Wolrd in the Grip of an Idea; C. Carson

546 main speaker was the lieutenant governor of the state. The audience was well mannered, polite, and con scious of doing the right thing by applauding at all the places where it seemed to be indicated. Civility was an unannounced guest of honor at the occasion. For a brief span of time in the midst of the proceedings, two men entered the room. Their attire was only a slight improvement over that of ranch hands returning from a long cattle drive. One of the men wore a cap which remained on his head for the whole time they were there. One man was a photographer, and the other was his lighting assistTHE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 547 ant. They went about their picture taking with no apparent regard for the audience or participants, stand ing between some of the audience and the dais, moving about at will, shining bright lights here and there, and making it difficult for all others there at the high point of the pro ceedings.

Undoubtedly, the photographers were invited to come to take pic tures. Undoubtedly, too, they were going about doing so in the most direct way. My point, however, is that they were an alien element in our midst. Their attire and manner would have been little different if they had been photographing hogs wallowing in their mire. Our man ners, our customs, and our purposes could hardly have concerned them less if they were invaders from Mars. My larger point is this. There is an alien force in our midst, a force (or pervasive influence) which is alien to our manners, customs, tra ditions, morality, and institutions. We are all familiar with it in its most obtrusive form, that of the newsman or reporter. We have all seen such reporters, .at least on tele vision, crowding about some person, pushing for attention, shoving mi crophones in his face, blinding him with flashbulbs, and insistently de manding answers to questions which are none of their business. It is a good analogy to think of them as wolves, baying at some prey they have surrounded, preparing to strip his garments away and render him helpless before them.

The Communications Industry Reporters are, however, only the most colorful of a much more exten sive alien element. It holds sway in a whole vast industry, or, more pre cisely, a congeries of industries. In its lesser dimension, it is often referred to as the communications industry, the opinion industry, or, simply, the media. In its broader dimensions, however, it embraces much more: the entertainment industry, the in formation and education industry, and a vast assortment of other busi nesses which lie on the periphery of these. It includes records, tapes, books, magazines, movies, radio, television, newspapers, much of live entertainment, schools, a portion of organized religion, the world of fashion-clothing, hair styling, adornment-and so on. In terms of impact, it might best be called the Lifesty Ie Industry. In terms of its thrust, it should be called the Trans formation Industry.

If it be considered a single indus try, it is a huge industry, and much of it is highly profitable. The pub lishing industry alone is so vast and profitable that large corporations have bought old houses in order to diversify and become more profitable. The ownership of a television sta548 THE FREEMAN September tion is the nearest thing there is to a franchise to, print money in the United States. Although the Life style or Transformation Industry in cludes activities that are generally not profitmakers, ,such as schools, those who work in them are often well rewarded. Despite the size, sway, and prof itability of much of this industry, a strange and apparently contradic tory development has been taking place over the last decade. As busi ness in general has been ever more closely regulated and controlled, as much of business has been turned into an instrument of government, the Lifestyle or Transformation In dustry has been breaking loose from such regulations and controls over it as there have been. An ever wider arena of freedom from either social or political control for those in this industry is being carved out. The tendency is for the Lifestyle Indus try neither to be controlled by gov ernment nor to be an instrument of government. Its thrust is rather to ward the control and use of govern ment and to assume for itself the role of society.

Much of the great tradition of lib erty in the United States has been pre-empted by the Transformation Industry and instrumented for its specialized purposes. The industry relies mainly on the First Amend ment to the Constitution to expand the boundaries of its uncontrolled activities. The Amendment reads, in part: CCCongress shall make no law ... abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; ..." It has long since been stretched far beyond the mean ing which could be deduced from its language to include all governments and is widely used to inhibit any criticism of things spoken or writ ten. The battle cries of cCcensorship" and cCacademic freedom" are employed to deter any control over the press and schools. Liberty into License Freedom, it has been said, is like a seamless cloth. Those who point this out have been most often inclined to argue that you cannot have freedom of speech, press, religion, and politi cal activity without the correspond ing freedoms entailed in private property, trade, enterprise, and managing your own affairs. The theory supporting this view is well established, and much historical evidence can be adduced which tends to prove it. But there is another aspect of this principle which is not usually noticed. It is that partial liberty tends to degen erate into license.

When does liberty become license? Or, when does the exercise of liberty become licentious? One way to an swer the question is to say that liberty becomes license when its exercise intrudes upon the realm of other people and becomes abusive.

1978 THE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 549 Another way is to note that liberty tends to become license when it is cut loose from that to which in its proper exercise it is responsible. The p~inciple can be stated more di rectly: Unrestrained liberty tends to become license. Partial liberty, en joyed by some portion of the populace only, that is unrestrained not only becomes licentious but tyrannical. Freedom without re sponsibility is indistinguish.able from tyranny. Those who claim that everything must be regulated are correct. (The fact that we have come to identify regulation with something that gov ernment does in our day should not mislead us on this point.) The prin ciple may be most readily grasped by a mechanical illustration of it. Every automobile is equipped with a generator or alternator and battery. The battery is for storing electricity, and the generator is for replenishing the supply. However, the electricity cannot go directly from the generator to the battery. Between the two is a voltage regulator, a device which keeps the voltage en tering the battery within a tolerable range and prevents the battery from being overcharged and destroyed.

All transmitted electricity requires similar regulation. In a like manner the amount of fuel going into an engine must be regulated. The driver of an au tomobile regulates the fuel by depressing or releasing pressure on the accelerator. It is impractical, however, to regulate the amount of fuel going into all engines this way. For example, power mowers need more or less fuel depending on the height, thickness and toughness of the grass that is being cut. Lawn mowers are equipped with gover nors to provide regulation in ordi nary circumstances. Without them, lawn mower engines would either be continually stalled or run dan gerously fast most of the time. Market Pricing Price is regulated in the free mar ket by supply and demand. The de mand is kept within the confines of supply by variations in the price. Price is held down and supply is kept up by competition. It happens, too, that so far as the quality of material goods and physical services is concerned, better quality gener ally sells for a higher price and poorer quality at a lower price, other things being equal. (With fruit and vegetables, the time of year or sea son must be taken into account, of course. High quality tomatoes are usually less expensive in summer than are the poorest quality in winter.) But the laws of economics are al most entirely ineffective in regulat ing quality by price in the intellec tual and spiritual realm. It costs no more to reproduce the words in the 550 THE FREEMAN September Bible than it does those in the most scabrous pornographic novel. Once the recording has been made, it costs no more to make copies of Mozart's harmonic symphonies on records or tapes than it does of the outrageous noise of the Sex Pistols. Supply, de mand, ,and competition still regulate price, but the market haS"no device for registering spiritual and intel lectual quality.

The market, as the late Ludwig von Mises was fond of pointing out, is democratic in tendency. It tends to provide the greatest number and va riety ofgoods to the greatest number of people. It responds to the most widespread and urgent demands. The market, as such, has no values, no standards, no morality, except such as are fed into it by buyers and sellers. The market is, let us face it, a potential monster, catering to the most debased taste, the most de praved yearnings, and ready to pro vide the perverted with the means fOf practicing their perversion. There is, normally, a corrective to and inhibitor of this monstrous po tentiality of the market. Normally, the free market does not exist and function alone and in splendid isola tion; it is an integral aspect of free dom and responsibility within the society generally. The free market is a part of the seamless cloth of the free society.

The market may be democratic, but society is, by nature, aristocratic. The market, as such, may be value free, but society is value la den, ever sifting in a timeless way the wheat from the chaff. The mar ket is a mechanism of society. Soci ety is the normal regulator of the market, insisting upon quality as well as quantity, inhibiting what may be bought and sold there, bring ing standards, values, taste, judg ment, and morality to bear on what takes place there. RegUlations Abound This brings us to what has hap pened and what is happening in the United States. There should be no doubt that the fabric of liberty is tom. There is not a free market in general. The market is hampered, restrained, controlled, planned, and intervened in by government. Meanwhile, a limited aspect of the market, that which offers fare for the soul and mind, is being given ever freer rein. It is not possible to buy an automobile without seat belts, but every sort of depravity is luridly described in books and magazines readily available. Diabet ics may not be able to buy substi tutes for sugar, but there is none so depraved that his tastes are not freely pandered to in the market.

More, society cannot effectively maintain its taboos today. It cannot bring to bear a discriminatory taste, judgment, the weight of custom and tradition, and morality upon what is 1978 THE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 551 sold in the market. Its prescriptive powers have been largely deacti vated. Society is wounded and crip pled where it is not entirely dis abled. The regulator has been re moved from that portion of the mar ket that is free. How this has come about is too large a story to tell in all its detail. It is much too complex to do more than call attention to the outlines of the process here. One thing should be clear: It has come about largely as a result of government interven tion in and inhibition of society. So ciety wields its influence and main tains its prescriptions by a great variety of customs, institutions, tra ditions, and organizations. The most basic institution of society is the family. The basic tasks of the family are the nurture and upbringing of children, the provision for those in their midst who are unable to take care of themselves, and the looking after aged relatives. To accomplish these tasks, authority must be exer cised, and divisions of responsibility must be maintained.

Paternalism Government has now assumed much of the role of the family. Com pulsory school attendance and gov ernment prescription of what must be taught relieves parents of much of their responsibility for the chil dren and authority over their up bringing. Welfare and Social Security payments eroded dependence upon the family. When dependence is gone much authority is lost as well. The tendency of government intervention has been to reduce the family to an affectional unit, to re move much of its disciplinary au thority, and to make it no stronger than the fickle ties of affection. The authority of employers has been drastically reduced by gov ernment intervention. Every gov ernment prescription of wages, of hours, of working conditions, and of employer-employee relations re duces the authority of the employer. A spirit of litigation afflicts Americans today. Patients are suing physicians, students suing teachers, employees suing employers, wives suing husbands, women suing men, blacks suing whites-even children suing parents. What this signifies, when it becomes rampant, is the breakdown of society, the substitu tion of force for persuasion, and the intrusion of government into every nook and cranny of life. It is a state of covert civiI war superintended largely by federal judges. Those who bring suits may not realize it, but every suit invites, even requires, that the force of government be brought to bear to bring the parties into line.

What has all this, and much else of similar character, to do with the largely uninhibited onslaught of the Lifestyle or Transformation Indus552 THE FREEMAN September try upon us? It has everything to do with it. Society enforces its prescrip tions mainly by approval or disap proval of acts. Public decorum, mor ality, and civility is maintained be cause the individual seeks the ap proval of others around him. In a similar fashion, good taste and high standards depend upon the desire people have for the good opinion of others. It seems natural to many of us to wish to be in good standing with those with whom we come in con tact. But for the generality it needs to be reinforced by exigent social ties. One seeks the good will of an employer, above all, to keep a job. Children obey parents, in the final analysis, because their livelihood de pends on them. Men have a care to their language, observe the taboos, behave themselves not only because they wish to be well thought of but also because their well-being in general depends upon it. When these financial and familial sup ports are cut away, social prescrip tions lose their bite.

The stage has been set, then, for the transformation of society. The social regulator which links freedom to responsibility has been discon nected. Business, in general, is ever more severely controlled and regu lated. The Transformation Industry, by contrast, is enlarging its arena for freedom of action divorced from responsibility for the consequences. The media has assumed much of the prescriptive authority once exer cised by society. It proclaims, often subtly, approved attitudes, reward ing those who conform and ignoring or punishing those who do not. Gen erals cower before the lash of en raged media-men, resign their posi tions' and retire to obscurity. But the media is not society; it is, in stead, one of the alien etements thrusting toward social transforma tion. The Urge to Transform The Lifestyle or Transformation Industry is alien to American soci ety in so far as and to the extent that it is bent upon transforming it.

Some qualification is in order here. There is nothing inherent in jour nalism, in book publishing, in music making, or any other of these under takings that would bend them to ward transformation of society. Magazines may as readily defend as attack the existing social order. Ed ucation is, by nature, a conserv'ative process whose main purpose has usually been imbuing the young with their culture and heritage. Un doubtedly, too, there are magazines and schools that have as no part of their purpose obstructing or trans forming the social order. Almost any newspaper will have a considerable variety of material in it, much of which will have little or nothing to do with social transformation. Some 1978 THE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 553 television programs may lovingly portray aspects of our culture and heritage. Be that as it may, for a considera ble while now a major thrust of the media, education, the information industries, and entertainment has been toward social transformation.

Intellectual fashion has prescribed social transformation as a desirable goal. The idea that has the world in its grip has held sway in the United States as elsewhere. Intellectuals bent on transforming have often pic tured and thought of themselves as being an embattled minority. That is a misconstruction of the actual situation. They are a majority, or at least determine much of the course of things, in the intellectual realm. But they are alien to the society and, as such, do occupy a potentially pre carious position. The fact that they are continually attacking and un dermining the received social ar rangements makes them aliens. To grasp what has been happen ing it will be helpful to get in mind as clearly as can be what a society is. A society begins to be formed when two or more people begin to interact on a regular basis. What we speak of as society emerges from the modes that are tacitly agreed upon and accepted for interacting with one another. The society consists of those who accept these modes of be havior. The modes consist of man ners, morals, conventions, customs, taboos, and traditions. Amongst civilized peoples, social prescrip tions not only facilitate intercourse but tend to protect indIviduals in the enjoyment and use of what is theirs.

(Those prescriptions that are amen able to it are often formalized as law.) Social Conventions Man was made for society, wise men have said, and there is no end to the advantages which follow from social cooperation. Indeed, the ad vantages of association and coopera tion are so obvious and great that societies will continue to be formed so long as there are people. Social arrangements exist for the purpose of enabling people the better to en rich themselves by interacting with one another. However, there is a nether side to the relations between people. All interaction between people is poten tially abrasive, fraught with dan geJiS of abuse of some persons by others, and sets the stage for every harmful act that can occur. Society exists for the specific purpose of pro viding means for keeping relations among people smooth. The more in timate the relations among people the more potentially dangerous the situation.

Taboos take shape especially to govern and restrain intimate rela tions. Since sexual relations are the most intimate of all relations, it is 554 THE FREEMAN September not surprising that taboos often are strenuously applied in this area. There is, for example, a near univer sal taboo against incest-a taboo which serves not only to abate the dangers of inbreeding but to protect the close family unit from the con flicts that would arise within it from sexual rivalries. Social conventions tend to change with the passage of time. Some times, society gets religion, so to speak, professes very high stan dards, and is purified somewhat of its dross of accretions over the years. Social prescriptions change to deal with new conditions and new oppor tunities and dangers. Positive law often arises from social prescription, as well it should, but law is fre quently too gross, precise, and in flexible for the complex and shifting shades of social prescription. But social change must be gradual, otherwise it is disruptive and con fusing, thus failing to facilitate in teraction or to protect individuals within it. A certain comfort within and accord with the rules of society is essential to the working of society.

Breaking Tradition Socialists regard the received social arrangements as a major det riment to their undertakings. Rev olutionaries require that they be de stroyed. Evolutionary socialists attempt to change them gradually by law so as to merge government with society. At any rate, both agree that the whole complex of distinc tions which society maintains must be broken down before man can be collectivized, communized or social ized. The received institutions, cus toms, and traditions. provide a pro tective shield for the individual, a shield which must be broken before he can be melded into a mass. The most drastic experiments with forced collectivization did not occur in Stalin's attempt to collectivize agriculture. They occurred in Soviet forced labor camps and in Nazi con centration camps. They were al luded to earlier in this work. They involved especially the uninhibited use of obscenities, profanity, and inducing the individual to violate various taboos. Alexander Dolgun, an American who spent years in Soviet prisons and labor camps, tells how when he was first put in prison he was subjected to a physical examination by a woman doctor who gave special attention to his private parts. This surely was not acciden tal, for it fit the general pattern of trying to break him down by remov ing the normal expectation of ob serving the social mores.

The most dramatic thrust of the Transformation Industry in recent years has been to break down or through the social prescriptions that have to do with the use of language and sex. Rampant public expression of obscenities became commonplace 1978 THE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 555 in the 1960's. Novelists began to lard their works with just about every vulgar expression imagina ble. Underground newspapers printed the theretofore unprintable. Magazines, even some of general circulation, began to do likewise. Even more profound in its impact was the use of obscenities in the speech of characters in movies. After all, reading is usually a private un dertaking. But movies have public showings as a rule, and are usually made for that purpose. Nowadays, profanity and obscenities are regu lar fare in movies designated PG (meaning acceptable for the admis sion of children but parental guid ance suggested).

Many sexual taboos have been ig nored and violated with impunity. The most intimate matters are now publicly discussed, written about, and portrayed in picture magazines and movies. Many restrictions are still observed in family newspapers, television, and radio, but they are being broken down there as well. Explicit descriptions of sexual inter course were only available in brown covers to discreet patrons a genera tion ago. What was not then con ceived as properly printable is now shown in technicolor on wide screens in movies. If present trends continue, in a few years the family can gather round to watch vivid por trayals of bestiality, necrophilia, and incest, with some orgies thrown in, on their home television sets. Such fare is already available on closed circuit television in hotels and motels. Human Dignity Denied Decorum is the condition of peace ful public assembly. Good manners are the clothes the civilization wears. By the clothes we wear we signify our respect for the sen sibilities of others as wen as our own dignity. Propriety in the use of lan guage preserves the communion in volved in communication. Custom, tradition, and morality are not merely the ornaments, they are the lineaments of society.

My point is this. What occurred as concentrated dosage in Soviet pris ons and forced labor camps and Nazi concentration camps is now being done in a much iess concentrated manner on a national scale by the Lifestyle or Transformation Indus try. The defenses of life, liberty, and property are being removed by the hammer blows on our sensibilities. The right to life depends upon the prohibitions against murder. Sensi bility for others is the foundation of the taboo against murder. There are religious sanctions against murder, but the acceptance, observance, and ~ppreciation of these depends upon sensibility as well. Obscenity, vul garity, and depravity publicly dis played are indications of a profound loss of respect for man. Liberty for 556 THE FREEMAN September such a man is no more than opening the gate and turning the beast out to forage at will. Such a man is no more worthy of property than would be a jackal.

The Collectivizing of Man The Transformation Industry is bent toward collectivizing us. It is stripping away from us our civility, our decorum, our good manners, our taboos, our customs, our traditions, and our individuality. Man must be reduced to be collectivized, his lan guage reduced to guttery curses, his body reduced to its respective and undistinctive parts, and his culture to its meanest remains. The process may be observed most directly by attending a Disco. What made dancing civilized is almost en tirely missing: the breaks from song to song, the dance patterns changing with the number, the couples danc ing together. The music, or noise, is continuous at the Disco; colored lights flash in psychedelic fashion; the music is devoid ·of almost any thing except blare and beat; and couples are not easy to discern. It is an orgy of dancing. It is, at once, each individual alone and the whole a collective mass driven to a frenzy directed by the disk jockey.

It is easy enough to believe that many of those in the Transformation Industry know not what they do. Since much of the industry is highly profitable, there is reason to suppose that many of those engaged in the business are not doing anything much but making money, at least so far as they are concerned. There is money to be made in pandering to man's baser desires, nor is there anything new about it. It is also true, however, that it is not neces sary for those under the sway of an idea to know it. There is a kind of demonic urge to the egalitarianism implicit in the idea that has the world in its grip. Women must be the same as men, children the same as adults, all races the same, and each no higher than all others. And, to prove it, we must all be disrobed. Here is a parable for our time, a parable that is factual, if the columnist, Bob Greene, who re ported it, be accepted (Atlanta Con stitution, May 19, 1978, p. 7-B). It seems that a photographer has put together a collection of his photo graphs which he calls ((Dallas Nude." Cha,rles R. Collum, the pho tographer, says that he took three and a half years on the project.

UMy idea," he says, u was to show the city through its nude people. Dallas had the reputation as an up tight, conservative, banker religious-middle-of-the-Bible-Belt city. I think that reputation was wrong. My pictures show Dallas being happy, innocent, exuberant, full of freedom." He accomplished this by' photographing people from all walks of life-librarians, dental 1978 THE U.S.: THE THRUST TO TRANSFORMATION 557 assistants, optometrists, nurses, bank tellers, and so on-in the nude. UThe soul of a city," Mr. Collum is quoted as saying, cCis in its people. And people without their clothes on are more expressive than people who are dressed." Mr. Collum is so impressed with what he has done with, or to, Dallas, that he is eager to do the same for other towns and cities in the United States. Indeed, he has in mind an even more ambitious project, Greene reports, and has approached the State Department about it: I want to go to Russia and do ccMoscow Nude." We were brought up to think that the Communists were bad people, were our enemies. But on a one-to-one level, I think the Russians are just as warm and wonderful as the people of Dallas. I think that ccDallas Nude" and cCMoscow Nude" would go great together. To gether, their message would be ccPeace on Earth, good will toward men."

Why would such a notion strike anyone as plausible? Indeed, where would anyone get such an idea? Ac tually, the antecedents of Mr. Col lum's idea are not difficult to trace. They are the progeny of Jean Jac ques Rousseau, the spiritual god father of our age. Strip away the cultural raiment, and man will emerge as a Noble Savage, Rousseau informed us. Man in the nude will be his natural, good self. This idea has worn a groove into the mind of an era. It is not necessary to read Rousseau to discover it; it is enough to breathe the fu~es that emanate from the intellectual cli mate. The idea that has the world in its grip holds that man is naturally good but that he is deformed by his culture. Divest him of his culture, and the goodness will shine forth. The Transformation Industry is under the sway of this idea. This is the demonic urge which impels its assault upon society, culture, man ners, mores, and civility. There are quite an assortment of ways to go about it. A George Bernard Shaw comedy could go about it with style and verve. Nudity is a relatively innocent approach. The more power ful weapons are profanity, obscen ity, vulgarity, and the vivid depic tion of perversions. The record thus far shows that when the protective cover of culture has been removed, we are exposed to the more drastic forms of political power. It is a cru cial part of the process of collectivi zation. , Next: 22: The United States: A Be mused People.