On Re-reading the Law; R. Colvard

The ideas appeared logically sound to me, but with application limited to places and times other than modern America. Robert L. Heil broner in The Worldly Philoso phers placed Frederic Bastiat, the author of The Law, in "the under world of economics." Mr. Colvard teaches at Clairemont High School in San Diego. 76 The Law is a disturbing book, however. I read it again. Before the fall of the old regime, Voltaire had made an acid observation that "in general, the art of government consists in taking as much money as possible from one class of citi zen to give to the other." Bastiat called this exchange "legal plun der." He pointed out: The plun derers are within the law, acting benignly, with the best of motives, under the glow of "false philan thropy." It made-sense - but. In this matter of education, the law has only two alternatives: It can per mit this transaction of teaching-and learning to operate freely and with out the use of force, or it can force human wills in this matter by taking from some of them enough to pay the teachers who are appointed by gov ernment to instruct others, without charge. But in this second case the law commits legal plunder by violat ing liberty and property.

1972 ON RE-READING THE LAW 77 Now that was just too much. Back in the foothills of rural North Carolina during the first half of this century the tradition of the summer "protracted meet ing" was firmly fixed in funda mentalist congregations. Visiting revivalists of a fire-and-brimstone bent attempted to electrify hot, sleepy listeners by cataloguing the alleged sins of erring neighbors. Over in the "amen corner" Deacon Jones munched his seasoned bolus of Sta.r Plug tobacco and •accom panied the preacher by nodding his placid agreement. ". . . the sin 01 young men drink1ing . . ." "A-men!" ". . . the sin 01 young women smoking . .." "A-men!" ". . . the sin 01, old,men chew i.ng .' .." At this point ·Deacon Jones rose out of his seat, sputtering. "Now just a. minute, Reverend," he ob jected angrily. "Now you've quit preaching and started meddling." This portion of' The Law seemed absurd: public education being linked with legal plunder. Just what do economists think teachers do? Don't they know we loose the glorious, exuberant spirits· of stu dents ?We encourage discovery.

We produce scientists, entrepre neurs and statesmen who maintain the nation's economic and political stability. We prepare citizens to become contributing, rather than dependent,members of a complex, competitive industrial democracy. Somewhere from the dusty past I seemed to hear a soft chortle and low whisper: "false philanthropy." This was ridiculous, I thought. It's my ox that's being gored now. It's all right to question the pro priety of industrial monopolies, protective tariffs, and agricultural subsidies. Leave education to edu cators. The :National Education Associa tion'scampaign for a ·Na tionalDepartment of Education is in full swing. With the right Sec retary in the Presidential Cabinet, public education could be run ef ficiently, like the post office. With enough power educational leaders could enforce academic freedom for all teachers, defend martyrs like Peter Abelard and Socrates. I tried not to remember at this point that Abelard got himself in to trouble playing around with a nubile teen-ager and Socrates really had been "corrupting the youth."

A Skeptical Student During the week of the' FE E seminar that. summer I remained skeptical of Bastiat's freedom philosophy, at least that part about public education, though he was quoted respectfully by the 78 THE FREEMAN February 3-R's of the seminar: Read, Rus sell, and Roche. (For clarification and lest I appear lacking in re spect, may I amend this remark to: Mr. Leonard Read, Dr. Dean Russell, and Dr. George C. Roche III.) I listened to them, but I was not fully convinced. I re-read The Law more carefully, however, when I returned home. "Look at the madhouse of a world," Frederic Bastiat had sug gested in an early work. The world "goes to enormous efforts to tun nel underneath a mountain to con nect two countries and then it sets duties and custom guards at each entrance to make passage as diffi cult as possible." Interesting. The latest, fourteenth edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica allows Frederic Claude Bastiat two dozen tepid lines. However, going back to the eleventh edition, published in 1910, I found this magnificent tribute: He alone fought socialism hand to hand, body to body, as it were, not caricaturing it, not denouncing it, not criticizing under its name some mere ly abstract theory, but taking it as actually presented by its most popu lar representatives, considering pa tiently their proposals and argu ments, and proving conclusively that they proceeded on false principles, reasoned badly and sought to realize generous aims by foolish and harmful means.

I was beginning to discover that Bastiat was, indeed, quite a man. A Very Good Yearl The year 1776 was a vintage one for freedom. It brought forth the master work of Thomas Jeffer son and Adam Smith. In the ver nacular of today's bright youth, "Groovy! Everybody has rights and everybody should do his own thing." The concept of liberty which came out of the enlightened eighteenth century and achieved wide popularity in the nineteenth has lost ground in the twentieth. The political term, "liberal," has shifted in meaning from those who would break government's hold on its citizens to those who advocate greater government con trols be placed on individuals. The great utopian appeal of collectiv ism, even in the modern extremes of fascism and communism, is the fond hope of equality. Collectivism proclaims high ideals and prom ises reforms. Literacy and public enlightenment are laudable goals for us to undertake in public edu cation. Can this be "legal plun der"? One might as well imagine Santa Claus an "enemy agent."

There is profound danger in cultivating the cult of equality. Tocqueville, the great admirer of American democracy, warned of the danger during his travels in the United States in the Jackson 1972 ON RE-READING THE LAW 79 era. Democracy would, he foresaw, pose an irreconcilable dilemma to Americans. They who treasured both freedom and equality would eventually choose to give up the former· to gain the latter. The Need for Rules Man must live by rules, but they should be rules of his own· choos ing. Ludwig von Mises stated this concept beautifully in his Human Action: Liberty and freedom are the con ditions of man within a contractual society .... As far as he gives and serves other people, he does so of his own accord in order to be rewarded and served by the receivers. He ex changes goods and services, he does not do compulsory labor and does not pay tribute. He is certainly not inde pendent. He depends on the other members of society. But this depend ence is mutual.

The late jurist, Learned Hand, wrote about the benevolent "beast in us" which leads us to destroy liberty for others. "Liberty," he noted, "is an essence so volatile that it will escape any vial how ever corked." The logic of Bastiat, von Mises, and Hand at this point seems virtually irrefutable. The public school system is an institutionalized cork restraining human freedom. It makes use (benevolently, of course) of the worst elements of socialism and protectionism. In truth, we teach ers are in the jail business. Edu cators, like a majority of the adult population, defend compulsory at tendance laws which are in fact nothing more than bills of at tainder against our young. We illogically uphold these ex tra-judicial canons despite their expressed ban by Sections 9 and 10 of Article I of the Constitution of the United States. This basic constitutional injunction has been blandly ignored. In Brown vs.

Board of Education the Supreme Court appeared to actively favor compulsion. In the words of the Court, "Compulsory school attend ance laws and the .great expendi tures both demonstrate our recog nition of the importance of educa tion to our democratic society." We are wildly inconsistent in de fining "liberty." First we confront youth with our terrible dictum: You have no inalienable rights. Then we expect him to become law-abiding while he is, himself, outside the law. We expect him to achieve a mature autonomous level in personal growth without exer cising the right of free choice. We expect him to develop value judg ment stripped of a compulsion for responsibility. A frenetic reality exists in compulsory education. We guard students possessively as they attempt to escape our bu reaucracy. They are not allowed to 80 THE FREEMAN February become nonconsumers in our edu cational monopoly. We employ "Keystone" cops called "truant of ficers" or more euphemistically, "attendance coordinators," to chase them when they attempt to decline our services.

Twentieth century school sys tems have come to be blatant ex amples of nineteenth century en terprise. Writing about anachro nous industries, Henry Hazlitt noted: "It is just as necessary to the health of a dynamic economy that dying industries be allowed to die as that growing industries be allowed to grow." A like case could be made for abandoning out moded compulsory institutional ized education. Cand/emaker's Petition Bastiat's masterpiece of eco nomic satire was the tongue-in cheek petition to the Chamber of Deputies requesting that owners of houses be made to do without doors and windows. He berated sunlight as a foreign, low-cost, unfair source of illumination and asked that it be shut out to create a demand for artificial light which would benefit French manufactur ers of lamps, tallow, and candles. Weed ucators today are logical targets for the Bastiat philosophy as we defend our right to a monop oly of artificial enlightenment.

It is. my belief that the services rendered by teachers in public schools are a. primary economic good. Our professional expertise is of such value that it need not be forced on anyone. In learning's free market, demand exceeds sup ply. Young people need not be compelled by legal entails to come to school. It's a compulsion they have reason to hate. They have a valid case in history. Tea-loving Colonists refused to drink tea when it was forcibly pressed on them by a benevolent England. The Boston Tea Party made Amer ica a nation of coffee drinkers. Public education as it exists to day is economically unsound and patently unfair. Schools offer con tracts for services to youths, but students have no legal way of en forcing the obligation. In even the relatively modest school districts, teachers report to principals who report to area directors who re port to assistant superintendents who report to associate superin tendents who eventually report to the superintendents who are solely responsible to the boards ofedu cation. Each level above the pedes trian classroom teacher is insu lated from students. Every educa tor position above the teacher level in the system is politicaL Public relations know-how is the criteria for successful ·performance. Qual ity of the product that reaches the consumer is of· small concern 1972 ON RE-READINGTHE LAW 81 to middle management in educa tional enterprises. Managers are never partners in concerns vvhich are without entrepreneurs. Edu cators are men of means, not of ends, and the means at their dis posal are collectivism, centraliza,;.