Is god a Keynesian? W. Chamberlin

38 WILLIAM HENRY CHAMBERLIN a conflict between Goldwater's "record and the judgment of the Christian churches on most of the major issues of our time." Dr. Joachim Prinz, president of the American Jewish Congress, went on record to the effect that "a Jewish vote for Goldwater is a vote for Jewish suicide." Equally strong was the statement of the Rev. William Sydnor, rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Alex andria, Virginia: When one listens to and reads Senator Goldwater, one finds that respect for God's law is shockingly absent. Never in the history of our nation have an aspirant for the pres idency and his backers espoused prin ciples and practices that so brazenly ignore God's commands dealing with love, peace, reconciliation, brother hood, care of the poor, respect for law and the constitutional authority. Many simliar declarations could be cited. And a similar attempt to extend a spiritual sanction to what would be a very grave decision of 1965 IS GOD A KEYNESIAN? 39 temporal policy recently occurred in the discussion at the Roman Catholic Ecumenical Council in Rome concerning the use of nu clear arms. Some paragraphs in a proposed declaration on problems of peace call for the total elimina tion of nuclear weapons without mentioning controls to insure that disarmament is made universal.

It is unlikely, to put it mildly, that the communist regimes in Moscow and Peiping will be re sponsive to admonitions. from the Vatican Council. A complete re nunciation of nuclear. weapons by noncommunist powers, principally the United States, would have as its consequence the confrontation of free nations with the alterna tive of surrender or annihilation, scarcely a. desirable moral objec tive. It is to be hoped that the ob jections to the proposed draft raised by American and British prelates at the Council will be heeded. An adoption by such a widely respected religious gather ing of a resolution in favor of ab solute abandonment of nuclear weapons would be another deplor able example of the harm that can be done when men of good will make hasty pronouncements on subjects outside their range of competence and in fields where hard choices are necessary and ideal perfection is not to be ex pected.

Moral Obligations upon Individuals Is there sound warrant for as.. suming the· moral superiority of a collectivist to an individualist economic system, for imparting religious sanction to Keynesian economics and welfare state poli cies ? The answer is No. All the great religious and ethi cal systems emphasize the moral obligations of compassion and charity, the virtue that accrues when an individual foregoes a part of his wealth to help someone less fortunate or to promote some de sirable cause in such fields as edu cation, health, and general well being. Incidentally, Americans, sometimes dismissed as material istic, have been more responsive to this kind of moral appeal than any people in the world .. Nowhere is there a quicker and warmer re sponse to the call for relief from distress. There is nothing in Eu rope to compare with the Rocke feller, Carnegie, and Ford Foun dations; nowhere have men of wealth shown such willingness voluntarily to give up a vast share of their wealth.

Nor is there any parallel to the number of American colleges and universities which owe their ex istence to private donations, not to state aid, or to the generosity with which such institutions are supported by their alumni and friends. Nor is American willing40 THE FREEMAN February ness to extend the boundaries of health and education restricted to the boundaries of the United States. In far-off cities which few Americans have ever seen, in Is tanbul, Beirut, Teheran, Salonika, colleges and schools founded by American initiative and supported to a considerable extent by Ameri can contributions have broadened considerably the educational op portunities in the countries where they are located. The Far East was a prominent field of American missionary ef fort, with important educational and health by-products. This is still true as regards Japan and Taiwan. China, before the com munist takeover, was dotted with American-founded colleges, schools, hospitals, research insti tutions; and the schools and col leges for many young Chinese eased the transition to study abroad in the United States and other foreign countries.

None of Great Religions Endorses Welfare State Individual prosperity does pose moral challenges and Americans have met these challenges on a much larger scale than many Eu ropean or Oriental peoples whose wealthier representatives are apt to let generosity stop at the limits of the family. But where is the moral element when the state transforms taxation from an in strument of raising revenue into an instrument for reallocating in come, for pillaging the thrifty for the benefit of the thriftless? One will find in the Bible, in the Koran, in the writings of Buddha, Confu cius, and other religious prophets, moralists, and sages many inj unc tions to practice charity and make voluntary sacrifices for the com mon good. What one does not find is any endorsement of a commu nist or collectivist form of society, anything that could reasonably be construed as a divine command ment in favor of the welfare state or Keynesian economics. On the contrary, the assumption is always that the individual enjoys enough of the fruits of his own labor to be able to share these, in one form or another, with those less fortu nate.

And a very good case can be made, on moral as well as economic grounds, for a system in which the individual is required to stand on his own feet, not to lean on the state for handouts. Character, re sourcefulness, capacity are formed and developed in struggle with obstacles, not in waiting passively for benefits from outside. Not the least of the causes of the juvenile delinquency which sometimes spills over into senseless and brutal riots is a sense of boredom, of having "nothing to do." This complaint 1965 IS GOD A KEYNESIAN? 41 could scarcely be voiced in .earlier times when young people expected and were expected to earn their livelihoods, instead of having these furnished on a silver platter. For the individual to be intelli gently generous with his own money is a meritorious and en riching side of life in a frQQ polit ical and economic system. For de signing politicians and empire building bureaucrats to be gener ous with other people's money is something quite different. The more Federal, state, and local agencies exact in taxation, the more limited is the scope of pri vate beneficence. And an individ ..

ual gift is much more likely to be well spent than a government grant. So, there is no warrant in logic or morals for trying to place the authority of religion behindmeas ures of social and economic col lectivism. Indeed, there is a much stronger case for arguing that the sense of individual responsibility - which is a key indispensable fac tor. in making it possible for the individual to distinguish between right and wrong - is best assured under a system· in which the hu man being is mainly committed to his own care and required to make his own decisions, instead of be ing shaped and molded in line with some scheme of bureaucratic plan ners. Misinterpretation of Biblical Reference to "Brother's Keeper" It has been said that the devil can quote Scripture. And a Bibli cal reference that is often used completely out of context, and for collectivist ends, is the reference in Genesis to "my brother's keep Qr." Th(!l'(!is 9. widespread attempt to twist Cain's reply, "Am I my brother's Keeper?" when Jehovah interrogates him about the where abouts of his brother Abel, as a divine inj uction on all human beings to play the role of "broth er's keepers"; that is, to assume responsibility for and, by implica tion, direction of enormous num bers of strangers, from riotous juvenile delinquents at home to feuding cannibals in the Congo.

It should be noted that the use of the phrase in Genesis carries no such implication. "Am I my brother's keeper?" is not a divine injunction for all human beings. It is the guilty Cain, taking the Fifth Amendment when charged with murder. And the whole idea of men and nations playing in re lation to each other the role of "brother's keeper" carries more than a little suggestion of con descension, even of insult. Among the dictionary definitions of the verb "keep" are "guard," "man age," "conduct," "detain," "con fine" - a rather ominous series of connotations. A "keeper" may be 42 THE FREEMAN February a warden in a prison, a supervisor of animals in a zoo. A person of spirit and inde pendence would give the rough edge of his tongue to anyone who tried to play the role of "keeper" by intruding into the concerns of his private life. And this is just as true for nations as for men. There is something naive in the surprised distress with which some Americans receive the not infrequent news that a mob in the capital of some country which has been on the handout list for for eign aid has pulled down the American flag or smashed the handsome quarters of the United States information agency.

foreign Aid Resented Behind such episodes is often an element of communist instiga tion. But this is by no means the whole story. Noma tter how poor a people may be, they have an in stinctive revulsion against the idea of being "kept" by another. Here is one psychological explana tion of why American aid has so often been met by brickbats, not bouquets. Another irritant is the large number of Americans in diplomatic and related establish ments and the visibly lavish style in which they live. The poorer and more undeveloped the country eco nomically, the more noticeable is this sort of thing. There has been much anguished discussion, with the aid of high powered psychology and opinion polls, of the question why Ameri cans are not better liked abroad. One of the reasons, beyond reas onable doubt, is America's self assumed role as "brother's keep er" for a vast number of peoples in foreign lands, many with pro foundly different traditions, cul tures, tastes, and habits. Even the most tactfully proffered advice can easily be resented as intru sion and interference; and the sudden injection of large numbers of free-spending Americans has sometimes created awkward fi nancial and trade problems.

Looking back to the far-off days when the political systems and the economies of distant lands in Asia, Africa, and Latin America were regarded as the concern of the na tives of these lands, when govern ment-to-government grants were unknown, when Americans were content to invest and do business in countries where they were wel come and to stay away from those where they were not, when the United States government consid ered its first task as protecting the security and legitimate inter: ests of its citizens abroad, one wonders whether Americans were not just as well or perhaps better liked when their government was not trying to play beneficent Big 1965 IS GOD A KEYNESIAN? 43 Brother to the rest of the world. And behind this lies still another question. Is it so important to be a win ner in an international popularity contest? In the age of Britain's greatest international power and prestige, in the nineteenth cen tury' there is no evidence that the British government or individual traveling Britons cared very much about the "national image"

or attached undue importance to the question whether they were liked or not. Perhaps respect is a more rea sonable and feasible goal than liking, which is sometimes least achieved when most pursued. No doubt many individual Americans have won esteem for themselves and, incidentally, for their country by striking out as pioneers of some new project in economic develop ment, or health, or education in a foreign country. But there is pre cious little indication that the bureaucrats who shovel out foreign aid have won a place in the hearts of the natives of the countries to which they have been assigned. The "brother's keeper" philoso phy, with. its false interpretation of Scripture, is just as inapplic able in dealings between individ uals as in relations between na tions. Meddlers in other people's affairs, however good their inten tions, seldom win much thanks for their pains. Sometimes the theory of collective responsibility is car ried to truly absurd lengths.

It was by no means uncommon, after the assassination of Presi dent Kennedy, for orators in and out of pulpits to put forward the idea that the whole American peo ple was responsible for this trag edy. This is sheer nonsense. Ac cording to all the evidence collected by painstaking search of a govern ment commission, supplemented by the private investigations of many journalists and publicists, a single unbalanced person conceived and executed the assassination, without accomplices, without instigation. How, in the name of reason and common sense, can the whole American people be regarded as participants in the demented act of this person? More Harm than Good Throughout history the efforts of religious spokesmen to take sides and pronounce judgments on secular political and economic is sues has probably wrought more harm than good. It is the primary function of religion to elevate the soul and improve the conduct of the individuals who respond to its teachings. There is no reason to assume that there is a divine sanc tion for Keynesian or other forms of collectivist economics.

And an international society of 44 THE FREEMAN February individual, self-respecting peoples and a national society of inde pendent, self-reliant individuals, who would vigorously resent the idea that anyone had the right to act as their "keepers," are far more attractive than the idea of some individuals and some nations assuming the impossible and un desirable burden of minding everyone else's business. No hu man being, no people worthy of its salt, has the slightest desire to submit to the ministrations, how ever benevolent in design, of a self-appointed "keeper." ~ $48,000 PAUL L. POIROT IT WAS a receipted bill for electri cal service rendered in 1907 by the Edison Light and Power Com pany to a customer in Wichita, Kansas. The bill was for $7.00, for a month's service - for only 14 kilowatt-hours of electricity. (Col lection must have been something ofa problem in those days, because the bill specified: "Less 20 per cent if paid before the 10th of the month.") The bill was made out on a postal card, the other side of which bore the one-cent stamp that paid for its delivery across town.