Comes The Dawn

13

IDOLIZING ERROR

Nothing is more harmful to a new truth than an old error.

—GOETHE

The question is this: Should we devotees of liberty present both sides, that is, the side of liberty on the one hand and the side of slavery on the other? This is a common notion, supported and advocated by teachers, preachers, politicians, ever so many businessmen, and others.

I contend that, historically speaking, liberty is a brand new truth and slavery is an old error. Nearly everyone in our country today thinks of slavery as something practiced prior to the Civil War—a Simon Legree-Negro relationship. True, that suggests “a relentless taskmaster,” but serious reflection reveals that the definition also applies to numerous human relationships in our day.

Let me illustrate with reference to an act by the Roman Emperor, Domitian (A.D. 51-96). Like all despots, then and now, Domitian suffered an abysmal ignorance parading as infinite wisdom. In his “wisdom” he exiled a slave—one Epictetus. Yet, so brilliant was this slave’s light that it mirrored its way for more than fifteen centuries through such philosophers as Grotius, Kant, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, and many more.

History affords no better example of despotic action to stifle creative genius by one who knows not what he does. Bear in mind that all human creativity begins as a hidden potentiality in some person unknown. Indeed, that individual himself cannot foresee his creative spark. Epictetus, the slave, did not. The newsboy, Tom Edison, had no idea that he was to become a great inventive genius. Examples, if known, should include the cave dweller who discovered how to harness fire, the Hindu who invented the concept of zero, on and on and on.

The fact is that the despots—Domitian, or his counterparts today—cannot direct creativity; they can only stifle it. They are not wise enough to handle a power of coercion over others. Nor will anyone ever be!

Now, it seems obvious that we must have an agency of society that inhibits the destructive actions of men, one that codifies the taboos and enforces them, leaving all of us free to act creatively as we please. This is what is meant by limited government. The opposite and evil use of force is when politicians and bureaucrats aggress, that is, when they use the force of government in an effort to cast us in their images. This is what I mean by coercion, for I believe that aggression against other human beings and the coercing of them is one and the same evil action—enslavement.

Compulsory seat belts exemplify this evil action—freedom of choice denied. On occasion, a person falls out of bed or off his chair. Why not compulsory bed belts or chair belts? Too absurd? No more so than the thousand and one other commonly accepted coercive actions which inhibit the freedom of anyone to act creatively as he pleases. The distinction between a bed belt and a tariff or any other form of coercive protectionism is that the absurdity is more easily discerned in the former. Each is a blow to liberty—freedom of choice. The same can be said for all infractions of the free market and private ownership way of life.

“Government can’t give us anything without depriving us of something else,” is the way Henry Hazlitt puts it in his article, “Instead of What?” in the March 1976 Freeman.

. . . practically all these subsidy measures, all these schemes to redistribute income or to force Peter to support Paul, are one-eyed as well as shortsighted. They get their immediate appeal by focusing attention on the alleged needs of some particular group of intended beneficiaries. But the inevitable victims—those who are going to be asked to pay for the new handout in increased taxes (which directly or indirectly means almost everybody else)—are left out of account.

Only one-half of the problem has been seen. The cost of the proposed solution has been overlooked.

An aside: there is no known phase of human action that the coercionists have not attempted to bring under their control. Why then, by this time, are we not wholly enslaved? It is the unknown, the hidden creativity in countless thousands of individuals, often stimulated more by adversity than by prosperity. Thank God that no political dictocrat is efficient enough to plug all loopholes.

Today’s coercionist—the political dictocrat—is as much to be deplored as Domitian or Simon Legree. One is just as much “a relentless taskmaster” as the other.

I repeat Herbert Spencer’s truth, “That which fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labours under coercion to satisfy another’s desires.” Does it matter whether he labors in Simon Legree’s cotton field in exchange for next to nothing or labors for high earnings only to have them taxed away to satisfy the demands of countless millions who produce nothing at all? This pack of parasites includes the coercionists who stimulate and develop these unwarranted demands.

Bastiat referred to this mode of social conduct as legal plunder:

See if the law takes from some persons what belongs to them, and gives it to other persons to whom it does not belong. See if the law benefits one citizen at the expense of another by doing what the citizen himself cannot do without committing a crime.

The present-day coercionist, no less than Domitian, is a despot who enslaves others.

Why this emphasis on the evil of slavery? I am unaware of any error more at odds with human destiny—emergence, evolution, growth in consciousness. In the practice of slavery, we have finite minds parading as Infinite Wisdom. To me, slavery—man’s denial of freedom—tops the list of all human errors and leads to many of the others.

Why, then, do we idolize this error and persist in the practice of slavery? It is the tug of tradition, the continuation of primitive ways—unless reason comes to the rescue. As John Locke observed: “Habits work more constantly and with greater force than reason, which, when we have most need of it, is seldom fairly consulted, and more rarely obeyed.” Thus, we seem to have always with us the relentless taskmasters, past and present. Reason has not yet come to their rescue—or ours.

In contrast to the old habit of slavery, liberty is a brand new truth. This new idea—freedom of choice; no man-concocted restraints against the release of creative human energy—began to emerge 200 years ago with the simultaneous appearance of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, and the American Declaration of Independence. To most people, anything born two centuries ago is old hat. What possibly could be brand new about a truth that aged?

Admittedly, we cannot see into the future—foresight—and few of us have the faculty accurately to assess the past—hindsight. We live in years, not centuries, and the present looms large in our thinking. We do not see ourselves and our times in proper perspective. And what is really brand new may appear to be quite ancient—or vice versa.

To help remedy such shortsightedness, construct a calendar of life on earth, collapsing eons of time into a single year, a comprehensible time span.

In January through August there were traces of life. The first insects appeared in October; in November arrived the first reptiles, dinosaurs, crocodiles, mammals; in December, the first snakes, flowering plants, elephants, deer.

It was shortly after 7:00 P.M. on December 31 that man appeared—in the glacial period. As midnight approached—only 10 minutes to go—Cro-Magnon man put in an appearance.

11:58	the beginning of recorded history
11:58:30	the first civilization (Sumer)
11:59:15	Athens in her glory
11:59:29	The birth of Christ
11:59:51.5	Columbus discovered America

But note this: Just 3 1/2 seconds before midnight appeared The Wealth of Nations and the Declaration of Independence.

Liberty is, indeed, a brand new truth!

Having tried to make plain what slavery is and why so many people persist in this dreadful error, I return to the opening question: Should we, the devotees of liberty, present both sides: Must we, in order “to be fair,” give equal time to slavery and liberty? Should we give the case for slavery, which we know to be false, the same platform dignity that we give to liberty?

I side with Hughston McBain: “If the evidence clearly indicates that an idea or policy is untrue or evil, no fair and objective person will voluntarily arrange to have it presented as valid.”

My formula: Expose the error of slavery with all the talent one can bring to bear. And as to liberty, there is no need to defend this truth; it can stand by itself. I would simply praise it to high Heaven!