Gulliver and the Planners; H. Smith

Two hundred and fifty years ago, Jo:p.athan Swift, the world's greatest political satirist, devised a similar plan. His hero, Gulliver, on his third trip to strange lands, was cast up on the island of Balni barbi. This large island was ruled by a king who lived with his court on a flying island called Laputa. This second island was about four and a half miles in diameter, and could be raised, lowered, or pro41 42 THE FREEMAN October pelled by force of attraction or repulsion imposed by an adjustable lode stone or magnet attached to the under side of the island. The king, like all kings, was in fallible and had divine rights. In case of insurrection on the part of any town or city in his domain of Balnibarbi, he had a number of recourses. He could station his flying island over the offending city, cutting it off from rain or sunshine to the detriment of crops and the economy. If the rebellion persisted, large rocks would be dropped on the inhabitants and their dwellings destroyed. As a final punishment, the king might order his island to plop down on the wayward metropolis, flatten ing it completely and killing all its inhabitants. This last extreme was seldom used, since the king's ministers usually had property in each town, as did the king. Fur thermore, there was some danger of destroying his floating home and vantage point.

In addition to maintaining law and order by this unique method, the king and his court controlled the economy of the main island through rule by expert. Gulliver spent some time on the floating island and later descended to the main kingdom where he was befriended by a lord who was out of favor at court. This lord took him on a tour of the kingdom which was in a sad state of dis order brought about by hair brained schemes of the govern ment planners. However, this lord's own lands were prosperous and well tended by using proven methods. His failure to adopt gov ernment procedures had caused his fall from favor. Gulliver de scribes the lord's account of con ditions as follows: That about forty years ago certain persons went up to Laputa, either upon business or diversion, and after five months continuance, came back with a very little smattering in mathematics, but full of volatile spirits acquired in that airy region.

Tha t these persons upon their return began to dislike the management of everything below, and fell into schemes of putting all arts, sciences, languages, and mechanics upon a new foot. To this end they procured a royal patent for erecting an Acad emy of Proj ectors [planners] in Lagado [the capital city]; and the humour prevailed so strongly among the people, that there is not a town of any consequence in the kingdom without such an academy. In these colleges the professors contrive new rules and methods of agriculture and building, and new instruments and tools for all trades and manufac tures, whereby, as they undertake, one man shall do the work of ten; a palace may be built in a week, of materials so durable as to last for ever without repairing. All the fruits 1965 GULLIVER AND THE PLANNERS 43 of the earth shall come to maturity at whatever season we think fit to choose, and increase an hundred fold more than they do at present, with innumerable other happy proposals.

The only inconvenience is, that none of these projects are yet brought to perfection, and in the mean time, the whole country lies miserably waste, the houses· in ruins, and the people without food or clothes. By all which, instead of being dis couraged, they are fifty times more violently bent upon prosecuting their schemes, driven equally on by hope and despair; that as for himself [the conservative lord], being not of an enterprising spirit, he was content to go on in the old forms, to live in the houses his ancestors had built, and act as they did in every part of life without innovation. That some few other persons of quality and gentry had done the same, but were looked on with an eye of contempt and ill-will, as enemies to art, ig norant, and ill commonwealth's-men, preferring their own ease and sloth before the general improvement of their country. By this last, Swift did not mean to imply that he was against true progress. As the giant king of Brobdingnag had said to Gull iver on an earlier voyage: "Who ever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."

Finally, Gulliver admits to the reader rather sheepishly that at one time in his youth he, too, had been a planner. Anxious to visit the planning academies of Balnibarbi, he takes leave of his friend the lord which he relates as follows: In a few days we came back to town, and his Excellency, consider ing the bad character he had in the Academy, would not go with me him self, but recommended me to a friend of his to bear me company thither. My lord was pleased to represent me as a great admirer of projects, and a person of much curiosity and easy belief; which indeed was not without truth, for I had myself been a sort of projector in my younger days. Thus, we see that similar men talities are still with us: that the mind which would rule the world with an international satellite based police force, is the same mind which would plan our daily lives. While it cannot be said that the United States has as yet lost out to the "projectors," much of our planet "lies miserably waste,"

with strangulated and languishing economies, as can be found in parts of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and South America, all vic tims of state planning. + 13. The ~Vemocratic " Elite CLARENCE B. CARSON THERE have been strange and in consistent developments in the movement toward what is billed as democracy in twentieth century America. The phrase that all men are equal has been a rallying cry of professed democrats. They have proclaimed their shock at the ex istence of distinctions, discrimina tion, and hierarchies. Leveling has been much in favor among them. Yet these democrats appear to have developed myopia where ce:r tain kinds of distinctions are con cerned. This is most pronounced where the presidency of the Dr. Carson is Professor of American History at Grove City College, Pennsylvania. Among his earlier writings in THE FREEMAN were his series on The Fateful Turn and The American Tradition, both of which are now available as books.