For Moral Growth; T. Machan

The problem here is a failure to recognize the difference between political and personal behavior. The former has to do with how people should live together in peace, while the latter concerns one's conduct of his own life. An effective political system may be approximated without the guar antee that citizens of the system will all be good individuals. It is precisely so as to· secure the pos sibility for the highest degree of moral development on each per son's part that people must be free from each other's aggression. It is man's personal freedom, his capacity for choice, that forms the philosophical base of the po litical system we call the free so ciety. If men were not free in this basic sense, they could not help doing what they do; and to expect them to refrain from interfering with each other's lives would be irrational. And so would be the desire for a free society. A free political society would require some means of protection against those who· would trespass upon or attack the lives and prop erties of peaceful persons. This 1970 FOR MORA1L GROWTH 621 conviction has been the impetus behind people's support for some kind of political system, that is, for the institution of government.

What the enemies of freedom have never understood is that there simply is no political means by which to make people good. A free society does, however, stop those who try to lord it over others. If a culture is morally de fective, there is nothing that po litically free men can do to induce morality except to educate as en ergetically and effectively as their talents and devotion to virtue per mit. It is a mistake to blame free men for not attempting to make others better through political means: a person who respects freedom cannot aspire to become a philosopher king without contra dicting himself; it is illogical to preach that no man should rule others and at the same time at tempt to bring about this condi tion of freedom and virtue by force! When individuals fail to meas ure up in moral qualities as is true of many in America today, this means they are acting without questioning what is right or wrong. The idea that individuals can aspire to moral virtue has been down-graded; instead, the collec tive, the group, the society has been given the responsibility ·of building the good life. Individualism always has been central to the American economic system, but in matters of personal morality the individual was not widely recog nized to have great significance and responsibility. Instead, the community, the church, the body politic assumed the role of moral leadership.

Today, when it is obvious to most that morality cannot be polit icalized and that something is drastically wrong, people are re jecting even the possibility of be ing good. Many college and uni versity students· express the view that right and wrong cannot be known; we are capable only of mindless action. Not only students and young people but members of the older generation are generally pessimistic about the possibility of building a better life for them selves and a better society. Overt enemies of the free soci ety often capitalize on this cul tural moral vacuum by attributing it to the relative freedom most people enjoyed in the early days of America and other Western so cieties which were influenced by the English classical liberal tradi tion (of Adam Smith, David Hume, John Stuart Mill). By pointing to some of the real and alleged personal failings of people who have been part of the Amer ican culture, they would have us believe that there is a necessary 622 THE FREE'MAN October connection between political free dom and personal misconduct.

There is, of course, a necessary connection between freedom and the possibility of evil, just as there is such a connection between free dom and the possibility of good. But what is important is that both good and evil are matters of per sonalcond uct. No one can make another person good or evil. Harm ing someone who is good will not make him evil, nor will helping an evil person make him good, in the final analysis. Praise and blame, reward and punishment, are all re sponses to good and evil, but they are not primary causes. Those who contend that the free society is bad for people, because people who have been free did not always behave well, are mistaken. It is, in fact, only in a free society that. the wrongheadedness, the personal mischievousness of some people, does not necessarily have a harmful effect on all. In social ism, where everyone has a hand in the life of everyone else, the evil that men do must live after them --and beside them,and around them, and on and on. The misman agement of some collectivist gov ernment project burdens us all.

Nor is it possible to uncover those who are responsible for the mis management. The abandonment of self-responsibility in favor of col"" lective action invariably spreads the lack of responsibility through out society. Today, in a climate of fear and moral uncertainty, unscrupulous persons make all sorts of attempts to gain political power over peo ple. Their arguing that the free society and the corresponding free market produce human evil must be challenged. A free society may not produce everything that ev eryone· would like; but free men have the option to pursue·· their own goals and aims. When there is no freedom, a person cannot even aspire toward satisfying his aims privately. When one's life is controlled by political masters and things are going badlY,there is little personal incentive toward improvement, and understandably so. But in freedom,· one man's ef forts suffice to make his own life, at least, more productive or other wise worth while. And this may encourage others· to do likewise.

To try to improve the quality of life in a given society by central izing it under political leadership is futile. Such efforts simply dif fuse responsibility and reduce the likelihood of moral improvement. Needed, instead, is a concentrated effort to restore to people both their rights and their responsibil ities. Those who value human life and look for it to be lived well should encourage progress toward a free society. ~ CLARENCE B. CARSON TlIrottling tlle Railroads IF SOMEONE had set out with malice aforethought to destroy the effectiveness of the American rail roads,he could hardly have de vised· better ways than those em ployed .by the Federal government for much of the twentieth cen tury - short of hiring wrecking crews to take up the track an d dynamiters to blow up the rolling stock. Before World War I, the government subjected the rail roads to increasingly debilitating restrictions: by trying to use force to make them compete, not permitting them to compete in many of the usual ways, making it difficult for them· to cooperate Dr. Carson is a frequent· contributor to THE FREEMAN and other journals and the author of several books, his latest being The War on the Poor (Arlington House, 1969). He is Chairman of the Social Science Department at Okaloosa-Walton College in Florida.