2 Philophies of Freedom; K. Sollitt

PHILOSOPHIES OF FREEDOM KENNETH W. SOLLITT THERE ARE in America today two diametrically opposite philosophies of freedom. The first is the philosophy that brought our forefathers to Amer ica. They sought freedom to wor shi p as they pleased, to speak and write-as they pleased, to work where they pleased at whatever work they found pleasant and prof itable, and freedom to enjoy the rewards of their labors. . They wanted the right of self-govern ment and social and economic self.;. determination. They asked for only such security as they could create for themselves and each other through the free exchange of goods and services augmented by such charities as were neces sary. And storms at sea, severe winters, poor crops, hostile In dians, impenetrable forests, vast prairies, unspanned rivers, or The Reverend Dr. Sollitt is Pastor of the First Baptist Church, Midland, Michigan. 48 burning deserts could not quench their thirst for this kind of free dom. Because of it, our forefathers hacked and blasted, molded and sculptured this country into the great nation that it is.

Ours is a philosophy of freedom that says a man ought to be free to do as he pleases up to the point where what he pleases to do in terferes with his neighbor's equal right. At that point he must halt or alter his course. If he pleases to do this of his own. free will, he remains a free man. If he doesn't, he has his freedom taken away from him by forces he himself has created to govern his society. This, very briefly, is our his toric American philosophy of free dom. It is based on the Judeo Christian belief in the sacredness of human personality, the convic tion that freedom of choice was bestowed upon man at the begin ning by God, and that no man has 1966 TWO PHILOSOPHIES OF FREEDOM 49 the right to rob another man of his integrity as an individual, or his God-given right of free choice, unless and until he becomes a menace to society. Freedom from Choice However, for some thirty-five years now another entirely differ ent philosophy of freedom has been evolving - the philosophy tha t freedom is no longer for something, like "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," but freedom from almost everything, like "want, worry, and war," and work, too, if possible.

Richard LaPiere in his book, The Freudian Ethic, credits Sig mund Freud with having much to do with the development of this philosophy, and shows, rather con vincingly I think, how out of it has grown our tendency toward permissi veness in home and school, the coddling of criminals, and political maternalism in all its forms. This doctrine of "social ir responsibility and personal de spair," as he calls it, has, he be lieves, led us to cease to want free dom as we have always known it, and to seek instead freedom from responsibility and involvement. And there is much evidence that he is right. Perhaps this new philosophy of freedom is best expressed by one of the characters in Ayn Rand's novel, The Fountainhead. In this book a character says, "The basic trouble with the modern world is the intellectual fallacy that free dom and compulsion are oppo sites ... In essence, freedom and compulsion are one." To illustrate this her character points out how traffic lights restrict our freedom to drive as we please, but at the same time they protect us from being hit by a truck. So, he reasons, "if you were assigned a job and prohibited from leaving it, it would restrain the freedom of your ca reer. But it would give you free dom from the fear of unemploy ment." And he goes on to say that "whenever a new compulsion is imposed upon us, we automatically gain a new freedom."

So, he concludes that "only by accepting total compulsion can we achieve total freedom." Most of us would agree with Ayn Rand herself that this is not free dom in any realistic sense,. But more and more people every day are consciously or unconsciously absorbing this philosophy. Some times even patriotic Americans re turning from military service, after getting their first taste of having to make decisions for them selves in the business world, actu ally prefer freedom from decision making to freedom for decision making. In any case, we are fast losing 50 THE FREEMAN May our identity as individuals. We have grown to feel that the individ ual is no longer important and that to achieve anything we must join and run with the pack - that is, the labor union, or the ind us trial association, the freedom march, or the campus demonstra tion. As a consequence, our op portunities for responsible choice making are being reduced almost daily. Practically every law passed makes us more dependent upon government. And since the govern ment is dependent upon us as wage earners, our jobs become prayer rugs .on which we prostrate our selves with our faces toward Wash ington praying to those who have preyed upon us to take care of us who are now irresponsible wards of a welfare state.

And are not promises more pleasant than responsibilities, and dreaming a pleasanter pastime than decision-making? Send some one else into our fields. Bring us our tranquilizers and let us relax until the next hour of prayer. At last we are free! Free of respon sibility for ourselves (which breeds laziness), free of consider ation for others (which breeds lawlessness). We are free! Free of freedom itself! Security May Betray Us Forgive me for overdrawing the picture. Things aren't this bad ... yet. But are we not mov ing in this direction? And isn't the trend due in large measure to a reversal of our historic phi losophy of freedom? We have ceased to want "freedom for" so much as we have wanted "freedom from," so we have sacrificed the former to those who have prom ised us the latter. In reality we have not wanted freedom at all, but security. We have ceased to see freedom as freedom "from control" and have thought of it as freedom "by control," and usually we have thought of it as the control of somebody else for our benefit. We knew that if we did this with bul lets in a gun, it would be wrong but imagined that if it were done with ballots in an election, it would somehow be all right. So we asked, or at least allowed, our politicians to rob our children by indebtedness and our old folks by inflation on the promise that our children and old folks (and our selves) would be protected from (in fact prevented from) taking care of themselves. Thus, we be come more and more dependent upon government and in the proc ess have built up a government that is almost omnipotent - a gov ernment which, by destroying man's initiative while at the same time increasing his appetite for handouts, is in for an increasingly 1966 TWO PHILOSOPHIES OF FREEDOM 51 difficult time. It can never take from us enough to give us back all we think we ought to have. Drain ing off savings and drying up the wells of initiative is the exact op posite of capital formation on which productivity rests and on which relief from poverty de pends. There is nothing formative, productive, or creative about rob bing Peter to pay Paul.

But cheer up! We are on the road to "total freedom" which the character in Rand's novel assures us is to be found in accepting "total compulsion." Rising to the Challenge One thing bothers me though. Since human beings are no longer willing or able to make decisions for themselves, aren't we someday apt to run out of little gods ca pable of making all the decisions for everybody? And another thing bothers me, too. When everybody is living off the government and nobody is supporting it, what kind of a liv ing will it be? What has brought about this re versal in our philosophy? Prob ably not the argument from the analogy of the traffic light. This might influence some pseudo-intel lectual, but most Americans with intelligence enough to understand such sophistries see through them. Perhaps we can blame some of our predicament on Sigmund Freud. The free dissemination of com munist propaganda by all kinds of pinks and punks in high and low places may be responsible, as is often charged.

But I think the real reason goes deeper. For the most part, we humans do not exert ourselves beyond the demands of necessity. The neces sity to fight for freedom seemed to disappear when we appeared to have what we had fought for - a home on the range, a good living, a republican form of government, isolation from the problems of Europe and Asia, churches, schools, libraries, baseball dia monds, hot dogs, and service clubs. But then came the great depres sion.And our jobs, our homes, our fortunes· were no longer secure. And there were no new frontiers farther west. Our frustration was complete. Whatever was to be done would have to be done by and for the whole country at once. This required organization, lines of communication and powers only government could provide - and that only after the people granted government those powers. Roosevelt declared in 1938: "Government has the definite duty to use all its powers and resources to meet new social problems with new social controls." In our des peration we accepted this as a na52 THE FREEMAN May tion and have been elaborating on it ever since.

For the first time we had a gov ernment organized to "give to him that asketh," and we have found it easier to go on asking than to return to doing for ourselves. In this we were doubtless aided and abetted by Freud and characters like the one in Rand's novel, by communists, socialists, and the like, but the thing that has thrown our philosophy into re verse has not, in my opinion, been anyone thing, or anyone person, but a combination of many per sons and things. Principal among these things, however, was our feeling of help lessness when caught in a nation wide economic disaster, followed by an experience of being helped at points by a benevolent govern ment which got us "hooked" on political pablum. Politicians have found it profitable to take from those who have and give to those who have not. And the recipients have found it easy to vote for more of the same, until our whole philosophy of freedom has been reversed.

Second in importance is the fact that up until now it has worked pretty well. We have never had such affluence; hence, such apathy. We like to imagine this can go on forever. We haven't realized yet that to make a government strong enough to give us everything we want, we must make it strong enough to take from us everything we have, including freedom as we have always known it; and there are thousands who have never known the former kind of freedom and have no appetite for it. Thou sands are willing to give up this old-fashioned freedom which they cannot comprehend for the new freedom from responsibility which they find so comforting. Soon an irresponsible people may find it difficult to find among their numbers responsible leaders. Demagogues there will be aplenty. But an irresponsible society can hardly be expected to spawn re sponsible .leadership. Well, what can we do about it? By Precept and Example The last thing we want to do is to say there is nothing we can do; this is to join the irresponsibles.

So the first thing we ought to do is to resolve to be, insofar as possible, a part of the cure instead of a part of the disease, a part of the solution instead of a part of the problem. How can we become part of the solution? We can at least study our concepts of free dom from different points of view: social, economic, political, psycho logical, ethical, and so on. And we can still listen to those who are trying to sell America to Ameri1966 TWO PHILOSOPHIES OF FREEDOM 53 cans and join them in the sales promotion, for we have something unique here we have not yet en tirely lost. ·We can help people, including our children, to re-examine such things as the present popular myth of equality, pointing out that men are not equal merely be cause they are born by the same biological process~ They should be equal before the law because we respect the sacredness of person ality. They should have equality of opportunity. But beyond that, whether they are equal or not de pends on what they do with their opportunities.

We need to help shift the em phasis from equality to justice and to help people see that justice is utterly disregarded when the relationship between effort and re ward is obliterated, or reversed, as when under the banner of "equality" the man who works is robbed to pay the bills of another who won't. If he can't work, that is, of course, a different matter. Let us help people re-examine the "from -each - as-he -is -able -to each-as-he-has-need" approach to sociology and economics in the light of psychology and ethics, and the "grea test -good -to -the greatest-number" theory in the light of what it does to people as well as what it does for them. Let us help them get a new look at the theory that there are so called "human" rights that are greater than "property" rights, and ask them what human rights are enhanced when property rights are interfered with? And what human rights are safe where property rights have ceased to be respected?

Let us help people re-examine the morality of buying votes with social programs, and the ethics of going through every revolving door on somebody else's push. Above all, let us teach our chil dren by both precept and example one maxim about freedom. It is this: that no man is ever free to do that which - if everybody did it - would spoil society. For it is the disregard of this maxim by self-seekers of every kind and de scri ption that is spoiling our so ciety today. ~ James Russell Lowell Being forced to work, and forced to do your best, will breed in you tolerance, self-control, diligence, strength of will, content, and a hundred other virtues which the idle never know.