ever so much easier to preach than to practice what is right. Over the years, I have come to see the error of name-calling, but I still find myself thinking unpleasantly of those whose politico-economic viewpoint is the opposite of mine. It is a habit difficult to overcome.

Is this to suggest that we devotees of freedom should cease all criticizing? Of course not! Criticism, used aright, should never be directed at persons; criticize the fallacies of socialism by showing the virtues of freedom. Strict adherence to this tactic has an all-too-seldom discovered blessing not only to self but to the freedom philosophy, freedom of speech being an integral part thereof. Impersonal but proper! This lesson was taught to me 45 years ago.

Back in the early days of the New Deal—the NIRA—the Blue Eagle, so-called—was invoked, a set of strangling controls endorsed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the NAM and most business leaders. On the staff of the Chamber at that time, I learned that one distinguished business leader—unknown to me personally—was severely criticizing this socialistic monstrosity we were sponsoring. “Thinking” that we were right, I called to set him straight. Following my nonsense, he employed a tactic which he rarely used. A very severe critic of all socialistic programs then on the rampage, he emphasized the positive, explaining the freedom philosophy in terms as clear as I have ever heard. That hour’s explanation was the birth of my turn-about.

What is criticism’s most useful purpose? According to Samuel Johnson, “Criticism, as it was first instituted by Aristotle, was meant as a standard of judging well.”

Were we to follow Aristotle’s counsel, we would, first and foremost, look critically at our own thoughts, ideas, impulses. Is our understanding of the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life grounded in basic principles or is it merely superficial or imitative?

In the advancement of understanding, are our methods attractive or distractive? Have both praise and criticism been relegated to their appropriate roles?

And, finally, has that all-too-common practice of “reaching others” been replaced by the attempt to get so proficient that others will reach for the freedom-oriented self?

If the answers to these questions are not affirmative, then there is homework to be done. Whether others do it or not is none of my business. What is my business? My homework! Interestingly, the more I do the more I find there is to do! And what might have begun as drudgery becomes increasingly joyous.

22

IS THERE TIME ENOUGH?

There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known.

—Matthew 10:26

In a spirit of eternal vigilance, let’s consider the important matter of advancing an understanding and practice of freedom.

As Aristotle observed, “One may go wrong in many different ways, but right only in one.” This applies as pertinently to the subject here at issue as to any other attainment.

First, what are the wrong ways? They are too numerous to list; so to avoid misunderstanding, or pages of explanation, or offense to many of those devoted to freedom, here is the one right way—as I see it: self-improvement! This means not only advancing one’s own understanding of the freedom philosophy, but achieving an ever-improving clarity in explanation. This is the right way. All the others are wrong and, in my judgment, do more harm than good.

Why is self-improvement the right way? Truth, as related to freedom or to any other subject, cannot be cannonballed into the masses or into any single person. All good and elevating ideas, be they yours or mine or anyone else’s, must be sought to be received. Real intellectual gains are made only in response to the law of attraction. In no instance can they be thrust into the mentality of another. All thrusting attempts are distractive rather than attractive and only magnify our problem. They cause the socialistic nonsense to gain by leaps and bounds!

During FEE’s 31 years we have heard over and over again words to this effect:

I agree that self-improvement is highly desirable, but we are facing disaster and your remedy is far too slow. Time is running out. We must get our ideas into the heads of these ignoramuses—and quick!

Most, if not all, of the wrong ways for replacing a growing socialism with a longed-for freedom stem from the notion that there is not time enough for the right way.

Really, the appropriate question is not, “Is there time enough?” but, rather, “Am I enough of an exemplar?” Time is infinite, but I am finite. Thus, when it comes to improving the practice of freedom, my part is to improve myself in my time. Beyond that, there is nothing I can do about it.

If we review the history and timing of good movements, we find that Christianity did not exert its elevating influence on Western Civilization prior to Christ’s crucifixion—and not, indeed, for many years thereafter. His exemplarity bore its wonderful fruit long after that shameful event.

Suppose He had held the idea that there wasn’t time enough for purity of thought and simple righteousness to result in the conversion of great numbers and had resorted to the wholesale reformation of others during His earthly moments. There would have been no Perfect Exemplar and no Christianity today or ever!

In the realm of mortals also may be found exemplars of the kind that you and I should try our best to emulate—Frederic Bastiat, for instance. Did his wisdom cause a turnabout in his native France during his lifetime (1801–1850)? If anything, the practice of freedom slumped during that period.

Bastiat, however, counselled two Englishmen—Richard Cobden and John Bright—who, in turn, were largely responsible for the advance of the Industrial Revolution as governmental protectionism gave way to free trade—an unprecedented increase of goods and services to the masses. And this, also: at least a million Americans have read one or more of his works during the past 25 years—a contribution to our restoration of freedom more than a century after his death. Bastiat did not live to witness the fruits of his politico-economic enlightenment. Instead, he labored on his own improvement in his own time and, in the process, left intellectual guidelines for others to follow.

Assess the works of our Founding Fathers, writers of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. These few were inner-directed, seeking an improvement in their own thinking and in their time. Few if any of them lived to witness the remarkable fruits of their joint intellectual, moral and spiritual labors. Had that been their consuming zeal—had they paused to lament that “there’s not time enough”—there would have been no American miracle. Those early exemplars did not stop all else to reform the vast majority who do no politico-economic thinking for themselves. Instead, they sought and discovered a social formula that encouraged and made it possible for the nonthinkers to cooperate to the best interests of themselves and all concerned.

There are numerous examples comparable to the above. And, assuredly, there have been ever so many instances of self-improvement resulting in monumental advances that have never been fully recognized and recorded. Indeed, it is certain that countless valuable social and political gains have been fathered by individuals who were unaware of their contributions. How come? The fruition of their exemplary behavior and thinking blessed mankind long after their mortal moment—often decades or even centuries later!

My admonition (to myself first of all) is that we set not our eyes upon saving or bettering humanity in our time. If such a result crowns our efforts, well and good; but our aim should be to strive for truth and righteousness all the time. To the extent that we succeed in self-improvement, to that extent will the general human situation be improved—though no one now knows the precise timing of the results.

No one knows what will happen in the next minute any more than he knows what will happen a century from now. It may very well be that an enlightenment of the past—no one knows how long ago—is to have its fulfillment right now, that is, in our time. And, by the same token, anyone’s self-improvement of today may achieve fruition in the far-off future.

Let’s have faith that such fulfillment—namely, a restoration of freedom—is in the immediate offing. This faith, however, can be absolutely justified only to the extent that there are individuals who pursue the path of self-improvement. Adherence to what is right—exemplarity—will result in a significant abandonment of the wrong ways, particularly the deadening notion that “There isn’t time enough for the right way.”

Saint Matthew shares a faith and a promise that should sustain all devotees of freedom: “There is nothing covered that shall not be revealed; and hid that shall not be known.” Again, the truth of freedom is about to be revealed and known. For there is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one small candle. Freedom is light—enlightenment—and cannot be extinguished!

23

WON BY ONE

An individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities that make for a superb nation.

—WALT WHITMAN

Our earth is but a tiny fraction of the solar system, that is, the sun and all the heavenly bodies that revolve around it. The sun is our star, the sole source of all the light and energy that make earthly life possible. One star, a remarkable one! Our galaxy, however, is composed of some 30 billion ones, stars that account for the light we occasionally observe in the Milky Way.

Descend now to the earthly level and our own nation. Each individual is but one among more than 200 million. The state of the union—how superb our nation—is determined by the individuals who compose the population. It always has been, is now, and always will be a matter of individuality. If no stars in the citizenry, then nothing splendid is to be expected. But note this: If there be but one who is sufficiently brilliant—a truly remarkable one—count on it, ours will be superb nation. Why? It is light that brings forth the eye! Thus, how bright the light of a star is the question before us.

During the past 45 years I have become acquainted with thousands of freedom devotees, not only in the U.S.A. but in 22 foreign nations. However, I am unaware of anyone whose quality is superb enough to bring about a superb nation. I know many praiseworthy ones but not the hoped-for remarkable one.

My limited vision, however, is not to be taken as proof that there is no one amongst us. Who sees all the stars! Reflect on the remarkable one of nearly 2,000 years ago. Only a few among the millions on this earth were aware of His existence. Even today, many in the world remain unaware.

To highlight my point, I turn again to an observation by Edmund Burke:

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is) I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.

Using Burke’s observations as guidelines, let’s examine today’s situation.

What is a public calamity? For geographical pictures have a look at Russia and Red China. Put into words, a public calamity has a double-barreled definition:

Government ownership and control of the means of production: The Planned Economy.

Government ownership and control of the results of production: The Welfare State.

Whether or not this is labeled calamity depends on one’s perception. Most Russians and Chinese, born into an authoritarian society, regard their situation not as calamity but as the what-ought-to-be; they do not see beyond their own experiences. And most Americans, born without the gift of seeing through the sham of political babble, are in the same unfortunate fix.

Is the U.S.A. on the brink of ruin? The few who see the glory of the free market, private ownership, limited government way of life—individual liberty—believe we are heading rapidly toward “the very brink of ruin.” The socialistic trend has been gaining momentum each year for the past six or seven decades.

Is there a “seasonable man” amongst us? I am certain, as Burke, that there are numerous persons with this potential, and among us right now. But neither you nor I know who the “seasonable man” is; indeed, that individual himself is unaware. If he so regarded himself, he wouldn’t be one. So what is your and my responsibility? It is nothing less than trying to surpass each other—competing for excellence—not necessarily that we’ll be the one but that we may be among the few drawn to the “seasonable man.”

Is it possible that the “seasonable man” might be an individual who is without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind? Yes, if his mind be adequately vigorous; if righteousness be his first aim in life (confiding in the aid of God), and if he be “full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance.”

All history attests to this truth. Jesus of Nazareth was without office or public functions of any kind, yet he shaped the history of the western world. And in one degree or another the same might be said of mortals such as Socrates, Maimonides, Francis of Assisi, Thomas Aquinas, Shakespeare, Spinoza, Isaac Newton, Emerson, and Thoreau. In recent times, I need only mention a Ludwig von Mises or an Ezra Taft Benson. And there are many others whose work may have been so much behind the scenes that we know not of them.

Will multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, appear and troop about him? The millions who today unconsciously follow and troop about present-day socialists will just as unconsciously troop about the one. Further, he will be unconscious that he is the one, unaware that the exalted ideas and ideals which he exemplifies constitute the driving force.

Finally, what method shall we use in trying to surpass each other in exemplifying freedom ideas and ideals? It is the very opposite of the wrong tactic so often employed: Reaching for others! The right? Striving to achieve that excellence which will cause a few to reach for us! Briefly, it is the improvement of self and not the reforming of others—the power to attract rather than repulse.

Having expressed my views as to what’s right and wrong, here are my concluding thoughts as to your role and mine. Merely remember that there is no level to falling or rising stars, to descending or ascending. What then? Strive everlastingly for excellence not only in understanding but for clarity in exposition—clearly as possible without losing the train of thought. Avoid obscurity, labor for simplicity!

Do this and some truly perceptive historian of the future will write of the turnabout now in the offing:

“They Won by One!”

24

OUT OF EVIL: GOOD!

Try to find the good in the bad. The good is always there.

—RUDOLPH STEINER

I choose to be an optimist rather than a pessimist, as related to our present politico-economic decline—and it is not because I am unaware of the decline. My stance is based on a series of exercises begun 20 years ago, Steiner’s formula for self-improvement. This requires five minutes of concentration every day for six months—each month a new exercise.[1]

In the fourth month one must contemplate a different bad thing each day until he finds something good in it. Interesting and encouraging, the good is always there! And five minutes is sufficient. One among countless examples: The starling is a messy bird—bad! One day hundreds of them moved across our lawn picking from the soil the grubs of Japanese beetles; their destruction ended—good!

Now to the good that is coming to light as a result of the present decline into socialism. As Horace observed in Rome about 2,000 years ago:

Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in times of prosperity would have lain dormant.

Here is my way of paraphrasing the above as related to this thesis:

Bad notions have the effect of eliciting good ideas which, were all serene and to everyone’s satisfaction, would stimulate but little if any mental activity. Dormancy!

Ever since the conclusion of those exercises two decades ago, I have been able to identify countless good and elevating ideas that would have lain dormant had it not been for the bad notions responsible for our decline. While I have featured this discovery—Steiner’s, not mine—in all of my lectures on methodology, the inspiration for this essay is a letter just received from an Australian friend.

Somewhat unbelievably, Australia is in a steeper decline than the U.S.A. Wrote my friend, “One of the good things about our present political mess is an increasing opportunity for me to discuss the ideas of liberty.” Were everything serene and to most people’s satisfaction in that country, there would be nothing to evoke his splendid ideas. Were there prosperity, they would have lain dormant!

To put this thesis into focus, to demonstrate how there is always something good in everything bad, imagine a man born at the beginning of life on earth, and still living! By reason of such a life span, his frequency perception would differ from ours. To use a figure of speech, he would see only the forest and not the trees, whereas, we see the trees and not the forest.

Let Walt Disney explain what I mean by frequency perception. He focused his camera on a rose planting, flicking a motion picture film every day or so. When the plant had grown and the rose had bloomed, he put this phenomenon—filmed over many weeks—on the screen so that viewers might witness the development in two or three minutes. That was a dramatic change in frequency perception.

Our imaginary man’s frequency perception would be vastly different from ours. About 35 millennia ago, he would have observed a level of humanity known as Cro-Magnon man. From that ancient time until now he would have seen only the emergence of humanity and none of the detail—just the forest and not the trees. Symbolized, it would look something like this:

To dramatize the point, put a powerful magnifying glass on this line and have a look at its interior: the detail, the trees in the forest, a look at what a few individuals have seen during the past. The interior would show evolution and devolution in a sequence, evolution inching ahead over the millennia:

That X is to symbolize the present devolutionary position, not only in the U.S.A. but worldwide—no exception! It’s the mess we’re in—the bad.

This raises the question: How possibly can any good be spawned from our present devolutionary situation? It is so bad—so evil—that many individuals who love liberty do not see or even look for the good. Instead, they indulge in combative tactics—name calling, smearing and the like. Not an iota of constructive thinking! Or, if not so indulging, they give up the ghost, throw in the sponge. There is no hope; all is lost—so they erroneously conclude.

Parenthetically, combativeness is a belligerent rather than a peaceful tactic. The very essence of freedom is a peaceful way of life and so must the tactic be, that is, if we are to be blest by a return to freedom.

A peaceful tactic that works like magic? It is, as Steiner taught, to find the good in the bad. It is always there—a belief for which there are proofs galore.

Here is one among numerous reasons why I know there is always something good in everything bad. The demand for FEE Seminars is increasing beyond our ability to accommodate. During the past year, we have conducted 23 from east to west—Georgia to Hawaii and in between. Aside from the Seminars at FEE, all have been sought by those interested in learning the freedom philosophy, not one promoted by us. What stimulates this yearning for learning? Nothing less than the bad we are experiencing! It is the current socialism that inspires a desire for understanding the freedom way of life, the bad that causes a search for the good—on the part of a few.

A few? Devolutionary slumps have quite a record of creating anti-agents—always an infinitesimal minority. But note this: On each occasion, it has been and will continue to be a matter of leadership. In every instance, one or two among the anti-agents will be up topside, “at the head of the class,” as we say.

Christianity was led by the Perfect Exemplar. He had a dozen Disciples—anti-agents—spawned by the bad that was rampant at that time in history. The turnabout in England following the Napoleonic Wars—from mercantilism to the Industrial Revolution—was led by Richard Cobden and John Bright. They had a small number of coworkers: anti-agents. The same can be said about the American Miracle. A few of our Founding Fathers led the way to the most miraculous politico-economic turnabout in all history!

Instead of lamenting the present devolutionary position, I applaud it. Why such an unorthodox attitude? Merely have a look at the devolutionary-evolutionary sequence. Each devolutionary slump serves as a springboard—an inspiration—that leads to the next evolutionary attainment. For proof, no more is required than a look at the historical record. Its instruction to us? Evolution, emergence, growth, awareness, perception, consciousness inching ahead as time goes on! Were it not for the stimulus to find the good which the bad evokes, humanity would still be at the Cro-Magnon level!

Back to the Seminars and their participants. Why are they present? It’s the bad that’s on the rampage! They have become anti-agents, searching for the good by reason of the evil.

A point that should be emphasized: Suppose you were in charge of the Cosmic Design. Would you pap feed the population—“money or favors from political office”—or would you give them obstacles to overcome? Obviously, you would choose the latter, for it is an observed fact that the act of overcoming leads to the art of becoming! Life has no higher purpose than rising to one’s intellectual, moral and spiritual potential—becoming!

Another appropriate suggestion to participants: Please note what’s going on above your shoulders that would lie dormant were all serene and satisfying. Your newborn activity is a heavenly blessing emanating from our current devolutionary position. So why not join in applauding this socialistic mess for your own sake and for freedom’s sake? It has made an anti-agent of you against the know-nothings who would run our lives. Thus are you inspired to help achieve that glorious ideal in which each is able to act creatively as he pleases!

Finally, a thought worth repeating: Our present-day anti-agents are growing in an understanding of freedom and its supporting virtues. It is this kind of growth, and this only, that energizes the magnetism which causes others to seek one’s tutorship. Only those who seek enlightenment can become enlightened! Thus, those who see the truly good spawned by the present bad are responsible for more and more anti-agents, all of whom grace mankind and by reason of their love of liberty!

[1] See my Elements of Libertarian Leadership, pp. 156–58.

25

HUMILITY: THE REMEDY FOR EGOMANIA?

God dwells not in temples made by human hands; his abiding place is the humble and contrite heart.

—THE HOLY BIBLE

If Infinite Consciousness [God]—Wisdom and Righteousness—does not originate in you or me or any individual, why then do so many of us pretend and behave otherwise, that is, in fits of egomania? It seems worthwhile to reflect on this problem.

Egomania is “abnormally, excessive egotism.” And egotism? It “. . . is constant, excessive reference to oneself in speaking and or writing.” Briefly, an egomaniac is an individual who regards himself as a source of wisdom; whatever he speaks or writes or conceives is original; there is nothing above his finite mind!

Persons afflicted with the notion that they are the originators of wise thoughts and ideas are prone to regard any repetition of them by others as plagiarism. Goethe—one of the great thinkers of modern times—voiced a profound but neglected truth: “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” Any person who claims to originate a truly wise idea might just as well regard himself as the source of Creation! Those of us who regard ourselves as source are victims of an all-too-common affliction—egomania.

The reason for this may well be that the self-assumed originator had not previously seen the idea in print. Now, no person has ever read more than a tiny fraction of all that has been printed. And, assuredly, most of the truly wise ideas during the past several thousand years may have been neither written nor even voiced. All of us have ideas that might remain silently in the mind, while nevertheless guiding our actions.

Everything—no exception—is mysterious. No one knows why grass is green, for instance, or what electricity is. And of all the mysteries, Infinite Wisdom or Consciousness—how Creation works its wonders—is infinitely beyond finite man’s comprehension. A few—past and present—have freed themselves from egomania. How? By becoming aware that Creation is the Source, not they themselves.

The few who have been or are aware that they are not the Source quite properly ascribe the reception of truly wise ideas to Creation. Numerous are the ways these few describe such heavenly phenomena. To me, Emerson’s is among the brilliant acknowledgments:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence [Creation], which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activities. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

A passage of its beams suggests that the immense intelligence is an omnipresent radiation. Required of us mortals is to see how much of it we can intercept or tune in—make of ourselves as much of a receiving set as possible.

For evidence that this is a radiation, observe tune-ins occurring to persons unknown to each other—simultaneously! One among countless examples: penicillin was discovered by an American medical student and by another in a foreign country—at the same time! This phenomenon is often referred to as “coincidental thinking.” A more accurate term would be “coincidental reception.” Dr. Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist, wrote a book confirming these miracles.[1]

What we must keep in mind is the infinite nature of this radiation. We can assume that it contains all there is in the Cosmic Design, now and forever, man having perceived but an infinitesimal fraction of it. Further, one’s reception, such as it is, depends on his potentialities and uniqueness. Briefly, one’s emergence depends on the few beams he is capable of intercepting.

Is any of us able to assess the enormity of these beams? In my judgment, it would be easier to count the components of the solar system’s atmosphere in which we earthlings live and breathe or all the components in the atmospheres of an ever-expanding universe. Why? We possess but finite consciousness. At best, ours are but infinitesimal glimmers of Infinite Consciousness [God]. We should recognize that it is impossible for anyone to comprehend Infinite Consciousness or infinite space or infinite time.

However, an awareness of infinity is possible. How? There are numerous ways. For my explanation of an easy way, see chapter 10, page 56.

History affords an excellent example of this phenomenon. According to the anthropologists, there existed about 35,000 years ago a level of humanity referred to as Cro-Magnon man. No question about it, there are millions in today’s world who have intercepted ever so many more of these heavenly beams than did those beings centuries ago. In this progression we witness man’s earthly purpose—growing, emerging, evolving, bit by bit in consciousness. It is only consciousness that is immortalized, our earthly moments being but your and my beginnings.

It seems plain to me that Infinite Consciousness—Wisdom and Righteousness—“dwells not in temples made by human hands.” Those who believe that they are sources or originators suffer from egomania.

It also seems evident that “his abiding place is the humble and contrite heart.” Only in those who know that they know not can the beams of immense intelligence find an abiding place. The ever-seeking eye is to be found among those who are humble. Their eyes are cast toward the Infinite Unknown.

The blessings of humility were recognized long before the Holy Bible was written. Samplings:

Humility is the foundation of all virtues.

—Confucius

Whoever humbleth himself shall be exalted.

—Lao-tse

Socrates revealed his humility:

That man thinks he knows everything whereas he knows nothing. I know nothing, but I know that I know nothing.

Centuries later, St. Augustine made many contributions to the wisdom of having a humble heart. Here are two:

It was pride that changed angels into devils; it is humility that makes men as angels.

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

Wrote St. Bernard:

It is no great thing to be humble when you are brought low; but to be humble when you are praised is a great and rare attainment.

Now to modern times:

True humility

The highest virtue, mother of them all.

—Tennyson

Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.

—Thoreau

No one knows very much.

—Kettering

No one knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything.

—Edison

The above are but a few well-known testimonials to the “humble and contrite heart.” As with all truly wise ideas, “They have already been thought thousands of times”—perhaps millions of times!

Goethe used the terms Nature and God as virtually interchangeable. He referred to Nature as the Divinity. Johann Peter Eckermann, his devoted associate, kept an almost daily record of his visits with Goethe during the last nine years of the great man’s life. The result is Conversations with Goethe, a book filled with wisdom.[2] On February 13, 1829, Eckermann wrote in his journal, “Dined with Goethe alone.” He then reported the wisdom that flowed from this scholar’s mind, including one of my favorite gems:

Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.

The errors and faults are always those of man, egomania being among the enfeebling faults. However, when man accords to God, to Nature, to Divinity the source of Wisdom and Righteousness, humility rules the soul.

When the great I-Am gives way to I-know-not, the mind opens to Infinite Consciousness. A yearning for learning becomes life’s highest goal—“she resigns herself and reveals her secrets.”

The freedom to act creatively as anyone pleases is among the secrets revealed. Hail to humility!

[1] Synchronicity by Dr. Carl Jung (Princeton University Press, 1973).

[2] New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, 1935.

The Freedom Freeway

Leonard E. Read

1979

TO

Dr. Perry Gresham

. . . and all who travel the freedom freeway.

1

THE FREEDOM FREEWAY

Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.

—MONTESQUIEU

A freeway is defined as a “multi-lane highway designed to move traffic along smoothly and quickly.” The freedom freeway is strikingly similar: It is a multi-million-lane politico-economic highway, along which speed goods and services, as well as intellectual, moral and spiritual ideas and ideals, to benefit all the people—smoothly and quickly. Not a single stop sign to any creative action! Indeed, many actions move at the speed of light, all according to the actor’s choice. But for such a network to exist, there must be a few who have some understanding as to why it works such phenomenal wonders.

Fundamental to such understanding is an awareness of man’s destiny, the end that should be pursued. So we must ask: What is the purpose of our mortal moment? There is but one valid answer: growth in consciousness so that individual creativity may be increasingly experienced!

Growth in consciousness is the noble objective. Having this end in view and being aware that all ends pre-exist in the means, what is the indispensable means? It is the freedom to exchange all creativities with whomever one pleases—goods, services, ideas or whatever. Not a single red light on this freeway—all green lights signaling go, go, go, now and forever!

Suppose this freedom were completely denied, that each individual were forced to live on only his own productivity—all exchange completely squelched. Obviously, all would perish! Freedom in its ideal form—no red-lights—has been most nearly approximated in the U.S.A.—but not perfectly, for human beings are imperfect. But freedom has never been completely squelched in all history—in spite of the red lights. The most powerful of dictocrats are not up to imposing complete depravity for, intellectually, they are weaklings.

Anyway, it is and always will be an interesting contest of men’s mentalities in one direction or the other—into nothingness—or toward the fulfillment of human destiny, a game of losing or winning. The stakes are the highest in mankind’s existence. So let’s join in the fun of perfecting the freedom freeway!

Why refer to the hoped-for freedom freeway as a multi-million-lane politico-economic highway? The traffic, just in the U..S.A., consists of more than 220 million individuals. No two of these persons are remotely alike, except in superficial ways, and each of them has many unique qualities; some more than others. Each of the millions times millions of these tiny achievements speeding about in an unimaginable profusion! One is reminded of the electrons in an atom darting every which way at the speed of light. No one knows what potencies are still locked within the atom; and likewise no one knows what the freedom freeway would be like should it be attained. The atom and its constituent parts is the smallest manifestation of Creation known to us. Freedom in its highest sense is Creation’s challenge—a goal at which we should aim.

To illustrate the phenomenal performances of the free and unfettered market—so far as we have experienced it—reflect on conditions during my grandfather’s time. Prior to 1864, the human voice could be transmitted at the speed of sound. Today? At the speed of light! Around the earth in the same fraction of a second that grandfather’s voice could be heard by another fifty yards away.

Travel? Grandfather’s fastest was on horseback. Today? Around the earth in less than one day! Light? The American Indians, only four centuries ago, had nothing better than flaming torches. Today? Homes, offices and streets aglow with electric lighting, requiring no more on our part than the flick of a switch!

Grandfather could not imagine the economic wonders that have happened since his time any more than we can foresee the miracles in the offing—provided we do our homework. One remarkable advantage has already appeared to those who can see below the surface—and for free! I refer to the role played in our lives by profit, in the broadest sense of the term.

There are two kinds of profit—material and psychic. The Indians, prior to our Pilgrim Fathers, were so primitive that their population, in the whole area that is now the U.S.A., was less than one million according to the best estimates. They had little to exchange. Material profit close to zero!

Today the material profit is so abundant that psychic profit is, potentially, a part of our lives. For instance, when one is materially graced, he can make a monetary contribution to a church, a school, a family in poverty, a hospital, and countless other objects of his concern—and without any cost whatsoever to any one of them. All free to the recipients!

Why is this a psychic profit? It is freedom of choice in action. One would rather lend others a helping hand than maintain his own material status. When freedom of choice rises to this level, the practice of Judeo-Christian charity finds its highest fulfillment!

Every other nation has had and does have more obstacles to freedom than the U.S.A.—Red Russia and Red China leading in red lights! What is produced and exchanged—goods, services, speech, press—is dictated and coercively enforced by dictocrats, know-it-alls who know no more than did Stalin. I marvel at the millions of Americans in all walks of life who are blind to the distinction between red and green lights. While having no desire to move from the U.S.A. to Russia or China, they favor and promote more and more red lights in our homeland.

As a consequence of this naivete, we have our ups and downs. However, the thrust of the freedom way of life, initiated in bygone days, is so powerful that the red lights only slow us down; they have not yet halted our progress. Sadly, there are many millions who perversely credit the red lights with the munificence they still enjoy!

It should be obvious that our present descent into all-out socialism can be halted only by increasing moral and politico-economic enlightenment. If no reversal, what was once the home of the free will resemble Red Russia and Red China.

The red lights imposed by our 78,000 governments—federal, state and local—are beyond anyone’s ability to count. Here is a typical Federal red light: no one is permitted to deliver first class mail—the free market outlawed in order to maintain a government monopoly. The “service” gets worse and worse as the prices go higher and higher. Were mail delivery left to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is, no one can imagine the miraculous service that would follow. The leap in efficiency would be as fantastic as the leap from Indian torches to electric lighting!

Why this abysmal absence of faith in freedom? No one knows all the reasons. This may be the most deadening one: An inability to imagine the miracles free men can work leaves most people stranded at the what-is level. The solution to this blindness is simple: merely reflect on how the free market has wrought its wonders in countless other fields.

As that French philosopher, Montesquieu, wrote about 200 years ago, “Countries are well cultivated, not as they are fertile, but as they are free.” How easy it is to confirm this wisdom. Red Russia, for instance, has climates as friendly, soil as fertile, resources as great as the U.S.A. Our plenitude in goods, services, discoveries, inventions, ideas, insights—creativity—has been and still is so far above theirs that accurate measurements are impossible! Why? One reason only: Russians are as enslaved as any people on earth; we Americans—even now—the freest!

What is the lesson to be learned from what is so obvious? What, pray tell, should be our aim? Get ourselves back on the freedom freeway. When? Right now!

* * *

The following chapters begin with the negative—explaining the red lights that restrain creativity. They conclude with the positive—the green lights that signal go, go, go, now and forever!

Wrote Longfellow: “Give what you have. To some one it may be better than you dare to think.” And indeed the one who gains most may be oneself. It is an observed fact that the more one gives—shares—the more will he or she receive. The Biblical counsel, “It is more blessed to give than to receive,” means that giving is the precedent to reception.

Let us share with each other, that freedom in its ideal sense may again grace our lives.

2

THE SOCIALIZATION OF SIN

Few love to hear the sins they love to act.

—SHAKESPEARE

The Bard of Avon would doubtless agree that most are self-blinded to the sins they love to act. Presently, in the U.S.A., citizens by the millions sin without the slightest awareness that they are so doing—sinning unconsciously. Sin has been socialized! The following is an attempt to demonstrate that the socialization of sin does, in fact, remove the awareness, but not the penalty and not the sin!

Sin is the breaking of a moral principle. Wrote Bulwer-Lytton:

What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or, as one of our great old writers has it, “That inbred loyalty unto virtue which can serve her without a livery.”

As to moral principles, the Golden Rule takes first place: “Do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you.” Would you have others take your life? Steal your belongings? Keep you from working wherever and for whatever hours you please? Prevent you from exchanging your goods and/or services with whomever offers the most in the U.S.A. or elsewhere? Do you want others to decide what your education shall consist of, and what religion you shall profess? Then do not unto others what you would not have them do unto you! Here we have reciprocal justice. This moral principle is the formula for freedom and peace on earth, good will among all human beings!

As to integrity, it is one’s alliance with Truth, that is, what one believes to be righteous. No deviation in word or deed—none whatsoever! Valuable? Indeed it is! As with any desirable good or service, value is determined by scarcity. Fear of disagreement, of standing alone, of unpopularity is an all-too-common trait.

No individual of integrity will ever take any action against his or her conscience. The American clergyman, Charles Simmons (1798–1856) wrote:

Integrity is the first step to true greatness. Men love to praise, but are slow to practice it. To maintain it in high places costs self-denial; in all places it is liable to opposition, but its end is glorious and the universe will yet do it homage.

As to independence, it has to do with the ideal in politico-economic affairs. “Hail! independence, hail! Heaven’s next best gift to that of life and an immortal soul!” With each of us the choice is either dependence or independence. If the former, our reliance is on government—the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul syndrome. If the latter, we have embraced that glorious virtue on which freedom depends: self-reliance! Only those who are self-reliant are free to act creatively as they please. An English political writer gave us good counsel about two centuries ago:

Let all your views in life be directed to a solid, however moderate, independence; without it no man can be happy, nor even honest.

Without independence the individual can never be free!

What is meant by socialization? My dictionary defines socialism:

. . . the ownership and operation of the means of production and distribution by the community [government] rather than by private individuals.

Briefly, instead of each of us individually being responsible for himself, dictocrats coercively command our way of life—the Command Society. Do as we say, or else!

The proper and limited use of government is to invoke a common justice and keep the peace—and that is all. Whenever government invades the creative realm by taking from some and giving to others, or otherwise intervenes to regulate and control peaceful activities, it abuses its principled role. Taking the livelihood of citizens is no less a sin than taking their lives. Wrote Martin Luther:

Whoever eats up, robs, and steals the nourishment of another, that man commits as great a murder (so far as in him lies) as he who starves a man or utterly undoes him.

The sinfulness of the act is not measured by the amount expropriated; robbing another of a dollar is as sinful as stealing a million dollars.

Now take note of a startling fact. Those who wouldn’t personally steal a dollar from anyone will favor the government stealing for them and with no sense of sinning—their awareness removed. Why this aberration, this departure from what is right? It is because hiding in numbers—mass action—gives a false sense of absolution. People by the millions—even those whose livelihood is taken—fall for this nonsense. I wouldn’t steal your horse but it’s all right if someone else does the stealing for me!

It should be clear that those who empower an agent—vote for a government—to do their robbing are as guilty of sin as those who steal on their own.

Wrote J. A. Broadus: “All the sin that has darkened human life and saddened human history began in believing a falsehood.” And what falsehood could be greater than the belief that the sin of stealing is absolved if government sins for you!

A final question: Is the penalty for such sinful behavior removed when the sin is politicized? Innocent or naive citizens by the millions “think” it does. Why this error? They are not fined or put in jail as would be the case were they personally to do the robbing. In this political hodgepodge the government relieves them of any sense of guilt for having sinned.

Regardless of this false absolution, the penalties are enormous. Merely reflect on all of the political interventions imposed by our 78,000 governments—federal, state and local—with their 16,000,000 elected and appointed officeholders. Here we have the cause for the mess we are in—the planned economy and the welfare state. More and more people are writing me and asking, “How do I survive? My dollar buys less and less.” The reason the dollar buys even as much as it does is the freedom which socialism has not yet destroyed.

There is, however, a happy side to this politico-economic dilemma; resistance to it is developing character. Suppose you were sitting atop the Cosmos and had on your hands the bringing up of a higher grade humanity. Would you pap feed your earthly beings or would you give them obstacles to overcome? Obviously the latter, for it is an observed fact that the art of becoming—life’s high purpose—is achieved by overcoming the countless confrontations. Result? Growth in awareness, perception, consciousness! The mess we are in is a steppingstone to the turnabout now in the offing.

Longfellow had a brilliant glimpse of life and purpose:

Man-like it is, to fall into sin;

Fiend-like it is to dwell therein;

Christ-like it is, for sin to grieve;

God-like it is, all sin to leave.

Away with the socialization of sin that we may glory in the material, intellectual, moral and spiritual bounties of freedom!

3

THE MENACE OF MEDDLERS

Meddlers are the Devil’s Body-Lice; they fetch blood from those that feed them.

—THOMAS FULLER

Why write on the same subject over and over again? It is my way of trying to find words for common sense, that is, for the sensible way of life: human freedom. For instance, “meddlers” may more clearly identify freedom’s opponents than “dictocrats” and vice versa. There is no end to the search for phrasings that highlight the blessings of freedom. This way of life is so advanced in intellectual, moral and spiritual learning that it borders on the celestial—each strains our powers of explanation. While confessing to being a neophyte, I love the exploration. ’Tis joyous and rewarding!

The English divine, Thomas Fuller (1608–61) lived when mercantilism was reaching its peak. The only difference between that political legerdemain—“trickery of any sort; deceit”—and our planned economy and the welfare state is in the spelling. In both cases it is the Command Society!

Following the Napoleonic wars, England recovered from that political hocus-pocus by reason of the brilliant works of Adam Smith, Richard Cobden, John Bright and Frederic Bastiat. Today, England is lurching into the same situation from which she earlier escaped. Similarly, during the past few decades, we in the U.S.A. have been rapidly sinking into the planned economy and the welfare state. Societies rise and fall; civilization comes and goes. As all history attests, it’s evolution/devolution—the Command Society/Freedom—in a sequence we should strive to understand.

To grasp the truth of freedom, we must first understand the fallacy of autocracy—“unlimited power of some over others; despotism.” Briefly, it is necessary to know the negative in order to accent the positive.

What a novel way Fuller had of portraying the negative, of identifying the political know-it-alls: the Devil’s Body-Lice! As someone phrased it, they are busy bodies with their hands in every dish. And, Fuller, “They fetch blood from those that feed them.” As the English, if of my persuasion, would describe him, “He was a jolly good fellow!”

Those who live only by robbing others are obvious meddlers. They fetch blood—livelihood—solely from those who feed them. Suppose all were robbers. Result? Nobody producing and nothing to rob—everyone starving to death! Any bright first-grader would agree.

It is the not-so-obvious meddlers who also qualify as the Devil’s Body-Lice; they bedevil nearly everyone. Most teachers—way up to Ph.D.’s—are as blind to this popular politico-economic nonsense as are first-graders. To whom is reference made? To everyone—no exception—who advocates or succeeds in obtaining special privilege, be it a “free lunch” for first-graders to a restraint of competition—domestic or foreign—by billion dollar corporations. Using this criterion, how many citizens have overcome the meddling affliction? My guess, less than 1 per cent!

Understanding what’s wrong is a necessary step to grasping what’s right and meritorious. We must know the negative to accent the positive.

Human evolution is implicit in the Cosmic Scheme; it is man’s manifest destiny. As I see it, moving onward and upward has at least two Evolutionary directives:

1. Reason: “the ability to think; sound thought or judgment.”

2. Suffering the consequences of thoughtless behavior: emotions, passions, hearsay, popular jargon.

Reason remains ever the property of the few. If we lack the wit to apply our rational faculties, we suffer the consequences. Suffering, in this case, is an awakening device. Such adversity has the effect of eliciting talents that would otherwise have lain dormant. It is a means to spur us on—to come to ourselves. Failure to grasp the menace of meddlers by pure reason has its instructive, though uncomplimentary, alternative. The first lesson? Rid our America of meddlers by employing reason!

Reason opens the eye to three inviolable rules:

1. Realize that our first obligation is to “remove the beam from your own eye.”

2. Never, never meddle with any other human being.

3. Understand and acquire the ability to demonstrate in spoken and written words why the non-meddling society—the freedom way of life—is in harmony with the Cosmic Scheme: Evolution.

The first rule of reason borders on the obvious; it is strikingly simple. Merely reflect on the difficulty each of us experiences in personal evolution, emergence—growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. The more we know, the more are we aware of how little we know. Reason makes it plain that we are no more than finite creatures. Thus, consider the utter absurdity of anyone running—dictating—the life of any other individual, let alone the whole population. No two of us are remotely alike.

The second rule of reason—never meddling with another’s life—relates to exemplarity. Wrote Edmund Burke, “Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.” Call it the aristocratic spirit as did Hanford Henderson:

He may be a day laborer, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a professional man, a writer, a statesman. It is not a matter of birth, or occupation, or education. It is an attitude of the mind carried into daily action . . . a religion. It is the disinterested, passionate love of excellence . . . everywhere and in everything; the aristocrat, to deserve the name, must love it in himself, in his own alert mind, in his own illuminated spirit, and he must love it in others; must love it in all human relations and occupations and activities; in all things in earth or sea or sky.

The third rule of reason requires explanations as to why the freedom way of life is in harmony with human Evolution. It is difficult to find individuals, past and present, who have assessed evolution as here used—in terms of the unfolding of human consciousness. An example of my point: People in our time are higher up the ladder of consciousness than was Cro-Magnon man. History records the rise and fall of civilization—each gain followed by a loss—but attests to the fact that consciousness has inched ahead, evolved, over the millennia.

Henri Bergson, the French philosopher (1859–1941) in his book, Creative Evolution, sheds light on the obstacles, the absence of thought, and suggests where lies our hope:

Our freedom, in the very movements by which it is affirmed, creates the growing habits that will stifle it if it fails to renew itself by a constant effort. . . .

Renewal does, indeed, depend on constant effort which, in turn, is possible only if the individual be free to act creatively as he or she pleases—free to explore the limitless unknown. And free from meddlers. No person who has ever lived is remotely capable of doing your or my or anyone’s thinking or exploring. Every human being is unique, popular notions to the contrary notwithstanding.

Doing our utmost to evolve in the direction of Infinite Consciousness—the Cosmic Scheme—possible only when free, classifies the freedom way of life as religion in its highest form. Alfred North Whitehead wrote:

Religion is the vision of something which stands beyond, behind, and within, the passing flux of immediate things; something which is real, and yet waiting to be realized; something which is a remote possibility, and yet the greatest of present facts; something that gives meaning to all that passes, and yet eludes apprehension; something whose possession is the final goal, and yet is beyond all reach; something which is the ultimate ideal, and the hopeless quest.

By “hopeless quest” Whitehead assuredly meant that we finite beings will never become Infinite Beings. However, going in that Divine direction is a hopeful prospect if we have freedom. Wrote Emerson:

Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

May more of us pray heartily for freedom—man’s only avenue to Truth!

4

COERCION: A POPULAR ILLUSION

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds; while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.

—CHARLES MACKAY

First, what is meant by illusion? According to my dictionary: “False idea or conception; belief or opinion not in accord with the facts . . . unreal, deception . . . an abnormal illusion is a hallucination.” Illusion, as related to my thesis, is indeed a hallucination!

Second, what is coercion? Even the dictionaries fail to give this word adequate definition. In the largest of all quotation books, with over 200,000 words—headings from Ability to Zeal—Coercion is not headlined. Nor is it mentioned by any of the countless authors. Why? Only a few have the slightest idea of what coercion really is!

The American statesman, Charles Sumner (1811–79) knew. He wrote: “Where slavery is, there liberty cannot be; where liberty is, there slavery cannot be.” Coercion is slavery!

And that brilliant British thinker, Herbert Spencer (1820–1908), not only had a similar view but in 1884 gave the word an unusual, thoughtful and accurate definition:

What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes a slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What. . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of self-benefit.[1]

The first question to which we should seek an answer is: Why do the vast majority of citizens look upon coercion—governmental and labor union edicts—so favorably? Is it not because they observe material progress and compulsion going on simultaneously? As a consequence, they erroneously ascribe the progress to the coercions. They make a wrong correlation. These people are unaware of the fact that coercion is a destructive force; coercion is never constructive or creative.

To illustrate my point, this very day I have examined an electronic calculator, a fantastic device that has a memory! Unbelievable! Yet, daily in the U.S.A. there are countless thousands of inventions, discoveries, technological advances. These are increasing at a pace more than comparable to the pace of the nonsensical, inhibitive forces—and so we inch ahead. Is it any wonder that so many believe that coercion is the cause of our advancement!

An example of inhibitive force is the minimum wage law—a labor union edict enforced by government. It is the union’s way of avoiding competition with the many millions who would gladly work for less than $3.00 an hour. Free market pricing of labor is taboo and in its place is the greatest of all monopolies—the labor union monopoly! Is this not slavery? Is not effort compulsorily expended for the “benefit” of labor union members instead of self-benefit for one and all?

Move to another form of slavery, to the millions who are unemployed by reason of labor union monopoly and all others who for this or that excuse are jobless. The present-day remedy? Government coercively takes from those who have and gives to those who have not. These “gifts” are to a great extent more munificent than the jobless would receive if employed. People are being paid not to work. The result? They don’t even look for jobs. Here we have the Marxian nonsense, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Another way of phrasing: Those who don’t have very much are “helped” by those who don’t know very much! They can’t tell slavery from freedom. Poor Souls!

Who are these people that think in herds? Not only labor union “leaders” and political dictocrats but all who vote for slavery. This group includes everyone who approves, encourages or lends support to coercion in order to achieve “goals” inconsistent with liberty. For “where slavery is, liberty cannot be.”

I do not mean to imply that my ideal refers solely to material welfare—riches. Far from it! Wealth only serves to relieve us of mundane chores so that our hours, days and years may be devoted to improving our awareness, perception, consciousness—that more of us may recover our senses “one by one.”

Believing that enlightenments discovered in others should be shared, here are a few I have gleaned from Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59):

The soil is productive less by reason of its natural fertility than because the people tilling it are free.

In fact, those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it long.

What has made so many men, since untold ages, stake their all on liberty is . . . a fascination it has in itself, apart from all “practical” considerations. For only in a country where it reigns can a man speak, live, and breathe freely, owing obedience to no authority save God and the laws of the land. The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense. It is not for what it offers on the material plane that they love it; they regard freedom itself as something so precious, so needful to their happiness that no other boon could compensate for its loss, and its enjoyment consoles them even in their darkest hours.

Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone.

It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) denies analysis. For it is something one must feel and logic has no part in it. (Italics added)

That last line certainly challenges the imagination. C. F. Kettering wrote, “Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.” Name the so-called logician who can convey the meaning of human freedom by logic!

A genuine love of freedom is, indeed, a lofty aspiration. It is Creation at the human level! Explaining Creation is impossible and explaining the love of freedom is nearly as difficult. Try explaining one’s feeling. The effort will have little if any meaning to another.

What to do? Immanuel Kant gave us an excellent guideline: “Act only on that maxim [principle] which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Or, in reverse: Never act on a principle which would bring chaos if everyone practiced it. Universality is the test: Can I concede the right to life, livelihood, liberty to every human being? I can, and thus this principle qualifies as a universal law. Try the opposite: Can I concede the practice of coercion to every other person? No! Therefore, I cannot concede the practice of coercion as a principle to anyone. So, let us abandon the practice and the very thought of it. All of this is in accord with the Golden Rule: Never do to others that which you would not have them do unto you.

If we are to do away with coercion—slavery—we should heed the counsel of that English clergyman, Caleb C. Colton (1780–1832):

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

[1] This is extracted from the chapter, “The Coming Slavery,” in Herbert Spencer’s The Man Versus The State (Caldwell, Idaho: The Caxton Printers, Ltd., 1946), pp. 41–42.

5

DEDICATION OR DECADENCE?

The politician plans for the next election; the statesman for the next generation.

—UNKNOWN

Here is how the dictionary distinguishes between politicians and statesmen: The politician is one “seeking personal or partisan gain, scheming opportunism,” etc.; as distinguished from statesman which suggests “able, far-seeing, principled conduct of public affairs.”

The scheming of politicians leads to societal decadence such as we are now witnessing. The dedication of statesmen to principled conduct—exemplified by our Founding Fathers—leads to a self-reliant, self-responsible citizenry.

In view of the present decadence, it would seem appropriate to reflect on the steps necessary to again approximate the ideal. Daniel Webster described America as: “The home of freedom, and the hope of the downtrodden and oppressed among the nations of the earth.”

Statesmen are dedicated to the highest of all politico-economic ideals: freedom—to act creatively as anyone pleases.

I have been saying for years that every good movement in human evolution has been led by an infinitesimal minority. History supports this observation. It now occurs to me that these few—the Perfect Exemplar, Confucius, Socrates, Adam Smith, Burke, George Washington, Bastiat and others—did not emerge merely as a response to citizen aspirations. They, as the stars above, are gifts of Creation, receiving inspiration, as we say, from a Heavenly Source. Models requiring your and my emulation!

The Second Coming, as I use the term, does not mean the coming of another Christ, but, rather, the approximation, as nearly as possibly, of His exemplarity. I do not know that any one of us is to be chosen as a model of exemplarity, only that we should strive continually to be prepared to be so chosen. This we must do if statesmen are to emerge from among us.

Indeed, how proficiently we are laboring in this direction can be measured by the number of statesmen now in office. While the number is growing, it is, as of now, far from sufficient. Your and my role should be self-evident.

Conceded, the dedication here at issue does not require our attention to the exclusion of every other effort and activity. Far from that! However, it does demand that our actions, speaking, writing or whatever be as nearly consistent with the freedom way of life as is within our potentialities. While this is difficult and seldom attained, it is impossible without the kind of thinking that clarifies—which, of course, stems from study. Wrote John Locke:

As there is a partiality to opinion, which is apt to mislead the understanding, so there is also a partiality to studies, which is prejudicial to knowledge.

Prejudicial to a free society is this: Millions of citizens study how to make a living—art, music, medicine, mechanics and countless other endeavors. But only now and then can we find an individual who will study how to contribute to a better society on which his living depends!

Everyone is entitled to enjoy the level of prosperity to which he aspires, but the extent to which the millions of ordinary folk can make a good living is determined by the kind of society in which they live. If they live in a Command Society—Red Russia, for instance—the prospects are slim. All but the dictocrats are downtrodden. The only chance of success for the mill run of us is to live in Russia’s opposite: “the home of freedom”!

Self-interest, if it be enlightened, is two-fold:

1. Making a good living in whatever endeavor one’s uniqueness dictates.

2. Working to establish and preserve that climate of freedom within which a good living for the millions is possible.

Too rarely recognized is an incontrovertible fact: Man is at once an individual and a social being! It follows that the alert citizen will do his or her part in perfecting the politico-economic situation in which we are destined to live. Individual and social: either one without the other accounts for the disasters that have featured the past decades. William Graham Sumner gave us wise counsel:

. . . making the most of one’s self . . . is not a separate thing from filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.

Man, as distinguished from other animals, has been given the power to act creatively but not the knowledge to use it. This he must arduously acquire! Those who fail in this respect will, more than likely, use their power not to create but to destroy. Power without knowledge is a stumbling block. This observation is remindful of a verse by another Unknown:

Each is given a bag of tools,

A shapeless mass, a book of rules;

And each must make ere life is flown,

A stumbling block, or a stepping stone!

From what are our stepping stones carved? STUDY: “the act or process of applying the mind in order to acquire knowledge, as by reading, investigating, etc.” Here are several thoughts on the blessings of study by individuals noted for their insight and foresight:

The love of study, a passion which derives great vigor from enjoyment, supplies each day, each hour, with a perpetual round of independent and rational pleasure.

—Edward Gibbon

Our delight in any particular study, art, or science rises and improves in proportion to the application which we bestow upon it. Thus, what was at first an exercise becomes at length an entertainment.

—Joseph Addison

There is no study that is not capable of delighting us after a little application of it.

—Alexander Pope

The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the progress he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Since I began to ask God’s blessing on my studies, I have done more in one week than I have done in a whole year before.

—Edward Payson

It is hard to find a man who has studied for three years without making some progress in virtue.

—Confucius

Impatience of study is the mental disease of the present generation.

—Samuel Johnson

Samuel Johnson’s observation on study was made about two centuries ago—shortly before the debilitating controls of mercantilism gave way to free exchange. Does not the same mental disease—impatience of study—feature our present situation—prior to the victory of the market place over the planned economy and the welfare state?

Prior to the victory? Yes, there is every indication that the age of decadence is nearing its inglorious end, being overcome by a dedication to virtue, truth and a return to “the home of freedom.” Our salvation is in the offing. Statesmen will soon displace politicians!

6

PROPHETS OF DOOM

Nothing is so wretched or foolish as to anticipate misfortunes. What madness is it to be expecting evil before it comes.

—SENECA

A prophet, says the dictionary, is “a person who speaks for God or a god . . . as though under divine guidance . . . a person who predicts future events.” Seneca (4 A.D.–65 A.D.), a Roman statesman, writer and philosopher, gave to posterity an observation which deserves reflection in our time—right now! His words prophetically portray the mood of our age.

Admitted, all countries in today’s world—no exception—are experiencing many varieties of misfortune: devastating inflation, the madness of cults and crowds, and a plunge into political nonsense—socialism! Conceded, darkness is upon the face of the earth. Historians of the future may write of these recent decades and use an observation made centuries ago in John 3:19: “Men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” And, by and large, our deeds have been and still are evil. However, is it not true that it is always darkest just before the dawn?

As a rule my criticisms are directed at the notions of socialists—the know-it-all ilk—at those who would coercively rule our lives. This includes ever so many so-called economists, Ph.D.’s and others with undeserved labels. The following, however, is a critical commentary aimed at some of my best friends, people who have no superiors in understanding and explaining the freedom way of life with its glories and beneficence!

While there are some notable exceptions, many of my friends are prophets of doom. Their god is their assumed foresight. I’m the opposite of an atheist, but I would be pleased were these friends a little more “atheistic” about their own godlike qualities! They have a crystal ball, or so they think, and its gadgetry is extrapolation.

Extrapolation—“to estimate or infer beyond the known range”—is the error here at issue. A typical case: A noted geneticist, extrapolating present population trends, predicted that there will be one billion billion of us on earth no further in the future than the Norman conquest is in the past—“some 120 persons per square yard of the earth’s surface. . . .”[1] Predicting the future is nothing else but extrapolation. That it can easily lead to fantastic conclusions was brilliantly demonstrated by Dr. Henry Margenau, Yale physicist: “By projecting [extrapolating] the rate of increase in the number of scientists against population trends we would have more scientists in 2000 A.D. than people.”

These extrapolating friends are brilliantly aware of the present mess, perhaps so aware as to be quite overwhelmed by it all. As a consequence, they see only a continuance of the present mess, more and more destructive as the years come and go. The ultimate result as they see it? Politico-economic calamity—societal hell!

Before suggesting a better way to anticipate the days and years to come, here are a few thoughts about not looking dismally into the future.

Suffering itself does less afflict the senses than the anticipation of suffering.

—Quintilian (35–95 A.D.)

The worst evils are those that never come.

—Samuel Johnson (1709–84)

The hours we pass with happy prospects in view are more pleasant than those crowned with fruition.

—Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74)

He who foresees calamities, suffers them twice over.

—Beilby Porteus (1731–1815)

To tremble before anticipated evils, is to bemoan what thou has never lost.

—Goethe (1749–1832)

Among so many sad realities we can but ill endure to rob anticipation of its pleasant visions.

—Henry Giles (1800–82)

True, we should never rob anticipation of its pleasant visions. How to avoid this robbery? Keep one simple truism always in mind: No one who has ever lived—past or present—has known or knows what is going to happen in the next minute, let alone the next year or decade. Conceded, it could be disaster. On the other hand, it could be that glorious turnabout which has happened numerous times throughout recorded history—from the Command Society to a Free People!

Human evolution is implicit in the Cosmic Scheme. This is featured by ups and downs, mankind inching ahead over the millennia. As to the infinite variety of Cosmic Forces that account for this phenomenon, we only know that they are, no one having the slightest idea as to what they are!

Once it is recognized that no person has been given the world to run—or our nation, or any other individual—your and my role becomes clear. Self-perfection—period![2] This is the sole way of harmonizing with the Divine Plan. Several guidelines:

- Have faith that we will again be blest with freedom. The nonbeliever hinders more than helps. The turnabout a miracle? Yes, as is everything in Creation! As Goethe wrote: “Miracle is the darling child of faith.”

- Refuse to be an extrapolator. Instead, become an exemplar. Start a trend that may attract others. Achieve such excellence in understanding and explaining the freedom philosophy that others will seek one’s tutorship.

- Replace pessimism with optimism. Joyous enthusiasm is the key! Foreseeing only the bad blinds us to the good. Despite today’s trials and tribulations, good and worthy actions far outnumber and outweigh the bad.

The perfect guideline is to be found in James 1:25: “But whoso looketh into the perfect Law of Liberty, and continued therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”

[1] “The Biological Revolution,” Stanford Review, September-October, 1965.

[2] “Be ye therefore perfect. . . .” (Matthew 5:48)

7

UTOPIA: DESPOTISM IN DISGUISE

The Utopian schemes of levelling, and a community of goods, are as visionary and impracticable, as those which vest all property in the Crown, are arbitrary, despotic, and in our government unconstitutional.

—MASSACHUSETTS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES—1768

The above message—with its archaic language—was sent to the agent in London who worked for and in behalf of our Colonies. The word “unconstitutional” refers, of course, to the British Constitution, which was then our Constitution—predating the American Revolution and the Constitution of the U.S.A.

Our Massachusetts representatives believed that the taxes imposed upon them evinced a despotic and unconstitutional design, in defiance of their natural right to their property. It was a distorted levelling process—taxation without representation! Our Colonists had no say-so with either the Crown or Parliament—none whatsoever! These forefathers of ours were slaves to a scheme as senseless as it was Utopian.

Is it not obvious that the security of human rights, including the rights to property, is the appropriate end of government? Whenever these rights are destroyed, both property and government are without support. In that respect they must stand or fall together.

The above is nothing more nor less than a portion of the historical background for the present-day situation in the United States. How shall we characterize our society? Is our present political process levelling and Utopian? But, first, what is meant by Utopian? Here’s a definition from the Oxford Dictionary.

Utopian: Involving, based or founded on, imaginary or chimerical perfection; impossibly ideal.

Throughout recorded time these impossible day dreams have wrought havoc in every country. Kings, Presidents and Czars, as well as witch doctors, have authored them. One might say that mankind is addicted to Utopias, and to rid ourselves of these addictions is extremely difficult, requiring unusually high talents. As Dostoyevski (1821–81) saw it, “All the Utopias will come to pass only when we grow wings and all people are converted into angels.” Such an ideal is clearly impossible.

What is possible is that first one, and then others, may see not only the error of Utopian schemes but also the alternative way for less than perfect people.

What is despotism? It is “autocracy; tyranny, a political system dominated by a despot.” Are we in the U.S.A. dominated by a despot? No, not by one but, rather, by millions of elected or appointed officials. Only a small fraction of officials are statesmen, with the understanding and courage to stand for the ideal government limited to the point where liberty can prevail.

Why this lamentable situation? There are more reasons than anyone knows. An unknown gave this reason:

Some modern zealots [despots] appear to have no better knowledge of truth, nor better manner of judging it, than by counting noses.

This is nothing more than going along with popular jargon as a means of getting elected or appointed to power over others. Multiple despotism! Such is as far from truth as anyone can get.

A Columbia University professor of last century, Francis Lieber (1798–1872), gave us a profound truth in 1859:

Woe to the country in which political hypocrisy first calls the people almighty, then teaches that the voice of the people is divine, then pretends to take a mere clamor for the true voice of the people, and lastly gets up the desired clamor.

Lieber’s insight turns out to be a remarkable instance of foresight, substantially portraying what’s going on in America today. An elaboration of his points:

- Politicians, as distinguished from statesmen, claim that nose counting determines what is right.

- With such a false premise, they ascribe divinity to mass hysteria—“emotional excitability.”

- Clamor—“a continual, vehement expression of public opinion”—is falsely depicted as the public good.

- Observe how politicians advocate special privileges to all and sundry as a means of promoting the clamor favorable to their despotic rule.

Utopia: Despotism In Disguise. Why does despotism give the false appearance of being sound? Actually, it is comparable to a Stalin in saintly masquerade—appearance and reality being opposites! Despotism plays favorites; the millions who are the recipients of this or that special privilege from government see the “good” conferred on them, but are blind to the damages done to themselves and all others. Individual blessings are deadened where and whenever despotism is in the driver’s seat.

Utopian schemes throughout history have been featured by levelling everyone into a sameness—human uniformity. In reality, no two persons are remotely alike; thus, these schemes thwart individual growth, emergence, evolution. The despot’s aim? Be like me! These poor souls who do not see the error of be-like-me-ness can hardly be expected to grasp the virtue of a society where each individual is free to act creatively as he or she pleases.

Speaking of blindness, we have a college professor friend who has been without sight for years. The fact that he engages in all sorts of outdoor exercises means that he has overcome much of his physical handicap. But, far more important, he is an excellent teacher of the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life. Meaning? He has also overcome the ideological blindness that handicaps a vast majority of the population. Wrote Jonathan Swift, “There’s none so blind as they that won’t see.” Our professor friend may not perceive everyday objects, but he sees the truth of freedom. A seer!

Our millions of despots inspect us in more ways than anyone can count. WE versus THEY. They fail to understand that the role of political officialdom is limited to seeing that no one does injury to others; the law should inhibit and prevent fraud, violence, misrepresentation, killing, stealing and the like. Injuries we inflict on ourselves, be it anything from erroneous thinking to suicide, is none of THEIR business. Required? A turnabout: rising to that point in understanding where WE can intelligently and persuasively inspect THEM.

Finally, we devotees of freedom must perform a most difficult and seldom attained task: ridding ourselves of despondency and hopelessness. Failure to do so gives credence to Utopian schemes—despotism. The formula was written centuries ago in Hebrews:

So do not throw away your confidence; it will be richly rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what he has promised. For just in a little while . . . He who is coming will come and will not delay, but my righteous one will live by faith, and if he shrinks back, I will not be pleased with him. . . . But we are not of those who shrink back and are destroyed, but those who believe and are saved.

Let us be among those who believe and are saved!

8

THE INFALLIBLE I

As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of their infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.

—BORIS PASTERNAK

First, what is the definition of infallible? It is “incapable of error; never wrong.”

Second, what inspires the following commentary on infallibility? It is nothing less than a recognition of my own fallibility—countless mistakes, errors in judgment, intellectual goofs. It is my contention that the freedom way of life is possible only as more of us than now become aware of our fallibility. The opposite—infallibility, never wrong, know-it-all-ness—can have but one result: the planned economy and the welfare state, that is, the Command Society. Worthy of analysis? Indeed!

Boris Pasternak, a brilliant Russian poet, who lived in the world’s number one political holocaust, where the absurdity of infallibility reigns supreme, had genuine background for the above observation. Those who succumb to the myth of infallibility are blind to the truth of freedom. There is nothing in the Cosmos over and above their assumed infallibility. The USSR—the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics—is god!

Undeniably, those afflicted with the infallibility syndrome are sources of societal chaos—socialism. They ignore truth, and millions of people suffer the consequences. But there are other ways to ignore truth, and it may be helpful to examine some of them.

Forgive a play on words as I move from “I” to “Aye.” I am thinking of those who yield to the opinions of others rather than standing by their own convictions. Leo Tolstoy clarifies this point:

From the day when the first members of councils [committees] placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience; on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.[1]

Falsehoods, misrepresentations—lies—do indeed sprout from committee reports—“men united in councils.” Reflect on a typical committee procedure. Assume that a committee of seven has before it for decision such a question as: Should government deliver the mail? or Should government impose rent control? or whatever. No two members think alike. Actually, no one person thinks as yesterday if his or her thinking is improving or degenerating. But these seven men must come up with a committee recommendation. So these no-think-alikes vote four to three in favor or against. Whatever way the majority decides is the committee position, and it does not accurately reflect the convictions of even one of the seven members! Here we have nothing but nose counting, and the committee report is a lie!

Reason and conscience play no more part here than in the actions of the political office seeker who shades one word for one vote or a thousand words for a thousand votes. For shame!

Again, forgive a play on words as I move from “I” to “Eye.”

It is light that brings forth the eye and, conversely, it is the eye that brings forth the light. Shakespeare phrased it well:

The jewel that we find, we stoop and take’t,

Because we see it; but what we do not see

We tread upon, and never think of it.

Before commenting on the jewel that very few find, a bit of reflection on what the vast majority fail to see and, thus, tread upon. What do they not see? That which no one ever sees—the unimaginable! Benjamin Franklin, flying a kite in a thunderstorm, proved the identity of lightning and electricity. But not even Franklin—a genius in many fields—could foresee the wonders that would later be wrought by electricity. Even after these wonders have blest our lives for many decades, you and I have an awareness of only a few of them—so bountiful their number!

Paraphrasing Lord Arthur James Balfour, the English statesman and philosopher (1848–1930):

The vast majority of people prefer the continuance of a problem they cannot explain to an explanation they cannot understand.

In today’s U.S.A. most citizens are stalemated. Why this ideological standstill? First, most people haven’t the slightest idea as to why our slump into socialism and, thus, explanation is beyond them. Second, they cannot understand explanations of how the free and unfettered market works its wonders. In their utter confusion, as Lord Balfour observed, they prefer the easy promises of socialism to the rigors of competition. Result? They imitate—unknowingly—the infallible I’s out front and become members of that mass hysteria!

Now to “the jewel that we find . . . because we see it.” How come that a few fallible individuals have faith in the unimaginable—a return to freedom? How do they see this wondrous way of life while the infallibles do not? Harry Emerson Fosdick made a wise observation:

You cannot kill a philosophy with a gun. You must destroy a philosophy with a philosophy—an ethical evil with an ethical right.

The ethical evil—the philosophy of socialism—is spawned by the millions of infallibles, those who “are incapable of error; never wrong,” that is, by the know-it-alls!

Very well! What is it that the fallible person sees that gives him or her faith in the unimaginable? An ethical right! And what, pray tell, might that be? The moral and ethical wisdom written into the three greatest political documents of all time: The Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

These fallible persons, aware of knowing next to nothing, turn their eyes to early America; they study our all-but-forgotten history. And then the light: the greatest outburst of creativity ever known—the miracle! They grasp the all-important point, namely, that limiting government more than ever before in world history—the opposite of socialism—results in a self-reliant, self-responsible citizenry.

Our Founding Fathers had a single goal: righteousness. They had no idea as to what the material results would be. But our fallible citizens—those who do their homework—do know. Indeed, such knowledge is no more than an affirmation of the ancient past:

Seek ye first the kingdom of God [Truth and Righteousness] and these things [wealth, learning, intelligence] shall be added unto you.

C. S. Lewis gave this an excellent phrasing: “Aim at Heaven and you will get earth thrown in. Aim at earth and you will get neither.”

In Matthew 6:22 we read, “The light of the body is the eye.” What then should be the aim of we fallible ones? To see how nearly we can emulate our Perfect Exemplar: I am come a light into the world.

[1] See The Law of Love and The Law of Violence by Leo Tolstoy (New York: Rudolph Field, 1948), p. 26.

9

THE VAGARIES OF BELIEF

He that will believe only what he can fully comprehend, must have a very long head or a very short creed.

—CALEB C. COLTON

Observing what’s going on in our country today and wishing to comment on the variations in belief—from fickle to profound—but not knowing how to proceed, I chanced upon the above quotation—as if by magic. What wisdom in a single sentence by that British clergyman (1780–1832)! Anyway, it is a sufficient cue for what follows.

A “long head” is an old term for a person with “much foresight, shrewdness; good sense.” Colton, as Tennyson, was a long head: “For I dipt into the future far as human eye can see.”

A creed is “a statement of beliefs, or opinions on any subject.” The creeds in our country are numbered in the millions, and with few exceptions they are short.

How shall we identify the plethora of “short creeds” that bedevil, plague, torment, harass, bewilder present-day Americans? What are the creeds responsible for our slump into the planned economy and the welfare state—socialism? The best generality that comes to mind: fickle beliefs on the part of nearly everyone!

The life and ideas of Thomas Alva Edison (1847–1931) set the stage for this thesis. Young Edison spent only three months in school—no government “education” to unlearn. There was little, if anything, in his earlier years to thwart the release of his fantastic creativity.

As a lad he knew not what was in store for him nor did anyone else. Later a miracle—the Wizard of Menlo Park!

Not only did Edison achieve the distinction of being the world’s greatest inventive genius, he was also a profound philosopher. Now to my point: he wisely grasped mortal man’s limitations when he said:

No man knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything!

Edison was comparing the miniscule wisdom of any mortal man to Infinite Wisdom. His own genius was evident only by contrast with other mortals. All individuals—no exception—are no more than human seedlings!

A “short creed”? Assigning to seedlings a nonexistent omniscience—“knowing all things.” This all-too-common politico-economic hallucination leads to schemes for turning over the welfare of mankind to the legendary character who robbed the rich to “help” the poor—Robin Hood.

Citizens by the millions are afflicted with escapism—“a tendency to escape from reality.” What is the typical prognosis for this malady? Instead of striving for self-reliance and self-improvement the masses join the ranks of present-day Robin Hoods—self-proclaimed wiseacres—“those who think they know everything.” They seek government handouts and call upon government to redistribute the wealth.

There is a direct method of immorally acquiring another’s goods, and there is an indirect method. A very small fraction of robberies is of the man-to-man, “stick-’em-up” variety. All citizens, except the gunmen, regard that type of “self-benefit” as despicable, immoral and a breaking of the Commandment, Thou shalt not steal. Most people are not of that villainous ilk, or so they quite innocently “think.” What deviltry such unawareness plays, not only on them, but on all of us!

What, pray tell, is the difference between personally robbing another and getting any one or more of our 78,000 governments to do the robbing for us? There is just one distinction: a sense of absolution! “I didn’t do it.” The truth? Anyone who advocates or condones such ill-gotten loot, be it in the form of food stamps, rent control, minimum wages, maximum hours, restrictions of competition or any of thousands of special privileges—regardless of how innocently—is catering to modern Robin Hoodism.

Now for the few who have been described as “long heads.” They face a distressing dilemma. They understand the utter fallacy of all “short creeds,” but they are compelled to live with, abide by and suffer from, most of them. The example of Social Security will suffice to make the lamentable point. No “short creed” excels Social Security in politico-economic nonsense and the “long heads” know it. Working for a business or any nonexempt organization, they face the choice of either paying the government’s dictatorial and ever-rising fee or quitting their jobs. Freedom to act creatively as one pleases, the hallmark of a free society, destroyed! All “short creeds” are destructive.

What might be the remedy for this malady? Unless freedom devotees—“long heads”—are aware of the proper tactics, the “short creeds” will grow in number and in their devastation. No question, we are faced with difficulties galore.

Perhaps the first step is to recognize that the difficulties we resist are blessings in disguise. Wrote Edmund Burke:

He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.

The act of becoming first-rate “hard heads” is the overcoming of obstacles. The “short creeds” are, indeed, our helpers. Seen in this light, the problem can and, of course, must be approached with joy and enthusiasm. Emerson on joy: “Nothing great was ever accomplished without it.” And Bulwer-Lytton: “Nothing is so contagious as enthusiasm.” In a word, let our efforts be undertaken with the kind of spirit that is catching!

First, there is the “negative” task: we must understand and be able to explain the fallacies of “short creeds.” But far more important is an ability to accent the positive: we must demonstrate how and why freedom works its wonders!

And here’s a final thought that might be really contagious if we can discover how to present it with clarity and good humor. It’s a paradox: the freedom devotee has more faith in the victims of “short creeds” than they have in themselves!

These poor souls cannot realize their intellectual, moral and spiritual potentialities unless they divorce themselves from all the coercive interventions. As free men and women they would become self-reliant, self-responsible citizens, joining the “hard heads.”

Conceded, bringing about a return to freedom will involve a miracle. But remember Goethe’s wisdom: “Miracle is the darling child of faith.”

Have faith, “hard heads,” and we shall win!

10

QUOTE THE WISE IF THOU WOULD BE LIKEWISE

I quote others only the better to express myself.

—MICHEL E. DE MONTAIGNE

My Encyclopedia says of this remarkable Frenchman (1532–92) and his works:

This attitude of judicious neutrality toward life is reflected in his immortal Essais which with irony, humor, and a spontaneously flowing style incorporate wise judgments on all human affairs. They are generally considered the finest examples of the ESSAY every written.

Like Socrates, Montaigne was keenly aware of how little he knew. On his Coat of Arms were the words: Que-sais-je? [What do I know?] He was graced with the humility of which Charles Spurgeon has said:

Humility is to have a right estimate of one’s self. . . . The higher a man is in grace, the lower he will be in his own esteem.

True humility reflects an absence of fancy pride and an awareness of one’s own limitations as mortal man. As the rare seers would phrase it: “The more I know the more aware I am of how little I know.” Briefly, every gain in understanding is accompanied by an increased appreciation of the yet-to-be-known. Does this involve a contradiction? To the contrary! Every broadening of one’s intellectual horizon is an incitement to explore further, a steppingstone to enlightenment, a move in the direction of Infinite Consciousness.

Saint Augustine was of this same humble caliber:

The sufficiency of my merit is to know that my merit is not sufficient.

In trying better to express myself in twenty-four books, I have followed Montaigne’s example of quoting many others. Only those have been favorably quoted whose thoughts add substance and meaning to life’s high purpose: Liberty for one and all to act creatively as each pleases. Liberty makes the unbelievable possible!

Why are not atheistic, socialistic, power hungering, special privilege notions favorably quoted? What follows is my explanation.

With liberty as the aim, my rule is this: all quotes must be consistent with the objective. And this rule demands that a person do his reasoning logically and deductively from a basic premise.

Short of a fundamental point of reference—a sound premise—ideological positions will be every which way—politico-economic hodgepodge! Wishing to avoid such inconsistency, I sought, many years ago, for a premise that would steer me aright! How? By asking and attempting to find an answer to a difficult question: What is man’s earthly purpose? That may be as deep as we can go. If the premise be not deep—fundamental—it will serve only on shallow and peripheral matters.

Man’s earthly purpose? I began the search for an answer by carefully examining three of my fundamental assumptions:

1. Man did not create himself for it is easily demonstrable that man knows very little about himself. My first assumption, therefore, is the primacy and supremacy of an Infinite Consciousness.

2. My second assumption is one that any person who makes the effort can prove for himself: man can upgrade his own awareness, perception, consciousness.

3. My third assumption is the profound belief, based on one’s immediate awareness of his inner self, that consciousness is the one great reality. This earthly moment, then, is but the beginning; the individual consciousness—dim or bright—is eternal.

What, then, is man’s earthly purpose? It is growth, emergence, evolution in consciousness; or, in lay terms, a realization of one’s unique potentialities. Hatching! Heraclitus, the Greek philosopher, wrote, “Man is on earth as in an egg,” inspiring C. S. Lewis to remark, “Now, you cannot go on being a good egg forever; you must either hatch or rot.”

With a premise such as the foregoing, how employ it to advantage? Take any quote, thought or idea—one’s own or that of others—and relate it to the premise. If inconsistent, reject. If consistent—in harmony—approve and abide thereby. If one’s premise be sound and if one reasons logically and deductively therefrom, one’s positions will be consistently sound and righteous.

Two ways of checking as to the efficacy of one’s premise: First, if it does not require individual liberty, thumbs down! And, second, if one cannot stand before God [Infinite Consciousness] and man alike and proclaim his or her premise as proudly as I have mine, do some more exploring!

That distinguished scholar, Montaigne, quoted others “only the better to express myself”—an acknowledgment that his was never the original or final thought. What about those he quoted? Contrary to common opinion, they, no more than he or anyone who has ever lived is the originator—inventor—of creative thought. Wrote Brewster Ghiselin:

For the creative order, which is an extension of life, is not an elaboration of the established but a movement beyond the established. . . . New life comes always from outside our world, as we commonly conceive that world. This is the reason why, in order to invent [originate], one must yield to the indeterminate within him. . . . He works toward clarification, toward consciousness.[1]

What is meant by “New life comes always from outside our world as we commonly conceive that world”? And what is the source of consciousness?

Many people not only think of our world as all there is but believe there is no source over and beyond the mind of finite man. Man is the originator of inventions, of all creative thought—they “think”! The fact? No man knows what an atom is or electricity or even why grass is green. Thank heaven for the few who concede that everything shades into mystery.

No one knows what Infinite Consciousness is; but some know that it is the source! The quotable Ralph Waldo Emerson saw with clarity that “new life comes always from outside our world”—and from beyond our minds:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence which makes us receivers [perceivers] of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

While it is true that we do nothing of ourselves but “allow a passage of its beams,” it takes a lot of discernment to decode the beams. They pass through animals and nothing happens. The same can be said of most humans who inhabit this earth; they lack the proper receiving sets. A few, however, get the message. In a word, no person originates an idea any more than you or I originate heavenly or earthly beauty in its infinite variations.

The most that can be said of anyone is that he was the original perceiver—identification impossible! As Goethe wrote, “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” The first perceiver of any idea can no more be identified than can the first individual to behold the beauty of the aurora borealis!

If we would improve our ability to capture the beams of Infinite Consciousness, what might be a few of the guidelines?

- Make the decoding of this Heavenly Wisdom life’s first aim—a prayed-for objective.

- Empty the mind of all conceits, banish know-it-allness, that there may be room for the not-yet-known. “Humility, like darkness, reveals the heavenly lights.”

- Search for those individuals—past and present—whose receiving sets have been or are far superior to one’s own.

- Test your “intercepts” against the premise that is the Essence of Americanism: “Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life and Liberty.”

- Look upon those who are intellectual, moral and spiritual giants, relative to self, as intermediaries, that is, as go-betweens—receiving and sharing. Socrates thought of himself as a philosophical midwife, while acknowledging that he knew nothing.

- How use these exemplars? Quote them only the better to express one’s self as I am now quoting a wise man, Albert Schweitzer: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”

Quote the wise if thou would be likewise!

[1] Excerpted from The Creative Process (A Mentor Book), pp. 14–18.

11

LIBERTY AND UNION: ONE AND INSEPARABLE

Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.

—WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE

William Allen White (1868–1944) bought the Emporia Gazette in 1895 and edited this small-town newspaper in Kansas the rest of his life. He made it and himself famous throughout the nation because he so brilliantly featured “grass-roots” political opinion.

The title of this chapter is supplied by that remarkable statesman, Daniel Webster (1782–1852): “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable.”

By “Liberty” he meant precisely what we have in mind today, namely, everyone’s privilege to act creatively as he or she pleases. And by “Union” his reference was to a friendly, harmonious, working relationship between our Northern and Southern states. Someone in this early period, while not referring to slavery, offered wise counsel that applies to ever so many situations—in his time and ours: “By uniting we stand; by dividing we fall.”

The thoughtful people in America’s early history had good reason to work and pray for Union. Why? Because of division and antagonism between the states. The cause? Slavery in the Southern states; and in the North, an abhorrence of the Simon Legree way of an inferior life.

While our Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights were the greatest political documents ever written, they were not perfect. No one—not even among our Founding Fathers—is or ever has been perfect.

There are numerous errors in these documents but the greatest of all was the failure to outlaw slavery. Why this deviation from simple justice? It was the ambition of the writers to bring the Southern states into the Union: This was an act of political expediency, the result of which was The Civil War. While all wars are disgraceful blows against civilization, none was ever more shameful than that unholy fracas.[1] “By uniting we stand; by dividing we fall.” And we fell!

Someone wrote, “Foresight through hindsight conduces insight.” Following The Civil War, many Americans gained a foresight of righteousness by hindsight, that is, by reflecting on those vicious errors. This improved thinking led to trillions of inventions, discoveries—insights—and a prosperity the likes of which no other people every experienced. A historical phenomenon!

As Horace wrote, “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in times of prosperity would have lain dormant.” Talents of the politico-economic variety are indeed lying dormant—dying on the vine.

Must we await national adversity to elicit the talents that assure Union or can we avoid such a disaster by rationally and volitionally coming to our senses? Doubtless, this is impossible unless we have a keen awareness of our present disunion, a disunion just as foreboding as that between our Northern and Southern states which led to The Civil War. So, here are some reflections on our present disunion.

Our situation today in society is, in at least one respect, analogous to the animal world: we tend to conform to the circumstances imposed upon us. The tiger is ferocious when first captured, but if he remained that way there would be no zoos. Adapting to captivity, the tiger becomes docile.

Move to the human level. No one would have kept slaves had slaves remained as rebellious as when first captured. But once enslaved, they tend to become tractable and docile workers.

The 16th Amendment—the Progressive Income Tax—would never have been enacted had there been a realization of the degree of confiscation—politico-economic captivity—that now exists. Confiscation is but another form of enslavement, but indifference and docility now mask the serfdom implicit in this form of taxation. One only needs to realize the nature of serfdom to see this. Serfdom or slavery substitutes coercive political control for self-control. The rights to the fruits of my labor have been dramatically transferred from me to political caretakers. Accompanying this shift to a primitive way of life is a marked loss of an awareness of what has happened. More and more are humans caged; more and more we observe an unfortunate docility!

The above-mentioned tax—a grave political error—has its genesis in countless errors on the part of citizens in all walks of life. Error continues to beget error—unless the cycle is broken by creative thinking. For instance, ever so many citizens speak favorably of our efforts at FEE and then add, “but you go too far for me.” What do they mean? They resent FEE’s disapproval of their particular brand of special privilege: tariffs or embargoes or TVA or government education or rent control or minimum wage laws or public housing or wage and price controls—on and on, ad infinitum.

To make sense, their criticism should be phrased, “You folks at FEE are too consistent for me.” It isn’t new to favor free market, private ownership, limited government ideas. However, only rarely is a literature written consistently on behalf of these ideas. And it might be added that no one can work effectively for this ideal way of life who does not advocate consistency in all of its parts. No one can make the case for freedom by favoring one socialistic item. One leak—one “yes, but”—philosophically and logically makes the case for all-out socialism—might makes right! Wrote Jeremy Bentham: “The rarest of all human qualities is consistency.” Consistency for freedom is precisely as rare as freedom itself. So let us, as best we can, strive to plug the leaks!

Liberty and Union are, indeed, one and inseparable. The opposites? Socialism and anarchy! As Ludwig von Mises wrote, “Socialism is planned chaos; Anarchy is unplanned chaos.” Each assures national disunion. But there is a Golden Mean: it is government—federal, state and local—limited to inhibiting all destructive actions, to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. Striving for this kind of Union should be our goal!

Now to a few reflections on the wisdom of that small-town editor, William Allen White, who gained fame by featuring “grass-roots” political opinion. Who are these “grass-rooters”? They are the millions whose voting weight tips the scales in one direction or the other, toward Union or disunion.

“Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.” When liberty is defined as “No man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy,” it follows that if I vote or plead for a single special privilege, I have forsworn liberty as my way of life. No one can expect any blessing he or she is unwilling to concede to all others.

Edmund Burke put the solution for disunion better than anyone known to me:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

Liberty cannot be established without morality, nor morality without faith. Wrote Caleb C. Colton:

Liberty will not descend to a people; a people must raise themselves to liberty; it is a blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

Let us raise ourselves to liberty and enjoy its countless blessings!

[1] For an elaboration of this point, see the chapter, “War And Peace,” in my book, Awake For Freedom’s Sake (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1977), pp. 30–39.

12

WHY LET WORRY RUIN OUR LIVES?

Worry affects the circulation—the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.

—DR. CHARLES H. MAYO

This American surgeon (1865–1938), along with his brothers, developed the Mayo Clinic—1889. It gained international fame!

Dr. Mayo used the words “worry” and “doubt” as analogous; each connotes a distressed state of mind characterized by anxiety, apprehension, dread, fear, suspicion, and vexation—a psychosomatic condition.

Dr. Mayo in the above deals with the individualistic aspect of worry: the destruction of life-sustaining faculties—the whole nervous system.

I would like to add another aspect, the societal. Worrying and fretting about the mess we are in, if it becomes an obsession among the citizenry—being the opposite of creative thought—can only continue the downfall and eventually lead to the end of freedom. In this event, life-sustaining elements become inadequate. Result? Life is shortened as in ever so many countries!

A person can literally worry himself to death, and it matters little whether he frets about his own state of health or about the health of his nation. Worry will never solve, but only worsen, these problems. Some reflections are in order concerning these two disasters and the alternatives.

Dr. Mayo stated that he never knew a person to die from overwork. This is a shocker to all people whose goal in life is to vegetate—where aspirations are limited to shorter hours, longer vacations, earlier retirement, getting out of rather than into life. The economist of a national businessmen’s organization wrote and widely publicized this error:

The most that can be said for work is that it is an unfortunate necessity.

The truth is quite the opposite. Listen to the wisdom of William Osier, M.D. on “the master word”:

Though little, the master word looms large in meaning. It is the “open sesame” to every portal, the great equalizer, the philosopher’s stone which transmutes all base metal into gold. The stupid it will make bright, the bright brilliant, and the brilliant steady. To youth it brings hope, to the middle-aged confidence, to the aged repose. . . . Not only has it been the touchstone of progress, but it is the measure of success in everyday life. And the master word is WORK!

Another distinguished physician, Dr. Hans Selye, names several famous men who lived to a ripe old age, and adds this comment:

Of course, in their many years of intense activity, these people never “worked”; they lived a life of “leisure” by working at what they liked to do.[1]

“What they liked to do”! With such fortunate ones there is no problem. They have hit upon their distinctive energies and talents, either by accident or by self-discovery. Let me illustrate.

Years ago FEE had a private garbage collector—a one-man, one-truck enterprise. While emptying a can of garbage, he said with a smile, “Mr. Read, I just love my work.” He would not love my work nor I his, any more than I would love being President of IBM or the U.S.A.

Granted, millions have never discovered their uniqueness and thus labor at tasks they look upon as drudgery. What is the remedy?

Reflect upon one’s present work until reasons for enjoying it are discovered; learn to love whatever the daily engagement may be. If impossible, switch jobs! Pride in one’s work is an important step toward a joyful life.

Work, if in harmony with one’s uniqueness, does not shorten life, it lengthens life. An understanding of this is one of the remedies for the several ills inflicted by worry.

Worry is also the cause of a traumatic illness that shortens the lives of millions. Proverbs 23:7 comes to mind: “As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” If he thinketh despondently and fearfully of every little ache and pain, his heart will cease to function—life at an end. This ancient truth gains modern support from an M.D. specializing in psychosomatic illness:

A patient whose parents have both died of heart disease will be anxious about his own heart. When then a normal diencephalic response to an emotion causes the heart to beat faster or when gastric distension pushes his heart out of its usual position, he will be inclined to interpret what he feels as the beginning of the disease which killed his parents, thinking that he has inherited a weak heart. At once all his fears cluster like a swarm of angry bees on his heart, a vicious cycle is established and thus anxious cortical supervision may eventually lead to organic lesions. He and his family will then be convinced that he did indeed inherit a weak heart, yet this is not at all true.[2]

The remedy? Do away with these killers—worries and fears. Cultivate instead the calm resolve that little aches and pains are transient; they have no ultimate significance for one whose mind is fully and properly engaged. Such an attitude offers no toe hold for these killers, allowing faith again to work its wonders.

Finally, some reflections on worry as it relates to society. Keep in mind that man is at once an individual and a social being. Good men make a good society and a good society makes it possible for men to grow in goodness—the creative life. The reverse is equally true. No good society can emerge from bad men or from “worrycrats”!

Have a look at the world around us, the millions who are murdered or sent to Siberia as in Russia, or the millions who die of starvation as in India. The cause of these disasters? Worry—fretting about the future—is assuredly one cause. Most people, observing the present societal mess, see tomorrow as a mere continuation of today. With hindsight as their only guide, they become prophets of doom—fatalists.

What is the alternative, the remedy, for this no-faith syndrome? Here is number one, a paraphrasing of some thoughts by Jacques Barzun:

Disciplining from within—by the self—must continue, steady and firm, or it will be taken over by public bodies—discipline by government. Moral regeneration can come about only when we devotees of freedom feel once more confident that ethical behavior is desirable, widely practiced, approved and admired. Only one force can bring this about: the force of moral and intellectual leadership.

Remedy number two is to abandon the error of prognostication—predicting the future, the crystal ball fantasy. It is easily demonstrable that no one knows more than an infinitesimal fraction of what went on yesterday or what goes on today. Tomorrow? The next minute? Not you nor I nor anyone else!

Wrote E. H. Chapin:

To me there is something thrilling and exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery—into something that no mortal eye has yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.

So why let worry ruin our lives? Why not let faith make our lives? As Goethe wrote, “Miracle is the darling child of faith.” Instead of worrying about debacles, have faith in a miracle: FREEDOM!

[1] See a splendid article, “But Hard Work Isn’t Bad For You” by Dr. Hans Selye, Reader’s Digest, June 1973.

[2] Man’s Presumptuous Brain by A. T. W. Simeons, M. D. (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., 1961).

13

TEACHING: REVEALING THE UNKNOWN

Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has never heard of.

—RALPH BARTON PERRY

This American philosopher (1876–1957) was not only a student—ever learning more and more—but, also, a distinguished writer and teacher. The above is an example of his deep and incisive thinking, which never abated. Doubtless it was this mental activity that accounted not only for his long life but for his improvement year in and year out. Age did not wither him. Those of us who aspire to grasp more and more of the unknown as our years extend should ponder this observation by a noted biologist:

The normal human brain always contains a greater store of neuroblasts than can possibly develop into neurons during the span of life, and the potentialities of the human cortex are never fully realized. There is a surplus and depending upon physical factors, education, environment, and conscious effort, more or less of the initial store of neuroblasts will develop into mature, functioning neurons. The development of the more plastic and newer tissue of the brain depends to a large extent upon the conscious efforts made by the individual. There is every reason to assume that development of cortical functions is promoted by mental activity and that continued mental activity is an important factor in the retention of cortical plasticity into late life. Goethe [and others] are among the numerous examples of men whose creative mental activities extended into the years associated with physical decline. There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that habitual disuse of these centers results in atrophy or at least brings about a certain mental decline, and examples bearing out this contention are only too numerous.[1]

In short: Think and stay young!

Dr. Perry, a brilliant mentor, insists that ignorance deprives men of freedom by denying them a choice among alternatives. No one can select a course of action he’s never heard of!

Most of us have heard of “freedom” and sense that it refers to doing as one chooses. So, of course, we favor freedom. But what are we doing to expand the range of our choices, exploring alternatives, maintaining the open society? Are we aware as we turn to the planned economy, to the welfare state, to socialism, that we thereby foreclose further options to choose? Do we understand that we thus abandon freedom?

So, if we truly choose freedom, we must consciously and constantly probe the unknown for new and better alternatives from which to choose. We must seek out effective teachers so that we in turn may become better teachers and exemplars. So let us study and practice the art of becoming.

Becoming a better teacher! How can we tell whether or not success is attending our efforts? There is no way of telling unless we use the right approach: seeking truth rather than followers! To the extent that we reveal the unknown—the multitudinous ways freedom works its wonders—to that extent will others seek our tutorship. These seekers are not followers but students—not imitators but learners! Those of us struggling to reveal the unknown may ascribe success to our efforts when and if our once-upon-a-time students become our teachers!

The above conviction derives from my own experience. It is the law of attraction at work at the human level; ’tis the joyous game of leapfrog, when, observing another’s progress, we then strive to surpass him. There are ever so many in my experience who embrace some minor truth I had grasped, who later used it as leverage to leap over and beyond my understanding. Result? I am now motivated to try to exceed their superior perceptions. Should I succeed, they will try again leaping over me—an intellectual, moral and spiritual game without end!

There are countless aspects to the teacher-student escalation—growing, ever growing in revealing the unknown. Here are a few thoughts by those of the past who, fortunately, have turned out to be my teachers. My ambition? To leapfrog them!

A man only understands that of which he has already a beginning in himself.

—Henri Frederic Amiel

Never expect an intellectual companionship among those who do not use their cerebral faculties. Disuse results in atrophy. The only ones who already have beginnings are those who employ conscious effort—mental activity. They are on their way!

Amiel regarded himself as a neophyte, and other great teachers have claimed no more, regardless of how richly graced with natural talents. Finite man moving toward Infinity!

We are perishing for the want of wonder, not for the want of wonders.

—Gilbert K. Chesterton

This English humorist, essayist and critic (1874–1936), observed his country rapidly falling into the catastrophic situation from which she had earlier escaped—the Command Society called Mercantilism. But we must no more belittle Englishmen than Americans for ideological slippage. We, also, have been similarly slipping for several decades, evident to anyone who has an eye to see. In that land and here, wonder and the urge to penetrate the unknown has suffered a fantastic slump. And when a people cease to wonder—lose the desire to know—they are destined for an earthly purgatory. They perish for the want of wonder!

But not for the want of wonders! Wrote Carlyle: “The man who cannot wonder, who does not wonder and worship is but a pair of spectacles beyond which there is no eye.”

I would modify the above to read, “who cannot or does not wonder.” Ever so many who do not wonder have the potential to do so. Fritz Kunkel shared this wisdom with us: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most uncommon man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

Everything on earth or sea or sky is wondrous—from atoms to galaxies. Contemplate the wonders by which—in spite of the decadent direction in which we are now headed—we live and prosper. These wonders exist by the trillions! Why is this not recognized? How account for the blindness—no eyes to see?

No one can see that for which he or she does not look. Those few who do see discover that our present prosperity is but a powerful thrust of the freedom that existed earlier. Creativity is still in our blood streams. As bad living stops the flow of the blood stream, so can erroneous or no thinking kill the thrust that blesses us today.

Lightning—radiant energy—goes from earth to clouds and back again, millions of oscillations in less time than one can say “Bang!” This is analogous to another form of radiant energy: the thoughts that go back and forth between those teachers who make progress at revealing the unknown.

There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.

—Elbert Hubbard

Few there are who recognize ability. Many people are drawn to those who spout popular jargon, purveyors of gibberish. They repeat the ignoble creeds proclaimed by those afflicted with the little-god syndrome: “I can run your life better than you can. Follow me, be like me, and wear diamonds!”

Ability is to be found only in those individuals

- Who live in harmony with Creation;

- Who make progress in revealing the unknown;

- Whose mental activity is ever improving;

- Who day-in-and-day-out strive better to understand and explain why freedom is attuned to the Cosmic Design.

These few are the only ones who deserve the title of Teachers. Let’s try to surpass them—life’s greatest game of leapfrog!

[1] See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

14

RESOLUTION: A FREEDOM IMPERATIVE

He that resolves upon any great and good end, has by that very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it.

—TRYON EDWARDS

Freedom of everyone to strive for life’s high purposes assuredly qualifies as a great and good end. Tryon Edwards (1809–94), American theologian, gave wise counsel:

He will find such resolution removing difficulties, searching out or making means, giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness, and like the star of old, ever guiding him nearer and nearer to perfection.

He will find such resolution removing difficulties—To resolve means “to solve or explain; make clear, as a problem.” In what respect is freedom a problem? Personal experience has given me the answer. For 45 years my principal aim has been to understand and explain how freedom works its wonders. A confession: I have no more than scratched the surface!

However, this I have learned: The dedicated aim—resolution—of many people working for freedom has resulted in thousands of tiny break-throughs. These, more often than not, are regarded as original by the recipients.

However, I side with Socrates, who regarded himself as merely a philosophical midwife. He received from sources over and beyond self and shared with all who would listen! Because Emerson was more explicit, I repeat his wise observation:

We lie in the lap of immense intelligence, which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.

The Sage of Concord could easily be misunderstood with his “we do nothing of ourselves.” To “allow” requires not only resolution but a prayerful—even passionate—desire that the beams be intercepted. There is no person through whom these do not pass. Indeed, they are omnipresent in everyone, a fact rarely realized. Where discernment is lacking, there are no sparkles of heavenly enlightenment. Not only do most people unconsciously lie in the lap of immense intelligence but, even more unfortunately, they cannot conceive of any individual so graced.

Reflect on the difficulties in achieving a return to freedom. The obstacles are manifold! Those who prefer freedom to socialism but haven’t resolved to achieve this great and good end are barren of enlightening ideas. They are forlorn and have no hope. Discouraged!

Thank Heaven, there are a few whose resolve serves as a tower of strength. The ideas and ideals which they intercept are countless—they see the light and the hope. Encouraged! They have a faith on which all miracles depend.

. . . resolution in searching out or making means—Searching—seeking and asking—is in the spirit of inquiry; it is the genesis of improved understanding. We freedom devotees can find encouragement in Matthew 7:7–8:

Ask and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.

The above presupposes that the asking be for the highest of all possible ends. This is confirmed in Matthew 6:33:

But seek ye first the Kingdom of God [Truth] and all these things [the Blessings of Freedom] shall be added unto you.

For “making means” appropriate, that is, consistent with the freedom objective, the formula is improved understanding. We must grasp the role of means. Again, Ralph Waldo Emerson:

Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

Our end—the Blessings of Freedom—is but the flower of good seeds we plant; our objective has no other means of attainment. Your and my role? Exemplarity! “Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.” Three guidelines:

1. Never do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you.

2. Never speak, write or behave in a manner that would bring chaos were everyone to do likewise.

3. Do that which, if emulated, would confer upon mankind the Blessings of Freedom.

. . . resolution, giving courage for despondency—Wrote Confucius: “To see what is right and not do it, is want of courage.” Were all citizens, above the moronic level, to do the right as they see it, regardless of how little they see, what a boon to civilization this would be—an evolutionary explosion!

Unfortunately, citizens by the countless millions so greatly fear disapproval and disagreement that they stoop to serve the latest public clamor. Courage to stand for what they believe to be right gives way before their dread of ostracism.

The result of this weakness in character? Societal decay, which in turn leads to their despondency. The world is going to hell! And, they, for lack of courage, go along. Wrote James F. Clarke:

Conscience is the root of all true courage; if a man would be brave let him obey his conscience.

. . . resolution in giving strength for weakness—We must rid our America of the prevailing socialism—politico-economic weakness. The sole route to this achievement? A firm resolution to understand and explain the strength of freedom! Here is an excellent formula by an unknown:

The nerve that never relaxes,

the eye that never blanches,

The thought that never wanders,

the purpose which never wavers.

These are the masters of victory!

The chief barrier to the good life is socialism! Let us remove this barrier by resolving to concentrate on and work for that rewarding and glorious end—freedom!

15

PERSEVERANCE: A KEY TO FREEDOM

The divine insanity of noble minds,

That never falters or abates,

But labors and endures and waits,

Till all that it foresees it finds,

Or what it cannot find, creates.

—LONGFELLOW

Why, for heaven’s sake, did this brilliant thinker and poetic genius use the word “insanity” in the above? No word has a more derogatory meaning! An interview being impossible, I can only guess. To startle the readers? Maybe, but unlikely! Perhaps the adjectives “divine” and “noble” provide a clue. The reference is to minds so far above the ordinary man’s—moving toward the celestial—that the mill run of humanity would mistake genius for insanity! And “creates” relates to Creation. I’m no poet but I am with you, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, at least in aspiration.

Perseverance is only one of numerous keys to freedom. It is not a master key but without stick-to-itiveness the door to freedom will never open. Ever so many freedom-oriented citizens enter enthusiastically into our intellectual, moral, and spiritual fray. They may do their very best for a spell, but noting no turnabout as the result of their efforts, they throw in the sponge and become do-nothings. More a hindrance than a help!

Most of us fail to understand that doing our very best—now and henceforth—is but a beginning! Everyone—no exception—is more or less naive, and a recognition of this fact is important. Short of such awareness, there can be no return to freedom. Some examples of naivete:

A pre-New Deal President of the U.S.A., seeking a way to end the depression that began in 1929, forbade business firms to lower wages or raise prices. Wage and price controls!

In the early days of the New Deal I became Manager, Western Division of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and I believed in wage and price controls—the N.R.A. Why? The U.S. Chamber gave its endorsement as did the National Association of Manufacturers and most leading businessmen. Copycat Read!

One of the most brilliant economic thinkers and writers I have known once advocated rent control—a naive position he later overcame.

The role of government? A mentor of mine, a Harvard Professor of Political Economy, once wrote, “Government must do for the people that which they cannot do for themselves.” A so-called conservative President of the U.S.A. said the same thing. This specious counsel spawned countless copycats and made a substantial contribution to the socialistic mess we are now experiencing.

Reflect: I do not know how to make most of the foods on which my life depends, and there are millions of things you and I cannot do for ourselves. Government’s role according to this panacea? The 16,000,000 elected or appointed officials—federal, state and local—who doubtless know even less than the rest of us, will do for us what we cannot do for ourselves! If this isn’t politico-economic balderdash, pray tell, what is?

The above instances may be sufficient to suggest that our lives, when lived aright, manifest a process of progression. As we progress onward and upward, some of our thoughts and ideals of the past—guesses at truth—will be revealed as error. The right course is uphill all the way—a bit of new light replacing the darkness of bygone days.

Before commenting on appropriate tactics, here are three thoughts we might keep in mind:

1. Freedom is personal; it is a social climate in which each person initiates his own actions, chooses his own goals, and functions creatively in peaceful ways of his own. Government control depersonalizes; it interferes with peaceful persons, interrupting their private plans in order to enhance some national overall plan, treating them impersonally as mere means to some political end.

2. Freedom works its wonders amidst complexity—tiny bits of expertise in unimaginable numbers flowing hither and yon and configurating into the goods and services by which we live and prosper. The more complex anything is, the more difficult is comprehension. The freedom thesis leaves most people nonplused—“a condition of perplexity in which one is unable to go, speak or act further.”

3. Freedom is not an end in itself. Rather, it is a means to the highest of all human aspirations: growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. This is why we should reflect on Longfellow’s enlightening counsel.

. . . the “genius” of noble minds, that never falters or abates—This refers to those very few who never vacillate or give up—regardless of depravity, corruption, demoralization, political hypocrisy. Such adversity, instead of turning them off—making do-nothings of them—spurs them on. It elicits talents that would otherwise have lain dormant.

. . . the “genius” of noble minds labors, endures, and waits, till all that it foresees it finds—It is genius—a superior power of seeing—that begins great works; labor alone finishes them. Wrote John Ruskin:

It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy; and the two cannot be separated with impunity.

But the labor should be happy—joyous!

It is only these noble minds who endure, who never quit—Wrote Epicurus:

The greater the difficulty, the more glory in surmounting it. Skillful pilots [those who point our way to freedom] gain their reputation from storms and tempests—[the socialistic confusion].

Not only do they gain their reputation; they make possible our salvation.

Another talent: it is only these noble souls who wait—If at first they don’t succeed, they try and try again. These few who fail today may well be up again tomorrow. Patience is their hallmark. Wrote Gail Hamilton:

Life has such hard conditions that every dear and precious gift, every rare virtue, every genial endowment—love, hope, joy, wit, sprightliness, benevolence—must sometimes be put into the crucible to distill the one elixir—patience.

“Patience is not passive; on the contrary it is active; it is concentrated strength.”

. . . or what it cannot find, creates—Noble minds, time after time, are stumped; they can find no ready-made answers to problems they seek to solve. What then? They turn to the spiritual in the sense that an idea, discovery, invention, insight, intuitive flash is spiritual. Everything by which we live originates in the spiritual before manifesting itself in the material. For instance, a water glass is inconceivable had not some cave man eons ago discovered how to harness fire. There would be no airplanes had not some Hindu centuries ago invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry, physics and the like would be impossible if reliance had to be on Roman numerals!

Interestingly, Americans more than any people in all history have proved the efficacy of the spiritual approach to the good life. It had its beginning in 1776:

. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among them are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Spiritual? Yes, indeed! By proclaiming the Creator as the endower of human rights they unseated government from that role. Result? The American miracle!

Thanks, Mr. Longfellow, for being a philosophic as well as a poetic genius. May we aspire to the divine “genius” of noble minds, featured by day-to-day perseverance. Yours is, indeed, an important key to freedom!

16

LET THERE BE LIGHT

Light! Nature’s resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom.

—JAMES THOMSON

Man is potentially a part of Nature but more often than not is apart from her “resplendent robe.” As to the latter, let me quote my FEE associate, Reverend Edmund A. Opitz:

Man is Nature’s wayward son, the chief disturber of the Cosmic Harmonies. He is a part of Nature, but a portion of his being sets him apart from the material universe. Man transcends Nature and is gifted with a novel kind of freedom of choice.

Here at last is a creature so detached from instinctual controls that guide animals that he can defy the laws of his being. The other orders of creation—birds, beasts, insects—possess built-in servo-mechanisms which give them all the answers; before man the Creator has poised a question mark and the answers are ours to work out.

This is our freedom, and also our peril. No animal has such control of its destiny as we possess—for good or ill. The tiger cannot be untigerish, Ortega once remarked, but a man can be inhuman. Man’s will is free; all other creatures obey the laws of their nature willy-nilly. Man’s freedom is so radical that he can deny his own nature—he can deny his Maker.

Yes, we have freedom of choice. We are free to abide by our nature—the constant pursuit of light—or to deny life’s high purpose, and our Maker. The results? It is, as Thomson wrote, “Nature’s resplendent robe,” on the one hand, or else “all wrapt in gloom.” It is either perpetual ascendancy—Heavenly; or degeneracy—hellish. So let us seek the light!

For years I have been repeating that wise old English axiom: “It is light that brings forth the eye.” The extent to which one’s own light is shining bright, to that extent does it bring forth the eye of others. Excellence in this or any other field is magnetic and is in tune with the Universal Law of Attraction. Anthony Standen gave this truth a brilliant phrasing:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movements of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies too are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[1] (Italics added)

As related to self and others, it is, indeed, light that brings forth the eye!

All of a sudden, a wee gleam of new light—for me, a discovery. My question has been, What about the dependence of others on my light? All well and good! Now, another question pops into mind, What about my dependence on others for light? The answer to the first has been and still is: It is light that brings forth the eye. The answer to the second question? It is the eye that brings forth the light. The brighter one’s light, the more are others attracted to it. That’s one side of the coin. The other side poses the question, How does one brighten his own light?

One’s eye—his awareness, perception, consciousness—is not and can never be a lone, one-man project. The notion that anyone could advance on his or her own and disregard the wisdom of the ages is absurd. The mind would remain a blank! We have the capacity to gain light from the wisest of tutors—past and present—and should make full use of it. The English critic and poet, Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772–1834) wrote:

A dwarf sees farther than the giant when he has the giant’s shoulders to mount on.

Admittedly, I am a finite being—a dwarf—but it is in the realm of possibility for me to see further than any single giant by drawing on hundreds of giants, past and present—tutors.

“We see through a glass darkly.” (1 Corinthians 13:12) This biblical observation was made nearly 2,000 years ago when glass was barely translucent, rather than the transparent substance we know. Reflect on the number of things about which we are “in the dark,” the things in creation beyond our perception or calculation. We do not understand what electricity is, only that it is. This may be said of everything by which we live and prosper. Do I know how to make my pen or the paper on which these words are written? Could I build the home in which I live or the car I drive or the airplanes on which I fly or any single part thereof? No human being has any such know-how!

“He sees enough who doth his darkness see.” This is a truism. Why? There are at least two reasons:

1. It is an absolute necessity that all creative activities be left to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is, for this permits the flow and configuration of our tiny bits of expertise. Even the simplest item of daily use represents the convergence of countless thousands of contributors. If pencil making were left to any single human being there would be no pencils. Or paper, or whatever!

2. When we really “see” our darkness, we strive for light—enlightenment.

In nature there is no absolute darkness. There is light for those who have eyes to see. Animals ranging from cats to owls are examples. They roam and fly by night. Time after time I have peered through the glass of my bedroom window into the night and all is black as ink. But keep peering and the iris expands and admits more and more light into the eye. We begin to see.

Peering, forever peering into the intellectual, moral and spiritual darkness that besets each and every one of us, results in the mind opening to understanding—Light! In John 12:46 our Perfect Exemplar is quoted as saying, “I am come a light into the world.”

May each of us strive to become a light—even a tiny spark—into the world! It is our role in human evolution.

[1] See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

17

MORALITY: ITS UPS AND DOWNS

The true grandeur of humanity is in moral elevation, sustained, enlightened and decorated by the intellect of man.

—CHARLES SUMNER

Sumner (1811–74) was U.S. Senator from Massachusetts for four terms. Whether or not we agree with all he powerfully advocated or denounced, the above reveals a brilliant insight. Moral elevation is, indeed, the true grandeur of humanity. Equally true, it is sustained, enlightened and decorated by our intellects.

If our intellects are advancing the cause of truth, up goes morality. But if the intellects be erroneous or bogged down at a low level, down goes morality. Thus, it seems appropriate to reflect on the causes: the ups and downs of our intellects.

The meaning of intellect: the power “to perceive, understand . . . the ability to reason.”

First, let’s dispose of the negative in order to concentrate on the positive. Whenever and wherever intellects are below par, morality deteriorates, and with it freedom and the welfare of mankind. Dictocrats take over! Wrote C. S. Lewis:

I am very doubtful whether history shows us one example of a man who, having stepped outside of rational morality and attained power, has used that power benevolently.

It should be clear why no such example can be found. Benevolence—“kindliness”—and power to run the lives of others—molestation—are opposites. Benevolence and power are as contradictory as are their characteristics: love and hate!

What is the cause of a sagging morality? Can it be other than an inability to perceive, understand, reason? Why this inability? Millions of individuals have their eyes cast only on satisfactions of the flesh—ease, comfort, sensation. Goals at this level—no high aspirations or aims—fail to stimulate the intellect. Result? Potential energies are not realized!

Were everyone of this caliber, there would be no moral elevation. Thank heaven, there are a few at the truly high level where energies are not “bottled up” but are free to flow—the gateway to freedom!

Wrote Emerson: “Intellect lies behind genius which is intellect constructive. Intellect is the simple power, anterior to all action or construction.”

How simple is this power? No more is required than to strive for the highest goal there is—Infinite Consciousness!

While this goal—the Eternal—is unimaginably beyond the reach of anyone, it is the lodestar—“the guiding idea”—at which man should aim now and forever. When this course is passionately pursued, permitting nothing to stand in the way, the practitioners are graced with intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. Elevation!

It is interesting to reflect on our intellects and how they can advance mankind toward the Eternal Verities—Truth.

- Creation has given us unlimited scope for the exercises of the intellect during our mortal moments.

- In some the intellect is highly advanced. Those so blest—unlike others—move toward Truth in the absence of obstacles to overcome. They inspire in others an understanding of the Unobstructed Universe—life in the Hereafter!

- Individuals so graced can fail in this or that endeavor without dejection and can succeed without elation. In tune with reality!

- Only those whose intellects are growing understand liberty, and have the courage to stand for liberty—the right of every person to act creatively as each pleases.

- Intellects in the higher realm can be likened to lamps in a lighthouse. They can be seen from afar and, thus, assist others in finding their way to the freedom way of life.

- The intellect of the wise can be likened to a glass which, intercepting the light of heavenly virtues, reflects them.

- Intellect and productivity in all fields are ideological and material companions. Happiness and peace on earth are increased by their union.

- Those who foster all creative actions are men and women of advanced intellects.

- The commerce of intellect loves distant shores. The practitioners favor free and unfettered trade the world over. They are the ambassadors of good will.

The true grandeur of humanity is, indeed, in moral elevation. And this is possible only as highly elevated goals are adopted and accepted as life’s earthly mission.

To develop higher intellects that morality may be on the way up rather than down, here is a good guideline by Saint Jerome (340–420): Begin to be now what you will be hereafter.

18

COPING WITH DARKNESS

There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.

—A SCOTTISH EPITAPH

Some 2,800 years ago an ancient author wrote these words in Genesis: “Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” Darkness is still upon the face of the earth and always will be! And the darkest spot is just under the wee candle. Striving to become a tiny light amid humanity’s darkness is a worthy and heavenly aspiration for each of us who would lend a helping hand to freedom.

The darkness with which we must cope is in the future. Why in the days to come rather than right now? There is no fraction small enough to identify the present—that moment when the future becomes the past. All is past or future, which is to say, all of our correct guidelines consist of memories or expectations, each of which should be examined.

If we rely on memory to steer us aright, we build our thinking on intellectual quicksand—fickle stuff! Why this assertion? Merely answer this question: On what are our memories founded, that is, memories prior to your or my experience? We are forced to rely on reporters, including those who label themselves historians! Are the reports accurate? To the contrary—loaded with prejudices! Heed these words by one of the greatest of all historians, a scholar who recognized the confusions which beset the members of his own profession:

What is it that leads one historian to make, out of all the possible true affirmations about the given event, certain affirmations and not others? Why, the purpose he has in mind will determine that. And so the purpose he has in mind will determine the precise meaning which he derives from the event. The event, itself, the facts, do not say anything, do not impose any meaning. It is the historian who speaks, who imposes meaning.

The historian has to judge the significance of the series of events from the one single performance, never to be repeated, and never, since the records are incomplete and imperfect, capable of being fully known or affirmed. Thus into the imagined facts and their meaning there enters the personal equation. The history of an event is never precisely the same thing to two different persons; and it is well known that every generation writes the same history in a new way; and puts upon it a new construction.[1]

While no two reporters of past events see precisely the same significance in any one of them, it is equally true that no two readers derive identical interpretations. Thus, histories, while not all darkness, are, at best, shifting, shadowy accounts of the near and ancient past. That such accounts are not the way to brighten one’s wee candle has been recognized by numerous wise men.

History can only be understood by seeing it as the theatre of diverse groups of idealists respectively urging ideals incompatible for conjoint realization.

—Alfred North Whitehead

We read history through our prejudices.

—Wendell Phillips

Truth is very liable to be left-handed in history.

—Alexander Dumas

The men who make history have no time to write it.

—C. W. Metternich

Many historians take pleasure in putting into the mouths of princes what they have neither said nor ought to have said.

—Voltaire

We must consider how very little history there is; I mean real, authentic history. That certain kings reigned, and certain battles were fought, we can depend on as true; but all the coloring, all the philosophy of history is conjecture.

—Samuel Johnson

To be entirely just in our estimate of other ages is not only difficult, but is impossible. Even what is passing in our presence we see but through a glass darkly. In historical inquiries the most instructed thinkers have but a limited advantage over the most illiterate. Those who know the most approach least to agreement.

—James A. Froude

Enough of the negative. In summary, the present does not exist and the past is shrouded in darkness. So let’s reflect on the future and the light that can be gleaned. Again, a bit of wisdom from Froude:

History is a voice forever sounding across the centuries. . . . Opinions alter, manners change, creeds rise and fall, but the moral law is written on the tablets of eternity.

Mankind’s problem is first and foremost the discovery of and a strict adherence to the moral law. The answers are to be found on the tablets of eternity—the future! It is by peering into the future that we will find the only way for each of us to light his wee candle.

It is well to remember that the darkest spot—the past—is just under one’s wee candle. Thus, the eye must be cast upward, toward the tablets of eternity, for only there is the moral law written. Here are two assurances:

Thou wilt light my candle: the Lord my God [Infinite Consciousness] will enlighten my darkness. (Psalms 18:28)

I am the light of the world: he that followeth me shall not walk in darkness. (John 8:12)

We who strive for freedom—peace on earth and good will toward men—must seek and find the moral law without in order that it may reside within our individual souls. Immanuel Kant phrased it well:

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and the more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above and the moral law within.

Freedom rises or falls as a common justice is or is not observed, as our lives are or are not governed by the highest of moral principles. In trying to brighten my own wee candle by looking upward and onward, what are the first two guidelines that meet the eye of yours truly? The Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule!

Discovering their existence or being able to repeat the words is far from adequate. Learning to live by the truths written on these tablets of eternity—gleaning all the light they have to shed—is beyond the capability of anyone in a lifetime. It is finite awareness moving slowly toward the imperceptible—Infinite Consciousness!

That wise philosopher, José Ortega y Gasset, humbly acknowledges his position:

We are going to look for a little of that light. You can expect nothing more of course. I can only give what I have. Let others who can do more do their more, as I do my little.

Many others have shared their “more” with me that my own wee candle may be brightened. This is the stairway to the dispelling of darkness and the light in which freedom appears as a way of life!

[1] See “What Are Historical Facts?” by Professor Carl Becker (1955) in Hans Meyerhoff (ed.), The Philosophy of History in Our Time (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor, 1959), pp. 131–132.

19

NATURE’S LAW OF CHANGE

We shall be changed. In a moment, in a twinkling of an eye.

—I CORINTHIANS 15:51–52

The above, a wise message passed on to posterity by Saint Paul, has been variously phrased and supported by others. Here are a few samplings from the distant past to recent times:

There is nothing in the world that keeps its form.

—Ovid

Presume not that I am the thing I was.

—Shakespeare

All things must change

To something new, to something strange.

We must all obey the law of change.

It is the most powerful law of nature.

—Edmund Burke

Look around thro’ Nature’s range.

Nature’s mighty law is change.

—Robert Burns

Weep not that the world changes—did it keep a stable, changeless state it were cause indeed to weep.

—William Cullen Bryant

The art of progress is to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

—Alfred North Whitehead

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

—C. F. Kettering

Ovid, a Roman poet of antiquity, was graced with hindsight, insight and foresight or else he could not have written, “There is nothing in the world that keeps its form.” Hindsight and insight imparted this wisdom to Ovid: that change is a law of life. This has always been the case, and it will be true in the future. It is interesting to reflect on the scientific evidence during recent years that lends credence to Ovid’s foresight.

Thirty trillion atoms could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping. All atoms are in constant change—nature’s law—no two ever alike.

There are one octillion atoms—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—in each individual. How can this be imagined? Cover the earth with dried green peas to a depth of four feet. An octillion? No, it is necessary to cover 250,000 earth-sized planets with the same depth of dried peas to reach the staggering figure of one octillion!

Interestingly, each individual has a new octillion atoms every five years. How fast do they come and go? One quintillion—1,000,000,000,000,000,000—every second! To and from where? Throughout the universe! It has been mathematically demonstrated that each of us, at any moment, possesses a few atoms that were in Christ.

The above is a firm confirmation of nature’s law of change. No person is the same from one second to the next. This is true of a blade of grass, snow flakes, clouds, our Sun and all other stars, galaxies or whatever.

Shakespeare’s “Presume not that I am the thing I was,” shows that he grasped nature’s law. Suppose everything in nature had remained as was. No such title as The Bard of Avon would have been accorded him. Why? Stalemated at babyhood—the thing he was! While there would be no human beings on earth—or even our earth itself—in the absence of nature’s law of change, reflect on our likeness to men of the Stone Age—Neanderthals. We would look more like monkeys than those who populate today’s world!

Edmund Burke and Robert Burns add their wisdom and clarity to this incontrovertible truth. Burke’s—“All things must change to something new, to something strange”—sheds a light easy to see. “Nature’s mighty law is change,” wrote Burns. Since their time there have been many millions of changes that would not only have been new and strange but startling to these brilliant minds.

Let two examples among the millions suffice:

1. An automobile that can speed at 90 miles per hour, with power steering, a self-starter, air conditioning, radio, rear-view mirrors, automatic windshield wipers and other labor-saving gadgets.

2. A motion picture camera that takes photos near and far and in color which are displayed on TV that can be seen not only by all citizens in the U.S.A. but by anyone in the world—by satellite!

These and ever so many other things which I use every day are strange to me. Imagine how phenomenal to Burke had he been able to look two centuries into the future! Though amazed, he would have said that the unexpected is to be expected. He understood that nature’s law is change!

No individual of even moderate perspicacity—keenness of sight—could help but side with William Cullen Bryant: Weep not at nature’s law of change! To weep at change would be no less absurd than to decry all progress—human emergence, growth, evolution, Creation! Were the world to keep a stable, changeless state, there is little prospect of survivors to mourn the sad fate of mankind.

Those who favor the art of progress must recognize the essence of this art. Alfred North Whitehead gives the formula: to preserve order amid change and to preserve change amid order.

Our present situation resembles a one-sided contest, with changes galore but disorder on the rampage. Reflect on the disorder—politicians, bureaucrats, business and professional “leaders” coercively interfering with the free flow of creative energy. Labor union strikes, tariffs, embargoes, regulations, controls—these are but samples of disorder. Bear in mind that the practitioners are no more at fault—perhaps not so much—as those who advocate this dictocratic nonsense—preachers, teachers, the media and the millions who have gleaned no politico-economic light. One-sided? The score is a thousand to one! We must achieve order if we would preserve change—nature’s law.

Boss Kettering avers that the world hates change. He was not referring to the few like himself who understand that change is the only thing that has brought and will bring progress. His reference was to those who revel in special privileges, ranging from cartels—which eliminate competition—to food stamps. The tens of millions who live by countless plunderbunds hate the very thought of a return to self-responsibility—living off the fruits of one’s own labor. The private ownership, free market, limited government way of life is anathema to parasites—hated!

Those who despise freedom haven’t the slightest idea that their sordid, avaricious notions will, if not reversed, do them in. They fight against their own self-interest—unknowingly! What is it they fail to see? Changes, occurring in profusion and automatically when the freedom way is observed, account for material abundance; but coercively taking from some to subsidize others will dry up the springs of wealth until nothing remains to be confiscated! What happens to parasites when the host has been killed!

What, then, is the solution to our problem? It is to establish an order in society that is free, flexible, fluid—and growing. Under these conditions of orderly freedom every individual may act in any creative way that pleases him.

All persons may:

- Labor wherever they choose and for the number of hours that best suits their fancy.

- Produce whatever accords with their talents.

- Exchange with whomever is agreeable.

- Freely compete in any or all activities.

- Employ and manage the capital they can honestly accumulate.

- Rely upon a government limited to protecting these natural rights, that is, keep the peace by invoking a common justice.

Thank heaven, ours is not a numbers problem. Over and over again I have written that all good movements in the world’s history have been led by an infinitesimal minority. Our role is finding ways better to phrase and explain the freedom philosophy.

As this is being written, a letter arrives from a freedom devotee in Spain. He reports a comment of his wife: “The Freeman articles feature the same subject over and over again.” His reply, “Yes, but note that new and better ways of explaining with clarity are on the increase.”

To conclude, here are the thoughts of two more wise men:

A system of fixed concepts is contrary to natural law. It prevents life from flowing. It blocks the passage of the universal law.

—Newton Dillaway

The greater thing in the world is not so much where we stand as the direction we are going.

—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.

May you and I go in the right direction that more may go with us: Toward nature’s law—toward freedom!

20

OUR TIMES DEMAND STATESMEN!

The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that the one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day, and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.

—EDMUND BURKE

To understand Burke’s distinction between the pretender and the statesman presumes that one knows the purpose of government and the appropriate role for political action. It then can be seen that pretenders, as distinguished from statesmen, are to be found not only among elected and appointed officials but in the ranks of the so-called private sector as well. Pretenders include all who advocate political action as a matter of short-run expediency, be they labor leaders, businessmen, teachers, preachers or of whatever calling.

As I explained in Chapter 2, it should be clear that those who empower an agent—vote for a government—to do their robbing are as guilty of sin as those who steal on their own.[1]

Indeed, if there were no private advocacy of political intervention, there would be little, if any governmental practice thereof. If private citizens favored only enduring principles and reasoned from the premise of immortality, officialdom would reflect the same virtue. Officialdom is but an echoing of wrong or right thinking on the part of the citizenry.

As to enduring principles, premised on immortality, an American author—Josiah Gilbert Holland (1819–1881)—understood and beautifully phrased the virtues each of us should comprehend and use as guidelines:

God give us men! A time like this demands

Strong minds, great hearts, true faith, and ready hands;

Men whom the lust of office does not kill;

Men whom the spoils of office cannot buy;

Men who possess opinions and a will;

Men who have honor; men who will not lie;

Men who can stand before a demagogue

And damn his treacherous flatteries without winking;

Tall men, sun-crowned, who live above the fog

In public duty and in private thinking;

For while the rabble, with their thumb-worn creeds,

Their large profession and their little deeds,

Mingle in selfish strife, lo! Freedom weeps,

Wrong rules the land, and waiting Justice sleeps.

Each of us is a part of society, and thus, has a public duty to keep the societal agencies within proper bounds, so that freedom may prevail. This demands that we be statesmen—tall men, sun-crowned—who see above the fog of socialism. The potential for statesmanship exists in any individual. Whether in public office or in private life, each may serve as an exemplar of the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life.

Jefferson wrote, “There is a natural aristocracy among men. It is composed of virtues and talents.” When society is graced with a few natural aristocrats—statesmen—setting a high standard, acts of selfish strife are held in abeyance. The rank and file of mankind respond to statesmanlike example. But when such exemplarity slumps as it has today in all walks of life—politics, business, professions, education, religion, labor unions—out come the thumb-worn creeds like weeds in an unkept garden.

Does one then stand among the weeds in despair? Or does he take up the challenge? Let that wise statesman, Edmund Burke, answer once again:

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is) I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.

Acknowledged, only a few over the ages have done more than follow the dictatorial customs of their time. This explains why the freedom way of life has graced humanity only on rare occasions. Those of us who love liberty have one assignment—to achieve the highest stage of exemplarity within our capabilities. This is the sole contribution we can make to mankind’s movement away from a primitive to an enlightened way of life.

Margaret Cameron, in The Seven Purposes, offers further insight as to how such exemplarity affects others:

Give unto each his opportunity to grow and to build for progress. Freedom to strive is the one right inherent in existence, the strong and the weak each following his own purpose, with all his force, to the one great end. And he who binds and limits his brother’s purpose binds himself now and hereafter. But he who extends his brother’s opportunity builds for eternity.

[1] For Congressman Davy Crockett’s well-told story of how he learned this lesson from one of his constituents, ask for a copy of “Not Yours to Give.”

21

THE IDEA WITH AN L: IDEAL

A great idea is usually original to more than one discoverer. Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world’s ignorance and press for admission.

—AUSTIN PHELPS

There are varying definitions of the ideal but this is my favorite: “A conception of something in its most excellent form.” However, even this has limitations along with its limitless potentialities. Tryon Edwards phrased it well:

We never reach our ideals whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies and spurs us on to higher and better things.

There are infinitely more ideas than all the individuals who live on this earth—and they are all different, no two identical. I need only reflect on how my own ideas have varied over the years—even from day to day. The same can be said of everyone else, except those who are mentally and morally stagnated. Variation occurs when the quality of ideas declines, no less than when it improves. Multiply all who live times the countless variations in their ideas, and the figure is beyond our imagination!

All of our actions, good as well as bad, are in response to the ideas we hold. Only rarely are these ideas one’s own; we borrow from someone else. Thus, many of our actions are no more than imitations, and too often we imitate actions spawned by bad ideas that have been so prevalent in mankind’s history.

There may be no better illustration of such imitation in our own history than that supplied by the Pilgrim Fathers during the years 1620–23. Where did they get the idea that they could best survive by taking from those who have and giving to those in need?

Prior to 1620—with a few notable exceptions—the Command Society, such as serfdom and feudalism, had more or less been a way of life. No better demonstration of this ancient idea has ever been written than by Karl Marx, the father of modern communism. While the Pilgrims, for the first three years, practiced the idea, Marx, two and one-half centuries later, was the first to phrase it: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

Bad ideas, like bad events—murders, airplane crashes, and so on—are publicized and talked about. Good ideas, like good events—respect for others, honest dealings, safe flying—are rarely publicized or discussed. Those addicted to bad ideas do not recognize good ideas or talk about them. Good ideas are over their heads and out of sight—invisible!

These bad ideas from the primitive past are remindful of an avalanche; they grow as they descend upon mankind. As an avalanche finally reaches a terrain where descent is no longer possible, so do bad ideas eventually run head-on into good ideas that make their continuance impossible. As Austin Phelps wrote, “Great ideas come when the world needs them. They surround the world’s ignorance and press for admission.”

We of today’s world—individuals in the U.S.A. no less than those in other countries—are in dire need of great ideas. Our aim? To surround and do away with the prevalence of bad ideas. Let the good replace the bad! In what politico-economic form do the bad ideas manifest themselves? In the planned economy and the welfare state: socialism, that is, Marxism![1]

Human errors—bad ideas—are undetectable by you or me until better ideas are found. However, when discovered and uncovered, the great idea with an L—The Ideal—graces the mind: the freedom way of life!

Freedom—no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy—is the latest great idea of the evolutionary process. Like a distant star, such an ideal is glimpsed by only a few, never more clearly than by our Founding Fathers in their stand before the avalanche. They unseated government as the endower of men’s rights and placed the Creator in that role. Result? The American Miracle!

How are we to explain the rather drastic slump from our country’s earlier approximation of the Ideal? Merely bear in mind that our countless blessings are conferred by Creation and that we mortals are creatures who have the potential of sharing in evolution.

What, then, is my answer to the question posed? Human freedom is but a phase of the celestial. Awareness of Infinite Consciousness is within our reach but understanding and clear explanations are beyond our finite minds. However, we can reach, and reaching is the part we can play toward our own salvation and evolvement.

For what shall we reach? That high goal: FREEDOM! This goal has at least three ascending stages:

1. Achieve that understanding and tenacity of spirit which makes it impossible to lend any support or encouragement to any socialistic notion.

2. Become a thinker and writer capable of explaining the fallacies of socialism and the principles of freedom.

3. Arrive at that state of excellence which will cause others to seek one’s tutorship.

The third stage is the law of attraction in human relationships. It is easy to tell the degree of excellence achieved. Ask yourself, “How many others are seeking my tutorship?” If none, there’s homework to be done!

Finally, let us strive to so grasp the great ideas that lie at the root of human liberty until it becomes second nature for us to act in accord with those ideals.

Ever so many behaviors in life are second nature, that is, we act automatically and correctly without the need of thinking. Two examples:

- Remember when as a child you were learning to write. You had to think your way around all the letters from A to Z. Today? Those physical movements have been relegated to the conditioned reflexes and all you have to think about is what you wish to write. The physical movements have become second nature.

- Reflect on driving an automobile. You do not think about turning the wheel or pressing the accelerator or brake. These movements, as in writing, have been relegated to the conditioned reflexes and all you have to think about is where you wish to go and how to avoid obstacles. The physical movements are second nature.

Very well! When do the great ideas about human liberty become second nature? When one can clearly explain the fallacies of socialism and the ideas that lie at the root of human liberty with the same ease as responding “42” to the question, “What’s 6 times 7?”

An admission: I am unaware of anyone who has reached this stage of perfection. As contrary notions are posed, most of us devotees of liberty must do a lot of thinking before arriving at a correct answer. Yet, there are a few known to me whose responses to most notions are instinctive! The knowledge has become a part of their very beings—second nature to that degree, and a goal we must each strive to attain.

True, mortal man has not attained and may never attain the Idea with an L: The Ideal—“the conception of something [freedom] in its perfect form.” Perfection is not within our range.

However, the thought of mental and moral improvement—The Ideal—exposes our countless deficiencies and spurs us on in a glorious direction!

They only who build on Ideas, build for eternity.

—Emerson

There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world and that is an idea whose time has come.

—Victor Hugo

The time has come to build for eternity!

[1] For an appraisal of how nearly we in the U.S.A. have adopted the ten points of the Communist Manifesto, see the chapter, “Ignorance: Agent of Destruction,” in my book, Vision.

22

READING AND WRITING

The trouble about man is twofold. He cannot learn truths that are too complicated; he forgets truths that are too simple.

—REBECCA WEST

The above epigram by this famous lady is, to say the least, an oversimplification. “The trouble about man” is not twofold; it is a millionfold! And this is true of me, or you, or anyone. Nonetheless, her two assertions deserve reflection by those seeking truth.

For whom are truths too complicated—the sayers or the listeners? If they be the sayer’s own thoughts, they are simple to him, if to no one else. He learns from them! The same applies to truths that are “too simple.” They will not be forgotten by the sayer but only by the listeners.

Here is an example of a truth—a sentence from the Sermon on the Mount—that at one time was too complicated for me, but not for Christ: “The meek shall inherit the earth.” To most of us “meek” refers to the Casper Milquetoasts. Christ did not mean that—far from it!

How did I go about simplifying this complication? By reading and writing—each equally important for thinking. The highly informative book was The Code of Christ by Gerald Heard. The word “meek” was originally in Aramaic: inwethan. Years later the Greeks translated this to praos and still later the French used debonair. At the time of the King James translation, the word meek was used for the first time. As Heard explains:

- There seems little doubt that praos stands for a word the meaning of which is opposed to “arrogant,” “domineering,” “overbearing,” “aggressive,” “bellicose.”

- Debonair is a startling contrast [to meek]. Instead of the motto being, “Please don’t kick me” we find, “Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.”

- . . . in the period before and during the time of the King James translation, the word “meek” implied “a wonderful, inherent teachability.” In a word, the Third Beatitude should read, “Blessed are the teachable for they shall inherit the earth.”

Heard’s interpretation was confirmed by one of the world’s great linguists, my late friend, Mario Pei. However, to capture this wisdom—to make it my own—required that I put it into my own phrasing. This simplification of a complication appears as chapter 3 in my book, Having My Way.

Next, what about a truth that’s “too simple”? Example: “Resist not evil.” Here it is in its Biblical context:

Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. (Matthew 5:38–39)

Assuredly, “resist not evil” was simple to Saint Matthew and possibly to many people of our time. But was the evil of his time assessed the same as now? Or, do any two of us have identical concepts of what is wrong? Negative on both counts! Indeed, if and when one gains in righteousness, what had seemed right before turns to evil when seen from the new perspective. For instance, in earlier years, I saw nothing wrong in referring to socialists as fools. Today? Such disparagement represents evil of the first order!

In Saint Matthew’s time slavery was no more questioned than is communism in today’s Russia. Today, nearly all Americans look upon slavery as an evil, that is, if slavery be of the Simon Legree kind. But what about those who coercively feather their own nests at the expense of others? Are not the victims enslaved? Thus, is not the welfare state evil? Affirmative!

Saint Matthew’s statement includes an obvious complication: “. . . whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other.” Really, should one turn the other cheek? Only to get socked twice? I came upon the answer by reading the works of Konrad Lorenz, the noted animal psychologist:

A wolf has enlightened me; not so that your enemy may strike you again do you turn the other cheek toward him, but to make him unable to do it.

An old Arab proverb comes to mind: “He who strikes the second blow starts the fight.” If another strikes or argues with you and you refrain from doing the same to him, you leave him absolutely nothing to scratch against. The lesson? Away with confrontations—all of them! This point is further explored in the chapter, “Resist Not Evil,” in my book, Then Truth Will Out.

Anyway, reading and writing have made it possible for me to comprehend many ideas that otherwise would have lain dormant.

Now for a few comments on several other of the many books in what may be the best freedom library in the U.S.A. or any other country. The reading of these has largely accounted for my writing several books—25 in all. And, in my judgment, this freedom library will be equally helpful to anyone who aspires to radiate the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life. These books range from those which are easy to understand to those which are more profound—and difficult.

The easiest of all is Weaver’s The Mainspring of Human Progress. Countless thousands of individuals—young and old—have been given their start toward an understanding of freedom by reading this literary gem. For example, he refers to the miracles of modern productivity in the United States, made available to the vast majority of people in all walks of life.

Three generations—grandfather to grandson—have created these wonders which surpass the utmost imaginings of all previous time.

And then Weaver clearly and attractively answers the question:

What has been responsible for this unprecedented burst of progress, which has so quickly transformed a hostile wilderness into the most prosperous and advanced country that the world has ever known?

That remarkable Frenchman, Frederic Bastiat (1801–50), saw as clearly through the political fog as anyone known to me, past or present. And the fog was dense in France during his time! However, it is one thing to see the fallacies of socialism but quite another matter to explain them clearly to anyone who can read and is interested. Here is a sampling of the light that shines from each of the 75 pages of The Law:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

Ask me the question, “What economics textbook would you recommend for high school and college use?” My answer: The two volumes of Free Market Economics (A Syllabus and A Basic Reader) by Bettina Bien Greaves, a senior member of the FEE staff for 27 years, close friend of Ludwig von Mises and avid student of his written and spoken words.

A Syllabus offers suggestions for teachers but also belongs in the hands of students—a well-organized guide to the principles and practices of social cooperation by which individuals compete and trade in the open market, each pursuing his own interests. A Basic Reader is a careful selection of eighty-one articles by various authors on the different aspects of economics, as outlined and organized in A Syllabus. Together, an unbeatable combination for a do-it-yourself course in economics.

Well known to Freeman readers are the writings of Dr. Clarence Carson, specialist in American history. Most exciting and helpful to me is The Rebirth of Liberty, concerning the founding of the American Republic in those critical years from 1760 through 1800:

When the energies of peaceful men are released, they are capable of and have achieved wonders of building, invention, production, transportation and much more.

And reproduced as a bonus in this volume are the “Declaration” and the “Constitution,” and seven other historic American documents.

Most people think of inflation as a rise in prices. What a fallacy! Henry Hazlitt, author of “Inflation in One Page” and numerous previous articles and books on this subject, offers a thorough analysis in his latest book, The Inflation Crisis, And How to Resolve It.

Andrew Dickson White, Professor of History, University of Michigan, and later co-founder and first President of Cornell University, presented to mankind an easy-to-read book, Fiat Money Inflation in France, describing the monetary debacle of the late 18th century and the accompanying revolution that brought Napoleon to power. It deserves reading and rereading.

Human Action by Ludwig von Mises is at once the most difficult and profound of our books. An appropriate aim should be an understanding of this great man’s wisdom.

A concluding thought: Ever so many among us who disdain socialism do no more than bemoan our plight. “There is no hope; the world is going to the dogs.” To their own loss and ours, they overlook their potentialities and the development thereof. Reading and writing will serve to put them on the right track. For an excellent eye opener, read The Undiscovered Self by the distinguished Swiss psychologist, Carl Jung.

For freedom’s sake, let us discover our undiscovered selves. Intellectual, moral and spiritual ascendancy will be the reward for each and all of us!

23

GLORY BE!

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; in writing what deserves to be read; and in so living as to make the world happier and better for our living in it.

—PLINY, THE ELDER

The Roman naturalist, Pliny, The Elder, was born in 23 A.D. When he passed away at the age of 56, he had written 37 books on the nature of the physical universe—including geography, anthropology, zoology, botany and other related subjects.

Pliny did, indeed, leave the world happier and better for having lived in it. His scientific findings have been far surpassed, as we would expect. And if we live our lives aright—in freedom—the miracles of the future will surpass our findings, as ours have his! He lived every moment of his life with zest—enthusiasm—perhaps the greatest stimulus for noble works. Wrote Emerson: “Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever accomplished without it.”

True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written; it consists in noble deeds worth recording. This is to be distinguished from blatant notoriety. History presents far more writings of the latter sort than the former. Alexander the Great, Charlemagne, Napoleon, Hitler, Stalin, and countless other great destroyers loom too large in written history. Why these lopsided recordings? It is the bad, not the good, which attracts the public eye. Observe today’s media and the preponderance of reporting that does not deserve to be either written or read, spoken or heard.

The following is an attempt to think through and to understand Pliny’s three parts of True Glory. If even partially successful, I will make a small contribution to the displacement of that which should be neither written nor read.

• True glory consists in doing what deserves to be written—In my study of writing that deserves to be written, I’ve been surprised that most of the world’s great writers—past and present—never kept a daily journal. Obviously, they had other disciplines that brought out their remarkable writings. We are all different in all respects. As for me, I have kept a journal for nearly 27 years without missing a day—capturing every thought that comes to mind or that I have learned from others—a rewarding experience. What a discipline—writing such entries for nearly 10,000 days!

Recently I came upon my entry of August 11, 1955, long since forgotten:

If it were not for the gravitational force pulling us down, there would be no such concept as “up.”

If there were no darkness, we would have no sense or appreciation of light.

If there were no evil, we would have no awareness of virtue.

If there were no ignorance, we would not know intelligence.

If there were no troubles, there would be no pleasures.

If there were no obstacles, there would be no aspirations.

If there were no insecurity, we would not know of security.

If there were no blindness, we would not be conscious of perception.

If there were no poverty, we would not experience riches.

If no man ever imposed restraint on others, there would be no striving for liberty and the term would not exist.

I now recall discovering, just a few days later, while reading Runes’ Treasury of Philosophy, that around 500 B.C. Heraclitus was saying the same thing: “Men would not know the name of justice if there were no injustice.” This made me laugh at my “originality” and brought to mind Goethe’s assertion: “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.”

Assuming the above observations to be valid, then “doing what deserves to be written” is learning how to cope with and overcome life’s countless obstacles. It is an observed fact that the art of becoming—human development—is composed of acts of overcoming.

Gravitation, for instance, is a physical force drawing all and sundry toward the earth’s center. What else accounts for physical ascendancy! Were there no such force, there would be no ladders or airplanes or rain or snow—indeed, no life!

Obstacles are assuredly the source of aspirations. Human frailties—which lead to such things as governmental interventions of the kind that destroy creative activities—inspire their own overcoming. Why, then, do errors have their value? Their overcoming leads to evolution—human Liberty!

A Latin proverb: “Nothing is too often repeated that is not sufficiently learned.” This encompasses an enormous realm, including every thought that reveals truth—repeating it over and over again, seeking improvement. Learning how to overcome may very well rank first in what deserves to be written!

• True glory consists in writing what deserves to be read—There are countless thousands of books, articles and commentaries that deserve to be read. The vast majority of these writings are known to a mere handful of people. I shall refer to only one that is an inspiring and instructive example: You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams.[1]

Professor Williams, a noted biochemist, became convinced that his wife’s death was caused by the doctor treating her as “an equal,” rather than as an individual. This led the Professor to his first study in human variation, having to do only with the variation in taste buds in different people. The findings, published in Free And Unequal, are fantastic.[2]

Having an unusually inquiring mind, he began an investigation into ever so many other forms of variation. The findings appeared in 1956: Biochemical Individuality, somewhat technical for lay readers.[3] Nevertheless, I read it with avidity, because it contained an important key to the freedom philosophy. It was this book that led to my acquaintance with the author.

We corresponded, and after answering a question of mine he added that he had just written a book, to be entitled You Are Extraordinary, designed, he said, for lay readers. The manuscript was enclosed.

Professor Williams is extraordinary. So are you and so am I and so is each human being. Indeed, no one is the same as a moment ago. Variation is a rule of all life, plant, animal and man.

Why does You Are Extraordinary deserve to be read? It makes the case for liberty. Wrote William Gifford:

Countless the various species of mankind;

Countless the shades that sep’rate mind from mind;

No general object of desire is known,

Each has its will, and each pursues his own.

Once variation is recognized as a fact of life, there can be no endorsement—none whatsoever—of know-it-alls controlling the creative actions of you or me or anyone. Authoritarianism dismissed as utter nonsense! We would witness our 16,000,000 public officials reduced to a mere fraction thereof. All but a few would return to that wonderful status of self-responsible citizens—America’s miraculous performance on the go again.

• True glory consists in so living as to make the world happier and better—How do we live to make others happier and better? Here are a few guidelines, mostly gleaned from others:

A desire to stand for and staunchly to abide by what is believed to be righteous—seeking approval from God, not man.

Strive for that excellence in the understanding and explanation of freedom which will cause others to seek one’s tutorship. This brings happiness to both the striver and the seeker—and the world!

Live with zest and enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever accomplished in the absence of such spirit.

Be optimistic. This does not mean a blindness to dictocrats lording it over us. Rather, it is self-assurance that a turnabout is in the offing. The world is not going to the dogs as the prophets of doom proclaim. Optimism increases happiness for it is contagious.

If we would make the world happier and better, we might well heed these words by Albert Camus when accepting the Nobel Prize in 1957: “In all the circumstances of his life, the writer can recapture the feeling of a living community that will justify him. But only if he accepts as completely as possible the two trusts that constitute the true nobility of his calling: the service of truth and the service of freedom.” To serve truth and freedom is as high as we can go. When more of us than now attain this intellectual and moral height, the path toward glory will open:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men.

[1] You Are Extraordinary, Pyramid Books.

[2] Free And Unequal, University of Texas Press.

[3] Biochemical Individuality, Wiley.

24

LAWS THAT MAKE AND/OR BREAK MANKIND

The civil laws, . . . so long as they are just, derive from the law of nature their binding force. The authority of the divine law adds its sanction.

—POPE LEO XIII

The following could not be authored, except by one who is aware of how infinitesimal is human knowledge—compared to what is to be known. A know-it-all could never make appropriate concessions to Infinite Knowledge—from which all blessings flow. Here, from one who is aware of knowing next to nothing, are a few thoughts that have been helpful to me and thus may be worth sharing with other devotees of freedom.

The following is a commentary on two kinds of laws: (1) the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God,” and (2) laws that human beings contrive. The fundamental point of this thesis is: We humans can no more break or alter the Divine Laws than we can control a galaxy or govern the going and coming of your or my octillion atoms. The laws of CREATION are above and beyond the power of man’s control.

What is the lesson we should derive from the above? It is this: The extent to which men break God’s Laws—be it through lack of understanding or willfully or whatever—to that extent will societal chaos bedevil mankind. Nature’s Laws are at once immutable and omniscient: “the Omniscient God.”

Pope Leo XIII shares his enlightenment. He says that man-concocted laws, that is, civil laws—if they be just—derive their binding force from the law of nature. The authority of the divine law, the sole source of all that is just and that should be obeyed—loyalty to righteousness—adds its sanction to those man-contrived laws only if they be consistent with the Laws of Nature.

Plato, the Greek philosopher, expressed a similar idea 2,200 years before Pope Leo:

Freedom is no matter of laws and constitutions; only he is free who realizes the divine order within himself, the true standard by which a man can steer and measure himself.

Edith Hamilton, a student and historian of ancient Greece, wrote:

. . . the shadow of effortless barbarism was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before. . . . True standards, ideals that lift men up, marked the way of Greeks.

The above is only to emphasize an incontrovertible fact: Any good society has its origin exclusively in individual attunement to the Divine Order. Thus, our aim should be, during our mortal moments, to discover as best we can the rules and imperatives of this highest of all orders and strictly adhere thereto.

Nature’s Laws reward virtues. Civil laws, when just, are limited to the inhibition and punishment of the various evils or vices. The relevant question is, why are most civil laws unjust? There are more reasons than we’ll ever know, but the fundamental error, the root cause, is the belief that the universe holds no wisdom or authority superior to the individual ego. And that belief, in my humble opinion, contains the correct definition of atheism.

This is more meaningful to me than the dictionary definition of an atheist: “a person who believes there is no God.” There is an important distinction to be made between the person who disbelieves in this or that concept of the deity, and the egotist who simply disregards or disdains the wisdom and truths of “Nature and Nature’s God.”

Those who disregard include people from all walks of life—even many clergymen and church members—and they are far more numerous than proclaimed atheists. All mortal beings fall into the disregarding category who fail to search for and adhere to the Highest Truths—the great ideals “that lift men up.” Unaware of how little and feeble their minds, such people regard themselves rather than Creation as omniscient—each fancies himself as the Big I Am!

Fancies! Wrote Samuel Johnson: “All power of fancy over reason is a degree of insanity.”

Insanity—“great folly; extreme senselessness”—has been dramatized a few times in history by those who fancied that the world would be perfect if its billions of inhabitants were cast in a single image—theirs! One can imagine no greater folly or senselessness.

There are, however, degrees of insanity. These range from the many who try to recast one other person in their image to such a Big I Am as Alexander the Great, who lamented because there were no more worlds to conquer. He boasted of his power to Diogenes and offered to grant any of the philosopher’s wishes. Came the answer, “Please move aside; you are standing between me and the Sun.” Such is an appropriate response to any know-it-all, be he a neighbor or a do-as-I-say President of the U.S.A.

That distinguished English statesman, William E. Gladstone (1809–98), wrote: “Good laws make it easier to do right and harder to do wrong.” What is behind this inspired thought? Gladstone observed his own country’s turnabout when a host of bad laws—those which imposed mercantilism—were repealed and replaced by free trade and an unheard of prosperity for the British masses—the Industrial Revolution.

Gladstone’s observation was even more inspired, no doubt, by the nearest approximation to the ideal in all history—the American Revolution. My reference here is not to that revolutionary fracas between our forefathers and England but to a revolutionary concept:

That all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

As I have written over and over again, it is one thing to adopt a Divine Premise, as did our Founding Fathers, but quite another matter to implement it, to put it into practice. This was accomplished by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, limiting government more than ever before—keeping the peace and invoking a common justice.

Result? A self-reliant, self-responsible citizenry. When these virtues are prevalent, creativity is unhampered, released. The Divine Order, as Plato phrased it, was more or less experienced by our forefathers—flowing naturally from the Divine Premise. Freedom and the all-time miracle at the human level: Success unparalleled!

Wrote Henry Ward Beecher: “Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it is as a last year’s nest from which the bird has flown.” Our bird of politico-economic paradise began its flight from the nest in 1898—the year I was born—and has been flying further and further away ever since. The background for this judgment is to be found in a book.

John W. Burgess (1844–1931), a Civil War veteran, enjoyed a long career at Columbia University. He became Dean of the Faculty of Political Science in 1890. In 1923 he wrote a small book, Recent Changes in American Constitutional Theory. The changes, in Burgess’ view, were not for the better. According to this believer in limited government, the leading contributor to the flight was a former student of his, who later became President of the United States.

Our flight from the nest has led to a first-rate plight. To get out of it demands rebirth of the ideas, ideals and the Creator concept that was responsible for the America that was. Large numbers of people are not required but, as a starter, nearly every freedom devotee must do a methodological about-face if our downfall is to be reversed.

Briefly, we must never depend on winning by concentrating on the opposition’s errors. To do so is to confine our thoughts to their goofs and blunders. Instead, spell out the positive case for freedom and we will remove all obstacles to their merciless, downhill stumbling.

I conclude with this bit of advice from the Father of our Country. He gave to Americans of his and our time the formula—a spiritual law—which if believed and adhered to makes mankind:

If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

Seeds of Progress

Leonard E. Read

1980

TO

The one who tries freedom—the sower of seeds and the beneficiary of progress.

1

LITTLE THINGS: THE SEEDS OF PROGRESS

The greatest things ever done on earth have been done by little and little—little agents, little persons, little things, by every one doing his own work, filling his own sphere, holding his own post, and saying, “Lord, what will thou have me to do?”

—THOMAS GUTHRIE

The above, by this Scottish divine (1803–78), suggests that he may have learned a great deal from his Scottish predecessor, the remarkable Adam Smith (1723–90), for there is a striking similarity in their thinking.

The mass of citizens who haven’t the slightest idea of what makes an economy fruitful or unfruitful, perform trillions of little things that result in an abundance of goods and services beneficial to millions of others whom they have no conscious intention of benefiting. If these benefactors are not guided by politico-economic understanding, what then? Adam Smith wrote an answer 200 years ago: “By directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.”

The common cause Adam Smith and Thomas Guthrie identified is intelligent self-interest: “Lord, what will thou have me to do?”

Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” is probably what Guthrie meant by “Lord”—Infinite Consciousness or Creation, the nondimensional, having no boundaries, that which cannot even be imagined by finite mortals. However, if we are to understand the little things by which we live and prosper, we must recognize that this Infinity is their source. The late Donald Hatch Andrews, among the greatest of scientists, gave this truth an excellent phrasing in his book, The Symphony of Life: “I suggest that we postulate that the intangibles of truth and beauty, human freedom, courage, honor, honesty are the core of the truly basic realities; and that the supposed realities which we see and touch and feel [little things] are really only shadows cast by these truly basic dynamic forms.”

Were none of us to grasp this point, namely, that the little things are but the shadows of Divine Omniscience, requiring the practice of moral principles, there would be no great things. Live the righteous life or perish!

Americans came nearer to living the righteous life than the people of any other nation. Result? The greatest prosperity ever known—more little things than ever before in history! Affluence, however, has its dangers. As Horace, the Roman of 2,000 years ago, stated: “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in times of prosperity would have lain dormant.”

Why does affluence lead to the loss of freedom? When people are graced with countless millions of little things the loss of one or two or thousands is negligible compared to the total, and is shrugged off as meaningless. “Observe how prosperous we are!” The source of their well-being—living by moral principles—is mostly forgotten. Uncorrected, this leads to adversity.

Reflect on the situation in primitive societies living a hand-to-mouth existence. The “little things” are few and far between, each one vital to survival. The loss of a single one would be a calamity. And calamities are talking alarm clocks: “Wake up! Come to yourselves! Examine the causes of your plight!”

There’s no doubt in my mind that the greatest cause of our own plight stems from dismissing Creation as the source of human felicity and placing finite man in that role. It is important that we see the utter fallacy of this role reversal. Nor need we look to morons as the authors of such balderdash. More often than not it originates with those who are among the wisest in their own fields. Plato and Dr. Alexis Carrel should suffice as examples.

Life in Athens of twenty-four centuries ago was relatively simple. Economics as a discipline had not been considered; technology as we know it was nonexistent; specialization in medicine, manufacturing, or in any other field had scarcely begun. Computers? Why, even the concept of zero was a thousand years in the future. Athenians, by our standards, knew nothing of the complexities we experience in everyday life.

Simple? In a sense, yes. Yet, human beings were as complex then as now. Each individual was unique. No two thought alike, or had the same incentives, talents, desires, likes, dislikes, goals, energies. Variation! And to the mind of a social planner this spelled chaos, humanity at sixes and sevens. How possibly could order be brought out of such disorder? Precisely the same question people raise today. And inspired by the same lack of understanding!

Plato gave us the philosopher-king idea—an omnipotent leader wise enough to play a totally dominant role. Plato’s final statement of this absurd idea is found in Laws Book 12, #942, where he has the Athenian say:

The greatest principle of all is that nobody, whether male or female, should be without a leader. Nor should the mind of anybody be habituated to letting him do anything at all on his own initiative; neither out of zeal, nor even playfully. But in war as in the midst of peace—to his leader he shall direct his eye and follow him faithfully. And even in the smallest matter he should stand under leadership. For example, he should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals . . . only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently, and to become utterly incapable of it.

Was the above Plato’s idea of the way a “leader” should run our lives or was he trying to show the absurdity of such dictatorship by ever so many others? I have no way of knowing but many others, brilliant in their own fields, have taken this identical position. For an example, read Man, The Unknown by a distinguished scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel.[1]

Most of this book is devoted to a skillful and critical analysis of our decline into the planned economy and the welfare state—Socialism. After enumerating ever so many advanced specializations Carrel claims that no one has all such knowledge in his possession. Of course no one does but Dr. Carrel believes a few should possess it all. Reflect on his solution:

In about twenty-five years of uninterrupted study, one could learn these sciences. At the age of fifty, those who have submitted themselves to this discipline could effectively direct the construction of the human being and of a civilization. . . .

We have to intervene in the fundamental organic and mental processes. These processes are man himself. But man has no independent existence. He is bound to his environment. In order to remake him, we have to transform his world. . . .

A group, although very small, is capable of eluding the harmful influence of the society of its epoch by imposing upon its members rules of conduct modeled on military or monastic discipline. . . .

Such a minority would be in a position to impose by persuasion or perhaps by force, other ways of life upon the majority. . . .

We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. . . .

Who are “we”? It’s a million-to-one bet that “we” would never have singled out that 12-year-old newsboy in Michigan—Thomas Alva Edison.

The sons of very rich men, like those of criminals, should be removed while still infants from their natural surroundings.

Peacefully? Hardly! The removal would have to be at the point of a gun; rich parents love their children, too!

C. S. Lewis had this to say about those of the Philosopher King school: “I am not supposing them to be bad men. They are, rather, not men (in the old sense) at all. They are, if you like, men who have sacrificed their own share in traditional humanity in order to devote themselves to the task of deciding what ‘Humanity’ shall henceforth mean.”

The mere acceptance of the lording-it-over-man concept paves the way for coercionists or war lords. Some people are drawn to the idea of a Leader who has synthesized all knowledge. They search in vain, for no such person exists. Frustrated they exalt government into a Philosopher King. No need to mention names. The 16,000,000 officials in our 78,000 governments—federal, state and local—who believe they can run our lives better than we can, discouragingly approach 99 per cent. They step out of bounds, as we say; they go over and beyond the role intended for man; they step into God’s Realm and fall into an abyss of utter absurdity.

Plato, when young, may or may not have been a Philosopher King advocate. In any event, as he grew older, he devoted his best efforts to the erection of barriers to the exercise of coercive power of one human over another.

The mind that can combine all knowledge or any tiny part thereof is not to be found among our kind. There is only one: the CREATOR! I have never heard anyone contradict Joyce Kilmer’s “Only God can make a tree.” If man cannot make even a tree, how can one logically contend that man can make or remake man? Surely, man is higher in Creation’s Design than a tree!

The Philosopher King syndrome, on the rampage, is causing countless adversities—calamities. As noted before, these are talking alarm clocks: “Wake up! Come to yourselves! Examine the causes of your plight!”

In what manner do these errors elicit talents that because of our prosperity have been lying dormant? Plutarch, the Greek essayist and biographer of 19 centuries ago, gave to posterity an excellent answer: “To make no mistakes is not in the power of man; but from their errors and mistakes the wise and good learn wisdom for the future.”

What are the wise and good learning?

- That intelligent self-interest, minding one’s own business, is the limited role of man.

- That truth and beauty, human freedom, courage, honor, honesty are the core of the truly basic realities.

- That the realities which we see and touch—our material blessings—are really only shadows cast by an adherence to heavenly principles—what the Lord, not dictocrats, would have us do.

- That each of us should do our little creative things and let everyone else—no exceptions—do theirs. These trillions times trillions of little things are, indeed, the seeds of all human progress and are founded on liberty for one and all.

As to liberty, hear ye this (James 1:25): “But whosoever looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.”

May more and more men and women strive to be such exemplars!

* * *

Lord, what will thou have me do? The answer: Pursue that goal which harmonizes with your highest creative aspiration. Mine happens to be finding ways to explain the fallacies of socialism and the truths of freedom.

Thank heaven that others have aspirations that differ and come first with them: for example, the production and exchange of countless goods and services by which we survive and prosper. Were all aspirations identical to mine, we would perish. Yet, if mine—freedom—were to cease as a way of life, adversity would predominate and human evolution would cease.

The following chapters in this, my 26th book, pursue the same subject as previous books, only the phrasing differs. Why the variation? One mode of speech is understood by a few, another by a different few.

One aspiration you might share with me: advance freedom by an improved phrasing of its truths.

[1] See Man, The Unknown (New York: Harper & Brothers), 1935.

2

POLITICAL BUNGLING

I hate all bungling as I do sin, but particularly bungling in politics, which leads to the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.

—GOETHE

What is a bungler? “A clumsy, awkward workman.” Briefly, he is one so lacking in grace and skill that he acts ineptly and irresponsibly. In what occupational category are bunglers most numerous? Politicians—elected and appointed!

To dramatize the point of this thesis, imagine this fictitious situation—the firemen of a community answering an alarm and rushing to a burning home. Failing to extinguish the fire immediately, they spray the home with kerosene. The fire worsens. The remedy? Spray it with gasoline! Still worse! On and on with “remedies” galore, each more moronic than the former. These imaginary firemen resemble the millions of political bunglers whose actions lead to “the misery and ruin of many thousands and millions of people.” The English novelist, Henry Fielding, might well have referred to political bungling when he observed: “Men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand.” Let us not be too severe in charging that the political bunglers have deserted the freedom way of life. No one can desert or abandon a faith never held! On the subject of freedom, the political bunglers have drawn blanks. An honest confession: I have drawn a blank on many thousands of subjects. And who hasn’t!

Most people are unaware—have drawn a blank—as to how the free, unfettered flow of ever-varying creative energies works its wonders. They fall into two deplorable categories. Some do no thinking whatsoever on this subject, while the rest think they know how to set the standard for everyone. Think of the political blunders based on: “Were all modeled after me, what a wonderful world this would be!” Wrote J. A. Froude in 1860: “Men are made by nature unequal. It is vain, therefore, to treat them as if they were equal.”

Assuredly, Froude would agree that every one of us should have equal opportunity to progress creatively as we please and, also, that we should be treated equally by the blindfolded Goddess of Justice. However, he was right in asserting that we are made unequal—each of us differing fantastically from any other.

Those who do little if any thinking for themselves are inclined to follow the millions of bunglers who loudly proclaim their know-it-all-ness and promise a heaven on earth. Thus, they fail to heed the very few who speak or write the freedom thesis. It is the shouting that leads them astray, drowning out the whispers which might start them on the road to truth.

How do our political bunglers resemble the fictitious firemen previously mentioned? First and foremost, they have no more understanding of how freedom works its wonders than did Cro-Magnon man. Thus blinded to reality, they see what to them appears as a societal flaw, and then employ coercion to correct it. Their remedy does not work. They then double their coercions. Worse than ever: more flaws appear! Deeper into the mire of our present mess! Their cure? More and more of their foolish interventions!

The wiser among us are aware of how little we know; the foolish bunglers are unaware. Wrote the French satirist, Sebastian Chamfort (1741–94): “There are more fools than wise men; and even in wise men, more folly than wisdom.”

There is no way accurately to trace these political depravities from their beginnings to present-day socialism. There are literally millions of examples of an initial flaw being “corrected” by an even more serious mistake. Error compounded, and all because of an abysmal know-it-all-ness. Perhaps the following will suffice to make the point.

The bunglers observe that some live in mansions, others in hovels. In 1913 they passed the progressive income tax as an equalizing measure. Senator Borah remarked, “Why, this might go as high as 10%.” It went to 91%, perhaps curbing the demand for mansions, but assuredly aggravating the plight of the least affluent who look to the market for supplies.

Their “cures” became progressively worse: minimum wage laws, child labor laws, maximum hours, coercive power granted to labor unions, Medicare, socialized medicine, fraudulent social security, bailing out bankrupt businesses, even to how many dogs one may own and so on. Summarized, these past 66 years have witnessed an increasing application of the Marxian doctrine, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”[1]

As I reflect on our political bunglers, I am reminded of a wise observation by Charles Mackay in his remarkable book, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds,[2] written in 1841: “Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly and one by one.” All human experience, from Cro-Magnon man to the present, attests to this truth. Every good movement in history—no exception—has been led by a handful of men and women who have been fortunate enough to recover their senses.

The socialistic mess we are in is a consequence of the gap between what we are and what we could be. The cause of this gap? Our failure to wonder about the unknown potentialities which lie deep in every human soul, and which become apparent only after serious self-examination. The remarkable psychologist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel, revealed a truth which if recognized and pondered day-in-and-day-out would not only expand your and my consciousness but might, now and then, free a politician from his bungling: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most uncommon man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

True, “men are strangely inclined to worship what they do not understand,” and the political bunglers are foremost among those so inclined. Well, what’s the remedy? Washington Irving (1783–1859) gave good counsel to all of us: “The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony.”

The keynote to the good life is freedom. Let every moment be attuned to this blessing!

[1] For an assessment of the extent to which we in the U.S.A. have adopted the ten points of “The Communist Manifesto,” see Chapter 15 in my book, Vision (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1978).

[2] New York: The Noonday Press, 1969.

3

TWO WAYS TO GO WRONG

There is a natural and necessary progression from the extreme of anarchy to the extreme of tyranny, and arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty.

—GEORGE WASHINGTON

There are as many ways to go wrong as there are human beings—multiplied by the countless frailties of each individual. This commentary, however, has to do only with two societal evils: anarchy and tyranny—two opposites with much in common.

Anarchy is the absence of any formal agency of society for dealing with aggression, and tyranny in its most vicious form is political control of everyone’s actions—socialism in its most pronounced state, as in Russia. Social disorganization either way! As Dr. Ludwig von Mises wrote, “Socialism is planned chaos. Anarchy is unplanned chaos.”

The Father of our Country was graced with hindsight and foresight. He was aware of the tyranny that had pre-dominated—with a few notable exceptions—throughout recorded history. And he, as much as any American past or present, foresaw and understood the blessings of liberty.

Liberty permits human ascendancy; anarchy and/or tyranny leaves everyone grounded. To pare over-extended government down to its proper role is to maximize liberty; it does not represent a halfway house to anarchy. When someone is eating too much of the wrong kind of food, the remedy is not to stop all feeding. This is starvation! The remedy is proper food, in the proper amount.

With the above thoughts in mind, we should never think of liberty—private ownership, free market, limited government—as a way of life halfway between anarchy and tyranny. Rather, we should visualize liberty as a heavenly power releasing human creativity, whereas anarchy/tyranny are restraints of man’s potentialities.

Wrote George Santayana: “Tyrants are seldom free; the cares and the instruments of their tyranny enslave them.” This is just as true of anarchists. Those who believe in no societal agency are also enslaved. In what manner? True, they believe in “protection,” but they envision persons or groups hiring their own protectors as they would hire any other type of service. In this degraded way of life each would have his or her own armed guards; the AFL-CIO its own army, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce theirs, and so on. This would result in a society founded, not on enlightened self-interest, but on utter selfishness. Justice impossible!

Wrote Joseph Addison: “Justice disregards party, friendship and kindred, and is therefore represented as blind.”

Dr. Benjamin Rogge gave us an accurate assessment as to how justice is denied by anarchy and tyranny. “The blindfolded Goddess of Justice has been encouraged to peek and she now says, with the jurists of the ancient regime, ‘First tell me who you are and then I’ll tell you what your rights are.’” A society in which gross inequalities before the law are tolerated will prevent the market from operating in its economic life. Individual liberty depends on the general observance of the principle of equality before the law.

My purpose is not to dwell on the aforementioned ways to go wrong but rather on the one way to go right: liberty, that heavenly power which releases human creativity. But, first, a bit of background on some ancient wisdom which links “right” and “left” with “wise” and “foolish.” Wrote Confucius 25 centuries ago: “For one word a man is often deemed wise; for one word he is often deemed foolish. We should be careful, indeed, in what we say.”

Three centuries later there appeared in Ecclesiastes 10:2 these words. “A wise man’s heart inclines him toward the right; but a fool’s heart toward the left.” What might have been the precise meaning of this when written? Perhaps no one knows. A guess: perhaps today’s use of “right” and “left” is a take-off of this ancient axiom.

What a reversal in meaning words have had throughout the ages! As an example, let me quote from Dean Russell’s essay entitled The First Leftist, written in 1951 when he was a member of FEE’s staff:

The first leftists were a group of newly elected representatives to the National Constituent Assembly at the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789. They were labeled “Leftists” merely because they happened to sit on the left side in the French Assembly.

The legislators who sat on the right side were referred to as the Party of the Right, or Rightists. The Rightists or “reactionaries” stood for a highly centralized national government, special laws and privileges for unions and various other groups and classes, government economic monopolies in various necessities of life, and government controls over prices, production and distribution.

The ideals of the Party of the Left were based largely on the spirit and principles of our own American Constitution. Those first French Leftists stood for individual freedom of choice and personal responsibility for one’s own welfare. Their goal was a peaceful and legal limitation of the powers of the central government, a restoration of local self-government, an independent judiciary, and the abolition of special privileges.

But before the program of those first Leftists was completed, a violent minority from their own ranks—the revolutionary Jacobins—grasped the power of government and began their reign of terror and tyranny.

To use a bit of slang, what a switcheroo—“a surprising variation; reversal”—not only in words but in aspirations, ranging from liberty to the ruins of liberty.

Finally, what is the one way to go right? What are the ideas that must be understood and adhered to if liberty is to grace our lives? First and foremost is the idea of our dual nature: man is at once an individual and a social being.

It is the purpose of life that each individual, during his or her mortal moments, should approximate Infinite Consciousness as nearly as possible. Righteousness must be our guideline—no deviations, none whatsoever! A good society is impossible unless it is leavened by a few moral exemplars—inspired enough to compose a leadership to which others are attracted. Standard bearers par excellence!

To what extent are we social beings? Almost beyond one’s power to imagine! In a highly advanced society—the U.S.A. being more so than any nation past or present—all of us are specialized, and have become interdependent as a result. Were we not able to exchange any of our millions of specializations we would perish. Imagine trying to live on what you now do or know how to do?

Free exchange in goods and services and ideas has obstacles galore: power mongers in all walks of life, seekers of countless special privileges and something for nothing—embargoes, tariffs, minimum wages, maximum hours, the Gateway Arch, Medicare—you name it!

The enjoyment of true liberty—everyone free to act creatively—comes not for free but at a very high intellectual, moral and spiritual price: the surmounting—overcoming—of these obstacles. Let us now probe our role as social beings.

If a common justice is to prevail, it is absolutely necessary that there be an agency of society—all of us—to cope with man’s inhumanity to man. Liberty and justice are inseparably associated. Wrote Edmund Burke: “Whenever a separation is made between liberty and justice, neither, in my opinion, is safe.”

What is the nature of an ideal government? It is where no one “rules” another! Government is an agency of defense, the members of which are you or I or others as social beings. We cast our votes for those who will represent us in keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. Period!

Does the ideal agency use force? Only defensive, never coercive, force. To simplify the distinction, let a policeman with a gun stand before your home warding off thieves and other marauders. Defensive force! Now—no imagination is necessary for it is all too common—let the policeman enter your home, take your possessions, keep them himself or give to others to obtain their votes. Coercive force!

How draw the line between what government should and should not do? This is impossible unless one knows what government is and is not. Government is organized force, issuing edicts and backed by a constabulary, a physical force. This can be symbolized by the clenched fist. Find out what the fist can and cannot do and we will know what government should and should not do.

This physical force can repel and restrain, in a word, inhibit. What, in all good conscience, should be inhibited? The moral codes give the answer: fraud, violence, misrepresentation—thou shalt not steal or kill or do any evil. And government cannot perform this role when over-stepping its proper bounds. For proof, merely observe the extent to which coercive force has replaced defensive force.

In what realm is this physical force absolutely impotent, majority opinion to the contrary notwithstanding? In the realm of the creative! All the goods and services by which we live and prosper show forth in the spiritual before they manifest themselves in the material, that is, in the sense that discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes are spiritual. There would be no such thing as an ordinary glass had not some cave dweller eons ago discovered how to harness fire. Airplanes? Out of the question had not a Hindu invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry, physics and so on would be no more than dreams had we to rely on Roman numerals.

So, how shall we draw the line? Limit government to inhibiting the wrong, and leave all creative actions—education or whatever—to men acting freely, competitively, privately, cooperatively, voluntarily!

As George Washington asserted: “. . . arbitrary power [socialism] is most easily established on the ruins of liberty.” Likewise, the power to act creatively as we please can be easily established on the ruins of socialism. The one right way is simple: grasp the error of socialism and the truth of liberty. As noted in John 8:32: The truth shall make you free.

4

THE PRETENDER’S PLAGUE

There is a false modesty, which is vanity; a false glory, which is levity; a false grandeur, which is uneasiness; a false virtue, which is hypocrisy, and a false wisdom which is prudery.

—JEAN DE LA BRUYÈRE

Humanity has suffered all sorts of plagues, and some of them have changed the course of history. The Black Death of the 14th century reduced the population of Europe and Asia by three fourths and had enormous social consequences. Then there are plagues of a different sort, such as the plague of present-day “pretenders.” Medical science has rid the world of the former and only some remarkable thinking can do away with the latter. Succeed, or we face another population disaster. Jean de La Bruyère (1645–96), French essayist and moralist, gave us some excellent guidelines. Let us reflect on their meaning.

There is a false modesty, which is vanity. Modesty is defined as “unassuming or humble behavior; lack of excesses or pretension; decency; decorum.” Interesting are the varying and contradictory assessments of modesty. Here are two among ever so many examples by famous thinkers:

The first of all virtues is innocence, the next is modesty.

—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)

Modesty is the lowest of all virtues and is a confession of the deficiency it indicates. He who undervalues himself, is justly undervalued by others.

—William Hazlitt (1778–1830)

And here is one that squares with La Bruyère’s point:

A false modesty is the meanest species of pride.

—Edward Gibbon (1737–94)

If we accept the dictionary’s definition—and I do—then those who are modest are definitely not pretenders. And modesty is a virtue second to innocence only when the individual acknowledges his innocence relative to the Infinite. In other words, he is aware of how little he knows. No false modesty here!

A false modesty is, indeed, vanity—“the quality of being excessively proud of oneself.” Wrote the English poet, John Gay, “Pride is increased by ignorance; those assume the most who know the least.” A large percentage of our elected and appointed officials are afflicted with this false modesty—they know so little, yet they “know” how to run our lives! Obsessed with the power of office, they allow their own lives to run out of control. Assuredly, this is the origin of vanity!

A false glory which is levity. What is levity? Says the dictionary: “. . . improper or unbecoming gaiety or flippancy; lack of seriousness; fickleness, instability.” False glory, in short, is outward show concealing inner emptiness. William Cowper (1731–1800), bequeathed posterity a good definition of false glory: “Glory, built on selfish principles is shame and guilt.”

Goethe added his wisdom: “By skillful conduct and artificial means a person may make a sort of name for himself; but if the inner jewel be wanting, all is vanity, and will not last.”

The inner jewel? The Scottish judge, Henry Home (1696–1782) had an excellent answer: “The shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.”

Reflect on the vast majority of citizens, in and out of office, whose lives are built on selfish principles which feather their own nests at the expense of others. These “principles” range all the way from food stamps to rent control to free lunches to social security to medicare to government swimming pools. There are thousands of these!

One point we must keep in mind: the distinction between selfishness and self-interest. Selfish? It is “having such regard for one’s own interests and advantage that the happiness and welfare of others become of less concern than is considered right or just.”

As to self-interest, no one, to my knowledge, ever gave a better explanation than William Graham Sumner: “Making the most of one’s self . . . is not a separate thing from filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.”

A false grandeur, which is uneasiness. Grandeur is “greatness of position, eminence . . . a moral and intellectual greatness.” Obviously, a false grandeur is the opposite, namely, an overestimation of self—unbridled pride.

In Ezekiel 21:26 we find: “The Holy One (blessed be He) raises those who humble themselves, and degrades those who are of a proud spirit.” Uneasiness is the want of ease or tranquility or peacefulness. It is, indeed, the penalty of pride.

A false virtue, which is hypocrisy. Virtue is “general moral excellence; right action and thinking.” In my judgment, virtue is attainable to the extent that a person strictly adheres to whatever his or her highest consciousness dictates as righteous.

What, then, is false virtue? It is a refusal to be guided by the highest moral principles—the Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule—and a yielding instead to such unholy attractions as popularity, fame, power over others and the like. This is vice—“. . . moral failing; corruption, depravity.” And vice nearly always pretends to be what it is not. Hypocrisy!

Hypocrites are pretenders—the plague of mankind.

A false wisdom which is prudery. This observation conveys the same implications as the previous one, for is not false wisdom a false virtue? And prudery—“exaggerated modesty in behavior”—certainly borders on hypocrisy.

Why does this author express the same thought in different words? Words have varied meanings from time to time, and thus strike listeners and readers differently at different periods. Finding words for common sense is an exploration that has no ending.

Take the word “meek” for example. Originally, it was inwethan, in the Aramaic. When translated to Greek, the word became praos. The French translated it as debonair. In English at the time of the King James version of the Bible, and even before, the word “meek” implied “a wonderful, inherent, teachability.” The Beatitude means, therefore, that “the teachable shall inherit the earth.” In our time “meek” implies “timid, shrinking, apologetic.”

Wrote Tryon Edwards: “Words are both better and worse than thoughts; they express them, and add to them; they give them power for good or evil; they start them on an endless flight, for instruction and comfort and blessing, or for injury and sorrow and ruin.” Let us find words for instruction, comfort and blessing, never for injury, sorrow and ruin.

Nature never pretends. May we follow her example!

5

POLITICAL STEALING

If from my thousand pecks you steal but one my loss is small, but you’re by sin undone.

—HORACE

Nearly all adult Americans think they know what stealing is; it is the seizure of another’s property by force or fraud. Were there no more to stealing than outright thievery—including its causes and consequences—we would leave the problem to our local policemen, assuming their defensive competency.

Political stealing, however, is so common, on such an enormous scale, and practiced or advocated by citizens in all walks of life—teachers, preachers, businessmen, politicians, and so on—that it is far more approved than condemned. It has become our way of life—and death—and may indeed be our greatest problem. So let us begin our homework!

Horace, the Roman poet of 2000 years ago, was not referring to political theft, but to stealing by individual thieves. His statement, as related to our times, might read, “If from my thousand possessions someone steals but one—a watch, for instance—my loss is small but his sin will do him in.” The apprehended thief is undone, indeed! No one will hire or trust or trade with him. A societal dropout—a lost soul!

There is no way of knowing how many of these lost souls plague our lives. Assuredly, they constitute but a fraction of the population. During my 81 years, I have been robbed twice—$10 by a pickpocket and later $150 by another of that despicable ilk—surely not an unbearable drain upon my time or possessions.

What accounts for such thievery? There are reasons galore, most of which are unknown even to these bandits. There is one generality: an absence of moral scruples. They have no aim in life beyond something for nothing. Thus, they commit their sins unknowingly. Ignorance in the driver’s seat!

Political stealing is mass degradation. It is a collusion between our 16,000,000 elected and appointed office holders and most of our 180,000,000 adult citizens. Most of those in both categories commit their crimes unknowingly, as do the individual thieves. Interestingly, the motivation is the same: something for nothing!

A wise observation: “He sins as much who holds the sack as he who fills it.” This is to say that the recipients of loot are as sinful as are the political looters. Right!

Who are the sack holders? They range from paupers to millionaires. In most cases, the wealthy individuals, along with nearly everyone else, accept Medicare when reaching the age of 65. Medicare provides a government subsidy in the event of illness. The source of this illicit loot? Everyone who pays taxes, including the paupers! How explain? Medicare, like thousands of other government “enterprises”—social security, the Gateway Arch, TVA, urban renewal and the like—is “financed” by inflating the money supply to drain goods and services from the market, thus increasing the cost of remaining supplies. Result? The poor become poorer!

This vicious trend is often described as a contest between the “haves” and the “have nots”—the taking of livelihood from the wealthy and passing it on to the poor—as if this were only a dollar and cents problem. Assessing the matter realistically, the “have nots” include those in all walks of life. A few of many examples:

- The poor have not an opening for jobs by reason of minimum wage laws.

- Ever so many workers have not the opportunity to free themselves from labor-union dictation.

- Businessmen have not the right to free exchange by reason of trade restrictions.

- Youth have not the right to work: child labor laws.

- Many teachers have not the privilege of explaining the virtues of freedom: government education.

If the poor, the so-called beneficiaries, were to realize that they are being robbed rather than helped, there would be a quick end to this politico-economic insanity. Your and my role? To see how much enlightenment we can gain and share.

There may be no better way to get at the root of this problem than to cite and explain the Eighth Commandment: Thou shalt not steal. Our troubles stem, as previously asserted, from an absence of moral scruples. This Commandment ranks high among all the moral injunctions. Why?

Stealing is wrong because owning is good. Stealing presupposes ownership! TVA will serve to make the point. My earnings were and are coercively expropriated by taxation to subsidize TVA’s construction and year-to-year losses, but I have no control over its performance. Something I owned—a part of my earnings—was taken to build TVA, but I own no part of it—not a penny’s worth! The government “owns” TVA.

How are we to draw the distinction between political and private ownership? There may be no better answer than self-responsibility. In ventures based on government “ownership,” not a single political official feels that failure is his responsibility. The loss falls in the lap of no one in particular. Thus, no one does his best.

In the use of privately owned property, the outcome is in the individual’s lap. I am responsible for mine and you for yours. Self-interest inspires the best that is within each of us. The Biblical injunction, “Thou shalt not steal,” could have no other reference than to private ownership. How can one steal that which is not privately owned? Absurd!

The freedom way of life can be defined thus: Private ownership, free market, limited government with its moral and spiritual antecedents. Private ownership is the foundation of freedom. Omit this and there can be no free market. The despicable alternative is government “ownership” which has no moral and spiritual antecedents.

Wrote Try on Edwards: “Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal as if you alone had done the wrong.”

The alternative? Instead of sinning, pursue righteousness. Side with Henry Clay: “I would rather be right than be President!”

6

LIVING: BY ROTE OR BY WHAT’S RIGHT

We first make our habits, and then habits make us.

All habits gather, by unseen degrees, as brooks make rivers, rivers run to seas.

—JOHN DRYDEN

Rote is defined thus: “by memory alone, without understanding or thought.” Doubtless, this is why the English poet and author, John Dryden (1631–1700), used the word “habit,” for its definition is: “. . . a settled tendency of behavior or normal . . . manner or procedure; a custom or practice, as a habit of rivers.”

There are, of course, excellent habits that are indispensable to doing what’s right. More later on that point. The initial reference will be to “habit” as synonymous with “rote”—repetitious behaviors that lack understanding and thought.

Probably no one above the moronic level lives by rote in all aspects of life. Were this the case, civilization would be at an end. However, the extent to which this intellectual deathtrap prevails determines how sluggish—lacking in vigor—will be our advancement.

Prayer by rote is common to millions of church members, despite Jesus’ admonition: “Use not vain repetitions, as the heathen do.” They merely repeat the words of some original thinker without any thought of their own. Are such vacuous prayers ever heard? Doubtful!

Time after time I have been in small and large luncheon and dinner groups where they all stand, bow their heads, place their right hands over their hearts and pledge allegiance to our flag. With few exceptions, this is but a formality, patriotism only in spelling—oblivious to what the American flag symbolizes.

For a gigantic example of living by rote, have a look at our present-day politico-economic behavior. It borders on the indescribable. How account for this depravity? Jacques Barzun gave a valid answer: “Intellect deteriorates after every surrender to folly. Unless we consciously resist, the nonsense does not pass us by but into us.”[1]

Approximately one-ninth of our adult population are elected or appointed government officials—16,000,000 federal, state and local! It is impossible to estimate the nonsense they engender. Fortunately, not a single person hears or reads anywhere near one per cent of it! But, without question, more than 99 per cent of the population unwittingly absorbs and responds to this political verbiage, and while rarely heeding the words of our few statesmen.

Why this surrender to folly? Why does intellect deteriorate? It is because of an all-too-common inability consciously to resist. As a consequence, the nonsense, instead of passing by, goes into—becomes a part of—most citizens. Anyway, this is enough of a commentary on those who, in many aspects of this mortal life, live by rote!

It is now appropriate to reflect on those excellent habits which are indispensable to doing what’s right. John Tillotson, Archbishop of Canterbury (1630–94) had an enlightening thought: “When we have practised good actions awhile, they become easy; when they are easy, we take pleasure in them; when they please us, we do them frequently; and then, by frequency of act, they grow into a habit.”

When we have practised good actions awhile, they became easy. Good actions are impossible without practice. Take any activity, be it golf or cooking or writing or speaking or whatever, the more practice the easier.

When we were in first grade learning to write we had to think our way around each letter of the alphabet. Today as adults? Those physical movements have been relegated to the conditioned reflexes and all we have to think about is what we wish to say.

The lesson to be derived from this? Advance to that level of understanding where we can explain the fallacies of socialism and the righteousness of freedom with the same ease as we can give the answer to “What’s 6 times 7?” Most of us derive pleasure from countless blessings: good health, good friends, a plenitude of goods and services, vacations, occupational success, and so on. Nothing wrong with most of these.

Then there are those who get pleasure from political power, notoriety, running the lives of others and similar forms of nonsense. Reflecting on this kind of “pleasure,” the American clergyman, Richard Fuller (1808–76) wrote: “Worldly and sensual pleasures, for the most part, are short, false and deceitful! Like drunkenness, they revenge the jolly madness of one hour with the sad repentance of many.”

Archbishop Tillotson had a superior goal in mind. Pleasure—enjoyment of the higher order—is possible only as we live a life of virtue and justice: righteousness!

When they are easy, we take pleasure in them. There are tiny phases of the freedom philosophy that some individuals find easy. And pleasurable, indeed, are these accomplishments!

Wrote Herbert Spencer: “‘Easy come, easy go,’ is as applicable to knowledge as to wealth.” All of us are acquainted with individuals who by a streak of luck become wealthy. Luck, however, is not the result of effort nor proportioned to merit, that is, it has no foundation—easy come, easy go!

Those who find phases of the freedom way of life easy to explain have made righteousness their first aim in life—all else secondary. All gains are gratifying and enjoyable!

When they please us, we do them frequently. A single step in the right philosophical direction—toward freedom—does far more than please the doers thereof. Like a magnetic force, the success of the first step beckons that person and others to take additional steps. And this power of attraction doubles and quadruples—on and on—frequency unlimited!

By frequency of act, they grow into a habit. When our primary mode of action is the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life with its moral and spiritual antecedents, the right will, indeed, become not only frequent but perpetual. And if that is not habit-forming, pray tell, what is!

Let me conclude with an unusual thought inspired by the preceding paragraphs. Should those of us who live by what’s right—and not rote—advocate the right of everyone to act creatively as he or she pleases? No, for the spirit of advocacy does not jibe with Divine Sources. No one advocates that the earth become a spheroid! Neither freedom nor the shape of our planet is a subject for advocacy; both are facts for affirmation!

Affirm the Divine in word and deed!

[1] See The House of Intellect (New York: Harper & Bros., 1959), p. 222.

7

AUTHORITY: TO BE EMBRACED OR REJECTED?

Authority intoxicates,

And makes sots of magistrates;

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men giddy, proud, and vain.

—SAMUEL BUTLER

There are two opposed types of authority. There is, first, the kind of authority conveyed by the unvarnished truth to receptive minds; the second is symbolized by the club—naked force. The former gains the assent of the will; it is voluntary cooperation. The latter overrides the will; it is antagonistic and coercive. I like the old theological vocabulary which would label the one, heavenly, the other, hellish; it is the contrast between (a) the Source of Truth, and (b) the forcible imposition of nonsense.

There is only one Source of Truth: Infinite Consciousness—Creation. There are, however, many subsidiary sources, namely, those seers, past and present, who have surpassed the mill run of us in their ability to intercept the wisdom of Divine Omnipotence. Whenever we seek enlightenment, we can learn from them just as they have learned from The Source. Indeed, if we fully realize our potentialities, we may become helpful subsidiaries ourselves, and the source of light to other seekers.

The above aspirations would be extremely difficult to achieve, if not impossible, without a minimal coercive authority. I refer to a government strictly limited to inhibiting all destructive human actions, leaving everyone free to act creatively as each chooses. Our freedom depends upon such a defensive force against the coercive acts of others.

The above are authorities we should embrace. Now to the object of this thesis—the authorities we should reject.

The English statesman, Lord Acton (1834–1902), a distinguished liberal in the classical sense and a devout Roman Catholic, wrote, “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” This shocking truth was inspired by the infallibility assumed by some of those in the papal hierarchy. It is obvious that no human remotely approaches infallibility. Lord Acton had the courage to pronounce the results: absolutely corrupting to the practitioners thereof. It leads to the forcible imposition of nonsense!

The English poet, Samuel Butler (1612–80), two centuries prior to Lord Acton, saw through the sham of power mongers—authority over the life of others—and beautifully phrased the end results: “Makes sots of magistrates.” A sot? “Stupid like a habitual drunkard.”

True, no more than a few among the millions of sots would fall into this intellectual gutter were they aware of (1) how it destroys their own lives and (2) the disaster it inflicts on all citizens. Why this inebriation? The answer may lie much deeper than we think. Here is one that deserves reflection.

Bear in mind that whatever shows forth on the political horizon is but an echoing or reflection of the given society’s preponderant leadership thinking at the time. If this assessment be correct, then it is today’s “thinking” that accounts for the countless sots who presently bedevil our country—those “infallibles” who would cast us in their little warped images. What lies at the root of their “thinking”?

It is inherent in the very nature of man to be led from the what-is toward the what-ought-to-be. Evolution is implicit in the Cosmic Scheme, and mankind today is far more evolved than Cro-Magnon man. The Creation which created us is a magnetic force. It is the first and foremost Law of Attraction.

Who can or cannot be drawn toward this Cosmic Order? Only the receptive. To symbolize the answer, take a handful of particles composed mostly of sawdust and a few iron or steel filings. Place a magnet over the particles and observe that only the filings are drawn to it.

Millions of people in the modern world—symbolized by the sawdust—are not attracted to the Cosmic Magnet. Some of these live aimless lives, but many others are powerfully drawn to the political messiahs who lead the collectivist movements of our time—Marxists and their ilk. A kind of mass hysteria results, and the silly seeds are sown which take root and sprout into “sottish magistrates.”

Wrote Plato: “The punishment of wise men who refuse to take part in the affairs of government is to live under the government of unwise men.”

How shall we define “wise men”? My answer: The more they know, the greater is their awareness of how little they know. Those who grasp this Socratic wisdom concentrate on self-improvement; there is not an iota of be-like-me-ness in their make-up. They would no more think of telling a neighbor how to run his or her life than dictating how Creation should be modified. Intellectually, morally and spiritually, they are the very opposite of the unwise ones who aspire to dictatorial powers. This is another way of saying that they are the opposite of Marxists—socialists. As a consequence, they are free-market oriented, believing that all citizens should be free to act creatively as they please.

Presently, with some notable exceptions, we are living under government by unwise men. And the reason is that many of the wise men among us, lacking political aspirations themselves, mistakenly assume that what government does is none of their business. They fail to see what they could and should be doing to limit government to its principled role of keeping the peace with justice to all.

Even the wisest are imperfect. Many have unwisely overlooked the method they should employ: getting so proficient at understanding and explaining the freedom philosophy that others will look to them as mentors. Our wise men have attained their present heights by intercepting Creation’s Law of Attraction. It follows that they should apply this Divine Principle at the human level. It has worked for them and it can have a comparable effect on others.

To repeat, what shows forth on the political horizon is but a reflection of the preponderant thinking, be it unwise or wise. What, then, is the role of wise men? It is neither silence nor reforming the unwise! Wrote Henri Frederic Amiel (1821–81): “Truth is not only violated by falsehood; it may be equally outraged by silence.” We are further enlightened by Michel E. de Montaigne (1533–92): “Reform only yourself; for in doing that you do everything.”

The formula is simple: Let each freedom devotee become so proficient that others will single out these wise men as mentors!

Instead of silence, there will be oral and written explanations sharing with all who seek. The more one shares, the more will he or she be graced with higher grade thoughts. This growth, and it alone, energizes the magnetism that draws others. It is the Law of Attraction at the human level!

And now for the good tidings. Among the seekers will be wise men replacing “sottish magistrates” in governmental offices, statesmen replacing politicians, that is, those who seek truth and not power over a single creative action! Several of the benefits we can expect:

1—A limited government staffed by statesmen numbering but a tiny fraction of the present political multitude.

2—Inflation will be at an end.

3—No more strikes or tariffs or any other restrictions to creative actions.

4—Free traders, the only ambassadors of good will, replacing politicians as the U.S.A.’s representatives in other nations.

5—All Americans as free to exchange goods and services with those in other countries as with those in our fifty states.

6—A rebirth of the American Miracle and socialism a bygone nightmare!

Let us reject authoritarians and all of their intoxications and corruptions and, instead, heed and abide by the counsel of George Washington: “If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”

8

GOOD DOERS OR DO-GOODERS?

Fenelon learned that his library was on fire: “God be praised,” he said, “that it is not the dwelling of some poor man.”

—WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS

Howells (1837–1920), American author, by quoting the above, demonstrated an unusual trait, namely, the ability to recognize a good doer, a benevolent individual, on reading his thoughts. Howells may or may not have had an awareness of the opposite type, a malevolent individual—a do-gooder.

François Fenelon (1651–1715), French theologian, author, Archbishop of Cambria and a great scholar, assuredly had a large and valuable library. Yet with rare and benevolent attitude, he could accept its loss in full compassion for others less fortunate. A good doer, par excellence.

In contrast are the countless do-gooders. According to my dictionary, they are “impractical minded humanitarians bent on promoting welfare work or reform.” Let me modify the thoughts of another:

Avoid an angry man for a while, a malevolent one forever.

The violence and evil of our time have been, when viewed collectively, the work, of impotent men who seek power in order to conceal their failure as persons. They are repressed and frustrated, taking refuge in a system of “thought” or a mode of life into which doing good cannot intrude. These bewildered individuals from Hitler downward advocate violence as a means of inflicting their nefarious ways on all of us. Result? Societal disintegration!

The late Newton Dillaway, a brilliant gentleman and outstanding biographer of Ralph Waldo Emerson, wrote numerous exposures of our “bewildered individuals.” He asks this fundamental question: “Is God to be pigeon-holed by the whims of man?” Several of his answers:

A system of fixed concepts is contrary to the natural law. It prevents life from flowing. It prevents the passage of the Universal Law.

More damage is done than we realize in trying to force human situations—whether in diet or metaphysics, whether in training children or in planning the social order.

Life asks only that we flow with it, that we do not resist, that we do not crawl into corners and erect barriers.[1]

Another name for “do-gooders” is “mean-wellers.” These people are unaware that everything we know is an interception of the Universal Law, and so they are addicted to fixed concepts—their fixings, coercively implemented! They are well intentioned, but so was Cro-Magnon man of 35,000 years ago and, earlier still, the cave dwellers. These “mean-wellers” hinder life from flowing because they are innocently ignorant of any such phenomenal process.

More damage is done than we realize in trying to force human behavior. Suppose Emerson, Dillaway’s intellectual, moral and spiritual hero, had used force to cast others in his image—“Behave as I say or I shall force you to do so.” What would be the result were everyone so directed and restricted? Emerson’s brilliant writings would have come to an end! Why? He would have starved to death! Imagine living on only what he did or the output of your specialized efforts! Or, suppose one’s energies were devoted exclusively to making the case for freedom. Live on that and nothing else? Perish the absurd thought!

Let’s try to dramatize this quandary. A famous painter—Pablo Picasso—favored political dictatorship—the state his god. Would you seek his explanation as to how the free market works its wonders?

Frederic Bastiat, on the other hand, was one of the greatest contributors of all time to how the free market works its wonders. But, would you ask him to paint a portrait of the Scottish economist, Adam Smith? Might as well ask me how to make a pencil!

To aid in understanding the destructive actions of “do-gooders” and “mean-wellers,” why not add the word smother to the ones commonly used: stifle, squelch, inhibit, restrain? These millions smother—take the living breath out of—creativity. Were our population composed only of these little dictocrats, there would be no pencils, no food, no life.

Wrote William Wordsworth (1770–1850): “Life is divided into three terms—that which was, which is, and which shall be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present to live better for the future.”

If anyone wonders what Dillaway meant by “Life asks only that we flow with it,” our English poet, quoted above, gave the answer nearly two centuries earlier. And what a splendid formula for individual emergence—life’s high purpose!

That which was. Most present-day Americans have all but forgotten the foundations of our country—the Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights. True, many pay obeisance to these documents as a formality but, unfortunately, are unaware of their essence. Which was? Government more limited than ever before in all history. The fruits of this wisdom? Self-reliance, self-responsibility, freedom of choice, freedom to compete and to produce and exchange goods and services, culminating in The American Miracle! The right answer to life: all talents freely flowing! General prosperity as a result!

That which is. Except for the very few who are intellectually alert and keenly aware of the what was, the prosperity we all enjoy has wreaked its damage on our population. Politico-economic talents lie dormant. The merit of government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice is no more apprehended by our contemporaries than it was by England’s mercantilists!

How account for the present dormancy? The unprecedented affluence which graces the lives of the multitudes is disproportionate to the efforts, on their part, to achieve it. As a consequence, they fail to think of affluence as a gift of a free economy.

Only a people who struggle for what they obtain will highly prize it. What is theirs will be lightly parted with if it is acquired without effort. Being born with a silver spoon or into a highly efficient economy may be a far greater handicap to one’s emergence than being born poor. Today, millions of Americans are wealthy who have done nothing toward the acquisition of their wealth. It wouldn’t be quite so bad if they only had the insight to understand that affluence is a by-product of freedom.

That which shall be. The do-gooders are still in the driver’s seat. Can they be unseated? Yes, if we accept and emulate Abraham Lincoln’s counsel: “The occasion is piled high with difficulty, and we must rise high with the occasion.”

Rising high with the occasion must include an ever-greater faith that we will win. Emerson suggested the appropriate formula: “All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.”

We have not seen François Fenelon but we know of his high ideals. Also, we are aware of numerous good-doers.

The do-gooders will lose their power over us when and if you and I join the good-doers!

[1] See Consent by Newton Dillaway (Unity Books, Unity Village, Missouri).

9

FICKLE CONTRADICTIONS

A virtuous tyrant is a contradiction in terms.

—BENJAMIN JOWETT

To contradict someone means, generally, to assert the opposite of what he has spoken or written. Contradictions fall into two categories: some are sincere, thoughtful, honest; but others are merely fickle—by which I mean tricky, deceitful, unstable.

Actually, if one is improving from day to day, present positions differ from or even contradict those believed earlier. And ever so many differences divide those of us devoted to freedom, especially as to methods of advancing it. These sincere differences, however, are not the aim of this brevity.

What then? A commentary on the fickle contradictions which, in today’s America, are rapidly on the increase and seriously threaten our high aspiration—freedom. These are so many that a mere sampling must suffice. These may help me and some others to distinguish the fickle from the sincere.

Benjamin Jowett (1817–93), was a classical scholar at Oxford, a translator of Plato and Aristotle, and a philosopher in his own right. What a wise and needed observation: A virtuous tyrant is a contradiction in terms! In ancient Greece a tyrant was one who seized sovereignty, a usurper. In our time, it includes “any person who exercises his authority in an oppressive manner.” We have them by the millions! Virtue? Says the dictionary: “right action and thinking; moral excellence.” So, how can tyranny be virtuous?

Interestingly, we never hear anyone use such contradictory expressions as “gentle murderer” or “generous robber” or “wise idiot.” Yet, observe the mass approval of those who rob Peter to pay Paul. Virtue is ascribed to those who advocate and practice the Marxian dictum, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” Tyranny has acquired the appearance of virtue!

Appearances, however, are often false. Tyranny is not a virtue but the very opposite—a sin! In a sacred Hindu text—the Bhagavad-Gita—we read this wisdom: “Sin is not the violation of a law or convention . . . but ignorance . . . which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others.”

Living at the expense of others—tyranny—assumes the dimensions of mass hysteria. And it is ignorance which allows such tyranny to be commonly regarded as a virtue, hence the contradiction in terms.

Government education, featured by compulsory attendance, government dictated curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay the bills is, also, a contradiction in terms. True education is achieved by seeking enlightenment—learning!

Truth can no more be forced into the mind of another than can humility, love, graciousness or an awareness of human limitations. Those who resort to force—coercion—trying to dictate to others how to think and act, violate the first Commandment: “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.” Without knowing it, they presume to be God.[1]

All fickle notions are neither more nor less than ferments of the mind. Reflect on how such simple truths as these—two among thousands—contradict popular “thinking”:

1—When and if inflation brings our legal tender near to zero, the dollar will no longer be money.

2—A frozen wage or price is no longer a wage or price; they are mere political numerals backed by force!

This last point brings to mind one of the most fickle contradictions of all: popular belief in the right to strike. But, first, how in this lamentable and unforgivable instance should “right” be defined? Let that brilliant German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), give the answer appropriate to his, our and all time: “Act only on that maxim [principle] through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”

How shall a strike be defined and when does it really begin? Not when one quits his or her employment! This right is precious and should be allowed to everyone. Nor is it when workers quit in unison. The strike begins only when workers quit their jobs in unison and use brute force to keep others from filling the jobs they have vacated!

Using Kant’s maxim, is this a right that should become a universal law? My answer is an unqualified “No!” And so, I think, must be the answer of any reasonable person who fully grasps the consequences of such coercive action.

For instance, let us suppose that the flight attendants or the maintenance crews of an airline have gone on strike. Now imagine this as a universal law—everyone doing it. The airlines, of course, would cease to operate. But now extend the strike to include all growers and suppliers of food, manufacturers, physicians, telephone operators, producers of electricity, and every other contributor to life and livelihood. Chaos! All would perish!

But strikes are not limited to labor unions! Every businessman who advocates restrictions against free production and trade is a striker against the welfare of mankind. Every teacher, preacher, politician or anyone else who proposes restraints against the release of creative human energy is a striker. Some of us may be far less inclined to strike than are others. But in our imperfect human condition, where is the individual who does not and would not try to exercise his striking power?

Surface appearances suggest that the odds are overwhelmingly against the goose that lays the golden eggs—freedom to act creatively. But look beneath the surface and we may see a different picture.

Reflect on the nature of adversity. It can be likened to a physical force having two possible consequences:

1—Adversity can run over and destroy our society.

2—It is possible that adversity resisted may give us the strength to hurdle these “virtuous tyrants.”

In every lemon is the potential for lemonade. Likewise, in every adversity is the opportunity to rise above it, providing that these trials and tribulations are regarded as possible sources of strength. Obstacles may become steppingstones.

Shangri-La, for example—a dreamland of milk and honey—has no obstacles; it is hellish in that all humans would lose their strength in Shangri-La. Is it not obvious that we tend to rise only to such heights as our obstacles and adversaries demand? True, some they destroy; but others, the ones fortunate enough to preserve freedom, gain strength from these adverse forces.

Wrote the English critic and author, William Hazlitt (1778–1830): “Prosperity is a great teacher; adversity is a greater. Possession pampers the mind; privation trains and strengthens it.” In that sense, let us be grateful to the “virtuous tyrants” who spur us to resist and overcome.

[1] For a detailed explanation of why education should be left to the free and unfettered market where the wisdom is, see chapters 15, 16 and 17 in my book, Anything That’s Peaceful (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1964).

10

“ABOUT FACE”: REFORMERS!

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.

—THOMAS à KEMPIS

As a soldier overseas in WW I, I often heard and obeyed the command, “About Face.” This merely meant to do a turnabout—face and march in the opposite direction. And that’s my theme as related to those who would reform their fellowmen.

The thought expressed above by Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471) was in accord with the thinking of another great philosopher 1,000 years earlier, Saint Augustine (354–430 A.D.), Bishop of Hippo. This thinker entitled his autobiography, Confessions. Even today, fifteen centuries after his passing, it is still the most widely read autobiography of all time! Among the many bits of wisdom passed on to posterity is this: strive for that excellence in understanding which will cause others to seek one’s tutorship. Briefly, resort to the law of attraction.

Examine any one of countless occupational endeavors—golf, cooking, medicine, artistry or whatever—and note that those out front attract emulators. Example: Golfers at my Club do not ask me how to play golf; but wave a magic wand and put Jack Nicklaus in my place and every member will try to learn from him. As I have learned from Charles Kingsley: “Nothing is so infectious as example.”

Let me share a favorite verse, author unknown:

And so I hold it is not treason

To advance a simple reason

For the sorry lack of progress we decry.

It is this: Instead of working

On himself, each man is shirking

And trying to reform some other guy.

To reform others would require the transplanting of talents—utterly impossible. There are all kinds of talents—millions of them—not one of which can be transplanted. Personal talents range from gymnastics to deep-sea exploration to writing and speaking on countless subjects to piloting airplanes to composing Grand Opera to an expertise in optometry, cooking, needle point—you name it! Could Leonardo da Vinci have transplanted in me that extraordinary talent of his which produced the famous Mona Lisa? No more than you could transplant into another whatever your unique talent happens to be!

Who are those so vigorously “trying to reform some other guy”? They are all the citizens who bemoan the “sorry lack of progress we decry”—the mess we are in—and who pay no heed to self-improvement. Suppose they were to succeed. Suppose everyone were to become carbon copies of them, that is, a world of reformers. The result would be unpleasant—a world of deformers!

Let us now reflect on a world of informers, those from whom others seek information—enlightenment.

Many of the best informers of all time were not college graduates, indeed, some of the greatest never went to school: Confucius, Jesus of Nazareth, Socrates. Abraham Lincoln was little more than a first grader and Andrew Carnegie, the great industrialist, had only three months of schooling. Wisdom may indeed come from humble sources. Look for light in whomever it shines!

Indeed, one of the most striking examples is the wisdom that came from the mind of a Roman slave—Epictetus. This slave became a learned Stoic, embracing the philosophy which holds that all happenings are the result of divine will and that, therefore, man should be free from passion and grief.

Stoicism was so at odds with the “thinking” of Roman Emperor Domitian, who reigned 81–96 A.D., that he exiled many philosophers, including the remarkable slave. Epictetus was sent by sea to the little town of Nicopolis, northeast of Athens.

There he conducted his own school, and was so well regarded and highly esteemed that he established the reputation of the place as Town of Epictetus’ School. Students came from Athens and Rome to attend classes. Private citizens came to ask his advice and guidance. Many of his students on returning home assumed the philosophic way of life in order to escape into the sphere of stoic freedom.

The wisdom of Epictetus comes to us in large part through The Enchiridion, a small book of notes taken by one of his students and translated into numerous languages.[1] Such is the lasting line of transmission and influence of the seeker after truth—the informer. If Epictetus had sought to reform others, force them into his mold, his thoughts would have been buried along with him—a historic zero.

But Epictetus was one of history’s outstanding informers, an individual worthy of our emulation. His thoughts, instead of dying on the vine, live on to this day and the end is not in sight. The Enchiridion has had enormous influence on great truth seekers, men who lived more than 15 centuries after him: Montaigne, Grotius, Descartes, Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Immanuel Kant and ever so many others.

Until recently, Epictetus was only a name to me: I would have confessed to knowing nothing of his philosophy. Yet, on reflection, I know much of it. For so great has been his influence on those whose writings are familiar to me that I have been, quite unconsciously, the beneficiary of his truth seeking. Here I am, nearly twenty centuries later, looking up to a Roman slave, and scarcely realizing it. Imagine a beam of light penetrating through the ages to this very day! Or, better yet, a light so strong its mirroring never ends. An apt phrasing of this methodology was expressed by its perfect exemplar, just prior to Epictetus: “And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me.”[2]

True, as Thomas à Kempis stated, neither you nor I can make of ourselves what we wish to be. However, we can march in the right direction. Thanks to the slave who freed himself!

[1] Liberal Arts Press, The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Indianapolis, 1948.

[2] John 12:32.

11

FLOWERS: EMBLEMS OF HUMAN FLOWERING

Stars of earth, these golden flowers; emblems of our own great resurrection; emblems of the bright and better land.

—LONGFELLOW

Recently, one of the most brilliant economists and freedom devotees known to me asked, “Why is it that ever so many people love flowers?” I have loved flowers since childhood, but never, during my 81 years, have I pondered the reason why.

Longfellow finds a poetic correlation between flowers and freedom: the unfolding of a flower into full bloom is symbolic of the evolvement of the human person, under freedom, to his full potential. If more individuals were to realize why they love flowers, it is likely that they might grasp why they should love freedom. This thought deserves some exploration, at least for myself, for my friend who asked the question, and perhaps for a few others.

A fortunate coincidence which some persons experience: A moment after completing the above the April 1979 issue of Natural History was placed on my desk. Lo and behold, the lead article is entitled, “The Pasqueflower,” by Holmes Rolston, III, who teaches philosophy and environmental ethics at Colorado State University. Not only is this a masterpiece of nature writing, but it sheds light on the query as to why so many love flowers.

The author tells of hiking a meadow in the foothills of the Rockies just after the equinox, seeing thousands of this beautiful flower in its finest bloom—an experience I had many years ago in Colorado: Wrote Professor Rolston:

Earliest among the rites of the western spring is the blossoming of the pasqueflower which . . . precedes by a month the rest of the vernal flora. Its precocious beauty accounts for its name, a flower of the Pasque, Easter, and its loveliness, size and season led Aldo Leopold to write, “the chance to find a pasqueflower is as inalienable as free speech.”[1]

The more beauty one sees in a flower, the more he or she loves it. The more one understands free speech, freedom of choice and the like, the more he or she loves freedom. There is a correlation here that cannot be dismissed. More by our author:

. . . such a brave flower can help us ponder what it means to live in and against the wild. So I venture here to let the meeting of it take a philosophical turn.

“Flowering” touches values so soon, this biological phenomenon becomes a metaphor for all the striving toward fruition that characterizes the psychological, intellectual, cultural, and even the spiritual levels of life.

Whatever its antiquity, we might first think, that association has no natural basis; it is entirely fictional. But we later find connections that are so fundamental. . . that we are hardly aware of them.

Awareness! Reflect on the bountiful wonders of freedom. Most Americans take these blessings for granted and have lost all awareness of their origin. Result? No more is required of them to preserve freedom than to preserve the air they breathe! The pasqueflower has this and more lessons for mankind:

Perhaps it may not be so fanciful but rather entirely realistic that this pasqueflower should in its limited and natural way come to serve as a symbol for what Jesus in his unlimited, supernatural way represents to the Christian mind, a hint of the release of life from the powers that would suppress it.

For longer than we can remember flowers have been flung up to argue against the forces of violence. . . . This is why it is liberating to find the pasqueflower bearing with beauty the winds of March.

And this is why it is that freedom argues against violence and, thus, liberates mankind. Thanks, Professor Rolston!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, born 126 years before Professor Rolston, had similar views, the difference being in phrasing, the latter referring to flowers as “symbols,” the former as “emblems.” An emblem? Says the dictionary: “allegorically suggesting some moral truth.”

In the politico-economic realm, what greater moral truth than our—America’s—“great resurrection” from the autocracies that prevailed prior to 1776! Flowers are, indeed, the symbols, the emblems of the “bright and better land.” Freedom shall bloom again!

Some decades ago it was scientifically demonstrated that flowers grow much better among individuals who love them than among those who are indifferent. Likewise, freedom reigns among those who love this ideal way of life and is impossible where indifference prevails.

I now know why some of us love flowers. They symbolize and are emblems of human flowering—freedom to act creatively as we please. Wrote Goethe: “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

Let us love flowers and freedom!

[1] This and subsequent passages are reprinted with permission from Natural History Magazine, April, 1979. Copyright © the American Museum of Natural History, 1979.

12

THE BLESSINGS OF MORAL OBLIGATIONS

What do I owe to my times, to my country, to my neighbors, to my friends? Such are the questions which a virtuous man ought often to ask himself.

—JOHANN KASPER LAVATER

Obligations are of numerous kinds, ranging from the payment of debts, to the keeping of promises and contracts, to moral responsibility or, as the English poet, William Wordsworth, phrased it, “stern daughter of the voice of God.”

However defined, obligations are rarely thought of as blessings. My thesis is that moral responsibility, if it is truly a blessing in disguise, ought then to be exposed—pull that veil away! Why? Because an awareness of our blessings is part and parcel of the good life.

Charles Dickens (1812–70), English novelist, sheds light: “Reflect upon your present blessings, of which every man has many; not on your past misfortunes, of which all men have some.” Here, then, are some of my reflections on present blessings and past misfortunes and their consequences.

In 1965 during a discussion session at a FEE Seminar in Missouri, a deeply religious individual asked, “What is the significance of the Commandment, ‘Thou shalt not covet’?” Never having pondered that one before, I gave him what is a correct answer to many questions, “I do not know.” However, the query kept nagging at me—a challenge that wouldn’t down.

After considerable reflection, I realized that this Commandment—the tenth—is more important than all but the first. Covetousness—envy—lies at the root of stealing, killing, bearing false witness and many other evils. My conclusion: To the extent that the souls of Americans are cleansed of covetousness, to that extent will we be graced with stalwart, righteous citizens. The formula for ridding ourselves of these traits? Count our blessings!

As related to this thesis, there is an attitude that dominates thinking and another that could become dominant. Voltaire expressed my views: “The longer we dwell on our misfortunes, the greater is their power to harm us.” Just as obvious: “The longer we dwell on our blessings, the greater is their power to improve us.”

As to the first attitude, one should, by all means, be keenly aware of the misfortunes which beset society. Properly assessed, they are steppingstones to truth—blessings in disguise.

Learn the wrong, to find the right!

Voltaire, however, had in mind the common attitude he observed in his time—two centuries ago—which is precisely what we observe in the U.S.A. today: citizens by the millions dwelling only on the countless misfortunes. The result of this myopic, unperceptive, shortsighted view? Ruled by pessimism, hopelessness, despair, such persons become crepehangers, doubting Thomases, worrywarts.

These people not only do irreparable harm to their own lives but a disservice to the rest of us and, may I add, to the cause of human liberty. No truth was ever advanced by dwelling only on man-made misfortunes—those sad consequences of ignorance or half-truths or outright lies!

Turn now from the negative to the positive, from dwelling on our misfortunes to dwelling on our blessings, from looking hellward to peering heavenward, from that which harms to that which improves. If enough of us do this our countrymen will know what precious blessings are theirs, and which no other people on earth enjoy. Too high an aspiration? A bit of reflection will easily replace misery with joy, forlornness with hopefulness.

Conceded, no person will ever count all of his or her blessings. The human being does not exist who can count that far—our blessings border on the Infinite. Every heartbeat is a blessing, as is every breath, all discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes that have advanced truth and human welfare since the dawn of consciousness. So numerous, they stagger the imagination—delightfully!

The Swiss preacher and theological writer, Johann Kasper Lavater (1741–1801), posed several questions which a virtuous person should often ask. Why virtuous individuals and not everyone? Only those having a sense of moral obligations are capable of asking what they owe to their times, to their neighbors, to their country, to their friends. Those not so graced have the order reversed, namely, insisting on what their country and others owe them.

Looking to the future, will our blessings multiply or will they dwindle and await another renaissance in the near or distant future? The answer, it seems, depends on how well some of us answer the questions above posed. Perhaps the best any of us can do—no one knowing the perfect answers—is to share our thoughts with each other. I owe you mine; you owe me yours.

What do I owe to my time?

As much growth in awareness, perception, consciousness as is within my potentiality.

We always have time enough if we but use it aright.

—Goethe

Time well employed is Satan’s deadliest foe; it leaves no opening for the lurking fiend.

—Carlos Wilcox

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity!

—Henry David Thoreau

Doest thou love life? Then do not squander time, for it is the stuff life is made of.

—Benjamin Franklin

Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.

—Edmund Burke

There is more time to do the worthwhile things in life than anyone will ever discover how to use. I owe to my time the avoidance of trivia, the constant striving to set a better example.

What do I owe to my country?

First is an understanding of the most important of all politico-economic facts, namely, that our rights to life and livelihood are endowed by the Creator and not by government. Second, an ability to explain this essence of Americanism with such clarity that others may become aware of the moral principles that made America great.

What do I owe to my neighbors and friends?

The best answer was pronounced centuries ago in both the Old and New Testaments: Love thy neighbor as thyself The English author, Francis Quarles (1592–1644), nicely embellished this truth: “If thou neglectest thy love to thy neighbor, in vain thou professest thy love to God; for by thy love to God, the love of thy neighbor is begotten, and by the love of thy neighbor, thy love to God is nourished.”

Love is, in a sense, retroactive brotherhood. Extend it to neighbors or friends or whoever with no thought beyond “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” With this attitude, the recipients will, more than likely, do the same and thou wilt be blest in thy giving.

High among the moral obligations, particularly when coercion—socialism—threatens our future, is the understanding and sharing of freedom principles, ideas and ideals.

Through my lectures and other contacts in 22 foreign nations and 48 of our states during the past 34 years, I have gained numerous good friends—good devotees of freedom—teachable as each of us should be. These individuals are among my countless blessings—each and every one! The Third Beatitude, when translated aright, reads: The teachable shall inherit the earth!

13

TWIN VIRTUES: RESPONSIBLE AND RESPONSIVE

It is easy to dodge responsibilities, but we cannot dodge the consequences of dodging our responsibilities.

—JOSIAH C. STAMP

This English economist and financier (1880–1941) was unable to dodge the consequence of those who were dodging their responsibilities. The consequence? This outstanding man was killed by one of Hitler’s bombs dropped on England. And it is difficult, if not impossible, to find a man in all history who dodged responsibilities more than that infamous Nazi. While Josiah Stamp did not foresee the cause of his demise, he foresaw the relationship between individual responsibility and the good life!

Reflection on the twin virtues of “responsible and responsive” brings to mind an observation of Plato: “Virtue is free, and as a man honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her; the responsibility is with the chooser.”

There’s no doubt that more people choose to dishonor than choose to honor the virtue of being responsible. And the cause, more often than not, is their unawareness that being self-responsible is a virtue. Here is a comical dialogue that dramatizes the point:

Employer: “For this job we want a responsible man.”

Applicant: “Then you want me. Everywhere I’ve worked, when something went wrong they said I was responsible.”

Regardless of how far any country has slumped into dictatorship, there always have been a few citizens graced with self-responsibility and self-reliance—societal saviors! Were this not the case, the entire citizenry would consist of man-like puppets, manipulated by a Hitler, a Stalin, or some other of that disgraceful type. Obviously, all would perish!

Americans have had and do have many responsible citizens emerging from countless varieties of political enslavement. There may be no better illustration than one who rose out of our deplorable Negro slavery: Booker T. Washington (1856–1915). His mother was a mulatto slave on a plantation, his father a white man. When old enough, Booker worked in salt furnaces and coal mines. This responsible Negro kept going up the ladder of achievement and became a remarkable educator, organizing a school for Negroes—Tuskegee Institute. He was a first-rate freedom devotee, and was also regarded as one of the greatest speakers of his time.

Did Booker T. Washington’s responsibility result in responsiveness? A single example: One of his students, George Washington Carver (1864–1943) became another free market exponent. He gained international fame in agricultural research, opening opportunities for ever so many in the South, black as well as white. The solid achievements of men like Washington and Carver have done more to lower the barriers of discrimination and prejudice than the passage of laws and the rhetoric of agitators.

The above, by itself, makes the case for the twin virtues of responsible and responsive. However, this important subject deserves more reflection.

Wrote William Ernest Hocking: “You can only make men free when they are inwardly bound by their own sense of responsibility.” According to G. K. Chesterton: “It isn’t that Christianity has been tried and found wanting. It has been tried and found difficult and all but abandoned.” A similar observation can be made about freedom. It isn’t that freedom has been tried and found wanting. Rather, it has been tried and found to require responsibility for self, whereupon it has been abandoned by millions of Americans. They give in to socialistic promises, “to each according to need.”

A good friend, Verna Hall, has caused numerous individuals to be liberated from their weakness—responsive to a well-phrased truth: “To the extent that an individual turns the responsibility for self over to another or allows government to take it away, to that extent is the very essence of one’s being removed.” Hocking, the Harvard philosopher of a generation ago, had he read this wisdom, would have been proud of our friend’s emphasis on responsibility and the responsive results thereof.

Every person who strives for excellence in life should put his high goals just out of reach. The wise words of an American Episcopal Bishop, Phillips Brooks (1835–93), provide one such goal: “Be such a man, and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s Paradise.”

Surely, this Bishop did not mean that we should all be alike, but that others should be similar to you or me in only one respect: in ardently striving for virtue. True, we finite mortals cannot come close to Infinite Consciousness—God’s Paradise—but each of us can aim his life in that direction. If our striving be sufficiently excellent, we become exemplars of righteousness. “Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.”

Josiah Stamp and numerous others foresaw the relation between responsibility and the good life—a mode of living where each is free to act creatively as he pleases. More of us than now must attain an attractive exemplarity as related to this virtue if we are to be blest with a return to freedom. Why is this a must? Where self-responsibility is absent, power mongers fill the thoughtless gap; they run our lives. It is either one or the other. Thank, heaven, we are free to choose.

Those of us who choose freedom must follow the counsel of Abraham Lincoln: “You can’t escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” Act now! This virtue educates and causes its practitioners to be attractive. Thus it gives birth to its twin, responsiveness.

Daniel Webster added his counsel: “The most important thought I have ever had was that of my individual responsibility to God.” This is righteousness. Reflect on how responsive countless citizens have been to this outstanding statesman!

To paraphrase a great thinker: Freedom will not descend to Americans; we must raise ourselves to freedom. It is a priceless blessing that must be earned before it can be enjoyed.

The earning of freedom is one of the greatest of all earthly joys!

14

TO ACQUIRE? DESIRE AND ASPIRE!

Lord, grant me that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

—MICHELANGELO

The use of the word “acquire,” in this little essay, does not relate to such infamous ambitions as fame, popularity, political or any kind of coercive power over others. Rather, the reference is, as Michelangelo implies, what the Lord would have us do. The instruction is recorded in Matthew 6:33: “But seek ye first the Kingdom of God and his Righteousness [Truth] and all these things [material well-being] shall be added unto you.” Here is how C. S. Lewis phrased the above: “Aim at Heaven [Truth] and we will get earth [material well-being] thrown in. Aim at earth and we will get neither.”

Ever so many people have the amassing of wealth as life’s sole ambition. Wrong, in my view! How should we assess our material well-being? Caleb C. Colton gave us an appropriate guideline: “If you would take your possessions into the life to come, convert them into good deeds.” Briefly, our earthly moments should be devoted to a growth in consciousness which lives on personally and eternally—good deed number one!

The famous Italian, Michelangelo (1475–1546), was not only one of the world’s greatest painters of all time but also a genius as a sculptor, architect and poet. Devotion to his earthly callings? Observe his painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in Rome, a task at which he spent 37 years!

Most people, when they attain some minor ambition, be it infamous or laudable, drop by the wayside—life’s mission accomplished; desire at an end; aspiration in the past tense! Growth in consciousness? None! In this respect, they become stunted men and women—intellectual dwarfs. Emulate them not!

Seldom in all history do we find an individual with the numerous and varied skills of a Michelangelo—on the topmost rungs of the ladder of accomplishment. Yet his prayer was to desire ever more and more; perpetual growth during his mortal moments was the goal to which he aspired. Why emulate his kind? It is their way of life that gives birth to the freedom way of life—what the Lord would have us do.

Richard Cabot, M.D. (1868–1939), teacher of social ethics at Harvard Medical School, and Chief of Staff at Massachusetts General Hospital for many years, beautifully phrased the way freedom works its wonders and its Source:

When you say to me, “Thank you,” remember I could not have done for you what I did, had it not been for what hundreds of other people have done for me. Neither could they have done for me what they did, had it not been for the thousands of other people who had done for them. And so the thing goes on in infinite time and space; and therefore when you say, “thank you,” you really mean to say, “Thank you, God.”

Thus it is that our gratitude for the blessings of freedom should be extended to Infinite Consciousness!

Let’s suppose that these thoughts I am trying to put together—thoughts which I have borrowed from many people—turn out to be useful to you. I should then be as thankful to you for accepting them as you are thankful to me for offering such thoughts.

Reflect on my dependency not only on the thoughts of others but on the thousands of things they do for me. They grow my food and prepare much of it; build and heat and light my home; make my clothes, on and on endlessly, even providing the pen with which this is written. Result? I am free to pursue that object in life which most intrigues me: aspiring to a better understanding and exposition of freedom!

Here are a few more thoughts—put into my own phrasing—borrowed from Inherit The Earth by N. J. Berrill, a man who has held numerous notable positions, including Professor of Zoology at McGill University.[1] I owe him a “Thank you” for offering his thoughts and he owes me and others the same for using them.

Everyone above the moronic level entertains some thoughts—good, bad and indifferent. However, unless these are activated—spelled out and explained—they are ephemeral, evanescent and, as dreams. Unused ideas are but nothings in the past tense. The message for those of us who love liberty?

Hide not your light under a bushel; do not keep thoughts to yourself. Instead, let each one achieve such excellence in words and deed that others will not only seek his tutorship but, hopefully, strive to outdo him. Share! Adhere to the law of attraction!

Our universe is creative at all levels—from tiny atoms, to sunshine, to immeasurable galaxies ever moving further and further into outer space. We humans are an integral, small but significant part thereof but we differ from other parts as related to creativity. Using the word God as the symbol of Creation, an atom, for instance, is God-created. It performs in accord with its God-given nature, having no more power to choose than does the moon. How does man, while also God-created, differ? My associate, Reverend E. A. Opitz, gives an excellent answer:

Man transcends nature and is gifted with a novel kind of freedom of choice. Here at last is a creature so detached from the instinctual controls that guide animals that he can defy the laws of his being. The other orders of Creation—birds, beasts, insects—possess built-in servomechanisms which give them all the answers they need. But man has not been given the answers; before our eyes the Creator has poised a question mark and the answers are ours to work out. This is our freedom, and also our peril. . . . Man’s freedom is so radical that he can deny his own nature—he can deny his Maker.

Let us choose wisely and well in the ongoing creative task of improving our minds. The freedom way of life is to that extent self-made.

Here is a direct quote from Professor Berrill’s book:

And potentialities mean not just skills, but the full range of the capacities for sensing, wondering, learning, understanding, loving, and aspiring. In this light, the ultimate goal of the educational system is to shift to the individual the burden of pursuing his own education. (Italics added)

How few there are who grasp Berrill’s important point that the personal seeking of truth from sources past and present—private education—is the way to enlightenment. Another direct quote from Professor Berrill:

A so-called average individual is in a dignified position upon a pinnacle. . . . He needs to know that whether his gifts are large or small they are his own, that he sees the world around him in a somewhat different way than has ever been seen before. And he needs to know that when all minds are uncommon the most uncommon may have by far the most to tell, and that the greater the minds the greater the differences. As the brain has grown, the differences between one and another are magnified accordingly. When visual regions reach their peak, a Michelangelo can arise creating shape and color from solid forms. When vision combines with the sense and memory of dynamic action you get a Leonardo da Vinci. These are uncommon giants . . . but they are giants who grew out of the so-called common stock of a multitude of uncommon individuals. (Italics added).

Those of us not crowned with power—voted or coercively grabbed—are uncommon individuals, no two remotely alike. Our potentialities? Fritz Kunkel, the eminent psychologist, revealed what is a secret to most people: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

True, we will not, because of our differences, ever be a Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Edison or a duplicate of anyone else. But we can become uncommon giants—individuals contributing to human evolution.

If our differences are to grow and flow to the advantage of all, freedom must prevail—an absolute necessity! And to aspire toward this glorious end, we can, in one respect, be like the great Michelangelo: Lord, grant me that I may always desire more than I can accomplish.

[1] Dodd, Mead & Co., New York (1966).

15

BELIEVE IN THIS MIRACLE: FREEDOM

The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.

—J. A. FROUDE

What is a miracle? “It is,” says the dictionary, “an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes especially to an act of God.” Creation!

Why do so few approve, accept and abide by the freedom way of life? A confession: I, along with many others, have been saying, “It’s so difficult to explain.” The truth as I now see it? No one can or ever will be able to explain this miracle! Were clear, lucid and persuasive explanation a requirement, some one or more of us would need to understand and explain every facet of human action—creation at the human level. No individual is or ever has been graced with such wisdom. Nor is such omniscience necessary for a belief in freedom.

Everything in Creation, including every form of life—no exception—is a miracle when viewed aright. However, one will seldom find a recording among famous intellectuals—past or present—who will agree with this statement. One notable exception was an English divine, Robert South (1634–1716): “A miracle is a work exceeding the power of any created agent, consequently being an effect of the divine omnipotence.”

The preponderance of people who deny the reality of anything beyond their capacity to explain may be a blessing in disguise. This is one of several reasons why so many individuals have looked upon freedom, not as a miracle, but as an explainable way of life. Being unable to explain it themselves and knowing of no one who can, it is held in far less esteem than socialism which can be and is easier to explain than a zero.

All but a few are blind to freedom’s miracles. Thomas Alva Edison, perhaps the greatest inventive genius of all time, gave us one explanation for this blindness: “No one knows more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.” This, of course, is a figure of speech. He could have said a billionth or trillionth of one per cent. Compared to Infinite Consciousness, finite man is no more than a mere speck in Creation’s Domain. Grasping this point—the more one knows the more awareness of how little he knows—is the beginning of such wisdom as is within mortal man’s domain.

There are reasons galore as to why freedom is not believed to be a miracle. Here is one: Our everyday life is crowded with miracles, so many that they have become commonplace. No one “contradicts” them. My telephone is an example. I can send my voice around the earth at the speed of light—in a fraction of a second. While few will think of this recent phenomenon as a miracle, I have never heard anyone say it is not. No contradiction! During the past few decades millions of miracles, ranging from penicillin to jet airplanes, are taken for granted, accepted as are the miracles of nature, be they blades of grass or giant oaks.

Froude, the English historian (1818–94) wrote: “The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.” Is it practical to believe in the unexplainable miracle, freedom? The answer is an unequivocal “Yes”! Why? Because the individual’s freedom to act creatively as he pleases is materially, morally and spiritually sound.

At our down-to-earth level, more miracles than anyone can count result from freedom, the greatest demonstration in all history being the American miracle!

There is one detail that should be explainable but no one to my knowledge has phrased it well enough for effective communication: it has to do with individual differences. Let us find a way to put these facts into understandable terms: No two of us are remotely alike. Indeed, no one individual is the same now as he or she was a moment ago. All is change now and forever. When our tiny bits of expertise are free to flow, they configurate. As drops of water make an ocean, so do these bits make the miracle.

Here are some final thoughts gleaned from that brilliant Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–1859). But first for some background. During the middle years of the last century, numerous governments sent commissions to the U.S.A. to find out why our success and their failures. All of them went home with the wrong answers. Tocqueville, by himself, made the all important discovery:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

A few other thoughts by Tocqueville which lend credence to this thesis:

The soil is productive less by reason of its natural fertility than because the people tilling it are free.

In fact, those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it long.

For only in countries where it reigns can a man speak, live and breathe freely. . . . The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense. . . . Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) defies analysis. For it [freedom’s miracles] is something one must feel and logic has no part in it.[1]

Wrote Charles F. Kettering: “Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.” This inventive genius passed away before discovering why grass is green. Why is it that no one can answer this question? A blade of grass is no more nor less a miracle than freedom, itself. Boss Kettering gave to freedom devotees a brilliant formula: “Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.”

Believe in our miracle and freedom will rise again!

[1] These are excerpts from Tocqueville’s book, The Old Regime and The French Revolution.

16

THE GLORY OF OUR WORLDS GALORE

Oh, what a glory doth this world put on, for him who with a fervent heart goes forth under the bright and glorious sky, and looks on duties well performed, and days well spent.

—LONGFELLOW

Among the numerous definitions of “worlds” is “individual experience.” Each individual who inhabits this earth has varying experiences every day of mortal life, from which are fashioned his or her countless worlds. Life provides us with an opportunity to grow, or as Henry Ward Beecher put it, “The world is God’s workshop for making men.” Let’s reflect on how this “workshop world” idea makes men when duties are well performed, and days well spent.

I like Beecher’s “the world is God’s workshop for making men.” It suggests that as a man chooses wisely or foolishly, he succeeds or fails, flourishes or withers, lives or dies. In this sense, God’s world comes down to the infinitely variable worlds of “individual experience,” and from that infinite variety evolve better persons—obviously, the first vital step to a better world. The key to such evolution is freedom, the opportunity to rise or to fall, depending on one’s choices and actions. But the right or the wrong of a given action is judged not according to the human whim of the moment but by the unwavering moral standards of Creation, Nature, God.

Many years ago a good friend of our efforts asked, “I don’t have to believe in God to believe in freedom do I?” My reply: “No, you do not have to believe in God to believe in freedom. But if no one believed in God there would be no freedom.” As explained in another chapter, freedom would be impossible were everyone atheists—nothing but chaos!

The term “God” has only the vaguest of connotations for the average person. It is widely believed, for example, that “God” is “The Man Upstairs”—an anthropomorphic concept. On the other hand, many, throughout the ages, have used “God”—and rightly so—to symbolize the Infinite Being—beyond our concepts and images. No person has ever known what Being is, only that It is. Creation—Infinite Consciousness—may be the best term to label the indescribable. Once this thought be grasped, we mortals recognize—and properly—our infinitesimal relation to the Infinite: “approaching zero!”

Short of a recognition of mankind’s near-zero position, a horrible notion takes over, one that has plagued humanity throughout recorded history: Man (with a capital M!) is the source of all creativity. There is no greater blockage to evolution than this!

But if evolution is to grace our lives, as is our destiny, it will be founded on an intellectual revolution: a politico-economic enlightenment on the part of only a few. Why a few? Every good movement in all history has been led by an infinitesimal minority—a handful, so to speak. A near-zero number understanding and explaining man’s near-zero position relative to Creation, Nature, God!

No individual, past or present, ever has or ever will program progress! Why this assertion? All humans are near zeros relative to Creation, Nature, God. Socrates, admittedly wise, could no more contrive a way to send the human voice around our earth in a fraction of a second than I can compose Grand Opera or take John Wayne’s place as an actor. Comparable limitations apply to all who live or ever will! A recognition of this fact on the part of a few is the first step if mankind is to enjoy progress.

The second step? A deep and abiding faith in a politico-economic phenomenon: only in the freedom of everyone to act creatively can we who know next to nothing—mere seedlings—assure progress.

Why is this faith and not knowledge? I know that the sun shines but not why it does; that grass is green but not why it is. There are millions of phenomena—flowerings of Creation at the human level. When first appearing—a flying machine, for instance—they are applauded. But when advanced to the 747 jet, they become commonplace to the masses, appreciation deadened—no more cheers as to the wonders of freedom, the source of which is Creation. This brings to mind two contrasting verses, author unknown:

Fueled by a million man-made wings of fire,

The rocket tore through the sky. . . .

And everyone cheered.

Fueled only by a thought from God,

The seedling urged its way through the thickness of black.

And as it pierced the heavy ceiling of the soil

And launched itself up into outer space. . . .

No one even clapped.

Great oaks from little acorns grow. Similarly, tiny bits of expertise grow—providing they are free to flow and configurate. It is now appropriate to reflect upon the obstacles to the free, unobstructed flowing of creative human energy.

The first obstacle is failure to grow, wasting away—atrophy. The cause? Doubtless, most of the reasons are unknown. An unawareness of Creation’s workshop takes first place, for It is The Source of all creativity.

The result of this unawareness? The millions cursed with this fogginess mistakenly regard themselves as source. They accept the faulty premise that whatever goes on in the universe originates with finite mortals. Errors multiply and result in disappointments, fears for the future, unhappiness. Their worlds are featured with woes!

“Thinking” in this manner—the problems of mankind on their shoulders—they, in their intellectual infancy, seek to become self-appointed, politico-economic trouble shooters. A vast majority of our 16,000,000 elected and appointed government officials fall into this ignoble category; but they merely reflect the know-it-all-ness of most citizens. Such persons, in or out of office, have a “cure” for every real or presumed ill. When their nostrums fail to work, they gloomily predict a future which, as they see it, is fraught with calamity. They become pessimists—no faith, none whatsoever, in a turnabout. Unhappy souls who multiply our difficulties!

Freedom—specialization in goods, services, ideas freely flowing—results in an unexpected, unaccustomed wealth. Merely reflect upon how little any of us do in exchange for the enormous bounties we receive! Our meager contribution relative to reward comes so close to approximating something-for-nothing that most people, failing to grasp this phenomenon, miss its evolutionary purpose: Growth! Such individuals, therefore, take it easy, cease to strive, look forward to retirement. Result? Atrophy! When “easy come” prosperity is used as an excuse to escape from life, no latent talents are released, and thus, wealth may be destructive.

Specialization, if appraised aright, is an important stepping stone—providing we take advantage of its unforeseen potentialities. The real purpose of wealth is to free us from the laborious chores of our predecessors—chopping our own wood, growing our own food, traveling by horse and buggy, and so on. Living in a prosperous society makes it possible for each of us to devote ourselves to personal evolution—to come up with one new understanding after another.

In summary, the right or wrong of a given action should always be judged, not according to any human whim of this or any future moment, but by the unwavering moral standards of Creation, Nature, God! When thus judged, we can, indeed, glory in our worlds galore!

17

THE SOURCE OF WISDOM

There is one person that is wiser than anybody, and that is everybody.

—TALLEYRAND

The above observation by Talleyrand (1754–1838), a French cardinal, might easily be misinterpreted. A man of his faith would be the first to agree that the initial source of all human wisdom is Infinite Consciousness—Creation. Obviously, he was referring to such wisdom as exists among finite humans. And, here again, he might be misunderstood. Assuredly, he did not mean by “everybody,” a mere body count of the many billions who have inhabited or presently inhabit this earth. That would not make sense and Talleyrand was a sensible person. What then?

The “everybody” to whom he referred were those individuals who are not “nobodies”—an amputation which dramatically reduces the number of “everybodies!” Who are these “nobodies,” as related to the source of wisdom? They are the millions who have all sorts of aims other than wisdom. A few samplings:

- The seekers of political power, that they may run the lives of others.

- The seekers of fame, fortune, and notoriety.

- The seekers of shorter hours, time off, vacations, retirement.

- The seekers of countless something-for-nothing schemes, that is, living off productive citizens: food stamps, social security and the like.

- The seekers of special privileges, ranging from rent control to embargoes to many other non-competitive devices.

- All who support any phase of the planned economy and the welfare state.

The wisdom here under discussion refers not only to spiritual and moral insight; it refers also to the intuitions that underlie the laws of science, and the technological breakthroughs on which our increasing prosperity depends. It is fairly obvious, then, that we “nobodies” are not the source of wisdom—although we are its beneficiaries. What about the “everybodies?” Not a one of them thinks of himself as the source. Possessing an understanding of freedom, and having faith in the way freedom works its wonders, they do not even regard themselves as a source, but rather as transmitters. In short, well over 99 per cent of our “everybodies” go through life as sources of wisdom—unknowingly!

How shall we account for this? To the extent that peaceful persons are not coerced, in that same measure do free actions prevail, talents emerge. Wrote Edmund Burke: “As to great and commanding talents, they are the gifts of providence in some way unknown to us. They rise where they are least expected.”

Great and commanding talents are, indeed, the gifts of Providence. Here is a great truth by Emerson which I have used numerous times: “We lie in the lap of immense intelligence which makes us receivers of its truth and organs of its activities. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves, but allow a passage of its beams.”

Socrates was acclaimed as the wisest of men, but he himself claimed only that he was aware of the extent of his own ignorance. He did not profess to be the source of any wisdom, but referred to himself as a mere “philosophical midwife.” As to the Immense Intelligence—God, Infinite Consciousness—Socrates merely tried to allow a passage of its beams. By not obstructing the truth, he did succeed in receiving messages from the Divine Source. He became one of the “everybodies,” perhaps more so than any other known to me. He received, and what he was given, he shared.

Socrates knew the Source of such wisdom as graced his life, and by tapping it he benefited every one of us. Wisdom, then, might flow through us, and we, too, might experience discoveries, inventions, little flashes of insight and the like. The number of these blessings are countless in any given day. Talents galore! They account in no small measure for the progress that our rapidly growing socialism has not yet destroyed.

However, an additional talent must be achieved if we are to avoid a socialistic disaster: a recognition of The Source. It is unlikely that you or I will attain a Socratic level, but we can come to recognize, as did he, that we are intermediaries—receivers of ideas from The Source—and, by so doing, achieve the required talent: receiving and sharing. We then become a knowing “everybody,” a source of attraction, the best contribution we can make to the dismissal of socialistic nonsense.

Assume that we move in the right direction, that success attends our efforts, that socialism fades away and freedom returns to grace our lives. Will we then be relieved of further effort? Quite the opposite! The further we travel the righteous road, the steeper and more difficult it becomes. The more we advance, emerge, the more each individual differs from his fellows. Variation! The more varied, the more interdependent, that is, the more do we live by voluntary exchanges of the fruits of each other’s specialized labor. What is the binding quality required, and absolute source of wisdom? It is an ever-improving morality!

Moral philosophy is the study of right and wrong, good and evil, better and worse. Economics is the study of what’s right in overcoming scarcity. Moreover, the two are inseparable. The latter cannot be achieved except as the former is improved.

Wrote Montaigne: “The principal office of wisdom is to distinguish good and evil.”

The source of wisdom is discovering and abiding by the good!

18

THE KEYS TO GREATNESS

Subtract from the great man all that he owes to opportunity, all that he owes to chance, and all that he has gained by the wisdom of his friends and the folly of his enemies, and the giant will often be seen to be a pigmy.

—CALEB C. COLTON

The above is an excellent listing of the self-deceptions and oversights which may prevent the ordinary person from achieving his potential stature, or may cause him to lapse into what Colton describes as a “pigmy” condition. An appropriate phrase for these latter, in our time, might be “mental midgets.”

Why is it that most people never come close to realizing their potentialities—becoming great? It is an unawareness of the munificent gifts that can be theirs for nothing more than self-discovery. Sir Isaac Newton (1642–1727), a distinguished scientist and philosopher, gave to posterity the key talent: “If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent.” So let us give patient attention to the keys suggested by the English clergyman, Caleb Colton (1780–1832).

All that he owes to opportunity. Reflect on the countless opportunities that have opened to all of us and for a simple reason: the freedom—now threatened—to act creatively as we please. Take a single instance among millions: the invention of the telephone. No one can make a fair guess as to the number of individuals to whom this gives employment. It is ever so many times more than the number of people who work for the telephone companies around the world. Included are the makers of the instruments, erectors of poles and the foresters thereof, producers of wire, printers of telephone books, and so on.

My great-grandfather had no such opportunity. Nor did he have an opportunity to work in automobile production or in its many subsidiary industries. Nor in a million other entrepreneurial adventures!

Suppose this ancestor of mine, the first settler in Shiawassee County, Michigan, had been able to hear me talk about my air travel for the past 60 years. He would have accused me of telling fairy tales. Suppose I told him about a 747 jet with its 5,000,000 parts—although no person on earth knows how to make a single one of them. Think of the immense number of jobs spawned by the aircraft industry, and their enormous variety. Opportunities unlimited, unknown to my great-grandfather.

I have two great-grandchildren. If we keep socialism from destroying freedom, their opportunities will be as astonishing to us as ours would have been to my forefather!

Margaret Cameron in her book, The Seven Great Purposes, brilliantly phrased the point I wish to make: “Give unto each his opportunity to grow and to build for progress. Freedom to strive is the one right inherent in existence, the strong and the weak each following his own purpose, with all his force, to the one great end. And he who binds and limits his brother’s purpose binds himself now and hereafter. But he who extends his brother’s opportunity, builds for eternity.”

All that he owes to chance. Philosophers have interesting and varying views on Chance due, no doubt, to the way the eye is cast. There’s a negative side. Thus Thomas Fuller: “He who trusts all things to Chance, makes a Lottery of his Life.”

Many side with Voltaire: “Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without cause.” All things, from blades of grass to the wisest humans, sprout from a variety of causes—mostly unknown.

There is, however, a sensible side to Chance. Wrote Lord Halifax: “He that leaveth nothing to Chance will do few things ill, but he will do very few things.” How limited my own life would be had not countless happenings—the unexpected or Chances—blest my actions. Ever so many can make this same confession.

One of the best statements was written by Terence over 2,000 years ago. This man was born a slave but given his freedom by a Roman Senator. Terence became a great writer of comedy, several of his works well-known to this day. He had good reason to write: “How often things occur by the merest Chance, [his unexpected freedom] which we dared not even hope for.”

All that has been gained by the wisdom of his friends. This brings to mind a conversation of 25 years ago. I was seated next to the host of a FEE Seminar at the opening dinner. In the course of our conversation, he remarked, “Since meeting you, Leonard, I have a whole new set of friends.” Startling! “What do you mean, Don?” “Before meeting you, those in the fast set were my friends. You interested me in freedom. Now, people like these at this Seminar—freedom devotees—are my friends.”

Who are my friends? The ones who enlighten me, those individuals—past and present—whom I repeatedly quote, such as Caleb Colton, author of the above observation. These seers—and their number is legion—are graced with more common sense as related to Truth, Righteousness, Freedom than any others known to me. Wrote Samuel Coleridge: “Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”

Assume that my life had been lived without the bits of wisdom gleaned from others. I couldn’t do the multiplication table, or read, or speak more clearly than a chimpanzee.

Move to the level here at issue and imagine that I had not a single friend of my present persuasion. Such phrases as private ownership, free market, limited government wouldn’t be in my vocabulary—a politico-economic dunce!

Joseph Story (1779–1845), Associate Justice, U.S. Supreme Court, wrote: “Human wisdom is the aggregate of all human experience, constantly accumulating, selecting and reorganizing its own materials.”

The folly of his enemies. I would phrase this final point thus: Subtract from the great man all he might learn from the follies of freedom’s adversaries—socialists—and this will lower him to a mental midget. If aspiring to true greatness, we will “love our enemies” for the help they give us!

Never, under any circumstances, think of socialists as “enemies.” Such derogatory assessments cause them to regard lovers of liberty as enemies and to look upon their own errors as truth. It hardens them in their ways! What then? Dismiss from our talk, writing, even thinking, the “thou fool” folly and proceed impersonally—dealing solely with false notions. If we are skillful enough in explaining the fallacy of the “we-can-run-your-life-better-than-you-can” syndrome, they may do a turnabout. Or try silence! Silence, under certain provocations, is truly golden.

Overcoming false notions is an intellectual imperative; they are the steppingstones to truth. Acts of overcoming pave the road to becoming—man’s purpose. All history attests to this. Were there no intellectual obstacles—no mishmash, all sublime—there would be no activity above the shoulders. Humanity dying on the vine!

Wrote William Cullen Bryant:

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,

Th’ eternal years of God are hers;

But Error, wounded, writhes in vain,

And dies among his worshippers.

The one great key to greatness? See John 8:32: And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

19

LIVING THE GOOD LIFE

Be such a man and live such a life, that if every man were such as you, and every life a life like yours, this earth would be God’s Paradise.

—PHILLIPS BROOKS

The Encyclopedia writes of the Episcopal Bishop, Phillips Brooks (1835–93): “. . . a gifted preacher and a man of broad and generous sympathies, fine spiritual qualities and unusual charm, he won wide esteem. . . . The Christmas Hymn, O Little Town of Bethlehem was written by him.”

Assume that I fervently strive every day of my life to attain the perfection Bishop Brooks suggests—righteousness and perfection in everything my only guideline. Were all on earth to similarly strive, would our world be God’s Paradise? An emphatic “No”! Nor, in my view, would the Bishop disagree. A man of his wisdom could have had no more in mind than a lofty goal such as was brilliantly expressed by an Englishman, Philip Chesterfield (1694–1773): “Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it, than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.”

With the above as background, it seems appropriate to reflect on the means—thoughts and actions—which will move us in the direction of an unattainable perfection.

Years ago I read a book by a popular college professor in which he argued that competition was antagonistic to cooperation. Away with the former that the latter might prevail! What a fallacy. For the truth is that we compete in order to cooperate!

Example: When the bakers of bread compete in quality and price, it is easy for us consumers to decide whose bread to buy, that is, with which baker we will cooperate. In the absence of competition, all of us would be stranded at the level of “take it, or leave it.” When the free and unfettered market prevails, there is a race for excellence. Indeed, even today with all the obstacles—governmental interventions—the game of economic leapfrogging goes on at whirlwind pace.

Senator Clay had this to say before the U.S. Senate in 1832: “Of all human powers operating on the affairs of mankind, none is greater than that of competition.” Seven years earlier, W. S. Landor wrote: “Competition is as wholesome in religion as in commerce.” Briefly, competition is essential to progress in whatever field of endeavor!

Contrary to liberal mythology, competition is as necessary to intellectual, moral and spiritual growth as it is to an abundance of goods and services. In the absence of competition, cooperation in learning and explaining freedom is impossible. Leapfrogging—out-doing each other—is a procedure which we must believe in and practice.

When it comes to acquiring goods and services, we have two guidelines: (1) our desire for this or that and (2) the price. When desire exceeds the price, we buy; when the price is too high for our desire, no transaction.

Now for an unorthodox question: Do prices furnish a clue as to freedom’s advance or decline? Affirmative! Reflect on present trends—away from freedom and toward socialism—governmental interventionism. What has happened to prices? The dollar buys less and less as political know-it-all-ness takes over.

No one likes the result of this vandalism but few there are who relate the real cause to the plight so greatly deplored. Were the ever-increasing prices recognized as the result of this social error, there would be two intelligent decisions: (1) we’d resist omnipotent government and, (2) make a devoted effort to remove the cause by restoring government to the limited role our Founding Fathers prescribed. Pricing gives valuable instruction!

The nearest approach to our lofty goal had its inception in the Declaration, thanks to our Founding Fathers. Some years after its signing, that great English statesman, Edmund Burke, wrote that “it was a partnership between the living and the dead and the yet unborn.” And how “the yet unborn” were graced by their noble efforts—some of us two centuries later being their partners. And proud of it!

It is now appropriate to identify the adversaries of our lofty goal—living the good life—and ask why they oppose. There are the millions who side with socialism, partially or entirely, many of whom would be offended to be so labeled. And there are more reasons than individuals for this intellectual delinquency. The explanation for this shiftless shifting? Most people are not guided by a sound premise—a fundamental point of reference, their behaviors being in response to this or that petty urge. The reasons for socialistic nonsense are in the millions, so a few samplings must suffice.

Perhaps the most important reason is a failure correctly to interpret self-interest. This term is not included in any of my quotation books and the dictionary defines it as “selfishness; to one’s own advantage at the expense of others.” This tyranny of words causes nearly everyone to think of looking after self as sinning against all others—a societal crime. A great boon to mankind would be a general understanding of the real meaning of self-interest as set forth by William Graham Sumner: “Making the most of one’s self. . . is not a separate thing from filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.”

Most of these millions who believe that looking after self is a sin against others, advocate and participate in the greatest of all societal sins: political thievery. This is the robbing-Peter-to-pay-Paul way of life. They do untold damage to others as they “think” they help themselves. Result? Dictocrats in the driver’s seat, inflation and so on—the road to enslavement.

Every act—no exception—which inhibits the free flow of creative action is part and parcel of this degradation. No need to enumerate the ways honest competition is disparaged and thwarted. Anyone who cannot readily recognize such hindrances to material, intellectual, moral and spiritual growth simply lacks the capacity to learn. And what a vast number that is!

A famous historian, John Neville Figgis, wrote: “Religious liberty is the residual legatee of religious quarrels.” The terrible wars of the 16th and 17th centuries had been fought to the point of total exhaustion; there were no victors, only survivors. It began to dawn on a few thinkers on both sides that there was a better way to advance the faith: separate church and state and let people come to God in their own way. This idea is the first article in our own Bill of Rights.

What lesson does this teach us? Forgo denunciation of today’s socialists. Don’t lock horns with them. Let their nonsense run rampant! “Resist not evil”—give them nothing to scratch against. Leave them free to babble—free in their efforts to make carbon copies of their depraved selves. Their quarrels are the rope they’ll hang themselves on, thereby allowing liberty to prevail.

For proof that this tactic is efficacious, merely note the turnabout in thinking presently under way. Ever so many, formerly indifferent or leaners toward socialism, are coming to themselves. Gas lines, all sorts of shortages, rapidly rising prices, inflation and countless other obstructions to the good life, are having a remarkable effect—an awakening!

Wrote Emerson: “Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being.” In other words, the future is uncertain. We build up our being in order to better cope with change. And essential for the building and subsequent adjustment is the freedom to choose and to act. Pleasant surprises? Beyond our power to imagine!

20

INFLUENCE: ITS ETERNAL RADIATION

Influence never dies; every act, emotion, look and word makes influence tell for good or evil, happiness or woe, through the long future of eternity.

—THOMAS à KEMPIS

Thomas à Kempis, the brilliant German monk (1380–1471) was not suggesting that a majority movement would lead to mankind’s emergence. On the contrary, he referred to the influence each individual exerts.

Calvin Coolidge observed that “Men do not make laws. They do but discover them.” Thomas à Kempis discovered a law of human action: every individual act—wise or stupid, good or bad—initiates an imperishable influence that goes on forever.

Here’s how that law is described by a distinguished scientist, Donald Hatch Andrews:

If I wave my hand . . . it not only moves the leaves on the trees outside, creates ripples down on the water of the bay, but also moves the moon; the sun feels this motion, and the stars; even the farthest nebula will tremble because of the motion of my hand. As a famous physicist put it, every heartbeat is felt through the entire universe.

. . . there is in each of us an eternal core, call it dynamic force, call it personality, call it spirit or soul or symphony or what you will; there is in us this core, this director of our symphony of life that somehow has an invariance that transcends the changes of space and time. And in this way, we can understand that in mortal life there is this immortal reality that merges with the eternal.[1]

The universe is an integer, whether we move from large to small or small to large: There is no fraction so small that it is not divisible, and no number so large that it cannot be doubled.

The fact that every act and thought—be it good or bad—extends its influence not only in today’s world but forever is, by and large, incomprehensible. Thus truth is foreign to—beyond the range of—day-to-day experiences, even normal imagination. Regretfully, a fantasy! Eternal radiation of our behaviors are thus “far-fetched,” no less so than a wave of the hand radiates throughout the universe.

What a blessing to the future of mankind were a few of us to grasp the significance of today’s intellectual, moral and spiritual example!

How comprehend the seemingly incomprehensible fact, that every action we take now reverberates throughout endless time? Merely reflect on how present parental behavior influences the lives of their children. When parental example is bad, indecent, untidy, slovenly, the child, more than likely, will be a reflection thereof.

But not always! Thank goodness, there are bright-eyed youngsters who are not victimized by parental delinquency. They respond to the good example of authors or neighbors or teachers. The ones who really contribute to human advancement are parents and children who are attracted to and abide by righteousness—the seekers of truth!

To the German author, Jean Paul Richter (1763–1825), we are indebted for this profound thought: “The words that a father speaks to his children in the privacy of home are not heard by the world, but, as in whispering galleries, they are clearly heard at the end, and by posterity.” Whatever we do now goes on forever—shapes the future!

Is it not obvious that most individuals are unaware of having any influence beyond their immediate surroundings and their mortal moments? Blind to reality! Assume a general awakening among mankind to the fact that their behaviors today radiate eternally—the future of mankind deteriorating or improving as a consequence of present actions. What a glorious revolution this would be, another renaissance, responsibility restored to its rightful place, namely, on the shoulders of those graced with a discovery of how influence can work its wonders! Given this new sense of responsibility, men will act accordingly.

To this line of reasoning, many will respond that the millions who believe in socialism will wreak their damage on the future no less than those who begin a righteous way of life will confer their enlightenment. Wrong! The socialists among us have for several decades been doing all in their power to destroy the America that was. They have shot their bolt; they can do no more than they are doing now.

Out of the blue, so to speak, will bloom the new, enlightened and rewarding opposition causing the forces of socialism to fade into futility. Success, however, depends on consistency—no leaks, no “buts.” And such consistency requires that devotees of freedom reason logically and deductively from a basic premise. That noted philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), had a premise which he called “good will.” By “will” he meant an ability to rationally will one’s own actions. And the adjective “good” could be used only if the individual could apply the principle of universality to his maxims.

The meaning of that last line evaded me until I tested it on two simple maxims:

1—Do I have a right to my life, livelihood, liberty? Yes, that is good for I can concede that right to all human beings—universality!

2—Do I have the right to take the life, livelihood, liberty of another? Only if I can concede that same right to everyone else. Can I? No! Ergo, it is not good!

With the above guideline, one will never do anything which, if everyone did it, would bring on chaos—socialism and the like.

For proof that superb thoughts, writings, actions radiate today, tomorrow and forever, observe that we are blest with the works of the world’s first civilization—the Sumerians.[2] The moral teachings of Confucius—25 centuries ago—enlighten us.

Move on five centuries to Jesus of Nazareth. Doubtless the greatest radiation of righteousness in all history!

We do not know the names of ever so many other contributors to peace on earth and good will toward men, but some are familiar. Just a few examples of exemplarity are Adam Smith, George Washington, Goethe, Edmund Burke, Bastiat, Emerson, Tennyson, Herbert Spencer, Lincoln, Ortega y Gasset, Edison, Kettering, Mises—on and on.

During the past fifty years I have become personally acquainted with many individuals in this and other nations whose works for freedom will radiate through the ages. Why am I writing this brevity on influence? Because the wisdom of Thomas à Kempis of five centuries ago radiates to me and others. To paraphrase Socrates:

Let him who would improve the world, first improve himself—and thus serve eternity!

[1] See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.

[2] See “Eruptions of Truth” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1977), pp. 22–29.

21

FINDING ONE’S DUTY

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

—GOETHE

The late Robert A. Millikan, Chairman, Executive Council, California Institute of Technology, and a former FEE Trustee, corrected a common misunderstanding of duty when he wrote: “Duty has nothing to do with what somebody else conceives to be for the common good.”

There are far more conceptions of what constitutes “the common good” than there are people. Why more? Each individual’s assessment varies with every intellectual step he takes, backward or forward. Billions of changing perspectives! One’s duty in life is never to be found by latching onto someone else’s idea or notion of the common good; duty lies in another dimension.

And what might man’s real dimension be? Goethe gave the correct answer: a human being must live “within the limits of his comprehension.” Reflect on the difference between the infinite complexities of the universe and finite man’s understanding. More fantastic than the difference between an atom and a galaxy!

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe. Those who deny that there’s anything in the universe intellectually above that tiny lump atop their shoulders are, they “think,” the sole solvers of universal problems. Such is the affliction of ignorance, a fact now and then recognized as in these samplings.

Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has “never heard of.”

—Ralph Barton Perry

Better be unborn than untaught for ignorance is the root of misfortune.

—Plato

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.

—Amos Bronson Alcott

It is impossible to make people understand their ignorance; for it requires knowledge to perceive it, and therefore he that can perceive it hath it not.

—Jeremy Taylor

By ignorance is pride increased; those most assume who know the least.

—John Gay

The most bothersome, frustrating and destructive of all are the millions of dictocrats who make no attempt to solve the problems of the universe but who sincerely believe that it is their duty to solve your and my problems. Think of the countless problems each individual has and then attempt the impossible task of multiplying them by the total population. The problems? Here are a few: the kind of schooling we may have; minimum wages and maximum hours of work; what and with whom we may exchange; at what age and at what wage one may be employed; prices one may charge; on and on, from seat belts, to how many dogs one may own.

Why emphasize the sincerity of these people who would run our lives? Those who are unaware of how little they know lack any understanding that restrains know-it-all-ness. Thus blinded, they sincerely believe it is their duty to make others carbon copies of themselves. Nor do they see any wrong in using force to implement their untenable ambitions. Ridding ourselves of the burden of such blindness is the major societal problem of our time!

Find out what he has to do and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension. Why is this admonition rarely observed? An all too common fault among us is an unlimited appetite for attainment without a corresponding enthusiasm for the comprehension which must underlie that attainment. The only remedy is to grasp and abide by the law of cause and effect, explained so brilliantly by Emerson: “Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed, for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.”

Briefly, most people not only wish for but believe they can have the fruits of life—enlightenment or prosperity or freedom or other rewarding desiderata—without planting any seeds. They pursue the idle day dream of something for nothing.

The enormous scale of the something-for-nothing syndrome, observed in all walks of life, accounts for our millions of dictocrats; it accounts for inflation and moral decline. Evil on the rampage! To reverse this decay is our problem—our duty. Hopeless? Just the opposite: hopeful! Wrote the American clergyman, E. H. Chapin (1814–80): “In the history of man it has been very generally the case, that when evils have become insufferable, they have reached the point of cure.”

Have the evil consequences of socialism become insufferable? Yes, even socialists—the millions of Americans who believe in, advocate and practice one or more socialistic notions—vigorously complain about rising prices, inflation, gasoline and other shortages and so on. Insufferable evils even to the perpetrators thereof!

We have, indeed, reached “the point of cure.” Now to the pertinent question: What is the cure? It is, like so many problems, as simple to state as it is difficult to achieve. The simple answer? To restrain ourselves within the limits of our comprehension! Why is this difficult? Because in the clear light of understanding, we must confess just how little we know, whereas in the darkness of ignorance we may pretend to know it all.

The antidote for know-it-all-ness—the root from which socialism grows—is an acute and abiding comprehension of how little we know. Such humility—a moral imperative—sets the stage for freedom. Standing in awe of all creation is the key to human creativity. So, how become aware of how little we know?

Here is the formula—simple as the ABCs! Visualize a sheet of black, infinite in dimensions. Now, assume that ten years ago I had achieved that measure of awareness, perception, consciousness symbolized by the small circle. A rather wise assessment of self! However, in the ensuing decade awareness has had a growth symbolized by the large circle. Merely note how much more darkness I am exposed to than earlier. The more one knows the more is he aware of how little he knows! This is known as Socratic wisdom.

We Americans who would do our duty must learn from the past in order to overcome present mistakes and assure freedom for the future. This past, present and future sequence is remindful of a kindergarten maxim:

Good, better, best;

Never let it rest

Until good becomes better

And better becomes best.

Reflection brings enlightenment:

1—Our society was made good by the Declaration of Independence—unseating government as the endower of our rights and placing the Creator in that role.

2—Our society was made better by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—limiting government more appropriately than ever before in all history.

3—Our society became the best ever known by reason of the good and the better: a self-reliant citizenry!

No question about it, what happened two centuries ago was extraordinary. It was nothing less than an interception of Divine Providence on the part of a few, with resulting benefits for the many. Then, following a century of experiencing the blessings flowing from the freedom way, Americans have made a U-turn down the opposite road toward the planned economy and the welfare state: socialism.

It is beginning to dawn on me that this turnabout may be a blessing in disguise. Wrote the English poet, Edward Young: “How blessings brighten as they take their flight.”

To a few, the blessings, as they recede, are becoming ever brighter. The likely result? There will be a renewal of interest in intercepting Divine Providence. There can be a return to what was once extraordinary only by extraordinary intellectual, moral and spiritual ascendancy on your and my part.

That our country may again be blest with freedom, let us be among those with unblemished hope. Wrote Alexander Pope:

Hope springs eternal in the human breast;

Man never is, but always to be blest.

22

SO HIGHLY ENDOWED

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness . . .

—THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE, 1776

I’ve sometimes wondered how differently we might have evolved had the Creator lavishly endowed us with property rather than the liberty to pursue happiness and to make the most of our lives in a world of scarce and limited resources. In such ponderings, I begin to understand the awful temptation of those possessing fewer worldly goods to envy the ones who have more. And I can better understand the caution of some wealthy individuals whose prime concern is to so protect their current holdings as to yield a comfortable life annuity.

The more deeply I’ve reflected on such questions, the more it seems to me that the road to socialism may be strewn with endowments. In the preface to his play, Knickerbocker Holiday, the late Maxwell Anderson concluded that: “The guaranteed life turns out to be not only not free—it’s not safe.” His was one of the early warnings against the consequences of the Welfare State, consequences increasingly obvious in our more advanced “Age of Inflation.”

To be a ward of the state can be a threat to the creative growth and upward evolvement of the individual so sheltered, to say nothing of the untold harm to those otherwise productive persons taxed to provide such handouts. And the tendency is to drive such a society away from competitive private enterprise and freedom—toward socialism and slavery.

I’m reminded of a time several years ago when FEE faced serious financial difficulties. This was a matter of grave concern at an annual meeting of the Board of Trustees. One proposal the Trustees considered was to launch a fund drive to establish an endowment, the earnings or interest from which would be sufficient to cover the Foundation’s operating expenses.

I argued vigorously against this proposal, contending that we of the FEE staff should face the daily challenge of performing well enough to earn our way—to attract financial support by our efforts, or to go out of business. It seemed to me that we needed such an incentive.

One of the Trustees then came to my rescue, citing an example he’d known of a church so highly endowed that the interest covered all expenses. The congregation had grown lax and indifferent, and the minister was preaching the gospel of socialism.

The point is that FEE was not then rescued by an endowment; we simply worked our way out of that financial difficulty, as we had done before and have done since. I do not pretend here a total indifference about our obligations to our suppliers or for the fulfillment of outstanding subscriptions. We try to maintain a reserve to cover contingencies. But a substantial endowment? Would we survive such a situation? I don’t know.

For the sake of argument, let us stretch the imagination and assume that FEE’s efforts had been so favorably received as to attract such funding. Suppose we did have a $10,000,000 reserve, relieving us of the financial pressure or incentive to meet a daily market demand.

What, in this circumstance, would be our incentive? Precisely the same as it was at the beginning—and always should be—the love of freedom for its own sake. Work on freedom’s behalf regardless of obstacles—financial or otherwise!

Given this premise, how should we conduct ourselves? The only sensible answer: We should continue FEE’s 34-year-old effort to generate an improved understanding and explanation of freedom. Let nothing stand in the way—regardless of how generous or skimpy the financial support. Our role as full-time workers is to serve as aides to all others whose aims parallel ours. It is research into this philosophy of freedom, refinement in the phrasing of this philosophy, bringing the wisdom of past and present to everyone who is interested. Briefly, our ambition is to become a good and faithful servant of The Creator, to aid in creation at the human level, to serve ourselves by serving you.

And what of your role? How best may you—having other and necessary occupations—participate in the greatest contest of all time—freedom versus socialism? There are ever so many ways. Among them:

1—Share your ideas with us. Hopefully, they may surpass our offerings, in which case we will share them with many thousands.

2—As for sharing such affluence as you possess, let your judgment and not ours be the guide. Large contributions make it possible to send all FEE material to nearly 50,000 individuals, all of whom are splendid workers in the vineyard but some of whom are unable to lend a hand financially.

3—Increasing financial assistance makes possible, (1) the expansion of our activities, (2) more gifts to educational institutions and (3) the pricing of our books, seminars and other services at an attractive level.

4—Whether or not you’re in a position to lend a hand financially, remember that it is your deep interest in freedom that really matters.

We are fortunate to have been so highly endowed, not so much with property as with the liberty to make the most of our opportunities and our lives in free and open competition.

23

TOWARD THE IDEAL

Man can never come to his ideal standard. It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher as it goes from strength to strength, still upward and onward. The wisest and greatest men are ever the most modest.

—MARGARET FULLER

Margaret Fuller (1810–50), according to my Encyclopedia “. . . was one of the most influential personalities of her day in American literary circles.” It was Miss Fuller who translated into English Eckermann’s Conversations With Goethe, one of the most interesting books I have ever read. Among the gems: “Nature understands no jesting. She is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises, and only to the apt, the pure and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.”

It is the wisest and greatest among us who are “the apt, the pure and the true.” Thus qualified, they become aware that only as they increase their finite ability to intercept the revelations of Infinite Consciousness will Nature unlock her mysteries for them. This awareness is the source of modesty—the humble and the contrite heart.

Other persons—the vast majority—are blind to the fact that their bounties originate with Nature [God]. As a consequence, they ascribe their welfare to the political planners and bureaucrats who are blind as themselves—but claim omniscience. “Blind leaders of the blind.” (Matthew 15:14)

It is this false self-assessment and misplaced confidence that, more than anything else, accounts for the world’s woes throughout history and for our own slump into socialism. Is it any wonder that Nature despises and penalizes such arrogance!

Men can never come to the ideal standard. Why is the ideal never attained? It is not supposed to be! To illustrate: Assume that a carrot is the ideal eatable item of a mule. Hang it on a stick fastened to his neck and projected two feet in front of his mouth. Regardless of his anxious movement—slow or fast—he will never reach his eatable ideal.

The ideal is a Heavenly lodestar for the advancement of humanity. Were it ever attained all progress and emergence would be at an end. To concede the ideal’s attainability is to deny the whole concept of Infinite Consciousness. If I may descend to the vernacular, the ideal is God’s come-on.

It is the nature of the immortal spirit to raise that standard higher and higher. It is otherwise with the above-mentioned mule. Noting no success in reaching that carrot, this mule—not the brightest of beasts—would soon abandon his eatable ideal.

The same can be said for ever so many freedom devotees. When the ideal for which we strive—the perfect society—is observed to be out of reach, they throw in the sponge—call it quits. They fail to recognize that this is the way it should be. Perfection is the unattainable goal—the intellectual, moral and spiritual lodestar. Wrote Chesterfield: “Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.”

The above is a wise guideline except I would omit “most.” Samuel Johnson came nearer to this truth: “It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be attained.”

From strength to strength. Wrote the Bard of Avon: “Oh! It is excellent to have a giant’s strength; but it is tyrannous to use it like a giant.” To grasp Shakespeare’s observation, one must be aware of the two definitions of “giant.” Says the dictionary: “a person of great intellect” and “a race of huge beings of human form who warred against the gods.” The reference here is to the Titans of Greek mythology, who rebelled unsuccessfully against the Olympians and suffered dire punishments.

It is indeed excellent to have a mighty intellect, one that towers above the mill run of mankind. When those so blest adhere strictly to moral principles—the Golden Rule and the Ten Commandments—it is their leadership that resurrects—brings back to life—humanity from its countless falls. Our ambition should be to advance from today’s strength, whatever its level, to a greater strength tomorrow.

However, it is ambition gone blind to flout reality and rebel against the very nature of things, to “war against the gods,” as the Greeks put it. Tyranny is usurpation, a giant’s strength put to destructive uses. Today in the U.S.A. we have millions of usurpers—political giants—putting their infamous brand of strength to the destruction of freedom.

These thoughts about “from strength to strength” were not original with Margaret Fuller. She merely knew of and understood an ancient wisdom recorded about 350 B.C.: “They [seekers of Truth] go from strength to strength till each appears before God.” (Psalms 84:7) Such striving, she explained, is “the nature of the immortal spirit.” Going in this direction is progress toward the immortal or Heavenly goal.

Let me share several thoughts by those who, relative to the rest of us, qualify as “the apt, the pure and the true.”

All growth [progress] that is not toward God [Infinite Consciousness] is growing in decay.

—George Macdonald

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time, are three things that never stand still.

—Colton

Every age has its problems, by solving which, humanity is helped forward.

—Heinrich Heine

The individual and the race are always moving; and as we drift [progress] into new latitudes new lights open in the heavens more immediately over us.

—E. H. Chapin

If a man is not rising upward [progressing] to be an angel, depend upon it, he is sinking downward to be a devil.

—Coleridge

All our progress is an unfolding, like the vegetable bud. You have first an instinct, then an opinion, then a knowledge, as a plant has root, bud and fruit.

—Emerson

Nature knows no pause in progress and development, and attaches her curse to all inaction.

—Goethe

We should so live and labor in our time that what came to us as seed may go to the next generation as blossom, and what came to us as blossom may go to them as fruit. This is what we mean by progress.

—H. W. Beecher

Let us progress toward the ideal—FREEDOM. Christian Bovee (1820–1904), an author and editor, phrased our ambition thus: “Intellectually, as well as politically, the direction of all true progress is toward greater freedom, and along an endless succession of ideas.”

24

AS A MAN THINKETH

In every epoch of the world, the great events . . . is it not the arrival of a thinker?

—THOMAS CARLYLE

This Scotsman (1795–1881), regardless of his intimate friendship with the Sage of Concord, was not of Emerson’s or our faith. He believed in a strong paternalistic government! Further, his assessment of an “epoch” was far from the dictionary’s definition: “The beginning of a new and important period in history.” What was important to him is distressing to me. But we have been taught that “As a man thinketh in his heart so is he,” and Carlyle’s thinking was assuredly from the heart. And his statement, assuming one’s ambition for a free society, is a gem! So here’s something from my heart.

What a man thinketh is the genesis of progress of every kind, be it economic, intellectual, moral or spiritual. Here is how C. F. Kettering explained the genesis of human advancement: “Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.”

In 1934 Boss Ket wrote a brevity entitled The Birth Of An Idea, in which he reports that the radio had its beginning 2,500 years ago. “Thales of Miletus, found that by rubbing amber he produced a force that would pick up straws.” Later, Queen Elizabeth’s physician, Sir William Gilbert, did some more thinking and experimenting and called the phenomenon electricity.

Progress over the ages, a man here and there entertaining a new thought. Benjamin Franklin with his kite, and many others since his time, have contributed to the millions of wonders now being wrought by electrical energy!

That remarkable explanation by Kettering as to the genesis of human evolution assuredly was rooted in thoughts comparable to these, and the examples of each which follow:

In dreaming, the soul doth often times foretell what is to come.

—François Rabelais

In belief lies the secret of all possible exertions.

—Bulwer-Lytton

The highest belief in the spiritual life is to be able always and in all things to say, “Not my will, but thine be done.”

—Tryon Edwards

Leonardo da Vinci, more than five centuries ago, dreamed that someday man might fly like birds. He even designed and built a winged contraption but it couldn’t get off the ground. Today? His dream has come to touch the sky—today’s miraculous airplanes!

Alexander Graham Bell noted that the human voice could be transmitted about 50 yards at the speed of sound. He believed that the yardage and speed could be fantastically improved. In 1864 he invented the telephone, an instrument that converts the voice into electric impulses. Result? Around the earth in one-seventh of a second!

Perhaps no one can identify the man who first proclaimed “Thy will be done”—God’s Will. Whoever that first man might have been, he was graced with an elevated thought, which was eventually responsible for that wisdom in the Declaration of Independence: “Men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights . . .” This unseated government as the endower of our rights to life and liberty and placed the Creator there—unquestionably the greatest step in politico-economic philosophy ever taken!

That heroic little band of men and women scattered over the centuries, who have dreamed and believed and willed, qualify as the initiators of human progress. They are the self-starters who have set the rest of us in motion. Among the millions times millions of innovations that have blest humanity is the self-starter on your automobile. Not only is this a good example to make the point here at issue but it recalls a vivid personal experience. Sixty-five years ago, when I was cranking by hand to start a 1912 Overland, the engine backfired breaking my wrist. It is easy to see why I have a deep appreciation for this remarkable product of those who think originally and aright.

The persons who think ahead are the self-starters who have set the rest of us in motion. Merely reflect on the hundreds of thousands of others who, beginning with Wilbur and Orville Wright, have made contributions to our present chariots of the air. Leonardo da Vinci had no more idea of what would result from his start than you or I have of what will grace the lives of our descendants 500 years hence—assuming a return to freedom!

Had a 747 jet flown over Leonardo’s home, he would have thought the Heavens were falling. And he would not have been far wrong! Why this assertion? Most people believe that any new idea they experience has its origin in them. Not so! At best we can prepare our minds to receive an idea, but the idea itself is in the nature of an interception of Divine Omnipotence—Creation. To avoid the affliction of the Great I-Am, let us give credit where credit is due, namely, the Heavenly Source. From this Source, not only the self-starters but all others are privileged to draw.

Ever so many seekers of political office are among the great I-Ams. They actually “think” that we know not how to run our lives; but they never doubt that we are wise enough to select them as our masters! Confusion worse confounded! There may be a remedy for this double-barreled confusion by seeking the relationship between (1) giving credit where due and (2) charity.

True charity goes far beyond material gifts such as food or cash or other life-sustaining items. High in the realm of charity is the giving of credit to those millions who have made and are making our lives possible. It is, without question, others who give us opportunities, challenges, the road toward truth. Our debt to others is beyond our power to measure—an intellectual obligation we should never let go unpaid!

The problem is to rid ourselves of egotism—the I-am-it syndrome. Giving credit where it is due is the initial step—opening the door, as we say, to a new mental stance. Success depends on daily practice, a difficult discipline, for it requires the riddance of old habits. The enlightenments that hopefully may follow:

- Gone is the notion that I am the Source.

- Welcome is the good news, namely, that I am the beneficiary of thoughts, goods and services conferred by others.

- My new role is to serve others as they serve me—even better if possible.

Thank Heaven for the arrival, every now and then, of a freedom thinker. May each of us strive as best we can to be his ideological companion!

25

THE POWER OF TOMORROW

Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow, when we are building up our being.

—EMERSON

When life is improving day-in-and-day-out, it will, regardless of one’s endeavor, be filled with surprises. New moods and pleasures that cannot be foreseen today will grace our lives; every tomorrow will be freshly enriched. Is such a hopeful prognosis credible?

This brevity will be limited to a few comments on FEE’s tomorrow. When we of the present Senior Staff no longer exist as working teammates—when we have passed on—what will be the fate of FEE? Will its work on behalf of the freedom way of life be at an end—passe!—and, if not, what are the possibilities of its being ever so much better than now? Briefly, what must we do now to assure a glorious tomorrow?

Evidence abounds that God—Creation, Infinite Consciousness—endows everyone with the potential virtue, temper, understanding, taste that lifts each life into that exalted role we are ordained to fill. Several thoughts that such a belief inspires:

- Most people are unaware of their potentialities. To use Carl Jung’s term, each of us has a partner, “The Undiscovered Self.”[1]

- Among those who are aware, ever so many fail to strive for discovery. Wealth, fame, notoriety, amusements and the like are higher ambitions!

- No two individuals have identical potentialities. Indeed, the intellectual gates are continually opening—changing, advancing—to those who are ardent seekers of Truth.

- All that is attained in the higher realms of life is ordained by Creation—no exception!

There is only one appropriate aim for those of us presently on the Senior Staff: to so conduct ourselves that we shall have superior successors! The Sage of Concord gave the only workable formula: “When we are building up our beings.” He had this to say on another occasion: “God offers to every mind its choice between Truth and repose. Take which you please, you can never have both.”

The ardent seeking of Truth and sharing one’s findings with nary a deviation—no leaks or “buts”—with the few who may be interested must be our guideline. There can be no hankering for repose—hibernation—the all-too-common trait. Awake for freedom’s sake!

It is my fervent belief, based on 46 years of experience, that what happens Staff-wise and otherwise, is over and beyond our personal control. We are not in charge of the future. As related to our chosen endeavor, the future is determined by our present performances. If we are building up our individual beings—which to the best of our ability we are—what follows is ordained by a Source far over and beyond the human.

Time after time I have wondered who would succeed this or that excellent Staff member who retired or accepted a higher paying position. But experience has taught me to look upon that anxiety as inept. On every occasion, and as if by magic, superior individuals have put in an appearance. Never have I had associates to equal the present FEE staff, when it comes to understanding the freedom philosophy and dedication to its advancement.

The power of tomorrow, as related to human liberty, is determined by our power on its behalf today. Let us not interfere or try to out-think the Great Ordainer. Be assured of a series of surprises—pleasant and rewarding ones!

[1] New American Library, A Mentor Book, 1958.

How Do We Know?

Leonard E. Read

1981

TO

. . . one who seeks truth and thus attains freedom

1

HOW DO WE KNOW?

He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his view; and he who profits of a superior understanding, raises his powers to a level with the height of the superior understanding he unites with.

—EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke (1729–97) here gives me reason enough for so frequently calling to my aid this great statesman and source of wisdom. He expertly counsels how understanding—knowledge—can be achieved.

All wish to possess knowledge, but few, comparatively speaking, are willing to pay the price.

—Juvenal

In my view, this Roman poet (60–140), over-assessed the citizens of Italy. Never in Italy or any other country, during the last twenty centuries, has everyone wished to possess knowledge. To many millions, ignorance is bliss; they are happy in their doldrums—“low spirits.”

However, this poet was absolutely right in asserting that few are willing to pay the price for knowledge. The price?

Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be attained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and more than all, must be prayed for.

—Thomas Arnold

If an individual fails to work for an ever-increasing understanding of ideas not yet known, he or she lapses into a stalemate—that is, a no-improvement—category. Asleep at the switch, as we say!

All growth depends on activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work. Work is not a curse; it is the prerogative of intelligence, the only means to manhood, and the measure of civilization.

—Calvin Coolidge

Everyone who pursues an improved understanding of how freedom works its wonders makes a contribution to a higher-grade civilization. More people than now must make freedom their lifelong study.

The man who has acquired the habit of study, though for only one hour every day in the year, and keeps to the one thing studied till it is mastered, will be startled to see the progress he has made at the end of a twelvemonth.

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Among the thousands of freedom devotees known to me, I am unaware of a single one who has mastered Creation at the human level, and it is my view that no mortal being ever will. Otherwise, this English novelist’s observation confirms my own, namely, the enormous advancement in an improved understanding of liberty made possible by daily study. These individuals attain an attractive status. Others seek their tutorship. This is the only way learning is advanced!

The English educator, Thomas Arnold (1795–1842), tells us that knowledge must be “worked for,” and “thought for.” And there is another “must,” namely, knowledge “must be prayed for.”

Prayer is not eloquence, but earnestness; not the definition of helplessness, but the feeling of it; not figures of speech, but earnestness of soul.

—Hannah More

“Eloquence” has two meanings: (1) the favorable kind: “articulate, fluent, smooth-spoken” and (2) “passionate, glib, silver-tongued, weak.” The English author, More, used “eloquence” in the derogatory sense, that is, as the opposite of “earnestness.” Those who are truly earnest in the pursuit of freedom more often than not find the means to such a glorious end. If not, they create their own means, and they succeed in their explanations.

Is not prayer a study of truth, a sally of the soul into the unfound infinite? No man ever prayed heartily without learning something.

—Emerson

The Sage of Concord stresses the word “heartily,” meaning “from the whole heart.” This is to be distinguished from prayers “repeated by rote”—the copycat variety—imitation. Let us every day of every year say our prayers for a return to freedom, and heartily.

I am often criticized—in a friendly way—for so copiously quoting those whose wisdom is far superior to mine, Edmund Burke, for instance. “Why don’t you confine yourself to your own thinking?” My reason? Most individuals do not have available to them such resources as are available to us at FEE. So why not share the wisdom of seers—those who have seen what most of us have not—with freedom aspirants!

Now to “How Do We Know?” that is, become more knowledgeable? Unquestionably, the first step is to become sharply aware of how little we know. The know-it-all is a know-nothing! The more we practice what we know, the more shall we know what to practice. If we have an awareness of how freedom works its miracles, we will, without question, become a freedom practitioner!

The above is consistent with Burke’s excellent knowledge, “He who calls in the aid of an equal understanding, doubles his view.”

In many things, it is not well to say, “know thyself”; it is better to say, “know others.”

—Menander

How to double our knowledge? Share and share alike!

To comprehend a man’s life it is necessary to know not merely what he does, but also what he purposely leaves undone. There is a limit to the work that can be got out of a human body or a human brain, and he is a wise man who wastes no energy on pursuits for which he is not fitted; and he is still wiser who, from among the things that he can do well, chooses and resolutely follows the best.

—Gladstone

Reflect on the countless pursuits for which each of us is “not fitted.” I, for instance, have no competence as an astronomer, a singer or composer of music, these three being among thousands of my incompetencies. Different people fall into different categories; some excel in several things, but no one excels in everything. Briefly, what any one person knows, compared to all knowledge, is infinitesimal. What we are ignorant of is beyond our powers of imagination! However, there are a goodly number of men and women whose highest aspiration is an improved understanding and explanation of freedom. Let us resolutely follow our best!

Wrote the author of a remarkable book, Human Destiny, Lecomte du Noüy: “To really participate in the Divine Task, man must place his ideals as high as possible, out of reach if necessary.” Liberty for one and all is, indeed, one of mankind’s highest ideals. Out of reach? No one does or ever has perfectly understood its miraculous potentialities. What to do? Study and discover the answer to this question: how do we know?

2

READ GOOD BOOKS FOR IMPROVED THINKING

To use books rightly, is to go to them for help; to appeal to them when our own knowledge and power fail; to be led by them into wider sight and purer conception than our own; and to receive from them the united sentence of the judges and councils of all time, against our solitary and unstable opinions.

—JOHN RUSKIN

This English critic, essayist and social reformer (1819–1900), in one of his books, gave posterity this council: “A speaker should inform his audience, at the very outset, where he stands.”

I have heeded this admonition in several hundred lectures delivered during the past 24 years. I explain that I like all kinds of weather—hot or cold, rain, sleet, snow, hail, fog, or whatever. This is my way of expressing appreciation that God, not the government, is in charge. My audiences know, at the very outset, that I espouse the freedom way of life and dislike politicians trying to run our lives. The reading of a good book improved my thinking!

Here is an outstanding example having to do with the value of good books. Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) was, according to The Columbia Encyclopedia, a “Russian philosopher and novelist, one of the world’s greatest writers.” In his book, The Law of Love and The Law of Violence, he wrote: “From the day when the first members of councils placed exterior authority higher than interior, that is to say, recognized the decisions of men united in councils as more important and more sacred than reason and conscience: on that day began lies that caused the loss of millions of human beings and which continue their unhappy work to the present day.” At the very moment I began this essay, a university professor from Wisconsin came to my desk and asked where he could find this example of Tolstoy’s wisdom. Having used this truth many times in my own books, I pointed to it in The Free Man’s Almanac. A good book of the last century was one source of a book of mine in 1974. I suspect that the professor, a great writer and freedom devotee, might include this in his next book. Observe how those of us looking for moral and politico-economic help go to books, hoping they are good. The good ones capture the wisdom of sages—present and past.

By the way, a chapter in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake, is entitled “War and Peace,” the title of a two-volume creation of Tolstoy’s. He and yours truly see eye-to-eye on this subject.

Let us not be misled that the mere reading of books will improve our thinking. Many are bad and intellectually demoralizing. Wrote the English author, John Murray (1851–1928): “A dose of poison can do its work only once, but a bad book can go on poisoning people’s minds for any length of time.”

As to length of time, Plato, the Greek philosopher of about 24 centuries ago, advanced the philosopher-king idea. Abbreviated, he said that everyone—no exception—“. . . should get up, or move, or wash, or take his meals . . . only if he has been told to do so. In a word, he should teach his soul, by long habit, never to dream of acting independently and to become utterly incapable of it.”

The same idea is to be found in a book published in 1935, Man the Unknown, by the distinguished scientist, Dr. Alexis Carrel. Most of the book is devoted to skillful and critical analysis of our decline into the planned economy and the welfare state—socialism. After enumerating ever so many advanced specializations, he observes that no one possesses all knowledge. Of course no one does, but Dr. Carrel believes a few could and should possess it all. Reflect on his solution:

In about twenty-five years of uninterrupted study, one could learn these sciences. At the age of fifty, those who have submitted themselves to this discipline could effectively direct the construction of the human being and of a civilization. . . .

We have to intervene in the fundamental organic and mental processes. These processes are man himself. But man has no independent existence. He is bound to his environment. In order to remake him, we have to transform his world. . . .

A group, although very small, is capable of eluding the harmful influence of the society of its epoch by imposing upon its members rules of conduct modeled on military or monastic discipline. . . .

Such a minority would be in a position to impose by persuasion or perhaps by force, other ways of life upon the majority. . . .

We must single out the children who are endowed with high potentialities, and develop them as completely as possible. . . .

Who are “we”? It’s a million-to-one bet that “we” would never have singled out that 12-year-old newsboy in Michigan, Thomas Alva Edison.

This is precisely the kind of moral politico-economic nonsense that is bedeviling our society today. The lesson this has to teach? Wisely choose the books we read!

The English essayist, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) had an excellent thought about good books: “Books create legacies that genius leaves mankind, to be delivered down from generation to generation, as presents to those that are yet unborn.”

Great books bring to us and our progeny the wisdom, the enlightenment, and the common sense of the profoundest thinkers of all time. A late friend of mind, Dr. Thomas Nixon Carver, Professor of Political Economy, Harvard University, gave me his judgment that “The two most important books ever written were Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and the Holy Bible.” What a boon to mankind they have been, especially in the formation of our own nation.

Let me conclude with a brilliant observation by the American divine, Henry Giles (1809–82): “The silent influence of books, is a mighty power in the world; and there is a joy in reading them with desire and enthusiasm—Silent, passive and noiseless though they may be, they yet set in action countless multitudes, and change the order of nations.”

And change the order of nations? How about the U.S.A.? Wealth of Nations had an enormous influence on our Founding Fathers. And the Holy Bible? It was responsible for overthrowing government as the endower of men’s rights and placing the Creator there! Result? For at least twelve decades, the freest nation that ever existed: Liberty for one and all!

3

THE OPPONENT OF HAPPINESS

I have never been able to conceive how any rational being could propose happiness to himself from the exercise of power over others.

—THOMAS JEFFERSON

Reflect on what a great American was Jefferson (1743–1826). My Encyclopedia gives his record:

Third president of the United States (1801–1809). A gentleman and a scholar of thorough legal and diplomatic training. Drafted the Declaration of Independence, became governor of Virginia (1779–1781), was U.S. minister to France (1785–1789), and founded the Democratic-Republican party as whose candidate he won the presidential election and became the successor of John Adams. As an opponent of the federative party he was bitterly opposed to Alexander Hamilton. During his administration occurred the war with Tripoli, the Louisiana Purchase, the reduction of the national debt, etc. He retired to his seat at Monticello in Virginia and died, as did John Adams, on Independence Day, July 4, 1826.

What an historical coincidence, these two friends passing away on the anniversary of the day they signed the Declaration of Independence! Wrote John Milton, “Death is the golden key that opens the palace of eternity.” The brilliant Goethe’s last words, as he passed to his reward in 1832, were, “Give me light.” May more of us than now be aware of and blest by the enlightenment that graced these two who shared in the founding of the greatest nation that ever existed!

Speaking of power over others, my long-time associate, Reverend Edmund Opitz, wrote: “Never advocate any more power for your best friends, than you would willingly see wielded by your worst enemies.” He would be pleased rather than offended if I rejected his wielding of power over me. The appropriate alternative? We work together by aiding each other.

Jefferson’s phrase, “power over others,” had to do with organized police force, politicians running the lives of others. In a word, coercion—a form of slavery. The world’s largest quotation book—nearly 3,000 pages, everything from “ability” to “zeal,” omits this slavish word, “coercion.” That English philosopher, Herbert Spencer, (1820–1903) gave the answer: “What is essential to the idea of a slave? We primarily think of him as one who is owned by another. . . . That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What . . . leads us to qualify our conception of the slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of self-benefit.”

Thomas Jefferson, who wrote into the Declaration of Independence “. . . that all men are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights,” were he to look down upon our present situation, would be flabbergasted, dismayed, shocked.

The idea of Creator-endowed rights is nonsense to atheists. To them, there is nothing beyond man’s earthly sojourn. There is no Heaven! However, evidence to the contrary has been growing for the past 2,000 years. I know it to be a fact!

What would shock our national hero more than anything else would be the millions of nonrational beings getting enjoyment from the exercise of power over others.

Edmund Burke had some thoughts on power:

Power gradually extirpates from the mind every humane and gentle virtue.

The greater the power, the more dangerous the abuse.

A few others:

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

—Lord Acton

Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wines the strongest heads. No man is wise enough, nor good enough, to be trusted with unlimited power.

—Caleb C. Colton

The basis of international anarchy is men’s proneness to fear and hatred. This is also the basis of economic disputes, for the love of power, which is at their root, is generally an embodiment of fear. Men desire to be in control because they are afraid that the control of others will be used unjustly to their detriment.

—Bertrand Russell

Finally, how does a rational being achieve happiness? Happiness is neither within us only, nor without us; it is the union of ourselves with Creation: Infinite Consciousness. While we finite beings can never approximate a union with the Infinite, we can continuously strive toward that goal. There is no greater source of joyousness!

The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is constructively unique in each of us. No two of us have an identical competence; indeed, each changes from day to day. It is this millions time millions of varying abilities which make the free and unfettered market a requirement for successful lives.

Is it by riches, or by virtues, that we are made happy? Wealth’s real role is to relegate mundane affairs into the past tense, that we may concentrate on living virtuous lives!

Happiness can be built only on virtue, not on power over others. The joyful life must, of necessity have for its foundation the seeking of truth!

4

RIGHTEOUSNESS LEADS TO HAPPINESS

Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires, and in having only right desires.

—SAINT AUGUSTINE

Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo, wrote his autobiography entitled Confessions about 16 centuries ago. I am reliably informed that this gem has been and still is the most widely read autobiography ever written. People respond to excellence in another.

Here, in this exemplary man’s story, we see how the law of attraction works its wonders. The lesson for those of us who work for liberty? Get so excellent in understanding and explaining the freedom philosophy that others will seek one’s tutorship. Anyone out front in any field, be it golf, astronomy or whatever, exerts an attractive force. A noted astronomer, Anthony Standen, wrote this enlightening statement:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movement of earthly bodies, too, are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[1]

It is my contention that the same law applies to human bodies as to the astronomical “earthly bodies,” the law of gravitation being one of many examples. Standen may have meant this; in any event, I believe he would agree.

True, happiness comes from having only right desires. But first, it is important to reflect on the despondency that results from wrong desires: indifference, covetousness, lust, fame.

Indifference never wrote great works, nor thought out striking inventions, nor reared the solemn architecture that awes the soul, nor breathed sublime music, nor painted glorious pictures, nor undertook heroic philanthropies. All of these and other grandeurs are never born of indifference.

The English divine, Robert South, wrote this on covetousness: “The covetous person lives as if the world were made altogether for him, and not he for the world; to take in everything and part with nothing.”

While many people deplore covetousness, few will compare it to murder, theft, adultery as an evil. Nor will they think of it as having any bearing on our current politico-economic problem. This wrong assessment may be due to the fact that “Thou shalt not covet” brings up the rear of the Mosaic thou-shalt-nots.

I suspect that the ordering of the Commandments had nothing to do with a sin-grading plan. Only one of the ten has obvious priority and it became the First Commandment. The next eight Commandments deal with conduct; they enjoin certain overt actions and forbid others. The Tenth Commandment deals with an inner attitude, a state of mind; it is more subtle than the other nine. But if we reflect on the matter, we realize that covetousness is just as deadly as the other sins—indeed, it is a spiritual defect that tends to induce the others.

Covetousness or envy generates a destructive radiation with ill effect on all it touches; it is a canker of the soul. Psychosomatic illness can be traced as much to envy as to hate, anger, worry, despondency.

But consider the social implications, the effects of envy on others. At first blush, the rich man appears not to be harmed because another covets his wealth. Envy, however, is not a benign, dormant element of the psyche; it has the same intensive force as rage, and a great deal of wisdom is required to put it down. Where understanding and self-control are lacking, the weakling will resort to thievery, embezzlement, piracy, even murder, to gratify his envy and “get his share.”

The English Quaker and American Colonist and founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn (1644–1718) grasped the point: “Covetousness is the greatest of Monsters, as well as the root of all Evil.”

When it is clear that covetousness thwarts Creation’s purpose and, thus, man’s destiny—that among the cardinal sins none is more dangerous—it surely behooves each of us to find a way to rid his or her self of this evil. I believe the way is simple to proclaim: Count your blessings! There is no room for covetousness in the heart filled with gratitude.

Now to lust, a vice akin to covetousness—“greed . . . piggishness.” Wrote the Roman naturalist, Pliny The Elder (23–79): “Lust is an enemy of the purse, a canker to the mind, a corrosive to the conscience, a weakness of the wit, a besotter [a stupefier] of the senses and, finally, a mortal bane of all the body.”

Lust stifles reason and puts passions on the rampage; the irrationality it begets is an enemy of the free and unfettered market. The victims seldom seek counsel from those who have some truth to share. Lust is, indeed, a hellish malady of the mind.

While there are ever so many derogatory habits, I shall conclude the negative phase of this commentary with fame—a passion for notoriety at the expense of righteousness. Wrote the Scottish author, Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–94): “It is for fame that men do brave actions; They are only silly fellows after all.”

Anyone who seeks fame by doing harm to his fellow men, by robbing Peter to pay Paul, or by countless other infractions of righteousness, is ignoble. Such actors fall into the “silly fellows” category. The antonym for bravery is “craven or cowardly;” traits which are infamous.

Finally, to “Happiness consists of having only right desires.” Wrote the English philosopher, Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679): “Our nature is inseparable from desires, and the mere word desire—the craving for something not possessed—implies that our present felicity is not complete.”

What are the right desires? There are many answers to this question, and each person must draw up his own list. Here is part of mine:

• A desire to grow, day-in-and-day-out, in consciousness, that is, in the perfection of self.

• A desire to know our countless blessings.

• A desire to recognize the mystery of Creation at the Heavenly and earthly levels.

• A desire to better understand and explain the freedom way of life.

• A desire to share one’s ideas with all who care to listen.

• A desire to recognize that no matter how far we advance, our felicity is never complete.

Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.

[1] See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

5

AFLAME WITH RIGHTEOUSNESS

Some nations . . . once they have grown prosperous lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which (I confess) defies analysis. For it is something one must feel and logic has no part in it.

—ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE

From the earliest years of our history America prospered. Other nations of the world whose soils were as fertile and climates as friendly as the U.S.A. were poverty-stricken and they wondered why America flourished. Many governments sent commissions here to find the answer. All returned to their homelands with the wrong answers. It was only that French statesman, Tocqueville (1805–59) who, when visiting here, found the right answer:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.[1]

And logic has no part in it. I am reminded of Charles F. Kettering’s remark: “Logic is an organized way of going wrong with confidence.”

No question about it, our Constitution was excellent as was the Bill of Rights. These documents limited government more than governments had ever been limited in any nation.[2] Result? No citizen turned to government for help and for two reasons: (1) it had nothing on hand to give, and (2) it had not the power to take from some and give to others. For more than ten decades a self-responsible, self-reliant citizenry!

Constitutions, however, short of a perpetual righteousness, lose their discipline and fade away as has ours. A good example is Argentina. A commission from that nation came here along with other commissions from other countries. On returning, they wrote a Constitution even better than ours. Have a look at Argentina today. In a deplorable politico-economic mess!

In the spring of 1940 I paid my first visit to Argentina. It was then one of the world’s most prosperous nations. Why? They were adhering more or less to free market principles. Three pesos was equivalent to a 1940 dollar. In any event, free-market thinking lapsed. Result? A Command Society! What has happened to the peso’s value? A brilliant Argentinean—a freedom devotee—recently bought four cups of coffee in Buenos Aires and remarked to his friends, “I am paying more pesos for the coffee today than I paid for a new automobile in 1936.” The lesson? It is only doing what’s right—freedom—that matters!

Some nations . . . once they have grown prosperous lose interest in freedom. Other wise men agree:

Everything in the world may be endured except continued prosperity.

—Goethe

“Everything” is too strong a term, for there are other things than prosperity that some people cannot endure. For instance, how hard it is for a politician—as distinguished from a statesman—to endure the thought of citizens acting freely and creatively as they please? Why? Fat-headedness—be-like-me-ness—rules their despicable conduct!

Prosperity has this property, it puffs up narrow souls, makes them imagine themselves high and mighty, and they look down upon the world with contempt.

—Sophocles

He that swells in prosperity will be sure to shrink in adversity.

—Caleb Colton

A swelled head is incapable of coping with adversity. Those who have not known ill fortune are lacking in knowledge of themselves, and they are ignorant of their potential virtues as well. As to such citizens, Tocqueville wrote, “. . . they lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched from them without lifting a hand to defend it.” They cannot defend freedom, and for a simple reason: they are too low on the politico-economic ladder. Most of them, resorting to legal plunder, are in a know-nothing category.

. . . lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. Wrote the Scottish clergyman, Samuel Rutherford: “Of all created comforts, God is the leader, you are the borrower, not the owner.”

One of my prayers is: “Blessings upon our associates, near and far, past and present; the perfection of our ideas and ideals; our adherence to them; and our faith in Thee.” Admittedly, I am a borrower, not the owner!

Descend to my level. We mortals, at best, possess no more than finite consciousness. Is creativity within our range? Yes, indeed! It comes by way of a strict adherence to private ownership, the free market, and government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice; briefly, everyone free to act creatively as he or she pleases. We owe all laudable comforts to freedom!

Finally, does freedom defy analysis? Yes, we only know that it works, not how the trillions of miracles configurate and confer their countless blessings. However, we can feel this phenomenon. Thanks, Alexis de Tocqueville, for grasping the wonders of early America!

[1] This quotation is found on pages 12–13 of the popular school text by F. A. Magruder, American Government: A Textbook on the Problems of Democracy. Except for the last two sentences, this is Magruder’s paraphrase of Tocqueville’s words.

[2] “No one can read our Constitution without concluding that the people who wrote it wanted their government severely limited; the words ‘no’ and ‘not’ employed in restraint of governmental power occur 24 times in the first seven articles of the Constitution and 22 more times in the Bill of Rights.” (“Liberty and Ethical Values,” Edmund A. Opitz)

6

FAITH GONE TO WORK

Holiness is religious principle put into action. It is faith gone to work. It is love coined into conduct; devotion helping human suffering, and going up in intercession to the great source of all good.

—FREDERICK D. HUNTINGTON

The above thoughts by an American clergyman (1819–1904) deserve some serious reflection. Here are a few of mine which I take pleasure in sharing.

Faith gone to work. For our work toward the restoration of freedom to be effective we must believe in our cause. As Goethe wrote, “Miracle is the darling child of faith.”

The turnabout from our growing socialism to the freedom way of life appears to fall in the miracle category. But we must believe it will happen or our doubts will postpone it to a far distant future.

As the flower is before the fruit, so is faith before good works.

—Richard Whately

In actual life every great enterprise begins with and takes its first step in faith.

—August Schlegel

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future.

—Robert Collyer

All I have seen teaches me to trust the Creator for all I have not seen.

—Emerson

It is love coined into conduct. Wrote Shakespeare: “Love works not with the eyes but with the mind.” Our finite minds cannot grasp Infinite Truth. Our role? Go forward step by step—from light to light. If our conduct be right, then the paralyzing fear of socialistic disaster will not plague us. We find in John IV: 18 the formula: Perfect love casteth out fear.

. . . devotion helping human suffering. There are two ways to aid those who are in distress, suffering from the lack of food and clothing and other life-sustaining items. The first is the practice of Judeo-Christian charity—voluntary assistance. When governments pre-empt the practice of philanthropy—food stamps, social security and other “welfare”*measures—the practice of private charity is dramatically abandoned. If a neighbor is starving, most citizens say, “That’s the government’s job.” Rid ourselves of this political nonsense and nearly everyone would share his or her last loaf of bread.

Charity, when properly practiced, has two disciplines: (1) never let the recipient be aware of the source and (2) let the giver take no personal credit for the gift—that is, avoid self-conceit. It works wonders![1]

The second way to alleviate distress is as much a mystery to most citizens as the appropriate practice of charity. What is the real road to success so rarely believed? It is the free and unfettered market with government limited strictly to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice—no exception, none whatsoever, dictocrats in the past tense!

Why this blindness to freedom? ’Tis a megalomania: “a mental disorder characterized by delusions.” What is this popular delusion? The populace listens to the countless politicians rather than to the few statesmen. These know-it-alls, utterly unaware of how little they know, promise a heaven on earth and the millions are thus deluded.

There is a remedy for this delusion-egomania syndrome but it is no less difficult to grasp than appropriate charity or how freedom works its wonders. Freedom cannot be sold but only understood by an individual who really wishes to know. Here is my answer: The more one understands the more his awareness grows of how much there is to understand. There are others who share this view—three samples:

The first step to knowledge is to know we are ignorant.

—Richard Cecil

He fancies himself enlightened, because he sees the deficiencies of others; he is ignorant, because he has not reflected on his own.

—Bulwer

Fullness of knowledge always and necessarily means some understanding of the depths of our ignorance, and that is always conducive to both humility and reverence.

—Robert Millikan

When and if enough citizens become aware of their finite nature—how very limited their understanding of themselves, and thus of every other human being, past and present, our millions of dictocrats—know-it-alls—will become “dead-give-away-ers,” an appropriate slang expression. And then? The enlightenment: freedom, tiny bits of creative expertise freely flowing to the benefit of one and all!

. . . and going up in intercession [mediation] to the great source of all good. What this means is improving as a go-between—advancing in an understanding of The Divine Source and sharing with those who care to listen. God is one of the names which we give to that eternal, infinite and incomprehensible Source. My reference is always to Infinite Consciousness for it is a reality now and forever.

George Washington saw the light: “Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.”

[1] I am unaware of any explanation on this point so enlightening as in Magnificent Obsession, a book by Lloyd Douglas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1938).

7

OUR HOPED-FOR AMERICA

We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient; we want American character to display itself in what I may, perhaps, be allowed to call spiritual efficiency—that dear, disinterested thinking and fearless action along the right lines of thought.

—WOODROW WILSON

Recently, I read a book published in 1900 entitled The State. On page 572 is a statement by Professor Woodrow Wilson: “Government, in its last analysis, is organized force,” a truism I have been repeating for years.

Governmental power over citizens is a physical force, as is a clenched fist. Find out what the fist can and cannot do and we will know what political force should and should not do.

What can this force do? It can inhibit, restrain, prohibit. What, in all good conscience, should be inhibited, restrained, prohibited? The answer is so obvious that it has been known for well over 2,000 years: The Commandments forbid us to kill, steal, lie, covet, commit adultery, bear false witness. Briefly, do no evil!

What can the fist, this physical force, not do? It cannot create. The creative force, in all instances, is a spiritual rather than a physical force, in the sense that discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes are spiritual. Everything by which we live has its origin in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material. A glass, for instance, is inconceivable had not some cave dweller eons ago discovered how to harness fire. There would be no autos or planes, or any of the countless other material things that grace our lives, had not some Hindu a thousand years ago invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry, physics, astronomy would be out of the question with only Roman numerals at our disposal. These spiritual forces, since the dawn of consciousness, number in the trillions.

So, how do I draw the line between what government should and should not do? I would have government limited to inhibiting and penalizing the destructive actions; leave all creative activities—without exception, education or whatever—to citizens acting freely, cooperatively, competitively, voluntarily, privately.

Professor Wilson wrote; “We want the spirit of America to be efficient; we want American character to be efficient.” The spirited person is alert, animated, bright, keen, vivacious. To be efficient means the capacity to achieve desired results with minimum expenditure of energy, time and resources; briefly, competence, expertise, know-how.

The Professor’s aspiration? In the year 1900 when he wrote these thoughts, the decline from the American dream had begun: men are endowed to life and liberty by their Creator, not by government. Freedom fading, socialism growing! Woodrow Wilson was praying that more and more Americans would respect and believe in freedom as easily and naturally as our Founding Fathers. We at FEE share these excellent thoughts!

We want American character to be efficient. My dictionary defines character as “a distinctive trait, quality or attribute . . . an individual’s pattern of behavior or personality; moral character.” The American educator, Thomas Dwight Woolsey (1801–89), gave this definition intellectual support. “It is not money, nor is it mere intellect, that governs the world; it is moral character and intellect associated with moral excellence.” It was the high moral quality of our Founding Fathers that, in large part, accounted for “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” A good society without high moral attainments among many of its citizens is unthinkable!

Wrote Goethe: “Talents are best nurtured in solitude; character is best formed in the stormy billows of the world.”

The stormy billows of our world—U.S.A. and everywhere—are eliciting a growing comprehension and a better understanding of freedom—priceless talents!

Wrote Elbert Hubbard: “What others say of me matters little, what I myself say and do matters much.”

Here is a lesson for those of us who fervently believe in private ownership, the free market and limited government. Suppose we were to be swayed by what the millions think of us: those who endorse social security, tariffs, embargoes, minimum wages, child labor laws, coercive labor union practices—and those who endorse countless economic monstrosities such as the Gateway Arch, built with the earnings of taxpayers! Were we to be guided by what these others think of us, we at FEE would fall in the category of our philosophical adversaries. Cowardly nonsense!

What we say and do matters ever so much. No two individuals have an identical definition of Truth. Indeed, if one is learning, his or her views are always upgrading. Were no one to agree with Truth as I interpret it, I wouldn’t budge an iota. We at FEE believe that everyone—no exception whatsoever—should be free to act creatively as he or she pleases. This is the very essence of freedom!

Goethe used the terms, Nature and God, interchangeably. He had this to say about nonsense and Truth: “Nature understands no jesting; she is always true, always serious, always severe; she is always right, and the errors and faults are always those of man. The man incapable of appreciating her she despises and only to the apt, the pure, and the true, does she resign herself and reveal her secrets.” Goethe was a freedom devotee!

Were enough of us to follow Goethe’s wisdom we would, as a nation, be blest with what Professor Wilson referred to as “spiritual efficiency.” There would, indeed, be a glorious realization of our hoped-for America!

8

SPARKED WITH PERSONAL LIBERTY

Without the wide diversification of talents, taste, abilities and ambitions that now and always exist among men, Society could neither feed nor clothe itself. It is consequently a wise provision of Providence that causes the perpetuation of endless variety in the desire and capabilities of human beings. Sparked with personal liberty and the natural personal incentive to own property and to advance economically, this conglomeration of inequality synchronizes into a great engine for the sustenance and progress of mankind.

—CLARENCE MANION

The late Clarence Manion was Dean, School of Law, University of Notre Dame. He retired from that position and began The Manion Forum. By reason of excellent thinking and speaking, he gained the friendship of countless freedom devotees. A much published author, his 1951 book, The Key to Peace, is still available.[1] This is a brilliant study of the religious foundation of our free institutions.

Suppose that you and I and our neighbors displayed no diversification, no dissimilarity of talents, tastes, abilities and ambitions—each of us a clone cooped up in his shell. Human oysters might be an apt term for such creatures.

As a matter of fact, it is impossible to conjure up such a picture—of human beings without a wide diversification of talents. Such creatures could not survive; apart from human differences “Society could neither feed nor clothe itself,” as Manion points out. All—no exception—would perish.

Wrote Herbert Hoover: “The spark of liberty in the mind and spirit of man cannot be long extinguished; it will break into flames that will destroy every coercion which seems to limit it.”

In 1928 I lived in Palo Alto and was Manager of its Chamber of Commerce. Across the road, bordering on Stanford University, was Mr. Hoover’s lovely home. He had been elected President; the Inauguration was to be on March 4, 1929. I organized a 16-car train of Californians to travel to the nation’s capital to honor our hometown friend. We were the first to shake his hand as he entered his office in the White House. From 1940 to the time of his demise in 1964, I called on him ever so many times at his apartment—Waldorf Towers, New York City.

I know not when he wrote the above bit of wisdom but I suspect that it was as a private citizen—before or after he was President—times he devoted to creative thinking, not being immersed in political action!

As explained in another chapter, “The Touchstone of Progress,” liberty has been sparked in the minds and hearts of men on numerous occasions during the past five centuries. When it broke into flames—to use Hoover’s aphorism—it consumed nearly all coercive, know-it-all idiocies.

However, when this laudable spark dies to the point of impotency, an outside force is needed to bring the latent virtue to a new birth. On what does a new birth depend? Horace, that Roman poet of 2,000 years ago, gave the answer: “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in times of prosperity would have lain dormant.”

Challenge and response is in accord with the Cosmic Design: evolution/devolution, now and forever, evolution inching ahead over the millennia. All nations—no exception—have experienced the devolutionary trend, but I am confident that the turnabout is certain. To illustrate: Thirty years ago, in a discussion period following my lecture, one of the participants asked, “Just what socialistic interventions would you remove?” My reply, “I cannot answer that question, but if you were to ask me which I would retain, the answer would be none!”

Imagine trying to name all the fallacious practices of our 78,000 governments! No person in a lifetime could discover, let alone name them! This is an indication of how despotic our situation has been.

Return to Manion that we may share his wisdom: “This conglomeration of inequality synchronizes into a great engine for the sustenance and progress of mankind.”

Inequality—each individual different from all others and self-different from moment to moment—is variation. Thank Heaven for this blessing!

Wrote Tryon Edwards: “The highest obedience in the spiritual life is to be able always, and in all things, to say, ‘Not my will but thine [Righteousness] be done’.” The righteous will leads a person to act in harmony with principles or ends. If one has the proper end in view—Freedom—then his principles are right.

Without change there is no progress; but every change upsets accustomed ways of doing things, so we resist. We are creatures of habit, which is why things get stuck on dead center. Over the past half century, for example, we have become so accustomed to the New Deal style of life that governmental regulation of the economy feels like the American Way.

But there are those who refuse to go along with things as they are, nonconformists out of step with the prevailing consensus, people who strive for better ways of doing things. Without such people the world would show little progress, and freedom would wither.

As Kettering wrote, “The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.” I would add, it is the only thing that ever will. And if we are open to life the change may occur unexpectedly. Paul’s letter to the Corinthians describes the process: we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.

[1] Available from FEE (107 pages, $2.00).

9

EXERTING A USEFUL INFLUENCE

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures.

—GOETHE

What did the great Goethe mean by the admonition that you, I or anyone, wishing to exert a useful influence, “must be careful to insult nothing”? The meaning of insult is to “affront, outrage, degrade, debase.” His reference was not to disagreement but to verbal slaughter. We of the freedom faith—Goethe being outstanding—do not agree with communists but we only damage our way of life and thus ourselves by filthy name-calling. Away with this derogatory tactic!

Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd. The English poet, Alexander Pope (1688–1744) gave a good reason for not being troubled: “To pardon those absurdities in ourselves which we condemn in others, is neither better nor worse than to be, more willing to be fools ourselves than to have others so.”

Reflect on the numerous politicians, and those not in office, who condemn the freedom philosophy and at the same time never give a thought to the absurdities of socialism which they so heartily sponsor. We would, indeed, be fools were we to pardon defects in ourselves or others which we believe to be contrary to liberty for one and all! Socialism is foolishness; freedom is wisdom. Stand for a righteous freedom regardless of the opposition. Let the others be foolish but not those of us who are freedom devotees!

. . . but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. Wrote the English philosopher, A. A. C. Shaftsbury (1671–1713): “To love the public, to study universal good and to promote the interest of the whole world, as far as it lies within our power, is the height of goodness and makes the temper which we call divine.”

To do good is man’s most glorious undertaking but, as Thoreau wrote, “Be not merely good but be good for something.” There is indeed a distinction between ambition and accomplishment.

We who really love the public—the welfare of everyone in the U.S.A.—will strive to understand and to explain all inhibitions to their creative actions that such monstrosities may be removed. Our goal? Let all people be free to achieve their unique potentialities, that is, free to produce what they please and to exchange thoughts or products. Briefly, a grand togetherness—ideological and economic!

Why is it so important to strive for creativity at home? Such an endeavor teaches us how we should deal with the whole world. Production and exchange should be just as free between nations as it ought to be among Americans.

Today, such international freedom is no more than a dream of a very few. Today our ambassadors are only from the political realm. Why should representation be so limited? Free traders work for peace among nations, based on voluntary exchanges within nations. Wrote the English novelist, Henry Fielding (1701–84): “There is nothing so useful to man in general, nor so beneficial to particular societies and individuals, as trade. This is that alma mater, at whose plentiful breast, all mankind are nourished.”

How make our dreams come true? Emulate that wise observation by the English poet, John Milton (1608–74): “Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties.”

We must not demolish but build. Wrote Emerson, “Every violation of truth is a stab [injury] at the health of human society.” Man is at once an individual and a social being, therefore, each of Us should scrupulously avoid declining in either respect. Mind intelligently employed is mind and life enjoyed. A highly developed consciousness is the source of joy!

“To build,” as Goethe urged, one must begin building “castles in the air,” as the saying goes. Thoreau wrote: “If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

To what should we aspire? A freeing of the human spirit; the millions of American citizens no longer wards of our more or less 78,000 governments. What then? Growing, emerging, self-responsible citizens, each his own man or woman. Castles in the air? Let us build foundations under those worth keeping!

We must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures. The clergyman, William Mountford (1816–85), wrote: “Often and often to me, and instinctively, has an innocent pleasure felt like a foretaste of infinite delight, an ante-past of heaven. Nor can I believe otherwise than that pure happiness is of a purifying effect; like the manna from heaven, no doubt it is meant to invigorate as well as to gratify.”

Let us raise temples in which an increasing number of us may worship the truth of freedom!

10

OPPORTUNITY: THE GREAT ART OF LIFE?

To improve the golden moment of opportunity and catch the good that is within our reach; is the great art of life.

—SAMUEL JOHNSON

While I agree with Johnson, there are numerous exceptions which warrant the question mark in my title, an example being furnished by the English divine, Isaac Watts (1674–1748): “Life is a long tragedy, this globe the stage.” In view of the fact that the best among us never complain about the lack of opportunities, it seems appropriate to reflect on these countless blessings.

A formula for a successful life is to be ready for any and all opportunities which are in harmony with our capabilities or talents. No two persons, past or present, are identical in this respect. Indeed, each individual, when striving for improvement, changes from day to day. Up to age thirty five, I had more than a dozen occupations, all of which I abandoned—disharmonious! Further, on four occasions I was offered jobs with salaries four to five times what I was receiving. Refused! I finally found my occupational niche: the love of liberty and a craving to better understand and explain this way of life. So far, nearly fifty years of joyous work.

Suppose that everyone else had a goal identical to mine and worked at nothing else. All would perish! There would be no food or housing or countless other necessities of life.

A fact shocking to most individuals: all would perish were there no freedom! Why does this give the appearance of contradicting historical facts? People survived under the reign of Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and numerous others of this despicable ilk. The explanation: there were at least two reasons, (1) disobedience and (2) goods and services traded with people in productive nations.

To grasp the point, merely imagine that no citizen of these unfortunate nations could produce or exchange anything which their dictocrat did not specify. Such a fathead couldn’t even manage the lives of his few neighbors, let alone the millions unknown to him or their talents and opportunities. It is self-evident that all would perish including the know-it-all!

Here is an excellent metaphor—figure of speech—by Shakespeare:

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.

Meaning? In history’s ups and downs, dating back to the Sumerians of about 4,500 years ago, there have been several freedom-oriented civilizations, the greatest of all being the U.S.A., as designed by our Founding Fathers.[1]

Those familiar with the Bard of Avon’s thinking know that he was not referring to pounds or dollars or any other monetary unit by the word “fortune.” What then? Truth—Righteousness. For confirmation: “. . . to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.”

. . . omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries; and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures. Most of our miseries come from a want of courage to speak the truth, as one sees it or, worse yet, to have no inkling of truth, or love of it. Life’s worthwhile ventures at a dead end!

Wrote the American author, Bayard Taylor (1825–78): “Opportunity is rare, and a wise man will never let it go by him.” As already noted, opportunities are indeed rare in countries where one cannot act creatively as he or she pleases. Rare, too, are opportunities for you or me that are beyond the range of our potentialities or talents. Astronomy is no more within my range than is the making of an ordinary wooden lead pencil.[2] And, all too rare are the astronomers—or those who have a part in pencil-making and countless other specializations—who strive for an understanding of human liberty. The wise individual will never “let it go by him.”

Wrote Christina, the Queen of Sweden (1626–89): “It is necessary to try to surpass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.” What an insight, a revelation that goes to the very root of human destiny—the wellspring of what man is intended to become! Wrote Tryon Edwards, “Thoughts lead us to purposes; purposes go forth in action; actions form habits; habits form character; and character fixes our destiny.” The hope of an improving America rests on improving characters and the road to this exemplarity is to surpass one’s self every day of mortal life!

An excellent thought by the American clergyman, William Ellery Channing (1780–1842): “The office of government is not to confer happiness, but to give men equal opportunity to work out happiness for themselves.” Note the ways that governments—federal, state and local (approximately 78,000 of them)—strive to impose their stupid ideas of happiness on us. There are more than anyone knows. A few samples: social security, food stamps, local swimming pools, government financed “educational institutions,” ventures into outer space.

Citizens by the millions are victims of a false happiness when they observe flights into outer space. Why false? No one, in or out of government, knows the cost. A hundred billion dollars is doubtless an underestimation. Now, suppose there could be no such flights into fancy except financing by voluntary donations. What would the revenue be? Relatively nothing! I, for one, wouldn’t give a dime. I would spend my money for ventures that bring happiness to me. Doubtless, most others would do the same. Equal opportunity for one and all!

Wrote B. C. Forbes: “Opportunity knocks as often as a man has an ear trained to hear her, an eye trained to see her, and a head trained to utilize her.”

The great art of life, equal opportunity, is, indeed, within our reach: freedom for one and all!

[1] For details see “Eruptions of Truth,” a chapter in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake.

[2] See my brevity, “I, Pencil.” Copy on request.

11

THE TRIUMPH OF CIVILIZATION

It is the triumph of civilization that at last communities have ordained such a mastery over natural laws that they drive and control them. The winds, the water, electricity, all aliens that in their wild form were dangerous, are now controlled by human will, and are made useful servants.

—HENRY WARD BEECHER

This New York clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher, (1813–87) lived during the period when the American dream approached closest to realization. Beecher observed in this nation the greatest triumph of civilization in all history. Natural laws represent the original constitution of things, and are thus properly ascribed to Creation itself.

The English divine, Sydney Smith (1771–1845) gave to posterity this excellent thought: “Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed.”

To say that nature—Creation at the human level—had a million different kinds of talent at her disposal would be a gross understatement. Shakespeare grasped the point, “O, the difference of man and man!” Life depends on the diversity of talents displayed by people generally. Were everyone the same as you or me, all would perish. Variety is the very spice of life!

Individual freedom of choice is the necessary counterpart to individual variation if the observed diversity of talents is to enrich life. Reflect on countries where the stifling of talents rules the political way of life and stifles the individual. Except for the communist commissars, and their appointed accomplices, who do as they please, no other Russians have genuine freedom of choice. For example, a potential inventive genius may be coercively assigned to sweeping the streets or digging ditches. With creativity squelched, millions live in abject poverty. To break the dictatorial commands is to incur the death penalty or consignment to Siberia. Woe betide any vocal pro-freedom Russian!

India affords another case in point. On the two occasions when I lectured there I found little understanding of the freedom way of life. A great friend, the late Professor B. R. Shenoy, knew the philosophy well, but he stood almost alone. There was a small pro-freedom organization headquartered in Calcutta. And there was doubtless a remnant here and there unknown to me or even to one another. Otherwise, few listeners or learners—only a fraction of the people aware of the potential of the free way of life. The consequence in India has been and is starvation on a major scale.

Yes, doubtless there was and still is a remnant in India but the number of those who seek them out must be close to zero. Why? A widespread unawareness of how these persons of intellectual attractiveness work their wonders. In the public eye are the do-gooders—those who would reform others—make carbon copies of themselves.

Members of the effective Remnant are few in number, and no others really count. The Remnant are, as Albert Jay Nock observed, an odd lot, quiet, shy of show-offs, indeed, they will have nothing to do with such types. These few—mostly unknowns—are the ones who tip the scales, and their search is always for those who, to some extent, make progress against their own bewilderment, who gain in understanding and clarity of expression, who evidence integrity and, above all, who strive to enlighten themselves. Those of The Remnant “run a mile” from reformers, they resent all attempts at “ramming ideas down their necks.” This attests to their realism for they know the futility of such an effort. It simply cannot be done.

The Remnant is dramatized in “Isaiah’s Job” by Albert Jay Nock. I read this essay 44 years ago. It gave me my first instruction in the methods appropriate to freedom. Like the Bible, from which the story is taken, it merits reading again and again.[1]

True, as Beecher pointed out, there was a time centuries ago when natural forces—the winds, water, electricity—all aliens in their wild form, were dangerous to man. And in Beecher’s time, prior to our plague of socialism, the forces were “controlled by human will and are made useful servants.” Freedom of choice in the driver’s seat!

A commentary on aircraft—natural forces harnessed by the human will—may be helpful to emphasize Beecher’s point. This prophecy by Lord Tennyson (1809–1892):

For I dipt into the future, far

as human eye could see,

Saw the Vision of the world and all

the wonders that would be;

Saw the heavens fill with commerce,

argosies of magic sails,

Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping

down with costly bales.

Talk about useful servants! Tennyson’s imagination caught a glimpse of our modern aircraft, the magic sails being metal wings. His verse appeared in 1842 when flying machines were but a dream.

Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) was another of the rare dreamers. He drew sketches of an airplane four centuries before Tennyson’s time—but it wouldn’t fly. Had a 747 Jet flown over his home during the night, he would have thought the heavens were falling. And, in a sense, he would have been right. Freedom works its Heavenly Wonders in startling ways!

Wrote the American educator, Alexander Meiklejohn: “Human beings should become civilized, that is, so related to each other that their thinking is a concerted attempt to reach common answers to common problems. They should practice a friendliness of the mind. Violence is savagery. Civilization is reasonableness.” Violence—all coercion—governmental or otherwise is, indeed, savagery. However, if enough of us are sound in our reasoning,—thinking—then civilization—freedom—will triumph!

[1] Copy on request.

12

OUR DUTY AND ITS REWARDS

Try to put well in practice what you already know; and in so doing, you will in good time discover the hidden things which you now inquire about. Practice what you know and it will help to make dear what now you do not know.

—REMBRANDT

This Dutchman (1606–1669), “one of the world’s most famous painters,” gave the above thoughts to posterity, part of what his outstanding success as a painter had taught him. These enlightenments and admonitions are worthy of our seriously pondering.

Every day of everyone’s life—from adulthood to old age—there are one or more duties that challenge the intelligence. Failure to recognize these obligations consigns life to mediocrity. Reflect on the mass of humanity thus afflicted. They die on the vine, as the saying goes. Wrote the French essayist, Montaigne, “It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.” The millions thus stalemated are happy in their doldrums, not alarmed. Poor souls!

Now, what about the few to whom a recognition and the mastery of duties is a joy? Wrote the English novelist, Henry Fielding (1707–1754): “Great joy, especially after a sudden change of circumstances, is apt to be silent, and dwells rather in the heart, than on the tongue.”

Duties, as other circumstances, are forever changing. Why this assertion? One’s duties change as new and attractive opportunities present themselves. These new occasions are so numerous that were one not to hold his or her tongue, he or she would sound like a mockingbird. Hold one’s tongue! Silence is golden! Let our achievements dwell quietly in the heart.

If one has chosen an understanding and explanation of human liberty as the number one duty, he or she will be blest with insights, intuitive flashes, ideas and thoughts from seers, past and present. To the extent that one succeeds in comprehending liberty, to that extent will new and challenging duties grace ever so many others.

There is no evil we cannot face or fly from, but the consciousness of duty disregarded.

—Daniel Webster

To be free from evil thoughts is one of Creation’s greatest gifts. “When evils have become insufferable, they have touched the point of cure.” The evils of runaway government—with inevitable inflationary consequences—now approach the insufferable stage. Three of ever so many examples:

• The Federal government owns roughly 42% of our total geography.

• American business spends 130,000,000 man-hours per year filling out governmental forms and that cost is passed directly on to consumers in the form of increased prices.

• In addition to the devastating effect of taxes, government spending beyond its income has generated monetary inflation of such magnitude that our savings have been devalued by more than 60 per cent in the past ten years.

Can we face or fly from these evils? Hardly! They are, indeed, insufferable and, hopefully, we have reached the point of cure. The remedy for this hoped-for turnabout is our duty and it must not be disregarded! It is sink or swim, as the saying goes. Let us swim toward liberty!

Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.

—Goethe

The last words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as he passed away in 1832, were, “Give me light.” Although one of the wisest—most enlightened—humans, past or present, known to me, he had an awareness, as did Socrates, of how “infinitesimal was his wisdom.” To use an old aphorism, he “stuck to his last,” that is, to those duties within his comprehension.

Obviously, no individual keenly aware of his limitations tries to solve the problems of the universe. Who does then? The millions of politicians—not statesmen—with not a smidgeon of awareness as to how little they know. They “know” how to run the lives of all persons within their towns, counties, states, nations. The truth? They know not how to run their own lives, let alone yours or mine. “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.” Our prayer for each day of mortal life should be, “Give us light.” There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle. Nor is there enough ignorance in America to put out the light of liberty.

The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the practice of the latter.

—George Washington

Wrote the English author, Philip Hamerton: “The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates what is best in us.” Happiness and moral duty are twin experiences and, if life is lived aright, they are, indeed, inseparable.

What is best in us? Reflect on this:

Countless the various species of mankind, countless the shades that separate mind from mind; no general object of desire is known; each has his will, and each pursues his own.

—William Gifford

Human variation is an endowment of Creation, for the survival of the human species is keyed to individual differences. If by some malign miracle every human being suddenly became a carbon copy of every other, we would all perish. The planet earth would revert back to nature; there would be mountains, oceans, rivers, various living forms, but no people.

No universal object of desire, valid for everyone, is known; never has been or ever will be. People differ and so their goals are not the same. This fact is a Heavenly Blessing that diminishes or increases as an understanding of freedom fades or brightens.

A salute to George Washington for giving us a great truth: the source of happiness is an adherence to moral duty!

Duty performed, gives clearness and firmness to faith, and faith thus strengthened through duty becomes the more assured and satisfying to the soul.

—Tryon Edwards

Alexis de Tocqueville: “Despotism may govern without faith but Liberty cannot.” The millions of dictocrats in the U.S.A. are without faith in liberty. To the contrary, they are obsessed by the fallacious notion that they are supermen, self-anointed to wield a godlike power over others. This is a messianic delusion.

As Rembrandt, the famous painter, suggested, we should diligently practice what we already know. By so doing, we will, sooner or later, be led to explore the next step in our moral and spiritual upgrading, and the next. This is how we grow, and growth, in turn, will reveal to us how infinitesimal is our wisdom. To acknowledge our finitude is to escape from devastating know-it-all-ness!

To improve the lot of mankind, let each of us do his duty, starting with himself, deepening his understanding of the miracles wrought by freedom. Have faith in liberty!

13

THE STEPS TO GREATNESS

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns; and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God, is most unfaltering.

—WILLIAM E. CHANNING

In the above quotation, this American clergyman (1780–1842), presents the human being in a rare state of perfection—seldom attained. I am aware of a few—past and present—possessing these rare qualities. Exemplars par excellence!

How can this exemplarity grace our lives? It serves as a high goal toward which we should strive day-in-and-day-out. Each improvement in this intellectual and spiritual direction is a step toward greatness. Such progress relates to those who persistently seek Truth—enlightenment—and excel their fellowmen in this quest. Briefly, it depends on the few whose wisdom becomes an attractive force. The Perfect Example? Jesus of Nazareth!

The German statesman, Otto von Bismarck (1815–98), wrote: “A really great man is known by three signs: generosity in the design, humanity in the execution, moderation in success.”

Generosity does not impoverish; instead, it enriches the lives of those who practice it, as well as the recipients. “Give and it shall be given unto you.” Luke 4:38.

As to the enriching of one’s humanity, here is a good aphorism: “A man’s nature runs either to herbs or weeds, therefore, let him seasonably water the one and destroy the other.” Those whose “nature runs to herbs” are the superior persons who are growing from birth to old age. Watering? Exploring the wisdom of seers, those who possess thoughts superior to one’s own.

Weeds? Evils symbolized—stupidities, destructive nonsense, know-it-all-ness, destroyers of all that is good or true. The remedy? An ever-improving self provides deliverance from evil. Errors caught in time can and often do show us the way to understanding and high-grade explanations.

As to “moderation in success”—let getting ahead not go to our heads! “Success at first doth many times undo men at last.” Think of success as a blessing made possible by the countless achievements of others. No one is or ever was able to go it alone!

The greatest man is he who chooses the right with invincible resolution. A determination to succeed is half the battle, as Samuel Smiles tells us: “To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence.”

These thoughts by Smiles reinforce Channing’s wisdom. Elbert Hubbard adds an interesting insight: “There is something that is much more scarce, something finer far; something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.”

The ability to recognize the ability of a carpenter, singer, salesman, comedian and the like is commonplace. But rare is the ability to recognize those few throughout history who have excelled others in an understanding and explanation of liberty.

The . . . man who resists the sorest temptation from within and without.

Temptations without imply desires within. Men ought not to say, “How powerfully the devil tempts,” but “How strongly I am tempted.”

—Henry Ward Beecher

As to temptations without, learn to say “No!” Thirty-six years ago, when the attractiveness of adhering strictly to conscience was more of a new idea to me, I was invited to spend an evening with a dozen of the country’s leading businessmen. Our purpose was to discuss the so-called Full Employment Act, then before the Congress. Most of the talk favored the tactic of opposing the measure by subterfuge, dealing under the table, so to speak—repulsive to me. When they finally asked for my view, I hesitated a moment. To tell them exactly what I thought would do me in, damage my career—or so I imagined. But, I told them! Never have I had a more rewarding experience. From that day forward those twelve were devoted friends, inviting me to counsel time after time. Why? Integrity!

As to temptations within: while it is not dangerous to be honest, this does not mean that one must necessarily divulge all of his innermost thoughts. Many doubtless deserve further incubation. But once a position is taken and expressed, let there be in it no deviation from conscience.

Imagine that a fair percentage of citizens of this nation were practicing what their highest conscience dictates as right. No man could ever be elevated to public office except as he exemplified integrity. Think what a change this would make in the national scene. Only statesmen; never a charlatan!

The . . . man who bears his heaviest burdens cheerfully. Wrote the Roman poet, Ovid, more than 2,000 years ago: “Burdens become light when cheerfully borne.” Could it be that the scholar, Channing, was enlightened by Ovid? Perhaps! As Goethe observed, “All truly wise ideas have been thought already thousands of times.” The truly wise individual is usually one who is aware of how little he knows, whereas the individual who thinks himself the wisest falls into the foolish category. “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34.

The best way to cope with our burdens? Have fun as we bear those which are necessary, share those borne by our friends, and overcome the rest. Were more of us to enjoy making ever clearer explanations of the present coercive nonsense by our governments, we would be graced with freedom—and soon!

The man . . . who is calmest in storms and most fearless under menace and frowns. “Menace,” as here used, means “threats, denunciation, intimidation.” Anyone who resorts to these common tactics to get his way is ridiculous. Those who are loudest in their threats get what they deserve: nothing but disdain. We freedom devotees who threaten our opponents only strengthen them in their misdeeds, their societal faults. The tactic we should employ? Calmness! Think exclusively of our own improvement and leave faults to the falsifiers. Errors of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free. “If we would guide by the light of reason, we must let our minds be bold.” Let us be fearless in the face of menace and frowns.

The . . . man whose reliance is on truth, on virtue, on God, is most unfaltering. Wrote the clergyman, Stopford A. Brooke (1832–1916): “If a thousand old beliefs were ruined in our march to truth we must still march on.”

Reflect on the history of mankind and the thousands of beliefs, once held to be true, that have become “old hat”—the flat earth theory, for example, accepted without question for generations. In spite of all dubious beliefs, we are still marching on to new truths.

As to virtue, a former Stanford University president, David Starr Jordan (1851–1931), gave to posterity this wisdom: “Wisdom is what to do next; Virtue is doing it.” May more and more be so graced!

There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every conquest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her; and zealously to labor after her ways is to receive them.

—Caleb C. Colton

Leading a life of virtue, with a reliance on God, are the steps to greatness and freedom!

14

THE PURSUIT OF VIRTUE

No man can purchase his virtue too dear, for it is the only thing whose value must ever increase with the price it has cost us. Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with all to keep it.

—CALEB C. COLTON

As in the case of Burke and several others, I repeatedly quote this English clergyman. Why? Not only was he a virtuous gentleman but he knew how to counsel his contemporaries and future generations as well on the blessings of living the righteous life. Is not the above a super-excellent guideline, one that inspires reflection and the hope of attainment?

Those who are truly virtuous are few in number. Keep in mind that scarcity raises the price of everything. Thus the ONE in a thousand is more likely to be disdained than esteemed—a high price! Yet, is it too dear? The few devoted to righteousness have no price that is too dear for this Heavenly aspiration. This virtue is integrity and the few so graced will, more or less, contribute to future generations the enlightenment—superior thinking—that Colton has shared with us.

I am obliged to take exception to one of the views of Colton: “. . . there is but one pursuit in life which is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain . . . the pursuit of virtue.” My thought? There are numerous simple pursuits such as talking and walking which are pursued and easily attainable.

However, the pursuit of virtue, in my view, is not in the power of all to attain; a few, yes, the many millions, no. Why? Virtue is an intellectual, moral and spiritual aspiration far above lowly, workaday goals. Might as well expect the millions to attain an explanation of why the sun shines. Wrote the English Divine, August W. Hare (1792–1834): “They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny the sun because it is not always noon.”

Our integrity is never worth so much as when we have parted with all to keep it. The value of this virtue? It is “precious, priceless.” Wrote Emerson: “I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of private integrity.”

The Sage of Concord, one of the strongest minds and most energetic phrasers of ideas, acknowledged a weakness: an inability to explain the exalted role of integrity in the life of man. In this respect, I find myself with a conviction identical to his, and a similar inability, no less distressing. At least, I am in good company. One is tempted to side with Bernard Dougall: “Integrity was a word he couldn’t spell, let alone define.” Such is the unawareness of its meaning and importance!

When it comes to listing the virtues, I know only those that are important to me. Integrity is by all means first and foremost. As to the others—charity, intelligence, justice, love and humility—I have no precise ranking. To me they are tied for second place.

Before going further, let me draw my distinction between integrity and wisdom, for these definitions so closely parallel each other:

Integrity is an accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right. Wisdom is whatever one’s highest conscience perceives as truth.

As to the pursuit of virtue, I concede that one’s highest conscience may not in fact be right but is as close to righteousness as one can get. Also, one’s highest conscience may not be truth but it as nearly approximates wisdom as is within one’s reach. Fallibility applies in either case!

People differ in their evaluation of Emerson’s philosophy, but all concede that his proclaimed positions, written and oral, were accurate reflections of whatever his highest conscience dictated as righteous. Never, to my knowledge, did he bend to expediency, that is, resort to deviation from conscience to gain favor or popularity with others. So rigorous were his spiritual convictions that he was at odds with the numerous religious orthodoxies and took no pains to conceal his innermost sentiments. Attuned to his conscience, he stood ramrod straight. As this rare posture is sometimes phrased, he sought approval from God, not men. Integrity!

Yet, Emerson, conscious of the sacredness of integrity, could find no words energetic enough to convey his sense of its importance. In the light of his genius as a thinker and a phraser of ideas, why his confessed inability to handle this concept? Why could he not explain his meaning of integrity to others?

As I see it, the answer lies in one of his own words, the sacredness of integrity. This virtue is in a moral and spiritual realm so far above normal experience that we possess no words to portray its meaning. It borders on the Infinite and, thus, is beyond our working vocabulary. This explains why it is so seldom included among the virtues. For these reasons, I am convinced that integrity cannot be taught, at best, it can only be caught. And, then, only by those who devoutly wish to be so graced!

To whom do we look for growth or improvement in the higher realm of thought? Only people of integrity! Those individuals who pay no heed to conscience are forever the victims of expediencies; they are governed by fickle opinions, pressures, mass sentiments, a desire for momentary acclaim. Wisdom—whatever one’s highest conscience perceives as truth—is out of range simply because integrity is not observed!

The above should be reason enough to strive for integrity. However, by far the most important reason remains: it is sacredness. Though new to me, I now discover that this idea was perceived nearly 2,000 years ago: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22) In other words, the light of the body is truth, wisdom, enlightenment. The eye is perception. And what is the meaning of “if thine eye be single”? Refer to Webster for the definition of “single” as here used: “Not deceitful or artful, simple, honest, sincere.” Shakespeare used the word in this sense: “I speak with a single heart.”

Single, in this sense, is directly linked with integer, meaning “Whole, entire, not divided.” Contrasted to single is double, which has the same original root as the word, “duplicity.” Such phrases as “double-dealing” and “double-talk” convey this connotation. Integrity is related to integer: and single as here used, refers to integrity.

Phrased in modern idiom, Matthew’s insight would read as follows:

Enlightenment of the intellect and spirit of man depends on his powers of perception. If these powers be free from duplicity, that is, if they be grounded in pure integrity, man will be as much graced with enlightenment—wisdom—as is within his capability.

Whatever the mysterious Universal Power—the radiant energy that flows through all life—it is blocked, cut off, stifled by duplicity in any of its forms. Expediency, lying, double talk and the like are ferments of the soul and through which Universal Power does not and cannot flow. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” James I:8.

Only in integrity—when the “eye is single”—do the powers of perception grow, evolve, emerge, hatch. Then the “whole body shall be full of light.” Then, and only then, are such virtues as charity, intelligence, justice, love, humility within our reach.

Finally, if we believe that we should not do unto others that which we would not have them do unto us—a concern for others as well as self—we have one more among all the compelling reasons why we should strive first and foremost for integrity.

No one ever gave a better formula for the pursuit of virtue than did the great English economist, John Stuart Mill (1806–73): “It would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.” Conformity to such high standards of conduct would, when voluntary, do away with wrongdoing and vice. Were enough of us to pursue this high order of virtue, we would assure the highest order of freedom!

15

THE UNFOLDING LIFE

Height is our aim, not because of any man-made doctrine about height and ascension, but because the universal processes everywhere indicate height as the aim of all unfolding life. Yet in the pursuit of this end, there is no escape from the natural process of growth.

—NEWTON DILLAWAY

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–82), known as the Sage of Concord, began school at the age of two and became famous for his independent thinking. In December, 1975, I read Newton Dillaway’s book, The Gospel of Emerson.

A bit of background may help account for my favorable review of this remarkable book. Sometime earlier, an English friend, one of the most scholarly and brilliant men of my acquaintance, startled me with, “Leonard, you are the most religious person I have ever known.” Nonplused, indeed, for I had always thought of myself as rather far down the line in this phase of life. I did not know what he was driving at. Later my friend asked who were my favorite philosophers. I gave him several names beginning with Emerson. His response, “I now know why I think of you as so religious.”

No subject has had more reflection than religion and none has produced a greater diversity of conclusions. They range all the way from the findings of Himalayan yogis to Augustine’s Confessions. And the employers have ranged from the lowly fisherman of Galilee to the greatest minds of all time, from small fry to big shots, from so-called commoners to the acclaimed elite, from the likes of me to popes. And among them all I have never come upon one more spiritual and religious than the notable and quotable Ralph Waldo Emerson. In my 27 books I have quoted him far more than any other. I quote Emerson and others the better to express myself.

Now to my point. The thoughts of this earthly hero of mine did not fit into any of our numerous orthodoxies. Religion to him was a growing, evolutionary, evolving phase of the individual human spirit. He rejected any and all “this-is-it” propositions. Here is an abbreviation of this phase of his gospel:

Thou shalt not profess that which thou dost not believe.

Thou shalt not heed the voice of men when it agrees not with the voice of God in thine own soul.

Thou shalt study and obey the laws of the Universe, and they will be thy fellow servants.

Nature shall be to thee as a symbol. The life of the soul in constant union with the Infinite shall be for thee the only real existence.

Teach men that each generation begins the world afresh, in perfect freedom; that the present is not the prisoner of the past, but that today holds captive all the yesterdays, to judge, accept, to reject their teachings, as they are shown by its own morning sun.

Emerson kept a Journal during his adult life—recording all of his ideas and ideals. Having kept my own Journal for more than 29 years, never missing a day—now nearing 2,500,000 words—I know the value of such a discipline, namely, the capture of ideas as they flash into mind. Ideas are like dreams—evanescent, vanishing, ephemeral, gone with the wind, as the saying goes.

Now to the late Newton Dillaway, an intimate corresponding friend for some years. I hardly know how to describe his fabulous—“hard to believe, astounding”—insights. Perhaps “esoteric” will suffice: “intended or understood by only a chosen few.” Although we had never met face to face, he would write about unbelievable acquaintances with me, a togetherness the likes of which I have never known or suspected. He was on the same intellectual and spiritual ascendancy as Emerson.

Emerson’s recordings in his Journal and lectures would doubtless have been lost to posterity had it not been for Dillaway’s genius. Let’s examine the meaning of “The Unfolding Life.” As he writes, “it is height.” And height? Heavenward or another term with a comparable meaning: Excelsior. Wrote Longfellow:

The shades of night were falling fast

As through an Alpine village past

A youth who bore ’mid snow and ice

A banner with the strange device,

Excelsior!

And speaking of youth and gaining height, the Sage of Concord wrote: “When we converse with what is above us, we do not grow old, but grow young.” To be young in spirit is the opportunity to do something and to become somebody.

The following are excerpts from Dillaway’s book, Consent, with which I wholeheartedly agree.

In the experience of the soul, as in the development of a plant, every “level” must be filled out to achieve health in all parts. The attainment of any plane as a natural base involves a slow, steady climb on what Smuts calls “the rugged, upward path of the universe,” a release from one state of consciousness to another, one field of magnetic action to another field. The law is that there is no release save in performance.

Epictetus was not teaching “naturalism” in speaking of harmonizing his will with nature. He permitted his will to be used by the universal power, which has its own will, one no man or group of men can reduce to a formula. All we know is that the cosmic will is to be followed, and in health any man will follow it.

But let no one lose sight of the fact that the way of divine acceptance is not the way of formalism, not the way of imposing man-made creeds and doctrines on the universe. That is folly. The universe has its own eternal way and there is no other way in reality.

If you impose limitations on human experience, you block the channels that permit life to flow. The urge to arbitrariness in human nature has been the curse of history, for it is this, more than anything else, that has blocked the flowing and ascension. It has stunted, warped and destroyed the finer elements of human experience.

When a way of life springs from the urge to preserve and promote freedom, it is good. When it springs from the urge to arbitrariness, it is a blockade. It springs also from the urge in man to feel important. If man can “settle things,” his vanity is appeased.

Let us learn to lead the unfolding life which is to grow, aspire, evolve toward freedom!

16

YIELD NOT TO TEMPTATION

No one can ask honestly or hope fully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.

—JOHN RUSKIN

The English critic and essayist, John Ruskin (1819–1900), was also known to the public as a social reformer. Doubtless that’s what most people would label those few Americans who are presenting the case for freedom as an alternative to the communistic mess into which our country is sinking.[1] But our “reforms” would not be Ruskin’s.

For years I have begun one of my lectures with a Ruskin suggestion: “A speaker should always tell his audience where he stands at the very outset.” So let me tell you where I stand as related to his interventionist philosophy. Wise in ever so many ways, Ruskin believed in mercantilism, no different from our own planned economy and welfare state. I am opposed to every variety of a politically planned economy.

England’s Industrial Revolution resulted in an unprecedented prosperity for the English masses. Our own private ownership, free market, limited government way of life resulted in even greater prosperity diffused much more widely. But prosperity breeds a peculiar temptation—the temptation to solicit economic privileges from government. I am acquainted with many Americans, outstanding in their specializations, who seek special privileges—living off others by coercive governmental interventions. They yield to temptation, in some cases unwittingly!

Ruskin’s interventionist position has a nonderogatory explanation. To write the above statement and then yield to temptation would make a liar of him. This Englishman was an honest man.

Aware of the enormous bounties that flowed from the Industrial Revolution, Ruskin failed to identify the cause as freedom of choice to act creatively as everyone pleases. To him the event was an historical accident. Millions of honest Americans, unable to see how creation at the human level works its wonders, are also victims of such lack of vision. ’Tis a partial blindness, not temptation, that accounts for this malady.

Creation—Divine Omnipotence—works Its Wonders regardless of human ignorance. As Thomas Alva Edison wrote, “No one knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything,” and in this lack of understanding we find an explanation for the growing governmental interventions. Politicians—not statesmen—take credit for the bounties Creation has wrought throughout history, and will continue to confer upon humanity.

Wrote the German scholar and ecclesiastic, Thomas à Kempis (1380–1471): “Occasions of adversity best discover how great virtue or strength each one hath. For occasions do not make a man frail, but show what he is.”

The present politico-economic adversity is a great teacher for those who seek virtue and truth. Privation strengthens their minds and does, indeed, show what they really are. Why this stimulation? It is an observed fact that acts of overcoming pave the road to becoming—the tremendous power of creative human energy when free to flow.

I repeat, politicians grab the credit for what Creation has wrought. While no degree of temptation justifies any degree of sin, millions of politicians yield to temptation. Believing that they are the source of the bounties of our not-yet-destroyed freedom, they “think” that these gifts are theirs to dispense. Results of this gross ineptness? They become predators—“plundering or robbing.” They indulge in legal thievery, having written the very statutes that make their actions legal!

Those who seek political power over others—those who would be human gods—are unaware how little they know. For God does not thus lord it over us. We are free to go His Way or not—to enjoy the rewards or suffer the penalties resulting from our actions.

Those of us who seek a society where everyone is free to act creatively as he or she pleases might well heed the wise counsel of one of the world’s greatest statesmen, Edmund Burke:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put chains upon their own appetites; in proportion as their love of justice is above their rapacity; in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption; in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon the will and appetite is placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be of it without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate habits cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

If there is to be a return to freedom—and there will be—intemperate habits must be replaced with temperate habits. How do away with the passions that forge our fetters? Have the courage to say “NO” to all political chicanery: “political trickery.”

It is ordained in the constitution of earthly life that freedom shall again bless our lives. Our role? Yield not to temptation!

[1] For the startling extent to which the U.S.A. has adopted the ten points of the Communist Manifesto, see the chapter, “Ignorance: Agent of Destruction” in my book, Vision (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, 1978), pp. 82–88.

17

MAKING THE MOST OF ONE’S SELF

Whatever you are by nature, keep to it; never desert your own line of talent. Be what nature intended you for, and you will succeed; be anything else and you will be ten thousand times worse than nothing.

—SYDNEY SMITH

This English divine (1771–1845) recognized that, because all of us have different talents, doing what we should do leads to success. Right!

However, that last line of his befuddles me. What could be ten thousand times worse than nothing? This is exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, and it may blind us to another facet of truth. Wrote the American clergyman, Hosea Ballou (1771–1852): “Exaggeration is a blood relative of falsehood and nearly as blamable.”

The eminent psychologist, Dr. Fritz Kunkel, offers a corrective and, in my opinion, voices a great truth: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

We have in Dr. Kunkel’s wisdom an excellent reason for never overlooking the potential that lies dormant in every human being. We find support for this openmindedness in Psalms 8:2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.” “Strength” has ever so many meanings, ranging from brutal power over others to the courage of one’s convictions. A few thoughts: “It is excellent to have a giant’s strength,” wrote Shakespeare, “but it is tyrannous to use it as a giant.” Hitler and many politicians—in our country and elsewhere—exemplify this tyranny.

“Who is strong?” asked Benjamin Franklin. His answer: “He who conquers his bad habits.”

What may we assume to be “strength” as used in Psalms? A strong aspiration—the strength to grow in awareness, perception, consciousness from babes evolving through all the decades of earthly life into mature adulthood. The lesson? For one’s own sake, search for those who see through the darkness to light—seers!

The wisdom of Sydney Smith is confirmed by Emerson: “Nothing is rich but the inexhaustible wealth of nature. She shows us only the surfaces, but is million fathoms deep.” Everything on earth or sea or sky is wondrous—from atoms to galaxies.

Reflect on the atom. It is so small that 30,000,000,000 could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping. Blow up an atom to 100 yards in diameter and what does one behold? Radiant energy in the form of electrons in wave sequences flying about at the speed of light. In the center of the atom is the nucleus which, after the atom is expanded, is the size of a pinhead! This and this alone is “stuff” and no one knows what it is, except that it appears to be solid. All else is empty space. As everything in nature, all is mystery!

Were it possible to apply an atomic press to me and squeeze out all the “stuff”—the nuclei—I would be a particle so small that it would not be discernible on a piece of white paper. I am but a mere speck—next to nothing!

Galaxies? There are millions of them, constantly moving away from each other into the void of outer space. All in nature is mystery, including our infinitesimal know-how!

As to our infinitesimal know-how, Smith gave us good counsel: “never desert your own line of talent.” Of all the people who have lived on this earth no two lines of talent have ever been identical, not even remotely.[1] Indeed, in each second of our earthly lives 1,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms leave every human’s body going every which way throughout the universe and a new quintillion replaces them.

As the famous chemist, Donald Hatch Andrews wrote: “And speaking very reverently, we can say that each of us has in his body a thousand atoms that were in the body of Christ . . . the individual atoms are scarcely more than the shadows of a far deeper reality that we find in this total atomic harmony within us, the spirit of our Creator within us.”

Most citizens believe that a societal catastrophe would result if everyone were to act in his or her self-interest—creatively as each pleases. But not one of America’s great economists, William Graham Sumner (1840–1910), who gave us this truth with its poetic conclusion: “. . . making the most of one’s self . . . is not a separate thing from filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done.”

A vast majority of people in this and other countries, including many noted scholars, confuse self-interest with selfishness. The definition of selfishness? “. . . having such regard for one’s own interests and advantage that the happiness and welfare of others becomes of less concern than is considered right and just.” Selfish individuals range all the way from thieves to political and private power mongers. All who gain at the expense of others fall in this despicable category!

Here are three fallacious observations by noted scholars.

Man seeks his own good at the whole world’s cost.

—Robert Browning

Whom blood has joined together, self-interest jerks asunder.

—La Fontaine

The worst poison of an honest heart: self-interest.

—Tacitus

Confucius revealed the popular reaction toward those who pursue their self-interest. “He who works for his own interests arouses much animosity.”

John Stuart Mill, gifted with insight and foresight, was among the few to grasp the pursuit of self-interest as an efficacious way of life: “The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.”

The pursuit of self-interest as one’s objective is more likely to be disparaged than applauded. Generally, acting in one’s own interest is associated with greed, avarice, selfishness. This only demonstrates the extent of the confusion.

The truth? Self-interest is the motivator of creative human action. Minding one’s own business amounts to serving oneself by serving others. This is a task of a size to fit the individual—whatever his talents. It can be one of life’s most fascinating and rewarding adventures.

[1] See You Are Extraordinary by Roger J. Williams (New York: Pyramid Books, 1976).

18

RESOLUTION WORKS WONDERS

You may be whatever you resolve to be. Determine to be something in the world, and you will be something. “I cannot,” never accomplished anything. “I will try,” has wrought wonders.

—JOEL HAWES

The American clergyman Hawes (1789–1867) further advised: “Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object on a level with yourself.” Obviously, Hawes’ “Aim at the sun” is symbolic of the ideal, namely, that which is perfect. An excellent commentary on this point comes from another American clergyman, Tryon Edwards (1809–94): “We never reach our ideals, whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies, and spurs us on to higher and better things.”

One need not be an atheist to behave as if there were nothing in the Cosmos above his or her own shoulders. Herds of citizens are completely unaware of why they live so well—on the fruits of the freedom socialism has not yet destroyed; they are not striving for mental and moral improvement. Such improvement might be stimulated by an idea I have recently encountered: whether realized or not, every moment is new and everything we think and do is new. Creativity is constant!

No person on this earth knows what happened—bad or good—during the last minute. Nor does anyone have the slightest idea about what will happen in the next minute. Whenever a person grasps the truth that creativity is constant, that individual is on the right road, toward the ideal. As Cervantes wrote, “The road is always better than the inn.” Indeed, there is no inn, no stopping place on the way toward the ideal. The best one can do is to travel righteously every day of mortal life!

According to the French clergyman, René Almeron (1612–72): “The best and noblest lives are those who are set toward high ideals, and the highest and noblest ideal that any man can have is Jesus of Nazareth.” No one could have a higher goal. While not attainable, ’tis a heavenly lodestar, an ideal toward which we should aim. The second coming of Jesus does not, in my view, mean another Jesus but, rather, personal striving to approximate His Holy Perfection!

How true that “I cannot” never accomplished anything. To apply it to every aspect of life would be to descend below the human level. But reflect on the millions who are afflicted to some degree with the “I cannot” syndrome—no thrust for higher levels, for growth in understanding. Wrote the English essayist, Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729): “I know of no evil so great as the abuse of understanding and yet there is no vice more common.”

There are ever so many among my personal acquaintances who understand that the coercive prohibition of creative actions is evil. One sample among thousands of creative actions will suffice: the freedom to exchange goods and services in this or any other country. They understand and, thus, believe that free trade is right. The performance? They abuse their understanding by failing to show the fallacy of embargoes, tariffs and other obstacles to free trade.

Why this abuse? The fear of criticism, the lack of courage to stand for what’s right. In 1953 my FEE associate, Dr. W. M. Curtiss, wrote a booklet—The Tariff Idea—thoroughly exposing its flaws. It had two results: (1) an improved understanding by ever so many of this politico-economic fallacy and (2) a loss of many thousands of dollars in contributions to FEE. Had we known beforehand what these results would be, would we have presented our position to the 50,000 on our mailing list? An emphatic “YES”! Away with this common vice—fear of criticism!

Wrote the American author and editor, Christian N. Bovee (1820–1904): “There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless, and the other half discreditable.” Should seekers after the truth of freedom fear criticism? Never! Expect criticism from those espousing socialistic notions, but heed it no more than opposition from anyone in a position of special privilege that he wants to protect. Let such nonsense pass by as mere babble.

But what about criticism from those who seek to achieve a reasonable understanding and explanation of the freedom way of life? Heed them, indeed! Why? This is a fruitful way to discover one’s own errors—the road to truth. Wrote Thomas Jefferson: “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is free to combat it.”

Reason is “the power of comprehending . . . or thinking.” Briefly, it is the power to advance in consciousness. It is possible that our third President derived this wisdom from the English poet, John Milton (1608–74), who in 1644 wrote in Areopagitica: “Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties.”

Consciousness is the reality! One’s aim in earthly life should be to advance in this respect as far as possible for the consciousness we succeed in attaining during our mortal moments is the consciousness that will belittle or bless us in the hereafter.

Why is the liberty to utter freely the most important of all liberties? There are at least two assurances that one is advancing mentally, morally and spiritually: (1) when he is working for the liberty of everyone to act creatively as he or she pleases and (2) when he is able proudly to present the truth of human liberty before The Source—Infinite Consciousness—and his compatriots.

Wrote Emerson: “A good intention clothes itself with power.” Liberty has tremendous power for human advancement. Resolve to work on its behalf!

19

THE GOOD WITHIN OUR REACH

To improve the golden moment of opportunity and to catch the good that is within our reach, is the great art of life.

—SAMUEL JOHNSON

The English author and lexicographer, Samuel Johnson (1709–84) wrote the first English dictionary. His old home on Fleet Street remains as it was when he passed away and the original dictionary is on a stand that tourists may gaze at it. I have visited his place several times. Johnson was and still is one of the all-time greats.

Henry Ford the elder was an outstanding exemplar of Johnson’s wisdom: “Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, working together is success.”

Suppose there were no coming together, each individual dependent solely on his or her own thoughts and productivity—no exchange of goods and services. All would starve! To prove this point, merely ask yourself, whoever you may be, how well you would prosper were you dependent on only that which you know how to do. The answer: no human togetherness, no humans—the earth populated with lower forms of life, ranging from oysters to chimpanzees.

Why is coming together a beginning? Because it results in a pooling of our specializations. Americans are the most specialized people who ever existed. We have become interdependent; each of us is dependent on the unique specializations of others and freedom to exchange.

Upon what does freedom to exchange depend? On an honest medium of exchange—money! A viable exchange economy requires a money more substantial than irredeemable paper—a money that may not be depreciated at the whim of political leaders.

There is no question that working together leads to success. The problem is to maintain the freedom to cooperate and to compete. As the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas remarked several years ago: “Today it is generally recognized that all corporations possess an element of public interest. A corporation director must think not only of the stockholder but also of the laborer, the supplier, the purchaser, and the ultimate consumer. Our economy is but a chain which can be no stronger than any one of its links. We all stand together or fall together in our highly industrialized society of today.”

Ever since Justice Douglas wrote the above we have been falling ever deeper into a socialistic abyss. Why this dilemma? True, “corporations possess an element of public interest,” a fact that is recognized by an enlightened few of the directors thereof, that is, they practice what they believe. Jolly well good, as the English say. But many compromise.

The exceptions to standing ramrod straight are, at this point in our history, appallingly numerous. The present situation is remindful of the ideological slump during the early days of the New Deal: the National Industrial Recovery Act—the NRA or the Blue Eagle—became law.

Top business leaders and their national organizations endorsed this fantastic set of strangling controls over the economy. Indeed, it was a wealthy utility president who sold FDR on this scheme. Why this anti-free market position? For more reasons than I shall ever know but one was the hope of being rid of dreaded competition. However, after a year of this politico-economic nonsense, business leaders and their organizations reversed their position, but some dragged their feet. Abbreviated, their reasoning ran like this: “We must be rid of this political monstrosity, but let us eliminate it gradually. To get rid of it suddenly would wreck the economy.”

Getting rid of what’s wrong gradually is a nonsensical tactic, for gradualism has no end. Restore what’s right right now! And that is what happened to NRA in May, 1935, with the Supreme Court’s famous “Chicken Case” decision. As of that moment every phase of NRA was abolished, not an iota of it remained. The wrong abolished suddenly! Did the economy go smash? To the contrary, citizens went suddenly to work. Have a look at the indices—on the up! The opportunity of working together was increased.

Why did most businessmen fail to take advantage of this reborn opportunity? Justice Douglas points to the answer: “Our economy is but a chain which can be no stronger than any one of its links.” What a brilliant analogy!

The failure of the Blue Eagle—for all its pitiful narrowing of opportunities—taught them not. Only a few learned the lesson and came to an understanding of how the free and unfettered market works its wonders for one and all!

Some time ago a noted professor of anthropology at a leading college condemned the market economy on the ground that cooperation was good, competition bad. What a fallacy! Example: When bakers of bread compete, the one who provides the best—highest quality at the lowest price—is the one with whom we cooperate. Competition and cooperation are twin virtues and when strictly observed they form what might well be called “The thank you society.” When buying a loaf of bread for 75¢, I say “Thank you” because I want the bread more than the money. The grocer says “Thank you” because he wants the money more than the bread. This is the free market at the bread-and-butter level!

“To improve the golden moment of opportunity and to catch the good that is within our reach” requires numerous virtues, one of which is the strict avoidance of compromise. Wrote the American statesman, Charles Sumner (1811–74): “From the beginning of our history the country has been afflicted with compromise. It is by compromise that human rights have been abandoned. I insist that this shall cease. The country needs repose after all its trials; it deserves repose. And repose can only be found in everlasting principles.”

Wrote Henry Ward Beecher: “Expedients are for the hour; principles for the ages.”

20

OUR WORK? TIME WILL TELL

Not armies, not nations, have advanced the race; but here and there in the course of ages, an individual has stood up and cast his shadow over the world.

—E. H. CHAPIN

This American clergyman (1814–80) was blest with hindsight and foresight. He knew of those sages over the centuries who stood foursquare for their righteous convictions, set examples for the advancing of the human race—cast their shadows over the world!

Some nations may have used their armies solely for defensive purposes, but most armies throughout world history have had only aggressive purposes. I feel personally involved in this matter, for my family has had quite a war record. My great-great-great-grand-father and my great-great-grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War, my grandfather in the Civil War, I in World War I, and my two sons in World War II. As I have written earlier, it has taken me all of these years to see the light.[1] I now see the nonsense of war; I see that the better alternative is free trade among nations. Dwight Eisenhower, with a far greater experience, had a view which I share: “When people speak to you about a preventive war, you tell them to go and fight it. After my experience, I have come to hate war. War settles nothing!”

A nation—apart from the families of men, women and children who comprise it—is a mere label for a piece of real estate. If the citizens are intelligent, industrious, honest and kind they make up a great nation regardless of the geography. This is just as true of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics as of the United States of America. Apart from the people we have here only labels which mislead the thoughtless. Here are three among the many agreements with E. H. Chapin:

Territory is but the body of a nation. The people who inhabit its hills and valleys are its souls, its spirit, its life.

—James A. Garfield

National progress is the sum of individual industry, energy and uprightness, as national decay is of individual idleness, selfishness and vice.

—Samuel Smiles

The true grandeur of nations is in those qualities which constitute the true greatness of the individual.

—Charles Sumner

With reference to Samuel Smiles’ observation, there is no need to elaborate on why national decay is born of individual idleness, selfishness and vice. The rise and fall of the Roman Empire is but one of many examples throughout all history. Paraphrasing the English poet, Lord Byron (1788–1824): “’Tis vice that digs her own voluptuous tomb.”

Now for the opposite—the most remarkable demonstration of how “national progress is the sum of individual industry, energy and uprightness in all history.” It took place in Florence when it was a nation and not a city as now. The Duke of Florence, known as Lorenzo the Magnificent (1449–92) was wealthy, a great scholar and had as much political power as any dictator who ever lived.

Lorenzo limited his great political power to keeping the peace. Florentians acted creatively as they pleased; an essentially free society prevailed which accounted for one of the greatest outbursts of creativity up to that time and laid the ground for the birth of the Italian Renaissance.

When Lorenzo passed on to his reward, his son, Piero, became the Duke whom the unlimited power corrupted. The Florentians drove that family—the Medici—out of their nation, never to return.[2] The rise for a good reason and a fall for an equally good reason!

Wrote Elisha Friedman: “When a national ideal dies, a nation perishes.” Lorenzo’s ideal died when his son, Piero, took over. The nation perished! I am reminded of a thought by Shakespeare: “Man, proud man! dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.”

The English poet, Samuel Butler, expressed the same idea a generation later in this enlightening jingle:

Authority intoxicates,

And makes mere sots of magistrates;

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men giddy, proud, and vain.

Lord Acton (1834–1902), added his wisdom: “Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Here is the way my dictionary defines the kind of government that “makes the angels weep,” that “intoxicates,” that “corrupts absolutely”: “To exercise authority over, direct; control; rule; manage.” Authoritarianism on the rampage!

In our America—once the home of the free—authoritarianism, for the past few decades, has raged unchecked, increasing each year by horrendous leaps toward a politico-economic hell. The American theologian, Tryon Edwards (1809–94), cited the cause of such a deplorable mess, of a kind that has infected the citizens of all nations throughout history: “Hell is truth seen too late—duty neglected in its season.” And this wise man added: “Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. To understand everything we must be as God.”

Duty’s season is always past, present and future. Duty-vacations are taboo! The late Robert A. Millikan, a FEE Trustee, one of the world’s greatest scientists and Nobel Prize winner in physics, wrote: “Duty has nothing to do with what somebody else conceives to be for the common good.” Duty has to do with what you and I conceive to be for our own good. What’s for the common good is a mystery to every citizen. Our one and only duty? Intellectual, moral and spiritual growth!

May our work—yours and ours—result in a return to freedom for the U.S.A. and, hopefully, for the world. Let us be freemen whom the truth makes free!

[1] See the chapter, “War and Peace” in my book, Awake for Freedom’s Sake (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1977), pp. 3039.

[2] See The Medici by G. F. Young (New York: Modern Library).

21

THE TOUCHSTONE OF PROGRESS

To have striven, to have made an effort, to have been true to certain ideals—this alone is worth the struggle.

—SIR WILLIAM OSLER

This Canadian physician (1849–1919) made another edifying and enlightening observation:

Though little, the master word looms large in meaning. It is the “open sesame” to every portal, the great equalizer, the philosopher’s stone which transmutes all base metal of humanity into gold. The stupid it will make bright, the bright brilliant, and the brilliant steady. To youth it brings hope, to the middle-aged confidence, to the aged repose. It is directly responsible for all advances in medicine during the past 25 years. Not only has it been the touchstone of progress, but is the measure of success in everyday life. And the master word is work!

Another distinguished physician, Dr. Hans Selye, named several famous men who lived to a ripe old age, and added this comment: “Of course in their many years of intense activity, these people never ‘worked’; they lived a life of ‘leisure’ by working at what they liked to do.”[1] Here, at least in common terminology, is what appears to be a paradox in the lives of men of achievement: (1) “these people never worked” and (2) “they lived a life of leisure.”

The individuals to whom Dr. Selye referred found occupations in harmony with their uniqueness. A labor of love! Hours? Long days and even nights! Years ago, FEE had a personal—not a government—garbage collector. Late one afternoon while he was emptying our garbage into his truck I asked, “How are you doing, Herbie?” He replied, “Mr. Read, I love my work.”

Work, if of the kind one loves—be it Herbie’s, yours or mine—is remindful of Thomas Edison’s laughable but wise sentence: “As a cure for worrying, work is better than whiskey.” Work, if joyous, is also a cure for fretting, despondency and doubt. The American surgeon, Dr. Charles A. Mayo (1865–1939), along with his brothers, established the Mayo Clinic in 1889. It gained international fame. Wrote this genius: “Worry affects the circulation, the heart, the glands, the whole nervous system. I have never known a man who died from overwork, but many who died from doubt.” True, many die from doubt, defeated by years of hopelessness, having no goals to encourage life’s advancement. “Doubt is brother devil to despair.” It is clear that we should steer clear of doubt. How? Have faith in intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. “Faith is the subtle chain that binds us to the Infinite.”

Conceded, the touchstone of progress is in working at the joyous level—each person in harmony with his or her uniqueness. It seems appropriate here to quote and comment on what several among the thoughtful have had to say about progress.

All that is human must retrograde if we do not advance.

—Edward Gibbon

There is no staying in one position—except under a tombstone. Alive, we change one way or the other every second. “We shall all be changed in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye.” (I Corinthians, 15:51–52)

He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad, will as certainly become worse; for vice, virtue and time are three that never stand still.

—Caleb C. Colton

Every moment of life should be aimed at surpassing the previous moment. Look not only to self but to the sages, past and present. If one’s goal be the advancement of liberty, study the works of Confucius, Socrates, Emerson, Bastiat, our Founding Fathers and ever so many others including the works of the late Benjamin Rogge. Not to advance in good thinking is to fall by the wayside. Lacking a worthy purpose, life drifts downhill; to mount higher demands effort.

Every age has its problems by solving which, humanity is helped forward.

—H. Heine

We Americans have been experiencing a problem growing worse during each decade since 1898: SOCIALISM! Humanity is helped forward only if and when freedom—civilization—has prevailed, and these instances are few in number.

The first eruption of truth—a move toward freedom—took place in Sumer, now known as Iraq, 4,600 years ago. About a century ago, some archeologists began excavating in that arid and nonproductive land. They went deeper than originally intended, coming upon fantastic surprises: beautiful buildings, artistic sculptures and other works of art and, above all, clay tablets, prisms and cones by the thousands, all done in cuneiform signs, setting forth the freedom philosophy, religion, and so on.[2] While this, as the ones that follow, cannot be described as a state of perfection, each was attended by a prosperity previously unknown.

The second eruption occurred in ancient Athens, described by Edith Hamilton. “. . . the shadow of ‘effortless barbarism’ was dark upon the face of the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before.”

Admittedly, it was not like ancient Sumer, but Athens was featured by an unparalleled freedom for that day and age. And Athens flourished for a time.

For the third eruption of truth, move on to medieval times: Venice in the heyday of Marco Polo (1250–1325). In this instance there was freedom to produce and exchange with others thousands of miles away. Again, unprecedented wealth! Exceptional? Observe Venice today! In the same all-too-common mess again.

For the fourth eruption of truth refer to Adam Smith and one of the greatest books ever written: The Wealth of Nations. It was his book and the help of John Bright, Richard Cobden and Frederic Bastiat that resulted in the overthrow of mercantilism—the thing we now call the planned economy or welfare state. Result? The Industrial Revolution, the greatest boon to the masses up until that time. But, again the slump, back to the same old mess again. Recently, a hoped-for political turnabout. Maybe yes and maybe no!

And finally the greatest eruption of all time: the U.S.A.—for a time! And do not overlook the role of Adam Smith as related to the American miracle. It was the simultaneous appearance of The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence, followed by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, that put government in its proper place and left Americans free to act creatively as they pleased. The result? By far the greatest flourishing of creative energy ever known, and a prosperity beyond the dreams of all who had gone before.

The U.S.A. another example of the rise and fall sequence? Yes, we are witnessing the same kind of fall that England experienced—except that our fall is from a higher level. The reason why we are still so prosperous is the enormous momentum from the time when we were freer than today. The ways of freedom are still in our blood, and they continue to serve even when not understood. Thank Heaven, we still have time to bring about a reversal.

As to the touchstone of progress, I shall conclude by quoting the American author and editor, Christian N. Bovee (1820–1904): “The greatest of all laws is the law of progressive development. Under it, men grow wiser as they grow older.”

One does not grow old; one becomes old by not growing. As we grow older, let us grow wiser in understanding and explaining the birth of the American miracle: freedom to act creatively as we please!

[1] See a splendid article, “But Hard Work Isn’t Bad for You,” by Dr. Hans Selye, Reader’s Digest, June, 1973.

[2] For detailed information see two books by Samuel Noah Kramer: From the Tablets of Sumer (Indian Hills, Colorado: The Falcon’s Press), 1956, and The Sumerians: Their History, Culture and Character (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press), 1963.

22

ALL IS MYSTERY

Mystery is but another name for ignorance; if we were omniscient all would be perfectly plain.

—TRYON EDWARDS

The wise Tryon Edwards (1809–94) presents a thought which, if grasped and adhered to, would be a boon to mankind.

First, what is the meaning of omniscient? It is: “Infinite knowledge; knowing all things.” Perhaps there is no greater thwarting of human evolution than the millions of know-it-alls who “think” of themselves as omniscient—as God—whereas they are about as far from such Enlightenment as humans can get. To them, very little, if anything, is mystery!

Second, what is mystery? It is: “Something unexplained, unknown, or kept secret; as the mystery of life.” It is, indeed, another name for the ignorance which is part of our finitude.

Everything in life is mystery—no exception whatsoever! Begin by asking a relevant question, “How can I have my way and at the same time do no injury or injustice to others?”

Perhaps the answer will come clear if I can find the answer to two other questions, (1) Who am I? and (2) Where am I going? or, better yet, What is my way? Another phrasing of these questions might be: (1) What is man’s nature? and (2) What is man’s destiny? These speculations are as ancient as man himself. Although they are beyond the capacity of any person to answer, some light may be shed as one wrestles with them.

Who am I? Here’s one part of the answer: I am one octillion atoms—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000—a number difficult to grasp unless we use our imagination. Cover the surface of this earth—land and sea—with dried peas to a depth of four feet and their number would fall far, far short of an octillion. Go out into the universe and cover 250,000 other earth-sized planets with four feet of peas and that would be the number of atoms in my make-up.[1] Mystery?

The atom? It is so small that 30 trillion atoms could be placed on the period at the end of this sentence without overlapping. Blow an atom up to 100 yards in diameter and what do you behold? Radiant energy in the form of electrons, neutrons and the like, in wave sequences flying about at the speed of light. In the center is the atomic nucleus which, after being thus expanded, is the size of a pinhead. This and this alone is “stuff” and no one knows what it is, except that it appears “solid.” All else is empty space. Mystery?

Were it possible to apply an atomic press to me and squeeze out all but the “stuff”—the nuclei—I would be a particle so small that it would not be discernible on a piece of white paper. In a word, I am physically but a mere speck—next to nothing! Mystery?

As for the other side of the coin, there is a sense in which I am even more than a mere, mechanistic speck—infinitely more. For instance, my octillion atoms are not the same atoms that comprised my make-up a few years ago. They continuously escape and a new octillion enters about every five years. To where do they escape and from whence come the new ones? To and from everywhere throughout the universe! As the famous scientist, Dr. Andrews, wrote: “There is a high probability that you have in your body right now a thousand atoms that were once in the body of Julius Caesar . . . and speaking very reverently, we can say that each of us has in his body a thousand atoms that were in the body of Christ . . . the individual atoms are scarcely more than the shadows of a far deeper reality that we find in this total atomic harmony within us, the spirit of our Creator within us.”

Wrote the Swiss theologian, John Lavater (1741–1801): “Each particle of matter is an immensity; each leaf a world; each insect an inexplicable compendium.”

Charles F. Kettering, famous engineer and inventor (1876–1958) said, “No one knows why grass is green.”

Here is a supporting stunner. Two acres of our lawn at FEE have over one billion blades of grass and this is an infinitesimal fraction of all the grass on earth—each blade “a world,” that is, a mystery!

After retiring, I often look through my bedroom window and observe headlights of autos some distance away. The source of these lights, countless millions of them in many countries? Electricity! Not a soul on earth knows what it is, only that it is and a few clues as to what it can do!

Every breath, all heartbeats, eyesight, the billions of cells in the human cortex, the ability to wonder, the evolution of humanity—blessings without end—are mysteries!

Wrote F. D. Huntington (1819–1904): “While reason is puzzling herself about the mystery, faith is turning it into daily bread and feeding on it thankfully in our heart of hearts.” Heart of hearts?: “in one’s innermost nature or deepest feelings; fundamentally.”

“Miracle is the darling child of faith.” And so is mystery for the right-minded. Mystery, if and when recognized—an awareness of how little we know—makes the case for liberty: for it is a mysterious fact that our tiny bits of expertise, freely flowing, become the goods and services by which we live and prosper.

Wrote the American clergyman, Robert Collyer (1823–1912): “Faith makes the discords of the present, the harmonies of the future.” Recognize that mystery is everywhere, and have faith in liberty for one and all!

[1] See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.

23

THE STEPPINGSTONES TO KNOWLEDGE

It was said of one of the most intelligent men who ever lived in New England, that when asked how he came to know so much about everything, he replied, “By constantly realizing my own ignorance, and never being afraid or ashamed to ask questions.”

—TRYON EDWARDS

In his compilation of The New Dictionary of Thoughts, the American theologian, Tryon Edwards (1809–94) found others to confirm his views:

The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

—Richard Cecil

By ignorance is pride increased; those most assume who know the least.

—John Gay

Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has never “heard of.”

—Ralph Barton Perry

Anyone with a modicum of wisdom realizes the absurdity of running the lives of others. No one knows perfectly how to run his or her own life. It is said that “Pride goeth before a fall.” The millions overly proud account for the fall that has been upsetting the freedom way of life.

I use the past tense, “has been,” because of a firm belief that the societal pendulum has swung to the left—toward socialism—as far as it is going to go, and that it is about to swing toward the right—the freedom way of life. To be found in Matthew 5:38–39: “Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth. I say unto you. That ye resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on the right cheek, turn to him the other [left] also.”

Here we have the use of “right” and “left” about 2,000 years ago. The counsel is of the highest order, namely, effective resistance to socialistic know-it-all-ness does not consist in smiting them—name-calling and so on—but only by the positive approach: presenting the case for liberty far better than we have been doing. Admittedly, the turnabout will be a miracle but as Goethe said, “Miracle is the darling child of faith.” We must have faith to win!

I have written time and time again that faith works miracles. Here are several proofs that I am an ideological and a politico-economic copycat and proud of it—looking for wisdom from my superiors:

There is no great future for any people whose faith has burned out or congealed. History records the ominous fact that national degeneration takes place where faith or vision fail or wane as surely as it does when economic assets shrink or when there is a dearth of sound money currency.

—Rufus M. Jones

Faith marches at the head of the army of progress. It is found beside the most refined life, the freest government, the profoundest philosophy, the noblest poetry, the purest humanity.

—T. T. Munger

Never yet did there exist a full faith in the divine word which did not expand the intellect while it purified the heart; which did not multiply the aims and objects of the understanding, while it fixed and simplified those of the desires and passions.

—Coleridge

We are establishing an all-time world record in the production of material things. What we lack is a righteous and dynamic faith. Without it, all else avails us little. The lack cannot be compensated for by politicians, however able; or by diplomats, however astute; or by scientists, however inventive; or by bombs, however powerful.

—John Foster Dulles

We, members of society, can expect no beneficial results short of a faith in—and practice of—righteousness, the Golden Rule being an excellent guideline: Never do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you. Dulles rejects bombs, however powerful; which is to say that mass murder multiplies rather than lessens mankind’s problems. I have recently written a pamphlet, Conscience on the Battlefield, an attempt on my part to demonstrate the absurdity of such action.[1]

Enough about the ignorance that torments all who have lived or now live. Let us reflect on its opposite, knowledge, that we may find the right steppingstones and move toward the proper goals; for “Knowledge advances by steps, not by leaps,” as Macaulay reminds us. Daniel Webster added his wisdom: “Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.”

We have American history to prove this point. Our Founding Fathers were knowledgeable—statesmen, not politicians. In their search for righteousness they unseated government as the endower of men’s rights and placed the Creator there. George Washington phrased it excellently: “If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”

Wrote Emerson: “Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.” Suppose that you or I knew no more than that which is or has been original with us. Each of us would be a dummy or, to use the German term, a “dummkopf.” Socrates referred to himself as “a philosophical midwife.” He received from countless sources and shared. Those of us who have a modicum of knowledge do the same. The Sage of Concord has been and still is one of the innumerable minds I draw upon.

No one is expert in all subjects, so let us emphasize in our writing and conversation whatever our unique knowledge happens to be. The more we practice what we know, the more skilled we become, and our improved bits of wisdom should be employed on the next occasion, and the next. Put the best foot forward, as the saying goes.

Doing what is right and proper, such as adhering to the Ten Commandments and The Golden Rule, are gifts of Creation. Knowledge at your and my level is awareness of how the free and unfettered market works its wonders. When tiny bits of expertise—there are trillions of them—are free to flow, they configurate and result in ever-improving lives and livelihood. Let’s be worthy of our Heavenly gifts that others may build on what we have begun.

Finally, let us heed the counsel of the English educator, Thomas Arnold (1795–1842): “Real knowledge, like everything else of value, is not to be obtained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and more than all, must be prayed for.” Let us pray for a knowledge of freedom!

[1] Copy on request.

24

WHAT THE LOOKING GLASS REVEALS

Do you know the man against whom you have most reason to guard yourself? Your looking glass will give you a very fair likeness of his face.

—RICHARD WHATELY

Among the highest virtues of mankind is self-control and the Archbishop of Dublin (1787–1863) clearly identified the individual in charge: Yours Truly!

Wrote Goethe, “What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.” The lesson? Those of us who would achieve self-mastery have only one guideline: strive for an understanding and explanation of Creation at the human level. This is an aspiration that can only be approximated, never achieved, no matter how brilliant one may be. Wrote the Spanish poet, dramatist and novelist, Miguel de Cervantes (1547–1616), “The road is always better than the inn.” If we truly seek freedom, founded on self-control, then there is no inn, no graduating class, so long as life endures. It is always the road—refinement and more refinement—now and forever. And fear not repetition, for nothing is too often repeated that is not sufficiently learned. Repetition is the mother of learning!

Several excellent thoughts by the American divine, Wilbur Fisk (1792–1839): “Every temptation that is resisted, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sinful thought that is repressed, every bitter word that is withheld, adds its little item to the impetus of that great movement which is bearing upward toward a richer life and higher character.”

Regardless of how great the temptation, it justifies no degree of sin, that is, no departure from truth as one beholds it. “The truth shall make you free!”

Edmund Burke came to our aid: “Nobility is a graceful ornament to the civil order. It is the Corinthian capital of polished society. It is, indeed, one sign of a liberal and benevolent mind to incline to it with some sort of partial propensity.” Propensity? It means learning, readiness and the like—intellectually moving in the right direction, an aim all of us should have!

As to nobility, it is, indeed, the graceful ornament to civil—stately—order. Emerson: “All nobility in its beginnings, was somebody’s natural superiority.” In this sense, our Founding Fathers were NOBLEMEN! Why? They unseated government as the endower of human rights and placed the Creator there! I, and everyone, should salute them!

Enough about Fisk’s noble aspirations. What about “every temptation that is resisted”? It is one thing to be tempted by monstrous and evil schemes such as socialism or any coercive device, but it is intellectual folly or sin to yield.

Observed the English critic and essayist, John Ruskin (1819–1900): “No one can ask honestly or hope fully to be delivered from temptation unless he has himself honestly and firmly determined to do the best he can to keep out of it.” In Matthew 6:13: “Lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil.”

Every sinful thought that is repressed increases the good thoughts that are within one’s potentialities. The recognition of sin is the beginning of moral and politico-economic salvation. Wrote the founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn: “If thou wouldst conquer thy weakness thou must never gratify it. No man is compelled to evil; only his consent makes it his. It is no sin to be tempted; it is to yield and be overcome.”

Perhaps an individual’s greatest weakness is when he fancies himself wise. All populations are infested with know-it-alls. Pretended omniscience is a self-imposed liability, not coercively inflicted by others. All of us are tempted, but a few, bless their souls, do not succumb. They lead the rest of us in the righteous way.

Every bitter word that is withheld is a blessing in disguise. Regardless of the derogatory names communists or other masters of coercion may call those of us who are freedom devotees, let us refrain from biting back. When one calls another a “so-and-so,” he reveals his own character. If one is improving, he doesn’t wholly agree with his self of yesterday. Bear in mind that the evolutionary thrust—Creation’s design for mankind—is toward an ever-expanding variation. Is it not obvious that bitter words, written or spoken to those who differ, hardens them in their ways? Instead of grasping any worthy ideas offered, they will turn their backs and assess the name-callers. “Thou fool!” It is tolerance and kindness that work wonders.

Wilbur Fisk’s wisdom, concerning character, is confirmed by Samuel Smiles: “Good character is human nature in its best form. It is moral order embodied in the individual. Men of character are not only the conscience of society, but in every well-governed state they are its best motive power; for it is moral qualities which, in the main, rule the world.”

No question about it, character is human nature in its best form. It is the know-how and the determination to become an attracting exemplar of liberty for one and all. Such good thoughts, if their progenitors be numerous enough, do, indeed, rule the world!

Wrote the Sage of Concord: “A man passes for what he is worth. What he is engraves itself on his face in letters of light.” To whom should one look for an ever-brighter light—understanding—of liberty? At the face seen in the looking glass!

25

ONE WAY TO ASSESS THE FUTURE

Tell me what are the prevailing sentiments that occupy the minds of your young men and I will tell you what is to be the character of the next generation.

—EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke was a statesman, not a politician. He was one of the outstanding spokesmen and exponents of liberty. Burke, more than anyone else, opposed the Crown in its behavior toward the Colonies. Were Burke a present-day American, we would invite him to be a member of FEE’s Board. I say this because I quote him more than any person past or present.

I have argued for years that prognostication—trying to predict the future—is nonsense. We have ever so many high IQers who are prophets of doom. They see the devolution of the past eight decades and conclude that that is IT! Such “prophets” are blind to the fact that evolution inevitably follows devolution. We have all history to demonstrate that this is part and parcel of the Cosmic Design. Actually, no one knows what is going to happen in the next minute.

We must not, however, overlook the fact that there is a rule of life which seems like prognostication, but is something quite different. It is an acknowledgment of the workings of cause and effect in human affairs; we reap what we have sown. Wrote Samuel Johnson, author of the first English dictionary, “The first years of men must make provision for the last.” This squares with Burke’s wisdom.

The above suggests that the future of our country rests on what present-day children will be like when advancing into adulthood and old age. Two samples of the very few who saw the light as did Burke and Johnson:

Childhood shows the man, as morning shows the day.

—John Milton

The child is father of the man.

—William Wordsworth

What is the “problem” we face? Appropriate education of our youngsters! Education falls into two opposite categories: (1) coercive, be it private or public; and (2) voluntary, with three major points which I shall attempt to explain.

Here are the two opposite philosophies, the first by that famous dictator, Napoleon: “Public instruction should be the first object of government.” He, more than anyone, was responsible for government “education” in the U.S.A.[1]

Here is the second, the opposite of the dictator’s nonsense and by a young lad, Andrew Carnegie, born in Scotland who had hardly any formal schooling: “Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.” Hard work was Carnegie’s schooling. Did it succeed? This man founded the Carnegie Steel Company, the world’s largest at the time, and became one of the world’s wealthiest men and philanthropists.

What are the three major points we should understand and have the ability to explain? They are: (1) the locus of responsibility for the child’s education; (2) the fallacy of government education; and (3) the efficacy of private education when understood and properly directed.

The responsibility for the education of children rests with the parents. For how long? Until the child matures into self-responsibility. If never, the problem is not educational but custodial. In brief, avoid present trends in “education.” Wrote Tryon Edwards: “Sin with the multitude, and your responsibility and guilt are as great and as truly personal as if you alone had done the wrong.”

Parents may hire a tutor as an educational aide. The right to hire has its counterpart: the right to fire. Bear in mind that authority and responsibility are commensurate. They are twin behaviors in all successful organization.

The second part is intended as a critique of government education, not as a criticism of all who teach in government schools, many of whom are committed to freedom. How do we know this? Over the past 35 years we have had many hundreds of teachers at FEE Seminars, and they are teaching the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life—liberty for one and all. Shall FEE take the credit? No, for our efforts would have been futile had we not been working with the seekers of Truth!

The three characteristics of government education? They are:

(1) Compulsory attendance.

(2) Government prescribed curricula.

(3) Forcible collection of the wherewithal to defray costs.

Compulsion is freedom’s most antagonistic behavior! Instruction cannot be forced into another’s head. Good ideas are to be attained by freely searching for the thoughts of superior mentors, past and present.

As to government-prescribed curricula: this is indoctrination, not education, and presupposes that those in political office think of themselves as know-it-alls. Wrote the English divine, Robert South: “Nothing is so haughty and assuming as ignorance where self-conceit sets up to be infallible.”

The English poet and satirist, Samuel Butler, phrased this nonsense better:

Authority intoxicates,

And makes sots of magistrates;

The fumes of it invade the brain,

And make men giddy, proud, and vain.

The forcible collection of the wherewithal to pay for government education compels freedom devotees to subsidize their opponents.

My conclusion is intended to suggest free market education as the appropriate alternative to government education.

Government is organized police force; its appropriate and limited function is to keep the peace and invoke a common justice. Were government to step aside in education, as it has in religion, education would be left to the free market where the wisdom is.

Would the elimination of government from education mean that children would go unschooled? Not at all! Time after time I have asked individuals, from taxi drivers to corporate presidents, “Would you let your children go uneducated were all government compulsions removed?” Answer: “Do you think I am a fool? I would no more let my children go without an education than let them go without food.”

The belief in freedom in education is in the form of an achievement in understanding (1) the nature of government, (2) its uniqueness as police force, and (3) the limited competence of, as well as the absolute necessity for, police force—an understanding to be learned, mastered, and remembered by at least enough persons to form an effective leadership in each new generation. This achievement is a personal, day-in and day-out requirement, meaning that it cannot be delegated to others, much less to our forefathers; it can never be relegated to the past tense; it is a continuing imperative of each new moment, without end.

The dilemma is this: The understanding of police-force-as-guard will, obviously, never be advanced but only retarded when the police-force-as-boss is put in the educational driver’s seat. Thus, unless a breakthrough is achieved by an individual here and there, capable of independent analysis and unafraid of parting company with the masses, the most important aspect of education for responsible citizenship will go unattended.

The myth of government education, in our country today, is an article of general faith. To question the myth is to tamper with the faith, a business that few will read about or listen to or calmly tolerate. In short, for those who would make the case for educational freedom as they would for freedom in religion, let them be warned that this is a first-rate obstacle course. But heart can be taken in the fact that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming. And becoming is life’s prime purpose; becoming is, in fact, enlightenment—self-education its own reward!

[1] For an explanation see the chapter, “Elementary Education” in my book, Liberty: Legacy of Truth (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1978), pp. 98–103.

26

HAVE A STRONG CLEAR PURPOSE

There is no road to success but through a strong dear purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, advancement of every sort.

—T. T. MUNGER

Purpose is defined as “something one intends to get or do; intention, aim.” Munger, an American clergyman (1830–1910), emphasized that the road to success, in any field, is paved with high aims. Tryon Edwards contributed a supporting thought: “High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.” We should, for our own good, be able to identify those among us who possess a clear strong purpose. This can be aided—made easier—by reflecting on those poor souls who are afflicted with low—hellish—aims or purposes.

Wrote James Russell Lowell: “Not failure but low aim is crime.”

In all of my 27 books I have emphasized time and time again that, in the politico-economic realm, none have a lower aim than those who seek coercive power in order to cast others in their pitiful, little images. Know-it-alls!

So, to avoid unnecessary repetition, I shall quote what others have had to say about low ambitions.

The man who . . . seeks all things, wherever he goes, reaps from the hopes which he sows, a harvest of barren regrets.

—Bulwer-Lytton

Fling away ambition. By that sin angels fell. How then can man, the image of his Maker, hope to win by it?

—Shakespeare

Ambition often puts men upon doing the meanest offices. So climbing is performed in the same posture as creeping.

—Jonathan Swift

Ambition is a lust that is never quenched but grows more inflamed and madder by enjoyment.

—Thomas Otway

Striving for fame and popularity fall into this same ignoble category.

Munger’s “road to success” is consistent with the dictionary’s definition of success: “a favorable or satisfactory outcome, or result.” But success has its risks. Ever so many wise men have assessed individual success as having a pitiful effect—fat-headed-ness—the I-am-it syndrome. “Nothing fails like success,” wrote Dean Inge; and Benjamin Franklin observed that “Success has ruined many a man.” And it has!

Franklin, on another occasion, used a clever aphorism, somewhat of an aboutface: “Success after forty is working for it like sixty.” Many an individual, after achieving success during the vigorous years, is inclined to rest on his or her laurels. This is to fall by the wayside, to call it quits, to think of life’s mission as already accomplished—creative action in the past tense. One must avoid such catastrophic nonsense and regard youthful success merely as the foundation for improvement—growth—in all of life’s tomorrows.

When we discover that each individual is unique—not remotely like any other—each person being the best judge of the field in which his growth is most promising, we will all do our best to see that freedom of choice is maximized—liberty for one and all!

Wrote Albert Einstein: “A successful man is he who receives a great deal from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more than corresponds to his service to them.” What a truism by this great scientist! According to this definition, I am a successful man, for I work to advance a cause which I believe is uppermost among mankind’s countless goals—trying better to understand and explain the freedom way of life.

Do I receive incomparably more from others than they from me? Trillions of times more! From whence comes the pen with which I write? Not from any one person but from the tens of thousands who had a tiny part in its making. Reflect on the countless individuals who had a part in the food you and I eat, the clothes we wear, the cars we drive, the planes on which we travel, our telephones which can send our voices around the world in one-seventh of a second! I, as any other person, cannot even scratch the surface in recognizing our incomparable blessings!

Were enough persons aware of Einstein’s truth, liberty would prevail. Why this assertion? They would reject any and all obstacles to the free flow of the trillions times trillions of blessings that account for our existence.

Andrew Carnegie, founder of United States Steel and one of America’s greatest entrepreneurs and philanthropists—only nine months of schooling—wrote: “I believe the true road to prominent success in any line is to make yourself master of that line.” Carnegie practiced what he preached, a laudable virtue—constancy of purpose! Thomas Carlyle wrote: “A man without a purpose is like a ship without a rudder—a waif, a nothing, a no man. Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw such strength of mind and muscle into your work as God [Creation] has given you.”

To conclude, no one ever knows for certain who first spoke or wrote helpful truths. Here is one generally attributed to Emerson and also claimed by Elbert Hubbard: “If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbors, though he build his home in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.” “The world,” as here used, is a metaphor, meaning unusually large numbers, not everyone on earth.

As to a better book, millions beat a path to those who wrote the Holy Bible. Reflect on the numbers who over the decades beat a path to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and who have beaten and still are beating a path to Weaver’s The Mainspring of Human Progress, Bastiat’s The Law and ever so many others.

Sermons? How about “The Sermon on the Mount”? And the millions who are attracted to the moral and spiritual Perfection of Jesus? The law of attraction at its best!

Or build a better mouse-trap? Again, a metaphor! Individuals exercising their unique capabilities to achieve their full potential.

Let us try everlastingly to move ahead on the road to success. The guideline? If at first you don’t succeed try and try again!

27

STRIVE TO BE A NOBLEMAN

True nobility is derived from virtue, not from birth. Title may be purchased, but virtue is the only coin that makes the bargain valid.

—RICHARD E. BURTON

What a noble observation by this American author and professor of English (1861–1940)! “Nobleman,” in its generic sense, is a man or woman inheriting at birth such titles as King, Lord, Prince, Duke, or a woman having the rank of “peer in her own right.”

However, not all such labels are inheritances. I have an elderly friend on whom the title of “Lord” was recently bestowed. Why? Because of his virtue! These exceptions, throughout history, are numerous. I know of a Prince who is a freedom devotee.

My comments in no way contradict the accuracy of Burton’s truisms. Error is too often mistaken for truth, for error is all about us and truth lies deep and must be searched for. As Austin O’Malley phrased this point: Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.

What about “title may be purchased”? Many titles, throughout recorded time, have been “purchased” by brute force. To name several examples: Napoleon, Mussolini, Hitler, Mao Tse-tung, Stalin.

What, really, is brute force? Is this a tyranny only of the past, a vice to be forgotten? Perish such a thoughtless notion!

A bum with a gun who robs another of his or her possessions obviously resorts to brute force. Even this kind of a low-brow bum wouldn’t disagree! It’s when a significant percentage of the citizenry descends to the Napoleonic level that titles are “purchased” by brute force.

Those who descend to this infamous level fall into two categories: (1) the millions of politicians who rob Peter to pay Paul and (2) the millions of Pauls who encourage and vote for the political robbers.

Is brute force implicit in this ignoble procedure? Yes, or the whole kit and caboodle of interventions by our 78,000 governments—federal, state and local—could be spoken of in the past tense.

These interventions are by the countless thousands. Several examples: social security, many forms of welfarism, government mail “delivery,” coercive labor union tactics, embargoes, tariffs, government “education,” local swimming pools, other special privileges in every town, city and state in the nation, the Gateway Arch being typical.

Are these interventions backed by brute force? Affirmative! For proof, try breaking these laws. Result? A fine or jail! Freedom of choice down the political drain! Napoleonic? Yes, indeed! Let us strive for their Waterloo!

Here is a suggestion as to the kind of thinking that, hopefully, might bring about a “Waterloo” to the employers of brute force—unrestrained and devilish action: It is incorrect to think of liberty as synonymous with unrestrained action. Liberty does not and cannot include any action, regardless of sponsorship, which lessens the liberty of a single human being. To argue contrarily is to claim that liberty can be composed of liberty negations, patently absurd. Unrestraint carried to the point of impairing the liberty of others is the exercise of license, not liberty. To minimize the exercise of license is to maximize the area of liberty. Ideally, government would restrain license, not indulge in it; make it difficult, not easy; disgraceful, not popular. A government that does otherwise is licentious, not liberal.[1]

True nobility is derived from virtue. The English clergyman, Caleb Colton, expressed this point with clarity: “There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every conquest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her; and zealously to labor after her ways is to receive them.”

Virtue? According to my dictionary it is “Manliness . . . general moral excellence; right action and thinking; goodness of character.” What a boon to mankind were a few as perfect as this definition suggests. However, no individual is or ever has been anywhere near perfect—Godlike! But bear in mind that there is no better aspiration, an ideal to be sought constantly, never forsaken. This truth inspired the English divine, A. W. Hare (1792–1884) to write: “They who disbelieve in virtue because man has never been found perfect, might as reasonably deny the sun because it is not always noon.” Believe in virtue!

Wrote the French archbishop, Francis Fenelon (1651–1715): “The most virtuous of all men, says Plato, is he who contents himself with being virtuous without seeking to appear so.”

Seeking to appear virtuous is the pursuit of fame, an infamous goal.

For what is understood by Fame

Beside the getting of a Name?

—Swift

Fame is nothing but an empty name.

—Charles Churchill

So let us content ourselves by being virtuous!

[1] I have used “liberal” in its classical sense. As my dictionary records: . . . originally, suitable for a freeman; not restricted; now obsolete.

Thoughts Rule the World

Leonard E. Read

1981

TO

. . . the seeker of truth

. . . the exemplar of liberty:

the key to a better world!

1

THOUGHTS RULE THE WORLD

Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than material force, that thoughts rule the world.

—EMERSON

Discoveries, inventions, insights, intuitive flashes—thoughts—are what I understand by “spiritual.” It is obvious that everything by which we live and prosper has its origin in the spiritual before its manifestation in the material. First the ideas, then the object. One of the countless examples: To claim that my electric typewriter is the product of a million thoughts would be a gross understatement. Reflect on these points:

• Press the button and instantly electric energy flows. No one can come close to estimating the number of thoughts that have contributed to this phenomenon—from the day Benjamin Franklin with his kite discovered that lightning is electricity to today’s electronic miracles!

• That which encases all of this fantastic gadgetry originates from a combination of mined ore. Modern mining includes everything from ropes to shovels to elevators to dynamite to consumer demand. Thoughts galore, beyond anyone’s imagination, no two identical!

• Facing the typist are 55 keys, the touching of which performs a magical function. Of what are these gadgets made? Millions of thoughts! And reflect on the letters, from A to Z, components of the English language. Who can calculate the number of thoughts that brought them into being over the centuries? No one, even remotely!

The above paragraphs have to do only with the thoughts responsible for the creation of a typewriter. Imagine how many more thoughts it has taken to account for the automobile! Every day for the past 80 years new thoughts have added improvements to the vehicle we take for granted. A 747 Jet has 5,000,000 parts and no individual knows how to make a single one of them—any more than anyone knows how to make a simple wooden lead pencil.[1]

I glance around my office and see at least a hundred items, ranging from beautiful artificial flowers to an accurate radio-clock. No one knows how to make a single one of these items, or even the pen I use as I ponder the complexities of the role of thought!

The point is that no one person has the capacity to manage the storm of thoughts that bombard the universe. But when free to flow, thoughts tend to configurate into the goods and services by which we live and prosper. So, let us have faith in freedom.

Given a sufficient realization that thoughts are fleeting, ever-changing, in an ideological flurry—given this understanding—the practice and impact of know-it-all-ness would dwindle. When it is recognized that no person on this earth—past or present—can command the thoughts of a single individual, let alone the millions, the command way of life is seen to be the mistaken way of the past. Politicians will be replaced by statesmen; our 78,000 governments—federal, state and local—will be limited to prohibiting the acts of aggression and destruction of a disappearing number of wiseacres. The cost of all governments will be insignificant—this alone being worth the ideological struggle.

Good thinkers of our day are blest with thoughts by wise men the world over, from ancient to modern times. Examples: Confucius, Socrates, Jesus, Epictetus, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Bastiat, Cobden, Bright, Adam Smith, Washington, Emerson and many more.

This good advice from the Roman Emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius (121–180): “The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts, therefore guard accordingly; and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue.” Aurelius was a devoted Stoic who held to the philosophy that all happenings are the result of Divine Will. Thus, no belief, none whatsoever, in a political or any other type of dictocrat!

That happiness depends on the quality of our thoughts is a truism. Wrote the French philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623–62): “Happiness is neither within us only, or without us; it is a union of ourselves with God.” As to quality of thought, this is unquestionably number one!

Aurelius wisely cautions against notions unsuitable to virtue. Briefly, entertain no thoughts nor take any actions out of harmony with Judeo-Christian charity, intelligence, justice, integrity, love, humility, reverence!

The elderly American divine, Daniel March (1816–1919) gave us this bit of wisdom: “The great thinker is seldom a disputant. He answers other men’s arguments by stating the truth as he sees it.” In our realm of thought, the freedom devotee who trades blows with a socialist merely hardens the latter in his ways. Bad method! Stating the truth of freedom, when done with enough expertise, occasionally attracts a socialist to a better idea. Good method!

Truly, thoughts rule the world. However, their rule will never be to mankind’s benefit unless the most difficult thought of all is understood and practiced. And what might that be? Several benchmarks:

1. To concede that everything is mystery, that is, to realize how infinitesimal is your or my understanding.

2. To recognize that trillions times trillions of good thoughts—no two alike—when left free to flow, will mysteriously configurate to the benefit of one and all as we stand in worshipful wonder.

3. “I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinions, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man’s.”

William Ellery Channing

He or she who stands in reverence of Creation is indeed one whom the truth makes free!

* * *

In the conviction that thoughts rule the world, I offer this, my 27th book. More accurately, it is a series of essays—thoughts on freedom as they have come to mind—enclosed between two covers.

[1] See “I, Pencil,” copy on request.

2

FREEDOM IS NOT FREE

Those who deny freedom to others deserve it not for themselves.

—ABRAHAM LINCOLN

Only a few—the pure, the apt and the true—never deny freedom to anyone. All others, while they may hope for freedom for themselves, deny this blessing to others in countless ways, sometimes knowingly but often in ignorance. Whoever diminishes your freedom deserves it not for himself! Thanks, Honest Abe!

We can also thank William Harvard for his counsel: “The greatest glory of a free-born people is to transmit that freedom to their children.” Never in all history were a people more blest in being freeborn than Americans. And for at least twelve decades they transmitted this blessing to their children. Then came the slump and for many reasons, ranging from prosperity going to their heads—thinking gone dormant—to government “education.”

Lincoln’s thought reversed would read: When enough of us grant freedom to others we shall have it for ourselves! For, as Edmund Burke wrote: “Depend on it, the lovers of freedom will be free.”

Who amongst us have the capability or the potentiality of advancing an understanding of freedom? Only those individuals who find the freedom cause a happy pursuit. Wrote Saint Augustine about sixteen centuries ago: “Happiness consists in the attainment of our desires and in our having only right desires.” Among the right desires is freedom!

If we are to enjoy the blessings of freedom, there are ever so many ideas and ideals that must grace our understanding and exposition. Among these are (1) the proper role of government and (2) the rights of citizens. According to the late Robert H. Jackson, Justice of the Supreme Court from 1941 to 1945: “It is not the function of government to keep the citizens from error; it is the function of citizens to keep the government from falling into error.”

Wrote the Roman Emperor and philosopher, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus (121–180), “Our understandings are always liable to error. Nature and certainty are very hard to come at, and infallibility is mere vanity and pretense.” A very large percentage of elected and appointed officials assume they are infallible and, as a consequence, attempt to protect us from our countless errors. The costs of this assumed infallibility? Almost without limit. For one, inflation on the rampage! As the Bard of Avon wrote, “You take my life when you take the means by which I live.”

Now to the important side of this problem. Justice Robert H. Jackson pronounced a great truth: “It is the function of citizens to keep the government from falling into error.” How are we to cope with and overcome the vanity and pretense of nearly 16,000,000 political office holders? They presume powers bordering on magic, in the sense of “producing extraordinary results.”

To repeat what I have written numerous times before: (1) ours is not a numbers problem; (2) it is not a selling but a learning problem.

• Every good movement in all history has been in response to an infinitesimal minority. One of many examples: The very few who did the thinking which resulted in The Declaration, Constitution and Bill of Rights.

• Ideas cannot be “sold”; neither can they be thrust into the minds of others. The correct formula? Become so excellent in explaining the freedom way of life that others will seek your tutorship. Become mentors! Excellence begets excellence whatever the endeavor—be it cooking, science, golf, music or whatever. All experience attests to this fact.

The achievement of these aspirations requires extraordinary effort, of a kind and quality which only those who love freedom are happy to expend. This is testimony to the fact that freedom is far from free.

It is interesting to observe what others have had to say on this important subject. Walter Weisenburger was President of the National Association of Manufacturers during the early forties, and one of the most brilliant freedom devotees any business organization ever had. He pointed out that: “American business needs fewer orders from the government and more orders from customers.”

No one, from the local policeman to the President of the U.S.A., is aware of even a small fraction of the millions of orders from our 78,000 governmental units—national, state and local. But we do know that every order beyond keeping the peace and invoking a common justice makes creative effort more difficult and hinders a progress that would be far greater than now.

One example should suffice to make the point. Governmental intervention makes for heavy taxation, deficits, and inflation. Individuals, then, are left with less money of their own to spend, but the interventionist government pressure causes prices to rise relentlessly—as in the case of automobiles and motor fuel. Prices of larger model automobiles, especially, are now so high that the supply exceeds the demand. Dealers’ lots are filled with unsold cars, and one of our largest manufacturers is being bailed out with a government loan. What is needed, obviously, are more orders from customers; impossible unless there be fewer orders from government.

Wrote Will Durant: “Freedom is not inborn or imperishable. It must be acquired anew by every generation.” We do not inherit an understanding of freedom—or the necessary devotion to it—from the previous generation. Freedom perishes unless acquired anew in one’s own generation and by a number sufficient to constitute an attracting leadership! There are many steps to such a glorious achievement. What are they? Two of them are (1) new phrasing for old truths, and (2) the necessary disciplines required if we would be free.

• Such old-time phrasings as “the home of the brave and the land of the free” or “Liberty and Union, now and forever, one and inseparable” have long since been meaningless—mere empty sounds. So, in our time, we search for new ways to explain freedom, even though no one will ever be able to explain it fully. Try to explain Creation! It is impossible. Creative action at the human level borders on this difficulty. One way of phrasing will be apprehended by a few, another phrasing by a few others. Explaining liberty is, indeed, a task now and forever.

• What are the necessary disciplines? It is perpetual “training that develops self-control, character, efficiency.” In our case, the basic discipline is the perpetual study of freedom that we may better understand and explain this wondrous way of life. To repeat a wise thought by G. K. Chesterton: “The world will never starve for want of wonders, but only for want of wonder.” If we want freedom to continue working its wonders, we must allow for the mystery of creativity.

Finally, two wise thoughts, the first by Felix Morley: “If people do not possess the capacity to govern themselves, they are inevitably governed by others.” This is an excellent and improved phrasing to describe our present politico-economic holocaust: “great or widespread destruction.”

The second is by Edmund Burke who expressed the same idea two centuries earlier: “It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” Those of intemperate minds—going to socialistic extremes—lack the capacity to govern themselves. The result? An unholy and tyrannical extreme: governed by governments!

The alternative? Self-government, self-reliance, self-responsibility, self-consciousness. Easy? No! But only those who move in the direction of these intellectual, moral and spiritual goals—while happy in their pursuit—gain a profound awareness: Freedom is far from free!

3

PRE-EMPTION: LEGAL THIEVERY

Petty thievery is punished, but thievery on a grand scale is honored by a triumphal procession.

—SENECA

Of all the devilish tactics which are leading the U.S.A. head-on into socialism pre-emption tops the list. Lamentably, the word is not in most people’s vocabulary, and try to find even a freedom devotee who is aware of its causal effects. All of us have some homework to do if we are to realize that pre-emption is legal thievery on the grand scale!

Before going further, it is necessary to define the proper role of government. One cannot tell what government should or should not do unless one knows what government is and is not.

Government is organized force! It issues edicts backed by a constabulary—a physical force which can be symbolized by the clenched fist. Find out what the fist can and cannot do and we will know what government should and should not do. The fist can restrain, inhibit and penalize. What, in all good conscience, should be restrained, inhibited and penalized? The answer was given in the moral codes long before Christianity: the “Thou shalt nots”—destructive actions such as stealing, killing, and so on. Inhibit those destructive acts: that’s what government can legitimately do—period!

Most important is the answer to what government can not do. It is not and can never be a creative force. All such forces are spiritual in the sense that discoveries, inventions, insights, ideas, intuitive flashes are spiritual. Everything by which we live and prosper shows forth in the spiritual before it is manifested in the material. A water glass is inconceivable had not some cave dweller discovered how to harness fire. A jet plane would be impossible had not some Hindu ten centuries ago invented the concept of zero. All modern chemistry and physics would be impossible had we to rely on Roman numerals.

What, then, is government’s proper role? It is to inhibit all destructive actions, keep the peace, and invoke a common justice. Leave all creative actions—education or whatever—to citizens acting privately, voluntarily, competitively, cooperatively. That’s how to draw the line.

The dictionary’s definition of pre-emption is: “To seize before anyone else can; excluding others.” Let’s pose a hypothetical example. Government has not pre-empted welfare. We can, if we so choose, give to others as generously as we please. However, government spends so much on welfare—billions of dollars annually—that most citizens behave as if it were pre-empted. Their reaction to a starving neighbor: “That’s the government’s job.” Were they not afflicted with the pre-emptive error, they would share their last loaf of bread with their starving neighbor—the practice of Judeo-Christian charity.

What do I mean by legal pre-emption? I am speaking of any productive, peaceful activity or service which government puts out of bounds to ordinary citizens, like the service of delivering private messages as a profit-making enterprise. The national government has legally pre-empted this service; it runs the U.S. Postal Service, and there is a law on the books making it a crime for any private citizen to go into the business of first-class mail delivery. There are cases in the courts periodically, prosecuting some entrepreneur who sought to set up a business for the peaceful service of carrying private messages for profit.

Legal pre-emption of any peaceful service—the Post Office is only one of thousands of instances—results in a species of thievery. In the case of mail delivery, legal pre-emption robs entrepreneurs—thousands of them around the nation of the opportunity to deliver mail. Were this opportunity thrown open to anyone, many would regard mail delivery as the most favorable occupational choice available to them. Why should they be forbidden to make this choice?

Mail delivery is as much a creative activity as voice delivery. Prior to 1864 the voice could be delivered about 50 yards. Left to the free market where the wisdom is, the miracle: the human voice can be delivered around the world at the speed of light—one-seventh of a second! One of many personal experiences: I once phoned my office from Switzerland, and it took no longer than phoning a next-door neighbor. This is an example of the efficiency of the market.

Contrast the situation in Argentina, where the phone system is “run” by government. Recently, I tried to call my office from Buenos Aires. I waited several hours. Why? Pre-emption by a political collective—the government—from which creative wisdom never has, does not, and never will originate.

Governmental pre-emption of mail delivery results in ever-increasing prices and the service declines year by year. Leave mail delivery to the market and the result would be no less phenomenal than present-day voice delivery by the market! No one in today’s world can imagine how wondrous it would be any more than Leonardo da Vinci could have foreseen the wonders of a 747 Jet!

It is my belief that creative wisdom never originates in political action. Why doesn’t it? Why is political action so devoid of rationality, discernment, sagacity? The correct answer to this difficult-to-solve riddle would open up a politico-economic gold mine: freedom!

Presumably, our 16,000,000 officeholders—federal, state and local—are equal in intelligence to those who elect them. Why, then, are their speeches and writings so often lacking in creative wisdom?

Here is a suggested answer: An officeholder tends to speak or to write as a member of a party or as the voice of a political collective. The individual and the personal are unwanted byproducts when words are fed into the political meatgrinder, only to come out as a homogenized communique! The truth is ultimately a personal witness issuing from a man’s highest self; written or spoken words reflect the mind and heart of the person who utters them and stands by them. His very being vouches for them; they are from the soul and make their just impact on the soul of another. Perhaps Emerson was getting at this point when he said, “What you are speaks so loud that I cannot hear what you say!” Words, to have weight, must match the man who voices them; take away the man and his words have lost any attachment to reality.

And it is precisely this we are guilty of when we operate as a committee. The mere spokesman for a committee, a sect, a party, or any other kind of collective, is issuing words that are anchored to no reality. They are adrift! A manifesto issued by a collective is but one set of words loosely related to another set of words; the personal note is eliminated, and with it the truth.

True, there are a growing number of officeholders who are statesmen and speak for freedom as individuals—separate and apart from the political collective. Also, there have been officeholders who have stepped aside from their political role and have prospered as creative citizens efficiently serving consumers.

The freedom way of life has its birth in a nation of self-responsible, self-reliant citizens—individualism—but never from a collectivistic society as Russia. Political collectives do not nor can they create!

In the foregoing I have commented on government pre-emption of mail delivery, and the disastrous consequences that have ensued. Contrast this with the field of voice delivery, where the market is free and miracles are commonplace. The Postal Service is not the only instance of political pre-emption; there are thousands of others. Many persons will thoughtlessly assume that some of these other thousands of pre-emptions are okay. But, if the same reasoning be applied to any instance of pre-emption as has been used in the cases of mail and voice delivery, the answer will be an emphatic, “NO!”

Let us not cast the derogatory eye only at political officeholders. Many citizens in all walks of life seek private advantage from some form of pre-emptive action. Labor unions keep non-members and youngsters from job opportunities; minimum wage laws outlaw the more or less unskilled.

Then there are businessmen who obtain or advocate embargoes or tariffs in their effort to pre-empt freedom to trade goods and services. There is not an occupational category in which preemptive thinking or action does not exist—more or less. Thus, we have “thievery on the grand scale, honored by a triumphal procession.”

The nearest one can come to remedying this thievery is by example: Make oneself an honest person and there will be one less rascal in the world!

4

GOOD INTENTIONS GONE ASTRAY

The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

—RICHARD BAXTER

This English Divine (1615–91) provides an excellent phrasing for my thesis: Disaster results from certain policies however well-meaning the people may be who sponsor them. We are on a hellish road, although it may be conceded that the intentions of our countless “pavers” are good—in their own view. They are afflicted with a shortsightedness that has only one remedy: a better understanding of why their notions are against everyone’s interest, including their own.

All of us who believe in freedom should try to surpass each other in putting brighter and brighter lights along life’s pavement. It is not enough that one’s intentions be good. People with good intention, but whose ideas are afflicted with fallacies, cannot avoid acting against their own interests, as well as everyone else’s. Here are a few thoughts on the hellish results.

Tariffs are anti-consumer. One of several flaws in early American history was a tariff law. There were two excuses: (1) revenue, which was skimpy and (2) protection of our infant industries against the competition of European giants. Here are three questions and three answers:

1. What nation in all the world and in all history has had the most infant industrial starts? The U.S.A.

2. In what nation has there been the greatest number of infant industries growing into industrial giants? In the U.S.A.

3. In what nation has little-to-bigness development faced the greatest competition? In the U.S.A. where there have been and are now more industrial giants than have existed elsewhere.

A friend of mine became one of the wealthiest men in America by discovering novel ways to lower his costs several years before his competitors. By the time they had caught up with him, he had devised new ways.

Much to my surprise, he one day advocated tariffs. Why? To outlaw foreign competitors who had found ways to undersell him. Today, there are thousands of leading businessmen who advocate tariffs and embargoes to destroy competition. The extent to which free trade is squelched, locally or internationally, to that extent are consumers deprived of goods and services.

Labor unions are anti-employee. As every employer should be free to hire or fire whomever he pleases, so should every individual be free to choose his employment. Such freedom does not exist in any business, educational institution, or any other endeavor dominated by unions. The labor union leaders, by reason of coercive force, granted by government, become employers, deciding who shall have work and who shall not. Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers for years, truly believed in his domineering role: “Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end [freedom] and bring us out where we want to be.”[1]

Today, there are some 20,000,000 members of labor unions, about one-fifth of the adult population. Reflect on how this limits the right of access to job opportunities by nonunion citizens. Briefly, coercion is used to prevent nonunion people from working in unionized endeavors; force is used to prevent willing workers from taking jobs which union members have vacated, whether by reason of old age or death or whatever.

If we concede that such mental delinquency is opposed to life’s high purpose—an improving righteousness—then all the Reuthers and all citizens would fare far better were there no coercive labor unions!

Government handouts are anti-charity. Judeo-Christian charity in its highest form is anonymous—giving aid to those in distress without disclosing the identity of the giver.[2] Not only keep one’s benevolence unknown to the recipient, but even to one’s self. Forget it! Let nothing enter the mind which leads to such an assessment of self as “What a great Samaritan am I!” Such is to destroy one of the greatest of all virtues: humility!

According to the above characteristic of true charity, government handouts are the very opposite. Instead of secrecy there is blatancy: “to bellow; disagreeably loud; noisy . . . obtrusive.” The “giver” government is not the source of its handouts; rather, government merely redistributes the livelihood of all citizens. If this be charity, then charity is evil, a sin of the first order!

One more comment about government handouts. Whenever government pre-empts any activity, citizens forget how personally to practice it. As it is today, when a neighbor is in need the common reaction is to regard caring for the needy as government’s role. But were there no pre-emption, we would share our last loaf of bread with our neighbors in distress. Government handouts are, indeed, anti-charity!

Price controls are anti-trade. Assume there were no trade, that you were compelled to live on what you now produce or know how to produce. You would perish! Trading—exchanging our specializations—is implicit in survival. This is self-evident.

We Americans have literally millions of specializations. The freer the results of specialization are to flow and configurate, the more will prosperity grace our lives; the less free, the worse off we are. There are countless obstacles to the free flowing of goods and services, and prosperity is one of them! “We have it made,” as many “think,” and thus their talents lie dormant—thinking deadened! Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty, and prosperity may cause us to forget—an all too human frailty.

There is, however, another “frailty” of which we should beware: the persistent faith in price controls. Anyone may rewrite the price tag, but the real price of a good cannot be controlled by law. Price controls tell lies!

Observe the people who say they are for freedom yet insist on price controls—the same as saying they favor people control! The fruits of your labor are yours no less than your existence is yours. It follows that the prices you can obtain for your goods and services in willing exchange are as much yours as your life. For government to control your prices is to control your life. Wrote Edmund Burke: “No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or allow such a principle in its policy.” Prices are no more government’s business than deciding how long we should live.

Child labor laws are anti-youth. Wrote the American Bishop, Edmund Janes (1807–76): “The interests of childhood and youth are the interests of mankind.” If we are to have a society graced with citizens devoted to freedom we must see to it that our children are not dominated by authoritarians. Are they now? Yes, in several ways. Child labor laws, for example. Young people are not free to accept employment until the age of 16! Work opportunities that make for growth and help them learn the problems of adulthood are denied. Result? Political domineering on the rampage!

The minimum wage today is $3.35 per hour, this being a government edict sponsored by labor unions. Why this immoral, destructive law? The minimum wage eliminates competition by youngsters in the labor market, thus giving a special privilege or advantage to labor unions. Stunting the growth of future citizens in this fashion may well be the most anti-freedom device ever devised!

When we assume that life’s highest purpose is a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness—a correct and laudable assumption—we must perceive child labor laws as nothing less than a death sentence. Youth committed to an intellectual tomb! That I, at the age of 82, have been able to write this, my 27th book on the freedom thesis, is partially due to a childhood not thus encumbered. Work was part of my daily routine.

Was I a laborer? Yes, and not only in childhood but into my advanced adulthood. “Laborer” is a label I refuse to relinquish. From the age of eleven to eighteen—when I entered World War I—my work week was 102 hours. Up and away to work at four o’clock, cleaning stables, milking cows, six hours at school, evening chores on the farm, clerking in the village store until nine o’clock week days and until midnight on Saturdays. Cows were milked on Sundays, too! Work is still an everyday matter with me. If all of this doesn’t qualify me as a laborer, pray tell, what does?

One summer there was a break in the above routine—working 60 hours a week running a cement mixer. The pay? Five cents an hour! That’s quite a contrast to the present minimum wage of $3.35 an hour! Given a choice between my 5 cents with opportunities unlimited or the present death-sentence law, what would my answer be? I’ll let my readers make the guess.

The above are mere samplings of good intentions gone astray. Today, there are more than one can count. Your and my role? See if we can improve the clarity of the explanations here offered. Have a try at explaining such ideological paradoxes as: Social Security is Anti-Security, Maximum Hours are Anti-Work, Energy Control is Anti-Energy, Medicare is Anti-Health, Rationing is Anti-Plenty—on and on!

A Latin scholar of more than 2,000 years ago gave to us a splendid idea: Begin to be now what thou would be hereafter!

[1] See the New York Times, June 30, 1962.

[2] For an instructive and inspirational book on this subject see, Magnificent Obsession, a novel by Lloyd Douglas (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1938).

5

WOE BETIDE YE OF LITTLE TRUST

The soul and spirit that animates and keeps up society is mutual trust.

—JOHN SOUTH

The economist, Dr. Donald Kemmerer, calls our attention to a lamentable fact: “The rotting fabric of trust causes our buying power to melt away as a cube of ice in July.”[1] While the dissolution may not be that fast, it is deplorably rapid. His metaphor helps to dramatize the cause and curse of inflation.

Wise men of the past have had a lot to say about “trust,” and quite a few held views similar to the Englishman, Lord William Burleigh (1520–98): “Trust not any man with thy life, credit or estate.” Why such a negative view about this important virtue? Burleigh lived in the age of mercantilism, a form of authoritarianism similar to our present planned economy and welfare state—little know-nothings afflicted with the I-Am-It syndrome. Trust them with one’s pocketbook or way of life? Might as well leave one’s fate to a Hitler!

Admittedly, trust requires a great deal of discrimination. Never trust a thief or those who advocate political thievery, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need”—plunderers! But reflect on the countless persons we can trust, and by trusting we increase adherence to this important virtue. Wrote Henry David Thoreau: “I think that we may safely trust a good deal more than we do. We may waive just so much care of ourselves as we honestly bestow elsewhere.”

Imagine a person who never trusted anyone. His life would be filled with bitterness and error, resulting in despondency—a hopeless character. Trust falls in the reciprocal category; it furthers mutuality. The fewer persons I trust, the fewer will trust me; conversely, trust begets trust.

Reflect on the vast majority of the world’s people—including ever so many in the U.S.A.—who do not trust the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life; there is little trust in the potentially miraculous results of citizens by the millions acting creatively as they please. What is the thrust of this general lack of trust? Toward socialism! Citizens vote and install in public office those who know no more or even less than they do, giving politicians power to run our lives. An utterly fallacious trust! Ergo, the thrust is toward the Command Society—freedom to produce and exchange goods and services made increasingly difficult, inflation and rising prices. Difficulties compounded!

Thoreau was right: “We may safely trust a great deal more than we do.” Safely and also wisely, for those of us who trust others assuredly make fewer mistakes than those who are bogged down in distrust. In order to minimize our own mistakes—errors—we must learn from others—past and present. And we can learn from even the most unlikely sources. Wrote John Maynard Keynes: “By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens.”[2]

For freedom’s sake, let us look for light from whatever source. Psalms 8:2: “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings has thou ordained strength.” Doubtless, the brightest light is to be found among those whose aim is the same as that of Cardinal John Henry Newman: “Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encircling gloom, Lead Thou me on!”

Trust is defined as the “firm belief or confidence in the honesty, integrity, reliability, justice . . . of another person . . . faith, reliance.”

There are millions of citizens who sincerely believe in the planned economy and the welfare state, but who can be trusted in ever so many other respects. Most of them can be trusted to keep their promises, pay their bills, obey the laws be they good or bad, do their best at their profession, be it cooking, carpentry, washing windows, operating machines or whatever. Trusting these people when and if trust is deserved is not only good for those of us who trust them but, sooner or later, may cause a few of them to abandon their socialism and put a trust in freedom!

What about the virtues bound up with “trust”—honesty, integrity, reliability, faith, justice? There are tens of thousands of men and women who labor for the world’s many airlines, and they constitute one example, among many, that deserves reflection. These laborers range from those who keep the planes spic and span, to baggage loaders, to flight attendants, to engineers, to the Captains.

Having flown more than 2,000,000 miles during the last 62 years, I have some familiarity with exemplars of the above-mentioned virtues.

• I have never encountered dishonesty in the personnel.

• As to integrity, broken promises are rarely encountered.

• Reliability? Name something more worthy of reliance. Air travel is by far the safest form of transportation. Millions of miles are flown daily in perfect safety.

• Do I then have an unwavering faith in air travel? Not quite. Why?

• Only in justice do they fail. All of these laborers, including the Captains—now and then an exception—are members of labor unions. They resort to coercion as a means of working fewer hours and getting higher pay. A Captain on a U.S.A. airline receives pay as high as $117,000 a year and the limit of labor is 75 hours per month. Coercion is sinful!

Longfellow gave good counsel to you and me and all who labor in this or that endeavor, including airline personnel:

Man-like it is, to fall into sin;

Fiend-like it is, to dwell therein;

Christ-like it is, for sin to grieve;

God-like it is, all sin to leave.

[1] See “The Rotting Fabric of Trust,” The Freeman, March 1980.

[2] From The Economic Consequences of the Peace by John Maynard Keynes, 1920.

6

LITTLE MEN CAUSE BIG GOVERNMENT

The real difference between men is energy. A strong will, a settled purpose, an invincible determination, can accomplish almost anything; and in this lies the distinction between great men and little men.

—THOMAS FULLER

The English divine, Thomas Fuller (1608–61), gives us an enlightening distinction between great and little men. There is no genius in life unless genius is buttressed by energy—an idea supported by the English dramatist and poet, Nicholas Rowe (1674–1718): “The wise and active conquer difficulties by daring to attempt them. Sloth and folly shiver and shrink at sight of toil and hazard, and make the impossibility they fear.”

When little men cast long shadows, the sun is setting on a civilization. Little men now abound by the millions. They do, indeed, cast their shadows—shiver and shrink at the sight of toil and hazard. This accounts, in no small measure, for the growing socialism.

These little men, having no high purpose of their own, are attracted by political folderol—“mere nonsense.” And their naivete, in turn, attracts modern medicine men, representing themselves as having supernatural powers: “Elect me to office and I’ll handle all your problems.”

We have about 16,000,000 individuals elected or appointed to political office—federal, state and local. With a few notable exceptions, what is their remedy for the woes of the little men? It is to promise something for nothing—taking from those who produce and giving to those who only consume. This is planned chaos, but both the little men and the political medicine men glory in this pandemonium—“the abode of demons . . . the capital of Hell!”

Conceded, both groups are presumed innocent of wrongdoing as they raise havoc with freedom. Their innocence sprouts from their naivete—“an almost foolish lack of worldly wisdom.” Let’s explore the remedy: a Heavenly Wisdom!

This wisdom is possessed by great men—men of energy! Wrote Goethe: “Energy will do anything that can be done in this world; and no talents, no circumstances, no opportunities will make a two-legged animal a man without it.”

Not everything can be done in this world of ours. Some things are impossible; other things are difficult and can be accomplished only by the expenditure of much energy over a long period of time. Reflect on Cro-Magnon man of some 35,000 years ago. He made tools of flint and of bones, and left traces of his art in cave paintings. His brain was large, suggesting a mental potential and an untapped reservoir of energy that links him to modern man. But it took 35,000 years for the creature, Man, to transform the simple artifacts of Cro-Magnon man into the miraculous man-made environment of modern technology. Cro-Magnon man would have been flabbergasted had he been able to foresee the world in which you and I live; our mental powers and energies are much more fully invested in our creations than were his. This evolutionary advance occurred because in each generation from his day to ours some human beings made full use of the powers they possessed at the time, and drew the rest of us on. By the same token, we would be equally amazed if we could catch a glimpse of the world in the year 36,980!

The eminent psychologist, Fritz Kunkel, wrote: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common men, indeed, of all people without exception.” What a boon to civilization were all individuals to recognize their hidden powers!

Recognition, however, is but the initial step. The idea is useless—lies dormant—unless accompanied by a dynamic and everflowing energy, the power of implementation!

Energy is necessary for high-grade behavior, but there are, as Fuller noted, several related virtues which must be practiced if men are to be great. Wrote Tryon Edwards: “The highest obedience in the spiritual life is to be able always, and in all things, to say, ‘Not my will, but thine be done’.”

The spiritual life ranges from the highest thoughts of the finite mind to Infinite Consciousness. When we make the latter life’s guideline and adhere strictly to it—looking always to The Source—burdens will be light and our duties a joy.

Another required virtue: a settled purpose. Wrote the American clergyman, Theodore T. Munger (1830–1910): “There is no road to success but through a clear strong purpose. Nothing can take its place. A purpose underlies character, culture, position, attainment of every kind.”

Reflect on the number of individuals who go through life with no purpose—as a ship without a rudder, going every which way. For these poor souls, life is no more than a meandering adventure; they wander aimlessly and idly.

The secret of success in life is to have a supreme purpose, one which harmonizes all other strivings. Individuals vary, so each person makes his choice of a lifelong goal from among the many alternatives open to him. Freedom prevails in a society when each person has maximum latitude for making these decisions. Life’s purpose realized; what a reward!

Fuller’s final virtue, if great men are to be among us, is “an invincible determination.” Wrote the English critic and author, William Hazlitt (1784–1870): “There is nothing more to be esteemed than a manly firmness and decision of character. I like a person who knows his own mind and sticks to it; who sees at once what, in given circumstances, is to be done and then does it.”

Here is what a few other great men have written on this subject:

Not education but character is man’s greatest need and man’s greatest safeguard.

—Herbert Spencer

The great hope of society is in individual character.

—W. E. Channing

If you would create something you must be something.

—Goethe

We cannot dream ourselves into great character, but must hammer and forge this virtue in our daily living.

I wrote in a previous paragraph about the woes of the little men. The longer they continue in that lamentable category, the more woes will they experience. As Shakespeare said:

When one is past another care we have;

Thus woe succeeds woe; as wave a wave.

The opposite of woes are blessings, a virtue of great men. The more they recognize and count their blessings, the more are they blest. Let us appreciate our countless blessings.

7

GOODNESS: THE FIRST STEP TO FREEDOM

None can love freedom heartily, but good men, the rest love not freedom, but license.

—JOHN MILTON

John Milton (1608–74), English poet and author of the renowned plea for freedom of the press, Areopagitica, referred to “good men,” presumably in the generic sense, meaning male and female. He stood steadfastly against the hierarchy that ruled in his time and may well have been the first outright exponent of the right to freely publish written material. This is a seminal freedom; implicit in such a position is freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to act creatively, and to produce and exchange as anyone pleases. Briefly, Milton achieved a monumental politico-economic and ideological breakthrough!

A first century Roman writer had this to say: “Some are good, some are middling, the most are bad.” These judgments are no more than three generalities relating to human beings. Actually, there are as many variations in virtues and vices as there are individuals, multiplied by their variations from one moment to the next—billions times billions! All of us are forever changing. However, these three categories of behavior deserve reflection for improvement’s sake. The definitions:

• GOOD: Morally sound or excellent; specifically virtuous, pious, kind.

• MIDDLING: Mediocre; betwixt and between.

• BAD: The wicked, the evil, the unrighteous, the reprobates.

There are countless ways to evaluate the wide range between good and bad but I shall adhere strictly to the greatest of all concepts within the range of man. It is the freedom to act creatively as anyone chooses—Creation at the human level! Briefly, ideas and ideals versus notions and nonsense.

As to the bad—the wicked, the reprobates—it’s a safe guess that even thieves have had, on rare occasions, a civil thought or done a kindly deed to someone. They may be 99 per cent but not 100 per cent bad. But, even at their best, they are devilish and a curse to mankind. An excellent warning in I Peter 5:8: “Be self-controlled and alert. Your enemy the devil prowls around like a roaring lion looking for someone to devour.” Our quotable John Milton wrote in his Paradise Lost: “The Adversary of God and Man, Satan.” Avoid these human evils and their nonsense as thou wouldst shun a deadly plague!

Before commenting on the next category, a confession: While that Roman writer’s grading of people stimulated some thinking, I believe he erred as to numbers. Here is my revised version: Very few are good, the vast majority are middling, and the bad number no more than one in many thousands.

The middling—the betwixt and between—wreak far more havoc on society than the bad. We know not all the reasons, but for one, there are so many more of them. Reflect on the infinite numbers of dubious “thoughts”—errors—that sprout from vast multitudes. Three thoughts by others on this point:

The multitude unawed is insolent; once seized with fear, contemptible and vain.

—David Mallet

License they mean when they cry liberty.

—John Milton

The mass never comes up to the standard of its best member, but on the contrary degrades itself to the level of the lowest.

—Henry David Thoreau

Unless an individual stands in awe of Creation’s wonders, he thinks of his finite self as the only source of our countless blessings. The unawed are, indeed, vain.

Most of those among the betwixt and between will claim an adherence to liberty for no more reason than its favorable connotation. By labeling themselves friends of freedom, they feel less evil as they indulge in countless forms of license—“freedom to deviate from strict conduct, rule or practice; excessive, undisciplined freedom, constituting an abuse of liberty.”

Every pronouncement or action which impinges on the right of anyone to live creatively as he or she pleases—embargoes, tariffs, minimum wages, maximum hours, coercive taking from some and giving to others, government subsidies, on and on—is pure license.

Wrote the American clergyman, William Sprague (1795–1876): “In the same proportion that ignorance and vice [license] prevails in a republic, will the government partake in despotism.” For proof, merely take a look at what’s going on in America!

Reflect, finally, on good men who love freedom heartily. Here is an excellent thought from E. H. Chapin: “Goodness consists not in the outward things we do but in the inward thing we are. To be good is the great thing.” I feel certain that this clergyman, in referring critically to “the outward things,” had in mind those who make a public display, those whose pomposity—“self-importance”—has to do with reforming others, that is, making others like themselves.

“The inward thing,” by contrast, means improving the only individual within one’s own dominion, namely, one’s self! Result? To the extent one succeeds in self-improvement, to that extent will others seek his or her tutorship! This is the only solution to a reversal from our present socialism to a hoped-for freedom. To be good is, indeed, the great thing!

The number of people who adhere strictly to the principles of freedom is small—relative to the total population. But this tiny handful does far more good than most of us imagine.

The Sage of Concord passed on to posterity a correct methodology: “Look not mournfully to the past—it comes not back again; wisely improve the present—it is thine; go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and with a manly heart.”

8

DEPENDENCE AND INDEPENDENCE

These two things, contradictory as they may seem, go together, manly dependence and manly independence, manly reliance and manly self-reliance.

—WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

What a wise observation by this English poet (1770–1850), who knew that dependence and independence are complementary, when people are free.

In a free society everyone enjoys the enormous benefits which flow from individual specialization and the ensuing voluntary exchanges of specialized goods and services. In a division of labor society every one of us relies on the work of others, and he relies on himself to acquire the marketable skills uniquely his own. Each person’s market offering of goods and services is judged by his peers in terms of the value it has for them, according to each person’s independent judgment. The impersonality of the market process makes for individual independence. No doubt this is the “manly independence” Wordsworth had in mind.

But there is also an unmanly dependence of the sort that assures “inferiority and corruption”: a pretty good description of socialism.

Our Pilgrim Fathers experienced such debilitating dependence during the first three years after landing at Plymouth Rock in 1620! While they did not use the modern phrasing, they practiced the communal formula, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and backed by force. No freedom of choice! Karl Marx gave the notion the current formulation 250 years later.

This unmanly type of dependence is otherwise known as robbing Peter to pay Paul—a procedure often associated with Robin Hood. Observe what the dictionary has to say about this lowbrow character:

Robin Hood, in English legend, a traditional outlaw of the 12th century who lived with his followers in Sherwood Forest, and robbed the rich to help the poor; he is the hero of many ballads and tales, celebrated for his courage, gaiety, courtesy, skill as an archer, etc.

There was no real Robin Hood to rob the rich to help the poor, for this legendary figure never existed. Nevertheless, the fairy tale has persisted. So powerful has been this myth that it works its devastations upon all nations in today’s world—no exception.

Those who embrace the myth are just as happy as those endowed with common sense! They get government to rob the rich “to help the poor” and, by so doing, grant themselves a sense of absolution. Examples abound by the millions, and few are the citizens who do not advocate this or that form of intervention. Hence today’s world plague of unmanly dependence.

But let us turn back to our Pilgrim Fathers and their experience with communal life. Why did they abandon this nonsense? They were starving! Starvation or the threat thereof—like any other calamity, present or threatened—stimulates remedial thinking, now and then. In the winter of 1623 in Plymouth, Governor William Bradford met with the remaining Pilgrims, pointing out the fallacies of the ways that had led to their disaster, and presenting a truth that led to Independence in our country. Here is his wisdom, abbreviated:

Our scheme, from each according to ability to each according to need, has not worked. To give presupposes something in the warehouse to give. Most of the time ours has been empty. Come springtime we shall try a new idea: to each according to merit or productivity. Each shall have what he or she produces!

Here we have the principle of private ownership—fundamental to the free society—expressed as simply and succinctly as any economist ever phrased it. Result? Following Bradford’s advice, the rewards were to be dispensed in accord with productivity, so father, mother and children joined to till the fields! To each his own!

The colonists worked in freedom, with each entitled to enjoy the fruits of his or her own labor. Productivity increased, and the result was unprecedented abundance, widely shared. This new society of free and prosperous citizens constituted the real American revolution. It was unrelated to the fracas with King George III, the Revolutionary War. Rather, it was a revolutionary concept of a voluntary society of free people supplanting the ancient practice of communal living.

Throughout history mankind had been killing each other by the millions over the question of which form of authoritarianism should preside as sovereign over man. The argument had not been between freedom and authoritarianism; it had been a contest to decide which form of political gangsterism should rule.

The adoption of private property principles by the Pilgrims led to freedom as never before practiced and 150 years later culminated in the Declaration of Independence, the greatest political document ever written. The Declaration unseated government as the endower of men’s rights and placed the Creator there!

Independence—with its complement of manly dependence—prevailed throughout the nineteenth century. Why this success, never before achieved in all history? Because manly citizens were not plundering one another or turning to government for handouts. Where, then, did Americans look for their welfare? Only to self, resulting in a manly self-reliance!

Henry Ward Beecher observed that, “Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it is as a last year’s nest, from which the bird has flown.” During much of the twentieth century in the United States, the flight has been from the nest of manly virtues—a flight toward socialism!

Will Americans return to the nest? It depends on whether or not there is a return to the thinking and devoted practice that originally brought Independence to America:

• The revolutionary concept of private ownership initiated by our Pilgrim Fathers which led eventually to the Declaration of Independence.

• The belief that the Creator, not government, is the Endower of our right to life and livelihood.

• A return to manly self-interest.

• A manly respect for others, a mutual dependence. Being the most highly specialized people that ever existed, we have become interdependent. No one of us can go it alone. We are absolutely dependent on the free, uninhibited exchange of our millions of varying bits of expertise. No government official—from the village mayor to the President of the U.S.A.—can any more properly direct what we shall produce or with whom we should exchange than I can take the Creator’s place!

Let each of us know these Truths revealed by our Forefathers. To be found in John 8:32 is the blessing, the reward: The truth shall make you free!

9

THE FREE MIND

I call that mind free which protects itself against the usurpations of society, which does not cower to human opinion, which feels itself accountable to a higher tribunal than man’s.

—WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING

Channing gave us a formula which, if we understood and followed, would help restore our waning freedom. Our present growing socialism, communism—call the command society what you will—leads relentlessly toward societal disaster. Thus, it is important that we give his excellent thoughts some serious reflection.

Much of what follows are paraphrasings of ideas on the subject by outstanding scholars over the ages. As the French essayist, Montaigne, wrote, “I quote others better to express myself.”

Mind unemployed is mind unenjoyed. Constant employment leads to ever higher activities of the mind; but mental inactivity—unemployment—accounts for mass behavior, serfdom, depressed spirits, and the like. Such people are in this sense mindless nonentities!

Possessing finite minds means that we can never grasp the infinitude of truth; but we do have the capacity to go forward from light to light. To grasp the infinitude of truth in the Cosmos, one would have to be as wise as the Creator—Infinite Consciousness, God! Perish such an absurd thought. Let each of us take our little steps, contributing our bits of light amidst the darkness. There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle!

May every one of us without exception—socialists and anarchists, as well as freedom devotees—be free to speak our minds. The English poet, John Milton (1603–74), gave this aspect of freedom an excellent phrasing: “Give me the liberty to know, to think, to believe, and to utter freely, according to conscience, above all other liberties.”

Suppose that you and I were to advocate the curbing of socialism (planned chaos) and of anarchy (unplanned chaos) by an anti-freedom method: attempting to silence believers. To employ this tactic would invite them to try silencing us—in a contest for power. Freedom would be lost. What then? Encourage our ideological opponents freely to express their views. Why? Such leniency on our part would be an attracting exemplarity. This increases the possibility of drawing a few of them to liberty.

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of our minds. Integrity is rarely mentioned or included among the virtues. The so-called cardinal virtues, as advanced in theology, are prudence, justice, fortitude, temperance. Integrity is omitted. I found, upon checking the largest of all quotation books, that integrity does not appear among the more than 1,000 headings. Indeed, so neglected is this virtue that one is tempted to side with Bernard Dougall: “Integrity was a word he couldn’t even spell, let alone define.” Such is the general unawareness of its meaning and importance!

When it comes to listing the virtues, I know only those that are important to me. Integrity is by all means first and foremost. For the others—charity, intelligence, justice, love and humility—I have no precise ranking. To me they are tied for second place.

It may be helpful to draw the distinction between integrity and wisdom, for my definitions so closely parallel each other.

• Integrity is an accurate reflection in word and deed of whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right.

• Wisdom is whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as truth.

Conceded, one’s highest conscience may not in fact be right but it is as close to righteousness as one can get. Also, one’s highest conscience may not attain truth, but it as nearly approximates wisdom as is within one’s reach. Fallibility applies in either case!

Who among us is truly educable in the higher realms of thought? Only persons of integrity! Those who pay no heed to conscience are forever the victims of expediency; they are governed by fickle opinions, pressures, mass sentiments, a desire for momentary acclaim. Wisdom—whatever one’s highest conscience perceives as truth—is out of range simply because integrity—whatever one’s highest conscience dictates as right—is not observed.

As if the above were not reason enough to strive for integrity! However, by far the most important reason remains: its sacredness. Though new to me, I now discover that this idea was perceived nearly 2,000 years ago: “The light of the body is the eye: if therefore thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22)

What is the “light of the body”? It is truth, wisdom, enlightenment. The “eye” is perception. And what is the meaning of “if thine eye be single”? Refer to Webster for the definition of “single” as here used: “Not deceitful or artful, simple, honest, sincere.” Shakespeare used the word in this same sense: “I speak with a single heart.”

Single, in this sense, is directly linked with integer, meaning “Whole, entire, not divided.” Contrasted to single is double which has the same original root as the word “duplicity.” Such phrases as “double dealing,” and “double talk” convey this connotation. Integrity is related to integer; and single, as used here, refers to integrity.

Phrased in modern idiom, Matthew’s insight would read as follows: Enlightenment of the intellect and spirit of man depends on his powers of perception. If these powers be free from duplicity, that is, if they be grounded in pure integrity, man will be as much graced with enlightenment—wisdom—as is within his capacity.

Whatever the mysterious Universal Power—the radiant energy that flows through all life—it is blocked, cut off, stifled by duplicity in any of its forms. Expediency, lying, double talk, and the like are ferments of the soul through which Universal Power does not and cannot flow. “A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.”—James 1:8

Only in integrity—when “the eye be single”—does the power of perception grow, evolve, emerge, hatch. The “whole body shall be full of light.” Then, and only then, are such virtues as charity, intelligence, justice, love, humility within our reach.

This, however, poses a serious question: When are we warranted in becoming revolutionaries, resisting the present system of laws by passive and/or active disobedience?

There is no one—even among the revolutionaries—whose distaste for the plethora of oppressive laws on the statute books is greater than mine. The remedy, however, is to repeal these laws, not break them.

It takes no intelligence whatsoever to break the law; anyone can do that. But the repeal of oppressive laws calls for all the wit, skill, and genius man can muster.

Lawbreaking merely adds to the existing confusion. Repeal of oppressive laws, on the one hand, calls for a new and enlightened consensus. If an idea or action does not lead to enlightenment, it is worthless, if not downright destructive. When will I become a revolutionary? Not until the time when I am forbidden to freely write and speak the freedom thesis!

This is my answer—and challenge—to inquiring students. And I sign it not “Your obedient servant” or “Long live the King,” but “Respectfully yours.”

Finally, if we believe that we should do unto others that which we would not have them do unto us—a concern for others as well as self—we have one more among all the compelling reasons why we should strive first and foremost for integrity. Shakespeare put it well:

. . . to thine own self be true,

And it must follow, as the night the day,

Thou canst not then be false to any man.

How avoid falsehood? Let us direct our minds to a practice of this Biblical Truth and Promise: “But whosoever looketh into the perfect law of Liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be Blessed in his deed.” (James 1:25)

10

LOVE MAKES THE WORLD GO ROUND

If the tender, profound and symphathizing love, practiced and recommended by Jesus, were paramount in every heart, the loftiest and most glorious idea of human society would be realized, and little be wanting to make this world a kingdom of heaven.

—FREDERICH KRUMMACHER

The title of this essay is a phrase taken from the work of the English novelist, Charles Dickens (1812–70). Krummacher, author of the quote, was a German theologian (1796–1868).

The Oxford Dictionary employs about 11,000 words to explain the meaning and nuances of “love.” For instance, there are individuals who “love” to steal, “love” to run the lives of others, “love” to ridicule devotees of freedom, “love” applause, on and on.

Let me offer a definition from a personal experience, not included in the 11,000 words of the Oxford. My host at a seminar dinner remarked, “Since meeting you I have a new set of friends.” He had until recently, he said, been consorting with “the fast set.” Now that he had become interested in the freedom philosophy, he had new friends also interested in ideas on liberty. Impressive!

On retiring, it occurred to me that there was a relationship between “a new set of friends” and “the law of love,” the Tolstoyan topic of our discussion. Searching for an answer, I fell asleep.

The next morning this question popped into mind: Who are my friends? A careful inventory revealed them to be those individuals, past and present, who were giving me light or the few who might be getting an idea or two from me; in brief, those in one’s enlightenment circuit.

Moments later two ancient axioms came to mind: “God is love” and “God is light.” Ergo, love is light—or enlightenment.

It is this kind of love that “makes the world go round”—the kind that lights the way to freedom.

We mortals have in Jesus the Perfect Exemplar. Many people think of the Second Coming as the reappearance of Christ. Such a belief requires nothing of you or me or anyone, except patience. In my judgment, there is a more immediately relevant interpretation. What, then, might be the deeper meaning? It is to see how nearly each of us can, in this life, approximate His Perfection! Seen in this light, Jesus is a Holy Magnetic Force, drawing individuals to love in its highest sense.

The thought above expressed is given support by the English author, David H. Lawrence, (1885–1930): “Love is a thing to be learned. It is a difficult, complex maintenance of individual integrity throughout the incalculable processes of interhuman polarity.”

Assuredly, integrity is the number one virtue—thinking and acting in accord with one’s highest idea of righteousness—the active love of truth. As Lawrence wrote, this is, indeed, a learning process!

Benjamin Franklin had an excellent thought as related to learning: “The man who does things makes many mistakes, but he never makes the biggest mistake of all—doing nothing.”

The greatest thinkers of all time have erred on countless occasions. They acknowledge their mistakes but have learned that their errors open the intellectual doors to truth.

Doing nothing—no inclination to learn—is, indeed, the greatest mistake of all. The millions so afflicted, unconscious of their stalemated status, assess themselves as infallible. How does this lopsided assessment of self wreak its damage on freedom? They—a vast majority—elect “infallibles”—know-it-alls—to public office!

Wrote Goethe: “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.” Flowers grow better in the homes of those who love them. Animals—dogs, cats, birds or whatever—have an affection for those who love them. I have a love for highly-evolved individuals, past and present. It is easy to observe the effect of love on one’s contemporaries, but rarely grasped is the possibility of a similar reaction by those who have passed to their reward a thousand or more years ago. Why this view?

Believing, as I do, in the immortality of the human spirit—consciousness—I am convinced that those of the past are as much aware of my feelings toward them as does my next-door neighbor know how I feel about him.

However, forget the effect of love for others. Merely keep in mind its benefit to self for “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love”—a Heavenly Blessing!

Wrote the German theologian, Frederick Spanheim (1809–59): “They are the true disciples of Christ, not who know the most, but who love the most.” In other words, it is not knowing the most but doing the best that really counts. There are knowledgeable individuals who label themselves “atheists,” but who are only reacting against some inadequate idea of theos. A genuine atheist would have to deny that there is anything in the Cosmos beyond his tiny mind. For him, there is no Creation; he is the Creator!

If love, “as recommended by Jesus, were paramount in every heart, the loftiest and most glorious idea of human society would be realized.” It would, indeed, be “a kingdom on earth”!

The reality? Love is far from being paramount in every heart. Only a small fraction of any population is so graced, and this doubtless remains a distressing fact. The role of those who love?

First, it is to recognize that this is not a numbers problem. Jesus had only twelve disciples, including Judas, a betrayer.

Let each of us try, as best he can, to approximate the Perfection of Jesus. By such an effort we will enlarge the fraction of those who love. It is ordained in the Cosmic Design that: Love makes the world go round!

11

THE PRACTICE OF MANNERS AND MORALS

Good manners are a part of good morals; and it is as much our duty as our interest to practice both.

—JOHN HUNTER

One never knows whence bits of wisdom will appear. Hunter was an English surgeon and wrote the above nearly two centuries ago—an enlightening thought.

A few years later the American educator, Horace Mann, wrote: “Manners easily and rapidly mature into morals.” Manners—“distinguished behavior,” and morals—“right in conduct or character,” are twin virtues. Whoever combines good manners with moral conduct possesses a virtuous magnetism that attracts others to the freedom way of life. Here are a few reflections on the practice of these virtues.

We are told in Romans 6:23 that “The wages of sin is death.” Assuredly, this has no reference to physical death but, rather, to intellectual and spiritual demise. Among mankind’s countless sins are bad manners, and bad manners are deadly to good morals! This accusation applies across the board, to freedom devotees no less than to socialists—a common and unholy trait! Bad manners are the mark of continuing adolescence—a sign of immaturity.

Socialists are those who resort to coercion to get their way in running the lives of others—be they politicians, labor union leaders, businessmen or whoever. Such people often speak and write despicably of those of us who stand for liberty: the right of one and all to act creatively as each pleases.

But what about freedom devotees? With few exceptions, we fall into that identical name-calling category—“the ignorant so-and-sos.” This behavior not only hardens our opponents in their fallacious ways but it diminishes us for righteous ways. The extent to which we damn others to that extent reduces our capacity to think creatively. Tolerance is never easy, but we should not even think of our opponents derogatorily. The consequence of such thinking? Arrested adulthood!

Wrote the English mathematician and philosopher, Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): “Rules of conduct, whatever they be, are not sufficient to produce good results unless the ends sought are good”

Wise men, before beginning any action, look carefully at the end they have in mind. Wrote Emerson, “There is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning.” “End” has two meanings: (1) an objective and (2) a conclusion. Emerson’s reference was to the latter. Those of us whose objective—end—is freedom should realize that every step upward is but a beginning in more and better thinking—now and forever!

Wrote the Scottish divine, Hugh Blair (1728–1800): “Nothing, except what flows from the heart, can render even external manners truly pleasing.” The “heart,” as here used, means: “inmost thoughts and feelings; consciousness; as I know in my heart.”

Unfortunately, most external manners are not from the heart; rather, they are mannerisms motivated by shallow desires—popularity, be-like-me-ness, and so on.

The ways of the heart, like Divine Omniscience, are mysterious. A stout heart is far more valuable than any material possession, and as Dickens wrote, “A loving heart is the truest wisdom.” Why? It means an enduring love of such virtues as integrity and humility. Individuals so blest have manners pleasing to everyone who is capable of forming sensible judgments on human behavior.

Paraphrasing the Irish satirist and Dean of Saint Patrick’s, Jonathan Swift (1667–1745): “Experience of the world enables some people to acquire a superficial polish and sophistry; but no one will have good manners whose nature is compounded of pride and incivility and who lacks common sense.”

Millions of people acquire a superficial polish, a veneer of culture lacking substance. It has always been thus and doubtless will continue to be. Why this mass departure from common sense? It is an all-too-common addiction to sophistry: “unsound or misleading but clever, plausible.”

The American theologian, Nathaniel Emmons (1765–1840), came to our aid with this excellent analytical thought: “To reason justly from a false premise is the perfection of sophistry, which is more difficult to expose than to refute false reasoning.”

Reasoning from a false premise can result only in countless errors. A striking example: Prior to Copernicus and Galileo—about four centuries ago—the common belief was that the sun revolves around the earth. Reflect on the deadly blow to progress in astronomy had that false premise not been corrected. A sound premise is essential in all fields, even more vital to freedom than to astronomy. Had Copernicus and Galileo not been free to unscramble the traditional error in their field and in their time, we would still be blind to an important truth.

To those of us who would advance the freedom way of life, consistency is an absolute necessity; no leaks, no “buts”—never an approval of a single socialistic item. To be consistent with truth requires that one does his or her reasoning logically and deductively from a sound premise. Realizing this about thirty years ago, I sought a premise on which we at FEE might base our reasoning. I did one thing right; I went deep! If one’s premise is founded on shallow or peripheral matters, consistency and truth are out of the question. So I asked the most difficult question I could think of, namely, what is man’s earthly purpose? I could find no answer without bumping head on into three of my fundamental assumptions. They are as follows:

1. Man did not create himself, for it is easily demonstrable that man knows next to nothing about himself. So my first assumption is the primacy and supremacy of what I refer to as an Infinite Consciousness.

2. While it is difficult, it is nonetheless possible for the individual to increase his own awareness, his own perception, his own consciousness.

3. I cannot demonstrate my third assumption but only know it to be a truth, namely, the immortality of the human spirit, this earthly moment being only the beginning.

With these assumptions in mind, what is man’s earthly purpose? It is growth, development, emergence, evolution, hatching. The Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, remarked, “Man is on earth as in an egg.” This inspired C. S. Lewis to comment, “Man cannot go on being a good egg forever; he must hatch or rot.” To hatch is to emerge, to evolve—man’s earthly purpose. If we can reason logically and deductively from such a premise, our positions will be consistently sound. Here are two guidelines to determine whether or not one’s premise is a good one:

1. If the individual cannot stand before God and man alike and pronounce his premise proudly, take another look at it.

2. If your premise does not require individual liberty, find one that does.

True, good manners lead to good morals. When enough individuals thus blest reason justly from a sound premise, Liberty will again prevail!

12

WHY THE PRESIDENT SAID NO

Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

—GROVER CLEVELAND

Grover Cleveland, while serving two terms as President, vetoed, I suspect, more interventionist or anti-freedom bills than any other President before or after his time. He understood the limited role of government and had the courage to stand by his convictions, a rare quality well exemplified in this veto message of February 16, 1887:

“I return without my approval House Bill No. 10203, entitled ‘An act to enable the Commissioner of Agriculture to make a special distribution of seeds in the drought-stricken counties of Texas, and making an appropriation [of $10,000] therefor.’

“It is represented that a long-continued and extensive drought has existed in certain portions of the State of Texas, resulting in a failure of crops and consequent distress and destitution.

“Though there has been some difference in statements concerning the extent of the people’s needs in the localities thus affected, there seems to be no doubt that there has existed a condition calling for relief; and I am willing to believe that, notwithstanding the aid already furnished, a donation of seed grain to the farmers located in this region, to enable them to put in new crops, would serve to avert a continuance or return of an unfortunate blight.

“And yet I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan, as proposed by this bill, to indulge a benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds for that purpose.

“I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit. A prevalent tendency to disregard the limited mission of this power and duty should, I think, be steadfastly resisted, to the end that the lesson should be constantly enforced that though the people support the Government the Government should not support the people.

“The friendliness and charity of our countrymen can always be relied upon to relieve their fellow-citizens in misfortune. This has been repeatedly and quite lately demonstrated. Federal aid in such cases encourages the expectation of paternal care on the part of the Government and weakens the sturdiness of our national character, while it prevents the indulgence among our people of that kindly sentiment and conduct which strengthens the bonds of a common brotherhood.”

All of the above as related to a mere pittance—$10,000. Today, politicians approve hundreds of billions for ever so many “salvations,” and for no more reason than political popularity—a means of staying in office.

Our Founding Fathers, while more oriented toward the freedom way of life than any other group in all history, were not perfect. They were guilty of several errors, the most devastating being their acceptance of slavery. Presumably, they had a “reason”: they wanted to bring the Southern States into the Union.

When the Negroes were finally freed, nearly all Americans believed slavery to be an evil in the past tense. But slavery assumed a new guise—in the form of subsidies and controls. “It is hardly lack of due process for the government to regulate that which it subsidizes,” declared the U. S. Supreme Court in Wickard vs. Filburn (1942).

“He who pays the fiddler calls the tune.” This certainly applies to the relationship between government and the citizens. When government subsidizes—pays—it regulates; it calls the tune which determines the extent of our enslavement.

Is “enslavement” too harsh a term? In 1884, that great British thinker, Herbert Spencer, wrote an unusual but thoughtful and realistic definition of slavery: “That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires. . . . What leads us to qualify our conception of slavery as more or less severe? Evidently the greater or smaller the extent to which effort is compulsorily expended for the benefit of another instead of for self-benefit.”

Based on the authority of the Supreme Court, and deductive reasoning as well, it should be obvious that all who ask for subsidies are inviting regulations that diminish self-benefits. Such persons are asking for slavery—no less!

The same can be said of those who ask government for a monopolistic position in the market—seeking to gain by the coercive elimination of would-be competitors. When successful in such depredations, they gain by denying others the opportunity to gain. Their gain is someone else’s loss, a form of subsidy-slavery.

Reflect upon the countless subsidies being sought, not merely by the socialists but even by those who call themselves “free enterprisers.” Each subsidy, when granted, gives birth to numerous regulations. Almost all of these regulations limit creative action, and they go far to explain our country’s rapid decline into the Command Society—enslavement! Along with the enslavement occurs the deadening of private ownership, a fundamental feature of the free society.

The government type of enslavement grows out of at least three hallucinations:

(1) I am wise! With few exceptions, those wielding power over others are corrupted. Such authority tends to intoxicate them; they see others as fallible, but never themselves.

(2) I am it! Government controls what it subsidizes. Most of the 16,000,000 elected and appointed government officeholders think of themselves as the state. They come to believe that the dollars they use to subsidize are the government’s dollars, and that they are the government.

(3) I am omniscient! This is the little-god syndrome. Be like me, do as I say, obey my edicts, and thou shall be graced with the good life.

The truth? Not a one of them is any more competent to direct our mortal moments than to direct our spirits in the Hereafter! This is to say that they can no more effectively direct creativity at the earthly level than they can direct Creation. Managing the creative lives of others is beyond any man’s competence. But the wiseacres do not know this.

How then, are we to rid ourselves of these enslavements? There is only one answer: To be blessed with citizens—in office and out—who understand the limited role of government as did Grover Cleveland, and who will not deviate from their convictions.

13

OBLIGATIONS SPAWN MENTAL GROWTH

There is nothing so elastic as the human mind. Like imprisoned steam, the more it is pressed the more it rises to resist the pressure. The more we are obliged to do the more we are able to accomplish.

—TRYON EDWARDS

The American theologian, Try on Edwards (1809–94), expressed a truth, which like ever so many a truth is the opposite of what is found in the popular mythology. “Popular opinion is the greatest lie in the world,” wrote Carlyle. The cause of this lie? Far more causes than we can count. Among them are ambitions in the derogatory sense: the seeking of fame, power, popularity, be-like-me-ness and so on. The millions who fall in this category are no more than followers of ignoble ambitions! They spawn no mental growth but, rather, assist the growing socialism which presently bedevils so much of the world. Let’s speculate on how this can be corrected.

As a starter, ignore popular opinion. If righting mass notions were the solution to the mess we are in, a return to the freedom way of life would be utterly hopeless. The restoration of freedom is not a numbers problem. We do not have to convert the masses; every good movement in all history has been led by an infinitesimal minority.

Aside from Jesus of Nazareth, whose movement started with only a handful of followers, the most outstanding example known to me was the accomplishment of a Venetian priest—Paolo Sarpi. Andrew Dickson White, co-founder and first President of Cornell University, wrote a book entitled Seven Great Statesmen. He accords first place to this priest. Sarpi alone initiated what proved to be one of the most beneficial movements in modern history—the separation of church and state.

The Papal Establishment in Rome at this time was, without exception, composed of power mongers—even murderers—and Venice was largely under its thumb. When Venice threw off this yoke it enjoyed a moral, political and an economic renascence. Father Paul—Sarpi—lived in Venice, then a nation, not just a city as now. The economic result? Venice became the greatest free-trade nation in the world up until that time.

For a remarkable illustration of how the separation of Church and State worked its wonders, observe how diametrically Leo III (Pope 1878–1903) differed from the power mongers 300 years earlier, prior to Sarpi’s victory. Wrote this Pope: “It is the mind, or reason, which is the predominant element in us who are human creatures; it is this which renders a human being human, and distinguishes him essentially and generically from the brute.”

Governmental behavior, if overextended, stifles economic progress, but if properly limited the law assures economic well-being. Reflect on the works of Frederic Bastiat (1801–50). I introduced his 79-page book, The Law, to our country in the early forties. It deals with the role of government—the political—and with the advantages of freedom—economic progress. We at FEE have sold over 300,000 volumes of this book and ever so many of his larger works.

Those of us who believe in freedom have an obligation to so direct our lives and actions and stand responsible for the consequences. The American author, Elbert Hubbard (1859–1915), expressed a belief worthy of emulation: “I believe in freedom—social, economical, . . . political, mental and spiritual.”

• Social: freedom of everyone—no exception—to act creatively as each pleases.

• Economical: freedom to produce whatever one pleases and to exchange mine for thine.

• Political: freedom from overextended government, with the law limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice.

• Mental: freedom to speak and write one’s own convictions.

• Spiritual: freedom from the error that mortal man is the endower of our rights. The faith of freedom is “. . . that all men are . . . endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty. . . .”

Wrote Stewart Edward White, a famous author and one of the greatest spiritual thinkers known to me: “A belief is not a possession until you can demonstrate its workability.”

We at FEE have demonstrated over the past 34 years how freedom works its wonders, and so have ever so many others in various nations. Thus, millions possess a belief in freedom, but many are pessimistic about its recovery—mistakenly filled with gloom! Wrote that remarkable English statesman, Edmund Burke, in 1779:

How often has public calamity been arrested on the very brink of ruin, by the seasonable energy of a single man? Have we no such man amongst us? I am as sure as I am of my being, that one vigorous mind without office, without situation, without public functions of any kind, (at a time when the want of such a thing is felt, as I am sure it is) I say, one such man, confiding in the aid of God, and full of just reliance in his own fortitude, vigor, enterprise, and perseverance, would first draw to him some few like himself, and then that multitudes, hardly thought to be in existence, would appear and troop about him.

Interestingly, the millions who are presently trooping about the socialists are doing so unconsciously; and when that one exemplar of freedom appears, they will troop about him just as unconsciously. May that one man, confiding in the aid of God, be the one you see in the mirror!

14

OUR MUTUAL OBLIGATIONS

The man who never reads will never be read, he who never quotes will never be quoted; he who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves he has no brains of his own.

—CHARLES H. SPURGEON

This English clergyman (1834–92), in the above, inspires some interesting reflections that relate to our mutual obligations and human liberty.

The man who never reads will never be read. “We may glean knowledge by reading, but we must separate the wheat from the chaff.” A high percentage of reading material—newspapers, magazines and even books—classify as chaff. If self-improvement be one’s objective, all reading should be over one’s head, as the saying goes. That’s the kind of material I aim to read. Very often I must read a sentence several times. Thinking required!

I am far from an authority on such a profound subject, so let me quote some of the all-time sages on the advantage of reading.

A man of ability, for the chief of his reading, should select such works as he feels are beyond his own power to have produced. What can other books do for him but waste his time or augment his vanity?

—J. Foster

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

—Joseph Addison

To read without reflecting, is like eating without digesting.

—Edmund Burke

We should be as careful of the books we read, as of the company we keep. The dead very often have more power than the living.

—Try on Edwards

It’s what you read when you don’t have to that determines what you will be when you can’t help it.

—D. F. Potter

It is not wide reading but useful reading that tends to excellence.

—Aristippus

. . . he who never quotes will never be quoted. I am unaware of anyone, past or present, whose writings have been featured by more quotations per book than mine! And this for certain: I am quoted far less frequently by other writers than the authors whose words I borrow! There are at least two reasons for this: (1) my lack of a wisdom comparable to theirs; and (2) the unpopular nature of my subject matter—explaining the freedom philosophy at a time when socialism is on the rampage.

Here is a Latin Proverb we should always keep in mind: “Nothing is ever too often repeated that is not sufficiently learned.” Repetition is, indeed, the mother of learning!

The greatest of all earthly miracles, the freedom way of life, has not been sufficiently learned by anyone, its essence approximated only by a few. We should seek out these few, and make the best of their enlightened thoughts our own. Once these thoughts are digested, share with those who are potential devotees. Keep on quoting! The more one shares—gives—the more he or she learns. A Biblical truism: “It is more blessed to give than to receive.” Hopefully, the listeners and/or readers will excel the givers!

There are excellent books by the wiser individuals throughout the ages—Confucius, Socrates, Burke, Emerson and hundreds of other men and women—available to those of us who seek enlightenment. These gems we quote, attracting others, becoming their mentors.

As one who believes in quoting the wise, here are a few samplings on this subject:

He that recalls the attention of mankind to any part of learning which time has left behind it, may be truly said to advance the literature of his own age.

—Samuel Johnson

He presents me with what is always an acceptable gift who brings me news of a great thought before unknown. He enriches me without impoverishing himself.

—Christian Bovee

To select well among old things [ideas] is almost equal to inventing new ones.

—Nicholas Trublet

We are not always so composed, so full of wisdom, that we are able to take in at once the whole scope of a work according to its merit. Do we not mark in a book passages which seem to have a direct reference to ourselves?

—Goethe

. . . he who will not use the thoughts of other men’s brains, proves he has no brains of his own. There are two parts to the brain: (1) the diencephalon, possessed by higher animals and also by man and (2) the cortex, possessed only by human beings, endowing us with the capacity for abstract thought.

Assuredly Spurgeon’s reference was to the disuse of the latter faculty. Wrote the famous biologist, Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener: “There also seem sufficient grounds for the assumption that a habitual disuse of these centers results or at least brings about a certain mental decline, and examples bearing on this contention are only too numerous.”[1]

There are two or three billion individuals in this world of ours who have let themselves go to seed and, thus, fall in this woeful category. The problem of those of us who love liberty? We have a mutual obligation to assist each other. Here, in my view, is an appropriate prayer:

Thy blessings upon our freedom associates, near and far, past and present, that we may do thy will.

[1] See Fearfully and Wonderfully Made by Renee von Eulenburg-Wiener (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1938), p. 310.

15

THE ROLE OF GOALS

. . . and only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the liberty of others.

—LECOMTE DU NOÜY

Dr. du Noüy (1883–1947), internationally known French scientist, author of Human Destiny, gave to posterity a valuable truth in that book. Most everyone wants liberty for self, but few there are who will defend the liberty of others. Short of such defense, there can be no liberty for anyone. Thus, those of us who love liberty have an obligation to evolve—grow in awareness, perception, consciousness—every day of our mortal lives.

Mankind’s evolution is pre-ordained, as beautifully dramatized by Professor William Herbert Carruth (1859–1924):

A fire-mist and a planet,

A crystal and a cell,

A jellyfish and a saurian,

And caves where the cavemen dwell;

Then a sense of law and beauty,

And a face turned from the clod—

Some call it Evolution,

And others call it God.

Whether one’s goal—this aim and aspiration—is high or low makes a tremendous difference. For as James Russell Lowell observed, “Not failure, but low aim is crime.”

No one is immune to failure. To do one’s best, without succeeding, is no crime. But to aim low, such as striving for wealth by theft, is a crime. Only a very small percentage of the population descend to this direct and open breaking of the Commandment, “Thou shalt not steal.”

However, there are millions who get the government to steal for them—the actions range from food stamps to social security to medicare to replicas of the Gateway Arch by the thousands to more massive economic devastations than anyone can count. All of this is “financed” by a rapidly growing inflation—irredeemable paper money. These are low aims—crimes of the first order!

So let us be aware of the shameful and degrading consequences if our aim be low—our goal unworthy. This is step number one. The second step is to discover and reach for higher goals, to learn how to explain and live by them. Here is a wise observation by Joel Hawes: “Aim at the sun, and you may not reach it; but your arrow will fly far higher than if aimed at an object [ideal] on a level with yourself.”

What is the lesson to be learned from this? See that one’s aim is constantly ascending! Suppose I were to stop where I now am in explaining the freedom way of life. Stalemated! I am unaware of anyone who has more than scratched the surface in understanding and explaining Creation at the human level. Aim at the sun—this Heavenly Virtue—if you would emerge, grow, ascend!

Several thoughts which give excellent support to Joel Hawes, the American clergyman (1789–1867):

Be always displeased with what thou art if thou desire to attain to what thou art not, for where thou hast pleased thyself, there thou abidest.

—Francis Quarles

High aims form high characters, and great objects bring out great minds.

—Try on Edwards

Have a purpose in life, and having it, throw into your work such strength of mind and muscle as God has given you.

—Thomas Carlyle

Dream manfully and nobly, and thy dreams shall be prophets.

—E. G. Bulwer-Lytton

What are the aims which are at the same time duties? They are the perfecting of ourselves, and the happiness of others.

—Immanuel Kant

Providence has nothing good or high in store for one who does not resolutely aim at something high or good. A purpose is the eternal condition of success.

—T. T. Munger

Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable; however, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it, then those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.

—Philip Chesterfield

The above are examples of highly evolved men. Not only were they willing to defend the liberty of others but their method—self-improvement—was as right as right can be. Let us aim for the high and the good: Liberty for one and all!

16

THE VOICE OF CONSCIENCE

Cowardice asks, is it safe?

Expediency asks, is it politic?

Vanity asks, is it popular?

But Conscience asks, is it right?

—WILLIAM MORLEY PUNSHON

This English Wesleyan minister (1824–81), by his four questions, brilliantly emphasizes the virtue of conscience. And we should recall that “virtue” once meant excellence and power. George Washington exemplified such virtue and gave to his countrymen this sound advice: “Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.”

This tiny spark of conscience must be identified and distinguished from the blazes of nonsense fanned by cowardice, expediency, and vanity.

Wrote Confucius: “To know what is right and not do it is the worst cowardice.” Many Americans believe that freedom to act creatively as they please is right. However, they are too timid to stand ramrod straight for a way of life so at odds with popular jargon. This fear is not entirely unfounded. Jesus was crucified for his holiness. No one of us being remotely as pure as He, the worst that will beset us is disrespect—how awful! Each of us knows, deep down, that cowardice is far worse than public disdain.

Wrote the English poet, Percy B. Shelley (1792–1822):

He was a coward to the strong;

He was a tyrant to the weak.

Reflect on those who were cowards when they lived under such strong dictators as Hitler, Stalin and their ilk. But know-it-all-ness—the little god syndrome—is contagious. These very same cowards would become tyrants when and if an opportunity opened up to them. Take note of those in our homeland who fear to criticize our political power mongers, but who—when and if they get into office—will behave just as tyrannically. Wrote the English navigator, Sir Walter Raleigh (1552–1618): “Better it were not to live than to live a coward.”

Expediency—the doing of what is to one’s immediate advantage rather than what is right or just—is, indeed, politic! That word in old-English phrasing meant artful or crafty—political in its most derogatory sense. Wrote the American clergyman, Edwin Chapin (1814–80): “When private virtue is hazarded on the perilous cast of expediency, the pillars of the republic, however apparent their stability, are infected with decay at the very centre.”

Expediency is akin to cowardice: (1) it stifles virtue, (2) it damages those who practice it, and (3) it corrupts the American Republic.

1—to be expedient is to lie, to take positions one knows to be false. It is to disobey the Commandment, “Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor.” Expediency says, in effect: To hell with the heavenly virtues.

2—How does lying wreak its damage on those who lie? It destroys character and rots the soul. Wrote the English Quaker and founder of Pennsylvania, William Penn (1644–1718): “When thou art obliged to speak, be sure to speak the truth; equivocation is half way to lying and lying is whole way to hell.”

3—Expediency plays havoc with our Republic; only utter ignorance is more dangerous. Wrote Henry Ward Beecher: “Expedients are for an hour, but principles are for the ages.” Those who do not heed principles either know them not or couldn’t care less. Their deplorable tactic? An ignoble resort to such short-run, momentary “gains” as power, popularity, governmental handouts and the like. The unprincipled top the list as enemies of our Republic!

Vanity asks, is it popular? The Irish satirist and Dean of St. Patrick’s Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) gave this topic a satirical “fly”: “The strongest passions allow us some rest, but vanity keeps us perpetually in motion. What a dust do I raise! says the fly upon a coach-wheel. And at what a rate do I drive! says the fly on the horse’s back.”

Vanity is the quicksand of reason, which has little chance to function so long as vanity prevails. “The most violent passions have their intermissions; vanity alone gives us no respite.” Wrote the Bard of Avon: “Vanity keeps persons in favor with themselves, who are out of favor with all others.”

Here are five more thoughts by wise men on this intellectual weakness:

To be a man’s own fool is bad enough, but the vain man is everybody’s.

—William Penn

When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done; he is dead; dead in the trespasses and sins of blear-eyed vanity.

—Henry Ward Beecher

There is no restraining men’s tongues or pens when charged with a little vanity.

—George Washington

Great mischiefs happen more often from folly, meanness and vanity, than from the greater sins of avarice and ambition.

—Edmund Burke

Vanity is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices—the vices of affectation and common lying.

—Adam Smith

Finally, how rid ourselves of cowardice, expediency and vanity? There is but one way: find the answer to what’s right—the source of which is the individual’s highest conscience!

As I see it, life’s highest goal should be growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. Briefly, see how closely one’s finite consciousness can approximate Infinite Consciousness.

In this respect, most people are unaware of their potentialities. To use Carl Jung’s enlightened understanding and phrasing: “each of us has a partner—the undiscovered self.” Discover thyself; there’s a gold mine within thee! As Dr. Fritz Kunkel revealed to us: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, of all people without exception.”

Let’s repeat what the Father of our country gave us as a simple formula for the road to righteousness and a restoration of our Republic as “the home of the brave [no cowardice or expediency or vanity] and the land of the free”:

Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience!

17

THE EMERGENCE OF TRUTH

Ultimately with God’s aid, Truth always emerges and finally prevails supreme in its power over the destiny of mankind, and terrible is the retribution for those who deny, defy, or betray it.

—VIRGIL JORDAN

The late Virgil Jordan was President of the National Industrial Conference Board when I joined the staff as Executive Vice-president in May 1945. As a scholar, writer, speaker and devotee of freedom he was one of the all-time greats!

In his search for Truth, my friend relied upon “God’s aid,” a faith which evokes hostility in some quarters, puzzlement in others. For clarification, I turn to my associate, Reverend Edmund Opitz:

God, for many people, is a Cosmic Bell-Hop who is “up there” to run our celestial errands for us; or He’s The Man Upstairs who’ll do right by us if we butter him up. He’s the Fond Uncle who hands out goodies and expects our praise in return. He’s the Coach who brings us the big win, the Judge who punishes our enemies. And so on.

We begin our growing up out of these childish superstitions into the world vision of theism when we learn to think and act on the premise that a Creative Intelligence is at work in the universe. The immense variety of living forms testifies to the creativity, and the elegant adaptation of means to ends bespeaks intelligence. The Creative Intelligence is the universe’s support system, and it fulfills its purpose throughout nature, in history, and above all by means of persons. The cosmos is rationally structured; it’s a coherent whole, a universe. It follows that history has meaning, human life has a purpose, individuals count. To say “God exists” is to affirm that the whole show makes sense, and that by taking thought we may catch glimpses of the big pattern.

Human life does, indeed, have a purpose. But what of those who deny, defy, or betray life’s highest purpose? In what manner is the retribution terrible?

In the above, my associate refers to “God” as “a Creative Intelligence.” Wrote the Greek philosopher, Empedocles (490–430 B.C.): “God is a circle whose center is everywhere and its circumference nowhere.” One may infer from this that we humans are finite centers and that our explorations can be no more than forward motions toward the Infinite. This is why my term for “God” is “Infinite Consciousness.” This makes the comparison between infinite and finite easier. Now to those who defy God’s Truth.

Consciousness is the only aspect of life that continues into the Hereafter—“the state of life after death.” Our mortal moments are lived at their finest and highest when they include a preparation for Eternity.

The “terrible retribution that will bedevil those who deny, defy or betray this concept”? For the Materialist, these mortal moments are all there is to existence. There is nothing over and beyond our tiny, dormant, human “minds.”

In a seminar discussion, the question arose, “I don’t have to believe in God to believe in freedom do I?” My reply, “No, you do not have to believe in God to believe in freedom; but if there were no general belief in God—the Right beyond might—there would be no freedom!”

Imagine the situation if “we know-next-to-nothings” were regarded as the sole source of existence—no Creation, no external source of Truth. The retribution for those who defy is to face a pointless life—no Hereafter. And if all possessed a similar outlook there would be no meaningful human life on earth!

Unless there be an awareness of Creation and the Hereafter, wisdom in its highest sense is out of reach. Awareness of how little one knows is wisdom. For instance, if one were aware of how much he or she does not know—trillions times trillions of phenomena—that individual would be graced with an all-time wisdom. Socrates, regarded as one of the wisest, remarked: “That man thinks he knows everything, whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing, but I know I know nothing.” The more one knows, the greater is the unknown.

Socrates regarded himself as a philosophical midwife. He received from that Source over and beyond self and shared with all who cared to listen.

Wrote the American minister, Ralph Sockman: “The larger the island of knowledge, the longer the shoreline of wonder.” The more we know the more we wonder, not only about the Heavenly unknown, but about its earthly offspring—the mysterious way freedom works its wonders.

18

ASPIRE TO SEE AFAR

The genius of man is a continuation of the power that made him and that has not done making him.

—EMERSON

The first question that must be asked and answered has to do with first causes: What is this power that marshaled the physical, chemical, biological and social forces that made every one of us? The Scottish bookseller and compiler of a Bible Concordance, Alexander Cruden (1701–70), gave an enlightening answer: “God is one of the names which we give to that external, infinite, and incomprehensible being, the creator of all things, who preserves and governs everything by his almighty power and wisdom, and who is the only object of our worship.”

The multitudes do not grasp this. Ever so many people in this and other lands know not the meaning of worship as used by Cruden. I refer to those who “worship” wealth, fame, self-esteem, power to run the lives of others—those who see nothing beyond their own little minds, who view themselves as the power that made them. An Infinite Being to them is a mere figment of the imagination. But enough about those who see not. My aim is to inquire into “the genius of man”—his inherent nature—hoping that more of us may find a motivating aspiration.

What did Emerson mean by “genius”? We must know the right answer if we are to aspire and see afar; only then will we have a motivating aspiration and attain an attracting exemplarity. According to the dictionary, genius is: “Great mental capacity . . . especially, great and original creative activity.”

Here are four enlightening thoughts:

Genius, that power which dazzles mortal eyes is oft but perseverance in disguise.

—Henry Austin

Genius is only a superior power of seeing.

—John Ruskin

The first and last thing required of genius is the love of truth.

—Goethe

Genius may be described as the spirit of discovery. It is the eye of intellect and the wing of thought. It is always in advance of its time—the pioneer for the generation which it precedes.

—William Simms

Austin suggests that attainments that strike some as genius may be perseverance disguised, which implies that mere perseverance is not genius, although it may be a means to that lofty height. Here is an instance from the writings of Samuel Johnson, compiler of the first English dictionary: “Great works are performed, not by strength, but by perseverance. He that shall walk with vigor, three hours a day, will pass, in seven years, a space equal to the circumference of the globe.” Such a stunt (over 24,000 miles!) does not betoken genius. Anyone who would do such would be an all-time physical marvel, but no sensible person would ever attempt such a venture.

To discover those who qualify as geniuses, let Johnson’s metaphorical impossibility serve as a suggestion for what is possible in the intellectual, moral and spiritual realm—the road to freedom. Here are three interesting observations:

Nothing is so hard but search will find it out.

—Robert Herrick

Never despair, but if you do, work in despair.

—Edmund Burke

I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

—Mary Ann Evans

While there are numerous others—past and present—I am unaware of any genius who better grasped the power that made man and that has not done making him than Ralph Waldo Emerson. A great exemplar!

Nothing is so hard but search will find it out. Were this the qualification for becoming a genius, there never has been nor will there ever be such an individual. No finite person in all history, regardless of how hard the search, has known what Infinite Consciousness is. Know error to find the truth!

How become a genius? One way is to search in the realm of one’s uniqueness. Who knows what the reward will be! An awareness of an incomprehensible being will assuredly grace a few. Mortal life has no higher gift!

Never despair, but if you do, work in despair. And enlist your understanding by recalling the words of a thoughtful philosopher: “What we call despair is often the painful eagerness of unfed hope.” Most of us have hopes—high aspirations—but ever so many let it go at that. Their hopes waste away, unnourished. Having failed to grasp the upgrading truth that the art of becoming is composed of acts of overcoming, they yield to discouragement—and that’s painful.

Those who perceive life’s purpose aright will never be stalemated at the desperation level. They will courageously rise to the challenge.

Burke knew the remedy—work out your despair! Jeremy Taylor added his wisdom: “It is impossible for that man to despair who remembers that his Helper is omnipotent.” Our Helper is not only omnipotent but is The Source!

Wrote the English novelist, Mary Ann Evans (1819–80): I’m proof against that word failure. I’ve seen behind it. The only failure a man ought to fear is failure in cleaving to the purpose he sees to be best.

There is more to failure than meets the eye. To see only the failure is to be beaten, discouraged, filled with bitterness and despair. But to see “behind it” is to know what went wrong and why.

Millions of Americans are distraught by the consequences of our decline into socialism. They see dollars losing value as prices mount. And they tend to blame the suppliers of goods and services for those higher prices—a failure of private enterprise! They do not see “behind it” to the reckless government spending and debt-based printing of worthless paper money.

Until we more clearly see and relate cause and consequence, see that it is the socialistic measures which have failed, we must bear those dreadful consequences. Once we understand, we may turn from the socialism that fails, return to the success that follows a faith in the market economy.

Where lies our hope? The power to make us, as Emerson wrote, is not done making us. Faith in this Truth is absolutely essential if freedom is to prevail. Three thoughts we should keep in mind:

Faith makes the discords of the present the harmonies of the future.

—Robert Collyer

Despotism may govern without faith but Liberty cannot.

—Alexis de Tocqueville

Miracle is the darling child of faith.

—Goethe

19

FROM THE “KNOWN” TO THE UNKNOWN

This is the world of seeds; of causes and of tendencies; The other is the world of harvests and of perfected consequences.

—JOSEPH ADDISON

Wrote the German humorist, poet and statesman, Jean Paul Richter (1763–1826): “If there were no future life, our souls would thirst for it.” Of all the adults on this earth, how many thirst for a future life, a life after our earthly life is done? No one can even guess the number; however, it is possible and perhaps enlightening to open up this question and speculate on several generalities.

Let’s first reflect on the world of the “known.” Ever so many of the ills in today’s world originate in the millions who “think” they can get along without drawing and relying on the Creation which brought them into being—to me, an absurdity!

These individuals suffer as they would if deprived of many other ingredients of life. While readily admitting that they cannot live without food, drink, red blood cells or brain, these poor souls believe they can survive on those infinitesimal talents which they alone possess. These millions see no need to come to terms with the power which created them! When mankind is afflicted with such egotism, a good society is out of the question!

Egotism or egoism is: “constant, excessive reference to oneself in speaking or writing; self-conceit.” Wrote E. K. Goldthwaite: “Overstuffed egos, waddling about in self-appointed importance.” These politico-economic “waddlers”—those who “know”—compose a large percentage of the population. For whom do they vote? For politicians who will “waddle” for them at the expense of others!

In the same lamentable category are those who avow their atheism—nothing in the Cosmos above their finite minds. Wrote the American lawyer, John Foster (1836–1917): “The atheist is one of the most daring beings in creation, a contemner [scorner] of God who explodes his laws by denying his existence.”

A given individual may affirm his belief in freedom, while at the same time denying any belief in The Source: God, Infinite Consciousness, Creation. However, if everyone in the society were atheist, there could not be a free society. Everything in Nature, be it good or evil, has its source. Freedom is good—creation at the human level—and its Source is Creation!

In addition to the millions who deny The Source, there are scores of millions who have no beliefs whatsoever concerning this matter—afflicted by blindness. In Matthew 15:14 we read: “They be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

The number of people in these categories—the know-it-alls, the atheists, the blind—is so great that all nations appear to be falling into the ditch. Disaster? Not if we can find the remedy! And it isn’t easy, for the more affluent a people become, as in the U.S.A., the greater is the tendency for talents to lie dormant. But is this the way it must be? Negative! It requires a renewal of the best thinking ever to grace humanity!

Let us now reflect on the “Unknown”—The Source. No one knows what it is; only a few know that it is. Wrote that remarkable author, Stewart Edward White: “You’ve got to play with the idea before you can make it work, because you are not operating in your accustomed substance. You are employing a higher creative form which you don’t know how to use except unconsciously and relaxedly.” To even move in the direction of the Unknown—The Source—cannot result from a personal commandment. The Unknown must indeed be approached “relaxedly,” that is, joyously!

The English essayist, poet and statesman, Joseph Addison (1672–1719), in writing about the life to come—the hereafter—claims that it “is the world of harvests and of perfected consequences.” Briefly, the harvest in the world to come is determined by the perfection achieved in our mortal moments. Wrote the English courtier, orator and wit, Philip Chesterfield (1694–1778): “Aim at perfection in everything, though in most things it is unattainable. However, they who aim at it, and persevere, will come much nearer to it than those whose laziness and despondency make them give it up as unattainable.”

The above is excellent but, in my judgment, his “though in most things it is unattainable,” goes too far. Wrote Tryon Edwards: “Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. To understand everything we must be like God.” Even this I would modify to read: “To understand anything we must be like God.” Truth and nothing but the truth exists only in The Source, unattainable by any human being. It is important that we properly evaluate our impotence in order to avoid the horrible and all-too-common assessment of self: omnipotence!

Once our limitations are properly evaluated, there follows an understanding of the efficacy of the free and unfettered market—our tiny and varying bits of thoughts and skills freely flowing and configurating. Result? Growth in material well-being and plenty of time to grow in consciousness—which should be our highest aim in life.

Here is a thought worthy of deep reflection by the Hungarian patriot, Louis Kossuth (1802–94): “The cause of freedom is identified with the destinies of humanity, and in whatever part of the world it gains ground, by and by it will be a common gain to all who desire it.” Here we have the case for exemplarity. Let us in the U.S.A. set the example for freedom and “by and by it will be a common gain for all who desire it.” Great thinkers over the ages have passed on to us the best of all methods for personal and societal advancement:

There is a transcendent power in example. We reform others unconsciously, when we walk uprightly.

—Madam Swetchine

People seldom improve when they have no model but themselves to copy after.

—Oliver Goldsmith

Nothing is so infectious as example.

—Charles Kingsley

We can do more good by being good, than in any other way.

—Rowland Hill

Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.

—Edmund Burke

So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.

—Immanuel Kant

Much more gracious and profitable is doctrine by example, than by rule.

—Herbert Spencer

Of all commentaries upon the Scripture, good examples are the best and the liveliest.

—John Donne

Wrote the Sage of Concord: “There is a persuasion in the soul of man that he is here for a cause, and that he was put down in this place by the Creator to do the work for which He inspired him; that thus he is an over-match for all the antagonists that could contrive against him.”

Let us ardently strive to learn more and more of the Unknown. What will be the reward? Freedom will grace our lives!

20

THE MASTERS OF VICTORY

The nerve which never relaxes The eye which never blanches The thought which never wavers These are the masters of victory.

—AUTHOR UNKNOWN

It is a safe guess that many of the wisest statements ever uttered are unknown to anyone in our time, for all people make remarks no one remembers—not even themselves. All the more reason, then, to cherish the proverbial wisdom we do possess. “It is better to verify the proverb, and take everything unknown as magnificent,” wrote Leigh Hunt, “rather than to predetermine it as worthless.” We know not who authored “The Masters of Victory” or when it was written. But it is, indeed, magnificent and the four points deserve reflection that we may profit from their wisdom.

The word “nerve” has numerous definitions but the one mentioned above has to be this: “emotional control; coolness in danger; courage.”

Emotional control: Ever so many of us lack emotional control. We are distraught when listening to or reading bad news, totally unaware of all the good that goes on. To assert that the latter is a million times greater than the former would be an understatement. On the other hand, we are elated by all sorts of trivia ranging from flattery to the election of a favorite politician. Aim to possess the nerve which never relaxes—steadfast for high ideals such as freedom—if thou wouldst be featured by nerve.

Coolness in danger: One of my brilliant friends humorously phrased this point: “All of life is filled with woe and strife and few of us get out of it alive.” Of course, no one survives this earthly life. But those who fret about what may happen—earthquakes, wars, cancer, heart attacks, depressions, old-age, poverty and countless other scary dangers—induce stress, which dramatically shortens life. The ones best gifted with coolness look upon birth and death as parts of the Divine Plan—our mortal moments being a passing and heavenly delight rather than a few years of hellish doom. Hail to those graced with coolness!

Courage: Confucius said, “To see what is right and not do it is a lack of courage.” Many citizens know it is everyone’s right to act creatively as he or she pleases. However, if a creative action is unpopular, such as hiring youngsters, freely exchanging goods and services with people in other countries, educating one’s own children, or ever so many contradictions of governmental or trade union interventions, they lack the courage to stand for what they believe to be right.

Wrote the clergyman, James F. Clarke (1820–88): “Conscience is the root of all courage; if a man would be brave, let him obey his conscience.” For freedom to prevail, there must be more men and women graced with courage!

In beginning this, the second point, by our Unknown Author, I find that he or she was among the ancients. I attempted to interpret what was meant by “The eye that never blanches,” for that word in our present vocabulary doesn’t make much sense in this context. But the dictionary does give an archaic meaning for “Blanch”: “Shrink, give way,” one meaning of the latter being “betray.” In our phrasing, the line would read, “The eye that never waivers or betrays”—a strict adherence to what one’s conscience dictates as righteous!

It is possible that our Author was familiar with that brilliant thought expressed 2,000 years ago: “The light of the body is in the eye; if therefore thine eye be single, the whole body shall be full of light.” (Matthew 6:22) The light of the body is truth, wisdom, enlightenment—perception! Refer to Webster for the definition of “single”: “Not deceitful or artful, simple, honest, sincere.” Shakespeare used the word in this same sense: “I speak with a single heart.”

Single is directly linked to integer, meaning “whole, entire, not divided.” Contrasted to single is double, which has the same original root as “duplicity.” Such phrases as “double dealing” and “double talk” convey this connotation. Integrity is related to integer, and single as here used does, indeed, refer to integrity!

Let the eye be single and cast on improvement—whatever the endeavor—and improvement is bound to follow. One of countless examples was cited by Andrew Dickson White in his remarkable little book, Fiat Money Inflation in France. It had to do with that Frenchman, Brillat-Savarin, who was not only the founder of modern cookery but also a staunch classical liberal, while at the same time a member of the National Assembly: “Singular, that the man, Brillat-Savarin, who so fearlessly stood against this tide of unreason has left to the world simply a reputation as the most brilliant cook that ever existed.” If the eye be cast aright—toward freedom—disregard fickle reputations. Such persons are the masters of victory.

Why applaud the thought which never wavers? To waver means “to show doubt or indecision . . . vacillate . . . to become unsteady.” One’s ambition should be to rid himself of such faults or foibles. The American theologian, John M. Mason (1770–89) shed light on the difficulty: “The wise man has foibles as well as the fool. Those of the one are known to himself, and concealed from the world; while those of the other are known to the world and concealed from himself.”

The thoughts of those who never waver, who stand ramrod straight for right principles, live on forever, testimony to which was given by that remarkable Scottish poet, Charles McKay (1814–89): “The old thoughts never die; immortal dreams outlive their dreamers and are ours for aye; no thought once formed and uttered ever can expire.”

May the thoughts we form and utter on behalf of freedom be helpful to all oncoming generations. Such intellectual, moral and spiritual ascendancy will qualify us as the masters of victory.

21

THE POWER OF THINKING JOYOUSLY

He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.

—EPICTETUS

One of the greatest philosophers of all time was Epictetus, a Roman slave, exiled with many other philosophers by Emperor Domitian who ruled 81–96 A.D. This Emperor was one of Rome’s worst despots. His life was filled with grievances for the things he had not. Thank goodness he is all but forgotten. Epictetus, the slave, lived a life of joy for things which he had—righteous ideas. As a consequence, his works have had an enormous influence on western civilization. Thank goodness he is not forgotten.

Epictetus gained fame as a Stoic: “a Greek school of philosophy founded by Zeno about 308 B.C.: The Stoics believed that all happenings were the result of divine will and that therefore man should be calmly accepting and free from passion or joy.” Epictetus differed in one respect, namely, to rejoice in what one has!

The philosophy of Epictetus is brought to us in The Enchiridion. Albert Solomon’s introduction to the book sets the stage for this thesis: “Roman Stoicism had been recognized the redeeming power of philosophical reason in all the moral and social purposes of life. Philosophy as a way of life makes men free. It is the last ditch stand of liberty in a world of servitude.”[1]

We who are interested in the freedom of individuals should know the meaning of philosophy as here used. According to my dictionary, philosophy is: “A study of the processes governing thought and conduct; theory or investigation of the principles of law that regulate the universe and underlie all knowledge and reality . . . a study of human morals, character and behavior.”

Our exiled slave, having the reputation of a philosopher par excellence, went to Nicopolis, a small village far to the northeast of Athens and, of course, a long way from Rome. Hear this: “He was so well regarded and highly esteemed that he established the reputation of the place as the town of Epictetus’ School. Students came from Athens and Rome to attend his classes. Private citizens came to ask his advice and guidance.”[2]

Wrote the Roman statesman and Stoic philosopher, Marcus Aurelius (121–180 A.D.): “The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.”

Epictetus gave to us the perfect methodological formula for a return to the freedom way of life. Using the above metaphor, what was the “color” of his thoughts? Self-improvement! Epictetus as a teaching philosopher relied exclusively on the law of attraction. Consistent with this method is an old English maxim: “It is light that brings forth the eye.” Excellence in any field, be it cooking, golf, liberty or whatever, is magnetic and is in tune with the Universal Law of Attraction. Here is what the distinguished scientist, Anthony Standen, had to say:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movements of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movements of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movements of earthly bodies too are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.[3]

While Standen may not have had human beings in mind when referring to “earthly bodies,” the Law of Attraction works on us as irrevocably as on any item in nature. We are drawn to great enlightenment just as physical bodies are attracted by gravitation.

Let me cite a personal experience to demonstrate how the enlightenment of our exiled slave influenced my life. Some years ago I sent an article of mine to a remarkable thinker and writer in Montreal. Later, on the phone to me, he said, “What you have written sounds like the ideas in The Enchiridion by Epictetus.” My reply: “I have never heard of the publication or the author. Please send me a copy.” After reading this 39-page pamphlet, the light dawned—an explanation of why my ideas were similar to those of the ancient Stoic. Here it is.

Epictetus did no writing—only thinking and explaining his ideas. Among his students was a young Roman, Flavius Arrian, who took courses at Nicopolis when Epictetus was elderly. Their informal discourses convinced Arrian that he had finally discovered a Stoic Socrates or a Stoic Diogenes, who was not merely teaching a doctrine, but also living the truth.

From the notes Arrian had taken, he published The Enchiridion, a brief summary of the basic ideas of Stoic philosophy and an introduction to the techniques required to transform Stoic philosophy into a way of life. Moral philosophy was first and foremost. A brilliant quote from this masterpiece has to do with what is, and what is not, within our power: “In our power are our thinking, our intentions, our desires, our decisions. These make it possible for us to control ourselves and to make of ourselves elements and parts of the universe, of nature. This knowledge of ourselves makes us free in a world of dependencies. This superiority of our power enables us to live in conformity with nature.”

The Enchiridion was translated into numerous languages. “There were many outstanding bishops in the Catholic and Anglican Churches who were eager to transform the tradition of Roman Stoicism into Christian Stoicism. Among the Calvinistic denominations were many thinkers who were in sympathy with Stoic moral principles because of their praise of the austerity of life and of the control of passions.” However, it was the following which explains why I, who had never heard of Epictetus, have been learning from him unknowingly: “. . . there is a continuous renascence of Stoicism from Descartes, Grotius, and Bishop Butler, to Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Kant. In this long development in modern times, the tiny Enchiridion of Epictetus played a remarkable part.”

Imagine the enlightenment of one man projecting itself into the consciousness of such remarkable individuals as Adam Smith and Immanuel Kant—seventeen centuries later!

Being intimately familiar with the works of Adam Smith and Kant, here I am two centuries after their time, the recipient of the wisdom that originated in an exiled slave!

Three of many excellent thoughts in The Enchiridion we might well keep in mind:

• If anyone tells you that a certain person speaks ill of you, do not make excuses about what is said of you, but answer: “He was ignorant of my other faults, else he would not have mentioned these alone.”

• When you do anything from a clear judgment that it ought to be done, never shrink from being seen to do it, even though the world should misunderstand it; for if you are not acting rightly, shun the action itself; if you are, why fear those who wrongly censure you?

• If you have assumed any character beyond your strength, you have both demeaned yourself ill in that and quitted one which you might have supported.

The lesson we should learn from our wondrous slave? Everlastingly strive for a light so brilliant that it will glow into the distant future—enlightening others. This is not only the joyous life but attests to the fact: It is light that brings forth the eye!

[1] See The Enchiridion by Epictetus (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1955), p. 7.

[2] Ibid., p. 9.

[3] See Science Is a Sacred Cow by Anthony Standen (New York: E. P. Dutton & Company, Inc., 1950), pp. 63–64.

22

THOUGHTS: DEAD OR ALIVE?

Thought must take the stupendous step of passing into realization.

—EMERSON

One reason why most individuals never realize their potentialities—remain at the dormant level—is that their thoughts die at birth. Thoughts, in a way, are comparable to dreams—evanescent—gone with the wind, as we say. Everyone has had countless dreams. Remembered? We can remember having had them but only in exceptional cases what they were. So what! But thoughts must be captured and reflected upon at the moment of reception if they are to advance into realization.

I am unaware of anyone who put his thoughts, conversations and lectures into writing more conscientiously than the Sage of Concord. The brilliant Newton Dillaway, whose intellectual and spiritual hero was Emerson, spent years in condensing this sage’s works into a remarkable book, The Gospel of Emerson.[1]

Henry Hazlitt, one of the great authors and exponents of freedom of our time, has emphasized again and again that a thought must be written out immediately on reception if it is not to be lost. This discipline, in no small measure, accounts for Hazlitt’s expertise.

For the past 29 years I have kept a daily Journal. Every worthwhile thought of my own or others that came to me has been instantly recorded. Here is my joyful discipline: I will read every page from the beginning to the present—now about 2,000,000 words—and, when finished, start over again. The reward? There are literally thousands of forgotten thoughts, many of which are inspirations for an improved phrasing of the freedom thesis. Is this not a stupendous step toward realizing my potential? Emerson and Hazlitt would give me an “A” for effort—if not for accomplishment.

Emerson, one of my all-time favorites and the inspiration for this little essay, wrote these words of wisdom: “The genius of man is a continuation of the Power that made him and that has not done making him.” These are the words Emerson used to identify this Power: God, The Universal Mind, The Creator of Man, Best Counsel, Supreme Spirit and, among others, Immense Intelligence. It is the latter I have used many times, for it relates accurately to thought reception: “We lie in the lap of Immense Intelligence which makes us receivers [perceivers] of its truth and organs of its activity. When we discern justice, when we discern truth, we do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of its beams.”

In order to do nothing of ourselves but allow a passage of its beams, we must develop a remarkable spirit. Why? The highest and most difficult of all human attainments is the discernment of justice and truth. The English essayist, Joseph Addison (1672–1719) had this to say about justice: “To be perfectly just is an attribute of the divine nature; to be so to the utmost of our abilities, is the glory of man.” And the American theologian, Try on Edwards (1800–94), reminds us of the divine nature of truth: “Much of the glory and sublimity of truth is connected with its mystery. To understand everything we must be as God.”

Justice is, indeed, an attribute of Divine Providence, and glory may be ascribed to individuals only to the extent that they are perfectly just in their thoughts and actions as related to their fellowmen. “Justice without wisdom is impossible,” wrote J. A. Froude. Only living thoughts are wise, and only then is glory an earned encomium. Required for a growth in consciousness—life’s purpose? Avoid dead thoughts!

As to the glory and sublimity of truth, all is mystery—no exception, none whatsoever. To dramatize this point, try to answer the question, “Who am I?”

Here is an infinitesimal part of the answer: I am one octillion atoms—1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000. These come and go at one quintillion—1,000,000,000,000,000,000—every second. Thus, I am a different person than a second ago. What is an atom? We know that it is but not what it is. This, and all else in Creation, is mystery! The recognition of this fact is the first steppingstone to truth. Why? We must know how little we know in order to know more than we now know!

The genius of man is, indeed, a continuation of the Power that made him and that has not done making him. Reflect on how little we now know, compared to all there is to be known. Reflect further on the enormous knowledge we now possess as compared to that of Cro-Magnon man 35,000 years ago. The Power—Creation—that made us what we are is still at work. Mankind 35,000 years in the future will, I believe, be as far ahead of us as we are ahead of our ancient ancestry. This is implicit in the evolutionary process!

Freedom from the know-it-alls—political and otherwise—is the momentous first step, if our high aim is to be realized. Wrote Tryon Edwards: “High aims form high characters and great objects bring out great minds.” Each of us is the architect of his own character. For freedom’s sake, and our own, let us be great architects!

[1] Unity Books, Unity Village, Missouri, 128 pp.

23

COUNT OUR BLESSINGS, NOT MISERIES

Blessings we enjoy daily, and for the most part of them, because they are so common, men forget to pay their praises.

—IZAAK WALTON

There are ever so many freedom devotees who are afflicted with downheartedness. Their pessimism is due to the political skulduggery—“rascality; trickery”—that features our present decline into socialism.

What possibly is the remedy for those who thus suffer? The ability to look in two directions at once! For, as Joseph Addison wrote: “A misery is not to be measured from the nature of an evil, but from the temper of the sufferer.” Assuredly, we need to see the evil but, at the same time, see the good: our blessings—thousands of times greater. We can discipline ourselves to take a balanced view.

Good and bad have existed together since the beginning of time, but no one needs to wallow in the bad! I do not listen to or read the bad which, with few exceptions, is all the media reports. Does this selectiveness leave me unaware of the bad—our decline into socialism? Not at all! True, I miss the trivia—who murdered whom, political misdemeanors, or whatever—but not the overall slump. I am as much aware of that as are those captivated by the trivia. Result? I have that much more time to think about what’s right and to count my blessings; joy instead of despondency!

The English author, Izaak Walton (1593–1683) emphasized one of the most important characteristics of our all-too-human behavior, namely, that our blessings are so common that we forget to praise them, that is, to count them! This accounts for ever so many forms of personal and societal decadence.

The original source of the American miracle was our Declaration—unseating government as the source of human rights and placing the Creator there. The companion documents—the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—limited government more than ever before in history! Result? Americans looked to themselves rather than to government for welfare. Self-responsibility on an unprecedented scale! The millions enjoying blessings by the millions!

What happened after decades of countless blessings? The Source forgotten! And why? The blessings have become so abundant that today’s citizens take them for granted; feeling no more gratitude for them than for the natural blessings of sunshine or the air we breathe.

There is, also, a very important reason for counting our blessings: it helps rid the soul of covetousness. To count one’s blessings is to accent what’s right, a truth rarely recognized as an inclusion in the infinite realm of righteousness. Why? Because covetousness is seldom evaluated as a wrong, even by those who repeat the Commandment, “Thou shalt not covet.”

While some may deplore covetousness, few will regard it as an evil on the scale of murder, theft, and adultery. Nor will they think of it as having any relationship to our present politico-economic decline. This may be due to the fact that “Thou shalt not covet” is the last of the Ten Commandments and regarded, therefore, as the least important. Admittedly, a guess on my part.

I suspect that the ordering of the Commandments had nothing to do with a sin-grading scheme. Only one of the ten had obvious priority and it became the First Commandment. The other nine were listed, perhaps as they came to mind. And covetousness, more subtle and an afterthought, concludes the list. But, on reflection, covetousness is as deadly as any of the other sins—indeed, it tends to induce the others.

Covetousness or envy generates a destructive radiation with ill effect on all it touches.

Psychosomatic illness can be traced as much to envy as to hate, anger, worry, despondency.

But consider the social implications, the effects of envy on others. At first blush, the rich man appears not to be harmed because another covets his wealth. Envy, however, is not a benign, dormant element of the psyche; it has the same intensive force as rage, and a great deal of wisdom is required to put it down. Where understanding and self-control are wholly lacking, the weakling will resort to thievery, embezzlement, piracy, even murder, to gratify his envy and “get his share.”

Though weakness of character afflicts all of us to some extent, only a few are so lacking in restraining forces as to personally employ naked force, such as thievery, to realize the objects of envy. Fear of apprehension and reprisal tends to hold such open-faced evil in check.

However, if the evil act can be screened, if the sense of personal guilt and responsibility can be sufficiently submerged, that is, if self-delusion can be effected, gratification of covetousness will be pursued by the “best people.”

The way is no secret: achieve anonymity in a mob, committee, organization, society, or hide behind legality or majority vote.

With the fear of exposure removed, millions of Americans feather their own nests at the expense of others, and on a scale never imagined by thieves, pirates, or embezzlers. Our “best people,” including the highly “educated,” gratify their envy with no qualms whatsoever. But their salved conscience in no way lessens the evil of covetousness; quite the contrary, it emphasizes to us how powerfully this evil operates at the politico-economic level. This subtle evil is indeed the genesis of more obvious sins.

We should also note the extent to which this “guiltless” taking of property by coercion is rationalized. Accomplices, bearing such titles as philosophers and economists, rise to the occasion; they explain how the popular depredations are good to everyone, even for those looted. Thus, we find that covetousness, unchecked in the individual, lies at the root of the decline and fall of nations and civilizations.

In considering the effect on the one who covets, we must be careful not to confuse the taking of another’s property with the taking unto oneself of a higher level of intelligence and morality exemplified by another. The former is depredation, harmful to both self and the other; the latter is emulation, helpful to all concerned.

As contrasted with the emulation of virtues, which takes nothing from but adds to the welfare of others, envy is nothing more than an avaricious greed to possess what exclusively belongs to others. Envy is a lust of the flesh as opposed to an elevation of the spirit. The Hindus saw it clearly for what it really is: “Sin is not the violation of a law or a convention but . . . ignorance . . . which seeks its own private gain at the expense of others.” William Penn grasped this point: “Covetousness is the greatest of Monsters, as well as the root of all Evil.”

As a person cannot be in two places at the same time, so is it impossible for the eye to be cast covetously at the material possessions of others and cast aspiringly at one’s own creativity. Thus, envy leaves unattended the human being’s upgrading; it is a positive distraction from the “hatching” process—Creation’s Purpose. It’s either hatch or rot, as with an egg; envy leaves the soul, the spirit, the intellect, the psyche to rot, and there can be no greater evil than this.

When it is clear that covetousness thwarts Creation’s purpose and, thus, man’s destiny—that among the cardinal sins none is greater—it surely behooves each of us to find a way to rid himself of this evil.

I believe the way is simply to proclaim: Count your blessings!

Any person who is not aware of countless blessings, regardless of how low or high his estate, will be no more aware of his blessings should his envy be gratified. Awareness of blessings is a state of consciousness and is not necessarily related to abundance and affluence. He who is rich in worldly goods but unaware of his blessings is poor, and probably covetous; he who is poor in worldly goods but aware of his blessings is rich, and assuredly without envy.

How easy the advice: Count your blessings! But what about the person unaware of his blessings? As well advise him to acquire wisdom, for wisdom is awareness. Some individuals are aware of no blessings, others of a few, still others of numerous blessings. Yet, no one is more than slightly aware, just as no one is more than slightly wise.

Exactly how unaware we are of our blessings can be seen by committing them to paper—actually counting. While they are in infinite supply, observe how few are recognized. Now, throw the list away; for these must be alive and every day in the consciousness, not stored on paper, not mechanically canned.

Try again, later: this is an exercise that one should never abandon. The list is longer! Note, also, how much greater the wisdom is. Conscious effort, really trying, constantly pressing against the unknown for more light is the nature of this discipline.

As progress is made in an awareness of our blessings, we are struck by how greatly they outnumber our woes and troubles. In a state of unawareness, the woes loom enormous, and we tend to covetousness; in awareness the woes are but trifles, and the covetousness fades away.

This remarkable cure for covetousness also puts us on the road to social felicity; for we best serve ourselves and others through the exercise of self-responsibility and freedom!

24

REAPING THE BLESSINGS OF FREEDOM

Those who would expect to reap the blessings of freedom must undergo the fatigue of supporting it

—THOMAS PAINE

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) played a vital role during the years of our Republic’s founding. He was born in England and emigrated to America in 1774. His Common Sense, published in January 1776, is credited as having “had a tremendous effect in helping to bring about the Declaration of Independence.” Anyone who thus contributes to the greatest political document of all time deserves our respect and appreciation.

In the above excellent quote, I would substitute the word “labor” for “fatigue.” Fatigue sometimes implies “. . . mental exhaustion; weariness; it causes a mental decomposition of the . . . nerve cells.” Working in freedom’s vineyard must yield joy; no mentally exhausted individual can lend a hand in reaping the blessings of freedom. This noble objective can be aided and abetted only by those who find it a joyous pursuit. Have fun or forget it!

Those who work effectively on behalf of freedom do so as a labor of love—a joyous adventure toward the societal ideal. Wrote the English critic, John Ruskin (1819–1900): “It is only by labor that thought can be made healthy, and only by thought that labor can be made happy [joyous]; and the two cannot be separated with impunity.”

It takes thoughts of the highest order—healthy thinking—to perceive the hellishness of socialism and comprehend the heavenly blessings of freedom. From darkness to light! However, there cannot be any great thoughts without joyous labor. The two are inseparable.

The freedom way of life demands creative thinkers. Creative thought is always joyous, but many obstacles stand in its way. Unless these obstacles be overcome freedom is stalemated—a mere pipe dream! Those thus victimized go through life as mere sleepwalkers. So let us identify and deal with some of these obstacles.

Lethargy—“indifference; apathy”—may head the list. Forget the millions who couldn’t care less; reflect on the few who believe in freedom but are afflicted with apathy and thus are do-nothings. Why this dormancy—inaction?

The do-nothings look at the socialistic mess into which we are drifting and conclude that there is no hope of recovery. The error? Contrary to their estimate of the situation, they do not really know what is going on—nor does anyone else! No one knows what is going to happen in the next minute. It is easily demonstrable that no one knows anywhere near a trillionth of what happened in the last minute. An old saying raises this enlightening question: “How can you pretend to foretell the affairs of others when you cannot foresee your own?”

The remedy for this intellectual delinquency is to recognize that a Divine Source, over and beyond the mind of man, is in charge of human destiny. No human authority is in charge, nor is any collective able to perform such a role, or even to foretell its rhythmic devolution/evolution performance. May more of our brethren than now come to a recognition of this simple truth!

Cowardice ranks close to lethargy as a deterrent to freedom—and I speak here of moral cowardice. Many citizens in all walks of life suffer this frailty or weakness in some degree. They may be physically brave, but they are cowards in the sense of fearing to speak the truth as they see it.

I know many politicians who speak or write, not as they themselves assess truth but, rather, to gain popularity. They seek to align themselves with this group of voters while avoiding offense to that group. Truth is a casualty in their drive to get elected.

Reflect on the many who insist that freedom must be restored gradually, never all at once. Follow this dubious advice and freedom would never be restored! In 19461 gave a lecture entitled, I’d Push the Button, before a national association of accountants. My title was taken from the first sentence: If there were a button on this podium, the pressing of which would return freedom immediately, I would Push the Button. To elaborate this point, I asked the audience to imagine that a big, burly ruffian had me on my back, hands around my neck, knees in my midriff. A dozen of my friends were looking on and bemoaning my plight, and I could hear their babble: “We must remove that ruffian but we must do it gradually or Read will get up and go to work all at once.” I paraphrase the old saying about justice: Freedom delayed is freedom denied.

Most people say they are in favor of freedom, but reflect on the great number who deviate for a thousand and one reasons—ranging from the fear of competition to the lack of governmental subsidies to finance such pet projects. Cowards! Wrote Queen Elizabeth I: “Cowards falter, but danger is often overcome by those who nobly dare!”

Willful blindness is also an obstacle. “None are so blind as those who will not see.” Everyone—no exception—is blind in more ways than he or she can count. But for my thesis, just one: Only now and then is there a citizen who is not blind to the way freedom works its wondrous ways. Socialistic nonsense easily flows into a society afflicted by such emptyheadedness!

“Men who know not their own path, yet point the way for others.” What an astute observation! Millions who haven’t the slightest idea of why they are alive and prosperous “know” they can point your and my way as to how we should live our lives. They use brute force—coercion—to achieve their ignoble nonsensical ways!

As gloomy as our situation appears, bear in mind that there are no hopeless situations. There are only individuals who feel hopeless. Let not their number cause us to predict a continuing failure. Wrote the English poet, John Keats (1795–1821): “Failure is, in a sense, the highway to success, inasmuch as every discovery of what is false leads us to seek earnestly after what is true, and every fresh experience points out some form of error which we shall afterward carefully avoid.”

Wrote Thomas Jefferson: “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” All obstacles to the good life are surmountable, providing we are free to speak and write about the wonders of freedom. The sure-fire remedy is to widen our door of perception. Awake for freedom’s sake!

25

PERFECTION? KNOWING OUR IMPERFECTIONS

It is reasonable to have perfection in our eye that we may always advance toward it, though we know it can never be attained.

—SAMUEL JOHNSON

My schooling was skimpy. If my teachers ever mentioned Samuel Johnson (1709–84) the name left no lasting impression. My introduction came later.

In 1918 I was working as an airplane mechanic in Scotland. A friend and I were given a one-week pass and took a train for London. On the first day a cloudburst caused us to take refuge in a large library. There we met an American couple who had not been able to return to the States. We were the first U.S.A. soldiers they had seen and we were blest with their generosity. They hired a remarkable guide for us, who took us on a tour of the city. After five hours of gaping at London’s wonders, we arrived at “Ye Old Cheshire Cheese” for luncheon—the restaurant made famous because Sam Johnson always lunched and dined there.

Afterward, our guide took us across the street to Johnson’s old home. And there was the original English dictionary completed by Johnson in 1755. Every time I have been in London since that first visit I go to that unique restaurant and to Johnson’s home.

The above quote which says we know that perfection can never be attained could easily be misunderstood. Who are the “we”? Johnson’s scholarly self and a few others of similar intellectual rank. But no such modesty characterizes the millions of Englishmen and Americans of Johnson’s time and ours, who have no question about their own near attainment of perfection!

Just as I began this brief essay, a news item came to my attention. It concerned a ruling by the City Council of one of our major cities that home Bible studies or worship meetings of any kind that include anyone not living in the home are illegal without a special use permit. The specious reasoning behind this edict is that such a meeting constitutes a religious service, which makes the home in which the service is held a church—in an area not zoned for a church!

Practical? No, fanatical! This ruling breaks not one but two of our hallowed traditions: one, it invades the privacy of the home; and two, it violates our freedom of worship. The political instigators of such legislation are as far from perfection as any dictator—utterly unaware of their imperfections!

Let this unawareness of imperfection go a step or two further and it will be illegal for an individual to say his prayers in private! Indeed, prayer is already against the law in ever so many schools! These politicos are so far from perfection that they are unaware of their know-nothing-ness. Thus, ignorance increasingly presides not only over their lives—unknowingly—but over the whole citizenry. The American philosopher, Ralph Barton Perry, wrote: “Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose to do what one has never ‘heard of’.”

The following are thoughts by several notable thinkers worthy of deep reflection:

• Ignorance of communism, Fabianism or any other police-state philosophy is far more dangerous than ignorance of the most virulent disease.

• Any frontal attack on ignorance is bound to fail because the masses are always ready to defend their most precious possession—their ignorance.

• It isn’t the crook in modern business that we fear, but the honest man who doesn’t know what he is doing.

• To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.

• Ignorance is not so damnable as humbug, but when it prescribes pills it may happen to do much harm.

• By ignorance is pride increased; those most assume who know the least.

• To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.

• Nothing is so haughty and assuming as ignorance where self-conceit sets up to be infallible.

There are two radically opposed concepts of government (1) The concept held by our Founding Fathers, which limited government to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. This philosophy is all but forgotten except by a few. (2) The authoritarian concept of a government designed “to exercise authority over; direct; control; rule; manage.” This is the Command Society, which goes by a variety of labels ranging from serfdom to the police state. Millions of people in today’s America are victims of the planned economy and various welfare state absurdities. Many of these victims would do a turnabout were there a realization that they are giving support to communism or Fabianism.

Frontal attacks—calling others “ignorant” or even thinking of them as ignoramuses is very injurious in two respects: (1) it hardens the condemned in their misconceptions and (2) it reveals an excessive proudness—vanity—in the name callers, an unawareness of their own ignorance. As Thomas Alva Edison said, “No one knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything.”

“There is no need to fear the crook in today’s business world,” asserted the President of one of the world’s largest corporations. It is a fact that swindlers in business are so easily discovered that they die aborning. Dishonesty, more often than not, causes customers to fade away before the police become aware that skulduggery is going on. Dishonest businessmen are not the real problem. Fear them not!

Should we, then, fear “honest” businessmen? Yes, because many businessman fall into this category and most of these—there are notable exceptions—know not what they do. Most businessmen, for example, are unaware of how the free market works its wonders, or even their contributions to its countless miracles. While personally they wouldn’t steal a million dollars any more than a dime, they seek government aid to bail their operations out of bankruptcy, to thwart competition, to look after the poor with the fruits of your and my labor—stealing unknowingly!

To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is, indeed, the malady of ignorance. I am unaware of any truth more difficult to communicate than this.

Were far more citizens than now aware of their ignorance—how infinitesimal their enlightenments—the freedom way of life would be the glorious reward!

Ignorance alone is bad enough, but it is not so damnable as humbug—ignorance put to evil uses. To humbug is “. . . to cheat, deceive, defraud.” Humbuggery is dishonesty in action, which is about as far down in hellishness as man can go. It is ignorance to try to run other people’s lives; it is humbuggery to prescribe fake remedies and trick pills for the havoc thus wrought. The resulting harm is what we are now witnessing—the destruction of a once free society. Wrote the English divine, Robert South (1634–1726): “All deception in the course of life is indeed nothing else but a lie reduced to practice, and falsehood passing from words into things.”

“Those most assume who know the least.” This aphorism ranks near topside as a description of those most guilty of societal depredations; this mentality is the source of plundering. The few individuals free of this ignorance know that running their own lives is the endless pursuit of intellectual, moral and spiritual righteousness. For those thus blest, the notion of running the lives of others, or plundering, is utter nonsense.

Another truth: “To be proud of learning is the greatest ignorance.” Pride is: “exaggerated self-esteem, conceit.” A very high percentage of Ph.D.’s, teachers, ordained clergymen and others, enamoured of their own “learning,” haven’t the slightest idea how freedom works its wonders. They are proud of their ignorance. Learned? Why, they don’t even know that their notions are socialistic!

Where, when, and in whomsoever self-conceit sets up to be infallible we have another source of societal decadence. Wrote the English dramatist and editor, Douglas Jerrold (1803–57): “It is wonderful how near conceit is to insanity.” I would substitute “tragic” for “wonderful.”

Those who are admirers of themselves more than of virtue think they are superior to others. To the contrary, their own attitude puts them on the lowest rung.

Dictocrats—those who run our lives—be they politicians, labor union leaders or whoever—and we have them by the millions—are victims of self-conceit. When enough of us see through their sham—much of it innocent—many of them will return to such virtue as is within their competence!

All of the above suggests what most know-it-alls would regard as comedy: Let’s start a graduate college or university where, instead of awarding Ph.D.’s, only S.F.I.’s would be awarded: Steps From Ignorance! Seriously: Let’s strike a blow for freedom: De-regulate!

26

GOOD NEWS

Experience has convinced me that there is a thousand times more goodness, wisdom, and love in the world than men imagine.

How hard it is to imagine the existence of goodness, wisdom and love when quite the opposite is being drummed into our heads day in and day out. Television, press and radio emphasize the sordid, the bizarre, the ugly. Newscasters specialize in disaster. For one of countless examples, a DC-10 crash is headlined around the world. But who sees or hears mention of the millions of miles flown daily in safety!

The preponderance of bad news has a traumatic effect on those exposed to it. Millions of people are downcast, overwhelmed by gloom, seeing nothing ahead but disaster: murder, rape, mugging, vandalism, arson, armed robbery, theft or whatever.

This atmosphere of disaster tends to make us prophets of doom, stranded without hope, unable to see or imagine how freedom would work its wonders.

Reflect for a moment on some of the bad news about our country: rising prices and wages and interest rates, fuel and housing shortages, unemployment, unfavorable trade balances, higher health care costs, more welfare claimants, educational problems, mounting crime rates.

What we are being told by such headlines, if we’ll only stop to ponder, is that coercive governmental intervention is bad news. Despite the good intentions of the proponents of easy money and credit, social security, Medicare, protectionism, subsidies to special interests, wage and price controls, more or different welfare programs—despite those good intentions the bad news is that each step of socialistic tampering leads inevitably to consequences that are undesirable. And the more burdensome and stifling the rules and regulations, the greater is the temptation to ignore or break such laws. This results in new demands upon government to cope with the consequences of the prior intervention. Bad news, compounded!

Now, think about that. Is it really bad news that coercive measures lead to undesirable consequences? No, not really. It would indeed be bad news if the consequences were anything else—if bad methods could be employed to yield good results. So, behind the “bad news” headlines on the state of the economy is the good news that socialism cannot deliver on its promises of something for nothing. There is an alternative, a better way, and that better alternative is freedom.

The good news concerns the private ownership and control of scarce and valuable resources and the voluntary exchange of goods and services in open competition—with government limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice. The good news is that we’ll better serve ourselves and others when free to act creatively as each chooses. The good news is that coercion does diminish the resources and the productivity of everyone involved. So hail to the better way—freedom!

One of my favorite examples of good news appeared some time back in The Ambassador magazine:

• Last year more than 196,000,000 Americans were not arrested.

• More than 89,000,000 married persons did not file for divorce.

• More than 115,000,000 individuals maintained a formal affiliation with some religious group.

• More than 4,000,000 teachers and professors did not strike or participate in riotous demonstrations.

And then this brilliant and encouraging comment by the author: “Let those apostles of despair who preach hate and discord ask themselves what they have done and what they are doing for the good of their loved ones, their nation and the world.”

Recently I read of a television station in Europe specializing in reporting only the good news. What a boon if all of us could tune to a “good news freedom station”—for those of us saturated with the bad news of violence and plunder are indeed hungering for the good news of freedom and its many blessings. What a viewer market such a station could profitably serve!

There was a time when the miracle of American productivity heralded good news around the world. Investigators came from many nations to seek the explanation. And none of these came closer to finding the right answer than did Alexis de Tocqueville when he visited here in the 1830s:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her free schools and her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution and democratic congress; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.[1]

Tocqueville read correctly the good news that the miracle of America was the outgrowth of the freedom of the individual. He knew, what so many today have forgotten, that such miracles are not attributable to the interventions and controls by those exercising political powers of coercion. He knew then, as we must learn anew today, that the coercive nature of overextended government is bad news.

As we reverse the tide—no longer captivated by the bad but anxious to learn more of the good—our America will move toward the good at an unbelievable rate. And the bad will rapidly fade away. Wrote the English poet, Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74): “Whatever mitigates the woes, or increases the happiness of others, is a just criterion of goodness; and whatever injures society at large, or any individual in it, is a criterion of iniquity.”

The good news is that individuals best discover themselves and realize their potentialities when free. And thus do they contribute most to the good of their loved ones, their nation and the world.

[1] This quotation is found on pages 12–13 of the popular school text by F.A. Magruder, American Government: A Textbook on the Problems of Democracy. Except for the last two sentences, this is Magruder’s paraphrase of Tocqueville’s words.

The Path of Duty

Leonard E. Read

1982

TO

The one who gains freedom by granting it to others.

1

THE PATH OF DUTY

If you have no friends to share or rejoice in your success in life—if you cannot look back to those to whom you owe gratitude, or forward to those to whom you ought to afford protection, still it is no less incumbent on you to move steadily in the path of duty; for your active exertions are due not only to society; but in humble gratitude to the Being who made you a member of it, with powers to serve yourself and others.

—WALTER SCOTT

Sir Walter Scott (1772–1832), Scottish novelist and poet, pronounced more clearly than anyone known to me, the numerous attributes which, if understood and adhered to, would assure the freedom way of life. He gave us the intellectual and spiritual formula for doing one’s duty. The following are supporting observations and commentaries on commendable actions.

“Our grand business,” wrote Thomas Carlyle, “is not to see what lies dimly at a distance, but to do what lies clearly at hand.” Thus did he warn us against vainly trying to foretell the future.

So, let us do what lies clearly at hand—right now! This is the formula for structuring a joyous and rewarding future. Let us, as Scott suggested, live in humble gratitude to the Creator of this marvelous universe. Our duty is to advance the freedom way of life, thereby serving ourselves and others.

From the American theologian Theodore Parker (1810–1860) comes this powerful urge to duty: “Let us do our duty in our shop or our kitchen; in the market, in the street, in office, the school, the home, just as faithfully as if we were in the front rank of some great battle and knew that victory for mankind depended on our bravery, strength and skill. When we do that, the humblest of us will be serving in that great army which achieves the welfare of the world.”

As a guide to duty, it would be difficult to improve upon the Ten Commandments:

Fear God and keep his commandments; for this is the whole duty of man.

You shall not make unto thee any graven image.

You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain.

Observe the Sabbath day and keep it holy.

Honor your father and your mother.

You shall not kill.

You shall not commit adultery.

You shall not steal.

You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor.

You shall not covet.

Emerson stressed the importance of self-responsibility: “What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think.”

This importance of self-responsibility also was stressed by William Ernest Hocking, Harvard professor of philosophy:

For in the last analysis, the thought and conscience of the individual man are the only thought and conscience there are. . . . There is, in literal truth, no public mind; there are only the minds of the persons composing the public. There is no public conscience; there are only their several consciences. Dry these functions up, or bind the life out of them, and all the mental and moral life of the public is stopped at its source.

The English poet, Aubrey De Vere (1788–1846), adds this: “This span of life was lent for lofty duties, not for selfishness, not to be whiled away in aimless dreams but to improve ourselves and serve mankind.”

I fully endorse De Vere’s concluding thought and commend self-improvement as the only way to serve mankind.

Not everyone, however, is willing to work at self-improvement. There is a powerful temptation to improve others. It was against that temptation that we were warned by the English clergyman Thomas Fuller (1608–61): “Thou must content thyself to see the world as it is. Thou wilt never have any quiet if thou vexest thyself because thou canst not bring mankind to that exact notion of things and rule of life which thou has formed in thy own mind!”

Goethe also shared Fuller’s point of view: “Man is not here to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.”

The English educator Thomas Arnold (1795–1842) added this good advice: “Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.”

The relatively few citizens who believe in the freedom way of life fall into two categories: (1) the pessimists who see no end to the growing socialism—doomsday in the offing; and (2) the optimists who have faith in the recovery of freedom.

To repeat what I have written many times: All history attests to the fact that devolution—the decline into socialism—is, with few exceptions, followed by evolution, with progress inching ahead over the millennia. This is why I feel certain that a turnabout—liberty for one and all—is to bless our nation once again!

Thomas Fuller, on another occasion, had this thought: “The world is a Ladder for some to go up, and others down.” Envision a ladder infinite in its tallness. Most people, if on the second step, look down with disdain at those on the first. Unless the person on any step looks up to those on the higher rungs, he will experience regress and not progress. That person will go down intellectually.

On the other hand, there are a few on the second step who, by reason of their high aspirations and accomplishments, cause those on the first step to seek their tutorship. But, equally important, they look to those on the above steps, learning from them. The more they ascend, the more mankind is graced with exemplars.

Let me conclude by quoting, as I often do, from the Father of our country, George Washington: “The consideration that human happiness and moral duty are inseparably connected, will always continue to prompt me to promote the former by inculcating the latter.” Thus does doing one’s duty lead to happiness and freedom.

2

THE PURPOSE OF WEALTH

The way to wealth is as plain as the way to market It depends chiefly on two words, industry and frugality; that is, waste neither time nor money, but make the best use of both. Without industry and frugality, nothing will do; and with them everything.

—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

As related to monetary wealth, Franklin’s formula is doubtless correct. Assume its attainment. Does it enrich the attainers? The answer, in my view, is “No,” if the wealth results in early retirement—life’s highest mission abandoned. The answer is “Yes,” if attainment results in an awareness of life’s greatest wealth—an awareness, perception, consciousness of the freedom philosophy and how better to explain it. Briefly, advance to the point that others will seek one’s tutorship.

Ever so many of our citizens think of wealth as a gigantic accumulation of dollars. To them millionaires exemplify the wealthy. They would envy a late friend of mine who was a billionaire. True, the more dollars one possesses the wealthier one is in a materialistic sense. This, however, is far from wealth in its most laudable sense. Wrote Henry Ward Beecher, the American clergyman (1813–87): “No man can tell whether he is rich or poor by turning to his ledger. It is the heart that makes a man rich. He is rich according to what he is, not according to what he has.”

The heart in this sense refers to courage, dauntlessness, resolution, and spirit. Dollars may aid this worthy goal but it is the celestial attainment that matters!

The Arabian religious teacher and founder of Mohammedanism, Mahomet (570–630), offered these guidelines: “When a man dies, the people ask, ‘What has he left behind him?’ But the angels, as they bend over his grave, inquire, ‘What good deeds has thou sent on before thee?’”

As to good deeds, ponder these thoughts:

The American clergyman George D. Boardman (1828–1903): “Our deeds are seeds of fate, sown here on earth, but bringing forth their harvest in eternity.”

The American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807–82): “Our deeds follow us, and what we have been makes us what we are.”

The English dramatist Richard Sheridan (1751–1816): “A life spent worthily should be measured by deeds not years.”

The Spanish dramatist, poet and novelist, Cervantes (1547–1616): “Good actions ennoble us, and we are the sons of our deeds.”

Good deeds are, indeed, good answers to what the angels ask!

What a variation in the assessment of wealth by sages past and present, ranging all the way from commendation to condemnation! There is a good reason for these differing evaluations: wealth has good effects on some people, bad effects on others. Here is one of the many derogatory statements about wealth:

Can wealth give happiness?

Look ’round and see—

What gay distress!

What splendid misery!

Whatever fortune lavishly can pour,

The mind annihilates, and calls for more.

—Oliver Goldsmith

Let me share a personal experience that is not derogatory but joyful. My annual salary when General Manager of the Los Angeles Chamber of Commerce in the early forties was $18,000. One day the head of the country’s largest insurance company offered me the job of heading their affairs in the seven western states. Said he, “Leonard, I do not know how much you will earn but I guarantee it will not be less than $100,000.” I replied, “No, thank you.”

Later I turned down two other offers. One was the Presidency of the National Association of Manufacturers; the other, Executive Vice President of the International Chamber of Commerce, headquarters in Paris. In each case the salaries were comparable to the previous offer.

Why these turndowns? They were not my cup of tea, as the British say. Mine? Working to improve an understanding of and a desire for the freedom way of life! A billion dollars would not swerve me from this aim any more than would ten cents! To me, my work is joyful, and joyfulness is a wonderful attribute, a blessing!

Another turndown. Three years ago FEE’s Board of Trustees voted to raise my salary by $20,000. I refused this generous act. Why? I am already wealthy! I enjoy countless blessings in return for the little I do—writing and sharing freedom ideas and ideals with those who are interested in our philosophy.

The thousands of financial supporters of FEE over the past thirty-five years have made it possible for me to lecture and discuss our way of life in 48 of our states, time and again, and in 22 foreign nations. They made it possible for me to purchase this remarkable home for FEE, built in 1889. I couldn’t dream of a more perfect workshop. And I am richly blest with my staff associates and 40 Trustees more pure in the freedom philosophy than any other Board known to me.

There are thousands of persons in America whose assets exceed a million dollars. There are billionaires, and possibly a few trillionaires. Some of this wealth is self-made, but it is inflation that has created the other millionaires and billionaires. In Germany, for instance, when the inflation reached the point that thirty million marks wouldn’t buy a loaf of bread, trillionaires were a dime a dozen.

These observations lead me to the conclusion that adding up dollar assets is not necessarily the best way to decide who is rich and who is not. Actually, this is the old-world way of assessing wealth: acres of land, size of castle, number and quantity of jewels, how many serfs, slaves, servants or ducats in the vault. On this basis the legendary Midas, Croesus, kings of England, and German trillionaires would be accounted richer than I am. And I say they are not!

Who, in my view, are the wealthy in its highest sense? Those who believe in and strive for that high ideal of liberty.

3

HOW TO BECOME A MILLIONAIRE

There are so many ways you can become a millionaire in creative living. It is a matter of a lifetime search for ideas, words, sights, sounds, feelings, ideals, habits, and experiences that will make your life an adventure in growth.

—WILFERD A. PETERSON

For years Mr. Peterson has written a brilliant article each month in Science of Mind magazine.

I was so intrigued with his article entitled “How To Become a Millionaire” in the February 1982 issue that I asked and received his permission to use it, along with a few commentaries of my own.

This friend and I see eye to eye on ever so many subjects. Creative living should be our number one aspiration, that is, striving to approximate as nearly as possible the will of God—Creation! He enumerates the ideas, ideals and other objectives for which we should search. They exist by the millions, indeed, by the billions!

Searching for these objectives, he suggests, will make our lives an adventure in growth, that is, striving for maturity, as noble an objective as one can have! Strive day in and day out for a growth in awareness, perception, consciousness. It is the growth of consciousness in our earthly lives that prescribes what we shall be in the Hereafter. As the English poet Lord Byron (1788–1824) wrote: “Man’s conscience is the oracle of God.”

You can become a millionaire by thinking a million great thoughts. In my book, Let Freedom Reign, there is a chapter entitled, “Confessions of a Rich Man,” in which I acknowledged the source of some of my possessions:

Applying concepts conceived during the past six or seven generations, I may be among the very rich. And bear in mind that I do not have many dollars stashed away.

First, consider the little I do—not a single thing which, by itself, sustains life. I only read, write and lecture on behalf of the freedom way of life, a theoretician of sorts. Now, observe the goods and services I obtain in exchange for the infinitesimal mite I offer on the market. It would take a long book to list what I receive from others in exchange for what I do. Let a few examples suffice. Others make my pens and pencils, typewriter, airplanes, telephones that send my voice around the earth in one-seventh of a second. No one knows how to make such a simple thing as a pencil. A 747 jet has 5,000,000 parts and no person—past or present—knows how to make a single one of them!

I could not expect to survive if I had to live on only that which I now produce, a mere trifle. Compared to the millions of individuals and the countless variations in their occupations, I approximate zero. Nevertheless, “My cup runneth over.” I “cast my bread upon the water” and what I receive in return for the little I do makes me a millionaire many times over.

Here is another way the two of us record experiences: each of us keeps a journal. I have kept mine for nearly thirty years, never missing a day. It begins in the morning with a prayer: “God, may my love for Thee motivate my actions and my thoughts for this day.” My records are completed each day.

I write these in long-hand, have them typed by my secretary, and at the end of each year put them into bound volumes. There are now fifty volumes and approximately 2,500,000 words. The beginning? One evening in Texas I wrote a lecture I had promised to deliver to a church in Los Angeles two months later. The ideas came to me as if by magic, an experience so unusual and rewarding that I then and there resolved to keep a journal. The first two months were laborious, tiresome. I was tempted to call it quits. However, resolutions are made to be kept, not abandoned. And then the reward: it became one of the greatest joys of my life. That Peterson and Read are millionaires is an understatement!

Enjoyment is not the only reason for keeping a daily journal. Ideas, insights, foresights, intuitive flashes, if not recorded on reception, are like dreams, ephemeral, fleeting, gone with the wind. Countless individuals are far more brilliant than the few of us who keep journals. Were they to adopt this discipline? Supermen, graced with an extraordinary power of creativity! Achievement of freedom for one and all is not a numbers problem. So, let us hope that one or two more will either begin to keep a journal, or else immediately record on reception the thoughts that flash into their minds.

My millionaire companion suggests that one fill the pages of his journal with love, joy, courage, faith, forgiveness, peace and happiness. It is interesting to note what several great thinkers have had to say about these virtues.

Goethe: “We are shaped and fashioned by what we love.”

Shakespeare: “Love looks not with the eye, but with the mind.”

David H. Lawrence: “Love is a thing to be learned. It is difficult, complex maintenance of individual integrity throughout the incalculable processes of human polarity.”

Robert South: “The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, while it lights on my friend it rebounds upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns, the more easily will it light mine.”

Richard Sibbes: “We can do nothing well without joy, and a good conscience which is the ground of joy.”

Paul Whitehead: “True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.”

Confucius: “To see what is right and not do it is the want of courage.”

Francis Bacon: “There was never found in any age of the world, either philosopher or sect, or law, or discipline which did so highly exalt the public good as the Christian faith.”

E. G. Bulwer-Lytton: “Strike from mankind the principle of faith, and men would have no more history than a flock of sheep.”

Alexander Pope: “To err is human; to forgive divine.”

Edward Thompson: “Peace is the happy, natural state of man; war, his corruption, his disgrace.”

Edmund Spenser: “Lovely concord and most sacred peace doth nourish virtue, and fast friendship breed.”

Emerson: “Nothing can bring you peace but yourself; nothing can bring you peace but the triumph of principles.”

Philip G. Hamerton: “The happiest life is that which constantly exercises and educates which is best in us.”

Samuel T. Coleridge: “Happiness can be built only on virtue, and must of necessity have truth for its foundation.” The above are samplings of the many sages Peterson and Read drew upon, making our lives, as he phrases it, “an adventure in growth.” A person who has nothing more than a million dollars is, indeed, poor.

Hail to those who have become aware of the millions times millions of the tiny bits of individual expertise which, when free to flow, configurate and assure the freedom way of life for one and all.

But whoso looketh into the perfect law of Liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.

—James 1:25

4

VANITY AND VIRTUE

Oh Vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged, or thy operations discerned! How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind, under different disguises! Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity; sometimes of generosity; nay, thou hast the assurance to put on those glorious ornaments which belong only to heroic virtue.

—HENRY FIELDING

This English novelist (1707–54) clearly perceived the distinction between two opposites: Vanity and Virtue. Vanity is defined as “self-admiration, self-conceit, self-love.” Without question, this vainglory accounts for the growing socialism that presently bedevils all nations, the U.S.A. no exception.

As to vanity, how little is thy force acknowledged, or thy operations discerned! Accomplished devotees of freedom are the few who discern this self-conceitedness, and few they are. Relative to the several billions who inhabit this earth, their number is a tiny fraction.

How wantonly dost thou deceive mankind, under different disguises. The victims of vanity are pretenders in ever so many ways. Politicians pretend to look after the poor, for instance, with food stamps, to cite one of many examples, and to guarantee their future with social security. These two interventions are but a fraction of their nonsense. Result? The poor get poorer and so do the well-to-do. Inflation, the only way the political schemers have of “financing” their schemes, drastically curbs the value of savings. These disguisers succeed in deceiving millions of citizens and, thus, are the enemies of freedom and the good society.

Sometimes thou dost wear the face of pity. This is to say that the victims of vanity think of themselves as virtuous when they sympathize with those in distress. This allows such persons to think they are something they are not—superior to those less fortunate.

Sometimes of generosity. Francois de La Rochefoucauld, French courtier and novelist (1613–80): “What seems to be generosity is often no more than disguised ambition which overlooks a small interest in order to secure a great one.” Generosity is a laudable virtue and when practiced brings appreciation and praise. This explains why those who are vanity stricken resort to imitating virtues they do not possess. Showy ambitions, no less!

Many sages have commented on the showy ambitions that thwart and baffle mankind. The American clergyman Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87): “When a man has no longer any conception of excellence above his own, his voyage is done; he is dead; dead in the trespasses of blear-eyed vanity.” Suppose I had no conception of excellence beyond my own. I couldn’t write this sentence without countless things I know not how to make.

An important question: Why do politicians, as well as many people in other walks of life, “think” they know how to run your and my lives? They are afflicted with blear-eyed vanity! Thanks, Henry Ward Beecher, for your phrasing. It lights the road to virtue!

That remarkable thinker and devotee of freedom, Adam Smith, lends credence to the above: “Vanity is the foundation of the most ridiculous and contemptible vices—the vices of affectation and common lying.”

Adam Smith wasn’t alone in his thought about vanity.

Sin has many tools, but a lie is the handle that fits them all.

—O. W. Holmes

When thou art obliged to speak, be sure to speak the truth; for equivocation is half way to lying and lying is whole way to hell.

—William Penn

Speaking truth as one envisions it is a sublime, lofty quality. The English divine, William Robertson (1816–53) gave his contemporaries and those of us in today’s world a laudable formula: “Truth lies in character. Christ did not simply speak the truth. He was the truth; truth through and through; for truth is a thing not of words, but of life and being.” There are a few, including some religious leaders, who share my view that the Second Coming does not mean the coming of another Christ, but rather an attempt of each individual to approximate His Perfection every day of life!

The Irish satirist Jonathan Swift (1667–1745) said about vanity: “The strongest passions allow us some rest but vanity keeps us perpetually in motion. What a dust do I raise! says the fly upon the coachwheel. And what a rate do I drive! says the fly upon the horse’s back.” On another occasion this author wrote: “Our passions are like convulsion fits, which, though they make us stronger for the time, leave us the weaker ever after.”

Passion, as here used, is “the state or power of receiving or being affected by outside influences: condition of being worked upon.”

The English poet Alexander Pope (1688–1744) tells us: “The general cry is against ingratitude, but the complaint is misplaced, it should be against vanity; none but direct villains are capable of willful ingratitude; but almost everybody is capable of thinking he hath done more than another deserves, while the other thinks he hath received less than he deserves.”

Why cry about faults, moral weaknesses? Might as well cry about those who couldn’t care less about politico-economic matters—asleep at the switch, as we say.

Politicians “think” they have done for us more than we deserve. And citizens by the millions in their naivete “think” they deserve more than the largess they now receive.

Away with vanity! Let us improve our thinking to that point where we are aware of our countless blessings!

The French mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal (1623–62), warned: “We are so presumptuous that we wish to be known to all the world, even those who come after us; and we are so vain that the esteem of five or six persons immediately around us is enough to amuse and satisfy us.” Pascal, a wise philosopher, assuredly did not think of himself as among those I’d call sloppy exhibitionists. He used “we” to point to a common human trait of presuming to seek fame for the little we do.

The Father of our Country, George Washington, said: “There is no restraining men’s tongues or pens when charged with a little vanity.” Reflect on those afflicted with vanity, not knowing that they know not, who babble with their tongues and scribble with their pens. This malady, be-like-me-ism, when and if it bedevils a majority of the population, results in know-it-alls being elected to political office. Result? A decline toward all-out socialism!

Washington gave to Americans the thought that when understood and adhered to downs vanity and puts virtue in its place: “Labor to keep alive in your heart that little spark of celestial fire called conscience.” And this: “If, to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.”

Those who seek “to please the people” are hungry for popularity. They will promise anything to get votes. These politicians may gain some immediate success, but they bring about ultimate ruin. The statesman, on the other hand, stands by his principles even when they are unpopular. He may thus lose the next election, but his cause is right and will eventually triumph. May we have more statesmen like George Washington!

5

THE LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE

Philosophy has been called the knowledge of our knowledge; it might more truly be called the knowledge of our ignorance, or in the language of Kant, the knowledge of the limits of our knowledge.

—MAX MÜLLER

Rudyard Kipling (1865–1936), set forth in verse the sources of his wisdom:

I had six honest serving men

Who taught me all I knew

Their names were Where and What and When

and Why and How and Who.

An inquisitive mind, then, is the key to knowledge. For none of us knows very much. According to Socrates: “That man thinks he knows everything whereas he knows nothing. I, on the other hand, know nothing but I know I know nothing.” This, at first blush, seems a strange saying to come from Socrates who has the reputation of being the wisest of all men. There is, however, an explanation: The more one knows, the greater is the awareness of not knowing. To illustrate:

A—one’s light—knowing—ten years ago.

B—today: the knowing has increased.

Observe the expanded circumference and note how much more darkness—the unknown—confronts the growing person ten years later, and the point is clear! There was little awareness of the unknown ten years ago; today it is greatly magnified!

Many wise men, along with Socrates, were aware of how little we know. Four samplings:

The first step to knowledge is to know that we are ignorant.

—Richard Cecil

We know accurately when we know little; with knowledge doubt increases.

—Goethe

He fancies himself enlightened because he sees the deficiencies of others; he is ignorant because he has never reflected on his own.

—Edward Bulwer-Lytton

He that boasts of his own knowledge proclaims his ignorance.

—Thomas Fuller

I quote once again Thomas Alva Edison: “No one knows more than one-millionth of one per cent of anything.” This is no exaggeration. Knowledge at the human level is but an infinitesimal fraction of Creation—there is mystery in everything from the 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 atoms in each human being to galaxies moving away from each other at the speed of light. Except for the know-it-all, all is mystery!

However, we must not let our acknowledged ignorance cast our lives in gloom and despondency. Our opportunities are unbounded. The road to human glory? Seek enlightenment, for it is light that brings forth the eye. Wrote James Thomson (1700–48): “Light! Nature’s resplendent robe; without whose vesting beauty all were wrapt in gloom.” Wrote Emerson: “Our knowledge is the amassed thought and experience of innumerable minds.” Edith Hamilton gave to posterity one of countless examples—wisdom of the past gracing our lives:

This full stature of greatness came to pass at a time when the mighty civilizations of the ancient world had perished and the shadow of “effortless barbarism” was dark upon the earth. In that black and fierce world a little centre of white-hot spiritual energy was at work. A new civilization had arisen in Athens, unlike all that had gone before.

Wrote the English physicist, John Tyndall (1820–93): “Knowledge once gained casts a light beyond its boundaries.”

Reflect on the light—wisdom—given to us by sages, past and present—Socrates, Emerson and countless others. The lesson for you and me? Let us light our candles so brightly that a few others will look to our lights. There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle!

A concluding enlightenment by the English educator Thomas Arnold (1795–1842): “Real knowledge, like everything of value, is not to be attained easily. It must be worked for, studied for, thought for, and, more than all, must be prayed for.” This excellent formula needs no commentary by me or anyone else. Creation dwells far off from any of us. Prayer, however, brings creativity to us and links its power to all worthy effort. So, let us pray for liberty, and peace on earth.

6

POVERTY HAS ITS ADVANTAGES

Of all the advantages which come to any young man, I believe it to be demonstrably true that poverty is the greatest.

—JOSIAH G. HOLLAND

My encyclopedia gives no evidence that this American journalist and author had personally experienced poverty. Therefore, I must assume that he observed men and women born in poverty who had no choice but hard work. Result? Success!

Here are several examples of individuals born in poverty who, as the years advanced, became famous or wealthy. Andrew Carnegie, born a poor lad, became one of our country’s greatest entrepreneurs and, by reason of his wealthy and charitable instincts, an outstanding philanthropist. He gave to posterity this gem: “Look out for the boy who has to plunge into work direct from the common school and who begins by sweeping out the office. He is probably the dark horse you had better watch.”

Thomas Edison was born in poverty. As a youngster he sold newspapers on a train. Later? The greatest inventive genius of all time—and wealthy!

Abraham Lincoln had only a few months of schooling. Poverty? He was able to purchase from others only a few books. This situation stimulated hard work and superior thinking. Result? One of the greatest Presidents in American history!

A striking example: The Roman Emperor, Domitian (A.D. 51–96), like all despots, then and now, suffered an abysmal ignorance parading as infinite wisdom. In his “wisdom” he exiled a slave: Epictetus. Yet so brilliant was this slave’s light that it mirrored its way down through fifteen centuries, illuminating such philosophers as Grotius, Kant, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson and many others.

At first he was a stranger to me, and then came the light. I had read the books of Adam Smith and the others before I knew that the slave’s remarkable thinking was the genesis of much of their thinking. Theirs was the philosophy which tended to terminate poverty and political slavery. Glory be to Epictetus and the fame he honestly earned! Domitian and his ilk? They stimulated a reaction which resulted in an overcoming of their harmful practices.

An experience here at FEE fourteen years ago demonstrated that a right tactic can turn a Marxian socialist into a free-market devotee. This man was a lawyer from another country, attending a FEE Seminar. After attending several lectures he announced that FEE’s free market, private ownership, limited government philosophy was not for him. He frankly admitted his preference for socialism.

Since FEE is not a reform school we would normally, under these circumstances, return his tuition and bid the man a fond adieu—as was done with two of his fellow students. However, we made an exception in his case because (1) he expressed a desire to remain, (2) he did not intrude his socialistic views into the discussion and (3) he had a most pleasant and gracious personality, attractive in manner and behavior. So he remained as an auditor.

And then the miracle! A FEE lecturer made a routine explanation of how the free market in action works its wonders in promoting the general prosperity and overcoming poverty. Our foreign friend came to life and saw the light, and exclaimed, “Why you folks are for the poor people.” He returned to his country and became a leading spokesman for liberty!

It was always one of my ambitions to become “the dark horse you had better watch.” Am I qualified? In one respect, yes, for I was born a poor lad. And while in a common school I worked 110 hours each week; among my daily chores was sweeping out two stores in my little town.

I seek neither fame nor wealth. My overriding purpose in life is to improve day in and day out in understanding and explaining the miracles wrought when all of us are free to act creatively as each pleases!

I am seeking a brighter light than I now possess, one that will rid our country of the darkness socialism imposes. Not knowing much, and knowing how little I know—humility—I see my role to be identical to that of the great Spanish philosopher, Jose Ortega y Gasset: “We are going to look for a little of that light. You can expect nothing more, of course. I can only give what I have. Let others who can do more do their more, as I do my little.” Many others have shared their “more” with me that my own wee candle may be brightened. This is the stairway to the dispelling of darkness and the light in which freedom appears to be a way of life.

Why do so many well-off individuals think of themselves as poor? They have all the food they wish, clothes for every occasion, vacations when desired, a car to drive, air flight from home to wherever. The answer? They can’t keep up with the jet set. They are wealthy, but envy keeps them ignorant of the fact. Wrote the American educator, Bronson Alcott (1799–1888): “To be ignorant of one’s ignorance is the malady of ignorance.” These poor souls, ignorant of the fact that they are thousands of times wealthier than Cro-Magnon man of 35,000 years ago, and wealthier than Kings prior to England’s Industrial Revolution, are to be pitied rather than scorned.

Let me conclude with a few thoughts on poverty which may be enlightening to those who are unaware of their material blessings.

I turn first to the Greek philosopher Plutarch (46–120): “Poverty is not dishonorable in itself, but only when it comes from idleness, intemperance, extravagance and folly.” What foresight! This Greek lived in poverty, that is, compared to those of our day who “think” of themselves as poverty stricken. Plutarch never dreamed of the planes by which we travel or of automobiles, telephones, electric lights, railroads, buzz saws or countless other material comforts that bless our lives. But he was aware of the vices that make poverty dishonorable.

The Athenian statesman Pericles (495–429 B.C.) spoke of poverty and its cure: “Not to be able to bear poverty is a shameful thing; but not to know how to chase it away by work is a more shameful thing yet.” This is in accord with Carnegie’s testimony to the value of work!

The American journalist Arthur Brisbane (1864–1936) shared this view: “Nations like men can be healthy and happy, though comparatively poor. Wealth is a means to an end, not the end itself.” As I have written over and over again, wealth is a means to rid self of mundane chores in order that one may be freed for creative activity.

Oliver Goldsmith (1728–1774) found that: “Want of prudence is too frequently the want of virtue; nor is there on earth a more powerful advocate for vice than poverty.” Millions who classify themselves as poor succeed in getting government to subsidize them. They live by the Marxian scheme: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” In essence, they are robbing Peter to pay Paul. Result? Inflation increasing annually. What a vice! If inflation is not halted everyone will be reduced to poverty!

If we are truly concerned for the poor, let us halt the political intervention and open to everyone the opportunities and blessings of freedom.

7

THE ENJOYMENT OF TRUTH

There are three parts in truth; first, the inquiry, which is the wooing of it; secondly, the knowledge of it, which is the presence of it; and thirdly, the belief, which is the enjoyment of it.

—FRANCIS BACON

Most of us are truly gratified if we are blest with a single creative talent. Francis Bacon (1561–1626) excelled most sages. He was graced by being not only a jurist but also a scientist, author, philosopher, and a member of Parliament. Those of us who are seekers of truth might well ponder his views on the matter.

It is interesting to note what several thoughtful individuals have had to say about the three steps to the enjoyment of truth: (1) inquiry, (2) knowledge, (3) belief. As to inquiry, the Swiss divine and historian J. H. M. D’Aubigne (1794–1872) made this observation:

Free inquiry, if restrained within due bounds, and applied to proper subjects, is a most important privilege of the human mind; and if well conducted, is one of the greatest friends to truth. But when reason knows neither its office nor its limits, and when employed on subjects foreign to its jurisdiction it then becomes a privilege dangerous to be exercised.

Now and always keep in mind D’Aubigne’s profound thought: Free inquiry “applied to proper subjects, is a most important privilege of the human mind.” One of several “proper subjects” is freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson gave to posterity an excellent thought on the importance of inquiry: “Be content with a little light, so it be your own. Explore and explore and explore. Be neither chided nor flattered out of your position of perpetual inquiry. Neither dogmatize, nor accept another’s dogmatism. Truth has its roof, and bed, and board. Make yourself necessary to the world, and mankind will give you bread.” We should, indeed, be content with a little light, a human portion. No individual, past or present, has been graced with more than a smattering of knowledge, that is, when compared to Infinite Consciousness. But it is fidelity to this glimmer on the part of finite individuals that sparks evolution—the good life! To avoid destroying our creative role requires that we never dogmatize—never be a dictocrat, nor heed their nonsense. This dreadful error is the intellectual slayer of Truth! Explore and explore and explore! To explore is the wooing of Truth!

Now to knowledge. Wrote George Washington:

It is substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it, can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric. Promote then as an object of primary importance, institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge. In proportion as the structure of a government gives force to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion be enlightened.

Imagine no self-governed individuals, no self-control exercised by anyone, everybody running around hog wild, as we say. With no self-imposed restraints, the situation could be likened to a rabble of madmen or imbeciles. Liberty? None whatsoever!

The very first step in knowing how to use our liberty is the practice of self-government. What is the key to this discipline, the mastery of pride? It is humility, the essential foundation of virtue. Liberty is possible only when men know how to and do, in fact, govern themselves!

Ponder these thoughts:

1—To improve yourself you must be free.

2—Your contribution depends on the use you make of your liberty.

3—Only a highly evolved man is willing to defend the equal liberty of all others!

There is no short cut to evolution!

Washington referred to “institutions for the general diffusion of knowledge”—the freedom our Founding Fathers so courageously documented and stood for. I believe that FEE is an example of what George Washington had in mind—an organization devoting itself exclusively to freedom principles since its founding in 1946. The harvest of our efforts?

Many organizations have come into existence as a result of FEE’s work: competitors, each trying to excel all others. Why is this good? In competing we learn from each other. Competitive/cooperative effort by growing numbers of freedom devotees will lead our country away from the growing socialism, along the freedom freeway of life!

Wrote Goethe: “Man is not made to solve the problems of the universe, but to find out what he has to do; and to restrain himself within the limits of his comprehension.” Solve the problems of the universe? Never! No man is capable of solving the problems of his village, let alone the problems of his city, or state, or nation. His assignment is to enlighten himself. This is within the limits of his comprehension; this is what he should do. Let him grow sufficiently in knowledge and others will seek his tutorship. Improving individuals constitute the genesis of an improving universe, in America and elsewhere.

Finally, to belief. Wrote the American psychologist William James (1842–1910): “These, then, are my last words to you: Be not afraid of life. Believe that life is worth living and you will help locate the facts.” Emerson further enlightens us on the life worth living: “Life is a series of surprises. We do not guess today the mood, the pleasure, the power of tomorrow when we are building up our being.”

How do we overcome fear of life? By increasing our awareness of our countless blessings! I count my birth as blessing number one. Every breath is a blessing, as is every heart beat, and eyes to see, ears to hear. Countless blessings from William James, Emerson, Confucius, Socrates and other sages who inspire creative thinking.

Our Founding Fathers a blessing? Indeed, yes, for had it not been for them I would be a mere serf—a servant to Kings, Lords, and others of the authoritarian ilk. Never to be omitted among my blessings are the trillions of creative, inventive thoughts flowing to my advantage. One of ever so many examples: I can send my voice around the world in one-seventh of a second! Such achievements are among my blessings. Other everyday miracles free me from all mundane, common, everyday chores, and I am graced with the opportunity to devote myself—while living in relative luxury—to my one highest aspiration: working at the one ambition I love: freedom!

To seek the truth of freedom, and to believe it, is the highest enjoyment.

8

SEVERAL FACETS OF FREEDOM

The only freedom which deserves the name, is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede their efforts to obtain it.

—JOHN STUART MILL

The quotation from Mill’s famed essay, On Liberty, published in 1859, captures the essence of freedom. But there are many facets or aspects of the subject that merit elaboration. And my purpose here is to enlarge upon some of these facets.

Knowledge. If individuals somehow could be ranked according to how much each knows, and if each were then asked to list those things unknown to him, it is likely that the best informed would also have the longest list of “unknowns.”

The recognition on the part of Socrates that he knew nothing but that he knew he knew nothing—the first step toward wisdom—is, from the standpoint of human freedom and prosperity the most important recognition there is. Why?

Each of us has an infinitesimal bit of knowledge—limited expertise at this or that. When the market is free—no restrictions against production and exchange—the tiny bits of know-how possessed by millions of discrete individuals flow naturally and easily, contributing to the prosperity of each. This knowledge is in the market process itself, not in you or me or anyone else—the claims of the know-it-alls to the contrary notwithstanding. To paraphrase the thought of a great philosopher: Man is not born to solve the problems of the universe but, rather, to find out what he can best do. Knowing this is knowledge at the human level.

It is in freedom that one’s knowledge is put to best human use.

Excellence. It is not mere quantity of knowledge that counts, for even the most knowledgeable man among us has a mere glimpse of all that is to be known; he has but lit a wee candle in a vast darkness. The individual who counts is the one who is growing in knowledge, for excellence includes growth. Call it the aristocratic spirit, as did Hanford Henderson:

He may be a day laborer, an artisan, a shopkeeper, a professional man, a writer, a statesman. It is not a matter of birth, or occupation, or education. It is an attitude of mind carried into daily action . . . a religion. It is the disinterested, passionate love of excellence . . . everywhere and in everything; the aristocrat, to deserve the name, must love it in himself, in his own alert mind, in his own illuminated spirit, and he must love it in others; must love it in all human relations and occupations and activities; in all things in earth or sea or sky.

Jefferson added his thought: “There is a natural aristocracy among men; it is composed of virtues and talents.”

When the aristocratic spirit is in ascendancy, the keynote of which is excellence, freedom reigns!

Influence. There is no fraction so small that it is not divisible, and no heartbeat but is felt throughout the universe—there is no action we take—good or bad—that fails to exert an influence on someone. Thus, the question: How influence others better to understand and explain the free society? The answer: Let anyone who would move mankind toward freedom first move himself!

Persons capable of enlightenment will seek light only from the already enlightened. The lesson? Never try to reform another; do not try to forcibly draw others toward your view. Instead, strive for that perfection of understanding and exposition which will cause them to do the reaching. There is an infallible guideline in this matter: observe whether others are seeking your tutorship. If not, there’s homework to be done. Goethe shares his wisdom:

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind may come and partake of the purest pleasures.

Through the better personal practice of freedom may we attract others to share its blessings.

Merit. Merit, if it be genuine, cannot be concealed. “There is not enough darkness in the whole world to put out the light of one wee candle.” As Albert Jay Nock suggested, the Remnant—those who are seeking light, the ones who really count—will find true merit. It cannot be hidden for long.

But merit can be depreciated by putting it on exhibit—“What a great man am I.” Instead of looking to him for light, the common reaction is to shun the person who blatantly “toots his own horn.”

History reveals that contemporaries see more the man than his merit. Posterity, on the other hand, sees only the merit and not the man. We have never seen Confucius, Socrates, Goethe, Emerson and other greats of the past, but we can see and respect their merit. We do not see the authors of freedom; however, more and more of us are coming to see the merit of their work.

Competition. Many among us insist that man is born for cooperation, not competition—as if these were antagonistic to one another. Such people readily see the blessings of cooperation, but they fail to realize that cooperation is only a dream in the absence of competition.

Genuine competition implies rules, such as the rule of free entry. Free entry in any field of endeavor—the production of goods or the supplying of services or whatever—assures competition, each participant trying to excel. Free competition among suppliers results in cooperation with customers. Examples: When there is real competition among the bakers of bread, we customers decide whose bread we eat, that is, with whom we will cooperate.

The goal of competition in the free market is to serve customers better, according to consumer choice. The alternative is coercion applied by those who would have the field exclusively to themselves. Such enslavement of others is a process of stagnation, rather than growth. And such a coercive society affords no incentive for self-improvement.

When there is competition, there are always those out front, setting the pace, leading the way. The effect of this leadership? Others have the desire to improve their rank and, thus, are inspired to grow. Competition—trying to excel—is the origin of growth; it is the magnet that draws forth each man’s best in the practice of freedom!

Justice. Government, the political arm or agent of society, can have no higher aim than justice for one and all alike. The Goddess of Justice is blindfolded; her concern is not with who you are but, rather, with how fairly and honestly one deals with one’s fellowmen. Justice conforms to such ideals as:

- The Golden Rule.

- The principle of universality; that is, avoid any action that would bring ruin and chaos if universally practiced.

- No special privilege for anyone.

- No violation of the right to the fruits of one’s own labor or the right to act creatively as one chooses.

Optimism. Nature presents us with contrasts: light and dark, hot and cold, calm and blizzards, the ebb and flow of tides, greenery and deserts, oscillations on and on.

Man enters the earthly scene and adds oscillations galore: depressions and “good times,” dark ages and renaissance periods, starvation and plenitude, dictatorship and freedom, and so forth.

“Isn’t this an awful day,” says the person who finds the weather not to his fancy. Likewise, seeing only a decline and fall and absurdities of all sorts in society, a person may vigorously denounce the bad while failing to see the good. This is pessimism, which fails to advance the good.

On the other hand is the person who realizes that it is always darkest before the dawn, that there is a silver lining in every cloud, that the good is in the offing. He stands foursquare for his belief—his faith that the right will prevail. This is optimism which advances the good.

Optimism does not mean a blindness to what happens, or fancy notions about a rosy future. Rather, it is a belief that there’s a good day coming and that by emphasizing this belief the good will become a reality—sooner! Here rests the case for faith in freedom.

9

EDUCATION FOR VIRTUE

We have in America the largest public school system on earth, the most expensive college buildings, the most expensive curriculum, but nowhere else is education so blind to its objectives, so indifferent to any specific outcome as in America. One trouble has been its negative character. It has aimed at the repression of faults rather than the creation of virtue.

—WILLIAM H. P. FAUNCE

Faunce (1859–1930), an educator and clergyman, became President of Brown University in 1899. My encyclopedia says of him: “A champion of the liberal arts curriculum . . . in his 30-year administration placed Brown among the leading American Universities.”

I have no way of knowing whether President Faunce was aware of how public, that is, government, education may very well have had its root in Napoleon’s dictatorial views such as, “Public instruction should be the first object of government.” What follows is a briefing of what I wrote in a book four years ago:

Napoleon now merged the various institutions of learning in a new University of France under officials nominated and supervised by the executive power. . . . “No one,” it was decreed, “may open a school or teach publicly unless he is a member of the imperial university.”[1]

If this be the root, then this may be the sequence of its transplanting here. Our brilliant Thomas Jefferson invited his close friend, the brilliant Pierre Samuel du Pont de Nemours, to study and recommend an appropriate form of education for the U.S.A. Du Pont wrote a 161-page book,[2] and Jefferson proceeded to implement its conclusion. Public education!

Why du Pont, a physiocrat and at odds with Napoleon on every other matter, should arrive at such a recommendation is difficult to understand, except that he lived a good part of his life in that “educational” atmosphere. Neither Jefferson nor his friend could see the scraggly bush that would grow from these roots.

The scraggly bush did not show up until well in the twentieth century. But now it is growing by leaps and bounds—and so are costs. In a district not far from FEE the taxpayers are forced to pay over $4,000 per student for nine months of “schooling.”

I, along with numerous freedom devotees, am unequivocally opposed to government “education” and stand foursquare for private education. But what a dilemma this presents! Why? There are countless teachers in private schools, colleges and universities who advocate the planned economy and the welfare state—Socialism! And I am acquainted with numerous teachers in government schools who are teaching the private ownership, free market, limited government way of life—Freedom!

What, then, in this confusion, is your and my role? What can the remedy be? Daniel Webster, American orator and statesman (1782–1852) gave to posterity a sound and virtuous formula:

Knowledge does not comprise all which is contained in the large term of education. The feelings are to be disciplined; the passions are to be restrained; true and worthy motives are to be inspired; a profound religious feeling is to be instilled, and pure morality inculcated under all circumstances. All this is comprised in education.

The French astronomer and mathematician, Pierre Laplace (1749–1827) added this thought: “What we know here is very little but what we are ignorant of is immense.” I confess to knowing very little about my greatest aspiration, namely, explaining with clarity how the free and unfettered market works its miracles. No one excels me in conviction, but difficulty in finding words and phrasings to transmit the great truths about freedom to others accounts for my shortcomings.

But what we are ignorant of is immense. Of course, we cannot explain the unknown; but we can marvel at the vastness of it—and keep searching.

Any thoughtful person must agree with Webster, namely, that education worthy of the name requires that our feelings be disciplined, and passions restrained. Instead, all true and worthy motives are to be inspired, the springboard of which is the aspiration for intellectual, moral and spiritual improvement.

Here is what a few among many wise men have written that supports and clarifies Webster’s views on religion. The American patriot, Josiah Quincy (1744–75):

The great comprehensive truths, written in letters of living light on every page of our history, are these: Human happiness has no perfect security but freedom; freedom none but virtue; virtue none but knowledge; and neither freedom nor virtue has any vigor or immortal hope except in the principles of the Christian faith, and in the sanctions of the Christian religion.

America was founded on the Truth that the Creator is the endower of all rights to life and livelihood, thus, unseating government from that role. Result? The greatest outburst of creativity in all history! Unfortunately, more and more citizens have forgotten the source of our plenitude.

The English banker and philanthropist Samuel Montague (1832–1911) told us: “Christianity is the good man’s test, His life is the illustration. How admirable is that religion, which, while it seems to have in view only the felicity of another world, is at the same time the highest happiness of this.”

Edmund Burke adds this thought: “We know, and what is better, we feel inwardly, that religion is the basis of civil society, and the source of all good and of all comfort.” This truth is well demonstrated in the work of our Founding Fathers!

Ever so many individuals assess themselves as educated at the time of high school or college graduation. This “thought” is a contradiction of human evolution. Education should continue throughout one’s life. Indeed, whenever growth in awareness, perception, consciousness terminates, life’s highest purpose is at a dead end.

This belief is founded on my own experience. As to education in its commonly accepted sense, I concluded mine at high school. It was obvious to me that compared to many of my acquaintances I did not know much.

What to do? I sought tutors, men far out front intellectually, morally, spiritually. How did I win their tutorship? By confessing my ignorance and pleading for their help. Result? Without exception, enlightening responses! Further, I have sought enlightenment from the outstanding sages of the past. A laudable ambition? Faunce set forth the goal: Aim at the creation of virtues!

[1] See History of Western Education by William Boyd (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1950), p. 360.

[2] National Education in the United States of America (Newark, Delaware: University of Delaware Press, 1923).

10

MY RIGHTS ARE YOUR RIGHTS

Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on the rights of others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combination of skill and force can do in his favor. In this partnership all men have equal rights; but not to equal things.

—EDMUND BURKE

Burke (1729–97) and Adam Smith (1723–90), two of the world’s wisest as politico-economic thinkers, and ramrod straight in their moral principles, were contemporaries. Doubtless, they learned from each other. In any event, each of them played an important role in the founding of the United States of America.

My aim in this essay is to comment on man—any individual—and his relation to others, past and present, with the hope of finding thoughts that will assure an improving future. Longfellow proved himself to be a real sage in the following: “Look not mournfully to the past—it comes not back again; wisely move to the present—it is divine; go forth to meet the shadowy future without fear, and with a manly heart.”

Ever so many devotees of freedom reflect mournfully on the past eight decades, which have witnessed our decline into socialism. Why so saddened? They assess our sociological slump as having no turnabout possibilities: “It comes not back again.” Move to the present! The pendulum that swung freely to the left, having reached its limit, swings as freely to the right.

“It is divine.” Yes, it is ordained in the Cosmic Design—evolution moving onward and upward over the centuries. Briefly, have no fear of the shadowy future. Replace fear with a manly heart—optimism. We are going to win sooner or later, that is, if there be enough manly hearts. I am an optimist as are so many others. A few examples follow.

The American clergyman Ezra Hall Gillett (1823–75): “We are always looking to the future; the present does not satisfy us. Our ideal, whatever it may be, lies further on.” The ideal always lies “further on.” Tryon Edwards enlightens those of us seeking truth: “We never reach our ideals, whether of mental or moral improvement, but the thought of them shows us our deficiencies, and spurs us on to higher and better things.”

Those of us who have the freedom way of life among our ideals realize the absolute necessity of mental and moral improvement. And the more we advance in this respect, the more we know that there is more to know. Our goal of creativity at the human level has no stopping point. What then? Strive for a closer approximation, now and forever!

Ralph Waldo Emerson said: “Mankind has ever been divided into two sects, Materialists and Idealists; the first founded on experience, the second on consciousness.” I assume that the Sage of Concord meant by Materialists those who specialize in goods and services, where success is, for the most part, founded on experience. Those up topside serve consumers remarkably. They become our servants in ever so many ways! Consciousness? An awareness of righteousness, mankind’s eternal reality!

Ralph Waldo Trine, who wrote In Tune With the Infinite, was in tune with Emerson: “Everything is first worked out in the unseen before it is manifested in the seen, in the ideal before it is realized in the real, in the spiritual before it shows forth in the material.”

The spiritual? The late Ludwig von Mises, one of the world’s greatest economists, gave us the correct answer:

Production is a spiritual, intellectual and ideological phenomenon. It is the method that man, directed by reason, employs for the best possible removal of uneasiness. What distinguishes our conditions from those of our ancestors who lived one thousand or twenty thousand years ago is not something material but something spiritual. The material changes are the outcome of the spiritual changes.

Whenever the spiritual shows forth in the material the results are far more than is generally realized. About 400 years ago the population in this land of ours was estimated to be no more than 1,000,000. Why? Lack of natural resources? There were more then than now.

The Indians lived by foraging—a primitive society. An absence of Materialists! It was the coming of the Materialists that accounts for our present population approximating 220,000,000. Had this not been the case, the chances are 220 to one that neither you nor I would have been born. So hail to the spiritual, the Idealists, that gave and still give birth to the Materialists!

Edward H. Chapin comments on the mystery of life: “To me there is something exalting in the thought that we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery, into something that no mortal eye has yet seen, and no intelligence has yet declared.” Everything in this mortal life verges into mystery. Every one of us has but dim notions of what has happened in the last minute and not the slightest idea of what will happen in the next year—or minute. We are forever faced with the unknown. How wonderful, were more of us to realize that “we are drifting forward into a splendid mystery.” This is an optimism ordained by Creation: evolution in awareness, perception, consciousness!

Albert Einstein believed in the mysterious, along with Chapin, yours truly and, hopefully, your good self:

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed. To know that what is impenetrable to us really exists, manifesting itself as the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty which our dull facilities can comprehend . . . is at the center of true religion.

Finally, a reflection on Burke’s wisdom. When one specializes in freedom and its mysteries, there is no trespassing on the rights of others. The same applies to everyone, regardless of specialization. All citizens have an equal right to pursue their respective aspirations, but no right to “equal things.” I have no right to your reward, nor you to mine. Thus, my rights are your rights so long as they are creative.

11

FEARLESS AND FREE

You must conquer fear or be a slave. No slave chains or iron bars are as restricting as fear. It is ridiculous for one to talk about “America, the land of the free and the home of the brave” while he wears the ball and chain of fear.

—LEROY BROWNLOW

The above appears in a remarkable book, Today Is Mine, an inspirational guide to living by the President of the Brownlow Publishing Company.[1] Following the above, he adds a warning all of us should heed: “No person is free who is afraid to try lest he fail; or who fears to break with tradition; or who is scared to stand for right when in its ranks there are only the few; or who is frightened to speak the truth when the masses hold to error; or who is too chicken-hearted to be his own master.”

Reflect on those who fear to explore what is unknown to them. They are frightened by the thought of failure and remain dormant—life’s mission abandoned. Fear to break with tradition? Our nation’s tradition for the past eight decades has been nothing less than the observed decline toward socialism. Millions are frightened at the thought of defying a movement which is so popular. They are scared to join the very few of us who espouse the freedom way of life. Follow the minority? No, they say! The majority? Yes! Mere “tag alongs”!

Frightened to speak the truth when the masses hold to error? Yes, too chicken-hearted to be one’s own master. Such chickens have been ruling the roost!

Today Is Mine is a book of daily readings for an entire year. Brownlow’s subject for each day is introduced by a quotation from some wise man and concluded by a bit of wisdom from the Holy Bible. Here are one day’s quotations.

The wise man: The American literary critic, poet and humorist James Russell Lowell (1819–91):

They are slaves who fear to speak

For the fallen and the weak;

They are slaves who will not choose

Hatred, scoffing, and abuse,

Rather than in silence shrink

From the truth they needs must think;

They are slaves who dare not be

In the right with two or three.

The Holy Bible: “I was afraid . . . and I hid myself.”

Lowell was not referring to the despicable Negro slavery of early America but to an enslaved mentality, a dormancy of the mind—all creative thoughts in cold storage! He condemned those who fear to speak truth against popular jargon—gibberish! Doubtless, it was this mental depravity which accounted for the Negro slavery that all intelligent citizens despise.

It is interesting to note the variety of ideas wise men have had about fear. Some examples and, now and then, a commentary. The English mathematician and philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970): “Our instinctive emotions are those we have inherited from a much more dangerous world, and contain, therefore, a larger portion of fear than they should.”

Go back five or six generations. Our ancestors had no transportation except horse-or-oxen-drawn vehicles, and little control over nature. Life was hazardous. The result of crop failures? Starvation! Many in today’s world, those who have no inkling of how the free market works its wonders, have inherited “a larger portion of fear than they should.” Diseases took their toll. Pneumonia, smallpox, and other plagues wiped out thousands in each generation. Today? The cures are known!

The American author and critic Christian N. Bovee (1820–1904): “There is great beauty in going through life without anxiety or fear. Half our fears are baseless and the other half discreditable.”

When anxiety or fear dominate one’s life, creative thought and action—growth in awareness, perception, consciousness—lie dormant, asleep. True, most fears are baseless, senseless! Discreditable? Yes, they are—to use other adjectives—disgraceful, shoddy, shameful! What may we say of those thus afflicted? Poor souls!

Only those who go through life unafflicted by such emotional disturbances can experience the intellectual beauty of advancing freedom for themselves and others. Rich souls!

The Greek philosopher Aristotle (384–322 B.C.): “No one loves the man whom he fears.” I, for one, do not love the Hitlers, Stalins or other dictocrats abroad or at home. I fear the disaster their know-it-all-ness inflicts on civilization and their thwarting of human evolution. However, I must never pronounce my hate for them. Why? It hardens them in their wayward ways!

Wrote the English poet and statesman George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham (1628–87): “All true love is grounded on esteem.” I esteem and thus love freedom devotees.

The American journalist William Allen White (1868–1944): “Put fear out of your heart. This nation will survive, this state will prosper, the orderly business of life will go forward if only men can speak in whatever way given them to utter what their hearts hold—by voice, by postal cards, by letter or by press. Only force and oppression have made the wrecks in the world.” Mr. White, Publisher and Editor of the Emporia Gazette, Emporia, Kansas, gained national fame with his small-town newspaper and his superior thinking on behalf of liberty. Another thought of his: “Liberty is the only thing you cannot have unless you are willing to give it to others.” And he did his best to transmit to others the liberty he so eloquently espoused.

William Allen White grasped the wrong and the right. The wrong? “Only force and oppression have made the wrecks in the world.” Oppression, is but another name for “irresponsible power.” It is the powermongers who wreck civilization!

The right? White and I see eye to eye on America’s future. He was, and I am, an optimist. We, and many others, are not the oppressors. We firmly believe that only the fearless are free.

[1] P.O. Box 3141, Fort Worth, Texas 76105.

12

SELF-IMPROVEMENT

Every temptation that is resisted, every noble aspiration that is encouraged, every sinful thought that is repressed, every bitter word that is withheld, adds its little item to the impetus of that great movement which is bearing humanity onward toward a richer life and higher character.

—WILBUR FISK

The above, by the American divine (1792–1839), is an excellent beginning for the purpose of this essay, namely, an examination of such virtues as self-control, self-examination, self-improvement, and self-knowledge.

As to self-control, Goethe asked an appropriate question and gave a correct answer: “What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.” This is not to deny the value of properly limited civil government. Were a sufficient number of us to govern ourselves, there would be no demand for government to subsidize and regulate the citizens.

Samuel Smiles added these thoughts: “For the want of self-restraint many men are engaged all their lives in fighting with difficulties of their own making, and rendering success impossible by their own cross-grained ungentleness; whilst others, it may be much less gifted, make their way and achieve success by simple patience, equanimity and self-control.” Why do so many spend all their lives in fighting difficulties of their own making? It is as Smiles said, for the lack of self-restraint. The root of this lack? A deadened power to overcome, making their becoming unlikely; thus unaware of their potentialities which may be great. Many of those less gifted control and overcome this weakness and succeed in achieving their unique potentialities.

The Scottish divine John Caird (1820–98), adds to our enlightenment: “Self-government is, indeed, the noblest role on earth: the object of a loftier ambition than the possession of crowns and scepters. The truest conquest is where the soul is bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. The monarch of his own mind is the only real potentate.”

Self-government is indeed the noblest role on earth, loftier than crowns. It is an order infinitely higher than that of political dictocrats, who would coercively impose their know-it-all-ness on the citizenry. Such simpletons haven’t the slightest idea how the free and unfettered market works its wonders and, thus, are menaces to “the noblest role on earth.” Here is an example of such “thinking” by the late Walter Reuther, head of the United Auto Workers for years: “Only a moron would believe that the millions of private economic decisions being made independently of each other will somehow harmonize in the end and bring us out where we want to be.” Walter Reuther and his brother Victor had their early “economic” schooling in the U.S.S.R.

Next, a reflection on self-examination. The Roman Stoic philosopher Lucius A. Seneca (4 B.C.–65 A.D.), suggested how each of us might well examine ourselves. “We should every night call ourselves to an account: What infirmity have I mastered today? What passions opposed? What temptations resisted? What virtue acquired? Our vices will abate of themselves if they be brought every day to the shrift.” By “every day to the shrift” means a daily confession of our errors. Wrote Saint Augustine, “The confession of evil works is the beginning of good works.”

Self-improvement should never be overlooked. Wrote that famous aviator, the late Charles Lindbergh: “The improvement of our way of life is more important than the spreading of it. If we make it satisfactory enough, it will spread automatically. If we do not, no strength of arms can permanently impose it.” This emphasizes the folly of trying to ram one’s ideas into the minds of others. The right method? Concentrate on the improvement of self. If a person becomes good enough, others will seek his tutorship. If no one seeks you out, there’s homework to be done! Strength of arms—political know-it-alls imitating Hitler and his ilk [armed forces]—is debilitating, the opposite of enlightening.

The English novelist Bulwer-Lytton, whom I often quote, observed more than a century ago:

“Know thyself” said the old philosophy. “Improve thyself” said the new. Our great object in time is not to waste our passions and gifts on the things external that we must leave behind, but that we cultivate within us all that we can carry into the eternal progress beyond.

The German scholar Thomas a Kempis (1380–1471), gave us several thoughts to ponder, relating to self-knowledge. “The highest and most profitable learning is the knowledge of ourselves. To have a low opinion of our own merits, and to think highly of others, is an evidence of wisdom. All men are frail, but thou shouldest reckon none so frail as thyself.” Wilbur Fisk believed as I do, that when temptations and other weaknesses are overcome, we are “bearing humanity toward a richer life and higher character.” As the Roman, Horace, wrote: “Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.” The adversity which we have been experiencing during the past several decades is now eliciting talents that assures a turnabout to the freedom way of life!

13

EXALTING THE COMMON GOOD

To sustain the individual freedom of action contemplated by the Constitution is not to strike down the common good, but to exalt it; for surely the good of society as a whole cannot be better served than by the preservation against arbitrary restraint of the liberties of its constituent members.

—GEORGE SUTHERLAND

This statesman, born in England, studied law at the University of Michigan Law School, practiced law in Utah, was a member of the House of Representatives 1901–03, and a Senator 1905–17. He became Associate Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, serving in that capacity from 1922 to 1938.

Most citizens in today’s U.S.A. haven’t the slightest understanding of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

Sutherland, on the other hand, understood these writings as well as did the authors of these politico-economic, spiritual documents: the greatest in all history! The basic premise that separates the American experiment in Man-Government relationships from all others is contained in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Reflect on the fact that these signers were, for the most part, men of means. Instead of wealth to gain, they were faced with the prospect of losses. What, pray tell, might be the nature of that loss? The likelihood—the possibility—of signing their own death warrant, so contrary to popular opinion were their glorious intentions!

Twenty-four of these men were well-educated lawyers and judges; eleven were merchants of one variety or another; nine were farmers and plantation owners; all were men of means. They were willing to trade their well-being to bring about, at best, the birth of a nation with unprecedented freedom principles; or a dangerous hangman’s rope, at worse!

Almost to a man, they paid a heavy price! Nine were reduced to poverty within a short time. Five were captured by the British, imprisoned and died within a few years. Twelve had their homes, farms or plantations sacked, looted by the British. Nine died during the war, either from bullets or personal hardship. Few survived to live out natural lives. They pledged—and they paid—and in doing so they gave birth to your and my freedom. Would you have signed the Declaration? Your answer is affirmative—provided that you are trying, regardless of opposition and unpopularity, to regain the liberty our Founding Fathers bequeathed to us Americans. Hail to their wisdom, courage and exemplarity.[1]

Justice Sutherland insisted that we should exalt the common good, his reference being the good set forth in our Constitution. It seems appropriate that I repeat some observations made in one of my earlier books.

What is a miracle? “It is,” says the dictionary, “an event or action that apparently contradicts known scientific laws and is hence thought to be due to supernatural causes especially an act of God.” Creation!

Why do so few approve, accept and abide by the freedom way of life? A confession: I, along with many others, have been saying, “It is so difficult to explain.” The truth as I now see it? No one can or ever will be able to explain the miracle of freedom. Were clear, lucid and persuasive explanation a requirement, some one or more of us would need to understand and explain every facet of human action—creativity at the human level. No individual is or ever has been graced with such wisdom. Nor is such omniscience necessary for a belief in freedom.

Everything in Creation, including every form of life—no exception—is a miracle when viewed aright. However, one will seldom find a recording among famous intellectuals—past or present—who will agree with this statement. One notable exception was an English divine Robert South (1634–1716): “A miracle is a work exceeding the power of any created agent: consequently, being an effect of the divine omnipotence.”

Many individuals have looked upon freedom, not as a miracle, but as an explainable way of life. Being unable to explain it themselves and knowing of no one who can, they hold it in far less esteem than socialism which they find easier to explain.

All but a few are blind to freedom’s miracles. Thomas Alva Edison, perhaps the greatest inventive genius of all time, gave us one explanation of this blindness: “No one knows more than a millionth of one per cent of anything.” This, of course, was a figure of speech. He could have said a billionth or trillionth of one per cent. Compared to Infinite Consciousness, finite man is no more than a mere speck in Creation’s Domain. Grasping this point—the more one knows the more awareness of how little he knows . . . is the beginning of such wisdom as is within mortal man’s domain.

There are reasons galore as to why freedom is not believed to be a miracle. Here is one: Our everyday life is crowded with miracles, so many that they have become commonplace. No one “contradicts” them. My telephone is an example. I can send my voice around the world at the speed of light—in one-seventh of a second. While few will think of this recent phenomenon as a miracle, I have never heard anyone say that it is not. No contradiction! During the past few decades millions of miracles, ranging from penicillin to jet airplanes, are taken for granted, accepted as are the miracles of nature, be they blades of grass or giant oaks.

Froude, the English divine (1818–94) wrote: “The practical effect of a belief is the real test of its soundness.” Is it practical to believe in the unexplainable miracle, freedom?

The answer is an unequivocal “Yes.” Why? Because the individual’s freedom to act creatively as he pleases is materially, morally and spiritually sound.

At our down-to-earth level, more miracles than anyone can count result from freedom, the greatest demonstration in all history being the American miracle.

There is one detail that should be explainable but no one to my knowledge has phrased it well enough for effective communication: it has to do with individual differences. Let us find a way to put these facts into understandable terms. No two of us are remotely alike. Indeed, no one individual is the same now as he or she was a moment ago. All is change now and forever. When our tiny bits of expertise are free to flow, they configurate. As drops of water make an ocean, so do these bits make the miracle.

Here are some final thoughts gleaned from that brilliant Frenchman Alexis de Tocqueville (1805–59). First, some background. During the middle years of the last century, numerous governments sent commissions to the U.S.A. to find out why our success and their failures. All of them went home with the wrong answers. Tocqueville, by himself, made the all-important discovery:

I sought for the greatness and genius of America in fertile fields and boundless forests; it was not there. I sought for it in her institutions of learning; it was not there. I sought for it in her matchless Constitution; it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and found them aflame with righteousness did I understand the greatness and genius of America. America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.

A few other thoughts by Tocqueville which lend credence to this thesis:

The soil is productive less by reason of its fertility than because the people tilling it are free.

In fact, those who prize freedom only for the material benefits it offers have never kept it long.

For only in countries where it reigns can a man speak, live and breathe freely. . . . The man who asks of freedom anything other than itself is born to be a slave.

Some nations have freedom in the blood and are ready to face the greatest perils and hardships in its defense. . . . Other nations, once they have grown prosperous, lose interest in freedom and let it be snatched away from them without lifting a hand to defend it, lest they should endanger thus the comforts that, in fact, they owe to it alone. It is easy to see that what is lacking in such nations is a genuine love of freedom, that lofty aspiration which, I confess, defies analysis. For it [freedom’s miracles] is something one must feel and logic has no part in it.

Charles F. Kettering, a great inventive genius, gave to freedom devotees a brilliant formula: “Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.”

Let us then believe that the miracle of freedom will rise again!

[1] Much of the above is taken from a great book, America’s Choice, by James R. Evans. See a review in The Freeman, November 1981.

14

CHOOSE STATESMEN, NOT POLITICIANS

The great difference between the real statesman and the pretender is, that one sees into the future, while the other regards only the present; the one lives by the day and acts on expediency; the other acts on enduring principles and for immortality.

—EDMUND BURKE

Edmund Burke (1729–97) was born in Ireland and became a member of the British Parliament. Contrary to nearly all of its members, he was sympathetic to and promotive of the American colonies and had no hesitancy in proclaiming his position. Stalwart! He was blest with foresight, seeing into the future: America, home of the free and land of the brave! Here was found the purest practice of freedom in world history, and Burke’s support was based on “enduring principles and for immortality.” In my reading of history, never before or since his time has there been a greater statesman—exemplar par excellence!

Let me begin by a brief commentary on immortality. Those of us who are freedom devotees have no chance of advancing our cause unless we are consistent. And consistency is impossible unless we reason from a sound premise. There are three parts to mine:

1. Man did not create himself for it is easily demonstrable that man knows next to nothing about himself. So, my first assumption is the primacy and supremacy of what I refer to as an Infinite Consciousness.

2. While it is difficult, it is nevertheless possible for the individual to increase his or her own awareness, his or her own consciousness.

3. I cannot demonstrate this but only know it to be a truth, namely, the immortality of the human spirit, this earthly moment being only the beginning.

My dictionary makes a distinction between statesmen and politicians similar to Burke’s:

Politician: a person holding or seeking political office; frequently used in a derogatory sense, with implications of seeking personal or partisan gain, scheming, opportunism, etc.; as distinguished from statesman, which suggests able far-seeing principled conduct of public affairs.

A few comments about pretenders—politicians—those who act on expediency, seekers of personal gain, schemers. Wrote Shakespeare: “A politician—one that would circumvent God.” Of the countless know-it-alls, ever so many accuse them of “playing God.” Wrong! God never lords it over us. We make or break ourselves. Excellent instruction on this point by the Scottish biographer Samuel Smiles (1812–1904): “. . . there is not an act or thought in the life of a human being but carries with it a train of consequences, the end of which we may never trace. Not one but, to a certain extent, gives color to our own life, and insensibly influences the lives of those about us. The good deed or thought will live, even though we may not see it fructify but so will the bad, and no person is so insignificant as to be sure that his example will not do good on the one hand, nor evil on the other.”

Enough of the negative—evil doers: politicians. Reflect now on the positive, those whose actions are promotive of enduring principles, as were Burke’s: statesmen. “Principle is a passion for truth and right.”

Wrote the English novelist Bulwer-Lytton (1803–73): “What is the essence and the life of character? Principle, integrity, independence, or as one of our great old writers has it, ‘That inbred loyalty unto virtue.’” Bulwer-Lytton, being of a later generation, may have learned this from Burke. In any event, his reference to independence proves that he had foresight: independent America!

The American clergyman William E. Alger (1822–1905), gave this counsel: “True statesmanship is the art of changing a nation from what it is to what it ought to be.”

This is sound advice for present-day Americans. Moreover, I feel certain he would agree that our country cannot remain as is. Nothing in nature remains identical from moment to moment; everything is in constant change. Thus, we will experience a continuing downfall into the welfare state and the planned economy—socialism—or a reversal into freedom, with everyone free to act creatively as he or she pleases. This requires a diminishing number of politicians and an increasing number of statesmen.

What is required for the achievement of such a phenomenon? First, forget about working at the political level! What then? More of us than now must strive to improve our understanding and explanations of how freedom works its miracles! If enough of us are good enough, statesmen will displace politicians at local, state and federal levels—the Burkes instead of the Hitlers.

How hopeful is our situation? The record of history gives us plenty of grounds for optimism. It has been a succession of ups and downs from the world’s first civilization—the Sumerians—till the present. In England and America we have witnessed several ups and downs during the last seven decades. It has been evolution/devolution in a rhythmic sequence. These swings are remindful of a clock’s pendulum: left toward socialism, right toward freedom. Our societal pendulum has swung to the left as far as it is going to go. That’s my faith. May it also be yours!

The English poet and critic Samuel Coleridge (1772–1834): “The three great ends for a statesman are, security to possessors, facility to acquirers, and liberty and hope to the people.”

A final thought by Charles F. Kettering: “Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.” Let us dream and believe and will that freedom for one and all is in the offing.

15

THE SOURCE OF PROGRESS

Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge; and though sometimes regarded as inconsistency, it is but the noble inconsistency natural to a mind ever ready for growth and expansion of thought, and that never fears to follow where truth and duty may lead the way

—TRYON EDWARDS

This theologian (1809–94) was the compiler of my favorite quotation book, entitled The New Dictionary of Thought. After reading the above, typical of his wisdom, one can understand why I regard him as among the all-time greats.

Change of opinion is often only the progress of sound thought and growing knowledge. This statement voices a truth that my own experience confirms. Whenever I come upon a new thought, or a bit of knowledge gained from others, or am blest with an intuitive flash, my opinions change and are improved.

Tryon Edwards has assembled ever so many quotes under “Opinion.” I feel that it is my duty to share these with FEE’s ideological and philosophical friends: those who also are devoted to freedom.

The American author and editor Walter Lippmann (1889–1974): “Where mass opinion dominates the government, there is a morbid derangement of the functions of power. The prevailing public opinion has been destructively wrong at the critical juncture.” Lippmann lived during a period when the principles that accounted for America’s greatness had almost been forgotten. Mass opinion, featured by the vicious notion of living at the expense of others, did and still does account for the morbid derangement of the true functions of government. Have a look at the ten points of the Communist Manifesto and you will be shocked at the extent to which we have approximated or adopted them.[1]

The Danish physician A. Barthelina (1597–1643) more than three centuries ago offered us a sample of the kind of thinking that would prevent the present deplorable slump toward the communistic way of life: “Security is never an absolute. The government of a free people must take certain chances for the sake of maintaining freedom which the government of a police state avoids because it holds freedom to be of no value.” The truth? In the politico-economic realm it is only freedom that is valuable! Over the past fifty years I have known many socialists, communists, welfare-staters, call this ignorance what you will, who have done a complete flip-flop to the freedom way of life. How come? Brilliant explanations of how freedom works its wonders by such great thinkers as Bastiat, Weaver, Hazlitt, Rogge, and many others—for all I know, perhaps by your enlightened self!

To demonstrate the enlightenment common to great thinkers, here is another by Edwards: “He that resolves on any great and good end, has, by that very resolution, scaled the chief barrier to it. He will find such resolution removing difficulties, searching out or making means, giving courage for despondency, and strength for weakness, and like the star to the wise men of old, ever guiding him nearer and nearer to perfection.”

In the above Edwards gives us the foundation for evolution. Robert Andrews Millikan (1868–1953), a renowned physicist and a FEE Trustee in our early days, gave us the formula in more detail: “Three ideas stand out above all others in the influence they have exerted and are destined to exert upon the development of the human race: the idea of the Golden Rule, the idea of natural law and the idea of age-long growth or evolution.”

Contemplate the idea of the Golden Rule: “Do as you would be done by.” The Golden Rule, variously phrased, is found in all of the world’s great religions. Jesus uttered the version most familiar to us, but Confucius spoke about the same words centuries earlier. The Golden Rule is part of the heritage of humanity; it is, so to speak, a law of human nature.

Go back to the Old Testament for an account of the evolution of man’s understanding of his relation to God. This is best traced in the succession of the prophets—Amos, Isaiah, Jeremiah and the others. The evolution of thought and spirit in the succession of the prophets of Israel laid the foundation for Jesus’ teaching that men and women are children of God.

Jesus’ teaching prepared the greatest advance in mankind’s evolution in all history. His disciples—only twelve, with one a defector—shared His wisdom with others who, in turn, became leaders of His Truth from that day to this. What should we learn from this? Then, now and forever, the advance of Righteousness is a matter of leadership, not a numbers problem!

Ralph Waldo Emerson: “A man cannot utter two or three sentences without disclosing to intelligent ears precisely where he stands in life and thought, whether in the kingdom of the senses and the understanding or in that of ideas and imagination, or in the realm of intuitions and duty.”

While I make no claim to “intelligent ears,” I have time after time, in reading a single sentence by the Sage of Concord, been enlightened by his wisdom. A few samplings:

- Trust men and they will be true to you, trust them greatly and they will show greatness themselves.

- Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.

- I cannot find language of sufficient energy to convey my sense of the sacredness of integrity.

- Cause and effect, means and ends, seed and fruit, cannot be severed; for the effect already blooms in the cause, the end pre-exists in the means, the fruit in the seed.

I shall conclude with two enlightening thoughts:

Thomas Jefferson: “Error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”

Goethe: “Let us not dream that reason can ever be popular. Passions, emotions, may be made popular, but reason remains ever the property of the few.”

Give America a few more individuals with Jefferson’s and Goethe’s power to reason and America will be free!

[1] See “Ignorance: Agent of Destruction” in my book, Vision (The Foundation for Economic Education, Irvington, N.Y., 1978), pp. 82–88.

16

SAY “YES” TO LIFE

Believe you can do the impossible. Try laughing when circumstances in your life make you want to cry. Act as if you possess the quality you feel you lack. On a day when you feel you have nothing to be thankful for, write a thank-you letter to someone who once made a difference in your life. Open the door to enthusiastic, joyous people.

—NORMAN VINCENT PEALE

Dr. Peale, whom I met thirty-some years ago, has just sent me his new book, The Treasury of Joy and Enthusiasm. He is one of the most widely-read inspirational authors of all time. Three of his outstanding books which reveal his laudable and optimistic thinking: The Power of Positive Thinking, A Guide to Confident Living and You Can if You Think You Can. In addition to his many writings and lectures, he is Pastor of New York City’s Marble Collegiate Church.

Dr. Peale inspired this essay. There is no one, past or present, whose thinking I more enthusiastically share than this contemporary of mine. First and foremost is his optimism. As one sage wrote: “It will all come right in time: the great American gospel.” The gospel? Unseating government as the endower of men’s rights and placing the Creator there! Here are some excellent thoughts by an unknown author:

The world is not going to the dogs. The human race is not doomed. Civilization is not going to crash. The Captain is on the bridge. Humanity is going through a difficult time, but humanity has gone through difficulties many times before in its long history, and has always come through, strengthened and purified.

Do not worry yourself about the universe collapsing. It is not going to collapse, and anyway that question is none of your business. The Captain is on the bridge. If the survival of humanity depended upon you or me, it would be a poor lookout for the Great Enterprise, would it not?

The Captain is on the bridge. God is still in business. All that you have to do is to recognize the presence of God where trouble seems to be, to do your nearest duty to the very best of your ability; and to keep an even mind until the storm is over.

This is the case for optimism, as opposed to pessimism; it also is instructive as to the avoidance of know-it-all-ness. Keep an even mind until the storm—socialism—has blown itself out. Also, it is highly religious and in harmony with Dr. Peale’s moral and spiritual ascendancy.

This essay will include Dr. Peale’s six suggestions for living the righteous life, along with my comments.

Believe you can do the impossible. Prior to invention of the telephone, it was impossible for the human voice to be heard more than half the distance of a football field. Alexander Graham Bell believed he could do the impossible. Result? Around the world at the speed of light: one-seventh of a second!

The storage battery impossible? It is reported that Thomas Alva Edison, the world’s greatest inventive genius, made 50,000 experiments before he succeeded in producing the storage battery. He was asked after his success if he didn’t get discouraged working so long without results. “Results,” he exclaimed, “Why, I learned 50,000 things I didn’t know before.” His 50,000 problems were blessings in disguise! So are our problems.

Try laughing when circumstances in your life make you want to cry. A majority of citizens whose objective is liberty for one and all are saddened by our slump into socialism. They are forlorn and have no hope for a turnabout. “They want to cry” appropriately describes their dejection. They throw in the sponge and, by so doing, make the objective of socialists easier to attain. Such sorrow makes each day a doomsday. Wrote Sir Walter Raleigh: “Sorrows are dangerous companions, converting bad into evil and evil into worse.”

Act as if you possess the quality you feel you lack. A few of us, myself included, feel that we lack the quality, the ability, adequately to explain the freedom philosophy with sufficient clarity. No one, to my knowledge, has even approached perfection in this matter. Explaining creativity at the human level borders on the difficulties everyone faces when trying to describe Creation itself. However, we must keep in mind the encouraging truth that the act of becoming is achieved by overcoming. The English critic and author William Hazlitt (1778–1830) sheds light on the value of difficulties: “Our energy is in proportion to the resistance it meets. We attempt nothing great but from a sense of the difficulties we have to encounter; we persevere in nothing great but from a pride in overcoming them.”

The French dramatist Molière (1622–73): “The greater the obstacle, the more glory we have in overcoming it. The difficulties with which we are met are the maids of honor which set off virtue.”

Edmund Burke: “Difficulty is a sense instructor set over us by the Supreme guardian and legislator who knows us better than we know ourselves and leaves us better too. He that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our skill. Our antagonist is our helper.”

These observations about difficulties do, indeed, make it plain that they sharpen our skills to labor day in and day out on behalf of liberty!

On a day when you have nothing to be thankful for, write a thank-you letter to someone who has made a difference in your life. I cannot remember a day in my 83 years in which I have had nothing to be thankful for. Write thank-you letters to those who have made a difference in my life? Yes, to contemporaries who have helped me in my thinking. However, my greatest helpers are those who have passed to their reward, such sages as Confucius, Socrates, Edmund Burke, Frederic Bastiat, Adam Smith, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, Emerson, and ever so many others. No thank-you letters. What then?

I have quoted these intellectual, moral and spiritual giants over and over again in my 28 books. Also in Notes from FEE going to 50,000 freedom devotees. Readers, in turn, do the same among those in their orbit. Result? The wisdom of these sages I have quoted does not rest in the grave with them. Instead, it graces generation after generation.

Thanks for my opportunity to serve others, now and hereafter, by discovering and sharing truths that advance an understanding of liberty.

Open the door to enthusiastic, joyous people. Wrote Emerson: “Every great and commanding movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of enthusiasm. Nothing great was ever achieved without it.” Ever so many citizens on our side are forlorn and see no hope for the future. How wonderful it would be were they to heed the counsel of that English poet Samuel Coleridge (1772–1834): “Enlist the interests of stern morality and religious enthusiasm in the cause of political liberty, as in the time of the old Puritans, and it will be irresistible.” It was the old Puritans and their remarkable thinking that set the stage for the Declaration of Independence.

I like what the English divine Robert South (1634–1716) had to say about joyous people: “The very society of joy redoubles it; so that, while it lights upon my friend it redoubles upon myself, and the brighter his candle burns the more easily it will light mine.”

So, let us joyfully practice freedom and say “yes” to life.

17

KINDNESS AND INTELLIGENCE

Jesus and Socrates, out of very different backgrounds, are saying the same thing. Intelligence is kindness. Kindness is intelligence. The fundamental which the two terms suggest in different ways . . . is the same quality on which all human civilization is built.

—ALEXANDER MEIKLEJOHN

This American educator (1872–1964) provides an insight which, if understood and practiced, would lead in a most admirable manner toward a return to freedom in America—the perception that civilization is based on a kindly intelligence. Civilization is achieved in “the countries and peoples considered to have reached a high stage of social and cultural development,” and it requires the practice of certain human excellences.

May we say that kindness and intelligence are the two foremost virtues that lie at the root of civilization? I believe, as Meiklejohn, that they are twins and that neither fully exists without the other. Goethe exemplified intelligence and added that “Kindness is the golden chain by which society is bound together.”

“Jesus and Socrates, out of very different backgrounds, are saying the same thing.” A few samplings:

Socrates: Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.

Jesus: The truth shall make you free.

Socrates: First and chiefly care about the improvement of the soul.

Jesus: What is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?

Socrates: No evil can beface a good man either in life or death.

Jesus: Fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul.

These are the exemplarities which, if we devotedly follow, will lead to a rebuilding of our American civilization!

“Do not be angry with me if I tell you the truth.” Well might the socialists—and any others who even minutely infract the freedom way of life—heed this Socratic admonishment. Anger is a dastardly, cowardly trait. I at least try not to get angry at my ideological opponents. I only feel sorry for know-it-alls, those in or out of politics. Why avoid anger? There are two good reasons: (1) anger hardens others in their ways and keeps them away from the freedom philosophy, and (2) anger poisons the soul of him who yields to it. Thomas Jefferson proposed a method of avoidance. “When angry, count ten before you speak; if very angry, count a hundred.” Better yet, to put anger behind you, count your blessings!

“The truth shall make you free.” Wrote the English novelist Bulwer-Lytton: “One of the sublimest things in the world is plain truth.” What might qualify for this sublime elevation? Living truth is the freedom to act creatively as we please! Falsehood enslaves, for, as John Dryden said, “Truth is the foundation of all knowledge and the cement of all societies.” No question about it, mankind’s highest elevation is Truth! “Truth is beautiful and divine no matter how humble its origin,” said Michael Pupin.

Confirmations? “Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength.” We must never scorn a truth because of its humble origin. Recently, I received a letter from a grade school student, ten years of age, explaining the freedom philosophy far better than most of those who have the titles of teachers and preachers. As Thoreau wrote, “Humility like darkness reveals the heavenly lights.” An appropriate ambition? Search for these lights from sources near and far, past and present, that we may brighten our own lights!

Reflect on the following by an author unknown to me:

Fueled by a million man-made wings of fire . . . the rocket tore through the sky . . . and everybody cheered.

Fueled only by a thought from God, the seedling urged its way through the thickness of black . . . and as it pierced the heavy ceiling of the soil . . . and launched itself into outer space . . . No one even clapped.

Fueled by a thought from God. Alexander Cruden wrote: “God. This is one of the names we give to that eternal, infinite and incomprehensible being, the creator of all things, who preserves and governs everything by his almighty power and wisdom, and who is the only object of our worship.”

I would amend the above by changing “is” to “should”—“who should be the only object of our worship.” Only atheists would dispute this. Hear this by John Foster: “The atheist is one of the most daring beings in creation, a contemner [scorner] who explodes his laws by denying his existence.” I am acquainted with many who embrace atheism, and I regard such a position as incompatible with the freedom philosophy.

“The greatest homage we can pay to truth is to use it,” said Emerson. There are ever so many individuals who know freedom works its miracles. But how many use this truth in conversations, speeches and writings? Only a few! Why? The fear of unpopularity; thus silence.

Let me conclude this little essay with a brilliant thought by the American poet, William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878):

Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again—

The eternal years of God are hers:

But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,

And dies among his worshipers.

Here we have a truth which all history confirms, namely, the rise and fall of nations. Bryant, during his life span, observed the greatest societal ascent of all time: our United States of America! He passed to his reward two decades before the beginning of our decline into the welfare state and the planned economy.

Bryant, however, was prescient. He knew that truth will rise again, and it was this wisdom that accounted for his optimism, foreseeing the turnabout that is presently beginning. Past error does, indeed, writhe in pain and will die, as will the dictatorial thinking of its socialistic worshipers.

In the practice of kindness and intelligence lies our hope for rebuilding a civilized America.

18

SUBLIME EXAMPLE

Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime. And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.

—H. W. LONGFELLOW

The meaning of “sublime”? It is “elevated, exalted, lofty, superb.” Those who attain this status are, indeed, examples of righteousness; they are individuals, past and present, who attract others to intellectual, moral and spiritual growth. As Edmund Burke wrote, “Example is the school of mankind. They will learn at no other.” If we would make our lives sublime—freedom of everyone to act creatively as each pleases—we would strive to become exemplars in the school of mankind, as did our Founding Fathers. If we succeed, we too would leave behind us “footprints on the sands of time.” The following is what several wise men have had to say about the importance of exemplarity.

The German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804): “So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.” How may you or I act so that our principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world? This philosopher used the word, “might,” which attests to his wisdom. The very best any of us can do is to approximate the Infinite Unknown. The appropriate method? To draw on the greatest thinkers of all time, Kant being one of them!

The American author and editor Christian Bovee (1820–1904): “Example has more followers than reason. We unconsciously imitate what pleases us and approximate to the characters we most admire. A generous habit of thought and action carries with it an incalculable influence.” Were there no means of advancement in thought and action beyond the solitary individual’s ability to reason, there would be little if any growth in consciousness or an awareness of what things are good—the free market being high on any intelligent listing of mankind’s blessings. What to do? Seek light from those more enlightened than self, Bovee being another one of ever so many examples! To the extent that we progress in thought and action, to that extent are others attracted by our example—the law of attraction!

The English poet, dramatist and novelist Oliver Goldsmith (1728–74): “People seldom improve when they have no better model than themselves to copy after.” The synonym for “model,” according to my dictionary, implies “flawless, ideal, perfect.” To “copy after” means to imitate. Who, then, should we copy after? Jesus ranks first! Who else? Any person whose competence is above one’s own. Diligent search will reveal countless exemplars who can bless our lives!

The Greek historian Herodotus (484–425 B.C.): “I am satisfied that we are less convinced by what we hear than by what we see.” The word “see” has ever so many meanings, ranging from what can be seen by the eyes to what can be discovered, learned, perceived. While I have no proof, it seems certain that this wise Greek used “see” in the latter sense.

Less convinced by what we hear. In his time there were no newspapers. No one even dreamed of a telephone, radio or TV. Herodotus heard little more from others than what his unlearned neighbors had to say. There were some other outstanding scholars in Greece in those days, but little opportunity for close contact between them. “Learning makes a man fit company for himself.” So, it seems that Herodotus was largely self-taught.

Now to our time. What do we hear? With some notable exceptions, nothing but bad news. Citizens by the millions are imitators and thus see nothing wrong in such chicanery. This despicable be-like-me-ness is not limited to murder, theft, rape and other such sins. It is to be noted in numerous walks of life. For a single example, corporations inhibiting free trade, getting government to bail them out of bankruptcy, on and on. No more than Herodotus should any of us be satisfied with the folderol we hear!

Suppose Herodotus could see what has happened in the world since his time. A veritable explosion in creativity, especially in the U.S.A. In spite of the growing socialism, freedom to produce and exchange surpasses that of any other nation. In reacting against socialistic error, an increasing number of Americans are seeking and learning the truth of freedom—exemplars! And for that response, I am grateful.

The English poet Edmund Spenser (1552–99): “Much more gracious and profitable is doctrine by example than by rule.” He wrote the above when mercantilism was the rule of his country: “Ownership and control of the means of production and distribution by the people as a whole.” The meaning of “people as a whole”? Collectivism, the welfare state and the planned economy, a coercive rejection of the rights of individuals to act creatively as they please, of their freedom to produce and exchange voluntarily.

Much more gracious and profitable is doctrine by example. Time and again I have claimed that ours is not a numbers problem. An interesting reflection on this point by San Pedro of Alcantara:

May your Lordship not torment yourself: there is a remedy for this deluge of crimes. Let us be, you and me, that which we should be. There will be two less souls to convert. Let each person behave thus; it is the most efficacious of reforms. The trouble is that no one wants to correct himself and everyone meddles at correcting others, thus everything stays as is.

I would modify that last sentence to read, “nearly everyone.” In our day there are thousands in the U.S.A. and other nations who are concentrating on self-improvement so that they may become exemplars of the freedom philosophy.

19

EARNEST RESOLUTION

To think we are able is almost to be so; to determine upon attainment is frequently attainment itself; earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it almost a savor of omnipotence.

—SAMUEL SMILES

Suppose we were to understand and adhere to the above by this English biographer (1812–1904). How could we phrase the result? Earnest resolution would lead to a revolution, that is, to a turnabout from the socialistic road we have been on for the past eight decades to the way of life Americans earlier enjoyed: the freedom way of life—blessings galore!

Several reflections on blessings. “Nothing raises the price of blessing like its removal; whereas it was its continuance which should have taught us its value.” The English author Izaak Walton (1593–1683), gives support to this excellent thought: “Blessings we enjoy daily, and for the most of them, and because they be so common, men forget to pay their praises. . . . Let me tell you that every misery I miss is a new blessing.”

Nothing raises the price of blessing like its removal. Why this high price? Because we never know the value of our blessings until lost. By nature man is fallible. Never being able to know much—regardless of how much knowledge is acquired—is a built-in condition of the human species. Escaping from ignorance, that is, progressing everlastingly, is an everlasting process.

To grow in harmony with Infinite Consciousness is a goal toward which man can ever strive but never attain. Any individual, aware of his natural ignorance, will readily realize that the more he knows the more will he expose himself to the unknown. As his stock of knowledge expands, the more conscious will he be of how much more there is beyond his ken. But by knowing something, however little, man does ascend and improve his situation; in an infinitesimal way, he thus participates in Creation. Viewed broadly enough, this appears to be human destiny. In any event, moving from the depths of ignorance to lesser ignorance is a process favorable to the unobstructed flow of creativities: the free market.

I repeat, ignorance of itself is not the enemy of the free and unfettered market. Ignorance is universal among humans. Were sheer ignorance the culprit, there never would have been any freedom in the market, none whatsoever. The real foe is ignorance of being ignorant; ignorance of the fact that man in his earthly station is limited at best to a growth in knowledge. Any person not in this state of awareness is, perforce, a know-it-all. These poor souls are unaware of their countless blessings. Removal! And what a high price this vacuity—going through life in a state of mental emptiness!

Let me tell you that every misery I miss is a new blessing. Why did Izaak Walton refer to the missing of a misery as a new blessing? I shall hazard a guess. He, unlike most individuals, was aware of blessings that grace the lives of everyone. To him, they were countless, common and, therefore, taken for granted. Freedom to act creatively as one pleases, every heart beat, all sorts of intellectual and moral and spiritual improvement, everything that gives happiness and prevents misfortune are but an infinitesimal fraction of our blessings. How few there are who count them or even think of doing so!

Every misery one misses is, indeed, a new blessing. Misery? According to the dictionary: “unhappiness, woe, wretchedness, agony, poverty, despondency, grief, sorrow.”

The missing of these miseries is a blessing in disguise. It is overcoming them—resulting in their absence—that makes them a new blessing! This by an unknown: “The nerve which never relaxes—the eye which never blanches—the thought which never wanders—the purpose that never wavers—these are the masters of victory.” This individual, I suspect, had the freedom way of life in mind. In any event, he or she presented the virtues that are necessary for a politico-economic turnabout, a resurgence of freedom.

The purpose that never wavers was brilliantly emphasized by the English minister William Punshon (1824–81): “It is the old lesson—a worthy purpose, patient energy for its accomplishment, a resoluteness undaunted by difficulties, and then success.”

Our Founding Fathers had a worthy purpose, unmatched in all history, “. . . unalienable Rights, . . . among them . . . Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” They did, indeed, have a patient energy for accomplishing their purposes and a resoluteness undaunted by difficulties. Success? Never before or since has there been such a remarkable achievement: self-responsibility and all citizens free to act creatively as they please. Result? The greatest outburst of prosperity and the good life ever known!

True, the roots of this civilized explosion are forgotten by most citizens and we Americans have been suffering the penalty. Happily, a turnabout seems possible in the near future. Let each of us do his part in bringing about the coming victory. Nothing is more joyful than ardent participation!

Smiles was right in asserting that “earnest resolution has often seemed to have about it a savor of omnipotence.” Being a first-rate freedom devotee, he meant that creativity at the human level savored of Creation—the Heavenly Level. Those persons so graced are on their way to life’s Highest Purpose.

The nature of our purpose or task is indicated by the famed economist F. A. Hayek:

We at least believe that we have attained an understanding of the forces which have shaped civilization which our opponents lack. Yet, if we have not convinced them, the reason must be that we have not yet made explicit some of the foundations on which our conclusions rest. Our chief task, therefore, must still be to improve the argument on which our case for a free society rests.

Wrote Christina, Queen of Sweden (1626–89): “It is necessary to try to surpass one’s self always; this occupation ought to last as long as life.” Perpetual self-improvement and an understanding and explanation of freedom should be the earnest resolution of each of us.

20

ATTRACTION

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mouse-trap than his neighbor, though he build his home in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.

The above is generally attributed to Emerson (1808–82) but Elbert Hubbard (1859–1915) claimed it was his. Were I 130 years younger, I would claim it as mine, for I have been citing this same law of attraction for nearly 50 years.

Anthony Standen of this century, a famous scientist, emphasized the same basic idea in the following which I have used over and over again:

All the phenomena of astronomy, which had baffled the acutest minds since the dawn of history, the movement of the heavens, of the sun and the moon, the very complex movement of the planets, suddenly tumble together and become intelligible in terms of the one staggering assumption, this mysterious “attractive force.” And not only the movement of the heavenly bodies, far more than that, the movement of earthly bodies too are seen to be subject to the same mathematically definable law, instead of being, as they were for all previous philosophers, mere unpredictable happen-so’s.

Standen may not have had human beings in mind when he referred to “earthly bodies,” but the principle of attraction applies across the boards, to physical nature and especially to human nature. Applied to humanity, this “mysterious attractive force” works in all cases of personal advancement.

With the law of attraction as a working premise, it is interesting to observe what people have had to say about the attainment of success. A few see dangers in succeeding, others applaud the determination to achieve. Here are two samplings that warn of the danger. An American clergyman, Henry Ward Beecher (1813–87): “Success is full of promise till men get it, and then it is as a last year’s nest from which the bird has flown.”

The nonconformist English divine Ralph Venning (1620–73): “Success at first doth many times undo men at last.” Ever so many people, in every walk of life, once they excel others in their respective fields, “think” they have it made and slump into do-nothings. They glory only in their past achievements, rest on their laurels—life’s mission at an end. Success undoes them, resulting in an entrepreneurial death! Wrote one sage: “It is not death, it is dying that alarms me.”

However, many wise men see only good in striving to succeed. The American journalist and poet Edgar A. Guest can be counted among them:

Somebody said that it couldn’t be done,

But he with a chuckle replied

That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one

Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.

Reflect on the things that couldn’t be done by Cro-Magnon men, 35,000 years ago. They had no pens or pencils with which to write, nor did they have anything in their minds worth writing about. No need to comment on the wonders that have taken place in the meantime: man evolving intellectually, morally, spiritually. What else? A prosperity that would have stunned these ancients, that is, if their “minds” were capable of such comprehension!

Edgar Guest grasped the genesis of progress, that virtue which sparks the road to freedom. Determination to succeed is indeed a virtue. If we do not move forward in any category of life we condemn ourselves to slipping backward.

The road to success is marked by individuals who with a chuckle admit the difficulty but determine to try. Observe how often such individuals with this drive succeed. They lay the steppingstones to progress—and find joy in the effort.

According to the famous actress Marie Dressier: “Never one thing and seldom one person can make for a success. It takes a number of them merging into one perfect whole.”

As I have written many times, it’s tiny bits of expertise by the countless millions, freely flowing, configurating and “merging”—that wend their way to prosperity. One never knows from whom the light will shine. The lesson? Always be on the lookout!

Wrote the great scientist Albert Einstein (1879–1955): “A successful man is he who receives a great deal more from his fellowmen, usually incomparably more, than corresponds to his service to them.” What a truism! Einstein set forth the theory of relativity in 1905. He received the Nobel prize for physics in 1921. Greatness made no egotist of this genius. The above attests to his humility, the absence of pride.

In a country where the citizens are as free as Americans and their talents are as diversified as ours, not one could exist on his or her endeavors. We are interdependent! Einstein could not exist on physics any more than I can on writing or you on your specialization. Starvation! In our stage of advancement, each of us does, indeed, receive incomparably more from others than they receive from any one of us. A doff of the hat to the millions who serve each of us!

An interesting thought by the English author Charles Buxton (1823–71): “The road to success is not to be run upon by seven-leagued boots. Step by step, little by little, bit by bit—that is the way to wealth, that is the way to wisdom, that is the way to glory, pounds are the sons not of pounds, but of pence.”

Seldom, if ever, does one attain wealth or wisdom in one stride. At best, it is bit by bit, step by step—the glorious road to freedom!

There is joy in attaining so great a power of attraction to the freedom way of life that others will make a beaten path to our door!

21

A BENEFACTOR TO MANKIND

The greatest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning; and whoever can remove any obstruction in this way, or open up any new prospect ought, so far, to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind.

—DAVID HUME

This Scottish historian and philosopher (1711–1776) was a close friend of Adam Smith. His History of England became famous; likewise his philosophical works. Hume was considered a skeptic, but skepticism was most appropriate prior to the overthrow of mercantilism. It is more than likely that Hume’s ideas helped to shape Adam Smith’s great book, The Wealth of Nations, which in turn proved enlightening and useful to our Founding Fathers.

Goethe, a German, born a half century later than Hume, also gave to posterity high-grade goals, which if pursued would assure a good society. Equally important, Goethe offered a workable methodology:

He who wishes to exert a useful influence must be careful to insult nothing. Let him not be troubled by what seems absurd, but concentrate his energies to the creation of what is good. He must not demolish, but build. He must raise temples where mankind can come and partake of the purest pleasures.

It appears that the objectives Hume and Goethe had in mind are similar to FEE’s goals. And our methodology appears to be the same, namely, emphasize learning and the good as the way to freedom.

Plato, the Greek philosopher (427–347 B.C.), warned that “The learning and knowledge we have is, at the most, but little compared with that of which we are ignorant.” There is no individual, past or present, who understands and can explain Creation at the Heavenly level. And I am unaware of anyone who has more than a tiny inkling of how creation at the human level works its miracles. No earthling, regardless of his or her genius, knows how to make a pencil. Simple? Unbelievably complex! Plato grasped this point twenty-four centuries ago.

The English critic and author William Hazlitt (1778–1830) discovered that: “The most learned are often the most narrow-minded men.” Hazlitt was obviously referring to those who are puffed up with pride by reason of their academic titles, their Ph.D.’s and other labels related to schooling. They “think” they have no more to learn, and such pride is, indeed, narrow-minded. “Pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Proverbs 16:18.

Sir John Powell, seventeenth-century English jurist, advised: “He who has no inclination to learn more will be very apt to think he knows enough.” Some have no inclination to learn more about freedom. In their blindness they assume that they know enough already. And the result is that they become copycats of socialists, past and present.

The American philosopher Ralph Barton Perry (1876–1957): “Ignorance deprives men of freedom because they do not know what alternatives there are. It is impossible to choose what one has never ‘heard of.’”

Ignorance does, indeed, deprive men of knowing what freedom is; and so they lapse into freedom’s opposite, socialism! Why do they give in to this despicable way of life? Although they may have “heard of” freedom, the reality is beyond their understanding. Wrote the English essayist Sir Richard Steele (1672–1729): “I know no evil so great as the abuse of the understanding and there is no one vice more common.” Let us make the failure to understand freedom less common by perfecting our own understanding of it.

Confucius, Chinese moral teacher and sage, is my oldest mentor, doing his excellent thinking about 2,500 years ago. Several samplings of his thinking follow:

- Learning without thought is useless. Thought without learning is dangerous.

- Not to enlighten one who can be enlightened, is to waste a man, to endeavor to enlighten one who cannot be enlightened is to waste words. The intelligent man wastes neither his man nor his words.

- To see what is right and not do it is a want of courage.

Those who are courageous enough to do no wrong will find confirmation in the following words of wisdom.

True courage is not the brutal force of vulgar heroes, but the firm resolve of virtue and reason.

—Paul Whitehead

A great deal of talent is lost in the world for its want of a little courage.

—Sydney Smith

A coward flows backward away from new things. A man of courage flows forward, in the midst of new things.

—Jacques Maritain

A concluding thought by Confucius: “I will not be concerned by other men not knowing me; I will be concerned at my own want of ability.” And the thought has been elaborated by the American author Elbert Hubbard (1859–1915): “There is something much more scarce, something finer far, something rarer than ability. It is the ability to recognize ability.”

It does not concern me that I am not known to the multitudes. Not one person in a million ever heard of me or ever will. The fact is irrelevant, for those of us devoted to the freedom way of life and its return recognize that ours is not a numbers problem. What then? Edmund Burke gave us the answer: “Example is the school of mankind; they will learn at no other.” The German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) pointed to that high level of exemplarity at which we should strive: “So act that your principle of action might safely be made a law for the whole world.”

How may we become benefactors to mankind? Learn and consistently abide by guidelines such as these:

- Ours is not a selling but a learning problem.

- Realize how little we know and seek the wisdom of sages past and present.

- Never disparage our socialistic opponents but, instead, demonstrate the fallacy of socialistic notions.

- Never, under any circumstance, permit any “leaks” or “buts.”

- Stand ramrod straight for freedom!

22

GOVERN THYSELF

Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

—EDMUND BURKE

“Controlling power upon will and appetite must be placed somewhere.” If this power be not placed aright, it is obvious that we cannot be free. If it be placed without, we will suffer all-out government, a trend that now bedevils us. On what does a reversal depend? Self-government, self-control; briefly, govern thyself.

Goethe gave his support to this truth: “What is the best government? That which teaches us to govern ourselves.” The Greek philosopher Pythagoras: “No man is free who cannot command himself.”

The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca: “Most powerful is he who has himself in his own power.”

Let’s begin by observing and commenting upon what several Presidents of the U.S.A. have written about the functions of government:

George Washington:

If to please the people, we offer what we ourselves disapprove, how can we afterwards defend our work? Let us raise a standard to which the wise and honest can repair. The event is in the hand of God.

Millions of citizens and politicians, for no more than the shameful ambition of gaining fortune at the expense of others, do that which if imposed on them they would disapprove. Can they afterward defend such political plundering? No more than they could defend common thievery! Consider just three among thousands of examples of political privilege:

1—Food stamps.

2—Tariffs sponsored by business firms seeking a non-competitive status.

3—Subsidies to peanut farmers and tobacco growers.

The role of freedom devotees? Strive for that excellence in understanding and explanation which is in harmony with this Creation of which we are a part.

Abraham Lincoln:

This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, that government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish from the earth.

A truth I have cited many times, by the eminent psychologist Fritz Kunkel: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man—indeed, in all people without exception.” I am unaware of any individual, past or present, in which this truth was better exemplified than in Honest Abe. Born in poverty, and of formal schooling he had almost none. Yet, so avid was he for learning that he schooled himself.

This President knew as well as anyone of freedom’s birth in America. However, the greatest error of our Founding Fathers was to allow slavery. Why? They wished to bring the southern slave states into the original union with the northern non-slave states. What Lincoln meant by “a new birth of freedom” was an America without slavery. He won!

Have we a lesson to learn from his victory? For the past ten decades we have been slumping, not into a Simon Legree form of slavery but into a Marxian form: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”[1] What should our ambition be? The same as Lincoln’s: achieve a new birth of freedom by people—you and me—that we shall not perish. Let us bring out our hidden powers.

Grover Cleveland:

Though the people support the government, the government should not support the people.

A government for the people must depend for its success on the intelligence, the morality, the justice, and the interest of the people themselves.

What a truth: “government should not support the people.” Cleveland’s wisdom on this point came in one of his veto messages. Congress had voted a $10,000 grant—a mere pittance—to Texas farmers whose farms had become temporary deserts. Cleveland vetoed the proposal.

Suppose all Presidents and a majority in Congress were to believe and act as did Cleveland. We would enjoy limited government in its pristine purity! On what does such an attainment depend? He gave us the answer: “On the intelligence, the morality, the justice and the interest of the people.” It is an observed fact that whatever shows forth on the political horizon is but a reflection of whatever the preponderant thinking of the citizens happens to be. Let every one of us follow Cleveland’s thinking on this point and we shall enjoy a properly limited government, all of us free to act creatively as we please!

Woodrow Wilson:

No man ever saw the people of whom he forms a part. No man ever saw a government. I live in the midst of the Government of the United States, but I never saw the Government of the United States.

I am a part of my country’s people, but I have not seen, and never will see, more than a tiny fraction of them. And no more than a fraction of the population will ever see me. This is nothing to lament. “People” and “government” are abstractions, mental constructs; only individual persons are real.

I, along with President Wilson, have no more seen a government than I have seen a black cat in a dark room. Is this kind of “blindness” to be deplored? Of course not! Let each individual light his or her own candle. Seek the light of freedom in individual action!

Calvin Coolidge:

Governments are necessarily continuing concerns. They have to keep going in good times and in bad. They therefore need a wide margin of safety. If taxes and debt are made all the people can bear when times are good, there will be certain disaster when times are bad.

Properly limited government is an absolute necessity for human progress. All governments, however, are, without question, agencies that require a scrupulous attention by the citizens. Our Founding Fathers were concerned to preserve their free way of life and to avoid tyrannous forms of rule that had featured the historical past. They found it!

Our Founding Fathers wrote the greatest political document of all time, the Constitution. Unfortunately, they made several disastrous errors such as government coinage, government mail delivery and tariffs. They failed to do away with Simon Legree slavery in the South; and they supported government education.

Let us strive for and hopefully attain this glorious situation: government at all levels—federal, state and local—securing justice for one and all and keeping the peace. When the law protects life, liberty and property, there is no longer any obstacle thwarting the release of creative human energy. What would be the result? The greatest outburst of individual creativity in history—genuine well-being for you, me, and all others.

Taxes and debts are growing so rapidly that their burden far exceeds what ever so many citizens can bear. Politically manufactured poverty! These times may, for some of us, still be good, but if the present trend continues it will, as President Coolidge wrote, “be certain disaster for everyone.”

Let us share in the wisdom of Edmund Burke: “No government ought to exist for the purpose of checking the prosperity of its people or to allow such a principle in its policy.” Then we may share the faith of President Lincoln: “This nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

[1] See “Ignorance: Agent of Destruction” in my book, Vision (Irvington, N.Y.: The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., 1978), pp. 82–88.

23

THERE IS TIME ENOUGH

If time be of all things the most precious, wasting time must be the greatest prodigality, since lost time is never found again; and what we call time enough always proves little enough. Let us then be up and doing, and doing to the purpose; so by diligence shall we do more with less perplexity.

—BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

Wisdom of a high order flowed from Benjamin Franklin (1706–90), a statesman, inventor, author and a signer of The Declaration of Independence. He was a devotee of freedom whom each of us should try to emulate.

Franklin, as much as anyone, gave birth to the American miracle: a government strictly limited to keeping the peace and invoking a common justice, with everyone free to act creatively as he or she pleases. The above quotation leads us to reflect on the question: Do we or do we not have time enough? The answers are greatly varied, ranging from brilliant to depressing.

I begin with some samplings of the latter, prior to testimony from the brilliant. It is joyful to present the brilliant last in order to demonstrate where lies our hope for the future. On the depressing side, here is Demetrius, a character from Shakespeare: “Time makes all things worse.”

Time does, indeed, darken the lives of millions. Lacking any aspirations to enlighten themselves, their potentialities lie dormant. These are people content to live off others. They depend on others for the creative ideas that make their existence possible, and also get food stamps, social security and ever so many other governmental hand-outs. The longer they live the more life worsens for them.

Without identifying the authors, here are a few more examples of the depressing:

Time cuts down all.

Time is the slave of error.

Time was made for slaves.

Learned man is an idler who kills time by study.

Surest poison is time.

Let us turn then to a more optimistic view of time. According to the American journalist Arthur Brisbane (1864–1936): “Regret for time wasted can become a power for good in the time that remains. And the time that remains is time enough, if we will only stop the waste and the idle, useless regretting.”

Whatever one’s aim in life and his level of achievement—be it success or failure, win or lose—never regret. Reflect on the millions who fail to get their chores into the past tense. Result? All is dismal, no hope! This is not only a mental sickness but an impediment to human progress. The road to success? A recognition of one’s countless blessings and the knowledge that there is time enough for individual ascendancy on the part of youngsters and adults alike. Keep always in mind this truism: One does not grow old: one becomes old by not growing!

Caleb C. Colton, English clergyman (1780–1832): “Much can be done in those little shreds and patches of time, which every day produces, and which most men throw away, but which nevertheless will make at the end of it no small deduction from the life of man.” Ever so many individuals have one or more good ideas daily. But ideas, as intuitive flashes, are like dreams—evanescent, fleeting, gone with the wind, as we say.

What must one do to avoid this intellectual calamity? Put it in writing; record every idea on paper the moment of reception! This is one of the reasons I have kept a daily journal for more than thirty years. Name a politico-economic thinker superior to one of FEE’s founders, Henry Hazlitt. He taught me this method years ago. Emulate him for intellectual progress!

Joseph Parker, English divine (1830–1902): “Our yesterdays follow us; they constitute our life, and they give character and force and meaning to our present deeds.” Live each day well, for today is tomorrow’s yesterday and yesterday’s tomorrow. Thus, if we would give character and force to the days and years ahead, we must concentrate on perfecting our character. When the late J. Pierpont Morgan (1837–1913), famous banker, was asked what he considered the best bank collateral, he replied, “Character.” Were I a banker and had the choice of an individual with high undeviating character or present-day government bonds as collateral, which would I take? The answer is obvious!

The American statesman Robert C. Winthrop (1809–94): “The greatest contribution which any man can make for the benefit of posterity, is that of good character. The richest bequest which any man can leave to the youth of his native land, is that of a shining, spotless example.” Let each of us improve our own character to the point where we are first-rate exemplars of freedom for one and all!

I shall conclude with another wise observation by Benjamin Franklin: “Does thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

24

SWEET LAND OF LIBERTY

Let our object be our country, our whole country, and nothing but our country. And, by the blessing of God, may that country itself become a vast and splendid monument, not of oppression and terror, but of wisdom, of peace, and of liberty, upon which the world may gaze with admiration forever.

—DANIEL WEBSTER

This American author and statesman (1782–1852) gained the reputation of being the greatest orator of his time. Among his many attainments, he served in the House of Representatives, later in the Senate, and later on as Secretary of State. His wisdom is worthy of our serious reflections.

May America become “a vast and splendid monument” for the peoples of the world, including those of our nation today; and may future generations forever gaze upon it as representing the most remarkable achievement in all history, namely, the politico-economic structure created by our Founding Fathers. Let us also hope that Americans and those in other countries will not look upon the world’s slump toward socialism as a model to emulate.

Socialism is featured by many kinds of “oppression.” Two samples: (1) the squelching of citizens’ desire to act creatively as they please, as for instance, the law forbidding the private delivery of first-class mail; and (2) the fantastic domination of everyone by political know-it-alls, that is, those who know not how to run their own lives but “know” how to run the lives of the entire citizenry!

With regard to monuments, hear the French novelist Joseph Joubert (1754–1824): “Monuments are the grappling-irons that bind one generation to another.” Concerning the freedom way of life: the depth of our understanding and the clarity of our explanation will either bloom in the next generation, or freedom will fade. Let us strive now for that excellence which will cause future generations to bloom!

The English critic and author William Hazlitt (1778–1830), observed: “They only deserve a monument who do not need one; that is, who have raised themselves a monument in the minds and memories of men.” An outstanding freedom mentor of our day, Henry Hazlitt, a descendant of William Hazlitt, might be considered a monument. How come? He seeks wisdom from his long-ago relative, and ever so many other sages over the centuries. Henry, as his forebear, William, is a monument to thousands in this and other countries.

Calvin Coolidge, a statesman and a monument in the political realm, advised us: “Patriotism is easy to understand in America. It means looking out for yourself by looking out for your country.” There is no way to look out for our country except to look out for one’s self—Self-improvement today and continuing through all of our tomorrows!

Said Senator Carl Schurz in a speech before the Senate in 1872:

Our country right or wrong!

When right to be kept right;

When wrong to be put right!

Only a patriot could make such a pronouncement. For a century prior to that speech our country ranked high in the scale of politico-economic righteousness, that is, more so than any other past or present. But then began a decline toward socialism, the authoritarian way of life. Your role and mine? Put our country right!

Daniel Webster believed in: “Liberty and union, now and forever, one and inseparable.” John Dickinson (1732–1808), confirmed the idea: “By union we stand; by dividing we fall.” These two statesmen of an earlier day had thoughts in accord with Schurz’s wisdom: “When wrong to be put right.” Let our tactics harmonize with their rightness!

The American lawyer Emery A. Storrs (1835–85) said that: “Love of country is one of the loftiest virtues; and so treason against it has been considered among the most damning of sins.” My love for my country accounts for one of my highest aspirations, namely, trying constantly to better understand and explain the freedom philosophy.

Treason against one’s country is, indeed, “among the most damning of sins.” And what greater treason than to subject one’s country to the ravages of socialism! Let us free our country of the fallacies of coercive collectivism.

Benjamin Disraeli, English statesman and author (1804–81), added that: “Patriotism depends as much on mutual suffering as on mutual success, and it is by that experience of all fortunes and all feelings that a great national character is created.” Those of us who believe in liberty suffer as we observe and experience present-day trends in the direction of all-out statism. Is our suffering to be lamented? To the contrary, it stimulates us to expose the fallacies of socialism and to explain why everyone should be free to act creatively as he or she pleases!

Longfellow realized that politico-economic predicaments, socialism being one of many, stimulate, at least in thoughtful individuals, an intellectual strength to overcome: “Know how sublime a thing is to suffer and be strong.” And Gamaliel Bailey, American journalist (1807–59), added this thought: “Night brings out stars as sorrow shows us truth.” Patriotism, when viewed aright, accounts for numerous high characters, those devoted to liberty for one and all!

Let us conclude with this patriotic verse by Samuel Smith (1808–95), a Baptist clergyman and author of our national hymn, “America”:

My country, ’tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing.

25

TO ASPIRE AFTER VIRTUE

There is but one pursuit in life which it is in the power of all to follow, and of all to attain. It is subject to no disappointments, since he that perseveres makes every difficulty an advancement, and every conquest a victory; and this is the pursuit of virtue. Sincerely to aspire after virtue is to gain her; and zealously to labor after her ways is to receive them.

—CALEB C. COLTON

This English clergyman (1780–1832), in the above, has made an observation that deserves a great deal of careful reflection. Virtue? The dictionary defines it as “goodness, morality, righteousness.”

What might be the highest goal for one who aspires to virtue? The English economist John Stuart Mill (1806–73) gave the best answer known to me: “It would not be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract to the concrete, than to endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.” Attainable? No, it is not, but it is the road to virtue!

There would be no road to virtue for any individual not blest with its components: integrity, honor, honesty, humility, teachableness, awe, that is, a sense of wonder before the mystery of Creation. Wrote Shakespeare: “There are more things in Heaven and earth than are dreamed of in your philosophy.” The virtuous individual has the humility that graced The Bard of Avon: he realized that freedom at the human level is also couched in mystery. The importance of this realization? Evolution replaces devolution, spawned by know-it-all-ness, the greatest plague to progress.

William Penn (1644–1718), English Quaker, American colonist and founder of Pennsylvania, made this vital distinction: “To be innocent is to be not guilty; but to be virtuous is to overcome our evil feelings and intentions.” Citizens by the millions are guilty and more or less innocently. Example: They partake in governmental handouts coercively derived from income honestly acquired—food stamps being but a fraction of such legal thievery. However, their innocence relieves them from feeling guilty. But it is possible for those poor souls to overcome their naivete by discovering their potentialities.

The explanation as to why so many rot on the vine, as we say—life’s mission at an end—is that they fail to recognize an undeniable truth so well expressed by the eminent psychologist Fritz Kunkel: “Immense hidden powers lurk in the unconscious of the most common man, indeed, of all people without exception.”

Laurence Sterne (1713–68), English clergyman and novelist, explained: “A great deal of virtue, at least the outward appearance of it, is not so much from any fixed principle, as the terror of what the world will say and the liberty it will take upon the occasion we shall give.”

There are many individuals who are virtuous, as this relates to their belief in the Truth of freedom. But will they speak or write this Truth as they comprehend it? So at odds is this Truth with popular jargon, a growing belief in socialism, that their witness is scorned. Scorn they fear and they remain silent: intellectual cowards! And as Shakespeare said: “Cowards die many times before their death; the valiant die but once.” These intellectual infants, doubtless unknowingly, join freedom’s opponents, and liberty is denigrated!

According to the French mathematician and philosopher Blaise Pascal (1623–62): “The virtue of a man ought to be measured not by his extraordinary exertions but by his everyday conduct.”

In my case, I do not employ “extraordinary exertion” as I strive for an understanding and explanation of the freedom philosophy. Instead, my work is one of my countless joys and blessings—my number one desire. Wrote Saint Augustine: “Blessedness consists in the accomplishment of our desires and in having only regular desires.” My desire, as set forth above, is regular—day in and day out.

Caleb Colton added this truth: “He that is good will infallibly become better, and he that is bad will as certainly become worse, for vice, virtue and time are three that never stand still.”

Become better? ’Tis intellectual, moral and spiritual progress. The Sumerians of 4,500 years ago had the problem of a nonproductive desert. A few good thinkers discovered the way to fertility and the first civilization. Later, some political know-it-alls turned the wonderful evolution into a lamentable devolution.

England is another example. For several centuries—until about 150 years ago—mercantilism, no less authoritarian than serfdom, feudalism or communism, stifled the masses. Result? Creativity was more or less dormant—deadened!

However, the ideas of that great thinker Adam Smith were beginning to bear fruit through such spokesmen as John Bright and Richard Cobden, assisted by the counsel of Frederic Bastiat. They explained not only the fallacy of mercantilism but the truth of that great principle: freedom in transactions. Result? Evolution—prosperity for the masses. Later, devolution. Have a look at England today.

The above are only two of ever so many evolutionary/devolutionary sequences. The U.S.A. has experienced a similar rise and decline. We were a leader among nations for about a century. And then the holocaust, a slump into more and more socialism.

Thank Heaven that vice, virtue and time never stand still. We should and will use our time to acquire the virtue which will result in evolution.

Another good thought by Colton: “Power will intoxicate the best hearts, as wine the strongest heads. No man is wise enough to be trusted with unlimited power.”

Shakespeare adds his enlightenment: “Man, proud man! Dressed in a little brief authority, plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven as make the angels weep.”

Let’s try to make the angels smile at us. How? Never, under any circumstance, attempt running the lives of others or even suggesting that they imitate us. What then? Direct all the power we possess at self-improvement. To the extent that we devotees of freedom succeed in an understanding and explanation of our philosophy, to that extent will others be drawn to this harmonious and peaceful way of life!

26

GREATNESS

If the title of great man ought to be reserved for him who cannot be charged with an indiscretion or a vice; who spent his life in establishing the independence, the glory, and durable prosperity of his country; who succeeded in all that he undertook, and whose successes were never won at the expense of honor, justice, integrity, or by the sacrifice of a single principle—this title will not be denied to Washington.

—JARED SPARKS

A doff of the hat to George Washington, a man of pure and undeviating principle. Jared Sparks (1789–1866)—clergyman, historian, Harvard president—was a man cut from the same cloth. Washington would have been as proud of him as Sparks was of the Father of our country. Were numerous citizens in command of such righteousness as these two men exhibited, ours would be a better world. Such attainments deserve our deepest and most sincere thoughts.

Excluded from greatness are the millions who practice various forms of vice. They range, for example, from the out-and-out thief to those who use governments—federal, state and local—to do their robbing for them. A tariff, for instance, perpetrates double robbery; it robs foreigners of American customers and at the same time it robs American producers of foreign customers. It would take many more pages than space allows to list the various vices now in practice—everything from minimum wages to maximum hours to peanut subsidies.

Before emphasizing the laudable—“never the sacrifice of a single principle”—let me offer two commentaries on the destructiveness of vice.

The American clergyman Nathaniel Emmons (1745–1840):

Vice is the bane of a republic, and saps the foundations of liberty. If our industry, economy, temperance, justice and public faith are once extinguished by the opposite vices, our boasted constitution which is built on the pillars of virtue, must necessarily fall.

Edmund Burke:

Vice incapacitates a man from all public duty; it withers the power of his understanding, and makes his mind paralytic.

Napoleon was famous and feared by men for the power he wielded. While he failed to direct the lives of his wife and children, he had no doubt about his ability to direct the lives of all Frenchmen. How grateful we should be for Waterloo!

We have in the U.S.A. countless politicians and citizens who know not how to run their own lives but, like the Little Corporal, they believe in their ability to run the lives of other Americans. Reflect on the countless individuals who use all the strength they possess to gain fame, notoriety, applause, conspicuousness. Theirs is, indeed, a solitary, antisocial glory.

Let us not dwell on the results of vice but emphasize, instead, those who stand ramrod straight for justice and integrity, who would never sacrifice a single principle. These we can and should honor. The American poet William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878):

Greatness lies, not in being strong, but in the right using of strength; and strength is not used rightly when it serves only to carry a man above his fellows for his own solitary glory. He is the greatest whose strength carries up the most hearts by the attraction of his own.

Bryant, writing the above perhaps ten decades before the founding of FEE, emphasized the identical “attracting” procedure we have suggested to anyone interested in advancing the freedom philosophy: Become so proficient in understanding and explaining freedom that others will seek your tutorship. Ours is a learning and not a selling problem!

The American educator Horace Mann (1796–1859) told us that: “If any man seeks for greatness, let him forget greatness and seek for truth and he will find both.”

Never seek for greatness; this is to put ambition ahead of performance. Seek first for truth and to the extent truth is discovered, to that extent will others classify one as great. Wrote the English clergyman and Dean of St. Paul’s, William Ralph Inge (1860–1954): “To seek the truth, for the sake of knowing the truth, is one of the noblest objects a man can live for.” The more persons who pursue this noble object, the more will freedom reign! “The truth shall make you free.”

The clergyman William Ellery Channing (1780–1842):

The greatest man is he who chooses with invincible resolution; who resists the sorest temptations from within and without; who bears the heaviest burdens cheerfully; who is calmest in storms, and most fearless under menace and frowns; and whose reliance on truth, on virtue, and on God, is most unfaltering.

Imagine, if you can, the abrupt reversal of present trends were all clergymen to equal Channing’s understanding and example! So let us strive to emulate this great man’s devotion to truth, virtue and Creation!

The English statesman Lord Brougham (1778–1868), tells us: “The true test of a great man—that, at least, which must secure his place among the highest order of great men—is his having been in advance of his age.” Of all great men, Jesus of Nazareth, the Perfect Exemplar, heads the list. Here are several famous men who were in advance of their age, listed in the order of their earthly life, and a sampling of their pearls of wisdom.

Confucius: “Learning without thought is labor lost; thought without learning is perilous.”

Socrates: “The more I know the more I know I do not know.”

Aristotle: “Our characters are the result of our conduct.”

Edmund Burke: “Depend upon it, the lovers of freedom will be free.”

Adam Smith: “Those parts of education for the teaching of which there are no public institutions, are generally the best taught.”

John Adams: “All men are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights.”

Benjamin Franklin: “Where liberty dwells, there is my country.”

Thomas Jefferson: “Equal rights for all, special privilege for none.”

Goethe: “Epochs of faith, are epochs of fruitfulness; but epochs of unbelief, however glittering are barren of all permanent good.”

Daniel Webster: “Knowledge is the only fountain, both of the love and the principles of human liberty.”

Frederic Bastiat: “Where goods do not cross border lines, soldiers will.”

Emerson: “Knowledge is the antidote to fear; Knowledge, Use and Reason, with its higher aids.”

Grover Cleveland: “Though the people support the Government, the Government should not support the people.”

Thomas Alva Edison: “Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.”

Calvin Coolidge: “There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, anytime.”

Let more of us emulate these great men, by being in advance of our age, so that freedom may reign for one and all.

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