Do You Want to Live Forever; C. LaDow

to snug us in with seat belts and protect us from all dangers, either from the environment or consum abIes. Their latest concerns have reached down to the safety of tri cycles and infant's cribs. What are the realities of these matters? People may surrender to seat belts or air bags in their cars; but, when they reach Sun Valley or spot an unclimbable mountain, they will ski the most deadly slope or try to scale up the sheerest cliff. Infants will choke themselves in the safest crib, with a pillow or a tantrum, and a fail-safe trike will easily carry a nonswimmer into the family pool. There is no way to keep the individual from sur rendering his relief check to the nearest poker game. Realizing that each heartbeat is a gamble with nature, man is a gambling animal. "Nothing risked; nothing gained," is his primordial motto. Going beyond such trivial risk155 156 THE FREEMAN March ings of life and health, men will positively seek danger, either for a cause or for thrill alone. Twitted by Oliver Goldsmith for his casual view of martyrdom, Samuel J ohn son said: "Sir, as to voluntary sui cide, as you call it, there are twen ty thousand men in an army who will go without scruple to be shot at, and mount a breach for five pence a day." Although the price has been driven up since Johnson's day, even in this nation there is no lack of willing mercenaries - nor of youthful militants willing to risk their Iives in protests against war, of all things. Our athletics and daredevil events often rival the Aztecs in human sacrifice. Al though crowds are no longer enter tained with public hangings, larger crowds, including the huge televi sion audience, watch mangled driv ersburn to death in flaming race cars.

Put in this perspective, the pre occupation of our political and in tellectualleaders with environmen tal, personal, and social security does seem a little odd. If a neigh bor should only dare advise you to do what governments order, you would shun him at the least - or, more probably, sock him in the jaw as a busybody; but, somehow, the art of propaganda has twisted our thinking around so that we tolerate, and even abet, this non sense of government. Good Intentions-Bad Results Actually, it is our· philanthropic virtue which makes this folly pos sible. Most of us do not think of ourselves as requiring all this con trol. It is to help, the other people who are careless, impecunious, or helpless. My father, a staunch con servative, voted for the 18th Amendment (Prohibition) be cause, as a grocer, he saw workers drinking up their paychecks and leaving wives without grocery money.

At the time, we do not think of the long term effect, on ourselves and others, of these piecemeal "re forms." Such wisdom is the busi ness of statesmen and, of these, we are always in short supply. Never theless, we cannot excuse our selves. Common sense and any knowledge of history should tell us that government is the least effective agent of philanthropy we could choose. Funding the Salva tion Army with 5 per cent of our income would outdo 20 per cent turned over to politicians. But, of course, we have bought the im practical philanthropy of Rous seau. Ameliorating misery is not enough. "If the people won't be good, we will make them be good." Such preventive discipline has never worked and never will. Peo ple insist on learning, so far as they do learn, from their own mis takes. One cannot keep one's own 1974 DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER? 157 children safe. Much less can gov ernment save anyone from his own folly.

The welfare-environmental, world-saving state did not arrive in a day, or in four decades. It is the fruit of over a century of logi cal positivism and Marxist dialec tic. Such modes of thought, if such they may be called, have gradually permeated a ruling number of our university staffs, our public schools, and the general intellec tual milieu. Hence, they have spread through our media in an era of their burgeoning ubiquity. Through such propagation, we have developed the current breed of political "liberal," concerning whom the late Albert Jay Nock said he "would not trust one alone in a room with a red hot stove unless it was valueless." (And, by all, historical standards, Nock, him self, was a liberal.) Look to the Individual To put the current liberal men tality in its proper place, one must compare it to the successful in tellectual tradition of the Western world. The progress of Western science and philosophy stems from the recognition that, in reality, "nothing exists apart from par-, ticulars." We learn the mystery of things by studying individual specimens, not by speculating in.

generalities. As Aristotle put it "The physician does not cure man kind. He cures Socrates, or Callias, or some other individual who hap pens to be a man." Even cursory observation shows us that the cur rent breed of liberal is engaged in "curing mankind." Certainly, he is not in any way, but accidentally, concerned with individuals. Groups he understands, and statistics from random samples; but individuals are the often troublesome acci dents which interfere with his glittering generalities. If biolo gists, botanists, physicists, or any kind of real scientists operated with his logic, we wouldn't have any workable science, or the kind of productive society which can afford to support liberals in un productive idle speculation. (Inci dentally, the Cal-Tech men who charted the spaceship trajectories to the moon give fundamental credit to Galileo-fifteenth century man of the honest tradition.) William James suggested that: "It is the primitive tendency of the human mind to affirm the re ality of anything conceived." Once one's ideas become more "real"

than the objects around him, he is out of touch with reality. With some notable exceptions, this is the condition among the liberals and academic "social scientists." It puts them in direct line with the medieval metaphysicians who speculated on how many angels 158 THE FREEMAN March could dance on the point of a pin. However, medievalists honored something more exalted than hu man stupidity. Wishful Thinking Liberals, of course, have an ad vantage over those among us with primitive minds. Wishful think ing has always been preferred to harsh realism among a large pro portion of any populace. Universal suffrage places a heavy handicap on sanity in government, as dem onstrated by every successful mass movement in history. Liberal con trol of compulsory public training (euphemistically called education) has come close to ensuring a frame of mind, among the popu lace, suitable to their forms of argumentation. Such forms dress tenuous, or even false, generaliza tions with the dignity of facts. We have come a long way from the thinking of Oliver Wendell Holmes' Autocrat of the Breakfast Table: "Facts are the brute beasts of the intellectual world. I tolerate no facts at this table." In the liberal mentality, the most miserable "fact," such as poverty or pollu tion, outweighs the most glorious truth, such as the survivability and progress of free men - even under the most arduous of circumstances.

In their book, The Disaster Lob by, Melvin J. Grayson and Thomas R. Shepard, Jr., have thoroughly documented how far we have strayed from common sense and logic in handling our political econ omy. Only Lewis Carroll or J ona than Swift could do justice to the present American scene. All of our priorities seem to be arranged as if the cart should be before the horse. Ecology holds pre-eminence over food, lodging, or energy. Birds, bison, or fish take prece dence over people. Race and sex are more important than individ ual excellence, or personal liberty. Watergate obscures inflation and the fumbling of all departments of government-Federal, state, and local. Consumerism Worst of all, the consumer, once deemed to be king in our economy, is now considered such an idiot that he must be protected, night and day, by the likes of Ralph Na der and a host of legislators and bureaucrats against the dire out comes of his stupidity. At the same time, the public "education"

which, presumably, nourished this stupidity, is endowed with increas ing billions of public funds, while private education languishes. In the midst of this shambles it created, the smugness of the lib eral establishment is amazing. At a time when most of· us are beset by doubts and misgivings, and are likely to be apologetic even when 1974 DO YOU WANT '.['0 LIVE FOREVER? 159 proven right, many newspaper edi tors and columnists, along with most network commentators and the liberal intelligentsia, seem to rest assured in their rectitude. "The best of all possible worlds" in which they appear to live is im mune to outside criticism. Without blushing, they can filch public doc uments or deal in innuendo de stroying public figures and appear to feel no qualms, even when caught up. Their formulae, which separate the good guys from the bad, appear to be unassailable. Lib erals are good; all others are bad.

It's as simple as that. Although there are strong signs of public disenchantment with this fanatic smugness, surprisingly the liberals manage to hold onto their controls, outside of modest losses here and there. Their security lies in the persistence of fanaticism, and the long-term conversion of the American people to their brand, coupled to the power of a. bureaucracy dedicated thereto and. backed by police force. Only an angry and aroused electorate can succeed in bringing this •reign to an end, just as an angry and aroused' public made the bureauc·· racy possible. Unlike the stead)!r fire of fanaticism, the boilin~~ points of individuals are immense .. ly variable, and indifference, is all too\common. However, smugness i8 an ugly human characteristic. No·· body really likes a know-it-all. So, the liberal establishment has an Achilles' heel. A Word for the Defense The current "energy crisis" of fers a great opportunity for liber tarians and market economists to be heard. Only when people are hurt are most of them willing to listen. The harder the crunch, the more likely is a response. Today, even our liberal legislators seem wordless at the possibility of an easing of environmental control. It is unanswerable that their ob struction of off-shore drilling, atomic power plants, strip mining, private forestry, the Alaska pipe line, and refinery building has placed us in an unenviable eco nomic position. Their emasculation of National Defense has maimed our bargaining power in a tot ali tarian world. Likewise, their head long, progressive mandates of questionable gadgets to clean up automotive exhausts have multi plied fuel use and resultant short age. If it comes to unemployed people huddling in cold houses, be reft of free use of their automo biles, the environmentalists are apt to lose their audience. People would prefer clean air and water, and a pristine landscape; but they would trade off quite a bit of pol lution for the right to use those facilities.

160 THE FREEMAN March Once the audience is ready, "selling" the free market should not be difficult. It is not as if there were an alien idea to explain. (In deed, the welfare state is the real alien idea!) An open market has always existed in human experi ence, even in times and places where it has operated as a "black market." Laissez faire, indeed, is the plainly observable law of na ture, predating human law. And man is a competitive creature, with a strong sense of territory (property), similar to all others in the animal kingdom. Only his strong moral proclivities can ex plain his willingness to submit to the will of legislators, short of be ing forced, and there can never be enough police in the world for complete subjugation. Lawmakers in a society which considers itself a democracy thus play a game of brinksmanship when they legislate morals and push eminent domain toward the extinction of individ ual liberty. One step too far (which may have been taken) and the free marketeers will have won the audience.

One of the many pleasant out comes of such a change will be a new genuine openness. Unlike rad ical liberals, libertarians nurse no urge to shut up the opposition. It is not in our credo to suppress ideas. We would suppress only violence, force, or fraud. That is, we would limit government's acts of suppression to these fields and would, within these limits, allow people to live their own lives; which, allowing for a good deal of official harassment and impedi ment, is what they already must do. It will be surprising how peaceful things will become on the home front under such conditions. Our relations with other nations are likewise sure to improve. The man who is free and happy at home is unlikely to stir up trouble else where. Voluntarism Is Best The free market offers genuine majority rule. Every majority is made up of individuals. If each in dividual, within the limits of legit imate law, is free to make his own choices in life, this will be the op timum condition of majority rule.

It is a fraudulent majority rule where a minority made up of leg islators and bureaucrats, or even a majority of voters (themselves a minority of the whole), can regu late the personal lives and choices of every individual in the society. The "true believers" in the wel fare state have managed to bring us to this pass. We do not suggest that they give up their predilec tions; only that they give up co ercion and put their ideas back in the open market. Ecologists, conservationists, and 1974 DO YOU WANT TO LIVE FOREVER? 161 humanitarians should have enough faith in the generosity of the American individual to place their cases before the court of individ ual choice. There is nothing in the record of private philanthropy in this nation to indicate that deaf ears await any legitimate claim. As a matter of fact we have a strong record of voluntary re sponse, even to ridiculous appeals, as indicated by the flourishing of private associations favoring al most anything under the sun. But it is an insult to the individual citizen and the spirit of our laws that any such association should be afforded the coercive powers of government in achieving its ends.

The Sierra Club, labor unions, Na der's Raiders, the National Edu cation Association, or any other form of pressure group whatever should face the same form of in dividual veto that every producer in the nation faces. Any other course puts the. cart before the horse. The reformer should con vince the consumer - not rule the producer. Of course the true believers are too obsessed with their particular manias to recognize alternative claims. Focused on the ideals of primordially pure air, crystalline rivers, lakes and oceans, untouched natural parks, flourishing endan gered species, and boundless health, they have. lost sight of the daily necessities of daily living and the basic truth of all econo mists: Human wants are unlim ited; resources are always in short supply; hence all economic deci sions must be compromises with necessity. In the pure majority of the market, such compromises are an amalgam of individual choices.

Whatever the political system or laws, the individual must decide what he shall have and what he must do without. This is as true on Park Avenue as it is in the darkest depths of Africa, or in a Soviet state. To the extent that any government circumscribes the individual citizen's field of free choice and association, it has lim ited his power of survival, let alone his chances of success. Why an ecologist, who can benignly watch a lion pull down an eland or harte beest, does not appear to under stand the foregoing is a trifle hard to explain. It's a tough world, rather unforgiving, and the true believers, in order to return it to Eden, seem determined to bring it down upon us. They have so twist ed up our priorities that not even General Motors has any clear idea how to plan. In such an arena, what are the prospects for the in dividual? The Ingenious Individual Contrary to the doomsayers, left to his own devices, the individual 162 THE FREEMAN March has always shown remarkable pow ers of survival, even in the most unlikely environments. One by one, he has created all the engines of economic ease which we possess, while reform governments have done nothing but milk the cows of his creation. Determined to man date an abstract "social justice,"

true believers have ignored the rela tivism that even the American sharecropper was rich by compari son with the vast majority of the world's inhabitants. Encouraging self-pity (to which we are all prone) in the less fortunate, they have dampened the spirit of such barefoot farm boys whose determi nation once made them captains of industry. (They now major .in "social service" and end up in pro football! ) If their ideas are not unseated from places of power, it is difficult to see how the reformers can avoid "killing the goose that laid the golden egg": American Capitalism. Everything we have is owed to the exercise of free indi vidual initiative. Its sole necessary and proper discipline, short of vio lence, force, or fraud, comes from the free choices of individ uals as consumers. Government has more than enough to do with the exer cise of legitimate police powers, justice. and defense. As it is, it is clearly doing nothing well, as Pe ter Drucker has said, with the possible exceptions of ventures in space, foreign wars and diplomacy.

These are, basically, Executive ac tivities, of a department which the liberals in Congress are set on weakening. Posing the question, "Do you want to live forever," implies no denial of immortality of the soul. As in the case of the Marine leader first quoted here, this is a question concerning this worldly existence. Patrick Henry's cry, "Give me lib erty, or give me death !", was more than political oratory. It strikes a chord in nearly all of us, if not all, from panhandler to merchant prince. There is the point beyond which we will not be pushed. Life is sweet only when it is creative; and we will always risk its loss on the altar of achievement, whether it be mounting a barricade, climb ing a mountain, rocketing to the moon, or in some more mundane occupation. Life is what we ulti mately spend: each person's total gift to the universe of reality and the essential coin of philanthropy.

A man's closest desire is that his passing through is not meaning less, for he knows that he is mor tal. Compared to this small glory in each· of us, how paltry seem the concerns of the welfare state. Let us live by our choices and die as free men! , STRIVE FOR THE S\MPlE l\fE LEONARD E. READ I, TOO, LOVE A LIFE whose plot is simple. However, my idea as to what's simple differs from that of the great naturalist and essayist, Henry David Thoreau. Doubtless, he had in mind the quietude of Walden Pond and its seclusion from society. And this is what near ly everyone regards as the simple life. My great-grandfather, born dur ing the founding of America, was the first settler in Shiawassee County, Michigan. There was no "society" to interfere with his comings and goings - the nearest village being miles away - and ex cept for the prying eyes of forag ing Indians he and his family hacked it out alone. According to the popular definition, his life was indeed simple, far more so than Thoreau's.