World in the Grip of an Idea; C. Carson

In this series, Dr. Carson examines the connection between Ideology and the revolutions of our time and traces the Impact on several major countries and the spread of the ideas and practices around the world. 102 Gradualism does not, of course, ordinarily adopt the guise of a power theory. Indeed, we are enjoined from recognizing it as a power theory by a prevailing intellectual temper which disdains theory. It operates under the guise of benevolence. In countries where socialism is an ac ceptable goal, it claims that goal and purports to be doing what is good for society. Where socialism is not gen erally recognized as a good, gradualism claims to be acting pragmatically for the common good. Yet, gradualism is a power theory; socialism is a power theory; and pragmatism is a power theory. It is THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADUALISM 103 on~y by grasping it as a power theory that we can understand its character, its mode of operation,and the manner of its success. This may become clear when we look at the matter this way. Socialism is a fail ure in every respect, save one. It fails in its tacit promise to lead us toward utopia. It fails to provide a bounty of goods. It fails to distribute wealth either justly or equally. It fails to fulfill its promises. In one respect only does it succeed. It suc ceeds in gaining, holding, and exer cising power. It succeeds, by its very success, in transforming all political parties which contend with it into facsimiles of itself.

Ideas have consequences which follow from the essence of the idea. Theories produce results in accord with the theory, whether the theory is explicitly stated or not. The one tangible result of socialism is power, power concentrated and extensively employed. It may well be that most of those who embrace socialism are not aware that they are embracing a power theory. Certainly, most of those who vote for the measures of gradualist socialism are not in formed that they are placing vast power in the hands of those over them. Yet that is what they do. Because power is the fruit of gradualism, its necessary antece dent is a power theory. The theory is here stated as the belief in the use of government to transform society. Distributing the Benefits Gradualism differs from com munism in practice in this way. Communism is spread· and its grip fastened upon a people by the use of terror. Gradualism, by contrast, fas tens its grip upon a people by provid ing unearned benefits to some or all of the people at the expense of some or all of the people.

Virtually the whole appeal of this notion is that those who receive the benefits are either not taxed to pay for them, or taxed much less than the sum of the benefits received. The graduated income tax and corpora tion taxes are essential to bolstering this belief. (If wealthy stockholders and corporations did not exist, gradualists would have to invent them. Indeed, in those countries where they do not exist, govern ments convey benefits derived from them by way of foreign loans and other sorts of aids.) There is an even more clever de vice for hiding the taxation by which wealth is acquired to pay for the unearned benefits. It is inflation, Le., the increasing of the money supply by government. Gradualist governments everywhere use this covert means of raising money. It is, of course, a form of taxation, for the value of the money thus raised is taken from the money which people hold or have owed to them. The effect is experienced as rising prices.

In gradualist countries, which is 104 THE FREEMAN February to say, in effect, in all non communist countries, a continual struggle goes on between groups to get the largest share of unearned benefits and to pay the smallest por tion of the costs. It is a struggle in which the apparent winners are often the biggest losers, for the bene fits carry a price tag. Those who receive them pay by loss of indepen dence. Those who rule thus increase their power over the people. The power thus gained by government is used to shape the populace accord ing to its will. A Single Government Gradualist socialism is a power theory, too, in that its eventual aim is to have all force in the world monopolized by a single govern ment. N~ such aim is generally avowed, of course, but it is nonethe less the tacit logic of the position. The idea that has the world in its grip requires the eventual concerting of all human effort to achieve felicity on earth. Moreover, the position sometimes gets explicit, albeit ten tative, statement. Here is such a statement in the mysticized evolutionary language of Teilhard de Chardin. He leads into it by way of the discussion of the future neces sity of applying eugenics to individ uals. Then, he says: Eugenics applied to individuals leads to eugenics applied to society .... Points involved are: the distribution of the resources of the globe; the control of the trek towards unpopulated areas; the op timum use of the power set free by mechanisation; the physiology of nations and races; geo-economy, geopolitics, geo-demography; the organisation of re search developing into a reasoned or ganisation of the earth. Whether we like it or not, all the signs and all our needs converge in the same direction. We need and are irresistibly being led to create, by means of and beyond all physics, all biology and all psychology, a science of human energetics.!

If we strip away the prophetic mys ticism in which his thought is cast, Chardin is saying that what is needed is a science of concerting human energy, and one is emerging. Government is, of course, the ap proved instrument for accomplish ing the concerting of human energy. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., put the case for world government more prosaically a few years back: Yet world government, in a sense, cannot emerge too soon; for the people of the world cannot long afford to expend their energies in squabbling with each other. The human race may shortly be confronted by an entirely new range of problems-problems of naked subsis tence whose solution will require the combined efforts of all people if the race is to survive .... The results of industri alization and introduction of public health standards in Asia, for example, may well be calamitous, unless they are accompanied by vigorous birth-control policies and by expanded programs of land care and conservation. 2 1979 THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADUALISM 105 The time was not yet right for it, however, he pointed out. HWhen Russia loosens the totalitarian grip, then the noble dream of world gov ernment will begin to make some contact with reality. . . . In the meantime, we had better do what we can to foster community where we can, through regional federations and through the United Nations .... "3 Schlesinger was stating the gradualist position in contrast with that of the enthusiasts for im mediate world government.

Effective world government can only emerge, then, on this view, when all the nations of the earth have come under the sway of demo cratic socialism. If this gradualist vision be thought of as a timetable-a term that is only apt if it be understood as a figure of speech-the stages of progression are roughly these. First, socialism must come to power within nations. When several nations which have common bonds are socialized, they can form regional unions. Eventu ally, these can be linked together in a world government. Before that can happen, however, all cultural, reli gious, racial, and social differences from people to people and nation to nation will have to be blurred or obliterated. In short, the very trans formation and homogenization to ward which socialism tends must have taken place. But the process does not occur in timetable fashion. It goes on simul taneously at many different levels.

It proceeds at any time and place when collective decision making and action is substituted for individual decision and acting. Thus, the United Nations Organization, which is already in existence, might even tually become the world govern ment. But whether it does or not, the yielding to it of any power of decision and action is a step in the direction of world government within the socialist eschatology. But so is the decision of some local gov ernment to fluoridate the water supply, for that, too, is a step toward total collectivization. My point is that the process may go on simul taneously at many different levels, that gradualists have no precise blueprint or plan, but that they un derstand themselves to be proceed ing toward the goal wherever deci sionsare being collectively made that were formerly made by indi viduals. The Spread of Democracy The spread of gradualism pro ceeds, then, by the spread of the collecti vizing of decision making and action. Gradualism is a power theory, a theory for eventually con solidating all power in a single world government, but it does not necessarily proceed by the direct exercise of power. And it certainly does not rely on terror for its spread.

106 THE FREEMAN February Its chosen instrument is democracy, although there is no necessary aver sion to autocratic methods so long as there is a general framework of de mocracy. In the world today the spread of gradualism is a concomi tant of the spread of democracy. Anyone who undertakes to tell the story of the spread of gradualism around the world in the mid twentieth century has set himself a formidable, if not impossible, task. The task does not simply arise be cause the world is a large and di verse complex of nations, though it is. The problem is more fundamen tal than that. It arises from the very nature of gradualist or evolutionary socialism. The very idea is that the movement toward socialism must be by gradual, and often imperceptible, steps. Usually, gradualists operate within the received framework of insti tutions. Often enough, those who advance gradualist measures do not proclaim themselves as socialists. Journalists usually confuse the issues. Head lines do not announce that a gradualist regime has come to power in some land. (If they did, it would probably mean that some commu nist had seized the government.) The world of scholarship provides no greater aid. There are no textbooks on the spread of gradualism in the world. Such references as are, usu ally made by writers to' such matters are apt to describe a regime as ttmoderate" or ttleft wing" or ttright wing," terms which may provide a better indication of the predilections of the classifier than about the ten dency of the government.

In truth, the spread of gradualism is largely unreported, though it is surely one of the most significant developments of the twentieth cen tury. If gradualism were a fact, I think it would have been reported. But it is not a fact; it is a theory. It is a theory that if you begin at one point with certain sorts of measures and advance them relentlessly and successfully, you will eventually end up at your destination. Gradualism is also a tendency, a movement, a direction, and an ideology. As a ten dency, when'it is recognized, a great many facts may be accounted for by it. More, it is surreptitious move ment, operating under cover of other names quite often, and moving to ward its eventual goal slowly and by indirection. Destination Unknown The problem' of the historian in dealing with gradualism may be il lustrated by analogy with describ ing a man on a journey whose desti nation is uncertain. Let us suppose that the man begins his journey at Dallas, Texas. Amongst friends and those with whom he is comfortable he has often talked of going to New York City to settle there. He has even discussed on several occasions 1979 THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADUALISM 107 the ways and means of getting there. For purposes of the analogy, we will equate New York City with socialism. But when he sets out from Dallas, he buys a ticket to go only to Longview. From Longview, he travels to Texarkana, thence to Lit-· tle Rock, then on to Memphis, then, unaccountably, to Muscogee, Okla·· homa. From Muscogee, he pro ceeds to Birmingham, and then north once again to Chattanooga.

Let us interrupt his journey at Chattanooga, with the observation that he has only got that far to date .. Is he going to New York? From the information available to us, we do not know. There is some evidence that he might be. There is a pattern to his travels, thus far, if the tacking to and fro is discounted, which could eventually get him to New York. He could, however, travel next to At-· lanta instead, and wind up in Miami. The only substantial clue we have is that he had talked as if he were going to New York. There are, however, some pieces of missing information. We have not been told in what sort of vehicle he is traveling, nor do we yet know how its intermediate destinations are de termined. Let us say, somewhat playfully, that he is traveling by a sail-driven wind-propelled prairie schooner. Its intermediate direc tions are determined by two vari·· ables, each more or less independent of the other, and neither of which is predictable in advance. One factor is that the passengers vote before they set out from a city, and the majority decide which city they will go to next. The other factor is what they may be driven off course, even to different destinations, by strong wind currents. There is another fac tor, however, which makes their eventual arrival in the vicinity of New York fairly certain, if they stay on the journey long enough. The prevailing winds in the United States blow in an easterly direction.

Indeed, those from the southwest, Dallas, for example, blow in a northeasterly direction, Le., toward New York. With this information, the anal ogy becomes very near ly a paradigm. The traveler is the na tions of the world. The vehicle is democracy. The course is gradual ism. The prevailing winds are the intellectual climate, driving toward the eventual destination of social ism. The tacking to and fro is occa sioned by the shifting currents of popular opinion. Bent Toward Collectivism This provides us an analytical tool, of sorts, with which to discern the mode, methods, and extent of the spread of gradualism. The spread of democracy in the twentieth cen tury is more or less coextensive with the spread of gradualism. On the face of it, there is no reason why this 108 THE FREEMAN February should be true. Political democracy could be, perhaps should be, ideolog ically neutral. It may have been at one time, but it is not in the twen tieth century. Democracy is now ideologically loaded and bent toward collectivism. What makes this so is the intellectual climate.

A major change in what is called democracy-more properly, repre sentative government-occurred in the late nineteenth and early twen tieth century. Democracy emerged in modern times as a means of con trolling government, of limiting and restraining those who govern. Rep resentative government was earliest and firmest established in England following the Glorious Revolution. Its most prominent task was to con trol and limit the exercise of power by the monarch. The control over the purse-over revenues-was reckoned to be the most crucial pow er for exercising that control. That was the reason for vesting the au thority for initiating appropriations in the United States House of Rep resentatives-the most democratic branch of the Congress-to keep the power over the purse nearest to the people. The major change referred to above occurred when the emphasis shifted from the people controlling government to the government con trolling the people. What occurred, let me reiterate, was a shift in em phasis, not some absolute change.

There never was a time, of course, when government did not exercise some control over the people. Moreover, as long as people vote in contested elections, they exercise some control over government. It is a matter of degree and emphasis. Attempts to Limit Government Anyone who will study in depth English history in the seventeenth century will surely discover that much of the great effort going on was to discover means of controlling government. In like manner, the documents of the American Revolu tion are replete with evidence of concern for limiting and restraining government. Placing basic powers in the elective legislatures was one of the important devices by which the founders hoped to accomplish this. In like manner, it should be clear that governments in more recent times have shifted toward more and more control over the people. That is not the way those who favor the controls describe them, of course.

They talk of planning economies, of controlling business, of controlling prices and wages, of providing social security, of setting standards for this or that or the other, and so on. But they are always using power upon and controlling people, and not just some of the people either, but all of them. As has been shown in this work, the control over business is a 1979 THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADUALISM 109 means for reaching through to and controlling all who work for or trade with it. Compulsory school atten dance, compulsory retirement ~~con tributions," building codes, ~~check off" payment of labor union dues, tax payments to subsidize undertak ings' fair employment practices acts, and so on, are people control. The ~~have-ngts," the ~~have littles," the ~~ne'er-do-wells," the un educated, the old, the young, minorities, industrial workers, ten ant farmers, working mothers whatever disfurnished classification that can be conceived-are essential to gradualist socialism. Their condi tion provides the grist for the pro gram mills of gradualism. The em phasis shifted from controlling gov ernment to controlling people in con·, junction with the thrust toward uni vers~il suffrage. The tie between democracy and gradualism was knotted with this development. The enfranchisement of those who hope to gain by weight of numbers what they had not achieved by their ef forts is the basic political, or power, technique of gradualism.

But the impetus toward socialism does not arise from those who can in one way or another be described as disfurnished. They could no more provide the continuous impetus for such a movement than they could effectively direct the development of great corporations. Nor does the im petus come from politicians primarily, though politicians do much of the work of arousing the populace and the enactment of programs. The Intellectual Drive The impetus toward socialism comes from what Russell Kirk refers to as the ~~clerisy ," or what are more commonly called intellectuals. ~~Clerisy" may be the better term, however, for it suggests the pseudo clerical character of the undertak ing. The impetus toward socialism is provided by secular clergymen, so to speak, by those who have taken up the mission· of transforming man and society by the use of force. The natural habitat of these secular clergymen is the modern coll~ge and university. But they are almost equally at home amongst the regular clergy, as journalists, as writers, and in anyone of the hundreds of intellectual pursuits. Whatever their vocation, their avocation is transformation. They are the mak ers and purveyors of intellectual fashion, or, more pointedly, they make gradualist socialism fashion able under whatever guises it adopts at the moment. They create and spread the intellectual climate which propels us toward socialism.

Gradualist socialism advances under many guises, but there is one that is very nearly constant in the world today. It is democracy. HDe mocracy" is the code word for gradualist socialism. The situation 110 THE FREEMAN February is somewhat confused, however, be cause communists also use it as a code word. Thus, it is not always immediately clear when we are in formed by the great news media of the world that democracy has triumphed somewhere or other whether communism or gradualism has come to power. But it does usu ally eventually get straightened out. If one-party rule is tyrannically im posed, and if close relations with one or more of the great communist powers are established, a country will likely be recognized as com munistic, not ttdemocratic." (There is yet another element in the confusion-the Third World. That will have to be discussed in its own place, however.) The spread of gradualism, then, can be very nearly equated with the spread of democracy. There are other ways of saying much the same thing. In those countries of the world in which the influence of the United States and Western Europe is predominant, gradualist socialism is generally well established. More bluntly, it is that portion of the world tied either directly or indi rectly to the inflationary spiral of the dollar. However, this last formu lation better describes the predica ment of much of gradualism than it does the extent of the sway.

At any rate, the geopolitics of the West has been deeply intertwined with gradualism since World War II. Much of the Western influence on the rest of the world had been wielded by way of colonies prior to World War II. Every major (world?) European war since the beginning of the eighteenth century had em broiled colonies and entailed re shuffling of colonial possessions. World War II marked a major break with the past. Theretofore, colonies had been sought mainly, though not exclusively, in order to gain domi nant trading positions in other parts of the world. The diminution of mil i tary power in Western Europe in the course of the war, plus ideological pressure, resulted in the release of colonial possessions, many of them within a decade after the war. With the release of colonial possessions went also the loss of European hegemony in many parts of the world. The Cold War The quest for favorable trading positions, and the conflicts that were engendered by it, was transformed into an ideological conflict. The gen eral name for that conflict, of course, has been the Cold War. The expan sive pressure of communism pro voked resistance to it which was centered in the United States. What ever the interest of those who op posed communism, this conflict be came mainly a contest between rev olutionary and evolutionary socialism, as I pointed out earlier.

1979 THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADDALISM 111 The answer to communism, many claimed, was democracy. Hence, much of the influence of the West and a considerable amount of the wealth and know-how of the United States was put into establishing and bolstering democratic regimes which, according to theory, might be able to defend themselves from communism and maintain their own independence. The result was the spread of democratic socialism where it was successful. Where it failed, which was in most places, it set the stage for some nationalistic and autocratic socialist regime. It is certainly simplistic and prob ably untrue to explain the failure of these re~"imes on the grounds that the people are unprepared for de mocracy. If by being Hprepared" for democracy is meant the willingness and readiness of peoples to go to the polls and vote themselves a share of the wealth, most peoples of the world are probably well prepared.

The problem lies elsewhere. They don't have the wealth to distribute! Democratic, or evolutionary, or gradualist, socialism is a product of industrially and agriculturally ad vanced nations. It succeeds in hold ing power only in these nations, if it is not massively aided from other sources. There is no mystery about why this is so. Democratic socialism is a parasite on the back of capitalism. It is a theory of gaining and exercising power by controlling and distribut ing the wealth produced by tools, techniques, and sophisticated busi ness organizations. It can succeed, so far as it succeeds, only in such countries as Sweden, the United States, England, Canada, Japan, and Germany-in those countries in which capital has already been employed so as to produce great wealth. It can only hold power elsewhere by massive transfusions of wealth from those nations in which capital was earlier suffi ciently free and the incentives were there for producing wealth.

Dispensing False Cures After World War II, many of the peoples of the world came to the West asking for bread and we gave them stones instead. More specifi cally, they came to the colleges and universities of Europe and America seeking to learn the sources of our wealth and prosperity. We gave them instead the power theories of democracy laced with pallid socialism. True, they sometimes learned how to operate our machines, but they learned Iittle of how they are to be acquired and less about how they may be effectively used. From our histories they learned of the horrors of the industrial revolution, how businessmen were rapacious and greedy, and what great evils at tended the growth of great corpora112 THE FREEMAN February tions. In economics they learned macro-economics, which is, in effect, distributionist economics. They went back to their native lands well instructed .about how to distribute wealth but largely ignorant of how to produce it. Or worse, they had been indoctrinated against the most effective means of achieving pros perity.

Even so, the spread of gradualism around the world has been impres sive indeed. From tiny beginnings in the minds of a few men, mainly in England and Germany, it is now firmly established in every ad vanced industrial country in the world. It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire. It is equally true today that the sun never sets on gradualism. Of course, gradualism has spread to every noncommunist country in Europe, to the United States, to Japan, to Australia, to Canada, to New Zea land, to the Philippines, to South Korea, and so on. It has also spread to many countries in Latin America, Africa, and Oceania. Indeed, there is hardly a petty dictator in the world who cannot point with pride to the accoutre ments of gradualism he has intro duced in his country: medical clinics, free schools, subsidized hous ing, land reclamation and redis tribution programs, minimum wages, empowered trade unions, and so forth. Few countries in the world are so backward that they cannot boast a parliament, the emblem of democracy, which has not busied itself in the not too distant past in confiscating foreign assets in order to redistribute them according to such lights as it has. In short, the outward forms of democracy and the inward thrust of gradualism have been introduced in states around the world.

Westernization evinces itself in our time as the spread of gradualism around the world. The technology which resulted from invention, sav ing, investment, efficient manage ment of great enterprises which were concentrations of capital has been used to give universal sway to intellectual fashion. More specifi cally, intellectuals can now utilize high-speed planes, fast automobiles, telephones, television, and radio to see to it that intellectual fashion prevails. Collectivized Decisions Intellectual fashion prescribes the collectivization of decision making and action. It prescribes a collec tivized democracy within each land, one whose government shows its good faith bypassing socialist mea sures. It requires that governments negotiate and come to terms with all radical and socialistically inclined groups within their borders. Intel lectual fashion proclaims· the de sirability of free speech and a free 1979 THE COLD WAR: THE SPREAD OF GRADUALISM 113 press in all lands, but does not re quire it in order to extend respecta bility to communist regimes.

Intellectual fashion not only pre scribes the collectivizing of decisions within countries but also in interna tional relations. Intellectual fashion is gradualist, and gradualists no more want independent nations than they want independent indi viduals. They want nations to negotiate with one another, to form regional associations with one another, and to act collectively in all matters. A nation today, particularly a noncommunist nation, which makes a unilateral decision, i.e .. , acts on its own in its own interest, may expect to be denounced and to be subject to every sort of pressure that the' makers of intellectual fash ion can mount. The United States intervention in Vietnam is a case in point. Com munists and gradualists united in condemning this action, communists for obvious reasons and gradualists mainly because the action was uni lateral. (In Korea, gradualists had been hoist by their own collectivist petard, for the United States inter vention there was approved by a United Nations Resolution.) Rhodesia has suffered the calumny of the intellectual commu nity for several years for the deter mination of its government to go it alone.

A Possible Exception Israel confounded intellectual fashion by making successful war against the Arabs on its own, con founded, I say, for the Western intel lectual community, at least much of it, had long had its sympathies bound up with the fate of Israel and for a while the juices of collectivism had to be held in abeyance. But they were only in abeyance-after all, gradualists are gradualists, not in sisters that everything be done at once-for it now appears that Israel has finally been brought to the negotiation table, and eventually the collectivist mode may regain its sway in that corner of the world. Gradualists have a goal. It is to socialize the whole world and bring it under one all-embracing govern ment. They have a faith, too. It is that they are moving toward. that goal, however slowly and gradually, whenever any decision is made col lectively. Indeed, it sometimes ap pears that the manner of the mak ing of the decision is more important than the decision reached, and that may well be the case for any particu lar decision. John Dewey put the premises of the faith this way. You cannot separate means from ends, for the means that you employ will eventually determine the ends you will achieve.

Gradualists believe, then, that so long as more and more decisions are being collectively made they are 114 THE FREEMAN moving toward their goal. That ac counts for their commitment to de mocracy, for by their understanding it is a means of collectivizing deci sion making. That accounts for the pressures they continually mount to have decisions by nations negotiated, mediated, and made collectively. In large, then, gradualism was spread within an intellectual atmo sphere arising from Western intel ligentsia and propagated as intellec tual fashion. This fashion is ex pressed as a pressure to collectiviza tion. It is advanced as democracy. Within the Cold War framework it was supposed to be democracy ver sus communism. The welfare, gov ernment planning, and dis tributionist schemes were advanced both as an antidote to communism and as substantive requirements of democracy. The programs of gradualism, however, were devised in the advanced industrial and ag ricultural countries of the West where the technology for producing wealth already existed. Industrially backward countries frequently had little wealth to distribute, and gradualist measures could have lit tle attraction. Therefore, the spread of gradualism had to be subsidized.

For that part of the story, it will be necessary to examine the foreign aid programs. @ Next: 27. The Cold War: Foreign Aid. -FOOTNOTESIFranklin L. Baumer, ed., Main Currents of Western Thought (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1967), p. 736. 2Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., The Vital Cen ter (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962), p. 240. 3Ibid., pp. 239-40. IDEAS ON UBERTY Ideas Determine Actions THE intellectual leaders of the peoples have produced and propagated the fallacies which are on the point of destroying liberty and Western civilization. The intellectuals alone are responsible for the mass slaughters which are the characteristic mark of our century. They alone can reverse the trend and pave the way for a resurrection of freedom. Not mythical Umaterial productive forces," but reason and ideas determine the course of human affairs. What is needed to stop the trend toward socialism and despotism is common-sense and moral courage.

LUDWIG VON MISES, Planned Chaos Lawrence W. Reed Liberty and the Powerof Ideas A BELIEF which I stress again and again in my classes here at North wood Institute is the belief that we are at war-not a physical, shooting war but nonetheless a war which is fully capable of becoming just as destructive and just as costly. The battle for the preservation and advancement of liberty is a bat tle not against personalities but against opposing ideas. The French author Victor Hugo declared that uMore powerful than armies is an idea whose time has come." Armies conquer bodies, but ideas capture minds. The English philosopher Carlyle put it this way many de cades ago: ttBut the thing a man does practically believe (and this is often enough without asserting it to him self, much less to others): the thing a man does practically lay to heart, Mr. Reed is an instructor in economics at Northwood Institute, Midland, Michigan. This article is from his address before the "Freedom in Third Century America" seminar at the Institute, July 3D-August 3, 1978.