On Liberty and Liberation; B. Porter

234 people never give up their liberties but under some delusion." With mad abandon contemporary Americans are jettisoning many of their once cherished freedoms and values as they seek an impossible form of liberation-from moral restraints, self-discipline, responsibility, work, necessity, competition, struggle, in equality, natural law, and the con sequences of their own behavior. It is a senseless, tragic course which can lead only to subservience, de pendency, and decadence. It is a de lusion. An imperative prerequisite to our survival as a free nation is that we recapture-in our hearts and minds, as well as in our politics-an under standing of the true nature of lib erty. A love of liberty and a clear comprehension of the foundations upon which it rests will quickly disON LIBERTY AND LIBERATION 235 pel every attraction of the false ideologies of liberation. Liberty is a divine gift, one of the most priceless of God's bequests to man, and the natural, inalienable right of every person who enters the world. In simplest terms liberty may be defined as the freedom of the individual to shape his own destiny and to govern his own affairs. Of necessity this implies the freedom to choose one's associations, loyalties, beliefs, opportunities, and economic relationships, as well as the freedom to exercise control over the fruits of one's own labors.

Though liberty is God-given, mor tal efforts are required to sustain and preserve it. Human institutions do not grant liberty, but they often usurp it. Individuals are born free, but they can willfully sell, abandon, or reject that birthright. For these reasons, liberty is never free. When not defended, it will not survive; when not exercised, it will atrophy. Essentials of Liberty Liberty can only endure when cer tain conditions are met. First, there must be an absence of coercive ac tions intended to impede the free exercise of will or to rob individuals of their labors and investments. Coercive force is justified only when it is imperative to the defense of liberty, i.e., when exerted to prevent a yet greater coercive act. Criminals and tyrants of every form stand ready to destroy human freedom, to rob the property of others, to impose their will upon whole societies. Their influence must be checked if liberty is to prosper.

A second necessary condition for the survival of liberty is that indi viduals possess and are free to ac quire the positive means needed to pursue rational ends. These means include material resources, talent, initiative, knowledge, energy, disci pline, and a love of progress and freedom. Liberty does not consist of undirected, impotent, and senseless expressions of the human will; rather, it thrives as the individual acquires power to act and to focus his efforts in meaningful directions. Liberty requires power-not power over others, but power to effect per sonal progress, to change one's cir cumstances for the better. Thirdly, the preservation of lib erty requires that individuals man ifest moral commitment and self restraint in the choice and pursuit of their goals. Liberty means the ab sence of coercive restraints, but it does not mean the absence of all restraints. We cannot escape the consequences of our own behavior.

The unrestrained pursuit of power means enslavement to ambition, the unrestrained pursuit of wealth means enslavement to avarice, the unrestrained pursuit of pleasure means enslavement to passions. Without moral limits liberty de236 THE FREEMAN April generates into license and license turns inevitably toward destructive ends. The moral authority which sets limits on the scope of an indi vidual's actions must flow from within him, the product of con science and reason; when imposed by a higher authority, however well-intentioned, moral laws are transformed into instruments of coercion and domination. A Constitutional Structure Keeping these conditions in mind, it is instructive to inquire into the kind of social structure which will foster liberty. In order to insure the first condition of liberty, a constitu tional and legal framework must be erected and upheld, its principal end being to guard against all coercive challenges to personal liberty whether from individuals, institu tions, foreign armies, or from the state itself.

The threat to liberty of the state itself should be emphasized, for un less such a constitutional system is strictly self-limiting its administra tive apparatus will grow in size and power until it comes to dominate the entire society according to its own vested interests. Consensus and consent are fundamental to the es tablishment and operation of a free government, but the goal sought is not so much Hgovernment of the people"-for this can imply that ma jori ties deserve coercive power-as a government of laws, administered as impersonally and fairly as possible. By itself alone a constitutionally limited government will never suf fice to insure the survival of human liberty. This is because government cannot bring about the second and third conditions of liberty discussed above-the power and means neces sary for positive action and the moral limits within which liberty operates. Government can be an ar biter, but it can never be a provider.

It can enforce protective laws, but it cannot produce virtuous people or act as a higher moral authority. A cycle of futility results whenever the state attempts to pro vide the resources and human energy necessary for progress. Every resource a government pro vides to the individuals in a society must first be taken from those indi viduals. Because the process of in jecting them back into the society will always incur a net loss, the resul t over time will be economic stagnation, declining initiative in society as a whole, depletion of real resources, debasement of currency, decline in productive capital, and the disintegration of social cohe siveness. The end of this cycle of futility is the dependency of the peo ple on the government and the death of liberty. Liberty is certain to perish in any society which relies solely on government to create the conditions of liberty.

1980 ON LIBERTY AND LIBERATION 237 No matter how carefully struc tured and well-defined are the legal rights, checks, and balances of a constitutional system, this cycle of futility will at some point ensue un less the citizens of the common wealth possess a strong spirit of in dependence and self-reliance, and the moral sensibilities to recognize true liberty when they see it. When the moral will and independence of the majority of a population decline, the checks and balances of any sys tem will erode. No constitutional system can long endure if its legis lators are not devoted to higher principles, if its judiciary is corrupt, if its administrators do not place integrity above all other qualities. Moral Foundations The constitutional framework of liberty must rest upon a firm foun dation: the love of independence in the hearts of a people, their moral commitment, and the vast human and material resources which they possess and independently control.

The institutions which transmit this foundation from generation to gen eration are almost all private: families, churches, corporations, firms, associations, publishers, newspapers, and the like. (Schools can also play a key role if they are under the control of those who pay for them, rather than under the cen tral government.) Standing inde pendent from the state, these institutions are the foundations of a society's liberty. If the state en croaches upon their domain and subsumes their functions, liberty declines. But so long as a people cherish the moral and material re sources which give them the power to be independent and so long as the state is a strictly limited constitu tional government of laws, liberty will prosper. The increasingly difficult and un fortunate circumstances in which America finds itself today may be traced in large part to a general decline in liberty. Genuine freedom continues to diminish even as large numbers of Americans are seduced by the muddle-headed mythology of liberation, believing that it will somehow make them freer. Quite the opposite consequence will result, for the doctrine and practice of lib eration constitute a direct assault on the conditions and structure of lib erty.

In order to discern the destructive potential underlying the multitude of contemporary theories and pro grams advocating liberation, it suf fices simply to ask: liberation from what? We learn to begin with that we are to be liberated from ~~artifi cial" self-restraints and moral limits-from the third condition ·of liberty discussed above. Proponents of liberation preach that freedom is an unrestrained, limitless, spontaneous expression of 238 THE FREEMAN April the human will, ignoring the reality that meaningful progress can only be made when disciplined efforts are rationally directed. Liberty is not a bundle of whims and passions. In order to promote this doctrine it is necessary to attack all the tradi tional and independent sources of morality: religion, family, private property, private schools, local con trol of education, corporate indepen dence, and so forth. In this manner liberation seeks to undermine the very foundation of liberty.

"Effortless Abundance" This is only the beginning. We are also to be liberated from work, want, necessity, and struggle. Thus, liber ation ignores the second condition of liberty: that individuals must pos sess and acquire the positive in struments of action in order to be free. The assumption is that freedom-the power to act, choose, and progress-can somehow exist without effort and investment. In the pursuit of this chimera goal of an effortless world of abundance for all, the advocates of liberation seek naturally to use the coercive power of the state in order to extract resources from others. In this man ner liberation becomes a predatory doctrine which can only accomplish its ends by dismantling the constitu tional checks of limited government and replacing it with an all powerful bureaucracy devoted to central planning, income redistribu tion, economic dictatorship, and to talitarian control over individual lives. And thus perishes the first condition of liberty-the absence of coercive power.

Liberation is a delusion which cannot lead to real freedom because it is based on principles and values .fundamentally contradictory to true liberty. The consequences of the de cline of liberty and the rise oflibera tion in America have never been described more eloquently than by William Simon: There has never been such freedom before in America to speak freely . . . to publish anything and everything, in cluding the most scurrilous gossip; to take drugs and to prate to children about their alleged pleasures; to propagandize for bizarre sexual practices: to watch bloody and obscene entertainment. Con versely, compulsion rules the world of work. There has never been so little freedom in America to plan, to save, to invest, to build, to produce, to invent, to hire, to fire, to resist coercive unioniza tion, to exchange goods and services, to risk, to profit, to grow. . . . Americans are constitutionally free today to do almost everything that our cultural tradition has previously held to be immoral and obscene, while the police powers of the state are being invoked against almost every aspect of the pro ductive process. 1 It is not difficult to discern the logical lWilliam Simon, A Time for Truth (New York: Berkely Press edition, 1979), p. 251.

1980 ON LIBERTY AND LIBERATION 239 end of this trend: America will be liberated of its liberty. Prior to the American revolution the world was imbued with the no tion that liberty was dangerous and irresponsible, that its establishment could lead only to anarchy, indo lence, and the breakdown of society. The birth of the American republic and the astonishing release of hu man energy and productivity which resulted shattered this myth forever. America was both free and stable; it possessed both liberty and order. The liberty of America became the cherished ideal of oppressed peoples everywhere. Liberty suddenly ac quired a respectable name. Never thereafter was it possible for the enemies of freedom to attack it fron tally. The most bitter opponents of genuine liberty came to portray their policies, programs, and ideologies as pathways to freedom. Preserve Our Defenses Instead of liberty, however, the favorite watchword became libera tion. Under this banner march the tyrannies of our time, from Soviet Russia with its wars of national lib eration to the kaleidoscope of coer cive political programs in America which invoke the mirage of libera tion. The twentieth century has been a century of liberation-of a war on freedom fought in the name of freedom.

The irony of America's present course is that in the name of free dom from restraints, every source of independent power and morality is being undermined; in the name of freedom from work, want, and scar city, the constitutional framework of liberty is being dismantled, at tacked, and perverted past recogni tion. Beyond the irony stands the very real tragedy that in the name of freedom we are being led inexora bly toward oppression and slavery.@ IDEAS ON LIBERTY INNOVATION, invention, change, all depend on the freedom of the individual to stand on his own feet. We can revert to communism very easily for it is the only system mankind has known throughout the far greater part of his existence. It is not a system to be attained by effort but one which returns to us when we dodge responsibility and fail to preserve our defenses; particularly our religious defenses. It is like the jungle awaiting silently around us ready to creep back and swallow up our feeble efforts the moment we cease struggling to hoe our vegetables and sow our grain. When it comes, it will not be an advance in evolution but a reversion to barbarism.

GEORGE WINDER LUdwig von Mises Foreign Investment SOME people call the programs of economic freedom a negative pro gram. They say: ~~What do you lib erals really want? You are against socialism, government interven tion, inflation, labor union violence, protective tariffs .... You say ~no' to everything ." I would call this statement a one sided and shallow formulation of the problem. For it is possible to formu late a liberal program in a positive way. If a man says UI am against censorship," he is not negative; he is in favor of authors having the right to determine what they want to pub lish without the interference of government. This is not negativism, this is precisely freedom. (Of course, when I use the term ttliberal" with respect to the conditions of the economic system, I mean liberal in 240 the old classical sense of the word.) Today, most people regard the considerable differences in the stan dard of living between many coun tries as unsatisfactory. Two hundred years ago, conditions in Great Brit ain were much worse than they are today in India. But the British in 1750 did not call themselves ttunde veloped" or Hbackward," because they were not in a position to com pare the conditions of their country with those of countries in which economic conditions were more satisfactory. Today all people who have not attained the average stan dard of living of the United States believe that there is something wrong with their own economic situation. Many of these countries call themselves ttdeveloping coun tries" and, as such, are asking for FOREIGN INVESTMENT 241 aid from the so-called developed or even overdeveloped countries.