• CHAPTER 12 • CAN BUSY PEOPLE BECOME LIBERTARIAN LEADERS?

A YOUNG BUSINESSMAN with whom I have a firsthand acquaintance has just begun a new and technical enterprise—from scratch and on a shoestring—straining all his energies and thoughts with only one end in view: getting his entrepreneurial duckling airborne. All other activities have been relegated to second place.

One other observation is relevant: This young man is a well-trained libertarian thinker, as accomplished as any businessman I know. With these facts in mind, it is understandable why he rebelled at a remark of mine: “Every American is doing all he knows how to do on behalf of liberty.” Concluding that he was doing nothing on behalf of liberty, while solely preoccupied with his new enterprise, he took my remark to infer that he didn’t know how to do anything. Mulling over his reaction, I came upon what to me is an important discovery and one which leads to the belief that this individual really is working on behalf of liberty in an effective manner. How? By employing what I choose to call “primary knowledge.” Not only does this man have primary knowledge to a marked degree but he practices it in every act of his specialized occupation.

Anyway, it was this sequence of talk and retrospection which led to a simple idea as to how our busiest people can assist in rescuing liberty from her present plight. They can do this without any more sacrifice of their chosen work than it takes to learn the essential features of primary knowledge and to get up the nerve to practice it—that is, to make it an integral part of their daily occupations, whatever they happen to be. Let me explain.

Primary Knowledge

While not customarily so divided, knowledge can be said to fall into two broad categories, primary and secondary. The nub of the idea under discussion is that liberty depends exclusively on primary knowledge and its practice, and not at all on secondary knowledge. If this be a correct thought, then the path to liberty’s rescue lies in simple outline, even though it may be a rugged path and call forth some difficult virtues to negotiate.

Primary knowledge, as the term suggests, is cognition of the fundamental type or, more precisely, knowledge of first importance. As hard to come by as some of it is, it requires little in the way of expensive schools or knowledge factories. It is, in a sense, a universal or natural knowledge which, when not realized, at least lies latent in man and can be freed, more or less, by conscious effort, the energizing of which is a strictly personal matter. The Law of Compensation is an instance: knowing that something dropped should be picked up; that a door opened should be closed; that a promise made should be kept; that money borrowed should be repaid; that with every right there is a responsibility. Other examples of primary knowledge:

Knowing how little one knows, an essential quality of the nonauthoritarian: HUMILITY.

Knowing of the rights of others, sometimes expressed as not doing unto others that which one would not have done unto self: JUSTICE.

Knowing enough to count one’s blessings—a riddance to envy, covetousness, political plunder: GRATITUDE.

Knowing the importance of accurately reflecting that which one believes to be right: INTEGRITY.

Knowing of a Consciousness over and beyond that of man (the rights to life and liberty are endowed by the Creator, not by the state): SPIRITUALITY.

Knowing that one’s own consciousness is expansible and knowing the high purpose of this unfolding or emerging or hatching process: AWARENESS.

Other Forms of Awareness

There are other forms of awareness that fall within the scope of primary knowledge. Awareness of danger is one. For example, were a person being held under water by another, he would struggle to free himself. Even animals have this instinctual type of knowledge.

But awareness or consciousness is on an inclining scale of its own. The loss of liberty, for instance, represents a danger much more difficult to discern than is the loss of oxygen which occasions drowning. The highly discerning person is aware that there can be no life where there are no liberties. Thus, fighting to retain liberty—a response to consciousness of danger—is tantamount to fighting for life itself, an action of first importance, an item far up the scale in the portfolio of primary knowledge.

Secondary Knowledge

Before commenting further on the relationship of primary knowledge to liberty, let’s briefly consider the nature of secondary knowledge. This embraces all forms of specialized learning. Without this type of knowledge there would have been no advances in agriculture or industry or construction. There would be no engineers or architects or other specialists. We would have no clothing as we know it, no sanitary paraphernalia, no cars, planes, harvesters, tools, engines, electric power and light, and so on. Indeed, no more of us would be living in these United States than a foraging economy could support.¹

But secondary knowledge, important as it is to life and to life extension, is actually a danger whenever we become so preoccupied with it that we leave primary knowledge unattended. This is to say that whenever we become enamored of wealth and so busy piling up its numerous manifestations that we have neither the time nor the will for primary knowledge, nor the nerve to practice it, the whole wealth apparatus must crumble—as the Empire State Building would topple had it no foundation.

Dangers of Compulsory Methods

The dangers of secondary knowledge, in the absence of primary knowledge and its practice, are quite obvious, and examples of the danger are all about us. For instance, people who wish cheaper power and light and who do not possess such aspects of primary knowledge as humility and justice will employ the coercive powers of government to take the fruits of the labor of others to gratify their desire. There are other people, similarly deficient in primary knowledge, who will forcibly take the income of others as reimbursement for not growing tobacco (farm subsidy programs) or to renew their downtown business section (federal urban renewal) or to place three men on the moon (outer space program) or to satisfy their own charitable inclinations (government welfare programs) or—name something they won’t do!

When we discuss how busy people can rescue liberty, we should stress the fact that it’s only those who are capable of busying themselves who can give liberty a hand. The unbusy, the ones who merely seek entertainment, amusement, escape from life’s problems, and self-indulgence can rarely be more than followers of whatever attracts them—not without changing their characters, an enormous undertaking.

This line of reasoning concludes that liberty is at the mercy of the practitioners of secondary knowledge, our busy specialists who, at the same time, possess primary knowledge. Liberty can’t be saved by those who retire into their ivory towers or take to the hills, so to speak, to bemoan its plight.² It is the individual who is active who pushes liberty over the brink—or rescues her—depending on the nature of his actions. Inactive people are as uninfluential on this question as is any inert mass.

Liberty Comes with Living

Is it not apparent that liberty depends exclusively on primary knowledge and its practice, and not at all on secondary knowledge? Liberty is not helped or harmed by knowledge of a mathematical formula or how to raise beef or bake bread or repair a motor. But dispense with justice, integrity, and other primary virtues, and liberty cannot exist. This is self-evident. So, there is no suggestion here that any person retire from or even diminish his activity in any honorable, specialized occupation. This is not a question of either specializing or rescuing liberty. Actually, it is a matter of doing both at the same time.

We have here the most important problem of integration there is—integrating primary knowledge with specialized practice, and on the part of busy people. Little more is required than a strict observance of the disciplines which primary knowledge supplies. Extend division of labor to the heart’s content as long as the specialized activities are within the framework of such virtues as integrity, willing exchange, and the rights of others. This will leave no loopholes to support or sponsor any of the legalized immoralities so rampant in our time.

No shoemaker would stick to his last were his shop burning down. He would try to put out the fire in order that he might again stick to his last. Aware persons know that their specialized busy-ness has no future except as liberty prevails. If each busy individual, in all his countless actions, would take no action except as it strictly accords with the axioms implicit in primary knowledge, that individual would be serving liberty persuasively and influentially. Radiating rightness is what this amounts to!

Every American is doing all he knows how to do on behalf of liberty. Does he know enough? If this thesis be correct, the answer ought to come quickly and clearly to any person who will ask himself the question.

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¹ Estimating our present population at 182,000,000, at least 181,000,000 of us would not exist. The foraging American Indians, even with some agriculture, never numbered over 1,000,000, probably no more than 250,000.

² This is only to frown on a withdrawal from life’s problems, not to belittle reflection and contemplation.