To Educate or Legislate; R. Bidinotto

A Matter of Principle To Educate-Or Legislate? T hese are dizzying days for those of us who have grown gray and weary in the battle for individual liberty . As I write, the President is publicly joust ing with congressional Democratic rivals, and with Republican opponents, over com peting initiatives to shrink government, cut spending, and reduce taxes. The current argument among politicians is no longer if such cuts are necessary, but where and how much to cut. That's a stunning change from the not too-distant past, when the very idea of limiting and reducing government was con sidered out of the question-when the only public debates were over which government agencies to inflate, which program budgets to fatten, which new regulations to impose, and which taxes to hike. I think politicians are reflecting a philo sophical sea change, a turnabout of popular attitudes that has transformed the nature of the debate over the very purposes of gov ernment. Some free marketers, though, are more skeptical of the fundamentality and scope of this intellectual shift.

They point out that none of the warring political factions yet propose complete and consistent laissez-faire capitalism. None Mr. Bidinotto, a Staff Writerfor Reader's Digest, is a longtime contributor to The Freeman and lecturer at FEE seminars. Criminal Justice? The Legal System Versus Individual Responsibility, edited by Mr. Bidi notto and published by FEE, is available at $29.95 in cloth and $19.95 in paperback. by Robert James Bidinotto are trying to terminate popular middle-class "entitlements, " such as Social Security and Medicare, or to end governmental' 'transfer payments" -what the great nineteenth cen tury economist Frederic Bastiat called "le galized plunder." After all the new politi cians' tinkering is done, say these skeptics, much of the welfare state will remain intact. In their view, the radical goal of laissez faire capitalism implies equally radical po litical tactics: immediately abolishing all immoral government programs. Halfway reforms, they contend, amount to compro mising on moral principles. "The lesser of two evils is still evil," they insist.

That argument sounds seductively logi cal. But is it true that there are no contextual distinctions between political ends and po litical means? Is it true that moral consis tency implies immediate abolitionism? Opposing the abolitionists are the gradu alists-in whose camp you may count me. Gradualists draw contextual distinctions between ends and means. . . and they reject the charge that they are" moral compromis ers" for doing so. I, for one, don't disagree with the radical goal of implementing complete laissez-faire. I share with abolitionists the view that capitalism is the only social system morally compatible with the nature and needs of individuals. In short, I support laissez-faire capitalism on grounds of moral principle. However, I disagree that the transforma tion to pure capitalism can be made over night, through a program of immediate ab103 104 THE FREEMAN • FEBRUARY1995 olition of all statist injustices. I also disagree that an agenda of "halfway measures" reforms that move us incrementally but steadily in the direction of total liberty necessarily implies a lack of principle.

Gradualists, too, are utterly uncompro mising about our ends: we support no mea sures that would move us one more inch in the direction of statism. However, in mov ing toward a freer society, we're certainly willing to compromise, if necessary, on the day-to-day pace or extent of change. We're willing to accept "half a loaf' rather than no loaf at all. Such tactical compromises are not moral compromises. Moving just one step in the wrong direction is a moral compromise. But moving only one step-rather than ten, or one hundred-in the right direction, is not a moral compromise: it's a tactical agreement among people over how much good can be done in a given context. Similarly, if one can't stop or abolish an evil initiative or program, it's not a moral compromise to try to blunt its destructive impact, rendering it less harlJlfhl. A tactical compromise over how much bad to avert in a given situation is not a moral compromise, either.

In short, doing some good is better than doing none. Why do abolitionists contend otherwise? I think they've failed to distin guish between two vastly different contexts: education and politics. It is one thing to educate; it is quite another thing to legislate. All of us in the fieldof persuasion wear the hat of educators. As educators, we can and should-be one hundred percent un compromising in our philosophical mes sages. Indeed, we can afford to be: as individuals, we answer to no one else. We need not pull our punches. We can, and should, say bluntly and uncompromisingly that the initiation offorce , fraud, or coercion by government is always wrong-that any governmental program or policy which en tails such practices must end. However, politicians are not educators. They wear a different hat: that of public representatives. Somebody once said that "politicians, like water, cannot rise higher than their source. " In a representative government by the very nature of the democratic pro cess-politicians are followers, not leaders, of public opinion. If it's true, as Ludwig von Mises argued, that the marketplace is a democracy in which consumers rule by voting with their dollars, it's also true that a democracy is a marketplace in which consumers shop in voting booths for the government personnel and services they want.

So it's useless to blame politicians, ulti mately, for the state of our government. They can rise in officeonly by reflecting the popular will, and will fall by defying public expectations. Even the greatest of states men can advance against popular winds only so far, before being swept aside. Likewise, unless sustained by popular opinion, political reforms willcome undone. That's why even the best politicians, com mitted on principle to laissez-faire, may have to curb their radicalism, mute their words, and take the best they can get in a given fight. This does not mean that they are immoral or spineless; rather, they sim ply realize that they wear a bridle of ac countability, and that the voters hold the reins. If so, then abolitionists err by focusing their energies in the field of politics. Trying to effect change by launching new political parties, running for office on a laissez-faire platform, or working to abolish Social Se curity and the income tax, are efforts wasted.

Likewise, they are wrong to blame good politicians for not being radical enough. Political reform must be rooted in public attitudes. If incoming politicians are still not going far enough (and they aren't), it's only because their masters aren't yet ready for more dramatic change. There has indeed been a revolution in the political marketplace, with "consumers" demanding major reforms. But we still have much persuading to do before citizens come to accept our ultimate vision of a totally free society. Before we are ever given the power to legislate, we must first educate. D THEFREEMAN IDEASON UBERTY Self-Control, NotGun Control by Catherine Farmer D isarm Americans. Force every law abiding citizen to surrender all firearms and America will at last be a safer place to live. Sounds absurd doesn't it? But the anti-gun lobby, fueled by misinformation and the FBI's unprecedented political sup port of gun control-is effectively eroding Americans' constitutional right to keep and bear arms.