Having My Way

13

THE FEAR OF FREEDOM

To love righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort is to love freedom.

Nearly everyone says he favors freedom, but in reality—with few exceptions in today’s world—most people are “scared to death” of it. This ambivalence is not widely recognized, but it is the same thing as the fear of righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort.

However, merely to use the word freedom communicates nothing. No two persons ascribe precisely the same meaning to it; indeed, each individual, as he thinks about freedom, may experience shifting definitions. This word, as are ever so many other terms, is shrouded in fuzziness. So, let me define the freedom to which I refer.

I wish to be free from dictators—all of them—be they of the one-man variety or an agglomeration hiding behind an act of Congress or an administrative ruling that restrains creative actions. Leave me free to do anything I please—stupid or brilliant—so long as it is peaceful and not injurious to others. Let me work at whatever I please for whatever I can obtain by willing exchange, whether the wage be a mere trifle or a king’s ransom. Let my hours of labor range as I please from zero to 168 per week—subject, of course, to contracts. And leave me free to exchange whatever I please with whomever I choose, be it with General Electric, Matsushita, or Joe Doakes. Free me from those people who would attend to my welfare, not with the fruits of their own labor in the voluntary practice of charity, but with the coercively exacted income of others. My welfare is no one else’s business; it is a matter between me and my God, not between those who levy and those who pay taxes. Finally, free me from fraud, violence, misrepresentation, thievery—the destructive actions of men—the curbing of which is the sole role I would assign to government.

These aspirations, strung together, are what I mean by the kind of freedom of which people are “scared to death”!

Why scared? Gilbert Chesterton once remarked: “It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting; it is that it has been tried and found difficult and abandoned.” So it is with those who try freedom; they find that it requires responsibility for self. And in consequence of that discovery, belief and faith in freedom is all but abandoned in America today! I emphasize “belief and faith.” Were the practice of freedom totally abandoned, all would perish. Freedom is still practiced to a marked extent despite all the barriers, but must wane and disappear eventually without a belief and faith to sustain it.

Stephen Vincent Benét has put our problem in realistic perspective:

Just as a physical fever may be beneficial for its cathartic effect in burning away the poisonous pollutants in the system, even while it is resisted for its painfulness, so freedom may be both sought after and opposed, for we may wish to partake of its benefits without accepting the burden of its consequences. (Italics added)

In order rationally to embrace freedom rather than fear it, we must see and understand the two faces of freedom: benefits and burden. If we wish to enjoy the benefits we must accept the burden.

Everyone wishes to partake of the benefits of freedom, its spiritual advantages and its material windfalls. These goods flow exclusively from people acting creatively as they choose. The range in benefits is staggering: on the one hand, a loner in an attic is unmolested as he pens a new system of philosophy or paints a masterpiece; on the other hand, an abundance of goods and services is at the beck and call of ordinary people in exchange for such minor performances as writing, lecturing, or hammering nails into a building. It is almost impossible to imagine the countless conveniences one can obtain in exchange for his own specialized output.

Here, however, is the rub: only a minority have the slightest idea that these benefits spring from the unfettered release of creative energy, and even fewer know how to achieve that release. Such failure may be traced to the fallacy of the False Cause: because the muscle of freedom is so strong that the benefits continue to flow from the economy despite increasing political interventions, it is all too easy to assume that the interventions cause the benefits! Many people fall into this trap; they fail to see that government is not the source of productivity but first must seize from producers any goods that it may eventually give to others.

That benefits spring from interventions is a falsity broadcast from every conceivable station: public media, pulpits, classrooms, the halls of Congress—from labor organizers to Lords of Parliament:

Tired old theories and slogans are trotted out as startling novelties. Bold experiments are proposed in one country that have been repeatedly tested in another. Arguments and counter-arguments are put forth as if their proponents stood in the dawn of history.1

Goods and services flow exclusively from individuals acting creatively and cooperatively as they personally choose. This is a fact of life, however difficult to grasp: Freedom affords the only way to release the creativity of the individual. Contrast this with the opposing formula, coercive regimentation, the dictocrat’s method currently on the upswing. Instead of release, it applies restraint! Take any one of countless interventions and examine first its source and next its impact on you.

What is the source? The fountainhead of interventionism is in the process that causes a person to so overestimate his own wisdom and to so belittle yours that he believes he can run your life better than you can. Not even to Solomon would you voluntarily delegate such power, and certainly not to anyone lower on the intelligence scale, that is, to anyone eager to dictate what you produce or exchange or how your tastes should be modified to fit his ever-varying dreams of Shangri-La.

Next, how do these restraints affect you and me? Applied 100 per cent, the restraints would fully paralyze; but to the extent of their application, to that extent are we kept from becoming our creative selves. What part of our property and our earnings belongs to us is their decision, not ours. The hours we shall labor, with whom we shall exchange and at what rates, even our educational efforts are less and less self-determined. Carried a little further and there will be a limit on the thoughts we are allowed openly to express. Let there be widespread surrender to this politico-economic heresy and the individual is no longer a man but a mere statistic.

Let me rephrase my answer to the question: Why is it that so many people believe that our unprecedented and enormous benefits flow from the dictocratic arrangement presently in vogue?

There is indeed a myriad of political controls on the economy, but there is widespread evasion of the controls—a zigzagging around the stoppages of creative action! Creative energy goes coursing through loopholes, no dictocrat nor any combination of them being smart enough to foresee and to block all the ways of possible circumvention. Look about you for abundant evidence, perhaps even in the mirror. In a word, the zest to be a man rather than a statistic, the pull or push of freedom, the will to stay alive, is not easy to down. Just as lightning cuts its own path, so creativity—a form of radiant energy—finds a way.

But reflect on the price for this short-term victory over the political obstacle course: destruction of character! Men, under these circumstances, become schemers. When the dictocratic trend advances far enough—as in England following the Napoleonic Wars—many citizens turn into outlaws, smugglers, black marketeers, breakers of the law. We witnessed many examples of this during World War II under the dictocratic price and production controls. What, then, is the price of interventionism? Banditry, a depraved way of life, is substituted for the way of the Golden Rule that characterizes a truly free people.

Yes, the enormous benefits of trade continue for a while in spite of the interventions. Meanwhile, the best and most responsible individuals—creative men—gradually lose their moral character; society slowly disintegrates at the core. This is the dreadful price we pay!

Enough about the one face of freedom—the benefits. But what about the other face—the burden of self-responsibility that “scares people to death”?

Our forefathers escaped from dictocratic arrangements and set up house in a truly underdeveloped country. They were at once free and self-responsible, neither condition being possible without the other; these qualities are two sides of the same coin. With them it was “root hog or die,” and they rooted. Also, it was trade or perish, and they traded. Trade is possible only among those who are honest—who fulfill their promises—which means that they are self-responsible and free.

People from many lands came to find an explanation for the miracle of America, an outburst of creative energy never before witnessed. Alexis de Tocqueville found the right answer: “America is great because America is good. When America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”

Our forefathers feared political tyranny. It never entered their heads to fear self-responsibility and its correlate, freedom. People do not fear the righteousness from which they benefit.

Our early American ancestors feared political tyranny because they were physically close to it; it breathed down their necks. Under the circumstances, there was worse to fear than freedom. But, as each succeeding generation receded further from the experience of tyranny—possessing little if any understanding of the effects upon men of restraint and release—people came to be less and less fearful of authoritarianism. By 1974, there are comparatively few among us who fear political management.

As the fear of political tyranny disappears, the fear of freedom and self-responsibility mounts, until many may be found praying thus: “Oh, Great White Father, protect me from whoever would labor for less than I; from whoever would undersell me; from the lack of possessions which I think are my due. Give unto me my cravings.” Responsibility for self has become nearly unthinkable.

There will be a return to freedom, regardless of present fears. Freedom is ordained in the Cosmic Order. Freedom will arise again and from either of two sources: (1) According to the historical pattern, it will arise from the ashes of dictocratic government, that is, after a people have been reduced to a shambles. Freedom is assured then, for it is the only alternative to extinction. But when? How long? This is the nonrational sequence for which there is no answer. (2) Our hope lies in an intellectual and moral awakening. Why should we not have a hand in shaping our destiny! Why must we be helpless pawns of a sequence void of human intelligence! For that intellectual and moral awakening, we need to realize that:

1. All dictocratic control of creative action must, of necessity, be erroneous, for it destroys the innovative talent with which each of us is endowed by God.

2. Such dictocratic control is, by its nature, irresponsible. The dictocrats do not suffer the immediate penalty for their errors; we do!

3. We become irresponsible when we surrender self-responsibility or have it coercively taken from us. It is impossible to be responsible for anything that falls beyond one’s own freedom of choice—and control!

4. Being one’s own man is better than existing as a mere fraction of a collective. Self-responsibility is the joyous key to being human!

In the light of such understanding, Americans will no longer fear to be free. To love righteousness or intelligence or outstanding talent or virtue of any sort is to love freedom!

• 1See “The New Science and The New Faith” by Dr. Donald Hatch Andrews, The Freeman, April 1961.