May

THEFREE IDEAS ON LIBERTY 172 Warren Brookes, 1929-1991 Tim W Ferguson A tribute to an innovativejournalist. 174 George Mason and the Bills of Rights Gary Williams A "powerful reasoner, a profound statesman, and a devoted republican." 178 A Most Sensible Man DonaldG. Smith The legacyof Adam Smith. 180 The Best for Priscilla RobertA. Peterson A child benefits from the high-tech fruits of philanthropy. 182 Canadian Medicare: Doomed from the Start TerenceCorcoran The consequences of out1~wing the basis of economic calculation. 184 The Little Railroad That Could Anthony Young The Florida East Coast Railway as a model of efficiencyand profitability. 187 Business and the" Adopt-a-School" Fiasco lohnHood Current attempts by businessto reform education are superficialat best, harmful at worst. 192 The Rebirth of Mexico SheilaMelvin Economic reforms bring the promise of prosperity. 196 Sex, Lies, and History TiborR. Machan The dangers of distorting established doctrine.

198 Street Performers and the Social Contract RobertZimmerman Re-examiningthe theories of John Locke. 200 Two Kinds of Influence LeonardE. Read Shallwe choose force or attraction? 201 Throwing Money at Social Problems lames L. Payne Non-governmental methods bring about workable solutions. 203 Book Reviews A Dictionaryof Conservativeand LibertarianThought,edited by NigelAshford and Stephen Davies, is reviewed by WilliamH. Peterson; Out of the Barrioby Linda Chavez is examined by Jim Christie;Jean Briggslooks at Reachingfor Heavenon Earth: The TheologicalMeaningof Economicsby Robert H. Nelson; and Doug Bandow reviewsJohn Mark Hansen's GainingAccess:Congressand the Farm Lobby,1919-1981. CONTENTS MAY 1992 VOL. 42 NO.5 THEFREEMAN IDEAS ON LIBERTY Published by The Foundation for Economic Education Irvington-on-Hudson, NY 10533 President of The Board: Bruce M. Evans VicePresident: Robert G. Anderson Senior Editors: Beth A. Hoffman Brian Summers Contributing Editors: Bettina Bien Greaves Edmund A. Opitz Editor Emeritus: 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. FEE, established in 1946 by Leonard E. Read, is a nonpolitical educational champion of private property, the free market, and limited govern ment. FEE is classified as a 26 USC 501 (c) (3) tax-exempt organization. Other officers of FEE's Board of Trustees are: Gregg C.

MacDonald, chairman; Lovett C. Peters, vice chairman; 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 $20.00 a year is required to cover direct mail ing costs. Copyright © 1992 by The Foundation for Economic Education, Inc. Printed in the U.S.A. Permission is granted to reprint any article in this issue except "Canadian Medicare: Doomed from the Start," "Sex, Lies, and History," and "Street Performers and the Social Contract," 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. Phone: (914) 591-7230 FAX: (914) 591-8910 Cover art: © Washington Post Writers Group PERSPECTIVE What Free Enterprise Means I believe the universe demands that each person become a responsible individual by making deci sions about the course of his life-big decisions,lit tle decisions, all decisions. To make decisions, one must be free to choose, and it is through this decisionmaking process that character is devel oped. Character, in the final analysis,may be all we shall be able to take with us, and its development should be our prime goal in life. Those who framed our Constitution were well aware of the need to be free in matters of con science and, therefore, the need to protect individ uals from the fetters of authority in areas where au thority should play no part. With such principles as guidelines, they weaved a fabric of freedom that became our Constitution and Bill of Rights.

To produce and exchange, to save, to invest, to create, to innovate, to profit-these are a few parts of the whole fabric. Those having to do with pro ductive matters we call "free enterprise" because, through them, enterprise is free. And so we find that free enterprise is not big business, it is not small business, it is not a system; it is the frame work within which people produce and exchange; it is the atmosphere in which society carries out its productive efforts. In creating the most nearly free society in his tory, the goal of those remarkable, farsighted men was not material prosperity but that man should be free to fulfill himself, to realize his full potential. Nonetheless, the Founders' extension of freedom gave rise to a general living standard that remains the envy of the world. Socialism is the order of the day in many other nations, and in virtually every case such economies are a shambles. It is no accident. Only the free market, which is a compendium of the freewill decisions of buyers and sellers, brings material prosperity.

In America, enterprise is not truly free-simply more so than in most other countries. It has been shot through with the nostrums of those who be lieve they know more about what people should do than the people know themselves. Their "cures" threaten to destroy the fabric of freedom, always tenuous at best. Changes may be needed, but never those that reduce freedom. 170 Entrepreneurs' decisions on when to take risks, producers' decisions on what to make, con sumers' decisions on what to buy and when to save, all add up to an unpredictable mix that pro duces a predictable result-prosperity-when freedom is the main ingredient. Because deci sionmaking is so frequent and so vital in the earning of our livelihoods, free enterprise takes on added importance as a key to growth-both spiritual and material. -E. W. DYKES Canton, Ohio Teensand Sex We are morally bankrupt, indeed, if we cannot stand in front of our children and say that birth control is when girls keep their pants on and when boys keep their zippers closed. No government can give motivation or a sense of self-worth to a child. It's up to parents and church leaders to say, "Son, your problem isn't society, your problem is you." It's our obligation at all times to impress a moral standard on our young, in spite of what's popular.

-REv. BUSTERSOARIES,quoted in the summer 1991 issue of Issues& Views The PoliticalProcess As we enter another political season, and Americans stand ready to expend millions of dol lars and untold man-hours in support of their fa vorite candidates, we might do well to reflect on Leonard E. Read's advice on how best to effect political change: "Legislatures, laws, courts, constabularies, bu reaucracies can do little more than exert a mild in fluence along lines consistent with the current con sensus. The consensus moves this way or that in PERSPECTIVE accord with its content; it rises when filled with truths and virtues and sinks when bogged down with nonsense. So,what I can do about the govern ment depends upon the quality of the ideas I feed into the consensus. This defines both my limitation and my potentiality." Meditationson Freedom,p. 23 The Fundamentals Education is important, but it isn't everything the world needs so desperately today. We must have insight. And courage. And stamina. And per severance. None of which you get from books.

-VERN HANSEN Los Gatos, California Spreadingthe Word The Freeman op-ed program is beginning its sixth year. Results have been heartening: More than 1,800 Freemancolumns have been publi~hed in over 260 different newspapers in the U~ited States and Latin America. Freeman newspaper columns reach more than a million readers a month. In recent months, material from The Freeman has appeared in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal,ChicagoTribune,DetroitNews, Cleveland Plain Dealer, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Houston Post, Orange County Register,Arizona Republic, Allentown (Pa.) Morning Call, Las Vegas Review Journal,PeoriaJournalStar,MobilePressRegister, ColoradoSpringsGazette,Camden(N.J.) Courier Post, and many other newspapers across the United States. Internationally, Freemanarticles ap peared in Argentina, Australia, Barbados, Bolivia, Bulgaria, the Dominican Republic, EI Salvador, Great Britain, Guatemala, Mexico, New Zealand, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, and South Africa.

171 172 THEFREEMAN IDEASON LIBERTY Warren Brookes, 1929-1991 by Tim W. Ferguson I t was a late evening in 1981 when I met War ren Brookes over the transom. I was sorting through prospective op-ed material at Cali fornia's Orange County Register when I came across this guy who used real, meaty numbers to build his argument-Census and IRS and Labor Department calculations I hadn't seen in all the papers and magazines I scanned. Warren won my editorial heart and soon a reg ular place in the Register'slineup. It helped that he seemed willingto take calls at all hours from some nobody in California who, much as he too loved data, never saw a table he didn't have a question about. In those days Warren was usually available because, I learned, he was something of a recluse. A personal preference going back to some unhap py days in Boston, word had it. Only after Tom Bray, editorial chief of The Detroit News, made Warren his man in Washington a few years later did he begin making the rounds of the political cocktail circuit.