December

THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 444 Glory Be! LeonardE. Read Aspiringto servefreedom and truth. 446 Kun Shou You Dou: Even a Cornered Beast Will Fight MarcellaSmith An Americanlanguageteacher learns a lessonin practicalChinesepolitics. 454 You Missedthe Point, Bernie Donald G. Smith No, it isn'tin the Constitution. 456 The Taprootsof PoliticalCorruption WilliamH. Peterson Tracinga pattern of majoritarianismand interventionism. 460 "Socialism Works" Evelyn Pyburn Dissectingan obviousuntruth. 461 AffirmativeAction:The New Road to Serfdom StevenYates To what extent is affirmativeactioncompatiblewiththe principlesof a free and open society? 473 Book Reviews John ChamberlainreviewsBasicCommunism by ClarenceB. Carson. 475 Index for 1990 CONTENTS DECEMBER 1990 VOL. 40 NO. 12 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 President of The Board: Bruce M. Evans Vice-President: Robert G. Anderson Senior Editors: Beth A. Hoffman Brian Summers Contributing Editors: Bettina Bien Greaves Edmund A. Opitz Paul L. Poirot Copy Editor: Deane M. Brasfield The Freeman is the monthly publication of The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc., Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 (914) 591-7230. FEE, founded in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical educational champi on of private property, the free market, and limited government. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization.

Other officers of FEE's Board of Trustees are: Thomas C. Stevens, chairman; Philip M. Spicer, vice-chairman; Paul L. Poirot, secre tary; Don L. Foote, treasurer. The costs of Foundation projects and services are met through donations. Donations are in vited in any amount. Subscriptions to The Freeman are available to any interested per son in the United States for the asking. Addi tional single copies $1.00; 10 or more, 50 cents each. For foreign delivery, a donation of $15.00 a year is required to cover direct mail ing costs. Copyright © 1990 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue, provided appropriate credit is given and two copies of the reprinted material are sent to The Foundation. Bound volumes of The Freeman are available from The Foundation for calendar years 1971 to date. Earlier volumes as well as current is sues are available on microfilm from Univer sity Microfilms, 300 North Zeeb Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48106.

The Freeman considers unsolicited editorial submissions, but they must be accompanied by a stamped, self-addressed envelope. Our author's guide is available on request. FAX: (914) 591-8910 PERSPECTIVE Bad CharityDrivesOut Good In early America, som€ poverty (brought about by calamity such as fire and earthquake, or by crip pling accident or early death) was seen as the result of God's Providence. Some was the result of busi ness failure, not always the entrepreneur's fault. Much, however, was seen as self-created through drunkenness, laziness, or other sinful behavior. The need to determine and administer the exact type of aid required in each case placed significant demands not only on the poor, but also on the more fortunate, who were expected to give of their time as well as their treasure. It is estimated that over half of New York'swealthiest one percent do nated part of their leisure time to helping the poor or the sick prior to the Civil War, a pattern found in other large cities.

Particularly significant are the changes caused by the economic and social conditions that devel oped toward the end of the century. When commu nities were generally small, personal involvement was easy; but large-scale urbanization brought economic segregation. The better-off could ride to work on broad avenues instead of walking through a variety of wards, and many churches followed their wealthier members uptown or out of town. The more fortunate would be less likely to face need directly.... Some charitable groups became "simply relief societies." Able-bodied individuals who did not wish to work learned to go from agency to agency; and some were said to receive aid from many dif ferent groups, their income related to the number of tears shed and false stories told. In a parallel to Gresham's Law, bad charity was able to drive out good. -MARVIN N. OLASKY writing in the July 1990 issue of Alternativesin Philanthropy.

Voicesfrom the BlackCommunity By cunning propaganda, and for obvious rea sons, our leaders have turned politics into a reli gion among blacks. Masters at standing truth on its head, they've sold us the bill of goods that politics brings prosperity. Nothing could be further from the truth. Politics translates into economic benefits for those few who are elected to office, not for the masses who vote for them. Economist Thomas Sowell has shown repeated ly, in his comprehensive works on ethnic groups, that it is those groups that studiously avoid politi cal involvement that achieve prosperity and rise to the top. It's only after achieving affluence that oth er groups turn their attention to politics. Successin politics has never been necessary for economic ad vancement, nor has it ever been translated into up ward mobility. Other groups know enough to distrust the fick 1eness of political trends. They figure out early that the political pendulum swingsback and forth, according to ever-changing public opinion, and that government policies are necessarily tied to trends that cannot be depended upon in the long run. Today, the pendulum swings left, tomorrow to the right.

Yet, here we are expending vast resources and precious energies on one election after another, trying to keep the pendulum from swinging one way or another way,instead of taking our cue from other groups and concentrating our efforts on eco nomic enterprise. Last year, both The New York Timesand WallStreetJournalreported on what ev erybody already knows, that America's Korean immigrants behave like all groups before them. They literally take care of business and pay no at tention to the political high jinks going on around them. How many Korean mayors can you count? -ELIZABETHWRIGHT,Editor writing in the Winter 1990issue of Issuesand Views,an open forum on issues affecting the black community. The majority of black youth and young adults are not the street brawling ignoramuses seen on the front pages of newspapers and on the evening news.... The majority of us are decent people who deserve a better image than the one we're being given by the violent few among us. But we have to PERSPECTIVE disassociate ourselves from these people, and re main firm in our moral and ethical codes of behav ior that prohibit us from acting out our anger in vi olent ways, no matter how justified.

Despite our past problems with police and oth er officials, we have to support efforts to prose cute the small number of criminals who commit vi 01entacts against other blacks in our communities and who, by their actions, show contempt for the law. Those of us who believe in obeying laws against the destruction of property, assault of oth er human beings, and other unnecessary acts of crime and violence outnumber those who don't, and it's time, past time, that we stop aiding and abetting these criminals with our silence, or by coming to their defense .... -from an editorial in the December 5,1989, ToledoJournal,quoted in the Winter 1990 issue of Issuesand Views. FreemanColumnsPass the 1,200Mark What do the ClevelandPlainDealer,Indianapo lis Star, Orange County Register, Tampa Tribune, Allentown Morning Call, Colorado Springs Gazette, Camden Courier-Post, Sacramento Union, New York City Tribune, Diario La Bora (Guatemala), La Prensa(Argentina), El Diariode Caracas (Venezuela), Libre Empresa (Bolivia), UltimaBora (Dominican Republic), DiarioXala pa (Mexico), and La Prensa (Honduras) have in common? They are among the more than 200 newspapers in the U.S. and Latin America that have carried Freeman articles, specially prepared and sent out from FEE several times a month for the past four years. FEE's op-ed program has now received more than 1,200 tearsheets, with new newspapers being added to the list every month. If you see a Freemanarticle in your local paper, we would very much appreciate it if you would send us a copy.