Freedom and Authority; H. B. Gow

2Sylvester Petro, ttDo Antitrust Laws Pre serve Competition?", The Freeman, April 1981. 3Janet Neiman, UBoycott? 2 Leaders Dis agree," Advertising Age, April 27, 198!. 4Newton Minow, Equal Time: The Private Broadcaster and the Public Interest (Atheneum, 1964), p. 82. 5Ibid., pp. 74-75. ~UTHORITY \ A Delicate·Balance IN his book Power, Adolph Berle dis cussed what he believed are five laws of power: (1) Power inevitably fills any vacuum in human organization, (2) Power is invariably personal, (3) Power is invariably based on a sys tem of ideas or philosophy, (4) Power is exercised through, and depends upon, institutions, (5) Power is inMr. Gow is a freelance writer in Arlington Heights, Illinois. variably confronted with, and acts in the presence of, a field of respon sibility. Power, in other words, is the ca pability of accomplishing some thing. It means control over others. It can mean, but does not necessar ily imply, the legal ability to do or accomplish something.

Authority, on the other hand, in volves the moral right (and some titnes, too the legal right) to settle 1981 FREEDOM AND AUTHORITY: A DELICATE BALANCE 505 issues or disputes. It means the right to control, command or determine. Authority is natural: that is, it em anates from the intense demands of man's nature. Human beings re quire and desire authority, even as they desire and demand friendship, love and family. Any human group, organization or institution demands authority. A family needs parents to lead it and set guidelines. A base ball team requires' coaches, a man ager, a general manager and an owner. A police or fire department requires a chief who will make and enforce the rules for the depart ment. A church group needs leaders who will help decide and enforce church policies. Everyday experi ence, then, reveals man's need for authority. But something tragic happened during the past decade: A total war on authority erupted. What resulted was an inordinate emphasis on «freedom," and the wrong sort of freedom at that. As Russell Kirk and other scholars have observed, the consequence of the total war on authority was freedom without or der, freedom without discipline or restraint, freedom without author ity. Certainly, though, any tolerable social order demands a delicate bal ance between freedom and author ity, for authority helps to teach man self-control and keeps human beings from committing mayhem against their neighbors.

A harmful breakdown of author ity in one area of life almost inevi tably leads to the erosion of author ity in other areas as well. For example, we witness in our society today a virulent and officious as sault on authority in the family and in schools-elementary through university. . RestoringAuthority What steps should we take to achieve the restoration of reasonable authority (not blind force or coer· cion) in our society? One way that authority can and will be restored in society is when those who have (or should have) authority begin to ex ercise it in their appropriate spheres of responsibility. Thus, authority in the family can be restored when parents fight to regain their right to educate their children. Teachers can help to restore authority by exercis ing their right to discipline unruly and discourteous students, who are infringing upon the right of other students to learn.

The state too can help to restore authority in society by guarantee ing the authority of other institu tions~for example, families, schools and churches-by exercising au thority in its own proper sphere, and by not usurping the authority of other bodies. It can serve to promote authority in society by guarantee ing that God-given rights are pro tected, and by enforcing laws justly., A REVIEWER'S NOTEBOOK JOHN CHAMBERLAIN ALire in Two Centuries Bertram D. Wolfe's A Life in Two Centuries (Stein and Day, 728 pp., $29.95) is a fascinating book by a man of great talent who spent most of his life trying experiments that were bound to fail. Eventually he came around to common sense views, but his ordeals were always pro longed by an innate romanticism that gave continuing scope to his imagi nation while it kept him from giving up on the ideals that fired his youth in Brooklyn slums and at City Col lege in New York.