Planned Chaos And The New Idolatry; E. Opitz

PLANNED THE NEW CHAOS AND IDOLATRY IF WE COULD take a sampling of American public opinion, asking people, "Are you for communism or against it?" an overwhelming majority of our fellow citizens would be in opposition. They would accept the anticommunist label as readily as most of us. How could they do otherwise, with communism's ugly record of the past forty years spread before all eyes? What are the in gredien ts of this record? Revolution, treason, and be trayal were present from the beginning. As the record unfolds, it becomes ever more grim; concentration camps, torture, and mass murder; broken treaties, conquest, and the suppression of whole peoples. And the end is not in sighL Comm unism did not invent the crimes it practices; history, as Edward Gibbon remarked in his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire) "is indeed little more than the register of the crimes, follies, and misfortunes of man kind." But if we examine the present world crisis center ing around communism, we discover two things which are new.

The Reverend Mr. Optiz is a member of the staff of the Foundation for· Economic Education. 237 238 EDMUND A. OPITZ There is, first of all, the magnitude of this tyranny, not only in terms of the area over which it holds sway and the countless millions of people it controls, but also in terms of the penetration of this control into each man's life. Ancient tyrannies-no matter how boundless their ambitions-were limited in extent by the difficulties of communication and supply. Genghis Khan and Tam erlane overran vast territories, killing and terrorizing, but they were hampered by the practical problems of logistics and policing. Present-day conquerors avail themselves of the latest technological advances in every field; in transport, as well as in the use of the written and spoken word. And they have discovered new tech niques for securing "cooperation" by intimidation and scientific terror, so that people police each other.

The second new thing about modern tyranny emerges from the first. Communism is not simply a mere revival of ancient slavery or serfdom; it seeks to dominate the minds of its subjects as well as their bodies. Communism uses its population as drudges, and by Stakhanovite methods seeks to get more production out of them. But it does not stop there. Communism claims the hearts and souls of men, as well as their bodies. It seeks to create a new man, independent of the old ties which bound man to family, country, and God. To the extent that communism succeeds in severing men from their old attachments, it fails; its "new men" become monsters. In spite of these things, there have been communists and fellow travelers among us. They are with us yet. Some are influential and articulate. But despite a generaPLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 239 tion and a half of communist propaganda, comparatively few Americans adopt the party line-so long as it bears a "Made in Moscow" label.

The 1930's, it is true, were spoken of as "The Red Decade," but this red tinge, after all, afHicted only a relatively few persons. There was, of course, the honey moon period during World War II when Russia was our "noble ally." This was a period when people who should have known better joined all kinds of "Front" organizations and coughed every time Joe Stalin had a tickle in his throat. But when the crusading fervor of World War II wore off, we took another look at the Soviets, and there was the same old dictatorial rule, the concentration camps as before, the continuing political murders, the under handed penetration of all governments including our own by communist agents and dupes, the conquests, the brutal suppression of natural human aspirations for more freedom (as in Hungary)-and we began again to see communism for what it really is: ancient tyranny plus all the modern refinements.

Com1nuniS11t: a Twofold Danger As a result, Americans are now aroused against com munism as never before. They see it as a twofold danger; as a subversive ideology, and as an armed revo lution. Communism, in the first place, is a kind of ersatz religion, a challenge and a threat to our whole way of life. In the second place, communism is an armed revolu240 EDMUND A. OPITZ tionary movement which threatens our very lives. Nat urally, therefore, Americans want to defend themselves at both levels; the spiritual as well as the military. Defense at both levels is important, but the spiritual is more important than the military. Coming from a clergyman, this may sound like a mere sentimental ges ture, so let me try to explain. Power is not the same thing as brute strength. If it were, we would not be here talking about the threat of communism, for modern communism began a little more than a century ago as a defenseless idea, or ideology, in the brain of Karl Marx. When this ideology was first unleashed, it had no military hardware at its disposal, and it had little elsel A number of researchers have shown that Marx did not have original opinions in eco nomics, politics, or intrigue; instead, he picked the brains of other men. But he dressed up these old ideas so attractively and imparted such a spin to them that they have ever since exerted an almost irresistible attrac tion on millions of men. The times were ripe for such a movement as Marx launched; and nothing, as Victor Hugo has told us, is so powerful as an idea whose time has come. Long before Marxism took root the once healthy soil of Western culture had been prepared for just such perverted growth.

In the early years of the twentieth century a self-un employed lawyer and political exile was living in a foreign country in a rundown boarding house. He lived on handouts. He wrote angry tracts, made rabble rous ing speeches, and plotted the Revolution. As World War PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 241 I drew to a close, he seized control of a great country and set brush fires on every continent. The man's name was Lenin. He had no physical power at the outset, but he lived for an idea. It was an evil idea to which he de voted his life, but the Marxist ideology which consumed him forged ahead until it invested itself with today's Soviet military machine. But the real power was in the idea; once this idea began to take hold of men's minds, military weapons gravitated toward it. Once this idea begins to lose its hold on men's minds~ the weapons will start to fall away. Attack the Idea Ludwig von Mises, the eminent economist and social philosopher, puts the point as follows: "One can become a leader only if one is supported by an ideology which makes other people tractable and accommodating. Might is thus not a physical and tangible thing, but a moral and spiritual phenomenon. A king's might rests upon the recognition of the monarchial ideology on the part of his subjects." This insight accords with the advice of the French revolutionist who told his followers: "Don't attack the king; attack the idea of monarchy."

The Marxist ideology has seeped into several coun tries and these countries have armies. We must, there fore, keep our guard up against a possible military threat, and this we are doing. We spend a great deal of money each year on ships, planes, tanks, bombs, and missiles. Furthermore, we have some able military minds and 242 EDMUND A. OPITZ technicians among us. Even though our military defense system is not all it should be, and may be sad_Iy lacking in certain sectors, it is in far better shape than our intel lectual, moral, and spiritual defenses. Our real enemy, basically, is not a foreign army; it is an alien philosophy. The real danger is that we will disown our native heri tage of religious, political, and economic beliefs and re place them with beliefs patterned after the ideology of our opponents. Should this actually take place, they will have gained the victory without firing a shot.

To a greater extent than we like to admit, this is hap pening. It may happen even among a people who regard themselves as anticommunist, if they are betrayed into the comforting belief that communism is an external and foreign threat only. Admiral Ben Moreell has put his finger on this danger. "Communism is a species of blasphemous religion," he writes, "operating under several guises, or aliases, the Moscow variety being the most obtrusive." He concludes his catalog of communism's aliases by saying: "And, finally, there is 'domesticated communism,' a species which is far more destructive of our social and political institutions than any of the others. Its followers denounce 'communism,' in the abstract, with all the vigor at their command. But, at the same time, they ad vocate measures which ideologically differ little from the program promoted by Marx and Lenin. We Americans have repeatedly been alerted against an unanalyzed thing labeled 'communism.' But many of our people have not been alerted against the specific political and economic PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 243 measures which, taken together are communism. They readily accept the heart of the communist doctrine, which is the enhancement of political power at the ex~ pense of the natural rights of the individual."

For the Mind and Soul of Man What we are witnessing today is a world-wide battle for the mind and soul of man-in education, in religion, and in politics. It is a contest to determine the system of values to which men will give their final allegiance. Call this a battle of propaganda, if you will; and in this area we must admit that it's Russia by a mile. Our predicament, in a nutshell, is illustrated by the famous statement of the then General Eisenhower about his conversations with Marshall Zhukov. "We tried to explain to each other," said Eisenhower, "just what our systems meant, to the individual, and I was very hard put to it when he insisted that their system ap pealed to the idealistic, and we completely to the ma terialistic, and I had a very tough time trying to defend our position .... You run against arguments that almost leave you breathless; you don't know how to meet them."

Genuine loyalty to a code of values must be freely given. This is not a matter for the intellect alone, but a man who cannot give reasons for the faith that is in him and meet the arguments against it is in danger of losing that faith. It is not enough merely to proclaim our devotion to the American System; we must seek to understand what it is and how it came to us. Unless we 244 EDMUND A. OPITZ are aware of the spiritual and moral antecedents of our way of life, as well as the political and economic impli cations of it, we will lose what Abraham Lincoln called "the last best hope of earth." Militrary Preparedness A growing number of people are now aware that mili tary preparedness is but a phase of the war which is total. The enemy we confront seeks to disarm us intel lectually; he seeks to confuse our systems of loyalties, to distort our values, to capture our very souls. Hence, the crucial need for a rebirth of our own philosophy. In addition to this, we must understand the ideology of comm unism and its various techniq ues for advancing its aims short of military conquest. Some of these tech niques make use of "double-think" and "double-talk."

To illustrate: The Soviet Union denounces imperial ism and colonialism, and becomes the greatest imperial and colonial power in history. It uses the concept of de mocracy to buttress autocracy. It perverts the judicial processes to wring confessions from innocent men. This is warfare in another dimension than the military. It even goes beyond what is usually called "psychological warfare." 'The aim of war always has been to impose your will on the enemy or to prevent him from imposing his will on you. Propaganda has always accompanied arms, but main reliance in the past has been on physical force. You inflict damage on the enemy's soldiers and destroy PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 245 his property until his will to resist has been broken. But modern refinements of propaganda techniques are so effective that in many instances the will can be gotten at directly to soften or break it. Something of this sort happened to many of our soldiers in the Korean War, in the process called "brainwashing."

Confused about Communism It is understandable, though it may be regrettable, that many of our young soldiers in Korea had no clear comprehension of communist ideology. This disability they share with a majority of our fellow Americans to day. "Communism," for all too many Americans, is simply a label which they have been conditioned to dis trust, hate, or fear. But if you ask them for an exposi tion of the ideology behind the label, they are at a loss. We have paid for this ignorance, and we continue to pay for it; but it is not the worst of our afflictions. It is bad enough that we as a people are untaught as to commu nist ideology and methods, but it is inexcusable negli gence that millions of Americans go through college, and millions more through high school, and do not know what Americanism is! Try an experiment. Ask a dozen or so of your friends how many have read T'he Federalist. Ask them to give a coherent account of the philosophy and structure of the federal republic projected by the Founding Fathers.

When you have done this, wonder no more that there were defectors in Korea! We Americans have lost touch 246 EDMUND A. OPITZ with the wellsprings of our national life. Is it any won der, then, that this confused generation, ignorant of Marxism and Americanism alike, offers so little resistance to communism, except on the level of labels? Not Clear about Liberty If one were asked to sum up in a phrase the essential meaning of American life as projected by the Founding Fathers, what words would he choose? Permit me to answer this question by offering the phrase, "liberty and justice for all," as epitomizing the American ideal. These words have relevance to our workaday world, to the realm of economic life, its meaning, and its freedom, but they carry religious overtones as well. Our religious heritage spells out into personal liberty in the· political and social spheres. The God who gave us freedom to accept or reject Him certainly intends us to be free in our relationships with other men.

This leads logically to the general philosophy of free dom which includes liberty in the economic sphere as one of its particulars. Once, perhaps, this could be taken for granted, but not in today's troubled world. Our situ ation has changed with reference to the roles of citizen and government; the balance of power has shifted to government, and the political power which _was once dispersed in this country in municipal, county, and state units has been largely concentrated in Washington. Cen tralization of political power is the pattern in all coun tries, whether they are behind the Iron Curtain or on PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 247 this side of it. The liberties we once enjoyed as our birthright and exercised according to our own discre tion have been annexed by society or by the state. For merly, we enjoyed independence; now we are grateful for parole during good behavior.

Both in theory and in practice we have gone from inherent and inalienable freedom to what might be called a kind of discretionary serfdom. Once 'we were free to initiate our own pattern of action and follow our own wisdom and conscience-provided our actions did not infringe the equal rights of all other persons. Now, we are allowed to do whatever the state or the law permits. Presently we have a great deal of latitude withia the state's area of permissiveness, so that we hardly feel its yoke upon our necks. But if we accept the principle that the state is our master and the endower of such rights as it tolerates, then we must look forward to this mastery being exercised over us with ever-increasing rigor. We still dwell under the protection of the old idea that an individual has God and the right on his side when he challenges the immoral actions of an unjust state. But this idea dwindles as its religious underpinning is eroded.

Governments Establisbed To Secure Men in Their God-given Rights The basic premises of the American system are to be found in the Declaration of Independence, where it is asserted that each man derives certain rights from God.

248 EDMUND A. OPITZ "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." Governments are established-according to this philoso phy-to secure men in their God-given rights. Constitu tions and political structures merely formalize the outer and social freedom which men's inner and spiritual lib erty demands. If government fails in its primary task of defending men's birthright of freedom, men are justified in altering or abolishing it, so the Declaration reads, and may then "provide new Guards for their future security." The inherent rights idea which was so prominent in the thinking of the Founding Fathers is but the im mediate application to political philosophy of the Chris tian idea of man as a creature of God and accountable to God for the proper ordering of the soul for which he alone is responsible. The late Dean lnge spoke of Chris tianity's "deep-rooted individualism." He asserted that 4Cassuredly its tendency is to claim 'natural rights' for every human being as such."

The Marxist Idea In contrast to this statement there is the declaration of the late Sidney Webb, the godfather of Fabian social ism: "The first step must be to rid our minds of the idea that there are any such things in social matters as ab stract rights." And Marxism, denying God, logically PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 249 denies the idea of individual rights. In so doing it re duces individuals from persons in their own right to mere units of the state. Communism, with all its ugly features, follows logically from this initial premise. Party line communism with a "Made in Moscow" la bel on it is not popular in America. It doesn't need to be. Its unpopularity does not matter, if only we can be induced to accept the Marxist ideology under some other label. This we are doing. Americans have been run ning away from their own revolution-which for the first time gave political form to· the "individual rights Creator sovereignty idea" -in order to embrace an alien program saturated with Marxism. They do this under the delusion that there is some safe middle ground be tween the idea of freedom, on the one side, and com munism on the other.

But there is no such neutral ground! There is only one place to take a stand, if we are really opposed to Marxism, and that is to stand uncompromisingly with the philosophy of freedom, including its spiritual and moral antecedents together with its political and eco nomic implications. Rights as Demands The key idea of freedom, as I have emphasized, is the conviction that men derive their rights from the Creator. This is a religious idea, so I turned to a "Report on the Changing Dimensions of Human Rights" recently issued by a national church group. I was gratified to see that 250 EDMUND A. OPITZ the Report quoted the Declaration of Independence and then went on to say: "Human rights belong to persons because of what in God's grace they are, not because of the political power of the state." But my gratification vanished when I saw how the authors of this report spelled out their premise, and in so doing changed the concept of "rights" into "demands"

or "goals." "Where formerly human rights were limited mainly to those political rights which governments have protected," reads the Report, "they now extend their orbit to include a whole galaxy of social and economic goals in the attainment of which people look to their democratic, representative governments as instruments." Human "rights" were once thought of as endowed by God. "Rights" have now been debased into demands which people may make of the state for "social and eco nomic goals." The state has no means of its own for meeting such demands, so, in practice, this concept of "rights as demands" means the creation of pressure groups to secure favors from the state for their mem bers at the expense of people not so organized. This is, of course, a fiat denial of the latter's rights. That a church group should sponsor such a philosophy is a measure of our intellectual and spiritual decline.

The framers of our institutions, Madison said, rested all their experiments upon "the capacity of mankind for self-government." In order that men might have an area for the exercise of their natural freedom, government was to be limited to certain delegated and specified func tions. Our government was not designed to administer PLANNED CHAOS AND THE NEW IDOLATRY 251 the affairs of men; it was designed to administer justice among men who run their own affairs." "Free government," as Jefferson wrote, "is founded in jealousy, and not in confidence; it is jealousy and not confidence which prescribes limited constitutions, to bind down those whom we are obliged to trust with power. . . . Our Constitution has accordingly fixed the limits to which, and no further, our con fidence may go.... In questions of power, then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution."

When government is limited to well-defined and well understood functions and duties in society, men have plenty of elbowroom to go about their creative and productive tasks. This is the meaning of freedom in human affairs, and such freedom as we have enjoyed in America is the result of keeping government within its proper bounds. "The history of liberty," as Woodrow Wilson told us in 1912, "is the history of the limitations placed upon governmental power." The Founding Fathers were heirs of the spiritual faith which, in the fullness of time, gave rise to political lib erty. We stand in the same line of succession, and thus we have at hand all the ingredients for a possible rebirth of freedom. Only the will is lacking, and only our in dividual initiative can make it up. What we do or don't do with our lives can mean victory or defeat for the things that matter most for us and our posterity.