You Rascal, You; L.E. Read

come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your number? James 4:1 As WITH ALL of my "original" ideas, this one turns out to be "old hat." Upon reading the first draft, an associate remarked, "Why, that is precisely what the Bible says." That accounts for the opening quotation. There then came to mind an .essay by E. W. Dykes entitled "Big Wars from Little Errors Grow." (The Free man, January, 1964.) Old hat or not, the theme needs constant repetition; it is so easily forgot ten. As I view the societal scene from my modest place in it, four current phenomena are outstand ingly impressive: 1. Things on the surface, at least, appear to be amiss, not only in the U.S.A. but world wide: wars with guns, wars with words in religion, edu cation, business, politics, .652 brutishness on the campuses as on the streets. Never in my lifetime have the confronta tions been more pronounced.

2. An amazing awakening to the fact that things are amiss: countless admissions by per sons on all sides of the poli tico-economic argument scholarly intellectuals, colum nists, politicians, and others - many of whom have had a hand in bringing on the very calamity they now decry. 3. A frenzied search for explana tions, causes, reasons - of the most diverse nature. These range from an incompetent bureaucracy to tax loopholes to inequality of income to ex cessive or inadequate. welfar ism to economic growth to lagging GNP - you name it! Never have the assigned rea1972 YOU RASCAL, YOU! 653 sons been more at odds and, as I see it, more astray. 4. A widespread acknowledg ment of trouble but without any noticeable confession of personal shortcomings. Nearly every finger points at some one else; it is impressively you; there is hardly an I in the population. Imagine! All of this rascality and not a professed rascal among us! Why? It is simply because the real evil, the cause of our way wardness, is rarely suspected.

Thus, self-identification is impos sible. People do not link them selves to error about which they are unaware. What is this rascality? It is the domineering habit, the insistence that others act in accord with one's own shadowy lights. Perhaps no one has shaken this habit com pletely, so common is its practice. This habit has its inception in the closest relationships, as in the family, one parent lording it over the other or both of them assum ing an authoritarian as distin guished from an exemplary rela tionship with their children. It takes such seemingly innocent forms as do-as-I-say - a carbon copy way of· life. This tendency, once rooted, spreads by unseen degrees to neighbors, the classroom, the· pul pit, and other associations. Sooner or later, it begins to grow tee.th and takes the form of do-as-I-say or-else, that is, it explodes into out-and-out coercion as in count less thousands of unprincipled governmental compulsions. When not recognized as evil and thus unchecked, it brings on dictator ships and finally reaches its apo gee, its most vicious manifesta tion: mass slaughter.

I am una ware of any evil more pronounced than man lording it over man. Not even God does this. Indeed, He has given us a freedom so radical that we may deny our Maker or otherwise make fools of ourselves. As I see it, thedomi neering habit is the root of allevil 1 and unless there is some realiza tion that it is, we will continue to ascribe nonreasons for our troubles· and without anyone fault ing himself. We will go on ex claiming, "You rascal, you!" A Record of Failure Enough of my theorizing. Let us reflect on an observed fact: an 1 This is close to the idea of Original Sin, as many theologians define it: the tendency of the creature to try to usurp the role of the Creator. That interpreta tion appears to be in accord with the Biblical account which describes the tempter as telling the human creature that if he will eat the forbidden fruit he can become like God. Genesis 3: 5. See also. Nature, Man and God by William Temple (London: Macmillan & Co., Ltd., 1934), p. 496 ff.

654 THE FREEMAN November example cannot be found where domineering in practice - man lording it over man - has resulted in success. 2 The record is failure, without exception. It has to be. A carbon copy is never as good as the imperfect original. Markedly on the increase are the complaints I hear from fathers and mothers about the wayward ness of their children. In some in stances, drugs. But most of them go like this: "She is brilliant, a straight A student in college, but she has bought the whole socialis tic doctrine. She won't do as I say. How do I solve this problem?" I have yet to hear one of these do as-I-say parents confess, "The fault is mine." In far too many of these relationships an unsus pected domineering attitude has been substituted for parental co operation and guidance. Take two cases of domineering that have "teeth": government education and the government postal service.

Government education has three forms of domineering: compulsory attendance, government dictation of the curricula, and the forcible collection of the wherewithal to 2 Success is composed of gains, not losses. Sputniks, moon ventures, the Gateway Arch, and the like-ambitions of a few - are made possible by enormous losses on the part of millions of people. With justice or fairness as the premise, these are failures. pay the bills. That education in America is in a mess goes without saying. It is generally conceded, even by many educators. Show me one person who says, "The fault is mine." Yet, it is the fault of everyone who has had an.y part in endorsing or supporting or prac ticing any form of domineering!3 The government postal service never, even remotely, matched what a free market operation would have accomplished. And it is getting worse day by day. Can you name one person during the past century who confessed the fault is his? No one makes such an admission because he does not recognize the domineering trait as the root of the failure.

The railroads have been subject ed to domineering with "teeth" for decades. They are failing. Not a person takes the blame; it is now and always has been, "You rascal, you!" There is no end to the illus trations that could be given. When Growth Ceases As already stated, the domineer ing habit has its inception in the closest relationships. Correct it here and it will cease to be a men3 This is not "collective guilt" as some would have it but individual error piled high. Al1d, critics to the contrary, each of us is to some extent shaped by the en vironment in which we find ourselves. In another kind of world, you and I would be in another kind of endeavor.

1972 YOU RASCAL, YOU! 655 ace elsewhere. Let us return, for illustration, to those parents whose children refuse to sha:r.e parental views, conform to parental dic tates. True, these parents are unaware that they have been domineering and such recognition is indeed dif ficult. As parents, we tend to for get the growth we ourselves ex perienced during childhood and adolescence. By the time we reach parenthood, our own growth may have stopped. We have arrived, that is, we no longer feel that need to learn which we want our children to feel. If they would only do as we say - think as we do that would be good enough! The insistence that our children do what we ourselves refuse to· do is what destroys the proper relation ships; th~re is no longer a learn ing partnership. Our failure to maintain this kinship in learning is a form of domineering. Looked at from the child's point of view, he is a know-nothing and the par ent the know-it-all. Conflict!

Teacher-Student Relations Perhaps the best way to shed light on the proper relationship between you and me, husband and wife~ parent and child-all close relationships - is to cite an actual case between a teacher and one of his students. My introduction be gan with a letter from the student, a stranger to me. Here it is, abbreviated: "Sir, I am a freshman at a col lege in Florida. Seven short months ago I came here believing in Keynesian economics. That is what I had been taught in high school and I had accepted it with out question. Since coming here I have been made aware of these fallacies, and due to my teacher, ............................. It is like I have been blind and suddenly recovered my sight." A few days later, the teacher, also a stranger to me and un aware of the student's letter, wrote in part: "I am a Social Science professor at a private, small liberal arts col lege. I am very much interested in the freedom point of view and, for the last few months, have spent time trying to understand the view". (Italics mine) Fascinated with these. two let ters, I invited the professor to one of our Seminars. In getting to know· him, I discovered what turned the student from socialism to a free market point of view.

This professor is trying to under stand; he and his students are part ners in the learning process. They have a common goal: enlighten ment! Contrast this with the par ent whose goal is to make the child a carbon copy of himself. The parent may not think of this 656 THE FREEMAN November as domineering, but he gives that impression to the youngster. In this circumstance, the parent and child are not in partnership but in conflict. This matter of posture applies in all close relationships. If we wish to put an end to the more horrible consequences of the domineering habit such as state socialism and eventually mass murder, we can do so by nipping it in the bud. This is to say, rid ourselves of the habit where it is born, namely, in our close rela tionships, whatever they happen to be. Riddance requires no more than (1) an awareness that the domi neering habit - freedom's oppo site - is the root of all evil, (2) an ability to recognize domineer ing in ourselves and to be done with it, (3) an appreciation that learning is just as much a require ment for the parent as the child, for the teacher as the student, for me as you, as much needed at eighty as eight, and (4) a strict observance of the Golden Rule.

Once we recognize that the vici ous domineering of dictators is but the political extremity of the domineering habit that lurks in the mill run of us, we should ex claim, "You rascal, you 1" only to the. image we see in the mirror. Breaking ourselves of a bad habit is the way to destroy its most ma licious manifestation. Remove the source - that's all. ~ IDEAS ON LIBERTY Aggression Is Always Wrong "LIBERALS" suffer a myopia, an inability to see that aggressive force is used to build the welfare state. True, there is considerably less outright violence in tax collections for interventionism than in full-scale war. Big Government relies much more on the threat of force, rather than on its actual employment, to promote the payment of taxes. But anyone could easily witness the trans formation of potential energy into kinetic energy - the threat into the-reality - by trying to spend for himself the portion of his taxes which would go for, say, farm subsidies. Not surprisingly, few citizens have made this interesting experiment.

CRAIG HOWELL IN MANY MINDS, "capitalism" has come to be a bad word, nor does "free enterprise" sound much bet ter. I remember seeing posters in Russia in the early nineteen-thir ties depicting capitalists as Frank enstein monsters, as men with yel low-green faces, crocodile teeth, dressed in cutaways and adorned by top hats. What is the reason for this widespread hatred for capital ists and capitalism despite the ov erwhelming evidence that the sys tem has truly "delivered. the goods"? In its mature stage it in deed is providing, not just for a select few but for the masses, a standard of living cordially envied by those bound under other polit ico-economic arrangements. There are historic, psychological and moral reasons for this state of af fairs. Once we recognize them, we might come to better understandDr. Kuehnelt-Leddihn is a European scholar, linguist, world traveler, and lecturer. Of his many published works, perhaps the best known in America are Liberty or Equality? and The Timeless Christian.