Freedom and Democracy; E. Zarbin

Had this been all, the railroads might still have held their own. But there was more. They were faced by increasing competition from other modes of transporta tion. And while they were being circumscribed by onerous restric tions, governments were frequent ly aiding and abetting their com petitors. That part of the story needs also to be told. ~ Next: The Grip of Privileged Competitors __FREEDOM AND]EMOCRACY EARL ZARBIN A COWORKER, assigned to write a newspaper story about Indepen dence Day talks in Arizona, opened with this sentence: "Lawmakers and political figures beckoned back to the first Fourth of JuLy in talks throughout the state yesterday with the message that democracy is hard to come by and even harder to maintain." Mr. Zarbin is a newspaper man in Arizona. This linkage of the word "de mocracy" with the Declara tion of Independence surprised me. When I asked if the word "freedom"

might not be more correct, he re plied: "I didn't think about it that much when I wrote it." Precisely. Seldom do we think about it. Woodrow Wilson said, "The world. must be made safe for democracy." Would it have made 634 THE FREEMAN October any difference if he had used "freedom" instead of "democra cy"? Perhaps not, but it is delu sion either to suggest or to be lieve that the words are alike in meaning or significance. Freedom is "the absence of ne cessity, coercion, or constraint in choice or action; liberation from slavery or restraint or from the power of another." Democracy is "government by the people; es pecially rule of the majority; a government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised by them directly or in directly through a system of rep resentation usually involving peri odically held free elections." In no way can the words "free dom" and "democracy" be sub stituted without confusion. That they are frequently used for one another is understandable. Democ racy, not freedom, is repeatedly held up to us as representative of the ideal. If we have democracy, we are presumed to have freedom, according to much of the oratory.

But we can - and do in fact have denials of freedom brought about by democratic or majority rule. Prohibitions against peace ful citizens entering peaceful oc cupations and pursuits abound. For instance, no one can open up new land to cotton without an allotment; no one can start a radio or television broadcasting station without approval. Instead of re lying upon market determination of approval or allotment for every honest enterprise, all too often permission from government must first be won. And there are count less examples of how such eco nomic freedom has been denied under democracy. Freedom is one thing, democ racy another. They may be re lated in some ways. But the con cepts are not interchangeable, nor should the nature and pur pose of the two be confused. f) Loyalty IDEAS ON LIBERTY IF YOU WORK for a man, in Heaven's name work for him; and stand by the institution he represents. Remember - An ounce of loyalty is worth a pound· of cleverness. If you must growl, con demn, and eternally find fault, why - resign your position and when you are on the outside, damn· to your heart's content - but as long as you are a part of the institution, do not condemn it. If you do, the first high wind that comes along will blow you away and probably you will never know why.

- ELBERT HUBBARD A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN CARTE BLANCHE FOR CHAOS LILLIAN R. BOEHME, the editor of a monthly magazine called The Liberta,rian, likes to write with a double focus. It is a difficult trick, but she pulls it off in a searching, closely argued book called Carte Blanche for Chaos - a Critical Look at the Kerner Report (Ar lington House, $7.00). On one level this is a "news" book. It goes rather exhaustively into the findings and recommenda tions of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders that tried to get to the bottom of the urban rioting and arson that began in the Watts area of Los Angeles and spread throughout the land for several of those "long, hot summers." But behind the critique of the news there is an other and far more positive book of a kind that would have appealed to the late Isabel Paterson or the late Rose Wilder Lane. Mrs. Boehme is not only concerned with exposing the statist bias of the members of the Kerner CommISSIon, she is also concerned with enunciating the principles of what Leonard Read calls "the free dom philosophy." The Kerner Commission's performance is the occasion for Mrs. Boehme's work, but she could have done just as well if she had picked anyone of a number of recent "official" in vestigations such as the Scranton committee's probing into the causes of campus violence. With Mrs. Boehme it is the application of her own ideas that counts.