The Coin of Freedom; D. M. Westerholm

Right?" "Sure, mom," he nodded im patiently, "but not when the guys need me to play shortstop!" And Mrs. Westerholm is a Registered Nurse, housewife, and student of liberty of Gardena, California. 52 he gave me a look which spoke eloquently of a 12-year-old's opin ion of such obviously unfair tac tics as reasonableness and logic. This seemed to be the proper moment to give my lad a small (and somewhat sneaky) gift which we had acquired for just this sort of situation. He reacted with cautious in terest when I returned from the house and handed him a tiny box. Scrubbing his earth-stained hands on his pants, he opened the box and took out a silver disk about the size of a 501 piece, and slowly turned it over and back again. On one side was engraved the word FREEDOM; on the other side the word RESPONSIBILITY. He studied the shining coin for awhile, and then grinned with 1965 THE COIN OF FREEDOM 53 elaborate mock re·signation.

"Guess there's supposed to be a lesson here, hmm?" "Maybe," I smiled. "Know what it might be?" He thought a moment and then ventured: "Could be that if I want the 'freedom' to play baseball, I ought to take care of my 'responsi bility' for the weeds, first?" "Could be," I nodded. "Maybe if you keep that in your pocket it might help explain some other things, too, as time goes on. Free dom' always has that other side. Freedom of speech carries with it the responsibility not to malign or slander another by your speech, for instance. It isn't a true coin without both sides - just a coun terfeit." The Cat stuffed the coin care fully into his pocket and said a bit ruefully, "Oh, well - I guess some guys do carry good luck pieces!" I grinned back at him. "You might find that this one can be a real 'good luck piece' if you use it to help yourself think." "Mothers!" he muttered - but he was smiling as he resumed his weeding.

An Important Lesson An unimportant little episode? Not at all. There was an extremely important basic concept involved here; and this was one step we were taking to try to teach it to our oldest child. The relationship between freedom and responsibil ity is one that has been essential to the formation and growth of this nation. It must be a balanced, equal relationship if the value and strength of either is to be main tained - let alone increased. This relationship is also one which can only be maintained by individuals; for to attempt to delegate or re fuse to accept individual responsi bility is to lose freedom propor tionately - not only for oneself but for all others as well. One cannot legislate away the burden of re sponsibility without also automati cally legislating away an equal de gree of personal control - and "personal control" is simply an other way of saying "freedom."

It is easy to understand a threat to freedom when it is a matter of someone bursting over the horizon, shooting up the town, and killing or capturing the citizens. It is easy then to understand and recog nize the need for assuming imme diate personal responsibility for the safeguarding of one's freedom. It is far more difficult to recognize a threat to freedom which comes gradually, insidiously, and through legalized peaceful means, enacted by our own people and loudly claimed to be "for our own good." But the threat is just as real in eithe I' case! A long careful look at the condi54 THE FREEMAN May tions under which we now live in this greatest citadel of freedom will disclose an amazing lack of personal freedom, compared with the degree we once had. There is literally no phase of living which is not controlled in one way or another by some branch of the state - from the moment we bite into our breakfast toast (made of parity-priced wheat, and spread with price-controlled butter) and send our children off to school (to compulsory attendance, usually at a government-controlled school) and draw our paycheck (upon which all sorts of compulsory de ductions have already been levied and withheld) and drive home (on multibill ion-dollar tax-built roads) to a rent-controlled or gov ernment-subsidized dwelling - and so on and on and on.

Our Sad Departure When we speak, rather smugly and complacently, about our re vered American heritage of indi vidual freedom, we are not speak ing of our present way of life. When we, step by step, legislated away our personal responsibility to handle the various problems of living, just so, step by step, we departed from that heritage of freedom. Granted, many so-called "benefits" have been gained - de grees of material security from birth to death - but at what a price! The price is not only in terms of lost personal freedom seldom missed until it is gone en tirely - but also in more easily un derstood terms of dollars and cents. Bureaucracy has always been a most expensive method of accom plishing anything, in contrast to the accomplishments of free com petitive enterprise. A glance at our soaring national debt, the rate of inflation, the tax burden, should demonstrate quite clearly this hard dollars-and-cents price.

But there is another price we are paying, the disastrous price of gradual, inevitable loss of individ ual initiative and integrity - the loss of the individual sense of re sponsibility. Without these traits, respected and put into practice, we cannot hope to regain personal freedom and all it entails. Without these traits, we face deeper and deeper immersion into a collecti vistic way of life. Dnder any socialized scheme, there is less and less material or psychological incentive to attempt to develop the creative ability nec essary for progress. Where is the incentive to excel, individually, un der a system which guarantees the same benefits to all, regardless of effort or ability? Also, moral in tegrity is inevitably lost when the whole societal emphasis is on dele gating personal responsibility and 1965 THE COIN OF FREEDOM 55 placing it in the hands of the im personal state. Moral integrity is a matter of individual growth, and cannot be legislated into existence.

Now, if we adults of this gener ation are practicing less and less personal responsibility, then we probably are teaching and empha sizing this trait less and less to our children. It seems reasonable that children thus untrained in the importance of initiative, in tegrity, and responsibility would certainly be apt to demonstrate less respect for others, less respect for property rights, less respect for the laws which were estab lished to protect these rights, and less respect for the social courte sies. The term is "juvenile delin quency." By the same token, children who have been taught respect for the rights of others, and have learned self-respect through initiative and achievement, are more apt to enter adulthood better prepared to en rich and enjoy their own lives and to help stem the tide of collec tivism sweeping our country. Most of us will quietly continue to try to teach ourselves and our children to understand freedom, to search after knowledge and wis dom, to. love our Creator, to re spect all men - and ourselves; to attempt to improve ourselves at all times, and to take humble pride in creative accomplishment. We will try to teach our children and ourselves that freedom must be earned, and guarded carefully; that it is a privilege which carries with it a real and continuous re sponsibility.

We will try to remember that these are learned concepts - not instinctive knowledge; that espe cially in this socialized society in which we live it is necessary to teach these concepts, deliberately and carefully, if we hope to pre pare our children to face adult situations and problems in a capa ble and responsible manner. And so, in our family, as an aid to learning, we each carry a small coin. One side says FREEDOM. One side says RESPONSIBILITY. We call it the coin of freedom. ~ Jr 7 hat's the DiDerence? IF IT IS WRONG for a .politician to buy Yotes with his own money, what makes him a great humanitarian to be backed by the churches when he buys millions of Yotes with other people's money? Is bribery in the one case right and the other wrong? If so, what makes it so? THE REV. KENNETH W. SOLLITT, Four Foundations of Freedom SUPPOSEthat an entrepreneur with a sense of scenic beauty builds a million-dollar motel on the down stream side of a dam that harness es a wild river for the needs of man. Shall the dam's owners, by reason of that motel, henceforth claim credit for $1 million of an nual flood damage prevention, and thereby justify further investment in the dam?

The Tennessee Valley Author ity seems to .figure that way. From the Report of the Chief Engineer for 1963 we find that "at June 30, 1963, the estimated cumulative benefits from flood reg ulation of the Tennessee River system amounted to $461 million. The total TVA investment allocat ed to flood control was $184.8 mil lion, and the cumulative expense of the flood control program was $53.1 million." (p. 90) The annual flood damage figure is calculated with the help of an appraisal curve that shows the recorded floods and the economic damage they would do if they oc curred today without regulation by TV A dams. Every few years the curve is lifted to reflect new construction and higher values. Thus, the curve informs us that, according to 1961 values and state of development, damages averted in fiscal year 1963 amounted to Dr. Sennholz is head of the Department of Economics, Grove City College, Pennsylvania.

56 some $113 million at Chattanooga and other locations at the Valley and to $4 million along the lower Ohio and Mississippi Rivers. Thus, multibillion -dollar spending by the Federal government is "justi fied." The 1963 edition of Facts about TVA Operations further reveals that "the Federal government is sole proprietor of an electric sys tem which at the end of the fiscal year 1962 had a net worth of $1.8 billion, well over half a billion more than the $1.2 billion Treas ury investment in the system." (p. 2) The adj oining income statement reveals a net income of $56.2 million for 1962, and $51.6 million for 1961. Let us assume that this net in come figure is correct, although the statistical and bookkeeping procedures cast grave doubt on its reliability. Every student of accounting and every investor knows that the capitalized value HANS F. SENNHOLZ of a company with $56.2 million net income usually is less than $1 billion. Even with an assumed yield as low as 6 per cent, the market value of the TVA power system would be only $937 million.