The Strongest Man; G. McGath

335 The Strongest Man by Gary McGath A major influence in my teenage years was Henrik Ibsen's An Enemy of the People. This splendid play deals with a Norwe gian doctor named Thomas Stockmann who dis covers an inconvenient fact: that the local baths, which he had helped to establish and are econom ically vital to the town, are dangerously contami nated. His supporters drop away from him as the town's leaders put pressure on them, until he is left alone to address a public meeting on the subject. At the meeting, Dr. Stockmann is forbidden even to state the case which he came to present. Instead, he speaks on an even deadlier pollution: the power of the "compact majority" to stifle dis sent. He is branded an "enemy of the people" and is driven out of the meeting; yet, in the courage and confidence which he shows, he is the clear moral victor. For me, Dr. Stockmann was only a fictional character; things like that could happen, but only somewhere else in the world. Or so I thought, until I experienced a taste of his ordeal in my own town.

The story starts with a frustrated board of library trustees in Hollis, New Hampshire. For year after year, they have been trying to get the town to approve an expansion program which would double the size of the existing library. Year after year, it has been voted down. This year, they decided to take a more active role in shaping pub lic opinion. They issued a series of flyers, in the name of the Hollis Social Library, and mailed with its bulk mailing permit, urging the people of the town to vote for the library expansion. Mr. McGath is a softwareconsultantin Hollis, New Hamp shire. It seemed to me that political advocacy by a gov ernment agency is something which everyone would recognize as plainly wrong, though perhaps they needed to have the issue named for them. In viewof this, I devoted an installment of my column in the local newspaper to this issue. In my column, I pointed out how such a practice could spread to every government agency if not opposed.

The column drew a response from one of the trustees, who defended their action, claiming that "it is the elected responsibility of the Trustees to be advocates for the library," and that engaging in political advertising is "a standard and continuing fulfillment of the Board's obligations to the citizens of Hollis." He stated that no tax money was used for the mailings,but that income from the library's trust fund was used, in addition to donated services. As further evidence that they were indifferent to my arguments, the library trustees sent out another mailing the week before the town meeting, again explicitly soliciting votes in favor of the expenditure. The next step in the battle was the town meet ing. After throwing out draft after draft, I devised a short speech that would, I hoped, convince an honest person that a government agency could not morally engage in political advocacy, whether it used tax money or solicited contributions for the purpose. The site was a crowded high school gym, not unlike many others across the country where town-sized democracy has been exercised. As I waited for my chance to speak, I kept scratching at my draft, taking out anything that didn't strictly address the point. Finally I had my turn at the microphone.

I said: "I'm Gary McGath of 5 Ames Road. I'd 336 THE FREEMAN • SEPTEMBER 1990 like to address the issue of morality in politics. We're concerned with high taxes-they're bad enough-but the activitywhich the library trustees have been engaging in, in order to promote the warrant issue, I think is far worse. We're supposed to be a government of the people, not people of the government, but the library trustees have put out a whole series of flyers promoting their politi cal position. [One of the library trustees] wrote a letter to the HollisTimestelling us that this money came out of the library trust fund, and thus pre sumably originated in contributions. But even so, a government does not have any business engaging in political advertising. Either they solicited contri butions for political activity,or they solicited con tributions that were not for political activity and then spent it on political activity.I consider either one to be entirely immoral. In today's morality, people tend to ask, 'What do we want?' and 'How can I get it?' and it seems as though that's about as much as the library trustees have been asking; and they figure ... "

That was as much as I was allowed to say. The moderator of the meeting told me that the library trustees were not immoral, that he objected to my terminology, and that I had been given a sufficient opportunity to make my point. When I asked to be permitted to close out my remarks, he told me that if I repeated that the library trustees were im moral, he would make me sit down. I fell into the trap. I hadn't said that the trustees were immoral, only that their actions were, so I couldn't very well repeat a statement I hadn't made. But my concern was with not being cowed, rather than with being lured into a statement that could be construed as a personal attack. I answered, "The library trustees are immoral." Outraged at being disobeyed, he told me to sit down. About half the crowd applauded him. No one said a word in my defense. I did not sit down; I left the meeting. On my way out, I realized that in my haste I had forgotten my jacket. When I turned back to get it, a couple of undersized cops, trying very hard to look tough, stopped me. One of them got my jack et for me, but they had provided the final proof for me of how low Hollis had sunk; I was excluded from a public meeting, even if it was one I was only trying to leave. I had, in effect, been declared an Enemy of the People.

From here, the story stops following Ibsen. No one has slashed my tires, thrown rocks through my window, or strangled my cats. Some people have offered me encouragement. But the shock of see ing people applaud the silencing of a political opponent has stayed with me. At the Expenseof Others What makes people act this way? The desire for something at the expense of others is an obvious factor; when people want what they know others aren't willing to offer, it becomes tempting to resort to subterfuge. The open exchange of in formation is valuable to people who deal with one another by consent; it is a danger to people who want what others won't consent to. The crowd mentality is obviously operative as well; people will often stick with the group rather than appear different. But these factors are symptoms of weakness rather than strength. People who want the un earned are dependent on those who provide it, and specificallyon their ignorance. They must-as this meeting showed-turn to desperate measures to keep people from understanding the issues and making an independent decision. People who fol low the "compact majority" have no enduring mo tivation; when the crowd sways in another di rection, they must sway with the crowd or fall on their faces.

This is what Dr. Stockmann came to understand after he was declared an "enemy of the people." He discovered that each person who denounced him or stopped doing business with him was acting simply out of fear of his neighbors. He realized that he was temporarily stymied, but that he was the only person in town who knew how to take action on his own initiative. He formulated a plan to start a new school, in the very hall where he had been denounced, in which he and his family would teach poor boys from the streets to be free think ers' until one day they would be strong enough to drive the "wolves" away. As he made his plans, he was confident, not afraid, because of a "great secret" he had discov ered: that "the strongest man in the world is the one who stands alone." Such a statement may seem paradoxical, especially to those of us who have stood alone in opposition to governmental encroachment and lost. But it is a truth which has shaped the world. Individuals standing alone have alwaysbeen the initiators of change; those who fol low the crowd are merely acted upon, and those who purport to lead the crowd must constantly run to arrive where the crowd is going to be next. Any one who hopes to see the world or a community move in a new direction must be the first to go in that direction and must be willingto stand on noth ing more than his own judgment, presenting a case and setting an example which others willeventual ly understand.

No QuickFixes Some people hope for quick fixes to society through the political process. But before political change can happen, there must be change in the minds of people. Without this, the crowd will turn away from attempts at change. With it, nothing can stop the change; witness the events in the Commu nist world today. The key element in Ibsen's "strongest man" is certainty without pretense. This does not mean regarding oneself as infallible;that sort of certainty is the most pretentious and vulnerable of all. It means not shrinking from the facts, not disguising one's own knowledge, but at the same time re examining every piece of that knowledge whenev er possible. Only knowledge that has survived the most difficult tests in one's own mind will survive in public debate. To reach people by standing alone, it's necessary to reach them when they're standing alone, that is, one person at a time. It's possible to sway a crowd with an emotional appeal, but reaching people with reason is a much slower process. Creating a free society is a "bottom-up" process, one that pro ceeds from the individual to the social organiza tion, not a "top-down" process of changing the THE STRONGEST MAN 337 individual by changing society. People who depend on the crowd for their thoughts may adopt the slogans of freedom, but they won't understand its substance~ This approach doesn't preclude addressing large audiences, but it requires addressing the rea soning power of each individual, not appealing to mob instincts or disguisingone's message as some thing fashionable.

It requires staying calm under stress, in order to be able to address the issue rather than the crowd. This can be the most difficulttask of all, and a lapse can allow clever leaders to maneuver the debate to their advantage; failing to remember this was cer tainly my own greatest mistake in that town meeting. It requires not overestimating the power of the crowd. It can seem, when facing a crowd alone, that the whole world has turned against you and that nothing you can say will ever make a differ ence to anyone. It's important to remember that there are stillpeople with minds, even if they aren't present or if they lack the courage to speak in your defense, and that even people who cheer with the mob may reconsider in privacy. In the case of my own experience, there was one light that penetrated the darkness: When the time came to vote, the library issue was defeated. Everything that the' politicians had done couldn't get them their way; there were still enough people who made their own judgments to keep the vote short of the needed two-thirds. These people, to that extent, stood alone in their own minds. By encouraging each person to hold on to such independence, those of us who care for free dom can survive and succeed in spite of the loneliest moments which political battles may thrust on us. D 338 School Budgets and Town Meetings by R. W. Boehm I n New Hampshire a popular topic of conver sation during the first months of the new year is the local school budget. Newspapers report frequently on the heated proceedings of town meetings where school budgets are dis cussed. Television coverage shows that these gath erings can become highly emotional as aggravated citizens express their concerns. There is much gnashing of teeth.